Karl Marx Is Not Gay. Not That There's Anything Wrong With That.

"Two guys wanna get married?  Well, that's just stupid."
                                                                                   Eight year old Luke Bean

"The Take Back the Land Movement is rooted in the following principles: housing is a human right; local community control over land and housing."
                                                                                   Take Back the Land Mission Statement


New York State is really making headlines lately.  Former Congressman Andrew Weiner finally stepped down after weeks of Weiner jokes following his sexting of almost every woman in the U.S. under the age of twenty-five.  The odd thing to me was that our capacity for outrage has become so burned out that news of Weiner's texting a high-school girl was met with a shrug of the shoulders and a "Congressmen will be Congressmen" indifference.  Yeah, the guy is/was a deviant.  I don't think he is the type of public servant that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he envisioned our Nation's representatives.

New York made the national news again last night when it passed the Gay Marriage Bill into law.  In thirty days it won't be just Adam and Eve getting married, but also Adam and Steve (as well as Guy and Manny, Neil and Bob, etc).  My nephew's reaction to the uproar was classic eight-year old brevity: "Two guys wanna get married? Well, that's just stupid."  I don't think that my nephew is biased against gay people but those on the fringes of the political spectrum may disagree.  There is suspicion and distrust everywhere of every representative of the straight, white, male social structure, even (I'm sure) amongst the elementary schoolers.  Wake up people!  Our children are being brainwashed that eating meat, driving cars, earning money and trusting the police are all okay and socially acceptable.  What will become of our society with these sorts of values?  Just think of all these elementary school kids as adults, obeying the speed limit as they drive to work, paying their taxes and coming home to eat a steak with their families, or worse yet, some venison tenderloins from a deer they shot and killed.  It's a Lefty's worst nightmare.  Personally, I miss Ronald Reagan.  He was steady as a rock.  Sure, he cut welfare spending and increased our military budget tenfold, but he was a good foil for a young kid like myself that was anti-Establishment.  Like D.J. says, "If you're twenty and you're not a rebel, you have no balls.  If you're thirty and you're not part of the Establishment, then you have no brains."  I have had both and neither.

Bill Clinton and Al Gore share an intimate moment

I was conflicted when I heard that New York may allow two women to get married, and I wasn't sure what to think, so I did a little research.  College-Girls and Pinkbabes were both useful websites with some very informative videos regarding the marriage issue, apparently also known as "Girl On Girl".  I did not know that so many teenage girls had friends' moms that were willing to hold them and comfort them and do other things to them just to make them feel better when they were going through some rough times emotionally.  I still don't know if two women should get married.   Sure, two ugly women getting married wouldn't bother me but, as for the hotties, I am still determined and willing to watch as many videos as it takes to arrive at an informed opinion.

Emily Good was another New Yorker to make the national news, having been featured on the Huffington Post, Glenn Beck, MSNBC, Newsday, Fox News, and USA Today, as well as many other news outlets.  Ms. Good was arrested on her own property for videotaping members of the Rochester Police Department making a traffic stop.  She wanted to get evidence of racial profiling in her neighborhood which, she says, happens all the time.  In this case the officers were white and the person they pulled over was black which, of course (according to Emily), would be racial profiling.  During an interview with the Democrat and Chronicle she noted that the officers making the traffic stop were white and she ran into the house to get her camera to record evidence of their crime.  The cops come off a bit short-tempered in the video and it appears that the arresting officer acts quickly once he makes up his mind to arrest Ms. Good.  She keeps shouting "I don't understand what's happening," as he is arresting her, which would have been funny if it wasn't so......okay, it was kind of funny.

I have been subjected to racial profiling once and non-racial profiling another time.  My friend Tony Mouzon (may he rest in peace) lived off Clifford Ave. in the city.  There was a crackhouse at the end of his street.  I was driving an old pick-up truck at the time and was (and still am) white.  The first time I went to his house to pick him up for work, I sat in my truck outside his house and waited there.  After waiting for a few minutes, I aroused the suspicion of his neighbors.  What is this white guy doing on our street?  The short and most logical answer to them is that I was there to buy drugs.  That is why most young, white males came to this African-American neighborhood.  When Tony came out of the house I saw him have a quick conversation with one of his neighbors that was standing on their porch.  When he got in my truck he was laughing and said that his neighbor was getting ready to call the cops on me.  I liked the idea of Tony having vigilant neighbors who cared about what was happening on their street.  I liked it even more that they would do something about it.  My other profiling incident was when I had long hair and was a passenger in a car that was traveling in a well known drug corridor headed to Washington, D.C.  We didn't know we were in a "drug corridor" as the officer called it.  It was the same route that my parents took when I was in fifth grade and we were driving to Florida.  We were just on the highway, going to see the dinosaurs at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum.  The cops said that they pulled us over for speeding but I am pretty sure they pulled us over because we had New York license plates.  It was an undercover car and I think they had shadowed us for a ways to get a good look at us.  Like I said, I had a lot of hair.  They made us wait while they brought a drug-sniffing dog onto the scene.  Did we do anything wrong that would warrant our getting pulled over?  No.  But we did fit the profile.   

Distrust of the Establishment was a given in the post-Sixties/Watergate society that I grew up in.  My first year away at college was 1986 and we were still in the wake of the 1960's.  The Grateful Dead were making a comeback, Hunter Thompson was essential reading, and the drugs of choice were still pot and acid.  Politically and socially, the Sixties cast a long shadow, like an overachieving big brother that me and my friends would never measure up to.  Not that we cared much.  We were doing our own thing.  We still carried a distrust of the Man, the Establishment, and Big Brother, but I don't think that's what Emily Good's deal is. Sure, if you read her Facebook page you will see comments like "very corrupt and they are out of control!" and "RPD must love wasting money and resources by just being douches" and  "Your story is living proof that America is looking more and more like a Police State" but I think that she thinks the problem goes deeper than that.  I think she subscribes to the theory that the police are just a part of the problem in our society, a tool of the Establishment to keep the needy and impoverished in their place, and to maintain the status quo for the Haves, the people who run or support Big Oil, Big Banks, and Big Fill-In-The-Blank.  I am certainly not the first person to defend the police.  I have had plenty of run-ins with cops who were jerks but I don't think the guy making a traffic stop is doing so because he's defending some secret network where white, priveleged males get everything handed to them.  He's just a guy enforcing the law who wants to get home alive at the end of the day.  The arresting officer in Ms. Good's case may be wrong but I don't think he's part of a bigger conspiracy.

Karl Marx

The Rochester Police Department was also put on the spot earlier this year when Ms. Good and others were protesting the foreclosure of a home in the city.  On March 28 of this year two dozen RPD officers executed an eviction notice at the former home of Catherine Lennon, a Rochester woman who had her home foreclosed on.  She hadn't made a mortgage payment in nearly two years and either she ignored warning letters from the bank or the bank refused to discuss refinancing with her.  She was called the "Rosa Parks of the Housing Market" because she stood up to the Big Bank (in this case Fannie Mae) who foreclosed on her house.  Fannie Mae was bailed out with taxpayer money two years ago, lending a murkiness to the morality of home foreclosures of taxpayers who supposedly are paying the bills of the institution kicking them out of their house.  Along with this, Fannie Mae is currently being investigated for fraud.  With the help of an organinzation known as Take Back the Land, Ms. Lennon returned to her home, and awaits further action.  Or something.  I don't really know.  I do know that Take Back the Land, or TBTL, has a mission statement that reads as follows:

Take Back the Land Rochester believes that housing is a human right, not a commodity. We believe that land and housing should be controlled by the community, not the banks. In order to elevate housing to a human right and secure community control over land we defend people from foreclosure-related evictions and assist homeless people to move into vacant, bank-owned homes. In this process we are wresting land from the control of the banks and turning it back to our community in the form of community land trusts—where land can be taken off the speculative market. As long as housing occurs at the whim of the banks and the market homelessness and poverty will plague our community forever. In short, housing should be for people not for profit. That‘s why we’re taking back the land!

These houses - which are the private property of the bank - must not be sold "for profit" (because making a profit is just wrong apparently) but rather be held by a "collective" and given to homeless people and others in a lower economic strata, particularly women of color.  I have just a few issues with the TBTL, and when I say a few, I mean everything they stand for.  To wit:
               - Housing is not a human right any more than having a car is a human right. It is not a human right that you should have what your neighbor has even though you don't work for it. However, if you can't afford to pay for your own housing, sign up for Social Services and the New York state government will subsidize your housing. That's pretty nice of them.
               - Land and housing costs money. Whoever owns it, gets to control it. It's called private property. Go to school, get good grades, get a scholarship to go to college (or take loans like everyone else), then get a job. Save your money, pay your bills, establish good credit and then buy a house. Or don't.
               - If you are a homeless person, you should be able to squat on someone else's property and the TBTL will protest that it's not fair that you, who are an alcoholic/drug addict who has never worked for more than three months at one job, don't have the same living conditions as the person who worked and saved their money.  Huh?

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness does not guarantee that you get to own a house, especially not a house that you don’t pay for.  I know that everyone has an excuse nowadays.  Weiner sexts underage girls and then checks himself into rehab. For what? To cure himself of being a creep? Yes, the job market is barren, but that doesn't mean you can quit paying your mortgage. If banks like Fannie Mae are using predatory interest rates then foreclosing unfairly, then there should be investigations to see if laws were broken. If we need legislation to prevent predatory bank practices, then let's pass those laws. We were founded as a nation with the power of law, not man. We have no King and there is no Judge that does not have to answer to the rule of law. If our system works properly then we cannot be convicted on a judge's whim. If the system works properly.  But the citizens have to be held accountable to the law as well.

It's insulting to Rosa Parks to call Lennon the "Rosa Parks" of the housing market. Owning your own home is not a human right.  Being able to work and go to school without prejudice or fear of reprisal because of your race or social status is.  Human rights are generally the right not to have awful things done to you. You can determine your own fate. You can vote and you can vote without getting your head bashed in. You have a right to private property and you have the right to be protected from unlawful searches and seizures. You have the right to be protected by the law, regardless of your color, creed, or sexual orientation.  You can't be beaten or tortured by the police or held without cause.  In New York, you have the right to marry someone of the same sex with equal protection under the law.  I don’t think that people have a right to free housing or free food. It is by the largesse of our brothers and sisters in society that we are charitable enough to help the less fortunate, even those who refuse to meet society half way.

It has become fashionable to bash Big Oil (the Gulf spill), Big Banks (where did the bailout money go?), cops (why are they harassing that poor girl?), people not of color (they lack compassion for immigrants even though our families were all immigrants), people who try to make money, carnivores, people who don't recycle, people who don't believe in global warming (I'm not convinced) and people that like Sarah Palin (this I understand).   I am never going to apologize for making money or eating meat or driving my car.   I'd like to live in a world where college education is free, healthcare is free, museums are free and frequent, and libraries and parks are the center of every town.  My dream society is a true meritocracy, one that rewards hard work and skill and talent and vision, a nation in which the best man or woman gets the job because they do the best job. We are all lucky to live in America.  Of course if society goes the other way then I would like to request a house now.  Preferably somewhere near a lake. With a patio, because I like to grill. Oh, by the way, I'll need a grill.

Happy Father's Day

Father's Day is Sunday.  I am lucky enough to still have my Dad around even though, at 72, he is still relatively young.  His father, my grandfather, Joe Bean, passed away when he was 93, leading me to think that my Dad will be around a long time.  Am I in denial about my father's mortality?  I sure am.  But anyone who knows my Dad can attest to his invincibility.  With two huge hands and the suppport of my Mom, he built everything that we hold dear: our family, our farm, our way of life that hums steadily in tune with nature.  It's perfectly normal on a summer day for either of my parents to grab some tomatoes out of the garden and make some fresh BLTs, like it's no big deal to be so connected to the Earth.   I know that kids always think their dad is Superman, but my Dad is Superman.

Last year I broke my leg and then my Dad fractured his pelvis.  His injury was much worse but, despite some tough times, he's bounced back.  We spent most of the winter in dual recliners in the living room, trying to find something to watch on tv to stave off the boredom.  My Dad was not meant to spend much time indoors.  I could read and watch movies and have a drink every day at 4 o'clock like it was no big deal.  My Dad, however, spends his winter days outside with his friends, chasing fox with his dogs.  He likes to listen to the dogs run.  But, like I said, he's bounced back.

My parents moved us out of town when I was only five and plunked us down on 98 acres on a dirt road in Lima.  My Dad started farming shortly thereafter and we became a "farm" family.  We had horses, chickens, pigs, cows, cats and dogs.  There were combines in our driveway and if it was 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning and you hadn't heard the tractor yet it was because my Dad was somewhere else, probably an auction.  I knew and my family knew at an early age that my Dad did everything for us.  We were the reason he got up in the morning.

As I've grown up, life around me has changed.  My Uncle George, probaby my Dad's best friend, was my Dad's brother-in-law.  I had a sort of hero worship for my Uncle George.  He took me to ball games.  He talked my Dad into taking us on a family trip to Florida to see my Aunt Margaret and her family.  It was the kind of trip that cemented childhood memories.  We went to DisneyWorld and the Ocean and I brought back oranges for some of my 5th grade classmates and I was smooth and styling because it was April and I was tan.  George passed away from cancer in June of 1979.  He left his wife Rosemary (my Dad's sister), sons Billy and Tommy, and daughter Amy behind.  My cousins were in their twenties and my Dad did the best he could to be there for everyone.  Eventually, he and Bill became close friends and went into a variety of businesses together.  Bill married a great gal named LuAnne and became a father himself and they built a house on the road where my parents still live and where I grew up.   Bill and LuAnne and my Mom and Dad were inseparable for a long time.  There were a lot of laughs and good cheer.  My Aunt Rosemary married another George and the family kept growing.   Looking back now it seems like the love and friendship and commitment to family that my Dad lived is a tree that keeps on giving to this very day. 

Friends that I grew up with have had fathers pass away.  Friends that I went to school with have had fathers pass away.  I finally caught up to a girl I had worked with a couple years ago.  A sweet, cute, kind-hearted girl that just entered her thirties.  Her father had passed away since the last time I saw her.  I knew some of these men pretty well, as well as one can.  I respected them and also had a healthy fear of them.  They were not the kind of guys that you lipped off to.   As I heard someone say recently about someone else's father, "Your Dad don't play no f***ing games!" and that pretty much sums them up.  One friend's father caught some kids shoplifting from the neighborhood liquor store.  He picked the kid up by the collar and the seat of his pants and tossed him onto the concrete sidewalk like a bag of beans.  The kid sat there until the cops arrived.  Another one of my friend's fathers responded in kind when a neighborhood kid lipped off to his wife.  That kid got tossed over the porch railing and into the bushes.  I liked these guys and I also think that a little bit of fear of your elders when you're a kid is healthy thing.  Now their sons have become fathers.

Contemplating my father's mortality is taxing.  I know it's all a part of the cycle of life but that doesn't make it any easier.   I think about the times that my Uncle George has missed and how my life might have been different had he lived longer.  I think about the fathers of friends and how they will miss seeing their sons grow into fatherhood.  And then I think about my brother and his five kids (yes, I said five) and how they sometimes follow him around and you can see the hero worship peeking through when they're with him and I grin when I realize that my brother has turned into the type of man that you don't lip off to.  I don't know why but I have been continually blessed with family and friends who know what's important.  And today, like yesterday, I am going to stop by and see what my Dad is up to, and tomorrow I am going to wish him a Happy Father's Day.  I am that lucky.

My Favorite Corey Haim Films

Some people define "blog" as "Any of various internet destinations maintained by tragically deluded people who actually think you are interested in their all-time favorite Corey Haim movies."  Please, Jennifer, when referring to Mr. Haim's work, call them films, not movies.  Afterall, he was an auteur.

The Godfather.  Corey Haim was great in this movie and I don't know how he did not win the Oscar.  He plays Michael Corleone, son of the Godfather, Vito Corleone, and held his own going toe-to-toe against the great Marlon Brando.

Apocolypse Now.  Who could forget Corey Haim growling the famous words: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

Citizen Kane.  Some say it is the best movie of all time.  Corey wrote, produced, directed and starred as a man who wants the world, gets the world, and then regrets his life and what it took to get him there.

Gone With the Wind.  Corey plays Scarlett O'Hara, a wretch who is loved by Rhett Butler.  Who could forget the look on Corey's face when Rhett says, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."  Classic cinema.

The Wizard of Oz.  Who could play Dorothy better than Corey Haim?  I love the part when he puts on the ruby red slippers and sings "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".

And my favorite all-time Corey Haim film has got to be Star Wars.  George Lucas usually gets all the credit for this film but it's Corey's performance that, just like the Dude's rug, truly ties this film together.  We follow Luke and Han and Obi-Wan as they battle Darth Vader and the Empire and then, against all odds, blow up Corey Haim at the end.  He is virtually unrecognizable as the Death Star, just another example of his ability to disappear into a role.

Ok, that's it.  Tune in next week to learn what my All-Time Favorite Martin Scorcese Movies are.  Hint: License to Drive cracks the top five. 

And That's What Really Grinds My Gears....

Everyone complains about the weather but no one does anything about it.  Mark Twain said that.  But why complain about the weather when.....

President Obama has abandoned Israel.  He came out last night in support of the Palestinians and embraced the pre-1967 borders.  Iran must be licking its chops.  Why would Saddam Hussein not allow weapons inspectors in?  Because then the world, and specifically Iran, would know he had no weapons!  But we did what Iran couldn't: we weakened Iraq beyond all recognition.  You're welcome.  Now we are going to give billions of dollars (that we will probably borrow from China) to Arab nations whose most mainstream political parties would like to see Israel wiped off the map.  Could we please have Ronald Reagan back?  Heck, I'd even settle for Jimmy Carter.

Public Safety Advocates, a fancy phrase for "People Who Know What's Best For You Better Than You Do Because You're A Dumbass" want to bump off Ronald McDonald because he's a bad influence.  The last time I checked (I didn't really but it's just good, common sense) toddlers can't drive.  Their parents are the ones who decide what the kids eat, and if parents want to take their kids to a G-D Mickey D's, it's none of the State's bizness.  Sure, kids are fat.  I'm fat.  But I still think choosing what I eat is a basic human right even if it's not in the Bill of Rights.
Part II of "People Who Know What's Best For You Better Than You Do":  New York State wants to pass a law banning teens from tanning booths.   If you are not yet 18 it's going to be illegal to get a tan so you don't burn on the family vacation to Myrtle Beach or so you can look nice for your prom pics.  Shouldn't that be up to the parents to decide?  Oh, that's right.  They're dumbasses.

The three-headed monster of Hochul-Corwin-Davis are running for Shirtless Chris "I'm Really Buff" Lee's empty Congressional seat.  The 70-year old Davis gets assaulted by a phony camera crew, who edit the tape to make it look like they haven't been following the guy around all day and getting in his face, and then the incessant radio and tv spots accuse all three candidates of trying to kill Medicare.  Way to make a play for the Frightened Senior Citizen voting bloc, you idiots.  These ads run alongside others in which, apparently, if you agree with the Ryan Budget Proposal from a few weeks ago, you want everyone and their mother to have an abortion.  I don't know who to vote for and I just want it all to be over.

It's NBA playoffs which  means a series started on a Sunday should end right before you begin your Christmas shopping.  The Heat-Bulls series is averaging a game every four days.  Can we please pick up the pace, Mr. Stern?  If Oprah was really that powerful she would have killed bin Laden a long time ago.

I think there was some other stuff that was bugging me but, except for people who hit straights and flushes on the River, I can't think of it now.  Ok, that's it.

Don't Put On Any Airs When You're Down On Rue Morgue Avenue

I was surfing Facebook (cybeer-peeping) recently, when I came across a girl that used to ride my bus.  I'll call her Mary Anne.  When she was in seventh grade, Mary Anne was friends with my little sister along with two other girls I'll call Cherie and Gretchen.  My sister used to miss alot of school, usually on Mondays and Fridays ("Sounds like someone's got a case of the MONDAYS!" ), and after missing one of these days, she went back to school and found out that these girls weren't going to be friends with her anymore.  Apparently they had decided this over the weekend and used my sister's absence to stage a friendship coup.  Kind of like when Idi Amin took over Uganda.  Anyway, they decided they were going to freeze her out of their little clique.  The one girl, Cherie, was my sister's "best friend".  They both had horses and she was an only child.  Later in the week Cherie folded and became friends with my sister again but the other two kept their distance.  I remember an ugly scene on the bus with this girl Mary Anne making a sour face at my sister, as if swallowing the devious, catty and mean truth of her actions.  I didn't give a shit about the other girl, Gretchen.  She was an amazon for a seventh grader and she always came across like a bully and an asshole anyway. 

My sister is blonde and sunny and, although we fought from 7th grade until college, not fake.  She isn't a schemer, she doesn't act a certain way to be popular, and she treats everyone with respect.  I've gotta believe that this little clique of girls had had enough of my sister's perpetual sunniness and that is why they froze her out.  My sister was crushed.  She cried.  I set about, true to my Irish roots, not liking those girls, especially Cherie, who was too cowardly to confront my sister to her face and then too cowardly to fully abandon her.  Although my sister was friends with her, and maybe even best friends, throughout high school, I never cared for her after that.  I was a wuss back then so I never said shit to anyone but that's what I felt like inside.  The girl that rode our bus, Mary Anne, continued to ride our bus, and eventually I graduated and never saw her again.  She kind of started to blossom in high school and, even though she had betrayed my sister, I liked sitting next to her and peeking at her bra and its perky contents.  Yes, although I didn't like the girl I didn't let that keep me from looking down her shirt. 

She lived in a weird little collection of houses that were in an area we called Factory Hollow.  It was almost a trailer park - it's a flat basin area with trailers everywhere.  She lived in the extended part, across the main road, and lived in a house.  I just drove by there the other day and not much has changed:  tires in the yard, kids' toys and wagons abandoned in tall grass, lots of rusted propane tanks and automobiles in various stages of repair.  There's an abandoned mobile home, windows shot out, about forty feet from the cracked and muddied vinyl-sided house that she lived in.  Her mom was a single parent, she had a half sister, and I think they rented. 

My sister graduated with Cherie and they even performed in the talent show when they were Seniors.  My sister and I went to the same college for a year and somehow she had gotten older and more responsible than me.  The last time I saw Cherie was at my sister's wedding.  It had been twelve years since I saw her and she seemed like the same selfish, little person that I remembered. 

This had all faded from my addled brain until recently when I came across Mary Anne on Facebook and I read something that gave me a new perspective on all those happenings from long ago.  Mary Anne writes a blog and was sharing her current circumstances.  Her and her husband (some sort of carpenter/roofer I believe) moved down to Florida with their kids and lived in a trailer in the hopes of making a new start.  Then they were in the process of moving back to New York after things somehow did not work out in Florida.  She said "It's difficult to put on airs when you live in the crappy little house in front of the Sugarcreek"  (the Sugarcreek is a gas station/convenience store).  Suddenly, for the first time in thirty years, I felt empathy for her.  When I knew her she lived in the weird little (crappy) houses that were down the road from Sugarcreek.  And now she lived in front of a Sugarcreek.  My sister and I came from a whole, loving family that lived on a beautiful farm and had horses to ride.  My Dad worked his ass off to give us an upper-middle class upbringing and my Mom worked her ass off to make sure we were raised the right way and didn't embarass her in front of the neighbors.  Mary Anne never had horses or a sweet house to live in or a farm to run around on.  Or a yard that had more grass than mud.  I never judged her for living where she did and it didn't really even register with me, but after reading her comment about putting on airs, I'm sure it not only registered with her but shaped who she was.  I realize that she must have been supremely self-conscious about it, kind of like we all are at times.  I was recently reading Mary Karr's Lit, and she told a tale of being at a fancy ceremony with her plaster pearls and cheap shoes with cardboard soles, and feeling like she didn't belong.  I think we've all felt like we are faking it at one point or another, like we weren't good enough and we didn't deserve to be where we were, or maybe we did deserve to be where we were, and where we were was a crappy house across from the Sugarcreek.

Bullying is big in the news right now.  Kids are commiting suicide or just having a generally hard time, getting harassed on Facebook, etc.  I think now that I might have done more to better understand Mary Anne's situation and maybe not judged her so harshly with my Irish temper.  Maybe.  I think bullying comes from a place where people can lash out at those weaker than themselves because somewhere in their life they have to take shit from someone else.  Or maybe, lacking worth elsewhere in their life, they latch on to a Gretchen or an Idi Amin, to give them some sort of status as opposed to getting a bucket of pig blood dumped on them like Carrie at the prom.  Or maybe they just don't want to be the slowest gazelle in the herd and abandoning one of their own to the lions is the only sure way they won't get eaten.  I don't feel sorry for bullies and I don't like them, but for everyone else I think a little empathy goes a long way.  Think To Kill A Mockingbird when Scout stands on Boo Radley's porch for the first and only time, and sees the world from his point-of-view.  I don't have to like Mary Anne but I do understand her better.  We've all been the person with cardboard soles in their shoes, haven't we?

The Hub Of Power In Honeoye

HUN-ee-oy is how you pronounce that word.  Honeoye is an Iroquois word meaning "a lying finger" or "where the finger lies."  I know this is true because I looked it up on Wikipedia.  The town of Honeoye sits on the north shore of Honeoye Lake which feeds Honeoye Creek which flows through the town of Honeoye Falls, where I grew up and went to school.  Honeoye Falls is a long ways from Honeoye, probably a good fifteen to eighteen miles (I'm too lazy to look it up just now), a little known fact which has repeatedly led me to have this conversation:
    Stupid Person: Where are you from?
    Me:  Honeoye Falls.
    Stupid Person:  Wow.  And you drive all the way here?
    Me:  Umm, yeah.  It's all of twelve miles or so.
    Stupid Person:  Yeah, right.  It's like fifty miles away.
    Me:  No,  you're thinking of Honeoye, which is about twenty-five miles away.
    Stupid Person:  Oh, really?  Are you sure?
    Me:  Yeah.  I grew up in Honeoye Falls.  You're thinking of Honeoye.
    Stupid Person:  Yeah, Honeoye, Honeoye Falls.  Same thing.
    Me:  No, they're actually two separate towns.  I would tell you how far apart they are but I am too lazy to look it up just now.
    Stupid Person:  Oh.  Gosh, now I feel stupid (they never say this!).

Honeoye is not a big town nor particularly ornate.  No big houses on Main Street, no nice side streets lined with elm trees, no solid block of interconnected brick buildings as its business center, but it does have a lake, and a main strip, and a barbershop.  There are some nice houses in Honeoye but they're more here and there than most Western New York towns.  The barbershop is part of the main drag in town, with an old fashioned barber pole and a storefront walkway that looks like it was made to hitch your horse to.  I mentioned to my dad that I needed to get my haircut and he called me and mentioned this place.  "I'll take you down to Ralphie Angelo's."  This seemed more like a foregone conclusion than a suggestion.  Ralph Angelo is known for his hunting dogs and his barbershop.  His shop is next door to Ace's Restaurant, for years the best place around to get a fish fry.  The town didn't look like much on a Wednesday afternoon in April but I think that on a summertime Friday evening, when people are renting houses and enjoying the lake, it might have a bit going on.

My dad called Ralph ahead of time to make sure he was open.  "Yeah, I'm open every day except Sundays.  If I'm not there when you get there, just wait.  I probably ran over to the town hall."  Sure enough, I walked in and no one was there except for a couple guys waiting.  What kind of proprietor, I thought, leaves his business and leaves it open in the middle of the day?  I thought that was pretty cool.  When I sat down in the chair Ralph didn't ask me how I wanted my hair cut but he did ask to see the monster buck I shot last year.  How did he know me and how did he know I shot a monster buck?  Well, he knew I was coming, knew who I was, and heard from my cousin about my trophy deer.  Then he clipped my hair like he was Edward Scissorhands.  After that he put shaving cream around my ears and on my neck and shaved it with a straight razor.  A straight razor!  Definitely old school.

When I was done I paid him and gave him a fifty percent tip (it was only an eight dollar haircut).  I was impressed: the barber pole, the straight razor, the Edward Scissorhands-like efficiency.  I left and told my dad about Ralph being late and asking me about my deer.  "There was nobody in there?  Really?  Usually the boys are there hanging out."  Oh, I thought, I get it.  Ralph's was like the old barbershops where the boys went to hang out.  It made sense.  "Yeah, I think Ralph is the Town Supervisor.  And, I'm not sure, but I think he's also the head of the schoolboard."  Now it really made sense.  The town that gave me a Mayberry vibe was actually old-fashioned enough to have its hub of power centered in the barber shop.

SH**T THAT'S PISSING ME OFF

(Friday conversation: 4:45p.m.):
This really has to be done today. 
I know.  I've looked for it.  I can't find it.  The office closes at five and it's half an hour away. 
I know, but he needs it today.  Can you look for it now? 
I've looked for it, I'll keep looking for it, but I can't find it.  If I find it I will fax it to him. 
Ok, because he would really like to send it out today. 
Yeah, I know. 
(Twenty minutes later):  Did you find it? 
No, I haven't found it.  When I find it, if I find it, I will let you know.  If not I'll have to wait until the office opens on Monday and get it then. 
Ok, because he really needs it. 
Yeah, I know.  I talked to him.  He told me to fax it to him Monday after the office opens.
Ok, because he really needs it as soon as possible.
Yeah, I know.  I don't have it right now.  I talked to him.  He said I could go to the office and get a copy and fax it to him Monday.
Ok.  Well make sure you do that.
Yeah, I know. 
The next day (a Saturday - same conversation , different person):  Do you have something you need to get to him?
Yeah.  I can't find it.  I have to get it Monday when the office opens. 
Well make sure you get that to him as soon as you can. 
Yeah, I know, that's why I asked you to take me first thing Monday morning. 
Ok, because he really needs it as soon as possible. 
Yeah, I know.  The office doesn't open until Monday.  That is the earliest I can get it. 
Oh, okay. 
The next day again (Sunday):  What time is your appointment tomorrow? 
I'm not sure.  I have to call.  I figure we can go to the office before the appointment. 
Well, let's go to the office as early as possible.  He really needs that thing. 
Yeah, I know.  It's why I asked you to take me first thing in the morning. 
Okay.  We gotta get started early though. 
Yeah, I know. 
Like, eight o'clock. 
Yeahhhh, I knowwwww.  I told you - the office opens at eight.  It's why I asked you to take me first thing!
Ok.  Well, you got to get this stuff taken care of.
Yeah, I know.  We'll go in the morning, before my appointment.
Ok, because he really needs that thing as soon as possible.
I knowww.  The office doesn't open until eight.  I can't get it until then.
Repeat ad nauseum.  It's the god-damned TPS reports over and over again.

Let's talk about it and talk about it and talk about it some more when there isn't anything we can freaking do about it right now.  I hate being nagged when the problem that is the source of the nagging can't be solved immediately.  Why, women, do we have to hear about it over and over and over again?  Will you give it a rest already?  I know that women like to talk about their problems and men like to fix the problems.  I get that.  I can listen.  That's fine too.  But please, for the love of God, there is nothing that can be done about it right now.  I say I'm gonna take care of it first thing and I mean it.  Can we please move on to something else?

Books I Love

My friend Vicky posted a new Facebook profile pic of herself and I could swear it's Audrey Hepburn. Not that she looks alot like Audrey Hepburn, but it's a neat pic and she looks shy and coltish. She is wearing a yellow dress and holding a gauze umbrella and wearing cowboy boots (?!), standing with her back to some pretty fall trees. She doesn’t look like a girl who knows all the words to Jay-Z. I had to send her a note telling her how much I liked the pic and, knowing that she's always looking for books to read/music to listen to/and (especially) films to watch, I recommended the book Winter's Bone to her. It got me thinking about some other books she might like to read, which again got me thinking about my favorite books to recommend to friends. These are books that I buy over and over again, just in case I want pass one along. I like books and books that I really like, I like to horde. That sounds like a sentence from Dr. Seuss. Anyways, here they are.


                                                    Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Ree Dolly is sixteen and lives with her family in a part of Missouri and the Ozark mountains where people don't care to keep up with the times. If not for the references to Ipods and crystal meth, you might think that it's set in the Depression. Ree is the head of the family, caring for her mentally absent mother and her two younger brothers. She chops wood and kills squirrels for sustenance. She dreams of joining the Army, where there is order and people need to keep things neat and clean. A visit from The Authorities brings Ree a dilemma: her crystal meth-making father put their house up for bond to get released from jail and, if he doesn't show to court, Ree and her family will be put out on the street or, in the case of this part of Missouri, she'll have to live in a cave like a dog. Ree must confront distant family members that are clannish and closed off and who think nothing of knocking a teenage girl on her ass, or worse, if she starts asking the wrong questions. Woodrell brings Missouri to life in a way that is captivating, fascinating, and revealing.  Ree Dolly reminded me of Lisbeth Salandar from The Girl Who... series by Stieg Larsson. Mr. Woodrell builds suspense while creating a world I did not suspect still existed. His style has the skeleton of a thriller told with the words of a poet. I hope I can read about Ree Dolly again.

                                        The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson

This is a classic collection of essays and whatnot by the great Hunter S. Thompson. Although he received alot of attention for his drug, alcohol and weirdness consumption, Hunter was above all else a compelling writer. His "serious" pieces on Peru or Hemingway or Kerouac and the Beats are interesting as straight reporting. His later "Gonzo" pieces are pure entertainment for entertainment's sake. The rest of his work splits the middle, with humorous asides and serious analysis, without a false word. The neat thing about this collection is the time and events and cultural shifts that Thompson covers. I must have read a paragraph he wrote about breakfast about a thousand times. He writes about Watergate, Jimmy Carter, Muhammad Ali, Jean Claude-Killy, and this book also includes his classic piece "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" and notes on the genesis of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I carried this book everywhere I went for years.

                                                 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I know it's cliche but I love this book. I read it every summer. It takes me back to the summer nights that Scout and Jem and Dill spent running around the neighborhood. You know what's going to happen but who cares? This is Harper Lee's only book. Talk about a one-hit wonder. If you really like this book, then read Mockingbird by Charles J. Shields, a history of the book's genesis and a biography of Harper Lee.

                                            Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

Critics have called him a modern day Mark Twain. This collection by David Sedaris exposes the humor of a guy who just kept writing despite a crystal meth addiction and various shitty jobs. Sedaris' essay ("Go Carolina") chronicling the battle with his 4th grade speech teacher is funny but, like the rest of his work, hints at something below the surface. In this case it is the indoctrination of might-be-gay fourth graders into the Straight world. There is another hilarious piece about his sister Amy Sedaris, who wears a fat suit home to fool her dad, another in which she is featured in a New York magazine as one of the most eligible bachelorettes of Manhattan (at the photo shoot: "Make it look like somebody beat the crap out of me") and yet another about Big Boy, a "party favor" that won't flush. I gave this one to a waitress at my favorite diner and haven't gotten it back yet. And that was six years ago.


                                                        The Liar's Club by Mary Karr

I don't know what to say about this book. It's the best book I've read since the 1980's.  I fell in love with the twelve year old Mary Karr when she ambushed her neighbor with a bb gun as they were coming home from church. Mary's father had the high cheekbones of a Cherokee, fought in WWII and worked the oil rigs off the coast of Texas. Her mother was a would-be artist who nearly killed the whole family at one point or another. Both drank full-time. Mary's recollections are all true and all hotter than a Texas August afternoon. I am not kidding when I say you should read this book immediately. It's available everywhere, but if you can't find a copy email me. I always keep a spare on hand for just such an occasion.

RIP My Poor Jeep

R.I.P.  My Pretty Pretty Jeep

My pretty pretty Jeep is no more.  I hit a 200 pound deer at fifty-five miles per hour.  As my friend Dave would say, "Do the math, motherfucker!"  The above pic is my Jeep in happier times, this summer, parked at a local cemetary.  I broke my leg last year and after getting the ok to put weight on it, I started walking again, and after I started walking again, I needed a new vehicle to drive.  My Jeep was rescued from my Dad's barn, fixed by my brother who got it started, and then fine tuned by me; the hood release needed to be repaired, the doors were frozen and needed to be unstuck, among other maladies.  After a few weeks I had to replace the starter.  After that it was something else that I can't remember, but I didn't care.  This is definitely the best vehicle I have ever owned.  It has a sunroof, something I have always wanted.  I got lots of sun this summer because it was always open.   It has a 10 cd player which means I have Live Springsteen On Demand.  I've never had anything more sophisticated than a tape player in anything I've ever drove.  The back seat folded down to make room for my bike.  It has electric start for Chrissake!  My Jeep was a way out, it was my freedom and allowed me to live my life with a sense of adventure.  I actually washed and waxed it.  Here it is near my Grandmother's gravesite:

My uncle planted that tree nearby to make his parents' markers easy to find. Here it is post-accident:

I've never been emotionally attached to a vehicle but if my Jeep was a chick, she could really do a number on me.  If you have ever been in a vehicle that hit a deer (or anything else I guess) there is a strange crunching sound.  I thought a window had shattered.  I drive at night all the time, through Mendon Ponds Park and Clover Street in Honeoye Falls, where deer are everywhere.  When I drive home at night I don't get above forty-five.  This damn deer was running full-speed (according to the driver behind us) when he jumped in front of me.  I braked and swerved slightly but it was no use.  I had a sinking feeling since I've owned it that it wasn't going to last long.  I'm sick.  With any luck I can get it repaired although, moron that I am, I didn't have collision insurance on it.  The person that I wish I was could take it apart piece by piece in my Dad's shop, replace parts as I went along, and put it back together good as new.  We'll see what the real me does.  My Mom suggested already that I should start looking for something new (new to me).  To me, that's like suggesting someone should pick up a new kitten on their way to the vet to put the old cat down.  My poor Jeep.  Please send donations in lieu of flowers.

 

Thoughts On the News

When I heard that a woman had been found burning in the middle of the road in Richmond I was immediately disturbed.  Richmond is in the sticks, what would be considered my neck of the woods, and the road she was found on is definitely country, only miles away from where I grew up.  How sick to think of a human being dumped on the side of the road like a bag of trash and then lit on fire.  To make you even sicker, she was eight months pregnant.  The D&C did a story about her in its morning edition today. She was Amelia Rivera-Castoire but "her family said she only used the last name Rivera."  Despite this, the article continually refers to her as Rivera-Castoire.  Why keep using this name if, as her family just told you, she prefers to be known as Amelia Rivera and not Amelia Rivera-Castoire?  Using the name she preferred seems like a simple way to respect her.  Ms. Rivera was a beloved sister, daughter and mother of six children as well as an admitted drug user.  Her drug use, presumably, led to a stay in the county jail.  She was released in August.  She was found in her pajamas and was last seen on North Clinton Avenue in the city at midnight Friday, less than six hours before her body was discovered.  For whatever reason it seems that the life she lived away from her family led to her brutal murder and the disgusting disposal of her body in a ditch along the side of the road.  Her family said that she had been threatened in the days before her murder.  Assuming the police track this person down and he (most likely) or she is convicted, the punishment is not going to be enough.  My heart goes out to Ms. Rivera's family.  

Top Five Songs For The 4th Of July

Here are my top five songs for the 4th of July. 

American Land by Bruce Springsteen from the Live In Dublin cd/dvd.  This tune rocks and is about America and the promise it held for 19th century immigrants. 

There's diamonds in the sidewalks, there's gutters lined in song
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long
There's treasure for the taking, for any hard working man
Who will make his home in the American land





Jimi Hendrix plays The Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock.  This is a 4th of July standard as far as I'm concerned.  The status quo thought Hendrix was intentionally disparaging the national anthem and Jimi's reply was "I thought it was beautiful."

 

Paul Simon wrote this song about traveling across America.  I think it's called America.  I always loved this song.  And Paul Simon.  I wonder if hitting the road is just an American thing.  I know that "Going West" is.



Here is Ray Charles singing America the Beautiful.  I wouldn't have included this (because its too cliche) but I still love it.  I saw Ray a handful of times - front row! - and he was awesome.



I love this James McMurtry tune.  Can we make it here anymore?



I could have included lots more Bruce, as well as Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard.  If you have any good 4th of July tunes please leave me a message.

The Summer Movie Preview Halfway Into The Summer Movie Season

It feels like it's halfway over, doesn't it?  The cussed (that's pronounced cuss-pause-ed) thing started on May 7 so technically I guess I am correct.  What are all these shenanigans going on with the box office numbers?  The media frets "Ohh, the numbers are down - people aren't going to the movies!"  We both know why presumably:  Your Movies Suck.  In lieu of that and in light of the new Twilight movie there is some good stuff coming up.  I am like a kid fighting through dinner to get to the ice cream and just as impatient: Gimme gimme gimme some good freakin' movies.  No Shrek bullshit, no god-damned Tom Cruise movie with a cute title like Knight and Day (Get it?  Someone in the movie is named Knight and someone is probably named Day),  and no Adam Sandler crap where the best parts are in the trailer, a dead giveaway because the trailer wasn't all that funny.  The remakes and the sequels are out of their cages and now it's time for them to die and make room for some good and original stuff.  To wit:

Inception  -  It's got DiCaprio (watch Catch Me If You Can and The Departed and you'll be waiting for every next thing he does), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (he's gonna be an A-list movie star someday - watch Brick and (500) Days of Summer) and Chris "I-Directed-The Dark Knight" Nolan directing.  They steal shit out of people's brains while they're sleeping.

Dinner For Schmucks features Steve Carell as a pathetic loser and Paul Rudd as the guy who is exploiting him.  But something tells me that Steve is gonna go all Fatal Attraction in the most hilarious and uncomfortable of ways.

Salt featuring Angelina Jolie.  She might or might not be a secret agent.  Even she doesn't know.  What is it about her in an action film that is so compulsively watchable?  Besides her rack...

Get Low features the Greatest Living Actor Mr. Robert Duvall as a hermit who is planning his own funeral and Jimmy Stewart's Evil Twin Bill Murray as the undertaker.  There have been rumors of an Oscar nomination for Duvall.  I met him one time and I wasn't disappointed.

I can't wait to see The Other Guys which features Marky "when did I get so respectable" Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell as cops trying to bust a big case.  Ferrell is nerdy and deskbound and Wahlberg is given one last chance despite his short temper.  It's from the writer of Talladega Nights and the other Ferrell stuff.

If you grew up in the 80's like I did then you'll probably want to check out The Expendables just on principle.  It has (I swear I'm not making this up) Sly Stallone, the Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren and Eric Roberts as well as some other people who were, like, ten when these guys were at the top of the box office.  How do you miss this one?

And maybe the movie with the most reliable built-in fan base is Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World.  Based on a popular graphic novel, this one has Michael Cera as a geeky (go figure right?) musician who has to defeat seven evil ex-boyfriends in order to win the girl of his dreams.  That sounds ok and might be enough to get me to a theater but what really puts it over the top is Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead) directing.

Ok, that's about it.  Except for a Jennifer Aniston movie.  The good: if it sucks bad enough she might not ever make another movie again.  The bad: it has Jason Bateman who is borderline very good/awesome.  I have a feeling I'll be disappointed and it will be halfway decent and she'll keep making movies.

Is Your Name Craftsman? Because I Think You're A Tool

I hate these people. I downloaded the above photo from this thing called "Metromix" at the Democrat and Chronicle website.  The D&C is the Rochester newspaper published by the Gannett company.  In its desparation to maintain sales, Gannett newspapers have resorted to publishing photos of local people out on the town, most likely in the hopes that they will come to the website to look at their photos.  Pretty much the same thing as the weekly Wednesday section that features a town near you and what makes that town unique.  The D&C will post a little blurb in the paper looking for people to write in their stories.  This "Our Town" feature has been running for years now.  Let's say, at a minimum of three years mulitplied by fifty-two weeks a year, the result is one hundred fifty-six towns featured.  Do we have that many towns around here?  No.  It's the same towns featured over and over and over again.  It's easy to bash the D&C (and fun too!) but that is not exactly the reason for this post.  Look at the people in that photo and you will see signs of an epidemic among young people:  Why the fake gang signs?   Why the pursed lips by these girls whenever they get in front of a camera?  How much do these people spend on hairgel and tanning supplies in any given week?  It's like they're saying - Look At Me!  To The Extreme!!!!  Yeah, I know I'm old and out of touch but I've been out of touch with this type of stuff since I was in my mid-twenties.  Oh well.  I'll go put on my flannel shirt, turn on some talk radio and shut the eff up.

Very Random Thoughts

Here is a pic of my awesome Jeep.

I haven't written in almost two months.  I started to get tired of hearing my own voice droning on about trivial and derivative stuff.  Plus I put my Jeep on the road.  I'm in love with it.  It's red with a sunroof, a 10 disk cd player, and a big ol' hatchback where I can stash my summer gear.  My summer gear consists of a fishing pole, my fishing vest stuffed with tackle, and a canvas bag that's packed as if I was going to the beach every day.  Believe me, if there was a beach around here I would be at it every day.  Since I got my new wheels I have been like a teenager skipping class and just as happy.  I go see friends, I stop off at bars for a quick beer (and to see the US lose to Ghana), I drive to the park and sit in the sun and read.  This has to be my favorite thing to do, maybe ever. 

I should have written about the beautiful time of year when the days are longest, when the end of the day seems to linger endlessly and the mornings come early.  I think this is my favorite time of year, but choosing a favorite time of year is alot like picking your favorite musical artist or record.  Or book.  The first cool Fall evening is pretty neat as is the first thaw of Spring when green grass is peeking out from the snow and there are endless mini-tributaries that run-off into endless pools filled with the demise of Winter.  But the beginning of June has such nice, pleasant weather.  It's been a perfect time to feel free and loose.

I read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo which I thought was pretty good and made me wish I could hack computers.  The closest I get is typing "hack" or "how to hack" into the Google search bar.  I am really computer illiterate.  But I liked Tattoo.  The Girl was an interesting protagonist and I felt weirdly protective of her as I was reading. 

I burned through a book about Laurel Canyon in about two days.  I think it was called....Laurel Canyon!  Laurel Canyon is in Los Angeles and was home to the hippie movement of the Sixties.  Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash lived there in a house (Our House), Mama Cass introduced Crosby, Stills and Nash to each other in her living room.  Frank Zappa had a sort-of compund there (No Drugs Allowed!) with his family and a big stone fireplace.  Apparently the Hippies were too hopped up on goofballs to notice that Charles Manson was a weird guy but Zappa's wife noticed ("People say it came as a shock but not to us.  For those with clear heads, you could see Manson was a strange guy").  Stills and Crosby were apparently grade-A egomaniacs and that was before the coke.  Warren Zevon's wife Chrystal lived there and adopted two kids when she was only twenty and the kids four and six (?) or something like that.  They were abandoned and she took them in.  I thought that was pretty interesting and I would like to know what happened to them. 

Right now I'm reading  Rip It Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 and James Michenor's Space.  Rip It Up is about music after punk rock and before....what?  Maybe before corporations reclaimed the business of the music business.  I graduated in 1984.  It was the year of Prince, Bruce and Madonna and they were huge: Puple Rain, Born In The U.S.A and Like A Virgin.  This book, however, concerns itself with stuff like "Tainted Love" "Don't You Want Me" and bands like Bow Wow Wow, Depeche Mode, New Order, etc.  Just go to Amazon and search the Pretty In Pink soundtrack and you'll get the idea.  I liked some of this music.  Some of it is too new-wavey for me but some of it is good.  I have gained a new appreciation for the Cure as I've gotten older.  Music history is interesting.  I don't know how long I'll stick with Michenor's Space.  I bought it at a garage sale (a great place to meet women) and it came without a book jacket but I think it's about the beginning of the Space program.  It might get me interested in the stars.  Or maybe the stars will just be a passing fancy like WWII reporting (I still want to get those books).

Ok, that's it.

The Windmills Of My Mind

I love Nico's "These Days".   Jackson Browne apparently wrote that song and plays guitar on it.  I thought it was put to good use in The Royal Tenenbaums.   And "We Both Go Down Together" is a really good song by The Decemberists.  "Here we stand on the cliffs of Dover..."  I have a cd I made with a bunch of random songs on it from the summer of 2007.  2007 is when I made it, not when the songs were released.  It has "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" by Genesis, and "Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta" by the Geto Boys.  Or is it Boyz?  Don't matter.  That song has some serious language in it.  I can't play it in front of nephews; that's for sure.  I had to look that one up after I saw Office Space.  "Give Up The Funk" by the P-Funk All-Stars is such a good song.  It feels really good listening to that song.  I feel like bopping my head up and down like Huggy Bear.  I hope that's not racist.  Right now I'm listening to Patty Loveless' "Blame it on your lying cheating, cold dead-beating, two-timin' double-dealin', me-mistreatin' lovin' heart."  I love the energy of that song.  Throughout the cd I also have some Dusty Springfield "Windmills of my mind..." and a song about making pies all day and a song about a girl who's mother works at the Motel 6, now she gets free guitar picks and that's how she learned to play and sing.  She is Catie Curtis and that song is "Memphis".  I recently wrote a blog about Joni Mitchell calling Bob Dylan a fake and a phony and a plagiarist that got alot of responses (11!).  Somehow I'm connecting the melding together of other people's work to create something new with the Joni/Bob argument and that's what I made with this cd.  It provokes different emotional responses from me and I don't really care if they all fit perfectly together.  Which made me think of Neil Young.  I think Neil just does what feels right and when his muse is gone, he's gone.  This cd came from an unconscious place in me.  Or maybe a drunken place.  Along towards the end is "Peek-A-Boo" by Siouxsie and the Banshees and then Rufus Wainwright's "Hallelujah" which seems to be required playing anywhere you go lately.  Local band Donna the Buffalo has a song called "No Place Like Right Time" that is laid back like "Memphis" and "Making Pies" by Patty Griffin.  People talk about Dylan as the preeminent poet of our modern time.  My friend D.J. thinks its Bruce Springsteen.  And when he says this he usually refers to "Blinded by the Light", a song with such non-sensical lyrics that who knows what Bruce is talking about.  I think The Raven is a good poem.  Maybe one of the best.  How did Poe get all those lines to rhyme?  Must've taken alot of work.  It's a story in a poem, which is nice, but not quite the same as The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.  Poe was a prolific writer and I don't know that The Raven had to be dredged out of him with the same earnestness that Eliot put into Prufrock.  What is a poem supposed to do?  Provoke a response?  Create an image?  Recreate life?  I say a little of all of the above.  If it doesn't provoke a response, or any feeling whatsoever, then is it serving itself?  e e cummings was a good poet but lots different than Robert Frost.  I think Emily Dickinson had it write (whoops - right) when she said poems are foolish when compared to a tree.  I think that's what she meant.  The cd that I made feels like poetry to me; something good that washes over me with no particular agenda.  Parts of it, like making pies, make me think about the creation of life.  Other parts, like giving up the funk, make me feel life.  My favorite quote about poets and poems and my life philosophy:  "And the poets down here don't write nothing at all - they just stand back and let it all be."  After all, who can really add anything to a beautiful summer day like today to make it more spectacular nature-wise?  I can't.  But that's just me.  I like to stand back and let it all be.

Tin Soldiers And Nixon's Coming....

A fairly benign pic at first glance, this is Kent State, where a dead student's body once lay.

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio State National Guard opened fire into a crowd of student protestors and killed four people.  My friend D.J. and I were roommates in 1986-1987 when we were students at the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.  D.J. had a Crosby Stills Nash and Young t-shirt that he wore quite a bit from a concert he went to the summer before I met him.  We all liked CSNY, our crew.  D.J. would make mix tapes for the afterhour parties and he always played "Ohio" because he liked to point at me when they sang "and Nixon's coming."  I looked (look) like Dick Nixon apparently.  Eventually D.J. would marry Eva, whose father (I swear) was a dead-ringer for Henry Kissinger.  I think he must have thought it was fate that we should come together.  I'd been fascinated by Nixon, even before Watergate, and when I was all of six years old I did a Nixon impersonation.  Weird kid, right?

1986 was the beginning or maybe the middle of a cultural revival of the Sixties.  The Grateful Dead found their way back into the mainstream and the neo-Hippie movement was in full swing.  The good kids that we were, being young and all, we were Liberal and anti-establishment.  Mostly we liked to do stuff the kids in the Sixties did but I think we had more fun and didn't take ourselves nearly so seriously.  Which was easy for us.  We didn't have Vietnam, or the murders of 1968, or the cultural schism between the Hippies and their parents to deal with.  And we had no chance of being shot on a collge campus.  My only link to those kids who got shot at Kent State was the Neil Young song, my relationship to the political ghost of Nixon, and the hopes and dreams I had for a society in which people are free from prejudice.

In 1990 I got a call from my buddy Eric and he said that CSNY was going to play a concert at Kent State in two days.  I lived in Buffalo at the time and high-tailed it down to Edinboro.  It was Friday, May 4th, the twentieth anniversary of the shooting.  We probably got drunk that night but for sure me, Eric, and Johnny (and maybe George) drove to Kent State in the morning.  There was no concert, that was pretty obvious, and there was actually not much going on.  I was wearing my Phi Sigma Kappa hooded sweatshirt while I was walking around the campus and I remember someone taking my photo.  I wonder where that photo is?  It was a rare moment we get sometimes in life where who we are brings us to where we feel we should be, even if it's only for a moment.  The song that had played so many times at the after hours parties became a reality that morning.  People were shot and killed here.  My significance to the event, my trek to see CSNY, seemed like a small, selfish act.  It reminded me of Abraham Lincoln and what he said at Gettysburg:

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.  But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

It was a somber ride back home.

I'm A Big Fan

In the week leading up to Iron Man 2 comes the anticipation and dread: how is it going to be?  Is it going to be The Dark Knight or Spider-Man 3?  That is not a fair comparison at all.  One was close to a masterpiece and different and the other, well, what a mess.  With great power comes great responsibility.  With great anticipation comes the possibility of a great letdown.  Poor Jon Favreau must be under a lot of pressure.  If you have read this far and wondered, why are you so concerned about this?  It's only a movie!, please move on!  Haha.  This post will bore you.  But for those who really like superhero movies....

I was indifferent to Daredevil and thought it was just plain awful.  Loved the book, didn't like the movie.  Ben Affleck with his hair in his face the whole movie, the flirtatious martial arts scene with Elektra on the see-saw, the constant night-blindness and too-close-to-see action ruined the movie for me.  I don't have a sacred cow fetish for the heroes.  I'm not a strict tradionalist but I want the movies to make some sense.  I could take The Fantastic Four even though the movie was miscast and Reed was a pussy.  Reed Richards is a smart guy, not a doormat.  Jessica Alba (I can't believe I'm saying this) didn't look super-hot in that movie, nor does she come across as the science-ey type, but I sucked it up and watched and was entertained.  I liked the Silver Surfer in FF2.  Not bad stuff. 

Ghost Rider is a movie that I didn't hate.  I had no expectations for it: it was cheesy, over-the-top, and light but it was entertaining.  Maybe because I watched it with my nephews. It's hard to be a cynical old bastard when they're sitting next to you.  Superman Returns, Hulk, The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man 3:  those movies got to me in a bad way.  They left the comic behind somehow.  S-M 3: Peter Parker playing bad like he's on his was to an emo concert; Harry vascillating between being a good guy and an enemy; Topher Grace playing Eddie Brock like he's a smoother version of Eric from That 70's Show:  that's not who these guys were in the books.  More than anything the architecture of Spider-Man 3 was just way off.  The light touches that Raimi added in Spider-Man 2, Peter walking down the street to "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head", the "oww, I hurt my back" reference to Tobey Maquire's alleged stalling to step onto the set of S-M 2, the scene in the coffee shop when Peter throws himself over Mary Jane:  Peter was real.  He was kind of a buffoon in S-M 3 and it killed the movie.  And why did he keep taking his mask off? 

Try to get too cute and the lions will eat you.  I could put up with Nick Nolte's howling in Hulk, and Ang Lee's pretension to create an art house film out of a comic-book movie, but that doesn't mean I had to like it.  Which I didn't.  I also don't want to see a soldier, a regular guy, going toe-to-toe and hand-to-hand with the Hulk.  The laws of the Marvel Universe must apply.  If the Hulk could crush Spider-Man, or Iron-Man for that matter, then please don't have him fight some guy Spidey could backhand in two seconds flat.  And why was Bruce Banner wearing a bicycle helmet around the office?  Not dorky enough just to be a scientist?  Which gets to the architecture problems with Hulk:
First, the name.  Just Hulk.  Remember:  too cute equals lions.  Ang Lee cited influences from King Kong, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, Beauty and the Beast, Faust, and Greek mythology for his interpretation of the story, but guess what: there's a whole comic book about the guy!  Why not base it on that?  When an interviewer asked him if he had read the comic books as a kid, Lee said, "No. I did see a little bit of the TV series in the late 70s (cheesy fun but a weak facsimile of the books), but I didn't pay any particular attention to it. But then when I came to the States, I found that there was such a character in the comic books (Really?!  The Hulk was a character in the comic books!). Then when I saw the big green guy it clicked right away. I saw it as a psychodrama." 

Lee's partner discovered a book in which David Banner, Bruce's father, returned and after that the movie became a father-son story about experimenting with Bruce's DNA and yada yada yada, we're three steps away from the source material and the Hulk is getting attacked by overgrown poodles.  Fans take this stuff seriously, maybe as seriously as Twilight fans take their stuff or as the leave-Britney-alone guy takes Britney Spears.  We want one thing:  Do Not Screw Up Our Movies!

Two years ago when George Lucas was making the rounds promoting Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Lost UFO's, or whatever he called that movie, he sounded bitter.  "I've learned (I'm paraphrasing) that no matter what you do, people aren't going to like it."  Apparently he was jaded from his experiences with the second round of Star Wars movies and their rejection by the adult fan base. Remember: cute equals lions.  Someone get the lions and feed them Jar-Jar Binks already (tastes like jerked chicken!).  These were not good movies.  People didn't take down their expectations from a jar on the top shelf and say, Ahhh, this is what the movie is going to be, and when it wasn't they were disappointed.  He had a chance to create The Godfather Part II of movie serials but he didn't have it in him.  That's where the disappointment lies.  Lucas reminds me a little of Jay Leno: a guy that became wildly successful with nowhere to grow.  His empire expanded while the thing that got him there shriveled and shrank, and he's left with nothing but memories of his sled Rosebud (or was it Sleddie?)* and his billions of dollars.

A lot of bad superhero movies have been made.  Superman IV: The Quest For Peace consistently comes out on top in the internet searches, but there is also Catwoman, Batman and Robin, Steel, Barb Wire, Supergirl, Judge Dredd, Captain America and who could forget (the original bomb!) Howard the Duck.  But of all these movies Spider-Man 3 has to be the worst.  And do you know why?  Because I cared.  All that being said, Iron Man 2 arrives soon.  On Friday I'm gonna open my mind, leave my expectations at the door, walk into the theater, sit in the dark and wait to be dazzled.  No pressure guys!


*Please note that the "Sleddie" joke was stolen from last week's episode of 30 Rock.  Please don't tell Joni Mitchell.