Story & Pictures

where am i

2009-01-21T07:58:00.000-08:00

every now and then someone (that would be you, right now) stumbles onto this blog (i guess someone can stumble 'on' to something...) and might wonder where i am.

well, i'm not here very often at all. your best bet to track me down is to go to either of my websites. i do have another blog, but i have yet to hit my rhythm with it, although i will be blogging regularly starting in late Spring 09.

see you around.

www.communicator.pro
www.writesite.com

moved

2008-07-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

yeah, i'm done here. there'll be one last post about the new blog and its address.

thanks to everyone whoever stopped by.

peace

as close to an update as I've got

2008-02-25T09:31:00.000-08:00

I'm not shut down, I'm on hiatus.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I will, eventually, have a link to a new, non-gagme blog.

the whole damn time thing

2007-08-08T09:03:00.000-07:00

this has just been silly.

has it really been this long?

still haven't set up the independent site, but it's coming. i'm only doing this post so that there's no possibility of a surpirse shut-down by Gaggle.

if you're reading this, i have to ask - what the heck are you doing here? no disrespect intended, by the way.

really, I am still here...or is it there?

2007-01-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

Usually, I spend a journeyman's amout of time crafting my posts, but I'm doing this one on the fly, just to let my loyal yet small group of readers know that I am coming back to a regular posting schedule, and that I'll be moving this blog to its own domain in a few weeks.

It's been an interesting transition to the new year, and I'll bring some fresh posts to you soon. I am still doing the retail thing (although I had to 'quit' to take off during the holidays, and 'ask' to come back), and I'll bring y'all up to date on the book, share some info about another profile article I'm working up on someone -- it's amazing how many people there are who's work is so recognizable while they remain almost anonymous) and share my new approach toward my own creative process. Swear to gosh on that last bit that it won't be a self-centered dirge, meandering (like a pebble in your shoe, eh RW?) or too metaphysical.

See y'all tomorrow.

That's Entertainment...maybe

2006-12-04T10:32:00.000-08:00

I'll leave the retail world behind for now, save for these: it's not as mad as I had thought it would be during this buying madness season; the slobs and campers are unaffected by the intrusion of real shoppers; and young people who have never had a retail job before don't know diddly about customer service.

I did a second show of my solo performance piece last week. An organization held a large conference not too far from here and had invited me to perform as the 'entertainment' at the end of the conference. I had to write up a description so people could have a good idea of what the performance is about, because what is 'entertaining' to one person sure might not be 'entertaining' to another, and that's really the case here.

I am one who is entertained by the full range of subjects and approaches. I'm entertained by jugglers and comedians, and I'm entertained by Chekhov and David Lynch. I can also use the phrase, "That was great," after watching Bill Irwin, Harvey Keitel, Janis Joplin or Noam Chomsky (and hundreds of other people or forms of entertainment). I consider any performance that touches my soul, evokes a response and engages me intellectually or emotionally as entertaining.

But, that's just me.

Over the course of my life for as far back as I can remember, I have had an inherent curiosity about what truly entertains someone, and, to this day, I am often intrigued by people who stay away from any form of entertainment that will make them uncomfortable, might make them question something about themselves, might make them squirm or might make them think. Those of you who know me also know that I am not referring to something like the Freddy Krueger movies; to be fair, there are aspects in that genre that have merit, i.e., if you have not seen the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie, you should give it a go. Keep in mind, though, that it sure as shit ain't suitable for kids, ain't suitable for many adults (referring back to those who might have a breakdown if they watch anything but The Santa Clause 1, 2 or 3) and that, upon watching, you should be cringing and laughing your ass off, sometimes simultaneously. With respect to Keitel, if you've never seen Bad Lieutenant, you'll never see a better performance of human depravity and self-destruction in a character who has no apparent reason to be so despicable.

But, again, that's just me.

My performance piece had its birth during my work in a Katrina shelter in Louisiana. This, in and of itself, doesn't necessarilly keep things horribly sad for the entire performance, but it does mean that the audience is not in for a nice walk through the park. And, as I say in an early stage of the show, it ain't all tears and despair, really. Therefore, I am reluctant to describe the show as entertainment, even if I consider it to be so.

The show went well, even though I still can't rate my performance at 100%, and I was surprised at some of the places where I was cruising on all cylinders, because they were in different places than the first performance. That's the way it should be in live theatre though, because the psychic environment, the vibe of interaction, trust, doubt and tension between the actor and the audience changes every performance.

I received audience feedback via the person who had invited me to perform, and he said it was all good, positive, yaddayadda, save for one person who had a problem when I took the name of her lord in vain. Considering the lengths the conference had gone to in letting attendees know what they'd be in for, I don't have much empathy for the criticism. There always has to be at least one.
If I couldn't get someone to be that uncomfortable, it wouldn't be entertainment, would it?

But, that's just me, I guess.

Black

2006-11-18T11:44:00.000-08:00

"The black guy?"

"...They're our black neighbors..."

"...and the ER nurse was just wonderful, this great black gal..."

Nope, not decades ago. Happened within the last year. And, the weird thing is, it came out of people who I KNOW don't believe, and I don't believe, that there's a racist bone in their bodies. That in itself is different than a relative, but not by blood, who is a bigot but would strongly disagree, even as he explains that when he was a young man, you didn't see people like Tiger Woods on the golf course because, "well, maybe it had to do with economics..."

Uh-huh, the economics of letting them clean the tables in the clubhouse and shooting them if they set foot on the green or if they walked through the 'Whites Only' door. This wouldn't-believe-he's-a-bigot also expressed surprise during a drive through the countryside when he saw a non-anglo couple sitting on the porch of a house: "Dont' usually see them out here."

But I digress.

These other people have never expressed any other statments, nor acted in any manner, that conveyed any leanings toward racism or bigotry. There is that descriptive thing though, and it's a toughy to deal with, because, well...let's digress again into backstory, just for a moment.

Some time during the summer of '71 (could have been '70, but I don't think so; couldn't have been '72, because I'm in basic training in lovely Ft. Polk, LA, by mid-June), I'm the passenger and Ken is driving, we're on the Eisenhower expressway, and we're either headed to Hillside or downtown Chicago. Traffic slows, we're just talking shit or whatever, and, maybe it was a hat or something, but I make a remark about the guy in a car close to us, and Ken asks, "What guy?"

"That black guy there."

"Why do people do that?"

"What?"

"Say 'black guy', instead of just 'guy'?"

The insight and maturity of both the question, coming from a goofball teenager who, like me, wanted to be a stuntman someday (you're fucking kidding me, right?), and his non-accusatory approach to the conversation, was one of those whack upside the head moments. "Why" indeed. The insight I could understand as having come to him as it came to me, from someone else. Not that I can't believe that Ken couldn't have had that kind of insight on his own at his young age, but it just seems more likely, given the time and place, that someone had shared that perspective with him, and they may have presented it to him in the same way: he didn't ask why "I" did that, he asked why "people" do that.

And we all know at least one of the answers: when you're young, and the norm of things is to describe someone of a different color than yourself by ALWAYS noting that other person's color, well, then that's your norm too. At least, that's your norm until someone like Ken comes along. Sadly, as close as were, I haven't a fucking clue where he is today. I last saw him in '76/'77, Kansas City, I think. I even had the opportunity to talk with someone five years ago who knew him intimately for a while, and she said that last that she'd heard, Ken got on a motorcycle one afternoon, took off and never came back.

Here's the thing: I got my perspective on "that guy" thing almost thrity-five years ago, at an age when I could use it as a foundation for the rest of my adult life. The people I'm talking about now, shit, they're in their sixties and seventies. And I can be fairly certain that they are, indeed, not racist, per se. Even though I've known them for between three and six years (not the 'no golf for black people because of economics' guy though...him I've known for, shit, long time...), their description by skin color statments only came up recently. And when they did just throw that out at me as we were talking, it was a bit, well, I guess surprising. Fuck, I don't know...I don't want to say I was shocked...actually, I think I was a little bummed.

See, I think that if you live in a place where either it's a highly diverse population, or in a place where there's a willingness to be diverse, you may become retro-naive, you forget what you had to learn once before.

So, I have another one of those 'swastika' things (an earlier post for those who don't know what I'm referring to; haven't been back to get my truck serviced yet, by the way). I suppose I could point out, like Ken to me, the undercurrent of meaning when they say "that black guy/that black gal", but, it's different when your older. For any of you who might've jumped up on the soapbox and started to take some sort of hard and fast position along the lines of, "You can't coddle them...", as I might have done in my younger, angry-Irishman days, I say this to you: shut the fuck up for the moment. As one gets a little older, one observes that there is far more gray in this world than black and white (geez, no pun intended, really), and one has to find the balance in this occasional mess.

Here's what I'll do, the next time this sort of conversation happens, and that 'black' thing happens, I'll come back to you and tell you how I handled it...or didn't...

I can't help but wonder, though, if the people I know were talking to a black person at a social gathering, and they wanted to point out someone across the room who was of a non-anglo descent, and the conversation partner asked, "what guy?", would they respond with...

Flat-footed

2006-11-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

She was a tiny, older woman, perhaps not as old as she appeared, but I wouldn't realize why that might be until after the incident. The top of her head barely rose to the level of my chin, so she was looking up at me from the other side of the info counter. She wasn't pale, but her skin color was somewhat flat.

It all started pleasantly enough. I had just come in, just stepped behind the counter and she was the first person there, with at least four or five people falling into a loose line behind her. She held a few pieces of stapled paper and a small plastic card from a discount program offered by the store.

"Could you tell me how I find out how much money I have in the program that I can use to buy a book?"

"You can do that online. You can go to our website and check on your account any time you wish."

"I don't have access to a computer. Can you check it for me?"

The response and the question are simple, but, I'm still relatively new to the store, and to some of its systems. It's been gently hammered into me that in order to be a member of this discount program, one of the requirements -- REQUIREMENTS -- is an email address. I answered, but I was simultaneously wondering about this dichotomy (small as it may seem to be).

"No, sorry, I can't check it here, because I don't have access to the web from these computers. Any of the cashiers will be happy to do that for you." This is true; they can slide the card and find out a few things about the account, even though they don't have access to the Web either.

She glanced toward the cashier area. This was late last week, and for whatever reason, it seemed like the first dry-run for holiday shoppers, and the lines were very, very long.

"No, no, the lines are too long. Isn't there any other way you can check? I just want to see how much money I have in the account to use to buy a book."

Her face and tone were slightly pleady, and that was okay; she was a little older lady. My obstacle was that, "no, I really can't, I'm sorry. You can use any computer to check your account though...", and my next words would have been about a friend's computer, or a library's or community center, but she cut me off.

"I don't have a computer. I don't use a computer." A slight edge accompanied a slight rise in volume.

Now the email thing came back to the forefront of my thoughts. My tone was inquiring, not reproachful nor disbelieving. "Ma'am, didn't you have to provide an email address to get your card?"

"No, I called a phone number. Can't you just tell me?"

"I know the line is a bit long, but any cashier can..."

"I HAVE CANCER, I'M DYING, AND I DON'T HAVE TIME TO WAIT IN LINE!"

She wasn't yelling, but she was loud, and her voice quivered, because she started to cry.

I am so rarely caught flat-footed, litteraly or figuratively, that when it happens, I spend the next few days going over what happened, how I got into the situation, and what options I had available to escape or handle the situation. I do comprehend, and am adept at, the art of bob and weave. As a kid, I grew up in the era of weekly televised boxing matches (sponsored by Gillette, for those old enough to remember...who can do the theme?). I was slight as a young'un, but my uncle Tommy had been a boxer in Scotland, and while he lived with us after he emmigrated, he taught me the basics, including bob and weave.

Being a slight kid, even with some boxing skills and getting into martial arts long before it was hip, I also learned the importance of reacting to something in a timely fashion, and trained myself to get out of my own way, to let my senses absorb information and let my brain process that information and let my body react to that information, all without any 'conscious' interference from me. As a smaller kid on the south side of Chicago, this meant being able to haul ass whenever necessary and not even attempt to stand your ground, like in eighth grade, when Bob Serritella and I made the innocent mistake of staring at a car too long, and five mosters in leather coats piled out of it and came at us like rabid special teams players.

So I know bob and weave, reacting, avoiding and re-positionsing, yeah, but i know flat-footed, too.

Man, do I know it. I was in the gym, Ft. Bragg, very early seventies. I was done moving weights around, and I was banging the heavy bag. I was a hard-muscled, one-hundred and fifty pound paratrooper; I didn't have an attitude, I was just a guy who was firing on all cylinders (ahh, youth). There were several gyms, but this one had the Olympic-style set-ups, those big plates and bars you see during the Olympic competition, and it was also where the boxing team trained, so it had the ring, the speed bags and the heavy bags. I wasn't on the team, but I wasn't adverse to slapping leather and being slapped every now then in pick-up matches, and there were a lot of guys on base who weren't good enough for the team but still did the work.

A good sized guy, probably in the hundred and seventy pound range, had been doing some footwork and shadow boxing in the ring when I was doing the heavy bag, and I stopped and went over to watch him. We did some small talk, he asked me at what weight I fought, things like that, and then I accepted his invitation to go a few light rounds. I grabbed a pair of gloves (fourteen ounce, more like fingered-pillows) and climbed in. He not only had me by twenty pounds, he was a head taller, with a reach advantage to match. This is all that stuff that doesn't matter to youth, and doesn't escape the eyes, and wisdom, of age and hindsight.

I have a good jab, but at end of my snappy extension, it was short. I got lucky. Oh, not because I landed any sort of lightening bolt of a punch or peppered my opponent with a rat-a-tat-smack-smack-smack of a artistic combination, no, not that. I was lucky because he almost certainly discerned that my skills did not match my confidence, and he was possessed of a boxer's heart, rather than a mauler's dispostition.

But, he was a boxer, and we were fighting, and when he saw the opening -- my right hand was a hair too low -- he whipped around a really pretty left hook, smooth, fast, powerful but not devastating. This next sentence is the truth, so help me Buddah: the punch caught me under the jaw and lifted me into the air, laterally moving me to my left many, many inches, and my feet came back down on the canvas in the same stance that I had left, and I realized I had been spared, even though I had been smacked hard enough to have been lifted into the air and moved through space.

I know flat-footed.

Tears were not coming out of her eyes, but she was trembling. I had been sucker-punched, caught falt-footed, and it was partly my fault, because I had focused on that goofy little thing about the email. I had let it niggle me enough that -- like the pilot and co-pilot of a jet who became so pre-occupied with a burnt-out light bulb on their control panel that they didn't notice they were losing altitude until they flew the jet right into a swamp -- I now had to try and make a recovery in an unrecoverable situation.

In my peripheral vision, I could see the people waiting behind her, but I didn't dare look away from this little woman, now that she had shared what I would have considered an intimate, personal bit of information with me; hi, I've never met you before, I'm dying. I realize that there's no way I could have known she had cancer, or that she was about to tell me and the people all around us. that's now what I'm getting at with the whole being distracted thing. I should have accepted some things as I observed them -- she had the program card; she got it in some way, and she didn't have an email. Should'a gone on from there.

I should have picked up on the rising edge in her voice and eyes, and maybe found a little space at the end of the counter, and invited her over for a quieter, gentler discussion.

I should have taken her card and walked over to the cashiers and found a for-the-moment un-used machine and looked up her account. It would have meant leaving the info area and making some people wait, but that's what we do when someone's looking for a book, we find it in the database and then lead the customer to the shelf in the store.

I could have done those things, and maybe made her burden a bit lighter, if only for a moment. As it was, as I sucked in some air, I think I said something like, "I know the line is long right now, but any other time, just go ahead and walk up to any cashier and they'll be happy to give you your account information."

She said "thank you" and walked away.

Are there rules of etiquette for dying people? Am I even supposed to think of that question, because it seems to me that if I ask that, I'm leaning toward a thought of, 'she didn't have to do that to me', and that sounds like whining. I know about relating to people who are dying. My mom's death was more extended than I was comfortable with, and a few years ago I shot what's known in the the legal industry as "day in the life" footage of a wonderful man dying of prostate cancer; he held nothing back as I videotaped him over the course of several months, and I'm a better person for having known him.

I understand, to the degree that I can, the ever-present cloud of death under which terminal people exist. Sometimes the clouds are brilliant white, sometimes the blackest black. As a buddhist, hell, as a human being, I try to look past the scowls or sad faces or the angry words or the sullen, empty eyes of people and know that something that I can't see, some loss, some abuse, some horror, some lonliness, some affliction, some terror, some darkness, something which isn't about me, is at the root of it all, and my heart and soul are better for knowing that.

I'm trying not to be hurt by that little dying woman, and I'm not, really, and I understand -- maybe if I go through something like she's going through, I'll react the same way. Maybe. Maybe?

I know flat-footed.

Sign Here

2006-10-23T13:16:00.000-07:00

Recently had a 'famous celebrity' do a book signing in the store. Although none of the store's managers know of my previous life as an entertainment/event kind of guy, they assigned me to supervise the control of the line and the actual signing area, something I was more than comfortable doing. This particular celeb is a mainstay on a popular cable channel, and has several books out already, but the appearance was highly anticipated and, it seems, a big deal for the store. The celeb had made an appearance in another Bay Area store and the crowd totaled between 700-900 people. We drew 300.

A note to the types from corporate who shepard and run these event from store to store: 1 -- the celeb is a human being, not an icon; 2 - the people in line - customers, I'll remind you -- find your rules about how to have the book that they just purchased open to the correct page for signing an inconvenience, and they're all right with it, until you admonish them to do it while they're still eighty-feet away from the signing table and they're carrying a stack of books, and they're taking care of their kids; 3 - take a fucking chill pill.

The celeb had two former NYPD detectives as bodyguards, not because the store is in a bad part of town, but because in this day and age, sadly, you're better off being proactive rather than reactive, no matter how nice the environment is. Out of three-hundred people, we had two that were obnoxious. I was actually more concerned, and somewhat saddened, at the guy who FINALLY put the cap on his lens after I told him, in no uncertain terms, no pictures, and who had obviously been drinking, and had his wife and three small children with him. He was nice enough, in that chummy drunk sort of way, but that behavior's kind of old, y'know?

The crowd was smaller than they expected, though not by much, and the celeb spent the down time signing more books. Eventually, every copy of the celeb's books in the store were signed, which meant that, aside from meeting the celeb for less than sixty-seconds, everyone who stood in line for just under three hours could have waited and popped in to by an autographed book the next day.

Quickies

2006-10-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

I can't help it, the slobs still amaze me. They pull off the shrinkwrap from books that have it on for a reason, jog through the book, and leave the wrap and the book behind when they leave.

One of the booksellers spent an hour with a woman, pulled forty books for her, and the woman walked out without buying one.

While mom was perusing god knows what, her son brought in tracing paper and traced the continents from a huge atlas for his homework.

If you give people free treats, like little squares of cookies or whatevers, because it's Educators' Week and teachers are getting 25% off because they work their ass off and get paid shit, the people will eat the treats then leave the little plastic cups in which the treats were served on shelves everywhere in the store, even though the trash receptacles are not that hard to find.

Lemony Snicket's The End generated as many phone calls and requests as Woodward's State of Denial.

Non-book store related:

What do I do, if anything, about the mechanic that works on my truck, and happens to have a good-sized swastika tatoo on his upper arm?

I first noticed it the last time I had my truck worked on, about six or seven months ago. It's not the first time he's worked on it. We have that kind of realtionship where we've interacted enough that we would recognize each other outside of the shop where he works, and we can do that casual conversation thing when I bring in the truck. He 'seems' nice enough, and it's not like he wears a sleveless shirt and displays his beefy guns with the swastika for all to see. I noticied it because some of it was visible, extending below the sleeve of his T-shirt.

I'm like that -- I notice things about people. It's the writer and actor in me. In addition to the book project I've mentioned here before, I have several in various stages, one tentativley titled "Don't watch the pretty girl: (sub) watch the guy watching the pretty girl", the point being that if you're interested in trying to understand what makes people tick (even on the days when you think that's a hopeless endeavor), you've got to observe them in a way that's different than the way other people do. So, I tend to 'see' things that others miss.

Do I take the Buddhist path, and go with compassion, think that maybe the tatoo is the result of a misguided period in his life, or do I follow that with logic (dangerous), and follow with, "well, why hasn't he had it removed?"

Is it something I should ask him about? Is it my business? It's not so far up his arm that he meant to keep it hidden.

Do I pull a Google thing on him and the shop, and take my business elsewhere?

I don't think about it a lot, but it does cross my mind more often than not, because it's time to take the truck in. I'm leaning toward asking him. Really.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Lips and ass kicking

2006-10-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

Since Nut Korea's duck-and-cover game has pushed the Foley scandal off the front pages and dropped it down the list on news sites, I can share this story and not be a part of the madness that took place last week. It's my attempt to focus on an aspect of the Foley thing that gets mentioned as a "what happened", but gets shorted on the finding out why this aspect of the story hasn't received more scrutiny.

Forty years ago, maybe more, when I was in seventh or eighth grade, a short, pudgy man known as Lips followed boys around my neighborhood. I was one of them.

I can't recall who at school first talked about him. I went to a Catholic grammar school on the southwest side of Chicago -- White Sox, Marquette park, Midway Airport (which was actually closed back then), a square of life for me bordered by Kedzie to Western, 59th to 69th. We were all working class, the only people out and about during the weekdays were retirees and houswives, and none of us had ever heard of a Mercedes, but the sight of a battleship-sized, gleaming Cadillac made us stop and stare. I went to Catholic school for the quality of the education, not because my parents were devout Catholics. They ponyed up something like fifty bucks a month tuition, a freakin' hefty sum back then.

We lived in an apartment above a neighborhood grocer on 63rd street, one of the longest commercial streets in the city. Our front window looked out over the street, and I could sit on the radiator cover like it was a bench, and watch the show below. Our short block was between California and Mozart, our next door neighbors were Fred and his wife, an old couple who owned the bar downstairs, and beside them was Schultz's bakery -- owned by the Schultz family, who lived upstairs -- and across the steet was a large, vacant, weed-overgrown corner lot, another bar (or tavern, for you midwesteners), a tobacco store, dry cleaners and, close to the corner, the Velvet Lounge, a club that had live music and a good deal of fights.

On many nights, it was a better than watching TV.

It was a playground discussion, along the lines of "there's this guy named Lips and he's following kids around, only boys, though". It didn't ocurr to me to wonder how someone knew his name, or where that name actually came from, none of that was anywhere near as important as knowing that some guy was following us boys around. Over the next few weeks it seemed like everyone knew, including Marge, a thick, no-nonsense woman who was the crossing guard at 63rd and California. She didn't use these exact words, but I do recall one afternoon, waiting for the light to change, that she essentially said something to the effect that if she ever saw him she would kick his ass.

And then came the day when I actually saw him, when he followed me home. I wasn't coming home from school, or he would have had to get past Marge; I think I had been playing at the schoolyard, which was only three blocks from home. I didn't know it was him at first. In all the talk about him, no one had ever really described him. I just kind of noticed him at some point, not just walking behind me but looking at me. He was probably in his forties, no taller than five-foot-something, maybe five-four, something more than stocky, with a broad face. The whole 'Lips' thing, though, it must not have come from his physical attributes, because that area of his face seemed no bigger than it should have been. He was neither caucasion nor black -- which was the not quite the phrase of that time -- but I only note this because, as I later found out, his english was very, very limited.

Now, I wasn't any kind of big kid. I was fast, a decent size for my age, but certainly not big. I had a kind of confidence though, and a bit of daring. The daring thing was innate: I had an ability to be accepted and hang with some of those kids who eventually ended up in prison or dead, and I was not adverse to doing things that, had I been caught, I would have suffered grave consequences; the confidence, or whatever it might be called in a closer-to-skinny-than-not eleven year-old, that came from the judo and karate classes that my father and I had at the dojo on the corner of the next block, also visible from our front window. This was, by the way, just before Bruce Lee hit the small screen as Kato on the Green Hornet, so this was a bit of an exotic undertaking to a few of my friends.

When I realized that this was the infamous Lips, and that he was following me, I slowed a little and let him catch up, enough so that when I looked over my shoulder at him for the upteenth time, he smiled at me and nodded his head.

I picked up speed, took a detour through a short alley behind my house and came around the other side of the block. When I didn't see him on the street, and I was sure he wasn't around, I went in my front door.

I told my dad when he came home from work, leaving out the part about slowing down as I walked home. He was livid, and I knew that he wasn't livid at me. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that if I ever saw Lips again that I should stay away and, more importantly, tell him.

My dad is an Irishman; not just a man of Irish descent, but a man born and raised in Ireland. He met and married my mom in Glasgow, Scotland, and they emmigrated to Canada, where I popped out, before moving to Maine then Chicago. He was never one of those hard-drinking Irishman, but he had a temper. He'd been a Royal Marine commando at a pretty young age, and he was one of those men who could do anything he had to do, work any job necessary to take care of his family. He was a do'er.

I took his orders to heart.

I never told him about the second time I saw Lips. I spotted him walking along 63rd, and I fell in behind him, at a decent distance. I can't say why I followed him, exactly, but I remember it having to do with that feeling of, "there, how do you like it, weirdo". He noticed me, doing the over the shoulder thing, but something about the way I looked, I'm guessing, conveyed to him that I wasn't trying to be his buddy. We went like this for several blocks, and as he turned off 63rd and headed into a neighborhood I closed the distance between us. By the time he turned around to confront me, and the look on his face was a mix of fear and anger, we were only ten feet apart.

Again, I wasn't big, and I wasn't really 'bad', and the same can certainly be said of him, I was intimidated though, as any child can be by any adult. I stopped, but I started to harass him vocally, something along the lines of "c'mon Lips, ya' goon", and he turned and walked on. I followed, and he turned back to me. We stared at each other, he turned and walked off, and I turned to go home.

I was stting at the front window, early evening, the third and last time I saw Lips. He was across the street, walking, and he stepped off the sidewalk into the vacant lot. It was early evening, already dark, but the streetlights and light from all the stores cast enough ambient light into the lot that even though he went to the middle of what was a pretty big space, I could tell what he was doing. He was unzipping his pants to take a leak, in the middle of the field.

"He dad, there's that guy Lips, that guy that follows us around."

My dad was at my side in a heartbeat. "Where?"

"In the field, taking a pee."

He was gone down the stairs as fast as he had been at my side. I watched as he crossed the middle of the street and walked onto the lot. I saw Lips turn, still taking a leak, barely able to get his tool back into his pants before my father grabbed a handful of his jacket at the shoulder and pushed, dragged and manhandled Lips back to the sidewalk. I could see that my father was giving him an earful, and as they reached the sidewak, he threw Lips forward. Somehow the little guy managed to keep his feet, and he was moving forward at a clip that I found remarkable, considering he wasn't running, but it wasn't fast enough for my father, who stepped up behind Lips and kicked him in the ass so hard that Lips actually left the ground.

I watched my father watch Lips scamper away. When he came back upstairs, he said Lips had kept saying "weak stew, weak stew" and pointing to his stomach. My father looked at me and said, "tell me if you ever see him again", and I actually felt bad for a brief moment, becuase I was pretty sure my old man might kill Lips if he ever saw him again.

I never saw Lips again. Some time later, someone in the schoolyard said they'd heard Lips was dead, stabbed to death in a bar.

There are a few things in life that are more than warnings. Lips didn't follow boys around because he wanted to be their friend; that's not what a normal forty year-old man does. A normal forty year-old man, or any adult man, can love kids, want to be around them because he realizes the magic of kids, the potential that's wrapped up in them, and he can be involved in their lives, as a father, uncle, mentor, teacher, coach, be there for them, all those important times. But normal men know that following boys around is abberant behavior.

Abberant behavior. An elder statesman who initiates conversations with male teenagers, asking them directly -- as opposed to introducing himself to the parents and explaining why he would like a photograph to include in some official aspect of the Page program, for instance -- asking the teenager for a photograph, initiating direct, private conversations and encouraging discussions that can easily be considered as suggestive and inappropriate, this is abberant behavior.

In the face of abberant behavior, and evidence of this abberant behavior, how would anyone come to believe that a 'warning' to stop engaging in such behavior would be prudent, effective or acceptable? While I accept that we are all at the mercy of what we get from the news on this episode, one consistent aspect of the story seems to be that regardless of WHEN people knew about Foley's behavior, the initial action was to tell him to stop it.

They told him to stop it. Like a warning ticket for speeding, or an admonition for being caught in a lie.

He was told to "knock it off."

The possibility of a cover-up, lying politicians trying to cover their asses, that's old news and unsurprising. I am truly, truly saddened that from the very first opportunity to deal with this, that these men -- and we are talking about highly educated, powerful men -- believed that telling a man who was engaging underage teens in questionable, private conversations, and making inappropriate requests, to 'stop it' was a responsible course of action.

This is about so much more than political parties and fingerpointing; this is about something that was shameful from the first moment, about something that should have been confronted and dealt with from the first inlking that it was ocurring.

The first person who told Foley to "stop it", and everyone else who thought that was good enough, should have their ass kicked. Hard.

Observing the bookstore universe

2006-10-09T14:00:00.000-07:00

Want to sell your book? Get a leader from another country to hold your book up as he speaks in front of the United Nations. Noam Chomsky -- I'll do some research as to the provenance of the name Noam, but let me know if you already have that info -- is one of the world's leading intellectuallists. How'd ya' like to have THAT as your claim to fame? Over the years, even though he is a relatively down-to-earth kind of guy, he's gotten flack about his staunch anti-American government views. The key here, before any of you patriots get your drawers in a knot, is the 'government' part of that description. Chomsky doesn't believe that it's just the American government that has a problem, it's government in general that is a problem, and historically, he easily supports those views and that perspective.

But, let's not get into his specifics here, although, like anything else that people develop strong opinions about, I STRONGLY suggest you read something he's written (as opposed to reading something 'about' him) before you go off on a tangent.

The point is, finally, that in this world of instantaneous exposure, where few nooks or crannies are left unexplored, one of the smartest guys in the civilized world, who has dozens of published titles known to a somewhat small, selective and educated market, sees a jump in sales of one of his titles because the leader of a country, who is a pain in the ass to our current president, takes the podium at the United Nations and holds up Chomsky's book --Hegemony or Survival -- as he calls our President the devil.

For several days after, people call requesting the book, or they come in the bookstore looking for it. I don't think we had a copy in the store, even though we had a shelf full of other his other titles. I've had my copy for two years.

What a world.

The other way to sell a book is to be Bob Woodward and write an eight-pound tome about the arroagance, ignorance and mind-numbing, ill-advised stubborness of powerful men who are so mission focused on doing things their way that they are blinded, some by choice as to the bigger picture emerging from the war in Iraq.

People who read on a regular basis are also aware of when books are set for release, which is why so many calls come in on the day of or day after the release of a widely anticipated book, especialy one that gets major media exposure weeks before it's actually released. The surprise for me was the number of phone calls and in-store inquiries I fielded from people who, by my own subjective observations, were not the usual readers of government/current events/history non-fiction.

And there were a LOT of calls and requests.

I am still amzaed at the delight that people display when you have 'their' book. My latest giggle came from the young woman with a beaming smile who actually did a tiny jump when I led her to a book on organic chemistry. And there was also the woman who was on hold for six minutes while I searched for a book on overcoming depression, then thanked me with a degree of sincerity that is hard to put into words.

The pay remians shit, but the expreiences are much more enriching than I had anticipated.

Regrouping

2006-10-05T12:36:00.000-07:00

It's one thing to be tired due to work, exercise, or family stress, financial pressure and such, but it's another thing entirely to be tired due to the daily carpet bombing of my sense and sensibility by stories of mentally disturbed politicians, deceptive leaders, rats in suits and ties, and the unfathomable deaths of children at the hands of madman. I don't even know how to make a smooth transition from this to the rest of my post, so I'll just get on with it.

Somewhere, I think in a cover story in a business mag, someone wrote that one of the important features of a "successful" blog -- whatever that is -- is to post daily, without fail. This I have not done over the last month. It's not that my life has been that crazy, but it has been going off in many directions. Here's what's up:

The Show
The solo performance piece I did last month went well -- I give it a 97%. The audience was most appreciative, several described the show as enriching, and two members said they felt "changed," which is magical. I have been invited by a member of an organization to perform it again at a large conference in November, and I have accepted.

I didn't plan on a second performance, and I don't plan on a third. I've been around enough to live by simple but important rule, which is "one gig at a time," which allows me to focus on the gig, and prevents me from entertaining any inclinations to think, imagine or fantasize about the future, which doesn't 'exsist' anyway.

The Book & Movie Thing
The book rights are about an event and its aftermath, and at its center is a gun, but IT'S NOT A GUN RIGHTS/GUN CONTROL/SECOND AMMENDMENT story; whether the gun thing puts publishers off or not, I'm in no position to really judge. My agent believes that the story is now stale, and that's his belief as to why so many publishers have passed, even after taking the time to hold editorial review meetings with senior editors to discuss the story.

The Strive Agency, that biggest ape in Hollywood agency who wanted the movie rights to the story, have said they're really interested in repping the story to studios, but they're not willing to include optioning the book, nor are they willing to entertain any notions about my involvement in bringing the story to the smaller screen (they firmly see it as a cable TV movie, not a big screen thing). The people at the heart of the story have said they don't want to do anything -- especially within the limitations dictatd by Strive -- without me, and, thus, the entire deal has fallen apart after a year of haggling.

My Job
Yep, had to get a part-time job, for a shitload of reasons, but really because I've invested three years of time and money in the book project, and it's just not feasible to continue on. Where does a writer/media guy go when he needs to get a part-time gig? Why, to a book and media store, of course. It's with one of the 'big' bookstore chains, the pay is shit, but it's interesting to constantly interact with people who like to, who HAVE to read. In one of those buzzy moments, on the first day of training, I walked past a book for which I had been content editor. There's just an odd feling when you're walking past a book that you may have to ring up in your job as cashier, and the book has a short paragraph in the acknowlegments where the author thanks you for your work.

As a writer, I welcome every opportunity to study the human race, to observe, to question, to decipher, and to wonder about, well, about us. In this reagrd, I'm getting a headful of material, observing a wide spectrum of types and behaviors. Some quick observations:

- Just because a stylish woman is decked out in expensive clothes, with a haircut that costs more than the yearly salary of people in many developing countries, and with a level of intelligence and apparently successful career, doesn't mean she isn't a slob. She's not the only one, but to actually see her take a stack of magazines from one end of the store to the kids department, flip through them for an hour, then get up and stride out of the store and leave them in a pile for some poor worker like me to pickup after her is a revelation. She's not alone, though, and I only use her because the irony of her appearance and comportment vs. her actions is an eye-opener.

- For many people, the only difference between spending an entire day or evening in a large bookstore and spending the same amount of time in a public library is that you can't get coffee at the library.

- People who come in looking for a specific book are overjoyed when you find it for them. Really.

I'll try not to bore y'all with work stories for however long this period of employment goes on.

The Future of Story & Pictures
Yeah, I'm still going to get off Blogger (see my earlier post about Google and Blogger if you need a refresher), and I'm working on the concept and look for the next generation of S&P. I'll also be posting on a regular basis, because, well...just got to do it, y'know?

Peace.

A dilemma, not.

2006-08-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

For me, this is a true dilemma.

A couple of years ago, Blogger became Google; that's the most direct way to put it. Blogger was the digital front door for a small company called Pyra Labs, Google bought Pyra, and Pyra continued to operate Blogger as a small piece of the ever-expanding Goggle universe.

Not too long ago, Google handed over to the Chinese government information on Chinese web surfers who might be -- or might not be -- attempting to visit websites that the government doesn't want its people to see. That's my own summation of actions taken by Google which Google states is required of it to do business in China.

China recently arrested a journalist working for the New York Times. He was arrested because of an article he wrote that the Chinese government said...oh, it doesn't matter what the government said, really. They arrested a writer because he wrote something the government didn't like. They subsequently dropped the original charge, after much scrutiny and exposure by worldwide media, and came up with another charge -- fraud -- and gave him just under five years.

So, I have this conumdrum, to wit: I'm a writer; if I were a writer in China, I wouldn't be allowed -- by LAW -- to write what I'm writing now. If I used Google to try and access sites that the government deemed unacceptable, the government could -- by LAW -- get information about my attempts from Google, and Google would be compelled -- by LAW -- to give it to them and, apparently, it would do just that.

I have heard several times over the course of my adult life that some people worry and fuss over things that they have absolutely no control over, and, therefore, it's a waste of their time. I understand this approach, and it has merit. As an example, when teaching video production classes at a DeVry-type school many eons ago, I knew that when it came time for the students to choose a subject to build their first significant video piece around, someone, or several someones, would choose "the homeless". In response, I would use their idea as a class on how to focus ideas, by drawing out the multiple levels of complexity inherent on "the homeless" subject, to wit:
"...okay, the homeless. Well, what about the homeless? Is your idea about how many; men; women; the impact of homeless on city services; the impact on the general public; feeding; housing; homeless children; homeless families; homeless teens; there are an estimated 5,000 homeless teenagers on the streets, so, will you focus on how they got there; why they're homeless; how about what happens to the homeless...migration of homeless to here...from here...new services ...andonandonandon..."

And so, there is some merit to fretting about something of which you have no impact or control. Can't cure world hunger; can't singlehandedly stop arms proliferation; can't even help all the homeless become non-homeless.

BUT, I can make a video documentary on any one of those ideas listed above; I can make a documentary on one homeless person; I can feed one person; I can volunteer in a shelter. I can find a way to channel my altruistic intentions into local, grassroots action.

I'll come back around now, back to the Google-owns-Blogger thing. There's a new Beta Blogger option for us. Click on it and you find some interesting 'improvements' and enhancements to our blog sites, yahdaw yahdaw. But, go to the FAQ and look around, and you find out that you'll need to open a Goggle G-mail account if you want to use the Beta stuff and, more importantly, you don't have to do it right now, but you'll have to do that eventually whether you want to or not, and if you don't, your blog as you know it now will disappear.

I don't want a Google account of any kind. As I read through the info and discovered the changes coming in my Blogger future, I realized that I had known of the Blogger to Google morph, and I had placed it amdist the mental pile of news and tidbits that flood my head, much as the literal paper-based news and tidbits that fill my office. I was remiss in not keeping track of that tidbit, since I had followed the Google gift to the Government of China story, and had been pissed, but also, truly, truly disappointed in Google's response to the questions of why it had capitulated and given up the info: if you're going to do business in another country, then you have to follow that country's rules.

That's it?

Fuck you. Fuck you. Your skyrocketting share price of $350 or whatever it is today might suffer if you incoproated some kind of freedom of speech vertebrae into the spine of your global business plan? Your board of directors might revolt if you decided that you'll do fine in most of the world without having a Google presence in China? It's just so disappointing that you took this route, that you knew when the China incident drops off the media radar, when most people have forgotten what you did, and many didn't care to begin with, that you knew it wouldn't matter. But it does matter; it matters to me.

I'm not one to try and mount the platform and make everyone listen to ideas that are too lofty for practical, everyday use. I DO use Google as a search engine. And, I certainly understand how everyone who's anyone in the world of business not only DOES business WITH China, they actually build manufacturing plants IN China, and that without the ability to do business with and in China, the U.S. economy would be in a real tizzy -- for all the moms and dads out there, I understand why it's important to be able to go to a big box store and get your kids' sneakers for twenty-five bucks, instead of the forty-five bucks it would cost if they weren't manufactured in China. But, I have to draw a distinction here, because, goddamn it, Google, you're supposed to be different.

You're supposed to be innovative, and people-centric. The people who work for your company love the way you do things, the way you treat them, the opportunities you offer. Your technology works, and you've become a noun-to-verb, both a brand awareness coup and problem for you. If you were a Chinese company -- government or 'privately' owned -- and I wrote this exact post about you and about my views, I would most certainly be picked up and questioned, and probably arrested, and that's not an exageration.

I honestly started this post without having decided what to do about Story & Pictures', but that is no longer the case. At some point in the near future, I'll move Story & Pictures from Blogger and continue it under its own domain. I'll certainly let everyone know when this happens.

China's huge, Google's big. There is a legitimate notion in not using a population's government as a target for an action if that action deprives the population of something positive and really does nothing to effect that government. Thus, I am a multi-celled organism unseen by the dinosaurs I am trying to effect. So be it.

This is about me, and what's in my writer's soul. I've worked very hard to be able to make a paltry living as a writer, and I have garnered some level of recognition of my skills, and that at least gets me inside a community of people I admire and respect. My tiny action is all about me on a very small level, but it's about the other "me's" in this world who understand what this is really all about.

I'm mad and sad, but I'll get on with things, it just won't be here

Nothing but silence

2006-08-21T15:16:00.000-07:00

I had a gig in the middle of nowhere over the weekend. It was an annual thing I do for a non-profit; I run a sound system (it's barely a system, really, quite tiny) for a string of poets and musicians who perform at an annual event. I'm not exagerating about the nowhere description; it's about five hours north of San Francisco, between Red Bluff and Shasta. You get off I5 at Red Bluff, scoot away from town, and head into a vast, volcanic landscape, surrounded by long, empty vistas, valleys of brown grass and mountains in the distance. Another thirty minutes and you finally arrive.

The gig went fine, long day, and I usually stay overnight, but I had the gear packed and ready to go by eight, and so I left as day entered dusk. That thirty-ish minute trip there and back to Red Bluff and I5 is a two lane road, and there might be, oh, two-dozen residences of varying sorts, from shacks to ranches, but it really is a Mars-like landscape, if Mars had scrub-bush, oak trees and seas of brown grass extending across its dreamscape. About half-way to Red Bluff, I did something that has become a tradition of sorts, in that I do it when the location and timing are right, and I never pass up the opportunity.

This so-called tradition started soemwhere deep in Michigan, deep into the night, when it's technically morning but still black, save for the brightness of stars shinning through a sky clear of smog, fog or ambient light.

I had worked a gig that night by myself, selling T-shirts at a Rockets show. The Rockets were a popular Michigan band, they had decent, semi-national hit tune, the name of which escapes me now, although if you ask me some other time I won't remember it then, either. It was one of those shows I worked when I was in-between working for the 'bigger bands'. Because even the successful bands of that day couldn't work eleven-and-a-half months of the year without hurting themselves, figuratively or litterally, in some way shape or form, so they would take time off and I would work tours for smaller, really good working bands, like Blue Oyster Cult and the Tubes. These were tours that occasionally hit a decent size venue, but generally landed at large clubs and small halls, ice arenas and festivals, anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 seats. I did a lot of these with Gonzo, one of those great friends from high school that you end up spending a lot of time with, and then drift apart years later...because you spent so much time working together. I have to wonder if he remembers the same reality-as-hillarity we experienced working a Blue Oyster Cult gig in Presque Isle, Maine. As an aside, just check out where that is on the map, and then picture a Spinal Tap-like adventure in Maine's version of Mayberry.

The Rockets gig, though, that was one I did myself. I don't remember much about the gig -- this is, what, twenty-eight years ago -- but I remember driving the truck through a remote part of Michigan, in the darkdarkdark, and just pulling over to the side of the road, shutting off the engine and stepping onto the road. There were the crickets, and whatever other night creatures make all that natural noise out there, but there weren't any other sounds. None.

None.

Not the faint whoosh of a jet plane high somewhere above, not the similar kind of whoosh made by an approaching car or truck, unseen but coming up the road. Nothin'.

Now, due to the laws of physic and thermodynamics ("...good god, where the hell is he going with this?..."), there was the click and and creak of the just shut off truck ("...oh, okay..."), but after a few minutes, even those sounds stopped, and there was nothing, no sounds, none.

It was spiritual, truly.

It's the kind of experience that exists only in a few places and, even many of those places, it doesn't always last very long. I was out there, just looking up at the sky, just looking around, for about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. No one drove by, no one even came close. I climbed up into the truck and headed on down (or up) the road.

I have never passed up an opportunity to do that same kind of thing again, which is why I did it the other night in the middle of nowhere in the far north of California. It was a little different this time, though, because I was doing it at dusk instead of the delightful dead of night. I have stopped on this stretch of road, at about the same spot, many times (remember, this is an annual gig, and I do get up there for other occasions), but always at night. The last night stop I made was under a full moon, and that was a stunning experience in and of itself, but this time, with the fading but still there light, I could see all the miles and miles of distance, look back and see where I'd been, look forward and see where I was eventually headed. Since it was earlier than usual, I did have to contend with a couple of cars zooming past, but I had a good chunk of ten minutes there where it was just me, the creatures, the rolling grasslands and solitary oaks, majestic, long armed, thin fingered islands silhouetted against a gray and pink sky.

You need to do just this sort of thing, any chance you get. If you're not by yourself, you need to get a vow of silence from the person you're with, for the time you'll be outside. This is not an easy thing for Americans to accept - silence is awkward for many of us, and it can be a chore to not speak. Give it a few minutes though, in that beautiful stillness, and most of them will get it.

It's wonderful. Don't pass up the opportunity.

Peace.

2006-08-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

Went to Colorado, had a great time, and the world continues to go to heck in a handbasket.

Gots lots to do, lots to do, including ripping through perspectives on the world as negotiations continue with the Strive Agency (and I'm really giving the other side an extraordinary swath of leeway in using the word 'negotiations') over a movie project, I await word from two wonderful orginazations (not trying tooo hard there, am I?) as to their decisions to financially support, or not, one of my book projects and, in the "what am I, nuts?" department, I've got a solo performance show coming up on September 6th.

"Let's go to the world outside yourself first, Bob (sorry RW)!"

Recently, the median cost of a house in Marin County, California, surpassed $950,000; generally, that would be a two, maybe three bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, small yard (maybe), fixer upper, complete with terrible traffic jams on the ONE AND ONLY highway through the county, and a population that's pretty neutral in skin color (I believe the current PC term is 'Anglo'), and a truly un-burstable real estate bubble, un-burstable until the next big earthquake (6.0 and higher) pops a few of those fixer uppers right off their foundations. I'm thinking that this particular missive belongs in the "what am I, nuts?" department also.

The 'not really our president because the majority of the people voted for the other guy but too late now so shut up he's the king and everything is happy in DopeyRummy land, both here and abroad' has just signed something that transfers from San Diego to the federal government 'ownership' of a huge Latin cross that sits on top of a war memorial in San Diego (that's how it's being described, distinguishing it from a cross ala Red Cross sort of plus sign orientation, as opposed to the crucifix kind of cross, the kind we're talking abou here, the kind Madonna is using in her act right now; that's the sort of thing that all really talented musiciains and singers use to draw attention to their talent, right?) (someone stop me before I use another set of parentheses). The cross has been at the center of ten years of litigation, the whole separation of church and state thing.

Hey, this ain't no pro- nor anti-religious post here, just an opportunity to say, "Is there ANYTHING that this pompous ruler does at any given moment that DOESN'T
FIGURATIVELY STOMP ALL OVER THE CONSTITUTION?"

Re an earlier post about Mustangs, teens being killed by and in Mustangs, and a commercial showing the bonding of a father and his teenage son as the kid spins donuts with their Mustang in some dark parking lot...After a local newpaper columnist contacted Ford last month about the inappropriateness of the... aw, piss on it, let's just call it stupid, commercial, and the Ford public info guy said, "You're sooo right, we'll remove that immediately", and they did...except...dang if it didn't appear again on TV just last week, and when contacted, PublicInfo guy said, "Ooooo, gosh, we forgot to tell our local dealerships not to use that..." Geez, I don't know if anything I could say here could be as insulting as PublicInfo Guy's response.

Having trouble getting over this, from Associated Press: Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003? Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq. People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.

I'm loving that phrase, "independent of reality", it's just so damn universal in this day and age, no?

Stay with me, we're close to the end.

Speaking of close to the end, there's this, via Frida Berrigan, senior research associate at the World Policy Institue's Arms Trade Resource Center: in 2005, the U.S. exported $18.6 BILLION in weaponry; Russia comes in second with a measly $4 billion in yearly sales. In fact, U.S. arms exports accounted for more than half of total global arms deliveries in 2004 - $34.8 billion. While boasting about democracy, security and peace, we sell weapons to dictators, human rights abusers and countries at war or at the edge of war (sometimes with each other). In fact, 20 or our top 25 arms clients in the developing world in 2003 were undemocratic regimes or governments with records as major human rights abusers.

'Nuff said there.

It all gets overwhelming sometimes, but I like to spread this kind of news around, so that when something seems too strange to accept on a small level, or it's just too (insert your own word here), we can keep in mind that weirdness scales both up and down.

Before I go, a shout out to RW, of Vincenzo's: Out here in Northern California, we understand, support and love the engineered art that is the Mini. Feel the love, feel the love.

Down at the local level, I'm doing a show in September based on things I saw in Louisiana when I volunteered during the Katrina crisis; I'll keep you all informed of how it goes, and I'd love for you all to be here for it, but since that's not realistic, here's what I'm hoping the audience will feel when all is said and done: entertained, slightly frightened, slightly humored, slightly educated, highly empathetic, and accepting of our collective responsibility to take care of each other.

What am I, nuts?

Where does this take you? No. 725b

2006-07-22T22:34:00.000-07:00

An ape swatting at a gnat

2006-07-22T16:18:00.000-07:00

Had to finish up some heavy wordsmith work, took all week but it was slightly important, so the blog had to wait, and, after this post, it will have to wait another week, as I continue to finish up a current project.

When I resume daily posts, in about a week, it will be time to bring you all into the "Hollywood wants you, but we don't want you" fold. It will be difficult, occasionally, to go into detail without being 'accurate', but I will endeavor to give you the inside scoop on a longterm project that I am currently working on, and which The Industry has expressed interest. To whet your collective whistle (hopefully, there are a few of you who don't give a shit about anything that has to do with Hollywood, but you'll dutifully read the posts because they show the folly of magic manufactured by lots of people with lots of money and very, very little taste), I shall herewith describe the project: I have the book rights for a story, and as I've been working on it, a call has come in from a Big Ape Hollywood agency, and I would love to call them the Big Ape Agency, but which I think they are better called the Earnest Attempt Agency. They also have an interest in this story, but they are somewhat in line behind me.

Somewhat? Ain't you either in a place or not?

Well, depends on if you believe you can manufacture reality. Hey! That's what The Industry does! So, yes indeed, the Earnest Attempt agency seems to be starting the manufacturing process with me, the principals of the story and, amazingly, my agent/manager. It's interesting (to me) already, and I'll do my best to share this journey with you as the reality of real-reality butts cosmic heads with the reality-manufacturing machinations of The Industry.

I know the above is just a wee bit nebulous and vague, but the balance I need to achieve is between sharing as much as I can with y'all, without screwing up the ongoing negotiations, since I am a little fish in the goopy sea of The Industry. It's early in the, um, "discussions", which is a misnomer, really, because I haven't actually discussed anything with Earnest Attempt Agency, and, while my agent/manager is talking to the agency, he seems increasingly aware that an opportunity also exists for him to become a player with decent legitimacy amongst all the other rising players. Seems like it's going to be a ride that will be described, from time to time, with various positive and negative modifiers.

The whole process is not starting out well, since the agency is interested in the project, regardless of my ownership of the rights. They're huge, I'm tiny, but the principals of the story love me. We'll see what happens...

I'm going to go ahead and post a couple of "Where does this take you?" picts, and I'll give you a bunch of new words in a week-ish. I'll be looking in on a daily basis, and if anything happens that's truly important, I pop in a new line between pages of this other thing that's got me occupied.

Peace: someday that word will be used in terms of something for which we used to strive; the question now is, will it be because of its worldwide prevalence, or because we will have given up on ever achieving it?

Where does this take you? No. 725a

2006-07-22T16:15:00.000-07:00

Where you gonna go?

2006-07-13T12:36:00.000-07:00

"Well then, where can you go to get the right news?"

Ted asked me that a few weeks ago. He's a tall drink of water, older, seen a lot, was a Marine quite a long time ago, qualified to be on anyone's Nicest Guy in the World List. He's married to a wonderful woman, and they both run the country's oldest Wild Horse Sanctuary. Diane founded the sanctuary, and Ted has kept it up and running, using his long experience as a power guy -- working with bigtime power, that stuff that runs along poles with transformers the size of Volkswagons, pushing enough electrons along the wire to make it hum -- to do amazing things, like take their house almost entirely off the grid. They're both christian, not the unbending, you-ain't-nothing-if-you-ain't-my-type evangelical christian, but the believing in God and reading the bible and living by the tenents and actions that go along with that kind of belief. They're just dang good people.

I always have wonderful conversations with Ted, always have a pleasant exchange of opinions or insights. For a few years there, he'd ask me about a certain ex-king of pop,had I heard this, or did I know about that, because years ago I'd worked with said fallen king. Ted wanted to talk about ex-pop king not because he had that kind of Access Hollywood need to know, but because, as much faith as he had about the innate nature of our humanity, he found it had to believe that someone could 'be' the way that the fallen king was; he liked to hear my impressions because I at least had interacted with the guy.

A few weeks ago, we're hanging out on the front porch, talking about this and that, and a couple of current topics came up: intelligent design and WMD. (I'll write up the intelligent design conversation in a few days). Ted couldn't, and in all likelihood still doesn't, believe that Sadam didn't have WMD. It was his personal belief, strongly held. My wife's nephew Evan, between his second and final year of law school, was up there with us, and he was part of the conversation. Ted was "pretty sure" he'd heard that they'd found at least some WMD. All of this ocurred before the Rick Santorum hyperbolic incident about the 'discovered' pre-Gulf War, degraded nerve agent report last month.

We talked, went over some of what was found, and about what's never been found.

Let me time shift a bit here: the week after this conversation, Frontline did a solid report on the now thoroughly discredited intel about WMD that got us into the Iraq mess. I'm getting a copy for Ted. Ted found it hard to believe that Sadam didn't have something, and we discussed that while intent and money may get someone like Sadam a lot of nasty things, there are certain controls around the globe that make it REALLY, REALLY, REALLY DIFFICULT to acquire the technology to design, assemble and use the kind of WMD that Sadam dreamed about. At the end, Ted may not have been convinced, but it remained a personal thing, and we all hold some kind of secret personal beliefs that we keep to ourselves, for all sorts of reasons. That's when he asked, ""Well then, where can you go to get the right news?"

Short, tough question, really. It is hard, I responded, it's hard for most people to take the time and get enough info from different sources so that you have a pretty good idea of the 'truth'. Part of my awareness of the Iraq WMD story is due to my relationship with a former WMD inspector. This person, by the way, has never said one way or the other that Sadam did or didn't have WMD, nor has this former inspector revealed any secret info, but it's clear from our conversations that the highly educated, highly trained, unbiased professionals who looked for Iraq WMD, preceeding the latest quagmire, concluded there were none to be found. But, there is enough information 'out there' that you don't have to know a WMD inspector to accept those findings. In the run-up to the war, that same kind of information -- from the mis-characterization of the tubes to the mobile chemical and gas labs -- was out there, but hard to locate without putting in some effort.

People like me, writers and such, and people who can't stop themselves, we make a conscious decision to get to information. Many who need info must, by personal leanings or by time constraints, focus on a few subjects: politics, spies, weather, college sports, dance, science, etc. Others, myself included, spend way too much time finding out what we can about everything, usually because we believe that there's enough misinformation pouring out of big pipes that it's up
to us to keep our family, friends and associates attuned to what's going on in this world, which is far different that what is PRESENTED as what's happening in the world. I once had a publisher tell me that "there is no unbiased news or information organization; everyone has an agenda." He's right, but some agendas are a damn sight more harmful, insidious and dishonest than others.

So, where do you go to get the right news? As many places as you can. Blogs are good, but, geez, I can't think of information presented with a more strident agenda than blogs! If you're only listening to Rush and Fox, and other portals with a sismilar slant, you are doing yourself wrong. The same can be said for PBS, Air America and CNN. Now personally, I find the latter group to be less strident and in my face than the former (all right, by a lot), yet caution and diversity need to be watchwords here. Information comes in many forms, and its provenance, where it comes from, is just as important as the delivery platform. A medical study financed by Bayer doesn't neccessarily make the study biased, but that backing needs to be realized and taken into account. Statistics about the insurance indsutry, presented by an insurance industry supported think tank, is another example. Studies done by chambers of commerce, or other stated pro-business organizations, on the "impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on business" is another.

My initial "it's hard" answer to Ted doesn't help him, really, in finding the 'right' news (no jokes about left or right here, please), and history proves how often good people get the right news wrong. A smaller amount of effort, or maybe a social-based reliance on friends or family who make a commitment to getting as much info as possible on certain subjects, is a way to sift through the chaf and fog of a busy world.

That being said, here's my contribution to you: for a clarification of Bob Novak's latest 'revelation' about his CIA agent outing source, and, more interesting, a very inside look on how the Taliban is establishing control in Pakistan (the July 12th post is "Dispatch from Pakistan: The Taliban Expands"...yikes), go to today's The Washington Note, a blog by Washington D.C. insider Steve Clemons.

The right news? Can't say that you can always find it in one place, but, for the love of whoever, keep trying to find it.

Space tape

2006-07-11T22:55:00.000-07:00

400 bajillion dollars, highly trained, courageous men and women, and yet the whole program can't get by without duct tape.

On the road we called it (and it's still called) gaffer's tape. None of us should be surprised that gaffer's was used to hold together an assemblage of parts that probably cost NASA ten million bucks. Hell, Gaffer's has been at work for years, holding fenders together for NASCAR, and gosh only knows what else, and, all kidding aside, there would not, COULD NOT be a single concert anywhere in the world if there were suddenly no gaffer's to be found.

Bands large and small, known by one or known by all, couldn't take the stage without it. In typical fashion, the magic of any performance is a culmination of many smaller, homely, unseen cogs in the wheel known as the show, and much of that is held down/secured/hidden/marked by the strong, reliable yet underappreciated treasure known as gaffer's. I'm not even sure that the possessive apostrophe is right, but, damn, I'm going with it. Cables, cords, stage marks, boxes of T-shirts, so much of live entertainment rides upon the sticky shoulders of gaffer's. Back in the day (isn't this where the kids can't keep their eyes open as granpa spins anouther road yarn?), roadies working for smaller bands with miniscule record label support would guard their primo gaffer's with their lives. Primo gaffer's was THE stuff: flat black, textile-based (not that glossy black plastic shit), with good tear and stickiness.

And gaffer's has its uses in many situations that might not occur to the uninitiated. For example, we once used gaffer's and cardboard to seal the tour bus bunk space of a rather portly roadie who had a neglectful attitude towards personal hygene, with the portly, smelly roadie inside. There are many other road stories, mostly true, of gaffer's used in the most original fashion. But, the true worth of gaffer's is its reliability to adhere to just about anything and hold just about anything together, as NASA and its astronauts have finally discovered.
Gaffer's in space. It's an amazing world.

And speaking of amazing, the other bright news story of the day is that researchers have discoverd that psilocybin mushrooms actually do exapnd your mind and make you contemplate, well, whatever you happen to be looking at after you've eaten psilocybin mushrooms.

I'm not sure where to go with this, other than to ask, what did they think was happening to people when they ingested thsoe mushrooms? My other questions are, where can one sign up for the studies, will they be doing more, and was there an overwhelming response when they asked for volunteers?

They did mention that a handful of people in the study had 'bad trips', which is a phrase I haven't heard in, well, a while, and that does indicate that the mushroom state of mind may not be for everyone.

It's nice to have a day where we can have two stories from two different places, where one is about one of the simplest inventions on Earth used in space, and the other is about one of the spaciest things on Earth used to get into space...or something like that...

Enough. Gotta get ready for liftoff; please use your roll of gaffer's to secure yourself to the seat.

Where does this take you?

2006-07-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

The continuing series:

No.876. Where does this take you?

A man with a plan

2006-07-07T14:09:00.000-07:00

This man is at the top of his game, on top of the world, just plain on top.

I watched the PBS Great Performances broadcast of The Seeger Sessions last night. Heckuva performance, heckuva show, heckuva band.

Springsteen obviously had a good time, and he's almost certainly still having a good time, not just because of everything he's already accomplished, but because of what that enables him to do in the future, to wit: just about any damn thing he pleases. It's not just a money thing, it's much deeper than that. Lots of people have more than enough money to do whatever they want to do (within the laws of our land, and there are plenty of rich dopes out there who attempt to do ANYTHING they wish; there's a higher power that deals with them, as the nation found out earlier this week). Choosing to do things, however, that make you feel good about yourself AND contibute to the betterment of society in general, man, that's the way to go.

In an interview last month, Sringsteen talked about having the ability to do whatever he wanted musically. There's no conglomerate to walk arm-in-arm with, no contractual obligation, no responsibility to sell out mega-shows, no real 'music business' to deal with, and those details only exists for a handful of artists. Even the biggest names in entertainment are beholden -- even if it is more than an amicable relationship -- to someone, be it a movie studio, music label, cable or broadcast network. When we read, see or hear reports about multi-jillion dollar box office, signing bonuses or contract signings, it is a gobsmack amount of cash, but it comes from somewhere, and it all has golden strings attached. The bigger the name, the more weight the name can throw around during negotiations, but even the biggies recognize that big dough comes with big expectations, and the financing entity needs to get that dough back from sales, sales, sales.

Along the way, the good, smart artists, plan ahead, for the time they can 'do what they want'. Springsteen's doing what he wants, and we're better off for it.

I must confess that, aside from knowing Pete Seeger's history, seeing him in documentaries and knowing his songs, I wouldn't have neccessarily called myself a fan. I appreciate his talent, his deserved iconic status and his contributions to the communal sense of knowing that government is (always supposed to be) of, for and about the people. Springsteen realizes this about Seeger -- safe to say Springsteen channels the Seeger energy -- and also realizes that this is a time when we need to hear Seeger's work, and understand what that work says about us.

So Springsteen decides to do Seeger, whilst putting his own Bruce stylings on the songs, and he puts a band together and goes on the road. From a musician's point of view, it's really obivous that, at least on the night(s) they taped, Springsteen enjoyed himself immensely. There are certain looks and interactions that musicians can pick up on that convey very specific things. There are the glances among bandmembers that convey a missed change, a cue to end the song, or a cue to extend a jam, or the signals to the guitar roadie or the house mixer. And then there are these other, more personal looks, and among those looks are the special smile or expression that only comes from someone who is part of a very special swirl of sound, a creation of energy that is one of the few times a human can create and be the creation at the same time.

Every musician loves being part of a really good band, but there is nothing like being in a great band, at a great time, in a great place. The Seeger Sessions is a great show.

Twenty-two years ago I worked a Springsteen tour, and while setting up my camera on the floor of a huuuuuggge venue, the boss was walking around the building, listening to the band as it did the soundcheck. As he walked up the center aisle to get back on stage, he made a slight detour to stop by and 'introduce' himself to me, and said, "Just wanted to say thanks for your work."

Helluva a guy, huh?

We're lucky to have Springsteen around, and really lucky that he's going down the road, doing what he's doing. He could choose to do anything he wants, he's chosen to do something obviously important to him and, maybe, more of us will understand why what he's doing is, and should remain, important to us.

Soon after my previous post...

2006-07-07T13:59:00.000-07:00

Happened last Wednesday night:

Three people -- including two members of the Tongan royal family on a community outreach mission -- died Wednesday night in Menlo Park after a teenager racing in a Mustang hit their sport utility vehicle on Highway 101, causing it to roll multiple times, authorities said.

Enough.

You know it's true.

2006-07-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

If you're a parent of a male or female teenager and you've given them a new car, something really nice and sporty, like a Mustang, Mitubishi or any other number of quick, fast, hot cars, you need to admit to yourself that at some point, or at any point that you can't see your son or daughter, they drive too fast.

You know they do. If you want to plant your feet and deny that they do, then you're a fool.

No slight on your parenting skills is intended, there's no personal attack here, and, yes, I am making a sweeping, broad brush statement. I don't care. I've had more than enough young women (notice I'm putting them first) and young men trying to pass me by inserting themselves and their car into my exhaust pipe with the intention of moving through me, as opposed to around me. This isn't really new, nor are my own hands clean; I, like almost all my teenage friends, occasionally drove too fast, too often, and probably came too close to going to the hospital instead of going home. And we all lost friends or family because of things done with fast cars and the results of stupid, immature intentions.

The recent phenomena seems to be the plethora of new, fast cars owned by teens; the number of those cars 'given' to teens by their parents; and the rising number of young women who drive as recklessly as young men. I'm not going to listen to any rationalizing, I really don't give a damn as to why you think your son or daughter should have, and can handle, a new, fast car. I also realize that a 4-banger Hyundai can be as deadly as a missile while under the piss-poor control of a teenager. I also realize that there may be teens out there who, god love them, actually drive their new car in a safe and sane manner, but this whole teen driving cluture is interconnected; somewhere along the line, the influence of another teen will come into play, whether your good-driving teen is a passenger in someone else's fast car, or that other fast car and your good-driving teen's car meet in some way that doesn't have to be described here.

Y'know, this message is so old, and always relevant, but I can hardly believe that at the age of 52 (I got no problem with being numerically old) I am now someone who feels the importance of repeating this message. Now, here's a kicker for y'all: I don't have kids. I love em', but don't have any. Now there might be more than a few of you that would insist that I shut my yammer portal right now, since I don't belong to the Parents Club, but I would tell you that I have a better idea of what your kids did when you weren't around, for those of you whose kids are now parents themselves, than you ever did. The reason that I was privvy to this behavior?

I worked in rock and roll. I saw you, and I saw your kids, and I saw you and/or them doing the most amazing things.

I know things change, though, and I'm not in rock and roll to the same degree as, as, well, a while ago, but the point remains valid: to some degree, teens do things that could get them in all sorts of trouble, and those that don't can get in trouble because of those others.

Steve Coursey is a columnist for a New York Times-owned newspaper in Northern California, and last week he wrote a column about Ford, teens and death, and dang if he didn't get the right response from the car company. You may have seen a particular commercial for the Ford Mustang in which, to summarize, a young man drives a Mustang like an idiot around a desserted parking lot kind of place, and his dad is in the passenger seat, and, oh so cleverly, looks as if he's going to admonish his offspring, BUT NO, he giggles and says something to the effect of, "Again!", whereupon they go off like two assholes in a Mustang.

Welp, in a Northern California county they had this problem of a bunch of teenagers who had all died in several different accidents, all involving brandspankingnew Mustangs that their parents bought for them. Mind you, this is not the place to go on about this, and we all feel the grief of any lost soul, especially young souls. So, when this goofy, and not really well done anyway commercial aired in this part of the country, one of the county supervisers essentially said, if I may paraphrase, "this is bullshit". He called Coursey, Coursey called Ford, and dang, Ford pulled the commercial...from Northern Califronia rotation.

Qucik aside here: not all national commercials air nationally during the same time period, for various reasons. If you haven't seen the commerical, you may yet still see it.

I wish there was a way to make this message fresh, although maybe if I'm pissing you off because you feel I'm besmirching your parenting skills, some of that will manifest itself in some additional dialog with your kids (I'm sure that right now most of you parents are shaking your head at my apparent naivete, but let's move on). Hey, you got the ability to give your kids something like a car, that's great, and I'm really happy for all of you. Just keep in mind that there are a lot of really nice, shiny cars, that can go fast enough on the highway without launching into orbit. It's been shown through studies that kids' brains ain't quite finished, and that unfinished part is one of the reasons that kids don't always make the 'best' choices, so there'a always going to be some issue to deal with.

I'm just trying to get one or two of you to really think about how truly, truly sad that polite but insistent knocking on your front door could be at two o'clock in the morning.

Don't look & 13 seconds

2006-07-03T10:16:00.000-07:00

I like a good, creative list of this and that, but when it comes to something as personal and universal as driving, I think it best that I, instead, share my 'observations'. Although I could then slip right into a long 'list' of observations, I'm also going to avoid that approach and see if I can hone today's part two of the driving theme to just two, maybe three important tips for safer, better driving that can be adopted with little or no fanfare at all. Yes, you can choose to see the validity of these tidbits, make them your own, and you'll never have to admit you didn't think of them yourself. Do pass along the info somehow, though, because these are good, and they can really, really make a difference.

Don't look at me.
I'm a passenger in your car. I could be friend, family, DMV inspector, what-or whoever, and I'm in your passenger seat for a few minutes or a few hours, ippso facto, I ain't going nowhere until you get us wherever we're going. What's important in this situation? Well, you need to get us to our destination in one piece, you need to watch the road, react, curse the idiot who just did any one of a thousand moves that are dangerous, so...don't look at me.

We've all done it, and we see it by glancing at the multiple boxed stage shows manuevering all around us on the road: animated conversations between two people, energetic nods of comprehension, wide open eyes and motoring mouths, and the driver's head moving with peppy regularity from eyes-ahead, to full face turn to the right, linger, a quick glance ahead, head whip to the right for much longer than necessary. Stop it. Get in the habit of not looking at your passenger. The passenger is not going anywhere that you're not going. The passenger is the uber captured audience. If you really need to interpret how your pasenger feels about what you just said, listen to the tone of the response, or the silence of the non-response, stay attuned just as if you were talking on the phone (different post, the whole phone and driving thing), but keep your eyes on the road.

It's a little thing, it takes just a tiny bit of practice, but it will make such a huge difference in how you drive, and how much more in control you'll feel. Your passenger will not mind, they may notice but it will probably not register with them to a great degree, and if they do notice -- "You never look at me when I talk to you..." -- your response can be whatever you want, but can then include something about "...avoiding eye contact to avoid (insert word here, i.e., death, dismemberment, human missle launch, looking at the weird thing growing on your lip, etc.) I'll avoid the whole accelerated mass equation thing here and go right to this: at 60 mph the distance covered in the span of a quick glance is considerable, and fraught with danger, and things would be just so much nicer for all of us if we'll all stop looking at our passenger (those with kids in the back, this is another universe; we'll visit your situation in the future).

The 13 second rule.
Dude cuts you off; young hot chick comes up your ass at warp speed and stays so close you can see just how much eye makeup she has wasted on herself; car ahead slams on the brakes to avoid hitting a butterfly; as you try to pass a slower car, the other driver finds the gas pedal...over, and over, and over...

And the rage begins. It comes after maybe a microsecond or two of disbelief -- "I can't believe what that asshole just did!" -- and, dedending on your personal 'What the fuck else can happen to me today?' sacle, you might attempt to find to send your own personal message to the other driver who turned you into a raving lunatic. Perhaps you want to convey something via sign language.

Perhaps you want to convey something at an amplified volume, using lung capacity that you reserve for such times as this. Your focus is now on defending your...um, what? Well, you're not going to let that asshole besmirch your...what? Pride? Vanity? Your professional driving prowess?

Please. Let's just put this in perspective for, oh, the rest of our lives, okay? Yeah, well, do it anyway, to wit: give yourself 13 seconds, tops, to be angry, swear, out loud or in your head, share a few expletives with whoever happens to be in earshot, outside and inside the car, and then, 13 seconds later, done.

Be done because your life, the energy of your existence, your focus, it's all too important to be dilluted by the energy of someone that you will not see again, or, if it's like a commute thing where you might see them at least once or twice a week, you still won't know them, you don't want to know them, you'll never really have any interaction with them and, shit, you have so much other stuff to deal with that this boob/twit/sonofabitch should not register on your life radar for more than 13 seconds.

For those with an interest in Eastern/Asian subjects, you might have gleened the Buddhist underpinnings here, but regardless, this is a very practical perspective on 'those other drivers'. Think you can't let that anger go, let your astonishment, that sense of being trespassed upon (it is your lane right now, afterall) blow away like the unimportant dust that it is? Bullshit. 13 seconds go by, get your mind back on what your were thinging just before Mr. Rude did his thing (notice the absence of "did his thing TO YOU"). Do not give a complete stranger an entitlement to your life. 13 seconds go by, then think about your kids; your horse; your dog; your job (man, are you that desperate? get a hobby); your hobby; the stock market; the babe you met last night; the meal you'll have tonight.

I'm not saying you shouldn't GET angry, maybe lecture your kids, your teens; about just how stupid that other driver is and why, not that I'm saying you'll can manage to do this every time, because I sure can't, but the more you try, the easier it becomes, and the more sense it will begin to make. Recognize it, let the expletive explode from you, then get back to your own life. 13 seconds is still way too long to put yourself in a funky state because of another dope, but it's better than keeping that psychic bile bottled up inside, where it might explode at some other, unfortunate time.

Last: every state in this big 'ol Union has a far left lane for passing and faster cars, and the lanes to its right are for the not so fast. This polite, understated observation is presented without embellishment in the hopes that the underlying message (it's correct, good and safe to move over to let others pass) will be accepted and implemented by, oh, everyone.

Be safe; don't look at me; your 13 seconds are up, so please resume being yourself.

The Sunday Post

2006-07-02T11:55:00.000-07:00

Where does this take you?

#725

Sligo fast, Sligo slow

2006-06-29T14:32:00.000-07:00

Yep, 'tis Sligo at Infinion Raceway, captured on film as I try to speed away from the voices inside my head, heart and soul that scream in unison, "if you really do care for the environment as much as you insist you do, why the hell are you doing THIS?!?"

It's a problem, this duality thing. I proudly hug trees, monitor the yearly West Coast migration of raptors (August through December, I'll certainly have some things to say then), try and walk the line as best I can when it comes to reducing my carbon footprint (way to go, BP, for that campaign, too bad about that federal inquiry though, ya' damn petrol company). I have said previously that I understand the need to balance industry and commerce with healthy living and environmental pro-activity (whew!), and there's nothing I can do to rationalize why I'll get on the racetrack, so I'm ready for a bit of admonishment from any of you holier-than-Sligo. Don't get crazy though...

I've had the fortune and misfortune to have driven in 49 states and 6 countries, right-hand drive and left, and made a couple of weeks worth of (high speed) trips on the autobahn, and, damn it, I know a few things about driving. This holiday weekend is going to be heavy with traffic, as is any good ol' American holiday, and the roads shall host many a driver who has, let's say, less than what he or she should have in the way of long distance driving savvy. Therefore, with this forum as my soapbox (talk about a mix of metaphorsimileanalogy), and based upon my not quite four decades of driving experiences, I shall attempt a three-part missive on driving: this introductional overview, tomorrow's list of helpful hints -- here's a preview: get your under-the-speed-limit-ass out of the left lane, and for the love of god hang up the phone and drive -- then we'll take a break Sunday and do a Sunday kind of post, and resume with a much more serious post about cars, speed, advertising and death beginning next week. Yep, death...it is cars, afterall.

It's not really a big deal to tell complete strangers how to drive; hell, most of us do it every time we get behind the wheel. And, bless my father, he shared a statistic with me that someone passed on to him, to wit: 70% of the people are stupid. This number is easily used to describe any typical gaggle of highway drivers, and perhaps should be adjusted up, for all sorts of reasons. Frankly, many people just don't give a shit that they're a shitty driver, and some even drive poorly just to piss the rest of us all off. Again, many of us experience these drivers on a daily basis, and talk about them with great vigor and/or vile, whether we have someone in the car to listen to us or not. I live in an area where the highway speed limit is 65 mph, a fine highway speed for many reasons, but the highway itself is mostly four-lanes, two north and two south, and has been for decades, even as the surrounding communities have expanded rapidly. I don't want to bring in some of part two's post here, so I'll break this off with this: a pox on you who's universe is so small that your only pleasure is to assume the juvenile role of lane monitor on my and my readership's roads. Asshole.

But I digress...

I don't want to go to far into on-record-universe, but I will say that when I do pass someone, or manuever my way around or past them, it is almost always to GET AWAY FROM THEM, because they're dangerous, either because they want to be dangerous or they don't know how not to be (again, part two, and part three). There are many of us in this part of the country who take driving very seriously, not in a "my car can beat your car" way, but in a "I've seen what the lack of concentration, a bad assumption, or a poorly executed lane change can do to families and friends, and I know I'll see more before I die, but I don't want to die today, and neither should you" kind of way. It may take a little talent, some knowledge and a lot of experience to be a professional driver, but it only takes some effort, knowledge and awareness to be a good driver. I've seen really smart people become idiots behind the wheel, and I've seen firsthand the damage that idiots can do with a ton of metal, where the accelerated mass overcame the friction resistance of the rubber on asphalt, whereupon all hell broke loose, and lives were changed forever.

Well, how's that for wishing everyone a happy holiday. I do wish everyone a safe and happy July 4th, and tomorrow I'll try to put you on the road with some helpful hints, tips and other insights, then, having done that, I shall fortify myself with adult libations and stay on my deck, grill and food within arm's length, for most of the weekend.

Be safe.

Things we need to know

2006-06-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

Over the last year or so, several prominent news pubs, including Time, Newsweek, several newspapers and CNN all ran major stories about the seas and the effects of over fishing, and about the steady rise in aquaculture, known more widely as fish farming. The reports were all solid, very important and had that "this is really serious, right now" sense of urgency and a close-to-runaway train feel.

Any presentation to the masses (the masses that read, at least, or watch at least one news program) that promotes and explains the values of science, environment and the global connection of, well, everything (again, I refer everyone to the "Nothing Disappears" principle) is a good thing...even if the biggies mentioned at the top of this post were LATE in getting said presentation out there to the masss audience. Two guys, and their associates, had spent the last six years documenting both the overfishing and aquaculture situations, and they did it so well that last year they beat out March of the Penguins for best documentary at Hollywood's most important enviro awards ceremony. Now, the Penguins may have marched to the tune of seventy, eighty million bucks at the box office, and I'm not suggesting that it wasn't a fine, fine film, I'm just saying that you need to know about the work of Habitat Media, their award-winning documentaries Empty Oceans, Empty Nets and Farming the Seas, and the guys who made the documentaries, Steve Cowan and Barry Schienberg.

People who make documentaries certainly don't do it for the money. They like money, and most of them certainly wish they had money, and they're definitely not trying to avoid making money. They just have this drive, this focus, to share something with people who are interested in a particular subject, or who could be interested in it if they knew about it. If they knew about it. PBS aired Steve & Barry's documentaries, and continue to air them around the yearly environment week time frame (good gosh, someone give me those dates!), so lots of people have seen the documentaries, and they're available on DVD, so more people can see them, if they know about them. And, lest ye be fooled, the actual mechanisms that go into getting your stuff on PBS prevent you from making much money even when it gets a national broadcast. That whole, long list of sponsors before and after a program is the financial motor that drives the piece to completion -- getting the piece over the air is another beast entirely, and I'll write about that in the future.

We do have the now-iconic, love him or hate him or find him somewhat amusing, Mr. Moore to recognize for raising the overall level of awareness about, and the audience numbers for, documentaries, and the available delivery platforms for accessing them have never been larger. The current (there's a pun here, for those who follow TV and the next mentioned person) docu man of the moment is private citizen Al Gore; the critics love his film, people are paying to see it, the subject matter is important, and the whole rising tide lifts all boats thing is true. And yep, documentaries have a point of view, even a slant, on their subject matter, and that's the way it's supposed to be, because it is where art meets commerce, and as long as the damn film isn't a damn lie, the filmmakers' point of view NEEDS to be there...otherwise why bother.

Farming the Seas and its predeceessor are really important now, because the federal government is working with big-buck entities (as if the feds would work with small-change chumps, but I digress) to support the growth of aquaculture on the same scale as conglomerate-controlled agriculture, and plans are already well underway to begin using vast tracts of our oceans -- the water within our international boundaries -- to put together some massive fish farms. It's not that the whole concept is a bad idea, but, well, you should see Farming the Seas and do a little reading up on it (I'll get some links together) so that when it hits the big media outlets again as a story, your critical thinking skills can come into play and you'll have a better sense of those unseen, hidden aspects of things of which you should always be aware (ref, the very first post of this blog).

Steve & Barry and all the other people who sacrifice personally, emotionally and financially to go after a story and package it up for us need to be recognized and thanked. If you know people like these guys, or you feel strongly about a documentary that we truly need to see, let everyone know. Let me know, specifically, documentaries you feel strongly about -- one way or the other -- and I'll add it to the Story & Pictures "See This" list, and send a link (if you know of one) so people can buy it, see it, find out about it and whatnot.

And yet again the media is the problem.

2006-06-26T16:20:00.000-07:00

The President, his spokesguy, Snow -- what a great name for this administration's spokesguy -- and other mouths in and around the White House are pissed and calling for the villagers to take up torches and pitchforks against the NY Times, because the paper revealed to us commoners the secret snooping being done of world financial records, snooping that's been going on for five years, since just after 9/11. Treason, off with their heads, and other shit like that is wafting out of the Oval Office like smoke out of an RJ Reynolds office building.

"How dare the media put our very existence in jeapordy? We would have told you ourselves, but we knew that you wouldn't understand, so we decided that you would understand that we knew you wouldn't understand, so we didn't tell you, and now you're going to get it. Heck, we're even thinking of putting all you NY Times people in jail, maybe pair you up with some of those evildoers."

Okay, fine. Let's try this: the NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and all the other major news distributors should stop covering the White House from the White House. Don't go to the briefing room, don't accept any of the pictures supplied by the administration, just go ahead and get your news from the wire, like many other news distributors do. S'okay, I think everything will be better, actually. These revelations that come down the pipe don't come about because of your face-to-face with Snow, or Chumpney, or Rummy, certainly not from Dubbney, anyway, so it's not really a loss there. The big stories come from people who know about these questionable actions and programs, and they have 'misgivings' about them, which is why they talk to you reporters. And these people who divulge these dark, deep secrets, they certainly don't make their contacts with the hard working investigative journalists via the White House, so, go ahead, you newspaper bastards, just leave. Let's see how things go without you.

Think I'll miss those beautiful pictures, the one's the peons who work in that Big House set up? Naw.

For everyone out there who may not be aware of it (this includes my father-in-law, who wouldn't believe what I'm about to write anyway), the stellar shots that appear in newsmags and papers, like the proud Dubya marching across the carrier flightdeck, 'victory' banner in the background, those shots are certainly captured by professional photographers, but they ain't left to chance. The angle, the lighting, the background, the colors, that shit is all laid out well ahead of time, and the people who capture those precious, historic moments are positioned by helpful helpers to do just that...just like one-on-one interviews with, say, the First Lady, how all those questions are cleared way before the interview takes place, just like Time, Newseek and other big mag cover stories about prominent, world-famous people are thoroughly reviewed, and mostly approved, by the subjects of the interview before anything gets into print.

Thus, my suggestion to the major journalism players is to leave the Administration to its own devices. Let 'em alone in there, and continue to do the great service that you do for us concerned readers, finding out the truly important shit that we truly need to know about, and that we wouldn't otherwise know because there are things that OBVIOUSLY the Administration has serious doubts about or they wouldn't go sneaking past the members of their own party-heavy committees and subcommittees to put these programs in place.

On another note, I didn't mention the Wall Street Journal in the above screed, because that's a newspaper with an agenda, and the agenda, in part, is about catering to a readership that does not include any of us making less than, oh, a decent, mid-six-figure level of yearly compensation. That agenda includes a particular slant on the news, and, ergo, that newspaper is welcomed in the White House with many open arms, and they might as well stay there. For instance, the WSJ had a few disingenuous, and flat out WRONG things to say about that nice Mr. Gore's latest film, and a wonderful breakdown of a smackdown of said WSJ piece can be found at http://thinkprogress.org/.

Ladies and gents, the whole climate change thing is just so well supported, why does the doubt persist? Oh wait, that's right, there's that whole big money, big industry, special interests fossil fuels thing...

Aspirations, oscillations and (bullshit) revelations

2006-06-25T11:06:00.001-07:00

Aspirations

From the Washington Post: Deputy FBI director John Pistole also said that the talk of attacking the 110-story Sears Tower was "aspirational rather than operational".

So, anyone out there had any aspirations lately, any that you've said out loud that you might have second thoughts about? Anything nasty on your mind? Here's my understanding about what happens if you say to someone, "I'm thinking about blowing away the president": if the Secret Service hears about your vocalized aspiration, they'll come and talk to you, ask you about what you said, ascertain the level of your aspirations, so to speak. I'm not sure, but I don't think you're arrested for that. I'm not saying I know that for certain; it could be that making that kind of statment is akin to making a joke in an airport about a bomb. The authorities take that pretty seriously. And, if you've been out buying guns and ammo, nitro or other such neffarious things, you're in for a rough time from the Feds, and, maybe, rightly so. But, the seven reality-challenged men who have been arrested as the latest cell of terrorists hadn't done anything but talk about what they were going to do (at least, according to news/media reports, relying on statments by the FBI and other authorities). They haven't purchased bomb-making materials, a cache of guns, poison gas, nor any of the other 'usual' materials necessary to cause mayhem on a serious scale.

LET ME BE CLEAR here, I'm not condoning terrorism or anarchy on our shores, but the powers that be here are moving ever closer to the Orwell-ian culture of 'thought crimes', and that's a very serious situation indeed. Whether you want to re-read (or read, if younger than a certain age) "1984", or watch Minority Report, the Thought Police approach to law and order, or the enactment -- by legislation or by a quiet, secret signing of a directive -- of prevent-a-crime-that-hasn't-been-committed-yet kind of policing is a mind-bending nightmare that shouldn't be ignored. It's just so damn close to really happening on a much broader scale that we need to be aware that there's an administration, that nasty cabal, that continues to find success in keeping a huge chunk of otherwise rational people looking over their shoulders because "evil doers" (give me a moment while I vomit), are capable of popping up everywhere. I know there are terrorists, I know most of them are in Iraq, and I know that the seven knuckleheads might have been on the road to death and destruction, but let's keep an eye on this story, because if it falls off the media radar, it will be because there was nothing there to begin with, and that will be scarier, in one sense, than an army of phantom evil doers.

Oscilations

From the L.A. Times comes a report about the melting waaayyyy-faster-than-anticipated Greenland ice sheet: "Two miles thick and broad enough to blanket an area the size of Mexico, [it] shapes the world's weather..." Essentially, this is a bad thing, really bad, and another (yes, yet another) example of the planet moving towards a state of hostility towards life, at least the kind of life that allows us to, well, live.

In all the give and take about climate change, of which all but the most mutton-headed agree is an increasing, not-good kind of thing, there's a very simple principle that is overlooked, and it's anchored in the natural laws of the universe: nothing disappears. Let me write that again: nothing disappears.

Things 'change state', but they don't go away. The most obvious example is water to steam. The laws of thermodynamics essentially state that 'creating' energy is actually the transferance of energy from one place or state to another, and that what you put into something you do by taking it from somewhere else. That whole cycle of life thing is more than a philosophy, and it needs to be taken just a tad more seriously. I understand the need for balance between industry and the environment -- I am after all, using electricity, silicon, plastic, lead, phosphor, glass and a crapload of other stuff to create these words, and you are using the same to read them. BUT, for those non-believers, doubters, futurists (as in, "fuck it, I won't be around when everything goes to hell anyway") and just plain grumpologists, the very mechanics of the micro- and macro universe (they're the same thing, by the way) make the truth/facts impossible to ignore.

Keep using energy to manufacture and distribute massive amounts of carbon dioxide around the globe, and the teeter-totter of life's playground will finally, sooner than we'd like, just teeter, or totter, but it will not do both.

Nothing disappears.

Revelations

Rep. Santorum, and those with a vested interest, have found the WMD, and SURPRISE, the Administration is rummaging through bank accounts.

Okay, okay, Santorum didn't find them, but he did get his mits on a previously classified document that describes the discovery of 500 munitions, weapons of sarin and mustard gas agents. SecState Rummy says, "They are weapons of mass destruction. They are harmful to human beings. And they have been found."

I can barely go here, but I will: intell officials describe the weapons as produced before the '91 Gulf War, and there's no evidence to date of chemical munitions manufactured since then. Let's kill this story, okay? Someone tell Fox and Limbaugh not to get all orgasmic about this.

As for the bank accounts thing, Chenney's pissed off because, dang, the MEDIA has let the cat out of the bag again. Did anyone really think, especially after the Ma Bell is a spy thing, that the Admin wasn't nosing around the financial end of things. A WMD inspector, who was also a U.S. intell agent, who I've been working with on a story or two, told me some time ago that a senate committee asked him his recommendation for cutting off the terrorists at the knees, and he responded with, "kill the accountants". He wasn't kidding.

More on this whole thing in future posts.

2006-06-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

since i'm still futzing with formats, i've decided to make the "Where does this take you?" series an additional weekly post, as opposed to having it at the bottom of the blog.

change is constant.

There are things we know, things we know we don't know...

2006-06-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

What's the tone of everything that will follow here? That's rhetorical, y'know; it's meant to take up a little digital space whilst I put the final tweaks on stating my perspective on what my missives 'do'.

It's all about perspective, a view of things from different vantage points. I've got a zen buddhist perspective on life, and part of that perspective is analgous to a Japanese garden (yeah, I'm going in a lot of parallel directions here, so bear with me and sit back for a moment or two). Without going into the actual philosophy of why a Japanese garden is designed the way it is, and the whole tranquility thing, one of the design elements is the rocks-as-islands in an ocean of pebbles, and in order to see all of the islands, you have to shift your position, because the placement of the islands hides other islands from view. Want to appreciate all of the beauty? Want to get the complete picture? Then you have to accept that there is something unseen, and you need to move around the garden if you want to see all of the islands.

Perspective.

There's a line that I'll always try not to cross, accept when absolutely necessarry, and that's the preach line (for a stellar example of a when a particular sermon SHOULD be preached, have a look at the heartfelt ode to young men presented on Vincenzo's by RW on Father's Day). I figure there are enough preachers preaching all sorts of shit at us, and many of them make millions of dollars preaching at us from their media pulpits on Fox, CNN, and other churches of loud opinions. I like to try and point out things, maybe give some direction, a little guidance, and let everyone go off and find out things on their own.

This is what I mean by perspective.

Due to my thirty years of working in and around the media industry, in many of its different guises, I have a few insights on things and, therefore, feel the need to share these insights with y'all on occasion. Sometimes I'll share media insights, much as Maureen Dowd shared with her readers when she wrote about the President's televised speech from New Orleans post-Katrina, and how much lighting and other accoutrement was brought in to keep the video production values high, because if you're delivering your speech from hell on Earth, you want to make sure the backdrop is as pretty as possible (if anyone can find the link to her NY Times piece on that, let me know and i'll put it in here).

Other times, I'll share insights about, well, insights, about how to look at things, at people, at stories, differently. For instance, as a writer, I've learned the value that 'place' has next to interviews. You can get all the 'facts' from interviewing someone, in person or on the phone (email interviews are another case entirely, and they'll come up in later posts), but going to a place, observing the environment connected to the interview subject, can provide a perspective that could never be uncovered otherwise. I've been following a story for quite a long time, and it involves a young person with a pretty severe handicap. We've got a heck of a relationship by now, and I know this person really, really well, but when this person was still in high school, I arranged to follow this person around school for the day, because I knew it was important, because I'd find out something that I couldn't find out any other way.

I observed lots of things: the relationships with other students, the motorized wheelchair scooting down the hall between classes, the assistance with opening books, stuff like that. Nothing of great revelation there.

The great revelation was what I didn't see: since the student is a tetraplegic (quadriplegic is an older term now), the list of what didn't happen was so much more insightful than anything else: no passing of notes; no leaning over and whispering to someone; no tossing something across the room; no turning around to see what the commotion was about in the back room The absence of these otherwise normal student activities from my observed student's life was a revelation.

It shifted my perspective.

If you're going to promote yourself as knowing something, make sure you know it from different persectives, is all I'm saying (ah, shit, I know I'm saying a lot more than that, but you know what I mean...). "Less conjecture, more insights" is a nice mantra. Opinions are fine, and positions are necessary, but know what the hell you're talking about, and make the attempt to form your opinions and stake out your position based on really giving a shit on being as accurate as you can be. You watch CNN? Then at least linger on Fox every now and then. Can't stand a person's politics? Leave some room to love the person. Don't like today's post? At least check out tomorrow's. Impressed by the statistics they just threw at you? Find out where they came from (the Cato Institute? Heritage Foundation? Insurance Industry Association?).

Doesn't that beautifully lit building all aglow behind the President look really pretty against the darkness of hell? Ask why.

I'll help you shift your perspectives, you help me shift mine, we'll all have a good time...or something like that.