logocracy

A great song about a dog

2008-11-12T15:45:00.001-08:00

My wife will dance to this one - dig the elementary school flute solo!

11/11

2008-11-11T14:33:00.000-08:00

Some of you have the day off - good for you. Veteran's Day never meant much more than that to me either, until I became enthralled by the English poets Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and others. That led to a fascination with WWI in general, and the Western Front in particular. I think I could make a pretty convincing argument that much of the way we think today, and many of the international crises we currently face, can be traced back to that terrible conflict that ended 90 years ago, and the botched carving up of Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East that followed. Whether it's "the former Yugoslavia", Iraq, the Congo, or many other places, just look back to 1918-19 and you'll usually find the peremptory and unrealistic decisions that all but guaranteed animosity and bloodshed would erupt again in a matter of decades.

Today, the English will all wear red paper poppies on their lapels in memory of the fallen from WWI and other wars. Perhaps we should all adopt the same practice as a reminder that the costs of war are measured not just in lives, not just in dollars, but in generations to come who will be burdened with our folly. It is not only our hearts that are stained, but also the hearts of those who follow us.

Liberty's sword has a double edge

2008-11-06T16:07:00.000-08:00

We had about 30 people over at Treat Street for the November 4 results. By the time I arrived home at about 6:30, they'd just called Pennsylvania, and I did a little jig as I walked across the threshold. I'll admit that well into the summer, well into October, even well into Election Day, I was unconvinced we'd pull it off. The New York Times recently had a piece about people with frayed nerves and terrible sleep patterns due to the election and the economy, and I felt they were writing about me. Like that terrible beast slouching towards Bethlehem, the world looked like it was coming apart in just a few short weeks, moving inexorably from one crisis to the next. And somehow Sarah Pailn embodied the attitude that I thought would undo us all - the unblinking, unwavering certitude, the absolute faith in values that didn't require any connection with empirical evidence. It's that conservative optimism that suggests that everything will be great with the world provided that everyone simply adopt the views of the extreme Right. It had made me tired.

So we drank wine and watched TV and checked Indiana and Ohio and Virginia county by county. Our friend Jani told my wife that if she'd seemed out of sorts in the past 8 years it was because she hadn't been herself with Bush in office. It seems a tall claim, but I think I know what she meant. My own animus was like a bank account, compounding interest over the years, then doubling again in November 2004.

Then they called Ohio and the math said it was over. We all got quite jolly and picked up the pace on the wine and champagne. Then just a few minutes after the polls closed on the West Coast, the call was made all across the media. Exultate! Tiger Woods' fist pumps! Tears! Hugs! I ran out to my car and honked the horn for a few minutes.

McCain gave the best speech of his venal campaign. Obama just another in his expanding collection of greatest hits. We cheered some more. I was watching my wife's home state of Indiana as the numbers went from bleak to iffy to too close to call. Taking Indiana was the twist of the blade I needed.

As the evening wound down, attention turned to Prop 8. The news didn't look good, but I guess the bitter comes with the sweet. And even the elation of the results has to be tempered with the burdens yet to come. Eight years of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Gonzales, Rumsfeld,the Stanford girl Condi Rice - there is much to be repaired, and little else we can accomplish before the mountainous ash-heap of the global economy is somehow addressed.

Kelly and I slept pretty well Tuesday night, but this is hardly a result - it's just an opportunity.
And to my friends and to all people who can't marry as I have - that's also an opportunity to keep striving to move us forward too. Congratulations to Senators Obama and Biden. Serve us well.

Turkey Lurkey Time

2008-10-16T10:56:00.001-07:00

We need to return to this kind of unbridled, unironic enthusiasm. What alternatives are there after all? 2008: The year the Turkey Lurkey returned to public consciousness.

I know a guy and he's a writer. A legit writer!

2008-07-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

You ought to write a book. Really, you should. You're witty and well-read, nuanced and multi-dimensional. Problem is, writing a full-length novel isn't something that happens in those interstices when you're feeling witty, nuanced, and multi-dimensional; it is a grinding slog involving months of existential mirror-gazing, when the self-doubt and and less salutary brain chemistry embrace your every keystroke. That's why you've never even tried it.

I met this guy, Toby Barlow, through my lovely wife. He is witty, accomplished, and an excellent man to meet for cocktails. We spent a week at his place in Brooklyn once, and I saw that he had 3x5 cards up on his bedroom wall with Ideas. Not ideas. Ideas. The kind of Ideas that come to you from time to time that you would love to realize but probably won't, because you have to work or you're just too tired or there are errands you haven't taken care of. I won't say what was on the cards on his wall, except to say that they were grand and fun. I didn't make too much of them at the time, but I now know that Toby is the kind of fellow who isn't just whistling Dixie when he affixes 3x5 cards to his wall - he's actually finding the wherewithal to make good on his Ideas.

Like this epic poem/novel he has written. It's called Sharp Teeth and it's about werewolves in Los Angeles. Except that it's not just about werewolves in Los Angeles - it's about all sorts of untidy emotions and the people who have them. The people just happen to be werewolves. And it's good. And while the plot is a rollicking yarn, it's the stuff about love and loyalty and betrayal that's particularly fine. And I'm pretty sure that he wrote it because he had an original Idea and wrote it on a 3x5 card and then followed through. And that's really impressive.

He came through SF on a book tour some months ago, and someone asked him how he managed to write Sharp Teeth and have a demanding job and tons of other responsibilities. He said he worked on it in hotel rooms when he was traveling, and I thought about how I can't even work on the crossword puzzle after work most nights. And again, this book doesn't read like something someone was tackling in their off-hours at the Sheraton. Although there is a significant sub-plot set in a hotel.

So kudos to you Toby, and I'm unreservedly recommending that people check out this book. It is about a lot of things, but for me, it's mostly about the triumph of Ideas over all that stuff in daily life that usually holds Ideas in abeyance.

Hitler Plans Burning Man

2008-06-18T21:30:00.001-07:00

This is how it must be for those diehards still willing and able to spend a week in the Nevada dust as people like me slowly peel off into a settled middle age of barbecues and white wine.

I miss my youth...

2008-06-11T16:11:00.001-07:00

It was never like this, but it's how I imagine it might have been had I grown up in NZ and been the son of a rabbit farmer. This song (Death and the Maiden by The Verlaines) got stuck in my noggin and I couldn't find it on iTunes, so thank you YouTube. Watch a video by any eighties era band from New Zealand and you'll find the same low production values and touching innocence. I imagine that the band's mums were in a room off-camera fixing up a nice luncheon for everyone. Lead singer Graeme Downs? Now a professor at the University of Otago teaching music theory and composition. Fancy that.

Consume less!

2008-05-20T11:34:00.001-07:00

(Me talking to myself): Stop shopping when you're hungry! And if you buy a head of cauliflower, eat a head of cauliflower!

Hey! You look like that guy!

2008-05-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

Among the people I have been said to resemble, Kirk Cameron has to be the unkindest cut of all. I am getting pretty long in the tooth to still be hearing that one, but someone at work hit me with it the other day when my hair was a little too lively. During my high school teaching years, many students took to calling me Tom Hanks, but their brains were still forming and visual pattern recognition must come fairly late. There were several occasions in college when women of a certain age would stop me on the street and ask if I was related to Joseph Cotten - I eventually picked up his autobiography and some of his early photos did present an eerie resemblance. That's him above when he was filming The Third Man with his buddy Orson Welles. Don't bother with his autobiography by the way - he's a little too pleased with himself. I've heard lots of other names too - some plausible, some ludicrous - that make me wonder what it is about me that "looks like that guy." I'm not insulted so much as curious. I can think of very few people I know who bear even a whiff of resemblance to someone else I've ever seen. I think it has to be the rubbery quality of my face. The Kirk Cameron thing though? Keep that to yourself.

All the wrong reasons - by Jeff Scher

2008-05-06T16:19:00.001-07:00

Remember "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" from the Beatles' Yellow Submarine? This is like that without the repetitiveness. I wish my dreams looked this way...

Best novel of 2007 (and I haven’t even finished it).

2008-01-16T12:34:00.000-08:00

Bolano actually published The Savage Detectives in 1998, but the English translation just came out last year. In the tradition of vivid, mystical Latin American novelists like Allende and Marquez, Bolano captures the zeitgeist of ‘60s and ‘70s Mexico City, where everyone is a poet and no one knows where they’ll sleep tonight (or with whom). While I haven’t finished the novel, Part One was an enjoyable bildungsroman and Part Two has shifted to a multi-voiced mystery about ulterior motives that isn’t always easy to follow, but is always satisfying. Bolano died young, but left a decent body of work that I’m looking forward to reading.

The end times never looked so good...

2008-01-14T10:38:00.000-08:00

Psychedelic political treatise! Who's with me?

Mexico vs. 24th and Mission - A Comparative Study

2008-01-11T15:38:00.000-08:00

*Note: Impressions of Mexico based on a week’s stay in San Miguel de Allende, which isn’t exactly representative of all of Mexico, but that’s where I went. Impressions of 24th and Mission based on years of up close and personal experience.

Bus transportation: advantage – Mexico.
Except for the videos of The X Files in Spanish blasting at 50 or 60 decibels on our 3 hour trip from Mexico City.

Street cleanliness: advantage – Mexico .
It turns out that throwing trash in the street is not a Mexican national pastime; it must be an American thing.

Mexican food: advantage – Mexico.
Mountains of starchy rice and refried beans in your burrito? That’s a Mission thing. My greatest discovery in Mexico? Tortas and more tortas. They know their sandwiches.

Restaurant service: advantage: 24th and Mission.
Super friendly in Mexico, but their policy is to promise you anything and then promptly forget to follow through.

Homeless/impoverished street people: advantage – Mexico
While the stream of consciousness rantings of your 24th and Mission homeless person might be colorful, the dignified desperation of a wizened abuelita gets the nod here. At least the Mexican homeless would take advantage of any opportunity not to be homeless, and you get a sense that they aren’t merely a product of a whole bunch of bad choices.

Sidewalk vending: advantage – Mexico
Fresh cucumber and watermelon sprinkled in chili powder? Corn on the cob? Hand-made yarn holiday ornaments? Dangerous fireworks? Much better than cheap plastic cell-phone cases and slightly suspicious popsicle vendors grouped in odd bunches of twos and threes. You could follow a pretty healthy diet in Mexico just snacking on the street.

Observance of traffic regulations: advantage – 24th and Mission.
This was a close call. It seems to me that traffic safety is inversely proportional to fervency of religious belief. I guess that would make Taliban suicide bombers among the worst drivers in the world. They should do a study on this.

Internet access: advantage – 24th and Mission
This was not a close call, but our friend Dave is narrowing the gap with his internet provider business in San Miguel. The cable TV was fine in our hotel though. I had no idea I would be able to watch college bowl games on our vacation. Neither did my wife…

Pharmacies: advantage – Mexico
While I did not visit a pharmacy in San Miguel, my friends assured me that expatriate Americans are like kids in a candy store there, what with no scrips required for a multitude of powerful pain relievers, muscle relaxants, and stimulants. Looking to retire in a state of permanent glassy-eyed bliss? Go to Mexico.

chew on this

2007-04-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

my day at the tour of california prologue

2007-02-19T11:23:00.000-08:00

I'm a cyclist and cycling fan, so naturally I spent four hours behind a metal barrier at the top of Telegraph Hill yesterday to get a good look at the finish of the 1.9 mile prologue to the race. In only its second year, the Tour of California (or more romantic Tour DE California) is already the most prestigious American road race, so some heavy hitters from across the pond come over for the event. I mean, that guy just a few feet from me, that's Thor Hushovd!

I'm a planner, so an hour before the first rider departed, I parked myself about 100 meters from the finish line, Sunday crossword and race roster in hand. Lovely day, incredible athletes, beautiful Specialized Angel nearby. Started crossword puzzle, struggled, but gradually teased out some answers. Prologue begins. Cowbells, annoying inflatable plastic bang sticks, riders flashing by at 20+ mph despite a serious gradient. The area starts to crowd up with fans climbing the Filbert steps, the parrots fly in formation overhead. ("Did you see the movie?" "No, did you?") .

My roster tells me which rider will be next up the hill. A few others around me have rosters too, so someone usually announces to the crowd the name and the team of the next guy coming. Problem for me is that I have a couple of real wags to the right and to the rear of me who can't resist attempting a witticism with every rider announced. Examples follow:

Idiot Right: "Next up is Kyle Gritters from Health Net."
Idiot Rear: "Nitter Gritters!"

Idiot Rear: "Josep Jufre Pou? He must get hassled a lot with a name like that..."
Idiot Right: "When he goes by, let's shout 'You're number two, you're number two!"

These are some of the more painfully memorable comments - most were just ill informed speculations about nationality - there was a long discussion about whether the designation AUS meant Australia or Austria, despite the fact that the rider's name was Rory Sutherland. I was torn between keeping mum and turning to point out that "Rory" and "Sutherland" would seem to indicate one of those countries over the other, but I opted for keeping mum.

I'm still having a good time - I can see, I have the crossword for the interstices in the action, the weather is fine. Then, midway through the event as the finish gets more and more crowded, a spectator decides that the 7 or 8 centimeters between my back and the rock wall behind me are ample space for him to squeeze into. Idiot Right and Idiot Rear are also affected by this, and an exchange ensues about squatter's rights and selfishness. Asshole Latecomer (AL) has the name "Maureen" tattooed on his right calf surrounded by bright red and orange flames. He tells them that he "got past" his selfishness a long time ago and that maybe they ought to do the same - this while his kneecap is repeatedly digging into my shoulder blade (I'm sitting on the ground).

Rather than point out the irony in his statement, I keep mum. Keeping mum is often my way of approaching conflict, much to the dissatisfaction of a goodly number of my intimates. I'm close to finishing the crossword and some of the bigger names are coming up the hill, so I'm trying to focus on the good parts of the experience. Then AL starts pulling out a bulky and quite sophisticated camera with a pole thing he attaches to the camera. I tune out until he extends the pole thing so that the camera is directly in my line of sight of the roadway, the line of sight I had husbanded so carefully for over three hours.

When you are a big guy, you have to be extremely cautious about how you respond to indignities, because there are lots of people out there who will view conflict with big guys as potentially physical. In this instance, I figured sarcasm was the best way to go, so I turned and looked back at AL and simply said, "You have GOT to be kidding me..." His response: "What? You're just sitting there doing your crossword puzzle!" Yes AL, I have ventured to the most congested place I could find in San Francisco, found a spot on the pavement that for some reason is coveted by many other people, and it has nothing to do with seeing the cyclists at all! You are a selfless genius! (Actually, I just stared at him incredulously for a long enough time that he left only a minute or two later.)

Idiot Right and Rear then rhapsodized about what a jerk AL was as they made up more bon mots about the riders - guess what brilliant onomatopoeia they came up with when Alexandre Moos rode by? When Levi Leipheimer finally passed by (he is pictured above after the race - thanks for looking down Levi), I realized that my afternoon of sincere fandom had been seriously undercut by my fellow fans. The peril of public fandom is that you often come face to face with people like you who are simultaneously very much not like you.

I am trying to follow the first stage of the tour on www.amgentourofcalifornia.com, but for some reason their site makes no sense at all. Ah well, there are always shots of the Specialized Angel to soothe me:

If you care, my favorite team this year has got to be Team Slipstream, both for their aggressive stance on clean riders and their really cool argyle pattern jerseys. One of their unknown riders, Jason Donald, came second in the prologue. He was working as a garbageman in Colorado last year, imagine that! Will garbage pickup become the next health craze, the Pilates of tomorrow? Great workout and simultaneous benefit to society!

will you be mine (for one night only)?

2007-02-15T11:29:00.000-08:00

Cue Up Frankie Laine's "Jezebel". Hit play. Begin reading:

Dear Ms. Rice: No doubt volumes will be written about your policies, your cronies, your academic career and your skills as an international power broker, but what of your book of love? Let's pretend for a moment, you and I. Say there could be a book that no one would ever see save you and me, a book of surrender and conquest, of peaks and valleys, of full-throated cries and barely audible whispers - a slender, tender volume of one night we alone shared?

My wife is perfectly fine with it, I wouldn't speak to the media or your boss - no one need know that for one night of your life you made yourself vulnerable to passion. You could get up the next morning and pretend that it never happened if you wanted to - just step back into your sensible underwear, slip and navy blue two-piece uniform, and off you go to your conferences and power lunches.

Where's the harm? Probably nothing will change - probably. You might feel a couple of strange new sensations as you work your diplomacy magic - we call these feelings 'empathy' and 'warmth'. Don't be frightened - most of us get these feelings from time to time.

Also, should you take me up on my offer, I promise to be completely respectful - the evening will be about you, not me. All precautions concerning birth control and STD's will be my responsibility, and trust me, I take those responsibilities very seriously. I also know how to whip up a tasty and rejuvenating smoothie to get your morning started right.

Statecraft requires deep insight into the nature of all facets of humanity, from the dark recesses of our subconscious selves to the bright horizons of what Lincoln called "the angels of our better nature." In this regard, my invitation, should you accept, can only add to your prodigious skills in divining the intentions of both evildoers and allies. It might also clear up some of that stuff you didn't grasp in those required literature courses in college.

Condoleeza, I eagerly await your response. Know that I am prepared to travel anywhere at a moment's notice, although I would appreciate a Kevlar vest if our assignation were to take place anywhere southeast of the Mediterranean. Again, discretion is my watchword, and, just so you know, I find that gap between your front teeth damn sexy. If it seals the deal for you to know, I have a gap there too. If you're reading this, you know how to reach me.

remember when we worried about this guy?

2007-02-12T18:26:00.000-08:00

I edited my high school yearbook, which gave me the opportunity to say whatever I wanted on the last page, in print, for all posterity to enjoy. I was a serious 18 year old, particularly about politics, so I never thought of doing anything but a BIG MESSAGE. I was fairly convinced that the overarching issue that would cut short our lives was the Bomb. "Yes, the bomb Dmitri," as Peter Sellars' Merkin Muffly says to his Russian counterpart over the phone in Dr. Strangelove, "the atomic bomb." So there on the final page of the 1983 Woodside Wildcats Yearbook, under a mushroom cloud cut from Time magazine are the words, "There is no such thing as winnability."

Dark to be sure, but back then, if you were looking for a specter to justify your fatalism or your liberal arts degree, the USSR was your ticket. Stoked by our own politicians, we clutched to a a historical trope; we are united by what we fear. Not only did I use nuclear winter and old "duck and cover" drills to justify my conscious lack of ambition, I also used the Bomb as the underpinning of my attitudes toward sex, drugs, drinking and physical exercise.

When the Wall came down in the early nineties, my reaction was mixed. Sure, oppressed peoples were suddenly free to express themselves and purchase American products, but what was going to replace my justification for not making something of myself in a world snapped into clear-eyed optimism? China? Not likely. They were already lowering their barriers like a sorority girl on South Padre Island. AIDS? I had too much faith in the inexorable march of science. While the nineties chugged along and many of my peers made small or big fortunes just by showing up at jobs long enough to get their options vested, I started teaching English while impatiently waiting for some new cosmic shoe to drop.

And drop it did, some ten years later. And the thing is, as monolithic as the Cold War seemed to me in my teens, I don't think it holds a candle to what we have today. My newfound sense of impending doom is no longer based on what I guessed to be the mindset of a handful of septuagenarians on the Politburo - now, it's based on what everyone seems to think about just about everything. I was behind a car today that had a bumper sticker that said "Come to Christ or go to Hell" and I realized that sentiments like that are just as venal as the values of those we are supposedly at war against in foreign fields. Everyone seems so certain of their viewpoints that simple skepticism is now the enemy. I'm starting to wonder if the guy pictured above had at least one thing right - the submission to the guiding principle of faith external to human experience is the thing that will extinguish human experience.

But the other thing that happened to me in that decade is I no longer feel the need to justify much of anything to myself anymore. If most people have adopted beliefs that I think are inimical to human progress, that doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing what I think is best for me and my fellow man. Spending time fearing specters is spending time in their world, not your own. I'm starting to think there might be more than a few others who are seeing this as well - Sam Harris' The End of Faith is popular (at least in this town) and the religious right is starting to look winded after so many years of vigorous hypocrisy.

The stereotype of the liberal male, the effete, ectomorphic, pot-smoking Vegan, is something I'm looking to update. How about the no bullshit, ass-kicking liberal who occasionally stoops to the tactics of the other side when the volume gets turn up too far? The models are out there, particularly if you ignore the last 30 years of popular and political history. If there were an Abraham Lincoln Brigade still in existence, I'd be game for a tour of duty - for first action, I suggest Washington D.C.

You may be on the ash-heap of history Vladimir, but I've still got a few things to learn from you.

word.

2006-11-11T13:57:00.000-08:00

Attended a fine dinner party last night with about seven people. Convivial, cordial, fine food and drink, but there was one guy I'd never met before who liberally sprinkled everything he said with the adjective "fuckin'". He was thirtyish, educated, married with a nice young child (in attendance), so what's his deal? Are we at the point where "fuckin'" is just standard dinner party parlance? I suppose I'm a little too sensitive and old school, but is the "new school" simply the ambandonment of any social standards? My wife Kelly was making repeated references to the fact that I showed up to dinner in a white t-shirt, but at least I didn't spend my time teaching the little boy a series of expletives as he drew a haunted house while sitting on his own at the coffee table. My problem in such circumstances is that I'm too gutless to say to the dad, "Would you mind putting a little thought into your language?" He looked like he works out quite a bit and I take incessant swearing for a sign of willingness to beat the crap out of emotionally sensitive punks like me. Saying nothing leaves me feeling like Caspar Milquetoast, too cowed by another man's 'roid rage to show a little gallantry in front of the ladies. So, great food, fine company, then a bad taste in my mouth as we walked home. The swearing guy owns nightclubs - I do not find this an honorable profession. Kelly found it amusing that two hours into the evening, the guy said "God damn" and his son said "Daddy said a bad word." Apparently the dad says "fuckin'" so much that junior no longer processes it. All I can say is good fuckin' luck kid.