Lally's Alley

SPEAKING OF THE SUMMER OF...

2009-07-12T12:00:00.006-04:00

Got back to Jersey yesterday, in time for a two day weekend music festival our town throws every summer like a mini-Woodstock, with even a few headliners among the local bands (the "old"—his term—singer/songwriter Jonathan Edwards, and Marshall Crenshaw).

There's plenty of terrific local musical talent too, some well known at least in this past of Jersey and some not, but all proficient and each different from the other so there's enough variety to find something you dig.

People spread out on a grassy hillside in the local park, the bandstand set up at the bottom of it. They picnic on home cooked food or what they buy here and have coolers of beer and wine and soda. The little kids run around while the teenagers hover at the edges or stroll the pathways between booths with art and food and clothes and massage, etc. and face painting for the little kids as well as those blow up slides etc.

But the thing that hit me about the connection to the summers of '67 and '69, is the peaceful and all inclusive vibe. Our town is known for its population of gay couples, many with kids, and of mixed race couples (although we all know those old concepts of "race" are outdated by now).

But the big difference is, 1967 was the year the Supreme Court finally struck down the last state laws prohibiting marriage between the "races." Now here were all these mixed couples, most of them perfectly "middle-class" suburbanites, just like most of the other couples in this town, including the "gay" ones.

Back in the late '60s not only were couples like these rare, so much so most people wouldn't have even known any, but their acceptance was even rarer. Now here they are with their beautiful children, and a president who represents the child of a mixed race marriage to look up to.

We just have to get to the same place legally for the "gay" couples, where they too can get married anywhere in this country and have the same rights as the rest of us.

Another difference between the late '60s and now—around here at least—is in a lot of the families I know the woman is the main earner. A lot of the men work but at jobs where they don't make as much as their wives, and some of the husbands stay home and raise the kids (some out of necessity since they've been laid off, but nonetheless).

Back in the late '60s that also would have been rare, the whole concept of equality between the genders was still a novel idea for many if not most in this country, including among the hippies of those days. Now here we are, my friend Chris, a ruggedly handsome man in his forties who coaches all kinds of sports for his sons' teams and has for years, a total sports fan and ex-athlete himself, with earrings in both ears, a wife who is a lawyer and makes a lot more than him (though like many here also, she works in New York for the city's poor and oppressed).

And while Chris and I are talking in front of a booth run by poet Jerome Rothenberg's son and daughter-in-law (with a beautiful slim book of three poems by Jerry illustrated by her for sale at their booth among other art objects she created, while the poet, his son tells me, vacations with his wife in Ireland), I notice a beautiful skinny little "black" girl who looks to be about thirteen and reminds me of my first true love, strolling by holding hands with her boyfriend, a skinny cute "white" boy about the same age, and it brings a big smile to my face and makes me want to shout THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to all the folks who let go of the old prejudices and fears and "beliefs" to make it possible for people of all "races" and creeds, as they used to say, as well as genders, to love each other openly, without fear of jail or harassment or any kind of violent or oppressive reaction.

Now that makes this year here feel a lot like a real "summer of love."

HERE'S A GOOD LAUGH

2009-07-11T08:53:00.002-04:00

Today's chuckle is thanks to Gail Collins on the NY Times Op-Ed page.

IN THE 'SHIRE

2009-07-10T22:02:00.003-04:00

Last night up here in The Berkshires, after spending the afternoon with my oldest child—my daughter—and her daughter and my eleven-year-old and my older son's little boy, and a beautiful afternoon it was, took the boys after dinner for ice cream at SoCo, the local homemade ice cream store I never miss when I'm here.

I've never been a big fan of pastries or cake (except for pumpkin pie and angel food cake, preferably with strawberries or some kind of fruit) or candy (except for dark chocolate), but ice cream has always sustained me.

My favorite ice cream for the past several years has been SoCo. Especially their special flavors like pumpkin and ginger. Last night I had a sugar cone topped with one scoop of Earl Gray with Honey flavored ice cream. A total taste delight.

The night before, we had all gone out to a roller skating rink in New York State that had a skateboard park in it too, which the boys mostly stayed in. I actually roller skated (old style skates) for a couple of hours. Not quite as disco dancing style as my older boy was doing or the boogieing dance moves my daughter was pulling off, but more like old guy's body trying to sense memory its way back into halfway feeling comfortable and confident in crossing feet on the turns etc.

Before we got there we stopped for soft ice cream at a roadside stand and I got a small one (out of three sizes, small, medium and large) and what they gave me was about twice the size of what used to be considered an ordinary cone with soft ice cream in it.

Which got me thinking about all the obesity and waste in this country and how simple it would be if we just dialed back to the standard sizes of my youth when an ice cream cone meant one scoop of ice cream, not even overflowing but a neat small circle of ice cream, with two scoops being an extravagance and even then not making you feel too stuffed because they'd be two small circles of ice cream, not overflowing extra large scoops more like a pint of ice cream on a cone.

Think if a box of candy at the movies was like they were when I was a kid, about the size of a deck of cards only a little more elongated. Today, when I buy my little guy some candy at the movies it's enough to keep several kids in candy for a week.

Part of the reason for all this, as has been written about extensively, is the government price supports for corn that makes growing it so profitable and buying it so cheap so that the sweeteners made from it can be used liberally and in everything. Let's not even get into corn fructose syrup, the result of a relatively recent process the long term impact of nobody knows, though the short term is obvious since any graph of the use of it in the food supply matches the graph of obesity, both rising dramatically once it became a staple ingredient in almost everything (though since much attention has been brought to that reality it's been removed from a lot of otherwise good products).

Anyway, wandering around Great Barrington eating SoCo ice cream cones, checking out the array of hippie styles outside The Mahawie Theater where a well known string band was performing, I noticed a lot of the young hippies/punks (the two styles conjoined around here) didn't just have piercings, but also had those ear lobe things, like giant wooden buttons stuck through their lobes stretching them out. But nonetheless, the vibe was so mellow and friendly and sensual it felt like it could have been The Summer of Love, same disastrous kind of world events going on, though a much worse economy, but that vibe of peace and love creating an aura over everything making the evening seem precious in the best sense of that word, a beautiful night to be alive.

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN

2009-07-09T09:48:00.006-04:00

Took my eleven-year-old and his ten-year-old nephew to see this the other night in Millerton in New York State, the only place it was playing within an hour's drive from where we're staying in the Berkshires.

The theater was full of teenage boys, maybe forty or fifty of them, with another bunch of younger boys, and two females: one mom and one teenage girlfriend. Which made sense. The movie is made for young males, obviously.

It depicts college (those scenes shot at Princeton, where the three of us along with my older son had spent a day on the set last summer thanks to the movie's still photographer Robert Zuckerman and the boys had met several of the cast members including a brief exchange with Shia LaBeof) as populated by nothing but the foxiest young women in the world, as though it was college for models, and all seemingly horny for not only the nerdy and childish but nowhere near as attractive young men but also for the only professor, played by the actor from the office who plays "Dwight"!

The one actor who I felt when I met him in person last summer has the kind of old fashioned good looks and star quality needed to carry a movie—Ramon Rodriquez—ends up playing the whiny nerdy ridiculously over the top sidekick. LaBeouf, who is a good actor but just doesn't have the star charisma for my taste, is of course the action hero of the flick whom the foxy Megan Fox (hmmmm) as her co-star-with-LaBeouf character is adoringly in love with (how come these nerdy looking guys, sorry Shia, in contemporary flicks always have these impossibly beautiful women head-over-heels for them?).

I saw the way the young girls in Princeton lined up for days just to get a glimpse of LaBeouf, so they obviously see something I don't, but what I did see in this flick, besides a way-too-long (almost three hours but it felt like seven) hodge pogdge of non sequitors, was a rightwing perspective that gives the lie to the rightwing myth of Hollywood being controlled by "liberals" and "leftists."

I've been trying to puncture that myth for years, if not decades, but the myth continues. My experience of working almost twenty years in Hollywood and another decade or so in the movie and TV business outside of Hollywood is that there are way more rightwingers in positions of power in that industry than moderates, let alone lefties.

The right always trots out the same handful of Hollywood "stars" as proof of "liberal" control of "Hollywood" like Barbra Streisand (as if she's even a controlling figure in Hollywood anymore) and Alec Baldwin, etc. Never mentioning all the rightwingers among the producers and directors and writers and stars there.

But this movie couldn't be more rightwing. Unlike most of these action flicks which normally have a stand-in for the president, a generic white guy, and almost never mention a real president by name (did the first TRANSFORMERS movie—which actually wasn't that bad, had some humor and a consistent plot and acting in it—name W. in it? I don't remember that happening).

But in this sequel, not only is Obama mentioned by name, but his representative (a bespectacled arrogant but ultimately cowardly young Robert MacNamara looking white guy) insists that diplomacy should be tried over force in the fight against the horribly powerful (until the ultimate showdown of course) bad robots (um I mean "Decepticons") and is therefore not only proving himself and Obama to be wimps but idiots as well.

The military, meanwhile, especially this special outfit that doesn't usually answer to anybody but their own sense of duty and comradeship, is always right and has to actually ignore the president's orders to save the world. Dangerous ideas to plant in the minds of teenage boys, I'd say, but planted they were.

How could the boys resist the mix of action (giant robots portraying a kind of armed conflict that is actually the arms themselves battling each other, and doing it with so little delineation it was difficult to tell not only what was happening but to whom or what) and simplistic representations of honor and duty and good (the military) and cowardliness and deception and evil (the Decepticons and Obama and his administration).

Especially when the plot makes it clear that nothing but foxes attend college and all they want is nerdy boys who play with computers and/or drive hot cars (the foxiest actually being on the side of the bad guys as played by Isabel Lucas, who even made Megan Fox look, uh, well, not quite as foxy).

This is one of the top grossing movies of all time already as I understand it, and the message is clear. Obama and those who work for him are misled wimps incapable of defending not only the USA but the entire jeopardized world so it's necessary for the military to act on its own and ignore him and his presidency and the democratic will of the voters [ala the recent military coup in Honduras or the use of the military, especially special units not beholden to the people, to defend the Mullah dictator and his puppet in Iran]!

And the even longer lasting message that only the military is capable of stopping the bad guys and defending all that is good against evil (the exact opposite of the lessons learned in Viet Nam and Iraq, i.e. the military alone cannot accomplish this but in fact only make matters worse, it takes diplomacy and infrastructure investment and the creation and/or shoring up of an independent judicial system and democratic institutions etc. to have any lasting impact, let alone even short term positive results.

I left the movie feeling down about all this, as even the teenage boys who were mocking it for being "cheesy" admitted (as one boy put it) "I'm not saying I don't like cheese."

[Forgot to mention that it's kind of racist as well, he military leaders all being white officers, their NCO loyal sidekicks black and the two comic-relief robots sound like stereotypical not-too-bright "black" buffoons.]

TED BERRIGAN TOM CLARK TERENCE WINCH ROBERT MACNAMARA AND ME ETC.

2009-07-08T10:47:00.008-04:00

This is more or less to catch up on some topics folks have been asking me about.

1) July 4th was the anniversary of Ted Berrigan's death in 1983. Anyone who knew and especially loved Ted remembers where they were when they got the news (I was in the kitchen of a house I was renting in Santa Monica with my second wife and two older children from a previous marriage when poet John Godfrey called from New York to let me know, followed shortly by calls from others).

It was a way too early death for a great friend and great poet. Not that it couldn't have been predicted. Ted, in fact, predicted it to me himself when we both first moved back to New York from various points in the mid-1970s. Standing outside St. Marks one night before a reading he told me he had come back to New York "to die."

His death had a great impact on me not just in losing a friend, but in losing one too soon and being angry about that which reinforced my only weeks old resolve to stop doing drugs for good (I had already stopped drinking, an earlier addiction). In fact, three deaths all close together that summer of '83 seemed like an omen for me, as Ted's death was joined by David Blue's (a singer/songwriter born David Cohen who was sort of the poor man's Bob Dylan, though in person he was much taller, handsomer and easier to get along with) and Tom Baker's (an actor who was predicted to be the Marlon Brando of the baby boomer generation but overdosed on heroin instead—he was played, if I remember correctly, in the Doors movie by Michael Madsen, though in real life Tom was much more classically handsome than Michael).

(For poet Terence Winch's take on Ted click here—Terry is the guest blogger at Best American Poetry this week and all his posts are illuminating, so check them out. For poet Tom Clark's take on Ted click here.)

2) Robert MacNamara's death (Tom G. got me going on this) drew an enormous range of responses, the most critical I read (thanks to poet and friend Bob Berner turning me on to it) was Alexander Cockburn's here (I don't always agree with Cockburn and there's stuff here I would argue with, but it gives you a pretty clear picture of MacNamara's critics from the left).

I had a visceral hatred of MacNamara during the Viet Nam war and my activist days trying to stop it, but when not many years after it ended I was in a book store near DuPont Circle in Washington DC where Terence Winch worked at the time, and I was in the stacks looking for some political tome I was interested in, I turned a corner of one of the tiny corridors between massive book shelves and ran smack into MacNamara. I was only inches away from him and had the instinct to at least smack him if not pummel him, but as I stood there staring at him, he looked so old and frail and deeply sad, even depressed, I actually had a feeling of sympathy for him, or at least pity, so I just moved on and ignored the man.

In reality he was at the time running the World Bank and according to his critics (see Cockburn again) using it to prop up murderous regimes and destroy poor people, or from the perspective of his defenders (see this editorial in today's NY Times from LBJ's nephew) doing more to help the world's poor than anyone else!

Someone should do a play or movie about MacNamara (not Earl Morris' documentary FOG OF WAR which exposed MacNamara's mistakes to some extent but also let him off the hook). It could be Shakespearean. This know-it-all brainiac technocrat who has all the statistics and educational wherewithal to analyze to death the last detail of war or money lending, but no instinct or higher intuition to grasp the realities on the ground and create a vision for progress and improvement out of those realities rather than the statistics the realities generate. In other words, as my dear old friend and mentor Hubert Selby Jr. used to remind me, MacNamara couldn't let go of the image in order to see the vision.

3) The Honduran situation and the irony of a leftist president being ousted ala the good old American imperialism days, only this time as far as we now know without the usual CIA push (though who can know for sure). Obama's decision to stay neutral, I'm sure comes partly from his usual pragmatic instincts but also out of fear of the right using any support for a leftist president intent on holding on to his presidency through changes in the Honduran constitution (ala Chavez in Venezuela) along with fear of the idea that the military can be used to oust a sitting president whose popular support might well have legitimized his attempt to hold on to his office (through the national referendum that the ouster precluded).

Like the situation in Iran, where the protesters could be said to be the left of the regime there (and the irony of our rightwingers wanting our government to somehow intervene on their behalf) the protesters in Honduras are to the left of the regime put in by the military. So if Obama were the "socialist" or "communist" or any other kind of leftist the rightwingers here keep saying he is, he would have intervened on behalf of his fellow leftists in both countries.

But in fact, he's a pragmatist and realizes that any intervention from the USA will only feed the opposition's justification for their actions. In the case of Iran, some US secret agencies were undoubtedly funneling support to the regime's critics and would be reformists. In Honduras, there may well have been some secret interference against the leftist president as well. Nothing on the scale of this country's imperialist interventions of the past (the democratically elected Allende's assassination in Chile and the installation of the dictator Pinochet, the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh in Iran and his replacement with the "shah" as dictator, or Guatemala in the 1950s or Nicaragua in the 1980s, etc.) and Obama may be doing his best to subdue our various secret agencies and their outside contractors etc. but not being a dictator unable to totally reign them in. Hopefully he'll have two terms and time enough to replace many of the rightwingers who now run and populate our various secret agencies and military. Hopefully.

FAVORITE SUMMER SONGS

2009-07-07T10:19:00.001-04:00

I’m up in the Berkshires for the week while my little guy’s at a morning skateboard camp here with his nephew, my grandson.

On the way up listening to the radio I got to remembering favorite songs that I first heard in summer and that became summer anthems at different points in my life.

So last night, falling back asleep after the dog barking woke me up, I made a little alphabet list, or as much as I could, of my favorite songs that I associate with a particular summer of my life:

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, The Beatles (the summer of…)
BOYS OF SUMMER, Don Henley (I ran into him at a Restaurant in Hollywood that summer and complimented him on the song and video which I have to admit I dug a lot, not that he needed kudos from me)
CALIFORNIA GIRLS, The Beach Boys, CRAZY, Gnarls Barkley
DANCIN’ IN THE STREET, Martha and the Vandellas, (and then several years later, in 1972, Laura Nyro’s incredible version)
EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE, The Police
FEVER, Peggy Lee (it was banned from the radio when it first came out for being too sexually provocative! So when it finally got back on the air one summer in the 1950s it seemed like it was coming from every portable radio on the beach, those old big ones before transistors)
GROOVIN’, The Rascals, GOOD TIMES, Chic
HEY GOOD LOOKIN’, Hank Williams (I remember falling in love with this song as a boy during a Jersey summer, especially the line about “I got a hotrod Ford” or something like that), A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, The Beatles (the summer of ’64, the film changed my life, or at least my taste in music and what I was playing), HOT FUN IN THE SUMMERTIME Sly and the Family Stone
IN THE SUMMER TIME, ? [had to look it up: Mungo Jerry!)
JERSEY BOUNCE, Count Basie (although I think a lot of swing bands did this tune, the first Jersey anthem I was alive for, or at least I remember my sisters teaching me to jitterbug to the 78 one summer when I was like five or so, though the record could have been from much earlier since my brothers were already teenagers when I was born)
KEEP ON THE SUNNY SIDE, The Carter Family (I wasn’t around when they first did this, but the summer I married my first wife Lee, she brought a Carter Family album with her, among many other great music she turned me on to, and this song became one of our favorites of that summer)
THE LOCOMOTION, Little Eva
MOONGLOW AND THE THEME FROM PICNIC (still some of the most romantic music I know for me, I listened to the 45 a lot one summer), THE MESSAGE, Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five (?), MY SHARONA The Knack
NANCY WITH THE SMILING FACE, Frank Sinatra (Jersey homeboy’s paen to his wife and daughter, as I heard it, just before he left them for Ava Gardner, sort of like Billy Joel’s reaction to JUST THE WAY YOU ARE, fast forward to UPTWON GIRL)
ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG, Billy Joel (one summer in a loft in what became known as Tribeca my older boy who was eight or nine at the time was in love with Billy Joel’s music so we played it a lot) OFF THE WALL, Michael Jackson (it seems like it was the same “Tirbeca” summer that I couldn’t get enough of this LP and it became the soundtrack for every party I threw in my loft that summer, which by the way was illegal and rented for two hundred a month! And was almost 2000 square feet which my son and daughter would roller skate around in! and Indian Larry parked one of his motorcycles in while he worked on it most afternoons that summer)
PALISADES PARK, Freddy Canon (a Jersey summer anthem that year)
Q?
REMEMBER, The Shangra Las, ROCK THE BOAT, (? I forget that group’s name, but this song always reminds me of the late great poet Ed Cox and DC disco joints we danced in those early ‘70s summers [The Hues Corporation! I looked it up])
SUMMERTIME BLUES, Eddie Cochran, SUMMERTIME SUMMERTIME, The Jamies, STAND BY ME, Ben E. King, SURIN’ USA, The Beach Boys, SUMMER WIND, Frank Sinatra, SUMMER IN THE CITY, The Lovin’ Spoonful, SITTIN’ ON THE DOCK OF THE BAY, Otis Redding
THEME FROM A SUMMER PLACE, Percy Faith (or Heath?), TWENTY-SIX MILES ACROSS THE SEA, The Four Preps (I thought of this song every time I looked out across the sea from Santa Monica the summer I moved to Southern California, even though most days the smog kept Santa Catalina hidden from view, but the summer it came out when I was a kid I couldn’t stop dreaming about that “isle”), THE THINGS WE DID LAST SUMMER, The Lettermen (also from the ‘50s and another song I found highly romantic at the time), THOSE LAZY HAZY CRAZY DAYS OF SUMMER, Nat King Cole, TAKE IT EASY, The Eagles
UNDER THE BOARDWALK, The Drifters, UP ON THE ROOF, The Drifters (I associate both these songs with summer but can’t remember exactly which ones)
V?
WILDWOOD DAYS, Bobby Rydell (another Jersey anthem one summer by a guy I later met as he was a friend of a friend of mine from Philly—Rydell’s real name if I remember correctly was actually Riderelli, later used as a name in GREASE), WIPE OUT, The Safaris
X?
YOUNG LOVE, Sonny James?, YAKETY YAK, The Coasters, YOU SHOULD BE DANCIN’, The Bee Gees
Z?

QUOTE[S] FOR TODAY

2009-07-06T14:26:00.004-04:00

"She can hunt wolves from the air and field-dress a moose, but she fears being a lame duck? Some brickbats over her ethics and diva turns as John McCain's running mate, and that dewy skin turns awfully thin." —Maureen Dowd (in Sunday's NY Times)

[And this juts in from today's Huffington Post: "I disagree with some of my friends who say this is 'out of character' for the good governor. Sarah Palin quit five colleges in her otherwise unremarkable collegiate career, before finally graduating from the sixth. She quit her job in television. She and Todd quit their snow machine dealership in Big Lake. She quit as chair of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission. Now she has quit the governorship of the state she supposedly loves. Sarah Palin is a quitter. When the going gets tough, Sarah Palin quits." —Geoffrey Dunn]

[For another take on this from RJ Eskow on today's Hffington Post click here.]

NURSE JACKIE

2009-07-05T12:49:00.005-04:00

I've been resisting this new Showtime show starring Eddie Falco from THE SOPRANOS. Not because I don't think she's a great actress, but because the ads for it turned me off.

But the critics seemed to all declare it the most unique TV show ever set in a hospital, so when a mini-marathon came on last night and my boy was at his mom's and I wasn't tired, I watched four episodes over two hours, like sitting through a movie.

Falco is still a great actress. But the show is not nearly as original as critics have been saying it is. The most original thing about it is the lead's a nurse rather than a doctor and a woman rather than a man (though ER had plenty of female doctor leads and a female nurse who became a doctor etc.).

In fact, the show is full of hospital show cliches and tropes that we've been seeing on TV for decades, almost since the first hospital setting shows back in the '50s (the angry patient who the lead subdues with kindness or understanding etc. the young person who dies tragically from a hospital mistake etc.).

There is more cursing—it's cable—and the sex and drug scenes go further than network TV as well, but nothing we haven't seen before in films and even some TV shows (THE SOPRANOS for one).

If anything's original about this, it's the way it seems to be glorifying, or at least romanticizing addiction to pain killers and infidelity. If the lead had been a male these aspects of the show would be harder to take. But there is, interestingly, at least for me, a certain leeway because the star is a woman who's unfaithful and a prescription drug addict.

They justify her behavior with back pain caused from the stress and strains of her job which also lead to the need for extramarital sex etc. But coming from a man those excuses would be dismissed by most women I know.

Also the show is terribly uneven. In films it's usually the director who has the most control, though with exceptions, depending on how powerful the star is at the time or who the producers are and the studio etc. (Disney used to be famous for over controlling etc.).

On TV shows it's different, since no single director could do every show the power is more with the producers, and the star if they're at a peak power period in their careers. Though I noticed Steve Buscemi directed some episodes in which case he'd probably have more control because of his name value etc.

The producers are usually also the writers or at least creators of the idea, which is why TV series ofen end up more of a writers' medium than films, where writers are generally considered an unplesant necessity but stripped of all power, with few exceptions.

So, I guess we have to blame the writer/prpducers on NURSE JACKIE for why it's so uneven. Some of the acting is terrifically realistic and moving, Falco's most prominently, but others are so off, so pushed they're almost cartoony (like Anna Deveare Smith as a hospital administrator who was once a nurse, she's all over the place as others have noted).

And having just spent several days in the emergency room and then on a hospital ward a few weeks ago, I found most of the action on NURSE JACKIE (which is set mostly in the ER) unrealistic and way too familiar from previous hospital shows (some still on the air).

But, if you're into great acting, it is still a pleasure to watch Falco work out in this complicated role (as well as some of her fellow regulars on the show who do great work as well, especially the young actress playing the new student nurse, the men playing Falco's love interests, and the lead male nurse played by Haaz Sleiman an actor I have always dug who here has to play what already seems like a new cliche, an Islamic gay male who seems to be half Hispanic from the character's name—Mohammed De La Cruz—but who somehow Haaz makes work).

I'm still waiting for BIG LOVE to return to satisfy what little interest I still have in TV series.

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL

2009-07-03T12:11:00.005-04:00

When this came out last year, a lot of friends recommended it. So did a lot of critics.

The latter seemed to me to be mostly impressed by star Jason Segel's fearlessness in doing the first-act scene that sets up the plot—naked. I had heard so much about that, I think if I saw the movie at the time I would have found it distracting.

But catching it last night on cable, I was able to laugh out loud at a few ways he uses his nudity in the scene to comic effect, but also not be distracted by the seemingly precedent setting boldness of it (actually, if I remember correctly, Richard Gere in AMERICAN GIGOLO was the first male move star to brave full frontal nudity and that was decades ago).

At any rate, I suspect hearing so much about that specific scene and the praise Segel got for it (he's an imposing physical presence because of his height, and not bad looking, but no Richard Gere—I mean he doesn't have that kind of movie star glamour physicality) I might have been disappointed had I seen it when it first came out.

If you missed it too, I highly recommend catching it on cable or DVD. The screenplay was also written by Segel, and it's really well done. It's the same old Hollywood romantic-comedy formula, but the way Segel wrings new twists and turns out of it is pretty original. Several times I found myself anticipating the usual resolution of a particular boy-girl scene and found myself pleasantly surprised to see it go either in a more realistic direction (from my experience in the world the story is set in—Hollywood, TV and stage performers, stardom or proximity to it, career ambitions vs. friendship and/or love, etc.) or an unexpectedly funnier one.

And the cameo appearances by various "stars" in minor roles in this flick make it even more enjoyable, e.g. Paul Rudd as an aging stoned surfer-without-a-clue is hilarious, as is Billy Baldwin as the male lead in a TV crime series. Among the leads Aldous Snow is a standout as an obnoxiously self-centered, but still impossible not to like, Brit rock star, and Jonah Hill does his usual great job, this time as a suck-up-to-the-rock-star, wannabe performer, waiter. The women are pretty perfectly cast too—Kristen Bell as the Sarah of the title and Mila Kunis as the other female lead.

It's a funny movie that was produced by Judd Apatow and has in it many of his usual suspects (Rudd, Hill, etc.) but somehow rarely descends (or more rarely than most of these Apatow flicks) into the obvious and for me often cheap shot land of adolescent boy humor, but remains, mostly, more mature in every sense of the word without sacrificing the laughs.

I laughed out loud several times and went to sleep satisfied I'd gotten my recommended daily dose. I suspect this flick is so good at what it does, it'll become one of those comedies I can watch more than once, way more.

ROBERT ZUCKERMAN

2009-07-02T13:13:00.005-04:00

Went to an event for my friend Robert Zuckerman last night at an exclusive Manhattan club that was hosting an exhibit of his photographs.

Robert makes his living shooting stills for movies (some of which end up being the posters for films, like TRAINING DAY, NATIONAL TREASURE, TRANSFORMERS and THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS just to name a few).

He also takes portrait shots of the famous and unknown, from David Bowie to my eleven-year-old. He took the photo of me that's most often available on the web and that I used on my books in the '90s (and I'll stick in here as an example).

But what he's become best known for in the art world and among many of his friends as well as strangers discovering him for the first time, is a continuing series of photographic portraits with little essays beneath them describing the circumstances of the shot—how Robert encountered this person, and what that encounter was like etc.

He used to email these shots and mini-essays (or I guess you could call them maxi-captions) to friends and I (and I suspect others) encouraged him to collect them into a book. Which he did (and I wrote one of the prefaces for) called KINDSIGHT.

I've touted this book before on this blog, but it's worth recommending again. Seeing these portraits and the prose that accompanies them in one book, and reading through them from cover to cover, is like the best spiritual retreat you could experience. Not only is each entry like a little epiphany, but the accumulated impact of the book, or seeing and reading them in an exhibit, or going to his blog KINDSIGHT and reading several of them in succession, is the best counter to the lies and cynicism and hypocrisy we encounter every day in the media (including in comments on this blog) and from so much in the world.

It's what has always been life saving and life transforming about any kind of art done not just well but originally. Experiencing Robert Zuckerman's KINDSIGHT series, whether in book form or on his blog or in upcoming new collections in book form or at an exhibit, makes you, or at least me, remember how good people can be, how kind and generous and thoughtful and un-judgmental and loving, even to strangers.

As Robert has always been since I first met him in the early '90s in California. His big heart matches his big presence (he's well over six feet, I would guess several inches over) and the gentle nature he meets the world with in all its variety.

He showed that last night, when despite the obvious pain and difficulties he's been having in recent years with his legs, needing to use a cane to get around and having trouble with steps etc., he still stood, leaning against walls and such, to make himself available to his friends and admirers who showed up for the event, and made sure to give my little boy a prominent role at an otherwise very adult occasion (he had his portrait in the slide show of photographs that was projected onto a big screen at one end of the room where otherwise framed photographs were on exhibit and for sale, and he introduced him to the audience when he was asked to make a little speech to the crowd—and my son was thrilled that people came up to him and knew his face and name from the portrait and essay Robert did about him).

I'm sure the book is still available on the internet, and his blog is always there as well (listed among those I recommend at the right side of this page). Robert Zuckerman, a name I think should be a lot better known than it is.

ARCHITECTS OF DISASTER QUOTES

2009-07-01T11:36:00.002-04:00

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." —Dick Cheney, Vice President's Speech to VFW National Convention 8/26/2002

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and East, West, South and North somewhat." —Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense in an ABC Interview 3/30/2003

MORE MEDIA MAYHEM

2009-06-30T11:16:00.005-04:00

I was watching the local (NYC) NBC News a few nights ago and the guy who covers sports referred to the USA loss in that recent international soccer competition as "a crushing defeat."

As I understood it, this was the first time a USA team made it to the finals in an international competition and they had defeated the world's best team to get there and were winning the final two to nothing but ended up losing three to two. If that's "crushing defeat" my name's Mickey Mouse.

Meanwhile, you had the usual rightwing influence on national TV news, with that Southern governor who disappeared the other day to visit his mistress in Argentina and lied about it and the affair until caught, and who was one of those condemning Bill Clinton for his indiscretion, something rightwingers said was as much about his lying as his sexual indiscretion, now defending the Southern governor with the idea that if it's "love" as the governor explained, then it's much more excusable than a mere sexual dalliance (!) ignoring the fact that many people convince themselves (and others) lust is love to justify their actions.

But it's an obvious ploy by the right to avoid comparisons between their cheating husbands and Bill.

Then there's the whole Michael Jackson news torrent and all the uncorroborated stuff flying around the networks and cable news about the circumstances of Jackson's death, and life for that matter.

Even news shows I dig, like Rachel Maddow's were addressing the Jackson rumors (though more conscientiously, looking into the veracity of them) (and under a lovely substitute while Maddow took a day off), making them way too prominent.

As is often the case, the places where all this news was handled most reasonably were the Daily Show with John Stewart and The Colbert Report. Stewart gave only a few minutes to the Jackson death, treating the way the media handled the event with the usual sarcastic humor but showing more respect for Jackson and his family by calling for the NY Post to finally stop referring to him as "Jacko" and moving on to news events that warrant our attention so much more.

And as an adjunct to this discussion, did anyone see that HBO documentary SHOUTING FIRE: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech that aired last night? It's heartbreaking to see how much infleunce the rightwingers have on not just the way news is skewed but on the outcome of news stories and their impact on peoples' lives. Heartbreaking.

UNFORTUNATE BUT REVEALING QUOTE

2009-06-29T15:17:00.004-04:00

"There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and white. Or a rape." —Richard Nixon (reacting to Roe vs. Wade on newly released White House tapes—even sadder and dumber in light of our current president)

A TRUE AND HUMBLE HERO

2009-06-28T14:51:00.002-04:00

Check out this article in today's NY Times, and read to the end for the full impact of this man's courage.

MORE ITUNES LIBRARY SHUFFLE

2009-06-27T14:57:00.001-04:00

As I’ve said, I don’t have an iPod or any kind of device you plug into your ear (I never used a walkman either). I don’t like things in my ears.

But I love having discovered the shuffle function on my computer’s iTunes music library once I plugged in the speaker system my older son bought me for it. I can’t get over how much delight it gives me.

I’ve always dug abrupt juxtapositions (the poet Ted Berrigan’s variation on William Carlos Williams famous dictum: “No ideas but in things” was “No ideas but in juxtapositions” and always struck me as pretty accurate).

And the fact is I hear songs I haven’t listened to in a while more clearly and get more out of them. Like Glenn Gould’s Bach variations, I haven’t listened to them in years because I wasn’t really hearing them individually anymore, they were all blending together and beginning to sound uninspired and tedious, which I know isn’t true.

Now hearing even the shortest one juxtaposed against Lester Young or Ben E. King or Lucious Jackson makes me hear in a more focused and clear way, like I’m hearing it for the first time and digging it in ways that give me so much pleasure I can’t stop smiling.

I know a lot of folks who love that “genius” shuffle device that organizes your music by genre and so on. But I love the crazy juxtapositions of sounds and feelings and memories and musical imagination that occur when the whole musical mix is included.

I’m still adding music to my computer but from what I have on it already, this is a pretty good example of the ways it surprises me, an alphabet list of some of the highlights of the last couple of days:

AIREGIN (Lambert Hendricks & Ross)
AVE VERUM CORPUS, K. 618 by Mozart (A Capella) (The Swingle Singers) (interesting juxtaposition of singers vocalizing instrumental music)
BABS (The Nat King Cole Trio, way early ensemble singing and swinging)
BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE (Johnny Mercer & Margaret Whiting?)
BEAUTIFUL MOONS AGO (Nat King Cole Trio)
BESS YOU IS MY WOMAN NOW (William Warfield & Leontyne Price),
BIRTHDAY (Bjork with the Sugarcubes)
BOB WHITE (WHATCHU GONNA SWING TONIGHT?) (Bing Crosby & unknown female vocalist with the John Trotter Orchestra, ‘30s),
CHAIN OF FOOLS (Aretha Franklin)
CHANT IN THE NIGHT (Sidney Bechet)
CONFIRMATION (Art Blakey)
DESAFINADO (Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd)
DON’T PLAY THAT SONG (Ben E. King)
DRUM BOOGIE (George Krupa and his Orchestra, Gene’s brother)
EPILOGUE (Bill Evans)
FLAMENCO SKETCHS (Miles David from KINDA BLUE)
FLYIN’ HIGH (IN THE FRIENDLY SKY) (Marvin Gaye, even heavier since he died and I haven’t listened to this in decades)
GOLDBERG VARIATIONS, BWV 998 – Var. 12 : Canone Ala Quarta by Bach (Glenn Gould, only 56 seconds, but it felt like an unexpected gift)
GONE WITH THE DRAFT (Nat King Cole Trio)
GOODNIGHT SWEETHEART, GOODNIGHT (The Spaniels)
GUESS I’LL HANG MY TEARS OUT TO DRY (classic older Sinatra)
HER MANTLE SO GREEN (Sinaed O’Connor)
HOLIDAY FOR STRINGS (Michel Legrand)
I CAN’T GET STARTED WITH YOU (Clifford Brown & Max Roach)
IN THE JAILHOUSE NOW (The Soggy Mountain Boys from the soundtrack to O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?)
IS IT A CRIME (Sade)
JACQUI (Clifford Brown & Max Roach)
LAURA (Sinatra again, I have a lot of recordings from over the half century he was making them)
LESSON # 8 from SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (Mandy Patinkin)
THE LONESOME DEATH OF HATTIE CARROL (the young Bob Dylan)
LOVE CHILD (Diana Ross & The Supremes)
MANHA DE CARNAVAL (Morning of the Carnival) (Luis Bonfa from the soundtrack to BLACK ORPHEUS)
MANY A NEW DAY (Shirley Jones from the OKALAHOMA! Soundtrack)
MENUET # 1 by Satie (Aldo Ciccolini)
MOANIN’ THE BLUES (Hank Williams)
MY LITTLE SUEDE SHOES (Charlie Parker)
NIGHTENGALE (Norah Jones)
NOBODY LOVES ME BUT MY MOTHER (B. B. King)
ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET (Sinatra again, the swingin’ era)
OPEN THE DOOR (from THE LAST EMPEROR sountrack)
PARADE (Lucisous Jackson, only 12 seconds long!)
PICASSO (Coleman Hawkins, solo, just him and his horn!)
RED SAILS IN THE SUNSET (a younger Bing Crosby & the Guardsmen Quartet)
ROCKIN CHAIR (Louis Armstrong & Jack Teagarden)
A SAILBOAT IN THE MOONLIGHT (Billie Holiday & Lester Young)
SALLY GAL (Bob Dylan, an outtake from the soundtrack to the Scorcese documentary)
SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES (Teddy Wilson solo, just him and the piano)
SOON (Frank Sinatra, live with an intro in his youngish voice)
STRAIGHT NO CHASER (Thelonious Monk)
SURFIN’ SAFARI (The Beach Boys)
TIPITINA (Professor Longhair)
VARIATIONS ON “I GOT RHYTHM” (George Gershwin live on the radio, with him introducing and explaining the variations, including a “Chinese version” imitating a “Chinese Flute” which he says are “always out of tune” etc. amazing to hear out of the blue)
WHEN NEW YORK WAS IRISH (Celtic Thunder, the original Terence Winch group & song)
WOODY’S RAG (HARD WORK) (Woody Guthrie)
YOU’RE DRIVING ME CRAZY (Lester Young)
YOU’RE STRONGER THAN ME (Patsy Cline)
ZOMBIE (The Cranberries)

ED MCMAHON, FARRAH FAWCETT & MICHAEL JACKSON R.I.P.

2009-06-26T10:01:00.007-04:00

ED MCMAHON

When news of Ed McMahon's death came on Wednesday, my first thought was, who will be the other two.

I know it's an unrealistic superstition that show biz deaths always come in threes. But nonetheless, they often seem to. At least when it comes to the famous ones. And McMahon was pretty famous.

Though it was an odd kind of fame. It seemed to stem mostly from his laugh on the Tonight Show through the decades of Johnny Carson hosting it. I wasn't crazy about that laugh, it seemed forced or phony to me most of the time. I also wasn't crazy about the ways he bragged about having been a Marine and about being such a great salesman he could sell anything.

Salesmen always seemed like phonies to me, at least the kind that bragged about being great ones. McMahon reminded me too much of a certain type of back slapping older Irish-American men I grew up around who would call you "pal" or "buddy" and leave the impression they didn't ever really see you because they lived in a cocoon of self-protection, using their smiles and loud guffaws (both of which often seemed faked to me) to keep others from seeing who they might really be.

Though McMahon's friends insist that what you saw was real with McMahon, and may well have been, I dug him most when he played against type. He wasn't famous for that, but it's what made me sit up and notice him as more than a sidekick. Like as the corporate bad guy in an underrated film from the late '70s (if I remember correctly) starring Jane Fonda and George Segal—FUN WITH DICK AND JANE.

I remember leaving the screening of that flick thinking how great McMahon had been in his small role and how much I had underestimated the guy's capacity for anything beyond that famous laugh, that always seemed to me to harbor some deep resentments never truly expressed but leaking out through the hail-fellow-well-met facade.

At any rate, the man led a long and successful life, and seemed, especially toward the end, to genuinely be grateful for it. So maybe what he was hiding, at least the way I saw him, was simply the fear that anyone would have who built a their fame and fortune on not much more than a smile and a deeply resonant laugh that had to be delivered on cue.In the end, my take on him was that he was a pretty great actor who put most of that talent into one major role—Ed McMahon.

FARRAH FAWCETT

After Marylin Monroe seduced me on screen when I was a kid, and in still shots in newspapers and magazines or in the famous interview on Edward R. Murrow's black-and-white TV show that invaded famous people's homes with their cameras and microphones for remote interviews from the CBS studios (a phenomenon that seemed as amazing at the time as landing a man on the moon would a few years later) I was never that taken by the usual blonde suspects again.

So when Farrah Fawcett came along, I wasn't a big fan of the poster that made her famous. there was something a little scary in that bright white toothed smile for me. Though I did find her attractive both physically and personality-wise on CHARLIE'S ANGELS, the TV show that made her even more famous than the poster did (I think they say it's the best selling pin up poster of all time).

But I met her several times over the years, when she was in NYC doing her first play (that I knew of) EXTREMITIES, and later during my almost two decades in Hollywood. And she was always unpretentious and surprisingly unselfconscious for someone so famous. I liked her.

Though her features and frame were delicate, in person she came across to me as a very powerful presence, almost with a kind of peasant earthy strength that seemed to contradict her looks. I don't know what her actual family was like, but on the set of THE BURNING BED (which my wife-at-the-time was in) she made me believe, even off camera, that she knew that kind of trailer camp lifestyle and deep disappointment and tragedy.

I liked her, and respected her attempts to prove she was an artist worthy of respect for her acting talent and not just her face and that famous smile. I'm sorry her last years were so difficult with a kind of cancer that had to be about as painfully uncomfortable as any illness could be. Doing that in public, whether by choice or not, has to have been an enormous challenge, which she seemed to face as seemingly fearlessly as she did the other challenges in her life.

MICHAEL JACKSON

Enough is being said about him. But I just wanted to add my perspective, which is simply that despite the damage his childhood traumas created for the grown man (and for others in his life obviously), there is no denying his talent and originality.

He was one of the great innovators in popular music, as not just a singer (that child-voice yelp has been imitated ever since he first emitted it, among other unique addition to a pop singer's techniques) and songwriter and bestselling recording artist, as well as live entertainer and especially dancer, but also as an innovator in the broader racial story of this country.

Yes, he ended up looking more like a wax representation of an older white woman with too much make up on, but initially—back when he was more obviously "black"—he bridged the still huge gap between African-Americans and other hyphenated and even WASPy Americans, with the kind of personality attack that paved the way for Obama's electoral victory.

Not in an easily defined categorically political way, but nonetheless politically. he played the politics of the entertainment business better than most, and at a very early age, and deliberately elevated that game to a higher level that incorporated the entire world into the ultimate victory he pulled off. By creating a worldwide audience that could not be denied, he transcended the limitations put on most "Black" performers, or any other kind of celebrities, at the time and forced the "white" establishment in this country to deal with him (the famous scene of Ronald and Nancy Reagan at the White House with "the gloved one" etc.

He was obviously a person who was hurting a lot of the time when he wasn't on stage, and who seemed to be sincere in his protestations of "love" for his fans, something that most of us can't fathom, how do you "love" an unknown mob of people? People you may never even see up close let alone talk to or get to know. Well, some entertainers truly do feel love most when presented with fans who obviously have the same kind of love for them, someone they never get to see up close or talk to or get to know outside of the performance arena and the media that fetishizes some of those who conquer it, no matter how briefly or ephemerally.

Though the latter two things don't apply with Jackson. Even if self-applied, he truly was "The King of Pop" far longer than anyone else since Elvis. And it's obvious from the outpouring we've seen in the media (and I witnessed first hand last night from an African-American woman in her twenties or thirties who kept passing by me and some family members outside the poetry reading I did last night in a library down the Jersey shore—she was loudly singing what slowly became clear was her own medley of Michael Jackson songs and smiling through her tears) that there are still plenty of folks who still feel that way about him.

He obviously had his faults (some of which may have even been criminal, though never proven), but as an entertainer, he was unique and in race relations in this country he was an important factor as a beautiful young black man, before he made himself into something that he obviously felt transcended, or attempted to transcend all that sad legacy.

[Here's links to two (here and here) of the best things I read about Jackson since his death.]

YEAR ONE

2009-06-25T09:23:00.004-04:00

I've never used the word "puerile" before, but this seems the right place to do it.

Hopefully this ridiculous waste of talent (unbelievable cast, some even uncredited, after seeing it, it's obvious why) strikes the death knell (also first time using that cliche) for second-grade-boys-room humor blockbuster comedies and returns filmmakers and comic film actors to addressing events and ideas that demand to be made fun of but nobody (in Hollywood films) is (rightwing Republican defenders of family values hiding affairs anyone?).

This column in today's NY Times is about a thousand times funnier than YEAR ONE, and Mel Gibson's APOCOLYPTO treats some of the same themes YEAR ONE tries to, and even with some young man's (or little boy's) sexual humor in an otherwise serious and great film (but the sexual humor bit is so totally original, I can't remember seeing it in a film before).

Any movie that makes me drag in Mel Gibson as an antidote has to be pretty bad. YEAR ONE is.

IRAN, THE RIGHT & REALITY

2009-06-24T10:04:00.008-04:00

Three things that strike me about the so-called "debate" over Obama's response to the demonstrations and crack down in Iran:

1. When similar things occurred in this country, i.e. demonstrations for Civil Rights, against the war in Viet Nam, for women or gay rights, against a current administration's policies or vote rigging (as in Iran) etc. and our government violently repressed it, as in Kent State where National Guardsmen shot and killed students, and the photograph of a young girl screaming over the dead body of a fellow student became as famous as the recent one of the young girl dying in the streets of Tehran, the rightwingers in this country defended the National Guardsmen much the same way rightwingers in Iran are doing—"the demonstrators were throwing rocks", or "destroying property", it's all being caused by "outside agitators" or foreign "Communists" or etc. and the military or police (as in the case of the Democratic Convention in Chicago in '68) had no recourse but to beat people and shoot and kill people, etc.

2. It was our government, through the CIA and other agencies, that (as I wrote in a post a few days ago) overthrew the democratically elected Mossadegh (under Eisenhower, a Republican) government in Iran that led to the installation of the shah that led to his repressive regime that gave rise to the islamasists revolt that led to the repressive government in Iran today, etc. And it was our government that supplied Saddam Hussein with much of his military weapons etc. and the jihadists in Afghanistan etc. etc. In other words, it's been the meddling of our government in the affairs of Iran and other Middle eastern countries that has led to this debacle, and in each instant our government thought it was making things better but only worsened the situation (i.e. the Iraq invasion etc.).

3. Repression works. Unfortunately. We are seeing that now in Iran. A lot of talking heads on our news programs are predicting a drawn out bloody confrontation, or an uprising, or some kind of continuation of what we saw last week in Iran, but that's not always the case. The deaths at Kent State and elsewhere during the protests against the Viet Nam War did lead to bigger demonstrations for a brief period, but also led to a lot of people withdrawing from the protests out of fear or frustration or feelings of futility, as it also led to a small faction becoming more violent in response to the government's use of violence. There was a poster created right after Kent State of the photo of that girl screaming over the dead body of her fellow student and it said: NEVER FORGET. But most did, and relatively quickly. In less than a decade Ronald Reagan was elected president, a rightwinger who while Governor of California ordered police and military troops to repress demonstrations, and in the case of People's Park in Berkeley, they even used live ammunition, to keep people from growing flowers in an abandoned lot!

Or take the case of the famous shot of the Chinese man holding those two shopping bags and stopping that tank in Tieneman Square. He symbolized resistance to the government crackdown on the demonstrations for more democracy. But the reality is, the crackdown worked. No more demonstrations like that occurred after the police and military used violence to disperse the crowd, arrested and hounded the demonstrators and their leaders, and did such a thorough job, the movement collapsed (as our government did with The Black Panthers and SDS and SNCC etc.) and today most young people in China don't even know what happened, nor are even aware of that brave man who faced down a tank to try and give them more democracy, which they didn't get and don't seem to care about as long as they have economic freedom to buy MacDonald's and Buicks and Coca-Cola etc.

Repression doesn't work in the long run, Obama is right in quoting Martin Luther King Jr. about the arc of history bending toward justice. But in the short run, it often works wonders for repressive rightwing regimes, whether Chinese, Iranian, or American.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL BOOKS BY POETS

2009-06-23T12:02:00.002-04:00

Last night’s falling-back-to-sleep list had me thinking about Eileen Myles’s COOL FOR YOU, which I recently posted about and which is now one of my favorite books.

It’s a “novel” according to her and the title page, but it’s also obviously a memoir, a very poetic and unique one. Which got me thinking about books by poets that are autobiographical and unique and are favorites of mine, including my own OF.

There are certainly more I didn’t think of, but these are the ones that came to mind last night. The criterion being they’re basically autobiographical, even if they only address one year in the life of the poet (Harry E. Northup’s REUNIONS) or even one day (Bernadette Mayer’s MIDWINTER DAY) or address more than just the poet’s own life or part of it (Michael McClure’s SCRATCHING THE BEAT SURFACE) or are small or tiny or what’s known as “chapbooks” (Geoff Young’s THE DUMP) and later included in larger collections.

There are plenty of poems that are autobiographical I can think of by many poets I dig, including friends, but if the only way I know the poem is in the context of a collection of poems which aren’t necessarily autobiographical I didn’t include those collections.

So I just listed books by poets that struck me as autobiographical in an original way. Here’s what I came up with, and might I add, all highly recommended tomes if you can get your hands on ones you haven’t already read:

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, AT BAOSHAN by Simon Schuchat
THE BASKETBALL DIARIES by Jim Carroll, BANGALORE BLUE by Terry Kennedy, BREAD & FISH by Mark Terrill, BOY DRINKERS by Terence Winch
COOL FOR YOU by Eileen Myles, CROSSING THREE WILDERNESSES by U Sam Oeur
DAKOTA by Kathleen Norris, THE DUMP by Geoffrey Young
THE ENORMOUS ROOM by e. e. cummings, EIMI by e. e. cummings, EARTH HOUSEHOLD by Gary Snyder, ETHIOPIA by Eric Torgersen, ELM by Nick Muska
FRIENDS IN THE WORLD by Aram Saroyan, A FAST LIFE by Tim Dlugos, FAIT ACCOMPLI by Nick Piombino
G?
HOLLYWOOD by Blaise Cendrars, HARMATAN by Paul Violi
I REMEMBER by Joe Brainard
JANUARY ZERO by Ray DiPalma
K?
LINE CAUGHT by Brooks Rodden, THE LONG EXPERIENCE OF LOVE by Jim Moore, LATE SHOW by David Trinidad, LUNCH. A POEM by Nathan Kernan
MOMENTS OF THE ITALIAN SUN, by James Wright, MY LIFE by Michael Lally (originally published as a “chapbook” by Wyrd Press), MAGPIE RISING by Merrill Gilfillan, MIDWINTER DAY by Berndaette Mayer, MEMOIRS OF A STREET POET by Frank T. Rios
THE NOTEBOOKS OF MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE by Rainer Maria Rilke
OF by Michael Lally, OBSIDIAN POINT by Ken McCullough
THE PISAN CANTOS by Ezra Pound
A QUINCY HISTORY by James Haining
RUNNING by Nathan Whiting, REUNIONS by Harry E. Northup, RECOLLECTIONS OF MY LIFE AS A WOMAN by Diane di Prima
SPECIMEN DAYS by Walt Whitman, SKY by Blaise Cendrars, A SERIAL BIOGRAPHY by Tom Raworth, THE STREET by Aram Saroyan, SCRATCHING THE BEAT SURFACE by Michael McClure
TRAIN RIDE by Ted Berrigan, THAT SPECIAL PLACE by Terence Winch
THE UFOs OF OCTOBER by Robert Bove
LA VITA NUOVA by Dante, THE VERMONT NOTEBOOK by John Ashbery, THE VIRGIN OF BENNINGTON by Kathleen Norris
WORLD WITHIN WORLD by Stephen Spender, WAKE UP CALLS by Wanda Phipps. WHERE X MARKS THE SPOT by Bill Zavatsky
X?
Y?
Z?

[Just read this on poet Tom Clark's poetry (and art) blog—"Beyond the Pale"—which made me think maybe in the future a lot of this great poet autbio writing will only be accessible on the web]

OBAMA & IRAN

2009-06-22T17:19:00.005-04:00

I've been mostly out of the news loop for a week, aware of what was going on in Iran and the main news, but out of the talking heads part of our media that give way too much time and attention to rightwing carping about Obama and his administration (or the Democratic majority in Congress) than they ever did to opponents of the last administration.

But at any rate, the argument goes that Obama should be doing more to support the opposition in Iran. There's the underlying assumption that the election there was rigged and that the opposition would have won. There's a pretty good analysis of the Iranian vote count and a good argument for fraud (not that most of us needed it, since it seemed pretty obvious from in front) from the Washington Post (a newspaper I used to write for, mainly book reviews).

What should be done about, and especially what Obama should have done and be doing about it is another issue and causing carping from both ends of the political spectrum (left and right, because as usual, despite the rightwing propaganda machine, Obama continues to prove himself to be mostly a pragmatist which most of the time means a centrist or moderate).

Let's look at some highlights in the history of USA involvement in the area (that Obama is aware of and trying to make sure he doesn't recreate the failures in it):

1. Iran had a democratically elected leader in the 1950s, Mossadegh, who was overthrown by forces backed by the CIA and allied with ex-Nazis! because he wanted to nationalize the oil reserves in Iran, that is, use this natural resource found on their land for the benefit of their country. The US unfortunately backed a different horse. Gulf Oil. The CIA chief for that part of the world was Kermit Rossevelt. He helped plan the coup that toppled Mossadegh and installed a "Shah" and when that was accomplished saw to it that Gulf Oil got an extended lease (twenty-five years) on a large percentage of the oil. Then he finished his term in the CIA and became a Vice President of Gulf Oil. That all happened under Eisenhower, a Republican president.

2. More shenanigans went on under Kennedy and Johnson, but JFK wasn't president long enough for too much to happen and was distracted by Cuba and Russia followed by Johnson who was distracted by Viet Nam. Then Nixon got in, distracted by Nam and Watergate, replaced by Ford who was brief and mostly oblivious and then Carter came in and directed some attention to the area, but unfortunately, by then things had deteriorated. Carter blamed rogue elements in the CIA for many of the problems in the Middle East (and elsewhere) and fired a bunch of them, who then went on to create a shadow CIA working with colleagues on the inside who had a rightwing perspective to create chaos in various spots around the world that would enrich military suppliers (weapons corporations, security forces, etc.) and keep them in business (the rogue elements). When the rebellion occurred against the Shah and his secret police, Islamists under the influence of the the Ayatollah took control and he returned from exile in Paris to lead the new Islamic regime when the Shah, dying of cancer, left town and his regime collapsed. The student rebels took a gang of US embassy employees hostage, demanding the US recognize and admit the involvement of the CIA in Iran's internal affairs for decades (and that some of the hostages had been spies), most obviously in the overthrow of Mossadegh, but the US pretended it didn't happen and instead Carter tried to rescue the hostages, which was botched because of faulty intelligence (hmmmm) and equipment (double hmmmm).

3. Interestingly, the minute Reagan was sworn in to replace Carter (one of the few presidents in this brief history who actually accomplished a lot for good in the Middle East, including brokering the peace deal between the then strongest Arab nation, Egypt, with Israel, unprecedented and unexpected (and not to the liking of the rightwing element inside and outside the CIA and other US government agencies) and whose policies contributed to the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan, though under Reagan the jihadists who defeated the Soviets with weapons and expertise supplied by the US including CIA training, were left to do what they wanted leading to the rise of the Taliban etc.) the hostages were freed. Reagan went on to make secret bargains with the Iranians for weapons for his secret war in Nicaragua, trying to overthrow the leftwing government there (as so many other leftwing governments had been overthrown with US backing over the years, too many to go into now but Guatemala and Chile are two perfect examples where democratically elected governments were overthrown with the help of the CIA and other USA agencies), and to take the side of Iraq in the war between Iraq and Iran, supplying Saddam Hussein with weapons and equipment that made it possible for him to kill not only many Iranians but also many Iraqis who were not of his tribe or might be a threat to him (the gassing of civilian Kurds, etc.) (many photos of a smiling Rumsfield when he worked for Reagan shaking Saddam's hand after making deals, etc.).

4. Then there was trouble in Lebanon, one of the more democratic and modern Arab nations and Reagan committed troops to protect the opposition there, promising never to withdraw US troops from Lebanon until the end of the violent repression of the democratic opposition there, but when the barracks housing American marines was bombed (a truck loaded with explosives) and two hundred marines were killed, Reagan immediately withdrew all US forces, which was trumpeted by jihadists as proof that the US was cowardly and would run if attacked inspiring Islamist "terrorists" including Osama Bin Laden to believe the US was weak and a paper tiger.

5. When Bush Sr. got in and attacked Iraq in the first Gulf War driving them back from Kuwait after they invaded it, he stopped at the Iraqi border and did not pursue Saddam for various reasons, but encouraged the Kurds in the North and the Shiites in the South to rebel. Which they did, and were slaughtered by Saddam's troops while the US stood passively by.

6. When Clinton got in, he used diplomacy and sanctions to isolate Iran and came close to brokering the second big peace agreement in the Middle East, and certainly during his two terms the world, including that area, were much more peaceful (and prosperous).

7. Then Bush Jr. got in and ignored warnings about Bin Laden and 9/11 occurred and we invaded Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and other jihadists—who we had set up and trained and supplied in the first place. Then he decided to invade Iraq for bogus reasons but made it clear in many statements that he was out to finish his father's business there by taking Saddam, leading to the rise of Iran's influence in the area, as well as being a great recruiting tool for islamist "terrorists" and creating a widespread hatred of the US across the Middle East.

8. Since Obama's election only a few months ago, and his more diplomatic and evenhanded treatment of the area and its people, things have been looking up for democracy and progress, as shown in the recent Lebanese election, where Hezbollah was not the winner, but in fact more democratic and liberal parties were. And then the election in Iran which seemed to be a forgone conclusion until the example of Obama's victory gave the democratic opposition hope and they began to build a political movement and enough momentum that made it seem they could possibly win.

As we said, the election was obviously rigged in many ways, though who knows what the actual outcome may have been had it been legit, though it seems likely it would have at least been close enough to warrant a run off. As it is, the opposition has been energized, but the regime has also been frightened and is cracking down in ways that probably will intimidate the opposition (as it did in the US in the early '70s under Nixon's administration and its more violent response to anti-war and Civil Rights protestors and activists). So what should Obama do now?

It's obvious he's moved so cautiously because any sign of the USA officially supporting the opposition just fuels the charges from the powers-that-be in Iran that all calls for reform or recount or a new election are generated by the USA rather than internal resistance to the current regime.

This is already a widespread belief across the Arab and Iranian world, which Obama's election and diplomatic tactics have begun to change, so he has to be careful he doesn't throw the progress that's already been made in his short time in office into reverse.

Even if the reformers are defeated this time, which it appears they will be, the genie is out of the box and cannot be put back in. Concessions will have to be made, or there will most likely be a permanent rebellion and/or possible civil war in Iran. Obama has no choice but to do what he's doing, reaffirm our government's support of the democratic process and of freedom of speech and movements, etc. But not make threats he cannot keep (we couldn't do much to Iran militarily except maybe drop some bombs which would inevitably include civilian deaths and we'd be set back in any effort to be seen as not the world's bully etc.) nor declare US support for one or the other candidate when only a recount or a new election could clear that up.

He's acting like a democratic leader (not necessarily a Democratic Party leader) who believes in the right of the people to elect their own governments and to speak out and march and even rebel against oppression when it occurs. His quoting of Martin Luther King Jr.and the implicit connection to the US Civil Rights movement is very shrewd, casting the opposition as morally and democratically on the right side and the regime as backward and repressive without calling names and giving them any ammunition to pretend its really the USA's fault (not that they haven't tried).

Of course I'd like to have seen the opposition be supported by a UN mandate and troops and the world community rejecting the election etc. etc. But that doesn't happen out of virtue or angelic political leaders or spontaneous progressiveness occuring worldwide, it happens out of the situation being cast as a moral question, which Obama has done (and as was done by other Democratic presidents visa vis apartheid in South Africa, anti-Catholic repression and inequality in Northern Ireland (thanks Bill!), etc. Obama's making all the right moves so far I believe.

DANCE

2009-06-21T09:04:00.005-04:00

The show went on and my son with it, thank God.

It was a wonderful evening, with probably over a hundred kids participating. The styles of dance went from tap to ballet to modern to break to salsa to jazz to swing to hip hop, to pretty much everything. And the best thing about it was the inclusiveness.

The classes aren't cheap, nor the costumes, which the parents have to buy. But it all seemed worth it to see all kinds of children included in short choreographed numbers (about thirty-six in all) including a little girl with Downs syndrome as one of a quartet of ballerinas. She actually performed very well, considering (I've read how music and especially dance therapy works wonders with Down syndrome children).

But what was especially noticeable, was the variety of body types. Which made me think how twenty years ago or more (and for centuries and millenniums before then) if you didn't have a dancer's body, you didn't dance on any stage outside a school (and it's still pretty much that way in ballet).

I remember how revolutionary it seemed to see heavyset dancers performing with renowned dance troupes (I can't remember which choreographer first did it, probably Merce Cunningham did it more than two decades ago, but I remember distinctly the commotion caused in dance circles and with dance critics back in the 1980s when someone introduced dancers who looked more like truck drivers or football fullbacks into the mix of a modern dance performance).

But last night, watching these kids, whose ages and body types and race and ethnicity and level of experience varied from one extreme to the other, it was instantly apparent that shape and size had little to do with inherent talent.

You'd be watching a troupe of kids, maybe one boy and seven girls, perform a very fast and hip-hoppy or jazzy number and notice a short squat girl performing the steps with such enthusiasm and agility and precision that it seemed like sheer movement perfection and it was even more exhilarating realizing that throughout most of history she wouldn't be on a stage like this (it was in the local professional performance space, where Steve Earle performed recently and where top musical and comic performers appear, including famous dance troupes) outshining other more obvious candidates for dance stardom.

Even if these kids don't make a career in dance, either as dancers themselves or as choreographers or teachers (most of the numbers were choreographed by the older teacher/students, meaning high school juniors or seniors), they will go through life, I suspect, with more inherent dignity and self-respect than many of their peers, having learned to develop talents and physical abilities beyond the usual elementary and high school levels.

And to see my boy, whose highly physically active behavior often gets him noticed by teachers in a not always positive way, moving his feet to the beat as the lead dancer in his first dance performance on a stage with a group of beginners, couldn't have made me happier, especially considering this past week.

After the finale, the head of the dance school, a youngish (I have trouble determining people's ages, always have, I'd guess she's somewhere between late twenties and forty, but who knows) attractive woman of what seemed to me to be mixed racial and ethnic origins (adding to her beauty) singled out some performers who were graduating and going away to college, and then, just when I was thinking maybe she'd mention my son for being such a trouper and showing up for the performance after being in the hospital most of the week, instead she walked over to one of the little kids who was so tiny she could have been preschool age, and told the audience how this child had spent two months in the hospital and was told she wouldn't walk again, yet here she was.

I almost lost it on that. And my son told us all later how from his vantage point, a few rows behind her, he could see the tears in the little girl's eyes as the head of the school, Dancette, as she's known, said that and then hugged her. My son pointing out that she must have been moved by the realization of what she had endured and what she had accomplished. Amen to that.

UPDATE & LINK

2009-06-20T13:01:00.003-04:00

My son's home, and doing so well the doc says he can take part in a dance recital today (since he missed his fifth-grade graduation (or "moving on ceremony") and his class play etc.—he's still on antibiotics but the symptoms are almost all gone and he's resting except for the few minutes he's on stage—what a trouper!) He's a tap dancer, just starting, so this is his first show and it's only a short routine.
Meanwhile thank you to everyone who sent their prayers and emails and thoughts and good wishes and comments.
And here's a link to a post by RJ Eskow that isn't anything we haven't heard before, but pretty specific and important.

QUOTE & UPDATE

2009-06-19T12:34:00.004-04:00

My eleven-year-old gets out of the hospital later today. This morning when we woke up in his room, he turned on the TV and there was Kung Fu Panda, a movie we saw together when it came out. I couldn't quite hear the dialogue, as the sound is in the remote device that was on his bed (I slept in a fold out chair) but he repeated a quote that "the master" (an old turtle) says early on in the film that I've heard before and don't know the original source, but here it is the way my son said it this morning (with admiration, saying how smart it was):

"The past is history, the future a mystery and this moment a gift—that's why it's called the present."

HEALTHCARE UP CLOSE

2009-06-18T07:15:00.006-04:00

Spent the night before last in the emergency room at our local hospital with my eleven-year-old. Some stuff has been computerized, but otherwise, a lot of the work I noticed everyone doing who worked there was still paperwork, and much of it for insurance companies, adding to the five hours we were kept there to see what was causing a high fever coupled with soreness behind the ear.

After I.V. antibiotics and a CAT scan, we were finally sent home, but then spent most of the night up with him as he shivered with chills and fever, his temperature fluctuating, etc. and yesterday morning at his pediatrician's and yesterday afternoon another several hours in the ER because there wasn't any room on the pediatric wing to put him (they explained several hospital closures in North New Jersey had increased their "census").

Finally got a room and I was there until late last night. His mom stayed overnight (only one parent allowed to sleep over in the room on an uncomfortable chair) and I will tonight if they keep him that long, which it looks like they will. The good news, they eliminated causes that would mean some kind of operation. Looks like just an unspecific infection they haven't, and may not be able to, figure out the cause of.

Turns out a lot of kids have been having this but it isn't the usual things that cause it. He's much better this morning and I'm on my way back with some things he wants. Hopefully they'll let him come home, but the rumor is they usually like to keep kids 48 hours under these circumstances.

It's certainly an insight into the healthcare system. As I'm sure the bills will be too. I'm happy it's looking like nothing too serious, and fortunately he's treating it mostly like a big adventure, especially since he's been feeling a lot better. We should be back to normal by the weekend.

CHRIS & DON

2009-06-16T14:06:00.006-04:00

Caught a terrific documentary last night on the Sundance Channel: CHRIS & DON.

It's about the writer Christopher Isherwood and the artist Don Bachardy. I think maybe it was the poet Ray DiPalma who turned me onto to Isherwood back in the 1960s. But however I got into Isherwood's books, they were a breakthrough for me back then.

I had a prejudice against upper-class Brits, coming from Irish-Catholic peasant roots. But I came to admire Isherwood so much as an original stylist of English prose, it helped me see through that prejudice to the common humanity underlying his characters, and eventually him.

I met him in the 1970s at a party in Manhattan, where he sought an introduction to me, for no other reason, I suspect, than he liked my looks. He was in his seventies but still vibrant and intellectually engaging. I dug him and we remained in touch through letters. He even recommended me a few times for grants and awards (that I never got).

When I moved to Santa Monica in 1982 with my second wife, one of the first things we did was go to Isherwood's house in Santa Monica canyon for dinner. That's when I met Isherwood's lifetime companion, Don Bachardy. Don was already well known as a painter, mostly a portrait artist. (His official portrait of Governor Jerry Brown caused some controversy because his style was too unconventional—he tends to use a lot of deep reds and yellows and blues in his painted portraits, not exactly skin tone—though pretty conventional compared to the art movements of his times, but always incredibly well crafted (though whether from the person "sitting" for so long as Don worked, or because of something he projected onto them, quite often the eyes in Don's portraits seem extremely sad, which Don almost never seems himself, he's so upbeat and quick to smile and laugh)).

Anyway, Don was an incredibly charming, handsome man whose accent was a replica of Christopher's, that is, upper-class Brit, even though Don was a Southern California native. But Chris and he met when Don was a teenager and Chris was thirty years older, so the influence of the older, upper-class, highly successful and admired worldly writer was dominant (although Don's youthful enthusiasm and vitality contributed I'm sure to Christopher's seeming so young for his age).

When they met, in the early 1950s if I remember correctly, both were relatively openly "gay" (though I think the word Don would use and does in the documentary is "queer") for the times and were smitten with each other for probably different reasons at first, but eventually their bond grew so deep—and weathered the usual relationship storms—that it blossomed into an almost mythical romance.

I know I was always impressed by it (one more argument for "gay marriage" since I, and a lot of "straight" men I know have been married more than once, unable to sustain a longterm relationship like Chris & Don and many other gay couples I know).

This documentary chronicles that relationship in a way that is so real it almost feels intrusive, except that Don's charm, now aged beyond Chris when I first met him, disarms any feelings of uncomfortableness over being let in on some of the intimate details of their lives together.

I sat for one of Don's portraits, on his request, not long after we met, and it was a way of becoming friends. I still consider him one, and one of the kindest most supportive of friends. I haven't been in touch with him since coming East except seeing him once or twice at events when I was in L.A., but he remains in my heart as one of the nicest and dearest people I've ever known.

The most moving thing about the film is the end, which explores the way Don coped with Chris's impending death over a decade ago now. Don asked Chris to "sit" for him (eventually only able to lie down) and made him his only subject during Chris's last months alive.

And when Chris finally did pass, early on a Saturday morning, Don continued to paint Chris's corpse, throughout that day, saying he felt it would have been what Chris would have wanted him to do, to do what "an artist would do" and he did (proving Chris's faith in him as an artist before anyone else, even Don, had that faith I suspect). For which we can be grateful, because the portraits Don made over those last weeks and then that last day are as unique a take on illness and death as any art ever produced, period.

The movie is compelling in that way all good documentaries about individuals can be, where you can identify with so much and at the same time discover so much that is unique you hardly can believe such people and experiences are real. But they were, and remain so in Don's art and Chris's writing and now in this highly recommended documentary (the animated sections alone make it unique, and will probably cause some viewers to think it's too precious, but precious has a lot of meanings and in this case it's the highly rare and highly valued one that applies.)