Inaugural Theme Music

Happy Holidays, all. Let's dance:








Michael Franti and Spearhead, "Obama Song" (feat. SoliLLaquists of Sound, Cherine Anderson & Anthony B)

Tale of Two Cities

Fermi. Time. Space. Movies. Aliens. Love.

This is probably getting tiresome, but it's hard not to be back on the john Hodgman bandwagon after watching this charming (15 min) talk:

Just Around the Corner

Not to spoil the mood or anything, but when your eight-year-old is a leukemia survivor (and sorry again, but I'm inclined to add the modifier "so far" to that phrase), reminders hide behind the strangest of corners. In this case, in the midst of a MoveOn.org solicitation, these words:

"I lost a daughter to cancer in July after a fight she couldn't win because she had no insurance. When President-elect Obama said no one in these United States should die of cancer because they didn't have insurance, I knew we had to work to get him elected. My daughter had to go to a county hospital where they died one by one in Houston, TX, one of the cities with the best cancer hospitals. That is when I joined MoveOn and worked with them online and in my city to register and get out the message to vote. My daughter passed away wishing her death would not be in vain. Yes We Did."—Martha T., Abilene, TX

But when I speak of "reminders" I'm referring to what, exactly? I don't know. But these words jump out at me, and I wince. I knock wood, and wince.

The John Hodgman Presidential Invocation, Megaforce Edition

The bloom has faded from the vine for me, a little, John Hodgman - wise, but he does make some good points on his blog about the Barack Obama / Rick Warren hubub. Myself, I can't decide if the Rick Warren choice is an affront to decency or much ado about a speaking engagement (and can an "invocation" even be considered a speaking engagement? Isn't it more like a brief howdy-do?). But as I say, Hodgman has some points. Is he positioning himself as the next Al Franken?



Begin Hodgman transmission:

EVERYTHING I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT RICK WARREN



AS I WROTE on the Twitter feed, I have spent many mournful hours turning over the Rick Warren conundrum in my brain, and it all adds up to this: what makes Rick Warren a “moderate?”



HIS “FRIENDS” goatee?



HIS HAWAIIAN shirt?



THE FACT that he spoke at TED?



SOME have argued that it is his commitment to good works: his anti-hunger and anti-poverty initiatives. His work with AIDS and HIV patients. (Though some may call this the basic requirement of being a “Christian” in the first place).



SOME have argued as well that it is his willingness to reach out to those who do not agree with him. (Also known as “conversion”)



THAT IS ALL FINE. I do not wish to silence Warren. I am glad of his good works, and I respect the inspiration and comfort his congregants take from his example.



I ALSO SUSPECT he is a very nice person to spend time with. While there’s clearly some politicking going on, my instinct is that Obama invited Warren because he likes him… because he appreciated Warren for inviting him to Saddleback, and wants to return the favor.



EVEN IF YOU ARE GAY, or had had an abortion, or believed in evolution, I bet Rick Warren would be nice to you. He probably wouldn’t call you a sinner to your face, or suggest that your loving relationship is at best immature, at worst akin to pedophilia.



(OR YOU KNOW WHAT? Maybe he would say it to your face. Maybe his convictions are that strong. And while I think those convictions are demonstrably wrong and logically absurd–and not particularly “moderate”–I recognize his right to them.)



WHICH IS TO SAY: I would shake his hand. If I met him, I’d try to find some common ground, or at least keep the dinner party civil until dessert. I think there are lots of ways for Obama to do the same in his presidency.



BUT AS SOMEONE CLEVER on Twitter pointed out, I still wouldn’t invite him to sing at my wedding.



WHAT’S MORE: this not solely a question of being inclusive of different viewpoints. If Warren were merely a pro-life creationist, I would not be so bothered. It’s the question that Obama and Warren agree on that really troubles me.



BOTH WARREN AND OBAMA believe in a fallacy: that one can support equal rights for “everybody” (Warren) and for gay folks specifically (Obama), and yet not support a gay person having the same access as a straight person to the governmental special status known as “marriage.”



I KNOW HOW TEMPTING this fallacy can be: I am ashamed to admit that I half-fell for it myself until Massachusetts proved that the world would not end, and the semantic difference between “domestic partnerships” and “marriage” was so meaningless as to be offensive. I was wrong, I am sorry.



I HAVE CONFIDENCE that, in no short order, Prop 8 will be repealed, and the gay marriage debate will look as absurd at the miscegenation debates of the 20th century do now. I have confidence this will happen not because it is merely right, or because the electorate will suddenly love gayness, but because opposition to gay marriage has no logical foundation in a civil society that is premised on equality.



(CHURCHES can go ahead and ban it all they like. They have their own charters, and no obligation to logic.)



THOSE OF US, however, who foolishly refused to take Obama at his word when he told us he didn’t support gay marriage OVER AND OVER AGAIN must now take him at his deed. He really, really doesn’t want gays to get married. SRSLY.



LOOK: my gut tells me that Obama likes and respects gay people and wants them to thrive in this country. I think he is tolerant by nature, as his patience with Wright and his embrace of Warren shows.



BUT AFTER MCCLURKIN and now Warren, it is hard not to conclude that Barack Obama is somewhat tone deaf when it comes to gay issues. And at this point, if he is interested in convincing us otherwise (and I’m not presuming he is), it will take more than a few words or a second pastor or some other symbolic gesture. It will take deeds.*



That is all.



*DID YOU NOTICE I was paraphrasing the tag line to “Megaforce” here. NO ONE QUESTIONED THEIR “LIFESTYLES:”

The full post, INCLUDING MEGAFORCE VIDEO EXCERPT, here.

Quite Cold = 33?

In Seattle, they call this Winter Storm 2008. City shut down. Sledding in the streets. Well over an inch on the ground.



Meanwhile, in Vermont, it's Just Another Day.



...And Dancing Bob writes from Seattle:

"In their infinite paranoid wisdom the Public School officials closed the schools on Wednesday for fear of The Storm. Turned out to be above freezing and relatively sunny all day. It didn't snow in the city 'til after midnight. Compacted snow on the roads on Thursday and Friday no school then either."

Athens Wrap-Up, Maybe

Before things calmed in Greece (they have calmed, haven't they?) my friend in Athens wrote these words:

Report for today (Thursday? Friday? It's all a blur): it's raining cats and dogs, and Greeks don't like getting rained on, so the hooligans have gone indoors until the weather blows over. Arrived home a short while ago, however, after picking my daughter up at the bus-stop, to a very upset babysitter who had watched from our balcony (we live on the fifth floor of a building on a hill that has a sweeping view of downtown Athens) a bunch of protesters hurling rocks and what-all from the roof of the university building (Panepistimiou). Large explosions, flames, and so on, and then a report that a passing bus had been hit with molotov cocktails. Escalation and retreat. Escalation and retreat. You may be wondering how "students" can storm the roof of a university building in order to create mayhem... It works this way: there is a legal (perhaps even constitutional) amnesty that forbids police from entering university premises--amnesty that came about after the infamous events of November 17, 1973, when army tanks drove through the Polytechnic gates to end a standoff between between students the the ruling military junta. I think about two dozen students were killed. So it's a "never again" kind of thing that now permits students (and others) to stockpile petrol bombs and other weapons on university property, and to seek refuge there. It's like a sprawling "home base" in a grown-up(ish) game of tag. I throw a rock, a home-made bomb, and run to base. Whew!



Forgive the tone problems, but this has gone on for about a week now, and there is not much to show that it's going to let up soon. Is it the American in me that wants to know why they haven't called in the Greek version of the National Guard and rounded everybody up by now? Whatever happened to the concept of the candlelight vigil after a shooting, anyway? What happened to the idea that police are supposed to protect the public (granted, this goes wrong sometimes, but shouldn't they be protecting the mom-and-pop shops that are being smashed and looted?) Here they say that the police are supposed to be "a presence" that doesn't "get involved" and is "meant to observe"--which makes them, what? Bystanders.



We will see where this leads.

This Xmas Brought to You By...Disco

Yes, we did this too--just like everyone else. Why do I have this sudden urge to go to OfficeMax?

The Best Holiday Party I Can't Attend

One of my favorite Seattle traditions was playing Loteria (a kind of Mexican bingo) with friends on christmas eve at The Canterbury (a tudor-motif dive bar and restaurant on Capitol Hill).

If I still lived there, though, I'd be hard pressed not to bump it up a notch and do the Burning Elf instead.

Tuesday, DEC. 23rd, 2008

at 6:30PM

@

(address) Ave SW

Seattle WA 98106

Jim and Laurie's

annual Christmas Eve Eve Chili feed, Sing-along

and questionably legal immolation of an 8 foot tall wooden elf!

We'd like YOU and your family to attend.

Hearty meat-laden and delicious (not whimpy) vegetarian Chilies will be served.

Traditional xmas carols will be sung accompanied by the freshly tuned 104 year old piano.

Nothing says "Happy Holidays" like burning the effigy of a cute imaginary toy-making imp!

More Reportage From Athens

My friend in Athens sent this yesterday:

You know, there is really hardly any way to explain this, because I can't see this sort of hoo-ha happening to this extent in the States, for various reasons (to be explained later if you are interested), but there has been huge civil unrest on the part of, um, disaffected youth. Who are, en masse, burning down buildings, firebombing various offices and banks and storefronts, looting, burning cars, smashing windows, throwing rocks and sticks and molotov cocktails at police and on and on. Started, so they say, when a 15-yr old was killed by police gunfire (very very rare here) after he and a couple of cohorts overturned a car and attacked the police. Turns out that the cop fired three warning shots, one of which ricocheted off of a building and hit the kid. Which is only to say that this was not a police killing in cold blood.

They say that the killing prompted the riots but one begins to think that the mayhem was already afoot, the kid part of it, and then escalated when the anarchic elements here found a convenient excuse to go on a total rampage. The police have very limited powers here--almost no enforcement authority, and so they have been largely standing by as thousands of black-hooded teens and twenty-somethings lay waste to downtown Athens. Monday night was the worst when we could see large swaths of downtown on fire from our balcony.

Fortunately, despite firebombings happening right in this very neighborhood, the hoodlums tend to shy away from direct bodily harm (unless you are talking about the police) so it's a matter of trying to stay away from the fray and go about one's business. We are still out there doing the grocery shopping and getting to the park. Hm.

The good part? Greeks don't tend to bear arms. So we are not talking about hepped up wackos running through the streets with firearms. Rocks and sticks and what have you, just like they do it over there on the West Bank is good enough for us, thanks. But of course that makes a difference.

Needless to say, we are happy to be leaving next Thursday for xmas in New Mexico. I think that after four days of this, we're heading toward calm. The grossest part for me was leaving the apt. with the kids on Tuesday morning and noticing immediately that my neighborhood smelled like Ground Zero.

Meanwhile, In the Rest of the World

There has been rioting in Greece for days now, following the shooting death of a teen by police. According to the BBC, hundreds of buildings have been torched, dozens injured, and the parliament has been basically under siege since Saturday.

My friend in Athens says:

"And so the city is literally up in flames and they are burning cars and all manner of things one block from our apartment. And so. It is dramatic and greatly distressing...I hate this country, tonight."

Record Club #3: "Covers"

© Mike Owens, all rights reserved

Last week was the third meeting of the False 45th Record Club, which this time included 52 cover songs contributed by local cooks, teens, librarians, tech flunkies, civil servants, architects, lawyers, artists, banjo players and other ne'er-do-wells. It makes for a good playlist:

Song (Original Artist)	Artist	Fan
Ceremony (New Order)	Rickolus	Josh Schwartz
I'm Sticking With You (Velvet Underground)	The Decemberists	Pete
96 Tears (? and the Mysterians)	Religious Knives	Scott Lovlette
Life in a Northern Town (Dream Academy)	Sugarland	Sharon Winn
Frontwards (Pavement)	Los Campesinos!	Jeff Willius
Tom Sawyer (Rush)	The Bad Plus	Scott Kerner
Palmitos Park (El Guincho)	The Ruby Suns	Pete
Just Like Heaven (The Cure)	Dinosaur Jr.	Mark Sciarrotta
The Beehive State (Randy Newman)	Harry Nilsson	Dan Richardson
Jack Palance (Little Sparrow)	Van Dyke Parks	Britt Richardson
Mr. Pharmacist (The Other Half)	The Fall	Brian Murphy
Pink Turns to Blue (Husker Du)	Saturnine	Kelly McCracken
Disorder (Joy Division)	Bedhead	Mike Donofrio
Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes (Edison Lighthouse)	Freedy Johnston	Mike Rapaport
My Favorite Things (John Coltrane/Rogers and Hart?)	Andre3000	Tom Sabo
Red Red Wine (Neil Diamond)	UB40	Carolyn Dwyer
Misfit (Wipers)	The Thermals	Jeff Willius
Kiss the Bottle (Jawbreaker)	Lucero	Josh Schwartz
Believe (Cher)	Macha and Bedhead	Kelly McCracken
Love Train (O'Jays)	Lewis Franco	Mike Rappaport
Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana)	Tori Amos	Jim Tringe
I Remember (Suicide)	Chris Brokaw	Mike Donofrio
We can Work it Out (Beatles)	Stevie Wonder	Britt Richardson
If You Have Ghosts (Roky Erickson)	John Wesley Harding	Mike Nordstrom
Thirteen (Big Star)	Elliott Smith	Brian Clark
Gin and Juice (Snoop Dogg)	The Gourds	Peter Kopsco
Vitamin C (Can)	Big Blood	Nick Mavodones
This Land is Your Land (Woody Guthrie)	Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings	Rob Ryan
The Orchids (Psychic TV)	Califone	Nick Mavodones
Aretha, Sing One for Me (George Jackson)	Cat Power	Brian Clark
Mony Mony (Tommy James + Shondells	Billy Idol	Carolyn Dwyer
I Fought the Law (Bobby Fuller)	Green Day	Larry Dwyer
Gimme Some Truth (John Lennon)	Pearl Jam	Clancy DeSmet
12XU (Wire)	Minor Threat	Danny Sagan
Making Love - At the Dark End of the Street (James Carr)	Clarence Carter	Dan Richardson
Strawberry Letter 23 (Shuggie Otis)	The Brothers Johnson	Mike Nordstrom
Let's Dance (David Bowie)	M. Ward	Scott Kerner
Blackhole Sun (Soundgarden)	Paul Anka	Danny Sagan
Smooth Criminal (Michael Jackson)	Alien Ant Farm	Jim Tringe
Climbing Up the Walls (Radiohead)	Easy Star All-Stars	Clancy Desmet
A Case of You (Joni Mitchell)	John doe	Scott Lovelette
I Wanna be Your Dog (Stooges)	Titmachine	Josh Friedman
Dirt in the Ground (Tom Waits)	We Versus the Shark	Ted Ingham
American Idiot (Green Day)	Richard Cheese	Mark Sciarrotta
Too Drunk to Fuck (Dead Kennedys)	Nouvelle Vague	Brian Murphy
Sweet Emotion (Aerosmith)	Leo Kottke and Mike Gordon	Tom Sabo
Ghostrider (Suicide)	The Gories	Josh Friedman
I Heard it Through the Grapevine (cover)	The Slits	Ted Ingham
Desperado (Eagles)	Langley Schools Project	Rob Ryan
California Girls (Beach Boys)	David Lee Roth	Larry Dwyer
Summertime (George Gershwin)	Miles Davis	Peter Kopsco
The Lion Sleeps Tonight (The Weavers)	The Nylons	Sharon Winn

DeLillo: "They Have to Walk Slowly to Accommodate Their Awe"

Strangely, it appears that Don DeLillo blogged from the Democratic and Republican conventions for The Onion. Some excerpts (posted 9/26/2008):

He speaks in your voice, American, and he's blogging right next to me, as I type my own blog, in this our blogging age. Our faces fixated with vigorous purpose on glowing rectangular screens, measured in centimeters. In the air, invisible information. Uploads, downloads. Waves and radiation. Surrounding us both, on every side of the lobby, dozens more do exactly the same, typing with their thumbs into tiny silver death machines.

From across America, they come to Minneapolis, to Denver, in herds, teaming hordes filled with sounds, smells. In great tidal flows of seething humanity they ease around the I-beam sculptures and move into the sports arenas. They are loaded down with noisemakers and paper and special hats.

The crowds are a slowly spreading ripple and moan. They heave and surge with some unexplainable animal intelligence. They have to walk slowly to accommodate their awe. Snatches of unattributed dialogue—absurdist, yet paradoxically naturalistic—come out of the mass of pressing bodies:

"You cannot state categorically?"

"Not at the present moment."

"So that's that?"

"As far as we are aware."

"So the general consensus seems to be that we don't know enough at this time to be sure of anything."

"Let me put it to you like this: if I were a rat, I wouldn't want to be within a 200 mile radius of Minneapolis right now."

"What if you were a human?"

[....]

We've witnessed these spectacles every fourth September, every four years. The volunteers stand handshake-dazed near their supervisors, seeing images of themselves in every direction. Staffers greet each other with comic cries and gestures of sodden collapse. In Denver there were vendors nearby when we ate breakfast. Stretch limos outfitted with powerful communications technology stalled in murderous crosstown traffic. Helicopters shine searchlights down at the buildings, the crowd. Chanted rhymes emerge like a collective tribal memory. Allegations are advanced concerning faked pregnancies. "This is one of those moments." There is a meet-and-greet with the guy from the Doobie Brothers.

A voice from the subconscious: Toyota Corola.

Here in Minneapolis, a woman with a clipboard, frazzled, efficient. She reads from a printout to a group of staffers a change in schedule from the coordinating committee: the station wagons arrive at noon. In the Free Speech Zone, a man dangles from a wire, the famous performance artist from New York. Everywhere, security: badges, metal detectors, small plastic cards with magnetic stripes. Police, silent in riot gear, truncheons like humming, efficient software. Someone says: "So she was technically never the actual Miss Alaska?"

They feel a sense of renewal, of communal recognition. The women, crisp and alert, knowing people's names. Their husbands in little hats shaped like elephant heads, something about them suggesting massive health insurance coverage.

CSA Soup

CSA Soup

Dang.

Carrot kale chicken kohlrabi celeriac leeks shallots potatoes. Served over crusty bread and pungent Manchester goat cheese...

Dang.

Pete's Greens CSA is so much fun --even when Lauren gets to cook.

Cold, Dangerous Day in the Woods

This afternoon we braved the deer hunters to walk the dog in the woods, a light snow coming down, and found treasure: a child's hair band on a tractor road, and two winter gloves, one in the leaves, one of them in the dust at the side of the road .

All of them Norahs's

From Hope to Anger, with a Great Depression in the Middle

Audio analysis of "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," heard this morning on public radio:

"The first thing that's surprising is that it doesn't start in a major key like most Broadway songs," (pianist and composer Rob Kapilow) says. "Appropriate to the Depression, it's in a minor key."

With lines like "Once I built a railroad, made it run / Made it race against time," the music jumps an octave, with all the energy and syncopation that made America's railroads. It even comes to rest, momentarily, in a major key. The music, like the words, reminisces about prosperous times.

"But then, heartbreakingly," Kapilow says, "under the word 'time' we change to minor, to set up the second half of the verse. Now it has lost all its energy; it's wistful. Now it's done — the good days in America, pre-Depression."

All of that, Kapilow says, provides a wonderful set-up for the perfect punch line: the song's title....

Rob Kapilow's analysis, sitting at the piano, is fascinating. LISTEN.

Fight the H8

Nationwide protest against CA's Prop 8, this Saturday, 1:30PM eastern and simultaneously in other time zones. Vermont info here.

Free Associative (the Worst Kind of) Navel-Gazing Status Report #1

I want especially to be him, the guy in the lower right corner, if I wasn't already.

Snowing here. When will I build the nesting boxes for the (not yet with us) hens?

Too much to do: accordion, fiction, non-fiction, paintings, t-shirts, greeting cards, dancing, laundry, work-work, gratis work, sweeping, mitigation of 5-year-old who uses the phrase "shit-head", toilet cleaning, mess-mitigation, clothes shopping, children-advocating, car-fixing, 8-year-old-plumbers-butt-mitigation (is all of parenthood reduced to mitigation?), garage-emptying-before-the-snow-REALLY-comes-so-cars-can-park-ization, i-zation-zation, picking up before the (yes) lame-ass cleaning lady comes, staying on top of the broken washer (not literally staying on top), garden that needs tilling, hair that needs cutting, teeth that need cleaning, cat that needs chastising, puppy that needs training, (figurative) noose that needs loosening, furnace that needs replacing, oil tank that probably does too, childhood tuition that needs bartering for (if it's going to happen), dudes that need accounting for, internal penance to be paid, for referring to a guy at the gym as "Cthulu" (see earlier posts), image that needs upholding, exercise that needs to happen more than once a week, CSA that needs utilizing, calm that needs to be restored, republicans that need to be ousted (oh wait), friends' semi-hallucinogenic epiphanies to be understood, dinner to be served, litany to be produced, free-association to be shared. Note to self: learn to stop worrying and love this bomb.

Post-Election Overseas Mumble

Dialog with a friend in Athens, Greece (who voted absentee in New Mexico):

S: "The whole thing amazing and strange from this distance, but yesterday, all day, moving around Athens, it was so tempting just to stop people and say, Look what we did! Look what we did! And since we're not over there...now that it's day 2, have the pundits started ripping the whole thing down already?"

To which I mumbled:

No, the pundits (those hindus) are not tearing things down yet, but I am, sorta.

Well, actually, it's a thrilling time. But I do wonder at the hint of racism in all the self-satisfied white commentators and bloggers celebrating the election of an african-american as president. Also, I'm reeling from lack of sleep and the post-election comedown. And it's also sad to know that, despite all this liberal hope, California has seen fit to amend its constitution to define marriage as man-woman. I don't get it.

To be sure, Obama's election is very significant. But it doesn't eliminate racism (americans will compartmentalize to preserve their own craven impulses). And, for me, it's only tangentially about race anyway. More, it's about inspiration and intelligence and compassion and lack-of-simplemindedness, and lack of bully-behavior, and, well, fill in the blanks. It's very exciting. But we saw Uncle Bill (Bragg) in NH 10 days ago, and he reminded us of his wholehearted support for Tony Blair, pre-election, and of the "realities" and disappointments that came after he became PM (especially after 9/11). I feel that Jan 2009 is when the real work begins, real work including personal-sacrifice-for-greater-good. And I don't always have faith that Americans know this is part of the bargain, or a requirement of the times. It's all Short Attention Span Theater here. But this is part of why I voted Obama: if anyone can inspire us to band together and get some shit done for once, it's Obama. Because, fuck, it's not all on him. It's all on us.

At any rate, I keep returning to the youtube video of people at Broadway and Pine, waving flags and dancing and singing to the cheesiest of Journey songs--not with cynicism or irony, but with almost-pure delight. Sigh.

I spent election night up a dead-end dirt road I call "hillbilly holler," with some friends and a stranger who turned out to be the dour-man-in-black guy at the gym I have privately named Cthulu. It's not quite the same.

New Mexico and I thank you for voting.

Obama Street Party, Broadway, Seattle

I used to live a couple of blocks from here. The band Journey has NEVER sounded so good.

Vote Notes

Lauren's cousin Jared (so I get to claim him too) gets the voting prize this year: He's living in NYC, but registered in his home town of Hollis, New Hampshire, 200+ miles away. After months of frustration trying to get an absentee ballot sent to him in New York, he gave up. But last night he decided to hop a train at 3AM that would get him to Hollis just as the polls were opening. His vote was that important.

Runner-up goes to the brave (and mysteriously republican-in-his-heart) Brian Quinn, Lauren's brother, who announced today,

"I was McCain from the start but he and his VP choice have talked themselves out of my vote, there isn't anymore room for trigger happy politicians in the White House. This isn't the Wild West and I have to vote on my belief that this world will be a better place with Obama leading the United States and the triplets are my first concerns. We'll be in it with Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan,and Pakistan at the same time if McCain is in office. A great American and I have the utmost respect for him but there isn't anything that will change from Bush's administration if he gets in the office. I vote and think Republican, this choice is way too important to not vote my conscience though. Love to all and let's hope we can become a great nation again and gain back the respect of the world without the "shock and awe" bully methodology."

Third place goes to my other brother-in-law, Michael, who says,

"I'm living nervously here in WA. It feels like it used
to feel being a Red Sox fan . . . no matter how well
things are going, you find yourself waiting for Bucky
Dent or a ball to go through Bill Buckner's legs (I don't remember Bucky Dent going through Bill Buckner's legs...?-Lauren).

"I want it to feel 'safe' enough tonight per the
electoral vote distance that we can feel the love
going to bed tonight. I slept in my van on a slanted
street in 2004 after too many frustrated beers
watching Ohio come in. I'm hoping for my bed tonight."

It's a good family I joined.

Prop 8

California's Proposition 8, on the ballot this tuesday, would ban same-sex marriage.

I never understand the "threat" that same-sex marriage represents to these people. I mean, I have family members--intelligent, otherwise open-minded people I love--who oppose same-sex marriage. They could learn a little from Jerry Sanders, republican mayor of San Diego, seen here in September:

Hodgmanalia

Happy October 31. Here's a description of this fine holiday for those who don't know, according to John Hodgman, Unreliable Expert on Most Things (and author of "More Information than you Require"):

"OCTOBER 31, HALLOWE’EN (apostrophe not generally pronounced.) Originally called Samhain, this is the traditional Pagan-American holiday in which we ask our children to ponder the fragility of life by dressing them in darkly colored costumes and vision-impairing masks and encouraging them to walk around in the road."

Note to my readership: I am undergoing a period of John Hodgman ecstacy. Please accept my apologies if I nudge all conversation Hodgmanward for while.

Forget Hodgman as PC, or even Hodgman on the Daily Show (which doesn't quite work). I knew he had something going on back in the winter of 2006 when, as "The Deranged Millionaire," he talked about "challenging the estate of Marvin Gaye to a 5K road race" (TMBG Podcast 3A):

Cecil: We can just keep it loose.

The Deranged Millionaire: Okay.

C: So we're, uh, going satellite in about 20 seconds.

TDM: Check, check. This is The Deranged Millionaire, broadcasting from my personal state-of-the-art---

C: We can hear it. We can hear it just fine.

TDM: Can you hear me?

C: So we're going on in five seconds.

TDM: That's fine, just as soon as we can get it over with.

C: Alright. Welcome back. My name's Cecil, I'm your host, it's 45 degrees outside our studio. It's time to play Six Questions. Our guest today is no stranger to fans of They Might Be Giants, he's the narrator of the Venue Songs DVD. The Deranged Millionaire is here with us today, we wanna welcome you via satellite, and welcome to the show.

TDM: Well, it is a contractual obligation.

C: My first question has got to be, 'Do you get tired of being called a Millionaire?'

(long pause)

TDM: Would you? I enjoy being a millionaire very much. Main-mainly on the account of the millions of dollars that I own. It reminds me of my wealth.

C: The other question I've gotta ask you... Do you feel offended when people call you a Deranged Millionaire?

TDM: Yeah well I once had a real traditional first and last name like most normal people back when I was a...a Sane Thousandaire.

C: One thing that a lot of guests on Six Questions have in common is they've had a Batman-like experience...

TDM: Uh, but you know, the sad the thing is that as you may or may not know once you become a millionaire, you don't have any real friends anymore. People just like you for your money. And, as I'm sure you definitely know, it's the same thing with derangement, people love to hang around with the deranged guy. Ladies love derangement, but they don't really know your heart. So if you're both deranged and a millionaire, you can understand why that would be doubly lonely. And after a while, I just didn't see any reason to continue on with my original name, and simply became what I was, a deranged millionaire, period. It's seemed more honest somehow. Go on with your next question, please.

C: Uh, before we went up on the satellite, we were talking in here. Now you challenged They Might Be Giants, and we were wondering if there is uh, any other bands, or people that you had made deranged challenges to.

TDM: As you point out, on the Venue Songs DVD, I challenge They Might Be Giants to create a new original song for each venue they performed in. Now, they fulfilled that challenge much to my anger and dismay, and appropriately I had to fulfill my end of the bargain, and appear on the DVD and do certain promotional spots, such as this one - I'm not very happy about it, but I am a deranged millionaire of my word. In the past, though, I've been a little bit more lucky. For example, I challenged Greg Allman to cut off his hair and sell it for a gold watch chain.

C: Now for our listeners, that's Greg Allman of the Allman Brothers B-Band.

TDM: Yes, that's accurate. That worked out very well for me, I got a beautiful gold watch chain. Recently I challenged the estate of Marvin Gaye to a-a 15K road race, which I'm glad to say I won, and as a result I control the rights to Marvin Gaye's likeness and image now.

C: Really.

TDM: Yeah, you've probably seen him on some Hennessy billboards, that money is flowing... directly to me, Marvin Gaye is now posthumously shilling for Hennessy. And in the next couple weeks, you'll see him in a series of Bed, Bath & Beyond ads, and we digitally reanimate Marvin Gaye as he walks through Bed, Bath & Beyond, and you know, says some words on behalf of the company. It's not Marvin Gaye's voice, because, well, he didn't say anything about Bed, Bath & Beyond in this life, so I had to dub it in.

C: But, you'll have to forgive me for jumping in here, but I've gotta pay some bills as they say. You are listening to They Might Be Giants podcast 3A, uh, this is Six Questions with our special guest The Deranged Millionaire.

TDM: A-appearing out of contractual obligation.

C: We were talking about music, your musical influences. Now, is there anybody else... is there any other influences for you besides Marvin Gaye?

TDM: Well, I'm not... I'm not a musician, I mean, like most cultured people, I was trained at an early age to play the viola, but then, y'know, I very wisely... y'know I, I smashed that thing to bits when I reached thirteen. I was done with it. It was uh, keeping me from reaching my higher potential.

C: I'm glad you brought that up, because I think a lot of our listeners would be interested in your higher potential program. Could you tell us about the higher potential program?

TDM: Well, it's a combination of motivational cassette tapes, and various kits I send out to people to help them reach their higher potential. You know, the thing is that most people want to be happy and successful in life, but they're wrong. What they need to be is deranged, and worth millions of dollars. And my higher potential program helps them to reach that by these motivational cassette tapes, and uh, as well, kits that they can use. I can send them lathering soaps, and various different kinds of um, headsets and uh, recordings; I'm doing a hypnotic podcast. Now, for subscribers, if you pay me the money I'll give you the website and you hear me recording hypnotic series of numbers that help you reach your higher potential. And of course, everybody gets a viola they can smash themselves as part of the initiation rite.

C: Hypnotic podcast.

TDM: Yes that's right, a hypnotic series of numbers that helps you reach your own potential - higher potential.

C: All right, well, it's time to wrap things up. At Six Questions, we have a tradition here; we like to end the interviews with a question Jann Wenner liked to end his interviews at Rolling Stone with. If you were to die, what would you like the angels in heaven to say about you?

TDM: Okay, for various legal reasons and agreements with the cryogenic company that's going to freeze my head when I die, I can't actually answer that question. Instead, I have a prepared statement that I'd like to read.

C: All right.

TDM: Begin transmission. Four, nine, three, two, nine. Six, nine, twenty three, forty seven. Nine, three, twenty three, ninety two. End transmission.

C: All right. We want to thank our guest The Deranged Millionaire for being on Six Questions today. Get back to the regular podcast, you're listening to They Might Be Giants podcast 3A, and thank you again.

U.S. Presidentiality Explained

For my foreign readership (Angus?), who may be understandably baffled by the hubbub surrounding the presidential election process in the United States, I share with you now a concise overview of the history and key facts about the electoral process, courtesy of John Hodgeman.

You people who live here already know all this, of course.

One More For the Mate

One more Bragg moment and then I'll leave it be:

Live in Seattle, 2006, "Waiting for the Great Leap Forward".

Fury in Your Soul, Mate

From a 2004 interview in "Mother Jones" with Billy Bragg:

MJ: So when you look in the mirror, you see a Clash-inspired songwriter rather than a middle-aged family man?

BB: I am a middle-aged family man, too, but that doesn't preclude you from having the fury in your soul, mate. I've been singing a Laura Nyro song called "Save the Country" that has a great line: "I got fury in my soul. / Fury's gonna take me to the glory goal. / In my mind I can't study war no more." I still got fury in my soul and I can't write in any other way.

I haven't even thought of Laura Nyro in 20 years, but I saw Mr. Bragg play this song last night in a little New Hampshire opera house.

If you can watch Laura Nyro play this song in 1969 and imagine Billy Bragg playing it last night--alone with an electric guitar, just before a huge American election--you know it was a special moment. And you know he's right when he reminds us that the election is not the end of the story, it's when the work really begins.

Come on people
Come on children
Come on down to the glory river
Gonna wash you up
And down

Come on people
Come on children
There's a king at the glory river
And the king loved to sing
In the sun -
"We shall overcome"

I got fury in my soul
Fury's gonna take me
To the glory goal
In my mind I can't study war no more
Save the people
Save the children
Save the country

In my mind I can't study war
In my mind I can't study war
There'll be trains of blossoms
There'll be trains of music
There'll be music...

Blame Me

If I fail to vote in November, feel free to blame me for the outcome of the election:

The Big Dot Dot Dot

From my vast readership I'd like to request huzzahs, sighs of relief, and even, well, hopeful prayers...and please point them toward both England and the tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe--where our online friend Angus and his family (separated still) are celebrating the end of Kezia's leukemia treatment.

Angus, you cantankerous soul, you know how I feel about going off-treatment. But--realistically or not--with every check-up comes a slightly stronger feeling of safety. Really. I hope your family is reunited as soon as possible.

Not Me

While it's true that I work at the University of Vermont, I do not "moonlight" for our friends at Clear Channel Communications. So don't be misled: this 'aint me:

Open Letter to Starbugs

(sent to Starbucks earlier today)

Hello kindly Starbucks Quality Control Masters and Mistresses.

Longtime Starbucks fan (broadway store, seattle, 1985-ish), first time complainer.

So look, here's my story: I was traveling from Vermont to Seattle (my home for 20 years, thank you very much), in September, when I had to change planes in the under-appreciated Detroit airport (which, by the way, has one of the coolest fountains anywhere). Realizing that meals are no longer served on airplanes, my wife and I rushed to the nearest Starbucks to buy a couple fine beverages and to grab some food for the trip to Seatac. After some hems and haws (and some furtive gawking at a woman with freakishly artificial looking breasts who was nearby) (sorry, but it's true), we settled (foodwise) on a couple of fancy ham and cheese sandwiches sold by your fine company, the kind that come on foccaccia bread or whatever.

To cut to the chase, we ate the first sandwich as we lifted off from Detroit, and it was tasty (albeit with kind of dry bread). A couple hours later we prepared to eat the second sandwich when lo and behold, before my wife could open the seal on the package, what should she discover but an insect running around there, INSIDE THE PACKAGING. It was not a cockroach (though it moved quickly), and not a fruit fly (though it had wings), and it seemed pretty desperate to get the heck out of there. We, on the other hand, were suddenly quite desperate not to eat our lovely sandwich. Have a look:





It should be clear that this bugger was inside the packaging (otherwise it would have flown away--into First Class or something).

I must say, bugs in my food is the last thing I expect from The Starbucks Experience, yes? (and just yesterday I heard that you have stopped selling molasses cookies??? The horror!). Are these truly such tough times for Starbucks that we must expect to see the closing of stores, the discontinuing of your finest cookie, and (gasp) the insectifying of your fine comestibles?

What say ye, oh Quality Merchants of Yesteryear? Is it time to refocus on food quality and insect eradication and maybe not so much on lifestyle branding and your own line of audio CDs? One wonders.

***

The response, from "Jessica F., Starbucks Customer Relations:

Hello Rob,

Thank you for contacting Starbucks Coffee Company. We appreciate you taking the time to share with us your concerns regarding the sandwich that you purchased.

Starbucks is committed to providing our customers with the highest quality beverages and food, so we take any concerns about product quality very seriously. I would like to share your comments with the management team responsible for the store, as well as our Quality Assurance team, in order to address the issue properly, however I was unable to locate the store that you visited.

As a customer service gesture, I would like to send you a Starbucks Card with my apologies for your experience....

All in all, this is a fairly lackluster response to the concerns I had regarding my sandwich.

From The Strange and Beautiful World Department

My apologies to those of you who have already seen this stuff (it's a couple years old), but please watch "Pinky the Cat" (first video) and then watch "Pinky the Cat Redeux". What does "Pinky Redeux" tell us about 21st century western culture? I honestly can't tell you if this is delightful or scary.

Ocho

It doesn't say enough to say that he was a good kitty. But he was.

Second Life and Polygamist Haikus

I often find poet and National Public Radio commentator Andre Codrescu to be insufferably cute, in a writerly/Latka Gravas kind of way. But today's commentary caught my ear, and held up to reading, and so here it is:

October 9, 2008.

I was sharpening my chain saw when they called me from Washington, D.C., to ask me how to fix the economy.

This request focused my thoughts, or the lack of 'em, to such a fine point, I gave my 14-inch Echo an edge it never had. Good enough for cutting half a cord at least, to keep the wood stove going through October. I love not paying the oil company a nickel. Except for the half-gallon of gas and the chain oil, but I'm fixin' to make the thing run on plum brandy. I've got a plum tree.

Ah, where were we? The economy, yes: $700 billion is more than enough money to buy every able-bodied American a chain saw, a solar-powered generator and a stake in a communal well and windmill. Also, red dirt and plum trees. That would probably only cost about $100 billion, and you can use the other $600 billion to buy everybody their house outright.

Now everybody can own their house and be green and self-sufficient, and can go back to whatever they were doing before the world ended: watching TV. Except for me. I was sharpening my chain saw.

So I go back to it, and I see a line of refugees coming up the road to move in with me. Oh my God, it's the '70s again. All my deadbeat friends — dead and alive — are being chased out of their homes and heaven for not owing any money. They are debt-free in a world that can't exist without interest rates. The dead are especially egregious in this regard; you can't squeeze even an extra penny out of them.

Oh, no, now that they are getting closer, I don't even think it's people from the '70s: It's people ... from the future!

It's worse than I thought: These are people independent from foreign oil, carrying solar-powered chain saws, full of American ingenuity. After the bailout, they owned their own homes, they didn't pay into a corporate energy grid, and they didn't worry about food because they grew it on the roof. They didn't drive, because they didn't have any jobs to drive to, and every garage in America was the site of an invention that was so darn beneficial nobody needed anything from the store.

Without worries about money, without a job, and with extra space in the garage to grow food and invent, these people forgot about the stock market, stopped borrowing money, even forgot how to shop — in short they stopped being American. These un-Americans got their exercise raking the compost instead of circling the mall; they home-schooled their children and were never again embarrassed that their kids knew more than they did. Heck, they were in heaven, the place where the pursuit of happiness leads to when you stop pursuing it.

Such self-sufficiency made the economy grind to a halt, so the government had to do something again: They called in the Army to chase everyone out of their self-contained greenhouses.

And now they are coming up the road to my place because I'm a poet, and I live in a compound defended by polygamist haikus.

"What did you do wrong?" I asked the first of the refugees to get over the palisades.

"Nothing," he said. "We just got out of debt and stopped watching TV! So the urge to buy things on credit disappeared. So they sent in the troops. First thing they did was to put a 40-inch plasma TV in every room and fixed it just so we couldn't turn it off. Just like in Orwell, only with much sharper images. They are calling this the Second Bailout, or the Bail Back In."

"At least the Second Amendment is safe," I said. "Nobody took away your guns, and the Founding Fathers didn't say anything about TV."

And with that, my chief haiku welcomed them thus:

make yourselves at home

you won't be bailed in or out again

you're safe in Second Life

Source


Second Life

Two Songs For Strangers

How do you pick two songs to share with strangers? That's the premise of the so-called False 45^th Record Club, an informal group of music fans who meet up in Montpelier to share a few drinks and songs every now and again. The result—both socially and sonically—is eclectic, educational and, well, only slightly less geeky than a dungeons and dragons meeting. So far it's also a bit of a white male thing, but we're travelling hopefully.

Record Club #2 happened recently at Montpelier's Black Door. Leading up to it, the hardest thing, of course, was: What two songs to pick?

For some reason I knew that I wanted to contribute a garage-rock song by Bellingham (WA) band the Mono Men (though I briefly considered a grungy thing by Hammerbox). But I ran through several options for my second song--before more or less tossing a coin. It shouldn't have been a big deal; odds are the songs would not get played adjacent to each other (playback on Club night and on the discs we all come home with is completely random). But still, I certainly wouldn't pick another garage-rock or surf-rock thing if my first song was going to be the Mono Men. So what to consider?

One that almost made it was "Why Can't He be You," by Patsy Cline, which would have made for a nice counterpoint to the Mono Men, and added to the female (and country & western) balance sheet—both of which were in short supply at the first Record Club.

I tried out several Gang of Four songs, but maybe the forced-monotone of, say, "At Home He Feels Like a Tourist" might have been a little much for the ostensibly upbeat atmosphere of a record club gathering. Or, sadly, a little dated.

Taking a different tack I almost went with the post-apocalyptic cabaret stylings of the Tiger Lillies: I considered "Russians," which seemed topical, too, given that Russia had recently invaded Georgia. Then again, "Slough" at least had an accordion, and had a zippy bounce to it (Slough, a city in the UK, must be a swell place to live). In the end, I wasn't quite ready to drop Martin Jacques' counter-tenor vocals on a room full of half-drunken strangers. Still, you have to admire a band that not only has a member named Adrian Large but another one named Adrian Huge.

Conor Oberst (also known as—wince--Bright Eyes) almost made the cut with his lovely duet with Emmylou Harris, "Landlocked Blues." I'm late to the whole Bright Eyes thing, having been amazingly put off by the name. But this song captures something about the way wartime events interweave themselves into our private lives--and we are at war, right? Plus, I love the trumpet solo in the middle—playing "Taps," I think. But Conor Oberst is quite popular these days, and I didn't want to roll any eyes at the Record Club. Rightly or wrongly I take it as an unspoken rule that you're not supposed to share the obvious.

Finally I decided to counter the simple garage-ness of the Mono Men with some classic soul: "Aint No Sunshine," by Bill Withers. I've always loved this song, even though I completely forgot about it for a decade or two. It's a song that evokes a wistful time for me--and even a particular year at summer camp. Go Camp Tousey! (Go Record Club!)

Tiger Lillies: "Slough"


Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, death!

-John Betjemen, 1937

Vermont: It's Small

Like everywhere else, Vermont has its People of Note. Some of them are relatively Large (Michael J. Fox, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, David Mamet), some relatively small (James Kochalka, Fred Tuttle).

Frankly the relatively small are more valuable to me.

But the striking thing about Vermont is how SMALL it--the state, the culture--all is. Six degrees of separation is more like 2 degrees of separation here, especially when it comes to the Relatively Small. On recent flights to or from Burlington, I've struck up conversations with people who turned out to be friends of friends, and run into co-workers coming back from vacation, and seen minor celebrities, like Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home. The woman who ran Fergus' playgroup in Montpelier lived next door to William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman. Other friends are neighbors with Frank McCourt's daughter. Speaking of daughters, Alistair Cooke's daughter is a minister at the church down the road. My favorite breakfast place happens to be David Mamet's favorite local breakfast place (though I've never seen him there). My wife's veterinary clients include the writer Howard Norman and, um, Sandra Bullock's sister (She introduced her as "My sister Sandy" when they both came in to the clinic).

It all sounds rather silly when you write it down like this, but it really is amazing how everyone is connected up here. Here's another example:

While we were in Maine last weekend, Montpelier apparently had a kind of street party called "Army of Fun," as you can see in this little video. The video itself includes two adults that Fergus knows (the mysterious Ben T. Matchstick and cardboard-samurai Pete Talbot), a girl that Norah knows (Maggie), a guy I know (Brian Murphy) from the local Record Club, and the wife of a guy (Earl) who did some work on my house last year. You can smell the patchouli in the air, a bit, but it's all rather charming.

Got the Travel Bug

These days, of course, airlines don't really serve food on their flights--even on cross-country flights. So on a recent trip from Burlington, Vermont to Seattle, Lauren and I bought a couple ham sandwiches--from a well-known coffee outlet--when we changed planes in Detroit.

The first one tasted pretty good, although the panini or whatever they used for bread was pretty dry.

When hunger returned, somewhere over Montana, we pulled out the second sandwich. But before we could even open the package we noticed it had a passenger: a small, winged insect was moving around in there.

We decided to go hungry.

Shipping Out

David Foster Wallace:
February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008

"My own terror of appearing sentimental is so strong that I've decided to fight against it, some; but the terror is still there....Do you identify with a distaste/fear about sentimentality? Do you agree that, past a certain line, such distaste can turn everything arch and sneering and too ironic? Or do you have your own set of abstract questions you drive yourself nuts with?"

....In an note to his editor at the New Yorker.

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Wallace and put off, say, by the sheer poundage of "Infinite Jest," please spend an hour or two with his charming and feverish essay about cruise ships. It's marvelous.

Red (Seattle Central Library)

Renegade Cows

File this under Vermontiana. Some of our local cows got out the other day and had to be herded back to the milking barn. Here they are rounding the corner in front of our house. A couple of guys from the farm followed on foot, running into the woods as needed to herd the girls back onto the road.

This kind of thing is ritualized every year in Brattleboro with the Strolling of the Heifers.

Ah, Vermont.

That Doomed in November Feeling--Again

I try to be optimistic, "hope-y". And mostly I am, because it seems impossible to me that John McCain (and Sarah Palin) could win this election. But then again, people can be amazing. Like the Clinton backers who were so miffed that she didn't get the nomination that they are ready to vote Republican. Or the woman in this audio clip.

First, I have to say she is actually being pretty brave. She is saying these words in a NPR "Race and Politcs" discussion forum with whites, blacks, and latinos, people from her community of York, Pennsylvania. She is white, a widower who grew up on a farm that she describes as free from prejudice.



I'm just astounded. And not. I'm both.

If this is the kind of thing that keeps Obama from getting elected in November, this country is doomed. I mean, feel free to vote based on suitability to run a country. But sheesh. Canada is looking better every day.

Full report here.

Welcome to the New Memory Pebble

Hola. Welcome to the new home of Memory Pebble. More later!