Mt. Wilson, Part 1

Monrovia, California

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

I’m going to leave off on the political stuff, which seems to be going about as expected. Also, Michigan, Michigan State, Connecticut, North Carolina, and the unlikely Ohio University are out of the NCAA tournament, and we can only hope Ohio State will lose.

Instead, I’m going back to my stock-in-trade on this blog, and recount a walk I took last Tuesday part of the way up Mt. Wilson. Mt. Wilson is a peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, the range that runs along the north side of the string of cities to the northeast of Los Angeles—Glendale, Pasadena, Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Azusa, etc., above old Route 66 eastward to San Bernardino.

Mt. Wilson’s claim to fame is that it has been used since the late 1800s as a site for telescopes. In the early 20th century an observatory was built there, containing increasingly powerful telescopes. Since the 1980s the observatory has been gradually abandoned in favor of sites in other countries. I will have more to say about the observatory when I actually get up there and find out more.

Mt. Wilson was named for Benjamin Davis Wilson, 1811-1878, who was the second mayor of Los Angeles and became, incidentally, the grandfather of General George S. Patton, Jr. Benjamin Wilson, known to some as "Benito," started a trail up the mountain in order to get wood for casks for his winery located in what is now San Marino. To his disappointment the wood wasn’t any good, but he constructed the trail anyway, in 1864, and it became popular with recreational hikers. So much for history. Let me now revert to a transcription of the recording I made while walking.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012. It is 10:10 a.m. and I am in Sierra Madre right off Mira Monte Drive, at the beginning of the Mt. Wilson Trail. This is a steep dirt walk that goes up from the present elevation of 970 feet to the top of Mt. Wilson, 5650 feet, over a distance of 7 miles. Because of the steepness of the trail and the fact that I haven’t walked in a long time (although I’ve gone to the gym on a regular basis and have done a bit of cycling), I’m not sure if I’ll make it all the way to the top this time, but at least I’ll make an effort and give myself something to aim at the next time I go.

Clear days are important for this walk, at least from the standpoint of being able to see the wide valleys that become ever more visible as one makes the ascent. Although this isn’t anything like the flat roadside hiking I did across the country, the young and not-so-young people I see jogging in both directions make me realize that I’ve gotten out of shape, comparatively speaking. I needn’t have worried that my workouts at the highest settings on the elliptical trainer were tougher than what I might encounter here. Aerobically, this is by far more difficult. I’m huffing and puffing in a way that my training didn’t prepare me for.

With each switchback the view of the floor of the San Gabriel Valley widens, and though I started in tiny Sierra Madre, what comes into view in the foreground of the slightly hazy distance is the city of Arcadia, which lies between Monrovia and Pasadena along the east-west line at the foot of the mountains. An expanse of concrete and grass gradually reveals itself to be the Santa Anita Racetrack and the large mall adjacent to it.

The dirt trail, although reasonably well maintained, is narrow—perhaps four or five feet wide in most places—and has no railings to keep people from meeting almost certain death should they fall off. At times it’s rocky, too. I see that it would never be a good idea to take this walk during or right after a rain when the stones are slippery and the little groove in the middle of the path is full of water.

Finally I begin to catch my breath, and after a mile or so I stop at a bend in the trail to talk to a toothless old man resting on a large rock on his way down. He’s probably not all that much older than me, but with his gauntness and without the teeth he looks ancient. We chat for a few minutes, during which I tell him it’s my first time on the trail and he tells me he’s been walking it for decades, although he doesn’t go all the way to the top any more—not since the 1980s. He’s just been up to the first stopping point, a place called First Water about 1.5 miles from the trailhead. He also assures me that the steepest part of the walk is behind me, and that things flatten out somewhat from here on and it becomes much shadier. Finally he tells me that the water at First Water is drinkable. “At least to me it is,” he says, with a chuckle that makes his face light up like a benign jack-o-lantern.

With thanks I leave him and take another hairpin turn. I’m wearing my hiking vest—the one I used throughout my journey across the country—with its pockets full of lunch, snacks, camera, cell phone, basic first aid stuff, and a bottle of water in the back. I have so far hesitated to drink much, waiting to see what the water situation will be further up. I have plenty, and it’s not an oppressively hot day. Nevertheless I’ve been sweating up a storm, and I take off the long-sleeved shirt I’m wearing over a t-shirt and tie it around my waist for now.

The going is still steep for now. I realize that most of the people I meet coming down have only gone up to First Water, or at most to Orchard Camp, another two miles past that.

At 1.5 miles I reach First Water. It has taken me 50 minutes to get here. I see that it’s a little stream about two hundred feet down from the trail on an alternate path. I have read that it is not advisable to drink from the rivers up here, and I think I’ll be prudent at this point and forgo this water, since I still have plenty. If necessary I’ll drink here on the way down. Who knows what that old guy looked like before he began drinking the water up here? Also, I really don’t want to waste the time or energy to walk down to the stream and back up to the trail. So I proceed to Orchard Camp, which the sign here tells me is in 2.0 miles.

It occurs to me suddenly that today is the first day of spring, although that term and designation means a little less here in southern California than it might in the north and the east. But just as I think it I become aware of a chirping bird. Here the feeling of spring is evident at the beginning of February, in a subtle way. Nevertheless, this is the day of the vernal equinox.

About a thousand feet into the next leg of the walk I pause on a rock to rest and to contemplate the sheer absurdity, if not utter bullshit, of what the skinny jack-o-lantern man told me about the steepest part of the walk being behind me. The trail is every bit as steep where I’m walking now as it has been all along, although it is a bit shadier and I've put my outer shirt back on. And indeed it wouldn’t make any sense for the trail to be less steep, given the additional elevation ahead. The total climb is 4680 feet in 7 miles, or an average of 670 feet per mile, and the first leg of 1.5 miles was 1000 feet, which is pretty close to the average. So no, it doesn’t get less steep, you crazy old coot. Maybe for a short time, but then it would have to get even steeper to make up for that.

At a clearing looking south, I take another look at the expanse of Santa Anita Racetrack and the Westfield Mall, which have become smaller and now sit in the middle of large expanses of residential real estate of Arcadia and beyond, even as far as the gravel pits of beautiful Irwindale. It feels good to be walking again. I turn around and get a look at the cluster of towers and TV antennas on the top of Mt. Wilson. Closer, but still a long way up.

About 3.5 miles into the walk I reach Orchard Camp, the halfway point. It’s no camp, in any ordinary sense, just a flat area with some low concrete and stone sides, perhaps twenty feet square, under some shade trees. I turned off my cell phone about an hour ago, since there was no reception and the search mode was sucking down the battery power. I turn it on for a moment to check the time. It’s 12:20, so it has taken me two hours to travel this far. Obviously it would take at least that long to do the remaining half of the ascent. I’m beginning to make up my mind to go only another mile or so beyond this point and then turn around and call it a day.

As I get closer to the top I can see that white areas I sometimes mistook from the highway for patches of snow are really just outcroppings of bare rock. It does snow up here sometimes, but rarely, even in winter, does the snow remain all day. The vistas to the south, instead of getting wider, are now narrowing due to the fact that I’m getting further back into the mountain range as I proceed. As bright and clear blue as the sky is, down below on the ground the haze puts a greyness on everything, making it less than ideal for viewing the valley. I suppose only a strong breeze from the west can really clean this area out. Back in the 60s and 70s the San Gabriel Valley was known for having some of the worst smog in the greater LA area. It blew from the west across the city and got trapped between mountain ranges. But air quality improvements, largely in auto emissions, have dramatically reduced smog overall, and made the valley a desirable place to live. In fact (and maybe due to the improved air quality) the City of Arcadia is listed as having the second-highest per capita income of all cities in the U.S. with populations of over 50,000. Greenwich, Connecticut is number one.

The vegetation up here changes rapidly. Deciduous and live California oaks, mesquites, huge cedar-like evergreens, scrub pines, you name it. Though I’m not afraid (too tired and focused on putting one foot in front of the other) I find myself wondering how many people over the years have slipped off this trail to their deaths down the steep rocky hillsides on this railingless trail. Don’t know if Google will give me the answer [it didn’t, at least as far as I looked], but there must be some statistics. Well, my job at this point is to not become one of them.

I decide not to press on to Manzanita Ridge, another 1.9 miles past Orchard Camp, and instead turn around at what I reckon to be between 4 and 4.5 miles. I mark my stopping point by photographing a large dead cedar or redwood tree, so I’ll know if I get past this point on my next foray. Mt. Wilson, I’m beginning to see, is something to be worked at, just as the entire 70 mile round trip length of the San Gabriel Bikeway is.

Walking down steep hills is a rigor of a different kind. Not as aerobically challenging, to be sure, it uses the legs in ways they really weren’t intended to be used. Each step is both a progress and a putting on of the brakes, as it were, and soon my knees and the fronts of my thighs begin to tell the tale. While I can move a bit faster, I can’t go too fast for fear of tripping. I reflect on the fact that most injuries from stairs occur on the way down, not up. Occasionally a young person comes down from behind me and passes, jogging, often with a dog in tow.

I reached my highest point at 1:00, two hours and forty minutes into the walk, and it takes me until 3:00 to get to the bottom. I had thought in advance that it might take half as long to go down as it did to go up, but this wasn’t quite the case.

Easing back behind the wheel of my car it feels as if I’ve done a day’s footwork. Next time I’ll go beyond, maybe not to the top, but closer. It’s been a good walk.

Go Home And Blog

Monrovia, California

Friday, March 9, 2012

All right. I’m done with political predictions. I was wrong when I said Mitt Romney would wrap it up on Super Tuesday, but I still think he’ll get the nomination eventually, and that no one will seriously threaten that. Tuesday night on MSNBC the commentators were in a particularly good mood. I wondered for a second why they were reporting the doings of the Dark Side with such enthusiasm, bordering on giggly bravado. Then I realized that of course they’re happy. The longer this clown show goes on, and the crazier the Republican Party gets before it finally gets behind someone, the better it will be for the incumbent. Well, let’s hope so.

Where I’ve erred is not so much in terms of understanding who will eventually get the nod from the GOP to run against Obama. My mistake has been in drastically overestimating the power of the Republicans to police themselves and put together an organized campaign for the presidency. Could it really be that this party, which has had such a fearful and mendacious grip on the country since 1980, whether its president is in office or not, is starting to come apart at the seams? Such things do happen when power becomes too entrenched, but I hesitate to feel very confident of it. Certainly they continue to have a decent hold on the airwaves. I wonder whether their most valuable asset—the easy boredom of the public that has let them simplify their message to a few infantile refrains—has finally become their undoing.

Then I think again. Without a doubt the legacy of the Republicans remains intact, and strong, and will be there no matter who wins in November. Obama’s victory in 2008, in fact, has proved to be only the hesitant promise of change so far. The legislature stays in the hands of the most venal and conservative elements in the nation, even when they operate as a minority, as in the Senate. What we now take for granted—the naked prerogatives of the wealthy and of big business to comport themselves as they see fit without any checks by the government, and the complete insinuation of radical right-wing Christianity into the national debate—will not change any time soon. Only those of us old enough to remember such shining beacons of rationality and progressivism as the graduated income tax, the Warren Court, the Civil Rights Movement, and Roe v. Wade will ever know the difference. Younger folks will only feel, as they seem to do, the vague sense of unease that has produced the Occupy Movement, a mishmash of discontent signifying relatively little, with great potential as yet unleashed because it has no single solidifying issue other than malaise. It is like a child’s tantrum, which the parents (smarter now than the parents of a generation or two ago) wisely and indulgently allow to go on until it is finally spent.

The lessons this country learned from the Vietnam War have been solid ones—not with respect to the foolishness of military adventurism, to be sure, but in terms of how to handle unrest at home so as not to create a situation where the whims of the public can interfere with national policy. First and foremost, the government must control the press and if possible get them on board. Embed them. Make them feel as if they’re part of the team. It doesn’t hurt that the press of the 21st Century came of age during the right-wing revolution of the Reagan Administration and doesn’t know the difference. If the media feel they are important to the war effort they will bend over backward to report favorably on the war. Propaganda is essential here. No one believes their own bullshit as much as the news media do. Just give them the right crap to disseminate and the job is done. The second lesson is don’t draft anybody if at all possible, and keep the body count down. That one is simple. Third, honor the returning soldiers, whether they're alive or dead. Never mind how much it might insult the intelligence of even the dullest of wits, tell the nation that every national guardsman and jarhead who comes back from the bumpy, mine-laden roads of Iraq and Afghanistan is a HERO, who has been over there PROTECTING OUR FREEDOM. Thank them profusely. It was this lack of thanks that disgruntled so many Vietnam vets. Today, in addition to the sober pronouncements of the news heads, it’s the little products of the propaganda machine, like the fawning banners hanging on small town streets, lauding the unfortunates who have no option but to serve in the military, that help to maintain support for and fuel our country’s permanent volunteer imperialist army, fighting endless wars to maintain the Pax Americana, propped up heroically by stable dictatorships all over the world. Looking back, it’s really hard to believe that news reporters actually helped to sow discontent for the war in Vietnam. Today they are, in a manner reminiscent of the era of the all-out effort of World War II, simply tools of the government, endlessly repeating a Big Lie--in the present case that the systematic hunting and killing of Muslims somehow protects the United States from selective airline hijackings. There’s a bizarre disconnect there that few people have ever commented on publicly.

The final lesson from the mistakes of Vietnam is to ignore the protesters to the greatest extent possible. If you take them seriously they might start to take themselves more seriously and organize better and around specific candidates, and the press will eventually pick up on that and the next thing you know a bunch of kids will be telling the country what to do and what not to do, which we all know is a bad idea, because for the most part kids don’t have a lot of money or property and are filled with idealism. For now, fortunately, there’s no real coherent politics involved in the Occupy Movement, just a few slogans, and furthermore, they've focused mostly on domestic issues, primarily because they just don't know much about what we're doing in other countries.

Extremely important to this entire effort, and never to be minimized, is the fact that almost every person in American now possesses a hand-held info-tainment device whose power to draw attention away from anything meaningful cannot be overestimated. In some places, like in the Arab world, these little i-thingies have been the very instruments of revolution, allowing otherwise disenfranchised and heavily censored people to tweet and twit and blog their way to organized opposition, and tell the outside world what’s going on. But not here, never here. We’re not the people who tell the world how messed up things are where we live; we’re the people other people tell things to. When we seem to the rest of the world to be complaining we get reminded that we’re far wealthier and freer to spout off than they are and should therefore be thankful. And we (quite rightly) host a constant stream of the wretched refuse of various teeming shores who, compared to us, really are a lot worse off. We’re like a person who runs a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter or a home for battered women, whose own life might be falling apart but who is nonetheless better off than the people he serves. And we do have games and apps to keep us busy.

How did I get from Mitt Romney and his party to this point? I’m asking myself the same question. But look here. Maybe the Republicans can’t get it together enough to rally around a single viable candidate for the same reason or reasons the Occupy Movement can’t gather much steam in any pertinent direction. Perhaps the answer is that our phone gadgets and the many instant opportunities for entertainment throughout the day have robbed us of the need, or the will, to be mentally organized around an issue or a handful of issues. Poor and middle class people are losing money to the wealthy, and poor kids are going to war, but how bad can that really be when we can instantly post our frustrations on Facebook or just forget about them and play Word Whomp or FarmVille instead? Aren’t the Republicans prey to the same technological seductions as the Occupiers? They know they’re discontented and they sense that the government is somehow not behaving the way they want it to and is too sympathetic to people whose skin isn’t the right color. But they don’t really have any idea of what to do about it, other than to conduct an endless series of debates, hoping some ideas and issues will shake out. And how really steamed up can they get when at the end of the day they can just tweet their frustrations for all their fans to see? Perhaps eventually the voters will ease this crop of Republicans into the background the way the city fathers shooed the encamped protesters away from their parks and from in front of their public buildings.

And everyone will just go home and blog about it.

Business

Southern California

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Sometimes I wonder about the people in China who make the stuff we buy, especially the knickknacks and gewgaws that are so particularly western as to be just about absent from the life of those who manufacture them. What do you suppose a person in a plant that makes plastic crucifixes, statues of the Virgin Mary, votive candles, and other crazy Christian paraphernalia thinks? I try to picture myself in a comparable situation. I’m on an assembly line, grabbing naked white plastic religious statues of I don’t know who or what—dead, dying, suffering, eyes heavenward, hearts enchained in thorns on the outsides of their bodies—and taking them on a large handcart to another part of the plant where other people paint their blood, or toenails, or wildly colorful garments. Then they go through a drying oven and pop out the other side, where people pack them into cardboard boxes for shipping to, let’s say, China. Someone new, next to me, whispers into my ear, “What are these things, anyway?” “Goods for export,” I reply knowingly.

One of the features of the web site on which I create my blog before publishing it on the blog site itself (that web site is www.blogger.com in case you’d like to create a blog and take a stab at it yourself) is an array of information about who visits the site. I can see who, if anyone, has been on it today, and how many have visited this week, or this month, or all-time. It’s a great feature if you love statistics like I do. Click on the tab that says "Stats" then on the one that says “Audience” then on the one that says “Monthly,” and it will give, in descending order, the top ten countries from which blog visits were made and the number of such visits during the previous month. For instance, out of the total of over 16,000 page views since I started the blog back in the fall of 2009, it turns out that about 12,500 views have been from the United States and another 1,500 or so from France. Nothing to wonder about there, really, since my cousins in France are regular readers (thank you, as always), and just about everyone else I know of who reads it lives here in the U.S. (thank you, too). But what’s really interesting is the makeup of the remaining two thousand views. For instance, did you know that my blog has been viewed 91 times in Slovenia, and in addition, 86 times in Belize? It’s not necessarily that 91 separate individuals in Slovenia have viewed it, but rather that the blog has been accessed 91 times by one or more persons while they were somewhere in Slovenia. At least I think that’s what it means. But who goes to Slovenia from somewhere else on a regular basis (maybe my cousin?), much less to Belize? Slovenia, just east of northern Italy at the top of the Adriatic, somehow doesn’t seem as remote to me as Belize does, even though English is the official language of Belize and it’s right next door to Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula. Formerly known as British Honduras, it became independent in 1981, the last area under direct English control on the mainland of the Western Hemisphere. I’m not sure who goes to or lives in Belize and why they might have happened on my blog, but there it is.

Aside from the Slovenians and Belizeans and the French and Americans there have been hits from such other locales as the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, South Korea, Ireland, Malaysia, Romania, India, and Indonesia. Malaysia, really? Isn’t that where they cane people for spitting on the sidewalk? Could I be in trouble? Or is that Singapore I’m thinking of?

It could be one person in each country who has visited on all those occasions. Naturally it has occurred to me as well that some of the more obscure places (from my point of view) from which the viewings have occurred might be because of random blog searchers (I think there really are such people, who like checking out blogs for the sake of checking out blogs). Other hits could be from those whose job is to put spam comments on blogs about erectile dysfunction drugs and the like. “Vjagra, Cjalis. Very good price. Best penis.” Really, the most common version of spam I get on the blog is in the form of long entailed messages written in somewhat demotic English that end up offering me a chance to improve my blog. I’m certain there’s a great deal to be done in the way of improvement here, but I doubt the ability of anyone to be of real help in that department who uses verbiage like this: “Facebook.com is effortless to use for Company and is a single of the most well-liked social networking web sites close to.” Syntax redolent of other languages and other climes. I picture the man with the beard named Peggy in the room full of telephones. Or the Czechoslovakian brothers on the old Saturday Night Live. “Now are the foxes! We are . . . two wild and crazy guys!”

Countries about which I know next to nothing continue to hold some fascination for me, even if I wouldn’t care to live in, or even visit, them. I am content to read a bit on Wikipedia and satisfy my curiosity that way. Slovenia, one of the hobby horses I ride today, is a comparatively new country in its present incarnation, having split away from Yugoslavia in 1991. Like practically all countries, it has a proud tradition of striving for independence, against the historic totalitarianisms of empire, fascism, and communism. Every country, no matter how beleaguered or obscure it might be, wants to have proud traditions. Even North Korea, as messed up as it appears to be, has its Great Leader, its Dear Leader, and now its Halfway Decent Leader to look up to.

All of which brings up a sort of parallel question: how must what I write sound, or look, to the people in these other countries, if they do actually read it? Pop culture references, talk about Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, chatter about American sports. I’m pretty sure that while most folks in other countries imagine they know a lot about the United States based on news stories about Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the U.S. military, and the depictions of us in television reruns and movies, they really don’t know much about how the country works, or doesn’t work as the case may be, on a regular basis. People from countries where the national government runs the economy, educates the young, cares for the medical needs of the people, regulates the activities of businesses, and so on, can’t know what things are like here, nor would they learn from episodes of Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond, or movies starring Brad Pitt or Jennifer Anniston. The truth we all live with every day, particularly when it comes to the role of the government, is that the President of the United States, however famous he might be throughout the world, can’t do a hell of a lot at the domestic level. He can nuke you, or rain down the wrath of the Valkyrie on some sorry-ass desert hideout in your country, but he has no power over the price of gasoline or medical insurance, or anything else for that matter, in his own country. Abroad the President is seen as the representative of the potency of America; here he’s not much more than a figurehead, even though the people who seek the office continue to imagine they can do wonders once they’re in it. Oh, you say (those of you who have studied the tripartite nature of the U.S. federal system), so it’s the legislature that really controls the government? Wrong. Okay then, the Supreme Court? Nope. It’s business.

And so it would be appropriate if the only interest people took in my blog in the recesses of the second and third worlds was in terms of its potential as a business opportunity—a chance to try to sell me something. The pecuniary spawn of the dot com revolution. Someone in Ljubljana, or Kiev, or Delhi, or Bucharest is looking at my blog. I’m talking about walking through East Jesus, Indiana. I’m crossing the mighty Mississippi River. I’m telling about the Big Easy, or the Naked Book Guy. I’m dipping my toe in the Pacific Ocean. That person is inserting a comment, at random, after one of my postings. The comment suggests that I can do better at reaching a wider audience by consulting a certain web site. Or it is advertising urban real estate in the Ukraine. Someone comes in the room while that person is reading and says, “Peggy, vat you are doing?” Peggy answers, “Business. I’m doing business.”

A Thousand Of My Closest Friends

California

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

“Who’s that nun holding the fish?” I wonder aloud as I see the photo on my Facebook page. And why is that guy telling me and everyone else what he thinks of Bobby Brown? Why does my daughter keep griping about how cold it is in northern Michigan (especially since it’s all the way up into the 20s)? And that guy with same name as me—he posts every day about nothing in particular, except that he does it in Dutch, which makes it seem even more odd and remote.

And why do I keep going on to Facebook? What am I looking for? Until now I’ve stayed off the subject of Facebook, which I became involved in only recently. I’ve considered the fact that I have a blog, which is perhaps only a more drawn-out and verbose version of Facebook. Who am I to cast stones here, when I have a page dedicated to long attenuated rants on whatever is in my head at the time? At least the people who post on Facebook say only a sentence or two. And I’ve considered the possiblity that whoever is reading this is thinking very much the same thing about me that I’m thinking about the nun with the fish, the guy with the opinion of Bobby Brown, my Florida daughter visiting the north, and the Dutch guy with the same name as mine.

The Dutchman, by the way, is one of two people with the name Peter Teeuwissen on my “friends” list, and the only reason I befriended—or more accurately “friended”—them is that we share the same first and last names and have never heard of each other. In Holland, ancient land of the Teeuwissens, this is perhaps no big deal, but where I come from it qualifies as pretty damn close to amazing, or at least weird and unsettling, like discovering your doppelganger. Part of the reason I added the two Peter Teeuwissens, I must confess, other than trying to find out if they’re shirt tail relatives, is that I have comparatively few friends on Facebook. At present I have a paltry 50 of them, including my children, a grandson, and several cousins and cousins-in-law. And also the Dutch guys who may or may not be cousins. Perhaps we’ll never know if we are, and in the meantime I’ll keep reading their daily postings that say things like “Voel me ineens oud..." which, thanks to Facebook’s handy built-in translator, I know means “I feel suddenly old.” It’s written above a photo of an audio cassette and a pencil. The photo bears the legend, in English, “Our children will never know the link between the two.” I had to think about that for a minute. First I assumed it was about the relationship between an instrument of the primitive technology of communication (pencil) and a piece of the obsolete technology of communication (cassette). Then it hit me. I was analyzing it the wrong way. The pencil is for rewinding the cassette. Cute.

Some of the people I visit on Facebook have hundreds, even thousands, of friends. I wonder about this. Does anyone really have that many friends? At present I think I know every one of my Facebook friends personally, except for the two Dutch guys. I suppose I could have quite a few more friends if I went with the “any friend of yours is a friend of mine” philosophy. Sometimes I’m tempted to do that, knowing the people with thousands of friends already will probably accept my offer of friendship, if for no other reason than to augment their friend numbers. I could go through that interminable list they have on Facebook, the one of all the people in the world who are friends with at least one of your friends. I could invite every one of them to be my friend and would surely get several hundred, maybe even a thousand, new friends. American friends, French friends, Dutch friends, Belgian friends, Arab friends. Kids, dogs, retirees. Hey wait, I think, I’ll bet that’s what other people do. Then I think, No, maybe they really do have more friends than I do. Then I start to feel comparatively friendless. It’s a vicious cycle. Would I feel more connected to the world if I had a thousand friends on Facebook, or would I feel phony and get pissed off as I’m assaulted by trivia from people I don’t even know? I could always block their comments and keep them as friends simply to impress myself and maybe others. And I could “unfriend” most of them, I suppose. I’ve done that in a few instances. But do people know when they’ve been unfriended? They must, since their friend totals go down. Is it considered unfriendly to unfriend someone, or just par for the course—necessary housecleaning, like paring down the Christmas card list? That can be a trap for the unwary, because just when you’ve got your list down to a manageable several dozen you get a card from someone you took off the list. Is there a way to unfriend someone without seeming to be cutting them? I don’t mind not having lots of friends nearly as much as I mind being thought of as unfriendly.

I have even fewer blog followers (called “members”) than I do Facebook friends. I have just 36 of them, at least of ones who have declared themselves to be followers. I don’t know some of them at all. I do know that at least one of them has been dead for over a year. And one is signed in twice. So that leaves 34 living, separate beings. And I’m pretty sure that close to half of them only followed for a time and have ceased doing so, and that half of the other half are sporadic readers. I started the blog as a log of my travels across the country. Now that I’m done walking for the present there’s less to say and fewer people to read it. This, and the rest of the postings I’ve done over the past year, could be likened to a more profane version of a weekly column in one of those small local shopping newspapers you see on the molded fiberglas seats in a laundromat. Andy Rooney-esque mutterings from an amateur. “Did you ever wonder” stuff, minus the Seinfeldian punchlines and delivery. Long musings going nowhere anymore, instead of twenty miles forward each day.

I begin to think of the comment from my namesake in the Netherlands. “Voel me ineens oud . . .” I feel suddenly old. That puts me in mind of T.S. Eliot. “I grow old . . . I grow old.” Prufrock, aging and alone, even in a crowd. Maybe I could use more commiseration, even if it’s in a foreign language. Maybe I could use more friends, readers, fellow travelers through life, telling me about the big fish they’ve caught, the cold they are feeling, their cats and horses, the gigs their bands are playing, their aches and pains. If I had a thousand of them on Facebook would they be any less real than if I had a thousand friends in the flesh? Would I then begin to crave solitude instead of the company of so many? Like those New York and Hollywood types we’re always reading about whose houses are filled with sycophants and hangers on, who throw parties for several hundred of their nearest and dearest. “Dahling,” they say, giving each a peck on the cheek. Then they talk to the same five or ten friends they always talk to. Meanwhile out at the pool people they barely know are drinking and splashing. There, at least, they come because they want and need proximity to the host, the hub of the wheel. Or they need to be close to free food and booze. “I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. . . I do not think that they will sing for me.”

I decide to leave Facebook and such dreary contemplation alone and gravitate toward what I consider to be the more concrete and real part of the Internet, my email. Real letters, or their modern equivalents, from people I know, and who know me. I click on AOL and glance at the home page first to get a dose of the latest news. There’s a blurred picture of a man, obviously filmed with a phone or a personal camera. In the middle of the image is a box with an arrow, on which I'm supposed to click. Underneath the picture it says, “Watch: He Has No Idea He’s In For Monkey Attack.” So much for the news. Then I sign in to the email. It says I have seven messages. Two are from Bed Bath and Beyond. (How did I get on their mailing list?) One each from Southwest and Delta airlines—“It’s time for your spring getaway vacation.” One from Johns Hopkins medical school about the latest research. One says “Vjagra 0.90. Cjalis 1.80. Our stores provide good pills for good price.” As I delete it I picture someone at a computer in Bosnia. Wonder what the weather’s like right now in Bosnia? The seventh and last email is to me personally. It’s an electronic bill. Then the U.S. mail arrives. Same thing. Six ads from banks and requests for money from charities for every piece of first class mail, and that’s usually a bill.

Maybe 50 relatives and friends I actually know on Facebook isn’t such a bad number. It's a pretty well-thought-out list, inclusive but not overwhelming. There’s the nun with the fish, who is really one of my oldest and dearest friends, a man who just happens to be cowled in some sort of winter fishing garb out on a cold river in northern Michigan so that only his face is showing as he shows off his catch. And my friend who bitches about Bobby Brown and other celebrities and about sports teams he doesn’t like but was a kind and helpful colleague when I was in the working world. And my daughter, whom I love even though I don’t care about most of what she writes. And the two Dutchmen who may, after all, be my third cousins once removed. These are no random acquaintances, no casual hangers-on doing lines of coke in my upstairs bathroom, no Kato Kaelins at my house on Rockingham. Were I to expand the list I would be spending most of my time wondering who the hell these people are who are talking about politics I don’t believe in, bragging about grandchildren I’m never going to meet, showing me photos of animals I don’t care about, and contemplating their navels. "Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?" I get enough of that already, but if I started receiving multiples of it from strangers it would be far worse. It would be like one of those commercials they're currently running for satellite TV. “When you have a thousand friends on Facebook, you don’t really know anyone. When you don’t really know anyone you become depressed and have to get shock treatments. When you get shock treatments they tie you down to a table and put something in your mouth to keep you from biting your tongue and your memory is partially erased. Don’t have a partially erased memory. Keep your Facebook friends list short.”

The Romney Problem

Southern California

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Okay, I may have missed a deadline—you decide.

I predicted here that the Republican nomination race would be settled for all practical purposes by the end of the first week in February. Instead things are being dragged out a bit, with Rick Santorum having won a couple last week. Rick, a/k/a Sanctum Sanctorum, the Holy of Holies, is an interesting knave in the euchre deck of presidential wannabes this year. As luridly compelling as Mitt Romney’s story is, Rick’s is in some ways even stranger. Let’s look at the salient aspects of each man’s life, taking him all in all, as Shakespeare said:

Romney—
First name really Willard;
Worked as night security guard at Stanford to fund secret trips home to girlfriend;
Served as Mormon missionary in France during the Vietnam War;
Involved in deadly car crash;
Probably wears secret long underwear;
Thought by some to have engaged in vampirism while governor of Massachusetts;
Unfounded rumors that he appeared in several Mexican snuff films;
Was separated at birth from the actor Bill Pullman;
Uses white shoe polish on hair at his temples.

Santorum—
Father’s name is Aldo;
Represented World Wrestling Federation to try to exempt it from federal ban on anabolic steroids;
Seriously entertains Intelligent Design alternative to theory of evolution;
Introduced law to prohibit Nat’l Weather Service from giving out free info;
Claimed to have found evidence of Iraqi WMD in his own backyard in Pennsylvania;
Rumored to have engaged in torture of small amphibians in the Amazon;
Guarded Republican desk filled with candy in Senate for ten years;
Thought to be a member of secret Catholic organization Opus Dei;
Alleged to have been accidentally castrated by a pit bull at the age of 19.

Regarding the last point, I should mention that the word “accidentally” is used in its narrow insurance-law sense, i.e., that the alleged occurrence was an accident from the standpoint of Rick himself. We do not know the state of mind of the pit bull.

I still think Mitt is a shoo-in, but it might take until Super Tuesday for him to ice it. So reluctant are the GOP voters to give the nomination to Romney, even though they know they’ll have to do it eventually, that they continue to tease him by granting victories to his opponents, even as his delegate tally inexorably rises. Others have expounded on this phenomenon, and it’s time I weighed in.

Why do the Republicans hate the idea of Mitt Romney? The word “hate” has a good deal to do with the answer. For one thing, Mitt’s not quite enough of a hater himself. This isn’t to say that he’s not a good Republican in the classic sense—supporting rapacious capitalism in its many forms, believing in the cliques of privilege that underpin his social class and his religion—but there’s something missing from the equation for Mitt, or rather something added on his side. As a member of a minority religion he’s bound to be just a trifle more tolerant than many Republicans feel is appropriate. And he did govern a state whose attitude toward its citizens is somewhat more generous than the national average--considerably more so than the bastions of southern and western paranoia that form the underpinnings of the modern GOP. These things make him suspect, and an outsider to boot, even though the Mormons are as indelibly Republican as any group could possibly be. But it’s one thing to let Mormons, or South Florida Cubans, or Catholics, contribute to the general cause of fear and loathing and narrow mindedness, and another thing altogether to make a member of such a group the party’s national standard bearer. Bobby Jindal the Indian, for instance, is fine as the Republican leader of a hopelessly miscegenating bunch like the people of Louisiana, but for president? I think not.

Which brings us to the second reason for the Mitt Romney dilemma, namely, that some people hate the idea of a Mormon becoming president. Why? Not because Mormons aren’t sufficiently sober, industrious, upright, conservative, driven, secretive, and clannish. They’re all that and more. It’s because they don’t worship the Lord Jesus Christ the same way most Republicans do. They’ve taken the basic mumbo jumbo of Christian doctrine and kicked it up a notch, with multiple heavens, baptism of the dead, Jesus visiting North America. And as I’m fond of mentioning, they have that secret underwear. Lock Moses and St. Paul in a room with L. Ron Hubbard and Timothy Leary and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is what you'd get. If you aren’t down with the predictable orthodoxies of Protestantism as it’s practiced in the U.S., you simply aren’t good candidate material in the minds of most folks. Take away that pesky Mormonism and Mitt would win in a landslide in places like Maine and Iowa. He has no other serious liabilities. He’s a younger John McCain without the taint of years in the Senate. But there’s that strange impenetrable religion, so superficially similar to the One True Faith but so bizarre-o and sci-fi in other ways. . . .

The GOP tent is not a large or welcoming one. Most real Republicans absolutely must
believe they’re part of a well-defined and exclusive group. It’s the group that starts with being good Americans, then narrows itself to being relatively pure Americans, then draws even further into itself by being religiously and ethnically correct. When the votes are needed, the party will welcome the unwashed masses into its midst, but it will never really let them in to the sacred halls of power. It’s like the bit from that movie The Good Shepherd, where Matt Damon is talking to the Mafioso down in Florida. The gangster says to the WASP Damon character, “Let me ask you something...we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish they have the homeland; Jews their tradition; even the niggers, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson? What do you have?” To which Damon replies, “The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.”

Perhaps Republicans in the modern era can best be understood in terms of the parliamentary style of governance. They are a minority party which will, in order to get a majority, ally themselves with or lure in such disparate groups as white trash, members of the working class, Asians, Cubans, upwardly-mobile Mexicans, the occasional person of color, Mormons, Catholics—even fringe utopians like the Libertarians. But that’s just to get into office. The funny thing is that because they’ve been pandered to, members of these outsider groups sometimes delude themselves into believing they’ve overcome their newness in the country or their ethnic or cultural distance from the mainstream. Sorry. Even counting the Democrats we’ve seen only one Catholic and one brown-skinned president. And just two with brown eyes. (Can you guess who the other one was?) Even Obama, in spite of the fact that his mother went native, is a mainline Protestant and half English and traces his ancestry back to Massachusetts in the 1640s.

But the reason Republicans hate Mitt Romney most is that they know he's probably going to lose. And that’s the best reason of all, from a purely practical point of view. They sense they are headed for defeat in November, and are pissed because no one has come along to rid them of the dusky interloper in the White House. Who would have thought the Party of the White Man would be unable to find a suitable, safe, and sane candidate among all the oligarchs and patricians this country has to offer? Many of the faithful have to be wondering, Has the nation that produced George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Herbert Walker Bush fallen so far that it is to be given over entirely to ninnies, Bible thumpers, cultists, papists, and the racially impure?

Students of Republican history remember another time the party surrendered itself completely to its far right wing in a desperate attempt to unseat an incumbent. The year was 1964 and the product was Barry Goldwater (the son of a Jewish dry goods merchant, of all things), who led them down the shitter. All the while there were Lodges and Rockefellers who would have been happy to bear the standard. Such is the state of disarray in the Grand Old Party that at the beginning of the selection process this time around there wasn’t a regular Protestant male in his right mind from a good eastern family in the lot. It’s enough to make an elephant cry.

He Is Risen

Burnsville, Minnesota

Monday, February 6, 2012

     Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday, a day that has become like a religious holiday. Really, it’s more of a sacred experience than Christmas and Easter as far as I am concerned, and I don’t even follow the NFL closely. But that’s how it is in general with the Christian holy days, too, and probably also for Passover among Jews. The major holidays are not for the devout, who live within their religion on a daily or weekly basis and who need no special mumbo-jumbo and red flag occasions. The holidays are attention-getters for the backsliders and apostates, designed to remind the less-than-faithful of their roots and of what they ought to be doing and believing. So despite the fact that I don’t believe in pro football I was filled with the spirit of the day. My daughter Katie and I woke up early to take her son to hockey practice. “Vince Lombardi is risen,” I said to her. “He is risen indeed!” she answered me back in the ritualistic fashion we part-time paschal football fans have. “Hallelujah!” we said in unison. After hockey we went shopping for the makings of the holy feast, which can vary from household to household, but usually contains several of the sacred dishes, such as chili, chicken wings, chips and dip. The body of Vince. And naturally there are any number of libations, often including holy light beer, or soda pop for the Protestants and abstainers. The blood of Vince.

     All afternoon people cooked and stirred, sliced and diced, mashed avocados and added lime juice, until the guests began to arrive. As the moment of kickoff at last came in sight, our attention to the food intensified. One of the ways we worship in this country—to celebrate what is good and right and essentially American—is to eat a great deal, and this is the day when it is most important. My grandson, who is eight years old, was the youngest person at the celebration, so he was assigned the duty of asking the Four Questions of Super Bowl Sunday, an ancient ritual that helps us to remember where we came from and what binds us together as a people. For those who celebrate in a more secular way, let me refresh your memory about the Four Questions. Really it’s five questions, including the introductory one, but they call it the Four Questions for some arcane reason known only to the clergy. Young Isaac came and stood next to me, the eldest member of the gathering. After I read a passage from the scriptures regarding the relaxing of the celebration penalty rule during the Super Bowl game, he asked me earnestly and on cue, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” I answered, just as seriously, to the knowing nods of the group, “Because this is the day we commemorate the beginning of our deliverance from the ancient system in which all of football was separated into two leagues, the National Football League and the rival American Football League.” Then began the questions in earnest. “Why is it that on all other nights we eat salsa or bean dip with our tortilla chips, but on this night we eat guacamole?” I replied, “On Super Bowl Sunday we eat the oiliest of all chip dips to celebrate football, the sport in which the players are the fattest, in the country where the Lord has made his people to live off the fat of the land and to be the fattest in all of his human creation. And be sure only to buy the avocados that give a little when you squeeze them.” Isaac nodded and drew his breath for the second question. “Why is it that on all other nights we go to the bathroom or grab something from the fridge during commercials, but on this night we watch the commercials and laugh indulgently at them and tell each other that they are good?” My answer, from the ancient text, was simple: “Because on Super Bowl Sunday we celebrate not just the game of football but also the generous and beloved corporate sponsors who pay obscene amounts out of their obscene profits in order to put their products in front of us so that we can enjoy the game.”

     At this point we all took a break from questions to have some chili and a lot more cheese and crackers, in addition to the tortilla chips with just a hint of lime dipped reverently in the guac. And Diet Coke, with just a hint of caffeine, so as not to fill up too much on beverage. And to watch more of the four-hour pregame show with the beloved Al Michaels and that master sports kibitzer Bob Costas, with his watery blue eyes and mastery of the irrelevant overstatement. As kickoff was rapidly nearing, we reassembled to finish the sacred questions. Isaac asked the third one. “Why is it that on all other nights we go out into the garage during halftime, or walk the dog, or try to appease the wife by performing some chore or other, but on this night we stay seated for the entire halftime?” Again I recited the answer from holy writ. “Because on Super Bowl Sunday during half time there is always the possibility, however slight, that a part of some woman’s body may be accidentally exposed, and we wouldn’t want to miss that in real time, even though we could YouTube it endlessly the next day.” Finally it was time for the fourth and last of the Super Bowl Questions. Isaac was doing great, and hadn’t missed a beat. I was in awe of his preternaturally sharp memory and his precocious interest in spiritual matters. Perhaps he will become a pop culture guru when he grows up. “Why is it that on all other nights we eat either sitting or reclining, but on this night we eat in a reclining position?” I didn’t have to read the answer, for it was as obvious to me as it was to everyone else. Some things about religion are far more self-evident than they are mysterious. It is this confluence of the obvious and the comforting with the unknown and unknowable that makes for the most well-rounded spiritual experience, in my opinion. “Because on this night of all nights we are so stuffed with junk that we can hardly move, and so full of cheese that we probably won’t take a crap for a week.”

     Then began the holiest time of the evening, the moment we’d all been waiting for—the kickoff and the beginning of the most-hyped game of the season. The purpose of the Four Questions of Super Bowl Sunday, of course, is not only to teach the youngest among us the unique nature of our collective cultural experience, but remind us of our rich heritage even as the Super Bowl continues in an ever-changing world. Without the Super Bowl how many young people would understand Roman numerals, for instance? Or know who Madonna is? In addition, the pre-game home ceremony encourages the youngsters to continue to ask all sorts of general questions, such as why does an intentional grounding penalty turn into a safety when the quarterback is standing in the end zone when he throws the ball, and why professional athletes and their large coaching staffs can’t make sure only eleven players from each team are on the field at the beginning of a play. The more a person gets to know the game the easier it is to prepare for the more intense theological issues, like why God gave us football in the first place, and why he won’t ever let the Lions go to the Super Bowl.

     After the game was over and the guests had given their personal benedictions, it was time for the warm good feelings of the holiday evening to continue with a dose of reality television in which people with mediocre voices try to break into show business with the help of established celebrities. As if the field weren’t glutted enough already. The glow of the holy day was still on me. Passes, commercials, catches, commercials, penalty flags, commercials, commentary, commercials. I was set for another year, and for the dry football-less spring and summer, until the page is turned once more on the liturgical calendar and we begin the march toward the next Super Bowl, the next big fat Roman numeral. Until then I resolved that I would try to keep the words of Vince Lombardi in my heart. “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” “The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work.” “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” And the one Tom Brady and his band of brothers will carry with them until fall: “We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.”

     May God bless and keep you until then, and may Vince Lombardi make his face to shine upon you, and may the spirit of smash mouth football dwell within you and give you peace.

Another Coma

Monrovia, California

Friday, January 27, 2012

I blogged a couple of months ago about the soap opera I’m watching, The Young and the Restless. Since then I’ve become somewhat more knowledgeable about the story and the characters, and I must say that in this case familiarity definitely has bred contempt. These people have one thing going for them: they’re even dumber than those of us who take the time to watch them each day. Oh sure, they’re wealthy, and the writers would have us believe some of them actually earned their money, or at least made it the old fashioned way by stealing it from others. But they're very dim where matters of the heart are concerned, which I think contributes greatly to the appeal of the show. We are made to see that the good people of Genoa City, Wisconsin, when it comes to love and lust, are just as clueless as the rest of us. The men are goofy in their utter captivity to the women they desire, and the women choose their mates poorly, time after time, in a continual and reassuring example of the soap opera imitating life.

My favorite character is Adam Newman (pictured above), the bad son of Victor Newman by one of Victor’s eight different wives (including Sharon, whom he just married while he was in prison and from whom he will soon obtain an annulment). I say “different wives” because in fact Victor has been married ten times if you count his three separate marriages to Nikki. And it looks as if they’re going to get married yet again. The relationship that produced Adam was Victor’s brief marriage to the blind Hope Adams when Victor was in Kansas and presumed dead back in Genoa City. I’m not sure why or how he ended up there. Maybe he clicked his heels together three times. He might have been trying to escape the pressure of being a billionaire entrepreneur who always gets his own way. Anyway, Adam was the spawn of this brief episode.

Today Adam is a graduate of Harvard Business School, come to Genoa City primarily to torture his dad. (Though born in the 1990s, Adam was subjected to the SORAS—Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome—and he is now in his mid 30s.) He has a tendency to do bad things, like abducting children and springing deranged women from nuthouses. But along the way he has developed another obsession, and now Adam’s poor twisted soul can’t decide between an unexplained desire for revenge against the old man, which manifests itself in rather naked business schemes, and his apparently real love for his ex-wife Sharon, who has previously been married to Adam’s half brother Nick and to Jack Abbott, and is at this moment married to Adam’s dear old dad. Her complete name at this point is Sharon Collins Newman Abbott Newman Newman. This makes her, by Y&R standards, practically a virgin.

One reason I like Adam is that his character actually seems to be doing something most of the time, or planning to do it. It’s usually a bad thing, but at least it’s something. The rest of the dopey Newman and Abbott families just drink coffee and champagne and talk and have sex, which is fine if you’re in a French movie. Even Victor, the godfather and paterfamilias of the show, rarely does anything but rumble and threaten imperiously in his stilted baritone accent. His favorite expressions are “I want you to listen to me very carefully,” and “Got it?” both of which he delivers as if he’s so used to giving orders that it matters not whether he’s talking to a son or a business rival or his true love Nikki. Not so the brooding Adam, who, though he likes to toss back shots of booze at the bar in the hotel where he lives, prefers the company of himself alone, except when it comes to Sharon. Also, the writers of Y&R, who seem to be as clueless from week to week as the viewers and the characters are, tend to give Adam the best lines—little zinging insults and epithets he delivers with a smirk and sometimes with a smile of genuine pleasure. (For example his name for a veterinarian who had a brief fling with Sharon was "The Goat Whisperer.") As for most of the rest of the cast, especially Jack Abbott, what little wit they possess is cancelled out by their long puzzled stares as each scene ends. Adam’s fade-out looks (mandatory for all characters in soap operas, apparently) are full of smoldering intensity. It’s as if he realizes he’s stuck in a story with a bunch of genuine idiots and he can’t escape except by doing something so bad that even the inept Genoa City police will have no problem sending him to prison for the crime.

Adam is also a fairly snappy dresser, though he sports the bed-head hair style fashionable among young white men a decade or more ago. Like his brother Nick, he refuses to shave regularly. For a pair of multimillionaires who could afford to be barbered daily the Newman brothers are quite cavalier about their personal grooming. But then why bother?—it’s not like they’re competing for anything in the material world. They’ve got all that, and also have had pretty much all the women their age in Genoa City except for their sisters.

Another reason I’m partial to Adam is that the guy who plays him, Michael Muhney, isn’t a bad actor. Not great, mind you, but better than just about all the rest of the Y&R cast. Melody Scott Thomas, who portrays Nikki, is okay too, with her Liz Taylor voice, but she plays such a hopeless case that it vitiates her best efforts somewhat. Most of the time the scenes in Y&R have the flavor of a high school or college drama club production, and you can tell that the people who star in it were lucky to look pretty good, or at least interesting, or else they wouldn’t have made it into regular paying gigs in Hollywood. Eric Braeden, who plays Victor, has one set routine as a character, which he repeats tediously and endlessly. At least today, in his early 70s, he looks sort of handsome in a stern graying way. Back in the 20th century he looked like a cross between Robert Goulet and a porn star, skin too tanned and hair too black and moustache too large—a cheesy combination if ever there was one.

So what does Adam Newman crave, apart from his beloved Sharon? I think it must be the respect of his father and a piece of his power. I’m tempted to portray him as a tragic hero along the lines of Lucifer in Paradise Lost. He is the son of the most high, but as a result of his own envy and warring ways, has been cast down into the lower regions. The old man will never give him the respect he feels he deserves, and if he got it he wouldn’t recognize it as such. It’s a no-win situation for him, because he’s so obsessed with the idea that he’s been disrespected that he’s unable to do anything to earn respect and unable to find anything approaching respect in the eyes of others, particularly Victor. The writers of course miss a good deal of opportunity here in terms of plot and character development from a purely dramatic point of view, but I think I understand why they don’t try to make him more understandable and prominent. It’s because this isn’t a story with a plot. Like life, it’s only an unending procession of events, in which the players act in all the inconsistent and haphazard ways real people do, albeit while dwelling in a fantasy world. Odd juxtaposition, but there it is. Adam could be full of hubris and tragic flaws, driven by a sort of inner nobility of purpose gone wrong; instead, as a real tragic hero said, he’s only full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

I think I’m reaching the end of my temporary infatuation with Y&R, but like many an addiction it’s easier to keep at it unfulfilled than to quit. I continue to watch, hoping something clever or redemptive or at least realistic will take place, all the while knowing that it won’t and that instead, just around the next corner, there awaits another evil twin or amnesiac or long lost bastard or SORASed child. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Another bride. Another groom. Another coma.

The Family Business

Monrovia, California

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Time for an update on the Republican primary front. As I and many others predicted, as the smoke begins to clear it’s apparent after only two states that Mitt Romney will be the nominee. Rick Perry is gone, so is John Hunstman, the Romney clone. Rick Santorum will soon fall by the wayside. We'll never have a president named Rick. We had one Richard and that was enough. South Carolina, being such a ruthlessly hateful (not to mention insane) place, may give Newt Gingrich some false hope, but in the end—and that end will come soon—Romney will be the guy. Barzini’s dead. So is Philip Tattaglia, Moe Green, Stracci, Cunio. They may not settle all family business today, but by the first week in February they will have done so.

Such is the nature of the exhibitionistic way they decide these matters that the nomination will be a foregone conclusion ten months before the election. Forget the smoke-filled rooms--you can’t smoke anywhere anyway, except in Herman Cain ads. The saddest and most dispiriting thing is that we will then be subjected to a full-bore election campaign between the Republican and Democratic candidates for what amounts to nearly a quarter of the presidential term. If the race were closer between some of the Republicans, at least Obama could relax for a few months longer as they continue to duke it out, and we wouldn’t have to be subjected to as much of the extra bullshit that gets thrown when the election itself is at stake, during which we will all get (more) sick of our own guy as well as the other guy.

The other aspect of the maddening preoccupation of the media with the political campaign as a form of reality television is that it gives the public outside the primary states the false impression that they have something of a voice in the process. I’ve pondered the phenomenon of “reality TV” for years, wondering first why anyone likes it enough to watch and second how they keep coming up with people who are willing to expose themselves to the nation for the utter nitwits they are. The answer to the first half of the question is what I suspected it was all along, namely, that it is somehow comforting to the viewing public to see people on television who are (if this is possible) even stupider than they are. The answer to the second half came to me very soon after I began producing my own public access TV show back in Connecticut in the early years of the new century. People (including me) love to see themselves on television, regardless of what they’re doing. The quizmasters of the 1950s knew this even when the medium was in its infancy.

Let’s get back to the “extra bullshit” thing I mentioned. To be sure, the stuff the Republicans are hurling at each other now scores very high on the old Shit-O-Meter. But the splitting of hairs of distinction among various card-carrying members of the official Party of Fear and Loathing in the U.S. isn’t the same as what’s coming up once it’s Obama versus Romney, mano a mano. As things stand now, those of us who wouldn’t vote for a Republican to save our lives can simply tune out most of their silliness and smile smugly at their buffoonery. But once the Mittmeister and Barack-o-rama square off we’ll be treated to the Final Insult, when the two candidates begin to try to out-God-Bless-America each other. Because there really won’t be much else to talk about. Both guys will promise the moon and the stars to the public, swearing they’re going to fix the economy, bring about world peace through superior firepower, clean up the environment while creating jobs, promote businesses small and large, put a chicken in every garage, etc. But in the end no president can actually do any of those things. They never could—the government simply isn’t set up that way for the most part. Nevertheless every four years we succumb to mass hypnosis and believe that one person can heroically pull us up by our bootstraps. We get this idea from inaccurate memories of presidents like FDR and JFK, who seemed to run the country by sheer charisma. (In fact, in our lifetimes it was the decidedly uncharismatic LBJ who came closest to running both the executive and legislative branches simultaneously.) Anyway, the country is really so completely in the thrall of Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and Hollywood that probably nothing that could happen in real life would ever make much of a difference either to our future or to our everyday lives. So the only thing left for the candidates to do is to tell the American people what a great and powerful and wonderful and divinely ordained country we live in, and that they are going to make it even better. Over and over, ad nauseam.

And as if that weren’t bad enough, all the sound and fury, signifying nothing, between now and November, the jillions of dollars pissed away on advertising, the endless hours of commercials, will be to capture a comparatively small percentage of the electorate. If they were to hold the election tomorrow the majority of the voters would simply choose the candidate of their party. They might not like the man much, and might think he’ll do (or continue to do) a half-assed job, but they’ll hold their noses and vote, based on what their party stands for. It’s as simple as that, and that accounts for over 80% of the votes cast in any election. But it’s the “undecideds” the advertisers and the candidates are courting. Some of these are folks who might not otherwise vote at all, and some will be genuinely undecided between the candidates, like breakfasters who are undecided about whether to order hash browns or home fries with their eggs and bacon.

I must here say a few words regarding persons who are undecided about whether to vote Republican or Democratic. They are idiots. This may offend some of my readers. Indeed, if you’re not sure which party to vote for, I wish to offend you. You should know better. Cynics on the far left or right will say there’s not much difference between the parties, and they may be right. But to be seriously wondering about whether to vote for the standard-bearer of the Republican Party, which publicly stands for racism and selfishness, or the Democratic Party, which publicly stands for equality and generosity—well, there’s just no excuse for that. I have more respect for a rock-ribbed Republican who knows his own nasty little mind than I do for a person who is genuinely undecided between the two parties.

The more strategically-minded among you might be thinking, “Yes, but if it’s the undecided voters who swing an election, then wouldn’t you rather they swing toward the Democratic side? Idiots or not, their votes are needed.” I suppose so, but what I’d really like is to live in a country where people know their own minds and don’t seriously believe that individual political candidates are going to make their lives better.

There is one important reason for us to put Obama back in office, notwithstanding his fecklessness so far and his almost limitless capacity to disappoint. That reason is the Supreme Court. The next justice to croak will probably be Ruth Ginsberg, a comparative liberal, and it would be a shame if a Republican were president when she does. And then there’s the possibility, remote but real, that Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, and Roberts will get hit by a bus at the same time. Or individually for that matter. Or be accidentally gibbeted by a rope carelessly flung over a lamppost. Or be decapitated by a flying lawnmower blade. Or have their intestines….. Oops, sorry. I’m fantasizing.

So gird yourselves for the months to come. Put on your raincoats, put in your earplugs, and hold your noses.

.... Come on, Newt, what are you afraid of? Do you think I'd make my sister a widow? I'm godfather to your son. No Newt, you're out of the family business, that's your punishment.

The View From The Air

Romulus, Michigan

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

I am at the Detroit airport awaiting my flight to LAX. To be precise, waiting to fly to Nashville, Tennessee and then to Los Angeles, the result of one of those routing arrangements made and understood only by personnel well above my pay grade. In general I enjoy airport terminal gates. You’ve gotten past the strip search part of the process and have consigned the heaviest of your bags to someone else, trusting against all odds that it will get to where you want it to go and come popping out, probably upside down or sideways, onto a luggage carousel thousands of miles away. Near the gate there are lots of bathrooms and little fast food joints and convenience stores, minus the hassle of parking. And there are lots of TV screens.

Here at Gate D21 most of us sit in wide leatherette chairs held together by robust aluminum framing. I’m up on a barstool affair with the computer plugged into electricity. Unlike many of the people down in the chairs, I can’t use the battery on my venerable laptop, as the charging mechanism deep within the machine ceased to function a few years ago.

People will become pretty docile when know they have to wait for things they want or need. I’m always amused and a little surprised when I see bits on the news where passengers act petulant and put out at airports. I’ve really never seen that kind of thing—but then I’m no world traveler. Once in a while someone in front of or behind me in a line will say something deprecating about airports or airlines in general, but I’m convinced they do it mostly to show how jaded and well-traveled they are. Their expectations seem to be that they are entitled to travel in a manner equivalent to first class on the Orient Express early 20th century. But air travel is mass transit in a way it never was even back when Pan American and TWA operated. It’s estimated that on any given day between 1.5 and 2 million people fly in the U.S. And while it’s true that at one time the seats and service aboard airplanes were better, those days are so long in the past that I doubt if the middle aged dude in the suit—the Glen Beck watcher whose clarion voice you can’t ignore—really remembers those days.

Of course there are people who just love to complain, and they’re everywhere, not only at airports. I was at the front of the line at the post office a couple of weeks ago, waiting at the spot where they tell you to stay until the next person is available to help you, carefully watching the two employees to see which of them would summon me to the counter. About six people back a woman was huffing loudly that we should just be able to go up to the counter when we got to the front of the line, not wait to be called. It was a trivial idea, at best, and I concluded immediately that it came from a mind clouded and crowded with the trivia of life. It was the middle of the day and from the crap she was carrying I suspected that the woman was one of those local business people or self-employed types who is apt to be at the post office during business hours in the first place. God save us all from these denizens of the downtown. When Napoleon called England “a nation of shopkeepers” he meant it as an insult, as indeed it is.

From having worked at the post office briefly, and simply from observation, I know there are at least a few things the counter people have to do besides wait on customers, like making computer entries that accomplish automatic inventory control, moving packages around from one place to another, and going to the back to do other jobs. Someone is always telling them exactly what to do, whether it's to work the front desk, go back and sort mail, or pass out special deliveries to the carriers. Postal employees are some of the busiest and most efficient people I have ever encountered in the workplace, so I’m on their side, notwithstanding their bad reputation. Also, postal employees know what anyone should know but most of us forget. Newman the mailman on Seinfeld knew it, namely, that the mail never stops, and the customers never stop, and nothing ever stops until it’s time to go home, and when you're home even more mail comes in. So there’s no point in rushing. Work steadily, work accurately, but don’t break your ass. And I quite agree.

But this woman behind me was someone who thinks that for 44 cents (surely one of the lowest domestic postage rates in the world) you should get the royal treatment. In fact, as a small business owner (I’ve already got her pegged, you see) she thinks the nation and the world revolve around her. Why? Because people keep telling her so. She believes all the hogwash and propaganda our government and advertisers put out about how “small businesses are the backbone of the economy.” If that's the case, we've got serious spinal problems. So the thinking (even of the liberals) goes, don’t go to a big nasty store with lots of employees, where economies of scale keep prices low and there’s at least a chance the workers have a union or if not then some regular benefits. No, go instead to a little store run by your neighbor, who is apt to cut corners, ignore safety rules and wage and hour laws, skip paying his taxes, and engage in unproductive nepotism, either because he’s incompetent or he can’t afford to do anything else. Makes sense, right? Don't patronize a place with enough money to withstand being sued by its employees or customers without going out of business and flying by night. (Here I admit that the bankruptcy laws of the U.S. have made it increasingly easier for large businesses to fly by night, too.)

This love of the small businessman, the one with the 75% chance of failing in the first year or so, must be part of our national weakness for the underdog. In any case, it is one of the great mysteries of American economic life to me. People love, almost venerate, the idea of small businesses. I suppose it’s because they can see themselves in that role, whereas it’s hard to see oneself as a scion of the Ford family, for instance. But let’s face it, even moderately successful small businesses are usually run by grubby cheapskates who, by the way, are exempted from many of the wage and hour, insurance, and pension laws that govern their larger brethren. We all have stories about having worked in such places, whether they’re local independent pizza joints or group homes or party stores or motels. These roach pits get all the glory in the mythology of American capitalism. They are for some reason viewed as the virtuous little acorns from which the mighty oaks of the Fortune 500 grow. But it was only in the large, well-organized mega-businesses, like coal mines and Pullman train cars and Ford and GM, that unions were able to force collective bargaining on a shop-wide basis. Try organizing the workers at your beloved little corner restaurant or coffee shop some time and see how far you get. In those places you’re supposed to work for the sheer joy of laboring alongside your fellows and knowing the boss personally.

But back to airports. Funny things you almost never see anywhere else exist in airports, like people movers, those horizontal escalators that let you rest a bit or walk faster. Cool and sort of silly at the same time. And lots of corridors and immensely high ceilings and carpeting and big thick windows. Quietude and the occasional announcement, many of which are as familiar to air travelers as are the liturgical pronouncements of a priest. "Do not leave your luggage unattended." "The National Transportation Safety Administration advises that...." "Don’t offer to carry anything strange for anyone who looks like a nervous Bedouin." I have a theory about these announcements and it is simply this: whatever might be next in the way of terrorism, you can be sure we’ll never see it coming. It’ll be like the proverbial bolt of lightning or the bus that appears out of nowhere and runs you down, but with an even lower statistical chance of happening than anything like that. So fuck it.

Then I’m in Nashville, where famous hillbilly singers like George Straight make welcoming announcements. However I don’t tarry in Music City longer than it takes for my connection to LA to arrive and begin loading. Once we're aloft I try in vain from my window seat to figure out what's what on the ground. The view goes from too close to take it all in to too far to comprehend it except as patches of varying shades of brown. I wish the states really were different colors like they are on the map. The Mississippi River must be down there somewhere, but I can't find it, and soon I'm above clouds and the sun has set and that's it. Then a nap and then it's the long descent into the lights of the most populous county in the United States. As the wheels touch ground I reflect on how glad I am that it’s not as easy to start an airline as it is a taco stand. No small businessmen allowed here, and no complaints from me.

The Funky Leader

Monrovia, California

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

As we’ve all heard, the Dear Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, has died at the age of 69. The Dear Leader was the son of Kim Il Sung, who was known as the Great Leader. He led the country for several decades until his death in 1994, at which time he became known as The Eternal President of the Republic. Now his grandson, Kim Jong Un, appears to be taking the reins. The youngest Kim seems to be going by the appellation The Great Successor, and is also known as the Young General. And young he is, at about 28 years old, especially for a general. Not the youngest general in history to be sure. There was Alexander the Great, and even George Armstrong Custer, who reached the rank of Major General in the Union army at about 25. But that was only a temporary, brevet rank. After the Civil War he was returned to his permanent rank of Captain, from which he was able to inch, over the next decade, a couple of notches to Lieutenant Colonel, before dying in the disastrous and ignominious Last Stand in 1876. But I digress.

It has been suggested that there’s something of a power vacuum in North Korea with the passing of the Dear Leader. But it seems to me that what’s been missing in the North Korean equation for a long time is the proper name for the leader, commensurate with his high rank. "Dear Leader" didn't ever quite make it and always seemed, against the accolades heaped on his father, to be damning Kim Jong Il with faint praise. Since it appears that the young Kim Jong Un loves basketball and especially the Chicago Bulls, and would like to play the game, an appropriate name for him might be The Dear Point Guard, or perhaps the Great Bench Warmer.

The sad silliness of the country might be allowed to speak for itself, but it really begs to be addressed. Sure they have nuclear weapons, and therefore in the minds of some they must be taken seriously. But, well, really? Look—the U.S. has nuclear weapons, and we’re running the most ridiculous political campaign in my memory even as I write this, unwittingly making ourselves one of the laughingstocks of the world. India has nuclear weapons, and face it, they’re among the silliest people on the face of the earth, with their crazy modulated singsong voices and the way they nod their heads from side to side like bobble head dolls. And let’s not even get into how ineffably ridiculous the Brits and the French are capable of being. So having nuclear weapons is definitely not a reason to take one country any more seriously than another.

Since things could hardly get any worse for the North Koreans, I am volunteering to go over there and run the place. I would call myself The Funky Leader, and would decree that James Brown music be played over loudspeakers in every city and town, from dawn until dusk. Or maybe from dusk until dawn. I'll have to give that some thought. I would immediately invite Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton over (a woman who to my way of thinking has been looking far too frazzled and serious herself these days) and ask her to provide North Korea with lots of nourishing food, especially things for which the United States is justifiably famous—foods named after great German cities such as Hamburg and Frankfurt, Italian delicacies like pizza, and of course Mexican food. And French fries, to be sure. The North Koreans need more calories, and that’s no joke.

I think I have the chops to be their leader, or at least as good a one as this youngster who seems to be taking the reins now. Like him, I received all my formal education outside North Korea. I read this morning that he is said to have “privately studied computer science,” by which I take it that someone sat him down and explained to him how to operate a computer and play FreeCell and Minesweeper, which is similar to my own training. I like basketball well enough, too, although in the past I’ve usually only gotten excited about the NCAA tournaments in March, being partial to the UConn men’s and women’s teams and sometimes North Carolina. But I have also followed the Pistons, the Celtics, and the Lakers at various points, and this year I enjoyed the Dallas Mavericks in the finals. So I think I’m okay there. And speaking of sports, I would decree that all North Koreans become New York Yankees fans, as well as supporters of the University of Michigan football team. In fact, I would change the North Korean national anthem from whatever silly thing it is now to The Victors.

Also (and I think this would help convince my new countrymen that a safe reliable and peaceful transition of power has taken place), I would change my name to Kim Kardashian.

Last but not least, I would assure the North Korean people that I’m not just the President of the Hair Club for Old-Style Stalinist Dictators, I’m also a member.

It Happens

Monrovia, California

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Interesting meteorological phenomenon here last week, or as Popeye would say, “Large weather we’re having.” Santa Ana winds were predicted for Wednesday night, with gusts up to 75 mph. Big deal, I thought, remembering how many times the weather folks out here have predicted dire things along the lines of Actual Rain, Temperatures Below 40 Degrees, Less Than Perfect Sunshine, and the like.

However, due to some weird combination of factors—dueling weather fronts, one going clockwise and the other counterclockwise, or something like that—the winds on Wednesday night/Thursday morning played hell with the cities and towns along the San Gabriel Valley, stretching out from the northeast part of LA along old Route 66 through Pasadena, Arcadia, Monrovia, and Duarte, and including a few smaller places north and south of that line. Somehow the winds from out of the northwest combined with winds from the desert southeast of here. The result was massive tree damage and power outages. Made me nostalgic for those Michigan and New England snow and ice storm conditions. I'm not just talking broken branches here, but trees uprooted entirely. Power was out at our house from early Thursday morning until Sunday morning, and in some places it still wasn’t on as of the next Wednesday. On the way into my volunteer job at the Pasadena courthouse on Thursday, going through Arcadia in particular, I saw more trees simply pulled out of the ground and stretched out over the road (always having fallen from north to south) than I’ve ever seen before, period. Mostly they were shallow-rooted trees, like evergreens and eucalyptuses, but some others as well. Just knocked over by the winds, which somehow conspired to roar down the south side of the San Gabriel Mountain range at speeds of up to 100 mph.

But here was the odd part, the part I’m not used to. There was no precipitation or other bad weather accompanying the winds. In fact, the skies were, if anything, clearer and brighter the next day because the wind had blown the pollution away. Sunny warm breezy days in paradise, only with electrical outages and trees and branches blocking virtually every street. Interesting. Still, Californians take this sort of thing more or less in stride. I’ve mentioned before that in spite of being rather spoiled, weatherwise, they’re not big on complaining, at not least volubly. The reliable surliness of the Midwest and kvetching of the Northeast are all but absent here. All that extra vitamin D from the sun, I guess. And it’s not like people had to shovel snow or dry out the basement on top of having lost power, after all. Crews of municipal and free-lance landscapers and tree cutters just got busy. Tons of cash passed into the underground economy, as people hired members of the legion of immigrant yard workers to do extra things, like raking and cutting and trimming and repairing. And meanwhile the sun just kept on shining.

After several days things were reasonably cleared up and it was business as usual, except in places like the LA Botanical Gardens over in Lucky Baldwin territory, where at least half of all the exhibits were damaged in some way. Apparently the news people weren't able to connect even one death to the storm, which was a good thing, though rather surprising, since the media like to attribute virtually all deaths from all causes that take place during any spate of inclement weather to such event. A ninety-five-year-old man dies of a heart attack while it’s raining heavily and he goes down as a casualty of the storm.

The other thing I noticed over the next few days was how little, not how much, I noticed the missing trees. To be sure, in some parks there were dozens of hundred-year-old trees destroyed, their massive stumps and roots lined up to be carried away like rows of fat dead bodies. But what the hell, they all have to die some day in some way. I was left marveling a few days later, rolling down lush tree-lined Colorado Boulevard in west Arcadia, at just how few trees appeared to be missing. There are more than enough to go around.

Don’t get me wrong—I love trees as much as the next guy. From our perspective they’re mighty and noble and all those things we like to ascribe to them when indulging in what John Ruskin termed the “pathetic fallacy” (which isn’t as bad a thing as it sounds—look it up). People worship them, hug them, rely on them for shade and shelter and food. But in the end they’re just bigger versions of grass and weeds. It's all a matter of perspective. If we were bigger, we’d think of them that way, too. And they have life spans like everything else. The ones that fell were weaker or older than the ones that didn’t fall, or more unlucky perhaps, or too big for their britches, so to speak. It happens.

Meanwhile, it’s mid-December and the roses keep on blooming and the sun shines damned near every day.