Sports

Rant alert: Possibly boring and tedious gassing on about why sports suck out loud to moi.

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I am utterly missing the sports gene. I understand why cats chase balls, but have no idea why people do. This makes me quite the oddball (nuh har har) to much of American society, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

This lead to a lot of angst on my part as I grew up. I'm not talking about being picked last in P.E. - I expected that, and it didn't matter one bit of course because other than the exercise I could care about the game we were divvying up for. I'm also not talking about an aversion to activity and just bombing around as a kid. I was an avid skateboarder (as my knees will attest these days), loved biking around, and dug hikes out to a cool island in the middle of the river in my hometown.

No, I'm specifically talking about getting some object in some pre-designated place so that my team will receive (imaginary) points, which if we end up with more than the other team, we will WIN! Wow!

Win what? Nothing but the joy of having won. Lotsa folks somehow translate this over into a feeling of superiority over the other team, as though we are somehow better than they. But so much of competitive sports, when the teams are balanced in ability as they usually are (and if they aren't the game is kinda moot), is about the luck of the bounce, the direction of the wind, and other uncontrollable and intangible things. Thus when the ball bounces one way rather than the other, makes the winning point, and the winning team screams at the other, "You suck! We are the champions!" I am mystified by the supposed alchemy that endows this seemingly random and meaningless superiority. It's like a neighbor and myself deciding that on cloudy days I win and on sunny days he wins. So, I walk outside on a sunny day, and my neighbor appears, smiles, and says, "You suck! I rule!" How much sense does that make?

Another aspect of sports is that some folks somehow enjoy having permission to kick the snot out of someone else. Maybe it's a character flaw, but I don't like hitting, kicking, or hurting anyone. I don't like getting hit either. I've noticed a lot of sportsniks really dig that kind of contact, though. Sometimes the rougher the better. Freaks.

My childhood is littered with events where I had to play a game of one sort or another, usually for P.E., and some clod just wiped the floor with me. For instance, once in a P.E. touch football game, no one was covering me because I was a late bloomer and pretty small at the time, and everyone knew I didn't enjoy sports, so I was essentially invisible. Well, I lined up right across from the quarterback and no one blocked me when the play started. I literally walked over and tore the flag off the quarterback as he was looking for an opening. He looked down with utter shock and said, "You little shit!" Of course, from that point on I had the three biggest buys dogpiling on me for the remainder of the game, with a punch or two thrown in. When I made some comment to the coach about the reaction being a little over the top, he more or less said that's the nature of the game and to cowboy up.

Only one P.E. teacher out the many I had throughout school seemed to understand that P.E. was supposed to be for keeping ALL the kids in shape and not just a time for the jocks to bash the smaller kids heads. The rest of the P.E. teachers I had the misfortune to encounter routinely seemed to enjoy seeing the little guys like me get knocked around. One of the more cretinous one's resulting smile would be in direction proportion to how badly a kid got hurt. This spitwad had me wrestle a kid (from the wrestling team, no less) 40 lbs. above my weight class. The guy put me out of commission for a month and a half by bruising the skeletal muscles on the left side of my rib cage (as the doctor later diagnosed) through an illegal move. As I lay there on the mat trying not to pass out from the pain, I heard the bastard coach even slap his knee as he yucked it up.

Those situations, however, didn't really play into my not understanding the point of and eventual dislike of competitive sports. Way before that stuff was tossed my way in school, the height of boredom would ensue when someone would say, "Let's play some ball!" That was usually my queue to hit my bike and look for fun elsewhere. Oh, I gave it a try, but would always get looks like I had an arm growing from my forehead when, after tossing a ball around for a while, would say, "Um, is this all there is? Just keep throwing this thing around?" No, the approved beatings in school were the just shit icing on what to me was already just a urinal cake.

After high school, I blissfully escaped the world of mandatory participation in any sport, and with the exception of temporarily losing part of the gang to the TV when the chosen team was GOING ALL THE WAY!, sports and I parted ways. We missed each other not at all.

Till recently.

Last season my daughter's soccer coach more or less drafted me to be a referee. I gave it a try because there was a need, and I was OK with helping given there wasn't much of an alternative. But, dear Lord, I loathe it. I just don't have the mind for it or the interest, so paying attention to the minutia of the ball crossing a boundary and who kicked it last, and then putting up with argumentative parents catcalling from the sidelines (and always only if their team is losing), is a regular trip through an outer circle of hell. I just wanna watch my kid enjoy herself from the sidelines. But, when it's for the kids, sometimes you just shut up and deal.

Oh, but sports had bigger plans. It wasn't done with me yet.

A week or so ago, there I was, enjoying one of our wonderful gatherings of friends and neighbors, having a cold one, shooting the breeze, and someone said, "Hey! Guess what! We're gonna form a softball team! Hey, [Yahmdallah], ya up for it?!?"

Pause.

"Um, no. But, hey, more for you!"

"Oh C'mon! It'll be great! Just get out your glove and show up. It'll be a blast!"

Thinks I: Yeah, like carving tribal tattoos into my own sober flesh with a Philips-head screwdriver would be a blast. But says I, "No, really, I'm not much of a sports guy."

"But it doesn't matter how well you play! This is just for fun!"

I've heard that promise in the dark before. Trust me, the second everyone has a couple beers in their system and a pop fly is missed, or someone strikes out easily, we will blow past the fun barrier with extreme ferocity accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Again, some folks kinda like this kind of fighting and yelling. It's how they relieve stress, maybe. Not I. So, here I am again, smack dab in a circle of folks looking at me like I'm just not quite right, virtually back in high school hell. Why can't I just get with the game?, they wonder.

Because I hate the game. Got it? Anything that thrashes between thunderously boring and snarlingly tense is just not my idea of getting the ya yas out, k? So what if we won? Or they did? Does this result in something useful or tangible like free beer or gratuitous nudity? A better parking space in the parking lot? Heads on spears for that extra Martha Stewart touch in the landscaping?

If I am stricken with the desire to throw a ball for fun, and so far this has occurred maybe one and a half times in my life, I'll go out back with the dog, because HE enjoys the hell out of it and could care less if I throw it right or left or if I can catch it at a crucial moment. Better yet, he won't throw that sucker back at me. You throw something at me, I duck. That's it. My fight-or-flight system offers no other alternatives. Best of all, my dog won't stroll up, drop the ball, and say, "I wish I could give you what you're missing by not playing sports," which someone once said to me, with all good intentions, of course. But I gnawed on that one for a long while and eventually came to the conclusion that I am so completely devoid of any desire or interest in competitive sports that I can't think of a single thing I would gain from them (outside of a bruise or two). It would be like an alien species saying to me, "Y'know, you humans just don't know what you're missing by not having a third arm protruding from your chest like we do. It just makes mealtimes so much less of a hassle." I grant from their perspective I have some sort of hole in my life, but from my side, it's just another day in paradise, damnit.

So, these days, I chuckle darkly when I think of that great quote of Michael Corleone's in Godfather III: "Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in."

I wonder how I'm going to get out of this one.

(Apologies to those of you from my crew who read this blog, btw.)

Sideways

As everyone and their pet turtle have opined, this is an enjoyable little movie. A truly compelling narrative that doesn't involve things going boom is a rare occurrence in American movies it seems. I'm not necessarily complaining about that because I like things that blow up real good.

No, more to my point, a compelling narrative about the little moments in a realistic depiction of everyday life is one of the hardest pieces of fiction to create, because it can easily collapse into a boring account of toenail trimmings and flatulence. For instance, I think that's what happened with Alexander Payne's previous movie, About Schmidt. Throughout About Schmidt, we follow a basic sad sack who's just retired only to discover that his major moment of breaking free from the chains that bind him is the ability to pee standing up after his wife dies (she forbade him due to the common male condition of "mystery stream" where the first shot of the morning can go anywhere - see Me, Myself & Irene for a hilarious depiction of said condition). The only fun, outstanding moment in that flick is when a very nekkid Kathy Bates hops into the hot tub with Schmidt, thinking she's going to get a little. Other than that, I wondered why Payne just keeps picking on this poor schlub until the credits roll. Sideways manages to achieve the correct ratio between revealing moments and pedestrian moments.

Two buddies go on a weeklong wine tasting road trip through California's wine country prior to the wedding of one of them, as a sort of last hurrah. For the guy about to be married, this last hurrah means boinking anything with a concave surface and a pulse (and you get the idea that a pulse might be optional). The other guy is recently gaping-wound divorced, is facing the possible final rejection of his latest failed novel (a 700-plus page opus to painful relationships, natch), and hides his alcoholism behind wine snobbery.

Neither of these guys are in a "good place," as it were. This setup scrapes up against a bias I've developed towards stories with nothing but flawed characters, so this movie walked a fine line with me. The big trend in postmodern writing seminars is filling the space between the bindings with mottled and broken characters utterly lacking noble motives because supposedly this makes them more organic and real, and avoids the traps of the supposed one-dimensional characters of commercial fiction (see Dean Koontz). Well, compost heaps are organic and real, but no one wants to spend a lot of time in their presence - a little factoid that our postmodern lit weenies would do well to become acquainted with. The primary success of Sideways is that it makes these human trainwrecks likeable (or at least entertaining), and thus we care about what happens to them and those they meet. In other words, their foibles do not define them (as in bad postmodern novels (*koff* DeLillo *koff*)), their foibles are just part of the mix. This movie is not afraid to be funny, and manages to be funny without betraying the characters or their situation.

As indicated by the Oscar nominations and critical praises, the bright candy shell of this movie is the stellar acting. Paul Giamatti's reaction when he discovers his (character's) ex-wife is pregnant is one of those moments movie buffs will carry in memory from that point on. My wife exclaimed out loud in response to it. I think a couple of the plants in the room behind me wilted in empathy. Somewhere out in the neighborhood a lonesome coyote howled.

The movie is a hard "R" for lotsa sexual situations that even young teens should probably be shielded from lest their little souls be scarred from the gestalt of adult woogiewoogie. A recent novel I read, The Stupidest Angel by Michael Moore, has a great warning in the intro pages to the effect that the book contains bad words that grandma wouldn't approve of and sex scenes between people over the age of 40. This same counsel would definitely apply to Sideways.

Oh Crap

Do I hear that REM song keening away in the distance? "That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane…"

This bug even got sent to the Middle East? Crikey.

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Update:

Uh oh, they're telling us not to panic. That's never good.

The Corporation

Been looking forward to this documentary because the reviews were good, and while I think capitalism is pretty nifty and all that, I do think corporations hold and wield too much power these days. This documentary explains that and why, but...

Gad, I'm a lefty and this thing was so far left of me, I had to glance to the right to see if it was visible on the event horizon that way, too. They don't come right out and endorse socialism, per se, but they gesticulate at it like someone playing charades at gunpoint. Look, socialism just doesn't work as the primary solution engine of an economy or even a culture. No, a good mix of market/privately held concerns and some publicly held institutions is the healthiest possible situation.

The flick does a good job of explaining the problems of privatizing everything, to its credit. There are two mind-blowing examples of corporate overreach which can't be described as anything other than evil:

- The World Bank forced Bolivia to privatize their water system before allowing loans to improve the same. The company (based San Francisco - can't find the name easily and I don't take notes during movies, k?) that was contracted to do it had laws passed that claimed they owned ALL the water in the country, including any rainwater that fell from the sky. Then they pulled an Enron-like shortage scam and overcharged for the water. Well there was a revolt and things got fixed, but Jesus Christ Almighty. Two people lost their lives, and many were maimed for life during this revolt, by the way.

- RiceTek patented basmati rice, evidently a staple in India, and even altered the seeds they sold so the plants that grew were sterile and would not produce more seeds. You wonder which of Dante's circles of hell the bastards who thought that one up will spend eternity. Hopefully it involves George W. Bush reading poetry about choking on a cracker and cell walls festooned with nude photos of Karl Rove.

But, the film is so freakin' lefty, only lefties are gonna see it. Now they do include guys from both sides giving their point of view, but like Fox Pretend News, you have no doubt as to the agenda of the filmmakers. Had this been a bit more balanced, it would have been an important film. Well, it is an important film, but if you wrap fish guts in newspaper, no one's gonna wanna read the paper anymore. Alas.

The official site of the film is here if you just wanna poke around and not commit to two hours of talking heads splainin things atcha.

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Update:

The first commenter to this post pointed out that companies have been altering seeds to grow sterile crops for quite a while. My bad. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe the farmers might want this as a feature. Lots of farmers like to rotate crops, and if the old crop always seeded, maybe they would be dealing with mixed crops all the time. I admit having almost no useful knowledge on farming, so these are just all wild guesses on my part. My point is these sterile crops might be what the majority of the customers want. I simply don't have enough info to offer, and I'm not interested enough to research it.

The commenter also said I was a loose canon, I presume based on the version of hell that I painted. Well, that would just be one of my versions of hell. I had originally worked in Noam Chomsky playing an out-of-tune banjo, just to throw in an unrepentant lefty with the unrepentant tighty-righties, but the line didn't have the same snap, so Noam got the ax. (Though to be a worse hell for me personally, there would be bagpipe music accompanied on pipe organ rather than a bad banjo.)

That aside…

What was not in this movie, but is my primary concern with American corporations, is all the quasi-monopolies that have sprung up. Fair competition is the lifeblood of capitalism and these monopolies interfere with that.

In the recent years, I've seen three examples of corporate consolidation into monopoly-like entities that have been to my detriment as a consumer - I get an inferior product, or the same product at a drastically ballooned price when the production of said product hasn't risen at the same rate.

When I first moved to my house, there were many small power companies that were competitive and offered electricity and natural gas at decent prices. For some reason that I've never been able to suss out, in one year they were all bought by the same monolithic national utility. I do know it had nothing to do with the financial viability of the little power companies; an article in the paper at the time showed they were all running nicely in the black. After this consolidation, the new big boy in town said prices had to rise so that they could stay in business, which was all bullshit of course, the profit margins weren't where the company wanted them, so we all got gouged. My utility bill has more than doubled in this time. This is unacceptable for something so crucial to our daily existence. These folks can make a profit, as far as I'm concerned, but gouging on necessities is immoral.

The other two examples are lesser issues, because they have to do with media, which is not a necessity of life.

My cable bill is twice what it used to be, and remember, deregulation of cable was supposed to lower prices. Ha. There has been no discernable change in quality and quantity in what I get over cable. And the physical network was in place, so what's the reason prices have doubled? There aren't any. There's just no competition to drive prices down.

The example that hits me hardest in the soft underside of my soul is the demise of radio. I was raised on a robust, rockin' radio scene where all sorts of great music was there at the turn of a dial. We all know about the lame, commercial-laden mush that we now have, in part due to radio quasi-monopolies, but also due to the music industry's accompanying consolidation into 5 companies, and the brain-dead bottom line approach to selling music, as if it were Cheetos or something. Back in the day, a song could break in one city's market or through one DJ's influence, and based on that popularity it might make it nationwide - effectively circumnavigating the omnipresent payola system the music companies use to push hits. But, now that we have just a couple companies homogenizing the whole nation, and everyone has the same basic radio stations, the system locks out any methods of hearing good songs outside the ones the music companies want to push. I imagine this situation will correct itself - market self-correction being one of the benefits of a capitalist system - and this correction time will allow the internet to get on its feet as a popularization and distribution system, which is a good thing. But I sure miss my music. The AM radio station I praised recently is already off the air. I am alone. Where are you Baba O'Riley? {Sigh}

In Praise of the Overplayed

Y'know how we all have abandoned artists who got played to death on the radio? We can't be blamed, though, because on the 4,327.5th hearing of "Billie Jean" (besides conjuring up unwanted thoughts on its true meaning since it's now obvious that Michael is a pretty serious pedophile who likes little boys and isn't Billie Jean kind of a masculine name?) we just can't stand that great bass groove any more damnit! It's ruined!

Still, I'd like to submit that in the same way that muscles that burn from a massive workout eventually feel better and stronger, so too can artists for whom radio wore out their welcome can seem all the more rich later on.

I'm here to make the case for folding these guys back into one's iPod playlist, mix-tapes, homebrew CDs, because they got overplayed for a reason: They were damn good. (And, yes, they're all guys, because the only female artist I'm aware of that got and still gets overplayed is Shania "Sha-nay-nay" Twain.)

John Denver was the first artist I can recall getting so overplayed that I have clear memories of people snapping off the radio in disgust when one of his songs came on. Monty Python even disposed of him (scroll down and select the sample of "Farewell to John Denver") in a hilarious, but rather nasty way (he sued them over it, even). Besides his ubiquitousness on the radio, TV specials and a movie (the still charming Oh, God!), people had other reasons for hating him. A good buddy of mine loathes him because he wrote all those earth-loving hippie anthems, but then wrote a song about flying home to his millionaire's estate "Starwood, in Aspen" where he hoarded gas during the fuel shortages of the 70s. A lot of folks hated him over the gas-hoarding thing, actually. Hunter S. Thompson hated him for many reasons beyond that and was known to walk out his front door and pop off some random shots in the direction of Starwood, which bordered Thompson's estate, in hopes of plugging John by accident. He was also despised for refusing to give autographs to fans, and tried to apologize for the same by naming one of his albums Autograph, but no one appreciated that anymore than his lame excuse for not giving autographs (though I don't recall what it was). A lot of his "I'm sorry" songs were written to Annie in hopes she would forgive him for fucking around with groupies on the road. Finally, though it's not remembered this way anymore, he was intent on getting a ride on the space shuttle, and was even in training at NASA for it, but then Ronnie got elected and said he wasn't going to let a pot smoking hippie on the shuttle, so he sent a teacher in his place, and we all recall how that went. Apparently John was destined to die in an aircraft accident.

All that shite aside (and considering that most of us have a laundry list of things we're not proud of in our own lives), the dude had some great songs. "Sunshine on my Shoulders" is still hauntingly beautiful, as are "Annie's Song" and "Rocky Mountain High." Not a single song on his last, and best, anthology will be a stranger to anyone who was forming memories in the 70s. (And, oddly, he's nude on the cover photo, perhaps an acknowledgement of his favorite state in which to mow his lawn. Was it the susurration of 2-stroke engine exhaust gently wafting across his scrotum the reason for this preference? The mind boggles.) Anyway, I dare anyone except my buddy with the grudge about "Starwood, in Aspen" (which does not appear on this disc!) to give this a listen. I'll bet you find yourself glad you did. I think you'll also be surprised how eclectic his songs were in both subject, performance, and arrangements. And - most of all - that voice. Wow.

For a while you couldn't get away from the Bee Gees' chipmunk disco invasion. At one point the Bee Gees had branched out on so many side projects with other artists that even when the radio wasn't playing a Bee Gees song, it was playing something they'd written and/or produced. You could go a solid hour on the radio and hear nothing but brothers Gibb products. By the time they released "Tragedy," it was one.

Besides the hailstorm of Bee Gees songs feeding the growing resentment against them, their music publishing company was notoriously cheap, and all the their album pressings and cassette tapes sounded like shit. Many who heard the songs on the radio and ran out to get their own copy probably wondered what the hell had happened in the transition. Even the first CD releases sounded like they'd been mastered by distilling the sound through a wall of cotton.

Their latest anthology and the megalith Saturday Night Fever soundtrack (that had been originally recorded as a straight Bee Gees album until the movie producers begged enough and tossed enough money at them to make it their soundtrack) are both beautifully remastered and sound great. If you can't bring yourself to buy Saturday Night Fever yet again (and don't try to pretend you didn't buy it at least once), there's a good chance your local library has a copy. Go have yourself another night on Disco Mountain. (Relish again the horror of "A fifth of Beethoven." Yeah, baby!)

Phil Collins. The mere mention of the name causes some music lovers who owned radios in the 80s to grow pale and get moist around the eyes. Their chin might even quiver a little. Phil probably has achieved the status of the most overplayed artist of all time, even though Barf Brooks tried his damndest to reach that goal. Like the Bee Gees, while his own projects were all over the air, both Genesis and his solo stuff, he was doing soundtracks AND side projects with Philip Bailey (Earth, Wind and Fire), Eric Clapton, Howard Jones, and Robert Plant(!!). And then he hit his power ballad phase. You could detect DJs actively suppressing gags while introing his songs, the door to the studio open so they could bolt to the employee lounge as soon as the needle hit the groove. The bitter taste so lingers with some that during the initial screenings of Disney's Tarzan (for those of you in the cheap seats, Phil did the songs), I could look back into the audience and see some parents straining Clockwork Orange-style to avoid lapsing into a seizure. To those of you that have gotten past the Phil overload, whose nervous systems are no longer flooded with Phil antibodies, I just gotta say that his first two solo albums - Face Value and Hello, I Must be Going - were in a league of their own. Nothing else sounded like them, then or now. They were unique blends of Phil's fantastic drumming, the fabulous horn section of "Earth, Wind and Fire" who were pushed way beyond what they did in their own band, and big, ambitious songs. Also, the two Genesis albums from that time are classics: Abacab and the eponymous Genesis. (Oh, and you Peter Gabriel fans are right, that the Phil's Genesis is incomparable with Peter's, but this is about Phil, so grab a beer and relax.)

For all of these, if you don't own them already and if you just don't wanna pop for the CDs on the basis of my advice alone (and I'm not very hurt by that), hit the library, go to a used CD store that'll let you preview them, or borrow them from a buddy. Someone you know will have them, but you have to be discreet about it and don't ask them in front of a crowd or all you'll get is denials. Even listing to the samples you'll find at the end of the links above may suffice. But, rediscover these guys. They rocked and you know it.

Thumbnails on Koontz's paperback series Frankenstein and Robin William's sci-fi flick The Final Cut.

Koontz has kicked out yet another readable yarn: Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Prodigal Son. It's aimed at the small attention span set, but then that makes it the perfect book for soccer practice, beach trips, and other times when you are required to be somewhere where your attention is as fractured as a cracker on a toddler's high chair tray. (Went around the block for that one, didn't I?)

What's cool is it doesn't begin with the premise, "Oh that stuff that Mary Shelley wrote about never happened," which most writers would take just to make it easy on themselves. No, it says she just wrote the story on stuff she'd overheard at parties. It really happened in Austria not <Bela Lugosi accent>Transylvania</Bela Lugosi accent>, and the process conveyed near immortality on the Monster. The monster is a logical extension of what Shelley's tortured being that escaped to the frozen wastelands in despair would eventually become.

This is all tossed into the middle of a series of serial killings in Anne Rice land: New Orleans. Victor Fronkensteen, who's managed to extend his life through what he learned creating the monster, now lives there and is still cooking things up on the slab. One is a purposely-created autistic monster, because Victor wants to harness the intense concentration of autistics provided he can overcome the other problems of autism. Sort of like a well-adjusted Rainman who can break Volkswagens in half.

So this book is a big gumbo of wild ideas, chases, and even a cute homage to the Addams Family.

For those of you who just like a good yarn (without a lot of knit one, pearl two), check it out.

Oh, and the reason this is in novel form at all is because some TV production company spliffed the deal of the decade. They had Scorsese, yes Martin himself, set to direct because he liked Koontz's script, but then they made a bunch of changes neither liked, so they bailed and hence the novelization of the series. Memo to production executives: If you fuck things up enough that a giant of movie directing and a giant of fiction writing both abandon the project, perhaps you're doing something wrong and should consider a career in fast food or a professorship a gender studies dept (I think there will be a vacancy at CSU in Boulder soon).

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The Final Cut is one of those near-miss flicks that sci-fi fans will gloomily include in their DVD collection, and mainstream viewers who rent it because of Robin Williams, if they manage to watch the whole thing, will wonder, "What the fork?"

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT: What I'm going to reveal is, to me, some Capt. Obvious stuff given the nature of the intro rules on the "Cutters" - the people whose job it is to edit the deceased's recorded memories into a "re-memory" for their loved ones to cherish and enjoy. But for those of you who like to go unsoiled into that good night, surf away NOW.

The biggest sin of this movie is the pacing is glacial, which is meant to convey a feeling of foreboding and weightyness, but the actual result is to make one glance at the clock a lot or to study Robin William's face for reasons as to why it never quite gels esthetically. The acting is very understated to the point of being nearly nonexistent, and I bring this up only to scoff at the director's praise of the same (in the DVD extra features). He talks about how on the page the characters weren't really all that much but the actors just made them come to life, particularly Mira Sorvino (whom I love and inadvertently left off of my "will see just 'cause she's in it" list in an earlier post). Well, dude, they're just as flat as they were on the page, sorry to say.

But, it's a fun sci-fi idea, and we fans will forgive a lot when it comes to poking the soft gooey center of THE BIG IDEA.

See, in the movie, parents can have a chip planted in a baby's brain before birth, at a high price, that will connect up with the neurons and then record every moment of their lives, which can be loaded onto a computer for viewing after their death. This chip is undetectable so no one knows who has them and who doesn't. One of the conflicts is that people don't like that fact that half the population are recording devices that catch every detail they witness, which makes them unwitting stars in someone else's drama, and eventually viewable by the corporation that provides this technology.

Robin Williams' character is renowned among "Cutters" because he'll take on the nastiest jobs - meaning he will take the memories of someone whom everyone knew was an evil bastard, and edit out all the bad stuff and create a "good parts only" "re-memory" of the cretin's life. This is because Robin has a nasty SECRET in his past, which is spelled out in the first scenes of the movie, so it's not a secret to us, the viewers. And, right before that, as mentioned above, we get the rules that "Cutters" must live by, the primary one being that "Cutters" cannot have the Zoe Implant, as it's called, that records their life. So, here's the spoiler, it's pretty freakin' obvious that Robin has a Zoe Implant. Which is the other reason why this movie is drudgery to watch. There are no big surprises because we're given HUGE HINTS on the two primary plots of the film that only the most brain-dead viewers would miss. It reminds me of that great blonde joke where a blonde is descending a staircase, sees a banana peel lying there on one of the stairs, and says with resignation, "Oh no. Not again." The outcome is as inevitable as the treatment of a liberal guest on "Hannity and Colmes."

Still, sci-fi fans won't be warned away. We want our sci-fi, damnit, and we'll bore ourselves silly to get it. Btw, the movie is only an hour and a half long, so not much valuable lifetime is lost. But watch this in the bowels of the night when you can't sleep or something, don't waste a sunny day or miss a good party for this one.

Two final caveats:
1) Though a very flawed film in its own right, Brainstorm did this concept much better and is way more fun. I suggest that determined sci-fi fans see this one, too, if they haven't already.
2) The central secret of the icky guy whose memories William's "Cutter" is cleaning up is not appropriate for children, plus there's some pretty direct boinkage footage (just to make the point that ALL of someone's memories are recorded and viewable to a "Cutter").

Rock on wich'yo bad self.

Do the Evolution

When will this issue go away? Hasn't it already inherited enough wind?

As a Christian, I believe that God created everything. However, the means by which He did it could include the way it's described in Genesis (though I think that story is an allegorical version of the literal events), through evolution, or by some other means not described yet. Moreover, who cares?

I spent a couple days thinking about how I could gas on about this for a post so I could then lead into linked articles, but realized I should just point to the articles that handle this topic much better than I could, and be done with it.

However, I have one point to make before you go.

In the same way that many fundies are trying to push their religious views on everyone, many profs in the sciences in college do the same thing. Anthropology is the biggest offender as I've heard profs say outright that belief in God or anything spiritual automatically marks you as an idiot, and unworthy as a scholar. Is that not evangelism for an unprovable point of view? Biology profs, though not as rabid as Anthro profs, are the other big offender in this group. What's interesting is that you go over to the physics and astronomy departments, you'll find many more profs - even something close to a balance - who will allow as much evidence points toward the possibility of a creator as points away. I find that most telling of all.

So, dear God, please let's teach evolution in schools. Creationism is pure bunk and its boosters can be best characterized as the poor blindfolded guy helping describe the elephant who has discovered the anus. And let's all avoid evangelism pro and con about God in the classroom. Just the facts, ma'am.

Roger Ebert says this better: 'Job vs. the Volcano': Faith vs. science in IMAX

As does Paul Krugman: An Academic Question
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The Time I Got Arrested for Christmas

I wasn't a bad teenager, followed the rules mostly. The height of my illegal activities was lighting fireworks off-season, occasionally being out after curfew (our town would run the tornado warning sirens at ten o'clock to signal it was time for all kids to go home), and having disc gun wars in the high school at night. The sneakiest guy in our gang was ironically the most trusted by the teachers, and he'd managed to get a complete set of keys to the school because when they lent them to him to get supplies for a school activity, he'd have the key duped while on the errand. Crap like that would never have even occurred to me, I think to my credit. Note to those who might follow in our juvenile tracks, though I don't recommend it: Most schools have these metal gates they pull across the middle of the hallways, for who knows what reason; one of the guys encountered one at a dead run; the sound of his impact was phenomenal.

By the time I got old enough to get into real legal trouble for such things, I'd had the presence of mind to stop doing borderline things - with one big exception.

TLD: Well, there is another exception I don't blame myself for, as it was really a sting operation. Y'see, when Ronnie became the pres, he forced the whole country to raise the drinking age (which I disagree with to this day) and to crack down on drunk driving (ostensively a good thing). The local police used this new opening to do things I think pushed the envelope of what's legal. They would go around to all the bars (many of which were restaurants, too) and mark all the cars in the parking lot with reflector tape, then as they cruised around, they would pull over anyone with reflector tape on their car. I think literally everyone in the whole town got dragged down to the station for prints and pictures that year. (Our family joked that we were gonna get our mug shots and use them for our Christmas cards.) The upshot of that tactic was people started parking at adjacent buildings and walking to the bar. The only cars in the parking lot would be out-of-towners who didn't know the score.

Since that particular brush with the law doesn't count in my book, the one big exception to my law-abiding adulthood began inauspiciously on Christmas Eve. I threw a party to get everyone together since nearly everyone was back home for the holidays. It was a grand success. Heck, a few of the parental units even cruised through, as most of us had good relationships with our 'rents. A detail that would prove to be ironic later (in the Alanis Morissette sense) was my mom's date for the night was the State Sheriff. (When I asked later how she could bring a cop to MY party where there might be underage drinking, she said that he was OK with that, but would have busted us big time had anyone whipped out a joint. [Heavy sigh.])

So, the party had wound down, and it was just me, a buddy of mine, and his younger brother. (One of the cool things about our group is that our younger siblings who were all roughly four years younger had all befriended one another, so we usually had this two-generation thing going at our parties. 'Twas fun. And we could keep an eye on 'em.) We were still ready to rock (I think we all had nightshift jobs, and so this was our daytime, really), and so started tossing off ideas about what to do next. My apartment was in the center of old downtown and one of the bros said we should find the tunnels everyone had heard about underneath the historical buildings. In the early part of the 1900s, the whole town flooded and ruined every building, so they just condemned all of them and built on top of them, leaving a maze of catacombs beneath all the buildings.

A block away, one of the hotels that had been built in the 1800s was slated to be demolished, so we figured we could get into the tunnels there. We walked right in because none of the doors were locked, and started looking for a passage to the tunnels. The whole time we chattered about what a shame it was that the hotel was going to be torn down, as it was still in great shape from what we could see, and we thought they should restore it instead (this is called foreshadowing).

About twenty minutes into our search, three cop cars came to a screeching halt outside, their strobing lights converting the interior of the dark hotel into a discotheque. As kids, we had evaded these guys all the time, and so immediately without discussion headed upstairs to hide in a room, thinking they would never find us considering all the rooms they would have to search. We hadn't counted on their following our footprints in the dust on the ancient carpets.

They put us in a police car and let us sit. Because of an incident with one of our crew a couple years hence, we knew they were recording us to see if we'd incriminate ourselves, so we purposely talked about cartoons, girls (just making up names in hopes we would happen across one of the cop's daughter's names), and other silly stuff because we knew someone at the cop shop would have to listen to the whole tape for evidence. Since we were gonna be put through the works, as evidenced by their not letting us go (which initially puzzled us), we thought we'd give them as much unconfrontational grief as possible.

After about a half hour of recording us, they took us to the jail to book us. We stood behind the line on the floor with our hands behind our backs (which they said we'd have to do or they'd cuff us) and answered their questions. We were completely honest and said we were looking for the tunnels and had assumed since the hotel was to be demolished and the doors were open, we'd done nothing wrong. We were informed that entering any building without permission was a crime. "Oh," we said.

We knew enough to be respectful and polite during all face-to-face interactions. Yet, my buddy was seething and having a tough time keeping cool. To his credit he managed to crack only once. We had a little metal "AA" flashlight (kinda like this one) and the cop at the desk unscrewed it slowly with great care, then turned it over on the desk. When the battery clattered out and rolled away, my seething friend said, "I'm glad we didn't hide the cocaine in there, huh guys?!"

Even though we were pretty much sober by that time, we smelled of booze, so they put us in our jail jimmies (bright orange jumpsuits and terrycloth blue slippers) and threw us in the drunk tank.

This drunk tank was essentially a poured concrete cube, with a funnel-sloped floor into a drain. Benches had been formed out of the concrete walls on 3 sides, so we each settled on one and waited for whatever came next. Examination of the room made it obvious that we were being taped again, this time on video. If we talked at all, we made sure it was inconsequential or annoying, so eventually they turned the lights out on us. As it was a windowless cube, it was pitch black sans artificial illumination. My buddy's little bro had already been having trouble with claustrophobia, but when the lights went out he freaked. After calming him a bit, we decided that a hearty round of Christmas carols sung very loud and out of tune was in order, just to be annoying but also to keep freakin' bro distracted. Our third selection was "The Twelve Days of Christmas." When we got to "fiiiiiiive golden riiiiiiings!" on round eight, the lights came back on, and a pair of cop lips w/ requisite mustache poked through the dinner tray slot and shouted, "Shut the fuck up!"

So we did.

I would guess it was about three o'clock in the morning Christmas day when they came and got us one by one for pictures and prints. The policewoman who took the pictures was too short to get a good shot at her angle - I'm 6 feet tall and the shortest of the three - so she had to stand on a chair and squat down to get a proper mug shot. The sight of a tiny police woman squatting sideways on a folding chair, squinting into the viewfinder was just a little more than comical, so I kept grinning through the effort of trying not to laugh out loud. Twice she lowered the camera and warned me that I can't be smiling in a mug shot. I promised to attempt to confine my demeanor to the requisite gravity appropriate for the situation, but requested that she not take so long to try and snap a shot.

At about five they came and got my buddy who'd made the cocaine remark for additional questioning. We found out after we were out that one of the police had the excess inventory from his pawn shop stored in one of the rooms of the hotel, and was under the impression we were out to steal it, and that my buddy was our ringleader. Apparently they've got a good five minutes of said buddy laughing his ass off on the "confession" tape.

In the morning they released us to go spend Christmas with our families, our court date set a couple months later.

We went to court, and though we were to be tried separately, we offered to be tried at the same time and plead guilty to the charge of "illegal entry." That sound you hear is any lawyers reading this collectively sucking in their breath at the stupidity of what we thought was a grand gesture. Since we agreed to help the court move along and cop to the charges fair and square, we thought they would go easy on us. Ho ho! Besides the fact that even a good judge would've bent us over anyway for not having a lawyer (as a lawyer later informed us), little did we know that we were in front of one of the most crooked judges ever to sit on the bench in our little burg. Before it became a national obsession with the current Republicans, our little 95% Republican Midwestern town gave opportunity and favors to any Republican when it came to any and all appointed government offices. (It was an open secret that if you wanted to work in the capitol or any of the county or city offices, you'd have to register Republican because all the employment offices called over to the voter registration office to see how you were registered. If you were anything but Republican, you never got an offer for a government job, period.) This judge had gotten the bench because he was the only Republican available when the slot needed filling. He was later removed from the bench when it came to light he was trading light sentences in exchange for sexual favors with the pretty girls who found themselves in court. Oh, and this guy was a 300 lb, 5 foot 2 bald troll with bad teeth, coke bottle glasses, a chewing tobacco habit, and a tendency toward voluminous flatulence. If I recall, he rattled off two or three multi-octave honkers during our hearing alone.

This gassy little cretin threw the book at us. We each got $400 fines, 10 days suspended jail sentences and a year on probation, plus a criminal record to boot. (Though actually, it did me more help than good. When I was required to tell potential employers about the incident, it usually broke the ice as they got a good laugh out of it. One guy who was giving me a lie detector test (for a store that sold pocket-sized electronic gadgets) had to stop the polygraph tape so he could compose himself enough to continue the test. His favorite part was the suspected cocaine-filled flashlight.

The hotel itself was restored and stands to this day. It's awful pretty, too. One of the complicating factors to our story is that someone had just bought it for restoration when we wandered through it. He had called the police and the judge and asked them to go hard on us, even though we hadn't broken or taken anything, nor had we intended to. I told him this myself when he demanded we go talk to him, which I alone stupidly did, and basically got yelled at for a half hour for my efforts. The only thing we did, besides enter what we assumed was a doomed building without permission, was leave some footprints in the dust, as you might recall. I have never been a patron of that hotel or its restaurant, since I don't enjoy the thought of lining the pockets of the owner who went out of his way to mess with our planets.

The moral of the story is NEVER go to court without a lawyer. Ever. For any reason. Even if you're going to fuck the judge to get a lesser sentence. Have that shark in a suit with you at all times. Look what it did for O.J. and Robert Blake. Keep your eye on the sparrow, my ass. Keep your remora lips firmly attached to the sharks, I say.

Oh, and don't get busted walking around an abandoned hotel in the dead of night. Apparently it's illegal.

I never did see the catacombs, btw.

Rap

Do you know anyone who likes rap? Or, to be more precise, do you know anyone who's NOT between the ages of 14 and 17 who likes rap?

The only person I've ever come across personally who likes rap was the loser kid across the street who moved away from home only after he impregnated a pastor's daughter, dropped out of high school, and lost his driver's license for getting pulled over all the time. I describe this kid because the only kids I've seen who like rap are all badasses in the making, too.

I have never met an adult who likes rap. Ever. I've read some music critics who do, but almost to a one they're enthralled with the Identity Politics of rap so much that you can't tell if they honestly like the sound, or if they just like the fact that black kids from the street are the artists. Yes, these critics talk about how much they like a cut or two, but to a person they always wax on about how cool it is authentic black people from the street are expressing themselves, how it's the poetry of the urban experience and white man just better bend an ear or else. (Which is rich because all of these critics are white guys.) It's as if Prince, In Living Color, Boys II Men, Fishbone, or (heaven forbid) Hootie and the Blowfish (Darius Rucker) don't count as black artists with an authentic voice.

There was a point in American history where rock and roll was actively suppressed by some parts of the establishment, because of racism and because some thought it was just too sexual. But, for the most part, people of all ages embraced rock and roll, and eventually all resistance faded entirely. By the time the Beatles came to America, rock was THE music of the mainstream.

Rap is now, what, 20 years old? And still, I meet NO ONE who likes it. Only dubious-looking, pissed off kids blast the stuff from their cars.

TLD: Let me drop aside here and say I've met people who like Will Smith's stuff, but they'll always chime in and say that's because it's musical - it has a tune, and his delivery is more melodic than the pissed off, about to pop a cap in yo' ass barrage that most rappers put out there. In short, they don't think of it as rap. Of course, "real" rappers constantly dismiss him as a rap artist and say he's not "black enough," whatever the hell that means. Again, Prince anyone? Stevie Wonder? Marvin Gaye? Seal? Lenny Kravitz? Hello?



So here's the primary mystery to me: Who listens to this stuff? And if it's no one you know, how come it's so pervasive in the movies, TV, and popular music?

Anyone?

Bound and Closer

Gotta tell ya, I love Netflix. I resisted at first because I've been burned a lot from being an early adopter of new technology and/or business models. But enough friends whom I trust said to take the dive, and when our last good video store closed leaving only Blockbuster in town, I committed. What's cool it that it now makes sense to watch older movies I've missed because they just don't release movies fast enough to keep up with my demand, and I don't pay extra for it.

This is why I watched Bound, the first movie made by the guys who did the Matrix series (the Wachowski bros, or now bro and sis as one of them had a gender reassignment). I had avoided it because it looked pretty much like a sleazy, rote mob caper, only with lesbians instead of Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci. Well, I was right, that's all it was. Actually, no, it was even less than that, because it was a shameless retread of Blood Simple, including someone dying dramatically in a big puddle of goo. The final stake through its celluloid heart was Jennifer Tilly. Gad she's terrible. She can't act, her voice peels paint, and she resembles that poor soul who in high school stalked/lusted after the star football hunk, but ended up getting impregnated by and married to the guy who ends up being the security guard on the night shift at Walmart, forever thereafter only to be seen in way too revealing halter tops, with a cigarette butt dangling from her lip. I mean, bless her heart that sometimes she gets cast as "glamorous," because if Billy Crystal can convincingly play the romantic lead in films, anything's possible. Yet, I just kept thinking why didn't they cast someone actually alluring? Gina Gershon as her lover, though, was excellent; I'd love to see her way more often in the movies; what a face.

I still like Netflix, though. Can't blame them.

I knew I wasn't bellying up to a great movie when I fired up Mike Nichol's Closer, but Natalie Portman (speaking of glamorous) has entered my short list of actors whom will merit my seeing of anything they're in.* (Her sweet and believable portrayal in Garden State of a young woman who is forced to wear a helmet at her job in a lawyer's office because she has epilepsy won me over.) I watch movies that I've been sufficiently warned about primarily to see precisely when the train goes off the tracks, what it smacks into, and how many bodies are strewn about in the end. In Closer you can feel the train wobble when Jude Law tells Julia Roberts that he "must see her" meaning he wants to screw her (set piece two), but the squealing steel and slamming cars truly ensue the moment that Jude Law and Clive Owen have IM/chat sex (set piece four). The disconnect in this movie is that everyone acts as though they're talking about love, but their fixation is simply who's having sex when, where, and with whom. Because of this odd focus that only characters in a contrived fiction would have, the whole movie feels like a clinical exploration of a fabricated alien corpse.

I've never met people who act remotely like this outside of fiction, with a couple possible exceptions. A few gay people that I've been acquaintances with, and who were not in committed relationships, lived in this state of constant sexual musical chairs partner-swapping that seemed to be primarily about sex and jealousy, and not about love even though they, like the characters in this movie, used the language of love when discussing sexual territory. And though I don't have any real, personal experience with swingers, via exposure that I have had to that world - through articles and documentaries - it seems to also center around sexual gratification as a second-best replacement for real love and intimacy. Had this fiction been about swingers, the new phenomenon of group sex parties (a whole different kind of flash mob, har har), or a gay club scene, perhaps it wouldn't have seemed so artificial.

Still, I recommend this movie to fellow movie fanatics just because it's an interesting artifact, and vaguely enjoyable during the viewing. The mechanics of the filmmaking are stellar: nicely shot, well directed, believable acting, looks nice, has a good pace, etc. Natalie Portman and Jude Law are riveting. Clive Owen is serviceable, but you can tell the character type is a stretch. And though she carried the role, Julia Roberts spent the whole time looking like she had just chugged a 24 ounce beer bong of Pabst Blue Ribbon and was in that precarious state before one knows whether it's all coming back up, still cold and foamy, or if it's gonna stay down and mingle with the Funyuns^® into a headache-inducing sludge.

Everyone else shouldn't waste their time and should get around to seeing The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind if they haven't already, as it is an authentic and moving exploration of love and relationships.

For Natalie Portman fans I have a small warning (and a mini-spoiler). Since she is so young and just now venturing into adult roles, it's kind of shocking when she peels back her g-string to display her, uh, virtues upon the request of her customer at the strip club. No, you don't see anything as it's blocked Austin Powers style, but seeing someone I still think of as a kid just grin and bare it was kinda harrowing. Being a dad does that to ya.

*The rest of the list of actors whose mere presence will merit my watching the flick: Jeff Bridges, M. Emmet Walsh (when he was alive), Francis McDormand, Matthew McConaughey, Kate Winslet (!!!), Sandra Bullock (even though she doesn't pick the best projects; I just have a crush on her), and Kurt Russell (the most overlooked and underrated great actor of our time, I kid you not). Jude Law is almost on this list, but we'll see; Cold Mountain is on my "not in this lifetime" list (and I hated hated hated the book). William Hurt used to be, but he got caught up in playing the same thing for a while and clearly chose roles for the paycheck on too many occasions. (Besides, Kiss of the Spider Woman put me off of him for a bit, he did such a terrible job. If it weren't bad enough to watch a bleak prison film where a hetero man sleeps with a gay man just because he cleaned out a pant-load of diarrhea while telling pulpy stories about a creepy spider woman, we have to watch Hurt try to queen it up and end up looking like a big doofus strait guy in bad eye shadow pretending to bat for the other team, popping fouls all the way. Was Tim Curry or John Hurt busy? C'mon.) I always find Sally Field interesting as a performer, worthy of her two Oscars, but she tends to pick over-the-top drippy chickflick dramas, which give me the fantods.

The list of actors who will make me actively avoid a movie unless I have another good reason for seeing it: Tom Cruise (how did this big-toothed weasel with the scary sociopathic/scientology stare get to be a star and why is Spielberg encouraging him?), Nicole Kidman (look up "skank" in the dictionary and there's her picture), Sharon Stone (a psycho-betty who perennially claims a Mensa-level IQ but has yet to display it), John Malkovich (for me he always evokes the term "curdled"), Mickey Rooney (hammy enough to make anyone consider turning vegan), Liza Minnelli (she's always looked like an alcoholic gay husband beater with bad breath), and David Strathairn (because he continually plays a craven uberwimp who you suspect is physiologically incapable of growing a pair).
(Kinda merciless, aren't I? Well, keep in mind my snarkiness is based on their persona, as I have no idea what these people are like in person.)

Are those trees, or a forest?

I might be out of the woods with this dread disease - some sort of viral bronchitis with many other joyous side-symptoms. It's going on three weeks for both my daughter and me. We're still hacking like 92-year-old tobacco junkies, with revisitations of earaches, sore throats, and runny noses. My wife just came down with it today. Gad what a plague. Half of the school, teachers and students, are still out. A friend's kids have all developed pneumonia from it, the baby landing in the hospital. The local children's hospital is so full of kids with this, they are forwarding new cases to a hospital out of town. This is Denver, folks, so think about that: A major metropolitan hospital is FULL and sending kids to the burbs for beds. Why is this not on the news? It makes me wonder if the avian flu or Capt. Trips did sweep the nation, would it be missed because the media was still enamored with political scandals? (Can't you just envision that meeting? "Why are the ratings down so drastically? Go investigate!" ...some time passes... "What? Half the population is DEAD? How did we miss that? Oh, look! Bush is signing a bill that will make all doctors liable for murder if they fail to resuscitate emergency room victims! Especially if they're Republicans! Get the liberal reaction to THAT!")

Of course, the medical story in the news is the woman whose feeding tube was pulled, according to her wishes. My take is this kind of thing is exclusively a private family issue. It's too bad the parents and the husband didn't agree, but they didn't, and now this mess. My family is all on the side of living wills and have signed, sealed, and submitted documents that all scream "KICK THE PLUG OUT OF THE WALL, DAMNIT ANYWAY," so this is just a circus as far as we're concerned. We're all Christians by the way. We don't agree with the fundie and Catholic take on this issue (well, to be fair, there are fundies and Catholics on the other side of the issue, but they aren't making the news). They scream about saving her life. If the brain or the body is damaged to where it can't live on its own without life support (which includes a feeding tube), is that truly life? I would expect atheists to chime in on the side of never giving up since they think this is all there is, but for those of us who believe the soul never dies, why would anyone want that soul trapped in a mindless shell for decades? Especially if we don't know if they are suffering or not inside that shell? For some, this goes back to the question of following God's will. The fundies and Catholics chanting outside of the hospice have decided that any human intervention that causes death is de facto thwarting of the will of God. I dunno. Is keeping a body alive through breathing machines and feeding tubes thwarting the will of God? Because if we weren't there to provide such support in the first place, it would die. These issues are complex, and so I feel this should have remained a family issue. But you can't undo what's done. May she rest in peace.

TLD: By the way, one of the real tragedies in the end-of-life hospice world is that the management of pain, say from cancer or inability to eat or sepsis, is a hit-or-miss deal due to the drug war. Because all drugs that do a great job of managing pain are controlled substances, and so are monitored by the DEA, someone's comfort level will be directly affected by their doctor's views of and fears of the DEA. Doctors have to let the DEA know when and how much of any narcotic they prescribe for any reason, thanks to the drug war. The DEA doesn't really pay attention to what the reasons are, but if a doc suddenly throws a yellow or red light from prescribing close to or above set limits, they get a nastygram, a visit, or even have their license yanked if the DEA is taken with a whim to do so. Some doctors are courageous and will prescribe what the patient needs; others have a reasonable fear of the DEA and choose to be safe, but the patient then usually suffers pain that is unnecessary. If you find a loved one or yourself on the long slide down, probe the doctor on their opinion of this issue and find out whether there will be adequate pain management or not. Get specifics on how they intend to manage it and don't accept vague generalities like "we will do our best to make you comfortable." Also, don't wait until hospice care has started to find this out. America is behind both the first and third worlds in this issue because other developed countries have figured out that if someone is terminal, it doesn't matter if they're on heroin or cocaine (both supposedly superior to morphine for pain control - did you know that our military generals cruise into the void on cocaine rather than morphine, for instance), and hospitals in third world countries use whatever works.

I've had little peace myself in the last week or so, staying up all hours, hacking away on the couch downstairs so as to not wake the rest of the family. From the run of Sat through Tues, I had approx 2 hours of sleep per night, incessantly surfing through the dregs of nightowl TV. It's always been a wasteland, but any more it's just, well, sick. Porn is openly advertised, with barely pixilated blurs pretending to hide the naughty bits. All the condom and lube commercials tout a new "warming sensation" chemical, which just makes me wonder two things simultaneously: 1) Are there really people out there whose genitals aren't warm enough whilst in the act, and if so, shouldn't they be seeing a doctor about it rather than applying heat rub on their pink parts?; and 2) who thinks it's healthy to have a chemical that makes perhaps some of the most sensitive tissue on the body experience burning sensations? Aren't burning sensations in our pee pees something most of us actively strive to avoid? Dave Chappelle, though funny, gets old upon the 5th rerun of "I'm Rick James, bitch!" MTV and VH1 are back to playing about an hour or so of videos in the wee hours, but it's mostly (c)rap and hiphop, with rock getting maybe one slot per hour, which makes the ratio of rockin' time to commercial time 1 to 5; how sad is that? To my dismay I've seen NO movies during this sick vacation because my wife wants to see all the movies we have rented (meaning I can't watch them alone), and since the child is home sick, too, we can't watch them during the day. I am in serious withdrawal. I almost watched a Hallmark/Lifetime Special movie the other day, it's that bad.

Because of lack of entertainment options, I've been reading the paper a lot. The local big deal is this schmuck-on-a-stick "humanities" (Identity Politics, Minority Studies - take your pick, they're all the same animal) professor, Ward Churchill, who labeled the victims of 9-11 "little Eichmanns," which means, for those of you in the cheap seats, he called them Nazis. This guy is a prime example of how fucked up these departments have become. If you can mangle logic to the extent that innocent people blown up at work by terrorists equate to evil bastards who purposely killed fellow human beings they had downgraded to animals through massive disassociations and putrid justifications, to quote the late great Bill Hicks, "You ARE Satan." Yeah, Churchill has the freedom of speech on his side to say such idiotic and cruel things, but he has to expect some consequences for the same. Many want this bastard fired, as do I. I don't want him fired for what he said, but for what he represents. If you identify a cancer, cut it out, I say. (Maybe I should just go up to the Boulder campus, find Churchill and cough on him. With his butt habit, this nasty virus would probably take him out in a week.)

Oh, a couple more notes on Churchill just to further emboss how twisted this guy is: He pretends he's a Native American (or an American Indian if that term does not offend) even though there's damn good evidence to the contrary. His claim for being an NA is based on his grandma telling him he was 1/16th Indian once and some tribe giving him honorary membership. Even the tribe that gave him that honorary membership won't go so far as to claim he's actually a Native American, they just had fun partying with him once or twice. Many suspect that he claims to be NA because it provides him the legal protection of being a minority and because apparently some college chicks dig it. He doesn't have a degree in the field he teaches either; he has an art degree (which he employs to create Native American paintings that he sells for cigarette money, natch). His tribal drumming leaves a lot to be desired by all reports, too, as his talent for rhythm is in as short supply as his honesty. You'd think someone living such a warped, corrupt existence would eventually perish from his own asshole rising up and engulfing him out of utter shame. Apparently his first two wives, including the one who has a restraining order on him, concur with opinions approximating this one. His third wife died by wandering into traffic while intoxicated, which friends say was due to her remorse over her marriage to Churchill.

So some say fire the bastard, but I'd like to take it further: Rout the whole damn department. These Identity Politics/Humanities/Minority Studies departments are all just little bastions of hate mongering, and their profs will stand in front of a class and say shit like: "White people have no culture" or "All of white culture has been stolen from people of color." How is this different from a white supremacy rally? You tell me. (One of Churchill's more odious pronouncements of this type (and I paraphrase) is he recommends that yuppies who push their baby strollers up to him and chastise him about his chain smoking should kill themselves and their children if they really want to do the world a favor, because the resources they consume would help about 70 Chinese people. Think I'm kidding? Search down to "Using this method" and read the two following paragraphs.) A while ago these departments pulled of the coup d'etat of making their classes mandatory for graduation. These departments would shrivel like poisonous mushrooms in the bright sun if they were no longer mandatory. That's all it would take. Let's roll.

The other big deal in the news is Bush baby and his minions are continuing their purging of undesirables from public meetings. (Yes, I actually typed those words in America as an American describing the current American government.) They did this during the last campaign stating that since it was a campaign for their reelection, they were in their rights to purge hostiles, which was dubious enough. But now, these are public meetings regarding proposed policy paid for by citizen's taxes. Any and all citizens should be allowed to attend. Even Al Sharpton or Pauly Shore. (Ow, that hurt.) What we have here is bullshit people. This simply shouldn't be happening. I dare anyone to defend this behavior of our elected officials; but think twice if you do, because you have to consider that it might happen to you.

Now some may think I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance if on one hand I can state that college professors should lose their jobs for controversial stances and on the other condemn politicians for curtailing free speech and fair representation. Well, let's give postmodernism yet another heave-ho and hope it will just wander off and die, because context is everything here. On the one hand you have a group of people so rabidly fucked in the head that everyone who's not a self-proclaimed minority victim should euthanize themselves for the greater good (gosh, who's solution does that resemble?), and on the other, you've got a supposedly democratic government actively excluding from participation citizens with differing opinions. In other words, they're the same thing, the same evil: one group declaring the other group is not worthy, and therefore excluding them or (suggesting) extinguishing them. This is not what the dream of our nation is about. We are about liberty, equality, and justice. Let's try to get back to that, huh?

[Deep breath.]

[Cough. Cough.]

The high spot in all this dross was I finally got a copy of Dean Koontz's How to Write Best Selling Fiction, his long out of print and now expensive second cook book. It's pretty darn good. Stephen King's On Writing is still the best, and John Gardner's The Art of Fiction is the other standard-bearer, but this joins them as yet another must-read, if you are into cook books. ("Cook book" is my adopted term for "how to write" tracts.) Koontz's takedown of "literary fiction" and the myth of "The Great American Novel" alone is worth the read, but the highlight is the chapter on plotting. Lotsa good stuff there; good practical advice on do's and don'ts. For instance, one of main characters has to be likeable to give the reader someone to associate to, something that literary fiction authors just can't seem to understand. (I'm looking at you, DeLillo.) And this seems to be obvious with so many real-life parallels. If you're at a party, do you want to be trapped talking to a boorish asshole who cheats on his wife and suggests that yuppies kill their children or would you prefer someone who's fun, upbeat, and tells good stories? Perhaps I'll put some excerpts from it up later (if I can find a way to boil it down). One interesting note is that all three authors mentioned here have little or no patience for the dreck that academia touts as serious fiction, which alone I think proves their mettle and worth.

And, btw, for all the slamming I've done on college academia, I still think everyone should graduate from college if they can manage to. There are many good professors and classes to be had that are invaluable towards having a good and prosperous life. Just watch out for the poltroons is all.

Cheers!

__________
Addendum:
I suggest you read the first comment to this post. Sharon straightens me out on what should have occurred for Ms. Schiavo in accordance to the wishes of the Catholic church.

Sicker'n Hell

I have been laid low with this evil two-part disease floating around Denver. First you get what seems like a cold for a week, then just as you think you're recovering, it goes into your lungs and you're down for the count. It has been going back and forth across my dept. at work for half a year now, making it sound like a TB ward. My daughter's school is half-emptied at the moment - which is significant if you consider the fact that many of the two-income households view elementary school as day care and dump their kid there regardless of how they feel unless the school nurse puts her foot down.

As if to make up for it, my dreams have been vivid and more bizarre than the court of public opinion these days, what with the poor woman and her feeding tube and Wacko Jacko's pedophile circus (you just watch, if he escapes, he'll move to Sri Lanka with that other famous pedophile, Arthur C. Clarke of sci-fii fame). The press doesn't know which way to point its collective pecker.

Also, I usually take times like this to read a difficult or dull old classic because nothing fosters stick-to-it-ivness like the inability to get up and do something else. This time I'm tackling Dracula. I've already tackled the other two big monster classics: Frankenstein and Moby Dick (though Moby Dick is hardly just a monster story, which is true of the other two, too, come too think of it; and btw, Jaws is a direct rip-off homage to Moby Dick, borrowing the plot and most of the major characters). I'm 3/4 of the way through, and it will be my least favorite of the three as the middle section was really rough hoeing. Once the first newly minted vampire is dispatched, that being Miss Lucy, there's a good 20 pages of "what shall we do next?" until someone asks Van Helsing what to do, and he says, "Kill Dracula now, of course," to which they collectively slap their foreheads to indicate "of course" and go after him, then things pick up again. The beauty (or the drag if you're not so inclined to enjoy it) is these novels take huge side-trips into philosophy about the thing they are battling. In Frankenstein, the most eloquent philosophizing is done by the monster itself (which never gets a name, btw).

My eldest daughter has the same ick I do, so we've been consuming way too much TV. She's again taken a huge interest in the classic Star Treks that I have on DVD. Nothing warms my heart more than to see my daughter embracing the classics. We got the movies from the library, but she wasn't as taken with them, and it's obvious as to why. Though some of the movies are great, they never really captured the tone and pacing of the original series. I think back in the day the joy of having Star Trek back in movie form was so thrilling that we tended to overlook how superior the original series was. You can never go home again, it seems.

Hopefully, when I post again, I won't be a solid brick of snot.

"What's the Worst Green Thing You've Ever Had?"

Last night on the way home, one of the radio stations was having people call in and describe the worse green thing they'd ever had - in honor of St. Patty's day of course. (I was channel hopping over to AM to hear some songs and surfed onto the station (obviously FM since they weren't playing music) in time to hear the premise.)

This stirred a memory that I doubt they'd allow onto the air, so I didn't call. However, for your enjoyment, here's the story of the worse green thing I ever had.

I was never one for one-night stands, though still managed to have a few - almost always after losing all sense and proportion due to being wasted. In this case, I was getting ready to head home as the wedding reception post party had wound almost all the way down, and people had partnered off or passed out - or, comically, both. The bride and groom had rented half a floor of rooms, and I wandered from a room that had collapsed into a grope-fest into the remaining noisy party to grab a cold one for the road. Beer in hand, I parked in one of the few places left on the floor. This girl next to me immediately started chatting me up. (Which should have been my first clue as to her motives. Experience has taught me that women will not usually initiate conversation with a male stranger unless they want something - the obvious exception being if he's a major hunksicle, which I am not.)

After about ten minutes of chatter, she hauls off and plants one on me. Just wham, out of the blue, no warning, no gleam in the eye ahead of time, just a full one-and-a-half gainer with no spotter into my face. Had there been flailing tongue involved, I certainly would have selected another spot to enjoy the final brew of the evening, but she had some talent, which is rare enough to have given me pause. (My wife and I estimate that well over half the population is not very good at kissing.) Anyway, after a little inappropriate public display of affection, someone muttered, "get a room," to which she immediately purred, "yeah, let's." Not many unattached men in their early twenties can turn down such an easy conquest, especially while wearing beer goggles.

Off we went to find a room. Not that anyone's proud of this, but people who were in the thralls of lust that weddings tend to evoke* were pairing off in some of the rooms, one couple to each bed, which was clearly what the betrothed had expected to happen and thus provided accommodations to keep all the horny drunks off the road. An unoccupied room was not to be had, so we claimed the empty bed in a room that already contained a couple in the throws thereof on the other bed, who mumbled without unlocking lips their semi-oblivious consent to our crashing there. To say the least, it's a little disconcerting to be doing the deed in the room with another couple doing the same, unless that's what you're into, of course. I am not, even though the events of this story include that very occurrence. But, with the dual shields of booze and the other couple's intense focus on each other, into the breech we leapt, lads.

*Hint for you young single men out there: Weddings are THE place to score. The whole event just does something to a portion of the female contingent; I've witnessed it myownself many times. As a bonus, the liquor is usually provided. (And I'm sure Jesus will bring up my circulation of that little factoid if I make it to the big pre-heaven life review.)

Let me remind you, dear reader, that while you are sitting there reading this in what I assume is relative sobriety, neither of us had the benefit of clear minds, or else I would have noticed the other warning flags going up in addition to the fact that some girl had jumped me moments after met. Yes, I should have been thinking of possible mitigating factors. (Btw, this was before the specter of AIDs. The herpes scare hadn't started yet. Nor had the outrageousness of abdicating responsibility for one's actions while wasted and charging a consenting partner with rape become even a possibility on the legal radar. I had inquired about BC though, and she said she was safe.) She was bombed, my friends, way more bombed than I had the ability to discern, being in the cups myself. So, what happened next you've probably seen a mile off, where I was completely surprised.

Let us join the mash session already in progress:

Her:
"Uuuuh, <---- the internationally recognized sound of passion
uhh,
uuuuuuh,
HURRRGH!" <---- the internationally recognized sound of an impending power hurl

She leapt out from beneath me (had there been Olympic judges present, she certainly would've averaged a 9.7 score for the maneuver) dashed to the can, slammed the door, and proceeded to ralph her brains out. The couple in the next bed had stopped what they were doing and directly after the crushing silence was broken by my paramour's first resonant retch, they burst into guffaws, replete with snorts.

For years after that, I was trailed at parties with the mocking reenactment of:
"Uuuuh, uhh, uuuuuuh, HURRGH!" Particularly if I were having luck at successfully chatting up a young lady. I would say that my buddies were cruel in haunting me with that particular episode in my patchy love life, but sober reflection always leaves me with a good shot of "what the hell was I thinking?" and so I feel I deserved the ugly reminder. It helped to keep me honest and more aware of what I might be getting into, so to speak, and as proof I can say this is the most tawdry stain on my love life to date, as it will remain.

And it serves as my punch line to "what's the worse green thing you've ever had?": A very green girl whom I should have stayed away from had I managed to produce one clear, prudent thought in my bigger head. I take a tiny bit of refuge in the fact that it's at least a better answer to the query than "too much St. Patty's day beer."

Maybe I should have called the station...

Poets

I'm always torn when I encounter a novel that's named after a classic song. Part of me thinks it's cute and digs the cultural reference while the other part cringes because the work has now inherited the baggage of the song.

TLD: For instance, it irked me for years that the song "Shangri-la" on the best album of all time imnsho - A New World Record by the Electric Light Orchestra - had the lyrics "faded like the Beatles on 'Hey Jude'." Urgh! The past purist in me hated that. I'm no longer a purist because it's a form of anal retentiveness that makes silly things annoy you, like direct Beatles references in a favorite song. About the only purist thing left in me is that I don't like to enter a movie showing after the credits have started, for grown-up movies, that is. I'll do it because babysitters are hard to procure and date nights are precious.

But, Douglas Coupland has proven to be deft handling nearly anything literary and allusionary, so I lunged into his latest, Eleanor Rigby, with glee and gusto. Coupland's writing itself still floors me. About the only word I can conjure to describe it is "profound." He is the master of invoking the background music of the universe through a description of someone making jello.

It's not one of his best, those being Microserfs, Generation X (yes, the very one), and Hey Nostradamus!. But, for even lukewarm fans it's a must - if only, at the very least, to discover why the title is borrowed from one of the Beatle's finest.

For those not into literary fiction, I recommend another fun recent read:

The Poet by Michael Connelly. This one's been out for a while, but if it's not yet shown up on your radar, consider this official SONAR contact (to mix metaphors and technologies all at once!). This was a exuberant read even though I'm tiring of the serial killer genre, not only because half the TV shows out there are retreads of Ed Gein/Ted Bundy inspired tales, but also because there's not a lot of variation to the story. It's almost as wrote as "The Hero's Journey," but it would go more like this:

The initiation:
- Future serial killer is abused as a child, typically sexually, but frequent brutal beatings will suffice. Mocking by peers is common as well.
- Future serial killer is overly intelligent but also overly shy and sensitive, and has trouble meeting gurls, at first. (It's never a woman, btw. Women travel a subtler path to the destruction of a target: financial ruin, social ruin, or both - so said victim can live with the full suffering until the end of their days - no quick and easy out like death. God bless 'em!)
- Future serial killer often expresses his brewing sickness by torturing animals to death or starting fires, or both.

The changeling:
- Future serial killer morphs into full-fledged sociopathy if not born that way already.
- Future serial killer forges outer shell personality to pass through the world with the appearance of normality, correctly sensing that the creature they've become would not be accepted by society.

The rise:
- Serial killer's first victim is usually someone they know whom they have formed a grudge on, deserved or not, or is someone who has rejected their friendship or romantic advances.
- Getting away with this first crime gives the serial killer confidence.
- An expanse of time passes before the serial killer strikes again, but it's inevitable as the pressure builds until the release of a kill is required.

The full bloom:
- Once the serial killer is established, a twisted sense of pride arises from the power to kill undetected, which conflicts with the fact that pride of accomplishment requires acknowledgment.
- The time that passes between killings is either consistent or becomes shorter each time, as continual release of pressure and seeking of pleasure is required.
- If it was not a element of the first killing, the serial killer initiates the use of sexual gratification with the victim, pre or post death, depending on what does it for the freak, as most serial killer's pathology has a sexual component.
- The serial killer, either by purposeful design or unintentional repetition of methods that are needed to bring release but also provide a pattern, becomes known by the police through a "calling card" of identical clues for different killings.
- The serial killer also must keep mementos, usually parts of the body, as prizes and reminders of the killing accomplishments, thus providing identification and proof when and if caught. (Ed Gein made an entire costume out of the skins of the women he killed, in which he would dance under the full moon.)

So, what makes The Poet interesting is that it almost never dwells on the killer, like the great Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs do, but on the inner and outer world of the reporter tracking the killer down. It's a page turner, and one of the better ones I've read, even though the killer conforms to "the serial killer's journey" as outlined here. And while the writing isn't as profound as Coupland's, the style is as deliberate and skillful, and beautifully serves the purpose of the story.

Thumbnail movie reviews of 03-14-2005

Saw, um, Saw. It stars Cary Elwes who was the mysterious stranger in Princess Bride. My wife marveled that he still looks the same, if not a little heavier. We had way low expectations and were braced for over the top gore. Se7en is still the high water, or blood, mark to meet when it comes to sheer "eeeeew" inducing fantods. Saw manages to suggest more than it shows, and it has a truly surprising turn of events. Those who like dark, grim explorations of the depravity of serial killers will enjoy this; casual viewers will not. I don't want to give anything away, but this would have been much better had the pace been a little tighter, and we got to the end about 15 minutes sooner. The collective reviews would have been better, too, methinks. Worth the time on a slow night, imho.

I was unable to make it through Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Who thought this was funny? Dear lord what a stinker. Even the bloopers were dull.

One of the Better Things You'll Read this Month

After I post something like the post immediately below, a screed on an unpopular topic where I'm even taking the designated wrong side (especially for a liberal), I feel I need to offer up something fun, informative - heck, just outright better - to read.

Well, here it is. Note: this does not allow access to non-subscribers, but see below.

David Foster Wallace¹ researched talk radio to bring us one of his stellar articles on the same. Wallace's short fiction can be hit-or-miss because most of his short stories are experimental and many bomb quite badly. His novels are much better, though², and his reports from the front, like this one, are perhaps his best. In the collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, the article that lends the collection its title is about his investigation of going on an ocean cruse. I've been on one, and he NAILS the experience, particularly that weird twilight zone mood where you're trapped on what's supposed to be a party boat but is really just a floating Vegas without the easy access to extreme sleeze, unless you count the topless sunning deck at the fore of the craft, punctuated by blasts of that accursed Buster Poindexter song "Hot Hot Hot." Because he was so close to the bone on that one, I've since trusted him implicitly with any reportage.

I don't listen to talk radio because radio to me is a device that's supposed to bring me an interesting mix of music. When it does not do this, it's merely an annoyance. And, no big secret, the vast majority of talk radio is wingnut Rush Limburger clones screeching at anyone who will call or tune in that they're not Americans unless they buy into the neocon's vision of war all the time, no social safety net, no increase in minimum wage, and their latest trick: making it much harder for the poor to declare bankruptcy while building in blatant loopholes for the ultrawealthy so they can do it easily and protect their money offshore at the same time. Let them eat Twinkies!

But, as the new reality show "The Contender" has demonstrated, you don't necessarily have to give a flying star-spangled fandango about the topic to enjoy the entertainment itself. Wallace's article is a grand entertainment, but informative, too. Further kudos, while I don't even attempt to walk the non-partisan line, Wallace trips down the wire gracefully. I don't believe anyone of any political ilk will object to how talk radio is portrayed here.

So, have a good time. It's long, so it'll take a good hour or two, all of which you'll thoroughly enjoy.³

"But, Yahmdallah," you say, "How can I read this thing if they don't allow you to see the whole thing on the site unless you subscribe?" To which I respond, "Dear, cherished reader, fret not. You can find a copy⁴ at your local library. But, if you don't have the time, or want to read it on the convenience of your own computer, just drop me a note, and I'll forward it on to you."⁵ Who's your buddy?

---

¹ He of the copious footnotes which drive some readers to distraction, but I like them because they're funny as hell. (Well and I do the same thing, just with parenthesis, usually.)

² (Since this is about the DFW, I'll stick these kinds of asides in footnotes as a pale homage to the master.) His Infinite Jest is one of my favorite novels ever, only beaten by A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, and neck-in-neck with the other denizen of my top three, Texasville by Larry McMurtry.

³ It even outs the scam of the herbal concoction Enzyte that's supposed to provide "natural male enhancement." That part alone is worth the read.

⁴ And a photocopier, no doubt.

⁵ See the upper left part of the page for my addy. Don't feel the need to compose any niceties for the request, a "gimme" will do.

Running with Scissors

<screed>
One of the guideposts of raising a child is to not reward bad behavior. Sometimes just attention is the reward when someone's throwing a fit, because the goal is attention, good or bad. Once it a great while, though, you've got to weigh intervention against possible harm, such as a child in full tantrum meltdown who grabs something sharp.

What follows is something like that.

I read this in the Sunday Denver Post:

The Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance bashed a speech by Jada Pinkett Smith on Feb. 26 at a Harvard University Cultural Rhythms show.

Three days after the speech, BGLTSA co-chair Jordan B. Woods said "some of the content (of Pinkett Smith's speech) was extremely heteronormative, and made BGLTSA members feel uncomfortable." Heteronormative, according to Woods, means they implied that standard sexual relationships are only between males and females.

A snippet of Pinkett Smith's speech: "Women, you can have it all -- a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career. They say you gotta choose. Nah, nah, nah. We are a new generation of women. We got to set a new standard of rules around here. You can do whatever it is you want. All you have to do is want it."

You probably noticed that the person who wrote this (unidentified in the article) dripped enough contempt, sparing me the duty.

Which is good because I wanna snark about the big, white elephant in the room. That big bastard over there in the corner double dipping in the guacamole and crapping on the settee.

Homosexuality is not "normal." Let's pause here before the screaming begins and see what Webster's has to say about normal: "a : according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, or principle b : conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern." No matter which percentage you choose on how much of the population is gay, 3%, 5%, that still leaves a vast majority of folks who are heterosexual. With those kinds of odds, that means heterosexuality is normal.

Again, in attempt to speak over the screaming, let me add further that I don't believe "not normal" is necessarily bad. In America particularly, we like the underdog, the misfit, the rebel - all terms for someone who's not normal. Most of the gay people I know and the ones whose opinions I've read often say they revel in being different, outside of the norm. They consider it a positive element of their identity.

Trying to force this Orwellian/Huxlian monstrosity "heteronormative" into the lexicon will result in little from annoyance to open guffaws, because no one wants it. It doesn't help anyone and only clouds the issue, because it's a lie. It wants to pretend that heterosexuality isn't the only normal there is. Don't we have enough to deal with considering the current administration and its love of Orwellian/Huxlian manipulation of the language? ("Personal Accounts" my ass. "PATRIOT Act" indeed.)

Let your freak flag fly, man, but don't ask me to pretend it's anything else.

Now that I'm all wound up and sloshing around in the verboten topic of the day anyway, allow me to lob another mouse at the elephant.

Most people I know (including me) don't equate the gay rights movement with the civil rights movement. These same people also believe that gay people have the right (and I do mean the right) to be safe from harm and to pursue happiness. They also believe that their orientation shouldn't be a factor in their job, housing, and so on. I don't make a blanket statement on discrimination because sometimes we all face some expected things we can't do; for instance, I can't use the women's sauna or changing room at the gym because I'm a guy - and let's not be coy and ignore the fact that the issue of homosexuality, because it is about sexuality, has some tentacles in that ballpark (to mix and torture a metaphor to death, most humble apologies).

Even gay-friendly Salon.com had an article recently that stated:

To compare these two struggles [gay rights and civil rights] is not to equate them. To say they are the same would be ridiculous. It goes without saying that there are major differences between race and sexual orientation -- and therefore homophobia and racism. [snip] To ignore the parallels would be no less ridiculous. [snip]

Hell yeah!

But, being Salon.com (when it comes gay issues), after it makes this bold statement, hauls off and messes it right up again:

There are two main reasons why this comparison jars with many. The first is blatant homophobia. It is far easier to marginalize the lesbian and gay agenda if you can sever any association between it and other struggles for equality. The second is latent homophobia, which argues that such comparisons trivialize racism, as though the right to love who you want and still keep your job, your home and sometimes your life is a trifling matter.

Well, no.

It's not homophobia, either the wax-on or the wax-off type as defined here, when folks just don't see the equals sign between gay rights and civil rights. It would be homophobia (how I hate that inaccurate, silly word) if someone said, "You shouldn't have a job here because you're gay." (With the possible common sense exceptions like the monitor behind the two-way mirror in a changing room.) It is not homophobia if someone says, "Y'know, I don't want my children's cartoons to explore the concept of homosexuality." Because what's really going on is the parent wants to decide how and when the child is educated concerning ALL sexuality, part of which is homosexuality.

This is where most draw the line: Our kids. In the adult world, nearly all of us agree that what consenting adults want to do with and for each other is their own damn business and no one else's. When kids come into the picture, the rules change.

Now, before anyone thinks this is just about homosexuality, let's trot out another example. I think that polygamy is not a good thing; I don't approve of it. I think it's an archaic form of marriage that no longer (if ever) serves a purpose, other than allowing a guy to legally get some strange once in a while (I've never heard of a woman having a harem of husbands). Our society allows all the strange you want, and the economic reasons for polygamy are non-existent, so I like the fact that it's not recognized in the states. Thus, when and if I have to discuss it with my children, I throw in my opinion that I think polygamy is wrong. For the record, I tell them Veganism is unhealthy, too. (And immoral since the philosophy and premise behind it would condemn most of the world to starvation; Veganism isn't sustainable as a primary diet anywhere but wealthy countries with efficient distribution systems.)

How and when I choose to divulge these adult things to my child is entirely up to me. And that's the way it will remain.

For the record, my wife's and my stance on homosexuality that we will communicate to our children is that it's just how some people are. It's not bad, it's not necessarily good, it just is. We will also say that gay people can have a hard time because of prejudice and that they encounter special problems that heterosexuals won't. It never hurts to be honest. This, of course, does not tow the GLAAD or BGLTSA line, but too damn bad. I won't tell my kids that being gay is a big rainbow Disneyland A-ticket ride. But then I won't tell them that it's inherently evil and wrong either. This will not set well with some, but there you are.

Oh and I wish whichever gay organization attacked the Boy Scouts would leave them the hell alone, just like PETA should leave kids fishing on the local pier alone. Yes, Miss Natalie Merchant, if I'm beating my kid in a grocery store, you can come up, stop me, and sing your sanctimonious little ditty, and I'd deserve it. But, don't force my kid to read "Beeboo Has Two Mommies" or scream at them that meat is murder. It's hard enough to get them to eat right in the first place. Crikey.
</screed>

I believe it...