Storing away the nuts of a Folky Bum, Jon and Kate, and One Beautiful Loser

Squirreling Around

This picture on the right is floating around the web today and it caught my eye as I have a family of squirrels that have nested on one side of the window air conditioning unit jutting out my bedroom window at the head of my bed.

The squirrels have been there since winter and I thought when I cranked the AC unit up in May, that'd be it. Nope. They're tenacious fuckers. I knocked away their nest but they just rebuild it. They haven't otherwise bothered me, but when I open the blind in the morning I'm often presented with just this image (well, minus the people in the background).

The Mystery Tramp

Apparently, Bobby Zimmerman of Hibbing Minnesota was wandering around Long Branch recently, several blocks inland in a 'low income, predominantly minority neighborhood' doing some 'sight seeing' when he was questioned by police.

They asked his name and the 68 year old disheveled 'bum' muttered, "Bob Dylan."

Blank Stares.

The 20 something cops apparently did not recognize either the man or the name. They just saw an aging potential vagrant.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm on Tour, just looking at houses until the show."

He didn't have ID. Why do famous people never have ID on them? He should at least carry a folded up copy of one of his cover shots from Rolling Stone or Creem.

At least sing for them, Mr. Voice of a Generation.

"Who am I? The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind."

"No it's not, that's one of the industrial chemical plants just north of here, you're in North Jersey dickweed - I ask again, who are you?"

They took him back to where he was staying and the tour staff vouched for Mr. Tambourine Man.

He shoulda known better, he said it himself once upon a time:

"Up on Housing Project Hill It's either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you here
And man they expect the same."

Jon and Kate + Hate

For me, the devolution of Jon and Kate from learning channel curiosity to huge family-friendly sensation to full-on Jerry Springer / car-wreck-we-can't-avoid-watching phenomenon sort of parallels the relationships in modern American mainstream politics. Specifically, the centrist wings of the Democratic and Republican parties. To be more clear, I'm referring here to the 'professional' politicos, not those of us out here in the peanut galleries of 'main street'.

Sure you've always had the extremes of both bents railing at one another and at the center. I've been watching the pros in this league kind of closely, as I play Left Wing position in pick-up games on the weekend.

But I think the mainstream has in recent years become much more polarized than they have been in a while, certainly since Reagan, and maybe since Watergate.

It's all cyclical on the generational scale, but we're definitely in the midst of a bad patch.

The latest 'break-up' I feel came to a head with the invasion of Iraq (though the 2000 election shenanigans signaled a separation and certainly there were fireworks during most of Clinton's second term).

Oh, the centrists tried working it out over the last few years as the Yeh Ha Cowboy Nutso antics of Bush/Cheney became ever more pronounced and Grandpa Grumpy saddled up with Sista Sarah making the central right look more like Limbaughland than the Gipperville he advertised.

They even tried moving back in together during the recent election, keeping it going for a couple of months of the Obama administration.

But that temporary reprieve all ended for good with the maelstrom that is health care and the false specter of Socialism on a Grand Scale, the central left understanding that the Fear-mongering is all one big red herring and the central right not taking any changes.

I'm not yet sure who is who in this admittedly 'stretching it' Jon and Kate analogy.

But I'm guessing Jon is the randy Dem, hanging out in Vegas with the babysitter, a 'Looking for Mr. Goodbar' type who'll no doubt be his downfall.

Kate is the self righteous Elephant, seemingly all 'family-first' but who will eventually be outed as a deviant loon. She's already had one brush with the law ('bad girls, bad girls, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?').

The kids are, you might have guessed, all of us.

Beautiful Cohen

After watching the PBS Leonard Cohen concert the other night, I picked up one of the two novels he wrote (he has several collections of poems and short stories), first published back in 1966. Beautiful Losers. "God knows how far up your moccasins were laced." The guy's gotta way with words, in song and in story. It's a bit too metaphysical for my taste and his prose can get mighty purple, but he's always on his game with an inside out turn of phrase and a heady mix of the pretty and profane.

'I thought you were a racing man, ah, but you couldn't take the pace. That's a funeral in the mirror and it's stopping at your face'

Michael Vick is a Philadelphia Eagle now, eh? Has Andy Reid found a new motivational coach, a new regiment? Can't make the cut? Here's a new way of releasing a player: how 'bout a little 'lectricity to the gonads, Scarecrow?

Welcome to the Novacare Complex and Training Pit.

How do I feel about it?

Eagles? Eagles, who? Go, Seahawks!

Vick lands for me somewhere between a child molester, a rapist, and Dick Cheney. Which means, I guess, that he's fits in just fine in professional sports.

Yeah, I'm a meat-eating, slaughter-house-appeasing hypocrite. Guilty as charged. My prerogative.

But there's a difference. Humans are carnivores. We started out hunting with our hands, then spears, and so on. We've gotten brutally effective at turning what was (or so we thought) a necessary evil into a massive, assembly line killing-machine industry.

And a lot of that industry is needlessly cruel, both in their treatment of the animals before slaughter and of course in the means by which they are killed.

But they don't do it as sport. Vick wasn't electrocuting dogs for his supper, he was doing it for his jollies.

Redemption? Yeah, I believe in it.

This is different, though, than getting busted for selling drugs or robbing a bank or any of that kinda stuff. This is badness and cruelty over a lengthy period of time that comes from an innate sadism.

'But, Steve', you say, 'bad can morph into good.' It can. Not often. Is this the case here? Is this some sort of Edward Norton/American History X prison metamorphosis from evil to inspirational?

I don't see any signs of that yet.

For the techno-geeks, there something in software development called 'refactoring' - turning bad code into maintainable software. You start by identifying 'bad smells' in the code. You know you're done when there is no more odor.

You spot a bad smell the same as pornography: 'I know it when I see it'. Now, that's a bit cagey - there are patterns and known bad smells. But at its core, that's the starting point: something doesn't smell

right, your intuition and experience tells you.

And with Vick, something doesn't smell right.

Fuck football, anyway.

Roller Derby is coming back in a BIG WAY. Go Philly Roller Girls League!

So with that, I switch off the Eagles pre-season game and drown my sorrows in the psychedelic wonderland that is Woodstock (celebrating the 40th Anniversary, man), documentary-style.

Well, too distracted to keep it in 1969 for too long a clip at a time, so ...

Click.

... Flipping incessantly between Woodstock and Generation Islam on CNN with a rock star in her own right, the incomparable Christiane Amanpour.

It's kind of surreal whipping back and forth between swaying, muddy hippies and the shifting sands of Islam in the modern world. Jimi Hendrix and the Star Spangled Banner played over scenes of poverty on the Gaza Strip.

"The New York Thruway's Closed, man!"

Blood stained misery and steely eyed prepubescent hatred. Stubborn motherfuckers on both sides of the equation. Land and Religion and Ownership and "Security". All worth life and death and worthless in the end.

"Some people say that the acid is poison. It's not poison, it's just bad acid, just manufactured badly. There really are no bad trips, if you ask me. If you feel like experimenting, just take half a tab!"

There are bad trips, Mr. Unidentified Bad-Trip-Talker-Downer from the Woodstock stage (I'll just call you 'Doctor'). This intermixing of cultures I'm trying to do (sort of a hippie/Islam mashup - Cat Stevens would be proud) is giving me a migraine.

Ahh, the DVR to the rescue. I "taped" a Leonard Cohen Live in London on PBS the other night. Leonard at 74 is still at the top of his game (well, maybe a shade or two below it but only just).

I never really listened to Leonard's song, "The Future" until just now, though I know it's on my ipod somewhere. Any song that can rhyme "Charlie Manson" with "White Girls Dancin'" is okay by me.

Thanks for saving the evening, Lenny. It's just a Dress Rehearsal Rag, after all. Story of my life.

Now, before bed it's time to get my Philly Roller Girl League gear for the upcoming season. Shit - "men's 'merch' coming soon". Gotta wait to get decked out in my Roller Mania Colors, I guess.

Finally, to choose my team. Will it be:

• The Liberty Belles?
• The Heavy Metal Hookers?
• The Broad Street Butchers?

Mmmm. Film at 11.
And who do the Philly Roller Girls sponsor?

PAWS.

Fuckin' A.

Deadly Serious sandwiched between slices of Silly Bread, served on a Soapbox

Wow, David Mamet's writing an adaptation of the Anne Frank story?

Strange bedfellows.

I visited the Anne Frank house during one of my travels to Amsterdam. The secret annex where she, her family, the Van Pelts and Fritz Pfeffer hid for two years is frighteningly small. It's quite a tourist trap these days, with signs pointing the way at what seems like every corner. I remember joking that it was no wonder the Nazis found her.

So, Mr. Mamet - is the young Anne going to suddenly start spouting expletives into the pages of her diary?

Will sections of the diary newly 'discovered' by Mamet detail Anne's secret excursions into the Amsterdam nightlife, hanging out in bars, knocking 'em back, engaging in witty, rapid fire, bawdy repartee in his usual style?

Is Alex Baldwin going to play the member of the Gestapo that discovered Anne? "Put. That. Diary. Down. Diaries are for Closers Only."

Not sure how many ways you can tell the story, but I know I'll be watching 'cause it'll be interesting: David Mamet is pretty much always that.


[warning: climbs atop soap box]

Make no mistake: these guys lived a horrifying few years, and it ended in death for all but Otto Frank. The passage of time doesn't change that fact.

But it does make it less 'real' to those that only know it from history books.

Guess what? The Nazi's don't have a corner on the evil that men do. They stand out in the 20th century only in sheer scale and maybe the degree to which they were able to make it seem 'civilized'.

Well, kids, learn it, learn it well. Not in history books (though there are some good ones). Go there, to Belsen, Auschwitz, etc. Just as important, keep an eye on those scary Holocaust deniers out there. They're all over the web now, so keeping tabs isn't difficult but they ain't going away (and in fact are on the rise).

But then put all that aside and take good hard look at current events and the suffering and death that goes on right goddamn now.

Take a look at the Congo, where they've institutionalized the gang rape of children and young women. Torn up physically to the point where they can't control their own bodily functions and then cast off by their family as damaged goods. God knows how fucked up they are in the head by this horror.


Ya wanna see genocide? Take a look at Darfur in the Sudan.


Is any of this near the scale of the Holocaust? No. But here's the thing: the Holocaust victims are dead and their suffering is over. Nothing you can do to help them. But ya can honor them, by doing what you can to stop this from happening now.

And there's a lot you can do.

I hate sanctimonious schmaltz as much as the next guy and this is about as long as I go without ducking into the safe walls of dark humor, satire or at least some good ol' fashioned irony. I also don't usually trumpet charities and such, simply because ya gotta make your own choices there - they all have their flaws and some much more than others. Most all the legit ones are doing good stuff.

I caught half a CNN report last night on the shit still going down in the Congo. How many years do we as a world allow this shit to continue? Of course, no oil to be had in the Congo, is there? And these evil pricks are smart enough not to posture on the world stage, knowing that we're juvenile enough for that to make a difference.

Same in Darfur, the numbers of dead that much higher.

Lots of great folks are helping out - join their rank.

Anyway, I had to vent, after throwing some coinage, as I try to do regularly but not nearly regularly enough, to the Red Cross, Genocide Intervention Network (Democracy In Action), and Amnesty International.

[Postscript: Amex actually put a hold on my card and issued me a fraud alert when I tried to make a contribution to the Red Cross - seems an odd transaction to be flagged. Are there really thieves out there ripping off credit card info so that they can fraudulently donate to the Red Cross? Robin Hood lives! Or is Red Cross not the upstanding institution it seems?]

Will my pittance help?

It's a drip of water in a firestorm of misery. I mentioned two of the more egregious atrocities but there are plenty more, some much closer to 'home' if that matters to you. Will it help? Not by itself, though I felt alittle better. And enough drips and drops provide at least some relief.

[climbs on a soap box sitting on top of the first soap box, this box filled with purely my opinion]

The 'closer to home' excuse always gets my panties in a bunch. I've never been able to understand the whole 'America First' and 'Our own backyard'.

If it ain't someone I know and care about, it ain't my backyard. That's not to say I wouldn't lend a hand to someone I don't know or don't care about - I would and do - just that they don't rate any higher on the scale for me because they live in Springfield USA rather than Africa or Asia or even Canada! (you betcha).

We sometimes tend to treat our country like it's our hometown football team. There be demons down that path. After all, Nationalism and Religion take a lion's share of the blame for all this shit in the first place.

Notice I didn't say patriotism or faith - those can both be very good things indeed.

Nationalism and Religion are their sinister twins.

I have patriotism in the ideals embodied in the United States. I have faith in my friends some of whom are also family. If you have faith in your friends and family or in your God, that is goodness for sure.

We all just gotta be mindful to keep our balance on what can be a slippery slope. Remember, Hitler thought he was doing God's work and Nationalism unbounded swept him into power.

What was it Lennon said? Imagine.

[steps off soap box]

Okay, off my high horse now. After which, I'll shoot it, the dumb beast, hi ho Silver be damned - gotta keep with the theme of this post. And don't get me started with the Michael Vicks of the world. I've got a new sport for him he can train for, requires he get fitted for a raw meat uniform and perhaps a set of 'Bring out the Gimp' restraints. Some of our larger, more abused four-legged friends are involved and they make one hell of a defensive line. 'Bone' Appetite. And that's me being dispassionate. Catch me after a dog fighting investigative report runs some evening - my liberal bleeding heart runneth over.


[steps off soap box that was under the first one]

Speaking of genocide, are you aware that someone permitted both the filming and the release of 'Smokey and the Bandit, Part 3'???

Yet here it is, it's on before my eyes.

And I'm powerless to turn the channel, compelled as I am to soak it all in. I don't want to, but strangely, have to watch, like a slow motion car wreck (it mostly consists of those anyway, so the analogy is apt).

I'm as big a fan of headin' East Bound and Down as the next guy but shit on a rope, this is going too far!

Burt has a cameo while Jerry Reed, that Oscar-watching master thespian, takes the reins full steam. And a sad Jackie Gleason.

As Kurtz would say, "The Horror. The Horror."

'My friend works for the national health, Doctor Robert. Don't pay money just to see yourself with Doctor Robert'

Boy the mob is up in arms over the imminent arrival of socialized health care.

It seems an odd mixture of dumb-as-post salt-of-the-earth types, pitchforks and torches in hand, coupled with the occasional flat out loons screaming like banshees at any microphone within reach.

Their empty heads filled no doubt with fearful grainy black and white images of endless lines of the sick snaking around the block, waiting for their turn to see 'the doctor' at the Government 'facility'. Perhaps having first traveled across the country simply because they were assigned to a medical facility alphabetically, per Government directive 181.1120-2..1102201-1234, page 10832, para. 2. Like a scene out of 'Pink Floyd's The Wall' or '1984'.

Finally, their child on death's door, they get to see one of the 'doctors'.

Ahh, yes, 'The Doctors'. The Polly Peabrains and Nick Numbskulls no doubt envision a faceless army of GS-9 grade civil servants with perhaps only a couple of high school biology classes under their belts, former DMV and IRS workers 'retrained' as medical health care providers through a two week correspondence course followed by a grade 'C' school on 'advanced' surgery for the brightest bulbs (those who manage to put their own clothes on in the morning).

Yes, locked and loaded and ready for surgery - once you've dotted all the 'i's and crossed all the 't's on a mountain of forms, each of which is written in Kiswahili. So you better invest in Berlitz language training and deal with the carpal tunnel if you want that transplant for your kid.

All this as Barack Hussein Lenin Obama, the first Kenyan Communist President, finally lowers his veil and raises the hammer and sickle over the White house lawn, chuckling at the fine precision of it all.

"Muahhh, muahhh, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

Obama rubs his hands together and howls with devious laughter, super-villain style before issuing the evening 'death pronouncements' on TV in fluent Kiswahili.

Yes, we all listen intently to the nightly Death Pronouncements: the ceremonial rattling off of the list of folks who'll be marched into the incineration machines the following day, sort of a mixture of the 'renewal' Carousal machines of Logan's Run (Farrah's greatest role til she burned that bed) and the 'death by forced LSD overdose' in the 'old people' commune-prisons of 'Wild In the Street' ('14 or fight!' with a very young Pryor).


Wild in the Street's acid prisons are the more apt analogy for the incineration machines to come. That movie has some chilling parallels to present day events, culminating in the election of a very charismatic, young 'rock star' president. In other words, stick out your tongue and prepare to get dosed - happy traveling to psychedelic insanity, my fellow true 'free market' Americans. The commies have truly won and Hollywood has been planning this since 1968.

But what's with the Kiswahili, you ask?

Why it's the newly mandated official language of the Socialist Kenyan United States of America (SKUSA), ratified by the Central Committee and enforced under the penalty of death by Rahm Emanuel's Radical Left Wing Blogger Boot Cops (sort of a new age techno-savvy KGB/Storm Tropper/SS style outfit).

It seems so clear.

If it all wasn't a pile of paranoid shit with no basis in fact.

Yes, it is all very grand to make fun of these folks, and the Daily Show is having a field day with 'Healther Skelter' and Government run 'Death Panels' and what not but even Mr. Cool is growing tired, it's clear, of having to constantly deny the ridiculous.

But deny he does and this very act unfortunately lends at least a sliver of credence to the fabrication. In 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail', Hunter Thompson recounts a story to make a point regarding this political reality: LBJ, during an early campaign, apparently instructed his campaign manager to start a rumor that his opponent had had carnal knowledge of his farm animals. When his campaign manager objected that no one would believe it, LBJ said he realized that. 'But let's make him have to deny it anyway.'

But it's health care, and people are passionate.

As Thorton Melon said in 'Back to School' about batshit crazy Professor Terguson: 'Good teacher. He really seems to care. About what I have no idea.'

And that's the problem with getting any kind of health care bill passed that isn't so watered down it floats away and/or filled to squealing with appeasement pork. The pitchfork/torch, batshit crazy/banshee wailing constituents put The Fear into the boys and gals on the hill.

Senators and Congressmen have for the most part not been known for their intestinal fortitude or for having any sort of balls. As in 'having hootspa (nerves, guts)', not as in 'tea-bagging Congressional Pages' or 'dangling under an airport men's room shitter stall as mating signal' - they seem to have plenty of balls for those sort of activities.

So all you aspiring MDs slaving away at the DMV and the IRS might still have to complete an accredited medical school and some form of residency in order to get a license to practice 'your craft' on people in this country. At least for a time.

But keep a sharp eye and a loaded gun, fellow Freedom Riders!

We must at whatever cost protect our free market private health insurance, such as that provided by fine companies like Old Glory. Does The Government really think some civil servant is gonna protect our senior citizens from the onslaught of medicine-fueled robots? Hell, the malevolent metal ones likely sprung to life from a screw up at some over priced government run research program in the first place.

Sista Sarah, oh Freedom-lovin' Angel from the Yukon - wing down to the lower 48 and stop 'em 'fore they legislate ...

'I wish his life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show - A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes' - Apologies to Ray Davies

I love today's MJ headline: 'Coroner Completes Jackson Autopsy, Film Deal Set'. Let's not actually read the tripe and just ponder the tag line itself.

What are they saying here with such a seeming non-sequitur? A film of the autopsy?

The medical examiner did say that the autopsy results would "remain sealed."

"Sealed." Is that some sort of 'coroner code'?

Seal the singer? "I'm going to Seal it" - as in, "I'm going to poke the autopsy results full of pockmarks and then go 'a little crazy' "?

No?

Aaahhhh. Now I get it: 'sealed' - as in, "closed/nah,nah,nah - I can see it and you can't."

Is it maybe sealed only until after the film premier? To avoid any '!!! spoiler alert!!!!'?

Maybe it's an 'Inner Space' kind of movie.

They shrink down Jermaine, Liz Taylor, Dr. Conrad, Ben the Rat, and Bubbles, put them in a capsule and attempt to fire them in through MJ's nose.

Well, not the nose, not enough room to get them through there anymore.

The mouth?

No, the throat is still clogged with half swallowed pills, they couldn't navigate around that logjam.

Oh well, it's a shitty job but somebody has to do it. Faster than you can say 'colonoscopy' (the Pixar animation is so life like!), the adventure begins. That's not candy, Liz!

A biological musical science faction action extravaganza, set to a soundtrack of MJ's finest and marketing/product placement tie-ins with Taco Bell and Stone Cold Creamery. Lots to explore! Fun for the whole family. Just in time for Summer 2010!

Jumpin Jezez - Let the guy be dead for a couple of days, would ya?

Doesn't the media have bigger fish to fry? Like health care or the mounting military deaths in Afghanistan or Kathy Griffin escorting Levi Johnson to the Teen Choice awards?

Wait, what is an old bag like Kathy Griffin doing at a teen-oriented event? And taking someone who but for the grace of God could have been the Vice President, Jr. In Law? Class.

Anyway, gotta go - the HBO documentary on one of my favorite small town Mayors, the Honorable Marion Barry, is underway - and then the luminescent Mary Louise Parker prunes her weeds.

Madmen Drummers Bummers and Indians in the Summer

One week away from another season with the boys and girls at Sterling Cooper.

Rolling into 1963, just a little less than a year from the Kennedy assassination. Not far then to the Beatles arrival, Dylan gone electric and the beginnings of the birth of "The 60s." One last season to bathe in the glow of fading innocence and bid adieu to its numbing viciousness as a black and white world turns to color (on a number of different levels).

For me, an excuse to lust after Betty Draper on Sunday evenings. All pastels and skirts and smokes, suits and booze at the office and beatniks on the fringes. Not yet for the avocado kitchen appliances and living room shag carpets.

I was going on three months of age at the dawn of 1963, so first-hand memories are a hazy shade of nothing. But then again I can say the same for most of the 60s and 70s. I seem to have clear memories from that period only of the Brady Bunch, Land of the Lost, the Watergate Trial and the day my Dad died (just couple days before Elvis kicked, 32 years ago this Tuesday).

Speaking of Dad, he wasn't exactly a 'Mad Man' (though going by the show, he drank like one). He sold plumbing supplies when he worked. Not quite Don Draper. More Don Birnam. And Mom wasn't Betty Draper. She was closer to Norma Desmond. They attempted every once in a while to Be The Drapers. But the Drapers out, not the Drapers in. We were at the core a Salvation Army family living in a JC Penney neighborhood and didn't do a lot of entertaining (at least not of the Draper variety).

Still, with Mad Men there is something oddly familiar. About the setting, the clothes, the mannerisms. Not exactly comforting, but ... contemporary. The present day by comparison seems dated.

So, Betty on Sunday and Nancy Botwin on Monday. In my own private Idaho ('get outta that state you're in!' - thanks, Fred, but I think I'll stick around).

'Drama continues this fans, get ready to who stretch the meaning' - need I say more?

Father Quint
'Ya got city hands, Mr. Hooper, ya been counting money all your life.'

Nothing starts a Sunday morning like the umpteenth screening of Jaws.

I don't need church: Quint is my minister.

He has more than enough proverbs and parables at the ready to satisfy the Ned Flanders in me, with a sanctimonious holier-than-thou air about him that would make any man of the cloth proud.

Even as he reenacts Jonah and the Whale for us at the end of the movie, there's a kind of twinkle in Quint's eyes, as if to say, "I'll be watchin' you - keep that chum line goin' now".

Indeed. Keep that chum line going. Sage advice for all of us.

Spam for breakfast
I'm often baffled by the intent of certain spam I receive (the email rather than the meat variety, though I'm baffled by the latter as well).

I'll spare you the subject line of the one that compelled a second look on my part this morning (suffice to say it mentions the promise of intercourse in a barn but with an especially odd turn of phrase). And really, it was the body of the message that was most intriguing, mainly in its unintentional obfuscation:

Abolition align
Liquor raps about extra mile and building are damn
help in keeping a told to right as to es dort wohl zu
die Gratispostille "Punkt The Top other content, Show" fan but this isn’t necessarily
and drama continues this fans, get ready to who stretch the meaning

There are touches of German here, but no signs of the sex barn I was expecting. You know, comely Amish Rachel Lapp getting it on with John Book by car-light among the hay and the cows. Talk about raising her barn! That sort of thing.

Amish? German? Ahh, we're getting closer. But closer to where?

These words must have a larger meaning, a bigger purpose that I just can't grok.

Somehow, I think Quint would know. But there's no asking him. Damn Shark.