Living Too Late

Death or Glory

2007-01-02T22:35:00.000-05:00

I’m no friend of Saddam Hussein, but the whole lynch mob (which included Shiite Iraqi officials) was kind of barbaric, wasn’t it? I mean, c'mon, the guy had been convicted of some of the crimes against humanity that he committed—and then he was sentenced to death. So he’s down and out in a major way (even though he was tried and convicted for just a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that he's ordered killed)…yet he’s heckled at his own hanging!

Couldn’t the mob at least have the courtesy to wait until after he was dead to dance around his body, gloat, and hurl insults? Then again, life is pretty cheap in Iraq these days.

I understand that the Bushies wanted to distance themselves completely from Hussein's rushed execution (though not because our great leader has any problem with capital punishment: Dubya presided over the state-sanctioned killings of 151 men and one woman during his six years as governor of Texas--and remember how Bush mocked born-again murderess Karla Faye Tucker, "Please, please don't kill me!" and refused to commute her sentence to life in prison?)--most people in the Arab world believe that the U.S. is orchestrating everything behind the scenes anyway. But you’d think that Cheney, Rove et al would have realized that the Iraqi government, which barely functions as it is, should not have been trusted to control the recorded images of Hussein’s hanging. All it takes is some idiot with a camera cell phone--and presto, the world's most famous snuff film all over YouTube--and you have another international crisis on your hands and increased sectarian violence throughout Iraq, instead of a moment of "victory" for U.S.-style democracy in the Middle East.

Can't wait to see what Bush & Co. have in mind for winning the war in Iraq in 2007...

Know Your Product

2006-12-08T23:17:00.000-05:00

Weird juxtapositioning of the week, spotted on a large billboard just to the right of the door of a youth hostel used by German and French twenty-somethings on Manhattan's Upper West Side: the image is supposed to be a post-card depicting a rather curvy, teeny-bikinied woman reclining on a beach, with the caption "Greetings from Brazil" printed in script. Marring this soft-porn fantasy are the spray-painted words "Turistas Go Home" (the title of this nasty organ-stealing horror movie).

I guess the movie marketers are writing off the international market on this one...

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"Know Your Product" is a great song from the Aussie punk band The Saints. Here's a sample:

I'm just sitting in my chair when a voice comes on the air
Says "Why don't you try it? You'll feel allright!"
"Got some great new brand of smokes
"Cool your head and clear your throat
"Keeps you young and so in touch."

Cheap advertising, you're lying
Never gonna get me what I want
I said, smooth talking, brain washing
Ain't never gonna get me what I need

Johnny, Are You Queer?

2006-12-08T22:57:00.000-05:00

Following up on my Mary Cheney post from yesterday, here is an excerpt from a thoughtful column on the subject from Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post:

My only regret about Mary Cheney's pregnancy is that it didn't happen earlier -- say, during the 2004 presidential race, when Cheney was working for her father's campaign and his running mate was busy trying to write discrimination against people like her into the Constitution.

Imagine a hugely pregnant Mary Cheney sitting in the vice president's box at the convention. Imagine Cheney and her partner, Heather Poe, cuddling their newborn onstage at the victory celebration.

How perfectly that would have illustrated the clanging disconnect between the Republican Party's outmoded intolerance and the benign reality of gay families today.

Better late than never. Cheney's no crusader; she has little interest in becoming the poster mom for gay parenthood. But whether she intends it or not, her pregnancy will, I think, turn out to be a watershed in public understanding and acceptance of the phenomenon. This is the Ellen DeGeneres moment of national politics.

Acceptance won't come immediately, of course, and certainly not from all quarters. The folks who have fits about "Heather Has Two Mommies" are beside themselves over "Heather Is One of Two Mommies." Especially because the other mommy is -- as Mary Cheney is inevitably described -- The Vice President's Openly Gay Daughter.

"Unconscionable," said Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America. "Her action repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation," Crouse wrote on the TownHall.com blog. "Her child will have all the material advantages it will need, but it will still encounter the emotional devastation common to children without fathers."

"I think it's tragic that a child has been conceived with the express purpose of denying it a father," pronounced Robert Knight of the Media Research Center. The couple, he said is seeking to "create a culture that is based on sexual anarchy instead of marriage and family values."

I can understand that people -- especially those who have no personal experience with gay families -- are uncomfortable with the notion of children without a parent of each gender. What I can't understand is using words such as "unconscionable" or "tragic" to describe the choice of two people who love each other and want to create a family together.

To be a badly wanted child (one thing that's indisputable about the children of same-sex couples: the parents had to work to make it happen) in a home with two loving parents is no tragedy. If they're worried about "emotional devastation," the Crouses and Knights of the world would do better to reserve their lamentations for children in poverty, those who are abused or neglected, or for children in families splintered by divorce.

Seems like a no brainer to me.

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"Johnny, Are You Queer" is off of Josie Cotton's "Convertable Music," as well as the soundtrack to "Valley Girl."

I'm a Sonic Generator

2006-12-07T22:14:00.000-05:00

I've got no beef with Gwen Stefani--she's talented and a star with No Doubt or on her own. But I was kinda queasy when I read in Entertainment Weekly that her new look--"coke whore"-- is based on Michelle Pfeiffer's character in Brian DePalma's "Scarface." From the EW article it's clear that Stefani is just having fun putting on the bad girl image, but she does has a huge following amongst the tween and teen girl set...she's kind of a role model whether she likes it or not (and she's a new-ish mom to boot) and with that has to come some responsibility, right? Then again, the folks that rail against (black) rappers for glorifying misogyny and the thug life are curiously silent in the presence of this 37 year-old blond white woman from Orange County who likes to dress up like a Hollywood-ized crackhead.

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From Salon.com:

George W. Bush, speaking today on the Iraq Study Group report: "The truth is a lot of reports in Washington aren't read by anybody. To show you how important this report is, I read it."

Asked whether he's still in "denial" about Iraq, Bush shot back: "It's bad in Iraq. That help?"

Warms the heart, don't it?

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According to the New York Times, VP Dick Cheney's daughter Mary--you know, the (whisper, whisper) lesbian one--is pregnant (with her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, a former park ranger). Personally, I wish them the best. But, how does the anti-gay marriage, anti-premarital sex, anti-children-out-of-wedlock Bush administration spin this? The Times was unable to unearth exactly how Mary Cheney was impregnated. (Thank god for Dick's obsession with secrecy.)

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Speaking of the hypocrisy among our nation's leaders when dealing with their own, check out Michael Kinsley's column from the Washington Post on the Bush Twin's nightclubbing while American troops are blown up in Baghdad every day:

From what little has leaked out, it seems that Jenna and Barbara are party girls who like to drink and dance until the wee hours with aristocrats and frat boys. Jenna is interning for UNICEF in Latin America (not actually teaching kids, as originally reported, but involved somehow in education). The twins recently took a trip to Argentina. Their first night there, partying in Buenos Aires, Barbara lost her purse to a thief.

So it would appear that George W. Bush's daughters are not Amy Carter or Chelsea Clinton or Karenna Gore. So what? Are you surprised?

Nevertheless, there is a war on. It's a war that has killed 3,000 Americans, most of them around Jenna and Barbara's age or younger. It has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis of all ages. And even more Americans and Iraqis have been injured, lost limbs, suffered terrible pain. President Bush can be quite eloquent in talking about the sacrifices of American soldiers and -- he always adds -- their families. In the Reagan style that has become almost mandatory, he uses anecdotes. He talks of Marine 2nd Lt. Frederick Pokorney Jr. "His wife, Carolyn, received a folded flag. His two-year-old daughter, Taylor, knelt beside her mother at the casket to say a final goodbye."

Bush says truly, about the American dead, "They did not yearn to be heroes. They yearned to see mom and dad again and to hold their sweethearts and to watch their sons and daughters grow. They wanted the daily miracle of freedom in America, yet they gave all that up and gave life itself for the sake of others."

Living your life according to your own values is a challenge for everyone, and it must be a special challenge if you happen to be the president. No one thinks that the president should have to give up a child to prove that his family is as serious about freedom as these other families he praises. But it would be reassuring to see a little struggle here -- some sign that the Bush family truly believes that American soldiers are dying for our freedom, and that it's worth it.

Who knows? Maybe they have had huge arguments about this. Maybe George and Laura wanted the girls to join the Red Cross, or the Peace Corps, or do something that would at least take them off the party circuit for a couple of years. And perhaps the girls said no. But I doubt this scenario, don't you?

. . . .

At first it seemed a brilliant strategy -- repellent, but brilliant -- to isolate most Americans from the cost of the war in Iraq. It's starting to seem a lot less so. As the deaths and injuries mount, more and more people are touched by the war -- and become understandably resentful of those who are not. Bush, in his speeches, is eloquent about what no one doubts -- the sacrifice -- but banal about what most people have come to doubt: the purpose.

But no amount of eloquence can overcome the bald contrast between that rhetoric and how his own family lives. His daughters are over 21, and he can't control them, but that doesn't let them off the hook. They are now independent moral actors, and their situation requires that they either publicly oppose their father's war or do something to support it. Is it unfair to expect Jenna and Barbara to shape their lives around their father's folly? Of course it's unfair. If this is war, then unfairness comes with the territory.

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Also, check out these interesting articles about Mick Jones from the Clash (most recently in the music press for producing the Libertines' two albums) and Jarvis Cocker from Pulp (who has a new solo album--"Jarvis"--that's only available in the US as an import). Oh, and Billy Idol has just released an album of Christmas standards. No word on if it bites the big one or not, but his track record since "Rebel Yell" has been spotty, to say the least.

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This post's title comes from Elastica's song "Generator" from "The Menace."

Babylon's Burning

2006-11-29T14:18:00.000-05:00

Each morning, when I hear of the latest bloodshed in Iraq on NPR and after all these years of car bombs, suicide bombs, death-squad-sectarian killings, I wonder how can there be anyone left standing in Baghdad to kill? Seriously. During the months of September and October, the UN has recorded over 5,000 civilian deaths in Baghdad alone (7,000 througout all of Iraq). As occupiers, that's a lot of blood on our hands.

While the White House is splitting hairs over whether or not the situation on the ground is a civil war or not (how about spending some time figuring out how to fix things, instead of managing the public's perception of the war?), here's a pretty grim assessment from CNN:

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN ANCHOR: Michael Ware reports from the Iraqi capital tonight.

And Michael, the Iraqi government and the U.S. military in Baghdad keep saying this is not a civil war. What are you seeing?

MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, firstly, let me say, perhaps it's easier to deny that this is a civil war, when essentially you live in the most heavily fortified place in the country within the Green Zone, which is true of both the prime minister, the national security adviser for Iraq and, of course, the top U.S. military commanders. However, for the people living on the streets, for Iraqis in their homes, if this is not civil war, or a form of it, then they do not want to see what one really looks like.

This is what we're talking about. We're talking about Sunni neighborhoods shelling Shia neighborhoods, and Shia neighborhoods shelling back.

We're having Sunni communities dig fighting positions to protect their streets. We're seeing Sunni extremists plunging car bombs into heavily-populated Shia marketplaces. We're seeing institutionalized Shia death squads in legitimate police and national police commando uniforms going in, systematically, to Sunni homes in the middle of the night and dragging them out, never to be seen again.

I mean, if this is not civil war, where there is, on average, 40 to 50 tortured, mutilated, executed bodies showing up on the capital streets each morning, where we have thousands of unaccounted for dead bodies mounting up every month, and where the list of those who have simply disappeared for the sake of the fact that they have the wrong name, a name that is either Sunni or Shia, so much so that we have people getting dual identity cards, where parents cannot send their children to school, because they have to cross a sectarian line, then, goodness, me, I don't want to see what a civil war looks like either if this isn't one.

Being the good Americans that we are, we don't really care about something like the carnage in Iraq unless it directly affects us (from Bob Herbert's NYT column relating to Black Friday):

Iraq burns. We shop. The Americans dying in Iraq are barely mentioned in the press anymore. They warrant maybe one sentence in a long roundup article out of Baghdad, or a passing reference — no longer than a few seconds — in a television news account of the latest political ditherings.

Since the vast majority of Americans do not want anything to do with the military or the war, the burden of fighting has fallen on a small cadre of volunteers who are being sent into the war zone again and again. Nearly 3,000 have been killed, and many thousands more have been maimed.

The war has now lasted as long as the American involvement in World War II. But there is no sense of collective sacrifice in this war, no shared burden of responsibility. The soldiers in Iraq are fighting, suffering and dying in a war in which there are no clear objectives and no end in sight, and which a majority of Americans do not support.

They are dying anonymously and pointlessly, while the rest of us are free to buckle ourselves into the family vehicle and head off to the malls and shop.

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The title of this post is from The Ruts' song of the same name.

Stop Making Sense

2006-11-22T14:01:00.000-05:00

Even though the return of the Dems to power in Congress is a victory for reasonable and sane people everywhere, Bush still has ways to mess with people's lives.

For instance, Dubya just hired Dr. Eric Keroack--who has dedicated his life to discouraging women from using birth control--as the new deputy assistant secretary of population affairs within the Department of Health and Human Services. His primary responsiblity in this position is to oversee the Federal Title X family-planning program, which has a federal mandate to provide information and access to birth control, as well as pregnancy tests, and abortion counseling/referrals (the Feds don't pay for abortions).

File this bit of perniciousness under: War is Peace, and Work will Make You Free (Arbeit Macht Frei). Here are the shameful details.

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The lyric above is from the Talking Heads' song "Girlfriend is Better," found on "Speaking in Tongues."

Dance Like a Monkey

2006-11-19T22:28:00.000-05:00

Woke up the other morning last weekend in a haze and was making breakfast for my daughter when I thought I saw something dart out from behind the garbage can. Considering that my eyes were barely open, I wrote it off as some sort of optical illusion, a trick of my mind. But, just in case, I looked around the corner of the stove--the direction that whatever it was went--and saw a tail hanging out from behind the back of the oven...

I've lived with roaches and mice before, though not in our current apartment and not with kids. So, I'm a little freaked out, but figure that the mouse must have come in under the service door in our kitchen and was headed out that way (the apartment below us is being renovated and there is other construction throughout the building, and that always stirs up the critters). As I'm pouring my cereal, I see the mouse dash out past the garbage can (my reaction is to jump about a foot in the air, sending raisin bran everywhere) and head for the living room. I assume that it ran under the radiator (where there must be a hole in the floor), but when I grab a flashlight and sweep the light under there I see nothing. I don't mention this to my wife.

While she's out, I take the radiator cover off, find a hole large enough for a mouse next to the radiator pipe that goes into the floor, and plug up the gap with some spackle. My daughter asks me what's going on and I tell her, and she's not phased by this in the least. She knows that mice poop everywhere and belong in cages if they're inside, so she thinks this is a good idea.

I also decide to check the under the radiator cover in the kids room--and find a gi-normous hole in the wood floor, as well as a few mouse poops. Damn! I drag the kids out to the grocery store for steel wool and mouse traps, and then stuff the Brillo into the hole, seal it up, and set out the traps (the nasty glue kind--I know, they're horrible and less humane than the snappy ones, but I hate setting them).

In the our first post-college apartment that we shared with two other friends--a crappy railroad on the top floor of a nasty tenement--we were away for the weekend and came back to learn that our roomies had caught something like 13 mice (!) while we were gone. The landlord had begun fixing up the apartment beneath us and those suckers came pouring out of the walls. Once the renovations were done, things weren't too bad (we also patched up every hole we could find), but we all bailed out of that apartment when the lease was up. After that, anytime we moved somewhere new, I plugged up any holes under sinks, etc., and pretty much never had any problems with bugs or mice (apart from the odd waterbug that would wander in under the front door during summer heat waves). Yes, the bugs and vermin are still in the walls and always will be with us, but this way they have their space and we have ours.

Knock on wood, I haven't seen any evidence that the mice have visited us again (and nothing has turned up in the traps). And I told my wife about the sighting and finding the holes after I fixed the problem. It minimized the freakout (if you gotta deliver bad news, at least tell someone about it after you've taken action to make things better). My wife, though, is the real pest control master...she actually stepped on and killed a mouse (by accident) at our friend's house earlier in the week!

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"Dance Like a Monkey" is from the latest New York Dolls record, "One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This."

Don't You Forget About Me

2006-11-16T09:07:00.000-05:00

Kids,

Sorry that I haven't posted much here in November. I started a new job (yay!) and have been busy with this and that. I do have lots of things to write about and promise to have new content up soon, very soon!

Thanks for your understanding and love.

Familyman

I Travel

2006-10-28T16:48:00.000-04:00

Sorry not to have written lately. I spent much of last weekend flying over this rather large country of ours (and then dealing with all sorts of work and family-related business upon my return). My brother got hitched (yes!) to a terrific lady, so I flew out to the Bay Area on Friday night, participated in their elegant wedding and awesome afterparty at this inn (on top of a mountain overlooking the Bay) on Saturday night, and flew back to JFK on Sunday night for work Monday morning. My head's still spinning and I caught a cold, but it was worth it!

Haven't flown much since 9/11, so it was cool to find a channel on the telly on the back of the seat in front of me that tracked the location of the plane on a map, as well as its altitude, and air speed. It made me feel less anxious about being crammed into a tin can, thousands of feet in the air, in a contraption that seems all too heavy to even lift off the ground, let alone fly...

When I was a kid, my parents drove us all over the US. It was cheap (my parents' obsession), and we had lots of friends and relatives to stay with (mooch off of) along the way. (At some point, we added up all the States that I'd been too and the number was in the high 40s...) My parents also liked to camp, so much so that I can't stand the thought of camping with my kids when they're older.

I've always had too active an imagination to be out in the dark in the wilderness...and I'll always remember my first camping trip with the cub scouts. To set us on edge from the outset, one of the kids in our den puked out the window on the car ride up (spewing all over the fake wood siding of the boat-like Chevy wagon); there was a stream literally right outside of our tent and, as a result, the ground all around was mucky; at the campfire that night with some of the boy scouts, one of the scoutmasters told us this cock-and-bull story about aliens having landed in a park near where I lived--and then one of the scouts swings into the midst of us on a rope all Tarzan-like with an alien mask on and screaming his head off, scaring the living crap out of all of us 9 and 10 year-olds (we all wanted our mommies that night). Needless to say, I didn't sleep much, when the only thing separating me from whatever was lurking in the dark was a thin layer of nylon...and for years later I was always worried about being abducted by aliens whenever our family went camping (I'd also seen my fair share of creepy, made-for-TeeVee alien abduction movies and too many episodes of "In Search of..."). Good times. Really.

I also remember being fascinated that my dad could find his way, no matter where the hell we were in some backwoods part of America, with the aid of a map (and when I was young, it blew my mind that there were maps of every road in our country). And I learned to read a map from him (most likely so I could figure out how much longer we had to be in the car until we reached our destination), as well as plot out a route to take one from point A to B. A lost art, I'm sure, in the age of Mapquest and on-board GPS navigation systems...

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"I Travel" is from Simple Minds' "Empires and Dance" album.

Is Your Love is Like a Button?/You Can't Stop Pushing It?

2006-10-19T09:58:00.000-04:00

Does anyone over 18 wear buttons ('badges' in Brit-talk) of their favorite bands anymore?

I've got a beat up jean jacket that I'm starting to decorate with a slew of badges that I had from my favorite bands. But I wanted more and was having a hard time finding a store or website that had a good selection of post-punk and alternative bands...until I found Mock the Rock.

Dude! I hit paydirt. My order just came in yesterday with buttons from Echo and the Bunnymen, Art Brut, Blur, Kaiser Chiefs, The Smiths, Super Furry Animals, Pulp, Supergrass, Futureheads, Psychedelic Furs, Elvis Costello, The Cure, Dandy Warhols, Elastica (!), The Fall, The Modern Lovers, The Pretenders, and T-Rex. And looking over the site just now, there are a bunch more than I'm gonna buy.

Go there now and get some badges, pin them on yer jacket, shirt, or bag--and see how many people will come and talk to you about 'em!

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Today's song lyric is from General Public's "Tenderness" off "All the Rage," their self-titled, debut album.

Ignore All Those Fools/They Don't Understand/We Make Our Own Rules

2006-10-18T09:52:00.000-04:00

I think President Bush should now be considered the worst worstest president ever in the history of the US of A. Yesterday, he signed into law a bill that should make the Founding Fathers rise from their graves to tar and feather Dubya, as it is so antithetical to everything that our country represents.

Shame on you President Bush (and VP Cheney). And shame on us for not rising up in righteous fury to protest the suspension of habeas corpus for anyone jailed by our government. I don't care if you're a citizen or not, the laws of our nation should apply equally to everyone! And shame on us for allowing people--whether they are terrorists or not--to be tortured in our name!

Here are the ugly details from Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing in the Washington Post:

"President Bush this morning proudly signed into law a bill that critics consider one of the most un-American in the nation's long history.

The new law vaguely bans torture -- but makes the administration the arbiter of what is torture and what isn't. It allows the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant. It suspends the Great Writ of habeas corpus for detainees. It allows coerced testimony at trial. It immunizes retroactively interrogators who may have engaged in torture."

Don't it make you proud to be an A-murican? And for God's sake, what has Bush done over the past six years that would make us want to trust him to decide who should be imprisoned and for how long--and if they should be tortured or not?

Here's what the ACLU has to say about this travesty:

"With his signature, President Bush enacts a law that is both unconstitutional and un-American. This president will be remembered as the one who undercut the hallmark of habeas in the name of the war on terror. Nothing separates America more from our enemies than our commitment to fairness and the rule of law, but the bill signed today is an historic break because it turns Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. facilities into legal no-man's-lands.

"The president can now - with the approval of Congress - indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions. Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act."

With powers like this, isn't President Bush more like a Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il--a leader unfettered by laws of man or decency? Should we now expect to address Dubya as Dear or Supreme Leader?

Osama's got to be proud. All he had to do was convince a bunch of crazies to slam a few airliners into a three (almost four) buildings and kill 3,000 Americans to convince Bush and Cheney to destroy everything that is sacred to us: our freedom, our values, our laws, and our Constitution.

Here's hoping that the Dems come back into power in Congress and reintroduce the concept of checks and balances into our government--and that the courts overturn this outrageous, revolting law.

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This post's title lyrics come from The Damned's "I Just Can't Be Happy Today," off of the brilliant "Machine Gun Etiquette" album.

Buy and Sell You/Terrorize You/Mass Destruct You

2006-10-17T13:58:00.000-04:00

As someone who is related to several women (wife, daughter, mothers, sisters, niece, and grandmothers), has women friends and colleagues, and is generally concerned about women's status in our society, I feel compelled to point out Bob Herbert's column in yesterday's Times:

"In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls.

Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.

In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.

There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.

None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls."

And...

"We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We’ve been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we’re still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.

What have we learned since then? That there’s big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it’s never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.

A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count. We’re all implicated in this carnage because the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society’s casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels — objects — and never, ever as the equals of men."

Obviously, there are no simple answers here--clearly we need stronger laws protecting women from violence, hate crimes, and discrimination at work and home--but there also need to be seismic changes in our attitudes, habits, and culture. Hollywood and Madison Avenue have become so skilled at exploiting women's sexuality--and manipulating men's sexual desires--in order to sell just about anything you can buy. Yet, no father wants his daughter to be treated as a sex object, though we're perfectly happy to get off on the sexualized image of someone else's daughter in an ad, show, movie, video game, or music video (that generates gobs of money for corporations).

I'm not calling for widespread censorship or a culture-war clampdown on anything remotely sexual. We're a free and democratic society first and foremost. But all of us need to do some soul-searching and realize that, collectively, we have an enormously destructive problem on our hands, and act to change things for the better. We need to teach our boys in such a way so they grow up to respect women and treat them as full equals; to teach our girls that they should never settle for being treated as second class citizens; and we need to become more aware of what the corporations are dishing out--and refuse to consume what they're selling if the product or ad campaign is degrading to women.

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The "buy and sell you" lyrics are from the Super Furry Animals' song "Slow Life," which can be found on their "Phantom Power" album (which is one of the best 9/11-related records I've ever heard).

My City Was Gone, Part 2

2006-10-16T09:54:00.000-04:00

If you are of a certain age and grew up in the New York City area, you probably found yourself at CBGBs to see a name act or a friend's band up on that tiny stage. While it was an incredibly vital part of the NYC music scene during the 70s and 80s (you know, the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, Blondie, Richard Hell, etc.)--the center of the underground and punk NY music universe at its peak--this simply wasn't the case in the 90s and 00s. The punk/alternative scene exploded, better venues came and went, kids grew up, most of the Ramones died (except for Tommy!), and the Bowery (and all the scuzzy, marginal neighborhoods in Manhattan) was gentrified. Can't stop change or the future.

CBs had become just another nasty pit with a glorious past and a brand name recognized world-wide.

After much wrangling with its landlord (ironically, a homeless shelter), CBs had its last show with the Patti Smith Group last night and is now closed. CB's owner, Hilly Kristal has talked about moving the club to Vegas (literally taking down some of the walls with its layers upon layers of band stickers, fan graffiti, and filth and piecing them back together Humpty Dumpty style on the Strip). This seems right to me. If the CBs on the Bowery couldn't be turned into some sort of landmarked punk museum (which would have been kind of cool...), the next best thing is to pack up the club and re-open/re-invent itself in the only other American city that doesn't sleep, makes gobs of money off of sin, and has a casino that sports a fake NYC skyline...

I dunno, it seems kinda punk rawk to me.

Are Friends Electric?

2006-10-15T09:30:00.000-04:00

Warning: Geek Fanboy Posting

If you're not watching the revamped "Battlestar Galactica" on SciFi, you're missing one of the best written, produced, and acted show on the telly. Forget the cheesy 70s series with its shiny chrome robots and feather-haired B-level actors. The producers of the new Galactica took the basic premise--that the robots in another part of the galaxy revolted and killed nearly all of the humans on their twelve colony homeworlds, and are hunting down the few thousand survivors who escaped on a motley group of civilian and military spaceships--and jettisoned almost everything else.

A big new development is that the Cylons have evolved and now, shades of "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers," look, feel, and act exactly the same as human beings (though there is limited diversity...the "skinjobs" only come in a few models, but there are many copies of each), and that they believe they are doing God's bidding. To orient yerself in this universe, check out the excellent 2-hour mini-series movie on DVD and you'll be able to jump into the series from there--or check out this handy primer.)

Anyhoo, the third season premiered a week ago, with a premise that only a science fiction show can get away with: the humans, who had thought they had found a planet to inhabit that was unknown to the Cylons--dubbed New Caprica--are now living under Cylon occupation (much like Vichy France under the Nazis, with the human President techically still head of state, but in reality very much compromised). Of course, many of the crew of the Galactica, the good soldiers that they are, have opted to fight back using guerilla tactics. The human insurgents are shown blowing up a Cylon ship and send a suicide bomber to the graduation of the first class of police academy recruits (who are viewed as traitorous collaborators), which ends up killing many humans and a few Cylons (who don't die, but have their personalities/memories transferred to another robot body through--and I love this--a 'resurrection machine'). The Cylons respond with increasingly harsh measures, including unlawful detentions, interrogations that include torture, and rounding up lists of suspected insurgents in the middle of the night and making them "disappear" in a ravine outside of town.

That's right folks...in this brave new world, we've confronted the enemy and he is us: we're the Cylons.

* * * *

"Are 'Friends' Electric?" is from Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army's "Replicas" album.

The Kids are Alright

2006-10-13T12:10:00.000-04:00

Bill Maher (love him or hate him...I do both) has a pretty spot on take on the many child predators among us apart from Mark Foley.

And we get upset when animals sometimes devour their young?!

* * * *

Hope I die before I get old, indeed.

My City Was Gone

2006-10-12T14:17:00.000-04:00

I know it's not like I'm living in Baghdad or Beirut and my local supermarket or hospital has just been blown up, but the recent news that two of my most beloved NYC stores are closing really bums me out. Both Coliseum Books (an independent bookstore that I've been going to since the late 70s) and Tower Records (where I bought LPs in the early 80s and CDs at the end of that decade!) are kaput, killed off by mega competition from thousands of internet-based discounters, iTunes and file-sharing, and Manhattan's ridiculously high rents. (I'd much rather hit an indie record or book store than a chain or go on-line...but there are almost none anywhere near where I work or live!)

I stopped by the Lincoln Center Tower yesterday. All CDs were on sale and, as a result, blood is in the air -- people were frantically picking through the stacks like buzzards pecking at the flesh and bones of some mass of roadkill. And I guiltily picked up some CDs (The Saints and Los Abandoned) that I couldn't ever expect to find at the local Best Buy.

Change is good...inevitable, really. But NYC is rapidly losing so much of what had made it so unique and vital for so much of my life. And neighborhoods that used to be so out on the fringe of things (and have all these funky people, shops, restaurants, and bars) have been transformed into the playgrounds of the very, very rich.

Hate to sound like a cranky old man talking 'bout how great things were back in the day...but they really were!

* * * *

"My City Was Gone" is from my favorite Pretenders album, "Learning to Crawl." Chrissy Hynde mourns the destruction of her hometown of Akron, Ohio during the Reagan years: "All my favorite places/in my city had been pulled down/reduced to parking spaces."

Music for Boys

2006-10-09T16:36:00.000-04:00

It's fascinating how the pompous, moral majority right-wingers in our country are so quick to blame liberals/Democrats for all our ills (see Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blaming 9/11 on gays, pagans, the ACLU, liberals, secularists, pro-choicers, etc.), especially in light of the Foley scandal, which of course, is the Democrats' fault (even though it is becoming quite clear that the GOP and House leadership have known about Congressman Foley's sexual harassment of/predatory behavior toward underage House pages for years and didn't do a damn thing about it). Let's see, the GOP controls the White House, both houses of Congress, and has purged our Federal agencies of people not loyal to Bush, but somehow the right wing Republicans are still the underdogs, fighting against the godless pagans who threaten their very existence by teaching the theory of evolution in schools (we're related to the damn dirty apes!), recognizing that the separation of church and state is enshrined in our Constitution, believing in global warming (c'mon, the environment isn't going to matter after WWIII/the Rapture -- the good people will be living in heaven, and the pagan zombies will be eating each other's brains on the burned-out remnants of Earth), and by the mere suggestion that imposing government regulation on businesses might be a good way to protect the well-being of the average Joe and Jane American.

Paul Krugman has an interesting take on the rampant conspiracy-theory paranoia that pervades the GOP and people living in the reality-challenged, parallel universe Red State America:

"Last week Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, explained the real cause of the Foley scandal. "The people who want to see this thing blow up," he said, "are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros."

Most news reports, to the extent they mentioned Mr. Hastert's claim at all, seemed to treat it as a momentary aberration. But it wasn't his first outburst along these lines. Back in 2004, Mr. Hastert said: "You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where -- if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from."

Does Mr. Hastert really believe that George Soros and his operatives, conspiring with the evil news media, are responsible for the Foley scandal? Yes, he probably does. For one thing, demonization of Mr. Soros is widespread in right-wing circles. One can only imagine what people like Mr. Hastert or Tony Blankley, the editorial page editor of The Washington Times, who once described Mr. Soros as "a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust," say behind closed doors.

More generally, Mr. Hastert is a leading figure in a political movement that exemplifies what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called "the paranoid style in American politics."

I thought the right wingers were trying to keep their anti-Semitism in check, since Israel supposedly is playing its part in bringing about Armageddon. You'd think they'd try to shut-up in public at least until the Rapture, when Jesus will come back and slaughter all the Jews, pagans, non-believers, etc., and embrace all of the Christian evangelicals to his bosom as he swoops them up for eternal bliss in heaven (this ain't too far from the whole 77 virgins at your beck and call in Paradise that the Islamic fundamentalists are peddling to would-be suicide bombers, is it? Though the Muslim vision seems a bit more on the fun side of eternity...). Isn't God's plan really great? And, as usual, the Republicans use everyone else as a means to their own ends!

The New York Times reports today that "Evangelicals Blame Foley, Not Republican Party." Of course, since they see homosexuality as a sin (and many are convinced that gay men are pedophiles who "recruit" boys to this type of sexual orientation), it's quite easy for them to focus on this non-scandalous aspect of the scandal, that Mark Foley is gay. Though, for the life of me, why would any gay person be a member of the Republican party? The GOP hates gays (along with black people, Jewish people, people of color, liberal people, immigrant people, French people, Muslim people, etc.)

Foley's attempts at excusing his own inexcusable behavior -- his alcoholism, his alleged sexual abuse by a priest -- are outrageous. Shouldn't he be atoning for his sins and asking for forgiveness instead of playing the so-called blame game? WWJD, indeed!

Two of my favorite things to come out of Foleygate:

1) How do you separate the boys from the men? Mid-term elections!

2) Fox "News" identified GOP Congressman Foley as a Democrat several times during the Bill O'Reilly show! (And I'm paranoid enough to believe that they did this on purpose to trick their viewers into believing that this was another Democratic sex scandal a la Bubba-Monica.)

* * * *

"Music for Boys" is from The Suburbs' "Credit in Heaven" album.

A Phone Box Full of Books (Is My Name in There?)

2006-10-06T12:32:00.000-04:00

I’m a big supporter of libraries. Where else can you walk in off the street, take out any book, DVD, CD home for weeks at a time (gotta love the fact that you can renew your loan on-line), and not pay a dime. If they don’t have the book/CD/DVD you’re looking for, you can even have it delivered to your local branch library from their city-wide collection. Pretty cool. I even send the NYPL a donation now and then to help support ‘em. As RIF says, "reading is fundamental."

There’s a small public library near one of the places I work, so I hit it every now and then during lunch. Admittedly, its collection is pretty limited (though its children’s library rocks), but like a bibliophile archeologist, I like rummaging through the stacks to see what surprises I can unearth.

Big score the other day was “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die” (somehow appropriate given my love of music and as my 40th birthday looms over me next month – I’ve got another 40 good years at least, I hope, to go…). When I saw this book at Barnes and Noble last year, I wrote it off as some as some gimmicky tome of pap. But flipping through it, I discovered that its selection of albums from the 1950s through 2005 was pretty amazing – and that the majority of reviews were smart, insightful, and really well written. I was particularly impressed with the Post-punk/New Wave, Alternative, and Britpop albums they chose (and while they cover hip-hop fairly well, not enough reggae is in there, mates). Everyone will have their quibbles over what was excluded (as well as included), but it gets mad props for not playing it middle-of-the-road safe. Of course, it turns out that the editors and writers are British (compare this book to the relatively sucky Spin or Rolling Stone ‘best of music’ books, and they just aren’t up to the task). Might just have to actually buy this book.

If you’re looking for some good on-line music review sources for Alternative, Post-Punk/New Wave, and Reggae music, check out Trouser Press, All Music Guide, and PopMatters. AMG and PopMatters are updated daily, and Trouser Press has a pretty lively message board that is worth checking out frequently. I know there is a huge buzz about Pitchfork, but half the time I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, and they tend to review a lot of rather obscure indie rock bands – who deserve the coverage – but they’re just not my scene.

Trouser Press started out as one of the first independent music magazines in the US (1974-1984) to cover the Post-Punk/New Wave scene back in the late 70s and first half of the mid 80s. The now out-of-print second edition of the “The Trouser Press Record Guide” was my music bible for the late-80s and early 90s – its one of my most prized music books (I really dig pop-culture reference type books – Leonard Maltin’s movie guide and one of the Guinness World Record books were throne reading throughout high school).

The reviews on AMG vary (though Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s critiques are usually spot on, and the ska and reggae reviews my Jo-Ann Green and Rick Anderson are quite good, as well -- disclaimer, I think I dealt with all of them when I was doing promotions and marketing for Moon Records in the 90s), but the scope of their coverage is mind-bogglingly massive. AMG also sends out a list of new releases worth checking out each Tuesday (when new CDs are placed on the shelves of record stores across the USA – something that is, most sadly, more and more of an anachronism in our iTunes/Amazon world).

PopMatters not only reviews albums and shows, they cover books, comics, movies, and other pop-culture related ephemera. Pretty good stuff.

* * * *

The "A phone box full of books/(is my name in there?)" lyric comes from The Clash's "Overpowered by Funk" from "Combat Rock."

Here I am in a Psychopathic World/Trying to Avoid Disaster

2006-10-02T22:01:00.000-04:00

In Sunday's New York Times, Richard Clarke, Bill Clinton's counter-terrorism tsar, argued that we all shouldn't focus so much on which administration is to blame for failing to prevent 9/11 (both failed because it happened)...but instead we must figure out where to go from here in protecting the still-vulnerable U.S. from future attacks -- without shredding the Constitution. Since he's the only government official ever to apologize to the American people for failing to prevent 9/11 (during the same 9/11 Commission hearings that Condi Rice was forced to disclose the title of the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) from the CIA -- Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S. -- and dismiss it as "historical information"), I'm willing to give some thought to his proposal.

Then again, it's becoming more and more evident that Condi and the Bush administration had plenty of warning that something wicked was this way coming during their first, pre-9/11 8 months in the White House. (And this is playing the blame game, folks -- the Bushies have cast the blame on everyone else -- especially Clinton -- for 9/11, tarred and feathered the Democrats as weak-kneed, pee-in-your-pants sissies when it comes to protecting the nation from terrorists, and used 9/11 to prey on the fears of the American public and manipulate us for their own political ends.)

Yeah, I loved that Clinton got all in Chris Wallace's face on GOP/Fox "News" and forcefully reminded everyone that at least he tried to kill bin Laden and keep al-Qaeda in check (and did indeed warn the Bush administration that they were a grave threat and handed them a plan for combating al Qaeda and the man to lead the effort: Richard Clarke):

"Clinton said he came "closer to killing" Osama bin Laden in a 1998 missile strike on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan than anybody has since.

"I didn't get him," Clinton said. "But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried.

"So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted."

The most damning revelation that emerged from all this was that in December 2000, Clinton finally learned from the FBI and CIA that the party responsible for the suicide-bomb attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors and wounded another 39, was al Qaeda. Clinton, in his last month as President, decided that the US response (and all its policy implications) should be up to the new administration (contrast this with Bush, who plans to leave mopping up the Iraq mess for the next President):

"[9/11 Commission member] RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Well, I think it's an important subject. The issue of the Cole is an important subject, and there has been a lot of politicization over this issue, why didn't President Clinton respond?

"Well, we set forth in the report the reasons, and that is because the CIA had not given the president the conclusion that al Qaeda was responsible. That did not occur until some point in December. It was reiterated in a briefing to the -- to the new president in January....

"[CNN Correspondent] WOLF BLITZER: Well, let me stop you for a second. If former President Clinton knew in December. . . .

"BEN-VENISTE: Right.

"BLITZER: . . . that the CIA and the FBI had, in his words, certified that al Qaeda was responsible, he was still president until January 20, 2001. He had a month, let's say, or at least a few weeks to respond.

"Why didn't he?

"BEN-VENISTE: Well, I think that was a question of whether a president who would be soon leaving office would initiate an attack against a foreign country, Afghanistan. And I think that was left up to the new administration. But strangely, in the transition there did not seem to be any great interest by the Bush administration, at least none that we found, in pursuing the question of plans which were being drawn up to attack in Afghanistan as a response to the Cole."

What did Condi and Dubya do with this vital bit of intel? Nada, zip, zilch. Focused on Star Wars/SDI missile defense. Finishing up Poppy's war in Iraq. Vacationing in Crawford and dismissing the CIA briefer who delivered the August 6, 2001 PDB "Bin Laden Determined to Strike US" that he'd "covered his ass" (quoted in Ron Suskind's "The One Percent Doctrine") and to git along, so he could get back to clearing brush.

According to 9-11 Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, in an interview with CNN:

"One of the questions ... I specifically had, was why President Bush did not respond to the Cole attack. And what he told me was that he did not want to launch a cruise-missile attack against bin Laden for fear of missing him."

Yeah, remember that Clinton got a lot of crap from the Republicans when he fired a cruise missile at bin Laden and failed to hit the target. It's hard being the Decider, isn't it? Your plan might not succeed!

But Condi insisted that she and the Bush administration did all they could to fight al-Qaeda and prevent 9/11 (this from the National Security Advisor who said that no one could imagine terrorists flying airplanes into buildings and that Saddam would leave mushroom clouds in the wake of his imminent attack on the US).

Now we learn that former CIA Director George Tenent met with National Security Advisor Condi Rice to sound the alarm on a sure to be coming al Qaeda attack. According to the New York Times, "on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism deputy, J. Cofer Black, were so alarmed about an impending Al Qaeda attack that they demanded an emergency meeting at the White House with Ms. Rice and her National Security Council staff."

From an excerpt in the Washington Post quoting Bob Woodward's "State of Denial" tome:

"On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.

"Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away. . . .

"He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action. . . .

"Tenet hoped his abrupt request for an immediate meeting would shake Rice. He and Black, a veteran covert operator, had two main points when they met with her. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden. . . .

"Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies. . . .

"The July 10 meeting between Tenet, Black and Rice went unmentioned in the various reports of investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, but it stood out in the minds of Tenet and Black as the starkest warning they had given the White House on bin Laden and al-Qaeda."

Condi's response to this devastating revelation? "'What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States, and the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible."

That's it? Essentially, a "I don't recall"/"they are lying" defense?

It's worth revisiting another bit of her dissembling, too, in light of all the other warnings that National Security Advisor Rice and others in the Bush administration must have been receiving from our intelligence agencies in the months running up to 9/11. From "What You Think You Know About September 11..But Don't," posted on Slate on September 10, 2003:

The misconception: No one could have predicted the Sept. 11 attacks. Since 9/11, President Bush and his team have repeatedly insisted that the attacks were inconceivable. David Corn chronicles these claims in his new book The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. In May 2002, for example, Condoleezza Rice said, "I don't think anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." Ari Fleischer echoed her, "Never did we imagine what would take place on Sept. 11 where people use those airplanes as missiles and weapons."

What's wrong with the story: In fact, there were tons of warnings of exactly this kind of attack. The recent congressional report on the 9/11 intelligence failures lists a dozen pre-9/11 indications that terrorists were plotting a suicide hijacking. For example, in 1994 Algerians hijacked an Air France airliner with the intention of crashing it into the Eiffel Tower. (They were tricked by French officials into landing in Marseilles to refuel, where they were overpowered.) In 1995, police in the Philippines uncovered an al-Qaida plot to fly a plane into CIA headquarters. (One of the plotters: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.) A year later, al-Qaida had the idea of flying a plane from outside the United States and crashing it into the White House. Two years later, al-Qaida planned to fly a plane from outside the United States and crash it into the World Trade Center. And so on.

Intelligence officials, who are endlessly juggling all kinds of different threats, didn't take the suicide-plane schemes seriously because they believed there were other, more imminent dangers. But no one can say they weren't warned."

I'd be a lot more forgiving -- and I think I'm speaking for a lot of people on the left -- if Condi, or Dubya, even Cheney (especially Cheney) had just gone on TV at some point after 9/11 and said "we had some warnings about this, and we should have seen it, and we completely blew it."

But they didn't -- and way too much has gone down since then...

***

"How To Avoid Disaster" is by the Aussie punk/rock band, The Saints, from their "All Fool's Day" album.

It Ain't What You Do It's the Way That You Do It

2006-09-22T11:55:00.000-04:00

When they elected him, I think the American people expected that their CEO/MBA president (yes, I'm talking Dubya here) would at least appoint competent people to positions of responsibility within his administration, despite any misgivings they may have held about his right-wing/evangelical beliefs. This, of course, would explain the public's reaction to his inexcusably poor response to Katrina and his extraordinarily low approval ratings ever since.

It does take one's breath away, though, to learn how the Bush administration filled positions within the Coalition Provisional Authority that were responsible for rebuilding Iraq (with $18 billion in taxpayer money). According to Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran in his article "Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq," the Bush administration vetted candidates according to their political beliefs and loyalty to Bush rather than their qualifications and real life experience:

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.

The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.

Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.

"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."

To any sane person, it sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn't it? You'd think that the Bushies would have wanted their little experiment in Democracy to be a bright, shiny success (and you can only imagine how good their standing in the world would be right now if their reconstruction efforts in Iraq -- or New Orleans, for that matter -- actually had worked). But, that's the problem with looney ideologues like Bush and Cheney -- they believe that what they are doing is going to have a set outcome no matter what transpires in the real world.

In related news, for those of us not living in Bush's bubble, the UN reports that during the last two months, close to 7,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in sectarian and insurgency-related violence. In addition, the UN report indicated that many of the people killed had suffered horrific deaths:

Bodies found at the Medico-legal Institute often bear signs of severe torture, including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones (back, hands and legs), missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails.

* * * *

Our title is a song off Fun Boy Three's self-titled album, which also includes the ditty "The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum."

All Out to Get You

2006-09-22T09:18:00.000-04:00

You may think I'm overly paranoid when I propose that US gas companies are lowering prices at the pump to help favor the GOP in the upcoming mid-term elections (which have been explained away as the result of decreased tensions in the Middle East -- I guess we're talking Lebanon here, certainly not Iraq and Iran -- a relatively quiet hurricane season, lower demand now that the summer travel season is over, etc.)...but then I read a story like this in the Times:

Four government auditors who monitor leases for oil and gas on federal property say the Interior Department suppressed their efforts to recover millions of dollars from companies [Shell and Kerr-McGee Corporation] they said were cheating the government.

The accusations, many of them in four lawsuits that were unsealed last week by federal judges in Oklahoma, represent a rare rebellion by government investigators against their own agency.

The auditors contend that they were blocked by their bosses from pursuing more than $30 million in fraudulent underpayments of royalties for oil produced in publicly owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The agency has lost its sense of mission, which is to protect American taxpayers,” said Bobby L. Maxwell, who was formerly in charge of Gulf of Mexico auditing. “These are assets that belong to the American public, and they are supposed to be used for things like education, public infrastructure and roadways.”

Of course, two former oil men like Dubya and Cheney wouldn't throw any favors to their Big Oil buddies, would they now?

* * * *

"All Out to Get You" is from the English Beat's "Wha'ppen?" album.

We'll Be Grinning in Heaven/When the Day of Judgment Comes...We're Going to Live for a Very Long Time

2006-09-13T20:25:00.000-04:00

You have to wonder what the parents of a soldier who has made the ultimate sacrifice in Baghdad were thinking when they heard Dick Cheney make the following declaration on national TV regarding our little war in Iraq: "It was the right thing to do and if we had to do it over again we would do exactly the same thing."

Really?

Iraq is the midst of a civil war. The country's infrastructure is in shambles. Thousands upon thousands of people have died after major combat was declared over -- several years ago. Our nation has spent billions in borrowed money to finance the whole thing -- much of it seemingly wasted, mismanaged, or outright stolen. Iraq has become both a magnet and training ground for jihadist terrorists. Pretty much the whole world -- especially the Muslim world -- is boiling mad pissed at us. Drug lords and the Taliban practically rule Afghanistan, and, oh yes, Osama bin Laden still roams free after murdering thousands of American citizens.

Bush recently was forced to admit -- once again -- that Saddam was in no way connected to 9/11, even though his administration spent years insinuating that he was the evil mastermind behind it all. So, even though there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks on 9/11, Bush makes the following declaration on the fifth anniversary of Al Qaeda's attacks on New York City and Washington, DC:

"I am often asked why we are in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. My administration, the Congress, and the United Nations saw the threat -- and after 9/11, Saddam's regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take. The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power."

So what was this "clear threat" threat to our democracy and way of life? We all know that there were no stockpiles of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in Iraq (the UN sanctions and no-fly zones had kept him in check for years). And Saddam wasn't in cahoots with Osama (they hated each other) and Al Qaeda. So where's the threat? Iraq is a huge problem now (as a result of the sheer incompetence of the Bush administration -- they have grossly mismanaged the post-Mission Accomplished 'peace'), but Iraq clearly wasn't a threat to us back then.

How can any of this make sense to any rational, sane human being?

Only if you believe if you are right because you are leading the country on a mission from God...

(Albeit, a crazy religious supreme leader with a potty mouth.)

* * * *

The synth-electro-pop band Heaven 17 appropriated its name from a ficticious band in the novel/film "A Clockwork Orange" and wrote the wonderfully wry "We're Going to Live for a Very Long Time" (which is from their "Penthouse and Pavement" album).

Makes No Sense at All

2006-09-08T16:40:00.000-04:00

As a resident of the city that was attacked on 9/11/01, and as an American who witnessed the black smoke pour out of the giant, crooked gash in the WTC’s North Tower first hand (and was almost dumbfounded by the realization that people were dying in there on such a beautiful, blue sky day), I find myself almost completely drained of outrage five years later. Don't get me wrong, the event itself still saddens me to the core, but all I feel is anger toward Bush and his henchmen for hijacking the real meaning -- the truth -- of that day for their own political, power hungry ends.

Let’s review some of what has transpired over the past five years: 9/11 has been used to justify our war in Iraq that has nothing whatsoever to do the 9/11 attack (or weapons of mass destruction for that matter), and the subsequent deaths of thousands of US soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children; to justify the illegal torture and open-ended imprisonment of people who may or may not be terrorists (let’s put them on trial in a court under existing civilian or military laws if our case against them is so legit – and if our interrogation of them is not torture and completely legal, why did all of this need to transpire in secret CIA prisons overseas or on a military base in Cuba); to justify the suspension of the Bill or Rights and the Constitution in regard to domestic spying on US citizens; to justify the wholesale expansion of Presidential powers to such a degree that Bush can declare himself so above the law that he can choose to ignore part or all of any legislation that Congress enacts – and to act in direct violation of existing laws and declare what he is doing is completely legal (for Pete’s sake, he believes he can unilaterally declare a US citizen an “enemy combatant” and toss them in jail indefinitely, without any legal recourse whatsoever); to justify the run-up of unprecedented national debt (while slashing taxes for the richest of rich Americans and corporations)…you get the idea (and know all this if you’ve been diligently reading the papers all this time).

Even though I was unhappy with him for waiting three whole days to visit Ground Zero (Dubya didn't come to NYC until September 14th) -- Clinton or Gore would not have waited that long -- and I hated his politics, I was willing to rally behind him during this extraordinary national crisis. When Bush announced that he was attacking the Taliban for harboring bin Laden and al Qaeda, I remember telling my wife that Dubya should “bomb the sh*t” out them for their part in making 9/11 possible. This from a generally anti-war kind of guy. I also told her that I might make an exception to my anti-death stance for bin Laden. (Though killing him in combat or executing him after trial only will make him a martyr to the cause, so it’s almost better that he dies of cancer or some natural cause instead.)

I now find myself angrier at Bush for what he has done to our country in the name of protecting it than I am with Osama bin Laden for attacking the city that I love and murdering thousands of my fellow citizens.

And that’s not right.

* * * *

("Makes No Sense at All" is on Husker Du's "Flip Your Wig" album. The band's name comes from a Danish board game, "Do You Remember?')

Killing an Arab

2006-09-06T15:45:00.000-04:00

More grist for the anti-American mill in countries around the world: "Senate Rejects Limits on Cluster Bombs".

Apparently, close to 40% of the cluster bombs dropped on Lebanon (many of which were supplied to Israel by the United States) during the recent Israel-Hezbollah war did not explode when they hit the ground. Tragically, even though the war is over, these cluster bombs (like land mines) continue to kill Lebanese civilians who are unfortunate enough to stumble upon them. Wouldn't it be a little more civilized (if waging war could ever be anything but barbaric) if we restricted our munitions to those that kill and destroy only during a war?

Of course, the Republican chicken hawks defend the maiming and killing of non-combatants (read: innocent children, women, and men) by insisting that restricting the use of cluster bombs will somehow hamper with the defense of the Republic (read: terrorists lurk everywhere! -- be very afraid! -- don't question what we're doing, it's unpatriotic and comforts the enemy!).

Does wrapping oneself in the flag keep the spray of innocent blood off one's fancy suit -- especially if the blood and guts are from brown-skinned, Muslim bodies? Most surprisingly, it's worked so far for Dubya with American soldiers (according to CNN, as of September 5th, 2,647 US troops have been killed in Iraq). The Israelis already are ready to dump Prime Minister Olmert for mucking up their war on terror (and he hasn't even bankrupted his country or trampled all over their nation's constitution yet)!

Certainly, the deaths of who knows how many thousands of civilian Iraqis in our effort to spread freedom and democracy in the Middle East through wholesale death and destruction seems not to trouble many self-proclaimed Christians in the Bush administration and in Congress...they're too busy figuring out new schemes for cutting taxes for the rich and those lucky GOP-connected corporations!

* * * *
"Killing an Arab" refers to a song by The Cure, which is based on "The Stranger," by Albert Camus (Bush claims to have read this book over the summer at Laura's recommendation).

Ever Fallen in Love with Someone that You Shouldn't Have Fallen in Love with?

2006-09-05T13:40:00.000-04:00

With all the crap that is heaped upon women (in our supposedly advanced and compassionate society) for not breastfeading or for being a working mom or [insert your sexist, patriarchal gripe here] and all of the supposed damage inflicted on their children as a result, I can't help but point with some glee in a culture wars type of way at the following headline from the Washington Post: Autism Risk Tied to Older Fathers.

"With every decade of advancing age starting with men in their teens and twenties, the new study found, older fathers pose a growing risk to their children when it comes to autism -- unhappy evidence that the medical risks associated with late parenthood are not just the province of older mothers, as much previous research has suggested.

Of special concern is the finding that the risk for autism not only increases with paternal age but also appears to accelerate.

When fathers are in their thirties, children have about 1 1/2 times the risk of developing autism of children of fathers in their teens and twenties. Compared with the offspring of the youngest fathers, children of fathers in their forties have more than five times the risk of developing autism, and children of fathers in their fifties have more than nine times the risk."

Trophy wives, you've been forewarned!

(And my apologies to anyone affected by autism, which I know is no laughing matter.)

Who Are You Fighting For?

2005-11-15T10:20:00.000-05:00

The fact that Bush and Cheney have the gall to label anyone who disagrees with their policies, lies, and innuendo as unpatriotic, while they advocate the torture of POWs (it's their "war on terror," right? So anyone they capture in this war is a prisoner of this struggle, a POW...), eliminate habeas corpus (even for American citizens -- remember Jose Padilla?) and lord over a secret network of prisons in Eastern Europe. They are the ones who have tread all over the Constitution and defiled our nation's ideals, principles, and laws.

As usual, Molly Ivins is able to sum up what I feel when anger and outrage threaten to overwhelm my ability to express my thoughts coherently:

I can't get over this feeling of unreality, that I am actually sitting here writing about our country having a gulag of secret prisons in which it tortures people. I have loved America all my life, even though I have often disagreed with the government. But this seems to me so preposterous, so monstrous. My mind is a little bent and my heart is a little broken this morning.

Maybe I should try to get a grip -- after all, it's just this one administration that I had more cause than most to realize was full of inadequate people going in. And even at that, it seems to be mostly Vice President Cheney. And after all, we were badly frightened by 9-11, which was a horrible event. "Only" nine senators voted against the prohibition of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under custody or control the United States." Nine out of 100. Should we be proud? Should we cry?

"We do not torture," said our pitifully inarticulate president, straining through emphasis and repetition to erase the obvious.

A string of prisons in Eastern Europe in which suspects are held and tortured indefinitely, without trial, without lawyers, without the right to confront their accusers, without knowing the evidence or the charges against them, if any. Forever. It's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." Another secret prison in the midst of a military camp on an island run by an infamous dictator. Prisoner without a name, cell without a number.

Who are we? What have we become? The shining city on a hill, the beacon and bastion of refuge and freedom, a country born amidst the most magnificent ideals of freedom and justice, the greatest political heritage ever given to any people anywhere.

I am baffled by these "arguments": But we're talking about really awful people, cries the harassed press secretary. People like X and Y and Z (after a time, one forgets all the names of the No. 2's after bin Laden we have captured). The SS and the Gestapo and the KVD weren't all that nice, either.

Then I hear the familiar tinniness of the fake machismo I know so well from George W. Bush and all the other frat boys who never went to Vietnam and never got over the guilt.

"Sometimes you gotta play rough," said Dick Cheney. No shit, Dick? Now why don't you tell that to John McCain?

I have known George W. Bush since we were both in high school -- we have dozens of mutual friends. I have written two books about him and so have interviewed many dozens more who know him well in one way or another. Spare me the tough talk. He didn't play football -- he was a cheerleader. "He is really competitive," said one friend. "You wouldn't believe how tough he is on a tennis court!" Just cut the macho crap -- I don't want to hear it.

If you are dead to all sense of morality (please let me not go off on the stinking sanctimony of this crowd), let us still reason together on the famous American common ground of practicality. Torture. Does. Not. Work.

Torture does not work. Ask the United States military. Ask the Israelis.

There seems to be some fantastic scenario floating around -- if Osama bin Laden had an atomic bomb hidden in a locker at Grand Central Station, and it was due to go off in 12 hours, and we had him in prison ... I seem to have missed some important television program on this theme. I am told it was fiction, but it must have been really scary -- it certainly seems to have unbalanced the minds of some of our fellow citizens.

Torture does not work. It is not productive. It does not yield important, timely information. That is in the movies. This is reality.

I grew up with all this pathetic Texas tough: Everybody here knows you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs; and this ain't beanbag; and I'll knock your jaw so far back, you'll scratch your throat with your front teeth; and I'm gonna cloud up and rain all over you; and I'm gonna open me a can of whip-ass ...

And that'll show 'em, won't it? Take some miserable human being alone and helpless in a cell, completely under your control, and torture him. Boy, that is some kind of manly, ain't it?

"The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have 'disappeared,' like the victims of some dictatorships." -- The Washington Post.

Why did we bother to beat the Soviet Union if we were just going to become it? Shame. Shame. Shame.

Amen, sister Molly, amen.

Better Must Come

2005-11-02T21:56:00.000-05:00

While I'm not surprised about all of the pathological lying that has taken place during the vast dark nightmare of Bush, Inc. (these neocon a-holes will say and do anything to achieve their twisted ideological ends), I have to admit to being a bit depressed by the idea that Scooter Libby lied to Patrick Fitzgerald back in October 2004 about the Valerie Plame case -- essentially, he stonewalled the grand jury investigation -- so that none of what has just taken place in the past week would have interrupted the final weeks of the 2004 Presidential campaign. (And you damn well know that Libby has been promised by Cheney or Rove that Bush will pardon him come the final, blessed dayz of his term.) Would Dubya have been re-elected if Libby were indicted in October 2004, and it looked like Rove and Cheney had been involved in the outing and subsequent cover-up? I don't think so. Especially if one considers how quickly the public soured on Bush in the first half of 2005, as the Iraq war continued its numbingly bloody course, and he tried to sell the fleecing of Social Security to us as the solution to all our problems.

They stole the election in 2000 and again in 2004.

Sigh.

I do take comfort that the history books will very likely rate George W. Bush as one of the worst Presidents in US history, and his administration as one of the most corrupt and incompetent ever. Check in with me ten, twenty years from now and you'll see that I'm dead on right, dude. I mean it, man.

Strange Days

2005-10-18T22:14:00.000-04:00

Here's a story from Salon that is sure to keep conspiracy theory freaks going for years:

On Sept. 24, 2005, tens of thousands of protesters marched past the White House and flooded the National Mall near 17th Street and Constitution Avenue. They had arrived from all over the country for a day of speeches and concerts to protest the war in Iraq. It may have been the biggest antiwar rally since Vietnam. A light rain fell early in the day and most of the afternoon was cool and overcast.

Unknown to the crowd, biological-weapons sensors, scattered for miles across Washington by the Department of Homeland Security, were quietly doing their work. The machines are designed to detect killer pathogens. Sometime between 10 a.m. on Sept. 24 and 10 a.m. on Sept. 25, six of those machines sucked in trace amounts of deadly bacteria called Francisella tularensis. The government fears it is one of six biological weapons most likely to be used against the United States.

It was an alarming reading. The biological-weapons detection system in Washington had never set off any alarms before. There are more than 150 sensors spread across 30 of the most populated cities in America. But this was the first time that six sensors in any one place had detected a toxin at the same time. The sensors are also located miles from one another, suggesting that the pathogen was airborne and probably not limited to a local environmental source.

There is much debate over whether or not this was a botched terrorist attack or if the bacteria, which can be found naturally in the soil, was kicked up in the air by all the marchers. Another troubling aspect of this story is that it took Homeland Security five days to analyze and test the readings, and then alert state and local public health officials across the country.

So far, there have been no confirmed reports of any marchers becoming ill from exposure to this bacteria, which causes flu-like symptoms and is easily treatable with antibiotics (if properly diagnosed). However, Salon does quote several anti-war marchers who claimed that they experienced flu-like symptoms after the demonstration...

Bizarre coincidence? A Pentagon test on an undesirable segment of the population? A home-grown, right-wing attack on liberals and freaks? I really wanna know.

Also, why hasn't there been more coverage of this story in the press? (I did a Google search and only found a few stories in the Guardian Unlimited, Reuters, and the Bangor Daily News among others.)

Hitting an All Time Low

2005-10-14T23:29:00.000-04:00

From Editor and Publisher:

Questions today from longtime White House reporter Helen Thomas caused White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan to declare that she opposes the war on terrorism. His response caused one of Thomas's colleagues, Terry Moran, to leap to her defense.

Here is the exchange from the official transcript:

THOMAS What does the President mean by "total victory" -- that we will never leave Iraq until we have "total victory"? What does that mean?

McCLELLAN: Free and democratic Iraq in the heart of the Middle East, because a free and democratic Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will be a major blow to the ambitions --

THOMAS If they ask us to leave, then we'll leave?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm trying to respond. A free and democratic Iraq in the heart of the broader Middle East will be a major blow to the ambitions of al Qaeda and their terrorist associates. They want to establish or impose their rule over the broader Middle East -- we saw that in the Zawahiri letter that was released earlier this week by the intelligence community.

THOMAS They also know we invaded Iraq.

McCLELLAN: Well, Helen, the President recognizes that we are engaged in a global war on terrorism. And when you're engaged in a war, it's not always pleasant, and it's certainly a last resort. But when you engage in a war, you take the fight to the enemy, you go on the offense. And that's exactly what we are doing. We are fighting them there so that we don't have to fight them here. September 11th taught us --

THOMAS It has nothing to do with -- Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

McCLELLAN: Well, you have a very different view of the war on terrorism, and I'm sure you're opposed to the broader war on terrorism. The President recognizes this requires a comprehensive strategy, and that this is a broad war, that it is not a law enforcement matter.

Terry.

TERRY MORAN On what basis do you say Helen is opposed to the broader war on terrorism?

McCLELLAN: Well, she certainly expressed her concerns about Afghanistan and Iraq and going into those two countries. I think I can go back and pull up her comments over the course of the past couple of years.

MORAN And speak for her, which is odd.

McCLELLAN: No, I said she may be, because certainly if you look at her comments over the course of the past couple of years, she's expressed her concerns --

THOMAS I'm opposed to preemptive war, unprovoked preemptive war.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- she's expressed her concerns.

Bush is sounding more Hitler-like with his "total victory" language regarding Iraq, and good ol' Scotty boy is ever the bully, attacking Ms. Thomas' patriotism for challenging the bull crap that pours out of the mouths of everyone representing the Bush administration. I'm just happy that more and more Americans are finally realizing what a mess Bush, Inc. has made of our nation...

I Spy for the FBI

2005-10-14T21:08:00.000-04:00

I'm not all worked up over the revelation that unnamed persons with ties to Homeland Security warned their friends via e-mail not to ride the NYC subways last week (if I had that info I'd be passing it along to all my friends and relations, too -- to hell with secrecy). And though it's disturbing that they were sent out before Mayor Bloomberg and Ray Kelly were briefed by the Feds, the wheels of bureaucracy at the Federal level can turn slowly, especially when it pertains to rumors of terrorism ("bin Laden determined to strike inside the US" anyone?).

What gets my boxers in a bunch was how "sources" at Homeland Security were publicly dismissing the warnings issued by the NYPD. As I've previously mentioned, the NYPD has its own counter-terrorism intelligence gathering apparatus which, from all that I've read, does a better job at evaluating threats to/protecting NYC that does Homeland Security. The whole thing smacks of inter-agency rivalry on HS's part...the whole stupid turf wars that break out between the Feds and local law enforcement:

A former anti-terrorism official told Newsday: "There is a standing joke that when Friday prayers at the Al Farooq mosque in Brooklyn ends, the NYPD's informants and the FBI's informants are bumping into each other as they leave."

Goodbye to You

2005-10-12T12:26:00.000-04:00

Feds to Louisiana: Drop Dead!

More grist for the mill that echoes Paul Krugman's belief that Bush Inc. are really not going to do anything significant to assist in the reconstruction of the Katrina-battered Gulf states can be found in this depressing op-ed.

I Can't Stand the Rain...

2005-10-12T10:10:00.000-04:00

It's pouring here in NYC this morning (and it's been gray and damp for daze now), the kind of rain that soaks a good part of you even if you have an umbrella up and a raincoat on. But weather like this still doesn't keep the sign-ripper-downers from their appointed rounds. As I ran to the corner Starbucks for a giant paper cup of tea, I spotted this bearded old white man tearing down 'Mayor Mike Bloomberg' signs that had been stapled around a lamp pole and stuffing them into a garbage can.

Like most cities, people tape up missing pet signs, ads for room painters or babysitters, things like that (and as we stumble toward November, placards for politicians). Since New York tends to cultivate a fair number of psycho-compulsive people, it's not too hard to spot those permanently upset by unauthorized signage on our streetlamps.

Here's the profile:

- Caucasian

- typically 65 and older

- usually male, but female variants have been spotted

- may be accompanied by small dog or 'granny' cart

- some appear to be people of great means, others appear ragged and semi-destitute

- demeanor: crotchety, testy, oblivious to the outside world

- cannot tolerate any form of paper attached to streetlamps or sign poles and will march block after block in search of these offending articles (and angrily remove the signage and tape when found)

- approach with extreme caution

One could only imagine what would happen if these folks were sent off to a place like San Francisco, where the wooden telephone poles and local traditions support a thriving ecosystem of stapled signage...

Mirror in the Bathroom

2005-10-10T20:11:00.000-04:00

It's kind of pathetic, but at least it's something: the U.S. government is sending only 8 military choppers (plus the promise of $50 million in cash that we have to borrow) to help with the relief effort in Pakistan, after the horrific earthquake there killed 20,000+ souls.

Here we are, the sole superpower, yet our volunteer military is stretched to the breaking point by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, plus we're so deep in the hole paying for them (latest tally= over $350 billion) and the generous tax breaks to the rich and corporate America that we simply can't afford to help out the Pakistanis. God knows, we can't even help our own in Louisiana and Mississippi. (Paul Krugman comments in today's New York Times that he thinks there is no plan or intent by the Bush administration to fund any post-Katrina reconstruction effort in the Gulf states at all!).

Considering how poor our image is in the Arab world, you'd think that the Bushies would pull out all the stops to help out this Muslim country in the midst of this disaster (and keep proping up General Musharraf). But you'd be wrong. They'll probably send Karen Hughes to lecture Pakistani women about how she knows how hard it is to be a working Mom of faith, and that we don't want to kill all of the Muslims in the world, just torture the Muslim men who might or might not be terrorists and keep them in jail indefinitely...

Speaking of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Gharib...seems like there is some common sense lurking on Capitol Hill after all: the Senate attached a ban on the U.S. military's use of torture to a defense spending bill -- and Bush has threatened to veto it (you can't get any more pro-torture than that, Georgie)!

Makes you wonder who Jesus would torture... Does Dubya ever think about that on his bike rides?

Going Underground

2005-10-06T19:50:00.000-04:00

God knows I trust NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and his anti-terror squad a thousand times more than some of the oafs at Homeland Security or the CIA (yes, yes, there are many good people at both of those agencies, but not enough of them...and the people at the top are Bush approved, so you know they're more crony than competent), so when they tell us that they have a credible terrorist threat to our beloved subway system (meaning a bomb plot) you know it's real, not Bush yanking our chain.

Time to break out the bike, skateboard, or the trainers, eh?

My wife commented that if a terrorist bombing does take place on the subway system, "Bush's head will explode" from all of the problems that are piling up on his doorstep (Katrina, Iraq, 9/11, Plamegate, Tom DeLay/Jack Abramoff, more torture photos to come, gas prices, FEMA, cronies, and on and on)...

Is My Name in There?

2005-10-06T13:32:00.000-04:00

The other night, at the end of another day in the salt mines, I was leafing through a fundraising brochure sent by my old (but despised) prep school and decided to look up the class of '85 to see who was sending in checks. There were a whole bunch of what looked like tiny crosses next to about half of the twenty or so classmates listed, and when I scanned down to the bottom of the page, the notation indicated that they were now "deceased!"

So, I freaked out a bit, and then noticed that there were lots of crosses next to kids from the graduating classes around mine. Did they all die on 9/11?!?! (I read throught the "Portraits of Grief" in the Times religiously, and only came across one person that I knew of through my wife...how could I have missed all of these people?) Is there some sort of freaky disease running through this rich, privileged crowd (of which I was never a part)?!

I raced to the computer and started searching through the Times' listing of the 9/11 dead (nothing), then checked their obituaries listings (nothing), then punched various names into Google (nothing). My wife returned from her errand and I relayed my bizarre tale of dozens of former classmates cut down in the prime of their lives. I remember seeing so-and-so in Central Park with his kid, and this guy on Lexington in the 70s...and do you remember meeting this guy in the playground a few years ago?

She takes a closer look at the brochure and tells me that the notation indicates not that they died, but that they have supported the school alumni fund for five years or more...

Oh. Never mind.

I'm Your Money

2005-09-30T19:57:00.000-04:00

Is it possible that the Government Accountability Office is the last bastion of our federal government that hasn't been overrun by GOP political hacks? Here is the sweet news:

From the New York Times: "Federal auditors said today that the Bush administration had violated the law by purchasing favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.

In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated "covert propaganda" inside the United States, in violation of a longstanding, explicit statutory ban."

The Times article goes on to note that the Education Department, which funneled $180,000 through Ketchum Inc. (a public relations company) to Mr. Williams to big up Bush Inc.'s so-called No Child Left Behind education initiative on TV, radio, and in print, could not produce any evidence (speeches, articles, etc.) of the services that Mr. Armstrong had performed in exchange for all the taxpayers' money.

What, they don't got Google at the Education Department? I know many of Dubya's political appointees are inept (this one's for you, Brownie), but c'mon!

I Love a Man in a Uniform

2005-09-30T16:13:00.000-04:00

So, John Roberts was sworn in as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court yesterday, with a tearful and smug Dubya at his side (no doubt thinking that he FINALLY made good on Rove's Faustian deal with the religious right). During the time it takes for the court cases regarding privacy, etc. to bubble up to the Supremes, you might want to: stock up on birth control (we're talking Costco-megasized here, Roberts is on the bench for life); get that safe and legal abortion you've always been thinking about; file that complaint/lawsuit about being wronged because of your race (non-white), ethnicity (methinks it will not be a good time to be of Arab descent and come under suspicion of anti-American activity), gender (female), sexual orientation (gay, transgendered), or injury (non-rich, non-Bush corporate crony), or religion (non-evangelical protestant); take out some books targeted for burning before they're ash or politically unpopular books from the library before the Feds open their file on you; bone up on the theory of evolution so you can help pass it on orally to the next generation of liberals; or generally exercise your civil rights as a citizen of these United States without all sorts of (up till now) Constitutionally prohibited interference from the government.

Ah, to be rich, male, white, born-again, and conservative in America...your government salutes you for your ongoing patriotism!

For the rest us, the clock is ticking, people! Get on it!

One Thing Leads to Another

2005-09-28T13:21:00.000-04:00

It's pretty amazing to read all about ultra-boob Brownie blaming everyone else (New Orleans' Mayor, Louisiana's governor, the press, the Department of Homeland Security for cutting his budget, etc., boo-hoo, woe is me) for FEMA's lame and deadly response to Katrina (the body count so far is over 1,000). But it's yet another instance of business as usual at Bush Inc.: they believe government is essentially bad and have little use for it, except as a means to reward and enrich loyal fundraisers and business cronies, and to dismantle any agency or law that prevents their buddies from making even more money. Check out Molly Ivins' column and wonder if any federal agency will function again once Bush Inc. leave office:

"There's a doctoral dissertation to be written about Bush appointees named during the administration's frequent fits of Petulant Pique. These PP appointments are made in the immortal childhood spirit of "nanny-nanny boo-boo, I'll show you." Susan Wood resigns [from the FDA] in protest over the politicization of women's health care? Ha! We'll show her -- we'll put a vet in charge, instead.

The PP appointments are less for reasons of ideology or even rewarding the politically faithful than just in the old nyeh-nyeh spirit. You could, for example, put any number of people at the Department of Labor who are wholly unsympathetic to the labor movement -- Bush has installed shoals of them already. But there is a certain arch, flippant malice to making Edwin Foulke assistant secretary in charge of the health and safety of workers.

Republican appointees who oppose the agencies to which they are assigned are a dime a dozen, but Foulke is a partner from the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country. What he does for a living is destroy the only organizations that care about workers' health and safety.

Here's another PP pick: put a timber industry lobbyist in as head of the Forest Service. How about a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional in charge of the public lands? Nice shot. A utility lobbyist who represented the worst air polluters in the country as head of the clean air division at the EPA? A laff riot. As head of the Superfund, a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund regulations? Cute, cute, cute. A Monsanto lobbyist as No. 2 at the EPA. A lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute at the Council on Environmental Quality. And so on. And so forth.

The Federal Trade Commission was finally embarrassed enough by demands from Democratic governors to start an investigation into recent price gouging by oil companies. But the investigation will be headed by a former lawyer for ChevronTexaco. Is this fun or what? Nanny-nanny boo-boo."

Look what Bush Inc.'s arrogant and shortsighted the-ends-justify-our-means policies have wrought on our military -- we have U.S. soldiers snapping pictures of dead Iraqis and posting them on a website in exchange for access to porn, and reports that troops in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division were involved in severe and regular beatings of people suspected of being part of the Iraqi insurgency (even the cook could come by to work off some steam by pummelling a prisoner with a metal bat). (Prisoners are supposed to be guarded by Military Police, who are specifically trained in handling POWs -- not by regular troops, who are not, and who may be pissed at the POWs for killing their buddy in a firefight, etc.) Read the Human Rights Watch report and weep for what is done in our name.

And Karen Hughes, as she tours the Middle East in her quest to improve America's image in the Arab world, is supposedly genuinely surprised to find that women in Saudi Arabia are generally happy with their non-American way of life and angry about U.S. policies in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and Israel/Palestine.

Amazing what happens when you leave the Bush bubble, isn't it?

Kill the Poor

2005-09-23T11:39:00.000-04:00

In a move to further punish the less well-off among us in America (and possibly in retribution for daring to ask for federal help in the wake of Katrina -- on national TV, no less), House Republicans have come up with a way to pay for Katrina relief and reconstruction efforts by -- and I'm not making this up -- proposing to further slash programs for low-income Americans as well as increasing tax audits of poor Americans, as they apparently are depriving the federal coffers of billions of dollars (unlike the richest of the rich or politically connected corporations). According to the Washington Post's Achenblog, here's what's on the table:

"-Delay the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill for One year
-Increase Allowable Co-pays in Medicaid
-Block Grant Medicaid Acute Services
-Reduce Farm Payment Acreage by 1%
-Eliminate Subsidized Loans to Graduate Students
-Increase Medicare Part B Premium from 25% to 30%
-Level Funding for the Peace Corps
-Eliminate the Federal Anti-Drug Advertising
-Eliminate Federal Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
-Eliminate State Grants for Safe and Drug-Free Schools
-Eliminate the Even Start Program
-Eliminate Teen Funding Portion of Title X Family Planning
-Eliminate Funding for Penile Implants Under Medicare

That's just a sample. Some of these items would save a lot of money, some would save very little. But there's one item that the GOP believes would save $85 billion over 10 years:

Verify Income of Earned Income Tax Credit Participants

This appears to be a proposal to audit people who claim to be poor, to make sure they are truly poor and deserving of the tax credit. I'll try to find out more to make sure I'm not missing some essential element of the idea. The GOP apparently believes that massive fraud exists in this program, and that we could ease the federal deficit by aggressively collecting taxes from the not-truly-poor -- people who could be defined as the merely non-affluent, the not-doing-so-well, the just-scraping-by. But not "poor." The GOP wants these posers to pay up. [And then the GOP will eliminate the Estate Tax, but that's another matter entirely.]"

Some of these proposed cuts are not surprising (they've been after those damn fairies Bert and Ernie on PBS for years -- and the very impudence of giving poor and minority children a good educational foundation with Head Start drives them freakin' INSANE!), but killing the anti-drug efforts seems weird for the Grand Old Party of Just Say No (but maybe with that nasty coke tart Kate Moss knocked off billboards for the near future, the incidence of drug use will plummet?). Yet now that Americans have discovered that millions of poor people are amongst us and have been generously opening up their wallets to help out, it would seem to be a bad political move for them to cut anti-poverty programs, etc. Then again, Dubya's approval ratings already are in the toilet and the Republicans' hubris knows no limits -- plus it's the poor people's fault that they are poor, right?!

I know the Republicans HATE the New Deal and FDR, but wouldn't it be a good idea to set up WPA-type programs to clean up and rebuild the Gulf Coast cities by hiring all of those people without means who are now destitute? I think a lot of Americans would much rather see their tax dollars go to helping their fellow citizens earn a decent living (and to rebuild their lives) instead of further enriching Halliburton's golden boys.

Having said all that, I'm just happy that I already took care of my penile implant...

All that Money Wants, Part II

2005-09-22T17:44:00.000-04:00

Surprising sharp commentary here for a corporate media outlet (Newsweek/MSNBC). Fareed Zakaria blasts Bush Inc.'s outrageous fiscal irresponsibility in light of Iraq and Katrina -- highlights below:

"Whatever his other accomplishments, Bush will go down in history as the most fiscally irresponsible chief executive in American history. Since 2001, government spending has gone up from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, a 33 percent rise in four years! Defense and Homeland Security are not the only culprits. Domestic spending is actually up 36 percent in the same period. These figures come from the libertarian Cato Institute's excellent report "The Grand Old Spending Party," which explains that "throughout the past 40 years, most presidents have cut or restrained lower-priority spending to make room for higher-priority spending. What is driving George W. Bush's budget bloat is a reversal of that trend." To govern is to choose. And Bush has decided not to choose. He wants guns and butter and tax cuts.

People wonder whether we can afford Iraq and Katrina. The answer is, easily. What we can't afford simultaneously is $1.4 trillion in tax cuts and more than $1 trillion in new entitlement spending over the next 10 years. To take one example, if Congress did not make permanent just one of its tax cuts, the repeal of estate taxes, it would generate $290 billion over the next decade. That itself pays for most of Katrina and Iraq."

And...

"Today's Republicans believe in pork, but they don't believe in government. So we have the largest government in history but one that is weak and dysfunctional. Public spending is a cynical game of buying votes or campaign contributions, an utterly corrupt process run by lobbyists and special interests with no concern for the national interest. So we shovel out billions on "Homeland Security" to stave off nonexistent threats to Wisconsin, Wyoming and Montana while New York and Los Angeles remain unprotected. We mismanage crises with a crazy-quilt patchwork of federal, local and state authorities—and sing paeans to federalism to explain our incompetence. We denounce sensible leadership and pragmatism because they mean compromise and loss of ideological purity. Better to be right than to get Iraq right."

Right on, brother! Let's man the barricades!

Dear God

2005-09-22T11:35:00.000-04:00

Last night, as I was watching Paula Zahn on CNN freak out over Hurricane Rita ("the third largest storm on record!"), then the Jet Blue plane with landing gear problems that was circling LAX (and later landed safely, thanks to the brilliant pilot), and also news reports that a twister had touched down right outside of Minneapolis, I turned to my wife and said, "Maybe God really is mad at America..."

...for using Him to justify the so-called "war on terror", to fuel hatred of His gay sons and daughters, to enact policies that greatly reward rich friends of the president and do nothing to lift many of His people out of poverty, and for our president's incredibly dangerous arrogance in assuming that he is somehow acting as an instrument of God's will in all that he does.

Same as it Ever was

2005-09-16T10:27:00.000-04:00

Can't stand Bush, so I didn't watch his effort to save his presidency from the crapper. I did read that even though he gave his speech to the nation in the French Quarter last night, no American citizens were in attendance, and the press were kept at bay, so he didn't take any questions. You'd think Rove would at least have rounded up a crowd of loyal, God-fearing Republicans to give the impression that Dubya has our support (like they did during the '04 campaign and the propaganda tour for the effort to kill Social Security). The truth is the guy everyone thinks they could share a beer with doesn't really like or care about us, as we might displease him with annoying questions and the like...that's why his crew keeps him in a bubble all the time.

While I'm glad to see that Federal money is going to help with the reconstruction (to the tune of $200 billion+), where is all of the money coming from (and where is the call for our common sacrifice to help out our brothers and sisters)? Yeah, Dubya's pulling out the charge card, again (this, on top of the $200 billion we've spent in Afghanistan and Iraq AND in addition to all the tax cuts for the rich and welfare checks for big business). I bet most Americans would be willing to pay a bit more in taxes to help out the Gulf states...(and don't you think it's time that the rich, who have done so very well under the Bush administration, step up to the plate to pay a bit more in taxes to help thousands of people who have lost everything?)

The other disturbing fact is that much of the reconstruction effort is going to cloak Bush Inc.'s sleazy agenda to bust union and minimum wages, crush environmental safeguards, eliminate affirmative-action programs, weaken the public school system, and reward GOP business cronies (read: Halliburton and their subsidiaries).

From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 15, 2005: "Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, say they are using relief measures for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast to achieve a broad range of conservative economic and social policies, both in the storm zone and beyond ... In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region. Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims' right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction ... 'The desire to bring conservative, free-market ideas to the Gulf Coast is white hot,' says Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who leads the Republican Study Group, an influential caucus of conservative House members."

I understand that the GOP truly does believe in some of these policies, but how exactly does paying a sub-standard wage help people that have lost everything in Katrina's wake? Wouldn't it be nice to pay them a bit extra for all the things they are going to need?

Oh, and did I mention that the Katrina Reconstruction Czar is not a Colin Powell type (or even the dark lord Cheney), but none other than Karl Rove (egads!):

From the New York Times: "Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development."

Hey, why have someone with actual experience be in charge of rebuilding New Orleans, Gulfport, etc. when you can have Rove making sure that GOP business buddies are handsomely rewarded. (Kind of undercuts the message that Dubya really cares about black people, doesn't it...I mean Rove is the guy who came up with the outrageous rumors during the 2000 election that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate child with a black prostitute, when he and his wife had, in fact, adopted a child from Bangladesh -- sent Dubya to speak at the racist Bob Jones "University" to secure the white supremacist vote, etc.)

Punky Reggae Party

2005-09-15T13:54:00.000-04:00

On IFC last night, I happened to catch most of Don Lett's new documentary, "Punk Attitude." The majority of the archival footage was new to me, and the present day interviews with members of The NY Dolls, Ramones, Clash, Damned, Slits, etc. were pretty insightful. In fact, it makes a great visual companion to the book "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk," by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, which I commented on here. Gotta find out when this sucker's on again...

Also, if you're kind of obsessed about New York City in the 70s, as I am, you might want to check out Allan Tannenbaum's photo book "New York in the 70s." He was the house photographer for the Soho Weekly News, and captured some of the incredibly wild stuff that was going down at the time. Check out some on-line photo galleries of his terrific photographs here, here, and here.

Happy Death Men

2005-09-14T10:14:00.000-04:00

From today's New York Times:

"American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses.
Federal Aviation Administration officials were also warned in 2001 in a report prepared for the agency that airport screeners' ability to detect possible weapons had "declined significantly" in recent years, but little was done to remedy the problem, the Sept. 11 commission found."

But I'm confused, our National Security Advisor at the time, Condelezza Rice, made the following declaration back in May of 2002:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile."

Oh well, add it to the laundry list of things Bush, Inc. didn't do to protect us from Osama and his thugs.

And remember how Dubya insisted that he wanted bin Laden "Dead or Alive"? A feature from last weekend's New York Times Magazine ("Lost at Tora Bora") reveals that during the battle at Tora Bora in December 2001, when we had the opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, we left most of the fighting to warlords with past links bin Laden -- only committing about three dozen U.S. troops to the mission!

"Now, as the last major battle of the war in Afghanistan began, hidden from view inside the caves were an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 well-trained, well-armed men. A mile below, at the base of the caves, some three dozen U.S. Special Forces troops fanned out. They were the only ground forces that senior American military leaders had committed to the Tora Bora campaign."

So, here's the guy that ordered and financed the hijacking of three passenger airlines, which are then slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (and they intended to hit the U.S. Capitol Building or the White House, had not the passengers of Flight 93 not fought back), killing over 3,000 American citizens. It's the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor -- and we only send 30 Special Forces after bin Laden and outsource the rest of the job to tribal warlords that may still have some allegiance to him? And people still think that Dubya is some great leader-patriot? Read on, my friend:

"Defending its decision not to commit forces to the Tora Bora campaign, members of the Bush administration - including the president, the vice president and Gen. Tommy Franks - have continued to insist, as recently as the last presidential campaign, that there was no definitive information that bin Laden was even in Tora Bora in December 2001. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19, 2004, Op-Ed article in The New York Times. Intelligence assessments on the Qaeda leader's location varied, Franks continued, and bin Laden was "never within our grasp." It was not until this spring that the Pentagon, after a Freedom of Information Act request, released a document to The Associated Press that says Pentagon investigators believed that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and that he escaped."

The real kicker? We haven't known for certain where bin Laden has been hiding out since (although it is assumed he is in Pakistan, but we can't press President Musharraf to hand him over, because he certainly would be overthrown and replaced with an Islamic fundamentalist regime).

But don't question the competence of your leaders! It's unpatriotic! Nothing to see here, now move along! Gotta go pin a medal on Brownie...

Red Skies, Part II

2005-09-13T17:01:00.000-04:00

I don't care how many ways Judge Roberts dances around the abortion question during his Senate confirmation hearings (Roe v. Wade is "settled as a precedent of the court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis."), you damn well KNOW that he's a conservative Trojan Horse. His seemingly pro-choice answers to the abortion questions should be raising the alarms with the James Dobson (Focus on the Family), Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Pat Robertson (700 Club) crowd -- but they, apparently, like what they hear and see.

So any middle-of-the-road to liberal American should be raising hell about this guy.

And c'mon...once bitten, twice shy, right? Remember, this is the administration that sold the American people on the Iraq invasion and occupation, even though Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, had no WMDs, and was by no means an imminent threat to our national security. Mushroom clouds, indeed. They lied to our faces. And have done so many times since.

Clearly, Bush, Inc. only cares about appeasing their wealthy, white, conservative GOP business friends (they are the base that Rove caters to in all of Bush's policy, from tax-cutting, business deregulation, to the Kyoto treaty), so you can bet that Roberts (clearly a highly intelligent person, but a judge with only two year's experience on the bench) is their guy to help gut Roe v. Wade and everything else that is on the right wing's agenda for the Supreme Court.

God Save the Queen

2005-09-13T16:27:00.001-04:00

Check out this completely damning analysis of Dubya's handling of Katrina in Newsweek ("How Bush Blew It") that reveals our President to be the detached, nasty bully that I've always suspected him of being:

"President Bush knew the storm and its consequences had been bad; but he didn't quite realize how bad.

The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.

How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.

President George W. Bush has always trusted his gut. He prides himself in ignoring the distracting chatter, the caterwauling of the media elites, the Washington political buzz machine. He has boasted that he doesn't read the papers. His doggedness is often admirable. It is easy for presidents to overreact to the noise around them.

But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority."

Red Skies

2005-09-12T16:17:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend, I caught a rerun of the movie The Siege (the working title for this film, eerily enough, was "Against All Enemies" -- the title of Richard Clark's most damning book regarding the Bush Administration's complete failure to address the al Qaeda terrorist threat leading up to 9/11), which is about Islamic terrorists striking New York City after a terrorist leader is adbucted by U.S. Forces in Lebanon. Denzel Washington and Tony Shaloub play FBI agents hunting down several active terrorist cells in NYC with the aid of CIA spook Annette Benning, and in the process, an MTA bus, a Broadway theater, and the building at 26 Federal Plaza (which houses all sorts of U.S. government agencies) are blown up, along with thousands of fictional New Yorkers.

The makers of this film, which came out in 1998, were prescient enough to connect many of the dots that most of us were unaware of at the time (that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was connected to the plot to blow up the United Nations, the George Washington Bridge, and Lincoln Tunnel, and the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, etc. through this world-wide network of Islamic terrorists, including al Qaeda) and foreshadows 9/11 (26 Federal Plaza is brought down by the terrorists, and there are scenes of police and firefighters combing through the massive wreckage for survivors), Abu Ghraib (a suspected terrorist is sexually humiliated, tortured, and then executed by the U.S. Military), and Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay (martial law is imposed in Brooklyn and all Arab men, regardless of their rights as citizens, are rounded up and illegally interred in the search for the last sleeper cell), etc.

I remember watching the movie back then and thinking how far-fetched and looney all of this seemed. They had caught the terrorists who had bombed the WTC -- they were just this lunatic fringe group that was now shut down (c'mon, the blind sheik seemed like something out of central casting!). The first bombing of the WTC was an aberration...these kind of attacks occurred in the Middle East and Europe, not New York City.

How far we've come since then...

* * * * *

On 9/11, as I watched the smoke pour out of the enormous gash in the North Tower from the 16th story of the Gramercy Park building I worked in, I clearly remember telling my wife on the phone that I was going to avoid subways and buses on my trip home because they might be attacked by suicide bombers (on that day, I had no trouble imagining the worst case scenario...). As I started my 3 1/2 mile walk home to the Upper East Side, I nervously eyed all of the tall buildings, scanning the skies for the planes I heard (which turned out to be the fighter jets scrambled to protect the city) that might slam into the skyscrapers all around me. Bizarrely, so many people seemed to be going about their regular business, buying cups of coffee, or heading back to the office after a smoke. I was racing home to protect my wife and kid, and to figure out a way to flee the city (we didn't, as the subways were shut down, the bridges/tunnels closed, and there was no easy or safe way out).

Around 42nd Street, I overheard someone mention that one of the towers had collapsed, and assumed that meant that the top quarter of the North Tower above where the plane had hit simply had fallen off. I mean, after all, the tower had withstood a huge jetliner crashing into it...

My mind resumed its review of all the possible targets the terrorists might hit -- and I planned the rest of my route home accordingly -- but I still couldn't believe that so many people were dying on this incredibly beautiful day.

Surrender

2005-09-11T22:59:00.000-04:00

9/11 has been on my mind for some time now, well before this fourth anniversary that is upon us. Twice a week, I work in an office building on Wall Street near the East River that essentially has been abandoned by one of the major US banks -- their operations presumably have moved to a safer, less conspicuous locale in the suburbs, and they haven't made up their minds what to do with the property. To their credit, the bank donates some of their space to non-profits who could never dream of affording these kind of digs.

Fewer than a dozen people work on the tenth floor where I am, in a space meant for maybe two hundred. And a sense of loss is palpable every time I need to visit the men's room, which is on the opposite side of the floor -- the dark side that none of us work on. I pass by the empty kitchen and break room, and then dozens of abandoned cubicles, all stripped of anything personal that could reveal something about their former occupants. These workers didn't die, but clearly they're gone for good.

An Eastern European cleaning woman comes by at the end of each day to empty our small collection of garbage cans, and the mail is dropped off/picked up once a day by some nervous guy from the mailroom, but it feels like an afterthought, as so little comes in and goes out. The men's room hardly ever needs cleaning, so much so that the blue-green cleaning solution poured into the toilets makes rings on the porcelain from lack of use. My very own elevator always awaits me in the lobby in the morning, and I never have to wait more that a few seconds when I want to return to the street.

As much as I like working for this non-profit (which promotes education in developing countries), I'm always a little sad working here. The fear from that day in 2001 still hangs in the air. Unlike so many other parts of the city, life here has not made a comeback, but is frozen in time. I can't help but return to September 11, 2001 every time I'm here.

How Did I Get Here?

2005-08-09T22:24:00.000-04:00

Earlier this summer, I actually uttered the words “society doesn’t value the work I do” (in an incredibly self-righteous tone) to my wife when I was trying to talk my way out of having to explain why I don’t have any clear career goals. She was pissed at me for days. I’ve been in social work, a noble calling, but burned out and the pay in that field is pretty awful. I worked for years at an independent label, the JOB THAT I REALLY LOVED that broke my heart when it all went up south (the label went bankrupt and one of the employees was found to have stolen tens of thousands of dollars over the years). Part of me would like to teach, but I feel like it’s too late to start that track (plus the starting salaries don’t cut it…and I break out in a sweat thinking about filling little minds with knowledge for six hours five days a week!)

Several jobs later, I’ve become a grant writer (really a proposal writer, thank you), which I enjoy and do well (but you only go so far in fund raising doing this). But no job since the record label has excited me as much (sad to say), and I’m kind of convinced that the anti-depressant that I’m on has kind of taken out the drive and ambition that I used to have. I don’t miss the lows and gut-wrenching anxiety that used to plague me, but the kick inside of me, the “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” drive that propelled me forward just ain’t there anymore. I’m happy and sort of satisfied and definitely complacent, and keeping my head above the water line, but not much more.

It’s not that I’m lazy, well…maybe just a little…and a teeny bit cynical, insecure, and immature. But, as my wife would say, quoting “Kicking and Screaming,” “Man-up!”

I’m a sensitive boy-tea drinker in a land of black coffee he-man men.

Boogie in my Bones

2005-07-22T10:42:00.000-04:00

A few more Laurel Aitken obituaries have appeared that flesh out his life a bit more. Check out the articles from the Jamaica Observer and the Telegraph. The piece in the Observer claims that he was bitter over not receiving much recognition in Jamaica for his pioneering musical legacy. This may be true, but it casts a pall over a man who really seemed to enjoy life and performing...

Mad About You, Again

2005-07-21T10:40:00.000-04:00

Finally, a little recognition for the Godfather of Ska...the BBC (God bless the Beeb!) is running a short obit for Laurel, and he even has a blurb on MTV's website (scroll down). I'm still waiting for the New York Times to do their thing (they did one for Coxsone Dodd when he died last year...).

Mad About You

2005-07-20T22:32:00.000-04:00

The longer you live, the more people die.

I always read the obituaries, not that I'm looking for anyone in particular. Oftentimes, it's fascinating to learn about someone who made extraordinary or quirky contributions to the world -- people that I didn't even know existed, but whose lives touched mine in some strange way, like the inventor of the Slinky. And then there is the pain of coming across someone who you thought would have defied the odds and outlive you, like the gutter poet Charles Bukowski...(RIP).

Sadly, I don't think that many newspaper obit editors will remember Laurel Aitken. I learned that this great singer/musician passed away on July 17 from a heart attack (after a long illness) at age 78. Laurel, known as the "godfather of ska," was the first artist to release material (one of the first ska releases ever) on Island Records back in 1959, a new label founded by Chris Blackwell (who would later release albums from such superstars as Bob Marley and U2). Some consider Laurel to be Jamaica's first recording star, with his string of hit singles in the 60s and 70s in both JA and the UK. The 2-Tone revival in 1979 saw a great resurgence in his popularity, and he played with the English Beat, toured with the mod band Secret Affair (and was backed by the reggae- loving punks The Ruts!). He later sang with the brilliant British ska band the Potato 5 in the 80s, and collaborated with Japan's Ska Flames, Germany's Busters, and America's Toasters during the 1990s. He even appeared with David Bowie in the mod film "Absolute Beginners."

I met Laurel on his tour the U.S. in 1998. He had released a best-of CD on the label I worked for, and I was overseeing the publicity for his tour. Offstage, he was a quiet, kind, almost reserved fellow -- a kindly grandfather. But on-stage with a mic in his hand, he was a master entertainer, his voice sounding better than it had in his youth. He signed autographs at our record store in the Village, and was kind enough to pose for dozens of pictures with fans young enough to be his great-grandchildren (I have my photo with him in my family picture album, though I was old enough to be his grandson). Apart from managing the publicity team that was arranging for press, radio interviews, and in-store appearances during his tour, I also became his haberdasher...fans kept on swiping his signature pork pie hat (that topped off his two-tone suit, skinny tie, and shades). So, I'd head up to 99X, buy another hat and FedEx it to whatever club he was appearing at the next day. From then on, he always remembered me as the guy who bought his hats for him.

In 1999, when I started my own, ill-fated digital download label, 7 Wonders of the World Music, Laurel and I had many transatlantic phone calls, as I tried to persuade him to license some tracks to my label. Nothing ever came of it...Laurel wanted to release CDs and I was trying out what was a new model for distribution at the time...but he was always charming over the phone and I loved talking to him about things going on in the ska world.

I last saw Laurel on NYC's Central Park Summerstage in 1999 (and brought my toddler son to meet him backstage). He was simply incredible that day, and had the huge crowd on their feet, dancing for his entire set. No doubt, that's what's happening wherever he is now.

(A good deal of Laurel's music is still available from Grover Records in Germany -- I highly recommend "Rise and Fall," "Rudi Got Married," "The Long Hot Summer," and "The Pama Years".)

London's Burning...

2005-07-11T14:25:00.000-04:00

Headline from Saturday's (7/9/05) New York Times: "Despite Terror, Europeans Seem Determined to Maintain Civil Liberties"

Buried in the last paragraph is this little gem:

"Germany is the only country to bring people accused of being members of the Sept. 11 terrorism team to trial. But both cases have foundered, not because of some excessive civil liberties scruples on the part of the Germans, but because the United States refused to provide records of its interrogations of terrorist leaders."

Simply translated: since the Bush administration has violated both international and U.S. law in the "treatment" of suspected terrorists in Camp X-Ray and other super secret prisons (lots of torture, no due process, extraordinary rendition), we can't actually prosecute any suspected terrorists in a court of law. When Cheney and Gonzales and all the bright conservative bulbs were cooking up their so-called "war on terror," did anybody actually think all this through to its logical conclusions? You start operating outside of the the Constitution and the law, and -- surprise! -- there's no legal way back in.

And it's fascinating that the Brits aren't queuing up to sign away their rights after the London Tube/bus bombings as so many Americans were happy to do so in the wake of 9/11...America's supposed to be "the land of the free, home of the brave," not the monarchy that spawned us!

Money!

2005-07-06T07:22:00.000-04:00

I was up in the Catskills over the holiday weekend with the extended family, so I wasn't able to sit around long enough to catch much of it, but I did see some of the footage from Live 8 re-broadcast on ABC that night. If I hadn't already seen "The Girl in the Cafe" on HBO, I would have no idea what Sir Bob was urging the G8 to do (and why not use Live 8 to raise some money to buy vaccine to immunize kids in Africa, or anti-viral medications for people with HIV/AIDS on that continent? Billons of people watched the concerts, so they should have used this incredible opportunity to help solve some of these enormous, but solvable, problems.)

And just when I thought American crassness had already bottomed out with a summer of new reality shows to distract us from the ongoing carnage in Iraq and the bid to turn the Supreme Court into the puppet of the religious right: after watching devastating images of emaciated Africans on the giant video screens on the Live 8 stages, ABC breaks away to commercials for Trimspa diet powder! And, incredibly, this happens several more times during the broadcast!

Don't you think that some ad sales guy at ABC should have told the Trimspa folks that this might not be the most...um...optimal way to advertise their product?

Ah, but then there is our all-consuming worship of Mammon and cold hard cash...

Another weird thing: David Gilmour of Pink Floyd now looks just like my father-in-law!

Blank Generation

2005-06-09T23:05:00.000-04:00

Haven't been here lately. My bad. Actually, I've been busy working hard to make ends meet. I spent most of the Memorial Day working on a grant proposal for a big city hospital here. And I've started a part-time job at music school (3 days a week), while freelancing the other two work week days, plus nights and weekends. Eight days a week round here, but I'm happy with what I'm doing, even though it ain't that glam, it's honest work.

Since our last visit, I've finished Jonathan Mahler's "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning" (a pretty good read, especially the description of the rioting in Bushwick during the '77 blackout and the brutal feud between Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner). It's so hard to believe some of the things that went down from a post-Guiliani perspective (the following is from a description of Game 2 of the 1977 World Series):

"An hour before the first pitch, a fire started in Public School 3, an abandoned elementary school a few blocks west of the ballpark. By the time ABC began its broadcast at 8 p.m., orange flames were licking toward the sky. The network cut to its camera in a helicopter hovering above for an aerial view. "There it is, ladies and gentlemen," announced Howard Cosell, who later misidentified the building as an apartment complex, "the Bronx is burning."

"By the late innings the fire had grown to five alarms, and Yankees' fans were getting restless. Play was stopped repeatedly while stadium police chased fans across the field. Rolls of toilet paper, whiskey bottles, and firecrackers rained down on the field. the residents of the upper deck dumped beer on the owners of the box seats below. A cop was assaulted when he asked several fans to lower a banner that was obstructing the view of those behind them. One fan pulled down his pants and hung from the scoreboard. Another tossed a smoke bomb from the stands that beclouded the outfield in an electric green haze.

"New York's nationally televised degredation was still not complete. During the final out of the game, a fan pegged Dodgers' right-fielder Reggie Smith in the head with a hard rubber ball. Smith required immediate medical attention and left town the next day in a neck brace."

I remember being in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium in either '77 or '78 and seeing grown men my dad's age pouring giant cups of beer over the side on the poor saps below and my dad being so disgusted with their boorishness (but you can bet he had enough sense not to interfere...he didn't want to get beat up). That kind of pervasive fan behavior and Steinbrenner's continual torture of Martin were enough to stop him from taking me and my brother to games at the stadium in protest...

Since I'm delving into the history of New York in the Seventies (all this cool stuff that was happening while I was a blissfully ignorant kid), I've been tearing through "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk," by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. A few things I've learned so far:

1) The drugs is bad, kids. Really bad. People died. People did incredibly stupid, hurtful, self-destructive things. People wasted time, money, their lives. People squandered their unbelievable talent. People prostituted themselves for drugs. They sold out everything for drugs. The drugs is real bad, kidz. Incredibly bad.

2) Lou Reed was a jerk. We're told this over and over by many, many different people. So, I'm left to assume that Lou was a jerk. Transformer is still a damn good album, though.

3) People in the NY "punk" scene (Ramones, NY Dolls, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Television, Heartbreakers, etc.) didn't really have a bloody clue how much they influenced the UK punk scene until some of them toured there. The especially bizarre thing was that the UK punk scene was based on how they imagined how tough and violent the NY scene must be (but really wasn't). The Sex Pistols and The Clash and all their fans were imitating something that didn't exist, they based all their impressions solely on the images projected by the New York bands on their album covers and in their music, which wasn't real.

4) All the New York "punk" bands didn't consider themselves "punk" until after the first fanzine, called "Punk," started covering the bands playing Max's Kansas City and CBGBs. The Ramones thought they were just playing rock'n'roll. Up till that point in pop culture, punk primarily meant being someone's same-sex sex toy in prison, if you get my meaning.

5) Malcolm McLaren managed the New York Dolls -- disasterously. Didn't do too much better with the Sex Pistols, either, really.

6) An incredible number of cool, talented musicians and artists hung out together in the mid-70s in the East Village. And it's so hard to imagine that anything like this could ever happen again in New York. This kind of stupid pie-in-the-sky innocence (if you could call it that with all the drugs and sex and hedonism going on) will never exist again, as the Sixties will never play out again and give rise to everything that was the mid-70s NY punk scene. New York is no longer a town where a whole bunch of down-and-out musicians can survive by playing a crappy, unknown bar and live in a largely-ignored urban wasteland and create a whole new music scene that they didn't even know about. Ain't ever gonna happen again. Money is god now, that's why, and the whole shebang would have been exploited to bits before some of these bands would have been able to really hit their stride and change the music world forever...

1977 (Two Sevens Clash)

2005-05-10T21:56:00.000-04:00

A good friend from Brazil was just in town for a visit. He'd spent his high school years in NYC (his dad was a diplomat), and we went to college together at Fordham in Lincoln Center -- we became friends working at the school paper, The Observer. In the late 90s, he moved back to Sao Paulo, but he often visits once or twice a year. Even though he has a really sweet life down in Brazil, you could tell that a good part of him still missed the Big Apple. Except this time. We were talking about how New York has changed -- and not for the better. We bitched about how expensive rents have become, how all the chain stores have forced out all the local mom and pop shops, how so many neighborhoods have lost their distinctiveness as the developers have run wild in every borderline neighborhood left in Manhattan (below 96th Street, of course). He said New York has lost its "grittiness." And he mentioned that this time, he doesn't really miss living here like he used to. And that's just sad.

I just picked up this book called "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning," which details a particularly bi-polar year in the life of New York City (1977: think Son of Sam, the blackout rioting, block after block in the South Bronx being torched for insurance money vs. Reggie Jackson and the Yankees winning the World Series, the ascendant disco era at Studio 54 and the burgeoning punk rock scene on the Bowery). I was 11 at the time and going to a boarding school in Manhattan (another story entirely), and remember a fair amount of that year (the Son of Sam lived and was caught in Yonkers, just a few neighborhoods over from ours; I was in the stands to witness Reggie wack several balls out of the stadium in the lead-up to the pennant; and my middle school advisor had a clump of Yankee Stadium grass in a glass tube from game 6 of the World Series when fans tore up the joint). And I'm feeling nostalgic for a New York City that was grimy, thrilling and a bit menacing, when artists actually lived in Soho and walking on 9th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen or past Avenue A in the East Village alone at night was asking for trouble.

Sheep Meadow was an ungated dust bowl that hosted every sport imaginable on a warm, sunny day. The sidewalks of every residential neighborhood in Manhattan were a minefield of dog poop. You kept your head down not to avoid eye contact, but to keep your shoes clean. Every surface on the inside of a subway car was tagged in black magic marker, a massive swirl of oppressiveness -- but if you were lucky, a train would pull in the station that had a car or two that sported giant cartoon characters and neon lettering on its skin. These train yard masters produced incredibly beautiful art for a city so down on its heels. And it seemed so appropriate that the elevated tracks ran through some of the ugliest and meanest parts of town, so the trains could bring some color and life and art to where there was often very little.

New York City wasn't for everyone, but it was real and chaotic and exciting. Now most of Manhattan is a romper room for the young, rich and fabulous, and Times Square is just a flashier version of a thousand other malls to make the out-of-towners feel at home, and not much is left in-between. I know that everything is always changing and always will, and I hate sounding like an old coot hanging round the barbershop talking down to the whippersnappers about how good things were in the old days, but my city is gone and I miss it so.

(The subway photo comes from the amazing book "Subway Art" by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, while the shot of the South Bronx was taken from "In the South Bronx of America" by Mel Rosenthal.)

Mirror Moves

2005-05-05T14:42:00.000-04:00

Kimdog challenged me to fill out this little quiz, so y'all could get to know me a bit better, I guess. Sadly, it was a bit difficult to do, as I'm a private guy and want you all to think I'm somewhat cool. The anticipation, of course, is killing you, so...here it is:

Three Names You Go By: Stephen, Steve, Hey you!

Three Screen Names You Have: Familyman, 7Wonders, angelsanddevils

Three Things You Like About Yourself: I can write pretty well, I have a good eye for photography, and try to be a decent human being. ("Me, myself, and I" seemed so crass.)

Three Things You Dislike About Yourself: My lack of confidence, vision (not eyesight, sport), and tendency to procrastinate.

Three Parts of Your Heritage: German, Irish, French -- essentially, northern European mutt.

Three Things That Scare You: Religious zealots of any stripe, homophobes, and racists (actually, all these types really piss me off).

Three Everyday Essentials: music, reading material, the web

Three Things You Are Wearing Right Now: black jeans, black t-shirt, wedding band

Three Favorite Bands/Artists: Super Furry Animals, Echo and the Bunnymen, Elastica

Three Favorite Songs at Present: Morrissey's "I Have Forgiven Jesus (live)," Graham Coxon's "Bittersweet Bundle of Misery," and Gang of Four's "At Home He's a Tourist"

Three Things You Want To Try And Do In The Next Twelve Months: Exercise regularly, learn how to play guitar, figure out where I'm going in life...

Three Things You Want in a Relationship: Love, respect, happiness

Two Truths and a Lie: I've been quoted in the New York Times, I've appeared in an FTD TV commercial, I've fired a gun

Three Physical Things About The Opposite Sex That Appeal To You: My wife, my wife, my wife!

Three Things You Just Can't Do: Anything to do with heights, fire, or big crowds of people.

Three Favorite Hobbies: Photography, blogging, and reading.

Three Things I Want To Do Really Bad Right Now: Find and buy a used Toyota wagon (for weekend trips out of the city), sleep, and buy the Star Trek original TV series DVDs, geek that I am.

Three Careers You Have Considered: teacher, nurse, filmmaker. Essentially, poor penniless bastard, whatever I do...

Three Places You Want To Go On Vacation: Ireland, Germany, Japan

Three Kid's Names You Have Considered : I've already named two...so how about something Irish that could be for either a boy or a girl...

Three Things You Want To Do before You Die: Live a long healthy and happy life, publish a book, and have no regrets.

Kissing the Tortoise Shell

2005-04-21T22:21:00.000-04:00

I've posted a new story on The Problem with Leisure, my blog that houses some of my fiction scribbles. It's the text for a children's picture book (without the pictures -- dammit, Jim, I'm a writer, not an illustrator!) inspired by a real live fish that my son won at a school fair. And my son named the fish Shelby, though he is the nervous one.

Better Watch Out for the Skin Deep

2005-04-21T21:42:00.000-04:00

In New York City, the change of seasons between spring and summer is not like easing yourself into a hot bath; it's a surprise shove into a cold pool. On Tuesday, the temps were in the sweet 70s. Then, BAM: Wednesday hits a muggy mid 80 and the air tastes bad all of a sudden.

Whenever we have the first super warm, humid day of the season, I break out. Seemingly out of nowhere, these deeply embedded pimples burst out of face. I have two huge ones on my forehead, and one nasty oozing one where the side of my nose meets my face. This type is new to me. It's dry and scabby around the edges, but manages to be always wet in the middle. And it makes the side of my face so sore that I'm taking ibuprofen. Did I mention that I'm in my late 30s? This kind of crap shouldn't be happening to me anymore, right?

Anyone who has met me can see the pockmarks that crater the skin covering my cheekbones. They create lumpy shadows on my face in harsh overhead lighting. I had a pretty awful time of it during my high school years -- I've seen people who've had it much worse -- but it sucked just the same.

Puberty hit and I had nickel-sized, cyst-like pimples all over my shoulders (backpacks and backslaps hurt!), as well as the cheekbone areas of my face. I was horribly self-conscious about them and utterly embarrassed. I did everything not to draw attention to myself, and withdrew so much that I rarely let anyone see the real me.

I remember being on this date in my freshman year with this girl that I had this crush on since fifth grade. We're taking the train down to Chinatown for dinner and instead of making witty conversation or letting her know how much I dig her, all I'm thinking about is how there is this massive red zit on the side of my face that is between us. Yo, she called me up for a date, so you'd think it was pretty obvious that she liked me. But I didn't believe that anyone as nice and beautiful and awesome as her could ever like someone like me. So, we had a few more awkward dates (I can't even remember if I ever kissed her hello or goodbye on the cheek -- forget about making out). We saw a horror movie at the old Orpheum on East 86th Street, and there was one of those shock/surprise moments when she grabbed my arm and buried her face in my chest...I could have died right there and then and been happy I was so starved for attention/affection. But did I ever let her know how much I liked her? I bet she spent all our dates wondering.

I'll always remember driving some of my school friends in my dad's car and one of the guys looking over at me and making this declaration to everyone else in the car: "Hey, look guys! [Familyman] even has zits in his ears!" It was the truth and it hurt more than I would ever let him know.

Only years later did I learn from female college friends that when they were in high school zits on guys didn't matter that much and that I would have been popular at their school...

So, the high school years are hell for everybody, with our own nasty personal demons tearing us up inside. Things turned out alright. In college, I finally found a dermatologist who knew what he was doing (the one I had in high school was old-school and completely ineffective) and cleared up my face (though the medication I took was later linked to severe depression). And I ended up marrying my college girlfriend and we have two incredible kids...and I pray every time I see their faces that my kids have inherited my wife's skin.

Natural's Not In It

2005-04-12T21:36:00.000-04:00

Now that the weather is finally hinting at springtime, you start running into loads of people at the playgrounds in the neighborhood. On Sunday, we accidentally crashed the end of my son's friend's birthday party (girls only, so he wasn't invited) in the park. Yet, the girls swarmed around him like bees on fruit salad at a picnic, and he was invited to the remainder of the party at their apartment nearby.

When I dropped by to pick my son up, his friend's father, who is a pretty amazing artist, started showing me all of the different portraits he had done of his family and friends in paint or charcoal. In their living room was a rather prominent and realistic portrait of his wife, nude and very pregnant, and he's telling me all about it, blah, blah, she's naked. I'm no prude, now, and am all for depicting the human body in all sorts of artwork. You want to paint, sculpt, photograph, draw naked men and women, go for it. More power to ya. Still, the woman is in the flesh not five feet from me and I see her all the time at school and in the playground, and I just don't need this much information about her body in my head. So, I'm doing all I can not to look.

Later, as I was recounting my attempts at not looking to my wife (and she's seen the painting herself, too), our son found it pretty funny, but we also talked about how art students end up studying the human body, and how some people pose nude for the art students so they can make drawings of them, etc. So, later that night, being the ham that he is, my son strips down in our living room and starts striking all of these wacky poses and declaring that he's going to be a nude model for an art school. I tell him that he has to wait until he is grown up and then he can do that if he chooses. As the naked modelling continues, I joke that he should have a little fig leaf drawn over his privates. Being the creative little lad he is, he then places a blue Post It Note over his privates and does a little dance.

Bless him.

Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio?

2005-04-11T10:09:00.000-04:00

Over the past few weeks, whenever I just wanted to listen to some music on the radio, I found myself tuning in to the new-ish classic rawk station here in NYC. Now, I was a teenager in the early-to-mid 80s who LOVED New Wave (Echo and the Bunnymen and the English Beat were my top faves) and despised classic rock with the kind of passion only a 16 year-old kid could muster. But here I am two decades later, surprising myself how many of these songs I know -- and not only can I sing along, but I know their titles and who performed them. (How can Aerosmith's "Walk this Way" sound so damn good and tight after all these years?!) So, I'm not worried about being cool anymore and can gleefully revel in the rock'n'roll campiness of it all, but I'm stunned that I actually saved space for these songs in my brain, despite my all out efforts to deny them entry. (The whole thing freaks my wife out -- she thinks I'm headed toward some sort of mid-life crisis.)

When I was at boarding school (grades five through eight) in the late 70s, I was exposed to all sorts of horrific music. This was, of course, back in the analog age...so if you wanted to listen to music, you often had to seek out a record player. The only turntable that we students had access to was in the faculty lounge, which it really wasn't. First of all, all of the faculty (called masters) lived at the school in their own apartments (hence no need for a lounge to escape from the students), and the faculty lounge was just a fancy room where the school held receptions and other formal events. Students had access to the room at certain hours and I could usually find some of my classmates rockin' out to Boston, Kansas, Aerosmith, ELO, Styx, and the like. In particular, there were a couple of guys who would sit there in these sofa chairs rocking not just their heads, but their whole bodies back and forth to the beat, white boy's overbite on every one of them. Thankfully, some good new music seeped into my head sometimes...my bunkmate introduced me to the B-52's debut album and I was blown away the first time I heard The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" at a dance we went to at a private girl's school. I probably couldn't tell you one thing about any of the junior high girls that I tried to dance with, but the DJ played "Sedated" at least four times that night.

In high school, at fancy private day school in Riverdale where I was a student, the assault continued. I worked for a few years on the maintenance crew during holidays and summertime to pick up some spending money, and the guys that I was painting classrooms with who dictated our radio selection just didn't get The Smiths or New Order or Heaven 17. This was the "disco sucks" record burning crowd that would gauge your masculinity/sexual orientation by the tunes you dug. Obviously, I would fall into the freaks and fags category, so I just grit my teeth and kept slathering on the paint, though I always thought a little bit of me died everytime I had to listen to "Stairway to Heaven."

Damaged Goods

2005-04-06T16:07:00.000-04:00

I used to drive a van around New York City picking up hookers.

Um, that doesn’t sound right…let me clarify. Senior year in college (1989), a fellow student hooked me up as the paid driver of van for a study that monitored the prevalence of HIV among street prostitutes in New York City (these were the days before the PC term 'sex worker'). Essentially, an HIV counselor, phlebotomist (both women), and I would cruise some of the nastier neighborhoods in the Big Apple for fresh blood: Hunts Point in the Bronx; projects near Coney Island Hospital (we’d always stop by the original Nathan’s afterwards); a no man’s land on 3rd Avenue between Sunset Park and Bay Ridge under the BQE; Park Avenue in Harlem under the New Haven line elevated tracks; 43rd Street between Ninth and Tenth, and the meat market in the West Village. We’d pay the women $10 or $15 bucks (whatever the going rate was for oral sex) for a vial of their blood, ask them some questions about their condom use and sexual practices, provide them with referrals for shelter, health care, drug rehab, etc., and send them back out into the mean night with a fistfull of rubbers.

On the flip side, we were no hassle, easy money for drugs (crack, really), and a bit of warmth from the van's heater on some cold winter nights. And god knows that all of these women needed some relief from their circumstances. These ladies were on the lowest rung of prostitution –- all headed for early deaths from AIDS, drugs, or violence. (I’d be really shocked if many of the women we encountered were still alive today.) Needless to say, these were not expensive call girls, or the cartoonish pimp-ruled hookers done up in thigh-high stiletto boots, g-strings and fluorescent-neon spandex tube-tops. More like grungy, gaunt, junkie shadows of their former lives.

Eventually, we all came to realize that the numbers for this study were going to be flawed. At least one other team besides ours went out to collect samples, and we only relied on an ever-growing computer generated list of participants to keep us from including the same women over and over. Yet, it was so easy to get around this: women just gave us fictitious names, or their street names…and towards the end, we were under so much pressure from the doctor running the study to maintain/increase the number of samples brought back that our crew ended up taking blood from the same women over and over (and there was a limited pool of street prostitutes that were willing to give us a blood).

Many months went by without incident. In fact, it was settling into a dull routine, but I needed the cash. Then, and you knew this was coming, one night we pulled over on a side street between Broadway and West End Avenue in the low Nineties. A grimy Twin Donut shop was on the corner, but the street was lined with mature trees and blank-faced townhouses. The HIV counselor (a thin, white, Jewish woman in her 50s) and the phlebotomist (a butch black woman who had been in the Army) were going about their business with one of the prostitutes, while I stared out the front window of the van. Then glass vials (empty, thankfully) began to fly. I turned to find both women trying to calm/subdue the prostitute, who still had a butterfly needle stuck in her arm. While the van was violently rocking, I got out and ran around to open the double doors on the other side, to release this fury back to the night.

Now, our safety policy was to NEVER man-handle anyone if trouble broke out in the van –- just get out of the vehicle and call the cops on our primitive cell phone.

I wrenched open the side doors of the van, and turned to find myself facing the chest of someone well over six-feet: the pissed-off pimp of our whirling dervish hooker. With one hand around my neck (one its way to crushing my larynx, really), he threatened to stab me in my gut if I gave him any trouble (I couldn’t see his other hand, but the blade was very real in my mind). So, I went completely limp in his grip, while I wondered what it would feel like to have a knife penetrate my soft belly. The pimp asked me if I was going to give him any trouble (not exactly how he phrased it), and I managed to squeak out enough air to say no. I was tossed aside just as the prostitute was thrown out of the van. The pimp and the phlebotomist traded threats and expletives, while I scrambled back around the van to get out of harm's way. Fortunately, nothing else happened, as the pimp and his lady ended up walking off into the warm summer night.

After jumping in the driver's side door and locking everything up, we called 911...but a squad car never came, so we drove back to the office. I was quiet on the ride down to the Village. I had never felt less manly (I had failed to protect my co-workers), but I was pretty damn happy not to have been knifed and on the way to the ER. Back at HQ, we took a Polaroid of the bruises on my neck (which I still have somewhere in all of my accumulated junk), and I steeled myself to call my girlfriend (now my wife) to tell her what happened ("I'm fine, but something happened tonight that I need to tell you about..."). Needless to say, that was my last night in the van...

I've Been Laying Down the Flowers

2005-04-02T22:52:00.000-05:00

Okay, for the few people who used to read this blog, I apologize for not posting anything in several weeks. My bad. I lost my job, blah, blah, blah, I'm not going to bore you with all that. I've been distracted and, as can be expected, had some trouble writing. But, instead of wallowing in depression, I'm doing pretty well in my head now, and am forging ahead. Expect fairly regular postings from now on.

And, like many of my fellow bloggers, I've launched an affiliated blog, titled The Problem with Leisure, which will feature some of my fiction and non-fiction scribblings. The first short-story is titled "Under the Big Black Sun" and much of it comes from my experience several years back working at a residence for older people living with mental illness. Hope you enjoy it.

Chase the Devil

2005-02-25T07:08:00.000-05:00

I'm dreaming. My son and daughter are sleeping at my parent's house, in the room my brother and I used to share. My brother's bed is pushed up in front of the double window that overlooks our quiet, leafy street. The streetlamp in front of the house opposite ours acts like an oversized nightlight, a klieg light really. Despite the pull-down shades and curtains, yellowish light makes the room glow.

To my annoyance, I notice that someone keeps rearranging my kids in their sleep, moving them around the bed or onto the floor. Then I realize that it is a presence...something bad. I have to protect my kids, but cannot see who or what is threatening them. Then I see the closet. It is definitely in the closet. It always is (and as a kid, you know damn well that the two closet doors in our room were shut tight before I went to bed each night).

I know I must cast this malevolent presence out of the house before he can harm the wee ones, and I'm struggling to find the right "Exorcist" words..."power of Christ...I cast thee..." No. "By the power of God I command thee...no." My throat is parched, scratchy, hoarse. It's a croaky whisper at first, but I finally manage to force out a relatively brave "Christ be with you!" Not exactly a menacing can of whoop-ass to unleash on the Devil, but it's all I had at the moment. (Yes, I was searching for "the power of Christ compels you," which I heard on "Family Guy" on Adult Swim a few nights before.)

Who knows what the hell happened next, because I woke myself up yelling "Christ be with you!"

Now, since I've been having some trouble with snoring, I've been sleeping on the sofa, right up against the wall of our neighbor's bedroom. Now, for whatever reason, all the other walls in our apartment are really thick and soundproof, except for this one. After my outburst, and I'm worried that I've woken up my wife or kids, because I was freakin' LOUD, I clearly hear a cough from next door. Great, I woke up my neighbor, who hates us anyway, because the kids are always up at 6 am making a racket, and now I go yelling some crazy religious phrase out at two o'clock in the morning.

Oh well, at least they didn't hear the chicken sacrifice I performed last week...

Pretty in Pink

2005-02-17T07:21:00.000-05:00

So, let me get this straight, once again, we can't show a family with two mommies on "Postcards from Buster," but it's okay for a gay male prostitute with no journalism experience whatsoever to gain unprecedented access to the White House press room? Two lesbian women who are raising a bunch of kids on a farm in Vermont are so threatening to our nation's children that we have to essentially ban their image from public television (even though the show is all about encouraging diversity and tolerance, and has featured Mormons and Christian fundamentalists in the past), but the righteously moral, born-again Christian, gay-bashing, bedrock-family values White House thinks its fine and proper to have a gay hooker ask the President of the United States a question during a rare press conference?

Hey, I have nothing against gay prostitutes from pretend news outlets making inquiries of President Bush. I just though with all the homophobia spewing forth from the GOP and White House over banning gay marriage, and all the hatred towards gay people vomiting out of every right-wing media outlet that, you know, gays were bad people not welcome into our homes, or really anywhere in our God-fearing country. Boy was I wrong. There's been nary a peep of outrage from the right wing hate machine, nor have the conservative Republicans bravely stepped forward to denounce a gay man in their midst. Apparently, they generally embrace gay hooker fake reporters as long as they are of the right political persuasion and don't want to shack up and get married!

Do you think that whomever "Jeff Gannon" was doing inside the White House liked using condoms or not? (Inquiring minds want to know, what with all the disparagement of condoms by the White House and their pet abstinence-only crowd.)

Do What You Want, 'Cos this is the New Art School

2005-02-15T19:12:00.000-05:00

Way back in the late 70s, if you were on a school tour of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, they would give you these round, day-glo orange stickers to put on your shirt or jacket to identify yourself as part of a visiting group. At the time, I was a shy, insecure sixth grader, always content to be amused by the look-at-me shenanigans of my more extroverted classmates, and there was always plenty of amusement on hand. As any adult who knows what it’s like to be among a hoard of middle-school boys, it was a struggle for some of us to be good and proper representatives of our WASPy, Episcopal choir school (another story for another day) in our matching blue jackets with their embroidered school emblems, gray slacks, and blue and gold striped ties. Yet, by the grace of god and fear of human retribution, we made it to the end of the tour without incident, and I’m sure our masters (in plain English: our teachers) were eager to get us the hell out of there before anything could mar this perfect outing.

If only there hadn’t been this oversized painting of dozens of perfect, day-glo orange circles hanging near the coat check we were milling about. If only Kelsey hadn’t done the most logically impulsive thing that any sixth-grade boy would do and take his sticker, which was the EXACT same size and color as the painted orange circles (to our amazement, it really was a perfect match!), and plonk it on the canvass of this museum-quality, world-class work of art (I don’t think we ever even knew whose work of art it was). If only the rest of us had just stayed silently stunned as we did when we watched this all unfold in slow motion, instead of guffawing and pointing to the vandalizing sticker, we all would have made it out of the museum without being busted. Perhaps in a day or two, the camouflaged sticker would have fallen off and no one would have been the wiser. A foolish prank that I’m sure some in the art world would have loved. Instead, my friend Kelsey – one of the nicest, funniest, most guileless people around – was snagged by the man. (The guard only noticed what was going on after we all stupidly drew attention to ourselves and the painting and Kelsey.) The NYPD was summoned and he was actually taken off in handcuffs (we’re talking a sixth grade boy here!). I forget if Kelsey was expelled at that point or simply was not invited back for seventh grade, but he joined the swelling ranks of bad boys and good that our class seemed to shed every year. He was made an example.

The last I heard of Kelsey was that he later became a gourmet chef. And I always wonder who at MOMA had the brilliant idea to give out neon stickers to school kids? Idiot. You bet that they changed that policy after we were there.

Beautiful Day

2005-02-12T20:31:00.000-05:00

Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's The Gates will probably go down as one of the most photographed art installations ever...and it should be. It's a gift to New York City in every sense of the word (they raised all the money to manufacture the components, to install it, to pay for extra police patrols, the whole shebang...and all sales from The Gates merchandise goes to supporting NYC parks, they don't make a dime). Simply art for art's sake.

Done too Much, Much too Young

2005-02-04T07:19:00.000-05:00

Like most pro-choice people, I am all about prevention. Let’s do everything we can to reduce unwanted pregnancy and shrink the number of abortions performed in the United States each year. To accomplish this, I strongly believe that every child in America should be taught about all about sexual reproduction, contraception, abstinence, sexually transmitted diseases, etc. in a manner that is medically accurate and judgment free. Then, there should be a separate course in which the ethical, moral, and societal issues surrounding human sexuality are discussed and explored from many diverse viewpoints (religious views should be recognized and talked about, but no preaching allowed!). Maybe this class should even include a forum that includes kids’ parents, to encourage dialogue about sexuality between the generations. But the bottom line is that we must give kids all of the information possible, so they can make the most responsible, informed choices about sex.

Yes, teens should delay having sex until they are adults, but most don’t, so let’s make sure they know how to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy and disease. And this includes removing any social stigmas around condoms, which should be readily available to kids if they want them. We’ve got to drill it into boys’ heads that if they are going to have sex, they need to use a condom. No excuses. Nada. (A lot of grief is heaped on girls and women for unintended pregnancy and abortion, but the guys are essentially off the hook…they are a big part of the equation, don’t you think?) Birth control pills and emergency contraception also should be easy to obtain if we want to make sure that abortion is rare, but guys really need to own up to the vital importance in doing their part in preventing pregnancy and the spread of disease. Wrap that rascal now, dude!

Here’s a wacky thought. As our intrepid legislators work overtime in their quest to restrict abortion, on a parallel tack, why don’t we demand that laws be put into effect that would make it a crime if a male does not use a condom during sexual intercourse (we want to make abortions rare, right)? Of course, there would need to be an exception for sexual intercourse that is for procreation (and we could draw up some sort of document men and women could sign attesting to their true intent before they have sex). So it would be a little complicated and trample people’s right to privacy, etc. But since our federal government has so much disdain for civil liberties anyway, why not have some good come out of this trend, right? Are you with me? I mean, if we are going to get all high and mighty and tell women they can’t have easy access to birth control or emergency contraception AND plan to outlaw abortion, the guys need to take on some greater responsibility or things are going to get a hell of a lot messier. Human beings have sex. So let’s make condom use whenever people are “doing it” the law of the land. Nice and simple.

Should I place a call to Alberto Gonzales right now, or give him some time to settle in and forget about that pesky Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo Bay nastiness the Dems keep harping on? Hello, is anyone there? This is New York calling…hello? Is this thing on? Can you hear me now?

Working for the Goon Squad

2005-02-03T23:03:00.000-05:00

You gotta hand it to the enemy. They are much more crafty than the left in their insidious and relentless “messaging.” Case in point: check out Frank Rich’s excellent column on the New York Times website regarding the continuing war on anything the right wing finds objectionable in the media (among other offenses, a black woman’s boob and the mere mention of the word ‘penis’ get them really hot under the collar – I guess‘taboo’ things turn ‘em on). The open season they have declared on gays since the presidential campaign has me particularly pissed off, and Rich hones in on how completely evil Spellings and Dobson are in their attacks:

"That our government is now both intimidating PBS and awarding public money to pundits to enforce "moral values" agendas demonizing certain families is the ugliest fallout of the campaign against indecency. That campaign cannot really banish salaciousness from pop culture, a rank impossibility in a market economy where red and blue customers are united in their infatuation with "Desperate Housewives." But it can create public policy that discriminates against anyone on the hit list of moral values zealots. Inane as it may seem that Ms. Spellings is conducting a witch hunt against Buster or that James Dobson has taken aim at SpongeBob SquarePants, there's a method to their seeming idiocy: the cartoon surrogates are deliberately chosen to camouflage the harshness of their assault on nonanimated, flesh-and-blood people."

Yeah, they wouldn't want to actually attack a real gay person like, say, Mary Cheney for being in the public eye and flaunting her lifestyle in front of impressionable young Americans. No siree! Gotta go after poor bunny Buster Baxter, who just wants to know how to make maple syrup, not advance a lesbian agenda (well, tolerance, actually)!

My Name is Might Have Been

2005-02-01T19:35:00.000-05:00

Remember when a grown-up would ask you what you wanted to be when you grow up? And you would eagerly tell them that you wanted to be some variation of fireman, astronaut, or veterinarian that you had read about or seen on TV. Adults would tell you that you could be anything you wanted to be if you applied yourself hard enough…even President of the United States.

Fast forward, and for the lucky few, a million variables come up triple cherry and are able to realize their dreams.

The rest of us settle, take what we can. We get by on diminished expectations. Or the better of two bad choices. Some kick and scream on the way down to their knees. We need our anti-depressants to make it through another bloody day at the office, dear. Potential is a dirty word.

We hope that our kids will be more successful than we were. Pin all of our tarnished hopes on them. And try to forget that we didn’t make it. That we let down that sweet kid from so long ago whose brilliant dreams are gone.

In the City

2005-01-28T06:48:00.000-05:00

Last night, I had to travel up from Manhattan to my childhood home in Yonkers to dig out my car. As I’ve mentioned before, we donated it to Habitat for Humanity NYC and I needed to do a few things before they pick it up today (clean out our stuff, drop off the title, keys, and radio, take pictures of the car for tax purposes). We were supposed to take care of this transaction a few weeks ago, but I couldn’t find the damn title, had to order a duplicate from the DMV, and then we were hit with snow. I almost avoided the trip when my mom graciously agreed to take care of all of this, but then my dad mentioned that the car was snow bound. Well, I certainly couldn’t ask my mom to dig it out (she’s in her mid-sixties and has early-stage Parkinson’s) and dad, well, he does a lot of heavy mental work (he’s a college professor and minister), but has never been one for physical labor. Long story short, he didn’t offer to dig it out, and I didn’t ask.

So, I hit the #4 train to Woodlawn after dinner (6:30 pm) and I was barreling toward my destination until we tried to enter the last few stations. We sat outside of Bedford Park Boulevard for ten minutes, then outside Mosholu for another ten, and finally about fifteen to twenty minutes outside of Woodlawn (the MTA is doing some sort of construction work on the station). If they tried to pull this crap below 96th Street, the riders would have bum rushed the engineer’s compartment, but irregular service is standard operating procedure out here. No one even worked up an annoyed sigh.

When I finally hit the street, I checked the Westchester “Bee Line” bus timetable on the sign post, which stated that the bus that will take me within a few blocks of the house will arrive at 7:55 pm. Mom and dad are out for the evening, so no one is waiting for me among the double parked cars under the El. A guy with a car that doesn’t have TLC plates offers his “taxi” services in halting English. I politely decline. Ten minutes pass and the bus does not appear as scheduled. A tipsy man and his pre-teen kid come out of a livery town car across the street. (The racetrack is only a few miles north of here and is the destination of many a livery cab.) The man loudly mentions his urgent need to hit the head. The corner bar accommodates him. People walk in and out of the pizzeria next door. Talk on the pay phone outside (“Where are you?!”). A few more trains pull in over us and their passengers flow down the stairs and disappear down quiet side streets. Another ten minutes pass, and the White Plains bus rolls up. I hop on, as it at least will get me to the city line. I could walk it, but there is a desolate ¾ of a mile stretch that cuts through the most northern tip of Van Cortlandt Park. With all the deep icy snow on what passes for a sidewalk, I’d have to walk in the road, which I did once a few winters ago, and nearly got hit by some buses, as they whipped along this stretch of urban/suburban no-man’s land.

Once I’m over the city line and off the bus, I have about another ¾ of a mile to walk, which is fine, but creepy. Hardly anyone walks around here at night, especially a bitterly cold one, and even though it is suburban and safe, I’m almost more guarded than I am in the city. So no tunes on the iPod to liven my pace as I hike up and down the hills of Yonkers.

I reach the old homestead at 8:30 pm – it took two freakin’ hours to go about 12 miles – and then spend less than five minutes freeing the car from its ice prison. (Thanks, dad.) I clean out the car, fill out the title transfer info, snap some pix of the car, and manage to catch the 9:31 pm bus (which shows up on time) back to the Bronx.

Few people of means ride the buses in Yonkers (it’s car city, baby) during the day, so it should come as no shock that the night bus is a strange ride. It’s either folks headed off to work, or the drunk, stoned, or deranged. The steps at the rear exit always smell like pee. But, tonight is quiet and painless. Everyone spread out far apart on the warm, brightly lighted articulated bus as it effortlessly runs its course. Friday nights on the night bus can have a particular edge to them, folks with pockets full of cash and bloodstreams brimming with chemicals. It could be a mellow party or a rolling brawl. One night bus I took a few summers ago was so filled with boozers, we could have fueled it on the fumes.

I’m always surprised by the number of people on the #4 train headed to Manhattan or Brooklyn on a cold weeknight. Where is everyone headed? No one wants trouble, so everyone hunkers down, hoods pulled up, hats pulled down, eyes shut or fixed on the linoleum, ears alert. I’ll make eye contact with people on the train during the day, but nighttime looking invites trouble. No one bothers you when you’re digging through a story about India’s Bollywood, which is what I do. A guy with a boom box walks on at Bedford Park Boulevard, and blasts some surprisingly good Jungle and Techno music that mixes in what sounds like 70s blaxploitation film music (lots of strings). No one seems to mind the beats. (And I miss the music when he steps off at 125th Street. I’d been tempted to ask him the name of the DJ, but didn’t want to risk making a scene if inquiries weren’t welcome.) A really sharp-dressed guy in his twenties saunters on at 149th Street, stoned into bliss, a sweetly satisfied smile on his lips, headphones clamped to ears, and eyes as shut as they can be while still letting in the light.

The doors mechanically pop open at 86th Street at around 10:15, and clumps of white people pour on to head to the Village (East or West), SoHo, and beyond to hit the nightlife. For a moment, I feel both young and old. Old because I’m beat from the day, the week, the years – and I’m headed home instead of out (and don’t really mind it). Young from the muscle memory of relying on fragile spider webs of outer borough public transportation to carry me in and out of Manhattan when I was too young to drive or too cash strapped to own a car. Suspended in time, place, and age. The cold wind on Lexington Avenue strips those feelings away and I’m back in my element, happy that I don’t have to deal with the futile exercise of alternate side parking – or using public transportation to Yonkers -- for the foreseeable future.

Happy that I’m headed home to my family in the city.

Free Yourself...

2005-01-27T07:02:00.000-05:00

Dear Education Secretary Margaret Spellings:

Why are you a homophobe? And why are we spending our hard-won tax-dollars to pay you to misinterpret the commonly-held definitions of diversity and tolerance? They include people of all races, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, and sexual orientation, dear. You’d think you could find more to do on your second day on the job than go after “Postcards from Buster” for showing a family that has lesbian mothers. Have you ever even seen the show? It’s quite sweet, really – and they have visited evangelical Christians and Mormons on previous shows, so you can’t accuse them of favoring a liberal “agenda.”

Instead of wading into the stupid culture wars, how about making sure that the nation’s schools are well-supplied and that its teachers are well-paid? My wife and I end up donating a fair amount of money each year to our son’s school PTA for classroom supplies, to pay assistant teachers, and to hold arts, science, and Spanish classes. This is on top of the high taxes we pay to the city, state, and feds.

So, I respectfully request that you stop demonizing gay people, get yourself to a diversity training workshop pronto, and publicly seek forgiveness from all Americans for your disgustingly un-American display of ignorance and hatred.

Your fellow American,

Familyman
New York City

Accidents will Happen

2005-01-25T19:34:00.000-05:00

A few notes on the continuing uproar over abortion:

1) The anti-choice people always scream that pro-choice people are for killing babies. Well, they are actually fetuses, and if you were to take a fetus out of the woman’s uterus at the point when most abortions are done (according to the CDC, 88% are performed within the first trimester), the fetus would die (this is where the umbilical cord, placenta, uterus, and rest of the woman’s body come into play). Near term fetuses are rarely aborted, except in extreme cases when the woman’s health is threatened, or if it turns out that the fetus has some horrible abnormality not previously detected. So, even though it seems like I’m playing semantic games, I’m not. There are many medical and legal differences between a fetus and a baby, so the antis should clean up their act. When we’re talking abortion, we’re talking fetuses.

2) Are fetuses people? No. They are developing human beings that cannot survive outside of their mother’s womb (until very late in a pregnancy, and even then, only with lots of medical intervention). They are people, with rights as individuals and citizens AFTER they are born (and many of their rights, like the right to vote, are not accorded until they are adults). Some would argue that all life is sacred…but clearly it is not. We wage “just” wars that happen to kill and maim innocent children as a byproduct. We repeatedly fail to address famine and genocide and the AIDS epidemic all over the world. Countless children die in impoverished countries because we have failed to immunize them against preventable childhood diseases. Our government essentially ignores millions of American children in poverty, failing to provide them with adequate health care, education, housing, and even food. How many children languish in our nation’s foster care system? How many non-white orphans are out there waiting to be adopted? Even the Catholic Church, which is generally against capital punishment, does make allowances that there are times executing someone is justified! Can’t we focus some of this “fetus love” on these enormous problems that affect millions of our fellow human beings that already have been born? And what about preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place? Let’s leave aside all the moral judgments about people having sex outside of marriage or when they are teenagers, or if people should have sex for reasons other than procreation, etc. What about making sure that if people want to have sex and don’t want it to result in a pregnancy, that we provide them with all of the accurate information and condoms/birth control pills they need? Seems like a simple solution to making abortion rare, if you ask me. Yet the antis are against emergency contraception, the birth control pill, and condoms (even masturbation)!

3) I’ve read a bunch of quotes from anti-abortion youth born after 1973 who call themselves post-Roe “survivors.” (I was born in 1966 to an unmarried 19 year-old woman and put up for adoption, but could have ended up being aborted illegally and I don’t call myself a survivor…though many people back then would have called me “illegitimate” or a “bastard” and my birth mother a “whore,” “slut,” and worse.) Well, kids, your parents CHOSE to have you, for whatever reason they made that’s none of my damn business…it’s not like abortion doctors were roaming hospital delivery wards, randomly killing fetuses before they were born, or King Herod decreed that all first born male babies should be killed. The government didn’t tell your parents whether to keep you, offer you up for adoption, or to abort you. Spare me your hysterics. Grow up, get out into the world. Things are much more complex and complicated than you imagine. (I’m always amazed by the right wing’s capacity for embracing victimhood...somehow Christianity is always under attack and good evangelical Christians are always being wronged by not being able to impose their beliefs on the rest of us).

4) Why don’t we trust women to make their own decisions? We don’t trust them if they decide they want birth control or an abortion, but we’ll trust/expect the very same women to raise their children to be good, productive members of society. If these women are “morally corrupt” enough to want the pill, how do we know that when they are having babies, they are not churning out little godless pagans?

5) Finally, I’ve read about this supposed “Roe effect” theory that declares that the country is becoming steadily more conservative because liberal people are aborting great numbers of their offspring. What a load of crap. It’s estimated that 35% of American women 45 and younger have had abortions. That’s one in four women. And they aren’t all atheist, liberal, Democrats who live in New York City or San Francisco. Some of them are red state soccer moms who go to church and help out at the PTA. In fact, in terms of numbers of abortions performed in each state, a surprising number of red states like Texas, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia are in the top ten. (A little sidebar here, Mississippi, which has only one abortion clinic and the most restrictions on abortion of any state in the Union has the highest rate of infant mortality in the U.S. -- and rates of infant mortality are higher in red states than blue!) I have two kids and I know plenty of great liberal folks who are having or adopting kids (some of them are even gay parents! Shock, horror!)…I even know many women who had abortions and went on to give birth to many kids. The country is becoming more conservative because there has been a strong, organized effort by the right wing over the past 30 years to drag this country back into the stone ages -- not because abortion is wiping out generations of liberals.

God Save the Queen

2005-01-20T06:30:00.000-05:00

Ex-Senator Gary Hart has written a commentary for the Independent that succinctly lays out the great harm the Bushies intend to inflict on this great democracy over the next four years. We can only hope that circumstances beyond their control hinder their dark agenda (and the Dems can avoid the Body Snatcher pods left in their offices and actually muster some opposition to the GOP). Here's the first paragraph of Senator Hart's piece:

Today's inauguration of George Bush will be all about his vision for uniting America. Three radical forces will colour the second term. The first is represented by those concerned to dismantle America's social security system, the cornerstone of the Rooseveltian New Deal and the heart of the United States' social safety net. The second by those attempting to remake the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, the fulcrum for institutionalising the cultural agenda of the religious right. The third is represented by those seeking to salvage the neo-conservative project to bring democracy to the Arab world at the point of a bayonet.

This all seems blatantly obvious to those of us who read multiple sources of news each day, but we need to be perfectly clear about what's going to happen (just like we could see the Iraq invasion coming right on the heels of Afghanistan...the "war on terror" = "all war all the time") and resist this radical plot against America with all of our might!

Otherwise...well, it's going to be like 1984 meets the Handmaid's Tale.

But worse.

Invisible Sun

2005-01-20T06:08:00.000-05:00

Perhaps my daughter F is a distant relative of the ancient Egyptian deity Nut, who swallowed the sun at the end of every day and gave birth to it every morning (from www.pantheon.org):

The ancient Egyptian sky-goddess, one of the Ennead of Heliopolos. She is the personification of the sky and of the heavens, the daughter of Shu and Tefnut.

Nut was the barrier separating the forces of chaos from the ordered cosmos in this world. The god Re was said to enter her mouth after setting in the evening and travel through her body during the night to be reborn from her vulva each morning. She also swallows the stars and has them reborn later. In the death cult she plays a part in the resurrection of the dead; she is portrayed on the inside of the lids of the sarcophagi. The pharaoh was said to enter her body after death, from which he would later be resurrected.

As sky-goddess Nut was portrayed as a naked woman covered with painted stars, held up by Shu. Thus she forms the firmament above her husband Seb, the earth. Her fingers and toes were believed to touch the four cardinal points or directions.

Now with our little ancient Egyptian religion lesson out of the way, I have to confess to being lax in ranting about the confirmation hearings for Alberto “Torture Guy/International Law is for the Little People” Gonzales and Condi “Mushroom Clouds/Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S.” Rice, as well as the lavish coronation of George Dubya “I Actually Won this Time and am Gonna Whoop It Up in my Boots Even though it’s Wartime and all my Policies are Unmitigated Disasters” Bush. Well, kids, you too can betray everything good this country stands for, be rewarded handsomely, and no one gives a damn.

I mourn for our nation.

Walking on the Moon

2005-01-19T06:47:00.000-05:00

Whenever my two year-old daughter F sees the moon, or if you ask he what you do with it, she proudly exclaims, “I eat it!” None of us know where she came up with that notion, but it works for me.

War Ina Babylon

2005-01-12T22:08:00.000-05:00

Well, Georgie…how daya feel…got some egg on yer face now, don’tcha? Finally had to call it quits and admit that no WMDs were found in Iraq after almost two years of scouring that dusty country from top to bottom. All those Chicken Little cacklings about mushroom clouds and imminent threats to God-fearing, White, Christian-Americans were a bit short of the truth, weren’t they? (Even though you trusted that Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Tenent were God’s way of telling you to do His will in Iraq). Turns out that nasty Saddam didn’t even have the capability of producing any biological, chemical, or nuclear WMDs after Pops kicked his ass in the Gulf War (and the UN inspectors kept him check).

But it was all worth it, right? FREEDOM IS ON THE MARCH! A murderous, mad dictator has been vanquished! (Never mind that Saddam was our ally during the almost decade-long Iran-Iraq war and Ronald Reagan supplied him with chemical weapons!) You’ve given the Iraqi people the divine gift of DEMOCRACY. All the billions of taxpayer dollars, the tens of thousands of Americans and Iraqis killed or wounded, and the complete destruction of a sovereign nation’s infrastructure were worth it, right?! Who cares that we alienated our allies and have swelled the ranks of fundamentalist Islamic terrorists? Who cares that we've trashed international law and the Geneva Convention in our "war on terror?" We can torture and “disappear” anyone we damn well want to, right?! We're righteous! Hell, we're gonna start up our own death squads in Iraq like we did in El Salvador to smack down the evildoers! Nobody else can tell us what to do now…we’re the ONLY GOD-DAMN SUPERPOWER and GOD IS ON OUR SIDE! Right…?

What? Social Security is in imminent danger of failing and we need to borrow $2 trillion and dismantle the system to save it?! Power on, O Great Leader!!! Clearly, you cannot fail!

The Dead Next Door

2005-01-06T21:53:00.000-05:00

Oh the humanity of it all...my wife just told me that not only am I snoring like a bloody freight train every night, now I've begun moaning! Not like I'm in the throes of passion, mind you, but like a Return of the Living Dead zombie craving brains. The worst part is that our neighbor's bedroom is right next to our living room and the walls ain't thick (we could hear the previous tenants shagging like we were sitting on their bed). So not only do they hear my kids screaming at 6 am every morning, they hear me snoring and moaning all night. I'm begging my wife to swap sleeping spaces tonight...

It's My Ambition to Have Ambition

2005-01-06T19:33:00.000-05:00

If I may, allow me to wallow in befouled puddles of self-pity for a moment.

My wife and I had one of those “what are you going to do with your life” conversations over the holidaze. While I fought my natural instinct to change the subject (and I’m mighty damn good at that, mind you), I confessed that I really didn’t have any career goals or dreams. I’m the marketing manager for the planned giving office at a non profit, and have done proposal writing for their major gifts department. But I’m really not going anywhere. Just treading water.

My wife challenged me to state my dream job…and I couldn’t come up with one(!). She was bug-eyed with disbelief, I tell you, and I was feeling nothing but shame, like I had somehow emasculated myself (what real man doesn’t have his eye on the prize?). And for any semi-ideal jobs that I might toy around with in my head, I can spout out a dozen reasons (fears) why I’d fail at each endeavor.

I’m also heartbroken over the best job I ever had (my wife J says, “get over it!”) that went so sour at the end (director of marketing at a now-defunct indie record label). Even though that was five years ago, time hasn’t healed me yet. J wants me to find the passion for work that I once had (see social work and music below), instead of settling for clockwatcher that I’ve become.

After college, I fell into social work (helping people with mental illness who had been homeless), then did the incredible music industry gig, followed by some advertising production work at a magazine (and a digital-download internet label that I started up on the side that went bust after two years), and a string of marketing and development jobs at some non profits. Instead of climbing up the ladder all these years, I’ve been hanging from the rungs, swinging across the monkey bars, lunging at the opportunities that crop up in front of me.

You know the cubicle adage that you should dress for the job you want? I have no idea what to wear…

Overpowered by Funk

2005-01-05T19:45:00.000-05:00

Now that the holidaze are over, I can settle in to my usual seasonal affective disorder (whose apt acronym is SAD). Despite my being an agnostic (really, I’m afraid to declare myself an atheist due to family circumstances – dad’s a minister, mom is Church Lady -- and who knows if I’ll be able to make this declaration in the future, as we lurch toward a evangelical Christian theocracy), I like Christmas and appreciate all that it represents (you know, the Jesus stuff, love, redemption, etc.), but the gray days and black ink winter nights tend to bum me out on a chemical level. I suspect that thousands of years ago my peeps used to find a good cave to crawl into and sleep ‘till April or May. No daily grind for them.

In the interest of full disclosure, dear reader, I’m struggling with how much of myself to reveal here, as I’m a pretty secretive (read: insecure, self-loathing) person. Obviously, there already is some built-in anonymity to this blog, and I’m careful not to include too many identifying or revealing details to protect the innocent and guilty alike. But I’m having trouble sharing right now. I will, however, forge ahead and attempt to smash this writer’s block/blue mood….

Ever since I came down with a cold before Christmas, my snoring at night has become so freakin’ loud that I’m banished to the living room couch (otherwise, the wife can’t sleep, and that’s no good). To be honest, the snoring has been a problem before I was sick (and the doc said I need to drop some of the daddy poundage to eliminate it), but it is now worse than ever. So, when the weather permits (or I don’t wimp out), I’ve started running again at night (the half-way mark on my run is a poster of Jennifer Garner on a phone kiosk in the 70s…yowza, pant-pant, woof-woof, hubba-hubba!) and have cut out all snacks, etc. at night. Root for me, dammit! Gotta lose the fat, work the heart, and flood the brain with all-natural happy juice that will kick out the funk.

We're a Happy Family

2004-12-23T06:50:00.000-05:00

Who would have thought that bringing a steaming cup of sweet, milky tea to my wife in bed each morning would undo all of the wrongs I have inflicted on her the day before? This is a MAJOR breakthrough for a man, folks! Even though I’m stumbling blind around the kitchen in the pre-dawn hours making breakfast for the kids, and packing M’s lunch, this simple act of kindness makes her feel like royalty, baby, and she starts the day happy.

Try it yourself at home with your mate/lover/partner, and substitute the tea for any appropriate/preferred beverage…and watch the good will credits pile up in the bank, yo! And you know we all need them.

Note to my primitive man brain: keep on doing this! Keep on doing this!

We're Through Being Cool

2004-12-22T06:58:00.000-05:00

Sorry about taking a break from my blue-faced foaming at the mouth over the Bush administration’s insane policies. Even though I’m OUTRAGED by the mounting evidence that our government’s use of torture on “enemy combatants” is widespread (and approved by Bush and Wolfowitz) in Gitmo , Afghanistan, and Iraq (and people in Gitmo were tortured as recently as four months ago!) – and that 14 more U.S. soldiers were blown to bits in our dirty little Iraq-‘nam war, I need a break before my poor brain melts and my miserable heart implodes. Somebody make it all stop!

After having seen the original Star Wars movie (the one where the Death Star is blown up, not the crappy new episodes) one rainy afternoon this fall, my son M asked Santa to bring him a bunch of action figures (he has the few SW figures that survived my childhood, including Obi-Wan, Chewbacca – with one leg shorter than the other, poor wookie – Luke in his X-Wing fighter get-up, a headless Leia, and C-3PO). So, I found (and won) a massive lot of figures on eBay that includes multiple Stormtroopers, Sand People, and Jawas, as well as many of the main characters, like Darth Vader, Han Solo, etc. In addition, I bought these incredible X-Wing and Tie fighter toy ships on Amazon that are big enough so that you can place the action figures in their cockpits. It’s going to be pretty amazing to watch him open this all up on X-mas morning. He’s gonna freak!

Since my two year-old daughter F wants to do pretty much everything that her big bro does, I picked up this Playskool Millennium Falcon that includes stubby versions of Han, Chewy, C-3PO, etc. This way, she has her own spaceship and can put the other SW figures in it (and M will dig playing with it, too). When I presented this prize to her, my wife berated me, worrying that I’m gonna turn her beautiful, hep daughter into a sci-fi geek. I kept on playing up the “equal treatment of the kids” theme, and may have won her over…slightly. (“Honey, it’s made by Playskool, for Pete’s sake! And F will probably end up putting her little toy cows in it!”)

More troubling is my own geekiness. Over lunch yesterday with my co-workers, Star Trek reared it ugly, latex head, and I had to bite my tongue from answering all of these questions I knew down pat. My boss was trying to remember the name of the Next Generation’s counselor (“Deanna Troi!”) who had special powers (“She’s an empath!”) and was from an alien species (“Betazoid!”). Didn’t want to tip my hand. Then we all had a discussion about which series was the best, and I ended up trying to defend the sexist, imperialist, Cold Warrior original series against a room full of very progressive women! Needless to say, I didn’t put up much of a fight…

And the gift that Kris Kringle is bring me, M, and F that crowns me king of all geeks is the toy Galileo 7 Shuttlecraft (from the episode “Where No Man has Gone Before!”) that I also won on eBay. We already have all of these Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov, Uhuru, etc. action figures that will fit inside it and…oh…oh, the shame! The guilty, pathetic, loser-y, I-suck-pickled-eggs pleasure of it all!

Dear God

2004-12-21T19:41:00.000-05:00

Have you ever tried explaining the real story of Christmas to a six year-old kid? The following words actually came out of my mouth (me, the agnostic!):

You see, son, God came down and, uh, made Mary pregnant with Jesus, because he could do magical things like that.

As the questions about Jesus' origins and eventual crucifixion became more pointed, and my answers grew more and more convoluted, my wife and I both had the idea to bust out the kiddie Bible that he had received at his baptism. ("Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?" To redeem our sins...to make up for all the bad things we've done. "Did it take him a long time to die?" No, not too long. A few hours. "Where did he go after he died, but before he came back to life?" Uh...) My wife is Irish Catholic enough to be worried that M and F would be condemned to purgatory should, God forbid, anything happen...and we want our kids to know about their religious background, and all the cultural references contained in the Bible. We're very much of the mind that they should know about all the mainstream religions and make their own decisions about whether or not they want to be practicing any of them.

As we kept reading chapter after chapter regarding Jesus' life and ministry, I was amazed at how many of them I remembered. Must have been listening in some of those Sunday school classes after all. I was there primarily to be in the same orbit as these pretty girls...and, you know, I had to go. As long as I was under my parents' roof, I did as the Romans did...

About a Boy

2004-12-17T18:49:00.000-05:00

Every adoptee has this sick fantasy that our biological mums and dads have gone on to accomplish great things after giving us up. And the hope against hope is that one day they will show up to rescue us from our humdrum lives, and all of the holes in our lives that we always attributed to being torn from the bosom of our genetic family will be magically patched up (with no unsightly scars or weight gain)!

In high school, I thought I looked a little like Dustin Hoffman and actually carried around a picture of him cut out from the paper in my wallet. (Daddy?) I’d see promo clips for the movie Wargames (“Do you want to play Thermonuclear War?”) and thought that in certain shots, I looked an awful lot like Matthew Broderick -- something in the eyes and eyebrows. (Are we cousins?) And since my parents and I simply did not get along during my teen years, the fact that we were not connected by blood pleased me to no end.

The ugly open-the-drapes-and-let-the-daylight-in truth is that we were given up for adoption because the "home" situation was not good (read this article from The New Yorker and weep). My biological mother was 19, in college, and slept with a senior guy she dated for a month or two, and then they broke up. Realizing she was pregnant with me, she took the next semester off, and moved in with a brother who lived in Boston while I gestated. I was born on the 5th of November in the year of our Lord 1966, and handed over to the adoption agency right after birth. My story is not that sordid (no tales of drugs, prostitution, etc.), but certain to cause shame. Enough so that all the records are sealed up tight, and my birth certificate officially faked by the State of Massachusetts. I'm illegitimate, baby. Says so right here...

I later found out that my biological mom did return to college and graduated. After that is a mystery. Do I want to unravel it...or will it unravel me? Or does any of it really matter?

New York Fever

2004-12-17T17:45:00.000-05:00

I’ve been sick, and I’m such a freakin’ baby about being sick that my wife actually teases me when I’m hunched over in pain as I Frankenstein-walk to the kitchen for some juice. I really hope that I never come down with a chronic disease, because she’ll kick me out pronto, yo! In her defense, whenever I have a slight fever, I complain about every little thing and want LOADS of sympathy more than anything else. This simply is not my wife. She’s more of a “suck-it-up like a man, bitch!” type, which is fine – I knew it going in. Also, because she’s self-employed P/T (and deals with the kids, plus the crap that I’m too lame or passive-aggressive to handle), she doesn’t have the luxury to call in sick and rest up for a day, so she resents me for being able to do so (can’t argue with that). Using what little sense I have as a male of the species, I made as few demands on her as possible during my three days in bed, and tried to keep my whiny mouth shut.

The kids were fascinated by the facial hair that sprouted forth from my face while I was bedridden. M was particularly distressed when he found out that I was going to shave it all off before heading back to work (he liked rubbing his hands on my scruffy face). I compromised and told him I’d leave a small patch in place, which really pleased him. My wife will be shaving it off as I sleep, I’m sure. Last night, she recoiled in horror and yelped, “You’ve got a soul patch!” after we escaped a freaky alumni theater event in the Village and emerged into the glow of streetlamps and neon bar lights.

Well, I’m no hipster (just Familyman!), so off it comes. Dude.

I am a Camera

2004-12-10T18:48:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, I pulled out my snake’s nest of orphaned A/C adapter cords in an attempt to reunite one of them with my scanner. After a few attempts, I finally found the sucka (reunited and it feels so good!), and will try to add some of my own photos to this blog, as well as some stock photos floating around the net. Kimdawg has put me to shame with all of those nice pix livening up her text…

Right now, I’m an analog guy (sadly, the older I get, the less inclined I am to use the latest tech gadgets, as in “35mm film has worked for the last damn century just fine, so why should I buy this blankety-blank digital camera?!”), but my son put in a request (in writing!) with Santa to send me a digital camera (and since my wife wants him to keep believing in the guy in the red suit for a few more Xmases, told me that’s what’ll be under the tree for me Christmas morn). Okay, I’m not really an analog guy. I love my iPod and my Apple laptop and my DVD player, but I don’t need the latest or the best, dammit and I don’t download music off the internet. Yet.

Let's Talk about Sex, Baby!

2004-12-10T07:01:00.000-05:00

Hopefully, you’ve seen one of the many editorials or articles regarding California Congressman Henry Waxman’s report on abstinence-only programs that the Bush administration has been pushing (to the tune of $900 million dollars over the past five years). The sticky thing is that the vast majority of abstinence-only curriculums in the Congressman’s study contained inaccurate or downright misleading information regarding contraception, STDs, HIV/AIDS, masturbation, and abortion. Some of the misinformation forced on American youth includes the following:

The AIDS virus can be spread by sweat and tears (it can't); condoms fail 31 percent of the time (a federal study says 3 percent); and abortion can lead to suicide (there's no proven link).

Why is it that the anti-sex crowd, if they are so correct and righteous in their convictions, have to resort to outright lies and fear mongering to score their points and convert the masses? (Sort of like going to war on false pretenses, isn’t it?) Afraid the truth doesn’t cut it, eh? Even more disturbing is the fact that studies are beginning to show that abstinence-only programs simply don’t work , despite the enormous amount of money we shower on them:

“A recent Columbia University study found that teens who make "virginity pledges" to delay sex until marriage still have premarital sex at a high rate (88 percent) rivaling those that don't, but are less likely to use contraception once they do.”

So instead of educating these teens about sexuality, contraception and the like, the abstinence-only folks intentionally keep these kids in the dark, so when they do have sex (and most of them will, like crazed rabbits), they are completely ignorant as to how to avoid unwanted pregnancy, STDs, etc. Mission accomplished, I’m sure.

Can’t we just give kids accurate information and help them to make their own responsible decisions? We're all sexual beings and deserve to know about our bodies -- it's part of being human. But how do you find middle ground with folks who ignore science, impose their religious beliefs on others, don’t care how many lives they ruin, and demonize those who disagree with their viewpoint?

Also, Frank Rich has a terrific column, The Plot Against Sex in America, which neatly summarizes many of the ludicrous (and scary) developments on sex cultural war front.

What is it Good For?

2004-12-06T07:06:00.000-05:00

Check out this unsettling interview with un-embedded journalist Dahr Jamail, who is covering the war in Iraq. Things are far, far worse there than we imagine. Just plain bleak.

One Thing Leads to Another

2004-12-03T19:46:00.000-05:00

Even though the Pentagon flat out denies torturing its prisoners at Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay, apparently it’s perfectly fine and dandy to use any “evidence” obtained through torture in military court.

Now, if they’re not torturing the 500 or so guys at Gitmo, why would the military be arguing that it’s okay to use any prisoner statements extracted through torture in a military court?

Does the phrase “just following orders” bring anything to mind?

I'm a Homosapien, too.

2004-12-03T18:07:00.000-05:00

Determining a person’s civil rights based on whom they sleep with is completely un-American. Either we’re all equal under the law and the Constitution, or none of us are guaranteed any rights as citizens. It’s as simple as that.

As more and more gay-bashers and bigots slither out of their cesspools into the media glare to spread their hatred, decent Americans need to stand up and smack them down before any more damage is inflicted on the republic and its gay and lesbian citizens. That our current government happily trades in this kind of discrimination pisses me off to no end, and all sorts of stories are starting to emerge in the wake of the GOP’s ongoing campaign of homophobia:

An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries .

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda."

"Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle," Allen said in a press conference Tuesday.

Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed.

"I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them," he said.

And then there’s the defrocking of a Methodist minister solely because she is an active lesbian…

Following a two-day ecclesiastical trial, the jury voted 12 to 1 to find the Rev. Irene Elizabeth Stroud, 34, guilty of violating the United Methodist Church's ban on "self-avowed practicing" homosexuals in the clergy.

And the networks have been so cowed by (or are beholden to) conservatives in power that they are much more concerned about the political content of the ads they run than any of their hyper-violent, misogynist, stereotyping programming: both NBC and CBS refuse to air an ad by the United Church of Christ that promotes its acceptance of all people. The tag line of the ad is: “Jesus didn’t turn away people. Neither do we.” What’s so controversial about that? Well, it seems that they show two women with their arms around each other in the diverse crowd of folks that are welcome into their churches (see the ad here).

First we propose to enact laws denying them equal rights as heterosexuals. We seek to ban and bury "gay" books. Then, we do all we can to discourage their acceptance within our societal institutions (churches, schools, etc.). When do we start rounding them up in cattle cars?

The World's a Mess (It's in My Kiss)

2004-12-02T19:02:00.000-05:00

There are some terrific off-line articles in this week’s New Yorker magazine (November 23, 2004) that you should read. One posits that the wide-spread belief that moral values largely shaped the outcome of the presidential election is complete bunk (or crap, for you young’ins). Essentially, the media (and crazy evangelical Christian right-types who want to run our lives) misinterpreted the results of the polling (which, itself, was somewhat skewed, due to the manner in which the questions were framed). Moral values had little to no effect on the election. It was all about 9/11, stupid. The other article is about a weird born-again guy, Ole (pronounced ‘Oh-lee’) Anthony, who runs this ministry out of Dallas that is based on sort of a redemption-through-suffering theology, which is really beside the point. The best part is that they go after the televangelists, like Robert Tilton, and expose their sham, money-grubbing, scam ministries!

In the ‘make your skin crawl that anyone could actually believe this lunatic’ category, the New Yorker also features Judith Reisman and her looney anti-Kinsey crusade. Here’s a teaser for you:

She claims that Kinsey actively solicited pedophiles to molest children and report back to him. In fact, she said, “there is absolutely no reason to believe that Kinsey himself was not involved in the sexual abuse of these children.” (None of Kinsey’s four biographers have turned up any evidence that he was.) Reisman also believes that Kinsey died not from heart failure but from what she calls “brutal, repetitive self-abuse.”

To a reader of Reisman’s scholarly papers, it sometimes appears that there is little for which she does not hold Kinsey responsible. In her research on gays, for instance, she has written that the “recruitment techniques” of homosexuals rival those of the Marine Corps. The Kinsey paradigm, she holds, created the moral framework that makes such recruitment possible. Reisman also endorses a book called “The Pink Swastika,” which challenges the “myths” that gays were victimized in Nazi Germany. The Nazi Party and the Holocaust itself, she writes, were largely the creation of “the German homosexual movement.” Thanks to Alfred Kinsey, she warns, the American homosexual movement is poised to repeat those crimes. “Idealistic ‘gay youth’ groups are being formed and staffed in classrooms nationwide by recruiters too similar to those who formed the original ‘Hitler youth.’”

Can’t make this stuff up…well, actually, I guess she can!

Oh, and note to self: ease up on the masturbating!

Happiness is a Warm Gun

2004-12-01T14:15:00.000-05:00

God, someday our country’s hubris is going to come back to haunt us big time. And payback is going to be a mighty bitch when it comes (and it will come someday). The latest International Red Cross report from July, leaked and printed in the New York Times yesterday, condemns the Bush administration for using interrogation techniques in Guantanamo Bay that are “tantamount to torture” and are clearly illegal according to international and U.S. laws.

Haven’t we already done enough to piss off the Arab world for at least the next 50 years? The cultural memory in many of these countries is long…they’re still fighting over events that happened centuries ago…

The IRC people also noted that, in violation of all medical ethics, physicians were being consulted to ascertain the POWs’ physical and mental weaknesses, and sometimes the interrogators had the POWs’ medical files right in front of them during questioning. "Paging Dr. Josef Mengele to interrogation room 'C'..."Angel of Death" to interrogation room 'C'..."

According to an editorial in today’s Times, the good news is that the IRC noted that the Pentagon has backed off the sexual humiliation of the POWs and has ceased having female interrogators bare their breasts, fondle the POWs’, show them porn, and make sexually suggestive comments.

How does our government respond to all this (from today's Times):

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a news conference in Indianapolis on Tuesday, dismissed accusations that the tactics amounted to torture.

"We certainly don't think it's torture," General Myers said before delivering a speech to the Economic Club of Indianapolis, according to the Web site of The Indianapolis Star. "Let's not forget the kind of people we have down there," he said. "These are the people that don't know any moral values."

Who are we talking about here, general, the prisoners or their keepers?

And just who exactly would Jesus torture?

People Who Died (World AIDS Day)

2004-12-01T07:21:00.000-05:00

Chris – He was a rabble-rousing hippie friend about a decade and a half older than me, and the first person I knew who died of HIV/AIDS back in the late 80s. He dug New Wave music, taught me how to drive stick in his brother’s VW Bug, took me to my first concert at Madison Square Garden (Queen and Billy Squire), and patiently listened to me pine after various girls in our church’s youth choir who looked like Chrissie Hynde or Grace Jones. He’s probably unleashing a stream of choice expletives about Bush right now, wherever he is…

Ari – I met him through my college’s alumni theater company, where I sometimes helped at the lighting board and backstage (once falling asleep and waking up just as I was supposed to lower the curtain…). He was a brilliantly funny actor (both in drag and out) and terrific costume designer, who also made a mean bowl of gazpacho. Ari was one of the most warmhearted, decent people that ever crossed my path and graced this planet. The stage lights are dimmer without you.

Bruce – I grew up with Bruce. He was the younger brother of my best friend, who often tagged along for whatever we were doing in the neighborhood. He came into this world with a couple of strikes against him: his mother abandoned him, he was a hemophiliac, and was learning disabled. But he was lucky enough to become part of my friend’s family, the 13th child in their household (11 by birth, two adopted). His passion was Star Trek, and he could quote whole episodes verbatim. Spock particularly fascinated him. Bruce was one of the sweetest people I knew – didn’t have an ounce of guile in him. Do they show reruns where you are?

Ms. R. – Back in the first half of the 90s, when I was a caseworker at a residence for formerly homeless people with mental illness, one of the people I worked with was slowly dying of AIDS, cycling in and out of Cabrini Hospital with alarming regularity. Thanks to her meds, she was lucid and faced her situation with a quiet strength. She was someone that many people of strong “moral values” were all too willing to cast off, but it was an honor to know her and help her.

All of you are greatly missed.

You Say it's Your Birthday/Birthday Suit

2004-12-01T06:14:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, my son’s first grade class had a publishing party, where all the kids in his class shared real-life stories (fully illustrated, too) with their parents. M recounted a visit to Lasker Rink last winter, in amazing detail. The cover of his novella featured yours truly, nude in the shower, with very hairy armpits (that needed a trim), among other anatomically correct renderings of my body. (His logic for including this episode in his story was that I took a shower before we headed off for the park that day – and we all know that a little skin helps move units...) Much hilarity ensued as many of M’s classmates and their parents caught an eyeful of my in-the-buff self. Can’t wait to see what else he reveals about me in upcoming tomes…

November 30th also was my daughter’s second birthday! After opening her presents first thing in the morning, she started asking for the cake, but was placated when we told her it would come after dinner (a cookie-dough ice cream cake). We’re having a party for her on Sunday for family and F’s friends, which will coincide with Brick Church’s caroling and lighting of the Christmas trees on Park Avenue (which began during WWII, in memory of their sons killed in combat). We’re not especially religious, but it’s beautiful and helps remind one that the day is not about lining the pockets of capitalists.

TV Party

2004-11-24T07:53:00.000-05:00

Obscure celebrity sighting: Waiting for an uptown #2 train last night, I spied Randolph Mantooth who portrayed LA paramedic/firefighter John Gage on the Jack Webb-produced TV show Emergency).

Not exactly like spotting Bill Clinton on the A train, but I’ll take it.

Sing a Psalm

2004-11-24T07:47:00.000-05:00

Probably a billion people have posted this ditty on the internet already, but for the few of you who haven’t read it...

The 23rd Sigh

Bush is my shepherd; I dwell in want.
He maketh logs to be cut down in national forests.
He leadeth trucks into the still wilderness.
He restoreth my fears.
He leadeth me in the paths of international disgrace for his ego's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of pollution
and war, I will find no exit, for thou art in office.
Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy media control, they discomfort me.
Thou preparest an agenda of deception in the presence of thy religion.
Thou anointest my head with foreign oil.
My health insurance runneth out.
Surely megalomania and false patriotism shall follow me all the days of thy term,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.

(- An anonymous internet scribe)

Go forth and eat your turkey in peace (if you can).

What’s so Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?

2004-11-23T06:40:00.000-05:00

Monday nights suck. For whatever reason (placement of hydrants, parking restrictions in front of private schools?), they’re the hardest night of the week to find a parking spot that’s legal for Tuesday. So, last night at 11:00, as I was circling the same batch of primo Upper East Side real estate that I’d been trawling for the past half an hour (you’d think all these super rich people could pay for a garage, dammit – with Dubya’s magnificent tax cuts, they surely can afford it!), I did something that I’m really ashamed of.

Long story short, as I was passing this giant SUV that clearly had stopped to back up into a parking spot (that wasn’t good for Tuesday, btw), I tooted my horn because he didn’t see my little Toyota and was beginning to back up – and the front end of his vehicle was starting to swing into mine. He hit his brakes and, as I looked over at him while driving by, he gave me the stink eye. So, in an embarrassing lapse of civility, I flipped him the bird. Blasting his horn in response, I’m sure he caught the “Teach Tolerance” bumper sticker on my back window as I sped away…

Oh, don’t tut-tut me too much -- he was probably a Bush-loving Republican. The message – and irony – would have been lost on him anyway.

* * *

Soon, the alternate side of the street nightmare will be but a distant memory. We’re donating our car to Habitat for Humanity, and signing up with Zip Car, for when we need to escape from New York and head for the hills.

I'm in a Time Zone

2004-11-19T18:09:00.000-05:00

I’m almost finished reading Philip Roth’s new historical novel The Plot Against America, which is pretty amazing. Essentially, it envisions the rise of a fascist state in America, where famed aviator Charles Lindbergh manages to be elected president on an isolationist platform in 1940 (preventing FDR’s third term in the Oval Office). The Lindbergh administration forges an “understanding” with Hitler that America will remain neutral and not supply Britain with arms in exchange for being left out of the war. On the home front, we begin to see the subtle (yet easy to explain away) plans unfold for the persecution (elimination?) of Jewish Americans through the pre-teen eyes of a certain Philip Roth from Newark…

The parallels between this imagined past and the real now (as our government uses fear and propaganda to manipulate its citizens and the press -- and insists that its lies are the truth) are really, really creepy. Few novels outside of the serial killer genre (Thomas Harris and Patricia Cornwell novels in particular) have created so palpable a world that fills me with so much damn dread.

Also, I love alternate time lines…it’s the Star Trek geek in me.

All that Money Wants

2004-11-18T19:34:00.000-05:00

With all the conservative/right-wing hoopla over mifepristone, AKA the abortion pill (and I truly do not mean to trivialize the deaths of the two or three women who may have died from taking this drug, though even the FDA cannot make a direct connection between their deaths and the medication), you’d think women across America were dying in droves. Yet it takes over 27,000 deaths – yes, twenty-seven thousand people killed as a direct result of taking this arthritis pain medication – for Vioxx to be pulled off the shelves. And they tell us that we need to be worried about imported drugs from Canada?!? Oh, by the by, Merck was raking in over $2.5 billion a year in Vioxx sales.

So political pressure is used to create unnecessary fear of medication abortion, while gobs of money flowing from the pharmaceutical companies to politicians keeps things quiet about a real killer drug until the stench of all those deaths is too hard to cover. Is it just me, or shouldn’t the FDA act independently of politics and regulate the industry/make sure that drug that’s supposed to heal you doesn’t kill you?

Just a crazy thought. Go back to being an oppressed/depressed blue state person now. Which color pill takes me back to the Matrix?

It Ain't What You Do (It's the Way that You Do It)

2004-11-18T07:14:00.000-05:00

Some more thoughts on the Bush administration's supposed "moral values" and their perverted view of Christianity:

Here's what Republicans of conscience have to understand about the machinations of Karl Rove and company. Fear isn't some emotion that can be easily bottled back up after it's been -- viciously -- unleashed. It isn't a once-every-four-years vehicle that can be wheeled out for a few months, then stowed back in the garage to be retooled for the next election cycle. Encouraging fundamentalist preachers to pound their pulpits and inveigh against gay people has consequences. It puts men and women in communities across this country at personal and professional risk. There's nothing more despicable than creating a phony political issue (just how many gay couples are clamoring for marriage certificates in the state of Ohio, anyhow?) and preying on people's prejudices.

So now it's up to discerning Republicans to wrestle with this quandary: You won all right, but at what cost? What happened to the party that once shared Abraham Lincoln's faith in the "better angels of our nature"? That fifth-grade teacher taught me to appreciate how -- through Lincoln's resolve -- our nation overcame a cataclysm of hate to stop the Union from dissolving. Back then, certain avatars of ignorance were called Know-Nothings, which, come to think of it, is an apt description of more than a few right-wingers today.

"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid," Lincoln wrote in the years leading up to the Civil War. "As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except Negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

There are a lot of Republicans troubled by their party's exploitation of contemporary know-nothingism. You know who you are. And before your party's degeneracy is complete, you ought to do something about it. Because camouflaging the fear and loathing of gay people as "moral values" isn't the base alloy of hypocrisy. It's hypocrisy itself. (Timothy Gay in the Washington Post, November 16, 2004)

Also consider these thoughtful words from Barbara Ehrenreich in The Nation:

Mainstream, even liberal, churches also provide a range of services, from soup kitchens to support groups. What makes the typical evangelicals' social welfare efforts sinister is their implicit--and sometimes not so implicit--linkage to a program for the destruction of public and secular services. This year the connecting code words were "abortion" and "gay marriage": To vote for the candidate who opposed these supposed moral atrocities, as the Christian Coalition and so many churches strongly advised, was to vote against public housing subsidies, childcare and expanded public forms of health insurance. While Hamas operates in a nonexistent welfare state, the Christian right advances by attacking the existing one.

Of course, Bush's faith-based social welfare strategy only accelerates the downward spiral toward theocracy. Not only do the right-leaning evangelical churches offer their own, shamelessly proselytizing social services; not only do they attack candidates who favor expanded public services--but they stand to gain public money by doing so. It is this dangerous positive feedback loop, and not any new spiritual or moral dimension of American life, that the Democrats have failed to comprehend: The evangelical church-based welfare system is being fed by the deliberate destruction of the secular welfare state.

Gee, all these "love thy neighbor" moments courtesy of Bush and the evangelical "Christian" right are giving me a such a warm fuzzy head rush that I might. Pass. Out.