More on the subject of cities

He is a man who eats and drinks too much, smokes too much, sits too much, talks too much and is always on the edge of a break-down. Often he dies of heart failure in the next few years. In a city like Cleveland this type comes to apotheosis. So do the buildings, the restaurants, the parks, the war memorials. The most typical American city I have struck thus far. Thriving, prosperous, active, clean, spacious, sanitary, vitalized by a liberal infusion of foreign blood and by the ozone from the lake, it stands out in my mind as the composite of many American cities. Possessing all the virtues, all the prerequisites for life, growth, blossoming, it remains nevertheless a thoroughly dead place--a deadly, dull, dead place.

That’s from Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. It’s been many years since I’ve read anything by Henry Miller. It's good to get back to him again. Miller was probably the biggest single outside influence on my life. I went the places he went, read the books that he read, looked at the art he looked at. Always wanted to write like he writes, but don’t seem to have it in me.

It cheered me up to find that his most notorious books are still unavailable on the shelves of the Public Library. If you wanna read The Rosy Crucifixion Trilogy you have to ask the librarian. I wanted to re-read it, but was too lazy to hike up to the big library, so I had them send me Nightmare. I had forgotten what an anti-American polemic it is.

Those two girls in Youngstown coming down the slippery bluff--it was like a bad dream, I tell you. But we look at these bad dreams constantly with eyes open and when some one remarks about it we say, “Yes, that’s right, that’s how it is!” and we go on about our business or we take to dope, the dope which is worse by far than opium or hashish--I mean the newspapers, the radio, the movies. Real dope gives you the freedom to dream your own dreams; the American kind forces you to swallow the perverted dreams of men whose only ambition is to hold their job regardless of what they are bidden to do.

The most terrible thing about America is that there is no escape from the treadmill which we have created...

Reading Henry, it struck me that no one today is seriously railing against the consumer ethic and the virtual enslavement necessary to its maintenance. I occasionally read about a simple life movement of some sort, but as far as I can tell it is made up entirely of high income types and has nothing to do with art. And no great artist, at least none currently known, is giving voice to the idea that a life of art is better than a life of work. Instead, we are told that art is hard work. And art, for most of us, is what we see on the 60“ plasma television or what the kids do in grade school. We are so deep in corporate hell that the only the very few can even conceive of a better life. Henry Miller, it seems, is dead.

But what’s different about The Air-Conditioned Nightmare is that it contains a lot of fairly standard political commentary and it’s surprising to find that much of it is pretty much exactly the same as what we read on the lefty blogs these days, albeit more insightful and better written than most.

The flag has become a cloak to hide iniquity. We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it it means danger, revolution, anarchy. In less than two hundred years the land of liberty, home of the free, refuge of the oppressed has so altered the meaning of the Stars and Stripes that today when a man or woman succeeds in escaping from the horrors of Europe, when he finally stands before the bar under our glorious national emblem, the first question put to him is: ”How much money have you?“ If you have no money but only a love of freedom, only a prayer for mercy on your lips, you are debarred, returned to the slaughter-house, shunned as a leper. This is the bitter caricature which the descendants of our liberty-loving forefathers have made of the national emblem. Everything is a caricature here.

How's that for an insight on the use of the flag? Now, 65 years or so since that was written, no one remotely considers the Amercian flag to mean revolution or anarchy. True, it still means danger to a lot of people, but not for the wealthy and the powerful. Things are, indeed, under control. King George is alive and well.

I've always thought that protests would be more effective if everyone draped themselves in the American flag. Not only would it be a good P.R. move, it is, as Miller points out, consistent with our tradition. As a country born of revoltion with a democratic tradition that merits tremendous respect, we just need to recapture the idea that the flag stands for revolution against the looting of the many to benefit the few and against a government that exists only to protect those few. Maybe someone could dig up a design from the old days for progressives to adopt? Something that reminds us of who we are, or once were. A potent symbol of who we are supposed to be.

More invisible city

Here.

Outside

When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him a s a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories.

That’s from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Beyond my admiration for the writing, it’s kind of how I feel about New York.

There they go again

The Washington Post prominently displays the headline “5 Iranians Linked to Militants” on their web page, referring to the 5 people the U.S. violently kidnapped from the Iranian consulate in the Kurdish state in Iraq. Funny though, when you click on the article it’s not about the 5 being linked to militants, it’s about the Iraqis and the Kurds protesting their violent kidnapping.

Though to be fair, it is reported way down in the article that “the U.S. military had information indicating that the Iranians were "closely associated" with activities targeting U.S. and Iraqi forces.”, whatever that may mean.

Of course I don’t know whether these Iranians are funneling weapons for our Shiite allies in Iraq to kill us with or not, but the Wapo article doesn’t address the issue. And even if the article was about what its headline claimed, I don’t doubt that they, the Iranians not the Post, would confess, but what’s a confession worth when it’s obtained by torture? Nothing, that's what.

No, this is just another example of lame ass pro war propaganda from our “independent” media to justify another idiotic crime by the morons in the White House.

A little west of some place

If anyone was wondering what Jersey City looks like, I'm on the case.

Symbolism and 50 cents

The Democrats in the House have passed a bill that would require the government to negotiate lower prices with drug companies. This is opposed to the Republican plan, which is to pay the highest price possible. In an open declaration of allegiance to the principle of absolute and unapologetic corruption, 170 Republicans voted against the bill and the president has promised to veto it.

Although the Democrats had an 85 vote cushion, they concede that nothing is likely to change. “This bill has symbolic importance...” said Representative Murphy of Connecticut and the Times reporter editorializes (with no attribution whatsoever) that the measure is unlikely to become law.

So if the idea of negotiating lower prices is just symbolic and unlikely to become law, what is really going on?

According to the gist of the article, it is unlikely that the power to negotiate would by itself have much of an effect. In order to achieve the stated aim of lowering drug prices, the Democrats would need to follow the Veterans Affairs example and implement a federal price ceiling and a uniform list of covered drugs, effective measures to which the Democrats are opposed.

So it’s not really about lowering prices. It’s about symbolism and making the Republicans look bad. Tune in tomorrow as the Democrats symbolically bring the troops home from Iraq while in the material world the Republicans throw another 20,000 into the quagmire. After that, we can look forward to the Democrats symbolically restoring tax fairness for the wealthy while the Republicans have to settle for yet another tax cut for the wealthy. And so on.

Rose garden strateegery

I couldn't help notice that we just stormed an Iranian consulate and took the occupants hostage. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that considered an act of war, or at the ver least, a war crime? I guess we're accustomed to the media ignoring acts of war and war crimes, but I'm surprised no one is pointing out the very obvious fact that once upon a time it was the Iranians who stormed our embassy and took our diplomats hostage.

Is it a question of turnabout is fair play? No, unfortunately it is yet another example of how we have abandoned the rule of law for the rule of the gun. Apparently we have unofficially declared war on Somalia at about the same time with the same lack of commentary, much less outrage over our complete abandonment of interanational good citizenship.

And meanwhile we want to increase the size of the army by 100,000. Whatever for? To invade more countries perhaps?

We are just a rogue state on a crime spree. Much like Nazi Germany in the late thirties, our security is threatened by weak states and shiftless races and we must lash out with overwhelming violence to protect the glorious homeland. Never mind that only an insane megalomaniac and his mindless followers could possibly think that this is the way to safety and national security, but it's not like we have any kind of system in place that can stop them.

I'm all for national security, but squandering trillions of dollars on a murder spree does not make us more secure. Just think how truly secure we could be if those trillions were spent on healthcare, education and job creation.

No, better not to think about it.

Should christian girls wear miniskirts?

Bartholomew turns us on to the New Year's demented hopes and dreams of the retarded right. Apparently 25 percent of Americans anticipate the second coming of Christ in 2007. Yea, that could happen. I guess those are the same 25 percent who still think George W. Bush is not the pathetically malignant little idiot that he so obviously is.

Of course their leaders are more interested in the pre-second coming festivities. It's the anti-Christ that girds their loins. On that front, they hopefully scour the bureaucratic scat of the European Union for sign (again, via Bart).

EU Action Plan agreed on improving animal welfare within the European Union, for the period 2006-2010. Could the renewal of this document be the one that causes the sacrifice and oblation to cease, halfway through the Antichrist's reign? (Daniel 9:27)

What a world, what a world.

Escalation surges

I notice the Liberals are actually having some success in the propaganda war and it’s interesting to see how the major media are dealing with it. You can tell that the pro-Bush writers, who are legion, predominantly use the word “surge” whereas the liberals have taken up the “escalation” banner and use it with abandon. The poor saps who at least make a pretense of being objective are getting all mixed up, using “surge” in some graphs and “escalation” in others.

Well, that’s progress for the Libs, I guess. Even though I think, as detailed below, that using the wussy word "escalation" in place of the strong and accurate "troop increase" is a strategic mistake, at least they are actually having some success framing the debate. Hard to remebember the last time that happened.

Even though I don't agree with the strategy, I don't blame politicians for being politicians. Propaganda is a large part of what they do. S

But the media, what's their excuse? This whole semantic debacle is yet another example of how pathetic the press has become. They are not supposed to be doing propaganda, at least not in the news pages, yet it seems that they have lost the ability to use words in an independent manner. Just read the British press to see how professionals handle it. In every instance, unless they are quoting someone directly, they say “troop increase.” What has happened to us?

Yes, that’s mostly a rhetorical question. But I have an inkling, so to speak, of the answer. In short, we are living in the era of the idiots. The way George W. Bush promotes sycophants and rewards failure is reflected throughout our culture, including the media. And as the rights of corporations continue to subsume the rights of individuals and the current crop of idiots continue to weed out the more competent and replace them with like-minded losers, we can look forward to a whole lot more stupid down the road.

Update: The Daily Howler wins the prize for being the first I've noticed to say the obvious, that the press should use "troop increase" rather than the propaganda phrasings of the right or left. Why is this so difficult?

Atrios hates me

Atrios has created a list of the types of people he finds most annoying and Chuckling is #1!

The Defeatists - Doom and gloomers who know it is all hopeless, who know that we can't win elections, or that if we do win elections nothing will improve, and who think that people who bother to try are just wasting their time. Why these people spend so much time paying attention to this stuff if there's nothing to be done I do not know. If you really feel that way go do something else with your time, otherwise I expect you're just addicted to the sweet thrill of self-righteous outrage.

Yep, that’s me. And it’s unfortunate he feels that way, since I like and respect Atrios and the work that he does. Nevertheless, perhaps I can be of some help by answering the question of why we poor chuckling dead-enders spend so much time paying attention to politics when there’s nothing to be done.

It’s really not so complicated. Watching politics is like watching sports. Politics, football, basketball, lacrosse -- they are all just games and our potential for influencing the outcome is just about the same. We watch them because we find the games interesting. Plus it’s fun to root for your team, to revel in their wins, to suffer through their losses. And there is also the flip side, the schadenfreude, the relish of seeing the opposing team suffer.

So thank you very much Mr. Atrios for your advice on how I should pass the time, but if I like to watch games, and perhaps talk about them over a beer or two, well, that’s nobody’s business but my own. Certainly not yours.

And since I’m in a communicative mood, perhaps I can allay his suspicions that I am addicted to the sweet thrill of self-righteous outrage. It’s nothing so eloquently or existentially interesting as that. I can’t speak for any of my defeatist brethren, but I, at least, do not find self-righteous outrage sweet. I know that Mr. Atrios interacts with many more people than poor chuckling, but I wouldn’t classify those gloom and doomers I know as self-righteous. Realistic is the more accurate term. The sorry state of our body politic is not something to be happy about, much less self-righteous. That’s just the way it is. Sad.

Yes, it is sad. But what can we do?

Recent neurological studies, which will remain un-cited, indicate that such attributes as optimism, pessimism, or realism are hard wired into our human nature. Thus, those like Mr. Atrios who are optimistic and believe they can change things are in no way morally superior, nor are the more realistic among us. We were all just born that way.

Don’t get me wrong. I recognize that the optimists are largely responsible for the strides we humans have made from our chimpish beginnings and I respect the efforts of those who go beyond opposing the current body politic and actively try to change it for the better. Of course it would be unrealistic of me to fail to note that the conservative morons who have actively created this mess, or at least nurtured the environment in which it could develop, are optimistic go getters as well. Optimism about the possibility of changing the world for the better is not a universally positive attribute. “Better” means different things to different people.

Another study, or perhaps it is the same one since I am referencing memory, found that the best decisions were arrived at when different types of personalities were involved. As is so often the case, the aphorism “it takes all kinds...” is not far from the truth. It’s worth noting that the United States’ founding fathers, as well as the architects of the western European social democracies were more realistic, if not outright pessimistic, than optimistic. The societies they crafted were arguably designed to keep the optimists in check. So if the realists and pessimists among us took Mr. Atrios’s advice and left the optimists to their machinations, the world would not be a better place. It would likely be more of a bloody hell than it already is.

And it is not such a bad thing to recognize that on the grand scale there is little hope for the body politic or that life ultimately has no meaning. There are currently about 6.5 billion humans on earth living 50 or sixty years on average and human history goes back about 40,000 years. By contrast, the universe is 17 billion years old and there are at least 125 billion galaxies each of which contains about 200 billion stars. When you consider those numbers and their significance, it is obvious that our little lives have no greater meaning in the grand scheme of things than the lives of ants. And we’re not as different from ants as we’d like to believe. Our cities are like anthills and we spend our days building, gathering food, reproducing, and moving around with no apparent purpose. We are all just earth creatures, evolved from the same distant ancestor. I doubt an observer from a distant galaxy would see that much difference.

That’s not something we like to think about, but the realists among us cannot help but recognize the unavoidable truth of the proposition. But just because our lives have no ultimate meaning in the vastness of space and time doesn’t mean that they don’t have meaning within our limited existence. My life means something to my parents and my children and, if I live well, to a good number of other people as well. And many people’s lives have meaning for me.

And there are some people whose lives unquestionably have meaning, for good or ill, beyond their immediate circle of acquaintances, and even beyond their own time. People who get involved in politics can, obviously. change the world for millions, if not billions of people. But it’s a dangerous proposition and I think the founding father types had it right to try to hobble them.

I wish Mr. Atrios and his coterie well in their quest to better our lives, and I have even thrown a dime their way on a couple of occasions, but I am not an optimist. The fact that he is already creating an enemies list exclusively made up of people “on our side” bodes ill for the future. Power corrupts those on the left as surely it does those on the right. As the left ascends, it's likely they'll follow the same pattern as the recent right. Talking points will be distributed, the loyalists will repeat them, those who don't will be attacked, then purged.

The nonsense about surge/escalation is an early harbinger of that dynamic (it's clear that all the liberal bloggers have gotten the memo) and demonstrates how hopeless our prospects are on several levels.

First, the fact that nobody in America is capable of calling a troop increase a troop increase is distressing. As far as I can see, the entire major media has adopted the word surge for troop increase without so much as a quibble, unless you consider putting quotation marks around it a quibble. And the opposition media, the Daily Kos, other leftist blogs, Atrios, rather than call a troop increase a troop increase dig up the old propagandistic wussy-word escalation, a word designed, like surge, to avoid calling a troop increase a troop increase. What the fuck is wrong with you people?

I’m generally okay with using language intelligently to frame the debate, but using escalation instead of troop increase is not an intelligent use of language. An escalation sounds reasonable. Nearly everyone is against a troop increase. Just say the fucking words.

If, for whatever reason, the liberal bloggers can’t call a troop increase a troop increase, they should at least drop the wussy-words and come up with a good snarky substitute. Bush is reportedly going to ask for sacrifice as well as a troop increase. Perhaps we should refer to his plan as a troop sacrifice? Try it out. Bush’s plan to sacrifice more troops? Personally, I think calling a troop increase a troop increase is as effective as it’s going to get, and very effective at that.

It’s issues like these that make me doubt the literal existence of the Democratic party. So often it seems like they are the political incarnation of the Washington Generals, the faux basketball team that is paid to lose to the Harlem Globetrotters. When they can’t take something as unpopular as a troop increase and slam dunk it in the Republican’s face (give them a facial, in popular terms), you have to wonder if the game is fixed.

A surge in propaganda

I've noticed that Atrios and other liberal bloggers have been making a concerted effort to use the word "escalation" instead of surge, saying that escalation is the accurate term.

Actually, escalation is just the surge of stupid wars past, a propaganda term designed to make "increase the number of troops" sound like a good thing.

In general, I agree with this push to choose the words with which to frame the debate, but I'm uncomfortable when it turns into misleading propaganda.

In the case of escalation, however, I don't think it's misleading propaganda as much as a poor choice of words. The honest and accurate description -- "increase the number of troops" -- is a much more effective, from an anti-war perspective, than escalation, which was originally, as noted above, a pro-war propaganda term itself.

Not only that, but escalation, like surge, is a weak word, which is why they use it. Think of the words we use when we want to make the opposite argument. We do not demand that the Bush administration ebb the troops. No one at a protest rally screams de-escalate now! No, "bring home the troops" is the powerful phrase. It is powerful because it is honest and direct. It is powerful because it brings humans into equation as well as the concept of home.

By the same token, the words surge or escalate have no human connotations. But "increase the number of troops," now those are some powerful words. People know exactly what they mean.

It's green, it's green, it's tangerine

My daughter and I saw Children of Men yesterday, the new movie directed by Alfonso Cuarón that stars Clive Owen. I was interested in seeing it because I liked the look Cuarón gave Prisoner of Azkaban, the third film in the Harry Potter series -- and Owen, who gave an interesting performance in Spike Lee’s Inside Man.

The first step in my approach to critiquing a film is to determine whether it is primarily art or entertainment. Of course it could be both, or neither, and I don’t necessarily consider art “good” and entertainment “bad,” but I feel the distinction is a helpful starting point. It serves no useful purpose to judge Monsters Inc. with the same criteria as Richard the III.

I consider Children of Men to be primarily entertainment. It is a dystopian sci-fi action-adventure that follows its main characters from point A to point B, forcing them to overcome ever more formidable obstacles along the way.

The most important requirement for entertainment is that it entertain. This it does very well. The film is well paced, the slow parts are not too slow. They often contain humor and humanity and add depth to the characters. The action sequences are great, and not so sustained that the action becomes overwhelming. The acting is very good. In addition to Owen’s hang-dog performance, Claire-Hope Ashitey provides spunk and attitude, Juliette Moore does a worthy star turn and Michael Caine goofs it up, adding some much needed levity to the proceedings.

I say “much needed levity“ because Children of Men is not a light film. It is, in fact, very grim, which explains why a big budget blockbuster-type movie with an all-star crew and cast is playing in only three theaters in New York and given next to no publicity.

Much of the plot could have been stolen from Michelle Malkin’s wet dreams. As we follow the main characters from their point A’s to their point B’s, we see unremittingly bleak images of refugees/Illegal aliens in the background being brutally chased, herded, beaten, tortured, and killed with impunity.

And it is perhaps the most violent film I have ever seen. As a Natural Born Killers aficionado, I do not say that lightly. But if someone were to do a body count, like they did with NBK, I’d wager Children of Men would easily take the prize.

Yet we did not find the violence overwhelming. My daughter said it was because there was not much blood. Yea, I replied, but there were a lot of limbs.

And thinking back, I realize that there was a lot of blood as well, but it was not obvious because of the film’s palette. As he did with Azkaban, Cuarón removed nearly all of the magenta from the film, leaving it with an aquamarine cast and strong yellows. So the blood was mostly shadow with only the deepest reds showing through. You really only noticed it when it pooled. The splatter was mostly lost.

Beyond the palette, Children of Men was incredibly well filmed and edited. The action sequences are fantastic. I am not a war movie nerd, but I would guess that the final action scene is one of the best battle sequences ever filmed. It is certainly very good.

The plot is mostly coherent. It is adopted from a novel by P.D. James, the mystery writer who apparently went off the reservation in the early 90's and wrote a grim sci-fi novel that foresaw the direction of our future. There is only one scene, near the end, that intrudes on the suspension of disbelief. It’s unfortunate, and could have been easily rectified, but does not do much to mar the overall achievement of the picture.

Children of Men may be primarily entertainment, but it is not stupid entertainment, nor is it artless. If you like a very good dystopian action-adventure and can stomach a lot of very stark violence, or if you are into cinematography, I recommend it.

Update: If you want to get a taste of the look and feel, here's an interesting video montage someone made. I don't think it will spoil much of anything, but I could be wrong, so view with trepidation if you plan on seeing the movie.

Another new york moment

Perhaps my iconic New York moment took place one day on Houston street, near Katz’s deli. I was walking down the sidewalk and after a few minutes, I noticed that every car on the street was honking its horn. The “after a few minutes” is the key to that moment. A crowded city street, cars backed up, probably all the way across Manhattan, every one of them blowing its horn. It was very, very loud. Yet I am so acclimatized to the noise that 500 cars honking their horn only intrudes on my consciousness after a few minutes, and then only because of how long it’s gone on. The noise itself is unremarkable.

I was reminded of that on the bus the other day. If you’re ever in New York and are the type of person who likes to get away from the tourist traps and see the “real” city, I recommend a ride on the B35. It starts in a warehouse district well-seeded with strip clubs and porn shops, makes its way through Sunset Park, a major Hispanic neighborhood, catches the edge of Brooklyn’s Chinatown, cuts through a corner of Borough Park, an orthodox Jewish neighborhood, then all the way down Church avenue through Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Polish, Mexican, Central American, Haitian, and West Indian neighborhoods all the way out to the mean streets of the East New York ghetto. Around the world in Brooklyn or It’s a Small World in Hell?

So my wife and I are on the B35 and after a few minutes I notice that people are screaming. In retrospect, I realize that the volume has been increasing for awhile. Then the F bomb explodes through the pop pop pop cadence of the Haitian Creole and the wild tonal swings of the English West Indian dialect and the Spanish (who knew that there were Spanish speaking Muslims in Brooklyn?) on the periphery and I realize that it’s gotten pretty damn loud in here.

The primary commotion is between two large black women, each with two kids. Apparently a woman from the English speaking West Indies sent her daughter up to pay the fare and leaned a stroller up against a seat to save it for her. Then, reportedly, the woman from Haiti came along, contemptuously pushed the stroller aside and sat down in the seat. A few insults were exchanged and the confrontation escalated quickly into a devastating war of words that left both sides badly shaken.

To get the full flavor, you have to imagine it in a West Indian accent.

Insults about speaking a foreign language.
Insults about English language accents.
Accusation that people like her are why white people look down on black people.

You are uneducated.
No, I have a bachelor’s degree. I am an artist.

No, you are uneducated, and you are no artist. You are too ugly to be an artist.

No, you are uneducated, I’ll show you my card, and I am an artist. And you are the ugly one.

No, you are the ugly one, and you are uneducated. I am enrolled at the university. You are so ugly.

No, you are so ugly, and you are uneducated, you are not enrolled at the university, show me your card. You are so ugly. And you are on welfare.

I’ll show you my card, and I don’t see your card. You don’t have no card. You are too ugly to be an artist. You are uneducated. And ugly.

No, You are ugly, and you are uneducated, and you are on welfare. You look link a monkey. Why aren’t you in the zoo, you ugly welfare monkey?

And so on.

In addition to being very, very sad on so many levels, the choice of words the women employed in this war were interesting for what they illustrated about their perspectives. Pretty much every insult concerned the ability to fit into the dominant American culture. What would white people think? The importance of having a college degree. The stigma of welfare. The implied stigma of being of recent African descent. The overall importance of appearances. Ugly was the weapon employed most often. Ugly was the word that cut the deepest. Both of these women were seriously overweight. Neither was what anyone would call good looking. From an American cultural perspective, they looked exactly the same. They were ugly.

So they smack each other in the face with this word, they whack each other on the head. But ugly is more than appearances. Ugly is the lack of education. Ugly is welfare. Ugly is Foreignness. Ugly is African. Ugly is un-American.

Of course I don’t believe these things. The ugly I see in this incident is the ugly of poverty in a land of obscene wealth, which is the root cause of all the other uglies.

The ugliest thing concerning the immediate human beings was the devastated look on the women’s faces. Neither won that battle. They both lost big time and were severely hurt.

But in long view, the ugliest thing was probably that the children were there to witness it. To hear their mother called ugly and uneducated in front of a bunch of strangers. And frankly, to watch their mothers act so ugly in such a public place. The look on the children’s faces was not ugly. They looked sheepish. They looked embarrassed. But the ramifications for their psyche? That’s got to be ugly.

A Moooving Frienship

Professionalism worthy of the Post, on so many levels.

An ongoing struggle

Here are some fall photos from my Greenwood Cemetery project. I suspect I've mentioned before that I am involved in an ongoing struggle to photograph this cemetery. Although mostly forgotten by the tourist industry, Greenwood is one of the premier attractions in New York City. It is beautiful, quiet and historic. It contains a wealth of natural beauty and quite a bit of interesting art and sculpture.

Yet I have found it very difficult to photograph and have not seen particularly good work from anyone else. Its beauty is obvious to the human eye, but harder discern for the camera. Anyway, I am not there yet, but seem to be making progress.

Sympathy for the conservative in us all

I’m a generally happy guy. I don’t remember ever getting pissed off about anything concerning Christmas. There were a lot of years when I didn’t give a shit one way or the other, but since having kids of my own I’ve always enjoyed it in a traditional way. Every Christmas Eve we have the turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, etc., with a bottle of wine and a Port for a digestif in a good year, then the kids are allowed to open a present or two and we all watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Then Xmas morning we open the rest of the gifts, have a nice breakfast, and spend most of the day playing with the kids' new toys. This is, for the most part, as it was in my childhood. I’ve replaced church with the movie, but otherwise have maintained the tradition

But today I turn into a seething conservative-like maniac. My wife’s family never celebrated Christmas and she usually does well to tolerate my insistence on tradition. Can we have lobster instead of turkey for once? No. Do we have to watch It’s a Wonderful Life again? Yes. Can we open half the presents on Xmas Eve? No. And so on.

Anyway, this year her nephew invites us to a Christmas Eve party in Jersey. Being from a family that doesn’t celebrate Christmas, and young to boot, he apparently has no idea that people with kids don’t generally trudge off to Jersey on Christmas Eve to go to a party with a bunch of strangers. Beyond the mere fact of trashing my lifelong Xmas tradition, it would require us taking three trains and a bus. We would be lucky to get home by 1 am. I was shocked that she would even consider the idea. She was shocked that I would be disagreeable about the issue. Each was seriously disappointed with the other. You really would not believe how rare it is for us to have a disagreement of any magnitude. It was not a good way to start the day.

And while this internal discord is going on, the landlord is having work done on the eave outside my window. Three Mexicans are on the roof blasting Cumbias and operating power tools.

Then I go out to get the Turkey and the fixins. The supermarket is a horror show. It’s packed, taking 10 minutes to navigate any one of the narrow aisles. Everybody is in a nasty mood. I make the mistake of getting in line behind an Asian with a nearly empty shopping cart and predictably the rest of the family arrives with three more carts and cuts in front of me.

And it’s like 80 fucking degrees outside and sunny. There’s a Cadillac Escalade with ghetto hop going thumpa thumpa, niggah niggah. The Jews are bickering and the Muslims haggling over pirated DVD's on the sidewalk. Dueling eastern Europeans with cheap Casio’s are blasting horrible Christmas music on opposite sides of the street. People are speaking Polish, Russian, Hebrew, Spanish, Albanian, Arabic, Hindu, whatever the fuck they speak in Bangladesh and Pakistan and who knows what else. I feel the Edward Norton character in 25th Hour. I just want to cuss them all.

And more than that, I just want a traditional white Christmas. I want to be sitting in a lonely farmhouse on a hill, looking out a frosty window at snow covered hills, hearing the ring-a-ling of approaching sleigh bells in the distance. Or in a small town with carolers and Christmas lights and a fresh dusting of snow unmarred as yet by tire tracks. But no, it ain’t happening. It just ain’t.

Of course I realize that the problem is me and I pick up a liter of Kentucky straight medicine in the hope of changing my perspective. My kid’s sitting under the Christmas tree shaking every gift, constantly scheming to open a present or five before the traditional time and this is as irritating as the heat and the noise and the foreigners and I know that I am wrong. The kid shaking the presents, the excitement in his eyes, this is what our Christmas tradition is about. I forcibly unclinch my teeth and try to soak up some of his spirit. A couple shots of medicine and I’m almost there.

So I take him out to see Night at the Museum, the season’s Ben Stiller comedy. The sun is setting. Now the people, their different dress and language, the dueling eastern European keyboardists and their music are all beautiful. The Muezzin is calling the faithful to prayer and there is a crescent moon. It’s all so beautiful I would probably weep if I were a sissy.

And the movie wasn’t bad. We walked home through the old Irish neighborhood and looked at the elaborate Christmas decorations. The wife was happy again when we returned. A little more medicine and a nice meal and hear I sit, the holidays lookin good again.

So I got a little feel of what it's like to be a conservative. The tradition part is nice, but that's not the property of conservatives. It's the hate that separates them and it sucks. It really does.

So happy holidays, whoever you are.

It's a wonderful life in pottersville

"When we consider the character of any individual, we naturally view it under two different aspects; first, as it may affect his own happiness; and secondly, as it may affect that of other people."

-- Adam Smith, famous Free Market Philosopher



"Remember, no man is a failure who has friends."

-- Clarence, 2nd Class Angel in "It’s a Wonderful Life."




It’s the holiday season again. Millions of people will watch It’ a Wonderful Life, the 1946 Frank Capra movie starring Jimmy Stewart.

It's a life affirming movie with wonderful characters and a happy ending. There’s dancing and romancing. Good triumphs over evil. The little guy wins. It’s even got angels. In short, it has the kind of plot elements that appeal to the masses, but would normally make people like myself want to puke.

Yet "It’ a Wonderful Life" has somehow managed to transcend that angel sodden sugar plum plot synopsis and become an integral part of the holiday tradition, not just for those who believe in angels, but for others as well, including my own family.

Our eyes grow moist at crucial points throughout the movie. George saves his brother from drowning, saves the druggist from a tragic mistake, saves Uncle Billy from the mental institution, saves Violet Bick from becoming a drunken harlot, and ultimately saves Bedford Falls from becoming Pottersville. Tears flow freely when we learn that George Bailey, not Mr. Potter, is the richest man in town.

When the movie was released in 1946, few could have guessed that it would attain the status of timeless masterpiece. "It’s a Wonderful Life" was a box office flop and financial disaster that bankrupted its studio. Although nominated for several Academy Awards, it didn’t win in any category. It may seem strange to us now, but people felt that the movie was too political. And it is a very political movie. But with the passing of time and collective education, It's a Wonderful Life has become like This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie. Rabble rousing art turned patriotic blather for the masses. Everybody knows the words, but their meaning has been lost in the ether.

George Bailey is a child in the years immediately following World War I. He’s a teenager in the Roaring Twenties, a young man during the Great Depression and a middle aged family man through the end of the Second World War. Those years span momentous eras in the history of the United States. From the general economic well-being of the war years through the record setting prosperity of the 1920’s to the Great Depression of the 1930’s, society was rocked by wild mood swings and extreme changes in fortune and financial well-being. Radically different philosophies were embraced to explain the times. Each new era seemed to prove false the philosophy of its predecessor.

It’s a Wonderful Life presents those philosophical arguments just beneath the surface. George Bailey’s struggle with Mr. Potter for the soul of Bedford Falls pits the individualistic moral universe of the Roaring Twenties against the community oriented struggles of the Great Depression and war years. The arguments pitting the good of the community vs. the greed of the individual are not only illustrated by the parallel lives of George Bailey and Mr. Potter, but also by the parallel universes of Bedford Falls and Pottersville.

In Bedford Falls, freshly fallen snow blankets the town square. Patriotic buntings deck the walls and buildings. Main Street is empty at night save for a few parked cars and some lonely tire tracks in the snow. The trees are bedecked with Christmas lights. Precocious little boys sled down a hill onto an icy pond. Little girls in ribbons and bows twirl on soda fountain stools. People treat each other with respect. The cops and the cab drivers are nice, happy people. Christmas wreaths and glowing candles in the windows of classic American homes appear warm and inviting.

In Pottersville, nothing is warm and inviting. Certainly not its Main street panorama of nightclubs and bars that serve "hard liquor to people who want to get drunk fast." Blinking lights and cold neon signs garishly advertise the Blue Moon, billiards and fights every Wednesday night, the Indian Club, cocktails, pawn brokers, dancing at the Midnight Club and gorgeous girls who will jitterbug for a dime a dance.

The same men who are warm, fun loving guys in Bedford Falls – Bert the cop Ernie the cab driver, Nick the bartender; are angry wrecks living in broken down shacks in Pottersville. Women like Mary and Mrs. Bailey who were safely ensconced in the warmth of family and friends in Bedford Falls are lonely, cold and afraid of strangers in Pottersville.

The message was clear in 1946. George Bailey’s community spirit resulted in a better society than Mr. Potter’s relentless pursuit of financial self-interest.

Judging by the box office, people didn’t want to hear it back in those days. But somehow in our own time, that message has much more resonance.

It’s a bit ironic, because, let’s face it, we’re living in Pottersville.

An aspiring Capra could easily put together a montage of images depicting a Pottersville-like panoply of strip clubs, porn shops, casinos, bars, cops, and mean drunks in any decent sized city in the USA. The necessary footage is all too easy to come by.

And the similarities between Pottersville then and USA now do not end with the nightlife. Like the 1920’s that Pottersville depicts, we live in a time of record setting prosperity and technological revolution which is creating, or at least further entrenching, a class of super wealthy and a government that exists to protect their interests.

Then, as now, the rich, and the minority of people who participate in the stock market are getting richer a lot faster than those who have to work for a living. In 1920’s Pottersville the wealthiest 1 percent' controlled a statistically inordinate amount of the nation’s wealth and that number was compounded daily by the inexorable march of interest. Today, the top 1 percent of Americans own more than 35 percent of the nation's wealth, and one half of the population has less than $1000 in net financial assets. The government of both eras exacerbates the disparity though regressive tax policies and loopholes for wealthy campaign contributor types, John D. Rockefeller has been reborn as Bill Gates.

Then, as now, a technological revolution has provided more jobs. Back then skilled labor gave way to assembly lines that have now become customer services and teleservices and shipping and handling. Working in a phone center in Tucson or an IT department in Manhattan is the 1990’s equivalent of working on the assembly line in the 1920’s. No serious education is required.

As wages for the majority stagnate or decline, consumer debt keeps setting new records. The mailbox is full of easy credit.

We know that the 1920’s ended with the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. To the great surprise of conservatives everywhere, it turned out that things such as ever increasing income disparity and massive consumer debt that could not go on for ever didn't. One rich family could have thousands of times more assets than thousands of middle class families, but they didn’t buy a thousand times more washing machines. Not then, not now. Business fundamentals eventually brought stock valuations back in line with reality.

Although It’s a Wonderful Life deals with these grand issues, what sets it apart from other political message movies is its focus on the value of an individual life.

And paradoxically, that is the great lie at the heart of the movie - that the life of anyone like George Bailey would have any significant influence on the life of a city like Bedford Falls, much less the country.

Wars and recessions; boom times and depressions will come and go. Adam Smith’s "Invisible Hand" will continue to assure social results that are independent of individual intentions.

Ultimately, what separates people in It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t their interest in accumulating wealth but their attitude towards it. George's life long friend Sam Wainwright pursues wealth with the same single-minded intensity of Mr. Potter, but he wants his friends to get rich too, unlike Mr. Potter who tries to keep it all for himself.

Like the great majority of Americans, George Bailey never becomes inordinately wealthy. But, like most of us, he learns that the value of family and friends is more dear than the value of money.

George Bailey will be the richest man in town in any era. Although Pottersville may be just outside the door, that’s not an entirely bad thing. If one is so inclined, what’s so wrong with enjoying a jitterbug with a pretty girl in a gin joint from time to time? We can still be good people, even here in Pottersville.

Make your holiday complete

A quick programming note. On Christmas Eve, I will publish my annual review of It's a Wonderful Life. It's a holiday classic you won't want to miss.

A surge in obsequiousness

Has anyone else noticed how the media so readily adopted the latest Orwellian term coming out of the white house, to write "surge option" instead of "increase the number of troops?"

I know we've seen so much of that over the past six years, and perhaps I just wasn't paying attention, but I've never noticed it being so total so fast. The first few stories I read put "surge option" in quotation marks on the first reference, but since then that's all they use.

A glance at the British papers, on the other hand, shows that they only use "surge option" when quoting someone. Otherwise, they use the accurate words, "increase the number of troops."

Why, oh why, does no one call the press out on this? I havn't seen a single word of complaint in any of the major papers or intelligent blogs. I know, I know, the bullshit and lies fly so fast and furious, it's just overwhelming.

Unfortunately, they see that the "surge option" is so effective with bullshit and lies that they think it will work with armies and lives. Tehy'll get a surge all right. A surge in death and destruction.

Another day in hell

I climb 13 flights of stairs in the subways on my regular daily commute, six on the way to work, seven on the way back. On many days, due to the impeccable timing of the MTA, I have to sprint up four particularly steep flights if I don't want to miss a connecting train.

Overall, I consider this a good thing. I am old and fat and climbing the stairs is usually the best, and certainly the most consistent, intense cardiovascular excercise I get, so if I don't keel over, it is probably good for me.

Another little known fact about New York is that there are homeless people. Not very many, by west coast standards, or even D.C., but although ours are few, they often smell much worse than the more numerous homeless folk in other towns.

These two facets of life in the big cesspool came together for me today. After sprinting up four flights of stairs, grabbing the subway doors and using all my strength to keep them open until the conductor relented and let me in, I found myself huffing and puffing in one of the smelliest cars I've ever had the misfortune to ride in. The eau de homeless was so strong it was almost as bad at the far end of the car as it was next to the poor soul from which it emanated, who was right next to me when I entered. Gasping for breath after the sprint, I'm sure I inhaled several decades worth of eau de homeless before the train got to the next station. Then when I got off the train, I set my bag down in a puddle of piss.

Otherwise, things are swell with the holidays coming up and, lacking smelling salts, I'm waving a glass of rum under my nose to make it all better. Soon I won't be smellin a thing.