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Lately I’ve been working my way thru a bunch of Woody Allen movies, taped from cable over several years, while putting in sessions on the Nordic Track (a futile effort in waist management). I recently watched Zelig for the first time in a while and found it fascinating.
No doubt about it, the technical tricks in this tale of a flapper-era “chameleon man” are amazing, and I was pleasantly surprised that there were more laugh-out-loud lines than I’d remembered. One incidental touch I found startling was seeing the Mia Farrow character with a cigarette in hand in nearly every scene – it made me wonder whether it was some strange inside joke.
But that wasn’t nearly as jarring as the bit where the vanished Leonard Zelig resurfaced in Nazi Germany. The voiceover spoke of Hitler’s popularity as a product of economic hard times and renewed nationalism, and it gave me a bit of a chill to think that it could happen here.
Before I proceed, some disclosure might be in order. I’m what is known on the right as a “left-wing moonbat.” To quote Will Rogers, I don’t belong to an organized political party - I’m a Democrat. (Actually I used to be Independent and then registered Republican so I could vote against the loonies in the last congressional primary, but I got so sick of the mail I started getting from the RNC that I re-registered Democrat for spite.) I would gladly entertain Republican arguments regarding fiscal policy, but I have no time for their social agenda. As was famously said by my long-time hero Barry Goldwater, people like Jerry Falwell deserve a kick in the ass. When McCain chose Palin as a running mate, it clinched my vote for Obama (I preferred Hillary); although despite the idealism surrounding his candidacy, I feared he would be too divisive – and he’s proven to be just that.
Even so, I’m frankly bewildered by the Obama/Hitler analogies espoused by the wingnuts. Granted, that stylized poster was creepy, but these people have severed all contact with reality. A few months ago, Beth and I were having lunch at the local brewpub, which faces our town square, when we noticed a commotion across the street and saw a teabagger demonstration forming. Some of the signs read “King Obama,” and I wanted to ask the people holding them where they had been when W was expanding executive powers and generally pissing on the Constitution – but then you don’t have to resort to thought processes when you take your cues from an admitted rodeo clown. The rantings of Beck, Hannity, & Limbaugh as they wrap themselves in the flag make me think of another classic movie, Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd. 
If you’re not familiar with this gem from 1957, you’d be startled to watch Andy Griffith in his first screen appearance, portraying a philosophizing bumpkin who becomes a manipulative media sensation. It views like a precursor to Glenn Beck (and if you’ve never seen Jon Stewart’s brilliant parody, check this link); yet when I looked at the comments on Amazon I was startled to see that at least one person likened the character to Obama. I suppose it’s all a matter of one’s point of view; unfortuntely, when that p.o.v. is spoonfed by Fox News, it tends to be a bit skewed.
The teabaggers ignore one indisputable truth: if a Hitler were to emerge in this country, such a tyrant could never come from the left - like Rogers said, we’re simply too disorganized. But ever hopeful, I remain open to suggestions for any politician who can unite what W hath put asunder.
I came across this gif while blog-surfing and traced it back to Flickr:
I find it absolutely mesmerizing. Whoever designed this? How long has it been around? (Beth says that she’d seen it a while ago.) I’d call it a Rube Goldberg, except those contraptions supposedly perform recognizable tasks – and I’m damned if I can detect a purpose to this. What’s especially fascinating about this particular mechanism is that it wraps: left and right edges connect, as do top and bottom. And if you study it, you'll find there are a couple of closed loops. Just gazing at it, I feel like a kid who's been presented with a shiny new toy. It kinda makes me wish I still smoked pot....
Ah, those were the days, now a couple dozen years in the past. Firing up a jay and cueing up Firesign Theater, or turning on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, or opening a volume of Escher prints and getting lost. But there came a point when the stuff just got too strong – too conducive to paranoia, no more mellow highs – and several age-group peers have confirmed this. (Marcelle Clements also wrote about it in a perceptive essay entitled “The Dog Is Us,” but you’ll have to check the library or used-book market.) Judging from the few tokes I’ve been offered since then, I don’t know how they do it anymore.
Getting high was good for such activities and I’m sure would enhance the appreciation of this splendid gif. Maybe giving up the habit led to my abandonment of fun and games in general – which is not to suggest that I was baked as a kid when I got out the tinker toys or became preoccupied with a sliding-tile puzzle. Maybe it’s just that the nature of our toys has changed. Now my “toy” of choice is an mp3 player that invites me to obsessively manipulate its content. Or the very laptop on which I’m writing this post.
So compelling is this gif that I opted to make it my wallpaper on said laptop, replacing the image of the lunar surface that I’d selected from the palette that Lenovo provided. And I’ll tell you, it’s quite a contrast going from the Sea of Tranquility to this constant busy-ness. I’m not quite sure it’s there to stay, but it’s something to stare at. And at the very least, it should be good for a contact high.
Which may well be its intended task.
First we had Ronnie Raygun co-opting “Born in the USA.” Flash forward a quarter century, and New Jersey Republican governor-elect Christie makes it known he’s a big fan. Now conservative pundit David Brooks comes out with a tribute. Doesn’t matter that the man himself campaigned for Kerry and Obama; everybody loves the Boss.I’m no exception, although I do qualify my level of fandom. When I set up this blog, I was pleased to see that you can list favorite movies, books, and music in your profile – definitely useful for letting people know where you’re at. I specified “early Springsteen” because, although I could also have cited “early Dead” (back when Pigpen carried more vocals than Bobby) or “classic Airplane” (from when Grace joined until Spencer left), Bruce’s early stuff is truly special to me. When I clicked on the published link, I saw that another dozen people had done the same.Having spent my first 30 years in the Philly burbs, I was introduced to Bruce’s music from the start thanks to heavy rotation on WMMR. I got to see him once at the Main Point (a folk club seating maybe a hundred) and twice at the Tower Theater before he graduated to larger venues like the Spectrum, where his epic three-hour sets included stunts like vanishing from the stage in a blackout during “Spirit in the Night” and reappearing in an upper deck to finish the song. I particularly cherish a memory of looking down at the Tower’s stage from the balcony while Bruce sat at the piano singing a slow “Thunder Road” and Suki Lahav backed him up on violin; unfortunately, all evidence points to Suki having left the band by then, and no published setlist substantiates my memory. Oh well, there must have been something in the air....The anticipation in Philly of Born to Run was palpable, but the wait for that was nothing compared to Darkness. And when the latter was released, I remember seeing the cover for the first time and saying to myself, “What’s going on here?” The beard was gone and so was the smile. The lyrics were leaner, the vocals throatier. It was a new Bruce, hipster transformed to working stiff, and I wasn’t sure I liked him as well. I bought The River and Nebraska, then I stopped.
For me, the first three albums are touchstones – as iconic as Dylan’s first three ventures into rock – and the only thing that tops their magic is the fabled bootleg The Saint, the Incident, and the Main Point Shuffle, a radio concert from Feb. 5, 1975. (Yes, David Brooks got the date wrong.) Born to Run had yet to be released, and it’s startling to hear the band launch into the title track without any audience recognition whatsoever. “Thunder Road” was still being worked out, called “Wings for Wheels,” but “Jungleland” was nearly finalized. The real gems are a down-tempo “Incident on 57th Street” kicking off the set, widely regarded by those who’ve heard it as the definitive version, and a “New York City Serenade” embellished with stunning improvisation. And the one thing I still find curious is that, so soon after its appearance on vinyl, “Sandy” already features the “angels on Harleys” lyric replacing the girl bopping down the beach with the radio. I’ve always wondered what prompted him to make that change.
By the time he’d recorded the 2000 concerts released as Live in New York City, Bruce had solidified his working-man persona despite his liberal activism – so much so that cops felt betrayed by the scolding he gave them in “American Skin.” While I enjoyed the HBO special and find the CD exhilarating, I’m still bothered by the change in his voice, its almost geezer-ish quality in spots. Back at the Main Point, the opening lines to “Jungleland” were a street-smart kid delivering a cinematic vision; now it’s like grandpa spinning a yarn.
Early Springsteen was youthful exuberance incarnate, and I’ve wondered what kind of impact Bruce would’ve made if his career had been launched with Darkness. Maybe it wouldn’t’ve mattered – but maybe he wouldn’t’ve attracted fans like me or the other dozen bloggers whose profiles make the same distinction mine does. We’ll have to get together sometime and share memories. Because they’re utterly indelible.
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The fact that I decided to kick off this blog on Black Friday betrays the fact that I’m sitting at home writing it rather than venturing out to the mall. Truth be told, I prefer to do my shopping on-line rather than cope with crowds, and the fact that I’ll buy shoes from a web site without the certainty of trying them on attests to my aversion. Most of my wardrobe comes from L.L. Bean, and the only things I wear that would vaguely qualify as “designer” are the jeans that Lands End hems to order (which I suspect is only a strategy of inventory management). I admit that this doesn’t do a whole lot for the local economy, but the UPS guy seems to appreciate it.
But it’s a sure thing that the media will be buzzing for the next few days over whether this year’s Black Friday will be a harbinger of recovery or a specter of continuing angst. Sales data will be as eagerly anticipated as election returns. Face it, the Thanksgiving turkey has become the groundhog of the American economy.
Today is also the day when the news led off with reports of Dubai debt defaults sending ripples through international financial markets. I suppose something that immediate has understandable effects; what’s always puzzled me is the market reacting to reports of economic events in the past, such as statistics on housing or employment from the previous month. It’s history, dudes! Get over it!
On those days when it appears that the wheeler-dealers are concerned that the sky might fall, the catchphrase around our house is “Mr. Market be sad.” Granted, occasionally Mr. Market be happy; but the bottom line is, Mr. Market be fickle. And the media coverage that’s always both baffled and irritated me comes in the form of headlines and leads that report “Investors expressed concern today...,” “Investors weighed in on the bad news...,” and similar attempts to blame collapsing markets on some conspiratorial conglomerate of Investors.
Well, I’m an investor and I’m content to ride out the storm. Apparently I wasn’t invited to the decision-making conference (which for all I know was held at the mall). It’d be refreshingly honest if the media coined some new label to identify those investors who are responsible for the dramatic downturns – something to capture the spirit of those who are only in it to turn as quick a buck as possible. How about “greedmongers”? “Gekkos”? Or maybe just “fat cats,” the ones eating pheasant yesterday instead of turkey. (By the way, they won’t be at the mall today either; they’ll be at stores like Saks buying the items I see in the ads on page 3 of the NY Times challenging my credulity that people actually pay so much for pedestrian articles of clothing. I mean, really: $375 for a hoodie?)
And so I hope this Black Friday turns out well for the millions of Americans who have off today so that they can go to the mall and shop for bargains and help the pundits weigh in on the future of our economy. And for the other millions who are not off today because they’re working retail in support of this effort. And let’s not forget the millions who don’t fit into either category because they’re out of work. Or are off fighting in unwinnable wars. Or are too ill to shop because they lack health insurance....
But as for the fat cats who got us into this mess: May pheasant bones lodge in your throats. May your Saks parcels be left out in the rain. And may you have to stand in long lines at the post office to return your designer shoes. The ones I got from Bean fit just fine.
Ever since I discovered blogs, I’ve been a fan of blog-surfing. I’ve found it an enjoyable way to pass the time, particularly in the evening while sitting in my La-Z-Boy with a tumbler of brandy on the rocks, to simply click on the “Next Blog” button at the top of any Blogspot page and see where it takes me. Better than TV channel-surfing where you come to know the order of rotation and, even if the programs change, the general content of the channel stays pretty much the same.
But I’ve noticed that the powers-that-be at Blogspot have fine-tuned the process. It seems like when I first started blog-surfing, that button would take me anywhere: cooking blogs, mommy blogs, travel blogs, even porn blogs.... (Blogspot also used to offer a stream of blogs on their home page whereby you could click on them at random, but that feature has unfortunately disappeared.)
Then there was a frustrating period when I’d land repeatedly on the same blog over and over again; some pages are designed without a “Next Blog” button so that I’d have to back up to the previous blog, but I’d land right back at the same dead-end. It drove me to tears and led me to suspend surfing for a while.
Now it looks like they’ve gotten rid of those cyberspace cul-de-sacs for the most part; only problem is, “Next Blog” now takes me to a page with a theme similar to that of the blog I’m jumping from – which is handy if I’m foraging for recipes or surveying American political opinion, but frustrating if what I crave is randomness.
And so I decided to create my own random blog.
My cat Peaches – one of three – is particularly fond of this pose, even more so when striking it with my wife Beth, who has more hair for her to knead. We refer to it as “Peaches getting head.” I won’t pretend that Peaches is responsible for inspiring any of the comments that may appear here; it just seemed like a good lead on which to hang my posts. This mancathead blog will strive to focus on a wide range of topics; but strangely, when I hit “Next Blog” before even loading my first post, I hit two sites devoted to dance and a bunch of mommy blogs – so go figure.
