Patti Abbott has asked a bunch of relatively irresponsible writers, myself included, to talk about a forgotten book, one you might have overlooked.
For me, that book is Cruddy, by the cartoonist Lynda Barry.
The story is Roberta Rohbeson's, a 16-year-old who writes a letter to Jesus and tells him to "Have a good summer and stay Crazy." The story takes place a few years after a motel massacre where Roberta has been found, covered in blood, wandering the desert.
This is a dark place Barry takes us to and based on this book alone, I would have Barry's children. Pick it up.
According to the exit polls, West Virginia's voters revealed that they are the most racist in the country. Fully 20% of the white voters reported that race was a factor, and they voted for Clinton 84-10 over Obama.
I think I'm on record saying that Americans haven't been asked to sacrifice anything for this war, but I now stand corrected. No less a man than our Commander in Chief has made a great sacrifice for the cause.
Sunday, Frank Rich wrote a column called, Party Like it's 2008, that unequivocally says the Clinton race is toast.
Au contraire, the Clintonistas say. Rich, unlike the cowards Kristol and Brooks, allows comments on his column and here's one from Dan in Virginia Beach.
"Rich overlooked the growing resentment by "uneducated whites", or "low income whites",(read crackers), or people in general, at the lemming like hubris, viciousness and racist attacks by the Obama fanatics on Senator clinton and her supporters. Granted it isn't easy promoting a person with no resume, questionable ethics, shady unpatriotic associates, and a wife with an uncontrollable mouth."
I understand Hillary's supporters are angry. Just last year she was considered inevitable, just waiting for her coronation as our country's first female president. This was history, and many women thought it was about damn time.
Then this golden speaker from Illinois rose up and put the electoral kibosh to Hillary's ascension. Women (mostly) are angry. They feel cheated of their historic moment by an upstart, an inexperienced newcomer who hasn't waited his turn, who elbowed his way to the front of the line and is coasting to the nomination on little more than his charm and a shoeshine.
So we get this from observer, somewhere in the u.s., complete with ee cummings' disdain for capital letters:
"frank rich is another rush limbaugh any american serious about the country's future should have voted for hillary in the primaries she is smart, intelligent, pragmatic and the best bet for an america that is peaceful, prosperous and the true world leader"
In response, Hillary has tried everything, from her "as far as I know" moment on 60 Minutes, to kvetching long and hard about how unfair the media's been to her. No one, not her or her supporters have considered that maybe it was the way she ran her campaign that turned away voters, that maybe people are tired of the Rovian innuendo and slur she's tossed at Obama.
I don't know. I do think it's time for a woman to be president. Just not this woman. Hey, if Tina Fey were running, I'd vote for her in a skinny minute. But Hillary? Forgive me, but I just don't want another 4 to 8 years of the Clinton soap opera.
And we've already had 8 years of a president who felt entitled to the office. I want a change.
Now we have Hillary and her supporters warning Democrats that she should get the nomination because there are so many bigots who will never vote for a black man. Now, there's a forward-thinking, progressive argument for her vote.
I went to school in West Virginia and if any of my old friends are reading this today, I urge you to vote for Obama. Let's put an end to this, OK?
Twelve Cents Shy isn't playing this weekend, but that doesn't mean your humble narrator will be staying home Saturday night.
Nope. I've been invited to sit in with The Monarchs, one of my fave bands. It should be a great night. If you're in the vicinity of Mebane, check out The Stumblin' Pig (no, that's not an ex-girlfriend) and as always, I'll buy you a beer.
...and the opposing team is cheering, perhaps you're running the wrong way.
As Hillary garners more enthusiastic support from people like Richard Mellon Scaife, the bat-shit crazy right wing kajillionaire from Pittsburgh, she might give some thought as to why.
Rush, Fox News and Bill O'Reilly are doing what they can to spark Hillary's campaign against Obama and, forgive me for being suspicious, but I don't think they're doing it out of any love of country. And given their behavior during the 90's, they're certainly not doing it out of any new-found love of the Clintons.
Never search Google images for "dentist" or "teeth" before your next appointment.
Yesterday I bit into what I assumed was a safe lunch (Jamaican jerk tilapia) and broke a molar. So tomorrow at 8:00, I have an emergency appointment for extreme pain. Joy.
Other than that, the weekend was great. The gig went well, I slept all day Saturday and on Sunday, Molly and I canvassed a city precinct for Obama. Molly is 27 and this is the first time she's ever expressed any interest in politics. I'm not sure I'm being a responsible father by encouraging her. God knows politics has not been a healthy avocation of mine.
But tomorrow is primary day here in North Carolina. If you live here or in Indiana, please vote.
You know who to vote for. He's the guy who's not feeding you a big bowl of bullshit.
That's right, Twelve Cents Shy is playing at a place called Crawdaddy's in Carrboro tonight at 10:00.
Tim Collins, our guitar player, is out of town so Chris Berry, six-string virtuoso of the Piedmont Sheiks is stepping in. Jeff Learman, our keyboard player and apprentice diva, is also out of town, which is OK since I've heard Crawdaddy's is so small that Jeff would have to put his amp in the parking lot. We'll see.
A new lineup always shakes things loose, a good thing for the blues if you ask me. It should be fun. If you're in town, come on out and I'll buy you a beer.
See that screen shot up there? That's from the Mensa members over at Fox News, the cable news network.
They were adding up their double digit IQs to cover Hillary's proposed Lincoln-Douglas style debate between her and Barack. The only problem is, that's Frederick Douglas, not Stephen Douglas.
Yes, we are a dumber people than we once were.
I got this giggle-inducing news from This Modern World. Thanks, Tom.
In a column titled, Dumb As We Wanna Be, he rips into Congress, the president and two of our three presidential candidates for their stupid energy policy. I urge you to read it. It should set your hair on fire.
While the last 48 hours have been all-Reverend-Wright-all-of-the-time, news like this goes hat in hand, an orphan begging for a few minutes of our attention and in America, this is like asking the president to read a book without pictures.
But that's not really fair. Because it's not just the president who is locked into a permanent, petulant childhood. It's all of us, all squalling like babies.
I don't want to pay taxes! Wah! I don't want to take the bus! Wah! I want my Deal or No Deal! I want it! I want it! I want it!
What has happened to us? How, as a nation, have we become so infantilized? How have we failed to grow into serious people willing to make sacrifices for our common good?
This society, more than ever before, exists on people who want whatever they see. It needs people who will scream like a brat in Walmart until we get whatever gee-gaw captures our limited attention span. We don't want to work for it or, God forbid, save for it. We want it now, and we're willing to go into debt to get it.
But that doesn't explain everything. I have seen the American people work and sacrifice if given the right leadership. After 9/11, we all looked to our leaders and asked, "What can I do?"
I was certainly not alone in my willingness to do just about anything. And I'm sure I'm not the only person whose first thought was, "Let's get out of this oil game. That's a start."
Now, I'm just a schmuck in North Carolina, but even I could see our continued reliance on Saudi Arabia wasn't in our best interest, particularly when most of the hijackers and their leader were Saudi. I mean, you don't have to be the president to be that stupid, do you?
No, if George Bush had taken our unified energy and spirit, and set us on a moon-landing style course, we would be well on our way to clean energy independence. I believe that.
But like an indulgent parent, Bush told us to go out and buy something. Don't worry, go shopping. Again, we were treated like children and sadly, that's exactly how we've responded.
And now we're about to do it again. Faced with rising gas prices, two of our presidential candidates are looking at what's easy, not what's right. And the one candidate not willing to buy votes at 18 cents a gallon?
He's on the ropes. All because of an angry old minister who thinks the US government hasn't always had the best interests of black people held close to its stone-cold bureaucratic heart.
So, who wins when we focus on the mean and stupid? Who wins when we act like children and always fill our fists with sweets?
I haven't been reading a lot lately. Seems like every day goes by in a thickening fog of work and family drama and frankly, I'm exhausted. Or as Ray Banks would say, I'm fucking knackered.
But no matter what, if I get a new novel by Ray, I drop everything and read it. No More Heroes is his latest and it tells another bruising story of Cal Innes, a reluctant PI who wrestles with his own infirmities as much as he goes after the demons that live outside his own skull.
All of us in this business bounce our protagonists around a bit, but no one runs their guy through the meat grinder like Ray. And as always, there's the language. I love the way Ray makes it look so easy.
The show went well on Friday. There was some bad news from Molly that took a bit of the joy out of the night, but let's not think about that right now.
I'd rather talk about my waltz with the abusive whore on Saturday. I spent 4 hours canvassing a Durham precinct for Obama and met dozens of really terrific people. Several were excited about going to see Obama in Chapel Hill tonight, and I recruited a few more people as volunteers. Suckers.
But the thing that surprised me was how many people volunteered the information that they had been for Hillary until she went to the dark side. All women, and all their opinions were unsolicited. Hillary's campaign might want to think about this.
But for now, the drunk whore is happy. That'll change, I know. She always lulls me into thinking this makes a difference before she whips out her box cutter.
It's another stop on the Broke and Busted Tour of 2008. This time we're playing at the Broad Street Cafe in Durham, along with two other bands - Jamie McFarland opens at 8:00, we go on at 9:00, followed by The Bull City Syndicate at 10:00.
OK, maybe it's more like Karl Rove. Who may not be Satan, but knows the Dark Prince personally.
The politics of Rove and Atwater won in Pennsylvania last night. The politics of fear and doubt kicked optimism's ass, just as it's done for 30 years. Jesus, who knew that flag pins and the Weather Underground would play such a big part in the 2008 primary?
Which brings me to my central thesis, that loving politics is like being in a relationship with a street whore.
Since 1964, I've followed politics the way a love-struck teen follows a girl who will kiss him and rub his back at the same time, even if that girl lifts his wallet in the morning.
She's as dirty as Bourbon Street on Sunday morning and she'll steal your mother's wedding ring to buy her pimp a new hat, but you keep coming back, knowing that she'll cut you sooner or later. She angry, mean and completely amoral, but she's yours.
I wish I could quit this abusive relationship, but every time I try to walk away, she promises that things will be better, and that's she's changed, honest, and I go back, only to wake up to find my guitar gone.
Still, this Saturday you'll find me in one of Durham's precincts, canvassing Durham's Democratic voters, hoping that this time, things will be different.
There's a word for men like me, men who fall in love with the wrong women. We're called suckers.
Mr. Blackmoore over at LA Noir has tagged me with a drive-by. That means I have to tell you 7 or 8 things about me you don't know. Here goes:
1. Due to a drinking accident in high school, I can't drink gin without tasting Old Spice. 2. I was once lured to an Amway meeting with the promise of sex. I left disappointed on several levels. 3. I campaigned for Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964. AuH2O! 4. I slept with a girl named Bitsy. Really. That was her name. She was also disappointed on several levels, I'm sure. 5. I wrote a column for my college paper titled, "Jimmy Olsen's Notebook." 6. A cartoon I published in the late 70's attracted a fan letter from Baba Ram Dass. 7. The only thing I'm afraid of is poverty.
My fight for Free Speech, the First Amendment and the rights of home owners everywhere has attracted the attention of the media. To be specific, a local columnist for the News and Observer, Jim Wise.
He called me a few days ago and asked about the HOA's letter demanding I remove the political sign in my yard. I told him what happened and yesterday he called the head of our HOA, Vickie Jackson.
When he contacted Ms. Jackson, she assured him that she wasn't operating as the head of our HOA when she taped that letter to my door, no, she was just being a friendly neighbor, a caring neighbor, reminding me of the HOA covenant rules. She was watching out for me. Yeah, that's what it was.
She also told Jim that the covenant rule against signs was in accord with a city ordinance. Both of us are skeptical that such an ordinance exists, but Jim said he would call the City Attorney today to see.
Ms. Jackson has invited me to the next community meeting, yet to be scheduled. I've invited Jim along. I'll keep you posted.
In the meantime, if you'd like to add your thoughts, you can email Jim at JWise at nando.com.
(I put in the "at" to protect Mr. Wise from spammers.)
In a letter on his web site today, Bruce Springsteen has endorsed Obama.
But Hillary shouldn't worry. She still has Celine Dion.
Here's the opening of Bruce's letter.
Dear Friends and Fans:
LIke most of you, I've been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.
He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where "...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."
...but the bullshit just keeps piling higher and higher.
Let's start with John McCain, a guy with eight houses, a guy who's spent more time in the Senate than you've been in shoes, a guy who's been getting a government check his entire adult life. He said Obama was an elitist.
Then move on to Hillary, a women raised in an upper middle class family, went to the best schools, then into private practice as a corporate lawyer and for more than twenty years has lived in the Arkansas Governor's Mansion, the White House and a very fine little place in upstate New York. She tosses back a shot of Crown Royal, talks about bagging a duck and suddenly she's the Blue Collar Babe.
But the guy who was raised by a single mother, went to school on a scholarship, worked as a community organizer, and just recently paid off his student loans, that guy, the guy who is so advantaged because he's black, that guy in an elitist.
But the bullshit doesn't stop there. What was on the news when I left for work? A story about Cindy McCain. That's her up there. Apparently she plagiarized her "family recipes" that are on the McCain web site.
For those not familiar with Jeff Shelby, he's the one in the suit. The guy unfolding like a steamer trunk is Jim Born. The footage is from Jim's most recent book tour.
According to the BBC, America has lost another cultural advantage to those skinny, cigarette smoking, wine-swilling European athetist bastards.
Thanks to the strength of the euro and weakness of the dollar, the best blow in the world is by-passing our great country's shores, leaving us with the stepped on crap that would make a street dealer blush with shame.
Is there anything this administration hasn't fucked up?
Hey kids, did you know that your Homeowners Association has more power than the Federal government? Well, neither did I until yesterday. I came home to find an envelope taped to my door, a notice from my friendly HOA. I assumed it was about my lawn, which is a disaster. No, the knee-high weeds weren't the issue. It was my lawn sign. What I had failed to notice in the HOA's covenant is that signs, even those expressing support for a political candidate, are verboten.
Not realizing I had signed away my First Amendment rights when we moved into this neighborhood, I called the woman who heads up our HOA. Her argument was, if she let people do whatever they wanted, the neighborhood would quickly devolve into a ghetto.
I suggested that putting up a candidate's sign in my yard and turning my cul-de-sac into a ghetto weren't quite in the same ballpark and reminded her that political speech was protected by the Constitution. Then she asked me when the Constitution was written. I told her 1789. Then she said, assurance of her rightness swelling her voice, "And things have changed a lot since then, haven't they, sir."
I told her I had missed the news that the Bill of Rights had been amended to keep up with the times.
After 15 minutes, I knew that debating the fine points of Consitutional law was like explaining the ferris wheel to my dog. So I assured her that I would not remove my sign and said that if she was going to have me arrested give me a few hours notice so I could call the local news media.
Then I called my lawyer and guess what? My HOA does have the power to restrict my political speech. The city can't. The state can't. Not even George Bush can make me take down my yard sign.
But my HOA can.
So I'm writing a letter to the local paper, writing to the ACLU and, well, telling you. I've also asked when the next meeting of the HOA board is so I can attend. We'll see what happens.
But as it stands, I am not giving up. Too many people were brave enough to fight for my free speech, I'm at least brave enough to use it. Fuck the HOA.
And as soon as the housing market settles down, we're moving.I hate the fucking 'burbs.Bunch of uptight little fascists.
A few years ago a tweedy professor had a surprise bestseller with his book, On Bullshit. We laughed because he was telling us something scholarly about the ordure we swim through every day.
Think of Chris Matthews swooning over the manly aftershave of Fred Thompson or the warrior swagger of the president when he landed, ala Tom Cruise, aboard the USS Lincoln. It's bullshit.
Or the sideshow of Bush 41 holding up a bag of prop crack cocaine to underline the dangers of the crack-addled zombies out to snatch your little girl off the street. It was right there on TV and we knew it was bullshit.
Obama's gutter ball and Hillary's pantsuits are stupid bullshit. But there were three docs at this weekend's Full Frame Film Festival that showed us that bullshit, even stupid bullshit, has consequences.
The men up there are Dalton Trumbo and John Howard Lawson and they're being taken to jail. Their crime? They refused to testify about their political beliefs. Their beliefs, mind you, not their actions. It was what they thought that was a crime according to HUAC, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.
Trumbo was the writer of Johnny Got His Gun, Spartacus and a bunch of other classics. Congress thought his ideas were dangerous. He went to jail. Others had their lives destroyed and it was all vintage bullshit.
This guy might be the King of Bullshit. He's Lee Atwater, the amoral, cold-blooded slime weasel who birthed today's politics of partisan crap. He proved that if you were willing to say anything about your opponent, you could win elections. It was all bullshit. He knew it, his clients knew it. And it didn't matter.
He ruined people's lives and reputations and was rewarded handsomely by his friends in the GOP. If you like the way American politics is muddied by innuendo, gossip, blatant untruths and despicable character assassination, thank Atwater. He was a charmer and pure-D, triple-distilled bullshit from the hair on his head to the shine on his shoes.
Today, what Atwater taught Karl Rove and George W. Bush led to this:
Tomas Young was a soldier with the First Cav. One week in Iraq and he takes a sniper's bullet to the spine and comes home seriously fucked up. His story is told in a new doc called Body of War. I urge you to check it out.
So the next time you hear someone say, "It's all bullshit," think of the consequences of shrugging it off. Bullshit may sound benign, may even be entertaining. But bullshit, when it hits you, has consequences. Ask Tomas Young.
But only for a few days. I know, I know, I haven't been exactly keeping up lately, but I promise I'll do better when I return.
Yes, it's that time again, when my nephew and I settle in for several ass-deadening, mind-bending days of documentaries at the Full Frame Film Festival.
Docs and vodka. Vodka and docs. What a wonderful combination.
...and one of our representatives will be with you shortly.
Asshole.
In her most recent column, Miss Manners comes through with useful advice for the harried 21st century human. Quel surprise! a reader shares this little discovery:
"A friend revealed that ... after being in a one-hour loop of voice-recognition commands for customer service of a major airline, he shouted an obscenity into the phone.
To his surprise, he was immediately connected with a supervisor, who solved his problem.
Last week, after a bout with an answering service that didn't recognize the words help, operator, live body and the like, I, too, cursed into the phone.
To my shock, the phrase worked with my health insurer..."
Wow, who knew that a timely use of expletives could get you immediate service? In my own personal experience it's more likely to get you arrested, but we're in a brave new world here, people, a world where even my skills may finally be appreciated.
As for what the two words were, I'm assuming the PhoneBot 2000 recognizes the sadly unimaginative Fuck You, but I wonder if it could also recognize the more colorful colloquies of an Al Guthrie or Ray Banks.
As I am always looking for ways to make your lives better, let's put together a list of Tourette's-like expletives we can test.
Here's one: George Bush! And is there a combination of curses that will make my clients stop acting like dicks? I'd pay good money for that.
That's a quote from Winston Churchill, a man George Bush compares himself to even though the only shot W's ever heard was the sound of Jack splashing in a glass.
Now, Hillary and W have something other than the Iraq misadventure in common. They both have bullshit on their boots.
Hillary has told the story over and over, how she had to duck and run from sniper fire in Bosnia. She tells it and laughs, dismissing the incident as just another example of her experience, the kind of pluck that makes her ready to rock "on day one."
Except, it's not true.
The first person to call her on it was Sinbad. Fucking Sinbad. You know you're in trouble when Sinbad drops a dime on your wide ass.
Hillary now says in an interview with our old friend Richard Mellon Scaife, the man who gave us Troopergate, Ann Coulter and the grand Vince Foster Murder Conspiracy, that she "misspoke" and she was "sleep-deprived" and she made a mistake, and then added "It proves I'm human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation. "
No, Hillary. If you ever uttered a genuine, untested syllable, that would be a revelation.
Hubris, deceit, condescension and arrogance. After 8 years, I think I want something different in our next Commander in Chief. But then, I've always been a dreamer.
UPDATE: Scott Bateman of Video Dog has just the right clip. It's amazing how detailed Hillary gets when she misspeaks.
...for making this blogging stuff as easy as point and click so I can get back to work.
But before I go, I met a novelist last night who was discouraged because she'd written four novels, sent one of them out and had it rejected.
Twice.
That's right. Two times. Two friggin' times.
Can you beat that? Sure you can. I have no idea how many people passed on Beneath A Panamanian Moon before St. Martins picked it up, but it was enough to fill a freight elevator, of that I'm sure.
Fifty-eight years ago tomorrow, a 24-year-old woman went into labor. It wasn't an easy push and sometime in the day the doctor told the father, smoking cigarettes in the waiting room (as was the custom), that it would be a while and he should go home and wait for the call.
So the father, thinking he had time, went bowling.
That's when I made my debut, and as the family story goes, my mother was in such distress that my grandfather filled the hospital hallway with his voice, his loud French working man's voice.
"Somebody better help this girl!"
I've written several times about my father, but not much about my mother, and maybe that's because we've had a much more complicated relationship.
My mother got married too young and wondered all her life what she'd missed by hitching herself to a man who worked 70 hours a week and moved the family once a year. There were long stretches of her marriage where I know she was restless and unhappy.
As a boy who adored his father, I saw her unhappiness as disloyal, a betrayal to a man we owed everything.
I'm older now, and know that things are never so simple. No one can look into another's marriage and see the truth of it. No one. Not even a son.
I got some important things from my mother. In a house with few books, she was the one who encouraged me to read. When she thought I was too young to see the James Bond films, she had no trouble with me reading the paperbacks.
She was behind my first guitar. She was the one who sang Peggy Lee in the kitchen. She was the one who loved movies.
I remember helping her feed clothes into the wringer so we could hang them on the line.
I remember chasing an escaped canary through the house with her, laughing until our dog jumped up and snagged the bird from the air. The dog was as surprised as anyone. The bird, pried from the dog's jaws, was rattled but unhurt.
I remember my mother visiting school and the girl next to me leaned in and whispered, "She looks like a movie star." And she did.
So why am I writing this? I was moved to after reading a beautiful piece about Obama's mother in the Times. It's a revealing article. You can read it here.
My mother is 82 now, and doing OK. She made it through that day 58 years ago, as did I.
So, this birthday is as much hers as it is mine. Happy birthday, Mom. I hope we have many more together.
Tomorrow, the Ides of March, is Peepsfest 2008 at Market Sreet Books in Chapel Hill. A full day of peep-related activities and enough peeps to give an army of dental hygienists the vapors.
According to the NY Times, this is Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the woman Eliot Spitzer met in the Mayfair Hotel. Being in advertising, I make no moral judgements about what Ashley has done to pay the rent and fuel her dreams.
The professions have far too much in common.
Here's a bit of bio from her MySpace page:
"When I was 17, I left home. It was my decision and I've never looked back. Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse ... I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own. I am here, in NY because of my music."
You can listen to her music here. You can even buy a song of hers for a lot less than $4000, but then, you don't get the lyrics and liner notes, do you?
Let's be honest here. Whatever stupid young men do, pumped full of streaming hormones, we do in the hopes of meeting a woman like Ashley.
Some men go to Wall Street, earn millions selling financial instruments secured by subprime mortgages, and get to sneak off on the sly with the Ashleys of the world without the FBI poking their noses in between the Mayfair's 400-count cotton sheets.
However, if you eschew the big bucks, go into politics and make it your life's work to hold others to high ethical standards, then Ashley is off-limits to you, my friend. W-a-a-ay off limits.
It's something to think about on a Thursday afternoon.
P.S. Then there are those of us who come to our senses, find a beautiful woman closer to home, marry her, have children, and live golden lives, tanned by the daily blessings of domestic sunshine. And we never once think of the Ashleys of the world. Not once.
