October 2008 Archives
This is one of the favorite pictures I took in Provincetown. It's very Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, isn't it?
It took me three days to get through all the backed up email. This article is long but quite worth it if you need a firsthand account of how the lust for power corrupted the soul of John McCain. Also, this one on why so many evangelical teens get pregnant, in the New Yorker.
I am not worried about Obama losing. I am worried about the conflict between his idealism and reality. He will not have the money to do everything he wants to do, and when he is forced to make some difficult choices, expectations will be dashed. We have to accept that compromises and disappointments will be inevitable, and trust his decision-making process. He is an extraordinary man, but he is a man.
Like so many of us, I am obsessed with this campaign. On a larger scale, I am addicted to media. Writing this blog, maintaining others, following and commenting on others. Reading massive amounts of email and trying to keep up with articles on practically everything. Trying to write my own work. Watching too much TV. I'm fried.
I'm so torn about what to do on election day. California is squarely a blue state, but the higher the turnout for Obama, the higher the percentage of yes on 8 votes (against gay marriage). This is because there is a large swath of politically liberal but socially conservative blacks and hispanics who are being swayed by the ads which purport No on 8 would mean gay marriage is taught in elementary schools. For some of these voters, this means some kids will "choose" to be gay because someone told them it is okay. (Funny, never heard a straight man tell me about the day he "decided" he was attracted to women.)
The problem with the ads on our side is that they stick to the issue of fairness when they need to address the persistent and pernicious misconception that gayness can be taught or passed on. This is not being done. I think this is a strategic error, and I have voiced my feeling via email to some who can pass it along to the right person. It's the longest of long shots, but in the era of 24 hour ads, worth a shot.
There needs to be a humorous ad as well, in which a man tells his wife he wants a divorce because the lesbians next door tied the knot. The ridiculousness of the idea that gay marriage weakens straight marriage needs to be mocked. If we go down, we might as well do it with humor and flair.
MCO 2008
Oh, that wacky Sarah Palin. On the one hand, she's discovered the pleasure of denouncing her opponents as "socialists." On the other hand, she seems incapable of retaining any sense of contradiction between her statements as they suit her at the moment and as she has made them in the past. Case in point: Decrying Obama's "collectivism" when she used that very word to claim the "collective ownership" of Alaska's resources by its citizens, justifying the "redistribution" of oil and gas wealth via rebate checks. Keith Olbermann says it better than I can.
What really irked me was her description of socialist countries as having "no freedom." Which countries would that be, Sarah? France? Sweden? This is the sort of ignorance that reigns when you only speak Alaskan and Barracuda, you xenophobic proto-fascist boob.
You just know she's plotting up a storm. It worries me, because she can do a lot of memorization between now 2016, just like Bush did. And just like Reagan dropped his opposition to Medicare once it became the law of the land, all the progress made under an Obama administration will suddenly fold into her agenda of acceptability. If we have universal health care, there isn't a Republican candidate who will be running on its repeal, even as they term it "more big government" now. (How come the bloated defense budget is never considered "big government?") This is what Republicans do. They battle progress until it finally happens and then act like they were for it all along. (Civil Rights, Social Security, Alternative Energy)
I did read a very interesting article on the unwinnable quagmire that Afghanistan is likely to be, and though its arguments were very persuasive, the author missed a crucial point. What about the subjugation of women under the Taliban? In my opinion, that's a far better reason to fight than capturing Osama bin Laden. He is one man, not half of the population.
MCO 2008
These are the first two of a bunch of pictures I took in Provincetown that I hope to be disciplined enough to parcel out just one or two at a time each day over the next month. If you've never been to Ptown, it's one of the most charming and atmospheric places imaginable, an artists' colony for good reason. What I do on vacation now is take all the pictures I want, then ruthlessly delete as I come close to filling the 45 images my camera holds before it needs to be downloaded. That way I really end up with only my best shots. (Although these two are off the cameraphone, as will be a few others until I get a chance to download the digital photos.)
I had a lovely time in Provincetown, but I have to say I'm over traveling for a bit. I just don't know how candidates do it. It's exhausting. And though I feel very inspired by all the workshops and camraderie of the roundup, being among all those gay men checking each other out, even discreetly, is a double-edged sword. I used to live for the hunt, and used booze and drugs to make the process of hooking up the focus of untold amounts of time and energy. Even doing it in a highly civilized and even decorous way reminds me both of how much technical success I once had (I rarely left alone) and of the spiritual toll it took (when he left, I felt very alone.)
I went dancing Saturday night until I limped back to the lovely inn on my poor plantar fasciitic feet, and on Sunday after the big closing meeting I took a photo safari and then stayed in watching TV. The prospect of "going out" felt more tiring than appetizing, particularly as a best case scenario might have yielded at best the most temporary of satisfactions.
I'm not 30 or 40 anymore. I know what it's like to paint the town brightly in every rainbow color there is. For a long time, a lot of it was a lot of fun. Part of me wants to get a facelift, a buttlift, and go out and do it again on a martini-soaked gay cruise, and part of me is sad that I know that just wouldn't work anymore. It would be trying to go back instead of continuing to move forward.
I'm glad to be home to my little routine. And another week to enjoy the implosion of the Republicans! By the way, I read Vanity Fair (with Amy Adams on the cover) on the way home, and Joseph Stiglitz has the best breakdown of the economic mess I've read yet.
MCO 2008
Flying over the United States is such an intense experience for me, especially at night. I imagine what life is like in every hamlet, town and city I fly over. The waitress, the truck driver, the CEO, the housewife, the high school student, the drug addict, the grandmother and on and on and. I wonder what life is like in that house, in that apartment building, in that neighborhood, in that ranch. Would would my life be like there? And what a great and fascinating country we have, 300 million people chasing happiness and trying to figure out what that looks like. The idea that I'm told, as a member of the liberal media elite--not to mention gay, HIV+ and an ex-con, that I'm less of a "real" American because I love her enough to criticize her--well it's the most unamerican thinking I've ever heard. I say Michelle Bachman and her ilk should migrate to Alaska with all the other "real" Americans, and they can declare the monarchy of the Palins. They can rename the state "Real America" and we need never hear from them again except to laugh at them on SNL and Letterman.
What I don't get is why the precipitous drop in the price of oil is not having any effect on the economic meltdown. Isn't this the equivalent of a giant economic stimulus package, putting billions in the pockets of the consumer just when she needs it?
I had a dream about a Hottie McHott Hot last night, and I remember his face and his body quite well. Can this be the fates preparing me for someone I'm about to meet? We're at Billy's condo in Boston, and leaving for Provincetown shortly. (Isn't it weird when you visit someone and they don't have any coffee? Talk about unamerican! I may have to report him.)
MCO 2008
What I don't get is why the precipitous drop in the price of oil is not having any effect on the economic meltdown. Isn't this the equivalent of a giant economic stimulus package, putting billions in the pockets of the consumer just when she needs it?
I had a dream about a Hottie McHott Hot last night, and I remember his face and his body quite well. Can this be the fates preparing me for someone I'm about to meet? We're at Billy's condo in Boston, and leaving for Provincetown shortly. (Isn't it weird when you visit someone and they don't have any coffee? Talk about unamerican! I may have to report him.)
MCO 2008
I'm leaving in about an hour for the airport, to head to Provincetown for the AA Roundup, where thousands of gay alcoholics descend in a beautiful place and have the coolest weekend ever. It's also doubling as the big 50th birthday present, thanks to my very generous friend of two decades, Billy, who moved to Boston a few months before I was arrested back in 2004.
I need some serenity by the sea. Every since I finished the script, I've been on information consumption and overload. There's too much going on, (the McCampalin alone is enough to turn the stomach daily) too much lying and craziness, too much poverty and suffering. I need to allow myself to experience some personal happiness without feeling I have to separate myself emotionally from the world. I battle constantly the sense that no one has a right to be serene when there's a child being beat up somewhere, a prisoner being tortured, a women being raped. (Liberal Catholic guilt is a terrible thing.)
As I await response from the script from some people in the biz who can move it forward, I need to settle on my next project, of which there are many possibilities, some already underway but put aside. Writing keeps me anchored, centered. As I've said before, art is increasingly to me, the only sane response to an insane world.
I may not blog until next Tuesday. Dare I hope I'll be too busy falling in love?
MCO 2008
P.S. You'd think they would have had the good sense to send Palin to buy new clothes in a Ohio mall that really needed the business. Brought the media and a $2000 budget. Would have still doubled the amount any Hockey Mom spent on clothes in the past year.
Idiots.
Yesterday afternoon David and I went to see W. It was marvelous, and much more compassionate toward George than you might imagine. The man means well, he really does. He's just so clearly unequipped to swim in the deep end of the pool. He doesn't even hide it. The real villains are Americans who don't seem to think it's important for the President to be a man with anything resembling an intellect.
I'm thinking of writing Economics for Dummies, a pinko rant on the inanities of capitalism. Yesterday was Chapter 1, here's Chapter 2: The Chinese Conundrum.
Here's how it seems to work. The American consumer is the engine of the world economy. When we "prosper," we buy, buy, buy and keep all those factories humming in China, India, Vietnam, etc, but mostly China. The Chinese consumer doesn't have a credit card, he saves and saves until he can buy that car or TV or bicycle in cash, which means the Chinese have all this money in their banks. Since the American government is running up as much debt as the American consumer, they have to borrow all that Chinese money. The Chinese put up with this arrangement because they can't afford for the social unrest that would come with even a few point rise in unemployment, they need to guarantee we have the money to keep buying their goods. So we give them money, and they give it right back, so we can then give it back. Capisce?
Now the American consumer, worried about losing his job or down to one income, is discovering he doesn't really need that extra plasma TV, the kids will survive with 20% less toys, and the cook in the house can manage another year or two with the old blender instead of a new cuisinart. Multiply that decision by several million, and you start to have factory closings in China. (Watch for the first big international crisis Obama has to deal with being how to react to the crackdown on riots of the hungry unemployed in Shenzhen or Guangdou.)
So basically, the Chinese lend us money so that we can buy goods from them. Goods we want, but do not really need. We have a world in which our very survival depends on stopping deforestation and the rape of the world's resources, and yet we have an economic system completely dependent on the perpetual consumption of more things. We're told we need to save and invest, but we're given stimulus checks and asked to spend and consume. The only thing we're investing in is our own destruction.
Thank God December 2012 isn't too far off. Clearly we need a huge do-over.
MCO 2008
Let's say there was an auction, and side by side were presented the Sargent of the woman and her children on the couch, the Tissot of the girl standing in the park, and this Hy-Art combining the two.
Aliens who didn't understand human culture might assume if the first two were worth a million dollars each, the third, combining the two, would be worth two million. Of course, we know that this, though quite pretty, would fetch virtually nothing.
This is because art is valued based on a complicated array of factors in which the aesthetic effect of the result is relatively minor compared to the context in which the work was first presented, the physicality and craft of the work itself, and the prestige that is conferred on the individual artist by the critics of his time, posterity, and the market.
Wealth is an idea. A bar of gold has no inherent value at all, it is worth a lot because we have all collectively agreed that it should be so. A loaf of bread in a supermarket with thousands of other loaves is worth 1.99. To a starving tentful of refugees, the very same loaf is worth a fortune--it may be the difference between life and death.
It is patently ridiculous that the same 500 corporations measured on the Dow Jones Industrials can be perceived to be "worth" trillions of dollars more or less from one day to the next. They have the same equipment, infrastructure, employees, product and potential. Their difference in value is entirely an illusion.
It is catetogorically nuts that we keep borrowing more money to pay the interest on money we have already borrowed. Isn't it high time we take all the interest we have paid on the national debt and consider that applied to the principal itself? If I loan you $100, and you pay me back $120, how can you still owe me $100? Isn't that loansharking?
Not to mention WE are the ones loaning ourselves the money. Where do you think banks get their wealth from? Your and my deposits. Where does "the government" get their money from? Your and my tax dollars. We are chasing our own tails, and the wealthy who have structured the system just so are laughing their asses off as they float away in their golden parachutes.
All those foreclosed house are HOUSES. They are the same houses whether the market values them at $100,000 or $400,000. You can live in them, sleep in them, be heated in them, raise kids in them. The idea that they are worthless from one day to the next is CRAZY.
If such talk makes me a socialist, then arrest me now. Free market capitalism is an emperor with no clothes, and it time we started pointing it out.
MCO 2008
I have a few places in the neighborhood where I put bottles and cans that I gather so the homeless with carts can add them to their recycling stash. This diorama struck me as likely to make for a decent composition.
I'm living in a Libra world this morning, going back and forth between light and dark, always struggling to find the beauty amidst the ugly, yearning for balance. For example, on the one hand, alcohol provides great spice to life--I would choose the guzzlers of Ireland over the ascetics of Saudi Arabia any day. On the other hand, alcoholism does horrific damage to most afflicted with it and many of those around them. On yet another hand, it gave birth to AA, which is one of the coolest spiritual systems ever devised. On a fourth hand, a small percentage of those who need to actually do get and stay sober.
I despise the politics of the right that have brought us George Bush and America on her knees. At the same time, I don't think anything short of Bush could have brought us Obama--the country needed to have the crap kicked out of it to be ready for this kind of change, and I can't imagine our future without it. (I heard an undecided voter on NPR talking about how we didn't need "rightwing or leftwing agendas" How the hell did health care, a green economy, a getting out of a war get cast as some sort of ideological "agenda?")
I'm personally feeling good about life, but physically still recuperating from the sinusitis and not feel very robust. I'm finding it hard to find any theme for this entry as my outlook is entirely schizoid. The world is a wonderful terrible place and I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed by it all. It feels selfish and self-centered to be happy when there's so much suffering in the world.
Viggo Mortenson turned 50 today. If that's not hopeful, I don't know what it.
MCO 2008
So I open my virtual New York Times this morning, and am immediately struck by this article: "Among Fans of Palin, Dudes Rule" Struck, because I predicted exactly this back on September 1, in a blog entry entitled: "The Sarah Effect." I surmised the real consequence of her candidacy would be to shore up her support among working class white males tittilated by the idea of voting for a "babe" who made turning them on somehow seem like an act of patriotism. It was ultimately a stupid move on McCain's part, of course, because these men were always going to vote for the ex-POW over the Harvard-educated black ex-professor. They're just going to do so alot more enthusiastically now. (McCain will spend his retirement rueing his stupidity at reaching for the base he always had instead of the center he needed to win.)
I saw Palin on Saturday Night Live--boy, talk about getting away with the sheer minimum. I would have at least proposed a skit: "The Real Housewives of Wasilla, Alaska." That could have been very funny. I have just been appalled by the Altanta version now showcasing all that is so wrong with the American "dream." I would have hoped for more from some sisters, though the token white girl on it is the worst by far. She dresses like a playboy playmate and is trying to buy the love of a daughter with $18,000 birthday parties that are guaranteed to turn her into the most self-absorbed, spoiled terror of an 18-year old imaginable. Materialism as a veritable religion. But as television, it's not half bad, in a train wreck kind of way.
So why the visual of the global butterfly with the remote control body carrying a football? For the answer to that, click here. I've written my first poem in a long time and am posting it on BBLOOMER, to get you guys to visit. Make sure you scroll down to read Sheria's poem as well.
MCO 2008
So this is a picture of the inside if my nose, confirming the diagnosis of sinusitis yesterday from the doctor. I am now on antibiotics, which have started to work after another dreadful day of laying on the couch moaning except to go to the doctor or walk the dog like a zombie. I can't remember ever having a case of this that led to a fever.
I'd like to hear this robocall from John McCain: "40 years ago, I flew combat missions over Vietnam in which I probably killed scores of innocent women and children as well as flattened villages and torched crops. I told myself I was serving my country, that I was just following orders, but in fact I didn't take a moment to question whether there was any right or wrong to what I was asked to do. In that way, I guess I'm no different from the terrorists who are told they are carrying out the will of Allah and don't have the intellectual wherewithal to question their orders. I'm John McCain. Vote for me because I understand the terrorists. After all, I was once one of them."
Something tells me if McCain is elected, there will be a litle file with my name on it somewhere in the Pentagon.
MCO 2008
I won't dignify by duplicating it here the faux food stamp coupon with Obama on it generated by a rascist Republican lady in California's Inland Empire (Where I was imprisoned--it might as well be Kentucky over there.) But I will offer this alternative. I figure $100 will be the average your average Joe (plumbers included) makes with his tax cuts. Ignore all pie-in-the-sky promises. Of course Obama is going to have to scale back on some of his plans. But he's dealing with a nation of five-year olds who don't want to hear when Christmas is coming that Daddy has lost his job. He'd be irresponsible if he didn't scale back, but it would be political suicide to specify how. (Remeber Walter Mondale?)
This idea that we can have record growth one year and no growth the next year, and this is cause for the sky falling in is ridiculous. It's exactly the same amount of wealth as the year before. The problem is not enough wealth in this country, the problem is that its so unevenly distributed. I'm appalled at McCain's dismissal of "spreading the wealth." Why the hell not? If we're all supposed to love each other so much for being Americans, why is the idea of the very rich being a little less rich so that the rest of us aren't declaring bankruptcy due to medical bills (for example) such anathema? I could have sworn I've heard of a little religion called Christianity that his based on the very idea of being "my brother's keeper."
I have to recommend a movie on DVD: "The Visitor." Directed by Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent) it's a beautiful, restrained, and superbly acted story about the accidental reawakening of a college professor through encounters with immigrants completely out of his comfort zone. And there's a piece of eye candy named Haaz Sleiman who is worth the price of admission, all the more because his character is kind and friendly where he could be arrogant.
I am sick like a dog. No Magic Mountain for me, I can barely utter a sentence without bursting into a dreadful coughing fit. Thank God blogging and email is pretty quiet, but I'm going back to bed shortly
MCO 2008
Yesterday, I created the above, AND I got the grey taken out of my hair. I'm such a stud now I don't dare post a picture. It would melt your computer with the hotness of my new dark mane matching my piercing brown eyes.
For a little bit I fancied that I had come up with the idea of a "blogazine" but there's even a Wikipedia entry for it (the grandiosity...oh, the grandiosity.) But I'm pretty sure no one's come up with this particular idea of catering to artists over 40. Please check it out and spread the word.
How about that John McCain? I never thought of him as a snake before, but that tongue sure did a lot of darting between those teeth. Once for every lie. No drama Obama was too cool for my tastes. This is the third time I have heard McCain's allegation that "people at Obama rallies yell out some horrible things about me." Oh yeah John? When, where? I have not seen/heard of one time anyone at an Obama rally suggesting your existence merited a violent response, nor that you were not a Christian or palled around with terrorists, for which one could make an excellent case against you considering the Alaska seccessionist ties of your running mate and her husband. When McCain insisted he repudiated any "out of bounds" attacks, I was just dying for Obama to say: "Are you repudiating your running mate John?"
Oh, and Sidney--that IS your middle name, right, not very masculine, is it?--when you quote "Joe the Plumber," should you make sure in advance he's voting for you. According to NPR, he won't say.
Well, maybe John will contribute an essay to my magazine. "How I turned my back on who I was and became a power-hungry, entitled, pandering, lying shadow of my former self."
MCO 2008
P.S. Re: Project Runway Finale: Karto was robbed!
I googled images for "October," "15," "1958," and "50" and this is what I came up with.
So yes, it's the big 5-0. And the day isn't quite like I hoped it would be, if only because I have an absolutely awful chest cold, and I had to cancel the little lunch I put together. Actually, the day was always going to be a comedown from the fantasy I had of celebrating it in Paris--thanks to fuel prices that were at their peak three months ago when I would have had to buy the ticket. (Of course I can always pretend today that I am a Parisian whose dream it was to spend his 50th birthday in Los Angeles. You know that expression, "Love the one you're with?' How about "Love the City You're In?")
So I am obviously not in Paris, and yet, the day is a good one. My inbox is flooded with birthday wishes, even a blog entry from Sheria devoted entirely to me! This mostly virtual celebration does underline my peculiar social life in which I have many a good friend on the internet (blogamis and commenters I've known virtually for years), tons of people I hug daily in the rooms of recovery, and a fair amount of friends acquired over the years who live in other states; but very few people I hang out with on a daily basis. There is David and my friend Michael, and that's practically it. And I like it that way. But on days like this, it feels a little small, like I should be walking into some sort of big surprise party, even if I would find such a pop-the-cork feeling very uncomfortable. (Yes, it's a contradiction. Welcome to alcoholism. It's hard to completely let go of the idea of the "party," even if you remember quite well the reality had become anything but fun.)
That's the closest you're going to get to a pity party from me. The glass is way more full than empty. The month started with a free trip to Albuquerque, it will end with another free one (thank you, Billy) to the Provincetown Roundup. I am absolutely grateful that I am sick now and not for that trip. I am going down to David's salon to get my the grey taken out, I will be looking like a 40-year old Italian stud by the afternoon. The last debate gives the day an air of importance, not to mention the finale of Project Runway. I will take it all quite personally.
Hell, by most math as it applies to men who seroconverted back when I did, and drank and drugged like I did, I shouldn't even be here. This is a glorious and unexpected day by any measure, even if I spend half of it in bed. How lucky am I that I can do that if I need to,
THANK YOU ALL FOR ALL YOUR GOOD WISHES AND BIRTHDAY COMMENTS.
Much love and more gratitude,
Marc
P.S. A group of us from one of my morning meetings are going to Magic Mountain on Friday to celebrate a variety of birthdays. So I WILL whoop it up!
This is me on the bed at my nephew's hotel room in San Diego, where I took a nap after driving down and before seeing his movie, The Meaning of Tea. It's a lovely film, very contemplative and beautifully shot, and we were both astounded by how well attended it was at 5:30 on a Monday afternoon. It turns out The San Diego Asian Film Festival is a pretty hot ticket. After the movie the lines to get in to the "star" features were around the block.
Keir is flying back this morning. I drove back last night, and don't know whether this cloud of congestion in my chest is due to the fires or a rare cold. I could complain because it's landing just near my birthday, but it's been ages and ages since I've had a cold and I need to stay grateful about that.
I was picking up trash this morning, and I passed as usual in front of the one building that always seems to grace me with at at least one empty pack of Capri 120s, which, along with Parliaments, seem to be the favorite brand of the Armenian diaspora. Now, everyday I see a dapper gentlemen of around 70, walking to the corner reading the paper or standing on the apartment building steps smoking--you guessed it--Capri 120's. (They're unmistakably long and thin). I've wanted for a long time to ask him to stop tossing the empty packs, but it's very dicey to make such an accusation when you never actually catch him in the act.
So as I passed, one of the plastic Ralph's bags I stuff my in my pants falls out of my cargo side pocket, and I don't see it. Mr Capri addresses me for the first time ever: "My friend!" he points to the bag. I nod, bend down and pick it up, and continue with my work, snaring one of the pack of empty Capri's in my picker. I hesitate, then decide to take the bull by the horns. "Do you smoke these?" I ask, knowing full well the answer. "It's not mine" he says, quickly, way too quickly. I take the diplomatic tack that is my wont as a Libra. "Well, someone in your building smokes them, and I wish he'd throw them out inside. There's no reason for it."
He was lying, he knew I knew he was lying, but at least that indicates some shame. If he didn't think it was wrong, he wouldn't have lied, he would have said "yeah, what of it?" or some other defensive bullshit.
So, it will be very interesting to see if there's a change in his behavior. At this rate, in about another 6 billions years, I'll have the entire planet clean as a whistle.
MCO 2008
P.S. On the way to San Diego, Mister Mister called me. "I can't really talk, I just wanted to say, 'THAT WAS HOT!'"
I passed this chair on the street and I immediately exclaimed: "oh my God, it's the economy."
And at complete odds with how nice my weekend was. On Saturday I got a completely unexpected call that turned out to be of the booty variety. It was just what the doctor ordered, as this is the week of my 50th birthday. I don't mind getting older, as long as someone as hot and kind as Mr. Mr. (his code name) finds me desirable, if only every six months.
On Saturday a dear friend took me out to dinner for my birthday and on Sunday I worked on both the new version of the Math book-in-progress for my sister and the launch of a 12-step newsletter in blog format, as I watched football and Paul Newman in Hud. I just love that moment when Patricia Neal says: "I don't mind telling you there was a time or two I dropped my dish towel watching you out in the yard."
Presently I will be headed down to San Diego with my nephew to see his film, "The Meaning of Tea" in The S.D. Asian Film Festival. He's had a wonderful time here renewing contacts from Film School who are making their way up the LA Film ladder, including agencies. It makes for a very interesting horizon creatively, for both of us.
It's a wonderful life.
MCO 2008
It occurred to me that Osama Bin Laden must be laughing his head off where ever he is in Waziristan. His goal with 9/11 was not to kill 3000 Americans. His goal was to commence a great unraveling of our Empire, and by all appearances, he seem to have provoked just that.
Bin Laden played right into the psychology of American exceptionalism. (Evil men can still be very smart.) That goes: America is the greatest country in the world, normal rules do not apply to us. We can have low taxes, big houses and a throw billions at defense contractors, and somehow the Math will magically work out. It's American Math, not like that snooty French Math. Everyone can get rich here, if they just work hard enough. We don't need to ask why these foreigners hate us, and we certainly don't have to change or even look at any or our behavior that might conceivably have something to do with that hatred. We're Americans. Good Christian Engliish-Speaking Americans. When we torture (which we don't of course) it's justified.
After 9/11, we could have tracked down Bin Laden and transformed Afghanistan at a fraction of the cost it took us to invade Iraq. With another fraction of what we spent there, we could have started on a Manhattan Project for alternative energy, reducing our dependence on foreign oil and actually making a dent on global warming. (It's obscene that in my state, where the sun never stops shining and everyone drives, we 're not all behind the wheel of electric cars with solar panels on the roof of every building.) We could have had National Health Insurance by now, and reduced class sizes, and rebuilt infrastructure. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive.
But instead of keeping the economy strong, deficits low, cleaning up our relationships with oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia which embody the term "Islamo-Fascism" (and provided the 9/11 hijackers), we reacted with the hubris and ineptitude of ancient Romans fighting the barbarians. As a result, we have an economy in freefall, with a national debt now at $480,000 for every household in America. And the people responsible for it are trying to tell those of us who voted against it that we're to blame, because we don't love America enough.
My friend Molly called me and told me she's probably going into a foreclosure. She bought this adorable little house in East Nashville years ago, and when she became sick with ovarian cancer, could not work and had no choice but to refinance and draw on some equity. She got better and returned to work, but then the crisis hit, and her interest rate is now through the roof. The mortage company will not budge.
It has all the hallmarks of the current mess. Because she had inadequate health insurance and was self-employed, Molly has nothing to fall back on when she got sick and has thousands in uncovered medical bills. Because her mortgage was repackaged and resold as securities (thank you Republican deregulation), she doesn't deal with a person at the bank who gave her the loan, but a voice on the phone that has no authority to alter any terms, much less get an agreement to return her to an interest rate which she could afford.
The America which was asked to make no sacrifices in crisis is now the America which will be required to sacrifice unimaginably more. I can just hear Bin Laden checking off his to-do list.
MCO 2008
Last night on multiple news outlets I witnessed that procession of McCain supporters denouncing in turn Obama as a terrorist, terrorist-supporter, Muslim, Arab or all of the above. The final offering came from a man asked whether Obama was a foreigner. He responded with the nonsensical: "I don't know what he is!" Read a newspaper in the last 20 months?
I immediately thought of those protesters in Arkansas in 1954, spitting out without shame the n-word at the young black students trying to integrate Central High. I guess there's a degree of progress in the replacement of that epithet by others, but in some ways it represents a more lethal regression. After all, calling someone a "nigger" (that is so hard to type) is a form of saying "I hate you for your dark skin," calling someone a terrorist implies that they support or actually commit dreadful acts. In one, the hate is irrational at best, in the other, the hatred has a veil of justification.
This need to demonize what we fear runs deep and wide in the human psyche. Ask any European Jew for the past 2000 years. Ask Sunni about Shia and vice-versa. Ask the Irish and Italians in New York in the 1860s--I could find some press clippings that would curl your ears. Just yesterday I read of the anti-English venom that swept the young United States in 1789, causing riots at the White House that burned George Washington himself in effigy because of the anti-French bias of the Jay Treaty. (Yes, we loved the French, once.)
In the age of television and the Internet, ignorance is a choice. But in a world in which, increasingly, only one's fears remain constant, the simple-minded and monolingual take refuge in the familar. They understand their family, their town, their language. They don't understand the globalized, multi-cultural, many-shaded world. They are scared little clowns, running around their one-ring circus screaming the sky outside is falling and it's only safe under the tent with themselves and their ringmaster, John McCain.
McCain has traveled outside the tent. He knows better. Yesterday there were signs that the man who once earned a fair amount of bipartisan affection might be re-emerging, I personally feel he's in tremendous inner conflict, torn by an intense desire to win and an intense resentment of his Bushrovian handlers and contempt for many of his own supporters.
What he should try is one last spasm of seeming erraticism. He should jettison La Pirhana Sarah, fire his team of haters, let the honorable inner John re-emerge, apologize to Obama, and make one last reach to the center. I think he'd still lose, but he'd retain some of honor that he is shredding on a daily basis. McCain needs to look at how he wants to be remembered. Joe McCarthy was once a respected Senator too.
MCO 2008
Wouldn't it be great if we lived in a world where we woke up to headlines like "Lost Cat Found" or "Students Put on Great Play?" Helas, no such luck. And because the current headlines are hitting so many of us right in the pocket, many stories that should get attention are completely submerged. By the times you finish reading this, several women will have been raped in the Congo. causing the unwanted preganancy of at least one, mutilation of the other, and death of the third. The rapists go scot-free, and the women are usually rejected by their husbands and families. This culture of rape started a decade ago but started to get really bad around the time we invaded Iraq.
Since the ultimate lesson of the Holocaust, we've had Cambodia, Rwanda and the Congo. Somehow, the collective will of the one country with the military might to intervene only seems to get roused when other issues besides human lives are at stake, issues usually related to economic interests.
The right has fetishized "the free market" to the point where it is blasphemy to question its primacy. The basis of the the free market is the profit motive, and while it is a perfectly good and normal impulse to want to make some money in order to feed oneself and one's family, and to aim to make more of it over time, the sort of primacy that has been accorded to this holy grail has proved disastrous. So many decisions have been made based on how big the resulting bonus or commission would be for the individual making it, that we are now witnessing a distorted economy based on spending over investment, having over sharing, short-term over longer-term.
No one ever held a baby, taught a child, showed genuine affection to a spouse, hugged an addict or created great art out of the profit motive There's also no profit in preventing rape, hunger, deforestation, and disease.
The most meaningful things in life are not done for money. We're not going to change the economy in a positive way unless we start to question the underlying assumption that they are.
MCO 2008
This is a a balloon my sister and I saw being launched, along with many others, at the Gordon Benneft annual balloon race in Albuquerque.
It was the central moment of a Sunday-Tuesday weekend at my sister's, and resonated in particular because our great Uncle Robb, who we never knew, died in this very balloon race in one of its early years when it was held in Holland in 1923. His ballon went down in a lightning storm, in a race which should never have taken place given the conditions. His death has always been part of the family mythology, and somewhere along the lines I suspect will show up in something I write.
On Monday and Tuesday, I spent much of the day either working with my sister on the Math book we co-created a few months ago, or I sat in on classes she teaches where the book is being used. It was an interesting experience to visit a sibling at work, not a chance most of us get. She's a very good teacher and the students are adorable. They're mostly individuals who paid little attention in high school, or were in and out of juvie, or taking care of siblings in dysfunctional families or jocks who thought they'd get sports scholarships etc. Community College represents their desire to change, but it doesn't necessarily come with much confidence in their ability to do the work. It was very moving for me to spend some time on one-on-one tutoring. I got to see the book being used and I got to see how individual guidance acts like quite the tonic on those who have had almost none of it in their formative years. I'm definitely going to expand the job hunt I'm about to embark upon into the tutoring arena. It came very easily to me and I enjoyed it.
I returned Tuesday night and barely had time to catch my breath and clean my house before my nephew arrived from Seattle for a week's stay, half with me and half with film school friends. I gave him the best tour of the city I could in several hours, taking the long way back from the airport and then later on around this part of town. Last night we watched the latest episode of True Blood together, and he showed me how the process of putting the credits together happened. This morning we saw a two-bedroom apartment right around the corner at a very good price and available immediately, How cool might it be that my Mom will be moving in next to my sister as my nephew would move in next to me, all on the same coast. I never thought a transatlantic family like mine would become Pacific. At least when California breaks off into the water we'll all go down together.
As for matters political, I'm appalled but not surprised at the viciousness and vacuousness of the McPain campaign, if heartened by the increasing likelihood of Obama's win. I find it worrying, though, that the very issue that will put him over the top electorally is also the very crisis that will force him to go much slower on effectuating change. Americans want the moon and they don't want to pay for it. They want to magically have their roads paved, children schooled, health cared for, tuition low, drug dealers imprisoned and empire maintained while keeping taxes low. They have this conviction that they will be rich one day, so often object even when increased revenue is supposed to come from those making more than they'll ever need to live lives of unimaginable luxury compared to the vast majority of the world.
I'm sick of "liberal" and even "socialist" being dirty words. Yes, I'm for the redistribution of wealth and proud of it. I don't think anyone's salary should be 10 times more than the minimum wage, and no one person should have more than 10 times more what anyone else has. Have no fear, I also think this vision would only work if everyone agreed to it, history has shown us anything imposed at the end of a gun is doomed. I just find it sad that people wouldn't agree to it. Those with the fortunes have the power to keep it that way, and most of them have some sort of sense of entitlement, that they "deserve" what they have. That anyone can have 13 houses when families of 13 have no house at all--this is mind-boggling to me. And yes, I'm talking to you Cindy McCain. You want my vote? GIVE ALL YOUR MONEY AWAY. You could save a lot of foreclosed homes with $300,000,000.
MCO 2008
P.S.. Google Ads doesn't read the opinion of blogs, just the frequency of words. Sometimes there's a McCain-Palin banner below. It turns my stomach, but I realize it's a good thing they are wasting money on my site. So feel free to click on it. The money will go to me, and I'll send it to Obama. Delicious irony,
The first two reviews of the screenplay are in, and though the readers are not in the film industry, they are smart and well-read and don't bullshit me. Their extremely positive reactions have buoyed me greatly.
Sometimes I think this is the best part. When you finish something you're proud of, and you have yet to hear anything negative about it. Trust me, those reactions wll come. But just at this moment, the illusion is that you've produced something that won't have to be substantially changed, so I try to appreciate it while it lasts.
The only shadow on my horizon is that my left foot is almost as bad as my right, and walking is becoming more and more uncomfortable. I have to keep the ibuprofen to a minimum, because I think it has something to do with the periodic diarrhea I've been suffering from, and of course anything stronger like vicodin is very risky for an addict, not to mention treats the symptom and not the cause. I'm really starting to think plantar fascitis is not the correct diagnosis, that it is neuropathy from being on HIV meds so long and it virtually untreatable. I may have to discuss taking a med vacation with my doctor..
Tomorrow I go to Albuquerque till Tuesday to visit my sister and to witness the Math book we wrote in action with the class she teaches. No worries if I don't blog for a couple of days.
MCO 2008.
I took this picture of a friend of mine (who happens to be in a wheelchair) because I thought it was an interesting composition. It has nothing to do with what I'm about to write.
Palin proved one thing last night: that she's a good contestant. If she can anticipate every question and rehearse to death every answer, she is a competent spokesmodel who can keep the base excited. But aiming for this was a crucial miscalculation on the part of the McCain camp. They don't need the base. They've got the base. They are the 30% who still approve of Bush, the true believers who don't understand why America circa 1955 is a place we ever should have left and can't go back to.
Neither could Palin win over the 47% that would rather be drawn and quartered than vote Republican. She needed to reach half of that middle 20%, in a few battleground states who are going to determine this election, and they would have been swayed not by more attack, but by conciliation. She should have been the one telling Joe Biden he was right, over and over. She should have pulled the ultimate maverick move, and bucked her own candidate. She should have admitted to being underinformed but willing to learn because at heart she wanted to serve, and she genuinely felt her side had the best approach to the issues, but was open to being wrong. She should have said she'd lobby McCain to appoint Hillary Clinton his chief of staff. (Fortunately for us, McCain and his advisers don't have enough imagination. And Palin has none at all.)
I thought Ifill really dropped the ball by asking no questions Palin couldn't have anticipated. So what if she would have been accused of practicing 'gotcha journalism?" When is the media going to stop caring so much how the right characterizes them?
I thought Joe Biden was very effective. If you were wavering, a member of the fearful middle-class who he addressed so directly, he said nothing to alienate and a helluvalot that made sense. He was like the kindly Uncle sent to bail you out of jail but who made clear how the road ahead would be tough. The guy you just didn't want to disappoint.
I'm really starting to see Obama as the new F.D.R., potentially, and the right may vote for McCain like they voted for Hoover, but they better hope their guy loses. If McCain wins, prepare to see a polarization that will make 2000 look like a love-fest. I know that I will swing way farther left, revolution or secession will start to look like sane alternatives. And I can see the right swinging farther right in reaction--we could be looking at the American equivalent of the Spanish Civil War and I'm not kidding.
The one happy bipartisan note I can sound is how far the cultural center has shifted when even an evangelical like Palin takes pains to claim tolerance in regard to gay people, and when Joe Biden doesn't have to worry about losing votes by advocating forcefully for domestic partnerships to have the full weight of marriage. That represents a real change.
MCO 2008
P.S. To the readers from AOL, (which closed down their journals) I'm told you have trouble commenting. So visit me instead at http://makemarc.blogspot.com/ where I am duplicating all these entries.
I finished my first polish of the script, cutting at least 8 pages in length. It's amazing how good dialogue can sound in your head while you write it, how conversations seem to flow and dance like a babbling brook; then you reread it, and the same scene feels repetitive and jumpy, and you have to mercilessly chop and refashion it.
The danger in the rewrite process is that you iron out the quirks with the kinks. A lot of what makes interesting writing is the element of the original and unexpected. But this can easily bleed into the contrived and artificial or even incoherent. Recognizing that you are as vulnerable to these traps as any other writer is ever-humbling. You have to accept it over and over again, in a perpetual process of flattening and fattening of the ego. I can't do this. I can do this. I can. I can't.
I can.
The difference between when I did this a decade ago and doing it now is the blog. Every day for over four years I've produced an entry, and none of what you read is ever a first draft. I edit the hell out of each entry before I post it, and sometimes after. I've tossed many a lovingly crafted paragraph because it just didn't fit. I feel like the Karate Kid--washing windows day in and day out turning out to be excellent preparation for the real deal.
It goes without saying that I'm on tenterhooks over tonight's debate. The question posed by Sarah Palin is not whether she has the qualifications to be Vice President using traditional measurements--that has been answered. The question is whether a crucial slice of Americans who are still undecided think a minimal amount of intellectual curiousity and an ability to articulate is even desirable for the job.
MCO 2008
Last night I watched my new guilty pleasure on Bravo, The Rachel Zoe Project, and I thought: THIS is the example I was looking for. The democratic equivalent to Sarah Palin. Someone who would horrify the right as much as Palin horrifies the left (and anyone with half a brain.) Then I saw the interview where Palin said she "reads everything" because she was unable to think of one magazine or periodical she followed regularly, and it occurred to me at least Rachel Zoe probably reads Italian Vogue, Elle Decor and Vanity Fair, and certainly the Style section of the New York Times. Not to mention is friends with Marc Jacobs and Zac Posen. Come to think of it, I don't know why Obama chose someone like Joe Biden, who's been around since I've been in kindergarten, instead of a woman who can make Jennifer Garner look like royalty on the Red Carpet. What was he thinking?
And then listening to McCain try to claim she's highly qualified! His logic contorts more than Natasha Lukin's on the balance beam. I think she'd have to talk about tracking down Saddam Hussein in the hills of Indonesia for the far right to abandon her at the point, but I do think that middle 20% that goes back and forth may finally be getting a little leery of Illiterate Barbie.
As for the bailout, Dennis Kucinch pointed out the absolute illogic of borrowing $700 billion from banks to turn around and give right back to banks. I caught him on Rachel Maddow, but you can read his reasoning here.
MCO 2008
