Friday, August 15, 2014

What is Water? This is Water

We lose the minds we need the most.  This week was no exception with the passing of Robin Williams. 


David Foster Wallace (pictured above) was another such mind, lost in 2008 under similar circumstances. 

His commencement speech to Kenyon College is worth a listen for anyone who has trouble slogging it out on this place Mork called, 'earth.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lu2e-q8ntM






Saturday, February 5, 2011

Happy



Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Villa Nelcotte, Southern France 1971

"Well I never kept a dollar past sunset,
It always burned a hole in my pants.
Never made a school mama happy,
Never blew the second chance, oh no, I need a love to keep me happy." 
Would you be happy if you were far away from the comforts of home? Exiled to another country, for tax reasons?  Learning to be a parent? Dealing with budding addictions?  Feeling the pressure to produce and collaborate?  You may, or you may not, according to research by those who know best. 

But I digress...

Keith Richards wrote and recorded the song "Happy" from his basement in southern France, where, along with the rest of the Rolling Stones, he was exiled from his native England during the summer of 1971.*  Appropriately, this is where much of Exile on Main Street was written and recorded. 

According to New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff, the album is "a wise horror show, an audio diary of rock stars finally facing the rigors of marriage, children and addiction."

The song "Happy" features the open, five-string tuning Richards invented.  You hear it in "Honky Tonk Women," assuredly in the opening riffs of "Satisfaction," "Jumping Jack Flash," and many others.  You hear it in all manner of music today, influenced by Richards and the Stones. 

The song was written in four hours while Richards waited for his mates to arrive for their recording sessions.  According to Richards in his book, Life, "I'd have been happier if more came like 'Happy.'"

Maybe.  Or Maybe not.

Listening to the Rolling Stones makes me happy these days.  It gets me thinking about happiness.  And sadness.  And how utterly useless these terms are.

What you think you know about happiness and sadness, and how you think life events will make you feel, is wrong.  This is the belief held and proven by Harvard Psychology Professor Daniel Gilbert.

Just as Richards stumbled upon the song Happy, Gilbert came upon studying happiness by happenstance.  Gilbert wanted to be a science fiction writer.  When a creative writing class was full, he enrolled in a psychology class.  He is now a renowned social psychologist.  

His work has led to him quantify that our ability to predict what will make us happy or sad is often incorrect.  Not just as it relates to eating a cheeseburger, buying a car or television, but even with bigger life events surrounding job losses, death, and having children, to name a few. 

I've yet to read Gilbert's book, Stumbling on Happiness, but an excellent overview of his work is available here.  It is a little dry, but worth reading if you've ever thought having a pool in your backyard would make you happy, only to seldom dip your toes in the water once it became reality.   


*Charlie Watts was living 130 miles away, above the Aix-en-Provence.  Mick Jagger spent much of his time in Paris.  Mick Taylor was the other guitarist at the time.  Ronnie Wood joined in 1976.

Monday, January 10, 2011

We're Never Gonna Survive...

A (somewhat) open letter to Teabaggers and their ilk (and those that don't tell them they are losing their collective minds):




The American Revolution was a violent and bloody period in our nation's history.  Overwhelmingly electing a Democrat to the office of President does not warrant same.

It is a fact that GWB lost the popular vote in 2000.  Lost it.  A Republican Supreme Court gave him the presidency.  No one starting talking of 'watering the tree of liberty' then, and no one should be doing so today.   

However, the opposite is happening:

  • Sarah Palin tweets "Don't retreat. Reload!" She puts cross hairs on congressional districts such as Rep. Garbrielle Giffords.  

  • Senate candidate Sharon Angle called for violence if "this Congress keeps going the way it is."

  • When not crying on television, Glenn Beck often predicts End of Days violence if liberalism is not defeated. 

  • Rep. Michelle Bachman has publicly called for a revolutionary war against the "tyranny of Obama."

These are just a few.  There are countless examples of elected officials, television personalities, and other members of the 'establishment' stoking the flames.  

They continue to do these things even as death threats for members of Congress are skyrocketing.  They pile on even as Gabrielle Giffords office is shot at after voting for the health care bill.  They pour gasoline on the fire even as teabaggers shout the N word at Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a civil-rights icon nearly beaten to death at a civil rights rally in the 1960s, for his support of the health care bill.

Look at the footage from McCain-Palin rallies as it became clear they were not going to win the presidency.  Their supporters were blinded with rage, yelling of Obama 'treason', 'off with his head', and 'terrorist.'  There were other insults, but it got kind of mean. 

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who was at the scene of this weekend's shooting, has best summarized what is happening in today's discourse:


"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous.  And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”
And it is no surprise that Fox News, fearing that the jig is up on its bearded-woman-at-the carnival-sideshow excuse for news programming, has begun to attack Dupnik for his candid observations, the ones that come from protecting and serving his community for 31 years.


Perhaps Fox News will spare Congresswoman Gifford's brother in law, Scott, who happens to be the commanding officer aboard the International Space Station.  He spoke from outerspace over radio today.  Flight controllers in Houston remained silent:
 
"As I look out the window, I see a very beautiful planet that seems very inviting and peaceful.  Unfortunately, it is not.  These days, we are constantly reminded of the unspeakable acts of violence and damage we can inflict upon one another, not just with our actions, but also with our irresponsible words.  We're better than this.  We must do better."

Say what you will about free speech.  But it isn't free. 

In 2009 the Department of Homeland Security warned that right-wing extremism was escalating, with the potential for violence.  The accuracy of that report is chilling.

When reasonable people begin carrying signs with our president depicted as Hitler, as a socialist...when they insinuate that he was not born here, is not a Christian, send you emails hinting toward violence even...when these things go unchallenged on main street and on the airwaves, there's a crescendo and eventually a crazy person hears it, several times, giving validity to it, and acting on it. 

And that not only leads to violence that killed a federal judge, critically injured a member of Congress, killed 5 others and wounded 14, it leads to good and decent people no longer wanting to serve their country for fear of what happened over the weekend happening to them. 


And we're never gonna survive, if we let the crazies fill that leadership void. 

Friday, December 17, 2010

Kick Me Sign Goes...

On this guy....


Relax everyone.  Mr McNair returned from an owner's meeting and they all patted him on the head. 

“The level of respect they have for our team and how close they think we are to having not just a good team but an outstanding team — it was nice to hear your peer group say that about you. It’s sort of an affirmation that we’re on the right track."
What? Sir, it has been 9 years.  And many of those owners have fired other coaches and gone to the playoffs since you hired Kubiak.  It is far time to be on the right track. It is time to be in the playoffs.  Just the first round. 

Stop being a Sunday school teacher and shake things up.  Throw a stapler at Kubiak during one of your weekly meetings.  Demand that he stop hiring people from Denver, or the sons of men he worked with, or the guy that made him a sandwich at that Subway once in Colorado Springs. 

This is just ass!



Thursday, December 2, 2010

Beat the F out of...



Proof of how dirty the Titans are is here, where Andre Johnson is wired for sound.   

The whole clip is excellent, but Dre warns the refs about Finnegan at the 1:11 mark.  It heats up at the 3:15 mark.  All this talk of Fisher being a great coach is a bunch of poppycock.  Based solely on appearances, he can get back to selling used Nissans once VY and Bud run him out of town. 




Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Freedom isn't Gratis.

Jonathan Franzen offended my Gulf Coast sensibilities years ago.  A guest of Houston-based Inprint's reading series, he was spinning yarns from his highly acclaimed The Corrections.  Franzen attempted to make an analogy comparing something to watching a boring baseball game, and cited the Houston Astros as part accomplice.  I would normally take umbrage to such an assault, especially when you consider how good those Astros were at the time. 

But Corrections pulled me in.  All was forgiven. 

Offend me once, shame on you.  Offend me twice, well, after reading Freedom, let's just say Franzen hit it out of the park on this one.     

Freedom navigates the twists, turns, sharp cliffs, foggy, low-visibility roads, and rocky, jagged embankments relationships take when each party values individualism, as most Americans do, whether they admit it or not.  And when each carries resentments, as most humans do, whether they admit it or not. 

Freedom's Walter and Patty Berglund are no exception, but they are different from the troubled relationships society watches for sport: Sandra Bullock/Jesse James; David Arquette/Courtney Cox; Al and Tipper Gore; Tiger Woods/Ellen Whatshername; Susan Sarandon/Tim Robbins, and on and on, to the extent that the Huffington Post now has a section dedicated to divorce.

Similar to the aforementioned couples, the Berglund's story is at times a sad one - but always captivating.  It is a sadness that is refreshing in a way that is real.  There's a line in a Guy Clark song, "give me chicken fried steak, not a baby ruth."  Meaning, give me something with substance.  Something that is real.  This story is a chicken fried steak. 

And this is a family that could live on your street, a couple you could be friends with, all confronting issues that are recognizable. 
You root for them for good reason. 

According to research conducted by Rose McDermott (Brown University), James Fowler (University of California, San Diego), and Nicholas A. Christakis (Harvard University), titled "Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone Else is Doing it Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample Followed for 32 Years," we are well served to tend to the relationships of our friends as much as our own.

"Overall, the results suggest that attending to the health of one's own friends' marriages serves to support and enhance the durability of one's own relationship..." and "that divorce can spread between friends, siblings, and coworkers, and there are clusters of divorcees that extend two degrees of separation in the network." 


And so it is -- or isn't -- with the Berglunds.  Freedom takes us through their years as the "it" couple, Whole Foods shoppers and gentrifiers of a St. Paul neighborhood where residents "relearn certain life skills that your own parents had fled to the suburbs specifically to unlearn." Walter, saving the world as an environmental lawyer who commutes to work on his bicycle, and Patty, a neighborhood resource who walked effortlessly down the street with her child in a stroller. 
"Behind her you could see the baby-encumbered preparations for a morning of baby encumbered errands; ahead of her, an afternoon of public radio, the Silver Palate Cookbook, cloth diapers, drywall compound, and latex paint; and then Goodnight Moon, then zinfandel." 

In a layered narrative, Franzen chronicles the adolescence and college days of Walter and Patty, thoroughly enough to understand how our families shape us, good and bad, and how we carry those wounds and cures with us, but not so painstakingly that the reader gets lost in the details.  The point is further driven home in the stories orbiting the Berglund children, Joey and Jessica. 

At pivotal points in the novel, Franzen employs a versatile literary device to give insight to the book's main characters through an autobiography Patty writes at her therapist's suggestion.  Titled, "Mistakes Were Made, Autobiography of Patty Berglund by Patty Berglund," it is so genuine it was more akin to reading a journal than an autobiography: at times, I couldn't help but feel like I should not be reading it. 

"She didn't think she was an alcoholic.  She wasn't an alcoholic.  She was just turning out to be like her dad, who sometimes escaped his family by drinking too much.  Once upon a time, Walter had positively liked that she enjoyed drinking a glass or two of wine after the kids were in bed.  He said he'd grown up being nauseated by the smell of alcohol and had learned to forgive it and love it on her breath, because he loved her breath, because her breath came from deep inside her and he loved the inside of her....But once that one or two glasses turned into six or eight glasses, everything changed.  Walter needed her sober at night so she could listen to all the things he thought were morally defective in their son, while she needed not be sober so as not to have to listen.  It wasn't alcoholism.  It was self defense." 

Patty is not the only person a harsh light is shined on.  Walter, their children, friends, neighbors, colleagues, parents, and Richard Katz, a college friend of Patty and Walter that loves them in profound yet inappropriate ways - and who I could not help but envision being played by Benecio del Toro if this book became a movie - all come across as flawed, human, and lovable.

As he did in Corrections, Franzen has a choke hold on American fiction.  Freedom is about more than just attaining freedom for the sense of the word.  Patty and Walter are desperate for freedom from isolation, and each other, and that contradiction plays out in ways both familiar and unexpected in this novel.   

Read it. 

And invite your friends over for dinner.