Yesterday, at my younger daughter’s new school: So there we are, a clutch of parents, waiting to pick up our kids. Some of the parents are obviously professionals – lawyers, accountants, doctors and the like. We stand on a sidewalk, facing a building fronted by a large plate-glass window. Huge SUVs idle on the street.
Through the big window we can see a hundred or so middle-schoolers gathering their things, fastening their backpacks. The vista is an unrelieved expanse of skinny jeans, Abercrombie & Fitch, American Apparel, Urban Outfitters, Uggs…
“I think I’ll wait for my daughter to come out of the building,” I say with an attempt at levity. “They all look the same, I can’t tell them apart.”
Silence. Looks of horror.
The empty space surrounding me suddenly grows very large.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
Questions for a New Year
Why ill in kill, but laughter in slaughter?
Is men in women there deliberately?
Do all interesting women have problematic relationships with their mothers?
If the child is the father of the man, then he’s sleeping with… ? Never mind.
Which Republican presidential candidate would you feel most at ease with in a bar, sharing a pitcher of hemlock?
When a priest pennstates a choirboy, is the end-product sancta santorum?
If Immanuel Kant but the Vatican, should we even complete the sentence?
Are you better off in life crying in a Bentley or laughing on a Vespa?
Is Sumatra comfortable?
Why do Americans pretend there’s an “r” in Goethe?
If your spouse gets raptured, do you have to quit your swingers’ club?
Can you get acne from Facebook?
Is your guiding principle WWYYMD?*
Why does Texas exist?
Did Jimmy Carter really say, “I came, I saw, Iran”?
Is one man’s Mede another man’s Persian?
Do you pronounce Cretan and cretin the same way? Why? What have you got against Greeks?
If you were a drone, would you enjoy the flight?
Can you have an atrocity in the countryside?
Have you heard the one about Orthodox Jews refraining from having sex while standing up because it might be construed as dancing?
Who was Kim Kardashian’s equivalent in Classical Antiquity?
Do you agree with the following syllogism: “Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore Socrates is a homosexual”?
Does it get better? Really?
*What Would Yo-Yo Ma Do?
Is men in women there deliberately?
Do all interesting women have problematic relationships with their mothers?
If the child is the father of the man, then he’s sleeping with… ? Never mind.
Which Republican presidential candidate would you feel most at ease with in a bar, sharing a pitcher of hemlock?
When a priest pennstates a choirboy, is the end-product sancta santorum?
If Immanuel Kant but the Vatican, should we even complete the sentence?
Are you better off in life crying in a Bentley or laughing on a Vespa?
Is Sumatra comfortable?
Why do Americans pretend there’s an “r” in Goethe?
If your spouse gets raptured, do you have to quit your swingers’ club?
Can you get acne from Facebook?
Is your guiding principle WWYYMD?*
Why does Texas exist?
Did Jimmy Carter really say, “I came, I saw, Iran”?
Is one man’s Mede another man’s Persian?
Do you pronounce Cretan and cretin the same way? Why? What have you got against Greeks?
If you were a drone, would you enjoy the flight?
Can you have an atrocity in the countryside?
Have you heard the one about Orthodox Jews refraining from having sex while standing up because it might be construed as dancing?
Who was Kim Kardashian’s equivalent in Classical Antiquity?
Do you agree with the following syllogism: “Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore Socrates is a homosexual”?
Does it get better? Really?
*What Would Yo-Yo Ma Do?
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Vive le GOP!
For reasons unknown to my conscious self, I watched the two Republican debates that took place in New Hampshire this weekend. Actually, I had heard, from snarko barfly friends, that the debates were what you could watch if you had exhausted your Three Stooges queue on Netflix, but, alas, with Cain and Bachmann gone, I never got the promised laff riot.
Instead, I got the peculiar feeling of being in France.
(Let us here, at the outset, retire the usual uninformed faux-sophisticate wheeze and state clearly that no Jerry Lewis joke is in the offing.)
Why France?
Because it seemed to me that the shiny white men on stage were talking about a world that no longer existed.
Background: As a journalist in France in the 1980s and 1990s, I sometimes did political stories. Not mainstream stories, but quirky ha-ha-those-crazy-French features about the country’s political fringes. On the left, the US has nothing comparable to what can or could be found in France. But on the right in France, there was a plethora of teeny and not-so-teeny parties and movements – Front National, Action Française, Renouveau Français and others – that appealed to, say, 20% of the electorate. And what they had said two or three decades ago, I realized with a start while watching the teevee this weekend, resembled what the speakers of New Hampshire are saying now.
Not in their particulars, of course, but in their worldview. Both – the present-day GOP and the French ultranationalist right – are not so much conservatives as archeologists, and militant archeologists at that.
In the French iteration, France is still Number One, Top Dog, Center of the Universe, Indispensable Nation of the world. The distressing past hundred or two hundred years have been swept under the rug by the Senegalese chambermaid, and the speakers at rallies could depict a world still under the sway of the great Parisian idea machine. Homeland of human rights, beacon of liberty, and all that. If any acknowledgment had to be made of the reality of the planet – that France was not first among equals on the world stage – then our far-right orators would cite not outside influences beyond their control, but domestic enemies, enemies within. For the hoarier of these groups, those enemies remained Jews and Freemasons. For the more “modern,” they were Arab immigrants and, well, Jews.
But the takeaway was that the world had not changed – if anything was temporarily amiss, that could be remedied by addressing the enemies within.
Now, back to New Hampshire. The militant archeologists there are living in a dig that, through carbon dating, I would put at about 1948 or 1949. The rest of the world, after the war, is on its knees. America is the undisputed Number One, Top Dog, Can-Do, Know-It-All, Benign, Superior Despot/Liberty Beacon of the world. The intervening sixty or so years or history have been swept under the rug by a Dominican illegal, and the speakers can paint a world where what America wants, America gets. Europe, the Middle East, India, Asia… they are all still bit players in the great Broadway musical known as We Are The Best. And if there is a jarring note coming from the ochestra pit – a shrill piccolo blast of reality regarding declining American education, income, influence, etc. – that too, pace the French archeologists, can be blamed on an enemy within. Thus the commies have become American Muslims; the liberals, socialists; the unions, antiAmerican layabouts; the poor, parasites.
Again, what is not acknowledged is that the world has changed. And that this change cannot be stopped, much less undone. I would say that identifying and fighting internal enemies to combat external forces is what adds the tags ‘militant’ and ‘futile’ to the title of archeologist.
Change has always been the central challenge to the conservative. Those wishing to remain in an inflexible past become the fringe, then gradually go away. A few of the French mini-movements I mentioned above are no more (excepting, of course, the far-from-mini Front National). But what is surprising here in this country is when a major political party, with all the resources at its disposal, deliberately chooses a starting point, a ground from which to argue, that in no way resembles the fluid, ever-changing realities of world politics and power relationships. The French ultranationalists are more ridiculous than the GOP – French superpowerdom lying so far in the past – but that does not make the Republicans’ fundamental error any less egregious.
And, yes, of course they are sincere in their beliefs. Trappist monks are sincere in their beliefs. So are flat-earthers. But, in politics, to address the world as it is requires seeing the world as it is. All parties, in all countries, make exhortations to patriotism and national exceptionalism – that’s par for the course. Yet here, the pride in having been Number One for a few decades has engendered, in the American conservative mind, a sort of romanticism. They look at ruins and see castles.
Just like archeologists.
Instead, I got the peculiar feeling of being in France.
(Let us here, at the outset, retire the usual uninformed faux-sophisticate wheeze and state clearly that no Jerry Lewis joke is in the offing.)
Why France?
Because it seemed to me that the shiny white men on stage were talking about a world that no longer existed.
Background: As a journalist in France in the 1980s and 1990s, I sometimes did political stories. Not mainstream stories, but quirky ha-ha-those-crazy-French features about the country’s political fringes. On the left, the US has nothing comparable to what can or could be found in France. But on the right in France, there was a plethora of teeny and not-so-teeny parties and movements – Front National, Action Française, Renouveau Français and others – that appealed to, say, 20% of the electorate. And what they had said two or three decades ago, I realized with a start while watching the teevee this weekend, resembled what the speakers of New Hampshire are saying now.
Not in their particulars, of course, but in their worldview. Both – the present-day GOP and the French ultranationalist right – are not so much conservatives as archeologists, and militant archeologists at that.
In the French iteration, France is still Number One, Top Dog, Center of the Universe, Indispensable Nation of the world. The distressing past hundred or two hundred years have been swept under the rug by the Senegalese chambermaid, and the speakers at rallies could depict a world still under the sway of the great Parisian idea machine. Homeland of human rights, beacon of liberty, and all that. If any acknowledgment had to be made of the reality of the planet – that France was not first among equals on the world stage – then our far-right orators would cite not outside influences beyond their control, but domestic enemies, enemies within. For the hoarier of these groups, those enemies remained Jews and Freemasons. For the more “modern,” they were Arab immigrants and, well, Jews.
But the takeaway was that the world had not changed – if anything was temporarily amiss, that could be remedied by addressing the enemies within.
Now, back to New Hampshire. The militant archeologists there are living in a dig that, through carbon dating, I would put at about 1948 or 1949. The rest of the world, after the war, is on its knees. America is the undisputed Number One, Top Dog, Can-Do, Know-It-All, Benign, Superior Despot/Liberty Beacon of the world. The intervening sixty or so years or history have been swept under the rug by a Dominican illegal, and the speakers can paint a world where what America wants, America gets. Europe, the Middle East, India, Asia… they are all still bit players in the great Broadway musical known as We Are The Best. And if there is a jarring note coming from the ochestra pit – a shrill piccolo blast of reality regarding declining American education, income, influence, etc. – that too, pace the French archeologists, can be blamed on an enemy within. Thus the commies have become American Muslims; the liberals, socialists; the unions, antiAmerican layabouts; the poor, parasites.
Again, what is not acknowledged is that the world has changed. And that this change cannot be stopped, much less undone. I would say that identifying and fighting internal enemies to combat external forces is what adds the tags ‘militant’ and ‘futile’ to the title of archeologist.
Change has always been the central challenge to the conservative. Those wishing to remain in an inflexible past become the fringe, then gradually go away. A few of the French mini-movements I mentioned above are no more (excepting, of course, the far-from-mini Front National). But what is surprising here in this country is when a major political party, with all the resources at its disposal, deliberately chooses a starting point, a ground from which to argue, that in no way resembles the fluid, ever-changing realities of world politics and power relationships. The French ultranationalists are more ridiculous than the GOP – French superpowerdom lying so far in the past – but that does not make the Republicans’ fundamental error any less egregious.
And, yes, of course they are sincere in their beliefs. Trappist monks are sincere in their beliefs. So are flat-earthers. But, in politics, to address the world as it is requires seeing the world as it is. All parties, in all countries, make exhortations to patriotism and national exceptionalism – that’s par for the course. Yet here, the pride in having been Number One for a few decades has engendered, in the American conservative mind, a sort of romanticism. They look at ruins and see castles.
Just like archeologists.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
And the winner is...
So the USA is ending its war with Iraq.
At the same time, the President is set to sign a bill that allows the military to detain American citizens indefinitely on American soil without trial or any semblance of due process.
I believe we now know who won the Iraq war.
Hint: not the USA.
At the same time, the President is set to sign a bill that allows the military to detain American citizens indefinitely on American soil without trial or any semblance of due process.
I believe we now know who won the Iraq war.
Hint: not the USA.
Monday, December 12, 2011
We get letters...
I have been cleaning up my filing system, throwing things out, perusing old manuscripts, rereading letters sent and received.
Most writers are familiar with weird correspondence, simply because there are so many weird people out there.
I submit, for your consideration, a letter sent to my English publisher by one Dominic Pickin, of Brighton. It is dated October 9, 2000. It was then forwarded to me, and I have cherished it in secret for more than ten years.
But that was selfish of me.
So here we go. My transcription is faithful, misspellings and all:
Dear sir or madam, to whom it may concern.
Re Stephen O'Sheas book The perfect heresy.
The general thrust of his argument seems to be if you're sympathetic to the Cathar position your a fool, a crank or even a Nazi. This is reminisent of a point of view I've often heard in nightclubs when a woman declines a mans offer of sex and he says to his mates 'she's a Lesbian' Could you please refrain from giving a platform to appologists for genocide. Thanks.
Yours sincerely
Dominic Pickin
Most writers are familiar with weird correspondence, simply because there are so many weird people out there.
I submit, for your consideration, a letter sent to my English publisher by one Dominic Pickin, of Brighton. It is dated October 9, 2000. It was then forwarded to me, and I have cherished it in secret for more than ten years.
But that was selfish of me.
So here we go. My transcription is faithful, misspellings and all:
Dear sir or madam, to whom it may concern.
Re Stephen O'Sheas book The perfect heresy.
The general thrust of his argument seems to be if you're sympathetic to the Cathar position your a fool, a crank or even a Nazi. This is reminisent of a point of view I've often heard in nightclubs when a woman declines a mans offer of sex and he says to his mates 'she's a Lesbian' Could you please refrain from giving a platform to appologists for genocide. Thanks.
Yours sincerely
Dominic Pickin
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Question of the Day
Beautiful, sunny, warm, creepy December day, and I am walking back home from a seaside park. To get to my place, I have to cross a wide pedestrian bridge spanning an eight-lane interstate.
At mid-span, I notice two young women standing to one side, holding a large sign that can be seen from the roadway. They are post-hipstah twentyish, a bit of hardware in their faces, but not of the Home Depot amplitude popular a few years ago. Their bare arms are purple-green tattoo canisters; their faces, white and impassive.
“Hey!,” I say. “What’s your sign say?”
Dutifully, they maneuver the huge sign to face me. It reads:
Sometimes Saying I Love You Is Not As Good As An Anal Plug!
“Wow!” I exclaim, genuinely impressed. “That’s quite a sign.”
They nod, bored.
“Have you been showing it around town?”
A shake of the head. “No, we just found it.”
“You found it?! Where?”
“Over there.”
A Stieg Larsson arm points further up the bridge to a stone bench, deserted save for two empty beer cans.
We exchange glances. “Well, do you agree with it?,” I ask.
Shrugs. “Seemed like a good idea.” Obeying some unheard signal, the girls then proceed to turn the cumbersome sign back around to face the highway.
I return home.
Now my question is this: Don’t you think these two young women are more socially useful than Lloyd Blankfein?
At mid-span, I notice two young women standing to one side, holding a large sign that can be seen from the roadway. They are post-hipstah twentyish, a bit of hardware in their faces, but not of the Home Depot amplitude popular a few years ago. Their bare arms are purple-green tattoo canisters; their faces, white and impassive.
“Hey!,” I say. “What’s your sign say?”
Dutifully, they maneuver the huge sign to face me. It reads:
Sometimes Saying I Love You Is Not As Good As An Anal Plug!
“Wow!” I exclaim, genuinely impressed. “That’s quite a sign.”
They nod, bored.
“Have you been showing it around town?”
A shake of the head. “No, we just found it.”
“You found it?! Where?”
“Over there.”
A Stieg Larsson arm points further up the bridge to a stone bench, deserted save for two empty beer cans.
We exchange glances. “Well, do you agree with it?,” I ask.
Shrugs. “Seemed like a good idea.” Obeying some unheard signal, the girls then proceed to turn the cumbersome sign back around to face the highway.
I return home.
Now my question is this: Don’t you think these two young women are more socially useful than Lloyd Blankfein?
Monday, November 28, 2011
Musical Madeleine
A few weeks ago my elder daughter had her sixteenth birthday.
Sweet.
But bittersweet, too.
On that day seven years ago – on her ninth birthday – my mother (her grandmother) died.
This year we did not celebrate her birthday on the proper day. Why? Her youth orchestra was performing a concert. A piano virtuoso from Russia had been flown in. The piece to be played was Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4.
“You’re going to like it, Daddy,” she said after emerging from the final rehearsal that morning. I was surprised, for she never hypes any of her performances. Usually, you can’t get even the shadow of a sneak preview.
So as I took my seat in the auditorium and the birthday girl took hers onstage, I was prepared to be transported.
And I was. Within the first few measures – the spectacular sprint of a beginning to the concerto – I was in Montreal, in the early 1960s. I was sitting in my shorts, playing with a red firetruck. I was the lone child in the house, as my older brothers now went to school. On the other side of room, standing at the ironing board, my mother, her coal-black hair swaying a little as she hummed along to Rachmaninoff.
The LP was Romantic Piano Concertos. She did housework to the strains of such pieces as Variations on a Theme by Paganini, as I studied and restudied the album cover on the floor, in my dad’s armchair, on the sofa (or chesterfield, as they called it). Slashing, vertical, black and white photographs of pianists in ecstasy.
The piece ended. My mother came back to herself, smiled at me from across the room, her lipstick scarlet.
I was on my feet, applauding my daughter.
Thank you, Sergei.
Sweet.
But bittersweet, too.
On that day seven years ago – on her ninth birthday – my mother (her grandmother) died.
This year we did not celebrate her birthday on the proper day. Why? Her youth orchestra was performing a concert. A piano virtuoso from Russia had been flown in. The piece to be played was Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4.
“You’re going to like it, Daddy,” she said after emerging from the final rehearsal that morning. I was surprised, for she never hypes any of her performances. Usually, you can’t get even the shadow of a sneak preview.
So as I took my seat in the auditorium and the birthday girl took hers onstage, I was prepared to be transported.
And I was. Within the first few measures – the spectacular sprint of a beginning to the concerto – I was in Montreal, in the early 1960s. I was sitting in my shorts, playing with a red firetruck. I was the lone child in the house, as my older brothers now went to school. On the other side of room, standing at the ironing board, my mother, her coal-black hair swaying a little as she hummed along to Rachmaninoff.
The LP was Romantic Piano Concertos. She did housework to the strains of such pieces as Variations on a Theme by Paganini, as I studied and restudied the album cover on the floor, in my dad’s armchair, on the sofa (or chesterfield, as they called it). Slashing, vertical, black and white photographs of pianists in ecstasy.
The piece ended. My mother came back to herself, smiled at me from across the room, her lipstick scarlet.
I was on my feet, applauding my daughter.
Thank you, Sergei.
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