Dan stepped on the train and saw Lyla, a stranger.
"Didn't we see each other tomorrow?" he asked. "That's two days in a row."
"What do you mean?"
But he couldn't satisfy her with an answer, and she turned away.
The next day, Lyla saw Dan step on again.
"We saw each other yesterday," she said, "do you remember?"
"Is that a joke?"
She couldn't explain herself, and he turned away.
When they saw each other again, many years later, they didn't speak.
For those of you who don't follow hypothetical games concocted by the pop culture cognoscenti, this one presents the following query:
If we lived in a totalitarian state, and the government mandated that all its citizens wake up to the same song every day, on state radio or television screens or some other universally-viewed device, and fall asleep to a second song every night, and you were granted the right to choose the two songs, what would you pick?
Here are my choices:
Morning - "Hold Me Now" by the Thompson Twins
Evening - "Amie" by Pure Praire League
What are your 'government songs'?
Over that tire sit the one called Chickadee
Known round the way to the steel-fist hickory
Dandelion neck and the thumbtack boots
Dirty pearl gloves and the brandywine suits
Married Lady Crow, she an ugly fine mess
Black as the folds in her crinoline dress
They sulk and she hiss and he drag on the smoke
Coiled like a whip from his turn with the yoke
Hunched like the river man water turned tame
Eyes like the holy man lost to the Name
Scratch in his shoe and a badge from the state
Chances out west and a body in the crate
Angel for his momma gone cotton at her death
Angel didn’t speak though he stumbled at her breath
And don’t he pass nights pickin’ zydeco-song
Purrin’ in the dark like the day ain’t long
There's an older brother on the hill
and the little one buried
given in spirit to red summer
Maybe the words came from a film
A blade needs dulling and there's hope
of melodrama in the downcast eyes
But it's beginning to rain
His leather glove drips clay water
and the family doesn't own a tv
My father adjusted the crooked metal
above ours, and I watched Fred Rogers
sing about the anger humming in my ears
When the static gave ground,
I dug fingernails into the piled rug
olive. drab. corrosive. All hail King Friday
On Sundays we drove past signs-
brown as tree trunks, words burnt orange
dividing the cragged Adirondacks
The older brother is past gratitude
for rain that hides his visions
and how they echo the clouds
In black our man makes heavy
purposed strides to the umber hilltop
You can only stall so long
(When 1990’s thief stole the
Oldsmobile Sedan, he made
some distance and surveyed
the back seat:
Props, puppets, a sweater.
Nobody but nobody
is immune when the pangs explode
like impossible starlight in a cave
Mr. Rogers found his car
returned the next morning)
What else is what remains
I can still see my father's profile
unshaven, and the truck's torn vinyl
My hand won't be balm to his shoulder
and it won't be light. It will be a promise
of time, gathered in the fading color.
To my dark-haired light-eyed L-train pixie with the sun in your mouth the pert flashing lashes and ingenue legs crossed delicately at the ankles- I’m sorry if I stare. It’s a problem ever since I came out wet and wide-eyed gaping at the helpful nurses with their white cleavage that never gave me the chance to cry and I can’t guarantee that in ten years I’ll be attenuated to the faint secondary lines tracing down your slim limbs or the little wrist I imagine encircling with lumbering convex thumb and index while you cradle The New Yorker and raise the toe of one sandaled heel to graze the outside of the worn khaki office pants in slow audacious circles implying a universe of stars and I whisper something in your small clean ear that gives rise to an impish grin spurring sly corners of your lips telegraphing teasing intentions and rolling me over like a train on the flat prairies where Indians hunting buffalo could only watch in fascination or pretend nonchalance at what was about to change them forever but I don’t pretend anything I’m too old for that twenty-five is past the point of feigned composure and I whisper something more that puckers the beginnings of your grin because it’s a little too risqué here in the underground even by your alarmingly liberal tastes and even in the throes a man should take hold of himself but I choose to believe you’re secretly pleased that I’m occasionally beyond such limits and won’t leave for wide-shouldered square-jawed rich-white heroes and think yes, something with an even keel might be worth trying on, something whose tongue wags less when it’s covetous and who might leave you of all people a little pleasantly uncertain because let’s confess, God put us together but gave you the ball and the court, made me something that must repeat a promise not to fall too deep, not to admit a mystic belief in extremes to anyone but myself in dark hours if you’ll only trust there’s some modicum of moderation latent in my chemicals made to regulate these awful salacious whims when they threaten to swamp the poor beach in tsunamis and jag-toothed sharks and with time recede to regular tides overlapping their bounds only once or twice in a blue moon but on balance free of that unreliable word that awful haunting hunting dog I’ve been escaping over months and years that word unreliable my little elfin charm and one day I’ll watch you sunlit silhouetted by our picture window and the whole house translucent transoms and open oriels and when you turn I’ll melt my face to the world’s most benign smile and consult my newspaper or gently correct a child spooning soggy messes onto the covered table playing the good mate like a method actor so forgive me today pixie love if I take the pink lobe of your sweet sugar ear between my teeth just to see the delicious O of your shocked red mouth and make tiny indents you can touch for a fading moment with the whorled tips of reproachful fine fingers.
Dream #12: Indiana
In all the city’s open rooms
where we’d begged
and fought for scraps
the lights reached
a degree of brightness
unfriendly to older eyes
And so I left my girl
and you left yours
to play it straight for a change
My old car, the proven
rusted-gold jalopy
appeared on the outskirts
amid climbing graffiti and darker smoke
that made us glad to drive
west, beneath the big sky
Billowing magnet clouds drew us
past the midwest. We stopped
only once, to rescue a dog-
a staggering starving collie-
before the wide roads and gravid plains
of open earth absolved our speed
His panting head scouted the land
from the broken rear window
and when the last of the gasoline
sputtered to fumes, we found
the perfect spot- a clear rocky stream
and a path to white-veined mountains
Who knew I could build a home
or that you, in functional
plaid dresses, could smile from the
windswept cedar porch and ring
a bell or wring the heavy soil
from my lone pair of jeans?
On all the full-moon nights
we swam naked in the creek
made love on the dry bed
and forgot the hard mornings
of hard faces with stunned desires.
In that place, nothing fades
Our amber-eyed daughter
addressed the hum of the world
with bubbling white laughter
and we named the dog Indiana
for the state of heat and dust
where he'd lain in a pile of bones
What beauty: no more to claim the day,
startled on gray sidewalks,
when thick smiles erupt too sudden
to pretend a strange notion
surging with calm assurance
to the women we clutch
Or my rusted car, sold for scrap
and nameless Indiana
watching an empty road
*The hospital auditor from Kansas bought a special travel purse to protect her from New York's pickpockets during the 3-week sojourn. She used to live in Texas, and just bought her first sailboat. There are places to sail in Kansas; good ones, with strong wind current. She uses Clinton Lake, near Lawrence, water made from a dam.
*Outside Grand Central this morning I found a moleskine notebook splayed on the ground near a rusted trash can. It looked ole and weathered, and, noticing nobody nearby who seemed to be searching, and with time to spare before work, I picked it up and began reading. It was three-quarters full with journal entries by a nameless male someone. I carried it to the Tudor City, found a park bench, and began to read.
The first few pages detailed the minutiae of the man's life- mild complaints about money and women- without delving too far into specifics. The jottings belonged to a sane, somewhat pedantic, typical human, full of self-interest and immersion in his sphere. Uninteresting, for the most part, and I almost returned it to its nook before noticing an entry longer than the others.
It contained a breathless account of how the man encountered a God on 42nd street one morning, near Grand Central, and how it swooped down from a light pole where it had been hunched, waiting. The God was Coyote, of the southwest Indian tribes, a lithe, virile creature who approached with a smile. He wrote in hurried prose that it surprised him to learn the Native Americans were right, among all mythologies and belief systems, if Coyote was being honest moments later when he claimed himself as the one true creator of Earth.
After brief discussion (during which time the passerby floated east and west as if in a dream, unaware of the God and man paused in their midst) Coyote told the man he could be granted one wish. While I read, the maddening question of why the author had been chosen above all others lingered like an itch, but went unanswered, unscratched. He never even seemed to wonder himself.
Without thinking, the man made his wish, for he'd been dreaming it a long time: that for 365 days, ever year, in every corner of the world, each day would ensue with the same exact weather. No changing of seasons; just cool mornings, sunny afternoons reaching eighty degrees, and balmy, breezy evenings, with overnight temperatures never dipping below 55 fahrenheit. Coyote honored the wish and disappeared.
Time went on, and though the climate change was initially viewed as a fun anomaly, in almost no time the awful consequences became apparent. Without seasonal patterns, the agricultural economy collapsed, food shortages spread worldwide, famine ensued, the ice caps began to melt, disease spread with flooding, massive starvation killed millions, warfare erupted in all corners of the globe, and the man with the journal fell into a deep depression. He knew he had to atone, somehow, but could think of no other way than setting off on a journey, searching for Coyote, begging for a reversal.
So he went, and it was days of wandering through ravaged land, always going north, surviving at long odds by sheer, strange luck, before he found himself in a small clearing amid a pine forest, and there Coyote alit from the boughs of a tall tree and met him again. The man begged for a restoration in time to stave off the world's apocalyptic meltdown. Coyote smiled and told him he'd do better, that he'd be willing to reverse time to the day of their first meeting, and have life go on as before, as though there'd been no interruption.
The man thanked him and cried, rejoicing in shouts, carrying on, jubilant, until he noticed Coyote's mocking stillness and understood that the saving grace came with conditions. He waited. Coyote spoke. One must be a martyr for his mistake, a lost saint for the cause. Despairing, the man sunk to his knees. Coyote's grin disappeared, and he stared in the man's eyes and showed him in flickering gray images the extent of the suffering he'd wrought. The man accepted.
"Can I have one more day? To stay in the forest and say goodbye?" he asked.
Coyote laughed. "No."
The last entry of the journal was written in the morning, as he rode the train to work. Time had been restored, and the man knew something would happen to him when he emerged, when his steps fell upon the same spot where the God had first been met. His writing didn't betray as much fear as I expected, but then again it was only writing, and probably couldn't reflect his true state of mind.
I decided not to keep the notebook, but throwing it out seemed uselessly destructive, and so I buried it beneath a pile of mulch in the Tudor Gardens. Whether it's found again, and what the new holder might choose to do with the knowledge...I leave all that to chance.
*Sylvia Plath - all I can think about.
Poems from crazy people with bad pasts, Installment 1:
MOTHER WAS A PEPSI PERSON
FATHER LIKED HIS COKE
MOTHER LIKED TO HUG HER BABY
FATHER LIKED TO CHOKE
MOTHER PRAYED FOR QUIETNIGHTS
WHILE FATHER SPENT HER DOLLARS
INSECTS SEEK THE PORCH'S
LIGHT
WHILE
HUMANS
SEEK
A
COLLAR
I met Brian one week ago today at the Wisteria Pergola in Central Park, close to dusk. Under the trellis, I inhaled the odor of the drooping racemes and tried to put a name on the memory it roused. The exercise veered between light curiosity and impending panic; was it a chance incident in youth, superfluous and easily forgotten, or something more crucial that fate had stirred from obscurity, needed to complete the shifting puzzle? But the harder I try to unearth an insistent memory, over-saturating in the clues, flailing in the muddy water, the more resistent it becomes, annealing, only to step from the shadows much later in the off moment of revelation. As the nebulous past stayed on the periphery, shrouded, Brian emerged in a thin, orange jacket, faded blue jeans, and heavy black boots. His shaggy, almost curly gray hair hung to his shoulders, and a light fuzz of the same color covered his face. "That's wisteria?" "Yeah. I'm trying to figure out what the smell reminds me of." He let gravity take his legs pitter-patter down the slight slope, and pulled up with his hands on his hips, his eyes on the pendulous flowers. Shorter than me, he had yellowish teeth and a shrewd expression. "Pretty," he said. "You don't happen to know what that tree is, do you?" I asked, pointing ten yards to the west where a short, spreading, gnarled tree grew wild on a fenced hill, its muscled branches moving oddly downward as they twisted at random, acute angles. "No idea," he said, squinting his eyes. "Where you from?" "Upstate New York." "Where upstate?" "You ever heard of Lake Placid?" "I've been to Lake Placid." "Yeah? I'm from a town ten minutes away." "Saranac?" "Saranac Lake, yeah." "Calm up there." "Yeah, it's beautiful." "I wouldn't call it beautiful. Just serene." "What were you doing up there?" Brian had been in the north country to paint flag poles. In the 70s, with no money and no prospects, he'd answered a newspaper ad advertising dangerous work. Since then he'd been all over the country, attached by harness to the long, silver projections, freshening them with a new coat, burnishing America's chipped, flaking image. It wasn't great money, he said, but it allowed him to travel. He'd grown up in the city. "You miss it up there?" he asked. "Not too much. It's nice to go back, but boring if you stay." "The city's great," he said. "Didn't used to be safe around here." He pointed to a black bicycle a few feet away, apparently his. "Used to have to carry a snub-nose .32." "Why?" He leaned in close, confidential. "N*****s," he said, nodding once. He said that the poor white population, all the ones who would fight back, had left by the mid-70s, leaving only middle-class people who wouldn't stick up for themselves. They were terrorized by homeless or drugged-up blacks, which is why he needed the pistol. I asked if he'd ever had to use it. "Took it out once or twice, never fired." He went on to tell me the country was screwed if Obama got elected president, because blacks had huge egos. I steered the conversation to his travels. He'd been to every state but Alaska and Hawaii. He asked about my goals in the city, and I told him about writing. He said there was no money in short stories anymore because all but a few of the literary magazines had gone out of business, and that I should take a Wall Street job for the security. "Or even write for all these advertisers," he said, gesturing at the high-rises to the west. "At least you're still in the practice of writing. Neil Simon did that shit for years before he became a playwright." I told him he was probably on the mark, and I'd think about it. "You married?" he asked next. I said no. "Find a virgin," he advised. "These girls, out there... they've had twenty dicks, you think they're going to be satisfied with just yours?" "Virgins are hard to find these days," I said. "No they aren't. Just go steal one from the churches." Brian had a hacking cough, and when we finally introduced ourselves by name, his hand was clammy with sweat or fever. I told him I had to get going, and my right palm burned with the compulsive need to be washed. "Before you take off," he said, "let me give you my poem for New York." He cleared his throat and looked away, watching the foot traffic by the marble fountain. I don't remember most of the poem, but it was fast, descriptive, rhyming verse, enumerating New York's various landmarks and extolling its rough-and-tumble qualities. Near the end, he referenced the city's eight million children, of all colors, from all places, who "all answer to the same name..." Before the reveal, he paused dramatically, coughed again, and trotted out his best New Yorker bark: "Eh!" I didn't believe he wrote the poem himself, but searches since haven't produced anything, so it's possible. At the time, I laughed at the punch line, obligated and somewhat appreciative of the effort, and waited until I'd hit 71st and Central Park West before cleaning up.
This morning on the subway, a small, tow-headed boy ran on at Montrose Avenue and took the seat next to mine. He leaned his Justice League backpack into my side, oblivious to the adult constraints on human proximity. His mother followed, carrying another, smaller child on her back- a blond little girl, maybe two years old, sticking out her lower lip and waving her tiny right hand in frantic circles.
The mother wore a short skirt and black stockings, and her straight brown hair looked unwashed. She was young, not over thirty-three, let's say, but had a slightly haggard morning face. Understandable, of course. She began telling her son about the longest train in the world, the Trans-Siberian Railroad. "It runs through Russia, all the way to Japan," she said. "No, not Japan....Korea."
The boy looked on, fascinated. "Does it take seventy days?"
"Probably not that many. Maybe ten or so," she said. "But it doesn't even stop at night."
That fact delighted the boy, who reached into his school backpack and took out a catalogue of Star Wars toys. I noticed then that he wore reddish pajama pants decorated with smudged strawberries and raspberries. Although I admired the mother, on first impression, for her liberal bearing and good humor amid the difficult undertaking, I couldn't forgive this transgression on her son's burgeoning social life. The little girl, now on her mother's lap, said "ba ba ba ba."
"How delightful!" said the mother, using a haughty movie voice. Her son, engrossed in the tiny pictures of Darth Vader and other heroes, ignored both. "Now I sound like Katherine Hepburn," the mother said to no one. I turned and gave a sympathetic smile, even though I don't think I've ever seen a Katherine Hepburn movie.
When the boy closed the catalogue, I tried to glance at the name on the address label, wondering if I could google the mother and read all about her life on a personal website. Her name was Judith, and the last name started with a V, but I couldn't get a clear look at the rest. I lost interest anyway. I put on headphones and tuned out. A few minutes later, the boy crooked his foot behind my leg, and I felt the intense discomfort that comes when a social taboo is on the verge of being violated. I ahem'ed with mild vigor, and the attractive girl standing in front of me laughed at the spectacle, but the mother or son didn't notice.
The decision to stop caring was easily made, and the regions of the brain dealing with matters analogous led me to the memory of how I sought physical contact with my father. It usually took the form of violence- the male comfort zone- crawling like a cat or super-spy along the top of the couch while dad watched the news. I'd poise above with a delirious grin, trying to contain my bursting giggles, dad unsuspecting or pretending at it when my springy weight fell straight down, landing on his wide shoulders to hang like a pet monkey, writhing in ecstatic laughter. My younger brothers all did the same.
It occurred to me that a certain willful ignorance about the lives of others isn't necessarily as arrogant as I once thought. I'd put pressure on myself to notice everything, take a piece of life from everyone. But it's not always meant to be. On the 4-train uptown, an older, round-faced woman with permed hair of the 80s variety, wearing a mid-length pleated black skirt with no stockings- a fact that awkwardly highlighted her bright, white skin and bruised kneecaps- leaned forward with an absent-minded expression that could be misinterpreted as dumb smugness.
Whoever she was, I didn't care, and couldn't. But there isn't anything to feel guilty about- she doesn't care about me either. Each spider's web can only catch so many flies. Others are meant to hit the sides, ricochet outward, breathe a sigh of relief at the close call, and be on their way. And still others are meant to soar miles above or below, unaware of your little web, bound for their own.
Another example: the RDS delivery man, a sullen, heavy, pasty-white man with a face like a fat, cynical child. He comes in every morning in his hunter-green uniform, bearing the packages in both arms like a miserable burden, and turns to give me an exasperated sigh. The short hairs on his head move slightly with the hallway's compressed air current, and he sulks off to the main entrance. "Fuck you," I mouth at him after he's turned away. Next door, I can hear him transferring the packages and asking for a signature. "You know the drill," he mumbles in his low, disaffected moan.
This man probably has a story. He may be an expert on model trains, or maybe he's a champion paintball player. But unless he goes crazy one morning and guns me down where I sit, our paths will only make this daily, superficial crossing.
I don't know who Petrova Elementary School was named for. It's one of the most common Russian surnames, and Saranac Lake must have had a doctor or other wealthy person in residence and willing to endow when the school was constructed in 1924. For a school, it's fairly typical; red brick exterior, wide, bright hallways, high windows in the classrooms, and filthy gum-stained carpet everywhere. I attended Petrova until third grade, when my mother thought I needed a stiffer academic challenge and enrolled me in St. Bernard's Catholic School, where I learned how to fist-fight. At Petrova I learned how to swear. Down a hill past the cafeteria wing, huge athletic greens, including the high school's baseball and football fields, stretched along LaPan Highway. When I played modified football in seventh and eighth grade, a handicapped student named Matt sat in a wheelchair near the highway, with his aide at his back, watching us stretch. Our coach had us yell "Hi, Matt!" in unison at the beginning of every practice. These fields are where we had recess for an hour every day. They'd make us sit patiently in the cafeteria until our time was up, and then, though it sounds cliche, we'd charge out the doors, screaming, run or fall down the hill, and burst onto the fields. The girls stayed on the tarmac or on the sandy playground, where they talked in groups or jump-roped or drew hopscotch with chalk. On the fields, there were early minutes of frenzy and chaos before the athletes among us organized into sides for that day's game. In the fall and winter, tackle football was the sport of choice, and aside from brief spring forays into kickball and softball, it ruled year-round. A soccer game also went on concurrently, and a mild rivalry sprung up between the two sides. Football players were "jocks," soccer players were "fags." My best friend at the time was Pat, a chubby, ruddy boy with a megaphone voice. He marched around with his chest out, maintaining order and barking at digressors. He spent a lot of time at my house, and one day after school when I felt terrible about everyone saying I had a big head, he consoled me. "I know what it's like," he said. "Everyone calls me Fat Pat." Along with being one of the best athletes in our grade, Pat was world-class at swearing. "Dave, what the fuck?!" he'd yell at someone who'd dropped a pass or thrown an interception, with special red-faced fury booming out on the last syllable. The word was usually accompanied by an incredulous expression, both hands raised in exasperation. "Fuck you," came the timid response, and Pat would only shake his thick head. Most of us on the field would copy the way Pat swore, with varying levels of success. The exception were the kids from Bloomingdale, the rough-around-the-edges outskirt of our town, where swearing was learned from birth and done with a hard stare, slowly, brimming with violence. They cursed for something other than fun. The rest of us just loved the way it sounded, the brief image of toughness we felt, especially after spitting out "fuck," a word so harsh and beautiful it seemed to sum up a thousand emotions and contain as many meanings. I resisted at first, because my mom taught me not to swear and I felt guilty. But it didn't take long to succumb to the appeal, and I remember the thrill at my first tentative foray. I was playing quarterback and threw an out-pattern to Pat, who looked upfield too early and dropped the ball. He stopped on the spot, grimaced and looked at his hands. As he ran back to the offensive side, I summoned all my courage, stared him down, and said "what was that shit?" It came out awkwardly, with the beginning swearer's over-emphasis and timidity. "Fuck you," he said, and shoved me. "I'm quarterback." Pat moved after fifth grade. His mother had family in Maine, and finally got enough money to get a place near them. They lived on an island with no electricity, and I didn't stay in touch with Pat for very long. The next and last time I saw him was at a varsity football game my freshman year. A group of us in the bleachers noticed him leaning against the rope at the sideline. He looked mostly the same, a little thinner, but with the same ruddy complexion and trademark scowl. "That's Pat," someone said. I didn't know what I could say to him, forgetting that it could be anything, so I stayed glued to the seat. Pat stood hunched on the sideline, hat pulled low, enduring his lonely homecoming. All of us knew him, but nobody said hello. But under his tutelage, swearing became second nature, something I could do efficiently and selectively, never slipping in front of a parent or authority figure. By fourth grade, I was a prodigy. When my mother put me in St. Bernard's, my friend Johnny and I fancied ourselves the toughest guys in school. I had a swagger in my step that beat anything I could have gotten away with at Petrova, where the Bloomingdale kids would have wasted little time burying me for that kind of attitude. But St. Bernard's was home to a lighter breed of person, and we ruled the roost for more than a year, starting and winning fistfights at will. That all ended in fifth grade. On a warm day in March, we were playing Pickle on the tarmac, and I accidentally knocked Joe Nickastrini's glasses off his face when I swipe tagged him. A massive, strong, quiet Italian kid, Joe was know more for his humor than anything else, and as his glasses hit the ground, I said "you're out." Joe exploded. "Don't touch my glasses!" he shouted in his deep bass, face quivering with rage. He punched me unexpectedly on the mouth, and I fell to the ground as he charged, trying to cover myself up while he kicked with his tree-trunk legs. I saw blood on my hand and panicked, rolled away, and yelled "help!" Johnny came and tried to stop Joe's progress, but he got tossed aside for his trouble, and it took two aides to restrain the fuming Italian. After that, my reputation as a tough-guy was tarnished, and I decided fighting wasn't my style. In sixth grade, I was back at Petrova for Middle School, and back to playing football. One lunch hour, a scrawny, quiet, spectacled kid named Ronald Rykker said he wanted to play. Everyone's instinct was to say no, and the word "nerd" was thrown around, but I was feeling like a samaritan and vouched for him. On our first drive, he stood open in the endzone and I threw him the ball. By a miracle, he caught it and held on, and our whole team erupted at the surprising success. I remember the glow on his face, and his strange words: "I'm gonna do it again!" And he did, near the end of recess, setting off a flurry of celebration and infuriating the other team. I felt high on myself after that, but Ronald didn't play with us again. Later that year, Ronald somehow burnt his face on a waffle iron. I gave him the nickname "paper," because he was thin, white, and had lines. It stuck.
Tonight. Chance of rain. Mariners in town. Wang dealing, Yankees needing a win.
I'm going to the Stadium hip hip hooray.
Tomorrow. Chance of rain. Berko in town. Me straight banging from 3, people ready for hoops.
I'm going to the Prospect Courts hip hip hooray.
Sunday. Chance of rain. Cherry trees in bloom. Two kids jonesin' for some tree-spottin'.
I'm going to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens for a Tree-Walk hip hip hoorah.
What a few days.
In 1932 and 1980, Lake Placid, New York played host to the Winter Olympics. The "Miracle on Ice," America's hockey victory against the Russians, remains the most memorable triumph of those two fortnights, but Whiteface Mountain, home of 1980's Alpine Skiing events, shouldn't be forgotten.
Nor should the resort bearing its name, The Whiteface Club, on whose golf course I worked as part of the maintenance crew for three summers in high school. My stepfather belonged to the club and golfed every summer morning, struggling to break 80. Through some pathway of tenuous connections, he managed to secure me a job under Ron, the crew supervisor.
As the youngest member of the maintenance staff, at 16, I was legally (and intrinsically) unfit to drive the various mowing machines. This left me the responsibility of tending to all the grass they couldn't reach. With a push-mower, I would struggle up the small hillocks on the sides of greens, tees, and bunkers, averting my face to avoid the spray of rocks shooting from the blades, and keeping an eye out for golfers, a species notoriously intolerant of noise distraction. My partner, Corey, the boss' son and one of the town's star athletes, was an easygoing 18-year old who had a habit of chasing squirrels in our Workman (a miniature pick-up truck with only 4 gears and no cover on the cab) and showing up to work hung over.
Corey had the bearing and accent of a local, but he was intelligent in the cynical, almost cruel way of someone who exceeds their surroundings but will never leave. We sped along the course, my hands braced against the metal dash, Corey hunched over the wheel, seemingly asleep, from hole to hole. The course stretched out in long, difficult sprawls of green hilly terrain, tainted by brown splotches of dying grass, carved amid a forest of pine, oak, and maple. When we needed a break, Corey drove through the woods on unmarked paths, searching for small glades where we'd rest. He already had a hacking cough from smoking, and he'd often seek these sanctuaries in order to vomit what remained of last night's alcohol. His retches mixed with birdsong and the crackle of dead leaves, a strange cacophony in the shafts of sunlight penetrating the tree cover.
Corey, a pitcher, could throw a stone with uncanny accuracy. The majority of his targets were birds. He never threw hard- just enough to scare it from its branch. Once, spotting a blue jay high up in the branches, he bet me I couldn't make it fly away with one throw. Normally I didn't like to bother the birds. I remembered once, as a child at my grandmother's yard, shooting at a red plastic cup with a cheap slingshot I'd bought at a county fair. At a distance of fifteen feet, I hit the cup one out of ten times if I was lucky. Later, on her porch, I spotted a bird sitting on an electric wire forty yards away. I loaded the slingshot with my last stone, and sent it arcing without taking close aim. It described a perfect parabola and hit the target in a flutter of wings. The bird flapped and propelled itself in obscene, crippled motions, and gravity took it downward in a spiral. It hit the ground and died. For a week, guilt lingered.
But this time, I couldn't resist the challenge and a flash of ingenuity. I took the bet and filled my hand with as many stones as I could hold. Proud of my clever strategy, I pegged them to the heights. One of the scattering rocks hit the jay, and it crashed to a lower branch and then to our feet, close enough for us to spot the crimson spot on its breast. The bird limped away and crawled up a tree. Corey shook his head. "Better finish what you started." Watching the bird, I looked for signs that the wound was temporary. But it couldn't fly, and only struggled to hop from branch to branch. Though it was pure mockery on his part, I realized Corey was right. I chased the bird through the woods, attempting to put it out of its misery and spare a slow death.
Unfortunately, the bird climbed higher and made itself a difficult target. Only by the pure, glaring blue could I track its progress. It took a half hour and several ineffectual hits, along with severe terror on the bird's part, before I gave up the pursuit. In the Workman, Corey waxed philosophical. "It'll die eventually," he said. I braced myself against the dash and didn't say anything.
The second summer at Whiteface there was a severe drought in upstate New York. I spent three months wearing a rubber rain coat, standing on greens, spraying them down with a hose. When golfers came by, I'd stand politely to the side, a yellow oddity in the oppressive heat. At the end of the day, my wrist and thumb ached from holding the nozzle, and my hands were swollen and pruny from the water. After a few weeks, I began securing the nozzle with wire, which spared some pain. But despite the constant attentions of the maintenance staff, the greens died slowly over July and August.
Austin, the oldest member of the crew, was deaf. He drank all day from a filthy coke bottle, and responded to every query with a loud "EH?" He wore a faded blue painter's cap and odd, pink slacks- some combination of pajamas and windpants. The other crew members accused him of selective hearing, as his deafness would worsen when he was asked for a favor. At lunch breaks, sitting in the large, oil-stained shed, he bore the brunt of the aggressive humor circulating through the room. At every insult, I'd watch his face as he sat next to the boss in cheap blue folding chair, and it was impossible to tell among his twitches and silence if he could hear at all.
Mark had a red drinker's face and a burly, thick body. The constant snarl on his face reflected the unabating meanness of his character. He picked me as his target early, accusing me of slacking, arrogance, and a variety of other offenses. Twenty years his junior, I ignored him in a manner which was no doubt interpreted as further arrogance. It came to a head one day as we shoveled stones into the Workman, preparing to fill in parts of the cart paths that had been washed away in the previous night's rain. "Hey," he said, turning to me with sweat pouring down his forehead. "Can you pick up the fucking pace?" I told him to go fuck himself. He raised the shovel and threatened me. Corey, nearby, ran over. He got in Mark's face. "He's just a kid!" he yelled. "He's just a fucking kid." Although Corey was only two years older, I realized, watching the respect he commanded and the weary drop of his shoulders after the confrontation, that he was right.
Later, parked in the woods, feeling young and weak, I told him he didn't have to step in for me, that I could have handled it myself. Instead of responding, he talked about Mark. "A few years ago, he went to his dad's place after work. The old man was dead in his recliner, blood on his shirt, shotgun on the floor." He lit up a cigarette. "Mark's been different since." Then he turned the key, the engine sputtered to life, and we drove off.
My last summer at Whiteface, I worked with Jason. I'd turned eighteen over the winter, and he was fifteen. Jason hated his stepfather and wanted to race cars. He had dark hair and an impish smile, and wore a large Yankees hat pulled low. His arms were scrawny and long. As a partner he didn't compare to Corey, because he was scared of being fired and forced me to work harder, but I liked him anyway. One afternoon, we devised a brilliant plan to get back at a lone golfer who'd screamed at us for starting the Workman when he teed off on the third hole.
The sixth hole at Whiteface is a long, dogleg left par 5. After the first shot- downhill, around the trees, into a gulley- you're faced with an uphill second and third. The green rests on a slight downslope past the top of the hill, and is therefore invisible from below. In order to access the putting surface, carts have to travel a curved path through the woods, during which journey the course is obscured from view by thick pines.
When the angry golfer hit his third shot, I watched the ball land on the green, thirty feet from the hole. I couldn't see him below, but Jason signalled with a loud burst of the Workman's horn when he was safely on the cart path. I raced onto the green, pocketed the ball, and sprinted back into the forest with plenty of time to spare. Slipping through the trees, I ran until I came to the road. Jason drove back to the sixth tee, to avoid overtaking the golfer and arousing suspicion, and from there to the road, where he picked me up. We sped to the seventh tee and waited, pretending to fill our mowers from the pink gas containers. When the golfer emerged from the woods above the sixth green, still puzzled, he paused and scrawled an illegitimate number in his scorecard.
The next day, we repeated the act with a slight variation. Watching a foursome's iron shots land in various positions around the green, I hunched in the woods and awaited the Workman's horn. This time, instead of stealing the ball, I placed one of the Titleists directly in the hole. Again, we waited for the golfers to emerge, and when they did, one wore a dazed smile. His friends shook their heads. A couple days later, we put two balls from a single foursome in the hole, and the following day, brimming with confidence, we put three in the hole and stole the fourth. This last maneuver aroused suspicion, and a general warning came down from the Club Pro that anyone caught tampering with golf balls would be immediately fired.
Some time in June, word got around that I would be attending Duke in the fall, a secret I'd vigorously tried to guard. Small-town resentment flared, as I knew it would, and my isolation was complete. I spent lunchtimes reading by myself, and attempting to catch a frequent chipmunk (named Chippy by the staff) beneath a trash can. I devised a trap consisting of peanut butter, crackers, a rake, and thin rope, and secured his trust over three weeks. When I finally nabbed him, I earned the very brief admiration of my fellow workers for the first and only time. I let Chippy go, and watched with envy as he dashed over the shed's concrete floor.
In late July, I discovered that Jason, in his first year, out-earned me by three dollars per hour. I attempted to rectify the situation, and was told by the big boss that Jason worked harder and deserved the pay. In fact, because he lacked the strength to push the heavy mowers up the steep hills, I had to do all the difficult jobs and exert twice the effort. But instead of arguing, I quit and became a dishwasher and prep cook at a restaurant called Tail O' The Pup.
Went to courts at 5:30, weather satisfactory, nobody around. Only handball courts full.
Small Hispanic kid and his sister/girlfriend followed me to court. Shot with me for twenty minutes. I asked their names but now forget. We played one on one. He won 5-4 on my generosity.
They left and for an hour nobody came. Shot hoops in waning sun.
Came home, could not watch game 7 of Bruins-Canadiens. Do not get the Versus channel. Very upsetting.
Improv show tonight. Expect it to reflect class.
Stuck in L train for 40 minutes this morning. Saw person with tattoo of person on neck. Asked who it was. Name forgotten. Buckminster Phillet? Something like that. Person had other tattoos, wore rasta hat, red marijuana eyes.
Four rednecks are fishing. One of them, called Jones, dies of a heart attack. The other three rednecks consider.
"Well Elijah," says one redneck to another, "you oughter be the one to tell the widow Jones. You're the one's good with words."
"I ain't even know the widow Jones," says Elijah.
"Even so," says the other, "he's right. You're keen of speech."
"Alright," says Elijah with a sigh.
Elijah goes alone to Jones' house. He rings the doorbell. A woman answers.
Elijah clears his throat. "You the widow Jones?"
"My name's Jones," says the woman, "but I'm no widow."
"The fuck you ain't."
This blog is now about basketball in Bushwick. Specifically, the brand of Bushwick basketball played at Gilbert Ramirez Park on McKibben Street.
The court sits between a children's playground and a chain-link fence, shadowed by old warehouses in a neighborhood at the edge of gentrification. The playground features a mock-subway system complete with signs for the P Train, and on the other side of the fence Hispanic kids play handball against a massive cement wall. A sprawling junkyard stretches across the one-way street, and young plane trees are scattered inside the park. Project housing is about six blocks away, and Bed-Stuy isn't much further, but an organic grocery store is closer still, and signs in the large windows of converted lofts nearby advertise cheap studio space for artists. The west side of the park has a narrow community garden filled with weeds, wheelbarrows, planter's soil, and clay pots. A ten-foot wrought iron fence, black and spiked, encloses the whole space.
Today's feature: Player Profile.
NICK
Nick is a white male in his mid-to-late thirties. He lives in my building a block from the park, and I've played with him about five times to date. When I first met Nick, I was shooting for teams with a group of black and hispanic kids who played high school ball together and are now in their first year of college. Before Nick came through the gate, they spotted him jogging down from Bogart Street, dribbling his ball. Nick was wearing the same outfit he's worn every time I've seen him play since- a gray sweat suit and a white do-rag. "Ohhhh shit," said Nelson, one of the college kids. He pointed. "Here's our boy."
Nick is short and thin, and moves with a sort of spastic quickness. He has a perpetual five-o'clock shadow, and sullen eyes. His posture is somewhat hunched. When he jogged through the gate and onto the court, he looked up quickly and shouted, "yo, what's game?" Without stopping to listen, he took two hard dribbles toward the basket and pulled up abruptly. His jumpshot sailed well past the rim.
Nick plays point guard, and he's more or less competent while handling the ball. When he finds himself with an open lay-up, he usually propels the ball with far too much gusto, and rarely converts. His jumpshot is erratic, at best, and his technique is odd to behold. Jumping in the air and kicking his legs forward, he holds the ball at the top of his head for an illogically long time, releasing the shot only milliseconds before landing. This results in a shot that is completely without arc, and follows a flat path that typically ends with a hard collision against the front rim.
He often finds himself in arguments in the middle of a game, and is a favorite target of locals. That first day we played, he often referred to the ball as a "rock," and Lewis, a black kid who spends his time between points doing a wobbly-knee dance, kept saying he'd prefer to play with a ball. "Yeah bro," said Nick, "I'm really droppin' mad slang with 'rock.'"
On our way back to the building, after our team lost by a considerable margin, Nick told me he was a keyboard player. Kanye West had asked him to play on his latest album, and offered him millions, but Nick had to decline. He explained to me that he was in the process of trying to build his own empire, and playing with Kanye would put that dream in jeopardy. "It was a heart decision, you know, brother?"
When I played with Nick Monday, and he'd missed most of the shots he'd taken in the course of a game, he told me this was just the beginning. "It's only March," he said, "by the time August comes around you'll think Ray Allen's out here. Every shot drops."
Last weekend, I played four-on-four with a group of white guys who mostly live in the artist lofts on McKibben Street or in my building. When the guys playing are mostly white, the rules tend to change slightly. The biggest shift is that every ball has to be taken out past the three-point line after a change of possession, regardless of whether it hits the rim. When a newcomer joined the game and mistakenly shot a lay-up after a stolen pass without bringing it out, Nick said, "nah man, we're playing white boy rules."
"You're white, too, dude," said Laurence (or L.B.), a white, 6'6", late-twenties player with a decent post game and a great shot. "I hate to say it, but you're white."
"Yo, I ain't white, bro," Nick shot back. "I'm Arabic."
He caught up with me again for the walk home. "I hope y'all didn't take me wrong when I said 'white boy rules,'" he told me. "I ain't racist, bro. Your white's side your right side, right? Nah, I don't mean it like that, but you know what I'm saying."
"I get you," I said.
Nick and I found ourselves on the same team in a full-court, 5-on-5 game yesterday. We won 22-16.
Personal results, 3/26: Team won 22-16. Miserable shooting performance. Shoelace broke mid-game. Hit winning three-pointer- only made jump shot of the game. On the plus side, several beautiful passes.
Okay, so a few posts back I wrote that lengthy and sadly misguided piece about why I was supporting Hillary Clinton.
A couple days after, my viewpoint began to change, and today I sit at my desk completely in support of Obama, and terrified that he might not win the nomination, much less the general election. Luckily, the shift has come about in time to influence my hordes of Pennsylvania readers.
But how did it happen?
First, I have to admit that I didn't know all the facts when I pulled the blog-trigger for Hillary. I wasn't aware, for one, that Obama took absolutely no money from lobbies, while she took lots. This leads to a very simple and very obvious conclusion, which is that Obama is more deeply committed to labor and, if elected, will be less indebted to big business and their lobbies.
I call that an obvious conclusion because it's well-known that Bill Clinton has one of the worst labor track records of any democratic president in history, and of course his wife will have the same money connections and the same vested interests.
Jobs, wages, and the prevention of corporate abuse is, to me, the biggest issue on the table. If we're able to resuscitate a dying economy, it will come through forcing big businesses to keep jobs in the country, and to show some financial accountability. It will come from imposing fair taxes on business, too. Hillary won't do that, Obama might.
The other big factor is that I was intensely cynical of his idealism, and his supporters. I wanted someone tried and true, I said. The first and most glaring hole in that argument is that Hillary isn't tried and true. In her time as First Lady, she only proved that she can make enemies. The way she's conducted herself in this campaign, with the litany of cheap shots thrown at Obama, shows that not much has changed. I like her ideas, but not her record. I wildly overestimated her past accomplishments, while wildly underestimating Barack's.
But more importantly, I underestimated the idea of hope. Sure, his campaign is based somewhat on rhetoric and the idea of sweeping change. But why not support that? Why not believe in a guy who, so far, has done everything right? Is it a fear of being hurt, of Obama proving himself insincere and the rest of us feeling tricked? Maybe that's it. But honestly, America is in such dire straits, on the verge of such an ugly future and in the midst of such a decaying present, that it's almost criminal not to throw your support behind the one guy who might have a shot at changing things. I committed that crime with Hillary, who is, at best, a status-quo candidate.
On the subject of fear, here's a great article by Michael Chabon, one of my favorite authors, called "Obama vs. the Phobocracy." Short, editorial, and well worth reading:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/03/AR2008020302526.html
Long story short, Barack is a politcian who finally seems to believe in something other than himself, and who gives America a chance at recovering from eight awful years. I believe in him, I made a mistake with the Hillary nonsense, and I'm fully on board the Obama train.
I think it would be almost tragic if he didn't win, another stalk of hope cut in its infancy by the scythe of skepticism and fear brandished by media, big business, and the power structure in Washington. We need an idealistic outsider with legitimate belief to right the ship. That's Obama, and nobody else. I'm fired up and ready to go.
I tell you: every sentence starts with I.
I woke up at 9 and went on my computer. I felt bad from the night before. I listened to "Killing the Blues" 20-30 times in a row. I ate a bowl of honey nut cheerios. I made a dvd. I thought about reading. I made myself a sandwich. I went outside to play basketball, but the courts were still covered in snow. I stared at them for a while and tried to hatch a plan. I walked around industrial Bushwick, looking inside mechanic shops. I stepped into the garage at Little Man Auto Body and Truck Repair four blocks from home. I spoke with the Hispanic man about a metal shovel that looked unused. I also spotted a push broom. I convinced him to let me borrow them. I left my basketball and water bottle as collateral, though the water bottle wasn't necessary. I walked back to the courts. I spent the next hour shoveling one half of the court. I used the push broom to get rid of the excess water. I considered that this is what people do when they have ennui. I wished for my water bottle. I finished and returned the equipment and got my ball and water back. I tried to play but it was still a little wet. Nothing is absolute. I just shot free throws. I went back in after a half hour or so. I listened to "Killing the Blues" a couple more times. I read a book that documents book-banning incidents in America. I opened the windows because I thought the apartment smelled smoky. I imagined a short story where boys at a school force the innocent child of book-banning parents to sit in a classroom at lunch and listen to them read the book in question. I went back outside to play basketball before it got dark. I told a black kid how to hop the fence because it was after five o'clock. I shot with him until it was dark. I asked about his life, and he claimed to be the MVP of the NYC Private School Athletic Association as a sophomore. I didn't necessarily believe him, but he was very good. I googled him this morning, and it turns out he is a good player for the JV team, but not Varsity. I went in and had missed calls to meet a friend for dinner. I took a shower. I read more of the book-banning book. I went and bought lunch meat and wheat bread at the organic grocery store. I thought about watching The Wire or a netflix movie. I chose to read a different book, 1919. I messed around on the computer until midnight. I went to bed and slept well.
I had a big day off.
A lot of people will be chiming in with their thoughts on the 80th Academy Awards, so I thought I'd better join their ranks in case there's a party or a club. Normally I don't enjoy the Oscars, but this time around I was a little psyched because it was a great year for "mainstream" Hollywood movies, and I felt that, by and large, the best were nominated. It's easier to write a bunch of bullet points than to pen a cohesive piece, so here we go... *Armed with a tube of cookie dough and a six-pack of Dogfish Head "Raison D'Etre" beer, ("Reason For Being" - a great name for alcohol), I settled in at 7:30 to catch some of the pre-show hoopla. Fifteen minutes later, my step-dad called, and we yelled and cursed about Duke basketball right up to the broadcast. Summary: Nolan Smith should replace Slow Whitey, aka Greg Paulus, at the point. *Jon Stewart is a great host. My favorite one-liner came when he noted that even Norbit had earned a nomination. "I think it's great. Too often, the Academy ignores movies that aren't good." *I caught snippets of Barbara Walters' pre-show interviews. She is a smug, preaching, self-satisfied woman. I hope I spelled her first name wrong. *Going in to the show, I thought the Most Obvious award was Daniel Day-Lewis for best actor. But as the musical nominees were performed over the course of three hours, that honor was transferred to Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova for "Falling Slowly" from Once. It was so clearly superior to the other four songs that I would have been irrationally angry if they'd lost. At that point, I was on Raison D'Etre number four. Also, they couldn't find anything better than the three, count 'em three, songs from Enchanted? Each one was a lame-o 1950s cookie cutter show tune. And I like Amy Adams- she's beautiful and apparently talented- but it's got to be embarrassing to sing that "Happy Working Song" in front of anything but a room full of five year-olds. That performance narrowly beat out the adoring gaze of Cormac McCarthy's son for "Most Uncomfortable Moment." When the folks from Once won the Oscar, though, it was one of the night's best moments. Gotta love seeing the Irish take a prize, and they seemed genuinely thrilled to be there. My Gaelic heart thumped with pride to hear the brogue-ish "Tanks" on film's biggest stage. It also led to one of Stewart's funniest quips of the night- "Man, that guy was so arrogant"- and a classy gesture when he brought Marketa back out after the break to say her thank-yous. *Nice to see Javier Bardem take the inevitable Supporting Actor prize. I'm not quite sure how the role of Anton Chigurh is considered a supporting actor and not one of the two male leads, but so be it. I got a few goosebumps when he spoke to his mother in Spanish. Then I wiped some cookie dough off my shirt. *The best non-Oscar moment of the night came from an unlikely source- a JCPenney's commercial. The ad was introducing a new line of clothing for dudes who forget to take the tag off their jeans, but the song caught my attention immediately. It was a beautiful folk-ish tune with great harmony between male and female voices. I looked it up online, and it turned out to be a cover of a song called "Killing the Blues" by country-music legend John Prine. The collaborating artists are Allison Krauss of Union Station fame, whose voice I've loved since O Brother Where Art Thou, and former Led Zeppelin (edit for KQE: LEGENDARY) front man Robert Plant. Apparently these two released an album together in October. Who knew? Anyway, I downloaded the song and it lives up to its billing and then some. I hate to describe music, since you can't experience it any way but the right way, so I'll just say that if you want the song, leave a comment with your e-mail and I can send it to you. On first listen, the rest of the album sounds pretty good too. *Anybody else sick of movies about rich people, past or present, in England? How much mileage can we get from the make-emotions-seem-more-profound-since-they're-coming -from-an-obnoxiously-repressed-culture formula? And on that note, what the hell is Woody Allen's problem? His bread and butter is making movies about neurotic Jewish people in New York. I'm not saying an artist shouldn't branch out, but it's hard to watch the ongoing train wreck of his murder-obsessed British period. The ghost scene in Match Point, to take one example, is one of the worst ham-fisted moments in cinema, and it's hard to imagine the guy who made Annie Hall and Manhattan stooping to that level. *Tilda Swinton is weird. I want to have tea at her home. I want her to silently judge me from across a table littered with controversial objects she dares me to comment on. I want to kiss her and have her bite me hard on the lower lip, and when I step back and say "wha-", she is already walking away. I want to try in vain to decipher her poetic non-sequiturs at a fountain in the middle of America. She will only smile and twirl in the wind, and when I least expect it, she will push me into the fountain and leap in after me. Her striking red hair will splay out in the water, and she will whisper "I am a Naiad." She will leave me at a Greyhound bus station in Cleveland, wearing a white dress she bought from a runaway bride in Toledo. Tilda Swinton is weird. *I think Marion Cotillard won by default this year. I'm not saying she wasn't great. I didn't see La Vie en Rose, but I heard excellent things. It's just that I can't imagine a French actress winning the award for a French movie in a year where there was a legitimate American contender. Who was her competition this year? Nobody was going to pick Ellen Page, good as she was. Too young. Laura Linney played herself, as usual, in The Savages. Effective, but not Best Actress material. Elizabeth: The Golden Age was a bad movie, so forget Cate Blanchett. I was hoping Julie Christie, one of my favorite actresses from the golden decade (70s) of American film, would win, but her movie was a low-profile Canadian affair that didn't stand much of a chance. Good for Marion and all, but I'd say she's the beneficiary of a bad year for leading ladies. *Diablo Cody. Jesus. How could this award happen? I'm not even someone who hates Juno. I thought Jason Reitman, the director, had an amazingly deft touch. I liked the music. I liked the acting. I'll even admit that after a while, parts affected me. But the movie's weakness, which everybody knew, was the too-hip-for-its-own-good writing. It makes you cringe at times with its smarmy, pop-intellectual tone. Like I said, the story is good, the film ended up being okay, and its possible to get over the dialogue if you come in with an open mind and stick it out. But an Oscar for Best Screenplay? Come on. Tony Gilroy wrote one of the best suspense thrillers I've ever seen in Michael Clayton. It was smart, topical, compelling, etc. It had terrific characters. It was a showcase in superb film writing. He was in a different class, and this was the worst screw-job of the night. I like Diablo, and it was cool to see someone so unconventional win an award, but I can't say it was deserved. *Daniel Day-Lewis. What more can you say? To think that the guy who accepted that award, the soft-spoken Englishman with two earrings and a gentle bearing, was the guy who played Daniel Plainview...unbelievable. It's one of the best performances we'll ever see in a film. *And to cap off the night, in the long-standing Oscar tradition, a filmmaker (or in this case two) gets rewarded for work they've done in the past. No Country For Old Men was a strong movie. There's no denying it. Chigurh is one of the best eerie characters ever, and the Coens stuck to their guns with Cormac's death-morality metaphor. I saw it twice in theaters, and liked it even better the second time. But There Will Be Blood is a classic, a once-in-a-lifetime effort that combines an excellent script, excellent directing, and excellent performances. Watching it on the big screen was like a revelation. Hollywood films are inundated with hype, and sometimes, as a moviegoer, it's impossible not to feel numb to the whole process. Then you see a phenomenal work of art like this, and, corny as it sounds, the idea of film's potential hits you like a hammer. P.T. Anderson made a movie that defied the various diseases plaguing American cinema, and rose to a level that can't be called anything but stunning. It's something that Joel and Ethan Coen have done before, but it's not something they did this year. When they announced Best Director, I watched P.T. Anderson in the split screen. To his credit, he kept his smile, but there was a slight grimace, and you could see the hurt, subtle as it was, pervading his expression. Here's a guy, a true talent, who went out and made the movie of his life. Anyone who's ever tried to put together something as small as a five-minute short knows how challenging filmmaking can be, how many problems you have to overcome, and how improbable it is to have any kind of result at all. But P.T. Anderson did it. From nothing but an old book by Upton Sinclair, he wrote, directed, and produced the best picture of the year. For his troubles, he went home empty-handed. In three or five or eight or ten years, he'll probably win Best Director or Best Picture for a film that doesn't reach the same plateau. That's just how it works. But he wasn't recognized this year, and it's a shame. So them's the Oscars. I had a good time, I must say. I hope you did too. Have a nice week. Be safe.
In gym class in elementary school, they taught us how to keep score in bowling.
Why is there no standing long jump event in the Olympics?
It's impossible to succeed in life with the first name Brad (this can be empirically proven).
If you take an extra blanket, roll it up until it is roughly in the form of a human, and spoon with it while pretending that it is a woman, you are pathetic.
Crowds love me.
A monk is a person you have to admire. There isn't a way around it.
David Denby in his article on the Coen Brothers insinuated that it was far-fetched for Llewelyn Moss to return to the scene of his crime just to offer a dying man a drink of water in No Country For Old Men. In fact, he was returning at night with the jug of water to wipe his fingerprints from the door handles he had touched in order to cover his tracks. David Denby is a film critic for The New Yorker, and should not make this kind of stupid mistake.
I'm starting a softball team, and I'd like to guarantee that we'll go undefeated.
Nobody can stop thinking about Barack Obama.
They say 3/4 of the Earth is ocean. But, what percentage of the ocean is salt? And isn't salt considered "land," since it's a solid? A salt mine, for example, you would consider land. We need to check on this.
If you pick ten people to ask on dates, how many will say yes, and, of those, how many will it be possible to marry? Answer: it all depends.
"Grab the brass ring" is a phrase that comes from carousels. It may be the only one. Unless you count "merry-go-round" as a phrase, which I guess it is.
Time is an idea, but it's also a thing. In that sense, it's like karma. But if I told you that karma was the Buddhist word for time, I'd be lying. Then I'd have wasted time and invited bad karma on myself. See how the world works? It's confusing, and that's why only people who hate themselves care about things like philosophy.
Brian makes his second appearance in the "Jes mindin' mah bisness, bein' a citizen, gettin' owned on g-chat" section of the blog, and goes down in history as the first person to get owned in two lines:
Brian: You like The Concretes?
Me: No, I prefer Pavement.
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
(people running around yelling, waving hands above their heads, pumping fists and grinning)
Someone get that sumbitch a fat piece of corn on the sob.
I was in my sixth hour of g-chat browsing today when I came across the following status message from a fellow on my list:
"I've got more game than a wildlife preserve."
If you're a big fan of wildlife preserves, like me, the absurdity of this statement is immediately evident. These areas are designated to protect animals. The term "game" refers to animals that can legally be hunted, of which there are none on a preserve.
In effect, this person was saying that they had no game. What folly! I informed him in no uncertain terms:
Me: a wildlife preserve is for the conservation of animal and plant species
Me: therefore the animals aren't "game"
Me: because they can't be hunted
Me: you just dissed yourself
Him: to you maybe
Me: this is my greatest g-chat triumph yet
Him: cool man
Him: live the life
Someone get that bastard a bawling card.
(so he can phone long distance to his mommmmmmmyyyy)
I don't watch a lot of television, but last week I watched the semi-finals of American Gladiators. My mother and I had a little tradition of watching the old reruns on the USA Network during summers when I was young. She'd go to work after and I'd try to go running or get a baseball game together or agonize over having to mow the lawn. But the morning hour from 10-11 was probably the best part of the day.
If you'd told me a year ago that they'd bring it back, I could have told you just how they'd fuck it up. The flashing lights, pounding music, drastic camera angles, mile-a-minute cuts, stupid choreographed screaming crowd. All the futuristic crap that some moron producer thought would appeal to a modern audience. It's the same wrong idea that makes bad filmmakers think that 100 years from now, the most popular sport will be RocketLaunchMoonBallExtreme. Nope. It'll still be football basketball baseball soccer golf tennis. And it's because those sports are timeless, and if they're complex, it's only a complexity that's laid on a simple frame, and so the complexity becomes elegant.
Anyway, the new AG is about 8 levels beneath the original version, but it's still okay to watch because the concept is great.
Here's what they've done right:
1) Keeping Assault. This was by far the greatest game on the original, and it's still the best. There's something primitive and awesome about having to dodge the projectiles of an overlord while you scurry between protective boundaries and try to take him out with a lucky shot. It's the ultimate underdog game. When I was a kid staying at my dad's for the weekend one winter, we set this game up in the front yard. It had just snowed, and it was packy, so we built a series of boundaries in a zig-zag pattern. Each one had a single snowball behind it. Then my dad had his station, in front of a garbage can, with thirty or so snowballs stacked up. I had to run between the snow walls while he tried to pelt me, and if I hit the garbage can I won. Some of the most fun I've had. At the same time, this game is hilarious. You have this huge gladiator, probably on steroids, posing and posturing and talking shit and being all physical, and when the game starts, he's behind a gun. It completely nullifies any strength he has, and you could bring in any random redneck who's hunted his whole life to do a better job. It's the only AG game like that.
2) Having the Gladiator shot backward into the water if he/she loses at Assault. Fucking awesome.
3) The water motif in general. Great call.
Here's what they've done wrong, and how to improve it:
1) Making the Gladiators into posturing villain types. Listening to these idiots make puns on their own names gets old about halfway through the first time. Nobody wants that. It just makes the Gladiators look ridiculous.
How to fix it: Give the Gladiators masks and don't let them talk. Think about it. How badass would it be if you never saw a Gladiator's face, or heard him speak? It would add an amazing element of mystery, and would make them ten times more terrifying. Instead, we have to listen to shit like "JUSTICE IS ABOUT TO BE SERVED," and think "oh, I see, he's just a moron."
Additional idea: Have a Gladiator coach. A small, brooding, mysterious figure in a suit. When a Gladiator wins, he walks through a tunnel back to Gladiator base, and the coach gives a little nod. When a Gladiator loses, he walks back with his head slumped, facing the coach's withering gaze. Basically, I want the Gladiators to be like my idea of sports teams in the old Soviet Union.
Also, before each event, the coach looks at a clipboard in front of the tunnel, then turns and gives a secret signal, indicating which Gladiator he wants. Then, boom, the music starts and Titan runs through the tunnel. This would make it more personal, like the Gladiators were really a team who wanted to defeat the contenders at every event, and not just a bunch of individuals who would talk some shit but not really care if they lost.
2) Speaking of music: the loud blaring rock that plays after every event is completely ineffective. So are the swooping shots of the audience giving the thumbs-down in rhythm to the beat. Watching some grinning disney-land dad cheer with his two spoiled kids is the exact opposite of badass.
How to fix it: Give each Gladiator specialized introduction music. Sure, some could be rock, but there could be variety. As my friend Brandon once told me, for example, the best serial killers always listen to classical music. Imagine if you had a Gladiator strutting out to Bach while some contender stood shaking on the Joust platform. That's scary shit. It gets psychological. Also, the audience should be audible only. Black them out. They should be trying to re-create the howling masses of the original Coliseum, and showing the actual crowd makes it painfully clear that it's onlay a bunch of over-fed Americans.
3) Gladiator names. Boring, predictable.
How to fix it: Instead of the usual fare of Titan, Siren, Venom, Justice, etc., how about something that personalizes them a little more? What about Gladiators from different nationalities? What about identifying characteristics? Couldn't you have a Gladiator called Saint Christopher, who wears a cross around his neck and a long white cloak? Or one from Samoa who does a tribal dance before every event? (editor's note: apparently they have this. oops.) The closest we come now is Wolf, who has his howl, and Helga, who I guess is from Germany.
Another great idea is to have Gladiators specifically suited to each event. Like one called "The Spider" who is ridiculously fast on the wall, or "Tarzan," who dominates the rings. Or, like I said before, a redneck type called "The Sniper" behind the gun in Assault. The downside to this is that it'd be really tough for the contender to ever win.
Additional idea: "The Sniper" could have a hunting dog with him. Actually, every Gladiator could have an animal. I want one called "The Shepherd" who wears tattered clothing and leads around a lamb.
4) Hulk Hogan and Laila Ali. Completely unnecessary. They add nothing.
How to fix it: Have a single, unobtrusive host. Someone out of the Jeff Probst from Survivor mold. The host is not the show, and all their bits are just designed to waste time. I do, however, like the fat referee. It's one of those inexplicable decisions that gives a show character.
5) Interviews with contenders. Over-talky, useless. More times than not, they make me dislike the contender.
How to fix it: Show two heavily produced bios at the beginning that make the contender seem likeable. Show them at home, doing their thing, helping kids, training, whatever. Do NOT interview them during the show. I hate that for the same reasons I hate interviewing football coaches as they jog to the locker room at halftime, or baseball managers in the dug-out in the fourth inning. It's even worse for a contender, because they're actually playing. They should be focused completely on the task at hand, and it spoils the tension of competition to get their thoughts on every single aspect of what they go through in the arena. That shit is sacred.
6) Only five events.
How to fix it: They have eight events to work with. Use all eight. There's definitely enough time, even with commercials. If they cut all the interviews and the posturing and the crowd shots, they could roll through, and it would be better. More people would watch.
7) The Gauntlet. Stupid event. New, I think.
How to fix it: This is where a contender tries to run through a narrow alley and reach the end line while being shoved and pinned by Gladiators with mats. There's zero sophistication to the game. It's a football drill. Get rid of it.
Instead, bring back the game where you jump on a rope and grab balls from the hanging pod at the center! That was great! Also, the roller ball game where you move inside huge spheres and try to settle on a pod while the Gladiator tries to knock you off. Those two games were clearly hatched from the mind of a demented genius! And they replaced them with the fucking Gauntlet? Come on!
Basically, it comes down to substance and personality over empty style. By catering to their notion of what America is like, the idiotic writers and producers created a boring, predictable show full of masculine cliches. What people really want is something mysterious and original. And American Gladiators isn't a show like Arrested Development where that kind of originality would hamper its chances; it has a basis of competition, which everyone can relate to, and was already popular years ago.
Viewers need to feel that real victory is at stake. By distancing the contenders and Gladiators, and creating an atmosphere of mystical, almost cabalistic gloom, the perceived triumph is greater. That's how you make American Gladiators great.
Something has been happening in my office that serves as a nice metaphor for what it's like to be young and white and not poor in America today.
About five months ago, one of our managers- an exceedingly nice, quiet woman- began bringing candy to work. She kept it in a box in the outer corner of her cubicle, and it was filled with all kinds of bite-sized chocolate; Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Butterfingers, Snickers, Hershey's, etc. The first few times I went by, I'd apologetically ask if I could partake. She made it clear with a smile and a permissive wave that it was fine, and I shouldn't even ask. Still, whenever I took a candy bar, I'd say hello and thank her.
Eventually, I began to look forward to Wednesdays, when she worked from home and I could raid her office without being spotted. Some days, by 5pm, I had helped myself to as many as ten bite-sized candy items.
I began to feel that these chocolates were a part of my life. I wasn't paying for them, nor did I do anything to earn them, and yet I still felt that I was deserving. On the days when she was in the office, however, I couldn't make more than one or two runs without seeming like a hun.
Whenever I walked by her cubicle, I would hope she was in the bathroom or otherwise occupied so I could have my fill. But she rarely left her desk.
I began to resent her. I'd peer into her area, see her hunched over and hard at work, and think 'why the fuck don't you ever take a walk?' Each time I passed and she hadn't budged, my annoyance mounted, until finally I noticed in myself a clear distaste. She was a dragon guarding a pot of gold.
What had begun as a nice gesture on her part, and a pleasant surprise for me, her co-worker, had transformed. I felt entitled to the candy that she bought and transported and supplied and gave away free, and when I couldn't indulge myself to gluttonous extents, due to fear of perception, my offended mind would not let her good deed go unpunished. For her kindness, she earned my ire.
I am a marauding, selfish, overfed American of Generation Y. Somewhere somebody is being pelted with rocks while they stumble on treacherous terrain, struggling to survive from second to second. Someday that person will tear me to pieces. I hope I remember to thank them.
This story is like 30% true.
In no order:
1) Go out on a lunch date with a girl who's a dental assistant from a small Wisconsin town and reminds me of a news anchor from back home. We're both unsure of each other at first, but leave the date feeling optimistic.
2) Get a call from an old kinda-friend who's in New York for the week and wants me to come with him to a strip club tonight. I try to bring up other cultural things we can do, but he's psyched up about the strip club.
3) Have a go at baking a three-layer cake, fully aware that I've never successfully baked a normal cake, but feeling ambitious.
4) Spot a spelling error on a chalk board outside a pub advertising soccer matches, and go inside to inform them of the mistake.
5) Get accidentally hit in the side of the head by the protruding metal of an umbrella. Cringe, lean down, hold my head, and hiss "fuck!" Have the owner profusely apologize and try to help while I wave him off. When he persists in apologizing, look up and say, "man, just walk the fuck away."
6) Listen to a British Sea Power song on my iPod while walking at lunch and imagine how awesome I would have been on an English schooner.
7) Have somebody misinterpret my humor as anger.
8) Have somebody misinterpret my anger as humor.
9) Google myself to see which blogs have linked any internet articles I've written, then e-mail the blog creator to ask if he or she wants to get a drink sometime.
10) Respond to spam e-mails with clever take-offs on the original content. Respond to my mother's e-mails, whatever their content, with the single line, "Kathy, you're being ridiculous."
Action!
Film.
Pond.
Algae.
Plankton.
Low Man.
I can think of a clever low man whose title does not reflect status.
Can you guess who he is?
Willy Loman.
Were you thinking of Lo Mein?
It is the hour of my feast and I am St. Riddicker.
-St. Riddicker C. Ambodextrial (h e w ill r aise t hem t o t heir f ormer s hape)
StIlL BeLlS pEaL, charmed 11th
Hair Care.
Care bear.
Fair share.
Fairgrounds.
Carousel.
Stationary Horse.
I can think of a clever stationary horse that you cannot ride in a circle.
Can you guess what it is?
A pommel horse in a gymnasium.
Were you thinking of a tranquilized filly?
I wish you one hundred happinesses!
-St. Riddicker C. Ambodextrial (t he b odies o f g hosts a re b uried i n f og)
Antipodes.
Podcast.
The Bowery Boys.
Five Corners.
Pentagon.
I can think of something clever that has five sides, but is not a Pentagon.
Can you guess what it is?
A steak dinner with mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, cole slaw, green beans, and carrots.
Were you thinking of a complicated war?
I'm interested in if you make it!
-St. Riddicker C. Ambodextrial (h ark t he t olling b ell u pon h is p romised a rrival)
Tarnation!
Tar Nation.
Tar Heel Nation.
North Carolina.
Gigantic Chairs.
I can think of a clever Gigantic Chair that you do not sit on.
Can you guess what it is?
The Chair of the National Obese Person's Foundation.
Were you thinking of Chairman Mao?
I think you can do it!
-St. Riddicker C. Ambodextrial (f ollow h is w ord t o t he e nd o f t he w et g rass)
Oh what a day.
What a day-oh.
O-dell.
Deli.
Sandwich.
I can think of a clever thing that sandwich reminds me of that isn't a food item.
Can you guess what it is?
Sandwich-board advertising.
Were you thinking the Earl of Sandwich?
I love you.
-St. Riddicker C. Ambodextrial (w hisper h is n ame o n a c old m orning)
A pretty apt summation from John Heilemann in New York Magazine:
"If you find yourself drawn to the Clinton candidacy, you likely believe that politics is politics, that partisanship isn't transmutable, that Republicans are for the most part irredeemable. You suspect that talk of transcendence amounts to humming "Kumbabya" past the graveyard. You believe that progress comes only with a fight, and that Clinton is better equipped than Obama (or maybe anyone) to succeed in the poisonous, fractious environment that Washington is now and ever shall be. You ponder the image of Bill as First Laddie and find yourself smiling, not sighing or shrieking.
If you find youself swept up in Obamamania, on the other hand, you regard this assessment as sad, defeatist, as a kind of capitulation. You're perfectly aware that politics is often a dirty business. But you believe it could be a bit cleaner, a bit nobler, a bit more sustaining. You think that paradigm shifts can happen, that the system can be rebooted. Most of all, an attraction to Obama indicates you are, on some level, a romantic. You never had your JFK, your MLK, and you desperately crave one: What you want is to fall in love."
What I especially like about these descriptions is that Clinton supporters can recognize some of the Obama attributes in themselves, no doubt, and vice versa. It portrays the ideology of both camps in a (somewhat) positive light, and makes the argument that both have the best interest of the country at heart. And underlying it all is a desperate plea to to the faithful of the losing candidate, whoever that may be: don't forget that you're a liberal, a democrat, and that our country needs one of these two people as president. We need it badly. So when the loss comes, mourn the memory for a day if you need to, then shed it like an old coat and support your party.
If you're not into politics, this will be a very boring post. Consider yourself warned.
With Super Tuesday over and nothing decided on the democrat side, I felt the need to write something about my choice, if only to get my thoughts on paper. I don't expect to sway anyone or anything like that, but the more I've seen, the more strongly I feel that Hillary Clinton is the right choice for the democratic nomination.
On the most basic issue, policy, almost everyone concedes that their views are "almost indistinguishable." (New Yorker) That being said, Hillary is, in general, very slightly further to the left than Obama, with the biggest difference being her support for Universal Health Care. But both support immigration reform and both vow to pull troops out of Iraq in a short time, so it's not like we're talking about a huge gap. What the decision comes down to, then, is the old "experience versus change" argument. But what real "change" would Obama bring that Hillary wouldn't?
Which brings me to my next point. I would be happy and proud to have Obama as president, but his rhetoric of change and the support he's gaining is starting to resemble a personality cult. I'm not saying he actively avoids discussing issues; I think he started the campaign with that strategy, but jettisoned it quickly when Hillary jumped to her early lead. What I am saying is that when he gets into what I'll call "preacher" mode, policy issues disappear and it becomes all oratorial flash.
Everyone who sees Obama speak in public says how magnetic he is, and it's certainly apparent on television as well. There's a genuine inspirational quality about him. But let's not forget, Ronald Reagan had that too. Charisma doesn't always translate into great leadership, or great ideas. He's managed to galvanize the youth population, but I think there's something a little worrisome about that.
And before I continue, let me add this caveat: a few weeks ago, I was on the Obama train. My thought was that the raw force the man exuded was exactly what the country needed. But after reading and studying more, it's apparent to me that there's an act of seduction going on that can be construed as slightly disingeuous, on his behalf, and slightly credulous on the part of youth. The more I speak with Obama supporters, and let me again clarify that I was just as guilty recently, the more I realize that they don't have a command of the issues, but that they've simply fallen under the sway of his charm. And there's something to be said for a personality of that nature, especially in a position of leadership like the presidency, but for so many people to choose based on that alone is scary.
Enough, for now, about Obama. Let's get into the positives about Hillary.
*Toughness - Hillary has been vilified from day one, and for no better reason, at least originally, than being a First Lady with the audacity to pursue policy. She's always been a strong personality, and people bridled at that. When she introduced Universal Health Care reform in '94, it was defeated by the Republicans in what amounted to petty, partisan politics. Something that could have greatly helped the uninsured in the country failed merely because of conservatives hating Hillary. When the Lewinsky scandal reached its apex, Hillary was, astoundingly, vilified again. Some wanted her to leave her husband, and railed against her for "setting the cause of feminism back fifty years," and many accused her of staying with Bill for personal gain only. Never has a woman trying to hold a family together under impossible circumstances been so excoriated. Then, when she ran for Senator in New York, she was vilified again for having the gall to run for office and possibly harbor presidential ambitions. Rick Lazio, her opponent, even approached her aggressively during one of the debates. And now, finally, she's running for president and is vilified by both parties.
And throughout it all, what's happened? She's stayed strong, and she keeps winning. Show me anyone else who could have gone through that kind of hell, with unfiltered hating pouring in from all sides, and still maintained their character, grown as a politican, and grown as a person.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, is tougher than Hillary.
*Experience- some are trying to frame this as the "experience versus change" decision. But again, what change, really, will Obama bring? Their policies are virtually the same, and what the "change" comes down to is the perceived notion that Obama's personality will somehow bridge gaps between Republicans and Democrats and set our country on a new, united path.
Dream on. I'm all for idealism, but if people truly think a black liberal from Chicago is going to win the hearts and minds of neocons and red staters, and if they think the Republican political machine, built for twenty years on the premise of dirty politics, wil lie down and die when faced with such a uniter, they need to wake up. There's a rift in America, and if the rift can ever be healed, it will be done with policy, not rhetoric. And when it comes to policy, Hillary's bringing the same exact change.
So if we put that idea aside, we're left with experience. When discussing their policies, although the general framework is the same, Hillary approaches with more pragmatism. She goes into details, some of which are boring because they're intricate and well thought-out. Obama speaks in generalities, focusing instead on the idea of a catalyzing change that will erase the gaps among Americans. Forced to choose between those two alternatives, I fall on the side of pragmatism. Hillary is a policy wonk, and I truly believe her when she says she'll be ready, on day one, to take over. She's thought everything through, certainly more than Obama (as I'll show later), and has real plans on every single aspect of governance.
To me, that's everything.
*Hard work - just as nobody's tougher than Hillary, nobody works harder. Even her detractors concede the point that, throughout her career as First Lady, advocate, Senator, and presidential hopeful, she's a dedicated, and at times obsessive, leader. A quick example is her newly-learned expertise on defense policy since taking her place on the Senate Armed Services Committee. There are a thousand more. Meanwhile, since becoming chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's subcommittee on foreign affairs, Obama hasn't held a single substantive hearing. A lot of that owes to time spent on the campaign trail, but it's certainly worth noting. In the end, we really don't know how hard he'll work, or how prepared he'll be for either the Republican attack machine or the presidency itself. Is that a chance we can afford to take? What do we really know about this guy?
And though Hillary takes a ton of flack for her so-called "ambition," (which, let's be honest, exists; nobody runs for president without ambition), it's Obama who strikes me as the more nakedly opportunistic. He's basically rode a tide of rhetorical flair to the nomination process at an incredibly young age, and without his qualities as a speaker, he'd be nowhere near his current position. He's certainly more calculating than Hillary. Which leads me to....
*Caring - this is an out-and-out personal call, but from watching Hillary speak, and hearing anecdotes about her more private moments, I'm convinced that she legitimately cares about people. She's spent a career advocating for the lower middle class and those below the poverty line. Her focus on education, health care, and immigration reform confirms the idea. If she plays dirty politics, or is accused by pundits of being cutthroat, I genuinely believe it's because she thinks she can help the most people, and desperately wants her vision instituted for America's benefit.
I don't mean to imply that Obama doesn't care. I'm just not convinced his desire for the presidency is 100% about caring. I think there's more personal ambition involved than in Hillary's case.
*Electability - This is the biggest knock on Hillary. The talking point among her opponents is that she won't be able to reach out to undecided voters, or to hold the middle ground, while Obama's charisma has a greater chance to make up the gap. I find that attitude to be completely flawed. Kerry was nominated on this premise in '04, and he got destroyed by the Republican attack machine. Keep in mind, the guy was a Vietnam hero and was running against the worst president in recent memory. And he still lost! It proves that the Republicans can and will go after anyone, no matter how unimpeachable their character seems. They'll go after Obama with the same fervor. Hillary, on the other hand, is tough as nails. People call her unlikeable, but watching her speak and watching her newly adopted tone of positivity and focus on policy, I can't see it. I think her character shines through, and I think her strength will become evident to more and more people. And she's already proven she can withstand the conversative attack. I envision a general election where she gains more and more support as people start to realize her true character, especially against a rigid guy like McCain. On the other hand, I can easily see Obama's rhetoric being exposed as a vapid defense mechanism for lack of experience.
And as a final, practical point, let's not forget that Hispanic voters have shown zero willingness, historically, to vote for a black candidate. That held true last night, which seems to indicate that it won't change in the near future. That could be a gigantic problem in swing states with large Hispanic populations, particularly Florida.
What it comes down to, in the end, is that I find Hillary to be a more pragmatic, prepared candidate. I think she's better equipped to lead the country, has more thoroughly researched solutions for the myriad problems caused by the Bush administration, and is overall more legitimate. The results of Super Tuesday seem to hold that up; she scored a huge victory among those in need, such as the working class, the elderly, and Hispanic minorities. Obama's main voters can all be attributed to his personality and "realm of influence," which includes black voters, youth, and undecided voters hoping to feel excited. It seems to lend credence to a very controversial, but perhaps valid, quote from a Clinton staffer:
"If you have a social need, you're with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend, and you're young, and you have no social needs, then he's cool."
Personally, I'm going with substance over style.
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