Marking Time

For those who don’t watch tv, or live under a rock (not that I blame you), the “more flags, more fun” slogan is part of the current ad campaign for the Six Flags amusement park franchise. There are 17 total parks, including Six Flags now in Montreal, Mexico City, and Dubai (United Arab Emirates). So it’s not strictly a U.S. phenomenon anymore. But it’s very much a product of what can be called “American” thinking — the kind of “more is better” thinking that leads to a slogan like the one above, as well as leading to a far-reaching corporate influence that offers a window into the most current marketing techniques. Six Flags wants to be the new Big Brother, in other words, or at least reduce the Disneys and all their own marketing muscle to a bunch of flashy plastic made-in-China rubble. (Speaking of China, and this dangerous “growth at any cost” mindset, who watched Ted Koppel’s Discovery Channel series on China this week?)

This year’s first lesson about the iron grip of commercialism happened for my sister before she even entered the park, when she was faced with the choice of parking in the back lot for $15, or in the closer-to-the-entrance front lot for $25. As we recall, all parking was one price last year: $10. Even Disneyworld in Orlando, where my sister went last year, only charges $10 to park.

I on the other hand, found a way to beat The Man: I parked for free in an out-of-the-way spot outside the park and rode my bike in. Considering that there was only one small bike rack, and mine was the only bike that was locked there all day, I think this was the biggest sign that the “car culture” and the U.S. amusement park experience are inextricably linked. I wonder if they’re running scared now? Are they trying to figure out ways to seem green, while distracting us from the fact that they’re plopped down in no-man’s-land — on an interstate fifty miles from each of the two major nearby cities (Milwaukee and Chicago)? Probably not scared, though. They’ve got sort of a monopoly, and are likely benefitting from the high price of airfare by getting more regional vacationers who have to stay closer to home this summer.

Speaking of the car culture, the GEICO gecko has apparently joined Bugs Bunny, Batman, Scooby Doo and other Time/Warner mascots at Six Flags to make my experience more… um… fulfilling. I first noticed the annoying product placement campaign when I saw that all of the 30+ bumper cars on Rue le Dodge had a bumper sticker which read: “My other car is insured by GEICO.” Then later, they had posted a picture of the gecko on a sign that advised it would be 15-minutes wait-time from that point to get to the front of the line. Next to that, of course, was the reminder that in those same 15 minutes, I could be saving 15% on my car insurance by switching to GEICO. Thanks, mate. Got any sunblock on you? That would be more useful at the moment.

This was just one example of the unrelenting corporate cross-marketing extravaganza we were exposed to, in concentrated form, all day long. It’s like being on The Truman Show, where the godlike planners have thought through every possible angle, dressed it all up nice and pretty, and yet all you want to do is escape as soon as possible. (If not for the rides, that is… which are fast becoming just a part of the background for all these other money-making schemes; they’re the reason we go, but not the reason The Man wants us there.)

I know I must sound like a crotchety old man. Fact is, that’s what I am now. Maybe I’m just pissed that the five pounds I had put on since last year made it impossible for me to fit into the seat and shoulder harness on my favorite coaster: Batman. Add to that the chafing on my thighs from walking around sweaty all day, and the problems with my feet and left knee, and suddenly I’m the All-American Whiny Stick In the Mud, the last guy I ever thought I’d turn into. Getting old just sucks. And I’m not even that old.

Okay, enough whining. A few highlights:

1) American Eagle, a huge old-style wooden roller coaster, has still got the goods, even after twenty years. A tad more rickety in one section, but a nice long ride compared to some newer coasters, yet still with good dips and decent speed.

2) I didn’t notice much ridiculously bad behavior from kids and teens this year. In the past I’ve seen line-jumpers and heard pretty foul language on occasion, or else general brattiness from the spoiled younger ones. But it wasn’t so bad Friday, and most kids were dang cute and pretty gleeful, so I guess the park still remains what I would call “family friendly”. People may finally be learning civility, in these tough times when we all feel a bit nervous about what’s next (Orange Alert, a Second Great Depression, or maybe a flood that takes out the entire city of New York). 

3) I had a grand time reminiscing and catching up with my two younger sisters, for whom this Six Flags trip is a tradition that they put right up there with any religious obligation or national holiday. Myself, I was just along for the ride, not looking to do everything in the park, …twice (like the 18 times my nephew Bill rode the Batman coaster). I see them alot, but not as often in a context where spouses and little ones aren’t around. So we got to pack three months worth of uninterrupted storytelling and complaining about life into one day, as we waited in line, moving five feet every five minutes. It’s nice to have people to do that with, people who know me that well, and aren’t wanting something from me.

It’s hard to know exactly when it happened, but sometime between January and June of 2008, my five-year-old (now six) outgrew most of the post-toddler “kid” shows on Playhouse Disney and PBS, and became a crazed fanatic about Cartoon Network.

It would be easy to blame it on my wife, since she does not share my mistrust of the network itself, and started turning it on for him when I had previously been steering him away from it. But it’s my fault, too. For one thing, I’m doing what we said we would not do: using the tv as a babysitter, to keep him occupied and safe while we try to get other things done (like this damned blog! …which magically turns minutes into hours!). Or rather, his body is safe… his mind may be another matter.

I’m trying to nip it in the bud by setting some time limits, but I fear Pandora may already be out of the box, and my kid’s a budding cartoon junkie. He hasn’t asked  to read a book in months. He blurts out random non-sequitr quotes from unknown shows while we’re riding in the car. He doesn’t want to go outside when it means turning the tv off. I don’t want to sound alarmist, but I’m concerned Cartoon Network will make my child into a brilliant idiot.

There are two reasons I don’t like and don’t trust Cartoon Network’s daytime programming:

1. commercials for junkfood, bad toys, and more crap we don’t need but that he will bug us to buy. He’s being groomed as a consumer, and I don’t want the corporate monstrosity that is AOL/Time/Warner reprogramming my child and undoing the good work we’ve done for six years
2. too much ‘toonified violence… watered down, bloodless, but aggressive nonetheless, and pushing values I definitely don’t share. There’s a marked difference between the spirit of conflict between Wile E. Coyote vs. Roadrunner, and the power rays, magic and kung fu of today’s cartoon violence. I can’t always put my finger on it, but something about most of the current “drama” and adventure ‘toons just seems to rub me the wrong way as a parent and a pacificist-leaning Christian. Plus it’s mostly just bad… badly written, badly drawn, badly acted. For example, I won’t willingly let Graham watch Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs until he’s 17… but when he does see it, I want to be the one to show him how good movie and tv-makers can do up violence and double-crossing with great intelligence, humor and style, instead of the cartoonish hollowness and CGI flashiness of The Incredible Hulk.

Just as an experiment, though, let’s switch on Tuesday morning’s Cartoon Network offerings for awhile and see what we get:

7:56am   Ben 10  is just wrapping up. Or is it Ben Ten: Alien Force. I don’t know. There are two current series featuring the same characters, and I think Ben 10 is Graham’s new favorite show. He clearly idolizes Ben, who is ten. (How’d you guess? No wait –on Alien Force, Ben is 15. I’m confused now.) It’s not bad overall. Fairly innocent, with today’s villain being a midget hypnotist who wants all the people at the mall to rob the cash registers and bring him cash. Ben has some wristband thing with a button he can push to transform himself into other entities, like Fireball Guy, or Plant Guy. Silly, but not all that different from the animated adventure/superhero stories that formerly appeared only on Saturday mornings or after school. The downside: I put on Playhouse Disney as Little Einsteins was wrapping up today, and Graham howled, “No! I don’t like this show anymore!” It used to be his favorite. Poor innocent little glasses-wearing Leo, cast aside in favor of one of the “cool kids”, complete with a shape-shifting gizmo and a preteen’s smart-aleck attitude.

7:59am        Wedgies. I had neither seen nor heard about this show until just moments ago. Oh wait, I see – it’s only a little bumper, a time-filler, a 1-2 minute mini-toon called Flapjack. Maybe these pilot-y sorta things are called Wedgies ’cause they’re wedged between two other shows. And unless I miss my guess, that’s Brian Doyle-Murray I hear voicing one of the two featured Flapjack characters. Brian is Bill Murray’s older brother. He’s a fairly decent, funny actor in his own right. But apparently nowadays, in an era where scripted tv comedy is third in the pecking order, behind hourlong dramas and semi-scripted reality tv, A-list character actors like Brian have to take what they can get. That means voicing car commercials (Matt Dillon is the current voice of one of the major car companies), or little wedged-in bumpers, or cartoons, just to keep working steady. (Brian’s done some Sponge Bob, some Disney tv stuff, a wide range… his scratchy voice is good for cartoons.) It used to be that movie actors (I think) did this type of work on the side, for fun, or after their biggest career successes were well in the rear-view mirror. But with increased competition, for fewer on-camera jobs, I’ve noticed more and more recognizable actors slogging away on cartoons. Take the PBS show Cyberchase, for example. It has two: Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future’s Dr. Emmett Brown) and Gilbert Gottfried (better known as a stand-up comedian, and for that aggressively annoying voice). Now maybe these two actors actually like working on a quality show that subtly builds math skills into the plotlines. And I know Mr. Lloyd has done stage work on and off for years as well. But part of me can’t help but wonder if the less expensive, less creative, tenement-style programming that is reality tv is the main reason that cartoons have become the bread-and-butter for a whole class of actors now. Meanwhile, have you looked at most of the crap that passes for live-action network sitcoms aimed at 18 to 32-year-olds these days? Big Bang Theory ? Puh-leeease!

8am      Johnny Test - (Not to be confused with Jonny Quest, for all you old-schoolers out there.) I’ve only popped my head in and watched partial episodes, but when I did watch, Johnny Test had a time machine. This is an old trick: it gives the writers permission to put their own goofy spin on thousands of years of human history. Now Graham will probably think Atilla the Hun was just a scowling ham of an actor with a beard and a clearly un-American look, unlike the dashing, blond and ironic hero, feisty little Johnny T.

8:30am    missed it - TVGuide.com says it was Skunk Fu! - probably typical of the snarky, hugely ironic and self-referential nature of entertainment in the Oughts. Everything’s a lefthanded rip-off of something else…

9am    Tom & Jerry Blast Off to Mars. A feature-length movie, produced by TBS cable network. Actually, Ted Turner and/or AOL/Time/Warner (owners of Cartoon Network) own alot of those old cartoon franchises now. When Cartoon Network first started it was mostly just an outlet for a wide range of those shows I grew up with, like the Hannah-Barbera stuff. (Now , CN shows alot of original and syndicated programming, some of which is imported, much of which is crap that definitely will not stand the test of time.) I blogged about this once, in the context of a discussion on Scooby Doo’s staying power. Meanwhile back here at the ranch, Graham just saw that Tom and Jerry were on, and got very excited. I was gratified that at least two of the more “classic” characters and situations strike his fancy as much as, if not more than, the Pokemons and Ben Tens of the cartoon universe.

Long live Bugs Bunny, Felix the Cat and Fred Flintstone!

I’ve always been a sucker for a good metaphor, and one of my favorite writers on spiritual matters, Anne Lamott, put me in mind of a very good one today: the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of the ancient temple courtyard in Jerusalem. Here’s an excerpt from her most recent book, Grace (Eventually) :

… a picture of a young boy and his father in yarmulkes, pushing prayers written on paper into cracks in the wall. This is something I do all the time, shove bits of paper with prayers and names on them into desk drawers, little boxes, my glove compartment. I have found that… turning the problem over to God or the elves in the glove compartment harnesses something in the universe that is bigger than you, and that just might work.

Anne herself is a recovering alcoholic, and writes quite humorously and eloquently about her journey, about the various ways God chased her around northern California until she finally surrendered and came to Jesus. I’ve been thinking alot lately about the idea of surrender. Certain prayers and attitudes are a healthy form of surrender, as Christian and Buddhist theologians have been teaching us for years. They say that letting go, giving up control, embracing humility, is the way to peace and happiness. Yet in an uptight, me-first, macho, militarized, post-9/11 world, the idea of surrender is not fashionable. Then again, when have I ever been fashionable?

Surrender also came up in church yesterday (Redeemer Lutheran in Park Ridge), as one of the earliest of the Twelve Steps in traditional recovery program language. Here’s how people in “the program” usually put it:

Step 3
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

“God as we understood Him.” This phrase is where the conservative evangelicals that I occasionally keep company with tend to part company with AA, considering it either a respectable but non-Christian system, or else a cultish organization of anarchists and tool of the devil (though not many would go that far… given the number of recovering addicts and success stories, it’s hard to make a case that God does not support the program).

Why don’t conservatives accept Step 3 at face value? Because those who cling tightly to an exacting and narrow interpretation of the Bible would like to believe they already understand all they need to know about God, through relationship with His son Jesus. Surrendering to the possibility that some things just cannot be known or explained scripturally, or that God as someone understands Him would not include Jesus, is too much of a stretch for them. Therefore a more subjective view of God, however one is able to see or experience God, is also too much of a stretch. For me –getting more theologically liberal by the day in how I look at the biblical text itself– the jury is still out on some of what Jesus actually said and did, and what I should therefore do.

Jesus was just such a confusing cat at times, wasn’t he?

Don’t get me wrong, though. I have great respect for scripture, and the utmost respect for Jesus — at least on the days when I’m not a sinful, piggish, opinionated clod only out for myself. On those bad days, Jesus is my perfect older brother, and I have a severe distaste for Him, because how could I ever possibly measure up to such a high standard? Those are my depressive days. My lonely days. My angry days. My self-pitying, potentially addicted days, which I often fill with too much tv or non-prayerful computer use. Basically that’s Mondays, alternate Wednesdays, and any other day upon which I have to take some responsibility for the well-being of myself and my family, and yet don’t want to do that.

And there’s the rub: I have to surrender control, and yet still maintain an attitude of responsibility and steady service to the principles set down by a Higher Power. I can’t just give up, say WTF?, and move on with my own business. I have to follow the path that has been shown to work. I have to have self-discipline, and set goals, even as I give up an investment in the outcome (knowing that it will not exactly match what I want personally). At this moment of surrender, the proud young Turk within me wants to stand up and say, “Wait. What’s in this for me? Why should I follow, if this path is so hard, and the ultimate destination is unknown (or sometimes unpleasant, if you’re doing it right, like Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King)?”

At which point the Holy Spirit shows up (hopefully) and answers for God, saying, “Because this is the path to health, dipshit. The path to abundant life. Do you want to be healthy and growing, or miserable and lost, wandering around some more in your own private 40-year desert?”

See how God is not always as gentle as those nice evangelicals once told me He was?

Meanwhile, remember those old Catholics, the ones who used to whip themselves? Well they may have been overdoing it, but they were still onto something: they knew how to surrender, and they knew how tough it is to do, over and over again, every bleepin’ day of our whole bleepin’ life. 

Which leads me back to where I started, the Wailing Wall. It took God so many years to get the Jews to a point spiritually where they were wise and humble enough to build His City, and then to build those temples properly and with the right attitude. It took both strength and humility, as modeled by leaders like Solomon, to create and maintain the home where Jehovah and his Ark (containing the original “Twelve Steps”) could take up residence. And then God turned around and chastened His people yet again, taking down the Second Temple as well, leaving nothing but an old retaining wall that keeps the mountain from spilling over onto the temple courtyard. That’s our Wailing Wall… it’s a glorified earth dam, a retaining wall.

And here’s something I didn’t know till I looked it up today: that expanded courtyard and its Wailing Wall were built by none other than Herod the Great. This is the same guy who was one of the worst Roman collaborators ever, who was outsmarted by the Magi, Mary and Joseph when Jesus was a baby, and then later killed his wife and two of his sons. So why did they call this guy great? Goes to show you: power does not equal greatness. It’s no wonder God had to get rid of Herod’s precious Second Temple.  It was nothing but a monument to  gross injustices, slave labor and corrupt, reprehensible acts by a man who couldn’t carry Solomon’s jockstrap. 

Besides, with the coming of Jesus, God moved off the Temple Mount and out into the world anyway. So the remaining ruins of the courtyard wall aren’t much more than a tombstone, really — an important landmark to what once was great. The old Jerusalem, the old temple, the old ways — those are all gone now. We have to surrender to the future, to what’s healthy and best for everybody that has a stake in the New Jerusalem (which seems to cover just about everybody, right?).

Thus, a desk drawer or glove compartment will suffice from now on, as repositories for the prayers of those of us who still want to write down prayers for peace in Jerusalem, or for the healing of our wounds so we won’t drink or gamble or compulsively shop anymore, or for anything else that’s too big a problem for us to solve through merely human methods.

A computer and a blog work pretty good, too. Pardon me while I go finish my wailing in private.

For those that don’t know your arcane Hollywood film history, The Three Faces of Eve was an odd, but high-quality, 1957 take on mental illness, specifically multiple personality disorder. It starred Joanne Woodward, one of the most underrated actresses of the Baby Boom generation. If I were a film historian, or teaching college (which I may in fact do sometime soon if I get myself together), I might do a unit on the good and bad portrayals of mental illness in film over the years. For example, how many of you have seen the sweet, early Johnny Depp movie Benny and Joon (subject: late teen onset of schizophrenia… not Johnny’s, but Mary Stuart Masterson’s)?

Maybe I’m thinking about Eve and Joon because I recently watched Robert Altman’s Vincent & Theo (1990), about another cuckoo, Vincent Van Gogh and his complicated relationship with his brother Theo. It was depressing and uneven, as many Altman films are, but I liked it nevertheless. Perhaps because I, too, am depressing and uneven.

Depressing, optimistic, whatever. All of the above and more. Therefore I finally put myself out there on facebook, which I think I’ve been avoiding for the past two years in the interest of NOT doing something trendy for once. Conformists like us all have to stake out at least one way to not be a lemming, right? (Same reason I’m not going to drive a hybrid, or probably get tats and piercings… I prefer to display my distinctiveness in what I say and do, not how I look.)

The cool part about facebook though –which, I know, will be stating the obvious for those of you who participate (sorry) – is the prospect of turning up old friends and returning them to New Friend status. Perhaps even friends you didn’t know you had, people you thought had dismissed you in high school as a dope, or nice but irrelevant. That’s the experience I’m having, anyway. Acceptance (or at least tolerance) from unexpected sources.

Still, nothing beats honest face-to-face conversation, like the splendid time that was had by all at the L’Arche Chicago Eighth Anniversary event on Sunday, June 22nd. My friend Spencer Foon was honored, along with State of Illinois disabilities advocate Sheila Romano. Sue and I caught up with old friends, made a few new ones, and just enjoyed the smiling faces of the core members.

Two highlights: Spencer in a suit and tie (it will be another five years before I see that again), and Reba/Sonshine Group pal Ron Polzella looking hale and healthy… and winning a bottle of wine in the raffle! I’ll drink to that, Big Ron.

Classes at my school wrapped up this week, possibly for the last time ever. Due to funding problems, Chicago Mennonite Learning Center will suspend operations for the 2008-09 school year, to do some fact-finding and determine if and how to re-open in some altered form.

I’m on a committee from Mennonite churches around the metro area, which is reviewing the situation and making some recommendations to the school’s board about future steps. Essentially, the problems arose from a combination of some minor past mismanagement, and greatly increased competition from charter and contract schools in the area. Who’d have thunk it? School reform in Chicago these days means a handful of savvy administrator/fundraisers get to set up public schools that function like private ones… with waiting lists, special programs, and a new brand of institiutionalized elitism. Meanwhile, the kindergarten in the “ordinary” public school down the street from ours reportedly had almost fifty kids this year, with one teacher.

So we at CMLC got lost in”no man’s land”: we charged a low enough tuition to be a workable option for families fleeing that blithely imbalanced CPS system (gee, what a surprise!). Yet we have no single on-site church to help us cover the daily costs beyond our tuition income (another 35% or so?). Couple that gap with a lack of experience getting the big grants from non-Mennonite sources and foundations, and you have a recipe for a financial crumble.

Last year, when the current principal looked like she would have to quit to take care of her elderly mother, I even applied to be the principal at CMLC. She ended up staying, solving her elder-care problems a different way. But even though I may have been effective in the role, I’m now glad it went down this way. For one thing, the amount of change I would have wanted, and the institution’s inability to move forward with those radical changes, would probably have frustrated me. Or else I would have focused on the students, teachers and curriculum, and as a result even the modest dollar-chasing that our principal has done this year would have been reduced in the process. There’s only so many hours in a day, after all, and I’ve never been the type to live, sleep, and eat my job. At the end of the day, I want to watch 30 Rock (who knew I’d agree with the lesbian community that funnygirl Tina Fey is red hot). I want to write a blog, or do a few other things that are for me and my family, activities not beholden to the Almighty, Soul-Crushing Buck.

I’ve worked on and off with small not-for-profit organizations for years, and our nation’s dirty little secret is that most of them are two steps ahead of broke, because they’re caught unknowingly in the middle of some serious class warfare. The infrastructure and free market system that holds sway in the U.S. means that most power structures don’t mind  letting the working poor or lower middle class languish away in substandard situations. In fact, we could make a case that it’s one more case of the rich getting richer, and the poor poorer. It’s no joke that community centers, small schools and local social service institutions are forced to compete with the Goodman Theaters, Northwestern Universities and Advocate Healthcare Systems of the world. Yes, they’re nonprofit in origin, but their bottom line and their fundraising force are both huge. Full disclocure: I’ve been a Goodman subscriber, and I’m an NU alum who got some serious grant money back in the ’80s to even be able to go there. So I’m not advocating pulling the plug on them. I just think we could do a better job of spreading the love around.

But since the flawed, shortsighted, trickle-down, ”thousand points of light” economic policies of the Reagan ’80s, which eventually led to the disparity we’re now faced with, nobody’s had the guts to admit we’re building this disparity into the very DNA of our culture. As long as the housing market was strong, and the Dow kept going up, nobody made a big ruckus about the economic losers, either here or abroad. But the house of cards is wobbling. So now what?

Obama shows signs of having some good sense, with things like the removal of Bush’s tax breaks for our wealthiest citizens and institutions. But even in a “Yes We Can” atmosphere of change, I suspect that our evenly divided Dem-publican society is too risk-averse to get ahead of the curve, on the environment and the new global economy and several other areas where there are quiet, looming crises — crises that have nothing much to do with Iraq, Iran, or the frickin’ inheritance tax. So maybe we’re in for a long, slow slide downward for the foreseeable future, until things get bad enough for folks to wake up and re-orient their priorities. Still, I’d rather have free-thinking Barack in the driver’s seat for those crises than political panderers and pawns like Clinton and McCain. Barack’s got the stones to make the tough calls –and believe me, there will be some — but he’ll do it with a measure of justice and fairness that gives more people a stake in the outcome.

Personally, I may or may not stay in teaching. I may move from kindergarteners to community college Composition 101 students, finally put this useless (so far) Masters degree to better use. Or I may sell out, write pithy corporate marketing copy for $50K a year, take advantage of dropping real estate prices in the far-flung suburbs, and leave the city and its problems to other well-intentioned swimmers against the tide. Because lemme tell you, people: I’m tired of using my best years and varied skillset in the service of losing propostions.

You might say I’ve “been schooled”, in more ways than one.

But first another confession: This marks at least my third blog post in which the word “confession” is part of the title - a sure sign that I’m a St. Augustine-aping, whiny, guilt-ridden, post-Catholic, pseudo-intellectual hack trying to catch people’s attention with self-deprecating humor and imitation, half-assed, lazy religious trickery. Nevertheless, here goes…

I went out, alone, for pricy coffee and and a delicious torte after a church committee meeting the other night. I seem to need to do something like this about once a month: fancy coffee and a hipster newspaper, or popping into a blues bar, or walking down to the corner tavern (which for me is about a half-mile away, barely walkable with my arthritic knee). I never plan when I will make these little bohemian excursions — where I act like a carefree single man, or an irresponsible married man, or a down-on-his-luck divorced man who for some stupid reason reveres reckless poets and raging drunks like Charles Bukowski and Arthur Rimbaud. In fact, planning would be in direct opposition to the spontaneity I so desperately need when the urge to excurge hits. (Excurge? Excurse? Play hooky from my boring life? Whatever… you get it.) Plus, I’m multiply disabled in the medulla adultada, that part of the brain where for most people planning occurs.

But my secret fear is that I look out of place when I’m out playing at that bohemian lifestyle. I have no tattoos. No hardware hanging from my appendages. I don’t wear funky hats much anymore. I mostly wear off-brand polo shirts. My jeans are not ripped, nor written-upon, and I don’t wear all black. I do own a classic old leather bomber jacket – one which I can picture the hero of Kerouac’s On the Road  wearing as he immerses himself in some seedy underworld of tenement apartments and broken-down, landlocked houseboats. But the zipper on that jacket is busted, so I often opt for something warmer and more sensible, if less cool.

Out at the cafe the other night, my main clue that I’m getting too old for this sh*t was that I couldn’t see anything in the dim, atmospheric lighting. I had to use my phone as a lame-ass itty-bitty book light, in order to read The Onion, skipping over articles about rock bands I’ve barely heard of, and occasionally puzzling over references aimed squarely at college-age kids. (I still “get” most of the jokes, though I may not think they’re as funny as the youngsters do…) And I cursed under my breath like a crotchety old man when my twenty-year-old waitress moved at the speed of molasses in getting me the check. Doesn’t anybody have pride in their work anymore? (Yeah, I sound like my parents now. It sucks.)

For last month’s excursion, I admit I pushed the outside of the envelope a bit, as I went out late on a Friday, after Sue and Graham were asleep, to play craps on the gambling boats all the way over in Gary, Indiana. I didn’t leave a note. I didn’t ask “permission” (God forbid). And I knew full-well that my father struggled most of his adult life with a gambling addiction, much injuring my mother and yet denying he had a problem every step of the way. But dammit, it was Friday night, I was wide awake and wired, and I wanted to do it. I’d been thinking about it for months, in fact. So I did it. I even won $130. But Sue called me at about 1:30 or 2am, as I was driving back, wondering where I was. When I told the truth she was rightfully ticked off.

So now I have to make confession, to be reconciled to my wife and my life and my boring middle-class, middle-aged existence. Until next month, when I will fall off the wagon again and limp my way through a game of Ultimate Frisbee with kids half my age after church. In a few minutes I will go off to my full-time job, and when I come home tonight I will cook a well-balanced dinner and probably watch Night In the Museum with my family. Between now and Sunday, I have to mow the lawn, the ultimate symbol that I’m no longer bohemian. (Do they even have lawns in Bohemia, or do they just cover their yards with skate parks and cheeky paintings of Elvis on black velvet?)

Plus I probably need to spend some time this weekend looking for work again, as the school I’m teaching at is suspending operations next year due to financial difficulties. Well, at least that’s ONE way I’m still living like a twenty-something bohemian and wanna-be. I have no real CAREER to speak of…

In a recent column entitled “George & Dick’s Excellent Adventure”,
(over at Neil Young’s Living With War site, author David Robb reveals the fifty year history of U.S. politicians –especially but not only Republicans– who get us into ill-advised wars, and then deny how ineffective these military solutions are for addressing political problems. Here are a few column excerpts:

 During a video conference with US military and civilian personnel
working and fighting in Afghanistan, Bush said, “I must say, I’m a
little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I
think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of
helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you and
in some ways romantic, you know, confronting danger.”
   Such an immature and foolish statement is particularly galling
coming from a guy who in 1968 dodged combat duty in Vietnam by using
the influence of his father — who was then a Congressman representing
Texas’s 7th District — to get into the Texas Air National Guard…
     As any combat veteran will tell you, war is not “romantic.” It’s
bloody and brutal.

Robb also cites some recently uncovered correspondence between Richard
Nixon — who was raised as a peace-loving Quaker — and his psychiatrist, written
when Nixon was Ike’s vice president. The shrink, perhaps to help
Tricky Dick deal with his conscience over Korea and
various Cold War problems, advised Nixon to be bold and work to create
a Department of Peace. Alas, I’m afraid no such courage or imagination can
be found among U.S. politicians, however. Robb then reveals an odd
little fact about Nixon’s tombstone:

…When he became president in 1969, Nixon continued the war in
Vietnam for another six years — and several million more lives. And
yet, Nixon still thought of himself as a man of peace. “The greatest
honor history can bestow,” reads the inscription on Nixon’s black
granite tombstone in California, “is the title of peacemaker.”
   In his novel 1984, George Orwell wrote: “War is Peace; Freedom is
Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.” He could have added: “War is
Romantic.

Today on the radio, I heard another interesting fact: in 2007, the
number of cases of PTSD in the U.S. military was over 14,000. A big
number, which looks even bigger when one looks at the 2006 number and
sees that the increase for 2007 was almost 50%. That’s in just one year… a year
during which The Surge was supposed to guarantee success. But at what
cost? (Besides which: are we actually having success? Recent studies show that outside the province where the Afghan capital is, coalition forces are mostly losing ground and influence, and the Taliban is resurgent.)

That PTSD statistic is only shocking if one believes that
the kind of moral and ethical compromises one makes daily in a war
zone are just a normal part of modern life. In reality, most real
psychological and scientific data supports the opposite case. Thus, since we civilians are far enough removed from the REAL trauma, and so culturally conditioned to romanticize
war, PTSD becomes a huge problem. When the *reality* kicks in for our
soldiers, their fully-functional minds cannot bear the disconnect:
war, it turns out, is nothing like they were told it was.

So there were not actually more weaklings or nutcases in the 2007 military than
there were in 2006 (or in 1956, or 1942). They’re just getting smarter
and more reflective. The real consequences of war, and the real
intractable problems in Iraq and Afghanistan that have almost nothing
to do with us, prove stronger than the soldiers’ capacity to adapt to
them. Oops. Innocence and naivete lost… forever. The “just”-ness of a war, or not, does not make individual acts of violence morally acceptable. Yes, soldiers are realizing in unprecedented numbers that they’re not freedom fighters or peacemakers… they’re interlopers and occupiers after all. Fooled again. Who knew?

Healthy middle-class Americans, and perhaps everyone everywhere, want
to feel that they are essentially “good” people — and that others are
good also (and thus not out to do them harm… the essential
insecurity that is at the heart of PTSD). Combat conditions often
strip them of that partial fallacy, revealing their aggressive,
unforgiving, sinful side, the side that makes us have to CHOOSE to be
good, on a daily basis. Many soldiers, under the stress of actual combat conditions, discover that this inner battle is much harder than a battle with any armed insurgent.

At that point –surrounded by an entire culture that seems so foreign,
where friends and enemies are hard to tell apart, where a mild
paranoia eats away at them– these soldiers might be faced with a
choice: harden themselves, sell off a portion of their soul and just follow orders, or
else admit a few basic truths and perhaps lose their mind a bit, because of the ridiclous context in which they have been placed by their government. Perhaps in an attempt to preserve some of their soul and conscience, PTSD is the “right” choice, even if the harsh reality of its symptoms makes life difficult for months and years to come.

I for one, unlike our childish president, do not envy these soldiers
one bit. Either choice is a bad one. Unlike the lie Mr. Orwell’s Big
Brother once tried to sell us, war is NOT peace. War is unnatural.
It’s bad foreign policy, it’s bad for the body, and most of all it’s
bad for the soul.

Anyone who lives in a midwestern neighborhood where there are lilac bushes has had a fun couple of weeks of late. It’s not Twilight Time — as the great singing group The Platters once sang in the 1950s– but it is Lilac Time. The color, the scent… there’s just nothing like it. I’m not the most dedicated of gardeners, but when something is this perfect, it’s just got to be acknowledged. Hurray for lilacs, of any and all varieties.

Meanwhile, politically, the Democrats are grinding their way toward the convention, with the scent neither horribly sweet nor foul, but definitely generating continued interest. And with the other shoe dropping for Ted Kennedy  cancer-wise (click for cancer-sufferer and feminist Elizabeth Edwards’ take on things), an interesting wrinkle now begins to take shape in the national debate on our medical/scientific/financial priorities. Do we want to spend our money and time saving American lives, or taking Iraqi and Iranian lives?

On the campaign: I’m now of the opinion that it’s actually good Hillary did not drop out earlier. All these late primary states finally get to feel like they matter. \Maybe it gets traditional Democratic voters nationwide feeling like their vote and their voice will also matter in November, when hopefully we will get more than the pathetic 64% 2004 voter turnout coming out for a presidential election, to voice their opinion in a context where they feel it actually matters.

Please, people… I KNOW we could do worse than McCain, but God knows WE COULD DO BETTER. We don’t need the working class abandoning the Democratic Party again, like they did when they were duped by Reagan. Sure, Hillary’s competent. But Obama’s a once in a lifetime candidate. Get on board, people, or get left behind. Race and class don’t matter. Progress… that’s what matters.

Apropos of nothing, my family had an intense discussion of our favorite numbers tonight. Here’s how they fell out:

Graham: 5, 11, 100

Sue: 3, 17 (her birthdate), 2002

Mark: 3, 11, 23, 34, 1118 (two of those are Chicago sports related… guess which two…)

Maybe those numbers mean nothing at all. Maybe they mean alot, on some deep spiritual level that none of us understands. Either way: each of us has a favorite number in common with at least one other family member.

Workwise: Sue’s teaching Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities to her freshmen this quarter. She did some background research – Around 1780, in France, the total amount of chocolate available (keep in mind that the New World was the only source of cacao at the time) was 16 pounds. Worse yet, eight pounds of it was owned by one company/family. If that ain’t an indictment of the aristocracy, and the concentration of power and marketable goods in the hands of a minority, then I don’t know what is…

Last but not least, amusement in the Nielsen household has finally degenerated to this: Mom, Graham, Gato and I are each currently wearing a pair of Graham’s pull-up diapers on our heads. It’s a true Solidartity of Silliness. I would post a photo, but it would most likely kill any political aspirations I might ever have, …so we’ll pass on the visual evidence, thank you very much…

Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend. Personally, I’ll be chillin’ in Wisconsin. I’m grateful, to a point, for the courageous sacrifices of our veterans in previous and even current wars. It still doesn’t change the fact, however, that military power is the dumbest and most outdated manner of political and social control known to mankind.

Are we ready to move on yet, friends?

My brain function was bad enough before old age started setting in. Now it’s getting ridiculous.

In the past two days I’ve forgotten first my cell phone (in a pullover pocket at work for two days), and then my wallet (up in Wisconsin, where I can’t get it back until this Friday).

Add to that the increasing frequency with which I forget people’s names (I used to be really good at it), and the 15+ times I’ve gotten my son to school late this year, and you’ve got all the makings of a classic flake. David Hirsch, an old family friend, calls my personality type Abstract Bewildered. It’s true. I can be creative, but when it comes to little details, schedules, and crossing all the t’s, I’m often a mess. My mother has been of the opinion for years now that I was borderline ADHD as a kid, but never diagnosed because I was high-functioning academically… all that completed-at-the-last-minute homework at least had the right answers.

Now that I’m looking for work again, it really gets me worried. “Attention to detail” and “ability to meet deadlines” seem to be the two main skills/cliches held in common for all the job-postings I’m interested in. Of course, nobody’s gonna advertise that they’re occasionally forgiving when it comes to a proposal deadline. So how serious do I take these job descriptions?

I know there’s no cure for old age or stupidity, but is there at least some kind of pill I can take to be normal? (Or as abnormal as I used to be, before I completely let myself go?)

Hillary, she of the two faces, is at it again. I planned on posting about this last week, but I wanted to do some homework on it, and didn’t have time till today.

Here’s the short version: Jeremiah Wright has already been to the White House… as one of Hillary and Bill’s spiritual advisors in the wake of the president’s marital infidelity. So how did Wright suddenly become the one-dimensional, seething, angry representative of a dissatisfied black America, if his advice was so valuable to the Clintons during their biggest personal crisis ever? If known lefty Jeremiah Wright was good enough to stand alongside influential evangelical and Willow Creek Chuch founder, Saint Bill Hybels, back in 1998, then why is he the devil incarnate now?

I heard a mention of Wright and Hillary’s relationship on the radio early last week, when a commentator mentioned in passing that documentarian Michael Moore had cited her historical rewrite as one of the main reasons he was throwing his support behind Obama. Then a day later, I heard Moore himself interviewed on the subject (by Joy Behar – the only worthwhile thing about ABC’s The View ). Moore, no stranger to deep dark secrets, said he was shouting at his TV when Hillary brought up the Rev. Wright’s comments on the same stage as Barack.

“Tell them!” Moore implored Obama. “Tell them Wright was one of the pastors the Clintons looked to for help.” But Obama, not a dirty fighter by nature, chose to keep mum on the subject.

Moore and Behar called it gentlemanly behavior. I call it “politic” behavior, in the only decent use of that dirty word. It was both a turn-the-other-cheek moment, and a smart move. Obama himself has thus far made no reference to Hillary’s most vulnerable personal/family crisis. It would be nasty and un-Christian of him to do so. It also wouldn’t score him any points with anyone – not with the “family values” types who dislike Clinton but may grudingly respect her for forgiving her husband, nor with the patient, ego-bruised liberal women who see Hillary as their champion. Gordon Fischer, a major political figure in Iowa and an Obama supporter, mentioned Monica Lewinsky’s stained blue dress last week in his blog, and got a beat-down for doing so. Apparently people will still empathize with a scorned woman, even when she’s quite strong enough to fight her own battles. (Why else would we have wailed and howled for years in tabloids over the breakup of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston?)

Partly because Wright spoke at the big NAACP meeting last week, and partly because Indiana’s primary is not very “sexy” news fodder, CNN.com has no less than twenty stories discussing various aspects of Jeremiah Wright and the aftermath of his America-bashing retirement speech. Like Barack saying he would have left the church over those comments, if Wright wasn’t already retiring. Or Clinton Cabinet-member Bill Richardson saying Obama’s response speech, on race in America, was the pivotal moment when he saw Obama’s merits as outweighing Hillary’s.

Richardson was recently called a Judas by Clinton’s unofficial attack dog James Carville. James is generally a funny and likable character, though it’s not at all funny to accuse Richardson of disloyalty while Hillary loses other former supporters like Bubba Bill’s Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Michael Moore, John Kerry, actor/activist Tim Robbins, and dozens of others (who probably matter much more than the above-listed fringe-y dudes). Most realistic Democrats and progressives see the writing on the wall (that Barack is the future of the party, that he’s smart enough to make up for his lack of experience, and that Hillary won’t win back even one Reagan-loving, Bubba-bashing Christian Republocrat in the general election this November).

It’s the comfortable, scared, politically-disengaged Baby Boomers that are the problem here – the ones about whom Don Henley once brilliantly wrote as seeing no contradiction in putting “a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac”. My mother, a mild Hillary suporter who bought the whole Wright-Obama connection story hook-line-and-sinker, represents Clinton’s last and only hope. Any preacher, outgoing or not, who says “God damn America!”, is going to scare off some good white people who are nevertheless concerned about a post-O.J. Simpson, post-Rodney King backlash against the white middle class.

I think the Carville comments on Bill Richardson show that Clinton is genuinely worried about losing the support of the influential Latino community, one of her traditionally strong bases, the way she has already lost the black vote. I’ve said it here before, but I will say it again: a ticket with Richardson as a V.P. would be a smart choice. He’d steal some votes from McCain out west, plus he’d win back a few Clintonites with his likability and non-”elitist” ways. Most importantly, the prospect of a half-Mexican stepping into the Oval Office if anything happens to Obama would keep the wolves at bay, all those crackers who might want to do President Barack some form of harm. (”But I keed, I keed…”)

So please move on, Hillary. You make a pretty good Senator. You might even have made a better president than your husband. But like Jennifer Aniston, Bill Richardson and Michael Moore, we’ve moved on now. Reverend Wright is retiring. Louis Farrakhan doesn’t command much attention anymore, even though you brazenly brought up his name in connection with Obama in another public forum awhile back. 

Electing you would be a step backward, Hillary, and we need to move forward. Swallow your pride and be the kind of leader that we know you’re capable of, the moral and ethical leader who does genuinely care about America, about our health and children and growth and international standing. You showed you could Move On with regard to your horndog husband. Now do it for us.