2/27/10
I love paradoxes and here is a great one from The Strong Horse, Lee Smith's new book on Middle East politics: "after 9/11, the schizophrenic nature of Saudi policy at the same time became plain: while members of the Saudi royal family relied on U.S. military might to protect them from foreign enemies, their domestic security depended on their ability to redirect the political furies of domestic rivals onto those same Americans who protected them," and so the end result is 9/11, because the Saudis, though beholden to America (for security of resources, diplomacy with Israel, protection from the Shi'ites, safety on the Suez Canal and in the Persian Gulf) still needs to direct the profoundly Sunni Al Qaeda's rage away from the region . . . and this time America was the victim . . . and the same sort of thing is going on in Iraq, where the Iraqi people, especially the minorities, need American support, but to preserve their honor and to attract a following and possibly garner power in the region, they need to fight against America-- Smith's thesis is that the region is still far too tribal to be ready for democracy, and that it is hard for Americans to even understand the mentality at play there, which I witnessed first hand when we invaded Iraq and one of my nicest, smartest, most diligent students in Damascus said her mother told her, "If I didn't have two daughters, I would go to Iraq and kill Americans, " and this is a woman who sent her two daughters to the "American" school to learn liberal values-- but still, when it comes to honor, though Saddam was a bad man, he was still a Sunni strong man and no one wanted to see him fall (and the Syrians I talked to pretty much hated the Kuwaitis because they were rich sell-outs, so they didn't really mind when Saddam invaded Kuwait, I could go on and on about this, especially the Druze, the Maronites, the Sunnis, and the Shi'ites in Lebanon, but, mainly, you should definitely read this book!)
2/26/10
WARNING: we watched Gremlins the other night with the kids, and though it's a little violent, they loved it . . . in this age of digital animation, those green puppets aren't very scary, BUT, and I totally forgot about this, Kate (Phoebe Cates) does recount a terrible little story, about how her father, dressed as Santa Claus, broke his neck coming down their chimney on Christmas, and she ends the story by saying, "and that's how I learned there's no such thing as Santa Claus," and I'm wondering how closely my kids were listening, because they didn't say a thing about it after she said it (and it happened too fast to grab the remote and fast forward through it-- which probably would have drawn more attention to it, anyway-- but maybe my kids are already smart enough to know that Christmas is all about playing the game, and pretending to believe in Santa so you get a bunch of gifts).
2/25/10
I just started Lee Smith's new book on Middle East politics called The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations; he is refuting the thesis that anti-Americanism in the Arab world is a product of government propaganda and an opinion of a few terrorists and dictators, and that it is more endemic in the culture, which is still very tribal at the core-- and this reminds me of a time, probably in 2002, when we were in the Western Desert between Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, on our way to Amman in a service taxi, and we stopped for gas at a godforsaken station and while we were browsing candy bars, a guy asked my wife, "You like bin Laden?" and then showed her his cell phone screen: on it there was a simple cartoon of a plane hitting the World Trade Center followed by a laughing Osama face.
2/24/10
Alex coined a word the other night; he said I should "buffle" someone with my newly shaven head, because it was "spiky and dangerous," and I corrected him and said, "You mean butt someone?" but then I realized he was taking the word "buffalo" and making it into a verb; I like it and I'm going to use it.
2/23/10
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a bit long for a thriller, but every time it slowed down, it was for a good reason-- and it's moody Swedish setting and byzantine layers make it more than a genre book . . .it's far better than The Da Vinci Code, though it shares some of it's themes: I give it nine dead and mangled cats out of ten (also, there's something compelling about reading an author's last works-- Stieg Larsson, Swedish magazine editor and expert on right wing and Nazi organizations, wrote this trilogy of novels and then dropped dead of a heart attack at age fifty, before he could enjoy his international fame . . . why does that make the book better?)
Sweet Sweet Cup Holder
I'm proud of the fact that I've been driving the same car since 1994 (a Jeep Cherokee Sport-- solid V6 engine and no power windows or locks or anything to break) but sometimes I dream of when the chassis will finally rust out and die because then I'll get a car with doors that always open, a car with an iPod dock . . . a car with a cup holder (that's right, I don't have a cup-holder-- there is a designated sneaker for holding hot coffee if there's no passenger-- otherwise the passenger is the cup-holder . . . but I am wondering: why is this? had the cup been yet invented in 1994? or was there once a cup-holder and I can't remember?)
2/21/10
Our Hamilton Beach food processor has these settings: Pulse, Grate, Quick Clean, Grind, Stir, Beat, Aerate, Shred, Puree, Blend, Crumb, Liquefy, Chop, Frappe, Mix, Hi, and Lo; but no matter which button I pressed, it just made a loud noise and didn't really chop my Poblano peppers and cilantro (I was making Rick Bayless green chorizo) so I stuck the knife in to nudge some chunks into the whizzing blade and peered into the blender to see what the problem was and then, just as the blade whacked the knife, it dawned on me how stupid I was being-- so I closed it up and shook it for a while and then it finally chopped the stuff up (real time update! my wife just walked in and told me that it's not a "food processor," it's a "blender," and that's why I was having so much trouble . . . you learn something new every day).
2/20/10
If you don't check the text messages on your cell phone for a long time, then when you finally do-- they tell a little story, and you are both the protagonist and the villain.
2/18/10
I loved the new Coen brothers movie, A Serious Man, for the first half hour, but then, once the theme dawned on me, it became harder to enjoy, but certainly engaging to watch-- and the ending seemed cryptic for a moment, almost like the end of The Blair Witch Project, but then the reality of the awful truth became apparent: four transistor radios out of five.
2/16/10
If there were any kind of cosmic justice, I wouldn't have had to endure A Gazillion Bubbles this weekend, since I took Alex to see One Man Star Wars two weeks ago-- but it was family day at the State Theater and my wife got a ticket for me . . . the show lived up to its billing, there were lots of bubbles and lasers and loud music, and though it was torture, it did give me an idea for my one man kid-friendly theater show: it is called A Gazillion Pointy Plastic Toys and it features a multi-level stage full of pointy plastic toys and a couple of staircases, and I just wander around the stage, stepping on toys with my bare feet, cursing, stubbing my toes, and tripping on the stairs while screaming, "Who left Legos on the stairs!" and then I ask for young volunteers to come up on stage and I beat them (I described the show to my friend's kids at lunch after the show and they said,"We'd pay to see that!")
Slightly Better Than Having Your Heart Ripped Out On A Ziggurat
Sea Isle City Polar Plunge Recap: a good turn-out, and everyone who was on time plunged, except our photographer Celine; the plungers were Mel, Ed, Chantal, Keith, Stacy, Ed, John, Mose, Terry, Catherine, me-- and everyone agreed that they would do it again, but the anticipation was nerve-wracking (although beer and tequila helped), since we were all novice plungers and had no idea of what to expect . . . and what we didn't expect was that thousands of spectators lined the fences and probably close to a thousand brave souls were plunging, and as Mel described it, it was like some sort of Stonehenge ritual, or a human sacrifice, total mob mentality, everyone jumping and screaming in preparation to dunk themselves into the 36 degree water (and the scenery was pretty good, plenty of cute girls in bikinis) and though the water was very cold, and immediately after I dove in, I couldn't get my legs to work-- I wanted to run out of the water but my body wouldn't run-- but I felt warm enough once I walked onto the beach and the only thing that really hurt was my toes-- the approach to the water was pandemonium, I held Catherine's hand and once we were waist deep, I let her go and yelled, "Turn Back!" like it was a life or death situation (which it may have been) and then we thought we lost Mose in the crowd because he didn't have his glasses on and couldn't see anything, but he turned up and we went and watched LeCompt play a four and half hour set at an insanely packed Springfield Bar and then ate at Welshies and passed out at the condo-- we slept thirteen in it; hopefully we will do it again next year and get enough people for two condos, I never would have thought jumping in the ocean when there was snow on the beach could be so much fun.
2/14/10
Howard Zinn and J.D. Salinger are with us no longer, but their legacy is: like Beck, they both championed the loser-- Salinger gave a voice to ostracized loser Holden Caulfield's sensitive and precocious teenage alienation and Zinn gave a voice to the losers of history, the enslaved, the indigenous, the female, and the impoverished-- and if success is measured by the acceptance of these paradigm-busting perspectives, then their success is astoundingly significant . . . but has the pendulum swung too far . . . is there not something to be said for the Stradlaters of the world, the winners . . . is it not best, as Conan says, "to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women," or as Chevy Chase says in The Three Amigos, "we will rape the horses and ride off on the women!"-- is there something so wrong with being a winner, enslaving the defeated, selling their children, destroying their culture, taking their women, developing their land, and not feeling a bit guilty about it-- what I am saying is this: Salinger and Zinn took all the fun out of kicking some loser butt.
2/13/10
This very well could be the best moment of the rest of your life-- the moment that your thoughts are most lucid and your body is most responsive, the moment that your experience is in perfect coordination with your wisdom, the moment that your recall and your factual knowledge are at their optimum ratio, the moment when you have several things to look forward to and nothing to dread . . . and now that moment is over, and you spent it reading this sentence.
Damned Child Locks!
After a fantastic day of snowboarding yesterday, Terry, Kim, Stacy and I hopped in my Subaru to head home, but on the way out of town I spotted the Shawnee General Store and stopped to get a cup of coffee; Terry was riding shotgun, and he got out as well, but Kim was eating animal crackers and Stacy was texting Ed, so they didn't get out and we went in and browsed what they had and ended up talking to the proprietor for a bit (he grew up in New Brunswick and was a Rutgers football fan) and then, finally, we went back to the car and Stacy and Kim were laughing when we opened the door, because we had locked them in (child locks on the back doors) and Stacy had even gone so far as to text Terry a message (we are locked in the car) but he didn't have his phone, and oddly enough, though we felt bad that they were trapped in the car for the duration, we never let them go into the store or asked if they wanted to-- we just got back in and took off (although I did share my chocolate bar-- Stacy took a piece, and then Terry took a piece, which made no sense, because he actually got to go into the store).
Poop and Sensitivity
On the same day that my six year old son Alex wrote and illustrated a book called My Family (which had a page for every person in the family: Daddy, Mom, Grand-dad, Uncle Eddie, and even my brother Chris, who died several years ago in a car accident) on this very same day that he made my wife cry with this book, and on the same day that my five year old son Ian illustrated his own book-- a book full of scary monsters drawn with loving care and detail . . . on this very same day of creativity and sensitivity, on this same day my children would also-- while my wife was printing photos to put in Alex's aforementioned wonderful book-- these same wonderful boys would come across a couple of old diapers, diapers they were out of long enough to remember them humorously and reminiscently, and in a fit of depraved nostalgia, put the diapers on, simultaneously defecate and urinate in them, laugh hysterically, and then toss the evidence of this scatological prank into the bathroom waste basket, for me to discover when I went to check on them-- because they were so quiet; at the top of the stairs I smelled something awful and wondered what it could be and finally-- with no help from the giggling perpetrators-- found the soiled diapers stuffed into the bathroom waste basket . . . all on the very same day.
Surprise! You Have Strep!
Some people say everything happens for a reason, and though I don't believe them, it is fun to pretend that this might be true; so the reason I got strep throat and spent Saturday in a delirious fever state and could not attend the big surprise party that night (we were part of the "plan" to execute the surprise, and perhaps one of the reasons I got strep is that I hate surprise parties-- they are stressful and I don't like keeping secrets, and what is the ultimate goal? to give the recipient a heart attack?) is because this was a fitting way to finish reading James Ellroy's trilogy of alternate history that he began with American Tabloid (the JFK assassination) and finished with Blood's A Rover . . . so in my strep-addled state-- which mirrored Dwight Holly and Don Crutchfield's mania, all of us coming in and out of consciousness, I read several hundred pages of document inserts, obtuse diaries, rogue cops, RED agents, cover-ups, cut-outs, torture, black bagging, Haitian voodoo, men with machetes and wings, emerald worship, an undercover cop with the Bent, J. Edgar Hoover's paranoia, homosexuality and racism, Tricky Dick Nixon's abrasiveness, Sonny Liston doing morphine suppositories, Tiger Kab, Klan Kamps, Black militant groups pushing heroin and knife fighting and shooting children, a peeper "detective" biting the head off a rat to break a voodoo curse, Trujillo vs. Papa Doc, fruit squeezes, right wing strong-arming, left wing radicalization, Redd Foxx snorting coke, document heists, betrayal, backstabbing, perversion, hate tracts, money laundering, voodoo porn, and, of course, loads of conspiracy . . . a fitting end to this for both Ellroy and me; it is a good read despite the conceit of the diaries, I give it four "perfect kidney shots" out of five.
2/8/10
Together is a Swedish film about a commune in the mid-seventies, and the moral is that you can't fight human nature: no matter how much of a hippie you, no matter what your beliefs are, no matter how committed you are to changing the world order, your kids will still desire meat (the kids picket for hot dogs in the kitchen one night) and TV and play violent games (there's a great scene where one kid plays Pinochet, the Chilean torturer, and forces the other to "say you like Pinochet!") and adults will desire stability and loyalty and family . . . as Birger says, "It is better to eat porridge together than pork chops alone," and-- like this sentence-- the plot rambles through the lives of all the members of the commune and a few outsiders . . . there's no need to focus on a particular story, it's really more like surreal episode of the TV show Big Brother, but from the seventies and with deeper characters and a nostalgic look that makes it more like an artifact from that era than a film; I give it one congealed glutinous Socialist bowl of porridge out of one, I loved it.
2/7/10
Apparently, high school kids find it really scary and funny if their teacher leaps over his desk and knocks over a chair and a water bottle and a stapler on his way to intercept a note being passed from one boy to another . . . even if it is during the filming of a short film that they wrote in Creative Writing for their "final exam"-- I think they thought I would calmly get up and walk over and demand the note, as I would do if I were playing myself, but what they didn't know is that I was acting-- I was no longer their calm and collected teacher, I was someone else; one guy actually leaped out of his seat when I came charging over, and for the next scene (where I had to take another note-- this wasn't the most thrilling plot) we set up a stool, a stack of thirty books, and a garbage pail for me to run through . . . and now I know why it's fun to be an action hero: you get to knock stuff over indoors.
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