Chris LaMay-West, writer in Boston

When Romney wins Florida it's...over? Beginning? In the middle?

2012-01-28T12:48:00.000-08:00

First things first, Romney, as you'll see below, seems to be well-headed to victory in Florida on Tuesday:

As of Friday, his surge and Gingrich's drop were plateauing, but at levels that leave Romney 8+ percent ahead. With about 9% undecided, almost all of them would have to break for Gingrich for him to regain the lead, and given his uneven performance in Friday's debate, that doesn't seem likely. The latest models at fivethirtyeight.com are also forecasting a Romney victory of 8.5%.

So what will this probable victory mean? Just 11 days ago, when I was expecting Florida to mark four Romney victories out of four, I thought it would mean the end of the race. Then Gingrich surged, Perry dropped out and Santorum retroactively became the victor in Iowa, causing me to recant just before South Carolina. Romney has rallied in Florida, getting muscular with attacks, clearing up his hedging on financial disclosure, and drawing in the establishment, who were suddenly panicked by Gingrich's resurgence. Will a Romney Florida win knock Gingrich out and once again point us toward a quick sew up?

I think there are some reasons to be skeptical. For one thing, Santorum is just about out of money, and it's not clear how a Florida third place that barely clears 10% would help him. Which leaves us with some interesting math:

If you look at the votes so far for the seven Republican candidates that started out in Iowa, a few things stand out:

1. Elimination has been fairly rational, in the sense that everyone who only garnered single didgits is now gone.

2. If you are Gingrich, you're so close to Romney overall so far that only an ultra-shellacking in Florida would convince you that you have no chance long term.

3. Assuming that all Huntsman votes would have gone to Romney if Huntsman hadn't been in the race, and assuming that some, but not all of the conservative votes (I've taken 75% of totals for Bachmann, Gingrich, Perry and Santorum) would have gone to a single Conservative candidate if there was only one in the race, the hypothetical Conservative would lead Romney so far. If you assume even more Conservative overlap, and/or less than 100% Huntsman conversion to Romney, the Conservative would lead by even more.

4. Bachmann and Perry are gone, and Santorum is running out of money. Gingrich is, effectively, the only remaining figure Conservatives dissatisfied with Romney will have to flock to after Florida.

The schedule between Florida and Super Tuesday on March 6th gives Gingrich several chances to steal a surprise victory or two and rally those still looking for an alternative to Romney, keeping things interesting until Super Tuesday on March 6th.

Sat., February 4, 2012	Nevada
February 4–11, 2012	Maine
Tue., February 7, 2012	Colorado
	Minnesota
	Missouri
Tue., February 28, 2012	Arizona
Tue., February 28, 2012	Michigan
Sat., March 3, 2012	Washington

On the skeptical toward my skepticism side of the coin, it's a heck of a lot of time, and a heck of a lot of geography to cover, for a candidate as underfunded and understaffed as Gingrich. It's also worth noting that Gingrich's best chance is probably in the arch-Conservative Arizona, but they don't vote for four weeks after Florida. And the lightning rod issue there is immigration, just about the only issue in existence on which he is actually to the left of Romney.

It will be interesting to see it all play out...

Book Review: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym

2012-01-24T13:51:00.000-08:00

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Edgar Allen Poe, 1838, 146 pp.)

When I got the Nook for Christmas and set about using my Barnes & Noble gift cards to download things to it, one of the first things I discovered was the joy of works that are beyond copyright protection. 99 cents can get you a lot, and if (as I would recommend) you spring for the extra few dollars to get to the $2.99-$4.99 category to get collections that have proper indexing for E-readers, you can find yourself with the entire works of William Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky or H.P. Lovecraft for under five dollars each. And, in this case, Edgar Allen Poe as well.

When I downloaded a collection of his stories, I discovered that it also included The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, the only novel he ever wrote. Having just finished it, I can testify that it is a gem, albeit a somewhat baffling one. What starts off as an adventure at sea story, and then takes a decidedly Poeian turn to cannibalism, becomes a fantasy of Antarctic exploration that then ends without an ending. Poe didn't die in the middle. Publishers didn't pressure him to finish it. He quite deliberately ends with a mysterious final scene, and then writes an afterword explaining how the last few chapters (since it's written as a memoir that has been "discovered" by Poe) have been lost.

While this is consternating, it does produce a curious effect of mystery and wonder that I, and apparently many other readers, ended up appreciating. The language is a delight, as is the always self-obsessed narration of the main character as he stumbles through fantastical scenes of stowing away, mutiny, shipwreck, starvation and sailing ever southward through increasingly strange realms.

One of the things that I found most interesting in reading about it after reading it, is the profound effect this strange little unfinished book has had on other writers. I'd known that H.P. Lovecraft was influenced by it and makes repeated references to it in his Antarctic novel At The Mountains of Madness. In addition to that, though, it appears to have been a major, uncredited, influence on Herman Melville in writing Moby Dick, was admired and translated by Baudelaire, and also inspired loosely-related sequels by Jules Verne and another 19th century writer, Charles Romyn Dake. More recently the book inspired critiques of its racial depictions by Toni Morrison, which themselves became the jumping-off point of Mat Johnson's satirical 2011 novel Pym, in which an African-American literature professor becomes obsessed with finding the inhabitants of the islands described toward the end of Poe's novel.

I myself found the depictions of the "savages" in the book to be troubling in their early-19th century way. Perhaps it's my own post-modernity talking, but I wondered along the way if Poe wasn't slightly tongue in cheek about it. The narrator believes they're guilty of a brutal massacre, but there are subtle indications throughout the work that the narrator himself is somewhat incompetent and not entirely reliable in his recollections. Are the signs that he sees of what he believes is a deliberately set-up ambush actually totally misinterpreted? One of several interesting questions to consider while reading...

South Carolina: This changes...Something!

2012-01-21T11:06:00.000-08:00

Not in the long run, but still something.

Last week, I was thoroughly convinced that today's primary in South Carolina would produce a clear victory for Romney, setting him up for a win in Florida and de facto ending the Republican nomination contest by the end of the month. Well, I'm a big enough Blogger to admit when I'm (partially) wrong. To wit, view the latest polling average from Real Clear Politics over the last three days:

As you can see, going in to the home stretch, Gingrich is in the lead, has upward momentum, and Romney, which is even worse for his chances today, has downward momentum. The model at the eminently respectable FiveThirtyEight.com is forecasting a Gingrich victory of around 38-30.

What happened? Gingrich has had some clear pluses this week: momentum from a strong debate performance Monday, Perry dropping out and endorsing him (which I did not foresee), and another strong showing on Friday night. He also had some pretty clear minuses in the last few days: Santorum's endorsement by the Evangelical establishment, Santorum's belated recognition as the victor in Iowa, and a decidedly unflattering interview with his ex-wife on national television Thursday night.

The pluses seem to be outweighing the minuses. Goes to show you what I know! I also realize that I made a fundamental error in my mathematical noodlings from last week in only considering reallocation of votes among candidates and not the additional factor that there were about 10% undecided who might break Gingrich's way as well. Even so, I wouldn't have called it, since I thought Perry would hang in there, and in addition to the votes from Perry, Santorum and undecideds going to Gingrich, Romney has been dropping the last few days.

Color me contrite! And, to clarify my above statement that I was partially wrong, I am probably, in fact, going to be completely wrong in my short term predictions from last week. If Gingrich wins today and Santorum is fourth, Florida becomes a real contest. And if Santorum is fourth there as well, Gingrich has an excellent chance of being the last Conservative standing and pulling in enough resources from that status to hang in there for many primaries and caucuses to come. As most everyone notes, Romney retains every advantage over the medium/long term. In that sense the "inevitable Romney" theory is probably still correct. But this could at least keep it interesting through Super Tuesday!

And it also has some bearing on Romney's ultimate prospects, as the longer the competitive race, the more focus on him seems to be eroding his favorability rating. Everyone pulls together for their nominee eventually, of course, but enthusiasm matters, as does the opposition seeing what avenues of attack are likely to be most fruitful. Those of us who still believe in civility should put up the blast shields, because this fall could get nasty on both sides...

South Carolina update: This Changes...Nothing

2012-01-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

Mind you, there are a few things afoot that could affect this Saturday's primary in South Carolina. Such as the fact that everybody else in the field finally realized Romney is about to walk away with it, and targeted him relentlessly in last night's debate. Not to mention which, they are spending heavily in the state with advertising that focuses on him, rather than each other. Santorum certainly got a boost when the evangelical conference this past weekend decided he was their last best hope for a conservative alternative to Romney, and backed him with surprising unanimity. Meanwhile, in the pro-Romeny camp, Hunstman has decided to drop out and back Romney.

The net effect of all of this? Just about nothing. To see why, you have to look no further than the latest Real Clear Politics averages for South Carolina:

Gingrich is not getting any upward trajectory for all his spending, but neither is he dropping. Santorum has similarly plateaued after a weak New Hampshire showing. The state is friendly to them, but they both have limitations in field strength, and are competing with each other for the same votes. Perry is meanwhile making his last stand, but clearly not getting any traction out of it, and any hope he held onto that evangelicals would rally around him is clearly dashed after this weekend. Santorum could get some boost from the evangelical backing, but no recent poll has him closer than 15 points behind Romney, and that's way too much to make up in 5 days, especially with Gingrich and Perry continuing to unroll their remaining advertising riches. And the considerable anti-Romeny advertising money that has been floating around is meanwhile largely focused on attacks on his business record that have actually caused conservatives to come to his defense, rather than on the social issues where he is much more vulnerable.

All of this combines to pretty much hold in place the following math, which you can see above:

Romney+Huntsman=37.3%
Gingrich=22%
Santorum & Paul=14.3% each
Perry=5.5%

Hypothetical united Conservative would win, narrowly, about 41%-37%, but neither Gingrich or Santorum will get that high unless almost all of the other's votes plus Perry's flow to them in the next five days. Which, absent a candidacy-ending scandal, isn't going to happen. Meanwhile, Perry has insisted he'll stay in through Florida, and Santorum and Gingrich have already spent so much money ahead in the state that they'll be heavily tempted to as well no matter how South Carolina turns out. Which makes it very likely that another split field will hand Romney four in a row.

Book reviews: Glasshouse, The Writers Journey

2012-01-14T11:05:00.000-08:00

Glasshouse (Charles Stross, Ace, 2006, 352 pp.)
Yes, that's right, you're getting two reviews for the price of one today. Having finished both books in the past week, I thought it would be nice to combine and expedite. Glasshouse was actually the final book of my Sci-Fi book club in San Francisco before I moved eastward. I don't think they ever formally met to review it, but heck, I'll give my review now:

Great! Disquieting in a good way. A little rushed at the end.

Without sacrificing my strong anti-spoiler stand, I can tell you that most of the book involves a character from a post-human future participating in a re-created simulation of late 20th/early 21st century life. This results in multiple opportunities to see our society from the outside, and appreciate how strange and even absurd some everyday things that we take for granted are. I think this is one of the highest functions sci-fi can serve. An additional layer of disquiet is provided by the fact that our narrator is someone who has undergone extensive self-induced memory restructuring (a kind of brain engineering not uncommon in this future). The result is that throughout, they can't be quite sure who they were before the experiment, just what they're doing there, and even which of their memories are real versus manufactured. This creates a feeling of being trapped inside a feeling of being trapped that is used to good dramatic purpose throughout.

About my only criticism is that the denouement feels very rushed. Things happen in 10 pages that easily could (and should) have been developed over 30-50 pages. I can't hold a grudge though. As a writer, I can testify that endings are hard, and this book remains well worth the time of anyone who enjoys contemplating just what "self" is and how we use memory to construct it.

The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (Christopher Vogler, Michael Wiese Productions, 3rd. Edition, 2007, 407 pp.)

Speaking of being a writer, this is a GREAT book on writing and story structure. It's written specifically with reference to film, Vogler being a professional story consultant for the movie industry, but the principles that he covers are applicable to stories of all kinds. Inherently so, since what he's done is drawn upon the stages of the Hero's Journey as originally written about by student of Carl Jung and mythologist extraordinaire Joseph Campbell.

Vogler uses the character archetypes and structures of myth repeatedly found worldwide, and shows how they're employed in film as a way of teaching what makes a story work. Hence the use of a monster in the photo above to highlight the mythic aspects of the book.

The Writers Journey was recommended to me by my friend Robert Evans of my former San Francisco writing group. Just as he promised, it proved very helpful with the screenplay that I'm currently working on. Besides which, it was delightful fun seeing examples of how universals of story structure and character development can be found in films ranging from The Wizard of Oz and The Lion King through Ordinary People and Pulp Fiction. Along the way, I gained a grudging admiration for Titanic, a strong desire to see more John Wayne movies, and even an interest in re-watching Beverly Hills Cop. Giving birth to that last wish is surely a feat that only a great writer could have accomplished!

New Hampshire wrap-up: It's over.

2012-01-11T10:30:00.000-08:00

I'm going to answer my own question from yesterday, based on last night's results. The Republican nomination contest is essentially decided.

Bold words after just two states? Consider the results of the candidates placement from last night:

Romney- Got more votes than he did in 2008, got a higher percentage than McCain won by in that same year, and was not far away from 20% ahead of the next comer. If anybody got positive momentum for South Carolina last night, it was him. Yes, SC is not a good state for him, and Perry and Gingrich are both sitting on millions in advertising they can unleash against him over the next ten days. But you'll see below why I think it won't matter.

Paul- Strong second last night, following up on a strong third in Iowa. South Carolina will be a little harder for him, but he's probably in a position to keep getting double digit seconds and thirds in many states to come, if he chooses to stay in. But is unlikely to ever do better than that.

Huntsman- I actually like him a lot, but then as a Progressive I would, for the same reasons in reverse that Joe Lieberman used to be the Conservative's favorite Democrat. It doesn't matter, because New Hampshire is probably the only state until maybe Utah that he can score double-digits in, and it's only a matter of time until money and/or a sense of futility forces him out.

Gingrich- Squeaking ahead of Santroum isn't a bad result for him, but being fourth isn't a good one either. What this not-bad-enough-to-knock-either-one-out result really means is that they'll both be in through South Carolina, along with Perry. Which means that Romeny, who would probably lose the state by 10-15% against a united Conservative candidate, will win it.

Santorum- Fifth ain't great, and his Iowa momentum is now officially tapped out. Nearly tied with Gingrich, though, means he'll be alive and kicking in South Carolina. It's possible one of them will decisively pull ahead of the other there, leading one to drop out. More likely, they split the conservative vote pretty evenly, and are both encouraged enough to stay in through Florida at the end of the month, dividing the vote there and delivering that state to Romney as well.

Perry- Skipped New Hampshire to make his last stand in South Carolina. The problem with doing that, of course, is that people write you off after two single-digit performances in a row. Presumably he'll give up the ghost after three in a row.

The upshot of all of the above? By the end of this month, Romney will have won the first four contests. The field will effectively be winnowed down to him, Paul and whoever the last Conservative standing is. Yes, technically it will take him a while to officially pile up the delegates needed. And some opponent will probably score a surprise victory or scarily-close second here and there. But the early division of the field will have gotten him enough ahead that nobody will be in a position to catch him. Finis.

New Hampshire: This is the end! Or not.

2012-01-10T11:37:00.000-08:00

In a few hours now, we'll be seeing the results roll in from the New Hampshire primary. In my case, I'll probably be on a news website by 8 PM refreshing live results every 15 minutes. Because that's just the way I am... For the record, here's what the latest polling is showing:

The statistical model over at fivethirtyeight.com is pretty much in line with this too. Astute cases are being made, like this one from Politico.com, that tonight's result will essentially mean that the nominating contest is over for the Republicans, since a strong win in NH will position Romney for a sweep of South Carolina and Florida too. Of course, you can find a contrarian view at the very same news site, which just goes to show that hope for an interesting primary season springs eternal.

My take? I have to side with the sweep theory. Even in the debates this weekend, most of the candidates still focused on bashing each other in pursuit of second (and third) place rather than targeting Romney in pursuit of first. Perry's decision to stay in through South Carolina and the fact that however they finish tonight, Santorum and Gingrich will be around for that contest too practically guarantees that Romney wins South Carolina, however underwhelmingly. And the fact is, you can't second or third place your way to winning the nomination, but you absolutely can get there through a string of underwhelming first place finishes.

I can still make a case for some interest tonight though. Romney is so thoroughly expected to win, and win big, that he has the most to lose. Finishing 20% ahead of the next comer could just get him an "as expected", but having someone get closer than that and/or finishing first, but with the same 31% share he had in 2008, will probably be counted against him. And that would make South Carolina tougher, to be sure.

The thing is, nobody else is likely to walk out of tonight with good enough news. If Gingrich can get ahead of Santorum into fourth place he does himself some favors, but fourth is still pretty far back. If Santorum can get into the top three, that would be something, but third is still third. Ron Paul is expected to get second, so anything else would be bad for him, but he's the kind of candidate who can keep going regardless. And no matter how they place, they'll all be in South Carolina for the next 10 days, carving up the vote there so thoroughly that Romney can comfortably win even with only 25-30%.

Huntsman is the only candidate having last-minute momentum, and it isn't impossible that he could pull off a surprise second. But even so, he has nowhere to go after New Hampshire. The party at large is clearly not looking for someone more centrist than Romney, and no amount of bounce will make Huntsman of interest in famously conservative South Carolina.

One piece of good news in the New Hampshire windup? If you read my earlier blog on "the gaffe" you know that I abhor how feeding frenzies around stray comments obscure actual substance. To their credit, Gingrich and Santorum took the high road and avoided pouncing on Romney's "I like to be able to fire people" miss-comment, recognizing the substance of what he was saying about flexible health care being better for companies. Glimmers of adulthood are always welcome in a presidential race.

Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!

2012-01-07T12:07:00.000-08:00

Or, as our friends in Japan would say, Happy New Year!

Just brief one today to say happy New Year's to you all, and publicly witness my intention for the year. I have a New Year's tradition for the past few years, which I picked up from the very wise book The Language of Letting Go. It's pretty simple: set some quiet time aside and write down everything you might wish for the coming year. Big goals, little goals, pie-in-the-sky dreams, all of it. And then, once you have it all down, turn it over to the Universe, any such Higher Powers as you see fit, to fulfill as it will.

I've found it's a very good way to witness and own what I want and at the same time release my hands from the levers of control about how, when or if it comes to pass.

What I'd like to share today is not the list, although I did note in making it that it was both smaller than in previous years, and eminently achievable. Which tells me the good news that my life is a lot less pent up than it used to be. Instead, what I'd like to share is the release part of my intention.

Which is that, all individual goals coming and going as they may, what I would really like to manifest for this year, after all the rushing around of 2011 (two weddings! one cross-country move! punishing work schedule! etc., etc.) is a year of living simply, in balance, and just being.

May you all have a blessed New Year!

Iowa Morning After Thoughts

2012-01-04T09:59:00.000-08:00

Just a few quick reactions to last night's first in the nation honest to goodness voting, in terms of placement order:

Romney- A win is a win, even if only by 8 votes, and he's going on to New Hampshire, which he's overwhelmingly likely to win too. Double bonus! On the other hand, the fact that he just squeaked past Santorum, Paul was also in the 20s, another two candidates were at or above 10%, and he only barely got more votes in Iowa than in 2008 even after 4 years of campaigning is hardly a ringing endorsement. He's never going to win by ringing endorsement though, more by lack of credible alternative. Which probably will work for him in the end...

Santorum- I really think this is more like a flash in the pan. He just happened to get what every other anti-Romney missed by timing, a surge just before voting actually started. New Hampshire isn't going to be good territory for him though, which means he'll have a good two weeks of media scrutiny before getting to friendlier ground in South Carolina. And like Bachmann and Perry, he isn't especially well-suited to being in the spotlight. Even yesterday, past statements by him that will be a little too unpalatable to more centrist voters were starting to surface.

Paul- Doesn't get as much traction as first or second would have gotten him, but more than doubled his '08 vote. And he's going on to New Hampshire, where he can make a strong play for second as well. In any case, a candidacy like his can hang in there with less funds than any of the others. There's every chance he's positioned to remain some kind of presence up until the convention, which will be an interesting challenge for party leadership.

Gingrich- Coming in fourth isn't great, especially since he's poised to come in third or fourth in New Hampshire too. On the other hand, I wouldn't count him out. He's scrappy and wily. With Bachmann out and Perry possibly folding, if Santorum starts to shrivel over the next few weeks under media scrutiny, he could, by Super Tuesday, once again be the only credible anti-Romney. Of course, in the meantime, lack of funds and organization is preventing him from even getting on the ballot in some states, so he may not be able to capitalize on this turn of events even if it does occur.

Perry- Seems to be making contradictory statements about whether or not he's still in. It's hard to see how fifth in Iowa, and likely ending up there again in New Hampshire, is a prelude to a comeback. On the other hand, he's unique in having the funds to stay in as long as we wants, success or no. He can easily remain through South Carolina and even Florida. The only effect I can see that having though, is not positioning him for a breakout, but preventing Santorum or Gingrich from solidifying as viable alternatives to Romney.

Bachmann- Our first casualty of the actual election season. One thing I do like about her story is that she was never taken as a token candidate because of her gender. She was fully viable. Except for being batshit crazy. It shows how much room Hillary Clinton, and yes indeed, Sarah Palin too, opened up in 2008, which I think is good for the future of our republic no matter what party you're in.

Huntsman- I think it's actually remarkable he got votes at all, considering that he'd consciously abandoned the state. This shouldn't effect his decent shot at doing well in New Hampshire, but it's hard to see where he'd have to go from there.

And so, on to New Hampshire!

Newt, we hardly knew ye...

2012-01-03T13:27:00.000-08:00

In a few hours, we should all start feasting on the results of the first real honest-to-gosh voting in the country, from the Iowa Caucuses. (At least us political junkies will be feasting.)

The RealClearPolitics national poll of polls isn't very up-to-date at this point, since it has only one poll of six that includes any results after 12/18. That's actually no big loss, since from this point on individual state results are what matter. Here's what the much more up-to-date Iowa polling average is showing:

As you can see, Romney is currently eking out an extremely narrow lead over Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum is in the midst of a surprising last-minute surge that has him at third and rising. Poor Newt, who only a few weeks again was strongly leading, is now fourth.

These rankings may indeed hold, but, as my new friend Swing State Voter reminds us, a caucus is not like a primary. In short, it doesn't depend on simple votes by secret ballot, but on committed voters showing up to very small meetings throughout the state, and publicly standing up for a candidate and convincing their neighbors to do so as well. This tends to favor candidates with the funding to organize and turn people out statewide (in this case Romney, and, though the polls don't show it, Perry), or with a devoted following who will show up no matter what (Ron Paul to a T, and whoever the Evangelical vote most strongly backs, which seems at this point to be Santorum).

Absent from this list? Newt Gingrich, which could be very bad news for him.

It's hard to see how a fourth place finish in Iowa wouldn't result in a third or worse in New Hampshire, which would rapidly erode his position of strength in South Carolina and Florida later this month. Of course, as many analysts have pointed out, including Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com, how you do relative to expectations actually ends up mattering more than where you place. If enough people think that Gingrich is a goner, and he then does better than expected in Iowa or New Hampshire, he could still remain viable. You may recall how in 1992 a cat named William Jefferson Clinton got blown out in Iowa and then placed second in New Hampshire, but compared to the DOA he was believed to be at that point, was actually able to spin that as a victory. Still, I wouldn't advise Newt to hold his breath on pulling that off.

What about Romney? A win, even a narrow one, in Iowa, followed by almost certain victory in New Hampshire could turn this back into the quick coronation he's wanted it to be all along. The only other candidates who were not sitting presidents that I could find who pulled this double-header off in the post-Watergate era were Al Gore in 2000 (who won 50 out of 50 primaries and caucuses) and John Kerry (who won 46 out of 50). But...

As Swing State has also pointed out, Santorum is the only person in that list who's showing surging momentum, and as I've noted above, caucus dynamics favor "devotional" candidates like Ron Paul. Romney could just as easily end up third (even if very, very narrowly). He'd probably still win New Hampshire, but the fact that three other candidates there are sitting on double digits would be harder to spin away. The field would remain plenty feisty into Super Tuesday. And that field, which has concentrated on tearing each other down instead of targeting Romney in Iowa, could now start to spend against him heavily.

So it may not be quite over yet (before it's begun!). Tune in in a few hours...

25 Most-played Songs in 2011

2011-12-31T13:40:00.000-08:00

Full disclosure: This is not a top 25 of songs released in 2011, or played on the radio in 2011.

Those of you who know me know that I love statistics and numerical patterns. iTunes seems to share my obsession, and one of my favorite things every time I synch the iPod up to load a new playlist is seeing how my top 25 most-played songs has changed. Since the year is now over, I'll reset statistics tomorrow, but first I wanted to review the past year. Consider it my Holiday present to you, dear readers...

Here, without fear and favor (and in alphabetical order to further reduce the favoritism) are my top 25 most-played songs in 2011 (links mostly to live versions, but feel free to play the originals if you've got 'em!):

All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan, Before the Flood)- This is a live version with the Band from a tour album Dylan released in the 70s. It's one of 6? 7? versions I have in my library. Not my favorite version (that would be the original), but there's a soft spot in my heart for this album, as listening to it on my parent's record player after school was the start of my induction into the glories of classic rock.

Batman (Jan & Dean, Surf City: The Best of Jan & Dean)- I can testify, I did end up listening to this a lot this year. Every time has been as delightfully silly as the first. I've got to hand it to Jan & Dean, though, this song evidences a better understanding of the uncanny darkness of the character than the campy 60s TV series did.

Could You Be The One? (Husker Du, Warehouse Songs & Stories)- The thing about all these 80s nostalgia kiddies around now is that they had no idea just how bad it was. Overproduced top 40 was everywhere, TV, the movies, the Mall. There was no escaping it. The only way you could find anything different unless you were in a big city was in a small record store that you had to learn about from friends that had a locked case in the back with a few alternative rock cassettes. Then, maybe, if you were lucky, you could find something like this bubbling up from the underground, keeping rock just barely alive in an era that had prefab slickened it to within an inch of its life.

Darkside (Tanya Donelly, beautysleep)- I'm a big fan of the Pixies and Throwing Muses, and all solo careers that have flowed from there, hence their strong presence in my playlist. The album that this is from, by Throwing Muses co-founder Tanya Donelly, came across my path immediately following my separation in 2002. It was like a beacon of light, giving me faith that a life of shimmering beauty and deep meaning was waiting out there somewhere past the darkness...

Down By The River (Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Decade)- Ah, Neil Young, one of my all-time top 5 musical artists (along with Dylan, the Who, the Pixies and Nirvana, in case you're wondering). There's also something hauntingly beautiful, yearning and melancholy about this. Easily my favorite shooting down your lover song. Which is a distressingly crowded genre!

Full Moon, Empty Heart (Belly, Star)- Belly was the group Tanya Donelly formed in the mid-90s after being with the Breeders for their first album, which came after her exit from the Throwing Muses. Like all the best of her work, this is evocative, full of gauzy beauty, and underlined by serrated guitar that underlines its delicacy with steel.

Ginger Park (50 Foot Wave, Golden Ocean)- One good Muse deserves another, in this case in the form of 50 Foot Wave, the current vehicle of Tanya's half-sister and fellow founding Throwing Muse Kristin Hersh. The combination of the harsh shred of her voice and the guitar, backed up with the lyrics (I don't belong there/ I guess I never will/ I don't belong anywhere) simultaneously makes me feel chilled and crawlingly itchily warm.

Green (Throwing Muses, In A Doghouse)- And now here they are together! Albeit this is one of the rare songs written and sung by Tanya Donelly that the Muses did. Hence, I imagine, her eventual decision to split and go solo. There's a driving urgency behind this song, a sound that's like someone just on the edge of really losing it.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan)- This album, Dylan's big original breakthrough, was another of the ones raided from my parent's that started me on my musical journey. While it was written in an attempt to cram in everything he thought and felt as the world seemed on the edge of holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it's no less affecting today. The poet as prophet, after all, inherently taps into a timeless space.

Her Majesty (the Beatles, Abbey Road)- One of many cute little snippets from Abbey Road that kind of makes you wish they'd been developed to full length. Although I'm not sure how long you could sustain this ditty of a love-song to the Queen.

I'll Cry Instead (the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night)- Most of my favorite early Beatles songs tend to be John's. There's just more anguish and edge to them, as here, where he's simultaneously crying over the loss of his girl and boasting about his ability to break and load every girl in the world. Oh Johnny...

I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) (Bob Dylan, Another Side of Bob Dylan)- Early Dylan has a lot of bitter telling-off a theoretical gal songs. I don't think of this as being one of my favorites, but apparently it snuck into my playlists pretty often. Also a fine example of the "Dylan nearly cracks up in the middle of a song" genre, which could generate a playlist of its own.

I Should Have Known Better (the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night)- Remember what I said above about John Lennon's early Beatles songs? Ditto here. It's a sweet straightforward love song, but just underneath the surface you can tell something's a little wrong. And isn't that what the urgency of early love is so often like?

I Walk The Line (Johnny Cash, The Legendary Sun Records Story)- I would have been mighty upset if some Johnny Cash hadn't made it in to this list. I love his early Sun stuff, there's something very simple about the songs musically and they're lyrically totally straightforward. But despite that, or maybe because of it, they're full of depth.

Lay Lady Lay (Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline)- Sometimes this song doesn't quite do it for me, since it tends to get overplayed. But there's something about Dylan's country croon, bright ringing guitar and tender entreaty here that wins out. Besides which, my parents played it at their wedding, so this song practically conceived me. Doubly so since they were married December 26th and I was born September 28th of the following year.

Lovely Rita (the Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)- Not one of my favorite Beatles albums, it suffers for me from the overplay and overhang of "this is the most important, popular music-changing album of all time". That all being said, this is one of my favorite songs. There's something very swinging 60s about seducing the meter maid, and a winning contrast between McCartney's poppy presence and the slightly sinister distorted Lennon backing.

Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds (the Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)- The very heart of Beatles overplay. For me too, apparently, since it's on this list! So, not one of my favorites, but there is something undeniably arresting about the musical layering and surrealistic imagery.

Night Flight (Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti)- I maintain that Physical Graffiti is one of the most sonically perfect albums ever recorded. I also have a theory that it represents a kind of capstone of Classic rock, a point at which nostalgia for the passage of flower power past officially replaces the living actual feeling that something great and wonderful was about to happen. This song is that to a T.

Paint It Black (the Rolling Stones, Aftermath)- Through some glitch of iTunes, this song ended up on every playlist I downloaded, even though it wasn't included in the playlists themselves in my iTunes library. The result, of course, was that I ended up listening to it a lot. Not a bad thing, really. Take away the 60s nostalgia and you can see it for what it is, one of the most creepily nihilistic expressions ever committed to record by a popular group.

Ready Steady Go (Generation X, No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion)- Speaking of 60s nostalgia, here's a song that's a conscious repudiation of it, and yet, in it's poppy bounciness recalls the best of the British Invasion. It's also a reminder that Billy Idol once had something going for him.

Sexy Results (Death From Above 1979, You're a Woman, I'm a Machine)- The 2000s have been a rough period, musically. Kind of as dismal at the mass market level as the 80s, maybe even more so. But even in the worst eras there's always something going on somewhere, as DFA's re-imagining of heavy metal as dance music is here to remind us.

Speedy Marie (Frank Black, Frank Black 93-03)- Speaking of the dearth of something going on in the 2000s, one of the best albums I bought last decade was this collection, which chiefly features songs from the 90s. What can I say, I'm a fool for the Pixies, and the solo work of their former front man as well. This is not one of my favorite songs by him, but it does go down super-smooth, with a strange aftertaste from the phrasing of the highly literate lyrics.

Subliminal (Suicidal Tendencies, Suicidal Tendencies)- Yes, I was an 80s alternative kid, but I think everyone should love the album this is from. I mean, really, listen to it. it was released in 1983, and everything that would actually become popular in the 90s amalgamation of punk and metal into grunge is already here, with a little shout out to rap metal as well from an era when hip-hop itself was in its infancy.

To Be Alone With You (Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline)- Nashville Skyline is one of my favorite albums and this is a bright and shiny little gem from it. It just rolls along, so uncharacteristically cheerful. Plus, I perennially love that, "Is it rolling Bob?" that kicks it off.

Won't Fall In Love Today (Suicidal Tendencies, Suicidal Tendencies)- Opportunity to repeat everyting I said above about Suicidal Tendencies. Only faster, since this song clocks in at 1:00 exactly!

So there you have it. This may tell us as much about the algorithms of the iPod as it does about me, or popular music. But I am pretty proud of the nearly half-century span of music (from I Walk The Line in 1956 to Sexy Results in 2004) on display here. Happy New Year all, and happy listening to come in 2012!

The Gingrinch will not steal Christmas, but don't count him out

2011-12-21T14:16:00.000-08:00

In my blog from a few weeks ago about Gingrich's sudden rise among Republican voters, I looked at the timing of the previous booms and busts of alternates to Romney. Based on the periodicity of Bachmann, Perry and Cain, I'd made a numerological guess that he would peak on 12/2, and start a sharp drop-off on 12/23. As you can see below, things have ended up working out a little differently:

In fact his high, of 35%, was reached on 12/13/11. And while the last three claimants to the anti-Romeny throne each had roughly three weeks on top before beginning their respective plunges, poor Newtie only seems to have gotten a few days. His polling average started a fall on 12/16, and as of 12/21, has fallen 5 percent in 5 days.

While this certainly looks to prevent him from running away with it (which I think he would have if he truly held on to a lead three weeks from his 12/13 peak, which would have had him still way on top when Iowa votes January 3rd), I think there's equally good reasons to think he's far from finished. He has a lot more going for him in terms of intellect, policy acumen and public presence than Bachmann and Perry, who wilted under scrutiny, and certainly doesn't have the kind of problems that Cain did when he propositioned his way to collapse.

What's going on is more like the effects of the whole field aiming their ammunition at him over the last 10 days, and the fact that the focus on him is showing him to be a little unpalatable. But, without the major handicaps of the others, there's nothing here that would wipe him off the map. Which makes it quite possible that we end up with something like: Gingrich loses Iowa, but not by enough to be embarrassing (especially since current trends make it seem like Ron Paul might win!). Romney wins New Hampshire, but not by enough to be impressive. Gingrich then wins South Carolina and Florida, leaving three consistent vote-getting candidates to duke it out in February and March, maybe long enough that nobody has enough delegates to win the nomination until June. Or maybe not even then.

At the very least, Romney does not appear to be in for a cake walk. I read a piece recently that laid out four scenarios, none of which involved Romney quickly and decisively wrapping it up. I also read an interesting piece comparing Romney to Nixon in 1968 as an ideologically indistinct candidate that the party didn't particularly want, but eventually swallowed its distaste for after repeatedly failing to find an alternative. Finally, the other day I read this article on Gingrich's current fall which makes many of the same points I made in my original blog on November 19th.

Which, if nothing else, at least backs up my conviction that, in a parallel world where I'd opted for journalism school instead of years of misadventure in the business world, I could have made a pretty fair political journalist.

In Praise of Scary Cows

2011-12-17T12:23:00.000-08:00

One of the things I dearly miss about San Francisco is Scary Cow, the independent film co-op that I was a member of for the last four years. It was founded by Jager McConnell, in part in response to a problem he kept running in to in the course of pursuing independent film-making: he would post online looking for cast and crew for a project, but then the day of shooting a flake factor would often mean key people, maybe even everybody, failed to show up. With a $50 monthly fee for members, Scary Cow takes advantage of the fact that people are much more likely to show up for something they're paying for.

It also solves another key problem for independent film makers: access to equipment and crew. The co-op format brings together people with varying specialties, levels of experience and access to equipment and enables them to pool their resources. At a pitch meeting every few months, any member who has a project in mind stands up before the group to present it, and then gathers together names of interested people. Directors, producers, writers, cinematographers, light and sound people can all be assembled in short order.

Finished ten-minute projects then screen to an audience of several hundred at the end of each round in a local theater in San Francisco (lately the grand old Castro Theatre). The audience votes on favorites, and top vote-getters are awarded funds for future projects and the chance to screen longer 20-minute pieces. I can testify that some really great films have been produced, many of them going on to film festival success outside of Scary Cow. So far two teams have expanded their work to feature length films as well, the documentary Iran is Not the Problem, and the delightful musical comedy shoe fetish extravaganza Devious Inc. The group is currently gearing up to support even more feature-length projects.

My own involvement began in 2007, when years of wanting to be involved in film finally reached a boiling point and happily intersected with seeing a posting about Scary Cow online. In four years with the group, I had a chance to work on 13 films, and went from having no formal experience to getting to try out just about every role imaginable: actor, art director, assistant director, best boy, casting, director, extra, producer, production assistant, props manager, script supervisor, shot log and writer.

On six films I got to be a principal participant (some combination of director, producer and writer), for a total of 75 minutes of screen time. That's almost a feature length in most parts of the world! Along the way, I also got to participate in many of the workshops the co-op held, led by experienced cinematographers, directors and producers. At $50/month for 44 months, plus about $1,000 I put in directly to making films along the way (craft services can really add up!), and then workshop fees, for under $4,000 over four years I got a thorough introduction to film-making and got to meet and network with hundreds of people. That's a significant bang for your buck compared to most any film school you could name.

While I'm sadly far from the herd now that I've moved, I'm working on finishing the first draft of my first feature-length screenplay (currently 103 pages and counting), informed by everything I learned with Scary Cow. And I have a half dozen films that I had a primary role in to show for my efforts too:

Carson Larson Gets the Picture- The very first film I worked on, which I got to co-write along with Alex Winter (who produced it) and Jason Hoag (who directed it), and also worked as a production assistant and had a small role in.

Geek Wars- Which I wrote and produced, and Richard Armentrout directed.

Deaf Dumb and Blind Date- Also written and produced by me, and directed by Richard. This was actually a companion piece to Geek Wars, intended to be part of a three-part 20-minute film called Triptych, which I never got the prize money to screen in its full-length. I can arrange home screenings if you like, though, and meantime I think this holds up niftily well on its own.

The Buddhist News- The brainchild of national treasure and co-star of Geek Wars Matthew Weinberg, which I co-wrote with him and Assistant Directed, and also spit up on screen for.

Ave Maria- My baby, which I wrote, directed and produced, based on a short story I'd written. Which was way too much to do all by myself, but I guess I really wanted to get it made! I learned a ton, and while it was a long haul to get it done, I'm super-proud of it.

23 Ways In Which I Could Die- Co-written with Matthew, and Co-directed by myself and Fathy Elsherif, this film just screened in November. It's not online yet, but when it is I'll let you know. Until then, vive la Scary Cow!

Review: Superman/Batman: Vengeance

2011-12-13T14:27:00.001-08:00

Superman/Batman: Vengeance (Jeph Loeb/Ed McGuiness, DC, 2006, originally Superman/Batman #20-25)

Dearest Blog, I don't know if we've ever discussed this before, but I am a comics collector from way back. Probably this is not news to you, given my other proclivities, but just for the record, there it is.

In my earliest form, in the halcyon age of those spinny metal wracks in supermarkets, I was a fan of horror comics. I would load up every time my parents went shopping. As I got a little older, I became an acolyte of Marvel. This was in the early-mid 80s, when they were really the shit- The X-Men, Fantastic Four, Thor, Spiderman et al were in the midst of some of their best runs. Except for following writer/artist John Byrne's run on Superman when he went to DC from Marvel, and Frank Miller's work on Batman, I wasn't very interested in DC. Compared to Marvel's attempts at psychological and physical realism, DC was just a little too cartoony, too hokey, with the fake cities (Metropolis, Central City, etc.), unlimited god-like powers, silly weaknesses like kryptonite and the color yellow.

As with many things that had been a key part of my life (writing being front and center on that list), I put down comics when I went to graduate school in the mid-90s. My soul went into hibernation and life got more and more off track. After recovery and separation and other major life changes, I began to pick up things again (writing being front and center!) in 2002. And so comics have returned to my life, fueled by the collections of storylines into big softcover trade paperbacks that has become one of the major distribution modes of the 2000s.

I've caught up with some great stuff this decade. And to my surprise, I've found that in my old age I've become a big fan of DC. In part, it's certainly because younger writers and artists have shaken up the formerly staid world of DC. But I think it also reflects my own ability to connect now, after a lot more of life's twists and turns, with the basic, archetypal legends that DC has to offer. They deliver comics myth-making in its most elemental form.

None are more archetypal than Superman and Batman, two golden oldies still running strong after 70 years. Each has several monthly series devoted to them, but they also co-starred during the 2000s in Superman/Batman. I have dearly loved it for how it takes the two biggest toys in the DC Universe, presents them at the peak of their careers, and spins an ongoing storyline involving the two of them but liberally drawing on heroes and villains from all over DC.

This is the fourth collection from that series, and it's a doozy! I'm allergically opposed to spoilers, so I won't give away much that you don't learn in the first few pages: Superman and Batman find themselves crossing paths in a parallel universe with the Maximums, a wonderful parody/homage of the "Ultimate" version of Marvel's Avengers. This could be a throwaway concept in the wrong hands, but the Maximums are very well done, the kind of loving forgery that shows as much affection as cattiness toward Marvel. Along the way, alternate Supermans and Batmans galore enter in, as do Bizarro and Batzaro. The series also draws in threads from almost everything that's happened in issues 1-19. You should probably read the other three collections first ("Public Enemies", "Supergirl" and "Absolute Power"), but once you're done, this volume delivers international, intergalactic and interdimensional fun in a way that only DC can get away with.

The Blog must go on...

2011-12-10T13:59:00.001-08:00

I'm on two weeks now of feeling sick and low energy. But this does not matter. What matters is the Blog. Well, writing more generally, but at this moment, the Blog more specifically. What happened in 2010 and through most of 2011 cannot be allowed to continue. Even when there seems to be nothing to say, the Blog must go on.

That is all.

Review: The Big Book of Conspiracies

2011-12-07T14:21:00.001-08:00

The Big Book of Conspiracies (Doug Moench, Paradox Press, 1995, 223 pp.)

I just finished this book, which had been part of my recent Amazon birthday haul, so I thought I would strike the iron of review while the reading is still hot. Or something like that.

I have to say I quite enjoyed it, perhaps even more than its sister volume The Big Book of the Unexplained. I certainly found this tome to be more disquieting. And delightful. That's right, delightfully disquieting.

That's what you get when you have well-researched text on some of the darkest conspiracy allegations out there illustrated by 39 different comic artists. I think this is actually a pretty compelling combination, which could profitably be used a lot more than it is. There's like this, and Classic Comics. And I guess that whole Introducing/For Beginners book series, which I'm also a big fan of. Someone likes narrative art, apparently...

A word on the artists themselves: they were really good! It was a pleasure to run in to a few names I knew well from mainstream comics: Frank Quitely, Michael Avon Oeming and Bob Smith, for example. A lot of the others though, were from alternative comics, with styles ranging from cartoonish to dark and surreal. I look forward to catching up with what they've been up to since the mid-90s.

As far as the text goes, Moench is a comics writer as well, and the writing benefits from the best features of the medium: it's lucid, fast-moving, and entertaining. It's also, despite the obvious mirth behind the form, well-researched and packed with information. As in a five page double column bibliography citing the sources for what's presented in the 39 chapters.

Conspiracy theory is as conspiracy theory does, and some of what's presented here is definitely a wild leap, or based on specious connections. I enjoyed further researching a lot of it online as well, and, predictably, some things are less sinister (and solid) than they appear to be at first glance. There are others, though, that get more disquieting. To touch on a Golden Oldie, what the heck is up with Lee Harvey Oswald? I'm finding that to be the most interesting (and fruitful question) in the whole JFK thing- maybe there was only one gunmen, and he was that one. But how did he end up there, and why, everywhere in his history that you look, do you find strange connections? There's something to this whole CIA-Mafia-Cuban Exile thing.

The JFK assassination, of course, ended up in the book a lot, and much of the rest was pretty familiar territory as well: RFK, MLK, CIA mind control, Freemasons, Karen Silkwood, the always dear to my heart UFO-conspiracies. There were also some that were new to me such as:

Multiple intriguing threads linking Jonestown to the CIA
The international businessman/secret agent James Douglas Morrison that started showing up all over the place right after Jim Morrison's "death"
Truly bizzare Reagan assassination attempt tidbits such as the fact that John Hinckley Senior was a friend of George Bush Sr., his son Neil Bush had dinner plans with John's brother Scott Hinckley the day of the assassination attempt, and a second Jodie Foster-obsessesed young man threatening Reagan was arrested with a gun at New York Port Authority a few days after the attempt
John Whiteside Parsons. Look him up online, and bathe in the weird goodness that is this sadly deceased patriot/JPL scientist/follower of Aleister Crowley.

The book also re-introduced me to the strange death of Danny Casolaro, who was found dead in a hotel of an apparent suicide as he was working on a book about the conspiracy that he claimed linked the October Surprise, Iran Contra, the S&L scandal and just about every other shady late 80s thing there was with a government attempt to steal a security-monitoring software. Were some of his sources questionable? Yep. Did he have financial troubles and other frustrations that could lead to suicide? Yep. Was he being warned off before his death in calls overheard by third parties? Yep. Were his research files missing from the hotel, and never subsequently found? Yep. Again, worth further reading on your part.

But don't tell anyone I told you so. Or send them a hyperlink to this review...

Gingrich at his peak? Maybe yes, maybe no...

2011-12-03T10:50:00.001-08:00

My November 19th blog on Republican Booms and Busts used the admittedly small sample size of the average timeline of other Republican candidates' rise and fall as alternatives to Romney to predict that the latest anti-Romney, Newt Gingrich, would hit a polling peak on December 2nd, and begin a plunge on December 23rd. So how's it looking?

Actually not too bad for the first part. On December 1st, Gingrich reached his all-time peak (so far) of 26.6% on the Real Clear Politics polling average, and has remained at that level since then:

Might this be the peak? One good reason to think it could is that polling slowed down so much around Thanksgiving that there is only one national poll covering the period after 11/20, a Rasmussen Reports poll that had Gingrich at 38% and Romney at 17%. Since this is only a single poll, and Rasmussen polls historically tend to skew more conservative, the chances of it being an outlier are fairly high, and new polls that show Gingrich still ahead, but by less than 21%, would tend to back him off a little from the high this poll contributed to.

On the other hand, today's piece of breaking news is that Herman Cain is suspending his campaign following the damage wrought this week by a woman who claims to be having an affair with him. While he denies it, he does admit to paying her bills and she has phone records that show months of contact between them. Prior to this, he had stabilized at around 15% despite the swarm of earlier allegations of woman trouble, and could probably have hung in around there until the voting started.

Now his votes will be looking for somewhere new to go, and all indications are that Gingrich and Perry are more likely to get them than Romney, which push Newt even higher and keep him near the top long enough to actually still be in the lead when voting starts one month from today.

There are still plenty of good reasons to think that Romney will eventually be the nominee. Look at this Washington Post article, for example, to see the advantages his lead in money and organization give him in building a machine that will accumulate delegates throughout the process. But it's looking increasingly like Newt might just hang in there long enough to at least make it interesting.

Plum Island Thanksgiving

2011-11-29T13:38:00.001-08:00

On Saturday Abbey, her Mom and I visited the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, a 4,700 acre reserve that is a playground for migratory birds on Plum Island, near Newburyport, MA:

While we weren't quite there on Thanksgiving itself, we did, as you can see above, cross paths with wild turkeys, which is pretty darn seasonal. The reserve is on an 11-mile long barrier island, with, accordingly, a beach side:

And a marshy inlet side:

Other than the turkeys, a beautiful pair of Mute Swans that reminded me of the Palace of Fine Arts Lagoon, and a black cat on a fencepost as we were leaving when it was unfortunately way too dark to show up on film, we didn't see particularly exotic wildlife, but it sure was pretty:

Besides which, a guy just likes spending time with his gal and her Mom.

P.S. Bonus extra credit for anyone who can positively ID the following plant, and tell me if I will drop dead if I eat the berries:

America's Stonehenge 978-Newt 130

2011-11-23T09:03:00.001-08:00

A quick one here, holiday week and all. I've been looking for appropriate sites to display some of my blog content on. Accordingly, I posted my recent blog on Newt Gingrich's polling rise to the 2012 elections board on Reddit.com.

Reddit is a pretty groovy place in terms of aggregating news and content from a variety of sites in a user-moderated environment. The Newt piece got some decent traffic, so I decided to post my recent America's Stonehenge column in their paranormal section.

The results? The Newt Gingrich post has generated 130 pageviews. America's Stonehenge? 978! Does this say something about the relative online audience for news of the Paranormal versus Presidential elections?

P.S.- Over 1,100 page views between them, and still only one comment on either blog. What's a brother got to do to get some reader interaction going?!?

Republican Booms and Busts

2011-11-19T09:47:00.001-08:00

Oddly, I'm not talking about the business cycle here. Instead, I'm talking about the following phenomenon (provided courtesy of the "poll of polls" updated daily at Real Clear Politics):

That green line now reaching for the sky on the far right (all appropriate puns intended) is Newt Gingrich, currently enjoying a popularity boom in the polls tracking candidates for the Republican nomination. As you'll see to the left, the same thing has previously happened to Michelle Bachmann (black), Rick Perry (blue) and Herman Cain (red). Mitt Romney (purple), meanwhile, remains remarkably range-bound, never lower than 15%, never much higher than 25%, as various opponents shoot up and fade away.

Now I'm hardly the first person to notice this. But, lover of figures and charts that I am, Gingrich's path along the same boom as his predecessors made me wonder if there's any regularity to the pattern. Curious, I tracked the timing of the beginning of the surge, reaching peak, and start of drop-off of the last three candidates:

It was interesting to see that, while the three boomlets so far have taken different amounts of time to reach a peak, that amount of time from peak to beginning of steep drop was remarkably similar. It makes me wonder if there's some kind of structure to media saturation, boredom and vicious turn, such that the newscycle of three weeks is inherently how long you can stay on top once you get there. Even more fun, since we can spot on the polling graph the date of the beginning of Gingrich's surge, it's actually possible to predict the timing of his peak and fall based on the average of the last three:

So, if his cycle follows the average of the last three candidates, he'll reach his polling high on December 2nd, and begin a steep drop-off December 23rd. Which won't be a great Christmas present for him. Even worse giving the following dates:

1/3/12 Iowa
1/10/12 New Hampshire
1/21/12 South Carolina
1/31/12 Florida

In other words, his peak of popularity will likely come (and start to end) too early to translate into success in the first primaries and caucuses. Which would leave the consistently medium Mitt Romney again on top just as the voting starts, giving him the nomination despite GOP voters' obvious equally consistent search for someone they're more excited about than him. A lot of people have thought all along that this is the most likely outcome, and I tend to agree. But I can imagine a few reasons Newt's experience might be different:

1. Everything tends to slow down over the holidays, and media cycles are probably no exception. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's just might stretch out the cycle enough that Newt is still at or near the top when voting starts.

2. If you look at the above dates, one thing that can be clearly seen is that, in each case the next comer was already starting to climb a few days before the previous person started to plunge. In other words, the "anybody but Romney vote" has probably remained consistent, and just looks for someone new to transfer to. This might work for Newt because there's nobody else left. Bachmann, Perry and Cain have all had their day, Huntsman is too centrist for the field, Santorum has never gotten more than 2-3%, and Ron Paul is Ron Paul. Of course, someone new could get in, but this would be difficult at this point given early primary filing dates being closed or soon closing. So, the opposition to Romney might have to stick with Gingrich now, for better or for worse.

3. A large part of what's happened with the last three anti-Romneys is that they were still relatively unknown to a general audience, and the inevitable airing of their dirty laundry (plus just letting people hear the ridiculous kinds of things they say) started to pull down their popularity shortly after its surge. Gingrich has plenty of negatives, but they're well known both in the party and among the public in general. If primary voters are liking him now, it's not like they're about to find out things they didn't know that will make them reconsider.

Mind you, these are just reasons he might not totally self-incinerate before the voting starts in January. All this might really mean is that Romney is left with a somewhat credible opponent at that point. With his funding, organization, and consistent hanging in there, he's still likely to be the nominee in fairly short order.

Which leaves us all with the shudder-inducing possibility that we could have a general-election that de facto begins by, say, April 1. Seven months of gaffes and spin and irresponsible rhetoric, saints preserve us all...

I love packages from Amazon!

2011-11-16T13:54:00.001-08:00

Even when, no, especially when, like this one, I already know what's in them. Birthday and holiday gift cards are a beautiful thing, because they allow me to go on shopping sprees for things that have been piling up in the back of my mind for a while.

Sometimes, like in this case, I enjoy giving it my shopping expeditions a thematic spin. My purchases were:

The Big Book of Conspiracies I got the The Big Book of the Unexplained several years ago, I think in the excellent used comics section at Aardvark Books in the Castro in SF. Ever since then, I've been on the lookout for this volume on conspiracy theories from the same series. The basic format is a series of short articles on different topics, all written by the same person but illustrated by different comic artists for each section. The BBotU certainly alerted me to some aspects of the paranormal that I hadn't known about previously, while also reacquainting me with some old friends. I'm looking forward to the same here. Despite the obviously tongue-in-cheek presentation in terms of form, the content is actually quite well cited. And there's something about the juxtaposition that gets it further under the skin than reading or seeing something on TV alone would do. I'm also looking forward to the hours of joy in further researching online new things I run across in this book. I've found one can both do some instant debunking, and crawl further down the rabbit hole this way.

The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates This volume is co-authored by Loren Coleman, leading cryptozoologist and proprietor of the International Cryptozoology Museum that Abbey and I visited recently in Portland, Maine. It's set up as a pretty straightforward field guide in some ways- illustrations, species descriptions, range maps, footprint outlines, etc. It just happens that the subject matter is a little more exotic and/or possibly nonexistent. Could come in handy, since I plan to doing a lot of tromping through the woods in these parts. Bonus question: Is the creature next to the book a mystery primate? I don't know, but now that I have the field guide I can find out!

The Mysterious Monsters I am especially excited about this volume, as you can see. But hey, you've gotta understand! I got this book as a kid, around 10 years old, from a book fair at elementary school. The Mysterious Monsters in question are the Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, and the book was actually pretty low on sensationalism and strongly evidence-focused in its treatment of the subject. This was one of my first forays into the world of the unexplained which, obviously, has had a lifelong effect on me. The beloved volume vanished at some point, along with a lot of things that were in my childhood room, as things from one's childhood room will tend to do. Over the years I've tried to track it down, but was hobbled by the fact that I couldn't remember two key pieces of information: the title, or the author's name. I did try googling based on my recollection of content many times, but to no avail. And then, a week or so ago, for whatever reason, I found a combination of search terms that led me straight to it. I'm looking forward to re-reading it, and seeing what I make of it now that I'm about 4x as old as the first time I read it. Talk about unexplained phenomenon!

2012 Election: The Gaffe

2011-11-12T11:08:00.001-08:00

As you may have heard, this guy is running for President again:

It will almost certainly be one of the four people in positions three through six below who will run against him:

It's not looking like it will be easy for Obama. Incumbents usually win, but there are exceptions. The chief being that Presidents who have presided over a recession whose effects are still being felt usually lose. But there are also exceptions to that. Nate Silver, who is just about the most canny analyst out there, is putting the current odds of Obama being re-elected at roughly 50/50. However, I'm not here, at least today, to discuss his chances. I'm sure I'll get around to that eventually, since presidential election seasons are to me what the football season is to the average American male. What I want to talk about today is the gaffe.

You know the one. Somebody says or does something a little silly. Maybe a lot silly. Rides in a tank and looks goofy. Gives a hoarse yell at a rally. Makes a comments that seems slightly pro-something they claim to be anti. Then it gets covered ad nauseam. In fact, this kind of moment will be what quite a lot of the presidential coverage ends up being about. Versus, say, a candidate's policy positions. Their actual record of achievement, or lack thereof. The truthfullness of claims they make.

Because those things require time to report about, and time to listen to or read about. And some thought and concentration to actually follow. And the American attention-span has become more and more fragmented by each new media that has come along. It's a little funny, since media bandwidth has exponeentially increased. But the average content of a single communication seems to decrease inversely, as more and more signals rush in to fill the bandwidth. Think of newspapers versus radio versus television versus the Internet circa 2000 versus social media now, and I think you'll see what I mean.

So it is perhaps inevitable that short incidents with some entertainment value (i.e. "the gaffe") will triumph over substance. But I don't think it can be good for us as a Republic. Who out there wants to commit with me to try to ignore the gaffe and concentrate on the substance this go-around?

Greetings from the International Cryptozoology Museum!

2011-11-08T18:08:00.000-08:00

This past weekend Abbey and I went to the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. Cryptozoology, for those who may not be hip to the field, is the study of (as yet) unknown animals. In other words, the Zoology of animals that are not yet documented by science, but some day may be. Here to the left, for instance, is the cabinet for Yeti artifacts. The museum is the brainchild of Loren Coleman, who founded it in 2003 to house some of the many objects he's collected in decades of work in the field. In-between teaching public policy and being one of the world's foremost experts on the copycat suicide phenomenon, he's spent a lot of time on the trail of unknown animals, and authored over 20 books on the subject.

Coleman is widely regarded as a serious and careful researcher, which befits Cryptozoology, since, of all the paranormal disciplines, this is the one that is most like conventional science. While there certainly are cryptids (unknown creatures) that seem supernatural, and researchers that specialize in the more paranormal aspect of the field, most people who work in it would say that these are animals that live, breathe, eat and poop like any others, it's just that science hasn't gotten a proper hold of them yet. The museum itself keeps a good balance of appropriate seriousness and whimsy. Like the giant beaver diorama to the right featuring guest appearances by Indiana Jones and Steve Irwin. Delightfully cute and silly. And yet, there were 8 foot long beavers around in North America as recently as 10,000 years ago, so who's to say that in some remote mountain lakes in Canada or the U.S. West, surprises may not linger?

Bigfoot, of course, as the marquee North American cryptid, gets proper treatment here. Besides posing for a picture with Abbey and I...

...there were some quite interesting displays on the footprints, hair samples and other leavings of our possible native ape. I also really enjoyed the cabinet of artifacts related to the 1967 Patterson film, which is either a thorough fake, or some of the best evidence. I've gone back and forth on that question myself, but I have to say that lately computer enhancements and scientific studies of the gait and body proportions of whatever's walking in the film have me leaning towards "best evidence".

The museum itself definitely doesn't ignore hoaxes or issues of fakery. There are several exhibits devoted to the subject, one of the creepiest of which has to be the recreation to the left here of the Feejee Mermaid. Said "mermaid" was a fixture of P.T. Barnum's traveling show. While the original was lost in the 1860s, the consensus is that it was probably the dried hairless remains of the upper half of a monkey sewed together with the lower half of a fish. More recent hoaxes and misidentifications are covered as well.

And speaking of recent, Maine is apparently getting its very own cryptid sightings right up to the present day. The color-coded pins in the map to the right display the locations of sightings of various cryptids. Some are more prosaic, like the ongoing sightings of big cats that indicate that the Eastern Cougar may not be quite as extinct as advertised. Then there are your star cryptids, like lake/sea monsters and Bigfoot, of which there are actually a significant number of New England sightings. Abbey and I observed a cluster of pins in Baxter State Park and have accordingly decided to vacation there. My favorite, though, is the Specter Moose. It was apparently a huge whitish-gray moose with antlers that spanned ten feet wide, and was seen a lot around the turn of the last century. I hope he (or she (or descendants)) is still out there!

So, to sum up, cryptozoology is fun, and so is the museum. On top of which, Loren Coleman is there in person most days, and how often do you get to meet a real cryptozoologist? Plus, Portland is a beautiful town, with ridiculously pretty harbor views. Go visit when you have a chance!

10 Essential Sci-Fi Books

2011-11-05T16:07:00.000-07:00

(from my Sci-Fi Book Club)
(and thoughts on 11 others)

One of the things I sorely miss about SF (the city, San Francisco) is my SF (the genre, Sci-fi) Book Club. We started in March 2008, taking turns each picking a book. Our membership waxed and waned from nearly 10 to barely 2 or 3 at times. We had periods where we met every 6 weeks like clockwork, then some others where we couldn't get together a next meeting for months. Even in the face of all these starts and stops, we got through 21 books by the time I moved to the Boston Area in July 2011.

Despite being a very book kind of guy and card-carrying geek of multiple lineages (Star Trek, Star Wars, comics collector, D&D player, I could go on), I had actually never read much Sci-fi, so I was interested to see what was out there, and what I would think of it. From the admittedly not completely scientifc selection of the books picked by the guys and surprisingly large number of gals in our group, here's my vote on a top 10, in alphabetical order (spoiler light beyond the basic premises, since I hate spoilers):

1. A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge, 1993) In full disclosure mode, I must note that this is one of the ones I picked. That being said, I really didn't know a lot about it beyond being familiar with Vernor Vinge from his relationship to thought about the Singularity. It turned out to be a delight for the way it combined genres- at heart it's a kind of horror story, with a really scary ultra-intelligence monster. But the story gets told in a unique Sci-fi setting (a race across across the galaxy, which turns out to be segregated by zones where intelligence, and even the laws of physics, are more advanced on the edge, and get duller toward the center). And a great deal of the action happens in what is basically a fantasy setting, full of castles and palace intrigue. Really well written, delightful all the way through, and provocative.

2. Childhood’s End (Arthur C. Clarke, 1953) This was the third book we read, deservedly a classic. Clarke is a master of clear, simple prose. The book itself is the prototypical "saucers appear over every capital on Earth" story, and once you read it, you'll see its influence everywhere. As far as what those saucers are doing there, who's in them, and what they want with us, though, the thing I found most striking about the book was its originality, both at the time of publication, and still today almost 60 years later.

3. I, Robot (IsaacAsimov, 1950) Again, a classic, and one whose influence you'll find everywhere you look. The thing that most impresses me about Asimov, though, is the warm humanity of the writing. The stories ring true not so much based on whether predictions about technology and future society are on target (though some of them are), but mostly because they are full of the author's shrewd understanding of what people are like and why they do what they do. In the hands of someone else this could come off very cynical, but with Asimov it's more of a wise, knowing, "Ah, yes, that's who we are."

4. Neuromancer (WilliamGibson, 1984) Here is born cyberpunk. And happy birthday to it! In many ways, a chillingly plausible look at a world more technologically advanced, but more socially decayed. Did this foresee many aspects of the Internet, or actually influence its development? And seriously, could The Matrix pay some copyright for ripping off every element of character and visual design it had from this book (albeit with a very different storyline)? But beyond all the further thoughts I could unload about it, at heart it's a damn well done film noir story thrust into the realm of cyberspace (a term it invented!).

5. Revelation Space (Alastair Reynolds, 2000) All the books I've described so far do an excellent job with character, but I don't think any of them get as deep into the psychology of their (often deeply flawed) main characters as this book does. Along the way, there's horror, intrigue, skillful plotting as three widely divergent storylines converge, and high concept cosmic evolution. Given that so many of the works we read came from a Sci-fi heyday of the 50s to the 70s, this makes me glad to say: Well done, 2000s!

6. The Forever War (Joe Haldeman, 1974) When it first came out, this was a kind of parable about the Vietnam War told through the main character's experience of a war lasting generations due to the time dilation between it's far-flung battlefields. Nobody quite knows how the war is going, why we're fighting, or even exactly who the enemy is. Sad to say, it has a whole new resonance thirty-five year later after our own decade-long Forever War Against Terror.

7. The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury, 1950) This was the book we kicked off with. As we should have, since it gave us the vital middle of the ABC "big three" of classic sci-fi (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke). In terms of science, the Mars it portrays was already badly outdated by the mid 60s, and throughout, the technology of how we get there and stay there is treated as an afterthhought. And that really doesn't matter, because it functions on the level of fable- the things in it are true, because they've always been true. And that truth is suffused with some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful prose you will ever read.

8. The Mote In God’s Eye (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, 1974) There's also some feudality here, in that there are lords and ladies in an interstellar monarchy. This turns out to be a feature of several of the books we read, a portrayal of human civilization becoming more feudal as it spreads out across multiple star systems. The focus of the action, though, is first contact with the Moties. I'll leave it to you to find out all about them, but suffice it to say it is a superb portrayal of just how physically and culturally alien an alien race might turn out to be. Plus it's just good, character-rich, well-plotted, fast-paced fun to read.

9. The Ophiuchi Hotline (John Varley, 1977) Set in a solar system that is now thoroughly inhabited (except for, curiously, but for good reasons, Earth) this book is rollicking good fun. It has everything you'd need for a good time- clones, aliens, spaceships, genetic engineering. It also delivers a future that seems quite plausible to me (especially the banana meat trees) despite how exotic it is. And it makes you think about just how little say we might have in the shape of our own future if there really are other intelligences and a higher cosmic order.

10. The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell, 1996) This could be exhibit A in the "Is literary fiction that happens to use Sci-fi themes or settings still Sci-fi?" argument. Or, conversely, "Can Sci-fi be 'serious' literature?" I've always thought it's a bit of a silly distinction. Dickens and Shakespeare were, in their time, writing that day's equivalents of potboilers. Meanwhile, many things that are supposed to be "important books" today will vanish in the mists of time, and thus prove to be quite as disposable as anything Danielle Steele ever wrote. Good writing is good writing, and time will tell what the enduring literature is. But this massively sidetracks us. A great book, literarily. And great sci-fi. Also one of my favorite kinds of sci-fi, near future, and involving first contact. Which turns out to be far less about the aliens, and far more about who we are and how we make meaning in life.

Honorable Mention (9 other good reads):

Berserker (FredSaberhagen, 1967)- May man versus killer robot spaceships always be so fun.

Eon (Greg Bear, 1987)- I think about this one a lot, almost a top 10. Stunning ideas about future human evolution, with a time travel twist. Plus great use of Ralph Nader. Really.

Flashforward (RobertJ. Sawyer, 1999)- I told you that CERN supercollider would be trouble...

IQ83 (Arthur Herzog, 1978)- A potboiler? Yes. But damn would it be fucked up if this happened.

Quarantine (GregEgan, 1992)- While this didn't make my top 10, I do think Egan is one of the finest, and most philosophically challenging, sci-fi writers out there. Check out Distress and Permutation City for further mind-bending.

Starship Troopers (RobertHeinlein, 1959)- Right wing? Left wing? Somehow to blame for the movie made from it? And Showgirls as well, through mere association? Or just damn fun reading?

The Divine Invasion (PhilipK. Dick, 1981)- One of my favorite authors. If I hadn't already read his book VALIS before I got to the group, it would have been in the top ten above, and this is more from that same, very good, vein.

The Gods Themselves (IsaacAsimov, 1972)- I don't believe Asimov wrote a bad book. Besides which, anything featuring trisexual energy beings is an automatic yes.

The Road (CormacMcCarthy, 2006)- See The Sparrow above vis-a-vis Sci-fi and literary fiction. Either way, a great book that somehow manages to be heartwarming and unrelentingly grim at the same time.

Dishonorable Mention (2 cautionary tales)

Last and First Men (OlafStapledon, 1930)- It deserves props for ambitious future history, and recognition as one of the earliest sci-fi novels. It was also very dry and slow. The only one I never finished from the group, sad to say.

The Blind Assassin (MargaretAtwood, 2000)- Great book, albeit very slow to start and frequently quite bleak. Not Sci-fi, though it does contain a sci-fi tale within the tale. Discussions on group policy were had afterward.

The theme of this Tuesday's Blog is...

2011-11-01T15:22:00.000-07:00

I put myself on a new schedule of posting twice a week. I figured that, if I make it a regular assignment for myself, just like a column I might write for someone else, the chances of it getting done go way up. So now "update blog" sits on my Google calendar at a set time every Tuesday and Saturday.

This is my third week doing it, I actually didn't want to have any fanfare and announcement (for what, all three readers?) and then not follow through. Especially after how little I was able to blog the last year and a half as life just seemed to swamp writing. This regular schedule is actually part of a counterattack on the problem, the essence of which is weekly dedicated time: 4 hours a week for my screenplay, plus an hour for editing my poetry collection, and then two Blogs a week.

So why am I mentioning it now? Because tonight, dear reader, I can't find anything my brain is collected enough to want to write about. This may be a side effect of the heat having been out for the past five days- blood has porobably been pulled out of my brain, and devoted to more important activities. Whatever the cause, here I am, content lite. But, DAGNABIT TO HELL, two blog posts a week, rain or shine.

So here you go. You'd best behave, or I'll do it again.

America's Stonehenge

2011-10-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.'  I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself." -Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"

Yesterday my lovely bride Abbey and I went to America's Stonehenge, a possibly archeological site just outside of Salem, New Hampshire. (Salem, NH, by the way is an unnecessarily confusingly close 37 miles from Salem, MA. Manchester, NH and Manchester, MA, and Concord, NH and Concord, MA are in a similar vein. As are Burlington, MA and Burlington, VT, although those last two at least have the decency to be separated by 200 miles. But that's not what we're here today to discuss...)

A short trail through the woods...

...leads to the main site...

which contains a maze of stone walls and chambers...

...about which several theories have been floated.

Some claim it to be a Native American megalithic site, for which there's some decent evidence. Charcoal pits, pottery and other artifacts found on site have been dated to between 2,000 and 100 BC. There's even evidence of a a stone slab being quarried in situ nearby.

Some researchers have even lined up walls and standing stones on the site with astronomical alignments, as a map there explains:

This stone, for example, would have had the summer solstice rise directly above it circa 1,800 BC:

As always, there are a few wrinkles with this theory, such as the fact that, given enough stones or lines, some are always going to line up with something. When I visited the Nazca lines in Peru in 2009, museums and guides in the area noted that 20% of the lines could be lined up with astronomical occurences. 20% could be lined up with sources of water. 20% could be lined up with mountain peaks and other features of the landscape. In other words, there were so many of them that 20% could be lined up with almost anything you choose.

It's also worth noting that many of these stones have been "set up" from presumed "fallen" locations, and that 20th century clearing of the trees has occurred to create openings in the skyline. I.e., it would be very difficult at this point to know what the exact arrangement of stones, or view of the sky from them, was when the site was originally inhabited.

Further muddying the waters, the site was the location of the farm of one Jonathan Pattee (and family) in the early 1800s. Historical records show he used stone structures there for storage (cellars etc.) and also rearranged and cleared a lot of stone off of the site. Signs there also made reference to more stone being carried of in the 19th century when the site was used for quarrying purposes.

In the 1930s, the site, already of interest to picnickers, occultists, and my dear friend H.P. Lovecraft, was purchased by William Goodwin, who "restored" many of the structures there. Some people seem to be of the opinion that Goodwin only did maintenance-type work, setting up obviously toppled stones, restoring rocks that had been scattered from walls, etc. Others have the suspicion that he extensively rearranged things to support his pet theory, that Irish monks had established a settlement in the area around 900 AD.

Barry Fell, a subsequent researcher, believed that the site may have been even older, and contained evidence of Phoenician occupation. There is a small museum on site, which includes petroglyphs said to resemble Old World languages including Phoenican and Celtic:

Whatever one makes of all these claims, somebody clearly built a lot of something there. My own personal feeling is that there was some kind of original megalithic site in the area. Subsequent occupants made such extensive changes, though, that it's very difficult at this point to determine what was there, or how it was arranged. Whatever it was or is, though, it's pretty damn neat!

My favorite was the Oracle Chamber, guarded below by the lovely Abbey, which really is kind of eerie inside, and features some advanced drainage and acoustics:

I'd kind of like to go back there for a ghost hunt sometime:

It should be noted that the current owners since the late 50s have been careful stewards, making restorations only according to historical photographs, and sponsoring archaeological research at the site. On top of which, they have an alpaca farm there, which firmly establishes them as awesome in my book:

The opening quote, by the way, besides being suitably stone wall and elf-themed, was inspired by the fact that Robert Frost wrote "Mending Wall", and many other of his most well-known poems, at a family farm in Derry, New Hampshire, right next-door to Salem. If you should happen to be in Derry you might, as Abbey and I did, stop off at the super-yummy Windham Junction Country Kitchen:

Some might fine meatloaf there, let me tell you!

The end of the Iraq War and the Courage of Progressive Convictions

2011-10-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

This week's announcement that all our troops will be home from Iraq by the end of the year got me thinking. We've certainly heard the obligatory Neo-Con voices saying that this a mistake, harms our security, harms the region, etc. I haven't heard as many Progressive voices crowing, but I suspect that's because they are so weary from the long years of misguided war that they're just glad it's finally over. That, and a sprinkle of sense and tact enough to know that this is a solemn occasion, suffused with a lot of loss for everyone involved.

But at the heart of this development lies a great irony: the Administration tried for what the Neo-Cons wanted, an extended ongoing presence after direct combat was ended. It failed to secure Iraqi cooperation with that goal, and it is this failure that has resulted in the end result Progressives have wanted for years, a complete end to the war, with all troops home.

This seems symptomatic to me of a frustration I've had with this Administration, the fact that it more often than rarely delivers, or tries to deliver outcomes that match the Conservative policy agenda. This, of course is done in the quite reasonable name of trying to work with the opposing side and achieve compromise. This after all, is actually a key trait of the Progressive worldview, the idea that even those who don't agree with you may have some valid views, and that it's important to find common ground.

Here's the thing: Finding common ground is not a value the Conservative movement shares. They operate in the land of ideas like "we're right, you're wrong" and "if you're not with us, you're against". And they've gotten where they have, electorally, by sticking to their guns (quite literally in some cases!) even when those guns are unpopular.

Wouldn't it be something to see Progressives in power be equally unapologetic?

Apparently, I'm most like the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela

2011-10-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

You must be wondering, dear reader, what I am referring to. Perhaps my recent Nobel Peace Prize? No, alas, the Nobel Committee has ignored me for yet another year. And in any case, if they were to award me, it should no doubt be for literature. Duh.

I am referring instead to my score on the political compass test.

It's a nifty little thing that proceeds on the idea that the traditional left-right spectrum we're used to in the U.S. is too limited, in that it collapses together what should actually be two different axes, one for economic freedom/control and one for social-political freedom/control.

I've taken it a couple of times over the years. In my most recent round, I ended up in the middle of the lower left quadrant, adjacent to, as alluded to above, the Infinite Sea of Compassion and first President of a free South Africa. Not a bad neighborhood really, but what I find to be interesting is my drift over the years.

I recall taking the test in the early 2000s and ending up socially liberal, but economically more conservative. Kind of a classic "New Democrat" in the Clinton mold. Later on, say circa 2004/2005, the anti-personal freedom and pro-business control excesses of the Bush years had pushed me further leftward on the economic scale, landing me more in classic Liberal territory, aka FDR and Johnson's Great Society.

And now, a few years later, the corporate shenanigans of the Great Recession, and the chilling proof of the plutocracy's ability to control outcomes throughout the political system have pushed me further leftward on the economic spectrum. This actually makes sense to me in terms of how I currently feel- what I would call a compassion-based world view. We're here to take care of each other while also giving each other the freedom and space to live our own lives. Rather like everyone is everyone else's mom, but the really cool while at the same time totally responsible mom.

How about you? I'd be fascinated to hear other people's scores on the test, and whether the results surprise them or not...

APOD, NDEs & the Omega Point

2011-10-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite web sites is Astronomy Picture of the Day. I think the name is pretty much self-explanatory, but if it isn't, take a look at the site and you'll quickly get the picture. (Heh heh, I made a funny...)

Today's post got me thinking in a meta-science vein. I say meta-science to place my ramblings in a field of thought that some might call pseudo-scientific, but I think of as being science that we just haven't gotten around to yet. Rather like what Aristotle considered "metaphysics", literally, "that which is beyond the physics" as it stood in his day. The clip in question is of what approaching the speed of light would look like in terms of its visual effects:

It occurred to me that what things looked like with all three effects (visual aberration, doppler and intensity) was remarkably similar to what people report in Near Death Experiences- seeing objects from a distorted, "floating above" perspective, shadowy indistinct figures and rushing toward a tunnel of light. This makes me wonder if those visual effects could have something to do with a speeding up of mental process that somehow approaches the speed of light.

If something like that was going on, it reminds me a little of Frank Tipler's speculations about the Omega Point. In short, he saw consciousness eventually permeating the entire physical universe as the universe approached its "end" in a singularity, such that an infinite amount of thought processing could occur, and the subjective time experienced by this consciousness would be practically infinitely greater than the objective time of milliseconds it occupied. Could this be something like what human consciousness is doing in the instant before death, thus producing visual effects similar to what would be observed as one approaches the speed of light?

Don't ask me precisely how, that's for quantum physicists and neuroscientists to puzzle out, I'm just here to point the way. In all seriousness, I think (and history attests) that thought experiments and being open to flights of fancy is often the way that new perspectives emerge. It's a noble pursuit. I just wish I had the nth dimensional math skills to take it further!

****************

Bonus image! Also from Astronomy Picture of the Day, and having nothing to do with the above topic, but it sure is purty. A mosaic of the MESSENGER probe's images of Mercury from its first "day" there, the Mercurian day being 176 days long:

Weekend with Beats and Beats

2011-08-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

This has been quite a fine weekend exploring our new home.

First, Beats. As in, yesterday we got out to Jamaica Plain for a free music festival:

To be precise, it was the first Jamaica Plains Music Festival, a free all-day gathering in the park featuring exclusively local bands. Some of the bands were quite good, but what I really liked was the ethos- a festival in the community featuring the creative talent of the community. I hope to find a lot more of this kind of thing as I become part of the local creative community.

I also thought it was very interesting to see the differences between the crowd at the festival and San Francisco, where Abbey and I got to several outdoor music gatherings in our time across the street from Golden Gate Park. Some pertinent observations:

The crowd in JP was very much whiter. Not quite exclusively, but definitely into the 90+ percentile.
It was also much more enchilded. As I think back, most of my close friends in San Francisco were childless, and meaning to stay that way. I guess it's that kind of city!
Compared to any large outdoor gathering in SF, there was much less whiff of ganja in the air. As in zero.
Ditto with the whiff of homeless.

That's it for now. Further cultural anthropology of Greater Boston to follow at a later time...

Now, on to Beats. Abbey and I headed to Lowell, Massachusetts today. This is somewhere I've wanted to visit since teenage nights staying up to the early AM hours in my parent's living room reading biographies of Jack Kerouac while drinking kool-aid infused with vodka I'd snuck into the house. Today's pilgrimage to Kerouac's boyhood home featured no vodka (or kool-aid, for that matter), but I did get to see a display including a typewriter he used:

And a beautiful riverside memorial garden with excerpts from his work engraved in stone:

The city itself was poignant. The downtown area was chiefly historical sites from Lowell's history as a mill town and old mill buildings that have been converted to condos. It felt a little sketchy, not because their were ruffians around but more because everything was felt abandoned, almost like a huge open air museum with only a smattering of visitors. Ghostly or not, though, I'll be back- I still have Jack's grave to visit.

For now, I had a great weekend, and am really enjoying exploring my new home with my lovely bride. More to follow!

Boston Day 11

2011-08-08T09:27:00.000-07:00

Technically, I'm in Danvers, which is a small town about 15 miles North of Boston. Abbey and I are camping out here in an extended stay hotel because:

A) It's more affordable to be a little outside of the city, especially when you need a room that allows pets as well.

B) We're looking for places in the area (North Shore, as they call it here) so it's a convenient base.

So how is day 11? Pretty good! I had been prepared to have a period of depression right after the move, since it's like that sometimes after you leave a place you love. Or after you make any kind of big change in life for that matter. But so far, while I did have a blue afternoon this weekend, I've been surprisingly buoyant. Still prepared to have all kinds of feelings along the way, but glad to be here.

And I'm super-happy to have the whole family together again. Small space to hold me, Abbey, Sasha and Jinks, but we're doing well:

So far, in-between me working remotely, we've mostly been looking for places to live. But along the way we're exploring too. I can heartily endorse the rocky shell-strewn beaches of Salem:

The big sandy stretch of beach between Lynn and Nahant:

The beaches near Ipswich, which, contrary to what H.P. Lovecraft led me to expect, do not seem to be crawling with hideous half-breed fish people:

And last yesterday we went to check out Gloucester, where an overcast windy day and cold choppy water made me feel very much at home:

As for our home-searching, it's going pretty well. We have a few solid prospects in Salem and Swampscott. More news to follow...

19 Days to Boston!

2011-07-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

So, this post is (perhaps) notable for two reasons:

1. It's my first post in 2011, after only a handful in 2010. Versus, say double-digits in 2007, 2008 and 2009. That's something I certainly plan to change as part of...

2. I'm moving to Boston in 19 days!

#2 there is kind of hard to absorb- both for the brevity of the time remaining in San Francisco, and the length of the time behind. I moved here in September 1999, so it will be almost 12 years in the city when I climb on board that plane (with my two furry little carry-ons) to join my beautiful bride in the Far East (coast) on July 29th. Kind of wow. Kind of big. Kind of too big to write about all at once. Which is one reason I need to get blogging again more regularly for the remainder of my stay here.

Beyond that, one of the things I want to be part of this move is a lifestyle shift to more time for creative pursuits. I had a pretty good run of it there for a few years, but then the pace of life, and especially the nature of my job, made it hard to maintain. So I'm going to try and recast that in Boston, and make my creative pursuits a central fact of my life, which work and other factors must be shaped around.

How exactly am I going to do that? I don't fully know yet! I'm doing things to explore livelihood, and making myself open to change. Stay tuned for what this looks like, along with other exciting announcements. And give me hell if you don't hear from me more often!

40 in 40

2010-10-07T19:20:00.000-07:00

A little over a week ago, I turned 40. I never particularly figured myself for being the type to get hung up on age issues, but I definitely had a reaction to the advent of this milestone. In fact, turning 39 set off a year-long slow simmering mini-crisis just because 40 was approaching. All the usual things came up: Is my youth gone? Did I waste it all? Is it all decline from here on out? Should I be further along than I am in terms of career? Finances? Achievments? Will women stop looking at me now? Wait a minute, did women ever look at me? Should I get a walker and start looking in to rest homes now?

And the verdict so far…?

Eh, it’s not so bad. The other day, when I overhead a young girl telling her friend that she had $14 dollars in the bank and $16 dollars in her pocket, I felt positively giddy about being in my age demographic instead of hers’. I even had the chance to do some journaling last week and realize that what I have in my life now is everything I wished for during despairing years in my early 30s. It doesn’t all look like I thought it would then, but it’s pretty damn good.

Even the year-long marination in low grade existential crisis had its benefit: I came up with a list of 40 things I wanted to do while I was 40. Kind of a proof to myself that life, far from being over, is full of as much richness as you want it to be.

Full disclosure: I got the inspiration from fellow Mortified performer and all-around superstar Sara Faith Alterman, who did a blog about her own Dirty 30 list to mark her transition to the decade that starts with 3. I figured it would work just as well for 4. So here, without further ado and in absolutely no particular order, is my own Forty in 40:

1. Take rock climbing lessons.
2. Try hang gliding.
3. Go to Burning Man.
4. Visit Nashville & Memphis.
5. Learn to ride a bike.
6. Do a mini-Triathlon
7. Do a 10-K.
8. Finish my 9th Step.
9. Swim in the ocean.
10. Start regular yoga.
11. Go to the Fringe Festival in Scotland.
12. Take a cruise to the Farallons.
13. Go sea kayaking.
14. Kayak on Elkhorn Slough.
15. Do a silent meditation retreat.
16. Ride in a helicopter.
17. Visit a haunted place.
18. Go to the Eureka Springs Arkansas UFO conference.
19. Take a DJing class.
20. Publish a zine.
21. Get some boots. Big ‘ole shitkickers.
22. Do something to explore Native American Spirituality.
23. Finish a draft of my new novel.
24. Finish a poetry collection and submit it for publication.
25. Finish my full-length screenplay.
26. Ride in a hot air balloon.
27. Write a song.
28. Take part in a dream group.
29. Get hypnosis.
30. Go to the hot tubs at Esalen.
31. Try Rolfing.
32. Go to a service at an Orthodox Church.
33. Go to a Santo Daime service.
34. Go to a Spiritualist service.
35. Come up with a career transition plan.
36. Let it all hang out at a nude beach.
37. Visit Alcatraz.
38. Visit the Marin Headlands.
39. Have a show in the San Francisco Fringe Festival.
40. Experience a psychic phenomenon.

I’m also giving myself permission to be imperfect. In fact, I think I’ll be doing very, very well if I can get to half of these. However it plays out, I’ll keep you updated along the way!

August 2010 Writing News

2010-08-14T19:19:00.000-07:00

Greetings friends! I haven’t sent one of these updates out in a while. I could tell you all kinds of reasons involving holiday travel, the time and energy-draining misadventure of being both a director and producer on a short film, work getting annoyingly more hectic throughout the year-to-date, etc., etc. But I’ve found I’m usually best served by getting back into action. So here we go with a new update on my latest creative doings!

Film
In June, The Buddhist News, a film that I co-wrote and helped produce, screened as part of the latest round of Scary Cow, the independent film co-op I’m part of. Don’t be sad that you missed it, you can watch the film (and my brief appearances therein) here. Meanwhile, I’ve been working on post-production of Ave Maria, the film I wrote, directed and produced (hence being too batty to post much the first half of this year). It will be screening at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on Sunday, October 10th. I want EVERYONE there, so I’ll be letting you know when tickets go on sale.

Performance
Per my being distracted, batty, overworked, etc., I haven’t done any readings in months. But the drought is about to be broken when I take the stage to read tortured poetry from my teenage years for Mortified. You can get tickets here for the performances at the Make-Out Friday August 20th and Saturday August 21st.

Publication
The biggest news: an essay I wrote on my student experience at Berkeley, “Bachelor’s of Armageddon”, has been published in the anthology When I Was There! Should you be so inspired, you can buy it on Amazon. Since last you heard from me, my prose poem “Young Karl Marx” appeared on Opium’s website. I’ve also been writing song reviews for the website Song O’ The Day.

Novel
I’ve submitted my novel Out in the Neon Night to a few independent publishers over the last few months. While they review it, I’m considering getting more input from a freelance editor and/or starting a new round of inquiries to literary agents. In the meantime, you can read a sample chapter.

Blog
My blog has not blogged overmuch so far this year. Perhaps it will more now that I’m sending this out and feel some pressure to have content for people to see!

Chris out for now, but I look forward to sending you more updates soon!

Hello again...

2010-05-03T11:38:00.000-07:00

So here’s the deal: I’ve only had one blog entry so far in 2010. While in previous years I never quite met my goal of having an entry a week, I was strongly into double-digits for 2008 and 2009. Not so much this year.

I understand how it happened. I started the year out of town, visiting Abbey’s friends and family in New York for Christmas and New Year’s. Which was delightful, but did get me out of my regular routine. I then jumped feet-first into Ave Maria, the short film I’m writing, directing and producing. In case you’ve never done it, let me save you the trouble and tell you NEVER to both direct and produce something. One or the other is fine, but both simultaneously will suck out your soul and leave you a hollow-shattered shell of a person. And so it was.

Simultaneous with this, my back went out in a spectacular (usually anxiety-provoked) fashion that it tends to do every few years. Credit clean living that I hadn’t had one of these since December 2006, but this one got me out sick from work for several days, and doing chiro and pilates for a month (shout outs to the fantastic Drs. Randall and James at Embrace Health in the Marina!) before I was functional again. And speaking of work, my quiet stable little non-profit job became unaccountably busy this year. Apparently doing an annual budget, long-range projections, finalizing financing for relocation and implementing a new financial software at the same time is a bad idea. This is why I left the for-profit sector!

The upshot of all of this: 39 entries in all of 2009. 1 in the first 4 months of 2010. UNACCEPTABLE. Forthwith, my pledge to you is that I’m going to post at least one entry a week for the rest of the year, even if someone has to die. Maybe me, maybe you. So be careful. I’m just saying…

10 Books in 2010!

2010-01-08T11:47:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year all! I can't believe I didn't post at all in December. The holidays always throw me for a whirl... Well, here's to turning over a new leaf.

I'm working on some general intentions for the year, which I'll write about soon, but in the meantime, I have finalized my list of 10 books for 2010. Here are the 10 "long been meaning to read" books I'm going to attempt to get through in 2010, in the midst of other assorted shenanigans (in the order I'm going to read them, corresponding to when they were written):

The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2000-1000 BC)

the Illiad c. (Homer, 700 BC)

Paradise Lost (Milton, 1667)

Short Stories of Dostoevsky (Dostoevsky, 1862-1872

the Varieties of Religious Experience (James, 1902)

Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke, 1903-1908)

The Big Sleep (Chandler, 1939)

Catcher in the Rye (Salinger, 1951)

Godel, Escher, Bach (Hofstader, 1979)

Please Kill Me (McNeil) 1997

I'll let you know what they're like as I finish them...

San Francisco Daze: November

2009-11-30T14:38:00.000-08:00

Hello all! Last year I published Jan-Sep of "San Francisco Daze" on the Blog. SFD was an (aspirational) daily prose and poetry reaction to life in San Francisco that I write in 2005. I guess I got busy toward the end of last year, because I never got Oct-Dec out. A week or two ago, I finally posted October. here's November, with December to follow in December....

*****************************************

November 1

I awake to the visceral horror of the cat scratch on my stomach. Bedroom littered with socks and papers. Empty bottles everywhere. The first morning of the new age. What has God wrought? We shall see, we shall see…

November 2-4

The first few days of freedom from work are too much for me, resulting in no useful scenes of daily life here in San Francisco. No useless ones either, for that matter.

November 5

Rain of the last few days is soaking into my socks through the cracks in my shoes. This tells me two things:
1) It’s time for new shoes.
2) The weather that marked the beginning of these daily snapshots of life in SF is back. I love winter!

November 6

At night, going to the store on Clement Street, rain falling through the sky, caught in the light of the streetlamp, looks like a shower of particles of gold.

November 7

Rainy day
Liquid gray
Monday morning
As I am coffe a’borning
At 7-11
Cute Asian gal buying cigarette heaven
Is asked for her ID
Delighting her and me

November 8

On the ocean side of the city, sun shines through silver ice of clouds, highlighting them liquid gold in the dusk.

November 9

Shafts of gold poured down today through silver clouds as I trudged home for a three hour nap, feeling like I was coming down with something. As long as this rainy weather persists, the metallurgical alchemy of the sky will delight. Achoo!

November 10-12

Of which I have nothing to say, except for parents, thank God for parents. They visited me this three day weekend, and I got untold time to spend with my father. Comforting, given my brothert’s recent passing. That is all. Hopefully you and I all shall all speak again soon.

November 13-15

Not too soon, thanks to the stomach flu. God, this is getting boring, just like a bad online journal.

November 16

The simple beauty of life today was sipping coffee and having a tuna salad in a café on Clement Street while getting back into the swing of daily writing on the NaNoWriMo. BeBopOBombOooh…

November 17

The 3rd day
Of 80 degree weather
In the 2nd half of November
Brought dismay from one man
But a steel blue sky for all

November 18

Aww, the dour looking woman in the seat in front of me on the 38 Geary has a really nice voice. Just another proof that the books, they should not be judged by the covers.

November 19

In the basement of Saint James’ early this afternoon, amid the clutter of a kitchen strewn with pre-school implements and too-short chairs at a too-tall table, two (not quite) strangers went over my finances in detail. I have never felt happier or freer.

November 20

Elephantine white
Massive marble block curved
Halls of Opera

November 21

Writing in my living room as a Monday afternoon gives way to dusk. The 5-CD changer loaded with Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Guns n’ Roses, Megadeath and Metallica. Outside, over the backs of the houses that face 12th Avenue, and the trees of Park Presidio, blue has flared into colors and faded into milky white. The next step will hollow violet, and the eternal black high lit by diamond.

November 22

The buildings of downtown
Silver
White
Reflecting
Jut into afternoon sky
Blue
White
Empty

November 23

What always gets me about returning to Prunedale at night is the supernatural darkness, earth trees and sky all black, RV Park and gas stations and small shopping centers huddled against the blackness.

November 24

A kind of homecoming:

I took a walk
Tonight
Down country roads
In darkness and the smell of manure,
With the distant sound
Of barking dogs and Mexican music
Floating
On cool evening air

November 25

More scenes from the home front:

The morning after rain, chimney of small grayish-brown house sending billows of smoke and steam up against green tree hills.
Pacific Grove theatre on a street that smells green and piney.
Ocean a green black and gray irregular swell glimpsed through gaps in the dunes on the drive home.
Dribbled white of Milky Way spilled across the length of the purple-black sky.

November 26

“This is CalTrain 119 departing San Jose, bound for the greatest city in the world, San Francisco!”— heard over PA from conductor on CalTrain 119, departing San Jose, bound for the greatest city in the world, San Francisco

November 27

Bay so clear today
Mt. Diablo looms behind
Transamerica

November 28

Day spent in rainfall
Pitter-pat on the window
White mist in distance

November 29-30

No record survives of the last two days of November. One can only imagine that some catastrophe of laziness and oversleep consumed them.

Project Dylan: Blonde on Blonde (1966)

2009-11-22T16:18:00.000-08:00

I've been (slowly) blogging an album-by album review of my favorite Bob Dylan albums. So far we've had Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A' Changin, Another Side of Bob Dylan>, and Bringing It All Back Home, and Highway 61 Revisited. Which brings us now to what many regard as the jewel in the crown, Blonde on Blonde.

****************************************************

Blonde on Blonde is where the rubber hits the road. It’s the third album of the transcendent trio that includes Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. It decidedly ups the ante on the album that came before it, as each of those two albums did. And it’s the last album before the motorcycle accident that marked a decisive break in both his music and his public person.

So, all that myth and legend aside, how well does it actually stand up? Really freaking well! The 14 tracks here have a lyrical richness and stunning musical diversity that by and large immunizes the whole from sounding dated even after 43 years.

I often think of the opener, “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” as kind of a one-joke novelty that loses its appeal after the shock of “everybody must get stoned” fades, and it’s surely pretty faded by now. That being said, it has a kind of driving stomping rhythm that won me over on this latest listen. This feeling flows into the thick rumbling blues of the next track “Pledging my Time”. “Visions of Johanna” then takes you somewhere entirely beyond, with it’s poetic paean delivered with a world-weary voice and slowly rising tempo of its ringing electric background. Here we the true flowering of an artistic vision, with Dylan adding self-reflection of his own part in the mess and a lovelorn vulnerability to the kind of bitter love song he had long ago mastered.

This song gets inside you and lingers, which could just be a lucky accident, except that it happens again on the next track “One of Us Must Know”. He tries to take himself off the hook by noting that he didn’t mean to do (her?) any harm, and that he was just doing what he was supposed to do, but the underlying melancholy of the song leavens the argument. Similarly, on “I Want You” he’s proud of being put down for not thinking about love, except the line is delivered in the midst of three minutes of yearning wooing of the object of his affection.

And then for something completely different there’s the next two songs… “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” is one of several songs on the album that is called surrealist in its streaming imagery. And so it is on one level, but I think it’s plain enough on another as a portrayal of the derangement of being on the overboard train of fame in the mid-60s, a world where after mixing Texas medicine and railroad gin: It strangled up my mind/ An' now people just get uglier/An' I have no sense of time Followed by the ultimate reincarnation blues: Here I sit so patiently/ Waiting to find out what price/ You have to pay to get out of/ Going through all these things twice

“Leopard-skin Pill Box Hat” takes us on an equally bizarre romp, accompanied by ringing electric blues. We’re then back to a familiar misogynist and snide Dylan on “Just Like a Woman” and “Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine”, but you have to wonder if both aren’t symbols of a larger disillusionment, foreshadowing the break he was about to take from music. Witness: your long-time curse hurts/ But what's worse/ Is this pain in here/ I can't stay in here/ Ain't it clear that--/ I just can't fit/ Yes, I believe it's time for us to quit And: I'm gonna let you pass/ And I'll go last./ Then time will tell just who fell/ And who's been left behind/ When you go your way and I go mine

Following this, “Temporary Like Achilles” slows us down and “Absolutely Sweet Marie” speeds us up in territory more obviously surreal and less obviously personal, but both continue a theme of wanting to drop out of a game the protagonist no longer feels like playing. “4th Time Around” then veers into territory where music and vocals almost achingly melancholy and romantic back lyrics that are alternately tongue-in-cheek and vulnerable. As if to shake the mood, “Obviously 5 Believers” launches into rapid blues rock, but this proves to be kind of a ringer, because the album’s finale “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” is the most disarmed and unabashed love song that Dylan had written up to this point. It’s slow saunter and profusion of cowboy and western imagery is also a prequel of the musical and lyrical space Dylan will be in a year and a half later when John Wesley Harding is released.

Whatever the truth or not of the seriousness of the motorcycle accident that sidelined him for this period, if nothing else he’d earned a break. From his eponymous debut in 1962 through Blonde on Blonde, Dylan had released 7 albums in a roughly four-year space, progressing from largely-derivative eager young folkie to massively talented pop-rock icon. To paraphrase Passover, if he had stopped there, it would have been enough. But as we’ll see next, how bountiful that he did not…

Facecation had to get away...

2009-11-19T16:16:00.001-08:00

I've just finished a one week Facecation. I got the idea (and the term) from my friend Roz, who did her own Facecation recently. I don't know what her exact motivation was, but in my case, I thought that Facebook and I needed a little time apart to get our relationship back in balance. The form of our relationship was roughly this:

Chris- Checking it first thing in the morning, struggling to keep up with friend's postings, continually trying to think of witty things to post for my status or in response to others postings, struggling to clear out the constant stream of alerts in my inbox, continually clicking on Facebook throughout the day to refresh a brief feeling of excited contact with the rest of the world, being unable to get to bed at night because I needed to check Facebook one more time in case anything new had happened.

Facebook- Accepting all my attention while otherwise practicing complete disinterest toward me.

You can see what the problem was.

I'm no stranger to compulsive behavior and online addiction, so I could see it too. I also had the feeling that I was increasingly getting cut by the other edge of the double-edged sword that is social networking: it can make you feel connected to a lot of people, but it also prompts shallow and fleeting connections that masquerade as real intimacy. So I decided on a one week break, just to let the dust settle. From midnight Wednesday last week through midnight yesterday, I did not visit Facebook, deleted all e-mail alerts from it unread and even, when I was fast enough to zap them, tried to delete the messages without even looking at their titles.

What can I tell you about that experience? Well, for starters, like most any break from something compulsive, it was pretty much an immediate relief. The withdrawal was fairly light, too. I did have the weird lurching feeling of continually composing status updates in my head about things I saw or felt, and then realizing that if I had thoughts I wanted to express, I had to find a real live person to express them too. That seemed unreasonable! But that went away after a few days, and I had very little of the "what do I do with spare moments?" feeling that I thought I might have. Instead I almost immediately felt more alert and appreciated the free time and free head-space. I also appreciated seeing people at various points throughout my week more, since I couldn't "cyber-see" them in-between. The other thing I noticed is that, after a day or two, the daily 20+ e-mail alerts I was receiving dwindled down to one or two. When you don't constantly feed the beast, it doesn't spontaneously come looking for you too often.

There were a few things I genuinely missed. When I finish reading a book, as I did with a behemoth 515 page tome this past week, I like posting the review. I also use Facebook to pimp my writing, so when I had new things come out here and there, it was a little frustrating to not be able to make use of this practical tool to let people know. And I missed the ability to send quick messages to people following up on things we'd done together over the weekend, which is not profound but is something that online networking lends itself well too. I also found myself with an ongoing strange yearning, when I got a real e-mail from someone, to go to their profile and see their pictures. Maybe not so strange- visual contact is very important to human socializing.

And now that I'm back? I am decidedly ambivalent. It's nice to "see" everyone again and to have the often convenient tools for staying in touch that Facebook provides. But I liked the peace and quiet, the increased time and energy, and the added impetus to make real contact with people that my break provided me. What I think I'm going to do is turn off all e-mail alerts (except maybe for events and pictures, because events need timely response and pictures are fun!), so that I'll only see stuff from the site if and when I go to the site. And I'm going to put myself on an every other day regimen for visiting Facebook. Maybe this will reintroduce a little balance into the relationship, and make my contact with it a more deliberate and conscious.

And so I return...

San Francisco Daze: October

2009-11-11T12:58:00.000-08:00
For whatever reason, it recently struck me that I'd never gotten around to finishing blog publishing the next installment of San Francisco Daze, a series of (aspirationaly, at least) daily sketches of life in our fair city that I wrote in 2005. I posted September right at the beginning of October 2008, and then no October, November or December. Here is October, and I'll get out November in a week or two.

***************************************************

October 1-2

What happened to these three days? Unfortunately, I have all too clear an idea what the answer to that question is. All too clear— this particular form of mass-mayhem has been entirely work related. A week’s worth of twelve-hour days. Desperate attempts to mellow out by having a drink or two in the evening. And then asleep on the bus or rushed in a taxi to work. All to be repeated the next morning…

October 3

Madrone on a Monday, and damn but I should do this every Monday. It’s their “living room”, in which people are encouraged to come out and bring games, art projects, etc. that they can work on together. There’s great music, and the atmosphere is very chill— not unlike hanging out in a friend’s living room. Except with a bartender, and cuter girls.

October 4

Why was the door open? Why was there no light coming from inside the apartment? Did the big bushy black and white cat on the doorstep, sinister pudgy Persian face, have to have its eyes glowing yellow? What was this a harbinger of? By such things is the feeling of the uncanny strongly evoked, even on 11th Avenue in the usually bland and safe Richmond District.

October 5-11

What happened to these seven days? Unfortunately, I have all too clear an idea what the answer to that question is. All too clear— this particular form of mass-mayhem has been entirely work related. A week’s worth of twelve-hour days. Desperate attempts to mellow out by having a drink or two in the evening. And then asleep on the bus or rushed in a taxi to work. All to be repeated the next morning…

October 12

To the Snow White Pigeon I Saw On 11th Avenue While Walking Home From the Bar Tonight

Snow white pigeon
I have never seen a pigeon
As snowy
And white
As you
Were it not for your size
And the distinctive bob of your head
When you walked
I might have thought you a dove
I loved
How you jumped up on the curb
And walked quickly toward me
Was saddened
When you veered over in the direction
Of the apartment instead
But delighted
When you perched on its step
And the girl coming down to get laundry
And I
Exchanged bemused glances
I know
Our love can never be
(the inter-species gap is too wide for that)
But I do hope
That I see you
Again

October 13-15

What happened to these three days? Unfortunately, I have all too clear an idea what the answer to that question is. All too clear— this particular form of mass-mayhem has been entirely work related. A week’s worth of twelve-hour days. Desperate attempts to mellow out by having a drink or two in the evening. And then asleep on the bus or rushed in a taxi to work. All to be repeated the next morning…

October 16

Eleven stops today in the Richmond District’s Open Galleries weekend, bright blue cloudless sky mercilessly transmitting hot sun onto skin and pavement, only respite in the shady side of the street and the disquieting magic of entering strangers’ homes and looking at their art.

October 17-19

What happened to these three days? Unfortunately, I have all too clear an idea what the answer to that question is. All too clear— this particular form of mass-mayhem has been entirely work related. A week’s worth of twelve-hour days. Desperate attempts to mellow out by having a drink or two in the evening. And then asleep on the bus or rushed in a taxi to work. All to be repeated the next morning…

October 20

Weird scenes at the third Tuesday’s at the Academy of Science. Apparently, at their temporary location at 5th and Howard, they have a monthly event in which a full bar, caterer and DJ are set up in the Academy. So, you can cruise around and meet the fish and reptiles and amphibians and see the science exhibits while sipping wine and grooving to Techno. Trippy. And the crowd is mostly well-to-do 20 and 30-somethings. It reminds me of the heyday of the dotcom boom.

October 21

First time in Gaspare’s, despite six years of living in the Richmond District. The Margherita pizza was divine, the Chianti insisted on its purple-reddishness, small wicker flaks hung from the ceiling and the darkness inside the restaurant soothed the soul.

October 22

Crunched coke can, rattling down Market Street, past the US Mint building. Each gust of passing car caught it up and set it rattling a few feet further, even though the road was level. I kept expecting it to get crushed under wheel, but it continued in its merry way. I wished that I had a video camera.

October 23

Land’s End Beach today was foam shooting up over the big offshore rocks and the clattering sound of the smooth rounded rocks as the tide retreated through them.

October 24-30

The last week of my working life is so harried that it leaves very little record. I mean, I certainly may work again. But it will be different from here, I think. Time off for writing here in my lovely city of San Francisco. I will commit to do six months, and then we shall see what’s next.

October 31

While sitting in my parents’ living room
Last night
During weekend visit
Synchronicity
Of sound of
Tapping on the wall
Owl screeching
And train passing in the distance
Tells me
My brother is visiting

November Writing News

2009-11-03T20:52:00.000-08:00
I didn’t think enough had happened since the last one for me to put out an update last month. That still may be the case. But the show must go on! Accordingly, here is my November Writing News for your reading enjoyment:

Film- “Deaf, Dumb and Blind Date”, one section of the three-part short film I wrote and produced, “Triptych”, screened at the Victoria Theatre on October 4th. For the upcoming round of Scary Cow, the independent film co-op that I’m a part of, I’ll be directing a film based on a short story I wrote last year, “Ave Maria”. It’s my first time as director, which should be interesting for everyone… While we wait for that, “Deaf, Dumb and Blind Date” isn’t up on the Scary Cow website yet, but you can check out the previous installment of “Triptych” that screened in June, “Geek Wars” (it’s listed as project #33): http://www.scarycow.com/videos/round0008/round008.html

Publication- I’ve cooked up a few things since last time, including a run-down on fall arts events and musings on freedom and responsibility in DIY culture for LEGENDmag: http://legendmag.net/thelegendonline/2009/09/22/independent-arts-high-holy-days/ , http://legendmag.net/thelegendonline/2009/10/20/what-are-we-diying-for/ . I’ve also become a regular contributor to a website named “Song O’ The Day”, you can check out my song reviews so far here: http://www.songotheday.com/?cat=352

Performance- At the beginning of the year I challenged myself to read in public once a month. I won’t quite make that pace, but I have read several times. The latest was something I’ve done before, performing tragic poetry I wrote as a teenager onstage at Mortified (http://www.getmortified.com/ ) on October 23rd and 24th. I’m not sure yet what I’ll get up to in November, but I’ll let you know…

Novel- I’m contemplating revision suggestions I got from a manuscript evaluation I had done by a freelance editor earlier this year. They would mean some major structural overhauls, which I may or may not be up for. While I ponder, you can read the first chapter of my novel, Out in the Neon Night, on my blog: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-chapter-of-my-novel-in-neon-night.html

Blog- One of the biggest traffic generators on my blog the past month has been a piece I did on the increase in right wing violence in the past year. You can see it here, along with other bloggy doings: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/2009/09/rising-tide-of-right-wing-chris.html

November out, stay tuned for December!

Project Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

2009-10-26T15:08:00.000-07:00
I haven't done this since May! I hereby pledge to pick up the pace, and publish at least two more before the end of the year. In the mean time, thus far in my sequential overview of my favorite Bob Dylan albums we've had Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A' Changin, Another Side of Bob Dylan>, and Bringing It All Back Home. Which leads us to Highway 61 Revisited...

****************************************

I’d like to start this review with a confession: my whole life I’ve heard music critics fawning about how rocking “Like a Rolling Stone” is, and I just don’t get it. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a great song, one of the exemplars of Dylan’s “bitter and snarky telling off of a woman” vein of song writing. And I understand the historical significance of his going electric here and what that did to rock and folk from that point forward. But to say it flat out rocks? Compared to other things from the same time period by the Who, the Kinks and the Stones? Or even Dylan himself in many places on the previous album Bringing It All Back Home or here in songs like “Tombstone Blues”?

Regardless, in terms of being a vessel for free-floating resentment, serving dual purpose as an attack on a person and a personification of mainstream society due for a richly deserved fall, and prominently featuring the cheesy rock organ, it’s a strong way to open an album, and a pretty incendiary thing to have reach number 2 on the pop charts in 1965. “Tombstone Blues” then knocks it up to a whole other level. The take on this era of Dylan is that he’s moved from the political to the personal, and is now expressing things in absurdist poetry. Listen to this song though, and see if amidst all the joking references to John the Baptist, Galileo and Cecil B. DeMille it isn’t serving as the ultimate protest, a deconstruction of the society itself that results in: Mama's in the fact'ry/ She ain't got no shoes/ Daddy's in the alley/ He's lookin' for food/ I'm in the kitchen/ With the tombstone blues

Dylan is also aces in track arrangement here, slowing us down after the initial one-two punch of the opening with the down tempo of “It Takes a Train to Cry” bringing us back up with rocking electric blues on “From a Buick 6” and then just weirding everything out with “Ballad of a Thin Man”. On the surface, he’s telling off a critic, and it’s enough of a joke that he actually cracks up at the beginning. Underneath, though, the weird whistling of the organ and slow building tempo of each lyrical turn charges you up and disorients you, the perfect compliment to a song that point-blank tells you it’s attacking your imagination. So personal, yes, but it lends itself to social critique as well, and not for nothing did the Black Panthers listen to this song repeatedly while drafting their manifesto.

Being so firmly tied to an era by these kinds of associations, “Thin Man” can sound dated. The next track, “Queen Jane Approximately” sounds perennially contemporary with its perfect pop song pitch and balance of angry snide that dismisses the subject and weary compassion that invites them back. If this song sound contemporary, then the track that follows, “Highway 61 Revisited” enters the realm of timeless. Listening to it, it’s possible to make a case that it’s poetic horsing around with archetypes of the road, an indictment of the angry tribal gods and cynical commercialism that are pushing society toward a next world war, or both at once. That is what playing in mythic space can do for you, and he goes even further into it on “Desolation Row” where Cinderella, Bettie Davis, Einstein and Robin Hood all have their identities scrambled together in a land where everybody’s making love or else expecting rain.

The other thing that I can’t help but hear in this album is Dylan the person struggling with Dylan the myth (in which wise it’s mind-blowing to realize that he was only 24 when this was recorded). “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” makes clear the weariness and disillusionment that would have him dropping out of the game, and coming back forever altered, after his next album, Blonde on Blonde:

I cannot move/ My fingers are all in a knot/ I don't have the strength, To get up and take another shot

***

It's either fortune or fame/ You must pick up one or the other/ Though neither of them are to be what they claim

***

Everybody said they'd stand behind me/ When the game got rough
But the joke was on me/ There was nobody even there to call my bluff/ I'm going back to New York City/ I do believe I've had enough

10 Books in 2010 Self-challenge (update)

2009-10-16T15:13:00.000-07:00
I got this idea lodged in my head that I would challenge myself to read 10 pending "always meant to get to it" books in 2010. I like the symmetry of the numbers, and I figured it would give me a good literary kick in the ass without being such a big list that I couldn't possibly finish. I did a blog about this last month with my list as it stood at that time, asking for particular recommendations. Since then, I've added a few more to the list, so I'm now up to 22. Help!

-the Illiad
-Paradise Lost
-Short Stories of Dostoevsky
-something by Tom Robbins (what?)
-Catcher in the Rye
-Jesus' Son
-Letters to a Young Poet
-something by Raymond Chandler (what?)
-something by Raymond Carver (particular recommendation?)
-the Analects
-the Varieties of Religious Experience
-Aristotle's Poetics
-The Corrections
-Good in Bed
-Pass it On
-something by DeLillo (I'm leaning towards "Libra")
-Godel, Escher, Bach
-Please Kill Me
-The Epic of Gilgamesh
-Jung (either Man and His Symbols or his autobiography)
-Cannery Row
-Tales of the City

Since I've got to get this down to 10, are there any particular plugs for "must reads" from the list? Any specific recommendations for the authors I'm not sure about which book to pick (Tom Robbins, Carver, Chandler, DeLillo)? Your input is appreciated...

Man, still inventing his doom

2009-09-30T15:03:00.000-07:00
At the beginning of the year I started keeping track of certain science stories related to genetics, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence. I wanted to see what developments were out there that might contribute to the following: trends in genetics, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence, each of them accelerating individually and converging collectively, make it very likely that a fundamental transformation of the human species is at hand. This is likely to happen more or less instantly in evolutionary time. Even on the scale of our day-to-day lives, it's likely to occur well before the end of the century, and is thus something many of us might live to see, especially in as much as these trends involve medical advances as well.

You can see my Q1 and Q2 recaps in previous postings. For Q3, even with me out of the country and not paying much attention for the month of August, several interesting stories have appeared:

Tiny New Battery is Printable
Embryonic stem cells used to create human sperm
Military Develops 'Cybug' Spies
Contact lens can dispense drugs to eyes
Gel heals injured brain and bone
Gene Therapy Cures Colorblindness in Monkeys
Brain scan reveals what you've seen
Micorsoft researcher converts his brain into E-memory

Even in this few months worth of headlines you can see potential for expanded lifespans, mobile robots powered by lightweight power sources and human brains interfaced with computers. To quote the prophet David Bowie:

Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the homo superior

The Rising Tide of Right Wing Violence

2009-09-23T16:17:00.000-07:00
In April, when a Department of Homeland Security report on the potential emergence of right-wing domestic terror threats was partially leaked, the Right in this country went wild with scorn and mockery. The media widely reported the dissing of the report, but did very little analysis of the relative merits or lack thereof of the idea.

The title, "Right-Wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment", pretty much gives you the thesis. You would think someone in the press at the time might have taken said thesis a little seriously based on:

- Jim Adkinson going on a shooting spree in a Unitarian church in June 2008 because, as explained in a letter he left behind, he “wanted to kill liberals”.

- Campaign rallies toward the end of the Presidential election where a beaming Sarah Palin said things like “You really get it!” to whipped-up crowds yelling “Traitor!” and “Kill him!” when Obama was mentioned.

- An assassination plot by skinhead groups that was broken up shortly after the election.

- Conservative groups organizing anti-Obama “Tea Parties” across the nation including one in which Texas Governor Rick Perry said frustration with the government might run so high that Texas might have to secede.

- Richard Poplawski in Pennsylvania, who frequently fretted about "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" staging a domestic disturbance on April 4th, donning body-armor and loading an AK-47 to then shoot the officers who responded.

By April, was it really that ridiculous to think that economic hardship in the country, combined with a sudden political change and exacerbated by alarmism from Rightist media, might be creating a milieu of violent extremism?

One could certainly make the case that Adkinson and Poplawski were lone nuts, but as subsequent coverage has made clear, they weren’t lone nuts who appeared out of the ether. Officers found Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder by radio talk show host Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring by talk show host Sean Hannity, and The O'Reilly Factor by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly in Adkinson’s apartment after the shooting. The note he left behind specifically mentions wanting to kill the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37). Poplawski turned out to be a follower of Alex Jones, who used to be a fringe 9-11 conspiracist but by March 2009 appeared on FoxNews.com hailed as “the one, the only, the great Alex Jones," in a segment warning about "what the government has done to take your liberty and your property away."

If mainstream media didn’t spot any emerging trend in April, you think they might have been on to one this summer, when, in the space of less than two weeks:

- Shawna Forde, a former member of the anti-illegal immigration border watch group the Minutemen, posed with another man as police officers in order to enter the home of a Hispanic family and kill them in Arizona on May 30th.

- Prominent abortion doctor Richard Tiller was gunned down in church in Wichita, Kansas on May 31st.

- White supremacist James Wenneker von Brunn went on a shooting spree in the National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. on June 10th.

Still not enough trend? How about Virginia Congressional candidate Catherine Crabill in July helpfully noting that, if candidates trying to stop “Marxism” fail to get elected in November, at least we still have guns to affect change? How about the town hall meetings and Tea Parties all fall where Obama has been excoriated in the most inflammatory language? Find Mark Williams of the group Tea Party Express, for example, calling Obama an "Indonesian Muslim and welfare thug".

And then there’s Chris Broughton, who proudly wore an assault rifle and a handgun to an Obama rally in Arizona in August. Far from being a disconnected lone nut, Broughton is actually a member of a church congregation whose pastor, while disavowing calling for anyone in particular to do anything illegal, publicly prays that Obama “die and go to hell.”

Is it possible that a sitting member of Congress shouting “You Lie!” during a Presidential address is the relative ruly tip of an increasingly unruly iceberg of growing radicalization that is implicitly encouraged by leaders of the Conservative movement? Possible enough that we might want to take a serious look at what’s going on?

Before dismissing this as Liberal paranoia, let’s play a thought game:

What if, during the 2000 election, a radical leftist had gone on a shooting spree in an evangelical church leaving behind a note saying he wanted to, “kill conservatives?” Not long thereafter, Gore’s VP candidate had grinned and encouraged crowds shouting that Bush was a fascist who should be killed. After the election of Bush, left wing acts of violence dotted the country in the following months as prominent Liberals organized and encouraged town halls where Bush was described as dangerous and a threat. A Democratic congressional candidate advocated violent revolution if Liberals lost elections and a prominent Democratic governor mentioned seceding if Bush's agenda continued. And then a gun-totting member of a radical Black church congregation whose pastor called for Bush’s death came to a rally that the President was at? How calm, nuanced, reasoned and balanced would Fox News and talk radio be in reporting on this?

Help with my Ten Books in 2010 self-challenge

2009-09-19T16:53:00.000-07:00

I've decided to issue myself a self-challenge in 2010: I'm going to try to read 10 books that are on my "always wanted to, but never got around to" list.

Now is the part where you come in- I've started a list, but it has over ten entires, with more being added all the time. Any particular "yea" votes? Or suggestions about something I might want to add? The list so far (mixing sacred and profane, in no particular order):

-the Illiad
-Paradise Lost
-Short Stories of Dostoevsky
-something by Tom Robbins (what?)
-Catcher in the Rye
-Jesus' Son
-Letters to a Young Poet
-something by Raymond Chandler (what?)
-something by Raymond Carver (particular recommendation?)
-the Analects
-the Varieties of Religious Experience
-Aristotle's Poetics
-The Corrections
-Good in Bed
-Pass it On
-something by DeLillo (I'm leaning towards "Libra")
-Godel, Escher, Bach
-Please Kill Me
-The Epic of Gilgamesh

Any suggestions?

September Writing News

2009-09-05T18:48:00.000-07:00
Now that I’m back from safari (more on that later) I figured it was time for another monthly update on my creative doings:

Film- “Deaf, Dumb and Blind Date”, one section of my three-part short film “Triptych” will screen at the Victoria Theatre on October 4th. I wrote and produced this one, for the next round in Scary Cow I’m thinking of directing a new project as well. While I ponder that, you can check out the previous installment of Triptych that screened in June, “Geek Wars”, on the Scary Cow website, project #33: http://www.scarycow.com/videos/round0008/round008.html

Publication- I just put together a portfolio of things that I’ve had published in the last few years. To my surprise, it reached almost 50 pages. Maybe I’m not as much of a slacker as I think! The latest additions are more musings on hipsters for LEGENDmag: http://legendmag.net/thelegendonline/2009/07/16/invasion-of-the-hipster-bodysnatchers/ , the short prose piece “relapse in 26 lines” for Slouch Magazine: http://www.slouchmag.com/?p=245 , and two poems for the science section in Umbrella Journal’s school-themed issue: http://www.umbrellajournal.com/fall2009/school_contents.html

Performance- I read at Magnet’s “Smackdab” reading series on Wednesday July 15th and at the Gallery Café poetry series on Monday August 3rd. The Magnet audience was mostly gay, which means they were literate and paying attention. Love it! The Gallery Café was also excellent, one of the largest and highest quality reading series I’ve been to, I definitely plan to go back some time. As for September, I’m not sure where I’m going to read yet, but I’m pledged to try, so stay tuned for details…

Novel- Still not sure what I’m going to do with the revision suggestions I got from the manuscript evaluation by the freelance editor I met at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference in February regarding my novel, Out in the Neon Night. Until I figure it out, you can read the first chapter on my blog: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-chapter-of-my-novel-in-neon-night.html

Blog- The biggest doing on my blog has been my updates from my three-week trip to Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia in August. I finally have my pictures up too! Check it out here: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-africa-pictures-are-online.html

So there you have it, with more to come…

My Africa pictures are online!

2009-09-05T16:10:00.000-07:00
As some of you may have heard, I went to Tanzania

Kenya

and Ethiopia

for three weeks last month. I now have some of my pictures from the trip in an online slideshow. Come and check it out! And you can also read my blogs from the trip if you like...

The blog Ethiopia didn't want you to see II

2009-08-27T18:01:00.000-07:00
I will contend with Africa no more- homeward bound!

I'm writing this at 10 AM (from my perspective) at the Semien Hotel in Addis Ababa, shortly before departing for my journey homeward. The end of (roughly) three weeks in Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia. Wow!

Yesterday, my last day here in Ethiopia, I spent the morning repaying all the folks whose kindness helped me enjoy Lalibela and Axum. Surprisingly, doing a money transfer at a domestic bank in Ethiopia was nowhere near as mind-numbing as I had feared! After that, I headed to the National Museum. After shaking off the efforts of a wannabe rasta "student" who swooped down on me as soon as the taxi stopped and tried to steer me to other sites that he would "guide" me to, I made my way inside. Man what is it with the scammy gangster wannabe rastas in Ethiopia?

Inside, a real bonafide student who worked at the museum gave me a free guided tour. Punctuated by the lights going out in the middle of a torrential raainstorm right when we reached Lucy. They came back on eventually and great aunt ^ 3.4 million years and I got to visit. It wasn't the real Lucy, which is usually in storage and only available to researchers (but is now touring the world for the first time ever!) but a cast, first of the bones laid out flat, and then reconstructed in a standing position. Australopithecus Afarensis was short, which I appreciate in a hominid, not being the tallest myself.

The museum was also full of a lot of other neat stuff, including some really stunning stone carvings from the 2600 year-old civilization at Yeha, and a fantastic contemporary art section. My guide was also knowledgable, friendly, and totally embarassed when I offered him a small tip at the end of the tour. We exchanged e-mails, as I have with a lot of people here, and hope to keep in touch. He's the kind of person I hope to remember more when I think of this country, rather than predatory pseudo-rastas. Although I guess both are parts of the same reality...

After that I hailed a taxi and tried to reach the national cathedral and a market I had read about that had fair fixed prices (I just don't have the haggle and bargain gene). The driver had never heard of any such places (even though a half dozen people in the last two days had mentioned the cathedral by name to me), but I did get a de facto city tour as he tried to find them. Finally I decided to stop contending with Africa and just return to my hotel. Boy was he consternated by that direction! It's been a long three weeks, and I'm happy to call the contest a draw. Africa-Chris tied 1-1, both retire for the evening.

In my case that meant a warm bath and watching the end of Police Academy on satellite TV. And now I'm here, about to depart. A 2 hour flight to nairobi, layover there, much longer flight to Amsterdam, layover there, and then a two hour flight to San Francisco. At least that's how I interpret it- I leave Amsterdam at 11 AM and arrive in San Francisco at 1 PM. That's two hours, right? Or maybe something is wrong in my figuring...

Regardless, I look forward to seeing you all soon!

The blog Ethiopia didn't want you to see I

2009-08-27T17:55:00.000-07:00
I never did get to post my last two entries from Addis Ababa, as the government of Ethiopia, in their infinite wisdom on how to deal with potential dissent, blocks Blogger.com. I was able to post them as Facebook notes (which tells you what a thankless job blocking specific websites in order to silence voices is), I figured I'd post them here for completeness' sake. First below, second to follow...

P.S. I'm back!
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Last day in Africa!

I think you could make a case that tomorrow is my last day in Africa, since my flight out of Addis Ababa isn't until after noon, and then I have a connecting flight through Nairobi that doesn't leave until 10 PM. But let's not get distracted by technicalities- this is my last (full) day in Africa!

I'm currently in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. I arrived here yesterday from Axum. Many apologies for not blogging more from there, the connections in Axum were 56 kbps dial-up (I didn't think that still existed outside of my parent's house!) and Blogger and Facebook were just way too much for those poor little phone lines.

My second day in Axum I visited the remains of Ethiopia's (and sub-saharan Africa's) oldest surviving structures, a 2600 year-old temple in Yeha, about a half-day's trip from Axum. This site is thought to be the font of all later Ethiopian civilization and completed my journey backwards in time (the rock-hewn churches in Lalibela are around 12th century, the stellea and other remains of the Axumite civilzation are from about 200 BC to 900 AD). It was truly awesome to stand there amidst walls that are still standing from before the birth of Socrates, arund the time of the Old Testament prophets.

The third day in Axum I had a chance to visit the old town, a winding array of old stone houses that was the area where most people lived before moving to the more "modern" concrete and electircity newer parts of town. UNESCO, which is big on preserving the historical heritage sites in Ethiopia, is actually paying most of these people to relocate, so the remains of the Axumite civilization that are under their farmhouses can be recovered. It makes sense, but also seems a shame, since those houses themselves are lovely and historic.

All-in-all, I'm glad I got to spend a third day in Axum, since it gave me a chance to appreciate it on my own (the omnipresent wannabe rastaman guide who met me at the airport had business out of town that day). It also gave me a bit of a break from the guide's constant attempts to hustle and vercharge me for things, although there were plenty of other people around town (including one of the busboys at my hotel!) who tried to take up where he left off. Let's just say if the people in Lalibela made that town seem like heaven, the people in Axum did a good job of presenting the other end of the cosmic spectrum...

But yesterday I arrived here in Addis Ababa, where, among other things, people are too busy being in the capital city to even care to much abut little old tourist me. It's bliss! The city itself is also really lovely- even though the population is well into the millions, the terrain is hilly, trees are everywhere throughout, and the whole thing is ringed by mountains, giving it a much more calm, fresh and open feeling than you might expect. I visited St. George Church and the Ethnographic Museum, which is housed in the former palace of Emperor Haile Selaisse. I even got a chance to see his still preserved bedroom, changing room and bathroom!

Today I have my sights set on the national cathedral, and the National Museum, where I look forward to meeting my great^3.4 million years aunt Lucy. I'll hopefully report about that tomorrow morning, and then I'm homeward bound!

Raiders of the Lost Axum

2009-08-20T07:31:00.000-07:00
So here I am on my fourth night in Ethiopia, and the first in the town of Axum. Sorry I haven't written for a few days. If you want to introduce some chaos into your travel plans in Africa, I suggest the following:

1. Leave Momabasa, Kenya for a connecting flight through Nairobi to Ehtiopia on the day Kenya airways resolves a three-day old strike.

2. Amidst the total chaos in the Nairobi airport with lines out the door, be lucky to get your (much delayed) flight, and have no time to do anything else at the airport.

3. Upon 2 AM arrival in Addis Ababa, Ehtiopia, find the one open foreign exchange window refuse to change your Kenya Shillings for Ethiopian Birr.

4. Proceed directly via a 7 AM flight to Lalibela, Ethiopia, a small town where nobody exchanges any currency except US$, and no bank will take any form of debit or credit card. You have plenty of money for the next few days, becuase the guidebooks warned you to make sure you had cash as nothing else was accessible, but you can't use any of it.

That being said, the people I met in Lalibela are the nicest people I have met anywhere. The manager at my hotel, the Lal Hotel, said to just charge everything to my room and pay their head office when I got back to Addis Ababa in a few days. And then a very nice gentlemen at the Ehtiopian Airlines office, not wanting me to backtrack to Addis just to be able to change money, loaned me some money to be able to go on here to Axum after Lalibela. My saviors!

The town was just as beautiful as the people. It's the rainy season, so everything is verdant green, and the whole small town is laid out up and down hills. The centerpiece, and the reason I was there, was a series of 12th and 13th century rock-hewn churches that were meant to create a "New Jerusalem" in Ethiopia and continue to be a pilgrimmage site to this day. Simply stunning to see, and to feel the power of people chanting and praying in carved out stone that has been visited continually for over 900 years.

And today I was on to Axum, which was the site of a major civilization that traded far and wide from about 400 BC to 900 AD. They left huge craved stellae (think, big stone obelisk) which I visited today. They also converted around 300 AD to Christianity, becoming the second oldest Christian nation in the world. The big pilgrammage site here is Saint Mary of Zion, built around 1600 by medieval Ethiopian emperors on the foundations of an older church dating to around 600 AD. There's also a small chapel on the grounds that's said to house the Ark of the Covenant.

Yes, that's right, the Ark of the Covenant. Legend has it that it was brought to Ethiopia by the Queen of Sheba's son by King Solomon. The Ehtiopian Emperors, right down to Haille Selaisse, continued to claim descent from Solomon. Only the head priest can enter the holy of holies hwere it's kept, but I did my best to soak up sacred emananations from a distance without bursting in to flame.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to visit the even older ruins of a civilzation at a site near here called Yeha, and then one more day here after that before heading back to Addis Ababa for the finale of my Africa excursion. I hope to write more tomorrow!

Last night in Kenya

2009-08-15T05:42:00.000-07:00
I'm back in Mombasa now after a sweaty, jostly but otherwise quite fine ride down the coast from Watamu. This is my last night in Kenya- tomorrow I do some sightseeing around town, and then head to the airport for the flight to Ethiopia. This is also the halfway mark of my journey overall, the first half in Tanzania and Kenya, and now the next half in Ethiopia. In honor of this, I'd like to mention a few things about the Tanzania/Kenya potyion that didn't make it in to the daily narrative:

- I love women's dresses. No, this isn't some kind of long overdue confession. Rather, just an appreciation for the incredible colors and patterns I've seen in dresses all over these two countires.

- Matatus rock! They're these litle minibuses that are the main means of transport, and they're much cheaper than any taxi or bus, and always colorfully decorated. usually with religious themes, but I've also seen Jay-Z, Eminem, Ludacris and Led Zeppelin.

- Safari moments that didn't make the main narrative, like when my driver got out to pee at one point, and a distant herd of elephants trumpeted and formed a defensive circle around their young, or when he caused a mother lion to long around puzzled when he mimicked the meow of one of her cubs.

- The sounds and smells of safari. You know the images, buy you have to include the smell of dung, pervasive mooing of wildebeest, and incredible racket of hippos.

- Also that it's not all fun and games. I saw bones scattered all over, we came across hyaneas chewing on the head of a wildebeest, and at one point we came upon a dying hyeana by the side of the road, after it had probably fought with others or (m guide guessed) been kicked by a buffalo.

- Cats! I never saw any in Tanzania, but there was a black cat at the border crossing with Kenya (good sign) and I've seen them around in cities and villages all over Kenya.

- The sound of the call to prayer at all hours of night and day. Tanzania and Kenya are both about half and half Muslim and Christian, and the coast in Kenya where I've been for the last few days is mostly Muslim, so there's always a mosque nearby.

These are a few things that come to mind now, I'm sure I'm missing many others. But soon it's on to Ethiopia, with all new adventures to share! I'm arriving very late, so probably I'll check in the day after tomorrow. See you all then!

Chris

My Life in Ruins

2009-08-14T04:39:00.000-07:00
Hello from Watamu! Which is a coastal town in Kenya, about 50 miles north of Mombasa. I arrived here yesterday by a little 9 seater van, the ubiquitous form of inter-city transport here in East Africa. It was a pretty uneventful journey, although the old lady next to me was wincing the whole time. At first I thought it was me, but then I realized she had some kind of pain. Other than the general pain of being jammed in a mini-van with 8 sweaty people.

I came here to visit the nearby ruins at Gede, which I went to today. There was apparently a very prosperous Swahili trading town here from around 1200-1500, although no historical record mentions it. It was large though, with a palace, inner and outer walls, and numerous houses and mosques, and the people there traded with Arabia, India, the Meditarranean and China based on goods found there. All of it now is stone ruins, crumbling into the jungle. It really struck me, bing there in this place that was once busy, touching stone walls that somebody had erected 600 years ago, and then eventually totally abandoned it. There weren't many people there, most of the jungle trails I had to myself, so much so that I occassionally wondered if I'd get back to the entrance on my own. I did though, and had some quality monkey and butterfly encounters along the way.

That mission being accomplished, I'm heading back to Mombasa tomorrow, and then flying on to Ethiopia the next day. Until then, I'm going back to my guest house and it's resident herd of goats and swarm of cats. Now that's wildlife!

So now we're in Kenya...

2009-08-12T07:23:00.000-07:00
...Mombasa, to be exact, the second largest city in Kenya with a lovely location right on the Indian Ocean. I am so happy to smell ocean again! What can I say, I'm a coastal kind of guy... In any case, I arrived here through what has probably been the most dangerous part of my journey to date, a 9 hour bus ride from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It actually wasn't too scary, and I ended up going with a really local carrier, a girl from China, 2 Spaniards and I were the only non-Africans on the bus. The most heart-stopping moment came when we debussed for lunch. I didn't know what was going on, and by the time I got my order together and started eating, the bus was making like to leave the parking lot! Much fun scrambling ensued. Anyway, I'm here now and I quite like here.

A lot of people in Arusha pointed out to me that the Bush from Arusha to Mombasa is actually faster than from Dar es Salaam, so i didn't need to fly there first. The reservation was already pre-paid, though, so I went with the wheels that were already in motion. I kind of wish I had known about it beforehand, though, becuase Dar was chaotic and most maked by a fight with my hotel when they said I couldn't downgrade from deluxe to regular. At which point I walked out, and headed to a hotel next door. I'm still looking for the hotel police to bust me, but I guess I'm safe since I'm in another country now.

Flying there did get me a stop at the island resort of Zanzibar on the way, though. The white sand beaches and coral reefs were duly spectacular from the air. And sitting with a bunch of bus goers in a dark alley at 6 AM waiting to disembark is it's own kind of fun too. I've been up at or before 6 half the days I've been here so far! I think I need to look up the meaning of the word "vacation"...

For now, though, I'm just happy because this city is pretty groovy, and my room has a bathtub, something I've been coveting. Tomorrow I'm up at a reasonable hour and taking a bus up the coast to a small beachside town where I'm going to stay for two nights, as a base to check out the ruins of an old Swahili trading town. Internet allowing, I'll check in from there tomorrow.

Lions and hippos and boars, oh my!

2009-08-10T08:46:00.000-07:00
I'm back from my three-day safari to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro parks in Tanzania. This will be a little brief and impressionistic, as I am a bit bleary thanks to three days in a row of 6 AM awakenings. Some of the things that stand out for me, amidst an overall experience that was amazing and outstanding:

- The red and purple-garbed Maasai herders tending animals along the roads.

- The variety of climates from arid semi-desert ot mountain rainforest to grasslands.

- Did I say grasslands? Vast grasslands in the Serengeti, stretching to the horizon with a sky bigger than you can imagine.

- Camping under the unfamiliar, and yet not, diamond blaze of the southern stars.

- Baboons swarming across the road the minute we entered Ngorongoro Park.

- The first sighting of an elephant emerging from the mist.

- Seeing a hippo chasing a lion away from a watering hole.

- Lions? Yes, many, often quite close. Sometimes with cubs.

- The roaring and tense stare-offs that occured when one pride of lions strayed too close to another.

- Not to let the rest of the feline world be outdone, cheetahs, a leopard, and a serval cat (a litle spotted wildat, which darted across the road with something in it's mouth).

- Zebras wandering through our campsite at Ngorongoro, and the elephants that came to drink from the watertank there.

- Ngorongoro itself, a crater formed by the collapse of a twenty-mile wide volcanic crater, with tropical rainforests on it's flanks, and runoff feeding in to grasslands down below and creating a lake in the center.

-Olduvai Gorge. I could write a whole entry on that place alone. Suffice it to say that being where our whole genus was born was a profund experience for me. Go Homos! (and props to Australopithecines as well).

These are just some of the things that come to mind. In a basically two-day period (minus driving two and from, two days in the parks themselves) I saw elephants, giraffes, hippos, a rhino, buffalo, wildebeest, more different kinds of antelope and gazelle than I can name, zebras, lions, cheetahs, a leopard, a serval cat, hyaneas, jackals, baboons, monkeys, ostriches and assorted strange and wonderful birds. I'm sure I'm forgetting something in this list, overall an amazing experience, well well worth it. Thanks to my tour operator, Kilidove, and especially to my driver/guide and cook, who went above and beyond the call of service for helping me work things out along the way.

Tomorrow I'm flying to Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania, from which I'll take a bus the next day to Mombasa, Kenya. More to follow...

Greetings from Arusha

2009-08-07T08:30:00.000-07:00
I woke up this morning and confirmed that the vast dark space beyond my room was indeed a vast space, only now not quite so dark. It was a big plain, with dry scrubby brush, rainclouds looming, and the not-too distant mountains hidden in cloud. The air was thick with humidity and the strong smell of life, and birds flittd all around the garden between the bungalows. At breakfast there was a great deal of bird interest in my plate, but they were so pretty I didn't mind. I sat afterward at a table looking out at the brush, writing in my journal and planning out the rest of my day.

The rest of that day started with the driver from Kilidove, the tour company I'm taking the safari with, coming to pick me up to drive me in to town. His name was David, and we talked about rich and poor people, Obama, and history. He was especially keen on my upcoming trip to Ethiopia. Everything got much greener as we approached Arusha, which is by a river and gets the runoff from the mountains. The town is insanely busy, but everybody I've run into is incredibly warm and friendly. There's some hawking of goods to the tourist (of which there are a lot in this town, since it's the jumping off point for most safaris), but mostly just people who genuinely want to say hi and talk.

I wish I had more time, as it was, I spent the remainder of the day dealing with banks and payments for the safari, which I'm leaving on tomorrow. It's going to be three days, to the Sernengeti, Ngorongoro Crater and (I'm especially excited about this) a stopover at Olduvai Gorge. Since we'll be out in the wild with tents and all, I probably won't be able to write again until late on the 10th or sometime the on the 11th. I will, though, bring back lots of pictures for you all! Love to all until then, especially Abbey and the furry feline monsters we share our home with. I can't wait to tell them about their huge wild cousins when I get back...

Something scurried by in the heart of darkness

2009-08-06T10:55:00.000-07:00
This will be brief, as I'm almost incoherently travel-addled, and purloining the hotel's office computer to write this. After more than 24 hours of flights spanning three continents, I'm here! Here is the KIA Lodge, next to Kilimanjaro International airport. Tomorrow I'll head in to Arusha, the town where a lot of the safaris in northern Tanzania leave from. For now I have a bungalow on the edge of a big dark plain, with scrubby brush and dim lighting from the moon through clouds. Something scurried away when the porter turned on the light on the front porch for me. What stayed was tons of geckos, which I hope will minimize the mosquito action. Headed to bed now, with strange new smells wafting in the moonlit breeze around me...

1,000,000 words

2009-07-21T16:54:00.000-07:00

During a recent session of my bi-weekly writing group, while commiserating about what a long, rejection-laden road getting published can be, one of our members mentioned the notion that it’s not until you’ve written a million words that you’re even starting to get good.

While that sounded rather daunting, it reminded me of something I’d read in various Kerouac biographies. When Jack Kerouac first met William S. Burroughs in 1944, he apparently told Burroughs that he’d already written a million words. That always caught my imagination, impressing me with the relentless incandescence of his output, the drive to just get it out, out, out, at all costs. It also always made me feel like a big, fat failure, and a lethargic one to boot, since he would have only been 22 at the time.

I wondered if anybody else had an opinion about this “million words” idea. I found several people citing a quote from Henry Miller’s “On Writing” to the effect that it takes writing a million words to find your voice. Crime writer Elmore Leonard, who certainly ought to know a thing or two about good strong writing attributes it to the widely-revered John D. McDonald and says:

John D. McDonald said that you had to write a million words before you really knew what you were doing. A million words is ten years. By that time you should have a definite idea of what you want your writing to sound like. That’s the main thing. I don’t think many writers today begin with that goal: to write a certain way that has a definite sound to it.

Science-fiction writer Jerry Pournelle, in an essay about how to get his job, helpfully notes that being an author is a really easy job. Unfortunately, nobody pays you to be an author until you first become a writer, which turns out to take work and time. In fact the work is mostly time, according to him:

I am sure it has been done with less, but you should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material.

Pushcart prize-winning poet and novelist Ward Kelley had this intriguing wrinkle to contribute:

There’s that old saw about becoming a writer–if you want to be one, you first have to write a million words. While it’s an old saw, I believe it to be true. However, you seldom hear mentioned what should be tagged to the end of it. The axiom should include the reason for the million words: all these practice words put a writer in position to use the best literary advice I ever discovered. That advice is "don’t think."

Okay. Fine.

Where, I wondered, was I against this benchmark? I started to tally up the various things I’ve written since I recommitted to my childhood dream of writing following my divorce in 2002. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, between the manuscript of my novel, a not-yet completed new novel, print and online essays and articles, my short film screenplays, poetry, as-yet unpublished short stories, blog postings, and journals, I am closing in on 800,000 words. At this pace, in another two to three years I’ll reach 1 million and actually be starting to produce something worthwhile. Hooray!

That honestly doesn’t seem so bad now that I’ve come this far. And if I’ll be almost twenty years older at that point than Kerouac was when he reached one million, maybe my remaining creative (not to mention physical) lifespan will at least match the 25 years that lay ahead of him at 22. Not too bad, not too bad…

Man has invented more doom!

2009-07-10T14:16:00.000-07:00
You may have seen my blog from earlier in the year tracking stories that had to do with the gathering forces of genetic manipulation, cybernetics and artificial intelligence that, I would (and d0) content stand to fundamentally transform our species into something new within short order (less than 100 years, quite possibly less than 50 years). That blog was illustrated with stories I'd run across in the first quarter of the year. I thought I'd update it now with some from Q2:

Robot scientists can think for themselves

MIT droids tend plants

Mind-Reading Device Sends Twitter Messages

DNA Nanotechnology making custom shapes

Flesh-eating robot

Genetically engineered monkeys pass on glow to offspring

Human Language Gene Changes the Sound of Mouse Squeaks

Synthetic fiber may cure blindness

Robot displaying emotions unveiled

Robot surgeon finds tiny shrapnel

Australian scientists kill cancer cells with "Trojan horse"

So what do you think? Has man, as Bob Dylan puts it in License to Kill, "Invented his doom"? What does "doom" mean in this context? Unparalleled disaster, or a bold new change?

July (and June!) Writing News

2009-07-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, we’ve gone into extended two-month issues for the summer. You know how it is, what with family visiting and being out of town and moving in with girlfriends and all. At least that’s what I did on my summer vacation! In between, some creative activity has occurred as well. To whit:

Film- “Geek Wars”, one part of my three-part short film “Triptych” (formerly “Three Conversations About No Thing”) screened at the Victoria Theatre on June 7th. The audience seemed to enjoy it. You might too! You can see it on the Scary Cow website, project #33: http://www.scarycow.com/videos/round0008/round008.html . You can also catch me playing the pizza delivery guy briefly at the beginning of #22, “Just Super”, which I did set management & costuming for as well. The crew is currently working on editing the remainder of Triptych, which we’ll screen during Scary Cow’s next quarterly screening this fall. I’ll announce more as the time approaches...

Publication- I’m at 22 submissions for the first half of the year, not far off my goal of one a week, and already higher than all of 2008! The acceptance rate is currently at 9% versus 2008’s eventual 14.3%, for those of you with a statistical interest. Two of the latest fruits of this labor to appear are “Post-separation alone at night listening to Patti Smith sing “Dancing Barefoot” while thinking of mistakes I made while living in Hong Kong blues” in Lit Up Magazine (posted May 30^th): http://litupmagazine.wordpress.com/ and “Twelve Steps to the New Israel of the Beats” in the July issue of SoMa Literary Review: http://www.somalit.com/New_Israel.html

Performance- I read at the Café Brainwash open mic on May 18^th, my fourth public reading so far this year. It was a really fun, boisterous venue, and I got to be all prophetic by reading a new poem on autoerotic asphyxiation before that whole David Carradine business. My next targets are to read at Magnet’s “Smackdab” reading series on Wednesday July 15^th and at the Gallery Café poetry series on Monday August 3^rd. See you there?

Novel- I’m currently absorbing the manuscript evaluation feedback from the freelance editor I met at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference in February regarding my novel, Out in the Neon Night. What she advises would be some significant structural reworking, but it is intriguing, I just need to figure out if I agree and if I’m up for it. Until then, you can read the first chapter on my blog: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-chapter-of-my-novel-in-neon-night.html

Blog- Did I just say Blog? Yes I did! You can catch up with my attempt to write 40 poems in 40 days, musings on Dylan, and other topics at: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/ Definitely check it out in August, when I’ll be traveling in Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia and doing updates from the road as frequently as time and technology allow.

I look forward to sharing more with you in all these areas now that we’re in the second half of the year!

Forty Poems in 40 days-sputtered out at 35.

2009-06-16T22:19:00.000-07:00
Well, it was a noble experiement. And if moving and the busiest work week I've had in like, ever at this job, and an out of town trip all conspired to zap me short of the finish line, I still learned something. Namely that, despite what I have long believed, one does not have to passively wait for the Muse to arrive to do poetry. It can be practiced on demand. Maybe not always prettily, but it is possible. Good news for stuck poets everywhere who want the kick-start! Below are entries 21-35. You can find 1-10 and 11-20 in previous entries.

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Two shakes of a lamb’s tail
Urban Dictionary:
Where did the phrase come from?
Answer Girl:
No one seems to know.
Her dark matter:
One who has seen, sees readily.
The Maven’s Word of the Day:
Visualize those little tails
constantly thrashing
back and forth.

Book of Love
Who, they ask
(understand, despite
my coming disparagement
of it,
that it remains
a damn fine question)
who,
who wrote the book of love.
Who wrote it?
We ought to ask:
Has anybody ever read
the motherfucker?
The world has
by and large
seems to have
left it on the shelf.
But you and I,
You and I…

Meeting Abbey’s Mom
Curtain pulled to one side
staring out morning window
with the cat.
Hand on doorknob
deep breath before opening
warm flannel
deep bosom hug.
Amused smile
sideways glances
holding her hand.
Hearing of
embarrassing childhood
stories
now warming
to possibilities.

Do it now!
Turn down the dog
Switch off the cat
Floss your pants
Fluff the driveway
Put on your groceries
Unzip the TV
Slip on your car
Make the garden
Water your bed
Fold the eggs
Whatever word is given
Act don’t think
Do it now

Concrete Poem
one square
gray
with hints
of silver and white
smooth plane
marred by chunks
scratches
and lumps of age
spotted with pads
of squashed black
sticky gum
white splatter
left by
passing bird
and green-yellow scrub
growing at the margins

Ergonome’s 12 Golden Rules for safe keyboard use #11 & 12 work well for life in general too
When you travel
from Home,
don’t resist
natural movement
When you’re not traveling,
Rest at Home

Church Street Café
Back when it was Muddy Waters
this place
used to be
a train-wreck,
each pitted, scarred table
a coach carrying
a choir of whores
who gargled
waterfalls of scorn,
their filth lodged
in every crevice
of the cracked,
blackened brick wall.
When it was renamed
a gong must have struck
in some eternal realm
sparking a baptism,
the whole place born again
as a respectable haunt
of laptop computers
and advertising execs
talking independent film.

Morning commute, 28 Fort Mason
Bank of dirty brown-gray cloud behind
Stonestown pull of the magnet from the
journal clasp on the pen ivy-choked parking
lot fence work crew shoveling piles of tar
into hole in the road hedges look like an
80s rapper’s haircut San Francisco Masonic
Center glares through lack of windows
Taraval Vietnamese place orange green
red splash of color on the corner Sunset
lettered avenues a sea of pastel houses
squat peach Jiffy Lube guards Noriega’s
slope down to the sea growing crowd of
elderly Chinese at the front of the bus
broken by lone Russian newspaper reader
“wet paint” sign by the barrel-chested
green trash can on Judah chipped paint on
a forlorn tan house between Iriving and
Lincoln thick green trees on either side of
the fast route through the park clear smell
of eucalyptus through the window blue-suited
crews watering & pruning he rose garden at
Fulton the girl on at Balboa long straight
blonde hair mass exodus at Geary as always
California connection to Chinatown finishes
off the stragglers white arrows point toward
narrow lanes green walls climb the side
toward the tunnel flickering halogen light in
concrete tube on the other side tall trees in
the Presidio like matchsticks white clock and
red lights on the toll booth steel gray bay and
red thrust of bridge up into foggy
disappearance ivy ripples in the wind at the
turnaround Coast Guard ship clipping white
trail through the Bay Palace dome with white
city dully gleaming in background light is
transparent here at the stop.

ST:TMP
The first twenty minutes
always makes me cry
With the medal cast
on the burning sands
The Golden Gate
And the shuttle
with the admiral
circling the ship
like a lover
approaching the beloved
with hushed reverence

Changing Viewpoints
We are flat, and
it moves around us.
We are round, and
it moves around us.
We move around it,
in epicycles.
We move around it,
in ellipses.
We move around it,
in ellipses, determined by
the force of gravity.
We, and it, and millions of others
are all gathered together.
Billions of others, all gathered
together in a giant pinwheel.
Our pinwheel just one of billions.
Just one of billions
all expanding outward
from a single point.
From a single point,
that’s a quantum fluctuation.
Quantum fluctuations
are influenced by observers.
It moves around us?

This seat is mine motherfucker!
Surge of adrenaline
and leap to the feet
from the crappy side-facing seat
as the bus slams to a stop.
Launch down the aisle
icy stare-down of the old man
bounding my way,
proceed
with no regard
for little old ladies
boarding in the back.
Slide in to the last forward-facing seat
for the long ride to come,
panic finally subsiding.

(untitled)
from pointing straight up
to shriveled
can happen in six seconds flat
when she pulls a gun

Ode to Sinatra and Sean Combs in Hell
I see k.d. lang
on TV screen
singing with Tony Bennet
and I like her less.
What’s she doing
with that thug?
Then I realize I’m confusing
Tony Bennet
with Dean Martin
and I like them both again.
And really
I only feel that way
about Dean Martin
because he palled around with
Frank Sinatra.
So maybe
he’s innocent too.
Regardless,
my contempt for P. Puff-diddly Comb
and his whole genocidal crew
remains undimmed.
I guess I just don’t like gangsters.

Every day in recovery is like this
The bee on my shoulder
buzzes.
It is his nature,
he means no particular harm.
I move to swat.
It is instinct,
I contemplate it without malice.
Pausing,
I use the umbrella strap
to brush him off.
A new day has dawned.

Singing the lease
walking from room to room
checking the fixtures
your ghost was on me
like a rabid Pomeranian

Forty Poems in Forty Days- part II

2009-05-20T22:46:00.000-07:00
Half way through my self-imposed challenge of writing 40 poems in 40 days, and I'm still in it. As proof, here are the poems from days 11-20. Fair warning: among the prompts in this ten day period were writing something repulsive and/or not politically correct, and writing an over the top erotic poem. If you read further, having been warned, I am not responsible for what happens to you...

************************************************
Day 11 called for no punctuation
The thing is (comma)
it’s not hard for me to do (period)
It’s easy (exclamation point)
I often leave punctuation out
in my poems (semi-colon)
commas (comma)
semicolons (comma)
even periods
or question marks (period)
Doesn’t everyone (question mark)

Bacon!
It’s a
wonderment
of
red,
orange
and
sienna
proteins,
with
twisty white
fatty
pathways
leading
to heaven.

It all makes sense now…
All the mother wounds
God-shaped holes
shifty obsessions
and cat love.
Even the Disappearing Mine
when I was ten
and the meaning
of the Green Flash incident.

I understand it all,
the secret.
The key lies in realizing
that your whole life
is actually—

Ah, but I don’t need
to tell you.
You can see for yourself
just do what I did:

In Microsoft Excel 2009
go to the menu, click on “tools”
choose “data analytics” from the dropdown
install the “analyze my whole damn life” toolpack
then use the help menu
to write the “understand everything” equation.

Minor Hues
Everybody knows
about ochre,
umber
and burnt sienna.
But who respects beaver?
What praise draws timberwolf?
Wherefore not into glory goes cornflower?
Is there a palette
that will honor
these marginal shades
before Crayola
shuffles off
their mortal coil?

The Ideal Man
You can keep
your
Apollo,
Adonis
and young Ganymede
buggered by Jupiter.
Give me
William Shatner,
circa 1967,
yellow-green tunic
torn at the shoulder,
wiping blood
off of his knuckle-busted
Elvis sneer
before teaching
a quarrelsome Klingon
the facts of life.

(untitled haiku)
Poop? Poop! Coprolites?
Maybe in a few million
Shit hardened years

Summer of Hate
I hear it was
really something
that first summer of 1967.
Peace and Flowers
positive vibrations
all that happy hippy bullshit.
But within a few years
the hippies switched
from LSD to speed
started killing cats for food
and the streets
filled with real shit.
Ever since then
it’s been
a Summer of Hate.

A Summer of
yellow-eyed
disease infected homeless
in crap-caked clothes.

A summer of
sneering teen gutter punks
from the burbs
playing homeless for the weekend
spitting on passersby
who don’t give them change.

A Summer of
abscess ridden junkies
leaving their fluids in the gutter
and port-a-potties overflowing
with the orange caps
of their syringes

A Summer of
Those who never made it out
of the Sixties
wandering emaciated
food and dried slobber-ridden
birds nest beards shaking
as they rant to thin air.

A Summer of
faux nostalgia head shops
yuppie ice cream parlors
and comodified counterculture
drawing in
fat, complacent onlookers.

Summer in and Summer out
for almost 40 years now
an Endless Summer
of Haight.

Autoerotic asphyxiation
Every time I think of you
I pull the plastic tubing
a little tighter
swell another half inch
and reach for the lube

How I Know I’m In Love
Sometimes it comes
In little things transformed:
Your earplugs on the dresser
Coated with dried wax
Beautiful to me

Captain! Oh Conservative captain!
(with all due apologies to Walt Whitman and Abe Lincoln)

This twentieth day of May
Two Thousand and Nine
you left us, dear Rush.
Call me no more, you said
the titular head
of the party Republican.
“I never sought it.
I give it back.”
Oh sweet selfless prince!
At the thought of politics
shorn of your presence
I weep, unashamed, like a woman,
and tear my shirt in grief.
“Mention me not,”
you told MSNBC,
“for an entire month!”
An entire month!
Scarcely can I imagine one day
without you by my side
to stem the Liberal tide.
The dark days ahead
seem to me as grim
as to you must seem
the thought of life
without oxycontin.

Project Dylan: Bringing it All Back Home (1965)

2009-05-19T21:35:00.000-07:00
After a shameful break, I'm back with "Project Dylan", my sequential overview of my favorite Bob Dylan albums. So far I've covered Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A' Changin, and Another Side of Bob Dylan. Now on to Bringing It All Back Home...

****************************************
In standard Dylan exegesis, Bringing It All Back Home is where Dylan breaks with the folkie/protest singer identity of his earlier work. Not only is he already turning electric here, well before he gets to “Like a Rolling Stone”, but his artistic focus turns to an inner symbolic world where his vision reaches the surreal new levels that mark him as the poet of his generation. I suppose that’s all true as far as it goes, but what I hear throughout this album is seething protest. The protest is now bigger, and more fundamental, than civil rights or the anti-war movement. It’s nothing less than a repudiation of the way things are, the entire way society is organized.

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” kicks in to it with full tilt electrified blues, rock and roll by any other name, that in just over two minutes flat of rapid-fire verse paints a picture of a society that one can only hide out from in basements as it seeks to put you on the day shift. And what else is it but the whole system of expectations itself that he doesn’t want to labor for anymore in “Maggie’s Farm”: Well, I try my best/ To be just like I am/ But everybody wants you/ To be just like them/ They sing while you slave and I just get bored/ I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more? The pervasive rebellion reaches a high point on “Outlaw Blues”, an echoing steely blues song that warns off all comers: Don't ask me nothin' about nothin'/ I just might tell you the truth.

The whole argument comes to a conclusion in the masterful incisive poetic stream of consciousness that is “It’s Alright Ma’ (I’m Only Bleeding)”. I won’t go into its rich detail here except to note that the poet, even while admitting: If my thought-dreams could be seen/ They'd probably put my head in a guillotine, still asserts: Although the masters make the rules/ For the wise men and the fools/ I got nothing, Ma, to live up to. Read the rest when you have a chance, and see if it doesn’t ring even more true in the aftermath of financial and consumer collapse in 2009 than it did in 1965.

Even a song that is clearly comedic, like “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”, where Dylan actually busts up laughing at the beginning, uses absurdism and rhyme to lay bare the genocide and thievery at the heart of the founding of the country. The joking “On the Road Again” similarly insists on opting out of the great big out-of-control American nightmare: You ask why I don’t live here?/ Honey how come you don’t move? So too with the seemingly abstract poetry of “Mister Tambourine Man” and “Gates of Eden” which nonetheless seek out realms beyond the straightjacket of everyday life.

There are more personal moments too, including what I think is one of the most beautiful love songs ever written, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit”. My heart aches every time I hear the lines: My love she speaks like silence/ Without ideals or violence/ She doesn't have to say she's faithful/ Yet she's true, like ice, like fire, not least because I know nothing I write will ever touch it. “She Belongs to Me” shimmers with line after line of beautiful poetry subtly undercut by the servitude to the woman it portrays. Words also fail to describe the bitter beauty of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, a breakup song that assigns longing and melancholy regret for the breakup to the other party, surely a neat trick if there every was one. It also seems a kind of bridge to the albums larger theme of protest, the bereft woman as American society itself, told to leave failed excess behind and begin again:

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

40 Poems in 40 Days!

2009-05-11T22:05:00.001-07:00
At the San Francisco Writer’s Conference in February I went to a poetry workshop where two poet-professors from Davis, Brad Henderson and Andy Jones described their semi-annual ritual/challenge of doing 40 poems in 40 days. The idea is, regardless of quality of result, to write a poem a day every day for forty days as a way of kicking your poetic muse into gear. They do this a couple times a year, although typically only a handful of the resulting poems go on to be used elsewhere. They even provided a list of daily prompts to guide your efforts if you need direction.

This whole venture sounded like fun, and fit nicely with my own intention for the year to re-connect with my muse. I knew I would be busy in March and April with my film project, so I decided I’d give it a try starting in May. And here we are! Being a confessionalist in my writing, I’ve decided to share the process with you, my hapless victims. The first ten day’s worth are below, more to follow…

Warning: These are meant to be exercises, and some of the prompts that inspired them are intentionally nonsensical. Proceed at your own risk…

Hot Water
(for Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”)

Some said fire, some said ice
but Frost (great seer)
got it right on both counts:
the lineaments
of our slaughter
are even now
being traced
by the drip, drip, drip
of hot water

A Truth Beyond All Truths
(owing something to Wallace Stevens’ “Landscape with Boat”)

Anti-matter, florid, eccentric

Meets its opposite and wipes out all things
Leaving behind the scintillating blue array
Of particle trails
Rushing out from a point that is no point
Primeval blank vacuum field

In the Night before all nights
Something erupted there,
Or nothing,
Whichever, kept expanding
Into all the things that now are

The truth, even now,
Is that these things are still the nothing
They once were,
Even we are that nothing
Which is to say something

We, all, the empty space
From which pours infinite creation

untitled
I would lie there
twelve years old
on the sand
between the dusty spread legs
of two oak covered hills
yearning for something
that stirred
like the slit-eyed leopard sharks
in the crusted salt
brackish tang
and sinuous twist
of the slough before me

Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu
All 200 patients
of the Denton Regional Medical Center
in Denton, Texas
have custom headphones
built into their beds
that play every Aerosmith song
ever recorded
on demand

Since most of the patients are older
classics are popular
In Cardiology, Radiation Oncology and
Geriatric Neurology
it’s strictly
“Sweet Emotion”, “Dream On”
and “Mama Kin”

Even down in Progressive Care
and the Adolescent Unit
they still have the good sense
to pick it up with the Run-DMC remix
of “Walk This Way”
and cut it off circa 1994
with “Cryin’”

Only in the Psych Ward
in the basement
does anybody have the
bad taste, or derangement
to listen to
“I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”

Nightmare of myself given childhood encouragement and high school confidence
He feels nothing but satisfaction,
a kind of ownership,
as he slaps the behind
of the lithe young blonde
lounging in satin
on his way to the shower.
More of the same
in the streamlined gleam
of his sports utility vehicle
gliding down LA freeways.
The feeling reaches a peak
in the glass-walled office
where all eyes at the trading desk
behold him with nervous regard
while his view
sweeps the city
that the electronic millions
he commands
courses through
as he confidently ignores
their expected reverence.

ellipsis
Of all the…
I have ever…
the one
that endures is…
Even now… rises
at the memory of… …
lying… on the…
as we… the width
and breadth
of…
until…
ran its course
and…
took its weary toll

It’s Surprising to Me Too
Legions of menstruating grandmothers for Obama
Will have their final battle
With the spider monkeys of doom
On the caldera of an Icelandic volcano
On July 4, 1876
For reasons that are yet obscure
But will one day be the subject
Of Applied Chronametrics term papers
Flashed through cerebral upload academies
By eight year olds

600 Montgomery
It squats at the bottom
like a giant marble bullfrog
The functionless top scratches heaven
with its ornamental cement pylons
In-between
stack upon stack
of white stone, black window
options narrow

Question to the Taiwanese birders I met at the Explorer’s Inn, Tambomachay, Peru
Do grebes float
In the Rio Tambobo?
Venturers
through a fluidic space
whose muddy bottom
is as bone-littered
as the Chauchilla Cemetery,
do they brave caiman,
giant river otters
and threats whose taxonomy
I can’t even name
and then emerge
to build nests
in green jungles
abutting sandy riverbanks?

I began to seek the way out long before
We lived in Salinas, I was only six or seven. I was not allowed to go to the 7-11 by myself. I snuck there anyway with my next-door neighbor. On the way back we cut through an abandoned lot. We got away with it! Home, no evidence, parents never even knew—“What happened to your foot?” I looked down to find my right foot covered in blood. I must have cut it on broken glass in the lot. I didn’t feel it before, but as soon as I saw it, I screamed and cried. Pain? Yes. But almost as bad— Caught! Lying, guilt, doing what I wasn’t supposed to. My foot throbbed and pumped out crimson. The blood shooting up the dropper’s neck, in my system even then. It left behind a triangular scar that remains to this day.

May Writing News

2009-05-05T12:12:00.000-07:00
And now the year is one third over! Don’t fret, though. Good things are afoot creatively, which I shall share with you forthwith:

Film- We finished seven days of shooting in April for the short film that I’m writing and producing, “Three Conversations About No Thing”. This month the crew is working on editing, and we’ll screen the film, or some portion thereof, during Scary Cow’s quarterly screening at the Victoria Theatre on Sunday June 7th. Invitations will be headed your way once tickets go on sale! And, as if that’s not enough, I’ll also be appearing at the screening (briefly) as a pizza delivery guy in “Just Super”, someone else’s project that I did some crew work on.

Publication- I’m at 14 submissions year to date, not quite one a week, but still a pretty good pace. The acceptance rate is currently hovering around 7%, which hopefully will revert toward last year’s mean later in the year and net a few more publications. Meanwhile, a poem I submitted last year has just appeared in the SoMa Literary Review, which I’m very excited about: http://www.somalit.com/(untitled).html . I also continue to write for LEGENDmag, an online and offline publication covering the progressive urban independent lifestyle. You can read one of my latest here: http://legendmag.net/thelegendonline/2009/04/16/i-make-movies/

Performance- I read at the Café International open mic on April 24th. At first the whole scene there seemed very chaotic, but it grew on me by the end of the evening. Furthering my pledge to read somewhere once a month, I’m aiming to hit Brainwash’s open mic Monday May 18th. Details to follow…

Novel- I’m expecting to hear back this month from a freelance editor I met at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference in February, who’s doing an evaluation of the manuscript of my novel, Out In The Neon Night. Hopefully this will help me plan the next step of targeting a new round of agents and publishers. In the meantime, you can read the first chapter on my blog: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-chapter-of-my-novel-in-neon-night.html

Blog- And then there’s the blog. Fascination and fear at future evolution, thoughts about being a man and reflections on personal holidays can all be found here: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/

Back in June, at which point the year will be almost half over! I promise I’ll get off this passage of time trope soon…

Independence Day

2009-05-04T21:51:00.001-07:00

I think it’s quite as important to have private holidays as public ones.
Thanksgiving, Easter, Memorial Day and their kin can, perhaps, bring us together as a community and help us remember important things. But there are also private dates of remembrance that can bring us together with ourselves. These dates of ritual observance can remind us about where we’ve been and give us occasion to think about where we’re going.
Yesterday, for example, was my Independence Day.
On May 3, 2002 I went to stay with friends for the weekend while my wife moved out of our apartment. Regarding the specifics, I’ll only say that she had her reasons, she did it after two and a half years of trying to get me to do it, and nothing we did to try to hold it together in the interim had worked.
At the time I was melancholy, and vaguely terrified, but looking back it was a profound gift. Within a few months, things that I had put on hold for years had reawakened. I was writing again, buying new music, getting out in the town to try a hundred new things. Our separation lengthened into divorce and I began the baffling process of learning to love again.
Other things reawakened to, old demons of depression and addiction, and the past seven years have had their share of heartbreak and turmoil. But I grew through them, and, looking back, everything that I think of now as who I am- the people I know, the things I do, what’s most important to me in life, came about after this date. I’m so grateful that life (and to be fair, her) gave me the kick in the butt I needed to start to become a whole person.
I treasure this wholeness now, and want to use this seven-year anniversary to reaffirm my commitment to continue to pursue it no matter what.

Men's Stories

2009-04-26T14:40:00.001-07:00
Last night I went to a performance in Berkeley put on by a group called the Men’s Story Project. Like most good ideas, the MSP’s is pretty simple: Patriarchy is as harmful to men as it is to women, and, in the course of its operation squeezes out voices that don’t fit. The way these voices are silenced is part and parcel of how heterosexism, racism, gender bias etc. silence the voices of gay people, non-white people, women, etc. So a part of those liberation movements is that men liberate themselves from restrictive ideas of masculinity, and get in dialogue with each other and with others about their unspoken truths.

The MSP aims to gather these voices together and give them a place to be heard. So far they’ve made a short film, produced several public events and even put together a training manual so new groups can be started in various locales. And put together this event in Berkeley where sixteen men presented their stories in spoken work, performance art, dance and monologue on issues including overcoming a life of violence, surviving testicular cancer, struggling with how being gay or disabled fits with being a “black man”, and fear of peeing in public.

I can hardly tell you how moved I was by this.

As a child who was soft-spoken, sensitive and couldn’t catch a ball to save my life, I never felt like I belonged with the other boys. Plenty of them felt the same way and made sure I got the message through exclusion, taunting and bullying. Years of being lost in the woods of drugs, alcohol and sexual and romantic obsession were all ways of trying to bridge this gap internally, but it still never quite felt “right”. To this day I have zero interest in sports, no mechanical aptitude and otherwise frequently feel alienated from my own internalized idea of being a “real man”. Despite being straight, I prefer the company of women and gay men and am as likely as not to identify with their concerns socially and politically.

To see a group of men onstage exploring there own experiences of mismatch and struggle with the traditional idea of masculinity was tremendously affirming. It underscored for me the right and need to define what being a man is on my own terms. Making space for the creation and affirmation of one’s own identity is what freedom movements are all about after all, and men (even straight ones (even white ones)) are as in need of it as anyone else. At least I am!

Man has invented his doom…

2009-04-14T16:38:00.001-07:00

Those of you who know me well know that I am a follower of the prophet Bob Dylan. He, of course, hates to be thought of in those terms, and I can entirely see his point vis-à-vis never intending that status for himself or wanting others to see him that way. As any devotee of the Old Testament can tell you, though, prophets are always reluctant. The initial response to the prophetic call (cf. Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc.) can be summarized as, “Whoa, hey, wait a minute, I think you’ve got the wrong guy.”
The marker of prophethood is really more the quality of the revelation that demands to be expressed through the prophet rather than the prophet’s giving assent to bear that message. In that sense, I will go ahead and consider Dylan a prophet, and will proceed to cite one of the passages from his 1983 song “License to Kill”:
Man has invented his doom,The first step was touching the moon.
I always found this refrain to be particularly evocative. It brings to mind a consistent theme in classical apocalyptic literature, that a fundamental rearrangement in human affairs is at hand, and that it is augured in by signs in the heavens. It also features one of the motifs of post-modern apocalypticism, that our own technological overreaching is responsible for the setting the final sequence of events in motion.
This is more or less what I think is already occurring: between advances in computers, human-machine interactions and genetic engineering, the seeds are being laid for the creation of a post-human state that will fundamentally change our existence as we know it. Before the end of the century, we will give birth to (or become (or both, simultaneously)) a new species that will exceed us. Our “doom”, if not necessarily in the sense of destruction, then in the sense of “destined end”. And new beginning…
So, inspired by Dylan and in honor of the recent end of Battlestar Galactica, which itself explored this idea of the consequences of a technological apotheosis and riffed off of Dylan, I’d like to share some links I’ve collected from the first quarter of this year that perhaps show our future, even now, taking form:
Brain-computer interface for gaming http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/08/Futureofgaming/index.html
Quantum releportation over 1 meter distance http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090122141137.htm
Breakthrough makes human cloning more likely http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/human-clones-ap.html
FDA approves first drugs from genetically altered animals http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090206/ap_on_he_me/gene_drug_altered_animals
Contact lens TV http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/121134
Picture overview of robot developments http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/robots.html#photo26
Man sees with bionic eye http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7919645.stm
Quick charging batteries could revolutionize world http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/12/mits-quick-charging-batteries-could-revolutionize-the-world-ma/
Brain Scans Can Read Minds http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090313/sc_livescience/brainscanscanreadmemories
Sugar-coated nanoparticles find hidden tumors http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/30/nanoparticles-cancer.html
Robot scientists can think for themselves http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090402/sc_nm/us_science_robots

April Writing News

2009-04-05T22:01:00.001-07:00

Hard to believe that the year is now 25% over! As a constant generator of internalized time-pressure, this of course fills me with a vague sense of unease about my progress year-to-date. Fortunately, I have these monthly updates, so I can now replace that vague feeling with a very concrete unease about exactly where I am, and share it with all of you!
Film- I’m now fully into the swing of producing the short film that I’ve written, “Three Conversations About No Thing”, for Scary Cow, the independent film-making co-op that I’m part of. It’s looking to be about twenty minutes, and the crew and I just completed the first week of filming, and will shoot more next week. Then follows several weeks of post-production, and a screening at the Victoria Theatre on June 7th. I’m super-excited about the great director, crew and actors working on it, and looking forward to seeing the final, which you can bet I’ll be pushing tickets for on all of you when the time comes.
Publication- My pledge to submit something somewhere every week in 2009 is still in pretty good shape, minus a week here and there. Acceptance and rejection rates are tied at 10% each, with 80% “the sound of one hand clapping”. I currently seem to be on hiatus with the online culture magazine The Rumpus, but if they come back begging me for more and I deign to accept, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, I continue to write for LEGENDmag, an online and offline publication covering the progressive urban independent lifestyle. You can read my March 4th discovery of my identity here: http://legendmag.net/thelegendonline/2009/03/04/quisp-like-me-the-queer-identified-straight-person/
Performance- Okay, okay, see, work and movie-making both got crazy in March. So I didn’t end up reading anywhere. I’ll get back to it this month, I promise! Let’s say the last Friday of the month, April 24th, at the Café International open mic (Haight & Fillmore)? I’ll see you there…
Novel- I’m taking the plunge and submitting the manuscript of my novel, Out In The Neon Night, to a freelance editor I met at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference in February. She’s going to help me evaluate its readiness to be submitted to agents and publishers, and possibly also target a select list of them. In the meantime, you can read the first chapter on my blog here: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-chapter-of-my-novel-in-neon-night.html
Blog- Speaking of my blog, see my desperate excuse making in the “Performance” section above. I may not have posted much there is the past month, but what I have you can find here: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/
I’ll get back in touch with you at the beginning of May, at which point the year will be 1/3 over. Egads!

March Writing News

2009-03-04T00:34:00.001-08:00
February was a short month, but I figure it is nonetheless good practice to keep current with regular updates on my creative doings. Even though I still wish we had the leap-day this year. Here’s the latest:

Film- I’ve taken the plunge, and am producing a short film that I wrote for Scary Cow, the independent film-making co-op that I’m part of. The working title is “Three Conversations About No Thing”, and it depicts three conversations about relationship-centered topics that take place in and around a restaurant at the same time. We’re having our first production team meeting this week, and beginning casting this weekend. Assuming we finish, it will show at the Castro on June 7th as part of the Scary Cow screening there. I’ll keep you posted on the latest production news between now and then.

Publication- So far for 2009 I’m doing pretty good keeping up my pledge to submit on a weekly basis. I’m at 7 submissions, with a 14% acceptance rate. That also equals 1 for those of you mathematically inclined, and that one has led to my semi-regular gig with the new online culture magazine The Rumpus.net: http://therumpus.net/author/chris-west/. I continue to write for LEGENDmag, an online and offline publication covering the progressive urban independent lifestyle. You can read my February 12th musing on Hipsters that I wrote for them here: http://legendmag.net/thelegendonline/2009/02/12/hipsters-hipster/ .

Performance- I’m good through February on my commitment to read in public at least once a month, since I read three poems at Sacred Grounds weekly Thursday night poetry reading last week. It was good clean fun, and I think I was the second youngest reader there that night, which is a nice treat at 38. For March I have my eye on Brainwash Café, I’ll let you know the date when I settle on it.

Novel- I speed-dated my novel Out in the Neon Night with agents at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference last month. While nothing concrete came of it, it gave me an opportunity to develop and sharpen a pitch; I met some great writers from all over the country, and was totally inspired in general. One person I met there was a former editor now freelance agent who I’m going to have provide a professional evaluation of the manuscript, which hopefully will help me target agents and publishers. In the mean time, I’ve put the first chapter online, in case anybody wants to see a sample: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-chapter-of-my-novel-in-neon-night.html

Blog- My blog gathers steam, with two entries in January and three in February. Perhaps we’ll see four in March? If so, you’ll find them here: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/

I’ll be back with more in April!

First chapter of my novel, "Out in the Neon Night"

2009-02-17T12:05:00.001-08:00
Still all jazzed from the San Francisco Writing Conference, I thought it might be fun to post a sample chapter of my novel that I'm currently seeking an agent for, "Out in the Neon night" here. To give you the quick lowdown:

The novel is set in California, Japan and Hong Kong during a fifteen year period from the late 80s through the early 2000s and tells the story of Carl, a young man who descends into a life of romantic and sexual obsession in his teens and twenties, and then has a painful spiritual emergence from it in his thirties. It's made up of five story arcs that take place at discrete points during the fifteen year period, and interweave with each other as they unfold. It's also surprisingly funny in places despite the subject matter, and informed throughout by the rock music of the era.

This is the first chapter, in which Carl is just starting out on the downward spiral...

***********************************************************************************
1. Shot Right Through With a Bolt of Blue

Coming to the Welcome Dance was a mistake.

Carl felt sure of that even before the guy knocked over the table behind him and hit him in the back.

To begin with, wasn’t it a mistake to come out at all? Out into the night where the air waited like a hungry ghost to suck out his breath and suspend it in an icy cloud before him. A cloud that pointed out into the bright and hollow sky, under which he searched, yearned, churned, for…

What? Carl didn’t know. When had the search ever worked for him? What made him think it would work tonight? What explosion would finally happen at the end of the fuse lit by this night if it didn’t fizzle out?

He ran a hand through his long blonde hair, pulled it together behind his head, and surveyed the dance. Nothing but a fizzle seemed likely here in this big box of a room. What could happen among the guys with short haircuts in sweats and shirts bearing names of sports teams, and lean and blonde girls likely straight out of Southern California? He stood there among them in a torn punk-rock t-shirt, baggy pants, and black leather shoes with buckles and shiny steel tips.

This was just as bad as the minimum-security prison masquerading as a high school that he came from. My God, the room even looked like a gym converted into the site of a high school dance! Berkeley should not be like this. Here in the land of the Free Speech Movement, People’s Park and the Third World Strike there should be freedom from the syndicate of jocks, politburo of the popular and oligarchy of rich kids who bought all the right clothes.

Carl shifted his weight from foot to foot. He found it hard to stand up straight so long with no support. But maybe he didn’t look manly enough with his hip out to one side. He shifted, back and forth, back and forth. Should he try to talk to people? Ask someone to dance despite the awful boom-boom-boom of the vapid dance music? All ew baby baby without a single real feeling in any of the songs. Without a person in the whole room who loved the rainyday music of English moors and pale windswept Northumberland towns. Or at least knew the words to a few Depeche Mode songs. Come on already!

If only there were people here he could relate to, then he could move out into the room. Instead he backed away from the crowd and further into the stricture inside his chest. His thoughts twisted tighter and tighter, wrapping him away from the world. A wallflower indeed and he would actually be up against the wall in a moment, with just another step or two backwards—

Which is when the small square brown table tumbled over and hit his back with a glancing blow.

“Fuck this shit!”

As shock staggered Carl forward, the guy who’d knocked over the table continued to curse and wave his arms around in inarticulate rage.

It was hard to see in the dim light, but the guy didn’t look that big. It was a lean frame that poked through his sweatshirt. He was intimidating nonetheless, as he shook his head and seethed disapproval of something. Carl stood rooted to the spot. Maybe he should get out of there; the guy could still be dangerous. Two friends tried to drag the irate table-tosser back, but he jerked his shoulders around and threw them off.

One friend stood in front of him and talked softly with a hand on his chest. Seeing the whole group was black, the thought flashed through Carl’s mind— did the guy throw the table at him because he was white? The group succeeded at last in calming their friend down enough that they could lead him away toward the glow of the exit sign.

Carl stood there for some time afterward. An image of himself flashed through his mind— long hair, dressed funny, and standing with his hip out to one side. Did the guy think he was gay because of the long hair? His bruised back throbbed in time to the music. Boom-boom-boom. Why did this shit always happen to him? Same old high school bully crap— he tried to be okay around people and what did he get for it? Whacked in the back with a table. Fuck this shit indeed.

He wandered back out into the main body of the dance, away from the table-flipping corner of danger. Some movement in the corner of his field of vision caught his eye. A girl.

Not just any girl.

She dressed differently now. A thin white blouse highlighted with green, yellow and orange flowers. A shiny black short skirt. Combat boots. A ghostly gossamer scarf around her neck. Her hair in a bob, buzzed short in the back and long in front, angled downwards to a point on each side of her face. But the round cherubic face framed by her rich dark hair was the same.

Gina Onizuka. Gina, who Carl had a crush on since freshman year of high school. Gina, who, resplendent in long braided pigtails and thick horn-rimmed glasses, sat in the seat in front of him for the duration of the English honor students’ bus trip to the Ashland Shakespeare festival. Fueled by the Vivarin he took in high school to be able speak to people without freezing up, he talked with her non-stop for 17 hours on the way to Oregon. Gina had— that’s right, she had! — come to Berkeley for college. And she was here now, a few feet away. It was perfect, because—

Crap! No, it was not perfect. At least he didn’t think Keisha, the girlfriend mired in junior year of high school back in his hometown at this very moment, would think it was perfect. Keisha, dumbshit, remember? The one he wrote the eighteen-page letter to earlier today? The one he was going to call tomorrow, as soon as the phone was hooked up. Probably before he even called his parents. No, definitely before he called his parents.

Yes, he remembered.

But. But the letter to Keisha was comfortable homesickness. Keisha herself represented pent up pages of love built up over years of never having a girl like him as more than a friend. It had to go to somebody, anybody, and Keisha was the anybody who finally said yes. His feelings for her had grown, by and by, into the hearts and flowers of wholesome first love and awkward innocent sex.

Gina, though, was last year’s Homecoming Dance. He went to every high school dance, just in case the thing that was supposed to happen finally happened that night. She went for reasons unknown to him, perhaps simply because freshman in college are supposed to go back to their high school Homecoming Dance.

Carl remembered the shock when she asked him to dance. This college woman, a whole year older than him, asked him to dance. She, the angel all dressed in black, the very essence of antidote to the obvious unattainable cheerful blondes he didn’t even dare to yearn for. She was not a sweet training-wheel girlfriend like Keisha. No, she was the real thing.

At the end of their dance he grabbed her hand, her perfectly soft hand, impelled by what, he didn’t even know, and squeezed it.

As the throb in his back returned him to the current dance, he could almost feel the warmth of her hand from a year ago. He glanced around the room and saw Gina headed for the exit. Dwarfed against the aircraft hanger ceilings, she was a tiny figure, almost at the door and moving fast. Too fast for him to take time with thoughts of Keisha, shyness or pain from recent airborne table injury. Too fast for anything but the electric impulse that launched him across the room after her.

He dodged near collisions with legions of bright young revelers on the way to the door and out into the dark, cold clarity of night. He found her leaning on the metal railing and staring out in the direction of the elephantine marble pillars of Sproul Hall. With a stealth borne of years of escaping the notice of bullies, he stood beside her without her even realizing.

“Excuse me, miss?”

She turned, her face set with a hard plastic ‘Who is this jerk?’ preparation for dismissal. Then her demeanor shifted and her girlish cheeks dimpled into a smile. She threw herself on him for a hug. As they parted, the softness of her nicely rounded body and the flower-sweet yet sweat-sharp tang of her scent clung to him in cottony ribbons.

“Carl! Hey! You’re at Berkeley now too?”

“I am! I’m glad I ran into you. I heard you were going here.”

“Yeah! Were you at the dance just now?”

“Yeah. Pretty lame music, huh?”

“Yeah.” Her nose wrinkled up and her full coral lips narrowed. He’d seen the same face once on a cat that had eaten a moth.

“So what are you up to?” He stared at her as he asked. Even the breath that shimmered into cold white clouds in front of her seemed beautiful.

“Oh, I don’t know. Hanging out, waiting for classes to start. Going to a lot of shows. Hey, have you been to Gilman Street?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so.” What the hell was Gilman Street?

“It’s this club; all these local punk bands play there. I’ve gone a lot this summer.”

“Oh cool. Hey, do you still read comics?” That should bring him onto firmer ground. Their common love of comics had animated the discussion on the Oregon bus trip, after all.

“Yeah I do, but not so much Marvel stuff anymore. I tried to keep reading New Mutants, but it sucks dick now. I’m really into Love and Rockets. How about you?”

Man, Love and Rockets. That was one of those alternative, underground comics, wasn’t it? He felt off-balance, even more so because it was the first time he had ever heard a girl use the phrase “sucks dick”. On top of that, here he still read the X-Men and Spider-man. Kids stuff. It took him a second to compose his answer, and he thought it still sounded far too lame.

“Oh, you know, different things, I read different things.”

From inside the dance, an orchestral flourish followed by a regular mechanical computer simulation of an empty tin can beat signaled the start of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle.

“They’re finally playing something decent!”

“Yeah. Hey, want to dance?” He flashed back to high school as she looked at him for his answer, and then nodded.

Back through the double doors they found a space in the midst of the dance floor. Which wasn’t too hard, the music had sent much of the crowd off to the sidelines. This was no song for bland perfect people. This was a song that Top 40 radio would never play. This was their song.

Every time I think of you
I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue

Shot he was. He let the sway into his body, unsure of how to catch the dit-de-duh-dit-duh-duh-dit of the beat. Utterly unlike Gina, a perfection of motion to the music, with none of the sweet young shallow sexuality that Keisha wore like an old pair of leggings. Gina’s curved hips and small round breasts, snug in her floral print blouse, rolled and flowed like water. This shocked first awareness of sinuous womanhood that seemed to course with the very power of the Universe stuck in Carl’s mind for years to come.

The lights of the dance swirled across her face. It seemed set and impassive now, a formal beauty made even more insistent and present by its distance. The stillness in her face seemed to hint at a whole world of feeling underneath, a direct electric connection to the tragedy of life. His tragedy, and she knew it too. She must know it too. But he felt a faint tickle of unease.

I’m not sure what this could mean
I don’t think you’re what you seem
I do admit to myself
That if I hurt someone else
Then I’ll never see just what we’re meant to be

Carl mouthed the words, but missed the point entirely.

As the Buddhists that he had just begun to read said, by your thoughts you make the world. That night he forged the first link in a chain of co-dependent origination. The wheel of dharma began to spin.

All he knew is that this was surely it, the moment he had waited for through years of being unloved, unlovable. All to be recouped in one fell stroke by Gina, who was punk rock, cool comics, a dangerous roll and tumble of curves. She could inhabit the space inside, the empty space that had been there for as long as he knew. She could fill it.

As the song reached its crescendo through the peaks and troughs of synthesizer waves, he wondered, doubted, felt sure:

She was the reason he came out into the night.

I’m in Decompression from the San Francisco Writer’s Conference!

2009-02-15T17:01:00.001-08:00
I just spent two and a half days at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference, at the Mark Hopkins Hotel perilously high atop California Street. For those of you not familiar, it’s an annual event started by local literary agents Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada to allow writers, often as-yet unpublished, to meet and hear from agents, editors and publishers. This is the first time I’ve been, and it was huge! While currently exhausted and in a bit of postpartum withdrawal, I found it to be really inspiring. I have tons of leads about various journals and contests and editorias and publishers to follow up on, I met some really cool writers from all around the country, and I’ve become encouraged about continuing to pitch my novel and working more on my new novel. Most of all it’s just really nice to be around so many people excited about writing, and to hear that publishing remains alive and well and will continue to look for good new authors despite much dire industry news of late. Carry on writing!

February 2009 Writing News

2009-02-04T21:10:00.001-08:00
It seems I haven’t sent one of these out since September- Egad! Was I caught up in a pre-election tizzy? Knocked for a loop by the holidays? In one of those periodic funks about what my writing efforts were adding up to that we all get from time to time? All of the above! But now I’m back, full of New Year’s fervor, to unleash the latest updates about my creative efforts on you, my hapless victims:

Film- I’ve been low activity in the last two rounds of Scary Cow, the independent film-making co-op that I’m part of. But I was script supervisor and production assistant on a video for a song by local musician Tony Maddox, “The Waiting Game”, which will air at their screening this Saturday (February 7th) at the Castro Theatre. It’s always worth checking out, you can get tickets here: http://scarycow.com/news_pages/2008-12-round7Screening.html . I am approaching 90% likelihood of writing and producing my own short film in their upcoming round, I’ll keep you posted.

Publication- Through the second half of last year I made a pledge to myself to submit something somewhere on a weekly basis, which I kept to pretty well. I am hereby extending that into 2009! For those of you interested in statistics, the 2008 effort has so far led to a 14% acceptance rate, 25% rejection rate and 61% eerie whistling silence rate. 2009 is still in its infancy, but has already yielded one might-become semi-regular outing blogging on music for the ‘around the web” section of the new online culture magazine The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/sections/music/ . And I’m continuing to write for LEGENDmag, an online and offline publication covering the progressive urban independent lifestyle, where I’ve just become a regular Thursday contributor. You can read my January 9th grouchy musical New Year’s resolution column for them here: http://legendmag.net/thelegendonline/2009/01/09/musical-years-resolutions-san-francisco-09

Performance- I’m making a commitment to read in public at least once a month this year. My first outing was an open mic at the Bazaar Café this past Thursday. My February installment will likely be at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference (for more about which, see below). I’ll update you on where I’ll be in March and going forward. If anybody has some good venue suggestions, let me know!

Novel- After a year of working together, things with my agent seem to be winding down. So, despite the fact that the publishing industry is collapsing along with the rest of the economy, I’ll be trying various new means to find a publisher for my novel Out In The Neon Night this coming year. The first of these is attending the San Francisco Writer’s Conference this month (http://www.sfwriters.org/ ), which includes “speed dating” events with agents and publishers. If nothing else, it should make for a fun story…

Blog- Forty one blog entires in 2008, and two so far in 2009, for better or for worse. You can read them in any or all of the following three locations: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/, http://chrisw-insf.livejournal.com/, http://www.myspace.com/chriswest_writerinsf

That’s it for now, see you in March!

Three Intentions for 2009

2009-01-19T16:09:00.001-08:00
For New Year’s 2007, I was on a retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains which had a New Year’s Eve ritual inviting us to form and share three general intentions for the year. I went to the same retreat again this New Year’s for several days, but I was back in the city for New Year’s Eve itself, so I didn’t do the ritual this time. I can’t be more specific about the reason, except that it involved my girlfriend, some close friends, and Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit. In any case, the ritual was such a valuable thing for me in 2008, not to mention which my intentions also largely came to pass, that even though I didn’t do it there, I’d like to do it again for this year, and share it with you. Here are my intentions for 2009:

1. To invest more in myself physically- I’ve always done gangbusters investing in my mental life, and the last few years I’ve been getting much better with doing the same emotionally and spiritually. My physical life has always been the least developed- sometimes I’ve even thought fondly about being a brain in a jar hooked up to a supercomputer. So, I think this is a year to work on that. What does that mean? Beats me, it’s just a general intention! Seriously, I imagine it will mean all kinds of things about diet, about exercise, about consciously investing in clothes and wardrobe, and about trying new physical activities. Maybe yoga wind surfing?

2. To reconnect with my Muse- While I’ve done a lot of writing in the last two years, and even started and completed some brand new stories, I haven’t really felt the fire (as one example, I haven’t written any new poetry) since going in to rehab at the end of 2006. I think that’s a pretty natural result of having to focus on recovery first these last two years, and I mostly have patience with it as part of a natural ebb and flow. But I do think this is my year to get back in touch with it, while staying safe and sober. So, I’m re-reading old journals to see what’s there that I can connect with, starting to learn music, reading new poetry, creating more time for writing in my weekly schedule and just generally inviting the Muse to alight. Tell her if you see her!

3. To be a little less self-obsessed and a little more connected to other people- Recovery literature regularly talks about most of our problems coming back to self-obsessed suffering, and for me this is definitely true. My external life has really gotten to be pretty darn good these last two years, and the only things I really suffer from these days are old patterns of thinking and feeling that still unspool in my head. So the solution, I have heard, is to spend a little less time there and a little more focusing on other people. Not to mention I might do something nice for others in the process. So tell me, what’s going on with you? Maybe I can take you out to lunch soon…

Those are my intentions for 2009. How about you?

Eight From 2008

2009-01-09T20:51:00.001-08:00

While it’s not standard for year-end countdowns, I’ve decided that a top eight albums is the best approach to take for 2008. What can I say? I’m a sucker for numbers and symmetry. Here, in alphabetical order, are my top picks:
1. Get Awkward (Be Your Own Pet)- They’re punk and garage with a dash of metal. Their songs are simultaneously tongue-in cheek and brash, slapping you to the mat from the start and keeping you there throughout. They’re fronted by a brash blonde girl. They’re from Nashville. What on Earth is not to like?
2. Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (Drive-By Truckers)- This album has it all. Male lead vocals. Female lead vocals. Straight-up country. Rock that reminds one of the Seventies in a good way. Music that sounds like storm clouds brooding. And as good as it is musically, it’s even better lyrically. The 19 tracks herein include heartfelt paeans to family, subtle evocations of domestic discontent, a soldier musing on the unknown life of the unnamed foe he’s just killed, and a song from the viewpoint of someone who has had it with a friend’s (family member’s? spouses?) crystal meth addiction.
3. Lust, Lust, Lust (the Raveonettes) There was a good case to be made with their previous album, Pretty in Black, that the Raveonettes had lost their mind. On this album they find it again and the lust, menace, and shimmering clouds of guitar feedback are ours to enjoy.
4. Narrow Stairs (Death Cab for Cutie)- I’ve been a late convert to Death Cab, but like many an infatuation acquired in later life, I’ve made up for it by falling hard. A song like “I Will Posses Your Heart” that starts with a four minute drum intro shouldn’t hold your attention, but in their hands it keeps you rapt, and brings a shiver when the lyrics finally kicks in with their mixture of romanticism and dark obsession. And really, at the end of the day, anybody who writes a bleak, piercing song about searching for Kerouac’s ghost can call me their bitch.
5. & 6. Nouns (No Age), Rip It Off (Times New Viking)- These two bands are probably tired of being mentioned in the same breath, but they really are two peas in one wonderful lo-fi pod. Of the two, No Age brings more melody and traditional pop structure in their navigations of ragged walls of sonic distortion. This makes Nouns more consistently listenable, but Rip It Off more exciting and challenging.
7. Stop Drop and Roll! (the Foxboro Hot Tubs)- Yes, okay, it’s really Greenday in musical drag buying time while they try to figure out how to follow American Idiot. But what glorious drag it is! Their roaring, rocking success at producing rock in the Kinks/Who/Hollies et al vein makes me wonder why rock ever stopped sounding like that.
8. We Started Nothing (the Ting Tings)- Dance music with the form and attitude of rock, this album is just good clean fun from start to finish.
Those are my picks, but in the interest of full disclosure, Bruce Springsteen’s Magic only made honorable mention on my 2007 list, and it’s turned out to be one of the few albums from that year that I still regularly listen to. I reserve the right to listen further… And so should you!

Project Dylan: Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964)

2008-11-16T22:32:00.001-08:00
For a long time I thought Bringing it All Back Home was the next album after The Times They Are A-Changin’. I knew the title of Another Side, but I thought it was from somewhere in the uneven early 70s stretch of Dylan output and so avoided it.

When I finally got it sorted out, not only did I repent of my earlier avoidance, it answered many questions I had about classic songs that I knew were from Dylan’s prime but that I couldn’t place on any of the albums I knew about. “My Back Pages” would be chief among these. That song, and this whole album in general, seems like a repudiation of the topical political tone of the album that preceded it: Good and bad, I define these terms/Quite clear, no doubt, somehow./Ah, but I was so much older then,/I'm younger than that now. Dylan isn’t disavowing his positions here, but instead signaling a turn into a realm of inner exploration.

And indeed, political commentary does show up in the songs here, but shot through with humor and satire. In fact, there are three tracks on the album that would qualify for my fantasy “Dylan cracks up” play list, songs in which he can’t quite deliver a line straight and ends up laughing.

Overall, the sense the album conveys is one of restless rambling through his range, from an “I Shall be Free No. 10” that could have fit on Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan to the surreal “Motorpsycho Nitemare” that’s like a preview of the next three albums. Along the way, we get the poetic blues of “Black Crow Blues”, the folk ballad “Ramona”, one of the classic bitter breakup songs (and is he breaking up with just Joan Baez here, or the folk scene in general?) “It Ain’t Me Babe” and one of my all-time favorites, the aching romantic searching of the “Spanish Harlem Incident”: I am homeless, come and take me/Into reach of your rattling drums./Let me know, babe, about my fortune/Down along my restless palms.

It’s almost like Dylan is surveying the ground he built up in his first three albums, and trying to spy the direction for a bold new breakout. Which will bring us to our next review…

Project Dylan: The Time They Are A-Changin’ (1964)

2008-10-12T18:30:00.001-07:00
This was my favorite Dylan album when I was 20. It’s easy now for me to see why- the album is full of anthems, stirring statements about the issues of the day, with good and evil clearly drawn in black and white. Granted the day was more than twenty-five years old by the time I got to it, but in the era of Rodney King and the first Gulf War it rang just as true. You never doubt who’s side you’re supposed to be on in “Only a Pawn in Their Game”, “With God On Our Side” or “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” and I needed that conviction, along with the certainty that right will eventually prevail that the title track conveys.

Listening to it now, I’m stuck by the poignancy of that song. The times had changed after he wrote it, and then changed back by the time I first listened to it. And since then they changed and changed back and may now be changing back again. The song itself hints at the humility that comes form a long historical view: “don't speak too soon/ For the wheel's still in spin/ And there's no tellin' who/That it's namin'/ For the loser now/ Will be later to win” And then win and lose again.

Which is not to say, even now, that I’m immune to the prophetic notion that the time is at hand and the order is about to be fundamentally recast. And anyone who has ever burned with the sense that their time will come can’t help but respond to the bitter defiance of “When the Ship Comes In” (which Dylan himself wrote after being snubbed by a hotel clerk while touring with the then much more famous Joan Baez). But it’s the more personal moments of this album that endure for me now.

Whereas the relationship songs on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan have a kind of pro-forma quality, the real feeling behind “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “One Too Many Mornings” is obvious and moving. As is the sound of the man beginning to struggle against the constrictions of his own public image in “Restless Farewell”. On “North Country Blues” the politics is still there, but subsumed by the personal in the story of the bleak lives of those left behind in a small mining town when the business moves south of the border. And then there’s the “Ballad of Hollis Brown”. The spareness, poetry and driving power of the song that ends with seven shots ringing out “like the ocean’s pounding roar” wowed me when I was twenty and continues to do so today.

San Francisco Daze: September

2008-10-01T22:13:00.000-07:00
Here's the next installment of San Francisco Daze, a series of (aspirationaly, at least) daily sketches of life in our fair city that I wrote in 2005. This one is actually sets off in Salinas, since I was there for my brother's funeral. Hard to believe that was three years ago. It both seems like a numb million years ago and a piercing just yesterday. *************************************************

September 1

Mortuary in Salinas. Wood panels. Felt. Old furniture. Subdued lighting. Everything designed to keep hysterical people controlled and calmed. It’s both comforting and stifling. I depart in the backseat of my dad’s truck with a golden plastic casket on my lap. Inside are my brother’s ashes, which they transferred into the box, along with an inscribed Bible from dad and a note from me, before they sealed it. This is all such strange business.

September 2

We buried Josh
this liquid gray foggy morning
at the small cemetery in Moss Landing.
The minister from my Mom’s church
sang Amazing Grace
as a striped seabird squawked and alighted nearby.
A small black and white cat
watched
from the weeds of the windswept field
just one dune down
from the ocean.

September 3-5

Nothing but foggy day naps with cats.

September 6

Clement Street, between 11th & 12th
Police motorcycle, lights flashing blue-white-red
Parked next to Linen Outlet
12th Avenue, between Clement & Geary
Motorcycle cop, big and tough in black leather
Pulls over little gray Japanese car
Geary Avenue, corner with 12th
Two police bikes have pulled over two cars
Another hums up the street past me
Policeman suspiciously eyeing the green Perrier bottle
I drink from a brown paper bag
11th Avenue, just before it crosses Geary
Three police motorcycles pull up to the corner
Geary, on the bus now, passing 10th Avenue
Police bike, lights blazing, roars past us
Why do I fear this symmetry?

September 7

The square green park
between Jackson & Front Streets
was full of birds
Unseen squawks, chirps, twitters
all seethed from the dark green spaces
in the trees
A sea of sound
washed out
my thoughts of my brother
and brought me back to life
Which insists on going on
Brazenly
Urgently
Loudly
No matter how unwelcome it is

September 8

Whoever did the clouds today really outdid themselves. There were layers on liquid gray layers. Big puffy white cauliflower. Brooding gray that seemed ready to let loose with some serious rain. Yellow orange highlights on fast moving cumulus as the sun set. Well done, mystery cloud maker. Well done.

September 9

On the Way to My Brother’s Memorial

Cal Train slides past
Twisted scrap heap of junked cars
Rusted loading cranes
Graffitied warehouses and squat buildings
With chimneys smoking
Wooden piers rotting
In brackish waterways
Water in the distance
The color of steel
Weird scenes
On the leeward side of the Bay

September 10-11

Saturday was Memorial Day for Josh. Rain clouds scuttled across the underbelly of the vault of heaven, thick, gray and fast. The bright sunny day above and beyond the clouds drove shafts of sunlight down like the voice of God, intermittently lighting up the floor of the Salinas Valley.

September 12

At first glance, nothing seemed off. She wore jeans, and a fuzzy sweat-jacket, zipped all the way up. Her hair, black flecked with gray, was pulled back from her face, and neatly kept. It was the glare in her eyes that gave it away. By the time I spotted that, it was too late. I was sitting in the seat one over from hers.

“Don’t look over here bitch! Keep your damn eyes to yourself. Don’t look at me! It’s your own damn fault, living the life you been livin’. Don’t look at me, bitch! You won’t be laughing when he puts the rag around the barrel of the gun. I gotta get outta here. I can’t stand she keeps looking at me.”

I and two cute brown haired girls in jeans and brown jackets kept our eyes focused rigidly forward. But she didn’t seem to be addressing any of us. Her rant was directed deep into the distance of the bus, or even out the window. And then she was gone. “Did you record all that for posterity?” asked the tall blond guy in the white work shirt opposite me.

September 13

Written in my notebook, not in my handwriting:

Christy White Productions limelight products

Did it happen when I was out with my writing group at Trader Sam’s? If so, who wrote it? Someone in the bar? Someone from my writing group? Admittedly, my memory of the evening is somewhat fragmentary, as they were showering me in Zombies as a form of grief therapy. So it certainly is possible. But what does it mean?

September 14

I sat on the rocky outcropping at the northwest corner of Baker Beach. The waves advanced in rolls of green and gray and blue and billowing brown flung out into white foam that crept a little further forward with each surge. I shared the waves with three birds. One some kind of little sandpiper that ran forward as each wave retreated, and dabbed his long bill into the wet bubbling sand. Then a big gray and brown seagull would occasionally charge the sandpiper away from what must have been some particularly tasty morsels. Finally, in the surf itself, a black bird with slick wet feathers, splayed legs ending in big webbed feet, and a bright orange beak bobbed up, over, and down each wave crest, except when he would turn over and dive straight down, popping up again a few feet away from his previous location. I loved all three, but him best of all.

September 15-18

Sierra County Weekend Hot Springs Vacation Observations:

A silver rental Honda. Good brakes! A CD player!
Double Cheeseburger at Jack in the Box on the way there (for shame, budding vegetarian, for shame).
The Sierra Valley, a big flat plain, fifteen or twenty miles on a side, surrounded by wooded mountains.
Pine trees like fingers, pointed straight up against the impossible steel blue of the sky.
The pleasantly drinkable surprise of Ginseng Cola at the main lodge.
The check-in man’s deadpan delivering about there being a quicksand pit in our room.
Giant acrylic folding screen adorned with peacocks in our sweet small room in the Globe Hotel.
Sitting in the Temple Pool, moonlight glittering through pentagon-shaped windows in the domed roof.
The fat wooden Buddha with one hand broken off.
Old friendly self-described redneck telling us about the rebirthers who used to run the place, and could also sometimes be found running around downtown in diapers with pacifiers.
The tantric couple practicing breathing, and possibly coupling, in the pool.
The female half of that couple, lean, with long curly black hair, floating.
The man equally dark curly haired, blowing bubbles while exhaling underwater.
Pale beauty of a girl with long curly golden hair floating in moonlight.
Her older companion (Mother? Lover?) doing the same.
All women, when floating, display round breast and thick bushy pubic mounds, beautiful and natural.
Comparing myself to every guy. Therefore I liked the chubby ones with small dicks the best.
Talking in the main pool naked with a Spanish girl who lived in Oakland, her visiting friend from Spain, and a gentle bald computer programmer from Berkeley.
The Spanish girl was nicknamed La Facista because of how radically anti-smoking she became after she quit.
Being shushed and asked to whisper by the groundskeeper’s long curly black and white beard.
Dos Hermanos for dinner the best Mexican food found 500 miles from the border.
The Roundup for breakfast, evenly divided by old ranchers with their silver hair, and out-of-towners in long hair and tie-dye.
Tuttenstein a cartoon about a friendly reanimated mummified pharaoh, and other weird weekend morning TV at the Roundup.
The coy gray and white cat at the Phoenix Baths.
The brown striped frog perched in a little notch next to the meditation pool.
Nearby, I played with Jen in the tents they’d set up to house the green vinyl massage tables. She played with me too.
A couple in the pool, consisting of a bald man, a thin and muscular 45 or so, and a brown-haired nubile woman who could not have been as old as 30. That fucker.
The smell, always the fat rotten egg smell, of the water.
Last night in the main pool, bodybuilder with the blonde with fake breasts talking about seeing satellites in the pristine night sky.
Three other girls shared the pool that night:
- a one legged amputee with a perfect butt
- a girl too shy to ease into the smaller pool, belly and breasts blazing with pregnancy
- sweet brown haired girl, body soft and curved with real womanhood
Their friend arrived later, lithe and bald with cancer treatment.
Jen meditating on the pool deck in absolute stillness and silence for 45 minutes.
A mother deer and faun, delicately picking out steps through the brush, seen from the deck of the pool.
The tree frog in the shower room two nights in a row.
Searching for dinner later, we found that in Truckee, no restaurant is open after 9:00 PM.
You can, however, eat chicken tenders and Fritos in the Safeway parking lot no matter what hour it is.
Grim little hotel in Loyalton on the second night, single beds in an L-shaped room keeping Jen and I apart.
The sweet Calico rubbing against my leg while being petted on the last morning there.
On that last morning, the big hairy mustachioed guy in the Meditation Pool reading Dune radiated subtle menace.
Approaching San Francisco from the East Bay on the way back, only Sutro tower visible above a bank of fog.
Midnight wine and pizza with Jen upon returning.

September 19

Morning:
Fog and rising sun
Renders
The towers of downtown
Silhouettes
Seen through a milky sky

Evening:
Perfectly clear sky’s blue
fades to pink and white,
up on the hill
clustered around the spires of USF
huddled evergreens
lit in orange

September 20

Spiritual patterns of icy haze shown through the rippled gray and white sky today.

September 21

“He’s young, totally good, and sexy.”- overheard in the Front Room, corner of California and Larkin. Overhead from a gal who has that little bit too high, little bit too heliumed kind of voice. Short blond hair, professionally dressed in something cream or gray or taupe or something. Twirling the wine in her glass as she talks to a dude. Do I feel superior or am I green with envy? I see the chain of co-dependent origination rearing its ugly head. Thank Buddha I am sometimes in conscious contact with the process these days. Let Siddhartha be praised!

September 22

The clouds
skid across the city sky
this afternoon
like a solid sheet
of scalloped white

September 23

Never been so close to Sutro Tower.
All the homes stacked on each other, layer upon layer marching up the hill. Concentric circles of red, blue, yellow brown and white with windows glinty in the afternoon sun.
And at night they glow like clusters of sleeping fireflies. (Do fireflies glow when they sleep?) Atop them all, the tower, black outline sketched by moonlight, blinks its spires in regular patterns of red and white.

September 24

There’s something about the Love Parade.

The Love Parade is techno, techno, techno, a 90s that never ended.
The Love Parade is a woman in a giant vagina costume.
The Love Parade is cleavage showing midriff bearing girls, inscrutable in sunglasses.

The Love Parade walks on stilts.
The Love Parade wears leather.
The Love Parade dresses as a gladiator.

The Love Parade goes nude as a girl on a soundstage painted in silver.
The Love Parade goes nude by having its bountiful breasts visible under a fishnet top while playing drums.
The Love Parade goes nude as four old men stark naked in the hot sun.

Civic Center, swamped by the Love Parade this sunny Saturday, can no longer maintain its chastity.

September 25

Today, on the way there, I gazed at a telephone pole as I stood at the bus stop. It was thick from staples and pins from old flyers, rusted and painted over in light brown. On top of which were staples and pins from flyers, on which another layer of dark brown was painted. And then again. Layer on layer, month by month, year after year. Eras of rallies, bands, underground clubs, lost cats and art show openings leaving their sediment behind. What a beautiful city this is.

September 26

“I am a psychiatrist, and you both need serious medication!”- young woman exiting the 38BX this morning, after having chewed out a hapless young man who tried to keep her backpack from hitting him repeatedly in the face, and arguing with another woman until the word “bitch” erupted multiple times.

September 27-30
Four days vanished into the maw of overwork. Even though my birthday is one of them, there is no trace of the wonders they might have contained. On that day, I merely worked until 10:00 PM, came home and collapsed on the couch, and got up again for work the next morning.

Project Dylan: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)

2008-09-30T22:48:00.001-07:00

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan occupies roughly the same place in my development as a music fan that the first nervous teenage toke of a joint does in the life of a future heroin addict. Every day after grade school I’d be alone all afternoon until my parents got home from work. My companions, in reverse order of influence, were cats, television, and mom and dad’s dusty old records. Over many an afternoon, my musical teeth were cut on repeated playing of the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors, Janis Joplin, CSNY, Simon & Garfunkle, and Bob Dylan. In particular this album by Dylan. Years later, when I finally forayed into the world of CDs, this was one of the first CDs I got as well, carting it off to college with me.
One of the chief problems with having put in more than a quarter century of listening to it is that I can hardly hear it anymore. I mean really hear it, beyond all the accretions of its place in my life, and history and indeed music history in general. Having tried to do that just now, I observe mostly how young an album it is. It’s the first one where Dylan is Dylan- in exact reverse of his debut Bob Dylan, it’s almost all originals, with only two covers. He’s stretching out and finding his voice here, and as a result his voice is all over the place- both literally and lyrically.
In traveling from the rough-hewn and timeless “Blowin in the Wind”, to the out and out absurd horsing around of “I Shall Be Free”, the overall sense I get is of a powerful car being taken for a test drive by a kid who doesn’t quite know how to drive it yet. So, for example, on “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” we find him in the emotional territory of the bitterness of failed relationship that he’ll mine extensively later, but he plays it too consciously jokey to really turn the knife. Or hear him having fun with the mythology of the Western plains on “Bob Dylan’s Blues” (Well, the Lone Ranger and Tonto/ They are ridin' down the line/ Fixin' ev'rybody's troubles/ Ev'rybody's 'cept mine/ Somebody musta tol' 'em/ That I was doin' fine) but not yet able to tap its genuine power as he later will with the Band.
On the tight corners that really matter though, he pulls out the bitter, poetic and razor-sharp focused “Masters of War”, the surging symbolic “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and the Swiftian satire of “Talking World War III Blues”. If he’d never recorded anything beyond these three songs, he’d already have surpassed the lifetime achievement of many another songwriter.