More Brandtson vinyl in the works...

The U.S. Military and "Freedom":Memorial Day 2010

A lot of people I respect repeat the idea that it is our military that makes us free. Let me disagree.

Every government needs an army. For the past few decades, we have been able to fight several wars with an all-volunteer army and a growing number of "military contractors", which used to be called mercenaries when I was growing up in the now quaint 20th Century. This strategy makes wars very expensive and we have the choice of high taxes or high deficits. For the most part, we have been choosing raising the deficit over raising taxes.

When I was growing up there was something called the draft. It existed when my dad was growing up and when his dad was growing up. In fact, until Afghanistan and Iraq, we never had a war that lasted more than a few months without the re-institution of a draft.

It was the most disgusting Orwellian nonsense to say we were "free" when every able-bodied young man could be forced by law to take a job at low pay that had a significant probability of ending his life. Young men who successfully avoided the draft are looked on as cowards after the fact instead of what they truly are, people with a strong sense of self-protection. Republicans mock people like Bill Clinton, Democrats mock Dick Cheney and the guys whose family connections got them into the cushy National Guard service like Dan Quayle and George W. Bush. The fact is the system sucked and it always did, and it stunk of corruption all the way back to the Civil War and even before.

My dad was a draftee. He survived Korea, due in no small part to landing a plane that had a wing shot off by enemy fire. He did everything he could to make sure his sons would not be drafted. He helped my brother Michael get a deferment on medical grounds, since Michael was allergic to penicillin and had injured his leg in a motorcycle accident. The draft became a lottery in the early 1970s, and the last drawing in 1972 concerned men born in 1953. I grew up worrying about it, but I never faced the draft and the war was winding down by the time I was of age, so I faced a very different situation compared to what my dad and older brother had to live through.

Here's to the young men who never had a chance to be free, indentured servants our government treated worse that pack animals. Here's to the draftees cut down at Vicksburg, the poor doughboys sucking poison gas in France, the drafted men who died fighting the Japanese island by island across the Pacific or died fighting the Germans village by village across France and Holland and Belgium. They died in the cold of Korea and the fetid rice fields of Vietnam. They died before they had the right to vote or legally drink a cool beer. They were enslaved boys and never free men, and we did this to them and pretended we were free.

Let us always strive to remember the world as it actually was, not the nonsensical nostalgic neverland the unscrupulous try to sell to us. Here's hoping on this Memorial Day that my nephews and their sons never have to face the situation their older relatives had to endure.

Light blogging schedule ahead.

The spring semester is over now, and I've been assigned to the graveyard shift for census work, 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. I tend to wake up early and be awake for a lot of those hours anyway (it's 2:21 a.m. as I am writing this), so I just have to acclimate myself to a slightly different sleep pattern than the already weird pattern I keep normally.

Until I figure out how this is going to work, my blogging output should shrink some here at the regular blog. Over at It's News 2 Them™, it should be business as usual.

New Tess Wiley song and album

This is a new song from Tess Wiley's new album she recorded last week. (The version you see and hear here is not the album version. She recorded this while the album was being mixed.) She recorded it "live" with three other musicians, and she updated frequently about it on her Facebook page. The album will mostly be new versions of "old" songs, but with some new songs.

Random 10, 5/28/10

Honeysuckle Rose Fats Waller
Shot With His Own Gun Elvis Costello & the Attractions
Gold Interference
Promised Land Spanic Boys
Up A Lazy River Hoagy Carmichael
Hang On St. Christopher Tom Waits
Down On The Riverbed Los Lobos
Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) Beyoncé
Under Your Spell/Standing (Reprise) Amber Benson and Anthony Stewart Head
You Can't Hurry Love Diana Ross & the Supremes

Yet another Random 10 that has songs from my top three singer/songwriter heroes, Fats Waller, Elvis Costello and Tom Waits. The oldest song on the list was recorded before my mom was born (the Hoagy Carmichael tune) and there are three from the 21st Century, with Sasha Fierce, a song from the Buffy musical and Gold from the movie Once. The most obscure song is the only one that doesn't show up on the You Tubes, a song by the father and son rockabilly duo Spanic Boys.

So, whatcha listenin' to?

Wednesday Math (one day late), Vol. 119: Why is a negative times a negative a positive?

The technical definition of a number and its negative is that both numbers are the same distance away from zero, but in opposite directions on the number line, which is usually presented as a horizontal line with positive direction moving to the right. So the negative of 4 is -4 and the negative of -4 is 4.

This definition is simple but abstract, with no grounding in experience. Let's instead deal with something people understand where positive and negative movement make sense, our bank accounts.

A credit represents positive movement, money being added to our account, while a debit is negative movement, money being taken away. It is possible to have both negative credits and negative debits. If you put money in the account but the check you tried to cash bounced, the positive movement you thought you had has to be subtracted to reflect the true amount available. You can also have a negative credit, when money was removed from your account when it shouldn't have been. If there was a charge to your account that you didn't authorize or the bank charged your account some fee that you should have been exempt from, a negative debit means money going back into your account. This would be an example of a negative negative being a positive.

One more candle on the cake for the Gosh Darned Pater Familias!

Best wishes on the anniversary of his birth to Donald Lee Hubbard, the best dad a fellow could ever ask for.

Technically, of course, I didn't ask for him. I just showed up one day and there he was. That was a lucky break, don't you think?

While his number of years is not a prime number, it does have only one prime factor. Given that I have said I am in my mid-fifties and my father is not a character from Genesis, I think the bright math students will be able to figure out his exact age from these clues.

Happy birthday, papa! I'll see you this weekend.

Elizabeth Streb and the forces of nature

Elizabeth Streb calls herself an action architect. She designs new ways for the human body to move through space, challenge gravity, push the possibilities of physics. At first glance she may seem like an edgy choreographer or an "extreme action hero," as some have called her. But don't get distracted by spectacle. What's really going on is an exploration of how our bodies can make the most of our existence in our physical world. Just as a meditation master might ask her student to imagine the infinite possibilities of the mind, Streb is asking her dancers—and by extension, us—to question our preconceptions about how we use our bodies. At least, that's my interpretation.

With the cinderblocks swinging and the bodies airborne, it would be a mistake to think this is a reckless act. Rather, it's a carefully constructed and executed communal event. The dancers must trust each other, trust their training, trust their bodies. And they must embrace the physical world, whether harsh or supple.

As you may have gathered, I've got a thing for dance. Ex-girlfriend. For a few years I saw a lot of modern dance in various studios and performance spaces below 14th Street in Manhattan. I know the art as observer—never performer—but not just as audience. I liked watching rehearsals, whenever I could, more than the polished concert. I liked seeing the dancers deal with their injured foot or discuss a particular "phrase" of movement. Streb invites the public to watch rehearsals at her company's space in Brooklyn—reportedly a cavernous facility in Williamsburg. I haven't been there—yet.

Streb is a great-looking butch punk lesbian whose partner is British-born journalist Laura Flanders (who runs GritTv, with which I am entirely unfamiliar.) See the two of them talking about gender and class in dance. Streb won a MacArthur "genius" grant in 1997. Scientific American has said: "Streb distinguishes her work from ballet and modern dance, which, she says, seek to camouflage the forces of nature. Those forces are the whole point of her performances."

Bob Wilkins

Several recent events have made me wax nostalgic. Being a fiftysomething when most of my students are twentysomethings has altered my view of what A Long Time Ago means. I recently taught my algebra students about logarithmic scales, and of course in California the best example is the Richter scale. When I brought up the Loma Prieta quake, the majority of the students had only dim recollections of it. A lot of Laney students were born overseas and weren't here in 1989, and more than a few of them weren't even born then.

I don't think of that as A Long Time Ago, but it's coming up on 21 years. At least it's a history landmark that my students know happened, even if they are hazy on the details.

Here's something young people know next to nothing about. Local programming that people actually watched.

Sometimes in droves.


If you didn't grow up in Northern California in the 1970s, the name Bob Wilkins will likely mean nothing to you. In 1971, he moved away from a station in sleepy Sacramento to the big market San Francisco Bay Area to host a late night double feature of monster movies called Creature Features.

As far as I can tell, there wasn't anybody else anything like him anywhere else.

In the world.

Other horror show hosts camped it up, like Elvira in Los Angeles or Ghoulardi in Cleveland. Count Floyd of Monster Chiller Horror Theater on SCTV is a perfect parody of them. Bob Wilkins was from the fine Midwestern tradition of comedy that includes James Thurber, Bob Newhart and Charles Schulz. All these people looked completely normal, like accountants or regional sales managers or vice-presidents of the local Elks Lodge, but for reasons passing understanding, they were about five to fifteen degrees off from level plumb.

Creature Features was definitely a guy thing, but it wasn't just a nerd thing. For guys my age from the Bay Area, it doesn't matter if you were a nerd or a jock or a stoner, you watched Creature Features. According to the Bob Wilkins page on Wikipedia, there were weekends when more people watched Creature Features than watched Saturday Night Live in its absolute heyday. The thing that was interesting was his comments during the breaks. He actually watched the movies before airing them, and even alone in your house on a Saturday night, you felt like part of a community of people watching these cheesy movies together.

(Note: According to comments here on the blog and on my Facebook link to it, it wasn't just a guy thing. My apologies for my sexist assumption.)

Wilkins passed away last year. All the tributes to him recall a line he said often. "Don't stay up, it's not worth it." This was his way to tell you that the second movie was a turkey, but his fans absolutely didn't care. You might miss something Bob said in the second movie, and you knew your friends at school would know about it and you wouldn't. That was not an option, and since VCRs were still a few years off, you watched the cheesy movie anyway, even against Bob's usually accurate advice.

Between the two movies, he'd have special guests. Before Star Trek conventions were the Big Damn Deal they later became, he would have some actor or actress that played a role on just a couple episodes talk about the Good Old Days. He also interviewed actors and directors from the movies he showed, or people who were serious horror fans. Some of the people were kind of silly, but he interviewed them straight. It was riveting television.

It's hard for me to remember his best lines. These shows weren't repeated over and over, so much of his best material is stuck in the somewhat fading memories of his fans. You can see some clips on The You Tubes. I do recall he would tell you the movies that would be on next week. One introduction sticks in my head to this day. "Next week we will be showing Attack of the Crab Monsters, not to be confused with the Army training film of the same name."

I also remember how his crew would laugh at his best lines. There was no live studio audience, but every once in a while, he'd let go with a perfect gag and the cameramen and sound guys would be laughing their heads off. I remember that with Lon Simmons when he broadcast the Giants games on the radio back in the day as well.

Watchable local TV programming. Must see local programming, in fact! There's no explaining that to young people today. If you weren't there, it's hard to believe it ever existed.

Best wishes to the friends and family of Bob Wilkins, from a fan.

Tilda at the Tea Dance

The magnificent Tilda Swinton will be in Provincetown next month when she is honored by the wee but A-list Provincetown International Film Festival, which runs June 16-20 in the queerest town in America. The fun-loving homos in Ptown will show Tilda some love by bestowing upon her the 2010 Excellence in Acting Award, which seems to be in honor of her ouvre, rather than any of her particular remarkable roles. The Provincetown International Film Festival began in 1999 by honoring John Waters. I've seen this eccentric mustachioed Ptown resident riding his funny bicycle along Commercial Street, looking like a character in one of his films. I've also sat across the dining room at Victor's while the beautiful Michael Cunningham dined with the avant-garde director. Yes, I admit, when I was in college, I thought John Waters was pretty cool, especially when I went to a "scratch and sniff" showing of Polyester (I don't recall many other details, blessedly). I'm sure Mr. Waters will be attending the festival. No word yet if Tilda will bust a move at the Tea Dance.

Iron Man 2, Physics 0

I saw Iron Man 2 last night. It was what you expect from a sequel, not quite as good as the original, but not awful. It was a little too long, crammed to overflowing with few too many characters and sub plots, the charming hero of the first film not quite as charming the second time around. But it was a Big Stuff Blowing Up movie, and if that's what you wanted to see, that's what you got.

It was the textbook example of what the young people today call "aight", pronounced like "all right" when you don't have enough energy to pronounce the l or the r.


But my big problem with the movie, nerd that I am, is physics. But trust me, it isn't really nerdy physics that was my problem.

We can ignore the physics of unlimited energy in Iron Man and unlimited ammo in War Machine, the gray Army version of the flying suit. My problem in the movie deals with gravity, stuff that goes up but, for reasons passing understanding, declines the coming down part.

Tony Stark gets loaded and shows up to a party dressed as Iron Man. At least this is in character, as Tony was a fall down drunk in the comic books as well. The rest of the party guests look like they have been shipped in from the best strip clubs in town, and he starts impressing the girls by throwing a champagne bottle in the air and destroying it with his hand mounted repulsor ray. Oooh, that's fun! Girls starting throwing the bottles in the air above the crowd and he shoots those bottles out of the air as well.

Excuse me, where does the broken glass go? I know I'm not supposed to think about as petty a problem as gravity when watching a Big Stuff Blowing Up movie, but the scene ends with one girl (and they aren't women, they're girls, as in the phrase Girls Gone Wild) carrying a huge watermelon she can barely lift, let alone throw two feet above her head, and Iron Man obliges by blowing it to smithereens, covering the assorted bimbos in the splash zone with icky, sticky fun!

The rules in a movie don't have to be the same way the rules in real life, but they do have to be internally consistent. If blowing up a watermelon means people getting hit with watermelon debris, blowing up champagne bottles in the exact same scene should also effect the people in the blast zone. And not in a good way.

Last year, a pleasant time watching the frothy Mamma Mia! was ruined by incessant usage of math and logic. This year, I used physics to break the magical spell of willing suspension of disbelief during Iron Man 2. In my defense, it wasn't the tough part of physics, it was the part that any toddler who knocks something breakable off of a table can understand.

Would that the director and screenwriters had made an effort to reach this level of understanding. Maybe the message was supposed to be "nothing ever happens to innocent bystanders", but it felt like "we the filmmakers don't give a rat's rectum what happens to innocent bystanders, because in this movie they don't count".

What I've learned about the supermarket rags.

I've been running The Other Blog for about five months now and I have learned to spot the subtle differences among The Only Ten Magazines That Matter. I've also done a little research into the business of supermarket magazines and the truth is... they don't matter. At least not as much as they once did.


The Big Winner. Currently, People magazine sells nearly four million copies a week. No other supermarket rag sells half that much. People is owned by Time Inc., who does not own any other magazine regularly found on the checkout counter. They do have a teen version and a country version of People, but in the supermarkets where I shop, those are in the magazine rack.

People almost always talks to its subjects, so it really doesn't count as gossip. They actually broke the Heidi Montag surgery story with Heidi going on the record. They also had Heidi's mom on the record saying she hated the idea. This is the way they come in on two sides of a "controversy", by talking to people on both sides. So far, they have been on Kate Gosselin's side and haven't talked to Jon at all this year. (No one is even mentioning Jon anymore, but many magazines have decided they hate Kate.) The editors at People don't use anonymous sources, at least not for stories on the cover.


The Big Loser. American Media Inc. (AMI for short) publishes all the supermarket rags on newsprint, National Enquirer, Sun, Globe and National Examiner, and one of the glossy magazines, the Star, which Rupert Murdoch started in 1974 to compete with the Enquirer and sold to AMI in 1990. In its heyday of the 1970s and 1980s, the Enquirer sold about six million copies a week. It now sells about 1.2 million, and the Star about 1.4 million. TV gossip shows stole a lot of the magazine's thunder about thirty years ago, and Internet gossip is picking on the bones today. AMI owns Radar Online, which is significantly less popular than its major rival TMZ.com.

British gossip rags have much more market penetration in their smaller market than American tabs today, so AMI brought Brits in to run things in the 1990s and 2000s with disastrous results. The Globe and Examiner are reduced to leaking gossip about people who were famous before I graduated high school, stories I call Hey Old Timer Gossip on The Other Blog. All the supermarket rags that aren't covering old timer gossip have decided that Reality TV is their bread and butter, so much so that major gossip stories in other venues, like the legal troubles of starlet Lindsay Lohan and Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger get no coverage at all. Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor's arrest for rape probably wouldn't have been worth mentioning in the supermarket rags except that he was on Dancing With The Stars last year.

Until I did a little research, I assumed the supermarket rags knew what they were doing covering the stories they covered, but clearly they haven't a clue on how to survive. Publishing only once a week means they can't keep up with TV or Internet sources, and though Murdoch quit the weekly gossip business with his tail between his legs twenty years ago, his New York Post gossip section Page Six often gets stories that go national, usually when they are being denied by the participants.

Still, I'm going to keep my other blog going. After all, without the tabloids, how will I be able to find out when the world will end? Well, I could read The San Francisco Chronicle, but it's pretty much at the level of supermarket rag since the Komodo Dragon Happy Meal Phil Bronstein took the helm.

'Her Deepness' should be in charge

As I've been following the news about the oil that has been gushing (one week), and gushing (two weeks), and gushing (three weeks), and gushing into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20—more than one month—I'm pretty upset. I am generally a supporter of President Obama, but he really screwed up on this one. He should have sent in our highly trained US military. They would've figured out how much oil was "leaking" and how to fix it instead wasting time pointing fingers while our natural environment became polluted at an unprecedented level. Then he should've sent the bill to BP.

Obama should also listen to Her Deepness. If there is any good news in all this, it is Dr. Sylvia Earle. Alas, she is not a lesbian, but she is a feminist, a pioneer, an adventurer, a goddess. She testified before Congress a few days ago, calling for the nation to act to protect the marine resources in the Gulf of Mexico. "These are assets worth protecting as if our lives depend on them, because in no small measure, they do," she said in her deep, calm voice.

Among her many achievements, she's the former chief scientist for NOAA and now an explorer-in-residence for National Geographic. She's been called a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress, the first "Hero for the Planet" by Time, and "Her Deepness" by The New Yorker. Coolest of all, she holds the record for the deepest untethered dive by any human being (1,250 feet in a special diving suit) and set a record for deepest solo dive (3,300 feet in a submersible rover).

Perhaps most interesting to us sapphists, however, is the fact that in 1970 she led a team of female oceanographers on an undersea mission. The "women aquanauts" (awesome!!) lived for fourteen days in a small structure 50 feet underwater. It was part of
the government-funded Tektite II Project, designed to study undersea habitat. It was a project of the U.S. Navy, the Department of the Interior and NASA. I believe this black-and-white photo from Life shows the women diving to the aquanaut facility. And I think these are the aquanauts in their bikinis, with Earle on the far left. No question, they should be in charge.

Holly Miranda

You might enjoy the hypnotic music of Holly Miranda, who just finished touring with Tegan and Sara. She's an out lesbian who doesn't make a big deal of it (though I am equally fond of out lesbians who do indeed make a big deal of it.) She's adorable and arty. Her music is lush and pensive. I'm thinking it's something best enjoyed in a club, late, after a few drinks, sweating alongside strangers. And, frankly, I haven't done that in years. Perhaps not since I was Holly Miranda's age. (I think she's 27.) Nonetheless, check out her excellent acoustic cover of Lauryn Hill's "Ex Factor." I believe that is Chris Martin singing timid backup.

Holly, it seems, is a charming little tomboy. According to The New York Times, which ran a profile of her back in February, she prefers lug soles to stilettos. The writer described a photo shoot in which Holly was all dolled up in a Marc Jacobs dress. "But instead of heels," the article continued, "she wore her trusty pair of heavy, worn work boots, and once the shoot ended she quickly changed back into jeans and a Billy Idol T-shirt." Sounds like someone we might know.

She's an intriguing artist who ran away from home—a strict Pentecostal family—at 16 to pursue her music. Enjoy my favorite new ragamuffin.

Rand Paul is not a racist!

He's an idiot. They are worse.

In most polite company these days, racists know they can't say what they really think, and so they couch it in code words. Idiots have no such compunctions.

Rand Paul is a special kind of idiot. He's a Libertarian. I should have some sympathy for him because I was a Libertarian.

When I was 20.

Then I met some other Libertarians. These idiots are terrifying. Anyone who does even a tiny amount of maturing has to get away from these stunted adolescents as fast as they can. For example, Dennis Miller considers himself a Libertarian. He was a Ross Perot supporter in 1992 when he was nearly 40.

I had an excuse in 1976. I was a snot-nosed kid. Miller does not have that defense. He's just an idiot.

Rand Paul's position on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the standard propertarian party line. Propertarians are a particularly dull-witted strain of the Libertarian breed. If two people's rights are in conflict, whoever owns more property wins. If some business owner wants to discriminate against me because I'm white or I'm old or I don't attend the right church, the government has no right to interfere according to the propertarian point of view. My money is no good in their store and I can be turned down for a job for which I'm qualified or fired from that same job.

Here's the thing about most propertarians. Most of them think that discrimination is something that happens to other people. More freedom and less government is always the answer. Paul, idiot that he is, is now saying that Obama sounds "un-American" for attacking British Petroleum, the perpetrators of one of the worst environmental disasters of all time that is still an ongoing situation.

Let's review this, shall we? Obama, an American president elected overwhelmingly by the American people is "un-American" for asking for responsibility from a foreign owned corporation legally liable for an environmental nightmare that will disproportionately affect the livelihoods and property of Americans.

As I said. Idiot.

Some people are comparing Rand Paul with Sarah Palin. It's not completely fair. I've heard Rand Paul actually complete a sentence. He not only got through college, he's an ophthalmologist. His problem is that he has steeped in the scum-filled Libertarian gene pool for so long, he doesn't know reality from the weird concoction of paranoid fantasies and unworkable solutions these people openly espouse.

In 2008, Paul was campaigning for his father in Montana, and he spoke of the feared NAFTA superhighway and the "Amero" currency as though they were real. This is what happens when you live in a bubble and everyone you talk to is just as crazy and stupid as you are.

He showed some guts going on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Guts, but not much brains, as one might expect from an idiot. His comments on civil rights were front page news and Maddow, who is not an idiot, tore him to shreds in a fair and balanced way. He is now backpedaling fast enough to win an Olympic medal. He has canceled an appearance this Sunday on Meet The Press, claiming exhaustion. He is the third such cancellation in the show's sixty three(!) year history. The other people who flaked were Louis Farrakhan and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a.k.a. Bandar Bush because of his close ties to the Bush crime family.

Being an idiot does not disqualify a person from elected office. Rand Paul is running for the Senate seat being vacated by Jim Bunning, who has some strong idiot tendencies himself. But Paul has a long campaign ahead of him and a serious lack of experience at this level, and though he currently has a very big lead, his best strategy may be running out the clock.

Sadly for Dr. Paul, one of the main weaknesses of idiots is that they never use the best strategy.

Young Frankenstein is the favorite comedy horror film

While there is a day remaining on the poll for best comedy horror film, the mercy rule is being invoked. Young Frankenstein was chosen by 83% of the people who stated a preference, while the second place films were only on 27% of the ballots. The people have spoken.

Young Frankenstein is one of my favorite Mel Brooks films, along with The Producers and Blazing Saddles. As a Highlight Reel™, I would say it is my favorite work of Marty Feldman and Cloris Leachman, and the funniest work for Peter Boyle and Gene Hackman, but the rest of the cast have several movies I like at least as much. Both Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn are good in other Mel Brooks' film and in movies by other directors. Teri Garr is good in Tootsie and I like Kenneth Mars' work in The Producers and What's Up, Doc?

I say this more as an observation that a criticism, but Mel Brooks does not always strike when the iron is hot, even in the movies of his I like. Young Frankenstein is a parody made in the 1970s about horror films as they were made in the 1930s. Blazing Saddles makes fun of westerns long after the genre has lost steam. Even Spaceballs came out four years after the last film of the Star Wars trilogy was released.


I voted for more than one movie on the list, including Young Frankenstein, but I would like to put in a good word for Shaun of the Dead, which I misspelled in the list as Sean of the Dead. It is making fun of horror films as the genre exists today, not as a tribute to films decades past. Shaun actually has horror aspects to it, gore and death and the like, and it is also very funny.

I do not think the voters made a mistake favoring Young Frankenstein. I can still remember multiple scenes from the movie that make me laugh. My point here is that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are one of my favorite comedy duos, most especially in Shaun of the Dead and their cop film parody Hot Fuzz.

Random 10, 5/21/10

Bird Dog The Everly Brothers
Po' Lazarus James Carter & The Prisoners
Sweet & Slow Fats Waller
Death Or Glory The Clash
One Love Bob Marley & The Wailers
Here Comes The Flood Peter Gabriel
Snowball Hoagy Carmichael
Just A Girl No Doubt
Old Man Randy Newman
Stranger In The House Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Not a bad list, not the greatest I've ever put up. The oldest song on the list is ironically the most recently released, the prison work song Po' Lazarus from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? The recording of Here Comes The Flood is from this century, and Peter can still hit the high notes on that song, which is remarkable. There are covers of Randy Newman's Old Man on The You Tubes, but not the original, which is a shame.

So, wadda you listenin' to?

Census Week continues:A memory from my last office job.

I've done a few interesting things in my life. There is a small number of people who are interested in my time in a synthesizer band in the 1980s. A somewhat larger number of people will happily listen to stories about my four day stint on Jeopardy! Among my students, there is more interest still in my career writing video games, which many young people think is the coolest job in the world.

Students are mystified as to why I would quit such a terrific gig. I explain that it is in general a young man's game, and the allure of working long hours without any extra pay wears thin after a while, and the companies can always find some one else, usually somebody young and less experienced, to do the job a mature person finds onerous.


Working for the census, some of the data entry is kind of like programming in that there are two levels of errors. The simplest level is math errors, like the number of hours worked when entered from start to end times not adding up to the total. Once those errors are fixed, a batch of payroll requests is saved and the next error level is reported on, checking to see if other time sheets from the same people either have overlapping hours worked or demand overtime. There's a whole rigmarole for people asking for overtime.


This reminded me of programming. The first level of errors are like spelling mistakes, but there are also logic mistakes that the compiler will catch. What makes programming more challenging than mere data entry is the next level, where you have to check if the program you have written that now is free from spelling and simple logic mistakes actually does what is says it will do.


To this day, I enjoy programming. Making the computer do stuff is fun and getting it to do it exactly correctly or making the output pretty or useful is a challenge.

I can even enjoy data entry, especially if I can see there is an end to it and I know what the payoff will be. For example, the research I did about the mortality rates for pro football players and pro baseball players compared to the general public was an enjoyable way to spend two weekend afternoons, with the bonus of debunking an unsubstantiated claim from the Internet.

But the work at the census, while not as interesting as programming, reminded me of why I didn't want to write video games any more. When Castle Wolfenstein and its ilk became a major game genre, I lost interest in a big way. They are called first person shooters in the jargon of the biz, and I hate them with a white hot hate. I am in no way exaggerating when I say I prefer data entry to playing games like Grand Theft Auto. I will actually volunteer to do data entry to answer a question that interests me. I won't play GTA for love or money.

I'm not some weird pixel pacifist who won't play a violent video game. I loved Defender and Robotron 2084. I helped write Road Rash II, for pity's sake. But when the first person shooter became the dominant genre, my days in the business were numbered and I'm happy I left to do something I actually consider useful.

Kagan, reconsidered

Earlier on this site I said that I was keeping my queer little fingers crossed for Elena Kagan's nomination because I had assumed—based on her haircut, her fondness for softball and cigars, Andrew Sullivan's declarations, and my own rusty gaydar—that she was indeed an authentic lesbian. Alas, no. She says she's not gay. Her friends say she's not gay. Her family (according to my source) says she's not gay. The White House says she's not gay. Okay, okay. We get it. SHE'S NOT GAY. But guess what? Methinks the lady doth protest a bit too much. And, therefore, I'm beginning to suspect the deeply troubling possibility that Kagan is one of those sad, lonely unrealized lesbians, or, worse, a repressed victim of "lesbian panic" who has chosen to remain in the closet.

It has also recently come to light that Kagan might not support gay marriage. Of course, folks on the right are crying that she does support gay marriage (which is oddly comforting). But gay rights activists are rightly worried that her legal writings contain the statement: "There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage." That does not sound good. However, an article on Salon makes the point that, in a possible attempt to appear more centrist, Kagan might have been trying to back off the very pro-gay rights stance she took while dean of Harvard Law School. Even if this is the case, I am still troubled by her, at best, political maneuvering and, at worst, closeted behavior in order to advance her career by seeming less supportive of gay rights. Andrew Sullivan put it this way: "Her entire life seems to have been a closet - in the pursuit of a career."

I would love to have the first gay American on the US Supreme Court. But does it count if she's in the closet?

Census Week continues:El Censo de Panamá

Not every country takes their census the same way. Yes, there are other ways besides the good old American way!

Seriously, there have to be.

My close personal bud Padre Mickey and his wife The Lovely Mona were counted in the Panamá census on Sunday May 16. The entire county of a little more than three million people is required by law to be in their homes. You can be fined or arrested for being out on the street. Obviously, Panamá does not have legions of freedom lovin' gun toters, because I think the Tea Partiers would have mass aneurysms if we conducted the Census this way in the States.

Unlike the U.S. Census, which asks about ten questions total, there are ten pages and 54 questions, and they get really specific. They wanna know about your stuff, from toilets to teevees, from cars to computers. If every census taker could ask about 100 people to fill this thing out, and that seems like a high estimate to me, they would still need to hire between 30,000 and 40,000 people for that Sunday to be enumerators.

Then you have all that paperwork to go through, so another small army of clerks have to be hired to get this stuff into usable form. I, of course, now have some experience at massive paper shuffling, but I'm not willing to travel out of the county to take this gig.

Perdón. Lo siento, pero no lo siento mucho.

Um... Cause? Effect? Are you guys talking to each other anymore?

For those of us not keeping track, and that includes me until a few minutes ago, The whole Gulf of Mexico disaster started in late April. This picture is from April 24. It's now May 18 and that means a big old gash in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico has been spewing petroleum like an underwater volcano for about three and a half weeks now. Sure, this is bad news for British Petroleum, it's bad news for the entire Gulf ecosystem. Oil is washing ashore in the Florida keys and this platform is near the Mississippi River delta in Louisiana.

Then we've got the whole "I drink your milkshake" concept popularized in There Will Be Blood. The oil that isn't available to this rig is also not available to other rigs tapping into the same big subterranean pocket of black goo. Moreover, this could easily have a long-term anti-offshore drilling political effect similar to the anti-nuke sentiments triggered by Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. So, short term, there should be less oil available, and long term, it could be harder politically to get to some oil fields.

Supply is shrinking and demand continues to chug along. Prices should therefore go in what direction?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

If you answered "skyrocket", you paid attention in economics class. If you said "plummet", you have been paying attention to the market over the past few weeks. On April 23, the Friday after the disaster started, crude was selling for $85.09 a barrel. Right now, it's under $70 a barrel at $69.16, a loss of about 19% in 25 days and reaching the lowest price this year.

When prices went completely nuts during the end of the Bush administration and hit $140 a barrel, the business press made up some fresh bullshit excuse nearly every day to explain why, with supply and demand not changing all that much relatively, the price could effectively double in eleven months and contract back to where they were in about three months. This bad news should be sending oil prices up, not down.

Are cause and effect not even on speaking terms anymore?

The Prodigal Sister

I realized recently that I've seen Michelle Shocked in concert more than any other artist. And the trend continued Sunday night at Johnny D's in Somerville, Mass., as I sat with the aged hippies, the still-hoping lesbians, and the musician geeks gathered to pay homage to our girl Michelle—icon, genius, diva.

Hey, Chel, you know it's kinda funny, we always thought you were a lesbian. There were, after all, indications early on—the references, the spiked hair, the long tall swagger, the Chuck Taylors. But, no. You went off and got all Christian on us for a while. Married a guy. Put on a dress. It was all so disconcerting. But I've made my peace with it. Come a Long Way is still a favorite anthem to rebellion. 5 a.m. in Amsterdam is still so tender. You are still a great showman, even if there are moments when you seem, uh, not quite stable. You run the stage. You boss the audience. Your music is part of who I am.

So it was like seeing a crazy ex-girlfriend, watching you up on stage again. You looked good. Tanned. Fit. Leather vest. (There you go confusing us again! And what's up with the 2005 album Don't Ask, Don't Tell? You flirt.) Tell me, what's it like to be a skateboard punk rocker? Whatever you're up to, keep on rocking, girl. Keep on rocking.

"So, have you had the census dream yet?"

I've been working for the U.S. Census for about a month now. I'm a clerk in the office and several of the people I trained with are working on shifts that overlap with mine. There's a lot of guys named John in the office, including one friendly guy from Alameda who was in the same training class as I was in. This particular John rides his bike to work, as do many others, so he and I have that in common as well.

Last week, John asked me if I had any dreams of working at the Census yet. When he asked, the answer was no, but this weekend, I had my first.


It was a dream about being at work without pants. You know, that dream.

But recently, I have noticed that I am quite the problem solver in dreams. It turns out I have my pants, I just forgot to put them on. So I duck into an empty room for some privacy, put my pants back on and hope as few people as possible saw me.

When I step back out, my supervisor and her supervisor are waiting for me. The room I stepped into to get dressed was a restricted area, and they have no choice but to let me go. "Was the problem that I wasn't wearing pants?" I ask. Oh, no, no, they both agree. Not wearing pants wasn't the problem, it was entering the restricted room. "I didn't know the room was restricted." That didn't matter, the rules are clear, I'd have to be terminated.

Then I woke up.

You know how if you die in your dream you die in real life? Not true. I've had falling dreams where I landed. Ow. So now I've had a dream in which I was fired, but I haven't actually lost my job. Those first few minutes after waking up were a little odd, though. My thoughts, in order were:

Oh, hell, I lost that job. I really need the cash.
Wait! It was just a dream.
I wasn't at work with no pants.
There is no restricted room that will get you fired.
Whew!
Oh, no! I'm not wearing pants!
Wait, that's okay. I just woke up. I don't wear pants when I'm sleeping.
Whew!

~

And so now I have had the census dream. I hope it's just one per customer.

Wherein the title of the post is given at the end, for surprise comic effect.

In 1996, during the resurgence of popularity of board and card games, James Ernest released Give Me The Brain, a fast paced card game about zombies working at a fast food restaurant. The idea of the game is to complete all your tasks so you can leave. Some tasks only require one hand, some require two hands or three hands, but the most difficult tasks require not just two hands but the brain. There is only one brain in the entire operation, so you have to win an auction to get the use of the brain.

Many minutes of jovial fun time could be shared by all.

Of course, I am not a zombie working at a fast food restaurant. I am a clerk with the 2010 United States Census. I don't even know why my new job would remind me of this game.

Okay, I'm lying. I know why.

Welcome to Census Week!

Vox Populi: What's the best horror comedy?

One last genre of comedies is on deck for this week, horror comedy. I came up with nine nominees, but I feel like I'm likely missing some. If you have any nominees, please put them in the comments.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
An American Werewolf in London
Beetlejuice
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Monsters, Inc.
Teen Wolf
Tremors
Sean of the Dead
Young Frankenstein

Some might say the Twilight series or Interview With A Vampire should count, but I decided to limit the list to intentional comedies. I would argue the funniest thing about both those films are the fans, so they don't really count.

Voting closes next Sunday. You can vote for more than one movie.

Favorite fantasy comedy is...

I could put up a second round of voting, but The Princess Bride is the only movie on the list that showed up on more than 50% of the ballots, so I'm going to give it the nod.

Besides being a good romantic adventure movie, I think it is the Highlight Reel™ for many of the actors involved. You could argue it is the best thing in the careers of Cary Elwes and Robin Wright Penn, and it is also my favorite work of Mandy Patankin, Chris Sarandon, Billy Crystal, Fred Savage and definitely Andre The Giant.

If not for This Is Spinal Tap, it would also be my favorite movie directed by Rob Reiner. It is certainly not the best work in the careers of Peter Falk, Peter Cook, Wallace Shawn or Christopher Guest, but only because they have done better work than the very good work they did here.

Next up: Horror comedy! Oooooh, scary, kids!

Happy Birthday to my little sister.

Happy Birthday to my little sister Karla.

Here she is, inventing the concept now known as photobombing. The less successful photobomber obscured by my mom's drink before she went to a party is the author.

At one time, both my little sisters were blondes, but Karla's hair got darker over the years.

And in a more recent picture, she explains to great nephew Emerson the epic win that is getting Smarties in your Halloween swag.

Love ya, sweetie. Many happy returns.

One of these teams is not like the others.

The Stanley Cup playoffs are halfway through, and sixteen teams have been whittled down to four. In the East, the Montreal Canadiens will face the Philadelphia Flyers, who just came back from losing the first three games of a best-of-seven series to the Boston Bruins only to win the last four and the whole series. In the West, it's the top-seeded San Jose Sharks versus the Chicago Blackhawks.

The Sharks are the odd team out. You can even see it in their logo, the only one that spells the name out and the only one without a circled r registration. The Sharks lack history. Montreal's history goes back to before World War I was over and Chicago put a team on the ice since before my dad was born. This is the 43rd season the Broad Street Bullies have played in the City of Brotherly Love. Next year, the Sharks will turn twenty.

Here's another way the Sharks aren't like the other teams. Right now, they are the best team in hockey. They are not just the top seed in the West, they won the President's Trophy, the award for having the best record in the league this year. The NHL has been giving out this Trophy since the league's inception, but has always been considered small potatoes in comparison to winning Lord Stanley's Cup.

Here's another way the Sharks are different. They are the only team to have never won the Stanley Cup of the final four in contention. The Canadiens had decades of dominance when the league had only six teams. They won the first of their 24 Stanley Cups in 1916 before the league existed and won their most recent in 1993. The Blackhawks were the sad sack team of the Original Six, and their last Cup was hoisted in 1961. The Flyers have won twice in 1974 and 1975, back when Bobby Clarke was their big star and leading the league in penalty minutes was their most successful tactic.

There's still plenty of hockey to be played, but this could be the Sharks' year. They have been the top seed in the West before, and they have always found ways to disappoint in the playoffs. Given their history, many experts picked them to lose their series with the Detroit Red Wings in the conference semi-final. The Red Wings are the top franchise in the sport over the past two decades, and the smart money said that the Red Wings knew how to win and the Sharks knew how to lose. The smart money was wrong, and the San Jose beat Detroit easily, 4 games to 1.

For Bay Area sports fans, the Sharks have been the only quality professional franchise in the four major sports. The A's have been the best cheap team in baseball, but that means lean years and fat years and the rich kids stealing their lunch money when the A's are lucky enough to make the playoffs. The Giants are doing everything they can to forget that the best home run hitter in history played left field for them for the past two decades. The 49ers are rebuilding and the Warriors and Raiders just plain suck. The Sharks are the only franchise in the bio-region that consistently make the playoffs and get the advantages the high seeds enjoy. If they continue to play as well as they have in the early rounds, the Bay Area will have its first major pro sports champion since the glory days of the San Francisco 49ers ended back in 1995.

As Long As We're Keeping Score

This blog was my idea but its name was not. I was casting about for some title that might link the two main subjects that I anticipate will be discussed here (soccer and "the law"), and failing in a rather pathetic and uninspired manner, when Thomas McChesney, our marketing director, suggested Keeping Score.

It was perfect. The book I'm reading now, "Inverting The Pyramid" is a history of soccer tactics and of the game itself. A recurring theme in the early chapters of the book is the struggle between early purists of the game, who maintained that the way it was played, not the final result, should be paramount, and innovators who changed the game first by introducing the application of tactics and then altered their team's approach through their vision and competitiveness.

This debate played out at several different points during the development of the tactics and strategy of soccer, after it had evolved from village-wide melees to the more organized competition that grew out of the Laws of The Game adopted in England in 1863. The visionaries, whether steering their clubs away from the strict dribbling game that first evolved, the short passing game that followed, or the iron-clad 2-3-5 formation that was long the only way that squads lined up until the institution of the "WM", were decried for ruining the game.

Eventually, however, the new way became the established way as teams adopted the successful tactics of the leading managers of the day. The reason in every instance: Keeping Score. It is possible, although not likely, that soccer could have evolved into some form of intricate synchronized swimming on turf. But it did not. Ultimately, the competition was determined not by how pretty a player or team looked according to the aesthetics of the day, but whether they scored more goals than the other team.

But was some of the art of the game lost in the process? No doubt. I've been extremely fortunate as a high school soccer coach to have talented players who have always been able to play an elegant, attacking game that pleases at least me to watch. I suspect that, if push ever comes to shove, I will adopt a more defensive approach for my team if their abilities dictate it, if I believe that gives us the best chance of winning. I hope not.

So it is in the practice of law as well. We are bound by, and should willingly adhere to, principles that have been established, whether in the rules of professional conduct, the rules of civil procedure, or legislative laws or judicial rulings, that dictate what we can and cannot do. Questioning, examining, or even testing those limits can be fruitful, challenging, and rewarding. But if we conduct those exercises while simply attempting to stay on the correct side of those pronouncements without considering the reasons for the rules (the "soul" of the law, if you will) we may be successful lawyers but we will lose touch with who we are and (hopefully) why we became lawyers in the first place.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not a Luddite and find excitement in change and new ideas. But not just for innovation's sake, nor at any cost. I understand that, whether on the field, in the courtroom, advising a client, or participating any other job, game, or endeavor, our success is largely measured by Keeping Score. I hope through this blog, however, to not just recount successes or failures, but to lend some observations regarding how I think coaches, players, litigants, lawyers, and employers ought to travel the path to that end result as well.

Julie Mehretu's high art

There are few lifestyles I idealize more than that of the artist. And I don't mean the starving artist. (I gave the starving writer life a whirl, and I can't say I recommend it.) I mean the artist who creates a vision truly original, executes it successfully, gets it on the canvas (or celluloid, or blank page, or CD), and inspires everyone to say, wow.

I recently read about such an artist, Julie Mehretu—a lesbian—in The New Yorker, which is where the bourgeoisie get their glimpses of artists. Fittingly, Mehretu is an artist whose work explores themes of capitalism, economies, colonialism, migration, civilization. It's like when the Impressionists captured the bougie obsession with leisure in the 1870s. These days, rich folk with an eye toward art want images that take them deeper into the concept of compound interest.

Mehretu's work was instantly a hit among collectors, which means she is not commercial and does not do shows. She doesn't shill, and yet her stuff can sell for upwards of $1 million. Not that I don't appreciate her art. I do. It's gorgeous and complicated, so of course I like it. (After all, it's how I like my women woman.)

When I lived in New York, I spent some time working for a private art curator on the Upper East Side. His clients were very wealthy. How wealthy? We visited a client's apartment in the Dakota to make sure the newly acquired piece looked okay next to the Whistler. A woman in a maid's uniform answered the door. I did not necessarily admire the people in that world. But I revered the art.

The article in The New Yorker centered around Mehretu's commission for the lobby of Goldman Sachs. Mehretu said she had no issues with working for a company perceived to be one of the big villains of Wall Street. "I don't see it as an evil institution," she said, "but as part of the larger system we all participate in. We're all a part of it. And, anyway, for me it was about making something—it was about the art."

Random 10+1, 5/14/10

Doo Wop (That Thing) Lauryn Hill
5ive Gears In Reverse Elvis Costello & the Attractions
Love Shack The B-52s
God's Song Randy Newman
Success Iggy Pop
Under Pressure Queen and David Bowie
Spesso Vibra Per Suo Gioco (A. Scarlatti) Cecilia Bartoli
In Dreams Roy Orbison
Waiting In Vain Bob Marley & the Wailers
99 Problems Jay-Z
Special bonus track:
The Groove Is In The Heart Deee-Lite

Recordings well spread out from the last fifty years or so. 9 out of 11 from The You Tubes, only missing a song from Get Happy!, still one of my favorites albums from The One True Living Elvis, and Cecilia Bartoli's version of the Scarlatti tune which translates to "She Often Quakes In His Game" is also not to be found. The list certainly looks random, though you could say that surrounding the real opera singer are two of the most operatic of rock stars, Roy Orbison and Freddy Mercury.

So, whatcha listening to?

Politics makes me crazy sometimes.

Maybe I should amend the title. Politics makes me crazy most of the time.

I don't care for Meg Whitman, but she has a compelling story that might connect with the voters. She created and ran eBay, which is a real success story, unlike senate candidate Carly Fiorina, who ran multiple existing high tech firms right into the ground. Whitman still has to win the Republican primary next month, but she looks like the favorite to be the GOP standard bearer for governor of California. If you've heard her radio ads, you know she's against welfare. She's also in favor of getting rid of a tax on stock market speculation, though she doesn't tout that as loudly.

Yes, that's the problem with California today. We give too much money to poor people and take too much money away from rich people.

But instead of a discussion of where she stands on the issues, one of Whitman's big problems connecting with some voters on the right because she's a Satanist.

How do we know this? Here's a link to Chris Kelly's piece on the Huffington Post, but the basics are that she worked for Procter & Gamble and the Satanist rumors are still alive, though they have been debunked since I was a teen, that eBay lets people auction Satanist paraphernalia, and she is connected to Hasbro and they sell Ouija boards.

Here's another problem for Meg in 21st Century America. She's a female candidate and she's not pretty enough. Of course, she will likely have the good fortune of running against Jerry Brown, and he looks like the Cryptkeeper's scarier brother now.


Okay, that's California, where our candidates tend to be from the corporate whore wing of the Republican Party and not the "Jesus Gonna Be Here" wing. In Alabama, an underhanded attack ad against gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne alleges that he believes that some parts of the Bible are true and some parts (gasp!)... aren't!

Yes, Mr. Byrne is being accused of believing in natural selection and evolution. Mr. Byrne has issued a press release denying the scurrilous accusation. Heck, he's on the State Board of Education and has a long record of standing by the 100% reliability of the superstitions promulgated by desert addled, pig ignorant dirt farmers from 5,000 years ago. You can read more over at Talking Points Memo.

Seriously. The problems we face as a society are real. Arguing about Ouija boards and talking snakes with legs isn't helping.