Grand Mental Station (2.0)

My Patriotism

the fourth, originally uploaded by richietown.

This is a re-post, a day late...

I talk a lot about how I dislike the President and his war, and I dislike most of his foreign and domestic policies. In past years (though thankfully, that fever seems to be breaking) this has been equated with hating America. Politically, I am a liberal, which has become quite a dirty word, even if people are starting to get a grip again and stop telling other people to leave the country if they disagree with the Republican party.

I guess much though I chafed at it, some of that message has still managed to sink in with me, since for several years I wouldn't have called myself a patriot. I wouldn't have been able to tell you that I love America, because of all the things I didn't love about our current government.

But [one night while driving], I began to think about the America I love, the America separate from the politics we argue about. And you know...I can really say that I do love this country. I love it like nothing else.

I love the fact that I am a woman, and educated, employed, paid a good salary, free to choose my spouse, free to choose my friends, free to dress as I please, and free to walk in public on my own.

I love the fact that I am free to smoke or drink or do yoga and eat yogurt, that we may grouse and argue but we listen to music and drink beers and smoke bratwurst and wear shorts and tank tops in the summertime in this country, and set off fireworks and let ourselves indulge in our senses.

I love all the people, online, in magazines, in books, on talk shows, engaged so wholeheartedly in political debate. I love that whether the feelings are positive or negative, the fabric of political debate in this country is vibrant and heartfelt.

I love The Daily Show.

I love baseball.

I love American football.

I love Coca-Cola. I love Marlboro cigarettes.

I love the white Protestant pilgrim churches of New England. I love town fairs on the Fourth of July. I love little kids with face paint and balloons. I love golden retrievers on leashes with American flag bandannas around their necks.

My discomfort with the Iraq war notwithstanding, I love American soldiers. I love their idealism, I love their sacrifice, I love their courage, I love the tradition of our Armed Forces in the Greatest Generation.

I love the Colonial-period history that pervades Boston. I love the fife-and-drum bands marching in parades. I love the re-enactments on Lexington Green.

I love it when an American wins a Gold Medal at the Olympics and they play our national anthem.

I love skater kids and Goths and hip-hop culture. I love De La Soul and Tupac Shakur and Snoop Doggy Dogg and all the amazing artistic expression that has come out of American cities. I love Southern Gospel music. I love Martin Luther King Jr. and Gwendolyn Brooks and Saul Williams.

I love Ernest Hemingway and F.Scott Fitzgerald and Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. I love Edward Weston and Edward Hopper and Ansel Adams.

I love that no one thing--no one racial or ethnic or linguistic or national group--is necessarily "American".

I love the things about my country that I didn't realize I loved before I left it to visit other places--I love 24 hour convenience stores. I love neon lights. I love skyscrapers made of steel. I love sleek, aesthetically pleasing American cars. I love club sandwiches and quarter pounders with cheese. I love pizza and ballpark hot dogs. Sadly, it's only been those few times I've been overseas and missed those things so terribly that I've really understood how deeply American I am.

I love that this country forgives me for taking it for granted.

"Don't you hate it when people cut in line?"

The redhead in the white car next to mine asked me through her window. She was wearing way too much brick-colored blush and purple eye shadow.

We were here:

She was attempting to pass me on the right on a one-lane on-ramp, the better to bisect the two slowly merging lanes of traffic getting on to Rte 128 ahead.

In other words, not only was she pulling a douche move, she was telling me, douche-ily, that she was pulling a douche move.

She'd stopped because ahead of us a Lexus had pulled out into the middle of the on-ramp, instead of over to the left as it had been, anticipating the merge onto the highway. The Lexus blocked her path, I looked over at her, and she said that. I still don't know if she meant for that to be some zingy parting line before she was thwarted, or if somehow she expected me to sympathize with her over the driver ahead. Either way...

"Yeah," I said matter-of-factly. "I especially hate it when they feel the need to SHOVE IT IN MY FACE."

Right at that moment, the traffic happened to surge, and we pulled ahead of her. As we passed, I heard her let out a shocked, indignant shriek, which faded satisfyingly as we got in front of her: "EXCUSE ME?!?"

I definitely shouldn't let assholes rent this kind of space in my brain, but what still makes me shake my head in disbelief a day later is the tone of astonishment in her voice, as if she simply couldn't believe she hadn't rendered me mute with her you-go-girl bitchitude. Somehow that pisses me off, in the end, more than anything else. The really ironic thing is, I didn't really care all that much about what she was doing till she opened her mouth--I've seen worse on 128.

But apparently I'd succeeded in pissing her off back, because a few seconds later she gunned her engine, pulled up onto the median strip, played a little chicken with the infuriated Lexus driver, finally got around him and went off ahead of the 18 wheeler to ply her fate at the merge. "SEE YA!" she yelled out her window as she passed.

Um, so you step to me, a complete stranger, and then all you've got is "Excuse me?" and "See ya!"?? Come on. You've gotta do better than that if you're going to try to start shit around here.

First Ten Songs

Red at SG started this.

First 10 songs that come up on iPod shuffle:

1. "Discipline" by Nine Inch Nails - Well played, iPod.
2. "Necromancer" by Gnarls Barkley - aka the best thing to happen to pop music in the last decade.
3. "Sextet: 3rd movement" by Steve Reich - One of Steve's "bleepy-bloopy" songs, on my 'pod because we share iTunes now (he uses the Prodigal iPod). How to describe this piece? Well, it may have been one of the ones that once caused Steve's dad to knock on his door and tell him the CD was skipping.
4. "Go-Go Gadget Gospel" by Gnarls Barkley - I shouldn't listen to this right before bed. Gets me all hyped up.
5. "Your Love" by The Outfield - Shut up.
6. "Under the Bridge" by Red Hot Chili Peppers - There, see?
7. "Time of Your Song" by Matisyahu - Probably my favorite Hasidic dance hall reggae song ever.
8. "Red House" by Jimi Hendrix - Just for added flavor.
9. "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance - I once asked Andrew, my barometer on all things cool, if I would lose all street cred by admitting I liked this song. He answered in the affirmative, but oh well.
10. "Jesus of Suburbia" by Green Day - I still can't believe Green Day is a big respectable band now. But a good song.

P.S. I highly recommend you check out Steve's list. Steve's list wins.

Window Shopping in Vegas

Creepy Dolls, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

I am now the proud owner...

Trent Reznor: NIN Rehearsals, 6.04.08, originally uploaded by Nine Inch Nails Official.

...of tickets to the NIN shows this August, the 7th and 8th, at Mohegan Sun and the DCU Center. After all the shows I've been to, exhausted as they leave me, I've always walked out wishing I could see another one right away (hell, I'd go to a NIN show every weekend if possible). Now I'm going to get to do just that.

Hell yeah. I can't wait to hear the new tracks live.

I'll take 'No shit, Sherlock' for $1000, Alex

''The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.'' --From a US Supreme Court ruling that Guantanamo Bay detainees should have access to US courts.

The Wire

HBOs The Wire - Day 13, originally uploaded by Locator.

It was a difficult morning. I was up and ready in plenty of time to go to the airport for YET ANOTHER trip to Las Vegas, but there was one snag in my plan: my iPod.

Last night I sat in the blue glow of the computer screen in my darkened apartment, my husband who didn't have to catch an 8 am flight already in bed, the iPod continually showing itself in my iTunes menu, then vanishing, infuriatingly, when I went to click on it. I tried resetting. I tried restarting. I tried opening and closing iTunes. Nothing worked. I finally gave up the ghost, as my time to sleep was dwindling with every angry click of my mouse.

This morning it was more of the same. Now the iPod would register correctly in the iTunes menu, but wouldn't sync. I tried restoring the factory settings, and then syncing just a few things, the essentials I wanted to take with me. The clock was ticking.

It synced approximately three items before giving me another excuse why it wouldn't work: "the source file cannot be found."

By the time I finally abandoned my empty and unsyncable iPod, I was running late. I wound up literally hyperventilating in traffic on 93 south, inching along as official check-in time for my flight came and went. If it hadn't been for a daring and technically illegal dash down the HOV lane, I probably wouldn't have made it. My travel agent told me in a sucks-to-be-you tone that all the rest of the flights for the day were full--if I hadn't made it on that plane, my ass would've been grass. So of course I'm glad I ditched the iPod. Wish I'd done it sooner, as a matter of fact.

But I am still iPod-less, and in addition to the obvious reasons that sucks, I'm especially peeved that it picked a week involving two six-hour flights to crap out on me, because I was greedily anticipating pounding two full seasons of The Wire this week during those interminable flights.

Ah yes, welcome to another episode of Beth's Behind the Times Pop Culture Commentary. First it was Audioslave; now, a full half-decade after everyone else in the Western Hemisphere got hooked on David Simon's riveting Baltimore police drama, I'm bringing up the caboose on that, too.

Despite the fact that it's the only place to find good television anymore, HBO is just not in my budget. Most of the time I have to watch TV these days is while I'm on an airplane. Hence The Wire + iTunes = heaven in my world. 

I've been a fan of Simon since his first Baltimore police drama, Homicide: Life on the Street, which is still far and away the best show I've ever seen on network television. The Wire is like Homicide in panorama: encompassing not only on the homicide unit, but the narcotics unit, and the dark world of the West Side housing projects where most of the action is set. It's also like Homicide with a bigger budget, and oh yeah, on a network and in the hands of producers that understand the first thing about what the show is trying to accomplish.

I was into Homicide when it was on in the early 90's, back when it made the cover of TV Guide's "Best shows you're not watching" issue. Andre Braugher won an Emmy for Frank Pembleton (still the best character I've ever encountered on network television), and most people couldn't pick him out of a lineup; most people are acquainted with Richard Belzer's character "Munch" from Law & Order: SVU, but completely unaware that he originated on Homicide.

Homicide was a deeply misunderstood, underestimated and underserved show. It never got its due, it was meddled with by the powers that be at NBC, and watching the current response to The Wire, it seems less of the American zeitgeist was willing to receive a difficult, gritty crime drama about hard truths starring less-than-Hollywood-ideal actors at the time Homicide came into being. To some extent, that's still true, but there's been a heightening of our sensibilities about TV shows and their possibilities in the intervening years, mostly due to the influence of HBO and originals like The Sopranos and Sex and the City.

He may only now have the tools at his disposal that he always deserved, but David Simon is still trying to tell the same basic story, the story of Baltimore and all its tangled, many-faceted troubles. Simon was a beat reporter for the Baltimore Sun and seems to have gotten out of journalism and into television when he could no longer refrain from the urge to editorialize about the world he saw around him, of corruption and drugs and human tragedy on both sides of the badge.

Since it's a commentary on the nuances of a real place, the show has natural weight and depth. Some of the same delicate cinematography that marked Homicide contributes to a similar atmosphere of artful apprehension. But what's most amazing about The Wire, in contrast to Homicide and every other police drama running, is its balance--it gives the marginalized, disenfranchised kids from the projects equal time and equal voice in the story.

It isn't until you realize this that you realize how seldom you see this perspective rendered so subtly and sympathetically. You are expected to understand urban dialect if you are to understand at least half of the story; you are also expected to sympathize with the marginalized characters as the lines between cop and robber, CEO and kingpin, good guy and bad guy, blur and fall apart.

The Wire fleshes out concepts I've only heard expressed theoretically before, things like disenfranchisement and white privelege, cycles of poverty and violence and addiction and homelessness. One of the most profound examples of this for me was the scene where Bubbles, a heroin addict police informant, winds up at one of the white detective's son's soccer games because of a scheduling snafu. McNulty lets Bubbles out into the idyllic sunshine of the soccer field, where cared-for white children run lustily over the grass; the juxtaposition against the bereft inner-city world in which most of the show is immersed could not have been more jarring. The actor playing Bubbles deftly inhabits the wonder and heartbreak of that moment, that first sight of the soccer field and all the realizations that accompany it.

Then Bubbles is summoned out of the car to meet McNulty's ex-wife, a coldly beautiful brunette in a camel-colored coat. Appoaching her, Bubbles assumes what is obviously the most welcoming, friendly, positive body language he knows--stepping from foot to foot, smiling broadly and warmly at her, holding up one hand for a handshake. "Yes, hello," is all he gets from McNulty's appalled ex, who quite pointedly refuses to touch him.

It's just one of many scenes in this show that drive home wrenching points about social divides, one of many moments in which I stepped back and thought, given the circumstances, what else could you reasonably expect either of these characters to do? This show has got to be the most complete, detailed, heartbreaking summation of race and class in America that has ever been committed to film. I look forward to the next scene, the next episode, the way I look forward to the next page of a really good book.

And right now, it's all just sitting on my hard drive, thousands of miles away.

Must be a Canadian thing

Here I am in scenic Toronto, Ontario. OK, 'scenic' might be a bit too strong a word.

It's the first time I've been to the fair land up north since high school, and I've never been to Toronto. I've also never flown Air Canada before, and the whole passport-extra security thing and unfamiliar destination disrupted my travel routine, which I otherwise have down to a science. For instance, were you aware that cutoff time for check-in is one hour before boarding on international flights, even if it's just to Canada? I sure wasn't! Luckily, they took pity on me and let me on the plane.

I boarded the jet, outfitted very much like a JetBlue plane, with comfy seats and chairback TVs, of which I approved. Air Canada has taken over the little tail end gates at Terminal B in Boston, which I remember being a holding pen of pure misery the last time I was there, since there were no restrooms behind its separate security, and not a lot of signage signaling as much outside the metal detectors. Also, its newsstand / coffee / entertainment options were limited to a little kiosk with soggy sandwiches and dingy windows looking out on the tarmac.

It's not exactly a place of overwhelming happiness now, but under Canadian supervision it has become entirely more pleasant, complete with bathrooms, fresh, sparkling clean furnishings, and generally highly friendly people.

We don't often think about culture shock when it comes to Southern Canada, especially for those of us from the Northeast US. In appearance, Toronto looks very much like the American Midwest, and most people speak English in an only lightly accented vernacular.

But I've found out today they do things a little different in Canada. Or, at least, on their airlines.

I boarded the plane with my iPod strapped on as usual. I was in one of the back rows of the plane, so I was one of the first on (another JetBlue-like practice). The plane was completely parked, with the door open, and people still boarding as I sat down, stowed my carryon, and sat back to keep listening to my podcasts.

That's when a flight attendant confronted me. "You need to take off your headset till we're in the air."

At first, I just blinked at her. Right behind her was a man pounding away on a laptop keyboard, and in the row behind him, a man sat scrolling feverishly on a Blackberry. "You have to turn off all electronic devices until we're in the air."

"Even just sitting here on the ground?" I asked bewilderedly. She repeated what she'd said. I bit my tongue before I could rat out Laptop Guy and BlackBerry Boy and just did as I was told. I didn't want to add "failing to obey the instructions of a flight crew" to my personal resume this morning.

She went on to bust Laptop Guy shortly after me, all while the plane sat parked, and people were still streaming on board. It would be another 15 minutes before the plane even pushed back from the gate.

"It's too early to be working anyway," she told him.

As the plane taxied out to the runway, the usual announcements came on over the plane's PA about the lifejackets under your seat, and in the event that the plane should undergo radical depressurization at 30,000 feet, you will have the presence of mind to deploy an oxygen mask, prior to assisting any children. And, of course, that electronic devices should be turned off from this point forward.

That's when the flight attendant reappeared at my side. She pointed up to toward the ceiling where a disembodied voice was reading the safety instructions. "See? It says right there, from this point forward all electronic devices must be shut off."

At that moment I couldn't help but think back to CVS Boy. Some people who are allergic to cats attract them; others have a pattern of attracting oversharers or assholes. I seem to attract customer service persons who can't leave well enough alone.

Several things sprang to mind immediately as she stood back expectantly waiting for my reply. Leading off was the point that the operative phrase was "from this point forward." Not the point 10 minutes or so ago. But I also knew at that moment that if I opened my mouth, my next stop would be out on my ass being questioned by Homeland Security. So I just looked at her. I didn't know what else to do.

Since then, I've encountered a few other examples of what appears to be a uniquely Canadian comfort with saying whatever comes to mind to complete strangers. Like the woman from Manitoba who offered me a light outside the hotel. For whatever reason, a conversation about airline security rules pertaining to cigarette lighters and matches (the former verboten, the latter allowed on US planes) turned into her confession that an airline security person at the beginning of her trip had pulled out her Rabbit for all to see and demanded to know what it was. This in turn somehow led to the information that she hated her husband, married him too young, and now she's stuck with him and three kids.

This all was revealed in the space of about five minutes--just a chance meeting next to the ashtray outside a hotel, while planes taking off from the airport flew low overhead.

"Well, at least you still have your Rabbit," was all I could think of to say.

YES

Forget about the fact that, as a nation, we still bear the sad disgrace at this late a date that no person of color has ever before held this position in our society. For me, this is about the issues--economic, environmental, social--and what I think is right for this country.

No, it's more than that. It's about what I would need to see happen to even have hope about this country's long-term future anymore.

Too sincere? Too dramatic? Oh, well. I'm too sick of the way things are to care if someone wants to throw a buzzword at me like "elitist" about it. That kind of red-herring bickering has no place in our current situation anymore.

For a while, it seemed that we the people had become incapable of deciding on a leader anymore--for a while, I was hearing about six possible vote counts, three of which could be interpreted in Clinton's favor, and three of which could be interpreted in Obama's. I was thinking it was 2000 all over again, that all these bitter years later we were going to experience the same miserable CF. It's an enormous relief to me that a decision has finally been made--and, of course, that the decision was in favor of the candidate I support.

I have never felt this way about an election. I have never been this passionately following public events. And I have never felt so strongly about a candidate. Or, for that matter, his potential First Lady.

To be honest, if I had my real druthers, it would be Michelle Obama I'd vote for. Her speeches are carefully composed and memorized, of course, as all speeches are, but delivered with such force and conviction--in many cases she articulates the positions her husband stands for more eloquently than he does.

 

If you can watch that woman speak and still reduce her to whether or not she once said 'proud' or 'really proud', well, you and I are just not speaking the same language anymore.

Another stint in Vegas, another moment of Zen

It's no secret that Vegas isn't my favorite place in the world. It's especially not my favorite place to visit on business, in part because much of its design is not conducive to business. Very often, for example, there are even features (or a lack thereof) in a hotel room where you are often trying to work, which are specifically designed to get you to leave it, and go down to the casino and blow your child support payment at the blackjack table, or whatever.

Case in point:

This is the decor in my room at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, which otherwise was very nice. A huge, framed screencap of Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Tim Burton's first Batman film. Generally I liked the movie theme I wound up with, especially the deep purple velvet chair and hollow end table filled with Batman memorabilia near the window. But this...?

Honestly, I don't want to look at any picture of Jack Nicholson, I don't think, when I'm trying to work or sleep. And especially not that one.

Ah, Vegas.

End This War

Senator Barack Obama, originally uploaded by goodmosconi.

Here I go again with the politics. But it's all I can seem to think about lately. So be forewarned: it's rantin' time. 

Since last I wrote about leaving the Clinton fold to evaluate Barack Obama, I'm afraid I've gone from open-minded to closed. And by that I mean, before I set out to learn more about Obama's positions on various issues, I was open to considering another candidate. At this time, I am not.

springtime

springtime, originally uploaded by Waffle Soles.

Andrew: "Just crouched down, pointed my camera under my board and got lucky, haha."

Escaped elephants and ski-jumping tires

I subscribe to a podcast from BestofYouTube.com that I'm quite enjoying. Here are two of the must-sees that I've been telling everybody about:

Police cameras and audio recorders capture the 911 call and police responses about escaped elephants in a residential neighborhood:

Japanese TV. Need I say more? Guys in lab coats rolling tires of varying sizes down a dry ski jump to see which ones go farthest. Starts a little slow, but has a big finish and some truly dramatic soundtrack and camera work.

What a great thing YouTube is. How else would I see all this, PLUS Filipino prison inmates remaking the Thriller video?

Sweetie

IMG_0313, originally uploaded by PhotoCub.

By Andy.

That damn stork commercial

Andy and I watched this commercial together on his HDTV yesterday during the baseball rain delay while we smoked cigarettes together in his room. We sat through it and for a few moments afterward in silence. Then, in a daze, we headed back into the living room to see what the rest of the group watching it on the living room couch thought of it. We found them in silence as well.

I'm sure that there's some Monster.com marketeer somewhere who would be jumping for joy at that. Whether a commercial offends you or pleases you, if it makes every twenty- and thirty-something in a Brookline apartment on a Saturday night stop what they're doing and take notice like that, it's been effective.

But I have to say, its conclusion reflects an attitude I've found at the heart of everything that's been sucky about being an adult so far, especially as an adult with many loved ones who are creative people. Namely, that 'your potential' and 'earnings potential' are interchangeable terms, that in reality it's actually the opposite of the famous line from Fight Club, that even in this time of cultural warfare and escalating national disasters and soaring food prices and real wages being eroded by inflation and no healthcare, you indeed are your job, and that its lack of glamour amounts to making the very efforts your parents made to birth you a waste of time.

Meanwhile, all I've been hearing on the news lately is about the shitty rabbit-hole our collective human civilization is heading down, from food riots in Haiti to disenfranchised young American men fighting in the war in Iraq (I wonder if they'd ever dare make a stork commercial about that), and the plain fact of the matter, I've come to realize, is that there are too many people in the world, too few of them have too much of the money, and there's not anything monster.com is going to do about that.

Maybe it's a bit of an overreaction for a commercial to send me into such a depressive reverie about our geopolitical situation, but it didn't appear, when our silence was broken, that I'd been the only one.

"Man," Andy finally said. "That commercial went deep."

YUSS

(Screencap)

If I play my cards right, maybe I can get to both of those New England dates.

Sometimes the clothes do not make the man

The Boston Gay Men's Chorus at Symphony Hall

Photo courtesy of BGMC.org

Saturday night found us at Symphony Hall to see the Boston Gay Men's Chorus (BGMC) perform their annual concert. Overall, it was a strong performance, and refreshingly different--most of us aren't exposed to much choral music, and when we are, it's a standard soprano-alto-tenor-bass mix or the decidedly treble sound of a school choir. The particular warm, brassy timbre of a tenor-tenor-baritone-bass choir is a rarity, and there's significance in a group formed around sexual orientation using both their bodies and the fact of their collective maleness to create a unique sound.

It was not as polished a concert as I've ever seen at Symphony Hall, but that's to be expected with a community group whose members have other careers. At times the ensemble seemed to have trouble staying together, especially behind soloists, and one of the two soloists on the group's George Michael medley in particular seemed totally lost. The lengthy piece the choir commissioned from Lowell Liebermann for the occasion, a Whitman Oratorio, was well-intentioned, but at times it dragged. The libretto might have done with a bit more careful selection, since some of the lyrics were clearly chosen for their significance rather than their sing-ability, giving the finished product a repetitive, psalm-like quality. That may have been intentional, but more than one audience member, probably regressing to childhood days in church, was witnessed dozing off before the piece was over.

Yet the BGMC brought a vitality I've never seen to the stuffy old hall. The audience, a younger and more casual crowd than the standard symphony throng, also dispensed with classical concert etiquette, showering the chorus with applause whenever it got the opportunity. Some people sitting in the orchestra section gave the conductor, who battled cancer this season, a standing ovation before the concert had even begun. To call them supportive and engaged (right up until about halfway through the Whitman piece, anyway) would be a vast understatement. This concert was about more than music.

And while I've done my best to give it an impartial review just now, I was there above all for one very good non-musical reason, and he was standing right in the front of the tenor section. Whenever his section had a solo, I swore I could pick out his voice, singing the highest part of the harmony.

My friend Andy and I actually met in a chorus room. We sang together throughout middle school and high school, took voice lessons from the same voice teacher, and were in the high school musicals together. Which is when, during the course of putting on Camelot, Andy told me he was gay.  Looking back on it, the only proper response was really, "Duh." But I hadn't been totally sure. And I had questions, which he answered amiably. We discovered we both had a crush on one of the male leads. And that was that.

I actually thought I would probably lose touch with Andy after high school. He was headed to Plymouth State, a good ways away from our hometown and where I was going in Amherst. And...I don't know. It was just a feeling I had. Somehow I didn't picture him being into writing letters.

And that's not what happened. Letter-writing, anyway.

More often, it was emails and text messages and phone calls and updates passed through mutual friends. And then, as we gained independence, it was parties and plays and more musicals, updates on our latest exploits at our respective school newspapers. There were introductions to new friends and moves from one location to another. Ten years after we graduated high school, there have been untold changes and losses, but our friendship has, blessedly, not been one of them.

Andy now lives in an apartment in Brookline with my best friend K (whom I also met in a middle school music program) and her boyfriend Ryan, and the three of them and their cozy apartment are like a second family and another home to me. I'm with them every weekend.

When I think of Andy, I think of the innumerable memories, the stories we have to tell, the experiences we have together, the unique shared perspective we have on formative years. Seeing him at Symphony hall, my first feeling was of pride in him as an individual, my friend, who got to have this experience of a lifetime, performing on such a storied stage.

It wasn't until later on, reading over the words of Whitman that make up the oratorio, including the movement "For Matthew Shepard", that it even occurred to me to put Andy into the darker context invoked by this performance. As triumphant as the concert was, this group exists to counteract the discrimination its members face in the wider world, and that discrimination was omnipresent in the texts they chose to perform, like the poignant "Michael's Letter to Mama".   

I tried, but it just doesn't compute. It's impossible for me to reduce my friend and all he has meant and still means in my life to one demographic identifier; it's impossible for me to contemplate homophobic bigotry and this whole, multi-faceted, multi-talented person in the same thought. It's impossible for me to grok the hatred that's out there, galvanizing this group of 150 many-splendored men just like Andy, the deep and endemic ugliness inspiring what should just be some beautiful music.

How Hillary Clinton convinced me to support Barack Obama

Barack Obama, originally uploaded by Llima.

This is the kind of post I get the idea to write and then think better of, because I am not a political pundit, nor is this a political blog. But I am a voter, and ostensibly I should be thinking at least a little about this stuff. And I have been.

When the Presidential race started, I was a Hillary Clinton supporter for two somewhat foolish reasons: one, I just plain want the 90's back. Putting the Clinton family back in the White House, I somewhat magically thought, might point us back toward those good times instead of continuing the downward spiral of the Bush years. I also found Barack too green and a little too far to the left for my taste--I am a liberal, but something of a fiscal conservative, and I tend to find the middle-of-the-road approach appealing in most cases. And the Clintons have made careers out of being moderate Democrats.

The second reason was, yes, the gender thing. The demonization of Hillary Clinton by the right wingnuts was something that stuck out to me as stemming from more than just political disagreement. Said wingnuts have attacked Hillary with more venom, especially in recent years, than they even reserved for her husband. And yes, I want to see a woman in the White House. Recent research even suggests that societies that have achieved gender equality are better at avoiding violent conflict.

Along those lines, I was also swayed toward Clinton's side when I heard a pundit on NPR dismiss her experience as First Lady as "proximity to power, not actual experience in power," and I thought, that just about sums up most of women's history. Why not give a woman experience in power for once? After all, how could any woman have that experience in power when we've never had a woman President?

It's also been suggested that Clinton's attacks on Obama's "inexperience" come from a similar origin in identity politics--he's in the same experience / discrimination Catch-22.

Where I began to part ways with Clinton stemmed from another decision I made before the Democratic primaries started heating up; I decided that once the two-candidate race gets under way, I will judge the Republican candidate by how he chooses to handle the candidacy of a minority opponent. One single misogynist or racist comment from the GOP on either Clinton or Obama, I thought, and I'd excuse myself from even considering the conservative candidate.

But it turns out I came to that kind of impasse far earlier than I'd expected, and the Republicans weren't involved at all.

New Economy Depression Syndrome

I first read about this term last week. It was coined by a Yahoo! executive, and while I find his 'all you need is love' approach from a position of wealth and power a modern answer to 'Let them eat cake', I found the whole NEDS concept fascinating. One blogger summarizes it this way:

NEDS is best understood, in a workplace scenario, as carpel tunnel syndrome of the mind. Think about it: today’s business world is armed with technological tools designed to make communication effortless and enhance productivity, yet we all seem to be suffering from a downward spiral of information overload, no-nonsense rationality, and social shyness.

He spoke of a world of constant "info-ruption," where stuff is coming at us all day long. In fact, at the time of the US colonies were first settled, our forefathers read as much in their lifetimes what we scan in a single day (about 500,000 words)!

Now, I hate words like 'info-ruption', and I hate the psychobabble-sounding title given to this concept. I realize even talking about this suggests I should go back to listening to crappy New Age music and connecting with my inner child and stop bothering everyone. But if you peel back the layers of corporatized goo all over this idea, it is one I can identify with, and one I'm struggling to figure out how to change.

Thoughts on human nature: Traffic Edition

What is with the people who slow or fully stop in bumper-to-bumper traffic, letting huge gaps form between them and the other cars, letting people from other lanes pass in and out of the lane ahead of everyone else behind them and generally pissing everybody off? Why do people do that?