What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Wednesday, February 28, 2007

   NIPPING AT THEIR HEELS

I can't say I'm a fan of the Killers but they've got potential, and it's been interesting watching this young band either
a) experiment with a wide range of sounds in order to develop their own, or
b) rip off the sounds of many other bands in order to develop their own.

Depends on how charitable you're feeling, I suppose.

Their first album Hot Fuss was a stew of 80s new wave pop influences with a hint of 70s glam-rock gender-bending. Quite fun, mostly pointless. Now, lead singer Brandon Flowers (his real name!) freely admits that he listened to a lot of Bruce Springsteen while writing their latest album Sam's Town, which leans towards the classic rock. Damned however if the new single "Read My Mind" doesn't sound a whole lot like pre-Achtung U2. When the video hits its Big Pop Chorus, it seems Tokyo is where the streets have no name:



But I give the lads some credit -- their songs are catchy, they're stealing from all the right people, and they asked the Pet Shop Boys to remix the new song (Flowers is a big fan) which I find very peculiar and somehow endearing. So maybe third time's the charm. I'll give 'em another chance. After all, Fountains of Wayne have been ripping off Cheap Trick and the Cars for years and I'm still fond of them:

Labels: Bruce Springsteen, music, Pet Shop Boys, the 70s, the 80s

I finally put my profile on John Amaechi to bed yesterday, by the way. I'm disappointed to see that the Advocate beat me to him by a week but Amaechi's PR person told me that they'd set up a deal with ESPN in advance. I'll have to settle for landing the first Canadian gay Toronto bi-weekly newsprint magazine interview.

I spent half an hour on the phone with him last Thursday and he was every bit as kind, intelligent and elegant as he'd come across in his book. And it's been really delightful to see the sports world support him, especially after Tim "I hate gay people" Hardaway sprayed venom everywhere.

Now we'll just have to see if a pro sports player can come out during his career. It's like that morbid joke that floated around the premiere of Philadelphia and Tom Hanks' Oscar win: everyone cries for the dying AIDS patient, but it's the ones who live they can't stand.

Which makes for an unplanned-yet-effortless segue into mentioning the piece I did in the current issue on a new plastic surgery treatment for people with HIV-related facial wasting. The foundation director I interviewed read it and said she was thrilled with how "kind and complimentary" the piece was. I was pleased but surprised, since I thought the tone was just matter-of-fact. I guess I'm just a big softy!

Labels: Canada, fab, health, homo-a-go-go, sports, Trawna, writing

Larry King Live had Laura Bush on last night, trying to make her hubby look good as a cheerleader for the Great War on Terror. It didn't quite work:

"Many parts of Iraq are stable now. But, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everyone."

It's that evil media again, pointing out how Monday's bomb killed 6 people, the other Monday bomb killed 14 people and Tuesday's bomb killed 18 people. Most of these 38 were women and teenagers. Doesn't sound stable to me but I'm not being fair.

Many parts of America are concerned now. But, of course, what we see on television is the one sociopath a day that discourages everyone.

Labels: George W Bush, insanity, media, Middle East, politics, war - what is it good for?

Since I posted my little "Cybermen/Pet Shop Boys" creation on YouTube, I've received a couple dozen positive comments and nearly 150 people have added it to their 'favourites' list, but nothing compares to yesterday's 'Pet Text' on the official Pet Shop Boys site:

20 February 2007
A friend has drawn our attention to two unofficial videos on YouTube for "Integral" and "I made my excuses and left". We quite like them.

I think that's the highest possible praise you can get from the British. I'm thrilled! I got my Nightlife CD signed by Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe in 1999, amidst the usual throng of other people, but Neil took a minute to chat with me. This mention on their site is almost as exciting.

Labels: Doctor Who, England, MeTube, Pet Shop Boys, TV

Good news out of New Orleans:
"Mardi Gras seems more normal this year. Well, as normal as Mardi Gras can be."

In the face of the sickeningly-slow pace of reconstruction, it's great to see Nola slowly getting her mojo back. I'm looking forward to the moment when this sentimental number from the great Billie Holliday (in the 1947 film New Orleans) returns to being lovely, instead of poignant:

Labels: America, music, repair

...yet completely perfect.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. George Takei:

Labels: homo-a-go-go, silliness, TV

Jim Wallis has an op-ed piece in Time that I hope proves to be true:

As I have traveled around the country, one line in my speeches always draws cheers: "The monologue of the Religious Right is over, and a new dialogue has now begun." We have now entered the post-Religious Right era. Though religion has had a negative image in the last few decades, the years ahead may be shaped by a dynamic and more progressive faith that will make needed social change more possible.

People have always told me that religion is necessary because "it brings people together." I've seen precious little real evidence of that -- mostly the opposite -- but I wouldn't mind being proven wrong.

Labels: America, evolution, politics, religion

Love it or hate it, the TV show 24 sure has everyone talking. By coincidence, my friend Darrell, my 'Ottawa correspondent' Guy in DKNY and Vanity Fair's mighty James Wolcott all weighed in this week on 24 and the depressing 'torture is fun' debate we're all subjected to these days.

Darrell linked to an article in the New Yorker on the show's producer Joel Surnow, a self-described "right-wing nut job" who smugly decries the liberalism of Hollywood while he makes a fortune within it:

Surnow, for his part, revels in his minority status inside the left-leaning entertainment industry. "Conservatives are the new oppressed class," he joked in his office. "Isn't it bizarre that in Hollywood it's easier to come out as gay than as conservative?" His success with 24, he said, has protected him from the more righteous elements of the Hollywood establishment. "Right now, they have to be nice to me," he said. "But if the show tanks I'm sure they'll kill me." He spoke of his new conservative comedy show as an even bigger risk than 24. "I'll be front and center on the new show," he said, then joked, "I'm ruining my chances of ever working again in Hollywood."

I love the logic: if The 1/2 Hour News Hour fails, it's because the liberals can't handle his manly take on politics, not (not!) because his "Daily Show for conservatives" just isn't funny:



Wow, I never thought anything would make me wish for PJ O'Rourke but hey, torture is moral and Joel Surnow is oppressed -- clearly, we're living in Bizarro World:

Labels: comic books, friends, politics, TV

This one goes to Josh and Darcy, fans of the respective shows -- the logo made me laugh out loud!

Labels: friends, silliness, TV

John Edwards, Democratic Presidential candidate, has been ordered to fire two of his campaign staffers by Bill Donahue, leader of the Catholic League. Donogue says Edwards "has chosen to embrace foul-mouthed, anti-Catholic bigots on his payroll." According to their press statement:

"On November 1, 2006, on her blogspot Shakespeare’s Sister, [Melissa McEwan] referred to President Bush’s ‘wingnut Christofascist base’ when lashing out against religious conservatives. On February 21, 2006, she attacked religious conservatives again, this time saying, ‘What don’t you lousy motherf---ers understand about keeping your noses out of our britches, our beds, and our families?’"

Personally, on my blog, I try to tone down the swearing but, for some odd reason, I know exactly how Melissa feels. Edwards admitted that he was "personally offended" by his staffers' previous comments but told reporters that the duo "gave me their word they, under no circumstances, intended to denigrate any church or anybody's religion and offered their apologies for anything that indicated otherwise. I took them at their word."

Sounds fair and should probably end there, but it won't. Donahue, or others like him, will continue to shriek about anti-religious bigotry. Too bad I can't sympathize, though, since Donahue, so concerned with civility and fairness and religious sensitivity, said this in December 2004:

"Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular...Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism...these people are in the margins. Frankly, Michael Moore represents a cult movie. Mel Gibson represents the mainstream of America."

My greatest fear is that Bill might be right about that, but I suspect mainstream America is more like comedian Louis CK, the creator of a Married With Children-type sitcom called Lucky Louie on HBO. Donahue attacked his show as "barbaric" and two radio morning show guys got them together to hash it out. It's a long clip but worth it for the way Donahue goes completely unhinged at the end. Sure, he's being ganged up on but this peek inside his head is like a really good horror movie, creepy and fascinating:



Oh, I get it: Donahue is a hero, trying to protect us from Arabian horses, bias crimes, Dakota Fanning movies and white Martin Luther King statue fetishists.

Or something.

Labels: America, media, politics, religion

But it's not all ranting -- I've been bopping around town to the debut album by 24-year-old Mika -- Lebanese-born, British-raised and Freddie-Mercury-inspired. Life in Cartoon Motion sounds like its title -- it's pure giddy dance-pop, with a dizzying mix of styles and influences. This lead-off single "Grace Kelly" is one of the less-catchy tunes sung by this kid with a golden voice:

Labels: England, music, silliness

There was an old Saturday Night Live fake commercial for "BAD IDEA Jeans" in which basketball buddies make comments like, "Now that I have kids, I feel a lot better having a gun in the house," and the screen flashes BAD IDEA.

I guess the ad was successful because there's many, many pairs of those jeans being worn now. And, for the most part, we're used to it. When I inevitably stop over the latest insane headline of a newspaper and inevitably rant, "Wow, can you believe this shit?" someone will inevitably say, "So what? It's just someone's opinion. Who cares?" Those people will undoubtedly live longer than I will but I still have to argue with them because we're never just dealing with one wrong opinion. A bad opinion stems from a bad idea and, like an untreated infection, will lead to bad actions, even from well-meaning people.

Here's my two favourite recent examples: last week, Joe Biden announced his candidacy for the US Presidential race. Like a typical politician, he did so not with a speech explaining why he'd be the best choice but with a speech criticizing his opponents. Biden now-infamously described his fellow Democratic presidential candidate and strong up-and-comer Barack Obama as "the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man." BAD IDEA. As blogger Atrios said, "I believe we've just witnessed the shortest presidential run in history."

While most of us howled over Biden's unconscious racism with his use of "articulate and bright" and puzzled over what the hell he was thinking with the word "clean," others were pointing out that he'd made previous racial comments, like this gem: "You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking." And remember, he's the left-winger. The only thing worse than his foot-in-mouth disease was what happened next, as the foot-in-head crowd dissected his comments. Two days ago, Bill O'Reilly actually said this to Temple University professor Dr. Marc Lamont Hill:

Now you got to feel sorry for us white folks here, because I’m telling you now I’m afraid to say anything...Instead of black and white Americans coming together, white Americans are terrified. They’re terrified. Now we can’t even say you’re articulate? We can’t even give you guys compliments because they may be taken as condescension?

Oh Bill, for the love of God, shut up! Don't you see the big neon BAD IDEA hanging in the air? Dr. Hill predictably, gorgeously, tore Bill a new one though, as usual, the host didn't notice. He was probably still marveling at how articulate Hill was. Meanwhile, on that same February 5th, national radio host, CNN anchorman, ABC correspondent and walking example of the "liberal media" in action Glenn Beck also used the presence of a black author on his show to confess:

I don’t have a lot of African-American friends, and I think part of it is because I’m afraid that I would be in an open conversation, and I would say something that somebody would take wrong, and then it would be a nightmare. Am I alone in feeling that?

No, of course not, Glenn -- there's lots of bigots out there. I love that Bill and Glenn suffer from the same fear: that their hearty pronouncements of "the truth" will be met with hostility by those confused, uppity Negroes. Why must the blacks be so sensitive? This is the ultimate BAD IDEA.

Beck infamous called the Katrina survivors "scumbags" and demanded that Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, "prove to me that you are not working with our enemies." Since he's dumber and more arrogant than Bill O'Reilly(!), I could go on about Glenn Beck all day (BAD IDEA) so I'll just point out Media Matters' extensive listing of his horrible opinions.

I have to move on to my second example of how well-meaning people can be roped in by bad ideas, courtesy of William Saletan, a columnist for Slate who's written excellent pieces explaining stem-cell research, cloning, the abortion debate, etc. He shocked me this week with his column on the New Zealand 'gay sheep' study. For the first time, we have hard evidence that homosexuality is biologically determined (at least in sheep, anyway). Neat! Until Saletan goes all Frankenstein on us:

"Roselli offers lots of evidence that human homosexuality is linked to biological conditions, some of them genetic. If he figures out how to manipulate sexual orientation in sheep, will others try to manipulate it in humans? We already have. Doctors used to "treat" homosexuality with hormone injections. Some still do. This idea failed miserably in adults, but it might work in fetuses, since their brains are forming. And if we can't engineer sexual orientation, maybe we can select it. Millions of Asians have used modern sex tests to identify and abort female fetuses. If we learn how to recognize gay brains in development, look out.

But killing is the horror scenario. The more likely path is gentler. Science will gradually convince us that sexual orientation is innate, more like the color of your skin than like the content of your character. Condemnation of homosexuality as a sin will subside. Freed from the culture wars, we'll turn to the biological differences between race and sexual orientation: Homosexuality defies the aspiration to procreate with your mate, and it's easier to isolate and alter in embryonic development. Resentment will give way to pity. We'll come to view homosexuality as a kind of infertility —- a disability, like deafness. The rhetoric of "acceptance" will shift from liberals to conservatives. We'll inoculate our offspring against homosexuality out of love, not hate."

Saletan's column had me quaking in horror at the notion of eradicating homosexuality by genetically-altering fetuses. I swear I could hear the hospital page for Dr. Mengele, Dr. Mengele to the operating room. For decades, we've had to listen to bigots go on about me and my friends being "unnatural" -- now they want to practice altering the chromosomes of babies? BAD IDEA. Isn't that an awful lot of work just to prevent the next Elton John? Is any of this making sense?

But that's science fiction, one might say. Calm down. Even if the whole world hated gays, we've proved pretty tough to eradicate over the centuries, no? Why not relax? If a bunch of people have racist or homophobic views, that's their problem -- we're dealing with it just fine. Well, I have to ask, are we?:

"The Ku Klux Klan, which just a few years ago seemed static or even moribund compared to other white supremacist movements such as neo-Nazis, experienced "a surprising and troubling resurgence" during the past year due to the successful exploitation of hot-button issues including immigration, gay marriage and urban crime, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The League, which monitors the activities of racist hate groups and reports its findings to law enforcement and policymakers, has documented a noticeable spike in activity by Klan chapters across the country. The KKK believes that the U.S. is "drowning" in a tide of non-white immigration, controlled and orchestrated by Jews, and is vigorously trying to bring this message to Americans concerned or fearful about immigration."

So let me make sure I've got this: it's the 21st friggin' century and we have a spike in membership for the Ku Klux Klan? Because the good ol' boys have put away their bedsheets and learned to make nice with Nazis? Wow, Molly sure was right about the ATM and the garlic press! But, as I've said, all these 'concerns and fears' simply stem from bad opinions made up of bad ideas -- notably the tired old canard that everything is the Jews' fault. The Jews I've known can't agree on bacon, let alone running the planet, and the KKK are trying to convince people that America is being overrun with Muslim fanatics because that's what Jews want? Yeah, good luck with that.

But Barnum was right -- there's a fuckwit born every minute (I paraphrase, of course) and John Rogers' 27% Crazification Factor theory still seems apt to me. All we can do to stem the tide is to come up with better ideas, or at least make savage fun of the bad ones.

I admit the latter is more fun but almost as necessary. How, for instance, could I -- growing up in white-bread Hamilton -- ever have a problem with black people? I grew up watching Bill Cosby on TV, hearing Martin Luther King's famous speech, dancing to Aretha Franklin and, perhaps most powerfully, learning about black history from Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live:

"So, Professor Carver's two dinner guests...Edward 'Skippy' Williamson and Frederick 'Jif' Armstrong -- two white men -- stole George Washington Carver's recipe for peanut butter, copyrighted it, and reaped untold fortunes from it. While Dr. Carver died penniless and insane, still trying to play a phonograph record with a peanut.
This has been "Black History Minute". I'm Professor Shabazz K. Morton. Good night."

I was 13 years old and Murphy's hilarious delivery burned into my memory, just like the BAD IDEA jeans sketch. Ultimately, bad ideas are useless and silly so I like a useless and silly response. Fight fire with fire. Like the two nimrods who shut down Boston last week -- I might have disagreed with their hare-brained corporate marketing stunt if not for the wildly-paranoid overreaction from the city's mayor and administration. It was so ridiculous that I could only applaud the two goofballs for their Dada press conference. Listening to the reporters getting angrier and more self-righteous in their questioning is still funny a week later.

As for the gay sheep -- implications aside, the story is kind of funny but leave it to wisecracking playwright Paul Rudnick to bring it home. His New Yorker piece, you see, was a very very Good Idea. And, in the interest of fairness, so is the end of Saletan's piece (mainly because he agrees with me, of course -- ha ha). Having hastily lumped him in with Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, I give him the last word:

But bad ideas —- communism, eugenics, wars of liberation -— don't happen because they're bad. They happen because, in the beginning, they're good. What we do with the biological truth about homosexuality, for good or ill, isn't written in our hormones or our genes. It's up to us.

Labels: America, evolution, homo-a-go-go, insanity, politics, religion

Now that cheap editing software has made it simple for even Luddites like me to tinker with songs and movies, while the Internet has made it simple to broadcast the results, the "mash-up" is becoming a great source of fun and fascination. There are legal issues, financial issues, ethical issues and artistic issues, all wrapped up in one clever little mp3 or YouTube.

As always, first comes the silly: I once heard a track that put Tom Jones' vocals from "Kiss" over "Funkytown" by Lipps Inc. It was literally better than both songs put together. Then the track that used the Dandy Warhols' guitar riffs to turn the cheesy dance song "Horny" into something joyous. Then the mash-ups got smarter. In 2004, The Grey Album's controversial-but-brilliant blend of the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's The Black Album (duh!) by DJ Danger Mouse was banned, while American Edit from 'Dean Gray' performed a public service by revealing exactly where the chord changes in Green Day's American Idiot came from (Oasis, the Doctor Who theme and, whoa, Glen Campbell -- who knew?).

A San Francisco DJ calling himself Earworm has practically conquered the bastard genre, with songs comprised of over a dozen others. My favourite is "Stairway to Bootleg Heaven" which puts (get ready) Laurie Anderson, the Art of Noise, Eurythmics, the Beatles, Pet Benatar, the Beastie Boys and Dolly Parton(!) through the wringer. As Truman Capote famously said of Jack Kerouac, "That's not writing, that's typing." In true open-source tradition, Earworm has published a mash-up how-to guide so others can play in the sandbox as well. But will he share the profits from his book? That's what artists and the record companies would like to know.

Assuming their opposition is more than merely financial (I'm generous that way), I assume record companies are upset at how easily these kind of remixes reveal the limitations of pop music. Let's face it -- most rock and pop tracks really DO sound the same and are easily blended. But didn't the mighty Ramones teach us that back in the late '70s? They took their parents' classic pop-rock style, sped it up and spit it back at them. They recorded an album with girl-group guru Phil Spector, for Joey's sake! Mash-ups are just the latest way of showing that pop culture is just a stack of Lego bricks. There's lot of colours and shapes but they can all fit together. Every kid has played with Lego, I think every kid should play with Lego, and some of them turn out to be architects because of it.

And if not? Well at least they're having fun. There's a UK outfit called Thriftshop XL that does great tweaks of music videos. They've sent Justin Timberlake back to 1992 and made a strong case for the Knack suing Franz Ferdinand, with Run-DMC as the lawyers. And then there's this -- a track so gloriously silly, I can't get enough of it:



Is a track like this an act of destruction or creation? Perhaps the best recent example was the now-legendary re-edited trailer for The Shining that stripped away the horror elements and added happy audio to make Stanley Kubrick's film seem like a family comedy. I discovered a pair of YouTube bits that hilariously pit Doctor Who against his most terrifying foe -- the French -- and make the high-seas hero Horatio Hornblower campier than Liberace. What was once some of my favourite TV is now something I'll have a hard time watching without snickering. Again, are these edits acts of vandalism -- or creativity?

I ask these questions because I'm now as guilty as anyone. Since discovering video editing software, I've been playing with the Lego bricks, too. The results have been quite cute (a jolly tribute to the original and still best Queer as Folk), rather peculiar (a Cyberman video for the Pet Shop Boys' sinister track "Integral") and now somewhat unsettling. Where the notion came from, I simply have no idea, but I felt compelled to combine Terry Gilliam's dark masterpiece on bureaucracy and terrorism with the bombastic giddiness of (God help and forgive me) the Electric Light Orchestra -- it's "Mr. Blue Sky Goes To Brazil":



And this is where the debates came in. Did I just ruin a brilliant film with musical cheese? Or did I taint a beloved '70s pop tune with creepy imagery? Or both? Could I be sued for this? Don't I deserve to be? Or will anyone just appreciate it for the peculiar and silly trifle it is?
Questions, questions...

Labels: MeTube, music, technology

Last week, I mocked the Boston authorities for over-reacting to the light-up cartoon character devices scattered throughout the city, but this clever clip illustrates both the awesome power of the Lite Brite and the horrifying consequences of their misuse:

Labels: America, insanity, Orwell says hi

As a lifelong champion of The Silly, I think this clip is fantastic. Dan Savage has a point, however, when he asks, "Come on now -- could gay people do more harm to marriage than straight people already have?"



Speaking of Dan (my true love, if not for his husband, their son and a restraining order), he recently started snowboarding and his story is a delightful one.

Labels: homo-a-go-go, silliness

Molly Ivins died this week at the age of 62 from what she joked was "a scorching case of cancer":

"Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that...I had been in great hopes I would become a better person as a result of confronting my own mortality, but it actually never happened. I didn't become a better person."

This was the kind of quip she was famous for. Ivins was a Texas political journalist who described her early career in the late '60s as "making heroes of militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers." She became a nationally-syndicated columnist but never a rich and famous TV pundit like so many lesser writers (though she's great on camera in this 1986 commentary on "fine ort" in Texas and in this amusing video on their sex laws). TV didn't know what to do with her -- she was too outspoken, too Southern, too sharp and too liberal.

Molly Ivins could listen to tedious speeches, read thick and dull budget reports, wade into the most polluted swamp of political spin and then explain, with wit and punch, what it all meant for ordinary working people. She knew a liar when she heard one and a fool when she saw one, and she'd write about them both, but always fairly: "I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth." I'd agree, if not for the fact that, well, Molly always told the truth. She did it well, she did it often and, on the occasions when she did make a mistake, she owned up to it in print (check out this incredible exchange between Ivins and famous misanthrope Florence King, for instance). Her obituary for her father both charms and haunts (it's well worth the annoying newspaper registration) so, rather than try to match that, the best tribute I can give Molly is to show you why I became a fan:

"I guess that was the first shock. Ronnie and Kaye had prepared me to find all manner of vile, venal types in the Legislature, villains without scruples and self-interested dastards without remorse. I didn’t find them. I found only stupid men. I found representatives so dumb they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. There are no villains: there are only asses."
-- June 18, 1971

"I have long maintained that Texans are not easy to love: we are, like anchovies, an acquired taste. I myself feel that we should be given points for our enthusiasm...At least Texans retain a capacity for awe in the face of something as awesome as the Colorado mountains."
-- December 30, 1977

“If [Rep. Jim Collins'] IQ slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.”
-- sometime in the early '80s

"Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -– it's vulgar."
–- December 9, 1991

"Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German."
–- September 14, 1992

"I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives."
-- July 19, 1994

"Politics in this country isn't about left and right; it's about up and down. The few are screwing the many."
-- September 8, 1994

"Sometimes I think I made Warren Chisum up for my own amusement...The egregious Representative Chisum is once more trying to get gays taken out of coverage under the hate-crimes bill because, he says, gays bring violence on themselves...'They go to parks and pick up men, and they don't know if that someone is gay or not.' Sure. Right."
-- February 9-23, 1995

"If it weren't for the automatic teller machine and the self-cleaning garlic press, we'd have no evidence of progress at all...Let's face it: the evidence is always on the side of the pessimists. In fact, one of the few pro-optimism arguments that work is to point out that things can always get worse, which means we should be cheerful right now, because now will eventually be the Good Old Days."
-- May 7, 1995

"I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle."
-- May 30, 1995

"I have wasted more time and space defending Clinton than I care to think about. If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he's weaker than bus-station chili. But the man is so constantly subjected to such hideous and unfair abuse that I wind up standing up for him on the general principle that some fairness should be applied."
-- from the introduction to her 1998 collection, You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You

"Arguing against the death penalty in Texas is such a bootless enterprise that over the years, I have worn down to merely advocating that we not kill (a) the innocent; (b) the mentally retarded; and (c) people who are so mentally ill that they think they’re black dogs in the seventh circle of hell and run around on all fours barking. As you know, these arguments have not prevailed, and we continue to bump off people in all three categories."
-- February 5, 1999

"The sponsor of the tax break in the Senate, J.E. 'Buster' Brown, explained simply, 'The oil industry is hurting.' And there’s nothing like pain in the oil industry to touch off compassion in a conservative."
-- March 5, 1999

"George W. is the unexamined candidate, and the extent to which he is unexamined gets eerier as Election Day approaches. At least half the country is prepared to vote for the guy; if asked why, they reply, 'Seems like a nice fella.' I like him myself. But he is often clueless, he does not have a nice record, and the idea of electing him president scares the living fantods out of me. I like my nephew, I like my mailman and the lady at the dry cleaners. That doesn’t mean they’re ready to be president."
-- November 3, 2000

"If killing more people were the answer, there would have been peace in the Middle East 50 years ago. The answer is justice, and there is nothing weak-kneed about it."
-- October 26, 2001

“I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. [Iraq] is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, ‘Horrible three-way civil war?’”
-- January 16, 2003

"I have never lost a political storytellin’ contest in any category: crooked pols, dumb pols, out-goddamned-rageous pols. We win -— and we never have to make up anything. How can I lose with material like the time Rep. Mike Martin paid his Cousin Eddie to shoot him in the arm with a shotgun, and then claimed it had been done by a Satanic and communistic cult. You think I can find stuff this weird anywhere else? This is why I’m still in Texas."
-- December 3, 2004

"We can now safely assert that W. has stacked much of the federal government with people like himself. And what you get when you put people in charge of government who don’t believe in government and who are not interested in running it well is...what happened after Hurricane Katrina.
Often in the past six years I have bit my tongue so I wouldn’t annoy people with the always obnoxious observation, “I told you so.” But, dammit all to hell, I did tell you, and I’ve been telling you since 1994, and I am so sick of this man and everything he represents -— all the sleazy, smug, self-righteous graft and corruption and “Christian” moralizing and cynicism and tax cuts for all his smug, rich buddies.
Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention [emphasis mine, of course]."
-- September 23, 2005

"On the general subject of political corruption, do not fall into the fatal error of cynicism. You do your country a great disservice by saying things like: "Eh, they're all crooks. Nothing anyone can do about it. Money will always find a way."
The answer is perpetual reform. Fix it, and if corruption comes back again, you just whack back at it again."
-- January 11, 2006

Those last two are the ones that really get me. She spent a decade warning her fellow Texans about their useless Governor, yet they and the rest of America elected him President, with disastrous results. Nevertheless, she never lost hope, she never went silent and she never stopped believing in the decency and, yes, power of ordinary people. This is the end of her last column, published January 12, 2007:

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"

Yep, Molly Ivins went out the way she came in -- kicking at the pricks with a grin on her face. I discovered her columns during the Clinton impeachment, loved her ever since, and regret that I've never praised her in print before. Somehow I believed that, despite the cancer, she would outlive us all. As she famously wrote:

"Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce."

Goddamn, what a woman.

In tribute, the Texas Observer has reprinted many of her classic columns, including the one she penned when leaving the paper to join the New York Times in 1976. It was charming then and appropriately lovely now:

"And for me, it’s leaving time. I have a grandly dramatic vision of myself stalking through the canyons of the Big Apple in the rain and cold, dreaming about driving with the soft night air of East Texas rushing on my face while Willie Nelson sings softly on the radio, or about blasting through the Panhandle under a fierce sun and pale blue sky, laughing at Clarence Zugenbuler’s stock report. I’ll remember. I’ll remember the way the printer’s feels at 4 a.m. What it’s like to read The Dallas Morning News editorial page. Sunsets, rivers, hills, plains, the Gulf, woods, a thousand beers in a thousand joints, and sunshine and laughter. And people. Mostly I’ll remember people...
I wanted to call this The Long Goodbye, but Kaye wouldn’t let me. She wanted to call it, Ivins Indulges in Horrible Fit of Sentimentality.
I love you. Goodbye, my friends."

At her memorial today, Andy Ivins told the crowd that he'd once asked his sister why she always walked so fast. She told him, "What you do is you look up at the horizon, and you go quicker." Then, blues singer Marcia Ball sang Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire." Perfect.

Labels: America, evolution, politics, religion, tributes, war - what is it good for?, writing

At the risk of sounding like an incredibly lazy man, I love my sofa. It's a happy place, home to some of my favourite activities. Number one, of course, the occasional make-out session with a Gentleman Caller; number two, lovely evenings chatting with friends over tea; and number three, watching a movie with my little dog curled up beside me. These things are bliss.

On an evening a few months ago, I took a night off, flopped down on the sofa and put on a movie. At one point, there was a scene with a dog crying in distress and Tegan suddenly sat up in alarm, staring wide-eyed at the screen with her head cocked to one side, and she started to quiver. I'd never stopped to consider what effect the TV had on a dog before. I found Tegan's reactions fascinating and a bit sad as I rushed to grab the remote.

Thinking of that moment in what was an otherwise delightful evening, I am very grateful that Tegan has been asleep on my bed for the last couple hours. There's a video clip exploding around the 'net right now, a video of US soldiers in Iraq abusing a maimed dog. I watched it and immediately wished I hadn't. There's a reason the phrase 'curiosity killed the cat' was coined. At the moment, it seems especially ironic. I won't link to the clip but if you should stumble upon it, keep surfing. Please don't stop and watch the dog & soldiers video. You just don't need that in your head, trust me.

Now, of course, part of the presumed appeal of this video is that it shows American soldiers at their most cynical and cruel. "You see?" people will say, "Look how horrible the Americans are!" but as a devout bleeding-heart liberal, I think that's crap. For one thing, nothing could ever be worse than the Iraqi's hostage-beheading footage (still haven't seen any, knock wood) and, even as a dog lover, I find it again fascinating and sad that people are getting so worked up over a animal while many still shrug at the supposed inevitability of a fiasco that has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis and, yes, American soldiers.

I have great sympathy for what the troops are enduring, trying to beat the odds so heavily stacked against them from the start, and I can certainly understand the desire to take out their frustrations on some lesser creature. But as Mark Twain said, "Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in." I'm not giving these soldiers a pass -- they disgust me -- but I will keep my blame squarely where it belongs: the war cheerleaders who put these men there through jingoism and lies, the kind of people Molly Ivins worked to stop, as it happens.

I've been thinking about Molly a lot this week as that "scorching case of cancer" finally took her from us. She was the kind of person who could probably watch that dog video and know exactly what to say -- something smart, angry, funny and compassionate, all at once. Tomorrow: some of my favourite Molly!

Labels: introspective, Middle East, Tegan the Jack Russell Terrorist, tributes, war - what is it good for?

No one is ever simple. Every person has at least two or three warring strands in their nature. For instance, the now-infamous Ted Haggard -- popular and respected religious leader by day, gay crystal-meth enthusiast by night. Reconciling such competing strands within ourselves is the work we all face in our lives.

For me, it's the split between my obsession with all the Very Big, Very Serious stuff of life (karma, life after death, the coming war with Iran -- you know, the usual) and my delight in tiny, inane, everyday absurdities (the kind of stuff that's clearly making Larry David both rich and insane). I never know if I'm taking things too seriously or not seriously enough. I believe my fondness for science fiction always stemmed from all that -- it's always about huge apocalyptic disasters threatening the lives of millions of people across the entire universe (oh the drama!), yet always perpetrated by sexy clones in red cocktail dresses or shrieking cyborg trashcans. It's the sublime and the ridiculous!

So, with all that said, can you imagine how much I enjoyed yesterday's terrorist attack on Boston? I say 'enjoyed' because these were the terrorists:

They're called Mooninites, evil creatures from our moon who proudly assert their "superiority" to humans (see horrifying footage of their cruelty here ,here and here). Yesterday in Boston, these monsters -- like the Martians of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938 -- brought a major American city to its knees!

Just like the Mel Gibson movie, there were Signs. Three weeks ago, the Mooninites scattered dozens of battery-powered light boards with images of themselves (in other words, bombs) throughout major American cities -- Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco and Philadelphia. Most of the cities didn't notice the lights. In New York, police quietly removed about 40 of them, having received no complaints. In Seattle, the Public Works department removed a few without notifying police. But the vigilant Boston authorities mobilized in force, effectively shutting down the city core, while the local news media panicked the citizens. These actions prevented the hypothetical deaths of thousands of people.

With more awareness of the interplanetary threat, these attacks on Boston could have been prevented. As Paul Hellyer, Canada's former Minister of National Defense, told an audience at U of T in November 2005:

"The Bush Administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide...The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning."

The man's a loon, you think, but it was that same month that President Bush had claimed outer space for America. Did no one think the moon's evildoers would not retaliate? Oh, if only the world had heeded the professor's warning! Our only defense against a full-scale Mooninite invasion is this video game!

Okay, okay, I'll stop. Yes, I found this whole thing hilarious from start to finish but it's not just me -- my friend Tara loves Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the cartoon that caused all this, though I still can't shake the belief that you really have to be high to enjoy it. Like the kids on YouTube, who've been all over this event (with coverage here and here). Best of all, not even the people who've been arrested have been able keep a straight face (typical Mooninite-enabling scum!) and, for me, one clip has summed up the whole thing with hilarious precision:



But, as I'm wont to do, let me put my Serious hat on for a minute and admit that, yes, this was an actual problem for Boston. People were frightened, lives were put on hold, ambulances were stuck in traffic. How could the marketers think that planting unknown electronic devices under bridges and roadways would not freak people out? How irresponsible can one be, especially in marketing a cartoon? They didn't take into account what's been distressingly referred to as "the post-9/11 mindset."

As Boston Mayor Thomas Merino said, "It is outrageous, in a post-9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme." A lot of people would like to see these guerrilla-marketing pranksters behind bars. My sympathies obviously lie on the other side but I recognize the debate: in a culture still struggling between a necessary awareness of terrorist threats and a debilitating non-stop paranoia, should people be less sensitive or more sensitive?

Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin quoted Jason Smith, a reader who asked, "I wonder if someone is sitting back and simply studying the emergency response protocol and timing...trying to identify weak spots and gaps to exploit for a real attack?" Considering the news reports stating that, as of last night, the Boston authorities had only found 10 of 24 devices, let's certainly hope not. All that diverted Homeland Security money is not paying off. Lucky for us, it's just Jason watching too much 24. As one blogger at Crooks and Liars wrote, "These were Lite Brites -- children's toys that light up. The Mayor and the rest of the city government threw the city into a panic, when they could've solved the 'crisis' by talking to a ten-year-old." Old Beantown looks especially silly when one recalls the actual bombings in London subways in July 2005 -- the British didn't wet their pants, they just went back to work and down the pub while the police began the process of tracking down and arresting suspects.

My heroes in all this are a pair of Boston women. Jennifer Mason, 26, told KUTV News, "It's almost too easy to be a terrorist these days. You stick a box on a corner and you can shut down a city." Wanda Higgins, a 47-year-old nurse, left for work at Massachusetts General Hospital at 4 pm, after seeing the drama on TV: "I saw the bomb squad guys carrying a paper bag with their bare hands. I knew it couldn't be too serious." That, ladies and gentlemen, is how it's done. I hope that Boston has learned to heed the warning from the moon:

"We are the Mooninites and our culture is advanced beyond all that you can possibly comprehend with 100% of your brain."

Clearly, we're gonna need every scrap!

Labels: America, evolution, friends, introspective, Orwell says hi