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A Poem for St. Paddy’s Day

From the most accomplished Gaelic poet of the past quarter century, Shane MacGowan:

The island it is silent now
But the ghosts still haunt the waves
And the torch lights up a famished man
Who fortune could not save.

Did you work upon the railroad?
Did you rid the streets of crime?
Were your dollars from the White House?
Were they from the five and dime?

Did the old songs taunt or cheer you
And did they still make you cry?
Did you count the months and years
Or did your teardrops quickly dry?

Ah, no, says he, t’was not to be
On a coffin ship I came here
And I never even got so far
That they could change my name.

Thousands are sailing
Across the western ocean
To a land of opportunity
That some of them will never see.
Fortune prevailing
Across the western ocean.
Their bellies full,
Their spirits free,
They’ll break the chains of poverty,
And they’ll dance

In Manhattan’s desert twilight,
In the death of afternoon,
We stepped hand in hand on Broadway
Like the first man on the moon,

And the blackbird broke the silence
As you whistled it so sweet,
And in Brendan Behan’s footsteps
I danced up and down the street,

Then we said goodnight to Broadway
Giving it our best regards,
Tipped our hats to Mister Cohan,
Dear old Times Square’s favorite bard

Then we raised a glass to JFK
And a dozen more besides.
When I got back to my empty room,
I suppose I must have cried.

Thousands are sailing
Again across the ocean,
Where the hand of opportunity
Draws tickets in a lottery.
Postcards were mailing
Of sky-blue skies and oceans
From rooms the daylight never sees
Where lights don’t glow on Christmas trees,
But we dance to the music
And we dance

Thousands are sailing
Across the western ocean,
Where the hand of opportunity
Draws tickets in a lottery.
Where e’er we go, we celebrate
The land that makes us refugees.
From fear of priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies
And we dance

And as captured by the BBC, at a free open air concert in Belfast three years ago,

Cheers.

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For Love of the Fatherland

During our family vacation to Germany last summer, I grew ashamed of my ignorance of the history of World War II. I knew a few of the basics, like everyone else, but how the Nazis actually came to power and held sway over a supposedly civilized nation—that was a gap in my education that made me feel like a complete sophomore.

As the years pass, the upheaval and lasting effects of WWII become just a feature of the landscape. With the exception of the founding of Israel, I’d venture to say that the outcome and results of the war are now taken for granted. Now that East and West Germany are united, what borders are left to dispute, or grievances to fester? The major political and military issues facing us today have their roots in the Cold War and petro-politics, not the Depression and the Great War. And as more of survivors of those times grow old and die, the lessons learned in “A World At War” are lost.

No such weighty matters were in mind a few weeks ago, when I picked up the first history book I’ve read in a long time, The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans. I just wanted a little background information. With so many volumes written about the era, the war and in particular about Hitler, I didn’t want to get bogged down in dates and troop movements and all the things that students of this era love to chew on. (I particularly didn’t want to read one more crappy examination into the “mind” of Uncle Adolph, such as Norman Mailer’s newest. I had high hopes for Stephen Fry’s Making History, but realized after 75 pages that it was packed with cliches, like the crazy scientist and the neer-do-well who will end up going back in time to do one good thing in his life by eliminating Hitler. So much time and ink has been wasted on that ratbag, I think, because we feel there MUST be an objective answer to why he was so evil. To believe that such extensive horror could arise merely from ambition, callousness, and mundane hate is much too frightening, like being able to make an a-bomb from things lying around the garage.)

Evans’ book is great for a layperson like me, who wants to see how the groundwork was laid for Hitler’s rise in the 50-60 years leading up to the war. And while I don’t want to get hyperbolic about it, the book described some unintentional parallels with our own political climate. America isn’t ready to turn into Nazi Germany yet, but it ain’t because we’re the land of the free and the home of the brave. It may be because our political stability and economic power haven’t forced most people to examine carefully how they want their society to run.

I apologize. I said I didn’t want to get hyperbolic, and it feels like I already have. Hard to avoid it when talking briefly about such matters. There are books and books that could be written about whether our country is headed toward real fascism or not, and I’m not the guy to write them. All I’m saying is, The Coming of the Third Reich describes a few situations and attitudes that could happen in any country. Economic uncertainty. Nostalgia for a time when the country was strong and respected, morality was unquestioned, the leader was blessed with divine insight, and a treasonous left-wing enemy was trying to bring the entire country to its knees.

(For an intriguing alternative history of America at a time when these very conditions were in the air, read Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America.)

Probably the most fascinating and chilling phenomenon Evans describes in The Coming of the Third Reich involved the German judiciary in the teens and twenties. Feeling no particular allegiance to the Reichstag parliament, which didn’t appoint them, judges would sometimes deliver incredibly light sentences on men convicted of assassinations, murders and riots. The mitigating factor the judges would consider in these cases was whether the crime was committed “for patriotic reasons.”

Yep, you could start a riot, or assassinate a political rival, or even attempt to overthrow a provincial government, and if a sympathetic judge thought you were acting out of love of the fatherland, you might only serve a couple of months or years in prison.

Something to ponder, as more and more members of the Bush administration get hauled to the witness stand.

Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, but sometimes it can be a handy defense.

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Essay on “848”

I recorded an essay last Wednesday for WBEZ’s morning show, “848”. No telling when it will be on, but since it had something to do with bad weather and overcoats, I suspect it will be sooner than later, so if you think you heard me faintly when you were taking a shower sometime this week, you were right. And lucky. So very lucky.

Listen well, me bratties.

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Small Balls

* What’s with the sidewalls on the new baseball caps this spring? Something special for the fashion designers in the audience? Enough with the stylish enhancements. Baseball uniforms ought to be lumpy, misshapen and preferably made of wool (cf., the St. Louis Browns, circa 1939). That allows the players a chance to sweat out the booze and pills from the night before.

* Can we look forward to new designs on batting helmets, too? It only took them 30 years to realize that bigger holes in the top might make the helmets a little more comfortable in the sun. I’m worried, though, that they might push for more aerodynamic structures, and the helmets will start to look like the Coneheads kind of things that Olympic lugers wear.

* Is it redundant to call them “Olympic lugers”? Or is there a semi-pro circuit I’m unaware of?

* It’s time to start a pool to predict the first time that Lou Piniella will throw a water cooler onto the field in frustration. And by that, I mean, the first time during spring training.

* FWIW, I haven’t met a single Cub fan this year who will give a stronger prediction for 2007 than sighing and saying “It’s going to be an … interesting … year.” (Discounting the usual, die-hard crap about how the Cubs are now due, and are strong enough and pure-of-heart enough to conquer Middle Earth.)

* You’ve probably heard of how the White Sox have taken sponsorship money from 7-11 stores and will start all their night games at 7:11 pm. Will that make me want to stop more at 7-11? Maybe. For starters, I’d buy a big bag of peanuts to smuggle into the park, because a 5-oz bag only costs a buck at 7-11, versus $5.75 inside Comiskey (prices approximate).

* I don’t mind the new UnderArmor ads on the outfield doors at Wrigley Field. Be realistic. How else can the team afford to pay for talent like Jacque Jones?

* Believe it or not, now you can order an offical MLB-licensed urn for your cremated ashes. What’s even funnier is the headline that Deadspin put on their post about it:

“Not A Gift You’d Give to a Tigers Pitcher”

* And finally, here’s a picture I found a few weeks ago in the bottom of a box, of outfielder Jim Northrup (a childhood hero) modelling the first ever appearance of the color orange on a Detroit Tigers uniform. While this one’s not a blight like various White Sox or Astros uniforms over the years, thirty-five years later, I still think it’s crap. Orange simply doesn’t belong on a baseball jersey, not even if the team is from Florida. Thankfully the Tigers’ home uniforms are still the classic white with the old English D.

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“Recut Madness” cover art

Now that my new book has a listing at Amazon, I think I can post the cover art here without any qualms about copyright. I couldn’t be happier with the design. Doesn’t this just look like a movie book, with the cool colors and those vertical lines in the back evoking the deco design of “The Wizard of Oz”? The theme of the book is also conveyed well, with the politicians (and by extension, zealous politics) lurking in the shadows to pounce on Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Spineless Donkey. (Although I’m still trying to figure out if those things crawling beside Geo. Bush are actually face-huggers from “Alien”.)

And on the back cover, we’ll have the Flying Monkeys, all dressed up in commando gear and toting rifles.

Brian Ajhar is the artist. You can check out his portfolio here. About 10 years ago, Brian did the cover art for a book that tried to imitate the success of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, so I knew he’d be a good choice for doing the cover here. I love it. Couldn’t be happier. Now I’m just waiting to get copies in my hot little hands.

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360 Degrees of Elks

Have you ever walked by that gorgeous, out-of-place domed building at Diversey and Sheridan in Chicago? It’s the Elks National Veterans Memorial, and fittingly it looks like it belongs at Arlington National Cemetery or at some battlefield in Flanders. Good news for those who want to peek inside: At their website, the Elks have posted a 360* virtual tour of the main room and reception room. If you’re a fan of gilded, allegorical art (and who isn’t?), check it out here. Very very cool.

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Weekend of Flaming Heads

For a weekend in which we had nothing pressing to do, it somehow completely exhausted me by the end. Don’t know what it was, but it might have been trying to negotiate with a daughter who was ready to scream at the drop of a hat. Is eight too early an age to worry about her hormones running amok?

Went with Number One Son to see the Ghost Rider movie at the Davis Saturday night. It wasn’t a good movie–not by a long shot–but parts of it were quite superb, and it was a very enjoyable time. Not least because we could walk to the movie and back and talk about it. It’s almost as good as being in a 70s Woody Allen movie, except we don’t have to live in Manhattan and worry about rats scurrying around our feet in the theater. And also, we can talk about Stan Lee and not Leni Reifenstahl.

Parts of the movie certainly were corny and lame. Well, when you juggle such dog-eared elements as a deal with the devil, and mystical cowboys, and demons connected with air and land and water, it’s going to take a pretty deft hand to not make the awful. But somehow, the image of a flaming skull still packs enough power to make it all watchable. The flaming bicycle was worth it too. And Johnny Blaze, the human host of the Ghost Rider, always stops his channel surfing when a video of a monkey shows up. This made me identify with him as a hero, more than the stuntriding and the loving Eva Mendes and the whole head-on-fire thing. Monkeys are the great leveler.

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The HungerDunger Proxy

It only took me a few months to notice, but somehow more than 6 months of my posts last year have disappeared into the ether. My host ISP has no idea where they could have gone, by gosh. What’s weird is that it happened in the middle of my archive. Everyone’s stumped, so it looks like my witty observations about monkeys, baseball and profanity are lost to the ages.

There’s one post I do remember, though, and that’s because it’s in verse. Maybe the lesson here is to write all my posts in verse. Then I can get work composing eddas like an ancient Icelandic poet, though it would be hard to rhyme the names of most newsmakers today, except Barry Bonds.

The limerick in question was a group effort. The first four lines came easily enough, but I was so incapable of finishing it that I sent word out to my writing group irregulars, The Hungerdungers, for their help. And here, an ode to a battle in the culture wars, is what they came up with:

Lesbians, gays and transgenders
Work hard on their social agenders.
While bisexuals try
With a girl or a guy–
If it’s warm, they’re game to upend ‘er.

I’m patiently waiting for a phone call from the folks at the Norton Anthology of Poetry.

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My Muscle-Headed Muse

I think Barry Bonds has become my muse. Every time I read an article about him, another limerick pops into my head:

Barry Bonds put himself to the test,
To beat Babe Ruth’s tally his quest.
To be home run king,
He would try anything.
So what if he grew some huge breasts?

For more on the Barry Bonds limerick challenge, read the post here.

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I’ll Admit, I Was Wrong

I’ve often asserted that I’d rather have my teeth drilled than listen to Jerome McDonald’s WorldView on WBEZ, with its stultifying earnestness, glacial pacing, and overall tone that the world’s in a baby carriage headed down a San Francisco hill. Now, I have to take that back. Today began the excavation work for a new crown, and to cover the whine of the jackhammers and take my mind somewhere else, I tuned in the show on the dentist’s Walkman. At least I could listen to McDonald’s guest talk distractedly about Filipino insurgents and pretend I was in a college lecture hall miles away.

Unfortunately, when Milosz Whatshisname came on and gave his thoughts on the Berlin Film Festival (which I swear is what he talks about every single time I’m unfortunate enough to be within earshot when he’s being broadcast), the choice was not so cut and dried. If I’d been able to see the controls through my protective eyewear, and I hadn’t had half a hardware store hanging out of my mouth, I would’ve sought out traffic reports.

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“Recut Madness”

I’ve made some teasing references in the past weeks to a book coming out in the near future. Well, that near future is finally almost here. The cover art was sent to me this week for my final approval (with the caveat as usual that it was too late to make any changes), and if I could figure out how to manage pdf files, I could try to post a copy of it. But that will probably come some time in the future.

“Recut Madness” is a book of vignettes from famous films that imagine what they might be like if they were written from a partisan point of view–if the Jews really ran Hollywood, say, or if Bill O’Reilly and Jerry Falwell did. Laptop technology exists now to re-edit films to a consumer’s own tastes , right? Well, if that consumer had a bias toward the extreme right or left, these are the scenes that would emerge. In a way, it’s like Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, but this time I’m rewriting familiar stories to make fun of both sides of the aisle. (Of course, many right wingers read my previous books and assume that they have found a compadre in arms who will share their screeds about feminists, liberals, vegans and everything else they hate. And they’re perfectly entitled to their reading of those stories, no matter how much of a caricature it makes them seem.)

“Recut Madness” emerged from a version of “The Wizard of OZ” I was working on last year, that imagined the story as a Republican dystopia–incompetent leader, terrorized populace, a scarecrow who wouldn’t come out of the closet, that sort of thing. After a few conversations with my agent, we decided it might be a good idea to expand the book to include other movies, just in case someone hated OZ or actually liked the president (I’m not sure I’ve ever met a whole lot of either one, but it’s good to listen to your agent if you want them to work hard for you). I was skeptical at first, but after three months’ work, I had a pretty big collection of recuts. It came out much better than I expected, and I’m damn glad to be back with a book to sell. It’s good to be back in the game again. Maybe this time I can spin the experience out as long or longer than last time.

One of the great things about working on the book is that I got to watch many great movies again to verify that scenes were as I remembered them. I didn’t have time to watch most of them in their entirety, but I have a nice list now of movies to put on my watch list. I did get to watch “Triumph of the Will” for the first time, but I didn’t have to take many notes, as I found numerous neo-nazi websites that transcribe the movie scene by loving scene. When time permits, “A League of Their Own” and “High Noon” are two I’ll be queuing up.

So if I’m lucky, during Sunday’s telecast of the Oscars, someone receiving an award will pipe up with some stupid remark about how Hollywood really reflects America’s values, and up yours George Bush, and movies really serve a positive role in society, or some other self-aggrandizing claptrap. Such preening self-importance can only serve to piss off a good portion of the audience, and that can only be good for sales.

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A Case for Rex Koko

Sent to me yesterday by DVA:

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) — Two clowns were shot and killed by an unidentified gunman during their performance at a traveling circus in the eastern Colombian town of Cucuta, police said Wednesday.

The gunman burst into the Circo del Sol de Cali on Monday night and shot the clowns in front of an audience of 20 to 50 people, local police chief Jose Humberto Henao told Reuters.

One of the clowns was killed instantly, and the second died the next day in hospital.

“The killings had nothing to do with the show the victims were performing at the time of the incident,” Henao said in a telephone interview. “We are investigating the motive.”

With an entrance fee of under 50 cents, Circo del Sol de Cali attracts mostly poor Colombians. It pitched its tents in Cucuta, near the border with Venezuela, earlier this month.

“The clowns came out to give their show, and then this guy came out shooting them,” one audience member told local television. “It was terrible.”

Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to confirm if this story is true. It may be just another web hoax designed to make clowns look bad, the types to have underworld connections or paramilitary links. This is NOT true of all clowns, of course, but people will try and spin it as if it is.

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Dibs Do’s and Don’ts

Now that Chicago has dug itself out from under its only measurable snowfall of the year, we get to enjoy the sight of everyone’s broken lawn chairs in the street marking dibs. Visitors might be forgiven for thinking we’re extra proud of our street debris (like we get a whole lot of visitors in the ‘hoods in February anyway). For a portfolio of photos of dibs markers, click here. Did you know a cardboard box filled with snow counts as a dibs marker? Neither did I.

I’m not a fan of dibs marking, but on the other hand, I’ve got a garage so I don’t really care. But my wife heard a story this week from a woman who shoveled out her car and set up her dibs markers. I don’t remember what it was–an aquarium, an old bidet, a human skeleton, whatever. Later in the day she comes home and finds that someone has tossed her marker up on the lawn and replaced it with their own. It’s not even a new car, mind you, it’s just a new dibs marker. Undettered, the woman knocked that crap out of the way and parked her car in the space.

The next morning, she finds a note on her windshield asking, “Why did you ignore our markers?” And then, the genius wrote his address on the note! If you haven’t had your morning coffee, I suppose a dose of blind rage and righteous indignation will fill the bill. The first woman goes up to the house and knocks on the door and confronts the bozo about claiming he shoveled out the space and put up his marker fair and square.

His forthright comeback? He blamed his wife for doing it. And his wife was within earshot at the time.

Dibs marking. A true test of character.

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I’m a Pack Rat, Fair Enough

Have the beer goggles kicked in yet?Anybody who’s seen my office knows that I have a hard time throwing things away, but I think I may have reached a new low. Sometime ago, someone who knows that I love board games gave me a used copy of RISK. I recently looked through the box and, right between Irkutsk and Kamchatka, I found a weird cache of papers. The game apparently had been the house copy used in a bar near Bloomington, Ind., and Indiana University. I’m pretty sure it was from a place called the Crazy Horse, “Bloomington’s Beer Authority”, since someone’s paycheck stub is inside. There’s also an unused tube of Blistex and a name tag for the Butler National Golf Course, where this bartender Gene also worked. Then, there are 30 or more small slips of paper and napkins with girls’ phone numbers written on them.

So of course, you get to thinking, should I phone up these girls and pretend that I’m Gene, you know, GENE, the bartender from the Crazy Horse, yeah, THAT Gene, and say that, y’know, I just got into town again, and if, y’know, you wanna party or somethin’, Tiffany, that maybe we could get together and have some fun. Yeah, I know it’s been ten years, but y’know, I never forgot you, you’re one crazy chick, and hey, remember about all those games of RISK I let you win….?

And then I realize I don’t have an hour to spend on a prank, and throw the little slips away. Crap. Gotta go pick up the kids from school.