Balls and Walnuts
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On this Valentine’s Day, I really, really do not love my cats
I know what you’re thinking: another writer writing about his damned cats.
Sure, some writers do a great job writing about their pets. Pat Kirby can do it, but then, what sort of hard-hearted sumbitch wouldn’t love Rat Dog? But me: if my animals aren’t having sex, I’m usually, well, uninspired.
Until now.
Wheel of Fortune
Before it became a showcase for the talent of Vanna White, the Wheel of Fortune was a tarot card symbolizing change, luck, the whimsy of fate. Great card if it’s dealt in the standard position (as shown), the pits if reversed (upside down). That’s Fate for you — a strict 50-50, like the coin flip of Batman’s nemesis, Harvey Dent. Heads, you win the lottery. Tails, you’re blindsided by a trucker asleep at the wheel of his semi.
I bought my first tarot deck, one of the classic Rider-Waite decks, my first quarter at Berkeley. Old-timers here at Balls and Walnuts will remember that I had a spooky period — read lots of Castaneda, futzed with my dreams, wandered the Berkeley streets at night like I was on some kind of vision quest. Tarot was part of it.
How does a chemistry major reconcile something as obviously bogus as fortune telling? My theory of tarot, circa 1984, posited that folks reveal far more in their body language than they do with their words. I might not understand what their body language had to say, but my subconscious did. Using the tarot as a sort of Universal Translator, I could free-associate my way through a reading, blathering on and on, wandering from one card to the next and then back again, generating hypotheses, testing for internal consistency, and ultimately arriving at a coherent story.
I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Yah, that’s how all the charlatans work. They throw out a million darts, hoping one or two will be bullseyes.” The trouble with that theory is, I never asked the recipient of the reading for verbal feedback. If he even spoke, I’d interrupt: “Don’t feed the reader. I don’t want you to say a word.” I was reading their body language, you see, and the cards merely catalyzed the process. (more…)
Guess who’s coming to dinner!
Dear Mom and Dad1,
I didn’t know quite how to break this to you, so I’m sending this picture instead. I’ve met someone new. You’d like her; she’s ambitious (a nurse, as you can plainly see), and she wants a huge family, at least twelve kids. This shouldn’t be as difficult as it sounds, though, since she already has eight!
I can’t tell you how excited I am by all this. I’ve always wanted tall children, and my gal will surely provide. You see, she has crouched down about six inches so that we could take this photo cheek-to-cheek. Isn’t that awfully sweet of her?
Jacob is thrilled as can be at the thought of so many new brothers and sisters to play with. Karen is taking it as well as can be expected. It’s not as bad for her as you think, since we will all be moving to Utah and converting to Mormonism to take advantage of the bigamy thing.
We’re counting on your blessing!
Love2,
Doug
1. I don’t want you to get the impression that my parents are racist. They’re not. They are, however, 80 years old (my dad) and approaching 80 (my mom) and their ability to roll with the punches ain’t what it used to be.
2. As for the cruelty factor here, (1) they don’t read my blog, and (2) let’s just say I dish it to ’em every chance I get.
Identity
I don’t know what I enjoy most about this photo-booth portrait. Is it the Hawaiian print shirt with the plunging V-collar, or the pencil lead-thin moustache, trimmed off the Cupid’s bow to match the fashion of my Hispanic high schoool friends? Is it the stoner eyelids (I’ve never been able to keep my eyes open for a flash), the full head of hair?
No, man. It’s the ‘tude.
July, 1977: you’re catching me between my Sophomore and Junior years. I had not yet hooked up with GFv1.0, which means you’re looking at one very depressed, lonely adolescent. Yeah, yeah. Aren’t they all.
You’re also looking at a chameleon. Here I am in stoner mode. I could also be a brainiac among brainiacs, a cholo among cholos, a stoner among stoners. Many of the stoners I hung with had more wits about them than the brainiacs. They were well fumigated wits, but still.
I didn’t smoke much pot in high school. My best friend Sophomore year, he smoked a bushel, and I chose to learn from his example. Besides. I didn’t enjoy smoking pot, and if I could fit in with the stoners without doing so, I did. They didn’t mind if I passed — more for them — and they never challenged my credentials for hanging with them.
Sure, they knew I took Advanced Placement classes, but they didn’t care. They didn’t pay attention to social status; they didn’t pay attention to much of anything. I think that’s why I liked them so much. It felt good to belong, and they made it easy.
What made me unique, I think, was my ability to shift from one group to another. In P.E.*, I learned how to blend in with the Hispanic gangstas and the Asian ninja-wannabes. Having the right friends made bully-avoidance much easier. (And yes, Sis, the fact that Marvin had a crush on you helped, too.) But don’t get the idea that self-preservation was my primary goal. I liked these guys. As far as I was concerned, for the 55 minutes we spent together in the weight room every day, they were my people.
And then the bell would ring, and I would find myself in Trig with the smart kids who were supposed to be my peers but wanted nothing to do with me . . . with one exception. I sat behind a Junior, a Japanese girl who didn’t seem to mind if I slid forward in my chair and gouged my knee into her ever-cushy butt cheek. Ah, forbidden love. I was a Sophomore, she was a Junior, and a cheerleader to boot. We never said a single word to each other.
No matter how many times I revisit these memories, I can’t get over it. Trig, Calculus, AP English and American History, Chemistry and Physics — that’s when I felt truly discombobulated. I looked at the other bright kids as though they were extraterrestrials. Sure, I had a few friends in those classes, but it was difficult. I was their competition, and they were my competition. But even that is too simplistic. My chameleon skills failed me. Somehow, the only type of kid I couldn’t imitate was the kind I actually was.
You would think, wouldn’t you, that adulthood had frozen my mutability; but it hasn’t. I see it happening with every patient who enters my exam room. My vocal inflections, diction, and mannerisms change. I suppose this makes me a more effective clinician, but it is far from intentional. There are times when I would dearly love to suppress it. Just ask my staff how I get when some needy depressive darkens my office. (We call ’em brainsuckers.)
Like any photo-booth picture, the one you see above is part of a trio. Wouldn’t you know it? I’m someone different in all three.
— Jorge Luis Borges, “Borges and I”
D.
*Physical education — do non-Americans call it P.E.?
On truthiness, propaganda, and the rise of fascism
Today’s NY Times Op Ed piece by Rich, “Truthiness 101: From Frey to Alito” (reprinted in full by Nevada Thunder) will be his last for a few months:
To my readers: Starting next week, I will be on a book leave, writing nonfiction about our post-9/11 fictions. See you in the spring.
Ah, me. What will I do without my regular infusion of Rich? Maureen Dowd may be the funnier pundit, but Rich is the more accurate marksman of the two.
Today, he draws parallels between faux memoirist James Frey and faux salt-of-the-earth, regular guy Sam Alito. He begins with an allusion to Stephen Colbert’s neologism, truthiness (thank heavens Rich knows the proper attribution for this word!) and moves on into more serious turf:
It’s when truthiness moves beyond the realm of entertainment that it’s a potential peril. As Seth Mnookin, a rehab alumnus, has written in Slate, the macho portrayal of drug abuse in “Pieces†could deter readers battling actual addictions from seeking help. Ms. Winfrey’s blithe re-endorsement of the book is less laughable once you start to imagine some Holocaust denier using her imprimatur to discount Elie Wiesel’s incarceration at Auschwitz in her next book club selection, “Night.â€
In reality, some bright lights out there really are suggesting that Wiesel’s dark, haunting Night is a fabrication. Let’s all thank Oprah (never thought I’d write that) for drawing attention to one of the best Holocaust memoirs ever written. But, back to Rich.
What’s remarkable is how much fictionalization plays a role in almost every national debate. Even after a big humbug is exposed as blatantly as Professor Marvel in “The Wizard of Oz†– FEMA’s heck of a job in New Orleans, for instance – we remain ready and eager to be duped by the next tall tale. It’s as if the country is living in a permanent state of suspension of disbelief.
He continues with an analysis of the fictionalization of Sam Alito’s history by Republicans and Democrats alike — even by Alito himself. For the fiction-writers in my crowd, however, Rich’s most resonant message comes early on (emphasis mine):
Democrats who go berserk at their every political defeat still don’t understand this. They fault the public for not listening to their facts and arguments, as though facts and arguments would make a difference, even if the Democrats were coherent. It’s the power of the story that always counts first, and the selling of it that comes second. Accuracy is optional.
Propaganda, that’s what it’s all about. Remember Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will? I can imagine Hitler (an unofficial executive producer of the film, according to Wikipedia) briefing Riefenstahl during the film’s creation: “Give ’em a story they can believe in.”
Fascism does not emerge from a vacuum. It thrives on nationalistic sentiment, which in turn depends on powerful and convincing propaganda. Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and George W. Bush wouldn’t exist if there weren’t widespread hunger for their message: that we are Number One, that we stand for freedom worldwide, that we are beset by foes on all sides, that the enemy lives among us. People want to believe.
But the message of Bush, O’Reilly, and Limbaugh is not for all Americans. As the recent ‘War on Christmas’ proves, it’s not Americans who are beset on all sides, but Christian Americans, and, I would argue, White Christian Americans. Those of us who are not Christian, or who are gay, Liberal, or have the wrong pigmentation, are left wondering: Whose country is this?
Hitler manipulated the German nation with the tools of fear and hate for many years before becoming its Führer. He had a simple message for his people: you are great, superior to all others; what keeps you down are those who are different. The Jews. The gays. Socialists, Liberals, Communists. Foes that live among us.
It has become unfashionable to draw parallels between the rise of Nazism and present day America. Some folks think it’s a non-starter, something which silences further debate (see Law, Godwin’s). I think it’s a conversation we must have if we are to avoid any further movement into Nationalist America.
For example, we should consider whether September 11, 2001 was our Reichstag Fire. Let’s ignore the many domestic conspiracy theories, and assume the official version of events is wholly accurate. Nevertheless, 9/11 led to the Patriot Act, our version of the Reichstag Fire Decree.
As a Jewish kid growing up in the 60s and 70s, I lived and breathed the Holocaust. I was taught — no, that’s putting it lightly. I was lectured to, berated, shaken like a rag doll, and made to never forget that we must never forget. Remember Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Can’t happen in America? Remember the Japanese internment camps. Remember Guantanamo.
My wife, Karen, has a chilling angle on all of this: the Nazi analogy is inappropriate because Bush’s America isn’t all that different from business as usual. Compare President John Adams’s Alien and Sedition Acts to President Bush’s recent actions; we haven’t come very far since 1798. Add to that our record vis a vis American Indians, immigrant Asians in the West, slavery, post-Civil War oppression of black Americans, and the abuses under Joseph McCarthy, and Bush & Co. begin to take their appropriate place in American history.
Unfortunately, Americans are poorly educated in American history, never mind world history. It is no accident that our children’s education lags way behind other developed nations.
It makes it that much easier to write propaganda.
D.
Technorati tags: truthiness, propaganda, fascism, Frank Rich, Elie Wiesel, Holocaust, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh,
Hitler, Nazism, Reichstag, Bush
It’s bloody sacrilege!
“Defamer” at Yahoo! News reports, “Bloody Mary” Episode Ensures South Park Guys a Bungalow in Hell:
Perhaps the most outrageous and offensive South Park episode of all time (and that’s really saying something), “Bloody Mary,” which first aired Dec. 7 as this season’s finale, was pulled from the network schedule last night.
Its plot involves a statue of the Virgin Mary, which appears to be miraculously bleeding from its rectum.
Pope Benedict XVI is called in to investigate, and upon discovering the statue is instead hemorrhaging from its vagina, says, ahem, “A chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle. Chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time.”
Quoting from the E Online article,
Somewhat predictably, the Catholic League was incensed by the satirical portrayal of the Virgin Mary and the pope and by the fact that the episode aired on the day before the Catholic Church celebrated its Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
The conservative group demanded an apology from Viacom, Comedy Central’s parent company, to Roman Catholics everywhere and “a pledge that this episode be permanently retired and not be made available on DVD.”
The Catholic League succeeded, apparently. We may never see this episode again.
Was it tasteless? Yeah. South Park often is. Can I see how this would offend devout Catholics? Sure, but . . . why the hell are they watching South Park in the first place? And is Defamer right that this is “Perhaps the most outrageous and offensive South Park episode of all time”?
Max from PGNX.net says it well:
South Park lambasts homosexuals, transsexuals, Scientologists, vegans, Jews, Mormons, atheists and everyone else under the sun. But suddenly the Catholics are off limits?
They’ve nailed the Catholics before; in “Red Hot Catholic Love,” Trey and Matt skewered the Church on their hypocrisy vis a vis pedophilia. But they don’t pick on the Catholics — that’s Max’s point. They pick on everyone.
My Japanese-American wife isn’t offended by the Chinpokomon episode. I’m not offended by the fact Cartman slams Kyle for being Jewish in every single episode. In “Ike’s Wee Wee”, the writers dealt with circumcision, while in “Jewbilee”, they misrepresented the whole religion. (Jews worship Moses, who appears in the sky as a spinning draedel and demands sacrifices of macaroni art.)
God Himself shows up from time to time on South Park. In case you haven’t seen Him, He looks like this:
Devout Jews (like Moslems, too, if I’m not mistaken) don’t want to see images of God (or Moses, for that matter), so any image is sacrilegious. Depicting God as a freak of genetic engineering? Well, that’s just icing on the cake.
Jesus is a regular character on the show, and (in “Red Sleigh Down”) once used automatic weapons to gun down a bunch of Iraqis who had kidnapped Santa Claus.
AND don’t forget Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo.
There’s something in South Park to offend everyone. Is there anyone in the English-speaking universe who doesn’t already know this? I’ve been offended by them, too — not for any of their Jewish jokes, but for their occasional support of questionable political positions. (For example, if I remember correctly, their “Rainforest Schmainforest” episode got my goat.)
Usually, but not always, South Park is funny as hell. That buys them a lot of mileage in my opinion. Tasteless and humorless media deserves the fate it gets — a rapid fall into a cultural black hole. (Does anyone but me remember Joan Rivers’ movie Rabbit Test?) But if you’re funny, hey, I’ll cut you some slack.
It’s not the first thing that comes to mind when I watch South Park, but the show is also a wonderful demonstration of the First Amendment in action. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Do we really need another voice to say, “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it”?
D.
*Maureen, to answer your question: since now.
My life in baseball
Before I get rolling, will some legal-type person tell me if I can get in trouble for writing a fake Alan Rickman blog?
I know, I know — I’m ruining the magic. But this way, I do get credit for convincing Maureen to take her clothes off.
My hatred for team sports is deep and abiding.
Wait, let me qualify that. I used to enjoy watching team sports. As a ten-year-old, I liked going to high school football or basketball games, for I had discovered that I was the perfect height to collide with shorter high school girls’ breasts. Crowds, man. They’re a bitch.
Participation, that’s what got me down. I grew up at a time when sports defined the boy, and I had a narrow definition indeed. To appreciate my problem, one needs a sense of proportion.
Yes, I had a bat, and yes, my teensy mitt swam over my teensier fingers. Maybe my dad or my brother taught me how to hit and catch, but if they did, I don’t remember it. I do remember being the last kid picked for a team, always, regardless of the sport — even kickball. And I wasn’t even half bad at kickball.
Elementary school softball: nearly every time at bat, I would strike out. I’d pray the ball would hit me, because then I’d get the walk. Invariably, the team captains made me an outfielder. The other outfielder knew that if the ball popped my way, he would have to catch it or there would be a home run for sure.
That went on all through elementary school and junior high school. In high school, we had several options for physical education. I took weight training every time, which allowed me to hang out with the stoners and the cholos and the ninja-wannabes — other guys who hated team sports as much as I did. My people.
I thought I had escaped the horrors of baseball, but in 10th grade I became involved in the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization. Our parents thought BBYO was a youth group designed to help nice young Jewish boys meet nice young Jewish girls. In reality, BBYO helped me meet other nice young Jewish boys who shared my burgeoning interest in pot and alcohol. But, wouldn’t you know it, the bastards liked to play baseball on the weekends.
Week after week, I dodged the invitation, and they would manage to round out their numbers by asking cousins, little brothers, or that kid across town who did pretty good in the Special Olympics. But one weekend, I couldn’t escape; they made it a point of honor. I’d be letting my brothers down.
And I thought: You’re going to guilt trip me? You sons of bitches. I’ll teach you what it means to let you down.
They figured it out by the end of the first inning. By the third inning, their oft-repeated refrain had become music to my ears. I’ve repeated it to my son and my OR nurses — it never fails to get a laugh. Thanks guys. I can still hear your warm words of encouragement.
D.
The other requisite baby photo
Notice the look of keen intelligence on my face:
I’m about to make either an earth-shaking discovery or a momentous poopie. One of the two.
D.
A singular lack of faith
Here’s how my mind works.
I’m thinking about all the various spoof blogs I know: Madonna’s Personal Blog, Harriet Miers’s Blog!!!, and Mel’s Musings (Mel Gibson’s Blog), and I’m wondering, what other famous people have fake blogs in their honor?
If anyone deserves a Harriet Miers-style blog, it’s George W. Bush. Google George Bush’s Blog and you’ll get this defunct site (last update, June 6, 2001). Then there’s Bush Blog!, which at least updates a bit more regularly (last entry, December 17, 2005). GOP.com, the Republican National Committee’s official blog, is the funniest of the three. With a headline like Economy Continues to Thrive, you know they have writers who will give The Daily Show a run for its money.
After that, I get the bright idea of looking for God’s blog. Turns out, He has several, like this one, or this one, which I rather like. Maybe I just dig the idea of God singing a Barry Manilow song for Jesus’ birthday.
He wore a diamond
He was escorted to his chair
He saw Lola dancing there . . .”
But what really gets me is this one, called Godblog. On June 3, 2002, someone named Steve Jones set up Godblog on Blogspot. His tag reads,
Some of the amazing stories that people have told me or I have experienced about God doing stuff.
and his one and only entry reads,
No link. Nada. Talk about a let-down.
So, Steve? Put up or shut up. If you don’t want to run Godblog, that’s cool. It’s easy as pie to destroy your blog — believe me, I know. But leaving up a blog that reads
Some stories of God’s amazingness
with nothing else to back it up depresses the hell out of me, and I’m agnostic.
Anyway, what we really need is for one of the God’s Blog guys to start leaving entries on George Bush’s blog. You know, to mess with his mind.
GEORGE
(the Lord, like Death in Terry Pratchett’s novels, should always write in caps)
YOU’VE DONE QUITE ENOUGH, GEORGE. TIME TO STEP DOWN NOW, BEFORE LUCIFER AND I ARE FORCED TO FIGURE OUT SOMETHING WORSE THAN HELL.
J.
Yeah, something like that.
D.
I love Jeff Corwin
. . . with a quiet, manly kind of love. You know, the way John Ireland loved Montgomery Clift in Red River — no, wait, that’s not quite right. I dig Corwin the way Sal Mineo dug Jimmy Dean in Rebel Without a Cause . . . no, no, no, that’s not it either.
Maybe I love him the way Claude Rains loves Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca — hey, wait, you mean that’s gay, too? (See David Thomson’s essay, Film Studies: Gay films? Well there’s ‘Raging Bull’ and ‘The Godfather’ for starters…)
Well, I certainly don’t love him the way Laurence Olivier loves Tony Curtis in Spartacus, or the way Jake Gyllenhaal loves Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. Damn it all, aren’t there any role models in Hollywood for good, beefy, MASCULINE love?
Hmm. Maybe I love him the way Jake Barnes loves his fishin’ buddy Bill Gorton in The Sun Also Rises. I can always count on Papa Hemingway for confidently heterosexual male-male bonding, right? Right.
Anyway, I owe this gush of enthusiasm for Jeff Corwin to my son, who found this repository of Jeff Corwin video clips. They’re all great, but we especially enjoyed Jeff’s “Never before seen movie segments!”
So, Jeff, I love ya ‘cuz your heart is in the right place, you care about animals, you’re a ham like me, and you’re funny as hell.
That and the fact you’re so damned hawt.
Jeff, I wish I knew how to quit you.
D.
P.S.: If you want a serious treatment of the history of gay themes in Hollywood cinema, you can do no better than The Celluloid Closet, 1995. Great stuff.