I guess it was the trombone.

I was a band nerd when I was growing up in the ’70s.  I wasn’t just a garden variety, run of the mill band nerd though; I was the special kind of band uber-nerd who plays the trombone.  I wasn’t the kind of trombone player who can pull it off and make it seem like a cool or at least marginally socially acceptable thing to do, either.  There was a kid in my 9th grade class named Theo who could absolutely pull that off.  I was definitely the other kind…picture a tall, exceedingly thin and gangly dork with big bushy hair and a seemingly guileless demeanor, who skulks around his high school in that kind of self-conscious manner that suggests perpetual embarrassment about everything, but especially about that odd-shaped trombone case with the long round end and the flanged other end.  That was my 9th grade year.  I was new to the school, and freshly transplanted from Cincinnati to New Jersey.  So add a touch of culture shock to the mix, too.

I did find a niche eventually, and some very good friends along the way; and we did some very cool things as a result of being in the band.  We marched in the Cherry Blossom parade in Washington, D.C. and in a marching band competition at the U of Penn. football stadium; and the jazz band played in a competition at the Berkeley School of Music in Boston, and played a midday concert on the steps of the Lincoln Center in NYC.  We also met Maynard Ferguson and Doc Severinson at jazz clinics, which was very cool.

What does that have to do with today? This: I have been in kind of a blue funk over various issues for the last couple of weeks.  I don’t know if it is midlife crisis material (I had that at age 25, in a series of episodes involving illicit substances, undercover FBI employees, a felony conviction and being a guest of the state; all of which I will write about in due time).  There has just been an element of uncertainty about many aspects of my life, and I have been really struggling for traction.

On my drive home today after work, I felt one of those undefinable angsty bubbles welling up deep inside my chest.  Popular children’s author J. K. Rowling describes characters called “Dementors”, which by their simple presence suck the very life force out of their victims, leaving them drained and bereft of spirit and hope.  Dementor was my copilot on the drive home tonight.  Winston Churchill called it “the Black Dog”…a wave of depression that is not necessarily “about” anything, but just lurks and looms and colors your thinking dark.  The one tonight was sudden onset and very intense, and was accompanied by a physical weariness in the limbs and chest.  I was thinking about heading straight to bed to sleep it off, when my cell phone rang…

It was my stepdaughter, and without preamble she asked, “Do you have a trombone?”  As a matter of fact, as a former trombonist I do have one, and said as much.  When I asked why, she said it was a long story.  I got home, and found out that it is surprisingly easy to misplace a trombone case in our house.  I also found my mood strangely buoyed by the addition of a goal, however oddball and out of the blue it was.  We looked in the basement, the garage, and several other places, and finally found it upstairs in one of the bedrooms.  I assembled the ol’ slushpump for the first time in several years, and played a Bb scale.  Little rusty there.  Tone sounded, in Leo Kottke’s words, like a goose fart on a muggy day.

The story was, my stepdaughter, who by the way is an extremely gifted pianist, had tried out for the high school jazz band.  Her background is not in jazz, and she did not make the cut.  The band director then mentioned that all his trombone players were graduating and asked if any of the incoming students wanted to try out for their spots.  She raised her hand instantly, figuring (I suppose) that the rest of the minor details such as getting a trombone and learning how to play it and whatnot, would all take care of themselves at some future point.

That future point being the phone call to me, which led to a feverish search for the long-dormant instrument.  All of which subsequently led to me offering some rudimentary instruction on trombone assembly and slide positions and embrochure and the Bb scale and finally, the proper use of a spitvalve.  That activity seemed to forestall the personal emotional slump I had been in just minutes before, which was an unexpected bonus.  And it felt kind of cool that the same trombone that led to so many interesting and fun experiences in my life, may yet play a similar role in the formative experiences of a lovely and talented young lady.  I hope she enjoys it.

Chili Cookoff at work

For operation feed. I’m going to enter this one. It is a sophisticated blend of flavors and textures that can be easily transformed via the judicious addition of hot stuff, high octane jet fuel, and cleaning products commonly found under your kitchen sink, into an oozing LaBrea tar pit that requires an insurance waiver and a titanium spoon. I’m not going to take it there, this time:
1 lb lean ground beef
1 package spicy Bob Evans sausage
2 medium or 1 large onion, finely diced
1 large green pepper, finely diced
1 jalapeno pepper, finely diced
3 sticks celery, finely diced
1 large can diced tomatos
1 medium can tomato sauce
1 15 oz can light kidney beans, drained
3 T vegetabe oil
2 t cumin seed
2 t salt
1 t black pepper
2 t sugar
2 t Worcestershire sauce
2 t chili powder
1 c water and 1 beef boullion cube (optional)

Heat vegetable oil in large skill on medium-high heat.
Sautee cumin seed for about 1 min.
Place beef, sausage, onion and celery in skillet; brown and drain.
Stir in green pepper and jalapeno.
Add salt, pepper, chili powder, sugar and worcestershire sauce, stir well.
Add tomatoes and tomato sauce, bring to a boil.
Reduce heat and simmer 1 hour.
Add kidney beans.
If liquid has reduced too much, add boullion cube and water and simmer until mixed well.

Sign me up!

Bush apologist and cranio-rectal-syndrome poster child Karl “Turdblossom” Rove is writing a book about the Bush presidency, in which Rove ”threatens” to name people who…
“never accepted him as a legitimate president…I’m going to name names and show examples.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/07/rove-to-name-names-and-sh_n_149092.html?page=26&show_comment_id=18600267#comment_18600267

Hmmm…dude might have a shorter list if he includes only people who DON’T think that way.

Back in the saddle

I have been away from this for over a month.  Just got a new laptop, another one.  So here goes.

One big thing that happened was that a very good friend and coworker collapsed at his desk one morning, a few weeks ago.  I have known him and worked with him for 16 years.  At abou 9:30 in the morning I heard this unearthly noise which it turns out was him gasping for air and experiencing the incredible pain of an aneurism.  He blew out an artery to the lower part of his brain.  Just  before that, he had looked unwell, and complained of dizziness.  He turned to the guy who sits right across from him and said “I need help”, and then everyone around heard this high-pitched keening as he was trying to breathe, and he collapsed to the floor.  The squad came, and took him to the hospital.  He is still in a coma, and they don’t know yet the extent of the brain damage or whether he will regain consciousness or functionality.   He is about my age.  Scary.

Some other shit has happened, too.  More later.

Thirsty

Black Power vs. White Trash

After watching the Democratic National Convention last week, and from what I have seen of the Republican National Convention so far, I have, for the first time in a long time, a vague and unfamiliar feeling of–what is this?  Is it optimism? Is it hope?–of guardedly positive anticipation, maybe, that this country will soon be on a new and improved trajectory.  No, scratch that.  I am still too cynical for that.  Maybe what I feel is relief, that the socio-politico-economic mudslide we have been riding will soon come grinding to a halt.  Yeah, that’s it:  Not that things are automatically going to get better once the current presidential outfit is out of office, but that the injury they have done and continue to do to the country will stop being exacerbated.  Like the farmer who comes up out of his storm cellar after an F5 tornado, surveys the flattened wreckage of what used to be his farm and his crops, and says “Look, Ma, ain’t it grand the wind stopped blowin’?”  (To paraphrase Bill W., may mad props always be with his legacy).

Amiable Dunce

My personal political cynicism began in 1980, with the Reagan presidency.  I have tried for years to understand the nearly idolatrous cult of hero-worship that surrounds the Reagan legacy, and I just can’t fathom it.  When it was first announced that he had dementia, part of me felt a little bit sorry for him, but part of me was at the same time screaming in my head “No shit Sherlock!  How did that escape everyone’s notice from 1980 on?? His own biographer had to make his story less vapid by inventing characters and other shit about his life!  Seasoned and intelligent foreign policy insiders called him things like ‘amiable dunce’ and wrote books about him called ‘Sleepwalking Through History’, for god’s sake!”  And his defenders assert that he surrounded himself with good people.  And I wonder to them “Who, exactly?”  James Watt was a lawyer for strip miners, who was put in charge of Interior, which put him in charge of our natural resources.  When questioned about global warming, his response was “wear more sunscreen”  Ray Donovan, who dodged questions about legal ties to mob figures, was in charge of Labor.  Nice fit.  And after the inquiry, he asked “Where do I go to get my reputation back?”, to which the logical response should have been “Dude, you work for Reagan! What fucking reputation are you referring to?!?”  And Alexander ‘I am in charge! My finger is on the button, and to hell with rules of succession!’ Haig, whose closet ambitions were laid bare during the drama after the assassination attempt.  And various gunsels, thugs, miscreants and ne’er-do-wells like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and William Casey and Ollie North and Robert McFarlane and John Negroponte and Caspar Weinberger and multiple felons Ollie North and John Poindexter, all of whom basically said fuck the constitution, we’ll do what we want.  Which they did, in the Iran-Contra affair (Hey! Let’s illegally sell these weapons to Iran through Isreal, and then secretly use the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan Contras, in DIRECT VIOLATION OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION!  C’mon, it’ll be fun!!), the illegal war in Grenada, the illegal war on working people (firing the air traffic controllers), the fuck-the-poor trickle-down Reaganomic policy (which by the way was ultimately discredited by its own architect), the October Surprise (which almost fucked Jimmy Carter out of a legacy altogether, had he not been born with more character and integrity and intelligence in his little pinkie  (and unfortunately far less cutthroat political savvy) than everyone in every Reagan and Bush administration put together had, ever).

He was a god damn puppet!

This is the crowd that surrounded Reagan, cynically taking advantage of his advancing feeblemindedness and decrepitude to advance their megalomaniacal agendas.  And his defenders assert that he was the right man for the times, and I wonder to them “What part, exactly?  The tripling of the national debt? The quadrupling of the national deficit? The subverting of the Constitution, which that smug bastard North had the unmitigated gall to brag about, in front of Congress?  The fact that the U.S. went from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation by the time he was done? No, really, which thing do you like about his legacy?”   And they mutter something about the fall of communism.  Which only proves that Mikhail Gorbachev was as much of a sucker for the Reagan charisma as his other worshipers are.  Even so, the Soviet Union’s collapse had as much to do with the expense of (and the resulting social disillusionment of the population, due to) the Soviets’ prolonged military misadventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Southeast Asia (holy shit! sound familiar, anyone?) as with some bellicose orangutan from the West showing its red ass about communism.

Like a cross between Mr. Rogers, Don Knotts, and some Macchiavellian nightmare…

My cynicism continued through the G.H.W. Bush years, which were thankfully cut short when he threw ‘92 to the Dems because he had to issue first term pardons to the Iran Contra crowd, which would have basically been political suicide had he continued to be president after that.  No, really.  He would never have been able to survive the scrutiny and investigations of that little saga of corruption and subversion, along with the probing of his role (and likely exploitation of CIA connections) in the October Surprise, that helped get him and Reagan into office to begin with.

Clinton

We did have what the Onion called “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity…characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas” during which Republicans demonstrated a) a willingness to spend $40 million investigating secret blowjobs, and b) that there were really no depths to their venality, and their desire to undermine any foreign or domestic policy achievement he ever tried to make.  They just couldn’t fucking stand that his shit worked, and theirs didn’t.  It drove them fucking nuts, which was fun and a little bit sickening to watch  as it played out on the national stage.

What the hell were we thinking?

Along came W., which got my cynicism kicked into full gear.  In 2000, I thought that the best case was, we had an affable goofball, a slaphappy windbag, a country-club chucklehead, who if not for an accident of birth and the backing of a family who would stop at NOTHING to grab and maintain political power, would have aspired to maybe, at the most, be qualified to be regional manager of some “84 Lumber” stores, with the politial skills to lead local chapter of the Kiwanis or Rotary International.  He brought all this heavy-handed religiosity to the table, along with a great whopping shitload of absolute ignorance.  I used to get involved in these epic on-line debates and discussions about the role of religion in government, with a group of political and religious conservatives.  Both sides and many nuances in between would chime in, but sometimes after carefully debunking “Christian Nation” myth by documenting the Deism of the founding fathers, and their specific intent NOT to make this a Christian Nation;  I would invariably end up trotting out ridiculously inarticulate shit like “No fucking way our country was founded on those principles!  Our country was founded by people getting on little wooden boats and sailing the fuck AWAY from those principles!”  And then I would sputter on my keyboard and wait for my neck veins to subside.

I got what what-do-you-call-it, “outrage fatigue”, along about year 5 1/2 of the current Bush regime.  I mean, was that really the best we could do?  And was that the best the Dems could do, to counter it?  Really?  Al Gore is honorable and well-intentioned, but he allowed the media to steamroll him with the Love Canal and Love Story and inventing the internet stories.  They were–and are–all easily debunkable lies, but NO ONE EVER BOTHERED TO PUSH BACK! (fwiw:  Tim Berners-Lee, who actually sort of did invent the world wide web, gave Al Gore all due props for the legislative initiatives that provided for its funding and creation.  If anyone would actually bother to go back and read Gore’s remarks IN THE CONTEXT IN WHICH THEY WERE MADE, they would realize that the whole claim to inventing the internet story is a hoax, originated and perpetrated by the likes of Limbaugh and other screaming douche bags).   And in 2004, the swift boaters succesfully painted John Kerry, more of a war hero than, let’s see, ANYONE in W.’s draft-dodging, military-obligation-shirking, hypocritically-bombastic-jingoism-spewing circle of acquaintances and advisors, as some kind of lying glory-hog.  Again, easily debunkable by the public record, but NO ONE EVER BOTHERED TO PUSH BACK!.  Kerry, brave in combat, showed his fucking belly to a bunch of lying assholes.  That illustrates exactly how Clinton, with all his moral failings, survived (and even thrived) politically, in the toxic political climate that marred his years.  He pushed back, every single time.  Even when he was a) lying, and b) wrong. At least he made the other side fight for their victories.

After we got W. the second time, I sort of had to give up being overtly pissed off about it.  I had to give up the epic lunch-table verbal sparring (I work with a bunch of absolute frothing, Reagan nutsack-licking, W-behavior-justifying-no-matter-how-egregious-and-incompetent-the-freshly-perpetrated-outrage-against-common-sense-and-common-decency, Kool-Aid drinking wing-nuts), and watching shit like Crossfire and the Sunday morning bobble-head shows, and reading shit that would make my blood boil.  Every once in a while I will stump them though, by asking what exactly they are proud of or satisfied with, in regard to W’s legacy.  Hahaha.  But all the same, I came to a kind of resigned acceptance that as a country we get exactly the kind of government we deserve, and if the majority of people vote for it (I KNOW!  THEY DIDN’T! AMONG OTHER IRREGULARITIES AND OUTRAGES AND VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT AND OUTRIGHT FRAUD, THE OWNER OF THE COMPANY THAT MAKES THE GOD DAMN VOTING MACHINES PLEDGED OUT LOUD AND IN PUBLIC THAT HE WOULD DO EVERYTHING IN HIS POWER TO ENSURE THE ELECTION AND RE-ELECTION OF BUSH!  WTF? I MEAN SERIOUSLY!  WHAT.THE.FUCK.QUESTION MARK.EXCLAMATION POINT.  (sigh. deep breath. fuck it. caps lock off.)), then that is what we will be saddled with.   The one remarkable achievement of W’s presidential career is that he successfully pulled off the impossible task of making his father, incompetent boob and bastion of mediocrity that he was, seem like a fucking statesman of genius.  At least, if you grade on the curve.   Note:  I have been a huge fan of the Bush family ever since I found out that their fortune was made by Prescott Bush, who had major holdings and investments in Thyssen Steel and other German industrial concerns that financed and fueled the Nazi rise to power, and that Bush only pulled out when the U.S. froze his assets under the Trading With The Enemy Act in 1942 (THREE YEARS AFTER HITLER BEGAN FUCKING EUROPE, BY THE WAY), and that 60 years later, a civil action for damages was brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave laborers at Auschwitz. Nice fucking family, just the kind of people you want in charge of your country.  Fuckers.

Yeah, yeah.  Whatever.

But this Obama guy, he seems like someone I can get enthusiastic about. Based on nothing more than he seems to be level headed, seems to want the job more than Gore or Kerry ever did, and that he already has more respect and credibility in the rest of the world than W. ever had.  And maybe, just maybe, people are finally realizing that the religio-political conservatism that has influenced and dominated public discourse for a generation, represents a consistently wrong, discredited and dying ideology.   I know, maybe I am just drinking some different flavor of Kool-Aid here.  But I am really fucking thirsty, and have been for too long.

The “F” Word…

Fuck!

More to come…

The (thuh) definite article – specifying or particularizing effect, as opposed to the indefinite or generalizing force of the indefinite artic–ah, screw it,  I am not the only one…
cla·ver·ing (klā’vər) intr.v. – Idle talking
gom·er·al (gom-er-uhl) n Scot. and North England – a fool.