Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
The good people at Smith Magazine are sponsoring a Six Word Memoir Contest this month, which is a super neat idea. A few examples...
"My family is overflowing with therapists."
– Shaina Feinberg
"Big hair, big love, big hurry."
– Larry Smith
"Longed for him. Got him. Shit." – Margaret Atwood
Mine:
"Well, where do I go today??"
Enter yours and you could win an iPod Nano. Contest ends on Christmas Day.
I'm reading this great book called The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese. Dr. Verghese's first book My Own Country, his autobiograpical story of running an AIDS clinic in the 1980s in rural Tennessee was one of my all-time favorites.
Early on, along with a brilliant turn of phrase every 3 paragraphs, he had this...
Ivan Lendl was to me the Ted Williams of tennis, the way he used a brand new frame and new shoes with every ball change during a match, the way each racket was strung with geniune gut at exactly seventy-two and a half pounds, the way he would toss a ball to an umpire when his fingers detected a drop in pressure that no one else had noticed. David Halberstam in Summer of '49 describes once how Ted Williams struck out at Fenway, he came to the dugout raving that the home plate was out of line. The next day, to humor him, they measured the plate. It was out of line. Lendl gave just that kind of attention to detail that oulwd have made him a great clinician, and yet, like Williams, he didn't suffer fools well and was not a popular champion. (p. 47)
I've never thought about it that way but it's exactly right. I'm loving this book.
"When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all of the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever."
My friend MJ has kissed enough people to have her own photo pool. Here's me.
Paroxysm: Noun. "A sudden, violent outburst; a fit of violent action or emotion"
The Elegant Variation reports this morning that Jonathan Lethem, author of the overrated Motherless Brooklyn and the beyond awesome Fortress of Solitude, is editing the Library of America forthcoming Philip K. Dick collection. How's that for a winning combination?
A rather disturbing post from my friend Carolyn about what her fellow MFA in fiction classmates are reading. You know reading, right? Its what you do with the stuff that people write...
So we’re sitting in class tonight and our teacher asks something like, How do you find the fiction that you read?
First, the class says _nothing_. This isn’t unusual, though. The dozen of us in class have been little more than bumps on our chairs tonight. Eventually, someone speaks up.
- I read what my teachers tell me to read.
and then
- I find books I like on Amazon and see what other people have bought.
No one says “I read the Sunday book review from the newspaper.”
No one says “I read litblogs.”
No one says “I read award-winners and nominees.”
No one says “I read the New Yorker.”
No one says “I read literary magazines.”
When I snuck into AWP last year a couple of the literary magazine folks said that MFA students wanted them to run their stories, but they didn’t want to subscribe, even read the magazines. I said bosh and poppycock. I was wrong. Sigh.
The Queen (2006): "Time waits for no one, not even a Queen."
Notes: Seen on the spur of the moment my first day back in town. Lovely, sweet and sad. This movie elicits sympathy for Queen Elizbeth II and Prime Minister Tony Blair if that's possible.
Rating: ****
Good to be home. Tonight will be about unpacking and getting to bed early.
Ahoy. I am spending the latter part of the Thanksgiving holiday at my parent's house in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. I return to California tomorrow.
Stranger Than Fiction (2006): "The things we presume are accidents keeping us away from our normal life are what our normal life should be"
Notes: Seen on Thanksgiving Day in New York City with my friend Keely.
"I believe in the unsubmissive, the unfaltering, the unassailable, the irresistible, the unbelievable—in other words, in an art of life."
"There's gotta be a future, and it can't be what is now 'cause you gotta build on a present and keep moving and going down. It's supposed to be something you can't think of now. That's part of life, man."
From the NY Times...
The 1964 Disney movie “Mary Poppins,” for example, treated adulthood as if it should be another form of childhood. Mary Poppins’s job, after teaching the Banks children that any job can be fun if you pour enough sugar over it, is to teach their father that the right dose might even dissolve the job altogether. Mr. Banks learns that the British Empire, its banks and many other manifestations of authority should be undermined, or at least taken less seriously. Life would be better if parents allowed themselves to dance like chimney sweeps and fly kites in the park. They shouldn’t just pay more attention to their children; they should become more like them. The movie’s liberatory spirit is, of course, out of the heart of the 1960s.
(via AL Daily)
Performer Danny Hoch, a hero of mine, on the racial implications of Seinfeld (via Jeff Chang).
Brick (2005): "Film Noir in 11th grade"
Notes: Saw with my dad on Pay per View. Took us a minute to get it even through I'd hear the director discuss it on The Treatment. Think Double Indemnity v. Clueless mashup and you've got the idea.
I can't tell you how happy this article about poor dressing choices in medicine makes me. Granted, all the pictures are of women's body parts but the article actually talks about professional dress as if men exist. It also includes a great history of dress in medicine, some quality historical reporting and a point of view. And it's written by one Dr. Erin Marcus, an internist in Miami, who out journalisms many a professional journalist I've read recently.
Bravo.
For no good reason, I once objected to reading or even acknowledging the existance of Gore Vidal. Actually, I had one lousy reason: I hated his name. I figured anyone with a name as precious and aristocratic as "Gore Vidal" (really, could you see yourself playing kickball with someone named "Gore"?) had nothing to share with me and my Midwestern-born, sneakers-wearing, Goonies-loving self.
About 10 years ago, I read his amazing introduction to the collected works of H.L. Mencken. Soon after I moved to the Bay Area, I began hearing his lethally acerbic radio commentaries. Just last week, I get a note from Truthdig.com that they've run a lenghty excerpt from his new memoir Point to Point Navigation which is getting a fair amount of hype.
None of really sunk in until I read this article in the New York Review of Books by Larry McMurtry. It begins like so...
In 1904, when Leonard Woolf steamed off eastward to become a cadet in the Ceylon Civil Service, he took with him seventy large and well-printed volumes of Voltaire, the edition of 1784, in Baskerville type. In Ceylon his duties were not light—from time to time it became necessary to hang a felon. Fortunately, in compensation, native women were available, and also, it appears, cheap. Very little more is heard from Leonard Woolf about Voltaire or the Baskerville type.
If I were planning to embark for a far place and stay for several years I think I'd take my forty-six volumes of the writings of Gore Vidal. (The forty-sixth, a collection of short fiction called Clouds and Eclipses, has just appeared.[1] ) This count does not include the pseudonymous work, which would be for another essay. Given that print is smaller now, and margins meaner, I probably have about as much wordage of Gore Vidal's as Leonard Woolf had of Voltaire's; and the two men, Voltaire and Vidal, seem to me to have several things in common. Both were brilliant talkers; likewise brilliant satirists. Both initially needed money and worked very hard to get it. Both also needed courts: Where better to place their well-sharpened darts than in royal rumps?
Fortunately, they had courts: Voltaire the Versailles of Louis XV, as well as the Berlin of Frederick the Great and courts of lesser brilliance. Vidal had the Kennedy Camelot in Washington, D.C., as well as the courts of several emperors of the silver screen: Sam Spiegel, for example, and there is probably no better example.
I didn't need to read much further to be sold but I did. Vidal has let the kind of life I dream about: Writing great books, meeting amazing people and leading with his gift of gab. I have no idea if I'll be as envious after reading one of his books or if Vidal's adventures were simply a product of their time, a pre-Internet rarified society, impossible today. I'm willing to get in there and look.
Should I pass a good bookstore while on vacation, I will be buying a copy of Vidal's Palimpsest, his first memoir. If not, I'll be checking out of the library. Reading McMurtry's encomium not only make me excited to read Vidal but excited to read, period.
After a morning that resembles getting struck by a meteroite, I have departed for the Thanksgiving holiday. Please enjoy yourselves and your time with family, friends and loved ones.
In keeping with my promise for National Blog Posting Month, I'll continue to post once a day. But no promises that'll be anything great.
See ya Monday, everyone!
Curbed.com recently ran an open letter about gentrification which just about brings about the worst in people on both sides. Sure, the old junior high nerd in me eats stuff like this up...
Don't rent to anyone that was in a frat or sorority. don't rent to anyone who wears black pants, a blue shirt and a gold tie to work. don't rent to anyone who gushes about the opening of a sushi restaurant on franklin without at least considering that every new business catering to recent arrivals ratchets up the cycle of neighborhood replacement. don't rent to anyone who works in equity trading, i-banking or finance in general. don't rent to anyone who describes things as "sketch" (a term only used by people who aren't from the area they're describing). don't rent to anyone who wears a dirty white baseball cap. don't rent to anyone who played lacrosse (unless they're indians). don't rent to anyone who like totally talks in that cringe-inducing neo-valley girl voice.
And, in spirit, loves this...
rent to artistically-inclined people. rent to actors and musicians and painters and writers and designers and carpenters and chefs and gallery curators. rent to social workers and nurses and people who work at non-profit organizations. rent to people who are interesting, people who are intelligent, people who have hobbies, people who have dreams that consist of something other than making partner. rent to people who aren't living here as a pitstop on the way to a luxury condo. rent to people who have heard of the caribbean day parade, of the riots, people who have a rudimentary understanding of the area's history. rent to people that will contribute to the neighborhood in some way, shape or form.
But ya know what? I live in Haight-Ashbury, the shining example of the latter, at least 40 years ago. Haight-Ashbury has gone from the Grateful Dead's neighborhood in 1967 to a theme park for suburban teenagers, a toilet for homeless kids and a fantasy for ex-hippes lucky enough to have bought a house up the hill 3 decades ago. The Haight no more resembles the birthplace of free love in 2006 than Hollywood Blvd. resembles where Gene Kelly attended premieres. That a supermarket sits vacant two blocks from my house because the neighborhood won't late a Trader Joe's move in (it's both non-union and will bring "gentrification") tells me it's delusional and dangerous to think otherwise.
I don't think gentrification is an either/or. I don't think we have to rip the guts out of a neighborhood to make it friendly to a higher paying clientele because no one moves to a place like the East Village in search of a funky Starbucks. But there is nothing "real" or "authentic" about homeless teens and drug dealing in front of the local bodega. It means that the neighborhood and by extention, the city, isn't doing its job providing a viable alternative to its residents. It also creates an environment people are affraid to raise families in, furthering the dangerous perception that a city neighborhood is for 20 somethings, gay couples and the retired but anyone with "serious priorities" should head for the suburbs. No city can survive that way.
The sad truth is also that there are way more boring people than interesting ones. Why a straight-edged fellow moves to a funky neighborhood then complains there's no Banana Republic, I'll never know. But as long as there is a paucity of interesting places to live and a surplus of people looking to gain social capital by moving there, I don't see how we are going to escape this miasma known as "gentrification." The question more me is can we come up with some practical, workable solutions that involve neighbors, business and government, instead of just calling each other names? (via Buzzfeed).
"There are nights when I think Sal Paradise was right.
Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together."
Michigan v. Ohio State. #1 in the land v. #2. It starts right now.
This one's for you, Bo.
Update: We lost. Leave me alone.
Last week, author Zadie Smith gave a fantastic interview on KCRW's Bookworm which has been on my mind since...
"I think of reading as a skill and an art. The model of a reader we're given is a person watching a film or watching television so the greatest principle is 'I should sit here and be entertained' and the more classical model is something that's been completely taken away, the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician sits at the piano with a piece of music which is the work made by somebody they don't know, or probably couldn't comprehend entirely and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift you give the artist and the artist gives you. That's an incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you pracitce reading and work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it."
In principle I love this idea. I'm drawn to people who can dig deep into an author's bibliography and look up to writers (Cynthia Ozick, A.S. Byatt, John Barth) who have based some part of their career on this digging. Part of my attraction comes from how inadequate I feel next to this kind of reader.
Ms. Smith's remarks leave me though with two difficulties:
I. How do we as readers determine who is worth reading deeply and who is not without becoming slaves to some crusty idea of canonical literature? Do we give Curtis Sittenfeld the same deep read we give Edith Wharton? Or do we create a literary apartheid by with older, deader authors get better treatment that younger living ones?
II. Should we commit ourselves to reading deeply, what are we willing to sacrifice? Television, movies and video games may seem easy to dispose of but how about time with friends and family? Exercise and health? Spiritual development? Working for a living? I'm saddened that the very people who argue for "reading deeply" are people whose lifestyles or social economic standing have granted them the privilege.
Question then: Where is the place of "reading deeply" in a modern busy life?
I have no answers yet to these questions. I ask to hear what you think.
Last night I attended the opening of "New Moves: Fast Forward & Instant Reply" at the LIMN Furniture Gallery. My friend Courtney Skott had a piece in the show, the cloud bed seen above.
Courtney graduated from California College of the Arts in May and has already shown her furniture in a bunch of places. I'm eager to see where her work goes next because that bed friggin' rocks. I want it to have a steering wheel so I can drive it around.
Ya know the guys in khakis you see doing reports from trade shows on like the Flooring and Carpeting Network? My buddy Dave is now one of those guys.
The fact that he doesn't show up as cleary as his co-host I am attributing to the latent racism of, er, someone involved.
Fuck (2005): "That one word solicits such strong reactions means it and language itself is doing its job"
Notes: Saw this one with my friend Amy last night when we missed a screening of Babel (that fucker is three hours long!). Not a whole lot to it but entertaining as all fuck and a nice half of a double feature with The Aristocrats.
Recommended by my buddy Dave and Oh and on Moviefone, this movie is referred to as "F-Star-C-K.'
Thanks to a friend who knows more about this world than I, the post I wrote earlier this week about press coverage of classical music needs some fixing up.
In response to an editorial in the San Francisco Classical Voice I wrote the following...
Please release yourself from the tired old paradigm of classical music as something we should support and tranform it into something we want to support. No one owes you media coverage. How about instead demonstrating why you deserve it?
My friend points out that I paint this article's author Robert Commanday as a relic, hostile to the changes that define contemporary culture. My friend further informs me that Mr. Commanday founded SFCV as an alternative to the lack of coverage of Classical Music in mainstream media and while his paradigm of newspaper-coverage-above-all-else may be limiting, Mr. Commanday is not ignorant, simply frustrated.
In rereading what I wrote, I see my friend is correct. Scolding a point of view, however crusty it may seem, is not only immature but unproductive. Should we seek real change in the arts, drawing mustaches on the old way is not the answer. Instead it's a process of understanding and education that begins with the notion that, young and old, we're all in this together. The arts has precious few friends as is. Infighting helps no one.
This is very sad news. The New York Times has reported that Bo Schembechler, coach of the University of Michigan football team throughout my entire childhood, has died of a heart attack. He was 77.
Glen Edward "Bo" Schembechler coached at Michigan from 1969-1989 and remains one of the winningest coaches in college football history. Short-tempered and old-fashioned, he often got ribbed for favoring the running game, "three yards and a cloud of dust" football that rarely shows up on highlight reels. He yelled at players and referees, broke countless headsets in disgust and had two quadruple bypass surgeries while coaching. According to his autobiography (written then with a less-known sportswriter named Mitch Albom), he quit coaching in 1989 at his doctor's and family's insistence. A few more years on the field, he was warned, would mean collapsing and dying on it.
Along with Joe Paterno at Penn State, Mr. Schembechler was one of the last football coaches from an earlier era, when coaching meant less about looking good on television and steriods, endorsements and giant paydays hadn't transformed college football into a pledge class for the pros. Schembechler said he wasn't just in the business of molding star athletes but raising young men. He understood that he entered his player's lives at a moment of great personal transformation, from adolescence to adulthood, and claimed to take that responsibility very seriously.
I believed him. During his 30 years on the job, scandals that ruined programs at the Univeristy of Oaklahoma and Southern Methodist University were rare at Michigan. Athletes caught accepting money from professional scouts before graduation were let go. Every player, whether All-American or third string Safety who never played a down, wore a full uniform with their name on the back of the jersey, received his letterman jacket at the end of the season and ran out onto the field before largest football crowd in America on Saturdays.
Years after he retired, players with distinguished professional careers like Anthony Carter, Jim Harbaugh and Desmond Howard spoke of Bo Schembechler at the best coach they'd ever had, as much a great football mind as a father figure. More importantly, former Michigan football players who had become lawyers, doctors, fathers and grandfathers spoke of their time at Michigan as the best years of their lives, a time they began as boys, left as men and learned the value of hard work, loyalty and respect.
I grew up going to Michigan games, thinking Bo was as permament a fixture in Ann Arbor as The Cube or the Painted Rock. We moved when I was in the 9th grade, right around the corner from Mr. Schembechler and his family. I'd see him in the springtime, riding his lawn tractor or trimming the hedges. I never said hello or thanked him for the memories. I was probably intimidated. Or shy.
Coach Schembechler compiled a 194-48-5 record at Michigan from 1969-89 and was Big Ten Coach of the Year 7 times. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1993. He will be remembered by Michigan fans around the world as a terrific coach and a man of tremendous dignity and class. I'll remember him as the guy who made me, a shrimpy, non-athletic kid who didn't really get football proud to come from Ann Arbor, the university and the town he loved so much.
When Michigan plays Ohio State tomorrow, the first time in the century-long history of their rivalry that the team have been ranked #1 and #2, I'm sure Bo will be watching. And probably throwing chucking his headset in disgust.
I saw this posted today. I think it about sums it up...
No one was more "Blue" than Bo. One of the last from an era of coaches when out of date attributes like "loyalty forever" were sincere. I think Joe Paterno has this at Penn State. You can find fault with their coaching decisions, but hard to find fault with their "character". Something we need a lot more of in this world, versus worshipping the alimighty $. Thanks Bo!!!
Bo was one of the greatest college football coaches to have ever graced the sidelines. And this comes from an Ohio State fan.
Tomorrow boys, can we win one for Bo?
Over at Consumating, I found this discussion of an incident at UCLA where a student was tasers for refusing to leave the library after refusing to show ID to campus cops. The Fark thread on the incident is just plain scary.
I posted about this sort of thing before so you know where I'm coming from. I'm getting damn tired of living in a country where any abuse of power can be justified in the name of our safety. If we have to taser 23 year-olds for public misbehavior then the terrorists, whomever they are, have already won.
Economist Milton Friedman is dead at age 94.
Milton Friedman, the grandmaster of conservative economic theory in the postwar era and a prime force in the movement of nations toward lesser government and greater reliance on free markets and individual
Conservative and liberal colleagues alike viewed Mr. Friedman as one of the 20th century's leading economic scholars, on a par with giants like John Maynard Keynes, Joseph A. Schumpeter and Paul Samuelson.
Rarely, his colleagues said, did anyone have such impact on both his own profession and on government. Though he never served officially in the halls of power, he was always around them, as an adviser and theorist. In time, his influence was felt around the world.
Didn't agree with him much but man, that's some legacy.
With friends like these, contemporary classical music performance is in big trouble. In an uninformed, whine titled "Come to the Aid of Music Journalism", Robert P. Commanday manages to be as unhelpful as he is regressive...
Pick any city, look at its newspaper, and you'll find attention to classical music diminished to the basic minimum. It will focus on the "big ticket" events — which, in the Bay Area, means the San Francisco Symphony, Opera, and Ballet, plus the most celebrated visiting artists. As is well-known to any person interested in classical music, such coverage just skims the surface.
Who's responsible? Newspaper publishers and their editors who have a hand in setting policy and then executing it. What to do about this downgrading of classical coverage? Go to the editors and lay it on. If you're representing a performing or presenting institution — say an orchestra or concert series — then get your board members to put on the pressure.
Mr. Commanday rattles on for a dozen more paragraphs without mentioning the Internet, blogging, The Long Tail and the decimation of arts programming in public schools. He ignores that we have raised a generation and a half, the older of which now assume leadership positions in local media, without adequate music education. In his universe, which begins and ends with daily newspaper coverage, not showing up on page D1 means your arts organizations doesn't exist.
Mr. Commanday, is it not 1957 anymore. The world of media of media is fractured, individualistic, and mircofocused. Daily newspapers face the greatest challenge in several decades of how to be all things to all readers and relevent to them as singular entities. They are doing their best and have a long way to go. I promise you that none of them have the time or the inclination to listen to symphony board members (which are still almost uniformly white, upper class, and middle-aged) "put the pressure on" so the newspaper can devote expensive column inches to their interests. The symphony board member may have once been the prize plum for a newspapers and its advertising team. But that was back when Eisenhower ran things. That prize plum now packs his kids' diapers in a messenger bag.
So instead of seeing newspapers as the cause of your troubles and the answer to your prayers, why notthink a little? Think about hyperlocal media like Yelp and the Gothamist chain. Think about classical music blogs. Think about innovative programming like partnering with other local arts organizations, having symphony happy hours and reimagining the classical music space as one of interaction instead of passive consumption.
Mr. Commanday, having this discussion through the eye of a needle is living in a dreamworld. Please release yourself from the tired old paradigm of classical music as something we should support and tranform it into something we want to support. No one owes you media coverage. How about instead demonstrating why you deserve it? (via Arts Journal)
Is there a definitive list of who the new congressional majority/minority leaders/whips are? I can't seem to find one anywhere.
After two straight weeks of out of town guests and a surprise trip to Los Angeles, I've never been so tired in my life. Apologies to those I had social obligations with this evening. I'm going to bed.
Borat (2006): "Idiots being bigoted remind us of how stupid bigotry is."
I was looking at this post on my friend Scott Andrew's blog and wondering...
Has anyone tried Google Calendar? Has anyone switched from iCal to Google Calendar?
Pluses and Minuses, if you please.
Noun, definition #1.
An artificial channel for conducting water, often fitted with a gate (sluice gate) at the upper end for regulating the flow.
Verb, definition #4.
To flush or cleanse with a rush of water
There are about 12 more definitions. It's also just a mighty fun word to say.
So I was not in Brooklyn this weekend and thus could not attend the annual meeting of the Corduroy Club. The CC get together on 11/11 (because the date resembles the cut of the fabric) to pay tribute to this most ribby of cloths.
The New Yorker profiled the group last year and sadly, little mention is made of Corduroy the Bear, a hero of my childhood whose sainthood or at least fan club is long overdue.
Next year in green overalls (via Mental Floss).
This really isn't the kind of item you want to get from your mom but the University of Michigan, not where I went to school but whose shadow I grew up in, has launched Wolverine Singles.com a dating service "for UMICH students, faculty, staffs, parents and alumni singles"
Makes perfect sense to me. Most prestigious colleges, even athletic powerhouses like Michigan are stacked floor to ceiling with nerds. Nerds (myself included) often come into their sexual own in college. So naturally, when (re)entering the dating world, one would love to be in the mindset of when getting laid was as easy as "could I borrow your chemistry notes?" followed by oral sex on a twin bed.
The hanging question then is will the University use the positive results of this service as a fund raising effort? If so, how will they spin it? I vote for this way...
"You got a hummer, give us a political science chair."
“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." --George Orwell
(via my friend James)
I'm very pleased to be named a Typepad Featured Blog. Bit of trivia: Mena Trott, one of Six Apart's co-founders, designed a very early iteration of this blog in exchange for a Gone With The Wind commenorative DVD box set. So I like to say things started around here with an unparalleled act of generosity.
Professionally I write, speak, consult and advise a handful of arts-related businesses and organizations about technology. For fun, I consume enormous quanities of books, music and movies, train in Kuk Sool Won, a traditional Korean martial art, and am an dedicated mini golfer.
I use the blog for ideas I call "too small for an article, too large for a note." I do a fair about of writing about contemporary issues in culture and technology, which often lead to pieces for print publications, churn through my del.icio.us links via a feature I call "Gleanings", review movies in a single sentence and drop quotes that inspire me.
Mostly what I do here is about sharing information. My three favorite words are "did you know?" followed closely by "No, I didn't."
Thanks for stopping by. I look forward to talking with you.
The Jewish Daily Forward has just released its Forward 50 list of the 50 most influential Jews in America. Tucked into the philanthropy category is the following entry...
Carol Smokler
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Carol Smokler was largely responsible for the overwhelming response from the national Jewish community. As longtime chair of the national Emergency Relief Campaign of United Jewish Communities, she helped bring in more than $20 million to rebuild the region. But Smokler, a clinical psychologist in Boca Raton, Fla., was thinking long-term, not just about Band-Aids. She knew that the campaign for the Gulf Coast was going to be a long haul, requiring years of constant attention. The volunteer leader earned her stripes working with the local Jewish federation in Ann Arbor, Mich., before she leaped to the national stage, chairing UJC's Women's Constituency Board. The UJC Emergency Relief Campaign, created in 1989 to cope with Hurricane Hugo, has been under her leadership for nearly half its life, winning acclaim after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Known for her capacity to build teams, Smokler effectively moderated the debate over whether Jewish or non-Jewish institutions should get the bulk of the post-Katrina monies she helped to raise.
Carol Smokler is my mother. I'm prouder than a pug with puppies.
Heeb Magazine has this feature called Urban Kvetch, artfully deployed complaining on a variety of mundane topics. An example...
Two Dimes and a Nickel
The ice cream comes out to $4.50. I give you a five and you give me a quarter, two dimes and a nickel. Are you rationing for some pinball war I should know about? You’ve got plenty of quarters left in the register. It’s common fucking courtesy. If you don’t want to give me two quarters, then change the price to $4.75 or something. I don’t want to deal with your issues when I’ve got laundry to do. Seriously, I’m wearing bathing suits as underwear for chrissakes.
JOSHUA NEUMAN
I was inspired to try one of my own
Your friend's band
We've had a tasty meal, a few glasses of wine. I will be trying to kiss you in the cab. So I'd rather remove my appendix with a railroad spike than head to Club Sticky Floor to hear your friend's band. No, they don't "sound just like Arcade Fire" and yes, that jerk from the Weekly knew exactly what he was talking about. You even think they suck. And "you're friend?" You've already slept with him or plan to come last call. We're only here because you think I won't try anything naughty while getting elbowed by that guy in the ironic "Alf" T-Shirt.
So please, could you leave me to my couch and ABBA:Gold? Then we'll both get what we want
eh?
“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”
Title: "Joe College"
Author: Tom Perrotta.
Synopsis: Danny is a sophomore at Yale in 1982. Has girl trouble, torn between roommates and hometown friends, drives father's lunch truck over spring break. Hilarity insues.
Backstory: College, the 80s, the
author of "Little Children" which I loved. Do I need another reason?
Notes: Quick, painless read. No fiber in this meal. Think Fruit Roll-Ups.
Verdict: Perrotta hasn't matured quite yet. The whoel novel is loveable in an old blanket sort of way but doesn't really justify why we should be reading. Danny is really hapless schlub, a financial aid package away from Fuck Head in Jesus' Son. Perrotta overwrites him giving him phrases no 19-year-old would use even the kind who hyperanalyzes nothings like I did at that age. The supporting cast is colorful yet flatly so.
This is a pleasant read. But not much more.
Wise man Jeff Chang had this on what made the difference this election cycle...
You want to know how it happened? Just check the League of Young Voters site. In Ohio, they knocked on 50,000 doors. In Pennsylvania, they ran a massive registration and GOTV and election protection campaign, and backed up those efforts on the ground in Maryland, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Florida, Maine, Missouri, Connecticut, and California. Not a few of those states turned on very thin margins--all made by young voters.
The Dems did not do this. The Reeps did not do this. Young people did it for themselves.
I have to admit it's wonderful to see all the old pundits and their brainwashed young followers (beginning with NPR and extending all the way to the alt-weeklies) who have been bemoaning the waste of "apathetic youth" eating a large serving of crow along with Rumsfeld and Bush.
Here here to that...
An update on Virginia. Thanks to the sharp eyes of my friend Kevin Lawver, CNN is reporting that the Associated Press is calling the race for the Democrat Jim Webb which would give them a 51-49 majority in the Senate.
That may be the best news I've heard all year.
Montana and Missouri have gone Dem. What happens in Virginia will now determine the fate of the Senate and the next two years.
Nails. Bitten.
The Senate is still up for grabs. Races in Missouri, Virginia, and Montana have yet to be decided and won't be finalized until tomorrow morning at the earliest. I'm watching a little dumb TV and going to bed soon.
Close races are the best kind. On to tomorrow and the next two years...
