Dan Riley's Blog, page 47

Another Brick to the Head

“Don’t know much about history” was not one of those pop music lines that applied to me as a kid. I knew my history—or at least the part they chose to teach us in school…and I liked it, for reasons I’ve never quite understood about myself. Perhaps it will make a worthwhile conversation with a therapist one day when I’m stretched out on a couch and asked to recount my earliest childhood memories and go into amazing detail about the view from my crib…literally my crib--not some urban lingo to describe the lovely home I live in now, but the crib where I could look up and see my Uncle Eddie’s candied, redhead girlfriend June smiling down on me. Where I could look down and see the black cocker spaniel Mickey we owned for all of about 15 minutes looking up at me. And I could look across the room and see my dad sprawled out on the chair, bloodied and bruised from yet another Friday night fight with his arch-enemy, a guy from the neighborhood named Smokey. I suspect the therapist would conclude that my love of history comes from the same place most such loves come from…we love the things we’re good at. It’s really just a short baby step, hop, skip, and a jump from mastering the world from outside my crib to mastering the world of Ancient Rome or the Civil War. If my memory has room for the lovely June, why not room for Caesar’s wife? If it has room for my father’s wounds, why not room for the wounds of Antietam?
I wonder, though, if even my facility for remembering would do me much good as a student in this age of gerrymandered history. I know that there’s always been a large element of hokum in so-called settled history—written as it is by history’s winners and tall tale spinners. The first bit of history I can recall learning in grade school was that George Washington never told a lie. I can still see the illustration of young George handing the ax over to his father as the felled cherry tree bears mute witness to his crime in the background. Of course, to praise a man for this trifling truth when he went through life wearing a wig, false teeth and fought a war for freedom while being a slaveholder practically begs the mockery of Spinelli, God of Irony. My sweet spot for irony gets all tingly when I think of teachers using a lie to teach kids a story about not lying. Though, in truth, this could be unfair to all the teachers who taught that hoary little story to generations of grade schoolers. Perhaps they believed it to be true themselves. After all, they came up through the same education system I did. And it’s not even an education system problem. Human beings just naturally like to mythologize, and have so from the beginning of time. Making up shit is pretty much what we do when we’re not too busy taking a shit or having shit happen.
Which brings another favorite pop music line to mind: When I think back on all that crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all. That song came out when I was myself a dispenser of such crap as a high school English teacher. I wasn’t willfully teaching crap to my students. But so it must have seemed to my charges when they pondered what good it did them to learn about split infinitives and Hamlet’s soliloquy. I wondered much the same when I was a student in high school, struggling with the value of knowns and unknowns. As my sunset years exponentially fall down upon me, I’ve yet to have anyone ask me even once in my life about the difference between rational and irrational numbers. So, it’s not for nothing that my kindly math teacher failed to adequately answer the question: Why do I need to learn this?
Another pop line: “Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!” Indeed, rock ‘n roll has not been kind to education. But then, who has? It is the whipping boy of American society—faced with a task that would humble the vaunted American military if that military had to work with the same handicaps—smaller, more vulnerable budgets; fragmented approaches for reaching poorly defined objectives; a largely non-voluntary army of students; and way too much disrespect from a citizenry that doesn’t think twice about building schools in Kabul but will rant the live-long day over a school bond issue at home.
I take some comfort in the fact that our bloated military budget does go to some extent to finishing the education that many of our students failed or aborted in their schooling. They are in fact receiving training that should help them be more employable. And painful as it is to give any justification for the US’s excessive, far-flung military bases, at least someone’s learning world geography. Anyway, not likely Pink Floyd would ever sing: “Hey sergeants, leave them kids alone!”
Not likely either that if our vaunted military were--say, in an act of local nation building--to take over our beleaguered public schools it would be able to wholly succeed. Yes, I can see it succeeding in advancing technical skills and surely overall discipline would improve. But when it comes to history, our imaginary faculty in cammies and body armor will think they’re back in Afghanistan because our national sense of past pretty much resembles that cobbled country. Every hilltop village has its own version of what is and isn’t true and is ready to kill anyone who says otherwise. At this particular moment in history we have rightwingers looking to eliminate Thomas Jefferson from our past for his skeptical views on religion, and we have lefties who want to diminish him for his slave holding. We have revisionist historians who want to recast Lincoln as a wily legislative operator rather than an inspiring orator moved by the better angels of his nature. We have Cheney torture apologists desperately wanting Hollywood, the town they hate more than Tehran, to validate them with an Oscar for Zero Dark Thirty. We have Oliver Stone, America’s foremost purveyor of sensationalized history, suddenly trying to be taken seriously as a documentarian of legitimately contrarian history.  We have some people actually taking Quentin Tarantino seriously as an historian. (Historians who don’t get out much can be excused for confusing Tarantino with David McCullough, but Spike Lee? Yes, Spike, Django Unchained probably is unfair to “your” people, but Do the Right Thing was probably unfair to “my” people…it surely was unfair to the Boston Celtics, pioneers against racism in the NBA. So do us all a favor…shut up and make a movie about our people.)
Most unsettling on this anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, we have the tribe of deeply disturbed idiots from Gun Appreciation Day, who tell us that MLK--had he managed to outdraw James Earl Ray that day--would be supportive of their cause because Martin would have known deep in his pacifist heart that if slaves had had guns, well then, they never would’ve been slaves. And of course Sally Hemmings could’ve shot Thomas Jefferson’s balls off.
Yes, if our military took over our public education, they’d have their hands full. I’d rather leave the job to this guy. 

The Dannys

The Oscars were announced this week…and please excuse me while I go yawn. I’m not a snob on the subject. For a long period I used to greet this moment on the calendar with all the reverence and revelry the Academy of Arts and Sciences hoped for—making a point of seeing all the nominated films, reading the reviews, and filling out mock ballots to unveil before friends at Oscar night parties. But no more. I’m up to here with awards, and now that the Academy has decided to treat the nominations with the promiscuousness of elementary schools handing out those “My Kid is Student of the Month” bumper stickers. I mean, really? Nine best picture nominees! That’s almost a best picture a month…even the greatest year in motion picture history* wasn’t so golden an age. (While some Americans live in fear of dictatorship, I fear the opposite—one day our proclivity for rewarding everyone will result in an election where we let the one who comes in second be President so nobody’s feelings get hurt. Hang on, Mitt.)
So my problem is not with the movies. Wife Lorna and I still view a movie virtually every night of the week, continuing a tradition from when we started dating back in college and both worked in a movie theater five nights a week. On the sixth, Lorna joined me in the projection booth where I worked as projectionist for the college film series, and for the seventh night we took the passes our theater manager gave us and visited other movie houses in Hartford. 
Of this year’s nominees, I’ve seen Argo and Lincoln and loved them both. I’ve read about the roiling controversies surrounding Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty and can’t wait to see them. And I plan to add Life of Pi, Amour, and Silver Linings to my Netflix queue. Question is, will any of them have lasting enough impact on me to one day win a Danny? A Danny is an award I’ve just invented to fill the void created by my indifference to the Oscars. To win a Danny a film has had to dazzle me enough through multiple viewings (at least three) and make me shake my head at least once in the most recent viewing at how well it stands up. There may be 30 films I could give this award to, but this is the Dannys, not the Oscars, and moderation is still a virtue. So without further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to present for the first time ever The Danny Awards…
The Wizard of Oz—From that best ever movie class of 1939. Like so many American families, we made this a Thanksgiving Day tradition when CBS ran it every year, and no one in the house ever whined, “Oh, not this again.” And here’s a tidbit for all those out there who envision us as the Ritzy Rileys hobnobbing with the One Percent: we watched this little masterpiece for 20 years on the black and white Philco my folks gave us as a wedding gift, and didn’t even know it turned into luminous color until I went to work for a company that gave me a deal on an RCA color monitor. (So, yes, cry for me, Argentina.) Anyway, from our current era where kids films are actually made for adults, it’s hard to pick one that for all its technical virtuosity could provide a young generation with the memorable songs, lines, and life lessons that Oz did. Yes, my pretties, if I only had a brain, there really is no place like home (for better and worse).
Casablanca—On a Valentine’s Day a few years ago, Lorna and I decided to watch this in our PJ’s during breakfast. At the end, she realized she had never seen it from beginning to end…but had seen so many clips of it over time that she thought she had. I suspect she’s not alone. It’s most famous scenes reprocessed over the years in commercials, comedy skits, and Woody Allen films are pretty much cinematic clichés by now.  And yet, when you give into it from the opening credits to the teary end, its pull is irresistible—the iconic cast, the unforgettable song, the shimmering black and white (Ted Turner be damned), and the enduring conflict—self vs. the greater good. Like the Grand Canyon, it has to be seen in whole to be fully appreciated.
Juliet of the Spirits—I think there may be Fellini films I like more, but this was my first so it’s most important for introducing me to a filmmaker whose films have entertained, inspired and provoked me for most of my life. Lorna and I saw it on one of those days off we had from our theater job. It was part of a matinee double feature with Morgan (a film that would’ve won a Danny about 30 years ago, but like many of those viewed-through-a-purple-haze movies of the 60s doesn’t really stand up well with time). We also had the theater all to ourselves that day, which made it a valuable introduction to entertainment not particularly made for the masses.    
2001, A Space Odyssey—Speaking of purple haze movies—watching the audience during this one was almost as much fun as the movie itself. That theater job of ours was at the reserve seat Cinerama in Hartford, which means we (the ushers and usherettes) had to lead the patrons to their seats like it was the goddamned opera. By the time Kubrick’s soaring bone changes into a spaceship, half the totally stoned audience had abandoned their premium seats to move down front and stretch out on the sticky floor right in front of the giant screen. Our theater manager—one of the great, real-life comic characters of my life--hated that he didn’t understand the damn thing, and whenever he was assaulted by straight members of the audience who didn’t get it either and were demanding their money back, he would call me over to settle them down. “Dan, explain the film to our unhappy customer here.” And I’d immediately go into my undergraduate exhibitionist spiel about Ulysses and Nietzsche and metaphor, until the poor folks would raise a hand in surrender and stagger out looking for a drink. God, how I loved the Sixties. (except for the war, the racism, and the assassinations). And 2001 was an epitome of it…the cinematic equivalent of Sgt Pepper...and I've seen it about as many times as I've played that album.
Cool Hand Luke—I’ve blogged about this favorite before. That earlier post dwelled on the film’s mythic power, which for me--lover of myth that I am--is the prime reason for granting it a Danny. But it succeeds on more temporal levels as well. It gave us one of the most enduring and useful lines in movie history: "What we have here is a failure to communicate." It gave us one of the two or three greatest performances by one of our most attractive and accomplished actors of all time. And it gave us a virtual 1927 Yankees batting order of character actors. That’s one cool hand.
All The President’s Men—The hysteria over Zero Dark Thirty comes from fear that it will give the last word on America’s recent infatuation with torture to our homegrown torture cult, which is the exact opposite reaction All the President’s Men received. At the time, it was so convincingly well done that it made it impossible for someone to come along years hence and offer a revisionist version of Watergate. All the President’s Men is a smart, brilliantly crafted version of the American myth that hard, diligent work combined with good conscience and our founding Constitutional virtues will ultimately triumph over evil. There will one day be its equal in answer to Zero Dark Thirty, which makes it the most indispensable Danny Award winner. 
Body Heat—Perfect name…damn-near perfect film, filled with perfectly beautiful actors before age, plastic surgery and overexposure took their toll. Kathleen Turner at the height of her Jessica Rabbit sensuality. William Hurt emerging as a sexy, blue-eyed Bogart. Mickey Rourke announcing in about five minutes of screen time: I’m going to have a fucking career, morons, and probably fuck it up in the end. Just watch me.  Ted Danson effortlessly gliding through a role that would set him up for a non-stop career. And Richard Crenna in one of the neatest bits of casting against type of all time. All that and a plot that never stops twisting and sex that never stops sizzling (I’ve never been able to look at an ice cube the same since…) And hell, this is The Nobby Works where it’s all about Love’s Body…even when the body's bad.
Il Postino—With this vast movie watching experience of mine, I can state with total confidence that the hardest thing to do in cinema is make a really fine movie about human kindness. Mind you, I am not talking about a schmaltzy movie, which is a freaking paint by numbers enterprise. I’m talking about a movie with well-drawn characters in clearly exposed difficult situations acting out of kindness that seems neither contrived or “miraculous.” I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of such films—The Elephant Man was one. Manon of Spring another. Il Postino is my favorite though, and add the fact that it was also a film about metaphor and you double the degree of difficulty--and double the shame on the Academy for giving its Oscar that year to Mel Gibson’s bloody, blue-faced Braveheart…oooh, mass armies butchering each other…never saw that before.  
Lost in America—Making up this list actually helped me realize why Oscar has been so dismissive of comedies over the years. When you get into the frame of mind to consider the best of something, you’re really calling on your analytical thinking—or System 2 thinking as chronicled in five earlier posts. Comedy appeals to our System 1 thinking--it’s off the top and visceral. So I had to literally stop myself and say Time Out of the Heavy Thinking for a comedy break before all the allotted spots are filled. And if it has to be just one, it’s going to come from this group—Heartbreak Kid (featuring one of the choicest performances by the most underrated comic actor of our time--Charles Grodin), Tootsie (one of the great performances by one of the greatest actors of our time—with supporting performances to match), What About Bob?/Groundhog Day (maybe the most overrated comic actor of our time doing his best to earn the benefit of the doubt), and Lost in America. And The Danny goes to Lost in America as representative of the inimical Albert Brooks oeuvre.  Here’s the thing about Brooks--of all the films on this list, his are the least likely to end up in remake hell. Even the sublime Tootsie is just one Hollywood obit away from being another Jim Carey “vehicle.” 
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—Speaking of Jim Carey…I don’t like him. For years he was on my personal No Fly list, and let me tell you that the TSA has nothing on my hard ass when it comes saying No (I still have not seen either New York New York, despite my admiration for Scorsese and DeNiro, or Cabaret because Liza Minelli is at the top of that list—and oh, if I could only get my memory cleansed of Arthur…) Anyway, my addiction for all films Charlie Kaufman drove me to see it, and I loved it, and it remains one of my favorite films of all time, not the least for its challenging proposition: If you could cleanse your mind of all its painful memories, would you? As happens, this week’s blog was supposed to deal with all the painful historical memories raised by these recent Academy Award nominations—from the slavery issue in Lincoln to the torture issue in Zero Dark Thirty. But I became so overwhelmed by the subject that I decided I had to ease into it with this little exercise in narcissism. After all, who should really care what my favorite films are? Well, nobody really. But here’s the thing…now that I’ve shown you mine, if you show me yours, it’s no longer narcissism…it’s sharing--which would be so very Academy Awards of us. So let's share, people! 

The Full Sully

Andrew Sullivan now wants money for his blog, which presents me with one of those exercises in values clarifications that I usually embrace as if embracing a maiden aunt—dutifully, but without much ardor. This should actually be an easy choice for a card-carrying liberal like me. After all, it’s an article of faith among many of my fellow bloggers of the liberal persuasion that even for free Sullivan should be shunned for the various sins he’s committed over the years—from championing Bush’s Iraq War while smearing its opponents to giving a platform to drawing room racist Charles Murray. So, what do I value more: the $20 the San Diego Mission tells me could provide dinner for 15 homeless folks on Thanksgiving or the privilege of having unlimited access to Andrew Sullivan’s sometimes irritating views?
Of course, Andrew’s blog is only sometimes irritating. Other times it’s invigorating--as when he exposes me to charts  and studies that I couldn’t hope to ever find on my own…or when he writes anguished mea culpas about some of the stances he’s bollixed in the past (like his aforementioned Iraq War posts). At other times he’s wonderfully diverting—as with his daily Mental Health Break and the popular View from Your Window (full disclosure: I submitted one of the more confounding views to this feature). And occasionally he’s quite idiosyncratic—as with his crusades against circumcision (Go, Andrew!) and for beards (meh).
What he is at all times, though, is catholic with a small c. Though an ardent religious Catholic, his all-embracing catholic tastes are the rock upon which his blog his built. I like building mine on that foundation as well, and try with limited resources. I cannot possibly match The Dish in the depth and breadth of what it offers its millions of regular readers. But The Nobby Works strives to make up in quality (of readers as well as viewpoint) what it lacks in global footprint. Which is why there is tremendous pride here on passing the 30,000-page view mark as The Nobs heads into its third year. Thirty thousand-page views is, I’d guess, what Sully’s Dish gets in a slow half-hour. But I still fondly remember that first year when we danced around the Works over our 20 readers of mostly families and friends. Though Sully warns not to make too much out of page views in his magisterial Why I Blog, I can’t help but be excited when I see a spike in traffic to the site after I’ve just posted something new…or even better a few hours before I post something new. And looking at the worldwide traffic map Google kindly provides still gives me a thrill to see handfuls of readers from far-away places like Russia, China and Malaysia holding steady. Yet, one cannot lose one’s humility when confronted with evidence that a few arrived at The Nobby Works by entering the keyword search chubby guy in speedo.
Over the holiday, I revisited Melville’s perplexing story Bartleby, The Scrivener. Melville is one of those writers I greatly admire because, like me, he chose to hold onto a day job while he continued his more creative writing pursuits. Bartleby, some critics contend, is Melville’s ultimate self-assessment of that particular life strategy. Bartleby reaches a point where the tediousness of his office job becomes too much to bear any longer and he refuses to perform his assigned tasks, telling his employer in Melville’s deathless phrase: “I prefer not to.”
I reread Bartleby because I was having a similar experience in the past year at work-work and found myself walking around the job site muttering to myself, “I prefer not to.”  Bartleby’s case was terminal. He eventually prefers not to eat as well as work and dies. I was more fortunate…much of that good fortune due to this blog. Under my Christmas tree this year, I found Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler’s book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (thanks, Meagan). It’s jam-packed full of goodies, which I’ll get to in future posts (for example, my hero Stephen Colbert has a legitimate claim for his Colbert Bump, and if I really want to lose those 10 pounds by summer, I should hang out with friends trying to do same rather than paying Nutrisystem $300). For the purposes of this post, however, I will stick to the authors’ not-so startling insight that loneliness thrives on the outer rim of our social circles—the notwork, as it were, where those with fewer and fainter social contacts must abide. That would be Bartleby for sure, despite the best efforts of his employer to draw him in. So Bartleby may have been doomed to die of self-inflicted loneliness in any case. But I prefer to think that if Bartleby could connect—even with anonymous others—through a blog, he would have lived a long and healthy life.
I, for one, prefer not to live otherwise. So excuse me while I go give Andrew Sullivan $19.99 in profound gratitude for leading me into this blogger’s life. 

For Family Only...

Okay, you can view it, too. This is one of those times The Nobby Works has to claim its prerogative to post something that's not necessarily going to save civilization...just kinda make some very near and dear folks happy.

And Yet Even More Excerpts from The Diary of Jesus H. Christ (V)

As they say, these exclusive Nobby Works excerpts change everything.

Dear Diary,            More confusion. One of the more recently ascended popes--I don't know which, it was either John, John Paul or Ringo-- tried to convene a meeting of the Blessed Trinity with himself sitting in for God. Can you believe the moxie of those guys? It usually takes them an eon or so to get over that infallibility nonsense. That's why I told Our Father that it was a bad idea to take those last two so close together. "We'll be up to here in popes," I said, touching the scars on my forehead. But He had this idea for a Polish pope--and, well, we all know what He's like when He gets one of His crazy ideas.                                                       JHC

Dear Diary,            It rained in Heaven today for about the third time in all eternity, and I’ll bet loaves and fishes that William J. Casey’s behind it.                                                                               JHC


Dear Diary,            Earthly news item came to my attention today: U.S. President Ronald Wilson Reagan quoting the Bible, quoting me in defense of an American military build-up. The reference, I believe, was to Luke 14 31:32. To wit: “...What king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?”            Moi ? The Prince of Peace advocating more arms? Has something been lost in the translation? Well, I guess it has.            First of all, I never made the statement in question. It was made by someone on my staff—Mary Magdalene, I believe, which accounts for all the dining imagery in that portion of the Bible. What Mary was getting at of course is don’t go preparing a meal for ten thousand people if you’ve sent out twenty thousand invitations. (Mary, by the way, had far more philosophical input on my teachings than she’s generally given credit for due to the sexist proclivities of the gospel writers.)             You’d think an American politician would be sensitive to the misquotes, half-truths and biases that abound in journalism—and what were the gospel writers but journalists? Luke was the Sam Donaldson of his time in sackcloth and sandals. I can hear him now: “Mr. Messiah...Mr. Messiah...are you or aren’t you the Son of God? King Herod says you’re full of beans. How do you respond to that, Sir?”             I, of course, would cup my hand over my ears, pretending I couldn’t hear the question over the baying of the donkeys.            Does Reagan think things were any better back then? Does he think journalists were more accurate before they had tape recording equipment and did their job strictly by hearsay? Not by a long shot. The Bible is full of things I never said personally and omits a lot of important things I did say, like: Verily, verily, I say unto you if anyone ever asks you for one red cent in thy name, tell them thou art a scam artist.            Anyway, when Ronald Wilson Reagan finally ponies on up here, he and I are going to have a lot to talk about.
JHC
Dear Diary,White flag on the horizon today ... a couple of emissaries from the nether regions, a pipe smoking John N. Mitchell and H. R. Haldeman. They are representing Richard M. Nixon who has sent word that held like to know before he dies if he's going to heaven or hell. We never divulge that information beforehand, of course ... not even to the saints, but Mr. Nixon wanted to propose a deal. He said held make a clean breast of everything, even announce what was on the 181/2 minute gap, if we'd just give him a sign.I left the two attorneys to pose for Norman Rockwell, who's been aching to paint something "with an edge to it" ever since he got here, while I brought the Nixon matter up with the Holy Trinity.As I figured, it was a no go. "He wants a sign?" said Our Father, "I'll give him a sign." And he handed me an anvil and said, "Go drop this on his head. That's a sign."Why do I always get stuck in the middle of these things?
JHC
Dear Diary,
Norman Rockwell's pipe was stolen yesterday. New rule: no more emissaries from hell ... white flag or no white flag. JHC

Dear Diary,             Karl Marx walking around nursing a bloody nose today.             “What happened, Karl?”            “Some petty bourgeois thug in a cowboy hat punched me in the nose,” he tells me.             Uh-oh. The red alert in my brain goes clang, clang, clang immediately. If God the Father gets wind of this it’ll be all over. I can hear Him now: “That’s it! No more Heaven. I’ve had it with humanity, spreading belligerence and nastiness everywhere it goes. Well, I won’t have the serenity of Heaven ruined by the likes of man. Disperse the souls and close the gates!”            Fortunately, He’s still off at His earthquake, so I make a beeline for the troublemaker since I’ve got a pretty good idea who it is. There he is, yukking it up with Davey Crockett, Dan’l Boone and Gabby Hayes.            “Sir,” I say, as solicitously as possible.            He looks me up and down, mean and hard and says, “My friends call me Duke, Long-hair, but you can call me  Mister John Wayne.”            That gets my back up immediately and in a most un-Christlike show of pique, I say, “I’ll call you Marion if I like; I’m Jesus H. Christ, Son of the Lord.”            “And I’m a two-fisted son-of-a-bitch,” he roars, “and I don’t take guff from anybody. Yeah, I hit somebody, but what I hit was no manly man, he was a Marxist.”             “Of course he’s a Marxist. He’s Karl Marx, a writer and philosopher. And we don’t go around punching people in the nose we don’t agree with up here.”            “Well, this is a hell of a place,” he says.            “This is Heaven,” I inform him, “not Hollywood, circa1952. And you’re here by the skin of your teeth, and only because the Holy Ghost is such a film buff. So if you don’t want to be joining some of your right-wing pals on the dude ranch down below, behave yourself.”            I certainly hope he got the message.                                                       JHC                       Dear Diary,             Black eye.             Bertrand Russell.            Wayne again.            “Look, Duke,” I warn him, “I’ve had just about enough of your macho posturing. What’s the idea of hitting Bertrand Russell?”            “Bertrand Russell ya call ‘im? Why I call ‘im Benedict Arnold-- pacifist...pinko...pussy.”            “He was a mathematician you big ox!”            “Call me big ox again, Stranger, and I’ll put a hole in your other side so wide you could drive cattle through it.”            Damn, I knew this guy was going to be trouble.                                                       JHC                       Dear Diary,            Someone’s spray painting 666 all over the place. Something tells me we better find Mr. William J. Casey and fast.
JHC
Dear Diary,             Our Father back from the quake today, and He had this weird sort of messianic look in His eye. I think what that translates into as far as the great Second Coming debate goes is that my goose is about to be cooked.                                                                               JHCDear Diary,            Sure enough. He was in a real business-like mood today when He called the Blessed Trinity together.            “Son,” He said. “Holy Spirit. I’ve just taken a long, hard look at the world I wrought, and I’m here to tell you what a damned, sorry sight it is.” (Make that Goddamned, folks.) “And I’ve reached a decision about that world. I’ve decided that the Holy Spirit is right—something’s got to be done about the condition of things down there." (I could see the little spook chortling to himself out of the corner of my eye.) “But, Compadres,” He says, getting ready to drop His bombshell, “I’ve also decided that I’m just not the God for the job any more. I’m tired, Jesus...I’ve lost the zeal, Ghost. I want out of the creation business for a while...I need a break...So, I’m resigning. Effective immediately. I’m packing it in. We’re going to find ourselves a little black hole someplace where I can get my head together.”             “‘We?’” says our Holy Ghostliness, blanching at the thought of spending the rest of Eternity in some God-forsaking black hole.            “Marilyn and Me,” says Our Father, showing that He’s still got a few tricks up His sleeve. “Marilyn Monroe. She’s going with Me....No offense, Fellas,” He says, “But this thing with the three of Us has gotten to be one long night out with the boys, and to tell you the truth I’m getting pretty bored with the whole macho Trinity trip. So I’m disbanding It. Jesus, you’re now in charge—a majority of one, as they say.” (And what a zinger for you-know-who, folks....)             “Holy Spirit,” He continued, “I expect you to be right by Jesus’s side whenever he needs your advice. It can get pretty lonely at the top you know.” (Our Father, the phrasemaker.)            “And Jesus,” He said, turning to me with His most solemn countenance, “I expect you to save mankind. You don’t have to get yourself crucified again if you don’t want, but you will have to suffer. It’s the only way.” And placing His enormous Hands on my shoulders, He prepared to deliver me a zinger too. “Son,” He said, “I’m counting on you.”            Poof! And just like that he was gone, leaving yours truly holding the old Being Bag.                                                                               JHC
Dear Diary,            The hard part, unfortunately, is in dealing with the nagging question of my Second Coming.            Mother came by today and kind of bitchy-like asked, “So how you going to do it, Jesus?”            And playing like I don’t know what she’s talking about, I say, “Do what, Mom?”             And she says, “Redeem the world of course.”            And I say, very sarcastically, “I’m going up in flames in a Masarati, Mom.”            And she turns on her heel in a huff and hollers to no one in particular, “He’s been talking to James Dean again!”                                                             JHC                       Dear Diary,            Maybe being Numero Uno won’t be so bad after all. I’ve been giving it some thought and there are some changes I wouldn’t mind making. There’d be no more war for starters. And no more rape or famine. And cancer would definitely be out. So would doggy breath and guns. And no one would ever have to be a teenager again.            But public nudity would be okay...and so would oral sex.            You wouldn't get fat or pimply from eating chocolate and all the dentists would have to become lifeguards because everyone would be at the beach and there'd be no more cavities. And Linda Ronstadt would be in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. And speaking of music, I'd have it piped in from giant speakers set up at the North and South poles, but it wouldn't be music that makes you want to kill yourself or your loved ones. No Muzak...no heavy metal.            I think I'd also roll back evolutionary progress a bit. Give mankind back its tail, let it go live in the trees and eat bananas for awhile. That way everyone would have a way to get home, a home to get to and something to eat when they got there.            And I'd make Mondays gravity-free days so everyone can learn to lighten up.            And that's just the Beginning! Yeah! Yeah, I think I could get into this...                                                       JHC  

Further Excerpt from The Diary of Jesus H. Christ, IV

The earth shattering Nobby Works exclusive continues...

Dear Diary,            In the Beginning the animals could talk. Cows spoke in a deep, rich baritone. Chickens spoke in a clear, crisp tenor. Ducks didn’t speak as much as they spat out their words in a high-pitched hysterical rant. God took speaking voices away from the animals when they began to pray.            “Their praying was a constant reminder of my shortcomings as a Creator, and I resented it,” He once confessed to me. “It got so I couldn’t turn around without hearing some giraffe praying for a shorter neck or some hedgehog praying for a more aquiline snout. Finally I said, “That’s it. You want to pray, then PREY!”             Suddenly the animals were left to get by with squawks and snorts, and their voices were parceled out to humankind, which until that point could only communicate through hand signals (i.e. touching the cap and drawing a hand across the chest meant Do you have any ice?; tugging on the belt and clapping twice meant Take the next pitch; and thrusting the middle finger in the air meant Stay away from me, I stink.)            Well, quicker than you could say Jack Robinson, humankind began praying too. But their prayers haven’t bothered God the Father so much. “Mostly they pray for things like BMWs and invitations to the senior prom — which are out of my department completely. So I just turn a deaf ear.”I was reminded of all this genesis of speech business because Nelson Rockefeller came before the Blessed Trinity for processing today and Nelson Rockefeller speaks in a voice that once belonged to the camel.JHC
Dear Diary,            Just in case they finally do force me to go back down there, I’ve already decided I’m going to change my name. If I go down as Jesus again, they’ll all pronounce it Hey-soos  and I’ll either end up a bus boy or a steroid-bloated outfielder with the San Francisco Giants. No, this time I want a better name—like Lance. Lance Christ.         On second thought, forget it. Sounds too much like a command. Some maniac’s sure to come at me with a spear once he hears that.

How about Abdul ? Abdul Christ — sort of broaden my appeal a bit.
            Or Johnny. Johnny Christ has a very sexy feel to it.            Chris Christ. Now there’s something really catchy. But would anyone take me seriously?            Bob. Bob Christ. Forthright and bold. That’s a possibility.             Maybe just initials— K.C.. or J..J. Christ.             Of course, I don’t even have to keep my last name if I don’t like. After all,, I am the only Son of the Lord. Maybe I'll go French. I love French names: Truffaut...Chevalier ... Cuisinard. Or, Longet. Voila´... Marcel Longet! The next time I have to go redeem the world it will be as M. Marcel Longet.                                                                                                                  --ML                                                                      

Dear Diary,             Only two or three times in all Eternity has it taken more than a day to process a soul. Nelson Rockefeller was before Us again today.            “Hiya fella, how ya doin’?” he says to God Almighty, offering to shake his hand and patting him on the back.             The Supreme Being turned to me and whispers, “Didn’t he used to have a hump on his back?”            Anyway the Holy Ghost has ordered an investigation into Rocky’s finances.             This could take a while.JHC
Dear Diary           We finally got down to brass taxes on the Rockefeller processing. All those millions should have made it an open and shut case. Normally businessmen are sent straight to hell (and most of them don’t mind either once they find out we don’t have any money in Heaven), but Rocky’s a forceful personality and had some pretty persuasive arguments in his favor.            “Look, fellas, I’m not a businessman. A businessman earns his money by hook or by crook. I never earned a dime in my life.”            “So how would you describe yourself?” asked the Holy Ghost, forever the Grand Inquisitor.            “A public servant,” replies Rockefeller.            “Is that anything like a politician?” asks Our Father, suppressing a yawn.            “Yeah. Yeah, I was a politician,” says Rockefeller. “I was President of the United States.”            “President of the United States?” asks the Holy Ghost, tapping his clipboard with a pencil.            “Ah, maybe it was Vice President...yeah, that’s it, I was vice president,” says Rockefeller, trying to sidestep the lie.            Not that it would’ve done him any good. Next to businessmen and auto mechanics, no career is likely to get you to Hell quicker than that of politician.            As they dragged him off, he started kicking and screaming about being a philanthropist. “I’ll fill this place full of Picassos and Renoirs!” he cried.            Picasso and Renior were there of course, looking on in muted silence. DaVinci was there too, rendering an artist’s sketch of the whole scene.            “Where have I heard that voice before?” Our Father asked when it was over.            “Camels,” I said.            “Filthy animals,” He muttered.                                                                            JHC

Dear Diary,               Well, I finally came face to face with John Lennon today. We were having one of our jam sessions. All the biggies were there — Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Mario Lanza, Mama Cass. What music! I knew that old Beatle-boy wouldn’t be able to pass it up. I saw him off in a corner trading guitar licks with Buddy Holly, so I tip toe up behind him and in this deep voice at about 16 RPM’s I say, “I...buried...Paul.”             I’ll never forget the look on his face. Then we smiled and embraced and everyone joined in singing “Imagine.” When we got to the line that goes “Imagine there’s no Heaven” we all just cracked up.            Then John says to me, “Maybe you can answer a question for me, when are the Beatles going to get back together again?”            What a cheeky guy — glad to see he’s got his sense of humor back.
JHC

Dear Diary,            Rumor has it that a Mr. William J. Casey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has died. No sign of his soul, however... anywhere!             This is very disconcerting.
Dear Diary,            My pal the Holy Ghost reported in with Plan B today. He’s got a nice Jewish cheerleader picked out from some high school on Long Island, he says.            “Look, how immaculate are these conceptions?” I ask.            “I permeate their being,” he says.            “Then why do they always have to be Jewish girls?” I ask.            “Because they’ve got big tits,” he says.            “Big tits!” I holler. “I thought we were supposed to be above all that.”            That smirk again. “Jesus,” he says, “no one’s above all that.”                                                       JHCDear Diary,               The whole place is an uproar today. One of the dead we processed the other day was Seth Goldfarb, Nazi hunter. And what do you think? Two minutes after he’s inside the Pearly Gates he spots this Belgian clock maker he claims was an Obergruppenfuhrer in the SS. He goes into a rant, calling us a bunch of no-good, anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizers.            Can you believe it? Me he’s calling anti-Semitic. Well, we do a quick double check on the clock maker and sure enough Seth was right. He was a Nazi. Our fault entirely. Sometimes we get a little sloppy, but you’ve got to figure we’ve been doing this for all of recorded time — before that even — something’s bound to get by once in a while.              It was left to me, of course, to try and smooth Seth’s ruffled feathers. “You’ve got to understand,” I told him, “Nazis are very sneaky people.”                                                                               JHCDear Diary,            The incident with the Nazi clockmaker’s got me more than a little concerned about the missing Casey soul. Letting someone in here who shouldn’t be here is one thing, but losing a soul completely is quite another.              Where can that guy be?                                                       JHCDear Diary,            Odd couple of the year at tonight’s Seraphim Strutters’ Ball: James Beard and Karen Carpenter.            Well, at least she’s eating again.                                                                               JHCDear Diary,             Saw Joseph again today. He saw me coming and tried to duck into a cloudbank. I grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him out.            “Will you stop behaving like this?” I begged him. “You served history. You raised me as your own son. You taught me everything I know about carpentry and took me to my first ballgame.”            “What ballgame?” he asks. “There was no ball game. They were stoning whores. First you turn your back on carpentry, then you turn your back on stoning whores. If I find a big enough rock, I’m going to crawl under it.”            What a tough nut to crack.
JHC                                                                                                                               Dear Diary,             Frank Lloyd Wright’s looking for carpenters to help him with his latest project. I wonder if I could get Joseph interested in that. We’ve got to do something about that sourpuss of his; it’s beginning to bring everybody down.                                                                            JHCDear Diary,             Suicides often look like they’ve been caught trying to sneak into a movie theater. Then it’s quickly into the denials. Hemingway moped around here for 15 years trying to convince everyone it was an accident. “I didn’t know it was loaded…I didn’t know it was loaded,” he’d whine to anyone who’d listen.             One day I took him aside and said, “Look, Papa, it’s cool. Suicide’s okay. So the big marlin of life finally wore you down and you reached deep into your bait and tackle box and came up with nothing but a handful of worms. We understand.”            “But it wasn’t a very Joe DiMaggio thing to do,” he said.            “No, it wasn’t a very Joe DiMaggio thing to do,” I told him with a rare flash of tough love…rare for me at least. “In fact it was pretty near spineless, but you did it and now you’ll have to live with it for all eternity.”            Sometimes reality is the best therapy—even up here.                                                                             JHCDear Diary,             I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. Isadora Duncan’s taken Joseph under her wing and is teaching him how to dance — modern, ballroom, even some ballet. And he looks great...the beard’s gone, the hair’s been cut.             “You don’t think it looks too preppy?” he asked me.               “Not at all,” I told him. “Makes you look a little like Ozzie Nelson. Very becoming.”             Maybe I’ll go for a shave and trim myself.                                                                            JHC
Dear Diary            Genetic engineering. I don’t know who brought it up, but whoever did ought to have his head examined. If there’s one subject that makes the Father Almighty feel about 2-foot small it’s genetic engineering.            “Why so glum?” I asked Him watching Him play with His soup.            “Oh, it’s nothing,” He says, without much conviction.            “Sure, it’s nothing,” I say. “You’ve only been playing with your tortellini’s for an hour and a half. Come on, what’s the problem?”            “See that woman over there talking to Manet and Monet,” He says, pointing to a table across the room where the two Frenchmen were being regaled by the vivacious Princess Grace.            “Yes.”            “Beautiful, isn’t she?”            “One of your best.”            “There,” He says, “That’s it. That’s just the problem. I could only make one of her. Do you know they’re doing things with genes down there now that’ll soon allow them to fill entire towns with the likes of her...entire countries even with beauty like that. How on earth do they do it?”            “DNA,” I told Him.            “What?” He says.            “DNA,” I say. “Deoxyribonucleic acid.”            “Deoxyribonucleic acid,” He says, slapping His forehead.  “Of course...of course...DNA. Why didn’t I think of that?”            “Oh, come now,” I say, “You can’t be serious.”            “Yes, I’m serious. I could’ve made a world full of beautiful women like that...beautiful men, too. Instead I come up with faces like William Bendix and that dreadful Stein woman.”            “Shh, she’ll hear you, “ I caution.            “Oh, let her hear me. ‘God, the Person’ indeed. I should’ve fried her for that suggestion.”            “Don’t you think that would’ve been a rather vengeful thing to do?”            “Need I remind you, Jesus? Vengeance is mine.”                                                       JHC                       Dear Diary,            I had to find Gertrude Stein quick this morning and tell her to make herself scarce for the next couple of days. I’m not particularly fond of the woman myself...just a little too pushy for my taste. But still she doesn’t deserve the Great Inferno for making a simple little suggestion. (Besides, I’m sure she was egged on by my mother.)            Would He do that? Would He actually dispatch someone to Hell after they’ve already been accepted into Heaven? You bet He would. There are rules against that sort of thing, of course. No soul should be subjected to double jeopardy, but there’s really no telling what He’s liable to do when He gets in one of His moods. And He’s done it before.            Darwin was here for years... seemingly home free after a rather controversial turn there on Earth. Then one day out of the blue he asks the Creator, “Did you ever stop to think where you yourself came from, God?”            Sha-bang! Now Darwin’s playing survival of the fittest with the hard-timers in Hell, and Gertrude Stein’s going to be right there beside him unless I can get her to bag her face for a few days.                                                                                JHC
Dear Diary,             Our Father told the Holy Ghost to put Plan B on hold while he goes off to Mexico for an earthquake. He's been brooding about George Burns playing Him in the movies for years now.            "Why George Burns?" He asked me. "I give them Al Pacino, Sylvester Stallone--Brando, even. Why do they pick George Burns?"            "It was a comedy," I told Him.            "So?" He says. "Brando's funny."            So now He's off to rattle a peasant village in Mexico because of a film they made in California. I swear He doesn't even know His own geography any more.                                                       JHC           
Dear Diary,            I tell you, He's just not the God He used to be. Take AIDS for instance. Pardon my French, but what a chickenshit curse to loose upon mankind? And this from the same God that gave the world the Great Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the plague of locusts? Even the Irish potato blight showed more scope, more power, more depth of feeling.             I mean if we're going to be chastening people, let's start chastening the right people. How about a little AIDS for the child abusers? the hostage takers? the gun manufacturers? Why all this unmitigated unhappiness for the hairdressers? I think what we need up here is a little more quality control. I know I'm His only begotten son and all, but sometimes I think that from the neck up Nietzsche was right about Him.                                                                               JHC
Dear Diary,             Our Father's still not back from His earthquake -- must be staying right on through the aftershocks.             Meanwhile this place is a madhouse with all the newly arrived Mexicans. It's always like this after a (ho-ho) natural disaster, but today was worse than usual because somebody put a sign outside the Pearly Gates that read: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.             St. Peter would still be there in his broken Spanish trying to talk the Mexicans on through if Señor Wences had not happened by.            "'Salright," he told the crowd.            "'Salright?" they replied.            "'Salright," he said.            I think it was Soupy Sales who put the sign there out of spite.  I like Soupy, but frankly, he's really beginning a pain in the celestial behind.                                                                               JHC         

The Anger Gap

Some years ago when grandchildren first reared their darling little heads in my life, I started to wonder what would become of such children who were nurtured in a loving, pacifying environment as they were when they came up against the inevitable harsh realities of life…the schoolyard bully, the predatory priest, the megalomaniacal college professor, the erratic office boss…the man with a gun. How would the spirit of compromise, the desire to avoid trouble, the instinctual passivity serve them? How--armed with but power of reason, patience and tolerance instilled in them by their parents--could they measure up against the kids down the block whose parents chose to arm them at an early age with bad attitude and guns?
There is a strong, noble, inspiring progressive tradition of nonviolence stretching from Jesus to Martin Luther King, Jr. And parents are both good and wise to steep their children in this tradition, but there is the finest of lines between that tradition and the tradition of leading lambs to slaughter. Children who grow up knowing only that Jesus taught turning the other cheek and MLK taught deferring the dream know but part of the story.  They must know that one day Jesus got angry enough to drive the moneylenders from the temple and MLK didn’t hesitate to call out the state of Alabama “with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification.”
The liberal sensibility is not inclined toward anger; it is inclined toward gestures. I have sitting in my email box at the moment an invitation from MoveOn to attend a candlelight vigil tonight and one from Daily Kos to sign a petition to ask “President Obama to help (sic) start a national conversation about gun control.” (But first let’s check in with Bob I-was-against-gun-violence-before-they-made-me-for-it Costas on how those national conversations go.)
I have nothing against gestures, certainly nothing against well-intentioned gestures, and I put both these in that category. But here’s the problem: after folks light their candles and sign their petitions, they think they really have done something, only to set themselves up for a big bad case of shock and dismay in three months when this all happens again. And it will happen again.
We, of a certain disposition, esteem one’s ability to control his or her anger. There’s an entire industry and “science” that’s grown up around anger management. We on the political left as well as those in the center generally find displays of anger distasteful and off-putting. This week, before things got really, really bad, Chris Matthews twisted himself into his usual pretzel when one of the union protesters in Michigan was caught on camera busting a Fox reporter in the chops (a nation turns its grateful eyes to you Mr. Union Man, whoever you are). Chris was embarrassed that someone on the side he was rooting for reacted with such...what's the word I'm looking for here? Oh, yeah, passion. It was reminiscent of how our cosseted media tut-tut-tutted at Obama when he finally struck back against the nonstop lies hurled his way by making a biting rhetorical flourish out of the alchemized word Romnesia on the campaign trail. There is something about the self-styled sane and civilized mind that finds anger unbecoming.
On the other hand, there are hours and hours of radio programming aimed at keeping the opposite side of the political spectrum…a well-armed segment, I might add—in a rabid junkyard dog frame of mind. Liberal talk radio fails miserably because liberals (and moderates, God bless them) do not wish to spend their precious few days on this planet barking, snarling and snapping at human beings, imaginary death panels and rotating car wheels. But those other people...they do anger with gusto. We do not want to be them…or even be like them. But in inoculating ourselves against rabies, we should not surrender our right to bark and/or bite when the occasion arises. On this gun thing? The occasion has risen so high that it is about to collapse on us like the Twin Towers. The cowards and blowhards of the NRA hide behind the fig leaf of a gun safety program (and the media and the politicians snuggle in there for cover with them). But the truth is, the primary function of the NRA today is to run a protection racket for every gun-toting, mass-murdering nutcase in America.  
I do not know if I will be walking peaceably with a lighted candle tonight or signing a petition when I’m done writing this. But I do know this: the first group that asks me for money to help outlaw automatic weapons will get a check. The first politician who asks me to support concealed weapon bans in colleges, churches, and political rallies will get my vote. The first organization that asks me to support a boycott of any business that in any way, shape or form enables these mass murders to continue will get my full support. And the first NRA member--be he armed or unarmed--who tells me that guns don’t kill people, people kill people will get a fist in the fucking face. 

Porn Again, Christians

As stated earlierand often, The Nobby Works is quite fond of myth, but perhaps not stated often enough is how The Nobby Works enjoys seeing a myth—any myth--blown out of the holy water by facts. And so it was recently when The Journal for Sex Researchreleased data that disproved the hoary (no pun intended) myth that porn stars are “damaged goods”--abused, addicted, addle-brained sluts. Okay, maybe it didn't disprove the slut part if we assume the most benign meaning of the word as a woman who likes sex and lots of it, because the research reveals that our friends the porn stars do indeed like lots of sex. But the research also shows that they are not at all filled with self-loathing over what the late Marilyn Chambers might have called this insatiable appetite of theirs. They are, according to the research, most happy about it. In fact they are happier overall than their more pristine sisters according to the report:

In terms of psychological characteristics, porn actresses had higher levels of self-esteem, positive feelings, social support, sexual satisfaction, and spirituality compared to the matched group.

Now the report didn’t give the porn girls a clean bill of mental health if you consider their above the norm drug use a problem, but the bottom line was that a girl could choose a more demeaning and damaging career path for herself than becoming a porn star. As a dad of two daughters, I must admit that in that endless late-night ramble down the dark alleys of What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, I occasionally ambled into a hallucinatory barber shop where a row of drooling gargoyles sat getting their trims while ogling my two girls as Playboy centerfolds. That vision always swayed my opinion whenever I heard anyone say, “I don’t care what my kids do with their lives, as long as they’re happy…” Oh, really? Tell me more, especially now that we know that porn can very well provide a young woman with happiness. Or an older woman it seems. In this week of Porn Ain’t What it Used to Be, we also learn of  the Sexxxton women, a mom and daughter porn team. It seems that 56-year old Jessica was recruited into the biz by 22-year old daughter Monica (and thus the DILF/MILF Combo Pak was born). And this family that was once on the verge of eviction is now walking on the sunny side of the street. "The money was part of the reason,” says Jessica, “but so was fun, and having sex with hot guys,"   
As an astute observer of the cultural scene, I should’ve realized this connection between happiness and porn when I made a brief foray into the porn industry back in the 70s. It was not as an uncircumcised Ron Jeremy, however, but as an editor for Larry Flynt. We had just moved our young family to Los Angeles so I could launch a writing career in more propitious circumstances than a river valley in New Hampshire. One day I answered a blind ad in the LA Times, and was soon summoned to Century City for the most bizarre job interview of my life. There I learned that the job would be for Flynt who was moving his Hustler magazine empire from its humble Midwest roots to new glamour digs in Century City’s luminous twin towers. Shocking as that was, it wasn’t the most bizarre part of the interview. That came when the interviewer told me that Flynt had just become a born again Christian under the ministrations of Ruth Carter Stapleton, the sister of the President of the United States! And Larry had a new dream of turning Hustler into the first born again porn magazine! And they needed a religion editor to help inform this miraculous transubstantiation! And that editor would be me because, as I was told, “We don’t get many resumes from seminarians”! (Do I overuse the stalwart exclamation point here? I think not.) It would turn out be the one and only job I ever landed in my life due to my master's degree in religion. (Spinelli, my God of Irony, would've had it no other way).
Well, the princesses of porn may have been just as happy back then as they claim to be now, but their sisters in feminism would have none of it. The feminist movement had become fiercely anti-porn in the 70s, led by Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon who claimed that pornography hurt all women. I walked into the teeth of the storm they blew up on my first day of work when an angry group of women held a protest outside the glittering new Flynt headquarters with picket signs featuring a recent Hustlercover of a woman being forced head first through a meat grinder.
Now the obvious question--given the personal history I’ve chronicled in a number of recent posts of principled stands I’d taken in my young life--is why did I walk past those picket signs and into that building? The answer is simple really…simple, unsurprising, and sad. I had a young child and a wife 8 months pregnant waiting for daddy to bring the bacon home to our little apartment in the San Fernando Valley. And inside the doors of that building—beyond the protesters--was a job that was going to pay me $15,000 for the year…or, to put it another way, twice as much as the teaching job I’d left behind in New Hampshire. Those other stands on principle of mine of which I’m so proud took place at a time when I was pretty much responsible for just myself. It often happens that way, which is why no one ever gains my respect more than the person who chooses to afford principles and family at the same time.
Anyway, once inside Flynt’s House that Beaver Built, my slide down the rabbit hole continued. Within a week after meeting the bumpkin porn king in the flesh, I along with my co-workers was summoned to a large conference room where we were informed that Larry had been shot outside a courthouse in Georgia where he was standing trial yet again (but for the last time, since the shooter had assured he'd be sitting through all his subsequent trials). The editorial crew left behind to tend his empire during his recovery was not as keen on the born again porn idea as Larry was. Thus, rather than researching prurient Biblical passages for posing more Christian friendly crotch shots, I ended up copy editing, which was good for explaining to my mom and future employers that my time in the porn trade was confined to checking the spelling and the grammar.
The work environment at LFP was pretty much the way it was portrayed in The People vs. Larry Flynt. In other words, it was colorful and eventful. How fulfilling or esteem-building or happiness-inducing it was for the nude models or any of the other professional pornographers there, I cannot say. But I can say there were more suicides, more teenage brides, and drug use at least the equal in quantity if not variety in the small New Hampshire town where I taught high school English before and after my stint at Flynt.
So, do I believe the rosy picture of the porn actress life revealed in this recent study? Fellow blogger, Alex Hieglsure does. He writes:

Society loves when the Damaged Goods Hypothesis gets reinforced, because it validates the shame we associate with sex in general. It's refreshing for us to see that these people were unhealthy or unhappy during their time as porn stars, because we're taught to believe that enjoying sex — which is what porn stars do for a living — is wrong, and so the people who make them must be wrong in some way. It's a comforting narrative: we get skittish around people who enjoy sex too much — even when those people are ourselves — and so we just love hearing how that enjoyment was a mistake…. 

Me? I’m not so sanguine. I have my issueswith putting on a happy face. This was a self-reporting study, so the source of the data was the actresses themselves answering questions about the state of their happiness. I'd much like to see a survey of the girls' level of introspection. It’s been my experience that even people in the non-porn world are loath to own up to being unhappy. In America, it seems, happiness is close to Godliness, and many people insist on how happy they are despite all evidence to the contrary. I think The Happiness Lobby has effectively convinced a majority of us—including our porn actresses--that if we can still manage a smile while the shit is happening all around us, then, by god, we’re happy. It used to be called coping.     
   

The Art of Dissent

If alive and healthy, we all come out of the womb screaming, so we might argue that we’re all natural-born dissenters. If so, there’s really no art of dissent, per se. It’s almost like breathing for human beings. I’ve been a practicing dissenter since boyhood, as I’ve chronicled here and here, but I never set out to be a dissenter. My mom will be the first to tell you that there couldn’t have been a more obedient child. But crazily enough, my subsequent disenchantment with obedience and affinity for dissent was fostered by church and country. As I’ve also written before, my first post-natal stirrings of dissent came in Catechism class listening to the stories of the martyrs who refused to renounce their god in the face of death…lo, how I envied them. To prove your love at that level, I guess, was something for the very odd 10-year old to aspire to. And then when I reached high school American history class and read of the nation’s founding drenched in the blood of dissent, I could barely contain my anticipation for the moment when I could prove my patriotism by dissenting.
And then came the memorable day when my What Would Jesus Do? came into direct conflict with my What Would Jefferson Do? That was the Sunday that came once a year when we were asked to stand at Mass and take the Legion of Decency oath against viewing movies condemned by the Church. As I sat there alone and heard the little boy behind me ask his parents, “Why’s he not standing?” I knew I was in the midst of a turning point in my life…I knew that open dissent often comes at the very high cost of separation from an object of love. And make no mistake, for all the mockery and outright disdain I often openly express for the Catholic Church these days, I loved it then and acknowledge and accept the significant role it played in forming the person I am today. 
That goes for the US of A, as well. Not too long ago a friend was surprised to hear me waxing warm about the Constitution, and said, “I always thought you were anti-American. You always seem to be bashing the country.” To which I replied, “What you think is bashing the country is actually me exercising my American rights.” As a teenager, I found the First Amendment every bit as titillating and fantasy invoking as the Playboy magazine hidden under the pillow that the Bill of Rights had made possible.
As I grew up and became nearly paralyzed by the wisdom that comes from maturity, I realized that the day I was making my dissent in Church, the people around me who were rising and taking the pledge not to view the likes of Spartacus and Some Like it Hot were dissenting too. They were dissenting against the conventional tastes of the wider culture that existed outside the Church walls. And those people out there in the greater expanse of the country beyond Catholicism who were lining up to see Some Like it Hot were dissenting as well from the fundamentalism and conventionality that existed in the rest of the world. Dissent, like so much else in our lives, depends on context.
The office worker who calls attention to company dysfunction can either be hailed as a whistleblower or condemned as a disgruntled employee. The government worker who releases classified documents that expose questionable policies can be hailed as national hero or condemned as a traitor. Dissent can also take many forms--from the spectacular public self-immolation of a humble monk protesting war to a near passing comment by the very famous Walter Cronkite raising national doubts about a war. From silent vigils in front of prisons to drum circle protests on Wall Street. Dissent can become a life-long career, like Ralph Nader’s, or it can be a one-time gesture that changes the course of history, like Rosa Parks confronting segregation by simply keeping her seat on a bus. What constitutes honorable dissent is very often in the eyes of the beholder and history.
The subject is much on my mind this week for a couple of reasons. The first is that I actually had the rare opportunity to witness up close as a business leader called for more dissent in the ranks…or at least more airing of dissent that already existed. Corporate leaders are famously conservative in this regard. “Think different” is not a motto many of them choose to live by. Yet, it’s the savvy leader who can detect when the happy-face consensus most companies strive for is beginning to suffocate the corporate landscape and killing the blooms of productivity and purpose.
The second thing is that I saw Spielberg’s Lincoln (nay, Spielberg…Daniel Day Lewis’s Lincoln…an act of reanimation never before seen in movies). The film is derived from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s renowned biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals, which chronicles how Lincoln deliberately surrounded himself with dissenting voices. That shouldn’t have been all that difficult to accomplish. Watching the film, there’s hardly a scene in it that isn’t teeming with dissent…Yankees and Rebels, blacks and whites, Democrats and Republicans, Conservative Republicans and Radical Republicans, husband and wife, father and son.
Lincoln’s genius, of course, was in recognizing that the world was naturally filled with dissenters, and he was humble enough to know that he needed at least some of them to succeed. When he announced that this was a country of the people, by the people and for the people, he probably realized more than any president--at least before the current president--that by people he was including a lot of folks unlike him in disposition, bearing, and attitude. His art was in drawing from his dissenters the best they had to offer without letting their dissent offend him personally--though dissenters who threatened the Union were another matter. And thus the art of dissent is really the art of handling dissent…recognizing the difference between dissent aimed at person and dissent aimed at policy, between dissent that contributes to common purpose and dissent that’s destructive of common purpose, and most of all dissent as a natural right and dissent as a granted privilege. 

A Few of My Favorite Things

Thanksgiving is the day we give thanks for the big things…family, freedom, food, health, happiness, etc. Black Friday is the day we give thanks for the useless things. Today I give thanks for the small things:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittensBright copper kettles and warm woolen mittensCream colored ponies and crisp apple streudelsDoorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles

Okay, maybe not that small. But without making dinner guests bow their heads to join me, I do want to take some time in this season of gratitude to acknowledge some of the more modest pleasures in my life, like...
$10 a bottle wine. That’s my price point when shopping for wine, established on my two personal pillars of vinification. The first is that any idiot can buy a good expensive bottle of wine, it takes patience and truly discriminating taste to bring home a satisfying budget vintage. The other is that to spend much more than $10 a bottle would drive me to bankruptcy in that I drink two glasses of wine every day. So when I find an enjoyable bottle of $10 wine I become a regular Little Danny Horner pleased as punch to put in my thumb and pull out a plum (take a bow, Seven Deadly Zins).  But here’s the thing, whenever I travel to a wine-depressed area, like Connecticut, and I find one of those favorites of mine on the shelf for twice as much as it costs in California, it suddenly loses its allure and place in my favorite things pantheon to some local bargain basement drink, like pink Catawba.
Pandora. Thank you, music gods, for letting me live enough to experience Pandora Radio. If not for Pandora, my musical experience would be frozen in that elegiac time around The Last Waltz…not a bad place to be frozen actually…certain Neanderthals should be so lucky. But Pandora allows me to keep one foot in my cherished past and my more tender other foot in the now. Whenever Stephen Colbert introduces a musical act that wows me in the final five minutes of his show, I immediately add a station for that performer to my Pandora list. Thus my list boasts the likes of Feist, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Pink, The Preacher, LCD Soundsystem...infusions of enough new blood to keep the old age home at bay for another decade or so. Weekends around the house are pure musical alchemy as the new groups magically mix with old standbys—Dylan, Dusty Springfield, Van Morrison, Beatles--from breakfast to dinner. The synchronicity with my moods and tastes is so unified that there are days, I swear, they’re programming the damned thing by beaming my brainwaves into their little black box.
French Sex Films. On Sunday last we watched another episode of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. This is the one where uber thug Gyp Rosetti buries one of his minions in sand up to his neck for the crime of knowing more than Gyp knows and proceeds to bludgeon his head with a shovel. Shortly thereafter, Margaret’s secret lover Owen is sent to her home butchered and bloodied and crated up in a box. A night later we watched the French film Elles, where a journalist played by the always-exquisite Juliette Binoche interviews two young women who are subsidizing their academic studies by working as call girls. We hear the girls in interviews describe and explain all manner of sexual favors they are paid to perform, including allowing one girl’s client to pee on her. I was struck, though not for the first time, by how different American and French cultures are in regards to their respective treatments of sex and violence. I don’t see enough violent French films to know if they’re ever more than totally derivative of American violence, which really does seem to be one of our enduring gifts to the world. But I have seen enough French sex-themed films to know that they can pull off a scene of a young woman being peed on by an older man with all the aplomb of Martin Scorsese ordering up another battering of a man’s head. And whereas American audiences take such batterings in stride with nary a wince, they would turn away in loud howls of “Ewwwwww!” to watch a comely co-ed take a golden shower.  In the real world, of course, the latter happens far more often than the former, which is the great service the French do for us in spite of ourselves. They explore such things that are far beyond the reach of America’s arrested development in the making of sex films. Forty-Year Old Virgin?  The perfect high, funny concept that we can hit out of the park with our perpetually juvenile view of sexuality. Forty-year Old Man Who has to Pay a Young Woman for Sex? Way too damn complex and scary for American filmmakers. So we need the French to explore such sexual realities that young women allow older men to pee on them and to tell us why that might be and what it says about marriage, loneliness, boredom, gender commerce, and growing old. There are just so many life lessons we can draw from constantly watching men get their heads bashed by other men. So merci beaucoup, Frenchies.
Solitude. This is a bit of cheat. It really could be in the category of the biggies, but how do you look at the sea of loving faces gathered around the Thanksgiving feast and say, Thank you, Jesus, for solitude. I mean, even though the man himself spent forty days wandering the desert alone, solitude is still looked upon suspiciously in our culture. We have a mania for socializing—social clubs, social media, social networking…collaboration, socializing’s drab disguise in the workplace. “Works well with others…” I vividly recall that as being high atop the list of attitude categories they graded us on way back in elementary school long before Oprah and Facebook came along to turn that virtue into big business. “Works well with self"?…not so much, which brings one of my favorite Springsteen verses to mind: Now a life of leisure and a pirate's treasure/Don't make much for tragedy/But it's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin/And can't stand the company. Solitude is where I write my blog, of course…where I think about what I’m going to write in my blog…think about the people I’ve met and what I’ve learned about them…plan for my future, reflect on my past, cope with my fears, and engage my fantasies. I’m a lucky man to have been long involved with a woman who appreciates solitude as much as I do and never begrudges me a moment alone.
iPad. This is my first year with my iPad, and I’m still transitioning from my deeply satisfying love affair with my laptop to this technological marvel that comes in the shape and heft of a menu for an unpretentious restaurant. It allows me to search for $10 bottles of wine, play my Pandora stations, watch sexy French films, maintain my solitude and sanity simultaneously…take pictures, save pictures, send pictures, read books, follow my teams, rant about politics, map my most confounding thoughts, and find my way home. If I wanted to, I guess, I’d be able to download an app that would provide me with Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes/Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes/Silver white winters that melt into springs…in short, all of my favorite things.