Dan Riley's Blog, page 48

Recipe for Thanksgiving Tranquility

To the very long list of reasons we have to give thanks that the election of 2012 has mercifully concluded we can add the holiday that’s coming up, which has become famous for throwing together relatives of disparate political persuasions and turning turkey dinners into turkey shoots. One would like to think that now that the matter is settled, the resulting exhaustion on both sides would mean this Thanksgiving’s political discussions would go something like this:

He (possibly Maureen Dowd’s brother Kevin): Congratulations on your man’s victory.She (possibly Maureen Dowd herself ): So kind of you to mention it. Thank you.

Then the conversation would smoothly and politely pass on to football, the new cranberry relish recipe, and grandma’s heirloom tablecloth.

But don’t bank on any of that if my post-election survey of the losing side’s emotions and intentions are at all accurate.
First, the emotions. I get it. I really do. The 2004 election between Bush and Kerry was the first one I followed in the blogosphere. The half-dozen or so political blogs I read daily each had at least one amateur diviner of polls who would regularly calm us partisans down whenever a poll went against Kerry. "It oversampled Republicans," they sagely informed us. Or, "It overlooked cellphones," they would announce from high atop the cutting edge of obviousness. Or, "Its methodology was wrong," they would proclaim dismissively. With my total absorption in these critiques of the polls rather than the results of the polls, I was able to convince myself and anyone who would listen that Kerry was going to win. And when he didn’t, I was so deeply shocked that I entered a total news black-out for much of a year, buried myself in pamphlets about living abroad, and hung a sign outside my door that read, No habla Inglis.

As I slowly started to regain my mental health, I threw myself into the enterprise of creating and selling John Kerry T-shirts featuring the Elvis album parody above. I didn’t sell many, but the therapy was great and helped me return to the state of a functioning, politically engaged citizen once again. My 2004 experience allows me to empathize with the looks on these faces:

And, I daresay, any Obama voter with a sense of fairness and honesty should be able to admit, “Yeah, if my guy had lost that would be me, too.” So I really do understand how fellow citizens who entered this past week positively, absolutely, indubitably convinced that America, the land that they love, would never give a president they so loathed another lease on their White House. I’ve been there…along with so many of my liberal friends who also reacted to the Bush reelection news by hunting the job and housing market in Canada.

The intentions are another matter though. My personal survey of rightwing media and my encounter in a coffee shop last week with Romney voters who only had visions of Hitler as they watched Obama tearfully thank his young campaign volunteers both indicate that conciliation will not be on the menu this Thanksgiving. The folks on the losing end of this election seem ready to go back on the warpath: 

Obama won last night, but we rejoin the fray today. Fight every attempt to spend us further into oblivion. Fight every attempt to further redistribute wealth. Fight every attempt to entrench a new entitlement. Fight every attempt to weaken our military. Fight every attempt to bury Benghazi. Fight every attempt to curb our religious freedom. Fight every attempt to revise history. Fight the enervating imposition of political correctness. Fight for American exceptionalism.

Even before the chads are hung out to dry in Florida, they were filling the airwaves with calls for impeachment, secession, and investigations galore into all manner of imagined malfeasance. The unhinged host I heard on rightwing radio this morning was exhorting the 57 million voters who lost the election to confront the 59 million who won and tell them to their faces what’s wrong with them.
So this could be a real Margo Channing Thanksgiving, but there may be more we can do than just fastening our seatbelts for the bumpy night ahead. My friend and neighbor Bob Zink died this week. Bob would easily have been at home with those Romney voters in the coffee shop comparing Obama to Hitler. Over the years, our political discussions—regardless of the subject—global warming, taxation, immigration, whatever—got hot in a microwave instant. Where Bob was a loyal Limbaugh listener, I would put Limbaugh at the top of my list of Americans who have done the most harm to the country. Bob once introduced me to a group of his fellow Sarah Palin followers as the “the biggest liberal asshole in Vista,” which I took as high praise.
Yet, I am going to greatly miss Bob this Thanksgiving, which I would agree to spend with him in a heartbeat. Bob was the classic guy who would give you the shirt off his back. And he didn’t have to know you to do it either. Once we were traveling together with our wives and standing around waiting for our baggage in Houston when Bob excused himself to approach a pregnant woman at the adjoining carousel. He told her that when she saw her bags to wave him over and he would retrieve them for her. When a lesbian couple at his synagogue adopted a baby, it was Bob they asked to be its honorary grandfather, a role he enthusiastically embraced, despite his politics. And whenever we ran into each other around town, he was always keenly sensitive to a personal issue that he knew had deeply plagued me for years and was always ready with a sympathetic ear and fatherly advice. (And the day after calling me the biggest liberal asshole in Vista, he called to apologize profusely...the man had both conscience and soul.)
We kept the politics that divided us to very brief, occasionally sharp exchanges, but both moved quickly and eagerly to the common ground where we knew our relationship could safely exist. We valued our friendship enough to never let politics ruin it. Agreeing to disagree may sound like the lamest of strategies, but given how helpful it was to Bob and me over the years, it may be just the ticket for avoiding a rancorous Thanksgiving. So when your bitter Uncle Buster concludes grace by saying something like, “And God save America from our socialist, Muslim, Kenyan overlord,” you answer by saying something like, “And God save the New England Patriots from that porous secondary of theirs, Uncle Buster. And now tell me, politics aside, what was the happiest day of your life.”


Take it away, Bob...

Making America America Again

I wanted to dedicate this week's Nobby Works to expression of some of the many thoughts I had about the recent election, but my day got off to a bad start when I sat down with my iPad and raspberry mocha at Peete's across from three comfortable-looking San Diegans who were loudly comparing Barack Obama to Hitler and all agreeing that he is about to succeed where the Japanese and Germans failed in bringing this country down. They were giving flesh to what I'd been hearing and reading in conservative circles all week, and it pulled me out of the proper reflective frame of mind I needed to write without anger or despair. So I did what I often do in such instances. I turned to art, which has the remarkable ability to transcend time...indeed that's what makes it art. And so while I take some additional time to collect my thoughts and try to regain my perspective for a future post on the election, I humbly turn this week's space over to Langston Hughes, who--with but a few tweaks here and there--managed to capture the essence of this week decades before it even happened.   
Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.Let it be the dream it used to be.Let it be the pioneer on the plainSeeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--Let it be that great strong land of loveWhere never kings connive nor tyrants schemeThat any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where LibertyIs crowned with no false patriotic wreath,But opportunity is real, and life is free,Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.I am the red man driven from the land,I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--And finding only the same old stupid planOf dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,Tangled in that ancient endless chainOf profit, power, gain, of grab the land!Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!Of work the men! Of take the pay!Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.I am the worker sold to the machine.I am the Negro, servant to you all.I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--Hungry yet today despite the dream.Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!I am the man who never got ahead,The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dreamIn the Old World while still a serf of kings,Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,That even yet its mighty daring singsIn every brick and stone, in every furrow turnedThat's made America the land it has become.O, I'm the man who sailed those early seasIn search of what I meant to be my home--For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,And torn from Black Africa's strand I cameTo build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?Surely not me? The millions on relief today?The millions shot down when we strike?The millions who have nothing for our pay?For all the dreams we've dreamedAnd all the songs we've sungAnd all the hopes we've heldAnd all the flags we've hung,The millions who have nothing for our pay--Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--The land that never has been yet--And yet must be--the land where every man is free.The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--Who made America,Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--The steel of freedom does not stain.From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,We must take back our land again,America!
O, yes,I say it plain,America never was America to me,And yet I swear this oath--America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,We, the people, must redeemThe land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.The mountains and the endless plain--All, all the stretch of these great green states—And make America again! 

Kisses for My Presidents

There have been 12 men (sorry, ladies...next time) who’ve been president of the United States in my lifetime. I’ll resist temptation to call them a dirty dozen--that would be glib and untrue…well, mostly untrue. With the possibility, however remote, of a very unlucky 13thbeing added to the list in the next few days, it seems like a good time to give one voter’s thumbnail assessments of the 12 men who’ve held the lives of so many others in their hands over the past six decades. I've also ranked them by how many kisses they deserve, and here is the what the rankings literally mean:

One air kiss—respect for the officeTwo kisses blown off the tips of my fingers—at least you weren't George W. BushThree dry kisses on the cheek--like kissing your sister...no harm, no foul, nothing sexy either Four wet kisses on the lips—the morning after your presidency we still have our self respect Five deep-throat French kisses--Waive the 22nd Amendment!

Harry S. Truman--I was wrapped in swaddling clothes during Truman’s presidency so I never got to witness the jaunty bantam style that has so endeared him to many over the years. But I did get to turn through the pages of Life magazine years later in an issue devoted to the horror wrought by Truman's bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, I know we all sleep better as a nation because through some amoral calculus we’ve been convinced that the A-bomb brought a quicker end to World War II...and besides we dropped leaflets warning those populations of what hellfire was about to come upon them. I suspect though that if there was a hell there wouldn't be enough fire in it for a man who could give the order to do that to other human beings. Still, he gets points for inaugurating the US Containment policy of the Soviet Union, which would allow one of his successors decades later to unleash "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" rhetoric and get away with it .
Dwight D. Eisenhower--The second Eiesenhower-Stevenson election was the one that made me cognizant of presidential politics for the first time, and crazy thing…home was such a hotbed of Democratiic Party sympathy and activisim, that I looked upon poor Ike as the underdog and rooted for him. Ike became an object of scorn and mockery among the hipsters I fell in with during the Sixties, but whatever embarrassment I may have felt about liking Ike as a boy was totally mitigated when I became a man and came upon Ike’s farewell address to the nation on the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex (full version here, and well worth the 15 minutes as a reminder that wise Republican leadership didn't die that night in Ford's Theater). It is one of the most important and prescient speeches ever given by any president…sadly also, one of the most ignored. Ike also gave the country Earl Warren…and oh, yeah, Richard Nixon. So Ike giveth and Ike taketh.

John F. Kennedy--Swoon...well, at first anyway. The pull of the Irish Catholic boy makes good story was strong, even if he was the son of a millionaire. But then my first up-close and personal hero Bob Campbell came along and introduced me to Norman Thomas and the notion that there could be third parties in America…and in fact there ought to be. For a while I fell for the far left view of the Cuban Missile Crisis that JFK had recklessly brought it on himself. As I became older and wiser, I became less enamored of contrarian views for their mere contrariness. And then in 2005 I read the Kennedy tapes of the actual recordings of what went on between JFK and his inner circle during the Cuban Missile Crsis. The tapes reveal national leadership at its best…cool, calculating and yet immensely compassionate, both for friends and enemies. A book of the transcripts  has just been published. And even better, there’s a funny novel out that draws upon the tapes and puts them in very personal context.
Lyndon Baines Johnson--LBJ was the first president I actually campaigned for (before  I was old enough to vote); he was also the first president I publicly protested against…not only on the streets but on stage in the one and only acting gig of my life. I played the title role in MacBird, a scathingly funny and mostly unfair MacBeth parody that accused LBJ of being behind the JFK assassination. I also gained some national notoriety at the time for wrting an editorial calling for LBJ’s impeachment. So I was not a fan. In retrospect, I feel more charitable toward the man. Even with his body counts piling up in Vietnam, his heart was in the right place domestically--Civil Rights, after all. And he knew how to work the levers of Congress better than any president on this list. But he was clearly in over his head in foreign affairs. Much like the the nation he led, he preferred to be plunged into war before learning his world history and geography. 
Richard M. Nixon—My enduring affection for Spinelli, God of Irony, forces me to acknowledge that the man did sign into law the EPA, did try to pass healthcare, and opened the door to China. On the other hand, he deliberately and with malice aforethought did everything possible to enflame racial, generational and cultural differences in the nation and blatantly undermined the Constitution. And he surrouned himself with the darkest cadre of henchmen to be found outside of a Marvel comic book…Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Agnew, Colson, Buchanan, Bork, Rehnquist, G. Gordon Liddy (and Cheney, henchman in training). It's a truly frightening roll call, and a wonder the nation survived.
Gerald Ford--loses big points for pardoning the aforementioned scumbag; he scores points for marrying Betty.
Jimmy Carter—Okay, easily one of the best ex-presidents ever. Unfortunately the country had to endure his presidency for him to achieve that distinction...and let me count the ways that was bad—the Bert Lance scandal; the resignation of an entire cabinet to reboot a poorly run administration; sanctuary for the Shah; alienation of his Democratic allies in Congress; using American Olympians as an arm of US foreign policy. Oh...oh...oh, and lest we forget, he was the first American president to drag Jesus into the Oval office as co-president and we’ve had to endure an unbroken string of presidents God blessing America from one national crisis to another ever since. A very nice try by Ben Affleck to try and rehabilitate the Carter presidency in Argo though. Close, Ben, but no cigar, and no extra kiss either.

Ronald Reagan—Like Ford, Reagan gets a family bump (Ron Jr.  is as good as it gets for TV punditry and you all know how I love Patti). Of course he didn’t defeat communism, which defeated itself with the help of 40 years of American containment policy maintained by even the worst of presidents on this list. Still, he did accept Gorbachev’s overtures with grace and shrewdness, and all we have to do is think of how close the warmongering Cheney was to the power center to realize how remarkable that was. So we forgive him for tap dancing to Pat Buchanan’s Racist Ragtime, sleepwalking through Oliver North’s Un-excellent adventures, and running roughshod over American labor...and doing most of it...the good and the bad...while he was out of his mind. 


George H. W. Bush—Boy, I guess if I’m going to be assigning points for family members, I should be docking points for same. So, the One Wholly Misbegotten Son could cost this guy all his kisses. But actually the son saves him, because by comparison this man’s wisdom in putting together a credible international coalition for Kuwait and resisting the fool’s errand of going into Iraq after Saddam seems downright Solomon-like.
William Jefferson Clinton--Oh, Bill. First  man I voted for who actually won, but it was a hold-your-nose vote…both times. Never has a stinkweed smelled more like a rose by virtue of the odoriferous composte that nurtured him--Limbaugh, Gingrich, Fox News, Ken Starr, Linda Tripp, Lucianne Goldberg,  the Arkansas Project. And then to have the luck of governing during the dot com bubble and relative world peace. Jesus surely loves him some Big Dog. Still, he tied the Democratic Party to Wall Street and deregulation; ignored warnings from within his own administration about financial derivatives, which would wreck economic havoc in the next decade; and he gave us that loathsome walking talking maggot of a man, Dick Morris.
George W. Bush--I drove around  from 2004 to 2008 with a bumper sticker that read Worst Presient Ever. I modeled a character in my novel after him and called him The Worst President Ever. And I truly believe that when the definitive biography of the man is finally written from a clear and sober distance, it will be titled The Worst President Ever. But part of the challenge of this little exercise is to give each devil in this rogue’s gallery his due. So let me say this, it was admirable how Bush unequivocably tamped down anti-Muslim sentiment after 9/11. It was downright bold of him to invoke the flaming excoriation of that louse Limbaugh by committing millions of US tax dollars to fighting AIDS in Africa. And it was damn near Chaplainesque the way he handled walking into the wrong door on his trip to China. The clip got played over and over again to reaffirm what a fool he was. But I took something else away from it…at that moment he revealed a sense of humor about himself...not a quality to be taken lightly in a leader. I figure the totally humorless and truly evil Cheney probably cost him at least one more kiss.
Barack Hussein Obama—Bonus points for being elected with that name and that background and giving a sizable majority of Americans a legitimate chance to put a nasty past behind us (a fact seemingly lost on my most ardent liberal comrades who insist, to their and the nation's detriment, that America is still racist--as opposed to having racists in it...a big and important distinction). The Estimable Charles Pierce gets right to the liberal disappointment with Obama here. I pretty much agree with most of it--with naivite about the magic beans of compromise, capitulation to Wall Street, and drone attacks topping the list. But as I sit here with ballot in hand and reflect on the past four years, it is remarkable how much the man delivered on exactly what he promised in 2008, against the most overhwleming odds and in the wake, as we say, of The Worst President Ever. Liberal imaginings to the contrary, we got exactly what we voted for...which is rare in American politics. And now he's the only man who stands between us and an inveterate liar and fraud whose election will lower standards for the Presidency forever...far below the depths plumbed by The Worst President Ever...dank, dark and deep into a land of no kisses.

More Excerpts from The Diary of Jesus H. Christ!

And now the third installment of The Nobby Works astonishing exclusive, The Diary of Jesus H. Christ .


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.”                                                                                                     Dear Diary,                                    When it rains, it pours. Got a station wagon full of born-again Christians in today. Their car slipped on an icy road on their way to an Amway meeting. The first thing they want to do is thank me for bringing them up to join me in the Kingdom of Heaven. Fractured skulls and severed spines and they can’t thank me enough.            "Ladies, ladies, I had nothing to do with your accident," I tell them. "We don’t operate that way."             Do they listen? No.            Right away one of them starts in telling me how she first accepted me into her life. “K.O.,” she begins, “K.O. Hargrove, Jr., that’s my husband. He’s in pharmaceuticals back home in Huntsville, and he calls to tell me one day that he’s bringing home the boss and the boss’s wife for dinner. Can you imagine? It’s 2:15 in the p.m. and I’ve got less than four hours to do myself proud in the kitchen. Well, I don’t mind telling you, I can rattle those pots and pans when the need be there. So I’m fixin’ up the most sumptuous fried chicken and candied yams you ever ate. And for dessert, I’m bakin’ up brownies accordin’ to Granma Beauchamp’s favorite recipe, you know, with pecans. And everything’s goin’ just Jim Dandy ‘til Melody Mae calls me on the phone. That’s Melody Mae right over there; she was drivin’ the car tonight, and Melody Mae and me, when we get to talkin’, if we can take 30 minutes to say what can be said in 30 seconds well you better just kiss those other 29 and one-half minutes good-bye. Well, by the time we finished jabberin’, you can just guess what’d happened in the kitchen, every one of those scrumptious brownies had been burned to a cinder. Well, I knew right then and there that I had but two choices in my life. I could stand right there in front of my microwave and curse the day I was born and curse Melody Mae and K.O. and K.O.’s boss, and the boss’s fat, ugly wife. Or I could get down on my knees and accept Jesus Christ into my life. And that’s what I did. Praise the Lord.”                                                                                                                                                                                               Dear Diary,            I’m thinking of making a motion at the next meeting of the Blessed Trinity that all born-again Christians be granted eternal life on earth. Maybe when that long-awaited nuclear holocaust comes about we could suit each of them out with some sort of protective see-through shield. Then they could look on in all their sanctimonious glory as their unrepentant friends and neighbors fry. As born-again Christians I think they rather expect some kind of preferential treatment — and God knows we’ve got to do something to keep them out of here, they’re driving me crazy. As soon as they get here all they want to do is hang around and be my buddy. They wear these mindless grins, ask to wash my feet and sing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah to me (!) all day (it doesn’t mean what you think it means, children!)                                                                                                                          
Dear Diary,            Made my proposal about granting born-again Christians eternal life on earth today. Needless to say, it raised another tempest.            “Absolutely not!” says the Holy Ghost, demonstrating once again why he is not known as the Father of Free Thought. “We’ve already decided, after the Big One goes off the ants get the earth and we’re done with it.”            “Ants and born-again Christians, I counter. “They’ll dig their tunnels in the sand and get along famously.”            “And then they’ll start praying, and God has expressly forbidden any praying after the Apocalypse. Right, God?”            Our Father yawns and says, “I spell relief A-p-o-c-a...            “All right, very funny,” I say, “it’s easy for you to laugh it off, you don’t have to go through eternity listening to them kill Hallelujah while trying to tie flowers in your hair. I do.”            “So we’ll ship them all to Hell,” says the Holy Ghost.               “On what rap?” I ask.            “False piety,” he says.            “You’re going to send convention centers full of born-again Christians to Hell when we accept murderers and thieves through the Gates of Heaven every day?”            “We only accept murderers and thieves because you’re soft on crime.”            “I’m soft on crime because I was a criminal. Remember? That was your idea.”            “Don’t blame me for that. You were a criminal because you broke the law.”            “But I was right! I was the Son of God.”            “But you were wrong in the eyes of the law.”            “It was a bad law. What was I supposed to do?”               “Work within the system. Change the law!”            On and on it went. Our Father yawned a lot and we gotnowhere.                                                                                                                                          Dear Diary,             What does it mean to be a born-again Christian anyway? Does that mean they didn’t take it seriously the first time?

Dear Diary,             When they’re not literally getting in my hair, born-again Christians are fond of telling me how they first “bore witness” to me. I call them bored-againstories. They always seem to turn to me just after they've been caught with their fiscal fly open during an IRS audit or their golf game's left them. None of it’s very likely of course. First of all, I haven’t had to step foot on earth in more than 2,000 years (knock on wood) and secondly, if I did, I’d hardly be hanging out around golf courses. They might catch me meditating in the High Sierras, but downing vodka tonics and contemplating my 9-iron is just not my scene.              So what are all these reasonably well-adjusted humans actually bearing witness to down there? My guess is Moogolians— extra-terrestrials from an entirely different galaxy. They have 6 heads, 20 arms, 30 legs and tongues the size of watermelons. They visit earth frequently — especially the American South — drawn by the pecans I suppose. And they look nothing like me. But if you’re a Georgian looking to maintain a respectable name for yourself in the community, it’s easier to tell folks you’ve just seen someone who’s been dead for 2,000 years than to tell them you’ve just seen a Moogolian.                                                                                                                              
Dear Diary,            Father’s Day. As usual I try to spend it with Joseph. Talk about forlorn figures.            “Buck up, Dad,” I tell him, “let’s break out the hammer and nails and build Mom a birdhouse or something. Just like in the old days.”            “Don’t call me ‘Dad’,” He says, “and don’t ever mention that woman to me again. I’m a cuckold... human history’s A #1 chump, and I’ll thank you and the rest of your holier-than-thou family to just leave me alone.”                                                                                                                            
Dear Diary,             I’m often asked what’s the easiest way to break into Heaven. Well, there are no hard and fast rules — not any more anyway, not since things became so complicated down on earth. But there are a few things:            A pleasing personality helps, as does a good sense of humor — although a good sense of humor is no guarantee. The Emperor Caligula had a terrific sense of humor, but was such a sick and demented character otherwise that we had no choice but to consign him to Hell.            Then naturally, each of Us in the Blessed Trinity has Our own individual preferences. God the Father, for instance, is very fond of creative types, having begun as a creator Himself. Even now in His oppressive state of ennui, His eyes still light up when He meets a good potter or someone who can shape shrubbery into famous cartoon figures.            I reserve a special place for carpenters and fishermen—although whale-killers are another story. Basically, I like underdogs—90-pound weaklings, flat-chested girls with braces, little old men who live alone and eat cat food, bag ladies, school teachers, boat people (as in Haitian boat people, not as in New York Harbor Yacht Club), the Chicago Cubs... those are my kind of people.             The Holy Ghost, on the other hand, likes good-looking women and anyone with charisma.

Dear Diary,            I’m having a power lunch at the chi-chi new Bread and Wine Cafe with God the Father when who should appear out of nowhere but Shirley MacLaine.  She blows a kiss Our way and then starts working the tables—first a few pleasantries with old Hollywood chums, Cary Grant and Fred Astaire; then a turn as  political raconteur with Rousseau, Locke and Allard Lowenstein (Lowenstein, contrary to house rules, is still wearing a Dump the Hump button); and finally catching up on old times with Nefertiti whom she claimed to know in another lifetime. The princess surreptitiously casts God and me a bewildered look, however, and shrugs her shoulders; she doesn’t know what the lady’s talking about.             No one up here really likes to be visited by the Living. It’s sort of like being at a nudist camp when someone shows up in an Armani original. Suddenly everyone’s feeling a little self-conscious.  So it wasn’t at all surprising for there to be an audible sigh of relief when Shirley finally squinched her eyes, twitched her nose and disappeared.             “What was she doing here?” God asks, stabbing at His veal with a vengeance.            “Astral traveling, I guess,” I say wanly, not wanting to provoke Him any more than He already has been.             “Astral traveling, hmm,” He says. “But she’s still alive. Who gives her the right to drop by up here any time she wants?”            “The Holy Ghost,” I tell Him (and I don’t mind doing so, though tattling’s not my usual cup of tea).  “You know him and his movie stars.”            “Yeah, well you tell him to tell her that when I want to see her freckled little face up here again, I’ll send a chartered tsunami by her Malibu beach house to pick her up."
                                                                             Dear Diary,            I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about this major tidal wave engulfing Shirley MacLaine’s house. Who knows who else would be swept away in its wake?  Barbara Streisand? Tom Hanks? Jimmy Kimmel? A tidal wave is not a surgical blade...lots of innocent people would go down with this thing.             I don’t know. He seems to be getting more and more Old Testament everyday, so I decided I just had to force the issue with Him. I tracked Him down at His gym where I found Him in the lotus position just after His workout. He was facing East and chanting His mantra: Wo...Wo...Wo.            When I knew He was done and His head was as clear as it’s ever going to get, I spoke. “You’re not really going to drown Shirley MacLaine,” I said.             “Maybe,” He said. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.”            “Look, “ I said, “I know she’s a little out of bounds taking these day trips up here all the time, but you really can’t blame her. She’s in the vanguard of a movement down there. They’re all trying to figure it out.”            “Trying to figure what out?” He asks pointedly.            “Your purpose,” I say. “The meaning of life.”            “And reincarnation’s their answer?  Am I supposed to be running some kind of jumbo aluminum recycling center up here, Jesus? Don’t they give me credit for any more imagination than that? Here you go, Shirley, we start you off as an Egyptian Princess. You tease the eunuchs and short-change the Pharisees and we bring you back as a squirrel. You be a good squirrel...give your nuts to charity and don’t fight with your mother and we’ll bring you back as a Hollywood movie star. I mean who do they think created this universe...Barnum & Bailey?”            “Well,” I venture, “the message does seem to be a bit muddled.”            “Muddled? How muddled?”            “Very muddled.”            “Not how much is it muddled. How is it muddled? Remember who you’re talking to here,” He admonished me. And I took it to heart, knowing full well that I was skating on thin ice—which is not as tricky as walking on water, but twice as dangerous, since you’ve got this two-fold problem of falling through the hole in the ice and then finding the hole to get back out again. I’m a sucker for paradoxes, of course, and this is a beaut: the hole that leads us to  our peril is also the hole of our deliverance from that peril. As I’ve said before, however, it’s easier for a camel to shimmy through the eye of a needle than for a fully-clothed man with his lungs full of pond water and his brain full of the living dead memees to find the hole in the ice again.              But I digress.            “This is how muddled,” I said, “Even the God is Dead movement is dead. They don’t even care about you any more. You’ve become like old gramps, down with the rheumatism for 20 years and now buried since spring...out of sight, out of mind. There’s even a growing movement down there that believes the whole thing was started by space colonists from far, far away. They’re just hacking away at each other now, like kids left at the playground too long, waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Alien-Being  to return in their rocket and take them all home again. I tell you if a God from another galaxy gets wind of this, you can have your entire creation stolen right out from under your nose."            “So?” He says, “Let ‘em have it. Let ‘em have the whole enchilada. Who needs it?” Then He threw on his windbreaker and started heading for the exit with me fast on His tail.            “You can’t take this attitude,” I persist with total reckless regard for my long-term health (and not for the first time). “You can’t abandon the world you created like a half-empty pop bottle. There must be a standard of behavior even for Supreme Beings, a code of ethics... some guidelines. “            He stopped and slowly turned back towards me. I braced myself for His full fury, but His face was wrathless. More resigned than anything. “No guidelines, Jesus,” He said calmly. “No code, no standards. No strategy, no agenda. No game plan or road map.  Nothing. El grande nada. I just opened my eyes one day and there I was stretched out on my Naugahyde recliner. I was trying to put two and two together, but it just wouldn’t add up. Then, I don’t know...on a whim I guess, I rubbed my hands together and formed a large sphere. I did it again and another sphere. Then another. They were big and colorful and I just kept on turning them out for about a million eons. And soon I had a universe full of them, but I was bored silly. So I decided to work on miniatures.”            “Humans?” I interjected.            “Snowflakes,” He said. “Snowflakes and sand. No two would be alike. That kept my mind occupied for another millennia or two, but that got boring too."            “So then came humans?”             “Yes, I had this idea for a story...the story of mankind with plots and subplots, murder, intrigue, romance, redemption...the whole ball of wax. And I was really cooking there for awhile.”            “And then what happened?”            He grew unusually pensive and sighed. “I don’t know.  I just lost it. Writer’s block, I guess. It’s been a night at the Improv ever since.”  He shrugged His shoulders and shuffled on, leaving me to ponder a rewrite job of mind numbing complexity.

Excerpts from The Diary of Jesus H. Christ, II

A week ago, The Nobby Works unveiled for its readers one of the most astonishing publishing events in  history, The Diary of Jesus H. Christ. This week The Nob is proud and humbled as pie to present the second installment of this blog exclusive. 


Dear Diary,            They’re starting to talk Second Coming around here again, and I’m getting a headache just thinking about my first coming. My side still hurts every time I laugh, and when the wind whistles through these holes in my hands and feet I sound like an ocarina.             “Jesus,” they’re saying, “the world’s going to hell in big, green Hefty bags, and we’ve got to do something about it.”             Yeah, sure, I say. We’ve got to do something about it all right.  Let’s deck Jesus out in human form and trot him on down there to do his sacrificial lamb thing again is more like it.            Well, not this time they don’t. I can think of better ways to spend Easter vacation (Helloooo, Cabo!). They can just get themselves another boy. There are plenty of others running around up here that’d jump at a second chance to save the world —Father Flannigan. Mother Teresa. Che. Michael Jackson (just a short hop, skip and a jump from King of Pop to King of Kings, wouldn't you say?). Break out the swaddling clothes for one of those semi-demi-gods, and let them go down and beat their head against the bloody wall for mankind. But not me — not this time — not for all the frankincense and myrrh in the world. -- JHC
Dear Diary,                 Big con-fab of the Blessed Trinity today—Identity Crisis time for yours truly. For the life of me I’ll never get this all-for-one/one-for-all/three-persons-in-one-God business. I mean it’s schizoid city every time the Three of Us get together.                  On the one hand you have the Holy Ghost, and he’s absolutely salivating at the mouth for me to go down there to try and save mankind. (Of course, anyone who knows his appetite for Semitic virgin girls knows he’s got more than the salvation of mankind on his mind.)                 On the other hand, you’ve got me — and you can call me Jesus — you can call me Christ. Call me JC, if you please — but don’t call me Messiah — and Handel be damned. When I heard that crowd cry, “Give us Barabbas!” I said to myself,  This is the last time I go out on a limb for rabble like this.            And I meant it too.            And then we have God...Our Father. And He doesn’t know what he wants anymore. He’s become so disillusioned with humanity — especially since Bush v. Gore. And I hear Him getting more and more nostalgic about the dinosaurs. “I really miss those big fellas,” He said recently — kind of melancholy-like. “They didn’t have a whole lotta smarts, but I liked their style.”               I think if He had it to do all over again, it would be mankind that’d be stuck in the tar pits and the dinosaurs who’d be frolicking at St. Moritz.               Anyway, there are the three of Us — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — and we can’t even agree on the time of day any more. Holy Ghost says I’ve got to go down and redeem the world, and I’m saying go down and redeem it yourself, and Our Father’s off in a corner by Himself mumbling something about pterodactyls.               Now if I’m them and they’re me and we’re all each other — then we’re pretty damn near Three Faces of Eve territory. I mean, like certifiable. Right? --JHC
Dear Diary,            Mother dropped by today. “Heard about your upcoming Second Coming,” she says, “and some of the girls and I were talking about how nice it would be if this time you went down as a woman....”             Some of the girls. Ha! I know who some of the girls are — Ms. Germaine Greer and Ms. Bella Abzug and Ms. Gertrude Stein — who wouldn’t even be here if ugly as sin carried any weight at all. The last time they got to talking, they wanted us to start calling Him God the Person.              “Look,” I said, “I was practically a Saviorette last time — long locks, soft skin, gentle eyes — and all thumbs as a carpenter. What do you want from me? Blood in lunar cycles? Besides,” I told her, putting aside my macramé, “I have no intention of taking the Passion Play on the road again.”            “Well! We’ll just see about that, Mr. Jesus H. Christ,” she says. And she stomps out of here just like that. -- JHC
 Dear Diary,            After all these years and Voltaire’s still stumbling around in a daze mumbling, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.” --JHC
Dear Diary,            Today was Abe Lincoln’s Ascension Day, and a bunch of us got together at the Martyr’s Club to celebrate. Sir Thomas More set the tone for the day’s festivities by reading a piece of doggerel he wrote about putting your neck on the chopping block for principle. Everyone applauded politely.             We’re such a dreary bunch when we get together — except for JFK, who, as usual, was busy charming Joan of Arc out of her pants.             Later Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and I got to talking amongst ourselves. And Abe was saying what a paradox it was that John Wilkes Booth was doing time in Hell for shooting him in the head when he really did him a favor. “Another year of those political cartoons and that lunatic wife of mine,” he said, “and I would’ve taken a walk in front of the nearest moving train.”            Then I asked them what they both thought of this Second Coming nonsense. Abe said he wouldn’t do it, but he wouldn’t mind going back some day as maybe a male model. “Someone with a face you could do more with than stick on a copper penny,” he said.            Martin said he’d only go back again if he could be white. And I told him I knew just what he was talking about. I wouldn’t want to be Jewish again either.            Abe just smiled sagely and said, “Boys, if you think being born white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant is a bed of roses, think again.” And he tapped his own noggin knowingly.            The rest of the day was ruined when Hitler, Booth, and Richard Nixon came roaring by on a chariot from Hell singing a mocking chorus of “Abraham, Martin and John.” Then they all dropped their drawers and mooned us.             I swear, those guys will never grow up — and I don’t think they’re suffering a whole lot either. Our Father’s letting the entire Cosmos go to wrack and ruin ever since He got into this Grand Funk of His. -- JHC
Dear Diary,            Speaking of Abraham, Martin and John, has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby? Once he found out we gave his old man the Big Negatore at the Pearly Gates, Bobby’s been very reclusive. I sure wish he’d be more like Jack and not take everything so damn personally. --JHC
Dear Diary,            Today I did nothing more than lie around all day contemplating the mysteries of the universe.            I wonder how they did do that Shroud of Turin trick. --JHC
Dear Diary,            Just my Father and me            And Holy Spirit makes three            Up here in my            Blue Heaven...Well, they’ve got the ball rolling on this Second Coming thing. The Holy Ghost reported in with what he called Plan A. I’m to be born on one of those cursed Israeli settlements on the West Bank— away in a manger — to a teenager named Tolvah and a retired furniture wholesaler from Queens.              “Very original,” I told him. “Only I’m not going to be born anywhere near the Middle East. You can stick me in Asia during monsoon season — you can stick me in Russia during winter — you can stick me in Detroit if you like — but I’m not going back to the Middle East. A guy can get killed there.”               And so he gets this little smirk on his face and says, “That’s the point, Christ.”  --JHC      

Dear Diary,             Here’s a depressing little item. Came home tonight to find the following smeared on my door in lamb’s blood:

            Christ!
            I’m ready! Let’s do it! NOW! Duffle bag packed! Lion’s skin cleaned and pressed! Let’s Go!                                             Sincerely!John the Baptist

             My first question is: where did he get the lamb’s blood? My second is: does anybody in his right mind think I’d return to earth with that fanatic leading the way? (Better Rodney King — even on crack he’d be easier to control than that guy.) --JHC
Dear Diary,             Processing Day tomorrow — gonna find out who’s been naughty and nice.             The Holy Ghost, whose left-brained persnicketiness comes from way too much time sitting at the portside of God, has been pushing us to adopt a Lean manufacturing approach to assigning souls to Heaven or Hell.               “What did you have in mind?” I ask him. “Post-its?”               “Exactly,” he says. “We hang charts all along the Pearly Gates and color code the whole process. Your name on a blue Post-it means Welcome to Heaven; your name on a pink Post-it means Go to hell.            Well, I’ll admit to the tedium involved in the current process, especially if you’ve got a lot of dead to deal with — and sometimes there can be a ton of dead. I mean, you mix in your typical Mideast religious bloodletting or African genocide with the usual assortment of natural causes, car crashes and household mishaps and we’re talking SRO crowds of dead. Add to that something exotic like e coli in the salad bar and then you’re into backlogs--having to turn folks away at the Gates until the next Processing Day.             All and all, though, despite the tedium and despite the tempers that sometimes flare up — a TV minister who gets here and finds out we don’t approve of that sort of thing, or an atheist who arrives only to learn that he or she had it figured wrong (I’m looking at you, Hitchens) — despite all that, I approve of the process. It’s a good chance for all God’s children to finally meet their Maker, and it’s certainly a good opportunity for Him to keep in touch with things. --JHC
Dear Diary,             Processing Day, and what a circus it was. First of all, the dead were in a very negative mood. That’s not unusual of course. It’s because of the wait. Somehow they get it in their heads down there that they die and just like that they’re at the right hand of God, sipping Chablis and munching Melba toasts — especially the suicides. Suicides are very impatient. You’d think they’d all be accustomed to waiting by now — what with all those lines they have to deal with down there — DMV lines, banking lines, ski lift lines; lines for grain in the Sudan, rice in Dear Diary,            Aside from teenagers who get here by way of drug overdoses or high -speed car chases, “holy men” are most disruptive on Processing Day. I don’t care if it’s a priest, a rabbi, a monk or a mullah, they’re always coming up to the reviewing table and whispering “Clergy,” as if they expect us to drop everything and wave them on through.            I remember some time ago when Cardinal Spellman got here, and he noticed Eleanor Roosevelt still standing in the Processing Line. He was livid. “The woman died five years ago and you still haven’t gotten around to processing her yet. What kind of place are you running here?”            Just the kind of talk to impress the Supreme Being, right?            Well, I had to take the pugnacious prelate off to the side and point out to him that we were up to our eyeballs in war dead thanks to a little conflagration he was helping fan in Southeast Asia, and if he was in such an all-fired hurry to get processed we’d be more than happy to accommodate him.            And with that we issued him a flak jacket and a one-way ticket to the eternal war zone. “Give our regards to Attila the Hun!” we told him. --JHC
Dear Diary,             Mother’s Day and I took Mom to lunch. It wasn’t easy for either of us. Today she wanted to nail me to the cross of my bachelorhood.            “Oh, not this again,” I pleaded.            “Yes, this again,” she persisted. And wagging her finger at me, she says, “If you refuse to have anything to do with women, people are going to talk.”            “I have lots to do with women,” I informed her. “I write poems with Emily Dickinson, I play tennis with Althea Gibson, I skip the light fantastic with Cyd Charisse.”            “Yes, all very platonic, I suppose.”            “So what’s wrong with that? Plato has platonic relations with women and his mother’s not after him all the time.”            “What about Mary Queen of Scots?” she asks.            “Well, what about Mary Queen of Scots?”            “She has a good head on her shoulders and she comes from royalty.”            “Mother, what in Heaven’s name do I want with royalty? I sitteth at the right hand of God, Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.”

“O.K., O.K., have it your way. But after 2,000 years of celibacy, people have a right to wonder just what kind of man you are, Jesus.”            “What do you mean by that?”            “You’re so good at raising the dead, you figure it out.”            That was the last word either of spoke. We sat through the rest of our lasagna in total silence. -- JHC
Dear Diary,            Press conference today.            We make every effort to keep the inhabitants happy up here, and of course for journalists happiness is a forum where they can gather together and ask smart-alecky questions of their betters.            Every once in awhile those of us who’ve had experience in the public eye volunteer to subject ourselves to a press conference. Today was my turn.            Sure enough, they all turned out — Zola, Zenger, Orwell, Huntley & Brinkley. And wouldn’t you know it, we’re not even through the cordialities when Mencken pops up and asks if I care to deny the rumors about my alleged homosexuality.             Alleged homosexuality!!!            Where do they get the gall? Where on earth did they get it?            I ask my Father, “Did you give them the gall to ask such questions? Did you? Huh? Did you?”            He says, “Back off, Jesus. I don’t even remember creating lousy, stinking journalists.”            “Well, where did they come from and what are they doing here?” I persist.            He says, “Well, they’re here to protect the peoples’ right to know. At least that’s what they tell me. As to where they came from, I can only guess. I think when I wasn’t looking Cro-Magnon Man mated with the hyena and journalism was born.”--JHC
Dear Diary,            Alleged homosexuality...boy, I wonder who’s been spreading that one around? --JHC
Dear Diary,            Of course there are homosexuals in heaven...but I am NOT one of them!!! --JHC

The Diary of Jesus H. Christ (A Nobby Works Exclusive)

Why me?
I'm sure that's the question asked by anyone who's ever been visited by an actual deity. Whether you're an innocent peasant girl who's just encountered the Madonna at a burning bush on the outskirts of town or you're a world-class preacher man who's just heard the Almighty Himself whisper in your ear on the set of your own nationally televised fund raiser, you've got to end up asking yourself, "Why me?"
Certainly I did.
On a recent dark and stormy night while working on my blog, the Message appeared on my Mac. It said simply, "I'm Christ the Lord, and I need an editor."
I must admit, at first I thought it was a hacker or some of Steve Jobs marketing wizardry from beyond the grave. But then the Message continued. It said: "I'm not kidding. It's time for me to break my 2,000 year old silence and speak up for myself. I'm tired of being used and abused by religious hucksters from way down upon that smarmy river. I'm done being the poster boy for a bunch of sexless, humorless right-wing political ideologues whose idea of peace on earth and good will toward men is a nuclear umbrella hanging from the heavens and a bigger tax break for the rich and specious. I'm no longer going to stand idly by while my life and message get reduced to a Jesus fish on someone's gas-guzzling SUV along side some NRA jive and a kid pissing on Arabs. I'm stepping out. I'm going to be me again!"
I reached for my keyboard and typed out the words, "But how?"
The Message came back: "A diary ... my diary. I've been keeping one for years." And before I knew it, a document of Ken Follett proportions was dumped into my computer—10,000 gigabytes at least! It was a miracle the thing didn't overload my system (but of course a miracle!).
"What am I to do?" I pecked with two fingers.
"Edit it down," the Message continued. "There's a lot of stuff in there about Stonehenge, the Pyramids and the Lost City of Atlantis that's of no earthly use to modern man. Cut it out. And cut out all the parables, too. No more ambiguity. No more metaphor. No more room for error. Make it terse. Make it direct. Think, Coke is it. Got Milk. 
Don’t think I was daunted by the task. I couldn’t even get that big, fat question on my mind down on the keyboard: Why me?  Why not one of those hot new writers like that Fifty Shades of Grey girl or one of Oprah’s favs, or a heavyweight like Jonathan Franzen?
I didn’t have to ask. The Message was way ahead of me. It read: "I feel safe with you. I know you'll get my words straight to the people without making them dial any 900 numbers to get it. I know you won't abuse the situation by building an amusement park or presidential campaign in my name. I know that through it all you'll maintain your basic humility and relative impecuniosity--which is all I've ever asked of any of my disciples."
"But will they believe it?" I asked. "Will they believe any of it? They'll expect miracles. They always expect miracles."
"This time, but one miracle," the Message said before signing off, "the Truth."
Periodically over the next number of months, The Nobby Works will present exclusively for its readers excerpts from the Diary of Jesus H. Christ as the monumental editing process progresses.  Herewith, the first excerpt.             Dear Diary,             Is God a Republican?           That question comes up every election season. It was raised again by a couple from the smart Georgetown set who arrived today after their Samoyed went rabid and turned on them. There was real fear in their eyes when they asked. Seems someone’s been spreading that rumor around and dead Democrats are in a fever trying to change their registrations at the gate.
             Well, here’s a little known fact about God. He once came to earth Himself in human form — as Franklin Delano Roosevelt.             Now, that should put to rest once and for all the question of his political affiliation. (Actually, nowadays I think He’d more aptly fall into the “No Opinion-None of the Above-Go Away, Don’t Bother Me” category, but there was a time when He’d relish a good political free-for-all. Afterall what more was His falling out with Lucifer than a little Cook County head banging?)              Anyway, so when all those critics were running around yelling about Roosevelt playing God in the White House, they had it all backwards. That was God playing human.  And, if I may speak from personal experience, not doing a terribly good job at it. I mean all the wealth and the women...and those FOUR terms in office. I mean really!!!  (And me they make a poor carpenter’s son.)            The polio was supposed to be his concession to human frailty, but I wasn’t fooled for a minute. Once he found out you can’t be head of a democracy and be borne about town on the shoulders of Namibian eunuchs...well, suddenly he comes up with polio and it’s roll out the wheelchairs and Katie bar the door.             Did Eleanor know she was married to God? How could she not? And at first she was appropriately humble and self-effacing about it all as any woman would be in that position. But after a few years she realized that God put His pants on one leg at a time (until the polio that is) and that’s when she started to step out on her own — the U.N. and all that.             But the New Deal was definitely His baby. That’s how He’d run things if He had a mind to — band together the workers, minorities, the downtrodden and the folk singers and stick it to the rich.             He’s actually very proud of His record in office. Even during His current apolitical phase you can elicit a devilish grin from Him by asking Him about his plan to pack the Supreme Court.            But if you want to get His Divine Dander up, just ask Him if He really knew the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was coming beforehand.            “Of course, I knew!” He roars. “How could I help but know? I’m omniscient. I know everything. But if I went around interfering every time catastrophe was about to strike, what would be the point of that mortal plane?”                                                                            JHC
Dear Diary,            What would be the point indeed?            What is the point?            How many times have I asked Him that question. “What was the point, Father? Oh, First Mover of all Movement, what were You thinking of when You first set this whole wacky thing in motion?”            I never get a straight answer. It’s always, “Later, Son, I’m busy” or “Not now Jesus, it’s too complicated to get into at the moment,” — as if He’s got a plane to catch or something.             The time to ask, of course, would’ve been during the Renaissance when His head was really into it. Everything was coming up roses — creationwise — and I think He would’ve been able to give a pretty good accounting of Himself.              But the question didn’t even occur to me back then. I guess I was too taken in with all that in excelsis dei  business myself. I mean all those statues and paintings. The point, it seemed, was pretty clear. Mankind was created to love, honor and serve Us.            I blush to think about it all now, of course, as we sit around watching mankind sing Hosannas to itself and turn the world into dog doo.            Very depressing.                                                                            JHC
Dear Diary,Talk about depressing...we were having our annual reunion of The Last Supper and who should come stumbling in but John Belushi. He does a pratfall across the room, then looks around and yells, “Food fight!”What a class act. I’ll tell you there’s nothing that turns folks off quicker up here than seeing some bloated soul that’s arrived the over indulgence and self-abuse route. I mean no matter how big a bowl of cherries heaven is, there’s always a few around who remember working 9-5 and weekends down at the GM plant and they get a little touch of the old earthly resentment when they see some guy floating around who once blew a lifetime of opportunity up his nose.            I’ll tell you something about John Belushi...he’s going to draw a lot of daycare duty watching over the abortion babies in limbo.JHC

Goodbye, Mister Campbell

Through the magic of Facebook, I just learned of the death of Robert Campbell earlier this year. Bob was a high school teacher of mine, and more importantly he was the first hero in my life not named Davey Crockett, Elvis or Ted Wiiliams. By the time I first walked into Bob’s English comp. class, I had had some juvenile pieces of my written work published in local newspapers, plus I had been elected editor of the school paper at the end of the previous academic year--the first sophomore ever to hold that distinction. So I already fancied myself as somewhat of a writer--which only added to the hell I was about to go through in the first three months of Mr. Campbell’s class.
The man shredded everything I wrote. In his tight, menacing handwriting he filled my papers up with his commentary: “Back this up,” “Where’s your logic?” “Contradictory!” “Superficial.” “Generalization.” “Specifics?” I came to hate the man. Not only was he threatening my cherished Quality Point Average, but my dream future career in writing as well. I really did hate him there in the beginning, and really believed he was just trying to bring me down a peg from my lofty perch as the frickin’ Editor-in-Chief of the Enfield High School Student Ticker.  It took a good long while to get over the pouting so I could finally get to the point where I took his comments critically rather than personally. And thus the man made me a writer with greater critical faculties than I ever would’ve had if he’d merely patted me on the head and told me what a fine young boy I was.
But that’s not what made him my hero. That didn’t happen until we published the first edition of the paper to come out under my editorship. I somewhat recounted the story in an earlier post. The paper was confiscated when it first arrived from the printer, and I was called into the principal’s office to answer for an opening editorial that I was told had put the jobs of the entire social studies department on the line.  That earlier post doesn’t cover the role Bob Campbell played in my junior John Peter Zenger drama. Before the authorities had called me in, they made Bob toe tap on the carpet. They told him that as faculty advisor to the paper he was responsible for its content, and they expected him to make sure the school wasn’t put in such an embarrassing position again.
For my next editorial I decided to go after the English department. I argued that the curriculum reading lists were limited and uninspiring, and went so far as to suggest that they might be enlivened by the inclusion of such writers as Henry Miller. After Bob read my first draft, he asked me if I’d ever read Henry Miler. I said I hadn’t. I had only read of him and knew he was the most controversial American author alive, and that was much to the point of the editorial. Bob said, “Well, you’re going to have to answer for this, so you better do some reading.” And with that he handed me his dog-eared, marked-up copy of Tropic of Cancer, and so popped my literary cherry.
Honestly, it scorched my virginal Catholic eyes and scared me enough to back off. “Maybe I shouldn’t mention Henry Miller,” I said, handing Bob back his book.
  It’s your decision, not mine, he told me.

But I don’t want to get you in trouble I said. I don’t want you to get fired.

It’s your decision, he insisted. Don’t worry about me.

I told him I’d have to think about it. And walk it about a bit. And get down on my knees and pray to Jesus about it. In those days, I ran every big decision by Jesus (and that’s why we didn’t have sex that night, Barbara M!). After I did what passed for my due diligence, I went ahead with the editorial—Henry Miller and all.
As soon as the edition arrived from the printer, I was back in the principal’s office. This time they invited Bob and me in at  the same time. He was asked to defend himself first, and simply replied that it was a student paper and this was a student editorial, and that was that. When it came my turn, I argued as politely as possible that I was merely practicing the freedom of expression I’d been taught down the hall in American History class. 

Bob was soon replaced as faculty advisor to the paper by six faculty members drawn from a variety of different departments from math to foreign languages, and I was told that all my future editorials would have to be run by every one of them. After a few go-rounds of that politburo style nonsense, I quit as editor. And thus concluded my crash course in institutional bullying and hypocrisy. But I picked up a degree in empowerment, which over time would prove more valuable to me than the high school diploma that followed a year later.

I tend to be protective of the teaching profession, not just because I was one and I now have a dear, dear daughter who is one. But because I come to know so many adults in my life who had a Bob Campbell to make a difference in their lives--perhaps not under such dramatic circumstances, but certainly circumstances that left a lasting and positive impact.
I get a little crazy watching the constant state of derision public school teachers have to endure in America. It is one of our greater national shames. Stripping Wisconsin teachers of their collective bargaining rights is only the latest high profile example of how this attitude manifests itself in our politics and policy-making. I had bitter firsthand experience with this malignancy years ago as a public school teacher in New Hampshire, another state openly hostile to workers' rights. We teachers then couldn’t form a union, so what we had was a punchless teachers’ association. At one point we were under particularly harsh and unrelenting attack by the burghers of the town who objected to our lofty salaries, our cushy schedules, and—truth be told—our very existence as a more educated class. There was to be an open board of education meeting where our upcoming contract would be discussed. Though we knew the majority of the board was determined to roll back some of our past gains and impose new limitations on us, our association leaders settled on a grace-under-pressure strategy. This would involve us showing up en masse, but sitting in the public auditorium quietly while one of our members was designated to speak for the entire group. We endured two hours of insults and scurrilous charges while our spokesman hemmed and hawed (much like a certain debater performed this very week). It was an utterly humiliating experience. If the controversy over my high school editorials had filled me with a sense of empowerment, my evening sitting mute while my profession was openly and scandalously denigrated was a harsh lesson in emasculation. And I vowed that would be a lesson I wouldn’t take to twice.

Bob Campbell fought against that emasculation as a longtime teachers’ union official. Both our fathers had worked in the same factory that provided the economic foundation for most of our hometown for many years until its unionization inspired the owners to move their entire operation to North Carolina, euphemistically called a right-to-work state. So before we ever met as teacher and student in high school, we had that wound in common. Perhaps wariness of bosses and their reliably self-centered instincts is something that needs to be handed down from parent to child to be properly understood--to assure that each younger generation never forgets that rights are only gained by fighting for them, and only held by a willingness to fight for them again and again.
Won't Back Down is a new film out, which is, from what I read about it, painfully anti-teachers' union. It’s financed by conservative Christian billionaire Philip Anschultz, who's made a habit of putting his formidable fortune to work making life more difficult for a group of professionals who, for five-figure salaries, take on the educational, psychological, and sociological needs of other people's children under conditions that would break Phillip Anschultz in about 10 minutes. I’d like to take some time here to say some really nasty things about Won't Back Down, but Bob Campbell would’ve insisted that I watch it before I do. So in Bob’s memory, I’ll say nothing.

Except this: Thank you, Bob.

Mr & Mrs Asshole

In the recent film, Perfect Sense, imperfect lovers Susan and Michael, played by Eva Green and Ewan McGregor, play a game she calls "Make Me Special." The object of the game, she explains, is to tell your partner something nobody else knows about you. Susan begins by telling Michael that she can’t have children and as a consequence she often hates her sister's kids. Michael then tells her that when his fiancé got sick, he abandoned her. 
"It works," she says. "You're making me yours.""I'm an asshole," he replies."So am I," she says. "A couple of assholes," he says."Mr. and Mrs. Asshole," she declares.
This declaration works in just the way the screenwriters intended it to. It redeems our feelings about our two narcissistic main characters by tempering their self-evident assholism with a bit of self-deprecating humor. But it also works in a way the screenwriters may not have been aware--unless they had been schooled in the writings of Nobby Works guru, Norman O. Brown, who wrote a lot—and rather brilliantly--about assholes. In Nobby’s landmark book, Life Against Death, "Part Five: Studies in Anality" centers around Jonathan Swift’s notorious scatological 18th century poetry, especially the verse where a lover laments a certain realization about Cealia, the object of his desire: Not wonder how I lost my wits/ Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelia shits. 
Nobby writes:

The thesis of this chapter is that if we are willing to listen to Swift we will find startling anticipations of Freudian theorems about anality, sublimation, and about the universal neurosis of mankind…For [Swift’s poems’] real theme…is the conflict between our animal body, appropriately epitomized in the anal function, and our pretentious sublimations, more specifically the pretensions of sublimated or romantic-Platonic love…what is exposed is the illusion in the head of the adoring male, the illusion that the goddess is all head and wings, with no bottom to betray her sublunary infirmities.”

In owning up to what shits they are in the "Make Me Special"game and declaring themselves Mr. and Mrs. Asshole, Susan and Michael achieve an equality of the sexes that goes beyond woman’s suffrage or equal pay for equal work. This is an equality that transcends cultures and politics and cuts to the essence of our humanness. 
Ostensibly, Perfect Sense is a science fiction movie about the loss of the senses. First to go is smell, which is preceded by an overwhelming sorrow about all the regrets in one’s life. Then goes the sense of taste, which is preceded by a ravenous, hideous hunger. Just before losing their sense of hearing, people all over the world viciously lash out in anger at those closest to them. (The filmmakers may have the exact causes and effects a little mixed up, but a recent study that links psychopathic behavior to a malfunctioning sense of smell suggests they may have been on to something.) If we follow Norman O. Brown’s logic through his interpretations of Jonathan Swift and Sigmund Freud, we can see Perfect Sense as a perfectly extended metaphor for our human state when we become alienated from our bodies. In the end, stripped of their senses, the lovers, like those all around them, have virtually been reduced to not much more than assholes.
At that ending, irony struck once again. My glass-half-full mate was thoroughly shaken by the bleakness of the ending. I, a glass-half-empty guy if ever there was one, was awash in tears--not at its bleakness—but at its profound revelatory power. This was not the cheap, feel-good revelation found in one of those old Movies of the Week where you watch someone struggle with blindness or some other affliction for two hours and then walk away saying to yourself, “There but fortune go I.” This was revelation where you realize, “Therein lies the fortune of me and every other one of us.” 
Through my lifelong obsession with Norman O. Brown, especially his Love’s Body, I’ve often encountered people who out of frustration with the psychoanalytic language of the book or impatience with its metaphors, ask me to explain what the hell it’s all about. This blog was primarily set up to answer that question. Fortunately every once in awhile a film (or other work of art) comes along that captures it pretty well. Like Hope Springs, which got churned through The Nobby Works a week ago, Perfect Sense shows how our redemption…our deliverance…is through our ever-decaying, but ever-loving bodies. 
As I’ve said before, I really don’t like to bog the blog down in the news of the week, but I can’t help but sense a reasonable connection here between our love’s body and the current political situation. There is serious evidence that the increasing gap between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in the presidential tracking polls is due as much to body issues—Medicare, reproductive rights…hell, basic female anatomy--as to any other issues of war or peace. It may not be to the point where Obama headquarters hangs up a sign that says, “It’s the body, stupid.” But there’s surely something happening out there that’s mitigating for him the awful economic numbers. 
This widening gap has increased pressure on Romney to perform well in this week’s first debate. Lots of suggestions out there as to what he should do. For my part, to help reduce Mitt’s performance anxiety, I offer the following: Right off, Mitt, look into the camera and say, “Ladies and gentlemen, you know that video that made the rounds recently of me basically dismissing half the US population as assholes? Well, that was an asshole thing for me to say, so I’m an asshole for saying it. And the folks who paid $50,000 a plate to hear me say it and slurped it up when I said it? Well, they’re assholes, too. But there’s really been too much ‘You’re an asshole!’ ‘No, you’re an asshole!’ going on in the country these days. So I’d like to declare a truce. I hope President Obama will join me in admitting that we’ve all got assholes, and sometimes we can't help but behave like them…shitting all over America the beautiful and stinking it up to the high heavens. Like, Ann and I were watching the terrific movie Perfect Sense the other night, and I turned to her and said, 'You know, I think I've been losing my senses. I'm such an asshole.' And she looked back at me and fluttered those eyebrows of hers that are just the right length and she said, 'So am I, Mitt.' And she was right. We are Mr. and Mrs. Asshole. But aren't we all? So won't you join us in admitting it? I believe it would really be something special. And I believe that on such hallowed common ground we could begin to build a better and brighter tomorrow. God bless the assholes of America.”
The game changer Mitt needs? Hard to tell, but it couldn't hurt. 

Why I Wear a Speedo

Well, the glib answer is that it's the closest I can get to skinny-dipping in public without being arrested. The deeper, more profound explanation is that the Speedo is a fashion statement that's closer to the metaphysics of this blog than a pair of baggy trunks that hang down over your knees (seriously, boys, why don't you just jump in the water with your bib overalls on?) In Love's Body, Norman O. Brown writes:

The reality of the body is not given, but to be made real, to be realized; the body is to be built, to be built not with the hands but by the spirit. It is the poetic body; the made body; Man Makes Himself, his own body, in the symbolic freedom of the imagination.

So there. In my Speedo, I’m projecting the freedom of my imagination. I am free to do this…free to exhibit my body rather than cloak it, disguise it, shrink in shame from it. And as Nobby says, it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with what we commonly understand as “body-building” (though there’s a spiritual element to that, too, as explored in that ever popular post Patti Davis Goes Nude Again). 
I love being on European beaches where the older folks are not cowed or bullied by a corrosive youth-obsessed culture into covering up. Bellies abound, drolly drooping over the bathing bottoms of men and women alike, who refuse to surrender the surf and sun to their more naturally well-toned young. I hear a quiet, albeit unconscious, declaration to Nobby’s love's body on those beaches—this is my body, I own it, I live in it, I love it, and I’m not going to drape it in another square foot of nylon or polyester or spandex to suit your aesthetic tastes. (Ick been mine prerogative!)
It’s been a notoriously rough week for Mitt Romney, so I want to take a moment in this post to have his back—his bare back at least. In an otherwise totally political assessment of Romney’s campaign, Democratic strategist Bob Shrum inserted this bit of snark:

And Romney won’t make up lost ground by pursuing a makeover on daytime TV. Last week he told Kelly Ripa that he’s a “fan” of Snooki from Jersey Shore and likes to sleep wearing “as little as possible.” The latter elicits an image we didn’t need.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph Smith, give the guy a break, Shrum! It actually elicits just the image Romney needs and we need of him, or at least the suggestion of an image that the man is comfortable enough in his own skin to sleep in it. Romney’s spirit is all cloistered…and that’s projected in the buttoned-down way he presents his body in public. If anyone ever needed to embrace the freedom of his own body, it’s Mitt. So damn your own eyes, Bob Shrum.
Shrum there has echoed the juvenility often on display in ESPN’s Sports Guy column where frat boy nonpareil Bill Simmons, not once but twice, broke from his wiseass ruminations on football and basketball to call “Ick!” on actress Jane Alexander for baring her golden-aged breasts on HBO’s Tell Me That You Love Me. This childish attitude pervades our culture, and I’m reminded of the time I pitched a movie idea to a tyro producer about a couple in their 40s who tried to reinvigorate their marriage by getting involved with the swinging life. My David O. Selznik wannabe’s response was, “No one wants to look up at a movie screen and watch a couple of naked 40-year olds writhe around in bed.”
For the record, here are a few of the actors who would’ve been in their 40s at the time, and thus age-appropriate for the roles: Viggo Mortensen, Jayne Seymour, Mickey Rourke (pre-facework), Ellen Barkin, Andy Garcia, Melanie Griffin, Ray Liotta, Lynda Carter (!!!), Val Kilmer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kevin Kostner, Angela Bassett, Mark Hamil, Rosanna Arquette, Mel Gibson, Kim Bassinger.
(No, I can’t think of anyone who would’ve wanted to see any of those bodies bare-assed on the big screen, can you?)
Anyway, I was glad to see Hope Springs recently, and glad the project didn’t run into some wunderkind producer who said, “No one wants to look up at a big screen and watch Meryl Streep trying to give Tommy Lee Jones a blow-job.” Hope Springs brilliantly examines what happens to people who retreat from their own bodies—first the love goes, then the contact goes, and finely the self-esteem goes.
Love's Body is not, as some have erroneously concluded, about free love and hedonistic abandon. It’s about embracing our bodies as the vessels of our life's deliverance from the shackles of shame, guilt, and regret. Overwhelmed by remorse from eating all those breadsticks and skipping all those workouts? Well, then, don your Speedo or your two-piece, boys and girls, and strut that body proudly because that belly of yours is a lot lighter and prettier than all the self-loathing shit.   

And that's why I wear a Speedo...take it away, guys....

I'm Down on My Knees

During the two weeks and millions of words of speechifying that went on during the recent political conventions, the line that stood out the most for me was when Barack Obama quoted Abraham Lincoln as saying, "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go." 
Damn, I thought, even from beyond the grave a Lincoln turn-of-phrase can still steal the show. In the writing of this post I learned that there is some question as to whether the line was ever actually uttered by Lincoln. As with questions that swirl around the authenticity of all those great lines from Shakespeare, I disagree with Mick Jagger--it is the song, not the singer. Even if Lincoln didn't say it, it's a great line, and like our current President, I'd like to appropriate it for my own purposes here.
As happens, I'm on my knees here begging readers...friends...family...to buy my new book, The Virgin Missile Crisis. I don't come to my knees easily to make this request. I'm well aware that money and time are issues for most everyone. I'm particularly aware that these days there's an inordinate number of all our acquaintances who have something to sell. Andy Warhol once quite presciently said that one day we'll all be famous for 15 minutes. It now seems equally likely that we'll all be artists for 15 minutes. I mean who do you know who hasn't written a book? Taken up painting? Recorded a CD? Certainly the technology and possibilities are there for most of us to indulge our artistic longings. By and large I think this is a good thing.
But this abundance of creativity does not come without a price. In my own case, I estimate that price could be close to $100 a month if I put my money where my mouth is and supported every creative venture of all the people I know who are engaged in such ventures. And it's not just the money. Is there enough wall space in any normal home to display all the photos and canvases? Enough shelf space for all the books? Enough time to listen to all the CDs and attend all the stage plays?
Moreover, are there enough polite smiles and nods in the kindest disposition to disguise disappointment in a friend's work?  Enough patience to forestall moving on to works of creativity that are more, as the euphemism goes, your cup of tea? Enough guilt to motivate purchase and appreciation of the sincerest, yet sorriest, efforts?
Down here on my knees, I'm keenly aware of these obstacles to your purchase of my book because I've had to hurdle them (or not) in regards to the artistic endeavors of many of my friends. But beg I must. It's a brave new world of book publishing, and even the major publishers are scrambling to make sense of it. One thing is clear though, social networking, word of mouth, and creative persistence are essential to marketing a self-made project.
So please allow me to amplify the first professional review of The Virgin Missile Crisis, reproduced at the top of this post (click on it for a bigger, better read). Kirkus Reviews calls the book "sweet." Like most authors, I prefer words like stunningor brilliant to describe my work, but sweet will do. Besides, the book is sweet. It's also, as Kirkus says, "a charming coming-of-age story." Admittedly, Kirkus is not terribly sold on my ending. But I can live with that, especially since it echoes the criticism leveled at the great American novel--The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (and, yes, I did just go there). Critics have scorched Twain for bringing Tom Sawyer into the novel at the end and turning what had been a deeply probing dissection of American hypocrisy into a farcical boys' tale. Well, it was Mark Twain who first inspired me to become a writer, so if they can fault him for screwing up his ending, they can fault me for screwing up mine. Writers take these plunges without regard to critics...without regards to anything much, really, other than how it feels at the time. (A far more egregious error in the review is identifying a character known as The Worst President Ever as Nixon--clearly a brain fart on the reviewer's part since Nixon in that context doesn't fit at all logically.)
Nonetheless, I'm happy to build my plea for your support of The Virgin Missile Crisis on the Kirkus Review. It's not just for fans of charming coming-of-age novels. It's for fans of comic novels because it has lots of laughs. It's for fans of historical fiction because it interweaves the startling public record of one of our nation's most trying times. It's for Baby Boomers because it captures in personal, intimate detail a time when we as a generation were almost annihilated. It's for my family and friends from Enfield, Connecticut, because even if they don't find themselves portrayed in it exactly, they're going to recognize people, places and events that are. And it's for all the people who have come into my life in the 50 years since the Cuban Missile Crisis...people like my friend Dave, who just happened to send me the following message as I was in the midst of writing this post:

started your book a few days ago... I started reading it with the thought "I want to enjoy this because my friend wrote it"... which eventually turned into "I'm enjoying this book because I'm enjoying it"...Freakin' excellent. I don't know what to say... what started out as a boyhood story (bringing back memories of a number of childhood kitchens I sat in, smelling marinara and listening to Italian-accented English) turned out to make sense of many in our political system today!

Modesty cannot prevent me from telling you that I've received similarly positive feedback from other friends who have read the book. And because I've had the good fortune to have been in this position before with my previous books, I know for a certainty that over time such personal testimonials mean more than any professional review no matter how glowing. (Slight digression: Many years ago, the woman who used to cut my hair in Thousand Oaks, California, traveled to New England to watch the leaves turn. One day she was in a lobster shack on the coast of Maine and asked the waitress to take her picture. As she did, the waitress asked where the traveler was from. When she heard Thousand Oaks, she asked, "Do you know Dan Riley?" My hair lady answered, indeed I do, and the waitress exclaimed, "The Dan Riley School for a Girl is the most important book I ever read. I raised my daughter by it." Stephen King probably has that happen to him a thousand times a week, as in: "Oh, Stephen King. We named our dog after Cujo!" But I'm here to tell you that having it happen just once is enough to float you through much of life.) 
Anyway, my knees are killing me, so let's get on to the business at hand--to wit, how you can answer my prayers:Buy the book (link above)Share the link to this post with your friendsAfter reading the book, write a brief review on AmazonOr at least give it a star rating on AmazonWrite a review on GoodReads (join GoodReads...fun site for readers)Ask your local book seller to stock itSuggest it as a selection for your book clubMention it in conversation when the subject gets around to booksShare it on FacebookBuy a copy for everyone on your Christmas list