Just a quick note to say the reading at KGB Bar last night—Terence Winch and I read our poems in two sessions with a short intermission, Terry reading first for "ten" minutes and than me and the same after the break—was a lot more entertaining than the debate tonight.
About half the standing room only crowd were old and new friends of mine and Terry's, and about half folks neither of us knew. Old friends and great poets like Bruce Andrews, Ted Greenwald, Charles Bernstein, Bill Zavatsky, David Lehman (who oversees the reading series and gave the introduction), Simon Pettet (he and I will be reading next month in Jersey, more about that soon)—and especially Beth Rake, Keith McCarthy and publisher and great editor Janey Tannenbaum (whose Wyrd Press published my early long poem "My Life" as a book back in the '70s)—were there, as well as new friends and also terrific poets, Jose Funes, publisher and poet Lisa Duggan, Phliipa Scott, artist and poet Susan Napack, Nance Boylan and others I'm probably not remembering, and ones in between, like Janet Kirker, just too many friends to list here (plus my ten-year-old now eleven-year-old today and his mother and aunt Luloo) and more, made it feel like a poets reunion and family celebration rolled into one (or vice versa).
Terence "raised the bar" as someone said, and I tried to reach it. Even read a bunch of new poems, ten of them written that day (yesterday afternoon) and they seemed to go over pretty well.
All in all a terrific night. I was told there'd never been a bigger crowd for a poetry reading at KGB. Nice to hear that. And Terence and I figured out that it may have been the first time we read together in Manhattan! A first. But we'll be reading again there in January, this time in a reading series where poets read prose they've written. I'll post the details when I get them straight.
For those who were there, thanks again for coming out, and thanks to KGB Bar for keeping the words flowing.
[PS For another take on the reading see "Last Night at the KGB Bar" link at the top right]
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
MCCAIN IN A REFRAIN QUOTE
Our friend, 15-year-old Gabe Norstein came up with the most succinct summary of McCain:
"Multiple houses, multiple spouses, but can't use mouses."
[woops, made a mistake, Gabe is only 14 years old!]
"Multiple houses, multiple spouses, but can't use mouses."
[woops, made a mistake, Gabe is only 14 years old!]
Sunday, October 5, 2008
WHERE WE STAND NOW
At the end of the Bush/Cheney regime, where do we stand?
They promised to protect this nation and entered office with warnings that the greatest threat to it was Al Queda but chose to ignore those warnings and allow the most deadly attack on this nation in almost twoo hundred years.
They promised to reduce the size of government. It's grown more than any time in the past several decades.
They entered with a budget surplus and promised to add to it, but are leaving with the largest deficit in history.
They put down "nation-building" and said our military would never be used for that nor would we ever engage in it under their administration. They leave with our military still engaged in a more than five-year effort to rebulld Iraq, a nation needing rebuilding because our military (under order from Bush/Cheney) destroyed that nation.
They promised to find Bin Laden and either kill him or bring him to justice. He's still at large (living in a "villa," not a cave, according to Christiana Amanpour's sources, which, as opposed to Bush/Cheney's, have proven to be reliable).
They promised to listen to their own military leaders and "commanders in the field" but instead demoted or forced into early retirement any general or admiral who disagreed with them.
They promised to create jobs and build our economy, which was already sound and had resulted under Clinton/Gore in more jobs being created than under any previous administration. They leave with the economy in the worst shape it's been in in a century, according to some of their own experts, and with job losses increasing every month.
They promised a "humbler" foreign policy. They leave having tried to bully other nations around the world into following orders from them, only to see the prestige of the U. S. government diminished to its lowest ebb in modern history and perhaps in all our history.
They promised to end partisan fights and "reach across the aisle" only to end up demanding everyone follow their orders lockstep or be branded unpatriotic or even traitorous.
They pretended to respect the Constitution, especially the privacy parts, but ignored the Constituion time and again and only fought to protect the privacy of profiteers and corporations, invading the privacy of citizens more extremely than under any previous administration even in war time.
They promised to return "honor" to the government and then overturned the historic tradition created by George Washington before we were even yet an independent country when in the Revolutionary War he set the policy which our military would maintain until Bush/Cheney of treating captured enemy combatants as we would want our troops treated, and in doing so brought shame not only on our country and our military, adding to the loss of prestige for our government and people, but also brought shame on this administration when it lied about deliberately designing a policy that not only tolerated torture but encouraged it and held only a hand full of low level troops accountable refusing to prosecute or even investigate those who designed and ordered the torture policy.
They promised to make government more efficient but instead rewarded their followers with more pork and perks and corrupt power coming close to bankrupting the economy and rendering government agencies virtually useless (see response to Katrina, warnings about Wall Street, etc.)
This list could go on for several more days, probably weeks, even months if we really got into the details, but the main point should be this—the only thing this administration and the Rovian philosophy behind it accomplished successfully was to get and hold on to power no matter how they had to lie steal and cheat to do it, and to use that power to reward friends and punish enemies, not based on those peoples' contributions to the welfare of the nation, but on those peoples contributions to the getting and maintaining of that power.
May their God hold them accountable for their deeds.
They promised to protect this nation and entered office with warnings that the greatest threat to it was Al Queda but chose to ignore those warnings and allow the most deadly attack on this nation in almost twoo hundred years.
They promised to reduce the size of government. It's grown more than any time in the past several decades.
They entered with a budget surplus and promised to add to it, but are leaving with the largest deficit in history.
They put down "nation-building" and said our military would never be used for that nor would we ever engage in it under their administration. They leave with our military still engaged in a more than five-year effort to rebulld Iraq, a nation needing rebuilding because our military (under order from Bush/Cheney) destroyed that nation.
They promised to find Bin Laden and either kill him or bring him to justice. He's still at large (living in a "villa," not a cave, according to Christiana Amanpour's sources, which, as opposed to Bush/Cheney's, have proven to be reliable).
They promised to listen to their own military leaders and "commanders in the field" but instead demoted or forced into early retirement any general or admiral who disagreed with them.
They promised to create jobs and build our economy, which was already sound and had resulted under Clinton/Gore in more jobs being created than under any previous administration. They leave with the economy in the worst shape it's been in in a century, according to some of their own experts, and with job losses increasing every month.
They promised a "humbler" foreign policy. They leave having tried to bully other nations around the world into following orders from them, only to see the prestige of the U. S. government diminished to its lowest ebb in modern history and perhaps in all our history.
They promised to end partisan fights and "reach across the aisle" only to end up demanding everyone follow their orders lockstep or be branded unpatriotic or even traitorous.
They pretended to respect the Constitution, especially the privacy parts, but ignored the Constituion time and again and only fought to protect the privacy of profiteers and corporations, invading the privacy of citizens more extremely than under any previous administration even in war time.
They promised to return "honor" to the government and then overturned the historic tradition created by George Washington before we were even yet an independent country when in the Revolutionary War he set the policy which our military would maintain until Bush/Cheney of treating captured enemy combatants as we would want our troops treated, and in doing so brought shame not only on our country and our military, adding to the loss of prestige for our government and people, but also brought shame on this administration when it lied about deliberately designing a policy that not only tolerated torture but encouraged it and held only a hand full of low level troops accountable refusing to prosecute or even investigate those who designed and ordered the torture policy.
They promised to make government more efficient but instead rewarded their followers with more pork and perks and corrupt power coming close to bankrupting the economy and rendering government agencies virtually useless (see response to Katrina, warnings about Wall Street, etc.)
This list could go on for several more days, probably weeks, even months if we really got into the details, but the main point should be this—the only thing this administration and the Rovian philosophy behind it accomplished successfully was to get and hold on to power no matter how they had to lie steal and cheat to do it, and to use that power to reward friends and punish enemies, not based on those peoples' contributions to the welfare of the nation, but on those peoples contributions to the getting and maintaining of that power.
May their God hold them accountable for their deeds.
Friday, October 3, 2008
THE MORNING AFTER
Well, she did better than expected because the expectations were so low.
Or another way of looking at it is, doggone it, she sure is a regular joe sixpack hockey mom kinda gal next door who’s gonna get that darn fed’ral government to help out the folks at Saturday’s soccer game and’ll just have to not be too specific how (wink wink) ‘cause doggone it who wants to hear about her ol’ end times beliefs (what the heck, the world’s comin’ to an end soon anyway an’ Alaska, according to her pastor, is gonna be the refuge state for all those believers in the lower 48 who’ll need a place to run to when the anti-Christ shows up—and we know who that might be wink wink—and the Rapture sends all those Jews and Catholics to hell and even some of those darn Protestants who just don’t get it that there’s only one way to be saved) and she’s not gonna come out and say it but her sarcastic tone and gotcha satisfied smile when she gets an opening for her rehearsed phrases about how these other guys are just gonna raise your taxes, gosh even if that is a lie, it isn’t if you’re as rich as John and Cindy McCain for pete’s sake, and anyways, these guys are just gonna take away your doctors and try and put the fed’ral government right there controlin’ your health care darn it, even if that’s a lie too (wink wink) we all know lyin’s fair ‘n’ square if you do it with a wink and a smile and that sarcastic knowing rightwing insider look of these dumb ol’ Democrats think that facts’ll beat her perky cutesiness and competence’ll win over repeating the same old lies over and over again until enough people believe’em. Which, come on, they obviously do or there wouldn’t be such high percentages of Americans who still think Obama’s a Muslim (well he did wear that funny outfit and has that funny name not like brig and trig and fig and the cutesy white folks Alaskan killers of wild animals with guns from helicopters chasing them down kinda folks) and he’s an obvious “elitist” with all that fancy expensive stuff (hey, so what if he was raised by a single mom on food stamps and later by grandparents from Kansas and made it to Harvard on brains and hard work and turned down opportunities to make millions as a big time lawyer to help working-class and poor people instead, and so far has been right on every major issue of our times so much so that even Junior and his team have come around to carrying out almost every suggestion Obama made (and there’s still more time left doggone it) like dealing with Iran, coming up with a timed plan to get our troops out of Iraq, deciding oversight is needed for Wall Street etc.) well heck even Mavericks, John and her, she , whatever, have followed Obama’s lead and now they’re for change too but not that ol’ changing of the people and party runnin’ Washington, that’s not change, change is sayin’ Maverick over and over again, ‘cause gosh, votin’ ninety percent with Junior like John has done and havin’ the same cut-taxes and don’t talk to bad guys like Russia and just let’em have it dead or alive you can’t hide it’s us or them country first there’s no people as great as American people cause heck anybody knows a young black man isn’t gonna change much in Washington, so who cares if that whole change thing was his idea, it’s John’s and hers now, just like John and her are gonna cure health care and not raise your taxes by cutting rich people’s taxes even more and letting the insurance companies run your health care instead of that old icky fed’ral government that should just go away, who needs it anyway? Government’s the darn problem, we need to get government the heck out of the way. Gee whiz that’s what the president’s been tryin’ to do and them Mavericks can finish the job ‘cause they’re a whole new party now and all the lobbyists and oil people and Carl Rove folks workin’ for John’s and her campaigns just means John and her are smart enough to use the bright guys that got Junior elected and kept him in power even though he pretty near gosh darn destroyed the economy and destroyed our country first!
[rj eskow did a much funnier and on the money version of this, check it out]
Or another way of looking at it is, doggone it, she sure is a regular joe sixpack hockey mom kinda gal next door who’s gonna get that darn fed’ral government to help out the folks at Saturday’s soccer game and’ll just have to not be too specific how (wink wink) ‘cause doggone it who wants to hear about her ol’ end times beliefs (what the heck, the world’s comin’ to an end soon anyway an’ Alaska, according to her pastor, is gonna be the refuge state for all those believers in the lower 48 who’ll need a place to run to when the anti-Christ shows up—and we know who that might be wink wink—and the Rapture sends all those Jews and Catholics to hell and even some of those darn Protestants who just don’t get it that there’s only one way to be saved) and she’s not gonna come out and say it but her sarcastic tone and gotcha satisfied smile when she gets an opening for her rehearsed phrases about how these other guys are just gonna raise your taxes, gosh even if that is a lie, it isn’t if you’re as rich as John and Cindy McCain for pete’s sake, and anyways, these guys are just gonna take away your doctors and try and put the fed’ral government right there controlin’ your health care darn it, even if that’s a lie too (wink wink) we all know lyin’s fair ‘n’ square if you do it with a wink and a smile and that sarcastic knowing rightwing insider look of these dumb ol’ Democrats think that facts’ll beat her perky cutesiness and competence’ll win over repeating the same old lies over and over again until enough people believe’em. Which, come on, they obviously do or there wouldn’t be such high percentages of Americans who still think Obama’s a Muslim (well he did wear that funny outfit and has that funny name not like brig and trig and fig and the cutesy white folks Alaskan killers of wild animals with guns from helicopters chasing them down kinda folks) and he’s an obvious “elitist” with all that fancy expensive stuff (hey, so what if he was raised by a single mom on food stamps and later by grandparents from Kansas and made it to Harvard on brains and hard work and turned down opportunities to make millions as a big time lawyer to help working-class and poor people instead, and so far has been right on every major issue of our times so much so that even Junior and his team have come around to carrying out almost every suggestion Obama made (and there’s still more time left doggone it) like dealing with Iran, coming up with a timed plan to get our troops out of Iraq, deciding oversight is needed for Wall Street etc.) well heck even Mavericks, John and her, she , whatever, have followed Obama’s lead and now they’re for change too but not that ol’ changing of the people and party runnin’ Washington, that’s not change, change is sayin’ Maverick over and over again, ‘cause gosh, votin’ ninety percent with Junior like John has done and havin’ the same cut-taxes and don’t talk to bad guys like Russia and just let’em have it dead or alive you can’t hide it’s us or them country first there’s no people as great as American people cause heck anybody knows a young black man isn’t gonna change much in Washington, so who cares if that whole change thing was his idea, it’s John’s and hers now, just like John and her are gonna cure health care and not raise your taxes by cutting rich people’s taxes even more and letting the insurance companies run your health care instead of that old icky fed’ral government that should just go away, who needs it anyway? Government’s the darn problem, we need to get government the heck out of the way. Gee whiz that’s what the president’s been tryin’ to do and them Mavericks can finish the job ‘cause they’re a whole new party now and all the lobbyists and oil people and Carl Rove folks workin’ for John’s and her campaigns just means John and her are smart enough to use the bright guys that got Junior elected and kept him in power even though he pretty near gosh darn destroyed the economy and destroyed our country first!
[rj eskow did a much funnier and on the money version of this, check it out]
Thursday, October 2, 2008
WOOPS
Hey, anybody interested in the poetry reading I'm doing this coming Monday with Terence Winch at KGB Bar (85 East 4th St.) in New York, I've had it listed to the right for a while now with the wrong time. I was originally told it started at 7:30, but on the bar's calender they have it down for 7PM. Just a heads up.
THE REAL MCCAIN
Check this out. It's long but worth it. Says pretty much what a lot of us have been pointing out for a while now.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
GHOST TOWN
I needed some comic relief from recent events so I took my little guy to see GHOST TOWN.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved almost any movie that had ghosts or spirits in them.
And I love romantic movies too, that work—at least for me.
So I’m a sucker for movies that do both.
I even liked GHOST, which most people I know can’t stand, or can only admit they like Whoppi Goldberg’s performance in. But I dug everyone in it, including Demi Moore and the much-parodied pot-throwing scene.
So, it should have been easy for me to love GHOST TOWN, the latest entry in this genre.
But I wasn’t sure I would. And well into it I was still wondering. Because even though I love everything I’ve ever seen Tea Leoni or Greg Kennear in, because they are both such good actors, especially able to draw pathos from comedy and vice versa, and I appreciate Ricky Gervais’s comic talent, ultimately I find it difficult to watch him.
I had trouble watching the original British THE OFFICE as well as his HBO series EXTRAS, for the same reason I rarely watch sitcoms.
Because when something totally embarrassing happens—no matter how obviously meant to be funny or lead into something funny, or how well resolved—I get so uncomfortable I have to leave the room.
For a guy who’s done his share of embarrassing behavior, you’d think it might be cathartic, or at least a small relief to see my own foibles shared. But that’s not usually the case, because the kind of behavior I’m talking about most people could see coming a mile away and avoid it, even me, or at least regret it later.
No, Gervais’s character on EXTRAS was so blindly unaware of other peoples’ feelings most of the time, it led to behavior that, though seemingly funny to a lot of folks, I usually found so thoughtlessly dumb, it embarrassed me too much to watch.
That’s how GHOST TOWN struck me in the early scenes, watching Gervais’s dentist go through his self-pitying self-centered day. There was a note of sympathy evoked for what was portrayed as a pathetically lonely man—which of course telegraphed the eventual resolution from the first moment—but that wasn’t enough to overcome the general dislike Gervais was seemingly deliberately creating for his character (yes as crucial to the story, but think of all the great actors, comedic and otherwise, who make us fall for them immediately no matter how bad or base the characters they’re playing might be).
Even when the ending is pretty much a given, how a movie gets to it is the mark of whether it’s any good or not. That’s mostly dependent on the writing (in this case the director David Koepp with the help of John Kamps) and how well the actors execute it.
Having Greg Kennear and Tea Leoni acting out your words and plot pretty much guarantees I’m gonna enjoy watching it, no matter how dismissible or unmemorable it might become in hindsight. But Gervais was the problem for this viewer.
Especially since I was so looking forward to the interaction between the ghosts and the live characters and it wasn’t happening quickly enough—or just plain enough—to satisfy the little kid in me (and maybe because I was watching it with my own little kid).
But after the set up extended too long for my taste, it finally started to pay dividends (if that isn’t too sensitive a metaphor to use these days) when Kennear’s and Leoni’s characters became a more integral part of the story.
From then on I was hooked, and by the end of the movie, Ricky Gervais had made me stop squirming and I’d surrendered to his “comedic” tics, used here for more dramatic effect, and left the theater having laughed a lot and even dropped a few tears, with another movie to add to any list of romantic/ghost stories.
And wondering if Gervais fans will be disappointed in his obvious surrender to a classic Hollywood kind of movie sentimentality and a more heart-warming take on reality than he usually offers in his TV personas (except for a few contemporary touches, like Aasif Mandri as Gervais’ character’s Hindu dentist partner, this flick could have been made by a Hollywood studio in the 1940s).
You Gervais fans out there, let me know.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved almost any movie that had ghosts or spirits in them.
And I love romantic movies too, that work—at least for me.
So I’m a sucker for movies that do both.
I even liked GHOST, which most people I know can’t stand, or can only admit they like Whoppi Goldberg’s performance in. But I dug everyone in it, including Demi Moore and the much-parodied pot-throwing scene.
So, it should have been easy for me to love GHOST TOWN, the latest entry in this genre.
But I wasn’t sure I would. And well into it I was still wondering. Because even though I love everything I’ve ever seen Tea Leoni or Greg Kennear in, because they are both such good actors, especially able to draw pathos from comedy and vice versa, and I appreciate Ricky Gervais’s comic talent, ultimately I find it difficult to watch him.
I had trouble watching the original British THE OFFICE as well as his HBO series EXTRAS, for the same reason I rarely watch sitcoms.
Because when something totally embarrassing happens—no matter how obviously meant to be funny or lead into something funny, or how well resolved—I get so uncomfortable I have to leave the room.
For a guy who’s done his share of embarrassing behavior, you’d think it might be cathartic, or at least a small relief to see my own foibles shared. But that’s not usually the case, because the kind of behavior I’m talking about most people could see coming a mile away and avoid it, even me, or at least regret it later.
No, Gervais’s character on EXTRAS was so blindly unaware of other peoples’ feelings most of the time, it led to behavior that, though seemingly funny to a lot of folks, I usually found so thoughtlessly dumb, it embarrassed me too much to watch.
That’s how GHOST TOWN struck me in the early scenes, watching Gervais’s dentist go through his self-pitying self-centered day. There was a note of sympathy evoked for what was portrayed as a pathetically lonely man—which of course telegraphed the eventual resolution from the first moment—but that wasn’t enough to overcome the general dislike Gervais was seemingly deliberately creating for his character (yes as crucial to the story, but think of all the great actors, comedic and otherwise, who make us fall for them immediately no matter how bad or base the characters they’re playing might be).
Even when the ending is pretty much a given, how a movie gets to it is the mark of whether it’s any good or not. That’s mostly dependent on the writing (in this case the director David Koepp with the help of John Kamps) and how well the actors execute it.
Having Greg Kennear and Tea Leoni acting out your words and plot pretty much guarantees I’m gonna enjoy watching it, no matter how dismissible or unmemorable it might become in hindsight. But Gervais was the problem for this viewer.
Especially since I was so looking forward to the interaction between the ghosts and the live characters and it wasn’t happening quickly enough—or just plain enough—to satisfy the little kid in me (and maybe because I was watching it with my own little kid).
But after the set up extended too long for my taste, it finally started to pay dividends (if that isn’t too sensitive a metaphor to use these days) when Kennear’s and Leoni’s characters became a more integral part of the story.
From then on I was hooked, and by the end of the movie, Ricky Gervais had made me stop squirming and I’d surrendered to his “comedic” tics, used here for more dramatic effect, and left the theater having laughed a lot and even dropped a few tears, with another movie to add to any list of romantic/ghost stories.
And wondering if Gervais fans will be disappointed in his obvious surrender to a classic Hollywood kind of movie sentimentality and a more heart-warming take on reality than he usually offers in his TV personas (except for a few contemporary touches, like Aasif Mandri as Gervais’ character’s Hindu dentist partner, this flick could have been made by a Hollywood studio in the 1940s).
You Gervais fans out there, let me know.
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