Clebilicious

The Adventures of Chronic Pain Barbie

2012-02-02T14:27:00.000-08:00

It's never a dull moment in the life of Chronic Pain Barbie! Her adventures include stretching all day, getting misunderstood & disqualifying for disability--all while lookin fly.

Millennial Rappers, The 2011 Albums

2011-12-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

VIDEOPLOGGERY: Mini-reviews of five fave 2011 albums by Millennial Rappers to be found herein. Wishing you more good music--as well as non-musical good--for 2012.

Q: What do you mean "Millennial Rappers"?

A: Why that's the very first thing discussed in the video!

Q: Guess I'll watch then. Do you perchance do any videohoery in here?

A: ... :) ...

When Occupation Is Therapy, Talk Is Not Cheap

2011-11-15T14:00:00.000-08:00

I HAVE NEVER been fond of protests. I was inculcated into lefty protest culture at a young age, and it seemed to mean belonging to a marginal subgroup yelling irrelevantly, much like when I had to go to Lakers games and root against the Lakers.

I did not expect, then, that my heart would warm to the Occupy movement as it has. Here in Oakland things have gotten out of hand every possible way, and the local news is often painful. But I also got to watch news chopper footage of the Port with an ant swarm of Oaklanders, publicly agreeing on something quite important. Precisely what that thing is I can't say any more than they can, and I think that is fine. Not everything is articulable, after all.

The agendalessness criticism not only misses but subverts the point. Why must it always be anti-government nuts and right wing media screamers who get to be generally aggrieved, while lefty poindexters are supposed to tiptoe into the halls of power with their briefcases full of bullet-pointed 'demands' in a sensible font?

Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in the New Yorker:

Yes, O.W.S. has 'changed the conversation.' But talk, however necessary, is cheap. Ultimately, inevitably, the route to real change has to run through politics.

And for the very first time I disagreed with him. In a world where Congressional Republicans are three hundred-pound brutes in pads who look plumply ineffectual but prove startlingly strong, and are single-minded enough to block our gallant, lean-muscled president from passing even a bill saying please let's at least keep teachers and firefighters...general shouting may be just the thing.

Rather than being based upon an agenda, Occupy is a manifestation of a feeling, one we all sort of have. When we see those protesters out there, we know what they mean. They don't have to spell it out. That they should make particular demands is great--like financial tranfers tax, awesome. But to focus exclusively on such would be a sign not of maturity but of timid self-limitation.

Occupy is a fresh wind blown in. The recent past has seen America awash in wealth worship. The vast cultural force that is Entertainment News scolds against hating on the rich. It's so flippin cool to be rich! cheer the Entertainment Newspeople, out of whose whitened smile mouths come terrible things. But hateration is about envy. The 99% solidarity ethos is about anger. Anger over wrongness.

Wealth can indeed be unethical, I believe. Hard core 1%-er wealth is inevitably built others' backs. The work of armies of immigrant gardeners and nannies and housekeepers hums along in the background. Regular people turn off lights when they leave rooms, while the fabulously wealthy keep a heated pool at a third home. And of course there's the elaborately choreographed fucking-over of other people that led to the 2008 financial meltdown.

There actually are limited resources in this world, and when they are allocated preposterously it's many ways helpful to yell about it. Even as cold and cops blow Occupy adrift, it does something.

In Which I Dip a Toe in Videoploggery

2011-10-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

West Coast Hugfest

2011-08-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

The Soul-Soaked Ms. Winehouse

2011-08-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

I NEVER saw Amy the way some people did, as junkie fuckup tabloid fodder. To me she was wonderful. Glimpses of her dark side saddened and worried me, but I did not mistake the ugly pictures for her.

It is possible to edifyingly consume artwork without respecting its maker, as though we believe the artist herself is not to thank for her own work. Many seemed to perceive Amy as an obnoxious, unworthy vessel for her Talent. I made that mistake myself at first: I liked her, but I didn't respect her. Fans can be cruel like that.

I came to properly appreciate her, though. How could I not, when Back to Black so uncannily resembled a gift granted me from Adonai above? You see, I was collecting tapes of the Supremes and the Shangri-Las back when the other little girls were on Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. Hearing that girl group sound from the quaveringly brassy vocal chords of a London Jewgirl with tattoos and rapper collaborators and British writing skills was almost more than I could bear. Amy was like a chimerical joint invention of my inner child and outer adult. (She even threw in some Specials covers to appease my inner teenager.)

IT'S FUNNY how much you can care for someone as a fan. I needn't try to explain the collision of internet mourning and the peculiar nature of loss when you are mere fan to the dearly departed, because Jay Smooth already did here.

I did cry. In the bathtub and on the floor of the Oakland Marriott. You only spend a bright summer Saturday in a hotel in the downtown of your own city (inhabiting the floor even) if you are recovering from a herniated disc and using your mom's stay at said hotel as an opportunity to abscond from your home for a change of scenery, so of course that was my reason. But the setting was fortuitously Amyish.

I completed the first inevitable cycle from "Back to Black" to "Tears Dry On Their Own" feeling sheepish, struck by how perfectly Amy had provided a soundtrack for mourning her. Her work made it too easy for me. And that's the gift I think we undervalue.

We can cluck about drugs and fame, but there was a more essential, if ridiculably "tortured," artistic quality to Amy. Tearing your heart open and pouring the contents into music can be healing, but it also costs something. We took Amy's end product, whatever it cost, lapped it right up. At best we listened to what she sang and really heard her. (And I suspect being heard was the compensation she sought, not money or fame.) At worst we violated her privacy and made sordid junk food meals of her pain.

That thing we got from Amy--that elusive, potent magic--she put it there. Herein lies the demanding quintessential skill of an artist. Perhaps we cannot directly see or hear the result of the exercise of such skill. But we do experience it some way, and are drawn to that quality. Crying on the floor was a poignant meme for me because Amy made it so. She did the alchemical drudgery. I got to enjoy the pain-turned-beauty.

If you really have a heart and it really breaks, some faux-angsty song like Beyonce's "Irreplaceable" won't do shit for you. "Back to Black" or "Wake Up Alone" might. That is the difference.

Someone once said to me (when I was in fact dressed for Halloween as Amy) that he could be no fan of hers, since he only listens to 'real Soul.'

I say real Soul really comes from the soul. Amy's damn sure did.

Letter to Game

2011-07-06T13:30:00.000-07:00

Game darling,

Funny you should write, as you had been on my mind lately. Been back painitentiary way (parole violation) so plenty of think time.

What happened? Ehhh...there was this whole coop killing incident and you know me: never ran from a possum, damn sure ainbouta pick today to start runnin (to twist your twist on Weezy). I have a release date, but you know how slippery those can be.

So...been here, reading BritLit. You'd like Trollope. Everything's about money for him, in this vicious, delicious, accurate way.

I like the star behind the "LA" over the butterfly. Am I the only one? (Teasing, sorry.) And huzzahs on the definite article snippage. More elegant this way.

Nah, no kids yet, though I don't doubt it's possible to become pregnant just off prurient thoughts about you ;)

Feel for you on the Jimmy Henchman situation. I can imagine how difficult a position that puts you in, &c. I still think the actual murders were Suge-backed, and I sense you think the same, though you know I'm not asking.

Obama...I know he is doing many things imperfectly, but I still feel, after those surreal Bush years, grateful to have a real president. Obama makes genuine decisions, genuine mistakes, understands and cares about what he says and does. Also I think at some point I decided to support him ride or die. There are plenty of people ready and willing to criticize him, and they should. I provide the unconditional love. Why, have you had a change of heart? (Sorry sorry know you're sensitive! But my penchant for teasing may be tied to your penchant for misogyny--just saying think about it.)

Want to let you know--because I'm truthful like that--you are not the only imaginary celebrilove in my life nowadays. I have another, Dan Auerbach, on whose YouTubed interviews I likewise stansturbate. Well and there's Nicki, but I know you won't mind that ;) You could have had my imagination all to yourself, for truth, had you fully met my needs. Anyway, he's a rockboy, half your size but quite equal in swag. If you can get past the sting of jealousy (and indeed I hope you cannot!) you'll find he's mad talented. He did this spine-tingling collab with your boy Chef. (See Dan stan out at 4:53; hear the track at 6:41.)

Random: what's Marsha Ambrosius like? I can't figure her out.

And now, because I care, several helpings of my usual unsolicited advice:

Beefmonster that you are, you remain surprisingly unschooled in the art of Hate deflection. Don't gripe about getting Hated upon. Hate is flattery, remember that. Far better to counteract the resultant insecurity by stepping your lyrics up. No whining about why do I get left out of top tens. Remember the old adage about talking -vs- being about it. Wise man say: You ain't grinding until you tired.

You have something a lot of rappers don't. It's easy to be Kanye clever. The hard part is putting your heart and soul, best and worst of yourself, into your work. You do that and no one can touch you. And I know you're capable of it, because I've listened to "Ol English" about eight thousand times. You don't have to have silken Snoop flow or Weezy wordplay; that's not you. You rap from the gut and at your best its contents pour forth. I know the process is not pleasant, but hey. If it wears you out just lay down some club bangers for comfort. Also, NO ONE's harder than you, so you have nothing to prove in that arena, trust.

Henpecks aside, I can see you're growing and working on your craft and I am glad. This was nice:

Walk through the gates of Hell
See my Impala parked in front
With the high beams on
Me and the devil sharing chronic blunts
Listenin to the Chronic album
Playin backwards
Shootin at pictures a Don Imus for target practice

The "Pot of Gold" joint seems meant for me and my radio-listening whitegirl demographic to love it, but I'm undecided. The beat is nice, as are your verses, but the whole feels a tad pandering. I say that with love; you know this. Maybe I just haven't forgiven C. Breezy, no fault of yours.

August 23rd! (Sure? [Continuing to give you shit ;)]) Can't wait.

Cleb

Laidupedness

2011-06-15T15:14:00.000-07:00

IN THE MONTH OF MAY the sharpshooters began to stand down. That electric nerve pain, worst kind, transmogrified to arthritic inflammation, pulsing along the nerve corridor like I was a bioluminescent sea creature. Lately I have lots of painless moments, or so they seem upon casual observation. If I inquire too solicitously my body usually reports that Pain is in fact still there, perhaps sleeping.

The controversially-called 'painless' moments are strictly conditional. I get to have them if...and you don't want to hear the ellipses contents. In brief, absurd limitation paired with ibupanacea.

I've had to cultivate some weird other kind of discipline. The kind where you don't do stuff--not even the sensible, responsible things your brain says to do. See the chickenshit on the patio, but don't hose it off. Hear the coffee beans crunch underfoot, but don't sweep up the resultant grounds. Faced with a heap of dishes, wash only one dish.

The little feline Buddhist nun understands such things. If her water bowl is empty, she says, Do not attempt to reach it! Merely open the door, that I may go and drink from the water garden. She is conducting clinical trials on the efficacy of feline saliva, applied topically, on spinal disc regeneration in humans. With a sample size of one.

I READ BOOKS about The Back and about Pain, trying to learn from them without being steamrolled by their high church pronouncements. Bed rest should not exceed 1-2 days. I agree: it should not. Not least because it FUCKING SUCKS. But what would general medical wisdom have had me do instead? Keep moving about until my screams summoned the neighbors?

I hold as my bottom line the oath I felt like a lot of doctors failed to make me: First, do no harm.

The research I do and the interactions I have about my back problem are often painful themselves, though I do learn from them. In such case I must unbandage the wound, saying, This hurts and I wish it would get better. That invites clucking opinions and facile judgments as readily as sympathy or genuine help. Princess SHao brought what I really wanted: chocozucchini bread.

AND NOW FOR a quick lesson in making a person's hardship their own choice and fault. It's a neat trick: 1. Think up something the person should be doing. 2. Suggest it to the person. 3. Sit back and relax! If the person fails to be better, it's on them! You tried.

Nothing I hate more than people's little self-solacing notions of What I Should Be Doing. The suggestey shit pricks me til I bleed with self-doubt. The philosopher JBird said what I really wanted to hear: that my ass retains its splendor.

But what would I have people do in lieu of solacing themselves? Doesn't provision of empathy require suffering along with me? How can I ask that?

AFTER THREE MONTHS of laidupedness and discouragement, I gave myself the following advice:

This will last...some amount of time. Some awful, unbearably long period of time, way beyond reason. The progress will be invisible slow; setbacks many. You won't have the support you need. Won't have options that could make it easier. Instead eight million things will conspire to make it harder. You'll often be mired in depression. Your self-confidence will wear down. Your life will get all off-track. You'll get farther and farther from being as you were. You'll lose your fitness and your beauty to some extent or other. You may not even feel like yourself; you'll feel like you are the Pain. Fully parasitized. All this will happen. Continue happening. Even so it will end. You'll get well.

That has proven useful. Eventual wellness is a damn fine promise, one beyond the reach of many who are unwell.

FINALLY, for Lolo, a word on bullshit-skimming. You see, ordinarily I care about a lot of dumb shit, like what people think about the things I do, and why I don't make more money, and whether quoting rappers makes me ridiculous. But with Pain at my back, how can I possibly care? Jay-Z said it best:

I used to give a fuck
Now I give a fuck less

Fun Times With Chronic Pain, Part MCCXLII

2011-06-09T15:19:00.000-07:00

STILL DOING my bid. Pain Prison, cell block 1722. Pain is not my constant experience. I get free from it sometimes and quiet it often. Rather, Pain is the bars and the guard. The walls seem penetrable, and I start telling myself that if I dared to walk through they'd give way. But what happens instead is I walk into a wall. Then Pain gets mad and I spend a day or two on lockdown.

Today I'm on lockdown, in bed, in a painstorm. The storms come less frequently now, and I had gone a record six days without one. Of course I was not without pain on those good days, but I could manage and be comfortable--so long as I didn't do anything wrong. In the concept of wrong Pain shows its capricious tyranny. Yesterday a walk and a stint in a reclined position turned out to be wrong.

This is where rope-a-dope pain management gets tricky. The initial strategy is clear: you feign surrender, let Pain think it's winning. So far so good. But like...you don't actually mean to give Pain the victory. And at some point along the fake surrender, perhaps when your muscles atrophy and your joints forget their parts and the nerve down your leg is so battered it goes haywire, making pain signals out of thin air, Pain does win. Can't have that. So the question is when and how to start punching back.

I try this or that: an exercise, a stretch, an activity. Maybe just moving about the house for twenty minutes. Sometimes I do these things and Pain is powerless to protest. Then I get a bit stronger, a bit more able. Other times I do these things and they open me up to a big fat punch. Then, like today, I stagger, curse myself and Pain both, hate being here, watch the painstorm pass, re-group, prepare for the next round.

Pain justifies the mixing of metaphors.

Dispatch from the Floor

2011-04-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

TERRIBLY OFTEN when I tell people I have back problems, they’re like, Yeah me too. And then I can't say, No but mine are like super bad. I will tell you, though, dear reader: they are quite bad. Bad enough that I’ve landed on the floor, two months and counting, though I didn’t do anything much out of the ordinary.

In fact the strain upon my spine over the last decade has been far less than ordinary, since I make innumerable concessions to the tyrant Pain. I work part time and stretch at ballerina frequency. I am mindful of lifting and sitting and sneezing and carrying too much in my purse.

But nor am I Pain’s little bitch; I defy its rules when I think I can get away with it. And really, it was a pile-up of such sneaky infractions that landed me here, spine trained to the floor, with my mercifully tiny laptop atop a pillow on my stomach and my feet on the couch and an ice pack beneath me.

For the last few years Pain was the weaker contender, and I spit in its face, daring to do things I thought I might never get to do, like have a normal job, live by myself, take dance class, walk for miles. At the height of my triumph I wore some obscene heels.

I was a blithe, jubilant rat fattening myself on a windfall of spilled grain night after night, and Pain was a cat with a grin, crouching and watching. I’m being melodramatic, but nothing inspires it quite like Pain.

THERE IS A NERVE corridor originating at my sloppy L5-S1 spinal disc, the disc aptly if uncharmingly named for its location between the fifth lumbar and first sacral vertebrae. This corridor travels the length of my leg. Errant L5-S1 protrudes and the nerve gets agitated. Back in the day the S1 nerve path used to be the thing; now my main pain corridor is L5. (Both are pictured below.) The S1 path ends in the tendon and heel, which made me feel like an aching Achilles. L5 ends in the toes, which are often a-tingle.

The corridor is constantly abuzz. Be it with electric sharpshooters, splayed inflammation, dull ache. The sensations, and locations thereof, are ever changing, and sometimes I lie here and watch them, as malignant internal fireworks. The corridor may grow dark and quiet, but it always exists. Even at times when I have negligible pain, the corridor is active, alert, ready. My unaffected leg feels to have no corridor; such is the difference.

You may get frustrated, dear reader, when I tell you there is little more I can do for this than rest and let it get better. This smacks of medical slackerdom. But having done much time down the rabbithole of pills, treatments, hospitals, I can tell you with confidence that this is the truth. I had surgery ten years ago, to the day. So do me this one favor and don’t suggest anything for me to *try.* If you wish to offer something, I like food.

I just have to do the time. It is not fun, but it is a test of a sort, a strength challenge, and I dig those. It's like a marathon, only instead of training from normal human to superhuman capability, you train from jacked-up to normal. You battle the daily discouragements and the limits of your body and develop focus and stamina. And sometimes you give up and fall backwards, and watch streaming episodes of Basketball Wives. (I assume marathoners get discouraged and turn to Basketball Wives.)

Sometimes it is hard to believe that my spine is so dysfunctional. But I think of how other people have diabetes or lupus or herpes or dire allergies and it seems common for the body to have some failed function or other. It is the human body, after all, and quite remarkable. It is much more shocking to think of what it can do.

I EMPLOY a rope-a-dope pain management strategy. I lie here in apparent defeat and let Pain punch itself out until I am the stronger one.

I've had to adapt to long-term battle. Reading and writing are all I can accomplish, and sometimes I can accomplish nothing. I'm drinking pint smoothies and eating mini yogurts and frozen dinners, with a resultant abomination of plastic refuse that is hardly less objectionable than begging friends to do my dishes. Bowls are heavy to carry to bed and glasses are easily spilled down the chin when drinking lying down, so the plastics do win for now.

My personality adapts too, as you might have noticed if you know me as a pleasant person and are reading this thinking you would rather not visit such a grumpbitch after all. I don't laugh much, but I usually feel alright. It's just I have to be serious. I can't listen to music that gets me worked up or makes me want to bust even the smallest moves. No Nicki, no Weezy. I've been on Joan Baez and Iron & Wine. My earffirmative action campaign got a leg up.

And I'm in the hard situation of needing lots of Help. A friend remarked to me that it's too bad how in our society it is frowned upon to need Help. And that may be so, but I think needing Help sucks inherently, not just because of some social norms. There are as many kinds of Help as there are kinds of love or water. Help can be given loudly or quietly, generously or stingily, for free or for an implicit price; you can be made to feel it or allowed to accept it with ease. Given gracefully, it is a tremendous gift. But the position of need is a shit position, even so.

Pain is not all curses and grumbles. I grow by its trials and appreciate how it skims the bullshit off life's surface. Maybe I'll tell you about that some other time.

Fun Times With Chronic Pain, Part MCCXVIII

2011-03-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

PAIN, old nemesis, I never should have thought I had you licked. You humble me, exhaust me, shred my plans, shatter my independence. I respect you, even so. You've changed me before, and taught me things I would have otherwise gladly avoided learning. You beat me up and make me strong. When you leave I remember so vividly how nice life is without you. That last while you were gone I enjoyed every way I could. I wore the badbitch heels and tore up the clubs and walked miles home from downtown in summer sunshine. I dashed about, met people, planted, milked a goat, tanned my abs in delicious somatic vanity. So you, the terrorist, have not won. It has been a hard March. You suck today. Maybe better tomorrow.

A Brief Treatise on Why "Real G's Move in Silence Like Lasagna" Is Indeed the Perfect Lyric

2011-02-25T13:57:00.000-08:00

WEEZY SCHOLARS are abuzz about the sneak-attack simile from the hot new single "6 Foot 7 Foot."

First Weezy Scholar: You heard that shit? Real g's move in silence like lasagna.
Second Weezy Scholar: Yeah man shit's hot...Real talk though... Fuck does that mean?
WS1: Think about it. Real g's move in silence like lasagna.
WS2: I'm seeing a lasagna doing slug walk cross a plate.
WS1: Like lasagna. Spell it.
WS2: L-A-S-A-- Oh shit the g is silent.
WS1: Yuup.
WS2: Damn.
WS1: Yuup.
WS2, following a moment's reflection: You know what, though? That's kinda whack actually.
WS1: You just mad you ain figure it out.
WS2: Nah nah for real, because the g in lasagna ain really silent.
WS1: Fuck you talkin about. Yeah it is.
WS2: Nah, it's not. Cause think about it though. If the g wasn't there you would pronounce it "la-zann-a." That nya sound is from the g. On some Italian shit.
WS1: Oh damn. You got me there.
WS2: He shoulda said real g's is like gnats.
WS1: Flyin all in a ball with other gnats is not gangster.
WS2: Says you.
WS1: You know what is gangster though?
WS2: Huh?
WS1: A letter acting all innocuous where it falls in a word, then moving silently, only to show up later making a y sound, on some Italian shit.

Hey Nicki! Hey Nicki! Asthmatic Ode to Nicki Minaj

2011-02-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

WHEN FIRST I heard "Your Love" on KMEL, I thought I had met it in the sky. Nicki's arrival had the same effect; I didn't know she was somebody I'd been waiting for, and I already can't fathom a hip hop world without her.

Nicki Minaj exists on so many planes she might fool you. First come the pink wig and flaunted ass, daring you to underestimate her. Then there are the many faces, many voices, Nicki as self-created cultural artifact. But rip off all the shiny packaging and you find an artist with talent and heart. (Also be advised you'll want to re-use such nice wrapping paper.)

An obtuse observer could mistake her sexiness for a cheap appeal to men, but in fact her brew of brazen sexuality and conquering power is bound to baffle and terrify many males. (Hence, When I throw this p**** you better not start duckin.) It's not easy to find straight male Nicki fans. Men seem to want to watch her, but from a safe distance.

She appeals, instead, to women. Nicki is power, and transmits power. On some advanced like fifth wave feminism shit. In this she differs vastly from beefmate Lil Kim, whose kittenish sexuality, while powerful in its day in its way, is less threatening, and voluntarily subordinate. Nicki would never list herself after Wayne the way Kim deferentially self-seconded once upon a time: Brooklyn home of the greatest rappers/Big comes first then the Queen comes after.

Nicki shrewdly combines her Barbie wigs with aggressive rapping, one of many replications of her perfectly calibrated hard-soft dichotomy. See also her person, with its sharp points and soft pillows, and her voice personas, which range from babyish to thug murderous. And unlike Lil Kim and Foxy Brown, who specialized in a delicious ghetto brand of sexual aggression (yeah I said it: specialized) , Nicki's aggression is general. Thus does Barbie also get accused of being too masculine.

AND SHE DOES channel masculinity when she feels like it, calling upon male alter ego Roman Zolanski. Suffice it to say that Roman can go head to head with that paean to male aggression known as Slim Shady. (It is understood that regular Eminem is a marshmallow Peep compared to this alter ego; Shady is the one still stuffing ladies in the trunk after all these years.) Over a scary railroad track of a beat, courtesy of Swizz Beatz, Roman and Shady defile and destroy anything and anyone in the vicinity. My favorite bit is in her second verse:

I hear the mumblin
I hear the cacklin
I got em scared, shook, panickin
Overseas, church, Vatican
You at a stand-still: mannequin

Next she breaks out the emotional matter, ranging from the glorious romantic phantasm of "Your Love" to the relationshipal nitty gritty of "Right Thru Me." The most powerful lyric in the latter goes simply, Okay you're right/Just let it go.

"Dear Old Nicki," in which Minaj openly grapples with her past self, is the most honest work of self-reflection I've heard from a rapper. Stars so often have unglamorous former versions hiding in a closet, those easily embarrassing rough drafts along the editing process of self-creation. It's quite a feat to embrace an old self while deciding to move beyond it. But Nicki can.

After all the serious work is over, it's end-of-album party time. The bangingly superficial "Super Bass," waiting to be discovered by club turntables everywhere, celebrates her own femme version of fun pimpery:

I am Nicki Minaj
I mack them dudes up
Back coupes up
And chuck the deuce up

NICKI IS PART of a cadre of Millennial rappers who realized in the nick of time that rap had staled into its own conventions in need of flouting. She is joined by Young Money labelmates Lil Wayne, the eyelid tattoo alien, and Drake, the matinee idol psychoanalyst. Peers include the dapper-suited philosopher of hard-partying Kid Cudi, and political nerd Lupe Fiasco. These Millennial rappers aren't nervously checking their street cred every five minutes, and so are free to explore uncharted terrain, like singing their own hooks, wearing eyeglasses, collaborating with rockboys, riding skateboards, experiencing ambivalence. And at long last, Andre 3000 has challengers for the weirdness throne.

Nicki, with her many guises and cartoon curves*, is trailed by an inevitable misapprehension that she is phony. (To which she responds: If I'm fake I ain notice cause MY MONEY AIN'T.) But her rapid rotation of wigs and voices is rooted in theatricality--she studied drama at LaGuardia High, the "Fame" school--and her embodiment of so many Nickis is a way of claiming every possible iteration of self, as well as an acknowledgment that to rap, after all, is to wear a persona.

*Her improbable ass to waist ratio does have this perfectly logical explanation: she's on a diet, but her pockets are eating cheesecake.

Were she sexplosion only: dayenu. But she can do sex, she can do glam, she can do swag, she can do love. She can be scary, zany, savvy, vulnerable, introspective--often under the same wig on the same song. She can murder a Swizzy beat then hopscotch across a will.i.am confection. Her strength is her stubborn unwillingness to be any one thing, least of all whatever you might want her to be. And I'm not just saying that as an X-pon-tittie Barb stan. Though to be one is a privilege.

Hibernating (Like a Dungeon Dragon)

2011-01-19T10:15:00.000-08:00

WHAT HAVE I been up to lately? Oh, hibernating. You know, winter torpor.

I have this theory of radical sloth. I invoke it as needed. Sometimes, the theory goes, the best thing to do is nothing. Said theory is staggeringly difficult to convert to policy. But you know: I try.

I am a staunch opponent of the culture of busy. I do my best to resist societal pressure to scurry about antlike, and operate instead at my own strange pace. Doing nothing I consider an art. I like to suppose that if you do nothing enough the things you then do will be better and count more.

Of course even in mid-hibernate you end up doing something, but it'll be exploratory and non-required. I took up Nicki Minaj whilst Carmela took up Pema Chodron. We have conversations like:

Ca[rm]: Bodhichitta is essentially a quality of warmth, an experience of our connection with all beings and with all things.
Cl[eb]: Shoulda sent a thank-you note you little ho. Now I'ma wrap ya coffin with a bow.
Ca: Don't have expectations for others. Just be kind.
Cl: I don't sympathize. Cause you a simple bitch.

Carm meditates for days in her kitty bed cave. I leave Wild Cravings treats at her feet and she bows ever so slightly but doesn't touch them until her sit is finished. I'll be in badbitch heels giving myself a dominatrix lapdance with gold-teeth-and-fangs derangement sneers for the mirror and the little feline Buddhist nun remains perfectly still.

Start at 3:35. And emphatically not before.

But mostly I've been filing my nails and thinking my thoughts and taking decadent naps and twiddling my thumbs. I had a nice long sleep. Now I'm rubbing my eyes and stretching my limbs. Emergence is nigh.

Good looks to the illustrator.

Last Name Ever. First Name Greatest. Middle Name Cat.

2010-12-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

I HAD TO say goodbye to Paulie James Walnuts III. King James, Wally Almonds, Molly Pecans, P Kitty, Diamond Princess, Juglans paulinus, Paulo, Wognuts, top predator, master of all he surveyed. Light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul. The cat the myth the legend.

House is quiet without him. No one bites me awake to be fed. Nevermore that claw grip to the edge of my bed, the sound that announced his ascension ever since he abjured feline agility and opted for a two-part pawual hoist instead.

He didn't live to be old. But "Die Young, Stay Pretty" was his second favorite song. (After "I Know What Boys Like.") No use trying to get him to slow down and do self care. He'd be all Fuck maintain boy I gotta keep BALLIN.

He left Carmela his full wardrobe, excepting the boas. Those went to Marianne, who had always coveted them. The jewelry went to me. So if you're wondering why I've been rocking all the gold chains with dinnerplate medallions: that's why.

As I leaned into that sad hospital cage he made funereal requests. I honored the reasonable ones two days later, digging his final resting place in his old strawbed nap spot, pouring out tooney, filling his grave with passion fruit and adorning its surface with passion flowers. He wanted "Aston Martin Music" played. (I opted instead for quiet and Kaddish.) And he wanted Crim to come over and help dig, which the latter was glad to do.

Before we parted he rasped some advice: It may look for all the world like you don't know whatthehell you're doing. But I know you do. After I'm gone I need you to know it. He was selfless really.

Miss you, big friendly orange cat. But legends don't die.

Earffirmative Action

2010-10-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

THERE ARE white people in my iPod, a tragically underrepresented minority. I make a sincere effort to support them, because I recognize that they have contributions to make. Cosettina loves to default to GENRES>>R&B/SOUL, which measures like 16 hours. (Cosettina is my iPod. Obv.)

White people doing black music* only semi-count for earffirmative actions. I did get Eminem's last album, concluding a long journey from outright loathing to tepid acceptance to tornado-volcano embrace. My first erstwhile hint of respect for him came when he likened himself to Elvis: To do black music so selfishly/And use it to get myself wealthy. I thought that showed self-knowledge. Recovery is his bar mitzvah album for real though. He is finally making use of those purported eighty pound balls to handle icky matter like love and personal growth. (Also, Em: I was wondering how your day went. xoxo)

*Don't ask me to define such terms. Just like do me this one favor and suppose you know what I mean.

Amy, for her part, has said she never listens to white music, a statement I find unaccountably, characteristically awesome. Looking forward to spending an evening as you soon, babygirl.

I USED TO listen to rap in the closet. Nowadays that's where I listen to rock. Well, not precisely the closet, but just outside it, lazy-splayed across the bed. For such occasions I don my glasses and wifebeaters and wide-stripe thigh socks, in a weak attempt to be as culturally as I am biologically white.

I favor rock bands with definite article-preceded names; there is swagger in such unironic certainty. Not that I select to like them on this basis. Just, having perceived the liking pattern, I thought I'd make up a whizbang rationale for it. And I gravitate toward white music that is soulful,* a quality inevitably, controversially (see Mercedes v. Quinn, S1 Ep XXI) associated with blackness.

*In the best footnote of all time, Zadie Smith wonders, "Is there anything less soulful than attempting to define soulfulness?"

This is what soulful means. (It's Dan!)

UNEQUIVOCALLY QUALIFYING as soulful is everyone's favorite White, my first husband Jack. Dan Auerbach is even soulfuller, and he could be Jewish, in which case we could maybe have a huppah, something bossy Jack was not into. Though I do miss Jack's angry sexuality, like on "Instinct Blues." They can both say "uh" as well as Biggie--the only thing that truly matters.

It's funny how when Jack says, Shake your hips like battleships I'm still tempted to say, "How fast?" We're not even together anymore! I had the same problem when I was with Game. He'd be like, Bounce like you got hydraulics in ya g-string and I'd be like, "How high?" Dan says that's wrong, and he's probably right. Dan also says I'm the only one, whereas I'm pretty sure Game was simulfucking Kim K while we were together. (I'll share a man with you anytime, bitch. High-five booty clap.)

And this, naturally.

Anyway. Much white music does sound soulless to me. Or at least undersouled. Soul suck may result from aloof withholding, grating cleverness, or ironic remove. To my ears, white music has a greater tendency to sound like it's trying hard to be cool; art should strive to be good, coolness being a possible byproduct only.

You could say there are values besides soulfulness in music, and you *might* have a point. Even my iPod admits as much. Fairly or not, Cosettina grants wide berth to rappers and R&B cheesemongers, calling their vulgarity real-keeping and their tackiness fun. No white person could say, We don't even clap the same when we livin that champagne life/Sexier than a regular clap. And yet I totally tolerate, even enjoy, Ne-Yo saying so. Because the beat is right and one could be tipsy on the dance floor and really feel, for one transcendent moment, to be living The Champagne Life.

Cosettina is way more judgmental about pop rock. Much of the white music on the radio seems to fail by overwrought, false sincerity. By attempting to be deep whilst lacking actual depth. Every note from the voice of that Hayley Williams chick is a small act of senseless violence to my tender ears. (You know: airplanes...night sky...shooting stars...)

Perhaps the moral here, if I got to generally set morals, would be: If you can't be for-reals awesome, just be trashy awesome. Call it the Pitbull Principle of Know Thyself. (Speakinawhich, did you hear "Hey Baby (Drop It to the Floor)"? Shit's bangin!)

What I like about the aforementioned soulful whites is their wide-eyed artistic devotion, and the full-heartedness of the music they make. They have found their own roads to soulfulness, not copping anybody else's style. Amy and Em make black music their own, and do so in a way I respect. But Jack and Dan make white music soulful, and that may be the greater feat.

Hustle and Cuss

2010-09-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

WE SIT DOWN for a finance meeting and Carmela crunches the numbers with the swift ease of a kitty who sidelines as a seasonal accountant. She presents the results in tidy printouts. With the school garden program in the shitter the outlook is grim, and Paulie Walnuts operatically declares that the only remaining option is to send one of us out on the stroll. He quotes a recently-rejected Haitian presidential candidate: Closed legs don't get fed/Go out there and make my bread. I know him well enough to read his assumption of the pimp role as a ploy; he secretly hopes to be pressed into ho service.

Meeting adjourned, Carmela sets out searching for ways to economize. Her first stop is the coop for a little chat with Marianne, AKA the laziest layer of all time. Paulie and I set out debating two related questions:

1. Is it trickin if you got it?
2. Can you make a ho a housewife?

On both I find myself at odds with conventional rap wisdom. Paulie insists it ain't trickin if you got it, and swears he's not just saying that because he's got it. I counter that however much of the elusive It one may possess, trickin is trickin.

On the second question he's the conservative. When the law changes--and I always promise him it will--he does wish to settle down, perhaps adopt a kitten or two from Hopalong. So he worries his reputayshun. I say we should put on our heel boots and have some fun meantime, and promote my viewpoint by taking him out to Easy, where we pay neither cover nor drinks. He says it ain't trickin if you got it and sweats out his "Fancy" dance.

We're half dead the next day so we do lazy gardening and lie in the sun while Carmela calculates the possible salad savings implied by my fall planting. I observe that there are many types of grinding. Fall Writing Program must go on, broke or unbroke. And I could always go back to SAT tutoring. Paulie observes there are many types of whoring.

I managed to befriend a bank security guard, so maybe we'll heist it and flee in the Beemer with "Sweet Escape" playing and abscond to Senegal and raise goats. To which Paulie says stop being dramatic and unreasonable. Holy pots and kettles, right?

And we are practicing our French. I'll find Monsieur le Noix snoozing on the straw pile that bears his imprint, and he'll lift his lids languidly and say, Ne detestez pas le joueur; detestez le jeu. Then he likes me to ask: Soyant souteneur, c'est facile? And he answers, Hell yeah, c'est facile.

Pleasure and Melons (Cold Summer)

2010-08-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

Pleasure and melons
Want the same weather
--Italian proverb

I DON'T LIKE spring to be better than summer. It implies something unfortunate, like the best of life is in anticipation and planting, and the harvest can never live up. July was tomatoless. August was half over before I saw the first Black Krim breaking, ending the big green stalemate that was interminable this cold summer. If I'd planted some bitchass cherry tomatoes I'd have long been picking, but that simply isn't the way I roll. I'm not into cherry tomatoes and rather resent consolation prizes.

Turned out this would have been a season to insure against disappointment, but instead I planted eggplants and edamame and the most ambitious, unreasonable heirloom tomatoes--all of which are now sickly, under-performing, shivering every dewy morning. I even switched from my dependable sauce variety, Super Marzano, a megavirile hybrid impervious to setbacks, to the vulnerable, romantic heirloom San Marzano Gigante. The latter is an old school version of the same fine paste tomato; it lacks the usual hybrid goodies (disease resistance, insane profligacy) but makes beautiful, odd-shaped, enormous tomatoes purported to be delicious. And you can save the seeds. It's an heirloom. That's classy.

Alas, I won't be saving any seeds. My San Marzano Gigantes got verticillium. The lush green tops are a fraud, given away by the yellow-and-brown-chevroned leaves at the base. When I grow the Super hybrids, two plants give me a year's worth of tomato sauce. The lovely heirlooms I planted this time will give me a dinner or two at best. But I can't hate; who knows what they could have done with a bit more bravery, in heat and undiseased soil.

Hot weather makes me want to be superficial. Which can be nice sometimes. If it's cold I have to keep considering serious matters instead of offering my bikini self up to the sun and thinking nothing. Plants worry overmuch in the cold too. They just can't seem to relax.

I like to grouse, so good things often happen just to spite me. This cold summer I grew my first successful melon, over at the school garden. Watermelons always top the kid request list, but I'd never been willing to plant them, because I don't like teaching children that gardening is about disappointment and I never thought we could harvest a damn watermelon. If all warm-weather crops want richness and heat, watermelons want both more. More than zucchini, more than tomatoes, more than peppers, more than eggplants, more than cucumbers--hell, even more than other melons.

In spring's planting daze I snuck two plants of an early, small watermelon variety into an already-overstuffed bed we'd newly constructed at the school, making no fuss so as not to build up childish hopes. The soil was lush, the courtyard location snug and warm, and in late July a softball-sized watermelon occurred. No kid ever saw it, as far as I know. (The school is abandoned to custodians and construction workers in late summer. They all like beans and squash.) Like a dummy I picked the prize when it was utterly unripe and had to feed it to my hens. But I think I saw a couple other set fruits nestled among those hand-shaped leaves.

In the same school bed with the watermelons I grew my first successful Bay Area cucumbers and made a half gallon jar of pickles, which ought to keep until Back to School time. Maybe more watermelons will be ripe for the kiddos by then too. Maybe not.

But there's always picking. Even in a cold summer garden.

Quotation for Thursday

2010-08-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

It's my life
I'ma do what I do
If you don't like it
It's cool
Fuck you

--words to live by, from the self-actualized Pitbull

Miss SHao's Cocktails for the Endangered

2010-08-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

Because the earth needs a stiff drink.

The Pika Sidecar
2 parts bourbon
1 part grand marnier
1/2 part meyer lemon juice

Shake well. Garnish with haypile of one pika.

Limpy the Wolf
2 parts earl grey infused vodka
1 part gin
1/2 part lillet blanc

Serve in rocking tumbler in honor of poor 253M.

The Mountain Pullover
2 parts vodka
3 parts fresh squeezed orange juice
1/2 part simple syrup
1 speckled mountain plover egg

Shake vodka, orange juice and syrup. Pour into chilled martini glass. Gently roll mountain plover egg into glass, allowing the incubating chick an osmosis share of alcohol. Remove egg and consume drink while waiting for gangly plover to emerge. If plover has not yet hatched when drink goes dry, repeat with additional drinks until egg watch concludes. After hatch, crush spent eggshells for future use rimming glasses.
Drink this and drive and you'll get pulled over. What are you doing driving? I thought you cared about the environment.

SUMMER BOOK REPORT: Cleb Does Bellow

2010-07-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

I WAS PRETTY SURE I hated Saul Bellow, vigorously and justly. Hated him for his sexism, which is to say he seemed to hate me first. My gag reflex was not Bellow-specific. I felt the same revulsion toward other macho American novelists, who struck me as oversexualizing and insulting and apelike.

However I had at some point to admit that I also found these same writers: fascinating. This attraction-repulsion required further investigation, preferably in post form. So here goes.

Bellow seemed like a fitting launchpad for said investigation, and I picked up a copy of his renowned 1964 novel Herzog. Both being Jews, I figured Bellow and I could bond over quaint Yiddishisms, having little else in common. Which worked out nicely when his character Moses Herzog reminisced on singing "Ma Tovu" with his brothers as a child. I was humming it all the next day. ("Ma Tovu" is a pleasant song to have in your head, since it means "How Good." Ma tovu ohalecha Yaakov, mish'knotecha Yisrael: How good are thy tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.)

I opened the test case macho novel with apprehension. The plan was to face the erection, hoping I'd know what to do with it. And mostly I did, noting the sense in which the hyperactive male sex drive ought to create a happy situation for us heterosexual women. I suppose the rub lies in our ambivalent role as object of those desires. Desire can beget derision, as I am wont to lecture. And too, horniness may beget creepiness. Reading Bellow was at times like being inside the head of some lecherous great-uncle; I did not want to know what was going on in there.

In the Herzog era, the Mad Men era, there seems to have been some glamorous sexual crackle, and simultaneously the sexes were warring. Usually it seems we get along better nowadays, but sometimes it seems men are stewing in their caves while women appear smugly victorious but are privately unfulfilled.

And I worry that our present era has warped and vilified some of the natural distinctions of gender, and that certain prevailing wisdoms attempt to subdivide relationships into unrealistically tidy, sterile compartments (sex, communication, housework, and so forth), neglecting the pulsating, organic whole that is the ever-tenuous but uniquely magical bond between men and women.* I kept these ruminations to myself, however, until I read a wonderful essay in the book review section of the New York Times.

*Sorry, beloved gays. This one's not about you.

IN HER ESSAY "The Naked and the Conflicted," Katie Roiphe observes that today's male novelists "have repudiated the aggressive virility of their predecessors." Predecessors like Norman Mailer, John Updike, Phillip Roth and Saul Bellow. (Among these Bellow is, incidentally, the most demure, as indicated in the below graphic, which accompanied Roiphe's essay.) She goes on:

The current sexual style is more childlike; innocence is more fashionable than virility, the cuddle preferable to sex...Rather than an interest in conquest or consummation, there is an obsessive fascination with trepidation, and with a convoluted, postfeminist second-guessing.

Of that last she provides an excellent example from Jonathan Franzen in The Corrections: "He could hardly believe she hadn’t minded his attacks on her, all his pushing and pawing and poking. That she didn’t feel like a piece of meat that he’d been using."

Ladies, if we have given guys the impression that their sexual aggression is loathsome, we have failed grievously to communicate. And communication is supposed to be our specialty. Furthermore, if we have given such an impression, that we want our men de-balled, does that not betray a cowardice of our own?

It is fashionable to speak of men being *threatened by strong women,* but what of insecure women feeling threatened by strong men? Mightn't we women be quick to judge a delicious specimen of masculinity as a jerk or a dolt or a cad, similar to the way some men are quick to condemn a dauntingly attractive woman as dumb or bitchy?

Speakinawhich, check out Herzog's flagrantly displayed desire/derision vortex in this passage from the book:

He saw twenty paces away the white soft face and independent look of a woman in a shining black straw hat which held her hair in depth and eyes that even in the signal-dotted obscurity reached him with a force she could never be aware of. Those eyes might be blue, perhaps green, even gray--he would never know. But they were bitch eyes, that was certain. They expressed a sort of female arrogance which had an immediate sexual power over him; he experienced it again that very moment--a round face, the clear gaze of pale bitch eyes, a pair of proud legs. [Emboldenings mine.]

Sheesh! What threat can this stranger possibly represent? She's just like sitting on a bench in a train station and he hates her.

I found a possible answer in a description of Herzog's ex-wife, Madeleine. Recalling the beauty of the woman who left him, Herzog is flooded with venomous resentment. "Such beauty," he thinks, "makes men breeders, studs and servants." Stands to reason that Bitch Eyes, likewise, would be a threat to power. A threat to freedom. Bell Biv Devoe said it straighter: "Never trust a big butt and a smile."

Here's another Bellow desire/derision gem, describing a photograph of Madeleine as a child: "In jodhpurs, boots and bowler she had the hauteur of the female child who knows it won't be long before she is nubile and has the power to hurt." I assure you, no twelve year-old girl has ever thought any such thing.

But I appreciate knowing Herzog has these notions. What makes the insidiousness of the contemporary male novelists is their reluctance to be real for fear they'll be caught thinking wrong. This is artistic cowardice, though also understandable. By contrast, in Herzog Bellow ruthlessly exposes the twisted consciousness of an often-despicable character who seems a damn lot like Bellow himself. It reads like plain truth; artless, and thus good art.

Funny thing--Franzen tries to do this, or something akin to it, in The Corrections*: creating a mildly despicable doppelganger with whom the reader must inevitably empathize. But Franzen's Chip comes off wanting to be pitied or sheltered or something. He backhandedly begs absolution, whereas Herzog is (at least in his stream of consciousness narration) guileless. Herzog's not trying to manipulate the reader into secretly liking him; he owns to being half schmuckish and is strong enough not to whiningly finagle your forgiveness. He only asks that his faults be accepted. Who can say no to that.

*I read The Corrections several years ago and did not re-read it for this essay. That was wrong, I know. Just I was loathe to rekindle so odious a relationship. By way of apology, I offer this interesting recent Franzen article.

At any rate, this business of shipping one's self-loathing out into the world in charismatic written package is an excellent trick, one I use often. But I digress from the point, which is: I'd sooner do Saul Bellow than Jonathan Franzen. And the former is dead. (Counterobjectification. Try it.)

I LEARN things from Bellow because he tells the truth, however ugly. I have some idea now how a person of Herzog's ilk, a muddled misogynist mid-century man of ideas thinks. Communication can only be born of honesty, of course. If someone avoids saying in order not to be caught harboring incorrect (politically or otherwise) thoughts, only frustration can result.

But it wasn't only Bellow's honesty that I appreciated. Reading Herzog, I felt a less inhibited version of the attraction to mid-century macho novelists that had formerly evoked feminist shame. Indeed the very things that might make men sexist--strength, dominance, a bit of brutishness--might also make them sexy.

The loins are rarely in accord with the politically correct brain. Trust me. I've read Superhead's memoir. (Sup's writing game can't match Sup's head game.) But I do believe this conflation of sexy and sexist, what we might call the Nigel Tufnel Paradox, can be overcome. It just requires effort on both sides. A male friend once told me it is not easy to find the balance of being a guy. And I believe him. Just as, he kindly added, it is surely not easy to do same as a woman.

In saying such things there is always the fear one's fellow woman will accuse one of letting men off easy, indulging in another pathetic effort to please them. Herein paragraph constitutes my plea for sisterly mercy, so let me reassert that yeah Bellow's sexist. Classically so. Herzog's ideal woman is geishesquely servile, delighted just to please him, bathe him, remove his shoes. And he thinks some mean shit, like, "But this is a female pursuit. This hugging and heartbreak is for women. The occupation of a man is in duty, in use, in civility, in politics in the Aristotelian sense." Ouch! (Resolved to watch PBS News Hour each evening in full. No TMZ.)

And yet Moses Herzog, wandering the existential desert, is also a decent person. And indeed decent people have often been sexists, racists, slaveowners and Nazis. How many must there be today who hate gays? Prejudice is one of those peculiar quirks of humanity.

CHEST-THUMPING authors, like Mailer especially, do also use sex and misogyny the way certain rappers do: to flex a disfigured masculine pride. I distinguish such cheap knocks from genuine expressions of imperfect sentiment. And as Roiphe points out, contemporary male novelists can be sexist too; just their version is "wilier and shrewder and harder to smoke out." Which is kinda worse, for its camouflage. (BTW, if you ever make your girlfriend mad, just drop five stacks on that makeup bag; it worked on my cat.)

My unsolicited advice to male authors: Writing is not macho. Novelists are not rock stars, not boxers. If writing novels threatens your manhood, perhaps prescribe yourself some other activity to restore it rather than jizzing all over the manuscript. Oh, and tell the truth. Even if someone might hate you for it.

To all the ladies worldwide, I say we have to be strong enough to let men have their strength and know we can handle it. They, in turn, have to promise not to be assholes and to treat us with respect. But the respect has to be genuine. As in literally 'look again'--not some blathering bullshit self-congratulatory fake sensitivity. Beware the man who announces his feminism. I never ever tell people who are not white that I'm nonracist.

What do women want? wonders Herzog. "What do they want? They eat green salad and drink human blood." At another point he lists what women around him seem to expect: "nightly erotic gratification, safety, money, insurance, furs, jewelry, cleaning women, drapes, dresses, hats, night clubs, country clubs, automobiles, theater!" But a woman of Herzog's day could easily have made a much longer list of what men then expected from women, including but not limited to: looking pretty, being the cleaning women themselves, rearing young, smoothing down hackles, pleasing in bed, living in suburban traps and resigning themselves to the denigrating attitudes and limited roles of their time.

I presume to speak for all contemporary women in saying we want strength without oppression, sensitivity but not 'paralyzed sweetness,' to be protected and appreciated and understood. And I cannot know but can guess that the men want care without stiflement, independence but not indifference, to be nurtured and appreciated and understood. Tall orders on both sides, but something can probably be worked out.

The Urban Rural Life

2010-06-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

I'm from the exurbs, so I can appreciate both urban and rural. They are both, at least, something, rather than an absence of anything. (Sorry, Riverside. You know you're always my hometown, loved unconditionally.)

When I tell people I'm milking an Oakland goat they seem amused slash to be wondering why I feel the need to be so obstinately strange. There is no explaining why goat-milking is wonderful. I cannot make the case in sensible terms, like the milk is so extra delish, or it's saving me money, or I have achieved near-vegan levels of food moralism.

I don't buy milk anymore, and that is cool. But I only quite grasp the awesomeness of the thing at 7:30 on Tuesday mornings when I'm in my pajamas carrying a quart jar of warm milk up the street of my city neighborhood. (Please note that my milking sentiments are less fond at 6:30 alarm time.) It's all there as I walk home: the udder just drained, the cereal soon to be wetted, the cheese later to be made, and the peculiar sensation of knowing how it all happens.

This yield is pitiful. But you get the idea.

Knowing how it happens is not pure bliss. There's a reason we've divorced our food from its origins. The origins are often gross. The Goat Girls, aged twelve and sixteen, are wont to squirt milk from the udder right into their mouths, preferably whilst singing My milkshake brings all the neighbors to the yard/Damn right it's better than the store's--but I cannot yet do this. And in fact it took me a while before I could scramble and consume the eggs laid in my backyard without queasy revulsion. And in fact it took me a while before I could eat the lettuce grown in my backyard without a dubious mix of self-mistrust and grossness aversion.

Milking does not have a singular character. There are many kinds of milkings, as with any elemental activity. Sometimes the Indigoat Farm hens are pecking at the alfalfa hay strewn about the stanchion and Indi is bleating sweetly from the pen and sun reflects off Kiah's deerish brown flank and my hand works like it was made to do this particular finger dance, forcing great white streams into a latte froth in the collection cup. Other times rain drenches my Cal sweatshirt, its cuffs stained by and reeking of Udder Butter, and Kiah hates me, alfalfa bribes notwithstanding, and to spite me kicks her shit-caked hoof into my hard-won supply.

I was surprised (and a tad smug) when I had to convince someone--a wise and worldly reportorial sort once employed by CNN--that milk comes only from animals who have given birth. In the case of a bucolicized small farm creature he was quite willing to believe it, but surely, he objected, this was not the case for those milking machines in industrial farm bondage. Modern agriculture has us well fooled. Surely, we think, it must happen some other way.

The reason for milk. Indi, at her sleepover chez moi.

Speaking of animals' inevitable reproductive habits, Marianne has gone broody, not unlike half my human friends. She sits on the nest, doesn't lay, has to be persuaded even to roam the yard at evening recess. There are nest box skirmishes when Ximena or Betsy want to go in there and get some actual work done, and egg yields are desperately down without her dark brown, speckled contributions. The one upside is I get to bust out heretofore unused chicken terminology, moaning about how she's 'setting' and I have to 'break her up.'

My attempts to break her up have failed. (Ice cubes? Bitch please.) I began to reflect on this latest form of insubordination disguised as poultry instinct in connection with the previous form: her weeks-long campaign of daily escapes, via flight from a high branch of the fig tree that canopies the run.

I came to suspect that the problem went beyond broodiness. She's at the bottom of the pecking order, forever getting her ass beat, last dibs on chard treats. Disgruntlement has radicalized her. I never saw this coming: my chicken is an anarchist.

Everybody seems to have ideas about how to break broodiness, but I couldn't find any tips online about how to break anarchism. And it's pretty far along. I cleaned out the nest box expecting to find some adolescent knickknacks, perhaps a few punk rock records. But no. She's got the entire fucking AK Press catalog stashed in there. Bakunin quotes scrawled on the walls. Suffice it to say that I came home sporting an "I Voted" sticker and got shat on.

I can roll my eyes and explain it away psychologically, and I'd have a strong case, considering her pecking order issues. But I should also give her choice of philosophy some respectful consideration. I do keep her caged in wire, after all.

Indeed there is much to ponder when keeping working animals. There is no 'freeing' them at this point, having finagled our needs into their very genes. At best we can work to ensure the bargain we strike with them is fair. I think
FOOD + PROTECTION ⇌ FOOD + OBEDIENCE
is pretty fair. Politeness on both sides is helpful; affection is bonus nice. (I don't eat meat, so you'll have to talk to somebody else about the off-with-their-heads bit.) But they are creatures, with creature hearts and minds. They can't be machinized, and I think that's for the best.

Leela (in the black down) and Erykah. Hands mine.

Animal husbandry is a progressive addiction, so I ended up with some ducklings, bought from a feed store in Petaluma. At maturity they're to join the lone duck at Indigoat Farm. But there was an uncute twist in which one of them died, age five days. It might not have been my fault. Then again, it might have been, which is another thing one has to think about. You gotta be on top of your game when it comes to those downy tufts of precious new life.

Shipped via Israeli post! No, not really.

Leela and Erykah have certain duck-specific charms. You can tell they like muck, and seek it (by gathering at the base of my wine barrel water garden) and seek to create it (by making a sludgy mess of their brooder box). When they splash into the Pie Pan Pond™, it is an absolute refutation of any argument that animals can't feel joy.

Meanwhile, Paulie has been in the shade by the passion vine, writing his memoirs. Six weeks in he has only the title, Big Cat Diary. He somehow duped Carmela into doing all the research pro bono, so she's on the phone making polite entreaties to Hopalong and Thornhill Pet Hospital, gathering data on his kittenhood. When he sees the ducklings coming, he runs. And the backyard beat goes on.

Rebuffing Roosters in Austenese

2010-05-31T13:17:00.000-07:00

It may be mating season, but the hens are instead ensconced in their book club. (Currently, Mansfield Park.) Following are their retorts to unworthy rooster suitors.

Ximena: A living of ten thousand a year and the finest carriages to your estate could not overcome a manner so uncivil. Besides which these attentions cannot have merit, your having so recently made my acquaintace as to be utterly ill-equipped to discern my character.

Betsy: Without wishing to insult you, I am nonetheless obliged to bring forth the unsuitability of the connexion, as I should never entertain the entreaties of a man of inferior birth.

Marianne: While in grateful receipt of the knowledge that your examination of my hindquarterly regions has yielded so favourable a result, I speak not from modest delicacy but rather with stern purpose in saying these attentions shall in no manner further the cause to which I can only but attribute your initial addresses toward myself.

Born-Again Baduizt Part Two: Return of the Donk

2010-05-18T15:07:00.000-07:00

IT WOULD have been nice if Erykah Badu made just the album I wanted. It would have had all the philosophical depth of New AmErykah Part One and all the yarn-spinning and sensuality of Mama's Gun and even better grooves than Worldwide Underground and would have taught me everything I need to know.

But it doesn't work that way. Badu made the album she needed to make, and it's on me to love it or leave it. Being a proper fan is probably good training for all kinds of other relationships.

I know I've no right to write music reviews. I'm not qualified. I don't understand music, even though I consume it in gobs. So people say New AmErykah Part Two is more acoustically au naturel whereas Part One was more pre-fabby, and I believe them, because* it sounds that way, now that they mention it. But I'd never have thought that up. I share my day job with a pro violist and find her world of wooden objects foreign and fascinating. I'm flattered to use the same mouse as such magic hands. Writing is not cool like that.
*This phraseology is meant to be Colbertish.

What I can tell you, experientially, is that Part Two is emotional journey while Part One was bombastic blaxpoitation soundtrack. But it makes leisurely tracks across sophisticated emotional terrain, far from the rawness of my perennial favorite Badu song, "I Want You." For those in need of review, the archetypically Baduizt prescriptions therein contained for the affliction of being sprung on some dude:

1. pray til early May
2. fast for thirty days
3. get a good book and get all in it
4. try a little yoga for a minute
5. turn the sauna up to hotter
and, 6. drink a whole jar of holy water (an entire jar!)

Badu appears to be done drinking holy water. On Part Two, she sounds cozy and requited. Which must be nice. This album doesn't have a natural single, a "Honey" or a "Danger." So "Window Seat" is the one getting tossed out for broad consumption, which is kinda random. It's not the awesomest song ever, but I object to criticism that it's a throwback to the Baduizm days. Nothing on that ankhdafied proto-Badu album was as cool as:

So, out my mind I'm tusslin
Back and forth tween here and hustlin
I don't wanna time travel no more
I want to be here
I'm thinkin
On this porch I'm rockin
Back and forth like Lightnin' Hopkins
If anybody speak to Scotty tell him beam me up

When New AmErykah Part Three comes out (oh yeah: there's a Part Three; you know it), I might as well just turn immediately to whatever track exceeds the ten-minute mark, because those weird, ambivalent, endless jams always become my favorites.

On Part Two, the weird, ambivalent, endless jam niche is filled by "Out My Mind, Just In Time." Throughout the whole ten minutes she never decides whether she is crazy or not, which--I don't know about you, but that's how I go through each day. It does that signature Badu trick of seeming like one track ends and another begins--the mood, the music, the gist of the lyrics may all change; silence may even occur--but no! Still the same song. And when you really listen to one of these smushies it's not just a cute ploy; the parts are rightfully of the same song. It's like with semi-colons; surely these are two necessarily-tethered independent clauses, not separate sentences in need of punctuational chastening.

Another good smush, should you need one, comes on Part One's "Master Teacher." That song also abets my theory that there is a Badu song suited for any mindstate. "Master Teacher" is for insomnia: I have longed to stay awake/Beautiful world I'm tryna find.

The best part of "Out My Mind" comes at one of its about-face seams. She shifts from delicately-sprouting optimism to:

MaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAn
Fuck this shit
Fuck this shit

That bit totally played in my head when I had to sit full days at the reception desk. (The pro violist skipped town for a spell.)

On the opposite end of two spectra--length, seriousness--comes the album's comic miniature track, "You Loving Me," which, in typical Erykah expectation-thwartation fashion, is not a lovey song at all. In its entirety, it goes:

[Badu sounds]
You lovin me, and I'm drivin your Benz
You lovin me, and I'm spendin your ends
You lovin me, and I'm drinkin your gin
You lovin me, and I'm fuckin your friends
[repeat]
You lovin me
[mutters That's terrible isn't it, and chuckles]

Erykah would never do those mean things! Why did she think that up? It's so needless and silly and catchy.

And yes, there's a collab with Lil Wayne because Badu does hear my prayers. It's a romp. He kinda sounds like he's freestyling. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I know he doesn't write shit cause he ain got time.

DON'T WORRY. I am going to talk about the nekkid video. Of course I'm gonna talk about the nekkid video. Badu has generously offered for us all to make of it what we will. So to me it's about unlayering. Which, in turn, is about performance.

Speakinawhich, I saw her perform at Oakland's renewed Fox Theater back in February. Seeing Badu live was not the easy adulative experience I'd anticipated. Goapele, who opened for her, is slick and unconscionably beautiful, and while she is a fairy godmother in her own right,* she seemed like a feeble pop star compared to Badu. Goapele gave us what we wanted. Erykah was making some obscure demand and promising to make it worth our while, like the mean teacher who actually has high hopes for you.
*I hate this phrase. Its use pertaining to the wife of an impressive man should be banned.

She started out inaccessibly weird and excessively clothed and inversed both ways as the night wore on, so when I watched the nekkid video, the theme was already familiar. The show's chailight came when she was down to just glitter pants and purple t-shirt. She led a sing-along to "Ain't No Fun," that classic West Coast posse cut which posits that if the homies cannot partake of the lady you are enjoying that enjoyment is curtailed, and I've never felt so elated singing Cause you gave me all your puss-ay/And you even licked my balls.

Who knew misogyny could be so efficiently undercut by mockery? But then co-optation of the oppressor is a fine tradition. It's why gay people took 'queer' and black people took the 'n' word. (Also why I took 'Cleb,' but long story.) Winking co-optation succeeds where rants fail. During the part that goes, And if you can't fuck that day baby/Just lay back, and open ya mouth, Badu tipped her head back and opened her mouth and aimed her mic there. It was hilario.

Onstage and in the "Window Seat" video, Badu's protective opener armor is peacoat, hoodie up, lots of articles. (It's like Game says: My mind fucked up, so I cover it with a Raider hood.) She sheds that protection in layers, with determination and care. Art demands self-exposure, but overexposure might kill you. The video evokes the work and risk of trodding one's individual path. She walks with unmistakable purpose. When I listen to "Window Seat" while walking home along Lake Merritt, I may or may not walk thusly myself. And may or may not loose my hair from its tyrannical clip in dramatic fashion at some pivotal moment.

Badu specializes in what they call 'brave vulnerability,' a thankless specialty. If it weren't bad enough to have your soul all naked, you also get demeaned as a pussified emotionalist. This strikes me as the opposite of, say, intellectualism, war and sports--pursuits that garner such ready respect.

NOT THAT that's why she did the Dallas stripdown. She did it because she heard that her #1 stan said this:

My only problem with [the song "Me"] is the part when she says "my ass and legs have gotten thick." If you have seen any recent pictures of stick figure Badu, you'll understand why this is offensive to those of us in the thick community.

Erykah: I am so sorry. Point taken. Your boomboom might mine own exceed in size. The thick community welcomes you.
xoxo,
Cleb

Less Money, Fewer Problems

2010-04-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

IT WAS ALL a dream. I used to read Mother Earth magazine. Now Paulie Walnuts and Miss Cleb are milkin cream. He hates when the little goat sleeps over, though. He can't stand immature forms of any species; he calls them 'larval rats' or LRs for short.

When the Bird Lady and her Tall Jew came for dinner, they noticed he had put on some weight. After they left I found him in the closet, weeping softly, and I was like, Come on. I thought we were done with that closet shit a long time ago. He won't come out. He's unfit to be seen, &tc. I yank him out by a hind leg and squeeze him into his rubber punishment suit in the hopes we can celebrate his paunch. Instead he takes one look in the mirror and puts a paw gun to his temple.

We talk. He says he really wants to pursue a healthy lifestyle and I try to encourage him. He spends the next forty-eight hours on nothing but legumes and cucumber water proving he means it. Then he crashes, gorges, collapses in a pile of self-loathing.

I prescribe us a night at Easy. We tuck our jeans into our heel boots and he brushes his teeth with a bottle of Jack and we go. He can't but be happy when it's midnight and his fur is drenched in sweat and "Five On It" is playing. I know he won't actually dial any of the numbers he gets. He just craves some talismanic reassurance of his fuckability. For such a handsome cat, he can be most insecure.

The next day he's like, Fuck the club. He'd rather count a million bucks. I explain to him yet again why we couldn't score that inheritance. He says integrity is fine, but a Gucci collar is infinitely better. Also he's through with dieting. Has decided to be a Jabba the Hutt-style rap Dionysus. I ask him how that worked out for Biggie and Pun. He says he's still not a player but I'm still a hater.

I'm sterilizing milk jars and he asks how's Mr. Snuffleupagus. (He means the TS.) I tell him to fuck off because my imaginary friends could kick his virtual friends asses. He swishes off to IM his remote homie Seymour, and soon is cracking up over what they've dubbed 'humanure': shit that only humans think is funny. (Seymour's humom taught him portmanteaus and this is the thanks she gets.)

He's got this diva persona, but he's actually sensitive. He knows when my Pain is bad. He thinks it was imprudent of me to strike out on my own when I can't, like, carry shit. But he doesn't say it out loud. If he said it out loud I could point out his rhetorical error, the implication I should have stayed with Crim so the latter could carry shit. I assure him that the bonus-bling hooptie is on the way and, as soon as it starts and I remember how to drive stick, I'm up for ease of groceries and he's up for a puke-erific ride culminating in a rabies shot. He can't wait.

And actually, he does understand. He's like, Freedom isn't free. We get to reminiscing on his Log Cabin Republican days.

In literal terms, we are making cheese. (Chevre cleanse, twenty days, key to health.) Also practicing our thug love duets. He sucks at memorizing lyrics, so he always gets to be Ashanti. If we're feeling weak we do pushups to "Drop the World." Naturally he gets to be Wayne and I have to be Em. After that he's fired up and wants to stay out all night 'hunting,' which in his case should rightfully be called 'hunching in a vigilant pose by the coop.' It's seemingly meek Carmela who actually earns her barn cat keep.

He says he's finally figured out why I like rap so much. Because it's pretty words and it's about struggle. He says even when it's about money-cars-clothes-hoes it's really about struggle. I tell him that's pretty insightful. For a cat. He gives me the middle claw.

He likes seeing me at my writing desk, but he can't quite be supportive. He feels obliged to step on the keyboard and point out that writing is not going to provide the bottle-popping lifestyle he's looking for. I tell him I know that but I have to do it anyway. He understands. Write it or die trying. I ask if he'd care for some goat's milk squirted straight from the udder.

Had Gadya

2010-03-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

An Only Kid was born in my neighborhood this week. Mazel tov to the proprietors of Indigoat Farm. Soon: goat-milking!

The full birth video is here. Warning: graphic footage.

Planting

2010-03-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

PLANTING IS an act of faith from which I still, in this my ninth gardening season, am incapable of expecting rewards. I look out on the helpless chardlings and meager carrot sprouts and see not overflowing harvest baskets but a multitude of dire ends inspired by the Yom Kippur liturgy: Who by slugs, who by chicken attack, who by leafminers, who by flooding; who shall grow limply without apparent cause, who shall perish when I fail to water.

Nature scatters a thousand seeds that one might reach mature planthood, and gardeners are usually wise to copy Mother. It is in willful defiance of this time-tested evolutionary strategy that we break out the Accelerated Propagation System (APS) seed-starting kits with the special wicking properties and coddle seedlings like infants. But then Nature must chuckle and sigh over many of our human follies.

Among the ambitious seeds currently germinating in my APS kits are tomatoes 'San Marzano' and 'Costoluto Genovese,' and eggplant 'Rosa Bianca.' Because I trust the Italians on flavor. For beauty, I turn to the French. I get obsessed with particular French plant variety names, like 'Comtesse de Bouchard,' a pink clematis I've yet to grow, and 'Merveille des Quatre Saisons,' a red-tinged crisphead lettuce I've grown to marvelous effect, though not in all four seasons.

This spring I've welcomed another longtime French fantasy, 'Cécile Brunner.' I'm a tad embarrassed to admit that Cécile is a rose.

YOU SEE, my favorite gardens look natural, hiding the blood, sweat, tears and APS systems (preferably in a darling greenhouse). And I tend to reserve my toil for edible plants, on whom it is more readily justified. I've sneered at rose gardeners with their dainty shears and ridiculous wide-brimmed hats and elbow-length gloves undefiled by dirt. They pour on the water and chemicals in exchange for some garish splotches of yellow and hot pink that are at once snobbish and uncouth, like the ladies off one of those Real Housewives of ________ shows.

Cool gardener that I am, I just scatter a few annual seeds in fall and when I head out for my spring labor at the edibles, there to surprise me is the unassuming beauty of larkspurs, Nigella, cornflowers, Gilia tricolor, and, of course, plenty of California poppies to set off all those blues.

This is myth, however. In reality, not even the poppies can be counted upon, and while Gilia is reputed to readily reseed--it's a California native wildflower, after all--spring invariably finds me searching the ground in vain, and then scouring every nursery for those finely-cut leaves that will bear the pale blue and surprisingly complex flowers which are my favorite.

Still, it was quite a leap from $2.99 for Gilia (better get two, sake of symmetry, so $5.98) to $30 for Cécile. She'll demand investments of others kinds as well. Unlike my hippie annuals, she cares about soil type and moisture, will faint at the sight of aphids, expects timely pruning, and hopes for 5-10-10. (Keep hoping, honey.)

My investment in Cécile marks the end of a long awakening process. Roses came to my attention from a gardening perspective when I read Second Nature some years ago. Imaginary Uncle Michael has quite the hard-on for his fifteenth-century vintage 'Maiden's Blush':

Her petals are more loosely arrayed than Madame Hardy's; less done up, almost unbuttoned. Her petals are larger, too, and they flush with the palest pink toward the center, which itself is elusive, concealed in the multiplication of her labial folds.

(Yeah. He used to be so cool. Now it's all gastropolitical sermons all the time. I think to distract him we should change the French name for 'Maiden's Blush' from 'Cuisse de Nymphe' to 'Reveille Mouillé de Boomer Chauve.')

Such written rose reveries are common, and I rolled my eyes, quite sure it couldn't happen to me. I was just not that into roses. My easy stereotypes labeled them arrogant and cantankerous. Such cliched beauty--a dozen, red, in a vase. And even if you got past that, to the old-fashioned fragrant climbers, in classy cream whites and pale pinks...well...their attractiveness was so obvious as to be obnoxious.

ANY MAJOR plant acquisition is preceded by an onanistic research phase. That involves some Google image searches, sure, but--garden nerd that I am--I really get off on the fine print. I was keen to learn, for example, that although Cécile is technically a hybrid tea, she is a venerable sort, not the trashy newfangled kind. (Growing the latter invites the scorn of any garden sophisticate.) And while Céciles do grow in bush form, the plant I purchased is the descendant of a 'climbing sport'--a freak of nature who climbed instead of standing still, from whom climbing progeny were then bred.

By the by, the garden pr0n images that please me most are not flowery; they feature army rows of vegetables, diverse but segregated. Whispy carrot row, rotund cabbage row, beets distinguished by their red leaf midribs, slender onion tops in a hectic mass. A spray of sweet peas climbing behind is the sole permissible ornamental flourish.

Anyway. Pretending amnesia for all my nerdlicious study, I then show up at Berkeley Hort and fake an impulse buy. Makes me feel spontaneous.

I aspire to be more like garden guru Pat Lanza, who finds grapevines on sale one spring, buys three when she hasn't space enough for one, plants them nine inches apart (!), and in so doing remarks, "There's something to be said for my kind of blind faith. I rush in and plant while others stew over the what-ifs." From Lanza I also learned about Dreaming & Planning, which is what gardeners do in winter. (I try to instill this concept in my garden class kids, because in their corner of the world some D & P is warranted.)

Of the two, Planning seems vastly more acceptable. Dreaming overmuch is just gross. Whenever I start in picturing how lovely the fence would look draped in rose blooms, how lovely the warm spring air scented with same, I smack myself and consult the Jew Manual, which decrees that such wistfulness be swiftly undercut by gloomy ruminations and self-deprecatory quips.

I PLANTED the rose in what was a sizable wooden container and now passes as a mini cylindrical raised bed. Before its bottom rotted, it contained, for several seemingly successful years, my dwarf Braeburn apple, a plant acquired amid a similar frenzy of earnest research mixed with blind hopes (albeit at a more innocent point in my gardening career), and a plant which, despite my sincere devotions and because of my myriad mistakes, as they say 'failed to thrive.' It did bloom beautifully, and gave me some apples before its decline. But I let the little tree languish, probably for too long.

Cécile will probably perish within weeks herself, says the inner Eeyore. Barring that, she may prove to be a pain in the ass. But then again: ease of cultivation is not a recommendation in and of itself. There are as many easy to grow plants as there are thirsty dudes in the city of Oakland. Doesn't mean you want them seeding in your yard. If you want an easy plant, I've got ten thousand oxalis bulbs for you, free of charge.

While planting I was viscerally reminded that roses also, famously, have thorns. This is quite hostile. One gets resentful, always having to wear those elbow-length gloves. But thorns served their evolutionary purpose, before we humans became the natural selector protectors, and they ought to persist. A rose de-thorned would be wrong. The thorns remind us about something, likely to do with beauty and pain. Seeking the one, encountering the other.

Thus far Cécile is contemptuous, or at best inscrutable. My Italian tomatoes are but spindly sprouts. The winter peas have been chewed down by some creature, probably one whom I feed expensive kibbles. The nurseries have no Gilia. I've done a lot of renovations, and it looks bare. But spring is come and the hens are laying and we can all photosynthesize again. One ought to be optimistic, even if such is not justified by the facts on the ground.

Quotation for Monday

2010-02-22T10:01:00.000-08:00

I still only travel by foot and by foot it's a slow climb
But I'm
Good at being uncomfortable
So I can't stop changing all the time

--Fiona Apple thinks little Cleb is an Extraordinary Machine

Melanie The Incorrigible

2010-02-04T09:00:00.000-08:00

MEET MY LATEST BESTIE, Melanie Fiona. She’s Guyanese-Canadian, because in the Obama era hybrid vigor is the new black.

Melanie says everyone recognizes the beat from her first single, “Give It To Me Right,” but can't place it, so I’m proud to proclaim that I called the sample—“Time Of The Season”!—right away.

“Give It To Me Right” could be mistaken for a standard radio skank track, and while I think it’s more than that, I also bear no grudge against skank tracks. “Ill Na Na” is way more *empowering* than any India.Arie kandy korn. Or try Cassie’s “Me & U,” which pulls off the ultimate coup of being slutty yet sweet. The trick is maintaining your charm and your halo; Kelis taught me that, and she only charged 99 cents.

I would say “GITMR” manages the same tightrope act, but Andrea Martin, who wrote the song for Mel, declares that it's not about sex. Yeah no of course not. It’s just about like wanting people to keep it real and stuff. (Don’t tell the guys, but such eyelash-batting innocence is part of the trick.)

This introduction may paint Melanie as a sexpot temptress, but that’s just her radio persona. The slightest scratch at the album’s surface reveals the hopeless romantic underneath. “You Stop My Heart” is pure malt shop swoon. It pairs well with my running favorite “Johnny,” a song that is girl groupy (= Cleb catnip) and makes heartbreak sound somehow fun.

SOUL SINGERS are practically the only ones who believe in love these days. We are meant to worship at the altar of the sensible, antiseptic Relationship; that full-cardio arduous, hideous, glorious thing called love is too sloppy and impractical for any adequately-analyzed modern citizen. We speak ruefully of 'partners,' of 'making it work,' and are so wise to the perils of infatuation as to damn near eschew its joys. As diligently as we lecture about the grinding labor a Relationship requires, the A-student could come to view cohabitational partnership as one more over-achiever's trophy, and love as mere irresponsible folly.

It can be jarring, then, to hear naive Melanie singing, I'll walk these streets all night until I bring my baby home. You can just picture her enlightened friends raising one eyebrow, like, Giiirlheainworthit. Because today’s faux-strong woman doesn’t deign lower herself to “Ain’t Misbehavin’” on the happy hand, nor “Black Coffee” on the sad. And then we have the audacity to whine from our impenetrable towers about where have all the Lloyd Doblers gone.

We are comfortable instead in the To the left to the left/Everything you own in a box to the left mold, in which despair curdles straight to vengeful stiletto anger—a move we presumably cribbed from old-fashioned faux-strong men, and the insipid Sex and the City. (And who but ventriloquist dummy Beyonce would sing a song called “Irreplaceable” that means “Replaceable.” Still, I do enjoy singing it with my garden class girls. It’s pretty cute when fifth-graders say, Baby you dropped them keys/Hurry up before your taxi leaves.)

Melanie is also under the woeful misapprehension that hotness and tender-heartedness need not be mutually exclusive. Sorry, Mel: if you're hot you must be an evil temptress. It’s just that simple.

EVEN WHEN THE impression is flawless, it’s boring to replicate the old. Sharon Jones may be good, but she just makes me think, Hey, I could be listening to Mary Wells right now. Melanie--like Amy, like Leela--knows how to engage the authenticity of the classic but make it new. Hence the album's title, The Bridge.

“Johnny” mixes scratching with an American Bandstand sound, and she's dialing on her cellphone begging Johnny to bring her back her heart. (Wow, how contemporary and high-tech!*) “Cry Baby” samples the Vandellas' “Jimmy Mack,” which makes me very happy. It also uses cool distorted vocals and so sounds rather like that old-timey Fergie song "Clumsy," but with the merciful excision of Fergie. And just to flaunt her hybrid vigor, Melanie throws in some reggaeish tracks, and breaks out her Debbie Harry swagger for "Bang Bang."

*That was my inner critic teasing me.

OF COURSE, poetic injustice, “Single Ladies” bested Melanie’s “It Kills Me” for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the Grammys. What kills me is that the former, despite its goddamn stupid lyrics, actually is the better song, although Melanie is by far the superior artist. (Or even merely deserves the word.) Factory-farmed crap is sometimes tasty, I suppose.

“It Kills Me” is now making the radio rounds, and while she delivers the song with heart, I think Melanie's nature is more joyful than mournful. For a badboy lament, I’d sooner recommend Keyshia’s classic “I Should’ve Cheated.” And when you really need dark depths, put Amy on. Melanie is more suited to making the best of things.

Beware the evil temptress.

Cute real Melanie. Equally a threat.

Quotation for Wednesday

2010-01-27T15:23:00.000-08:00

I got ice in my veins
Blood in my eyes
Hate in my heart
Love in my mind
I seen nights full of pain
Days of the same
You keep the sunshine
Save me the rain
I search but never find
Hurt but never cry
I work and forever try
But I’m cursed, so never mind
And it’s worse, but better times
Seem further and beyond
The top gets higher
The more that I climb

--my nominee for Poet Laureate, Lil Wayne

2010: Pursuit of Happiness

2010-01-05T12:19:00.000-08:00

Men Necessary, Alas

2009-12-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

I'VE BEEN THINKING about men a lot lately. This is not unusual. I don't mean that any untoward way. Just that I try to understand them, as I try in general to understand people who are different from me. You know--like it's a good mind exercise.

I quite like men. Sometimes they make more sense to me than women. Men like to verbally joust, roughhouse and trade quips, whereas many women seem so delicate and polite that I can't relate. I often imagine there is some soft sisterhood out there to which my application is yet outstanding.

And men usually seem to like me back. So all is swell, right? Alas, no. Because it's always fraught. Probably something to do with sex. Specifically, the conjoined twindom of desire and derision.

Ladies, you probably already figured out, consciously or un, that being an object of desire is a form of power. Conversely, to desire is powerless. So when some guy harasses you in the street, maybe what he's really shouting is that he hates you because he wants you. Come to think of it, how much of sexism is just men trying to reassert power over those who rob them of it? (My research thus far indicates that power is very important to men.)

I often get the vague impression that older men in particular want to think I'm at least a little stupid. And I wonder if that isn't because if I'm cute and younger and smart it's just going to piss them off. I'm thinking, for example, of a co-worker with whom I share undeniable mutual fondness (and respect, or so I thought) who, in venting about his job stress, once remarked that it must be nice to, as receptionist, "just sit there and look pretty."

IT'S EASY FOR heteros of both genders to team up against one another. Like Frenchy telling Sandy that men are amoebas on fleas on rats, or Rowlf singing to Kermit that you can neither live with nor without 'em. The generalized group wielding the power to hurt you makes a ready target. (Man, I guess that's one more way it's a challenge to be gay. Who do you scapegoat?)

I'll say it plain: I've had a lot of men treat me like shit. Enough to make me wonder if there isn't something about me that turns otherwise decent guys into hole-in-wall-punching, insult-yelling, heart-breaking assholes. Not a pleasant thing to wonder.

Surely there are many reasons for this, many of those to do with my own many faults (not least among those many, the fact I think it's my fault [thanks, Dad!]) and just as surely I am one of many, many women to wonder approximately the same thing. (Just for the hell of it, here's that word one more time: many.)

But to unabashedly side with my own sex for a moment...All too often when men treat us this way, it is, once again, a bid for power in a situation in which they find themselves lacking it. When, in addition to a body and a mind that attract them, you possess various skills (kitchen, bedroom, couch, &tc.) that would make them want to stick around...Well, that is power indeed. And it may piss them off. And make them want to cut you down to size by hook or crook--by objectification, by possessiveness, by cultivating dependence, by infidelity, or simply by rejecting you before you ever get the chance.

But ladies, if we're being honest with ourselves we will admit it goes both ways. That a man who attracts us also scares us. And our fear may become self-fulfilling.

Haters Never Prosper and Obama Totally Deserves the Nobel

2009-12-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

You see the hate
That they servin on a platter
So what we gon have
Dessert
Or disaster
--KW

I KNOW WHAT you're thinking. This post is worthlessly untimely; no one cares about a stale opinion. But the blogosphere (what an icky word) gets its parasitic bad rap from all the half-baked, loudly-shrieked opinions that are its burden to publish.

A mind as nimble as inhabits the skull of Frank Rich can dash out brilliant analysis on cue. Paulie's pundit crush, Sully, for another example, had these wise words on the subject of Obama's Nobel immediately. But we can't all be that quick smart.

Better, perhaps, for the rest of us, to think well and then say. Which is something op-ed writers get irritated at Obama for doing. (Maybe because they are deadline-stalked op-ed writers who lack the luxury.) But those radass speeches don't birth themselves overnight; insight requires time and meditation. We could probably stand, as a nation, to slow down and think a little.

The way Obama models this behavior itself qualifies him for a Nobel. I'm not even old enough to know when we became such a fidgety society, always thumbing our electronics, greedy for new inputs. We're unaccustomed and uncomfortable having to wait for anything. But Heinz teaches that the best things come to those who do.

I'll collectively insult us further (I love you all, individually, rest assured) and say we Americans tend to be lazy and only want the sure thing. Obama inspires us to instead reach for greatness. He defies, and makes us want to defy, the pull to spare ourselves the potential pain and humiliation of the whole risk-taking thing.

Haters say he hasn't *done anything*.

Yeah. Except make the whole world believe anything is possible. Slacka-ass-slacka. How much you wanna bet those same weenies saying, What were you thinking, Nobel Committee? were partying hard on election night.

HOW QUICKLY WE forget the unprecedented number of--in Wire terms--plates of shit this guy was handed. Our nation was more royally fucked than it has been in generations and we're peeved he hasn't fixed it in a year.

Sure, there is all-important Policy (see Gene for that), but there is also something intangible and arguably larger. It's called leadership. And he's got it. I have great confidence in Obama's ability to solve the world's problems, because he knows how to wield soft power. His biracial talent for straddling worlds makes him a peacemaker on a grander, subtler scale. I know Obama has made missteps, and he is a politician. But I fully believe he can achieve greatness if we just give the guy some time and a chance.

I would add to Gene's list of rookie year accomplishments the shift Obama has engendered in our national mood. Damned if black people aren't on average cheerier, even if they won't admit it. (And I can't think of an American population more deserving of cheer.) Everyone I know who worked seriously on the campaign was subsequently inspired to aim their lives more toward what Zora Neale Hurston called "far horizon." And when I say Obama makes everyone believe anything is possible--well, I might be projecting. If you doubt this mood shift theory, just try the following exercise: Close your eyes and say to yourself, Bush isn't president. Obama is president. Did your shoulders ease down a bit from that tense position around your neck? I thought they might.

FAIRY TALES ARE a gas to watch, but substantially less fun to live. Political fairy tales are especially hard on the actors, seeing as how they must play out on a huge public stage. Just ask Howard Dean and George McGovern how they feel re: this. Presidential politics is ripe for life-ruining humiliation.

In Protestant work ethic-y America, there is perhaps no greater humiliation than to be exposed as a hopeless dreamer--which is of course ironic considering the whole "American Dream" thing. We love dreams, so we hate them; desire and derision as conjoined twins. (On this see also black people's initial mass rejection of Obama. Note that he is black now.)

But he did it. He had the Nobel balls. He put his own life on the line for us. You know, like Jesus.

SOMETIMES YOU have to keep your own time. Which I think our president understands. He is wise enough to know that when you brood quietly and wait to speak, people listen when you finally do. And that when you stand your own firm ground, rather than swaying reedlike with the winds of polls and pundits, people believe in your leadership.* As well they should.

The truth behind the heaping criticism may be that we are so scarred--not only from the raw gash wounds of the Bush years, but from the thousand cuts inflicted by politicians who perennially abused our trust--that we would be suspicious of next man, good as he looks, no matter what.

*Triple mixed-metaphor word score.

Who I'm Worshiping Now--THE FICKLE REVERSALS EDITION

2009-12-01T10:06:00.000-08:00

I've oft been accused of fickle hero worship. Of course that's hogwash. Anyway, here's

WHO I'M NOT WORSHIPING ANYMORE

Ah, Boomers. Break my heart every time. I only wanted to admire you; is that so much to ask?

...and, to show I'm an optimist, with heart, here's

WHO I'M ONCE AGAIN WORSHIPING

Her freshly book-published essay on Their Eyes Were Watching God makes me say, "She is my sister, and I love her."

2009-11-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

Oh man. Beautiful song.

Most Popular Post of All Time

2009-11-13T09:45:00.000-08:00

OVER A YEAR AGO, I tossed off a little rant about Keith Olbermann, to whose narcissism I am severely allergic. I never expected it to be my most popular post of all time. But so it is.

Every few months some crazed Olbermann-loather (like myself) pops out of the woodwork, googles "Keith Olbermann sucks," finds my post (it is currently the eighth-ranking Google result for that search) and, if I am especially lucky, leaves a rant in the comments section that far outshines my original.

Many of these commenters are rightist lunatics who would hate me in real life. But our Olberloathing brings us together--in this ephemeral place, in this one magical moment. Thank you, Keith.

Quotation for Election Tuesday

2009-11-03T13:41:00.000-08:00

Tell him I'm doin fine
Obama for mankind
We ready for damn change
So y'all let the man shine

--Young Jeezy, "My President"

Can't believe the election was a year ago. In his mutterings at the end of this song, Jeezy also says to Barack, "You motivate us; you motivate thugs," which I find very sweet.

In Which I Go Back to Black, Yet Again

2009-10-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

WHAT KIND OF fuckery is this? Why do I keep showing up as Amy Winehouse each October, when she is long since discredited as a human being?

I don't care what anybody thinks. Amy is my favorite singer. I've said why before, so I shan't repeat myself. But I've been thinking about Amy a lot lately.

When she says, infamously: "No, no, no"...

I'll go out on a rather shaky limb and say she has a point. If you are a complicated, sensitive, artistic sort like Amy, Twelve Step paint-by-numbers may not do the trick.

Which is not to say she doesn't need rehab; addiction is serious and requires serious care. In fact I'm sure she has gained from rehab, having now made various trips there. Just that her objections are legitimate. To be ham-fistedly analyzed or plied with Help is fine, but to be loved and understood is infinitely better. I've always called Blake an asshole, but maybe she thought she was--or actually was--getting those things from him. And if I'm blaming all the bloody mutual destruction on him, I might be missing the point. And fans are nice, but they are not friends.

(Ame, if you're looking for a man--and I don't know whether you are, as explained below--I still think you should give Weezy a call. You guys would understand each other.)

WHEN AMY is feeling blue (black), she'd rather hang out "with Ray [Charles]" or "Mr. [Donny] Hathaway." Which I totally get, because when I'm miserable, I'd rather hang out with Amy. (Or Lauryn, who is just as brilliant and screwed-up. Or Erykah, who has a self-deprecating sense of humor, and keeps it together, and therefore can be artistically prolific and also offer the most trustworthy advice.) Maybe in future I should explore the notion of real-life 'girlfriends.'

Eh. Maybe not.

GOOD ART works hard to tell the particular truth. Therapy is lazier, generic. When those record execs were telling her to go to rehab, that's a variation on You should really get some help. Which is an unkind thing people say when they are too pre-occupied, lazy, selfish, confused or scared to try to give you any portion of said help themselves.

I'm not gonna spend ten weeks
Have everyone think I'm on the mend

She doesn't want to let them off the hook. Doesn't want to be hauled off to get-better-quick-so-we-can-make-money-off-you camp. She would rather feel her pain in her own honest way. Amy goes black well. She makes the ugly beautiful, which a smart person taught me is the artist's cardinal skill.

AMY SAYS WE should just listen to her music, because that is the best of her. And from now on, I'm respecting her request. No more Google News searches. Just Back to Black. Her art is the only part of her we ever had any right to consume. We should listen to her sing and not gawk in sordid curiosity at her trainwreckiness. Because rubbernecking hurts if you are a sensitive soul like Amy; all that toughness and sarcasm is just an exoskeleton protecting her tender insides. Tattoos connote invincibility, but don't be fooled.

I bet she doesn't enjoy putting her biz in the streets, either. She probably covets privacy as much as the next person. I'd venture to guess that her personal life became public because her music and her drug-addled lunacy were the only adequate outlets she had for what was tearing her up inside.

Poor Amy. She just needs a friend. The hutch offer stands, girl. []

~BONUS~
FAVE QUOTES FROM MS. WINEHOUSE:

He left no time to regret
Kept his dick wet
With his same old safe bet

--"Back to Black"

I played myself again
Should just be my own best friend
Not fuck myself
In the head with
Stupid men

--"Tears Dry on Their Own"

If I was my heart
I'd rather be restless
Second I stop the sleep catches up and I'm
Breathless
Cause this ache in my chest
As my day is done now
The dark covers me
And I cannot run now

--"Wake Up Alone"

What kind of fuckery is this
You made me miss the Slick Rick gig
And thought I didn't love you when I did
Can't believe you played me out like that

--"Me and Mr. Jones"*

* That one's about Nas. I've had imaginary rapper lovers too, Amy.

Cocooning

2009-10-24T10:44:00.000-07:00

COCOONING looks like a bad idea. General wisdom holds that if you're going through a lot you should be surrounded by advice-mongering people. But pupae are fragile and easily crushed underfoot by accident. It can be hard to hear yourself when other people are talking; hard to see yourself when other people are looking.

There's not much to do in the cocoon, so I mostly just listen to New Amerykah Part I and file my nails and write weird stuff like this here. The cocoon is a bit stuffy, but the acoustics are superb.

Chrysalization is not often fun. But hopefully I earn some wings.

Walnuts Copes By Becoming Even Bigger Asshole

2009-10-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

WHEN CRIM MOVED OUT, little Paulie Walnuts--light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul--coped by becoming an even bigger asshole. So if you're wondering why I have bruisey scratch/bite marks all over my calves: that's why.

The majority of his evening hours are spent at tomcatsluts.com, and he doesn't feel guilty about it anymore. That's if he gets stuck inside; he prefers to stay out all night prowling for the real thing.

And speaking of freedom from guilt, he's been hanging out by the coop taunting the hens about how much chicken The Other One eats these days.

But I told the girls not to peck back, because he's going through a lot. He misses his pops. He misses flirting with the rappers who used to rehearse for shows in the living room and smoke blunts with him on the porch. Matter of fact he misses having any of the human species around to flirt with, since appearances suggest to him that I am a loser with no friends.

He moans that Daddy always had on such good music, whereas my listening habits are so low-brow and repetitive. He says if he hears that "Doorbell" song one more time he'll blow his brains out. And I still fall for:

W: Who sings that?
C: The Chiffons! they're like a sixties girl gr--
W: Let's keep it that way.

He came back from his sleepover at the Musiquarium with so much attitude talking about he'd totally go live there if he thought Carmela and I could survive without a man in the house. He said he spent hours fishing and the tank looks so awesome and sucks to be me that I don't get to see it.

In the past he's been a good listener--what are gaycat besties for, after all--but by now I'm trying his patience. He's quite sure the Temescallion Stallion is imaginary. Seeing is believing, Mummy (dripping with condescension).

But he's a good friend in that he'll say to me straightup, Why are you so weird? All that pacing at four am is disturbing his beauty sleep. (But as long as I'm up, His Highness could do with some nourishment and access to the great outdoors.) And he ribs me about the inverse proportionality of journal pages covered : coolness. (For the record, in three months ≈ 600 pages. I am not cool.)

He bites my calves and like a sucker I spoil him with a new Scratch Lounge and high-grade Canadian catnip, because I can be nurturing to a fault when it comes to those I love. Even when he is being an A1 dick, I understand the delicate feelings behind the dickish behavior. And I want to cheer him up. I know he really just misses getting shiatsu from four human hands.

So, he may be a dictator. But he's my dictator.

Quotation for Monday

2009-10-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

Oh mister wait until you see
What I'm gonna be
I got a plan
A demand
And it just began
And if you're right you'll agree
Here's coming
A better version of me

--Fiona Apple

Quotation for Thursday

2009-10-08T11:24:00.000-07:00

To my girls on prescription pills
I know how you feel
To my boys in Iraqi fields
This ain't no time to kill
To my girls in the therapy
See I'ma tell ya this for free

--Badu

Keyshia vs. Goapele: A Hens' Debate

2009-10-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged that hens love their soul music. And Bay hens take special pride in their rich Bay soul legacy. Visit any local coop at the right time of day and you might hear a flock cackling as they re-enact the backstage opener skit off Funky Divas. (Note to self: future flock members to be named Dawn, Maxine, Terry, Cindy.)

Nothing soothes nervous pullets on their first night out in the coop quite like Bay soul lullabies. There may be peeping without ceasing, but with those first softly-sung strains of "I used to think that I wasn't fine enough" or "As summer was ending, you were walking in" all will be well.

FOR WEEKS NOW Ximena has been losing neck feathers. And I scoured my poultry library for answers, to no avail. Then it hit me. Betsy's been plucking her. They are fighting again about who is queen of Bay soul.

In Betsy's corner, we find Keyshia Cole. Betsy says Keyshia may not have a lot of fancy lyrics or expensive beats, but she's hella fine, and girl knows how to sang. Pure Oakland-grown ghetto fab flavor. Which describes Betsy as well; you don't know the meaning of funky chicken until you hear her belt out "Love." Granted: no one belts it out like Keyshia. Bets and I watched this incredible interview Keyshia did with Sway for an MTV special on Oakland, and they were out in her old neighborhood in like the 60s or 70s in East Oakland and she hit the chorus right there on the street.

IT SHOULD surprise no one that Ximena is all about Goapele. They both have that odd beauty, and foreign pedigrees. One Araucana, one Israeli-South African. But both came up Oaklandish.

Of course Ximena in her Goapele sophistication finds "First Love" played out. Her top jams are "Closer," "Love Me Right" and "Crushed Out." She loves the intelligent sensitivity and tender voice that are Goapele's signatures, but clucks disdainfully about the poor production value on both her old albums. We haven't dug into the new album yet, but aren't crazy about the first single; only Michelle Bachmann should be Auto-Tuned.

When I saw Goapele live a couple months back, she announced she'd do one song that wasn't her own--and broke out "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I sang along and sounded terrible and tingled to my toes. I rushed home to tell Ximena, and she laid a fucking egg right there on the roost we were both so excited. (Chickens never get to go to shows.) Now I just need to hear Aretha do "Heavy Cross" and I'll be straight. Rock & soul => emergent property.

I also once saw Goapele strolling at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market, because it is so goddamn great. (Sorry, Temescallions.)

FORTUNATELY, I HAVE an odd-numbered flock, so it was on Marianne to break the tie. She's at the bottom of the pecking order (read: was gonna get her ass beat either way). Ever the squawking contrarian, she says, no, actually the reigning soul queen doesn't come from the Bay at all. (This ruffles some feathers.) She contends the throne-holder is an LA chick, one whose version of "Don't Speak" Gwen should be embarrassed to know is out there. The other two hens are stumped, but I smile, because I know she means Leela James:

Sip me up like lemonade
From a mason jar
Make it good like [some chicken]*
Fried in a pan of lard
I'm gettin spoiled like old beans
And I can't lose my head
Cause when you're not around
I'm crumblin like cornbread

*This part is mumbled.

And once you hear Leela slay "A Change Is Gonna Come," you'll surely agree.

Quotation for Friday

2009-10-02T14:01:00.000-07:00

Respect the game
That should be it
What you eat don't make me shit
Where's the love

--Jiggy Jigga (lookin gully in the joint)

On Hotness

2009-09-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

LADIES, WHEN YOU see a woman in Muslim head-coverings, do you feel guilty? I so do. They're the ones being freaks acting like the body is shameful, but somehow I always feel the shame.

I was out running the other day (okay real talk I was walking by then; I can't run more than three minutes), wearing a wifebeater and Old Navy knockoffs of Lululemon capris and soaked in unearned perspiration. And this Orthodox Jewgirl is walking toward me. (Her Orthodox Jewgirl status was made conveniently evident by both her attire and the fact that she was heading right for a synagogue.) As she got closer, I realized that not only was she averting her gaze from the impurity that was sweaty, meagerly-clothed Me, she was actually shielding her eyes with her hand! Lest the sin corrupt her holy soul.

It didn't help my case in the courtroom of my self-loathing mind that I was, at that moment, listening to Pitbull, he who says things like:

I party like a rockstar
Look like a movie star
Play like an all-star
Fuck like a porn star

So yeah. I felt whorish and it hurt my feelings.

IN RECENT YEARS I have tried to trod a path of embracing whatever personal hotness I may possess, having prior pursued a path of sweats and misery. And shouldn't it be thus? For surely the world is better when we're all doing our best selves. In looks, and all things.

The danger of course is that hotness suggests a dearth of other qualities. It somehow signals that one cannot be, for example, serious or tender-hearted. This is true for women, especially. I'd venture to say, too, that to look good in a certain way--non-dainty, and without Tina Fey glasses--is particularly damning. Genetic fate decreed the variety of attractiveness available to me to be (in Mad Men terms) less pretty Peggy, more jiggly Joan. With implications.

Hotness also connotes invincibility. Which could be a useful trick. Or troublesome.

Jiggly Joan. Things aren't working out for her last I checked.

I HOPE I sound smart, and that if I sound smart you won't suppose I look bad. And I further hope that if you believe I look good, after a jiggly fashion, you won't disbelieve me a decent person.

Quotation for Tuesday

2009-09-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

Lot a times it seem like you ain't gon make it where you want to be in life. But yo, if you got a plan: believe me, you gon get there, you gon get everything you ever wanted, baby. Thas my word.

--Nas (the millionaire, the mansion)

IM, You Little Miracle

2009-09-11T15:56:00.000-07:00

I never knew why I didn't have access to interoffice IM (everybody else did) and now I don't know why I do. My work chum Miss SHao speculates that the IT guy likes to play God. Steve giveth and Steve taketh away.

Miss SHao and I were talking, like literal in-person style. But when I told her I (finally) had Messenger, she scurried back to her desk so we could IM. And it was SO MUCH MORE FUN

When I need to talk to the homies Back East, I don't want to *call* them. I prefer to schedule a heart-to-heart G-chat date. And sometimes, if I log on Gmail at just the right time, there is a little green dot next to the name of my sister in Tel Aviv. And when words from her pop up on the screen--about everyday things, her husband walking in the door--I flip out.

Why is that so amazing to me? The technology has existed for ages that would allow me to hear her voice.

Does the charm lie in the comfortably casual nature of the instant message? The fact that it employs written words, which are my favorite kind? The balance it strikes between intimacy and remove? Because talking on the phone can make me nervous. (Why do you work as a receptionist then? Huh. Good question.)

Maybe it's just an extra-fun medium, combining speech-like rapidity and use of the written word; it rewards cleverness (and I like to think that I'm clev-aaah, like Badu.) And you can abruptly say a link, like, http://www.mypetchicken.com/catalog/Day-Old-Baby-Chicks/Wyandotte-Standard-Silver-Laced-p235.aspx. Which you can't do in talking life.

Oh Yeah: Obama

2009-09-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

Why am I so weird that I stopped thinking about Mr. Forty-Fourth President Barack Obama for like eight months? Why do I do that?

The election was so overwhelming that truly I had to return to my own life once it was over. And then too the country was such a mess. I wanted to let him clean up whilst I took the liberty of looking away from the icky scrubdown process. Now things are tidied enough that I can stand to pay attention.

I expected that after the inauguration I would wake up each morning with a song in my heart and continuous CSPAN on my TV. But I never did watch CSPAN, not until recently, when I flipped to what turned out to be that town hall about health care, the unfortunate one in Colorado, when he started hedging on the public option.

This ought to have been a particularly painful viewing experience for me, because when it comes to this shit, I am finally one of what Chris Matthews calls 'people with needs.' As in, I need health care. I work part time and don't get health insurance. (Plog ≠ work.) So, you know, I actually personally need a public option.

And yet: I can't stay mad at him. No, scratch that. I can't even so much as get mad at him for one second. I'm not one of those practical lefty people who get all *disappointed* when he lets the climate change bill get watered down. Because he is so much a personal hero, and I am such a dork. All I can do is listen in rapt admiration when he speaks, savoring that favorite debunking construction of his: the notion that somehow. When he breaks that out, you know it's time to gleefully tear down some criticism or other.

As:

"The notion that somehow just by having a public option you have the entire private marketplace destroyed is just not borne out by the facts."

Or the oldie but favoritie:

"The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous."

Lord knows there need to be people riding his ass about everything he's doing wrong. It's just not gonna be me. I'm about the unconditional presidential love.

Quotation for Tuesday

2009-09-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

I don't have a spine
I don't fantasize
I mastermind
Then go after mine

Today's quotation courtesy Lil Wayne.  Thanks, Weezy.

ON VACAY

2009-08-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

As per tradition, Clebilicious will be shutting down for the month of August. Je vous verra en Septembre!

Emmer (Part II)

2009-07-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Austen again, with predictable results. Here I was at the day job:

Miss Thompson called on her early that afternoon to indicate she would henceforth be out and the development caused Emma some not undue agitation. It was always mildly distressing for Miss Thompson to be indisposed, as the duties of that lady included corresponding with the many impertinent individuals on whose contributions of modest sums the financial solvency of the organisation relied, and in her absence Emma might be forced to handle such correspondence, simultaneously dull and delicate, herself. But Miss Thompson was reassuring, 'Her compatriot would handle majority of correspondence, &c.' and smiled sweetly as she took her leave.

A quiet hour followed and Emma indulged the pleasures of an easy afternoon, the sun streaming through the tall windows as she read a novel and attended the peripheral duties the place of employ required. After an interval, Mr. Leonard visited her station and she enquired after the plans for his coming nuptials. He responded that they were advancing according to schedule, and that both families were equally eager for such an advantageous connexion to be finalised.

'You have heard, of course, the regrettable business about Miss Fassluke?' Emma proceeded to ask.

'Ah! she is to remove to Michigan. An atrocious development indeed for we have so cherished her companionship here.'

'So we have.'

At that moment, as if summoned, Miss Fassluke herself entered. Her hair was fixed according to the latest fashion, presenting her youthful face in an especially pleasing manner, and she appeared in excellent spirits--surely, Emma remarked, not as affected by her own impending removal as were her friends. Miss Fassluke called herself flattered to find them put so out of sorts by her planned departure and Emma bore the teazing admirably.

'You will be attending, then, the ball in Miss Fassluke's honor?' she asked Mr. Leonard.

'I shan't be, regrettably. But you have my best wishes nonetheless, Miss Fassluke.'

'And am I to believe your cordial wishes sincere, Mr. Leonard, when you prove unwilling to upend prior engagements in order to attend my ball?' Laughter accompanied this remark.

'Ah but you remain ignorant, Miss Fassluke, of my excuse! It is excellent, and once you give it audience, I assure you my decision to absent myself will become quite easily understood. You see, on the very day of the ball, I turn two and thirty, and therefore have celebrations to attend at which my presence would be yet more sorely missed!'

The two ladies laughed in complete understanding and the party then disbanded, each member returning, with a degree of reluctance, to their respective tasks. Unfortunately, the previous quiet was not to be replicated and soon Emma found herself in a most grievous communication with one of the individuals contributing modest sums, who explained at length her previous ardent support for the organisation, being a person who cared a great deal for animals, and wolves especially, and who had, over the course of many years, contributed sums to a great number of organisations whose missions reflected her earnest values, &c. She further explained that she had received a recent communication explicitly requesting additional financial tidings and that, due to the misery of the current economic situation, both in the country as a whole and in her own home, she was unable to abide the request and that in fact she wished to receive no such communications whatsoever in future. Emma sighed. This, then, was the object, and could have been reached without the preceding speech.

The afternoon waned without further event, save for the welcome return of Miss Thompson at half past three, and it was soon time to board a carriage bound for home.

Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day" As Performed By My Chickens

2009-07-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

Just hoppin down off the roost, gotta thank God
I don't know but today seems kinda odd
Hit the feeder hard
Ate chard
And got let out into the full yard
Found grubs to grub on
But didn't pig out
Finally flew up in this flower bed I wanna dig out
Crop fulla greens and I'm peckin more
Thinkin will I live another twenty-fo
I gotta hide cause I got me a wormpop
And if I bite the head
I can make that wrigglin stop
Do a little preening in the sunlight
Checkin out my feathers, not a single red mite
And everything is alright
The Lady's comin out the house, and she gives treats on sight
Squawked to the coopmates and I'm askin em
Which box, are y'all layin eggies in?
Get me in the nest and I'm trouble
Last week fucked around and laid a triple double
Sonnin all these lazy layers like Hennessy
I can't believe
Today was a good day

Headed out front, walked straight into the kitties
They ran the other way, left me sittin pretty
Cause just yesterday them fools tried to scratch me
Saw a mean dog and it strolled right past me
No flexin, didn't even look in a henny's direction
and I just kept on peckin
Found a perfect dusting spot, and the dirt felt wet just right
Get my feathers lookin tight
Shake em up, shake em up, shake em up, shake em
Roll those parasites in a bath of dirt and watch me break em
And it's heaven heaven for hens and heaven for hens
Heaven with with my back in the cool soil
My dusting hole's dug low
Eye on the bugs, found me a poli roll
Plus no poultry I know got slaughtered in Oakland, CA
Today was a good day

CBT came out again late
With some oyster shell, replace calcium from the eggs I laid
Did our bit, my crop was full, she had the grit
Now I can really grind this shit
She reached under Betsy's big fat fanny
Pulled out the eggies, fixed em with toast and jammy
And my eggs taste sweet, so sweet
So sweet make the humans peep
Cased a bed border
Ain't no doubt I'm on top the pecking order
Snuck into that raised bed and I'm coastin
Took a sip of water-garden potion, hit the two-leg motion
I was glad everything had worked out
Jumped in CBT's lap and then chirped out
Today was like one of those fly dreams
Didn't even see a possum stalkin those high beams
No raccoon lookin for a murder
Eight in the evening got the Scratchburger
Even saw the lights of the Goodyear Blimp
And it read 'Three Hens is pimps'
Crop fulla scratch but no throwing up
Almost to the roost and my clucker still blowing up
Didn't hear anybody call straw 'hay'
I got to say it was a good day

© 2009 Three Hens
Polwick Farms Productions

The Truth About Facebook

2009-07-07T14:20:00.000-07:00

THE TRUTH is this title is a sham. But you wouldn't have clicked on 'Some Mild Observations About Facebook.' And you probably wouldn't be here at all if I hadn't posted this on Facebook. So that's my first observation:

1) It's not totally worthless. I admit I kind of wanted it to be. But then protests in Iran were organized with online social networks. Sonnafabitch. And (more importantly) without Facebook, no one would read Clebilicious. With it, two do. (Thanks, you two!) Also it reminds me about birthdays.

2) People have different personalities on Facebook than they do in real life. In real life I'm a ceaseless chatterbox. But on Facebook I am sly and morose. And I can think of at least one individual who, while subdued in real life, is a yammering Yenta on Facebook.

3) Facebook interaction is less daunting than real life interaction, with implications. Which of course is true of online interaction in general. This could be good, when, for example, it allows a shy person to venture out of her shell. Or it could be bad.

4) People like to have little rules with Facebook. Like they only will be friends with people they don't often see in real life. Or they never do status updates. Or they only do status updates. The rules seem intended to grant the illusion of control.

5) Facebook usership passes through three distinct phases: Thrill, Thrill-seeking and Practical Resignation. First you get a genuine kick out of it. (Person A! I haven't thought of her in years! And Person B! I knew he had a crush on me in high school! And Person C I hardly recognized! They all like me! What wealth! what extensive connection! all gathered here in this shining, ephemeral place!) As the kick fades, you try and fail to recapture it. Finally, you accept that Facebook is boring, abandon hope and try to make some mundane use of the thing.

6) You can learn fascinating facts about people from Facebook, but it's unclear how much you are supposed to acknowledge the possession of these facts in real life. If a Ffriend writes in her status update that her new nickname is 'Sexy Legs,' would one be remiss in referring to her thusly at work? And if the answer be clearly yes, then: what? What strange world do we live in if we walk about knowing things and not acknowledging them?

7) It might be more pathetic to have too many Facebook friends than not enough.

8) Facebook can be an effective way of entering other people's worlds. (Especially those with a tendency to overshare.) I can better imagine now what it's like to be a lunatic-distance runner, or a nurse hankering for a drink at the end of a long hospital shift, or a former pro football player launching a tentative new career. (Yeah I'm Ffriends with a former pro football player. Maybe he had a crush on me in high school; are you so surprised?) Because seeing people's little daily updates gives you the nosehair view of their lives. Even when trying to uphold grandiosity, the more people update, the more they unintentionally reveal. Whether we should know so much about every acquaintance is debatable, but the debate never quite happened and the reality has arrived. This will have big implications for human interaction in the 21st century--unless we all just get bored and stop updating.

I Am Photosynthetic

2009-06-22T09:46:00.000-07:00

I shrink and languish when the days are short. Unfurl before the sun's rays like a large-leafed plant extra open on a hot day. I thrive in the desert. When I lived under dim Northeastern light I was miserable. I figured it out: I'm photosynthetic.

Think about it. You might be too.

I totally fall for the notion of a healthy tan. I don't want to be a leathery old broad, but I find it hard to fear the *sun's damaging rays* of the Coppertone propaganda. Maybe the stereotypes linking darker skin to the possession of more soul predate James Brown. Maybe the soul is photosynthetic.

Good then that the longest days are here and I'm set for a beach week some four hundred miles closer to the equator. Photovoltaic cells ready. Chik-chik-chik-aaah.

Born-Again Baduizt

2009-06-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

IF only this post could fade in with sparkly sounds like "Back in the Day." Writing is just not cool like that.

I had always heard her, but only recently have I come to accept Erykah Badu as my personal savior. As for many born-agains, my Baduizt epiphany came when she performed on Chappelle's Show. She swayed her small hips, she rocked her big afro wig. I fell into a trance.

For Chappelle she performed "I Want You," which proceeded to become my favorite song. It's Badu at her extended-jam finest; the album version runs to ten minutes and fifty-three seconds. The song is so simple and she's just chanting I I I I I I I want you you you you you you you half the time, but it totally works. The lyrics suggest the following archetypically Baduizt prescriptions for the ailment of being sprung on some dude:

1) pray til early May
2) fast for thirty days
3) get a good book and get all in it
4) try a little yoga for a minute
5) turn the sauna up to hotter
and 6) drink a whole jar of holy water (an entire jar!)

I can start the "Back in the Day" glitter intro when I hop on the bus downtown and jam through the city of Oakland on a Badu ride, wrapping up the flight-of-fancy riff at the end of "I Want You" just in time to walk through the gate to my backyard and let the chickens out of the coop. If life gets better, I don't know about it yet.

And I have learned to let Erykah go on her flights of fancy. She has won my trust; I'm willing to take the ride. These days I earnestly and willfully choose to march through all the dense "Bump It" yodeling in order to earn the clear awakening "Back in the Day" intro (about which I won't shut up).

WHEN New Amerykah Part One came out last year I was naturally keen with anticipation. But that album is like *advanced* and, not being a music nerd, it took me a while to break into it. Because the rest is not like "Honey." The rest is some bombastic blaxploitation soundtrack that this whitegirl was not initially prepared to get with. Plus, the vibe struck me at first as ickily political and I don't like music trying to be political (although I have to give it to Erykah that she can pull off even that without much departure into lameness).

But I found a road in, eventually, with the song "Me," which falls on the tender, self-reflective side of the bombastic blaxploitation spectrum. My only problem with it is the part when she says "my ass and legs have gotten thick." If you have seen any recent pictures of stick figure Badu, you'll understand why this is offensive to those of us in the thick community.

My next single was to be "That Hump," a song which promotes my theory that there is an Erykah Badu song for any mood that might befall one. "That Hump" works on feelings of depression or discouragement: If I could get over that hump/Then maybe I wiiiiill feel be-etter. But my latest fave off New Amerykah Part One is "Soldier," which is actually a gentle groove track despite the name. It includes classic Baduing around à la: Break it down say mhm whooooaho hey hey (repeat). Turns out "Twinkle" is the dark, disturbing song. (Oh, Erykah, how you love to thwart my easy expectations!) It has the hoped-for sparkle sounds, but they come off spooky somehow.

WOULD that this post could blast out on a Hendrixy riff like "I Want You." But writing is just not cool like that.

Farewell, Best Little Garden Crew

2009-06-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

I taught garden class for two years before this one, and I'll teach it again. But there was something about the group of gardeners I had this year. I know I'm gonna miss them.

This one, especially. Graduating. It's funny: last year, garden class was basically black girls plus Dylan. This year, it was basically Mexican boys plus Dylan.

Holding it down every Monday was the fabulous brother team of Uriel and Jose. Uriel is one of those eleven year-olds who seem thirty-five. There are a lot of them at the school. I had seen him on the bus once, before he joined garden class. For reasons unknown he had somewhere to go, alone, on a school day afternoon, and he sat crumpled in his seat looking weighted by the world. Only his feet swinging well above the bus floor gave away the fact that he was a kid.

Jose is lighter of heart, as younger brothers will be. Here he is being Bugs Bunny, with Uri's support. Ever the comedian, his favorite joke was to sneak up on me when I was inspecting cabbage leaves or checking seedbeds before class. I caught him every time, but he could never be deterred from trying again. One day he did this hilarious bit he called watering "like a model". He made his eyes all smoldering and did suave hose maneuvers with one hand while rubbing his head mock-sensuously with the other. And he loved weeding competitions, because he ended up with the biggest weed pile and won the prize every time.

There was Oscar: quiet, eager to please, and best known for his starring role in the game "Who's Taller: Oscar or the Pea Plant?" (which successively became "Who's Taller: Uriel or the Pea Plant?" and then "Who's Taller: Miss Emma or the Pea Plant?" and finally "Who's Taller: Kobe or the Pea Plant?")

And there was Shauntenai, who was surly and difficult ninety percent of the time. But that other ten percent--oh man, how sweet it was. You had to toil for it. She only ever showed up for half an hour at a time, but she planted the most successful tomato seedling, and took a lot of pride in that fact.

We dug potatoes on the last day, and pulled our garlic. And watered, as always. And as always, the kids wanted to put the hose head on the cherished "mist" setting, which creates a beautiful, cooling cloud of water, almost none of which reaches the soil. (Probably my most frequently-yelled admonition this year was "Put it back on 'shower'!") One very hot afternoon this spring, I announced that there would be a special treat. At the end of class, I gathered all the kids in front of me, held the hose over their heads, and put it on "mist."

Here's the thing about Dylan. Yeah, he's bright. Yeah, he's sweet (often enough to cancel out when he isn't). Yeah, he's got gardening in his blood. But the quality that won me over most completely was his weirdness. Witness the photo above. Oh, it's cute, sure. Sweet kid, sweet smile. But look a little closer. Those green things aren't part of his "Water Strider" shirt, which looked like a brand-new freebie. No: he picked Scarlet Runner beans (from the vine just to the right of his head in the picture) and discovered what he called their "velcro" capacity and stuck them to his shirt. See what I mean? He also ate a carrot and turned the tops into a lash--even had the audacity to give me lashings with it, and I had the audacity to let him get away with it, on the Last Day principle.

After all the kids had been picked up, I finished watering the vegetable beds and found myself getting teary. When I got in the car that Keri Hilson "Knock You Down" song burst on the radio, way too loud. You know: Sometimes love comes around/And it knocks you down...I had denounced the song as cheesy. But as I drove homeward dewy-eyed, tender images of Dylan digging potatoes still playing in my mind, it sounded pretty right.

Sonia from the Block

2009-05-26T11:55:00.000-07:00

This morning President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Her acceptance speech follows.

Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)

Projects to Princeton
So yeah I do it well
No wonder Barack loves me
I'm like brown Michelle
Second circuit New York City
Court of Appeals
And saved baseball for my public
Cause I keep it on the reals

Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)

I'll be up in the Senate
Judiciary hearings
Pink tracksuit, low bun
And the fat hoop earrings
Singing tracks from West Side Story
Every stereotype
Boricua from the Bronx
That's what Supreme looks like

Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)

President Obama's verse:
You want to block her confirmation, Jon Kyl from Arizona?
All the Mexicans in your Senate district
Think they'll still be votin for ya? (Na-ah)
Picked the first Latino, yeah you didn't think of that
Whip is playin checkers
Ha-haa! I'm playin chess

La Crise Plogxistentielle

2009-05-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

The plog asks, Why do I exist? And I don't quite have an answer, although I suspect there is one out there somewhere. It's nothing new. Plogicide ideation is a weekly Clebilicious routine when not a daily one. The Statcounter numbers come in, enthusiasm flags, the "Delete This Blog" button beckons. I have to give it to the ploggie blunt: the world may not care, but the plog must go on! Why? I don't know! I just make unexplained demands like some banana republic dictator. Occasionally I am encouraging, too. There, there. Carry on, little plog. Carry on.

Beyoncé and the Impersonal Pronoun

2009-05-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

No one can self-objectify quite like Beyoncé. (And when I use her name, please hear the Stephen Colbert pronunciation, fully engaging that accent aigu on the terminal "e": Bay-on-SAY.)

Let's begin, shall we, by attempting to unpack the nut graf of "Single Ladies":

Don't be mad when you see that he want it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
Wuh-ho-ho, &tc

Begin at the beginning. What is "it"? In its latter use, we might might expect the referent to be "finger." As, That poor girl. He should have put a ring on her finger. But this theory crumbles the moment we consider the pronoun's other roles, standing for the thing wanted (by another), and conditionally liked (by the narrator's former flame).

Is the finger metonymous, then, for the body? In such case, the full meaning becomes, If you liked this body, you should have put a ring on this finger, which stands for this body. The logic holds, but the implications are troubling. Is appreciation of a woman's physical assets adequate basis for marriage? Surely not. And yet, how much more dismaying if we suppose the word "it" in fact stands for the woman in her entirety--body, soul, mind, spirit.

For, what woman thinks of herself as "it"? Aha! you say, glimpsing the path down which I appear to intend to lead you, Perhaps a man could think of a woman as "it"!

The "it" in question.

And indeed, "Single Ladies" was created not by some jilted woman, but by R&B mastermind The Dream. (Perhaps tellingly, he co-wrote Mariah's "Touch My Body" as well). Like most Beyoncé lyrics, these were written by a stable of male songwriters, Beyoncé credited among them.

Men writing objectification tracks for women leads to strange distortions. For example, in Beyoncé's "Check On It," written, per usual, by a stable, the word "it," used as described above, appears 49 times. Here is the construction I find most bizarre:

You can look at it
Long as you don't grab it
If you don't go braggin
I'ma let you have it

Does any woman think of her body as a removed Other like that? Wares to consciously ply? Here the direct referent appears to be the badonkadonk, metonymous again for the body whole.

While the lyrics evoke the body as a removed Other, they simultaneously conflate the body with the total woman. In one instance in the earwormish "Check On It," the word "me" is substituted for "it" (i.e. having said "check on it" eighteen thousand times, she throws in a "check on me"). Confirmation then, if any were needed, that Beyoncé herself--one supposes, body and soul--is "it".

When a man writes a song and a woman sings it, there is a certain synergistic fucked-up-edness. He can slip in offensive notions (woman="it") without voicing them himself. She voices these notions without giving the implied ownership thereof much thought. (See the related "ho cosigner" phenomenon.)

Beyoncé always strikes me as a childlike star, a sexpot never quite in possession of her sexuality. Hence she vixens it up throughout the "Single Ladies" video, but gigglingly disowns the whole bit at the end.

Feminist carping to the contrary, there is one way I don't mind: at least her work promotes the stubby-legged, long-waisted, back-stacked body type in which I share a stake. And hell yeah I can do the "Single Ladies" dance.

Paul Krugman Is Driving Me Insane

2009-05-07T16:46:00.000-07:00

We get it, Krugman. You, with all your pre-recession Chicken Littling, were right. Must feel pre-tty fri-ckin sweet.

Oh, and thanks a lot, Nobel Committee. You've created a monster. Now everything he says, he says with the arrogance and the imprimatur of a *Nobel-prize winning* economist.

Ever since his ultimate vindication--the sky, and the Dow, have indeed fallen--Krug feels justified, if not downright giddy, shitting all over everything for all time. He has particular contempt for Bernanke's 'green shoots' comment, on which he rained disdain in two columns plus a blog post.

Green shoots? The phrase itself sickens Scroogeman, with its overtones of fresh hope and delicate vernal regrowth. Blech! Don't you just want to rip those shoots right out?

He has become the world's most cantankerous groundhog, scrambling back into his underground lair with joyous contempt. Winter will be here forEVAH HAhahaHA!

"Even in the Great Depression," he taunts in another post, "things didn't [Montgomery Burns fingers-tapping gesture] head down [moohoohahaha] all the time." Naturally this was on a week when things were looking up, and any buzz needed to be promptly smited.

If we do have Depression II, imagine what it will do for Krugman. On the one hand, the devastation of 25% unemployment. But on the other, he called it!

When Food Scraps Dream

2009-04-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

I did not know an ad campaign could be endearing. One does not expect to gaze up at a billboard, enchanted. And the kinds of ads that purport to serve the public with positive messages are usually the most loathsome. So I can really appreciate the triumph that is:

This was the first ad I saw of the Alameda County Waste Management's Food Scrap Recycling campaign, and, as we say on Passover, it would have been enough. It came out around the time when a compost fairy visited every house in the land and left little green pails at the curb. (Free green pails! Eee! Talon hands!) In the early days, they were just warming us up to the idea of "recycling" food scraps. The scraps go in the pail, that they may someday become joyous sunflowers.

The old artichoke goes back to the farm. (Technically, I think its re-ordered molecules--sorry, I don't understand science--go to local gardens via the Davis Street Dump, but I quibble.) They went seasonal in October, which was more than awesome:

I regret that I never saw this versión en español in action: (If it wasn't on a bus shelter on Fruitvale or International Blvd, where was it?)

Aren't you glad to live, or don't you wish you lived, somewhere with ads for composting spent jack-o-lanterns that say "Qué te pasa, calabaza?"

The shitty economy is a boon to PSAs. No one can afford to rent that billboard space any more. So Waste Management can just churn out the quippy food scrap recycling ads with abandon. I do wonder why they don't call it composting. Does the word carry some stigma I'm unaware of? Sound too dirt-nasty? Or did they use the word "recycling" to make a quick link in the public brain from the gray bin to the green one?

Okay. Here's where they go advanced. So we get it about the banana peels and the corn husks. They go in the green pail, which then gets dumped into the green bin at the curb and gets turned into compost--or, to be coy, "goes to the farm." Now we are ready for some next-level ish: bring on the food-soiled paper products. Used paper coffee cups, for instance.

Or pizza boxes. For the coup de grace, Waste Management has even put out a custom pizza box, instructing its holder to place it in the green bin when the fun pizza times are through. I only know about the boxes because yesterday one such was stuffed, ironically, into my gray recycling bin. (Ooh: so close.)

In the Healing Waters of Nodrambama

2009-04-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

Obama was like the jeans we tried on at the store in a skinnifying mirror and thought, wow, these jeans are perfect and will make me whole. Thus the inevitable flood of buyer's remorse when they were but jeans. The very finest, perhaps, but still: jeans. Working with what they've got. Incapable of miracles.

But perhaps now we are settling in. Obama has been through the wash a couple times and we are beginning to think he wears quite well after all. We still have our fat little gams and entrenched casino capitalism, but he is trying to show us our best national self--as we are now and as we could be.

Compare it to the Bush era and you'll realize what a warm bath this new political atmosphere is. We've been through quite an ordeal, and are not at all well, but we finally get to soak in Epsom salts and essential oils and begin the healing. It's that turning point in a cold when you know you're starting to get better and all you have to do is tend yourself, enjoy the hot soup and let healing proceed apace.

Our shoulders can finally fall from that tense position we had been holding them in since circa 2001, because, really: we are in good hands. We can be children dozing in the back seat as Barack and Michelle drive us home, soothed by the murmurs of their voices talking about grown-up things.

How's this for soothing:

Mr. Obama has begun to sketch a vision of where he would like to drive the economy once this crisis is past. His goals include diminishing the consumerism that has long been the main source of growth in the United States, and encouraging more savings and investment. He would redistribute wealth toward the middle class and make the rest of the world less dependent on the American market for its prosperity. And he would seek a consensus recognizing that an activist government is an acceptable and necessary partner for a stable, market-based economy.

We are still keyed up from Bush times, adapted to all the fussing and fighting. It can be hard to recognize the progress we've already made toward the promised land of No Drama: the stable good intentions, the reasoned decision-making. The economy has not gotten worse in a while. The White House lawn has a food garden. Gay marriage laws are quietly passing and in the current climate no one quite wants to be the bigot to object. The president does a bro handshake with Hugo Chavez and Fox wants to whip up a froth, but those days are done. Obama smiles with his big teeth, lets it blow over.

And the dangerous metaphor-mixing experiment is now complete.

Ode to the Bitchy British Songbirds

2009-04-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

Now I know you feel betrayed
But it's been weeks since I got laid
This doesn't mean
I don't think you're a fool
-"Never Gonna Happen"

He left no time to regret
Kept his dick wet
With his same old safe bet
-"Back to Black"

Wrap it up cause I ain't
Carrying your embryo
-"Wait a Minute (Just a Touch)"

If you can imbue caustic, obscene lyrics like those above with easy charm, you must be a Bitchy British Songbird. These ladies can don fabulous earrings, deball a man, and write a fetching song about it on any given afternoon. They can also do the vulnerable vocal equivalent of languishing on the couch with an ice cream pint. That's range.

No matter how much of a laughingstock she becomes, I keep loving Amy Winehouse. When someone is willing to rip open her soul for my listening pleasure, I forgive just about anything. Hence I still want to set Amy up in a little hutch in the backyard with some fresh straw and clean water and care for her until she gets better. Sure it's irrational. But if you were off listening to Mary Wells and the Shangri-Las when the other little girls were on Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, hearing that Motowny girl group sound coming from a sassy, contemporary London Jewgirl is too much to resist. In interviews about her hypothetical next album, Winehouse has said it will be like Back to Black, "but with more ska." Which makes me want to cry, because I would like to hear that so very, very much, and its future existence is dubious.

Not that I mind listening to Back to Black even yet more. The title track manages to chop and screw chipper Motown into the darkest of lamentations on love lost: We only said goodbye with words/I died a hundred times. (Of course she's talking about that fuckup Blake guy, but never you mind.) And "Wake Up Alone" is a slow jam straight out of the secret Kellerman's staff party in Dirty Dancing. She really croons on that one:

If I was my heart
I'd rather be restless
Second I stop the sleep catches up
And I'm--breathless
This ache in my chest
As my day is done now
The dark covers me
And I cannot run now

The sensational Estelle also harkens back to all my favorite old soul. But if Amy is widely known as cracked-out "Rehab" chick, the general listening public knows Estelle as just the popstar of "American Boy." Only marginally less of an underestimation. Her Shine album reminds me so much of Aretha's Sparkle that I have to wonder if the one-shimmery-word title thing is coincidental. The splendiferous "More Than Friends" samples the Queen of Soul version of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," so it had me at hello. Then it overclosed with tender lyrics and Estelle's sultrily earthy rapping:

Don't play me like a extra
I got speaking roles
I am not that ho
I am so much more

And the "American Boy" thing is no joke. Seems every big man on the American music campus wants to musically date Estelle. Her "(feat...)" stable includes John Legend, Kanye West, Wyclef and Sean Paul. And the latter sounds especially excited to introduce the two of them (Sean-a-Paul and ESTELLE!) at the beginning of the "Come Over" remix.

Lily Allen's offerings remind me not of my old Motown tapes, but of driving out to Orange County for ska shows in high school. Her first hit "Smile" does, anyway. And come to think of it, I wish her new album, It's Not Me, It's You sounded more like "Smile" and less like microwave popcorn with fake butter. (You can say something mean like that to her, because she can dish it out, hence she can take it.) She may be lightweight, but she is just the perfect confection. A vanilla meringue, spiked with vodka.

Brits are always better at using the language, and Londoners seem to specialize in rich, cussy slang. Why say "lots of diamonds" when you can say "fuckloads" like Lily? (Amy also enjoys nouns that employ the "fuck-" stem, as in, What kind of fuckery is this?) The BBS's use those dirty mouths to dress down men, which is a healthy tonic if you listen to fuckloads of misogynistic rap, as I do. There's nothing quite like Estelle's final blow at the end of "No Substitute Love": You need to grow a couple boy/You ain't bout nothin boy.

It's Not Me, It's You goes ahead and takes it there by having a song entitled "Fuck You." It's about a bigoted individual to whose racism and homophobia Lily Allen is saying "fuck you very much"--but you know that theme was an afterthought. The girl wanted to have a song called "Fuck You." And then she was like, well it would be too obvious if it was another of my deballing tracks, so I'll go in this unexpected political direction. She never tires of using her cherubic voice to say something demonic, and I haven't tired of it yet either. If and when I do tire, I'll write her a saccharine-toned grenade of self-esteem demolition. Because she can dish it out.

Pesach, Baby

2009-04-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Passover begins tonight! Swill the Manischewitz and enjoy last year's post on this theme.

4/14/08: Pesach, Baby

2009-04-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

Wow, America, so all it took for you to be into your president again was for him to go out on the world stage and flirt with some other countries? Old Europe lines up to blow him and suddenly you're like, "I got it!" Entire editorial pages of eager fellation. Those nose hairs and the porcupiney technocrat he picked for Treasury aren't bothering you quite so much now. Mmhmm. Relationships 101 trick right there.

...I will unplug stuff more...

2009-04-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

I unplugged some stuff and I was like, wow, that felt so amazing. I'm doing my part. What made me want to do that? Oh yeah, it was that friend of mine. Great lady. She's got like these barely tamed red curls and we were talking and she told me she was planning to unplug stuff more and I was like, wow: yeah. I'm gonna do that too.

And then, after that, I left the car at home. I had been meaning to do that more. I don't know why. No, wait. I do know. It was because of my neighbor. She has this amazing cocoa butter complexion and she said she was planning to leave her car at home more, and I was like, yeah, she's so right on. I want to do what she's doing.

The last time I felt this healthy and right was during my Thrive phase, when I had this mysterious compulsion to eat blueberries and catch frisbees on the beach and do yoga in the park.

I saw this flock of geese flying in like an inverted V-pattern and I got this warm feeling like there was something really positive about that shape. For some reason, it reminded me of going to see The Nutcracker at the Paramount Theater. At the end, they gave every audience member these little boxes of chocolates? And it was like, wow, so generous. And on the box there was a symbol like that. And a word. I want to say it was...CHEVRON.

Yes! That was the word. My mind was spinning. In a flash I knew the redhead and the cocoa butter lady and the Nutcracker chocolates magically intersected at this word. That the redhead was not my friend but my guardian Chevron angel. I felt the aura of this Chevron everywhere, encouraging the use of solar power, funding the local arts institutions, asking me to join. What was this extraordinary force for good? What shape did it take? I knew not. I asked around and apparently they are running this virtue factory right out of nearby Richmond.

I will visit sometime.

Meeting the Night Neighbor

2009-03-30T12:15:00.000-07:00

Nightly came the crashing sounds below: toppling stacks of plastic pots, tomato cages that bent and thwanked, a persistent metallic scraping. I initially theorized that the neighbors' funny-eyed cat was hunting rats down there and rested easy on this theory, with its benign implications, until the neighbors and cat moved out. Then I moved on to thinking a homeless drunk was bedding down in the crawlspace. (The challenge was explaining the spectacularly awkward movements that would create such mayhem. Most creatures are sneaky and smooth; they don't trip over stuff with every step.)

I developed half-waking paranoia that the drunk would break into the coop and slaughter the chickens for a meal, and Crim amused himself exploiting my fears. I'd bolt awake in the night and say, What the fuck is that? and he'd say, Shh, go back to sleep. It's just Ernie the Homeless Guy, stumbling home hungry.

A few times I whined enough to make Crim gallantly step out the back door, peak under the house and report that there was nothing there. We let the mystery persist for a good half-year. It became de rigeur to pretend it wasn't really weird to have something crawling around down there.

Was it rats, drunk off whatever was in the corners of the bottles Ernie left behind? A raccoon doing dissertation research on coop security systems? A skunk? In any of the above cases, I didn't want to encounter the perpetrator, which fed the systemic denial. But then fleas fled the cats and invaded our bedclothes (nice work, Advantage), and one fitful night I lay awake with fleas and phantom fleas crawling all over me, hearing Ernie or Skunkie or whoever down there knocking shit over. Classic invasion of grossness. I snapped. I threw on my robe, grabbed a flashlight and said, I'm ready for you, fucker. Be thee skunk or drunk, I shall face thee.

As I stumbled down the back steps, I thought about Writing. I think about it a lot, Writing being the altar at which I have sacrificed whatever money, power, respect I might otherwise have coming as a thirty year-old college graduate. When you want to write things, stories tend to come. And maybe also courage. Because you want a good story, and a good story requires going out there and meeting the beast.

(When I was ten, a skunk got into my bedroom at night--don't ask--and I spun it into my first publication feat: a proud check for $10 from Stone Soup, the magazine for children that no child has ever read. The check was tacked to my wall for years, beginning what I can only hope will be a lifetime of Writing paychecks so tiny that they are more trophy than income.)

I soothed the hens, who were making quiet sounds of anxiety. That's the best they can do, defenseless in the night: commiserate with each other like, You hear that?--sounds like something--well I'm okay--you okay?--everybody here?--united front, girls, stick together--we're okay--not to worry. Then I looked under the house.

Nothing there, of course. Silence where the crashing sounds had been. But I wasn't going back inside. I crouched among the cobwebs and the rat droppings and waited.

Finally, near the opposite wall, I saw something. A swish-swish. A long, white tail. No other movement. No other sound. It became The Sound of Music: me as Nazi soldier with my flashlight and this thing as the Von Trapp family hiding in the abbey. But there would be no climbing the verdant Alps to Switzerland on this night; I was persistent.

Whatever this creature might be, it was not bright. No self-awareness where the tail was concerned. It was struggling mightily to keep the rest of its body concealed, but the rattish tail was out there unselfconsciously flapping in the breeze. That tail looked familiar, and I gradually remembered why. I had seen one like it when I accidentally caught a baby opossum in a rat trap (an unfortunate incident, which may or may not have made me cry).

Finally the fugitive was ready to give himself up. Lowered his gray and white fur girth out of his hiding place and stepped into the beam of my flashlight. Big, fat possum. And an affable creature: once he decided the jig was up, he started tightroping across an elevated pipe bridge--there was the metallic scraping!--right toward me.

Posse the Possum. Long last we meet. I was taken with delight. Possums make unobtrusive neighbors, and their appetite for snails, rotten fruit and pre-killed carcasses earn them the nickname 'Mother Nature's cleanup crew.' They don't disturb the garden and, best of all, they are North America's only marsupials! Who wouldn't want to cohabit with a species that carries babies in a pouch?

Posse stopped a few feet away from me. We stared at each other for a while, then went our separate ways. I went back to bed contented, knowing that somehow I wasn't going to mind all the knocking and scraping and thwanking. Because I would think, hey, it's Posse, of the Midnight Marsupial Janitorial Crew, just going along to get along. I still don't know why he makes such a racket; supposedly opossums' jutting eyes give them excellent night vision. But now his awkwardness seems kind of sweet. I'm glad we met.

Deep Thought for Friday

2009-03-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't it be funny
If a guy made a comment about my ass
And it answered
With a fart

Might As Well Have, Much As My Cat Accuses Me of Cheating

2009-03-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

I thought he would like seeing the Facebook page of another kitty, but Paulie was: devastated. Apparently I had made some recent comment about how the gray and white neighbor cat was cute, and Crim had come home from a social function with Maine Coon furs on his sweatshirt, and then he finds out I'm Facebook friends with this other feline and, being Paulie James Walnuts III (drag name Molly Pecans, blues name Muddy Paws) he had to bend it into some overarching theory.

You guys are seeing other cats. Don't bother to deny it.

Of course we rolled our eyes at this nonsense. How much vet debt must we accrue, how much biting abuse must we tolerate, how high-end a cat food must we buy to prove our boundless loyalty? Assurances were made that he is a very special cat. Staggeringly handsome, impeccable wit, always top predator in our ecosystem, master of all he surveys, &c.

And how superficial did he think we were? As if we would judge our animal companion by mere degree of cuteness, or proportion of assholish to sweet behavior, or amount of particulate matter stuck to rectum, or number of fleas leaping off onto our bed.

What about your charming wiles and pocketful of foibles? And his anarchist saboteur technique of clawing the mattress underside until his demand to be let outside is met--I have a grudging respect for the strategic means there, even if the ends are questionable. What other cat puts on stunna shades and does hip thrusts to "Poker Face"? What other cat wept at the end of Milk with such passion? And your comic timing! He has great comic timing.

That night he stayed out late. We played right into his paws, were worried sick, calling from the back door and then the front and then the back. Around midnight he showed up, flea-ridden, cobwebs stuck to his face, and got just the worshipful welcome he had angled for. We saw the trap and fell in anyway. Because he may be a dictator. But he's our dictator.

More weird Walnuts posts:
Four Paws Marching
Goodkitties
My Cat is a Narcissist, But I Love Him
Walnuts v. Walnuts

USEFUL VOCABULARY: "thirsty"

2009-03-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

thirsty (adj.) 1. Afflicted with horniness that knows no bounds, esp. in men. 2. Shamelessly solicitous. 3. Dehydrated of female affections.

As,

"I went out to Easy the other night and the guys were mad thirsty. I told one of them, look, my boyfriend is right over there. He offered to intercourse me in a way that would cause my gray matter to extrude, regardless."

"Wow. Thirsty indeed."

Paradox of Thrift

2009-03-13T15:40:00.000-07:00

Thrift has many paradoxes, the foremost being that if everyone is thrifty, the economy hurts. (The economy being an obligate fiend for consumer spending.) These days I like to go around saying, to anyone who talks about trying to cut back on $3 lattes or $30 sweaters, "In this economy, who can afford it?" (And I'm sort of saying it ironically, although of course no one would ever know that; I have to sometimes indulge my urge to be unnecessarily weird.) You could call the thriftward shift irrational, since the recession hasn't made us all suddenly broker. In fact, Dean Baker has pointed out that our real wages have actually gone up as prices have dropped.

Of course layoffs force some to cut back, and the threat thereof makes us all legitimately cautious. But who says we're rational? (Oh right, economists do.) We also react to the ethereal panic and want to hunker down. The entire economy can be like Wall Street in its self-fulfilling expectations. We think the economy is going to suck, and we thereby cause it to suck harder. Each individual household is responsibly protected, but the economy itself become the collective goat no one wants to feed.

My personal P of T is that the recessional spirit of the times makes me want to thriftify, even though my household income is at historic highs (meaning, middle-class eligible.) It suddenly seems cool to be plucky and resourceful, steadily defrosting my bricks of summer tomato sauce. Whereas in the boom economy, when I was boom broke, I had to make periodic pilgrimages to Payless for some knockoff insensible shoes, just so as not to feel left out. We are social animals, I suppose, listing toward the zeitgeist.

Yet another paradox is that thrift is good, but an Ascetic Mission is bad. (You might be on an Ascetic Mission if...you feel wrong paying $1.75 bus fare when it's raining but you could have biked.) Many forms of thrift are gratifying and fun, but going too far can set up a landslide of thwarted consumer desire. When I heard this story on NPR, I was totally with the newly poor and unemployed heroine, Gigi, as she described her excised spa treatments and her switch to outdoor exercise and her homemade clothes. But then she said she had "downgraded [her] coffee" from Starbucks to Yuban. This reeked of Ascetic Mission. I am a Peet's girl myself, and I appreciate the symbolism of ditching the morning Starbucks, but Gigi: there are less drastic measures. Like good coffee beans at bulk prices. And if that latte is so very sweet, why not make a weekly ceremony of it? The best kind of thrift, after all, makes us really enjoy the good things.

And P.S. Who's got the last laugh now? Could it perchance be the crazy lady who grows vegetables and keeps chickens and makes soap, and sometimes uses the eggs from the chickens as an ingredient in the soap. Oh wait, that's me! Ha! (That was me, having the last laugh.)

Ode to Demetri Martin

2009-03-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged that to talk about comedy is to sound awkward and conspicuously unfunny. But I am willing to sound lame and worse in service of praising the subject of this ode.

Comedians tell jokes, and when Demetri Martin is about to tell some, he admits to it ("Let's go with...jokes.") But he also invents formats. He begins with a kernel of funny and decides later whether this comedic stem cell will become a skit or a slam poem or a pie chart.

Demetri's ability to draw mountains over time.

His new series, "Important Things with Demetri Martin," which premiered on Comedy Central on February 11th, allows him to sprawl across his many pet formats. When the catchy but understated song comes on that goes, "This is a sketch/This is a sketch/It's a sketch," it does not signal a sketch comedy bit, but rather that Demetri is about to bust out Pictionary-style, drawing and writing with both hands at once.

He loves using hand-drawn graphics, especially data charts. He flips the page on his big sketchpad to show a line graph and says, "This is the cuteness of a girl versus how interested I am in hearing about how her intuitive her cat is...You'll notice, at a certain point, I don't care how cute you are, I don't want to hear about your fucking cat anymore."

And when he does plain old stand-up, it has maximum density, no filler. The ratio of setup is miniscule; it's a payoff and then another and another. He always seems to have too many notions and nuggets kicking around his brain, such that when he plays guitar and harmonica and bells while flipping through jokes on the big sketchpad, it seems to mirror his mindstate.

Martin is a comedic philosopher, lifting the stones of our cultural foundation and examining the underneath bits. He specializes in small observations: "What distinguishes man from animals is his ability to reason. Another way is last names. What's his name? Patches? Patches what? No last name? That's a dog, don't waste my time."*

*Joke estimated from memory.

Deep Thought for Wednesday

2009-02-25T13:13:00.000-08:00

'It was all a dream'
Is the 'Call me Ishmael'
Of rap

The Best Little Gardener in Deep East Oakland

2009-02-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

In the far southeast corner of Oakland, where white people aren't, an eleven year-old boy is wondering whether the bulbs are off to a good start, inspecting the cabbage for camouflaged worms and nervously urging the peas up their trellis. Worry is a hallmark of great gardening, and this kid's got it.

Three years ago I needed to scrap together more income, and Dylan, although he didn't know it yet, very much needed a garden at his school. (Laugh now at my supposition that starting an after-school gardening program at a public elementary would be a lucrative lark.)

It didn't take him long to become a gardener. The transition was well underway when we planted crocuses that first fall. He was inspecting the packaging--intense, as usual, while the other kids were wilding out, also as usual. Printed on the crocus package was a flower icon that read "MAR-APR," and he asked me to interpret this.

"March through April. That's when they'll bloom."

Dylan's eyes went wide. His fingers curled like talons grasping prey. His skinny limbs trembled. And he squealed as little ghetto boys are not supposed to squeal: "THAT'S WHEN THEY'LL BLOOM??" Affirmative. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!"

We had discussed the bulb concept as a class beforehand, but imagining these brown lumps creating fat purple flowers in a mere (he had a gardener's patience already) five months was just too much.

He quickly learned to identify seedlings. Pale gray-green V sprout? California poppy! And why is it special? Because...Because! Oh! Oh! (Talon hands.) BecauseitsthestateflowerofCalifornia!! He attacked stands of oxalis with rage, ignoring the little girls' pleas that the yellow flowers were pretty. It's a weed, he answered with unveiled disdain. Miss Emma, tell them.

I knew from the start that Dylan was not, for lack of a more circumspect phrase, regular black. His pants were a little too tight and his hair was a little too long. When he came back for a second year of garden class, my only repeat recruit, he was mooning about orchids, which he said reminded him of Belize.

"Are you from Belize?"

He nodded, excited to tell me, and said he had been back over the summer. His fourth grade iteration included new big jeans and a fresh-clipped fade, but he was still kind of a loner and a bit weird. Certainly no other kid would play along when I wanted to talk in British accents. He developed an obsession with tomatillos (planted as a nod to the Mexican half of the class) even though he never quite understood what or why they were.

With Dylan as its stalwart, the garden program gained popularity. During one class I overheard a group of girls talking about how much they loved gardening. Dylan swished past them, busy with his trowel, and said, "I just come for the flowers."

That spring we planted tomatoes from seed. Each kid got to plant a four-inch pot with three seeds to take home. Ten kids in the class, plus the drop-ins who suckered the teacher into letting them plant their own pots too--probably sixty potential tomato plants were in those hopeful pots. Many were banished by parents who hated having their kids touch dirt. Some fell victim to kids' inevitable neglect. But one lucky seed was coddled and sprouted and fawned over and transplanted and in late summer it bore fruit to feed a large Belizian family.

The tomato experience planted a seed in Dylan as well. This year, our third, he began asking me for extra seeds and seedlings to take home and in my harried state I would pour a few seeds into his hand and move on to the next crying catastrophe. Only recently did I come to understand that he had created a vast menagerie of potted plants at home. I try to picture it, the mad scientist amid his many experiments. His mother explained that he had somehow obtained a cob of ornamental corn, painstakingly removed the kernels, and grown some cornstalks.

This fall the veteran fifth-grade Dylan showed the new crop of kids how to plant bulbs. (Two leftover bulbs were destined to join his menagerie.) He ripped open the package of paperwhites with glee, but was disturbed to find the roots already sprouting.

"Miss Emma, they think they're in the soil!" And that's when I knew the transition was complete. He knew what the bulbs were thinking.

Driving away from the school one cold night, jean cuffs dripping, I saw Dylan riding home on the handlebars of his big brother's bike. Seeing him perched so precariously, my little horticultural genius, heading off into the dark of a neighborhood where the murder rate is high and the optimism rate is low, I decided to drop the hardened teacher thing. I thought, I'm just gonna love this kid. /

Obama Doubt, Multipliers

2009-02-11T18:30:00.000-08:00

I kind of love when people freak out about Obama. The cycles of rising hope and creeping doubt are as predictable as moon phases, and it's fun to watch columnists and pundits churn through another cranky round of PMS, knowing Obama will stay steady and not give a fuck.

A glance at NYT op-eds tells the tale. There's MoDowd making a point of roughing up the president, as she does periodically to prove her crush is not blinding. David Brooks' honeymoon is over--but then he cycles through the Obemotions so fast that no one cares anymore. Paul Krugman secretly resents Obama; read between the lines. (Is it because he's not the president's favorite bearded elfconomist?)

Doubts about Obama have a strong multiplier effect--which is what a stimulus plan is supposed to have. In addition to following the Obamalove tides, a recession-era amusement which I invite you to enjoy is watching Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and his frat brothers in both houses contorting into pretzels trying not to ratify Keynesian economic theory and still avoid blame for national ruin.

Pence cried about the stimulus plan last week, "It included wasteful government spending that has nothing to do with creating jobs!!!!" (My quadruple exclamation.)

Conservatives are into listing things in the stimulus plan that they think are ludicrous. From a CBS News column: "Shipyards get $100 million in handouts; $400 million is diverted to 'farm ownership loans.' [Yeah, whatever that means.] Another $200 million goes to computer centers at community colleges... NASA and the National Science Foundation receive $2.3 billion."

Now I'm not going to go into how farm-ownership, community colleges and science are sort of hate-proof. Because that really isn't the point.

The real point is, it's a stimulus plan. You spend money on stuff; that's how it works. But Republicans pull this disingenuous shit, like, Condoms! schools! art! (ew, art is grossest of all)--what does any of that have to do with creating jobs?

Government spending on any damn thing creates jobs. It's money going out into the economy, buying goods and services and so necessitating hiring.

The hirees then have income to spend, even if they earn that income testing condoms or, worse, educating children. And that money goes out into the economy => more demand for goods and services => more hiring, more income => yet more demand for goods and services, and so on. The alternative is to invite Depression II by allowing the downward spiral of decreased consumer spending and decreased income to continue unabated. And there you have the Clebilicious Pocket Keynes.

The problem for Republicans is that if they acknowledge government spending stimulates the economy in this way, they forsake everything they ever said about the crystal clear purity of the free market. (They also hate anything they can call 'entitlement.' Poor people act so fucking entitled.)
Their pretzely solution is to pretend tax cuts are a stimulus, because tax cuts get the Reagan stamp of approval. This fails on two counts. Republicans get caught acknowledging the concept of economic stimulus, and they also promote an inferior stimulus mechanism. Spending is what stimulates the economy; only a portion of tax cuts become spending, not the whole. When government spends directly, all of it (duh) becomes spending. It's like not believing in birth control but deciding to use some stupid contraceptive sponge just in case.

And about that other downward spiral, in Obama confidence, I agree with Bob Herbert that Obama is underestimated all too often. I think his stock still has room to climb.

Deep Thought for Monday

2009-02-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

In a half-conscious moment
I thought it was David Axelrod
Who created "The Wire"

On Turning Thirty

2009-02-05T15:30:00.000-08:00

Saturday I turn thirty, and my pose is 'not approaching it with dread'. That's my little contrarian streak showing, because you're supposed to approach it with dread.

Anyone over thirty will tell me I'm still young, and I buy that. If I can hope to live long, and if I value my older years rather than expecting diminishing returns from them, then I am indeed young at thirty. I feel pretty old to be young. Thirty years is a hell of a long time, just objectively. To get to live that long and still be technically young is a pretty neat trick. I know a few things by now, and I have some road ahead to apply them.

But when I turn fifty, I don't want to hear some bullshit about how I'm still young. I won't be--and what's wrong with that? What's wrong with being, in my thirties, at what Updike called "the midpoint," in full bloom rather than just a rosy bud full of potential? Most people seem to prefer bud status. Maybe it's scary to be smack in the middle of life. Easier to dream on what we might be in the future than admit the future has arrived. But unambiguous adulthood could be a good thing. No more school and throat-clearing. Now I play for keeps.

I started thinking of myself as 'about thirty' when I was twenty-eight and a half. That was my attempt to avoid surprise, one of three major factors behind Decade Dread. (Followed by fear of mortality and life dissatisfaction. This according to my research. My research was inferential, meaning I didn't look any stuff up; I just thought real hard.)

The Precor at Gold's thinks I've been thirty for quite some time. (And bless that Precor for being as forthright about these matters as humans wish we could be.) In the leadup, I have wanted to remind myself of both the youthful qualities I want to keep and the mature qualities I wish to own.

Old enough and young enough. I thought surely the overlap could be positive, not just some nightmare of confluent wrinkles and pimples. So I have made myself hunker down hard on my big writing project. (Mature and serious.) And I made myself learn, in full, the dance to "Single Ladies." (Fun and flippant.) Apparently project creation and execution is my approach to life. And I know that about myself because, hey, I'm thirty.

Going to the Snow

2009-01-29T16:06:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I'm going to the snow. When I tell people I'm going to the snow they say, What are you going to do there? Are you going to ski? No. Skis scare me. Snowboards even more so. Looks like a double-leg mangling waiting to happen. I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to the snow.

Those who grow up around snow don't have a strong concept of snow tourism. I grew up where it was a hundred-and-ten degrees in the summer and seventy in the winter and my concept of snow tourism is sterling. For Inland Empire dwellers, going to the snow is a standard outing like going to the beach. Drive an hour, get someplace nicer. Just instead of fleeing for the more glamorous part of Southern California on the coast, it's fleeing for the more glamorous part in the mountains. (And if you don't find Arrowhead glamorous, you are not from Riverside County.)

The romance of snow will never be marred for me by the mundanities of shoveling, or long, icy melts, or yellowing by dogs. (Nor enhanced by the providential magic of a Snow Day, but still.) I find it so exciting to step on snow and handle snow and--thrill of thrills--be snowed upon. I get a kick out of just being very cold and needing cocoa. Zooming across great mountains of the stuff is probably better suited to people who readily accept water in its solid state.

OBAMA: The 'Means to Me' Inaugural Essay

2009-01-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

Since Obama won election, I have not been able to think about him. I had never hoped so hard and so outlandishly. To have those hopes realized was jarring, and caused some sort of processing error.

Through the year, the crazy dream became an ever greater possibility. What if it became absolute reality? All the heartwrenching suspense, a year of thrill mixed with angst, would be over. The effect, I thought, would be calming. I would walk out into the sunshine with open arms. But instead: system overload. I could not think about Obama as president. If I did, my head would explode.

The thing to do was shut down and restart. For me, as for any ardent supporter, the intensity was a sickness and it overwhelmed everything. The Obama-ascent-to-the-presidency narrative inevitably overpowered that of my own piddling life. In the election's aftermath I sought to correct the balance; I made Barack Obama a minor character. The transition seemed like a good time to leave him the hell alone, anyway. Give the guy some space to figure out the eight million problems of the world without us clinging to or picking at him. I would save the hot stone massage of thinking about him as president for later.

But the inauguration is now. And I haven't thought about it.

So what's so great about him becoming president? Attempts to sum up the answer objectively tend to fall back on "first black president." That is a huge, wonderful part, but not the whole. For most of us, he's also our first awesome president. (The meaning of "president" has been diminished lately, and I'm not just talking about Bush.)

No use trying to coldly analyze his greatness, right here in the moment. Instead, we should each write a fifth grade-style essay called "What Obama Means to Me." Mine goes a little something like this. (Hit it.)

I grew up in a lefty household and I thought of politics like cultish religion or hard core sports fandom. Something where you're really into your team and the other team is affiliated with the devil. You love to win and hate to lose, but like to moan about losing (and lefties have long been proud, moaning losers.) But belief in the team is what matters. Anyone on your team is instant kin; members of other teams are aliens. Your entire worldview is team-filtered, and capped off by belief in a messianic age when lefty politics will dictate reality. This stale perspective did not, for me, include any notion of government policy as a means to practical ends. Sure, I knew that was technically possible. But I took for granted that politics was far too arcane and antiquey for actual use.

And the teamthink I imbibed as a red diaper baby is probably not unlike that of, say, a right-wing evangelical. Obama is right to say we've been a divided nation. We all have our teams, be they political, religious, cultural, regional. It's a big country and it's easy to slip into lazy disunity. But Obama has given 83% of us something to agree on: we like him.

Our president (you can say that now) insists that we shake up the whole league. He is not a teamthink type himself, which pisses off everyone on whose team he might otherwise be. He doesn't like to win and gloat or lose and rant. He doesn't care to have enemies. His political views basically jibe with mine and I don't fret over discrepancies because I trust his when judgment is called for. When he says "pragmatic," I swoon.

Obama is very modern in the way he is reflective, a man of emotional intelligence. He made a campaign appeal based on politics, but he also made an appeal to individuals as an individual, which is fitting for our open, hyper-communicative age. In the FDR era the president was a crackling voice coming through the radio, and a leader could present himself in broad strokes. (Roosevelt even hid his paralysis from polio.) Today we get such an intimate, high def picture, and slathering on the PR won't help. We can see the pancake makeup and what's underneath.

Obama is healthy and unwrinkled. He doesn't have much to hide and he knows how to artfully maintain boundaries of privacy while giving us a peek at his soul. He lets us look at--or up to--him, but he doesn't fiend for attention like a typical narcissistic pol.

Surely it is unprecedented for Americans to know their president so well. We know him from his writing (we maniacs do, anyway), but also from his open speaking habits. In both, he takes care to express himself with precision. The fact that this person whose insides we roughly understand is also our president, our representative in the world, is both confusing and exhilarating. It can be a little mindfuck, like: Barack? Don't I know that guy? What's he doing with all these big people? Oh yeah, he's president.

To the extent I feel like I know him myself, it's also because he seems so plausibly like a part of my world. His multiculti sensibilities, his cool/nerd dichotomy, his penchant for self-improvement, the rigor of his relationship with Michelle, the kinds of jokes he makes ("My greatest strength I guess it would be my humility. Greatest weakness, it's possible that I'm a little too awesome") all make him seem like someone I might know if I was just two tads cooler myself. He's aspirational that way. I want to be awesome too.

"Mad Men" and Asshole By Proxy Syndrome

2009-01-14T15:00:00.000-08:00

Award-season hype may lead to a swarming of "Mad Men" dvds in mailboxes. Please be aware that prolonged and/or enthusiastic viewing of this program is associated with Asshole By Proxy Syndrome. Symptoms include painful guilt over neglected household chores, fear of committing adultery not commensurate with actual propensity to cheat, spontaneous desire to apologize to women in general and, in advanced cases, paranoid delusions of growing a curly pig tail and soft, felty pig ears. Researchers believe that watching the sexist behavior of the program's archetypal fifties males can cause enlightened, twenty-first century men to believe they themselves are the assholes.

If you must watch, preventive measures are recommended. Plan "Mad Men" viewing dates in advance and offer to both make dinner and do dishes on that night. Also note that women may take advantage of your ABPS by assuming a victim stance and initiating post-show arguments. Should this occur, politely remind your mate that you are not the asshole by scurrying off to the kitchen to wax the linoleum.

This has been a message from the Sanjay Gupta.

Cable News Staggers Back to Work Hungover

2009-01-08T14:36:00.000-08:00

POOR cable news. They thought the ratings could go up and up and never come down. The election ratings orgy is over and Keith Olbermann (who bragged his numbers throughout) faces a self-esteem crash. It's heartbreaking to see CNN and MSNBC running Change ads, wishing the magic could never die, vying to be The Official Network of the Obama Presidency.

There have been some happenings besides Rachel Maddow's endless nationwide quinceañera. David Gregory's "Race to the White House" show has sunsetted, and the resulting vacuum has mercifully not been filled with some sad new iteration of a Dan Abrams show. As Gregory heads off to meet some press, the open time slot goes to...

David Shuster! Despite the yowwing mouth movements and extreme enunciation that sometimes make him seem like a hamming "Daily Show" correspondent, Shuster appears to be a competent journalist. It was a shame when he got bludgeoned for remarking that Chelsea Clinton was being pimped by the Clinton campaign. I feel more sorry for Chelsea Clinton than just about anybody (them? as parents? deargod), and she didn't deserve to be likened to a streetwalker, certainly not by a serious reporter. But all the same, she was, in fact, being pimped by the Clinton campaign.

FROM the ongoing reality show that is "Cable News Anchors: Race to the Bottom," I give you: Rick Sanchez. Wow this guy's a douche. Giant-headed, charming douche, but an incontrovertible douche nonetheless. He's like the high school math teacher slash wrestling coach who desperately needs the kids to think he's down. ("I'm on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter...")

In an impassioned onscreen and online commentary this week about the war in Gaza, Sanchez decried the use of religion as cover for violence. Except he said it like this: "You know who else thought it was cool to torture and kill because it was God’s will? Hitler."

Dag, Rick. You blew my mind.

CNN is resting assured that the whole "unbiased" brand looks good on them, as confirmed by Campbell Brown's new show "No Bias, No Bull." (Isn't that like an implied cussword right in the title?) I don't understand how Brown got the reputation for being the tough bitch interviewer. I've mostly seen her being bland and smiley. Here's how I would be:

Clebbie Polwick: Why does Anderson Cooper need to anchor "360" from disaster zones?
What CNN Would Say: To lend him gravitas?

CP: But does he really contribute any reporting? Nic Robertson and Christiane Amanpour and the Scottish-sounding dude have it covered, right? So he just seems like a lightweight deadweight then. And he fucks up his teleprompter reading more than usual.
WCNNWS: He's, like, in the thick of things. He's a Reporter.

CP: Okay, fine. Have him on the Gaza border. But then for the love of Christ, can't somebody else be at the anchor desk in the studio?
WCNNWS: But what would AC do from the Gaza border if not moderate discussions about Roland Burris? He can't just stand there with his...mic...in his hand.

CP: So you think it makes sense for him to be asking Gloria Borger and Joe Johns asinine time-delayed questions via satellite about matters whose pettiness stands in stark relief to the bloody crisis going on right behind him?
WCNNWS: Look at you! I'm gonna start calling you Little Campbell!

CP: You know he said John Podesta when he meant Leon Panetta, right? He asked Gloria Borger about John Podesta being named head of the CIA.
WCNNS: Do not take Levitra if you take nitrates for chest pain.

WELL it's going to be lonesome out on the Perilous Planet trail for AC Slater if Gupta becomes surgeon general. Like that guy needed a resume-booster. ("Yeah, investigative journalist, neurosurgeon...did I mention I can bench two thirty-five?") Okay, my secret theory? Obama is having to think up like a LOT a lot of people to name for administration jobs. So picture him and Rahmbo, up late, getting a little punchy, and Rahm's like, oh shit, who for SG? And Barack's like: SG! Sanjay Gupta! And Rahm's like: that's hilarious! Let's fuckin do it!