If You Can't Make Them Pay, Make Them Irrelevant.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has some strange ideas concerning the reality of life in America in the 21st Century. I don't need to spell them out. You've heard them. If not, ask David Hogg. Ask Cory Bush. Ask anybody with a soul.

More to the point, Marjorie Taylor Greene is an insurrectionist. She has aided & abetted sedition. She worked actively to overturn a legitimate American election. She has blood on her hands. It is beyond comprehension that she is still a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives.

That said...

I hate to be a buzzkill, but we all need to understand that Marjorie Taylor Greene is wildly popular in her extremely conservative district, as are Gohmert & Gaetz (& many of the insurrectionists) in theirs, for that matter. All they have to do to keep their jobs is keep their district happy; owning the libs seems to be enough. They don't give a shit about you or me & don't need to. 

The GOP leadership will not disavow her; indeed, they have embraced her. They don't seem inclined to take away her committee assignments, like they did to Steve King. Kevin McCarthy (who flew down to Mar-a-Lago the other day, in case you were wondering who's still running the Republican Party) just added her to the House Education & Labor Committee (just think about that), with more to come. 

Expulsion of a member of Congress requires a 2/3 majority, as per the Constitution. It’s not happening. Censure is only slightly more likely & outside of forcing the accused to stand in the well of the House & listen to the censure, it has very little effect, particularly on someone pathologically devoid of conscience. A reprimand is a worthless cop-out.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is unbound & not going anywhere; neither are very many of the Sedition Caucus. It's frustrating as hell; I know it is. They should all be in jail. We do still have laws in this country that address their behavior. Every last one of them should answer for their actions. All levels of Law Enforcement should be pressured to make them answer, because they don’t seem to have the will. LE is thinking twice about prosecuting the actual Capitol Hill insurrectionists. If that's even a question, expecting them to go after the people in power behind this attempted coup is hopeless. In a sane world, this wouldn't be a question. We are not living in a sane world.

Maybe justice is coming. I’m not optimistic. 

I’m looking past the individuals to the system. GA-14 is R+27. If Marjorie Taylor Greene actually vacated her office, whatever the circumstance, she would be replaced by someone with less criminal culpability but the same ideological taint. That goes for most of the seditionists. Unless the Republican Party is marginalized, politically, socially, & morally, the seditionists could be punished, but we will be no better off. Justice improves society; vengeance doesn't.

Don't tilt at windmills. We are not helpless & never will be. Our energy is better spent making sure the Democrats have a bulletproof majority in both houses, thereby rendering these traitors toothless. (We can deal with the Democrats & their flaws later.)

...& that’s a tall order. The Democratic advantage in the Senate is as razor-thin as it can get.  A lot of things can happen to alter a 50-50 balance; it probably won't maintain through this year.  One death, one resignation, one sufficiently pork-laden promise & the whole game changes beyond recognition. It might get better in 2022; the map is in the Democrats' favor. Of course, it was supposed to get much better than it did this time, too. (Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema & oh, how it pains me to say this, Susan Collins are the most powerful people in Washington right now, but that's a different story.) 

The Democratic majority in the House is hardly much safer than the Senate & right now it doesn't look good for 2022. The Republicans will gain enough seats in reapportionment alone to flip the House, & the party in the White House almost always loses seats in the midterms. That’s a fact, but it doesn’t need to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is where we should focus, not on one lunatic from Georgia. It isn't impossible.

America’s democracy has two broken legs & a punctured lung. It need to breathe on its own again before it can walk, or run, or kick ass. 

29 January 2021. Delray Beach FL.

©2021 Don McKennan

Lincoln Project screed incoming. You’ve been warned.

I’m sorry. These guys are living in my head. That's on me. I need to get this out of my system, so I can drop it.

The Lincoln Project played you. Sure, their ads were loads of fun; political voyeurism at its finest. I watched them, too. But they were entertainment. They were not the best political ads of all time. Not close. Good ads move markets & create some kind of capital for the ad-maker's clients: financial, political, social, whatever the client considers to be of value. Their ads did neither, while earning them $67M in ‘consultant fees.’ That was the point, all along, yknow. 

That’s your money, or it was. It’s theirs now. 

The reactions to the ads were always 'Fuck you' or 'Fucking-A', almost never 'Gee, they make a good point, I'd better think this over a little more.’

They played you.

The money you sent to The Lincoln Project could have gone to Sara Gideon or Cal Cunningham or Theresa Greenfield or Jaime Harrison or MJ Hegar or Steve Bullock or Jon Ossoff or Barbara Bollier or any Democratic House candidate in any swing district anywhere or any downballot race that might have helped to flip state party control going into reapportionment. There are thousands of things you could have done that might have actually mattered. Instead, you helped make Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, et al even wealthier than they already are. 

The Lincoln Project has never had a page on ActBlue.

Forget that 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' nonsense. They were never your friends. They never had your well-being at heart. Thirty seconds, maximum, of googling Rick Wilson would have told you that.  These guys have spent decades making tons of money by recognizing a mark when they saw one. If there's any principle at all behind their actions, it's because they can no longer control the monster they created. It's the lack of control that appalls them, not the monster.

But I know. Those ads felt really good to watch.

They played you, hard.

The chances of the Democrats flipping the Senate are bleak. They may yet lose the House. The 2020 census will lead to even more gerrymandering. Joe Biden is screwed. (To digress, President Biden, which, on top of everything else, is not yet a sure thing, will have to do a lot of things that will give us lefties fits if he wants to get anything done at all, but that’s another screed for another day.) This is what your schadenfreude bought you. 

The Lincoln Project played you. Like a violin. They can't wait to do it again. Have a nice day.

5 November 2020. Delray Beach FL.

©2020 Don McKennan

Melanoma.

May 2014

This is the time of year when I start wearing sunblock every time I go out the door. I should wear sunblock year-round & someday I will have to. But I hate sunblock. I hate the way it feels. I hate trying to wash it off. The stuff I use feels & smells like oatmeal. I hate it.

But I hate what might happen if I don't put on sunblock, more.

I've never really wanted to talk about this. Maybe I was ashamed. (That's stupid. I shouldn't be.) Maybe I thought if I said nothing, it wouldn't really be happening. (Oh, it's happening, all right.) Maybe I just hate getting the doe eyes from people.

It doesn't matter. I still, after all this time & all of the warnings, see lots of people doing some incredibly stupid things, proudly, & besides, I've let the cat out of the bag elsewhere. So here goes. It's too late to stop now.

In 1998, I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma & basal-cell carcinoma. I'm told that basal-cell carcinoma isn't such a big deal, but melanoma is a very big deal. I've also been told that it is unusual to have both. Lucky me.

The melanoma returned in 2001 & again in 2011 (& again in 2014 - see Update #2, below).

How did this happen? Who knows. Too many sunburns to the point of blisters when I was a kid. Too often thinking peeling was cool. We didn't know any better. Maybe none of those things. Maybe nothing at all. 

Oh well.

So far, I have been lucky. No chemo, no radiation, no hospitals. I go to a dermatologist every four three months. More often than not, he will take a sample from a spot that he doesn't like & send it out for biopsy. Most of the time, it comes back benign. Sometimes, it doesn't & he has to carve a larger chunk out of me.

By far, the worst of this has been repeatedly fighting with my insurance company:

-No, that was not cosmetic surgery & no, I don't care if that stuff is also wrinkle cream. I have cancer.

-I dunno. The only mail of mine that the Post Office manages to lose are the claims I mail to you.

-Funny. The claim I'm holding in my hands is perfectly legible. Maybe it's your scanner. (I get that one a lot.)

-No, that is not a duplicate claim. He really did two biopsies on me in one appointment. Would you like to see the scars? (I get that one even more.)

-Did I mention that this is a cancer patient that you're dicking around with?

I feel fine. I am fine. I'm doing what I gotta do, as best I can. I put on the sunblock. Sometimes Jane has to yell at me before I do it & she shouldn't have to do that. I wear hats. I expect to live a long goddamned time. I wish there were more shade along the Hudson, where I do most of my running. But no matter how much I sweat, the oatmeal doesn't budge, so there's that.

The last thing I want or need is for people to worry or think differently about me. If you thought I was an asshole before you read this, then I'm still an asshole.

I am OK.

As you might imagine, I hate beyond measure ever saying 'I am so glad today is over.' I am never glad that today is over.

One more thing. I generally don't hassle people about their sun worship. Maybe I should, but I know that negative reinforcement doesn't work, at best I'll get ignored & I'll just end up angry & frustrated. There are enough sources of anger & frustration in my life as it is; I don't need more. But I'll say it, just this once, while I have your attention: Please. I'm begging you. Wear sunblock. Stay out of the sun. Wear a hat. You don't look better with a tan & if you're luckier than I am, all it will do is make you look old too soon. But it could kill you. Sunburn is not funny, & your jokes about sunburn are truly not funny. Go fuck yourself if you think they are.

Thank you.

Update #1, 12 May: My cousin had a basal cell carcinoma removed today. He urges everybody to use sunblock & no, he does not intend to use any himself.

Update #2, 19 November: I've been diagnosed positive again. I had to go back for that larger carving today. Normally I do what I gotta do & otherwise just live my life, but, on days like this, when I see it in print, it isn't easy...& yes, the insurance company has already rejected my claim, twice. So. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. I bought a banjo.

Shameless Self-Promotion.

I now have two Twitter feeds:

@donmckennan - all of my usual nonsense, only in smaller doses;
@RightwingIrony - speaks for itself, literally.

Please follow, and enjoy. I thank you.

Live music on Broadway?

When I was the FOH mixer on Les Misérables at the Imperial Theater, over twenty years ago, on more than one occasion an irate customer came up to me during intermission & said something like 'You people have a lot of nerve. I didn't pay $60 to listen to recorded music on Broadway.' (Yeah, Broadway tickets were sixty bucks then. Imagine that.) My response always was, 'No. You didn't. This is all live music. Take a walk down to the front row & look into the orchestra pit. There are twenty-five musicians down there & they'd love to say hello to you.' The customer then said something like 'Oh, thank goodness, there is still live music on Broadway after all. Thank you thank you,' & walked away, relieved & happy.

So. Not quite ten years later, when I was mixing Saturday Night Fever at the Minskoff Theater (tickets were around $100 by that time), a customer came up to me during intermission & started raving about how good the show was, what a good time her whole family was having, & the show sounded wonderful; how long did it take to get it recorded so well? I said, 'No ma'am, it's not recorded, it's live music, why don't you go down front & have the musicians introduce themselves to you, they'd like nothing better,' and she shrugged & said, 'Hm. Whatever,' & walked back to her seat. This also happened more than once.

Sure, this is anecdotal. But this suggests to me that in less than ten years Broadway audiences went from demanding live music as part of a live theatrical experience, to thinking the music was recorded & not caring when told it was live, at roughly twice the ticket price. Tickets are half again as expensive today, and that's not counting premium pricing, 'airline' pricing, scalpers...

I tell Broadway musicians whenever I have the chance that this is what is gonna kill things for them, not synthesizers replacing violins. Some day, some producer is going to have the balls to actually try canned music on Broadway & if by some miracle the show is any good, it will sell out anyway, because the audiences think it's canned now, and they're ok with it, if they think about it at all.

It's already happening on the road. I found myself thinking about all of this after reading a story on the AFM website written by Mark Mulé, a musician who went out with a non-union tour of The Wizard of Oz:

But perhaps the greatest evil and the most egregious crime perpetrated against the actors, musicians, and most importantly, the audience, was the use of the virtual orchestra machine.

Non-union producers of musical theatre are absolutely in love with this mechanical monstrosity.

...

As some of you may know, the virtual orchestra machine is operated by tapping a single key on a miniature keyboard which triggers a computer simulated “orchestra.”

Thus the title of “tapper” is given to the operator of this crime against humanity masquerading as “musical accompaniment” for a so-called “Broadway tour.”

The thing sounded like crap, broke down several times per week (even nightly for a while), and sounded like crap (yes, I realize I wrote that twice).

Non-union tours are almost without exception a fraud perpetrated upon an unsuspecting & gullible public. But, despite generally bad reviews, this specific tour has been out at least since 2009, selling tickets & making money. Until that stops, this is only gonna get worse. It's a matter of time before this 'virtual orchestra' stops sounding like crap & doesn't break down repeatedly. Those are probably the only reasons we haven't seen it in New York, yet.

But there's more. Broadway shows have grown progressively louder over the years, so that now, almost nothing acoustic emanates from the stage or the pit anymore. It's all in the sound system. The actor's voice is no longer his; it belongs to a black box, fifty feet away, & the orchestra is no different.

I have been told that loud shows make it easier for the audience to understand what is going on & draws them in. I disagree; I think the opposite happens. I've watched audience members stare at the speakers instead of the stage, during book scenes & musical scenes alike. If the actor's voice is removed from his mouth, a wall goes up that inhibits his ability to tell the story; the audience is pushed away, not drawn in.

That's my story & I'm sticking to it.

If it is unforgivable that audiences don't demand live music for the money they're paying, or that they don't insist that live theater be performed by live human beings, top to bottom, at least it's easy to understand why they can't tell the difference.

If I were of a suspicious nature, I would think that this steady increase in volume is no accident. If nobody can tell whether a live orchestra is playing, then nobody will miss them when they're gone.

All of this is taking place in a culture where everything is spoonfed to us, usually through earbuds. Sitting in a theater, elbows on knees, & concentrating, really listening, rarely happens anymore.

Ironically, all of this significantly increases the job security of people like me. They're gonna need sound people more than ever.

Stan Musial at the Polo Grounds.

I don't remember the New York Giants or the Brooklyn Dodgers. I was three when they left for California. When my dad was growing up, New York had three ballclubs, and you were allowed to like only one; you had to hate the other two. Those were the rules. My dad’s team was the Giants. When they were gone, his heart was broken. He blamed everything on Mean Old Walter O'Malley. It wasn't bad enough that Mean Old Walter O'Malley had convinced Poor Old Horace Stoneham to go west with him; Mean Old Walter O'Malley had talked Poor Old Horace Stoneham into moving my dad's beloved Giants to cold, rainy San Francisco, while Mean Old Walter O'Malley took the hated Dodgers to sunny Los Angeles. It was too much to bear.

My dad was, and is, a National League fan. He may have hated the Dodgers, but at least they were a National League team. So, with the Dodgers and Giants (sorry, Dad, the Giants and the Dodgers) gone, as far as my dad was concerned, there was no Major League Baseball in New York. He refused to take us to see the minor league team in the Bronx. My brother and I knew all about Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and Bobby Richardson and Tommy Tresh and Tony Kubek and Clete Boyer and Moose Skowron and Yogi Berra and Elston Howard and Whitey Ford from our friends. We had trouble understanding how the team in the Bronx, who beat the holy crap out of everybody year after year, could be the minor league team, but that's just how it was. My dad said we would understand when we were older.

It wasn't until the Mets started playing in 1962, and there was National League baseball in New York once more, that my dad took us to a ballgame. We went up to the Polo Grounds on Sunday, 8 July 1962, to see the Mets play the St Louis Cardinals, who, nearing the end of a long dry spell, were about to start beating the holy crap out of everybody, too.

The Polo Grounds was huge. (For years, my brother and I thought that every ballpark was huge. It wasn't until we went to Shibe Park in Philadelphia in 1968, by that time gloriously renamed Connie Mack Stadium, that we learned that most ballparks were not huge, and looked nothing like the Polo Grounds.) The foul lines were short, but the centerfield wall was 483 feet from home plate. The team clubhouses were beyond centerfield, up a flight of stairs that were on the field. The resulting niche pushed the dead centerfield wall back to 505 feet. Vic Wertz' shot in the 1954 World Series that Willie Mays caught over his shoulder would have been a home run anywhere else, by 50 feet. There were vertical iron girders throughout the stadium that managed to block the view of anything important, without fail.

The Mets lost, 15-1. I was only eight, and even I could tell they weren't very good. The Mets committed four errors; Frank Thomas, their best hitter but something of a defensive liability, had two of them. They only managed three hits. I really didn't understand how this could be the major league team in New York.

But my dad was in heaven. He was finally sitting in a National League ballpark with his sons, the same ballpark he had sat in with his father (more often his grandfather, actually; my grandfather didn't care too much for baseball), watching guys he remembered from what were already being called the Old New York Giants; the Old Brooklyn Dodgers, too.

The Mets scored their one run in the bottom of the ninth, on Felix Mantilla’s triple and a groundout. Even the Cardinals' pitcher, Bob Gibson, hit a home run. But the Cardinals' left-fielder, Stan Musial, forty-one years old, hit three mammoth home runs and was removed in the eighth inning. My dad said he must be tired. When Stan Musial left the game, he had to walk across the outfield to get to the clubhouse and the crowd cheered, so he walked a little slower.

My brother and I had finally seen our first baseball game. Now that we had seen a National League game, my dad relented and took us to see the minor league team in the Bronx, so we got to see all the guys that our friends had been telling us about. They even beat the Red Sox that day, in the bottom of the ninth.

The Mets moved to Shea Stadium in 1964, practically walking distance from our house in Corona. We got to see a lot of games in the next few years (particularly when the Mets played the San Francisco Giants), but I wasn't present at a game that the Mets won until 1967.

The Polo Grounds was torn down in April 1964, right around Opening Day. We moved to Jersey in 1968.

The night before our first game, Stan Musial hit a home run in his last at-bat. Combined with the three he hit at our first game, he hit four home runs in four consecutive at-bats, which tied a major league record. Monday's Times dedicated half a page to the game, and Musial's feat. Thanks to Stan Musial, I was able, years later, to find out the exact date of my first baseball game, complete with a big spread in the Times.

Stan Musial died yesterday, at the age of 92. Thanks, Stan.

(...& special thanks to William Austin Campbell, Sr., whose photograph of Stan Musial I cribbed.)

A 9-11 T-Shirt.

I was buying a bagel on the way to work this morning & there was a woman on line wearing a brand-new ‘9-11 Memorial’ t-shirt (with an ad for Tishman Construction prominently displayed on the sleeve). Not a ‘Never Forget’ t-shirt or an ‘In Loving Memory’ t-shirt. That mighta been OK.

No. It was a tourist trap souvenir t-shirt. How exactly is that different from an Auschwitz t-shirt or a Srebrenica t-shirt or a Darfur t-shirt or a Columbine t-shirt?

At least it was black, but I think that was more Manhattan cool than anything else.

There is a serious disconnect these days between the sacrifices, the hardships, the tragedies, the insanity that makes up the lives & deaths around us, & the willingness or even the ability of the rest of us to see it. We have no shared American experience anymore. No shared grief or anger or despair or joy. Or love. We have become a nation of people who hate our neighbors, both next door & around the world, because we think they have something that should be ours & why should we share, anyway?

I had hoped that Ground Zero would remain...I dunno, hallowed ground. Sacred. That's strange coming from me, I guess. Maybe 'sacred' is the wrong word, because, in a sense, it is a monument, to how quickly people will kill (& avenge those killings) in God's name. An invisible monument, to be sure, but still there. To most people, it has become one more background for one more vacation picture of the kids. Something to do before the Broadway show or the Yankees game. A reminder to nobody. An homage lost & forgotten. An inconvenience.

9-11 no longer has any meaning. After just 10 short years, it is just an excuse to deny each other's patriotism. Or sell t-shirts.

Update, 20 May 2014: The 9/11 Museum is open. It has a gift shop.

Way to go, counselor.

Lemme see if I understand this. The Solicitor General of the United States, with months, maybe years to prepare, stood before the Supreme Court today and could not answer the one question that anybody who has been paying attention knew was coming.

At least Carlos Beltran got froze by a curveball, didn't he?

Un-f*cking-believeable.

The Photograph I Didn't Take.

 It was the last day of our vacation. We had just finished a week of camping our way around Lake Ontario & had spent most of September 10^th driving back to our house in Sullivan County under a cold front. If we had left 90 minutes earlier or later, we could have made the entire trip in sunshine. That storm also pushed another storm traveling up the coast out to sea, leaving behind the beautiful weather that we all remember so well.

Our backyard had three ancient willow trees that always shed branches when it rained, so that’s where I was, cleaning up, when my brother called the next morning.

Jane answered & Dave said, Are you watching television?

No.

Turn it on. Now.

What channel?

It doesn’t matter.

I was on the phone with him when the North Tower fell.

On September 12^th, back in the city, Dave & I rode our bicycles downtown to see what we could see. On my way to meet him, I saw a car parked on West 77^th Street, covered in dust.

The cops had all traffic blocked at Houston Street, but from years of running along the East River, I knew the little downtown streets pretty well. Getting inside was easy.

Dave wanted to go back to his old apartment in the West Village. Walking out of his front door every day, the first thing he would see would be the towers. At Christopher & Washington, he got off his bicycle in the middle of the intersection & let it drop. He stood in the middle of the street, arms at his sides, staring up at the empty sky.

I took so many pictures that day, but I didn’t take that one. I don’t know why.

We got within two or three blocks of The Pile. Everything was covered in dust, sometimes ankledeep. Papers & shoes. Demolished cars & trucks, towed just far enough away.

At some point I realized that we were serving no useful purpose & had no acceptable reason for being there, taking pictures of rescue workers with nobody to rescue. I thought about what was in the dust I was walking on & I felt like a creep.

The fires burned for weeks. You could smell them from 30 miles away, or more.

In 2002, I worked the first Tribeca Film Festival. Every time we stepped outside, day or night, we would see truckloads of debris being loaded onto barges for transport to labs, hoping to find something, for somebody.

Jane & I sold our house upstate a couple years later. Dave died a few months after that. The 9/11 photograph I didn't take is the one that's stuck in my head.

All those people.

Welcome Back.

OK, that was a lot of fun. We all had a good laugh or two at the expense of fools, & that’s the best kind of laugh. ‘If you can’t think of a good Rapture joke, it’s not the end of the world.’ That was my favorite.

Y’know, I can’t help but think that the people who were that sure they were going, at the end of the day, weren’t going anywhere. If the Rapture had happened for real, we would all have been very surprised at who stayed & who left.

But we’re all still here & what sucked about life on Earth last week still sucks. Legitimate problems that gave this joker in Oakland just a little more ammunition to convince people that the world deserves to end, they’re still around. Some of the other stuff, like homophobia & good old-fashioned Christian intolerance, isn’t what I’m talking about. Those are problems, to be sure, just not in the way most apocalyptic Christians imagine.

So how about we dispense with the myths & fantasies & fairytales. Let’s stop waiting for dreams to come true. We could actually try to fix the world that we live in, here & now.

I know. Fat chance.

But we do get to play this End of Days game all over next year, when the Mayan calendar runs out.

Children of the Rapture.

So, should the Rapture NOT come Saturday, what happens to the children?

We’re all giggling up our sleeves at these poor delusionals that have exhausted their life savings to warn the heathen scum among us that it’s not too late to repent & be saved.

(Let’s just think about that for a second & then quickly move on: the End of Days is upon us & people are spending everything they have on advertising. Madison Avenue has won. Maybe it really is over, after all.)

When the End doesn’t come, they’re gonna be broke, because of this snakeoil salesman in California. (Don’t misunderstand me. I have no sympathy for them. None.) Is he gonna reimburse them? Not bloody likely. He’ll just pick another day, like the last time. Maybe he really believes this stuff. More’s the pity.

I could go on at length about how here we are, an allegedly modern society, & this nonsense still has astonishing traction. But, like I said before, what I really want to know is, what about the children? This wasn’t their idea. I doubt that they were seriously consulted. What did they do to deserve whatever comes Sunday, after their parents throw it all away on Saturday? Why are the sins (yeah, I said sins) of the father always visited upon the son? Are the infidels, atheists & other sundry unbelievers who these pious souls were willing to pray for, but happy to leave behind, supposed to step up? On Friday, we weren’t good enough. Will God provide? He’s lied to them already, at least once.

All I’m saying is, if you gotta roll the dice, then roll ‘em, but don’t bet your kids. There’s no such thing as a sure thing.

What about the children?

Metablog.

Blogspot has been down for over 18 hours. Something about maintenance gone bad, with spectacular conspiracy theories floating around. Since I’m trying to avoid thinking about how long it’s been since I last checked my hit count, I thought this might be a good time to muse about how this whole blog thing is going for me. Oh, & for you too. Of course.

Yes, it has come to this: I’m gonna write a blog about my blog, & I can’t promise that this will be the only time. You will see this as either an exercise in ironic self-reference (if you like it) or self-important narcissism (if you don’t). I’m OK with it, either way.

I’ve been writing this blog for a couple weeks now. In that time, I’ve tried to explain what I intend to do, told a joke or two, even ranted a little. So far, so good.

The main reason for doing this at all is a desire to find my voice, to see if I really can be the writer that I have imagined myself to be, without ever really doing it, for so many years. The answer so far is, Maybe. Maybe I can. I dunno yet. But I’m averaging about 40 hits a day, so somebody is actually reading this stuff, maybe even people that don’t know me. That blows my mind.

Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.

A few months ago, I performed my own songs, for the first time ever, at an open mic thing. Yeah, I know, it was planned by friends, produced by friends, & largely peopled by friends. It was quite possibly the friendliest audience I’ll ever see, & it went very, very well. I was scared shitless anyway & didn’t really enjoy it, or rather, I enjoyed it just enough to want to do it again & scare the shit out of myself all over. The most amazing part of the experience was the realization that there may actually be an audience for my bizarre little songs. Who knew.

I kinda feel the same way about this blog business. I would hope that I could provide wry commentary on life as we know it, the eternal search for irony. I plan to be funny soon, preferably when it’s on purpose. Make a contribution. But at the end of the day, I’m afraid that it really is mostly navel-contemplation. Me, expressing my opinion. Me, writing a slow-motion autobiography. Me, me, me. Hopefully, something of substance will come out of this. That's not for me to judge. I’m just as amazed at people reading this stuff, with the distinct possibility that some are coming back to see what nonsense I’ll drum up next, as I am at people liking my songs. It’s fervently desired & thoroughly unexpected. The difference is, with writing a blog, I don’t hafta stand up in front of people. This is a little easier. Just a little.

Oh hey, Blogspot’s back. For me, anyway. Me, me, me. See ya.

Enos Slaughter.

I wish I could take credit for this story, but I can’t. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but, frankly, I don’t care. I can’t even give proper attribution, because Google has let me down, this once. So I will repeat it as best as I can remember, heavily paraphrased.

Many years ago, I was watching a baseball game on television, & the announcer was talking about an interview he had heard, many years before that, with Enos Slaughter, Hall of Fame outfielder who played his best years for the St. Louis Cardinals. The conversation turned to Ty Cobb. The interviewer asked Enos Slaughter what he thought Ty Cobb’s batting average would be if he were playing today (the late 1960’s).

Enos Slaughter said, Probably .310 or .320.

The interviewer said, Is that all? He hit .367 lifetime, over .400 three times.

Enos Slaughter said, You have to remember, he’d be over 80 if he were alive today.

Happy Mother's Day...

The Mothers, Passaic NJ, 1974. Photo ©2011 Don McKennan.

...to all Mothers everywhere, especially my own.

In The Mailroom.

In our building, there’s a bulletin board in the mail room. It usually has fairly innocuous stuff on it – co-op board notices, misdelivered mail, guitar lessons, ‘Anybody got a cleaning lady they can recommend?’, like that. Over the years we’ve lived here I’ve paid it almost no attention.

But we were checking our mail today & my wife says, Look at this. Tacked to the bulletin board was a business card that simply said

WORK SETS YOU FREE.

No name, no address, no phone number, nothing else.

I have to admit, the point was lost on me until Jane repeated it, in German: Arbeit Macht Frei. The words at the entrance to Auschwitz. Somebody went to the trouble (& perhaps the expense) to print up at least one business card, guaranteed to upset people, frighten people, piss people off, & posted it anonymously, with very little possibility of witnessing any reaction. A random act of stupid. At the very least, this coward, who probably lives in my building, thinks this kind of shit is funny. Outside of Mel Brooks, very few people can make Nazis funny. This, in particular, I don’t think is funny. Jane is even less amused than I am, but then, she would be; she has the relatives with the tattoos on their arms.

I really don’t want to ascribe any political motive to this. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just an asshole doing what assholes do.

But I don’t get it.

Skippy.

In the days & weeks after 9/11, President Bush would not refer to Osama bin Laden by name. He called him ‘the evil one,’ & such. I thought that was a mistake, because that sort of non-naming conferred power in him that he didn’t deserve; it gave him mythic status. I thought we should give him a name that would cheapen him, trivialize him. I called him Skippy. It caught on, a little.

So Skippy is dead. Good. That’s good. I only wish there were a hell so he could burn in it.

The Rainbow.

‘It is inconceivable that this campaign to portray Mr. Obama as the insidious “other” would have been conducted against a white president.’ – New York Times editorial, 4/28/2011.
 

I was hoping to start this blog with some sedate, non-confrontational, non-partisan, happyface stuff; there’s a 'popcorn kittens' video going viral that would have been perfect. Yknow, so I could suck in some repeat visits. Build up my hit counts. Become the darling of the advertising world. Convince everybody that I’m a rational, caring human being, a funny guy. Acquire a fan club. Drooling sycophants and fawning acolytes by the thousands. Raw, naked power.

Oh well.

It probably wouldn’t have worked, anyway. America in the 21^st Century doesn’t go for bland. Being bland & boring doesn’t work. Being loud works, even if you have nothing to say. Especially if you have nothing to say. 


Bland is not the same as empty, though. Empty works. So does bigotry, which is basically the same thing. Which leads me to…

(One of my rightwing friends has already advised me that I have lost the ability to look at the issues rationally & nothing I’m about to say will change his mind.)

…this birther bullshit. It is bigotry. It is racism. It is intolerance. It is choosing to be stupid because having to adapt to a changing world & drag oneself kicking & screaming out of the 16^th century is too bloody difficult. And it is indistinguishable from, & part & parcel of, The Tea Party, the tail wagging the Republican dog.

It has to stop. Now.

If you don’t think Obama should be President on political grounds or philosophical grounds or moral grounds or, God help us, religious grounds, then whatever, do what you gotta do. Vote him out in 2012. Campaign hard. Be a positive part of The Process. If you don’t like Obama’s policies (assuming you’re having better luck than I am at figuring out what they are), fine. I’m not happy with Obama, either, but probably for very different reasons. Let's discuss it like adults.

But anybody who thought Obama is not an American citizen before he released his birth certificate is a bigot. Anybody who still thinks so since he released his birth certificate is a delusional bigot. If you don’t like the word, too bad. Too Got-damned bad. That’s what you are. You would never have pulled this crap on a white guy.

The Tea Party is nothing but white supremacy with a populist hood over its empty head.

But, like I said, racism sells in America. It works. It gets you where you want to go. A Republican Oklahoma state representative declares that black people don’t work as hard as white people & then apologizes. In Missouri, the Republican Speaker of the House suggests that flooding a predominantly black town is preferable to flooding largely white-owned farmland & then apologizes. A Southern California GOP official emails a picture depicting the President of the United States as an ape, with apes for parents, & then apologizes. Do you see the same pattern I see? Spew racism, rile the base, pocket a few votes for next time, & then apologize to the press, and repeat as necessary.

It pains me greatly to say this, but America is not ready for a nonwhite President. Not yet. Not this one, not any other one. We’re still fighting the Civil War. I was stunned to find out that people still say ‘nigra.’ Silly me.

But whether you like it or not, folks, America is changing color.

The Rainbow is coming. In our lifetimes, non-Hispanic whites will become a minority in America. Sooner or later, our elected officials will start to resemble our population. Of course, this can be delayed indefinitely through slander, intimidation, fear, terror, all the things Donald Trump is doing right now, or other tactics that are much, much worse. But The Rainbow is coming & it's inevitable. If you’d drop the blinders for two minutes, you’d see that it is a good thing. It’s a very good thing. It’s a great thing. We can accept it, embrace it, and live up to the promises we made to the world hundreds of years ago, or we can be South Africa, pre-Mandela.

It’s The Rainbow or apartheid. You choose.

(Yeah, I know. I said that things had to stay civil here. But it’s my blog. Sorry.)

It Starts Here.

Hi. My name is Don McKennan. I’m Dave’s Brother. I’m a stagehand. Dave was, too.

My brother Dave died in an automobile accident several years ago. I miss him today as much as I did the day he died. I still see him walking down the street, almost every day, & I can still hear him calling me from down the block, somewhere behind me. But no. He’s gone. He’s gone & he’s not coming back.

Dave was a stutterer. A stammerer, actually. Watching or listening to him try to unbottle himself was always painful, but I thought that spitting out the word he was stuck on for him, whether out of compassion or impatience, would be worse, for both of us. Not surprisingly, Dave never used a hundred words when ten would do. (I, as you shall see, am the opposite.) Besides, he was usually worth the wait.

Some years before he died, I was very surprised when he told me that he was running for union office. Stagehands can be a very tough audience. As Dave put it, All you have to do is stand up at a union meeting & introduce yourself, & immediately one third of the membership will hate your guts. In our culture, ‘fucking asshole’ is generally a term of endearment.

I asked him what made him do it, because public speaking was clearly not his strong suit. He said, After years of letting other people control the debate & being reluctant or afraid to contribute, the day came when I felt like I needed to be the person standing on the soapbox.

I said, Good for you, then. I’m not there yet.

He said, You’ll get there. You have more to say than I do.

(More words, certainly. More substance, I dunno.)

I said, How will I know when I’m ready.

He said, When the time comes, you’ll know. You can’t predict it, & you can’t force it.  He said, You might not even be aware that it’s your time to get up on the soapbox until, suddenly, you realize that you’ve already been on it for half an hour, railing against the gods. Or tilting at windmills.

He lost that election, and held a victory party anyway.

Well. Perhaps my moment has come. I read so much drivel these days that passes for rational thought & reasoned discourse, tales ‘told by an idiot, all sound & fury, signifying nothing.’ The way I look at it, I can’t possibly do any worse.

So. It starts. Here come a few more idiot’s tales. Just what the world needs.

It’s hard to tell. Maybe I’ve been there half an hour already.