Petesophizing...

Song Covers I Now Like Better Than The Originals

2009-09-05T13:46:00.004-05:00

I Want You Back (Jackson 5) - Steel Train

Won't Get Fooled Again (The Who) - Richie Havens

Streets Of Philadelphia (Bruce Springsteen) - Richie Havens

Here Comes The Sun (The Beatles/George Harrison) - Richie Havens

Strawberry Fields Forever (The Beatles/Lennon/McCartney) - The Bobs

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Bob Dylan) - Madeleine Peyroux

Helpless (Neil Young) - K.D. Lang

A Less Severe Kind Of PTSD

2009-09-03T15:36:00.007-05:00

I've been diagnosed as having intrusive memories--basically, a less severe kind of PTSD.

I have many intrusive thoughts and they include an image of my father on his deathbed and my view from an operating table surveying the enormous garden tools surgeons were about to use to cut into my chest. I suppose these two would support the claim of researchers that vivid, unshakeable memories are formed at moments of high emotion.

These two would be among the most frequent and most unnerving in my Rolodex. But I think they're less impact-ful than one that came shuddering in again this afternoon.

It was my first day at my work-study job at Northwestern University. After running an errand for a professor I returned to the desk where I was sorting some papers only to find it occupied by a physically grotesque maintenance man, a big, older guy in the final weeks before his retirement. I told him I needed to sit down and do my work. He said, "Sure I'll move. You're my bread and butter."

Freaks me out every time. God, I don't want to become that guy.

A Fan And A Supporter

2009-08-16T13:47:00.009-05:00

I wanted just to receive Sarah Palin's Facebook missives but I fear I'm now listed as a "fan" and among her "supporters". Am I right? I was supposed to just subscribe to her notes? I feel like an elderly Florida Jewish woman pressing a ballot to my forehead and accidentally voting for Pat Buchanan.

I hope I can sort this out and that Facebook isn't guilty of offering a false dilemma. I want to be able to choose among "Subscribe", "Fan" and "Support". It's bad enough we can only have "Friends" and not "People I Want To Keep Tabs On For Whatever Reason".

I'm a fan of Mel Gibson but I don't want to be viewed as supporting him. I'm a supporter of nearly all fast food chains but not a fan. I would subscribe to Bernie Madoff's notes from prison if he were allowed to use Facebook but I wouldn't want to be anywhere near the words "fan" or "supporter".

I am a fan of Maureen Dowd and a supporter through my purchases of the Sunday New York Times. I see "Modo" has in today's op ed made an excellent semantic data compression by calling Sarah Barracuda, "Sarahcuda". I was on that one a long time ago.

While sorting out this death panel nonsense Maureen Dowd mentions the movie Logan's Run. I would never be able to call forth that excellent illuminating reference because in Logan's Run, if you watch carefully, you can see a woman's ass cheeks. (The movie has a euthanasia theme? Really?)

I'm going to allow myself to be listed as a fan and supporter of Sarah Palin because I want to try to figure out, without the benefit of computer-driven textual analysis, whether she's actually writing her own Facebook Notes.

Also, I secretly root for her and I don't know why.

Also, I want to make clever remarks on "secondary meanings" and such. For example: In my view the most important sentence in all of her recent notes is this: Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement... The rest of the sentence, paragraph, note can't compare to the power of these words for a woman fighting for legitimacy in the national dialogue.

Score one for the "Sarahsaurus" <==invoking both dinosaurs coexisting with humans and a thesaurus.

Gilbert Gottfried At Caroline's Tonight

2009-08-13T21:44:00.003-05:00

Saw Gilbert Gottfried's standup at Caroline's tonight with married friends Kim and JK and their friend Joe.

As we approach the doorman I notice JK is holding a $20 bill along with our numbered ticket. He's planning to bribe our way in early and with better seats. I ask him, "Does this work? Do people actually do this anymore?" "I don't know", JK says, "I've never tried it before." I tell him he's my hero.

The doorman stops us because the number on our ticket is too high. JK says, "Is there any way we can get in here right now?" "No", says the doorman. JK says "There's no way we can get in here right now and get a better table?" "No", the doorman says. "There's no way we can get in here right now?", JK intones. Excruciating.

I don't know JK all that well but there's always been an easy connection between us. Certainly Kim is the grounding wire for that connection. Some time has passed since she and I, with no small affection, weathered her twenties together (my early thirties) in a friendship full of dark humor and dark psychological alleys. Looking back, I think there was a kind of unspoken assumption that if we could sort her out we would be accomplishing something bigger than just a couple of people talking in Washington Square Park. We didn't get very far.

But I became her accomplice in the David Mamet sense--by listening. And we established a bond which has weathered even long periods of no communication (mostly my fault). JK knows me almost exclusively through stories of me and Kim from those chaotic--and fun--days nearly two decades ago. The comfort level, the trust, between JK and me is an especially wonderful feeling, coming as it does through the conduit of Kim's memories spoken within their marriage.

Maybe this is saying more about me, but also in this little doorman scenario I flash on the Wisconsin upbringing JK and I share. I once felt the need to shave in a truckstop mensroom just because, like Everest, that living cliche was there. By my own goofy calculus, JK is taking a similar psychic flyer.

I have a little running commentary about how Kim's a true New Yorker, and grew up a rich kid. She knows how to get things done. Whereas JK and I are weighed down by Wisconsin-ness, and all that entails. There's an implicit test of menschness when dealing with a doorman. Of course this has nothing to do with JK's real competence. What a shame he seems headed for no outcome at all. His offbeat and inspired gesture is falling in the woods with no one to hear it. Shouldn't the doorman at least make off with the money while delivering no improvement in our entertainment situation and robbing us like huckleberries?

FINALLY the doorman sees the twenty dollar bill. He says, "You want to get in here right now?" JK says "Yeah" and hands him the twenty. JK is my hero. "You want to get in here right now?" the doorman says. "See if you can get us a good table" JK says. Did I mention JK is my hero?The doorman calls over a waiter, or host, to escort us to a table. Just then Kim jumps into the arms of Gilbert Gottfried's wife, who we're informed has reserved us a great table in advance. Kim tells her "I wasn't sure you'd gotten my email."

I was having a great time already. A really great time.

And Gilbert Gottfried's lunacy advanced the night into the sublime. The unforgettable bit for me was this: Gilbert describes checking into a motel with suicidal intensions. Jesus arrives in a vision to inspire him to live onward. Heading out the door, Jesus offers to make a gesture as long as he's stopped by earth, like maybe ending all wars. Gilbert says, no, go on, get outta here. But then begs Jesus, cajole's him, nags him, to take a piece of cake with him.

Manson Still Interests Me

2009-08-09T19:13:00.004-05:00

The fortieth anniversary of the Tate-La Bianca murders...

John Waters has blogged about being friends with Manson girl Leslie Van Houten. I like this quote:

She was pretty, out of her mind, rebellious, with fashion-daring, a good haircut, and a taste for LSD -- just like the girls in my movies. Instead of being a "good soldier" for Charlie and participating in the murders of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca, which she certainly believed was the right thing to do at the time, I wish she had been with us in Baltimore on location for Pink Flamingos the day Divine ate dog shit for real...

Never been a big fan of Charlie Rose as an interviewer. But his is the best interview of Manson.

Launch Sequence To A New Persona

2009-06-28T14:34:00.006-05:00

My dance vocabulary is not sufficient, but even I can identify in Michael Jackson's breakthrough performance in 1983 the following:

Charlie Chaplin

Fred Astaire
Elvis, of course
Chuck Berry
Karate kicks
Vaudville poses (how many bows does he take in the middle of the number, not just after it?)

There are probably a half dozen references (samples) I recognize but can't pinpoint. (Who in the pantheon used to reach out and shake hands with an imaginary companion?) Like Shakespeare's play Hamlet, there's something for everybody in this dance.

I was going to write that, like the play Hamlet, Jackson's breakthrough moment, the one that survives the passage of time, is nearly incoherent. Fragmented. Not an artistic whole. At the very least Jackson's a long way from heeding the character Hamlet's own advice to the players: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action. Does anybody believe his naive, misdirected hip thrusts could have anything to do with a paternity scenario?

But this morning I realized there is an organizing idea, or maybe a frame tale, to this stylishly patchwork five minutes. His dance, at age 25, is really the dance of a teenager. (So are his limbs.) It's supremely well executed, with flashes of individuality, yes. But those flashes leap from between pop culture references. His overarching persona is a talented kid who's watched too much TV having a Risky Business moment. And like Tom Cruise acting out Bob Seger's Old Time Rock And Roll, incredibly, Michael Jackson is lip-syncing. Pretending. The overall effect, like the moment for Cruise's character in the movie, is to invoke a state of sexual inexperience, which is maybe a state of anticipation, but one certainly dominated by the imaginary.

If you think of him as a teenager at a fantasy distance from the song's decidedly sexual groove and its lyrics of post-coidal anguish, the performance suddenly takes shape as an artistic whole. The nonsensically nonsexual juxtapositions (like invoking Fred Astaire) make sense in a bedroom adolescent world. And the performance becomes, it is, in front of millions, so intimate.

I wonder, though, if at least two aspects of this performance might have reverberated negatively in Jackson's head over the years. First, that the launch sequence for earning gazillions with worldwide fame was so full of unabashed borrowing. The old cliche is that a mature artist doesn't borrow, but steals. Later he would not steal, or borrow, but buy Paul McCartney's catalog--the exploited kid becoming the exploiter receiving checks every time Sir Paul wanted to tour his own music. How that must have felt, especially when his stake in the songs of the Beatles became his principal (perhaps only) income asset. How much better it would have been for him (now rotting in a funeral home) to retain McCartney's friendship and creative kinship. Jackson did have his own well to draw from.

And, as mentioned--and I didn't remember this thinking back to first seeing this performance--the launch of Michael Jackson, the gloved one, was lip-synced. Thanks to YouTube, his solo legacy may be reformatted with thumbnails of lip-syncing at key junctures, a blow to the performance chops he surely had. How did he get away with it when others have been so lambasted? The Superbowl looks pathetic to me. All hat and no cattle. To be sure his voice, complicated by real physical problems, was nowhere close to the vocal strengths of his Mount Rushmore companions, Elvis and Sinatra, both of whom could achieve lift-off with little or no accompaniment. Elvis liked stagecraft and pyrotechnics, but he didn't need them. Jackson's "I'm a fake" panics, like those experienced by all performers, must have run even deeper than his talent.

I hadn't seen this performance in years. It brought out in me real sadness, where before I think my only emotion was a small sense of relief--at not having to watch this guy twist in the wind any longer.

I Can't Help Myself

2009-06-26T17:15:00.001-05:00

The Boston Herald cover wins...

Sportsbras (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-06-10T15:09:00.001-05:00

I Will Be Brief (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-05-25T01:29:00.001-05:00

From an interesting young economist named Ian Ayres (I've read his book called Supercrunchers). Perpend:

People who say that they’re going to be brief often aren’t.
Indeed, the very time taken to say that you are going to be brief works to negate the claim.

Polonius's is a supernegation of his own claim, a negation deluxe: Since brevity is the soul of wit and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.

I have a bachelor's in economics. I'm thrilled with a new energy in the field for applying the powerful tools of economic analysis to genuine, everyday problems--something I didn't really encounter at Northwestern in the early Eighties--problems like speakers droning on and on. Though not exactly a real economic study, this blog post offers a refreshing look at a talented economist's mind in motion.

Why people start with "I'll be brief":

Of course, one of the strongest reasons for starting with this statement of intent is as a soft form of commitment. I’m giving the audience permission to cast aspersions toward me if I speak for too long.

The problem:

One of the problems is that people underestimate how long they speak.

A simple study:

It would be useful at Quaker meetings (or other places where people share the floor) to have speakers immediately, upon finishing an oration, estimate how long they spoke. I bet initially many people would report that they speak fewer minutes than they actually do.

Or (like asking people if they think they are better or worse than the average driver), you could ask them if they think they generally speak longer or shorter than the average meeting speaker. I’m guessing most people believe they are more concise than their average neighbor.

A proposed solution:

Better yet, groups might develop a norm to have speakers publicly estimate how many minutes they intend to speak before they begin: Instead of saying, “I’m going to be brief,” it would be a stronger commitment to say to the moderator, “Please interrupt me if I speak more than X minutes.”

The problem of speakers droning on at conferences and meetings isn’t one of the biggest problems in the world — but it is an example where cognitive error leads to a persistent dysfunction.

Thus it remains and the remainder thus.

Why Bush Is Our Most Shakespearean President (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-04-15T07:59:00.001-05:00

Bush is our most Shakespearean President. Not the most comfortable thought, but blogger Kenji Yoshino on Slate's Convictions makes at least one strong case for him because he...invents words.

The Best Of A Genre 2 (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-03-27T16:31:00.001-05:00

There once was a cop from Milwaukee
Who said in his Walkie McTalkie
I pissed at my best
But I can't pass the test
So I spluged a big load in my Jockeys

Drew/Claudius's multiple variations after this initial effort were sidesplitting, and uncapturable. But I do remember his credo:

I don't play chicken with cocks.

There's something in the air at Trocadero. Or maybe it's the booze.

Combining Two Things We Love (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-03-23T13:40:00.001-05:00

Combining two things we love, wine (with cheese) and figurative language...Gary Vaynerchuk describing a bottle of red wine, the 2004 Razon Valascro:

hit a deer on the road...let it fall down....throw a bunch of cherries on it...take out your knife that you always have on you....cut the deer....bite it....that's the flavor profile

Stand And Deliver (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-03-23T13:31:00.001-05:00

The power to move people...a guy who'd never been paid to sing before--Paul Potts--on last year's Britain's Got Talent.

Mamet: Take Away The Director And What Do You Get? (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-03-15T17:58:00.001-05:00

In an essay entitled David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' in this week's Village Voice Mamet has written of his switch from big government liberalism to a free-market/civil libertarian outlook. To explain, he draws on his experience--in the play rehearsal process.

But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?
I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.

The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.

Photo: To understand BRott, is it necessary to know he was Aquaman at Great America in Gurnee?

Hypocracy in Fiction

2008-03-13T18:52:00.000-05:00

This radio story mentions the hypocracy in some of Shakespeare's characters, along with some other characters in fiction.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88140102&title=We+We+Can+Learn+from+Hypocrisy+in+Literature

Ties these characters in to modern political hypocracy.

If Everybody's Guilty Of Everything (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-02-28T17:43:00.001-06:00

William F. Buckley, Jr. died a few days ago. Here's an exchange between him and Professor Noam Chomsky from 1969.

As they debate the Vietnam War, Buckley offers "If everybody's guilty of everything, then no one's guilty of anything." Chomsky's reply is interesting, surprising.

A Picture Of Brian (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-02-26T23:02:00.001-06:00

Hello Jessi (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-02-26T22:35:00.001-06:00

Thank you for posting, Jessi. Not that I have a problem having a dialogue with myself, as you all know. But we could have some fun here. Tell us more about why you like Q2.

The process is wonderful. I love it. At the same time, I wish we had our script. I'm anxious to get out of our chairs.

The Best Of A Genre 2 (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-02-16T11:01:00.001-06:00

Photo by fdiazh.

Polonius with an assist from Ophelia:

188 bandaids walk into a bar. One of them sees a Kotex maxipad sitting alone across the room. He says "I think I should go over and talk to her." His friend says "No, she's out of your league."

Ophelia with an assist from Polonius:

188 gelatos walk into a bar. When Ophelia is finished with strawberry, pineapple walks up to her and says "What about me?" Ophelia says "I'll spoon with you, but I'm not going to fork you."

Disagree that these were the best? BLOG IT.

Your mothers agreed with me last night, though.

Fishmonger (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-30T16:53:00.001-06:00

Alexander van Adriaenssen (1587-1661) "The Fishmonger"

From the Arden:

fishmonger a comic mistake and presumably a deliberate one, establishing that Hamlet is feigning madness at this point. Since Malone, editors have argued about whether fishmonger carries connotations of 'fleshmonger' or bawd (see Jenkins).

Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-30T16:45:00.001-06:00

Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

For good measure, here's the Arden (Folio) on Hamlet's sighting of Ophelia after To be or not to be:

Hamlet, at the sight of Ophelia, does not immediately recollect that he is to impersonate madness, but makes her an address grave and solemn, such as the forgoing meditation excited in his thoughts (Johnson). Others, however, find his tone ironic or even sarcastic. In Q2, this is the first time that Hamlet and Ophelia encounter each other onstage...

Mostly Iambic Tetrameter (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-30T16:04:00.001-06:00

You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much higher

-Light My Fire, 1967
(Morrison, Krieger, Manzarek, Densmore)

Mary had a little lamb
It had a touch of the colic
She gave it whiskey twice a day
And now it's an alcoholic

-Traditional

Hello Muddah Hello Faddah

2008-01-28T23:35:00.000-06:00

A link to a quick read, the seminal essay on a Freudian (Oedipal) interpretation of Hamlet, by Ernest Jones:

The Oedipus-Complex as An Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A Study in Motive

Interesting for my purposes: Jones remarks on Hamlet's unrestrained contempt for Polonius:

It is here that we see his fundamental attitude towards moralising elders who use their power to thwart the happiness of the young...

In other words, I'm an old man standing in the way of my child's (erotic) fulfillment, an Oedipal situation without incestuous restraints for Hamlet.

This essay is famous and worth reading.

Also -- whether you value psychoanalysis/psychiatry/psychology or not, it's pretty cool that one of the great theories of the mind was inspired by trips to the theater: Freud's documented attendance at several staged versions of the Oedipus story.

Sugar Sugar (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-25T14:31:00.001-06:00

Here's what I was talking about from Quarto 1, (4.6):

Gertrude:
Then I perceiue there's treason in his lookes
That seem'd to sugar o're his villanie:

Though there's some confusion with pronouns, I'm pretty sure Gertrude is referring to her husband Claudius here, as Horatio has informed her of the plot to assassinate Hamlet in England, which Hamlet has uncovered.

In Quarto 2 and Folio (3.1):

Polonius:
Tis too much proou'd, that with deuotions visage
And pious action, we doe sugar ore
The deuill himselfe.

Here I'm thinking long-winded Polonius instructing Ophelia on how to conduct herself when Hamlet arrives has a revealing moment, offering (unnecessarily) how an outward display of piety and devotion can conceal evil. He understands the Richard III (Machiavellian) formula for power and trips Claudius into a crisis of conscience, the "heavy burden" speech that follows.

Gertrude delivers this "read" on Claudius in Quarto 1. In Q2 and Folio Polonius seems to throw it against the wall and it sticks to Claudius.

Sugar over the devil himself--love it.

Campaign Poetry Clinton Style (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-25T12:50:00.001-06:00

As we begin to consider scansion... It's said in politics you campaign in poetry but govern in prose. Listen to how Hillary Clinton in the SC debate uses stressed syllables to paint up Barack Obama with the words SLUM LANDLORD and INNER CITY CHICAGO. That's really some poetry. She might as well have called him the n-word.

The Beat Goes On (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-23T15:40:00.001-06:00

From The New York Observer:

Hamlet 2 Nabs Top Dollar at Sundance
Hamlet 2, a witty high-school satire starring acclaimed British actor Steve Coogan, took home the top prize at Sundance yesterday, selling for about $10 million. Focus Features, which has garnered success with arty fare including Brokeback Mountain and Atonement, bought the rights, making it one of the biggest sales in the history of the fest, according to Reuters. Mr. Coogan stars as Dana Marschz, an "overly dramatic drama teacher who attempts to salvage his high-school theater department by staging a controversial sequel to Shakespeare's play."

Hamlet And His Problems (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-22T15:03:00.001-06:00

Here's the classic essay from T.S. Eliot: Hamlet And His Problems.

The money quote:

So far from being Shakespeare's masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure.

Open To New Ideas? (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-21T00:15:00.001-06:00

Open to new ideas? Our fearless leader, BJR, has already rejected my proposal that I (Polonius) deliver the To be or not to be soliloquy and dismissed my suggestion that Hamlet and Gertrude do it with each other wild in Act V.

James Scares Me (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-21T00:06:00.001-06:00

James scares me a little. But may the big monkey in the sky bless him for knowing that Strange Brew: The Adventures Of Bob And Doug McKenzie is loosely based on Hamlet.

I Phelia Pain (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-20T23:51:00.001-06:00

In rehearsal #2 we considered whether Ophelia is still a virgin at the end of the play, or, as Miracle Max would put it, only mostly a virgin. I still don't understand Brian's shouting "Nine ball, corner pocket" while the rest of us grappled with this essential question.

Led Zeppelin Or Jimi Hendrix (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-20T23:37:00.001-06:00

To the question, Led Zeppelin Or Jimi Hendrix?, I can only say...You know that it would be untrue, you know that I would be a liar...

The Literature Of Crisis (imported from my Hamlet blog)

2008-01-20T23:10:00.001-06:00

As I mentioned in rehearsal #1, Stanford University has uploaded a free course (MP3's) called The Literature Of Crisis, which includes two worthwhile lectures on Hamlet.

Roaring Forties Blue

2008-01-08T15:07:00.000-06:00

My favorite food discovery of the last 5 years: Roaring Forties triple cream blue cheese.

Swoon

2007-12-27T15:29:00.000-06:00

I've watched Paul Potts' audition on Britain's Got Talent at least twenty times and I still get emotional every time.

Room In NY

2007-11-13T18:03:00.000-06:00

I keep returning to this Edward Hopper painting. I keep loving it.

Wine Library TV

2007-10-22T21:21:00.000-05:00

Gary Vaynerchuk reviewing a bottle of red wine, the 2004 Razon Valascro:

hit a deer on the road...let it fall down....throw a bunch of cherries on it...take out your knife that you always have on you....cut the deer....bite it....that's the flavor profile

Nobel Prize In Economics

2007-10-16T23:47:00.000-05:00

Pretty much accidentally I spent four years as a work-study student at Northwestern's Department of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences. The professors there were "high quant" types, game theorists, and the department had a wonderful, international reputation, as did the entire business school during the MBA-crazed years 1980-84.

Once, one of the professors said to me, "Peter, you see that guy over there? He'll win the Nobel Prize for sure, if cigarettes don't get him first." It was Robert E. Lucas, who was a visiting professor from the U. of Chicago. He did indeed win the Nobel, in 1995, and happily he's still going strong (though coughing on a recent podcast available on EconTalk).

This week the Nobel went to Roger Myerson, whose office was a few feet away from the desk where I answered phones and did light office work. I didn't know him well, though I probably said hello to him several days a week for four years. I remember him as extremely shy, but kind--the picture of a professor with an obsessional attachment to his work, but notes of humor about himself.

It's great to see he now writes about electoral procedures, corruption, and the Iraq War, in addition to his more theoretical books and papers.

I'm A Flop

2007-10-16T11:14:00.000-05:00

To the tune of "You're The Top"

I see some wisdom in masochism

I've been diagnosed as depressed

And if you're adding that I'm repressed

Be my guest

I'll get more stressed

I'm hyperactive, I'm unattractive

And I can't believe my unluck

This song ain't easy

I'm getting queasy

But there's nothing on TV, so what the fuck

I'm a flop

I'm a melting icecap

I'm a flop

I'm a local speedtrap

I'm full of sanity like Christianity in school

I'm an aging stripper, Bill Clinton's zipper

A total fool

I'm a flop

I'm a midlife crisis

I'm a flop

I'm high oil prices

I'm the broken wing on that shuttle thing in space

I'm a fast food portion, a late-term abortion

A basket case

You're Ludwig's Fifth

The Hallelujah Chorus

You're the width

Of a dick ginormous

When friends our photo view, they're always telling you to crop

But friends, at least you got'em

I'm a flop

Ueckerdome

2007-10-02T22:06:00.000-05:00

Photo by OmniNeon.

Tom Haudricourt writes today in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 10 Reasons The Brewers Lost The NL Central. Reason Number 1: "Blowing Leads". I could read no more. How do you get that writing gig?

Speaking of begging the question, I'm begging for questions.

What effect does having the figure of a lovable loser as the voice of the Brewers have on performance? I'm speaking of course about Bob Uecker, a constant presence over decades of flapping and flopping. Couldn't some pop psychologist address this? Ned Yost clearly exhibits some kind of self-defeating personality traits. Is he afraid that by winning he'll lose the love of Brewers fans?

This year's team couldn't hold a lead in the eighth and ninth innings, right after the Sausage Race (run during the seventh inning stretch). Does the Sausage Race carry a powerful secondary meaning like "we're idiots?"

Wait a minute, strike that. I see this year's team posted the best home W-L record in the Majors.

Does the Sausage Race carry a powerful secondary meaning like "WIENIES UP"?

And how do we duplicate that on the road?

Photo by compujeramey.

Still Number One

2007-09-01T22:01:00.000-05:00

Wisconsin has the following ranks, among the 50 States and DC, according to 2003 data:

Alcohol consumption, casual drinkers: 1st
Alcohol consumption, heavy drinkers: 1st
Alcohol consumption, binge drinkers: 1st
Alcohol abuse or dependence: 1st

HOWEVER, with regard to ...

Alcohol related traffic fatalities (per capita): 19th

Drunk driving, it seems, is a skill like any other. Of course I'm kidding. I think.

Speaking of suicide: Even as the NIH and others have implicated substance abuse in almost 90% of suicide deaths, where in the ranks on selbstmord is Wisconsin?, a state necessarily depressed over being supplanted as the nation's cheesemaker by -- ouch! -- CALIFORNIA (those balmy beach-going, two-growing-season-having bastids).

Suicides per capita: 24th

We can handle it. Of course Packer season is only a week away. The next one surprised me:

Overweight and obesity rate: 29th

Not so bad. So much for the myth of the beer belly. But what about:

Tobacco use, total current smokers: 20th

First in drinking but twentieth in smoking? Hard to understand. Drinking and smoking, Bogie and Bacall -- they didn't do Pilates, you know. (Still the altar boy, I've conjoined Tai Bo boxing and Pilates in a cardiovascular discipline I'm calling Punchious Pilates.)

The other day I'm talking to a guy I'd say is a perfect specimen of Homo Sapien Szaz's Statehouse. I'd just met him on the street, a pleasantly round Milwaukee guy counting the hours until his 25th high school reunion. He'd parlayed a recent stock transaction into an open bar for all of his long lost classmates. He'd be picking up the whole tab later that night, creating an instant, but I think surprisingly enigmatic bond with people some of whom he hadn't seen in decades.

"What are you serving?", I ask him.

"Brandy Old-Fashioneds", he says.

I like him. He's full of grins. Right away he invites me to crash the reunion party, and then vents a little about a recent D.U.I.

I didn't even know they keep statistics like the following one. Go ahead and click the link, if you don't believe me:

Perception of alcohol consumption risk (defined as percent of residents who believe there is a great health risk in having five or more drinks of an alcoholic beverage once or twice a week). Wisconsin's rank: 49th.

"Brandy Old-Fashioneds", I say to my new best friend. "I should have known."

"No, you couldn't", he says. One final grin before we parted ways. "These are going to be ON TAP!"

Wrong Spokesmodel

2007-08-19T23:35:00.000-05:00

I wouldn't trust that solipsistic necrophile Dr. Jack Kevorkian to determine when I've lost all quality of life. Hugh Hefner is the obvious choice for the right-to-die movement. My choice: Mario Batali!

Not So Easy

2007-08-19T23:06:00.000-05:00

It's not so easy to get a picture of a raccoon in the daylight.

Lisa Nowak: Halloween Boon Or Halloween Bust?

2007-02-08T17:43:00.000-06:00

Having some schooling in economics, I'm wondering about the effects of Shuttle astronaut Lisa Nowak's diaper decision on the market for Halloween costumes. (Amazing how her intensive training and knowledge of equipment still occupied a brain awash in loopy madness.)

An adult diaper is low cost. But a decent-looking space helmet can inflate the aggregate price of the ensemble. Still, the whole package should have a lower price point than a life-like Katie Couric mask and hospital colonoscopy equipment. We'll just have to see.

Photo: Sushi Diaper by Sarahtar on Flickr

What Unites Us

2007-02-05T10:18:00.000-06:00

I liked this Superbowl commercial for the NFL Network, called "Hanging With Chad", and clearly built for repeated viewing via the internet and morning show analyses (how else to identify all of the party-ers; how else to catch Jimmy Fallon eating a potato chip off the floor?)

This kind of detailed viewing and analysis opens the possibility for multiple sponsorship and product placement. The ad sells snacks, music, Martha Stewart's programming, and more. And until the tagline for NFL Network, I thought it was a promo for Major League Soccer, now fortified with Beckham.

It stood out also in a lineup of suprisingly violent ads this year for its secondary meanings of diversity and peaceful coexistence. The party is a melting pot organized around football (or is it around celebrity?) Johnson warmly greets white country music star Rascal Flatts; Reggie Bush is scolded by Martha Stewart for a kitchen mistake.

I've yet to sort out David Letterman. Does he affirm a deep kind of sincerity with his ironic posture? This 10-second CBS promo with Oprah (another inter-racial embrace) was sweetly silly and sweetly sweet.

Zeitgeist: Men Steal Batteries, Women Steal Meat

2007-01-23T12:58:00.000-06:00

From Slate yesterday:

According to the Food Marketing Institute, meat was the most shoplifted item in America's grocery stores in 2005.

Apparently, the "Black Angus" stamp on beef triggers the impulse. For men, batteries are the most targeted item, but overall it's meat.

As the son of a retail butcher, having grown up with tales of meatlifting, I say unequivocably that the smoked hamhock I simmered in black beans last week was better than anything ever stamped "Black Angus" -- and more portable than a porterhouse.

Speaking of ham -- the Academy Awards nominations have given some validation to Petesophizing by recognizing Mark Wahlberg's performance in The Departed.

Like looking at tree rings, you can tell your age by counting the Best Picture nominees you've seen. For a decade I was at three out of five. This year, two -- The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine

This morning I saw the headline JT Pounds One Down For Mom and thought I'd catch up on James Taylor. Alas -- "JT" is Justin Timberlake now.

Idol Diagnosis

2007-01-19T20:14:00.000-06:00

Re: the performance of one Nicholas Zitzmann on last night's American Idol, Munraven raves:

I watched the show last night. I was appalled.

The software guy from Utah looked like a textbook case of Asperger's Syndrome.

The Thinking Mother writes:

I think American Idol has crossed the line now.

I saw two if not five people on the show 1B who seemed to me to have symptoms of being in various places on the Autism Spectrum, such as Asperger’s Syndrome or being a highly functioning Autistic person, if not having Pervasive Developmental Delay or some other kind of real issue such as possibly even, mild mental retardation.

tvsquad offers:

Does 'Idol' Need To Be Such A Spectacle Of Cruelty?

I consulted JR, a clinical psychologist with a specialization in autism, a top expert who works with Asperger's every day. Re: Zitzmann, she says:

I'd bet on it.

The armchair diagnosis is all over the web, an extraordinary sign of the times. So is the backlash against Idol. But I think Zitzmann, a 27 year old software engineer from Midvale, Utah, was triumphant, and American Idol should be commended, not vilified.

Even a cram-course understanding (mine) of the Americans With Disabilities Act and the litigation arising from this wonderful legislation is enough to commend the Idol producers, whose goal is a parade of the genuinely delusional, talentwise. They cannot, and should not, screen out the Nicholas Zitzmann's of the world. Nor can they ask him if he is in some way disabled.

Zitzmann has a right to make a fool of himself singing, like anyone else. He did. He also had moments of shy dignity. The above clip is worth viewing to the end, if only to watch Simon Cowell ask him:

What the bloody hell was that?

To which Zitzmann replied:

It was me.

My Other Ride Is Your Mom

2007-01-18T18:23:00.001-06:00

Pleasant Hill Cemetery's Memorial To The Preborn

2007-01-17T18:13:00.000-06:00

He'brew Genesis 10:10 Beer: Celebrating Biblical References To Pomegranates

2007-01-14T10:18:00.000-06:00

Get It Going Tea: "Simply Brew, Sip, And Get Going"

2007-01-13T11:47:00.000-06:00

The Sausage Case at Whole Foods ("Whole Paycheck") Milwaukee

2007-01-12T13:33:00.000-06:00

WI Version Of Gravestone Pebbles (Jewish Calling Cards)

2007-01-11T12:15:00.000-06:00

Zeitgeist: WI Hwy 41 Near Hartford

2007-01-10T14:17:00.000-06:00

Can Anyone Out There Translate Korvat?

2007-01-09T00:21:00.000-06:00

I've received another email from my cousin Gyula Foistikov in Korvatz. He proudly forwards another of his "schemata" and the abstract of his newly published paper:

Primul Moderna Brassiere Osho Maria Phelps Jacobs:
Formovik v. Functionariti

Dc. Gyula A. Foistikov, V.V.M.
Universitosto Korvatz, Dezembro 2006

Abstraktik

Karo jat rdnjak kao Sneeder, Meckling et. al. 2002 Proposing Panties With A Purpose, te sodao bimi opozao te pol 1930's je uzo do tup Internet gramaticki rod uloga. Stavja zene to formovik v. funcionaritie in tvornica mondura za jedan dan ni 1917, U.S. Ea pe rochie unul acestia corsets, sia whalebones pokeda afara visiblo. Ea patented ei designa siacum hot brassierro un suport parta de apropriat fiecare moderno femeie wardrobla. Oni je kupovina sto gore neki 28,000 tona od posuti tucanisam dosta ot graviti da bosni brok upsy-daisy a lepo whoopsie poopsie.

The Moments That Make You

2007-01-08T23:33:00.000-06:00

The day Sister Josetha told me a boy once peed on a painting of the Virgin Mary and he never stopped peeing. What chance does therapy have against that? I'm 44.

Photo: The Peeing Boy Of Brussels by Emmaline

Another Visitor

2006-12-15T17:35:00.000-06:00

While I was stringing some Christmas lights outside this afternoon a bird flew up the driveway at high speed and perched on the neighbor's fence. I managed to get this picture.

It's a female Cooper's Hawk. She flew to the top of a telephone pole and back to the fence several times. Note the neighbor's bird feeder in the background.

The extraordinary thing is the silence when she's around. The sky is empty of pigeons and sparrows and there isn't a squirrel or rabbit in sight.

Here's a stock photo that's the spitting image of her.

It's Been Right There All Along

2006-12-09T11:11:00.000-06:00

Add leftover macaroni and cheese to cream of tomato soup. Top with black pepper and parmesan.

Research Royale

2006-12-03T22:10:00.000-06:00

He smashes through drywall at a construction site. (Audible satisfaction from the men in the theater when I saw it.)

He's kind of dopey looking, but his body's fantastic -- just like us! (Well, not me -- I look more like Judi Dench.)

He saves the world from multicultural! terrorists by PLAYING TEXAS HOLDEM! (Not online, though. And not very well. You won't catch me with "Heinz 57" (7-5 suited) in a hand like that.)

He has his balls whipped by a guy with a French name and a Hitler haircut.

Wha?

The practical, secretly loyal, and hot hot hot Eva Green tells him she'll love him no matter the condition of his testicles.

Ahhhhh.

What a mirror! What box office!

Forget K Street

2006-11-15T17:16:00.000-06:00

Just for fun and because I guess the midterm elections last week riled me up -- I've posted links on the left for twelve likely Democratic Presidential candidates in 2008. Two, Mike Gravel of Alaska and Tom Vilsack of Iowa have filed their FEC papers. Joe Biden of Delaware has announced.

While I was cutting and pasting this list I noticed something a little startling. Nine out of the twelve names are in the top half of the alphabet and seven out of those nine are in the top five letters of the alphabet, A-E. Seven out of twelve in the top 20% of the alphabet. These people are used to being at the front of the line.

All the more reason to like Richardson and Obama.

I know, Hillary was "Rodham" in her formative years.

What's the visual equivalent of a "tin ear"? "Jello eyes?" Whatever it is, John Kerry's got that too. Above is the first image you see on his PAC site.

Powell Doctrine

2006-11-04T21:57:00.000-06:00

It's good to see that someone in Government still believes in the Doctrine Of Overwhelming Force:

The New York Senate race:

Total Receipts:
Clinton $37,025,878
Spencer $4,705,648

Total Spent:
Clinton $26,815,268
Spencer $4,231,580

The impressive thing is not just that Senator Clinton raised $37 million but that she spent almost $27 million of it to John Spencer's $4 million.

He And Greatness Were Not Compelled To Kiss

2006-10-31T20:52:00.000-06:00

Wasn't John Kerry a "C" student like Bush?

I dreamed I owned a horse farm and the John Kerry Campaign asked me to use it for their debate preparation weekend.

When I acquiesced, they kicked me off my own property for security reasons.

When I returned after the weekend they were gone and my cat was dead.

That's my analysis.

Learning A Mere Hoard Of Gold Kept By A Devil

2006-10-31T20:18:00.000-06:00

Lacking TIVO, I'm going to miss the ability to rewatch some television moments when they disappear in the YouTube litigation.

Here's the old Letterman v. O'Reilly, the 60% of what you say is crap clip.

It doesn't hold up well to repeated viewing, if you want to continue to claim victory for Letterman.

I'm biased -- I don't like to see the Democrats using Cindy Sheehan and Michael J. Fox as point people.

But I don't want to side with O'Reilly, either.

Still, Letterman was nonresponsive, thinking in soundbites:

Away, You Mouldy Rogue, Away!

2006-10-31T12:51:00.000-06:00

A Clemson University economist, Todd D. Kendall, has delivered a paper at Stanford entitled Pornography, Rape, and the Internet.

Borrowing Andrew Sullivan's syntax, the "money quote":

I find that internet access appears to be a substitute for rape.

(Italics is Kendall's, in the paper's introduction.)

If you don't have multiple regression in your math background (I do, but it's been fading for 20 years now), I can summarize this procedure as follows, and I'm borrowing now from Steven Pinker, I believe: Correlational statistics doesn't tell us about causes but instead tells us what likes to happen with what.

In other words, the paper concludes that a reduction in rape statistics "likes to occur" when internet access increases, particularly for 15-19 year-old boys. Pornography seems to decrease rape, leaving other crime rates unchanged.

Keep in mind this conclusion doesn't immediately invalidate all suspicions and worries about porn. Porn could still dehumanize women, desensitize men, etc. But the paper makes a strong argument that porn works as a substitutive satisfaction. And this effect is powerful enough to overcome other factors, at least as far as decreasing rape statistics.

Well worth reading. And sure to cause controversy because Kendall -- like Steven Levitt before him applying mathematics to questions that really matter -- has the unmitigated gall to write clearly and thoroughly, with a broad audience in mind.

O, Thou Hast Damnable Iteration

2006-10-29T23:09:00.000-06:00

I'm midway through Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Fascinating. Refreshing after six years of homeschooling by the Bush's and the Cheney's -- even if you're not converted to atheism.

I confess I've watched Dawkins' appearance on The Colbert Report about ten times. Two geniuses at this table? At the very least, seven minutes of the best television I've seen in some time:

Here's a blogger who's collated Dawkins' British broadcast called The Root Of All Evil. I don't think this documentary is going to make it onto American TV. (It's not on the Netflix horizon either.) His encounters with evangelicals in the South are frightening -- filled with violent expectancy.

Here's an internet find. Google videos is carrying his 1987 BBC broadcast The Blind Watchmaker. Wonderful for illustrating why Natural Selection should not be considered a random process:

Returning To The Simulacrum

2006-10-24T15:04:00.000-05:00

Once again there's cleverness in the Republican attack -- this time from Rush Limbaugh suggesting Michael J. Fox was simulating his symptoms during this political ad airing in Missouri:

Beaudrillard offered medical symptoms as an example when he said: Simulation threatens the difference between "true" and "false", between "real" and "imaginary". Introducing even the smallest doubt about what you're seeing is decidedly clever.

But forget about the hifallut'n Frenchified that I probably don't understand anyway. The ad itself is hopelessly unsophisticated -- even to the point of being counterproductive. Like a public embrace of Cindy Sheehan it's full of the suggestion that our case is emotional.

The case for scientific research is decidedly unemotional; the Republican position, (usually a prone position while getting angioplasty or secret antibiotics for std's), hypocritical.

Our case isn't emotional in the least. Scientific research? An end to an incompetently prosecuted war? What's more rational than these?

An ad like this let's the idealogues occupy the high ground of rationality (leadership!) even as they're demonstrably thoughtless.

The Departed

2006-10-24T13:36:00.000-05:00

Some statistics about Martin Scorcese's The Departed:

Number of clients the police psychiatrist character has a personal relationship with: 2

Rank of Mark Wahlberg -- sharing time with DiCaprio, Nicholson, Baldwin, Damon, and Sheen -- in terms of screen presence: 1

Rank of DiCaprio's performance as an actor: 1

Number of dialogue surprises and innovative characterizations in the first half of the movie: lost count

In the second half: 0

Number of characters shot in the head in the second half: lost count

Scenes supporting the presence of androgens, including testosterone, in the male characters: all

Scenes suggesting those hormones are implicated not just in violence but in the natural, pleasurable, female-directed act of procreation: maybe one? maybe?

This might be wishful thinking but I'm wondering if others aren't experiencing violent resolutions to interesting conflicts as superficial. Witness the popularity of Law & Order, where the violence usually takes place first and the resolution usually involves thought, cleverness, character.

Who Really Is In The Details?

2006-10-13T21:41:00.000-05:00

(Photo: Marlene Dietrich autographs the cast on the leg of Tec 4 Earl E. McFarland at a United States hospital in Belgium, November 24, 1944. )

My play makes some mention of Oskar Schindler so I've been rereading David M. Crowe's Oskar Schindler: The Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind the List, published in October 2004.

With this book in hand you can't help but ask about Steven Spielberg's movie Schindler's List: How much license is too much license? And when are narrative demands too demanding? According to Crowe, a Columbia University history professor affiliated with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:

Oskar Schindler never compiled the list (more accurately: lists).
There's no evidence he ever went to Auschwitz to save the women who were routed there.
He fled for Switzerland five weeks before his factory in Czechoslovakia was liberated by the Russians, leaving others the burden of acquiring food for the more than 1000 "Schindler Jews".
He was not just a German spy, a member of the Abwehr, but a German spy implicated in covert operations that helped to incite the invasion of Poland. (He helped start World War Two!!)
He's so controversial, Vad Yashem, the Jewish memorial organization in Israel, did not name him among The Righteous Of All Nations -- until Steven Spielberg was about to arrive to shoot the film's epilogue.

"Schindler's List" is fiction based on fiction, derived from Thomas Keneally's 1982 book entitled Schindler's Ark, a book ultimately classified as a novel. Yet of the three principal English-language treatments of the Schindler story, Keneally's novel, the Spielberg film, and Crowe's 700+ page biography, we all know which one occupies the mental space known as "history", and probably always will.

I don't care if the film adds snow to events that actually occured in warm weather. I care about whether Steven Spielberg should have waited for the seven years of scholarly research Crowe undertook. (Would the movie have been made at all if Crowe's biography had preceded it?) And I've been thinking about the risks involved in presenting a composite hero.

Schindler was socially clever, and at times, brave. More than individual acts of bravery, every day tempted him with a loss of nerve that could have doomed those people. But so many more heros were necessary for the miraculous outcome. And often it was questionable whether one could really consider Schindler to be in the leadership role.

The months after the factory was moved to Brunnlitz in Czechoslovakia really offer the most heroic portrait of Schindler. (Keneally's original novel title was "Ark" not "List".) Yet here, his wife, Emilie, humiliated for years by her husband's infidelities, emerges as certainly a necessary condition for survival. For the dual tasks of throwing sand in the eyes of their Nazi overseers and procuring food for more than 1000 people in the Spring of 1945, Emilie Schindler has also been honored by Vad Yashem.

The Nazis perfected the cult of personality delivered via film. Has Steven Spielberg answered them powerfully, countering larger-than-life evil with larger than life goodness? Or is larger than life evil countered only by a consortium, with each member doing what small things they can, not waiting for a hero, not using the heroic paradigm which inevitably mirrors back that me, I, am not made of heroic stuff.

(Photo: Amon Goeth with rifle. NARA.)

The story in Crowe's Schindler biography that caught my eye a couple of years ago was the rescue of the 300 women from Auschwitz. I don't care if it was routine to be sent there temporarily. They were in Auschwitz! And temporary was beginning to look like permanent. Yet someone did something to get them out -- a singular event in the history of the facility that has come to represent the greatest crime in modern history. Who?

From Crowe, according to Emilie Schindler:

So a few days later, Oskar went to Zwittau, and asked an old friend, Hilde, to go to Auschwitz "and personally take care of the release of the women." Hilde, at least according to Emilie, "was strikingly beautiful, slender, and graceful."

In an interview with West German police in 1963, Schindler testified directly:

It is true that I sent my secretary Hilde Albrecht (fate unknown) to Auschwitz with gifts (jewelry and alcohol) in order to obtain the release of my female workers from the responsible labor supervisor Schwarz [SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Heinrich].

In a letter Oskar Schindler wrote in 1956:

Who can feel my inner conflict, which I encountered when I sacrificed a dozen women to the orgies of the SS-Uebermenschen (superior human beings), where alcohol and gifts had already lost attraction.

In the same letter:

I was throwing pearls before swine.

Crowe does not take a decisive stand on how the women were released. But there's no case for Oskar Schindler personally going to Auschwitz.

Can you imagine at such a decisive point in "Schindler's List" the tall, dapper Oskar Schindler as portrayed by Liam Neeson turning to his former secretary and asking her to go to Auschwitz to save 300 women?

What's lost with a composite hero? Maybe nothing. Maybe the heroic meditation serves humanity.

But maybe everything. Maybe all the Hilde Albrechts of the story -- when the sadistic Nazi Amon Goeth is played by the handsome, ethereal Ralph Fiennes -- so attractive to women -- but the real Amon Goeth -- who needed so often to be placated and controlled -- was decidedly not attractive to women.

I notice Vad Yashem has titled the small biography supporting the Oskar Schindler tree on the Avenue of the Righteous "Oskar and Emilie Schindler". (Italics mine.) In the short biosketch they include the statement:

He then proceeded to send his personal German secretary to Auschwitz to negotiate the release of the women.

I don't know what their website read like before Crowe's book was published.

Frenchy Strikes Again

2006-10-09T11:08:00.000-05:00

Recently I read in Norman Cantor a terrific summary of the French deconstructionist thinker Michel Foucault:

Foucault is, entirely, thoroughly, a moral relativist. He writes that all the institutions of a society, as well as all its ethical principles and cultural forms, are instruments of power.

He famously indicted not only the obvious -- the criminal justice system -- but also the sexual revolution, feminism, and – ouch – what I’ll call liberalism of the type spirited along in the Huffpost, Daily Kos, and Air America. (Al Franken on a power grab? But he’s so cute!) Late in life Foucault -- less-famously -- recanted.

A new schtick of mine is to say I’m dating one clinical psychologist casually, and another, hourly. I turned to JR (casual) the other day and asked her if she thought it was possible the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles Of Psychologists And Code Of Conduct is primarily an instrument of power.

What do I mean? I mean: Could its most significant role be not protecting patients but protecting therapists and their ability to make money? Could the code even have a role in positing a class of people called “patients” or “clients” who are unable to act in their own interests?

“This is personal”, JR said. “You want to sleep with LV” (hourly).

Just what you’d expect from a psychologist.

I cried, “But does that mean I’m wrong?”

What followed surprised me for the ease with which my devil’s advocate position held its own. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I was just fooling around.

JR: The APA protects patients by illuminating for therapists what ethical conduct is.

Petey: That should be accomplished by a school and a curriculum before licensing, not by ethics review boards applying a code.

JR: The ethics boards stop therapists who act detrimentally toward their patients.

Petey: As usual the protection comes too late for the victims.

JR: Protecting future patients.

Petey: You’re referring to unethical behavior that’s not addressed by the criminal justice system – otherwise the ethics boards are redundant. Clients are protected by laws. Why an additional code?

JR: The therapist-client relationship is a special one. The client needs to feel safe.

Petey: But is it so special that the client is unable to act in their own interest?

JR: No, the client still acts in their own interest.

Petey: And defines what’s a positive therapy outcome for themselves.

JR: Yes. Although now you can appeal to brainscans to see changes.

Petey: But if a client says “I feel terrible” and later commits suicide -- that might trump a therapist saying, based on a brainscan, “He’s doing better”.

JR: (laughs)

Petey: If I don’t see myself as vulnerable having a physical relationship with my therapist (cough), or if I want to give her an expensive gift -- why should an ethics board tell me that’s wrong?

JR: Those things change the therapeutic relationship.

Petey: And if I find something abusive or exploitative in my therapy, I’ll only get satisfaction from the ethics board if they – a body of professionals working with the same paradigm as my therapist – agree.

JR: They examine things on a case by case basis.

Petey: No doubt careful about setting precedents – especially where refunds are concerned.

JR: They try to determine if a client has been damaged. It’s a thorough process. But if a client says their therapist is stalking them using a spaceship, isn’t it “right” for the board to side with the therapist?

Petey: And once again protect the therapist, not the client. The client would be better off going to some other type of arbitration – where maybe the adjudicator isn’t so swift at identifying delusions. Or maybe has a strong anti-therapist bias. Or -- believes in spaceships.

JR: You see, you’re just good at arguing. There are others who can make this case better than I do.

Petey: But what if I’m not? You’re just as articulate as I am. What if I’m just on the right side of the issue?

I annoyed her there. I’m sure there’s something wrong with my position. Between the two of us, though, we couldn’t come up with an example of how the APA Code of Conduct protects clients.

I put on the (French) devil’s mask and it’s become my real face. And JR (who’s not in private practice) unraveled enough to say:

JR: If George Clooney is my client, the ethics code is going out the window.

Presumably right before her underwear.

Absolutely The Best Party

2006-10-07T11:08:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the thoughtfulness of an old friend, last night I was able to attend Absolutely The Best Party 11, the annual AIDS research benefit sponsored by the Wisconsin AIDS Fund, with a VIP ticket. All VIP's received a stainless steel flask with a few ounces of vodka in it as a party favor. Still, the lines for the bar were long all night. Everyone drinking.

What happened to "gay energy"? Few people, gay or straight, dressed for the Las Vegas theme. The Party's new location, the Pfister Hotel, induced cognitive dissonance: there are no musty curtains in Las Vegas reminding you your wealth was inherited. I didn't know a soul, other than my companions.

The best appetizer, a one-shrimp cocktail in a shot glass full of sauce, produced piles of half-eaten shrimp and bloody shot glasses. I'm sure I'm the only attendee who ate the crunchy shrimp fins at the end of the tail and drank the remaining cocktail sauce like a horseradish shooter. Three times. The third one I had out in the hallway.

Tommy Femia took the stage doing his Judy Garland Live show. "Pfister? I hardly even know her." The sense of Weimar-coated gloom was complete.

I was in performance mode, too, believing I was not sharing in the despair -- over the cause, (AIDS treatment now heavy with unmentionable income and class considerations), over the same old 11,000 Dow, and over how the buffet of mini-food uncannily whispered that none of us would ever experience true cleverness or charm again. I thought I'd risen above it all. So what if beef tenderloin is now the size of Scrabble tiles on tiny toast. You just eat more of them!

This morning I think I might have been pretty depressed myself. I recall now that I quipped to my companions, including my generous sponsor, that I have an idea for a restaurant to feature 72 nubile waitresses and a river of yogurt. I didn't even realize I'd put a stinger on the end of the scorpion's tail. I designed a place where the carriage trade -- and how do you get to the Pfister if not in a carriage -- can sit back, relax, and receive their just reward at the end of a long day.

Theater: Windfall's NAUGHTY ANGEL

2006-10-03T19:53:00.000-05:00

I have to say – Mike Fischer’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review of Naughty Angel makes me cringe. Look at his lede from September 30 -- ‘Angel’ falls flat despite naughtiness:

Nice guys don’t just finish last in baseball. They also tend to make boring protagonists. “Naughty Angel,” local dramatist Thomas Rosenthal’s latest play, unwittingly confirms this simple maxim. The Windfall Theatre Ensemble staged the world premiere on Friday night.

I’m betting Mike Fischer got “Nice guys … tend to make boring protagonists” from a how-to website. I guess HowToWritePlays.com didn’t mention Hamlet. (Also, consider: “unwittingly confirms this simple maxim.” Sheesh.)

All right. Naughty Angel is not "Angels In America" or "Look Homeward, Angel". It’s “premise heavy” and the premise plays out in the first act. There. I read a website, too.

But what Naughty Angel is – is funny. In all three acts – it’s FUNNY. It’s not “flat” in the least.

Writing is a lonely business made lonelier by the foreknowledge that nearly everyone -- family, friends, and oh yeah, reviewers – will work out their judgmental reflex on what THEY see as flaws. Their impulse usually requires ignoring the hundreds of decisions and inspirations the writer wagered successfully. I take issue with such a hatchet job, especially when it’s directed at a new play by a local playwright.

Fischer says Rosenthal’s dialogue is ‘dull’. I’m old school when it comes to accusations of “dull” and “boring”. The really clever people of this world never experience boredom. I found plenty of sequences where Rosenthal gave the actors just enough of a comically endowed situation for THEM to shine. And this ensemble cast, under the direction of Shawn Gulyas, got laughs. Each and every actor.

Angela Beyer's talent is clear to me, and I’ve noted it elsewhere. Though her role as temptress Lilly is small, Rosenthal gave her an opportunity for a large “contrast”, from sorority girl to she-devil.

Amy Kull always has some Kramer-like “kovorka” on stage. The audience Saturday night physically reacted to each entrance by Ryan Spiering as lovable mechanic (and “swordsman”), Zack. They expected to laugh, and did. So too, for Chad Tessmer playing Rick, a beer guzzling “reality instructor” who’s stuck in the same gear he was when he was your Freshman roommate in college. Funny.

Jason Powell as the leading “nice guy”, Jerry, could have used more ammunition from the playwright. But the audience was still with him at the play’s sentimental ending, after a solid two hours. An accomplishment for director, actor, and writer.

If overall Naughty Angel kicks more like a string of comic set-pieces than a theatrical “whole”, remember: in these melancholy, anxious times Will Ferrell gets millions of dollars for doing just that.

And before you thank reviewers like Mike Fischer for saving your precious time and your entertainment dollar, try a little experiment. Put down your Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and pick up a blank piece of paper. Now – using only twenty-six phonetic symbols and a few punctuation marks, set in motion a chain reaction that results in two hours of badly-needed laughs for a Milwaukee audience.

A daunting, mysterious, vulnerable endeavor, right?

Consider supporting this local playwright and these fine, local actors.

Naughty Angel plays again this weekend and next. Details here.

Fantasy Theater: The Glass Menagerie

2006-10-02T09:40:00.000-05:00

Had dinner with AB last night. We're trying to invent a game of "Fantasy Casting" like "Fantasy Football". We agree the following cast for Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie would score maximum allowable points:

Jim O'Connor: Sylvester Stallone
Tom Wingfield: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
Laura Wingfield: Sandra Bernhard
Amanda Wingfield: Harvey Fierstein

MKE Online

2006-09-29T22:06:00.000-05:00

MKE Online has been nice enough to include "Petesophizing" in their 1000 Voices: the mke blog directory.

They've also nominated me for their "blog of the week" voting this week. Ahem. Here's where you can vote.

MKE is the free weekly published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Nice -- this month they've started featuring an arts blog by Jonathan West. Jonathan was one of the founders of the Bialystock & Bloom theater company.

I don't know him, but coincidentally, Cornerstone is approaching him this week to direct my reading.

The Night They Invented Champ Egan

2006-09-25T10:30:00.000-05:00

Cornerstone Theatre is sponsoring a reading of my play, "The Night They Invented Champ Egan", next month. Details forthcoming. A recent email to a friend, with a few edits, works as a teaser:

In the small town of Nova Vess, in the Eastern part of the Republic of Korvatz, the pagan traditions survived both the Nazis' brutal expansion from the West and the Russians' eventual occupation from the East. Decades later in the early 1980's, with Korvatz still under Soviet domination, the mayor of Nova Vess, a Catholic priest and former dance choreographer, was getting a little frustrated by Communist restrictions. He wanted to add all he loved to the annual pagan harvest festival, so thumbing his nose at his Communist overseers.

The traditional theme of the festival is taming the "Panna Zhenna" (untranslatable, but a "goddess" -- approximately "nonvirgin virgin") and usually she's represented by a mannikin or straw effigy. But the mayor decided, in earnest, to try using a live girl. He dressed 16-year-old Alzhbetta Klinke in bad 1980's fashions -- in spandex and a purple tunic blouse, with a big leather belt off the hips -- and tied her to a cross.

The effect was immediate -- so powerful that the festival organizers had to bring her down prematurely when a young man, driven "kisilikiki" (one of 89 Korvat words for crazy) by the nexus of symbols, ran back to his school and tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window. Fortunately very little money was coming in from the Soviet Union so the dormitory was only two floors. Broken clavicle.

The repercussions of Alzhbetta's ascent can be felt in the urban apartment of Champ Egan in mid-1990's America. Talk about a man's "visual Rolodex". He's already survived (Act One) aerobics instructor Karen Wiggenbotham, her recipe from the book "White Trash Chicken 'n Hash", and her one-of-a-kind back massage. He's about to learn why it's been said about the new woman sitting next to him: "Men would rather be killed by Alzhbetta than cured by someone else".

Three nights. Three conversations. Agitated depression. Sexual dysfunction. The drugs Alprostadil and Rohypnal. An imaginary marriage and an imaginary divorce. A seduction scene inspired by Abbott & Costello's "Who's On First" routine.

The Night They Invented Champ Egan.

"Be the man who is getting laid" is the advice of Dr. Alexander Volovich. But, for Champ -- that's not so easy.

Another E-mail From Cousin Dyula

2006-09-23T11:03:00.000-05:00

Again, my cousin Dyula Dulvitz, an unemployed engineer, has sent me an email with a "schemata". He's trying to redesign the flag of the Korvatz Republica.

The graphic is small but I'm pretty sure that's a "thumbs up" in the middle.

Couterclockwise: A pear, Groucho Marx, a pan of sausages, and I'm pretty sure the upper right is Picasso's "Les Demoiselle d'Avignon".

Zeitgeist: Public Domain Clipart: Headache, Heartburn

2006-09-21T13:14:00.000-05:00

The Zeitgeist On THE VIEW

2006-09-18T11:12:00.000-05:00

On this morning's The View:

Elizabeth Hasselbeck complimented Rosie O'Donnell on her childrearing skills. All panelists agreed -- on television -- that Rosie's kids are so creative, lively, and intelligent because they don't watch television.

An ad for the new Kutchie Kutchie Costner quotes the film's own market research. (First time I've seen THAT.) It's one of the "highest scoring" films in history.

Barbara Walters believes one problem with the Pope's hate speech is the reaction in the Muslim world.

All the girls agree they should book George Clooney as soon as possible, since he's the sexiest man they know who speaks out against genocide.

I turned the TV off before Dr. Phil and his wife could walk on stage.

Give Me Your Digits

2006-09-15T13:13:00.000-05:00

To get your City Of Milwaukee Class "D" Bartender's License you have to be fingerprinted.

This is an odd moment pertinized by an exchange in my play, in which a character from Eastern Europe yells at an American, "You volunteered to give your fingerprints to the government! You are the King Kong Godzilla of the naive."

I've been fingerprinted once before -- when I volunteered to work on a tutoring program in the NYC schools system. But those were paper and ink prints, buried in a NYC bureaucracy.

These are digitized.

I don't think you have to be planning a life of crime to hesitate at a moment like this.

Theater: Dramatists Theatre's 'NIGHT, MOTHER

2006-09-09T09:54:00.000-05:00

I believe the playwright's focus is the sand castle, not the waves, so I'm operating with a strong bias against 'night, Mother, Marsha Norman's realtime suicide countdown, running this weekend and next at the Marian Center and produced by Dramatists Theatre.

The Pulitzer Prize committee in 1983 obviously saw it differently, and maybe they were seeing a different play. As much as artists might appreciate being judged on internal aesthetics, some plays are contexted and re-contexted with the passage of time -- by new works, by world events, by scientific discoveries. Romeo And Juliet may still be a love story, but it's certainly now, also, a case study in bad parenting.

In the years since audiences first met 'night Mother's Jessie Cates, a daughter looking to take control of her life by ending it, sophistication about mental hygiene has reframed the character's statements. Even a layman like me knows that "clarity" -- so prized by Jessie, and so seductive -- is a mindset not to be trusted.

If you don't know what I mean look into Tom Cruise's eyes: He's the product of an indoctrination, Scientology, which transformed the word "clear" into a global financial instrument and seduced thousands into baseline hysterics. (Give me Rosie O'Donnell any day. In a depression-related struggle, she couldn't be less acquainted with clarity. She really doesn't know how she gets through the day, and is rightly loved for that.)

Jessie is also, like Seinfeld's Kramer as he pictured sunny California, "already gone". There's never a doubt about the play's conclusion. Julie Swenson-Petras in the Jessie role, under the direction of Raeleen McMillion, accomplishes considerable stage alchemy in the service of being "already gone".

But you don't have to be a psychologist to lose sympathy for Jessie's "already gone". Her tranquility has been undermined, for example, by the pithy comments Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold made to classmates on their way into Columbine High. They were "already gone". And like Jessie, they joked, even extending reprieves to friends, as they walked compulsively into the school building to lay waste to innocent lives and shackle hundreds of others with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Thanks to Harris and Klebold I chucked much of what Jessie had to say into the bargain bin with the statements of sociopaths and psychopaths.

I talked to director Raeleen McMillion this morning. Initially she rejected the offer to direct 'night, Mother, but reconsidered. She seems to agree it's a problematic artifact, though confessed she found the rehearsal experience incomparable for stimulating discussion with the small cast.

We can all make a case for our own suicide, just not so eloquently as Marsha Norman. 'night, Mother is unnerving, convincing, a kitchen table universe, one with a gravitational logic all its own, as well as a "to do" list -- how to prepare your mother, how to acquire bullets, how to rationalize around desperate protests. It has a strong annihilation agenda.

It's the kind of representation that activates "copycat suicides", (sometimes called the Werther effect after Goethe's The Sorrows Of Young Werther.) The "legitimizing" effect of one suicide on another has also been documented in the last twenty years and is still being researched. Some countries, less blindly devoted to "freedom of speech", actually now regulate the way suicides are publicized. Such caution could certainly be applied to 'night, Mother, ironically with deference to its own penetrating impact, actualized here in a high quality, small production.

Raeleen McMillion is right: it certainly stimulates thought. But under her direction, with Swenson-Petras as Jessie and Carol Zippel as Mama, the play received better than it deserved. I don't agree with Damien Jaques in this morning's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In the past twenty years it's been undermined as a human meditation.

And it left me in an odd, dual state of mind. I don't regret seeing it. I had a wonderful talk with Raeleen this morning. Still, I wouldn't see it again. And I'm glad it's having only a limited run.

Military Photographer of the Year Winner...Playing Dead Category

2006-09-05T10:05:00.000-05:00

Combat medics train on a simulated battlefield using the Combat Trauma Patient Simulation system at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. The simulators realistically replicate a vast array of conditions to include trauma, weapons of mass destruction, and diseases. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith

The Department of Defense has made about 300,000 images available in their DefensLINK Multimedia Gallery. I noticed there's a sprinkling of "simulated" photos throughout, among each of the Armed Services. Here's one released just last week:

08/29/06 - From left, U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Larry Forester, Capts. Michelle Cook and Andrea Whitney, and Master Sgt. Patrick McEneany, all from the18th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, fasten a simulated patient with a leg and eye injury to a litter in preparation for flight on a C-130 Hercules aircraft at Kadena Air Base, Japan, Aug. 29, 2006. The 18th Wing and the 353rd Special Operations Group is conducting a mass casualty exercise to test the rescue and emergency care capabilities of Kadena AB. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Kasey Zickmund) (Released)

Extraordinary. Have they been reading their Roland Barthes and decided their photo archive needs "innoculating" -- letting in a little bit of the disease to protect against a more virulent strain? He's French!

Military Photographer of the Year Winner 1996 Title: Playing Dead Category: Portfolio Brief Description: Two soldiers with weapons stand over another soldier laying on the ground. (black & white ) Exact Date Shot Unknown (Released to Public) DoD photo by: PH1 SUSAN M. CARL

"Military Photographer of the Year Winner...Playing Dead Category." Baudrillard: simulation threatens the difference between "true" and "false", between "real" and "imaginary". Could they be that clever? He's French, too.

There's a picture of one dead American soldier -- a Civil War photo of a Confederate soldier. And there are pictures of bodies stacked at liberated concentration camps from WWII. Concentration camps in the DefenseLINK Multimedia Gallery. We're always fighting the last war, but the next Hitler.

No one expects the DoD to put dead bodies in their photo archive. Or coffins carrying dead American soldiers. Why the simulations? Is it to signal that our leaders are aware of the costs of war without actually showing those costs? Do historic photos contain the same signification from a temporal distance?

They've made an exception...by showing contemporary photos of the real coffin carrying President Reagan's body:

Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff salute former President Ronald Reagan's flag-draped casket during the funeral procession June 9, 2004, along Constitution Avenue in Washington D.C. Reagan's body will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda June 10. A state funeral will be conducted June 11 at the Washington National Cathedral, where President Bush will give the eulogy. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Shane A. Cuomo

I'm wondering -- does this WWII veteran not deserve the same respect as our dead in the Iraq War because, like President Bush, he was only a Reservist?

On further review, my theory is wrong: President Reagan was eventually called to active duty in the First Motion Picture Unit, where he served in California with Clark Gable and Dr. Seuss.

Zen Koan, Groucho Koan

2006-09-03T14:02:00.000-05:00

Zen Koan:

A student once asked Joshu: "If I haven't anything in my mind, what shall I do?"

Joshu replied: "Throw it out."

"But if I haven't anything, how can I throw it out?" continued the questioner.

"Well," said Joshu, "then carry it out."

Groucho Koan:

"You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute 'n a huff."

- Duck Soup (1933), to Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont)

We Will Tell No Joke Before Its Time

2006-09-02T21:12:00.004-05:00

Cowboy and Adolph Hitler, by H. S. Anderson, Topanga, California, 1942
National Archives and Records Administration

Jackie Mason's in the news again, this time for suing Jews For Jesus. I think he’s funny. My mnemonic for Jackie Mason is his routine about how Gentile men are always thinking about their next alcoholic beverage and Jewish men are always thinking about their next bite to eat. Some years ago he was attacked for saying (paraphrase):

You could get a Jewish guy to join the KKK if they served coffee and cake.

It’s difficult to capture Jackie Mason on paper but the line was really funny in his concert and just about every word in it alienated or angered somebody. Cake manufacturers didn't protest but I wouldn’t be surprised. Yet no one really had a right to be angry. The line holds up to scrutiny, saying as it does that joining the KKK is the last thing a Jewish guy would do.

I remembered this morning I’m the custodian of a joke-in-progress. Some years ago, circa 1983, my apartment-mate and college friend Eric Schwartz suggested we invent a joke together. Schwartz is Jewish and introduced me to the marvelous breakfasts integral to his faith. He's also a mensch, so when he proposed inventing a joke he was also ready to get us started. He looked at me and said:

Adolph Hitler walks into a computer store.

We improvised in many directions but in the end, we agreed we'd gotten no further than this promising beginning. I forgot about this college conversation for ten years.

Ten years later I was talking to another Jewish comedian, the The Philosopher King Of Morton Street, in his restaurant as we waited for the breakfast crowd. In a moment of pure spontaneous recall, and without any contextualizing introduction, I said “Adolph Hitler walks into a computer store.” Kenny, with little hesitation, responded offhandedly:

Oh, and he’s naked and he has a paintbrush tied to his penis.

We didn’t even try to go further. When a thing is right, it’s right.

I’d known Kenny for years before some part of my brain recognized he was the person to add a line to the joke. After rousing him from his NY Times crossword I forgot about the joke again – for another ten years.

In 2004 I was sitting with my former employee, Jon, on a lawn in front of a church, waiting for Gilfest to start. Jon is funny, Jewish, has an active mind. In fact he drinks deep at a well of paranoia, but he’s gentle and self-deprecating. He once confessed to me his guilt over some psychic complicity in killing The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. I assured him he’d only maimed the guitar great.

It took me a while to recognize Jon, too, as the next trickster from the collective unconscious to supply a line for the joke. Maybe there's a circadian rhythm for the ten year interval, but not until Jon and I were sitting on the church lawn, after knowing him for a couple of years, did THE JOKE, twenty years now in the making, come to me. I offered to him, without explanation: “Adolph Hitler walks into a computer store. He’s naked and he has a paintbrush tied to his penis.” Jon mumbled and grumbled, but understood the task at hand intuitively. In a few seconds he blurted:

He asks the clerk, “Do you have a copy of Windows XP, Fatherland Edition?”

We both knew he'd nailed it.

So that’s where we stand. My sense is we’re only one or two lines from the end. The joke will be done in 2014 or 2024. I’m amused by the fact that when the joke began there was no such thing as Windows XP. I’m hoping I’ll forget it again. And then one day I'll turn to someone and say:

Adolph Hitler walks into a computer store. He’s naked and he has a paintbrush tied to his penis. He asks the clerk, “Do you have a copy of Windows XP, Fatherland Edition?”

The rhythm seems to be calling for a punch line already. The punch line could very well be the clerk’s.

Merchant Revisited

2006-09-02T11:23:00.000-05:00

Saw Loose Canon's The Merchant Of Venice again last night. My mother after we went out to dinner said "Let's drive by the theater and see if they're getting a good crowd." When we got there she said "Oh, let's just go in". She's hooked.

Seeing the same theater piece several times is always interesting. I used to do it quite a bit when I worked at The Rep.

Last night -- equally compelling. See my review a week ago. Still, a different crowd, a different theater space, a different moment. As a zen teacher said, they climbed a different mountain.

Anybody Can Put Pieces Of Fruit In An Æbleskiver

2006-09-01T02:02:00.000-05:00

It's putting jams and jellies inside that shows your mettle.

I add more batter.

Talk to the people.

Then I flip 'em around and brown 'em. Tool of choice: Thin antique wire fork. (Toothpick doesn't work for me.)

I go with the spongy recipe with the beaten egg whites. I might have a smaller pan because a whole teaspoon of jam is too much.

Blogging the Æbleskiver:

My Workshop: Aebleskiver Pan!!
Bakingsheet: Sunday Brunch: Aebleskiver
Culinary Adventures: Aebleskivers

An Email From Korvatz -- Where Everybody's An Unemployed Engineer

2006-08-30T12:12:00.000-05:00

My relatives in the Republic of Korvatz are all unemployed engineers and they keep sending me "schemata" for business ideas. My 3rd cousin, Dyula Dulvitz, has read that American women have date panties and lucky panties and I think he might be confused about what's meant by going commando.

Anyway, he suggests putting the various "Terror Alert" classifications from Homeland Security on women's underwear, but he has no financing.

Vandals!

2006-08-30T12:02:00.000-05:00

Review: Loose Canon's "The Merchant Of Venice"

2006-08-27T18:56:00.000-05:00

One reason "we'll always have Shakespeare" is not just the durability of the greatest poetry in the English language but the opportunity Shakespeare offers talented directors to fuse a modern sensibility with -- the greatest poetry in the English language.

In a bold fusion this weekend at UW Parkside, Brian Rott, directing the first production for a small group he founded this summer called Loose Canon Theatre, puts the fashions, postures and iconography of 1980's America to work in a seven actor version of The Merchant Of Venice.

Still in his early twenties, Rott couldn't have known the full extent of his cleverness, couldn't have known what invoking the era of junk bonds, Princess Diana and Ronald Reagan would do for his 40-something audience. He couldn't have fully anticipated the toe tapping at the first notes of Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics, or the memories kindled by something like hair gel, shoulder pads for women, and a marvelously employed Rubiks Cube.

But his instincts were superb. In this "Merchant" Rott combined two smaller male roles into one fatal female. His concept was more than validated by Milwaukee actor Angela Beyer, playing some dangerous candy and leaving lipstick and a trace of cocaine on Shakespeare's verses.

This Beyer sister (there are two in the cast) also accounts for some of the play's subtlest comedy (Rott making it clear he considers Merchant of comedic origin) when she returns as Shylock's daughter.

I often think Angela Beyer has the soul of a comedienne. Here, as Jessica, she's amusingly off center. In an ill-fitting man's hat and overcoat, showering hopes and money on her suitor from a balcony, she winks at Shakespeare's Juliet but her closest relative may very well be one of the comedian Red Skelton's lovable kooks.

UW Parkside student Derek Ewing's slick, posturing Bassanio, all jacket and jawline, seems like he's one cigarette burn on his shiny suit from having the surface punctured. An 80's mindset.

As for Shylock, the question of sympathy is complicated. Milwaukee actor E. Frank Namath remains engaging throughout, and that's surely a victory.

Milwaukee actors Kyle Tikovitsch and Tina Schultz deliver comedically in multiple roles and also demonstrate this group believes rightly there's a worthwhile moment in every line.

If you know Shakespeare a little you anticipate the big speeches. Milwaukee actor Jacquie Beyer's "Quality of mercy..." was muscular in her male disguise, and worth waiting for.

Portia is one of the "pants roles" and Beyer made it clear early on, before she put on pants, that a swimming suit, Lolita sunglasses and a one-of-a-kind hairdo can be pants as much as pants are pants. Her tabloid-style repose on a chaise lounge was perfect for shooting the clay pigeons that are her unwanted suitors, and perfect too for signifying that her wit concerning the male of the species is also, to some degree, "a cover story".

The heartstopper Sunday was her capacity for sentiment. From behind the sunglasses she's first snide about, then emotionally snared in, one of the play's principal conceits: her romantic fate being attached to a shell game -- the chests of gold, silver and lead. Jacquie Beyer raised the stakes high before the game was decided in her favor, so when she walked a few steps to embrace her new husband-to-be, the entire audience walked with her. A kiss is still a kiss.

Loose Canon Theatre is a young, educated group, clearly empowered with both textual analysis and visual splash, and their leader is Brian Rott. One hopes on his return from study at the Moscow Art Theater he'll gather them again, and that these talented performers will help constitute the next generation for Milwaukee theater.

You can see this terrific "Merchant" in Milwaukee at the Astor Theater on Brady Street the weekends of September 1st and September 8.

What Telemarketers Know About "Doctor Zhivago"

2006-08-24T22:56:00.000-05:00

Some years ago I landed close to the bottom of the employment ladder. I suppose professional chicken grabbers, those guys who corner and snatch up chickens eight at a time to transport them for slaughter, have it worse, but not much. I wasn't just a telemarketer, but a telemarketer on "the cop call", the nightly shakedown across the country in the name of police and veterans groups of questionable legitimacy.

Even though the job led improbably to becoming the phone room manager at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, I've tried to forget the cop call. But it looks from my notebook like I attempted to make the best of talking to thousands of Americans and it looks like I started taking notes for an essay with the working title: "What Telemarketers Know About America".

From "What Telemarketers Know About America":

Americans use their children to screen their phone calls. In New York, Kansas, and Michigan, little children have become a front line of defense against the kind of call I'm making. As young as 2, 3, 4, they're power-lifting telephone receivers, stopping for one last coaching session from mom and dad, and screaming WHO IS THIS?

Here's a peek into the phoneroom:

After a few weeks I decided to ask the phone room manager, Mark, who was already fond of me -- and fond of my results -- the question so many people on the other end of the lines ask me: "What percentage of this money actually goes to the officers?" With seventeen or so years in the business, he was ready for me. "I was badly abused as a child," he said. This was his verbatim, direct response. Then he handed me a brochure for the prepaid legal services he was hawking on the side.

But here's something I kind of like:

I'm talking to Lara on behalf of the Kansas Peace Officers when I have a realization and I break from the script. "You were born in 1966 or '67, weren't you", I said. "You have that information?," she asked. "Doctor Zhivago came out in 1965", I said, "your parents loved Doctor Zhivago, didn't they." "Clever boy," she said. Suddenly sexuality. I'm not totally gone.

Julie Christie as Lara.

According to the Social Security Administration's (SSA) Popular Baby Names, in 1965, the year Doctor Zhivago was released, Lara isn't in the top 1000 names at all, (though "Fonda" -- used as a first name -- ranks 885th).

In 1966 Lara makes a stunning debut at 618th.

In 1967 Lara jumps all the way to 277th.

1968: 227
1969: 224
1970: 235
1971: 273
1972: 297

So Lara peaked in 1969.

In 2002 the BBC reprised Doctor Zhivago as a miniseries and in 2003 it played in America on Masterpiece Theatre, with Keira Knightley in the role of Lara, the role Julie Christie beamed into the minds of American parents-to-be.

(The real letdown in the miniseries was Sam Neill standing in for Rod Steiger, but that's not to discredit Neill, who I usually like, but just because Rod Steiger was unstoppable. The way Steiger's Victor Komarovsky intones, not "Lara", but "Larissa", would fry any database.)

In 2003 Lara ranked 730th according to the SSA.

In 2004, 733rd.

Score one for Julie Christie.

Although in 2005 "Keira" ranks 232nd.

Wordwise, It's Time For "Opensure"

2006-08-24T13:47:00.000-05:00

It's time to consider "opensure". The nicens at LezBeOut.com think so too. From When She Leaves: 12 Ways To Mend A Broken Heart:

You want closure? I don't believe in it. It's not closure. It's opensure. Opening an unhealed wound. Don't do it. Is there a reason to call and ask why he/she broke up with you? Yes, if you want to feel more pain. There's time for this tomorrow (and when tomorrow comes, you won't care to know the answer).

Raspberrysundae -- bewitched, bothered and bitten -- in one of her bursts of berry goodness has been open to falling from grace:

i like the word opensure. my little brother - he's a smart one, that guy.

I like "le sigh" at the end of her posts.

I can't find my rhetorical quarry in the blog of said brother, but in Give Me Monsters and I will slay them he informs:

- Anna Kournikova is no longer cool to have as your imaginary crush. Try like Jessica Alba or something. Ohh...Zooey Dashchnel or however you spell her name.

Even at 44 -- I can adjust. (Whoever Zooey is, I hope she's of legal age, fantasywise.)

Opensure is, or was, a rock band in Orange County, CA fronted by one Ryan Chapelle. If the solo career deflates go back to the band title, Ryan.

Psychotherapist Mira Kirshenbaum has written EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. Nevermind the subtle tautological aspect of the title (less generously: a fallacy), we're flacking for a word, here. From the blurb on Zooba:

[Kirshenbaum] turns a platitude into a profound principle of self-understanding...and guides you toward, not closure, but "opensure" -- an acceptance that focuses energy on the future.

Why not? A working definition: acceptance that focuses energy on the future. It can be positive energy. Or negative capability. Opensure has more pop than "openness"-ness-ness. How many n's in that word, anyway? And let's change "closure" to "death".

Intelligent Driveways: We Use Rosetta Stones Only

2006-08-23T18:44:00.000-05:00

My Vets, My VA

2006-08-22T20:22:00.000-05:00

I'm a cemetery person and I have five to choose from in easy walking distance. My dead are in Calvary Cemeter y, but this afternoon I walked the grounds of what's now called The Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center, but what I'll always call The Soldier's Home. Because, well, that's what my mom calls it.

Building No. 41: Ward Memorial Theater

As a kid I somewhere absorbed the myth that the Ward Memorial Theater was an exact replica of Ford's Theatre in Washington. Now a laptop instantly punctures that myth for neighborhood kids, lowering the creepiness factor, but I'm thinking probably not entirely eliminating it. I see the founding document for the grounds is dated just ten days after the end of The Civil War.

Building No. 43 Domiciliary

The vets now call the Domiciliary the "Hoptel" -- free lodging for out-of-town veterans here for outpatient or follow-up care.

The Main VA Hospital

As a kid I was told some guys wounded on Omaha Beach were shipped directly to these grounds -- and they never left. As I understand it, floors 9 and 10 are essentially now a nursing home. Architecturally speaking, if some Red Army soldiers from Stalingrad were shipped here because of overcrowding in facilities built in Soviet-era Russia, they'd feel right at home.

National Avenue

"Bar Open 6:00 AM Tues-Sat." Flanking the main hospital on National Avenue is a string of hotels, bars and single-room-occupancy's -- not an easy landing strip if you're fresh out of rehab. I know of one vet from the previous Gulf War whose first residence on release was this SRO, with an entrance through the bar on the ground floor. His neighbor introduced himself as "Snowball".

Relaxing By The Pond

I'm talking to Bill and Cathy, I'll call them. They're generally satisfied with the care Bill gets at the VA. He's here for followup after major surgery. "Things take a while", he says. "You have to wait for appointments, but the care is good." He's particularly happy about doctors rotating in from Froedtert Memorial Hospital. And the pristine condition of the cemetery grounds gives him comfort.

Bill's dad was a WWII vet who spent time in a German POW camp. When, 50 years after the war, Bill and Cathy brought him here for Alzheimers evaluation, an MRI scanning the back of his head revealed a fracture from a German soldier's rifle butt.

The DNR looks after these swans on the grounds.

Bill understood immediately my particular city-brand of attraction to the Great Blue Heron. He gave me directions to a heron rookery far off the beaten path in the north woods. "Wear your boots," he said laughing. "Because the place is covered with heron shit and fish bones."

Baby Swan

The grounds certainly carry the weight of historical memory. There's understandable controversy over a plan to put some of the property to commercial use.

"The Bivouac Of The Dead", says the poem.

I didn't think I would include this shot. Now that I've titled the entry, "My Vets, My VA", let me just say: When I was a kid we used to play football on this grass. It was an open field. And in winter, standing up boldly on a flying saucer, I was one of the inventors of snowboarding.

A photo angle from a chemotherapy veteran.

I've seen the guys sometimes arrange a picnic table under a tree branch so they can hang an i.v. up there. I have no trouble returning to my cancer experience time and time again, now twelve years later.

A month ago I attended the funeral of a distant relative by marriage, an old timer who was a tail gunner and radio man on bombing missions over Germany in WWII. He flew in the B-17 called Dear Mom. I had two surprising moments that afternoon.

The first was panic when I looked at a scrapbook his family put together for Bill S. Pasted in was the list of missions he flew and I had to scan it to see if he'd been on a bombing run over Muhldorf, Germany on March 19, 1945, a botched effort destroying the dormitory where my father was living and killing some of dad's friends. Thankfully, no. Bill had been out of the war for a long time by then, had written a letter home saying "I'm as safe as a kitten curled up next to a fireplace", and had vowed never to set foot on an airplane again -- a vow he kept.

The second was graveside, standing as the priest delivered prayers, pushbuttoning the tired language of salvation, afterlife, and reconciliation. Then a stranger to us all, a highly decorated soldier whose sole occupation is now attending funerals, stepped some distance away under a tree, picked up his flugel, and blew a ghostly Taps. Thats when we found religion.

The Mailbox At Beth Hamedrosh Hagodel Cemetery

2006-08-21T12:40:00.000-05:00

Taxis Real And Imagined

2006-08-20T22:27:00.000-05:00

The new working title of my play is THE NIGHT THEY INVENTED CHAMP EGAN, and I think it might stick. I'm putting the finishing touches on another draft.

The following exchange between characters has me reminiscing about an old friend -- and about taxis. "Champ" is an American and "Alexander" comes from the tiny Republic of Korvatz. (Can't find it on the map? I'll see if I can produce a link in another post.)

CHAMP
Did you get any psychiatric training in Korvatz?

ALEXANDER
I learned this as some teenager in the backseat of my brother's taxicab. Those Russian imports were maybe sixty, seventy percent cardboard but the back seat was "magnifico". If the girl was small she could lay down completely.

Those of you from my poker and chess days might recognize an echo of Alex R., my friend and onetime apartment mate (I was really more of a squatter), in that "magnifico". My fictional Alexander shares with Alex R. that kind of verbal play referencing a third language, even as he bruises his second language, English, a little.

It was, in fact, Alex R. who told me about the enormous ("cardboard") Russian taxicabs commonplace when he was a young man in the former Yugoslavia. They now bump and splash in the memories of an expatriot from Korvatz.

The real Alex R. has a wonderful story about those cabs, too, a story I haven't grifted for my play, but I probably should.

Back in the old country, after dinner one night, he and his date hailed a taxi. Alex being a gentleman escorted his female companion to one side of the car and closed the door for her. He got in on the other side. The evening had been going well and he felt there was plenty of chemistry between them. But they were now separated by the Continental Divide of that enormous back seat. An insurmountable distance.

Years later, having each gotten married, they ran into one another an ocean away in New York -- and joked about how, if that taxi had been smaller, their lives might have been quite different.

I Know When I'm The "Primary Subject"

2006-08-20T18:15:00.000-05:00

Match.com is relentless sending me follow-up emails after my promotional subscription ran out. (While I was enrolled "Elena" from Russia wrote to me: "I like your structure".)

Match.com, also -- in an unholy consortium with Dr. Phil -- rejected this photo, claiming I'm not the "primary subject".

A matter of opinion.

I suppose a case could be made for the "primary subject" being my stylist, Heidi, who shaves me with a straight razor.

She's easily one of the five key people who've helped me in the process of grieving over my father's death.

Meet Me At Squatty Roo's

2006-08-19T16:38:00.000-05:00

If I'm out to dinner with a snobby "foodie" I have a little maneuver I pull which is to interrupt his monologue with "Have you been to Squatty Roo's yet? Oh, it's terrific. Jazz on Tuesdays and 25 cent oysters I don't even know what days -- it seems like every day." It's very effective this far inland. I've gone so far as having to make up a fake address. If someone ever gets back to me complaining they haven't been able to find "Squatty's" I'm going to say, "I think it's closed because of an EEOC investigation. They were hiring only big breasted women between the ages of 18 and 25."

Among my dinner companions last night was an employee of a major Defense Department contractor. I knew she was going to be there and I was prepared for her. About the Iraq war I was going to say:

I'm interested in the "enabling" idea. And, applying that on a broader scale, I have more of a problem with the International Red Cross and my beloved Catholic Bishops, than with the defense industry.

This morning I'm not even sure what that means, but I'm sure it's clever and somehow would have let us all off the hook.

When she finally warmed up to me -- incidentally, mentioning I'm the co-founder of Adult Children Of Acoholics Who Still Want To Drink (ACOAWSWTD) is a real winner conversationally -- she said, "No matter what you think about the war, fighter jets are really cool, aren't they?"

Speaking then as an eight-year-old with fingers matted by model airplane glue -- I had nothing. I sought refuge in some buttery lobster mashed.

A Little Bit Of Wildness

2006-08-17T20:40:00.000-05:00

[Photo: Lightmatter_greatblueheron2 by LIGHTmatter Photography By Aaron Logan]

My friend Judy and I watched one of the herons feed for over an hour last night. I noticed they’ll wade and fish close to humans but if you try to inch your way to a better view they’ll often take flight.

I’m tempted to go to the Horicon Marsh for a rookery tour but I know herons are somewhat common and I’m afraid to lose the special feeling I have around these visitors. The magic is looking up from your ordinary urban day and meditating on a little bit of wildness. A flash of eye. A balance beam pose. One minute they're scrawny and turkey-like; the next, purposeful, drawn back like a bow and arrow. They’re not all that attractive. They’re gawky. And when they fly they look like Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose.

But that beak is suggestive of prehistory, like an ancient bifacial tool. You don’t find a tool like that at The Home Depot. If these birds weren’t here before us they sure look prepared to survive long after we’re gone. I take comfort in that. For me it’s some at least momentary antidote to the moronic inferno.

The Washington Post reports today there is no bomb in a Seattle shipping container. If I had any money I’d try to invest in the Washington Post Company. Reporting on frightening events that could happen, but haven’t, signals an unlimited future for them.

But their close competitors have also mapped the undiscovered country of the undiscovered country. People Magazine yesterday boasted an exclusive, as Jennifer Anniston revealed “I am not engaged and I don’t have a ring and I haven’t been proposed to.”

I’d like to report that I did NOT do 1000 push-ups today as I’d planned.

When the smaller of my two herons wades in the pond she comes up with a morsel every time she dips into the water. I really love watching that.

Kenny Shopsin and "I Like Killing Flies"

2006-08-13T02:09:00.000-05:00

The Orpheum Theatre in Madison, WI is going to show the cult documentary I Like Killing Flies, a film which for me isn't so esoteric since I was in the orbit of the restaurant Shopsin's General Store in the late 80's and early 90's in Greenwich Village. I was pretty friendly with Kenny Shopsin, the restaurant's proprietor and the subject of the film. [Photo: kenny1fx by nycnosh on flickr]

Anyone with a history at Shopsin's is off balance seeing a film, reviews, articles, because Kenny's been hostile to publicity even as he feeds NY media types. He told me he never wants to lose the neighborhood feeling of the place to a crowd of tourists. Of course -- a room full of regulars also gives the man the journalist Linda Ellerbee used to call "The Philosopher King Of Morton Street" an opportunity to hold court. [Photo: avocado milkshake by roboppy on flickr]

A Shopsin's Memory: Carl Bernstein was there one night and as he was leaving my friend David gave a small wave and said THANKS FOR WATERGATE!

To get a feel for Kenny, first look at the restaurant's menu, offering over 900 selections, all scratch-cooked by him. I've personally seen him refuse to serve a guy who picked up this menu and asked WHAT’S GOOD?

A Shopsin's Memory: Once John F. Kennedy Jr. walked in, or I should say, rollerbladed in. This was in his Assistant District Attorney days. I have to say, a better looking human being I've never seen. Kenny's wife, Ev e, thought so too. To crack me up (and express her innermost thoughts?), she made obscene tongue gestures behind JFK Jr's back for as long as it took him to eat his soup.

Here are six clips from the movie. Much is made of the rules at Shopsin's, especially NO PARTIES LARGER THAN 4. A whole mythology, including a poem, has grown around this rule. But Kenny once told me the reason he originated it. I don't know if it's public knowledge so I'm not saying. I think he enjoys being misapprehended as arbitrary, mean, eccentric, but the real reason is thoughtful and respectful of his customers. [Photo: inside the ebelskiver (spherical pancake) by roboppy on flickr]

A Shopsin's Memory: In the middle of my chemotherapy the phone rang and it was Kenny inviting me to hang out at the restaurant whenever I was up to it, without having to eat. He suspended a rule for me. I could never resist ordering something.

Calvin Trillin is a Shopsin's regular who, regrettably, I never got a chance to meet. Kenny finally consented to let Trillin write about the restaurant. Don't Mention It: The Hidden Life And Times Of A Greenwich Village Restaurant appeared in the April 15, 2002 New Yorker.

A Shopsin's Memory: The walls have original artwork contributed by patrons. My favorite is a cartoon of Kenny stabbing a health department inspector with a chef's knife.

The film keys on the restaurant's forced move from its 32-year home at the corner of Bedford and Morton Streets in New York. I've been to the new place only once and I'm a little nostalgic for the old one. But Kenny -- uncensored, confrontational, imaginatively indulgent, and in my experience, a totally authentic human being -- is certainly a moveable feast. [Photo: kenny2fx by nycnosh on flickr]

The Fandom Phantom

2006-08-09T01:32:00.000-05:00

I must be emitting a vibe sitting in the park waiting for my herons because people want to talk to me. Saturday a total stranger, a softspoken guy in his 40's, sat down next to me as if I were a monk about to reveal today's koan.

I was smoking a pipe (yes, a pipe) filled with Uhle's Blend #71. On my lap I had a copy of Norman Cantor's Twentieth Century Culture. My uninvited companion, not really so much looking for delicate wisdom, needed to unburden himself.

The daily grind of his associate ministry at an inner-city church had him soulsick. His job hunt has netted only part-time delivery for a dry cleaning business. And his wife of seven years has developed agoraphobia: she sits frozen in their house, denying any problem exists. He apologized to me several times during each anecdote.

I really wanted my birds and to dip back into Cantor. But I couldn't ask him to leave. He was sitting down, literally at my feet -- I have one of those portable chairs. He was in the lotus position. What a gesture that sitting down was. He committed! -- and he committed me. I didn't really want to speak and he didn't really want me to speak, but the situation, the posture, the silence, demanded it.

I said: "You're a caretaker now and you're no good to anyone if your own mental health dissolves." It was too much. Too intimate.

A further silence.

Finally, I said, "I can't believe Packer season is starting again," because he told me he grew up in Green Bay.

"I think I was the only man in Green Bay who hates the Packers", he said, with some relief for the change of subject.

"I'm sick of Favre", I said. "The buildup to this season feels uneasy."

"I know", he said. "A losing season. My best friend works for a domestic violence crisis center up there and she told me on Sundays -- when the Packers lose -- women all over town get beat up."

Not exactly where I expected the conversation to go. My mind did a double-move, wanting to acknowledge his sincerity but uneasy about the mythical texture of this statement.

But is it true? I haven't found a straightforward answer yet.

(I shot these pictures at the Minnesota playoff game two years ago. Doesn't the statue of Vince Lombardi in front of Lambeau have a Cold War, Soviet Bloc feeling?)

What I have found is some interesting articles.

On the relationship between sports fandom and self-esteem: SPORTS PSYCHOLOGY; It Isn't Just A Game: Clues To Avid Rooting, from the August 11, 2000 New York Times.

On the relationship between self-esteem and violence, Exploding The Self-Esteem Myth, from the January 2005 issue of Scientific American has got me thinking. And rethinking.

Professor Robert Cialdini, who I've read in another context, is one of the pioneer researchers on the subject of sports fandom. I'm moving his book Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion, to the reread shelf.

What an odd encounter. But he got me thinking.

Cloe Will Live! And Feed Off My Dead Carcass Until Help Arrives

2006-08-07T14:46:00.000-05:00

Cloe's 19 now and needs drugs to battle kidney bacteria. She has skin reactions to the most common antibiotics for cats so she's getting Cipro, the antibiotic famously approved by the FDA "for the inhaled form of anthrax after an individual has been exposed."

In the event of an Anthrax attack, Cloe will live! And feed off my dead carcass until help arrives.

Cipro's made by Schering-Plough of Kenilworth, NJ. Though Cipro was developed for humans, Schering-Plough has a whole division focused on animals. They recently won FDA approval to medicate fish with a drug called Aquaflor, which could be a big deal for Schering-Plough stockholders as well as fish since drugs for aquaculture are rare.

“The problem is there aren’t many catfish veterinarians, per se,” says Dr. Dick Endris, Aquaculture Research Program Manager for Schering-Plough Animal Health Corporation, on their website.

Schering-Plough can't be all bad when they have a companion animal program and at least one doctor in their aquaculture division with a sense of humor. (It's the "per se" that makes the above line funny, isn't it?) Their whole corporate family of websites seems lighthearted when you find out they make both Levitra and Bain de Soleil.

They've resorted to the “headline” format, though, wherein "National Survey Reveals That Losing A Pet Can Be More Traumatic Than Losing A Job" turns out to be a promotional piece for the HomeAgain Pet Recovery Service using implanted microchips.

The big surprise: On the product page for dogs is a category entitled “Euthanasia”. With Beuthanasia®-D Special, “Cardiac arrest begins in less than half the time required by pentobarbital alone.” It’s a Class III drug and so “eliminates extra paperwork required with Class II drugs.” A special purple dye “Visually identifies Beuthanasia®-D Special, eliminating mistakes.”

I keep a close watch on Cloe, since she’s blind, or nearly so, and has lost half her body mass in the last couple of years. She’s pet and companion to me, but also 18 years of continuity: She’s a New Yorker. I adopted her from the Bide-A-Wee Home Association in 1988 and her first vet at the Bide-A-Wee clinic was Stephen Kritsick, who became a TV star on Good Morning America. He authored the books Tender Loving Cat Care and Creature Comforts: The Adventures Of A City Vet.

Sadly, neither Schering-Plough, nor any other drug company, could come through for Dr. Kritsick in time to save his own life. In 1994, just as he was becoming an American James Herriot, he died of AIDS at the age of 42.

I remember talking to Kritsick, calling him with petty concerns about Cloe. I’d never had a cat before. She was sleeping so much.

“Is she eating, drinking, going to the bathroom and grooming herself?”, Kritsick would ask me. "Yes", I'd say. “Then she’s OK,” he'd say.

Eighteen years later I can still answer Dr. Kritsick in the affirmative. Most important: I don’t see any signs of physical pain from her. So I hope for some continuing window of enjoying her, and her enjoying me.

Now she’s prepared for Anthrax-wielding terrorists.

Nessy Sunday Morning

2006-08-07T01:28:00.000-05:00

On The Rocks: How Many Gibsons Had Gibson? How Mellow Was Mel?

2006-08-06T01:23:00.000-05:00

How many Gibsons had Gibson? How mellow was Mel?

Christopher Beam (a Slate intern), writing for the magazine's generally appealing Explainer series, (recently: Are Snowflakes Really Different?, Did Stress Kill Ken Lay? and I Want A Butt Double, How Much Will I Have To Pay?) says Malibu Mel was "Pretty Drunk" -- with a blood-alcohol level of 0.12.

Now wait a minute. Not long ago the legal limit was 0.10. Is 0.12 really that drunk? Yes, I'm speaking as a resident of Wisconsin.

Kevin C. Barry is a resident of Racine, Wisconsin. Last Friday night when he drove through a barricade in Milwaukee's Third Ward and into a jazz festival Kevin C. Barry of Racine had a blood-alcohol level of 0.20. Nobody was hurt. A Milwaukee County Sheriff was having dinner at The Wicked Hop and arrested him. Even with a 0.20 blood-alcohol level he was smart enough to remain unconscious and not give voice to any racial epithets.

I'm speaking also as a recent graduate of The Bartending Academy Of Wisconsin, where on the final exam I had to make 24 drinks in 20 minutes. I remembered the ingredients to a Golden Cadillac but forgot to salt the rim on a Margarita.

In Urbana, IL, Lawrence Bouser was arrested a fifth time for D.U.I., with a blood-alcohol content of 0.26. Last week his sentence was probation. He'd already spent a year in jail in Wisconsin for his previous offenses. We don't like "Illinois Drivers". I'm glad to read he seems to be getting his life in order now. That's doin' some drink'n -- 0.26.

I'm speaking also as the co-founder of Adult Children Of Alcoholics Who Still Want To Drink (ACAWSWTD). We have no website and only one bylaw: You can't ruin your life drinking the same cocktail your parent(s) used to ruin theirs. Add ice, at least. Or change the garnish.

Mel Gibson is claiming total irrationality -- he's inventing "state-dependent anti-Semitism" -- with a blood-alcohol content of only 0.12. COME ON. We have some cakes and pies here that will get your blood-alcohol level up to 0.12.

Petesophizing...

Song Covers I Now Like Better Than The Originals

A Less Severe Kind Of PTSD

A Fan And A Supporter

Gilbert Gottfried At Caroline's Tonight

Manson Still Interests Me

Launch Sequence To A New Persona

I Can't Help Myself

Sportsbras (imported from my Hamlet blog)

I Will Be Brief (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Why Bush Is Our Most Shakespearean President (imported from my Hamlet blog)

The Best Of A Genre 2 (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Combining Two Things We Love (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Stand And Deliver (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Mamet: Take Away The Director And What Do You Get? (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Hypocracy in Fiction

If Everybody's Guilty Of Everything (imported from my Hamlet blog)

A Picture Of Brian (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Hello Jessi (imported from my Hamlet blog)

The Best Of A Genre 2 (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Fishmonger (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Mostly Iambic Tetrameter (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Hello Muddah Hello Faddah

Sugar Sugar (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Campaign Poetry Clinton Style (imported from my Hamlet blog)

The Beat Goes On (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Hamlet 2 Nabs Top Dollar at Sundance

Hamlet And His Problems (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Open To New Ideas? (imported from my Hamlet blog)

James Scares Me (imported from my Hamlet blog)

I Phelia Pain (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Led Zeppelin Or Jimi Hendrix (imported from my Hamlet blog)

The Literature Of Crisis (imported from my Hamlet blog)

Roaring Forties Blue

Swoon

Room In NY

Wine Library TV

Nobel Prize In Economics

I'm A Flop

Ueckerdome

Still Number One

Wrong Spokesmodel

Not So Easy

Lisa Nowak: Halloween Boon Or Halloween Bust?

What Unites Us

Zeitgeist: Men Steal Batteries, Women Steal Meat

Idol Diagnosis

My Other Ride Is Your Mom

Pleasant Hill Cemetery's Memorial To The Preborn

He'brew Genesis 10:10 Beer: Celebrating Biblical References To Pomegranates

Get It Going Tea: "Simply Brew, Sip, And Get Going"

The Sausage Case at Whole Foods ("Whole Paycheck") Milwaukee

WI Version Of Gravestone Pebbles (Jewish Calling Cards)

Zeitgeist: WI Hwy 41 Near Hartford

Can Anyone Out There Translate Korvat?

The Moments That Make You

Another Visitor

It's Been Right There All Along

Research Royale

Forget K Street

Powell Doctrine

He And Greatness Were Not Compelled To Kiss

Learning A Mere Hoard Of Gold Kept By A Devil

Away, You Mouldy Rogue, Away!

O, Thou Hast Damnable Iteration

Returning To The Simulacrum

The Departed

Who Really Is In The Details?

Frenchy Strikes Again

Absolutely The Best Party

Theater: Windfall's NAUGHTY ANGEL

Fantasy Theater: The Glass Menagerie

MKE Online

The Night They Invented Champ Egan

Another E-mail From Cousin Dyula

Zeitgeist: Public Domain Clipart: Headache, Heartburn

The Zeitgeist On THE VIEW

Give Me Your Digits

Theater: Dramatists Theatre's 'NIGHT, MOTHER