The Trash Whisperer

Titanic: The Musical

2012-02-13T08:52:00.000-08:00

Last night I caught a little of "Funny Girl," one of my favorites, and the scene where she sings "Don't Rain on My Parade" on the boat in the harbor suddenly reminded me of the famous other moment at a boat railing. I threw in Mary P. for a surrealist touch.

In my memoir-writing class Saturday, we had the writing "prompt" - a beautiful Spanish acoustic melody by Fernando Delgaldillo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4Y2uGDuZSk&feature=youtu.be It was very emotional, but for some reason I could find nothing in my own life it matched. I just kept seeing in my mind a woman walking away on the beach, in the dark. (It's called "The First Star of the Night.") When I got home I realized it was being played for us at the exactly moment Whitney Houston was found dead.

About that. When addicts like me propose complete abstinence from drugs AND alcohol, we are not fingerwagging for no reason. Whitney Houston may have gotten off the cocaine, but she kept drinking, and obviously taking pills. It just doesn't work that way. Once you're addicted to a drug, you are a defacto alcoholic. Sobriety is choosing to be 100% present to your experience, and whatever Miss Houston gave up, she didn't choose that.

Regardless, by any measure, its a great loss.

MCO

Huffington Post

2012-02-11T20:54:00.000-08:00

I had to write about the latest nonsense from the Republicans on contraception.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-olmsted/human-rights-invisible-to_b_1268754.html

MCO 2012

Andrea Bruce

2012-02-09T14:40:00.000-08:00

Fairly rarely, I am so struck by a photograph I simply have to share it here.

This accompanied an article about the 8th death of a child in one family in an Afghan refugee camp. The photographer is a women named Andrea Bruce. Her website is extraordinary.

MCO 2012

The Only Madonna Post of 2012

2012-02-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

This is what we didn't see during the half-time show at the Super Bowl, which would have been truly great, as the Republican legislature passed a "right-to-work" law in Indiana last week. Of course I never expected any such thing, but I do think she could have sported some kind of pro-union button on one of her crazy outfits. God knows the cameras would have picked it up.

I've always liked some things about Madonna and not others. I think Vogue is a great song and a beautiful video. I admire her savvy ability to keep reinventing herself. She's exactly my age and looks amazing. On the other hands she can be high-handed and pretentious, more smirky than down-to-earth. But once she became a mega-star, that wasn't really ever going to be the case. I don't begrudge her a big personality, but neither do I worship her like some gay men. Tracy Ullman and Rachel Maddow are my female heroes, maybe Meryl Streep and Michelle Obama as well.

But I have eyes, and the Super Bowl show was amazing. From the "Cleopatra" entrance to the "Like a Prayer" lighting up of the stadium, the production design alone was spectactular. Madonna was playful, taking herself less seriously than I can remember. The costumes were over the top, the computer graphics award-worthy. And yet some of the Facebook comments--all from straight male friends--were so bizarrely negative, I had to question my grasp on reality. It wasn't till I saw the media roundups the next day that I realized that the consensus was by far on my side of the equation. Josh Elliot on GMA--not an outlet that ever goes out on a limb--pronounced it by far the best Super Bowl half-time show ever.

In the grand scheme of things, this is extraordinarily unimportant, which is why I have never blogged about Madonna and probably never will again. But I had to wonder what the hostility was about. I am a tough critic, believe me. I was prepared to roll my eyes at the show. But the very same fans who might have gone nuts over Aerosmith or Bruce Springsteen were called Madonna "a tired cow" (The woman is in amazing shape and nothing if not tireless.) You don't have to like her music, or go to her concerts, but give credit where credit is due. The woman can put on a show.

MCO 2012

What Graffiti Represents

2012-02-04T12:30:00.000-08:00

So I happened upon this plastered to a trash receptacle in Griffith Park, and I contrasted it with the graffiti that plagues this neighborhood. In fact the candle memorial I took a pic of two blogs ago was for a tagger named "J.P.K." who probably got killed by a rival gang, although it didn't seem to make the news. (A neighbor told me.)

I find graffiti annoying and gangs scary, like anybody else, but far worse is a society in which a young boy sees joining a gang as his only viable option to feel respected and protected, and whose sole way to say to the world "I am here, I am somebody" is to spray paint his initials everywhere.

When I hear the Republicans rail against the very poor, and those who need foot stamps, and social programs, while still always willing to spend more money for prison and the military, it's makes me sick. These kids need intensive intervention in the early years of their life, with small classes and committed, smart, well-paid teachers. Yes, this should be the role of the parents, but these parents don't know how to parent, most of them should never have had kids. It sucks that society has to step in, but if you don't like it, then don't rail against Planned Parenthood and choice and contraception. Either prevent unwanted pregnancies or help take care of the ones that result from your intrusive government denying access to reproductive services.

I'm hoping Mitt Romney's comment about being unconcerned about the "very poor" is what sinks him in the general election. "They have a safety net." If the safety was working properly, we wouldn't have "very poor" you fucking asshole. The point of a safety net is to eliminate poverty, not to salve the guilt of the rich for taking a ridiculously high proportion of the country's wealth.

No one, in the history of mankind, has EVER done ANYTHING to EVER justifying having 1000, 10,000 times more than another human being. If the minimum wage is $8/hr, the maximum wage should by $800/hr. That's 16,000/day for an 8 hour day. 80 grand a week (a 5 days a week). 4 million a year. Even 1000x more I could deal with. What can you not do with 40 million a year?

I don't care if you invented the telephone, the computer, and perpetual motion machine, a cure for cancer. In the presence of horrific, life-crushing poverty, huge concentrations of wealth are obscene, immoral, wrong. And no one, certainly not Mitt Romney, EARNS 57,000/day. Disgusting.

MCO 2012

Cops 12, Bad Guys 1

2012-01-31T11:12:00.000-08:00

So this was two of 12 cops in 6 different squad cars arresting one sulky 55ish black man on Carlton Way this morning. I suppose this would be more dramatic if I got a picture of all the cops, but I didn't want them to think I was some angry citizen objecting to non-existent brutality, because they weren't and I wasn't. I was more concerned with seeing if I could sneak a pic of a hot cop in a uniform--cheap thrills, at it were.

So two things: I don't think we don't have enough cops in L.A., but I do think the ones we have could be a little more productive. For example, it would be nice if they would call "311" once in a while to report a couch or a mattress or an old TV on the street. I don't know for absolutely sure that none of them ever do that, but I would bet up to my credit limit that it's extremely rare. Hell, they don't even wave to me as I pick up trash, like it doesn't even compute. If this was my "beat," I sure would make friends with someone like me, the essence of an extra pair of eyes and ears in the neighborhood. I thought that's what "community policing" was all about.

In other news, Reince Preibus is a scumbucket. The head of the Republican National Committtee accused Obama of being like Capt. Sciottino, of that poor capsized cruise ship in Italy. So I dug up (i.e. photoshopped) this old high school yearbook picture of him, and added an appropriate caption.


Reince Preibus, Voted "Most Likely to Disguise Himself a Woman to Get on a Lifeboat"

Speaking of adults with the intellectual maturity of high school students, can I just tell you that some of my classmates do not belong in graduate school? I mean, seriously, some of their presentations are on the 10th grade level. On the one hand, I love it, because they make me look like a genius in comparison. On the other, it sort of cheapens the value of the degree and pisses me off. I want my Master's to mean something, to carry some weight. At $752 a credit, I don't think that's unreasonable.

MCO 2012

Sidewalk Memorial

2012-01-29T06:40:00.000-08:00

This was a little memorial for someone who died, evidently, on the corner I pass every day, From the look of a goth-skater couple I saw lighting a candle, I have a feeling the Miller Beer bottle was intentional, (drunk walking? Hit by a car? It's a dangerous crosswalk) but after leaving it be in this pic, I removed it. It's disrespectful.

I'm sorry for the death, but I do think this photo is supremely well-composed, especially the touch of Gaza's paw in the corner.

I also finally ran into Louise, who has been AWOL for weeks. She has been too depressed to do anything since her mother died. I had just found $10 in front of my building, so I gave it to her, and that made her happy for about 12 seconds.

Second meetings of the new semester this weekend. Yesterday's memoir class went very well, today "The Apocalyptic Imagination." I continue to make friends and create work, and try not to think of the debt that's piling up.

Bogo returns to Austria today. Damn, I'm going to miss him. But he got a new laptop so we're skyping now at least.

MCO 2012

Another Trash Whisperer

2012-01-27T09:27:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I round the corner of Sunset and Western in the afternoon, (when I just walk the dog, I don't pick up trash in the afternoon, only the morning) and on one of the worst litter corners of the city, I see this woman with a trashpicker, picking up trash. I stare, agog. She's says: "It's terrible, isn't it?" I say: "TELL ME ABOUT IT." I point out the blocks above Harold Way on Western. "I do up there every single day." I bet she is thinking exactly what I think when someone tells me they pick up trash. 'Sure, you did it one Saturday three months ago. You don't do it like I do it. Nobody does it like I do it.' I see that she is surrounded by bags of trash, but her trashpicker seems much less efficient then mine. Turns out hers is from the 99 cents store, mine is from OSH. (20 bucks. Ouch).

I realize it doesn't matter if she believes me. She is tackling a corner so bad that even I stay away from it, because the one time I tackled it I was there for over two hours. So I just ask her name, (its Kim) and tell her it's so wonderful to see someone who cares about this city like she does, like I do. (No I did not inspire her, I was clearly a stranger to her.)

And then I asked to take her picture--not very good, I know. It was very warm and sunny here (don't be hating on me, everyone lives here for the weather, we have to deal with the traffic). I tell her it's for my blog, The Trash Whisperer, but I don't think it computes.

As I walk away I think: Oh my God, I just told Reader's Digest I've never seen anyone doing what I do. How extraordinary that I should be proven wrong, just a week later, JUST A BLOCK SOUTH OF MY ROUTE. I mean, I have literally NEVER seen anybody here (who is not an apartment manager/Gardener/doing community service) picking up trash just because they hate the way it looks.

I wonder if I shall ever see her again, how regularly she does it. You'd think I would have asked, but I had to get back home for my last date with Bogo before he goes back to Austria.

We went to the most marvelous restaurant with David and my friend Rich, Cliff's Edge, and ate like kings. Bogo and I have had the most wonderful time - 4 dates (in between his father's radiation/chemo) over 6 weeks. This makes three years in a row. It makes for a long year in between, but at least now we're Skyping.

As I bid him goodbye last night, I thought of all the military families who have to do the same with soldiers going off to Iraq and Afghanistan, and then I didn't feel so bad.

Not all heavy hearts are equally heavy.

MCO 2012

The Wicked Witch of the West

2012-01-26T10:43:00.000-08:00

To think that Arizona could produce both Jan Brewer and Gabrielle Giffords. Incredible.

For those who missed it, the addled and incompetent Governor of Arizona tried to score points with her Tea Party overlords by confronting the President on the tarmac. He declined to meet with her privately, as she has completely mischaracterized their previous Oval Office meeting in her book. For example, all cell phones are left outside the door during meetings there, and she claimed hers was "confiscated." He was perfectly cordial, she termed him "confrontational." (The President? Confrontational over cordial? I WISH.)

They try to compare Obama-hatred with Bush-hatred, but c'mon. W. was a flaming numbnut, a truly mediocre and unintelligent man, devoid of intellectual curiosity, as frat-boy, a simpleton. His going to war unnecessarily resulted in the death of thousands. His tax cuts destroyed the economy. He memos led to TORTURE. He didn't start out with our contempt, he EARNED it. I don't remember ANY liberal treated Bush the way we did until after his policies turned toxic. The right has been EVIL to Obama since the moment he was sword in.

Even if you disagree with Obama ideologically, how could anybody say that he is not extraordinarily bright, smart and unquestionable devoted to his country and to the finest ideals of public service? You don't have to love him, but to hate him? He can't even give in 75% of the way with these people, they won't even cooperate if he adopts REPUBLICAN proposals. Obama Derangement Syndrome is sick, and the lack of respect for the office of the Presidency while he's in it can only be explained by racism.

Be gone, Jan Brewer, before someone drops a house on you.

MCO 2012

Mitt Romney's To-Do List

2012-01-25T07:25:00.000-08:00

Limerick

2012-01-20T09:17:00.000-08:00

MCO 2012

Hometown Hero, I guess

2012-01-19T07:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.rd.com/true-stories/inspiring/the-power-of-1/?v=print

This will give you an idea of the "hometown hero" secontion of Reader's Digest in which I will be profiled in April. The phone interview occurred last Thursday, and then on Tuesday the photographer, Lori, her assistant, Patrick, and the makeup artist, Riku came by the photo shoot/ipad video.

The interview went on for 90 miniutes -- this for a 2 minute finished piece. She just kept asking questions-- about AIDS, prison, the spiritual principles of picking up trash. "Talk more about this" she would prod. "How are you going to use all this extra stuff?" I asked her at the end. "I don't know" she says. "I just want to have it. It's gold."

It was pretty cool. They are coming by again today for re-shoots because even though we took a ton of pix it seems I don't smile enough when I pick up trash. Imagine that!! (I'm smiling inside.)

Yesterday, between an ear lavage (wax) and a teeth cleaning (regularly scheduled) a few blocks from each other, i found myself with several hours to fill. I didn't want to go back and forth home (20 minutes each way), so I went to the new Museum of the Holocaust, which is free.

The top two images were photos I took of display cases, but the bottom photo is of a chained and covered menorah on its way to storage after Hannukah. I just happened to pass it in the back of the Grove Mall, returning to my parked car. For obvious reason, it struck me.

MCO 2012

Why I Write

2012-01-14T06:35:00.000-08:00

This is my first assignment for Memoir class, off the example of George Orwell and Joan Didion with the same title.

We tend to take language for granted, but we shouldn’t. After all, what could be more marvelous than different formulations of air around one’s lips conveying a thought from one brain to another? If there’s anything closer to magic, I don’t know what it is.

I can’t remember ever not being fascinated with language. At 10, I even tried to come up with one of my own.

It was 1969. My family had just moved to the New York suburbs and my little sister and I would go down to the corner on Saturday mornings. I would get a Superman comic book and some SweetTarts and she would get a Betty & Veronica and a Hershey Bar. We’d go back to our room (I think I was the only boy in Mount Vernon who shared a room with his kid sister) and we would read the comics and eat our treats. The importance of the ritual probably had something to do with our shared sense of intimidation at our new surroundings. Compared to Maryland, New York was ethnic and gritty, and I think our weekly routine was an attempt to prolong our sheltered childhood innocence for just a little while longer.

The first word of my language was polamo, meaning “Let’s go down to Eddie’s,” which either my sister or I would suggest to each other after we finished chores on Saturday and received our two-dollar allowance. I came up with an additional page or so of vocabulary, even a grammatical structure, and named our little dialect “Racana. ” It never went much farther than that--I discovered soon after that Esperanto had me beat by a century or so--but as I consider why I write, I can’t help but see my early preoccupation with language as an indicator of the path I would later pursue.
Certainly my mother noticed my precocity with words, and gave me a diary when I was 7. I must have felt comfortable showing her what I wrote in it, but certainly it was an ill-advised move on her part to ask if my uncle could read it, an uncle I didn’t even like, to boot. I said yes because I didn’t know how to say no, but I was embarrassed at my thoughts being read, and the next night I ripped up the diary. For years I regretted those lost pages, as we can never recreate with complete accuracy the way we thought as children. (The upside was that I did learn how to say no to my mother.)

In fourth-grade English, the semester project was the writing of a short story. Mine was called “The Black-Framed Letter” because my mother used to get them in the mail when an old French aunt or uncle died. The story was about a 13-year old boy delivering a secret message to his partisan father in Nazi-occupied France, and it’s amusing to reread now because my perception of the war was invariably distorted by the assumptions I made as an American child in the 1960s, like “the underground” was actually underground. The content of the story, though, was less essential to my formation as a writer than the process I used to write it. It was the first time I discovered self-discipline.

I remember the Sunday before the due-date for a first draft. It was late morning, and I could find no excuses not to spend the afternoon finishing the story. With no prompting from an adult, I scribbled “KEEP WRITING” across each of the ten or so blank pages I set myself to complete before day’s end. True to my word, I filled up page after page, losing all sense of time in the process. My fingers seemed to barely keep pace with my mind, my brain buzzing along like a Ferrari on cruise control. It was the most remarkable sensation, every bit as addictive as the substances that would cause me untold grief later on, but with none of the hangover.

After that day, there was never really any turning back. I’d found my vocation; or it had found me.
I need to write like an quarterback needs to throw a football. Putting words in an order that produces a pleasing result tickles a certain part of my brain--the release of dopamine I suppose. And though George Orwell is certainly correct is placing egotistical gratification at the top of the list of what motivates writers, I can honestly say that my own pleasure at composing a well-turned phrase or smartly-fashioned paragraph is equal to my pleasure at hearing it so described by someone else.

When the muse alights on my shoulder, when the words flow out of my fingers in a process that feels outside of myself and independent of my will, then I have an experience that nobody can take from me. Money or prestige can add to it, like icing on a cake, but the inner, moist deliciousness of the creative process remains inviolate and sacrosanct.

It may not always be why I write, but it is always why I love to write.

MCO 2012

Things I find # 722

2012-01-13T08:47:00.000-08:00

The stretch I clean on Western is highly traveled by teenage girls going from school to subway, and I often find discarded schoolwork and all kinds of notes. This one was intriguing. It would seem to illustrate the old photographer-promises-model-wannabe-a-glamourous-portfolio situation, one is which the fairly plain girl ends up finding the suggestive pictures she has paid to have taken on the internet or in a bad catalogue considered a joke by legitimate casting agencies.

But there is some contradiction between the first paragraph and the second. The questions seem to be ones she would be asked, not asking. Could this possibly be the notes of the person who interviews the girls? But it doesn't look like male handwriting, does it?

Whatever the answers I hope it's not another Hollywood broken dream.

MCO 2012

P.S. I've been interviewed by Reader's Digest for their April issue, "Hometown Heroes" section.

P.P.S. The new semester starts tomorrow. I'm taking "Creative Memoir: Writing" and "The Apocalyptic Imagination" which is all about end-of-the-world scenarios through history.

The Real World

2012-01-12T09:18:00.000-08:00

So I found this salesman's script (there were several more pages) tossed in some bushes on the corner. I would bet that it belongs to one of the guys in the halfway house down the street, who probably quit in frustration after a week, because he didn't make one sale. He probably knew tele-marketing wasn't for him, but it was the only job he could get, as a an ex-con without an education.

THIS is the real world, Mitt Romney. Someone who's trying to go on the straight and narrow, but the choices open to him are so limited that eventually he returns to the easy cash of petty crime. What do you want when the class sizes when he went to school were up to 35 and 40 and there's no money for the remedial reading programs he didn't get? Was he supposed to make up for his education deficit during his time in prison? Not only, Mitt, would you never even take a moment to imagine the life of an inmate, no one in your circle would even think to include anything about prison reform in your platform. The underclass isn't even on the radar, except as men we need to fear, lock up, and forget about.

This guy probably has an ex-girlfriend and two children to support. He doesn't know how to parent, because he was never parented. Not being able to send money home to them kills him, so he never visits. For relief from his sense of inadequacy, he will drink and get high as soon as he's off parole. and maybe before. The parole office will never even mention a twelve-step program. All she really knows how to do is give him a piss-test and violate him.

The idea that in the era of the robber barons anyone would vote for a manbot who is the quintessence of the phrase "part of the problem" is galling. It makes me nauseous when I hear voters complain about needed to "change" Washington. Washington if fucked up because YOU, voters, keep sending wealthy idiots there who only care about their class maintaining their status, or clueless ideologues who think the Magna Carta is some sort of founding document of the nation.

All that vote-buying and handshaking does not mean that these rich yahoos really have any idea what the life of a real American is like. Mitt Romney has never, once, for a second, worried whether his kids had lunch money, or whether he could afford braces for his daughter, or had to choose between going to work or leaving an elderly parent at home to fend for herself. Say what you want about Obama, but there is no doubt in my mind that then man has the the background and the empathy to put himself in practically anybody's shoes. It's what he does as a matter or who he is. The idea that anyone could vote for one of the present crop of Republicans over him is incomprehensible to me.

MCO 2012

Election Year Cycle Poem

2012-01-10T23:37:00.000-08:00

MCO 2012

The Hooker and the Inmate

2012-01-10T08:54:00.000-08:00

A lot of you have posited hopeful scenarios concerning the hooker and the inmate. Of course, nothing can be for sure, but having gone to prison and read tons of these kind of letter from"girlfriends" on the outside, and knowing well the process of recovery, let me share a few sobering details.
1) No one every successfully gets sober for someone else. It's the easiest thing to promise to someone in prison. I guarantee you the first thing they did when he got out was get drunk or high, and any attempt at sobriety after was undercut by a the qualification that if she/he drank, pot didn't count, or if he/she did meth, alcohol didn't count, etc.
2) The second thing they did was fight, probably over the fact that she had to go and make money. I've never even heard of a hooker successfully getting sober while remaining a hooker, and any boyfriend who's allright with that is okay with that because he wants a cut of the money.
3) The letters got to him, and were probably his most treasured possession until they fought, at which case he tossed them all onto the street.

If would be a tad miraculous if she got sober and stopped hooking and got a job before he got out, and he got sober inside and got a job as soon as he got out and they managed to put a life together. I know a couple like that, but they are literally 2 in a million.

MCO 2012

P.S. And I agree, she is a surprisingly literate writer. There is hope in that.

Life is Dandy

2012-01-09T11:46:00.000-08:00

What I really like about cellphone cameras is that they really encourage you to be look at the world, and it's a powerful spiritual practice to be observant as opposed to just seeing things.

Speaking of details, I found it astonishing to believe that Jon Huntsman's response to Romney's "I enjoy firing people" was "I enjoy creating jobs, " and not "I enjoy hiring people." HELLO. Firing and Hiring RHYME. That's just bad copywriting to ignore that.

I saw my Bogo this weekend, my same-time next-year annual paramour who lives in Austria. HEAVEN. Meanwhile, the initial response to the screenplay has been uniformly excellent.

I'm a very content person.

MCO 2012

Found

2012-01-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

FOUND ON STREET:
"Hey baby, what's up! I'm totally confused as to how you want things to be when you get out. I mean if you are planning on getting a real job and being the man I know you can be, I'm all for it. Like I said, I am willing to get sober for you and intend on cutting off every single person in my life just to have a normal life with you . I'm also not trying to cut out anyone who has helped me out along the way. I feel like you want me to be monogamous and just be cool with you fucking other bitches. Justifying it because I fuck for money. i so do not want to lose what we have and willing to be open-minded as to doing what i have to do to keep our relationship alive and active. I want you to want me again. I want you to know and be willing to take what is yours. Every time we talk on the phone it just seems like you are on the verge of giving up and it's very depressing to me.

This pretty much needs no commentary. let's say it just captures a world.

MCO 2012

Mount Newt

2012-01-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

I find it absolutely fascinating to watch Newt Gingrich. He has a endlessly bloviating belief in his own superiority, a vindictive temper that stretches from sea to sea, and an arrogance made doubly dangerous by his utter incapacity to perceive the difference between what's good for his ego and what's good for the world. It's like watching The Exorcist.

I have never been less impressed by a supposed intellect. You can't be truly intelligent and a racist at the same time, anymore than you can be a racehorse if a couch was attached to your hind legs. Without empathy, there is no real intellect, because you if you can't put yourself in the shoes of others, you can't come close to accurately assessing their experience.

Newt is about as capable of advocating for the interests of all Americans as a volcano is capable of protecting the valleys below from its lava and ash. He should retire permanently to the conservative lecture circuit, and eat himself into an early grave.

I have had a lot of trouble with some of Obama's centrist policy choices and inadroit negotiating strategies. I don't understand the inconsistency of his pugilism or his seeming incapacity in perceiving the blatant bad faith of an opposition who would never compromise with him. I find his use of the bully pulpit to be inadequate, and the timing of some of his proposals head-scratching. I will always think the extension of tax-cuts was a mistake of prodigious proportions.

However, next to every single one of the Republican presidential candidates, he is a giant. Whatever his flaws, his integrity, intellect, and desire to serve his country is absolutely unquestionable. The idea that anybody could sit out this election as if Obama or a Republican is like choosing between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum is incomprehensible to me.

MCO 2012

Rick Santorum Ad

2012-01-03T08:32:00.000-08:00

Yes, I inserted the gay couple. Yes, I'm hoping this goes viral. Yes, Rick Santorum is a horrible person.

If he wants to proved these aren't his actual sentiments, he should denounce the persecution of gays in Iran. He hates Iran, right? So why not, Rick? Prove that you really just "hate the sin" and not "the sinner."

MCO 2012

The Nose Parade

2012-01-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

Enough silliness, I have a screenplay to revise.

MCO 2012

Old Year, New Year

2011-12-31T08:29:00.000-08:00

Body by Beckham by that is my face! I decided to treat myself to a removal of gray for the New Year, in case I decided to go to a party tonight.   I will be high on the drug of vanity, cause dang, I look good.

Anyone who's been reading knows I've had a spectacular year. I am keystrokes away from finishing the first draft of the screenplay written as part of my first semester of grad school. I have never been so confident in my writing, I would honestly lay money on the likelihood of this script selling.

I have stayed sober. I have picked another few thousand bags of trash. I have been a really good friend, son, brother and student.   I also have spectacular friends, family and teachers.

I can't claim to be optimistic about the future of the world, but I am intensely enjoying my life. The new year brings two new classes, one of which should yield a memoir to go with the screenplay as far as work floating out in the marketplace.   There will also no doubt be some personal shocks which will blindside me -- but that applies to everyone reading this as well. That is life. There are accidents, early deaths, disasters. One of the great gifts one can give oneself is the abandonment of the idea that life is somehow fairer to everyone else than it is to you. In fact, I have had way more than my share of luck, as far as I'm concerned. I have survived two major epidemics -- HIV and drug addiction. I always have food in the refrigerator and rent. I have indoor plumbing, electricity, and the magic window on the world that is the internet and television.

If you feel the love in this blog, than you're reading just right.   I am really thankful that you check in with me, and hope you take some warm feelings with you into the day and your celebrations.

MCO 2011-2012

Kim Kardashi-un Mourned

2011-12-28T08:10:00.001-08:00

Who knew she had so many Twitter followers over there?

MCO 2011

A Chritmas Miracle, Almost

2011-12-27T08:30:00.000-08:00

David bought me a robe for Christmas so I took this iPhoto to show it off and discovered--could it be--Jesus in my chest hair? I had dreams of auctioning myself off on Ebay for big money, though I'd probably end up in the house of some rich, devout Texas baptists who'd never let me take a shower. So I blew up the photo and did some biometric measuring, and found out that in fact, that is young Hugh Jackman! Oh well.

Btw, movie review. "War Horse" is big, old fashioned, blatantly cinematic, weepy and beautiful. If you go in for that experience, you are in for a treat. I'm actually very surprised at the wealth of negative criticism about its "emotional manipulation." Some movies aren't trying to be subtle or edgy, they're going for big and sweepy and epic-y, and with complete transparency.

Let Spielberg be Spielberg, I say. Sit back, grab a box of kleenex and enjoy the ride.

MCO 2011

P.S. Though I'll bet the majority of movie-goers will have no idea that's WWI, not WWII on screen.

Wrong and Right

2011-12-26T12:07:00.000-08:00

So the six richest Waltons have as much as the poorest 90 million Americans.

No one person born on this planet has ever or will ever do anything that makes him or her deserving of having 15,000,000 times as much as another person. It's inherently and obviously immoral. The only thing that would make any sense for anyone who inherits that kind of money to do would be to give 95% of it away. A small minority do, but the vast majority don't. That's the truth.

In a sane society, the differential between the richest and poorest might be 100 times, and we wouldn't have "working poor." If you worked you'd make enough to live decently, period. Minimum wage would be 30,000 a year, and maximum wage would be 3,000,000 a year. Now, that ain't going to happen, but it's a starting point in negotiations. You end up agreeing to a differential of 1000 times, so that the richest would be capped at 30,000,000 a year. It's still nuts, but way less nuts than anyone have 300 million or 3 billion.

The idea that the prospect of pulling in 30 millon a year is somehow not enough of a profit motive is ridiculous. But the distortion of the idea of what constitutes "real" money in this country is complete. The top .01% consider that chump change.

The uber-rich don't really "need" one more chalet or jaguar or basketball team. But they have convinced themselves that their self-worth is measured by their monetary worth. The goal is to have more than others, and you win by displacing Carlos Slim or Bill Gates at #1. If they go up on the list of the Forbes 400 every year, they consider themselves successful. If they go down, it's depression. I can't think of a more spiritually empty value system.

You want to be really happy, uber-rich? Wouldn't it be nice to go into any emergency room in the country and see that no one has to wait more than 20 minutes to be seen? Wouldn't it be glorious if schools were safe and clean, and prison guards had to become teachers because we didn't warehouse millions of poor men of color in jails? Would it really provide you no satisfaction if the air was sparkly clean, the oceans weren't dying, that our bridges and roads weren't falling apart? Is having all that money really more important to you than a world without children that are forced to pick through garbage dumps to make $1 a day?

What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you really think having another 20-room mansion is more important than funding a shelter for battered women? Doesn't it not bother you that we have tens of thousands of homeless vets, hundreds of thousands of homeless kids? Can you really not see that when you get 22 cents of every dollar that you are guaranteeing this state of affairs? For Christ's sake, I'm asking you to "get by" on THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.

I hadn't seen Louise in a few days, and just ran into her. Her mother died, in the Congo. She can't go back for the funeral because she couldn't get back in the country. She has to guard her income derived from collecting cans 10 hours a day, with sciatica. But she's "illegal," so, you know, she doesn't have the same needs and rights as "real" person, an American. Her pain isn't like the pain of an actual citizen. We don't have to empathize with her, she's undocumented.

Yes I gave her money and have held back the cans of the entire building for her to help make up for the days lost working. Tonight she'll have full bags to trek two miles in shopping carts to the only center left from recycling in Hollywood.

She reminds me every day that I am one of the richest men in the world.

MCO 2011

It's Going to be a Bumpy Night

2011-12-24T10:48:00.000-08:00

By the way, I am also 7 years clean and sober today.

MCO 2011

New Proposed Ballot

2011-12-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

With the revelations of the curdling racism Ron Paul either wrote or allowed to be printed in his RON PAUL newsletters, there is only one category missing from the 2012 Primary ballot.

MCO 2011

N.R.A's War On Christmas

2011-12-22T08:30:00.001-08:00

I know this is rather sharp political satire for the season, but as we speak, there is someone alive right now who will be dead by the end of the year from a gun gifted at Christmas. They will either be a victim or an accident--very possibly a child--a suicide, or a murder.
This will be a legally obtained gun brought for "protection." Yes, because we know how often someone surprised by a home invasion (of which there are incredibly few) has time to get to a gun and repel the invader. (Of course it may happen all the time but the liberal media doesn't want to report it. Because, God knows, it wouldn't make for good ratings.)
The gun may be used by a disgruntled employee settling scores at a former workplace, or an unbalanced student at a campus. It may be used to kill a cop or a politician. All this so some paranoid red-state type can go to sleep knowing that damn black President isn't taking away his God-given second amendment rights to defend his house from bands of roving illegal aliens dedicated to bringing on socialism while insisting everyone pray in Spanish. (The irony! I live amongst these "illegals." Most of them are rabidly Christian and extremely conservative.)
My suggestion to these gun-owning enthusiasts? Don't buy that gun. Go down to the local food bank and give the money you would spend and feed some poor and hungry people (some who might even be undocumented! Just like Joseph and Mary!) As a Christian--which most of you consider yourselves--do you really, honestly think that "our savior" would think you are celebrating his coming into the world more appropriately by stocking up on bullets or stocking up a pantry?
Honestly.
MCO 2011

Coming to a Theatre near You

2011-12-20T09:13:00.000-08:00

I was kind of intrigued by the similarities in graphics in this year's movie posters, so I put them all together. Title suggestions? "The Silent Mystery of the Impossibly Tattoed Horse" seems just a tad busy,

MCO 2011

The Adventures of NewtNewt

2011-12-19T12:52:00.000-08:00

You know why I have a freakin' awesome life? Because I express practically every funny or creative idea that crosses my mind. It like a constant massage for the brain.

I may just have to write a book called "Radical Creativity."

Computers are a wonderful thing.

MCO 2011

Another Oops!

2011-12-19T11:04:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have heard that Fox "accidentally" put Obama's face in the place of Romney's on a recent graphic (pictured above.)

So it occurred to me: What recent incendiary, ego-to-end-all-egos, loose cannon has been in the news, someone I can "mistakenly" use for Gingrich?

MCO 2011

From Eternity to Here

2011-12-16T08:59:00.000-08:00

That's George Clooney, from "The Descendants," accompanied by Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr from "From Here to Eternity."
Hawaii itself is a major character in both movies.

MCO 2011

Perception vs Reality

2011-12-15T11:10:00.000-08:00

The top left is Lord Wellington -- which only struck me because he has the dignity and bearing Romney thinks defines him, rather than merely being a generic male model from the 70s. The German guy to the right of Napoleon is Herman Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe in WWII, who evidently didn't let too many pictures of him get taken when he got superfat near the end of the war. He was a pompous, self-important buffoon if there ever was one.

MCO 2011

Bad Days, Good Days

2011-12-14T11:11:00.000-08:00

I happened up this immediate aftermath of this crash, which was actually worse than you can tell from this pic. I thought I'd post it for any having a bad day. You're not. You COULD be one of these drivers (a third damaged car is out of frame.)

Today my trashpicker died. It stuck, basically, in the trigger position. So I bought a new one, and then I went back and got a second one. It occurred to me that it was the one tool I could give Louise that might actually help her aching back, as she's always leaning over to retrieve cans from the trash.

I got back from Chico yesterday. It was really the perfect visit but I am very happy to be home. Mostly because the screenplay is still spilling out of me, and I have utter confidence I will finish the first draft quite soon. And I just love my little routine.

I thought it would be fun to share a little scene from the script. (Remember, this occurs in 1948. I'm trying to capture a certain style of dialogue).

INT. SWANK RESTAURANT. MANHATTAN.
ROBERTO MONLEON, 34, handsome and dapper, is having lunch with LENORE PIERCE, a chic 30ish socialite.

LENORE
Don’t be cross, Roberto. It’s not easy to be the woman who proposes marriage to a man.

ROBERTO
And it’s not easy to be the man who has no choice but to say yes.

LENORE
Then don’t. Be deported. Is that what you want?

ROBERTO
Do you want to be married to a man who doesn’t love you?

LENORE
Marrying for love is overrated.

ROBERTO
For what then, the title? I’ll never inherit that.

LENORE
Parents forgive their children all the time. Look at Daddy and me.

ROBERTO
I won’t go back to Spain while Franco lives.

LENORE
If you marry me, you can go back when you choose, on your terms, with your own money.

ROBERTO
Your father’s money.

LENORE
Our money.

At that moment a waiter appears.

WAITER
Another drink, Sir?

Roberto nods.

ROBERTO
And champagne for the lady.

LENORE
Nothing for me.

ROBERTO
You always have a little champagne at lunch.

LENORE
Not today. Not for a little while.

The waiter smiles and leaves. Robert stares at her.

LENORE (CONT’D)
I saw the doctor this morning.

A beat.

ROBERTO
Whose is it, if I may be so bold?

LENORE
Yours, of course... If you didn’t drink so much you would remember.

ROBERTO
That would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?

MCO 2011

Famly Visit

2011-12-12T09:03:00.000-08:00

This is the original version of the family creche before I put in color and lights and little figurines, but this one is funnier because my nephew had it guarded by his army soldiers and I thought that they were more representative of the Middle East. Plus I like how his minesweeper looks like he's playing hockey.

I'm at my sister Erica's, my other sister Sandra is visiting too, and together with Erica's kids and my Mom we have been doing a little pre-Christmas. It's been lovely. My sisters and I do a really good job of navigating through potential minefields that come up when adult children spend more than 24 hours together. My Mom's memory loss is marked but may have plateaued, she does seem to be less depressed.

I have a lot of gratitude for both my family and my life, which I will return to tomorrow with great relish. I have a month to finish the script and then on to the next semester.

MCO 2011

School

2011-12-06T09:26:00.001-08:00

This is my new buddy Gabe. Gabe was wounded in Afghanistan, and spent a year and half in a military hospital. He is the poster boy for why the G.I. bill should put veterans through school. We are very different, and yet we both signed up for the same classes this semester and next. We have a similar appreciation for history, philosophy and how proximity to death changes one's thinking. Gabe is the sort of unexpected friend I'd hoped to make in Grad School.

He got all dressed up for out one-day Shakespeare conference on Saturday; I had a jacket and a dress shirt but was tie-less. My paper went over quite well, as did his; we both wrote about "Hamlet." On Sunday we both read 30 minutes of our screenplays in class (as did everybody) and voted for each other for Best Overall Screenplay. His is about a serial rapist on a military base in Afghanistan, it kicks ass. Mine is about that murder/suicide in a plane about Manhattan in 1948 (a true event) and it kicks ass too. He got "Best Plot" and I won "Best Overall Screenplay."

The last day the other writers discovered that I am a) a big ham; b) a decent actor. The started casting me to play parts in their scripts--I got to play a handsome New Orleans black man; a prostitute, a Mexican gangster. And emcee for out little awards presentation at the end. I had such a blast.

And, as hoped, it was very motivational. I wrote 5 pages yesterday, and hopefully will do the same today. I need absolutely to finish this before next semester starts on January 11. I start my memoir-writing class then and want to hit it on all cylinders. If this script is running around town in the hands of some of my carefully nurtured connections while I am completing the next project, it will be the coolest thing.

I am going to get this film made. I am going to publish the memoir. I am going to teach creative writing. All the time and energy I spent in the detour of my addiction will not go to waste. It was just part of my journey.

And I'm discovering for myself what Malcolm Gladwell writes about in "Outliers." Doing something over and over will make you good at it. I am an incomparably better writer now than I was in my 20s and 30s. I really know what I'm doing.

MCO 2011

What You Just Know They're Thinking

2011-12-06T09:25:00.001-08:00

MCO 2011

The Impossible Missionary Position

2011-12-02T08:39:00.001-08:00

Isn't this awful? Some gay blogger was pissed off at Michelle Bachmann's asserting the gay people CAN marry, as long it's a person of the opposite sex, that he photoshoppedMarcus Bachmann on the body of Ned Beatty in "Deliverance." I won't even repeat the implication that he's being buggered by his wife wearing a strap-on.

What unscrupulous liberals will do to mercilessly mock those good Christian Republicans who are just trying to return America to the good old days when gay people went into loveless marriages and stayed in the closet until they hung themselves there.

MOC 2011

World Aids Day, 2011

2011-12-01T08:18:00.001-08:00

This is my message for World Aids Day, sung to the tune of "Seventeen"

MCO 2011

Oh, the Packaging

2011-11-30T14:32:00.001-08:00

I found this packaging doing my morning rounds.

So someone couldn't wait to get the dildo out on the way from the car to the apartment, evidentally.

MCO 2011

Herman Cain's Next Spokesgig

2011-11-29T08:34:00.001-08:00

I don't care who Herman Cain had an affair with or even that he had an affair. But when he goes out of his way to denounce the supposed immorality of commitment between other consenting adults, to propose the denial of their legal rights, well, then he's fair game. It's called egregious hypocrisy.

And an ordained baptist minister? How many times has he denounced sinners from the pulpit? I suspect that Cain's brain operates the same way Laurie Fine described that of her husband Bernie, the Syracuse coach accused of abusing boys: "He is also in denial. I think that he did the things he did, but he somehow, through his own mental telepathy, has erased them out of his mind."

Herman Cain seems to genuinely believe in the virtual reality of his alternative world. He seems shocked that anyone could hold him to account. He is the posterboy for "Don'tyouknowwhoIamism." Yes, Herman, we know who you are. A megalomaniac

And a very bad politician. The woman you had a 13-year affair with has phone records of you calling her at 4:30 in the morning, and you said "you were helping her financially." Oh yes. Discussing restructuring her mortgage before the banks open, I suppose?.

And another thing. Why do the Gloria Cains and the Laurie Fines and the Mrs. Jerry Sanduskys stick with men they know are such scumbuckets? At least with Hillary you know that she had considerable personal benefit from being in a "power couple." Lord, she ended up a Senator and Secretary of State. What do these women get but shame and broken families? They should take the money and run.

MCO 2011

P.S. I'd love to hear Cain say: "Perhaps I shouldn't have showed with those women. But we only engaged in horseplay, there was never any sexual intent."

The Cranes

2011-11-27T17:41:00.001-08:00

Hamburg is known for its massive cranes.

MCO 2011

All About the Wind

2011-11-26T23:44:00.001-08:00

"But what if 'Butler' is somebody's name?" says Marilyn as Miss Caswell in this scene. It's sort of funny here, as Rhett Butler could be just out of frame.

MCO 2011

Leyster/Leighton

2011-11-25T10:32:00.001-08:00

Because sometimes he/she's just not that into you.

MCO 2011

You only have one conscience

2011-11-24T12:47:00.001-08:00

I have long advocated a strategy of appealing directly the the consciences of those who do the actual torturing.
I can't think of one instance of civil disobedience in the United States where the use pepper spray or tear gas was indicated. It should be used on extremely rare occasions, if at all. Certainly it has no place against the Occupy movement.
An America that tortures its citizens is a shameful America that betrays the ideals of its founding. We must have zero tolerance for anyone who practices it or orders its practice.
MCO 2011

Arrogance

2011-11-24T12:29:00.001-08:00

White Christians have a long, sad history of thinking themselves God's Gift to the rest of the world. Here they "discover" the new world, and think nothing of claiming entire colonies for themselves, as if there's nobody living there already.
Alabama is experiencing some discomfitting blowback from their recent draconian law, which might as well be called "Dark People Who Speak Spanish Make Me Feel Uncomfortable." Well, you should have paid more attention in class, asshole, and learned a little Spanish instead of a lot of racism. Vegetables are rotting in the fields because no one is there to pick them -- what, didja think the nice black people would go back to sharecropping and it'd be like the good ole days?
And then a German Mercedes- Benz executive gets arrested for running around without his passport. Kudos to the cops for applying the law consistently! Please, do it again! Alienate Mercedes-Benz! We're only talking about 41,000 really good jobs, a mainstay of the Alabama economy. Send them over here, California could use the work, and the weather is even better!
No human being is illegal. Mothers have been separated from the children, put in detention, and their children have ended up in foster care. PERMANENTLY. This is FACISM.
It's tragic that Obama has felt the need to outflank the Republicans on this, deporting thousands of people a day. There are millions denied due process, and incarcerating them costs a fortune. All for seeking a new, better life. It is wrong, wrong, wrong.
MCO 2011

Groping for the Mirror Ball

2011-11-24T12:23:00.001-08:00

I like this because it really speaks to the motivations of the Republicans. The feel so entitled to the Presidency, as a function of pure ego. They put the interests of the class over the interests of all Americans.

I would take this years winner of Dancing with the Start, J.R. Martinez, any day to be President of the United States.

MCO 2011

Wicked

2011-11-22T08:46:00.001-08:00

Self-explanatory.

MCO 2011

OCCUPI

2011-11-21T08:37:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I'm lousy with puns these days.

MCO 2011

Primary Purpoise

2011-11-21T08:32:00.001-08:00

Those in 12-step will probably enjoy the pun most. ("Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety.)

I know, dreadful. But I still laughed when I thought of it.

MCO 2011

P.S. These days my almost-primary purpose is the screenplay of which I need to finish 40 pages in time for the final reading in class December 4. I'm on page 25. I wanted to have a completed screenplay but you get what you get.

Le Picnic

2011-11-18T10:17:00.001-08:00

Paul Newman crashes the party, and then Marilyn Monroe seems to magically appear from the lake. All is revealed in Jean Renoir's 1959 comedy: "Le Picnic."

(The real movie is "Dejeuner sur L'herbe" a modern take on the Money painting, sans, of course, Marilyn and Paul)

MCO 2011

The New York Times Editorial Page

2011-11-16T08:49:00.001-08:00

We are both horrified and appreciative of Mayor Bloomberg’s clearing of Zuccotti Park. Here at the New York Times, we are most comfortable being uncomfortable: our editorial page lives in that milquetoast wishy-washy place of mild liberalism, somewhat like the guest at a Manhattan dinner party who makes mildly provocative remarks after two glasses of wine and then apologizes even though no one even noticed.

We at the Times went to Journalism school instead of getting an M.B.A. We are both envious and resentful at all of our friends making a fortune on Wall Street, and we can’t decide whether we want them to pay more taxes or gives our children jobs so they move out of our rent-controlled apartments on the Upper West Side. Some of said children are participating in Occupy Wall Street, but they don’t own the department stores that still advertise on our pages and therefore indirectly paid for their tuition at Princeton and Bennington, respectively, even though we pleaded for Izzie to go to MIT. This is the real world. For crying out loud, we can’t even afford the cabin in the Adirondacks anymore.

Therefore we urge determined restraint and decisive action when dealing with the protesters. Or decisive restraint and determined action. Whatever. Mayor Bloomberg had legitimate concerns about noise and unkempt hair and rumors of pepper spray being used as a condiment. Public safety is in the 1st amendment, after all, along with the right to land right in the middle of every issue so no one will get mad at us. The Times reaffirms both principles without reservation. Except on alternate Wednesdays. Cause we don’t want a ticket.

MCO 2011

What's Old is Newt Again

2011-11-15T08:14:00.001-08:00

The only sane reaction to this Republican presidential field is relentless mockery.

MCO 2011

Stanwyck/Tissot

2011-11-14T08:14:00.001-08:00

This is a reminder that what seems "old-fashioned" to us was once hopelessly modern to someone else. Although Barbara Stanywck as a sort of timeless sexiness. She's brazen for the ages.

Today was school weekend - 5th weekend of 6. It means that you are far in enough to really get to know the strengths and the weaknesses of your classmates and professors.

I am going to err on the side of diplomacy here. You never know what could come back to bite you on the internet. I trust the life experience of my readers to understand what it's like have decided opinions about levels of professorial expertise. Suffice to say I feel very confident about my ability to teach creative writing some day in the future.

I will say that I have made friends with a vet, who saw multiple deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. (His military career was cut short by a roadside bomb--he spent a year and a half in the hospital.) We have a very interesting affinity, in that we both understand proximity to death and how it alters your sense of time. Our lives have both been "translated" - his by war, and mine by HIV, addiction and prison. Very different experiences, at the same time we've both had to reclaim the idea of a future we'd let go of, and that's a powerful thing to have in common.

MCO 2011

Waterhouse/Ingres

2011-11-13T06:16:00.001-08:00

A Greek servant girl listens to hear if her French mistress is crying. Wow, I just illustrated the European debt crisis.

MCO 2012

Poor, Addled Rick Perry

2011-11-10T08:31:00.001-08:00

A Patriot.

2011-11-08T08:57:00.000-08:00

I'd like to see this billboard.

MCO 2011.

Hubble Dragon

2011-11-08T08:16:00.000-08:00

With just a little help from Photoshop, I brought the dragon out of this gorgeous shot from Hubble.

MCO 2011

The WInds of Love

2011-11-07T09:20:00.000-08:00

A sequel to "Gone With the Wind" in which I imagine what happened to Wade and Etta. (Scarlett's children in the book, before Bonnie.)

MCO 2011

Windsor Series

2011-11-07T09:18:00.000-08:00

1. Brando 2. Doreathea Lange Photo 3. James Tissot.

MCO 2011

Occupy MGM

2011-11-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

Monet meets Esther Williams.

MCO 2011

Morality and Profit

2011-11-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

I wrote some Huffington Posts last year that read almost presciently given the current new-found understanding of income inequality. Since I'm too busy with grad school with seriously join the Occupy Wall Street movement in a physical way, I am hoping to helpfully participate by adding to the literature that seeks to explain the grievances of the 99%. "Protext literature" if you will.

A friend of mine posted a link to an essay on a site called "The Morality of Profit." The site actually promotes a wide array of opinion, but this particular essay held that:

"A society is moral if it both allows man to fulfill his potential and, in utilitarian terms, creates the most good. Fortunately, a society based on the profit motive can achieve both of these factors. By acknowledging the fundamentals of human nature -- that man is intrinsically self-interested -- and channeling it towards productivity through a system based on such an understanding, both individuals and societies will develop and grow."

I beg to differ. Under this logic, the unbridled application of the profit motive would create the most moral society -- and history shows us instead the Gilded Age. Unrestrained capitalism may produce the most wealth, but the wildly unequal distribution of that wealth guarantees that some will have more opportunity to fulfill their potential than others. The reality is that the more the profit motive rules, the less moral the resulting society.
I would have to be a blithering idiot to ascribe no good to the profit motive, nor acknowledge the multitude of positive human endeavors in which it plays an indispensable part. The transcontinental railroad, for example, allowed for the wholesale destruction of the buffalo, sealing the fate of the Plains Indians. But it also linked two sides of the continent -- the epitome of an inevitable development. I would not be writing this without the internet and 10,000 inventions that preceded it -- many motivated by the desire to make money. Societies in which there is no profit motive mostly do not work -- witness North Korea. (I say "mostly" because many small communitarian societies in which there is no profit motive have worked very well. Native American tribes are a prime example.)
Without the profit motive we wouldn't have much in the way of mining, oil and gas, skyscrapers, bridges, food production, housing, biotech, retail, fashion, banking and air travel -- in short, all the elements of modern industrial society. It is also an indispensable part of any realistic solution to third world poverty -- though ironically so, as this poverty is almost always inextricably linked to the legacy of rapacious colonialism.
But the fact is that the best things we do as human beings are never motivated by the desire for profit. Not one poem is written, symphony composed, or masterpiece painted. Miep Gies did not hide the Frank family for money, nor was it the reason Mother Teresa tended the sick of Calcutta. It's not why 99.9 percent of all athletes pick up a football, swim a mile, or run a marathon. It's not why you read to your kids at night, tend to an aging parent, or stage an intervention for a drug-addicted friend.
Here are two lists. One denotes 10 things done solely with profit as an overriding motive; the other, 10 things in which the desire for profit plays little or no part. (If there is a related consequence, I put it in parentheses.)
Profit-Motivated
1. The Slave Trade (Civil War)
2. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
3. The Iraq War
4. Sex trafficking
5. Blood diamonds
6. The arms trade
7. The drug trade
8. The genocide of Native Americans
9. The destruction of rain forests
10. Off-shore drilling (The BP Disaster)
Little or No Profit Motive
1. Motherhood
2. Affection
3. Volunteering
4. The Arts
5. Play
6. Twelve-step Programs
7. National parks
8. Exploration
9. The Olympics
10. Education
The profit motive may be necessary, but "moral" hardly seems like the right adjective for it. Loan-sharking is not moral. Strip mining is not moral. Sweatshops are not moral. A world in which making money reigns as a supreme expression of morality would be a sorry utopia indeed. Greed may be inevitable, but the urge to accumulate as much as possible should be far down on the list of traits a society should ever want to anoint as one of its highest values.

I Miss My Childhood

2011-11-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

Then. And Now.

MCO 2011

How to fix the World Economy

2011-11-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

I figure the Chinese would love to have an entire country just for a vacation paradise - that should be worth a trillion Euros or so. Europe: HANDLED

As for us, it always made more sense for Alaska to be part of Canada, and Lord knows Texas has been a colossal pain in the ass that should have always been part of Mexico. We should be able to dredge up at least a few trillion from Canada and Mexico. USA: HANDLED.

Of course, does anybody call me for advice. NO! Oh, the burden of being ahead of one's time.

MCO 2011

General Update

2011-11-02T10:36:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of my Mom and sisters in 1962. She really looks gorgeous, doesn't she?

I figure a personal pic is appropriate as I offer this rare update. School is going very well, but I really have to be a little more disciplined with my time. The Shakespeare course is very demanding, I simply can keep up with the internet and my favorite TV shows as I want to, especially given the time I like to make available to the newly sober. One close friend, in particular, is finally committing to getting clean in a way he hasn't before, but he's also discovering what a roller-coaster it is to really be present to your experience for the first time. I am by far the person he leans on the most, and it's quite a challenge to be there for him without trying to control the outcome and still carving out time to get my schoolwork done.

The screenplay course is great and I think the script I eventually finish will be awesome. I have a real confidence that I will sell it, or the memoir I will write with the next course. And if I don't, I frankly think I have a very good chance of teaching creative writing with this Master's.

I'm sorry I don't check in on your blogs often enough. But there is an ongoing connection I feel with all of you. I think of Mrs Alaineus in class, or Sarcastic Bastard working, or Miss Moon being Miss Moon or Mark negotiating Omaha or Mary's quirky and powerful brain observing her life back east and so on. Beth and Sheria and I talk constantly on Facebook. I am of the belief that social media, when used correctly, is a really wonderful thing.

On to my Hamlet paper.

MCO 2011

Herman's Thinking

2011-11-02T10:19:00.000-07:00

The Evolution of Herman's Memory in regards to sexual allegation charges.

MCO 2011

Forgotten!

2011-11-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

Let's play "Forgotten settlement, or Forgotten Agreement?" GO!

MCO 2011

The Way of the World ("La Via del Mondo") - 1965

2011-10-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

Sophia Loren is trying to tell Marcello Mastroanni that she can't marry him, that she has to take care of her sister. Meanwhile Christina is yearning for the boys at the lakeside. (Later she will be raped with Sophia Loren is off with her lover. It's a very dark movie.)

Directed by Andrew Wyeth.

MCO 2011

Winslow Homer/Robert Mitchum

2011-10-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

MCO 2011

Haiku for Facebook

2011-10-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know a traditional Haiku is 5-7-5, but there's actually a lot of leeway in practice, as long as it respect a certain rhythm. This is the one I wrote yesterday:

No comments? Really?

 But it was so funny 

My update.

MCO 2011

The Trouble with "Meritocracy"

2011-10-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

I wrote this a while back for the Huffington Post, but they put it in their "Living" instead of their "Politics." For me, it sums up whats wrong with the thinking of the Libertarian right--Herman Cain, for example--who believe a society must first and foremost recognize individual success over the rights of all people to a productive and happy life.

The left/right divide in this country is predicated on some fundamental fault lines. In broad strokes, progressives tend to favor the interests of the many over the few; conservatives extol the primacy of the individual. On the left we consider freedom from want to be one of the measures of liberty; on the right America is seen as a place where nobody has to be poor if they only work hard enough.

In the conservative worldview, government, as the expression of majority will, is seen as the biggest threat to the capacity of the individual to flourish. They see the free market as the ultimate arbiter; it rewards wealth to the most enterprising, ergo the most deserving. They view any system that redistributes wealth as leveling the distinction between the mediocre and the remarkable. (I have yet to find anyone with money in this country who does not consider him or herself to be "remarkable.")

If you are born poor, in say, Appalachia, and your Dad dies young from black lung and your mother scrapes by as a waitress, you can absolutely still make it in this country. You can ignore the overcrowded classes and peer pressure to get high, you can go to the library and use their computer or encyclopedia because you don't have one at home. You can get that sports or academic scholarship and be the first in your family to go to college. Many individuals have precisely this kind of life story, and surely their exceptionalism should be rewarded. But what we have now is also a society that punishes the equally unexceptional for being unexceptional.

Most kids who grow up in poor communities, who go to overcrowded schools taught by under-trained teachers -- these kids don't rise above their circumstances. Girls are often sexually abused, gay kids bullied and ostracized. Parents are overwhelmed at best, in prison or addicted at worst. Middle class kids often have it marginally better from a material point of view, but they grow up on fast food and video games, terrified of the punishing, fundamentalist God of a church that encourages conformity over creativity. They find school uninspiring, and don't have the grades or the drive to make it through college. They just want to get a decent job, get married and raise a family, often with some degree of addiction to any number of substances or behaviors to ease the journey along.

Here's the problem with "meritocracy." You can't have the "excellent" and the "above average" unless you have the "average" and the "below average." Anyone can make it, but everybody can't. Most children born into poverty will live in poverty; most people born rich will remain rich. Human beings react with stunning consistency to consistent circumstances. Almost every man I knew in prison came from single parent, abusive households--only a tiny percentage had even made it past high school. (I was very much the exception that proved the rule.)

So here's the question society needs to ask itself: Do the "average" and "below average" have the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the "above average" and the "excellent?" Is it a crime to react unexceptionally to your circumstances? Shouldn't qualities like a willingness to do your best and kindness to your fellows be valued as much as traits like guile, enterprise and risk-taking? Do those born into money and a good education really "deserve" huge slices of the pie because they picked the right parents?

I don't deny the value of the profit motive. I agree that a free market is indispensable to a certain degree of economic efficiency. But there's an oil-slick close to the size of Pennsylvania that vividly illustrates the pitfalls of letting the smartest and meanest inherit the earth. It's time we question the premises of a system that equates worth with worthiness.

MCO 2011

Cain Smile

2011-10-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

It's that creepy smile at the end of "smoking" ad that creeps me out the most.

MCO 2011

San Juan

2011-10-28T11:06:00.000-07:00

"San Juan" -- the long lost sequel to "Casablanca"

MCO 2011

Not So Still Life (Chardin)

2011-10-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

MCO 2011

StumbleUpon Badges

Helpful Chart

2011-10-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

Income Inequality

2011-10-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

I've posted this a few times before, but I want to see how it does on "StumbleUpon" which I just signed up for.

MCO 2011

I can dream, can't I?

2011-10-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

The Exile

2011-10-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

In "The Exile," a Jewish novelist is haunted by the memory of a nun who hid him in a convent during the war.

MCO 2011

Don't fergit about yer blind side

2011-10-24T08:43:00.000-07:00

See, I just don't do old movies and politics. Sometimes I show off my jock side. And I have been noticing the demise of the Colts with the lost of Peyton Manning due to injury. So I thought I'd bring in Sandra Bullock to pressure him.

You know on the one hand, it's killing Peyton Manning that his team is losing so bad. (62-7 last night, to the Saints,) On other hand, it must feel really good that they're a mess without him. He's only human.

Had school this weekend. Absolutely marvelous, especially my screenwriting class.

MCO 2011

The Politician's Wife

2011-10-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

John Slattery and Nina Foch in 1963's "The Politician's Wife." After the JFK assasination, the film was put in the vault.

Cain/Palin

2011-10-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

No, Herman, you can't wash off the black, but if you could I know who you'd be.

MCO 2011

Don't Drone Me Bro!

2011-10-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

They come up with apps so fast these days.

MCO 2011

FauxFilm Brando/Welles

2011-10-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

MCO 2011

Get your T-shirt while they last

2011-10-18T12:27:00.001-07:00

It's not just Wall Street

2011-10-18T10:55:00.001-07:00

First This, Then Fox Analyst

2011-10-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

And you just know he doesn't understand why the tactics that have worked all of his life don't seem to be working now. Journalists ask more questions. Old videos doesn't lie. People don't take your word for it. This bozo seems to think he can get away with blustery dismissiveness, or convenient rhetorical feints like "I was just joking." NO YOU WEREN'T.
Your 9-9-9 plans comes off a video game, dude, not to mention it directly contradicts a column you wrote a year ago. How intellectually challenged are you? You are such an idiot, that if someone held a gun to my head, and said: "You have to choose between Herman Cain and Sarah Palin for President" I would say "SHOOT ME."
The capper was his writing that Jesus Christ was the ideal conservative, who was put to death by a liberal court. It boggles the mind. J.C. could appear in a soup kitchen, feeding the hungry, and Herman Cain would tell him to get a damn job and to stop wearing those stupid sandals.
Oh well, all of us close readers of the Bible will get the last laugh. Because: "It is easier for a camel to pass through a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven." And perfect conservative that Herman is, he's a wealthy man.
I laugh at you, Mr. Cain. But you do have a loveky alto singing voice. If they make "Great Pumpkin: The Musical" I would totally cast you.
MCO 2011

Birthday from the Other Direction

2011-10-18T07:40:00.000-07:00

This is a great opportunity to get acquainted with a blog that is guaranteed to be one of the funniest places to park your cursor on a daily basis. http://kathyhepinstall.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/ungrateful-birthday-boy/

MOC 2011

Read the Damn Signs, 1 percenters

2011-10-17T08:38:00.000-07:00

Don't you know, "Having it All" is just an expression?

MCO 2011

Birthday Pix

2011-10-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

I simply can't manage to get this pix in a logical formation, but this is visual evidence of my perfect birthday.

RWC

2011-10-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

MCO 2011

Mitt, Rick, and Moi

2011-10-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

I can think of so many other things I'd rather young Mitt Romney and young Rick Perry would have done besides go into politics. Like gay porn didn't need some businessmen/Mormon missionary motifs in the 70s?

Today is my birthday. I should be going down to the Occupy LA demonstrations, but I am skulking up to Santa Barbara, to be treated to lunch by my wonderful friend, the author Kathy Hepinstall.

I have a bad habit of not planning things on my birthday, and then feeling lonely. Not today.

MCO 2011

Google Maps

2011-10-14T11:06:00.000-07:00

I'm just saying, you've got to be very careful what you do on the roof these days. You never know when Google has decided to add your building to the visual database.

MCO 2011

Jules et Jim

2011-10-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

Another in my Fictional Film Series, in which this would be the cast of an American remake of the French classic--with a twist. The primary love affair is between Jules and Jim --which certainly makes sense, given the title.

MCO 2011

What Awaits

2011-10-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

The Republicans in Congress are paying a very dangerous game. It's not the Occupy Wall Street people they have to worry about, they are driven by students committed to non-violence. But there is a growing pool of the angry longterm unemployed, millions of foreclosed-on, and millions more to come. They will eventually explode.

Romney and Cain et. al. are incredibly stupid. If they win the election and inherit this economy, they will rue the day Congress didn't pass the Jobs bill, because their economic plans (9-9-9, PLEASE) are huge jokes that will do nothing to improve the situation. Their proposals are basically a return to the very policies that created 2008 in the first place. They do nothing to reduce the deficit, but will increase it. Their regulation-shredding means more financial fol-de-rol and environmental destruction. They propose no cuts in military spending, just in social programs. All those tax cuts to the rich don't create one job--except overseas, because the pursuit of profit at all costs is worshipped over a basic patriotism which conceives of a healthy and thriving middle class as essential to this country being what it is.

The President's advisors have served him poorly. His long-awaited agressive populist message is a year too late. But if he can harness the energy of the Occupy Wall Street movement, there is a ray of hope for 2012.

That said, we are probably spitting in the wind of the future. Grand historical trends tend to occur no matter who is in power. There are too many people on a finite planet, almost all with expectations to join the class above them in the coming century. Billions are destined for disappointment; we are about to witness dashed expectations on a scale never before seen in history.

So with that pessimistic intro, something that truly gave me some hope. (Of obvious interest to The Trash Whisperer.) Perhaps, just perhaps, innovation and technology will save us:

MCO 2011

Schooled by Professor Perry

2011-10-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

MCO 2011

By Any Other Name

2011-10-11T09:58:00.000-07:00

"By Any Other Name" told a daring story of a mob boss who objects to his daughter's choice of a choreographer husband because of a secret in his own past. It was considered too controversial and never released.

As I progress in my screenwriting class, it's interesting to note my strengths and my weakness. Coming up with plots like the above--the broad-stroked "logline" -- I'm pretty good at that. I mean what an interesting story that would make, a Godfather with a secret gay past, who's daughter (a dancer, perhaps) wants to marry a choreographer who used to be an escort. (An escort paid by the mob boss.) Not bad eh?

I'm also very strong with dialogue. In my "Writing the Picture" textbook, there are exercises at the end of the chapters in which you are tasked with rewriting poorly written scenes using certain techniques. That comes very easily to me.

It's plotting and structure that kills me. What happens next, in what order, all those choices--they are very difficult. The real classics that you love so much? They are so smartly put together. There are formulas, of course, but if you examine the best movies ever made-all of them violate at least a few crucial "rules."

That said, I can honestly say that I have the most awesome "problems" of anyone I know. This is not to say my life is not stress-free, but most of that comes from dramas swirling in lives of people I love. It's indirect stress. I have learned the limits of my own capacity to transform someone else's life, and as painful as it is to see some choices that astound, befuddle or grieve me, those choices--and their consequences--belong to them.

MCO 2011

A Place for Us

2011-10-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

This prequel to "The Sound of Music" was called "How Do You Solve Two Problems Named Maria" but everyone could tell Julie Andrews was singing for herself AND dubbing Natalie Wood, so 20th Century Fox just shelved it.

MCO 2011

Being a CEO makes you qualified to be rich, not President

2011-10-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

Enough of this nonsense that being good at turning a profit someone makes you more qualified to be President than someone with a history of moral courage and a desire to make life better for all Americans.

MCO 2011

Occupy Everywhere

2011-10-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the OccupyLA protests down at City Hall.

As anyone who's been reading me for a while knows, I've been writing about this stuff ad nauseum for years now. It is very gratifying to see that "income inequality" is finally being understood as the chief culprit of our economic downfall. It's not even politics--its science. Check out Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett/ They are British economists who discovered how deeply destructive it is to healthy societies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y0sBsZfzJk

Happily, the media is finally reporting on this movement with far less snarky dismissiveness. The leaderless quality of the protesters is extraordinary. We haven't seen democracy quite like this ever before.

MCO 2011