Soon-to-Be More Knowledgeable

Posted on 18 Jul 2014 by Frank Moraes

I was thinking about a little bit of conservative polemics that I noticed during the 2012 election, although surely it is older than that. It goes something like this: Americans don’t see themselves as rich and poor; they see themselves as rich and soon-to-be rich. Now this is nonsense as politics go. Of course it isn’t true. Most poor people are just trying to get by; they don’t even have fantasies about being rich, unless it involves the state lottery. But even as an aspirational claim (We want poor Americans to think of themselves as the soon-to-be rich!) it doesn’t work. Most people don’t want to be rich. Most people want to become something and while that usually does involve making more money, it rarely involves being rich.

But last night, I was thinking about this bit of polemics in terms of education. My first wife was extremely intelligent and well read. But she was hopeless in college because she was not will to, as she would put it, “look stupid.” She was younger than I and basically just starting as a physics undergraduate when I was in graduate school. But try as I may, I could never convince her that it was fine to look stupid and ignorant and lots more. That is what school is about. In fact, if I were talking to her today, I would tell her that that is what life itself is about.

My wife is sadly not a rare specimen. I see it especially among men who, when younger, were always the smartest kid in class. But somewhere along the line, they stagnate because they think they have a reputation to uphold. They are wrong, of course. People don’t think of me as knowledgeable because I know everything about everything. The truth is that far greater minds than my own couldn’t know more than a small fraction of everything we as a species know. So admitting ignorance does not make one “look stupid.” Well, I suppose he might look stupid if Paul Krugman got up in front of a class and told them that “demand” was the function showing how much of a product suppliers would be willing to supply at a given price.

There is a terrible irony here that a person’s desire to be perceived as knowledgeable leads to them being less knowledgeable than they would be if they didn’t worry about it. So I have an idea that I fully admit that I’m stealing from the Republicans. “People aren’t knowledgeable or ignorant; they are knowledgeable or soon-to-be knowledgeable.” Although the truth is, I’m not even quite happy with that. Because I’m a pretty knowledgeable person, but I don’t think there isn’t a person on the earth who doesn’t have concrete information to give to me. (Well, barring babies and people in vegetative states.) So maybe it is better to say, “People aren’t knowledgeable or ignorant; they are all soon-to-be more knowledgeable.”

One of the most annoying things people say to me is, “I’m not that smart.” It’s also heartbreaking. I always wonder who told them that. I also imagine a lot of people were given tests when they were younger. When I was in school, starting 45 years ago, I remember being tested all the time. We test even more now. But I was always thrown into the advanced math classes and the slow English classes. But I was blessed and cursed with a rebel’s soul, and now I figure I know more about literature and writing than 99% of the all of the teachers in all the pre-college schools I went to (and I went to a lot). Because it doesn’t really matter how smart you are (and I don’t even really know what “smart” means anymore). And it doesn’t matter how much talent you have. If you love learning—and I think we all do naturally—you are soon-to-be even more knowledgeable.

Never fear, let your love make you brave: your ignorance will soon make you more knowledgeable!

Unreasonably Beautiful People

Posted on 14 Jul 2014 by Frank Moraes

Since I seem to have been ensnared by Game of Thrones, and have given up on doing some rather pressing (and actually fun) database work, I thought I would leave you with a disturbing observation. As I have gotten older, I went through a bad period, and ended up with rather bad teeth that I work very hard to maintain without the use of dentists. Thus, I have become obsessed with teeth. I am also rather obsessed with eye color. I used to think Hollywood had this thing against people like me with brown eyes. But it turned out that, in fact, if you look at the British and northern Europeans, brown eyes are actually kind of rare. And with George Clooney and Johnny Depp having brown eyes, it is kind of hard to make the case for being a member of an oppressed minority.

But the teeth thing still bugs me. I watch these shows of people living with no central heating or plumbing and yet they all have perfectly aligned, bright white teeth. There was a time not that long ago that even British movie stars had bad teeth. But I guess the American obsession with teeth has taken over everything. But I’m not fooled! I see a lot of really fine veneer work. I used to manage a dental office, so I know! Nasty procedure. I’d never have it done myself. I’m only interested in the health of my teeth, not looking like some dental freak. Anyway, it isn’t like having better teeth are going to turn me into George Clooney or Johnny Depp, brown eyes or not. (In my defense, I publicly challenge both men to a differential equation solving contest. Who’s the attractive one now?)

It’s one thing, though, for the royal women to have beautiful teeth. But there’s one character in Game of Thones who’s had his face half burned off and he has perfect teeth. What is it? Couldn’t Steve Buscemi do a English accent? He is literally the only actor I can think of who has rather bad teeth. And for all I know, he may have gotten his fixed. Plus he has blue eyes, so he’s dead to me anyway. I know we don’t want to look at a bunch of ugly people, but really. This is just too much.

Another thing: this series has an enormous number of naked female breasts. And to its credit, they all look quite natural, if you know what I mean: no “veneer” work. And they are all shockingly symmetrical and what I would call perfect. And that’s not a surprise because when it comes to women, I have a shockingly normal idea of beauty. And when I’m talking about breasts, I’m not just talking about minor characters. Major female characters who have beautiful faces, perfect teeth, deep blue eyes, wonderful acting skills, also just happen to have perfect breasts.

Am I going crazy?! This reminds me of a story I heard about some MIT physics students who were working out how many acceptable mates there were in the world for them. And in walked the only female physics professor there at that time. So they decided to do the calculation for her. (This is a standard physics exercise, “How many piano tuners are in New York City?” is a classic.) And she happened to be freakishly tall: like a bit over six feet. She would only accept a mate who was as intelligent as she was. So they cut out 99% of the population. And he would have to be as well educated as she was. That cut it down quite a bit more—actually only about 1% get PhDs, but you figure if you are starting with the smartest 1%, the numbers going to be higher. But here’s the kicker: he would have to be taller than she was. So basically, there was maybe one man in the world that fit that description, and maybe not even that.

Is that how it is in Hollywood? There are so many people who want to be actors that they can just say, “Oh, you have a slight overbite, maybe you should become a school teacher?” Actually, I think at some point this has got to reverse a bit. I mean the unrelenting beauty of the women and the men is too much. But back I go to watching all the warrior men who have never so much as had a tooth chipped!

Update (15 July 2014 5:15 pm)

For the record, having watched it all, I have to admit that I do not find the breasts on all the women in the show so perfect. This actually makes me feel much better. And for the record, when I talk about “perfect breast,” I mean just a kind of advertising ideal. I find almost all women beautiful in their great variety. The most beautiful women in the world are the women who like me!

Don’t Look Back and Sneer

Posted on 12 Jul 2014 by Frank Moraes

Last year, I wrote a rather angry article, Michelle Obama and Downton Abbey. It is well known that the First Lady is fond of the show, as I have been. But it allows people to look back at that time and say, “Oh, we are so superior!” You see, we don’t treat gays and former prostitutes quite as badly as we used to. Ain’t we great?! Meanwhile, we allow our own injustices to continue on. And I’m not talking about ones that are so ahead of our time that we don’t even know about them. I’m talking about things like the selective enforcement of cannabis laws that manages to label huge numbers of young black men as felons for the rest of their lives.

So it’s always dangerous to feel too smug about how enlightened you are. I totally agree that it is best that we no longer hang witches in this country. (But don’t consider it enlightened that we didn’t burn them; the Catholic Church made that illegal in 785.) So I was excited to see that Business Insider had published an article, 26 Shockingly Offensive Vintage Ads. Some of them aren’t actually so bad — more simply reflecting the times. There is, for example, a 1940 Plymouth ad that shows a white couple, and attending to them is a uniformed black man carrying suitcases — and very happy in his job! The ad is conflating owning a Plymouth with being rich (that is, having a uniformed black servant). Charles Howard is shown in the movie Seabiscuit as having a black servant, and I don’t recall anyone complaining that it was racist.

But most of the ads are horrible. There is a 1950s Schlitz beer ad (see above) that shows a kitchen. A woman is holding a skillet that has smoke floating out of it; with her other hand, she has a handkerchief up to her eyes. Here husband has his arm around her, smiling and pointing to two bottles of Schlitz on the table. He says, “Anyway, you didn’t burn the Schlitz!”

The best example is a 1950s Van Heusen ad. Now in a certain way, this isn’t really racist. It is highly ethnocentric. And it implies that all Americans are white. And that America is 80% of the planet. But what the ad is saying is that unless you are a tribal chieftain in the jungles of Africa, you wear Van Heusen shirts.

Okay, I was overstating above. The ad is racist. But it isn’t anywhere near as racist as all the photoshopped images of Obama as witch doctor that were so popular among conservatives from pretty much the moment he took office. It is not making a cultural comparison as in the Van Heusen ad; it is saying that our president is a primitive from another continent (and even time).

What was most striking about the Business Insider article is that right after it was, The 20 Most Hilarious And Clever Print Ads Ever. Mostly, I didn’t find them that great. But the two page DHL ad is nothing short of brilliant. However, it is quickly followed by the Bijouteries Natan: The first remote control ad. You’ve got to see this one:

Bijouteries Natan: The first remote control

I suppose I have no reason to complain. I was promised “clever” ads; there was no promise that they wouldn’t be offensive. But here’s the thing: I’m sure that the type of person who reads Business Insider today is the kind of person who would have found the Van Heusen ad “hilarious and clever” in the 1950s. And there is the point for Alyson Shontell and Kim Bhasin and Patricia Laya (the writers of those articles) and Michelle Obama and you and, most of all, me. We haven’t landed anywhere. In 20 years, that Bijouteries Natan ad is going to look totally sexist — unless we decide that sexual relationships are simply going to be pay-to-play. We must look to the future. We have come a long way, but on an infinite trip, that doesn’t mean much. Looking back at how awful we used to be is just a way of ignorantly showing how awful we now are.

Afterword

In 2008, the people of “liberal” California voted to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. That was just six years ago.

Revolution at the Public Library

Posted on 11 Jul 2014 by Frank Moraes

I was over at the library, just roaming around. That’s the great thing about libraries and used bookstores: you never know what you’ll come upon. That exists online with blogs, but not at, say, Amazon. For one thing, you don’t get to browse older books. And the newer ones where you can “Look inside!” you are limited to what it has decided to show you. You can’t look at the table of contents and think, “Chapter 3 looks interesting, let me take a look at it!” Amazon has told you as much as it thinks maximizes its profits. But as used bookstores drop like flies, libraries continue on.

Have you given much thought to public libraries, though? Imagine we had no history of public libraries. And some person who cared about knowledge and society and the good of all humanity rose up and said, “Let there be public libraries!” What do you think would happen? Well, I know what would happen. The publishers would rush to Congress and get laws made. They would say, “A single book could be read by a thousand people! The writers will stop writing!” You see: it would be all about the writers. It would have nothing to do with the publishers who make far more from books than the writers. Nor would it have anything to do with Amazon that makes a huge amount of money just because they are Amazon. (And note: the fact that they don’t show profits is just because they are buying up everything in sight.)

At the very core of my being, I am a writer. I always have been. I like telling stories whether they are about things that are going on in the world or just bizarre things that are going on in my mind. And yes, I would like to make some money from it—at least enough to pay for the hosting of this site. And I probably will do something along those lines one of these days, throwing up a couple of ads. It would be my wildest dream to actually be able to make a living writing. The thought of making $40,000 a year is just amazing to me. But my writing here, much less what I consider my more serious private (for now) writing has nothing to do with making money.

Do you know what a lot of money does for writers? It turns them into hacks. Consider Jonathan Kellerman. I haven’t read his first book, but it was thought to be pretty good and I’m sure that it was. Since then, he’s pumped out almost three novels for every two years for the last three decades. I reviewed one of his novels, Twisted Stretched. A number of fans have come by to tell me that I’m wrong, but it’s a total piece of garbage. Then there’s Stephen King. I actually think he is a great writer. He’s published 59 novels in four decades. This does not include his numerous novellas, short story collections, screenplays, and non-fiction books. In his case, however, I will admit that he does seem to simply be a madman and he maintains a high level of quality, unlike Jonathan Kellerman or many other writers I could mention. And I think King would write like a madman even if he weren’t making millions.

So money really isn’t the key to causing people to create things whether they be books, hand carved statues, or cool new high tech devices. (On this last issue, my partner and I have been doing this very cool, cutting edge work for a year; and although we do hope to make some money from it, we don’t expect to become millionaires; in fact, we expect only the thrill of doing something totally new.) But the world is not run by the writers and the other creators of things that make life worth living. Today, the world is run by the wealthy who are only really interested in becoming more wealthy, because wealth is what they “create”—even if it in itself is not something that anyone wants.

Roam around your public library—that relic of Enlightenment thinking, which paleoconservatives would destroy if they could. It is a wonderful thing. It will change your mind. As I walked about, I came upon Ann Coulter’s book, Never Trust a Liberal Over 3—Especially a Republican, a common sort of title for conservatives. It rightly implies that the writer is still thinking at that preschool level. She’s going for that hippy slogan (most conservatives have not moved beyond the silliest 1960s revolutionary thinking), “Never trust anyone over 30!”

But right there next to Coulter’s commodity book was Penguin Books’ Greet Ideas series edition, Common Sense. I picked it up. So you see: Ann Coulter isn’t completely useless. And I found that the book was downright subversive. It wasn’t just the one pamphlet. It also included Paine’s far better and more revolutionary Agrarian Justice. But when I checked on Amazon, I noticed no mention of it. It is only if you “Look Inside!” that you will even know that it is included. Out of 204 reader reviews, not one mentioned that it contains the other essay. The top reader review stated simply, “This book should be required reading for every American. It lays out the logic of the founding fathers in separating from England but also lays out the logical and philosophical foundations of freedom. Eye opening and enlightening.” In fact, this is not true at all. It lays out Thomas Paine’s logic for separating from England. The rich guys had their own reasons. What did The Oracle say in The Matrix Reloaded? “What do all men with power want? More power.”

A browser at Amazon would just find the sanitized version of the Revolutionary War. But the browser of the public library found actual revolutionary thought from long after the war. I’ve read it twice before, but I checked it out anyway.

The Great Housefly Massacre

Posted on 06 Jul 2014 by Frank Moraes

Here in Northern California, it has been very hot the last couple of weeks. And with the heat has come the houseflies. Normally, I don’t notice them and I don’t really care. As long as there is not one buzzing past me and distracting me, what’s the big deal? But yesterday, I came into the kitchen and behind the blinds on the front window were a group of at least a dozen flies. I grabbed the fly swatter and went on a killing spree. It was terrible. It was like if the United States went to war with with Ghana.

I’m not proud of this. In fact, I feel very bad. The flies weren’t doing anything. They weren’t bugging me. They were just hanging out. But I don’t like flies. When seen outside, they are usually standing on a pile of dog feces, enjoying a banquet. I know: it’s the circle of life and every creature is special. But I can’t help but think that every time they land on me, they they are tracking feces all over me.

And this isn’t just some kind of germophobic fantasy of mine. Houseflies are known to transmit over a hundred diseases, including tuberculosis and cholera. And it isn’t as though we don’t have enough of them. They are everywhere. We now have confirmation that they’ve made it to Antarctica. So there is no reason to morn for the houseflies I destroyed yesterday.

Just the same: why? I mean, what’s the big deal? They were out of the way. There were none flying around my head. In fact, I had to lift the blinds to get at them. And it always makes me think that if some advanced civilization discovered earth, they would probably kill all of us humans with as little regard. And I could hardly blame them, because we are far more annoying than houseflies.

And then I think of the Jains and how they won’t even hurt a root vegetable. Meanwhile, I can’t live in peace with a dozen houseflies living in my window seal. What kind of a monster am I?!

You Don’t Care about World Football

Posted on 18 Jun 2014 by Frank Moraes

Every day for the past week or so, Google has had a new Doodle about the World Cup. And that’s fine, because Google serves the world and the world is crazy for what they rightly call football and we call soccer because what we call football should really be renamed, “The boring homoerotic game where men bend over to display their genitals to their betters.” The fact that “world football” is only slightly less boring than “American football” really doesn’t matter. People find many boring things interesting just because everyone else finds them interesting because the one thing that really makes humans unique is just how ununique we are. That doesn’t bother me.

What does bother me is how my fellow Americans get interested in world football whenever “our” team does well. Remember the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup? This was an especially big deal because Americans cared about soccer and a sport played by women not dressed in bikinis. And this year, I see a lot of interest among people who otherwise have no interest in anything that happens outside the world unless it is one of our “shock and awe” wars, who are interested in the World Cup. In particular, they are excited that we beat the team from Ghana.

Did you know that the population of Ghana is less than 8% of the population of the United States? Did you know that Ghana’s economy is one-quarter of one percent the size of the United States’? Did you know that the average person from Ghana makes 3% what the average American makes? So the United States beat Ghana in the last 5 minutes of a 90 minute game by a single goal. And you, my fellow Americans are excited? This victory is like if Goliath had beat David, except that not only did David not have his sling, he had been born without arms and legs, and yet Goliath still managed to lose a considerable about of blood because of numerous bite attacks from David. That’s what the United States’ victory over Ghana is.

I have a special admiration for Jonathan Bernstein. He’s a political scientist and a good writer with great insights into the political process. But that’s not the reason for my special admiration. You see, he is a baseball fan. But he doesn’t start talking about baseball just when his team is doing well or during the playoffs. Every Friday, he writes about baseball. The man loves baseball! I respect that.

What I hate every March is that all these nerdy political writers who I read suddenly start gushing about NCAA basketball. Is it the case that they just love the sport all year long but just can’t contain it in March? I don’t think so. They are just like the fools who are all excited that we beat a tiny African country in a world football match. They’re just following the herd. Meanwhile, Bernstein has been silent on the issue of the World Cup. But last Friday, he did write, The Best, and Worst, Places to See a Game. That’s a baseball fan. Because he actually goes to see them. It isn’t like where Americans see their world football games: during the sports section of the evening news.

Angela’s Drilling a Hole

Posted on 29 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

This is a picture of Angela Ellingson. I knew her and her boyfriend Jason Iverson very well some two decades ago. I would say that Angela and I were kindred spirits. And I liked Jason so much that I based a character in my first novel on him, who became the main character and narrator of my second novel. (Over time, the character broadened and became much more—including parts of me; but what is coolest about the character is mostly Jason.)

I haven’t heard from them for well over a decade, but I did come upon Angela’s Facebook page, which says that she and Jason are still together. It also says that she is working at Macheezmo Mouse, which is out of business, so I doubt the page is up to date, although I’m sure she and Jason are still together. I can’t imagine them apart.

Five years ago, right before I started Frankly Curious, I wrote a song “Angela’s Drilling a Hole.” It started out about her, but eventually turned into a song about watching someone you love disappear due to mental illness. Other than the refrain, it is written in iambic pentameter. It is rather hard for me to sing, but I thought I would present just the verses as a poem. This comes out of my rather personal writing recently, in particular, Challenges of Female on Male Violence. But just to be clear: Angela did not have mental health issues, and I’m sure she is as delightful today as I remember her.

Angela’s drilling a long line of holes
She is the prettiest girl that I know
We sleep together as far as it goes
She’s always looking to drill some new holes.

Angela’s dripping a lot on the ground
She is the best friend that I ever found
I’m always happy when she is around
Even when Angela’s staining the ground.

Angela’s drilling a hole in her brain
She says that everyone else is insane
But if I’m nice then she’ll let me remain
I’m putting gauze on the hole in her brain.

Angela’s drinking some acid today
This is not like all the games that we played
She used to smile at the love I displayed
Now she gets mad taking acid away.

Angela’s drilling a hole to my mind
She says in there it is peaceful and kind
Now we are both in a treacherous bind
Angela cannot connect with my mind.

Angela’s body is crumbling apart
Too many holes now there’s one in her heart
I’d like to help but I’m just not that smart
So I stand by as she rattles apart.

Angela’s holes are all she left to me
Stand them on end they’re as tall as a tree
Now that she’s gone I guess she’s finally free
What of the nothing that she’s left to me?

There are few people from the past I want to have any contact with. But I wouldn’t mind hearing from Angela or Jason.

Challenges of Female on Male Violence

Posted on 24 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

Paul Day is the brilliant mind behind Billy Bob Neck, but he also happens to be the most interesting person on my Google+ feed. And sometimes, he sends out links to very serious stuff. Thus it was today when he alerted me to what is an important but typically trashy Buzz Feed article, This Is What Happens When the Public Sees a Woman Abusing a Man. What they did was get a male and female couple and had them get into a fight in public. The first time, the man was abusing the woman. Nothing terrible, but clearly unacceptable and likely leading to much worse. Strangers intervened, and even threatened to call the police on the man. They made sure that the woman was fine and everyone went on their merry.

Then, some time later, the same couple did the exact same thing. Except the woman was the abuser. Actually, the woman is more violent than the man had been. Strangers right next to them completely ignored the situation. Those that reacted at all seemed to think that it was amusing. Here is the video:

Now the caveats. It isn’t that people don’t think that the woman is misbehaving. But most of them figure the guy can handle things for himself. What’s more, they likely think that it would be rude to defend him—like it would make him a sissy. And let’s not forget that regardless of the fact that 40% of domestic abuse is against men, much more damage is done to women and that is the primary problem. So let’s grant all of that.

Having been the victim of domestic abuse that goes far beyond what is shown in this video, I think that I have some insights. There are really screwed up men who have never learned the rules that we were all taught as boys. But most men have internalized “never hit a girl” even more fully than “never cry.” So when we are confronted with a woman who is punching us, we parry, we weave, but we don’t counter punch. Just the same, we tend not to cower. And so it seems like nothing is especially wrong. But that is a mischaracterization of what is going on.

I had a wife who was always a bit marginal, but lots of fun. But later in the marriage she got into meth and alcohol and went full tilt schizophrenic on me. From my perspective, the worst point was when she was strangling me with speaker wire, screaming, “I’m going to kill you! I’m going to kill you!” That was the moment that I realized that she really was going to kill me. But did I hit her? Scratch her? Kick her? No. I simply got control of the wire and retreated. But I didn’t leave.

Months later, she got very angry at me. And she battered my face so badly that I looked liked the hero at the end of Rocky. It didn’t really hurt that much, but it looked bad. The Neighbors had called the police. By the time they showed up, my wife was passed out, and although I tried to stop it, they arrested her. I didn’t press charges (the police didn’t want me to anyway), but I did use it as an opportunity to disappear.

This behavior had been going on for a couple of years. And just like women in the classic stories, I made up excuses about all the signs of abuse. That’s easier being a man, because guys get in fights. No big deal. Although the same psychological dynamic goes on. We all feel as though there is something we are doing wrong. We aren’t saying the right thing or we are saying the wrong thing. This is how humans think: it’s all about us. We don’t like to think that stuff just happens to us. In this case, I fell in love with a beautiful, sexy, fun, and (sadly) crazy woman.

But until I had that experience, I always wondered about abused women, “Why don’t they just leave?” And while I was living through it, I was thinking, “Why don’t I just leave?” With many women, it is much worse because there are children and financial dependence. But I think it is much deeper than that. The abuse doesn’t happen all the time. It’s like the new Cookie Monster, “A now and then thing.” And there’s inertia. It’s easy to keep on keeping on. Hey, you’ve survived thus far! Until you don’t. And there is the feeling that you can finesse it—that you can figure out what sets them off. (For the record: sex is part of it too. These violent incidents do tend to eventually lead to really great sex. So there has got to be something of a conditioned aspect to it.)

Of course, in the end, you realize it isn’t about you. You might be the most annoying person in the world. But they ought to leave you then. There are an endless number of people who annoy me and I don’t hit them because of it. The abuser needs help and regardless of how loving and brilliant and lucky the abused is, he or she is not the one to provide that help.

But the smirking and the laughing in the video is a big problem. Because a woman acting that way isn’t just girls being girls. It often leads to men turning violent. It is not right that a woman’s slap on the face leads to the man pummeling her. But women should not be encouraged to slap men in the face as though it were cute. It’s not. It’s violence. All the time I was being brutalized, my lack of response was not just having learned that boys don’t hit girls. It was also my firmly held belief that if I gave my wife as good as I got, she would have gone around calling me a wife beater. And that’s a term right up there with “child molester” in my mind.

I don’t want to make too big a deal out of any of this. This is still primarily an issue of man on woman violence. But as a society, it protects us all (And women more than men!) to not turn a blind eye to female domestic violence.

Afterwrod

Although I was always worried that people would see me as a sissy man (not that they didn’t already), I always saw myself as the male ideal. I was always strong—never brutal. I did my best to make the situation better. Those who are abused are the strong ones—just unfortunately in weak positions. But if they can get out of those positions, they will do well. I’ve been remarkably happy since ending that relationship. Of course, I haven’t had another since.

The Bonus Round

Posted on 23 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

Even when I was a little kid, I hated the idea of coming in first place. Not that it was actually a problem I had to deal with as a practical matter. But it always seemed to be that second place was better than first place. It probably owes a lot to my love of stories. In general, I hate it when a good story ends. A second place finish implies more chapters. Although as I learned from Irwin Shaw in “The Eighty-Yard Run” (pdf), often the best stories end with the hero bringing up the rear. Sometimes, second place is the best that you’ll ever do. Sometimes, not even that.

The story starts with Darling on the football team in high school. He catches a pass in practice and runs for an eighty-yard touchdown. He feels great that day. He is in love with his girlfriend who will eventually become his wife. His whole life is ahead of him. And it’s going to be great! Except that it isn’t. That eighty-yard run is the high point of his life. Of course, the story is more complex than that. Fundamentally, it is about a man coming to grips with the fact that his life has been going down while his wife’s has been going up. He doesn’t begrudge her success, although he fears he will lose her because of it. He just wonders why even as he fell and she climbed he couldn’t have taken her hand and joined her.

It’s hard to read more than one or two Irwin Shaw stories in a row. In me, anyway, they bring out an intense feeling of loneliness. It’s the feeling that you’ve lost something, but you can’t quite locate what it was. There is a sad, even terrifying feeling, that you are alone and always have been. It seems like such a modern idea. After all, didn’t people have actual friendships in the past? Aren’t there vast collections of long letters that William Hazlitt wrote to his many friends. Now all we have is mindless time wasting: the Facebook picture of your dinner, the snarky tweet about someone I’ve never heard of, the sentimental blog post about loneliness or whatever it is I’m writing about.

But what’s most interesting in “The Eighty-Yard Run” is that Darling isn’t pathetic. His life certainly has not turned out as he wanted. But whose has? After a couple of years of graduate school, I realized something: by the time people got their PhDs, they didn’t care. There was a certain time when each of of us realized that we could do it; mentally we were already there and the rest was just bureaucracy. What mattered was the struggle not the resolution. But most of us got the damned thing because we were already so close. These kinds of rites of social status are never worth having once you can have them. They don’t signify accomplishment; they signify disillusionment.

Shaw’s entire story is told 15 years in the future, when Darling sells sports equipment to high schools. He is at his old high school and he relives the eighty-yard run, doing it himself on the same field. A young high school couple see him and doubtless think he’s a freak. He walks up to them and says, “I—once… I played here.” He’s embarrassed, but wise enough to laugh at himself. The kids just stare and he goes back to his hotel. Alone. But if Darling had gone on to play pro ball, at some point he would have the same experience. In the end, we all die. And we are all forgotten. Even this entire culture will be completely forgotten.

What ultimately matters is how we treat each other. And in general, that’s pretty bad. It’s not surprising. Everyone has to divide up their time with trying to make eighty-yard runs and listening to others tell us their stories of eight-yard runs. But we have a society—a culture—that reinforces this. I saw an episode of Wheel of Fortune recently. At the end of the main game, some woman had won $30,000 in cash and prizes, a guy came in second place with about $8,000 in cash, and another woman didn’t win anything at all—she went home with “parting gifts,” which I always imagine as being a year’s supply of dishwasher detergent. Then they went to the “bonus round” where the woman who won the most got the opportunity to win even more. That seems odd to me, but entirely typical of who we are.

Humans are almost indistinguishable. Albert Einstein or your average bus driver: throw them into the wilderness and they’ll do about as well. But we’ve set up a social order that makes a very big deal out of very little differences. The Darling of the story who is just a traveling salesman is no different than my hypothetical ex-pro football player. But our myths requires us to lie. “Oh yes! The ex-pro could run the 40 a tenth of a second faster!” Is that who we are? Because that strikes me as a very strange kind of myth to believe in. What’s more, it is exactly the opposite of the religion that 80% of us claim to follow. And also the opposite of the very idea of democracy that we claim to cherish. The problem is not you. And it is not me. It is us. We are killing us.

Darling put up his hands, felt all over again the flat slap of the ball. He shook his hips to throw off the halfback, cut back inside the center, picked his knees high as he ran racefully over two men jumbled on the ground at the line of scrimmage, ran easily, gaining speed, for ten yards, holding the ball lightly in his two hands, swung away from the halfback diving at him, ran, swinging his hips in the almost girlish manner of a back in a broken field, tore into the safety man, his shoes drumming heavily on the turf, stiff-armed, elbow locked, pivoted, raced lightly and exultantly for the goal line.

All the Sorta Gay Sorta Celebs

Posted on 20 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

You know me: I love link bait. So when I saw this headline, I had to click over to an article on Rant Lifestyle, 25 Celebs That Shocked Us When They Came Out as Gay. It’s kind of a challenge, because really, how likely is it that anyone was shocked when whomever came out as gay. In fact, recently, I’ve been thinking about writing an article, “Celebs that Shocked Me When They Turned Out as Straight.” I have quite a list. Robert Preston as married for 47 years. Tony Randall was married for 50 years to Florence Gibbs, when she died. But he was so heterosexual that he got married three years later at the age of 75 and sired two children. But maybe it’s just me: I automatically assume any man who was a musical theater star is gay. I’m also surprised that Grace Jones is straight. Regardless, at this point, an article about shockingly straight celebs strikes me as a lot more interesting than one about gay celebs. (And yes: I am using the term “celebs” simply because it annoyed me in the original headline!)

The list of 25 was divided into two groups: one small and one large. The small one consisted of people I had actually heard of. And there was one shocker that I will come back to. But first, let me list all the celebs that I have never heard of: Matt Bomer, the star of a show I’ve never heard of; Jason Collins, a basketball player who bravely came out after he retired—the article says he “truly came out” as opposed to Oscar Robertson who “falsely came out”; Raven Symone who appears to star in a show with her name in it; Lady Sovereign who is some kind of cute (I use that in the worse possible sense) rapper; Amber Heard is one of those models who looks hot emerging from bodies of water—but she’s not gay, she’s bisexual, unless, you know, Johnny Depp is a transvestite (which is possible); Zachary Quinto is a television actor with fabulous hair; Victor Garber is someone who acts in a lot of bad movies but may be great—how would I know?; Jonathan Bennett is a “leader star” which I think is Rant Lifestyle for “we don’t know how to write”; Matt Dallas played the title character in a television show I’ve never heard of; Sarah Paulson was in a television show; Jonathan Knight was in a boys band; Suze Orman who is one of those celebs that don’t seem to qualify as celebs at all—or maybe celeb isn’t short for celebrity (I’m so out of it, how would I know?).

Most of the people who I actually knew from their work I also knew explicitly were gay, because, you know, they talk about it all the time. For example, Ian Mckellen, who frankly couldn’t hide it if he wanted to. It was much more surprising to learn that Derek Jacobi was gay because (1) he doesn’t talk about it so much, and (2) he’s a better actor. It was only watching him nancing around while directing Hamlet that I found out. (Jacobi is not on the list because he wasn’t in Lord of the Rings I guess.) Another example is Portia de Rossi. Was not her marriage to Ellen DeGeneres something like an American Royal Wedding. Jeez!

It turns out that Ricky Martin is gay. I didn’t even know who he was in 1999, but after seeing this I knew:

Jodie Foster? Ha ha ha!

I didn’t know who Gillian Anderson was by name. But I found out that she was a star on a show I know was really big but which I never saw because I thought taste required it. She seems to be gay only in the sense that she had a lesbian affair in high school. Since then, she’s had two husbands, one long-term boyfriend, and three children.

I also didn’t know David Hyde Pierce by name, but of course, he’s the guy who played Niles Crane on Frasier. And of course he was gay. The producers got together and said, “Kelsey Grammer is just a total unlikeable jerk, we need to pair him up with with a nice gay guy.” It was magic! I was just disappointed that the series didn’t end with Frasier falling down in the park and being eaten by rabid squirrels.

Kelly McGillis has spent a lot of time married to men, but I guess the new haircut sealed it for anyone wondering for at least ten years.

Nathan Lane? Ha ha ha!

Cynthia Nixon is bisexual. She had a husband and two children with him. Now she has a wife. It’s weird how homosexuality is like blackness. If you are one percent black, you’re black; if you’re one percent gay, you’re gay. I did find out she’s suffered from breast cancer and has become an advocate. But I have no idea what the status of the disease is. She was first diagnosed in 2006, so hopefully she has made a full recovery.

Wanda Sykes? Yes, if you had never seen Sykes do her stand-up routine and had never heard her talk you might have missed this. She was once married to record producer Dave Hall, which might have pushed her over the edge. I know that I’ve remained straight all these years because of Dave Hall. (I’m kidding! I’m sure Dave Hall is a perfectly nice guy and great in the sack!)

Annie Leibovitz? Say it ain’t so! If only Susan Sontag were around to confirm or deny!

Okay, now I have to get serious. Was Eleanor Roosevelt gay? It doesn’t really look like it. Maybe she lusted in her heart. She certainly was comfortable with lesbian couples. And she had a very strong friendship with Lorena Hickok. But there is no evidence of them consummating it. What’s more, I think people want to jump from physical affection to sex when it isn’t necessarily warrented. Human beings are complex, and Eleanor Roosevelt was more complex than most. Regardless, her sex life is about the least interesting thing about one of the most interesting people of the twentieth century. Oh, and did I mention she had six children? Also: those rumors about Roosevelt have been around forever—they are hardly shocking.

Now for a real shock: Cary Grant was gay! Except, well, he wasn’t. This is a similar situation with Eleanor Roosevelt. Grant did have some strong friendships with men, and I’m afraid everyone wants to sexualize them. It’s possible that he was bisexual, we’ll never really know. We do know he was married five times and those women all confirm that they had a lot of sex. But I think there is something in a lot of us who like the idea that someone as witty and debonair as Grant must be gay. You know, someone like Noel Coward.

Regardless of all that, you can bet that when a website offers you “25 Celebs That Shocked Us When They Came Out as Gay,” we are not going to be shocked and many of the people are not going to be gay. Well, at least the list didn’t include Oscar Wilde or Alan Turing. But Nathan Lane? Really?! I mean, really: really?!

They Only Come Out at Night

Posted on 13 May 2014 by William Brown

If at all possible, if you have the ability, you should spend a couple nights In, At and Around any place you plan to relocate to, move someone into or acquire. I know its old advice. I have heard it myself… or read it in a NOLO Press book on real-estate or Landlord-Tenant Law. See, you never really know what you are getting into AND if you have any choice, choice can be a good thing.

The most obvious is probably the most creepy, but very true and very real: Crawlies. We are lucky. Our cave is not and apparently has never been very bothered by crawlies. But if you ever wound up poised to rent a place like my brother Marlo did in San Diego, you would—at the very least—want to be warned. I visited Marlo in ’82 when he was renting off-base housing, while stationed in the US Navy. I’d probably been there a couple days when he showed me that if you suddenly turned on the lights in his bathroom, all kinds of little friends would scurry. Yikes! We had never had any kind of bug problem where we grew up. I had never even seen a cockroach ‘cept for a display of some kind of wooded roach, in the ‘nature glen’ of Navarro Boy Scout Camp. The pests, of course, were not isolated to the bathroom and had hundreds of friends than one would care to know about. Even with inspections etc, I don’t think you can really know what you are facing, bug wise, unless you are able to surprise them in the middle of the night. ALSO worthy of note, it is not limited to the confines of the intended abode. I know a nearby neighborhood which has both a dairy plant and a grain processor. On that block, late at night, if one dares stroll there and dares to illuminate select sections of pavement, one might reconsider the premise of late night walks altogether.

Another pretty obvious thing that goes bump in the night pertains to late night scavengers. We live not far from the town police department. To those not in the know, that is not altogether a good thing and often quite the opposite. There is a generally accepted phenomena which indicates neighborhoods near law enforcement agencies tend to be ‘questionable’ on more than one level. Now add surrounding elements of low-income housing, both retail and light industrial zoning and railroad tracks (often referred to, on the streets, as the Mexican highway). It is a sketchy enough area during the day, but between the hours of 2:30 and 5AM things get extra special. I have seen groups of 4-5 homeless people, on bicycles, divide and ride down each side of the street and indicate to each other specific addresses that look worthy of gleaning… verbal accounts of how many bicycles and other noticeable items can be found on each property. Yeah, I was on my porch, in the shadows, enjoying a break from an overnight project. Many times locks have been cut and human-powered transportation stolen. We also have two sets of dumpsters in our complex. The very early morning hours seem to be a preferred harvesting time for recyclables. This activity too is generally carried out by an armed and intimidating crew of 4-5 homeless people, with loud banter and camaraderie. Add close proximity to bars and liquor stores and you also have the frequent drunken fight on your porch. In one incident last year, a fighting couple believed they were scuffling on their own porch, which was actually blocks away.

Yes, we could see, when we moved here, there was a nearby market and, in another direction, a nearby min-market (read liquor store). No prob. The only thing that came to mind about those was convenience. These businesses have a staggered schedule of very noisy business-related events. The market receives shipments of stock 2-3 times a week, after 1AM, by the arrival of a big rig that blares its horn twice upon arrival. There is a 2AM parking lot cleaning and power wash, once a week. On another day the shopping carts are power washed at 4AM. The worst, however, is the 3AM garbage truck which empties the liquor store dumpster on Tuesdays. The backside of the building faces our complex and seems to amplify the sound as the dumpster is pounded several times against the open top of the truck. This particular event I never fail to notice. Some nights, I can fall back to sleep almost instantly… other nights, I have to get up and write.

The front of this apartment complex features two mixed-use buildings. One houses a daycare (which does not receive younglings until 6:30) and the other the traffic enforcement division of our local police. Apparently, motorcycle traffic enforcement begins between 3 and 4AM. I am also told, by a couple bikers, that police motorcycles are the only ‘bikes’ on the public roads that can legally have illegal pipes (exhaust systems which are specifically altered to make them much louder). Add that to the frequent code3 (lights and siren) responses to distant emergencies and it becomes quite a noticeable feature of the neighborhood.

Spending a night or two, on different nights of the week, at or near an address you are considering for residence or business could reveal elements you may not be comfortable with and help you avoid a bad move. If you find yourself, however, in a situation of limited options… try not to fret. Learn to roll with the punches. Maybe find a way to be productive at off hours or days. Maybe buy a nice set of headphones and get used to sleeping to music.

Terry Eagleton’s Across the Pond

Posted on 03 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

I am a big fan of Terry Eagleton’s books, so I was quite excited to read his newest book, Across the Pond. It is subtitled, “An Englishman’s view of America.” It is a subject that he has a special expertise in, given that his wife and pretty much his children are Americans. So it should come as no surprise that he has a fondness for we colonists. But he’s also quite clear about our foibles. And he is very entertaining in talking about them.

The overriding attitude that Eagleton takes is that Britain is superior to America, but only because you can’t get a decent cut of tea in the latter. This sits rather well with me, because I feel very much out of place here in the land of coffee. Tea is my drink of choice, yet Starbucks seems determined to destroy any of the extremely poor teas they stock. Can an entire civilization be judged on its handling of tea? I think so and apparently so does Eagleton.

On a more serious level (Taking nothing away from tea!) he discusses how freedom works in the United States. Here, thanks to the First Amendment, we have more explicit freedoms. For example, I’ve written at least one book that would not be legal in the United Kingdom. But as a result of this greater explicit freedom, there is far more social pressure on people to behave. Now libertarians and the like would claim this is a good thing because it isn’t the government telling you what to do. This is something I’ve never understood: freedom is freedom. It doesn’t really matter how it comes about. If the masses are serfs because of the government or just because corporations have so much power, it hardly matters.

Eagleton distinguishes between this American “you have rights but you aren’t supposed to use them” and the more formally restricted English system. What it means is that Americans are for a kind of theoretical freedom, where the British are for practical freedom:

The British dislike authority not because they are opposed to the state on principle, but because they want to be left alone to breed pigeons or attend classes in flower arranging. They do not want to be free of regulation so that they can aspire, rise through the ranks or accumulate profit, but so that they can putter about as they please. They are not so much individualist as idiosyncratic. Their resentment of those in charge is less politically militant than passive aggressive. It is part the the “free-born Englishman” syndrome, which is less strident and self-conscious than the “free American” complex.

I doubt that many people would disagree with this contrast. And this does get to perhaps my biggest problem with America: the greatest good is money. That’s such a thin notion of good. After all, regardless of what we do in life, the best we can hope for is that at the age of 95, we are able to putter around the garden. But the issue is bigger than that. It isn’t that money isn’t a perfectly fine obsession. It is that in America, money is considered the only acceptable obsession.

This gets at the very central characteristic of modern American politics. The great political divide is between idealism and realism. The problem with this is that now this divide exists almost entirely along partisan lines. The Republicans have an ideology and are not at all interested in the practical consequences of it. The Democrats have no ideology and are only interested in the practical consequences of policy. This is a terrible state of affairs. It leads to conservatism that is immune to facts and liberalism that is rudderless. It also leads to two political parties that effectively speak different languages. The result of this is that the Democrats have been pulled inexorably to the ideological edge along with the Republicans, skewing our politics far to the right of what the vast majority of Americans actually want.

Eagleton gets at this problem:

Whereas Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes, the United States multiplies options. No restaurant in Britain would ask you how you liked your fried eggs, any more than they would ask you what exotic national costume you would like your waiter to be dressed in. Choice in the States is a paramount value. “I’ve made my choices” is a common American phrase, meaning among other things that one is the author of one’s own existence rather than ignominiously shaped by circumstance. Life is a self-authoring narrative in which, unlike Oedipus or Anna Karenina, you get to decide what happens to you. It is therefore all the more surprising that there is so little political choice in the country. In fact, the United States is a one-party state. There is the Democratic capitalist party and the Republican capitalist party. The diversity of political options hardly rivals the variety of candy bars.

Put another way: America is a fraud. We are a country where everyone can have their eggs prepared just the way they like them but who have no real choice when it comes to important things like who is going to make your laws or who is going to determine whether you can pay your bills.

I should be clear, though. This is my take on the issues that Eagleton discusses. He is much more positive about it. And he is also well aware that there are many Yankees like me who find life in America an uncomfortable experience. In “The Outgoing Spirit” chapter, he applies Milan Kundera’s idea of the angelic and demonic views of the world:

The opposite of the angelic for Kundera, predictably enough, is the demonic, by which he means the language of the cynical and nihilistic, one with too little meaning rather than (like the angelic) one stuffed with sonorous cliches. There is enough demonic discourse in the States to suit anyone’s taste, but the fact remains that the official rhetoric of the country (which, on should stress, is far from the discourse of everyday life) is too pious, elevated, hand-on-heart and histrionic for us jaded Europeans. A dash of the demonic would do it no harm. The demonic can be found in the edgy, abrasive, sardonic speech of New York Jews, which is much closer to the Irish than it is to the Midwest. When they hear angelic American speech—”this great country of ours,” “let freedom ring forth,” and the like—most Europeans simply stare at their shoes and wait for it to stop, as some people do whenever Schoenberg comes on the radio. Many Americans, to be fair, find this kind of language just as excruciating.

And that should give you a good idea of where Eagleton is coming from. Just the same, as I read Across the Pond, I was struck by just how much of a real American I am. Despite myself, I really do have a “can do” attitude. And I am rather more positive than I would like to be. And in his conclusion to the book, I think he sums up both America and me, though I do wish he were wrong:

The good news about the citizens of this kindly, violent, bigoted, generous-spirited nation is that if ever the planet is plunged into nuclear war, they will be the first to crawl over the edge of the crater, dust themselves down, and proceed to build a new world. The bad news is that they will probably have started the war.

Terry Engleton certainly does understand America!