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"And here is Earth, a bright-blue jewel glittering in our modest galaxy, wandering in the darkness like a tourist in a bad neighborhood, about to be mugged." From "Stephen Hawking is a Peeping Tom," in Essays.

The Critical Mass

May 21st, 2013 by Jeff

The morning walk

The birds are out early these days. At about 5:30 this morning, as the dog and I meander down the sidewalk. Two other neighbors and their dogs are out as well, enjoying the beautiful day. Our street has 16 houses on one side, 17 on the other. Neo-Dutch colonials, they’ve been here since the 1920s. Beautiful big trees stretch their limbs overhead. I hear a woodpecker at work. I try to imagine all of this swept away, just bare foundations and unrecognizeable twisted stuff. The houses and trees gone, even the grass stripped from the ground, carried off to other blocks, perhaps miles away. Just like I’d seen on television last night, in Moore, Okla.

Here in Rochester, our dog walking is never marred by cars lying upside down in the streets, or reports that so far 51 bodies and more than 200 injured people have been pulled from beneath the rubble that was once elementary schools and churches and taverns and homes. If we get tornadoes, they are small ones, usually flattening some barn out in Wayne County. Our tornadoes are so small, we aren’t even sure if they really were tornadoes. A mile-wide tornado, like the one that hit Moore? Our little street would fit in its hip pocket. We had an ice storm back in 1991. We get some snow, but not like Colorado gets snow. We don’t get hit by hurricanes, mud slides, floods, hailstorms, fertilizer-plant explosions or firestorms that can melt a fire truck. We do die by handgun, but usually at the un-newsworthy rate of one at a time, and not 24 in five minutes of work, as we saw at Newtown, Conn.

It props up your faith in the common man and woman to see so many of them rush to the aid of their neighbors. And the rush of financial aid and blood and equipment that people send to places like Moore – which they otherwise couldn’t find on a map – when something like this happens. In the coming weeks, musicians will play for free at shows raising money for people who lost everything Monday afternoon. Even here in faraway Rochester, we held benefits for the victims of Gulf Coast hurricanes.

What happened in Moore  does not bolster my faith in our leaders. No, I am reminded that Sens. Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn, both Oklahoma Republicans, have repeatedly voted against funding disaster aid for other parts of the country. They criticized, and voted against, relief for East Coast victims of Hurricane Sandy because they claimed these programs were riddled with waste. They voted against funding national programs such as FEMA. They have worked hard on behalf of corporations that demand the kind of deregulation that allows insurance companies and banks to rip off these people in need.

And yet there are many, many occasions on which staunch conservatives find socialism to be entirely acceptable. This morning in Moore, Okla., is one of them. Mitt Romney may have lost the last presidential election, but the selfish principals for which he and the other 1 percenters stood for remain in power. The state that Inhofe and Coburn represent, Oklahoma, is the third-largest beneficiary of such relief, after California and Texas.

Disasters like Moore and Newtown do remind us of what it means to be a part of society. It reminds us that we’re all living in the beautiful, dangerous world together. And that the only way to safely navigate our way through is if we help each other.

Posted in Music |

The Critical Mass

Apr 30th, 2013 by Jeff

“The Amazing Spider-Man 2″ vs. real life

The Amazing Spider-Man relaxes off camera.

The Amazing Spider-Man relaxes off camera.

I was walking a couple of blocks to City Hall for a press conference this morning when I stumbled into a roadblock. A crowd was already gathering, with the cops keeping the road clear so that the movie makers in town can shoot some scenes for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. “I have to go to City Hall,” I said, pointing.

“They’re shooting the movie,” the cop said, peering down the street. “Go ahead, they haven’t started yet.”

Forty-five minutes later, I was on my way back up the same blocked-off street. “You can’t go there,” another cop said. “They’re shooting the movie.”

I didn’t see anything happening except a bunch of my fellow citizens standing behind city barricades. “I have to go to work,” I said, pointing at my office, a block away.

“Gotta go back down to West Main, turn left, walk up Plymouth,” the cop said.

I did as I was told. It was OK. It was a beautiful day for a walk. I’ve never seen so many police cars in Rochester. But this week, it’s a stunt double for Manhattan. Some of those vehicles might have been fake New York City police cars.

Lunchtime, I ventured outside again. I was thinking about the little Chinese restaurant a half-block away. I mean, the restaurant is little, not the folks who work there.

“The street’s closed,” said yet another cop, standing at a barricade. “They’re shooting the movie.”

“OK,” I said. I didn’t see anything happening, except more of my fellow citizens standing behind more barricades.  None of the movie’s stars are here. It’s all stunt men and stunt women, and Rochester citizens hired as extras. I walked over to an alley, went around the back of the building, crossed the forbidden street, ordered lo mein with chicken and broccoli, walked back through another alley and stepped over some yellow tape that read CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. I could see I wasn’t the only one who’d figured out this back route.

In the elevator, a couple of my co-workers said the movie-makers were shooting a scene where some cop cars are chasing an actor down East Main Street.

“I wonder why they’re not so careful when they do that stuff in real life?” I said.

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Posted in Life During Wartime, Visual arts |

The Critical Mass

Apr 19th, 2013 by Jeff

The boys in the junk store

The bravery of the citizens who rushed to the aid of their fellow citizens maimed by the Boston Marathon bombings on Monday, and the bravery of the police and assorted authorities and military personnel who brought the two suspects to justice on Friday, bookended the shameful cowardice of the U.S. Senate, which declined this week to act on a necessary piece of legislation: background checks on anyone who wants to own a gun in this country. Those two stories are intrinsically related. And a lot of people just don’t get it.

I had the day off on Friday, spending the day running a few errands, when I popped into an interesting-looking  junk store up in Charlotte, on Lake Avenue. The one with FLEA MARKET in big red letters in the windows. A woman I recognized from the bus ride home from work was there. I haven’t seen her for weeks, and she explained she’d been laid off from her job of 13 years. She introduced me to the store’s owner, who was evidently a friend. She left, and I started poking around. I found an interesting old vinyl jazz album that I considered buying.

The owner’s buddy was milling around the store as well, and they started discussing the Marathon manhunt. Suspect No. 1 was dead after an early morning shootout, Suspect No. 2 was still at large.

“We gotta stop letting these young Muslim kids into the country,” the owner was saying. “Those kids come here, they get scholarships, which we pay for, and then they turn around and murder us. We need to replace the torch that the Statue of Liberty is holding with a baseball bat.”

I thought about saying something. But emotions are running high, I guess that’s a understandable reaction for some people. I started looking at another piece of junk.

Then the owner’s buddy piped up. “Obumhole isn’t making it easy for us,” he said. “He wants to take away our guns.”

I looked at the guy, giving him my most withering stare. He didn’t look at me. What should I say? Did these guys understand the contradiction in these beliefs? I could explain it to them, perhaps. Yes, the suspects – who came to this country as political refugees – committed a vile series of crimes. But thousands of immigrants are welcomed to this country each year, and they become productive citizens. The suspects were apparently Islamic with sympathies for the Chechen insurgents of the Russian Federation. As killers, they are an anomaly among our Islamic citizens.

And what of the murderers of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn.? Film goers in Aurora, Colo.? Citizens who go to hear their Congresswoman speak in Tucson, Ariz.? No, responsible gun owners shouldn’t be punished for the actions of a few. Our well-armed spree killers are an anomaly, say those who hide behind the uncertain language of the Second Amendment.

Well, you can’t have it both ways.

The horror of the Boston Marathon bombing demonstrates the impracticality of The National Rifle Association’s insistence that the answer to gun violence in this country is to fill our schools with armed guards. “School Resource Officers,” that’s what the pro-gun folks euphemistically call them, like they’re librarians or career counselors. What will we do for all of the other mass targets presented by society? Do we line all 26.2 miles of the Boston marathon route with armed guards? Do we assign armed guards to our movie theaters? To our supermarket parking lots on a sunny Saturday morning?

All of this ran through my head in a half-second, as I debated whether to share it with the boys in the junk store. In the next half-second, I thought about a simple, “Fuck you.” Instead, I abruptly turned and walked back to the front of the store, where the owner was leaning on his glass counter filled with junk. Now I thought about saying, “You’ll never see me in here again.” But I just saved my breath and walked out the door.

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Posted in Life During Wartime, Politics |

The Critical Mass

Apr 17th, 2013 by Jeff

1,000

chasingThat’s right. As best I can figure, sometime last month Chasing the Wind: The Humble, Epic Century of a Sailor, passed 1,000 in sales since it was published last May. That, for an independently published book, is pretty good. I was at a writer’s convention in January of 2012, and remember one of the speakers talking about how the average self-published book sells 45 copies.

My friend Ernie Coleman was always kind of dismissive of his life story. Married four times? Champion sailor on Lake Ontario? Ship sunk during World War II with the loss of more than 300 of his fellow sailors? Who cares? But people did care about all that. They always wanted to ask him about the Battle of Savo Island. He never talked about the war. “It’s in the book,” he’d say with a dismissive wave of his hand. But he went with me to a a lot of the book signings and readings. Near the end, after he’d had a heart attack that nearly killed him – actually, it did kill him, but the paramedics brought him back – Ernie was showing up with his oxygen tank in tow.

He didn’t go to the last reading, in February at the Central Public Library, because by then he really was dead. His heart gave out on Dec. 26, and he was 96. That was a very, very tough talk for me to get through.

I’m not surprised people have told me they like this skinny little book. I’m not surprised they loved Ernie, even though most people who read Chasing the Wind probably never met him.

I’ve always loved libraries. They’re an awesome part of the community. I used our library a lot when I was a kid growing up in a suburb of Cleveland. Even now, once every two or three weeks, I walk the couple of blocks from the office in downtown Rochester, hand the homeless guy a dollar, cross the Broad Street Bridge over the Genesee River, and duck into the Central Public Library for 45 minutes or an hour. I usually check out 10 CDs, the limit, and one or two books.

In January, I had forgotten the date of my upcoming talk and called up the library web site. I couldn’t find the listing right away, so I did a search for Chasing the Wind. Instead of the talk, up came a listing for copies of Chasing the Wind carried in the Monroe County Library System. I didn’t even know this: There were 13 copies of the book, two at the Central library, one at each of 11 branch libraries around the surrounding suburbs and towns and villages.

And more than half of them were checked out. It took my breath away.

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Posted in Books |

The Critical Mass

Apr 2nd, 2013 by Jeff

The morning walk

Every morning, glancing out the front window, I’d see these curious-looking, silent oddballs – neighbors, I guess – walking down the sidewalk with one hand holding a plastic grocery bag filled with hot dog shit, the other hand holding a dog straining at his leash. Without realizing it was happening, I’m now one of these curious-looking, silent oddballs, walking down the street with one hand holding a plastic grocery bag filled with hot Weimaraner shit, the other hand holding Abbie, straining at her leash.

I say hello to a few of them as we pass. The woman with the painfully overweight Dalmatian. I’ve also waved at the old fella wearing a knit Tibetan skull cap, the guy who lives at the end of the road. In the fall he’s obsessively raking leaves, even those on his neighbors’ tree lawns, and the leaves falling from the trees across the street. In the winter he’s clearing his sidewalk and driveway after the slightest of snowfalls. I’ve even seen him snow-blowing the street. He never waves back. He may have interpersonal communication issues. But he keeps his end of the street tidy.

The other morning, Abbie hit the jackpot. A McDonald’s bag was lying in the street, and inside was a full box of cold French fries. She nosed the bag open and started wolfing down the fries, mindful that I am prone to snatch that kind of treat away from her. I didn’t. I let her finish. It was her lucky morning.

As I was picking up the now-empty bag, a garbage truck turned onto the street. We stepped onto the grass. The driver slowed, leaned out of his cab and pointed at the back of his truck. I flipped the empty McDonald’s bag and the plastic bag of dog shit into the truck and waved thanks.

The No. 1 bus was on time that morning. Another two or so miles closer to downtown, after the 20 or so Laotians got on, and it was standing room only. The bus stopped again and someone exited from the side door. A woman entered through the side door. You’re not supposed to do that. You’re supposed to get on in front and slip your $1, or your bus pass, into the collecting machine. But the bus aisle was packed, the side door was right in front of her, so she climbed on board.

She stood there for a second. I think she was wondering if maybe she didn’t have to pay. That maybe she might catch a break today. Most of the people on the No. 1, especially the ones who get on board in this neighborhood, look like $1 is a lot of money to them. After a few seconds, a slight murmur moved through the bus. I guess the driver was asking for her dollar. She looked down at her purse and kind of fumbled for the opening.

“That’s all right, ma’am,” said a guy standing in the aisle. “We got ya.” He’d pulled a buck out of his own pocket and passed it up to the driver. It was a really tiny but decent thing to do. And it looked like $1 was a lot of money to him as well.

The bus lurched on. I started to think about Mitt Romney. I wondered, if Romney was in that guy’s place, would he have thought to make such a nice gesture?

I decided he wouldn’t have done so. A dollar means nothing to the rich.

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Posted in Life During Wartime |

The Critical Mass

Mar 9th, 2013 by Jeff

Delusion is hard work

Cruz: Was it murder, or just a dog thing?

Cruz: Was it murder, or just a dog thing?

A 3-year-old Samoyed died three days after it competed in the Westminster Kennel Club show last month. And it may be… murder.

Cruz’s owner says the dog appeared to have been poisoned. Cruz’s handler – who’s now out of a job, I guess – takes it a bit further, and suggests Cruz may have been poisoned by animal rights activists, who stage protests at the event each year.

As a dog owner myself, I’ll go with what the vet who treated Cruz told The New York Times: “Dogs are dogs. It’s not anyone’s fault. They eat stuff; they get into things; they make bad decisions.”

Yes, obvious. So why is it always a conspiracy?

Conspiracies are complex ideas. They have to be. Because there’s generally an obvious answer to every question: Terrorists hijacked jetliners and crashed them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. And for an alternate theory to dispute this conclusion – the Bush administration planted explosives in these buildings – a conspiracy theory must circumnavigate a lot of eyewitness testimony, forensic science, the public record and common sense, including how a demonstrably inept administration could even pull off such a flawless endeavor. And then you get to the realization that it would take the silence of thousands of people to keep the government’s role in 9/11 a secret, and after more than 10 years not one person has stepped forward to confess, “Yes, I was a part of this massive conspiracy and subsequent cover-up.”

Some of the greatest conspiracy theories are non-partisan in nature. The United States military is engaged in a massive coverup of UFOs visiting the Earth? I’ll bet that’s a belief shared by Republicans and Democrats alike. The assassinations of JFK and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., are big in the conspiracy world.  Elvis, Tupac and Michael Jackson are alive. Paul is dead.

I can think of  few liberal conspiracy theories. The pharmaceutical companies are keeping disease-curing drugs from us, so that they can continue to make money off of our illnesses. Car manufacturers have deliberately kept a successful electric car off the market so that we continue to rely on fossil fuelmobiles. And here’s a good one one: That a President of the United States would approve a plan to break into the party headquarters of his political opponent in search of anything that could be used against him in the next election.

Of course, that last one  proved to be true….

But most conspiracy theories – particularly the outright ridiculous, demonstrably false ones -  seem fueled by conservative fears. Here’s a short list: Obama is a Muslim. Obama was born in Kenya. Obama is taking away our guns. Obama will use drones to kill U.S. citizens on American soil. Voter fraud. Climate change. Muslim extremists are introducing Sharia law into the United States. The New Black Panther Party is intimidating voters and influencing elections. The Holocaust never happened. Fluoridated water is a mind-control scheme. Jet contrails are actually the U.S. government conducting a chemical attack on its own people. The shootings of U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the kids at Sandy Hook Elementary School were faked in order to get people behind gun control. Planned Parenthood is a corporation that wants to keep abortions coming so that its stockholders can make money. Liberals control the media (Even though virtually all media outlets are owned by right-leaning corporations). And the United Nation’s “Agenda 21,” its non-binding plan for sustainable development in a world that’s outgrowing its resources, is actually the foundation of a plan for a One World Order (The Illuminati, the Freemasons and the Fourth Reich are also hard at work on a One World Order).

Operating hand-in-claw with many of these conspiracy theories is the need to demonize the other side. Obama is a socialist, a communist, an agent of Satan. The rhetoric needs to be heavy, because of the overwhelming evidence that he is actually a decent guy and perfect family man.

Delusion is hard work.

I feel badly for the folks who lost a beloved dog. But in crying conspiracy, and accusing animal rights activists of the deed, Cruz’s bereaved survivors are overlooking the obvious. Animal rights people seem the least likely suspects to be behind the death of a dog.

If I were Cruz’s people, I’d be looking at other, more-obvious suspects. Like, do the owners of the other 32 Samoyed dogs at the show that weekend have alibis? Now that is a murder mystery that I can buy into.

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Posted in Politics |

The Critical Mass

Mar 8th, 2013 by Jeff

The 21st century isn’t here yet, but we’re getting close

Would God really have created our complex and planet-filled universe, and not expect us to be inspired by its potential?

Would God really have created our complex and planet-filled universe, and not expect us to be inspired by its potential?

Believe what you want. The Earth is 6,000 years old?  Humans were created by God in his image? Obama was born in Kenya? Go ahead and think so, there’s plenty of room here for all kinds of beliefs. It’s a big world. And an old one: 4.54 billion years old, in fact.

As a hefty news consumer, I’ve drawn the conclusion that the world holds two different types of beliefs. If you believe God created all life on this planet, that’s what’s called a faith-based idea. As is the belief that Santa Claus exists. As is the fear that, if I take your picture, my camera will capture your soul. These are all ideas completely unsupported by any evidence. They’re only endorsed by what you read in a book. Something your parents told you. A movie that you once saw that presented a shallow interpretation of indigenous peoples’ reactions to unfamiliar technology.

The second type of belief? Fact based. Time tested. scientifically proven. The fossil record tells me that all animals evolved from simple, one-celled life forms. And I really wouldn’t care if you think fossils are just intriguing rocks that God scattered around the planet to mess with our heads – it’s your right to be wrong.

I wouldn’t care, that is, if it weren’t for one jarring problem. Those who are wrong can really make life tough for the rest of us. Here’s an example. Say you’re a Republican politician who follows your party’s most-extreme beliefs about abortion. That means you’re against stem-cell research, because you believe that it kills babies. So you vote against funding stem-cell research. If you’ve floated to the top of the Republican depth chart, as George W. Bush once did, you create legislation that makes it difficult for serious scientists to study the promising role that stem cells could play in regenerating human tissues. A breakthrough that might help cure paralysis, or slow your mother’s encroaching Alzheimer’s.

Here’s another example. Say you’re a Republican politician who’s on your party’s ticket as candidate for vice president. That mean’s you’re the pit bull. With lipstick. You attack everything that the Democrats stand for. Especially spending money on useless science. That means one day, during a speech, you mock the idea of the government spending money on researching fruit flies. Money for fruit flies! What typical government waste!

I happened to see Sarah Palin express just such outrage, back in those goofy days when she and John McCain were making their bid to run the country. And I knew one thing at that very second that Palin didn’t know. That fruit flies are very important in  the field of genetic research. Since fruit flies have such a short life span – dozens of generations can pass before your eyes over the course of a couple of weeks – scientists can study genetic mutation on fast forward. I knew this, and I’ll bet millions of Americans that day also knew it. Yet Palin didn’t. And she wanted to be a part of important budget decisions that would impact the lives of many, many Americans.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the wasteful spending of the Obama administration included “buying $47,000 cigarette-smoking machines.” Shocking. Unless you know the facts. The Veterans Administration uses one of those $47,000 cigarette-smoking machines for testing new treatments for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. That’s the third-leading cause of death in the United States. Boehner, a smoker, probably doesn’t want to hear this fact either: But in a 2010 study, the American Cancer Society estimated that the disease would cost the county $49.9 billion that year.

After a few years of hearing elected leaders arguing with scientists that climate change is a hoax, and claiming women have a way of shutting down pregnancies in the case of rape, there can be no denying that the Republican Party lives in a  fact-void world. These are dangerous people who, rather than calling for violence-free schools, are pushing legislation allowing teachers and school janitors to pack heat. “Some day, our side is gonna win one of these shootouts….”

Time lays waste to wrong ideas. We were wrong to invade Iraq. Gay marriage hasn’t destroyed the institution of marriage. And sometimes, time takes time. The state of Mississippi didn’t get around to officially ratifying the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which banned slavery in 1865, until Feb. 7, 2013.

Minority points of view must be heard and properly represented. But not to the point that it shuts down a society’s ability to move forward. Scientists are using 3-D printers to make replacement human ears. Brain researchers have discovered that chimpanzees have better short-term memories than humans. Geneticists confirmed a few weeks ago that the 500-year-old skeleton of Richard III has been found buried beneath a parking lot in England. Astronomers are discovering new planets every week.  The future isn’t to be feared. Would God really have created our complex and planet-filled universe, and not expect us to be inspired by its potential? The 21st century promises to be a really cool and exciting place. But only those who don’t believe in it would step aside, and allow the rest of us to get there.

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Posted in Politics, Science |

The Critical Mass

Feb 15th, 2013 by Jeff

One last chance to sail with Chasing the Wind

chasingPut this on your bucket list: I’m doing a reading and book talk for Chasing the Wind: The Humble, Epic Century of a Sailor at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Rundel Building of the Downtown Central Library, and it might be the last one.

It’s been nine months since we self-published the book. The hero of the book, Ernie Coleman, and I did talks and readings at book clubs, old folks’ homes, grocery stores, gift shops and folk-music concerts. It’s sold well, and I’ve been touched at how people have told us they really like the book.

Ernie’s story one of an average man, a carpenter, a kid raised in the Great Depression. Married four times – two wives died tragically – he acquired a half-dozen children along the way. He’s a clever fellow who’s scrapped to survive in a fashion that seems quaint today. Testing himself as a teenager by swimming across lakes, building homes from foraged lumber, running a Navy carpentry shop as though he were a member of the scamming crew of McHale’s Navy. And a self-taught championship sailor who’s a legend on Lake Ontario.

Yet when Ernie was with me, at most of these events, I didn’t speak much of the biggest thing in his life. The Battle of Savo Island, the first naval engagement of the Guadalcanal campaign during World War II. It was the worst open-sea defeat ever inflicted on the United States Navy. Three American cruisers and one Australian cruiser were sunk by the Japanese in a 20-minute battle, with the loss of more than 1,000 Allied sailors. Ernie’s ship, Vincennes, was among those lost. And more than 300 of his shipmates went with it.

As is the case with so many survivors of the many horrors of World War II, Ernie couldn’t speak of it, lest the nightmares of men screaming in the burning water return to him. At our book talks, he’d go one and on about sailing. If anyone asked him about the war, he’d simply point at the book and say, “It’s in there.”

Sunday’s talk is a part of the library’s “Rochester’s Rich History Series… How We Became Who We Are,” in the Rundel Memorial Building, 115 S. Main St. That’s the older of the two library buildings, the cooler old building, supposedly haunted, its marble facade chiseled with the old inscriptions like, “The Shadows will be behind you if you walk into the light.” I’ll be in the third-floor Rundel Auditorium.

It’s the first event I’ve done since Ernie passed away on Dec. 26 at age 96. I’ll talk about how the book came about. I’ll read two small sections from the book. One about sailing, one about the war. I’ll take questions if there are any. I’ll have some copies to sell as well.

I’m thinking this might be my last Chasing the Wind event because I don’t have any more on the schedule, and I have to turn my attention to a few other projects that are begging to be completed. I suppose, if someone asks nice, I might do another event to promote Chasing the Wind. I don’t think I’d mind. But the truth is, I’m afraid of doing it now without Ernie there as well.

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Posted in Books |

The Critical Mass

Feb 14th, 2013 by Jeff

Bush-league paintings

In general, my traditional embargo on the news while vacationing remained intact last weekend. If you’re trying to clear the head while spending time with friends in a snowbound B&B in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, it’s best to not know the latest moves in the Republican insurrection against America. That stuff is always there, it can wait until I get home.

George W. Bush, "Untitled," 2011 or 2012.

George W. Bush, "Untitled," 2011 or 2012.

Of course, everyone else at the inn had their iPads, smart phones and other anti-social media devices in hand, so I couldn’t duck every piece of news. You’d be surprised – or maybe not, if you watch The Daily Show With Jon Stewart - at the roasting a group of lapsed Christians can lay on the Catholic church after we heard Sunday morning that the Pope was retiring. “To a Florida condo with a 12-year-old boy?” someone laughed. Yes, the Catholic church still has some credibility issues.

When I was back up and running amongst the media herd Tuesday morning, this bit of news stunned me: The private e-mails of a former president of the United States have been hacked. Stop and think about this for a moment. The guy was once the leader of the free world, as the cliché goes. And now some computer geek is trolling through his correspondence, releasing some of it to the general public. And that’s how the art world has been enhanced by The George W. Bush Nudes.

Two nude self portraits. Tasteful nudes, admittedly: We are exposed to no evidence that this was once the world’s most powerful man. In one painting, the artist reposes in his bathtub, his knees and toes emerging from the water. As often was the case during the Bush presidency, the perspectives seem off. But so did Picasso’s. Genius prevails.

George W. Bush, "Untitled," 2011 or 2012.

George W. Bush, "Untitled," 2011 or 2012.

In the second painting, drawing much more attention from the art world, the artist depicts himself standing naked in his shower. It is a curious picture from the get-go. The subject is seen from the back, raising the question: Where was the artist standing when he painted this? Behind himself? Behind a presidential stand-in? Perhaps he was just using his artistic license, an artist’s interpretation of what a 66-year-old man looks like in the shower. The fact that he can’t see himself might explain why the shoulder blades are misplaced or curiously tensed, as though he’s bracing himself for a blow from a 2×4. The shower water falls limply, as though the water pressure in the house is weak, and the nude figure chooses to not waste his time standing beneath it. Instead, he seems to have his face pressed to the tile wall, as though asking, perhaps existentially: “What is this?” Or perhaps he is urinating; men do that in the shower. The expression is visible in a small shaving mirror hanging from the shower nozzle. This was a familiar image throughout the Bush presidency: A face of the perplexed, the confused. The artist wisely places the figure in the lower-right quadrant of the canvas, saving the viewer from being exposed to presidential ass.

Both paintings are filled with daylight, as though the presidential bathroom is outfitted with large windows, exposing the neighborhood and E! network cameras to gratuitous moments of a former king with no clothes.

Other world leaders have taken to the canvas. Churchill, Eisenhower and Hitler. People rarely appeared in their paintings. All three favored pastoral landscapes and architecture, although Hitler did a few bombed-out roads recalled from his service during World War I. Later generations of politicians have been emboldened by today’s technology: Former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner posting a shot of his crotch on Twitter.

The Bush Nudes harken back to that earlier generation of leader (Although only the most discriminating of collectors is likely to be interested in a Churchill nude). Yet Bush’s art runs deeper than a Hitler vase of flowers. Bush’s paintings also offer an obvious, subliminal message. Here is a man attempting to cleanse himself.

But this Internet hack job has revealed something much more curious about Bush and his post-presidential mindset: Here’s a retired man who manufactured two wars, established torture as American foreign policy, attacked the civil rights of U.S. citizens and nearly destroyed the world economy, and all we find in his e-mails are a few crappy acrylic paintings?

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Posted in Visual arts |

The Critical Mass

Feb 6th, 2013 by Jeff

The misplaced story lines of the Super Bowl

After the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show, I left the neighbors’ house and went home. Again. I almost always leave the big game before it’s over. If I even watch it. Last year I was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean and happened to be passing through a bar where Super Bowl XLVI was on the TV, allowing me to witness the last 50 seconds of the game. So I guess I was counted as among the estimated 111 million people who watched that one.

Monday morning, I read that the Baltimore Ravens had beaten the San Francisco 49ers 34-31 in Super Bowl XLVII, a last-second thriller. Further analysis over the following days reveals that it was the No. 1-watched TV show in America for the week, seen by 108 million people. No. 2 was the 106 million people who watched the half-hour Super Dome Blackout. That must have been one very compelling darkened room.

Most of my friends are likely not surprised by my ambivalence – actually, let’s call it disdain – for the Super Bowl. They know I am a cynic, but most of them are also likely unaware that I was once a sportswriter and editor. I did that for a dozen years, more than two decades ago. Which does not, by any means, qualify me as a sports expert. What it does mean, however, is that I have a highly evolved bullshit detector when it comes to these events.

I’ve learned to pay only inadvertent attention to the hours leading up to the game, when the sports networks air hours of soft-focus, journalistically useless profiles on the athletes and coaches. Sunday, I shook my head in disbelief when all five TV analysts for the game, sitting behind their semicircle desk, were sporting American flag pins at precisely the same spot on the lapel of their sports jackets, as though placed there by an intern, perhaps under orders from a producer – who was likely not wearing an American flag pin himself – to subtly remind viewers that this is a Great American Event. Or perhaps a Republican presidential primary debate.

There were five major, relentless story lines to Super Bowl XLVII, and the national sports media didn’t get any of them correct.

Story line No. 1: The Harbaugh brothers. Brother John coaches the Ravens, younger brother Jim coaches the 49ers. Nothing against the brothers’ success, which may be well deserved from their end of things. But what does it mean that two guys born 15 months apart of the same parents each lands one of only 30 head-coaching positions in the NFL? It means the league hiring process is a private club. An old-boys network. Genetics doesn’t make NFL coaches, opportunity does. There’s some kind of gate-keeping mechanism at work. It’s likely not entirely race based, but that’s still gotta be a factor. Since the regular season ended, there have been 15 vacancies in top team positions – eight head coaching jobs and seven general manager positions. All were filled by white candidates. That’s in a league where 67 percent of the players are African-American.

Story Line No. 2: Ray Lewis. This was the final game in the linebacker’s career. Next stop, the Hall of Fame. That’s always feel-good story. But not to the families of the two men stabbed to death in 2000 after a party at a bar. Lewis was among those arrested that night. It was established in court that he had lied to the cops, and the white suit that he was wearing that night was never found. Lewis pleaded guilty to a charge of obstruction of justice and testified against two of his friends, who were acquitted. The crime did follow Lewis at a distance through the Super Bowl. Yet it did not obstruct the adulation showered on this man who was celebrated as an example of NFL toughness, but who has never answered disturbing questions about a double murder. Former NFL star Sterling Sharpe, once a teammate of Lewis, was assigned the key pre-game interview. Sharpe produced the predictably soft-focus, journalistically useless piffle. When he asked Lewis what the families of the two dead men should think about the acclaim that Lewis has received, the linebacker said something that should have made a journalist’s red flags fly:

“It’s simple, you know.  God has never made a mistake.  That’s just who He is, you see?  And if our system — this is the sad thing about our system — if our system took the time to really investigate what happened 13 years ago, maybe they would have got to the bottom-line truth.  But the saddest thing ever was that a man looked me in my face and told me, ‘We know you didn’t do this, but you’re going down for it anyway.’ To the family, if you knew — if you really knew — the way God works, He don’t use people who commits anything like that for His glory.  No way.  It’s the total opposite.”

In other words, Lewis’ success means God has judged him innocent. Sharpe said nothing of this logic, nor did he follow up on the identity of the mysterious guy who supposedly told Lewis, “We know you didn’t do this, but you’re going down for it anyway.”

Story line No. 3: San Francisco second-string quarterback Alex Smith was praised for the graceful way in which he handling losing his starting job to his backup, Colin Kaepernick, who looks like a star in the making. Yet Smith was having a fine season himself when forced to the sideline at mid-season after suffering an injury. That injury was the real third big story: NFL concussions.

For years, the NFL has not acknowledged the escalating evidence that players are suffering concussions at a frightening rate, resulting in damage to the brain. Consider the recent suicides of two heralded NFL defensive players, Dave Duerson and Junior Seau. In 2012, both men thoughtfully shot themselves to death with bullets to the chest, and I do not write that line lightly. It was a decision allowing for their brains to be autopsied. In Duerson’s case, he specifically texted his family before shooting himself, asking that his brain be examined. Both men’s autopsies revealed chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease brought on by repeated blows to the head. In fact, a recent study of the brains of 34 deceased NFL players showed that 33 of them had CTE.

The phrase “sports teaches good character” is obsolete. These games breed bad character and violence, and the NFL sells it. Nearly every play was followed by a player shoving or taking a swing at an opp0ntent. After a Kaepernick pass was intercepted, one of the Ravens pushed an official. “Did that guy just push an official?” asked the guy sitting on the couch next to me. “I think so,” I said. That should have been an automatic ejection for cornerback Cary Williams. Instead, unnecessary roughness penalties were called on San Francisco’s Joe Staley and Baltimore’s Corey Graham; pointless penalties, because they cancelled out each other. Williams remained in the game, as though the officials hadn’t seen what he’d done. But I’m relatively sure the official who was pushed noticed it. The game appeared to be completely out of control.

Story line No. 4: The halftime show. Praised as “electric” by overnight critics, I’ll give you my professional, music critic’s opinion. Beyoncé is charming and has a big voice, but the performance was flat, rushed and overwhelmed by a pyrotechnics-loaded budget. There were no emotional highs and lows, just huge flashing lights. Even Beyoncé re-uniting with her Destiny’s Child pals inspired no heart flutters. The most emotional moment was 26 kids from Sandy Hook Elementary School singing “America the Beautiful.” Twenty-six kids, representing the 26 first graders and adults killed in December’s tragedy in Newton, Conn. It was truly a heartfelt moment. But rather than allow the children to bring the song to its subtle conclusion, and allow 108 million people to ponder for a few thoughtful seconds what it all means, Jennifer Hudson was brought out in full diva-howl mode, stepping all over the moment.

U2 did it right at the 2002 Super Bowl. Just months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the band closed its performance with “Where the Streets Have No Name,” as the names of the victims scrolled upward, across a towering backdrop behind them, into the heavens.

Story line No. 5: No media outlet’s coverage of the Super Bowl is complete without an analysis of the commercials. That would have read like a joke back in the days of Vince Lombardi’s Packers winning the first two Super Bowls, but now the commercials are a much-anticipated event in and of themselves. Sunday’s were generally deemed a letdown. I personally found  it offensive to combine heartfelt images of American soldiers juxtaposed with artsy shots of Jeeps. Patriotism = Buy a Jeep? Really?

Other lesser story lines were ignored. How about the legacy this particular game owed to the city of Cleveland, which had its team hijacked by owner Art Modell and moved to Baltimore. No disrespect meant to Cleveland’s loyal, intense, supportive fans. But it was the money, you know….

It’s been scientifically proven that spending eight hours every Sunday during the NFL season, sprawled on your couch watching games, is a drain on your sperm count.

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