The Bassett Dispatch -- Also Starring Suzanne Pleshette

Bassett Dispatch

Chants Du Moment

A tie!

Popguns
"Waiting For The Winter"
off Rough Trade Shops Indiepop 1 (comp., 2004)

and

An April March
"Clench"
off Instruments of Lust and Fury (EP, 1995)

Both of these are quite pretty. And the former is on a must-get compilation, filled with lots of Britpop goodies.

Perfect Pitch
i hate you toonces
kidchamp
slithytove
metameat
wonkette

Level Pitch
UNICEF
Jimmy Fund
Howard Dean (sorta)
Dem. Underground

Out Pitch
Chicago Tribune
Progressive
American Prospect
The Nation
BBC
Guardian

Old Pine Pitch
WisDC
COWS
KZSU
Daily Cardinal

Pitching Won A Championship
Boston Red Sox

Pitchers Needed
Chicago Cubs

1 January 2007 -- Nothing Changes

Sure, the Tragically Hip show at the House of Blues was absolutely incredible. But I think I have sworn off the HoB for good. First of all, the show was $145. It was always going to be a sellout, so you tack on $15 from punching-bag-of-the-year Ticketmaster, without debate or discussion. No smoking inside. (Grit teeth and mutter, but accept as being a part of the march of time). No in-and-out or designated smoking area outside--you leave for a smoke, you stay out. (For fuck's sake. The United Center has managed to set up a cattle cage (moo!) outside the Adams Street entrance, and have set it up so they can scan your ticket coming in and going out. Smokers happy, if inconvenienced; non-smokers happy; law complied with. What gives with the no in-outs at the HoB, though? Maintain a relatively healthy atmosphere? Sure. But this just smacks of snobbery.)

Worst: cash bar, downtown prices. I had assumed--rightly so--that the price included an open bar. Everybody else in town was having an open bar, at about half the price--with, admittedly, shitty bar cover bands. But $7 for a damn beer? I got drunk last night by the grace of God.

Of course, when I mean drunk, I mean downright shitfaced. So much so that sleeping until 1400 was on the docket. I have breakfast in the middle of the afternoon, go to the store, and come home to.... USC on the TV. Just like they are every year.

--

An editorial note: as you know, I have been editing and adding to this here blog for four years now. I enjoy doing it, but I need to get back into doing it daily. So I figured that if I create a new blog, I might get back into the swing. This blog will still feature general commentary and stuff, but the new one will be focused on politics, and thus easier to make into a continual routine.

Thus: behold. I'll be waiting for you in the tall grass, Markos.

13 December 2006 -- The Moment

In August 2003, I sat on the board of directors of a good government watchdog group, focused on the enactment of campaign finance reform in state government--in the second one-year term of my tenure. When I accepted the job here in Chicago, I naturally had to resign. I got this note from a fellow board member, David, who I had known since December 2000 when I joined the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, and who was largely responsible for overseeing my work there:

"TOM -- Great news about the job; persistence is what pays off. I know your frustration level has been running very high, and that you have internalized much of that. I hope this opportunity and recognition that you have value to offer will re-energize you and give a good bounce to your self-esteem. We will be sorry to lose you from the WDC board, but overall for the better. Cheers."

And that was the last I heard from him, or of him, until this afternoon. A friend I had not spoken to in years left me a voicemail during lunch--he is with a law firm in Tallahassee now, but in a previous life he and I worked side-by-side at COWS. We even took an overnight trip to La Crosse to do a presentation that we and others had been working on; my focus was on democratic reform issues, while he dialed in on environmental issues. We were close, but had fallen out of touch. His call was out of the blue.

And so was the news. David took his life last weekend. He leaves a child from a previous marriage.

The shock is, to a certain extent, still with me tonight. Apparently, he had been suffering from a deep depression for about two years, which explains (in part) what happened. Quite frankly, I don't know what to feel--guilt for not keeping in touch with him, concern for his young daughter. And there was not a small amount of self-criticism, for feeling overly maudlin about what happened to someone who I had not spoken to in years.

Part of it is based in my own struggles with depression and, frankly, my darker moments. It would be wildly outlandish and somewhat crass to say that I have stood in his shoes. But I do recognize the feeling, and the pain.

But it is just an deep sense of regret and sadness that pervades my thoughts. Here was a man who helped me, gave me guidance and, in his last words to me, encouragement for what was to come.

I am at a loss as to what to do next, with regard to this event. I'm sure that it will come soon, of course.

It will be enough to say, for now, that we have lost one of the good guys, and that I am grateful for what he gave to me. May he rest in peace.

8 November 2006 -- Can I Measure The Drapes Now?

Historically, Democrats have a couple of famous theme songs. "Happy Days are Here Again," in general, and also "High Hopes" for JFK. But what has been the GOP's theme song? We here at Bassett Dispatch are proud to nominate this as the theme song for the Republican Party.

Boy. Did they ever get hammered last night? A disappointing night in Duckworth headquarters, to be sure, but we were buoyed by the fact that (a) no Democrat had ever come so close to taking that district, and (b) just about every other Congressional target fell, and fell hard. And now we have the House and, if the AP is to be believed, the Senate as well.

Thank God.

But joy is tempered with sadness. On the political front, that same-sex marriage ban in Wisconsin that was mentioned won--more handily than I had thought it would, and so my friend up in Milwaukee is, undoubtedly, bearing it heavily. And then there is something totally unrelated that I will not share, except to say that it is from a dear friend who has come upon a hard personal loss. It takes a step out of my stride, this stuff--but not nearly to the extent that they are feeling it.

Yet there is better news on my job front, where there seems to be a new lead. I say seems, but will say no more in order to not jinx it further. So, in short: things are generally looking up. So we move forward with caution--and with knowledge that Chicago winter is in the mail--but renewed hope regardless.

6 November 2006 (2140 CST) -- Drop The Puck!

Boy. I never thought it would get here, but it is. Election 2006 -- The Reckoning. While that sounds a bit optimistic (here at Bassett Dispatch Election Headquarters, pessimism is Job One), all signs point to a Democratic victory--at least of sorts, and quite possibly all the way.

(You want a prediction: OK. House Dems pick up 24, Senate Dems take 5. I'd prefer a six seat swing (plus Ned Lamont, just to make sure that Lieberman doesn't get any ideas), but having Cheney forced to sit there and vote down decent legislation is nothing to sneeze at.)

Anyways: how's the mood out there? Take my old hometown, where Mr. Big showed up for an airport clutch-grab-and-fly stop this afternoon. Apparently, it was the biggest thing at the airport since the Balloon Festival. And the race has tightened considerably, from GOPer plus-14 to Dem plus-3, in two weeks. And the reason for the shift? Turns out it was a domestic incident for the incumbent. I would have preferred him getting sacked for being a sycophant for the Bushies (check) or his lobbyist junkets (check), but, at this point, I'll take it.

(This is not, of course, to suggest that that abusing your wife is a ejection-worthy offense. It is. A straight-to-red, start kicking dirt on home plate, pack your bags foul. It's just that the last straw came a bale of hay ago for this guy. Bottom line: if this is what sends him home, that's just fine by me.)

Here in Chicago, the battle is out west, in the burbs, where I will be reprising my role as an election observer that came to great success (!) in Wisconsin two years ago. (That slammer in the middle of the sentence is, of course, a nod to Borat. I didn't think I'd enjoy it, but--whoa. Incredible.) Early call tomorrow mandates a shorter explanation. It will be enough to say that I'm on the hunt for the bad guys, seeking to disenfranchise people.

So wish me luck. Wish us all luck. And, if you happen to hit a knee tonight, send one up for some common sense among our electorate. For my friend in Wisconsin fighting an anti-gay amendment. For the thousands of people nationwide who will be knocking on doors and getting people to the polls to vote for change. For the candidates who have stuck out their necks and endured a positively brutal cycle. For not backing down. For every sentiment uttered in every John Mellencamp song ever written. For success, and peace, and sanity. For a breath of fresh air that this nation has desperately needed.

[P.S. -- lest you think I have gone way too earnest, here is the best campaign button ever invented, unearthed for us by the good people at Wonkette.]

30 October 2006 -- The Battle of DuPage County

Things, politically, are omnipresent in my life right now. After the pain of 2004, my interest atrophied somewhat. But somewhere deep in my reptilian brain, it was dormant and--almost like Old Faithful--switched on some months ago as the election season began in earnest. It has, to a minor extent, affected work, and I habitually scan the news sites for the latest buzz.

This season could be unlike anything we've seen before. Case in point: my old home district--New York's 20th--is a pure toss-up. If you had told me that the district would be in play at any time in my lifetime, I would have told you to increase your dose. But there it is: Kirstin Gillibrand, raised in the district, did some time as a lawyer in the City, is neck-and-neck with John Sweeney, a four-termer known in political circles as a bit of an enforcer, in partisan terms. It's one of those fringe races, however, that will flip only if the projected Democratic wave is an Oahu North Shore crusher.

Not so with another reliably Red district: Illinois's 6th. This one is tooth-and-nail to the wire. Henry Hyde--the lead House member on the impeachment in 1998-1999--has retired. Tammy Duckworth, perhaps the most well-known of the so-called Fighting Dems--formerly of the Illinois Army National Guard, before she lost both of her legs when her chopper was shot down--is facing off against a state senator, Peter Roskam.

From what I know of it, the top-mark on the debate has been immigration. This seems odd, given the district's stereotypical makeup--McMansions and office parks, mostly, lying to the immediate west of Chicago. But Roskam is hitting the immigration issue with a vengance. On Iraq, the public side of his campaign has piped down somewhat, after one of Roskam's staffers accused Duckworth of supporting a "cut and run" strategy--using those precise terms for a woman who lost her legs in the war.

And so I am enlisted again as an attorney working for the Democrats on election day, just as I was two years ago. They are preparing me for a battle, it seems; the presumption is that there will be some dirty tricks at the polls. I was prepared similarly in Milwaukee in 2004, but my experience showed that it wasn't anything that I couldn't handle, and nothing, save for an isolated incident or two, that approached anything close to the worst-case scenario. So I am going into this expecting that everything will be on the up-and-up. And, I am 99% sure, it will in fact be so. But my eyes will be there in case I am wrong. Let us hope that this does not, in fact, happen.

As for the election itself, I noticed something odd coming home from the movies tonight, where I saw, coincidentally, Death of a President.

(It's not the most artful film ever made, but not the simplistic snuff film that many on the right are advertising the picture as being. It was filmed (in a way) in Chicago, and the places and scenes were portrayed (more or less) faithfully--except where they held the federal trial in the state courthouse, which stands to reason given the subject matter. One of the pivotal scenes, in fact, took place outside my office building, which makes me wonder how I missed the filming of it. But the filmmaker did a good job of not turning the exercise into a "why you should hate Bush" lecture; the man comes across as being human, as someone who does not deserve to die, whose death causes more problems than it solves. All of which is true, of course. Rather, it is more about us than anything else, and particularly about our prejudices. Maybe the story could have been told without the assassination. But the filmmaker made his movie the way he wanted, and its there for us to take or not take.)

Anyway: driving home, I was at a stoplight at Southport and Irving Park. And in front of me was a Mercedes sedan. The license plate was one of those special ones you get from the DMV. It was the "America Remembers" model that they put out directly after 11 September.

The plate read "LUXURY." I'm not kidding. "LUXURY."

Some people just have a disconnect in their brain, which prevents them from being sensible about things. Other people's brains are incapable of exhibiting any sort of taste, or class. Mr. & Mrs. LUXURY (who shared a demure kiss at the light) somehow have both character flaws at once.

And, of course, they will vote next week.

I don't know about you, but it is these folks, and others like them, that deserve to feel pain when they open up the papers on 8 November. When they learn that one or both Houses have changed hands, I want them to feel a pit in their stomach and the beginnings of a migrane. I want them to feel a slight twinge of anguish and dread.

I don't know where this wish for pain comes from. Maybe it's seeing the President on the television every day for the past six years, spinning the same cynical story and playing the public like a fiddle. But, I reserve more blame, perhaps, to his enablers. I think they have a reckoning coming to them through the vote next week. Nothing would make me happier than to see it delivered to them with a big red bow.

30 September 2006 -- The World Turned Upside Down

The month that was, in no uncertain terms, was one of the most of eventful of the past few years. And this came, of course, on the heels of August and all the fun that included.

Let us start with the Big Headline.

Ahem.

I have a girlfriend.

[The Stars and Stripes Forever playing in background]

Her name is Erin. She grew up in southern Illinois, recently graduated from the U of I, and works out in the burbs. She's a world of fun. I am just so happy about this. And she's happy with me, which is just as (if not more) important.

Work is in a state of flux at the moment. Another attorney in the office just got fired, and I got saddled with some of his cases. This came after my performance review (which I passed through with flying colors), and a month where I was just hammered with a massive amount of briefing. In essence, I wrote enough to fill a decent-sized hardcover this month. This, along with my new relationship with Erin, has left me almost totally exhuasted. But we press on.

And, of course, the whole political thing is heating up. Yesterday's news, of course, was creepy as hell. And what preceded it--yeah, OK, torture is just fine--was worse. Look--if you are just hitting this here blog out of the cold blue, you would be best to start volunteering for your local Democratic candidates right now, and not to stop until the election. You start to wonder whether the Republic will hang in there with these clowns in charge much longer. And that scares me senseless.

But, as in all things lately, there is hope out there. Which is nice.

26 August 2006 -- St. Clement's

Just now recovering from the trip (and, as an added bonus: a cold inherited from the eleven-hour plane ride from London). Of course, the perfectly-planned escape from work crashed on my sorry head as soon as I got back--the cleaning-up I had left for people to complete on my week away never got done. And so it came to pass that, even though I was on top of the world as soon as I walked in at 0800, I was almost to tears just six hours later.

Maybe it was the exhaustion, or the bacteria that were just beginning to get organized in my nose. Or maybe it could have been that England was just so lovely compared to the drudgery of my workplace. Though, even if the office I worked in had perfume jets and harpists in reception, I would have felt let down.

Goddamn it--I have to get back to London sometime soon.

The one day I had there was not enough. For a town so old and choked with tourists, I felt like I was discovering routes that nobody had found yet. This is silly, of course, but I am somewhat of an extreme tourist--get off the beaten path, soak up as much local culture as possible, and move on. Perhaps it was because I was so disoriented by it all. So even though I did Piccadilly to Leicester Square to Trafalgar to St. James's to Whitehall to Westminster Palace--like doing Michigan Avenue and Navy Pier here, or Fifth Avenue in New York, or (oh God) Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, I did all the really neat stuff--a vespers-like prayer service in a small corner of St. Paul's, the knotty alleys in the City, hanging in a pub in Smithfields, and then Southwark. And the rest of it.

And oh my dear God--Lauren and Joe. Seeing them just so happy throughout the whole week, and on Sunday in particular. I concur with Paul: it was authentic, running through them like a river in March. And it carried on to everyone else. I was walking up from the High Street, warm Cuban in my hands, and I felt like a king. I was waiting outside the reception for a half-hour with borrowed money for the cabs filled with guests, and I couldn't stop smiling. Jen, Paul, Mari, Val and their others, Jacob and I were on top of the world.

For a week, I felt simply radiant. My saying those words just seem to fall flat on the knowledge of the fifty-one weeks that precede it and, if I am not fortunate, the fifty-one to come. It will be enough to say that the week in England--from the starry night over the Atlantic to the passing glance of Scotland, Greenland and Labrador on the return, will be one of the happiest memories I will ever have. And I have to thank people who I am honored to call friends.

30 July 2006, 2d. -- Wolf Fly Trap (cont'd)

For the first time in, well, a while, the name of a post needs some explanation.

Wolf Trap is an open-air performing arts center in suburban Virginia. When I was in DC at the Stanford-in-Washington house (nice place on Connecticut Avenue, just southeast of the Zoo), I went there with the house through the generosity of the Bing Family--who basically underwrote so many cultural events and charitable things on the Stanford campus that every undergraduate, at least once in his or her trip, got a free ride to a nice deal on the Bing dime. (For the record, it was Riverdance. Yeah: everybody who made a donation to their local PBS station in the late 90s got a ticket to Riverdance too, but I liked it--Celtic music that does not have Celtic Woman or (oh God help me) Enya attached to it is top-notch, if you ask me.)

[Aside: do the people who program pledge breaks really know what the hell they're doing? Every so often, I sit myself down on a Wednesday night, expecting a nice installment of Frontline, and I get Rick Steves hiking in the hills near Siena, or some Dutch guy with a synthesizer and a 500-piece orchestra--with electric guitars, yet. Oh yes. Let me fork over that $75 right now. Bah!]

Anyway. Wolf Trap is kind of like Ravinia, a smallish place just across the Cook County line. They had a Mozart concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra up there tonight, so I went. It was nice. Strolling across a nicely manicured lawn with sculpture and Mozart is a pretty sweet deal. Of course, I took more strolls than I normally might, as the couple parked on a blanket next to my lawn chair began snogging rather heavily after intermission. But hey.

Meanwhile, it is so damned hot around here. Over 100 tomorrow--at which point this "heat index" thing doesn't mean a whole lot. (For the record, again: it's supposed to be 110 tomorrow.) Jen has been known to complain about the cold--now it's my turn.

This heat has done things to the apartment that make it very attractive to flies. I went downstairs to wash the sheets, and BANG! I was just overwhelmed by them--thirty flies, maybe more, buzzing around the laundry room. Had to go across the street to the laundromat. And thus, on the way home from a nice of fine culture, overpriced wine and averted glances--this girl's sundress was, shall we say, inadequate--I went to the drug store to buy a sticky fly trap.

Inspecting it some hours after installation, it has done the trick. Oddly, I felt sorry for the little guys--some of whom were still buzzing, trying to get off the glue. But after realizing that the lifespan of a house fly is, apparently, one or two weeks, I don't feel too awful about it. Still, the number of them leads me to believe that something downstairs may be causing it. Pool of water behind the washer, busted pipe, something.

30 July 2006 -- Wolf Fly Trap

Well.

The fact that I haven't posted here in quite some time--posting has been intermittent for a while, no doubt, but the recent drought has been quite notable--can indicate that I have had a lot on my mind lately. And a lot of travel--more so than any two-month period in recent memory.

The stress at work is turned up to eleven. The last two months have been just dreadful. This, combined with the longer-term unease with the work, has led me to go looking--just to see what's out there. And this led to a somewhat serendipitous trip to Springfield, Ill.--200 miles south of here.

Serendipitous? Here's how: one day in late June, I felt incredibly wound-up. Not so much like a top, or a toy, but like one of those two-story industrial springs that you might find in, say, a steel mill. One of my friends, Alec, offered to have me up for the Fourth of July weekend in Wisconsin. Up North, deep in pine and oak trees, sounded just fine, so I accepted. That night, I got a letter from an office down in Springfield, asking for an interview. They had the Monday before July 4th, so I was able to convince Da Powers Dat Be that I was having my Wisconsin fix, while going the exact opposite direction. The perfect cover story.

[I, of course, had already wasted my "I have to go to the dentist" on an interview that never happened. Turns out the head of the firm I would have interviewed with had been suspended from the practice of law. Three times. And he was accused of another misdeed that would have... well... if it wasn't for venetian blinds, it'd be curtains for him. That bad. And so I went to (yes!) the dentist.]

The job search process, however, has been tough to get started, even now. Work just weighs over everything. If it wasn't for my biking kick, I would have been tearing down the walls. Big accomplishments that have nothing to do with work have been just huge. Example: all night ride (25 miles around Chicago, with 20 more miles on the to-and-fro for the event), followed by a massive 40 mile ride, end-to-end on Lake Shore Drive the following week. If you had told me I'd be able to do that a few months ago, I would have found the nurse so that she could give you your medicine back.

The rest has just been keeping pace. Apart from the bike rides and the trip to New York over Memorial Day, nothing too exciting has happened. Which leaves me set up well for the week in England coming up next month. God--only two weeks away. I can't wait.

20 May 2006 -- Carroll's Sacred Trust

Well, once again, it's been a while. In some ways, it's been an eventful month. In other ways, not. Work's been work, and things are not too different, except for the details.

For instance, I now have a bike. The gym membership was doing nothing for me, as the only times I could go were before work (no, thanks--I prefer sleeping) and after work (the irregular quitting times made a routine exercise time just about impossible). So, at least twice a week since the middle of April, I've biked into work--a ten mile ride, one way. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the prevailing wind. You don't think much about a light breeze when walking, but when biking it makes a noticable difference. Downwind, you are Lance Armstrong. (Or, in my case, the fat Lance Armstrong that shows up on Letterman every once in a while.) Upwind, and you are really struggling. (Like a week ago--raining, 25 mph off the lake, and brutally cold for May. I was hurting something awful after that.)

And the results so far? Well, weight wise, I've actually picked up a couple. (Explanation from friends: muscle replacing fat. I'll buy that; my calves are rock hard and huge, and my thighs are getting firmer too.) And I feel better--like I've accomplished something. Not bad.

The match.com thing is providing mixed results--not a whole lot of response to my profile. I went on a couple of dates with a girl named Holly, who seemed nice enough. We had fun (or so I thought), but there was, in her words, "no connection." Huh. But there was a nibble this morning from someone I winked at. Progress, hopefully, to be reported here, soon.

One big regretful detail, though, to report: my next door neighbor, Ted Sparrow, died a week ago, from a stroke incurred during open heart surgery, at 84. A fairly friendly guy, who kept to himself most of the time--just a friendly face. But he lived a full and interesting life. From the Tribune obituary:

Ted Sparrow saw a lot of things during his 37 years as a Chicago police officer. He was on the streets trying to quell riots that broke out in the wake of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, and he worked crowd control during the tumultuous Democratic National Convention later that year, his family said. He almost escaped unscathed during the convention, but a protester bit his finger, and he needed stitches.

Those experiences pale, however, to what happened one night in August 1954 when Mr. Sparrow subdued Richard Carpenter, who later was convicted of killing a Chicago police officer and shooting another. "The police had him holed up in his house, and my dad sneaked in there with another officer and arrested him," Mr. Sparrow's son Teddy said.

But during the arrest, Carpenter tried to grab Mr. Sparrow's gun, prompting Mr. Sparrow to "smack Carpenter in the head with his flashlight," his son said.The case was covered widely in the media, and Mr. Sparrow received a commendation from the city.

Mr. Sparrow, 84, one of six siblings and the son of a Chicago police officer, died Thursday, May 11, in Weiss Memorial Hospital of complications from open-heart surgery.

Mr. Sparrow grew up on the South Side and, along with his older brother Harry, was a Golden Gloves boxing champion as a teenager, his son said. The brothers often boxed on the same night and became known as the "Fighting Sparrows."

Mr. Sparrow joined the Navy after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and trained as an aircraft tail gunner at Banana River Naval Base in Florida, his son said. While stationed there, Mr. Sparrow saw a plane crash into the ocean. He swam out to the wreckage, located a survivor and pulled the man more than 100 yards back to shore, Mr. Sparrow's son said. The plane's other occupant died on impact, he said.

During World War II, Mr. Sparrow was stationed on the USS Saratoga in the South Pacific. After his discharge, he moved back to Chicago and worked briefly as a maintenance man before becoming a police officer and raising his family near the Ukrainian Village neighborhood.

Mr. Sparrow had two children with his first wife before their divorce. He met his second wife, Ann Marie, in 1974 at a coffee shop that Mr. Sparrow and other officers frequented. The couple married in 1981 and moved to the Rogers Park neighborhood in 1989. He retired from the Police Department the following year with a full pension, spending his days at home, where he often could be found gardening in the company of his dog, Lady. His wife died in 1999.

John Pappone, a retired Chicago police officer who worked out of the Wood District with Mr. Sparrow for 15 years, described Mr. Sparrow as a man with a "good heart."

Mr. Sparrow would never refuse to buy a cup of coffee or a sandwich for the poor people he often encountered while on the job, Pappone said.

Mr. Sparrow's son Robert recalled his father's kindness, saying that although he could be perceived as a "tough guy, he had a real gentle way of treating people."

Other survivors include a third son, Daniel; and two grandchildren. Services have been held.

I went to the memorial on Monday. A small affair, with a short service at the end. To be honest about it, I felt like I was intruding on something. But the family seemed like they were glad to see me. And maybe they got some comfort from my being there. If so, I feel good about that, because he was a great guy--who liked sitting out on the backyard, watering his plants, spraying the dust off of my car, squirting the kids next door, and giving me a wave. Sorry to see him go.

5 April 2006 -- Scoreboard!

In news that makes no real waves, a bunch of towns in Wisconsin had anti-war referenda on the ballot in local elections yesterday. And of the 32 towns and cities that had them, 24 of them prevailed. Madison, of course, was a blowout. But the advisory referendum in La Crosse--the biggest town in western Wisconsin, and a true political battleground--passed as well, by ten points.

A local blog run by one of my old profs had an interesting comment line. She has a fairly libertarian/conservative viewpoint--hard to classify it as such, even then. Which is nice. But it attracts a bunch of yahoos. Blasts such as these were fairly common:

This is just more manufactured news. The people who put these referendums forward are the people who have been against the war from the start. That they turned out to vote for their side in a very low turnout by-election is no surprise.

I threw the hand grenade into the barrel of oatmeal with this response:

At regular intervals, a large proportion of the talking heads out there (MSM and otherwise) who support the war (or the President) have called the patriotism of those who oppose the war into question.

If you accept the proposition that the most patriotic thing that an American can do is vote, then the people in these communities who, at least yesterday, exhibited the most patriotism yesterday are those who are against the war. The proponents of this war have to really come to grips with that, instead of slapping a yellow ribbon on their tailgate and calling it done.

This brought the inner loony out in a lot of people:

"...If you accept the proposition that the most patriotic thing that an American can do is vote..."

Who accepts this? What a fraud. This is leftism at its highest. Would it be patriotic to go and vote for the end of the republic?

Patriotism means putting country ahead of self. Merely voting is not patriotism.

If the United States Congress votes overwhelmingly to go to war in Iraq (which they did), and further voted almost unanimously not to pull the troops out, it becomes unpatriotic to try and undermine the policy created from these decisions.

And this:

"...If you accept the proposition that the most patriotic thing that an American can do is vote..."

But I thought protesting was the most patriotic thing that an American can do. Make up your mind.

And this:

"If you accept the proposition that the most patriotic thing that an American can do is vote"

Uhh, what a laughable, silly proposition.

Wow. And just think: if they actually won on these referenda, they would be the first to take their shirt off and wave it 'round like a helicopter. (Not my quote--from some hip hop song from a few years back. I forget from whom.)

This, and Tom DeLay's unfortunate (sniff) political demise, is getting me excited about politics again. It's like we actually--maybe, just maybe--have a shot at getting our nation back on track. Feels nice.

27 March 2006 -- Annual Stockholders' Report

Well, another year, come and gone. And the year just past? Well, a microcosm of it came on Saint Patrick's Day. I was at the office from 0830 on 17 March, all the way through to the next morning. Major brief needed doing, and in a hurry. It got filed the following week, but that day was just horrendous. Walking back on the deserted streets of the Loop (partly because the streets are almost always empty on the weekends, and partly because the police had banned all parking for the day, on account of that night's march down the Magnificent Mile for the third anniversary of the war), I was stumbling, almost as if I were drunk. Almost fell down the granite steps of the Red Line subway on State Street.

This was not the first holiday I sacrificed to the cause--Thanksgiving, and the four day weekend it provided to just about every American, was completely consumed by work (on three separate projects due the next week). And Memorial Day, too. But the last nine months have been positively brutal. (Hence, the severe decrease in frequency on posts here.) And it has dominated my life outside of work, just by the sheer force of it. If I did not spend my whole weekend recuperating, I would have had a nervous breakdown by now. This basically spoiled any designs I've had on getting into regular exercise for the first time in, oh, a decade.

I came damned close to losing it today. On my fucking birthday--for two hours, I was on the verge of tears. Worked my ass off this year, and still felt like I was one mistake from becoming a ghost in the office. A romantic breakthrough, of sorts--unless and until you take into account the fact that the only woman who was kind enough to show any real interest in me, in years, was a certified, card-carrying, Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval loony. Otherwise, the status has been quo.

And everyone at the office was wishing me a happy birthday. I wasn't in the mood for smiling. This, around work, was taken as nothing extraordinary. For my time there, and particularly in the last nine months, the focus has not been on how much I've done, but what hasn't been done. Where I've fallen short. Where I have failed.

And through it all, I still have managed to hang on to friends, and pick up some new ones. The day-to-day friends (mostly around the office, but some outsiders too) have put up with my for-every-silver-lining-there's-a-tornado-brewing mentality. So maybe there's something there that shines through the sour demeanor. I don't know how, but they're still around.

And this weekend was pretty damned good, with Jacob coming in from Pennsylvania to see me, Jen and Andy while doing his PhD thing. We had a blast.

But, these things are too infrequent. I need to get something into me where I stop promoting the negative feelings I have and start appreciating what I am doing--not focusing on the next foul-up but the latest success. This may give rise to the confidence that people tell me I sorely need. Let us hope so.

P.S. And speaking of giving rise to things, I ordered a slice of cake over at Standees an hour ago, and Julie the waitress found an opportunity to land one right in the abdomen:

Me: [holding lit disposable lighter over cake]
She: Oh, it's your birthday?
Me: Yep.
She: Oh wait a minute; here's a candle.

[impromptu singing]

She: No, don't blow on it yet. Let me get some more candles.
Me: No, no, that's fine....
She: No, I mean it. I know what you're wishing for, and you are going to have to blow real hard for it.

That cracked everyone up. It was pretty funny, I guess, in a cheeky, ribald sort of way.

8 February 2006 -- The Chicago Smoking Ban: Day 23

Two snap shots on the Grammys (which I am now switching off in favor of the Daily Show):

One: Herbie Hancock and Christina Aguilera? They just don't give a damn anymore, evidently. Did they think that anybody was going to see through that attempt to be, for lack of a better term, deep? Yeah. And I believe Wayne Gretzky when he says that he has no clue that his wife was in on an betting ring, headed up by his assistant coach in Phoenix and with possible connections to the Mob. (Sad business, that.)

Two: I think I've solved a mystery.

Lance: "Say, hon, are you really going to wear this to the Grammys next week?"
Sheryl: "Yeah. Why?"
Lance: "Well, for one thing, it doesn't leave a whole lot to the imagination."
Sheryl: "You don't like the way I look in this?"
Lance: "Oh, come on! The slit goes all the way to your waist. It looks horrible!"
Sheryl: "Damn it, Lance. I am beautiful in this. Don't you think I'm beautiful anymore?! I thought you loved me!!"
Lance: "Oh, Christ. Look, we need to have a talk...."

24 hours and one call to their PR agent later, they called the whole thing off.

Now, the smoking ban: it hasn't really had the effect on me that I thought it would. There have only been two culture-shock style moments.

At Logan Square to see Low (very, very good), the Auditorium has gone smoke free. But you suck it up and pick the slow moments to duck out. (The slow moments were built in. The undercard, His Name Is Alive, was incredibly disappointing. Noodling, noodling, noodling. And they handed out percussion instruments to those hangers-on at the stage's edge. Folks: that is a bad sign. No amount of illicit personal enjoyment products would make that sound good.)

Same thing over at the United Center for the Hawks game against Calgary a week ago. Admittedly, the smoking areas inside, pre-ban, were untenable. You literally couldn't stay there for more than five minutes without getting knocked out. The alternative: a caged-in pen, scientifically located at least fifteen feet from the doors (per useless regulation). Even the minders thought it was odd. One of them called out: "OK, everyone, on three... one, two, three, 'mooooooooo.'" And everyone had a good, knowing laugh.

4 February 2006 -- Upside Down

Another turbulent patch at work. But I'm working through it as best I can. This is a recording.

Meanwhile, for the first time in a long while, I've actually seen all five best picture nominees. There is usually one film out there that, from the previews and the plot, I cannot bear to watch. Case in point: Titanic--one film every year is all sweepy and weepy and not totally redeeming. I thought that Brokeback Mountain had some of those qualities, but apparently also had some redeeming characteristics. And so I went to see it.

And all I can say is this: if Heath Ledger wins Best Actor, I'm never watching the Oscars again. Jesus--if you want to give an award to somebody mutters under his breath all the time and only shows emotion when it is a life-or-death situation, give the damn statue to me. And, of course, shooting that film must have been a lot like breakfast. Bacon and eggs are hard to screw up; so is getting a good shot in the Canadian Rockies.

Now: Capote wasn't the best film in the world, but Philip Seymour Hoffman has made long strides since Scent of a Woman, hasn't he? Crash was disturbing as hell, and actually taut--it was the first time in a long while that I audibly gasped at a particular moment in a film. (Last time I remember? When the roulette ball landed on 20, the second time, in Run Lola Run. I knew it was going to happen, but the way they shot that with a dim strobelight drew out the tension.) Munich was just overdone, I think.

But Good Night, and Good Luck--that's my favorite, even though not finding an actual actor to be McCarthy was a bit contrived, as was the Dianne Reeves cameos. And it was preachy. But, then again, Mr. Murrow could preach. That was his deal, after all. And I love films shot in black-and-white. People should do that more often, really.

31 January 2006 -- "Humperdinck!"

So I was at Frankie Z's in River North to watch the State of the Union. Not a bad event. There were some candidates, largely on the outside looking in of the bland, shiftless center-left hegemony that is the Illinois Democratic Party--there's a reason why they call Rod Blagojevich "Governor Photo-Op," and these guys were railing against the system locals lovingly call "the Combine."

And then the speech got wound up. This, truly, was the Cindy Sheehan wing of the party--the news that she got busted in the gallery raised murmurs of discontent, but there was a sense that precisely nobody was surprised. (Personally, there are days when I think that she is a Godsend, and days when I think she is now simply milking her tragedy for all its worth, to the detriment of the cause she hopes to advance. Tonight, I leaned to the latter, but kept my fat mouth shut about it until I entered the warm (and neglected) embrace of this here blog.)

I won the SOTU Bingo game (about five minutes in) probably because (a) I am a competitive guy by nature and (b) everyone else was too busy seething. Got a couple of buttons out of the deal.

The most remarkable part about the speech? The line-item veto demand. What? Does anybody fact check things? Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 117 (1998). I realized that within two seconds after he said them. I had three beers in me. I was in a room with people screaming "LIAR!" after every other line. And I picked up on an obvious flub. There were, maybe, three or four senior White House guys on that one paragraph of the address, and they let it through.

[NB: an earlier version of this post cited to U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton. Wrong case--that dealt with either (a) the Congress's ability to curtail, under the Commerce and the Necessary and Proper Clauses, roving gangs of tiddlywinks enthusiasts or (b) term limits. Don't drink and blog is the bottom line here, people.]

People in the room were pissed, too, at the Democratic response. This is what you get when the guy you put on there has been in office for all of two weeks. But I thought he did fine. The first couple of minutes was slow. (Stand back! He was a missionary... any more vim and vigor, and he'd shake his own drink. And his state is well-managed. Competency. So hot. And reforming the senior year of high ZZZZZZZZ....)

But then he found his speed and began hitting with what passes in the Democratic Party for gusto and force:

Our commitment to winning the war on terror compels us to ask this question: Are the president's policies the best way to win this war?

We now know that the American people were given inaccurate information about reasons for invading Iraq.

We now know that our troops in Iraq were not given the best body armor or the best intelligence.

We now know the administration wants to cut tens of thousands of troops from the Army Reserves and the National Guard at the very time that we're facing new and dangerous threats.

And we now know that the administration wants to further reduce military and veterans' benefits.

There's a better way.

Working together, we have to give our troops the tools they need to win the war on terror. And we can do it without sacrificing the liberty that we've sent our troops abroad to defend.

Yes, he has a pulse, ladies and gentlemen!

All of this is fluff, of course. In the next month, there will be enough actual honest-to-God news to occupy us. (Between the whatever-dominates-the-attention-of-a-fickle-and-stupid-public news (whoa! American Idol is fixed!), that is.) And by November, something that is not in the speech tonight is going to boil some party's pasta.

But remember: we were promised the governmental equivalent of flying cars tonight. If I can't buy a hybrid for less than $15,000, or a tank of fuel made entirely of refined soybeans, by the fall, there'll be hell to pay. Dammit.

Home