Resurrection

I thought Don Imus was dead. If he isn’t, he sure looks like it.

When I watched him on television a couple of days ago ’splainin’ his comment about the long rap sheet of Adam “Pacman” Jones, I would have sworn that I was watching a set of empty clothes with a mop sticking out of the shirt collar. And for emphasis, someone had stuck a Stetson on top of it.

I know that’s coarse, and I know I’m probably exposing my age bias and I apologize if my words offend anyone. But I swear, that’s what I thought, and I was always taught to tell the truth. Speaking the truth is an inalienable right under the Constitution of the United States of America. Isn’t it?

Well, that depends. If your name is Charlie Black (McCain’s high powered campaign advisor) and you say outright that a terrorist arrack on America would benefit McCaint, then your career may be in jeopardy. Even though a terrorist attack would definitely aid McCain’s election bid, shush now, Charlie, you aren’t supposed to say so out loud.

So the truth is relative and situational, and now Don Imus in his characteristically convoluted manner of talking without moving his lips and later ’splainin’ his mumbles, is in hot water for suggesting that Blacks are at a high risk of arrest on general principles in some parts of the country.

What’s going to happen to Don this time around? He was fired from one radio station for referring to a girls’ basketball team as “nappy headed ho’s.” His latest faux mumble seems tame compared to that one.

Meanwhile the Talking Pinheads will monopolize valuable air time shouting and screaming and hollering at each other while news of note is unreported or minimized.

I want to know the salacious details of Christie Brinkley’s impending divorce trial.

Late Breaker. Don won’t be fired. He’s safe for the time being.

Technorati Tags: Don Imus,Charlie Black,John McCain

The Outdoorsy Type

In 2004, Chris Matthews observed that Americans have always elected outdoorsy presidents.

He cited a few examples of the type he was talking about, men like Clinton, Truman, and Reagan. He called these presidents physically healthy-looking guys.

Then he named Dukakis and Mondale as classic losers and called them indoor types.

The meaning of a word like outdoorsy is largely in the eye of the beholder, but to help us along, Dictionary.com defines it as characteristic of or suitable to the outdoors, unusually fond of outdoor life, associated with the outdoors, showing a liking for the outdoors.

When Matthews called it for the outdoorsy types, he lined up with many others who believe Americans vote based on the appearance of a candidate. The most common belief is that the taller candidate will likely win.

There’s probably little if any empirical evidence for any of these beliefs. But a number of studies has demonstrated that children almost from birth prefer an attractive face.

In one film clip I watched, a group of elementary school students thought that a beautiful blond teacher was more competent than a plain brunette.

When queried later about the reason for their selection, a large majority said “Because she’s beautiful.”

I don’t think we can conclude from this that Pam Anderson would be a shoo-in for president. But the evidence suggests a strong connection between appearance and perceived strengths and talents.

Attractive people are widely considered more intelligent and capable at many tasks than individuals who may rank lower on the symmetrical scale.

In men, attractive usually refers to maleness, a rather indefinable characteristic that Chris Matthews probably meant when he used the word outdoorsy.

Men are attractive if they do outdoor things like play ball, hunt, fish, blow watermelons to smithereens with a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with Number Two buckshot.

Fast forwarding to 2008, and given the expert opinions of Chris and others, how do Barack and John stack up against the two main characteristics outlined here?

Barack is obviously the taller of the two, so he has the advantage on that point. But which is outdoorsy or the most outdoorsy?

Barrack has been photographed shooting baskets on an outdoor basketball court. That’s certainly outdoorsy. To the best of my knowledge, John doesn’t play basketball, but he wears a baseball cap with “Navy” on it. That’s man-stuff in action and speaks of an outdoorsy lifestyle.

Sounds like a draw, doesn’t it?

But when push comes to shove, these factors may be totally irrelevant. The final outcome will depend on which group votes in the greater numbers, Barack’s younger generation or McCain’s older age group.

One thing is certain: no matter how emotional voters vote, you and I are too intelligent to be swayed by base feelings.

We will analyze each and every issue. And only after we’ve fully examined the pros and cons will we walk into a voting booth and vote our guts.

Technorati Tags: Obama,McCain,Chris Matthews,Perceptions,Attractiveness,Outdoorsy,Pam Anderson

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Will You Love Me Tomorrow?

I’m sitting here watching PBS and listening to some great doo wop sounds.

The audience is definitely into the music. They sort of remind me of golfing fans. They emulate the gestures of the vocalists and mouth the words, all with impeccable rhythm.

The songs are ancient, sure, but they have an enduring quality about them. Music crosses borders and spans generations. Music unites.

Sitting before the TV, I find myself keeping time and finally standing up and moving as if I have a partner.

Doo wop’s sounds and tempos speak to romanticism, and its subtle lyrics are in sharp contrast to the wall of sound and frenzied  movements of modern music.

Doo wop is for slow and easy romance, mood music for lovers. There is an anticipatory tension about doo wop that speaks to the gentleness of true love. True love rarely lasts forever, but doo wop extends that promise.

At least until tomorrow morning.

Tonight you’re mine completely
You give you love so sweetly
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes
But will you love me tomorrow?
The Shirelles

Technorati Tags: Doo Wop,PBS,The Shirelles

My Old Kentucky Home

Okay, Hillary won an overwhelming victory over Barack in yesterday’s West Virginia primary. I wonder what overwhelming means. Is it a state of being like “being in love,” which usually lasts a few days?

If overwhelming is like true love, Hillary may make it another week. Life and feelings are transitory, and Politician is the most ADD riddled occupation in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Will Hillary’s overwhelming state of being carry her through the Kentucky primary next Tuesday?

Kentucky is a state that I am intimately familiar with. I was also intimately familiar with West Virginia and predicted her victory there as soon as the results were announced. I predict a victory for her in Kentucky as well because the state consists of a lot of White blue-collar folks who love their guns and their religion.

When Barack remarked that the common folk turned to guns and religion because they are bitter over the economy, he made a boo boo, maybe the biggest of his candidacy. The people he spoke about carried their guns and religion on their lapels a couple hundred years before big corporations began sending their jobs overseas. Guns and religion are deeply woven into the fabric of blue-collar culture. And nowhere is that culture more predominant than in Kentucky.

In the interests of open and honest journalistic standards, let me just say that I have actually never set foot in Kentucky. The closest I’ve been to the state is Cairo, Illinois which sets on a little spit of land at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Kentucky is kind of catty corner from Cairo and I could see the trees of Kentucky across the water.

Well, sir, and ma’am, you may ask and rightly so, if I’ve never been to Kentucky, how do I know so much about it?

Early on, I learned the lyrics to My Old Kentucky Home. I’d wager that’s more than Bush or Cheney know about the state. And, I’ve seen lots of Hollywood movies about the Kentucky Derby. And, Kentucky is where Fort Knox is located with its store of gold, if any remains. Or has the gold been removed to Area 51 to pay a Chinese contractor to construct UFO landing strips? Hmmm. Conspiracies, anyone?

But the real reason I know a lot about Kentucky is that I am a golden repository of cultural information panned from a surplus of descendents of our common Kentucky ancestor, descendents who now populate the Earth. I have cousins East and West North and South. Lots of them send me emails with religious messages and telephone me at inappropriate times. They are universally guns and religion types, and they all are titanium white.

I am also probably the only human on Earth dumb enough to look at the statistics accumulated by the U.S. Census Bureau. The State of Kentucky has a population of around 4,000,000, roughly 90% White, 7% Black. Fifty percent are women and the state has a substantial number of senior citizens. These stats sound like a Hillary playground.

It isn’t my intent to suggest that all Whites will vote for Hillary and all Blacks for Barack. Race in America isn’t quite so black and white. In the Hil and Barack contest, we have a generation gap, and past voting patterns have shown that younger voters turn out in sparse numbers. In the current race for the Democratic presidential nomination, the younger folks will vote for Barack. Youth may be the primary key.

On the other hand, we currently have a Generous Ration Gap as well. Rich people and the current political power structure seem to make light of the dire straits of ordinary folks. Yet, exit polls taken after the primary in West Virginia clearly show that the number one concern of the voters is the economy. The end game may thus turn on who presents the most believable and understandable program to juice up the economy and stop the slow bleed of American jobs.

A careful consideration of each candidate’s solid approach to alleviating the pain of a collapsing economy would be the most reasonable approach when deciding who we vote for. Unfortunately, politics is not a an exercise out of a text on symbolic logic. Politics is highly emotional, and no one knows it more than politicians. In the final analysis, we’ll put aside all of our reasoned considerations and vote our guts. That’s life.

In the meantime, I think I’ll canvas my cousins for their reasoned preferences. I’m willing to bet a bundle that they will carefully consider all of the options and, as true Americans, haul out their guns and lapel pins and vote John Boy in the general election irrespective of the identity of the Democratic candidate. In the lives of my cousins, familiar and comfortable trump change any day.

Is San Francisco the Dirtiest City in the World?

One of my favorite sources of information is city-data.com. The site has a plethora of information about almost every inhabited settlement in the U.S.

It’s a great place for casual browsing if you want to learn things about your hometown, or about any town for that matter.

Depending on my mood, I may look for real estate info, including recent lists of properties sold along with the selling price.

But I think my favorite city-data feature is its forum. Readers post questions and wait for answers from knowledgeable residents and ex-residents.

This is the “dirty” question that piqued my attention and  brought 73 replies from a wide-range of city-data fans. By some quirk, the query appeared in the Albany forum:

“Is there any city as dirty as SF? I am surprised at the amount of garbage in the street.”

Most of the respondents agreed, but quite a few added a caveat or two, like, “Yeah, it’s dirty, but have you been to Newark or New York?”

Others agreed that, yes, SF is dirty in spots like the Financial District and around the Civic Center. Other parts are quite clean, though.

A few respondents included photos of spotless rows of apartment buildings, while one challenged the photo approach by noting that the area looks clean but it really isn’t.

My preferred response was this one:

“SF is more dingy than dirty. A lot of the old houses could use a power wash, and it has far fewer new condos and apartments than cities like Seattle, Portland, and San Diego. The mild weather also seems to keep some people from showering.”

I don’t know about the showering bit, but given the homeless population of SF, I wouldn’t be surprised.

The dingy part seems right on the mark. A few years ago, many parts of the city were sparkling white. The whole effect when approaching on a ship from the Pacific or an airplane overhead was of a shining jewel. No more.

On the other hand, Oakland isn’t quite what it used to be, either. Cities, buildings, and people age.

 

Technorati Tags: San Francisco,Oakland,Newark,Mew York,Dirty Citiies

Get Your Nipple Rings Removed Here!

I’m going to expose my lingering puritan upbringing and ask a stupid question.

Will someone please explain why a 37-year old woman is still wearing nipple rings?

Shouldn’t a person be somewhat grown-up by then? Is there ever a time in America when we accept adulthood and put aside our childish ways?

I am far from being a prude, but for goodness sakes, think about your kids and their kids. Do you want a six-year old hollering, “Grandma, Grandma, you’ve got nipple rings” as you baby sit at a public playground?

This isn’t a topic only about aging women. Men are equally guilty of weighing themselves down with body adornments in private places.

Body mutilation is no longer an uncivilized custom. It has become an accepted part of our civilized culture.

At one time, only salty sailors sported tattoos. And in Japan, a tattoo was a sign of the yakuza, Japan’s underworld.

Nowadays in America, tattoos have spread over every inch of the human body. A visit to any popular beach is sure to demonstrate such.

Imagine America’s next-generation Ambassador to the Court of Saint James introducing himself to the Queen in accordance with American principles of familiarity. “Say, Queen, this here tattoo symbolizes the American spirit of eternal fertility.”

Even little kids run around proudly displaying washable tattoos. And each time I see a small kid flexing a tattooed muscle adult-style, I remember an incident in Japan.

Several of us were sight seeing in Yokosuka, a town south of Tokyo. I noticed a man staggering around and pestering passersby. Obviously, he was very drunk.

As we neared, he noticed us and turned his attention our way. But he didn’t pester us as he had bothered the Japanese pedestrians. Instead, he pulled his sleeves up to display tattooed arms.

He repeated over and over, “Yakuza, yakuza,” in the sloppy-friendly manner of drunks everywhere. He was quite proud of his status as a yakuza and of his tattoos. He wanted to impress gaijin, foreigners.

As soon as one of us smiled and said, “Ah, so,” signifying that we understood, he smiled and  proudly staggered away.

Will we become or are we already a nation of pseudo-yakuza, not gangsters but a multitude of individuals possessed of the same sort of adolescent bravado and defensiveness?

Somehow I have the impression that widespread body mutilation is just another form of conformity masquerading as rebellion.

I sympathize with the 37-year old woman who was required to remove her nipple rings with pliers at great pain to her.

But nipple rings at the age of 37? Come on.

Technorati Tags: Nipple Rings,Yakuza,Tattoos,Conformity

I’m in the Mood for Love

Why not take a trip thru time this Valentine’s Day and celebrate romance as your parents and grandparents did?

Romance is ageless and although the elders may look a little wrinkled here and there, they knew in their youth as they know now that nothing is guaranteed to get us in the mood for love like romantic music.

In fact, there’s an old song called I’m in the Mood for Love. The first few lines go like this:

I’m in the mood for love,
Simply because you’re near me.
Simply because you’re near me,
I’m in the mood for love.

So if you live and die in 30-minute sitcon intervals but you want to stop and smell the flowers with your inamorata, create the proper atmosphere with some romantic music when the two of you are together. Here are some of your elders’ favorites, in no particular order.

• Can’t help falling in love with you, Elvis Presley
• My Eyes Adored You, Frankie Vali
• Unchained Melody, Al Hibler
• I just called to say I love you, Stevie Wonder
• Dream Lover, Bobby Darin or Rick Nelson
• La Vie En Rose, Edith Piaf or Madelyn Peroux
• O Sole Mio (It’s Now or Never) Elvis Presley
• Stand by Me, Ben E. King or Mickey Gilley
• Till, Tony Benett
• I Can’t Stop Loving You, Ray Charles
• I’m Yours, Don Cornell

Now, here’s a romantic scenario for February 14th. Select one or more of the songs you like from the list above and arrange with the maitre d’ of your selected fancy dining locale to pipe them in just as your waiter delivers 12 long-stemmed roses to your private nook. Or, if you have the guts, launch into your powerful karate-style crooner’s voice when the roses arrive. This is a good one to start the evening, a ballad by Don Cornell, aka Luigi Francisco Varlaro:

I’m yours
Heart and soul I am yours
Can’t you see it my eyes
Can’t you hear it in my sighs
I’m yours

My life and my love, dear
Are yours to command
I stand here before you
My heart in my hand

I’m yours
All the world knows
I’m yours.

Sounds trite and hokey, doesn’t it? Even makes me want to gag a little, but you might be surprised to learn how effective it is.

Now, it’s up to you.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Oh, almost forgot. While your ritual is underway, you’ve got to look sincere. Practice avoiding your trademark imminent and annoying half-snigger quivering lip. On Elvis, it looks good. On you…