Sunday is….blog feedback day

A reader who had not been reading the blog got back to me tonight after spending a while looking over the posts. Me: “so, were you amused or entertained by any of them?” Reader: “Uh, yeah, I liked the one about California.” “What about California?” “It was cute.” “Cute?!!” “Yeah. I got kind of tired reading about that Bukowski person in the other posts.” “That was just a subplot; see it wasn’t really about Bukowski, it got more complicated..” “Yeah, but it was kind of like ‘enough already.’” “Like, I crossed the line?” “Hey, I didn’t say that!”

This was, n.b., not my mother. Had she read the blog, our conversation would have proceeded thus: Me: “so, where you amused or entertained by any of the posts?” Mom: ”Yes, well, I was wondering, are you sure you have the time for this?” Me “You know I tend to find time for things..” Mom: “Well, if you’re sure. I’d hate to think you’re not getting your work done. You know it would be terrible if something happened to your job right now.” Me “I’m still employed. So, which post did you find most amusing?” Mom: “ I found it interesting what you wrote about California.” [my mom lives in Berkeley] “Okay, California. Anything else?” Mom: “Well, I’m surprised that you assume Kerry will get the nomination. I just don’t like the looks of him. He’s not someone I would enjoy having dinner with.. And I’m worried that you’re neglecting things. Are you sure your family’s okay?” Maybe that’s just a touch too predictable.

A colleague reported that one of his students was writing a comment to the prof’s blog at the very moment that the prof was lecturing. This was, according to the colleague, a sign of the times: a GOOD sing of the times. Perhaps, my colleague speculated, blogging posts and responses will replace the need for some of the lectures. A win-win situation.

Sunday is a good day to mull over reader’s notes and comments. Please do send them along. It’ll be “cute” to address them here (without names, of course) or via email.

On to the next week.

Yet another Sunday of disenfranchisement

It’s bad enough to have just had a Sunday of Super Bowl [so what's an offensive pass interference?]. Now tonight I have to confront the Grammy Awards.

There was a time when music was more important to me than anything I’d see in the movies. I was the quintessential Beatle nut: I could sing all their songs backwards, I could make my voice SOUND like a Beatle – just ask me to do “Fool on a Hill.” And I was one of the 72 million that tuned in to the Ed Sullivan show 40 years ago. I was just 10, but I cried through it, I was that worked up.

I tried to keep current in music. Even when I returned to Poland in the late 60s, I found ways to tune in. And I was one of the lucky few to get tickets to the Rolling Stones when they “broke through” the “Iron Curtain” and traveled to Warsaw in March of 1967. I threw a bunch of flowers on the stage with a note for Mick: “call me: I speak English.” I was 13 and very naïve.

Then I lost it. I started experimenting with classical stuff, with women vocalists, with jazz, but any fool on the hill could tell that I was in the hinterlands and would never catch up. And now? Anyone who gets happy that Clinton won a Grammy because she wants to hear a familiar name does not deserve to watch the Awards.

Still, one Sunday on the margins is enough. I bought the Norah Jones CD, I know who the Sting is, and U2, and the sensual Celine, and my colleague keeps blogging about the Dave Matthews Band.. Sooo, I’m with the NYT reader from today (see post below) –it ain’t over til the fat lady sings (who is the fat lady, BTW?)!

P.S. Does Justin Timberlake always wear a suit and tie?

Give Wisconsin a day in the bleak winter sun

First they take the cheese, now they’re scoffing at Wisconsin’s role as the “sealer” state in the primaries (we seal the deal: Kerry in, Dean out). California wants it all. This from a reader of the Times:

“Re ‘Dean Says He’ll Quit if He Doesn’t Win Wisconsin’: For those of us on the Left Coast intent on keeping this democratic process alive, I’d just like to say it ain’t over until the fat lady sings – and that fat lady is California.”

You know, that just shows how it’s never enough. California: the state with the largest number of electoral votes BY FAR (55, compared to next largest Texas with 34, and Wisconsin at 10, and going down…), the state that is determined to snatch the cheese title from Wisconsin [the California Milk Advisory Board claims that California will surpass Wisconsin as the top cheese maker by 2005; California already is the No. 1 milk-producing state and California also has the most cows of any state in the nation], the state that has the wine, the avocados, the old trees, the ocean, the filmmakers, the Richard Nixon Library [hey, I’m looking at a list of 50 important assets—not my choice of “important”]. In other words, the state that has it all. Still not enough? A momentary spotlight for Wisconsin, a flicker, really. Dean sees it as defining the race. Let it go, California. One man, one race. You don’t need to have the last voice in everything.

Can’t shake this Rumsfeld thing

As Colin Powell met with the French foreign minister in NY yesterday over lunch, newspapers immediately picked up on the cordial nature of the encounter. Indeed, Powell and de Villepin appeared to go out of their way to emphasize their long-standing friendship and their desire to bring the two countries in closer political alignment.

Flip the channel, and we are in Munich, where Rumsfeld is at this very moment, facing the French and German delegations. The NYTimes reports: “Mr. Rumsfeld (answers)..a question, his voice rising, his hands chopping the air for emphasis… ‘There were prominent people from representative countries in this room that opined that they really didn’t think it made a hell of a lot of difference who won..[this is where he is ‘almost shouting’].. Shocking. Absolutely shocking.’”

Back at the Waldorf Towers, Powell and de Villepin beam at each other. In this story, buried more deeply in the paper, the Times reports: “(Powell) noted that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was in Munich talking to European leaders at the same time that Mr. Powell was meeting with Mr. de Villepin in New York. "So," Mr. Powell said, "we're reaching out."”

A hand shake here, a punch there, a reach is a reach.

Where Howard went, Nina soon followed

Well who would think that both Dean and I would lose it over Iowa? I want to appear on Diane Sawyer too, though like for Dean, I think it’s too late. Dean yowled, I commented on (okay, questioned, though inadvertantly) the pairing of a state license plate with the poet-writer Bukowski (see post, February 5, and many thereafter). I have a feeling if Bukowski wasn’t already dead, he’d die laughing at me. He’s the type who’d probably find humor in life’s bleak realities.

No apology on my part will suffice, I do understand that, even as a fellow blogger from across Bascom Mall writes stoically that Iowans are a resilient bunch and have learnt to adapt to the hostile words of their neighbors and countrymen and women.

But wait a minute – who is coming at this from a position of power? Suffering and down-trodden? Hardly. Iowa has single-handedly picked the democratic candidate for the presidential race this year. The Iowa Office of Tourism reports that 17 million people visit Iowa each year. In the first two months alone, I’m sure double that amount (candidates and press entourage) crossed the border into the hawkeye state.

Now Poland, there’s a country raised on suffering. Maybe I should save that one for another time though. One fall per week is enough.

Does anybody really like Rumsfeld?

It’s hard to believe that Dean the candidate got knocked down for his howl of enthusiasm, while Rumsfeld can get away with displays of anger on a fairly regular basis. The NYT describes Rumsfeld’s speech at the Security Meetings in Munich yesterday as “an impassioned defense of the American-led war against Iraq.” Impassioned? The man is terrifying when he loses his cool. Would you leave your children (let alone the national interest) in his care for even a minute? He sounds like he’d tear their hair out for not finishing their toast.

Only at the bottom of p.10 of this front-page article does the Times acknowledge that in his accusatory rant against those who continue to oppose the war in Iraq, Rumsfeld was “nearly shouting.” Oh, he was shouting alright, ending his comments with a lovely display of national pride: “I know in my heart and my brain that America ain’t what’s wrong in the world.” It’s people like Rumsfeld that make many countries think otherwise.

Late viewing of “Japan through the eyes of Sofia Coppola”

If Bill Murray gets an Oscar for Lost in Translation, it will be because the Academy likes him personally, or likes watching an actor having a good time keeping a lid on emotion, or because it dislikes the fact that Sean Penn (Mystic R) never shows up to claim awards. All good reasons.

But how would you explain a win for Ms. Coppola? I’m not saying it’s going to happen. But what if? Would it be to finally recognize that there are credible women directors out there? Or to offer a personal word of encouragement to SCoppola and reassure her that this has nothing to do with her father? Or to try and convince people about the pleasures of staying home and not crossing any borders except those between states? A hint that we all should forget about flying an endless amount of hours to odd places where we’ll be so freaked and jet-lagged that we’ll hardly ever be able to leave our American hotel or the American bar within?

I’ve become an almost annual traveler to Japan for work reasons, and each time it confounds me, more so than any other country. Pico Iyer (see post below) lived for a year in Kyoto and managed to actually say profound things about people he met there. And me? By the end of each trip I’m not saying anything profound about anyone, but I am talking to myself rather loudly on the streets and getting really anxious over the absence of raw fish on Starbucks coffee lists (figure that one out). I listen to professors of law sing Elvis songs in Karaoke bars while women in kimonos refill plates of nuts and sea weed chips (it isn’t really a sing-along, it’s a listen-along). I never meet their wives. Even when I whisper and use a lot of question marks, I know I am speaking too forcefully and that the questions are too intrusive. I carry a towel with me, as does everyone else, and I wash my face all the time along with everyone else, and I drink the tea, and I interview countless judges and I don’t really understand a word they’re saying, even though I always have at least two translators. Only later, when I am back home can I begin to pull out something useful. In Japan, everyone around me – all millions and millions of everyone -- fades into one ocean of well-intentioned faces, smiling, encouraging, always polite, always sympathetic, always incomprehensible.

It’s interesting that the Japanese took this movie in stride. Last I heard you could book a “Lost in T” stay at the Tokyo Park Hyatt, where you would be taken on a tour of places where Bill hung out, shown the room where much of the “action” took place, and charged a whopping small fortune for it.

But why was this movie rated R?