Poor Herman. And Abe. And Dustin. And Pablo. And Joel and Ethan. And Igor. And Wolfgang. And Ludwig. And (just for Will) Tom.

Working today on a spot using reviews (only the raves of course) of our shows to convince a chronically over-entertained and distracted public to make room for even more in their digitally super saturated lives. Got me to wondering about poor old Herman and how he struggled to find an audience for his under appreciated efforts in a world (so different from today) far less crowded with entertainment options, but apparently teeming (not so different from today) with those quick and eager to find fault in their betters.


When the reviews for Moby Dick rolled in--The London Morning Chronicle said it was “sheer, moonstruck lunacy”

And the Southern Quarterly Review said the book was “Sad stuff, dull and dreary, or ridiculous . . . his Mad Captain is a monstrous bore.”

He got some raves too, but for each of those, there were two of these.

“Mr. Melville has to thank himself only if his horrors and his heroics are flung aside by the general reader, as so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature “--Henry F. Chorley, in London Athenaeum, October 25 1851

Thrice unlucky Herman Melville!...
 should he be to maintain the fame he so rapidly acquired, and not waste his strength on such purposeless and unequal doings as these rambling volumes about spermaceti whales. --London Literary Gazette, December 6 1851

Wonder what Abe thought after delivering The Gettysburg Address when The Chicago Times said,
“The cheeks of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dish-watery utterances.” 


The Graduate… or to be more precise, Dustin Hoffman came under fire when Films in Review said, “... a genuinely funny comedy which succeeds despite an uninteresting and untalented actor in the title role.” 


The National Gallery in London orgainzed the first major post-war Picasso show in England and one newspaper . . . damned his art as the work of the devil, dismissed piggy-nosed portraits as the imaginings of a schizophreninc, and declared that such work should not be publicly exhibited in England . . .

The New York Times, generally a restrained and proper paper, gnashed that he (Picasso) was …”the very devil and that his audacity was breathtaking . . . “

SF Chronicle critic Edward Guthmann began his appraisal of the film that launched a thousand White Russians with:
“WEIRD STUFF, DUDE: Coen brothers up to the same old shtick with crime caper.

‘The Big Lebowski'' is ultimately too clever for its own good. There are more ideas here, more wacko side characters and plot curlicues than the film can support, and inevitably it deflates from having to shoulder so much.”

Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was first performed in 1913, People booed, fights actually broke out in the crowd, the cops rushed in to quell what was turning into a riot and Stravinsky, rumored to be in tears, ran out of the building in the middle of the performance. However, some scholars suggest that Savvy Igor fueled the fires of controversy as a publicity tactic. BTW: Drawing on left by Picasso


Emperor Joseph II told Mozart that The Marriage of Figaro had "too many notes." Other bad, or cautionary, reviews included: "too strongly spiced"; "impenetrable labyrinths"; "bizarre flights of the soul"; "overloaded and overstuffed"

When Beethoven's 9th symphony was first performed in London, reviewers wrote things like:

"...elegance, purity and measure are gradually surrendering to a new, frivolous and pompous style adopted by the superficial talents of our time." Fortunately, such criticism fell on Beethoven’s deaf ears.





Tom Brady was picked #199 in the 2000 draft – a sixth-round choice. The Patriots had four quarterbacks that season, and guess who was fourth-string? Yep. The Quarterback who still has a chip on his shoulder. And as Will Julian once said; " If Tom Brady has a chip on his shoulder, then I don't even have arms."

THE NOT SO PROS OF PROSE. SOUTH PARK. ALEXANDER HAMILTON. AND WORDS NOT TO LIVE BY.

I am a writer in a visual medium. In film and on television, the word defers to the image to varying degrees but the image always takes precedence. James L. Brooks who worked in television news before moving on to film (Broadcast News) and television (The Simpsons) once said that on TV, “News is whatever they have footage of.”

McLuhan was right, though according to him, misunderstood. The medium is not only the message (one story has it that when the book was printed, they mistakenly spelled message: massage, and when McLuhan saw that, he said “leave it alone, it’s great.”) it’s the mess-age—or is it mass-age?

Point is…the word is no longer The Word….and really hasn’t been since the birth of film and rise of TV. (Although on Radio, the word still reigns except where supplanted by music) And it has occurred to me that the internet may be the last great hope for literacy. If Kindles and iPads reinvigorate reading then that may make it easier for me to get used to watching the whole world staring endlessly at their glowing rectangles.

Checked out “The Making of South Park”. Fascinating documentary that illustrates how complex (and labor intensive) the visual process can be, and ironically, South Park is animation in its most primitive form. The Simpsons requires the labor of hundreds of skilled digital craftsmen working round the clock for 8-10 months for a single episode. The South Park guys crank out an episode weekly.

Another fascination in the film is the way that Parker and Stone have been able to push the “offensiveness” envelope further than anyone else because the medium they work in is considered by most to be frivolous and unworthy of serious attention or scrutiny. And because the show makes the network so much money, you don’t see any network suits (though in the film you do see the woman responsible for dealing with standards and practices having to negotiate with the censors) standing over their shoulder or messing with their stuff.

Been meaning to get around to reading Ron Chernow’s biography of G. Washington, which Ellen gave me as a gift last year but it’s over 900 pages and I do most of my home reading in bed and I don’t think my stomach can handle the weight. Guess it’s time for a Kindle. But I will get around to it someday since I liked his Hamilton Biography (which I read when my stomach was harder and flatter) and I think about Hamilton often these days as I watch the Wall Street Occupiers try to shape and reshape their message for public consumption. Hamilton was a Realpolitik operator and unlike his founding father compatriots, not to the manor (sic) born, so he didn’t mask his baser instincts in the aristocratic jargon of Noblese Oblige like Jefferson and the other early American trust fund boys. And he would make a great subject for a Hollywood Bio-pic since sex-scandal and political mud-slinging played such important roles in his glorious career and dramatic demise.


And Alex was a stickler for details too. In a letter to a friend he pointed out that the constitution contained a ticklish loophole: if the Vice President is impeached and tried by the Senate, then, as President of the Senate, he presides over his own trial. The document contains an exception for the trial of the President, where the Chief Justice presides instead. But the framers inexplicably forgot to extend this exception to the trial of the Vice President. No wonder Joe Biden looks so relaxed all the time.

And if you’re still reading then you deserve a break from any more along these lines—so I’ll switch to something potentially more engaging—like pet peeves about words and language.

I could care less
I couldn’t care less

Everyone uses them interchangeably. But they’re opposites. Aren’t they?

Irregardless means nothing. It’s not a word.

Nonplussed. Means unworried, calm and collected, right? Wrong.
If this confuses you, then you are now nonplussed.

I’m nauseous actually means: I make others nauseous.
If you’re feeling sick…you’re nauseated.
But this one is pretty benign as bothersome usage goes.

PIN number? The N stands for number. Why repeat it?

ATM machine? The M stands for machine. Ditto

And the one that bugs me the most is: Simplistic. Only because I hear it at least once a day from someone (usually with a marketing degree) use it as a synonym for “Simple”.
As in, “ Richard, can you just make the spot simplistic so people can follow it better?” To which I usually reply after a long pause to reflect and consider my options—“ Sure.”

AND WE DO NOT HAVE:

...less whales in the ocean or less books in the library or less intelligent GOP presidential candidates or less good blogs on the internet …we have FEWER of all the above.

Class dismissed.

QUOTATIONS FROM THE GREAT BUT NOT SO FAMOUS….

“I’m up, I’m up…hey, it isn’t even noon yet”
--W. Cohn (my son)

“ Get your so-called creative ass into this meeting now!”
--D. R. Jackson (My Account Director)

“ I’d rather be a pirate than join the Navy”
--F. Pintauro (my boss)

“ Taste this, I think it’s rotten.”
--E. Biblowitz (my wife)

“ It’s going on the air tomorrow, so you better finish it yesterday!”
--D. Roach (my producer)

“ Oh Boy.”
--K. Applebome (fellow Drifter on her way to Morocco)

“ Come anytime, we’re easy…just don’t let the cat get out”
--D. Rabben (my sister)

“ Hey Dada, I may or may not make it on time”
--E. Cohn (my son)

“ All you need to figure out in life is the social, the psychological and the cosmic”
--J. Goldberg (my lifelong friend)

“ Osmosis. Youse Jesus.
--See above

“ So what color did you get? Oh, that’s nice, I like that. We were thinking of getting the same model but in brushed metal. Sorta silver, but with a hint of blue. But not really blue. More like a tealish blue. Bob doesn’t like it. But he’s letting me decide. But I’m not sure yet. I may shop around a bit more….”
--A. Noying (woman who always sits next to me on train)

“ What do you mean you’re not hungry?”
--B. Biblowitz (my mother in law)

“ Oh my god. You are so full of shit”
--M. Weinberg (fellow Drifter)

“ Oh Marty, you don’t really mean that.”
--R. Issacs ( Fellow Drifter and above’s wife)

“ It’s a good joke, even though it’s not funny.”
--E. Applebome ( Fellow Drifter)

“ I trust you, as long as you do it my way”
--H.D. (My Former Boss)

“ If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.”
--S. Lifeshy (my editor)

"I'd rather be fully engaged in the ridiculous
than marginally engaged in the sublime."
--The Drifter

Something both glorious and sad about the OW$ protest.

The spirit of democracy in action; exercising right to assembly and free speech; the expression of anger and resistance in the face of foul play and injustice. Quite a lot to admire and quite a lot of reasons to lend support. And then there is a sense of sadness too which comes with the realization that venting anger and frustration in the direction of those who are pathologically deaf, dumb and blind to any such demonstrations is doomed from the outset and will only end in more frustration and a sense of helplessness. The bad guys are bad because they don’t care about anyone else, so why should they care about a bunch of strangers parked in their back yard screaming at them?

“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
--Alexander Hamilton


It takes one to know one, and old Alex was a sly dog himself and was a master of playing both sides against the middle. He also knew a few things about ambitious men and the seductions of wealth and power…and if he were around watching today I think he’d be over at Goldman Sachs advising those guys to ignore the rabble on the street and raise sail and follow the compass point east to China.

But perhaps that’s not really the point, perhaps the point is simply speaking out. And being heard is secondary. But I wish they could formulate a more specific agenda and generate something tangible that could translate into legislative action. I haven’t followed that closely, but I sense that the movement is somewhat leaderless and is more spontaneous communal political theatre than it is a prelude to progressive change.
Enuf.


A few more OW$ Haiku

No opium pipe
No heroin fix or jones
Steals souls like mammon

From Tea in Boston
To Whiskey in Tennessee
Rebel yells echo.

Unfair? “Wealth is seized…”
Said Hamilton the banker
“…opportunity.”

To have and have not
The Fates reserve no pity
And that’s the pity

You can’t reform them
Can’t shame them. No such thing as
A sorry Pirate.

ANOTHER LATE NIGHT EDIT AND FRESH OUT OF NEW IDEAS...SO I REPRINT A LITTLE DIALOGUE I WROTE A FEW YEARS BACK FOR THE AMUSEMENT OF MY TENNIS PARTNER WHO IS EVEN MORE SENIOR THAN ME.


SENIOR TENNIS
What a day huh?
Beautiful.
New knee brace?
Yeah, titanium hinges—very lightweight.
Advil?
No thanks, I took some Aleve earlier.
Which side you want?
I’ll take the sun side so you serve first.
Hooh boy.
Stiff?
Little bit, took the red eye Wednesday, still feel it in my neck.
You ever try that horseshoe padded thing goes around your neck?
I had one, but I left it on a plane.
You still play with Joe on Thursdays?
No, he had his surgery two months ago.
Oh yeah, his hip right?
Both of em.
He’s our age right?
No, he’s younger. He’s got a 12 year old.
Oooooph. Nyahhhhh.
Acccch….Yaiyeeeeeeee.
Hang on a minute.
What is that?
It’s for Tennis Elbow.
Does it work?
Who knows?
Looks uncomfortable.
It is.
Alex started taking Yoga.
Really?
Says it’s great.
I tried it years ago. It made me sleepy.
Was it in a really hot room?
Like a sauna.
You ready?
Serve em up.
First one in?
Alright.
Wow…sorry, I’ll get that later.
I got plenty of balls.
Good shot.
Your ad.
Beauty. Right on the line.
Out!
Out!
Ooooh, Jeez, what am I doin?
Out!
Out!
JEEEZ…What the HELL am I DOING?
Let! First Serve.
Out!
Out!
Score?
Ad out.
I think it’s ad in.
No, it was ad in when you hit that serve into the post.
That was this game?
That was two points ago.
What? You’re sure?
Yeah.
Wait a sec.... I had that volley winner at fifteen love.
Right. And then you double faulted.
That was in this game too?
Yeah.
I thought that was in the…alright, ad out.
Out!
FUCK.
What’s up?
I don’t know.
Ddidya twist it?
It’s nothing.
Want to stop?
No let’s play, it’ll go away. Ughhhh.-yeowwwwww!
I hear something go pop?
No it’s ok, let me walk it off for a minute.
I don’t think you should play on it.
It’s okay.
It looks bad to me.
Maybe you’re right.
You gotta get ice on it.
Damn. Look at it.
Holy shit!
It’s big isn’t it?
It’s fuckin huge.
I should probably have it checked out.
I’ll drive you to Emergency.
No, I can drive.
Are you kidding, It looks you got a grapefruit in your sock.
Yeah, it'll go down. So what are you doing next weekend?
I’ll be around.
Want to play?
Sure.

Melville Matters. OWS Haiku challenge. And another embedded musical diversion for those who enjoy playing anything on their brand new iPads, iPods, tablets, Droids and Kindle Fires.


Melville’s tome concerning the epic voyage in search of the Great Leviathan of the deep is taking up permanent residence in my soul. Hard to fathom (no pun originally intended as I write) that the book never got its due in his lifetime. Makes one wonder who the contemporary equivalent might be. I took a gander at some of what the literary crowd in his day had to say and it only confirms what is more common than not—which is that the universal and the transcendent are often great forests that can not be seen for the individual trees that tower over our own small parcels of land. Melville’s vision was too broad, too focused on the cosmic nature of existence to hold the attention of those seeking simple diversion or the cheap thrill of literary “originality”. He was too guileless and direct to seduce the critics and too sensitive and philosophical to please the masses. And again, I wonder who today might be considered his peer.

Cormac McCarthy comes to mind, but somehow I think he’s really more of an anomaly in that he’s almost a genre unto himself and (I now realize) is almost channeling Melville in such a self-conscious way that he fails to establish a voice that sounds truly personal and organic. He certainly can be dazzling and I think Suttree is a masterpiece in many ways, but I never feel like I could sit down and share a beer with him and shoot the breeze. He’s above it all—like Moses on the mountaintop, whereas Melville sounds like someone you could have a few laughs with and stroll around town sharing stories and observations.

David Foster Wallace may come closer, but he was even more self-consciously literary and pre-occupied with verbal gymnastics and his adrenaline fueled language leaves little room for the reader to ever get truly comfortable or feel like a welcome passenger in his high tech cockpit built for one.

Jonathan Franzen? Don’t get me started!

Of course, Melville’s contemporary alter-ego may be someone we’re not aware of and that would explain everything and be proof of his/her worthiness as a viable candidate for the role since Melville was never all that ambitious or comfortable in his role as a serious novelist. He thought himself more a journalist by inclination and over time came to despair of the value of fiction to express what he called “The truth to the face of falsehood”. He took up writing as a lark in hope (and not a high one) that it might provide some much needed income. And his career lasted little more than 10 years, over which time he experienced much more failure than success. Norman Mailer called writing “The Spooky Art”, but for someone like Melville who had little ambition for fortune or fame (unlike Mailer) , it got spookier and spookier and more and more eccentric with each new attempt to express his vision. I tried reading The Confidence Man, (it’s still sitting on my desk at work as if waiting for me to reconsider) which was the last book he ever submitted for publication and I couldn’t get a handle on it. But Moby Dick is still knockin me out and I’m savoring it like a Bear’s first meal after a long winter’s hibernation. Apropos of Melville’s propensity to question himself as worthy of his calling, in a brief passage Ishmael’s observes something about his noble, pagan, remote island born, multi-tattooed, super-humanly strong and unfailingly honorable and trustworthy companion Queequeg :

“Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is—which was the only way he could get there—thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have “broken his digester.”


HARD TIMES HAIKU—OR OCCUPYING WALL STREET ONE SYLLABLE AT A TIME.

Former colleague and blogging mentor (teddyvegas.blogspot.com) has been writing of late about OWS and attendant topics. Back when Obama was elected in 2008 Teddy and a few of his most loyal readers went on a Haikus for Obama tear for a few hours and generated some thirty five or more poly-syllabic odes in honor of the nation’s new Janitor in Chief. So since I got started a few posts back with my Post Empire noodlings, I thought I’d keep the poetic device going, but this time the muse is OWS and related issues, and though I know I’ll never match Teddy’s prodigious numbers, I’ll channel the Melville in me and soldier on even in solitude.


Money talks, they say
It says I don’t care bout you
Or you, or you or…

When they all Trade off
pay-offs better than Madoff’’s
Time to say fuck off

Keynes Marx and Galbraith
Said: Inevitably it’s
Intolerable

Bubbles always burst
Cause greed never stops blowing
How derivative

Ninety nine percent
Versus one is their premise
What’s your point? Asks Trump.

In a private park
A public protest rages
About property


Yesterday I posted Adam Rafferty doing his solo version of “Isn’t she Lovely” by Stevie Wonder. Here’s another version by Bireli Lagrene and Sylvain Luc. For me it’s like watching a great tennis match, but minus the scoring and grunting.

LEARNED ANOTHER NEW WORD TODAY

Opsimath: ahp-sê-mæth : A person who undertakes study late in life, a person dedicated to continued education at an advanced age.

In other words: an old dog trying to learn new tricks.

And this old dog is always happy playing around the word-play playground. So I share with you the list below that was begun a few years ago at work by all those who heeded the call to participate and help create this list of:

FRACTURED NEOLOGISMS FOR A NEW MILLENIUM.

NOTE: IT IS VERY FRUSTRATING AND DIFFICULT TO MAKE A LIST LIKE THIS IN A WORD PROCESSING PROGRAM BECAUSE SOME REALLY STUPID PEOPLE WHO THOUGHT THEY WERE REALLY SMART DECIDED TO BUILD INTO THE PROGRAM AN AUTOMATIC AND ANNOYING SPELL CORRECTOR … WHICH MEANS THAT ANYTIME YOU WANT TO USE A DIFFERENT SPELLING YOU HAVE TO GO BACK AND CORRECT THEIR CORRECTION AND EVEN THEN THE FRIGGIN PROGRAM SOMETIMES OVERRIDES YOUR PREFERENCE AND YOU ARE NOW IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR OWN BATTLE TO THE DIGITAL DEATH WITH THE “HAL” OF MICROSOFT WORD.


Some (Debby, Heidi…and ?) have seen many of these before, but I’m always happy to add new ones if anyone out there wishes to contribute.

Lexpionage-- The sleuthing of new words and phrases

Thelonious Assault—Offbeat or eccentric Star Spangled Banner renditions

Bad Hear day--A day in which a person says “Whaaat?” more than 10 times.

e-upmanship :The act of showing up another person by using advanced e-mail shortcuts and features.

Anecdotage-- that advanced age where one recounts the past with the same handful of tired old stories.

Facebookworm- A new age twist on an old stereotype.

Hasbian--A former lesbian who’s gone straight. Also known as a Wasbian.

Multidude, --The collective noun for a group of surfers.

Netois --Net patois. The unique vernacular found on the Internet.

Javlovian- An automatic response that causes people to fork over 4 dollars for 4 ounces of any hot black liquid with an Italian name.

Inloviduals,--Lovers who maintain their independence and individuality. The writers Michael Holroyd and Margaret Drabble, who for the first 15 years of their marriage lived in separate houses, provide the archetype.

Elmomentum--The inexplicable mania that descends upon one or two consumer products each Christmas season.

Corplaining—Griping and grousing, about the corporation you work for.

Factitious-- A depiction of an event in which the facts are combined with fictitious elements in order to win journalistic or literary fame.

Slackademic --A perpetual student who prefers the safety and comfort of academic life to the trials and tribulations of the real world.

Name Rackognition --The process of racking your brain in an attempt to recall the name of a person whose name you used to know.

shiftless -- a person who types entirely in lowercase letters.

Megamaniacal--The current tendency for marketing types and pundits to attach the prefix "mega" to anything even remotely large.

and a selection of oldies:

Macintush—A computer that you can carry in your back pocket

Pittiful- Someone who still can’t get enough gossip about Brad Pitt.

Personility : A person who doesn’t appear to be there.

Unemploymint: A hard candy for hard times

Pulpitations- An allergic reaction to Orange Juice

Botax- An injection that eliminates any worrisome wrinkles in your IRS deductions.

Claptomaniac -One who thinks Rock and Roll ended when Cream broke up.

Zooillogical—The whole idea of putting innocent and wild animals in cages.

Las Vegans—Animal loving gamblers

Historectomy- The removal of all evidence that George W Bush was ever a US President

Asspirational- The endless search for a pair of jeans that fit right.

Chimpagne—Bubbly wine for the un-evolved.

Wackapedia—A good place to go for bad information.

Peemonition -- One’s reaction to seeing highway sign that reads: Next rest stop 45 miles.

Prayola— A bribe used to get out of going to a religious service.

Klaustrophobia—The fear of being trapped in a small German automobile.

Alesheimers—Having no memory of how many beers you’ve had.

Orthodontest- Opening a beer bottle with your teeth

Goodbye Dreiser. Hello Melville. And thank you Project Guttenberg, Manybooks.net , EbookTakeAway.com, OnlineBooks.Library, ibiblio.org Longreads.com …just to name a few and ClassicalGuitarTab (classtab.org)

NY Times had a review of a book by historian Nathaniel Philbrick entitled Why Read Moby-Dick. But unfortunately for Mr. Philbrick the review succeeded in motivating me to pick up Melville’s book and not Philbrick’s. Now, if you write a book and title it Why Read Moby Dick, and then people go read Moby-Dick, do you consider your book a success even if they didn’t read your book? Hope he doesn’t quit his day job. Anyway, I’m about 150 pages into the whale sized classic and having a dandy good time. Whouda thunk? If you’re looking for prosaic, ponderous, heavyweight prose delivered in stentorian tones of profound and serious purpose then look elsewhere. It’s not in this whale tale. It’s practically spritely in tone and positively playful in places. Maybe it’s too early, but so far I don’t feel that oppressiveness that one associates with some other pre-20th century classics…in fact, I’ve had a harder time with some of Cormac McCarthy than with this century and a half old saga. I remember starting it (and not getting too far) back around my (aborted) college days, and I was struck then by the same realization that the book’s reputation as a weighty and burdensome read was ill-founded. Back then I probably put it down because I was too busy being my own Ishmael to be bothered reading about another…but I sure ain’t no Ishmael today…so I’m down with the big read and looking forward to at least another month of high sea adventure.


At the very beginning Ishmael muses about the lure and attraction of the sea…and of water in general, and having taken my own shot at describing the appeal of water back in the early days of this blog, I was particularly drawn to Melville’s wonderful way with the topic:


But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand--miles of them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues,-- north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?


Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach?

And one of the other pleasant surprises of journeying along with such a classic is the discovery of particular lines and thoughts that have endured as memorable quotations. Watching a production of The Importance of being Ernest by Oscar Wilde provides at least a dozen such surprises, and Melville has already thrown off a few of his own, among which this may be my favorite so far:

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.



In a recent post I noted that the Internet has changed everything. Well, that may be an overstatement, but it certainly has changed my life in regards to my reading choices and habits. Ever since I discovered that downloading books was as easy as making a cup of instant coffee I’ve been quenching my unlimited literary thirst with everything from century old classics to independent and self-published pulp and short stories. And I don’t have a Kindle and I don’t read online. I just print out 40-50 pages a day, staple em and take it on the train. By the time I’m done I’ll be up there with Paul Bunyan as one of the great Tree Fellers of all time. Also gotta mention my love affair with online musical resources—if not for them, I’d still be playing nothing but old Beatles songs and simple blues. And Bach and I would never have found any common ground. The internet has been the music school I never had and I don’t have to ride the subway to get there….and oh yeah, it’s all free.

Here're just two guys whose transcriptions and playing always knock me out…and they and dozens of others have devoted enormous amounts of energy and time to sharing their knowledge online. They are modern mentors in a digital age.
If you dig…you can dig further by searching:

Per-Olov Kindgren
Adam Rafferty

When in Post Production Post a Post Empire Blues Post

We are a nation in decline and the writing is on the wall in permanent ink. We are a nation running on the fires of financial manipulation and the fumes of mass entertainment and promotion. The middle class has shrunk and is getting smaller by the day. The Have Way Too Much side is bloated and the Have Way Too Little is broke

Some are working at understanding the economics of it while others are obsessed with the political. Some see a spiritual reawakening and others see moral collapse. Some are looking for hidden opportunities while others are planning their escapes. And then there are those who wonder if it’s a fresh and ripe new recipe for poetic exploration in the form most preferred by attention deficit disorderlies like me.

Post Empire Haiku

Gone gone, so so gone
Gone like a wooden nickel
Heads or tails you lose

Real is as real does
And real now rules on TV
oh no how surreal.

China in the morn
China all day and all night
China never sleeps

Bye bye full time job
Bye bye onward and upward
Hello Siesta

Rome and Greece know well
The best part of the empire
Are the ruins left.

WILL SOLDIERS ON THROUGH TOUGH GIG AND THE BOYS FROM BOOK GROUP WEIGH IN ON WEIGHTY MATTERS

Will made his second appearance at Caroline's comedy club last night. Fair size audience and moderately nice turnout of friends and family for what was a 3 hour show. Will was scheduled as 11th or 12th out of 14 or 15 performers...and one of those was Darrell Hammond (of SNL fame) who staggered on ( I swear he was hammered) and did close to 30 minutes. Lot's of good stuff from him and others, but hard to keep energy in the room up through that many acts. Will did well for a rookie and held his own despite an audience that was by then breathing hard and beginning to look for waiters to square away their checks. Hope Will takes it in stride, since it coulda been worse and chances are if he stays in the game there'll be nights when it is.

Got some feedback from guys in book group who got Alex's e-mail with link to story about Bank of America's dumping of toxic assets and turning the IOU over to the fed where taxpayers will ultimately have to foot the bill. In the interest of fairness and the open door policy of Adrift on Driftwood, I reprint below what was said by respondees without divulging names.

"The title of the article is extraordinarily misleading. The banks aren't dumping anything - Bank of America appears to be trying to movetheir derivatives positions to its Merrill Lynch wholly owned subsidiary. Regulators are deciding whether to allow it. I'm not sure how that turns into dumping them on taxpayers....?

The potentially scary part of this, in my view, is the sheer notional amount of the derivatives positions - $73 trillion. According to the Bloomberg article, JP Morgan has $79 trillion on its books. Who knows what Wells Fargo, Citibank, etc. have? At the end of the day, the important numbers to be aware of are each bank's net exposure and counterparty risk. Neither the Seeking Alpha story, nor the Bloomberg article quantifies that. The Seeking Alpha author correctly references the s#@t show that occurred at AIG, but fails to identify exposures at the big banks."


and another who wrote:

Warren Buffet framed it best....
Warren Buffet on Derivatives

Following are edited excerpts from the Berkshire Hathaway annual report for 2002.

"I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system. Basically these instruments call for money to change hands at some future date, with the amount to be determined by one or more reference items, such as interest rates, stock prices, or currency values. For example, if you are either long or short an S&P 500 futures contract, you are a party to a very simple derivatives transaction, with your gain or loss derived from movements in the index. Derivatives contracts are of varying duration, running sometimes to 20 or more years, and their value is often tied to several variables.

Unless derivatives contracts are collateralized or guaranteed, their ultimate value also depends on the creditworthiness of the counter-parties to them. But before a contract is settled, the counter-parties record profits and losses – often huge in amount – in their current earnings statements without so much as a penny changing hands. Reported earnings on derivatives are often wildly overstated. That’s because today’s earnings are in a significant way based on estimates whose inaccuracy may not be exposed for many years."

THE DRIFTER REVISITS CRAIG DAMRAUER’S NEW MATH AND ATTEMPTS TO CARRY ON THE LEGACY WHILE AVOIDING ALL OTHER PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES AND OBLIGATIONS.

Craig Damrauer started posting his New Math equations back in 2002. I became an instant fan and would send him my contributions periodically. I lost touch with him over the last few years and when I went back to his site I discovered that he has moved on to greener pastures—though the site is still there with a fair number of equations still posted.

http://www.morenewmath.com/

It’s worth a visit if you like this kind of thing and if you come up with any of your own I’ll pass it along…the site may be dead but Craig isn’t. I came up with a few dozen over the years but I've just discovered that I don't have an underscore option here which is what I need to create equations that include division. How could Blogspot (a Google Company) not provide an underscore function? Maybe it's here and I can't find it...but believe me, I've looked. So with that handicap I give you some of my efforts using div.by for the division functions.

Katrina = People div.by water - help

Family = (Biology + History) div.by Psychology +/- love

Ambivalence = maybe div.by maybe not + maybe not div.by maybe

Stock Market = value div.by perception + Crapshoot

Grape Nuts = Brown Pellets – grapes- nuts

Paul McCartney = Beatles – John – George – Ringo - taste

Avant Garde = Creativity div.by Chutzpah - {skill + tradition}

and a few more from the NewMath maven himself....

WOODY WOWS! KAREN ENDURES! ELLEN SNIFFLES! ELI AND WILL DELIVER! LILY ARRIVES! AND THE DRIFTER TRIES TO WRAP HIS HEAD AROUND SOME CHICKEN LITTLE SIZED NEWS.



Sunday Times arrives Saturday morn (a perk for we home delivery customers) and there front and center in the real estate section looking as serious and distinguished as we know him to be is…Woody! You can read article below…we were all impressed except for Woody who regrets that he didn’t prepare better ( how well can you prepare for an interview?) and express himself with the high level of precision and eloquence that he expects and demands from himself. To be expected of course since no truly dedicated and disciplined leader is ever fully satisfied with his performance—which is how and why they remain leaders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/realestate/edward-a-applebome.html?_r=1&ref=realestate

Karen’s Saturday however was one she would probably prefer to forget. Long story short is that sudden onset of severe pain led to sudden visit to Emergency room where it was discovered that she had been stoically enduring the passing of a kidney stone and by the time she was in the hands of the pros the worst had passed. Woody was in Connecticut with his parents so I took her to the hospital ( While Ellen stayed home nursing a bad cold—otherwise she’d have been there in a jiff) and sheesh, Karen is one tough cookie. And far too honest for her own good. When asked in Triage how she would rate her pain on a scale of 1-10, she thought for a moment and said five. Really Karen? Five!? You’re in the emergency room where on a slow day you’re liable to wait an hour to see a doctor and you’re telling them that your pain is a 5? Okay, so her condition wasn't as bad as that poor little girl with burns on her arm crying while her dad attended to her younger sister…but still—you gotta tell them the pain is real real bad or you’re going to the end of a very slow moving line. Anyway, she’s okay now and even woke the next day and drove out with Woody to check out progress on the house construction. When I get new pix I’ll post.

Will and Eli spent the better part of last week writing a Situation Comedy Pilot script. They pulled a couple or three all-nighters and spent the better part of their other waking hours hammering away at it. I’m a tough critic and not easily impressed—but I gotta hand it to them, they pulled it off and it’s good. It’s fast, funny, smart, lean and eminently producible. I’d produce myself it if I were one of those people who could, but I can’t so we’ll see if they can find a way to shop it. Gonna try and figure out how best to help em out with my meager connections. Lily (Eli’s gal) flew in Saturday and she’s always a total pleasure to be with and now the home front is hoppin again and there’s more noise, food and laughter than usual. And Will is performing for the second time tonite at Carolines. All new material and I’m looking forward to every joke, even the ones at my expense.

My friend Alex ( headache specialist extraordinaire, creator of all natural OTC remedy Migralex http://www.migralex.com--and fearless leader of the monthly motley men's book group) sent the link below. Could this be true? I thought I had a rough on idea of some of the numbers and what was going on but this is staggering. And this is just Bank of America…I just did some digging (Bloomberg sources mostly) and discovered that there have been other transfers of this magnitude before this, and similar sized holdings are now being dumped (or rumored to be on the way to being dumped—who really knows what’s happening behind closed doors?) onto our laps from four or five other banking institutions. Holy Henny Penny & Cocky Locky—is the sky really falling? How do we climb out from under this? Please mommy, make it go away…or teach me how to weld or lay brick or catch, skin and cook wild boar.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/301260-bank-of-america-dumps-75-trillion-in-derivatives-on-u-s-taxpayers-with-federal-approval?ifp=0&source=email_authors_alerts

A BRIEF DRIFT INTO THE MONEY PIT OF POLITICS

Wonder if at the time (May 17, 2002) any shrewd observer deigned to ask why and for whom this speech was given.
Looking back it's so painfully obvious.

Michael Lewis' Big Short made me laugh. This just made me nauseous. Any chance he might want to pick up the tab on all those foreclosures?

If you can watch this all the way through, you've got a stronger stomach than me.




Great article in New Yorker last week on John Maynard Keynes and the role of government in times of economic crisis.

Sorry for the out of character detour into the darker realms of human debasement, I'll try and regain my more lighthearted footing next week. In the meantime I'll share with you some pix I took in Ghana when we went to visit Will during his semester abroad. I've discovered that when I'm feeling a little down and discouraged, these pics and memories of that trip provide almost instant relief and put a smile back on my grumpy face.

This needs no words.


Typical day at the Mall


Typical day at the beach


Typical local socializing. With the inevitable sales pitch. I bought the drum (under my arm)


Will was no push-over. He could duck and parry and spar all day with them...and keep it real and cool.


And anytime I think our little vacation cottage feels a bit too tight for comfort, I'll try to remember this little gallery that housed two owners and a few dozen works of art in a space roughly the size of the average Minivan.

Apparently it is a World Wide Web

I have 25 page views this month from Russia.

Possible Explanations:

1. Adrift on Driftwood roughly translates to: Free iPad in russian

2. The KGB is still trying to contact my Commie parents

3. What else is there to do in Dubovka?

4. There are actually 25 people there responsible for monitoring every single website on the internet.

5. It's the only website not blocked by the censors.

6. Woody looks a lot like Putin

Drifter’s Remorse and an attempt to restore some modicum of entertainment value to what has become (in the estimation of one of my esteemed colleagues) Richard’s Bog.

Always thankful that I’m surrounded at work by talented, smart, and brutally honest collaborators who take both pride and pleasure in the passing of judgment on all things….um, yes, on all things.

Seems that I have much to learn about the secrets of good blogging. So I’m going to try and make up for some recent less than scintillating posts and follow the advice of my betters (the afore-cited critic is a blogger himself but has asked me not to advertise on his behalf—apparently his blog has become something of a private password required kind of site due to some past legal problems related to content ownership and non-disclosure issues.)

Another thing about being around such creative free spirit types --most of whom,like yours truly, are former artists, writers, musicians, poets, slackers, dreamers and bums (was going to add actors, but dreamers and bums covers that) who at some point in their life woke up one day to discover that they were either married, parents, or had signed their name on a mortgage-- is that they like to fill their downtime with talk and trivia related to their pathological preoccupation with all things artistic. (Do lawyers stand around listing their favorite precedents?) Thus do they while away many an hour citing and debating favorite movie lines, movie scenes, characters, songs, mistakes (as in continuity gaffs) and a host of other things that generally have me (having grown up essentially TV free and relatively sheltered from the influences of mainstream culture) standing on the sidelines and rooting them on like a baseball fan watching a Cricket game.

So I’m taking a cue from them and my blogging mentor and proposing an interactive challenge that may or may not stimulate my many readers to whom I owe at least the gallantry of an effort to earn their continued attention.

Premise: A list. A la Woody Allen in Manhattan, who in one of his more memorable screen moments endeavored to list his top reasons to live. To refresh your memory, or introduce newbies to the classic Allen soliloquy…it went like this:

Well, all right, why is life worth living?
That's a very good question.
Well, there are certain things, I guess,
that make it worthwhile.
Like what?
OK... for me...
Ooh, I would say Groucho Marx,
to name one thing.
And Willie Mays.
And... the second movement
of the Jupiter Symphony.
And... Louis Armstrong's
recording of Potato Head Blues.
Swedish movies, naturally.
Sentimental Education by Flaubert.
Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra.
Those incredible
apples and pears by Cezanne.
The crabs at Sam Wo's.
Tracy's face.


Am I dreaming? I could have sworn that he also mentioned Sidney Bechet…but Sinatra? Swedish Movies? Brando? Wonder if he’d like to update that list—would make a great question for an interviewer today. Anywho…if so inclined, provide your own (very short, short, medium, or seemingly endless) list of reasons to live. Meantime I’ll think of my own and post in the not too distant future. Ah, why wait...this is my list...so far


The Drifter's incomplete list of Reasons to Live.

Ellen (If she doesn’t top the list, I’m dead already)
Eli and Will and entire family, friends, dog etc.
(Long as I’m being careful, might as well be thorough)
Death too ill defined.
Sushi (I know my son Will agrees)
Playing music
Laughter.
New guitar strings
The 55 Bar
Tres Generaciones Tequila
The ocean
The Sunday Crossword
Learning Bach’s Air on G string (Parkening version)
Monday NY Times for answers to the Saturday crossword
War and Peace still unread
Shakespeare (not reading or watching but just the idea of him)
Stevie Wonder’s For once in my Life
Finding out if String Theory is right
Pujols as a Met
Grandchildren (adoptions acceptable)
Beating one of my sons in tennis (will require 2 set plus 4 game handicap)
Buying my Sunfish
Sailing my Sunfish
Sailing my Sunfish with grandchildren
Selling my Sunfish

LEARNED A NEW WORD TODAY

Paraprosdokian

My son Will is a stand-up comedian, though just about every time I see him he’s lying down.

That’s a Paraprosdokian.

Comes from Greek "παρά-", meaning "despite" and "προσδοκία", meaning "expectation". However, it’s not a term of classical (or medieval) Greek or Latin rhetoric, but a late 20th century neologism.

Aside from NY Times crossword puzzles or playing online word games (Word Monaco was a favorite for a long time) during lulls in the editing suite I’m not much of a game player or puzzle solver. And now that I’m blogging, such time wasters are an even less frequent part of my daily routine. But I’m fascinated by all things linguistic, and I never knew there was a word to describe a figure of speech in which the tail end contradicts or introduces an unexpected twist on the meaning or implication of the front end. And it’s the basis of so much comic writing and joke telling I’m surprised it never occurred to me that there was a term to describe it…like oxyoron, malaprop, epistrophe et. al. But now that I’ve read some of what the leading language and word-play websites list as Paraprosdokians, I’m a little skeptical about whether it really deserves to be considered a figure of speech. There are no strict rules of thumb to follow as in other figures of speech where there is a formal constructive element or set of elements that are always present or used. A Paraprosdokian could practically be any sentence in which there is a thought followed by an editorial comment on that thought. The element of surprise or twist is entirely subjective—and on some lists I saw neither surprising nor twisted.

Ex: When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.

That’s just lame.

But I started this silliness, so I include below a list of the best ones I found and I’ll let you decide. Meantime I’ll take comfort in the fact that I have again found a way to pass the time by typing away another lunch hour and dumping the collected detritus of my passing fancies on the virtual papyrus that has become this distracted Drifter’s digital diary. Alliteration is fun too.

Let the Paraprosdokians begin:

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

A fool and his money are soon elected.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
(Groucho…adding a pun to boot)

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car

I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not sure.

Some people hear voices. Some see invisible people. Others have no imagination whatsoever.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

ANOTHER LATE NIGHT EDIT IN TV LAND...SO EITHER I GET BUSY POSTING SOMETHING OR EAT MY SECOND ROAST BEEF SANDWICH...THINK I'LL POST.

supervising a video edit is like managing a baseball team. You sit in the dugout and call the play and then wait, and wait and wait to see how the play develops and then you call another play and the process continues till...well, till upper management decides it's time to change managers.

So now that my editor is busy trying to execute the play I just called, I'm back online and in a late night kind of mood...so here's a video of Mike Stern playing a beautiful piece of his called Wing and a Prayer. I learned to play it around the time my mom died, and I now always associate it with her. But not with her passing...but rather her life. It's a quiet tune and a somewhat blue one but it's also, to my ears, full of wonder and hope and beauty and peace. As I listen to it and play it, I'm always moved and touched by the sweet and somewhat melancholy melody and the exquisite harmony. The video was shot live at The 55 Bar (for a Mike Stern instructional video) in Greenwich Village, my favorite music joint in NY. It's real small, real old, no food (not even pretzels or nuts...but you can bring your own) not very comfortable chairs, but everyone is into the music and the musicians are just playing in a corner of the room and everyone is kind of just packed together like it's someone's living room. There are other slicker stage performance versions online,as well as the original studio version but I like this one even though they cut it off prematurely when the bass solo begins. Tonite I dedicate it to my friend Jeremy's mom who at the age of 86 just got married again. She is one hell of a great lady and I have wonderful memories of her when I used to spend hours and hours at Jeremy's house hangin out--and I have a very vivid memory of her telling me that she liked the British Jazz singer Cleo Laine. When I checked out Laine's music, I could see why. Laine is a smart, classy, sophisticated singer with great sensitivity and soul. Just like Marie.

Voodoo memories of hot days, Cajun cookin, and ceiling fans.


Our (mostly the lady drifters) recent search for the right ceiling fans brought back some fond memories. Around 15 years ago. In New Orleans on business trip. Never been there before. It was summer. Hot. Real hot. Humid. Real humid. On the way to a meeting (half mile walk or less) had to stop in a store to get a new shirt and after shave to avoid showing up sweat soaked and stinking. Modernized downtown area much like many other cities, but French Quarter, Garden District and outer neighborhoods distinctly different from anything you’ll see anywhere else in the country.

Like San Francisco, it’s a city with a strong identity that feels more human or more connected to traits associated with human character than most others. Spent most of my downtime in and around the French Quarter and the river.
Ate Oysters all day long. Went into thrift stores, record stores and junk shops and saw some wild stuff and met even wilder people. The whole Voodoo thing is mostly a touristy sideshow now, but when you meet older folks you can see that there’s something deeper goin on for them that is connected in some way to that strange amalgam of cult religion, superstition and sex. Don’t know anything about it but it’s in the air.


Had a Crawfish Etouffe that I remember as one of the tastiest dishes I’d ever had. Had it at least 3 more times before the end of my trip…and they were all great. Never had one outside N.O. that came close. Maybe it was the VOodOoo.

Had an amazing musical adventure too…but it’s a long story, so I’ll save for another time.

Oh, yes, ceiling fans
All through the town (and especially in the Quarter) are restaurants and bars with large windows and doors open to the street. Inside every joint you’ll usually find a high ceiling with as many ceiling fans as space allows lined up one after another all hanging low (about 12 ft. from the floor as I learned was ideal height and almost always 2 bladed) and turning lazily slow.

Coming in from the street, you can feel the difference instantly. It’s a gentle breeze running through the entire place and it’s somewhat surprising considering how slow those blades are turning and the number of people generally packed on the floor beneath them. And though I’m sure many establishments have considered and had the opportunity to install air conditioning (which considering the heat would seem like a no-brainer business decision) surprisingly few have--or so it appeared 15 years ago. The just barely sufficient efficiency of those ceiling fans is part of the charm and tradition and experience in these places. And so what if it’s still kinda hot? That’s part of what makes it New Orleans…and not Dallas, or Atlanta or God forbid, Houston. And of course, like everything else in New Orleans, the fans have style.

The Drama of Desire, Homeownership in the Digital Age, and the seemingly infinite variety of ceiling fans in yet another post which may be of only marginal interest to readers who have nothing else to read and of absolutely zero interest to those who do.

Finally finished The Genius. Final five chapters managed to rescue the book from what was beginning to look in the ones just prior like a long slide into sentimental oblivion. Dreiser was obsessed with and possessed by all things concerned with human desire. And specifically how desire for love, money, status, luxury, fame, manifested itself in America circa 1900. But what sets The Genius apart from his other major novels like Sister Carrie, Jennie Gehrhardt, An American Tragedy, The Financier and The Titan is that in The Genius he is painting his own portrait. Wherein the other books he moves freely from character to character and setting to setting to create a broad canvas of diverse humanity, in The Genius he sets himself firmly to the task of exploring the mind of his alter-ego Eugene Witla --though thankfully not in the first person. And the reader (this one at least) comes to feel a sense of claustrophobia and frustration as Dreiser struggles and struggles to work his way through an endless maze of internal battlefields where the wars going on in the outside world take a distant back seat to the war that Witla is waging within himself. It’s a long slog and I’m kind of amazed that I made it all the way to the end, but as I said previously, Dreiser, despite his crude skills and inability to rein in his tendencies to repeat himself and indulge in enervating elaboration, still has the power to compel by virtue of his deep philosophical and psychological insight into the human animal. The childbirth scenes and the exploration of the tenets of Christian Science at the end are riveting. The world of obstetrics has come a long way in the last hundred years, and if you want to know how far, just read those three or four chapters culminating in the Angela’s Cesarean procedure. And perhaps it’s a testament to Dreiser’s passionate prose, but I actually found myself drawn to the wisdom of Christian Science a bit and if wasn’t for all the biblical stuff I might have become a convert.

The Internet hasn’t changed the world. It has changed everything. Okay, that’s a bit hyperbolic, but I am a copywriter—and trying to wake you up from the nap you took in the preceding paragraph.

Ellen had a boiler/heating guy come over to the house to do a routine inspection. He determined that we had a dangerous Carbon Monoxide level in the boiler and shut the system down and gave us a $7200 estimate for putting in an all-new system. Well, if I’m given a diagnosis that says I need a $7200 operation, I’m getting a second doctor’s opinion. Went online to try and learn a little for myself and first thing I learned is that Carbon Monoxide leaks are most often caused by Flue and Chimney problems. So I got a Chimney guy to come in and he said all was well in that regard and that if my carbon monoxide alarm didn’t go off when running the system, then I was probably safe—and that it’s altogether possible that the boiler guy only shut us down in order to get me to buy his $7200 new system. So I got a new CO alarm and mounted it in the basement and we turned the system back on and no alarm sounded.. So…what to think? Was I getting the run-around? Ellen said she saw the guy do the Carbon Monoxide test and his meter was beeping a lot…whatever that means. So back online again and try to learn more. Now I learn that you shouldn’t measure carbon monoxide emissions immediately after turning on the boiler/Heater –and especially not if it hasn’t been on for a long time—like an entire summer. CO levels are bound to be high initially as the fire burns off accumulated gunk and grime and other stuff that builds up. Like a BBQ grill you gotta burn off the old stuff before you get a clean fire. So I call the original Boiler guy who shut us down and run this all by him—and he says he shut us down because he didn’t want it on his head if a squirrel or some other animal got stuck in my chimney and all that CO backed up into the house and killed us in our sleep. I asked him if he thought that could happen if I had a CO detector/alarm, and he said that sometimes they don’t work or the batteries die . I was steamed. Now he’s saying he shut us down to protect us from roaming animals on the roof (who cannot get into the chimney cause we have a cap) and faulty CO alarms (which when the batteries run low actually begin beeping loudly to alert you to that fact). So do I or don’t I have a dangerous CO leak? My alarm says no, the chimney guy says no, the internet site experts say no and only the guy who wants to sell me a new system says yes. And BTW—you can simply call your local fire dept and they will come over lickety-split and test your CO levels at no cost.

Given the time and the energy and the willingness to work at it, one can become a virtual expert in just about any field via The Internet. Maybe not a brain surgeon, or other such expert whose training requires hands on practice and experience, but certainly a better informed homeowner with a enough knowledge to prevent you from spending $7200 on something you don’t need.

So now I want to know more, especially with the house in the Springs just now getting to the point where some of this information can prove useful.

I spent some time yesterday at a web site called Energy Vanguard:

http://www.energyvanguard.com/about-energy-vanguard/

The site is a University of Home building scholarship. I’ve read four or five articles and learned (among other things) that the attic fan that I’ve always believed was a good thing to have is actually a useless thing and an energy drainer.

So many fans so little time. And I don’t mean fans of this blog.
Trying to select the right ceiling fans for the house. Go online and discover that there are only a few hundred thousand to choose from. Then try and figure out how to make the best decision in regards to performance, energy efficiency, style, blade number and length,brand, price, lighting fixture, color, wood v. metal v. other etc. etc. etc. Just as I’m thinking how the internet has saved me time, money, labor and freed me from the chains of ignorance, I now find myself drowning in a sea of information that is making me waste time and probably money too in the long run…and I just tell Ellen and fellow drifters that I’ll abide by whatever they decide as long as I can be spared having to look at one more ceiling fan.

The internet giveth and the internet taketh away.

What we talk about when we talk about how we talk about Drugs with our kids.

Sipping my morning brew and reading NY Times and see a full page (back page) ad from Partnership for a Drug Free …hmm, it actually doesn’t say America anymore, just The Partnership At Drugfree.Org. Maybe they realized that adding America sounded somehow jingoistic—and implied that they didn’t really care about Drug use by non-Americans. But they’ve got my attention and dubious as I am (full disclosure—I did some ads for the Partnership back in the early 90’s and it was not a particularly rewarding or productive experience…I’ll elaborate further at the end of this post) and I keep reading.

The headline reads:

How to talk to your kids about drugs if you did drugs.

The subhead:
The fact that you’ve had experience may actually be an advantage. Read on:

The all text ad --except for a small inset photo of a long haired male teen in a hoodie with backpack standing in a Library with an open book in hand and smiling toward camera—goes on with 12 individually titled short paragraphs outlining their suggested approach to the problem.

I thought I might reprint selected sections here and go through it item by item but realized that would take some time and wouldn’t really be playing fair since I don’t want to risk sounding like I’m finding fault by taking things out of context.

But I do think it’s fair to quote a few sentences to give you an idea of the tone and manner they adopt in making their case.

“…This isn’t about what you did or didn’t do. It’s about what your child is going to do or not do. So let’s talk about how your personal experiences might help steer your child in a good direction.”

“…For every psychologist who recommends openness and honesty about your past, another advises caution. The fact is, you can say too much.”

“Some kids demand candor. Others are happy just to talk. Use your judgment. You know your kids better than anyone.”

“ YOU COULD SAY IT LIKE THIS: I tried drugs because some of the other kids I knew were experimenting with them, and I thought I needed to try drugs to fit in. “

“Everyone makes mistakes and trying drugs was a mistake I made. “

“I love you too much to watch you repeat bad decisions I made.”

“…even if drugs didn’t ruin my life, I’ve seen them ruin other people’s lives. And God forbid that you should be one of those people.”

Okay, you get the idea. And much of the rest of it goes on in similar fashion with recommendations to Stay Calm, Listen, Don’t raise your voice, and ends with an encouraging …Good Luck. And again, to be fair, my selected quotes are only here to give you an idea of the piece, and I think if you read the whole thing you’ll see that it’s a pretty accurate representation of most of it.

Okay, here’s my problem with it. One, it’s dishonest. Patently. In fact it’s all about how to appear honest to your kids while keeping them in the dark about some of the most pertinent (and useful to them) truths. Two, it’s deceptive. It’s about how to keep your kids from using drugs by spinning and manipulating the truth of your own drug use experiences in such a way as to keep you (the parent) from having to face the facts regarding your own choices and behavior so you can still come out smelling like a rose.

But that’s not really my problem, my problem is that if the Partnership was really serious about helping parents help their kids, they’d have learned long ago that this approach is doomed to fail. They bought a $40,000.00 full page ad in the NY Times and hired who to write it? A scholar in the field of related sociological, medical, psychological, chemical issues? No. A wise and experienced person who by dint of personal experience and/or study/or research has developed a program or approach proven to work in the real world? No. I won’t bet my life on it, but my guess is that this ad was written by an advertising copywriter with the assistance (so to speak) of a few Board members and a couple of lesser Partnership functionaries who because their hearts are in the right place consider themselves competent to tell parents how to solve this problem, assuming we all know what the problem is. Now I said I won’t bet my life on it, but this ad smells too much like what I experienced when I worked for them for me to imagine this is any different.
But like they say…this is not about me. It’s about the kids. And I’m no expert on drugs or kids but if given the assignment (assuming I couldn’t pass it on to someone more qualified and/or they were paying me a shitload) I think I might say:

DRUGS ARE A PLEASURE.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Even if the founding fathers didn’t mean it, they knew it was a pretty good line. And people have been quoting it and repeating it ever since for every reason under the sun including the making of profits, the stealing of land, and the taking of drugs. And it all comes down to one thing. Pleasure.

Pleasure is what drives us in just about everything we do. The anticipation of it, the hope for it, the feeling of it, even the memory of it. It is central to all our basic appetites and needs. Sex. Food. Shelter. And how we look for, find and experience pleasure is a function of countless factors. It’s tied to who we are physically and chemically.It’s tied to our inherited DNA and our cultures and traditions and histories.

But what the founding fathers didn’t say is that all pleasures are not created equal.
All things come at a price. And Pleasure is no exception. Some prices are high. Some low. Some fair. Some unfair. Some dangerous. Some safe. Some healthy. Some fatal. And with some we don’t even know what the price is because they’re too new and it’s too soon to tell.

So when it comes to pleasure, the question often becomes: What price can you afford? Can you pay the price of what comes with indulging your every sexual instinct and desire with anyone at anytime? Can you afford to punch your evil boss in the nose? Can you afford to ask your parents for some money so you can buy some more marijuana? If you can afford to, chances are you will. If not, you won’t. John Lennon said he wanted success so he could have Fuck You Money. But he also said he paid a price for it. Keith Richards indulged his huge appetite for drugs...cause he could afford it. (Not just financially, he could also afford the luxury of not having to do much more in his life than play the guitar occasionally and even then he used a tuning method to make it even easier...or as he said " Three fingers, two chords, one asshole". Others tried the same and it killed them cause they couldn't. All depends on whether you can pay the price.

If you can find pleasure without fear of finding pain. You’re gonna go for it.
Not because you’re greedy. Not because you’re lazy. Not because you’re immature.
It’s because you’re human. Humans are animals and The Human animal seeks pleasure.

So what about drugs? Well, what is a drug? Is it a remedy, a painkiller, a consciousness changer? A way to forget? A way to relax? A way to change?
If drugs can do all those things then many things can be called drugs. Some people consider music their drug. For others it’s religion, or the adrenaline that’s released when doing a high risk sport. For some it’s nicotine or caffeine or alcohol. For some people power and control are drugs. Some people get pleasure from inflicting pain on others. And money may be the most powerful drug of them all.

So what’s so different about drug drugs? The ones you smoke, ingest, snort, shoot or drink or get at the CVS with a little piece of paper signed by your friendly enabling Doctor? Why all the fuss about these drugs? Good question, and one with a whole lot of answers --most of which have nothing to do with you. But if you really want to know then go find out and learn more for yourself. Knowledge is mostly free…which is why it’s not always very popular.

In the meantime, you can also ask yourself:

What do I want?
Where am I going?
What’s my pleasure?
and
CAN I AFFORD IT?

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I've had many a conversation with friends (who are also parents) over the years about this "What to tell my kids about my drug use" topic and I'm often surprised at what I've heard. I don't think an all the truth all the time approach is necessarily the right thing, but isn't it sorta in the right direction? The ad suggests telling your kids that you "experimented" or "tried" drugs because you wanted to fit in with the crowd. Well, ok, if that's the truth, then tell it. But that particular reason is the one that even if true would be the least likely for any self respecting parent to admit to. " Yeah son, I did drugs, but only cause I was like sheep following the mob." What's wrong with " I was curious", " I was bored", " I was in pain", " I was confused","I was into altering my consciousness", " I was angry," " I was dating a girl/boy who liked it", " I was trying to piss off my parents", " It was fun"....if one or more of those applies? Should'nt we want our kids to know that we were not so different from them when we were young? Wouldn't that help keep the doors of communication open? Wouldn't that be fun to talk about? Hey...what a concept, talking to your kids about Drugs can be fun! Or am I discounting that perhaps the unspoken message in the ad is that we parents who took drugs (yes we took them, not tried them or experimented or some such bogus euphemism) should be ashamed? Is that the message buried in that ad? We are ashamed, but at the same time we love our kids and have this responsibility to guide them and protect them...but god forbid we reveal to them the truth about something in our past for which we feel guilt and remorse. I don't particularly relate to that, but perhaps some people do and they're the ones this ad is trying to reach. if that's the case, the ad that might really be effective and useful would be the one with the headline:

HOW TO TALK TO YOUR PAINED AND CONFUSED PARENTS ABOUT YOUR PAIN AND CONFUSION AND TURN IT INTO SUCH A PLEASURE THAT YOU BOTH COMPLETELY FORGET ABOUT DRUGS.



* my Partnership with the Partnership lasted about a month. I wrote 6 or 7 TV spots and produced one of them. I wrote 10 or12 print ads of which they approved one. My general impression was that they functioned like private country club with a big budget and a well heeled board of directors. Every meeting was like a country club luncheon. Chatty, friendly, self-satisfied and with little or no attention paid to business at hand. I met and worked with no one who had any expertise, experience, or specialized understanding of issues related to teen drug use. The director I brought in to work on the one spot we made had spent many years working with teens and others who had been drug abusers or had served time for drug related offenses. He made a documentary that was shown on some PBS stations. The people at the Partnership paid little or no attention to his suggestions and ideas...and it was clear to me at the time that it was because he dressed and looked like a recovering drug user himself...which he was.