Okay, This is Weird...

I took a test I stole from Vikki, who stole it from Megan, who stole it from Big Orange, who presumably stole it from somebody else...

Here was my answer:

You're A Prayer for Owen Meany!

by John Irving

Despite humble and perhaps literally small beginnings, you inspire faith in almost everyone you know. You are an agent of higher powers, and you manifest this fact in mysterious and loud ways. A sense of destiny pervades your every waking moment, and you prepare with great detail for destiny fulfilled. When you speak, IT SOUNDS LIKE THIS!


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Here's the weird thing: on New Year's Day, I was posting about "Rants, Raves and Resolutions", and mentioned that I strove to read more fiction. Flannery Aiden kindly suggested some John Irving, including "A Prayer for Owen Meany." I actually went to the library a couple of days later with the intention of checking "Prayer" out, but all their copies were checked out. I checked out another of Flannery's suggestions, "A Son of the Circus," instead, which I'm thoroughly enjoying. Now I'm definitely going to have to go back for "A Prayer For Owen Meany."

Ten Songs I Wish I'd Written

I was checking email and my blogs with my itunes on random and a favorite song came up-- "Maybe Tomorrow," by Stereophonics, and it got me to thinking.

These are ten songs I wish I'd written, in no particular order.

1. Maybe Tomorrow- Stereophonics
2. Southern Girls- Cheap Trick
3. Refuge of the Roads- Joni Mitchell
4. Set Me Free Rosa Lee- Los Lobos
5. Interstate Love Song- Stone Temple Pilots
6. Dreams- The Allman Brothers Band
7. Tape From California- Phil Ochs
8. White Man in Hammersmith Palais- The Clash
9. Wedding Bell Blues- Laura Nyro
10. Moonlight Mile- The Rolling Stones

I'm sure if you polled me tomorrow, that list would change. It would probably include The The's "Love is Stronger Than Death," Bob Dylan's "Sara" and Rhett Miller's "Come Around."

What would be ten of yours?

Remember Spy?

Remember Spy Magazine?

It was a brutally funny magazine that hit its peak in the late eighties. I always thought it was as if the New Yorker and the National Lampoon had a love child. When I roomed with college buddies Dan and Mark after college, we had a subscription to it. I can't remember which day of the month it was, but the magazine usually arrived on a particular day in the month. Each of us would frantically dash home get at the magazine first.

There were a lot of memorable regular features: separated at birth (Mary Tyler Moore and Caesar Romero as the Joker on the Batman Show) and the annual New York City Nightlife Ironman Triathalon were notable examples. One of my favorite-ever articles was the "100 Most Loathsome People of New York"; approximately one fourth one of them were Donald Trump in various capacities-- real estate developer, husband, father, celebrity, etc. Another one was Cliff Notes for Jay Macinerney's "Bright Lights, Big City" and Tama Janowitz' "Slaves of New York."

They could be crude, but required a cultural literacy. To get the joke about the Ironman Nightlife Triathalon you had get know that the "participants" were night-clubbing, womanizing New York-based authors whose literary output had dropped off-- i.e. this is why their literary output had plummetted.

Why did Spy die? Part of it was that the eighties ended; the eighties had so much fodder for ridicule and parody. Part of it was economics-- the recession of the early nineties. And part of it is probably that it's audience got older.

In this age of mediocrity, the age of sporks, focus-group-guided endings to movies and the USA Today, I wonder if there'll be a magazine with the same combination of intelligence and wit as Spy had. While I wait, probably forever, It's a good thing I've got my bloggers. The reason I love reading blogs, something I've only started doing in the last year, is that I often see that same combination of humor, anger, indignation and satire that made me love Spy Magazine. I had no idea-- I wish I hadn't waited so long.

Don't Say We Didn't Tell You...

I had the day off of work yesterday in memory of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. I'd intended to post about my memories of the first time this day was celebrated in Illinois, in 1983, but I couldn't find the picture I wanted to use. I'll save it for another time.

What I did come across was a copy of The Atlantic Monthly that I'd saved. It was from November of 2002. I'd picked it up because it had some articles that looked interesting by authors whom I'd read-- Robert Kaplan and Mark Bowden. There was also an article by James Fallows entitled "The Fifty-First State?: The Inevitable Aftermath of Victory in Iraq."

It's available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200211/fallows

The article is amazing. It opens with:

Going to war with Iraq would mean shouldering all the responsibilites of an occupying power the moment victory was achieved. These would include running the economy, keeping domestic peace, and protecting Iraq's borders-- and doing it all for years, or perhaps decades. Are we ready for this long-term relationship?

It's like he had a friggin' crystal ball.

He points out that history is rarely linear-- that it always has consequences we rarely foresee. He quotes a book I've mentioned before, David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace," which was about how the settlement of World War I and the carving up of the Ottoman Empire directly caused a lot of the problems of the mideast today.

Fallows discusses a lot of the considerations before going in and then points out:

Regardless of these diffences, the day after a war ended, Iraq would become America's problem, for practical and political reasons. Because we would have destroyed the political order and done physical damage in the process, the claims on American resources and attention would be comparable to those of any U.S. state.

Wow. What has this war cost? Nearly $350 billion? Has even California, the most populous state in the union gotten that much from the federal government since March of 2003?

The invasion was based on a whole host of fallacies: that Iraq would quickly become self-governing; that the conquered Iraqis would view the coalition troops as liberators; that Iraq's economy would quickly recover and pay for the war; that Iraq could quickly develop democracy; that an Iraqi democracy would stand as a shining example of democracy in the region.

Yesterday there was the quiet news that Condy Rice is soft-pedalling democracy in Egypt in favor of stability. Expect to hear the same about Iraq eventually.

Fallows states that providing a force of even 25,000 occupiers would strain the U.S. Military's resources. We have more than six times that amount.

Rereading this article got me to thinking back to the first day of the war, back on March 20 of 2003. I was in my first year of a four year stint of teaching sixth grade in Cicero, Illinois.

That day, the students wanted to talk about the war and it's history. Most of them were from poor latino families, and many had brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles in the military or reserves, so I obliged them.

As the US invaded Iraq, I told them to remember this day, for it was the day that the United States overtly became an empire.

Later that day, as I started my new social studies unit, I had a wry chuckle of irony. That day we started a unit on an empire that took over other countries, ignoring the needs of its citizens, and choking and collapsing itself on the costs of their expansion. That day, I began teaching, for the first time in my teaching career, about the Roman Empire.

'70's Hair

A few days ago, I was posting a John Kerry quote, and included this picture.






Kristi over at Two Minutes in the Box commented that John Kerry was a smart man, even with that hair. I replied that all men, even myself, had hair like that in 1971 and 1972. Here is the photographic proof. This is my fifth grade picture, taken in 1972.

I'm working on post about a roadtrip to visit Elvis' grave that took place in 1985. Not only do I have feathered eighties hair, but I have those yuppy tortoise shell-framed glasses that seemed to be a good idea to men only in the eighties. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

He Who Laughs Last...

Coaster Punchman was blogging about memories about the whole junior high school and high school social status thing and it reminded me of a moment in my life.

When I was in seventh grade, my family moved to Western Springs, Illinois, a middle class 'burb west of Chicago.

Things did not go well. My brothers and I were different-- we'd lived most of our lives up to that point in the city. We weren't jocks, and my family didn't attend church. We got picked on ferociously.

At some point, the three primary bullies of my junior high, all bigger than me physically, decided that punching me whenever a teacher wasn't looking was the most fun sport of all.

I endured it, made it out of junior high school and thrived in high school. As high school ended, I won a scholarship to North Central College in Naperville. I lived at home, and would usually take a commuter train to school.

One day, I was running late and missed the train that would get me to school on time. If I was going to get there on time, I was going to have to drive.

I hopped into the car, my family's yellow 1973 Ford Pinto, and got ready to go. I looked at the dashboard and saw that the fuel gauge was down near "E." I needed to go to a gas station.

I was really running late now, especially with the time it was going to take to go to the gas station, so I pulled up to the Full Serve. The attendant came running out and asked "Fill 'er up, sir?"

I was at a loss for words for a moment. It was John Birk, the bully ringleader.

I regained my composure and said "Just five bucks worth will be fine, thanks."

As I drove off to Naperville, I chuckled to myself. I was going to college on a scholarship and poor John was working as a gas jockey. I thought to myself "I guess that bully thing didn't work out for you so well, did it John?"

Friday Random Ten For a Three Day Weekend

It was a pretty good week. There's a lot going on in the alternative school I work at, stemming from a huge fight the week before Christmas break. I'm keeping my fingers crossed-- it looks like they're making some positive changes. I made it to Friday and now have a three day weekend.

1. Jean and Dinah- Robert Mitchum
2. And I Moved- Pete Townsend
3. The Flesh Failures/Let the Sunshine In—Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll
4. Mandocello- Cheap Trick
5. Balloon Man- Robyn Hitchcock
6. Kiss and Say Goodbye- The Manhattans
7. I Will Not Go Quietly- Don Henley
8. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee- Bob Dylan
9. Dirty Old Man- Fugs
10. Perfect Blue- Lloyd Cole

Comments:
1. Yes, a calypso album by Robert Mitchum. And it's pretty good! The first time I heard this one, my friend Dan brought it over. He'd found it on vinyl at a garage sale. He gave it to a another friend as a gag gift. The friend found out, much to Dan's chagrin, that the album's a rarity, and worth a bundle.

When I first started dating Kim, who's now my wife, I discovered that she owned the cd version. I knew then that I was dating the right girl.

2. From Pete Townsend's "Empty Glass" album. It came out shortly before his realization that he was an alcoholic. What a surprise-- the album title, the fact that nearly every song is about drinking, and that even the little markers showing who played on what track were noted with different shaped glasses. The album is still amazing.

3. This is a song from the Hair soundtrack, done by the couple probably best known for their great cover of Donovan's "Season of the Witch."

4. Tenacious S just posted about Cheap Trick. They were a group I was so-so with from when I was a teenager, and suddenly some time in my thirties realized how great they are.

5. This song has one of the great lines ever: "And it rained/Like a slow divorce." Reminds me of living with college buddies Dan and Mark in Wrigleyville in the eighties. Mark loved Robyn Hitchcock.

6. Holy guilty pleasure, Batman!

7. I was just quoting this song recently. "I will not lie down/I will not go quietly." It reminds me of Dylan Thomas' admonition not to go quietly into the night...

8. When I went to Shanghai with co-best friend Viktor Zeitgeist in May of 2002, we ended up finding a bar within walking distance of our hotel owned by a young Chinese guy and his mother. The guy was a huge Dylan fan, and every night would play the entire "Love and Theft" cd.

The picture of me at the top of this blog was from that trip. I ran in to an old friend right in the middle of Shanghai, and had Viktor take a picture of us together.

9. The Fugs were sixties pioneers in political incorrectness. If you've ever listened to Dr. Demento, you've probably heard their locker room anthem "Boobsalot." Ironically, Fug Ed Sanders, who went on to form the Holy Modal Rounders (who reformed a few years ago) wrote beautiful touching liner notes to a Phil Ochs best-of album some years ago (I'll be mailing those to you this weekend, Dale!)

10. The perfect dream song.

Hot Breaking News

I had just posted the last post about the exhausted and the mentally ill being used to fill the ranks needed to fight in Iraq when I discovered a way for those people to get out of service: show their stuff in skin magazines. U.S Air Force Staff Sgt. Michelle Manhart has been removed from active duty while her appearance in Playboy Magazine is being investigated.

I can see the investigation now:

Judge Advocate General: "I think I may have to examine the evidence further. I'll be in my office. I'm not to be disturbed."