Thanks John!

Last night, as we watched Barack Obama's phenomenal nomination acceptance speech at work, we all expressed the hope that he and Biden can squeak out a victory in November. With this morning's news that "Maverick" McCain had chosen first-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, he's made it much more likely that Obama and Biden can win. First, in choosing an militantly anti-choicer, he is sending all the women who threatened to vote for McCain because Clinton didn't get the nomination running back to the Democratic Party. And secondly, in choosing a woman, he's alienating the sexist male neanderathals who are, lets face it, at the core of the Party of Old White Guys. Thanks John!

Blogaversary Friday Random Ten

Today's the second anniversary of my starting this blog! Looking back to my first post, I realized that I got off to a great start when the first person to comment on my brand new blog was Dale. This blog has helped me make some new friends, like Dale and Bubs, and to reconnect with old friends like Lulu and Kringle. It's helped me deal with the horrible death of a beloved friend and deal with a bunch of huge changes in my life, particularly leaving the teaching profession and becoming, in my late forties, a college student again. All in all, I'm really glad I decided to start this blog.


1. Yesterday's Not Here No More- Pete Shelley
2. Help Me- Joni Mitchell
3. Change of the Guard- Steely Dan
4. Rabbit Fur Coat- Jennifer Lewis
5. Bonzo Goes To Bitburg- The Ramones
6. Dancing In Heaven- Q-Feel
7. Then Came You- Dionne Warwick with the Spinners
8. Michael Smith and Jamie O'Reilly
9. King of Love- Dave Edmunds
10. Snappy Khaki- ZZ Top


1. From the 1981 solo album from Buzzcocks frontman Pete Shelley. Watch the double negatives, Pete!
2. I recently read a review of a book about rock women and discovered that Joni Mitchell's song "Coyote" was about playwright Sam Shepard. I wonder who this one's about.
3. From Steely Dan's marvelous debut album.
4. I read an article about Ms. Lewis in the New York Times and had to seek out some of her music. I'm glad I did.
5. This song is about Ronald Reagan's nortorious visit in the eighties to the graves of Nazi SS soldiers. It's put to good use in the movie "School of Rock."
6. This is from the Rhino Records' marvelous "Just Can't Get Enough" series of new wave collections.
7. Two of my favorites together here.
8. From "Pasiones," a record about the Lincoln Brigade.
9. From the Dave Edmunds box set, another Rhino Records labor of love.
10. From Tejas, one of my favorite records of all time.

I Can See Frankie From Here!

About a year ago, I posted about a field trip with my alternative school students to the Sears Tower, one of the last things I did as a teacher. I had some shots from the top, and Skyler's Dad, one of my favorite bloggers, made the comment "Hey! I can see your house!" I replied that he had no idea how funny that comment was to me, and promised to post about it. Well, finally, a year later, I'm making good on my promise.

I've mentioned before that the summer of 1982 was, for various reasons, one of the worst in my life. I won't go into that, but at the end of the summer, I was getting ready to go back to school and my brother, a year younger than me, had just returned from grueling Marine basic training. I was dead broke, but he had a bunch of cash from back pay burning a hole in his pocket, so we hatched a plan.

In the late seventies and early eighties, before Chicago's Navy Pier was renovated, the City of Chicago used to have a huge festival that they called, very cleverly, Chicagofest. It was actually really amazing. They had a main stage, where they'd have a variety of acts during the afternoon and early evening, and then a big act at night. They had a variety of themed stages who actually performed on stages that were on barges moored to the pier. On a windy night, it was funny to see the stages bobbing up and down with the waves with the performers gamely swaying to the waves to maintain their balance. There was a rock stage, a blues stage, a country stage and a folk music stage. For some reason, the folkies got to play on a stationary stage inside the main building of the pier.

All up and down the pier there were a variety of activities, all included in the price of admission, which was something like 5 bucks, ridiculously cheap even in 1982. There were movies-- "Rock and Roll High School" and "Quadraphenia" were showing. The then-unknown The Flying Karamozov Brothers performed their quirky, hilarious blend of juggling, comedy and performance art daily. There was food and drink. I remember smelling three things all the time-- coconut oil from the suntan lotion, stale beer and a certain herb burning.

In any event, my brother and I decided that we were going to walk down to Navy Pier from my parents' Lincoln Park apartment and see Frank Sinatra. We were realistic, though; we knew that there were probably thousands of others with the same plan, so we had a back-up. We looked in the newspaper and saw that there was an incredible line-up at the blues stage, which was sponsored by local progressive-rock station WXRT. Mighty Joe Young was performing, as well as Texas bluesman Albert Collins, a big favorite of my brother and I.

Sure enough, when we arrived, we discovered that the line to get into the Frank Sinatra show was huge. We went to Plan B.

We sat through a couple of great blues show. Mighty Joe Young brought the house down with "Sweet Home Chicago." About a year later, the recording of that performance was on a record that WXRT, teamed with Chicago blues label Alligator Records put out of live blues performances. Once in a blue moon, WXRT plays that record, and I'm fond of noting that my brother and I are on that record, in the crowd cheering.

As the evening wore on, we had a great time. I'd just turned 21 and he had a bunch of money (and was only 20) so we did the "I'll fly if you buy" thing. And there were a number of flights. We alternated between plastic cups of beer and wine, which was oddly served in those plastic pitchers you get in the hospital. We were, apparently, pretty entertaining, cutting up the crowd around us, who bought us a couple of rounds.

One of the people sitting next to us told us that Sinatra had a deal with the Chicagofest people that nobody else would be performing while he was. And sure enough, all the other stages quieted down, and to our amazement, we could see (and hear) Sinatra, probably nearly a half mile away from us on the other side of the long pier.



Now, you know that old joke where Jesus is on the cross and keeps calling to Peter, and Peter fights his way up Calvary Hill, past the Romans, to Jesus, at great risk and cost in physical abuse, only to have Jesus tell him "Peter, Peter-- I can see your house from here!"? Well, this was one of my brother's and my favorite jokes, which you have to know for this to make sense.

All of a sudden, as the audience quietly chatted and looked at Sinatra, who was a tiny crooning figure in a bright spotlight a couple of thousand feet away, my brother suddenly stood up, threw his arms up so that they were straight out and yelled "Johnny, Johnny-- I can see Frankie from here!"

I was, of course, laughing so hard I couldn't breath, as were the handful of people around us who actually got the joke. We should probably have been ashamed. But we weren't. We were pretty hung over the next day, though.

Who's The Out-Of-Touch Elitist?

For someone who's got a Master's Degree in Political Science, I've said very little about this election. It's time to pipe in.

Six months ago, my feelings were that even if McCain won in November, it wouldn't be a complete disaster. For example, unlike many of his fellow conservatives, he actually believes in modern science, and that the scientific consensus that fossil fuel use is hurtling us toward a global warming disaster is true.

I don't feel that way anymore. If McCain won, it would be a disaster. This is going to be the most important US election since 1860.

Let me clarify. Most who know me and those who read my blog regularly certainly know that I was always going to vote for the Democrat who won the nomination, whether it was Obama, Clinton, Kucinich or any other of the pack. My concern is that there's no guarantee that the Democrat will win in November. And in fact, the Republican did win in the last two elections. This has led to a disasterous slide in this country at every level-- economically, politically, internationally, energy-wise. I sometimes wondered if Bush and Cheney had a crack team up late at night trying to figure out new ways to screw up.

The fact of the matter is that we are in trouble. We are trapped in a war in Iraq that we never should have been in. We are losing a war in Afghanistan that could have been won by now had we not diverted resources to Iraq. The dollar has plummetted in value, and oil prices have skyrocketed. We've got seventies style "stagflation" going on-- inflation combined with economic slowdown. And thousands and thousands of Americans are losing their homes. I read in the New York Times today about Merced, California, where three out of every four housing sales are foreclosures.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/business/24house.html

In the midst of this, the soon-to-be Republican candidate for President, in what is, in my opinion, the most important election in over a century, did not know, when asked, how many houses he owns.

Let me state, right off, that the issue is not that he is rich. Obama, Biden and most other Senators are rich. The issue is that he did not have the sense not to say something that stupid and insensitive. He's been trying to paint Barack Obama as someone who is elitist and out of touch with the issues that concerns Americans. Americans are scared to death about the economy. It's been frightening to go from the nineties, when everybody seemed to be getting in on the economic boom that happened then. Welfare mothers were going to work and buying homes. I have no doubt that the flush times were largely responsible for the plummet in the crime rate. And that the current economic problems have been part of the uptick in crime, including violent crime, in recent years. As most of you know, this has personally affected me.

So McCain's strategy has been to paint Barack Obama as an elitist who is out of touch with the concerns of the common folk. Two recent things have really troubled me, beyond the fact that McCain seems to be completely out of it in understanding global politics and economics. A few weeks ago he revealed that he is unable to use a PC, something my kids have done since they were babies. How in the hell can a guy who can't use a friggin' computer do a job that is probably the most demanding job in history?

The other is, of course, his response about the houses. I'm not just appalled that a guy trying to portray his opponent as an out-of-touch elitist is so rich and, well, out of it, that he doesn't know how many houses he has-- though I do find that pretty appalling. The thing I find disturbing is that it never occurred to him that the answer he gave would be appalling to many, many people. He should have kept his goddamned mouth shut. If he doesn't have the sense to do that in that situation, I cannot imagine how he would have the sense to run the country.

Go Barack and Biden!

End Of Summer Break Friday Random Ten

I went to sign up for my fall classes a couple of days ago. I was able to sign up for Chemistry 203, which I need before I can take Organic Chemistry, but the Anatomy class I wanted was full. I talked to the professor and he was certain that people would drop the first couple of days, and I'll be able to register for it. Just in case, I'm going to try to sign up for a Writing class that I need.


1. Waiting For A Train- Johnny Cash
2. Sweet Lelani- Don Ho
3. I'm Not Down- The Clash
4. I Can't Stand It- Velvet Underground
5. Esther Be The One- ZZ Top
6. The Wino and I Know- Jimmy Buffett
7. Animals- Talking Heads
8. Comin' Back To Me- Jefferson Airplane
9. I and I- Bob Dylan
10. Getting Better- The Beatles

Notes:
1. I'm still sad that Johnny Cash is gone. He was a national treasure.
2. Some friends of mine in the early nineties had a band called The Primary Colors and did a good cover of this.
3. This song has one of the greatest lines ever in a rock song:

If it's true that a rich man leads a sad life
N' that's what they from day to day
Then what do all the poor do with their lives?

4. One of my favorite Velvet Underground songs.
5. From the great Deguello album.
6. I never knew what the "Cafe Du Monde," which is mentioned in this song, until I read about it after Hurricane Katrina. It's in New Orleans.
7. From "Fear of Music," my favorite Talking Heads record.
8. Surrealistic Pillow is one of my desert island albums.
9. From 1983's "Infidels," a big come-back album for Dylan.
10. From Sgt. Pepper.

Ready To Rock and Roll!

This is my stepdaughter and two of her best friends at lacrosse practice yesterday.

He Was A Baaaaaaad Mutha...

I was saddened the other day to hear the news of the death of musician Issac Hayes.

He's best known for his huge hit, "The Theme From Shaft," which won him an Oscar. What's less known is that before that, he was a very successful R and B session player, songwriter and producer with the famed Stax Records. He wrote a number of Sam and Dave's hits, including "Soul Man," (later covered by the Blues Brothers), and "Hold On, I'm Coming," one of my personal favorites.

One of my favorite memories of Hayes was as a kid, when I was watching a Jack Benny special. Hayes perfomed "The Theme From Shaft," complete with a platoon of scantily clad dancing girls. He himself was dressed in his characteristic outfit, with only a huge gold chain for a top. As he finished, Jack Benny approached him, lifted the chain a little and deadpanned "Nice shirt, Isaac."

As music tastes changed, and R and B sales plummetted, Hayes' fortunes followed. Stax went out of business. He and his wife filed for bankruptcy in 1976. He lost most of what he owned, and even worse, the rights to future royalties on much of the music he's written, published and performed.

Hayes began a comeback that included a number of television and film roles. He had a recurring role in "The Rockford Files," and of course later in "South Park" as the voice of The Chef. Perhaps his greatest and most memorable role was as "The Duke" in the cult classic "Escape From New York," where he lampooned blaxploitation movie characters.

Some people have dissed on Hayes for his involvement in the Scientology cult. I don't have much to say about that, but I will add that when times were good, both before and after his bankruptcy, Hayes was a generous guy, giving lots of time and money to charitable organizations.

My favorite memory about Issac Hayes involves the Gingerman Tavern, here in Chicago, where I spent some good times in my illustrious youth. They had one of the greatest jukeboxes ever, with a nice mix of music that ran the range from punk to old R and B and everything in between. The most popular song, by far, on the jukebox, was "The Theme From Shaft." By popular, I mean that the song was played, some nights, every third or fourth song. The bartenders came to really, really hate the song.

Not the patrons, though. Every time, without failure, that the song played, when the part came up where Hayes sang "That cat Shaft is a baaaaad mutha-," the entire bar (and I include myself here) would shout "Shut yo mouth!" It never, ever stopped being funny.

RIP, Isaac. Thanks for the great music and memories.

Transitions

On my refrigerator, there's a "project." It was from when Adam was in preschool at the New City YMCA in Chicago, in December of 1998.

I was working as a seventh grade Social Studies teacher at a public school in a tough neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago. I was wearing a suit that day-- all the male faculty members wore them that day as an example for the students. At Adam's school, it was "Family Night." The school's gym was filled with stations where kids and parents could make all kinds of projects. At one station, they took a Poloroid picture that they put in a frame that your kid had decorated, then attached magnets to the back.

It's funny to look back at the picture as a time capsule. Adam was in the first year of his education. I was twenty five pounds heavier and ten years younger. He was 4 and i was 37. I had just settled a bruising custody fight Adam's mother. Suddenly, after only sporadic visits, he was on a regular schedule of seeing me on weekends and holidays. You look at the picture and make your decision about how he felt about it.

This past weekend was one of his weekends with me. This one was a little different from most; when the weekend ended, he would return to his mother's house, and then on Monday, today, begin high school.


I made sure to schedule a bunch of things I knew he liked. We did Chinese buffet on Friday, and watched "School of Rock," one of his favorite movies, on Friday night. On Saturday, we went to Uncle Fun's, the greatest store in the world. We played putt-putt golf at Novelty Golf (Chicagoans usually call it "The Bunny Hutch," which is actually the name of the small restaurant that is part of it.)

Saturday night, one our good friends had a birthday party-- his 37th, ironically. Since I had to work, Kim brought the kids there, and I was able to call in a favor and got off of work early and joined at a reasonable hour.

Watching the kids play happily together-- the electric "shocking" pen that Adam got at Uncle Fun's was a big hit-- I felt a sense of relief. I realized that a series of decisions I'd made over the years had paid off. Adam is a happy and well-adjusted young guy.

On Sunday, when I dropped Adam off with his mother, we met at an Office Max store near her home so that I could give her a coupon I had, and some money, my share of the cost of a graphing calculator we were purchasing for him. He was carrying the new backpack and clothes that I bought him this weekend.

As they got in her car and got ready to go, I sensed that she was struggling to hold it together. "You ready for this?" I asked her. I knew the answer already. "No," she replied.

I, on the other hand, was doing much better. I'm sure the tightness in my chest was just from middle age and the humidity.