Just Too F&!#'n Funny

On a lighter note... This is the kind of thing I was just talking about... THIS is what happens to you when you watch too much You Tube (though I actually found this in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone).

In honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Greatest Story Ever Told, here's 2 minutes of Fantastically Funny Freaking Filmwork.

To quote The Cowboy (and a number of my personal friends)... "Do you have to use so many cuss words?"

[Note: Not for family (or office) consumption.]

Adrift In The Home Of The Free

I was checking on the Gustav blogs that Enigma4ever has at Watergate Summer and found a link to a really beautiful version of Randy Newman's Louisiana 1927, a song that always made me cry BEFORE Katrina, but which now days I can barely make it through without breaking down into sobs. In that sense it's alot like an Anders Osborne song (sung here by Jesse Moore) that really has come to be the Katrina anthem to me, and a lot of others.

All of that is actually by way of saying that the song above has nothing to do with that (well even that's not really true, but you'll have to watch the video to see what I mean). I found the song above in one of the You Tube synapses that almost always happens when you go to You Tube for one thing and emerge four hours later, glassy eyed and confused.

In any case... with Gustav bearing down on The Crescent City, and The Republican Convention bearing down on The Twin Cities (at the opposite end of the country), I offer the above video as honor, memory, and wistful longing for an America that might have been (and with ANY luck at all, might yet still be).

You're Kidding... Right?

So John McCain has decided that the way to go after a dream ticket like Obama/Biden is to pretend like Sarah Palin is somehow the equivalent of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

To quote a line from Firesign Theater, "It's an interesting approach... but it isn't us."

On Wednesday night Senator Clinton brought her historic campaign to a close when she came to the floor of the Democratic Convention, took her name out of nomination and asked that the delegates nominate Barack Obama by acclamation. It was an amazing political moment, a classy act, and shrewd politics. It was the act of someone who knows what she's doing and has been doing it for most of her life.

To the contrary, John McCain has just chosen a woman whose entire political career consists of being the mayor of a town of less than 10,000 and being Governor, for all of eighteen months, of Alaska, a state with a population (670,000) smaller than most large cities in the U.S. THIS is her entire experience, and THIS is who John McCain puts up as some sort of equivalent to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.

There are plenty of people who I am sure will fall for this ruse, but please, let us not fall into the stupid argument that there's anything about Sarah Palin that makes her the political equal of anyone on the Democratic ticket. The campaign that has been ranting about Barack's inexperience to govern has just provided us with a candidate for Vice President who could not be LESS suited to high office. It's too bad that John couldn't have tapped the small though significant list of far more qualified Republican women... But those women likely would have been too much for him.

Nice try John... and it IS indeed nice to see the Republicans nominate a woman for the nation's second highest office.

Next time, could you maybe nominate someone actually CAPABLE of holding it?

Between A Rock and A Wet Place

Because of my experience 3 years ago today when, at pretty much the last minute I grabbed my landlord's dog and my landlord's van and beat it (very very SLOOOOWLY) north to Hattiesburg MS to ride out Katrina, and because of my care for and concern for so many people still in The Crescent City, I worry A LOT about what goes on during hurricane season.

This morning however, checking to see the status of Gustav, I caught this image from the National Hurricane Center and thought... YOW! My sister, aunts, cousins and friends on the east coast of Florida, The Pirate and his family on the west coast of Florida and even some new friends I just met the other day in wine country, are sitting smack dab in the middle of a tropical onslaught that's going to be ugly no matter how you look at it. Folks from Cuba and the Caribbean and pretty much all points north are looking at a one two punch like nobody's seen in quite some time. This is what life in the tropics during the late summer is really all about.

Our Lady of Prompt SuccorHasten to Help Us...

I got a call last night from New Orleans. My friend Mary had called to ask me to go to the website of Our Lady of Prompt Succor, the patron of New Orleans, and to pray... and to KEEP PRAYING. Knowing me, and my rather dubious spirituality, she wasn't 100% serious... she was only 99.97% serious.

Mary already had much of her stuff packed and was preparing to get things, like risers for her bed, if and when the flooding comes. Mary knows the drill. She lost her house three years ago when The Thing took us out last time.

Yesterday, Louisiana Governor (and possible McCain running mate) Bobby Jindal made statement trying to reassure everyone that plans were well in hand and that comes as soon as Thursday, the state might start "activating bus contracts" with contraflow escape routes starting as early as sometime Saturday. Of course, during this time, a week away from probable landfall, C. Ray Nay-gone has yet to utter a word (at least any word that I can find) and Governor Jindal is probably feeling pretty pissed that he might have to miss the Republican Convention.

So here we go again. Gustav has already killed 11 in Haiti and will no doubt cause even more havoc in Cuba when it blasts that little island sometime tomorrow. The fact of the matter is that wherever this storm goes, it's likely to be massive. I have friends on the West Coast of Florida that could get hit if it heads East, and friends in Mississippi that will get hit if it heads down the middle, and lots and lots of dear folks in New Orleans (who I expect will get the hell outta Dodge pretty quickly), if it stays on the track the weather service is now predicting.

So... I'm heeding Mary's request and taking the prayer to Our Lady of Prompt Succor out to the backyard where I can pray it in front of the statue of The Virgin that my landlord has in my little "Garden of Good Graces." Care to join me?

Happy Bubble Day!

Yesterday was my birthday and in an ongoing change of lifestyle that has been rolling out ever since last year at this time, I actually TOOK THE DAY OFF!

What did I do instead of spending the majority of my waking hours staring at the screen of my Mac? Well... to read about that go over to FoodFetish and take a look. It mostly has to do with Karen and I heading out in search of bubbles... many many bubbles.

For me this birthday felt like the culmination of a process that began for me a year ago when I finally put to bed some of the deepest struggle, lostness and pain that came out of the summer of 2005 when I first moved to - and then away from - New Orleans, before, during and after Katrina. For me it's been a year of truly rebuilding my life; finding new love, of finding a new place to be, seeing my daughter get married and enter a whole new life of her own, finding new people, new work, new enjoyments (and renewed old enjoyments), new pastimes, and new hope.

We ended the day in another BUBBLY FASHION, when we made it home in time to catch Ted Kennedy at the convention.

Watching his speech felt like a significant part of my birthday, for it ended a truly perfect day with the up note of positivity, hope for the future (even in the face of brain cancer) and the idea that a change really just might be around the corner.

It was a very good day. Indeed... it was a BEAUTIFUL day.

I'm Sorry E...

I can't not write this blog today.

The Olympics, which I love... always... and which I think are, and should be, mostly apolitical are ending tonight in Beijing.

Because yesterday I was accidentally (in that internet sorta way) directed toward a new site with very interesting and informed connections, I have been fully confronted with a reality I was very aware of, a reality I was having a problem with, and a reality that disturbs me on many many levels.

19 years ago this summer I stood in the living room of my home in Sonoma, watching a black blank TV tuned to CNN as reporters screamed news about an unbelievable event happening at that very moment. I was stunned. My mouth open, my mind astonished. There was a real revolution happening right before our ears and the juxtaposition of voyeurism and compassion was nearly impossible to stand.

These moments were then followed by one of the most astonishing images to ever cross a media screen. The single image of one man, staring down a line of tanks.


Since that time there have been many changes in China... changes theoretically for the good, and changes theoretically for the better.

One of the main changes is that in the 19 years since Tiananmen Square the Chinese government has come to own a massive percentage of our Dubya created debt. They also are creating an ubelievable market economy that, as usual, ignores, and even exploits, the reality of the lower classes in the rural areas.

There is of course the question of the issues with Tibet and ongoing human rights violations

But the most compelling question with regard to China still comes back to those days 19 years ago when first students, and then the general population stood up to say STOP. There is an amazing documentary on the event and on the inspiration of "Tank Man" which takes 90 minutes to watch, but is completely available on You Tube. Most importantly, this documentary looks at how the west has chosen to accommodate the Chinese government and it's abuses for the simple fact that there is profit... LOTS of profit... to be made there.

At the same time that we as a government, and individuals, sell ourselves out hook, line and sinker to the authoritarian government of China, we are closing in on 50 years of embargo against a little tiny island 90 miles from our shores. Because both sides of our government cowtow to the Gusanos in Miami, in search of the ever present dollar and the ever elusive chad, our government permanently (at least in my life time) exists within a reality between selling out to a set of big time "communists" on one continent and big time greed heads on our own, while pretending that "Amerkkka" stands for freedom.

I'm 54 years old tomorrow, and I don't think I can remember when we have ever REALLY stood for freedom, despite our rhetoric and despite what I want to believe. I am pretty sure, on this evening before my anniversaire, that I don't want to live life in any way that ignores any longer the basics of what really matters. But I've struggled with that reality for my whole life (literally my WHOLE life) and I still don't have a decent answer regarding how to both exist in a life that is lovely to live, AND a life that matters.

Somewhere about 22 years ago (more or less) I was visiting new friends in LA, when one of those new friends made a comment that transformed my life. Sitting around the middle of his living room, drinking wine and pontificating about what mattered in the world, a whole collection of us waxed eloquent about the way things ought to be in the age of Reagan. At that time, I had just come back from the first Witness for Peace trip to Nicaragua, and my business partner and I were developing a gospel album that chose to truly take on the ongoing story of American militarism that included, Iran, Iraq, Guatemala, Nicaragua and more (the fact that one of the songs being worked on at that very moment could have been written yesterday is for another blog at another time). My friend stopped the conversation (and stopped my heart, my brain and forever my ongoing sense of what matters) with the comment, "Plato said that three things matter; Justice, Truth, and Beauty, and I'm ready for a little beauty." We were very big on justice and truth in those days, and I thought his advocacy of beauty was vitally important.

Right now, at nearly twice the age I was when we had that conversation, I am once again looking for truth and justice, but with the added hope that maybe we could include beauty as well. I've never been able to really pull this off, and I am forever, and rather unsuccessfully, searching for it.

But these days... I seem to have a bit more hope, and on this birthday eve I really am hoping that we might get there this time.It is indeed MY AMERICAN PRAYER.