Merry Christmas

Thank you for spending time here. And best wishes for the holiday.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Bing & Bowie

Strangest duet ever.

There's a story behind it, too.

Leonard Cohen - Story of Isaac (Live Songs)

ALEX CHILTON covers "Sugar, Sugar" (the Archies) 1970

Local Lear

My father has a friend, Pat, who worked for the fire department, but who also was an actor and even ran his own theatre for several years. He found a cheap place, fixed it up, lived upstairs and put on whatever plays he wanted to in the theatre on the ground level. He did modern classics, old plays and even one of his own, which was a funny and entertaining piece of work.

Pat is a gruff, macho Irish guy with a square face, short nose and contrastingly soft brown eyes. His voice, gravely from whisky and cigarettes, was straight out of film noir. He made some money doing commercials where he played a version of the George C. Scott version of General Patton. He, of course, made more money from those commercials that only played in a few local markets than he ever did as a theatre owner.

He liked to smoke Mores -- long, dark cigarettes, and he was a helluva a performer. Pat acted brilliantly, and acted as well as anyone I've seen, off or on the New York stage.

His personal life was less accomplished. I didn't even know he had children until a few months ago. He had been married, to a woman he'd met later in life, and who was younger that him. She committed suicide a few years ago.

(Goriot on his death bed)

Then he suffered a stroke. On what he thought might be his deathbed, he told his son and his daughter that he had a lot of gold coins stashed around his home, and he told them where they were. The coins add up to $400,000 or so, depending on the market.

His daughter hasn't been able to find work for two years. He's helped her, but only so much. His son has a government job. Decent money, but you know how that goes.

He recovered from the stroke, but they had him committed. They found a so-so retirement home. In one wing of the home, they keep the lunatics, the demented and the non compos menti in locked rooms.

So Pat found himself there, locked down, among the insane. He tried to convince the staff that he was, in fact, sane. As would any person suffering from insanity.

Proving your sanity is quite difficult. Especially when you're old, have a bad temper and are coming out of a near-debilitating stroke. It doesn't help when your two children, seemingly caring and concerned, insist that you desperately need psychiatric care

What the officials didn't know was that the children rifled the stash of gold coins. Kind of a pre-inheritance bounty

Back in the ward, Pat made some desperate calls to old friends whenever he had a chance. Finally, some old firefighters got together  -- for safety, just in case -- and paid him a visit. To their surprise, Pat was lucid.

"No crazeir'n he ever was," was how one of them put it.

Now Pat's lawyered up. He's taken his children to court to get himself released and some money back so he can finish his days with some comfort.

When you look at the literary and historical evidence, it's obvious that inheritances cause more trouble than they're worth. At the same time, you have an overpowering craving to build something up -- wealth, connections, experience -- that you can pass along.

Just now, I have safely avoided the dangers of passing along any level of wealth to my children. I have, and will continue to remove any temptations from them. They won't have much from me, other than my blessing and whatever advice they ask for.

It's probably better for all of us that way.

50 Cent's Words of Wisdom

John Lee Hooker - Blues for Christmas

iKEA

An Ikea store opened not far from where I work. It's the first one around here. Every now and then, something happens that makes you realize, yes, Denver still is kind of a hick town. The grand opening of Ikea was one of them. You'd've thought it was the second coming of Christ, or at least, the Pope. Naturally, I stayed as far away from that as possible.

I needed a desk for a gift, and I'd looked around all kind of stores, which means for me, used furniture places, curated used furniture places, and Target. Finally, I broke down and looked for our very own Scandinavian Design store. 

That was owned by a surprisingly attractive Danish woman in her 60s or 70s. Her son, a jerk with a pony tail who had pretensions to being all Euro-cool, ran the place. It was crammed with every manner of teak table, sleek desks, sensuous black leather chairs, space age curved couches, sideboards, chandeliers -- you name it. You could barely move through the space, let alone decide what creamy leather would get the privilege of your refined backside. 

It had closed.

So down I went to Ikea. The store here is probably visible from outer space. It's vast, I tell you, and decked out with the navy and yellow colors of the Swedish flag. Hard to miss, even from the interstate.

The baby boom generation has given posterity three great achievements: civil rights, better cuisine and nice packaging. So, let's be fair and ignore, for a moment, the monumental idiocy, greed and pus-soaked mediocrity with which they've bathed the world.

Ikea is a kind of perfection of this for a certain kind of boomer. It's Euro. It's all design-y and shit. And it's dirt cheap. I didn't want to think of what kind of rape of the earth or wherever third world hell hole this stuff must come from. I just wanted a desk.

So I put aside those qualms and navigated my Honda through the immaculate concrete parking garage with its pleasingly high ceilings. I followed the highly legible signage to the entrance. A sudden nostalgia swept over me. I tried to figure out why. Oh yeah: all the colors are Lego colors: those primary yellows, navies and reds from those tender days, long ago, resurrected suddenly for my own delectation.

Once inside, I decided to sample the famous Swedish meatballs. That's about the second thing everyone talks about when they talk about Ikea. I grabbed a tray with something in a green sans serif font written on it. A very nice and cute girl ladled meatballs, gravy, mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam on a minimalist plate.

I took my seat at a pristine, white table. I reflected that, in my house, with just my family, a white like that could not remain so pure for very long. 

Then it hit me: a profound sense of dislocation. I felt like I'd dropped into some mid-sized airport with a good architect, maybe in Portland or Malmø or Xinhua. I was going to say that it was odd to be so geographically divorced, but it was, in fact, quite familiar and comforting. I felt at home. Nice posters about Swedish architecture. Hard glossy surfaces, relieved by ornamental plastic light fixtures in tasteful organic forms.

Looking around me, it felt oddly Swedish though. In Colorado, most of the white people come from Scandinavia, Britain or Germany. So you get a lot of stocky, thick thighed, fair-haired folks, or volks, and if they were thinner and better dressed, you'd almost believe you were in Gothenburg. Weird. Weird, that it's not weird at all, but rather the familiar and by now much noted feature of current life. What would be really strange would be standing out in a field of dun colored short grass, seeing a buffalo. This is just your garden-variety alienation, which is no longer alienation at all, but rather comfortingly familiar and homey.

Once fortified, I sallied out. Ikea has a specific layout of this serpentine maze that forces you through all the display spaces. Everyone knows about it. But, even forearmed, you just . . . go with the flow. Now, I'm all trained about impulse purchases and up-selling and merchandise display, so I'm on my guard. Even so, I have to admire the sheer engineering brilliance brought to every facet of the place. 

I make my selection, write it down, make my way -- after a few slightly claustrophobic moments -- down to a vast warehouse, where I, myself, pull out my table legs and top and then check myself out. I haven't talked to a single salesperson the whole time. 

I load my very reasonably priced stuff in my car, wondering, a little, if all the jokes about assembling Ikea furniture are going to come true.

But so far: Friction free.

And I think of the crammed Scandinavian furniture store that's out of business. I wonder if the impossibly snobbish pony tailed guy got another job, and if his mother is still striking in her 80s. I miss him, slightly, even though he was a royal pain in the ass. 

I remember that what they sold was actually wood and not particle board or laminate. Their store reflected their own bet that what they chose would click. 

And I think - oh so dramatically, yes --  that global totalitarianism would look a lot like the Ikea store. It would be well engineered and thought out. It would be carefully deracinated. It would be well designed, but accessible at the same time. It would not make you feel stupid, but, rather, flattered for being in on things. You'd feel good, like a kid with Legos, doing stuff that worked for the greater good and if things felt a little artificial and slightly out of place, well, you'd get used to that right away.

It would be like Starbucks and Apple -- irresistible, well executed, letting you know that we're all in on the joke together, but it's such a fun and pleasant trick that you wouldn't mind at all being a part of it.

And I missed the asshole with the pony tail even more.

Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto James Brown

Christmas Party

The problem with office Christmas parties is that they're never like they are in the movies. Growing up, I saw movies with parties where everyone got drunk and into trouble, with tinsel and ironic holiday music. Humping on the boss's desk, drunken jokes, or at least, later, photocopying your ass on the Xerox machine. You know the drill.

It's a great tool for a screenwriter, if you think about it. All sorts of conflicts can arise; the story can spin in a whole new direction. Even the great Billy Wilder had a Christmas party in The Apartment.

When I started my first regular day job, I assumed the parties sucked because my coworkers were really boring people. For a few years in a row, they were odd affairs with full on grotesqueries, as if someone had convinced David Lynch to plan them.

One year, for example, it was in a bar that's on top of a winding, narrow road. The place itself usually hosts country bands, a no-frills place covered with avocado green paint and wood paneling. A flaming gay man was the DJ. The closeted Mormon and he got on pretty well, although the Mormon's wife looked progressively more and more worried. All the dj's jokes fell flatter than a stretch of Kansas interstate. Fat women with wide mouths and heavy makeup dished up prime rib. The rest was strained conversation.

Yeah, no story there. Just another dead boring night, when you tally up the price of conformity in slow painful minutes.

After the company re-arranged itself and we broke away, explorers of the digital future, the parties changed a bit. They became more elaborate. No dingy dusty mansions or roadhouses for us, no sir.  About half the employees would sneak off to an alley or someplace and smoke dope.  Despite this and the free booze that began to flow about the same time, everyone stayed pretty decorous. There was an infamous moment when a young woman started making out with her roommate on a dare.

Yeah.

So this year, my boss's boss's boss -- three levels up the org chart! -- hosted at his house.  He lives in a tony neighborhood in a Tudor style brick place that looks relatively modest from the outside, but once you're inside, it just seems to keep going and going in a series of immaculately decorated rooms. The style is sort of American, relaxed Martha Stewart. It's the kind of house that can, however, accommodate an 18-foot Christmas tree. About which he and his wife joked, appropriately, but it makes an impression.

It's tempting to make fun of it all in a snarky, cynical way, and to take the well-established pose of the superior outsider. Which is more than just a pose, in my personal case, believe me.

But I reflected a bit, as I drank the Prosecco with the festive red pomegranate seeds at the bottom of the glass. First, he was hosting, so it's rude. Even if he will write the entire event off of his taxes, I'm still in the man's home, accepting his hospitality.

Second, he's playing the game well. No one will be writing books about him, or even very many articles in Forbes magazine. But I'm pretty sure he's not a sell out. He majored in business, got his MBA, jumped into the corporate world, lived abroad. It looks as if that's what he wants: the office, the business class flights. He adores his daughters, and he's not an asshole at work. On the contrary, he's respected, he treats people correctly, and he's doing a good job by most people's opinion. He's also making a shit load of money, and should be coming into a cool few millions when the Company goes public.

Ever since I read Nietzsche, and I had this notion reinforced by that Kierkegaard book I read, I've really been on the guard against ressentiment. Envy. This awful peasant impulse to bow and scrape on the one hand and vandalize on the other. It's just small to get worked up about the boss having a more opulent lifestyle. I don't want to become some screechy low-rent Underground Man. But I have to struggle, and I resent the struggle at the same time, knowing that it's much simpler for nearly everyone else in the room.

Because, if left to my own devices, I'd hate all that ranged perfection of Viking stoves, and Persian rugs and the bookshelves empty except for an old edition of the World Book encyclopedia. Hate it, but kind of be implicated, because I'd buy nice shit too if I earned as much money as he did, probably. It'd just be different shit, a matter of taste rather than ethics.

Plus, he more or less earned it. He works hard. I don't think he works as hard as a teacher, a nurse or a firefighter. It isn't fair that his set of skills is so much more richly rewarded. But he does work; he's not a precious little dauphin. And if he's at all human, which he seems to be, he has to have nights filled with dread. He has a lot riding on his show.

No, what doesn't fit in this picture is me. If you're in a game, you should play to win. I'm working the first post office job I've ever had -- that is, the kind of gig where you show up, you more or less work, and you go home. My family needs the health insurance. Hell, I need the health insurance.

So you take up the oldest pose there is -- you say to your self, I work there, but I'm not of there. I'm just doing time, collecting my check, working on what counts on the side. I guess this is true, but the longer I'm there I wonder if, instead of being a heroic artist and family man, I'm just a second-rate employee.

Time for a change.

Birthday

Today's my son's birthday. It's tempting to launch into a sentimental post that would be impossible to read, even for me.

But I will say that this day is the anniversary of one of the best days in my life. I'm grateful that he's here. I'm proud of him, and he's made my life richer and better by his presence.

We'll go down to a Brazilian steak house later. His choice. One of our few family traditions.

He'll never really know how glad I'll be to be sitting across the table from him.

I read Kierkegaard

I read The Present Age by Soren Kierkegaard.

In it Kierkegaard starts out by contrasting his present age - the 1840s, with the revolutionary age that exploded a few decades before then. He finds his time wanting.

Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiams and shrewdly relapsing into repose.

It is a time, he says, filled with shallow materialism, virtue put on for show, and "reflection." Reflection isn't genuine thought, but more a variety of self consciousness, superficial brain spasms. He discerned a preference for appearance over action and a flight from inwardness. Instead of passionate enthusiasm, we suffer from envy -- all products of being stuck in the process of reflection.

Because of this paralysis, we fall into ressentiment -- we can't stand what's truly great. We need to level whatever surpasses our abilities. We exalt the mass and squash great individuals. The greatest engine of that levelling is the "public" -- a phantom manufactured by the press and sustained by society. This creates the necessary pressure to adopt whatever ideas public opinion cherishes.

A by-product of this is that more individuals will aspire to be nothing at all in order to become a member of this public. They abandon themselves to distraction and to gossip. They are indolent rather than bad, given over to sensuality and easy laughter.

The mass prefers talkativeness over silence, chatter about trivialities to real conversation or solo reflection. We take on the attitudes and values of the public, and ignore or never cultivate our own ideas: "The introspection of silence is the condition of all educated social intercourse; the exteriorized caracature of inwardness is vulgarity and talkativeness."

He urges us to develop an inner life, and to return to a hierarchical society, one based on the recognition of true authority. We should accept suffering and leap into the arms of God. To act with boldness and faith.

As usual with me and those 19th century guys, I agree with his diagnosis, but can't accept a lot of the prescribed cure. Overall, I was surprised by how immediately applicable Kierkegaard's critiques were. If you streamlined the language and reduced some of the complexity of his arguments, it sounds very much like more recent complaints about how shallow and stupid we have become.

It made me think that the society of the spectacle is more of a continuation of what occurred before it, and made me remember that the struggles we're facing are not new to a time dominated by electronic media. The Internet is less a rupture with the past than the perfection of modernity, distilling processes that started with mass industrialization.

Key quotes:

...ours is the age of advertisement and publicity (in 1847)

As soon as the artist prostitutes his own reality he is no longer essentially productive.

In the end, therefore, money will be the one thing people will desire, which is moreover only representative, an abstraction. Nowadays a young man hardly envies anyone his gifts, his art, the love of a beautiful girl, or his fame; he only envies him his money. Give me money, he will say, and I am saved. 

It is a fundamental truth of human nature that man is in capable of remaining permanently on the heights, of continuing to admire anything. 

Reflection is not the evil; but a reflective condition and the deadlock which it involves, by transforming eh capacity for action into a means of escape from action, is both corrpt and dangerous, and leads in the end to a retrograde movement.