Monday, August 30, 2010

I Was Bored Today So I Watched Glen Beck. Big Mistake

I just finished watching the first fifteen minutes of Glen Beck and, just like every other time I have watched, I came away amazed at the "content" of the show. Today was the first show since his Restoring America rally at the Lincoln Memorial, so I was expecting him to talk about that triumph with a certain amount of Beckian smugness, but instead he spent fifteen minutes showing video clips of different media types attacking the whole thing. After each clip he reminded his viewers that he is the ONLY non-governmental figure IN HISTORY to have single-handedly convened 500,000 people for such a happening. (Actually, if you don't count Martin Luther King, the last person who got that many folks in one spot had to throw together a bunch of loaves and fishes to feed them all. Of course that couldn't happen in Washington because the waters around the city are too polluted.)In any event,he was sad when he shared his feelings of persecution when left-wing pundits bad mouthed the event, or when LIBERAL media outlets underestimated the crowd at only around 100,000.

I've always been amazed at the self-referential nature of the show, at the portrayal of poor Mr. Beck as a kind of martyr for the conservative cause who allows himself to be regularly pilloried by people like Joe Klein and news outlets like The Huffington Post. When he isn't congratulating himself for his courageous stands, he is drawing conspiracy theories that would make Mel Gibson blush. Well maybe not, but you get the idea. He seems more a caricature than Stephen Colbert and Colbert is trying to be a caricature.

He expressed his sadness, mixed with a little self-righteous outrage, over the skepticism with which his claims are met. What does he expect. His estimate for the crowd was five times the estimates of every other media outlet. He, of course, uses this disparity to support his claim that the media is simply a lap dog for PROGRESSIVES. Well, I'm a PROGRESSIVE (I keep putting that word in caps because whenever Beck uses it he seems to expect his audience to collectively shudder)who is skeptical of Beck's claims. After all, the last time The Tea Party had a Beck inspired rally in Washington, Fox News estimated the crowd at somewhere over a million strong. To prove their point they aired a photograph of a full-to-the-seams mall. There was one problem with the photo. It was taken years before at Bill McCartney's Million Man March. If you have been to Washington within the last couple of years, you have certainly seen the Native American Museum, an impressive addition to the network of museums in our capital. In the Fox photo, however, you could clearly see on the left the empty spot between the Washington Memorial and The Capital. If you looked closely you could also see a crane being used to erect the Native American Museum. The photo was a complete sham, just like Mr. Beck.

He even addressed the controversy over his choice of August 28 for his rally. As everyone who keeps abreast of things must know, August 28 is the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Beck claims that his choice of that date was completely innocent and merely coincidental. C'mon man! Beck would like us to believe that when he sat down with Sarah Palin and others to plan this event, they just stumbled upon August 28! "Oh look, I have the 28th free on my calendar." "Well let me see, so do I. This'll work out just fine." Please.

How can anyone in their right mind take this person seriously?

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Funereal Concerns

I've been attending more and more funerals since I retired from teaching five years ago. They all look pretty much alike. More often than not the service starts with a friend of the family in possession of a good voice or the ability to play a musical instrument offering an introductory musical piece as the mourners file into the sanctuary. That same musician will reappear periodically to offer some relief from the eulogies, remembrances, readings of the 23rd Psalm, and if the deceased was of a literary bent, the passages from Shakespeare, all offered, we are constantly reminded, by way of celebration of a life well lived. Toward the end of the service, the same musicians, or sometimes a new talent, will offer a moving rendition of "Wind Beneath My Wings," after which the mourners will all be directed to a room in the basement of the church where refreshments will be served, presumably to the accompanyment of spirited story telling. Then we all go away somehow renewed and determined to tell people we don't see as often as we should how much we love and appreciate them.

All of this has me worried about my own funeral, especially the part where members of the congregation are invited to grab a microphone and share memories of the deceased. I've noticed that most of these memories tend to be designed to make us laugh at all of the funny and unusual things the deceased did during his or her life.

I remember Frank Phelp's funeral less than a year after his retirement. Frank was my supervising teaching when I student taught. He was also Katherine's the following year. We taught with him at Green Mountain toward the end of his career and I remember the joy he had thinking about his loaded up Winnebago and all the places he and his lovely wife would travel during their golden years. That all ended all too abruptly and the church was filled with students, friends, and colleagues mad and confused about a life cut short. But then we were asked to share and laugh and celebrate.

I have to say that celebration was the furthest thing from my mind, but laugh I did when one of Frank's friends, another colleague, got up to share a couple of Frank anecdotes. The first one was designed to show Frank's prefessionalism as a teacher and it was related to us how on those occasions when Frank was burdened down by papers to grade (Frank's least favorite thing to do, I might add) he would call in sick and spend the day at home grading. Wow, what a guy. I remember exchanging shocked glances with every other English teacher in the church over that amusing anecdote. The second one was a real knee slapper. I think I can even quote it.

"I remember one time our two families were going to hang out at the lake and Frank opened the back of his car and pulled out a Weber Grill and started making hamburgers and hot dogs right there on the beach. There are hundreds of stories like that."

Well, I always suspected that Frank was something of madman, but I never fully realized to what extent until I heard the grilling at the beach story.

You see, I'm worried that no one will have any equally hilarious stories about me at my funeral. Although I do have two Webers, it has never occured to me to take either one of them to the beach. And my dawn to dusk grading frenzies on Saturdays and Sundays are pretty standard teaching stories, nothing to make people laugh uproariously at my idiosyncratic behavior.

In fact, the only funny story teller at my funeral would probably be my sister, Jeri:

"I remember one day up in Estes Park when Jimmy was twelve, I got so mad at something he said that I started chasing him around the kitchen with a butcher knife. He ran into my room, grabbed my pet turtle, ran down to Lake Estes, and skipped him across the lake! There are just hundreds of fun moments like that."

Not exactly the kind of stuff to set the table on a roar. Any laughter coming from that anecdote might sound a little uncomfortable.

Christian will end up telling the good one about how we were sitting in the living room once watching a news feature about this blind man who coached Pop Warner football. They showed film of the blind guy tackling and generally messing around with his young charges. "I bet he'd be easy to fake out," I commented. Chris cracked up for a long time over that one. But again, I'm not sure that is an appropriate anecdote for a funeral.

All of my kids could make fun of me for dogmatically making proclamations that I invariably break.

"I'll be damned if we get a VCR. We don't need one. Instead of watching stupid movies we should be reading."

"Microwaves are works of the devil and should be banned."

"We don't need a new, big screen television. We are getting along just fine with the one that we have."


It should be of no surprise that we probably have one of the world's largest collections of video tapes and discs; our microwave gets constant use (how else can you make popcorn?); and we have a 60 inch plasma screen Panasonic. I, of course, see no contradiction there, but there are probably some malcontents who do.

See what I mean. There just aren't enough good stories to enliven a respectable funeral. On the other hand, my kids all have impressive connections with the entertainment world and will undoubtedly offer a great arrangement of "Wind Beneath My Wings."

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Ono Means Delicious


The Wake Up Cafe sits on the Kuhio Highway just a few blocks before the access to Hanalei Bay. This is Puff the Magic Dragon country and this cafe provides a kind of intro to the place. Quickly delivered and well prepared eggs, so-so hashbrowns, the omnipresent Portuguese sausage, and crazy good cinnamon rolls are all readily available for cash paying customers. Franny and I had to walk over to the strip mall across the street to find an ATM. The walls are covered with yellowing pictures of surf and surfers, some of whom, judging by the autographs, must be famous. The Wake Up is clearly a young locals hangout. (Come to think of it, I'm not sure Kauai has any old locals except for a few guys with long gray beards, sandals and awesome tans who look a little like Howard Sprague in the Andy Griffith episode where he goes off to live on an island.) The servers are dressed in surf bum grunge and are clearly filling time until the next big wave. I think it is what a breakfast joint in a place like Kauai ought to be like.

Actually, the best breakfasts during our stay were the ones cooked up by Franny and Ken and served in their condo. There is a garden on the grounds of Hanalei Bay Resort that, as legend has it, was started by some enterprising employees and guests. Guests are evidently free to wander the rows of vegetables and glean what they like. This was a situation custom made for Ken, for whom foraging is a favorite pastime. If he wasn't in the condo, or on the beach, he most likely was scoring sprigs of fresh basil and strange varieties of peppers for next morning's scrambled eggs, or looking for wild boars. Of course, there is fresh fruit everywhere you turn on this island so we had freshly cut pineapple and mango at every breakfast as a prelude to that day's version of eggs and Portuguese sausage. Those breakfasts and the bloody marys that accompanied them were some of my favorite moments.

Across the street and about a half block further on is the Bar Acuda, a too clever name but a terrific tapas restaurant. Judging by the crowds trying to secure a table, it has been almost as "discovered" as the Dolphin situated a few blocks the other side of the Wake Up.

We liked the Bar Acuda so much we ate there twice. This is a very user friendly place where it is easy to order from a medium sized list of small plates whenever the feeling hits. This worked better on Thursday when we had a long and leisurely dinner. We didn't get seated until 9:15 on Saturday and we were rather brusquely informed that the kitchen stopped taking orders at 9:30. The food was every bit as good as Thursday night, but I was made to feel like I was keeping the wait staff up past their bedtimes.

One (of many) memorable tapas was a salad of island sourced honeycomb along with wafer thin slices of local fennel and apple barely dressed with a pricey olive oil and champagne vinegar. We drove all the way to the other side of the island one day in a kind of pilgrimmage to a locally sourced grocery store owned by the Bar Acuda people so we could get the ingredients for the salad. They had everything but the fennel and our homemade results were pretty close.

The Dolphin down the street is always packed and rightly so. The one night we were able to squeeze in (I'm still not sure how Ken managed to park the rental in that tiny space, or why someone didn't tow it away.)I had fish and chips made from Ono and it was indeed delicious. Kathie also had the fish and chips as she was being wonderfully brave and open minded about eating fish, not something she has ever been fond of. Ken and Franny had grilled fish specials. I had two complaints. I felt almost as rushed as that second night at Bar Acuda and the grill taste was so heavy on the fish that it was hard to tell one type from another. We had lunch there our last day and everything was slower and more comforable.

We had one wonderful day where we simply drove around to Po'ipu on the south side of the island and stopped at local food venues for snacks along the way. The Fish Hut in a strip mall (a surprisingly large number of strip malls) in Kapa'a was a winner. The grilled Ono (the stuff is too good not to order every time)plate with cole slaw was terrific.

Further up the Kuhio highway, which by this time has morphed into the Kaumuali'i highway, was a one time sugar plantation now turned into an upscale shopping experience and rum distillery. We had a sort of unplanned rum tasting and ended up drinking Mai Tais the rest of the trip. Well some of us did.

We had a great lunch at the market mentioned above, bought some locally sourced beef and fish, did a little shopping, and headed back to Princeville.

We made one last stop at Scotty's Beachside BBQ for sliders and, you guessed it, Mai Tais, making it back to the resort in time for Franny and Ken to prepare a great dinner to cap the day.

There are other places I have to mention. At the top of the list is the Kilauea Fish Market. It sits behind yet another strip mall on the road to the Kilauea Lighthouse and it might have the best food on the island. Just go up to the counter and order whatever is on special (the fish tacos ((Ono of course)) are to die for). Then go hang out at an empty picnic table and wait for someone to yell your name. We ate here twice and probably should have tried it more often, like the night we ate at that mexican joint by Foodland.

The food (brunch, lu'au, tasting menu for dinner one night) at the St. Regis was always excellent, creative, and downright beautiful. People (Christian and Bud primarily) have always told me how expensive Hawaii is. The St. Regis lived up to that label. One day Ken ordered some drinks from their pool bar and the bill came in just under $45. C'mon man!

But for the most part, I didn't think things in Kauai were exorbitantly priced when compared to the places I hang out in in Denver. For instance, I paid $19 for a bottle of Gruet champagne. That same bottle would have cost a little over $16 in Denver. One of our memorable meals at Bar Acuda ran about $90 a couple. That's pretty consistent in cost to a similar meal in Denver and probably cheaper than a like dinner in D.C.

I miss the fruit.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

My World Has Fallen And I Can't Get Up

In a terrific essay in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine ("The Right Stuff," p. 14), Virginia Heffernan details some of the changes in fact checking since her days as a fact checker for The New Yorker. It used to be that journalistic fact checkers did only what their job title suggested. They made sure their publication printed accurate information in a grammatically consistent manner. Nowadays, however, things have changed. With Google, everybody is or can be a fact checker; of course that means the very act of checking facts has sunk to the lowest common denominator. We don't check every word some politician utters on Politifact because we are passionate about accuracy. No, we check every fact because we want to play gotcha with the politician in question. If we catch an inaccuracy, we can make the politician look ridiculous at best and dishonest at worst. Fact checking has become just another way to spin things to our advantage. But Heffernan makes an even more disconcerting point when she ends her essay with ". . . if the Web has changed what qualifies as factchecking, has it also changed what qualifies as a fact? I suspect that facts on the Web are now more rhetorical devices than identifiable objects."

This illustrates the first way my world has fallen. For as long as I can remember, reading the newspaper has been one of the joys of my life. I read the paper with my grandmother when I was a grade schooler in Estes Park and we would talk about the world together over coffee (for her) and hot chocolate (for me). When Franny was a baby I would prop her up on our kitchen table and read The Denver Post outloud on weekend mornings when we weren't in a rush to get to school. Each morning when I'm not doing handy man stuff, I get home from the Y and read the Post with a pot of coffee. Then I go to the computer and look at The Daily Beast, The Drudge Report (my attempt to be listen to all sides no matter how dreary), Gary Hart's blog, Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Huffington Post, Politico, Fact Check, Politifact. By the time I'm finished with all that it is time for lunch and puttering around the house, or writing my own stuff. Sunday mornings are devoted to The New York Times and then, of course, the Broncos.

But I've noticed that all of that is beginning to change for me. The news is different than it used to be. I won't even talk about TV news because I try to make it a point to avoid it whenever possible. But the reportage in newpapers is getting more and more TVish. Actual occurances, what we used to call facts and events, are no longer the stuff of a typical new article. Instead, we are informed about how each occurance is viewed by liberal and conservative politicians. Then a continuation takes us into the paper where we are confronted by pundits on both sides of the issue who busily cut and paste sound bites, thereby keeping score on who is popular and who is not; who is going to win the next election and who is not; who is a socialist and who is a fascist and who is a tea partier, etc., etc. Then we are made privy to Sarah Palin's latest Tweet, a medium uniquely suited to her limited command of current events and history. It has all become meaningless.

I used to argue with some of my more cynical friends that it was possible to find the truth, that you could get around the spin. I'm not sure I believe that anymore. The New York Times published a ONE SOURCE piece hinting at Michael Bennet's multi-million dollar boondoggle of DPS's budget. The source was a school board member who was constantly at odds with Bennet and who actually shopped the piece to the Times so it would be published just a couple of days before the Bennet-Romanov primary. A simple fact check of that piece showed logical hole after logical hole, but the Times published anyway. I mean if you can't trust The New York Times who can you trust.

If I watch the news on Fox I come to the conclusion that I am living in a different world than the one inhabited by viewers of MSNBC. And major networks divide up their precious few minutes between Bret Favre updates and media created storms like the one over the proposed community center (read: Islamic terrorist recruiting center) in New York.

It is beginning to drive me crazy. Katherine and I were in the car on the way to the Y at 6 in the morning yesterday when I started to rail against this sad state of affairs. Katherine, concerned, leaned over and gave me a little hug as if to say "There, there. It will be alright." It has come to that.

And if that isn't enough, when I got dressed after my workout yesterday and headed to the towel desk to retrieve my membersip card there was organ music wafting through the basement of the Y. ORGAN MUSIC! I don't want organ music interrupting my exercise induced endorphin rush. But there by the towel desk was this little middle aged guy programming different rhythm lines into his Wurlitzer as he played his Born Free/Impossible Dream/Ain't She Sweet medley. AARGH!

Friday, August 20, 2010

Kauai


We have been away from home four of the last six weeks. Over half that time was spent at Jenny Lake Lodge. The rest with Franny and Ken in Kauai.

It just occurred to me the other day that we have just been in two of the most photographed places in the world. For instance, the photograph to the left was taken at sunset the night before we had to leave. The four of us were luxuriating under some viney trees that I should probably know the name of but don't. We were drinking our last bottle of champagne and being a little furtive about it, since there was a rather imposing sign at the entrance to the beach informing us that alcohol was forbidden beyond that point. We were just taken up in the moment and couldn't be bothered by municipal trivialities.

Off to the left looms Bali Hai. I know it doesn't look like that in South Pacific, but all the guides assured us that they used trick photography to make it look like some faraway island paradise. Actually, it is a nearby island paradise. It is also interesting to note that the Hawaiian language has no B in it. Of course, that is okay because Kauai isn't in the south pacific anyway.

A little bit to the left of Bali Hai is the beach where Mitzi Gaynor washed Rossano Brazzi out of her hair. I never could understand her attraction for him in the first place. Further up the coast are all kinds of recognizable location shots for Jurassic Park. A little bit inland is the waterfall where the helicopter first lands.

Forgive me for being so touristy, but I like recognizing places I've seen or read about it. Been there; done that; have the tee shirt.

So let me go on. Somewhere between Mitzi Gaynor's beach and Bali Hai is Pierce Brosnan's house, the one with the blue tile roof. A little bit up the road from Pierce's place is the red tiled compound that Liz Taylor sold in 1971 for $17,000,000. One can only guess at its worth today. I know all this because Larry, our incredibly articulate guide on the catamaran tour of the Na Pali coast told us so. He even pointed out the place where all the dinosaurs ran while the expert paleontologist and the two bratty kids were up a tree. I thought I recognized it.

I'm sorry, but I get carried away with stuff like this. In the Tetons we are always driving by some familiar spot. "Oh, look, isn't that where they shot that Chevy commercial?" "That's the spot where the town in Shane was." "John-boy Spencer got married in that chapel, and wasn't that the Mormon barn he was helping to build?" "I'll bet you anything this is where Rocky outran the Mercedes in Rocky IV."
But back to Kauai. On the south shore is where Harrison Ford and Anne Heche crashed the plane in Six Days, Seven Nights. And on the drive from our condo to "downtown" Hanalei I think we pass the field where the director in Tropic Thunder blows up. Cool.

We need to make our next little getaway to New York to see Nate and Ashley. I think I know exactly where Cher's brownstone in Moonstruck is.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Beach Reads


THE ENGLISH MAJOR - Jim Harrison

Technically, I did not read this at the beach, but immediately before we left to join Franny and Ken in Kauai for ten beautiful days.

I have mixed emotions about this book. It is the first one I read after finishing Underworld, so in that sense it was kind of a nice vacation from heaviness. On the other hand, it suffered a great deal by comparison. Briefly, it is about a sixty-something English major who dabbled in teaching for about ten years (I have to assert here that in my book being in the classroom for ten years does not qualify one as a teacher. I don't think I really became a teacher until well into my second decade in the classroom.)and then moved onto other occupations. At the beginning of this novel we discover that our "hero" is recently divorced and trying to forge a new identity sans long time wife. He isn't doing well, primarily because his emotions vacillate between self-pity and raging lust. The lust rages whenever he encounters someone, anyone, of the opposite sex. When he encounters a former student (It is a wonder he remembers any of his students.) oozing sex appeal, his lust factor grows by a factor of ten.

He takes off cross country as a way to deal with his current life crisis. I get the feeling that he has had lots of life crises in his time. The former student rides along with him to return to the family she has deserted and during the trip we watch as he discovers all sorts of heavy shit about himself and life in general. To occupy his time and give him the illusion of accomplishment, he sets himself the project of renaming all the states. He manages to make this task much more difficult than one might imagine and the reader is rewarded for his perseverance by getting a list of the renamed states on the last page. Phew!

The most interesting thing about the book for me was the title: The English Major. It seems to turn that rather common college route into a cultural stereotype and since I am in fact an English Major I found it a little irritating. I was probably irritated because I realize that English Majors are of a type. I know a lot about the type. I married one. Most of my friends are English Majors. But I'll just speak for myself. I chose the major at first because I liked to read. I wasn't really thinking about teaching, but rather I thought it would be an okay thing to occupy my time until I got into the seminary and became a priest. Marriage after my sophomore year put an ecclesiastical damper on those plans and forced me to consider the practical side of being an English Major. I quickly discovered that there was no practical side, so I turned to teaching. Now I'm through teaching and asking myself what else my college major has prepared me to do. It has given me a refreshingly literary perspective on being a handy man and allowed me to see the irony in any number of political posturings and proclamations, but other than that I'm not sure how it has prepared me for anything.

So I can see how losing your wife and never really being a teacher would push someone out onto the road armed only with a year long quest to rename states and a hard on for anything feminine with a pulse.

THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST - Stieg Larsson

This is the third and best of the adventures of Lisbeth Salander. I started it on the plane to Kauai and finished it by my second day on the beach. Like all of these novels, it is quite difficult to put down. Lisbeth gets herself into all kinds of fixes and always manages to escape by the hair of her chinny chin chin while getting graphic revenge on all her tormenters. Even if you are bothered by the idea of revenge (I still feel guilty about how much I enjoyed Dustin Hoffman finishing all the bad guys off in Straw Dogs.), you will get much satisfaction with the creative ways Lisbeth finishes off her tormenters.

I think the main reason why I like this book is because it spends a lot of time talking about journalistic ethics and even more time in courtroom drama. I love trial scenes.

A LONG WAY DOWN - Nick Hornby

Wonderful book. Four individuals all set on suicide happen to meet one New Year's Eve on the most popular rooftop for jumping in London. We have Martin, a TV breakfast show host who has pissed away his life with a fifteen year old girl; Maureen, a long suffering middle-aged mother of a hopelessly infirm son; Jess, a loud mouth punker with impulse control issues; and JJ, a mediocre rock guitarist who has just lost his band and his purpose in life. These four improbable people unwittingly offer each other support and a reason to live by the end of the novel.

That is the plot, but the charm of the book is the varying points of view and macabre sense of humor permeating every page. I loved this book and was able to finish it in two mornings of hanging out on various beaches.

INES OF MY SOUL - Isabel Allende

This is a serious book that is also exceedingly compelling. It follows the various loves of Ines Suarez through her travails in the Peru and Chile of the 1500's and in the process shows us the true history of Spain's systematic rape of South America happening at the same time that North America was being raped by our forefathers.

On one level the book is about love and soul mates. On another it is about exposing the truth of history. But mainly, I think, it is about an incredible individual who survives against seemingly impossible odds to be instrumental in founding a country. It also shows how women are behind the forming of civilizations. They provide the sustenance, the foundation upon which everything is built, while the men folk indulge in fatal pissing contests.

INHERENT VICE - Thomas Pynchon

I read this on the awful plane ride back to Denver. If you have ever read Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow, V.) you will agree that he is next to incomprehensible, so it was with a little trepidation that I approached this mystery. In this book Pynchon seems to be writing a parody of west coast mysteries, the kind that become film noir classics. The music of his language as he apes the speech patterns of drugged out sixties types in Los Angeles sounds like the patter in L.A. Confidential or Chinatown. Not much more to say about this juicy little novel. I liked it.