Lee Wochner: Writer. Director. Writing instructor. Thinker about things.


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Archive for the ‘On being’ Category

All politics is yokel

Monday, March 26th, 2007

Think this presidential race won’t get uglier than ever (Obama be damned)? Check out what’s happening with the (non-partisan) Burbank, California city council race.

I too received the “sleazy mailer” that my friend David is writing about here. One of the things it slams candidate Gary Bric for is serving alcohol to intoxicated people, without ever explaining that the man owns a bar and restaurant and has been charged something like three times in probably 20 years. How many people does he (or his bar) serve in a night? 100? Times 365 days a year, times 20 years? I’m not endorsing serving intoxicated people, but sometimes it’s a tough call — particularly when you’re in the business of selling intoxicants. The police don’t seem too concerned about his behavior — they’re endorsing him — and both the chief and the deputy chief are well aware of who is a problem (like other local bars they talk about constantly) and who isn’t.

My immediate response to said mailer was to vote by mail for the two candidates being attacked.

Lincoln, the beaver, and me

Monday, March 26th, 2007

lincolnbeaver.jpgI few months ago I was troubled by the bizarre Citibank ad campaign built around some master-slave relationship I didn’t quite understand.

Now I find that I can’t figure out why Lincoln and this… beaver?… are hanging out together. The online vid at theymissyou.com shows a drowsy insomniac lurching into his kitchen in the predawn hours to find Lincoln and this beaver awaiting him. “We’ve been expecting you,” Lincoln says as the beaver prepares to make a chess move.

Although this metamessage seems beyond one’s immediate grasp, I suspect that the subconscious grabs hold of it immediately. The beaver I think most of us would equate with nature’s most reliable sleep aid (what the French call “the little death”). Lincoln was kept awake many nights by the horrors of the Civil War and his own depression, although I wonder how many people associate him with that. Mostly, he probably means three things to most Americans:

  1. the war and emancipation
  2. the dollar and the penny
  3. an extra day off, with corresponding sales events

I don’t think one sees Lincoln and thinks about insomnia, nor do I think one sees a beaver and thinks about insomnia. (Of course, prior to “The Shining,” I never thought of oral sex with a bear as a sign of madness.) When it comes to sleeplessness, most of us think of counting sheep. So (stovepipe) hats off to whoever came up with fresh imagery for this. And on a meta level, I am confident that anyone having neurotic dreams about Lincoln and a beaver playing games in one’s kitchen would gladly take a pill that would make it stop.

When I first stumbled across this little campaign in my local CVS drug store, I peeled off a coupon for further investigation. I’m ordinarily of the take-no-drug school of self-prescription; my mother’s cure for all ailments was a shot of whiskey and bedtime. But I was curious. I’ve been suffering from various forms of sleeplessness even before the Reagan Administration (to which I originally ascribed blame). According to the website, this pill is for those “who have trouble falling asleep.” That leaves me out; I can fall asleep just fine. It’s waking up 46 minutes later that makes me crazy. Not crazy enough to want to drug myself, but all bets would be off if I were seeing dead presidents and large rodents.

More bad reporting

Saturday, March 24th, 2007

As they say in the movie trailers, “This time, it’s personal.” That’s because it’s about me.

Over at The Burbank Leader (owned by, you saw it coming, the LA Times), they’re reporting this story:

Burbank Democrats elect officers

The Burbank Democratic Club has selected its officers for the 2007 year. Club member Janet Reynolds was elected president and David Dobson was elected vice president.

Club secretary Larry Nemecek and treasurer Ken Ahern will retain their posts. Outgoing president Lee Wochner is taking a seat on the executive board.

Wochner and club member Dana Ragle will travel to the 2007 state Democratic Convention in April.

The club’s next meeting on March 28 at the Hill Street Café will feature former Assemblyman Dario Frommer, who will speak about his career and future plans. For more information, call (818) 288-2649.

Before this story ran, I sent an email to my fellow members of the executive board wondering what the Leader would get wrong and offering a few ideas. Well, I was way off-base; the Leader found a unique way to get far more wrong than I suggested. Here’s what they got wrong:

  1. I’m not “taking a seat” on the executive board — I was already on it, as president. Now that I’m the immediate past president, I still have a seat. I believe we told them this.
  2. They have misspelled Ken Ahearn’s name. Yet again. Remember that first rule of journalism I keep quoting? “Get people’s names right.”
  3. While it is technically true that “Wochner and club member Dana Ragle will travel to the 2007 state Democratic Convention in April,” it isn’t because of an election by the Burbank Democratic Club. We were elected by Democratic voters in the 43rd Assembly District. (Which I believe we told them.) This is a huge distinction. Dana and I aren’t representing the club, which is comprised primarily of Democrats in Burbank — we’re representing 190,000 Democrats in a large chunk of Los Angeles County. This reporting is doubly wrong — both in implying that it was a club election, and in not making it clear that we’re delegates to the convention rather than “travelers.”

With regard to my election as delegate, I previously covered some of this ground here.

I show up in the media only occasionally and I don’t generally have time to correct the errors. (And by “errors,” I mean factual errors, not opinions. I mean verifiably erroneous reporting, the sort that should not be reported by reporters, or should be caught by editors or fact-checkers.) What must life be like if you’re an actual media presence? The Burbank Leader isn’t out to get me, they’ve just made mistakes; but what if you find yourself on the wrong side of The Drudge Report, or Fox News, or a producer at CNN or 60 Minutes? What must it feel like to wake up every morning and hear your name on the radio, on television, see it in newspapers and magazines, and feel to the core of your being that that is not you? And the only thing you have to back it up with is facts, and facts just aren’t that interesting any more.

The good ol’ red, gray, and blue

Saturday, March 24th, 2007

Over at Newsweak, a rabbi discourses on the demise of Captain America and gets it almost entirely wrong:

Captain America was created by Joe Simon in 1941 as a fictional ally in the war against Hitler and Nazi fascism. In the most recent issue, Cap was gunned down in New York City after 65 years of fighting for freedom and the American way of life. Pop culture mavens said that Cap’s death symbolized the death of the American passion for freedom and of the kind of heroes who give their lives in its defense.

This particular maven said something different: that Cap’s demise ipso facto symbolized the demise of the American symbol of freedom, one it wasn’t clear we deserved any more.

Rabbi Marc Gellman continues:

It’s obvious to me that movies and comic books can make this case better than any subtle novel and more authentically than any spin-tested political speech. Comic books, and the graphic novels that evolved from them, are about the struggle of good against evil. Other art forms can make the claim that everything is gray, nothing is true, and nothing eternal. Of course these latter claims may be right, but if they are, then the age of heroes is over and both Cap and Leonides are really dead.

It may be “obvious” to him that comic books reflect a dualistic morality, but as someone who has actually read a comic book at some point since 1941 (including just last night), I can say he’s wrong. (Which is not an uncommon reaction from me when religious leaders say something is “obvious.”) As we discussed here just recently, comic books post-Watergate have indeed become more and more gray. The conflicting necessities of doing right in a world without good choices — precisely contra the Manichaeian belief system Gellman thinks pervades comic books — was the entire subtext of the Civil War storyline.

Finally, Gellman opines:

Embracing the need to spiritually justify the fight for world freedom carries its own perils. Chief among these dangers is what we now see in the world of Islamic fascism: the use of religion to extol death and tyranny. The biblical name for this is idolatry, and the seductions of idolatry are hard for some to resist. In the end, though, the spiritual truth of freedom’s cause is eventually clear to all.

Although he’s right that we “now” see the danger in Islamic fascism, when it comes to the misuse of religions that seek to create utopia (here or hereafter), I suggest the rabbi dig into some 20th century history. Or Medieval history. Or the history of the Crusades. Or of the Holy Roman Empire. Because this “use of religion to extol death and tyranny” is not precisely a new thing. The Founders of this nation were right that people yearn for freedom (even though they were unable at the founding to grant it to all). They were also right to recognize that when left unchecked man is a morally bankrupt creature and that the freest form of religious practice is for the state to have no attachment to religion.

Where could one find some of the themes I’m talking about? Throughout comic books post-9/11. I just wish that media critics, either religious or not, who choose to write knowingly about comic books would show some evidence that they had actually read any.

iPhone, iTV, i want it all

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007

apple_tv_intro_graphic.jpgEvery day it becomes more clear that I should not have sold that Apple stock a couple of years ago. If anything, I should have sold it now so I could buy the new Apple products I want.

I don’t think of myself as a true gizmo hound (although I did have a home computer in 1980, and was on the Internet very early, and was an early adopter of first the Handspring Visor, then the Visorphone, then the Treo). No, it’s that I like useful gizmos that help me with information exchange (communication), because that underlies every single bit of what I do, professionally and personally. I am scheduled to the max, and my Treo helps me handle that. My wireless card (and/or Treo) allow me to get email most places I need to. Synching to .Mac allows me, potentially, to access backups from anywhere in the world. Could I have survived without these things even 10 years ago, let alone in Chaucer’s time? Sure. But now I don’t have to.
iphone.jpgAs I shared here previously, I greatly covet the iPhone. The Treo was state of the art; now, by comparison, the iPhone is a Lamborghini and the Treo is a Chevy Aveo. But the Treo does get the job done, at least for the moment. So maybe what I really want first is:

The iTV (or Apple TV). Why? Because I am indeed one of those guys with a bigscreen TV who finds himself all too often huddled over a 15″ laptop screen watching video. Sometimes it’s downloaded from iTunes, sometimes it’s streamed (as from CBS.com, where for some inexplicable reason I continue to watch “Jericho”), sometimes it’s made and edited by me myself with my Canon digital camcorder. Wouldn’t it be better to just beam it via the iTV to the large flatscreen, for the enjoyment of all in the household? (Especially when it’s a movie of my short play, or a movie of a speech or presentation I just gave? What could be more entertaining on the large screen?)

I’m not the only one pondering the calculation of iPhone or Apple TV (assuming one is not going to buy both, which this one is not, at least not right away). Over on Macworld, they’re wondering which will go over bigger. (And just 10 years ago, this was not the question on analysts’ minds; the question was when would Apple be going out of business.)

Good new music

Tuesday, March 20th, 2007

I get frustrated with people who say things like “There’s no good music any more,” as though some previous time (usually their own adolescence and young adulthood) held the key to all good things. Actually, there’s lots of great new music of all sorts — it just has a hard time finding a place on airwaves dominated by “classic rock,” which caters to the selfish stinginess of the 60’s and early 70’s. I say this as a fan and follower of the Beach Boys, the Who, Pink Floyd and many other great bands who wind up on those classic rock stations — I just wish the format would open up to include new artists.

Luckily we have the internet (including iTunes), satellite radio, and Indie 103.1. Between those three venues, some terrific new music gets out.

Three albums in particular I want to plug (and put into the ears of those who think “good music” ended decades ago, whether they agree with me or not):

goodbadqueen.jpg

  1. “The Good, the Bad, and the Queen” by, um, an unnamed band that insists its name is not the same name as its album. (Officially, the band has no name.) The band includes Damon Albarn (Gorillaz, Blur), Paul Simonon of the Clash, the guitarist of the Verve, and Fela Kuti’s old drummer. That’s a diverse bunch. The producer is Danger Mouse (of Gnarls Barkley, another recent fave of mine, as well as The Gray Album), and the atmosphere is a decided mix of drug-induced-experimental Beach Boys, early Pink Floyd just before Syd Barrett fried his brain, the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, and, um, a seedy carnival in town for one night. You haven’t heard new anything that sounded like this in more than 30 years. I’m sure Van Dyke Parks owns multiple copies. I love this album, and if you’re like most people you’ll absolutely hate it — so you’re forewarned.

tvotr-cookie.jpg“Return to Cookie Mountain” by TV on the Radio. If “The Good, the Bad, the Queen” is a creepy clown acid trip, this album is the soundtrack to that post-apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy novel I keep talking up. I’m so taken with “Wolf Like Me,” which I had heard all of twice, that I had a dream in which I was listening to it; I guess it made an impression. I saw this band two years ago when they opened for Franz Ferdinand at the Greek, and at the time I thought this was quite possibly the worst band I’d ever seen (a distinction soon achieved by The Polyphonic Spree, who opened for Brian Wilson and who were loudly and justly hooted and laughed at by whole sections of the Hollywood Bowl). I couldn’t imagine the raves they’d earned from people like David Bowie, whose opinion always counts. Even while I thought TV on the Radio was bad, very bad, I also could see that they had probably alienated some very key people at the Greek, i.e., the people working lights and sound, because they were mostly unlit and had a sound mix so bad I felt we were listening to a band playing underwater and on a distant planet. Listening to this record proves once again that Mr. Bowie is wise in all things.

pic-pereubu-wihw.jpgWhile Pere Ubu is in no way a new band, “Why I Hate Women” is a new album by a band that continues to change. At times I find myself wondering if this may not be the best album in their 30-year history. They actually pull off what amounts to a blues song with “Blue Velvet,” featuring a haunting harmonica turn by Robert Kidney (The Numbers Band, the Golden Palominos). That song is bracketed by the atmospheric small-town ghost story of “Babylonian Warehouses” and the teenage raveup “Caroleen”; together these become a mini-suite probably never equaled in the history of the band. The rest of the album, especially “Love Song,” is just a strong. Vocalist David Thomas assays the neurotic subconscious of lost people on empty roads, but it is Robert Wheeler, playing theremin and synthesizers, whose sonic architectures evoke alien landscapes rarely explored.

Not to your tastes? I understand. But now more than ever there is a breadth of new music of all sorts, utterly available if you can get past the urgent determination of the mainstream radio dial.

The end of the “free” society

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

Don’t ever believe that Western governments are “free” societies — someone must always pay.

In this case, it’s brothers Vincent and Michael Hickey, at left, of Birmingham, England, who spent 18 years in jail after being wrongly convicted — but will still have to pay for their prison room and board.

Further evidence that Franz Kafka secretly runs everything.

Predicting the future (profitably)

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

Think you can’t predict the future?

Ray Kurzweil says you’re wrong, in this think piece in Inc.
What I love about this:

  1. his optimism
  2. that his optimism is built on fact, not belief
  3. that it rings true, given the exponential growth in technological efficiency

To that point: I’m writing this on a MacBook Pro. Ten years ago I would have been writing this on a PowerMac 6300, which had one of those cool new 3.5″ disk drives. I would be writing it, but I wouldn’t be posting it — blogs didn’t exist yet, and neither did the internet in the way we know it. Ten years before that, I would have been writing this on an Apple IIGS with a dial-up modem. Ten years before that, I would have been working on paper with an IBM Selectric II, and other paper conveyances (called “a stamp and envelope”) for distribution.

Kurzweil thinks this exponential growth in power is going to hit the energy industry. I agree. And then at some point, if indeed the war in Iraq was about oil, there won’t be a need for such interventions.

Another day of mourning for newspapers

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

Yesterday, the Washington Post trained its laser vision on the zeitgeist of “dumbed-down” game shows — which had me wondering if the writer had ever seen any game shows previously. (I know that my generation took its cultural cues from “Match Game.” Oh, the good ol’ days.)

Today, I discover that the paper’s online version seems to be doing video interviews with, um, nobodies, talking about nothing in particular. Click here for a case in point. To my trained ear, Mr. New (great name) is a case study in “unreliable narration,” in which while he believes himself a knight errant, we can see what a neurotic loser he is.

If only there were some news to cover, or some interesting modern philosophers to interview, and if only we had a newspaper or a website that could disseminate this information.

A clarification from the Jeni family

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

He wasn’t “down,” he was ill.