Here’s the new album from David Byrne & Brian Eno, offered as free streaming special to you* as a faithful reader of this blog.
*Other, non-readers of this blog, might be able to get it too — but they’re not quite so special, are they?
Just now I got a call from a telemarketer soliciting donations for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Paraphrasing, here’s her closing:
“Mr. Wochner, as you know, our veterans have sacrificed so much for our freedom. That’s why we’re making these calls on behalf of the Veterans of Foreign Wars so that we can honor our brave veterans who have sacrificed so much for us. The top honor we give them, which shows them really how much we respect their sacrifice, is $100. We do have another level of honor, which is only $50. Should I put you down for that, or for the top honor?”
Her honeyed voice betokened a southerner: the sort of good ol’ gal who pronounces “you” as “yew” and does her best to ingratiate herself with fellow good ol’ folks. (In other words, John Edwards, with fewer $400 haircuts.) Given the target market for this appeal, I’m sure the selection of calling firms and their calling voices is intentional. (And why am I getting this sort of call more frequently? Because once I subscribed to Reason, the magazine of the libertarians, all sorts of unattractive causes and groups have tried to embrace me as their own.)
When she asked which “honor” she could put me down for, I said: “I think the best way to honor our veterans is not to invade countries that don’t attack us, so they don’t have to die or have limbs blown off.”
After a pause, during which she did not acknowledge that comment, she did her best to tie back in the notion of sacrifice (which I had just noted), and how they were due this honor.
So I replied, “How much of this goes to the veterans?”
In that molasses drawl – still working to be polite, but hearing the edge in my voice – she said, “Excuse me?”
“I said, how much of this ‘honor’ goes to the veterans?”
“Well, that’s a very complicated answer.”
“Actually, it’s a very simple answer. You’re calling from a for-profit fundraising organization, right?”
Meekly: “Yes.”
“And the non-profit has to file paperwork showing the fundraising expense behind this. So what is it? What percentage goes to ‘honoring’ the veterans?”
“Sir, I can put my manager on. I’m sure she has answers to these questions.”
There was a click, and then a woman I take to be the manager picked up.
“This is Leeza. Sir, did you have a question?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been invited to honor our veterans by paying either $50 or $100 to honor them. I’d like to know how much of the honor goes to them.”
She repeated the same line: “That’s a very complicated answer.”
I explained to her why it wasn’t. And then, in what she intended as a long answer with more camouflage, and which included an offer to mail me some “information,” she let it slip: “about 20%.”
“Did you say ‘about 20%’?” I said.
“Again, sir, that’s a complicated answer.”
“No, you said ‘about 20%.’ So it’s less than 20%. So if I send you $100, less than 20 bucks is in some way, shape, or form going to make its way to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. That doesn’t sound like much of an honor. In fact, it sounds rather dishonorable, especially given the level of their sacrifice, which you keep noting. I mean, if they’re dying over there, or getting their limbs blown off, surely they deserve more than 20%. More than 50%! I think they should get it all.”
Now unsure what to say, she offered again to mail me something. I decided to let her off the hook so I could share this story with you, and said, “That’s okay. As you can tell from my questions, I’m not going to be sending a donation.”
“Thank you very much, sir,” she said, and hung up – no doubt striking me forever from their particular call list.
I did want to say other things, but I think they would have fallen on deaf ears. I know you’ll take them to heart, though, so here they are:
Although of course there are always fundraising expenses, if the cause is worthy it’s shameful to keep the majority of a donation. If the cause isn’t worthy, it doesn’t merit a donation.
I’m sickened by the treatment of our soldiers and our veterans, and I recognize our enormous obligation to them. But we do pay taxes to take care of them, and if that isn’t happening – whether at Walter Reed or in the field – then we need to fix that system and prosecute the people at fault. Sending phony tributes through telemarketers does nothing.
Finally, our best long-term solution is to elect people to Congress and the White House who have a better understanding of the world and how it works – and who therefore know better than to embroil us in dangerous, ill-conceived, badly executed foreign missions with no clear exit strategy.
Sending money to people turning a buck off the mutilation of our armed forces is stupid and disgusting.
The new issue of the Atlantic arrived today in the mail. It provides interesting reading for anyone who has been following the recent presidential campaign closely.
“The Front-Runner’s Fall,” by Joshua Green, details what went wrong with the Clinton campaign — from the inside. After it was over, Green contacted many of the people who worked on that campaign, and they were quick to oblige by supplying him with insider emails and memos that, I assume, advanced their individual agendas. (I.e., “It wasn’t my fault.”) You won’t find anything terribly surprising — the view from inside looks just like the view we all got from outside: of a campaign at odds with itself, and hobbled early on by crippling hubris — but I did come away again relieved that Hillary Clinton has no shot at the presidency, at least not right now. If you’re disinclined to read the whole piece, allow me to pull out the single most salient insight:
Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.
We’ve currently got a quote-unquote president who makes decisions — albeit all too quickly and poorly. Imagine following the current catastrophe with someone incapable of making any decision and incapable of managing a staff, even the rather small staff of a campaign. You can’t be “leader of the free world” if you need your husband to make the final call on whether or not to air a TV ad. (An incident revealed in Green’s piece.) Say what you will about Obama, but he has certainly managed his campaign well, mounting an effective insurgency that continues to impress.
Elsewhere in the issue, James Fallows views and critiques all 47 (!) of the primary debates. If you thought cleaning the Augean Stables was a job unfit for most, imagine watching 60+ hours of shifting statements about Iraq, illegal aliens, and the meaning of the word “bitter.” Fallows shrewdly decides out that Obama “won” the Democratic debates by playing a consistent character, where Clinton kept redefine herself to do better. For some of us, this is an uncomfortable reminder of 2000, when George W. Bush telegraphed the boorish cluck he would prove to be, but was seen as doing “better than expected” and praised by the press for his consistency. (While Al Gore went from extravagant sighing in Debate 1, to careful reticence in Debate 2, to finally finding his voice — when it was too late — in Debate 3.) The Atlantic website carries some videos that back up Fallows’ analysis; chiefly, the video of Carter and Reagan serves to remind me why I was a supporter of John Anderson that year.
Fallows makes this forecast for the eventual McCain-Obama debate:
Once he gets on the stage, McCain will try to remind Obama of Hillary Clinton—that is, of someone he must take seriously, someone who is willing to challenge him and even insult him to his face. Obama “is vain about his idealism and ‘nobility,’” a staff member for one of Obama’s Democratic opponents (not Clinton) told me on the phone. “He is thin-skinned about having his motives and competence questioned, so that’s what you do.” Grizzled pols like Hillary Clinton or her husband would laugh off such an attempt; Obama may still be innocent enough to be shaken by it. McCain made many dismissive references to Obama after Obama became the presumptive nominee. The easy next step is to do so while looking at him.
This sounds like good advice for McCain. We’ll see if Obama is dumb enough to get rattled by it.
It’s easy now to look back and mock the George W. Bush who made this pronouncement about his new friend Vladimir Putin:
“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
Easy to mock, yes, and no, I won’t resist.
Because now, seven years later, Pootie-Poot has announced himself as someone who is somehow resistant to the quote-unquote president’s powers of telepathy and x-ray vision. He did this by invading Georgia in a not-very straightforward or trustworthy way, darn it. It’s almost like this Russian guy has been thinking one thing and saying another. It’s too late to educate the quote-unquote in this sort of arcane behavior, which relies upon a skill set somewhat above that of walking while chewing gum, but I have confidence that his successor will be able to handle it.
At this point Bush isn’t the point, barring his late-term ability to further botch an international crisis (a topic which again raises the question of just how much damage he can do in the remaining months; this assumes, of course, that he actually leaves office). But while I’m tempted to leave aside further criticism that merely adds spittle to the hurricane, I just can’t part without enumerating the steps that led to this incursion by Russia into Georgia:
Yes, Georgia is an independent nation — as independent as one can be when bordered by an overwhelming power willing to use overwhelming force, and abetted only by a feckless West that makes bold promises but never delivers. Now it’s time to rattle our swords and seem aghast, while maintaining the tacit admission that if Kansas ever decides to go Communist, it’s unlikely to be allowed to stand.
Since May, I’ve been in training to do an AIDS marathon this fall. (If you’d like to sponsor me and haven’t already done so, please click here.) In that time I have learned many things — things so astonishing to me that I’m considering collecting them into a book. Maybe it wouldn’t be this generation’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” or even close, but it would be by me. Here’s just some of what I’ve learned.
1. Your achievement is your own. No one else cares.
On Sunday, I ran my furthest distance yet — 13 miles. To me, this is an amazing accomplishment. I came home and told my little boy and he said, “Oh, yeah? I can run a thousand miles.” His dead certainty was disconcerting. I told my wife I had run 13 miles and she looked at me said, about my forthcoming marathon trip in the fall, “I guess you expect me to change my work schedule.” Nobody at the training site was impressed either, because they had just run the same 13 miles.
2. The foulest place on Earth is not where you think.
Is it the bottom of the world’s largest garbage pit, in Lagos, Nigeria? No. Is it the drinking water beneath Pittsburgh, PA? No. It’s not even the dark thoughts in the furthest corner of Larry Flynt’s mind. The foulest place on Earth is the freestanding porta-potty in Griffith Park next to the training site. It is so foul that if I were to post a photo of its interior, the internet would shrivel and die. If I were to describe it in terms too readily understood, you would never return to this blog for fear I might do it again. Just imagine the very worst toilet situation imaginable, extending your imagination to all surfaces within (including the ceiling), and then add in the stench, then multiply by infinity. That approaches the state of this, the foulest place on Earth.
3. The laws of physics don’t apply to running.
I’ve been running since May, and I’m now running between 14 and 34 miles per week, depending upon what week I’m on in the training schedule. I don’t eat fast food, I don’t drink soda, I eat fish twice a week and plenty of fruits and vegetables, and I’ve cut out most alcohol. Guess how much weight I’ve lost. If you said “none,” you win. Not one ell-bee. Not a gram. Inevitably when I tell people this, they’ll say, “You’re gaining muscle.” I haven’t seen that. I have large calves, so you’d expect it there, but nope — same level of (or lack of) definition. How is this possible? Yesterday on that long run, I shared this question with a fellow runner. She replied, “Well, your ass looks great.” I didn’t ask if she meant it looks better now than it did, and whether therefore I had a saggy ass or maybe fat ass before this. In fact, I dropped the whole matter, though I did feel compelled to first respond, “Uh… yours too.”
4. It may indeed be true that your parents walked nine miles uphill both ways to school through three feet of snow.
I say that because the training course — through Griffith Park, through the Equestrian Center, through the Rancho District, into Burbank and back — is uphill both ways. However, I can’t vouch for the three feet of snow.
5. Bum smell is mostly sweat.
You know that smell that bums get? Of course it comes from poor hygiene, unclean clothing, and bad diet. But I now suspect that, specifically, it’s mostly sweat. That’s because I’m smelling it on myself after long runs. Yes, after a long run I smell like a bum. (Or someone from a distant land with different bathing rituals. Say, France.) Of course I take a shower when I get home after one of these runs, but first I have to come inside. My children greet me this way: By covering their noses. Literally. This Sunday, my daughter and my little boy stood in the room adjacent and looked at me, each of them peering over an arm stretched across to cover a nose. They wouldn’t come any closer. At one point, my daughter added a comment: “Ewwwwww.” I had suspected the situation even before getting home, when I stopped at the Smart ‘n’ Final two blocks from our house to get orange juice and hazelnut creamer so I could enjoy the sort of breakfast I now felt entitled to, having run 13 miles. Still wearing my soaking running clothes and staying respectfully distant from others, I grabbed what I needed, placed it on the checkout conveyor belt and backed up several feet. The cashier, a man in his mid-20’s, greeted me. Then there was silence as he scanned my goods. Finally I said, “I just ran 13 miles.” Without looking up, he said, “That explains it.”
More observations to follow, I’m sure.
We don’t have any troops left to send to Georgia.
Earlier this year, my world-traveling friend Doug Hackney took a long-distance view at the major candidates for president in his home country and did an assessment of each. Like most soothsayers, Doug got a lot wrong — but what he got right rings with insight, particularly with regard to the Democrats. A few samples:
And finally, and most tellingly, Doug called John Edwards “a charlatan.”
That simple word has stayed with me all seven months since Doug wrote it. Because I was jealous. Doug had nailed the word I’d been searching for. As surely everyone else can see now, John Edwards is a charlatan.
Here’s why Doug thinks he’s a charlatan:
“In the last few years I’ve spent a lot of time around people with little to nothing. Their collective net worth probably wouldn’t pass 1/1000th of one percent of John Edwards’ multi-million-dollar net worth. John Edwards is running as the candidate of the poor, the downtrodden, the people with little to nothing. From what I’ve seen from being around these people, the only thing John Edwards has in common with them is that he’ll tell them anything they want to hear to get their vote. He’s a classic political charlatan. Luckily for us, he’s not the anointed one this year.”
What is a charlatan, exactly? It’s “a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money or advantage via some form of pretense or deception.”
Like using your wife’s cancer as the backdrop for your first campaign video while you’re booking “consulting time” with another woman.
(And just to be clear — the relationship with the other woman is between Edwards and his wife. Repeatedly lying about it while asking us to believe that you weren’t doing it while she had cancer and while asking us to believe you didn’t father a child with her — that’s asking us to double down on your ponzi scheme.)
I could go on in further fashion detailing Edwards’ behavior and tactics in this scandal, but Mickey Kaus has already done that for me. I will say, though, that I’m thrilled to see Edwards go down in flames this way. I’ve never been so alarmed at any event as I was at the 2007 California State Democratic Party Convention, where Edwards threw out one crowd-pleasing and self-serving slab of meat after another and the people in the pit gobbled it up, no matter how wildly impractical, dangerous, and wrong it seemed. I felt like the only Jew at the Nuremberg Rally.
Twenty-five years ago, my then-five-year-old niece Lesley came to stay with me overnight at the house I shared with my then-girlfriend (now wife) Valorie. This was something that most of my nieces and nephews did, once their parents decided they no longer cared about our “living in sin.” I walked Lesley to the Ocean City shoreline and bought her a big hot pretzel, and as the little girl stood by the railing on the beach side of the boardwalk and prepared to take her first bite of that pretzel, a grimy seagull flew down, clamped onto it and flew off with it, leaving her shaken and sobbing.
When A Flock of Seagulls no-showed on Tuesday night it my reaction wasn’t quite that bad, but it was close.
Yes, the other acts played — Naked Eyes, ABC, Belinda Carlisle, The Human League — and they were great. But once again a seagull flew off with my pretzel and left nothing behind but hurt and anger. No explanation, no announcement, nothing.
Some years ago, when the U.S. was freshly mourning its lost innocence and bad music filled our airwaves, four lads from England arrived with offbeat haircuts, a look that was endlessly copied, and a sound we hadn’t heard before on the radio.
I speak, of course, of A Flock of Seagulls.
I saw A Flock of Seagulls (calling them just “The Flock” or “The Seagulls” won’t do) in a daylong show at Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium in the early 1980’s. They were opening for Robert Hazard and the Heroes, who were opening for Blondie, who were opening for Elvis Costello, who was opening for Genesis. In other words, they were the last-billed act. They stepped on-stage in the bright daylight, started their first number, and were immediately pelted with bottles. I couldn’t understand why — sure, they looked (and sounded!) different, but what was wrong with that? And it was a good different. A few short weeks later, “I Ran (So Far Away)” lit up the singles charts and dance floors — even of the formerly disco clubs — and everyone loved them and said they always had.
Tonight, for the first time in about 25 years, I’m going to see A Flock of Seagulls, along with other (almost as-) cool members of the Regeneration Tour: The Human League, Belinda Carlisle, ABC, and Naked Eyes. To say that I had — and have — CDs by most of these bands is a given.
One thing hasn’t changed. Despite their innovative look and sound, A Flock of Seagulls still can’t get any respect. On the box-office window of the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal Studio (where the show is, tonight), and on the tickets themselves, the billing is as follows: “Regeneration Tour: The Human League / Belinda Carlisle / more.” Still, that’s somehow fitting. Twenty-five years later, A Flock of Seagulls is still more.
If you grew up in the northeastern U.S., you remember the laughably bad Carvel Ice Cream commercials, with badly ad-libbed voiceovers by founder Tom Carvel. Whatever happened to Carvel and his frosty creations?
Evidently, Cookie Puss (above) and Fudgie the Whale live on in 500 Carvel Ice Cream Stores around the U.S.
But founder Tom Carvel’s dream of leaving $80 million to small non-profits died with him, and the story of how that happened will melt your heart. It’s a tale of greed, skulduggery, and possibly murder.