If By "100 Posts in 2008," You Really Mean...

We here at Beitel-blog set a modest goal on February 9, 2008. One hundred posts in 2008. At that point, the tally was 2. Today?

This here is post #200. 2 with two zeroes after it.

Yee. Effing. Haw.

I'd like to thank the Academy. And my parents, for believing in me. Also Ye Olde Sis and Mike H., for reading and razzing me in the "Comments" section. Also whoever came up the idea for blogs and how in a democratic society they should be free and ubiquitous and utterly unabashed in their navel gazing.

We are, as I write, four hours and four minutes away from ought-nine. As for year-end recaps, etc., I'll refer to this post, where I said 2008 was actually fairly awesome for me in general. Sometimes as you're living it, it's easy to see it another way. But, see, that's where a blog comes in handy. It'll keep you honest.

We aint goin' nowheres in 2009. It's just gonna be bigger and badder than ever. Or, you know, as big and as bad as it's been for the last 2.5 months. I'm gonna lowball the 2009 goal for posts: 500. (Yee. Effing. Haw. Indeed.)

We're--where the hell's this Royal We coming from?--going to be linking and essaying in the same fashion you've come to know and love (we know who you are!), but also we're gonna be all about chronicling...

The 2009 Mega-Publishing-Blitz-Extravaganza!!!!!!!!!!!

For those of you who haven't tried to get a book published in the U.S. of A. (or anywhere, I guess), it's a little bit like jumping off the edge of the Grand Canyon and trying to fly. Even when it feels like you actually might be getting somewheres, you're really just plummeting to your inevitable doom.

But, see, it's that kind of thinking that lost this country the car business. Hence: I'm going to spend 2009 trying to publish a novel and two poetry manuscripts. And you on this here blog will have a front row seat to the carnage. I'm going to chronicle the whole durn thing--costs and benefits, be they tangible or psychic, direct or residual. Down to the last page, penny, and tear. (Names will be changed, of course, to protect the innocent. I'm no Gerard Jones, as he'll be the first to tell you...if we're lucky, in the "Comments" section below!)

I'm also going to read 52 books. But not just any 52 books. 52 books that A) I've never read, B) I don't have to read for any particular reason, and C) I already own. I'll report on that, too, which may or may not prove to be good times. We'll see.

First up: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles.

Also if they throw an election I'm not expecting, I'll be on that thing like white on rice. (And, you know, just in case you need a little fix of Yes-We-Can to keep the buzz going...)

So. Yeah. For old acquaintance...something, something...something...Auld Lang Syne!

Happy 2009...

Love,
Your Humble Beitel-blogger

PS...Ooh, ooh, just for fun: my first ever blog post (from almost exactly two years ago) which was, admittedly, a less than generous one about Dick Clark's New Year's Rocking Eve. Enjoy!

PPS...Um, yes. That is, in fact, the coolest-ever archival picture of some dudes waiting to set the Times Square ball in motion on a New Year's Eve of yesteryear.

Reflections on the Brightest Day in Recent Memory

Jean-Louis Blondeau/Polaris

I have approximately fifty-two minutes to write about all the things that made today a bright day. Oops. Now fifty-one. And counting.

1. For the first time in what must be three weeks, there was nothing but sun and blue in the sky.

2. I went to Urban Standard for the first time this morning and wrote part of a story about Benazir Bhutto that is not really about Benazir Bhutto at all. It is, uh, “artsy.” Or something.

3. I ate the Superfood Salad which consists of—fittingly enough—a bunch of superfood. Blueberries. Strawberries. Lightly roasted walnuts. A clean, white clot of goat cheese. Lettuces, some bitter, some not. Sensible little Raspberry Vinaigrette. I put all that in the story. Also it means I will live forever.

4. Urban Standard has a perfect latte. With little shapes rendered in the foam. Mine today was of the Blessed Virgin. Or a Christmas tree.

5. The superfood thing inspired me to buy dark chocolate and pomegranate juice at the grocery on the way home. (I ordinarily don’t just leave it at “grocery” but I secretly like it when people say it like that, so I’ll leave it. As an act of indulgence.) Actually I purchase and eat superfood all the time—it is a kind of religion with me, some strange mixture of asceticism and indulgence which, I think, pretty much sums up everything there is to know about me—but this time it felt special. Like I was in someone else’s life. And doing something life-affirming on their behalf. [Forty-one minutes.]

6. Yesterday I decided I might be finished with something very large, something that has occupied me for a long time. (Pretend that you know what I am talking about. Pretend that you are happy for me. This will allow me to avoid saying something silly like “I finished what I think is a novel yesterday.” Not only is it silly to say something like that because who didn’t finish a novel yesterday. Lots of people finished a novel yesterday, and almost all of them are bad novels. But it is also silly because if you have embarked on the mad, quixotic charge that is writing a novel [in this particular moment, when book publishing threatens to really, once and for all, we-mean-it-this-time go kaput], you know that it is never done. Done isn’t even the word. I think I feel it is justified in existing. There isn’t anything more I can think to do to it. I don’t know. I've spent my forty-five minutes dancing around on the high-wire [see above] and I'm ready to get down now. My work here is done. There it is, you know? My crazy little yarn about a transgender endtimes prophet in west central Alabama. PS: I reserve the right to not be finished; this is a significant phase completed, though. [Whoops. I’ve only got thirty-four more minutes before my arbitrary, self-imposed deadline to post this.])

Anyway...

7. I went to Bottletree tonight and watched “Man on Wire.” French fella [see above again], Philip Petit, who walked a tightrope between the WTC in May of 1974. I wanted to come home and post something really smart and pseudo-spiritual but I can’t quite get to the words right now. They asked him when he came down why he did it. He laughed and said there is no why. It’s probably best to leave it at that. Sometimes I’ll cry a little at a movie that nobody else would cry at. (To wit: “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Uh, what?) This one made me cry a little. I think it might be because I can anticipate that sort of question as it relates to #6 above—Why?!—and I know for sure what ol’ Phil Small was talking about. There is no why.

8. I remembered to put the trash out.

9. I did some other work-related stuff that had been hanging over my head. [Six minutes; can you tell I’m hurrying?]

10. I’m going back to Urban Standard first thing in the morning and I’m going to keep writing the story about Benazir Bhutto (which is really not about Benazir Bhutto at all) and I’m going to drink a perfect latte as I (simultaneously) kiss the foamy face of the Blessed Virgin. I will, no doubt, eat some superfood at some point in the day. I will retrieve the trash bin that has been strewn who knows where by the trash collector guy. Maybe it will be bright again, but that might be asking a little too much.

Okay, now I have to go eat a peanut butter sandwich. Superfood's great and all, but it don't always stick to your ribs.

Monday, Will You Be My Supernova?

Indeed. Today was in fact the brightest day on record in the Magic City. And that's no mere matter of opinion. Everybody said so. Or at least that's what they were thinking.

Sunday Review of Links

News & Opinion
...Miss Hispanic America is a drug dealer! (Wasn't that a Steven Soderbergh movie?) Anyway, I guess it's just like Grandma Beitelman used to say: Pretty is as pretty does. (Time)
...WWGD: What would Gore do? Fareed Zakaria asks him. (Newsweek)
...Why Israel wants the war in Gaza to be brief. (New Republic)
...A post-holiday deal: Six links for the price of one! A slew of unsolicited advice for 44. (NYT)

Sports
...They used to call it boxing. And there used to be rules. (The Atlantic)

Books
...are dead. (Salon)
...Okay, can we all just agree that if Oprah endorses a memoir, it's all a bunch of mularkey? Thanks. (New Republic)

Alabamiana
...Pastor Jim's Top Ten New Year's Resolutions for 2009. (Annistor Star)
...JeffCo kicks the $3.2 billion sewer-debt can down the road for six more months. (al.com)

Watch This!


Prima facie evidence aside, the course of human history is a slow, steady march to Peace. So says Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker.

From the Papers of the Prophet John Doe (iii)

Jarmusch? Hate to Say It, but I Might Prefer Not To

Here's my thing with Jim Jarmusch: really like him in theory but actually watching the movies? Not so much. I mean, you know? Whatever. Case in point: last night I fired up the Netflix "Watch Instantly!!!" machine and watched -- instantly!!! -- Broken Flowers. Bill Murray vehicle from a couple years back. Let's just say if I wanted to watch a dude with a flat affect and a sweet set of matching Adidas sweatsuits make like Bartleby the Scrivener for 105 minutes -- well, I'd get myself some sweatsuits and stake out the mirror for a spell. ("This is YOUR LIFE, T.J. Beitelman!!")

I haven't given up on ol' Jim. Need to see the Forrest Whitaker vehicle (man...JJ's a veritable Ford Motor Company, what with all the semi-viable vehicles he pumps into the marketplace just hoping to break even, huh?), where he's a samurai-gangsta. With a flat affect. Point is, any self-respecting wannabe artiste (which is to say, me [among others]) simply can't give up on the avant-gardeners who actually make it work in the workaday world. There's gotta be some there there, no? (Must admit, I'm hoping it's not the packaging: shock of prematurely white hair, noirish attire, cool pals, and American Spirit cigs.) And in fairness, the last twenty minutes of Broken Flowers actually works and it could've really sucked.

Main thing is it makes me think about pushing the artistic envelope, who gets to do it, and why. I mean, throughout Broken Flowers I just kept thinking about my Dear Sis, who would've been beside herself with boredom. In no time flat, she would've been complaining that this was the Worst Movie of All Time, even worse than that "thing" with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn that she made me watch. (Which actually is the worst movie of all time.) And, you know, Jimmy didn't give me much to work with in the way of a rebuttal. I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. Or at least I think it's not the worst movie ever. But I can't really explain why, nor can I say I really enjoyed the hour and forty-five minutes of my life I spent watching it. So it's like why make a movie like that? (Or write a book or make music or paint something, etc.) Just because you can? And yet that's pretty much what I want to do with my life.

Ah, humans. We. So. Crazy.

The New Asceticism

Extremely, extremely (hence two 'extremelies') cool article in MoJo* about all these crazy extreme gonzo people who, like, live like the Bible for a year or whatever and then write about it. The article rightly points out that this aint new: Hank Thoreau was all about some book deals when it came time to "front the essential facts of life." Lots of great pull quotes from author Michael Agger, but here's the takeaway:

All of these writers have good advice for our economically perilous and environmentally precarious moment. Not many, however, were permanently changed by their yearlong experiments. The authors of Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally welcome lemons and beer back into their house. Judith Levine is thrilled to buy new socks and starts to consume again, albeit in a more deliberate way. The ultimate lesson of the new Thoreauvians seems to be that change is rarely drastic. We must strive for continuous, daily, incremental improvement toward whatever social, environmental, and economic goals we deem important. That path won't land you on Morning Edition, but it might just get you to floss, recycle, grow your own food, sit in the dark, air-dry yourself, take daily walks, and read more poetry. Which puts us back where we started: Walden Pond, 1845.

Writers, man. You gotta watch 'em. That's all I'm saying. Oh and PS I'm also kicking myself for not parlaying my six months of self-induced carlessness in the pedestrian purgatory that is Birmingham, Alabama, into some six figure book deal. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it all.

* Yeah, I guess today really is the Day of Crazy Liberals.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

Bush v. Gore. (NYT)

From the Papers of the Prophet John Doe (ii)

Happy Days Are Here Again!

Or almost, if you believe the Crazy Liberals at MSNBC.com with all their happy talk about how everything maybe, maybe, maybe just might come together sometime in '09 to make us forget the Great Depression 2.0 ever happened.

Ut Prosim

(Photo by John Hamill/johnhamill.com)

Virginia Tech's student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, has published (against the wishes of the administration and the victims' families) some of the e-mails Seung Hui Cho sent to various professors. I've already said everything I had to say about the shootings; I only revisit this to underscore what seemed clear from very near the start: the professors in the Tech English department, many of whom were seminal forces in my own development as a writer and teacher of writing, handled this very troubled and troubling student as well as -- better than -- could be expected. That I may serve half as well as they did. (WaPo)

Sunday Review of Links

News & Opinion
...Gen. Wes Clark says, contrary to popular belief, Democrats aren't wusses. At least not all the time. (WaPo)
...Some guy from Illinois won Time's POY -- no, not you, Blago. (Time)
...It won't quit raining in Italy. (Newsweek)
...Kennedy. Kennedy. Where have I heard that name before? (NYT)

Sports
...When times are hard, it still pays to be a left-handed pitching prospect. (NYT)
...LeBron says he may stay in Cleveland after all. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Books
...Yes, they got these crazy e-book machines where Jeff Bezos will zap you a book in a nanosecond and you read it on a screen. But can you tuck a piece of bacon...or a used Q-tip...or a love note in between the "pages"? Hmm? (NYT Book Review)

Alabamiana
...'Tis the season for a little state o' the Union, Pastor-Jim-style. (Anniston Star)
...Bear Bryant used to say that three things can happen when you throw a forward pass, and two of 'em are bad. Well, three things can happen with JeffCo's sewer debt fiasco -- and all of them are bad. (Bham News)

Watch This!


Werner Herzog tells Hank Rollins that you don't move mountains with money; you move mountains with faith. [Also that Truth and Fact aren't the same thing, but here at Beitel-Blog, he's preaching to the choir.] (YouTube)

From the Papers of the Prophet John Doe (i)

How Debt Is Supposed to Work

Imagine a hypothetical country where saving money is built into the culture, where the populace is intuitively leery of credit, where you have to put down as much as a third of the purchase price to buy a house. It would be a place where fiscal prudence reigns, from bottom to top, and the government has a constant eye on hotspots and bubbles and it isn't afraid to act decisively to address them. Such a place might have actually avoided, for the most part, the current economic mess we're in. Dare to dream. Oh, wait: that country already exists. It's called India. (NYT)

As the Empire State Turns

Sucks to be Andrew Cuomo these days. You're the accomplished scion of a NY political demigod, you've paid your dues and taken your lumps in the political arena. Just when a little electoral manna drops into your lap in the form of a vacated Senate seat, along comes your ex-wife's cousin -- a political neophyte who just happens to be JFK's daughter. Good thing is I think he's dating a lady with a cooking show where she tells people how to turn Spam into Chateaubriand. So, you know, looking at the glass half full, maybe he won't be a senator or anything but this holiday season, it's all the spruced up potted meat Andy can eat! (NYT)

A Rising Generation of South Asian Voices

During the drive home this evening, ATC had an interesting point-counterpoint interview with Sonia Faleiro, a 31-year-old Indian novelist and journalist, and Pakistani filmmaker Mehreen Jabbar, 37, who lives in New York. As there really are no more (merely) regional conflicts -- and as this particular once-regional conflict has implications that are so very global -- it was useful to hear the cultural nuance on an interpersonal level. While Jabbar and Faleiro went out of their way to be cordial in their closing salutations to each other, see if you can't detect a certain awkward tension that creeps into the moment.

Turns Out My Childhood Dreams Have Just Come True!

According to Malcolm Gladwell in this week's New Yorker, teaching is just like being an NFL quarterback. When I was a kid, I mostly wanted to be the latter (though sometimes I wanted to be the former, and I'm happy to say that's how it has ended up -- less money but far fewer knee surgeries and concussions). So what does it mean that now I really want to be Malcolm Gladwell? Seriously, great piece by one of the best thinker-writer types around...a must-read for anybody who cares about the state of education and its future in this country.

Update: FYI, I've added a link to Malcolm Gladwell's blog in "Navels Worth a Gaze" over there on the righthand side of the screen.

NBA Suspends Operations Until 2010

...or, as Slate's Neil Pollack observes, so it seems.

What Werner Herzog and the End of the World Have to Offer in the Way of Transcendence

Last night I had occasion to talk to a good friend who owns a small business. In case you happen to be living under a rock, life for small business owners these days ain't the greatest. And yet in a torrent of bad metrics, she's had a few bits of good news here of late. Not earth-shatteringly great news, but enough to keep hope alive. My friend also happens to be a big Oprah fan, and she attributes at least some of her recent uptick to The Secret. That is, she has faith that if she relentlessly puts out positive vibes/mojo, the Universe will answer with abundance. Then you're supposed to say "Thank you." That's The Secret and if you follow it, things will inevitably work out okay in the end.

And today, amid sobering news regarding state budget shortfalls, a colleague at work -- who is herself relentlessly sunny and, therefore, one of the more delightful Presences I've encountered anywhere -- buoyed us up by citing this 60 Minutes piece on how folks (even monkeys) can do a whole range of things just by using their thoughts. Maneuver a wheelchair, grab something with a prosthetic limb, or send a text message. If the brain has that much power to effect change in the physical world, just think -- think! -- how much power the power of positive thinking really has over all aspects of life. Even things you thought were out of your control.

Then there's Werner Herzog.

Herzog is a German filmmaker whose work is unfailingly strange and usually bleak. The thread that unifies it is his obsession with the raw and relentless march all life makes toward disintegration. Needless to say, Herzog does not make romantic comedies. He makes movies about men attempting extreme and impossible feats -- and their inevitable failure.

Often Nature is the ultimate force of destruction in a Herzog film, and that is certainly the case with his latest work, a documentary about Antarctica called Encounters at the End of the World. The double-meaning of "End of the World" is, no doubt, intended. The film's thesis seems to be this: Not only is an individual life destined to be nasty, brutish, and short, but so -- given a grand enough scope -- is the course of human history. Herzog presents an Antarctica that is ruthless and disorienting -- yet so terribly beautiful in its extremity -- and in so doing he offers a prima facie case for the ephemeral frailty of human existence. Not just as individuals; as a species.

There are two truths here:

There's the power of positive thinking that helped us puny humans inhabit the uninhabitable pole in the first place.

Then there's the raw power of the pole itself. It not only wreaks havoc on the poor souls who exile themselves there in a search for meaning -- be it scientific, cosmic, neither, or both -- but it is preparing to send its armada of iceships (some as large as Texas) northward into warmer waters where they will melt and change all the rules of habitation we thought we had already mastered.

Transcendence. Dissolution.

Both are true. Both are unavoidable. And here's the real secret: both demand a similar kind of unconditional surrender.

Choosing Sides

Can There Even Be an Elephant in the Room at Auburn?

As per usual, the self-proclaimed Future Governor of the Great State of Alabama, Charles Barkley, is calling it like he sees it. Turner Gill is A) a good football coach, B) black, and C) married to a white woman. Gene Chizik is A) a bad football coach, B) white, and C) also married to a white woman. In Auburn Land, according to Chuck, that score adds up thusly: Chizik -- 2/3...Gill -- 1/3. Welcome to Auburn, coach Chizik...

Update: The inimitable Jason Whitlock, himself no stranger to Barkley-esque controversy, chimes in with his dissenting two cents.

Father the God

Me, I love a good double entendre. And if you can sneak a paradox in there, you're golden in my book. So the title to this particular blogpost has me pretty pleased with myself. The picture and the impetus for the post are sourced in this here sign, which I drive by at least twice a weekday on my way to work. There is a rotation of such exhortations and exaltations, though none quite as provocative as this one.

First there's the father-as-a-noun angle. In a literal sense, of course, my father was no Nazarene. In fact, he was a proud, staunch atheist from Buffalo, New York, who -- after his first major heart attack -- sent away the priest who had come to his hospital room to give him last rites. This was after a Go-to-the-Light near-death experience that he would later chalk up to a few stray brain cells flashing out in a blaze of glory.

So yeah: I'm fairly certain that, in my case, Jesus and Dear Old Dad were not literally the same guy.

And while I'm not sure that the good folks at the Christ Pentecostal Church at Oak Mountain are thinking about literal v. figurative theological interpretations, their sign certainly encourages me to think that way. Of course, I'm inclined to think that way all by my lonesome. Sign or no sign. Heck, I don't even need a signifier.

Anyway, all that's just to say that if you're gonna say "JESUS IS YOUR DAD" you are, by definition, speaking in metaphorical terms and, when it comes to religion, that's where all the juice is, in my book.

In this case, "DAD" means something besides biological father. It becomes far less limited and specific than all that. Far less personal, anthropomorphic. And if "DAD" is approximate, signifying something beyond mere words, probably "JESUS" is too. Likewise, the implied begetting must be approximate too; it isn't physical, literal, personal. It's spiritual.

And speaking of begetting...

The second -- and maybe more interesting -- angle is if "father" (in the title of this post, not on the sign; stay with me here!) is a verb. Father the God.

Karen Armstrong, who is a wonderful writer and thinker on these matters, has written, in A History of God, about my favorite moniker for Jesus (it's at least in the top two -- I'm also partial to the "The Nazarene," for what it's worth):

Jesus himself used to call himself “the Son of Man.” There has been much controversy about this title, but it seems that the original Aramaic phrase (bar nasha) simply stressed the weakness and mortality of the human condition. If this is so, Jesus seems to have gone out of his way to emphasize that he was a frail human being who would one day suffer and die.

But all that nuance just won't fit on a roadside sign, I guess.

Pining for the Heyday of Hooliganism

If you want to read the very coolest blogpost on the current state of booing at English soccer -- er, uh, football -- games, look no further than this recent keeper (semi-pun intended!) from Nick Hornby, the "bloke" (ha!) who wrote Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About a Boy, etc. Doesn't even matter if you don't like football/soccer. That's not really the point. What's awesome is all the parts where he says stuff like "the crowd were" (instead of was) and he puts s's were the z's are supposed to go. And then he quotes some British sportswriter and you're like, "What the hell's he talking about?!" And then you realize it's all just evidence of the greatest thing ever: England is so totally a Parallel Universe!!

TJB-POV: Sunday in the Steel City of the South (vii)

TJB-POV: Sunday in the Steel City of the South (vi)

TJB-POV: Sunday in the Steel City of the South (v)

TJB-POV: Sunday in the Steel City of the South (iv)

TJB-POV: Sunday in the Steel City of the South (iii)

TJB-POV: Sunday in the Steel City of the South (ii)

TJB-POV: Sunday in the Steel City of the South (i)

Sunday Review of Links

News & Opinion
...The Alliance for Climate Protection and likeminded others are launching an ad campaign against...an ad campaign. They say that if you must use the term "Clean Coal" you have to employ snarky air quotes and a sneer, lest you be seen as a gullible naif who believes in things that don't exist (e.g., Santa, UFOs and Sasquatch [except the latter two really do exist and I've got the pictures to prove it!]). (Newsweek)
...Guess what? Schools are mediocre, at best, all over the Western World!! (The Economist)
...Thomas Friedman thinks 44 needs to forego the Band-Aids altogether and just lance the three biggest boils on the butt of the Global Body Politic: cars, Kabul, and banks. (NYT)
...Friends of the First Fam look for ways to keep the latter 'F' in BFF. (NYT)

Sports
...If the economic downturn has you in the market for a career change, look no further than fast-paced, lucrative world of handcrafted mascot suits. (NYT)

Books
...The NYT Book Review's ten best books of 2008. With excerpts and everything. (NYT Sunday Book Review)

Alabamiana
...To show he's an equal opportunity dissenter, Pastor Jim joins the anti-Blago brigade. (Anniston Star)
...Let's just say the Auburn Nation is a little underwhelmed with its new fearless leader. (al.com)
...Kyle Whitmire says Chicago/Illinois politics ain't got nothing on JeffCo. For that matter, neither does Communist China. (Bham Weekly)

Watch This!


Everybody loves a painting elephant. (YouTube)

In Between the Moon and You / Angels Get a Better View / of the Crumbling Difference / Between Wrong and Right

So here's when you know you've been bit by the blogger bug. Not yesterday but the day before, my myopic eyes pop open just after dawn and I'm staring out at what must be an enormous moon. I say "must be" because I really do mean my uncorrected vision is intensely bad. Anyway, I knew it was the moon, I knew it was an extremely weird and awe-inspiring (in an ever-so-slightly Endtimey sorta way) sight, and -- still half asleep -- I knew I had to go get my camera and snap a shot of it so I could slap it up on my blog.

Alas, the photo quality sucked (as you can see) and this is about as good as I could do, even with the night vision thing turned on. I didn't even put on my glasses, though I feel sure that wouldn't have helped. (In the Glass-Half-Full Department: If you squint, you can see Sasquatch in them thar woods! Plus, just out of the shot, there was an actual flying saucer thingamabob!! So that was awesome.)

Supposedly this moon is/was a portent of astrological discontent for me and my fellow Libras. Seems Saturn, Pluto, and the unfortunately named Uranus are teaming with the big fat lunar orb to make a strange mojo. I certainly wouldn't put it past them, but mostly it just seems like the same old blurry mix of confusion and awe-inspiring mystery. Nice to think the astral plane's got me on its mind, though.

When the Going Gets Rough...

...the Divine gets feminine (it also gets to chewing its raiments, but that's another story altogether). At least it does in Mexico, where everybody's flocking to the Virgin of Guadalupe for a little intermediation. (WaPo)

Grand New Party V: Meet the New Boss?

...same as the old boss, at least as far as RNC Chairman Mike Duncan is concerned. He's running for re-election and, if you're a registered Republican, he'd like your support. Because after all, he collected just as many e-mail addresses as Barack Obama did. That's gotta count for something. And! More people watched John McCain's convention acceptance speech than any other convention acceptance speech in human history. In some countries, that alone would make him president. So vote for Mike: Change We Can Believe In!

More on Mean Michelle Rhee

This relatively recent Time article by Amanda Ripley confirms some of my suspicions about Chancellor Rhee (a moniker that sounds like somebody who reports to Darth Vader, but my sense is that Rhee would be okay with that connection). Her TFA experience was typical: hellish first year (complete with stress-induced hives) followed by some moderate, hand-to-hand success in the trenches during the two years that followed. The article also indicates that it was during her TFA days that she developed her skeptical stance toward teachers, as she watched the students she had helped improve in basic skills backslide under other teachers.

My two takeaways are that Rhee is blind to anything that isn't quantifiable -- or, more specifically, anything that isn't a test score -- and that her people skills are far behind her intellect and ambition. I think her biggest blindspot is that she doesn't understand that teaching, at its core, is about people skills. (She calls that stuff "touchy-feely" and says she can't stand it.) Quality control is fine and necessary, but at the end of the day, the simple fact is that schools are not tidy organizations, and my-way-or-the-highway perfectionists are destined to be frustrated.

And, oh yeah: ideological purists -- of which Chancellor Rhee is most certainly one -- almost always think they know more than they do, and that means they are destined to do more harm than good.

The Word on Afghanistan/Pakistan?

Um, well, let's see. Think it might be "sobering." Here's Joe Klein on his recent trip to Afghanistan. And here's George Will on his recent trip to Robert Gates's office.

44 Continues Unabashed Display of Weird Fetish with Smart People Who May Actually Know What They're Doing

They got 'em a Nobel-winning physicist to head the Department of Energy. Okay, so chalk up another important cog of government I couldn't run. Now they're hiring physicists. Jeez-oo. I totally should've failed physics in high school but, because the American public educational system is so mediocre, they just looked the other way and said, Sure, sure, grab you one of them fancy cap-and-gown dealies. So now I can't run the OMB, I can't run the DOE (Energy or Education, come to think of it), and I'm just stone-cold bloggin'. Cool. Whatever. But if they start up a Department of Bloggers in the Provinces (DOBITP), I'd like to think I could at least be a long shot on the short list. Ask not what your country can do for you...

You Can't Go Home Again

...nor can you get anywhere in Tysons Corner, Virginia, near my old neck of the woods, without a car. Of course, that's not news to anybody in the DC metro area -- or, for that matter, most suburbs ringing the Great American Cities. But that's all fittin' to change. Come 2038 -- that's just thirty years to you and me! -- Tysons'll be a quaint mid-sized city of its own. All "people friendly" and stuff. Sidewalks and everything. Storefronts, streetscapes, walkability. It all adds up to what they call "density," and all the studies say if you build it, they will come. Pull quote:

The car-dominated city is the product of policies and subsidies that favored drivable suburban development, [says Chris Leinberger, a developer turned academic and urbanist who is now at the Brookings Institution].

"This is something that we the people wanted very badly," he says. "What we didn't know is as you build more of it, you decrease the quality of life."

Fairfax County is the most populous county in Virginia — and Tysons Corner is a huge source of its revenue. But in today's market, people want walkable, bikable, livable, urban environments. That will be possible as Metro rail makes its way from D.C. to the airport. Four Metro rail stations are planned to anchor four of five new neighborhoods in Tysons.

Plus there's a lake of stew and of whiskey too / You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe! Should be a hoot. Hope I still got a spring in my step at 67. I better, cuz lord knows there ain't gonna be no Social Security left for us old folks then! Yee-haw! (ATC/NPR)

What Is Even Up with This Leno Character?

Gotta admit I don't quite understand this Jay Leno thing -- how he's "quitting" the Tonight Show -- a move that has been in the works for what seems like a full decade now -- but really he's just going to have a show before the news instead of after it. So basically they moved him and Conan up a slot. Because...? And his show is going to be different...how? And poor Conan, right? Now the Tonight Show has all the panache of a pair of oft-rented bowling shoes. Anyway, clearly Esquire is yearning for simpler times too, when a man's word was his bond. Or else why would they regurgitate this article on the erstwhile King of Late Night himself, Johnny Carson? Heeeeeere's...ah, you know the deal.

Blagojevich Must Mean 'Delusional Moron' In Some Eastern European Language

Tough to even parse out the stupidity of this thing. Chris Cillizza does his dead-level best anyway, including providing a link to the whole indictment. (The Fix)

Grand New Party IV: Phew!

Turns out that whole "Yes We Can!"/Change thing was a flash in the pan. The GOP is back, and not a moment too soon. (The Fix)

The Only Thing We Have to Fear?

NYT's David Carr on the Frenetic Feedback Loop of Fear. Pull quote:

With unemployment, auto sales, home foreclosures and consumer confidence all benchmarking historic levels of distress, news outlets are hardly making it up. But the machinery of the economy began to freeze in place far more quickly than it has in the past, in part because so much scary data is circulating so much faster than it used to. This recession got deeper faster because we knew more bad stuff quickly.

Read the article.

TJB-POV: Desk (vii)

TJB-POV: Desk (vi)

TJB-POV: Desk (v)

TJB-POV: Desk (iv)

TJB-POV: Desk (iii)

TJB-POV: Desk (ii)

TJB-POV: Desk (i)

What This Blog Is and Does

"Everything is biographical, Lucian Freud says. What we make, why it is made, how we draw a [blog],* who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget. Everything is collage, even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross." -- Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero.

_____

*Which is to say: like all of us, I am but one small voice in the wilderness. The real-life wilderness I inhabit is the deep, green thicket of the American South, circa the 21st Century. I traipse in less tangible woods too: the high-concepts of God, Love, Art, America. This blog is the on-going patchwork of a life spent in pursuit of a series of elusive Higher Callings. Truth. Beauty. The American Way. It is best seen as an ad hoc how-to -- How to Be Alive and Awake and American -- in one long string of dubious notes-to-self. Advice and insights are intended for entertainment purposes only. Please, no wagering.

Sunday Review of Links

News & Opinion
...Indulging his inner spy novelist, Dick Clarke (with an 'e') turns his attention to rocking in the New Year, counter-terrorism-style. (WaPo)
...Frank Rich plays wet blanket to all this 'best and brightest' talk, reminding us that A) Halberstam meant for the phrase to be ironic and B) 'smart' doesn't not necessarily mean 'wise.' (NYT)
...If it's up to Bill Gates -- and isn't everything? -- change is coming hard and fast to America's schools. (Newsweek)

Sports
...The New American Superhero. (SI)
...Auburn to talk to Turner Gill, one of three black coaches in major college football, about its vacant head coach position. (al.com)

Books
...Bob Dylan is a poet. No. Really. Even Billy Collins says so. Wait, Billy Collins is a poet? I thought he was a rockstar. (NYT Sunday Book Review)
...Critic Michael Dirda gets definitive when it comes to the second-boringest holiday gift of all. (WaPo Bookworld)

Alabamiana
...Pastor Jim says that while there may be political, social, and even psychological arguments against a concerted effort to alleviate poverty -- and his in-box is chock full of messages in all caps and exclamation marks that posit a gamut of them -- there isn't a legitimate spiritual one. (Anniston Star)
...Birmingham Weekly's Kyle Whitmire owns the Mayor Larry story, and he says the 101-count indictment and all the sordid rest of it boils down to one thing: haberdashery. (Bham Weekly)

Watch This!


Sir Ted Robinson -- 'creativity expert' cum stand-up comedian -- says creativity is the new literacy. (TED via YouTube)

Reverse Sticker Shock

So occasionally it falls upon me to go pick a poet up from the airport. Not a bad gig, especially when said poet is a nice guy and a good conversationalist -- far too few poets can boast the same, but that's another blogpost altogether...

What I want to write about is this: when driving back from the airport, I drove past my friendly neighborhood petrol retailer. Regular unleaded goes for $1.69 a gallon nowadays. 169 pennies.

Which makes me think of my dad who, later in life, lost a lot of weight because he was too heavy and he was afraid he was going to get diabetes and they would have to lop off one or more of his limbs. That's how a Beitelman tends to think about such things. Anyway, he lost the weight in, like, literally four seconds. You turned around and there he was, a bag-o-bones. I didn't notice so much because I saw him everyday. Plus I figured hey, this is good. Better to lose the weight this way than to lose it because they chopped off your leg.

But my friends were worried. "Is your dad sick?" they asked me, grave looks on their faces. No, he just lost a lot of weight really fast.

And so it is with gas prices. Or...is it? On the one hand you're, like, "Glad you lost weight, Mr. Formerly Flabby Gas Prices. We didn't want to say anything, but you really let yourself go."

But then it dawns on you. This just can't be good.

I'm saying right now: if it dips below a buck, I'm headed to Oak Mountain State Park to eat bark and bugs and wait for the imminent endtimes. On that note...nighty-night!

Paul Benedict, Better Known as "That Guy from The Jeffersons" Dies

I don't know which is a bigger blow: news that Paul Benedict, the actor who played Bentley on The Jeffersons, has died or that he was 70 years old. 70. That's a little too young to die... But still. Bentley was 70 years old.

Poetry Reading in The Ham Tomorrow Night

Come one, come all to the inimitable Alabama School of Fine Arts in beautiful downtown Birmingham, Alabama, to hear two fine and decorated poets read from their latest work tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m.

Al Gore Out-Tin-Manned by Evil Coal Spokesman!

So we can all admit it: as much as we love the Gore-acle and his New and Vastly Improved Post-2000 Election Debacle Self, he can still sometimes come off as a little tone deaf. Like he's not really aware that he sounds like an overly packaged and pre-prepped blowhard. But this guy with the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, who followed Gore on this evening's All Things Considered, made Gore sound like the most emotionally intelligent person on the (hot, flat, and crowded) planet. Fella just keeps talking about how he used to clean his room and his mom would get all upset how his room was still dirty even though he thought it was clean. It was all a matter of opinion, really. Subjective like. And how this is the situation with "Clean Coal." See Robert Siegal, it's that Al Gore is this coal-lover's OCD mother who won't let him go play even though his room belches plumes of black smoke into the air, choking the planet, and dooming us all to an apocalyptic, hand-to-mouth existence not unlike in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. So, see, the American People are on the coal-lover's side with this! Clearly! They understand that Clean Coal doesn't really mean clean coal. It means, uh, you know, something else...something else wonderful and wholesome and good. Yes. But not clean. (NPR/ATC)

Tim Kaine Doesn't Want Your Stinking Consolation Prize

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine said today he'd reject any of the bottomfeeder Cabinet posts that are left. VP, he says, would've been like a draft notice. It's, like, either that or Canada. But now he'll just play out the string as Governor and then maybe go be president of some college or a Taco Bell or something. (WaPo)

Everything You Wanted to Know About Bill Richardson...

...oh yeah, you didn't really want to know about Bill Richardson or else he wouldn't have gone kaput so early in the Democratic nomination process. Still, here's some stuff in Esquire regarding the Commerce Secretary nominee, as flagged and glossed by the o-so-buttoned-up guys and dolls over at Wonkette.

Attack of the Elderly!

Japan may be the canary in the coalmine of civil unrest vis a vis the massive, worldwide socioeconomic question nobody knows how to answer: what do we do with all our old people, especially as traditional cultures that tend to value and honor the elderly succumb to more "modern" ones that don't? It's a numbers game. Old people can't work and, let's face it, they're pretty high maintenance. If Japan's current situation is any indication, you can't just ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Cuz they'll just go to the mall and stab somebody just to get three squares and an ear to bend in the clink.

Wait, Does Money Really...Exist?

Of course money exists! What are you, stupid? But then again...if you really think about it...with your direct deposits and your automatic billpayers, not to mention the whole crazy digitized world of High Finance, it all starts to look a little like smoke and mirrors. And like poor Wile E. Coyote up there, if we ever choose to look down and see how high up we are -- and just how much nothing there is between us and ground -- it can all come crashing to earth in a hurry. Kai Ryssdal talks to Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and the author of a new book called The Ascent of Money. Ferguson says it's all about trust and a willing suspension of disbelief. The upshot, according to ol' Niall, is that, from a broad enough perspective, money, well, it ascends. (APM/Marketplace)

Missing the Forest for the Trees

NYT's David Sanger with an 'On Washington' piece that reveals the Obama transition team's surprise at what's under the current administration's hood. And contrary to popular belief, it's not so much that W is insulated from information; it's that he gets too much of it and the wrong kind. Too detailed, too day-to-day. Too much tactics, not enough strategery. And the big culprit? Technology. Pull quote:

But several [Obama transition team members] say that their biggest surprise came when they learned more about how President Bush spends his day, and how he gets his information. It’s not clear what they expected; perhaps after all those jokes on Letterman and Leno, they thought Mr. Bush spent the heart of his day on the stationary bicycle. Instead, they have been surprised to see the degree of tactical detail about two wars and a handful of insurgencies — from the tribal areas of Pakistan to Sudan and the Congo — that surrounds him. Partly this is because the high-tech makeover of the Situation Room, completed about two years ago, makes instantaneous conversation with field commanders easier than ever. Both the transition officials and some White House insiders say it may make this communication too easy, sucking the commander-in-chief into a situation in which
real-time, straight-from-the-battlefield discussions of tactics masquerade as a conversation about strategy.

44 = 41?

E.J. Dionne notices the Bush 41 parallels everybody else is noticing re: the moderately hawkish foreign policy apparatus 44 is installing. That's not very interesting because there it is, plain for even Fred Barnes to see. What's insightful is Dionne has gone back to 44's original speech denouncing the Iraq war and parsed out all the Realpolitik, Scowcroftian pragmatism. If you'd a just listened, the guy already told all you give-peace-a-chancers that he doesn't mind mixing it up, just not when it's so obviously gonna be a clusterf#$%. (TNR)

Don't Tell Me This Means No Olympics?!*

From the Department of Not If But When, the SEC shoe finally dropped and Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford was indicted today on eleventy-seven charges by the mean people at Your Federal Government. (WBHM)

*For all you non-Magic Citizens (muggles, if you like), Mayor Larry has been fired up for a while now to bring the Olympics to Birmingham. Yes, the actual Olympics, where they have all those fancy medals and participants ooze performance enhancing drugs.