Syntax of Things

Happy birthday, George McGovern!

George McGovern is 85 today. 

As David Broder notes in a column in today's Washington Post, McGovern's influence is still quite strong today despite his landslide loss in 1972:

At the time, it certainly didn't look like salvation to party leaders, who saw the Democrats losing seat after seat in the McGovern debacle. But the energy and talent McGovern enlisted have proved to be the party's salvation. Without the reforms McGovern forced onto a reluctant Democratic establishment -- including guaranteed representation for women and minorities in the convention hall -- it is impossible to imagine that this year, the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination would be Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

Though no one at this mostly partisan Democratic gathering noted the point, the parallel to the McGovern experience on the Republican side can be found in Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign. Goldwater was a landslide loser to Lyndon Johnson, but he, too, brought a whole set of talented newcomers into national politics, among them Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Unsuccessful campaigns can have that long-term benefit for their party, but only if the losing candidate identifies himself with much larger causes. For McGovern, the causes were peace abroad and reform of the Democratic Party at home. For Goldwater, it was conservatism in its contemporary definition -- low taxes, strong defense and skepticism about government.

It was the idealism of their campaigns -- and their willingness to defy the pollsters and the political odds -- that endeared them to their young followers. And their vindication came with the successes those followers achieved.

There's a lesson in this for those running for president today. There is more than one way to measure a successful campaign.

As someone who worked in McGovern's campaign, and many other losing ones, including several of my own, I'd like to believe this.

The first campaign I ever worked on was when I was 13 years old and handed out leaflets that said "Get on the Johnson, Humphrey, Kennedy Team" to voters outside the American Legion hall on Avenue N and East 56 Street in Brooklyn, down the block where I lived: Lyndon B. Johnson for President, Hubert H. Humphrey for Vice President, Robert F. Kennedy for U.S. Senator.

Some girls my age who were Goldwater supporters were trying to harassing me, but they were so dumb they didn't realize their chant was not favorable to their candidate:

"Goldwater in '64!  Hot water in '65!  Bread and water in '66!"

Little did I know that on a 105-degree day in early June 1998, I'd be in Frank Lloyd Wright's monstrous Grady Gammage Auditorium on the Arizona State University campus where I'd later teach, crying my eyes out at Barry Goldwater's funeral as I sat with members of the Phoenix gay community who felt bereft at the loss of their unlikely champion. 

The Arizona Human Rights Fund later named a human rights award in honor of "Mr. Conservative."  It's hard to remember that Goldwater was pro-choice.  Supporting gay soldiers, he famously said, "You don't have to be straight to shoot straight."

As a 20-year-old college junior attending a meeting in January 1972 to organize a McGovern campaign in our congressional district, I believed that electing McGovern would be our best chance to end the horrible, seemingly endless war that we all hated so much.  But I liked everything about McGovern: not just his stands on issues, but his seemingly modest, earnest personality.

It's kind of amazing today that throughout the campaign, McGovern never played up his status as a genuine war hero or someone who had a divinity degree.  He and those of us in his campaign didn't think it was about his military record or his religious beliefs.  Ha.

Around the time of the 2004 Democratic convention, I copied the entries from my diary of the 1972 convention in Miami Beach and sent them to the webzine Rouse Magazine, which published them.  I thought I lost them, but this morning I managed to find them, a little worse for wear, on the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine).  If you're interested, you can read them here.

We worked really hard that fall, even after it became obvious that Nixon was going to be re-elected in a historic landslide.  We didn't care; we believed in our candidate and our cause.  I guess that sounds dogmatic, self-righteous and a little scary today.

The weekend before the election, McGovern campaigned in Coney Island, and I will never forget being in the crowd that chilly night on West 8th Street outside the mammoth Trump Village apartment complex where some of my friends lived.  Despite the crush, I got up close enough to shake his hand. 

On the Brooklyn College campus Tuesday morning, I remember my friend Lou Marcus, who'd voted early in Far Rockaway -- he stood in line, he said, behind my great-aunt and great-uncle -- smiling and saying, "I don't believe the polls.  He's going to win."

I believed the polls.  They were right.  McGovern lost big.

Today's his birthday, though, and in the end I think he will go out a winner.

(Sorry for the old-man sentimentality.)

I'm not a winner.  My voting residence is in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District, a safe Republican seat where there was no Democratic candidate on the ballot in November of 2004.  Nor was there one when I got my absentee ballot for last November's Democratic landslide.

I'm hoping we can get a good one for 2008.  So far nobody's expressed any interest in challenging the Republican incumbent, so I've registered with the Federal Election Commission as the lone Democrat running in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District.  I hope the prospect of me as a candidate scares local Democrats enough to get a decent nominee, but if not, I'll be the one to lose in a landslide.

George McGovern taught me how to lose.  Happy birthday, George.

Five blogs that would be on my blogroll if I only had a blog

I've been asked a number of times why I don't have my own blog.  For me, it's too much work and too much pressure to produce.  The blogosphere beast needs to be fed regularly, all the how-to-be-a-blogger manuals say, and I'm too lazy, too old, and too inept to deal with the daily grind.  I greatly admire those who are regular bloggers, however.

For me, guest-blogging -- whether it's I or someone else -- provides a short-term dose of a voice that might become grating on a regular basis.  It's just like those great guest hosts on late-night talk shows who managed to be a pleasant, refreshing break from Johnny Carson or Dick Cavett.  (Now I'm dating myself -- but it's okay because I'm a cheap date.)

(Admit it, people who write "it's I" really grate on your nerves, don't they?)

My favorite talk-show guest host was on the old late-afternoon Mike Douglas show in the 1960s and early 1970s.  Delayed by bad weather on a flight back home to Cleveland, where the show was taped, Mike would sometimes just call his next-door neighbor, an average Joe -- perhaps an insurance salesman? -- to take his place and chat with Totie Fields and introduce Steve and Eydie's next number.  Once, about fifteen minutes before the show's end, Mike walked in wearing a raincoat and carrying a suitcase and took the reins back from his neighbor, who seemed quite relieved to give up his temporary celebrity.  That was back in the days before reality TV when all Americans did not aspire to become famous.  The guy did a fairly credible job, though.

If I were credible enough to have my own blog, here are five nonliterary but literate blogs I read regularly which would have a place on my blogroll:

Susan Mernit: I've known Susan since her early days as a poet, when we lived under the same roof as fellows at the Virginia Center for the Arts in the summers of 1981 and 1982.  Currently one of Silicon Valley's most prescient gurus and a bigshot at Yahoo, Susan has also been a key executive at Netscape, AOL and other Web 1.0 and 2.0 enterprises.  She was my boss's boss when I was a columnist at New Jersey Online in the early 1990s, at a time when all of us were trying to figure this Internet thing out.  An expert on social networking, interactive media and online journalism, Susan's blog is required reading for Silicon Valley hotshots. Sample post: 10 things we can learn from Facebook.

Living with Legends: the Hotel Chelsea Blog: The Anonymous Blogger (some of us know her real name) reports about the past and present at the residence of Manhattan bohemians since before even I was born. Ginsberg & Kerouac!  Tennessee & Gore!  Frida & Diego!  Janis & Jimi!  And no one can forget Sid & Nancy!  My most memorable evening there was spent in the 1970s hanging out in the room of Lance Loud.  Now this bastion of avant-garde is imperiled by a new management team.  Will the Chelsea as we know it survive?  Stay tuned to the Anonymous Blogger's daily reports. Sample post: Stanley Bard: patron saint of punk rock. 

Law School Academic Support Blog: As a once and perhaps future Academic Support Program (ASP) professional, I go here to find out what's happening in the field that helps law students achieve their maximum potential.  An important movement that has a lot to offer educators in other fields, I recommend this blog not only to ASP directors and law professors but to law students who want to go behind the scenes and see what their greatest allies on campus are thinking. Sample post: Our own skills: empathizing.

Father Jake Stops the World: This Episcopal priest is the go-to guy for news and opinions about the current turmoil in the American church and its place in the Anglican communion.  With Nigerian Bishop Akinola, the cleric who's making sure gay men in Lagos are put behind bars for having dinner in public together, seemingly intent on colonizing the more conservative American dioceses, Father Jake provides a voice of reason.  But can a schism be avoided?  Sample post: With Apologies to Don McLean.

Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn: The New York Times recently called Park Slope's Louise Crawford "the nurturing matriarch" of the bloggiest borough:

In accordance with the unwritten rules of placeblogging, Ms. Crawford considers her three-year-old blog an “informal portal” with no pretense of objectivity and, by definition, an automatic interest in anything that ever happens in or relating to Park Slope. This is why she welcomes e-mail tips from readers sharing observations like “I think I heard a gunshot” or questions like “What was that smell last night?” For Ms. Crawford and her audience, absolutely nothing is too trivial.  The quirks of her own life reflect her postage stamp of home turf. Ms. Crawford, a mother of two, writes a parenting column called Smartmom for The Brooklyn Paper, and observations on education and child-rearing factor prominently in her blog. In a recent entry on her daughter’s fifth-grade graduation ceremony at Public School 321, she wrote: “Graduations. Parties. They’re going on all over the city. These are the milestone moments that require Kleenex and a strong margarita afterwards.”

Also worth a look are Hugh Crawford's photos on No Words Daily Pix. Sample Smartmom post: Once again America asks: What to tell the children?

(Full disclosure: I recently guest-blogged on OTBKB, posting two reports from my current project, Exploring Brooklyn by Bus: the B68 and the B24. The latest bus report, on the B100, is here.)

You Ain't Seen Gloatin' Yet

I had a new idea just now thanks to Shannon Byrne, an Atlanta-based publicist for Little, Brown.  As part of the shrill chorus that's been gathering and whining for weeks over at the Critical Mass blog, she wrote a nice little piece about, you guessed it, bloggers, a favorite subject for too long now on the BLOG of the NBCC.   In her post (on a BLOG), Ms. Byrne acknowledges that we bloggers serve a useful purpose, even if she doesn't quite see the usefulness in the same way that I do.  Here, let me quote her:

Seriously, though, blogs are kind of like parasitic microorganisms which feed off of a primary host. For the sake of this discussion, the host is clearly print media. Some are the good bacteria and some are transient and viral. Or maybe I can upgrade blogs to the status of some sort of interstitial or synovial fluid, buffering the vital organs of the media (newspaper, television, radio, the Internet)? But, c’mon, if newspapers are dying, then blogs are the maggots come to feast upon their corpses.

Now let me ask you, could you imagine a world without maggots?  Think of all the piles of decaying corpses and rotten trash that would sit for days smelling up the very air we breathe, making it difficult to read the newsp--...ah, computer screens in front of us.  Maybe to her, maggots have a negative connotation, but to someone like me who appreciates a tidy planet in which all things run efficiently and in which the dead can be disposed of by creatures who demand no pay and complain very little until the corpses--in this case, "the host"--start calling them dirty names, well, I'm a fan of the maggot. 

So back to my idea.  I'm still looking for a way to make a few extra bucks and my cafepress thing didn't go over so well, so I've come up with this:

Keep in mind, this is just a prototype.  I also have hats and bibs and little rainproof covers for your newsp--...ah, laptops.

Let me know if you're interested.  Remember, these Totebags! really do a good job keeping your petitions organized.  If I can get them manufactured in time, I might send a batch up to New York in time for BEA, where the corpses and maggots will mingle.

Oh Bother

The most intense intellectual debate I've allowed my rather exhausted self over the last few weeks has been what the theme for the wee one's first birthday will be.  I'm a little embarrassed to admit that her favorite thing right now seems to be the Teletubbies.  Now I know this goes against the whole hipster dad ideal and probably exposes me as some sort of bad parent for allowing the wee one to be sucked in by something so inane, or any TV for that matter; after all, I can hear folks saying, she is so young and she can't control her intake.  But sometimes parents need a break and we have this free watch-on-demand channel on our cable, Sprout, which shows all of these low-impact shows for tots.  Well, she's become a fan.  Now you can say to her, "Hi Sproutlets," and she'll turn her head toward the television.  It's rather cute in an "uh oh" sort of way.

So no, this isn't an excuse, this isn't a warning that all of you future parents need to heed, a "beware the Sprout", or a mea culpa for turning the wee one into yet another TV-addicted youf.  She'll be fine.  I've already started feeding her a steady diet of books.  Literally.  She enjoys chewing on the corners.  I'll have her devouring some Kerouac before you know it.  Right now, it's about keeping our sanity, allowing us as parents and as people to catch our breaths for a few minutes, to let the television do what it might be good for, babysitting.  It's not like we do it for hours on end and truth be known she spends most of her Sprout time playing with the toys around her, screaming at the dogs, or plotting ways to impress us her with her cuteness so that she can build up ample toy-buying credit when she hits toy shopping age.

But back to the debate.  Yesterday morning, my wife sent me a link to all of this Teletubby party ware and that's when my alarm bells went off.  First of all, I had given birthday-party theme zero thought.  I figured we'd show up with the wee one and all would go from there.  But of course there would need to be a theme, a backdrop for photos and videos, something to benchmark all of her future birthday parties.  My only concern was trying to make a convincing argument that we don't want it to be the Teletubbies.  After all, she's also a fan of the Teletubby-like Boobahs, and the Boobahs are less well-known, therefore in my skewed version of parent cooldom, this would be better than caving to the popular, this would still allow my baby to be different--separate and somehow better--and will keep us from being one of those parents who think that just because little Danny likes the look of a shiny pistol he'll need to have a cowboy-themed party.  Then I thought, Pooh.  She likes Pooh.  Everyone likes Pooh.  Pooh is classic; Pooh has a certain quality about him.  Pooh gives you this:

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie."

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fish can't whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie."

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken, I don't know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie."

Can't it be Pooh?  I don't think Elaine was impressed.  "Does she even like Pooh?" she IM'd.  "And is it even possible to find Boobah party stuff?" she continued, her defense of the Teletubbies obvious.  After all, she spends the most time with the wee one and she knows more than anyone what she likes.  That's why I'll probably end up caving.  I'm not going to be some cool-obsessed Neal Pollacky arbiter of taste.  If the wee one loves her Teletubbies then let her have her Teletubbies.  It does mean that I have some work to do if I'm going to get Pooh up to number one in her heart before she turns two.  Or three.

And on the bright side, at least it isn't Barney.

Go Moan

Nothing like having your favorite regular Tuesday night hypnotized by idiot box viewing of some fabulous Court TV docudrama interrupted by the news that someone has managed to hack your wife's PayPal account to the tune of almost $900 to buy himself a new laptop and have it shipped all the way to Indonesia.  Smart guy this thejarnold, who left behind enough personal information that he probably won't be too hard to track down.  In fact, I found his information on eBay in less than five minutes, including his praise of the guy who sold him "his" computer.  Unfortunately, the $900 which was pulled out of our bank account won't be restored until the wheels of justice have finished rolling over this guy's head, meaning that the wee one will have to go without the brand-name organic smushed bananas for up to ten business days.   

Couple all of that with a raging headache that came on yesterday morning rendering me pretty much bedridden most of the day.  So far, so good this a.m., but being without access to the Anna Nicole trial of the century part one will be difficult.  Anybody caught any of the judge's act?  Pure and beautiful chaos, like the guy is scripting his own made-for-TV movie right there in the courtroom.  He's got a Robert Blake doing Baretta voice and I'm not sure his elevator hits all the floors, if you know what I mean.  Probably the best judge one could ask for in this case, at least from a spectator's POV. 

While watching this circus sideshow, I kept seeing the trailer for the new Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow) movie Black Snake Moan.  You know a movie has a lot of potential when seeing the previews makes you rather uncomfortable and this one has that dirt-under-the-fingernails feel written all over it.  Anyway, Brewer is interviewed in Filter and gives you a good idea of what he's going for in his movies:

You mentioned how this movie fits in the canon that you read and watch. What literary tradition is that?

I’m really trying to be a filmmaker telling Southern stories. So when I look at the stories of Flannery O’Connor or Faulkner or John Fergus Ryan, or especially Tennessee Williams, I feel that Black Snake Moan is at home with those particular narratives, because there is an element of camp, an element of exploitation. It’s funny...Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, played by Marlon Brando, gets drunk, gets mad at his pregnant wife, starts punching her, all his friends pull him off of her, all her friends take her upstairs, and Tennessee Williams decides that the best way to sober up Marlon Brando’s character is to put him under a shower and he gets in a fight where his shirt gets ripped. So now, when we see this monster who just beat up on his pregnant wife, calling up the stairs, “Stella! Stella, Stella!” he’s got this muscular, sweaty, rippling, exposed, sexy back and we as an audience think it’s just as sexy as his wife coming down the stairs, unable to be away from him and running her fingers down his back. There’s a touch of exploitation in that. There’s a touch of camp. There’s extremity in that, that people go to movies and plays to be a part of. They want their lives filled with crazy passion, with outrageous situations.

At least he seems to be invoking the right folks.  Unfortunately Justin Timberlake and "the girl with the amazing growing forehead" have roles in the film so it's not a free pass to make it to my rather limited movie-going queue.

Hopefully, tomorrow will see a little less pain in the head and the wee one's organic turnip green fund will be restored.  Otherwise, you will be hearing a chorus of crying from down Raleigh way.

Heavy Pages

It's finally happened.  I've thrown up the white flag.  Given up.  I can't fight this feeling anymore.

Gone are the days when I could come home, say hello to the beautiful wife, eat my dinner, then scurry up to the reading room and settle into a book. That's over now.  I have more pressing things on my daily agenda, namely a little baby who smiles when she first sees me most afternoons, a smile that makes me immediately forget that the stack of books keeps growing.

It happens. 

Not saying for a second that this is the end of a long reading career.  Just a hiatus. One of these ...  Just a few more weeks or months of not feeling like I need to read, of feeling that I'm being an irresponsible reader, that I'm missing out on something.  Miss it already, that's for sure.  I'm reminded every day, every time I walk by the TBR pile.  Reminded every time a new book arrives in the mail or a new review goes up on a favorite blog.  But being reminded from now on will not come with the guilt that has often accompanied it.  After all, those books aren't going anywhere.  They will be there unchanged, each word intact, just as I left them when I abandoned them for what to me right now are better things.  Unlike those books, Marlie is changing seemingly with every passing minute, her blank pages filling with the simplest of type, unseen footnotes waiting to be referenced, chapters becoming outlined.  I plan to be a major character in this novel. I aim to cherish as much of these brainstorming days as I possibly can.

So how is it that I still don't have time to read or don't take the time to read once I've spent time with Marlie?  Call it a lack of attention span.  Call it a lack of desire to invest time or energy in a book.  Whatever you want to call it, I'm just not interested right now.  How long will it last?  Who knows.  Might not last out the weekend. 

In fact, I doubt it will.

I Dreamed of an Angel on My Chest

A few days ago, I heard the sad news that Farrah Fawcett has cancer.  It reminded me of something I wrote in the early days of Syntax of Things, something I'm going to repost here.  Get better soon, Farrah.

Long before my wife Elaine or my first wife Jen, long before the numerous declarations of love I made as a high schooler or the crushes on the likes of Ashley Judd and Juliette Binoche, even before the fling I had with a sixth grader when I was in third grade, I fell in love with Farrah.  It wasn't exactly the living, breathing Farrah who talked to the invisible Charlie and who tracked down dangerous criminals with her fellow Angels.  It was actually this image. I was seven when I first spotted her hanging on the wall of a T-shirt shop in the Selma Mall.  Of all the options available, the cars and comic book characters, I wanted nothing more, would think of nothing but having her ironed on the front of a light blue shirt, my name in dark blue letters on the back.

I no longer know what inspired this need.  Was it the pearly whites casting some sort of hypnotic spell?  Was it the hair?  Was it the, well, obvious?

So I was seven and being given the privilege of picking out my own design because I had scored perfect S's on my first report card.  Being a budding scholar did not give me the freedom of choice I had expected.  It seems the one image in the entire shop that my mom refused to allow on a T-shirt was the one I coveted.  No matter how much I begged, no matter that I offered to buy it with my own money, my mom refused to see beyond the implied pornography.  After all, what would the other mothers think?  What would my dad think?  What was her seven-year-old boy thinking?

This story could end with a plot hatched by a precocious thwarted lover to convince an older cousin to buy the shirt for him.  Or some fashion of rebellion in which I refused to eat my lima beans until I could wear my love on my chest.  But it ends with a distant second choice, an image of Bo and Luke Duke leaning against the General Lee.  Despite the jealousy of my friends,  John Schneider and Tom Wopat could not ease the pain of my unrequited love.

At a Mill Wheel Grinding

Look at the photo above and you'll know exactly how I spent my 4th of July holiday.  What started off as roughly four hundred pieces of particle board, dowels, screws, hinges, and bolts consumed my entire day, save for the few early morning hours when I was able to start Steve Yarbrough's The End of California.*  Soon enough, my reading turned from literary to technical, from clear and consice to confusing and confounding, from beautifully written passages to poorly drawn illustrations.  Who the hell do they hire to come up with the manuals for putting together prefab furniture?  Seven hours after I began, about the time Kim Jong-il was tossing his Taepodong-2 missile over the Pacific in a big "Up Yours!" to the West, I put the last screw in the dresser and proclaimed victory over the forces of evil instruction writing.  Baby Marlie now has a place to sleep and some drawers for her clothes and I have two fewer pieces of furniture to put together.   

So another year goes by that I didn't compile my "Music for Fireworks" compilation.  Not only that, but I didn't have the energy to go see fireworks.  I settled for watching the pundits blame each other's party for North Korea while the neighborhood kids shot off barely legal pyrotechnics a block or so away.  However, there was one song I hummed all day.  Fitting in many ways, I think.  The version I'm offering here is Johnny and June Carter but this song has been done by dozens of folks over the years.  Enjoy and check back later today or tomorrow when more regular randomness will return.

+ "If I Were a Carpenter" by June Carter and Johnny Cash

If I were a carpenter and you were a lady
Would you marry me anyway, would you have my baby?
If a tinker were my trade, would you still love me?
Carrying the pots I made, following behind me

  Save my love through loneliness
  Save my love for sorrow
  I've given you my onliness
  Come and give me your tomorrows

If I worked my hands in wood, would you still love me
Answer me, babe, yes, I would, I'd put you above me
If I were a miller at a mill wheel grinding
Would you miss your colored box, your soft shoes shining?

_______________________________________________________________
*Any book with a picture of a Piggly Wiggly on the cover automatically goes to the top of the TBR pile.

Wholly New York

You would think that someone so enamored with with Americana, with writing, with art, with the Beats, with culture in general, would have made numerous trips to New York City.  Not the case for me. Last week marked my first time there other than a layover or two at JFK.  I'm sure like most people going to New York for the first time, I had my preconceived notions of the place.  I probably bought in to some of the myths.  You know the ones I'm talking about:  people are rude, city is dirty, everything is expensive.  Frankly, I didn't know what to expect and really didn't care one way or the other.  I had training for my new job and I had a big, wonderful, amazing city all around me.  Once there, it was time to take it all in, good and bad, as much as I could in one evening in Manhattan.

That Was Then

I thought about writing one of those classic five-paragraph essays highlighting the adventures of my six weeks of unemployment now that my period of being unemployed is coming to an end but I've forgotten all about the placement of the thesis statement and probably couldn't come up with a good concluding paragraph seeing as anything that concludes with going back to work could never be good.  And who needs structure like that when I have bullet points?  Oh, and I can't remember much beyond last Friday so I'm only going back that far.  Thus, the highlights of my last weekend of freedom:

• Elaine and I spent a few hours at the Raleigh Farmers Market sampling strawberries and tomatoes and absorbing the deep and true North Carolina flavors--people and produce.  But the real find for us was the NC Seafood Market and Restaurant, where I chose from the menu a large, three-piece sample platter (fried oysters, shrimp, and catfish) and what I got for the $8.99 I paid was so much food that I might be eating seafood for the next two weeks.
• Saturday afternoon, I watched Samone, the laziest cat in the world who until last week spent 23 hours of every day on the end of our bed, become a fearless backyard hunter.  At first, I thought she was crouching low in the high grass going after a bird, but then when she took off, cat quick, and charged a third of the way up a tree I realized that she was going after a squirrel.  She didn't catch it, but she looked quite nimble going after it.
• I bought Elaine her first Mother's Day card.  Ok, a little premature, but I figured I should get in the habit.  Plus, I heard rumor (from Elaine) that a father-to-be these days is expected to buy their wives a "push present" to give to the laboring wife on the day of delivery.  Seriously, what the hell?  Who came up with that absurdity?
• I'd planned on driving the thirty or so miles to Zebulon to take in a Carolina Mudcats baseball game.  But thanks to Richard Grayson and his new collection of short stories I couldn't leave my reading chair.  More about this book tomorrow I hope.
• Thanks to a proud citizen of the Caryon Nation, the true highlight may just come tonight (Sunday) in the form of a ticket to game five between Carolina and New Jersey.  My first NHL game and it's playoff hockey to boot. 

#FFCBDB

I apologize to anyone whose favorite color happens to be pink, but I would love to find the people responsible for tagging baby girls with this color and place them in a brightly lit pink room--pink carpets, pink painted walls, pink ceiling--and play Pink loudly through a pair of pink speakers. And when their indigestion hits, I'd force feed them a big spoonful of pink Pepto and ask if they were convinced of pink's disturbing characteristics.  I'd leave them in the room until they realized the error of their ways but not until they decided to change the baby girl color to something easier on the stomach and the eyes.  Perhaps light green. 

Yesterday Elaine and I stood in the baby section of Target, barcode scanner in hand, filling out our baby registry.  I don't think either of us realized just how hard this would be.  We had a checklist, we had ideas, but still the lingering questions, the distinct possibility that we were leaving off essentials.  Not that we had to get everything on this first go with the scanner, but we were unsure of what we were looking at much less what we needed to be looking at.  Crib: check.  Stroller: check.  Changing table: check.  What's next?: check.

Actually, I think things went okay until we moved to the clothes.  Staring at all of that pink, my heart sunk.  Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to be having a baby girl.  Girl was and is my preference.  But looking at all of that pink.  Frilly, lacy, ugly pink.  Thankfully, Elaine also dislikes pink, or at least she doesn't intend to swathe the baby from head to toenail in that godawful color.  It's unavoidable, but I think we will stick to the yellows and greens, mixing in pink only when and if necessary. 

I guess I should move on.  Get over it. Accept the fact that I'll need to get used to pink.  Let pink grow on me, like a fungus, until I'm a pinkophile.

But her room will not be pink.  And she won't be sleeping on pink sheets wearing pink pajamas.

And when she's old enough and rebels against her dad, I'm sure it will be to wear pink, but I swear she will never, ever listen to Pink. Or Madonna. 

If so, I'll disown her.  Then I'll paint her room pink.

****

I have to say that I was quite impressed with the selection of high-tech baby equipment, and this even though we weren't at the best of Targets.  Tomorrow, we'll be hitting Babies R Us and I'm sure to find their toys even more to my liking.

But the best find of the day can be seen in the picture below.  Don't ask...

Crates and Sheds

For those of you keeping score, I'm at least a dozen books behind in my minireview project.  I say "at least" because my books have been relegated to a storage shed in Wake Forest, North Carolina.  Not all of them; in fact, the finished but not yet reviewed books are in a plastic blue crate in the bedroom of our temporary residence.  Before I'm able to resume my minireview project, I'll have to finish my book extraction and organization project, and I'm sure you'll understand when I say that there are at least a dozen other projects clogging up the "to do" list right now, including job hunting, baby classes, and house finding, not necessarily in that order.

I already miss my books,their familiar spines my favorite wallpaper.  I miss being able to pull one down at random, dust away the months of sitting idle on the shelf, comb away the dog hair before opening it to a random page.  Or just the ability to stare at them from the comfort of my couch, one book in hand, as if showing it where it will live one day.

I watched as the movers pulled the cheap, Home Depot boxes from the truck.  Corners creased, middles folded, tops missing or flattened.  One of the movers commented, "You sho have enough books."  "Kinda my job," I responded.  Lied.  Figured it would make these guys understand that I don't read just for the fun of it.  It's work.  After all, how weird would it be to be talking to a guy who actually reads for the hell of it?

As far as I could tell, all of my books made it, stayed in their boxes, except for one: Camus's The Stranger.  The Stranger, the Outsider.  Maybe that's a sign that I need to reacquaint myself with my masculine side.  I stuck the paperback in my back pocket and brought it home, if home is a blue plastic crate.  Now it mixes with the books I've just finished reading--Lisa Carver's wonderful Drugs Are Nice (thanks Soft Skull) and Ron Rash's The World Made Straight--and with the books, too many to mention, that I still need to read.

I'll get around to reading them, minireviewing them, organizing them.  I can hardly wait.

Bread Crumbs

One of these days I'm going to take a trip across the country and stop to enjoy some of the roadside attractions.  Once again on this my ninth trip, time was somewhat of the essence.  Not because I had a deadline or a firm date to arrive in Raleigh, but because I was driving a van load of impatient and restless passengers so the need to get to where we were going was priority one.  And admittedly, I was anxious to get to my new home.  Still, good old I-40 gave us quite the scenic drive and the iPod and xm radio kept our ears filled with all kinds of goodness.  So below the cut, I give you a state-by-state, brief recap of the eastward migration.

If the South Woulda Won

Frequent visitors to Syntax of Things know that I'm a self-exiled Southerner, having moved to California in 1998 after spending all of my life in the deepest of the Deep South.  I grew up in a fairly typical white Southern household, where the prevailing philosophy was conservative and Christian with that added ingredient of open and unapologetic racism.  No one in my family would give a second thought to waving the confederate flag from their front porch, and talking openly about the supremacy of the white race wasn't only de rigueur but was encouraged.  I'm not saying that anyone in my family donned the hood and burned crosses (though rumors of my grandad's KKK membership have never been denied or confirmed), but family members didn't mind the presence of what they considered a well-meaning group that wanted to keep law and order and preserve the white identity.

So this past weekend as I sat in the theater watching the new mockumentary CSA, I felt somewhat squeamish.  The movie's premise is pretty simple: what if the South had won the Civil War, what would our country be like today?  It's a pretty bleak premise, considering that in the so-called Confederate States of America slavery is legal, slave trading can be done on the internet, escaped slaves and immigrants are chased down by the CBI (the Confederate Bureau of Investigation) and filmed for a Cops-like television show, racism is just a word, and miscegenation can lead to the ruin of a political dynasty.  I doubt the movie will get much attention outside of some academic and/or Indie film watching communities, but the message is clear.  How much of a stretch is it to imagine this happening in 21st century U.S.?  Thus my squeamishness. 

I thought back to some of the conversations I've had over the years with my family members, knowing that with any power given to them they would have walled off their neighborhoods, would have led a charge to keep blacks from voting, would have made sure that Martin Luther King Jr's message wasn't taught in schools or at least not as the positive and peaceful message of equality but rather as something divisive and ultimately destructive.  I'm not kidding when I tell you that my relatives who lived in Selma, Alabama, during the sixties believe that King was an evil man who created anarchy in the streets of Selma.  "I saw a n---- boy urinating in public," an uncle once told me.  I don't remember if I asked if it was because the poor man couldn't use any of the bathrooms in town because they were all marked "White Only."

Scary stuff, huh?  I think or hope that many members of my family, or at least a few of them, have changed for the better over the years.  I still hear some of the racism and outright ignorance when I talk to an aunt or cousin but for the most part, the use of the n word has lessened and the general attitude toward African Americans has improved, although I wonder if this isn't simply because they know how I feel and they don't want the pinko-commie-lefty California weirdo to get his panties in a wad during those precious few moments that I'm in their presence.  Now that I'm moving back to the South and closer to future family gatherings, I have to brace myself for the inevitable conversation.  I need to figure out whether it's worth the energy to debate racial tolerance with a seventy-year-old woman who thinks that George Wallace didn't go far enough when he stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama.  Believe me, I've held my tongue so much around my family that I can taste my fingerprints.  Will it be any different the next time?

And if for some reason you think that CSA presents an idea that hasn't been voiced in the South, more than likely still is in open and "polite" society, consider that you can still see the rebel flag waving, bumper stickers bearing the slogan "The South will rise again" aren't uncommon, and then there's a song by Hank Williams Jr, the lyrics I somewhat reluctantly reprint beneath the fold, which speaks volumes.  One day they'll bury their swords, but like I've said before, it's going to take time, lots and lots of time.

Dry

Oh sure, it's inevitable, y'know? When you begin, it's a man takes a drink. When you end up, it's a drink takes a man. Keeping my balance during that period was tricky. When I was in my twenties, I thought I was invincible, made out of rubber. You skate along the straight razor and flirt with it all the time. I've been sober now for nine years; the best thing I ever did apart from getting married. Was it hard to quit? No, the hard part was before I quit. This is the easy part.
                                                                                                                         --Tom Waits

I've been sober six years today. 

SoT Retrograde

How can one suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder when the city in which one lives has only one season?  So maybe it isn't SAD that has me feeling the blues.  Maybe it's my old nemesis Mercury doing its retrograde thing again.  Whatever it is, I'm in a serious funk.  I look at the calendar every morning and cringe as each unproductive day goes by and this morning it dawned on me that I need to get my shit together.  We have twenty-four days to prepare for this cross-country move and we have yet to put a single thing into a box.  Until yesterday, we didn't even have a box.  And then there's the yard sale that we need to have but neither Elaine nor I have the least bit of desire to lift a finger toward getting it organized.  In addition, I have to finish up my job here and start looking for a job there.  I have COBRA insurance to coordinate, I have bank accounts to close and open, contacts to change, a storage unit to rent, the mover's contract to sign, car shippers to hire.  Am I missing anything?  Oh yeah, did I mention we're having a baby?

And I'm falling behind on everything.  I'm nine books behind on my minireview project.  I have four books to read for the LBC.  I have two fantasy baseball drafts to prepare for.  Etc. Etc. Etc.

So I try to chip away at these things a little at a time, including yesterday when I spent a few hours adding to and consolidating all of my blogroll links, something I've been meaning to do for months.  A word of advice: never attempt the technical while Mercury is in retrograde.  So do me a favor:  Please make sure that I have your link listed.  If it's not there (or it doesn't work) and you know that your site was listed before the consolidation, please drop me a line.  Also, I'm always open to adding sites to the list.  If I haven't linked to you, please tell me.  I know I'm missing some folks who have linked to Syntax of Things and I want to reciprocate.

SoT will return to normal soon.  As normal as possible considering.

This Post Is Rated R

R for repeat.  Everything below the fold anyway.

The local news folks have been on Storm Watch 2006 for the last three days, and because I'm a certifed weather spotter--though I'm never been called on to spot--I'm going to spend my usual blog writing time sitting on my front porch, Kevin Brockmeier's highly touted new book in hand, waiting for the promised storm.  Instead of fresh content on this Mardi Gras morning, I'm reposting a little something I wrote in the early days of Syntax of Things, back when I got eight visitors a day and four of them were me.  Anyway, it's relevant to today's festivities, so maybe one or two of you will learn something you didn't already know.  I'll have new content up later in the day.

The Stack

What happens when you receive $350 in various bookstore gift certificates for Christmas and you use them all at once--whether in person at the store or online--and all of the purchased books start arriving at your apartment to be piled on top of books bought during a comparatively modest November birthday spree and added to a trickle of books that have come in for review?  It's a problem.  And not just a problem of what to do with such a growing To Be Read stack (or better put, how to keep my wife okay with a stack of books that can't be shelved until I finish them), but the dilemma really then becomes more about which books to read first. 

What a Day

I visited a mall for shopping purposes for the first time in a long time today.  Reminded me why I don't spend much time shopping in general.  Funny thing--if you find such things funny--they were holding auditions for The Biggest Loser at a 24-Hour Fitness in said mall.  From a distance, I couldn't figure out why so many very large people were standing around a fitness center. Perhaps it was some sort of protest?  Of what I couldn't imagine, but this being California, anything is ripe for protest.  I had to walk past to see what it was all about and that's when I saw the sign.  Other than that, my trip was very unproductive so I ended up at the Borders across the street. Curious as to whether they had the updated A Million Little Pieces with its author's and publisher's notes, I picked up a copy.  It wasn't in there.  But before I could reshelve it, a lady who appeared too eager to help a fellow Oprah Book Clubian asked me if I had heard that it was all "a pack of untruths."  Really? I asked.  And she told me that the guy had lied to Oprah, had made it all up, that Oprah laid into him on her show, and that she, the lady talking to me, had returned her book for a refund because it was all just so misleading.

Thanks, I told her. 

She then said that if I wanted to read something really good I should pick up the new Stephen King.  He knows how to write a good book.  And off she went.

To make this day complete, I witnessed a wreck on my way to the grocery store to fetch myself a frozen pizza.  Well, I didn't really witness it as much as just drive up on it, and since I was the first on the scene, I felt compelled to stop and offer assistance.  It didn't appear that anyone was seriously injured, though one woman had taken a pretty nice blow from her air bag.  I waited for the cops to arrive, gave them my vitals, then finally made my way to Ralphs for my dinner.

So how was your day?

A List Last Look Book

Two days in to 2006 and I'm still desperately trying to catch up with the projects remaining on last year's "to do" list.  Of course, the most pressing of those has nothing to do with Syntax of Things and I'm not sure if I'll have it done before the end of this year, but a few things do remain to be taken care of here.  For instance, last year I decided to list off a few of the things I considered the best and worst of the year that was, so to continue that tradition, here's my list for 05. 

Books

Best Book I Read in 05:  Of the 56 books that I read in 2005, it's one of the last ones I finished that takes the honor of Best.  Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper will be high on my list of recommendations to friends for a long time. Other notable books included George Singleton's Novel, Dallas Hudgens' Drive Like Hell, Stephen Dixon's Phone Rings, and Luis Alberto Urrea's The Hummingbird's Daughter.

Worst Book I Read in 05:  James Frey's My Friend Leonard, his follow up to the Oprahtastic A Million Little Pieces.  You can read my review here.

Biggest Disappointment:  Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem.  Not being a big fan of the comics, I had a hard time with this book.

Music

Best Album:  The album that I'll probably be listening to far beyond this year will be My Morning Jacket's Z.  And a great band to see live also.

Most Disappointing Album:  I think the one album that still causes my cavities to hurt despite numerous attempts to try and figure out why it is getting such overwhelming critical acclaim would be Sufjan Stephens' Illinois.

Movies

Best Movie I Saw in 05:  After a lot of thought, I'm going to have to say this was a three-way tie between The Squid and the Whale; Me and You and Everyone We Know; and Junebug.

Worst Movie of 05: Elizabethtown.  Nothing else comes close.

Personal

Best accomplishment of 05:  I'd have to say that I'm proudest of the Underrated Writers Project.  Next to that, I'm very proud of something I can't really mention here as of yet, so just take my word for it for now.

Worst Thing to Happen to Me in 05:  Overall, a pretty good year with little about which to complain, but I'd say that it would probably be the day the local indie weekly printed an extensive excerpt of Syntax of Things which contained no indication of the site's url, not to mention the fact that they got my name wrong.

That's it.  On to 2006...

To the Garmin GPS, We Say Thank You

Preface:  The long roadie there and back has come to an end and because I'm not much of a photo snapper you'll have to take my word(s) for what the trip was like.  Okay, so there are a couple of pictures--one in particular that's a must see--but these trips are more about moving and the digital camera will never be able to capture that.

---------------

When in Rome

After years of poking fun at my wife for eating a fish that gave its name to a white trash hairstyle, I finally relented yesterday and had a plate of golden fried mullet.  I made sure that there were other things available in case after a bite I started feeling the urge to chew tobacco and wear overalls.  But the mullet was pretty tasty, less fishy than I expected, but fishy enough to make it very similar to catfish.  What made the experience even more entertaining was the fact that we had the mullet in the Pensacola diner behind which Ted Bundy was first spotted by Pensacola PD in his VW Beetle in 1978.  They would pull him over a few blocks away and the state of Florida would electrocute him a decade or so later.  We asked the woman working the cash register if anyone there remembered Bundy's arrest.  She gave us a funny look as if she were thinking, "More of those sicko's.  And these'ns ate mullet."

By the way, the restaurant was across the street from the (in)famous Brownsville Assembly of God, home to a "Revival" that has been going strong since Father's Day of 1995.

Tonight, we plan on going to a farmhouse-turned-restaurant in a little place called Perdido, Alabama.   Not to be confused with Perdido Beach, this little town is a hole in the road between the slightly populated old railroad communities of Atmore and Bay Minette.  According to my parents, the farmhouse serves up a mean, freshly slaughtered cow.  I can't confirm rumors that one must help with the slaughter.

Just in case this is the last post before the old guy slides down your chimney, have a nice Christmas or whatever your holiday persuasion happens to be.   

In the Heart of the Heart of Dixie

First, let me say that I love Alabama, but it's the kind of love that one has for an ex-lover, one who may remain your friend but who also requires little in the way of reciprocation for that love.  Having spent over 2/3rds of my life as a resident of this fine state, but now nearly a decade removed from the last time I had a mailing address bearing the letters AL after the city's name, I find myself making return visits to Alabama as an outsider and with an outsider's sensibilities.  The language is no longer familiar.  The dress seems odd.  People drive slow.  So with that in mind, I thought I would make a brief list of observations made in the first few days of my holiday visit to south, south Alabama.

--Christmas lights do not make the Confederate Flag any less of a divisive symbol, even if you do say it's all about your heritage.
--Children with rat tails are not our future.  Those little rat tails grow up to be mullets.
--Pig's feet, pickled or otherwise, should not be at the checkout stand of any store.
--If I ever decide to do a podcast, I hope to have an episode in which a Southerner orders Mexican food. I'm still not sure how this one guy ever got his order. Remember, that's what the numbers are there for if you're not sure.
--When did Alabamians start dropping the "l" from the end of words?
--Camouflage is not a good look, on anybody, unless you're a) fighting in the service of your country, b) running moonshine in the mountains of north Georgia, c) playing in a heavy metal tribute band in Arkansas.  Otherwise, keep it in the closet.

I'm still compiling.  And to be fair, I'm also making a list of things I appreciate about this state.  Stay tuned.

Alabama Arrival

In observance of the fact that I drove 1,026.3 miles yesterday, from Fort Stockton, Texas, through a labyrinth of dead and soon-to-be-dead roadside deer in the fog outside of San Antonio and the debris and detritus of Rita and Katrina recovery in Louisiana and Mississippi and across Alabama nighttime slow-driving familiarity, all the while dealing with nicotine fits brought on by a smoking co-pilot, Syntax of Things will be mostly quiet today and for the next few days.  The dogs and I have made it to Alabama safe and somewhat sound, but time will be a precious commodity as we spend some time getting reacquainted with the area and its people.  Reports from the land that time forgot soon.

Typepad Rained on My Parade

Before I hop into the rented minivan to begin my 2000-mile trek across the country--1,000 through Texas should count double--I need to take a few seconds to wish myself a happy second anniversary as a regular blogger.  Two years, 1400 posts, and lots and lots of complaints that I have a headache, neckache, toothache, etc.  I wish I had more time to spend on a proper post, something to recount the two years that have been, but I need to get the dogs prepped for the long ride ahead of them.  Little do they know that they aren't going to the dog park. 

Have a great weekend.  The next time I write to you will be from Alabama.