Cell Images

More from my cell phone photo file. Click on images to enlarge:


Work cube, Beaverton OR.



Nick Lowe show from front row, Portland OR, October 2007. Pic and B&W alteration by Greg T.



Nick Fresco. Pic by Greg T.; alteration by Maitland Jones.


I considered posting a shot from my wife's work party last New Year's Eve, of the drunk guy wearing nothing but women's undergarments, but I decided the image would be best left to your imagination, if you dare.

Counting Presents, Pt. 3

Pt. 1
Pt. 2

Through the 2004 presidential election year (oh joy) we go:

4/3/04

If Air America constituted a clear threat to plutocratic interests, don't you think there would've been a more organized smear campaign against it, in the mainstream media? Such a campaign might yet happen, particularly if the ratings and subsequent poll numbers show AA being any kind of threat to the media big boys' tax cuts, deregulation and permanent war coverage.

Air America is a promising first step toward reclaiming some true balance in a media marketplace dominated by timid sellouts and corporate shills. But I think the listeners of AA must realize (and the on-air talent should remind them) that it won't be a good thing if the net effect is nothing but liberal listeners feeling good about their pre-held beliefs and opinions. Ultimately some dent must be made in the 45 percent of America who currently reside in the Ned Flanders Twilight Zone, and among those few who control the corporate wealth, or else the radical conservatism espoused by Reagan, Gingrich and Bush will continue to thrive in the political arena.

***

6/7/04

He was Bob Dobbs' head personified, and Robin Williams was only half-joking when calling him Walt Disney's last and ultimate automotron: "Fuck it, we'll make a president."

He came to power, first in California and later in Washington D.C., at two moments (1966 and 1980) when there was heightened doubt and confusion about the post-New Deal welfare state and security state. Ma and Pa America started to wonder whether government notions of charity and containment remained viable, in a world where enemies foreign (Communists) and domestic (counterculture) were skillfully being demonized by the media. I'd say that this crisis of confidence arose less from inherent flaws in the government system, and more from the trauma-filled trifecta of assassination, war and scandal, but the "anti-government" Reagan and his handlers had the knack of seizing upon our moments of weakness with ruthless political aplomb.

Reagan wasn't as much a Great Communicator as a Great Exploiter, capitalizing on the breakdowns of his era not with sober analysis, but with Disneyfied fantasies about the utter sanctity of America, where God and General Motors share a shining city on the hill. And part of what made him politically successful was that he really believed in those Disneyfied fantasies.

***

6/30/04

The hopeless arrogance, the sour sarcasm, the tone-deaf rhetoric...why, Ralph Nader is positively Bush-like!

Even if you agree with a good portion of the man's ideas, and even if you agree that there's more similiarity between Democrats and Republicans than you'd like, it's crystal clear to me that he's not the one to take a progressive cause to a higher level.

As a matter of fact, there's ample evidence that he's running for president this year more to punish Democrats for not adopting more of his policies, than to help kick the incompetent, corrupt, plutocratic and warmongering GOP from power. Against the advice of supporters like Michael Moore in 2000, he campaigned in swing states (including the decisive state of Florida) just before the election; in this Village Voice article, a close aide to Nader is quoted as saying they would not campaign in "safe states" only, because "we want to punish the Democrats, we want to hurt them, wound them."

A person who'll vote for Nader in November must have such levels of willful ignorance and/or arrogant denial as to need their head examined. One can make a reasoned argument that the difference between the parties has significantly increased since Bush took office, and Molly Ivins' fine book Bushwhacked is one place that points out evidence of this. But even small differences in policy -- on healthcare, the environment, reproductive rights or dozens of other areas -- can still directly effect many thousands or even millions of people. Focusing too much on the macro in politics (not enough difference between parties) can cause one to lose sight of the micro (the actual differences), and I don't think a truly aware and compassionate person would abandon the people affected by said differences, just because both major parties don't meet his or her personal standards.

***

8/21/04

Local theater is typically a mixed bag of the professional and amateurish -- flashes of brilliance mixed with awkward moments that wouldn't be out of place in Christopher Guest's mockumentary Waiting For Guffman. But for the hundreds of people who've showed up for the performances, the thrill is primarily seeing the locals do their best to strut their stuff. Slack is cut, and kudos are distributed generously.

***

9/5/04

"When his (Dylan's) first book of lyrics came out -- 'Writings and Drawings' -- it was dedicated to Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson. To an Oklahoman white protest singer and a black Delta bluesman. And one of the things I've wanted to study for years is, what happens when black arts and white arts come together in this country? Dylan gives you just a remarkable place to study that happening."

***

10/28/04

I

My point (and I do have one) is that we're truly at the dawning of a new era here, one way or another. If Bush is able to hold onto power, it's a clear signal that a large bloc of voters are willing to accept a quasi-fascist state, and that's different from the 1968-2004 GOP era. In 2000, Bush voters though they were getting no more than a genial hybrid of Poppy Bush and Dutch Reagan. Not now: a majority of Bush voters are okaying the possibility, if not probability, of a violent Pax Americana in the Middle East and strident one-party rule at home.

II

1932-68 was the age of FDR and Kennedy. 1968-2004 was the age of Nixon and Reagan/Bush. Now we're on the brink of a new decades-long period: either of Democratic advantage and a long, hard slog to recovering some sense of progressive reality; or a "New American Fascism" era of The World At War meets Monty Python's Flying Circus, with plutocratic & theocratic Republicans dominating, and perhaps with Dems occasionally offering a more marketable package of cloaked corruption and Orwellian militarism.

***

11/03/04

You'd think that with the Iraq quagmire, Osama still at large, Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, the 9/11 Commission report and the worst jobs performance since Herbert Hoover, enough citizens would wake up and vote the "miserable failure" of an incumbent out. Particularly with Fahrenheit 9/11 and Air America out there, and three solid debate performances by Kerry.

But noooooo. Kerry supposedly didn't have enough "moral clarity" on issues like gay marriage, abortion and fighting terrorism. And so, 59 million idiots Americans went with "the devil they know." Most likely they, plus the rest of the world, will pay dearly for it.

***

11-4-04

I

I mean, out of 115 million votes cast, it will be 136,000 votes in Ohio that separate John Kerry winning the White House from George W. Bush re-winning (or re-stealing, if you must) the White House. From a hope, possibly slight but undeniably real, of creating a new momentum to protect Enlightenment and New Deal values, and the fragile balance of the earth's environment, to a nearly inexorable decline into unnecessary chaos, pain, absurdity and, finally, the extinction of the human species -- most likely, as T.S. Eliot foretold, not with a bang but a whimper.

This is a cruel fate that could've been written by the devil hisself. (Why, it even goes beyond Game 6 for the '86 Red Sox, or Game 7 for the 2000 Trail Blazers.) And we, as a species, need some miracles and we need them fast -- and I don't believe there is a God who guarantees such miracles. We, as citizens of the planet, must help ourselves, before the possibility of avoiding future madness and death becomes so faint as to be practically non-existent.

II

Commander Codpiece after 9/11 and the fall of the Taliban was going to be tough to beat no matter how you look at it, particularly since he had the whore media in his pocket pretty much to the end. Kerry wasn't perfect -- he could've fought back a bit harder on Swift Boat (just a well-placed 527 ad or two would've likely done the trick); and as Digby said, he by nature isn't the kind of telegenic everyman that Bush is able to fake -- but he did wonderfully in the debates, at the convention, and for the most part on the stump. He raised a lot of money, chose a decent running mate (although in retrospect Wesley Clark may've been better) and came within 136,000 votes and some rigged voting machines of winning the thing.

***

11/6/04

And as one realizes by the end of the film, how Carrey and Winslet's characters have, with love and bonding and perhaps a little luck, been able to transcend the obstacles and limitations of their mysterious and even darkly magical minds, one attains a deeper understanding of why they belong together.

A great film can make you believe the magical is possible, and this one does. It's way more out there than Sofia Coppola's fine Lost In Translation, but the two movies do share a couple of important qualities: the human vulnerabilities displayed by the glamorous Hollywood leads end up making said glamour beside the point; and the bonding between the leads (Carrey and Winslet; Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson) has a magical component that nevertheless makes some real-world sense.

Is it surprising, after all, that Murray's Bob and Johannson's Charlotte have their "chance" and fortuitous get-together on the streets of Tokyo at film's end? Not really, because the bonding between the characters makes it seem inevitable. And so it is with Carrey's Joel and Winslet's Clementine -- by the end, we just know their relationship was meant to be.

***

11/26/04

As for where I'm personally at on the issue of this year's presidential election and its alleged chicanery, author Mark Crispin Miller puts it well:

"To nod agreement that this was indeed an honest win is to forget how Bush was shoehorned into office in the first place; to ignore the ease with which electronic totals can be changed without a trace; to suppress the fact that Diebold, Sequoia and ES&S-the major manufacturers of touch screen voting machines and central tabulators-are owned and run by Bush Republicans, who have made no secret of their partisan intentions; to deny the value of the exit polls, which turn out to have been “mistaken” only in the swing states; to downplay the weird inflation of the Bush vote in county after county, where the number of votes for president was somehow higher than the number of voters who turned out; to ignore the bald chicanery of the Bush supporters who ran the central polling station in Ohio’s Warren County and forced out the press and poll monitors so they could count the vote in secret; to forget the numerous accounts of vote fraud coast to coast throughout the prior weeks of early voting; to overlook the fact that every single “glitch” or “error” that has been reported favors Bush; to ignore the countless instances of ballots-absentee, provisional-thrown away or left uncounted; to forget that the civilian vote abroad (some four million Americans) was being mishandled by the Pentagon (which had somehow become responsible for doing the State Department’s job); and to ignore the many dirty tricks reported-the polling places quickly relocated at the last minute, the fake voter-registration drives, the thousands of Americans who found themselves not on the rolls, the police road-blocks, the bullying pro-Bush poll workers, the machines that kept translating votes for Kerry into votes for Bush. And so on."

Hail to the thief, again.

***

12/10/04

All this press to fascism is just another way for the weak multitudes to say "I can't handle life without some kind of reality-altering drug." You see their fear, and see their stupid banality, and what dominates is not their desire to transcend, but their desire to deny. The anesthetizing allure of denial, and the overwhelming waves of power that result, is perhaps (more than the love of money) the root of all evil.

In the end, the Ministry of Silly Walks will probably tie us all to Slim Pickens' atomic bomb. But for awhile yet, some of us can still have a little fun with our fleeting psycho-delic time stamps.

***

12/20/04

Mitchell invites couples who are unhappy in long-term relationships to question whether they are as unhappy as they think they are. He, like the other two authors reviewed here (Joshua Coleman and Phil McGraw), is wary of any "grass is greener" thinking among those in marital crisis. Better first, Mitchell says, to explore the possibilities of what one already has, seeking to discover (or rediscover) something essential and transformative. To give up without fully exploring those possibilities, he says, leaves one vulnerable to repeating similar self-defeating mindtraps with future mates.

Exploring the transformational possibilities of one's stuck marriage, Mitchell writes, takes at the least an understanding of the creative aspect of a relationship. He says that marriage ideally is a "sandcastle built for two," with the notion of "objective reality" accepted as a "construction" that can be molded and remolded.

***

1/24/05

I had a nice buzz on and I had to check in on the weirdly compelling pomp and circumstance of the inaugural parade on C-SPAN. I find the live feeds of political events from C-SPAN often fascinating, one of the few glimpses behind the facade of soundbites and BS that viewers ever get.

I watched live as George W. Bush gave the Texas Longhorn marching band the "Hook 'em Horns" sign during the parade. I saw that he might not have done it, were it not for his daughter Jenna flashing the sign first. It was a moment of small controversy, as that sign has long been taken in some circles as something obscene and devilish. Bush himself looked a bit embarrassed after he flashed the sign; to cover for it, as he has in other uncomfortable public moments over the years, he made a slightly goofy gesture for the omnipresent TV camera, with self-deprecating body language that seemed borrowed from (or aligned with) a master of the art, the late Johnny Carson.

I was pleased when James Wolcott noticed the Carson/Dubya connection in an early blog entry of his -- I sometimes need affirmation that my crazy-ass media notions (and there are several) aren't completely off the charts.

Samples

Hee Haw salutes my hometown of Donald, Orygone. Population 895.

Sa-LOOT!

Nick In The Hat

High Hat #9 is here at last, with plenty of good stuff as usual, and my Nick Lowe career review included:

Peace, Lowe and Understanding

And he tried — how he tried — to write hits. But only one, the 1979 “Cruel to Be Kind,” riding the zenith of the New Wave commercial boomlet, made the US Top 40. And ever since, as he transitioned from consciously trying to create followup commercial successes to simply trying to stake out journeyman territory, he has drawn upon his vast musical influences to elongate a career that is hard to top in the rock and roll era for consistent quality over a lengthy period of time.

Artful Dodgers

It's World Serious time again, and in honor of the Fall Classic, let's play some old-school Lego ball with Maury Wills, Orlando Cepeda and Danny Kaye:

When I worked at a radio station in Eugene in the late '80s, there was a tape of the last section of "The Dodgers Song" that was in the studio archives of one of the announcers. During a late-night shift I dubbed it onto a cassette, and it's been a favorite ever since, but I'd never heard the entire song until I saw the above video.

The song is based on the 1962 LA Dodgers, the subject of one of the first sports stories my dad shared with me when I was a kid. He remembered following the team when we lived in SoCal at the time (me being born during that season) and seeing the Dodgers choke away a big lead at the end of the year, before losing a three-game playoff to the SF Giants for the National League pennant. A game-by-game record of the final two weeks of the season (courtesy of baseballlibrary.com) seems to confirm this:

Sunday, September 16: Lost to Cubs
Monday, September 17: Lost to Braves
Tuesday, September 18: Lost to Braves
Wednesday, September 19: Defeated Braves
Friday, September 21: Lost to Cardinals
Saturday, September 22: Defeated Cardinals
Sunday, September 23: Lost to Cardinals
Tuesday, September 25: Lost to Astros
Wednesday, September 26: Defeated Astros
Thursday, September 27: Lost to Astros
Friday, September 28: Lost to Cardinals
Saturday, September 29: Lost to Cardinals
Sunday, September 30: Lost to Cardinals

Losing 10 of the last 13 to blow the NL pennant. Maybe not quite at the level of the 2007 Mets or 1964 Phillies. But a mighty disappointing way to end an otherwise stellar 102-win season.

Senior Benefit

Happy birthday to my mother, Barbara Santora of Fontana CA, who turns the big 65 this week.

Married more than 25 years now to her second husband Jerry, the Santoras are apartment managers in Fontana, not far from the Kaiser hospital where my brother Mike was born and where I got my tonsils out.

For what it's worth, she has the same birthday (10/26) as Hillary Clinton, who is five years her junior.

YouTube has a clip of a Tonight Show taping that me, mom and my brother Mike attended in September 1982, about a year and a half after my parents divorced. The clip features Johnny Carson introducing the Manhattan Transfer, who were guests that day along with Richard Benjamin.

Quick Snap

I finally figured out how to transfer pics from my cell phone to my computer. Below is a shot, enhanced by HP Image Zone, from this year's Oregon Shakespearian Festival. This was my view at the outdoor Elizabethan Theater in August, while I was waiting for The Tempest to begin:





















Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

W. Shakespeare, The Tempest

Formidable

Hail Britannia, and hail the good Bush:

Counting Presents, Pt. 2

Pt. 1

Back through the mists of blogtime we go, for another look at past Greg T. posts:

7/27/03

It was ultimately a C-section birth, though it wasn't planned that way. To my surprise the HMO doctor asked me to help with the birth by keeping one of my wife's legs up. She pushed and pushed, and I felt such empathy for what females go through with childbirth...but the boy just wouldn't come through the birth canal. When his vital signs started looking a little shaky, the doctor chose to remove him from the womb via C-section.

My self-image went all over the map that night, from giddy lottery winner to insecure dorkburger. I've a habit, for better and worse, of trying to sum up "profound" moments with a clever word or two. But that moment was just too darned big. I remembered Jack Nicholson calling his little son "my man Ray" and feeling the love behind that comment; when Andrew came out, I blurted out "my man!" and felt typically incongruous. But soon my boy calmly rested in my arms, and I carried him out of the delivery room toward the nursery. It was magic.

***

9/11/03

I remember the numbness and darkness in the voice of, of all people, Katie Couric, as she spoke while the second tower fell. The testimonials from people near Ground Zero that day were alternately heartbreaking, scary and heroic, and always poignant. The pictures, from both New York and Washington (where the Pentagon had also been attacked) were unforgettable.

I work at a horse-racing wagering establishment, and was sent home early that day, as all the tracks cancelled their races. The TV network that carries the races (TVG) was replaced by Fox News (oh joy!), so I saw those towers falling over and over on my cubicle TV monitor. I remembered the magnificent view of Manhattan that I had from the top of the WTC, when I visited New York in June 1980.

***

9/13/03

Throughout the '80s, Late Night With David Letterman was my favorite TV show. It struck a comic pose that seemed so ballsy and innovative in the context of the Reagan '80s, where yuppification and sellout abounded, that it was like a cool swim in the middle of a desert. I got rather obsessed about it, as did many thousands of other fans. That level of fandom undoubtedly inspired a skit the show did: a commercial announcing the release of two Bible-like books of Dave jokes and sayings: What Dave Said and More Dave.

Watching Late Night on NBC in the '80s (up to 1987 or thereabouts) was often a giddy and uplifting experience for me, but it was also a bit of a package deal. On the upside, Letterman had a stubborn and obvious commitment to making his show a quality package, an edgy step up from the dated panderfest that Carson's show had become. With writers and performers like Chris Elliott and Gerry Mulligan aboard, the show was daring, innovative and refreshing. But the other side of the coin was that on the air, Dave wore his inner control freak on his sleeve, practically all the time. Anyone who deviated one iota from the Master Plan of Brilliant Comedy got it good from the General, one way or another.

***

9/18/03

He lived hard, he lived strong, he lived with much integrity. He was, in the words of one Internet compadre, a splendid human being. If his Christianity sometimes seemed a little over the top; if too much of his recorded output between the late '70s and early '90s seemed unfocused and even schlocky, it all pales next to the amazing body of work the man left us, and the resonance of that voice, one that will vibrantly speak to people over future decades and centuries.

***

9/18/03

What's the difference between right and wrong?

I'm not a professional philosopher, so I can only give a gut reaction. My gut tells me that true love is never in vain, is always right in some way. And experience tells me that commitment, integrity, passion and humor are virtues that are very powerful and very useful.

So, for me, a life with love, commitment, passion, integrity and humor is the right life to pursue. Lacking any one of these virtues would be the wrong way to go.

***

10/16/03

Name something you've done to undo, subvert or neutralize the Battle of the Sexes.

All I can tell you is what I've tried to do. The jury's out on whether I've ever succeeded. I've always tried to avoid the predator mentality with women, yet lust and whimsy and desperation have more than once made me too pushy. I married a woman whose passion and sense of humor I love, yet we argue too damn much.

I respect women, and I don't believe there's anything a man can achieve in society that a woman can't. If anything, I hope I've communicated that I am not a male chauvinist.

Here are two dispatches from the battlefield that have stuck with me:

"We make her paint her face and dance." - John Lennon

"We hate them. They hate us. They're smarter. They're stronger." - Jack Nicholson

***

11/14/03

Having smoked pot since I was 18 years old, and having taken acid a few times, I couldn't in good conscience throw a blanket "drugs are evil" gauntlet down on him. On the other hand, I have a strong opinion that underagers play an especially dangerous kind of Russian Roulette by taking drugs, and the chances are good that neither their minds or bodies are ready to handle either the upsides or downsides of it.

So I simply said to my son: "Drugs are dangerous, and kids really shouldn't be doing them at all." What I'll likely add in the future is: Adults need to decide for themselves, and take full responsibility for what they decide. If he's open to it, I'll probably someday go into my standard diatribe about how stupidly unfair and hypocritical the U.S. drug laws are, but that won't be for awhile.

***

11/24/03

It's been a sad spectacle indeed, watching someone with Michael's great singing, songwriting and dancing talents become an utter freak show over the past two decades. My theory is that the mega-success of his album Thriller in 1982-84 was too much for the already fragile MJ to handle, and when it coincided with unresolved personal issues with sexuality, religion and childhood, the man just snapped, and he fully devolved into a creature of repulsive vanity and denial.

It was first evident during the summer of '84, the summer of The Jacksons' Victory album and tour, that MJ had developed a dysfunctional relationship with the media hype, which by then regularly put him in the same category as Elvis and The Beatles. (This would culminate in 1991, when he declared himself "King of Pop".) Perhaps in his mind, it was the only thing that could liberate him from the inner demons. In any event, his aura of self-importance became suffocating, and certainly that adversely affected his art.

***

1/7/04

If you check the Madison Avenue commercials and the mainstream TV, you don't see a lot of anger reflected there. What you see is: America, the land of plenty, kicks ass. And the heartland is exposed to that message, day after day after day. Even an event like 9/11 is ultimately portrayed with heroic, reassuring strings.

The media seems to have an inbred resistance to angry rhetoric. Anger can be niche marketed in selected doses of comedy and commentary, but generally it doesn't jibe with the in-house research -- data that says the mainstream audience is primarily apolitical and wants to be pacified.

***

1/13/04

...while it's important for Democrats to be armed with damning evidence about George W. Bush, unless they have developed enough spine, compassion, discipline and rhetorical savvy to sell themselves as trustworthy vessels of information, they probably won't get far with swing voters & non-voters who remain uncommitted to candidate or party. These are people who are quite capable of logic and common sense, but for various reasons are a generally apolitical lot, not prone to the wonkish research and analysis required to properly critique (and often debunk) the mainstream media's spin on the news. What they're fed is a series of manipulated images and soundbites that make them feel reassured about America and their potential as Americans.

When they see a Dem calling BS on the whole corporate propaganda racket, and how it conceals hideous GOP policies adversely affecting the economy, environment and world community, many want to know, first and foremost, if said Dem can provide a replacement for that comforting feeling they get from the "America kicks ass" meme, sold daily via TV shows, commercials and newscasts.

I'm afraid that simply articulating one's logic and evidence on the matter is generally not going to win the hearts of the uncommitteds. There needs to be something extra added: a demonstration that one is empowered by thinking the way they do, in a way that is inspirational to others. That could manifest in different ways for different people, but in most cases it would involve noticeable increases in energy, focus, discipline and compassion, coupled with a certain joy for living that shines through even when one is angry.

***

1/25/04

Around Christmas of 1944, Hellemn was assigned to join Gen. George S. Patton's 3rd Army, near the German border in France.

"After being there for about four days, our division joined in the Battle of The Bulge," Hellemn said. "Our division was to replace two divisions that had suffered heavy casualties."

Below-zero temperatures and hilly terrain faced Hellemn and his fellow soldiers as they left for Verdun on the German border.

"The roads were all ice," Hellemn said, "and the truck wouldn't go up hills. We had to get out in the cold and push them up over the hills."

There, the soldiers found their "K rations" of food being used up within a couple of days, with no imminent replacements.

Risking punishment for going AWOL, Hellemn joined a group of soldiers who went to a French cafe in town, and were able to trade two cigarettes (very valuable in Europe at that time, he said) for a big bowl of potato soup.

***

2/6/04

His rifle made useless, Hellemn headed back toward Tetingen to get another one, braving more fire. He encountered his squad leader, still badly hurt and not moving, on the way back.

"I wanted to get Harry," he said. "In Tetingen there was a captured German medic who could speak a little English, and he said he'd go with me.

"We were able to pick up Harry and get him back to town, and somehow we didn't get hit."

Hellemn said they didn't settle for rescuing only the squad leader: "We decided at that point to get other people who were down."

Still avoiding being hit by fire, they were able to rescue about 10 others. They loaded all the wounded in an old abandoned American medical jeep (risking that the jeep might've been boobytrapped by the Germans) and made four trips to an AID station 10 miles away.

***

3/19/04

*Oct. 26, 1965: The Selective Service declares that married men without children, who were previously exempted from the draft, will now be called up. Married men with children remain exempt.

Turns out Cheney's "other priorities" centered around getting his wife Lynne pregnant.

What's interesting, for me, is discovering that 10/26/65 was an important day in my life as well. My father was 24 at the time, and still draftable -- but he already had two kids, my brother Mike and myself. And 10/26 is not only my mother's birthday, it's also Hillary Clinton's.

I love the smell of synchronicity in the morning.

Uncle Albert



Cheers to Al Gore for winning a piece of the Peace Prize. And huzzah for The Rude Pundit, who once again sums things up beautifully (and rudely.)

Gore v. Bush

Gore's not gonna run. Give that up. To go from speaking out about melting icecaps to being asked what he thinks about, say, a flag-burning amendment would be a degradation of what he's worked for the last six years. And had that statewide recount in Florida happened and Gore had become president, Republicans would have simply worked night and day trying to destroy him, and his causes would have been washed away in a tide of worthless investigations of Buddhist monk phone calls and worse. And let's not even get into how Republicans would have exploded in berserk, ape-like rage over 9/11 if it had happened under a Gore presidency.

It's not that we're not worthy or that he's too good for us or any of that hyperbolic nonsense. We got the president we deserved, twice, and we realized too late that we didn't get the president we needed.


I'd guess that Gore's Nobel win puts him in a close race with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for TIME's Man of The Year as well. An Oscar, a Nobel and a Man of The Year, all in 12 months, would be quite the trifecta.

I'm sure it's all a leftist conspiracy funded by ChiComm money. < /sarcasm >

It's sad, because in a sane country, one not dominated by corporate, conservative-enabling news media and corrupt and/or spineless politicians, Gore's honors would make it more likely for him to win the presidency. But we don't live in such a country, and I think Gore -- who's talked in recent years about no longer having the stomach for the extreme rough and tumble of electoral politics -- knows this.

Time to choose between Hillary (Clinton 2.0?), Edwards (Carter 2.0?) and Obama (Kennedy 3.0?) So far, all three remind me more of failed past idealism than the promise of future accomplishment. But at least they're not crazy rat-bastard Republicans, and avoiding Republicans as long as it's allowed is the only real choice voters have left these days.

Pure Pop

One advantage to being in the front row of a Nick Lowe show, in a relatively intimate setting like Portland's Aladdin Theater, is that you can see beyond the modest facade of an aging rocker with gray hair and a wrinkle or two, and witness a musical vibrancy that doesn't really show much ware for age. In short, at age 58 the man can still flat-out sing, and better than ever I think. And he looks fighting trim, like he could still do tours for another 10 years at least, if he wanted to.

The Lowe show I saw last night was almost all acoustic; one of the encore songs was performed with electric guitar and keyboard backing by Bill Kirchen and Austin deLone, the former Commander Cody band members who opened for Lowe. Kirchen and deLone didn't do "Hot Rod Lincoln" last night, but Kirchen especially wowed the audience with some fine classic Telecaster playing.

Lowe did just about all my favorites -- including "What's Shakin' On The Hill," "The Beast In Me," "Without Love," "Man That I've Become," "Heart," "Shelley My Love" and "All Men Are Liars" -- and several songs from his new CD At My Age. He also sang what you might call his signature songs: "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," "I Knew The Bride (When She Used To Rock and Roll)" and "Cruel To Be Kind" (a performance that really showcased his improvement as a singer.) He left out "Raining, Raining" and "Freezing," but the dude didn't have all night.

He said his visit to the "beautiful and dramatic Pacific Northwest" was coming near the end of a grueling US tour to promote the new CD. He said he only had a couple shows left after this, before going back to his home in England. He complimented the Aladdin, "despite its unsavory past" (it once was an X-rated movie theater that ran Deep Throat for years), for being a favorite of touring musicians, comparable to theaters in New York, San Francisco...and Boise, Idaho.

His shadow reflected beautifully off the theater walls as he performed. Sometimes I'd turn my head and watch the shadow sing.

He had a charming conversational tone with the audience, talking about how he used to have a home in Cornwall in south of England. He said that normally this would be the time of the show where a map would come down behind him, and he could point to Cornwall on the map, but "the truck" wasn't able to get the map to the show. His Cornwall place, he said, was originally intended as a hideout to write songs at. He said he ended up not writing many songs there, but having plenty of good times getting drunk with his friends.

Now that he has a wife and kid, he told the audience, things like the house in Cornwall and "the Mercedes-Benz" have gone away. He had the audience in the palm of his hand at this point, and he gave a wistful sigh of remembrance for all the past wild times. He said he likes to do one of those sighs per show.

He talked about taking four hours to drive to London from Cornwall, and writing in his head during the trip his "folk song" called "Indian Queens." He said along the way he stopped for petrol and a sandwich.

He plugged his new CD, and when the crowd reaction seemed to indicate that most of the several hundred there already had a copy, he said it "looks like sales might be a bit weak in the lobby."

Lowe got multiple standing ovations at the end of the show, from what he called a great crowd.

After the show my friend Maitland and I went to the theater back door to see if we could say hello and thanks. Nobody was back there, and if there was any kind of tour bus, it was hidden away. We figured it wasn't meant to be, and headed to our cars. And really, it's probably just as well -- I get kind of embarrassed these days when I can't help but whoop and clap loud at a rock concert, and let my Inner Fanboy show. At my age, and with my eternally geeky looks, I feel like it must look sillier than ever. But when the music grabs me, it's hard not to go wild a bit.

***

Which reminds me of a story that proves once again that I am George Costanza West.

In August I took my kids to see the All-American Rejects at the Oregon State Fair. I like some of the songs I've heard from them -- stylistically, they seem somewhat in the Cheap Trick mold. The lead singer was born in 1984, around the time Greg T. was actually working on a musical project, and Nick Lowe was already considered something of a has-been. So AAR is definitely my kids' generation, not mine.

My original plan was to go hide up in the nosebleed seats, and let my kids (staying together, just to be safe) get closer to the stage and fully enjoy the show. Turns out there was festival seating in front of the stage, with lots of teenagers and young adults bunched together like sardines as they stood and waited through the setup and soundcheck and opening act. The kids and I decided that the spot we secured up in the stands, which looked down onto the stage from the right, was a better place to view the concert.

The kids, having memorized the lyrics to many of the AAR songs, whooped and sang along as the rockers rocked. It was great to watch them have so much fun.

Then, about two-thirds into the show, as lead singer Tyson Ritter spoke to the audience, he looked up at our section and noticed that not all of us had "gotten up off our asses." So he took his hand-held mike, walked behind the stage, and then went directly to our section. He walked past my daughter Vicktoria (who, in awe, got out her cell phone and took some pics) and went up near the railing next to our section to address the audience, as the spotlights shone down on us all. He was standing right next to my son Andrew and me.

Surreal, no? I was laughing enthusiastically (and I'm sure, geekily) at the surrealness of it -- and then, feeling that I was in a position to be part of the show, I reached out and gently patted him on the back, as if to say both "Good show, mate" and "You are real, aren't you? You're not a hologram of some kind?"

Turns out I was the only one who dared touch him. He didn't seem to mind, but in the moment it seemed like maybe I broke some unspoken rule between performer and audience, and made myself look foolish. Possibly just my paranoia, but as what happened sunk in after the show, it did seem more and more like a Costanza Moment.

I love rock and roll, but rarely if ever have I mastered the art of rock and roll cool.

Done Dirt Cheap

Trying to get a new job that saves me gas by being closer to home, I recently applied for two customer service positions that I felt very qualified for. My qualifications were clearly laid out in my resumé, and yet I didn't even get an interview for either job. Earlier this year, I applied for a general reporter position at a nearby daily newspaper, hoping my Oregonian clips would at least get my foot in the door. Didn't get an interview for that, either.

This does have me a bit worried, as I consider what might happen should I lose my current job. Is the competition for jobs so great now that many who apply are very qualified? Or is it something else, like my, shall we say, advanced age compared to other applicants? Or my lack of upward mobility in past jobs -- do they judge me on not having supervisory experience, even if the position itself is not a supervisor job?

It's the not knowing, the forced guesswork, that bugs me the most. If I at least got an interview, I might get a better clue as to what they want and what I might lack.

All I can say is, as annoying as my current customer service job can be, it may well be as good as I'm going to get in that field. Someday I may be forced to get a job in another field -- maybe even requiring job training -- and that would not be easy. In future jobs I may ultimately have to accept a pay cut, or worse.

Ugh. And meanwhile, there'll always be people who say, just bring out that Inner Salesman, Greg! Sell, sell, sell! Smile, smile, smile! Coffee's for closers!

I made decisions back in the day, I know, that made this state of peril more likely. Not looking for available media jobs right after graduating from college. Not going for a two-year media degree instead of a four-year one, which ended up taking 10 arduous years to complete. Now I've budgeted myself out of all or most entry-level media jobs, and may face more silent age discrimination in future positions (in media and elsewhere) that I apply for.

Oh well. One advantage to having life experience, is that I know over time the unexpected can happen, and the tides can turn.