B.B. King... Family Areana Gives Me The Blues

B.B. King
Family Arena
February 12, 2008

I come here not to praise the Family Arena but to bury it. If there is a more insipid venue in the metro area I am unaware of it. It is first of all in St. Charles. It is second of all a faceless, characterless, cement behemoth. It is third of all on a flood plane with a difficult parking lot with apparently random pylons which preclude you getting where you want to go. And... fourthly... it is called “The Family Arena” and if anything could sound more gay I am having a problem figuring out what it is. So we hate the Family Arena. I saw Weezer and Tenacious D there and still managed to have a bad time. The Family Arena is one of those poorly conceived, post apocalyptic, soviet, cement structures that are conceived of by well intentioned (hopefully) politicians and civil planners in an evil conspiracy with satan (real estate developers) that give rise to a structure born of a great idea which was ... “we need a big venue of our own in St. Charles”. noble idea but carried out with a numbing sameness every time whether in Bloomington Illinois, St. Charles Missouri or Timbuktu. These places are soul less with bad sound, lighting and ambience. Enough said.

My friend was kind enough to invite me to see B.B. King with he and my God Son. I had never seen B.B. King and had wanted to for some time (30 years) but had never really justified it. I feel bad I did not see him when he was a lot younger... say 60 but at this point you have to say that it becomes important to see him before her dies. Seeing him with my friend and his kid, an aspiring guitar player/rocker made it even better. Seeing B.B. King was a bucket list item. Not for me but for him. he had on his list that he wanted that fat, middle aged, bald, arrogant, piece of shit lawyer to see me play before I die. I owed it to him. He is 82. I wanted to give him a break.

Looking on the web I see BB has been using local acts to open for him in every town and while I am sure this is “nice” and also controls costs in not having another act or two to tour with you, the quality tends to be... spotty. Marquis Knox (pronounced mar-kees) opened. he is a local 17 year old blues wunderkind who came out solo, played guitar (poorly) and sang (awesomely). I could have watched him all night. He is around town with the Marquis Knox Band and I would guess they rock, because if he had a decent band (rather then his own average guitar) to wrap around that huge voice... it would be impressive. He is someone I definitely will catch again. He only was up for about 15 minutes and then we were “blessed” by the appearance of “Big George Brock”. Brock has been on the St. Louis blues scene for 50 years and looking him up on the web has a lot of stories to tell but the bottom line is that his band and backup singer were of average quality as was his harp playing. One thing about St. Louis is that you can see pretty good blues music 7 nights a week at bars in Soulard so this just left me a little cold. The highlight of the night was watching the old man lay on the floor of the stage wailing on his harp. Weather this was a stage ploy, he was having back spasms or a stroke remains to be told but at least it was different. He was... eminently missable.

The show started at 7:30 with the opening act which meant BB did not wander up till about 9 or more likely about 9:20. He travels with the BB King Blues band and the fact is... they can really play. The talent level of four horns, a bass, a drummer, a keyboardist and another guitar player is so high that you cannot help but smile just to hear how crisp it all is... and perfect time... perfect time. These guys just played for 20 minutes and were very good with one of the horn players playing band leader... and then the man was pulled up to stage side in his golf cart and wandered up on stage.

82 is old for a man. My dad is 81 and in good shape but shit... that is old. I have lost a step at 46, BB has lost a basketball court. He sat on his chair and leaned back... and introduced his band with the requisite solos (a nice break from the normal practice of doing that at the end) and they all shined. Then he talked. The post dispatch said he played a dozen songs but i only counted 5 on his hour and twenty minutes or so on stage. Some stories were funny, some were droll, some were inspired and a little thoughtful... and all of them were long. He played his U-2 Song “When Love Comes To Town” he played “The Thrill is Gone” he played “Let The Good Times Roll” and he talked.

He has no chops anymore and the bands guitarist did the heavy lifting but this was not the blues guitarist you might want if your fan. What he does have is an effortless style that beautifully strums the sainted “Lucille” as he smiles, and sings. And he can still sing. he does not have the wind he did as a young man but he carries a tune and like Dylan or some of the other older guys he changes his arrangements to suit his current vocal capabilities. Unlike Dylan you can understand the words. The cramped seats in the family arena afforded a good view of the stage but ultimately the late hour 10:45 and cramps in my legs begged for an ending of the set which due to Family Arena curfew had us in the car and on our way home well before 11:00.
It was a good show and a good experience. His band was awesome but as is often the case with “legends” this was more performance heart and a homage to his former greatness then it was a night of kick ass blues guitar. I am happy the guy is still around and how blessed would i feel at 82 to have a couple of thousand people come see me every night. He has tour dates through June and is among the long list of people who are better men then I. Take on of his old albums... put it on and listen and you will get a lot more of the man then this live show, but still, I was happy to go and pay my respects to the man, and his guitar.

Erata: February

Here is something I would like a comment upon... or two because it is an important issue for an epicurean focused blog such as this one. Now I know some of you are not residents of the Lou and that most of you are familiar with only the tradional Surf and Turn which consists of a filet mignon and a lobster tale. Not to disparage the traditional surf and turf but for me I have a St. louis variation (not that it is not available in other cities but it seems to me to speak volumes about my town) I call (cleverly) “St. Louis Surf and Turf” which consists of White Castle Cheeseburgers (not just for drunks anymore) and two pieces of Long John Silvers fried fish. Obviously this calls for some side dishes and generally I would reccomend the cumblies (by-product of deep fryar which are thrown away by a lot of less perceptive purveyors of fast food) and some onion rings (also fried) from White Castle.
So that... according the definitive source, the St. Louis Diner Review is St. Louis Surf and Turf. But... I am not an island and I am always open to the possibility (however slim) that I might be incorrect, and that being the case I would like to solicit your opinions on the best modern surf and turf... from St. Louis... or wherever. I await your comments ALL of which will be published. Do NOT disappoint me.
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Even in the midst of election fatigue where I am not watching Meet The Press and was grateful for public radio’s Valentine’s Pledge Drive giving me a reason to turn NPR off... I am still having ideations of election nightmares at 2:00 A.M. The most recent one is (forgetting about super delegates and the seating of Michigan and Florida) what happens if barack does not knock Hillary off by Texas? The State that gave us George W. Bush could play a decisive role in shoving Hillary to the nomination. Might be an even better “firewall” for her the California was since it has a large hispanic population and historically no great love for african americans. Frightening. I am hoping after his sweep of Kansas, Washington and Louisiana that he can follow up with the Chesapeake Primaries of Maryland, D.C. and Virginia and she will do the right thing and quit like a Becker.
*****
What happened to Mike Gravel?
****
Does Ron Paul really believe that the Trialateral Commission in conjunction with the evil cabal of international financiers and of course the liberal Jewish media are planning Canmexamerica uniting North America... like that awful European Union? Would that be a bad thing?
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Now it is Valentines Day! A lot has happened. Barack has swept 8 in a row and although we are still concerned about Texas that looks to be the only race Hillary can win. So what about Valentines Day? Is there any holiday that is more insipid... more prone to misunderstanding, mis calculation, out of whack expectations and general unhappiness? (The answer is no.) The Hallmark people and their lobby must have been working over time on this one. I have nothing against love, infatuation or sex and the persuit thereof no matter how misguided but... jeez... Valentines Day with it’s forced ackowledgment of your special “relationships” tends to be painful, awkward and well, stupid. If you love someone... you need to find a way to show it every day...duh?
****
So, we soldier through February trying not to kill ourselves. We watch the fabulous yet unheralded Duke Bulldogs... shambling out of Des Moines. Althoug beaten last night by this years unheralded SIU Carbondale the champs out of Iowa look like they will give us all someone to root for in the NCAA’s. You have to love the underdog, even if they have only lost two, they are still from Iowa and still have an ugly mascot..
****
The election moves on to Iowa. Hillary’s huliation will continue albeit slowly.
****
The writers strike is over. rarely have I felt less inconvenienced by a “major” strike.
****
More and more Mark Mc Guires pathetic appearance before the Senate several years ago looks... brilliant. Making the best out of a disasterous situation Mc Guire feigned memory loss and refused to answer questions about his steroid and or HGH use. Roger Clemmens on the other hand is insisting upon extending the nations, and his own pain with what appear to be a series of arrogant lies and deninciations. I watched him the other day in front of Congress. Perhaps he does not go down for perjury but he NEVER gets into the Hall of Fame and is generally remembered as a putz. A little sad but for the fact thtta he seems like such an asshole (the type of guy who would have enjoyed beating me up in high school) that I cannot muster much sympathy for him. Not that there is anything particularly sad or pathetic about having your wife shoot up HGH before a photo shoot. Jeez.

Tragedy At Home

Shared Suffering:


On Thursday madness visited quiet Kirkwood again for the third time in the last few years. There was the Kirkwood cop who was killed in Meacham Park and the perpetrator of that crime was tried several times in St. Louis County, always to the same result. There was Michael Devlin and now there is Cookie Thornton. 5 people killed in a city council meeting and the Mayor in ICU after having been shot in the face twice.

Kirkwood, simply put is a great little town. Good schools, rising property values, old train station where the train still stops, nice rivalry with Webster Groves, not too far out or too far in. They call themselves middle classed but that of course is a lie. It is an upper middle class enclave with more then it’s share of million dollar homes and Mc Mansions but it does still maintain some of the vestiges when it was a distant, small town suburb of downtown St. Louis. It is a nice place. A really nice place and in quintessential St. Louis fashion it is a “great place to raise your kids”.

All of that having been said they have been having a Payton Place like run f bad luck, violence, accusations of racism and with the Devlin thing that ultimate squeamish creepiness that no one can wrap their minds around. Kirkwood’s challenge to defending it’s image of itself has always been the Meacham Park area. Even when I was a kid riding a bike around my parents and grandparents admonished me that there was an area between Kirkwood and Crestwood that was a no mans land. What that meant was that it was a place that a little white kid on a bike should not be riding through. The fact is I never thought much about it other then observing that it was a run down area in a lot of ways and seemed predominantly black. I am told there was a time when it was really it’s own community with black run businesses and bars and it’s own infrastructure but by the time I became aware of it, it was just a disappearing community.

Kirkwood thought it had solved it’s Meacham Park “problem” by paving it over. Over the protests of the local home owners (or renters) Wal-Mart and Target paved a solid 3rd of town. Problem solved! Well... not quite. Instead it was walled off even more and more compressed and clearly from what we have seen over the last few years, very well policed with revenue from the new retail tax base. So the pot was set to boil and the rest of us walked away hoping nothing bad would happen. But bad things have happened and it seems from the position just outside that town, knowing little of the facts that neither Kirkwood, nor Meacham Park can reconcile one another existence and Kirkwood law enforcement, attempting to enforce Kirkwood’s laws in meacham Park is, for lack of a better term, a disaster.

The Kirkwood Police Department by the way, from my perspective is one of the top law enforcement organizations in the area. Professional and polite. Extremely competent while still being courteous whether giving tickets or breaking up a party or investigating a crime. But to ask them to enforce laws that make total sense in Kirkwood (like not parking vehicles on the street because it looks “tacky” and “hurts property values” in Meacham Park cannot feel like anything but spite and harassment to the residents involved. Anyway... it is like anything else, a complex problem with no simple answers. The fact is they are part of Kirkwood and Kirkwood has laws, and discretionary enforcement of those laws is probably fraught with it’s own peril. That is not what i really wanted to talk about... what I wanted to talk about was the larger communities sense of shared suffering at the recent violence on Thursday.

St. Louis is NOTHING if it is not an inbred small town with a long memory. And you can tell me we are the 15th or 26th or whatever largest metropolitan area and I will still hold that we are much more like Mayberry then NYC or even Chicago. The six degrees of separation, or six degrees of Kevin Bacon telescope down to four, three and sometimes two degrees of separation from everyone else in town. Everyone either personally knows someone who was in that council chamber or knows someone who knows someone and for some reason that gives us all license to personalize this as our own tragedy. I am sure every town is like this but i remember being slightly baffled but (surprisingly) too polite to comment on the same phenomenon after 9-11 when everyone knew someone who worked in the World Trade Center and felt compelled to tell you about it.

A lot of this is very natural and even kind. Any group that suffers violence and trauma needs to deal with the real grief of the people really really effected. The families destroyed, the kind and even brilliant people lost, the psychological trauma of the survivors, all need to be loved and acknowledged by the community at large. It is a healthy part of the healing process. What is more problematic is the sense of shared violation and anger at... anyone. Right now we have Cookie Thornton’s idiot mother and brother blathering into the cameras. But seriously, these people are idiots. I do not know whether it is more irresponsible for them to say what they are saying (which seems to condone and rationalize the violence) or whether it is worse that the media put them on the news. I think... that I think it is the latter.

But if we were not angry and blaming his family we might next look to blame someone else. I know over the next year we will all have to deal with heightened security at ALL community meetings and that FOX 2 News and the Post Dispatch will be running exposes about WHY THE POLICE CANT KEEP US SAFE! And that is a shame because they will scare a lot of people and we will spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money and thousands of hours of police time to protect us all from what is a very isolated incident involving mental illness and stupidity and you cannot defend us all from those things all the time and it is asinine for us to expect it. We will have metal detectors at every city council meeting, every school board meeting and soon every condo association, PTA, AA and Boyscout meeting because somehow it is the governments job to keep us safe from everything and everyone, no matter how crazy and random.

This shared suffering needs to take a different form. A healing form. In this primarily Christian Community we need to react as Christians and love and heal the victims and the survivors of this tragedy and then, if we really want to model Christ we need to try and love and understand the sad twisted people who spawned this kind of violent rage. That is the hard part. It is not a situation that gives rise to easy, glib, Nancy Grace, Rush Limbaugh answers. It goes to our basic social fabric and flies in the face of the main credos of our current government which are “pull yourself up by your own boot straps” and take “personal responsibility” for yourself and your actions. All of which make perfect sense for our Ivy Leagued, Haliburtoned shareholdered leaders but make less sense even for us privileged, white, upper middle classed, college educated (often on someone else’s nickel like myself) and well insulated mid-westerners. I can tell you though that they make no sense to a on of a single mother working two jobs and still not making ends meet. Ultimately as Christians and as people we need to come to grips with the fact that that angry kid is part of our community and part of our responsibility. But there is the rub.

As they said in the film “New Jack City”...”Am I my brothers keeper?... Yes I am”. That is what ALL our religions teach us... I think.

Book Review: The Defense: Vladimir Nabakov

Soooo... I have a theory. It is only a theory... it is untested... unvarnished... unwashed but as the years go by I become more and more confident of it’s validity. Now this is important and I want you to pay attention. The theory is this. You should read Russian authors during February in the midwest. Last year around this time I wrote about seasonal affective disorder...SAD. Makes me sad even to think about it but the idea is that due to gray..clouds...rain...cold... that we get depressed. We get sad... we get...affected. I know it is true for me and as I get older it becomes truer... or more truer which is how I would write about it in a legal brief. I am not certain if it is the most truest... only time will tell.

But back to the Russians. If you read, and enjoy reading ultimately you must confront the Russians. Like the Germans on the eastern front in all the wars we eventually lost, there are always the Russians. They live in a bleak landscape that we cannot appreciate. Whether living under Tsars (Czars?) or Communist rule or “democracy” or oligarchs or... or Putin. The Russians are always there, always writing and their great writers are VERY hard to avoid.

Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin and later Vladmir Nabokov and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn these guys have written some great shit (now that is some good commentary). And you hear about them but then you go to the book store or the library and look at “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina” or “Crime and Punishment” and you think, why do they need a thousand pages to tell a story? It is a good question and though I have fought my way through two of those, “Crime and Punishment” still eludes me. If that speaks poorly of me, so be it. “War and Peace” was a battle but I must confess “Anna Karenina” was a lengthy, hard fought pleasure.

The Russians combine attention to detail, a strong sense of irony, a bleakness as well as a sense of culture that makes them unparalleled in English literature. Maybe Maugham wrote about about people better but, I doubt it. The Russians understood bleakness and madness and above all irony. Russian political history and Russian winters breeded these awful little men who wrote about love, war, death and especially madness and mental illness. They love those two topics and they don’t just write about it... they caress it and nurture it. It is the Russians. they must be read, they must be studied, they do not have to be loved but they must be appreciated.

The key thing to remember is that you do not have to read the 100 page monsters in order to get a taste for these guys. They all have short stories and novellas and reasonably long books to while away some winter reading time. So for February I decided to light a big fire, enjoy our first big, big snow (or maybe the second) and hunker down and read Nabakov’s “The Defense”. Nabakov has a bad rap with a lot of people because of “Lolita” and while “Lolita” is a deeply troubled book about two deeply troubled characters and their deeply troubling romance and abusive relationship... it is beautifully written and is more a book about obsession and self defeat then about pedophila.

But we are hear to discuss “The Defense”. I thought maybe it was a war book or a legal book but it turns out it is a chess book about a sullen kid in Russia who is a chess prodigy and while it sounds boring this guy writes so well it is compelling. Almost from page one where we meet the spoiled kid, neurotic mother and disappointed father. The thing about Nabakov is that he writes so beautifully and in such detail that when he writes about a kid playing chess... it is compelling. When he writes about the kids father having an affair with the kids aunt... it is beautiful and it makes you think about how you feel and that is something most writers cannot even come close to.

There is something compelling about prodigies. Kids who are prodigies are like idiot savants and they amaze and delight with their gifts while generally stumbling through troubled dysfunctional lives on many levels and this story of the child Luzhin (like illusion) and his invention of the “Luzhin Defense” is an interesting... troubling story. Written in 1930 you have to know what the author was doing to appreciate it’s brilliance. He was born to Russian nobility which had to flee the Russian army in 1919 moving to the Crimea and ultimately at this point to Berlin. In 1922 his father had been assassinated while trying to shield a leader in the Russian Democratic movement. The author new some tragedy and it shows in this dark book.

Luhzin buries his parents and proceed with his chess career and then he meets his future wife and he takes us through courtship, engagement and ultimately marriage. In between Luhzin suffers a complete mental breakdown at the big tournament in Berlin in the final match against the Italian Turani and apparently gives up the game altogether and tries to become a normal husband and minor league rich guy Russian expatriate in berlin. Surprisingly... it does not work out. Nabakov move him along in rambling several page paragraphs which almost have a magical realism quality as he is constantly imagining himself in a chess game, mixing with the other pieces, making forays into new territory and ultimately being out played and falling into a trap. Which is how Luhzin and the book end. Beautiful.
Read the Russians and February and get that gun out of your mouth.

Record Review: Cat Power Jukebox

Cat Power
Jukebox
 Chan Marshall as Cat Power has long fascinated, enthralled and infuriated me.  Her whispered, atonal mewing is enchanting and yet sometimes there is jus t a sameness to the whole thing that is numbing.  With a few exceptions her original songs have been unremarkable and her gifts as a singer has always been through interpreting other peoples works.  Sometimes it is brilliant, sometimes the song selection is questionable, but it is never uninteresting to see what she does with someone else’s tunes and while her covers may be eclectic and more geared to music snobbery then tunefulness her CD Covers was very well received and had a number of memorable tunes on it.  Her cover of the Oasis anthem “Wonderwall” stands as the brilliant mark by which any artist should be judged, reinventing the song in a way never envisioned by those pretentious little twits the Gallagher's or in the much ballyhooed Ryan Adams cover.  Find it on iTunes….BUY IT NOW!
 
So it was with some apprehension and anticipation that picked up her knew CD “Jukebox”.  Once again a collection of covers, some old, some new, some borrowed, etc… She did this one with the help of pretty much the same Memphis session players she used for her last CD, the critically acclaimed but ultimately disappointing “The Greatest”.  These musicians are brilliant and understated with Judah Bauer on guitar, and Greg Foreman on Organ accenting  her voice and framing her tunes.  This CD also has special guests on it like the brilliant Spooner Oldham on piano and organ and Matt Sweeney on guitar.  It is a sweet band for a sometimes silky sweet voice.
 
She kicks off with “New York” and she is no Frank Sinatra and you immediately think ooohhh! That was a mistake but… it grows on you like a fungus or in you like a cyst and now (although I would never want to drunkenly sing it at a bar) it has become my favorite.  She moves into a muted version of the Hank Williams (not Jr. or III) tune Ramblin (WO)MAN and it lilts along in a most pleasing way with it’s steel guitar muted in the background and frankly…beautiful.  The third song is hers, “Metal Heart”, and it is surprisingly good.  Lee Clayton’s “Silver Stallion” lilts along followed by “Aretha, Sing One For Me” which unhappily sounds a little trite coming from a woman who does not by any estimation have a “big” voice.  James Brown’s “Lost Someone” is a non starter… and even after it fails to start it goes no where.  “Lord Help The Poor and Needy” seems to resonate but I do not know if that is because of her cover of it, or because it seems to be a relevant song to life right now.
 
She veers suddenly to brilliant again inn her cover of Dylan’s “I Believe In You” which you can also find on the sound track of the recent non hit movie “I’m Not There”.  This song works on every level with a great, almost Keith Richards on Xanax like guitar rift that counterpoints her reading of a song that when Dylan does it is almost unintelligible.  She follows up with her own “Song To Bobby” with the usual disappointing results and then reaches out and fails on the Billie Holloday song “Don’t Explain” before closing with a one two punch of Spooner Olhams “Women Left Lonely” followed by a really thoughtful version of Joni Mitchells under rated “Blue”.
 
The CD is cohesive and at times brilliant and enchanting but even as it fits together the unevenness of Marshall’s performances and commitment to these songs as she goes through it is distracting.  I think that when she stops recording she is going to leave us with a really sweet greatest hits package and I guess that is feint praise indeed for this critics darling.

Election Fatigue

It could happen to you, it could happen to me, it could happen to everyone eventually... But seriously. I never thought it would happen to me. I was really, really excited about this election. It was close, it was engaging... everything I could want our of an election. I loved it. It had a good guy (Obama), a bad girl (Hillary), a grumpy old man (Mc Cain), a high priest (Huckabee) and a born again Nazi (John Mc Cain). It was fun. I love our system and even with these absurdly early primaries making the season more absuder (legal term) it seemed like it would all be good.

I think I started to tire when I found out that John Mc Cain was a left leaning, pinko, gay marriage espousing, pro abortion, anti-life, probably gay himself, killer of small children, puppy maiming BASTARD! I had no idea. I thought he was just a smart but grumpy old man who had served his country well, been a prisoner of war, devoted himself to public service, refused the pork barrel earmarks and (in earlier elections) stood up to hate and intolerance. So it was distracting when my favorite comfort woman to the Nazi’s... Anne Coulter set me straight on John Mc Cain. I think that started to make me tired.
And then there was Super Tuesday. I was really thinking I would get some closure on the Obama/Clinton thing at Super Tuesday but... instead I get uncertainty and fear that we will go to the convention without being united. That there will be legal battles over the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegates where Hillary won and Barack didn’t campaign. That there will be a convention decided by “Super Delegates” that no one voted for.

Now Romney has quit. That is a good thing because I really hated him (and I know that is irrational) and his rich guy (I put 35 million into my own campaign) pretty haired, I turned around the Olympics and a consulting company so I can run the country, attitude. Now everyone says Mc Cain will pick Huckabee as his VP but I do not see it. I hope he does not grab Johnny Depp before Obama thinks of it. God it is hard on me coming up with all the ideas for these guys.

And when I started to think about all that I really just became tired of the whole thing. I listened to all the analysts on Wednesday puffing and talking and... I just got tired. The local NPR station started it’s Valentine’s pledge drive this morning and I was grateful for the break in commentating. I think that I am afraid for the future and that makes me feel weak and sad. I do not have a lot of faith that anyone can save us from a long cold winter in our economy and I have fears of fascism and nationalism and a lot of other ism’s as we start through our Limbaugh and Coulter demagogues to find people to blame. I really am afraid of that so... I am taking a break from political blogging for a while and doing a strategic withdrawal until March or so. Certainly know one can object to that?

Guest Political Commentary

OK, you heard it here first.

Barack and Hillary come out of Super Duper tuesday in a statistical dead
heat, both in absolute votes and in delegates. The available cash
favors Hillary, but momentum and state demographics favor Barack. So,
what if they go into the convention with neither one able to score a
clear victory?

Super delegates my friend. Yes, just like the Super friends and the
Justice League, there is an unelected cadre of senior Democratic Party
know-it-alls who will eventually throw this one way or the other.
Diving deeper, 10% of these are "controlled" (bought and paid for) by
organized labor (AFL-CIO) and 15% are controlled by the NEA. These are
the constituencies that really wanted John Edwards, and he now has the
ability to sway the nomination, or at least the final Democratic
platform on important labor (read free trade and health care) issues.

Would he dance as a VP candidate again? Barack did well in the South,
and maybe, just maybe that's why Edwards bowed out early to give him a
more clear victory there. But, as a VP, the two seem to have redundant
strengths in the south when they need a vote getter from the northeast.
California is a Democratic lock in November, so it doesn't really even
enter the calculus. So, if Johnny and Barack have been cooking
something up in the kitchen, it probably doesn't come out with him as
VP.

Tim

***
The Diner Review takes some small objection to the West Coast commentary of this deeply troubled reader suggesting that Edwards will need to be attorney General and further suggesting that Barack would do well to state now that he is drafting Johnny Depp for VP in order to lock up Cali in the general election and more importantly to beat Hillary to the punch. Now I want Johnny Depp not in his current "Sweeney Todd" mode but i want the young, cool Johnny Depp.... The 21 Jump Street Johnny Depp. That is a VP that could whip the Islamo-facists and save America. That is a team that could roll back the recession, stop the foreclosures on the sub prime loans, settle the financial markets, make our 401 k plans grow again, solve global warming and AIDS in an afternoon... That would be sweet.

The Oscars

Michael Clayton and
No Country For Old Men
Juno

Sooooo... it is almost Oscar time. I think. Or at least Screen Actors Guild or Golden Globes or some-such. Normally I cannot be expected to pay attention to these things since my taste is... well... so much better then everyone else's. But this year... with the actors strike...why not?
So I went to see three of the movies that have received a lot of nominations. In fact they re-released “Michael Clayton” just for the nominations. I saw that one along with “Juno” and “No Country For Old Men”. Here are the best picture nominations for Best Picture: ''Atonement,'' ''Juno,'' ''Michael Clayton,'' ''No Country for Old Men,'' ''There Will Be Blood.'' I did not see “Atonement” or “There Will Be Blood” but I got the other three. All three were good but some thoughts:

“Juno” is just squeamish fun. Ellen Page kills as the too smart, too cool, too nice daughter that all of us are grateful that we do not have. Go see “Juno” but do not go to see it with your 15 year old daughter and one of her friends whose parents are somewhat circumspect about what movies their daughter goes to see. When the movie begins with Juno saying “It all begins in the chair”... pans to a picture of the chair sitting on the lawn and then flashes back to her mounting the dorky boy it is... well... awkward. Anyway, they march you through it and you do not see the not so happy ending that approaches but it is one of those movies that helps add perspective to life.

“No Country For Old Men” is deeply disturbing and forgetting about the devastatingly devastating performance Javier Bardem it is a tour de force of darkness. The adaptation of Cormac Mc Carthy’s book is so spot on and relentless in it’s brooding, graphic violence that it is hard to take. The violence builds slow and hits again and again but it is unavoidable and ultimately sends a strong message regarding the lack of goodness, sanity and perhaps ultimately God. See this one alone. I did. Do not take the wife. The movie is so stark, lovingly filmed, well scripted and well cast, that it is hard to take it all in... even when nothing is happening. Tommy Lee Jones is perfect as he narrates and wanders through (second hand) all the violence and forsees awful things happening that neither the victims or even his own deputy can understand. If you are watching it and you think the good guys might win... bet on the villian and take the points.

“Michael Clayton” is edgy and asks some hard questions about life and Tom Wilkinson plays the truest and scariest bipolar guy ever seen in the movies and even more unfortunately is a spot on trial lawyer. Hmmm. The movie is kind of annoying because: 1. George Clooney is in it and I hate him like cancer. 2. He plays a fixer and hustler who knows everyone’s secrets at a huge NYC Law firm but has to scramble for 75k to fix a debt for a failed restaurant he and his brother tanked. 3. The good guys win in the end... kind of. The main message is that “truth” is kind of a mallable concept and as a lawyer, sadly, I agree. The good guys are never so good and the bad guys never so bad. Go see it, you will be entertained and it will provoke some thoughts but do not expect to have your life changed..

These three are worth seeing. “No Country For Old Men” has the possibility of being one of the great all time films. I need to see it another time or perhaps another 10 times but it might... just might be like... “The Godfather” and that is high praise indeed. I think it sweeps best picture and Javier wins for best supporting actor. He also would make a good successor to Dick Cheney as Vice-President.

SUPER TUESDAY

Soooo... it is hard to write about anything but politics. The South Carolina thing, rather then being treated as a coronation of Obama seems to be seen by the media as only a pre-requisite to his candidacy staying alive. There seems to be some serious question in the medias mind that, after winning States as broad as Iowa and South Carolina, he might still not fair well on Super Tuesday. 1 day to Super Tuesday...yikes. Well, there are a lot of States up for grabs:

Super Tuesday: February 5
Alabama primaries
Alaska caucuses
Am. Samoa caucuses
Arizona primaries
Arkansas primaries
California primaries
Colorado caucuses
Connecticut primaries
Delaware primaries
Georgia primaries
Idaho caucuses
Illinois primaries
Kansas caucuses
Mass. primaries
Minnesota caucuses
Missouri primaries
Montana caucuses
New Jersey primaries
New Mexico primary
New York primaries
North Dakota caucuses Oklahoma primaries
Tennessee primaries
Utah primaries
W. Virginia convention

We are here and no one knows what is going to happen on the Democratic side. It really seems to all come down to California and Hillary is in the lead there. But as in a lot of things with our country California will lead the way and we will see if Obama’s momentum can overtake her machine and her polish. They debated again on Thursday, just the two of them and I was concerned that Obama would just get killed. Instead he held his own but make no mistake, he just held his own. Hillary is smart, well spoken and despite all evidence to the contrary has great instincts. Still, watching her makes me cringe. She cannot communicate without a petulant, smug, superior and yes bitchy, attitude. On the other hand Barack, who I love and will vote for if I get the chance, seems like a scolding parent. Still, he survived in that fight. But will he survive California?
The Republicans are done and they did the right thing. They rejected this flipper Romney in favor of the grumpy old man Mc Cain. And I could vote for him even though I think he is wrong on the war, he is right on a lot of other stuff and as soon as he wins the nomination I think he will move away from all the tax cut, right to life talk. They have dismissed Huckabee but he will live to fight another day. There is no question that he burst from irrelevance to now being the guy who delivers the nomination to Mc Cain. Good for him. Mc Cain will be hard to handle in a general election. He is, as I said, a grumpy old man. There will be a lot of talk about his age but the bottom line is, old people vote. He will be tough in the general election. He will be tough in the general election. Do not discount this guy.

I watched meet the press this morning (what a great show) and was repressed by almost everyone but the Mary Matalin/James Carville thing is particularly depressing because these is just dying that this commie Mc Cain (when did that happen?) is going to win the nomination and Carville cannot believe anyone could be challenging the coronation of his once and future boss. The encouraging thing is that there are people in the middle. There are people open to compromise and the demonization of Mc Cain for being able to reach compromises with the Democrats is ultimately what will get him the nomination and maybe even the White House.

This is a new environment compared to the last 20 years. The Republicans lost me with Newt Gingrich and the beginning of the Orwellian language choices (brilliant) made by the Republican party when they threw “The Contract With America” at us. These were the politics of the 51% which were honed by Karl Rove and left the Democrats confused and standing in the shadows scratching their asses and their heads (different hands). The idea of “your with us or your against us”....”your for no child left behind or you hate kids”... “your for tax cuts or your an anti business commie”... “your for the war or you hate America AND freedom”. We, as a country are sick of this. But that having been said we could lapse into the same thing again.
Be aware Whether you are for Barack, Mc Cain or even Clinton. These are all good people. They all sincerely want what is best for us. Each of them will face an enormous challenge, and unbelievable challenge and they will need our support and our prayers. The people who support the people who we do not support (including my brother and many of my friends) have nothing but but the best intentions for our leaders and the country. It is hope that after we finish with the primaries we can have a healthy discussion about the issues and leadership and remember in the end that we are all Americans and have a lot of work to do.