Macro/Micro

I was talking to an old friend recently about a certain international event that has got everybody all lathered up of late. He mentioned that he had been talking the matter over with his wife for several days, and she brought up the point that this particular incident had potentially dramatic consequences, not just for Pakistan, but for Israel. My friend then asked me for my opinion on the subject. I was quiet for a little while, and I answered,

"Possibly. We'll have to see."

Profound, I know.

The fact of the matter is this: I live in America. I don't live in Pakistan, and I don't live in Israel. My father is from Israel, but we don't live there, and my family doesn't live there. In my world, small as it is, I care about what and whom I emotionally connect with. There are people of Irish descent in this country who've never set foot in Ireland, but belong to organizations (they'd probably spell it "organisations") like "Celtic Connection" (they'd probably spell it "Connexion") and, whenever something happens in Ireland, their ears perk up.

When shit goes down in the Middle East, I am relatively unfazed. Sorry. I just can't help it.

International news in general interests me, of course. Like a good Jewish Volvo driver, I read the NYT online edition every day. And by "read" I mean "scan the headlines of for stories that might potentially interest me." However, I am not someone who gets his rocks particularly off over espousing my views on what's going on in Tibet or the Congo. Do I have views on these subjects?

Sometimes. Not always.

Oftentimes, I feel far too ill-informed to formulate a view or opinion, and I would feel silly discussing something about which I am not grossly informed and/or semi-ambivalent about.

Why would I bother? To sound smart? I kind of think I'm smart already. To hear myself talk? Meh-- kind of nasal.

I guess sometimes I'm just too damned practical-- too fucking micro-- to engage in heated discussions about international affairs. I wish I was the sort of person who enjoyed getting all animated jawing about Egypt or Syria, but I'm just not. The people in these countries are going to do what they do whether or not I offer my view around the chart-room table. I'm not going to impress anybody, or move anybody, or gain anything out of chewing the fat about the value of the euro on a Thursday afternoon. I'd much rather talk about issues surrounding my job, or the challenges we face in every day life.

For me, the smaller the issue, the better. It's something I can conceptualize, something which with I can wrestle and, not only that, something I can (possibly) do something about.

Maybe that's what bothers me so much about fervent discussions about international affairs. What is going to change by talking about it? What is it going to matter what I think? Easy: it's not.

To that end, my wife and I are not the sort of couple that engages each other in spirited debate on matters of politics or happenings in far off places. Sometimes I wish we were that sort of couple but, mostly, I don't.

I think it's great if you're in a relationship where you can fight like James Carville and his wife over politics and then have romper-room-style sex afterwards, but that's just not us. We do our best to figure life out together, and it comes with complexities aplenty, that's for sure. Because we both listen to NPR very frequently, by the time we get home and back into each others' arms where we belong, we're so sick of the daily news anyway, who the hell wants to rehash it all in the dining room or the kitchen.

Besides, we pretty much know how the other one feels about most news stories anyway, even before they happen.

I Used to Want to Be Sam Donaldson

I sometimes tell myself that, if I had more time, more talent, more motivation, more money, more... chutzpah, I could probably take a year or two off from work and pen one of those awkward, painfully funny memoirs of what it was like to grow up in my skin, my eccentric, affectionately crazy skin. Re-enacting the Pan-Am 103 disaster with Playmobil victims wrapped in Kleenex. Memorizing entire episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus as a nine-year-old, complete with diverse English accents, coming to my elementary school's 1988 Halloween parade dressed as Richard Nixon.

I mean, you'd read that, wouldn't you?

I mean-- you are reading that. Aren't you?

Right.

Little boys spend a lot of their time and their energy thinking and fantasizing about what they want to be when they grow up. I suppose some of them want to be their Daddies. I wanted to be anything but. He was (and still is) what I referred to cheekily and audaciously as "A Girdle Man," that is, someone who has devoted his life to manufacturing compression undergarments-- first for ladies, then for professional athletes. I used to go with him to his factory some Saturdays to spread fabric from bolts that were three times taller than I was. We'd spread fabric, a long sheet across the table, weigh it down on each corner, and I'd take a huge, rusty pair of shears and he'd take a huge, rusty pair of shears, and we'd slice, slice, slice until we'd meet in the middle, and spread another sheet.

"Jesus Christ," I said to him, at age eleven, "you mean to tell me there are actually people who do this for a living?"

He laughed at me. What a dummy. Of course there are people who do this for a living. I was looking at one.

I knew I didn't want to be a laborer. A manufacturer. Someone who did something with his hands. I knew I wanted to be on screen. But I knew also, from a very early age, that my physical appearance was, well, awkward at best, and that my potential for television/film was limited, and my voice wasn't special enough-- not smooth enough or, for that matter, brash enough-- for radio. It was a dilemma for an a-typical American youth.

From a very, very early age, I enjoyed watching two things: Monty Python, and the news. While you may at first regard these two televisual pastimes as exceedingly disparate, I assure you they are more similar than at first they appear. There is one thing that they both have very much in common:

Not entirely attractive, very well-dressed men sitting behind desks talking into microphones.

I mean, John Cleese created an entire character whose sole purpose was to be dressed, usually in a tuxedo, sitting behind a beautiful wooden desk, with a gigantic, old-school BBC microphone in front of him, just to say, "And now for something completely different." Sometimes this desk would be in the middle of a field, or in a creek, or in front of an apartment building window where a young woman is getting undressed, or ascending heavenward courtesy of two large propellers attached to the desk.

And, of course, as we well know, the news is nothing BUT sometimes unfortunate-looking men sitting behind desks wearing formal blue and red striped ties talking into the camera. I began, at age eight, cutting out photographs of our local news anchors and taping them to my bedroom walls-- you know, the way normal children do with cars or, I don't know... dinosaurs?

Men behind desks. Wearing suits and ties.

Yes, I thought. I will be a man behind a desk, wearing a suit and a tie.

In addition to cutting out photographs of local news anchors, I also got into the habit of recording news theme music that I found particularly titillating. The music to ABC Nightly News was my favorite. It's not as good anymore, but, back in the eighties, it started out with the pounding of bass drums and then came in some badass trumpets heralding the arrival of something truly important-- something you've waited your whole fucking day for.

And I liked it.

So, I had one of those mini cassette recorders that I probably made my father buy for me from Radio Shack for some ridonkulous amount of money, and I would hold it up to the speaker on our living room TV, just below the green, red and white RCA logo, at exactly 6:30 to record the theme music. And I would listen to it. Alone in my room. A lot.

And then it hit me.

I had a closet full of formal wear, you know, like every child my age, I had a desk, I had a gargantuan mirror in my room, I even had a desk-mounted microphone (which I also made my father buy for me from Radio Shack for some ridonkulous amount of money).

It was time to play a little make-believe: me style.

So, one weekend morning, I dressed in my dark blue suit, with my powder blue dress shirt underneath, and completed the ensemble with an appropriately dour dark blue striped tie. I parted my hair on the side (I wore a bowl-cut back then) and wet it under the sink so it would stay that way. Not only that, but I plastered the front part of my hair down on my forehead, like my favorite ABC Nightly Newsman, Sam Donaldson. Then, I looked in the mirror and realized that something was missing. My eyebrows. No matter how I manipulated them, no matter how hard I scowled, I just didn't look enough like Sam Donaldson, with his extreme browage. So, I did what any pre-pubescent boy fantasizing about being a news anchor would do: I snuck into my parent's bedroom, ransacked my mother's admittedly scant make-up area, and found black eyeliner. I carefully drew over my eyebrows, creating a dramatic transformation. I then turned the desk to face the mirror, switched on the mini tape cassette player, and did my newscast.

In the middle, I heard my bedroom doorknob click and the door cracked open, and my mother was standing in the doorway. I saw her in reverse in the mirror, looking at me. I turned to her.

"Hi, Mommy. I'm being Sam Donaldson."

"That's nice," she replied, "could you put my makeup back when you're done?"

"I did already."

We'll be back, after these messages from our sponsors.

I Guess That's Why These Crazy Kids Watch the Daily Show

When I worked my old job, a mere .3 miles away from my house, my wife and I got to spend lots of morning time together. We had a leisurely breakfast together, walked the dogs, and ensconsed ourselves on the couch to be lulled into a state of idiocy by Meredith, Matt, Al, and Ann.

The Today Show was a mindless routine for the two of us, and by far the most enjoyable part of the show occurs at around 7:14am, when Ann Curry is finished doing the 1.4 minute round-up of international and national newslettes, ending with a story ripe for bawdy, either just shy of the line or just over it commentary by Al Roker.

But that's about as good as the Today Show gets. And it's definitely all downhill from there.

Yesterday morning heralded Tuesday, my coveted and oft-squandered day off. Getting the car's oil changed was on the agenda, and it's my firm tradition to show up at Soly's garage at 7:28am, in preparation for his military-like arrival at 7:30am. This 67-year-old mechanic with a bad shoulder and a bristle-thick gray goatee changes the oil while we talk and joke in the garage, thumbing our noses at litigious and logical rules designed to keep motorists out of potentially dangerous garages. In order to facilitate my punctual arrival at Soly's, I woke up with Mrs. Apron at 6:10am, and we enjoyed a little bit of our old Today Show routine.

I had heard, on the local news that comes on before the Today Show, a blip about a startling initiation of aggression by North Korea, firing 100 unpleasant projectiles into a South Korean island, killing two South Korean marines and wounding dozens of others. That this unpredictable, unstable, and volatile nation was showing its most unsettling arm-flexing since the Korean War was indeed troubling to me, and I expected the event to be covered with proportional depth by the Today Show.

Well, clearly, I'm an idiot.

What was the top story yesterday, covered for a full nine minutes?

The location of Prince Fucking William and Kate Nice Legs Middleton was just announced.

Westminster Abbey. Wow, right? Never saw that one coming, did you? I had heard it was a toss-up between there, BBC Television Centre, the apartment where Terry Jones lived in 1968, and a public lavatory two miles south of Piccadilly Circus.

I guess common sense won out that time. Good show, old chaps.

I don't know why I was so incensed and so surprised by the inordinate attention being given to an announcement that was such frippery, such fluff, such ridiculum, and not only that, but one that was a foregone conclusion anyway. I guess they chose Westminster Abbey because all of the Southern Black Baptist churches in England were booked on their desired date.

I joke, because that's what I was trained to do by scads of unwittingly reinforcing public school teachers, but it's really not funny. My father loves to refer, in his semibroken English, to America as "the dumbest fuckin' retard country ever" and he may very well be right, but, if we are, the news media deserves its fair share of the blame by sliding retard sauce down our throats and calling it medicine.

It's easy for me to get worked up over this generation's obsession with Jon Stewart's reinvention of "The Daily Show," turning it from the simple, funny, relatively innocuous show it was during Craig Kilborn's reign (remember that?) into a ferocious, self-important political whirlwind where comedy often takes a backseat to grandstanding, but there is a reason for its dominance over traditional news, and I acknowledge and accept that.

Our local ABC affiliate newstation, Action News, does a regular feature on Tuesday mornings on "Dancing With the Stars." And I always stare at the screen, dumbfounded, as people who call themselves "news anchors" sit behind desks wearing suits have the utter temerity and lack of dignity to expound on a moronic television show, and pretend that it's news.

Pass the remote. I want to shove it up somebody's ass. If North Korea doesn't blow us all to hell before I get the chance to do it, that is.

Commentary

I like to know what's going on.

It helps to know what's going on when you ask the question, "What the fuck is going on?"

And I ask that question. Frequently.

I ask that question because events in the world baffle me. They confuse me. They annoy me. They are, more often than not, beyond me. There's been a good number of crazy, stupid, frightening and unfortunate events in the news in recent days, and I've been conspicuously silent about many of them, because, well, I've needed to blog about cars and undershirts.

You know how it is.

But I love commenting on world or national or local events. The kind of writing I love to do, second only to blogging, is editorial writing after all. So, let's look at the week that was, and see what we think of that.

The Party-Crashers

As I'm sure you've heard, some aging turd and his blonde wifelette faked their way into a state dinner at the White House and got photographed shaking Obama's hand and checking out Mrs. First Lady's much-lauded biceps. No, they weren't invited, and, no, they weren't supposed to be there-- but there they were. They even got formally announced, like in that old Saturday Night Live sketch ("Presenting My Lord & Lady Douche-Bag!") Apparently, the bitch-in-question wanted to flaunt her exhibitionism even further by showing up in a fire-engine-red sari. Lots of questions have been raised about what should be done with these people-- should they face criminal charges for this security breach or should it be treated as a harmless incident and chalk the whole thing up to necessary Secret Service training revisions.

My advice? Execute them.

Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods wrapped his 2009 Cadillac Escalade around a neighbor's tree at around 2 o'clock in the morning, a time when megasuperstar athletes typically discover that they're out of 2% milk and need to visit the local Circle-K. My question isn't whether or not Woods was drunk, or stoned, or had just had a fight with his wife or his Pomeranian, or whether there's a police coverup or legal consipracy or public relations spin.

My question is: what the fuck was that dude doing driving a Cadillac? Isn't he Buick's bitch? I mean, I realize that Cadillac & Buick both belong to the General-- but still-- where's the loyalty? Where's the love? Tiger-- you fucked up.

Black Friday

(No, I'm not still on about Tiger Woods.)

Walmart opened early. Kohls and Old Navy were both open at 3 o'clock. Best Buy was probably never not open-- who can keep track? In the words of my wife, "They're all just a bunch of filthy disgusting hookers anyway."

Nevertheless, people pounded down the doors for the newest Wii Fit and G.I. Joe-- PTSD American Hero, and Assrapeme Elmo to shove down their kids' throats this Christmas. Nevermind that we're in a recession and unemployment is at 98.7%-- where's my new iPhone, mom, you out-of-work bitch?

Thanksgiving

Thank God the media finally has a secular holiday on which to report. I hate the awkward, uninformed way newscasters report on Jewish holidays, in their inept, bumbling fashion.

"Jews everywhere wail at the Passover plate in celebration of 10 days of Chaeynakippccchhccchveroshasteinberg. This festival of light and money honors the time when Jews split the sky and ate the tablets of despair. They wear a loincloth of... um... cloth and grow beards for several days in this beautiful, pagan ceremony."

A Hometown Massacre

Not to end on a total downer, but, as hard as it is to believe, there was actually real news this week. On Sunday morning, four Lakewood, Washington police officers were sitting in a cafe, using their laptops, catching up on paperwork and easing into their caffeine buzz when a gunman entered the cafe and shot them all to death. 3 officers, 1 sergeant -- 3 men, one woman, all assassinated because of the little piece of metal on their chests.

And today, as you remember your family meal and your good feelings from the holiday, as you return to your regular life, give one extra thanks for those four cops who won't be returning to theirs.

And that's the news, diverse and silly and stupid, and sad, from My Masonic Apron.