Punches Telegraph

Texas Voice | An interview with Molly Ivins

2011-11-10T13:03:00.000-05:00

by Andrew Norman

I hadn't thought about my phone conversation with the late Molly Ivins in years. I spoke with the Texas humorist-newswoman in the fall of 2004, just months before George W. Bush beat John Kerry to win a second term. She was promoting a new book, Who Let the Dogs In? Incredible Political Animals I Have Known, and I was using my Omaha-based alt-weekly's scant distribution in Iowa as a hook with which to speak to my own favorite political animals who were compelled to influence the state's critical electoral vote. When I saw the following quote from the old Texas humorist-newswoman used by someone on Facebook to lighten the current socio-political atmosphere, I decided to dig up that interview:

"So keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Be outrageous ... rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through celebrating the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was!"

It's a quote not far off from something you might see on mass-produced, faux-vintage home decor — the reminder to keep your worries in perspective, to smell roses. But in Ivins' voice, the quote — one of countless, simple, brilliant, down-home nuggets she whipped up during her 30-plus-year career — contains an authenticity that makes it clash next to an IKEA bookshelf.

Ivins had a keen nose for bullshit. So you won't find any in her words. Also a skilled chef, she was able to turn politicians' verbal and legislative crap into genuinely hilarious, irreverent stories you could chew on for weeks.

Her legendary voice shined in our discussion, which was never posted online. (Ivins died just over two years later.) Now seven years since we spoke, history has weighed in on many of the topics, some of the most contentious news of the day — including the 2004 Presidential Election (where John Kerrey stands on the "Elvis scale" and the Iraq War (on impeaching Donald Rumsfeld) — and some not so critical, including with whom, alive or dead, she'd most like to dine.

Andrew Norman: What do you like the most about book tours?

Molly Ivins: When you’re on book tour, you always collect a couple of stories you can dine out on for months.

Tell me about Who Let the Dogs In?

It’s a collection of previously published journalism. My editor at Random House says he considers this my career retrospective. I said, “Jonathon, that makes me feel slightly dead.” (Laughs) And of course, the hardest thing about a career retrospective is you’re sitting there trying to figure out whether there’s any theme at all to this stuff. And it turns out there sort of is. I guess it’s stuff I’ve been preaching about for a long time, but it comes through in a lot of different ways.

Who are some of the people you’ll be focusing on?

The title comes from the fact that it’s portraits of mostly politicians I’ve known, so it’s sort of divided into Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush, and accompanying cast of characters, of course.

How did you get your start as a muckraker?

I started in the newspaper business in the early 1960s, just basically doing the things that all raw recruits do. I did obits and wedding announcements and street closings and no end to boring things. I was police reporter for a while, which was fairly unusual in my time for a woman. In 1970, I left the Minneapolis Tribune, where I’d been working for a couple years. I’d worked at the Houston Chronicle before that.

I left the Minneapolis Tribune to join the Texas Observer, which was a tiny, progressive magazine in Texas. And at the time, of course, I had cleverly fifthed my salary by taking this job. I thought I was giving up all hope of ever having a career in establishment journalism. You see, I was going to go off and do noble things to save the country from Richard Nixon, as I recall. I had decided that establishment journalism was just too frustrating in those days. The strictures on reporters in terms of objectivity — or sort of false objectivity — were much narrower than they are now. So off I went to do this wonderful thing — live below the poverty level and have the complete freedom to report whatever I wanted to and say whatever I wanted to. It was the best experience I ever had. I mean, it was better than graduate school. It’s the only way to learn how to do real journalism — to be free to make your own mistakes.

I just flat fell in love with Texas politics the day I first set foot on the house floor, in 1971. I still remember — the opening day of the legislature is like the first day of school. It’s this excited buzz, and everybody’s meeting and greeting and slapping each other on the shoulder and on the ass. I’m looking around at this going, “Oh, this is heaven.” I knew right away. I was born to report this, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

Do you feel obligated to do this kind of work?

Oh, it’s not so much a sense of obligation. In fact, I’m always amazed that I get paid for doing something that is as much fun as this. I suppose, you know, I love to make fun of politicians. I love to ridicule politicians and hold them up to public laughter because I think many of them deserve it and I think it does us all good to laugh at our political system. But, underneath that has always been a sense that I will put up with a lot from these people, because I actually like politicians. I’m one of the few people who will say — in front of God and everybody — that I like politicians. But there are times I get genuinely infuriated with them. And sometimes, it’s not so much the politicians — it’s the system. They’re as trapped by it as we are. It’s a very corrupt system because of the way campaigns are financed.

What do you think is the most glaring issue that the American people are ignoring, currently?

Well, since Iraq has been getting most of the attention, I would say to me, the clear one is the health care system. It’s falling apart. It’s not just cracked — there are huge chunks of it falling out. And people are aware of it, but it has not moved to the front burner, and it really needs a focus because it is just an impending disaster.

Why do you think Republicans have been able to court the middle class better than have the Democrats?

Oh, there’s a good question. Well, of course, there’s the eternal lure of tax cuts — everybody thinks that they pay too much in taxes. But I also think that it is the consequence of a long and deliberate campaign. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a vast, right-wing conspiracy. I think it’s all right out in there in plain sight, what has happened to American politics. There’s no sinister plan here — it’s all been on the table for a long time. Over 30 years ago, some major right-wing funders — including Joe Coors and Richard Mellon Scaife — started putting money into a network of think tanks and subsidized publications to promote right-wing ideas and then subsidized media of various kinds. They have managed to convince people that government is a terrible thing — government is the problem.

You’re a supporter of the use of hydro, solar and wind power. What do you think it will take for Americans to demand the switch to more efficient, renewable energy sources?

I really think that Bush had such a missed opportunity after 9/11. When the country was so united and everybody was just dying to help. You know, we would give blood, join the army — anything that anybody had asked of us. I think that would have been the time to say, “We need you to get out of your cars and ride bicycles. We need you to get more fuel-efficient cars,” and so on. I think it was a terribly wasted opportunity. I really think you could get Americans to cut down on fuel consumption in two ways. First of all, price is always a good way ... if the price of gasoline shoots up, but it’s still nowhere approaching what it is in Europe. On the other hand, in Europe, people drive very small, very efficient cars. The other thing, of course, would be a national crisis.

I know you’re critical of California having elected Arnold Schwarzenegger governor.

Actually, I was very, very grateful to California for drawing attention away from Texas last summer.

But, if they were going to elect a misogynistic action star, isn’t he the most qualified?

(Laughs) Mel Gibson for governor. This is a wonderful question. We need some more action stars. Who else would be a contender? I can’t think of anybody to compare him to, so I can’t say he’s the most qualified. Oh, I guess he would be compared to Sylvester Stallone — gee, tough choice. Stallone for governor could be a lot of fun.

Who are some of your historical First Amendment heroes?

Oh, I have many, many, many — starting with John Peter Zenger. Actually, the case is not that interesting, but at least, according to lore, he was the one who established the principle that there was freedom of the press by appealing directly to a jury a story that I always loved. That was well before the Revolution. Jefferson, of course, is the God of all of us who worship at the feet of the First Amendment. But he got as annoyed with the press as any other politician does. There are so many others, (Eugene) Debs, of course — so many, who have literally done time in order to defend the principle of Freedom of Speech.

Who are some of the people today whom you admire for standing up for what they believe in?

Oh gosh, lots and lots. Many of them are fairly obscure citizens. In fact, my next book is going to be about some of the heroes of current, contemporary struggles for the Bill of Rights. That’s the book I’m starting next year — I’m really excited about it.

What I do is I donate a free speech every month to the First Amendment — any First Amendment group that needs me, often the ACLU, sometimes libraries that are under fire, First Amendment Congress, anybody who defends the First Amendment. My deal is I don’t go to places like New York or San Francisco — they already have enough liberals there. I go to places like Alabama and Mississippi and Nebraska and Montana — places where liberals are seldom heard. In the course of doing so, I’ve met some of the most remarkable people … librarians. And it often starts not even with people who, like librarians, who might be considered to have a professional interest in the First Amendment. It’s often just people who look up and say, “Well, that’s not right.” I can’t tell you how important people like that are to justice in this country.

If you could impeach one Bush administration official, who would you impeach, besides Bush?

Probably Rumsfeld, it’s looking very much as though Rumsfeld was actually responsible for the torture — not that I mean that he did it personally — but it looks more and more as the result of the memos that are coming out that that is where the orders came from.

And Ashcroft wouldn’t divulge the memos.

That was a charming moment with the so-called chief law enforcement officer of our nation — you know, open contempt of Congress.

Do you think that Rumsfeld could actually be forced to resign?

Yeah, I do. It looks as though the military is going to do a real investigation.

Are you supporting Kerry?

Yes.

Do you think of him as more of a lesser evil, or do you think he could be real positive to this country?

Like a lot of people, I’m not just crazy about Kerry. One way I evaluate politicians is on the Elvis scale, and lets face it — this guy has not got any Elvis. Gravitas, intelligence and courage — yes. But Elvis — no. He’d probably be a good president. There’s some evidence that he has a particular form of intelligence. He’s clearly a thoughtful man, who has read widely and thought deeply and has a lot of experience. And as much as we all hate politicians, the critical skills of compromise and persuasion are very useful in office.

We always think, “Oh, God. Let’s get somebody in there who’d just cut through this bullshit and ride in on a white horse and say, ‘Let’s do this, let’s do that.'” And it turns out to be a really bad idea.

The way democracy works is you don’t elect someone even a temporary dictator. That’s one of the appalling things about these memos that claim that the president literally has the right to break both United States law and treaties with foreign nations — that’s insane. That’s not the way the system was set up. Democracy is tedious and confusing … and very noisy. Marianne Moore once said, “It’s an honor to witness so much confusion,” which is the way I feel about politics. The trouble is you can’t have one person deciding. We’re better off if a whole bunch of good minds are working on the same problem and everybody chips in and has their say and points out things that are wrong with other people’s ideas.

Would you ever consider running for office?

No, for two reasons: One is I don’t have the patience — it takes an enormous amount of patience to work in politics, the kind of patience that good mothers have, and I don’t have that. And then of course, it says in the Bible, “I would that my enemy had written a book,” and I’ve written several. (Laughs) I’m a great believer in the thesis that good mothers whose children have left the nest should get involved in politics. Boy, do they make good politicians.

What do you like to do besides getting all fired up about injustices?

I love the outdoors — I love to camp and canoe and run rivers. I’m going on a packsaddle trip this summer in the Canadian Rockies with some old friends. We’ve done a lot of trekking together.

What kinds of music do you listen to?

I love jazz. I love classical, and I love country.

What does your favorite campaign button logo say?

(Laughs) It’s real hard to pick a favorite and often it’s just the last one you saw that you remember. I saw someone in a T-shirt that said, “Well, God tells me he’s never spoken to George Bush in his life.”

Final question: Who would you most like to have dinner with, alive or dead?

That’s a game I’ve loved to play for years. And I’ve got it down to Ben Franklin, Voltaire and Sam Houston. But then we need some women at the dinner party, too, and I’m still making up my mind about that.

***

My 15 Minutes of Zinn

2010-01-28T11:35:00.012-05:00

“One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.”

I didn't deserve this interview.

Fresh out of college, serving as managing editor of the startup alt-newspaper, Omaha City Weekly, I selfishly established a loosely-focused Q&A feature that allowed me to interview anyone who would agree to talk with me, typically, on the phone.

I asked a lot of broadly topical, current events questions to which I was personally interested in hearing responses.

Usually, it was a local or state newsmaker — an artist, or a community or government leader. Sometimes it was a national figure on tour (including Henry Rollins, Louie Anderson, Amy Goodman, Jenna Jameson and the late Bo Diddley).

Occasionally, I had the opportunity to speak to my personal heroes.

Many of these interviews came during the 2004 presidential race. Armed our paper's rather meager distribution in Council Bluffs, Iowa, I pitched the feature as a great opportunity to influence some of the swing-state's voters.

I Googled my brains out, tracking down and securing interviews with comedians David Cross and Al Franken, investigative reporter Greg Palast, musicians Jello Biafra, Tom Morello and Ani Difranco, and rebellious presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.

I was not a skilled journalist or interviewer. I was curious, enthusiastic and lucky. I had no business taking the time of figures like the late muckraker and humorist Molly Ivins, or the people's historian, Howard Zinn, who died at 87 yesterday.

I reached him directly through his Boston University email. The 81-year-old professor agreed to an interview. And we spoke on the phone from his home in Auburndale, Mass., on Nov. 4, 2004, two days after Election Day:

You've said that voting doesn't necessarily play a significant role in social change. Did you vote this year?

I did. I didn’t mean that it’s insignificant — I meant that it’s less significant than what social movements do.

Why did you vote?

Because I think this is one of those elections where it became more important than it usually is because of the nature of the Bush administration. We’re facing an administration which is very dangerous, which is ruthless, which is more militaristic, more fanatic, more fundamentalist than any administration I can remember. And so I thought it was important this time to try to get the Bush administration out of office. I failed, obviously.

Bush won with ultra-conservative stances on gays and abortion, among other issues – will four more years increase the demand for social change. And how does it affect social activism?

I think that people will feel the necessity of becoming active. I think the chances of social movement are growing greater now because I think there’s so much frustration and I believe that people need a way of expressing their feelings and their resentment at the Bush policies. So I believe that this will be a time of a building of a social movement.

I think, at the time of the last election, people didn’t know what to expect. They didn’t expect an onslaught such as we have had from the Bush administration. Now we know what the Bush administration stands for, and [have] seen it win. And therefore, the Bush administration’s feeling that it now has a mandate to go full-throttle ahead with its program. I think people will be motivated to become active, so I think the possibility of a large, growing social movement is a very favorable one at this time.

How do you think Bush’s re-election will affect America’s standing with the rest of the world?

Clearly, the rest of the world was opposed to our war in Iraq. They’re still opposed to our war in Iraq. They see the Bush administration as unilateral, as dangerous, as going its own way, as determined to exert its power in any part of the world that it chooses. So, I think the rest of the world is going to remain hostile to the Bush administration.

I think it may induce them to get closer together to form a defensive block. For instance, the European community, I think, will feel the need to maybe cohere a little more closely in order to create the counter-balance to American power.

Has the right ever been in such a good position to establish U.S. policy? And where do you think they’ll take it?

Well, you know, sure, during the Reagan years, the right wing was in power. But during the Reagan years it faced an opposition to Reagan’s policies in Central America, which made Reagan resort to covert activities in order to follow out his policies of supporting dictators in Central America.

But in the case of the Bush administration, he sees no need to engage in covert activities. Openly and covertly, he gets into two different wars in three years. We’ve had right-wing regimes before, but never one as sort of determined to change the direction of the country drastically in the way the Bush administration is doing.

How would you fight terrorism if you were president?

I would call for a fundamental re-examination of American foreign policy. I would start with a premise that you don’t fight terrorism by bombing countries, invading countries. I would start with a premise that when you do that you create more terrorists. And, in fact, this is so. Anybody who knows anything about the Middle East will tell you that we have created greater numbers of terrorists by our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I would start with a proposition that terrorism is a result of huge anger against American policies in the world — our policies in the Middle East particularly — and our determination to sort of rule the world. And that means if we want to do anything about terrorism we would have to diminish that anger, diminish that hostility. We would have to do it by withdrawing our military forces from the Middle East and other parts of the world, [by] turning around from being a military superpower and start using our resources not for military action, but to give food and medicine [and] economic aid to people in various parts of the world.

You look around the world and you’ll see countries that are not worried about terrorism, and they’re not worried about terrorism because they’re not aggressive countries. They don’t have armies stationed in other countries. They don’t militarily interfere with other countries. We should take our cue from that.

Did Bin Laden's recent statement explaining his reasoning for 9/11 offer America a different way to view terrorism?

Yes, it was a remarkably rationale statement.

We can and should deplore his notion that he will defend the killing of innocent people — acts of terrorism — but, in fact, he stated very clearly that the United States, by its policies, was making people in the Middle East less secure and therefore he would make the United States less secure.

If a terrorist has an agenda — has a demand — that it would be immoral to meet, well, then you can’t meet it, even though the threat of terrorism will follow upon that. But if the demand of the terrorist is justified … For instance, terrorists in Israel, suicide bombers in Israel, demand that Israel get out of the occupied territories. Well, it’s a justified demand. And so the way to deal with getting to the root of the terrorism is to meet that demand, and I think that’s the case here.

Can our version of democracy work in Iraq?

The question is: What is our version of democracy? We seem to think that [because] we have elections that means democracy. But democracy is not a matter of elections. Democracy is a much more complicated matter. You can’t simply call elections and therefore declare it’s a democracy.

And people have to work out their own democratic forums. There’s nothing ideal about the American democracy. All we have to do is look at our recent elections. The election that just took place wasn’t a particularly democratic election — two major parties monopolizing the possibilities for the voters. So I think we need to get out of the way of thinking that we need to tell other countries how to become democratic. They all have to figure it out and work it out in their own way.

How do you think Iraq is different than Vietnam?

Vietnam was desirable not for its own resources, but because it was kind of in a strategic spot in Southeast Asia, where there were also resources — tin, rubber and oil — all around that area.

The resources are right there in Iraq.

Of course, there’s a difference in the two wars, in the scope of the war. We have 130,000 troops in Iraq. We had 530,000 troops in Vietnam. The casualty rate for American troops in Vietnam was much, much higher than it is now in Iraq. So you know, there are differences, but probably more similarities than differences.

Do you believe there is something inherently dangerous about world trade? Or do the problems arise from powerful countries taking advantage of those that are poor?

It’s the latter, there’s no doubt. We need world trade. If there really were free trade then that would be fine, but what is called free trade is not free trade. It is, as you pointed out, the rich countries taking advantage of poorer ones.

That term “freedom” has always been used in a kind of dishonest way. When you talk about free enterprise it doesn’t mean that people are really free — it means that some people are free and other people are not.

Who are some American groups or individuals in whom you have faith for a more progressive future?

Well, the Green party, certainly. The environmental groups. The various anti-war groups.

There’s no one organization I can point to. There are really hundreds of groups around the country that are doing important and good things against war, against militarism, for equal rights and for the minorities and for poor people.

The problem is creating — out of these various, diverse movements — a kind of unified social movement that would be powerful enough to block the agenda of the Bush administration.

What do you like to do to relax?

Go to the movies, watch the Red Sox.

All Arabs are Poets

2010-01-13T22:08:00.002-05:00

Note: An enlightening Reporting on Islam class I took last year from Geri Zeldes at MSU resulted in this little feature. (Much thanks to Ahmed for all his time.) If you're interested in Islamic issues, read another story I wrote for the class, "Closet Jihad," about the gay Muslim movement.

Ahmed Hamer Alshosha is not a poet, he says. Not like his mother, Zohra, or his brother, Ali.

He cannot express what he feels through words, and make those who hear them feel the same.

Hamer Alshosha says he is not a poet, but throughout our hour-long conversation in a loud, bustling East Lansing, Mich., coffee shop, the tall, gentle 35-year-old proves otherwise.

“Poetry is an eternal emotion. And eternal emotion goes out from the heart through the mouth," he says. "All this emotion comes from poets, but it can describe the feeling of an audience.”

He sits with his laptop open on the table between us, in case he needs to translate.

He only uses it twice.

His words come deliberately at times, then flow together confidently and rapidly. The final syllables sometimes end abruptly. The inflections often rise, as if he’s asking a question. Lingering clues that just a year ago, when he had arrived in America for the first time, this conversation would have been quite difficult.

Hamer Alshosha holds a master’s degree in computer engineering at the University of Seventh of April in Al-Zawia, Libya. The school was named for the day in 1976 when students protesting human rights abuses were targeted and killed by Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government.

Hamer Alshosha moved to Michigan in 2008 to earn his master’s degree from Michigan State University and plans to eventually return to Libya with a Ph.D. He is currently in the final level of English classes at the school’s English Language Center. He will begin his degree next spring.

He considered studying computer engineering at the University of Colorado. But Hamer Alshosha chose MSU after a friend said there were many Arabic speakers the Colorado program. He wanted to be forced to speak English.

East Lansing didn't uphold his assumption about America.

“I thought all the cities had skyscrapers, huge buildings and good roads,” he says. “So when I saw this, it was like my city. Maybe my city’s roads are better.”

The people he met contradicted the stereotypes he saw on Libyan television.

“Americans are very kind,” he says. “[There are] maybe some cultural differences, but that’s OK. We can understand that.”

A practicing Muslim, Hamer Alshosha prays at the Islamic Community Center of East Lansing two or three times daily. He meets regularly with a loose group of fellow Libyan students at MSU. But he hasn't found the community he was used to back home. He laments that he and his wife have not had any visitors to their home.

When Hamer Alshosha gets homesick, he turns to Arabic poetry, the first literature he ever read. Specifically, he finds solace in the poems of his mother.

“Poetry is like therapy,” he says. When he reads his mother’s poems — he pronounces this word “pooms” — his homesickness vanishes.

She can neither read nor write, “but she can listen,” Hamer Alshosha says of Zohra. She listened to poets, and recited their work by memory.

His mother began saying her own poetry as a young woman, before she married Ahmed’s father.

“She’s clever,” Hamer Alshosha says. “She has knowledge from the TV and radio. She has good knowledge about everything, even politics.”

She writes poems in her head.

“If someone memorizes them, it’s OK, otherwise, she forgets,” he says. Hamer Alshosha wanted to preserve his mother's poems, so he transcribed and collected them in a book that he distributed all over his city, Al Jawf, in the southeastern region of Libya. His mother is now famous in Al Jawf for her poetry, he says.

Hamer Alshosha’s favorite poem of his mother’s is one about him. He translates it for me: “Slim and tall, and I like the way he walks/I called, ‘Oh Ahmeada.’ He echoed, ‘yes!’/He is valiant, and I admire him/He has a splendid look when he came back from the university/Oh my God, save him from envy/I supplicate the god and he doesn’t frustrate me/Make his days vivid and blissful/I hope in my golden years he won’t leave me.”

Hamer Alshosha’s older brother, too, is a poet. But no one knew until he fell in love. His talent suddenly blossomed.

“He started to write, to write, to write. And he was shy. We noticed that, and we take his notes, and we know,” Hamer Alshosha says, laughing.

His brown eyes are kind, especially when he smiles, which he does when speaking of his love of poetry. Like a river provides water to drink, and food to eat, Hamer Alshosha says, poetry “can feed your soul.”

Before we leave the coffee shop, he repeats a proverb: “Every Arab is a poet,” he says.

But Hamer Alshosha is not a poet.

A version of this story appeared through Capital News Service.

Blood and Mt. Marcy

2009-12-13T22:20:00.007-05:00

"Sledding Mt. Frandor."

The holy shitty trinity of Ted Nugent, Kid Rock and Insane Clown Posse formed much of what I knew about Michigan music before I moved here in August 2008. And yer darn right Michigan loves its guns, cowboys and clowns.

But the gray, depressed Midwest state also produces independent folk musicians whose songs slice you like rusty metal and inject the souls of shuttered small-towns into your veins. They'll be relevant long past when the last SUV rolls off the line and after Nestle drains the last of Lake Michigan into a $2 plastic bottle. My favorites are Paul Baribeau, Breathe Owl Breathe and Frontier Ruckus, the band I finally saw for the first time this weekend at Mac's Bar in Lansing.

Watch them play "Mt. Marcy" on the above video I captured on my point-and-shoot to see why you should care.

After their set, the band, minus bassist Anna Burch, played an acoustic singalong version of the howler "Blood" for the homers. Check it out below, and forgive my inability to shake overzealous cell phone girl.

Wielding Crowbars in Islam's Intellectual Palace

2009-11-20T00:07:00.008-05:00

The movement usually precedes the book. In this case, it's the other way around.

Michael Muhammad Knight’s "The Taqwacores," a 2003 self-published novel about a fictitious group of Muslim punks living in Buffalo, N.Y., inspired young Muslim bands like The Kominas and The Secret Trial Five to make punk rock their own.

In an e-mail interview, Knight put Islamic punk rock in context, explaining what media misses and why Islamic youth should carry intellectual "crowbars."

Read the full story at UPI.com.

Drinking Ourselves Into the Future

2009-11-16T21:30:00.005-05:00

"Wrong note."
"Yep."

Red City Radio swung through Lansing Nov. 9, 2009, on one of their last nights on tour. The ukulele-led, High Life-fueled acoustic dick around after the show was almost as much fun as their actual set.

Campaign Cash, Great Lakes Congressmen and Climate Change Bill

2009-09-21T12:33:00.003-04:00

Here's a story I wrote for Great Lakes Echo.

Bobcat Goldthwait as Himself

2009-09-04T13:31:00.006-04:00

Note: This story originally ran in Omaha's The Reader Aug. 28, 2009.

A golden-hearted, psycho-biker everyman, Bobcat Goldthwait’s multi-octave screech of a voice exposed nerves that brought sympathy to his hapless character Zed in the Police Academy films in the late-’80s. That exposure led 1988’s Hot to Trot — in which Goldthwait teamed with a talking horse —three HBO specials and dozens of less-regrettable film and television appearances (Scrooged, Blow, “Unhappily Ever After”). Publicly feuding with Sam Kinison and setting fire to Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” couch, added real-life credence to the Bobcat character’s neurosis.

But at 47, Goldthwait works mostly behind the camera. He’s directed episodes of “The Man Show,” “Chappelle’s Show” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” His writing/directing credits include the 1991 cult classic, dark comedy Shakes the Clown, 2006 Sundance Festival selection Sleeping Dogs Lie and 2009’s World’s Greatest Dad, a dark comedy starring Robin Williams. The latter earned rave reviews at this year’s Sundance gathering. (He’s currently writing a screenplay for a musical based on The Kinks’ 1975 album Schoolboys in Disgrace.) After a half-decade hiatus from standup, Goldthwait returned to the stage this summer. A Des Moines club owner was chauffeuring him between radio interviews when Punches Telegraph spoke to him about dropping (for the most part) the persona that made him a household name, meeting Robin Williams, and how a rectum-exploring gerbil relates to regret.

Punches Telegraph: What’s it like being a touring comedian during the worst economy since the 1970s?
Bobcat Goldthwait: It means a lot that folks still come out. That is something that hit me recently. I’m pretty lucky that after all these years I still have fans show up and see me, even during a recession. I used to be crabby about the whole thing, but I’m glad that I can go out and make a living and do comedy — that’s not a bad job.

Do you think the break from standup helped that?
I think what really helped was having the courage to go on stage and not rely on the persona that folks know me for.

When did you shed that persona?
This week … I’m not kidding. I was on this road tour that hit eight cities in 10 days and it really dawned on me. I’ve been filming [the tour] for some sort of a possible documentary and I really thought the gist of the movie would be, it’s really hard being a comedian on the road. When you have cameras on and people traveling with you, you really examine the fact that, you know, it’s really not that bad. I would perform in places that were not comedy clubs and I would do it out of character, and I’ve enjoyed myself. The big transition was me getting over the fear of people not accepting me as myself, and actually it’s been working out fairly well.

You’re serious. You literally just stopped doing the Grover?
Yeah. Now, if I start bombing on a second show Friday night, the possibility of me doing the Grover voice is really good. I’d like to tell you I’m as courageous as Bob Dylan when he went electric, but … (laughs).

What are you talking about in your standup?
It’s usually the things that bother me. And I’m not like going, “How come they sell 10 hot dogs and eight hot dog buns?” That’s not the crap that bothers me. Right now I spend time on stage dissecting Michael Jackson and what he’s meant to people because I find his fans really in such denial … and I can sense the audience getting upset and all that, but in a few years when everyone’s comfortable talking about him in a humorous way then I won’t, but right now I will until people are comfortable with it.

Tell me how and when you met Robin Williams.
It was when I was 19, and I’m 47 now. I was in a comedy club in Boston called the Comedy Connection and Robin came in to do a guest set. I was wearing a leisure suit and I had a lot of eyeliner on — cause I used to dress up really weird to freak out crowds — and the club owner was like, “Hey man, Robin Williams is coming here and I don’t want him to see you,” so he put me in the kitchen. And when Robin Williams got there, there were so many people kind of annoying him that he went and hid in the kitchen. So we had this very uncomfortable weird thing. Here’s this guy who looks like a fat Alice Cooper in a leisure suit and I’m just sitting there going, “Hi, how are you?” It was a while before we finally met again. And since then we really have become best friends. That’s why making the movie was weird because you’re working with one of your best friends. The night before, I actually had some anxiety. I was going, “is he going to listen to me?” I was afraid I’d say, “Hey, let’s do it again and this time we’re going to do this take a little quieter” and I imagined him saying, “I have an Academy Award and you were in Hot to Trot.” But it was the direct opposite. It became very, very collaborative.

Are there ways producing an indie film is easier now than it would have been in the ’80s?
When I made Shakes the Clown it was like every movie comedy had to be a big, giant mass appeal thing, and as a writer/director I’ve never been concerned with mass appeal. And I’m kind of not even interested in that. And people don’t believe that. I mean, I’ve already sold out. I’ve already done my version of Paul Blart: Mall Cop. I don’t really care about connecting with everybody. I’m just trying to make movies I’d actually go see. I think things have changed. It’s funny. Three of the major film companies that would buy indie movies don’t even exist anymore. So at Sundance it wasn’t like people were just buying up movies. And [Robert Redford was speaking at the festival and asked], “Why do you really make these movies?” And I understood and I agree — I make these movies because I have to make these movies. I think a lot of people think of Sundance as a platform, but I truly think of it as a destination. I love the fact that I make a movie and I get to watch it with close to 5,000 people in one week.

How do you feel about Comedy Central ranking you 61st on its all-time greatest standup list? You’re ahead of Eddie Griffin but behind Jeff Foxworthy.
Right (laughs). I think of myself as the bridge between Eddie Griffin and Jeff Foxworthy, because I’m kind of a redneck but still I have a bit of a flava. No, I think it’s really absurd. I mean, what is that list? It’s not worldwide. It doesn’t include Buster Keaton. I’m sure there was a caveman that was much funnier than most of the people on that list. (laughs) Gordo, he slays, man, when he tells that story about that saber-tooth tiger and then lights his fart, it’s the best.

If you could have been in a John Hughes film, which would you have chosen?
If it was the character it would have to have been a Vacation movie, or Home Alone. I’m sure I would have been good at getting a paint can in the nuts. I think if it was me I would have been really happy to be a disgruntled adult figure in The Breakfast Club.

I read on Wikipedia that your father worked with sheet metal, is that true?
Yeah, I’m so glad to hear you ask me if it was true. Because people are like, “It was on IMDB — when do you start Police Academy 8?” My dad passed away just recently. I finished the movie and I flew across the country and got to spend some time with him right before he passed away. I’ve never told this story. It’s kind of horrible because, you know, he knew I was making a movie called The World’s Greatest Dad, but he didn’t know anything about the plot. And I knew he thought it was about him. So I didn’t bother to tell him what the movie was about. And then I ended up dedicating the movie to him.

What do you remember about him working in sheet metal?
I remember his hands were all gnarled and stuff. And I remember that when I was a little boy I would go to a construction site there would be a 20-story building and it wouldn’t even have walls up yet, and there would be my dad. He’d be on the top. And I could see this little figure and my mother saying, “There’s your dad.” I just thought he was a superhero. I thought he was the tallest man in the world.

Did you ever make up with Sam Kinison before he died?
No, I never did, and I’ve met his brother and his friends and they would say, “You know, Sam always said he felt bad and he said he knew that you weren’t derivative of him and he always thought of it as pro wrestling and stuff.” But it is kind of a drag. Because I never addressed it. I probably should have said, “Hey man, I started before you and I’ve never even seen you do a set and I don’t think our acts are anything alike. I don’t know why you’re saying this.” Richard Gere never came out and said, “Hey man, um, I’ve never had a gerbil in my anus.” And if he had I think it probably would have gone away. The reality was that his comedy was more about pro wrestling and I always had this kind of persona that was way more influenced by George Carlin and Andy Kaufman than heavy metal.

Right, and you never had a gerbil in your ass?
I’m not going to deny that or answer that. ,

Should've California

2009-08-13T18:23:00.015-04:00

"Ice-cold Schlitz cans as comfort food"

While the larger music industry desperately and hopelessly struggles to maintain its unconscionable profit margins, some bands are touring hard in this shitty economy, slinging vinyl records and often giving away digital songs.

It's a slight variation on an old business model that is far more sustainable than saturating Clear Channel-Live Nation with one or two catchy songs to sell an overall horrible album for 17 bucks - not that I'm affected there.

It weeds out the shallow, gimmicky and superficial by forcing bands to be on every night, build relationships in every city and write great songs. You tour often, spend way less on production (or self-produce) and release digital songs one or two at a time - the EP is relevant again. Print more Koozies and pint glasses than CDs, include a free digital download with every vinyl album and stream albums for free.

Three Suburban Home Records acts who stand out in the weeds played upstairs Aug. 12 at DC9, the low-key, two-story bar in Washington's unofficial "Little Ethiopia" neighborhood.

The Denver indie label, which now harbors more folk musicians hiding punk-rock pasts (including members of ALL, Descendents, Avail and Lagwagon) than the other way around, was represented by former Gunmoll frontman Mike Hale, gritty rockers Two Cow Garage and bury-your-head-in-your-beer bluegrass/country acoustic tunes by Austin Lucas.

These guys all write gritty, honest songs and deliver them without pretense. They'll thank you a hundred times for coming to the show, and share a drink or a smoke afterward.

The above video features "Should've California" from Two Cow Garage's album Three. It's a slow song about regret that will stick in your head, but unfortunately not one that demonstrates the brutal beating drummer Cody Smith gives his set.

Lucas stepped into the crowd to perform the last half of his set without a mic, which made for an incredibly intimate show, but the low lighting kept me from getting any good video. You can and should stream his new album in its entirety here.

This Punches Telegraph underwritten by Schlitz. "Ah, just the kiss of the hops ..."

Bad Bad Things

2009-08-09T21:35:00.003-04:00

"Stick you hand down the back of my pants and see how dry the heat is."

Not everyone who paid to see Andrew Jackson Jihad Aug. 3 in Baltimore's Station North art district actually saw the band. The Arizona duo played a rushed 25-minute set at one end of a small basement space crammed full with about 30 people who closed their eyes and screamed all the words while soaking each other with sweat. Another dozen or so people huddled behind the band on the steps leading outside to the street, getting their money's worth while blocking any fresh air from soiling our singalong.

This was the kind of show I hope I'm never too old to love.

Red City Radio - "A Brief Lesson in Repetition"

2009-08-07T17:13:00.004-04:00

Note: This is the fourth video in a loose assortment I recently retrieved from the depths of my hard drive.

Red City Radio, which is currently supporting the EP To the Sons and Daughters of Woody Guthrie, happened to have a couple van seats available, and graciously allowed Angie and I to hold them down for three shows in early January from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs to Denver.

Along with a lift to the airport with friends, we got to see this band connect with Colorado audiences, many of whom were seeing them for the first time. I was impressed at the reception, but not surprised. The band plays extremely tight, catchy punk rock songs that just feel Midwest. They're also great guys to drink Fat Tire with, and consistently high-performing high-fivers.

I shot this song, "A Brief Lesson in Repetition," at 3 Kings Tavern in Denver on Jan. 10., 2009. They wanted me to get their new one, "We are the Sons and Daughters of Woody Guthrie," but three nights in a row I wasn't ready with my point-and-shoot.

This is a brief lesson in settling.

UUVVWWZ - "Green Starred Sleeve"

2009-07-28T22:36:00.003-04:00

Note: This is the third video in a loose assortment I recently retrieved from the depths of my hard drive.

UUVVWWZ, Nebraska's best new band, according to the Boston Phoenix alt-weekly (and I wouldn't argue), plays "Green Starred Sleeve" at Box Awesome (RIP) in December 2008.

If anyone happens to know the actual date, let me know. Like most shows I went to at the venue, with its cheap tallboy Old Styles, the evening is fuzzy.

A good friend gave us a copy of the band's self-titled debut LP as a parting gift from Nebraska, and it now spins regularly in Michigan.

Disturbing the Peace on Lake Michigan

2009-07-26T19:58:00.003-04:00

Note: This is the second video in a loose assortment I recently retrieved from the depths of my hard drive.

Lake Michigan near the Nordhouse Dunes, September 2008.

Airboating in Nebraska

2009-07-26T18:11:00.006-04:00

Note: I tend to take a lot of miscellaneous video when I'm shooting photos. But I rarely do anything with it. I recently went through the last year or so of my random videos and will post some of the more compelling ... to me, anyway.

This was shot last July from the front seat of my friend's flat-bottom airboat. He parks it on the bank of a little creek just a few feet from his front door. The creek feeds into the Platte River near Ashland, Neb. The Platte is a tributary of the Missouri, which feeds the Mississippi. The only thing keeping my friend from driving this thing to the Gulf of Mexico, he said, is the gallon of diesel it requires to go one mile. For a short skip around the winding creek bends to make your tears peel to the back of your head, though, it's ideal.

Tigerfriend and Tweety Bird

2009-07-14T18:04:00.002-04:00

We let our formerly indoor house cat outside last weekend while his owner was away. The backyard is kind of overrun and has a canopy of trees that held birds who were entirely pissed about the interruption.

Snakebite Medicine

2009-05-07T16:56:00.010-04:00

For two weeks every summer growing up, I’d camp at southwest Nebraska’s Lake McConaughy with my grandfather, Maynard, and his fishing buddies.

Before the trip, I’d go to the local park after a big rain and spy earthworms in the beam of my flashlight. I’d drop to the mud on my knees, grab the worms with my fingers and wiggle them out of their holes. Each dozen was worth a dollar to Maynard.

His skin was a leathery red, and his eyes were kind and patient. He’d tell me dirty jokes and I’d call out “here, fishy, fishy, fishy.” We trolled the lake all day with lines extended, hoping to catch the prickly finned walleye on those worms. His job was to catch the food for that evening’s fish fry. Mine was to retrieve the snakebite medicine from his tackle box when he’d shout, “Ouch! Ouch! Oh, they’re biting me again!”

Even then I knew the medicine was just a bottle of whiskey.

Maynard passed more than 15 years ago, and my father inherited much of his fishing equipment, including his ice-fishing sled. I visited him for a few days last December. On one particularly cold afternoon, he took me ice fishing. We drove his pickup to the edge of a frozen irrigation lake.

The ice was still forming and boomed under our boots like steel chords plucked by God’s fingers as we pulled the old white sled about 100 feet out onto the ice to meet his friend Gary, who was sitting alone in a small hut. Gary had held a funeral for his father, who everyone called Hooter, the day before, and was unusually quiet as he slowly bobbed two lines up and down through small holes in the ice, their jigs bouncing off the lake’s bottom.

Like Maynard did for my father, and my father did for me, Hooter taught his son how to fish. He was 92 when he died, but was ornery to the end — witnessed when his son tried to get him to wear hearing aids.

“I don’t need no goddamned hearing aids,” Hooter grumbled cantankerously.

“They’re not for you, Dad, they’re for me,” Gary said.

Hooter’s legs had gone, but his mind was strong. And when Gary would urge him to take the senior center’s HandiBus to run errands, Hooter would reply, “That’s for old people.”

My father and I set up our rigs and dropped our lines through the ice. He said the fish would start biting right before sundown, and he was right. For about a half hour we pulled in one walleye or white bass after another. It didn’t matter that most were too small to keep — that’s not why we were there.

My toes numb even through insulated boots and two pairs of socks, I slid open the sled’s splintered lid and saw a half-bottle of peppermint schnapps lying at the bottom, along with decades worth of lead weights, hooks, line and white paint chips.

I screwed off the lid, which was tight with crusty, sticky residue, and noticed my father eying the bottle as I took a swig.

“Now don’t drink all of that,” he said, nervously. “That was grandpa’s bottle. I was saving it.”

I felt my stomach drop, but before I could apologize he said, “You know? I think he’d like this.”

I passed my father the old snakebite medicine. He took a drink, and passed it to Gary.

“To Maynard,” Gary said extending the bottle in front of him, “And to ‘Ol Hoot.”

Holler and Howl

2009-04-03T00:44:00.019-04:00

Jet trails strip the blue sky like chalk. Down in the hollers of southwestern Ohio near Waynesville, I hop to and from a makeshift rock bridge to cross a shallow stream that has cut a 10-foot gorge into the shale and limestone-rich earth. Small gray chips of the sedimentary rock flake the walls of the ravine.

All the surrounding hills lead down to this stream, a tributary of the Little Miami River, and eventually, the Ohio River.

Four hundred thirty-eight million years ago, this was a shallow seabed. Now-extinct, marine invertebrates like trilobites and brachiopods were abundant here. Coral reefs first evolved during this Ordovician period.

Standing on the flat floor of what’s shaped like a halfpipe, I see fossils from these creatures at my feet. They blanket the ground. I drop squat, pick up and put down rocks like I did as a kid looking for crawfish in southwest Nebraska irrigation lakes. They’re here too, scurrying away as the muddy water clears. My nature sensibilities a scant more nuanced than then, I don’t leave the rocks overturned.

I climb out of the ravine and trudge hunched up the hill through thick, grey underbrush of Ash, oak, almond and maple trees. The few remaining fall leaves are a pale brown and scrape softly against loose limbs. I scan overhead for widow makers, the trees that fell during winter’s demolition, but not completely.

The vernal equinox was a week ago, but today is the first honest day of spring. The birds are rowdy. It’s too early for poison ivy and chiggers, but briers are already green and sharp. They’ll scrape you if you’re not careful.

Reaching the edge of the woods, I see Sharon Mooney standing by a just-tilled garden. In the distance, her beagle Boon howls excitedly.

“He has a rabbit,” Mooney says.

A tiny ball of white, followed closely behind by bellowing Boon, race from behind the horse corral and through Mooney’s yard, disappearing behind her house.

A small horse saunters near me, her winter coat shedding in clumps. Her name is Penny, Mooney says. She’s part Welsh and part miniature horse. She was bred for hauling coal from the mines. Her little hooves fit perfectly inside the narrow tracks left by the carts. And she could fit anywhere.

Penny never hauled carts, but she will. Mooney thinks she can help take a 10-year-old girl’s mind off of not riding for an entire summer, after she has surgery on a growth plate in her foot. The girl will lead Penny from a show cart in 4-H competition.

About a year ago, Penny joined Mooney’s other 4-H horses, the dark brown Xena, and ornery Max, and big, gentle Magic Lance, the black horse asleep in the shed. Penny stayed in the pen for a while.

“Now I just let her roam,” Mooney says. Penney snaps into a carrot that’s presented in front of her face.

From behind the house, Boon emerges. His nose to the ground, he’s lost the trail.

“He’s trying to figure out where the rabbit tricked him,” Mooney says.

First Baseman

2009-03-31T00:20:00.002-04:00

I knew the summer of ’94 was when I was going to do it — touch a boob.

I was 14, and going out with Emma Chase — a pretty girl who hid two of them underneath a sports bra and a baggy shirt. She was a quarter Mexican and her skin was nearly black by the time the school year ended. She was beautiful.

She was also the best athlete in my small class. She wanted to play junior high football, but her father didn’t let her, a relief to all the other boys too embarrassed by the thought of her sharing the field. I dreamed of her tackling me.

My best friend Emma’s best friend, and the two of them were our make-out partners. We’d lie on the trampoline in her friend’s parents’ backyard, skin sticking to the black fabric. Underneath separate blankets, we’d gaze at the stars, hold hands and French kiss until our jaws ached.
I was excellent at it, keeping in mind what the cool new kid at school, Zane, had told me about what to do with my tongue: up, down, and all around. I was in college before I learned that girls hate this.

Emma was a farm kid — her dad grew onions. And on weeknights, when she couldn’t drive her boxy Geo Tracker to town on a school permit, we’d talk for hours about nothing at all. I’d sit on our upstairs carpet, twirl the long phone chord around my finger and rub my buzzed head nervously while bragging about how well I played in my last baseball game.

On weekends, we horny teenage couples would find new spots in our small town to make out. Next to the windrow of pines behind the hospital. In the legion baseball field’s dugout. In the outfield. Behind the concession stand.

I don’t remember how we figured out we could sneak into the old caboose sitting on a short span of track in the middle of the town’s park. But it quickly became our steady rendezvous. Its faded, red paint chipped and peeling, it was only about 20 feet from a road, but no one could tell we were inside.

The other couple would climb the ladder and get to work in the cupola while we sat on a wooden bench below. He was consistently making it to second base. It didn’t seem dirty at the time, this group sexual experience. It seemed thrilling, risky and nerve-wracking.

Emma would make a quiet joke about the other couple’s noises while I gathered up my nerve to slowly lean into her.

Her sweat smelled like onions.

While we kissed, I’d consider making the move, and my heart would start beating loudly, my stomach giving way. Had I warmed her up?

Slowly I’d move my right hand from her thigh up the inside of her shirt. I’d be a rib away and she’d grab my hand and push it down softly. She probably heard it coming.

We’d continue kissing. She must not be hot enough, I thought. After some time, I would try again, and again be shut down. Each time I would think I’d kissed and pet her so perfectly, gotten her so randy that there would be no way I’d be denied. At one point she let me get one finger on the bottom of her tiny, glorious breast before pulling my hand away. My arm was moving like a windshield wiper, but a wiper stopped halfway through its motion.

This happened at least 15 times the night before she broke up with me.

Seven years later I was living in a much bigger college town. I’d rounded first base and even slid home a few times by this point, but was no less clueless about the opposite sex. I’d heard that the old caboose had been burned to its frame by some deviant youth. It had been purchased, refurbished and converted into part of a fake-Irish pub.

One night, I re-entered the old caboose and walked past the ladder leading to the cupola and sat down at a table where the wooden bench had been. As I looked out the window, I heard a car engine and brought my arm up instinctively to raise a pint to my lips, like a windshield wiper.

The Knitting Lesson

2009-03-19T15:21:00.004-04:00

The dozen or so ladies in the nursing home activity room, all in wheelchairs, laugh and tease the nurse acting as bingo caller when she tells them to put their “bowls in their chips.”

“Bowls in your chips?!” they say in near unison, looking around to see who else they’ve amused.

In this group I find Donna, who’s agreed to give me some pointers on knitting, something I took up on a whim only the week before. She is putting away her bingo cards into a small bag and at first doesn’t seem to notice me.

I try to help a tiny lady next to her put on a blue sweater. Her arms are so frail I’m afraid I might snap them sliding through the sleeves. Donna sees me struggling and moves over to help. She’s clearly younger and stronger than the others. She moves the woman’s body to put one arm through, then the next. Then she stuffs the woman’s pillow behind her back with a firm pat.

The woman who won the last round waits by the elevator. She’s giddy and childish, singing the opening lines from the 1920s song, “Has Anyone Seen My Gal.”

“Five-foot-two, eyes of blue…”

The bingo caller and two other aides are moving busily to help residents to their rooms for naptime. The employees here all seem to speak slower, and in decibels louder than in other social settings. “Julia, want to go to your home and call Dennis?” “Sheryl, grab Mona and take her to the nursing station.” “OK, Caroline and Martha!”

As the last resident is wheeled from the room, Donna and I sit facing each other at a teal card table that is also the color of the walls. There are streaks on the walls from wheelchair tires. A TV across the room blasts on full volume and the heater emits a continual fuzzing sound into the room. Every 10 seconds or so an alarm beeps softly out in the hall.

Donna digs out two long, purple knitting needles from her large sewing bag. She drops one of the brass needles and it tinks onto the linoleum. I pick it up for her.

I show her my first work in progress, a thin, black stub of a scarf only about five inches long, randomly narrow and wide at different points. The edges look like they have nipples. I expect her to laugh at me.

“Oh, you dropped some stitches,” she says.

She reaches into her bag and pulls out a crochet hook.

“That’s why, when you drop a stitch you need one of these and you can pick it up.”

She grabs my short, wooden needles and shows me how to hook the loose stitch, then pull the loose yarn through the loop and put it back onto the needle.

“I use them all the time,” she says. “Even us professionals.”

I’m not sure if she’s patronizing me.

She’s been knitting since she was a kid, when her mother taught her.

I stab a loop with my right needle, wrap the loose yarn around its tip, pull it back through and slip the loop off the left needle — slowly moving the scarf onto the right needle. Stab and wrap, pull and slip.

She adjusts herself uncomfortably in her chair.

“And then I ended up going on to blankets, and I did ceramics in-between. And then I decided I had all this yarn so I figured I’d go back to knitting.”

She tells me she recently knitted a pillow using three strands of yarn. I tell her I can’t imagine using more than one. I’m not ready.

“Well, it’s a little tough. You have to make sure you get all the strands. It’s like regular knitting but only you’re knitting with three different strands at once …”

Yeah, I murmur.

“… and I stuffed it and I ended up giving it to the bingo club. So they’re going to put it in the store.”

I ask her what she’s working on. It’s white with intricate patterns of pink, yellow, purple, green and blue.

“This here is a bed blanket, or it’ll be a bed blanket when I get done with it. It’s got three different skeins of yarn that’s got to go on it …”

“What’s a skein?” I interrupt.

Donna holds up her yellow spool of yarn.

“… and with white in between them.”

She’s making it for Helen, the little lady who needed help with her sweater.

“She’s in her latter stage and she gets cold a lot, so I figured this would keep her warm.” She says she needs another two weeks.

Bed blankets usually take a month to make, she says, because you don’t work on them constantly. She used to.

“Give me three days and I’d have one done.”

For an ex-boyfriend’s Christmas present it only took her a week to make an afghan for a love seat and another for a chair, along with accompanying pillows. He still has them, as far as she knows.

Donna says she now gives away everything she knits. Why not? She’s not going to use them. “I’ve got an air conditioning going in my room because it’s so hot in this place,” she says.

I tell her I noticed it’s a little warm. Stab and wrap, pull and slip.

“Well they have it set on 80 or 90 degrees.” She says a lot of the older residents get cold easily because they’re on blood thinners. She makes lap blankets for wheelchairs and gives them to the bingo store as prizes.

Wednesday is card day. On Fridays she attends an art class. “They wouldn’t let us call it a paint clinic.”

But even though she seems disappointed that she only won three games today, bingo is her sport. She plays it Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and again on Tuesday night. She and her father worked bingo matches for 15 years.

“And regardless how bad I hurt I always go to bingo. I can be dying and I go to bingo.”

Donna’s arthritis goes all the way down her spine from her neck, across her shoulders and down to her hip. She has gout in her feet and hands, along with arthritis and tendonitis in her hands. She has fibromyalgia throughout her body. And she has neuropathy in her left leg.

“And right now, I am suffering so bad because my rib cage is out of whack and I have to have my back cracked to get it back in place.”

She can’t do it this week because she has to go to have her esophagus stretched. It’s something that she says needs done a couple times a year but it’s been two years because of conflicts with other hospital stays.

Last time she went to the hospital the doctors at the nursing home removed a lot of her pain medicine. She says she’s been fighting with the doctors to get it back. If it keeps up, she says, she’s going to go to her regular doctor. “Because I can’t keep going on like this, being in pain.”

Donna complains that one of the two physicians who make weekly visits from Detroit won’t even sit and talk to her.

“And you know we’ve got questions we want to ask, too, just like the regular patients do in Detroit. We want answers, too, we just don’t seem to get ’em. And I’m just tired of hurting so bad.”

Donna will have lived here a year this coming Saturday. She says she checked herself in — taking herself out of her daughter’s hands after the last mini-stroke. “I says ‘I don’t ever want to see that look again.’” Her daughter was scared. “And she thought she was hiding it but it was written all over her face. My hands came up like this and they were all distorted.” Donna scared herself when she pictured being in that position the rest of her life. During another stroke in November she couldn’t talk for about an hour. She was weak for three or four days before she regained most of her energy. I ask her what she remembers from that hour.

“I was conscious but you get into a state to where your mind is thinking of the worst and you hear people talking in the background. And to where you can’t really make out what they’re saying. My vision was fuzzy. My tongue felt like it was that thick [she holds her fingers about three inches apart] and I couldn’t stick it out my mouth.

“My mouth was all distorted. All I could picture is myself being like that. And I, didn’t care for it.”

“Mind if I go turn down that TV?” I ask.

“Huh uh. You can shut it off as far as I’m concerned.”

When I come back she’s holding my needles.

“All I can tell you is just be patient because when I first learnt I was dropping stitches. I still drop stitches this very day. But if I can’t go back and pick them up I just go on.

“The mistakes I make now is when I get tired and I keep on knitting. Instead of knitting, I’ll purl.”

“What is that?”

“I’m purling right now,” she says. She shows me how instead of crossing the right needle behind the left, you cross it in front.

She shows me the difference on her bed blanket.

“This here is like a rippled look,” a purl. “And this here is like a chain,” a knit. “I might be purling and if I get tired I’ll turn around and put a knit stitch in there. You can’t really detect it, but I know it’s there.”

She mentions crocheting, and I tell her I’ve never done it.

“You haven’t?”

She turns around and wheels herself to the door.

“Let me go and get that blanket.”

She leaves me alone in the activity room for about 20 minutes before she comes back with the blanket hanging out of the bag hooked to the handles of her wheelchair.

She shows me how a crochet stitch is bigger than a knit stitch. It’s a good point, but I wonder what took her so long.

She knocks a cough drop to the floor and I pick it up.

“My nurse, she says I should be in bed. She just gave me a pain pill so it should take effect shortly.”

Donna likes living here. Especially since she moved to her own room, which she calls a private room. She used to stay with a 107-year-old woman, who was “with it” sometimes.

“And then other times she’s back in the horse and buggy days. And then she sees people that aren’t there and it gets you kind of worried.”

Donna’s daughter visits twice a week, and usually brings the grandsons. One is 15, “but he thinks he’s 25. Then I’ve got one that’s 19 that thinks he’s a man and he doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.”

“He found his dad hanging from a tree,” she says. “And so he felt, well, he’s going to be a tattooist and take over dad’s business.”

Donna and her daughter tried to explain how difficult it would be to make money. “But you can’t tell him nothing.”

He went to Oklahoma for an apprenticeship and “they busted his ego,” she says. “They told him his work wasn’t worth nothing. They didn’t have to bust his bubble completely. But they did.”
It was a good thing, she says. After he finished brooding, he decided to return to school to be an electrician.

“He’s finally got his stuff together. He doesn’t have any idea how happy he made me.”

Donna mentions she is just waiting for the pain pill to kick in. She’s been waiting all day.

I hold up my knit and ask her why it got wider and thinner. She takes it from my hands and tells me I should count my stitches at the beginning. And she teaches me a trick to correct a double stitch.

Knitting another row, I ask about her childhood. She was the youngest of three kids all born and raised in Lansing, Mich. Her sister was born at home.

“And the doctor was busy not paying attention and ended up hitting her head on a bedpost and he paralyzed her. And she never walked and never talked. She died when she was 20, in ’59.”

Donna says her sister was eight years older, her brother three. She talks of tough times when her parents would borrow money from a loan company for Christmas presents. Then borrow from another loan company to pay it off. Then they’d have to borrow again to pay off the last one.

However, she says there was always plenty of love and warmth in her family. She remembers her mother stayed at home until the kids were grown, and she would stop whatever she was doing to play cards with them.

Her father drove a truck for Oldsmobile. He’d come home late from work some nights and Donna would still be up struggling with homework. “It’s 11 o’clock and you’ve got to get up at seven,” he would say to me, “so you best get to bed. Then he’d sit there and go through the book and find the answers.” When she woke up the next morning, her homework would be sitting on the table.

Donna did just about every kind of work that came her way. She sold shoes at a department store, ran a snack bar at a discount house, worked as a carhop, and at a food market. But care giving was what fulfilled her.

She started by helping her mother care for her sister. She later worked for a nursing home and eventually was trained as a certified nurse assistant. After divorcing her husband she met her fiancé, Ron, and they started up a home care service. Ron helped her raise her daughter, who never really knew her real father.

Donna took care of her father until he died in 1984. She dated Ron 15 years before he died in 1994. Her family had six funerals that year. There were five funerals in 2000, including her mother, and three more in 2002.

“It’s been a rough haul,” she says. “It’s just like I’ve lost my whole family.”

She says she doesn’t want to get attached to anyone because she’s afraid they’ll die.

She’s also not as sharp as she used to be, she says. The strokes have left her with vascular dementia.

“Sometimes you can remember everything. Then there’s times where you can’t remember nothin’.

“I just can’t tell them what I want to say and it’s very frustrating. I know it comes with age. I’m not as young as I used to be, or as active.”

She used to roller skate but can’t now. She says it’s because strobe lights cause seizures.

“So I can’t go back and that used to keep me thin. The most I weighed was 125. But then Ron died and all of a sudden, boom, my health just went downhill.”

She says it was because of the way he went. He didn’t seem sick. She’d taken him to a hospital a month before and the doctors said his heart was fine — sounded like that of a 16-year-old boy. But he died of a coronary artery.

“They’d said it wasn’t his heart. That he had pancreatitis. He didn’t even have that. It was his heart all along. Three blocked arteries. “He had just turned 52 when I lost him.”

It’s lonely at times, she says. “Sometimes I get down — not really depressed — but down because he’s not there.”

She changes the subject. She asks if I remember Kelly, the nurse who was calling bingo. Her fiancé died recently, two weeks before their wedding.

“She asked me, she says, ‘How long does it take to get over it?’

“And I says, ‘You never get over it.’ But I says, ‘you learn to live with it.’

“She says, “How?”

“I says, ‘Just by taking one day at a time, and just by being thankful for the memories.’ I says, ‘that’s all you can do.’”

Sometimes she hears songs that remind her of Ron and it “puts me into orbit.”

A nurse walks in and asks us to wrap up our conversation. Donna tells her that her bingo sack is so thick because she’s holding cards for some people. They play the same ones over and over again, she says.

Looking at my slightly longer, still deformed black scarf, she leaves me with a final tip: I should start with lighter colors. The darker colors are hard on the eyes.

She finishes a row. Places her materials into her bag, hooks it onto her chair, turns around and wheels toward the door.

I thank her for her time.

“Uh huh, anytime,” she says over her shoulder.

Stab and wrap, pull and slip. I don’t leave until I finish my row.

Exclamation (unnecessary) Protection (unwanted)

2008-11-25T15:00:00.010-05:00

I started shooting video during last night's Mustard Plug show at Mac's Bar when I saw a guy trying to negotiate the awkward act of "protecting" a girl in a skank pit. (More about the show in a minute.)

This situation is familiar. You're among a mess of pointy-clothes-clad bodies with a member of the fairer sex and, with guilty apologies to my feminist ideals, you feel some degree of responsibility to make sure she doesn't get an elbow in the eye or a steel toe to the shin. The gentlemanly thing to do.

I'm lucky in that the woman I go to shows with, while dainty, can more than handle herself. Still, I've occasionally found myself in some sort of flanking position — standing slightly behind and to the action side of her. The idea, I guess, is you can abate a dangerous situation from this angle — like throwing yourself in front of a bullet. The truth is, what the hell are you going to actually do? If someone doesn't want to risk facial maladies, she should not be near the stage. Acting like you're protecting a woman is not only insulting to her, but you look like an insecure putz.

There are other variations of this phenomenon: the guy with his hand in the girl's back pocket; the constant hug-from-behind; the fight-ready guy who stares down anyone who looks in his lady's direction. They're all incredibly embarrassing for man, which can't quite help himself from overexerting himself territorially.

The question is, then, what do you do? I'm not exactly sure, but it should probably involve letting down your guard. You don't do what this guy did — arms extended at eye level as she, clearly embarrassed, tried to ignore the little guy's establishing dominance. Pay attention to the bottom, left side of the screen.

Now about the show (and kudos to Scott from Bermuda Mohawk Productions for booking it).

A couple of friends who'd seen O Pioneers!!! at a house show in Nebraska recently told me I needed to get my hands on the band's 10-inch split with Bomb the Music Industry! (based on the exclamation points, you'd think O Pioneers!!! is three times more exciting than BTMI! Not exactly true. They're both fun bands to watch, which makes the exclamation points seem both dated and unnecessary). After seeing BTMI! a couple weeks ago, and subsequently listening the hell out of a couple of the band's albums, available for free download here, I ordered the sucker from Suburban Home Records' Vinyl Collective. Every day since I've been hurrying home to find it, but it hasn't come. Better be there today.

I mention that because fewer than two weeks after hearing about the bands, I have now seen both of them in East Lansing. Another reason I need to stop bitching about the local music scene.

O Pioneers!!! (I really hate exclamation points) is a three-piece Houston band that sounds a lot like The Lawrence Arms, Hot Water Music and, I thought, The Loved Ones. They're on Asian Man Records (careful not to go to asianman.com) run by nice guy-in-chief Mike Park (ex Skankin' Pickles, current solo folk artist). One thing you know immediately from that connection is that the guys in O Pioneers!!! are going to be good people. And they are. Not-quite slurring from cheap PBR, I approached guitarist/vocalist Eric Solomon, wearing a black hoodie, sitting in a metal fold-up chair behind the merch table. The band's current tour is actually just three shows that finds them in New Jersey for Thanksgiving. They added pretty late to last night's bill, in fact I didn't know they were playing until that day. This truly is a time for thanks.

Since that 10-inch split hadn't come yet, and I had 5 bones itching for a scratching, I asked Solomon which of the band's three $4 records I should by. He reached out and pointed at the split with Houston's The Anchor called Triumph of Life.

"It only has one song, but it's the best song I've ever written," he said emphatically.

The song in question, "Summers in Necro Norway with Ryan," is a kick to the teeth of apathy that challenges listeners to ask "who do I want to be?" .... then to actually do it.

A quick note about Mustard Plug — these guys have been playing ska punk since 1991. That's the same year Nirvana's Nevermind came out, and influenced angsty, flannel-wearing pre-hipsters for far too long. That's also the year happy-footed Mustard Plug frontman Dave Kirchgessner graduated with an audio/video degree from MSU, in case you cared.

What's important to note is that this Grand Rapids band continues to put on a great live show, and obviously get great support in Michigan. Kirchgessner at one point asked the crowd, "Where's Mike? Is Mike here?" He said Mike was their only fan that has traveled to four different continents to see them.

A balding, sweaty guy rose his head from a pile of bodies center stage. "I'm right here," he said.

"Where've you been?" Kirchgessner asked?

"I got married," he said meekly.

Resting lazily by a structure beam near the state, I imagined his wife somewhere in the middle of the crowd, skanking wildly, happily, refreshingly, consciously vulnerable.

The Democratic Assumption

2008-11-25T14:59:00.001-05:00

For the first time since LBJ in 1964, Nebraska's second district (which includes Omaha) this year yielded its one, mighty electoral vote to a Democrat. Talk of this possibility ramped up after Obama won the Iowa caucus, but it still seemed incredibly unlikely (much like his eventual presidency). Ironically, I'd moved from the district to Michigan thinking that my vote could actually count for a change — turned out, McCain ceded Michigan when he pulled out his staff in early October, while Nebraska's third electoral vote wasn't secured for Obama until a few days after Election Day.

Omaha's The Reader thought the occasion was historic enough to donate a large cover story to the news. The project featured a "where were you" piece consisting of Reader writer's narratives. I contributed this:

Polling booth four, three blocks from my house in East Lansing, Mich., a reverse Nader effect, and Obama got my vote. The state was projected to be in the bag, but I hadn’t even had coffee yet, what if Joe the Plumber starts dating an Olsen twin this afternoon?

At 7 p.m. EST, as my professor explained where we/I had gone wrong on my mass media and society test, I was streaming MSNBC with CNN, CBS and Fox in three other panels on my 12-inch, beat-up iBook screen.

Comparing vote projections, counting pinstripe suits, feeling tech savvy.

It was the first time I’d streamed something live — it still feels awkward to say — and after eight weeks, the first time I’d taken notes on my laptop in the class.

But how could I truly engage what and how forces enable or disable individuals to fulfill their democratic roles of caring and competence when the answers were this class, blocking my news fix, and is Bob Barr pulling ahead?

Bomb the Music Industry

2008-11-25T14:55:00.003-05:00

A&E editor Eric at the Pulse asked me if I'd cover a show a couple weeks back.

"From what I know, there seems to be a real lack of d.i.y. efforts and music in East Lansing, so this seems like it could be the start of something positive," he said.

I agreed with that sense at the time — I hadn't seen much of any DIY music since I'd moved to town (I made sure to temper my bitching with the acknowledgement that I haven't exactly been taking advantage of most of small shows I have seen advertised on photocopied fliers at placed like the record store Flat, Black and Circular.)

This show actually made me excited for some of the cultural efforts happening here. It's not going to knock you over the head — you have to find it yourself.

Upstrokes

A few blocks from the Breslin Center, where a mass of fans was gathering for the Spartan basketball team’s first home game on Nov. 5, a less-easily defined custom was being observed in the basement of Snyder-Phillips hall.

Estrella Torrez moved her brown ponytail to show me proof of her credentials. “Straight edge,” read the tattoo on her upper back. “We’re straight-edge, vegan kids from the ’90s,” said Torrez of her and her husband, Dylan Miner, who sat nearby at a fold-up table helping their daughters paint fluorescent-colored faces on small sugar “skulls.”

It was Torrez’ idea to combine a late Day of the Dead celebration with a ska/hardcore concert. She and Miner are assistant professors at MSU’s Residential College in the Arts and Humanities and are involved with different ethnic student groups. Students from the College Assisted Migrant Program and a spikey-haired girl wearing pink knee-highs and a plaid skirt walked past us as we stood near the entrance of the Arts & Humanities Theatre. “We knew it would be an odd mix of culture,” Torrez said. “We did it on purpose.”

Up the stairs, by the band’s merch tables, Katie Secord, 19, explained that Torrez and Miner helped her register her booking company, Safe in Sound, as a student group, which allowed her free campus space to book shows. This was her second one. Secord said more than 60 people showed up for the first show, which featured an all-local lineup. “That’s pretty good turnout for all local bands,” she said, adding that at least 80 people had paid tonight.

Scott Bell, of Bermuda Mohawk Productions, had booked the headliners, Shinobu and Bomb the Music Industry!, two bands from opposite coasts that have cultish followings. Bell said having a free space and providing their own P.A. system allows him and Secord to pay bands better. He remembers not being able to get into 21-and-over venues growing up. Now he’s in a position to book all-ages shows “and bring cool bands to town, that way we don’t have to drive to Detroit.”

Bell and Secord hope to make these shows a regular event. Secord said they’re limited to nights when there are no plays or other performances scheduled for the space.

On the floor inside the theater, Bomb the Music Industry!’s set devolved into a frenzy of sweaty bodies. Kids crowd surfed and singer Jeff Rosenstock’s microphone became the scene for a mass pile-on, sing-along.

Bell said music with this kind of urgency makes sense in post-industrial Michigan. “Around here,” Bell said, “If you’re not moving, you’re freezing to death.”