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November 30, 2003
Thoughts after a holiday weekend
Thoughts after a holiday weekend full of events:
1) The Red Sox signed Curt Schilling. I'm of two minds on this deal. From an on-the-field perspective, I am thrilled. Schilling is a bona-fide horse - an innings eater who wants the ball deep into games; a power pitcher who will strike out 250-300 a year; a born competitor with a history of success against the Yankees. Martinez-Schilling-Lowe gives the Sox as potent a 1-2-3 as anyone in the league. Theo Epstein and the Sox ownership have sent a very clear signal that they have every intention of doing whatever it takes to beat Steinbrenner and the hated Yankees - and I have to admit, I like that gumption.
That said, I have some serious misgivings about what this means off the field. For years, I have raved about how evil the Yankees are and how the only reason they win is because of the money they spend - and how their free-spending ways are ruining baseball by eliminating small-market teams from budget contention. Hearing the Schilling news this week, I was reminded of Kevin Costner's unmistakeably melodramatic monotone in "The Untouchables," when he is bemoaning having to stoop to Capone's level of violence in order to beat him. "I have become all that I have foresworn." I could almost hear Sean Connery angrily berating Theo Epstein. "Ya wanna know how ya get Steinbrenner? One of his guys pulls a Boone, you pull a Williamson. He gets a Sheffield, you get a Schilling. THAT'S how you get Steinbrenner!"
What we rapidly have evolving is Major League Baseball's very own version of the Cold War. Just like in the real one, we have "good guys" whose hearts are in the right place, and we have an Evil Empire. However - also just like in the real one - the good guys are so blinded by the evil on the other side that they seem to have adopted a "whatever it takes to win" policy that disregards any damage their actions may do to the rest of the world. America overthrew democratically elected governments in Guatamala and Chile, and supported brutal dictators in Iran and Indonesia. Boston is ratcheting up the budget and spending whatever they must in order to beat the Yankees. American foreign policy turned much of the world against Americans during the Cold War, and brought billins of people worldwide with us as we played dangerous games of brinkmanship; Boston's behavior is exacerbating the problems that MLB has with the distribution of money. Small market teams have less chance than ever of competing for the best talent; the only difference now is that instead of ONLY the Yankees spending money, now we have only the Yankees and the Red Sox. We've become part of the problem, not part of the solution.
During the Cold War, world events were dictated by the United States and the Soviet Union, with the rest of the world simply along for the ride. In Major League Baseball, it appears that events will be dictated by the Red Sox and Yankees, with the rest of the league solely along for the ride. The fact that the Sox are wearing the white hats in this battle of good vs. evil is of little comfort to me; the overall situation is still Mutual Assured Destruction, as far as I am concerned. Baseball needs to do something to limit spending so that all teams can compete. Otherwise, the Yankees - and now the Red Sox - will simply continue to buy pennants year after year.
2) Thursday was one of the saddest days in American history - and one of the most telling.
George W. Bush is getting a lot of political mileage out of the alleged "bravery" he showed in going to Iraq to visit our troops. Sure, I'll concede you this point: a Commander-in-Chief's job is to visit and show support to his troops, on location, where they are. Dwight Eisenhower went to Korea; LBJ went to Vietnam; Bill Clinton went to Kosovo, and nearly every president since the Korean War has made a visit - and gotten a photo op - at the Korean DMZ. So as much utter disdain and disgust that I have for George Bush, I cannot and do not fault him for visiting the troops in Iraq. Even though everything this president does involves showboating of some sort, this trip was by and large a part of his duty as the president.
What no one is paying attention to is the WAY the visit happened. Bush's Thanksgiving Day trip was a monumental admission of failure on a grand scale, and it seems to be escaping mass attention.
Every other US president who has visited our troops in a combat zone has been able to acknowledge that they were visiting. The operational details of the trip were of course secret, but everyone knew he was coming. Clinton announced he was going to the Balkans. LBJ told the world a month out about his impending trip to Vietnam. Hell, Eisenhower *campaigned* on the promise he would go to Korea - he told the world that the US President was going to Korea several months *before* he was even president.
But not this time. George W. Bush had to sneak into Baghdad in the cover of darkness, not telling anyone as he crept through the back door to Iraq like a thief in the night. The official explanation was security concerns... but Korea was an active war zone when Eisenhower went; the Vietnam War was raging when LBJ arrived in Saigon; Clinton walked into an active war zone in Kosovo. Each time, we were able to tell the world we were coming. In years past, American prestige was such that it was a mark of pride - not shame - that the President was visiting, and we didn't have to hide and sneak around like cowards.
In 2003, after nearly three years of buffoonish, clownlike, arrogant behavior on the part of this president and his administration, marked by mistake after mistake, international anger with the United States runs so high that *this* president had to hide his intentions. The visit of an American president to his troops is no longer a badge of honor, it's a scarlet letter. It's something to be hidden, snuck in the back door in the middle of the night. The fact that the world wasn't told of Bush's trip until he was already well on his way back to Crawford illustrates that even the president's handlers understand that his foreign policy has been such a failure, and has made him so hated around the world, that the leader of the United States of America cannot travel freely and of his own will in this world anymore. We must take extensive security precautions and sneak him into countries in the dead of night. We must treat the President of the United States like an illicit mistress or whore whom we're sneaking in the back door of the hotel while the wife sleeps soundly at home.
Thursday was a colossal admission of failure on the part of George W. Bush, and it was a sad day for our country. Thanks, Dubya.
November 24, 2003
All of us were horrified
All of us were horrified over the weekend when the news came out that two American soldiers had been killed in Mosul, Iraq - first shot, then beaten to death by an angry mob that used, among other things, cinder blocks to pummel their prey to death. What was already a horrific and gut-wrenching incident has been magnified by some in the conservative media, who are using the mob killing as "proof" of the alleged uncivilized or somehow barbaric nature of the situation in Iraq, and to support the argument that the US needs to maintain its presence in Iraq. This is shameful manipulation of a tragic incident - propping up a flawed argument with an ignorant perspective.
I have to be careful how I say this, because I don't want it to be easily misinterpreted, nor do I want it to come off in any way detrimental to the US military. I have nothing but admiration for our men and women of the armed forces. I strongly support the US military; I came from a career military family, and I myself proudly served in the United States Naval Reserve for four years. Anyone - and I do mean ANYONE - on the conservative side who dare tries to call me unpatriotic or anti-military for what I am about to say, I'll provide a fistful of patriotism and miliary support, right across their disgusting traps, and right before demanding to see *their* service record to find out when and where *they* served our country and to compare tours of duty. (All too often, "patriotism" runs only rhetoric deep for conservatives, most of the loudest of whom have neither the spine nor the stomach to serve their country in the military. But I digress.)
I think the incident in Mosul - horrifying and barbaric though it was - was not so much a reflection of the barbarism of the situation in Iraq. It was a reflection of the protective, and sadly vindictive, side of human nature.
Our soldiers and Marines are occupiers. There is no other way of putting a pleasant face on it; the facts of the case are these: The United States invaded Iraq, toppled its government, and now has stationed an occupying force in country to fill the void. Support the Iraq invasion or oppose it, there is simply no way to argue that basic point; it is indisputable. Our forces have been asked to do a job, and they are doing it with courage and honor. It is not a slight to them to say that the job they've been asked to do is occupy a foreign country during a time of war.
I believe that any people in any country might react similarly to the Iraqi mob in Mosul. Picture it: There's a war on. There is no electricity, no commerce, no gasoline, and food is scarce. People have died. And, there are soldiers of an occupying power who walk the streets of town. These soldiers are strangers in a strange land, a foreign presence in a country that has just been invaded. And yet we hypocritically wonder at the barbarism seen in Iraq? Don't you think it would be the same ANYWHERE?
Put the shoe on OUR foot for a moment. Let's suppose, just for a moment, that in the days immediately following 9/11, the UN had placed troops in New York City to maintain order and, ostensibly, to help the people of New York get back on their feet. Now, let's say that among the UN forces are some Arab soldiers - be they Iraqi, Saudi, Palestinian, Yemeni... their exact origin doesn't matter; they're Arabic. Now, let's say we drop two of those soliders on any random street corner in the Bronx or in Jamaica Queens, or in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. (Or, for that matter, in Atlanta, or Nashville, or Des Moined.) What exactly do you think might happen?
How many people would *care* that those soldiers' intent was ostensibly to help? How many people do you think would care that those two individuals were not responsible in any way for the horrors visisted upon New York that day? And how many people - New Yorkers, Americans, their hearts heavy for those lost and for the shock of the attacks, and their blood boiling over the violence done to their nation and its people - do you think would see those Arab soldiers and have a sudden coldness run through their veins before all that anger and pain and rage reached a flashpoint? How many do you think would set upon those Arab soldiers with baseball bats, tire irons, crowbars, and anything else they could get their hands on? The crowds wouldn't know anything about the two individuals - all they would see would be occupying soldiers, and they would react. I doubt those two fictitious Arab soldiers would have life expectancies longer than that of a Jennifer Lopez-Ben Affleck romantic comedy at the box office.
Don't believe me? Think I'm wrong? Think that Americans are somehow better than that... that we would not do anything like that because we're too "civilized?" Well then, think back to September 12, 2001, when a gas station attendent in Arizona was shot to death because he *looked* Arabic (he was Indian). Think back to that week, when cab drivers and convenience store owners were so afraid that they took to displaying signs pointing out that they were Indian or Bangladeshi out of fear of the anger and rage they saw in the faces around them - which was in many cases directed at them simply for sharing physical characteristics with the perpetrators of 9/11. How many death threats and how much hate mail did Arab-American organizations receive?
My point is not to point fingers at Americans or call us racist - far from it. We are still the most free place in the world, and as a whole we are extremely open to newcomers and to immigrants and to people who do not look like us. We're not a bad people, nor a bad country - on the contrary, we are a determined and undefeatable people who by and large value freedom and fairness. My point, rather, is that in stressful, painful times, all human beings and all societies have a capacity to react in a violent manner, and that mob violence is not unique to Iraq nor uniquely directed at American armed forces.
I do not defend what was done to those Americans in Mosul; I condemn it, and it turned my stomach. NO ONE should take this blog in any way as a "they asked for it" or "they deserved it" sentiment; they did not. All I suggest is this: foreign occupiers, or any strangers in strange lands, are more likely going to be the targets for the violence and rage of any people under seige. The fact that a Mosul mob brutally murdered two American soldiers is not "proof" of some instability somehow uniquely inherent in Iraq. It is merely proof that a wounded and frightened and angry people are capable of focusing all that pain and fear and anger on the visible reminders of those feelings; proof that war brings out the worst in every human being. No more, and no less. To suggest otherwise not only demeans the people of Iraq, but disrespects the memories of the soldiers who died carrying out their orders - orders to occupy a foreign land.
November 22, 2003
Tales From The Assassination
I suppose I'd be derelict if I didn't write about the JFK assassination today, on this 40th anniversary of the event. Given my unique connection to the case - a connection that only a dozen or so people in my generation share - this day has a different feel to me than it does to even those who lived through that searing afternoon.
Even all these years later, it still boggles my mind that I (who was born in 1968) spent 1994-1997 working for a commission concerned with a 1963 murder - an event that had happened more than 30 years prior, and five years before I was even born! That's actually one of the first things that comes to my mind when someone mentions the Kennedy assassination - the incredible charisma that John Fitzgerald Kennedy had. 40 years ago, a man was killed; yet that individual had so much charisma and so much star power that today, even people who were born a decade after his death still find his persona magnetic, and still consider his death one of the great tragedies of the 20th century.
Yes, we know now that so much of the Kennedy mystique was manufactured... he was a serial philanderer, and many of his conquests would probably be considered date rape by contemporary standards; he was reckless and arrogant; there is strong evidence that his father worked with the Chicago mob to steal the 1960 election; and he was on amphetamines and all sorts of drugs while he was President, due to his back condition. We know all of that... and yet still, his character, his persona draws people to believe in Camelot even though we know it was a lie. Manufactured or not, it takes an incredible amount of charisma and magnetism to pull that off. My whole life, I've wished for that kind of charisma, that "something" that makes everyone in the room know that you're there as soon as you walk in, and just draws them to you as the center of everything, a sort or vortex that draws the entire room toward you and makes you THE MAN. In that respect alone, if for no other, I respect the hell out of John F. Kennedy.
I know, you want me to get to the assassination. Christopher, you worked on the case for three and a half years; you saw all the files the government doesn't want us to see; you talked to people who were really involved in the whole thing. You MUST know something that we don't... so what *really* happened on November 22, 1963? Well... do you really want to know? You wanna know the deepest, darkest, most dastardly secret the American government has in its closet? Come closer... I can't say it out loud, so I have to whisper it... lean in close to me, and I'll tell you... here goes:
I... have... no... idea.
One of the great conundrums I learned about this case is that the chain of evidence and the (deliberate?) holes in the official story are so screwed up beyond repair that it is impossible for even two people to interpret the case the exact same way. They may draw the same conclusion, but they'll have different opinions or interpretations as to how they reached that conclusion and why. On the Assassination Records Review Board, we had 25 people working on the case. Even though we were specifically charged NOT to reach a conclusion as an organization, all 25 of us had opinions. We ranged the gamut going in, from die-hard Warren Commission defenders to a conspiracy buff so radical he made Oliver Stone look rational. And when it was over, after all 25 of us spent three plus years looking at the same evidence, we still had 25 different opinions and conclusions. So the one thing I can say without question or reservation is this: No one will ever know the true and complete story of what happened on November 22, 1963. Whether Oswald did it himself or was wholly uninvolved, there are just too many questions that will never be answered, and we'll never have a 100% complete and accurate account of that day's events.
All right, all right... don't call me a tease. I'll get to it. Fine, you say - no one will ever know the truth. You still have to have an opinion, Christopher. What happened??
Here's my opinion, though it be no more valid than anyone else's. This is NOT an official theory or based on any inside knowledge, this is just what I think after having studied the case for as long as I did. First of all, on the shooting... I count five shots, every time I watch the Zapruder film, every time I think of the day when we looked at Kennedy's actual clothing from the day, every time I consider the medical evidence. I personally think there had to be five shots. The first missed the car completely; it hit the curb in front of the car, where curb fragments opened a small cut on the cheek of one of the witnesses, James Tague. I think the second shot hit Kennedy in the throat from the front. The third was something close to a dud, hit Kennedy in the back but made little more than a surface wound. The fourth hit Governor Connolly from the back, and the fifth and final shot, the kill shot, hit Kennedy from the front and to the right. Yes, I believe there was a shooter on the Grassy Knoll.
Now, what do I think that means? Who was the second shooter, and what/whom did he represent? Who orchestrated the conspiracy? I can't tell you. Not because I know and just am forbidden or afraid to tell you - if I knew, I'd say it. I can't tell you because I don't know. I *am* sure it was not Lyndon Johnson, nor the CIA as an organization, nor the "military-industrial complex" as a whole. I don't think there was a palace coup that day, orchestrated from within. My best guess is that there was a loose configuration of right-wing elements - rabid anti-Casto Cubans, elements of the Mafia, rogue anti-Communist Americans (including rogue operatives who may at one point have been contracted by the US government for work in the intelligence capers of the time, like overthrowing Arbenz in Guatamala or trying to kill Castro), and far right wing businessmen who didn't like Kennedy's social or economic agenda. It wasn't some massive plot by the Right to overthrow the government, it was just a handful of right wing nut jobs, the McVeighs and Coulters of their time, who in my mind pulled it off.
Now, the "cover-up." I don't think the Warren Commission ever intended to do a real investigation of the case. I think they were formed to cover the US Government's butt. For two reasons: one, at the height of the Cold War, the Secret Service and FBI had messed up, and the President of the United States had been killed. We couldn't just say, "folks, we'll never know the truth... and oh by the way, here are the specific details of how we screwed up." No, at that time there needed to be an open and shut case, without foreign involvement, and without complexities - and that's what the Warren Commission delivered.
The second reason is that I do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union was real. I believe he was a part of a fake defector program run by American intelligence to place operatives - even if they were only there to learn about what the Soviet system might do with defectors. It isn't such a wild theory. We know the Soviets ran false defectors to the West all the time. The Cold War was on, and I frankly HOPE our intelligence community was doing stuff like that - we SHOULD have been. Be that as it may, I think Oswald was a fake defector, and the Warren Commission knew early on that any real investigation of him with end up blowing his cover story as a lie, and exposing the defector program - which would have endangered the lives of other operatives. So, they had a ready-made cover story that had already been worked on for years... they had their single shooter and their easy explanation, and they constructed their entire case around protecting and building up that theory - ignoring any evidence to the contrary, and in some cases perhaps manipulating existing evidence or testimony in order to do so. The Warren Commission wasn't the fox guarding the chicken coop, as many suggest, there to make sure the coup plotters weren't exposed; but they were there to protect the official story, even at the expense of the whole truth. I can virtually 100% guarantee you that had a prosecutor gone to trial with the Warren Commission's case, any fair minded jury would have taken less than a day to come back with a not guilty verdict - the government just did not prove its case.
I'm not endorsing the conspiracy theorists - far from it. 95% of them are whack jobs who figuratively still live in their parents' basement with a pair of Vulcan ears hanging on the bedpost and with Dungeons and Dragons paraphenalia all around. Oliver Stone took "dramatic license" to a whole new definition in his film - in fact, my proudest achievement at the ARRB, in my mind, was doing the research before our deposition of Fletcher Prouty, who was the basis for Stone's "Mr. X" character played by Donald Sutherland. I think we proved beyond the shadow of a doubt - and anyone who reads the transcripts would have to agree - that Prouty's story is dubious at best, and a wholly sensationalized concoction at worst. In my opinion, we proved his entire story and premise to be a falsehood - and though it's not my voice on much of the tape, nor me being credited with the questions in the transcripts, believe you me that I was the one who did the research and prepped my bosses with the right questions to ask. One of the buggest purveyors of hooey got exposed, in my opinion - and *my* work made it happen. So please don't count me in with the nut jobs who think LBJ AND the CIA AND the Mafia AND anti-Castro Cubans AND the miliary industrial complex AND Big Oil killed Kennedy so that we could stay in Vietnam OR go back to overthrowing Castro OR protect Big Oil OR reverse the Civil Rights movement.
So, 40 years later... here we are. We went into Vietnam, we lost, and we got out. And today, we're back, though this time as welcome visitors. The Civil Rights movement happened anyway, thankfully, and we are a more diverse culture than we ever were. JFK died, his brother ascended, then died; his other brother ascended and then descended from Chappaquiddick bridge. JAn entire generation knows the name "John Kennedy" as the cute guy who Elaine fantasized about in the Master of Your Domain episode of Seinfeld, who published a mediocre magzaine, and then fell from the sky. The Challenger explosion and now September 11, 2001 have replaced November 22, 1963 as the moments most indeliably seared into the living memory of the American consciousness. And yet we still talk about this man, and his death still is ranked by the public as one of the greatest American tragedies. And his death and the pain around it permanently impacted my life.
I got a job as a 26 year old fresh from the Midwestern prairies, investigating the death of a man murdered five years before I was even born. I went to Washington from small town Minnesota, and got to see the "magic bullet" and Jackie's pink suit with my own eyes. I got to interview a guy who'd once contracted with the CIA to train Cuban exiles for the re-invasion of Cuba and overthrow of Castro; as I walked from his house to my car after the interview, he called me back to him, put his arm around my shoulder and said softly, "You seem like a good kid; don't get too close to the truth, or They'll get you. Just leave well enough alone." (Probably paranoid bunk, but how cool is it that I actually got to have someone say that to me in a context and circumstance where it seemed plausible and not just a part of some cheesy, hack spy thriller plot?) I got to sit in the parts of the Pentagon that aren't there and talk military intelligence operations with men who knew the men who'd run those operations in the 50s and 60s. I got to do the research that thoroughly debunks one of the grandest, most widely discussed conspiracy theories, and the guy who pushes it.
I got to talk with the man who'd run the CIA's Berlin station in the 60s when the Wall went up, and find out first hand what it was like to be there at that time. My papers - the papers of some brash and overly cocky 20something from a small Minnesota town - are still on file at the National Archives; you could go into that massive library and ask to see my files, and you'd get six boxes full of 'em. Pretty darn cool, I have to say. I got bored by the end of it, and I clashed with my bosses (to whom I now offer an unabashed apology, because time, experience, maturity and years of therapy have brought me to an understanding of just what a pain in the ass I really was!)... but at the end of the day, I was able to do all these things, and have an amazing chapter in my life.
And all because we as a culture are still fascinated with the life, and death, of a man who died before more than half of all living Americans were even born. Only in America, folks. Only in America.
November 21, 2003
I know my friends have
I know my friends have urged me to be less political on this blog site - and I have meant to try. But when world events warrant, I can't help myself.
Did you see the footage of 100,000 Britons - the nation that both considers itself and whom we consider our greatest ally and friend - gathered in Trafalgar Square, burning George W. Bush in effigy and toppling a giant statue of him to the approving roar of the crowd? These are our FRIENDS - and yet a BBC poll showed that 59% of Britons believe Bush has damaged American prestige in the world - and 37% agree with the statement "George W. Bush is too stupid to be president." Our closest friends DESPISE our leader. DESPISE him.
Tony Blair backs the war on terror and in Iraq - but they don't burn him in effigy, as much as they may dislike him. What is it about George W. Bush that makes him hated so much more than anyone else in the world? Could it be his cocky, smamry grin? His cowboy, "shoot first, ask questions later" behavior and demeanor? Could it be that he really is too stupid to see the world in any but the starkest terms, only able to comprehend "evildoers" and good guys?
After 9/11, Britons marched past the American Embassy in tears, laying flowers at the gates and crying with us and proclaiming solidarity. Today, 100,000 of our closest friends shouted at our leader to go home, and burned him in effigy. In two short years, Bush has squandered ALL of the goodwill that 9/11 should have earned us. This irresponsible DOLT of a human being has managed to turn even our closest friends against us. And if our *friends* hate us, imagine the impact of the Bush presidency on those nations and individuals that are not inclined to like us to begin with?
America - and the world - are not safer places thanks to George W. Bush. We are all in more danger than ever before, due to this disgusting cowboy. He is an embarassment, one of the greatest shames and disgraces we have ever been saddled with. And how ANYONE could watch the reaction of our dear friends in London and not feel totally saddened and ashamed over what this idiot has done to the image of our wonderful country... well, it's simply beyond me. What W has done to America is simply criminal.
God bless the victims in Istanbul. Hopefully, not many more will have to die because George W. Bush is intent on making the world hate us even more than they have. May God have mercy on us all.
November 16, 2003
Self-knowledge is a great thing.
Self-knowledge is a great thing.
Continuing on the theme of playing the wannabe game in Manhattan last night, after dinner we went to one of the more well-known New York clubs - Whiskey Blue. From the moment we walked in, I was miserable. I mean, really, really unhappy. But - not like I would have been a few years ago. Even for the last couple of years, I would have gone to a place like that and wanted *so* much to fit in better, to be one of the young and fashionably thin and trendy. My unhappiness would have been out of envy of a scene I just didn't fit into but wanted to.
But now... I don't know if it came from spending time in south Florida this year; or whether it's just come with age and time. Whatever it is, I have finally reached a point of self-awareness that tells me that this scene isn't for me, and I no longer want to be a part of it. I was miserable last night not because I was envious of the club and the people inside, but because I was seeing it in a new light - a bunch of pretenders hanging out in a place designed for pretense. There wasn't a genuine human being in the place last night - just a bunch of people pretending to be something in order to be counted among the "cool." Not only is that scene not me, but I no longer even *want* it to be me. That self-knowledge is calming, even if it did make me miserable last night.
I stood there (as opposed to sitting, because the only seating areas available were not really available - they were roped off for some imaginary "VIPs" who may or may not ever have been planning to show up), and I watched people in outfits that only the anorexically thin or the surgically enhanced could pull off... shouting at one another at the top of their lungs because they had no other way to hear themselves over the din of the mindless, lyricless techno that pulsed from speakers throughout the place. I watched people buy $15 drinks that were made no differently, nor contained a different kind of alcohol, than the $6 drinks one can get at less trendy places. I watched a bunch of people who work on Wall Street, or Madison Avenue, or more likely the suburbs of Westchester County or New Jersey, pretend that they belonged in a place set up for the beautiful people. I saw a dance floor made of squishy film with psychadelic colors that shifted as people stepped on it... and realized with a sudden peace that I just didn't want it. I felt a combination of pity and disdain for the people around me. And all of a sudden, I wanted to be anywhere else in the world but there. A day later - and I'll bet you, for the rest of my life! - I still want to be anywhere else but that scene.
Not sure what it says about me that I am more comfortable in a beach bar where everyone's wearing tiki prints, shorts and sandals than I am in a place where everyone's got the latest Versace, DKNY and Tommy Hilfiger outfits. I don't know what it means that I would rather find a place with some good old fashioned blues (Albert Collins or the Allman Brothers or Stevie Ray) and maybe a little country thrown in there, in a jukebox hanging on the wall... than go somewhere with euro-techno being piped in through a massive speaker system... or that I would rather the volume be low enough where I can actually hear my companions speak than have the decibel level rival a jet engine. Maybe it means I've gotten old.
Or maybe - just maybe - it means that I finally know who I really am, and I've grown comfortable with him.
November 15, 2003
1) I had a friend
1) I had a friend in town this week, a friend who is also close with some other people I work with here in New York. As you might expect, the group of us decided to go to dinner in Manhattan. But somewhere between the hatching of this idea and its execution, a funny thing happened. I was vicitimized by the Food Snobs.
You know them. If you've ever spent any time in New York, you've probably been a victim as well. Their defining characteristic is that they are missing the gene that allows them to enjoy themselves without being conspicuous or spending extravagently. They're the ones who don't want to go to a place unless a) it's been written up in Hipster Wannabe magazine; b) the chef is famous; or c) someone hip and trendy has been seen there. (Note: it's not enough for a famous person to have eaten there - the famous person must be hip and trendy.) And of course, the other prerequisite is that the place must be expensive enough where the Great Unwashed Masses can't afford to eat there.
Don't get me wrong - I have no problem paying a lot of money for a meal out in a restaurant - IF it's outstanding food and I am truly paying for the meal. But I do not want - and will never understand the desire - to be ridiculously overcharged merely for the pretense that the name and atmosphere of a place allows. If I pay $150 for dinner for two because the meal is worth it, fine. If I pay $170 for dinner for two because the chef was just profiled in TimeOut New York, or because Leonardo diCaprio ate there last week and the place is full of black-clad, hipper-than-thou types, well... that's utterly ridiculous.
But they make it worse, these Food Snobs. It's not just that they want to be seen more than they want to dine. No, their true foul is that they do not believe a meal CAN be good unless theyve been overcharged for it. Want to find a little hole in the wall ethnic place that might have escaped Zagats, but is the best thing going? Forget it. How about just popping into a little pub for a burger and beers? Not with these folks around. Nope, if you're not in hipster wannabe lighting and paying at least $12 for an appetizer and $30 minimum for an entree, the Food Snob will not play. (Yes, one of the people in our party actually griped that the places we were suggesting weren't "expensive enough" - and we were told that if we didn't select someplace trendy enough, this person would be crabby and would likely make our evening difficult.)
I'm not sure what their problem is. Maybe their self-esteem is so low that they feel they have to be in a place where other faux hipster wannabes go, to reinforce their own wannabe cool status. Maybe they have the opposite issue - maybe they honestly think that they're better than everyone else, and want this "fact" reinforced by going to places that are specifically designed to keep the masses out by virtue of their cost. Whatever it is, I find it to be the kind of pretense and falseness, the kind of egocentrism, that reminds me of everything I hate about New York. Hi, let's go prove how much better we are than everyone else by spending more money than they have! No, wait - I have a better idea... let's go prove to ourselves that we really are cool, not as dorky as we secretly believe ourselves to be, by going to places where OTHER people with the same self-image issues go in order to feel better about themselves!
Give me a break. Don't worry, my friends... you can count on me to carry the flag of irreverancy tonight. I have every intention of showing up tonight in jeans, a flannel shirt, and a John Deere cap with a ridiculous bend in the rim. If I can't get the Food Snobs to go to someplace just because the food's good, then I am going to embarass them into submission at their wannabe hoidy toidy place. I'm going about my mission - making the world safe for regular people.
November 04, 2003
Ronald Reagan was an out
Ronald Reagan was an out of touch, befuddled old man who, in his few rare moments of clarity, was a mean-spirited, closed-minded, confrontational right wing extremist.
There. I said it. That noise you hear is the Republican Thought Police pounding down my door for expressing an opinion they do not like.
Thankfully, I am not CBS. I don't cave to intimidation and scare tactics. I believe that every opinion has the right to be expressed. And I believe that no political party ought to be allowed to dictate to the broadcast media - which operates on THE PEOPLE'S airwaves! - what can or should be put on the air.
Admittedly, by most accounts, the program "The Reagans" was flawed and inaccurate. Fine. That doesn't give the Republican Party the right to intimidate a network into pulling it from the air. Besides, since when have Republicans had a problem with inaccurate and mean spirited portrayals of presidents? Do they think we weren't paying attention to the entire decade of the 1990s, as they attempted over and over to engage in the character assassination of Bill Clinton - the innuendo over the airstrip in Mena, Arkansas and their total fabrication of his alleged drug running... or worse yet, their innuendo that he was involved in Vince Foster's death? Republican hypocrisy is showing through yet again. And they want to argue that CBS should have been required to run a disclaimer that the program was a fictional account of the Reagan presidency? Well, in that case, Fox "News" should be required to run a disclaimer 24/7 that their programming is a fictional account of the news and of the world.
The Republicans are Stalinists, and CBS is Pravda, as far as I am concerned. I will not ever watch ANYTHING on CBS ever again.
Screw 'em. Reagan was a terrible president and a mean-spirited and cold-hearted person. And I am not afraid to say it. Bring on the Republican Thought Police. I'll take 'em on.
November 01, 2003
Come With Me And Escape (The Pina Colada Post)
It was a very challenging week this week, to say the least - the most difficult in at least five years. It was the kind of week that makes you reconsider your whole life - decisions you've made, mistakes you must own... what you do next, whether you want to keep working at the same place, whether you even want to keep doing what you do, where you want to live, what you're going to do with yourself. To say that I'm exhausted -- physically, emotionally, and mentally -- is like saying Michael Jackson's had a little work done. My professional life is in extreme burnout right now, my personal life is coming to a screeching halt... and in the last few days everything that I thought I knew and everything I counted on is all turned about. Ever have one of those lives? Where you just want to chuck it all and run away from every stress?
You know what might be really wonderful to do? Open up a beach bar & grill. Find some place right on the ocean or the Intercoastal ... get an open, breezy layout of the place so that the breezes from the water could blow coolly through... do the decor in upscale-dive fashion (in other words, comfortable and respectable, but maintaining that roadhouse feel as well)... a jukebox with a giant collection of blues, country and a little bit of roots rock like Springsteen or Meatloaf - and of COURSE, Jimmy Buffett is mandatory... make it the kind of place twentysomethings go when they feel like taking a step up, and thirtysomethings go when they feel like dressing down... a couple of TVs on the wall but nothing so large as to be distracting... a few pictures on the wall of the staff and regulars out on a charter boat fishing, or golfing or something... maybe a few street signs on the walls from my favorite cities and places, to give it that kitschy "we're not from here but we've made it home" feel.
I'd have a tiki bar out back, with sand going right down to the dock (people will be able to just come right in from their boat if they want). Maybe even have a small stage set up somewhere in the place, either out back near the tiki bar or somewhere in the inside bar, where musicians and bands could play - nothing too loud, we're talking acoustics or light amps only... just some folks singin' the blues or country or Springsteen covers... playing the kind of stuff the people want to hear, not the stuff ClearChannel says we're supposed to listen to.
I'd hire bartenders who specialize in tropical drinks... going with the beach theme, I think the "uniform" might end up being polo shirts and cargo shorts for the guys, tank tops and shorts or wraps for the women... my menu wouldn't ever have too much "sit down and dine" food - everything on my menu is going to be stuff you gnosh on while kicking it at the beach. Lots of seafood - conch fritters, crab cakes, kalamari (both fried and grilled), oysters, clam strips, seared ahi tuna... and of course, the standard bar fare like wings, quesadillas, mozzy sticks, buffalo tenders, nachos... maybe the occasional "signature" item like a crab dip or a spinach dip, or a papaya, kiwi, peach & mango salsa... salads and burgers available... yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
I know that food service is a risky industry - that most places close within a few years. It's probably not worth doing. I don't know the first thing about any business, least of all the food service & entertainment business. I can cook and have good recipes, but what do I know about running a kitchen? Or a bar? Or a business? But I have to tell you, after weeks like this last one, the corporate writer in me is tired, man. I want to be Hemmingway or Jimmy Buffett, just soaking up the sun, loving the ocean & beach life, and hanging out in a place I built, listening to the kind of music I like, and watching people around me having a good time and letting their rough days fade a little bit, enjoying themselves in MY place.
Now THAT would be something to do with my life. Don't you think?
Posted by Christopher at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)
