The Snooki Effect

Blame it on Snooki.

Yesterday I finally got to see the most recent Academy Award Best Picture, “The Artist,” but not before I had been sufficiently warned.  There on the box office window, typed in bold and ominous font, was a sign that read:

ATTENTION!

“The Artist” is a SILENT, BLACK and WHITE movie.

(And the surgeon general has determined that it may cause migraine headaches, cancer, leprosy...)

OK, I kid…they did not mention leprosy.  Of course, in order to cover their tracks, they might also have posted on that sign that the film contains symbolism and metaphor and only a very few of the words presumed to be spoken are actually printed on the screen. 

In truth, the film is miraculous...not because of its quality, but because of its very existence.  It is a very good movie, a true homage to early Hollywood and an entertaining, informative piece of art.  But what is miraculous about it is that it could ever have been made in the first place.  Of course it wasn’t made in Hollywood, but in France, and it was made on a very tight schedule with a budget that was less than what an A-List movie star would make for a single picture.  But it was made, so alas, there is hope.

Culturally speaking, what was once branded as elite and snobbish is now virtually extinct.  What was high quality and sometimes thought-provoking is now snobbish.  What was mediocre is now high quality.  And what was once idiotic is now PURE GOLD.

It is the Age of Snooki.  It is the Age of Cultural Junk Food, served super-sized at the drive-thru window, and we are eating it up like there’s no tomorrow.

I remember seeing a clip of the cast of The Jersey Shore when they first appeared on The Tonight Show.  Jay Leno did a skit with them on a mock quiz show and drew laughs from their lack of knowledge of even remedial facts.  It seemed like the show itself was a spoof, an over the top, let’s see how far we can go with this whole “reality T.V.” thing sort of goof.  Then they became superstars.  Now they sit on the couch at talk shows and are treated as serious cultural commodities, as, dare I say it…artists. 

Lower that bar, follow that dollar.

And why is this so?  There has always been entertainment and popular culture that hardly qualified as Shakespeare or Ibsen.  Most Vaudeville acts, indeed most early movies were anything but sophisticated.  But what is different today is the growing supremacy of the banal, the glorification of the downright moronic, and the unused brain cells that flitter away in their exhaust.

“Citizen Kane” wouldn’t get made today unless maybe George Clooney took it on and bankrolled most of it himself.  Today, Louis Armstrong would be stuck in a gig-to-gig existence playing 30 seat clubs for meal money.  Franz Kafka would be told to change the giant bug in “The Metamorphosis” to a vampire or a werewolf and to get rid of all the symbolism crap and put in some good fight scenes. 

I hear there are discussions of Snooki having her own show now that she’s pregnant.  Flash forward to September, 2013: “And the Emmy goes to…”

We reap what we sow. 

But that does not have to be the case.  There are oases of quality still to be found, not necessarily on the front pages or on AOL news feeds, but they are there.  It may require a little searching, sometimes away from the major television networks, sometimes to a movie theater twenty miles farther away than the local multiplex, sometimes past the usual suspects on the bookshelves or in the DVD displays or even on iTunes.  The quality is there, and now perhaps made all the more special by the search for it, by the rarity of it.

By the NEED for it.

Resolution

When I was 23 and living in Boulder, Colorado, I decided one autumn afternoon that I would drive back east to my college Homecoming/Reunion.  I spent a few hours swapping shifts at work and withdrawing almost all of the four hundred or so dollars I had in my savings account at the time, and by 9 o’clock that night I had reached Denver and turned east on Route 70 headed all the way to Washington, D.C.  It was not a thing I’d necessarily recommend to 23 year olds right now.  I guess I’ve gotten a little old…probably I’d utter things like, “Why would you do that in this economy?” or “Do you really think your 20 year old Volkswagen can make it there and back?”  (For the record, it did make it there…just not the back part, and I returned two weeks later via Greyhound.)

But I bring it up because one of the most special moments in my life occurred on that trip.  For two and a half days I drove for a few hours until the engine began to get too hot, then I’d pull over and read for a while, or sleep for a while - sometimes in an open field, sometimes in the car itself.  By the afternoon of the third day, I had reached the short rolling hills of eastern Kentucky, with the sun maybe an hour from setting almost directly behind me.  It was late October, but it was still warm enough to roll the windows down and breathe in the reflective glory as the sun’s light bounced off the autumn foliage all around.  I’d headed off to a smaller country highway and the traffic was so light that it lent an air of exclusivity to me and my fellow travelers, as if only we would be privileged enough to see all of this.  And to top it all off, I had John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony to act as the soundtrack for a little more than an hour as the sun set and the gloaming gave way to darkness.  It was the last in a series of maybe three or four transcendent moments around that time in my life which would later act as a sort of spiritual, geometrical theorem providing me with all the proof I needed that God did indeed exist.  And I never was, before or since, as grateful to be alive.

Obviously I have never forgotten that moment.  But I think in the two decades that have followed, I have held on to it in mostly the wrong way.  I have searched for a repeat performance, wanting to be lifted up to such spiritually transforming heights, once again.  And I have been disappointed time after time in that pursuit.  Even getting my first novel published has not done the trick, instead yielding concerns of whether it will sell enough to allow the publishing of my second, and such.  It is reflective of how I have come to think, and, if I may stretch it beyond myself, how we as a society have come to think.

We are all imperfect people, broken in some way or another.  And we live in an imperfect world that is broken in many ways.  One need only turn on the television or thumb through a magazine to be reminded of our imperfections.  Pharmaceutical companies tell us to ask our doctors if we should be on their medications, there are ads to grow hair, remove unwanted hair, whiten our teeth, lose weight, look younger, get rid of acne, and on and on and on. 

Now, I’m not calling for an end to capitalism as we know it, just pointing out that it’s a greater challenge today, in this age of hyper-convenience, to actually feel good about ourselves, our friends and families, and the world around us.  What used to be a New Year’s tradition of making a resolution, has now grown into a year-round industry.  And we, as a result, are never given a minute just to be content, and truly grateful to be alive.

So in comes 2012, and time for resolutions to be made.  In thinking about it these last few days, I formulated the usual sorts of things.  But just yesterday my thoughts took me back to that drive from Colorado to D.C.  I thought about that magical hour through eastern Kentucky, and my resolution, my real resolution was formed.  I concede that I will never look, nor think, like that 23 year old again.  And I’m OK with that.  One time around is enough, if there is true growth involved, and gratitude.  I know I have grown as a person since then and will continue to do so.  Now, this first day of 2012, I resolve to be not as focused on the brokenness, the incompleteness.  Instead, I will try every day, to be truly grateful, for what I have, for the moments of clarity and confusion, for the perfect and imperfect alike.  And most of all, for the chance to enjoy the ride.    

The Real Christmas

Every year we hear about how Christmas has become too commercial, about all the wrong things, and every year the evidence of it is all around us. The music starts playing on the radio and in the stores a day or two earlier every year, having long-since jumped Thanksgiving and pushing in on Halloween now, with Labor Day in its long-range plans, no doubt. Retailers place all their year-long fiscal hopes into that final burst of sales, politicians exploit it to fit whatever message they are trying sell, and the rest of us very often allow ourselves to get caught up in all the sentimentality we have come to associate with the season, still missing what the day means at its very simplest, undecorated core. And even when we are stripping away all the trimmings of the season, forming what we think is a more pure idea of the meaning of it all, we still so often miss the mark.

Christmas is not about a cheerful spirit. It is not about family. It is not about giving.

Not at its core, at least.

Instead, Christmas is about redemption. It is about each of us as individuals. It is about receiving.

Was the past year a difficult one, perhaps filled with loss or frustration, confusion or hurt? “We need a little Christmas, right this very minute…” sounds like a nice remedy for it all. Still, it will be as fleeting as the turning of a calendar page if all that Christmas means is to be of good cheer. Instead, there is the hope of The Child, born in the humblest of surroundings and circumstances, showing us that great things come from struggle, and that God does His greatest work in the most trying of times.

Don’t have the family pictured in a Norman Rockwell painting? That’s all right, because the Real Christmas is not about that. It is about the redemption granted to each one of us broken people in this broken world. There in The Child is the humility to forgive others, knowing we are all in need of mercy. There in The Child is the courage to accept forgiveness, helping us become more willing to forgive others. There in The Child is the strength to forgive ourselves, understanding that grace is the greatest of gifts…and there is more than enough to go around.

All the decorations and carols and gifts in the world will not fill the voids within us. But The Child will, bringing gifts of hope, redemption and faith, needing only open hearts and humble souls to make it so.

The Loss of Special

Driving yesterday afternoon, perhaps four o’clock or so, I came to a particularly stubborn red light…the kind that makes you wait for a mythical flow of traffic in the opposite direction that isn’t really there and seems like it never was or never shall be.  But I digress.  You see, almost immediately after I stopped, a big black SUV pulled up next to me, just a few feet beyond me actually, so that when I glanced over I was looking in the second row of seats.  There were two computer-size screens mounted in the roof and they were each playing “A Charlie Brown Christmas” for the two kids harnessed into the back seats with more protective equipment and nylon strap restraints than the Apollo astronauts had to hold them in place.  And I felt sad for those kids, just a little, because I don’t think they’ll get to know what special really is.

Let me explain.  When I was a kid, something like “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was what you would call special, meaning that it aired once a year - on CBS, if I recall - and that was it.  If you had the school Christmas concert (back when there were such things) or a CYO basketball game that night, then it was “Wait ‘til next year” (a mantra that would come in quite handy in the life of a Mets fan).  But the absence of DVDs and digital downloads and all things “4G”, meant that there was such a thing as special.  Of course, I sound like a curmudgeonly old man in saying all this, but I heard a U2 song on the local “Oldies” station the other day and I’m pretty sure Turner Classic Movies recently aired “The Breakfast Club”, for cryin’ out loud.  So allow me this rant before I’m put on the ice floe and set adrift once and for all.

Things that used to be seasonal are less and less so in these days of hyper-convenience.  Walk into any supermarket and you can have practically anything you want at any time of year…whatever fruit or vegetable you want, shipped in from halfway around the globe where they actually are in season.  Want to see any movie, listen to any piece of music?  It’s just a download away.  Wait a few minutes (seconds if you’ve got 4G!!), and there it is.  You can watch “Dances with Wolves” right there on your three-inch phone screen.  Or listen to Mozart’s 40^th Symphony on the very same device…hell, make it your ringtone while you’re at it!  I suppose the convenience of it is meant to make up for any of the artistic splendor that might be lost in translation.

As a kid, I remember seeing my father reading a book and coming upon a word with which he was unfamiliar.  So he put the book down, walked over to the bookshelves, pulled out this massive unabridged dictionary we had, and proceeded to flip through its pages until he found the word in question.  Then he wrote the definition down on a scrap of paper and inserted it into the book he was reading before resuming.  I guarantee you my father remembered that definition…maybe for the rest of his life.  There was something in the attaining of it that made it a true acquisition.  But such a simple action is already a thing of the past.  And in this Age of Everything, with all the information we could ever want and a thousand times more at the touch of an “app”, what is lost is the very essence of exploration, of learning, of process.  Of special.  And that’s too bad.

For the record, I once saw “Dances with Wolves” at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C….70 mm of wide-screen magnificence enveloping the audience.  And I once heard Mozart’s 40^th performed at the Kennedy Center.  Special.  Like an apple pie in the fall.  Or a peach in summer.  Or “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, once a year.  If you didn’t have a basketball game instead.

Merry Christmas? You Can’t Say That!

Last year on December 23^rd, my last day of seasonal shopping (which, as ever, was also my first day of seasonal shopping) the red and green sweatered woman at the register finished the transaction then looked at me with a smile and said, “Merry Christmas”.  Just threw it out there.   Now what the hell did she mean by that?

Bewildered, I fumbled for a response and ended up saying something like, “happy....days.”  I may have even given her a Fonzie thumbs up, I don’t recall precisely…it was quite harrowing, after all.  Clearly this woman had not received the memo, or if she had, she had chosen so brazenly to ignore it.  Suffice to say, this gray-haired, grandmotherly monster must be stopped. 

I don’t know exactly what year it was that the scourge of all things religious was finally removed from the month of December (and November…as previously discussed).  I remember as a kid seeing T.V. station promos along the lines of “Merry C-word to all of your family from all of our family at WPIX”.  Or, “Happy (other C-word…the Jewish one), from all the folks at Channel 5.”  There was even a brief window where you might see a “Happy Kwanza (sorry if I am wrong in writing the word all the way through…I meant no harm) from all of us at WOR.” 

Oh, the horror of it all.  Such gratuitous disregard for the potential damage these words could cause.  Thank Go-----…that is, thank goodness, that we, as a society, have come to our senses.  (I do apologize for the near slip with the G-word…..and when I say “thank goodness”, please know that I do not venture to define goodness in any way, nor do I necessarily espouse goodness over so-called “badness” or anything in between.  I am quite neutral on it.  Really.)  Fortunately, we’ve moved past all those once-upon-a-time relics of infernal religiosity, and have evolved as a society to the point where no one has to be subjected to such hateful words.  But of course, there is more work to do. 

For starters, there should be some form of punishment for mavericks like that elderly woman at the store.  Perhaps I could file a suit against her, and the store, while I’m at it (‘cause at minimum wage and social security, it’s not like she’s got much money to pay for damages).  But besides that, don’t we realize all the other potential disasters waiting to happen?  Newscasts callously cover “Black Friday.”  Radio stations insist on playing “White Christmas.”  Excuse me?

Santa Claus keeps getting all kinds of press in the last two months of the year.  And exactly what holiday is he supposed to be connected to?   And if you’re OK with that, you’re clearly an insensitive Neanderthal.  (My apologies to all Neanderthals and descendants of Neanderthals.  I meant nothing by it.  I love Neanderthals….some of my best friends are Neanderthals!)  And what of the fascists at Rockefeller Center?  Sixty-five feet of bathed-in-light, trauma-inducing, Douglas fir smack dab in the middle of Manhattan.  And an ice skating rink right beneath it?  Really?  Like we need to be reminded the polar ice caps are melting. 

Anyway, Rhode Island has now joined the flood of municipalities across the country callously putting up “Holiday Trees”…as if we don’t know what they’re doing.  Oh, and what “holiday” might that be?  Even the expression “Happy Holidays” reeks of insensitivity.  Holidays, plural, implies what?  New Years and take your pick…the C-word, the other C-word (the one Adam Sandler made a cool song about…unless that offends you, in which case it is an awful song), or perhaps the K-word (just playing it safe).  And are you really comfortable with wishing someone a “Happy New Year?”  As if the Gregorian calendar is the only calendar anyone could follow.  And happy?  Why must it be happy?  What of those suffering from depression…as if they need to be reminded of it.

Yes, the world is still a cruel and dangerous place indeed.  But this December 23^rd…..or 1 Nivôse CCXX, if you choose to follow the French Revolutionary calendar, which is your right, of course…anyway, on that day, I will take my cash (focused only on the front of the bills lest I be subjected to the “In G-word We Trust” sprawled across the back), and I will walk back into that same store.  I’m sure they will be playing Johnny Mathis blurting out “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” insulting the entire non-chestnut-eating population, as ever.  And I will seek out that horrible woman all decked out in red and green with the little jingle bell broche her granddaughter made for her out of construction paper and popsicle sticks pinned right there for everyone to see.  I will smile at her, all the while secretly filming our transaction (got to get me one of those 4G gadgets)…and when she inevitably blurts out the C-word again, visions of zeros on my settlement check will be dancing in my head. 

Happy Days, indeed.  (Unless you were a Laverne and Shirley fan, in which case, my apologies.  I meant no offense.  Really.)  

Faith and Religion in the Modern World

So after delving into the world of politics for a couple of posts, I figured I’d tackle something less-controversial this time around...faith and religion.

Please don’t tell anyone, but my book is actually about faith.  It is the first of a trilogy in fact, with the other two book themes being hope and love (if you’re gonna “borrow” ideas, might as well “borrow” from some of the best, no?).  Anyway, I say don’t tell anyone because I don’t really think the modern world has any idea of the difference between religion and faith.  And true to form in this ten-second sound bite world where our limited attention spans require quick and precise categorizations, any people who speak of faith in this country are automatically lumped together. 

So by my mere mention of faith, I would be put in the company of say, Tim Tebow, kneeling on the sidelines of a football game as if summoning the Almighty to lead the Broncos to victory.  I was not aware God was a Broncos fan, but apparently He is, since Tim is so quick to thank Him after every victory and the team is 5-1 since Tim took over as quarterback.

Or perhaps then, I would be put in the category of the Pat Robertsons or Jerry Falwells, spewing what seems to me to be anything but what faith is all about.  Or throw me in with those who talk about what devout Christians the Founding Fathers were when in fact so many of the most prominent among them had a particular distrust of religion. 

But I am not any of these people, nor do I espouse their ideas of what faith really is.  I do not see faith as a competitive endeavor.  I do not see God standing behind one segment of His creation enabling them to smite or exclude another part of it.  Not in war.  Not in society.  And sure as hell not in a football game.

I believe that faith is of God’s creation, and religion is of man’s creation.  People have been slaughtered and cast out in the name of religion for thousands of years.  But faith does not lend itself to anything of the sort. 

I believe that faith can reach the soul in many ways...perhaps in hearing a sermon, perhaps within the structure of religion, but in other manners as well.  The character of Micah in my book is the one whose journey towards faith is most pronounced, most clearly defined.  And like myself, when he demands the answers from God, he hears only the reverberating sound of his words, and nothing more.  But in the quieter times, when we remove ourselves from the “discussion” as much as possible, faith comes.  That’s how it did for me, anyway.

So yes, my book is about faith.  It does not carry with it the message that “everything happens for a reason”, but rather “everything happens”.  And all of it is part of life, threads intertwining in a vast tapestry, the good along with the bad, usually right alongside each other, it seems.  And faith is about seeing the entirety of it for what it really is, or at least accepting that we will one day be able to see it as such.  That is what I believe.  That is my faith....my faith...and though it may be too little for some of you and too much for others, that does not matter.  That is between me and God. 

The book is meant as an expression of that faith...not evangelization, not with a mind towards convincing anyone of anything.  Indeed, you’ll have to look closer than most of the people who’ve read it so far to see the supportive strands of faith running throughout.  But they are there.  Softly.  Amidst the quieter moments.  The way faith so often is.  

I Am Not the 1%

See, now I went and did that thing so many teachers (or ex-teachers I guess, too) do when discussing a particular topic.  Call it playing Devil’s advocate, call it discussing rather than pontificating, or call it downright annoying (I’m going with the last one), but there are always at least two sides to every debate.  So all you One-percenters out there (Does anyone actually in the 1% read my blog? And if so can you recommend a better accountant...preferably one without “dot-com” in their name?), or you wannabe, someday One-percenters, you’re not getting off so easily.  Not if I can help it.

Perhaps, as children, the One-percenters were regaled with different folklore than most.  Instead of coal in their stockings at Christmas if they were naughty, perhaps they were threatened with tiny replica windmills or mini solar panels, instead.  Instead of monsters under their beds, there were the ghosts of Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin.  Instead of being taught to share their cookies, perhaps they were taught to hide them away in tax free, high-yield cookie jars. 

Whatever it was, they see Socialists around every turn.   And radicals.  And environmentalists.  Oh my!  And their over-the-top fears of populist revolution, as well as their skill at employing just the right code words, do more to stifle actual discussion than the Occupiers could ever hope to do.

I believe our higher education system should more closely resemble that of most European countries, where education through the university level is contingent upon one’s ability and hard work, not one’s (or one’s parents) bank account.  European students do not come out of college with the equivalent of a mortgage’s worth of debt strapped to their back.  But many, many American students do...and if we want to keep up with the rest of the world, well then, there's gonna have to be considerable government assistance in all this.  Of course, by suggesting this, in fact the mere mention of the European manner of doing anything has the One-percenters shouting, "Socialist!"  as if they were the long lost children of Joe McCarthy himself.  But I believe it all the same.

I believe that laissez-faire, completely unregulated capitalism is unjust and inhumane.  It's a nice sounding idea to people who think their taxes are too high, that the government is too big, and such, to suggest removing the government almost entirely from daily life.  But suggest to the One-percenters that government has an important function beyond assuring the security of the country and protecting property and out come the code words...liberal, radical, socialist. 

I believe that global warming is real, and that oil is not our future unless we want to one day make the Kevin Costner movie "Waterworld" into reality.  And considering what a god-awful movie that was, why would we subject our descendants to such a thing?  Of course, to most One-percenters that makes me a tree-hugging, hippie, environmentalist.  In truth, I have never actually hugged a tree, and I don’t (and never will again, I’m afraid) have the requisite hair to be a hippie.  But feel free to call me an environmentalist.  I can live with that...even if you mean it as an insult.          

So many of the One-percenters can be just as wrong and counter-productive as the most radical element of the so-called Ninety-nine percent.  Anyone who refuses to, or will not engage in, rational discussion on these most serious matters, is little more than an angry child stomping their feet in the hopes they will get their way eventually. 

The Occupy movement failed because it lacked any sort of real direction.  I drove past the “occupiers” of downtown Savannah a few weeks ago and amongst the two or three dozen there (and I’m being generous in that estimate), there were not two signs that spoke to even remotely similar points.  They just looked like a bunch of angry folks with nothing else to do than stomp their feet.

And the One-percenters do the same.  Only instead of stomping their feet they draw lines in the sand, refusing to entertain any sort of compromise and clinging to their code words, as ever.  They scare enough folks (those who would never be confused with the One-percent) into thinking that a tax on millionaires is the equivalent of the British Tea Act of 1773.  So those folks go and dress up like angry colonists and do the One-percenters' bidding.  Funny thing is, the actual American Revolution was quite liberal for its time.  Radical, you might say.  

So no, I am not the One-percent...and having more money will not make it so.  Nor do I believe that the so-called Ninety-nine percent is represented by the Occupy folks.  I am somewhere amongst the grown –ups, the people willing to have rational, spirited debates with an aim towards reasonable compromise and practical solutions.  And I do not believe I am alone.  

Of course, that doesn't make for very good content in the 24 hour news cycle, so don't expect this movement to be covered.  Perhaps that's for the best though.