A Legend Of Man's Hunger In His Youth

November 5, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 08:48:00 +0000

Oh, the time will come up
When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin'.
Like the stillness in the wind
Before the hurricane begins,
The hour when the ship comes in.

Oh, the seas will split
And the ship will hit
And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking.
Then the tide will sound
And the waves will pound
And the morning will be breaking.

Oh, the fishes will laugh
As they swim out of the path
And the seagulls they'll be smiling.
And the rocks on the sand
Will proudly stand,
The hour that the ship comes in.

And the words that are used
For to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they're spoken.
For the chains of the sea
Will have busted in the night
And be buried at the bottom of the ocean.

A song will lift
As the mainsail shifts
And the boat drifts on to the shoreline.
And the sun will respect
Every face on the deck,
The hour that the ship comes in.

Then the sands will roll
Out a carpet of gold
For your weary toes to be a-touchin'.
And the ship's wise men
Will remind you once again
That the whole wide world is watchin'.

Oh the foes will rise
With the sleep still in their eyes
And they'll jerk from their beds and think they're dreamin'.
But they'll pinch themselves and squeal
And know that it's for real,
The hour when the ship comes in.

Then they'll raise their hands,
Sayin' we'll meet all your demands,
But we'll shout from the bow your days are numbered.
And like Pharaoh's tribe,
They'll be drownded in the tide,
And like Goliath, they'll be conquered.

- Bob Dylan, 1963.

You Can't Make This Shit Up

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 23:09:00 +0000

Despite being the world’s laziest blogger, there was no way I was going to let the selection of first-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate go unmentioned in these hallowed pages. Read on for my reactions in roughly the order I had them, uncensored, unabridged, and unkind.

As I drove into work, the know-it-alls on NPR were hailing this as an opportunity to fundamentally reshuffle the electorate. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but as an Obama guy, I’ll admit thinking “if walruses win the right to vote between now and November, we’re in big trouble.”

The cynics have said this is further evidence that McCain will do anything to get elected. I just think it’s further evidence that he’ll do anything to get an erection.

Now that McCain has cast his lot with an ethically dubious nutcase from a western state with a four-digit population, Larry Craig has to be thinking “Who do I have to blow to get a slot in this cabinet?”

A hardline social conservative, Palin’s newest fearless policy initiative is to rename the waterway bordering Alaska’s westernmost point the “Bering Straight”. OK, even I’ll admit that wasn’t very funny.

Palin apparently named her first son “Track”, her first daughter “Bristol”, and her youngest son “Trig”. It’s a good thing frontier toughs don’t tend to believe in therapy, because these kids could go through a high six figures worth.

While this pick is sure to enrage whatever portion of McCain’s base has the slightest belief in meritocracy, it could be the best chance yet for the famously Internet-shy senator to learn such 21st-century terminology as “WTF” and “RUFKM”.

It’s too bad noted squirrel chef Mike Huckabee isn’t the presidential nominee, because he and mooseburger aficionado Palin could throw a varmint supper fundraiser that would singlehandedly negate Obama’s online contribution edge.

Much in the same way that McCain promises to be a continuation of Bush, Palin promises to be a continuation of Cheney. Think about it: they’re both hunters, both hail from the middle of nowhere, and, if Palin keeps having kids at this rate, she’s statistically almost certain to someday have a lesbian daughter she can conspicuously avoid discussing.

But don’t let Palin’s meager resume and McCain’s preponderance of vacation homes fool you into thinking these two won’t work round the clock. Between them, McCain and Palin have both 4 PM and 4 AM feedings covered.

This Side of History

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Sat, 24 May 2008 21:10:00 +0000

In a campaign where unfortunate, often outrageous statements have served as the most distinctive landmarks, Hillary Clinton’s latest broadside bears all the blithe insanity of a desperate basketball team fouling a 90% free throw shooter in the hope that he’ll miss everything from here on, and they’ll hit four or five half-court shots in the next 7.3 seconds. If you haven’t heard, or wish you hadn’t, Clinton had this to say on the mounting absurdity of her continued presence in the race:

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."

The rest of the political universe (at least those who are not preoccupied debating whether talks with Iran would be more akin to giving away the Sudetenland or losing a NASCAR race to a Frenchman) is, predictably, disquieted. The calls for Hillary to bring the ship in to shore are growing louder; as Newsweek’s Howard Fineman put it, “this is a campaign that needs to be put out of its misery real soon". My first reaction is “Forget its misery; how about mine?” But this is about much more than pained rhetoric or Machiavellian opportunism. To decry Hillary Clinton’s cynical self-justification is to shift the blame unfairly from her indifference to something much larger.

Since 1968, idealists have, not unjustifiably, feared the worst. To a lot of people, Hillary Clinton seemed to be saying “I’m going to hold on, because hey, you never know what could happen to this once-in-a-lifetime black leader”. Calmer heads must prevail, however. I don’t doubt that a few of Clinton's supporters (especially in the Davey Crockett states) are that virulent, but to ascribe this sort of malice to someone who is quite obviously crumbling is a temptation Obama supporters shouldn’t permit themselves. More than that, it trivializes what is really on the line here.

Returning to 1968, the real message in Clinton’s poor choice of words is her ignorance of how she fits into the larger context of the Democratic heritage. Hillary Clinton has vowed, even within the last week, to take the fight to the convention, and that invokes its own, subtler nightmare: few backroom deals could encapsulate the dispossession of the progressive movement like Hubert Humphrey, who barely bothered to campaign, securing the nomination by virtue of his pre-existing hold on the delegates. While it would be foolish to claim that Clinton hasn’t bothered to campaign, when she’s exhausted a seemingly infinite number of political lives in this process, the fact is that the Clinton camp had not planned on a post-Super Tuesday strategy. As P.G. Wodehouse once said of a hapless foil, “He had confused the unlikely with the impossible, and as a result he was taken by surprise.”

The surprise, however, is not how badly Clinton miscalculated, nor that the establishment has turned on her. The exodus of superdelegates followed the emergent mathematical probability, not the other way around. The real surprise of what everyone thought would be a historic campaign is this: Hillary Clinton landed on the wrong side of history, spurred by her own worst impulses as much as the advent of a remarkable new voice. By invoking Bobby Kennedy, she invoked the most sacred iconography of the Democratic Party, an iconography in which she (and her husband) have no place at present.

However, the Democratic party has been left with an iconography of false choices. Their most shining legacy, so we've been told, is a pair of fallen brothers; the rest of the story is populated by lovable losers, ineffective stiffs, and vile compromisers, with a few worthy fighters thrown in. This is not meant to ignore Martin Luther King, Jr's fifteen-year struggle, which, while it transcended mere politics, is surely inextricable from the transformation of the Democratic Party and the schism with the Dixiecrats. Nor is it meant to diminish at all what John and Bobby Kennedy accomplished in their too-brief allotments.

However, we know what is at stake: for the Kennedys' brilliant but incomplete legacy to be Barack Obama’s inheritance would be the greatest tragedy yet. No one can know fate, but the dream must be to lead with a wisdom that endures, not to spend another forty years of darkness lionizing one more noble sacrifice. In the pernicious political universe we inhabit, moral victories will no longer suffice. The threat is so dire and real that, paradoxically, we are better off not speaking of it, and in a time of such flickering hope, that is Hillary Clinton's real transgression.

Democrats have always had the reputation for eating their young, and this explains much of the futility, compromise, and bitterness of the past few decades. The most meaningful breakthroughs, at least since my parents came of age, have traditionally required that the young, and young-at-heart, eat the establishment instead. Geraldine Ferraro and her ilk have been quick to pin Hillary Clinton’s downfall on a conspiracy of the boy’s club, but the fact is that Hillary Clinton had the boys in her pocket not six months ago. What makes Obama’s ascendancy so refreshing, and so in keeping with the true Democratic spirit, is that he recognized when others did not that while he could not win without the establishment, they had to embrace him more than he embraced them.

The difference this time is that it should not be about who’s eating whom. Obama’s detractors have comforted themselves by dismissing his movement as a cult, but it would not be unreasonable or derogatory to say that it is a church. More importantly, it is a church in which all should be welcome. Hillary Clinton, by virtue of this latest verbal ordeal, might appear to be past help, but, for better or worse, her supporters might well determine whether the party eats its young yet again. To ensure that it does not will require the best efforts of everyone involved, and while it might be a bitter consolation to everyone who staked their hopes on her campaign, averting civil war is her best chance of journeying back to the right side of history.

Dispatches from Youngstown: Part Two

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:08:00 +0000

One day in, I wake up just in time to take a shower, dress respectably, and scramble downstairs to meet my ride to canvassing HQ, and in a quiet moment on the way over reflect how quickly we assimilate to routine. I've been in Youngstown less than 36 hours, and it's already another day on the job. This is a good thing; outsized expectations and lofty ideals have a tendency to put undue pressure on what should be the simple task of crossing names off a list. If it sounds unromantic, it is, and that's for the best. You have to forget, to sail away from your illusions, before, as Crosby, Stills, and Nash put it, "you understand now why you came this way."

My canvassing partner today is John, a retired high school math teacher who began his career in Youngstown in 1960. Our beat is a ramshackle stretch of South Youngstown, almost entirely black, some two miles south of HQ. It's sunny and mild, and while a welcome relief, this seems to underscore the omnipresent decay. John warns me in a tone that is grandfatherly yet ominous that we will see numerous houses boarded up, or simply abandoned; many properties are worth less now than they were twenty years ago - not adjusted for inflation. Looking at the street names - Glenwood, Park Cliff, Fairmount, Ravenwood - you could be anywhere in any city in America. The WASP street name aesthetic is alive and well, belying a squalid and essentially segregated reality.

After an opening stretch where almost no one answers the door, we find fertile ground away from the main road. People open their doors
with justified suspicion at first, but tend to warm up when we say who we're with. John reminds me to hold up my door hangers prominently so that the image of Obama is the first impression. When given a few seconds of goodwill past our opening pitch, we urge the more passionate-sounding voters to come by and help out tomorrow. John points out, time after time, "This kid came out here from California to work on this campaign!" It's an effective line and seems to engender genuine appreciation. Underneath, it feels more like a luxury than a sacrifice.

An hour or so into our route, we see a car pulling into a driveway, towing another, almost identical one close behind it. This seems like a moving enough parable of humanity, until the driver's eye catches ours, and she steps out and welcomes us onto the front porch. She is thirty-something, determined, and voting early, and giving rides to her extended family. She takes enough flyers and stickers for all, and enthuses, "Regardless of who'll be elected, I'm just so proud to be a part of this century, where a black man and a woman have a chance to be president." She trembles, and adds, "I'm sorry, this is just really touching me", before bursting into tears.

The glow of the interaction lasts well into lunch and is not interrupted until we resume canvassing on Glenwood Avenue, even sides this time. A middle-aged black man answers the first door with a shaking head, then announces with discernible glee, "Obama? You've come to the wrong place. I'm voting for the blonde!" John asks wearily if anyone else in the family might be for Obama, and the man replies "Not in this house!" as the door closes emphatically. This exchange should provide plenty of material for problematic race and gender themes, but for me, the lesson is this: the true battle is always against whomever we perceive as the uncool parent.

During the longer stretches between assigned houses, John fills me in on how much the area has changed since his first classroom forty-eight years ago. Dollars are tough to standardize in your mind, but there is nothing ambiguous about this statistic: Youngstown's population has declined from a peak of 185,000 to fewer than 85,000 today. A high environmental cost preceded the economic and psychic toll of the steel decline; the Mahoning River once had an average temperature of 107 degrees along the stretch of steam mills that powered Youngstown's industrial heyday, and the water was reputed to be the most polluted in the United States. It is one of countless mistakes we hope that progress will not cause to be repeated, another exhibit of evidence for reinvention, not restoration.

Nearing the end of our route, we approach the first white man we've seen all day as he steps into his car. He wastes no words. "Democrats, I assume? Well, there's only one issue for me: abortion. You've pushed a lot of Catholics out of the Democratic party!" He backs out of the driveway as we tiptoe around patches of rapidly melting slush, and drives off, shooting us a look of accusation as if to suggest John and I were personally responsible for the political disapora of the believers.

I return to canvassing HQ happy to have finished a route from pages 1 through 15, and head for the tables. I'm beginning to feel like a part of the family now, but reveal my vestigial Northern Californian diffidence when I search furtively for a plastic knife. A kindly older woman asks what I'm looking for, and laughs at my sheepish admission. "Honey, you eat chicken with your fingers!" Evidently, that was all I needed to hear.

By this point, the collective din in the hall makes phone banking next to impossible for me, and a few tortured, half-understood live interactions convince me there must be some other way to contribute. This spurs me to catch a ride a few minutes away to the local Obama HQ downtown, a bustling, white-lit, modest space reminiscent of the all-night computer lab where I wrote two dozen or so of my more desperate college papers. There was usually a great sense of accomplishment which I later realized was actually relief.

After a few minutes of helplessness, I start coloring in the letters of a "Honk If You're Voting For Obama!" poster, joining Jessica, a young, blonde mother of two who looks barely more than twenty, and Elaine, a middle-aged lady whose voice makes everything sound like a lullabye and whose utopian vision for the country makes Obama himself seem downright cynical. Elaine announces that "God is good! I got tomorrow off work!", and given the swiftly closing window before the polls open and the ground force enters its most concerted and crucial push, I nod feverishly in agreement.

Once settled in, any resemblance to my collegiate haunts quickly gives way to an overwhelming sense that I'm back in the first grade. Now as then, there aren't enough Magic Markers to go around, and the seemingly bottomless black one is in high demand. I press my marker tip flat against the paper and fill in the blank spaces with firm, parallel strokes, trying to cover the most paper with the least ink. Our supervisor praises the resulting poster as a "work of art!", and her teacherly tone transports me once more to the first grade.

And for the first time since, I find myself genuinely believing anyone can grow up to be President.

Dispatches from Youngstown: Part One

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:41:00 +0000

I. I touched down in the Cincinnati airport late yesterday afternoon and was immediately seized by an amaranthine sense of yearning. To be so close, yet so far, from Kentucky. Learning, several minutes later, that the Cincinnati airport actually is in Kentucky was only the first of what I expect will be several days of humbling lessons.

Opportunities to be humbled abound in Youngstown, Ohio, where I’ll be spending the next several days canvassing and cajoling for the Obama for America campaign. The hub of the Mahoning Valley, an overwhelmingly Democratic region with little cause for optimism, Youngstown has weathered over thirty years of stagnation since the decline of the steel industry in the 1970s. Youngstown seemingly captures the political imagination every four years, only to be forgotten by the next wave of economic development and innovation. On 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad, Bruce Springsteen included a searing portrait, simply titled “Youngstown”, of a city and economy left behind:

Seven hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name

Thirteen years later, progress remains slow and expectations are muted. All is not despair; last summer, John Edwards praised “Youngstown 2010”, the city’s plan to crack down on blight through organized shrinkage, and the establishment of a downtown tech-job district, as “visionary”. But as America once again casts opportunistic eyes on Youngstown, Youngstown glances back suspiciously. Driving past the dark storefronts, missing street signs, and sagging traffic lights of Belmont Avenue, you come to understand how sympathy is ultimately as cheap as neglect. In a widely-referenced New York Times feature, Youngstown’s Downtown Director of Events and Special Projects, Phil Kidd, charges, “The problem is that this is a rubber-stamp Democratic area so they know it’s almost a guarantee they’re going to get our vote. We just have to hope that this time whoever wins won’t forget about us.”

As of the article’s publication (February 26), Kidd was said to be “leaning toward” Obama. Kidd is an interesting lens through which to view the Obama campaign. The creator of the “Defend Youngstown” t-shirt, featuring a towering steelworker swinging a hammer, Kidd has taken on the tenuous challenge of bringing not only visibility but respect back to the city. Kidd is also using the internet to further visibility’s too-often neglected cousin, transparency. His blog details exactly how his days are spent advancing downtown revitalization, and include - perhaps tellingly, perhaps not - a summary of his meetings with campaign to finalize the location of Obama’s headquarters.

What Kidd may or may not see in Obama is idle speculation, but I do feel obligated to explain why I’m here, and why now. As Michael Jones wryly reminded, (and as I acknowledged in a pre-emptive announcement last week), my dating life was not absent from consideration. Guilt has played a role as well: I was plenty unhappy about how my own state’s primary played out, and realized I’d done little to change it besides a few arguments held in the safety of friends. Once I decided to get involved, the choice of Youngstown was both symbolic and strategic. This is probably the toughest battleground in the crucial Ohio primary. Obama’s message of hope finds a receptive audience in the favorable acoustics of San Francisco Bay; here in the Mahoning Valley, skepticism is plainspoken and arises of necessity.

But hope is also vital in Youngstown. Despite the working-class hero iconography of the “Defend Youngstown” movement, the steel heyday of the mid-20th century will not return in its original form, nor will the jobs shipped oversees magically reappear. This is, perhaps, the essence of the Obama pledge. In his “Blueprint for Change”, Obama declares, “I don’t want to spend the next year or the next four years re-fighting the same fights we had in the Nineties.” The dark side of this looking so firmly forward is the tacit acknowledgment that many of those fights have been lost, as have many in the new century. I’m not naïve enough to think Obama can succeed in fixing Iraq. I’m hopeful that Obama has the judgment not to lead us into an even deadlier entanglement in Iran. Likewise, foundries and sheet works are not going to erase the economic ravages of the past 30 years, some of which can be attributed to NAFTA and some to the simple vagaries of commodity and manufacturing markets. Instead, the hope is that Obama will have the foresight not to sign another NAFTA, and use government to catalyze, not stifle, innovation in building, transportation, and energy, creating both assembly-line and work-station jobs in the process. In both cases, the hope rests more on Obama’s intelligence, demonstrated prescience, and lifetime of working for the little guy than any sweeping legislative or diplomatic triumphs.

II. Neither complex economic issues or lofty rhetoric, however, have much bearing on the immediate challenges of Sunday, March 2: increasing the chances that both committed and likely Obama voters actually make it to the polls Monday and Tuesday (early voting is an option, and many of the voters I met today plan to take advantage). Logistical traps are rampant, and canvassing is more about filling in these gaps than changing people’s minds. For an elderly voter reliant on a walker, or someone without internet and television, a free ride to the polls or confirming the location of the county board of elections is the difference, not a new slant on the issues.

After an orientation lasting no longer than necessary, I set out to canvass in the suburbs just south of Highway 80. Obama’s gospel of participation is the main orthodoxy: there is no need to burden yourself with excess preparation, just hit the road and go. My canvassing partner is a nice middle-aged lady from western Pennsylvania, just 20 minutes east of Youngstown. She drives – you guessed it – a Prius, though it is gunmetal gray as opposed to the ubiquitous silver or burgundy models seen in San Francisco. It seems like a discreet nod to the location, but that’s probably reading way too much into it. Still, I can’t help but shudder, recalling how Hillary champion Tom Buffenbarger, president of the Machinists Union, denounced Obama supporters as “latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies”. Coffee is served black at headquarters, and thankfully it’s too cold to be tempted by impractical footwear. Two out of three ain’t bad, right?

I started this trip with castle-storming ambitions to, as Michael put it, “struggle against the Forces of Darkness in the Battleground for The New Tomorrow.” Minutes after leaving headquarters to begin canvassing at an address 5.3 miles away, I’m ready to settle for just finding the damn place. Detours, indistinct maps, and most of all the aforementioned missing street signs make navigation a royal pain in the ass, and frustration is only overcome by the image, rife with symbolic possibilities, of the wayward Prius adrift in suburban Youngstown.

If the snow pack and basement cinder blocks, both showing several inches aboveground, aren’t enough of clue that Northern California is far away in every sense of the word, there are red-on-white signs, seemingly every third house, proclaiming “Keep 9/11 In Liberty.” I’m not going to argue this is good or bad. It is, however, ineffably different.

My partner is reticent to attempt to drive up on the frozen roadside, leaving nowhere to park but driveways. Hence, she drives almost from house to house, in obscene hiccups of motion, and we brave unplowed lawns and ring doorbells, usually to no avail. Live greetings are few enough to remember verbatim:

Fiftyish man: “Sorry, I’m a Republican.” But you can vote in this primary too! As Rush Limbaugh is reminding his remaining listeners in his effort to game the system by getting them to vote for Hillary in Ohio. On Friday, Fox News, alas, lacked the forbearance to give this latest stunt of an Oxycontin-addicted icon of both literal and metaphorical deafness fewer than the requisite fifteen minutes of coverage.

Fiftyish man, walking dog: “I guess it’s between Hillary and Obama for me. Well, I think he’s inexperienced. He’s not what this country needs right now. But thanks for your effort! It’s what makes this country great!” If I were in familiar territory, I would be certain he was mocking, not enthusing. Today, who knows. But it does make me wonder: What does this country need right now? More fear-mongering and tough-guy posturing? More compromise and obligations to lobbyists? More rhetorical questions? Always.

Fiftyish man, smoking a cigarette indoors. “Hell yeah, Obama!...I’ve been for him since the beginning…Can you put a sign in my yard?” In my experience, those who persist in smoking indoors tend to be individualists, and rarely decline to state allegiances. For good or evil is anyone’s guess at first glance.

Seventyish man: “I’ve picked my guy. But I like ‘em all!” That was a popular sentiment six months ago. These days, in my crowd, it’s Panglossian naivete at its finest. Unless you’re kidding, which is just too close to call anymore.

After a couple of hours, my partner decides to call it a day and return to Pennsylvania. However, I’m quickly absorbed by three students from the University of Pittsburgh. Our beat for the afternoon is a retread of a cluster of tenements closer to the industrial heart of the city. Almost all of the residents who were reached the first time around were Obama supporters; we are visiting the places where no one answered the door the first time around. In stark contrast to the suburbs, almost every knock is answered, and for a long stretch, the voters here are as overwhelmingly female as the suburban ones were male. At several addresses, painfully polite children intermediate between us and wary mothers or grandmothers.

Besides tallying who supports whom and offering rides, information, and toll-free numbers, we have door hangers and glossy leaflets to give away. I offer one to a man staggering across the road, who replies, “Thanks, man, I got boo-coup of those!” A little further down, a boy and girl, no more than five, ask what we’re selling. My partner, clearly more at ease with the very young, exclaims “Why, sweetheart, we’re not selling anything. These are yours to keep. But show them to your mommy and daddy.” Are we selling something after all, though? Emphatic no. On second thought, it’s too soon to say.

In some buildings, apartments are accessible only from inside, and we’re let in with remarkable ease. The Obama pin seems like a good-luck charm here; we’re saved many cases of fruitless knocking by good neighbors who let us know not only who’s sick or who’s out, but who’s likely to need a ride and what her phone number is. As we give out the last of our materials, someone asks for a pin like the one I’m wearing. Upon finding out we don’t have any to give away, she asks me the best rhetorical question of the day: “You’re spending a million bucks a day, and you don’t have a pin for me?” I step forward and remove mine. “It’s yours. But only if you recruit all your undecided friends.” Something tells me that won’t be too difficult. Then, we knock on another door, and another small boy intermediates between us and his mother upstairs. She is voting early, tomorrow. And would she mind letting us no for whom? The reply comes direct: “That’s none of your damn business.” Fair enough.

We return to canvassing headquarters again, having completed the full route this time. The gas station where we stop to refuel has an Obama sign in the window, making this particular gratuity to OPEC slightly more palatable, and some of the cheapest cigarettes I’ve ever seen. The lunch table has been restocked, and a crowd every bit diverse enough for a pamphlet cover trades war stories over fried chicken and spaghetti.

After a couple of hours of phone-banking and a round of Nerf football to unwind, I catch a ride back to my host family. Looking up Youngstown on Wikipedia, I learn that its most famous natives include a host of American icons: Catherine Bach, who played Daisy Duke. Ed O’Neill, better known as Al Bundy. Chris Columbus, who wrote “The Goonies” before producing “Home Alone" and numerous other, less distinguished films. And, as one of my favorite Warren Zevon songs tells us, boxer Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, a lightweight champion whose epic, 14-round battle with Duk Koo Kim assumed tragic proportions when Kim died five days later of brain injuries.

Whether silly or sobering, these icons are each firmly rooted in an increasingly distant past. To suggest that the resulting void in iconography could be filled by the resolute, granite-steady face of Obama himself, however, would be forgetting a lesson all too recently learned. I’m here, with hundreds and thousands of others, in the belief that Youngstown itself can assume a new place in American iconography, that this embattled, depressed, and impossibly hopeful city will come to symbolize the reclamation of not only its own destiny but that of a nation.

The Hempire Strikes Back

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 01:42:00 +0000

And it’s up against the wall, Redneck Mother
Mother who has raised her son so well
He’s 34 and drinkin’ in a honky tonk,
Just kickin’ hippies’ asses and raisin’ hell.

- Jerry Jeff Walker

This blog is about to boldly go where no other entry has gone before: I will not only touch on incidents of a personal nature, but I will make pointed accusations, denounce an entire group of people, employ dramatic narrative strategies, and pass value judgments. I will, in short, complain.

First off, it should be said that my relationship with so-called hippies has always been a complicated affair. On the fuzzy side, I’m the son of a Berkeley ’69 graduate. I lived in a co-op for three years of college. Crosby, Stills, & Nash’s “Teach Your Children” makes me so sentimental you could shit. I’ve used a frying pan as a musical instrument, and eaten more than a few meals off a Frisbee. I think Burning Man is the coolest, although, as longtime readers will know, I’m in it for the conspicuous consumption and sheer patriotism of it all more than any feel-good ideology. The point is, I’m not going to be confused with the Project for the New American Century anytime soon.

There are contradictions, however. I often denounce residents of the Mission as “liberals and vegetarians”, tongue partly in cheek. While I was certainly an avid proponent of some aspects of co-operative living, I also took a hard line against the resident ideologues. During my house’s now-infamous “buy local” meeting, I declared, “I don’t care if they come from Mordor, I’m eating a banana every morning.” I enjoy hunting wild boar in the wilds of coastal California. I part my hair with precision. I think the American system of government is superior, I’m just not convinced of the efficacy of trying to impose it elsewhere. I’m a pretty reasonable dude, when you get down to it.

All of which makes the current outrage afflicting my previously pristine quarters overlooking San Francisco’s Aquatic Park all the more difficult to brook with equanimity and grace. Last Sunday, after several days away from home, I returned to find that my housemate was going away to Aruba for a wedding and would be gone most of the week. I also found that two textbook cases of unmitigated hippie scum, itinerant jewelry “artists” who eschew last names, had been invited to stay the week and furnished a pair of keys. I was further informed that they were recuperating from an infection of “worms”, and were treating themselves with a strict diet of vegetables and almonds.

I have been familiar with these two for some time, and I must disclose that my enthusiasm becomes more restrained with each successive visit. Past highlights include the matriarch and nutritionist, as it were, informing me that “you shouldn’t eat fruit with anything else, because it rots in your system”, and the whole menagerie badmouthing my friend, the human rights attorney, for being a “fancy Stanford and Yale person” while they thought she was out of earshot.

One could debate the merits of taking nutritional advice from people who sleep until 3 PM, smoke cannabinoid stimulants throughout the weekday, appear to have four or five functioning brain cells left, and make a point of driving across town to dine at Café Gratitude. But that's a given. I will instead present some of the more noteworthy scenes of this past week, for your moral instruction:

Scene 1: Wednesday, 10/31/07, 4:00 PM. The male hippie has risen for the first time all day and is busying himself in the kitchen.

Me. So, what’s the plan for the rest of the week?
Male Hippie: We don’t have plans, we have visions.

Scene 2: The same day, 5:15 PM. The female hippie is busy concocting numerous unappetizing substances in a blender. I enter the kitchen to put together a marinade for that evening’s dinner.

Female Hippie: Hey, do you want me to clear some room? Are you gonna make lunch?
Me: No, that was a long time ago.

Scene 3: The following day, around 3:30 PM. The male hippie shambles into the kitchen in a state of obvious decrepitude.

Me (pointedly): Good morning.
Male Hippie: Good morning, man.
Me: I was kidding.

Scene 4: Several hours later. After disappearing back into my housemate’s bedroom, with no evidence as to the activities within save for a steady trail of marijuana smoke, the male hippie re-emerges.

Me: So, what’s the agenda for this week, guys?
Male Hippie: We might be taking off in a couple of days. We want to find some more stores to sell our jewelry, but we got a lot of work to do before we can do that, y’know.
Me: (Suppresses urge to helpfully point out that waking up during normal business hours and leaving the house might be effective ways to follow through on this strategy). Yeah…you know, I’m going to be doing a silent meditation all weekend, so the sooner you all could clear out, the better.
Male Hippie: Cool, man.

Scene 5: Saturday, 11/3/07, 3 PM. Both hippies, in an unprecedented state of dress and mobility, leave the house, bags in tow.

Hippies: See you later, Gabe!
Me (overjoyed): Are you guys leaving for good??
Female Hippie: No, we’re just checking out some stores! We’ll be back!

I’m heading back to my apartment now after a day exploring many of San Francisco’s cosmopolitan pleasures. Who knows what I’ll find on my return.

“The omen is bad…Today, I saw the day become like night. I saw a man run with the Jaguar…”

To be continued.

Concerning Brave Captains: Jay Fliegelman, 1949-2007

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:01:00 +0000

“Rosen, you should check out this class with me. I hear this guy is amazing.” So said Noah Barron, my brother in arms in the English department, with little idea how prescient he would turn out to be. The spring quarter course catalog said only “Eng 138: Melville”, and I had never heard of the professor, Jay Fliegelman, though his name had a pleasant familiarity to it. It was an unseasonably warm day, and the seminar room on the edge of the quad was filled to capacity. A signup sheet went around, but there were no pleasantries or introductory remarks dispensed. Instead, as sweat beaded on his forehead, Jay Fliegelman read Melville’s “John Brown” with searing clarity, until, as he hit the poem’s iconic final line, “The meteor of the war”, a whole room trembled along with him. Judging by the look Noah and I shot each other as we filed out of that classroom, we had come home at last. Not everyone, however, was equally moved. Another friend remarked, “I dunno, I think this guy is a little too intense for me.” He was probably right.

For all his oracular qualities, Jay was also a lot of fun, especially in those early days of the quarter, which were ardently consumed in cracking his newest students open as thinkers. On the first day of class, he promised that an extremely long term paper would be required, then, on the second day revealed with no little mischief that he’d only said so to scare away the pretenders. Jay’s teaching recalled what Edward O. Wilson said about good science – that it consists of play disguised as serious work. Our work, nonetheless, was cut out for us. To follow Jay’s inquiries was to hitch a ride from the inscrutable to the sublime, often within minutes, as he coaxed each student from fogginess to intimation to discovery. The questions usually stemmed from somewhat counterintuitive focal points, and it seemed almost a game: what absurd political cartoon, tangentially related landscape painting, or 1840s household object would lead us closer to the truth today? Invariably, Jay supplied just enough revelation - any more and we might have started to take things seriously.

All levity aside, however, it quickly became clear that Jay Fliegelman’s teaching centered on a proposition more radical than any critical theory or political agenda: that his students had ideas worth seeing through. His penetrating brand of scholarship defied easy categorization, while rising above the fray that tends to dominate the academy. He opposed himself against no orthodoxies more violently than intellectual complacency and reliance on others to supply personal conviction. Jay’s guidelines for how to write a paper sounded innocent enough: Pick out something in the text that speaks to you, something that gets stuck in your head, and work inductively to get to the bottom of it. What Jay did not advertise, but what we all found to be true, was that he would help a student to attack the “pasteboard mask” of uncertainty with a vengeance worthy of Captain Ahab himself.

Jay was not given to overt political pronouncements, being both too wise and too jaded. All the same, it was clear how acutely he felt the sting of an age when America seemed to be turning its back – gleefully – on its own intellect. As someone who had dedicated his career to charting the evolution of the American mind, it was only right that Jay should be among its most jealous guardians. Having assembled the members of the Melville seminar in his home for an end-of-quarter pizza party, Jay exhorted us to strive to truly become intellectuals, and to wear that mantle without apology. At a time when Americans were being told in no uncertain terms to watch what they said, Jay raised the specter of unquestioning acceptance, and it was as terrifying as any of the more obvious demons thought to afflict us.

I spent two memorable summers assisting Jay with the researching of his long-awaited masterwork, Belongings: Dramas of American Book Ownership. Though we were nominally working under the auspices of Summer Research College, a flagship program with formal dinners and presentations, Jay quickly dispensed with all notions of supervision and turned me loose in the libraries with only faint clues for assignments. We would, so the plan went, check in once I had something. Like many American Jews of his generation, Jay regarded Chinese food as a panacea, and our more or less biweekly meetings invariably took place over Mongolian beef and moo goo gai pan at one of several familiar Palo Alto haunts. Though the majority of these “progress reports” seemed to focus on our respective dating lives (at least during the first summer), we usually made time to go over the findings of the previous few weeks. It always held an air of high adventure, as Jay no doubt intended. On a good day, a connection might surface that had escaped the notice of earlier scholars, and Jay would note, with barely restrained triumph, “That’s going in the book.” Having known him those few months, I understood, even then, that there could be no higher compliment.

One afternoon, driving to lunch downtown, I asked Jay if he was a Beatles fan, and his voice quavered and slowed as it did whenever making a particularly impassioned point. “I saw them live. Three times!” Encouraged, I popped in a mix, beginning with a shaky but especially ethereal bootleg of “Across the Universe”, and went silent, stealing furtive glances at Jay as John Lennon intoned “Jai guru deva om”. Neither of us spoke for the length of the song, and for some time afterward. Looking over to my right, it was clear that Jay had been transported, by forces stronger than a ’93 Volvo, to somewhere far beyond Palo Alto.

Not surprisingly, my education broadened when it was Jay’s turn to pick the music. One muggy July evening, on the way down University Avenue, he at first cranked up some standard Motown classics, then reconsidered, asking if I’d ever heard of Laura Nyro. I had not, and sat, mesmerized by her voice, as he pulled his Chrysler Sebring into a parking lot. With the devotion of someone who remembered his teenage years and still honored them, Jay kept the car on for the full length of the song, and began to sway, at first imperceptibly, and eventually with rhythm and gusto few would have thought possible. Turning to me, he exulted, “Is that a song, or is that a SONG!”

Between his New York roots, taste in restaurants, evangelism of Melville’s novellas, and talent for self-deprecation, Jay felt like a member of my own family, even in the early days. The effect was at once paternal, fraternal, and avuncular, and represented a sort of coming full circle for me: finally, thanks to Jay’s guidance, I could discuss Benito Cereno with my own father, who had been urging me to read it for ten years before I finally experienced it under the fierce torchlight of Jay’s seminar. Although my college graduation was almost entirely a blur, the one image that remains absolutely clear is that of stumbling, dazed, out of the main entrance of Memorial Church, and finding Jay at the head of the crowd of well wishers thronging the quad. Without speaking a word, we embraced, and then I ran over to summon my father away from the extended family, to meet the professor I had raved about in almost every call home since the first week of English 138. Fixed in the benevolent gaze of two of the most indelible influences I’d ever known, I felt my true graduation ceremony was taking place, and for a few seconds I stood as proudly as in all the twenty-two years that went before.

Jay and I last spoke in early November, 2006. I was at the height of optimism, fairly gushing about my various projects and prospects, though feeling a touch the prodigal son – after all, there was not too much evidence I was using the many gifts imparted to me by this titan of professors. On the other hand, he was the same man who, upon being informed that I would not be applying to graduate school, grinned ever so slightly and told me “Get out while you’re still young!” Jay, for his part, sounded as ebullient as ever. Typically the Rembrandt of self-effacement, he was finally permitting himself a bit of triumph. He was in high demand on the lecture circuit, at home and abroad. The by-then legendary manuscript of Belongings was developing apace, and promised to be the apotheosis of his lifetime of thinking. Finally, he had found, in Christine Guth, love, light, and wholeness.

We concluded our chat on a note of mutual admiration, and I vowed to visit the next chance I got. That I never did is a sin a thousand Yom Kippurs won’t erase, but, then again, neither teacher nor student ever set any records for synagogue attendance. Jay’s world was one of few pieties - and almost infinite reverence. Knowing his distaste for easy consolations, perhaps Jay would remind us that, as with the annihilation of the Pequod, the sea simply rolled on this time as well. Yet, to leave it at that would likewise be too easy a consolation.

Neil Young, writing in the spring of 1970, knew it all along: We’re finally on our own. It’s an ambiguous line, equally an expression of liberation and bereavement. All of Jay’s teaching held the conviction that we must take our own compass readings, however wavering or imprecise. Like all great captains, he prepared his crew, whether consciously or not, to someday sail on without him. That is our only solace today, as the North Star disappears over the horizon and unknown leviathans approach. We have always been free.

FIRE TRENT JOHNSON NOW

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

It wasn’t easy, but I have finally stopped vomiting long enough to put some thoughts down for your moral instruction. This morning, as everyone knows, witnessed Stanford’s wholesale destruction at the hands of Louisville, including a 22-3 run that left Stanford down 46-20 at the half and several turnovers below their own basket. It was an all-too-appropriate finale for a squad that has been in absolute freefall since a gritty comeback from a 17 point deficit to stun then-#3 UCLA seemingly ages ago.

For the sake of what’s left of our basketball program, Stanford fans cannot request that Trent Johnson be removed from his post as Anthony B. Joseph Director of Basketball. They must instead demand it. Johnson has done everything to bury this once-great program short of making his players compete blindfolded – although, given his brand of guidance, he can even be accused of doing just that. Under Johnson’s tutelage, today’s stat lines have become commonplace: 21 turnovers. 13-27 from the foul line. 10 turnovers in the first 10 minutes. I could go on, but I’d wear out the numbers on my keyboard.

From my freshman through senior years at Stanford, the team won 31, 20, 24, and 30 games, with conference records of 16-2, 12-6, 14-4, and 17-1. Since Johnson’s takeover, the team has won at most 18 games. They have made the NCAA tournament twice in 3 years, losing both times in the first round by a combined 43 points. They have beaten hated rival Arizona only once, at home.

Johnson’s teams step on to the floor unprepared, unsteady, and visibly shaken, getting down early and irreversibly. Ball control ranges from shaky to abysmal. With a lack of any rhythm to the perimeter passing game, opposing defenses have all day to adjust, as each perimeter player is forced to put the ball on the floor. Almost no effort is made to get the ball into the low post; despite the presence of two seven-foot McDonald’s All-Americans, Stanford routinely loses the points in the paint battle. Badly positioned wing players jack up three point attempts from almost anywhere, without reproach, while legitimately hot shooters are yanked from the game the moment they have established any rhythm. Defensively, Johnson refuses to make adjustments until the team is in desperation mode, stubbornly leaving his worst defender to get mercilessly picked apart. The same feeble motion schemes net opponents uncontested three pointers a half dozen times in a row. When substitutions are made, it is wantonly and without purpose, such as rail-thin forward Taj Finger for a lead-footed point guard.

At the center of this miracle of ineptitude is Mitch Johnson, a point guard who Trent Johnson saw enough in, apparently, to displace Chris Hernandez to the “2” in 2005-2006. Achingly slow, lacking in court vision, with no handle, easily taken off the dribble, and boasting the ugliest shot imaginable, Johnson the player’s presence on this roster is a mystery to all but Johnson the coach. While effective players such as Lawrence Hill and Fred Washingon have spent lengthy periods in Coach Johnson’s doghouse for relatively minor mistakes, Mitch Johnson’s record of cascading liability to his team has been rewarded over and over. Meanwhile, intriguing prospects such as Kenny Brown, Da’veed Dildy and Landry Fields must scrap it out between each other for the 16 minutes a game that Johnson isn’t forcing his team to play 4 on 5 from both ends of the court. Upon closer examination, given his contributions to the opposing team’s offense, we might be compelled to call it 4 on 6. Finally, consider Coach Johnson’s early-season penchant for playing Mitch Johnson at the same time as Carlton Weatherby, giving the Cardinal a backcourt averaging 6’ and 4.7 points per game.

All this, and the guy has about as much personality as a head of lettuce. I say fine. He can be a head of lettuce. Just let someone who knows his ass from a hole in the ground be head of Stanford Basketball.

Change on its own is no guarantee of success, but retaining Trent Johnson is a guarantee of the following: 20 point losses, dwindling attendance, golden potential gleefully squandered, scoring droughts long enough to read The Economist cover to cover, and a once-proud program sinking into an abyss of mediocrity unseen since the dark ages that preceded Mike Montgomery. Who, the last time I checked, wasn’t up to a whole lot.

Marshall Hydorn, 1982-2006

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 19:11:00 +0000

Late Wednesday night, the phone rang, and unsure whether I was awake or dreaming I picked it up. A minute later, I learned that my high school classmate and friend Marshall Hydorn had “passed away”, thought it’s extremely difficult to imagine Marshall doing anything as quietly or passively as the phrase implies. True, I couldn’t picture Marshall growing peacefully old. This was someone with “blaze of glory” written all over him, and at the same time it’s impossible to conceive of a presence so vitally alive being gone. I just can’t understand.

Except for some brief correspondence and a few chance meetings, I can’t say I saw much of Marshall the last several years. The Marshall I knew was mainly the Marshall of high school and one or two years after. Partially because he was so enigmatic, his figure loomed large in my consciousness, and there was also something uniquely genuine in him that held no mystery and needed no explanation. That’s the Marshall I want to remember, and despite the circumstances in which his life ended it’s the only Marshall I can remember.

Marshall and I competed together in soccer and swimming, and while he’ll always be known as a fierce individualist, he was also as fine a teammate as you could ask for. Without being violent, Marshall was a warrior, and he carried himself as one. When there were rumblings of aggression from an enemy soccer team, Marshall would stand up with an expression of simultaneous calm and fearlessness that made it clear that he was ready and willing to take them all on. It was a look that could take your measure in an instant, and throughout more than a few tense moments, I never saw anyone fail to back down.

Marshall was no less intimidating in the pool, but it was there that his freewheeling, celebrity side emerged. He cut an unmistakable figure on the deck with his shades, sideburns and shock of black hair, and was one of the few seasonal swimmers to specialize in the 100 yard butterfly, which he swam with bravado. He was an excellent relay teammate as well, fast off the blocks and quick to offer inspiration, often derived from the martial arts movies he loved. My favorite Marshall moment, however, was when I was dispatched to go find him and tell him to put his suit back on because we had a 200 yard freestyle relay to swim in 3 minutes. Marshall, of course, was at the far end of the P.G. High aquatics complex, dressed to the nines and entertaining several female P.G. students, to the obvious resentment of some of their football players. Marshall continued his virtuoso flirting performance for another minute as my blood pressure inched upwards, then changed in a flash and arrived at the blocks just in time to swim a great race. Recognizing greatness, no one said a word about it.

Our senior year was marked by a cultural renaissance of sorts at Carmel High, and Marshall was, as usual, in the thick of it. One of his more remarkable contributions was introducing the practice of Falun Gong, a series of meditation exercises followed by millions and brutally suppressed by the Chinese government. Along with Tom Logan, Marshall established weekly Falun Gong sessions in Room 36, leading the exercises with a strong sense of both spiritual discipline and solidarity with oppressed followers in China. Marshall was seemingly everywhere at once: DJ’ing Asian hip-hop at lunch, forming the breakdancing club, injecting new life into student government, and keeping things interesting in many unofficial capacities as well. One weekend, I was told that Marshall was filming a kung fu movie in Carmel, and to get downtown as fast as possible. Never mind if anyone besides him knew kung fu, or if we had a script or the proper equipment. I’d learned some time before to show up first and ask questions later, if ever. No one had a cell phone in those days, and by the time I caught up with everyone the kung fu movie was several plans ago. It didn’t matter. Life with Marshall was cinema enough.

That was Marshall the persona, and, regrettably, for much of the time I knew the persona better than the person. Marshall the person, for me, was defined by two things: he was up for anything, and if you were in a fix, he would be there in two seconds. There are people who can attest to that much better than I can, but the quality was unmistakable in him. As a friend, Marshall’s life, for better or worse, was a study in brotherhood. As an individual, he was colored by a relentless hunger for truth. I’m not sure if he ever knew how much he really possessed.

The association seems wrong – too mellow, perhaps - but there’s a Jackson Browne song called “The Barricades of Heaven” that I haven’t been able to get out of my head since I heard the news. Recalling his own feverish coming of age, Browne sings,

Running down around the towns along the shore
When I was sixteen and on my own
No, I couldn’t tell you what the hell those brakes were for
I was just trying to hear my song…

I don’t know if I ever heard mine, Marshall, but I’ll be hearing yours for a long, long time.

Fahrenheit Four Five Wonderful

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 04:11:00 +0000

I. “I need to go take care of the big bunny outside.”

As with all great declarations, there was implicit nobility in this statement, and that bothered me. I wrinkled my brow quizzically before thinking better of it. The first step of the revolution, conventional wisdom would tell us, is questioning. The final step, I realized somewhere around Day 3, is ceasing to question. Make this decision a moment too soon or too late, and it’s game over. I nodded approvingly at the man, whose spiky tufts of hair ringed his pate in a sort of corolla. “Wicked.”

And with that, the afternoon bacon was served, as it had been since as long as anyone could remember. But then, the things I remember best now, I had no awareness of while they were happening. The important things, anyway.

II. "De Toqueville? More like De Tokeville!"

In desire of many marvels over sea,
Where the new-raised tropic city sweats and roars,
I have sailed with Young Ulysses from the quay
Till the anchor rumbled down on stranger shores.

- Rudyard Kipling, “The Song of the Banjo”

Understand this if nothing else: Burning Man, for all its reputation as an anti-capitalist confabulation of unwashed heathens knocking out tribal rhythms on a reused yogurt container, is at its essence a celebration of fundamental American values. Outrageous vehicles, fabulous babes wearing little to nothing, domestic comforts imposed ruthlessly on unforgiving soil, aimless migration from one abject thrill to the next, – we got it all, hombre. You have to bring in your own water, of course, which is a fair approximation of how Southern California, for instance, came to support fifteen million people with barely enough native resources for two or three. Progress and decline are both writ large on the stark expanse of the playa, where a metropolis of 40,000 appears and vanishes in the course of three weeks. I am tempted here to conjecture that Black Rock City ceases to be American in its commitment to politely disappear without a trace, but no, I decide, that’s not it at all. The dismantling of the city is merely the final stage of the immolation; the judicious and complete destruction of what you worked so hard to create mere days earlier. It seems harsh, tragic even. But it is thus that the frontier is restored to spotlessness for the next guy.

III. Viva Patriarchy

Seemingly everywhere you went, there was the bicyclist towing the papa bear in the Radio Flyer wagon, in turn towing a train of his identical progeny in individual wagons of their own. Once again, the supposed exponents of hedonism and depravity proved to be dedicated to the rugged preservation of family values. Inter-species families, granted, but families nonetheless. Like all good children, the bears maintained strict silence and a single file.

IV: From Ralph Waldo to "Where’s Waldo?"

The former, as I’ve remembered in rare intervals of humility, once made some crack to the effect that “Every man is my superior in some way, and in that, I learn of him." Here on the playa, that proves true in an evolutionary sense as well. My fellow man boasts retractable claws, opposable toes, prehensile tails, compound eyes, fangs, wings, you name it. In the case of one fellow man’s 17-year-old stepbrother, there is a handsome pair of tighty-whities to match said wings. Take note, less enlightened adolescents: enough of this artificial bifurcation of “truth” and “dare”. If I’ve learned one thing today, it’s that they’re the same damn thing. Deal.

While discovering humanity in its localized whole is a modest task, locating a particular representative is anything but. One is almost resigned after the first few futile attempts to place all trust in chance, whose providence is certain, though it may lack attention to all the items on the wish list. Knowing only the coordinates of her camp, I set out in search of a refugee from the gone world. Approaching the first cluster of people in the general vicinity, I ask if they’ve seen a person of that name.

“What does she look like?”
“Umm ... she’s beautiful?”

Well, that really narrows it down. If I’ve been paying attention, though, I’ll realize that I’ve already found her over and over. Take heart. All of this is, to put it mildly, statistically improbable.

“Life is good, be it stubbornly long, or suddenly
A mortal splendor.”

- Robinson Jeffers, “Shine, Perishing Republic”

For my patriotic cohort, the burning of the eponymous Man is best witnessed in a manner consistent with the American dream: from a folding lawn chair. The mood is difficult to qualify; imagine celebrating every holiday at once. Of course, there is also something unmistakably funerary about the whole spectacle, but the ensuing celebration is not the “celebration of life” that’s come to be the euphemism of choice for the grieving. There is no discrete before and after; we have always been mourning and we have always been celebrating. The truth is, we’re all on fire, albeit some of us at more comfortable temperatures than others.

Like so many extraordinary events, Burning Man ultimately lays bare what we’ve always known: that there is no moment like the present, and it’s always better with the ones you love. Did I have to travel 700 miles and hasten the melting of the polar ice caps as much as I did to realize that? Probably not. But that’s a question for another time. Right now, I need to go take care of the big bunny outside. Care to join me?

"Live and don't learn. That's us."

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 21:47:00 +0000

So, as everyone knows, last Friday marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of my heralded arrival on this planet. I say “heralded” because it was announced in the Monterey County Herald. Well, that, and the fact that I’m an egomaniac. Hence, I decided that my birthday blog entry would depart from the past few months’ tradition of blissful silence, and instead showcase the wisdom I’ve gleaned from a quarter century of gleefully doing what I want, when I want, in the manner I deem appropriate. Coincidentally, this is a really short entry by my standards.

Things I Done Learned:

Attitude makes a big difference. When I went on a long weekend to Jewish summer camp in the sixth grade, I was resolved to hate it before I even arrived. I could have started with an open mind – and risked waiting until Day 2 or 3 to really make those counselors earn their money.

There are an almost infinite number of beer bottles in the world, but you have at most a couple dozen teeth. Save them for special occasions, such as when your birthday falls on a Friday.

You have only two choices: you can be yourself, or you can be a second-rate version of someone else - including yourself. You can’t, however, be someone else.

When people say “If I were you”, they really mean “If you were me”.

There are few things wrong with your personal life that a weekend at the lake won’t fix, or at least obscure for the time being.

It’s almost impossible to conceive of a more profound attachment than the present one.

Playing an unorthodox role doesn’t change the fact that it’s only a role.

It’s tempting to get wrapped up in what you’d do differently if you had it to do all over again. But you do have it to do all over again – just in less time and with more cynicism.

And, finally, being sexy is a full-time job, and there ain’t no vacation or overtime.

Only In America

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 22:52:00 +0000

I.

Last weekend, I was waiting for the bus on Van Ness & Greenwich. The Sf Muni, especially on the weekend, does not come "every 15 minutes" but rather when it damn well feels like it. As I dug my heels in for a protracted faceoff with my watch, a young woman approached me, initiating this feverish exchange:

Young Woman: "Excuse me, does the bus come here?"

Me: "Allegedly."

Young Woman: "I'm sorry, do you speak English?"

II.

Due to the NBA finals, I have been watching much more television than usual - although, to be fair, any television at all is much more than usual. One of the commercials that seems to really be making the rounds is for Cialis, an ED drug that promises to work up to four hours. At the end of the commercial, they admit that side effects may include an upset stomach, headaches, and a sore back. Seems obvious enough to me. My only question is, what happens to the guy taking it?

Kicking Ass and Faking Names

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 15:54:00 +0000

Misunderstandings, the more I think about it, really make the world go ‘round. Whether it’s the classic SNL Emily Litella routines about “presidential erections” and the like, or your typical Middle East religious riot, misunderstanding can always be counted on to add some color to life’s drab landscape. My father, a criminal attorney of some notoriety, is apt to describe a client as having been the victim of “a small misunderstanding about 70 kilos of cocaine”. Who could argue with that?

Easily among the most misunderstood of concepts is networking, a topic which, if it’s of scant interest to some of you, it might well be because of how it’s been misconstrued. Keith Ferrazzi writes in his modern classic Never Eat Alone about those unfortunate “networkers” who return from a conference bragging about all the “contacts” they’ve made – in reality, nothing more than a stack of business cards of people they met in passing. As Keith explains, these aren’t contacts, but merely a list of people you can now cold-call.

While the Internet has been widely touted for redefining the way we do things, I find it’s equally effective at allowing us to repeat old mistakes. Look on any social networking site, and you’ll find people who shamelessly amass names – call them contacts, friends, connections – until you wonder if it’s possible they’ve even met a tenth of those people. The only networking site I find professionally useful, LinkedIn, expressly discourages this type of aggrandizement, and that is why it’s (for the most part) effective. People only feel comfortable making referrals for, or requesting introduction through, people they trust. A revolutionary concept, no?

Of course, it was only a matter of time until the business card collectors invaded LinkedIn as well. LinkedIn displays the number of connections each user has, and to an extent it’s a good barometer of a person’s commitment to getting the most out of the service. Someone with one connection probably joined at the behest of a friend, forgot about it, and hasn’t gotten much value from it since. To be fair, in some professions and geographic areas, it’s not terribly useful. On the other hand, 25,000 connections suggests a separate form of indifference to the site’s goals. I get invitations to connect from these people all the time.

It’s funny when a message from someone you’ve never met begins “Since you’re a person I trust…” I end up accepting these invitations, because I’m a nice guy and I’ve learned the hard way more than once that I can’t afford to brush anyone off. But I seriously question the value of this practice when I notice that I’m connected to someone through someone I’d feel totally uncomfortable asking for an introduction. Not surprisingly, these trusted "colleagues" I’ve never met never seem to contact me again.

Perhaps to discourage blatant connection-padding, LinkedIn no longer displays the number of a user’s connections when it tops 500 – in that case there is only an icon that reads “500 +”. When I see that icon on the profile of someone I've never heard of who's just requested me, I have to wonder how many of their other "connections" are in the same boat. Frankly, I think it’s a perfect response. The connection-mongers, however, are not happy, and they’ve banded together to do something about it – namely, establishing their own wiki. Read their stirring manifesto:

Why MyLink500? LinkedIn no longer displays the number of connections for top networkers. Anyone with over 500 connections carries a notation only of "500+" connections, whether they have 501, 5,000, or 25,000 connections. This policy is an insult to top networkers who take pride in the care and development of their networks and evangelism of LinkedIn. This page is dedicated to these proud networkers.

Funny – I consider diluting the value of LinkedIn by making a mockery of its guidelines to be sort of insulting itself. I’ve never been that great at mathematical reasoning, so I’ll pose the question to you all: is an insult of an insult a compliment?

(Ironically, this nonsense is hosted by PBwiki, the co-creation of my good friend Ramit Sethi. It was Ramit who, in May of 2005, turned me on to Never Eat Alone. Thanks again, pal!)

Forgotten But Not Gone

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 21:34:00 +0000

So, as everyone knows, I didn’t write a blame thing for the past two months. Why? The truth is, there were a lot of factors. The Final Four, incidentally, sucked. Three total blowouts. Then I was dog-sitting. Then Desert Trip 2006. Consequently, I was too happy. Then I was too sad. I was too busy. Then my schedule opened up completely and I lost all sense of urgency and time management. Ultimately, the blog became one of those old friends you’ve forgotten to call for so long you’re afraid to try again, because it will never be the same and he’ll never forgive you for your failure to care. But who does?

Apparently, at least two of you. One of whom is Guru Khalsa, who frequently bombards me with whispered exhortations to quit my job, grow my hair out, and above all, write more. Thanks, pal. The other remains anonymous and left only this comment:

gabe, it's been almost a month. please write.

Simple, poignant, direct. I wish I could do half so well. And, having felt quite the same way of late, I decided to embrace that crack I saw on someone’s Nalgene sticker about being the change you wish to see in the world. I’m back. Let’s get down with this jazz music.

Last night, I attended satsang with Adyashanti, the spiritual teacher and funnyman known in my circle as the Bliss Bunny. I dragged a few friends along, always a dicey proposition. To keep things interesting, one was raised a devout atheist, the other a devout Catholic. The air was thick and stifling in the normally comfortable Unity Church of Palo Alto, the epicenter of I’m OK/you’re OK spirituality in the South Bay, prompting Adyashanti himself to remark, “I know it’s only a concept, but could someone try to adjust the air conditioning?”

After we got over that zinger, we were treated to a fairly enlightening discourse on the ultimate dimension of being, followed by Q&A, during which, as always, people with no discernible questions to ask droned on interminably, lulling us into a stupor worthy of spontaneous awakening. Afterwards, I was asked why I’m attracted to Adyashanti’s teachings, which emphasize freedom from struggle over freedom through struggle, and urge making peace with the unknown. My first reaction was, “Well, it runs counter to everything I tend to believe and do…”, which, on its own is probably not a great rationale.

We’ve all heard some brand of nonsense about the struggle within, but I’m starting to believe it. I’ve always been at odds with my own nature, and have found my greatest rewards in doing things I don’t like to do initially. My friend Bill Stewart, who is at least six decades older than me, says that you should get up every morning and do something you don’t want to do – and, I’m guessing, merely getting up doesn’t count. I never would have thought, for instance, that a former recluse and sociopath like myself would end up in headhunting, one of the most networking-heavy of all professions. I used to be afraid to call my close friends, let alone cold-call an executive I’d never met. But a funny thing happened along the way – the connecting process stopped being painful and is now something I truly enjoy.

So, I think, the internal struggle is not a journey in itself, but one stage. Doing something you hate as a discrete task can be rewarding. Making a career of it, maybe not so much. Ask someone who knows. They’re everywhere, and there are far too many of them. For more on this unfortunate phenomenon, check out the writings of my good friend Ian. I justify my ocean swimming by claiming that the water is so cold, you feel warm as a result. It’s taken some getting used to, but the truth is, it’s also almost ten degrees warmer than it was in January when I first donned the red cap favored by the mighty South End Rowing Club, where I often enjoy a post-nautical sauna. In other words, if it sucks the entire time with no noticeable improvement, something’s wrong.

It kind of reminds me of the time my friend Suzanne took me to a Buddhist meditation service. I was poked, prodded, and admonished by the presiding monk to sit correctly, face correctly, and fold my hands correctly. At first, I was highly annoyed; later, I began to think that there might be considerable rewards in embracing rigid discipline until it no longer seems difficult. The next morning, I woke up with the worst lower backache of my life, and concluded, “Fuck that guy”, which I generally believe these days as well.

Setting aside the spiritual realm for a moment, though, I think there’s something more fundamental about the internal struggle: personal contradictions are enjoyable, and inherently humorous. Joseph Heller , for instance, constructed almost an entire book out of sentences such as “Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly.” Or consider the Facebook profile of a good friend of mine, a talented mechanical engineer and a sensitive, empathetic, and loving person, who shall remain anonymous.

Interests:
nra, shooting guns, kickin it at the lake, drinking miller high life, pornography, smoking meth at the pismo dunes and kickin it there, underwater basket weaving, kickin it with the michigan militia

On second thought, as the cliché goes, it’s funny because it’s true. We’re from Carmel Valley, after all.

Nostalgia for the Present Moment

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:32:00 +0000

Shaking my head at what was left of my bracket, I remarked to myself that irrationality is a beautiful thing. If it didn’t land George Mason University in the field of 64 to begin with, it’s certainly kept them, as the man said, free and clean. Thanks in large part to these patriotic gentlemen, the average seed of teams in this year’s Final Four is a whopping 5.0. But that’s just the average. Those of you who know basketball would point out that the actual 5’s were mostly eliminated by the 12’s long ago. However, for Florida, UCLA, LSU, and George Mason, basketball’s pinnacle and holy shrine awaits, appropriately enough, on April 1.

More so than the championship game itself, the Final Four as a whole is a thing of majesty. I think that many NCAA hoops fans would acknowledge that whoever wins the whole thing is really of secondary concern. These four teams represent the best America has to offer, from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters. Everybody sing along now. The fact that three of the four teams come from the Southeast and one from the not entirely beloved confines of Los Angeles is of small import. The Final Four transcends geography. It transcends logic. It transcends just about everything – except, of course, alliteration. Until now, these four teams belonged to the people. Today they belong, like Lincoln, to the ages.

2006’s Final Four is an odyssey yet to be sung. Reflecting on the last half-decade of NCAA tournament glory, however, is like a visit to the things in the back of my refrigerator. Their time has passed, but an indescribable fondness remains. The memories, man. The crazy, sweet memories.

For starters, you always pulled for Duke to lose. This much was certain, and, legend had it, the day they fell in the first round to a sixteenth seed, Dick Vitale’s hair would grow back and time would be reversed. It always happened if you hung on for the daylight long enough – except in 2001, when the daylight never came. After jumping out to a 22 point lead in the first half of the semifinals, Maryland seemed on the verge of redeeming themselves for having eliminated Stanford the week before. Alas, it would be one more year.

And 2002 certainly had its share of moments. For instance, Duke lost – and in the sweet 16, on a missed free throw followed by a missed putback, against accidental tourist Jared Jeffries and an Indiana squad so white and Midwestern that corn would sprout from the earth at the softest whisper of the name Dane Fife. Third place finisher Oklahoma had some great ballplayers as well, guys like Aaron McGhee and Hollis Price for whom the question of ever suiting up for the NBA game was almost an insult to the legend they forged in college. In the end, though, the turtles won. It was 1989 all over again, only Splinter was renamed Gary Williams and even more grizzled than the original.

There’s no sense going in sequence, though. It’s not so much the chronology or the history that matters as the seconds and tenths of a second of tournaments past, just so there would be time to inbound or hoist a final three. Hakim Warrick’s block as Kansas sank into the gloaming. Mateen Cleaves wielding the Claw without a thought for the NBDL. Marvin O’Connor of St. Joseph’s fouling out with 37 points, to a standing ovation. Casey Calvary, a Gonzaga forward for the common man. The “Fighting Wadoods” of East Tennessee State. And lest I forget, what in God’s name is Dick Bennett doing here?

But finally, and perhaps ultimately, this pronouncement from the redoubtable Lee Lightfoot as Arizona outlasted Illinois to advance to the Final Four, buoyed by the infectious spirit of a forward listed at 6’6”, 240 lbs, and every last bit of it Afro:

“Eugene Edgerson ... is the MVP of everything.”

May I Just Say...

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 22:31:00 +0000

This basketball season was a fucking joke, and an insult to the selfless and heroic service of Chris Hernandez. Trent Johnson has shown us all season long that he doesn't belong as a coach in a major conference (and the Pac-10 has been rapidly losing its claim to that distinction the past few years).

I'm not going to say anything else except this: Other angry young alumni (and angry old ones as well) are invited to join me in withholding donations to Stanford until we have an administration that doesn't feel a successful basketball program is inconsistent with the goals of a great university.

The Human League

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 17:22:00 +0000

One of the regrettable sports clichés to which I’ve grown the numbest would have to be “human highlight reel”, especially during these last two years of witnessing USC tailback Reggie Bush run roughshod around almost everything in his way. It’s no accident. Great athletes, for better or worse, find their life’s work distilled into snippets of film, moments of grace and impossibility bookended by close-ups of their protagonist waving to his adoring faithful and walking off the field in exalted resignation. Sport has always been as much theater as athletic showcase; as Bill Shakespeare once put it, “They have their exits and their entrances/And one man in his time plays many parts.” Heroism arrives by varieties and degrees, as does decrepitude; Prince Hal becomes Henry V, and perhaps an early – or at least timely - departure is all that stands in the way of one’s descent into incapacity and irrelevance. Falstaff, for all we know, simply hung around too long.

I’ve often wondered how my own highlight reel might appear. Would I look handsome, dashing, fluid under the microscope of film? My first temptation is to imagine my most glorious (and vainglorious) moments from Carmel Valley mud football immortalized onscreen: flattening five or six people en route to a long touchdown run up the middle, or perhaps flying off a corner blitz to notch a sack on fourth-and-long. I think I know what would happen, however. The camera, rather than rendering us more powerful, begs attention to our myriad failings. You never look as fast as you feel – in fact, you rarely are as fast as you feel. In that sense, the stopwatch is merely a more esoteric sort of camera. For most people, the truly magical moments become mundane when stepping out of their skins and into the nosebleed seats of objectivity. Why is it that so many would rather watch professional sports than their own unfolding lives? Safety in numbers, I suppose – mass agreement that something is worth exercising not only attention, but passion as well.

Drifting away from my athletic fantasies, and recognizing that I am, at best, a sandlot hero, I ponder expanding my definition of the highlight reel. It strikes me that romance might provide an equally fitting arena for the heroic and spectacular, while playing to a somewhat fairer audience. Here, too, I have the consolation of any number or scenes of my choosing. I can see myself now, transfixed by momentary passions into so many time capsules. I might be making an extravagant and unexpected gift, or composing the sort of sonnet that comes along only once or twice an attachment. I could offer up a rippling shoulder on which to take comfort, or say, believably, that something is OK that clearly isn’t. Whether at my most stoic or most quixotic, it’s an image that’s as practiced as it is conjured up for the climactic scenes that cry out for such material. And, inevitably, somebody is going to say “You’re too serious”, or “It happened too suddenly” or “Her butt’s too big anyway.” And you – if you’re me, anyway – mutter “Philistines!”, completely missing this sad fact: aesthetics are only half the story.

I’ve always been a great believer in the aesthetic and narrative value of life. I like gaudy entrances, drawn-out climaxes, poignant exits, and all the cringing, breath-holding, and uproarious laughter in between. Forgetting these things, though (to the extent we can), it might be wise to re-examine the perception of something as simple as sports. In many cases – basketball being a prime example – we discover that we have lost in precious fundamentals what we have gained in momentary flashes of excitement. Look askance at a game of football, for instance, and you’ll see that, as often as not, it’s the solid, unspectacular movements, in totality, that win the game. While we might like to think of the three, four, and five-yard pickups as simply filling in the blanks between the Big Plays, they are frequently the routine, and the spectacular the interruption. Woody Allen remarked, famously, that ninety percent of success is just showing up. His glibness, however, belies the fact that there may be considerable honor in doing so, when taking into account the thousand temptations not to. Similarly, I recall a musical number from a Berenstain Bears animated Valentine’s special I watched in 1987, which declared that “sometimes love is just being there”. And, as anyone who’s ever been in love will tell you, being there can be everything.

Perhaps our perspective errs not in the concept of the human highlight reel, but where we place the emphasis. Perhaps what would prove most morally instructive would not be a human highlight reel, but rather a human highlight reel. These are scenes that scarcely rate a mention, and yet they fairly populate our days. In one, you might angle carefully around a car parked in the middle of the road with its flashers on, elegantly anticipating the reaction of the oncoming traffic. In another, a wry joke might distract your distraught friend just long enough to reclaim his day. In the midst of your bathtime reverie, you find you have dispensed just enough body wash to create a satisfying lather, while judiciously avoiding great excess. Your favorite song from high school comes on the radio unexpectedly, and, against all expectations, you choke up. And, unfailingly, you start to feel like a person again.

Feeling like a person is dependent on many different factors, some more, some less essential than one’s choice of bubble bath. We tend to focus on the visible parts of the spectrum, leaving on either side the invisible elements of our existence. On one side are the meaningless things that we know to be meaningless. On the other are the sobering thoughts. Nature has had, for instance, about six billion years to screw things up, and yet here we are. Your body requires twelve million complex chemical reactions to correctly happen every second, and yet happen they do, for the time being. If your life seems to be lacking at all in excitement, take comfort. Thus far, you are the highlight of the evolutionary process. Now, with your permission, I'm going to sit back and enjoy.

Parisites Like Us

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 22:22:00 +0000

While moving into my new environs in North Beach, I was lucky enough to uncover an old journal I thought was lost forever, documenting my backpacking trip through Europe in August-September of 2002 with Noah Barish, Andreas Baer, and Bret Ballou. Since I haven't really done anything besides headhunt like a madman since the last entry, I offer, instead of an update, a window on the not-so-distant yet heretofore ignored past.

...Typically, I slept in the latest, then we embarked for Montmartre, Sacre-Coeur, and a lengthy period of Waiting For Ballou in front of Gare du Nord. So much about this country disgusts me, namely the hygiene, constant smoking, pay toilets, Eurotrash bedecked in black shrink-wrap T-shirts, and at the same time there is a sense of culture, or at least history. As Andreas said at Notre Dame, “So much stuff happened here”, which is quickly becoming the in-joke of the entire trip.

...We headed for the Tour Eiffel, storm clouds gathering ominously. Once there, we were caught in a downpour so emphatic the whole street was like looking through an aquarium.

…From the prix fixe menu, I selected potage de legumes (a lot like Mom’s, surprisingly), lapin a la moutarde, and tartes aux abrigots. After dinner, we sat down to red wine on the stone wall, drinking the night away like real Bohemians in the red glow of passing riverboat lights.

…Stefan, I thought, shuddering. I still can’t believe his grinning, sinister presence has been extinguished. We progressed slowly out of the hostel, making a few stops on the way into Paris proper.

…The Louvre is far too massive to form a cohesive impression of it, So I consider it bit by bit. The Italian masters are all well and good, but you can only look at so many creepy babies and swooning Virgin Mary’s before they all start looking the same. Noah and Andreas removed their shoes in the mass confusion of the Mona Lisa room, and shuffled around successfully in vagabond style, like young Ulysses, before being busted by the museum’s gendarmerie…We made a forced march to Room 77 to observe my favorite painting, Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa”, where I posed with dying histrionics for latest in a long series of photos mimicking the attitude of the painting in the background.

The most important event of the day was that Andreas and I committed to sitting on at least one bench in each room of the museum. At times, mainly around the home décor exhibits, this activity superseded our appreciation of the art itself. I fell a few rooms behind and had to frantically catch up to Andreas, sweeping through each room and swooping low over the bench like an eagle catching fish, just long enough for my buttocks to touch down on the cushions. And that, friends, is my defining moment in the world’s greatest museum.

…We passed a million brasseries before finally deciding we’d found one authentic enough for a last night in Paris. Andreas made his own way, opting for a hot dog over Parisian fare. He also eschewed the sleeper car, the cheap bastard. I was privileged to observe this exchange:

Andreas: “Uhhhh….Merci! Merci! Je would like, um, (gestures frantically to the hot dogs).”
Vendor: “Un hot-dog?”
Andreas: “Yes! Oon hot-dog!”

I might be the world’s worst ambassador for America, but I get respect from the waiters here.

…The sleeper car consists of six beds, factory-farm style. Thankfully, only Bret, Noah, and me inside. After much internal debate, I opted for the bottom bunk, which I had not been assigned. After an all-too-brief chapter of Kavalier & Clay, we popped the lights, and I fell asleep surprisingly fast, bathed in the noise of the rails, the sleepcase Mom had sewed so dutifully, and my own nakedness. Pillow surprisingly ample for train issue.

End Age Discrimination In Your Relationships!

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 21:13:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with my good friend Henry. Henry embodies what I want to accomplish. He’s been married to his beautiful wife Marcia for three years, and hearing him talk, you’d think they were still on their honeymoon. He recently sold off his real estate company to spend more time on charitable work. He’s planning an African safari, works out every day, and keeps a close watch over the art world. And yet, some of my contemporaries think it’s funny that I enjoy hanging out with him so much. I can only assume this is because Henry is 86.

Relationship-building is a hot topic these days, and many of my friends are getting right in step. Still, it amazes me how few people my age (24) are cultivating friendships with much older folks. I’m not talking about being guilt-tripped into calling Grandma on her birthday, or occasionally helping an elderly neighbor unload his groceries. I’m talking about older people that you call on frequently, confide in, invite to your parties, email the latest good joke – in other words, treat like any of your regular friends. Why, you ask? Well, it’s a nice thing to do. But for those of you who remain unconvinced, let me list some advantages:

Older folks wield more influence. It’s no accident that, at 46, Bill Clinton was considered extremely young to be President. Although this is changing with the rise of young ultra-entrepreneurs, business, industry, and politics remain largely the province of the over-50 crowd. And it makes perfect sense: Older people have more experience, more eminence in their fields, and, perhaps most importantly, have been building their networks for longer. Who wouldn’t want to join a circle that’s been expanding and improving for twice as long as you’ve been alive?

Older folks can show you how it’s done. The older you get, the more responsibilities you have (well, unless you’re a certain uncle of mine, but that’s another story). Marriage, parenthood, your own parents’ aging – these are all challenges they don’t teach you how to face in school. And how could they? You don’t have to go it alone, though. Your older friends have been there, and are usually only too happy to pass on the benefit of their experiences and insights.

Older folks know how to have fun. Seriously. Although they often grew up in less permissive times, chances are your older friends bent a few rules in their day. They can teach you how to short-sheet a bed, and other age-old but ageless pranks. They know dirty jokes you’ve never heard, and they learned how to be bad boys from the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn. Who were they? Listen up.

Older folks have great stories. My friend Howard served in the B-25 squadron that inspired Catch-22, and you have to figure the wits he developed there made him the crafty poker player he is now. My friend Myles grew up in integration-era Mississippi, forging the democratic ideals he volunteers for today. My friend Taelen went to the same school as I did, forty years earlier, and knows a thing or two about stirring up trouble there – and getting away with it

Older folks can improve your karma. I’m sure that when I’m gray, I’ll want younger people around to keep me energized, share new ideas, and hear my stories. If I am so fortunate, I can’t help thinking it will have been because, having once been a young person who made friends with older people, I understand how an older person can befriend younger people.

There is much for us to share with each other as human beings. Why limit ourselves by spending 99% of our time with those born the same decade we were? I move we end age discrimination not only in the workplace, but in our relationships – and start enjoying all the tremendous gifts we can offer one another, young and old.

Ding-Dong, The Witch Is Dead!

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 01:09:00 +0000

It’s a bit out of date, but I thought I might weigh in on Wednesday’s classic Rose Bowl. I am not going to attempt to hide my glee, though I must admit I never thought I’d find myself cheering this wildly for Texas in anything. It is true that the shirts that were removed at game’s end included my own. Although my previous post bore the headline “it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a coming day”, I spoke too soon. After what was mostly a miserable year for sports, the bad guys finally got what was coming to them. And how.

The real story of the game as USC’s utter ineptitude in containing Vince Young. That he was going to run early and often came as no surprise to anyone – except, apparently, the USC defense. It was a spectacle worthy of the great Hollywood epics – the parting of the Red Sea over and over again. USC’s “defense” ought to be taken out and whipped as a disgrace to the memory of previous units. Granted, you don’t replace a unit that includes Mike Patterson, Shaun Cody, Lofa Tatupu, Matt Grootegoed, and Jason Leach all at once, but I’ve seldom seen a defense demonstrate such a serious lack of pride. This is not, of course, meant to take anything away from Young, who was nothing short of miraculous on the biggest stage of his life. Now, when he says he needs to meet with his pastor, it’s to pray he’s not playing behind the Texans’ offensive line next year.

Honorable mention should go to tight end David Thomas, who went over the middle several times to preserve the Horns’ comeback bid, including an incredible sideways diving catch on one of their most critical drives. A reliable and fearless receiver who doesn’t get enough credit for his hand in shaping one of the comebacks of the century.

Most of all, it was great to see the wind vacate the sails of the obnoxious parade of sycophants and bandwagon-jumpers that has swelled USC’s already despicable fan base. Much has been made, for instance, of Matt Leinart’s friendship with Nick Lachey, the former Mr. Jessica Simpson. It’s a great country indeed when the golden-boy quarterback’s prestige is increased by hanging out with a mediocrity whose only claim to fame was having been married to one of the most vapid celebrities of our time. How about Spike Lee, former New York Knicks eyesore, and his late-season bid to catch the USC fan-cam? On the other hand, given the state of his directing career, whatever works, right?

What’s most disappointing is the people who root for USC because “you have to support the Pac-10”. This is wrong on so many levels. Ignoring the fact that the school is the right hand of Satan, it’s just stupid. I should suspend my bitter rivalry because they happen to be from my conference? As Voltaire was rumored to have said, “Le fuck that”. I don’t hate a team all year long and then turn around and support them because the prestige of the league is on the line. Does it somehow enhance the reputation of my school? Maybe if our games had been a little bit closer, but not really. Everyone knows that the Pac-10 is a second-rate league with no defense and one team that dominates the other ones, and the best way to change that perception is to have some of our other schools win every once in a while.

I actually talked to Stanford alumni this week who were rooting for USC in the Rose Bowl. To those unnamed people, you deserve to be stripped of your diplomas.

It's As Big As The Promise, The Promise Of A Comin' Day

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 19:54:00 +0000

1.

Last night, after drinking a glass of port, I came up with another one of my patented Fearless Policy Initiatives (FPI’s). The boys and I were talking some campaign finance reform: how it’s desperately needed, but no one wants to be seen squashing the free-enterprise-run-amok that is the electoral system. It’s a fine line. I think the average American feels an innate sympathy for racketeering, and for meaningful change to come about, the voter must feel that he himself, not some abstract concept of fair play, is being defrauded by the current system. This is the essence of Tom DeLay’s defense: I did it for you, guys. Screw the rules – you’re more important.

This is why the neoconservative doctrine has such innate appeal. Its message is exactly that. We don’t need to abide by international convention to launch a war, if it’s to protect our own. If your ass was on the line, would you rather I fussed around with rules and regulations, or dropped bombs until you were out of harm’s way? This why my older friends bought me beer when I was underage: my happiness was more important tan the rule of law. Well, that, and the exponentially higher likelihood that I would sing the periodic table once properly shitfaced.

Hence, any attempt at campaign finance reform must 1) empower the individual voter in a direct and tangible manner, 2) give the politicians themselves a forum for unfettered honesty, and 3) at least create the illusion that on the whole, freedom is being increased and not curtailed. As I so often do, I devised a system that satisfies all three major criteria, while remaining wildly advantageous to people like me, from whose gifts the voting public has been sheltered for much too long.

What I am proposing is this: All candidates are entitled to whatever campaign materials, endorsements, or promotions can fit onto their bare buttocks. This is a brilliant idea on many levels. For one, it would favor candidates with larger buttocks and lesser inhibitions. It would also make a brilliant instantiation of the vague but deeply felt notion that the longer a campaign goes on, the lower the candidates will sink. No one would want to be the first guy to bare all of his ass, but it would certainly prove expedient. And for those of us less gifted in the volume department, it would become as much an eating contest as a political one.

Finally, Americans would be treated to honest and uncompromised campaigning, while focusing on the part of a politician we all suspect is being bared to us as it is, albeit in subtler ways. The electorate would be given a chance to call the bluff of the elected. I firmly believe that the measure of service is how low one is willing to stoop for the benefit of others. I mean, we all loved the teachers who volunteered for the dunk tank, right? This would be a simple way to find out just how much your vote means to your would-be representative. Of course, it would also advance a premise that all of my campaigns have ridden, however discreetly I implied it: All other things being equal, shouldn’t your leader have an amazing ass?

2.

To those of my readers who celebrate Christmas, may it be a joyous one, and may you have enough friends and family that you aren’t compelled to read this miserable blog for your peace on earth/good will to men fix. To everyone else, ditto. To my Jewish supporters, may the theaters and Chinese restaurants be open early and late today. And, finally, to Sarah Silverman, in case you’re reading, I’m still single.

Twilight of the Gods

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 07:14:00 +0000

Five days ago, I announced the annual Thanksgiving Mud Football Classic for Friday at 2:00 PM. They say bad news travels like wildfire, but in this case it was sweet gospel that swept through town with blazing urgency. Navigating the hordes of Carmel High alumni thronging the local dives Wednesday night, the tension was palpable. Danger was more than just a posted sign. I don’t know if it would be fair to say that a table was prepared before me in the presence of mine enemies, but at least two Sierra Nevadas were. I smiled grimly at friend and foe alike, and slept soundly the next two nights, having made my peace.

Inevitably, at times like this, I recall the anecdote about the prisoner who, chided by his guards for dawdling en route to the gallows, quipped “Nothing will happen until I get there.” Evidently, thirty other people were thinking the same thing – in other words, the CVMFL enjoyed by far the best turnout in its nearly seven-year history. The result was a defensive coordinator’s dream and a tailback’s worst nightmare. The score at the water break, after which half of the players excused themselves, was a piddling five touchdowns to four (extra points are not yet attempted in the CVMFL). For the record, my team lost the first series and won the second, albeit in totally different types of games.

If I learned one thing from the fallout from the season preview, it was that I could not attempt to pay adequate tribute to all the athletes who participated, nor could I have foreseen who would emerge from the shadows of obscurity and decrepitude to reclaim his lineage. Nor, I should say, did everyone live up to the threats he made against your humble narrator for his crimes of omission. In any case, I am not naming names. Instead, I wish to salute every player on the field Friday, to a man. Whether it was the ability to kick mud in the face of an opponent at a crucial juncture, or a well-placed jab in the eye socket en route to a two-yard pickup for the first down, you all contributed something ineffable. We can look forward to the Christmas Classic knowing that the legacy of the kings is secure. As Brother Scott Manke put it, we left it all on the field. And there, where we laid that strange, dark burden down, shall we take it up again.

I have a few fond (and self-serving) moments from the game: recovering my own onside kick, coming off a corner blitz for one of the most vicious sacks of my career, and watching time and again as our defensive backs came up with the ball after the Flatliners forced a bad throw with our relentless pressure. Although very few of them came on offense, there were too many great plays made by both teams to enumerate here. Instead, I am going to request that everyone add his own in the comments section. Anything that you feel is worthy of publicity, feel free to write down. The battle to spread democracy to our planet has come right home to this blog.

(Cue bugles and drums).

Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 10:04:00 +0000

More than a few of you (well, OK, that isn’t true) have noticed that the content on this site has been pretty pitiful lately, and I don’t have much to say in my defense except that, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I have actually been busy enough to forget to blog. New city, new job…but more on that later. The important thing is, I’m back in action. As Mo’Nique put it in the underappreciated Snoop Dogg vehicle Soul Plane, “It’s time to get straight down with the get-down!” But where to start?

I. Well, this one is easy enough: The annual Thanksgiving Mud Football Classic will be this Friday, 2 PM, at Carmel Middle School. I am predicting one of the best games in the history of the league, and I can tell you right now that we can look forward to a stunning comeback from one of the sport’s all-time greats. Who could it be? There’s only one way to find out. Names have been named. Shit has been talked. Brother has looked into the face of brother and discovered the reflection of his own searing hatred. Nothing else remains to be done until kickoff.

II. Over the past few weeks, I have begun an exciting new chapter in the ever-expanding account of my dirty life and times. After months of flirtation and intrigue, I turned headhunter, signing with Goodwyn/Powell LLC of San Francisco – or, as I like to call us, the Pirates of 208 Utah St. The job is simple enough, to describe it: we get retained to find the perfect executive for a new company, and then we make a concerted effort to steal that person away from his or her unwitting and hapless current employer. We are the Samuels of Silicon Valley, anointing the kings of the age – or, at the very least, directors of business development. If any of this sounds shallow, ruthless, or like a waste of my talents, don’t worry, it probably is. I’m not naïve enough to think this will be my life’s calling, but, in the meantime I don’t mind admitting that it’s pretty damn sweet.

The reasons for this are numerous. One of them, of course, is being able to share an office with Shams, an Australian shepherd known for drinking beer, noticing hot moms at Starbucks, and terrifying a certain no-good cat out of its life. Whenever things get too stuffy, I begin prancing through the suite with an elongated gait, and Shams hops to attention. After all, there’s a big world out there to conquer. Another major plus is my “boss”, Brother Peterson Conway VIII, who in the course of my first day on the job set up a number of secret email accounts for me with obscene user names, ordered us quadruple Laphroaigs at the Big Four, and compelled me to indulge in an ocean swim at around 9:00 PM. I haven’t swum that fast since May of 2000. I haven’t felt that small coming out of the water since, oh, about 1988. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not admit that I get a vindictive pleasure from the fact that I am now in a position to capriciously select and dismiss people from companies like McKinsey, where I couldn’t get a job last year. Not to mention doing it all while wearing jeans.

III. Random reflections from life in the big city:

The menus at the Indian fast food joints that grace San Francisco (Pakwan, Shalimar, and of course Naan & Curry are three perennial favorites) include some fabulous uses of the English language. Viz. “Lamb curry with dominant taste of tomato”. Amen, brother. I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

One slight drawback to the cozy feel that makes San Francisco special: 795,000 people, 4 empty parking spaces. I suppose I’m not the first one to notice this.

I work not too far away from a mural honoring O.J. Simpson, who grew up in Potrero Hill and starred at San Francisco City College before taking his talents to USC. The neighborhood is no longer the uniformly rough place it was then, having attracted its share of startups, home furnishings, and import showplaces. Nevertheless, there is still a local strongman who maintains order in the streets surrounding our building, and used needles can be found by the pallets of junkies who sleep in the stretch of parking spaces under the freeway.

Even after all these years and the iconoclasm that has characterized most of them, nothing seems to epitomize northern California quite like the Golden Gate. Beautiful, vast – and expensive as hell.

A stampede of cockroaches across a restaurant floor isn’t necessarily a bad sign, especially to someone like me who sets so much store by authenticity. However, it isn’t necessarily a good one, either.

IV. Contents of my latest hand-burned mix CD, “Headhunting Music”.

1. Geto Boys, “Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta”
2. Dr. John, “Qualified”
3. Glen Campbell, “Rhinestone Cowboy”
4. Gogol Bordello, “Occurrence on the Border (Hopping On A Pogo Gypsy Stick)”
5. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Constipation Blues”
6. Tenacious D, “Fuck her Gently”
7. Warren Zevon, “Gorilla, You’re A Desperado”
8. Loudon Wainwright III, “The Swimming Song”
9. Johnny Cash, “Wanted Man”
10. Big Tymers, “No No”
11. Terror Squad, “Rude Boy Salute”
12. Crosby, Stills, & Nash, “Southern Cross”
13. Phil Collins, “Jesus, He Knows Me”
14. Randy Newman, “Short People” (Got No Reason To Live)
15. David Lindley & El Rayo-X, “Tiki Torches At Twilight”

Word.

Special Teams, Indeed

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 22:48:00 +0000

From 1987 through 2004, Frank Beamer’s Virginia Tech football teams blocked a total of 105 kicks in 213 games. That’s almost one block for every two games – something it takes some teams an entire season to accomplish (or not, in many cases). Beamer’s secret is, in fact, no secret at all. His special teams employ as many starters as possible, both offensive and defensive, in an effort to get the best athletes on the field. When the best athletes for the job do not happen to be starters, they are given the call. The result? Top ten teams year after year. Using the best talent available at each position - what a revolutionary concept.

It has often been said that we are living in a talent economy. Unlike my father and grandfather, no one ever told me to become a doctor, lawyer, or accountant. Instead, my parents, teachers, and mentors all said to do what I was best at. After a woeful attempt at learning computer programming my sophomore year of college, I decided that all other things being equal, talent and passion beat guilt and struggle every time. As a fearless communicator and writer, I’ve had jobs in editing, marketing, and headhunting. As a bumbling, incompetent, uncommitted programmer, I would have lasted two seconds if I’d even finagled a job at all. As a result, I’m a great believer in the talent economy.

Not everyone is, though. Last April, I got a call about an entry-level position with a sports marketing firm. Now, I’m a sports nut with a jones for relationship-building. I took the first slot available and the very next day I walked into their office, located in a slick commercial building next door to a major tobacco company. The interviewer was young, probably not yet thirty, and swore freely. He asked me two questions: 1) Tell me about a time you took on a leadership role, and 2) Rate your interpersonal skills on a scale of 1-10. For the first, I related my experiences as the anchor of my four-man kayak team, and answered a confident “10” for the second. The interviewer said “Great, that’s the interview – can you start next week?” I was shocked. I replied that I could not, but I left with an unsure feeling.

Perhaps I had just closed a door on myself unnecessarily. After all, I’d been looking for a new job for several months, without luck. Then it hit me: They’re more desperate than I am! How did it get this way, I wondered, if they were, as they claimed, an expanding company with a rock-solid customer base? My hunch is it’s an ingrained habit: when you make a practice of seeking anyone at all, and on short notice, anyone at all is exactly what you get. Maybe that’s how a company claiming to serve the sports markets of Oakland and San Francisco ended up in a small, depressing town in the no-man’s-land between San Jose and Sacramento.

Entry-level positions are the special teams of the professional world. They are taken for granted, and, at many firms, the least amount of care goes into filling them. For many people, they are more about not screwing up than distinguishing oneself, although a few folks do every year in almost every company. Too often, however, entry-level people are considered replaceable. Those sports marketers clearly believed that – I couldn’t name you one friend of mine with a college degree and decent grades who wouldn’t have landed that job provided he or she had bathed that day and put on clean clothes.

It sounds silly to say that the best companies are those that hire the best people – but the whole truth is that they don’t only do this for their best jobs, but for all of them. Frank Beamer has proved that even at invisible positions, talent proves to be anything but. Of course, football is different from the corporate world. While the star linebacker can also handle kickoff coverage, the CEO can’t take extra time and double as junior analyst. But star linebackers are born from kickoff coverage all the time. Similarly, a junior analyst candidate might prove, on closer inspection, to have “CEO” written all over him. The company that hires for an entry-level position with the goal of only filling that position has already lost the talent war. The question is not whether you can afford to invest the resources to hire top talent at the entry level. It’s whether you can afford not to.

Indian Summer of an Uncle

noreply@blogger.com (Gabe Rosen) — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 23:45:00 +0000

"Gambler tried to be a family man, though it didn't suit his style..." - Warren Zevon

I've always striven to be an avuncular figure, having benefited from many such people myself. One of the beauties of uncledom is that it probably affords the greatest opportunity for corruption of minors, while requiring the least convincing credentials as a relative. In recent months, I have been blazing new territory as an uncle, not of the cigar-smoking and racetrack-frequenting but the diaper-changing and baby-rocking brand.

If this sounds unusual, let me begin by reassuring you all that my brother, despite a thriving practice as a heterosexual, has not sired any offspring. Rather, I have been named uncle on an honorary basis, this being the best kind. Since July, I have enjoyed an exalted position with seven-month-old Molly Zander Franklin, she of the very big hair. Then, a few minutes after midnight on Wednesday, Oct 12, the world welcomed one of its newest constituents, Sage Beryl Tarozzi Melton, who checked in at a robust 8 lbs 6 oz. I had the pleasure of visiting this charming individual yesterday evening, although I had a devil of a time getting Uncle Pete (Conway VIII) to relinquish her for even a moment.

Sage's parents, Forrest (an earth scientist) and Kristine (a dancer), have teamed up on a number of ventures before, and have always hit a home run. It was no surprise, then, that their latest and most important contribution should be so stupendous. In days of yore, momentous events required that the poets of the age chip in with an occasional poem, and while I have always shrugged off the title of "poet", thinking it rather akin to "bum", I did hazard a sonnet in honor of Ms. Melton. It is slightly sweeter in sentiment than my usual fare, but give the kid a break - she's less than ten days old.

Sonnet

for Sage Beryl Tarozzi Melton

It's almost something of a magic trick,
A mystery sublime on which to pore,
This strange and wonderful arithmetic:
How love combined with love makes something more.

The glint of glass, the headiest of scents
And greenery enough for woodland elves;
You fashioned her of precious elements –
A leaf, a stone. And something of yourselves.

She'll grow to love the mountains and the sea
And revel in the wild and the wet.
She'll dance above the bounds of gravity,
And teach the gasping clouds to pirouette.

Look upward now. A harvest moon's agleam.
Bid sleep goodbye – and welcome in your dream.