A Little Happiness

I've been in bed for two days with a damned stomach flu, too tired still to do anything. At all.

So I thought I'd share a little happiness with y'all. My friend Susie turned me onto this video.

Back in 2005, Fat Boy Slim hosted a video competition based on his single "That Old Pair of Jeans," and among the submissions, was this entry which didn't conform to pretty much the only contest stipulation: that there be juggling somewhere in the video. While it didn't win the competition, Fat Boy liked the video so much, he wanted to honor it, giving Hula Girl a special "non-juggling" award.

Click here for more details and a link to a list of 10 other finalists. (Note: the links to the videos are broken but I'm pretty sure you can find them all on youtube. )

Mad Love

The cast of AMC's Mad Men
I can come off as a snob sometimes, especially when it comes to art. I like to be challenged by my entertainment as much as I want to be entertained by it. Those people who have “Kill Your Television” bumper stickers are full of shit. Really. Hey, I’m all for getting people to watch less TV, especially kids. In fact, I don’t think children should be allowed to even see a movie picture until they’re at least five years old. Like the late great George Carlin used to say. Get a stick. Go out and play. You’ll learn a lot more than you would watching purple dinosaurs.

But that doesn’t mean I condemn all TV. I think the boob tube gets a bad rap and it’s not just by people who don’t work in the business. I cannot tell you how many of my colleagues claim they don’t watch TV. Yep, you heard me right – TV writers who do not watch TV. Or claim they don’t anyway. Can you say “self-hate”. Christ, could you be any more transparent?

Me, I'm one of those people that loves TV. And right now, I think it’s an entirely supportable argument that there’s better art on the small screen than the big one. Take a look if you doubt believe me. I mean if you’ve ever watched even one episode of a great TV show, you would appreciate the power of that amazing little box of wires and lights (to paraphrase Edward R. Murrow).

Purists might argue with me, but I say that (with the exception of comedies) we are currently in the Golden Age of television; that there’s more really great shows on then ever before.

I had feared that the end of The Wire, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, The Shield and soon, Battlestar Galactica, would mean the end of an era, but there’s a lot happening on TV that makes me hopeful.

I hear David Simon’s new show is going to seriously rock – for starters, it’s set in New Orleans and will feature an awesome soundtrack. I have high hopes for Sons of Anarchy, too. It's a very cool-ass take on the outlaw biker world which just wrapped year one on FX. Tell you what I like about this show – even if you don’t know anything about outlaw biker clubs (and I don’t know much) you can tell the writers care about their subject. It just bristles with authenticity and yet it handles the whole world with a kind of fairness that sometimes gets lost when writers try to outsmart themselves. I came to it late but I like it and I’m looking forward to next season.

I don’t love Alan Ball’s True Blood (like I loved Six Feet) but it does have its moments and I like the acting a lot. Even though it’s getting canceled, I totally dig the look and idea of Pushing Daisies. I wish Barry Sonnenfield could bottle what he did on the pilot and make a movie like that. As much as I enjoy his work, the excellence of the pilot for this show (which he directed and produced) makes me think he could do a lot better on the big screen. I also think Shonda Rhimes is one of the most original voices working in Hollywood today. Grey's Anatomy has it's down moments, but when it works, it absolutely kills. (And I would kill to be in a writing room with her). I'm not as into it as I thought I'd be, but I acknowledge the greatness of Breaking Bad produced by Vince Gilligan another of our great current writers of TV.

But these days, I'll tell you what I'm really in love with, or more precisely who I’m in love with and his name is Don Draper.

Some shows are defined by a great cast, others by their unique take on a world, and still others by their writing or their finely drawn characters and some even work combinations of these attributes. There are shows I watched just for how good they look. A select few bring you into their world in such a way that you find yourself completely transformed. To me, right now, that show is Mad Men.

The show, for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, is set in the early 1960s, centered around a rising young advertising executive with a mysterious past, a darkly brooding man who is trying to figure out why having everything isn’t making him happy.

There's so much in each episode even though it seems like nothing is going on. I could be wrong but it feels like a creative choice. This show is all about the subtext, all in the nuances, which doesn't make it any more smart or doesn't mean you have to be "in on the joke," it's just its style of storytelling. And, frankly, the reason I think it's brilliant is because this was the reality of this time in America. It's not that we're all that different than we were then, but we didn't show our foibles as much. It was what we did then, we hid our skeletons in the closet. It was expected of us. It's not that it wasn't happening, it was just happening behind closed doors. And this show is set at a moment in our history when the doors were starting to open.

It was a moment of real, concrete change, where traditions of all kinds – religious, racial, sexual, social -- were about to be blown to pieces, literally and figuratively. Those last days of America’s so-called innocence, before Cuba and Vietnam, Birmingham and Kent State., Dallas and Memphis.

When I began watching it, I didn’t know much about Matthew Weiner, the producer (except that he'd been a writer and producer on The Sopranos), but I wondered if he was a fan of the works of John Cheever, the 20th Century American writer famous for his explorations of post-war suburban landscape. (My feeling was confirmed when I mentioned this to a friend, he showed me an interview Weiner did for Variety in which he mentions he was influenced by Cheever).

Don Draper, the show’s central character, played wonderfully by Jon Hamm (he's that hot guy in the picture to your left), lives in Ossining, New York where Cheever lived and where back in the early 1960s my parents were buying the house I grew up in.

Like Cheever’s stories, the themes of Mad Men are rooted in the main characters, who are, like most people, not what they seem. It's just like advertising, about which my Dad used to say, “the big print gives it to you, the small print takes it away.” The real world of Mad Men is simmering under the surface.

It’s the same thing that fascinated Cheever (and Updike, Rick Moody and others) who saw the modular sameness of suburban streets and their perfectly-trimmed lawns, white-washed fences and happy (mostly white) families, and couldn’t jibe it with the melancholy faces they saw on commuter train every morning. All this happiness and nobody’s happy.

Don feels like a guy in one of these stories. A man who seemingly has everything he’s ever wanted, realizing suddenly that it’s not filling up the hole in his gut. Part of it is the not knowing – he has a line in the middle of the second season about how he can't seem to feel anything - he's numb to everything. In the show, Don is doing what people like him do – he’s looking for answers, trying to find some kind of anchor to the world, something that makes him feel he’s not alone.

This theme runs through almost every character's storyline.

The cast is tone perfect, especially Hamm who seems to have walked right out of Breakfast at Tiffany's. John Slattery, who plays Don's boss and friend Roger Sterling, is particularly good. His dialogue rat-a-tat-tat-tat's off his tongue like machine gun fire.

The women are all fabulous -- ranking as some of the best female characters I've ever seen on television. They could have easily sunk into cliches of their time, but they almost never do. Betty Draper (January Jones) as Don's suffering, seemingly dumb-blonde wife who turns out to be much more complicated. And Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss) as the secretary who wants a seat at the table with the guys.

The sets are amazing and fun as hell. One thing that's hard to get used to is how much smoking they did then. Hard to imagine but it wasn't that long ago where you could smoke inside bars and on airplanes and in elevators. I mean there's a part of you that wants to put a "cigarrette smoking will kill you" as a running warning on the bottom of the screen.

It's not just the smoking. They drink a lot too -- everybody has a bottle of booze and two glasses in their office. (The old school journalist in me totally loves this part). And they drink and drive. It's as jarring as the oh-so-casual racism and sexism. It's all tightly bound up in a martini-cool soundtrack.

The show is more than the sum of its parts -- it says something interesting about its world and ours and the characters take us on a journey that's so far been rich and compelling. Some of it is uncomfortably heavy, but I like that the writers aren't trying to sugar coat an innocent time, like the world only got fucked up when we modern folk arrived. It's dark, yes, and brooding and there's been one or two off-course storylines, but the devil is truly in the details. This is one ride I'm thoroughly enjoying.

The Problem with Plaxico

I was reading a message board recently where half the posters were calling for the head of Plaxico Burress. Just like the Mayor of New York, they wanted to see the Giants receiver thrown in jail for discharging a weapon in a Manhattan nightclub and accidentally shooting himself in the thigh. Period. Let's forget that quaint notion that you're innocent until proven guilty or that the jails are overcrowded enough as it is -- with real criminals.

Nope. Let's make an example of a celebrity. Let's show we treat them the same way we treat the poor kid on the street.

Only he isn't being treated the same.

Because while it's true that there's a mandatory sentencing law in New York for carrying an unlicensed, loaded weapon the fact is that few people charged with the offense actually end up going to jail.

In fact, Jim Dwyer, writing in illuminating detail in his About New York column in the New York Times last week, makes this exact point. He quotes John M. Caher, a spokesman for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services who says “Less than 10 percent of the people charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, which carries the mandatory prison sentence, are ultimately convicted of that charge.”

In addition, there has been much speculation that the very fact that Burress is a celebrity will net him special treatment, but not how you think. It appears that prosecutors may not agree to a plea deal in this case, even if they would in other, similar cases -- because they want to send a message: if we throw Plaxico Burress into jail, we'll do it to anybody. Which is a load of horseshit because it sends more than just one message, like it's okay for the law to be applied to different people differently. Nice lesson in civics there, Mr. Mayor.

I'm not about to condone Plaxico's behavior. It was stupid, even if he had a reasonable concern for his safety, which I'm sure his lawyers will argue. Just four days earlier, another Giants receiver, was robbed at gunpoint. There is also a disturbing recent history of gun violence around the NFL -- a number of players have been severely injured, even killed by gun violence. Last year, Washington safety Sean Taylor was murdered during a home invasion. This September, Jacksonville lineman Richard Collier was shot 14 times by a man he reportedly had argued with, ending his football career at age 27. The shooting left him paralyzed below the waist and had to have his right leg amputated above the knee.

While his history is not as checkered as Collier's (he had substance abuse problems and at least one DUI arrest -- and so far none of that history has appeared to play a roll in the shooting), Plaxico's past is troubling, there's no doubt about that.

The guy clearly needs help, but he's no Terrell Owens. Not even close. What he did last year, showing up every Sunday and playing like a warrior despite ankle and knee injuries that would require offseason surgery, earned the respect of every man in his locker room. It also earned him a contract extension though I think the Giants took too damn long to ink that deal and as a result, Burress skipped most of training camp. How much this led to his problems (on and off the field) this season is uncertain.

On a team of mostly model citizens, he's unfortunately stood out this season. He is a very complicated man -- extremely bright, yet very emotional and extremely, painfully private. His teammates describe him as likable but aloof and distant. And while he's been accused in the past of not leaving it all on the field every Sunday, he has showed up for the Giants when counted upon. It's a cliche, I know, but if anything, his behavior this season feels like a classic call for help.

Does that make him a victim? No. Does it make what he did any less wrong? Of course, not. Should he go to jail? Hell, no.

I think he should be treated like every other first offender in this sort of gun case, not made an example of because he's a public figure. Fine him. Get him some counseling and take away his license to carry a weapon. And let's not pretend he murdered anybody.

Yeah, he certainly could have hurt someone and he certainly should have known better. But let's not turn his stupidity into a referendum on gun control. If New York City or any other place for that matter wanted to get guns off the street, they could do it. That's another argument altogether.

You gotta think Burress has finally received his wake-up call. You would hope anyway. We don't need to lock him up to teach him that lesson -- that's not what jail is for anyway. It's to put away people who are a danger to society.

Now for my second sermon in two days: this is the problem with mandatory jail sentences. For one, they're too rigid and don't take into account what almost always are extenuating circumstances. Second they rely far too much on an idea long ago debunked -- that harsh prison sentences are a major crime deterrent. Third it ignores the fact that sending minor offenders to prison exposes them to more violent offenders and likely influences them negatively, as opposed to "scaring them straight." Fourth, mandatory sentences haven't proven to significantly curtail violent crime and in some cases, makes dangerous criminals more dangerous. All they do is put an insufficient Band Aid on the issue of chronic recidivism, which is the real problem. Full-court handling of suspects who commit lessor crimes -- including psychiatric counseling and rehabilitation support -- works for most first-time offenders (those who aren't sociopaths or severely mentally ill and even some studies have shown it can work with a percentage of that population too) by preventing them from turning into violent criminal in the first place. If we really wanted to make a difference in violent crime, we'd stop locking everybody up and start spending time, money and resources on prevention and rehab of early offenders. Get them when they still have something to live for. Don't get me started. Fuck.

Okay, I'm done.

I just don't think there's any serious person who could put Plaxico Burress into the category of "danger to society." Everything he's done has been self-destructive pleas for help. At the moment, despite imposing a very severe penalty (one I think is warranted), the Giants seem to be willing (at the moment anyway) to ride this storm out to see if Plax can get his shit together.
It's possible that while his season is over for 2008, the Giants would welcome him back next year -- provided of course that he prove he's addressed his behavior problems.

This shouldn't be seen as coddling a rich superstar, but instead the pragmatic actions of an organization that wants to protect its investment while at the same time understanding there is a difference between a troublemaker and a guy who is clearly troubled.

I hope Plaxico can find his way through this. Even if he never plays football again, he's a bright, thoughtful man and he owes it to himself and his family to straighten his act out.


Better Days: Burress catches the game-winning touchdown in Super Bowl XLII

Big Three Bailout

I don't know much about whether the government should bail out the Big Three, but it doesn't take an economist to see the short-sighted greediness of the American auto industry. For almost every major advancement in auto safety and fuel economy and improvement in workers' rights and benefits, Detroit has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the point where it's a wonder they have any fingernails left.

All their protestations to the contrary, that the government has, for example, made them meet stricter fuel economy standards and put windshield wipers and airbags in every car isn't the reason they're bankrupted.

I've heard the argument that the industry is making the cars that people want. But that's just bullshit. While Ford, GM and Chrysler were putting all their efforts into making unsafe, inefficient, badly designed SUVs, the rest of the world's automakers (with a notable exception here and there) were making better cars. Which is why I drive a 6-year-old BMW that's running, after 80,000 miles, as good as it was when I drove it off the lot in 2002. The reason the Big Three were making SUVs was because they were cheap to make and had a far bigger profit than regular cars.

By the way, if you remain one of those people who still think that the only problem with SUVs is that they're not fuel efficient, or you're still under the impression they are NOT the most dangerous vehicles on the road for everyone, including the people driving SUVs, than read this book and get your facts straight. Seriously, if there is an object outside of guns that has a clear moral identity, I don't know of one. SUVs are unsafe. People who drive them are not bad people but they need to understand that by just being on the road with other cars, they are making the the world more unsafe for everybody. And it's a canard that SUV drivers are more safe just because they are in bigger, heavier cars than everybody else. First of all, just making the argument is frightening, because it means you could give a rat's ass about other people's safety. Second, it's statistically a lie. People IN SUVs are more likely to be seriously injured in an accident than if they are in a sedan. You can look it up.

Okay, sermon over.

Back to the Big Three, who are now, hat in hand, begging for a $40 billion bailout from the U.S. Government, all because they didn't look farther than the road than their own diamond-studded driveways. The only reason Congress hasn't kicked these idiots to the curb yet is because it would mean putting hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work.

That doesn't mean giving them a load of cash is a good idea though. What the fuck to do with them then?

Michael Moore posits one idea on his website today that, in general at least, seems to make a lot of sense to me. Moore is the Flint, Michigan native whose documentary films include "Bowling for Columbine," "Sicko," and his first major film, "Roger & Me," which chronicled the effect of General Motors on the city of Flint, Mich. (The Roger in the title being then-GM Chairman Roger Smith.) So he's not usually my go-to guy for objective political commentary, but I find if you look past his ego, the guy does have something important to say. In this case, I thought it was worth sharing.

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

Friends,

I drive an American car. It's a Chrysler. That's not an endorsement. It's more like a cry for pity. And now for a decades-old story, retold ad infinitum by tens of millions of Americans, a third of whom have had to desert their country to simply find a damn way to get to work in something that won't break down:

My Chrysler is four years old. I bought it because of its smooth and comfortable ride. Daimler-Benz owned the company then and had the good grace to place the Chrysler chassis on a Mercedes axle and, man, was that a sweet ride!

When it would start.

More than a dozen times in these years, the car has simply died. Batteries have been replaced, but that wasn't the problem. My dad drives the same model. His car has died many times, too. Just won't start, for no reason at all.

A few weeks ago, I took my Chrysler in to the Chrysler dealer here in northern Michigan -- and the latest fixes cost me $1,400. The next day, the vehicle wouldn't start. When I got it going, the brake warning light came on. And on and on.

You might assume from this that I couldn't give a rat's ass about these miserably inept crapmobile makers down the road in Detroit city. But I do care. I care about the millions whose lives and livelihoods depend on these car companies. I care about the security and defense of this country because the world is running out of oil -- and when it runs out, the calamity and collapse that will take place will make the current recession/depression look like a Tommy Tune musical.

And I care about what happens with the Big 3 because they are more responsible than almost anyone for the destruction of our fragile atmosphere and the daily melting of our polar ice caps.

Congress must save the industrial infrastructure that these companies control and the jobs they create. And it must save the world from the internal combustion engine. This great, vast manufacturing network can redeem itself by building mass transit and electric/hybrid cars, and the kind of transportation we need for the 21st century.

And Congress must do all this by NOT giving GM, Ford and Chrysler the $34 billion they are asking for in "loans" (a few days ago they only wanted $25 billion; that's how stupid they are -- they don't even know how much they really need to make this month's payroll. If you or I tried to get a loan from the bank this way, not only would we be thrown out on our ear, the bank would place us on some sort of credit rating blacklist).

Two weeks ago, the CEOs of the Big 3 were tarred and feathered before a Congressional committee who sneered at them in a way far different than when the heads of the financial industry showed up two months earlier. At that time, the politicians tripped over each other in their swoon for Wall Street and its Ponzi schemers who had concocted Byzantine ways to bet other people's money on unregulated credit default swaps, known in the common vernacular as unicorns and fairies.

But the Detroit boys were from the Midwest, the Rust (yuk!) Belt, where they made real things that consumers needed and could touch and buy, and that continually recycled money into the economy (shocking!), produced unions that created the middle class, and fixed my teeth for free when I was ten.

For all of that, the auto heads had to sit there in November and be ridiculed about how they traveled to D.C. Yes, they flew on their corporate jets, just like the bankers and Wall Street thieves did in October. But, hey, THAT was OK! They're the Masters of the Universe! Nothing but the best chariots for Big Finance as they set about to loot our nation's treasury.

Of course, the auto magnates used be the Masters who ruled the world. They were the pulsating hub that all other industries -- steel, oil, cement contractors -- served. Fifty-five years ago, the president of GM sat on that same Capitol Hill and bluntly told Congress, what's good for General Motors is good for the country. Because, you see, in their minds, GM WAS the country.

What a long, sad fall from grace we witnessed on November 19th when the three blind mice had their knuckles slapped and then were sent back home to write an essay called, "Why You Should Give Me Billions of Dollars of Free Cash." They were also asked if they would work for a dollar a year. Take that! What a big, brave Congress they are! Requesting indentured servitude from (still) three of the most powerful men in the world. This from a spineless body that won't dare stand up to a disgraced president nor turn down a single funding request for a war that neither they nor the American public support. Amazing.

Let me just state the obvious: Every single dollar Congress gives these three companies will be flushed right down the toilet. There is nothing the management teams of the Big 3 are going to do to convince people to go out during a recession and buy their big, gas-guzzling, inferior products. Just forget it. And, as sure as I am that the Ford family-owned Detroit Lions are not going to the Super Bowl -- ever -- I can guarantee you, after they burn through this $34 billion, they'll be back for another $34 billion next summer.

So what to do? Members of Congress, here's what I propose:

1. Transporting Americans is and should be one of the most important functions our government must address. And because we are facing a massive economic, energy and environmental crisis, the new president and Congress must do what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was faced with a crisis (and ordered the auto industry to stop building cars and instead build tanks and planes): The Big 3 are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.

2. You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company! (You're going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the "loan," and because we know they will default on that loan, you're going to own the company in the end as it is. So why wait? Just buy them out now.)

3. None of us want government officials running a car company, but there are some very smart transportation geniuses who could be hired to do this. We need a Marshall Plan to switch us off oil-dependent vehicles and get us into the 21st century.

This proposal is not radical or rocket science. It just takes one of the smartest people ever to run for the presidency to pull it off. What I'm proposing has worked before. The national rail system was in shambles in the '70s. The government took it over. A decade later it was turning a profit, so the government returned it to private/public hands, and got a couple billion dollars put back in the treasury.

This proposal will save our industrial infrastructure -- and millions of jobs. More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession.

In contrast, yesterday General Motors presented its restructuring proposal to Congress. They promised, if Congress gave them $18 billion now, they would, in turn, eliminate around 20,000 jobs. You read that right. We give them billions so they can throw more Americans out of work. That's been their Big Idea for the last 30 years -- layoff thousands in order to protect profits. But no one ever stopped to ask this question: If you throw everyone out of work, who's going to have the money to go out and buy a car?

These idiots don't deserve a dime. Fire all of them, and take over the industry for the good of the workers, the country and the planet.

What's good for General Motors IS good for the country. Once the country is calling the shots.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Prop 8 - The Musical

Why I Love Pugs

Reason No. 1: They know what friends are for.

"All the songs Odetta Sings"

Odetta died today. Here's a link to the New York Times obituary. It's a huge loss for the world. According to the story, friends said she hoped to sing at Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20. How fitting for a giant of the Civil Rights Movement to have performed at the inauguration of the first African-American President. Now, it will feel like something is missing. When Rosa Parks was asked what songs she liked, she answered "All the songs Odetta sings."

I got to see her many years ago. She was a gifted singer but she also had a singular stage presence -- not something you ever forget. And she could sing almost anything from old spirituals to blues to rock music.

Thankfully there's a number of videos of her performing sprinkled around youtube. Like this one of her performing with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his variety show.

And this one from 2003 at the Philadelphia Freedom Festival doing Amazing Grace. These guys are really jamming.

Odetta was 77. She died of heart disease at New York's Lennox Hospital. A great voice of the people is gone.