The guy who gets away with it
At the center of the 1997 noir picture "L.A. Confidential," there's a character named Rollo Tomasi. Tomasi is not a real person, even within the fictional accounts of the film involving the Los Angeles Police Department of the 1950s. Det. Lt. Edmund Exley, played by Guy Pierce, is motivated to become a police officer because of Rollo Tomasi.
"Rollo was a purse snatcher. My father ran into him off duty. And he shot my father six times and got away clean," Exley explains to Kevin Spacey's Jack Vincennes, "No one even knew who he was. I just made up the name to give him some personality... Rollo Tomasi is the reason I became a cop. I wanted to catch the guys who thought they could get away with it."
President Bush is Rollo Tomasi, and he's going to get away with it. Bush has fewer than 8 months left in office, and the Democrats in Washington, many of them complicit in his crimes, seem content to cross off the remaining days on their calendar, and let this criminal president wander back to Crawford to finish out his days. Not even the public testimony of former Bush spokesman Scott McClellan has spurred action.
In a soon-to-be-released book, McClellan asserts that Bush used "propaganda" and manipulated intelligence to sell the Iraqi war, while ignoring contradictory evidence of their policy position. McClellan also contends that President Bush once confessed to him having directly authorized the public exposure of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Washington Democrats, many of whom rode along on the bandwagon rush to war, have done little or nothing to hold Bush accountable for his trumped-up war or for his unprecedented attempts to expand executive powers spying on Americans or circumventing the framework of the Geneva Conventions on detainee rights. Time has just about run out. To date, the war on Iraq has claimed the lives of more than 4,000 American servicemen and women, along with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and still the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, led by Michigan Rep. John Conyers, has not considered the option of impeachment. The House at large has taken no action in that direction, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying that impeachment proceedings are "off the table."
In a 2005 Zogby poll, 53% of Americans expressed support for the impeachment of the president if it was determined that he lied about the war, but the numbers supporting impeachment have plummeted since Democrats took over Congress and allowed the issue to dissolve. Only then-Representative Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, now a Green candidate for president, has introduced articles of impeachment (in 2006), and Senator Russ Feingold's efforts to present even a scaled-back "censure" measure against the president for the described offenses has fallen on deaf ears. He has found only three co-sponsors for his bill.
The Constitutional promise of three equal branches of government and our rule of law fades into memory. "Shotgun Ed" Exley is nowhere to be found.
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The BBC reports that an "uncontacted" indigenous tribe has been discovered along the border between Brazil and Peru, and they've got
pictures. The photos are so extraordinary that they almost appear to have been doctored.
The new neighbors
Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Iowa's largest health insurer is constructing
this $194 million building atop a 6.5 acre tract of land four blocks from my home. I'd love to say the artist's rendering is inspiring, but the building looks rather plain to me.
I join in others' excitement over the renovation of Des Moines' Gateway West district, of which I have an emotional and financial stake, and I admit to selfish reservations about how neighborhood parking and my walking path to the library will be impacted, but wouldn't it have made more sense to have provided incentives for small businesses with multi-use developments to build on this space. Taxpayers are shelling out upwards of $10 million for Wellmark's project, and all we're getting in return, it seems, is an oversized eyesore that Wellmark can threaten to abandon at any time if the public subsidies dry up.
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One of the more heartwarming revolutions taking place in America is the rapidly-increasing public acceptance of gay marriage. Washington lawmakers-- both Republican and Democrat-- have almost all behaved like cowards in expressing support, whether it be Dick Cheney limiting his support to blood relatives or Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton hiding behind the concepts of "civil unions" and/or "state's rights," but Americans have come a long way in a relatively short time. In California,
for example, where the institution was just legalized, 51 percent of poll respondents now back same-sex marriage, up from 44 percent just two years ago. During that period, opposition dropped from 50% to 42%. That translates to a change-in-heart for more than 3 million people, in one state alone. In 1977, the same pollster found that only 28 percent of Californians were in favor.
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Ten percent of Americans believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, according to Pew Research, but consider
this...
22 percent believe President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance.30 percent believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.23 percent believe they've been in the presence of a ghost.18 percent believe the sun revolves around the Earth.That last one is especially hard for me to believe. Maybe it's because we capitalize the
Earth, but not the
sun. Think about it, people.
The sport of kings
As his nephew August IV attempts to ward off
a takeover bid of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, 48-year-old Billy Busch scored
a feature story in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch this month for his efforts to popularize his long-time passion and one of the most dangerous sports anywhere-- polo. The great-grandson of Adolphus Busch, and one of August A. Busch Jr.'s youngest sons (born when the late Cardinals owner was 60), Billy has been around horses all his life. A number of photos and trophies marking his equestrian pursuits are visible to the public at the stables of Grant's Farm (near the family castle) in suburban St. Louis.
You gotta love rich people. Forget the fact that, as the articles points out, polo participation at the highest level of competition requires a "string" of at least six trained ponies, the Busch family has long been able to blend their baronial lifestyles with proletariat demeanors. Said another way, they can be boorish. P-D columnist Bill McClellan once wrote, "One gets the sense not that they are barons who rule the peasantry, but that they are, at heart, peasants themselves. Filthy rich peasants, but peasants. Nothing prissy about the Busch clan." Polo would seem to be another perfectly-designed avenue for wealthy thrill-seekers.
Aside from the various drinking, driving, and weapons-handling scandals dotting the family's history, Adolphus' male descendents, of which there are dozens, never seem to hesitate when given a chance to bruise it up. And Billy may be tops in the litter, having once bitten off a man's ear in a bar brawl.
I hope it works out for him. There would be a sporting void to fill in St. Louis if the gridiron Rams
skip town, and I can think of plenty more destructive ways for Billy to spend his trust fund.
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Upon the theatrical release this weekend of volume 4 in the Indiana Jones trilogy,
The New Yorker has posted online
Pauline Kael's less-than-enthusiastic 1981 review of the first edition "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
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The Cardinals are scheduled off on Memorial Day. The people who run Major League Baseball must be certified geniuses.
Nationalize, nationalize! Also: The Clinton's latest angle
Rising gas prices (approaching $4 a gallon in Iowa) have taken headlines across the country, but virtually none of the news reports (
AP here) are addressing as a root cause the record profits being posted by our private-controlled oil companies. Oil executives have even been on Capitol Hill this week being grilled before Congress, and still the traditional media focuses it's coverage mainly on the Memorial Day holiday traveling season-- the
effects of high prices rather than their cause-- in essence buying into the oil companies' preposterous claim that global market forces, i.e. supply and demand, are solely to blame for the high cost of fueling up at your local filling station.
Betraying these executives' claims, though, are these staggering profits being posted at ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP America. Falling in behind the political cover of Vice President Dick Cheney, who eight years ago assembled a super-secretive national energy "task force" comprised entirely of industry executive-slash-Bush campaign contributors, these billionaire executives continued this week to press such a phony notion of public stewardship and concern that two of the executives actually claimed before the House Judiciary Committee that they didn't know how much they were paid.
ExxonMobil alone posted a $46 billion profit in 2007, essentially for performing the service of selling our national resources back to us. In 2006, company CEO Lee Raymond received a $400 million retirement package. That's an out-and-out raping of the American taxpayers. The time is long overdue to nationalize the exploration, extracting, and processing of petroleum within our borders and along our coastlines. Not only would that eliminate the costly, profane payouts to the boardroom middlemen who act as pimps, but the profits of a nationalized firm could be put towards developing technologies for future American energy independence, such as the transfer to alternative fuels, something the private sector has long promised but failed to deliver.
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I can't think of a dumber idea than Barack Obama choosing Hillary Clinton as his running mate, but at least now, the New York Senator's actions over the last few months make sense in a context. Clinton's efforts to split the Democratic party into two parts, after the delegate math began to turn against her in February, has been the same old "Friends of Bill/Enemies of Bill" tactic our First Disfunctional Couple pioneered in the 1990s when their reckless personal ambition cost the Liberal Left the legislative and judicial branches of our government and a seat at the table within the party's establishment. (And they then have the temerity to brand Ralph Nader a "spoiler"?)
In the Clintons' world, much like the Bush/Cheney world, you're either for them or against them, and if you're against the Clintons, then you're self-righteous, elitist, and now sexist and misogynist too-- not that a party that smothers all manner of anti-establishment dissent deserves better than the likes of
Geraldine Ferraro-- but it's aggravating that so many of our fellow citizens have bought into this fabricated and distracting conflict of the competitive disadvantages between black men and white women. Truly, what an enormous waste of time and energy.
Hillary has played both sides of the gender issue as it suits her campaign purposes, and more power to the campaign, I guess, but the tactics that work to shame her philandering husband into paying back her career with his political cache should have nothing to do with Obama, Nader, Cynthia McKinney, John McCain, you, me, or our daughters and granddaughters so desperate for political female role models. The rest of us were never sworn to love, honor, and cherish within the Clintons' altogether-unique marital covenant, and we should resent the implications of any theme of her campaign larger than that. As
The Village Voice's Allison Benedikt wrote tongue-in-cheek, "There is no greater wish that a mother can have for her daughter than that she will exploit poor people, obliterate Iran, and win rigged class president elections, Putin-style. (Mom, I won 100 percent of the vote.)" The women's movement, already a casualty of the Clinton White House, remains in a death-like state.
Hubby Bill pals around with Bush 41 and other right-wing fat cats like Rupert Murdoch while treating Barack Obama and his reform-minded supporters with the utter contempt he once reserved for blue dresses. Yet today's
New York Times reports he's now
maneuvering behind the scenes to have Hillary tabbed as Obama's running mate, as if Illinois' junior senator would want to share what would be a suddenly-cramped White House with one Clinton, let alone two.
I'm fairly certain that Obama has the individual good sense to see what a bad idea such a running mate selection would be, but if there's one thing we've learned in American politics-- beyond the corrosive influence of corporate cash-- it's that Democratic presidential nominees (read: Gore and Kerry) can have precious little control over the decisions made on behalf of "their" campaigns. And as summer begins in earnest, there seems to be an ever-growing number of Democratic bosses that believes Obama can only topple McCain in November if the Democrat is running as part of a "unity ticket" with Hillary and her husband. Clinton operatives, meanwhile, with the '08 writing already on the wall, see this as the best way to angle Hillary for another presidential run in 2016, and they're probably right. The Obama people, though, just shouldn't be surprised then when VP Hillary first challenges his re-election in 2012.
There, but for the grace of God...
These are the stories that single people dread. The remains of a Croatian woman were found by police in front of the woman's television in her living room in Zagreb. She had died sitting in her chair with a cup of tea at her side. But here's
the kicker-- she was last seen in 1966. As Yogi Berra would say-- Only in America.
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Frank Sinatra died 10 years ago this week. This month, he became one of the original inductees of the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Bruce Springsteen
does the honors.
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From
The Des Moines Register online today:
Throughout the crowds waiting to enter the security gates or to get their volunteer assignments at the Obama rally, there is confidence the Illinois senator will be the next president of the United States...Mike Newell of Urbandale said he heard conservative Des Moines talk show host Steve Deace on the radio bemoaning the Des Moines turnout for Republican presidential candidate John McCain on May 1. About 250 people attended an event at the Polk County Convention Complex.“Whatever we do let’s make as much noise as possible and mock the WHO studio down the street,” Newell told a team of volunteers.Is that Mike Newell, the Iowa Public Television producer? The same guy who did sports at WHO Radio throughout the 1980s and 90s. That's hilarious if it is. Way to go, Mike!
The horror of Jim Edmonds in a Chicago Cubs uniform
It is now for the Cubs fans to construct
clever haikus in which to sing the praises of veteran slugger Jim Edmonds. The starting centerfielder for the rival Cardinals from 2000 to 2007, a man who sports tattoos of both the late Darryl Kile and the late Josh Hancock on his person, has caused many Redbird rooters to cry "Benedict Arnold" by signing a contract to finish out this season and possibly his career on Chicago's North Side. Likewise, so many Cubs fans have been screaming bloody murder over the marriage of Edmonds and the Small Bears, you would think the team had decided to bring back LaTroy Hawkins.
I am not one who shares the Cards fans' sentiment, at least from the perspective of betrayal. I love James Patrick in the unconditional way that I love Willie McGee, Busch Bavarian Beer, or the International Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum. The moment the Cards' front office dealt Jimmy to San Diego in December, the franchise ceased having a say in how he makes a living or attempts to apply the finishing touches to his distinguished career. If a woman dumps you, she doesn't then get a say in whom you pursue next in your romantic life, and she shouldn't be surprised when it winds up being her sister. Time has a way of healing, anyway, such as the previous loyalty-shifting by the likes of Dizzy Dean or Gary Gaetti.
But I can't
root for Edmonds in a Cubs uniform. I'm hoping that the oft-injured 37-year-old has as little left in the tank as both the Cardinals and the Padres believe. I could even live with the prospect of "Hollywood Jimmy" putting up solid offensive numbers and regaining his once-sleek footing in the outfield grasses of the National League that he might exit his career with grace, but I cannot live with Jim becoming worshipped, or claimed as one of their own, by the fickle and villainous cretins of the Wrigley Field bleachers. No, that, I'm afraid, would never do.
What works best is if Edmonds goes into the tank and the Cubs faithful are handed still another reason to despise a man who clubbed 17 home runs in their park while wearing 'the birds' across his chest. Cubs fans-- increasingly-grumpy over the last few years-- are already pissed that the signing of Edmonds instigated the demotion of 23-year-old centerfield prospect Felix Pie (who, like the once highly-touted Corey Patterson before him, already held the dubious distinction of being issued Lou Brock's old uniform number (20) with the Cubs).
I hope for the best, but fear the worst.
The Sun-Times Jay Mariotti thinks the Cubs have nothing to lose by signing the veteran Edmonds for the relatively-paltry sum of $289,000, "For all the grieving over the demotion of (Pie), there simply is too much at stake to be patient with another 'can't-miss, five-tool prospect' who has had sufficient opportunity to prove he can't hit. Twenty-three strikeouts in 63 at-bats spells downtown Des Moines to me."
That assessment of the deal neatly summarizes, I think, the... Hey! I live there.
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In a recent study, people in Japan were polled to find out which person they wished were their boss. The overwhelming winner was an American baseball manager named
Bobby Valentine.
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Maybe the Yankees shouldn't have been so quick to release Billy Crystal.
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The New Yorker magazine and Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Remnick have come up with a list of
the 100 essential jazz albums of all-time.
Building by suit
Computer solitaire is one of my great passions. It's solitaire straight (Klondike-style), draw three, ignore point scoring, untimed, no Spiders or FreeCell-- only the way my grandmother taught me to play with her old-fashioned 20th century hand-held deck-- sound effects turned off, reset statistics every 100 games, change the appearance of the deck every couple months.
The "cascade of cards" upon victory sends a rush of adrenaline into my bloodstream. (It's called "solitaire," which means when you've won, you've done it all by yourself, Mister.) Upon once achieving the still-record 27 wins in a 100-game set, I took a picture of the computer screen with my cell phone, inadvertently also preserving indefinitely the date of this momentous accomplishment (9/9/07). Outside of computer solitaire, I don't know my Minesweeper from my Blasterball, and I don't care to know. Computer solitaire washes my brain in a way not unlike the hand-held version did for Raymond Shaw in the 1962 film "The Manchurian Candidate."
My brother plays routinely and believes that the version on my PC is somehow rigged against him. An aunt, unnamed here to protect her professional reputation, plays semi-nightly to help alleviate stress. Andy Dick's character, Matthew, on "Newsradio" stopped contributing to Jimmy James' fictional broadcast operation almost entirely so that he could devote himself to the game.
At my work, computer solitaire is strictly forbidden-- not that I have much time to devote to it anyway what with all of the websurfing and daily blog research I'm required to do to keep my corner of cyberspace as semi-interesting as it is. At home, though, you'll frequently find me multi-tasking with the game when I'm at my computer enjoying the latest streamed episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher," "Lost," or "30 Rock," or if I'm just waiting out those precious few moments in the evening before that special lady knocks on my door.
Slate's Josh Levin had
this to say Wednesday about the remarkable game that is as collectively important to our office cubicle well-beings as are those pitch-by-pitch online diaries of the afternoon ballgame. And such as with our National Pastime, computer solitaire's form is at once so perfectly linear and neatly tailored, yet so explosive and exhilarant, that we feel as though it must have been handed down to us directly from the Divine.
Who would Jesus deport?
Tired and poor, the huddled masses were rounded up yesterday in Postville, Iowa by INS officials.
The nation's largest-ever immigration raid led to the detention of 390 employees of Agriprocessors, Inc., the kosher slaughterhouse in the far northeast corner of the state.
Immigrants from beyond our southern border will continue to flood the country as long as we continue to starve their countries through NAFTA. The so-called "free trade" pact has not only driven down wages in the U.S., but the effect on crop prices has devastated Mexico and Central America's rural and agricultural communities and caused those populations to flee in droves. It's always easiest to blame the brown people, but this is another human tragedy hat's been caused by undemocratic, corporate-owned governments-- across several borders.
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The number one trafficked porn site on the internet is YouPorn, a site that allows an almost unlimited supply of free hardcore sex videos. It's
overall rank in web hits is higher than CNN.com, at #84 (I rarely link to either site), or Weather.com, at #195. The internet proves yet again to be the great purveyor of direct democracy as its small players are not forced to compete against the corporate socialists for fair access, such as they are in the broadcast, cable, and satellite media. YouPorn has existed for just a matter of months, has no promotional budget, loads of competition, and still it outpaces not only Playboy, Penthouse, or Vivid sex sites, but Time Warner's high-profile global news network. Power to the people.
Also, people really like porn.
Warriors rest
Three of the greatest St. Louis Cardinals of all-time, three of my favorites, and three of their teammate's favorites as well-- Matt Morris, Jason Isringhausen, and Jim Edmonds-- have experienced precipitous performance declines in 2008.
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Morris, who aced the pitching rotation for much of his tenure in St. Louis from 1997 to 2005, was released by the Pirates on April 27th after failing to win any of his five starts to begin the season and allowing 24 earned runs in 22 1/3 innings. The Long Island, New York native announced his retirement upon the release with plans to become a full-time dad to a baby girl born last fall, turning down offers to go to the disabled list, move to the bullpen, or take a front office position.
During the early part of the decade, "Matty Mo" was probably the biggest of all the little brothers to Darryl Kile on the Cards' staff. When Kile died in June of 2002, it was Morris who represented the team at the All-Star game the following month and hung his mound mate's jersey in the National League dugout. A huge music fan, Morris missed few of the rock and alternative acts that would roll through St. Louis during his time there, and nobody enjoyed the rivalry with the Cubs more than he did, or was involved in as many of the frequent brushback episodes. "Those were great times at Wrigley and at Busch," he said last week, "The intensity that Tony (LaRussa) brought and maxed it out, whether it was Dusty (Baker) or whoever was managing the Cubs... It was a true rivalry, the Cardinals and the Cubs. But the Cubs started to abuse me when I left (St. Louis) and then it wasn't much fun."
Research done by the Post-Dispatch last week found that only nine other pitchers in history with as many as Morris' 120 career wins and a winning percentage bettering his .568 retired at such a young age (33), but Matty says he's done throwing-- "I don't have any (next) moves. That's the beauty of it. I'm moveless. I'm not looking for anything. I'm not building a mound in the backyard to make sure I get the ball down."
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Jason Isringhausen is growing tired of dealing with his recent failures on the diamond as well. The Cards' reliever has been all too human coming out of the team bullpen this season. Though the team's all-time saves leader tops the Senior Circuit with 11 saves and is just 8 shy of 300 for his career, "Izzy" has blown 4 chances in his last 7 appearances, his ERA climbed to 7.47 Friday night, and he was pulled from the closer's role this morning.
Quite unusually, he had asked his manager to make the change, delivering some of the more blunt post-game comments in recent Cardinals' history after Friday's loss-- "I'm just getting sick of embarrassing myself and letting the team down. I remember in '06-- (when he had hip surgery)-- I had an explanation. I just wasn't telling anyone. Now I don't have an explanation. I'm pitching like a second-grader... It's just time for them to figure out-- we should have five more wins games in the win column, in my mind. We should be out there in first place even more. It's not a whole lot of fun, especially when you let down 25 guys day in and day out. It's the end of it."
Isringhausen and the team's coaching and training staff seem to agree that his problems on the hill are mechanical and not physical, but in that case, the decline is rather striking since the hurler blew just 2 of 36 save chances last year, posting a 2.48 ERA.
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And as for Mr. Edmonds, the team apparently made the correct decision in shipping the 37-year-old outfielder to San Diego this winter. "Diamond Jim" lasted just 26 games as a member of the Padres before being released Friday. He had hit one home run and had driven in six while batting .178 in 90 at-bats. Just as importantly, Edmonds' one-time defensive prowess, which has earned him 8 Gold Gloves during his career, had slipped badly. His battered and bruised body had reportedly lost a step or three after more than a decade of crashing into walls, sprawling his muscular frame almost daily onto the outfield grass, and after numerous foot and shoulder surgeries.
Though the Southern California native is still looking to catch on with another club, the obituaries for his career were rolling in on Friday. "Jim Edmonds was the greatest center fielder I've ever seen-- ever," said Milwaukee Brewers' coach and long-time scout Ted Simmons, "He did things on a baseball field that I've never seen any other center fielder do. That's not hyperbole. That's fact." Edmonds hit .285 in eight seasons with the Cards, clubbing 241 homers, willing the Cards to the 2004 World Series with his play on the field, and to the 2006 World Championship with his leadership in the clubhouse.
On Friday, Cards fans were composing their own Jim Edmonds tribute haikus on message boards, many alluding to the player's controversial sense of fashion. Here are just a few, for an unforgettable player who inspired a little style in all of us:
I had hoped to seeyour spectacular catchesbut alas, no moreFists pumped in the airWalk-off home run in game sixoh, the memoriesDive, young Jimmy, DiveGliding swan-like through the airWearing your half-shirtEdmonds highlight reelGreat American ownerTal's Hill is his tooJim has a half-shirtPretty gay, yet part of himRolen had one tooThe half-shirt, so freeWind cools your belly buttonWhole shirts are so lameI never understoodHow to writeTheseI love you JimmyLet's party at Pattio'sNext to your pictureGreat Jimmy BallgameRunning fast, straight for the wallAll for Bottenfield
"I know you are, but what am I?"
If you watch Bill Maher on HBO, you probably know Matt Taibbi, political correspondent for
Rolling Stone magazine. Matt possesses the proper lack of regard for the major presidential candidates put forward by our dominant political parties, and this week, he has written
the definitive piece on the bloody, much-publicized campaign battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
My contribution to the topic is that this culture clash within the Democratic party was inevitable. The two candidates are so remarkably similar and rehearsed on policy issues across the board, and both so disconnected from the actual inequities and challenges facing the American people, the Oval Office applicants had no choice but to get personal in their attacks to differentiate themselves. All along, the 'style over substance' competition between Clinton and Obama was destined to morph into one of shameless race and gender baiting, with a bold helping of disingenuous economic populism besides-- of which Clinton and her thugs have been the main perpetrators since they were playing from behind and because their team has always operated free of a moral compass.
With this election cycle, the Democratic party has hijacked yet another progressive cause (ending the war) and obliterated it. Courageous war opponents like Cindy Sheehan and Cynthia McKinney have been pushed off-stage, and the debate in Washington over putting an end to our blood-soaked occupation of Iraq has gone almost completely silent. The battle for the Democratic nomination laid claim to the media spotlight and transformed our nation's foreign and domestic policy debate into an ugly, unsubstantive pissing match between a pair of political flyweights. America is dumber for the entire spectacle.
The buy-out
Pundit
Lawrence O'Donnell says he has it on authority that Hillary will drop out of the presidential race before June 15th; and it's evidently
bribery that's going to do the trick. Sources say the Obama campaign would agree to pony up more than $20 million to settle the New York Senator's monumental campaign debt.
This is where we'll find out what sort of stomach Hillary Clinton has for the fight. Democratic consultants want her to leave the stage gracefully "as Gore did in 2000," but my recollection is that it was Al Gore who rather piteously stopped the vote counting in Florida that year despite loud and persistent accusations of widespread voter fraud disenfranchising tens of thousands voters, mostly minority and underprivileged. Only the Ralph Nader presidential campaign ever filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission over allegations of voting irregularities in the Sunshine State.
As a central activist contends in the political documentary "An Unreasonable Man," Democrats also offered bribes of extravagant sums to Nader and to his public advocacy organizations in 2000 in return for the candidate agreeing to bow out of the race, and party reps issued simultaneous blackmail threats to choke off funding for the groups if he refused.
Either you can be bought. Or you can't.
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With the completion of tonight's Cardinals/Rockies game at beautiful Taxpayer Stadium in downtown Denver, the Cardinals are now 22-13, 2 1/2 games in front of the 2nd place Cubs. I reference you back to
this CM Blog prediction from Opening Day:
If the team (the Cardinals) takes off at the start and wins 8 to 10 games more than it loses before Memorial Day, they won't look back.---
Did you hear that recently-retired baseball player Julio Franco had sex with a plastic doll? Oh, never mind.
Chris Moeller: He's Been Around
Des Moines Homestyle magazine is out! Des Moines Homestyle magazine is out!
The May issue of this previously-unknown and -unimportant publication has gone to press, and my condo unit is featured in not one, but three photos, and there's an eight paragraph piece of the phone interview I did with the writer. The photos look great, capturing the lack of pretentiousness in my home decor. Unfortunately, my Dad's tile job wasn't profiled (and my neighbor's was, alas), but the old man can't be too upset. Framed photos of him appear twice in a picture of my dining room bookcase.
Sadly, the editor of the piece saw fit to label my section "Chris Moeller: He's Been Around" because I told the guy I'd already lived in the neighborhood for a few years before I moved in. It's true that I've been around the proverbial block a few times, but that doesn't define who I am.
I wish I could tell you where you could see this exquisite issue, but the magazine's not online and it's not available on newsstands. If you live in the metro area, you could stop by the third (or fourth?) floor of the Des Moines Register building downtown for a copy, but even that's not a guarantee for success as I took 7 of the 10 copies on the rack there just for myself on Friday.
Next year, the cover!---
Actress Carrie Fisher
hinted on a London television show last week that she and Harrison Ford fooled around on the set of "Star Wars." Interest in this story leads me back to my theory that any film producer casting for a set of parents or even grandparents in a lighthearted comedy feature should open the door of the vault as far as it will go to get these two opposite one another again on-screen. They each have such a dry, endearing sense of humor and audiences already love them forever. Fisher and Ford would have been great in the Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman roles in "Meet the Fockers." Something along that line.
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Bruce Springsteen
inducted fellow Jersey-ite Frank Sinatra into the state's Hall of Fame this weekend.
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Baseball's Julio Franco finally
announced his retirement from the game last week at the age of 49. He debuted in 1982 with the Phillies. The end was marked by scandal. He was having an improper relationship with a 30-year-old country singer.
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Does that last joke make any sense to you? Please respond.
NOLA Travelogue- Part 2 (of 2) "Make Levees, Not War"
More rain met us at our hotel in New Orleans on Saturday, although with a kind of tropical flavor. I can tolerate rain when it's falling on swaying palm trees and accompanied by that fresh scent of green growing things-- a scent that hasn't typically arrived yet in Iowa by April.
After shedding our bags, we headed off for Vieux Carre ("Old Square" in French), the French Quarter. It was everything I remembered from our trips there as a kid. It's 78 square blocks of music clubs, strip joints, sex shops,
restaurants, galleries, hotels, elaborately patioed and balconied
private residences, and maybe a thousand t-shirt and souvenir stores, accented by the French Market on the river, and
St. Louis Cathedral. With
this link, you'll see a somewhat famous aerial photo of the city (facing east) taken immediately following Hurricane Katrina and the resulting breach of 53 of the city's levees. To the immediate left of the downtown skyscrapers in the picture, the area where there are virtually no high-rise buildings, is the Quarter, and our hotel was located not far over the interstate bridge found in the top right corner of the shot, crossing the Mississippi River snaking easterly to the Gulf.
What makes New Orleans perhaps the greatest American city is its utter distinctiveness. In the French Quarter, the centerpiece of the city's $4 billion dollar-a-year tourism industry, the area is mostly and refreshingly free of the corporate blandness that has damaged so much of the rest of the country. There was no "French Quarter McDonalds," as I could find, a "Fazoli's at Jackson Square" or some such-- save for a sprinkling of chain-operated hotels, a Hard Rock Cafe here, a House of Blues there, and handful of sex clubs that fall under the umbrella of Larry Flynt's publishing empire. We spent Saturday night at Maison Bourbon, a Dixieland and traditional jazz club at the corner of Bourbon and St. Peters Streets. Trumpeter Dwayne Burns and his band played, followed by headlining trumpeter Jamil Sharif.
The Quarter is bordered to the west by Louis Armstrong Park, which contains within a statue of the 20th Century musical pioneer and icon, and Congo Square, an open space where African slaves were allowed to perform their music during the 18th Century French Colonial era, and where European Americans were first introduced to African indigenous music and dancing, and which evolved into 95-98 percent (my estimate) of the music you hear in the United States today. According to a tour guide who kept following mysteriously close through the streets of the city, Armstrong Park is still closed by order of Mayor Ray Nagin as part of the post-Katrina renovation effort. The statue of Satchmo and Congo Square are both still very visible though through the iron gates of the park. And back across the street, still on the edge of the Quarter, is the spiritual temple of
Voodoo Priestess Miriam Chamani.
Attending the Jazz and Heritage Festival on Sunday afforded a chance to see the less celebrated parts of the city, and we alternately witnessed homes at truly every stage of abandonment or repair. Many of the homes in the city still have the spray-painted 'x's that were left by rescue workers on the doors or walls, and Aaron and I were both soberingly aware, thanks to Spike Lee's Katrina documentary "When the Levees Broke," that the number painted below the 'x' indicated the number of bodies found in the dwelling following the storm. As of 2007,
the death toll of Katrina was calculated at over 4,000, and officials estimate that even three years later, New Orleans is still at only 60 percent of its pre-Katrina population.
We exited the city late on Monday by its northeastern shore, driving across the five-mile-long I-10 Twin Span Bridge connecting New Orleans to Slidell, Louisiana-- a bridge that collapsed during Katrina and which will be replaced by a more storm-resistent passage by the year 2011. Aaron slept off his three-day hangover in the backseat, resting his sunburned flesh upon a cushioned pile of newly-procured Bourbon Street bead necklaces, as we followed the Great River north to St. Louis and back to Iowa.
A-Train Concert Series - New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 4/27/2008 - by Aaron Moeller
My brother and I drove to New Orleans last Friday and Saturday and never went more than five minutes without running the windshield wipers. There were a half dozen stretches of thunderstorms along the way that were severe enough that multiple cars pulled over to wait out the downpours. The rain was beating down its hardest as we drove the lengthy I-55 bridge across the western corner of Lake Pontchartrain, headed toward downtown New Orleans. Our hotel was further south across the Mississippi River in Westbank, a section of Harvey, Louisiana. Westbank, we learned later, had had significant flooding that very morning.
We found New Orleans to be as long advertised – wet. Our tickets for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival were for Sunday the 27th, day three of seven at the festival and the final day of the opening weekend. Rumor had it that Billy Joel played in a vicious storm on Friday night and that the collaborative performance of Robert Plant and Allison Krauss was a stunning highlight of Saturday’s lineup.
We parked in a virtual swamp at New Orleans’ City Park on Sunday morning (I brought some genuine Louisiana swamp mud back to Iowa on my car) and took a shuttle bus to the fairgrounds and horse racing track that serves as the festival’s annual home. The sun was out and I even applied some sunblock as the day’s shows started. I munched on my lunch – a crawfish po’ boy sandwich – as we gathered at the Jazz and Heritage Stage and listened to the Paulin Brothers Brass Band. (The festival is made up of both larger stages that present bigger, major-label acts and smaller ones with local names generally playing more traditional and indigenous styles - Dixieland jazz, cajun, zydeco, etc. The Jazz and Heritage Stage is one of the latter. Dozens of acts were on the docket every day and a music lover simply couldn’t hear all the music they desired.)
The Paulin Brothers are a popular local brass band noted for performing in the "traditional" marine-type uniform – black pants, white shirt, tie and band cap. The Paulin Brothers carry on the tradition of "Doc" Paulin, family patriarch and a Louis Armstrong-contemporary (!) who is still alive and kicking, but who retired from performing after the 2004 Jazz Fest. According to their website, Doc is in good health at one hundred years old.
Chris and I then listened to a talk with jazz chanteuse Cassandra Wilson, who was giving an open-air radio interview in advance of her late afternoon headlining performance. She looked great in a sundress, was open and engaging to listen to and no performer all day was more accessible as it was easy to get within ten feet and snap a picture.
Then it was out to the Acura Stage, the largest at the fairgrounds, and a performance by the
Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars. Some of the biggest names in New Orleans had put together this supergroup even before Hurricane Katrina as a way of bringing light to the devastating destruction of wetlands in the Mississippi Delta. Tab Benoit, a blues guitarist, is the guiding force of this outfit that also boasts one of the Neville Brothers (percussionist Cyril) and the great Mac Rebennack, a.k.a. Dr. John. No one did more than the Nevilles and Dr. John to rescue the New Orleans voodoo sounds and styles and bring them to a larger audience in the '60s and '70s. With their long, prolific careers – timed as they were with the psychedelic and funk music eras – they’re now elder statesmen and very much the face of the city’s music scene.
Side note: That Jim Henson based Muppets character, Dr. Teeth, bandleader of the Electric Mayhem, on Dr. John is patently obvious to anyone familiar with both. The other "Voices" in the band include bassist George Porter, Jr. of the Meters, drummer Johnny Vidacovich, New Orleans icon Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, fiddler Wayne Thibodeaux, and Jumpin’ Johnny Sansone on harmonica and accordion. But it was Anders Osborne, who’s guitar and soaring vocals on "We Ain’t Gonna Lose No More" stole the show. Unfortunately, five songs in, their set was cut short after their voodoo magic caused the skies to open and unleashed an hour and a half monsoon on the unsuspecting public. Suddenly, we were at Woodstock. If you meandered at all from the sidewalk after that, which was inevitable, your feet were certain to sink ankle-deep into the earth. Kids played in puddles, some plunging in up to their waists.
Chris and I went our separate ways after the rain delay. I stayed at the Acura Stage and listened to the Soul Queen of New Orleans, Irma Thomas. Thomas, grateful to the vast crowd who waited out the delay, treated the crowd to "Stone Survivor", "Ruler of My Heart" (perhaps her best known song) and "Time is on My Side" (a tune she recorded before the Rolling Stones had a hit with it), among others. Everyone waved a handkerchief or twirled an umbrella as she led everyone in the legendary New Orleans tune and indestructible crowd-pleaser, "Iko Iko". Though a contemporary of Aretha Franklin or Gladys Knight, Thomas has never had comparable mainstream success. But in this town, she had no difficulty filling the place – in less than ideal conditions – on the festival’s biggest stage.
Chris spent the rest of the afternoon checking in on legendary New Orleans clarinetist, Pete Fountain, jazz upstart Nicholas Payton, and Cassandra Wilson, all of whom – fortunately for Chris – were performing under tents and in presumably drier conditions. (I’ve had a crush on Cassandra Wilson for years, but with plans to attend the St. Louis Jazz Festival next month, where she’s the headliner, I settled for having heard her interview and took the opportunity to check out some other music greats.)
Enjoying another po’ boy – fried alligator smothered in cajun hot sauce this time – I looked in on Pete Fountain, but also Big Chief Monk Boudreaux and the Golden Eagles, back at the Jazz and Heritage stage, who have the whole headdress and Mardi Gras Indian thing going. Their smaller stage was packed with young people moving and grooving.
The muddy track had me running late, but I heard the unmistakable sounds of "What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding", the presumed set opener of Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint. I’ve already seen Elvis Costello twice in the last two years. With his Imposters, he opened for the Rolling Stones at Soldier Field in Chicago a year and a half ago. Then I caught him in a radically different
solo performance opening for Bob Dylan in Iowa City last fall. You never know what surprises Elvis may have in store – he has a vast collection of songs and thrives in collaborative situations and never more so than on the Katrina-inspired
The River in Reverse, his most recent album with Mr. Toussaint, legendary New Orleans rhythm and blues producer and pianist. Armed with Costello’s own Imposters, plus Anthony "A.B." Brown on electric guitar and the Crescent City Horns, the collective musicians unleashed the day’s most unprecedented soul storm as the sun again struggled to peek out.
Allen Toussaint took over lead vocals for "A Certain Girl", a song he originally produced for
Ernie K-Doe. "Clown Strike" is from Elvis’
Brutal Youth album, but it now has a Toussaint horn arrangement which would have blown off the roof had we been in an indoor venue. A thunderous trombone solo by Big Sam Williams added power to "Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further", already the most ass-kicking song on
The River in Reverse. With Costello’s dark suit and bolo tie to match Mr. Toussaint’s matching outfit (plus distinguished salt and pepper hair), this was rough and tumble R&B with a classy look and buckets of style.
Toussaint’s boogie-woogie piano and lead vocal tore into his own composition, "Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)", which segued into the title track of their album. I may have mentioned it after last fall’s Costello concert in Iowa City, but "The River in Reverse" is one of the decade’s great songs. An instant classic, it’s a pissed-off and fiery song to rival John Lennon,
Darkness on the Edge of Town-era Springsteen, or Costello’s own early records. He again threw in the lyrical declaration (borrowed from another unperformed song on the album), "In the name of the Father and the Son, in the name of gasoline and a gun!"
A muted trumpet solo from Joe "Foxx" Smith was a highlight of "Watching the Detectives", one of Costello’s best-loved tunes, accompanied as it was with another brand new Toussaint arrangement. Costello has collaborated with numerous musicians from a variety of genres, but these recent collaborations with Toussaint are electric and the often-radical reinterpretations of his songs have set fire to Costello’s back catalog. And as this setting proved, nothing beats the power of a big, live horn section.
Unfortunately though, I then had to jet across the fairgrounds to ensure seeing at least an hour of Al Green’s co-headlining set which was occurring simultaneously. Some legitimate sunshine blessed the Good Reverend as he quoted lyrics from "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart", his own chart-hitting cover of the BeeGees song: "How can you stop the sun from shining?"
"Everything is Gonna Be Alright (He’s Comin’ Back)" is a criminally underrated Green composition and the man was – as usual – tossing roses into the crowd. Dressed in a sharp black tux with spotless white shoes, Green’s face kept breaking into that million-watt smile at the sight of all us mud people. "Amazing Grace" kept us in the ol’ time religion, though Green
did gently comfort the audience: "Don’t you worry folks, I’m gonna sing ‘Love and Happiness’ in a minute."
I knew I had missed the first part of his performance, but I was still there soon enough to hear "Let’s Stay Together" and "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)" – two of his biggest hits. "People said I could wear a tux because I wouldn’t be sweating out here," Green told us. "But we don’t sing
those kinds of songs. We don’t sing (gently crooning) ‘I left my heart in San Francisco’, we sing (soulfully emoting) "I’M SO TIRED OF BEING ALONE, I’m so TIRED of on-my-own, won’t you HELP me, girl, just as soon as you can..."
Sipping liberally from a Gatorade bottle, Green had – by this point – shed the tuxedo coat and was drenched in sweat. "People often say, ‘ I wonder if the Rev’s still got it’," Green pointed out, just before reaching for a sky-high falsetto note and sustaining it for a solid ten seconds. The crowd roared its approval and agreement. I then noticed a woman walking by with a t-shirt that read "Burn K-Doe Burn", a reference to the catchphrase of the late New Orleans eccentric and R&B giant, Ernie K-Doe, who died in 2001, but whose spirit lives in every great R&B performance at Jazz Fest.
The skies again threatened to open and the day could not have had a more righteous finale as Green delivered definitive versions of "I’m Still in Love with You" and the eternal "Love and Happiness". It’s a wonder to behold that the man who is
still the best singer in our country is now 62 years old. But everybody knows great music never has to worry about giving up the ghost and it certainly can’t be washed away.
