Tom Watson

Lunch in Overtime

Four of us went to lunch here in midtown today, and you had to wait for a table at a couple of Second Avenue joints where you can usually stroll in for a casual club sandwich. The reason: overtime, Germany and Argentina. Now, I'm not a big-time soccer fan like Steve Gilliard but I do occasionally follow the exploits (or disasters) of Liverpool, across the Mersey from where the artist's family hails from. And when World Cup rolls around, I tune in as convenient. (Though I've never been the same since Columbia's 1983 bid to win the national collegiate title in soccer was thwarted by Indiana, 1-0, on a goal by Pat McCauley 2 minutes 43 seconds into the second overtime). So we're sitting in this packed Mexican joint, and the crowd is roaring - overtime and suds always creates a noise level around these places. Every couple of minutes the patrons erupt in a scat-like rhythm section, "uh-oh, uh-uh-uh-oooooooh!" Another chance missed. This crowd probably favors Germany, but just barely. Then they go to penalty kicks to decide who advances. This has always seemed insane to me, like flipping a coin in the 10th inning of a World Series game. Germany's goalie Jens Lehmann comes up big and stops two shots. So Germany advances and the local fans erupt (not in the bar, in the stadium; in the bar, people quiet down and go back to work). But it's a tainted victory to this American sports fan, like asking two pitchers to throw five baseballs each through a tire rope-swing after nine innings in the post-season. Two halfs, two overtimes, a massive investment of sweat and blood and energy and strategy. Then the slot machine. This and the lousy look-at-me refereeing has to change. Let 'em play on!

The Manly Pursuits

I know what men want, she said quietly. She looked down at the wet pavement, and her shoulders shook slightly. It’s all they want, she said.

No, he wanted to scream. Men want many things. They want beauty. They want hope. They want surrender, and warmth, and safety. They want a home and path through life shared by someone else very much like them, if only a little different, perhaps a little tougher and a little more realistic.

They want a salve to the violence in their souls – and all men have violence within -- a reason to fight the hardest battle of their lives; that is, making the choice between working for others, or simply working for themselves. And quite selfishly and consciously, they’ll trade that hard choice for the currency of domesticity and familiarity and comfort. They want their sentences completed, their thoughts anticipated, their needs met.

And the best men want poetry, lyrics to accompany the time stamp of the years. And they want a conversation spoken silently, in gestures and movement and the song of the body.

But he said nothing. He took her gently by the elbow and guided her across Seventh Avenue to the cab-stand, and put her in a yellow taxi alone, for the sad ride home.

Move Along, Son

The early afternoon Harlem Division trains out of Grand Central are locals, and therefore attract more of a mixed crowd than your 7:57 a.m. express from Bronxville. Fewer suits, more workshirts and battered boots. Students, maids, healthcare workers, laborers. People who commute at odd hours, riding from midtown to Melrose, Fordham to White Plains, Mount Vernon to Scarsdale. I had my back to the northern suburbs and my belly toward Park Avenue a couple of days ago, facing backward in one of the old cars, as the conductor came up the aisle collecting fares. Guy two seats behind: 30ish, green chinos, gray t-shirt, seated by the window. Conductor - tall, straight back, big ass, red face, sandy hair and spit-shined shoes - hands back his ticket.

"Sir, this ticket is for the New Haven line. This is Harlem Division."

"But the guy told me" - he waves his hand down the track in the general direction of the distant MetLife Building - "I could use this ticket to get to Crestwood. I have to get to work. It's the same distance as Mamaroneck."

"Sir, that'll be eleven dollars - this ticket's no good."

"But they told me..." Hispanic accent, English is the second language. I'm thinking he's a restaurant worker, perhaps. The time of day fits, and there are commutable restaurants in both places.

"Either you pay me eleven dollars or I put you off the train."

"Well, I'm not leaving. I paid for this ticket. They said I could ride."

"Sir, this is MY train. What I say goes. I don't care what they told you. Fordham's next. Get off there."

We wait in Fordham with the doors open. Quite a few times I've ridden New Haven on a Harlem monthly - but then again, that's an investment of nearly $200 and the monthlies generally have the conductors' respect. I don't say anything because, like everyone else, I just want to get home. Nor do I give him the eleven bucks, because he sounds like a working man to me and he ain't asking for it. But it sticks with me for a couple of days. The hard-ass conductor. The argument in the silent car that everyone listens to - their heads deep in their newspapers or looking intently at some newly-fascinating feature of the Fordham Road Metro-North stop.

And the guy's long, forlorn face on the platform as the train pulls away, still holding his ticket to Mamaroneck and trying to figure a way to get to work on obviously limited cash flow. Tough luck, I guess.

For Which It Stands

Tony Alva - a frequent commenter here - and I don't agree on too much in the political realm, but this lefty can't say it any better:

...the idea that our leaders spent any amount of time debating a constitutional amendment to prohibit the burning of a flag is simply ridiculous at best, and a shameful political ploy at worst. I don’t believe our constitution and our nation was in crisis over this issue in anyway that warranted this vote. The fact that it almost passed is even more surprising. In a way, the whole debacle is no different than the act of actually burning a flag itself in that it only appeals to an already convinced base, and further polarizes the left by validating preconceptions.

We are at war. Our best legislative efforts and energy should be spent engaged in matters far more impactful to our nation’s well being than suppressing the ability to offend someone else’s patriotic sensibilities, including my own. The first amendment must be stronger than the idiots who burn flags. To the representatives who took the time to proffer this legislation, I say shame on you. Get back to work on issues of higher priority and ones that actually matter at this point in our history. You’re only proving the worst about yourselves.

Hoisting His Petard?

There are some few libertarians who still believe that the Republican Party is their natural political home, a dwindling band of crusty, bearded GOP reenactor types pitching their canvas field tents around the fire with the grand ole elephants and decrying the "danged federals" and their big government assault on civil liberties. Like polite dementia patients, they manage to overlook the mundane day-to-day actions of this government - dominated by a huge and arrogant Republican Party machine and intent on centralizing civil power and political patronage in one convenient sippy cup.

You've seen these chaps, who occasionally appear to be dapper elderly gentlemen in full possession of their faculities, all pip-pipping and well met. Still burstin' with pride over Ronnie's fabulous destruction of the air traffic controllers and the welfare cheats. Remember the revolution, sonny? To these coots, talk of Democrats linked to the defense of basic civil liberties is like the moonshiners teaming with the revenuers....it just ain't natural. We're conservatives, son. Not Stalinists.

But these guys are living in a political old-age home. The modern Republican Party has no place for them; oh, they're expected to vote for Republicans and hiss at Democratic nominees, but otherwise they have no use whatsoever. The assault on civil rights from the Vice-President's office marches on, the latest revelation - a revelation rated treasonous by the snarling veep - of open-ended warrants allowing government agents unimpeded access to the financial records of Americans. Jason provides the history lesson:

Since 1603 English common law and court precedent required that any search of a man's home or seizure of his property be made pursuant to a sworn warrant, and that the warrant be specific as to what rooms were to be searched and what articles were to be seized. (The requirement that warrants be specific was a reaction to sweeps of the homes of political rivals by the king's men in which desks and locked drawers were broken into and documents, maps, and the like were seized indiscriminately.)

But in the fight against smuggling out on the wild frontier of the new world it was easy to do an end-run around the such niceties as the 100-year old civil rights of Englishmen, especially in the name of tax collection. So revenuers began issuing not warrants but "Writs of Assistance." These writs were, in effect, general, open-ended warrants, authorizing the bearer to enter any house or location and to seize any property the bearer deemed "prohibited and uncustomed." The writs were to remain in effect for the lifetime of the king and six months thereafter.

When James Madison drafted the Fourth Amendment--prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure and requiring warrants obtained by showing cause for a search in advance--these writs were very much his inspiration and target.

But the Fourth Amendment matters not to the modern GOP. Indeed, they now attack the First to protect their assault on the Fourth. All this is lost on the vestigial Republical Libertarian wing, which utters not a word. Nor did it when the so-called champion of true conservatism occupied a key seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Silence reigned when Justice Alito joined the "conservatives" in Hudson v. Michigan which ruled that a violation of the "knock and announce" rule by police does not require the suppression of the evidence found during a search, as well as Samson v. California which ruled that evidence obtained in a suspionless search of parolees is admissible, and not prohibited under the Fourth Amendment.

Now perhaps the latest government outrage, this last intrusion into individual privacy by a central power run amok, will finally shake these superannuated libertarians from their stupor and provoke them to outrage.

I speak of poor Rush, of course.

The jack-booted thugs who arrested Mr. Limbaugh clearly crossed a line unforeseen by the Founding Fathers (except perhaps for Franklin). So what if the prescription on the jar didn't specifically refer to Rush - where was the probable cause? As James Wolcott righteously noted: "Now there is no shame in requiring wood enhancement. Men have needs, and if Viagra enables the little fella to jut proudly from the folds of the dragon kimono bequeathed to Rush by the late Allan Bloom, it is not for us to cast judgement."

Limbaugh tried to talk the Customs officers out of their over-the-top search, saying on his radio show that they didn't believe him when he said he got the pills at the Clinton Library and he was told they were blue M&Ms. "I had a great time in the Dominican Republic. Wish I could tell you about it." Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Oh I'll bet he did.

Maybe the libertarians can let this latest intrusion into a man's privacy go. After all, there hasn't been much libertarianism on tap in Limbaughland of late, or Fox, or any number of conservative outlets. It all changed on 9/11 - or so they say. I think it changed on a different date: January 20, 2001 - the day Bill Clinton left office, and the day when the cry of liberty fell silent all up and down the Republican lines, replaced by the march of power.

Fascists in the Basement

We brownshirted, armband-wearing fascists of the blogosphere huddled in the basement late into the evening this Thursday past, talking in low voices of the left, listening for the orders of Markos - who sat in the corner. Then I ordered another chardonnay. And Steve Gilliard talked about blogging World Cup and his favorite recipes. There we were: vicious, street thugs all, nipping at Thai food in cute little buckets and plotting against MSM. A man like Lee Siegel would surely have melted in fear. After all, he said we're "hard fascism with a Microsoft face." Funny. Some people might say that the Trickster, or me, or a couple of other guys in the room had Microsoft faces - middle-aged white guys with facial hair - but it's insulting to BlueGirl, and Lindsey, and Barbara, none of whom appear to be hard, vicious fascists.

We had about 25 bloggers at the postgame "open thread" in the basement lounge at Lotus on far-west 14th, after Markos, Anna Burger, and Wynton Marsalis accepted their awards from the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy at the annual benefit. Tremendous showing, great night for DMI - thanks to Andrea Batista-Schlesinger who runs the joint (where I'm the board) and Elana Levin, who runs DMIblog and helped me organize the blogger committee to honor Kos. Got to meet Lance. Brendan was there. so was Bruce B., one of my best commenters (I invited the conservatives, but they didn't show) and Steve's partner Jen. And a whole buncha progressive bloggers.

So we sat there and talked about our blogs, about politics versus policy, about whether we're preaching to the choir or reaching new audiences, about the iconoclastic nature of blogs and how that very nature sometimes discourages mass movement, the very marching in lockstep that Siegel and his New Republic goons accuse us of. James Wolcott - who we all missed - nailed it today in his usual good form:

Perhaps I should look in the mirror. Perhaps I'm one of those Angry Bloggers who's turning the playground into a graffiti-strewn, bullet-pocked gang hangout, beating up spindly writers from slick magazines who wander unawares into our "turf." But wait--I write for those slick magazines too. So by definition I can't be an Angry Blogger, even if I have a blog, and occasionally lose my equaninimous cool. Because, after all, those of us who compose beautiful music for print are superior to those who write online, even if we dally online ourselves; we got class, after all, a certain airy refinement, not to mention couth.

<snip>

A writer chiding bloggers for their incoherent rage ought not to be so glib about lobbing characterizations of fascism around. It sounds as if he’s lashing out, doing what he laments others doing, only with fancier language and rhetorical footwork. A lot of those who oppose Lieberman are longtime liberals who are tired of him being the Republicans' pet Democrat, and fed up with his unctuous mushmouth pieties in support of Bush initiatives. I suspect that part of the peevishness Siegel and his fellow epicureans of ideas feel towards the angry amoebas of the blogsphere is rooted in the uncomfortable knowledge that sites such as Daily Kos, Atrios, and Steve and Jen’s News Blog proved a helluva lot more right about the debacle in Iraq than the battle cries of the Beltway intelligentsia.

<snip>

Now whatever one might say about Daily Kos, MyDD, Atrios, etc., it is absurd to float the charge that they express or harbor "a hatred of the processes of politics." They help raise money for candidates, track polls, sponsor or promote meet-ups, highlight primary fights that might otherwise go unnoticed. They are completely plugged into the process, their championing of Ned Lamont no different than NRO’s cheerleading for Pat Toomey in his challenger run against Arlen Specter. It’s not as if they’re urging blog readers to disrupt campaign stops as a prelude to a beer-hall putsch.

Austin (who was there) points out in his post on Bring It On! that unity in our liberal midst is fleeting: "These are independent thinkers who won’t be shouted down, which helps explain how so many progressive blogs have continued to write passionately in the face of 5 years of Bush rule."

As Maha pointed out, no one in that room on the West Side takes order from Markos, much as we admire his dual skills of acquiring a huge audience and organzing online campaigns: "We let Kos get a word in here and there, but on the whole he seemed perfectly happy to just hang out and listen."

As did I. Thanks to all who made it happen. As Blue Girl said, everyone was really nice. Next time, we'll get some "real writers" from New Republic to take their training wheels off and join us - if they're not afraid.

UPDATE: Marty Peretz loses his cool - publicly. And in tomorrow's NYT, via RawStory, liberal-wannabe David Brooks shows his native understanding of the fascist left: "The Keyboard Kingpin, aka Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, sits at his computer, fires up his Web site, Daily Kos, and commands his followers, who come across like squadrons of rabid lambs, to unleash their venom on those who stand in the way. And in this way the Kingpin has made himself a mighty force in his own mind, and every knee shall bow." Good reporting at that paper.

UPDATE II: Lance does a round-up of our little cell's secret meeting (and his journey there). Lindsay has some pics. DMI has a bunch more.

Tags: HonoringKos | Drum Major | Drum Major Institute | DMI | Kos | DailyKos

Mellow Yellow

There is some elusive, compelling quality about Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers even after 30 years, even after the churning restlessness of Florida youth melds smoothly into the cool observations of an old California dude with a great collection of guitars and pals like Dylan and Harrison. Last night at the Garden, where I first saw Petty open for Springsteen at No Nukes in 1979 (organized, by the way, by John Hall who - God willing - will defeat the Bush toady Sue Kelly in New York's 19th District this fall), that cool, sweet music was drifting with the ganja smoke in the rafters, brushing up agains the jerseys of Brad Park and Rod Gilbert. Totally derivative, they said with derision about Tom Petty three decades ago - he copies the Beatles, the Byrds, the Yardbirds. He plays a 12-string Rickenbacker, for Crissakes. But Petty has endured, and his prolific career has produced a certain canon that commands airplay on the classic rock stations and in the iPod earbuds of rockers of a certain age: teens to 50s. Much of this respect is due to Larry Campbell, one of the great sidemen of American rock bands, a guy whose licks light up the simple G-C-D-Em progressions of so many Petty laments about girls, and cars, and wanting something more. Yeah, we had to endure Stevie Nicks on a few tunes (another of Petty's A-list rock pals). But the new songs had sparkle, and the old guy with the long, blonde-gray hair kept rolling out different guitars - and a whole bunch of songs that I dearly love to hear.

Tags: Tom Petty

The Outlaw Jimmy Wales

Over at his News Blog, Steve Gilliard has a photo up of Josef Stalin - his stand-in for Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and his crew of volunteer editors, who have clamped down on the open standards that made the site so justly famous - and so furiously used by millions. But one man's "open" is another man's "closed." As the Times pointed out this week, 82 entries are currently excluded from the "anyone can edit" ethos - including Albert Einstein and human rights in China. Another 179 entries, including George Bush, are on the more modified, double-secret wiki probation. You can try to edit them but you have to be registered for at last four days.

And as Fred found out this week, God help you if somebody has it in for you (Chervokas and I have our suspects) and wonders aloud if you're really prominent enough to warrent Wikipedia status. Fred's bio got dumped. Voted down. Blackballed. Wikiwashed. But, of course, this being Wikipedia - he's back.  And yeah, I'm partially responsible. And yes, I've edited my own page for accuracy and proper citations. I didn't create it, but I'd rather it be right.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, and it's an incredibly useful first point of departure for research, but it hardly represents the full net knowledge of the wired generation. Ask Wales:

"A lot of people think of Wikipedia as being 10 million people, each adding one sentence," Mr. Wales said. "But really the vast majority of work is done by this small core community."

Which makes it tricky to monetize - to take from the rare status of a massive project fed by a band obsessed, committed stalwarts to an actual company, a money-making enterprise anwerable to both investors and customers. The worst of that initial phase was visible when Fred was dumped, but the best can be seen every day in millions of searches of more than a million articles. My advice, if Wales believes his founders principles better than the Google guys, is to opt for greater openness - let more people in, allow more self-editing, let the community self-select with clicks a bit more. Go the Craigslist route. If he believes in those principles, Jimmy Wales (who reacted with anger at what I thought was a pretty balanced Times piece) should read his own blog post every day:

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. I’m doing this for the child in Africa who is going to use free textbooks and reference works produced by our community and find a solution to the crushing poverty that surrounds him. But for this child, a website on the Internet is not enough; we need to find ways to get our work to people in a form they can actually use.

And I’m doing this for my own daughter, who I hope will grow up in a world where culture is free, not proprietary, where control of knowledge is in the hands of people everywhere, with basic works they can adopt, modify, and share freely without asking permission from anyone.

Tags: Wikipedia. Wikis, Jimmy Wales, Fred Wilson

Comment of the Week

Got this great comment (full post really and a nice story at that) from Chris in the UK, and it keeps the "British rock giants" theme going here, so it's comment of the week:

Congrats on your daughter and handing down the guitar habit. I look foward to doing the same in due course.

This is as much a comment on the "Pete Townsend is not only human but reads select blogs and posts comments", which came to mind yesterday. I was walking down the street pushing my 8 month old son on Notting Hill Gate, London ( where I now live, after growing up in Chicago and living in DC). I stop to look in a window, look up, and there's Jimmy Page standing next to me.

First, a quick background note, I'm 37, and a guitar geek since 11 years old. I was born just too late to participate in the 60s and 70s, but they still were a potent backdrop to my youth. My earliest musical bedrocks were the Beatles and the Stones, inheritances from my parents. But my first peer-influenced discovery was Led Zeppelin, and at 11 years old I was obsessed with their records. When John Bonham died, I was holding my first (cancelled) rock concert tickets courtesy of an uncle, a chaperone right out of "Dazed and Confused".

At the same age picked up a guitar and started pulling these records apart trying to figure out where all the weird sounds were coming from. My musical journey continued swiftly from british blues rockers into blues, old R+B, jazz, then punk, post-punk, country, I got into all sorts of open tunings, fingerstyle, slide, etc, and the art of underplaying in service to a good song, and I left the slightly embarrassing stadium heavy-rock far behind in pre-adolescence.

Jumping back ahead over two decades, so there's Jimmy Page next to me.. Instead of ignoring him NYC Celeb style, I proceed to gently initiate a conversation. He asks my name. I tell him that he's responsible for my having picked up a guitar for the first time. He asks if I still play. We talk about Chicago and its music. The cancelled tour. He asks after my son, wondering if I still play with an infant in tow. I tell him that I have a guitar in open D for him to plonk a chord on. A very genial few minutes of chat, then we move on.

It was jarring to be brought back to the state of mind of that age, the hero-worship stage of youth in which these towering figures, whether giant rock gods, or maybe, baseball stars, could no more be human than Odin or Thor.

Because, later came true adolescence, when under the DIY, punk and indie influence, rock gods, like all father figures, were very uncool, and heroes abandoned for a more human lot of influences, and books, and peers. You literally forget what one's 11-12-13 year old mind is like. But then something cracks a back window view into it.

I laughed afterwords and thought that if you had told my 12 year old rock-loving self, "oh, one day, you'll chat with Jimmy Page on a street corner", that would have been as weird to me as saying one day you'll walk on the moon.

But then I thought it was probably the same for these British kids, who felt the same way about Chess 45s, when they got to meet Willie Dixon and Howlin Wolf as adults. As kids they didn't imagine bluesmen walking down the street, or worried about the bills, or maybe buying some ribs and beer in Chicago. They too must have at some point spent so much time immersed in the sounds from a flat plate of vinyl that their imagination had no room for mere mortals behind them.

Anyway, keep up the good writing, and teaching your daughter.

Tags:

Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend

These Six Strings

V for Veronica, originally uploaded by Tom Watson.

Earlier this week, Jackson had a terrific post about all the guitars he's owned and played. I've had some great ones myself and will write about them - and about how important they were in my life - one of these days. But I wanted to write about the newest guitar in our household, a nice Ibanez acoustic-electric. It's Veronica's graduation gift for her eighth grade graduation - 30 years to the week I graduated from the very same school and received my first guitar, a Sears mail order special given to me by my grandmother. Veronica's middle name is Gertrude - after my grandmother - so it just seemed like the right way to go. Veronica (and this is a father's sacred right of bragadocchio) graduated with first honors, receiving the singular award for academic excellence in her class. The artist and I are very proud indeed. And now this old guitarist  is working through G and C chords with her - slowly, surely, and with the sense of time, in the metre of the old school, where tradition means something and music is the gift of a lifetime.