Seven Sons

Less than 30 hours to go in this decade.  No idea what we’ll decide to call this decade.  It’s not like they ever decided what they should call this one.  And now that we’re ready to shuffle the corpse of this one off in a few more hours in a haze of alcohol and bad decisions, it seems as appropriate a time to being writing the epitaph for the next one as ever.  The 2000’s haven’t been complete rubbish. Only mostly rubbish.

I for one navigated the chasm between my third and fourth decade on the planet only to find that in retrospect my thirties were a relatively useless span of years.  I changed jobs, gained weight, and started going gray.  Also it bears mentioning that for the modern American male, you spend the majority of your professional career while in your 30’s being viewed alternately as an overly ambitious career climber and an inexperienced whippersnapper.  Most often by people younger or older than you by less than a decade themselves. There’s something settling about forty.

But the past decade—like my past decade—is wholly remarkable for its utter lack of utterly remarkable things. Yes, yes, yes– there are images of the 2000’s forever burned in our collective memories.  The attacks on 9/11. President Bush and the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the deck of the aircraft carrier declaring the end to a war that we’re still fighting. Paris Hilton’s eyes lit up like a raccoon sifting through a trash can on her “accidentially leaked” sex tape. Notoriety is the new black.  It goes with everything. Sheryl Crow hit it earlier in the decade—”We got rock stars in the White House, and all our pop stars look like porn.”

Ford brought back a Mustang that looks like a Mustang, and Pontiac ceased to be. We have our first black president to close the decade. One that ironically began with our first special ed president. We spent ten years getting more. Too much actually.  And I suppose the challenge is to see if we can pay for it all in the next ten. My bold prediction is that we will have to learn to do without. Money, much like matter, can neither be created nor destroyed. Yet no one can seem to figure out where it’s all gone.

Banks have failed.  Automakers have failed—oops, covered that one already. Even Jay Leno—the most infuriatingly populist of the no-talent late night hosts—has failed. Jay has failed because he’s the ideal American product. Loud. Rich. Smarmy funny in that used car salesman way. But we’ve stopped buying American cause we’ve come to view the product as crap. We’re lucky Jay failed.  If he hadn’t, then all original scripted programming would’ve vanished into the air like the settlers at Roanoke. And we’d have been subjected to a Malcolm McDowell-like cavalcade of night-time viewing more fitting for an ill-thought through remake of A Clockwork Orange.

America makes art for the dinner theater crowd.

Here I’m going
Walkin’ with my baby in my arms
‘Cuz I am in the wrong end of the eight ball black
And the devil, see, he’s right behind us
And this worker said she’s gonna take my little baby
My little angel back

But they won’t getcha,
‘Cuz I’m right here witcha
On the Night Train

Swing low, Saint Cadillac
Tearin’ down the alley
And I’m reachin’ so high for ya
Don’t let ‘em take me back
Broken like valiums and chumps in the rain
That cry and quiver

When a blue horizon is sleeping in the station
With a ticket for a train
Surely mine will deliver me there
Here she comes …
I’m safe here with you
On the Night Train

Oh mamma, mamma,
Concrete is wheeling by
Down at the end of a lullaby
On the Night Train.

Rickie Lee Jones. From the eponymous 1979 album. The song is “Night Train.” It is beautiful and haunting.

I first heard it when I was probably 16, maybe four years after the album was released. Even then it spoke to me. A desperate woman. A helpless baby she’s responsible for, completely now that ‘dad’ is long gone, assuming he was ever there for anything but the requisite chemical reaction in the first place. And if he stuck around for a while, it was probably just to do more damage.

“And this worker says she’s gonna take my baby, my angel.”

In many years of this work, I’ve yet to meet the mother or the child who welcomed the intervention of Child Protective Services (or ACS, Administration for Children’s Services, as we called it in NYC). Few jobs are more difficult than that of a CPS worker, pulling a screaming and terrified child from her mother, sometimes in the middle of the night, for reasons the child can’t possibly fathom. Anyone who believes that a hungry, dirty, abused or neglected kid will welcome the strangers who arrive to remove her from the only reality she’s ever known is sorely misled. It really doesn’t matter what the child is dealing with, and how miserable and inappropriate it seems to the well-intentioned interlopers. To the child, the barren cabinets, the rotten smell in the fridge, the rodent droppings and the paint chips in the hallway are just what she knows. And it’s all she’s ever known. Given a choice between what’s awful and what’s unknown, most adults- let alone children- will grasp the former.

So word gets around, and sometimes, the mothers run. They do whatever they can to stay a step ahead of those who purport to know better, whether it’s the right thing to do or not. Running is open-ended, like an impulsive visit to a casino. It’s a one-way ticket to something better, maybe. Or maybe not. In any event, it’s an uncertain path. On that path, they trust no one. And frankly, I don’t blame them.

“But they won’t getcha, ‘Cuz I’m right here witcha. On the Night Train.”

I’ve worked with women who had been victimized by life- and every male in it- up until the thing that put them on the other side of my desk. Sometimes it was the biological father of the child in a sex case; a lot of people are surprised at how often biological fathers sexually abuse their own children. Sometimes it was a boyfriend, or a second husband, or whoever else looked at the time like something stable and basically good. Until, of course, that illusion disintegrated in a principal’s office, or a hospital, or a police station. Until it fell through like wet paper with the details of what he’d done to her daughter or son behind her back. While she was at work. While she was with friends. While she was out clubbing, or at a 12 step meeting, or wherever else the daily routine took her. The details ring in her ears while she clutches her purse and fights back tears. And wonders what the hell she’ll do now.

So the gears of the system turn, and eventually she arrives in my office.

At that point it’s crucial to remember, if I’m going to be effective in any way, shape or form, that to her I’m simply the next man in the line. I’m further trouble, just not the kind that will leave a bruise. The tie I wear glows as malevolently as a nightstick. The desk I sit behind is the perfect barrier between everything that I am and everything that I’m entitled to, and everything that she is, and will never have. It’s that simple.

And so I come out from behind the desk, and sometimes I lose the tie. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

“When a blue horizon is sleeping in the station, with a ticket for a train, surely mine will deliver me there. Here she comes. I’m safe here with you. On the Night Train.”

The train image might be a little antiquated. The urge to run isn’t.

“Concrete is wheeling by. Down at the end of a lullaby.”

The end of a lullaby. That’s where I work, which is say, live. I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else.

In the spirit of the trendy idea of knowing where your food comes from, and in the spirit of Thanksgiving, the farm-to-table restaurant The Linkery in San Diego has a blog post that shows (in a s slightly graphic way, since that’s the way life is) some of the staff catching, killing and packing pasture-raised turkeys.

We have a lot to be thankful for in the United States, but odds are that, at least in the last 50 years,  giving a shout-out to the people who raise our food has never been a popular pre-meal prayer at the holiday table. And obviously I’m not talking about the corporate suits at Butterball and Stouffer’s.

I heard about the 32% hike today on CA public university students. I feel terribly for CA residents- as long as they’re not the small percentage who, over the decades, created this culture of state government. I don’t know what CA can do at this point- they’re a microcosm (although not very micro) for the whole country. Taxes need to be raised to keep up basic and necessary state services. But raising taxes might squelch a recovery.

My partial solution? It’ll come as no surprise. Soak the fucking rich. They can afford it. And please- don’t be fooled by their insistence that taxing them will have a negative trickle-down effect on the little guy. Because it won’t. Tax the rich, and they’ll grumble and pay it. Period. So tax them. Up the fucking ying-yang. If they don’t like it, they’re welcome to move to any other developed western country, where their tax rates will be many times higher.

If the last 30 years have taught us anything, it’s that giving the rich more money equals nothing other than giving the rich more money. Milton Friedman was wrong. Fuck them all. In the ass. Oh, and by the way, I’ll entertain no philosophical arguments about how it’s “just wrong” to punish the “successful” either. You’re successful? Great! You’ve been the equivalent of a 16 year-old boy in a whorehouse with a shoebox full of 100’s and a cask of whiskey for the last 25 years. Time to fucking pay up- taxes are the tolls you pay to drive the highways of American life. Fuckers.

I’ve been reading up lately on how TARP/bailout money is being used by the big banks. Seriously, if people really understood how thoroughly the Goldmans of the world are fucking us, they’d be in the streets with pitchforks. Here’s the progression:

1. The big banks engage in ridiculously reckless speculation on margin from the 80’s on, and they pressure the ‘government’ into relaxing the rules more and more so that said speculation (gambling) can flourish unabated throughout 2007.
2. The house of cards crashes in 2008.
4. The big banks go to Paulson, Summers, Geitner and others, and demand hundreds of billions to avert a crisis in September 2008.
5. Said hundreds of billions are given by the taxpayers to the big banks.
6. The big banks use the money they’ve been given to buy up securities that are (in the fall of 2008) worth a fraction of what they were worth before the crash. So…with our money, the big banks buy worthless securities at bargain basement prices.
7. A Wall Street recovery ensues- the value of the securities bought by the banks with taxpayer dollars increases dramatically. The big banks are now holding securities that are worth billions more than what they paid (with our money). They begin to trade among themselves, and the value continues to rise.
8. Rather than lending TARP money or their newfound gains to, say, a small business in Vidalia, Illinois desperate for a loan, they instead internally speculate within (using our money) and continue making tons of money from each other on fees and transactional costs. And they pay out billions in bonuses.

Scott pointed this out a while ago- there is money being made, but not from money going to produce anything. Instead it’s the same money being sloshed around with little pieces being cleaved off for the players. Not a cent of it is trickling down, unless you count an increase in guys getting paid to shine shoes in lower Manhattan.

The system is rigged- beyond belief. Why anyone does anything with their cash other than putting it in a mattress or buying precious medals is beyond me.

God Bless the USA.

Trained the prosecutor on this case. He’s about 26 and this is his first case. He’s doing a damn good job. The case is a tragedy. Step-father on daughter, although the daughter grew up thinking he was her bio father.

The victim is now 14. Abuse started when she was about 10. She finally disclosed to her mother last year. Not the best disclosure circumstances- she was ’sexting’ a boyfriend and mom found a compromising picture of her on her cell phone. Girl started crying and said that she felt all screwed up, partly because her father had been doing x, y and z to her for years.

Of course there was a ready-made defense at that point- she made it up to avoid getting trouble for sending pictures of her breasts to some kid. It’s rarely a viable defense; most kids don’t make up sexual assault to avoid getting out trouble, even major trouble, let alone display the ability to concoct text-book grooming behavior and a years long progression of abuse. But it works surprisingly often. And unfortunately, a lot of kids disclose exactly when they get in trouble for something else they did- usually some small thing, and particularly a sexually involved thing. They do so often because a sense of justice kicks in, or they make on some primitive level the connection between what they’re driven to do and what’s happened to them. So they just leak it all out. And it creates a ready-made defense.

Thankfully this guy pleaded guilty and admitted to just about everything. And there was compelling medical evidence and DNA- the last assault was only a day before she finally disclosed. He’s looking at 25 years- we’ll see. I’d have been lucky to get 18 months for this case in the Bronx.

So I’m in Clarksville, Tennessee a town that services Ft. Campbell, KY.
We’re staying just off of I-24 at an Interstate island featuring a
strip of strip malls and big box stores, 10-15 fast food franchises
and adult book stores, mammoth, ever-glowing 50 telescoping signs for
McDonalds, Shell, Applebees and about 40 other places.

I walked from the hotel over to a nearby Target after dinner.  On my
left, very easy to miss, is a fenced-in, civil war graveyard founded
sometime around 1855.  It is sandwiched between the Marriott
Courtyard, the Days Inn, the Homewood Suites and some other chain
dump, bathed in the light of all that is the meeting of I-24 and US
79.

I simply can’t imagine a worse place to lay for eternity.  Thanks for
your sacrifice, young Tennesseeans.  In return, won’t you please
accept this garishly-lit eternal resting place along a six lane
boulevard lined with grease pits, gas stations and porn shops?
Thanks.  Hopefully not too many Big Gulp cups fall upon you.

Okay. So I get this offer. From AT&T. It’s literally so not good I can’t not comment on it.

Here’s the pitch:

I can get “upto” five bars in my own home by buying this AT&T/Cisco prop from Tron for the low, low price of $150. What this magic device does is apparently poach bandwidth from your broadband connection.

Wait. It gets better. You could get a $100 rebate if you sign up for a $19.99 a month calling plan that gives you:

So, I can save $100 by spending $239.88 a year to help AT&T with their spotty network issues. Go. Me.

Thankfully, this is not an issue. I have, on average, 4 bars here. In my secret lair. So I decidedly won’t be contributing to the cause. And I’ll continue to have all my bandwidth for. . . research.

But you might like it. Visit AT&T’s site (featuring music that may drive you insane) or read Engadget’s unboxing.

Of course, I’m curious if this intersects at all somewhere down the litigation/Karma spectrum for AT&T doing an about face on iPhone applications using VOIP on their wireless network. I’ll leave to it to smarter people to chime in, but as far as I can tell this is the Bizarro version of that.

And if anybody has any insight into how much pipe this thing leaches: Post up below.

I’m not sure that the rule-of-threes applies to the death of a magazine. But it deserves an obituary.

I’ll start by saying I’m not much of a food magazine guy. I love to cook, but only because I love to eat. I like photos of food, and appreciate “food porn” as much as the next person, but every photo I have taken of something in my kitchen ends up looking like pancakes. I get Cooks Illustrated, but that’s more like an instruction manual for cooking engineers as opposed to a celebration of the artistic aspects of cooking.

I love to read about food. I came of age in my love for food writing with Bourdain’s seminal “Kitchen Confidential,” but quickly discovered more true artistry in Ruth Reichl and Molly O’Neill. I read MFK Fisher’s translation of Brillat-Savarin and then listened closely when she taught me how to cook a wolf. Lately I have been enthralled by Rochelle Bilow and this weekend I plowed through the Julie/Julia book by Julie Powell (can’t imagine the movie is as satisfying).

And today, maybe not so much tomorrow, but today… I am forced to confront a death of something important that I knew, but not well. Like losing a famous aunt whose home you have never visited. A magazine, silly enough, that I have bought maybe once or twice at the news stand, and ignored every ad in it. A periodical I cherished in absentia because of the name on the masthead. I’m not idealistic enough to feel any guilt about helping cause the downfall of Gourmet, but I am enough of a history buff to recognize the need to celebrate its 70 years of history, the comfort it provided in spite of its commercial nature, and the headlines that its death will garner in contrast to its lack of widespread notoriety in life.

Ruth Reichl, the erstwhile editor of Gourmet and the protagonist of several incredible (meaning hard to believe but nevertheless true), poignant books centered around food, may retire in comfort tomorrow. One can only hope that the passion she exudes in her autobiographies is real enough to keep her written word in constant circulation in a post-Gourmet world. With the charity of history her epitaph will not read “the last editor of Gourmet magazine.” It will read “an artist whose palette was taste and whose media was the written word.”

Rest in peace, Gourmet magazine.

I know I shouldn’t wear it like a badge of honor, but today when I heard his name on the radio, I realized with some smugness that I must have been one of the few people in the entire nation who thought it was pronounced like “caine” instead of like “con-yay”.

This photo speaks for itself; what it says, I suspect, is entirely up to the listener. The man in the picture is picking up loose change off the street. Thanks to ChezWhat for keeping a cell phone cocked and ready for photo opportunities like this.

Hope for Change