Simple Pleasures

By this I mean, small things that make you happy, calm your nerves, or otherwise produce a pleasant impression.  I had mentioned one of these in my much older Happiness vs. S**t That Sucks:  observing a thunderstorm from the security of shelter, but most of the other posts were more substantial items;  winning a case, getting a new car, etc. 

The problem is that we can’t always count on big ticket items, and while intense and impressive they come along at long intervals.   They’re great, and we enjoy them, but how do we extract happiness and pleasure while we’re waiting for the next big thing?   How can we extract happiness and pleasure from every day life?

It’s like that “Success Baby” meme of the triumphant baby.   “Favorite song on the radio ends just as I pull into my parking space”, was one of my favorites.   Generally with me it’s the opposite:  after blathering with commercials, traffic, weather, etc. they finally get around to playing the song I want to hear just as I’m pulling into the place I want to park.   I guess that’s a “simple pain.”

Other examples of simple pleasures?

1.         Sunshine – particularly after a rainstorm.

2.         The vending machine has the item you want:  and it GIVES it to you.

3.         A cold beer at the end of day of work – or after a workout.

4.         Enjoying a classic album – and it doesn’t have to be on vinyl.

5.         DVD extras which justify the extra time watching them – like really juicy scenes they had to delete to keep a PG rating, or including actors who are only in that scene, or alternate endings (the alternate ending of “Natural Born Killers” is actually better than the original one).

6.         As Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) advised in “Modern Family”, try to experience at least one sunrise a day.  (I prefer sunsets, which give more purple tones.  Sunrises are too yellow-orange.)

You get the idea.  And leverage it:  use the simple stuff to improve your attitude, take out your happiness on random, innocent strangers, annoying co-workers, or even your spouse, children, or pets.  Yes, I know I’m hopelessly upbeat – most of the time (rarely on Monday, though).   Anyhow.

“I tell you to enjoy life, I wish I could but it’s too late.”  (“Paranoid”)

Gravity & Solaris & Burn After Reading

It’s movie time again, folks.  In this case, it’s a tiny tribute to George Clooney.  Let’s get started.

Gravity (2013).   This film won a few Oscars this time around.   Although George Clooney plays an important role, the main character is played by Sandra Bullock.

            Bullock plays Ryan Stone, a medical engineer on a Space Shuttle mission.  Her comrade is veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (Clooney).  While the pair of them – plus red-shirt space walker #3 (hereinafter, RSSW3) – are out spacewalking, disaster strikes in the form of a sudden impulse by the Russians to destroy some satellites.  Not good.  The resulting debris comes by and kills RSSW3, blows open the space shuttle, and thereby kills the astronauts inside who weren’t wearing space suits, also rendering the shuttle useless as a vehicle.

            So now it’s down to Stone & Kowalsky.  Err, make that Stone.   AND she loses contact with Houston, so now she’s really completely on her own, unlike the heroes in  “Apollo 13”.  “Gravity”, though, seems less of an enemy than “space” – cold, quiet, airless, pressureless, with no food or shelter, no friends, no assistance, and a shortage of suitable re-entry vehicles.  Space is liable to kill you long before gravity pulls you to the ground.  You share Stone’s fear and anxiety:  how do I un-f**k this situation?  How do I survive?  How can I get home to Earth?   Does she do it?  Stay tuned.

Solaris (2002).   Note, this is actually a remake of a Russian 1972 film which I haven’t seen, which itself was based on a 1961 Polish novel which I haven’t read.   I bring it up because the main character, Chris Kelvin, is played by George Clooney, again in an astronaut/space context.

            A space station orbiting a distant planet calls in a discreet distress signal.  They ask for Kelvin to come, but are vague on what happened or why they need him, presumably they’ll tell him when he gets there.  Sure enough, he does, and finds that half the crew is missing, and with a few exceptions the rest are dead.  Those still alive refuse to return to Earth, for reasons which we’ll learn later. 

            Once on the station, Clooney dreams of his dead wife.  Then he wakes up, and there she is: in the flesh.  WOW.  Jeremy Davies, who studied Charles Manson for a prior role, seems to enjoy Mansonizing all his subsequent roles as well – including this one, as crew member Snow.  

            The film has a glacial pace and intensity almost indistinguishable from “2001: A Space Odyssey”.  While it’s not nearly as impenetrable, it is just as boring. 

Burn After Reading (2008).   While I’m on the topic of George Clooney, without getting drawn into an exhaustive review of all of his movies, I would like to mention this one.  It’s a screwball comedy.  And it’s very good.

            The movie starts with Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), an extremely foul-mouthed and bad-tempered CIA field agent who is abruptly demoted to desk duty in Langley.  Obviously unhappy with this change, he goes Miles Kendig and starts writing unauthorized memoirs – which he promptly loses.  David “Sledgehammer” Rasche and J.K. Simmons (Travelers insurance commercial dude) are some of his hapless colleagues at the Company.

            The CD-R is found by a pair of clueless gym employees, Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), who conspire to extort Cox and/or release the disc to the Russian Embassy (did I mention, the film takes place in the DC area? Sorry).   At some point, Litzke, who was angling to somehow procure cash for various elective surgeries her health insurance refused to cover, winds up dating Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a buffoonish but endearing US Marshal.  It turns out Pfarrer had been cheating on his own wife with Cox’s wife (Tilda Swinton), oblivious that Mrs. Pfarrer (Elizabeth Marvel) was also pursuing extramarital excitement.  Are you confused yet?  Don’t worry, the confusion is part of the humor.

            I bring this up because – not only is it a great film – Clooney jumps into the comedy like a natural.  Is he the best actor, ever?  Maybe not.  But his case is certainly helped by this film.  Enjoy.

Pentagram & Ghost

Here are two bands that take Black Sabbath as a starting point and each do something “completely different”.

Pentagram.  This band has been around since 1971, loosely based in the Washington, DC area, and essentially our equivalent of Black Sabbath.   For a band that’s been on-again, off-again for all that time without ever making it big – and only getting an album released in 1985 – they’ve had as much inconsistency and turnover on lineups as you might imagine.  The only consistent member is singer Bobby Liebling.  The band has several albums, and a recent studio album, Last Rites.  The music is close enough to Sabbath that it’s borderline a de facto tribute band, although Liebling sounds nothing like Ozzy, Dio, or any other singer for that matter.  I caught them recently in concert at American University in DC; from what I can gather, Liebling’s eccentric and unreliable personality may have made his band persona non grata at the established DC clubs like the Black Cat or 9:30 Club.  Hopefully if Liebling can stay clean - more likely now that he and his wife Hallie have a child, so he's settled down to a normal life as a responsible adult - the band may finally get its act together and start playing better venues.

    As of 2014, however, they remain a cult band.  The closest they got to the big time were a failed audition – in a band member’s basement – in front of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley (who were NOT impressed) in December 1975, and earlier that year, a Liebling scuttled demo session in NYC with Murray Krugman, who worked with Sandy Pearlman in Blue Oyster Cult. 

    “Last Days Here” is a recent documentary about the band, which for obvious reasons focuses heavily on Liebling.  Until recently he was living for the past few decades in his parents’ basement in Germantown, Maryland, a virtually hopeless drug addict with zero marketable skills.  Eventually he moved up to Philadelphia, found a girlfriend (who is now his wife), and got the band going, with some of the inevitable hiccups along the way.  His persistence in sticking with the band is somewhat admirable, although it’s not like he has much of a choice.  Steve “Lips” Kudlow of Anvil – subject of a very similar documentary on that 80s metal band – at least has a catering business for elementary schools to fall back on. 

    Concert.  At American University, most concerts seem to be at the Bender Arena, a small basketball stadium, in between Richie Coliseum (1500) and Baltimore Arena (14000) in capacity – as indeed it is (4500).  I guess the AU student activities group couldn’t get that many, because this Mary Graydon Center Tavern can fit maybe… 300 people.  I don’t know if that many people were even there.  The “Tavern” was nothing more than a huge empty room with no seats.  Even the “stage” wasn’t even above the floor, so if you weren’t in the front row what you saw were the tops of the band member’s heads and not much more. 

    Liebling is a very strange person, visually:  he looks like an old woman, in fact a witch (!!!), with a beard.  His vocal style is distinctive.  His “stage presence”, as it is, seems to be his oddity.  The guitarist, Victor Griffin, reminds me a bit of Duck McDonald (Blue Cheer) but plays a Les Paul.  I know that Les Pauls can definitely give a heavy sound, but shouldn’t there be an unwritten rule that if you’re going for a Black Sabbath sound you should play an SG?  Anyhow.   The band doesn’t jam, and plays its own material fairly faithfully.  If you like their studio recordings, the live show should do just fine, and if you like Black Sabbath, chances are you’ll like Pentagram.

GHOST.   Also known as Ghost BC, this particular band is from Sweden and formed just a few years ago.  Aside from the singer, Papa Emeritus II (not his real name) the two guitarists, bassist, keyboardist and drummer are all known as Nameless Ghouls, and wear identical black robes and plague doctor-esque plastic masks.  PE2 dresses as a satanic pope or anti-bishop, with mitre, robes, etc. and face painted as a skull, a bit better detailed than the Misfits mascot. 

  They have two albums, Opus Eponymous and Infestissumam, with a covers EP called If You Have Ghost.  Soundwise?   Harken back to 1970-72, when Blue Oyster Cult, then known as Stalk-Forrest Group, were rejected by Elektra and told by Columbia to beef up, as that label wanted their own Black Sabbath (who were on Warner Brothers).  Oddly, none of BOC’s songs or albums sound like Black Sabbath.  I’d describe Ghost as, “Blue Oyster Cult with Tony Iommi on guitar instead of Buck Dharma”. 

   Back in December 2000, Wishbone Ash came by to a local club.  At that time, as now, the only original member was Andy Powell.  For that reason, I was skeptical, but 2 hours before showtime I decided, “what the hell”, and went.  WISE DECISION.  Although he wasn’t backed up by Ted Turner, Martin Turner and Steve Upton, the nobodies Powell did hire were certainly competent.  The three guitarists I’ve seen play with this band over the years, Mark Birch, Ben Granfelt, and Muddy Manninen, are all excellent (maybe even better than Powell himself).  I was blown away.

   Likewise with Ghost, who I had never seen in concert.   Here’s some advice: if you keep seeing bands you’ve seen before, you’re far more likely to be disappointed hearing the same sets than to be surprised hearing songs they’ve never played before.  The Nameless Ghoul Guitarists play reissued Gibson RDs (one black, one white); unlike the original 70s models, the reissues have stock PAFs and no active electronics.  Killer guitar sound, mind you, although the tube amps were tastefully hidden away.  Behind them, a backdrop of a cathedral with faux stained glass images of quasi-satanic subject matter, and various smoking braziers of incense.   If Anton LeVey were alive today, he’d probably be their biggest fan.  Like KISS, what you get is a full concert experience, but the music is still a compelling ingredient of the live show.  They even covered the Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun”, as heavily as anyone could imagine that song being played… “it’s alright…”   Check them out on Youtube (apparently they don’t have any concert DVDs yet) or better yet, do yourself a favor and see them live.   

Shirley Muldowney vs. Danica Patrick

Recently NASCAR legend Richard Petty got in hot water for saying that the only way Danica Patrick could win a NASCAR race was if no one else showed up.   The issue of women drivers, and particularly women race drivers, is this week’s blog topic.

Before Danica Patrick, the most successful female race car driver was Shirley Muldowney, who was active in NHRA (drag racing) from the mid 60’s up until her retirement in 2003.   Not merely competitive, she actually won three NHRA Top Fuel championships, in 1977, 1980, and 1982.   That means not merely winning ONE event, but the entire season.   The nature of drag racing means that winning an event means not beating 35 other drivers on a dragstrip simultaneously, but winning a bracket of paired races. 

Danica Patrick started out in Indy Racing League (IRL) before NASCAR.   From 2005 to 2010 she raced in IndyCar, switching to NASCAR in 2010, initially in Nationwide (2^nd tier) and bumping up to Sprint Cup (top tier) in 2012.   Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jimmy Johnson, etc. are in Sprint Cup.   In her entire career, through IRL to Sprint Cup, Patrick has won ONE race, in 2008.  Her highest position was 5^th place in the standings, the 2009 IRL season.  While she has won pole positions, these are won by driving quickly alone on the track, and do not translate into results amidst the full field of competitors on the track at once.  To date she does not appear to be competitive. 

Granted, there are big differences between drag racing and stock car racing.  In drag racing you drive the dragster from a dead stop for a quarter mile, racing at most one other competitor in the other lane, in as close to a straight line for that 1320 feet as you can.  NASCAR means driving around a track, among a field of 30-something other drivers. 

The local tracks have “bracket racing”, which means you can literally bring your street car to the track, zip off at the same quarter mile as the NHRA legends, and compare your E.T. and mph to theirs in an apples-to-apples comparison.   Obviously a street car isn’t going to compete with a top fuel dragster (the fastest category), or even the Pro Stock dragster (the slowest category), but the track and measurement are the same.   A street car might be anywhere from 20 seconds (slow minivan) to 14 seconds (fast muscle car) to 12 seconds (Dodge Viper or Z06 Corvette).   Race motorcycles are even faster.   

            To give examples, my best speed in my fastest car, a 1992 Pontiac Firebird Formula 350, was 14.28 seconds and 98 mph.  The current NHRA records are: Pro Stock, 6.471 ET, 214.69 mph; Funny Car, 3.965 ET, 324.15 mph (John Force); Top Fuel 3.701 ET, 332.18 mph.   This means John Force covered the same quarter mile it took my car to cover in 14.28 seconds, in just under 4 seconds (10 seconds faster), at over 3 times the speed by the time he reached the end of the track. 

            Needless to say, the same does not hold true for NASCAR.  You cannot bring your street Camaro or Mustang down to Daytona and race your buddies.  For that reason, drag racing appeals more to me as someone who sometimes drives “performance” cars., emphasis on “sometimes.”

Also, I’ve noticed that NASCAR has a bit of a soap opera element to it.  Fans get passionate about their allegiances to different drivers, and subjective qualities of the drivers come into play.  Jeff Gordon, in particular, seems to elicit the same hostility as Justin Bieber.  But the world of drag racing also had its drama.  Muldowney was dating Connie Kalitta, “The Mongoose”, a rival of Don Prudhomme, “The Snake”.  Don Garlits and Jungle Jim and Jungle Pam were also colorful characters in the 70s.  Some of this can been seen in “Heart Like A Wheel”, the movie about Muldowney, featuring Bonnie Bedelia as her, though Muldowney was not impressed by the film or Bedelia. 

Anyhow.  If you look at many of the records Muldowney and Patrick have made, almost all of them are “first” or “best” by a woman, not first or best overall.  There are so few women in racing that either of these two were bound to break some of these records.  Clearly among the sports, Muldowney was far more competitive.  As it stands, Patrick’s only virtue appears to be as a photogenic, articulate Go Daddy spokesperson amidst a male-dominated sport.  The likelihood of her of winning a Sprint Cup race is extremely low.  Her likelihood of winning the trophy – top points score by the end of the season – is effectively nil.   Contrast that with Muldowney’s three championships. 

Why are women not more competitive in racing?  Given how diligently the engineers try to reduce weight in the race cars, a lighter woman (e.g. 5’2”, 100 lb Danica Patrick – no Brienne of Tarth!) should be competitive against a bigger, heavier man driving the exact same vehicle.  Neither a vagina nor ovaries appear to have any direct impact on steering, shifting, accelerating or braking, relative to male anatomy. 

In Puttering About In A Small Land, an early Philip K. Dick novel with no science fiction elements, the major character Roger Lindahl articulates why he believes women make poor drivers:  because they don’t focus on driving.   The book was written in 1957 but not published until 1985, a few years after Dick died.  By 1957, automatic transmissions had become popular in American cars.   With an automatic, as opposed to a manual, a driver can shift attention away from shifting the transmission and let his – or her – attention to other things, which may not even include driving.  I find my own attention wanders immensely if I’m tired.  The safest and most effective driving is when you’re focused exclusively on driving.  While I can’t speak from my own nonexistent experience in NASCAR (though I have bracket raced, as noted above) it takes little imagination to ascertain that what holds true at 70 mph on I-95 is even more important at over 200 mph at Daytona. 

I’m not going to suggest that Danica Patrick isn’t winning NASCAR races because she’s fixing her makeup or thinking about wallpaper or the argument she had with Ricky the night before, or worried that her race jumpsuit makes her butt look fat.  This isn’t the blonde chick on “The Big Bang” (who we know is no bimbo in real life anyway).  I’m sure she’s 100% concentrated on finishing 30^th instead of last, on not crashing again, and on finishing the race.  But results are results.   She is NOT competitive.  Why is that?

Women love to brag about their ability to multitask.  Relative to men, they are definitely better.  Men think in linear, series, terms:  focus on one thing to the exclusion of all others, do that, do it right, then move on to the next task, tackling problems and assignments one at a time.  Women think in parallel: they are more apt to try to do many things at the same time, but while they may be better at doing so than men are, none of the individual tasks will be completed as competently as if it had been done exclusively.  While this may apply to most of the women drivers out on the roads today, I don’t think this is necessarily the issue with Patrick, as noted earlier. 

So I remain stumped:  problem identified, but not conclusively solved.   Perhaps it is a male-female brain thing.  In my earlier blog I suggested that gays are people with the wrong-sex brain.  Notwithstanding “Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby”, that Will Ferrell NASCAR parody in which a competing driver Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen) from “Formula Un” – a GAY driver! – defeats Ricky Bobby, I’m not aware of any NASCAR champions who are gay.  For that matter, I’m not aware of any lesbian race car drivers either, and by all appearances, Danica Patrick only sleeps with men.  For that matter, the same holds true for Shirley “Cha-Cha” Muldowney.  While I’m not a big champion of gay rights, maybe a lesbian NASCAR champion could resolve this issue once and for all.            

The Thought Police vs Donald Sterling

Obviously the Clippers’ owner is in big trouble.   No one is defending the substance of his statements.  But Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Mark Cuban have raised extremely relevant points.   KAJ, aka “Roger Murdock”, pointed out that the comments were not made in public, but were a private conversation, surreptitiously taped by the GF or someone else, and then leaked.  It’s not like Sterling took the mike at halftime, and went out onto the court, and addressed the crowd and the national viewing audience in an attempt to broadcast his unpopular views.  Nor is this like the Greaseman’s “now I know why they drag them behind trucks” comment: again, broadcast to the public on the air.   These comments were made in a private conversation and leaked without his consent. 

            As of now, Stiviano is denying that she released the conversation; I don’t see what her motive for doing so could have been.   If a third party recorded the conversation and then released it, under California law, that would be illegal and subject to civil suit.   In particular, CA law requires the consent of ALL parties to record a conversation, so if Stiviano was the one responsible, she would be on the hook here.   Given that Mr. Sterling is out at least $2.5 million AND possibly the value of his franchise if expropriated from him by the NBA, the civil damages under CA law would be x3 = $7.5 million + 3x the value of the Clippers; Sterling acquired hte Clippers in 1981 for $12.5 million, and as of 2014 the team is valued at $575 million by Forbes magazine.  Perhaps the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office should be investigating exactly who did that, though the criminal sanctions (less than a year in jail) are dwarfed by the civil repercussions.  

            Cuban rightly questioned whether having “incorrect” or moronic views is just cause for taking away an NBA team from you.  Who decides what is the “correct” view or position?  Granted, the NBA’s actions are those of a private party and not a state action, so legally it’s not censorship.  But then we have to interview all the NBA owners, all the NFL, MLB, and NHL owners, etc., and determine if they are all “on board” with America’s currently acceptable political views.   How long would Steinbrenner have kept the Yankees?  Are we sure we like Dan Snyder that much?   Bigoted assholes can’t own a sports franchise – only nice, likeable rich people?  You have to pass a politically correct litmus test?  Is that what we want?  Brilliant, now only Warren Buffett and Richard Branson can own sports teams.

            Now Harry Reid is urging more of this coercion:  that the Redskins be forced to rename their franchise.  There is also talk about forcing the Clippers to change their name.  Where does it end?  Mass seppuku for the team – after the playoffs, of course?  Will Winston Smith, of the Ministry of Truth, excise all mention of the L.A. Clippers and Donald Sterling from public media?  Review this again:  for making racist statements in private, Sterling is banned from the NBA for life, fined $2.5 million, and now there’s talk of forcing him to sell the team.

            To take an extreme example, suppose David Duke bought a sports franchise.   Then he hired coaches and managers to run the team, and basically sit back and let the money pile in (assuming the franchise was profitable).   No KLAN ads in the forum, he hires black players, even a black coach, etc., so no outward change perceptible.   But we know who David Duke is and what he stands for.   Is he prohibited from owning a team?

            We talk about “diversity”, but the standard only seems to work one way.   We decide what the “correct” position on each issue is, and reward the people who express agreement with it and punish those who don’t.   The end result – and implicit intention – is to bludgeon the entire country into accepting a narrowly defined value judgment system which someone – who? – has decided is “correct.”   Lifetime bans, humungous fines, and a forced sale of private property.  Bottom line:  if your views are unpopular your property is fair game.  Imagine being forced to sell your house or your business because you said something nasty in private and it was leaked to the public.  That’s a dangerous precedent.

            If Sterling, or anyone else, commits crimes or torts based on those beliefs, he should be held accountable for that behavior, but the underlying belief system should be free for him to decide.  As Sheriff Buford T. Justice said, “oh…you can THINK about it, but don’t do it.”   Is this a free country?  Or do you only have rights if people like you and agree with your politics or views? 

            For that matter, my focus has been on Sterling’s speech as private and publicized without his knowledge or consent.  But would it really be any different if he had made the remarks in public?   Courtside at a Clippers game?  In a magazine interview?  In a TV interview?  In a speech?  Does publicly verbalizing unpopular ideas – racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, etc. – necessarily entitle others to attack your personal property, expropriate your business, levy fines against you?  Do you forfeit your rights to life, liberty, or property?   Clearly the first two would equal censorship, and content-based restrictions by the state are forbidden under the 1^st Amendment, with narrowly confined exceptions.  Shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, inciting a crowd to riot, advocating the violent overthrow of the government, “fighting words”, and so forth, lose 1^st Amendment protection, though clearly these factors do not apply in Sterling’s case, where the speech was in a private conversation and publicized without his knowledge or consent. 

            In addition to not defending the substance of Sterling’s speech, nor am I saying that those offended by it have absolutely no right to react or respond.  Some allowance has to be made for others’ freedom of association, i.e. a country club could revoke his membership and his peers could ostracize him.  Sponsors could withdraw (depending on the contract), fans could boycott the team.  But contractual and property rights should not necessarily be forfeited.  I can't pretend to know whether the NBA has any contract with the Clippers which would allow the league to force an owner to sell the team against his will, but any such forced sale would have to come out of that and not merely popular demand.

           

            Again, I cannot accept the premise that our property rights are contingent upon holding views the rest of society accepts, or hiding as deep secrets whichever unconventional or unpopular views we might have for fear of such massive retaliation.   To protect and safeguard our own freedom of speech and belief, we have to accept the rights of others to hold contrary viewpoints, no matter how vehemently we may disagree with them.  As Mark Cuban said, "In this country, people are allowed to be morons."