gobble gobble

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when i was a kid growing up in tyler, texas, it was a backwater place basically known for three things: roses, oil money and greenberg's smoked turkeys.

if we were lucky, one of our rich relations would favor us with a greenberg turkey at christmas, and when that happened i can't tell you how special it was because there are few things in this world my family loves as much, but in those lean days we would've never dreamed of splurging on such a luxury for ourselves.

in the ensuing years--especially since oprah named them one of her favorite things a few years back--greenberg's has gone from regional delicacy to coast-to-coast phenomenon, and deservedly so. i'm tellin ya, if you haven't had one, you haven't lived.

these last several years, i've always made sure one of these glorious birds preceded my arrival at my mom's house by a day or so, so as to be perfectly thawed in time for christmas dinner.

well, today it suddenly occurred to me that i'd forgotten to go online and order this year's turkey, so in a last-minute panic i called greenberg's from my car, prepared for the inevitable disappointment.

to my surprise, the phone was answered on the first ring by a live person [and no indian accent, either--that familiar east texas twang washed over me like warm bathwater].

i explained the problem, she pulled up my record immediately. "got it, hon--same order, same address?"

i said yeah, started fumbling for a credit card, asked if she could wait til i pulled over. she said, "aw, don't worry bout that--when the bill comes jest send us a check, and yew and your family have a merry christmas!"

i miss east texas sometimes.

a guttermorality political endorsement

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i just did something i swore i'd never do: i donated money to a political campaign.

mr. schiff has been featured on these pages before--i've been following him for a long time.

this is my kinda republican--he doesn't give a damn about such sideshows as abortion or gay marriage; he's got his eye on the only ball that matters right now: the financial future of the united states of america.

and speaking more broadly, he's also my kinda politician--a successful, self-made entrepreneur who came to politics only after having established his credibility out in the real world, and who is just as even-handedly critical of republican policies (and politicians) as he is of democrats'.

and the icing on the cake? he's going up against one of the chief architects of the financial catastrophe in which we we find ourselves today: that most bloated, corrupt and infinitely inept of all political hacks, christopher dodd.

schiff clearly saw--and has spent the last ten years warning the world about--everything that dodd was so obviously blind to. ridiculed for years as "dr. doom," schiff's critics have all pretty much shut up, as everything he predicted has pretty much come to pass.

and his followers? they're a passionate bunch, to say the least. from its humble beginnings as a grassroots "draft schiff" movement barely a year ago, his campaign has raised over $1.1 million, most of it from out-of-state donors--and far more than has the tainted mr. dodd.

how will this race play out? i think it's gonna be fascinating to watch. first, to see how he does against the various party hacks the republican establishment--who hate schiff and see him as a huge threat to their status quo--run against him in the primary; second, to see how the connecticut electorate take to his message; third, to see how his candidacy resonates nationally; and, finally, the reaction of the dodd camp to this, the most formidable threat they've seen in 30 years.

i, for one, will be following it closely.

if you'd like to get a sense of the man for yourself--or if you just want a quick primer on how we got to the sad, sorry place we are today, and where we're headed if things don't change--i urge you to watch the following clip featuring most of his very first campaign speech, given yesterday in hartford. trust me, there's no empty political rhetoric here:




[and now that he's gotten the stamp of approval from this bastion of respectability--seriously, what could possibly stop him?]

and now, a talking head i actually like

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i've never talked about my friend mark, but something came up recently as regards him, so let's do that.

mark levine is one of the smartest, most accomplished guys i know: ivy-league educated, fulbright scholar, massive over-achiever, dyed-in-the-wool liberal, perennial optimist--in other words, my polar opposite in almost every way.

to give you an insight into mark's nature: dragged to an audition for wheel of fortune while an undergrad at harvard--he got on, the friend who dragged him there did not--mark, suddenly seeing this as his best shot at paying for law school, left nothing to chance. while the other contestants were no doubt crossing their fingers and thinking good thoughts, mark spent every night up until game day in the library poring over letter-frequency charts and books on cryptography and code-breaking, and calculating the physics of how hard he should spin the wheel based on its position. the result?



at the time i met him, mark was in his second year of law school at yale, and was visiting los angeles in preparation for a summer-associate gig at the firm where he would ultimately end up working after graduation. for whatever reason, we hit it off pretty much immediately.

how would i describe our relationship? to paraphrase hillary clinton, mark and i started an argument in the spring of 1991, and almost 20 years later, we're still talking.

always passionate about politics and policy, mark abandoned a successful and lucrative law career in order to take a job as counsel for congressman barney frank; and then, once he'd had his fill of intrigue on the hill, began a new career in radio, where for the last several years his show, the inside scoop, has given his listeners a perspective on washington and national/world events with a depth that they're not likely to get anywhere else in radioland.

i've watched mark evolve from his stiff, awkward beginnings into a polished, confident radio--and now, tv--personality, and struggle with his characteristic focused tenacity to make a name for himself in one of the toughest, most competitive businesses out there.

and it looks like all that hard work is finally beginning to pay off: he is now being heard nationally as a fill-in host on air america, and--the reason for this post, actually--just appeared last week for the first time on fox's the o'reilly factor, where, in the limited time bill allowed him, he gave as good as he got:



[incidentally, this clip is an instructive lesson as to how o'reilly works--avoiding his more formidable opponent and instead devoting most of the segment to a back-and-forth with the blonde bonehead who really contributed nothing of substance other than her apparent eagerness to act as an easy foil for the host.]

if you're weary of the kind of janeane garofalo-level drivel that passes for progressive talk radio these days and would prefer an informed, in-depth exploration of the issues of the day, i urge you to go over to radioinsidescoop.com and check mark out--in addition to his ongoing broadcasts, he has all of his past shows archived and available for free.

oh, and if you're in the d.c. area and think you can keep up, he's single ;)

gringo frio

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the other day i came across that rarest of all things: a blogpost to which all self-respecting blogposts aspire. and i haven't been able to get it outta my mind since.

written by an american [he's straight, but try not to hold that against him] who moved to south america in order to seek the yin/yang balance that had so eluded him in his homeland, and using gabriel garcia marquez's love in the time of cholera as his metaphor, he lays out the essential difference between the south- and north-american cultures in a way that not only had i never seen it laid out before, but that spelled out shit i had instinctively known and had been unable to articulate from the first time a warm glance from a latin guy made my dick hard.

the money quotes:

Latinos say “gringo frio” – cold gringo. They say our culture is cold. It’s a unanimous opinion. One Colombian girl, with a confused look on her face, asked me why gringos are like that.

and, a little further in,

Modern advances seen in the developed world require cold, hard intellect free of romantic delusion. Cold, calculating gringos have made some impressive societal advancements throughout history.

in other words, we make the trains run on time, and they live with passion. which, in the end, is more important?

think about that, and then read the post--and yeah, i mean the whole goddam thing. trust me, it'll be time well spent.

another plug

so i've been reading this blog for awhile, written by a guy by the name of steven barnes who, by all accounts, is pretty accomplished in a number of disciplines. while i could go on about him, better you should just click over and spend a little time there--you'll either resonate with him or you won't.

i read him because he (a) writes really well, (b) has a fine and demonstrably open mind, and (c) seems to have come closer to achieving that rare quality of balance than most anybody i personally know--and this comes across very clearly not only in his posts, but (if you take the time to read between the lines) in his life as well.

(and i'd put him on my blogroll except that, being straight, married-with-kids and in his mid-50s, he'd probably look upon a permanent plug by the likes of me in much the same way as would, say, barack obama a full-page new york times endorsement by louis farrakhan--so as my ultimate gift to him, i'll spare him that.)

anyway, check him out--you like me, chances are you'll love him.

a plug

so one night not long ago, v and i are watching a certain episode of jeopardy (again, it's like millionaire; tivo a week's worth, you can speed through to the parts that matter in no time), and final jeopardy comes up: "best picture winners." i groan, v rubs his hands together and, after the inevitable 30-second midas ad, the answer is revealed:

2 movies whose 1-word titles are cities;
they won the Oscar for Best Picture, 59 years apart

before i even start to turn over the possibilities, v unhesitatingly blurts out, "what are casablanca and chicago?". i turn and look at him with my mouth open, he smiles and says, "1943 and 2002--easy." [easy? hell, even with 30 seconds, none of the contestants got it]

and i sigh, chalk up one more for v in the movie department.

see, v is a film buff of the first water--even at his relatively young age, he has more knowledge of and/or passion for movies in his left pinkie than do most of the industry types i've met in the almost-20 years i've lived in this city.

i could go on and on about v and his love for cinema--like how, for instance, he'll happily curl up with me and watch any goddam movie i want, no matter how old it is, how many times he's seen it or even whether he likes it or not--doesn't matter to him because (a) if it's important to me it's important to him; and (b) he'll learn something from it either way.

or i could talk about how he spends hours searching obscure movie-spoiler sites before he ever sees a movie for the first time so he's not distracted by plot elements while he watches, deconstructs it and puts it back together in his mind.

i could go on about lots of things, but the reason i'm writing about v tonight (because i haven't gotten anywhere near this personal on this blog before) is because he's decided to start blogging about his passion--about movies past and movies to come--and i wanna give him a plug.

his blog is new (and who knows if it'll last because, as i've found out, this shit is hard) but what's there is worth reading and i urge you to check him out--and, if you're lucky, he'll continue to write and thus enrich your cinematic perspective as he has mine.

hey, the blind have needs too

so i head over to april winchell and download her latest podcast to listen to on the way to work (and if you don't know april, you need to--for my money, one of the most brilliantly funny people out there anywhere). and one of the things she and her co-host talk about this week is a website devoted to the noble--and apparently grievously overlooked--cause of bringing porn to the blind.

for those of you who are as clueless in this regard as was i, here's the deal: porn-starved blind guy (and no, i'm not being sexist--you know it's always gonna be a guy) logs onto porn for the blind and submits a request for an audio description of a sample movie clip from the adult website of his choice. they in turn put it out there in hopes that a sighted volunteer with suitable descriptive skills will come along and record their (fine, his) visual impressions of said clip in fulfillment of said blind guy's fervent wish.

well, apparently unmoved by the half-ass efforts of the few volunteers who had up to now come forth, april--who is nothing if not a humanitarian--brought in the inimitable auntie vera charles to show 'em how it oughta be done.

the result almost caused me to run my car off the road and take out a startled flock of hasidic jews at beverly & mansfield--trust me, don't try to listen to the following clip while you're doing something that could hurt somebody.

[oh, and (1) apologies for the quality--i hijacked it offa her podcast; and (2) this woulda been up yesterday had it not taken me ten fucking hours to figure out a way to embed an audio clip in a blogger post--i mean, sweet jesus, why do they make what should be such a simple thing so hard? finally, i hit upon the idea of turning it into a movie--for the blind, of course]