Valerie (photos of)

Good morning, world.

Here are four pictures I have on my computer of my wife, Valerie M. Blake. Isn't she pretty?

I have another one, but it's apparently too big to post.

Have a good day, all.

P.S. There's another photo of her at her website, www.dchomequest.com

P.P.S. I have some nude photos of her too, but you have to get to know me a lot better before I'll show you those.

Kelley

Confessions of an aging Beethoven fan

This essay is dedicated to the memory of Mark Harrison Williams, 1955-2008.

When I was 16, I had a very unusual hero for a kid of that age at that time.

Beethoven.

And here's the kicker: I didn't even play an instrument. Oh, I sang in my high school choir -- baritone -- but I learned the songs we sang by ear; I never did master reading sheet music, although I could point out a treble clef and a half note if I had to.

But I had a couple of friends, Armand Silva and Charlie Berigan. Armand was a few years older than the rest of us. He loved Bach and Mozart and also had a burning interest in science. I used to go over to his house and we'd listen to the Goldberg Variations or Mozart's Piano Sonata in D major K. 284 as played by Glenn Gould while we discussed particle physics. Armand's taste in music rubbed off on me a bit -- Top 40 radio was going down the toilet in 1971 and I was looking for other things to listen to.

I started tuning in the local classical station in San Diego, KFSD, half paying attention to what I heard. With a teenager's finances, I couldn't afford to buy records very often, but I would check classical vinyl out of the public library. I do remember my first classical purchase, ever. On May 14, 1971, Armand and I walked three miles to the White Front store where I bought the London recording of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, with Zubin Mehta conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Stravinsky had just died, so we were interested in his music. The music puzzled me, but man, did I think I was cool. My slack-jawed classmates were ooh-ing and hey-wowing over Black Sabbath; I was the supersophisticate tuning in Stravinsky instead.

In the fall of that year I met Charlie. Unlike Armand, Charlie was a couple of years my junior. But Charlie was something else Armand wasn't. Like me, Armand was a non-musician; the only instrument he played was the stereo. At 14 Charlie was an accomplished pianist. Our very first meeting was serendipitous. We were playing football in gym class and I began whistling the opening notes of the "Eroica" Symphony. As a teenage classical pianist, Charlie was of course familiar with that piece, recognized it, mentioned it and we became immediate friends. Our friendship is now in its 37th year. After high school Charlie went on to conservatory studies, then to New York, where he attended Juilliard and studied with Earl Wild for a couple of years. Later he had extensive involvement in theater, playing, arranging and sometimes composing music for the stage.

Armand, I'm sorry to say, didn't turn out so well. He already had some emotional problems in the early days when I knew him, and with the years they didn't improve. The last time I saw him he was a 50-ish homeless person, sleeping on the trolley and subsisting on disability checks from the State of California.

Charlie's musical horizons were wider than Armand's, and he introduced me to a wider range of music by more composers. But Beethoven was my main man, always. I admired his rebellious spirit, his ferocious independence, his messy room. But mostly I admired his wonderful music. I started with the popular middle-period stuff of course, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the "Emperor" Concerto, the "Egmont" Overture, etc. But soon I was sampling his later, more inward-looking and less theatrical stuff, such as the heavenly C-sharp minor String Quartet Op. 131. At the tender age of 16 I was transported by that piece. It inspired me to rent a violin and try to teach myself how to play it, a doomed enterprise if ever there was one.

I wanted to be like Beethoven. There was just one problem: aside from a more-or-less passable singing voice, I had no musical talent to speak of. But that problem was easily solved, actually -- there are other arts, after all. If I couldn't play the piano I'd write poetry. So I did that instead. I was the nerd who strode around campus with his hands behind his back, a scowl on his face, his notebook filled with recently-scribbled free verse.

Actually, my teachers liked my poetry. They thought I had talent, for that, anyway. Okay. If I couldn't be Beethoven, I'd be Goethe. Or Baudelaire or T.S. Eliot or one of those guys. I wrote poetry like a fiend the rest of the way through high school. Even got one poem published about the time I graduated. I suppose it was an acceptable consolation prize for not having written the "Appassionata," but boy, did I love to fantasize that I had! I used to dream of girls swooning over me as I sat at the piano playing the slow movement in a very soulful way, then launching with great elan into the tempestuous final movement. I didn't bother to notice that Charlie could actually do this, and the girls weren't swooning over him, either. I think that year they were swooning over Elton John.

Well, of course we outgrow our heroes if we grow up at all. Beethoven -- the persona, not the music -- faded for me as I left my teens behind and became of necessity less of a romantic. But I remained a faithful classical-music buff. I joined the Musical Heritage Society, shopped the record stores and built a huge collection, almost all of which which I had to give away in 2003 when I decamped from Maryland to return to the west coast. You want to know that broke my heart? But I kept one box of vinyl, and made sure that it included that Zubin Mehta Stravinsky recording which had been the acorn from which the unwieldy oak -- too unwieldy to transport 3,000 miles, anyway -- grew.

Since then I have been rebuilding the collection. Vinyl is hard to find these days, but I'm back up to perhaps 500 or 600 CDs. I've done a few iTunes downloads, but I try not to go crazy. Yes, I have re-acquired a great many of the titles I bid farewell in '03. It's been a satisfying experience, but also in some ways a revelatory one.

I'm discovering that some of these pieces of music I just don't want to hear any more. One of the appeals of classical music, to me anyway, has always been its perennial freshness. It can astonish and delight just as much today as it did when it was written down 250 years ago. Can you honestly say that about very much popular music? Well, sure, there are the timeless great figures in pop of which we never tire: Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Gershwin, Rogers & Hart, Lennon & McCartney. Sinatra, of course. I would even add the young Billy Joel to that list. But by and large popular music is a sea of dreck in which occasionally you find treasure floating. Classical is different. It's all good. As a pompous jerk said to me one evening in 1975 at an all-Mozart concert at the Hollywood Bowl, "There's no bad Mozart." He was a pompous jerk, but he was right. There is no bad Mozart.

But there is, admittedly, some Mozart I just don't want to hear any more. I'll give you an example: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. There are some pieces, even by Mozart, that after 10,000 hearings in 35 years, I'm ready to retire them. And that goes for every other major composer I could name.

Classical radio is partly responsible for this. I know it's fallen on hard times lately, and no one could be more sympathetic than I. But even as I twist my dial back and forth between the two classical stations I can pick up where I live, WETA Washington, D.C. and WBJC in Baltimore, I am forever exasperated at hearing the same old stuff over and over and over again. I know classical radio has to play softball if it's to survive. I learned that way back in 1978 when I called up KFSD's Sunday-afternoon request program and asked the deejay if he would play Pierre Boulez' Pli Selon Pli, about as esoteric an essay in masturbatory serialism as you could ask for. Don't ask me why I wanted to hear that; maybe I'd been drinking. Pli Selon Pli is the one piece of music on earth that I have never, ever, been able to sit all the way through. It's that boring.

"Oh, I couldn't play that!" The deejay laughed. "We have a strict rule: no 12-tone music."

"Really?" I said.

"Yeah. Our station manager likes country-western."

"You're kidding."

"No. His favorite song is El Paso. If you want to hear a nice piece by Tchaikovsky or Brahms, I can play that for you."

I compromised and asked for Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto.

I've found this, or something like it, to be a problem everywhere I've gone. I'm not complaining that radio stations don't play Boulez -- I don't think his music should be played anywhere but Patagonia anyway. but I would like to see some slightly more-adventurous programming than what I hear. Shortly before my mother died in 2000, I was talking with her on the phone and I mentioned that between WETA and WGMS, I had heard Rachminanoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini three times that week.

"Oh, I love that piece!" Mom said.

"Well, so do I, but I don't want to hear it three times a week," I replied.

I know, the radio stations want to keep their audiences happy and yes, people like to hear what's familiar, which is why the Beatles are still selling like cold beer at a jalapeno festival 38 years after they self-destructed. But you can only hear Toscanini's famous "50 basic pieces" so many times before you're groaning. And if you've been listening since your teens and are now in your fifties, like me, it starts to go beyond 50 basic pieces. It becomes 100, 150...and mounts.

I never thought I would hear myself say this, but if I never heard another Beethoven symphony on the radio, it would be just fine with me. I prefer to have my private collection handy, so if for whatever reason I ever get a hankering to hear his 7th (my long-time favorite, but even it now getting old for me) I can pop it into the CD player, enjoy it once and then put it away for another six months.

Should I ever win the Lotto (unlikely because I never play) I just might be tempted to buy a radio station and give it a classical format if it doesn't have one already (and if I can swing an NPR affiliation. Not that I'm a fan of NPR, but I really do think non-profit is the future for classical radio, and NPR, with its government subsidies, is the king of nonprofit radio.) As owner of KFUD or WUSS or whatever unfortunate call letters I wound up with, I would of course give myself a weekly radio show to ingratiate myself to my own annoying ego. I would also post a list on the wall outside the production room, of pieces I do NOT want to hear. Ever. Or at least until further notice.

THE LIST:

1. Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor.

2. Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique.

3. Any symphony by Brahms, Beethoven or Tchaikovsky.

4. Rachmaninoff's Second and Third Piano Concertos.

5. Mozart: "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik."

6. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major.

7. Mussorgsky: "Night on Bald Mountain."

8. Grieg: "Peer Gynt" Suite (I loathe "In the Hall of the Mountain King." Too noisy.)

9. Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor.

10. Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1.

11. Mozart's Variations on "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" or whatever that damn thing is called in French, I can never remember.

12. Mozart: Sonata in A major, K. 331 (the one with the "Rondo alla Turca.")

13. Beethoven: "Coriolan" Overture.

14. Gershwin: "Rhapsody in Blue."

15. Prokofiev: "Classical" Symphony.

16. Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture (Even Tchaikovsky hated it.)

17. Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat.

18. Dvorak: "New World" Symphony (Yes, we all love that slow movement, but enough is enough!)

19. "The Ride of the Valkyries." (I'm a Wagnerite, but can we lose that one?)

20. Vivaldi: The Four Seasons. All four.

21. Schumann: Symphony No. 1 "Spring"

22. Weber: "Invitation to the Dance"

23. Pachelbel's Canon in D major (Surely he must have written SOMETHING else?)

24. Ravel: Bolero

25. Chopin: "Military" Polonaise

26. Dvorak: "American" String Quartet (I used to love this piece, but radio overkill killed it.)

27. Liszt: "Totentanz" (Actually, this one isn't a case of overkill. It's just loud and ugly and I don't like it.)

28. Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto

29. Beethoven: Violin Concerto

30. Brahms: Academic Festival Overture.

I could probably add to this list for another hour, but you get the idea. By the way, feel free to suggest additions. (My late friend Mark Williams would have added Liszt's "Les Preludes." But somehow I've managed to avoid that one lately, so I haven't burned out on it yet.)

Lest you think I'm just an old sourpuss, there are pieces by each and every one of the composers I've listed above that I can still listen to with love and delight. They're all great composers, every last one of them. And they all wrote a great deal more than the overworked, overbeaten, overplayed chestnuts listed above. Perhaps I'll dedicate a future posting to pieces I still love by all of these composers (Except maybe Pachelbel. That treacly Canon is the only thing of his anyone's ever heard. He must spin in his grave every time it goes out over the airwaves.)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go change the radio station. They're playing the suite from "Swan Lake" again.

Thoughts in a still season

George Will, in a recent column, called January "this godforsaken month" or words to that effect. I don't know. I've always rather liked January. There was one January when I was in junior high school, living in Spokane, Washington, that was like something out of the fevered world of that wacky kid in Conrad Aiken's short story "Silent Snow, Secret Snow." Only I got it for real. Eastern Washington state had a real Minnesota-style winter that year. We were buried in snow from Christmas until April.

I liked it. We got snow days out of school. My room was cozy and warm. It got old after a while, but on the whole I remember that January with fondness.

On the other side of the coin, I'm from the San Diego area, and January is usually a delightful month there. Cool, as in not hot (maybe in the 60s) and generally sunny. A nice month to go bike riding out along the Silver Strand to Coronado.

I live in Washington, D.C. now, but we haven't had much snow this winter. In fact we've had damn little. I do NOT put that forth to support global warming conspiracies; it's just a fact. D.C. runs hot and cold when it comes to snow. I was here for the Blizzard of '93 and the Blizzard of '96, so I know. This year it's just been lighter, that's all. I'm not really looking at snow as I write this, but a dry street. The snow photo above is a stock picture I pulled off the Internet.

A Saturday afternoon in January in Washington. WETA radio is quietly offering The Barber of Seville and there's fresh coffee in the kitchen. Time to ponder some big issues at random.

Here's one, one of the more shameful confessions a baby-boomer can make. I've never particularly cared for Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I was 11 years old when it was released. My older sister was a big Beatles fan, as were most 13 year-old girls in 1967, and she bought it right away. Hence, as of last year I've been listening to it off and on for 40 years. My sister's vinyl copy wore out years ago. I have the CD, but I seldom play it.

It's just not my favorite Beatles album. There's something sort of, I don't know, overstuffed about it. Over-produced, I guess you'd say. And if you're my age and you remember the Paul-Is-Dead thing that swept across the world a few months before the Beatles self-destructed, you'll also remember that many of the so-called "clues" relating to Paul's demise came from that album and its jacket, which for me anyway somewhat tainted the album with a dark tarbrush. But chiefly I guess it's a matter of taste. I liked to think of the Beatles as a band, and Sgt. Pepper was not produced by a band. It was produced by a bunch of guys who spent five months dial-twiddling and tape-cutting and experimenting in a studio somewhere. I don't have anything against that, and I'm glad they were able to do it, but I just don't care all that much for the result. There's little spontaneity in it, none of the kick, sock and passion I associate with rock n' roll. It's a produced piece of art, which makes it neither fish nor fowl. Among those early "concept" albums of the late '60s, I much preferred the Who's Tommy, which sounded more like what I thought rock music should sound like.

I'm not alone in this feeling. Ringo Starr once said he felt the same way. He may have changed his mind by now; the radio interview in which I heard him say that Sgt. Pepper was not his "fave" took place in 1977. I was just out of college and was walking a security-guard beat at three O'clock in the morning at a lemon packing plant in Ventura, CA. I had my radio on for company, and there I sat, perched on a dormant forklift, listening to Ringo hold forth. He told the interviewer that he didn't especially care for the album, and when he expressed a marked preference for Abbey Road, the Fab Four's last effort, he said the reason was because with Abbey Road, "We went back to being a band." Well, they didn't go back to being a band for very long, but that was significant.

Okay, on to other topics.

One thing I like about the January cold is that it makes it easier to clean up my back yard. My wife Valerie and I have three dogs. And I can tell you that when dog waste is frozen, it's much more pleasant, or perhaps I should say less unpleasant, to clean up than when it's being kept nice and soft by temperate rain.

Okay, this next question is directed only at my fellow conservatives: are you getting as sick and tired as I am of left-wingers calling virtually anyone they don't like a "racist?" It's become the equivalent of "poo-poo head" on the playground. This got my goat the other day when I saw what some lefty blogger had written to the American Spectator On-line in response to an article someone had posted about why they admired Ronald Reagan. "You like Reagan because you're a racist and an elitist," the lefty blogger sniffed. Well, that's a new one on me in two ways. First of all, it's usually conservatives who call liberals "elitists," not the other way around, and secondly, Ronald Reagan was probably the most UN-"racist" president we ever had. But lefties don't like Reagan, so when someone expresses admiration for him, they resort to their rhetorical old reliable: "Poo-poo h - I mean, RACIST!!"

Why do we let them get away with it? Well, sometimes we don't. Two or three years back Al Franken, that toxic little twit who I wish would choke to death on his Che Guevara T-shirt, called somebody he didn't like a "racist" without providing any support for the claim -- I suppose Franken assumed he didn't have to back up the taunt; among lefties "racist" has become shorthand for "I don't like you." I forget who the insulted party was, but he retaliated by posting a photo of Franken on the Internet and putting the word "RACIST" underneath it. Touche and well done.

I'm a fan of chess in the same way that I'm a fan of surfing. I'm not very good at it and don't expect that I ever will be, but I like the game. So I took close notice of Bobby Fischer's death this month. His epic clash with Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky in 1972 was one of the highlights of that summer in the news media, right up there with Mark Spitz winning I-forget-how-many Olympic gold medals for swimming, then proving a not-very bankable hero when he turned out to have too little acting ability even for Wheaties commercials. But I remember some slick magazine proclaiming that Fischer and Spitz had made us "proud to be Americans" again that summer. Yes, Fischer was a genius. Recently, just to get a sample of how he played, I cranked my computer chess program up to its highest level, which happens to be called "Fischer," and tried playing "him." He surprised me with an attack focused around advancing his king and queen's pawns, respectively, launching a pawn-based attack on the center of the board. I've always accepted the conventional wisdom that you deploy your knights right away and castle as soon as possible. I didn't even get a chance to castle; "Fischer" checkmated me in about six moves.

But the rest of the story has to be told -- he was also a whack job from Planet Schizo. Much has been written about the close relationship between chess genius and insanity, so I won't go into that, but Bobby Fischer could not deal with the world outside the stratospheric, hermetically-sealed world of this board game. Music, mathematics and chess are generally acknowledged as the three disciplines in which it's possible to show genius at a tender age, because all three of them center around mastering abstract disciplines that are beyond the realm of personal experience -- they're concerned only with measures, technique, counting and spatial relationships. If Bobby Fischer had a counterpart in music, I might say it was Glenn Gould, similarly precocious in his talent and similarly filled with strange tics and quirks -- it's been speculated that Gould might have suffered a mild form of autism. But Gould, for all his peculiarities, was articulate, well-read and well-spoken, and expressed himself beautifully, if sometimes a bit archly, in prose. Fischer was a hopeless mess at communication. I once saw him on The Dick Cavett Show. I was only 16, but I was nonetheless amazed at how thoroughly stupid he managed to sound. Despite being a Jew himself on his mother's side, he ended up as a paranoid wing-nut who believed Jews are secretly controlling all the world's governments and applauded the 9/11 attacks. It doesn't surprise me. He never finished school ("School is for dumb bunnies. I don't need school to play chess," he said in his youth) and it showed. The greatest chess player of all time had a breadth of ignorance that was truly breathtaking. Genius he was unmistakeably, but as my mother once said of Gould, "Not the sort of person I'd want to have breakfast with."

I was on the phone a few Sundays ago with my old pal Doug Parker who lives in Reno, NV. Doug and I rode some hard trails together back when we were a couple of scrabbling radio guys (Doug was a deejay; I did news) sharing an apartment in Vacaville, CA. Doug is an all-around sports nut, which I'm not, but we both love baseball and of course we love to talk about it. He was telling me of how he related to a female acquaintance recently what he feels are the four most beautiful words in the English language: "Pitchers and catchers report."

Yes, sir! Only three weeks until spring training! As I said in this space just about a year ago, we baseball fans get the best of winter. For us, spring starts in February when "Pitchers and catchers report."

You know, it looks like it might be about to start snowing. Catch you later.

Does this swimsuit make me look fat?

I'm not especially given to quoting myself, but as I was chugging down my 250-calorie meal replacement shake this morning, a line of my own came back to haunt me.

My novel Tower-102 (2000) opens with the line, "They say the knockout punch is always one-two."

Sometimes that goes for the flash of insight as well.

Yesterday I was watching Bruce Brown's classic surfing film The Endless Summer. I'd seen it before, years earlier. For the record, it was better than I remembered. I'm a fan of surfing, though I'll probably always be too scared of the ocean to be much good at it. I took a few lessons once, fell off my surfboard, went home, wrote about it.

The Endless Summer was made in 1966. As I watched it on my flat-screen home TV 42 years after it was released to theaters, three things leaped out at me right away:

(1) The Sandals' theme music for that film is wonderful. The ultimate in classic surf tunes.

(2) History is inflationary. (I already knew that.)

(3) Our national obsession with being skinny has gone over the cliff.

The first point needs no discussion. Go get the DVD, or find a CD compilation of surf music and see what I mean.

The second is something of a side-note, but I found it amusing when the two young surfers in the film, who are taking an around-the-world trip in search of the perfect wave, make their first stop, in Dakar, Senegal. Bruce Brown, voice-over narrator as well as director, points out the astounding detail that the boys were charged (gulp!) $30 a day for their hotel in Dakar. "They could have stamped 'sucker' on your forehead as you came through the door," he says. $30 was outrageously expensive for a hotel room in 1966. You'd never find anything that cheap now, in Dakar, Oklahoma City or anywhere else.

He goes on to say that the boys found Dakar so expensive they decided to move on quickly. "A cup of coffee cost the equivalent of ONE AMERICAN DOLLAR," he tells his no-doubt amazed audience of 42 years ago. Equally outrageous is the price of gas in Accra, Ghana, also the equivalent of (yikes!) one dollar a gallon. Well, okay, in 1966 the median family income in America was $7,400 a year. Still, to hear in the age of Starbucks a dollar for a cup of coffee cited as outrageous is...quaint. As quaint as Beatle haircuts and striped bell-bottoms, anyway.

But the detail that really caught my attention was the women in swimsuits, the beach cuties encountered by the two surfers in places like Australia and Hawaii. In Melbourne, for example, Brown was joking about the fact that the girls' swimsuits were so skimpy that the lifeguards carried spares...in band-aid boxes. Yuk, yuk. Boys being boys, the surfers were so taken with the sights that they were wiping out, staring at all this luscious pulchritude.

Pulchritude that would be considered obese today.

That's right. The swimsuit gals and women surfers in The Endless Summer were noticeably meatier than the feminine ideal of 2008. In those days curves were to be embraced (no pun intended) everywhere, not just north of the solar plexus. And the boys were not complaining a bit, nor were the girls the slightest bit self-conscious. I'd be willing to bet the girls weren't living on tofu and bean sprouts, either. The Sixties were pre-health-and-fitness, surfers' athletic physiques notwithstanding. Jogging didn't even enter the language until that decade was nearly over. People still smoked, everywhere. And young people consumed cheeseburgers and butterscotch sundaes without guilt and without tut-tutting from a national choir of food police. If you described yourself as a "vegan" in 1966, people would think you belonged to some bizarre religious cult. Yes, there is something to be said for the old days.

I was 10 years old in 1966. I don't remember thinking that the girls I was precociously ogling at the beach were fat. Yes, when I looked at sepia-toned old photos of Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties from half a century earlier, I remember wondering that anyone could find them attractive at all. But the young women of my childhood and youth were none the less attractive to us adolescent boulevardiers of that day generally, for being what they were: unselfconsciously female in every way.

That was Sunday's movie moment. The second punch came on Monday morning. I was sitting in the waiting room at my podiatrist's office, waiting to have the inserts in my shoes given their three-month tire-kick. There was nothing available to read but a fashion magazine, so I picked it up and began thumbing through it.

There, parading before my eyes, were page after page of young women celebrities showing off what they'd worn to the latest Hollywood premiere or whatever. I'm proud to say that I recognized not a single one of them aside from Jamie Lee Curtis, who's closer to my age, and Paris Hilton, who unfortunately is as unavoidable these days as spam e-mail for penis enlargement. Perhaps it was the very fact that I didn't recognize any of them that drew my attention to the most obvious screaming fact about them: they all looked exactly the same, and they all fit perfectly Tom Wolfe's term for the modern ideal of what a woman's body should look like. That term, coined in the pages of his 1998 novel A Man In Full, is "Boy With Breasts."

It's true. Every one of these gals, except for wearing an evening gown that put her breasts on display like a float in the Rose Parade, could have been a 16 year-old boy. The rest of their bodies were almost uniformly linear. Is this really, honest-and-for-true, the ideal of beauty in the age of iPod? It appears to be. But if one stops and thinks about it, it's a bit disturbing. Now, maybe I'm well into creeping fuddy-duddyism and then again maybe not. As I watched Bruce Brown's old surfing film I did think, "Man, those gals are chubby!" But then I caught myself. Were they really? I don't remember thinking so when I was a boy. And then I remembered that famous picture of Marilyn Monroe crawling out of the pool naked.

You know what? Today someone would be telling her to go to Weight Watchers.

And that means something is wrong.

Does a national drift in the direction of androgyny have something to do with it? I don't know, I'm not a sociologist. In 1966 Bob Dylan, before his motorcycle accident anyway, briefly embraced a somewhat androgynous image, of which we were reminded recently when Cate Blanchett played him in a movie. And of course that same year saw the phenomenon of Twiggy, the British supermodel who resembled a kitchen match wearing a sweater. But she was considered a freak in 1966. Today she wouldn't be.

With stories about celebrity anorexia all over the front pages of the trashy tabloids, I think it's time we stop and reevaluate the nationwide craze for ever thinner and thinner and thinner. I'm not saying we should just forget about it and go back to stuffing ourselves without guilt, but I know this for certain: "Moderation in all things" is a reasonably reasonable proposition. "You can't be too rich or too thin" is one of the most idiotic things ever uttered. Plenty of Lotto winners have come to bad ends, and so, let us not forget, did Karen Carpenter.

This morning I was poking around on USA Today's website, and there was yet another story beating the drum about how many calories and grams of fat this or that treat at McDonald's has. Shut the hell up, already! And quit telling us over and over and over again that women are supposed to look like Iggy Pop wearing falsies if they want to be glamorous. If I have a choice between a picture of Marilyn crawling out of the pool and one of Nicole Richie swooping out of a limo and into a restaurant like a coat rack in Prada, there's no decision to make there. Viva Marilyn. Viva Woman. Viva Flesh.

Excuse me. Surf's up.

Ever wonder?

I'll bet you do this, too, if you're a coffee drinker, anyway.

You have those two or three jolts of caffeine first thing in the morning, and then, (often while you're in the bathroom) the synapses start firing. Suddenly you're either in possession of the world's greatest wisdom or you're pondering questions that most of the rest of your day doesn't have time for.

Now, my last previous blog posting was a list, and normally it's not like me to post two lists in succession, but what the heck? It's my blog. And people do like lists. Just ask David Letterman.

Anyway, here is a list of things I wonder about sometimes after having that second cup of joe. Anyone know the answer to:

1. Why do people always assume that all cats are female? I have three cats. All of them are male (neutered.) But whenever someone comes in and sees one of my cats, they always refer to him as "she."

2. While we're on the subject of assuming, why does everyone in Washington, D.C. assume that everyone they meet is a fellow Democrat? From what I hear at parties, you'd get the idea that there are no Republicans in Washington. Or at the very least that D.C.'s Democrats are perfectly comfortable with offending you if you don't hold the same views they do.

3. And why do women assume that it's always incumbent upon men to leave the toilet seat down? Why don't we tell them to leave it up?

4. Why is rush hour called "rush hour?" Nobody's moving. They ought to call it "crawl hour," "ooze hour" or cocktail hour.

5. Why do stores put signs out front saying animals aren't allowed, "except service animals?" I assume that refers to seeing-eye dogs, and people with seeing-eye dogs can't read that sign anyway.

6. What was the reasoning behind car manufacturers' giving everybody a bicycle tire for a spare? Who made that suggestion? (And by the way, this is just a suggestion, but...let's find him and kill him.)

7. How do left-handed people manage to write? I'm always amazed when I watch a left-handed person in the supermarket checkout line writing a check. They PUSH that pen across the page. I'm right-handed; I PULL it. How does that pushing motion produce words?

8. Why do wine companies put the corks in wine bottles with an atomic-powered jackhammer, so that it takes a 20-mule team and the Jaws of Life to get the damn wine bottle open?

9. Why don't Bill Gates, Al Sharpton and Don King get decent haircuts? God knows they can all afford them.

10. Why does the Super Bowl always have a Roman numeral assigned to it, implying that it has the same historical significance as World War I, World War II or Pope John XXIII? They don't do that with the World Series. (Psst! Hint! M-A-R-K-E-T-I-N-G.)

11. Why do booksellers ship books wrapped in bubble-wrap? Books aren't breakable. But the last book I ordered came in the mail as mummified as if it were cut crystal.

12. Why aren't movie stars larger than life anymore? I'd give you 26 Reese Witherspoons for one Audrey Hepburn, 100 Nicole Richies for one Ava Gardner.

13. They can send probes to Jupiter. Why can't they figure out a way for passenger planes to avoid air turbulence?

14. Why do hotels refer to paying customers as "guests?"

15. Why is driving with an .08 blood alcohol level considered a Scarlet-letter sin, while driving with a cell phone plastered to your stupid head is completely tolerated?

16. Why is it that when you buy one tomato at the supermarket, the plastic bag you yank off the roll to put it in is big enough for a dozen watermelons?

17. Why don't they give up on those stupid "blow-dry" gizmos in restrooms for drying your hands? They don't work. You stick your hands under one of those things for five minutes and you still end up wiping them on your pants.

18. Why is it that every time you get used to a handy software feature, when the next version comes out, they've gotten rid of that feature?

19. Why do DVDs come with promotions for other movies before the main feature you want to see? I assume one of the reasons you rented that DVD was to AVOID commercials. And besides, once the DVD is a few years old, nobody cares about the come-ons for those old movies anyway.

20. Presumably, Commissioner Gordon had once been a detective. So why did he never tumble to the fact that Bruce Wayne and Batman had the same telephone voice?

21. And while we're on the subject of Batman, the Batmobile ran on atomic power, right? I never noticed that the Batmobile went any faster in traffic than any other car. So what was the advantage of having it run on atomic batteries?

22. And finally ... Why doesn't Britney Spears just go away and never come back? And take Michael Jackson with her while she's at it? As far as I'm concerned, the two of them can go spend eternity playing cribbage at the Henry Winkler Home for Has-Beens (or in Britney's case, never-was-es.)

A Cease-and-Desist List for the New Year

With 2008 now well underway, I have been giving some thought to things I would like to see happen this year.

I'd like to see the San Diego Padres win the World Series.

I'd like to see my wife Valerie sell a gazillion dollars worth of real estate, after which we buy ourselves a vacation spot on the Mediterranean somewhere.

I'd like to find a publisher for the book I wrote last year.

I'd like to get my weight down to 180 pounds.

That's a partial list. I could probably come up with a dozen or so other "I would likes" to cover the next ten-and-a-half months until we start hearing Christmas music on the radio again.

But, like most folks, in addition to my "I-would-likes," I have a list of "I wish-they-would-go-aways."

This is my cease-and-desist list for 2008. Ten things I wish would just vanish from sight and/or sound and never be seen or heard of again. (No, President Bush isn't on the list. He doesn't have to be. He's going away whether I want him to or not. These are "hope-to-be" go-aways.)

10. Hannah Montana.

9. Miley Cyrus.

8. Network news sites promoting the network's own shows by treating them as if they were news, e.g. "DANCING WITH THE STARS: HORACE VEEBLEFETZER ELIMINATED."

7. Al Franken. Anyone my age remembers Pat Paulsen doing the comedian-running-for-office gag. It wasn't funny then, it isn't funny now, and Al Franken has never been funny in his life.

6. While I'm clearing away "Als," Al Sharpton. Before, during and after. The next time he grabs his soapbox to sound off about something that's none of his business (Tiger Woods, for example) I hope he falls down and breaks his hair. Make that his tongue.

5. People saying "I was like" or "I'm like" instead of "I said." (fat chance -- this particularly tic of stupid has already been with us for over 15 years, and isn't going anywhere soon, I'm afraid.)

4. While we're on the subject of stupid things people say, I'd like to see a stop put to people saying "I could care less." If you're in the habit of saying that, pause, right now, and THINK for just a minute about what it is you're actually saying. You're saying the opposite of what you mean, dummy.

3. Spam e-mail pitching cheap mortgages, penis enlargement and Viagra. By the way, I can sort of see the association of items two and three there, but what the heck do mortgages have to do with either?

2. Hand-held cellphones glued to the heads of morons who are concurrently (a) steering their cars with one hand, and (b) paying no attention whatsoever to their driving. Plenty has already been written about this, particularly in view of recent studies that show "distracted" driving (under which umbrella brainless cell-phone blabber falls) is every bit as dangerous as driving with a .08 blood alcohol level. But whereas drunk driving (or indeed, drinking alcohol at all) is now accorded a crime on the level of pederasty in our health-and-fitness-obsessed society, the cell-phone blabber on the road goes on and on and on, with legislative interest in curbing all this mindless -- and deadly -- chitchat lukewarm at best. I suspect state legislators are reluctant to put a stop to all the blather because they find it convenient that they can harangue their staffs while stuck in traffic. Folks, if you won't consider the blood-alcohol equivalency question, consider this: a clinical study that I have been conducting for 52 years has concluded that approximately 94.8 percent of the adult U.S. population has chicken fat for brains to begin with. In view of such numbing statistics, letting them make phone calls while steering 1,500 pounds of automobile down a residential street at 40 mph is insane.

1. Britney Spears. Anytime, anywhere. Or perhaps I should say EVERYWHERE. Can we STOP putting her idiotic, glassy-eyed, vapid mug all over every supermarket check-out line, not to mention all over the Fox News home page, every time she farts? What is this mass fascination with washed-up former teenage pop stars who haven't done anything in years except parade around making asses of themselves in public? Why does anyone CARE? If I never saw Britney Spears again it would be three weeks too soon. But I know I'll be seeing her tomorrow when I go to buy lettuce. On at least three slick magazines. And I'll be seeing her on the Fox News home page when I'm surfing the news websites over my coffee tomorrow morning. (Somebody at Fox News has a real boner for Britney -- they post a file photo of her every day, sometimes three.) ENOUGH already! I'd rather look at Nicole Richie, if only because I don't know who she is. And don't want to.

Here's to a saner, quieter world. Wherever it might be.

Last night the music died

An e-mail last night from my old friend Arthur Hayashi in Spokane with the subject line “Horrible News.”

That was putting it mildly. The story was in the Spokane Spokesman-Review this morning:

Former Spokane music educator stabbed to death

January 4, 2008


"Mark Williams, who for years was a fixture in the Spokane music scene, was stabbed to death Wednesday, and his son has been arrested in connection with the crime, the Bellingham Herald is reporting.

Mark Williams’ wife was hospitalized after the attack, in which she was stabbed in the chest, the Herald reports. She was reported in satisfactory condition this morning.

Williams, who was 52, taught elementary band for Spokane Public Schools and was the former director of the Spokane British Brass Band. Acquaintances say the couple moved to Bellingham within the past year.

According to the Herald, 24-year-old Brian Williams has been arrested on investigation of second-degree murder and first-degree assault. Investigators allege that he attacked his father and mother about 1 a.m. Wednesday.

Police say an argument may have begun when Brian Williams was woken up by his father to take medications, the Herald reports.

Connie Williams told investigators that she tried to break up a fight between her husband and son. She said she wrestled one knife away from him, but he grabbed another, the Herald reports.


A neighbor called 911 after hearing a commotion.

Mark Williams graduated from Shadle Park High School and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Eastern Washington University, according to the Spokane British Brass Band Web page. He had performed with the Spokane Symphony, Spokane Civic Theatre, Spokane Jazz Society and the 560th Air Force Band, and composed and arranged music for school bands and orchestras.

He was a member of the Spokane British Brass Band from its inception."



Arthur, Mark and I attended Jonas Salk Junior High School in Spokane together when we were all barely in our teens. Mark was already a musician then. He played clarinet in the school band. He had a particular fondness for Soviet composers, particularly Khatchaturian and Shostakovich. I first heard Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony sitting with Mark in a listening booth at the Spokane Public Library, around 1970. We were both 14 at the time. (Mark liked the piece, in fact it remained a favorite of his all his life. But he warned me that spring day that its Largo movement was "the most boring thing you ever sat through.")

I re-established contact with both Mark and Arthur when I moved back to Spokane to operate a bed-and-breakfast in 2006. Arthur, a family-law attorney, was president of the Spokane County Bar Association. Mark was arranging music for school bands and touring on behalf of his music publisher. He was on the road a lot. But every six weeks or so I would organize the "three [gray] musketeers" for lunch at some local eatery or other.


When I last saw Mark, late last April at O’Doherty’s Irish Grille in Spokane, he told Arthur and me that he was thinking of moving to Bellingham because he was about to become a grandfather and wanted to be “near the grandbaby.” At 52, he was the first of our crowd to become a grandfather. His wife Connie, he said, was looking for a teaching job which might facilitate their move from Spokane to Bellingham. I kept in touch with him sporadically after our move to D.C., but was unaware that he had gone ahead and made the move over to western Washington state, with which he was familiar because of course he had attended the University of Washington and lived for a while in Seattle. So he’s in Bellingham for a couple of months, being near the grandbaby, and then gets stabbed to death by his unstable son, whom we already knew had problems.

Here’s the irony: Mark’s family meant so much to him that he eschewed a larger career in music than teaching elementary school band and writing and arranging music for school bands so he could devote most of his time and energy to raising his kids. He told me that the satisfactions of home life and parenthood more than made up for his not having reached for the gold ring and tried to become a symphony conductor or something else grander than a music teacher. And what does he get for it? Stabbed in the chest several times by his son, whom he told me in 2006, when we first met up again after not having seen each other in more than 35 years, had been diagnosed as bipolar.

I’ve seen friends die. This is the first time I’ve had one murdered. And no one deserved it less.