Mila's first Election Day

I’ve been following elections since around 1984, through fits of curiosity, elation, disappointment, drunkenness, fear, and loathing. But there is nothing that puts things in a new perspective more than the way I watched last night’s late late returns come in: when CNN called Missouri’s Senate race for Democrat Claire McCaskill at about 2 a.m., and my nine-day old Mila spat up on my knee.

Considering my line of work, and my desire to avoid having to defend my objectivity in awkward situations, I try to keep my thoughts on our political climate very simple and vague. But I simply can’t hide that it is very important to me that my daughter grow up in a civil society that refuses to be guided by greed, hate, and fear. The fact that any honest person reading that line can tell exactly where I stand should tell you a lot about American political culture in the past few years.

I spent most of the night at the Eagle running our election blog, which unlike the primaries, was terribly boring. The Democratic state senate candidate Ben Downing had it in a walk after very early results. And the governor’s race was not much of a contest at all.

Good. It shouldn’t have been. Republican Kerry Healey’s campaign was one of the most vile in memory, more so because it was perfectly unnecessary. In all the mud and bile she paid to spew across the state, many may have overlooked the fact that she is a moderate on most issues, and probably a very nice person beneath it all. But she chose to take a very dark path – she became her own Lady MacBeth. She could have used this race to build an amiable public persona, she could have positioned herself for a serious run at some of our weaker House seats or even at John Kerry the next time he comes around. But she refused to do that, and she deserves a nice quiet life in private sector oblivion because of it. (The Globe reports on the incredibly weak thinking behind it here)

It is a testament to the fact that things are, indeed, different that Democrat Deval Patrick refused to hop into the gutter as well. I’ll confess that I was a late-comer to the Patrick bandwagon, which lit people on fire around here in the Berkshires. He has a house in Richmond a few towns away, and I remember a year and a half ago getting emails and calls from Democratic folks around the area telling me about meet and greet events with Deval, and my response was “Who? Holy cow, don’t you realize the election is a year and a half away!”. I admit I was suspicious of his background: I don’t believe that success in business in any way qualifies you for elected office, and telling me you were a high-level executive at Texaco and Coke is like telling me you were a third-mate on a pirate ship. But through the primaries I came around and inhaled the spore with everyone else.

So while I was in the newsroom keeping tabs on the local races, the television gave dribs and drabs of what was happening at the national level. I didn’t have a chance to really start paying attention until after deadline, when it was down to Tennessee, Missouri, Montana and Virginia. When I got home I took Mila to the living room so we could watch some results before collapsing myself.

This afternoon I caught glimpses of Bush’s press conference. For the first time he looked and sounded like a beaten man, like someone who has heard the music. He was vicious and ruthless having won, and ferocious and nasty while in the process of loosing. But having lost almost seems to agree with him. I even laughed at one of his jokes (the one about Karl and the reading list). I almost can’t believe I’m saying this, but I have a hunch that the glad-handing bipartisan Texas governor we heard so much about years ago might make an appearance after all because he is all out of options. And if recent political history has taught us anything, it is that the Republicans are probably a more skillful minority party than a majority one (remember Newt Gingrich?). The next two years will be very interesting. But at the risk of sounding like a Massachusetts Republican, thank god there will now at least be a little bit of balance in the nation’s government.

On Halloween night, when we were still in the hospital, I turned on the television to watch the news. On the Albany stations there were a lot of awful ads in the Sweeney/Gillibrand race. We switched to the Vermont channels and there were lots for the Rainville/Welch race. We turned the whole thing off.

Those first few days in the hospital are a real blessing. You have lots of people around to help you out, you have no cares or responsibility beyond the new member of your family, and you have nothing ahead of you but the bright field that is the rest of your life. Yet it doesn’t take long for you to be ready to head off into the big Whatever-it-may-be, to get bored with the hospital walls and the hospital halls and to get back Home. Even though one can’t know what awaits, I knew all along this election day was coming. And in addition to hoping for a happy, healthy baby and wife, Tuesday was one of the things I wished would happen. I hope we earn it.

Axl and Kurt

For whatever reason last night while Mila was keeping us awake I started thinking about that strange rivalry between Axl Rose and Kurt Cobain. It started late one night months ago when I was watching VH1 or some such and found myself trying to remember what I thought of Guns n’ Roses, and how weird and portentous the feud between frontmen Axl Rose and Kurt Cobain was, and whether there is a larger point buried in it.

GNR was very big right when I was in junior high school, and I remember they were everywhere during those years. But by the early 90s the tide had gone out. They entered their baroque period, with the lavish, expensive videos, stadium tours of dubious quality, and Axl veering into a singular rockstar eccentricity while his bandmates just veered. Then came the grunge revolution, and Seattle’s indie scene became the Platonic “alternative” music ideal, with sonic mix of punk and metal and its flannel-clad, latte-fueled aesthetics.

At the time it was clear where the humor was, but looking back the picture becomes blurred. Although GNR came from the worthless Sunset Strip hair metal scene, they had the talent and creativity to beat it, and it is remarkable how well many of their songs hold up. Meanwhile grunge has has revealed itself to be just plain hilarious: all along maybe it was just metal that took itself way too seriously. I can’t listen to Soundgarden or Alice in Chains without chuckling. Nirvana was a rather large exception, and I think they knew it and it was one of those pressures that made them so uncomfortable in the limelight.

One point of friciton in these tectonic shifts was the famous feud between Axl and Kurt. There are stories Axl had wanted Nirvana to tour with them, which came to naught in some incidents at the 1992 MTV Music Awards involving Courtney Love and Axl’s entourage. There are many variations and rumors about what exactly happened, but Kurt seems to have seen Axl as a phoney, washed-up rockstar, while Axl saw Kurt as a heroin-addled whiner. At this moment, each of them seems to have had a point.

Over the weekend I saw an article in the Guardian by a filmmaker who traced Cobain’s last few mysterious days before his death. There are some very interesting moments…

In Seattle, we met up with Duff McKagen, bassist in Guns n’ Roses who’d bought a ticket on Delta Flight 788 to Seattle on April, 1 1994, and found himself sitting next to a crumpled figure wearing sunglasses.

It was the first irony of Cobain’s final week. Having jumped the wall of the Exodus Recovery Center near LA… Kurt found himself sitting next to a junkie rock star on the flight home. Duff is amazingly frank about what happens when two drug addict musicians meet up on a plane. “You cop some dope and then talk about quitting… ‘Yeah, this is the last time right?”

Or this…

Back in Seattle, Cobain proceeded to start scoring inordinate amounts of heroin, heading on out to the seedy-as-fuck Aurora Avenue to score them in Room 226 of the Marco Polo Motel (checking in as “Bill Bailey,” the real name of Axl Rose).

As much as I like Nirvana, I don’t regard Cobain nearly as highly as his fans do. I want to think this was a weird kind of solidarity and connection, a sense that when you strip away the personae they had to put on, they were just people trying to make art and live their lives. But alas, I fear when Kurt dragged himself into the hotel and gave that name, there was nothing more on his mind than a silly joke, made by a floundering jerk.

The years since have seen Cobain’s legend explode – as seen by his remarkable posthumous earning power. Meanwhile Axl has vanished into the studio, working on that mysterious single album that may or may not ever be finished, and is almost certainly going to be so worked over that it can’t be very good. Instead of being a slave to drugs, he’s a victim of his own perfectionism and difficult temper.

Sometimes you see kids running around in t-shirts with images of dead rock stars – Jimi, Janis, John Lennon, etc etc. This thanatos is the great drawback of rock culture, and we could do without it. It’s the kind of thing that turns Jim Morrison from the singer of a pretty good band into, as Lester Bangs dubbed him, a “bozo Dionysus” with an annoying afterlife.

It's a girl!

Olga and I welcomed into the world little Mila Jane Marcisz on Sunday, Oct. 29. She was born at 11:25 p.m. at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, and checked in at nine pounds, twenty inches.

No respect I tell ya...

It is a terrifically discouraging time to be a journalist, and many more posts here would include my thoughts on the subject but since nobody likes other peoples’ shop-talk, I try to keep it to myself. Though sometimes the conversations taking place way up in the stratosphere of Big League Journalism trickle down onto my head while mucking along down here on earth. I like Jack Shafer’s work very much, and usually agree with him. His work on the disheartening prevalence of anonymous sources in the national media is especially worthwhile. But the very idea of writing about media and journalism is weird and self-referential. And in Mr. Shafer’s case it seems that he has had too long to get comfy with a steady gig from a big family-owned news concern, and hasn’t talked to nearly enough people actually out in the hills trying to do this stuff. Lately he has been complaining about complaining about cuts at newspapers. He was talking about the big guys, whose steady stream of lay-offs has had ripple effects down to every level of the profession. He thinks it’s no big deal, and journalists should stop being so full of themselves. He feels so strongly about the subject that he even chose to refine his points in the face of criticism today. At first, I though all this was just the obnoxious, knee-jerk contrarianism that has been Slate’s bread-and-butter throughout (I always expect to see the headline, “Why not smoking and eating a healthy diet is bad for you”), but there is a little more here. I work at a newspaper that has already been cut away to nearly nothing. We had our big purge in 1995 when a certain big corporation bought the place from a well-regarded lcoal family and came in with sharpened pruning sheers. I know very well what it is like to have to do far too many things – cover too many towns, responsible for too many project stories, keep track of too many people. And what’s worse, the people you write for do little but complain about all the things you can’t do. But perhaps what gets me is Mr. Shafer’s rather sharp dismissal of journalism’s beloved self-positioning as watchdog and civil servant:

“Scratch a serious reporter, and he'll offer volumes about the "public service" his newspaper performs in the form of investigations: It watchdogs government. It keeps corporations honest. It uncovers the dastardly deeds of foreign dictators and prevents genocide. It exposes quacks and charlatans. (It turns the common man into a Socrates if he reads the editorials!)”

Well, har har har. Last night I covered a selectmen’s meeting in one of the seven towns I’m responsible for. There were the five board members, the town administrator and assistant, two reporters, and one concerned citizen. They were talking about the upcoming budget, but couldn’t help but spend several minutes at the end of the meeting in a red-faced rant-fest complaining about the media, disagreeable people who attend meetings, and all the other evildoers that have conspired to create a truly difficult situation for the town. I don’t know if our presence there just gave them something else to holler about, but if the interest of the majority of residents who pay taxes and can’t even be bothered to vote is any hint, we are doing something that Mr. Shafer has forgotten about. Now earlier in my career I spent awhile working in that stratospheric big-league journalism world and I saw a lot of things that made me shake my head at how callow and silly it all was. And I listened to many, many chest-thumping pep talks at J-school hitting all these notes Shafer mocks, and many of my colleagues there are now very successful and following along the agenda that he thinks is so funny. But when I moved out to a smalltown newspaper, making so little money I can barely make my student loan payments, with little hope of going anywhere because every place I’d like to work is firing people, it really gets you down to the brass tacks of what this is really all about. He writes: “My admiration for original investigative reporting knows no bounds. But the defenders of journalistic excellence will have to make a better case for the connection between big staffs and great journalism before I don my helmet and rush to man the Los Angeles Times barricades.” So how about a kind word for the connection between tiny staffs and alright journalism? Jesus, I have to stop reading Slate.

Chris is a punk...

... for never updating this bloody thing. Who knew just waiting around could be so busy? I'll have more soon. But tonight is the last night at CBGB's which, if you are like me, you've never been to but walked past once or twice -- knowing full well that a giant clump of your favorite bands were launched there. Many a time while living in NYC I scratched my head at the band listings in the Voice and told myself to get down there anyway, but I never did. Anyway, spend a minute...

David Ortiz's 41st

Congratulations to David Ortiz, who broke Jimmie Foxx’s single-season home run record for the Red Sox, which was set in 1938, on Thursday night.

My friend Jamie stopped by for a little while, and while that was cool, he also brought for a visit -- and then forgot at our house -- this…

That is David Ortiz’s 41st career home run. It was hit on the night of August 6, 2002, when he was just a chubby underachieving slap-hitter for the Minnesota Twins, who were visiting Camden Yards to play the Baltimore Orioles. It was hit in the sixth inning off of Sidney Ponson, and drove home Cristian Guzman. The homer was a shot to center-right field, and was caught by my friend Jamie, who was sitting immediately to my right. The Twins went on to loose that game, 9-2, and would give up on Ortiz after that season. The rest is history.

Primary night post-mortem

Primary night blogging went pretty well, judging by the responses we received and word around the office. I put up 33 posts through the course of the night, most were more processing returns than analysis, but it was a good run for the first time not just for me, but the Eagle as well. We had a very close state senate race that actually managed to keep us at the edge of our seats toward the end, and some conclusive and fascinating statewide results. The biggest surprise was that people started demanding the results fiftenn minutes after the polls closed, which suggests that we’ll need to do a little more explanation of the counting and reporting process for November.

Primary night in the Berkshires

Even if you aren't a hardcore political junkie who won't be able to fall asleep tomorrow night until you know whether State Senate Candidate X carried North Adams' Ward 2, you should still check out the Berkshire Eagle's primary night blog. I'll be your host for the evening, so wish me luck!

On Christgau

I flinch whenever senior journalists are canned through some corporate nonsense or other. So it was pretty alarming when Bob Christgau was unceremoniously shoved off his perch at the Village Voice. He has enough stature that he’ll land on his feet someplace, but I’d love to know how got that high in the first place. I think very highly of rock criticism as a genre – when done well it is an entertaining and insightful blend of unabashed fanboy enthusiasm, home-cooked literary theory, and bold, creative leaps and connections that define what is best about postmodernity. And while I can, if pressed, dig appreciations on Christgau (like this one in Slate) I don’t wholly agree with them.

His signature column – the “Consumer Guide” – was a periodic list of capsule reviews, and as a regular act of journalism they were darn near useless. Reading it is like intercepting fragmented telegrams aimed to one of his close friends. In-jokes, awkward grammar, unclear frames of reference, no sustained thought beyond a snap judgment (his longer pieces, I might add, are little better. Or rather, they may be incredible, but I’ve never gotten through any). I’ve read the Voice pretty regularly since high school, and I’ve never understood what he was on about. Frankly, it’s not English. And I’d love to learn more about this “fearsome line-editing” Jody Rosen write about. I’m afraid to admit I always believed he was a once formidable critic and intellect who had gotten a bit too cozy and lazy and was phoning them in.

To his credit, he maintains a terrifically comprehensive website, and looking back – especially if you look at whole columns as they originally appeared – turns out he was always that way. However, if you search by particular bands, bits and fragments jump out through the fog with some impressive – and concise -- insights. And he starts to look more like the Ezra Pound of rock critics. He’s an important figure at a critical time, he’s incredibly grouchy, and his vast body of work is a giant ash-heap with a few gems buried inside.

And about that grouchiness… Some gloomy critics are like doomed lovers in Gothic romances. Sometime, somewhere, they had a powerful, transformative, ineffable encounter with Art. Maybe it was one night in the dark at the theater, and some mix of words and performance laid raw some experience. Perhaps it was alone at home one night with headphones and some LP record sent shockwaves down your spine. Or maybe it was hours hidden away one quiet summer afternoon with a book. Something snapped in that moment and you can’t explain it, but you are so moved by its power you roam the earth seeking to find it again. But all you meet, over and over again, is the bitter taste of failure and the frustrating twilight of only seeing shadows of the wonders in your memory. That personal journey is all well and good, and often, it’s even fun to read.

And you can’t deny he’s dug deep, so visiting his website is a fun way to waste time. Consider this blurb on my favorite Soviet rock-band, which, amazingly, he got his hands on…

Kino, Grupa Krovy, 1989: Just Russian new wavers, their translated lyrics unobtrusively poetic, alienated by habit, politically aware, resigned. But Victor Tsoi's solidly constructed tunes have a droll charm that's fresh if not new, and to an English speaker, the physical peculiarities of his talky voice, which saunters along as if a low baritone is the natural human pitch, seem made for the offhand gutturals and sardonic rhythms of his native tongue. When his boys ooh-ooh high behind "It's Our Time, Our Turn!," it's as if someone has finally concocted an answer record to "Back in the U.S.S.R."

Here area a few I can certainly dig…

The Ramones, Ramones, 1977: But my theory has always been that good rock and roll should damn well make you uneasy, and the sheer pleasure of this stuff--which of course elicits howls of pain from the good old rock and roll crowd--is undeniable. For me, it blows everything else off the radio: it's clean the way the Dolls never were, sprightly the way the Velvets never were, and just plain listenable the way Black Sabbath never was. And I hear it cost $6400 to put on plastic.

The Eagles, The Greatest Hits, 1976: Hum 'em high--ten poptunes from the Four Lads of I'm-okay I'm-okay are probably a must for those who've concluded they're geniuses by listening to the radio.

Pavement, Slanted and Enchanted, 1992: Though no outsider wants to believe it, they're not just the latest scruffy rumor. And though no insider wants to believe it, they're more well-schooled than inspired--skilled, gifted, of enduring artistic value, condensing a decade of indie thrashing about into a two-year recording career that takes off with their debut album.

Pulp, Different Class, 1996: This year won't produce a more indispensable song than "Common People," but that doesn't mean young Americans know enough about the bourgeoisie to get it.

And these just make me say ‘y’ouch’:

The Doors, The Doors, 1967: I admit that some of the tunes retain considerable nostalgic appeal, but there's no way I can get around it--Jim Morrison sounds like an asshole.

The Stone Roses, Stone Roses, 1989: Their music is about sound, fingers lingering over the strings and so forth. And in the end they're surprisingly "eclectic." Not all that good at it, but eclectic.

Son Volt, Trace, 1995: Finally the answer to a question that's plagued me for years. I'd pound my pillow at night, drift into revery at convocations on fun, plumb forget how my dick got into my hand, wondering why, why, why I could never give two shits about Uncle Tupelo. But the answer, my friends, was blowing in . . . no, I mean hopes "the wind takes your troubles away." Name's Jay Farrar, never met a detail he couldn't fuzz over with his achy breaky drawl and, er, evocative country-rock--and needn't trouble with the concrete at all now that that smart-ass Jeff Tweedy is Wilco over-and-out. In the unfathomable Tupelo, Tweedy whiled away the hours writing actual songs, leaving Farrar the drudgery of mourning an American past too atmospheric to translate into mere words. As sentimental as Darius Rucker himself, Farrar is only a set of pipes and a big fat heart away from convincing millions of sensitive guys that he evokes for them.

Summertime has passed and gone

Our best investment of the summer was a regular old small charcoal grill, which, as a Weber, Olga nicknamed "Max." Steaks, burgers, salmon, clams, jerk chicken, and many ears of corn were among the dinners successfully prepared in our first year of outdoor cookery. We will have the naked spot of burnt grass outside our porch door to remind us of the good times for the rest of the year. That's me on the rocks at Pemaquid Point, Maine, Aug. 27. A perfect late summer dinner. At the Lobster Dock restaurant, Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Aug. 28. View of Williamstown from Stone Hill, August 2006.