Just Before Crossing the Swamp
Where the Battle Once Was ...
Beware: The Dadlands!

As reported by KGB-TVHO, Harlingen, Texas ... Sir the Artist Formerly Known as Frodo Now Known as Freudo has been reportedly ... um, transported ... to deep South Texas, at the mouth of the Rio Grande River, and he was mumbling something, sounded like he was jabbering, actually, to himself, in Japanese or Navajo or something, as if he'd gone completely insane over the so-called magical Ring of Doom (copyright notice goes here) ...

Before that he reportedly said, "All of the king's soldiers are slaves, same as the whores, but I'd won't sleep with either and I sure as hell won't fight without any reason," said Sir Freudo. "There is nothing left to prove, nothing left to discuss, nothing left to do, but love."

At the sound of these words, several reporters ... um, reportedly, left the room screaming with their ears on fire and their mighty pens melted. An occurrence to which those who remained at the impromptu press conference held on the beach at South Padre Island, just off the jettie allowing now, floating dead birds and dead fish and dead dreams to fog on in to the inlet leading to Port Isabel, once a quite seaside town, now a quite Wormwoodianly enclosed seaside ghost town, all of the king's reporters and all of the BP men in hazard gear ... the whole greasy crew, stood there, agape. Awed. Amazed, even, at the visit of such a person as dear Freudo.

"Diffusing lies, one day at a time," he laughed at the rest, scoffing. "You guys wouldn't know Hitler if he walked right up to you and handed you a letter to the editor, hah! ... as if that's a doctor's visit to anyone anymore."

###

Frodo, the Missing Years, Day ... Whatever ... Summer, I think ...

Frodo sat on a rock, made of plastic, overlooking Black Cibola, the famed city of glorified Mammon, and took another look at the Ring, which he decided to keep, then give away, then send out a rescue team to get it again, because they said, "What a shame." He looked at the so-called "Ring of Power" and said to himself, "Wow, what a piece of shit."

Sure, he was eating better. Feeling better about himself, empowered and all with his mission, as well as the book deal. His effort to throw it into Mount Eyechart in Iceland was a bust, and that was the wrong damn volcano, anyway. Then, returning to the Shire and moving down south fast by personally Fed Exxing himself to the Port of New Orleans, there was the by this time well-publicized mission to throw Ring into the Oilcano. But the pressure was too much. The Ring, tiny as it was, seemed to slip off everything down there, no reasonable planned fittings at all ... clearly it wasn't mean't for that. Not at those depths. Not at those freezing temperatures.

And so Frodo ... or Freudo ... as he was more gladly apt to call himself, had earned something of a public name by, first, like we said, deciding to go George Costanza on the whole thing, keeping the ring ... and before that, trying to be a hero, that failing ... either earning scores of favorites from different quarters, most of them somewhat mixed in their own motives about the Ring, or then, at the polar extreme edges, earning the scorn of those who claimed he was not only a quitter, but a greedy one at that.

"The road to hell is paved with ... ," he thought, just as he heard a bustle in the hedgerow behind him.

~

Frodo, the Missing Years, Day One ...

Frodo then returned to the Shire, feeling dejected about his botched first attempt at being a glorified worldwide hero by taking this supposedly all-mighty, all-powerful magic Ring and plugging up the Oilcano with it … because, quite obviously, it lacked the proper design and research and development necessary to do that. Pretty overrated ... No, really, really overrated, as far as it’s solutions for saving humanity went. “So,” he thought to himself, “Wassup with this damned Ring?”
His grandfather had left it for him in a green metal box filled with other a bunch of Boy Scout-like badges and so on from some ancient war only he could give any details on, and he’s gone and dead now. He pulled it out to view since it was held close by a blue and yellow intertwined string, another remnant of history, his own, from some other Boy Scout year long gone. It had strange, and yet, not completely unfamiliar symbols. But strange enough for him to get distracted, if just for a moment, to dream on his truly unstated hope. And that hope?
All he really wanted to do was sit at home and write early in the mornings while listening to supremely optimistic days of his rebellious youth. So he could mock the flocks of sheep gathered upon some green field around him and listen to Pink Floyd. Or, better yet, to realize that Grand Funk wasn’t all that bad, damn the critics. Same for Three Dog Night.
Then he returned to thoughts of his grandfather, Charles Stewart Parnell, not the historical one of Irish political lore, but the one was quite clearly the worst racist he’d ever met. Elves were some of best friends now. Same for the Dwarves. He even met a bunch of Orcs and, once you got to know them, they had good qualities, too. Sure were handy when shit was going down.
“Why should I consider this proper attire, this stupid Ring?” he said to himself, nobody else was listening or watching or caring (as far as he knew, since he wasn’t online, mentally, anyway). Somehow, the symbols etched upon its gold surface were appealing, but unthreatening. It had a couple of intersecting compasses with the letter “G.” It had what appeared to be a symbol for a masculine sex act on one side, a feminine sex act on the other. Lot of sex implied here. Pretty fertile sentiments, overall. Really weird old thing, considering it was a prized possession well before the advent of online porno.
He put it back under his black shirt and sighed. Now supposedly safe at home in the Shire, Frodo understood full well why it was his view of his childhood home would never be the same again. He’d seen too much, he knew. To Frodo, the magic and innocence his youth had been replaced by a sense of ongoing dread.
He began to hatch a new plan. Always trying to be self-less, he knew if he hung onto the Ring he would become increasingly intolerable. He would become a loose cannon, mouthy, expressive, about how clearly stooped sheep were. What was he supposed to do all day long now, go around like some bitter goat butting heads with Flat Earth folk who couldn’t be convinced there was such a thing as being smart? No, the wise Hobbit could clearly see it was a different tree he was looking at, much more sophisticated and smart and needed, then the ones they all let their dogs just pee on.
He decided to take a sabbatical. To keep the Ring, but to get away from all of the sheep so that they wouldn’t be eaten due to this growing outrage his was feeling about not even being able to breathe Shire air safely anymore. No longer able to even abide, like the Dude advised (and where was He these days?).
So he packed up his bag, filled it with a flute and a pen and a notebook and a Swiss Army knife, placed a little day-old pizza in a NASA inspired aluminum foil packet, and headed out the back door and into the woods, thinking of Salinger …

Deconstruction of Arizona

Arizona, I don't recognize you anymore
Your creosote roots lie beneath
the perfect piles of McDonalds parking lots

Arizona, an unequal symmetry
of rubble piles collect
Ten thousand miles from here

Arizona, you are responsible ...
The middle-aged businessman
with expendable income
sweats for pleasure

Arizona, when can I stop sweating?

I swear in the heat like a pizza oven
Arizona, you are a car part store
but you got no glass to see through
and the beige collection
of air-conditioned caves
are conditioned to respond
in all the right meets wrong ways

The forests are in ashes
as the governor gapes
from a helicopter high
for the diversionary tactic
of the the unrael politic


Arizona, I can find no fluid,
no friend, nor car phone
to lean on
for company

By GPS,
you can find me in the living room,
darkly lit, with rayolight flashing
bible black blurbs

Arizona, not even Ginsberg
would gripe about your tripe,
so blurred with anonymity
hell hardly matters anymore

Arizona, my life's belonging
sare melting in a storage facility
and there are more things that beep
here than I can count

Arizona, you haven't hassled me for a while,
though I'm a loose cannon at the mousy mouth
roaring at the corporate big box store

The world is flooding, bleeding, burning
and all of the above
as you dry up and blow away

Arizona,
a kid almost got crushed in your parking lot
and I went to one of your social service buildings
and was amazed about how many homeless lurks
were sleeping in the lobby,
dreaming of Mississipi burning

Arizona, I can't get assistance at the cash register
and the mountains are closed, cats run free
and all the lizards are gone
Arizona, you are sucking in souls,
eating them, spitting them out,
at very low wages ...
of sin ... I suppose ...

Arizona,
I think you should battalion
the borders with snow
and big bad bars of soap

~ Paradise Valley,
Arizona

From, "Ginsberg Rolls Over,"
the latest book of poetry
by Douglas McDaniel

Arizona Burning

Being Red, Day One? My first day as a red went okay, I guess ... we poisoned the apple of knowledge at the school teacher's desk and I shouted her down when she told us about the census. I tossed a rock at her on the way home from school ... Then, at football practice, we were given a rousing speech to hold our ground. Coach Boehner, too had been especially incensed about the new social contract being passed around Funny, he'd been so quiet for nearly a decade ... Shit, we are going to hafta, like, take care of each other now. Later, we went home and watched bully pulpit teevee and it lit up the oven in our eyes. They were high sock days, white cleats, hard rock days, daze of football glories when I could sail over their eyes, duck around their walls since getting tackled was well ... inconvenient, hurt like a sucker, yes, so I learned to run in fear ... At homecoming assembly, Coach Boehner cheered us on, Lombardized and lobotomized since winning was everything ... Yeah, the kid's mind went squish in that game at the U.S. Capitol Sugar Coated Sugar Candy Pill Complex, and yes, we do teach our kids to tackle like torpedoes. It's just a wink you know. O, certaintly yes it's unAmerican to aim to kill. He just stood there, the tragic suited one, at the kickoff, he did, and there was violence and a collateral cry across the field and the kid stumbled toward us, in a daze: Fortunately, Coach told us later, his dad was a brain surgeon. But now my broken knee has been plowed into ploughshares, my swords, cow-pastured, thirty years from that yesteryear believing in that gridiron dream imagined into a pre-existing condition of crunching bone and graal ... Now we cry "Marshall, Marshal, Martial" ...

As anyone who watched Wallace and Ladmo knows, Marshal "Martial" Good died jumping through the window of the Twin Towers holding the last known photocopy of the Fourth Amendment. Which is why now in the Verde Valley the toothless methheads just wave their rights before the dogs arrive. Yeah, check their records. Superman search has rendered search and seizure asunder. Which is why Dick Cheney can bring his shotgun into the Pink Pony and steroids are the drug of choice before Sarge says, "Let's be careful out there." Marshal Law: He Big Man! Him law provides cover to the car part store of the mind. Him Law, Marshal Law, martial law ... is broadcast behind pulled-in blinds, spitting out Bible black blurbs ... just ask your doctor, Marshal law is so grisly in Meachamite-glories, the Constitution hardly matters anymore. Martial law is punishment society. And as anyone who laments for Marshal "Martial" Good, that good old gawd abidn' Lone Ranger of Justice, (Dang!) ... as big him he might remember, we adore our enforcement with a tinge of tragi-comedy. Which is why the photo radar captures images of Sheriff Joe out breathalyzing tonight so breathless and bluesy... Which is why soon Big Him Marshal Law will battalion the border with snow ...

Meanwhile, Momma def poppa returned from their red, white and black road racer rally car trip to Nevada dehydrated from drinking too much tea. On the way back they discussed checking the brakes at the East India Trade-In Company, then stopped off at the Wal-Mart to buy a Krate of Klassic Koke, an eighty-four percent share in Monsanto korn seed, Kool Aid for the kids, got home (paid for), checked the U.S. Mail, tested the Teev-Ho for the latest on the NFL draft, and any new instructions from Poppa Bear on how to resist socialism and thought control.
Unlike the usual church sermon, they still had visions of posterized black-faced Obamas dancing in their heads and their bull eyes kept konjuring the kulars: Black, white and red ... They found the kids at home, waiting, playing Monopoly ... They were playing with their children, and the children of their children ... Momma def Poppa had just missed the debate about the rule about the rule about the rule of how and when ... you simply toss the board and start over again when nobody has any money. Reshuffle the deck ... Good game theory .... Despite the appeal to those eeking it out on Baltic Avenue, too many remained unconvinced the gig was up, and they klung like bees at the bank window to their paper money hearts of reds, black and white, to their pixilated imaginations of digitized seas of more time, more money waiting to appear if they just pray and work hard enough. Meanwhile, Pablo sat out on his porch listening to Norteno way too loud into the night since it was a full moon and he could still dream of amnesty and learning how to read Thomas Paine ...

~ Douglas McDaniel,

Meteor Crater,

(Just to the left

of the Contention Mine),

Arizona

Why the cable news media failed us this week

Terrorism, in terms of market share, proved to be the only winner for this ... one terribly turbulatin' week of news.

Maybe the media declared a "system worked" tag on this week's Times Square terrorism spectacle, but it was an "all systems failed" day for the media itself. Anytime a poorly fabricated fireworks display pushes back time for a story on a global oil catastrope ... as well as the sudden sinking of a great American city like Nashville ... something is really off.

Within minutes of this posting you would have found the same thing happening.

A bag of books and a bottle of water were found on Times Square. For yet another day, every major cable news media eye in America is focused on one block in NYC ... capturing the view of dazed onlookers. One of the on-screen monitor readers gasped about how "it takes a village" to catch the terrorists, in terms of cops and citizens pointing out the potentiall explosive devices. But in that same gasp, we can see how the very sense of the "Global Village" of media is being broken down. We can see how the media can only care as far as the viewer lens of local concerns. We can see how a decade of degrading, ever centralizing media is just dumbing every damn mind in America down ...

Meanwhile, the Gulf of Mexico is being transmuted into black tea worthy of biblical tales of Wormwood, in places literally burning, and not too much time is spent broadcasting shots of the tragedy in Nashville, re-awakened volcanoes in Iceland closing down airports in Ireland, soul-sucking stupidity on Wall Street ... and so on.

Last night, Anderson Cooper on his 360 show finally made it to Nashville, Tennessee four days after the storm that claimed at least 30 lives in the region. He agreed that the national media failed in its duties as an emergency responder. Indeed, all of the usual media front-runners to the catastrophic storms were missing. So were the usual rescue angels. As of last night on 360, well into a show that included a spastic attempt at a music telethon for victims of the catastrophe, the ground total had yet to reach a half a million bucks.

"We should have been here sooner," said Cooper, whose show featured Tim McGraw and Faith Hill as recognizeable guides to the disaster. "I didn't cover this as much as I should have this week."

In terms of values ... the point makes sense. As a life or death issues, in Tennessee, 30 people have died in the flooding, and many, many people need immediate help ... Haiti-style assistance. But where is the attention of the media eye focused? At Times-Square, the only thing that died was civility and sanity.

Yeah, it was a New York-centric story, which explains the passion and interest focused on the local threat. But hey folks, as the news media proved this week, that part of the system isn't working. If anything was a success this week, as opposed to a disaster, it was for the terrorists themselves ... both for the apparently lone suspect (oh yeah, that word "alleged" doesn't seem to exist anymore in terrorist plot vcoverage), who scared the life out of any journo with walking range of New York's Times Square ... and for of course whose who make a living on selling fear.

How did the media machine ever become such a tool?

Fear certainly is a mind killer, Yoda might say. Hardly a source for education, enlightenment, understanding ... or good civic-minded decisions.

For example, who are these crazy sheeple running the machines all dialed into the New York Stock Exchange, jittery heartless folks capable of sending the index down 1,000 points in say, 15 minutes? Willing to sell out the whole planet's economy over a riot in a European city? Jeez, good thing we didn't have a machine mind like that in 1776. Riots in European cities during those days were common, but even more, to have a device such as the daily Dow Jones average, a kind of mad media indicator for the general health of, what, a way of Capitalist life, is another simple metaphor for what is wrong in the media, in general, on all topics related to panic and fear.

The media itself needs to do a more conscious look in the mirror about how it handles terrorism. When real violence appears on the fields of sport, for example, I think the NFL does a much better job than hockey, in taking the viewers eye away from the melee, rather than profiting from it. Acknowledge it, warn us yes, but don't go on all day using your contact lists of the same old talking heads to spend the day mooning on what might be in the minds of these nutbags, on how amateur their bomb-making seems to be, and why Oh wny Oh why didn't we learn something this time.

Because, face it, news guys in New York. Though ye may be blocks away, these highly effective if crude weapons are intended for you.

Arizona Burning


Among the political actors involved in the Tea Party movement, the media darlings leading the spectacle, such as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others channeling Reagan and McCarthy at Fox News, few performers can put on a show like Sarah Palin did last month in Searchlight, Nevada.

Who knew there were so many history buffs who watched Fox News, now commonly acknowledged as the Fifth Column of divorced reality in media and politics these days.





Given the compassionate view, a media liberal such as myself might only watch what's going on and think of the film, "Network."





As many have done ... since the "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" vibe has really come unto acceptance of being completely, like, retro. Journos such as myself can only howl now with jealousy because not everybody gets to be Bill Maher these days, and his raunchy note to the Republican Party, every bit as divisive and politically incorrect as Beck, Limbaugh and Poppa Bear, was certainly one of the talking head highlights of the season.





But Beck came to Phoenix for his stadium tour, and we aren't talking about the cool singer/songwriter who analyzes the earth with such songs as "Sex Laws." This is the guy who has unburied all of the mythic ghosts of the Illuminati for a broad audience, rendered as a distracting voice, yes, for Fox News listeners who, for all we know, are now completely hypnotized by the very Ruppert Murdoch-esque forces Beck supposedly rails on about.





Oh yeah, Beck went beautiful mind before national audiences this year, conjuring the very ghosts of McCarthy and the Rothchilds and the Bilderbergers and the "None Dare Call It Conspiracy" crowd, somehow managing to swoop in the Green Party and progressives with a sweep of his piece of chalk on the blackboard as well, drawing it all up for us to prove only one thing: An overwhelmed mind is a relevance machine.





For any imagintor with a limited receiver, even one with a cable TV show with all the props and graphics he might need to illustrate his ranting, Beck is also, if nothing else, a canary in a coal mine.





However, to watch a canary get sick and die is hardly reason to put much faith in its last dying chirp.





Nonetheless, it all plays well in Arizona.





A state, which, let's face it, appears to be experiencing all of the symptons South Africa faced as it elected its first actual African as president. The film, "District 9," also comes to mind.





A state completely freaked out by its economic mess, its furies along the southern border, its long-standing tradition of Goldwater-style individualism run amok, featuring whole cities of voters in gated communities who dislike change in general, and that includes the weather.





Not just swinging to the right, but in many ways defining it nationally, Arizona is perched to be that place where the Mechamites (see Evan Mecham) are returing for one last dying breath.





Of course, Palin is trying to get on top of all of this ... but my guess is, as a pop star, she's appearing on the scene a little early, and as a performance artist goes, is likely to simply malaprop her way right out of contention ... given the odds of a mispeak over the long haul ...





I have her picked out for a nice Whore of Babylon outfit for 2012 ... the other two cats, Beck and Limbaugh ... Jesus, I just don't have the patience to scour around in the Book of Revelations to dig for the appropriate coda right now.





~ RFA






Remember the Mecham!

With so many history buffs in Arizona, it's hard to understand why the name Evan Mecham didn't come up more often during the debates, protests and spontaneous quiet riots that broke out in every heart and household of the region with the passage of the new immigration law.





Evan Mecham was the Arizona governor who brought great shame and embarrassment to the state when he cancelled the Martin Luther King holiday.





It created a blowback of economic catastrophes such as cancelled conventions.





The Super Bowl was taken away by the NFL.





The state become a comedic punching bag and Arizonans were commonly asked, when traveling, why their state was racist.





Then came the pop stars.





A cascade of them started playing concerts here, such as Stevie Wonder, to protest Mecham.





Next, every concert performer had to say something about Mecham, or the state's racist stance, for the cache of, well, actually "playing Sun City," but not liking the vibe so much.





In this next round, there will be key differences. In taking a stance in favor of an MLK holiday back then, the issue was idealistic, abstract ... and therefore manageable as propaganda.





Human rights, sure, yeah ... why not ... rock on!





Who couldn't back that? Other than those who put Mecham in office to begin with ... you know, that ever aging race of Goldwater Republicans ... yeah, sure, rock on Garth!





A paid state holiday for everyone!





In this case, while it's likely there will be a cascade of comedians and pundits making a lot of new material for the new immigration law, the toughest of its kind, it's hard to imagine how a Canadian like K.D. Lang or vagaband Celt like Bono could legitimately show up and make a big statement.





Such as this: Irish! Go home!





~ Radio Free Arizona





P.S. If Native American rock bands starting getting involved in this, most of us could all be in real trouble.



I think we need a big Aid for Arizona concert, just like AID for Africa in the 1980s.



I think the appropriate state policy would be to make sure all performers be required to wear the right color cowboy hats and, before playing, make sure they have their paperwork in order.



Also this, Woody Guthrie covers should be avoided, discouraged at all times ...



Also this: Most of the Arizonans who support the law have clearly forgotten the humanity of their own families and how they got to state to begin with ... and unless there is some kind of Mormon sanctity over the Gadsen Purchase now lost in the dustbin of history, it's no doubt as elusive as searching around for references to three shrunken heads in the Bible named Palin, Limbaugh and Beck ...



~ Douglas McDaniel

Meteor Crater, Arizona

Marshall, Marshal, Martial ...

As anyone who watched
Wallace and Ladmo knows,
Marshal "Martial" Good
died jumping through the window
of the Twin Towers
holding the last known
photocopy
of the Fourth Amendment

Which is why now
in the Verde Valley
the toothless methheads
just wave their rights
before the dogs arrive

Superman search
has rendered
search and seizure
asunder

Which is why Dick Cheney
can bring his shotgun
into the Pink Pony
and steroids are the drug
of choice before Sarge says,
"Let's be careful out there."

Marshall law provides cover
to the car part store
of the mind

Marshall law is broadcast
behind pulled-in blinds,
spitting out Bible black blurbs
... just ask your doctor

Marshall law is so grisly
in Meachamite-glories,
the Constitution hardly
matters anymore

Marshall law is punishment
society

And as anyone who laments
for Marshal "Martial" Good
might remember,
we adore our enforcement
with a tinge of tragi-comedy
Which is why the photo radar
captures images
of Sheriff Joe
out breathalyzing tonight
so breathless and bluesy...

Which is why soon
Marshall law will battalion
the border with snow ...

~ Tonto

Searchlight Serenade

Momma def poppa
returned from their
red, white and black
road racer rally car
trip to Nevada
dehydrated
from drinking
too much tea

On the way back
they discussed
checking the brakes
at the East India
Trade-In Company
then stopped off
at the Wal-Mart
to buy a Krate
of Klassic Koke,
an eighty-four percent share
in Monsanto korn seed,
Kool Aid for the kids,
got home (paid for), checked
the U.S. Mail, tested the Teev-Ho
for the latest on the NFL draft,
and any new instructions
from Poppa Bear
on how
to resist
socialism
and thought
control

Unlike the usual church sermon,
they still had visions of posterized
black-faced Obamas dancing
in their heads and their bull eyes
kept konjuring the kulars:
Black, white and red ...

They found the kids at home,
waiting, playing Monopoly ...
They were playing with their
children, and the children
of their children ...

Momma def Poppa
had just missed the debate
about the rule about the rule
about the rule of how and when ...
you simply toss the board
and start over again
when nobody
has any
money


Reshuffle the deck ...
Good game theory ....


Despite the appeal
to those eeking
it out on Baltic Avenue,
too many remained
unconvinced the gig
was up, and they klung
like bees at the bank window
to their paper money
hearts
of reds, black and white,
to their pixilated imaginations
of digitized seas of more time,
more money
waiting to appear
if they just pray and work
hard enough

Meanwhile, Pablo sat
out on his porch
listening to Norteno
way too loud
into the night
since it was a full moon
and he could still
dream of amnesty
and learning how
to read
Thomas Paine

~ The Daily Dash

What's Next for Joe the Terrorist

This just in from Fox News:
Coach Boehner, well, he got bad blues,
gonna put an oven in the eyes
for and you and you and you

Like a rough beast backbeat back at last
the popular rage rolls in real time fast
flinging flags with snakes on the porch
of Democracy, livin' free while you die

... and all that know-nothing why

This just in from Fox News:
Joe the Terrorist just got refused

~ The Daily Dash



Bury My Heart at Broken Knee

They were high sock days,
white cleats, hard rock days,
daze of football glories
when I could sail over their eyes,
duck around their walls
since getting tackled
was well ... inconvenient,
hurt like a sucker, yes,
so I learned to run in fear ...

At homecoming assembly,
Coach Boehner cheered us on,
Lombardized and lobotomized
since winning was everything ...

Yeah, the kid's mind went squish
in that game last week, and yes,
we do teach our kids
to tackle like torpedoes

It's just a wink you know
O, certaintly yes it's
unAmerican to aim to kill

He just stood there, the tragic suited one,
at the kickoff, he did, and there was violence
and a collateral cry across the field
and the kid stumbled toward us, in a daze:
Fortunately, Coach told us later,
his dad was a brain surgeon

But now my broken knee has been plowed
into ploughshares, my swords, cow-pastured,
thirty years from that yesteryear
believing in that gridiron dream
imagined into a pre-existing condition
of crunching bone and graal ...

~ The Daily Dash



Being Red, Day One

My first day as a red
went okay, I guess ...
we poisoned the apple
of knowledge
at the school teacher's
desk and I shouted
her down when she told
us about the census

I tossed a rock at her
on the way home from school ...
Then, at football practice,
we were given a rousing speech
to hold our ground

Coach Boehner, too
had been especially
incensed about the new
social contract being
passed around

Funny, he'd been so quiet
for nearly a decade ...

Shit, we are going to
hafta, like, take care
of each other now

Later, we went home
and watched bully pulpit
teevee and it lit up
the oven in our eyes

~ The Daily Dash


Look for the new album this spring ...


Dead Peasants Revolution

See there, over the Holy lands,
the lost McDonalds arch
over the sea
over the winds
between the digitized clouds
of moneyed imaginings ...

A toast to all, a call
to the muse, once forgotten,
now nobody, nothing, plain,
wandering the land ...

Summon the post-insurance marvel,
confounding the co-fathers,
the commercial second foot ...
about to draw ... media mad ...

Like in "Network," yes, "Network..."

Channeling theocracy they are
the Fox net whizzes

A toast. A toast.
Jelly and jam for everyone ...
Falling from grace, falling

Juniper walks in, the challenger,
the maker of tastes, sweet whispers
of things once forgotten, now remembered:

She sings, leaning into the sea, O Juniper!
Juniper!:
"Storms, storms across America ...
conjuring up Tiamat from the depths,
from the depths, from the depths ..."

~ today's dash
by Douglas McDaniel

Bury My Heart at Broken Knee

They were high sock days,
white cleats, hard rock days,
daze of football glories
when I could sail over their eyes,
duck around their walls
since getting tackled
was well ... inconvenient,
hurt like a sucker, yes,
so I learned to run in fear ...

At homecoming assembly,
Coach Boehner cheered us on,
Lombardized and lobotomized
since winning was everything ...

Yeah, the kid's mind went squish
in that game last week, and yes,
we do teach our kids
to tackle like torpedoes

It's just a wink you know
O, certaintly yes it's
unAmerican to aim to kill

He just stood there, the tragic suited one,
at the kickoff, he did, and there was violence
and a collateral cry across the field
and the kid stumbled toward us, in a daze:
Fortunately, Coach told us later,
his dad was a brain surgeon

But now my broken knee has been plowed
into ploughshares, my swords, cow-pastured,
thirty years from that yesteryear
believing in that gridiron dream
imagined into a pre-existing condition
of crunching bone and graal ...

~ The Daily Dash



Being Red, Day One

My first day as a red
went okay, I guess ...
we poisoned the apple
of knowledge
at the school teacher's
desk and I shouted
her down when she told
us about the census

I tossed a rock at her
on the way home from school ...
Then, at football practice,
we were given a rousing speech
to hold our ground

Coach Boehner, too
had been especially
incensed about the new
social contract being
passed around

Funny, he'd been so quiet
for nearly a decade ...

Shit, we are going to
hafta, like, take care
of each other now

Later, we went home
and watched bully pulpit
teevee and it lit up
the oven in our eyes

~ The Daily Dash


Look for the new album this spring ...


Dead Peasants Revolution

See there, over the Holy lands,
the lost McDonalds arch
over the sea
over the winds
between the digitized clouds
of moneyed imaginings ...

A toast to all, a call
to the muse, once forgotten,
now nobody, nothing, plain,
wandering the land ...

Summon the post-insurance marvel,
confounding the co-fathers,
the commercial second foot ...
about to draw ... media mad ...

Like in "Network," yes, "Network..."

Channeling theocracy they are
the Fox net whizzes

A toast. A toast.
Jelly and jam for everyone ...
Falling from grace, falling

Juniper walks in, the challenger,
the maker of tastes, sweet whispers
of things once forgotten, now remembered:

She sings, leaning into the sea, O Juniper!
Juniper!:
"Storms, storms across America ...
conjuring up Tiamat from the depths,
from the depths, from the depths ..."

~ today's dash
by Douglas McDaniel

Being Red, Day One

My first day as a red
went okay, I guess ...
we poisoned the apple
of knowledge
at the school teacher's
desk and I shouted
her down when she told
us about the census

I tossed a rock at her
on the way home from school ...
Then, at football practice,
we were given a rousing speech
to hold our ground

Coach Boehner, too
had been especially
incensed about the new
social contract being
passed around

Funny, he'd been so quiet
for nearly a decade ...

Shit, we are going to
hafta, like, take care
of each other now

Later, we went home
and watched bully pulpit
teevee and it lit up
the oven in our eyes

~ The Daily Dash

Look for the new album this spring ...


Dead Peasants Revolution

See there, over the Holy lands,
the lost McDonalds arch
over the sea
over the winds
between the digitized clouds
of moneyed imaginings ...

A toast to all, a call
to the muse, once forgotten,
now nobody, nothing, plain,
wandering the land ...

Summon the post-insurance marvel,
confounding the co-fathers,
the commercial second foot ...
about to draw ... media mad ...

Like in "Network," yes, "Network..."

Channeling theocracy they are
the Fox net whizzes

A toast. A toast.
Jelly and jam for everyone ...
Falling from grace, falling

Juniper walks in, the challenger,
the maker of tastes, sweet whispers
of things once forgotten, now remembered:

She sings, leaning into the sea, O Juniper!
Juniper!:
"Storms, storms across America ...
conjuring up Tiamat from the depths,
from the depths, from the depths ..."

~ today's dash
by Douglas McDaniel

Bumcore from the Reverend's Big Damn Band: Recession Era Holy Rollin' Goes on the Road

The Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band consists of three people, and they are from Indiana, like a tent revival storming in from the north, displaying the furious sound of the age, "bumcore."
They have been touring for years. They will likely not be seen on MTV.
"We are practically homeless," says band leader, Rev. Peyton, with his big beard and suspenders and Depression era hat as the band continues a roubust lifestyle as just a bunch of neo-hobos on the road.
Right now we are in Denver. Along Colfax Avenue, the longest commercial corridor on earth, 27 miles, to be exact. In front of the Bluebird Theater, where the band is going to play, with American Relay and another local band, Slakjaw, one of whose members, sitting out there along the theater entrance smoking cigarettes well before sound-check, came up with the "bumcore" tag. Lots of souls to save here, for the Reverend and his band.
"Of course they are called American Relay, not American Relay race," says one, knowing full well what it takes for a band to pay $4 a gallon for gas, racing across the state in a compact car full of instruments and amps, to make a good gig ... even if it's just for one hour.
"Screw the Bluedbird," another says as something wild is going on inside as the Rev. Peyton trio goes through its soundcheck. "Let's go watch some porn," referring to the adult arcade next door.
Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band turns out, later on, to be a riotous act. A three-piece band playing with punked-out speed banjo and wild woman washboard, percussion whatever comes handy in Great Depression Two, the outfit belongs beneath a circus tent, perhaps, yes, but also on the same bill as the Pogues.
"We are a punk band," says the Rev says. "Old hippies, you name it ... the meat markets are not the place for us."
The band is a a modern musical revival, a foot stompin' delight to see: Just sangin' and bangin' those punk rock po' boy blues ... resonating with the economic undercurrents of folk-punk, to which, this is all nothing new.
Yep, on the front porch of the rock-n-roll up-and-coming scene, there's a neo-Depression revival underway. Just hours before the show, the Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band, come out of their sound check dressed in their finest washboard wear: suspenders, fedora and even a flower dress complemented by red cowboy boots.
Blues-rock duo American Relay, late from the previous night's gig in their original hometown, Steamboat Springs, enter into view of this new musical damn-nation. They spill onto the sidewalk from a compact car with their instruments and luggage. They are as friendly as plain folks at a barbecue, smiling, ready to shake hands with anyone and everyone. They are both college grads, bright-eyed, sharp, smart. But without a band bus in sight, one immediately wonders what the apocalyptic price of gas these days means for musicians on tour, the very life blood of rock 'n' roll.
The members of American Relay — guitarist Nick Sullivan, 27, with his Fu Manchu mustache and Hendrix hair, and drummer Alex Hebert, 30, looking all 1930s with, again, the Fedora — have stripped their sound down to the basics: blues, rock, maybe a little bit of punk if you're feeling categorical.
Comparing their economy to another drum-n-guitar duo, the White Stripes, Hebert muses, "We can split our winnings better..." But then, halting, looking over at Sullivan, he says… "OK, accrue the losings more easily." This dry sense of humor finds its way into the music in interesting and satisfying ways that help elevate their songs above the radio-friendly masturbation rituals produced by many mainstream artists.
Onstage, it's easy to see why American Relay's efficient sound appeals to a new generation that has gone bland on the Widespread Panic noodling of the '90s. Their brand of blues-punk is reminiscent of Neil Young's Re-ac-tor phase, of George Thorogood on steroids, of the very dhambala of the blues on speed. It's the synthesis, really, of the bluesmaster tradition that created R.L. Burnside's blistering guitar style, the great grandfather who American Relay is quick to embrace: "He's the reason we are here," belts out Sullivan at the start of their set, which calls out to every white boy and girl in the crowd: Hey, poor boy, how's it feel to really know the blues?
Sullivan and Herbert met in audio engineering class at University of Colorado-Denver, where they learned the technical ins-and-outs of the business, but the professor who really caught their attention was R.L. Burnside. His music and style had a big influence on the budding rockers.
"He was the gateway artist to what we are doing," Hebert says. "No f...ing noodling or anything." Sure, he says, the '90s jam bands "did a lot for the blues, but we're taking business away from those bands."
American Relay's artwork for the 2007 album Corn & Oil conjures Depression-era roadside art deco in a post-9/11 climate. Like their music, it's an ode to tradition designed with modern sensibilities. The album sounds like acetylene sparks in the garage, like early Hendrix without the rocket fuel solos funded by '60s-era NASA. Music that finds a single, straightforward beginning and just sticks to it with razor-steadfastness, the visceral truth of rock.

There's a certain one-man-blues-band quality to it, and a true sense of gospel somehow leading back to Howlin' Wolf roots. It's as if George Thorogood had been served up for human sacrifice.
When told it sounded like they were out to digitally deconstruct that type of blues-rock influence, Sullivan says, "George Thorogood is still kicking it out, so he ain't dead just yet. And we got a lot of respect for how he does business."
Throughout the night, during the interview and after Reverend Peyton's show, the spirit and intensity of the tent revival is not so much felt as drained out through the sweat glands. At the end of the day, it feels like some kind of redemption has taken place: the audience drenched from the relentlessness worship service, the endless swinging and stomping and raising of the spirit, the cleansing...
After the show, blues brothers Sullivan and Herbert are waiting at the door for one more greet and a smile. Asked if there's some kind of religious belief system at work here, Sullivan says, "Not much of instituted religious experience growing up, but there is a definite faith in the power of roots music."

Taking the Boss for a Bruising

I have always loathed Mr. Bruce Springsteen. And it is more than just having the Boss hanging around, bossing around my radio airwaves for decades and decades. Not so much the music I loathed, but his fame (especially this crap about him being the Boss). Not so much his fame but the people who made him famous, that is, his fans and his fawning critics. Not so much all fans but just the few that I have known over the past, say, 30 years. They were all people full of passionate intensity, and as W.B. Yeats wrote, they are the worst kind of people (compared to the best, who lack all conviction, I guess). Maybe not so much full of passionate intensity, because I am one of those big, bad, willful people, too, and the truth is my reaction to these fans and the fawning critics has always been a little too strong. In fact, I have always kind of admired Bruce Springsteen, but the real truth of the matter is it all got ruined for me a long time ago.

In the new century of exclusion (as opposed to inclusion), membership still has its privileges. For that reason, I endorse the BMG Music Club, of which I am now a member, and now I bring to you critical news of what landed on my doorstep, "The Essential Bruce Springsteen." The triple-CD collection of basic Bruce, of course, for the most part, nobody needs, except for the 12 bonus tracks, which most true fans will find to be ä um, essential.

My loathing of Springsteen goes back to those so-called Glory Days at my high school (Chaparral, Scottsdale, Arizona, class of 1978), and a girl I was secretly in love with named ... Now, like most of the femme fatales in a Springsteen song, she was not the prettiest girl in school. But I never went for the kewpie dolls anyway (and they never went for me). It was all made more complicated, though, by the fact she was ... was ... that's tangential, because we were all dazed and confused, listening to the Who, Genesis and Pink Floyd.

Now, at that time, I was a total Anglofile. In fact, I still believe those Brit bands of the 1970s != your Led Zeppelins, your Yes men, Your Genesi (with Peter Gabriel), your Crimson Kings != were pretty much the final angel prophets of our time sent to gong the electronic trumpets of the Apocalypse for the generation before it all went down ... Like I said, dazed and confused.

So when this girl, now an old woman, old as me, at least, chirped in that the only true god was this wannabe Elvis they called "the Boss," well, it just ran against my doctrine at that time. Then she said he was the sexiest man alive, and so I was jealous, and that was simply more than I could take.

No more. As this essential set reveals, Bruce is all about passionate intensity and there's nothing sexy about it. Rather than polishing the sacred gemstone of stoned souls or wooing the ladies with the Elvis routine, Bruce plundered the depths beneath the dark cities of the American dream, finding not so much light down there, but dignity. A lot of it.

Probably the best thing about this triple-CD isn't the music at all but the collection of the lyrics of all of his songs in a single booklet. His words can stand alone. With passages too numerous to write down for these purposes, his lyrics transcend the last decades of the 20th century. His words come across like political propaganda, too; but no, what I mean is this: Bruce has been used, quite incorrectly, it seems, as political propaganda.

Which brings me to another one of those Springsteen fans whom we all used to call the "human storm cloud." I just didn't like this guy, we didn't get along at all, since he was my boss, and it did not help that the real ascendant rock God by the mid-1980s was U2.

Nevertheless, in the 1980s, somehow, the song "Born in the USA" -- even though it chipped huge chunks out of the self-assured armor of the American century -- somehow (I guess it was just those Teflon times) became the anthem for the Reagan Era. Read these lines and explain the fallacy of this reading by the masses:

Born down in the dead man's town
The first kick I took when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that's beat too much
Till you spend your life covering up
Or this:

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain't nowhere to go

Reading these lines, I just don't feel so lucky being born in the USA. I wonder if I'd have been better suited as a Tibetan monk ... or a Vietnamese fisherman (another story there, too).

My old hated boss later moved on and became some kind of Las Vegas gambling guru, last I heard. I bet, though, that for a time he lost touch with the Boss, as we all did. Springsteen entered a period of contemplation and resignation and happy family life. As other bands such as REM and U2 went on to conquer the world, Bruce descended into the "Tunnel of Love," penning somber folk songs about the interior lives of quiet, little, marginalized people. Except for a few exceptions, his music was no longer the soundtrack, the background music, of our lives. It was more like the museum of our lives.

Which is perhaps why I stopped hating him so much. Until Monica. Now, the person I am referring to is not a real person. In the 1990s Monica, a character on the show "Friends," was the fussy girl. I have no idea what the actress who played her, Courtney Cox, is really like. I think she's really hot, as kewpie dolls go. However, I always identified her with Bruce Springsteen because she was basically discovered when she was brought on stage to dance in that horrendous "Dancing in the Dark" MTV video.

Now, Monica was a clean freak character on the show, of course, and there lies the rub for myself: Clean freaks are the most controlling, manipulative, contradictory, conspicuous consumers on the face of the earth. All of that soap. Chemicals in the home that will give you cancer. Bug killing agents with fumes that you soak up yourself. And paper, tons of paper. And trash bags piling up in small mountains worldwide.

So there was Springsteen, contemplating his folksy navel in the older-is-wiser middle-age years of the 1990s. Meanwhile, squeaky clean Mall America became the safety zone for all of this poisonous whitewashing of the landscape. The Boss was too focused on decrepit street folk and dignified bikers on the fringe to really spend much time on the Monica virus.

Just as a bizarre composite of consumerism was moving into the far corners of China -- forget about compromised Ohio -- just as the Internet gold rush was taking place; the I-am-the-Walrus marketing guru was climbing into the pilot seat of Air America; just as Deadhead stickers were stuck on Cadillacs; just as Las Vegas was remade into an All-American Disneyland for the kids and folks, well, the Boss was plain missing from his throne.

Even worse, while on tour during the past few years, his old fans, his constituency, the common man, needed to apply for financial aid to see his shows.

If you look at the demographics of this nation, the common man could only marginally afford to enjoy Bruce Springsteen as an American Natural Resource. As one of the richest entertainers on an annual basis, he is actually a major Third World Nation now, asking for a handout. Oh sure, this has really nothing to do with the quality of his work but the fact is that after the lilting eulogy to AIDS victims in the song, "Philadelphia," Springsteen waited until after 911 to resurface as, well, himself. That is, the Boss. Except, the song, "The Rising," still sounds like a lot of foaming at the mouth as it plays to the culture of vengeance as hip.

But now that the Bank of America logo is tattooed on the ass of pretty much everybody's favorite pop star (even U2 has caved, pandering to the marketgeist by co-branding a song from its new album to also help sell iPods), Mr. Springsteen is just another voice in the wilderness of big, bad money. Too bad he couldn't have found himself sooner, like say, 1996. All I know is my BMG Music Club is charging me $29 for this triple-CD set, which I am glad enough to own, not that I am not sure if I can afford that. Probably have to send it back.

In the meantime, I will e-mail some of his best lyrics of the past to people I love, miss, friends like that Courtney Cox or a holographic Monica will be interested enough to call. Or maybe even the Boss, finding the true connection to the real common man, no Woody Guthrie style bullshit here, will pen an anthem about some idiot driving a Humvee to the cleaners around the corner.

Finally, you might ask, do I recommend this, based on the quality of the bonus tracks? Well, maybe. Depends on your station in life. I would just hate to think about what kind of soul-wrenching experience it would be to find out what it costs at the mall, or to learn what mass production on this scale really costs; in terms of the paper, the CDs, the electricity to burn it, the bottom line for the record company, the publicists, the marketing, distributors, retailers and so on, in order to repackage the non-bonus CDs. Apparently, the Boss was one of the first of his generation to DIY these early recordings and sell them on his own. Now that was a beautiful idea. Now that was essential. Now that was what it was really like to be born in the USA.

Mythville MetaMedia - Lulu.com

Take the road to Mythville ...
Mythville MetaMedia - Lulu.com

2012 film offers terrible treats for terrified audiences

To believe in the apocalypse, or to not believe in the apocalypse in 2012? This is now no longer the question due to the mind’s eye of film director Roland Emmerich, director of this week’s mega-blockbuster DVD, 2012.

By all grim appearances in accordance with his work, 2012, that big blowout year in the Mayan calendar is a vivid and foregone conclusion.

Does that make him a prophet, a film visionary, or, a salesman? Movies are made to please pre-existing markets, especially on the mega-scale of this seamless, somewhat revealing examination of what life might be like as the deal goes down. The film is a real chance to schadenfreud oneself into a tizzy with an eye-full of god-wrath, as we watch each character, each necessary human figure in the film, get fried, flooded or simply shaken right out of the big script of life. Except for the lucky ones (Oh yeah, have faith!) Fairly much preaching to the choir then, is 2012, a tasty treat believers rapt in the eye candy of no more future … no more, well, everything …

Certainly fun to think about. And a terrible beauty to watch, 2012 is, yes it is …

However, with daily television news broadcasts confirming the collective psychology that the end is near, rendering such imaginative works less fun to think about, the popular attitude that the sky is falling, one can only go back 1,000 years to find a culture whose sense of doom was so widespread.

In their respective millennia, the creators of great apocalyptic works of art were sparked by minds overwhelmed with turmoil. So it is with 2012, the film, which provides the imagination with more than it can handle, an everything in one box disaster film for our times.

Frederico Fellini’s 8½ had a moment when the jaded director portrayed in the film declared that all he was trying to do was fulfill his vision of a film where “everything happens.”

To be a blockbuster filmmaker in the 21st century, you have to do pretty much that: One man, or woman, goes out and saves the world. Wish fulfillment theater at its finest. It is a common theme in the human psyche. This need to channel all of the chaos the earth can muster into a digestible apocalyptic thriller, in which the evil doers are done in, once and for all, as we enjoy the collateral damage of what is, in the end, a happy ending.

Since the mind is a relevance machine, the end result, in all cases, is an overpowering distortion, but nonetheless valid expression, of the news of the day. Unfortunately, as beautiful and fascinating and awestruck we might be from all of these hell-raising conceits, there is a danger. There is a malfunction, yes, that almost works like bad code embedded in a computer. The kind of thing that can make the mind shut down.

Which makes the popularization of the idea that the world will end in 2012 so laughably unfortunate. Forget to even try to study the origins of the Mayan myths on 2012. The way it was popularized by the Harmonic Convergence in 1987. Forget even to have to get rid of that old SUV, or hell, even take out the garbage. There are forces out there larger, Emmerich tells us, than mere global warming. Climate change plays no part here (item for additional research: does the media empire involved in the making of this movie have in stock in Exxon? Hmmm … Sony Pictures … big Godzilla vibe only, one supposes).

If every sector of society, infected with the doom code, then that society is only further demoralized into hopelessness and inaction. This, when action and participation are really what’s needed. Say you want a revolution? Well, that’s not the message since Fellini made movies. Now it’s: If you want a ticket to the ark, build it first, in your heart, then your head, then start swimming, swim, swim, swim with the shore …



In the past month I've rediscovered the creek that once ran beneath Cave Creek Road, and despite the intensity of that storm, it gave me hope. The run off from the major storm ran beneath the wash into a narrow twin-tunnel, right beneath Cave Creek Road, near the intersection at Grovers. I had heard there once was a cave and a creek and the essential idea of recalling the name of things swelled in mean, since, after all, the preservation of the source of all waters and wells and springs, both of the waters and of the mind, is clearly a solid goal at all times.

The effect of the storm was to create a brilliant waterfall to lead, as the Cave Creek Wash heads southwest under the road. It would, once through the tunnel beneath the street, fall over a cement cascade and then ... below the ground. Otherwise, it would have washed out the dog park, for sure, which is really what I want to tell you about: How dog parks are the new coffeehouses and how, well, this all relates to the well of both doggie beings and human beings at the same time.

People, as a lost resource, are hard to find, generally. They are hidden away, behind their fences, inside their portable headsets blaring private music, behind invisible stares on the bus, projecting themselves across great distances on their cell phones, generally not connecting to their neighbors, fellow pedestrians, everyone in their cars ... everyone, except for at bars (an old) favorite, coffeehouses (if you are a regular), and dog parks.

Yes, dog parks are the new social networks. People will stand there, talk first about their dogs. Their doggie traits. Share there stories. Really breaks the ice. Then, if you go often enough, you really get to know people.

Now, I could roll on a bit about animal behavior. And I wish I had a nickel for everyone I've met who thinks they are some kind of dog whisperer. I think lion tamers had it right. Walking into the cage like you own the place, since, after all, people seem to be attempting to obtain and then grow ever larger dogs ... those pocket poodles being some kind of embarrassment ... yes, large dogs are the new SUVs for yuppies, maybe since having kids in the 21st century seems a tad dicey ... suffice to say what dogs do, sniff and pee, is fairly much the same thing as small talk. Curious thing about all of that doggie behavior, the way they circulate, reminds me of social networks of all kids.

The, you know: the "Will you be my friend part."



Having lost a lot of sleep over the late night talk show drama at NBC, as well as the "Heidi"-style break from the closing Olympics ceremony in order to broadcast Jerry Seinfeld's reality/comedy combine ... not to mention the Amber Alert sent out for Conan O'Brien, we decided to ask Kenneth, the ever helpful page at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, New York, to give us the code for what, exactly, goes on in his building.

If the entertainment biz tells us anything, Kenneth is telling us even less. Overall, there is only this single truth about what has been projected for decades on the NBC TV screen of your choosing: There is no magic, only mystery.

In fact, no doubt, spontaneous combustion, as much as it can self-create drama and buzz, is the best way to describe the formula working here. Must go back to those legendary behind-the-scenes skits with Lorne Michaels, in which the fumbling and funny activities in the halls of 30 Rock were so cleverly on automated display.

The move to Jay Leno at the 9 p.m. slot (Arizona time), was merely a calculated shuffle to recreate buzz once the Olympics ended. But then, whenever it comes to networks (and networking) there is always some conspiracy buff in the building. Funny it is, though, how this blockbuster Jerry Seinfeld production, "The Marriage Ref," leaps into the picture. Hardly a spontaneous event.

Think of Leno, who sadly and alertly picked up on the new mean lowbrow ... in mean standards ... humor apparently in demand for the mainstream. Conan was simply a tradeoff for Seinfeld and the glorious rack of talent he could bring in ... Conan, the player to be named later here, in a significant trade ...

If you think of lining up intellectual property as something akin to shaking up a baseball lineup. Once you bring in the major free agents, send that up and comer to the minors, and all ... So then Leno goes back up on the mound, armed with his notorious spitball ... but the umps are watching closely now.

In fact, despite the buzz and fuss and drama the network continues to make for itself, although it may not be apparent, everything is clearly in order. These guys know exactly what they are doing: creating the most madcap entertainment entity on earth, a Keystone cops event for the masses. Yeah, there's reality TV and then there is reality.

NBC just figured out a long time ago...there's just no difference between the two.

Life in the tsunami zone

It’s early winter on the Oregon coast and Depoe Bay is a roiling sea as gray whales bound about in the distance, mostly behind behemoth waves driven by an oncoming winter storm.

Along the seawall people are everywhere in their jackets and other warming gear, with cameras or binoculars, hypnotized as the waves pound away. The stormy sea sends great white splashes into the air that generate applause.

It’s as if Depoe Bay were a vast stage without actors – or very shy performers, if you count the gray whales off in the distance – and the churning of the water is part of an amazingly on-schedule performance (considering this is the holiday Whale Watch Week rush).

During the week, many of the same people had been shopping during the busiest day of the holiday season. That night, maybe as they luxuriated in a local hotel room with waves from big winds pounding out-side their big picture windows, the watched anniversary shows on last year’s tsunami disaster in the Indian ocean. Now they are enthralled with waves powered by a storm way out by Hawaii heading this way, coming fast as 30 to 40 mph wind gusts whip away, and the power of the water is the attraction.

The whales? They are hidden behind, zooming in and out of a white-washed curtain out there ... riding high ... riding low ... .

Mark Spaulding, who has come from Vancouver, Wash., to see this, instead points his fancy camcorder down into the Depoe Bay spouting horn. Others stand closely nearby, hoping to catch a bit of the spray. There is no logic to the way the waves break, no apparent system, no pattern, no order, no way to predict which wave will be the one to send the water shooting through the spout and into the air. Finally, we have a hit. Spray goes into the air, onto the sidewalk, onto vehicles parked along the seawall.

He exclaims. “I got one!” That is, his camera did, his highly sensitive lens doused by the salty sea of the Pacific.

Meanwhile, in the “Whale Watching Spoken Here” interpretive center, a woman is toting two restless grandchildren onto the second deck of the building perched on the southern end of the seawall. The picture windows for the room in-the-round are steamy from the day’s crowds. One of the boys climbs onto a for-pay viewmaster. “I want a quarter!” the boy shouts. But the grandmother says, “Why, there’s nothing to see out there. If there was anything to see, we could do it.” Then, she says, “Did your mother ever tell you about the time we saw a whale go right under the boat in Mexico?”

Actually, the whales are going right under her nose again.

At precisely that same time, one deck below in the interpretive center, there is, in fact, something to see out there. A whole room of people lean into the window with their binoculars as Morris Grover, lead interpretive ranger for the Oregon State Park service’s whale watch center, keeps people in the room posted. “There’s one going by the buoy,” he shouts. With swells of 20 feet or more, it has been a hard day to see whales, he said. On this day, he only sees six or seven. The next day, with calmer seas with only 12-foot swells, he will see 20 whales. But on this day the payoffs are few and far between as the giant curtain of waves steals the show.
“Well, there’s one of the 1,800 whales out there,” he says to the crowd.
Leaning toward the sea is a natural tendency. When you go to the beach on a sunny day in say, Florida or Southern California, we are all children at heart: We want to go in.

But this kind of sea is different. We are drawn to the sea, but in cases such as these, with it crashing and roiling and churning, to try to get close is unwise.
There are signs all over. Such as the sign at the Rocky Creek outlook off of Highway 101, just south of Depoe Bay, which states: “Warning. Area beyond this point subject to high dangerous waves. Even though ocean appears calm large waves may sweep over rocks at any time. Do not go beyond this sign.”

So, just as people are poking their cameras into the Depoe Bay spouting horns a few miles away, people who can (probably) read have crossed the line. Rocky Creek is peculiar in this way. Its access to a very close look at the sea is easier, due to the erosion of where a fence should be. Three men are past the warning sign. The sea doesn’t appear to be calm. Indeed, high dangerous waves are apparent. Just beneath their noses. High dangerous waves are almost at eye level for anyone daring enough to scramble down just a few feet of rain-slick black rock. The tide is coming in. They are getting a face full.

Such is also the case at Cape Perpetua, just south of Yachats. There is a huge spouting horn at a place called the Devil’s Churn. This should be a clue. Well-built stairs in the trail lead down to where the spouting horn sends white-water blasts into the air.

A young couple goes down and disappears around the bend to where the very front edge of the horn should be.

The tide is coming in.

Next time they are seen, at the top of the Cape Perpetua trail, they are soaking wet. They get into their car, head north up Highway 101, to zoom up and down, maybe happy, maybe shivering, in and out of a series of coastal areas with blue signs indicating tsunami danger zones.

The Further Adventures of Absolutely Nobody

Nobody fell into the job really, the unfamiliar world of grout, just as a way to get out of the house. Nobody would be a fine hire, the woman at the dog park said. She'd gotten to know him a little. Not enough. But a little. Yes, Nobody was a fine hire, she said. Maybe she felt sorry for him. A guy named Nobody. Like, Jesus, what luck, having a name like that your whole life. Nobody. Mr. Nobody. Some parents. First day on the job site he seemed a little timid about all of the activity. As well as the getting ordered around. Nobody, a shapeless being at the point, had been unconfronted by order for some time. A couple of years, maybe longer. Was there ever any ... order? But in actuality it washed over him, shaping him, into a kind of zenlike trance. Robotic. Compliant. Orderly. As if he were teaching himself to be OCD if only because, well, the tools terrified him and straddling the line seemed like the safest thing at the time. But it didn't take him long before the peepholes started to appear. The portholes to freedom, I suppose. First, the smoking breaks. Then, little walks to get a sense of the neighborhood. But when he came back, and he always did, he was refreshed, yes, but also a little angrier.
The site had unquieted him. Hell, even getting to the site unquieted him. And then there was a the problem with the water, the buckets, the waste. Custom finishings require a remarkable amount of conspicuous consumption. Even before you actually get to live around the house. The process was incredibly, well, conspicuous, thought Nobody. Somebody, thought Nobody (though not him) should write a strongly worded letter to the local newspaper about the waste. About the fat cats. About the place. The site. The purposelessness of the fact that all this effort was going to an eight-year-girl who already had a whole 'nother house to live in next door ... except the room hadn't been painted pink, as ordered. The rest was well, too many trips to Disneyland for the girl. Hardly her fault. Parents, rich as hell, spoiling her, no doubt, Nobody groused, as he mixed the grout.
The mix was a secret formula, he supposed, sent up from the gristy mill of hell. Nobody marvelled at how often the language for the cauldrens of hell, in fact, applied in this particular case, this job, this site. How often he went (Biblical on the language meter.)Although recently things had become more, shall we say, egalitarian. If only because it had only recently been discovered that Egyptian craftsmen for the pyramids were paid, respected members of the community. Most weren't slaves at all. They were skilled. Scientific. Architecturally seasoned sorts. Professionals. And this was no rush job. Ancient Egyptian economy, as it reigned over the desert for a few thousand years or so, was sustainable, diverse, generous, robust. Even in the desert. Hardly the stick-figured slaves you saw propped up at the minituarized displays of the history museum. They were consumers. Bricks in the wall. Threads in the fabric. You know. Those little brown tiny toy soldier-sized replicas of how this or that ruin might have looked in their heyday ... they represented people who had choices ... Nobody mused on this as he applied the grout to the wall and went "Karate Kid" on filling in the gaps on the opulent glass tiles ... musing to himself even more, then his co-worker, a dim, Mr. MaGoo-type, who perhaps had inhaled too many vapors from that so-called cauldren hell stuff, too ... mumbling orders like some mechanized clone whose DNA pattern got glitzy, downright out of focus late in life ... but the site had a life of its own, and a gaudy one at that, especially when it came to mixing the graphical styles, mixing Byzantine-age faux stone with four-by-four inch jewel glass tile that anybody with any taste could see was post-modern ...
"Personally, I wouldn't mix Greco-Roman with this after-rebar, Frank Lloyd Wright-type stuff, but that's just me," Nobody said. "Look at this glass. The perfect squares made to look like New York City skyscrapers, little cube farms, the whole fucking matrix. But this other stuff, the pieces are old world, Constaninop ... no, the Byzantines. They could build walls like nobody's business."
With that, Nobody went on with his business. Week One of Mr. Groutmeister man. Waxing on. Waxing off. Musing on the music on the radio. Sighing quietly to himself, considering the irony of the fact that he went to high school right here, that is, just right down the street, living in amazingingly vacant innocence among the super rich fucks of Paradise Valley, Arizona. He used to be one of those people, those spoiled kids with Disneyland lives, in a home just like this ... but now, but now? ... Now doing custom home scut work, doing nothing but scraping dried mix off a wall in a giant new bathroom extention for an entire week, a sort of pre-jeweled prison basement cell, like some strange and almost invisible ghost, doning on the past, as well as the spectre and energy of the site, with it's miniature toy soldier worker servants busily moving around in teams, painting, covering up walls with expensive fake brick stuff to make it look all so Southwestern, fortified, made to live forever, until they bulldoze the whole property again, to make it look like some other type of architectural flavor of the week, or better yet, Aztec ... or, no, Mayan jungle temple deco. Yeppers. Real Indiana Jones stuff. Both showbiz and still, yet, the perfect projection of power for the mercenary, feudal new century to come ... and so on ...
"We could dial this whole bathroom fixture situation up to the Mayan calendar, if you like," Nobody told the bathroom wall, still enjoying the mid-morning growl of his coffee rush. "I could be president of the United States, too ... as long (a little woman's voice now) as it doesn't cost money ... eek, eeek, eeeeek ..."
Nobody moved around his work space like a short-armed robot with each "eek," tottering in a smal circle like a penguin, his arms closed tight to his body, his hands grabbing tips of air in his snapper, zen worker bee position ...
His partner, MaGoomeister, just groaned. It had been a slow starting day, due to complications due to the way one shower head lined up with the tile, considerations well beyond Nobody's talents or interest. Magoo was also still stinging, perhaps, from Nobody's lecture on the 1970s era classic rock on a dusty clock radio used to create white noise, a pulse and energy at the site. When you criticize someone's music it's like pissing on the soul, after all, especially when the words are flying over the target's head. A target, in fact, that was perfectly happy to remain stuck in the dope smoking days of his youth, listening to old Foreigner, Queen and Led Zep hits. A lecture on the development of "Heyooo RRRR," as it sounded to him (to the deliverer of the sermon, it was AOR, as in Album Oriented Rock), had abruptly missed it's mark, since old MaGoo was perfectly happy to still hear Manfred Man Earth Man singing about "douches" in the night in that Springsteen cover of "Blinded By the Light."
"So that's what passes for art these days, still?" mutered Nobody to himself. "Bet the Boss sold his soul to the devil to make it a hit, right there and then. Douches. Indeed! And I still have to listen to this crap!"
Nobody thought he was going to lose his mind. He'd gone into the endeavor with a refreshed attitude, yes, but he was just too much of a damn smart as to stare at the wall all day, like some kind of punished Promethean ... Okay, Okay ... cautionary tale ... no eternal chaining to the rocks here, Zeus didn't do this, he did. It was Nobody's idea, after all, to work with Magoo. He'd volunteered for this miniaturized stick figure construction man business ...