Monday, July 11, 2011 21:07:59
So much for ‘daily’ and ‘just for me’. Every time the idea of writing again crosses my horizon, I have a million responses. Maybe that’s the fucking problem, assuming there’s a problem at all. I want to write, but more importantly, I want an audience. I think that’s been the most important thing, for as long as I can remember. I chased girls because I wanted the approval that I got from them, but you can’t work the audience one member at a time, like that. And besides, I’d rather have applause than get to see the promised land that hides up a skirt. I want applause, and/or laughter.
Most of my self-chosen heroes have been comedians of one type or another. Sure, I still root for the Reds, and stick up for Pete Rose (Derek Jeter’s got a long way to go. Think he’ll make it to 4000? Me neither.) but he was everyone’s hero when I was a kid in Cincy. So was Oscar Robertson of the Cincinnati Royals. Never heard of ‘em? And when we moved to Wisconsin, every kid wanted to be Bart Starr. So I learned to throw hard and fast, whether with a baseball or a football 9I was still too short for basketball,) but these were the socially-approved heroes.
The ones I made mom and dad let me stay up and watch were Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Marty Feldman on Dean martin’s Golddiggers. It was That Was The Week That Was, which linked Tom Lehrer’s records, which dad was playing, back to the TV. It was Bill Cosby, telling about life as a kid, then crossing over to TV as a truly cool spy. It was Jonathan Winters, the Marx Brothers, WC Fields, Dorothy Loudon Live at the Blue Angel (yea, you never heard of that album, and it ain’t at iTunes either.)
Rambling, reminiscing, regretting, all at once, all the time. I think it’s leaked into my voice. I think it’s why I really don’t have that many close friends, just a lot of solid acquaintances: I’m still too focused on trying to figure out what I am. Assuming, of course, that I’m anything, or supposed to be anything.
Something I realized or learned, not sure which, a few years ago, is reinforced by an old Broadway semi-joke: “It takes ten years to be an overnight sensation.” And ten years it is. But it only takes five for you and your immediate associates to recognize if you’re any good at what you’re trying to do.
This all struck me after I’d really thrown myself into ‘re-defeating Bush’, and when that didn’t work out, writing weekly and monthly for my Democratic Club’s newsletters. Soon I was the editor, and then on the Board, and then I was elected president of the Club. I ended up at the Democratic convention, I got pictures taken there with Franken before his election and with Joe Biden after he’d been nominated for VP.
And long before Obama won, in the summer after the Convention, my Congresswoman asked me to be her Elector in he won. All this in about 5 years. And maybe if I’d wanted to do something farther up the food chain than that, I could have gotten a paying gig with one of the local elected. A couple asked.
So here I am, at the end of or the beginning of another 5 and ten, feeling like a 5 and dime refugee, unaccomplished and unfulfilled. And instead of writing this, I should be trying to write something funny.
Now, as a parting bit of randomness, various thoughts that I wanted to write about: The Chinese military budget is growing, but is now exceeded by their Internal Security budget. So much for the success of their economic model. Meanwhile, all three branches of our government, at all levels, are operating at their unanticipated, unchecked extremes. The White House continues to run wars and security on the imperial model, the houses of Congress are locked down by an extreme religious ideology, the anti-taxers, and the highest court in the land is held by five people who vote in lock step, and have no ethical constraints except the ones they hold themselves to. And since those five have no ethics…Scalia’s lawnjockey, the Pinhead from Pinpoint, continues to line his pockets, fill his wife’s purse, and hand out favors to friends, all because a white patrician from Connecticut said that, of all the lawyers, all the black lawyers, all the black conservative lawyers in America, that misogynist was “the best man for the job” thus demonstrating the fine judgement that got him re-elected, er, uh…
And a last shot, in reaction to the various types of undead, whether zombies, vampires, werewolves, warlocks, demons, whatever, that seem to have taken over our media at all levels:
“Who Needs Zombies When You’ve Got The Tea Party.”
816 ~ Monday, July 11, 2011 21:44:25
