Discovery Channel: I Love the World

A pick-me-up.

Kentucky Derby Death

I am a casual horse racing fan: I watch the Triple Crown (I was born the year Secretariat won all three races, the Belmont by 31 lengths, and my parents tell me I watched him do it); I like the films Seabiscuit and The Black Stallion; and I will always remember the scene in Frank Deford's book (and film), Alex: The Life of a Child, that documents the match race between Foolish Pleasure and Ruffian--during which Ruffian (a filly) broke her leg, and after which she was euthanized. So I watched the 2008 Kentucky Derby--impressed by Big Brown's victory and deeply saddened by Eight Belles's death. The response to the tragedy has been widespread and passionate, some calling for an end to the sport. Though I know far too little to support firmly a ban of horse racing, I believe, regardless of the care provided for the top thoroughbreds, many horses are treated poorly. With the injury and subsequent death of Barbaro in 2007, a lesson needs to be learned--which is why I consider Tim Layden's recent Sports Illustrated article, Big is Better, so disturbing. I find two passages beyond ignorant and insensitive. The first: "That much of the postrace attention focused on the tragedy is unfair to Big Brown, whose victory was historic -- it had been 93 years since a horse with so little experience (three races) had won the Derby -- and seductive." Who thinks Big Brown gives a shit how much media attention his victory receives? Okay, maybe the glory of the owner and trainer and jockey has been overshadowed somewhat. But suck it up. A horse died. On the racetrack. After finishing second. And here's the second passage: "with the fresh memory of a dominant win on hallowed ground, a familiar chase begins. Racing is endlessly in search of transcendent greatness, for the next Citation, the next Secretariat, the next Affirmed. The chase routinely ends in disappointment. Now it is Big Brown's turn to try to make history. To erase the memory of a fallen filly. To elevate the sport." To "erase the memory"? Why? So we can all watch the last two legs of the Triple Crown--remorselessly, guiltlessly? It will be entirely irresponsible and disrespectful for anyone--fan or participant--to attempt to erase the death of Eight Belles. Tim Layden's statements are shameful, and it is shameful for Sports Illustrated to have printed them.

Meet your Meat

Go vegetarian.

Smoke = Flowers (see Sedaris and Cigarettes below)

Bug Sex

Isabella Rossellini does bug sex: Green Porno. Why?
"I was always fascinated by the infinite, strange and ‘scandalous’ ways that insects copulate,” she says. The short short films are bizarre, humorous, tragic (especially for the male bee), fascinating, titillating, educational.

Talkin' 'bout My Generation

Joshua Glenn (aka Brainiac) has posted a lengthy consideration of the generations of the twentieth century, renaming most (The Greatest Generation as The New Gods), distinguishing among and between [his take on Gen X (my generation): 1964-1973], and chronicling symbolic images (Catcher cover) and the birth years of the famous and noteworthy (J.D. Salinger: 1919). I do not like seeing Holden Caulfield on the cover of this paperback; because without visual representation, especially the absence of a motion picture, he remains my Holden. (He, of course, remains everyone else's Holden, too.) However--though I much prefer the spare cover of today, and though I want to forget the profile of Holden's face offered here--this cover attempts something. Holden's elusiveness is part, or maybe all, of the reason why it "breaks my heart." If someone would recognize the fall...reach out. And that's what the cover gets--Holden walking away, just out of reach; even when you do reach, he's gone--transient, illusory. ***** Thankfully, the one generation Glenn does not rename, the one on which he offers no commentary, is the Baby Boomers. Perry Farrell (Jane's Addiction), during the 1991 Lollapalooza Tour, promoting the Rock the Vote campaign and encouraging activism, offered HIS commentary: "That hippie shit didn't quite make it--you turned the country into polyester and republicans."

Sedaris and Cigarettes

I smoked for about six years (and quit about 12 years ago). I never crave a cigarette, like I thought I would, but I do sometimes miss smoking. David Sedaris's personal essay, Letting Go, reminds me of that. *****
I smoked Camels, initially, in the summer before my senior year of high school. My friends smoked Camels, and I bummed theirs for a good while. I don't know why I started smoking. Again, my friends smoked...growing up in central Maine, it was something to do. Immediately, I liked the taste of a cigarette, the experience of a cigarette--sliding it out of the pack (especially a new, fresh pack), lighting it, the first inhalation...and exhalation. I loathed my first beer, a can of Bud Light, but loved my first cigarette--the virginal lightheadedness. I didn't smoke a lot in high school--I played three sports, and so smoked mostly in between seasons, and in the summers. In between high school and college, I spent a year in Denmark, and over there I smoked Prince cigarettes, the only Danish-manufactured cigarettes. I smoked mostly when we were drinking (usually bottles of Tuborg beer), but that was often. (A standard line during the Tuborg Brewery tour was that Denmark had recently moved from fourth place to third in per capita beer consumption worldwide--as East (3rd) and West Germany (2nd) had recently reformed into Germany--Czechoslavakia was number one.) My host mother smoked, too: she purchased loose tobacco and empty, filtered cigarettes, into which she inserted, with the help of a red, plastic device, the tobacco. So sometimes late at night, when I was out of cigarettes and while the rest of the house slept, I would make a cigarette or two in the kitchen and smoke them on the patio outside my bedroom. Upon returning to Maine, I returned to Camels. Camel had a promotion at the time: Camel Cash, which accompanied each pack of cigarettes. The Camel Cash catalog presented a great variety of items for purchase, from tins of matchbooks to leather jackets (with Joe Camel on the back)--I even, no kidding, recall a white water raft. So that summer I smoked Camels and collected the cash, and that fall at college I smoked Camels and collected the cash. I never collected enough cash for the raft, but I bought some tins and a Zippo lighter or two. And then I met a girl, and she smoked Marlboro lights. I became a Marlboro man, and began to smoke in earnest. The first three years of college I moved back and forth from a pack a day to two packs a day. But even when I was smoking 40 cigarettes a day, I knew there would be a day when I would stop. I had known that all along--it wasn't an attempt to justify or rationalize the habit. I just knew that I smoked, and soon there would be a time when I would not. Those years, I lit up most every chance I got, often thinking of a good reason for a smoke: "I'll have a coffee--and smoke a cigarette; a beer--and smoke a cigarette; I'll eat a snack--and then smoke a cigarette; I'll go for a walk, a drive--and smoke a cigarette." Cigarettes filled in the gaps in time. I smoked early in the morning before breakfast, late at night just before bed, and any imaginable time in between. I could not fathom drinking a beer without a cigarette--at parties I would notice non-smokers with a beer in one hand and the absence of a cigarette in the other, and wonder how the hell they did it. Then, during my senior year, I started purchasing Drum tobacco and rolling my own cigarettes. They tasted better, they smoked smoother, and I began to smoke fewer cigarettes each day. I had begun the decline. Earlier, I had tried to quit several times, lasting a day or an hour (Mark Twain said: “Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times.” ) but it never took, because I didn't want it to take. But "the time when I would not smoke" had arrived. I smoked ten cigarettes a day, then five, then three, then one. Finally, one day when my packet of Drum was empty, I decided I would not purchase another. I have smoked probably less than ten cigarettes in the last decade. Though I smoked for five plus years, and though I sometimes miss it, I now have no idea why anyone chooses to smoke.

iPod, Take Me Back

My father, almost exclusively, listens to oldies. Music from the 50's and 60's, then, dominated the soundtrack of my childhood: anything from Tommy James and the Shondells to Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys to The Band, Diana Ross and the Supremes to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Chuck Berry to The Kingston Trio. Often, as a song played in the background, my father would recall the year the record was released: "This song came out in '67, the summer I drove a beer truck for Budweiser..." He knew them all, and it impressed the hell out of me. But now, as I grow older, and my youth slides further and further away, I find that I possess the same recall. I can remember not only the years, but the seasons, and sometimes the particular store where I purchased a particular album/cassettee/cd: my first album purchase was Songs from the Big Chair by Tears for Fears; my first cassette was Michael Jackson's Thriller; first cd: Green by REM. I can remember the place where I first heard a song in my car/room/friend's living room (Blind Melon's "No Rain" in Pat's living room in downtown Hallowell, summer of 1992). ****** Finally finally finally, I tranferred my vast cd collection to a big, fat 160GB iPod--and now my past is just a few clicks away. Because I not only recall when and where I was, but WHO I was, and who I was with, and what it all felt like. I recall the warmth or the chill of the day or season, the lightness or the darkness. I remember my freshman year at college, sitting on the floor of a friend's dormroom, processing the crush I had on her, as she played "Feel Us Shaking" by The Samples. They say that our sense of smell is most closely linked with memory, and I know the truth of that, but as I click through my iPod, rediscovering cd's and tracks that had been long lost in shelves and boxes, I am rediscovering my past.

"Radiohead"

BRAINIAC (see sidebar) posted this a few days ago. Brilliant.

This is Joy

Speaking of Madonna

Living in a beach town may not be heaven, but I appreciate it all the same. After work today, I went for a walk on the beach with my wife and our sons. The hard wind was chilling, but the setting sun provided almost enough warmth. My wife noted that it seemed weird that we could possibly be there in a month with nothing more than our bathing suits. Living in a state with four distinct seasons, I always anticipate the next one restlessly. Each season lasts just long enough, then lingers a bit, and then we embrace the new. Wonderful. Later, back home, after some pasta and while cleaning up a bit, I was beat and felt the need to listen to a Madonna song. This is not a nightly, weekly, or monthly need, but right then I wanted to dance to Like a Prayer. I set my ipod to repeat track, cranked the Bose, and danced round the kitchen table with the family as the song played over and over and over. One summer, mid-nineties, when I was teaching in Downeast Maine, I got a summer job in a t-shirt shop in Bar Harbor--the store also sold, oddly, Christmas tree ornaments. The job was mindless: refolding t-shirts all day and night. I didn't mind it at all. I read the paper, drank coffee, listened to music. In the store's collection of employee cd's was a Madonna single, the dance mixes from Evita, that I played just about every night after I closed as I refolded and restacked t-shirts--especially the Don't Cry For Me Argentina: Miami Mix Edit. It's not at all spectacular, but I could have listened to that tune forever.