Nearly Moore than Enough

Michael Moore is a name you probably know, but may be a bit fuzzy on why. He has always used his talents as a writer, editor, producer and director to pursue what he feels are important issues from the perspective of everyday people whose lives of quiet desperation are not normally the materials from which the Dream Factory makes movies. I've seen bits and pieces of his debut effort, "Roger and Me" (which is how I watch all movies) though the manner in which it was offered has proven to be a template for how he works through film and video.

Roger and Me is in its way, a variant of Dicken's Tale of Two Cities, in this case, both cities are Flint, Michigan (GFR! Terry Knight and the Pack!) and through a hundred moments, large and small, Moore takes the viewer through what happened when General Motors' Chairman Roger Smith simultaneously closed several manufacturing plants, a move that cost 30,000 people their jobs and created a ripple effect across the upper Midwest (and USA) that seemed to be a tsunami, though not for Roger Smith. Moore spends the movie trying to speak to Roger Smith and never succeeding.

It was muckraking of the first order, somewhere Sinclair Lewis was smiling, whose anger and outrage were well camouflaged by its irony and humor, but whose fundamental premise, well in advance of the New World Order, was this is a dark ride and the new world in the morning will be a lot less friendly. In the course of the nearly twenty years since, Moore has been pretty unblinking about that (Brave) New World.

I fell in love with him during the summer of 1995 when NBC gave him a slot for TV Nation-a show that the more frequently I viewed it, the more convinced I was they didn't even know they'd green lighted it. When the grown-ups came back from The Hamptons and/or Vail in the fall, the show disappeared only to return at some point, later, on Fox where you just knew Moore's politics and those of Roger Ailes, who was driving their TV news effort, were on a collision course. They certainly were and he was gone for good, except for a stint at Bravo with The Awful Truth so it was probably for the best that he kept his day job, film maker.

You just flashed on it, right? The guy who made Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11. Tall, bumbling kind of fellow, always wears a ball cap and seems to be in need of shave. Yeah, that's him-sort of resembles an unmade bed on two legs. Always seems to be reasonably pleasant right up until the on-camera moment when someone underestimates him and the situation and then it gets very nasty very quickly. He won an Oscar for the former in 2002 and caused a lot of consternation on all sides of the political aisle with the latter. He writes books when he's not making movies and he's making movies when he's not too upset at a world of gilded greed that seems to infuriate him.

He's not a guy, once you've experienced him, about whom you have no opinion. Basically, he's Pets or Meat. He's not a gray area in the rainbow in which we all live. Polarizing, caustic you'd have guessed he might be an Irish Catholic and you'd be correct. He is indeed a true son of Holy Mother church, while confessing to problems with the very religion that helped him fashion his moral universe. As a thank you to everyone with whom he has ever interacted, in any manner, his next movie, timed for release before the November Elections (there's a shock, right?), Slacker Uprising, will be available to watch online for free and is in all likelihood yet another variation on his life-long theme which will frustrate those who go to his work to complain as there'll be no place to get your money back. Somehow, I think he'll find that part most attractive of all.
-bill kenny

not a regular customer of the Barber of Seville

When next we meet, do not be surprised if I'm wearing a hat. Regardless, and irrespective if it's night, in the rain, perhaps in the pool or indoors, I'll be the guy with the fedora, perhaps a trilby, or a bowler, maybe a cowboy hat (if you have to look like a dick, why not look like a Dick Cheney? That's what I say) or a watch cap.

I've been battling the ever-expanding scalp I have. It's my own fault-as I've explained before, our heads are designed to protect our brains and as we get smarter, I believe our brains get bigger. Rather than smother or strangle us with an inflexible skull, our scalps, which are much softer than the rest of our heads, expand to make room for our new and bigger smart brains. Alas, there's only so much scalp and hair to go around and when some of us, a select few, I suspect (and it's a cross I carry willingly), end up with expanding heads, we develop bald spots.

I hear you snicker. This is not creative design, my friend, but observable fact. Consider this: many regard David Letterman as the brightest of the late night TV hosts (to me, akin to the prettiest garden slug, but no matter); note, please, the expanse of scalp we occasionally see on the back of his head. Perhaps you'd prefer the example of Al "I'm an animal when it comes to Tipper" Gore, he of the 'don't put ice in your drink, it'll be here in a minute' fame. His comb over is visible from space, and can viewed by Stevie Wonder.

Realizing I had the same situation developing some months ago, I opted for chemicals since the kits with the cardboard cutout that involve spraying paint on your head were too stupid even for me. I was also uncomfortable with the hair clubs and the transplant labs since an acquaintance years ago lost his eyebrows in a fire and the plastic surgeons used hair from his terrier's hind legs to create new ones. Yes, I admit, the eyebrows seemed real, but he always looked surprised when he walked past a fire hydrant.

After nearly ninety days, I think it might be easier if I tried to cultivate and then comb the hairs growing out of my ears over the spot on the top of my head. The hair growth topical solution is all 'ical' and very little 'top', leaving me to seek the silver lining in the less than hirsute grey cloud that is my bald spot is on the absolute top of my head.

If I were six feet four inches tall (A height I think I was born to be) few would notice because, fewer, still, would know. Being five feet nine inches tall has become my undoing. I need to find a salon with lots of very short barbers. Who did Snow White's hair? Snippy? That's my guy.
-bill kenny

Saint Peter and the glass house

It didn't seem too radical or extreme to me last Tuesday at the Norwich City Council meeting when a former Council member, Ms. Jacqueline Caron, and (in turn) three other speakers, during citizen comment asked the City Council to consider a refinement to the city's employment screening process as to when an applicant is asked about a possible criminal record. Of course, I was sitting in the back and may have missed something, though I doubt it.

I don't recall any murmurings or mutterings from other citizen speakers or from those of us sitting in the audience. That's why the online reader reaction to a story on Friday, in one of the local papers, Former Norwich official urges city to place less emphasis on criminal background checks, confounds me.

Someone once told me 'you never get a second chance to make a good first impression' and I think many of us may be a tad too hasty in drawing conclusions before the crayons are all out of the box. From what I read as I sampled the readers' comments, a lot of those who have incomplete artwork on their refrigerators, also have computers and not a lot of reading comprehension skills.

As I understood the original proposal in the Council chambers, the idea was to build a pool of eligible candidates based on ability and suitability as well as education and experience. Once the pool was defined, situations like a police record and the severity of that record would come into play. A lot of folks who commented seemed to not get the concept at all and, instead, made horror movies of unintended consequences.

Just one guy talking, or technically speaking, typing: A critical component of our justice system has always been the successful rehabilitation of those found guilty of crimes and their successful reintegration back into society. I read nothing in the news story to suggest, if implemented, Norwich could have 'ex-crack heads in the school system' (Mike in Norwich).

It must be bracing as an editor at a newspaper with on-line responsiveness to read comments that have nothing to do with anything in the story (sort of like the Literacy Volunteers skipped your entire target demographic). I concluded the fellow who came up with this a had super-duper computer with a monitor with MUCH BETTER resolution than mine because I wasn't able to see ANY of that in the actual story. Perhaps I need even stronger glasses.

In addition to reading comprehension problems, I may have uncovered an issue with compassion for one another. One reader, I assume with a straight face, insisted 'If they [those with a police record] chose (to) act irresponsibly then they should pay the price', ignoring completely that they did pay the price as determined by a court of law. They were incarcerated, and, upon completing their sentences, released.

Sometimes I forget I'm in 'New England' and not the Global Village, but then I come across the type of mindset to underscore that many believe not just Hester Prynne should be made to wear a Scarlet Letter. As a former privileged prep schooler, I remember slogging through Nathaniel Hawthorne, a joyless read for a callow young man in the late 1960's. I hadn't realized he must still be on summer reading lists. I was always partial to The House of the Seven Gables, but there's no accounting for taste, I guess.

I'd hope if this proposal makes it to a resolution and to the floor of the Norwich City Council, all of us could be involved in a reasoned and reasonable discussion on its merits and that the hyperbole of hateful invective and small-minded snap judgements can be kept to a a minimum. For a region settled centuries ago by many who believed so devoutly in their interpretation of the New Testament, I would hope their descendants might remember the people their Saviour chose to 'hang with', the publican and the prostitute, and how The Rock upon which He was to build His church, denied knowing him, it says in the Book, three times the night before the cock crowed. I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean we should never visit a KFC but that a walk in someone elses' sandals might not be a bad idea.
-bill kenny

Cell Phones Ringing in the Pockets of the Dead

In the interests of full disclosure, I'll note the title today is a theft from Willie Nile.

I'm old enough to remember where I was when I learned the President, John F. Kennedy, had been murdered in Dallas, Texas. I can see it very clearly, still--basement classroom, row closest to the door, fifth seat back, staring up at the loudspeaker on the wall where the morning announcements usually emanated, utterly bewildered by the words Sister Immaculata, the principal, was speaking. It was English, but I didn't really understand. Even days later as the caissons rolled by and the riderless horse with the boots backwards in the stirrups and John-John's salute, it was still sinking in.

I can also remember where I was today seven years ago-at my desk, at work and someone popped in to say 'a plane has hit the World Trade Center' and my first thought was he meant a small prop plane, like a Piper Cub. I went to the Web, as it turned out half the people on earth were also doing, and had trouble getting into any of the news sites I visited on a regular basis because their servers were buckling under the volume of traffic.

They weren't the only thing buckling, as by the time I made my way upstairs to a staff lounge where a television with cable was located, one of the towers was less than an hour away from following suit, though none of us knew that. The TV talking heads were scrambling to get seated and explain to us what had happened, as the why wasn't yet known. Someone had gotten hold of the accidental video of one of the jumbo jets (I was numbed, looking at the size of the plane) going into one of the towers, simply being swallowed up, and NOT coming out the other side. I'm not linking to the thousands of sites that have it-ALL of us need to remember it, and NONE of us ever need to see it again.

This clip ran, it felt like, for days, as analysts took it apart a frame at a time. Technical note: in US broadcasting, NTSC (never twice the same color as we always called it to the anger and chagrin of engineers), 30 frames of video are recorded per second (half the cycle rate of alternating current in our power grid) at 525 lines of horizontal scan. Western Europeans use a higher scan rate, 625 at 25 frames a second (same reason why ours is 30) and the audio is recorded at a different place electronically, making the two systems incompatible with one another. I read where the news director at ABC, at the request of the late Peter Jennings who anchored three days of non-stop coverage, STOPPED showing the clip because he feared the impact it was having on viewers. Too late for me and many more like me.

In a flash, NYC (and Washington DC and a field in Pennsylvania) became everyday in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In Fortress America, with our oceans and armed forces to protect us, we had watched for years as violence became an everyday occurrence in Israel, in Sri Lanka, in the Philippines and elsewhere. It hadn't really touched us. Yes, there had been the murder of the Marines in Beirut in the Eighties, the explosions that killed people at the embassy in Africa and the destruction of Khobar Towers and the death of American airmen, but all of those were television news stories.

We paused, watched for a moment, and then changed the channel. We weren't stupid or unfeeling, just distracted by modern life. We understood, at least in the abstract, that terrorists are people who have nothing to live for, but we failed to grasp that people who have nothing to live for will always find something to die for. And then they want you to die for it, too. I am not the brightest bulb in the lamp, so I may not have been the first one to recognize the worldview the maniac cowards halfway across the globe constructed to rationalize murdering thousands of innocent people because they were, in some obscure way, responsible for creating everything the hate-filled crazies despised and feared.

More than two towers of concrete, glass and steel fell that day and more than hundreds of hopeless people hurled themselves from windows in those towers to certain death on the streets below rather than perish in the inferno and carnage that only a fully-fueled commercial passenger jet creates when it crashes into a building. The only opportunity left to behave like the sentient creatures we all believe ourselves to be, the Crown of Creation (no matter how you envision the Creator), and to attempt as a species to find political solutions to questions of homeland, heritage and personal liberties disappeared, perhaps forever, in the dust and debris of that day.

Many people died trying to save many other people and we remember them on this day as heroes because of that sacrifice. Maybe what we should remember is more the reason why they rushed in to save those who were overtaken by the calamity and the chaos. I think they died believing they were making a difference in trying to help if but only one other person. And because of the willingness that each showed in giving of their life to attempt that, at least for today, I think we owe them, and ourselves, another opportunity to work for peaceful and just resolutions to all the challenges facing all of us on the Big, Blue Marble in the 21st Century.

Hey, those who hate and exult in your hatred, don't get lost in the noise. It's not, nor ever been, "My God can beat up your God." As Voltaire noted, without man there is no God. Here's the real lesson: Anything worth dying for is worth living for. One day at a time, no matter how sad remembering that day is, or how painful that memory will always be. Through the tears, across the years and despite the fears, we will always triumph-to do less would betray and dishonor the memory of all, before and since, who sacrificed so much for us to be here now. And being here now, is the Soul of America.
-bill kenny

Ritual and Rote

As a kid, one of the rules on weekends growing up, before being allowed outside to play ball (for those under the age of thirty, 'playing ball' back then involved physical acts that included interaction with another human and an actual ball. There were no joysticks in stoop ball, at least not in my neighborhood) or any other Saturday morning function, you had to brush your teeth and comb your hair, make sure your homework was done for Monday and make your bed.

The last part always tripped me up, because I never got it. At the end of each day, I changed into jammies (when I was old enough, no more footies! Hurrah, today I am a man!) and climbed into bed. Never saw why it made any difference if I made it the following morning or not. It wasn't like, as I've read about on some ballistic missile submarines, I was 'hot racking' (more Sailors than beds on board and since someone is always working that bed can be recycled for someone who should be sleeping).

I checked-the population in the house was relatively stable. I saw the same faces at mealtime and at bedtime. I did learn, while watching my mom manage our household that there's a difference between how a ten year old boy and a mother of a ten year old boy make the bed. The former pulls the blanket and top sheet semi-straight, puts the bedspread on and hopes it hangs down about the same on both sides. The latter strips the bed to its mattress, lets it air and completely remakes it. The only thing I never got to see was the bed inspectors who must have shown up in their Sealy-Simmons Supercharged Inspection Van right after I headed off to Bobby or Neil's house. Why else go to all the trouble, if no one ever sees it?

And if the bed inspectors weren't real, they were to my mom, and, by extension, to me. And they're not the only-real-but-not-really real folks-and all of them live in our heads. When you get the chance, look in your sock drawer--notice how neat it is. Do you fold them in half or do you roll them up? Critical concerns. Luckily my wife and I approach issues like how to fold socks in pretty much the same way--gives us one less thing to shriek about at the marriage counselor's office. I say pretty much because we disagree on how to wear socks. I, as she always says, am wrong because I wear them inside out with the smooth, finished side against the skin of my foot and the rough side against the inside of the dead cow from whose skin the shoes are made.

We have a similar disconnect with setting the table and where to place the silverware. I am right handed, but always place it on the napkin that I set to the left side of the dinner plate. She is a southpaw (why can I NOT call myself a Northpaw?), and places everything on the right side, for me, and on the left side for herself. Our two children are right handed and I'm tempted to call for a show of hands when one or both comes to visit and stays for dinner, because I love the joys that the tyranny of the majority can bring.

Of course, appeasing the sock drawer inspectors is only part of the battle-later in the day, I imagine the undergarment police show up which is why 'the unmentionables' drawer is a thing of beauty if not a joy forever. The towel shore patrol check out the main bathroom, make sure the shampoos and rinses are back in their cubbies and all towels and seat trays are returned to the upright position. The kitchen keystone cops look for dishes in the drain rack, always at least a demerit per plate or glass, and you don't want to be the one who didn't wash, rinse, dry and return the silverware to its rightful place-the 82nd Airborne could be coming through the kitchen door any moment, so every second counts.

Actually, what does count, and counts a lot, is how much of every day we fill up with rote and ritual. We always do what we've always done because it's what we've always done. It's more than 'monkey see, monkey do' (if they had the gift of speech, assuming that it is, indeed, a gift, what might they call it?). We insist the 'outside world' behave in a logical and reasoned manner but in our hearts and minds there's more than enough space for 'step on crack and break your mother's back', for pushing in the chair at your kitchen table as you get up, for closing the door when you go to the bathroom even if you live by yourself, turning on a light in the bedroom to reach for the ringing phone after dark. And when we can't put the newspaper back in order, by section, before tossing it in the recycling bin, when we have to live to cover up on the porch mailbox because we were rushing to get to work, when we have to omit part of our routine that has become our coping ritual, we have a sense of disquiet and unease. It's hard when the difference between a rut and grave is only the depth of the habit.
-bill kenny

The Boy in the Bubble

It was a slow day. And the sun was beating on the soldiers by the side of the road. There was a bright light, a shattering of shop windows- the bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio. Saves me the trouble of snapping off the dials and yanking it out of the dashboard, Paul, much obliged. Maybe we're nearing the decline and fall, though I haven't heard from Will in a while (since he stopped being the Fresh Prince but before he became Hancock) to read some of the things folks are writing about the upcoming Miley Cyrus tour (and her stop here in the Enchanted Forests of Southeastern CT).

I'm grateful my children are adults and beyond this kind of music probably in much the way my parents felt about what I listened to growing old (we didn't have cable, just plain old vanilla TV so all the narrowcasting that Nickelodeon, Sprout and Disney can do, didn't exist 'back in the day') and I think all of us are better off for it.

Cheap Trick sang in On Top of the World 'rock and roll deejays got their finger on the world. They play the music that makes you feel so good.' I know first hand sometimes it's the middle finger. Today's entertainment stores (don't call them 'record shops', they ain't) stock only what gets played on the radio, which plays only what sells in the shops and then my head spins and I get dizzy from the vicious circle. That Rick and the crew were the opening act on a triple bill in July at Mohegan Sun with Heart and Journey (with the Steve Perry soundalike vocalist-how much does God have to hate you to make you a soundalike of Steve Perry?) proves the world is upside down.

I spent three hours Saturday to no avail looking for the new Randy Newman album. It's on my list with Lyle Lovett and efforts by James McMurtry and Joan As Police Woman--all of which can be found in the 'good luck!' bin, I suspect. Listening to radio when I was a child (and as an adult, childish) was the most fun you could have with your clothes on.

Radio is now a commodity, available to the programming service that delivers the most consumers to advertisers as radio echoes with the sounds of salesmen (sorry, Neil!). If they stepped off a BOAC jet tomorrow, could there be a second BEATLES? (Don't even look for a hyper-link! If you don't know who The Beatles were, cash in your belly-button and get off this planet, now.) Probably not on today's sales charts and certainly not in today's radio playlists.

I don't want to sound like one of those conspiracy theorists, but you, too, must've noticed how things started going sideways when labels moved away from the big pieces of vinyl with the little holes. And though the holes were rather small, they had to count them all. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
-bill kenny

Person to person. Porch to porch.

The party's over-but it's not yet time to call it a day. The Republicans have concluded their nominating convention and all I can think of is Dylan's The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, which is where I was when the Democratic Party wrapped up their shindig the week previous.

I had never realized that 'I know you are, but what am I?' was allowed to be used beyond third grade, much less that it would become the manner in which national issues are debated in this country. I can only imagine the citizens of Iraq as they observe our election year shenanigans and wonder what the hubbub about democracy is all about in the first place.

Like somebody else we can both name, this ain't my first rodeo, either, but I was excited to anticipate an engaged discussion on issues of national and international importance whose solutions and impacts would reverberate across economic, ethnic and generational divides. And what did I watch in dribs and drabs for the last two weeks? Variations of a bad audition for the part of Mark Antony (sorry JLO, not your stud) in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar where the tag teams of Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin take turns damning one another with faint praise and demonizing with both hands. Is this how an honorable man (or woman) should behave?

It seems temper tantrums are now political dialogue. In all candor, if Nathan Hale could have seen this coming, he'd have kicked that box out from under his own feet. What are we doing to each other and why? Hurling invective, thinly (and badly) veiled, is not going to get us out of the debtors' prison we've fashioned for our national and personal finances; it will not address the looming collapse of safety nets upon which millions depend on a daily basis, ranging from Social Security to health care. It costs us time and uses up oxygen (and from the tone of the discussion, many of us are already oxygen-deprived.)

When there were LOTS of folks running (you remember that, right?) there was talk that those who were selected by their parties would travel the country together, speaking to the same folks in the same venues--not like Stiller and Meara, though that might be a model, but like the formal conversations Lincoln and Douglas had with one another and their fellow-citizens across Illinois one hundred and fifty years ago, this year. Talk about lightning not striking twice in the same place.

There's no confirmed schedule of televised debates (which aren't really debates in the sense I would hope but feature questions once reserved for The Dating Game ('If you could be any vegetable, which one would you be?' 'A zucchini!' And let's promise one another now, the first cretin to ask 'boxers or briefs?' of any of the Fab Four gets clubbed like a baby seal. Agreed?). There's no format, venue, length and won't be without weeks of negotiations on arcane aspects like the height of the podium each speaker will have (maybe zucchini is not such a bad answer after all), the color of the curtain behind them, the cut of the crystal of the drinking glass each will nervously sip from and how far from the edge of the stage all of this happens. Rest assured neither side will make the first move to get this show on the road but will make very sure to paint the other side as the bad guys for the delay.

Tell you what-all that's needed is a front porch and a couple of chairs. As it just so happens, I have both at my house. And electricity, so when it gets dark the talking with America doesn't have to stop and some Hosmer Mountain soda in the fridge, pick a flavor (they're all good), to wet your whistle before you slake our appetite to learn what you propose to do for what you see as the issues facing us and our children. Speaking of appetite, if you get hungry we'll call out for pizza-everybody likes pizza (with or without zucchini). Drop me a line right here and let me know what day and time you'll be by so I can tell my wife. She gets really cranky if I bring home Presidential debaters without calling her first. She wants to clean house (and this time she won't be alone).
-bill kenny