The Open Road

Catching up

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 03:58:00 +0000

Not going to lie: with the release of Believe in Me on Nov. 29, it’s gotten extra tough to keep up with multiple blogs, etc. So this time we’re going to go a little short on verbiage and long on linkage. Focus of the moment is obviously promoting the book, so here we go…

Believe in Me home page

Believe in Me Facebook page

Believe in Me blog

Wampus author page

RiffRaf guest-blog on the music in Believe in Me (Part I)

RiffRaf guest-blog on the music in Believe in Me (Part II)

The Buzz blog post on Believe in Me

Will hope to come back and add to this in the weeks ahead… as well as get back to book reviews, Giants baseball and other random nonsense. In the meantime, thanks for paying attention.

Believe in Me: cover art revealed

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 20:13:00 +0000

When you've been working on something for as long as I've been working on my forthcoming novel Believe in Me (would you believe, I started the first draft in 2002?), you'd think something as simple as a peek at the cover art wouldn't rise to the level of thrilling. Yet there I was earlier this week, staring at the four-inch screen of my iPhone, thoroughly dazzled to see what my publisher Mark Doyon of Wampus Multimedia had come up with. Leading up to that moment we'd talked at some length about what really constituted the essence of the story, and how to capture those ideas and emotions in a simple, immediately memorable image. All I can say is, Mark nailed it. In a single stroke, he made my characters' world real. And I'm thrilled.

So, here's the thing: I wrote a book

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:02:00 +0000

Now, that headline probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise. As most who read this blog know, I’ve been writing non-fiction about music for 15 years now in the form of reviews and interviews for The Daily Vault; it was really only a matter of time before that became the nucleus for an attempt at fiction as well.

The end result is Believe in Me, a novel of “musical fiction” that will be published in e-book form by Wampus Multimedia on Nov. 29. There is no physical book, at least not at this stage; instead, I’m joining my friend Wampus Creative Director Mark Doyon out on the electronic frontier. Wampus has been publishing e-books for several years now, in between releasing some of the most imaginative, challenging, literate indie-rock albums out there.

I could go on with a whole lot of blah blah blah about the story and such here, but Wampus has already set up a couple of places for that to happen, so if you’re so inclined, please join me at jasonwarburg.com and/or wampus.com/jason-warburg to learn more. Bottom line: I hope you’ll enjoy the book, and that if you do, you’ll tell your friends. That’s how this stuff works circa 2011: it’s all about spreading the word, one e-mail, Facebook status, blog post and tweet at a time.

(Oh, and just for the record, I'm not abandoning this blog... it will be back at some point in the future. After all, I have a lot of reading list left to explore!)

Take care and don't be a stranger.

Good reads: Life v. Art

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 20:40:00 +0000

For my birthday this year a friend gave me two books that were logical choices, yet books I wouldn’t have bought for myself. I ended up fascinated by both for very different reasons.

The common thread of the books is rock and roll in the ’60s and ’70s, kind of a natural for a guy of a certain age who’s written 535 album reviews and counting. That and the two narratives’ occasional brief intersections aside, though, this pair of autobiographical pieces could hardly be more different.

We’ve known for a long time now that Keith Richards is (a) a brilliant musician who co-composed some of the most memorable rock and roll songs of the ’60s and ’70s, (b) an incorrigible, unrepentant, world-class hedonist, and (c) possibly also kind of a dick. His massive, rambling, deliriously candid memoir Life reminds us of the first two and confirms the third. Richards’ memory is remarkable for having been at one time the most famous junkie on earth; other than the occasional blackouts, he seems to have registered and stored away most of what was happening around him even at his most debauched.

In the end—which takes a long time getting to in this 547-page tome—the clearest message offered by Life is that Richards is a man who regrets nothing, least of all his own regrettable attitudes toward women ("bitches"), gays ("poofters"), parenting (he made his young son his on-tour houseboy as he traversed the depths of heroin addiction), and even his musical other half and longtime frenemy Mick Jagger. Jagger, to his credit, has not responded publicly to the many jibes Richards throws his way in Life -- so a veteran rock journalist by the serendipitous name of Bill Wyman has done it for him, penning an absolutely brilliant imagined response by Sir Mick. It should really be required reading for anyone who completes Richards’ winding, entertaining-when-not-horrifying, largely amoral and deeply self-serving tome.

Standing in stark contrast to Richards’ celebration of self is Patti Smith’s exquisite memoir Just Kids, a celebration of two young artists’ drive to create and the complicated relationship they forged and re-forged within that charged environment. Smith deftly and inexorably draws the reader into her life as a sometimes literally starving artist in early 1970s New York City, all the while tracing her long, layered, sometimes fraught relationship with the “hippie shepherd boy” who would later become the noted and controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Smith’s is a book I didn’t particularly expect to enjoy—my relationship with both her music and Mapplethorpe’s photography is one of detached respect, an admiration for their technique and execution rather than any sort of personal connection with their art. What Just Kids accomplishes through Smith’s gorgeously constructed sentences and vignettes is to expose the roots of their art even as it’s describing their struggle to create it.

I’m not done with Just Kids yet, but am captivated by it, and in awe of the drive to create that lies at its core. Best known as a poet and musical visionary (the “godmother of punk,” some have called her), Smith’s only real misstep in my eyes is that she hasn’t spent more time working with prose over the years; perhaps now she will. And of course, it doesn’t hurt my appreciation for Just Kids that one of the gigs Smith landed in her varied efforts to scrape together a living while working on her poetry was writing album reviews. Hope springs eternal.

Good reads: "The horror... the horror..."

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 01:18:00 +0000

After a long break from the genre, I read a couple of novels this past year that at least nominally fall into the horror category.

As a teenager, my favorite author was Stephen King. ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining and The Stand remain touchstones of my early adolescence, and I still own a good chunk of the man’s catalogue, though I shed a few of his thicker and less memorable ’80s and ’90s novels in our 2009 move. I think even the ever-frank King would agree he hit a sort of rhythm in that period where his stories became somewhat formulaic. I’ve continued to enjoy his short-story collections—they’re always a kick, full of tightly-written bite-sized morsels and O. Henry endings—but I stayed away from the novels for a number of years until picking up the well-reviewed Under The Dome last year.

Under The Dome is not, strictly speaking, a horror novel, although a number of horrible things happen in it… it’s more like a mash-up of Our Town and Lord of the Flies, with a bit of ’50s B-movie sci-fi thrown in for seasoning. To wit: an entire small town in rural Maine is suddenly, inexplicably encased in a perfectly clear, almost impenetrable, mile-high dome that cuts it off from the outside world. This offers abundant opportunity for King to do what he does best—examine with a keen eye and ear how ordinary people react under the most extreme circumstances imaginable.

A few near-stereotypes are present—the instinctively heroic military veteran, the devious and megalomaniacal used car magnate, the straight-arrow small-town New England newspaper publisher—but King gives them depth and shading aplenty and comes up with one of his most convincingly horrific creations in the person of Junior Rennie, a small-town bully whose brain tumor turns him into a depraved serial killer even as his manipulating daddy gets him installed him as part of the town’s emergency police force. There were also a couple of twists that I didn’t see coming (although I might have “smoked out” one of them if I’d started watching Breaking Bad before reading the book), and King’s writing feels energized in a way it hasn’t for me in some time. Under The Dome was a solid read and a keeper. Welcome back, Steve.

Mr. King also supplied a laudatory jacket quote that contributed to my decision to pick up Justin Cronin’s The Passage. Not that I have a constant jones for either post-apocalyptic survival stories or vampires, but when the author of two of the best novels ever written on those particular subjects praises a post-vampire-apocalypse novel, it might be worth a look.

And it was. Cronin, a writer once better known for the literary novels Mary and O’Neil and The Summer Guest (the former a PEN/Hemingway Award winner), dives into the genre with aplomb and recognizes instinctively how to drive this sort of narrative forward in a way that’s both captivating and satisfying. There’s always a necessary balance between answering all of the obvious what-if questions about a world-changing event, while at the same time keeping you engaged with and invested in the characters’ very basic struggles to survive in an extraordinarily hostile world. Cronin’s insights about how a crumbling modern society might react, and what sort of physical and socio-cultural landscape that reaction might leave behind for the survivors a generation later, are sharp and feel remarkably realistic considering the sci-fi-with-hints-of-supernatural nature of the disaster that strikes humanity.

The ambitious Cronin has declared The Passage to be the opening act of a planned trilogy, and he structures his narrative well for that plan, delivering a finish that satisfies while leaving many more questions and possible directions unexplored for the forthcoming chapters in the story. Count me in.

Breaking Bad: an appreciation

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 17:22:00 +0000

So, I’ll get back to writing about my reading list—which keeps growing—very soon, but just this moment, my imagination has been captured by a TV series about meth dealers.

No, really.

Some of you know this already—one of you turned me onto the show, after all—but I’m speaking of Breaking Bad, the cable series on AMC starring Golden Globe winner Bryan Cranston (formerly best known as the dad from Malcolm in the Middle) and created/produced/often written by Vince Gilligan, who used to be one of the main writers on The X-Files. I never expected to become a fan of a show with such a dark premise, but the acting is terrific and the writing… the writing is completely brilliant.

As the series begins Walt, played with total erupting-out-of-the-middle-aged-doldrums conviction by Cranston, feels like his life has been a failure. Once a promising but congenitally passive scientist, the on-the-cusp-of-50 Walt has watched his former partner take his best idea and build a successful company around it while Walt has languished for 20 years as a barely-scraping-by high school chemistry teacher. He loves his wife Skyler—pregnant with an unexpected second child—and his son, Walt Jr., who is a typical 15-year-old in every respect except that he has cerebral palsy, but the rest of his life is one unending humiliation.

Money is already tight when Walt learns in the first episode that he has stage four lung cancer (ironic because he does not smoke), with a year, maybe two to live. The next day he goes on a ride-along with his DEA agent brother-in-law and sees one of his former students (the luckless, mostly well-meaning loser Jesse) escaping from the meth lab the agents are in the process of busting. He also sees the rolls and rolls of cash the agents recover at the house, and an idea forms… Walt may be doomed, but he can leave his wife and kids well off rather than destitute—be their hero financially if in no other way—if he can team up with Jesse to cook and sell meth.

Needless to say, complications ensue, not the least of which is that Walt is both an excellent meth chef, and smarter than almost everyone he has to deal with in that world. He doesn’t like what he’s doing, but he does like how it makes him feel—powerful and finally, for once, in control of his life.

What prompted me to write about the show this morning, though, was the brilliant episode I just watched last night, episode ten of season two, titled “Over.” At this point I’m going to put up a big

*********************** SPOILER ALERT ***********************

so that no one reads any further if they want to check out the series for themselves. (Seasons one and two are on DVD now, and season three should be coming out before long. Season four is scheduled to start in June.)

In the previous episode, Walt becomes convinced by the hacking cough he’s developed and the blurry shape he sees on his preliminary medical scan results (that the technician won’t talk with him about) that the end is near. So he calls Jesse and they go on a marathon four-day meth-cooking binge that’s full of comic complications, with Walt’s MacGyver-ish science abilities ultimately rescuing them.

The kicker, though, comes at the end, when Walt and his family sit down together in the doctor’s office and hear the scan results—Walt is in remission, the tumors have shrunk 80 percent and the cough and the blur on the scan were side-effects of the chemo and radiation treatments that have saved his life. He’s not dying, his family is delighted… and he slips off into the bathroom alone and pounds his knuckles bloody against the towel dispenser.

That’s the setup for “Over,” in which Walt tries to figure out what this means. At first, he calls Jesse for a meet and says, sell what we’ve got, we’ll split the money, and then we can both walk away. A big clue that this is far from over, though, comes when Walt continues to shave his head, even though he finished chemo weeks ago. Then his wife throws a celebration for him, at which Walt spends his time sulking, drinking and generally behaving poorly. When asked to say something to the assembled group of friends he will say only this: “When they told me I had cancer, I thought, ‘Why me?’ And then when they told me I was in remission, I thought the same thing.”

The next day he apologizes, telling his wife “That wasn’t me, that was, I don’t know, someone else.” And then begins furiously working on a home repair project, ultimately ending up on his back in the crawl space literally shoring up the subfloor of his family home (and you’d better believe that symbolism was intentional). But you can see he’s deeply frustrated, to the point of obsession. Now that he’s no longer dying, everyone in his life wants everything to go back to the way it was… but other than his wife and son, Walt hated everything about his life the way it was. He felt defeated and powerless and constantly a victim.

In the episode’s final scene, he goes to the local big-box hardware store to get some mold-resistant primer to apply to his house repairs, walks down the aisle with a can in each hand, and comes across a shopping cart filled with what he immediately recognizes as a large buy of the ingredients needed to cook meth. The cart’s sketchy-looking owner returns and Walt glares at him before launching into a whispered rant in which he tells him everything he’s doing wrong—wrong ingredients, wrong approach (buy different components at different stores, and never in quantity), etc.—until the guy wordlessly flees the store.

Walt then gets in line to buy his primer, but something has already clicked over in his mind and he leaves the cans on the floor, leaves the checkout line and marches out into the parking lot, where he finds the sketchy customer explaining what happened to his muscle-bound, biker-ish minder. Walt marches right up to the two of them and does an old-West staredown with Muscles, the sort of tough guy he would instinctively have run from three months before.

After a long face-off, Walt finally hisses out five words: “Stay out of my territory.” The other two back off slowly, get in their van and leave Walt standing alone in the parking lot. He won’t go back to his old life; he can’t. He’s become a different person… and for better or for worse, he likes it.

Return of Good Reads: Robert B. Parker redux & requiem

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 17:13:00 +0000

I don’t generally do New Year’s resolutions. Let’s face it; in recorded history, what percentage of them has lasted beyond February 15th?

But just for the sake of argument, let’s pretend I made some this year. Two of them would have been: read more, and write more. Nothing like a busy schedule and a touch of OCD to convince me I could more or less do both simultaneously by writing more about what I’m reading. And so… off we go, yet again. (There will of course be occasional interruptions for baseball, politics, etc. along the way, but that sort of thing tends to end up on Facebook these days and I’m not going to double post.)

So. Overall, 2010 was a solid year, reading-wise. I didn’t do that much heavy reading – a lot of comfort-food books, I’ll cop to that – but it was good stuff, and some interesting tangents developed along the way. Today’s entry is going to focus on the biggest loss for me as a reader this year: Robert B. Parker, who passed away quite suddenly in January at a robust 77 years of age.

Parker’s wisecracking yet wise Spenser and his memorable cast of supporting characters have been the focus of one of the most venerated and honored series in mystery fiction for nearly 40 years. Parker also successfully launched three other character-driven series in recent years, two mystery series focusing on small-town police chief Jesse Stone and Boston detective Sunny Randall, respectively, and a series of Westerns about quiet but deadly friends Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. (The Stone books have been adapted into a series of successful TV movies starring Tom Selleck as a somewhat older but equally troubled Jesse Stone; and Appaloosa, the first of the Westerns, was made into a terrific feature film with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen.)

Parker’s passing means the end of all four series, though he was so prolific in his later years that he was five or six books ahead of his quarterly publishing schedule at the time he died, so that new releases will continue through 2011. After gobbling up The Professional (2010’s typically engaging Spenser paperback) and the third in Parker’s terrific Western series (Brimstone), I decided to delve into some of his more tangential work to satisfy my craving for his lean, witty style. The Boxer And The Spy and Chasing The Bear are young adult novels, the former an original and the latter a story of Spenser as a teenager. Both were like small plates at a favorite restaurant—tasty but not substantial enough to be entirely satisfying.

Gunman’s Rhapsody, a retelling of the Wyatt Earp story, was oddly frustrating. In attempting to tell a true tale as faithfully as he could, Parker managed to muddy the waters in several directions at once, I think. The story doesn’t flow as you might wish because real-life events rarely take on the rhythms and plot-development pace of a good novel, and by virtue of the fact that the Earps’ entourage and approach to confrontation bear significant similarities to Spenser’s own fictional milieu, the whole exercise ends up feeling a bit like Spenser Gunfights at the O.K. Corral.

Let’s set the analysis aside for the last part here, though, and focus on the real world. The most remarkable thing that happened in the post-RBP world of 2010 was this: after decades of being known by readers mainly through references made by Parker in interviews, his wife Joan and sons David and Daniel chose to remember his life by starting a Facebook page in his honor and beginning for the first time to communicate directly with his many thousands of fans. The quality of the conversation on this page has been faintly astonishing, as family and fans have jointly mourned him as both an author and a man. Each camp, it seems, has been of considerable comfort to the other, and the family’s decision to share various old letters and funny anecdotes about RBP has made it feel at times as if he is still in the room, chuckling softly from the corner at all this fuss about a guy who could never abide pretension, and really just enjoyed spinning a good yarn, and being a father to Daniel and David, and being a partner to his beloved Joan.

R.I.P.

A picture is worth 48 years of waiting

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:15:00 +0000

Voice of reason (not mine)

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:05:00 +0000

I don't blog much any more, and I've thinking recently about why that is.

Part of it has to do with time, of course. There are only so many hours in the day, and if middle age reminds us of anything, it's that time is not an infinite resource; it's a commodity, best used with care up to the point when it will eventually, inevitably run out. And -- no offense -- but I doubt I'll ever look back and think "Gee, I wish I'd spent more time sitting at the computer."

So, I try to focus my energy on things that matter.

And therein lies the second part of the dilemma. Because the aspect of the current state of the world that alarms and depresses me the most is the tenor of our political conversation. I mean, you can't even really use that word any more -- it's not a conversation, it's a shouting match. Precious few people even try to reason with one another any more, both because so many of us on both the left and the right have long since lost patience with the back and forth, and because there's precious little reward for being the voice of reason, when everyone else on both ends of the spectrum is busy shouting you down.

So how do you talk about things that matter, without becoming part of the problem?

An excellent example of how showed up today in the form of the most eloquent voice of reason I've heard in some time -- Theodore Olson, a lion of conservative thought and solicitor general under President George W. Bush, arguing the case for gay marriage. Take it away, Ted...

Sometimes I fear for my country...

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:51:00 +0000

...but then something comes along to remind me that there is always hope as long as our singers and storytellers still have a voice:

"Welcome back my friends / To the show that never ends.."

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:45:00 +0000

You might think that after a 10-month break I could do better for an opening line than a quote from Emerson, Lake & Palmer. But, "write what you know" and all that...

Anyhow, without further adieu I'm going to propose that we dive back into our usual topic, i.e. what's been amusing me lately. This week I'd have to go with: ranting tea-baggers who couldn't find a clue with a spotlight and a steamshovel. This bit in The Onion about a man "whose understanding of the Constitution derives not from a close reading of the document but from talk-show pundits, books by television personalities, and the limitless expanse of his own colorful imagination" is so dead on the money that the laughter it generates comes out sounding distinctly queasy.

How to become permanently employed

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 21:23:00 +0000

Apparently the answer to my headline above is: become a pollster.

Or at least, that's the only reaction other than gales of laughter that I could come up with when I read the following headline this afternoon: "Poll: 2 out of 3 approve of Obama's job."

The article goes on to rather breathlessly note that President Obama's approval rating of 68 percent is "near the high end for new presidents, but short of President John F. Kennedy's 72 percent in 1961," though the numbers may be just a bit apples and oranges, since in 1961 the Gallup Poll waited an interminable three weeks (!) before asking the American people how the new guy was doing. None of that lollygagging in 2009, though. No, today our omnivorous mass media monster betrays no embarrassment whatsoever at trumpeting a poll measuring the job performance of someone who has been in office for THREE DAYS.

They used to call election years "silly season" -- these days, that seems to describe the American media machine 24/7/365.

Bookshelf update: Randy Pausch & Robert Crais

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:10:00 +0000

This will be quick. I'm 3/4 of the way through Randy Pausch's book version of The Last Lecture, and calling it inspiring is like calling grass green. The very act of writing it was inspiring; the end product could hardly help but be so. It really is a good read, though. Pausch emerges as a quirky, three-dimensional character for the ages, a self-professed recovering jerk whose intellectual arrogance is thoroughly undermined by his deep loyalty to his family and belief that some vital part of the secret of life lies in striving to achieve your childhood dreams. If Peter Pan had grown up to be a computer scientist with terminal cancer, he might have written this book.

The other thing that led me to post today was Robert Crais, whose Elvis Cole series is among my very favorite reads, and who just published a typically smart, witty, multilayered and purposeful essay about his own creative process, in the form of an imagined conversation between himself and Cole. If you aren't already a fan of this series and are curious about it, give this a read and see if it doesn't tempt you to pick up one of the books.

Life at warp speed

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:10:00 +0000

It's been some time since I blogged here, and -- fair warning -- may be some time yet. Somehow even in the most predictable of circumstances, life around the holidays assumes greater velocity. And circumstances today -- a new job starting January 5, three kids finishing finals this week and coming home for break, our good friends' annual Christmas party, etc., etc. -- include both the predictable and the life-changing. Where it's all heading right now is anybody's guess, but as usual the challenge is to stay in the moment and try to navigate your path with some element of grace and presence. When you're moving at warp speed, the laws of physics have a tendency to break down... but you're still making memories.

The Loving Decision

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:36:00 +0000

Back in May I wrote about the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down laws against interracial marriage, the fortuitously-named case Loving v. Virginia. In recent days a number of commentators have noted the irony that in 2008 Virginia's electoral votes were won by a presidential candidate whose parents would have been thrown in jail if they had visited the state when he was a child.

In May I happened across and wrote about Mildred Loving's obituary just a week before the California Supreme Court delivered its decision striking down as unconstitutional a California state law against same-sex marriage. And now Anna Quindlen has delivered a column that puts it all in beautiful perspective. "The world only spins forward" -- yes.

Tim Lincecum and Keith Olbermann

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:02:00 +0000

Other than the fact that Olbermann used to be a sportscaster, those two subjects have little to do with one another outside my personal bubble. But today they come together because I have two items to offer. One is of course the news about Timmy winning the Cy Young Award at age 24 in his first full season in the major leagues. Watching this kid pitch is the most fun I've had watching baseball since October 2002.

Item the second is one of Olbermann's trademark special comments. Now, Keith can be a bit of a blowhard; in his own way he has assumed the mantle of the Bill O'Reilly of the left, utterly sure of his own correctness at all times. That said, this special comment is clearly heartfelt and genuine and confronts the viewer with compassion rather than brow-beating. Well done, Keith.

Strange days indeed

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:55:00 +0000

What a strange day dawned just now. On the same day the nation overcame a centuries-old legacy of discrimination by electing our first African-American president, the citizens of California -- who voted for Obama by a 61-37 percent margin -- also voted 52-48 percent to write discrimination into our own state constitution. Never mind questions of right or wrong, the simple cognitive dissonance of that act is staggering.

To the extent there is a bright side, it's this. In 2000, California voters enacted a statutory ban on gay marriage by a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent. Proposition 8 wrote that ban into the state constitution by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent. All indications are that voters over 60 years old supported Prop 8 by a substantial margin, and voters under 30 opposed it by an even greater margin. In eight years, the numbers moved nine percentage points. Supporters of Prop 8 may have prevailed in this instance, but the tide of history continues to run in the direction of freedom and equality.

Proposition 8: The Last Word

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:29:00 +0000

The No on 8 campaign released this ad over the weekend. Well done.

Proposition 8: The Ring-Bearer's Question

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:49:00 +0000

Yesterday I promised a more personal take on this issue. Here it is.

When the California Supreme Court handed down its decision affirming equal marriage rights this May, I took the opportunity to repost an op-ed piece of mine that was published in the Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Chronicle fifteen years ago. That piece talked about my perceptions of various issues as a straight suburban parent whose kids have through their entire lives enjoyed the love and support of a godfather-figure who is gay.

Three years after that piece was published, I wrote another, similar one addressing gay marriage. I liked the piece but felt it made my grammar school-aged kids -- then 8, 6 and 5 -- vulnerable in a way I wasn’t comfortable with. So I put it in a drawer -- until today when, 12 years later and with their blessing, I am publishing it here for the first time. Thanks, guys.

***************************************************************

The Ring-Bearer's Question
by Jason Warburg

“Do you think Dave will ever get married?”

My eight-year-old son and I are splayed out on the family room floor watching a movie, the very portrait of late spring Sunday afternoon lassitude. I look over at him and see every dream I’ve ever tucked away reflected back at me, his bright face a prism glinting fresh hopes and opportunities across every wall of our home. Sometimes just a smile at the right moment from this treasure chest of innocent wisdom is enough to bring tears to my soggy, overzealous parent’s eyes.

“I don’t know,” I respond, stalling shamelessly.

I am trying to backtrack his thought process... his uncle’s wedding was just a few days ago, and he and his sister and brother each had speaking roles in the joyous, family-centered ceremony. Farther in the past, three years ago, he was the proud ring-bearer for a close cousin’s wedding. I try to imagine what he is thinking right now and see him dressed to the nines again, shoes freshly spit-polished following a tromp through the ivy after some interesting bug, beaming with the knowledge he is about to play an important role in his beloved godfather’s marriage.

My little man understands weddings well. The idea of two people declaring their love for and lifelong commitment to one another in front of their family and friends clicks on all his cylinders. He appreciates both the spectacle and, I honestly believe, the deeper meaning of it all. It is something, though he knows it lies far off in his own still-mysterious future, that he wants very much to experience for himself, and his roles in others’ weddings have been a kind of unconscious dress rehearsal aiming him toward a goal he has long since embraced.

At this point I decide to stumble forward with an answer rather than delaying further. “He might. I think he’d like to be able to, someday. But right now, even if he found the right person and wanted to, he couldn’t.”

My son looks over at me, eyes clouding, brow furrowing. We delve slowly further into the subject. I remind him of a couple of previous conversations we’ve had about his godfather, particularly the one in which we talked at some length about why “faggot” is such a bad word, even though some of his friends -- nice kids, otherwise -- use it occasionally.

“But why couldn’t he?” my son persists.

I answer as best I can, trying to keep my terms simple. “Because if he did get married, he would want to be married to another man. Remember?”

He remembers, we’ve talked this point through before, and yet he continues to protest, his unfettered mind clearly puzzled at the logic which allows people who love one another to marry only if they are of the politically correct genders. I listen with a concerned but mild expression; only inside my head do I let loose my own frustrated answers -- “Because a lot of straight folks don’t seem to comprehend that many gay people want long-term, committed, monogamous relationships, and because some so-called conservatives feel their particular interpretation of God’s will should overrule the Constitution when it comes to every American’s equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

What ends up coming out of my mouth instead is much milder -- a few words along the lines of “it’s just something that people haven’t done very much before, so some grown-ups aren’t comfortable with it yet” -- but it proves to be enough to tide him over for now. I won’t lie to him, but neither will I overwhelm him with a barrage of truths he is too young to absorb.

One piece of unfinished business from our conversation weighs on me, though. I have explained to my son why his godfather -- a warm and vital presence in his and his two siblings’ young lives -- could not today marry someone he loved and wanted to be with for the rest of his life. It has been difficult, but manageable. The moment I fear more may come later.

My wife and I have three children, two boys and a girl. Assuming somewhere around five to ten percent of our population is gay, there is roughly a 15 to 30 percent chance that someday one of my children may again ask me the question which launched this exchange. Except he or she won’t be asking it about a godfather, or cousin, or friend from school or work. She will be asking it about herself. My child will be asking me why he can’t marry the person he loves with all his wondrous heart.

And I won’t have the slightest idea what to tell him.

Republicans just say no to Proposition 8

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:12:00 +0000

With Barack Obama poised to win “the largest California victory of any presidential candidate since World War II” and high-profile Republicans turning away from their party’s desperately flailing ticket in droves (let’s see, Colin Powell, David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, Kathleen Parker, Peggy Noonan, David Frum, Scott McClellan, Francis Fukuyama and the list goes on), it’s time for me to similarly turn away from the national stage and move to a topic that hits much closer to home: California’s Proposition 8.

Proposition 8 attempts to reverse the May 15 ruling of the Republican-appointed California Supreme Court in favor of equal marriage rights for all Californians -- rights now enjoyed in six Western countries (Canada, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands) and three states (Massachusetts, Connecticut and California).

Most Californians are aware of Prop 8 and have at least the beginnings of an opinion about it. What's less well understood is that Prop 8 has attracted opposition from all across the political spectrum, as both liberals and conservatives have objected to government restrictions on basic individual rights and freedoms.

A leading Republican voice in 2006 stated that the Bush Administration’s proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage "strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.” He added that the decision in Massachusetts to legalize same-sex marriages did "not represent a death knell to marriage." The words of Senator John McCain – or at least, the pre-presidential primary version of John McCain.

McCain may have been willing to shed his principles for the sake of appealing to the far right wing of his party, but traditional conservatives within the Republican Party -- who believe in individual liberty for all, not merely some -- oppose Proposition 8 by the thousands. Their site, www.republicansagainst8.com, identifies its sponsors as “concerned California Republicans who believe in limited government, personal responsibility, the maintenance of Constitutionally-protected rights and freedoms, and in protecting California’s business climate.” In addition to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and a long list of Republican local officeholders and candidates, the site lists as supporters leading California businesses like Apple, PG&E, AT&T, Levi Strauss and Google.

Republicans Against 8 have also developed three simple, effective ads spotlighting their arguments against Prop 8. This one focuses on the backward-looking nature of the initiative, this one reminds voters that Prop 8 would take away rights from people all around us, and the one included below features three Republicans – a federal prosecutor, a missile defense scientist and a Vietnam Veteran -- speaking out against Prop 8.

Tomorrow, a more personal take on this subject.

Switchfoot confuses the pundits

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:57:00 +0000

Over on the Daily Vault, I’ve blogged several times in recent weeks about the various musical artists who have complained to and/or sued the McCain/Palin campaign over their appropriation of songs for use in campaign events and propaganda. Meanwhile numerous major acts (Bruce Springsteen & Billy Joel, Jon Bon Jovi, James Taylor and the list goes on) have performed benefit concerts or hosted fundraising events for the Obama/Biden campaign. It seems safe to say that, as a class, the majority of popular musicians prefer the Democratic ticket.

Unfortunately, it also seems safe to say that lazy stereotyping remains rampant all along the political spectrum, from Fox News on the right to MSNBC on the left. Today’s transgressor is uber-glib MSNBC.com columnist Dave White, who in the context of suggesting alternative music for the McCain/Palin campaign to use, indulged in blatant stereotyping to come up with this assertion: “There are some easy ‘gets’ though. Kid Rock’s ‘American Badass,’ or Toby Keith’s ‘Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue’ are probably fair game without consequence. And I’m guessing Reba McEntire, Switchfoot, Daddy Yankee and Trace Adkins are open to having their music co-opted.”

Toby Keith yes, that’s a no-brainer, and I can’t speak for most of the others because I don’t know their music or whether they’ve endorsed a candidate. But Switchfoot? The only plausible reason I can think of for White “guessing” they would support the McCain/Palin ticket is that they are a band that is both nationally popular and openly Christian.

And there’s your stereotype – oh, they’re a Christian band, they must be for the conservative Republican candidates. Let’s deconstruct the fallacy here.

First, Switchfoot has never publicly associated itself with any specific candidate or party. Look it up. The only overtly political song they have ever produced criticizes “Politicians” as a class without differentiating between left and right and promotes an anti-nationalist viewpoint (“I pledge allegiance to a country without borders, without politicians”) that seems way out of sync with the Limbaugh-loving, U.N.-hating crowd’s ideology.

Second, Switchfoot’s fans come to the group from all across the political spectrum, as evidenced by this lively presidential race discussion thread on the Switchfoot.com forum.

Third, Switchfoot’s political philosophy, to the extent it has ever expressed one, is distinctly anti-materialist:

“When success is equated with excess
When we’re fighting for the Beamer, the Lexus
As the heart and soul breathe in the company goals
Where success is equated with excess

I want out of this machine
It doesn’t feel like freedom

This ain’t my American dream
I want to live and die for bigger things
I’m tired of fighting for just me
This ain't my American dream

’Cause baby’s always talkin’ ‘bout a ring
And talk has always been the cheapest thing
Is it true would you do what I want you to
If I show up with the right amount of bling?

Like a puppet on a monetary string
Maybe we’ve been caught singing
Red, white, blue, and green
But that ain’t my America,
That ain’t my American dream”

The only thing you can really say for sure about Switchfoot’s political beliefs is that they clearly don’t believe that the materialism and greed that characterizes unfettered free market capitalism is the answer to our nation’s problems. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say they have some distinctly socialist leanings -- but then, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say the same about Jesus Christ himself.

Christian does not equal conservative, nor does it equal Republican. Some of the most politically liberal people I have ever known have been deeply committed Christians. The world is not black and white, but filled with shades of grey. The only way to see them all is to remove the glasses that render everything in easy stereotypes.

The new McCarthyism

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:50:00 +0000

The last couple of weeks have been a little dizzying, both for me personally and out on the campaign trail. Granted, it has to be tough when your core beliefs are being challenged by a wide swath of the American public, not to mention the global eonomy, but you can also tell a lot about people, both as individuals and as leaders, by the way they react under stress. And the reaction of some Republican candidates and public officials to their party's sagging poll numbers has been nothing short of alarming.

The gist of the response is "Real Americans agree with us." So where does that leave, say, the 56 percent of likely voters in California who plan to vote for Barack Obama? Do these Republican leaders really mean to say that anyone who doesn't share their views and/or vote for them is anti-American? It sure seems like they do. Which puts these folks in bed with Senator Joseph McCarthy and every other ideological fanatic who's ever proclaimed "you either believe everything I do, or you're evil."

Enough of my little rant, though... Jon Stewart does it so much better. [Usual warning here about adult language, content, etc. Jon does not pull punches. You've been warned.]

Best. music video. ever.

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:50:00 +0000

I realize all the cool people on the Internet saw this two years ago. I saw it for the first time myself several months ago. I don't care. I saw it again today and it made me smile. So there.

(P.S. The group is OK GO, the song is called "Here It Goes Again," and yes this really is one continuous shot. Don't ask me how many times they had to do this before they got the shot.)

Life (the series)

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:55:00 +0000

It’s not every day I find myself wanting to tell people about a TV show. Yes, I have my guilty pleasures -- Lost, 24, The Daily Show -- but unless the Giants are playing, my “must-see TV” list is a very short one.

It’s not every day, but it is today, and the show is NBC’s brilliant Life. British actor Damian Lewis plays LA homicide detective Charlie Crews who, after uncovering corruption within the department, was framed, convicted of murder and sentenced to life (thus the title). After 12 years in a maximum security prison -- thrown inside with the people he’d been putting away as a cop -- what does he do when a defense attorney finally gets his conviction overturned and gets him out? First, he files and wins a $50 million lawsuit against the city. Then, as part of the settlement, he gets his old job back and proceeds to use his position inside the department to try to unravel the conspiracy that led to his being framed.

That might sound a little contrived, a little bit too “Count of Monte Cristo inside the LAPD” Hollywood pat. And it could have been, if not for the writing – which snaps, crackles and pops its way through every cleverly constructed episode – and the superb Lewis, who invests every moment with meaning and, with the writers, brings his damaged character to life in perpetually interesting ways. Charlie learned to survive the brutality of prison life by studying Zen, which philosophy seeps into everything he says and does as he works homicide cases full of equally damaged victims and suspects. What did he miss most on the inside? Fresh fruit -- every episode he’s eating some different variety of it; on this fall’s premiere episode it was miniature kumquats. What does he do for fun? Pull over his now ex-wife’s hotshot second husband whenever he sees him. Oh, and his tightly-wound, by-the-book partner -- the superb and stunning Sarah Shahi -- just happens to be the daughter of the ex-cop who’s apparently at the center of the conspiracy that got Crews wrongly convicted.

Life’s first season was cut short by the writer’s strike, but NBC appears to believe in the show, having re-launched it by running two episodes a week last week and this week on Mondays and Fridays at 10, before settling into its regular Friday 10:00 pm timeslot. It’s one of the smartest and most entertaining shows ever to make it onto network TV, so catch it now before they decide that what civilization really needs is more episodes of Wipeout…

Palin's new chorus of critics: conservative pundits

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Warburg) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 03:22:00 +0000

The narrative of the presidential campaign the past two weeks has frankly been rather predictable. There's just one trend that's truly new and noteworthy here -- a developing groundswell of criticism of John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate from an altogether unexpected source: conservative pundits. George Will, David Brooks, David Frum and perhaps most notably, early Palin supporter Kathleen Parker (see at right) have all expressed serious concerns in recent days about Palin's fitness to serve. Parker, who previously hailed McCain's "keen judgment" on selecting Palin is now actively calling for her to resign from the ticket "for your country." To quote from Parker's column of this morning, "Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League."