NYCweboy

You've Got A Fast Car...

...and in today's weird celebrity news: Robert Novak hits a pedestrian in downtown Washington... and then tries to drive away.

(Insert comment about heartless conservatism here.)

There'll Be Another Dream for Me. Someone Will Bring It.

The first time I saw Donna Summer perform live was twenty-eight years ago.  Disco records, in a remarkable confluence of racism and homophobia, had already been burned in American stadiums the autumn before, and Summer's career was supposed to have been over.  What I remember most about the show was its lackluster quality and how odd it was that Donna was doing that Patti Lupone song about Argentina (at fifteen years old, I wasn't quite up on the showtune stuff...yet).

The second time I saw Donna Summer perform live was last night.  Lackluster it was not (Side note to Bravo's Step it Up fans, someone who looks suspiciously like Nick is one of the dancers in this tour).

I won't even attempt to offer a "review," being too much of a fanboy, or at my age I suppose it has to be fanman... or fancrone.  I can only say if you get the chance, go see her; I defy any other of grandparent status to sing as well.  It's a good thing that self-admitted drug use of hers was shortlived (just around the time of that first performance I saw).  She still hits the high notes on I Feel Love and, yes, weboy, even on your favorite, Con Te Partiro.

The crowd was an interesting mix of other gays I recognized from "back in the day," women my age, who still really seemed to worship She Works Hard for the Money,  and daters of all ages.  I could have done without Hot Stuff and Bad Girls, though, having worshipped them a little too much myself too long ago, but a healthy dose of twirling did come to pass.  And to steal one from you, weboy, the title of this post refers to the line, from McCarthur Park, that Donna was singing...when she winked and smiled at me.  Thanks, Donna (and oh so very generous ticket benefactor - you know who you are) for bringing me another dream, much better than the one twenty-eight years ago.

Leaving you with Crayons, Donna's duet with Ziggy Marley, though obviously not the "official" video:

jinbaltimore

... Sure, A Lot Of People Will Blame Matt, But I Blame Ben.

Rumors of wild Hollywood living aside, apparently it's over for Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel.

Hot Stuff

I think it's the heat.

The string of heat waves this summer have done a lot to sap my brain power, and make almost any distraction from writing look appealing. I think the heat has also made news a bit stupid, too: precious little of any real import is leading the news - even though the serious stuff that's happening is pretty awful and serious - making Christie Brinkley's divorce settlement somehow seem deep.

So, while I've been pretty silent, I haven't been completely out of the loop. Here are the things I've been following, in short form. I'm thinking a summary approach may help me jump start my writing again... plus it doesn't take so much energy.  Plus... with the rain this morning, it's also a little bit cooler. So here goes:

• FISA Follies - I'm sort of fascinated at how the FISA story won't go away, and how it's become something of a rallying cry for a new disillusionment with Obama. What's really disheartening is that all the protesting won't amount to a hill of beans.  And PS, funny how Clinton wound up on the right side of that one... and hilarious how the Hillary Haters just couldn't admit she'd gotten it right without some caveat...
• Testicular Fortitude Theology - I think anyone's slow slide into irrelevancy after years in the public eye is a sad, painful thing to watch. Still, it's a real car crash moment with this whole Jesse Jackson "cut his nuts off" comment, ain't it? I mean can't look away, can't help but feel a little sorry for the guy... the whole bit. Still, what an amazing, spectacularly inappropriate thing to say - and on a live mike! - and while some want to try and hang an Obama critique on it... I'd say... best not to go there. Jackson's notion of his own importance is such a lost cause, and his irrelevancy so apparent at this point... I think it's best not to draw more attention to him.
• Mediscare - One of the somewhat overlooked stories of the past couple of weeks is the collapse of... er... testicular fortitude when it comes to dealing with the healthcare crisis. Paul Krugman suggested - and Ezra Klein approvingly noted - that Congress' decision to raid Medicare HMO funds to fund a softening of cuts in doctor's fees under Medicare fee for service was a good thing... but it's totally not. Aside from the fact that Medicare HMOs are proving to be a positive step in delivering care to some seniors the fact that no one wants to address spiraling healthcare costs in any serious way is the biggest indication that the talk of "healthcare reform" is almost entirely talk (for the best explanation of this, check out wisewon's comment in Ezra's post; wisewon is one of the smartest people I read on healthcare issues, a doc with a great understanding of the issues). Krugman points to the notion that a united Democratic front can defeat GOP intransigence... but when that united front is in place largely to give gifts to doctors... that doesn't seem like a good place to be.
• Fannie and Freddie - One very large hen came home to roost this week, a two- headed monster called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The two semi-private mortgage banks have been in free fall as the extent - and depth - of the mortgage crisis became all too clear in the last few weeks. Though "too big to fail" may turn out to be true, the real problem with Fannie and Freddie is not that they are part of the mortgage crisis... it's that, with some 50% of all mortgages tied to them, they are the mortgage crisis. It's easy, as some have done yet again, to blame mismanagement at both firms; there's definitely loads of scandals still to come. But this is also a problem 70+ years in the making, as a reasonably well conceived and intentioned notion of providing government support to some home buyers gradually morphed into a system of purchasing every mortgage under $400,000.  Now the two lenders have some 5 trillion dollars worth of potentially wrecked debt that the government may have to assume... which will double the national deficit overnight. And for once, the Wall Street Journal is right: this was avoidable, and it's astonishing how stupid people have been in letting Fannie and Freddie grow beyond all reason.
• Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today - oh come on, you know you looked at the Christie Brinkley story too: and what earthly good to drag each other through a week's worth of embarrassing revelations (worse for him... but who wants a psychiatrist's testimony that you need therapy for your lousy taste in men?), to reach a settlement that almost everyone knew was pretty much where they'd wind up anyway? And while Cook may look like a total loser while Brinkley hangs on to most of her fortune, one of the interesting side notes was the fact that she's sitting on some 18 properties in the Hamptons; which, given the disastrous real estate market out there and everywhere, may not be the gold mine some think it is.

That Act Is Getting Old

Summer's here and the time is right... for news that's not really news.  Thus, we New Yorkers have been treated to a breathless daily feed from the ins and outs of Christie Brinkley's divorce from Peter Cook, a/k/a Husband #4. Cook, as readers of the Post and Daily Snooze well know, got caught having a teenage mistress, which led to the unraveling of a whole life of clandestine affairs and assignations.  That has been bolstered, in the past few days, by revelations of Spitzer-like levels of paying for adult entertainment (some $3,000 a month for various internet sites, including ones where he appeared to others on webcam).

The real news, of course, is that Brinkley has looked smashing throughout, younger than her years, dressed to the nines... all set to work again. Or marry again. Brinkley always struck me as one of those odd examples of marital repetition - you turn around, and suddenly she's on husband number four and it's like... how did that happen? Wasn't she married to Billy Joel (number two - not counting the Moet et Chandon heir she was dating who died before they married)? And really, once you get to number four... how many illusions can you have left?

Meanwhile, vying for space on the tabloid pages has been a week of yet more rumor and innuendo, this time that Madonna - she's a singer, for you kids who may not know - has been"canoodling" (I always always wanted to use the famous Page Six word) with... A-Rod (he plays baseball... in case you don't follow sports). That news seemed to underline months of rumors that Madge's marriage to Guy Ritchie was all but over (she's been in New York rehearsing her latest tour for that largely forgettable album she just released... he's been anywhere else, mostly); but  apparently, it came as news to A-Rod's wife, who promptly jetted off to Paris (weekend photos in the Post and Snooze), started an affair with Lenny Kravitz (oh never mind) and today filed for divorce.

Sure, it's fun to write like Rona Barrett... but really, does any of this matter?

George Carlin

All I can say is: me, too. I was stunned to hear that Carlin's dead, and the usual "what a great guy" or even "what a funny guy" seems beside the point. Carlin was too alive, too present, really, to deserve reverie. He'd have said "Fuck you, cocksucker" (using two of the seven), and ignored it.

I'm sort of fascinated that what we celebrate in Carlin really happened in the last 10, maybe 20 years. He was an old comic, from an old tradition, and like many of them, he got funnier, and feistier, with age. I don't even know what he was like in his actual youth; in the seventies, when he was in his forties, he was really sort of a counterculture holdover; but suddenly, in the eighties and beyond, he came into his own, and was really completely unstoppable.

In that hazy way, we will remember for those moments of speaking truth to power, and forget that his best humor was "old crank" humor maybe amped up a notch or two: if it was official, or established, or serious, or had some beaurocracy attached to it, Carlin hated it. He hated that we had to be polite, or perhaps more accurately, that we pretended that we had to be polite. As a result, though, he probably gave license to a sort of inner asshol-ishness that's not necessarily an improvement. Though I enjoyed his various specials... I usually got a little weary as they wore on.

But oh, when he was on! When it was seven dirty words or other hot topics, and he killed. Or, as the grizzled anchor of "The Aristocrats", the brilliant, savage documentary about one of the dirtiest jokes ever, he  was soft spoken yet brilliant. We won't have to miss him (there's so much video)... but oh, what a shame that someday... we'll have to explain him.

I can't choose: Ezra, Dana Goldstein and Nick Beaudrot all found wickedly funny moments. I offer them all, together. Share and enjoy.

Everytime I Breathe, Everytime I Try To Leave

So here I sit in Towson, Maryland, typing away at another Starbucks.  I had hoped to mention traveling - or at least to have done a joint post with the J in town... but that didn't happen. Sorry for the silence.  As Red notes, all the important news happened in the sports world, anyway.

Except, maybe, for the loss of Cyd Charisse.

In any case, as Red noted overnight, it's a moment of feeling a bit beaten down. J and I had a long conversation - all evening, really - about coming to grips with Obama. I try to come up with ways to get comfortable myself... and nothing seems to work. If it's not the tired rhetoric of his Father's Day speech, it's the dull, conventional nature of his advisement choices (I don't necessarily have the issues others do about his economics team... but his foreign policy team is dull dull dull).

Perhaps more instructive was the man who struck up a conversation with me waiting for the Light Rail to bring me to J. He's a painter by profession, 32 years, and work's been hard to find. First day he'd worked in 3 weeks, he told me. When I said "Vacation?" he laughed bitterly and said, "if only."

Beat Down

After an hour on the phone with the man, I'm realizing as this day comes to an end how beat down I'm feeling by the subtleties of discrimination in all its nefarious forms.

This election season has driven home with brutal force what most of us who are non-white-able-bodied-straight-affluent-men experience on a regular basis: the subtle dismissals, devaluations, and discounting of our worth.  Clinton has been martyred for the rest of us, and many still want to debate whether there was sexism in the campaign, and if so, how bad was it really, anyway?  C'mon now.  I'm sure "likable enough" is just arrogance, pure and simple, not couched in a gendered context in a patriarchal society.  And surely Whoopi wasn't talking about colorism on that coffee-klatsch The View?  Is that what I just heard?  Colorism?  What's that?  Aren't they just gabbing, those black and white ladies?  We do live in a color-blind society, right?

Tim Russert

It's only in the last six months or so - since I moved back home - that I've been tuning in regularly to Meet The Press. Within the last 3 years, I'd pretty much stopped watching; partly out of convenience (I would DVR it and never watch those either), and partly because I really found it utterly unsatisfying.

It's these things that come to mind when I think about the sudden, stunning loss of Tim Russert.

In his way, by the time he died, Russert was legendary. Partly that was due to ratings - Russert was the number one Sunday talk show anchor almost without interruption (I think ABC was on top for a while there, but I can't confirm that). Partly it was due to a reputation as the "serious" interviewer, the litmus test of any major political figure, certainly any American one (and really... what's the alternative... Charlie Rose?).

Neither of those, I think, really speak to what made Russert so successful, which was really about personality. Russert was a prime example of news reader celebrity, and almost everything - his role as political commentator, his hosting duties, his role as "Washington Bureau Chief," was subsumed to his star quality. Buoyant, gregarious, full of that manly bonhomie that people seem to like so much, Russert filled up the space - literally - and the room. I may not have loved Meet The Press... but I always liked the guy. How could anyone not?

The Kennedy Endorsement That Matters (Or WWJD)

In contemplating whether or not to write a "post mortem" on the primary, I've found myself unable to say that we're really at a point to evaluate. Too much, it seems to me, of the "how he did it" or "how she lost" evaluations that came out this week was the way they fed the all too American need to have our history here, now, in easy to digest form, so we will never have to look back on it again. And it's not that easy - there are things we don't know (some we can't know) about developments behind the scenes, what motivated several key players, and the like. Saying confidently "he won because he did X" or "she lost because she failed to do Y" seems too easy, just now.

And if I have to hear another round of Clinton-opposing women say now that sexism is a problem... I'll just scream.

I was reminded of all of this, doing the aforementioned dishes, catching up on last weekend's podcast of Washington Week. One of the especially painful aspects of the primary season has been that Gwen Ifill, a woman I've respected tremendously, and whose success as a key Washington reporter has been heartening generally, has failed me over and over this primary season, unable, really to conceal the kind of natural preference for Obama so many reporters share, and letting that color her coverage. That was true in her "post mortem" discussion, one where Clinton did no right, and Obama did no wrong.

Still, one interesting observation that came up was when Dan Balz pointed out that "Kennedy's endorsement was key," and it occurred to me that I agreed that a Kennedy endorsement was key.

Just a different Kennedy than most.