Welcome Heir to the Sch___ Throne and Lands!

No time lately for a proper post. Maybe this weekend. Just had to stop in and say welcome to my new nephew, though! This is my first nephew and I have my brother and his sister in law, who have just joined the rest of us in the parenting arena, to thank. This little fellow is a native Texan, God help us!

He showed up a month early and tipping the scales at just under five pounds. His genetic destiny having been shaped by a thousand generations of milk maids, hewers of wood and drawers of water, he is likely to top out with another 200 pounds or so by the time he reaches middle age.

My brother and his wife haven't decided quite on a name. Something Ameri-Russo-Anglo-German, reflecting his little melting pot self, seems likely.

How I Learned to Stop Watching American Idol

(Put on your culture critic hat and matching scarf! We're off!)

So, for the first time ever this year, the kids and I have been watching American Idol. We stumbled in by accident back when the judges were traveling around the country auditioning wannabe Idols, which was interesting in a voyeuristic way. (There is nothing like open-call for the nation's top TV show to bring out not only a trace amount of talent, but a sea of naive dreamers, the delusional, and the bizarre). We came briefly under its spell. But that's over. Shack and I have reached our limit. Only the Understudy (who is 12 and an occupant of the ideal demographic and mental age for the show) still has any interest in the results. Shack is bored. I, predictably, am appalled.

As everyone knows by now, and in "everyone" I am including inhabitants of remote desert islands and space aliens, American Idol is a talent contest. The talent in question is, ostensibly, singing.

As I write, the 2010 contestants have been whittled from the 50, who were plucked from the hordes to go to Hollywood, to seven. In the end, one will win.

As everyone also knows, although the judges remain on the stage to critique every performance, once the 50 were dropped to 12, the decisions about who stays and who goes, have been made (so we are told) by the voters. The voters = anyone with a cell phone and an opinion who is willing to pay regular texting rates.

Ryan Seacrest (whose name I have been hearing around for years without having any idea who he was), is the host/ringmaster. He looks like a friendly Apollo-era NASA engineer in a close-fitting suit, short hair and thin tie. He holds hands with the contestants after they get the judges reviews, he interviews the contestants briefly before their numbers (seated cosily with them on cube-like couches with Coke ads swimming in background). He plays middleman between the judges and the contestants. He urges America at the end of the show (lines stay open for two hours) not to let their favorites go.

The talent under scrutiny, as noted, is singing. Of course, it is now and has been since America started doing the judging, a popularity contest.

This is the show's true self and what a big part of what makes it, at bottom, ghastly. There are other horrors in its DNA but the popularity aspect is what really puts it into the category of soul destroying.

What is that will make a young singer (28 is the cut-off age) popular with that unspeakably vast middle/mob audience?

Despite judge Simon Cowell's repeated admonitions to the contestants that to win they must find and express who they are, "as an ahtist," being an "ahtist" will not save them here. (As he very well knows). In fact, real "ahtists" need not apply. This is a competition for the Liberaces of pop music - not the Glenn Goulds.

Mostly, as Simon and the other judges also know, the real artists wouldn't apply in the first place. Anyone with sufficient integrity to be merit the label would not assume the posture necessary for winning.

The one contestant this season with a trace of rough edge, and potential disdain for this kind of thing, a former busker called Crystal Bowersox, has been sanded down before our eyes. The lip piercing is still there, but the dreadlocks have been deemphasized. The jeans and T-shirt have given way to high heels and black dresses. Early on, before the stakes got so high, Crystal revealed she auditioned partly as a goof and because she needed money for her kid. She had a real light in contrast to the glossy lips and vaselined teeth that surrounded her. But she has been changed. When Simon pointed out after one of her recent performances that she didn't have "the competition in the bag," she started wolfing down the humble pie. "I never thought I had it in the bag. This is a competition, anyone could win. I never thought of myself as a favorite. Last thing on my mind." Translation: "Love me America. Please."

Hubris = death.

Equally fatal, however, is too obvious sucking up. Another contestant, a particularly cloying high school girl from Connecticut, actually said in a recent post-performance interview with Ryan that she was "begging" for America's votes. Big mistake. I see she was voted off last week. Truckling is required, but America doesn't want you to say that you're truckling.

It's a fine line these poor sods have to walk. Walking it deftly is what will determine who wins.

Of course all this has put me in mind of The Simpson's episode, "A Star is Torn". (Is there a moment in American public life without a better, funnier Simpsons corollary now?). There, Lisa competes on "L'il Starmaker." ("Not affiliated with American Idol," says host Krusty the Klown. "We've never even heard of American Idol"). Lisa makes it to the final two and wins with her sweeter-than-an-Easter-basket song, "My Dad." Her competition, a twinkling little boy called Cameron, has been sabotaged by Homer who chooses a song for him called "Privileged Boy".

The other thing that makes American Idol a kind of horror show is its focus on the slow and lingering death. I have heard professional performers talk about how brutal regular, real-life auditions are. Hopefuls appear, get their few minutes, and the judges say, "OK, you, you, you and you. Come back tomorrow at noon. The rest of you, thank you for coming, don't let the stage door hit you on the way out."

Not kind, but business-like at least, and quick.

The point of American Idol, a marketing juggernaut from which every available dollar is clearly being eked, is to prolong the agony. The slow lopping of one, then another, from the show whips elements of the audience into camps. Shots of the audience, which makes the audience at the Price is Right look sophisticated by contrast, routinely show sign wavers and T-shirt wearers who have become tribal affiliates of one or the other contestants. (William Golding was, it appears, right about humanity).

At this point in the competition the contestants sing on one night, the votes are tallied, then an hour-long elimination show follows on the next night. Needless to say, the survivors are all placed on tenter hooks for the duration. Ryan brings them forward by twos and threes. "Do you think it's you? Here's what the judges said last night. One of you will not be going on. Here's what America said... Blah blah."

It's like watching a car crash. I really can't stand it anymore. I worry that those space aliens looking on at American Idol might decide we aren't worth observing anymore and dust off their planet destroying death rays. Let's hope they instead think to tune into Discovery Channel, or PBS or Showtime and watch coral reefs or snow leopards or Edie Falco or something else that redeems life on earth - or at least all of us who have played along with AI.

I can report that we never texted in a vote. I might keep watching, though, here and there, just to see if Crystal works up the guts to tell the producers that they can stick their contract where the sun doesn't shine.

Phew. I'm done now.


Oh, and I must add that today's banner comes courtesy of the Understudy who has been exploring the paintbrush on her new Mac. Thanks dear.

Shackleton Speaks VI

The Understudy came downstairs a few minutes ago and wanted $2 to buy an application, (that is "app" in 2010 speak), for her iPod. I asked what she would do to earn it. She had no ideas, but I told her she could have the $2 if she put away the clean laundry heaped (as usual) on my bed. It worked.

A few hours ago, when I had dumped the laundry on the bed, I noticed that the last load included a folded dollar bill. It had been nuggetized in that way of folded, washed and dried dollar bills. It wasn't destroyed, though, and I put it next to the bed. Shackleton just found it there and called down the stairs:

"Mom, I just found this dollar. Can I have it?"

Me: "What will you do to earn it?"

(pause)

Shackleton: "I'll put it back."


==============

Will someone remind me to write down my thoughts on American Idol? We have been watching it this year, for the first time - a little late to the party - and every time I see it I start thinking dark thoughts about large swathes of humanity. I want to share these with you all, but I'll need a prod. Or, well, maybe that's enough said. Bon weekend, tout le monde.

At Random...

Easter: Nice. Weather: Fine. Food: Good. Company: Same.


Hope yours was good, too.

Clutch, shift.


One thing about having satellite radio now is that I see the names of the bands whose songs are playing on the radio. The Understudy's favorite station is "Pop 2K." (Understudy = 12, Pop 2 K = Pop music of the last 10 years). As a result, I am learning the names of a lot of hot new artists and bands, or "beat combos" as my friend Mme. Defarge so charmingly put it recently, and how these names are spelled. E.g.:

Linkin Park
Kardinal Offishal
Ke$ha
Flo Rida
Timbaland
Ludacris



I told my daughter that when I start my Hip Hop band I am going to call it "The Badd Spelluz."

I am told this isn't funny.

Empire State of One Mind

Kids and I are back in my old hometown for the weekend, visiting with my father and his wife.

Whenever I get down out of the Vermont hills, I am always gobsmacked at how different my adopted Vermont home is from this world, which I think of as "the Rest of America" or "ROA". So many retail establishments! So many cars, suburbs, ethnic groups, big highways etc. Also, so much history, most of it industrial, lots of it cultural.

My but those New Yorkers of yesteryear were vigorous and earnest! Think Roosevelt, think Rockefeller and all their ilk. Their legacy is much on view all around this part of the world.

We went to the New York State Museum this morning which currently has an exhibit on Woman's Suffrage (the home base of the movement in the U.S. was Seneca Falls in western New York) and also a collection of photos from Eastman House. (George Eastman was a Rochester boy). Of course Schenectady of a hundred years ago was an industrial behemoth, home to the mammoth General Electric works and American Locomotive. GE, or big bits of it, remain here. The locomotive factory is a giant, brick husk sitting silently on many brown acres above the Mohawk.

They thought big in New York, at least once upon a time. You can see it still here in these upstate cities and towns. The managerial class had their mansions and those are still here. Although many of them have been converted into funeral homes or chopped up into apartments or suffered worse fates, most seem to have survived as family homes. Looking at them today as we drove from downtown Albany to downtown Schenectady on a road laid out perfectly straight during the 18th Century, it occurred to me again Vermont is not and never has been a place friendly to grand ambition. I think an honest state motto for us would be, "it's good enough!" The Vermont soul does not want to spend; it wants to get by with what it has had. It wants to make due. This mentality is part of what has preserved the place, to the extent it has been preserved.

But where would be without that New York spirit? (Which now seems to have blown over to California, or father into the Pacific). I have to say, I admire it and at least some of what it left behind.

Of course, the current reality of the non-Mansion class here is, frankly, depressing. The solid old houses peter out quickly as one departs the old downtowns. Along that straight road between Albany and Schenectady lie all the seedy stores and quasi-slum housing that characterizes the exurbia of the East Coast ROA.

In a few blocks, as we headed up out of Albany, we were riding past tatoo parlors, tax preparation franchises (why so many these days?) car dealers, and cockroachy-looking shops. (My favorite was "Sham Candy and Tobacco." Presumably the real candy and tobacco is available in better neighborhoods). Close to downtown Schenectady were a couple of motels known even in my high school days as dens of iniquity of the prostitutional variety. One was advertising, "special weekday rates", which I assume meant partial day rates. This dreary spectacle goes on for the full 15 miles that separates the two cities.

At the end of our road today, however, was a bright spot, the very oldest part of Old Schenectady, which is old by North American standards. It is the section of town known as "the Stockade," and it was first settled in 1661 by Dutch merchants. My Dad lived down here during my high school years, shortly after the Dutch were routed by the local Indians, and he and I spent many happy hours around this part of town.

Today, I took the kids to see the old house where he had his apartment and also made them march around a couple of blocks. They protested but I persisted. When I stopped to take pictures of a church, St. George's Episcopal, that I had always admired the priest saw me and invited us in. He was an Englishman, and I asked him if he had been brought over to serve here and he joked (I think), "Yes, as a penance".

The church was as beautiful inside as out. It always struck me as a bit of England in New York and course, that's what it is. When they built it in 1735 and then again in 1762, it was still English territory. Since it served as a barracks in the Revolutionary War, it's American credentials are beyond question, but since we're all friends again and we can all admire its Englishness.

If I were being honest, or at least thorough, about the local scenery I would have pictures for you of the Sham Candy store and the Executive Motor Inn. I actually thought of taking pictures, but I was worried about firing the suspicions of clerk/owners with guns under their cash registers. Also, it is the church, that I want to remember and the thing that you can't see along every main drag in the country, so here ya go.

Brush With Greatness 2

I wrote a few months ago about the handful of personal encounters I have had with famous people. I realized shortly thereafter that I had left one out! I made a mental note to come back and correct the record, so here we are. The kind of embarrassing thing is that I am not exactly sure who the famous person was. How can that be, you ask?

He was (is) part of the band Phish. I did not know a lot about Phish then, or now. I know it wasn't Trey Anastasio. His name and look are sort of hard to forget. The other guys are very regular looking in my estimation. (I do have their new album, Joy, on iTunes BTW, but its my first foray into their music). I have looked at a few pictures of the guys and I think it might have been Page McConnell. Sorry, Phish fans. Anyway, here's how it went.

It was the late '90s and I was working in a small Burlington, Vermont law firm. Late in the afternoon one day I heard from one of the partners that someone from Phish was coming into to talk with the firm's real estate expert. I am pretty sure that I was told that it was Trey, but I am sure that it wasn't, as noted. I kept my eyes on the parking lot for an expensive car.

Eventually, after stalking around the ground floor near the entrance, I saw that the Phish Man had arrived. No fancy car. He had walked up the hill from downtown in his sandals. I came down from my office for what I intended to be a bit of low key gawking. When I got to the waiting room He was waiting, just like a regular person! He was perusing a copy of Life magazine, which, as I recall, had been recently reconstituted around that time.

The cover story was about a pair of Siamese, ooops, I mean "conjoined" twins who had not been subject previously to public exposure. They were girls of about 10 at the time and Life had given them a camera of their own to document their lives. The resulting pictures weren't that great, but they were still pretty startling. The remarkable thing about them was that they were joined from the neck down, giving them the appearance of a creature with two heads.

I always thought of those girls in the years to come when I saw this creature on a TV show my kids favored as preschoolers:



The twins were basically like this, except that they were human and white and not a cartoon. (I used to wonder what they and their family thought of this particular character, and if they ever felt riled by this and other depictions of the two-headed as dim, but that's another blog post....)

Anyway, the Phish Man was smiley and friendly to the little crowd of us who had come to look at him in our waiting room. Together, we all looked at the magazine. We agreed that the twins were an amazing sight. He said, "God, it's hard enough to share an apartment with someone!" We all laughed. We all liked him, whoever he was. We wished that Phish did not have a phalanx of New York City lawyers to do all their big work.

OK. That's all I got. Well, one time I did have to leave a message for Lynda Barry, but that sounds a little desparate, doesn't it?

Hoping to hear more celebrity stories from any commenter willing to share.

Spring; Ditcher and Ditchee

A Saturday in early spring means no time here on the Vermont/Quebec border for a proper post. The snow has disappeared and revealed all the dirt and sticks and dog doo and everything else that looked a lot better covered with three feet of snow. I am heading out with a rake and a shovel so just stopping by to wave the flag.

But before I forget...

Does Middle School Ever End?

I went to a Vermont Bar meeting over the last couple of days, something I haven't done in a couple of years since I no longer have an employer-provided budget for continuing legal education. (They scared up a subsidy for this one, though I was partly on my own dime).

As a result, I saw a bunch of people (i.e., lawyers) that I hadn't seen in a long time. One, I will call her "Lawyer 1" for reasons that will become apparent, sat in the office next to mine at the big firm where we both worked for a couple of years. Working there was, for both of us, like living with a spear in your back. We left around the same time for something less pointy and I hadn't seen her since. Lawyer 1 has a certain charisma and obvious charm that made it more or less certain she would find something good, which she seemed to have done. I was excited to see her and to catch up with her after our last encounter which included bemoaning the agonies of big firm law. I said we should have lunch and she seemed enthusiastic and agreed.

So anyway, I was waiting outside the banquet room for her (OK, sort of like stalking) when I spied another lawyer I hadn't seen in years. We had worked opposite each other during my stint as a prosecutor (she was a defense attorney). We'll call her Lawyer 2, although lawyer 202 might also be appropriate given her professional circumstances. I had heard some whispering about some big personal disaster that had overtaken her, something to do with a love affair gone bad. I knew she had left the office where I had known her under some kind of cloud. Anyway, I said hello to her and asked how she was. Still unemployed she said. Getting interviews but no call backs. Taking bar exams in other state. Ouch. I didn't probe. Then Lawyer 1passed by and I said, "Bye, gotta go."

We got to the banquet room, Lawyer 1 right behind me. I sat down and saw Lawyer 1 had jagged to another table. I.e., I had been ditched.

I saw Lawyer 2 wander in, alone. She sat at a table with a buffer seat on either side of her (i.e., still alone). Well, I thought I have been both the ditcher and the ditchee here. Live by the ethos of sixth grade and die by it.

A note on today's banner: also not the view from my house but isn't that a cool old picture?