Author: fifteenkey (Page 48 of 96)

I recall back around 1984 or so predicting Madonna was a fad and she’d never last. I’m not sure of the official length of a fad, but I do believe she’s eclipsed it by, oh, 20 years or so. When I saw this new promo shot of her yesterday, I was amazed how this almost 50 year old woman now looks like a woman I dated a few years ago. Well, minus the heavy eyeliner…

Yesterday I faced and survived my annual tax burden, a full ten days before I had to. There must be something wrong with I, Procrastinator. Anyway, I fired off my digits to our friends at the IRS and the MA DOR with a painless upload courtesy of both H and R Block. Before I stroked the AMT-enhanced $1.5G spot, the scoreboard read mostly red:

After I sent millions of microscopic little digital swimmers up into the mothership, I experimented to see how I might have lightened my load. A few keywords and clicks later, I found statistics indicating people in my general tax bracket give 3.65% of their Adjusted Gross Income to charity. I think that’s bullshit for most people. (Although I do believe someone “tithes” away enough of my money for the both of us…) Just to be charitable, I entered the 3.65% number into the program and discovered I would have received hundreds of dollars in a refund had I, um, been more charitable with myself…

An IRS and Economic Policy Institute study done after the 2000 tax season estimated $353B in taxes was owed, but not paid. That’s equal to about 15% of total taxes owed, or for those of you playing at home, a substantial piece of our mounting national debt.

Regardless of politics or position on how government spends our money, there are rules and many are breaking them, resulting in a weakening of our country.

Do you cheat on your taxes?

My grandmother Lillian was at our house and she was sad and scared. The heartsong of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been silenced in a city of music at 39. There was fear in many American households that night.

Real fear. Not the FauxFear peddled on Fox with endless loops of Barack Obama’s minister. Thirty years of ministry reduced to repeated 60 second clips of angry venting sandwiched between commercials for Cialis. This week it was reported that prior to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Senator Obama, Senator Hillary Clinton, hoping to prevent it told Richardson flatly, “He cannot win, Bill. He cannot win.” Sen. Clinton figures if she can’t hang Sen. Obama with the robes of Rev. Wright, the Republicans surely will. Anyone who believes that should read this.

It’s a story of four 60’s contemporaries, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jeremiah Wright. Faced with fear, three of the men used deferments and family connections to avoid military service. One, ‘after hearing President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.’

Can you guess which one?

“the relation of language to painting is an infinite relation. It is not the words that are imperfect or that, when confronted by the visible, they prove insuperably inadequate. Neither can be reduced to the other’s terms; it is in vain to say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say. And it is in vain that we attempt to show, by the use of images, metaphors, or similes, what we are saying; the space where they achieve their splendor is not that deployed by our eyes but that defined by the sequential elements of syntax.”

“This Is Not a Pipe” – Michael Foucault
p.9 Translators Introduction

Yeah. Where to grow with this one? The book is inspired by a René Magritte painting that mixes media in French irony. I’m off work today and just back from taking my son to see one of his favorite thin…, uh, artists, Julie Andrews. We had hoped to meet her as she signed her new autobiography at Borders – Downtown Crossing, but British protocol had other plans. Still carrying the weather and navigating ourselves and a parrot-handled umbrella through a turnstile door, we heard, “all the tickets are gone for Julie Andrews.” Huh? Tickets? Sadly, we trailed the real fans who arrived at 7:00am to score free tix to meet the woman who embodied two of the most enduring characters in film. I was concerned for Kyle, but he’s so understanding. Truly, he has both song and love in his heart, and Ms. Andrews is a big reason why. Thoughts of a payoff raced through my head. A couple hundred would buy a position in queue, right? It didn’t happen, but we were able to get a spot about 8 yards of high traffic carpet from the table where pen would grace paper.

Grace doesn’t walk, it floats, balancing on its head a legacy that will never fall. On air, she glided through polite applause and took her seat as a solitary press photographer documented the moment from within an empty area of red velvet past. Amateur photography was not allowed, but many of the 400 attendees showed the Brits how rules don’t apply to us and flashed away, in spite of the gentle pleadings of the Borders staff. I stored some respect with my camera in its bag. At 72, Dame Julie Elizabeth Andrews is an enduring, now backlit beauty. Kyle was awed, but ready to leave after a few minutes. Book signing is not a compelling spectator sport.

My intention today was to blog the Ansel Adams episode on “American Experience,” but I don’t need to. Its start provides my end. It features the late photographer John Szarkowski poignantly describing the infinite relation: “He found some way to put together those little fragments of the world in a way that transformed them into a picture in the same way a poet uses the same dictionaries the rest of us do. All the words are in there. All the words in the poem are in there in alphabetical order so you can find them. And it’s just a matter of taking a few of them and putting them in the right order. That’s all there is to it. So why is it that some lines of poetry, some sentences, grasp us, grip us, and we think that’s right, that’s true! I don’t know what it means, but it’s true! A good picture does something like that.”

At Least Someone Has a Sense of Humor…

Yesterday was far away Opening Day. Today the bright sky of “Play Ball” hides behind drops of rain.

That’s it. I just needed a reason to link to 13 Fabulous Photos of a Rainy Day.

“I’ve felt the coldness of my winter
I never thought it would ever go.”
– Zep

“I misspoke.” No, you tried to pass a premeditated lie on us to bolster your claim of “experience” you say your Democratic opponent apparently lacks. In the recent tradition of soiling the office practiced by your husband and his successor, you have passed the Commander in Chief threshold for lying. Congratulations. Please run with your head down like you did in Bosnia and exit the race.

I’m left with Gary Kamiya, who writes in Salon, “Wright isn’t the problem. Stupid patriotism is the problem.”

It’s true. If not for the “patriotic” fervor whipped up post 9/11, there would not have been an Iraq war. We were lied to and used by the Bush Administration who will leave us soon with thousands dead and injured, our international image laughable, a $3T war tab and $4 gasoline.

Then there’s the sickening, racial hypocrisy spewing like raw sewage from the bowels of Sean Hannity. He rants on Rev. Wright for 9/11 comments suggesting we got hit for our imperialist tendencies, but will tirelessly defend the late Rev. Jerry Falwell who said we were attacked as punishment from god because we have gays.

How must the religious and phony patriotism bent in this campaign look to the rest of the world?

Today’s reading is from “It Ain’t No Sin to Be Glad You’re Alive” by Eric Alterman:

“The sunny new Springsteen is also evident in the album’s packaging. Gone are the blank existential stares of the Frank Stefanko photographs for Darkness and The River and the stark , depressing Robert Frank-style artwork of Nebraska.”

These messages have been coming at me lately. Last night as Kyle and I watched previews before “The Bucket List,” a scene from “Definitely, Maybe” depicted a young daughter and her dad talking:

Daughter: “I want you to be happy.”
Dad: “I’m happy.”
Daughter: “Trust me Dad. You’re not happy.”

Of course the feature film theme was, “Find the Joy in your life…”

“Break the Mold.” That’s the sage advice from my buddy Alan. Another smart guy, Albert Einstein is credited with this definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

“Can you give me some dating tips?” That was the question floated out toward me a couple weeks ago. I think the question was facetious, but I still had no idea what to say and that fact I couldn’t say what I was really thinking: “Are you kidding? With that whole brains/beauty thing you have going on, all you have to do is show up,” still irks me. I went with a very safe “Don’t settle,” followed by a short passage on how I won’t compromise time with my children for a woman, blah, blah, blah… Yeah, she basically got the kitchen-ready recipe for “How to be alone.”

Safe. At arm’s length. Still living in the darkness on the edge of town… Protected by my facade like carbonite, but fighting for air.

I guess the real advice I should give and follow is the Nike brand slogan. There’s no way around it. You’ve got to drop the bags at the curb and jump on the train because it’s moving. When the ghosts catch your eye and your old friend fear smiles wickedly, smile back and keep moving…

“I’ll teach my eyes to see beyond these walls in front of me
And someday I’ll walk out of here again
But now I’m trapped”
Trapped – written by Jimmy Cliff, performed by Bruce Springsteen

The sunny new me.

On January 20, 1961, a young President challenged the nation, “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” John F. Kennedy’s words were historic.

Nearly 50 years later, I hope we have the collective courage and wisdom to “do for our country” and elect this young man President. Only then will his words rise from heartfelt to historic.