Magic Dave

Feeling Bookish

I'm reading lots... also actually have started writing again, so I haven't been blogging as much. I am still trying to figure out my chick-lit book. I think I have an idea, so cross your fingers.

In the meantime I've discovered some new writers and also enjoyed the latest from old friends. During my trip to LA I read Kate Christensen's In the Drink, one of the books (along with The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing) that is credited with launching Chick-Lit as a supposed genre. Like Girl's Guide, it is much more "literate" than one associates with what the genre has become, but it also speaks to the conclusion that Jennifer Weiner draws-- that Chick-Lit is a false catch all for books by women. I also read Christensen's The Great Man while I was in LA. They represent book ends for the writer; both are really good in very different ways. I would have never expected the writer of In the Drink, which so totally captures the sense of waiting for life to happen that gets people through their twenties, would capture so so well the full blown adults from a bygone era in The Great Man. I just picked up Trouble, her latest offering, and like the other two that I've read thus far, it's engrossing from page one. On the other hand, I have put down The Epicure's Lament several times, without even making it through the first third.

While I was in LA-- at the Westside Pavillion Barnes & Noble, to be precise-- I also picked up two works of nonfiction. Where Did You Sleep Last Night? By Danzy Senna, who I knew when she was at Stanford and I was at Berkeley, and whose fiction debut, Caucasia, I read in practically one sitting. I haven't gotten to it, yet, but the new one looks promising. She and I both lived in Cambridge/Boston at the same time-- during the bussing era-- and I remember talking to her about similar experiences with the terror of seeing adults so angry and out of control. We also each have parents were very involved in the civil rights movement, much to the chagrin of their parents, so I figure I will find some interesting stuff in this book. Because of my personal history, I have been really excited to see that there are some interesting and funny looking memoirs out there from Gen-Xers whose parents were idealist Baby Boomers (see: When Skateboards Will Be Free and skip anything by Rebecca Walker, thanks).

The other is A Day in the Life: One Family, the Beautiful People & the End of the Sixties. For some reason I really like things set in the era in which I was born (people always say the Sixties ended with Watergate and Nixon's subsequent resignation in 1974). I like reading books about different music eras and artists, even when I'm not that intensely into the music. In this case, the central characters are linked quite closely to the Rolling Stones. I'm a Stones fan, but not a superfan (Keith Richards really pissed me off way back in the eighties by dismissing rap music as unoriginal and saying something like, it was stealing music that you didn't write. This from the man whose group made their career by stealing every single blues song and riff of Muddy Waters' that they could get their hands on... seriously?!). I like the intel and background information, but what is really of great interest is just the crazy stuff that happens; LSD-induced psychosis, Keith Richards, drug smuggling, Keith Richards, benign neglect and uh, yeah... Keith Richards.

I read A Day in the Life on the nonstop back to DC. Right before we landed, as I was reading about the main character's resescutation of his dubious rock promoting career via the 90's rave scene, the flight attendants told us about Michael Jackson's death. The book is engrossing in a prurient-interest sense (the son of the main characters plays the husband on Medium, which is actually a favorite show of mine. I didn't realize this until I was well into the book) but isn't particularly well written. If you like the era, it's a good read. If you don't, you can pass and you won't have missed anything. The writer also did a book on the Rolling Stones that is supposed to be good-- I may have to read it; supposedly he stumbled on this story through his Stones research.

So, what to read next? Re-reading The Baghavad Gita, of course, followed closely by Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching. I have been trying to seek peace lately, and also switch up my daily meditation process. I first read the Gita in college, right after doing my anthropology area studies survey on South Asia with Gerald Berreman. I think I was reading it and The Hidden Injuries of Class at the same time... we'd read excerpts from the book and I wanted to get it cover to cover. I can remember sitting on the lawn at Cloyne reading while all of the attendant noises swirled around me: someone chopping up the pavement while attempting tricks on the skateboard ramps that Boogie built before he designed the half-pipe; someone slamming shut the cover for the composting heap; planning for planting a palm tree; arguments over just how many times anyone really needed to listen to Blood Sugar Sex Magik in one afternoon. Good stuff. So... um... relaxing.

Anyway, now I'm still reading Trouble, and looking for the copy of Jeffery Euginides' Middlesex that I bought ages ago. My aunt highly recommended it, and I loved The Virgin Suicides. I just somehow never got around to it.

What are you reading this summer?

It's Complicated

I landed at Dulles airport and the crew told us about the death of Michael Jackson.  It was a sad way to cap a good trip; it made me realize that LA and MJ are kind of linked for me.

When I lived in LA the first time the story broke about the allegations of child molestation.  I remember sitting in my old-fashioned studio apartment in Los Feliz and watching the reports flash across the screen.  Because entertainment is "The Industry" in LA, anything remotely entertainment related came first, news-wise.   I was also much too poor to afford cable, and so I was watching on regular old network television.  They actually interrupted regular programming to bring the news, though, and then, when Jackson made his statement, live from Neverland Ranch, they carried the before, during and after.  I remember being simultaneously awestruck by Michael Jackson's ability to command such attention and the amazed that the local nets thought this was important enough to do away with everything else that was going on.  

I remember watching all of it, eating it up with the prurient curiosity that fuels all of our celebrity obsession here in America, and shaking my head in wonder.  It was a crazy moment.  I wasn't ever one of the girls who was crushing on Michael Jackson, or in love with him.  I did, however, love his music.  

I can remember being a kid and dancing around to "ABC".  I can remember being in New York, en route to some family gathering and "Dancing Machine"  coming on the radio, and begging whoever was at the wheel to turn it up.  I remember the Jacksons on Soul Train, singing "Dancing Machine", as well-- Michael does the robot at the bridge and lights up the stage.  I remember moving to DC and my aunt's then brother-in-law brought "Off the Wall" to our house.  I remember hearing "Workin' Day & Night" and "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" and thinking, why would anyone listen to "Rock With You" or do "The Rock", which was The Dance of the moment, when they could dance to the soul-searing, infectiously uptempo "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough"?!  I was eight at the time, and really big on Soul Train. I would dance around the brick-floored back room of our house on Capitol Hill, screaming, "OOOOOOHHH!" at the top of my lungs.  

I remember looking at the cover of the album and thinking, "something's a little off about his face."  And my mother explained to me that he'd had his nose done.  I remember being perplexed, and wondering why on earth he would do something that was so obviously not natural to his face.  I also remember thinking that his "before" nose looked an awful lot like mine.  

Cut to sixth grade-- Thriller!  I remember when it came out, and I remember seeing the video for Billy Jean on one of our local video shows (yeah, DC didn't get cable in the inner city til my senior year of high school).  I liked it, to say the least.  But I also remember thinking wow, that's a helluva jheri curl you're rocking, Mike.  And that the nose job was even more pronounced.  I got my copy, just like all my peers, played the songs endlessly like all my peers, loved, loved, loved the album.  I used to love PYT;  Human Nature remains an all time fave.  I had the poster of  Michael in yellow and white, looking fairly normal. I didn't like any of the others that my friends had-- he just always looked too something for me.  

The jheri curl, the makeup, the clothing which I found odd.  I didn't like iconic glove that everyone else loved; I didn't get the super short pants.  But I did get the dancing ability and sheer showmanship of Michael Jackson.  My mother and I watched the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today and Forever special, mostly because she was eager to reminisce and groove to the music of her generation.  We both watched, open-mouthed, as Michael moonwalked into history.  And because I'd managed to rig the betamax to tape it, I watched it again, and again, and again.  

So many of the pieces written about him in the past week have quickly veered into the negative-- what about the molestation charges?  His penchant for plastic surgery?  His family?  The kids?  The marriages?  Next we were goaded into an official "black" response.  Next... this business about Michael Jackson transcending race, gender, sexuality.

I get that the last is meant as a compliment and I have really struggled, over the entirety of his very long public life -- I mean his career is older than I am-- with the changes and the oddness and the WTF?! element.  But I would also argue that rather than transcending, Michael was defining:  showmanship, entertainment, sheer amazing-ness.  It was very, very clear to me that he was locked into some kind of crazy view of himself, one that drove him to rip apart the beautiful face that he was born with and reinvent it into the oddity that looked like a Guy Fawkes mask in a funhouse.  But even with that... that definition of entertainment was always, always there.  Even when he was looking a little wacky and out of it (um, the VMA's where he thought they were giving him Entertainer of the Millenium or something, springs to mind), you still wanted to hear him let out an "oooooh!" and pop a few moves out.  

During my second stint in LA, the second set of allegations surfaced, and MJ went to trial.  I remember watching him trundling to court in pajamas; the day he broke out in dance on top of a car; the fans who faithfully crowded the courthouse.  I remember reading the Vanity Fair pieces about the trial and all of the Los Angeles news coverage, which seemed endless.  It was a madhouse.  It seemed like the music stopped, then.  I know he released more albums after Bad, but I think that was the last one I bought without reservation.  It was the last one I listened to with expectation.  I told myself it was because I was always really a Prince fan... but it was also the freakshow element.

It's complicated-- not for nuthin' did Gen-Xers practically invent this relationship status.  I love the music, the dance, the show, the definition of Ultimate Pop Star.  Unlike the pretenders to the throne *cough* Bobby Brown *cough*; I would never dispute MJ as King of Pop. There's no crossover. Michael made a market:  kids who would grow up to buy his stuff again and again; he brought a whole new audience (from around the world) to MTV again and again; he defined success by selling 25 million copies of Thriller.  But it's complicated because I do feel bad that that beautiful little brown sugar baby who could dance like James Brown at the age of five and had a smile that lit up a room never saw how his face the same way we did.  The teenager who really never seemed all that awkward and gawky, thanks to his fluid dance moves, didn't look in the mirror and find anything to love.  The grown up who literally caused women and men to cry and throw themselves at his feet never embraced himself as he was... 

I almost forgot about this-- the movie, Three Kings, says a lot of what I think about evolution of Michael Jackson.  Remember the torture scene?  The guy is torturing Mark Wahlberg and says, "say my man-- what did you do to Michael Jackson?!"  and proceeds to equate evil of America with the demise of Michael Jackson's nose and skin color.  I remember watching that scene with the same shock and awe as I did Michael's maiden moonwalk.  It perfectly encapsulated a lot of what I have felt as a minority growing up in a country where the dominant culture says that thin, blonde, blue-eyed and pert of nose are the only ways to be.  I used to not so jokingly add to the chorus of "Black or White"-- "if you wanna be my baby it don't matter if you're black or white... as long as you're white!"  As creepy as his face became, as sad as his life seemed to be at points, I could sympathize. I'm a civilian, with no desire to be a bajillion selling artist.  I know what it feels like to look in the mirror and think that you don't look like "the ideal".  I always found it sad, though, that he could be a bajillion selling artist, revered as the greatest... and still not love himself.  

I respect his legacy, and I have thoroughly enjoyed reliving all of the moments that wowed us all.  But I also feel so sad for him, and hope that he's genuinely resting in peace.  

Adventures on Pico

I am in LA for a week for both business and pleasure, and was feeling a real need to soak up LA while I am here. Although most people want to get out of the car and walk around, see sights and take pictures in the fresh air, I moreso felt like I wanted to revisit the main activity of my past LA life: driving.

I took off for a bookstore, searching for a place to re-up after completing the two novels I brought with me (more on that later, but for point of information they are In the Drink and The Great Man, both by Kate Christensen). I Yelped for a book store after unsuccessfully searching the new hipster downtown of Culver City (who knew Mid-Century Modern could look so great?!), and was lead to a Barnes & Noble on Pico. The program neglected to include that it was inside the Westside Pavilion, which was actually nice to revisit, as well. After finding two nonfiction selections that look nowhere near as light as I was planning on buying (including a memoir by Danzy Senna, who I met through Damien when I was at Cal; looks like an interesting book). I also noted that there was a movie theater on sight. So upstairs I went, in search of a screening of The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock.

The Landmark Cinema at Westside Pavilion is marvelous in the way that only things in LA can claim to be. It’s sleek and clean and spacious and has a lighting scheme. The kiosk where you can purchase your ticket not only tells you the theater number and showtimes, it also tells you what percentage of the auditorium is sold and lets you pick whatever seat you’d like to sit in. It’s a movie goer’s dream in a way that only a movie maker could imagine it. I was really nervous when, halfway through the flick, I dropped my M & M’s wrapper on the floor. I quickly scooped it up and put it in my half empty popcorn bad for later disposal.

The movie was a lot funnier than I thought it would be; I genuinely enjoyed it. Afterwards I found myself on the same familiar drag of Pico that I used to drive all the time, when heading home from Santa Monica. I was pulled eastward by the road, sort of anxious to recreate that same sense of driving around that I used to have when I lived here.

Everyone who has a car knows about the lure of the road; the sense is much amplified in the west, I think-- you know you could just take off, in your car, at any time, with very little to encumber you. Although I was quite solitary most of the time that I lived in LA, I also remember feeling a tremendous sense of freedom. Most of it came when I was behind the wheel; it was that sense of taking off, that sense of control, that sense of invention. Despite my solitary existence, or maybe because of it, and maybe also because of the consistent oddity of my work life, I felt very much alive during the years that I lived here. I remember a constant sense of expectation, and feeling like things were just around the corner, and they were things that I didn’t dread in the least.

I worked my way up Pico and saw so many familiar and comforting things: the glatt Kosher delis and food stores, the Roxbury Inn, the odd chockablock houses mixed with small Spanish/Mediterranean casitas mixed with “French Normandy” apartment buildings ( since when is Normandy not French?). Jack In the Box (great drunk/late night party/hangover food-- 2 tacos for a dollar with the tart, tangy not so hot hot sauce, or a burger deluxe for a $1.50 with barbecue sauce and bacon on it; also drive through egg rolls and root beer floats), Vons (which for an entire semester I thought was Vaughn’s) and Sav-on (which I still call “Sav-on’s” and thought was “Say Vaughn’s” when I kept hearing it from SoCal friends). I cut over to Olympic after a pit stop at Jack in the Box; love the wider boulevard an amble of traffic. I went up, back up to my old hood, and then cut back down to 3rd Street, just to see and remember.

The house with all the little statues of David is missing its statuary. I wonder if the owner was finally successfully entreated by neighbors to take them down or if he sold the house. The Ralph’s where I shopped a lot is at the intersection of 3rd & La Brea. I remember trolling around in there for good stuff, and watching the Orthodox Jewish husbands who were grocery shopping with two carts each, filling them to the brim. I remember wanting to follow them home, just to see what size household consumed that much food.

Further down 3rd; past the Beverly Center, and the kitschy stores before it; left on Robertson, right on Wilshire into Beverly Hills. Past Saks, Barneys & Rodeo Drive. Left again, jogging over back to Olympic. Curving around up and down and through Century City. Down to Sepulveda, where I cut over and keep going some more till Washington Place, back in Culver City.

To me LA is always hopeful. The neighborhoods that are crusty and old, the ones that are neglected; they still contain a hopeful element to me. The palm trees and the sunshine and the manicured lawn, even if the grass isn’t that green, still looks tony to me. Those boxy buildings with their dull grey or yellow coat of paint on stucco, they seem to say, “you could live here and still enjoy the sunshine” to me. I thought that I didn’t really miss LA too much, but I guess that’s not so true.

Elie Wiesel

President Obama visited Buchenwald with Angela Merkel and Elie Wiesel. Read Wiesel's words:

As I came here today it was actually a way of coming and visit my father's grave -- but he had no grave. His grave is somewhere in the sky. This has become in those years the largest cemetery of the Jewish people.

The day he died was one of the darkest in my life. He became sick, weak, and I was there. I was there when he suffered. I was there when he asked for help, for water. I was there to receive his last words. But I was not there when he called for me, although we were in the same block; he on the upper bed and I on the lower bed. He called my name, and I was too afraid to move. All of us were. And then he died. I was there, but I was not there.

And I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him of the world that has become mine. I speak to him of times in which memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will -- in America, where I live, or in Europe or in Germany, where you, Chancellor Merkel, are a leader with great courage and moral aspirations.

What can I tell him that the world has learned? I am not so sure. Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you because you, with your moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this world into a better place, where people will stop waging war -- every war is absurd and meaningless; where people will stop hating one another; where people will hate the otherness of the other rather than respect it.

But the world hasn't learned. When I was liberated in 1945, April 11, by the American army, somehow many of us were convinced that at least one lesson will have been learned -- that never again will there be war; that hatred is not an option, that racism is stupid; and the will to conquer other people's minds or territories or aspirations, that will is meaningless.

I was so hopeful. Paradoxically, I was so hopeful then. Many of us were, although we had the right to give up on humanity, to give up on culture, to give up on education, to give up on the possibility of living one's life with dignity in a world that has no place for dignity.

We rejected that possibility and we said, no, we must continue believing in a future, because the world has learned. But again, the world hasn't. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.

Will the world ever learn? I think that is why Buchenwald is so important -- as important, of course, but differently as Auschwitz. It's important because here the large -- the big camp was a kind of international community. People came there from all horizons -- political, economic, culture. The first globalization essay, experiment, were made in Buchenwald. And all that was meant to diminish the humanity of human beings.

You spoke of humanity, Mr. President. Though unto us, in those times, it was human to be inhuman. And now the world has learned, I hope. And of course this hope includes so many of what now would be your vision for the future, Mr. President. A sense of security for Israel, a sense of security for its neighbors, to bring peace in that place. The time must come. It's enough -- enough to go to cemeteries, enough to weep for oceans. It's enough. There must come a moment -- a moment of bringing people together.

And therefore we say anyone who comes here should go back with that resolution. Memory must bring people together rather than set them apart. Memories here not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the contrary, a sense of solidarity that all those who need us. What else can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere who say the 21st century is a century of new beginnings, filled with promise and infinite hope, and at times profound gratitude to all those who believe in our task, which is to improve the human condition.

A great man, Camus, wrote at the end of his marvelous novel, The Plague: "After all," he said, "after the tragedy, never the rest...there is more in the human being to celebrate than to denigrate." Even that can be found as truth -- painful as it is -- in Buchenwald.

Thank you, Mr. President, for allowing me to come back to my father's grave, which is still in my heart.

It does make me ask, again, will we ever learn the greatest lesson that violence and hatred have to teach us-- that they solve absolutely nothing? When will we ever learn peace?

Apropos of Nothing

It's finally really hot. DC in summertime hot. So I will be:

• Rounding up more books that I love.
• Going on vacation (watch out LA!).
• Getting a tan.
• And continuing to wear my hair really short.

Thanks for your continued interest.

Memorial Day

These are shots of the Buffalo Soldiers, who are a black contingent of the Rolling Thunder memorial.  They came down U Street to buzz the Black Civil War Memorial.  It was a pretty cool display.  I was more than a little choked up, thinking about the generations of my family that served this country.  I was particularly thinking about the generation that fought to be sent to war-- my great-grandfather wanted to go to World War I because he and his peers felt that their service would prove them worthy of "regular" citizenship.  Sent to the front lines, where they weren't trusted with guns, really-- just retrieving bodies and loading dangerous artillery, they proved their mettle with their bloodshed.  The French loved them for it, and erected a statue to them.  They were shunned when they came home-- not allowed to march in the victory parade and sometimes lynched in their uniforms.  My mother remarked on Sunday that they would be swollen with pride at Barack Obama.  I think they are really, really glad that their progeny is "true to our native land."