Here and There

California’s state Democratic Party is meeting in Sacramento today to resolve the issue of who will represent the party in this fall’s gubernatorial election. The party is hoping to unseat Arnold Schwarzenegger. Current polls show Steve Westly out in front of Phil Angelides, though 45 percent of voters are still undecided.

But for local press, the bigger story was the address given by a person everyone seems to agree is the “rising star” of California Democratic politics: my mayor, Gavin Newsom.

This article in SF Gate speculates about Newsom’s run for governor in 2010, with the possibility that this decade’s JFK may have a challenge in LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who, according to the San Francisco Chronicle (who wrote the article), should be able to shore up a larger constituency statewide than the possibly controversial Newsom.

My thinking is that Newsom should skip the governor’s office, and shoot for the U.S. Senate. I wish he was a more established politician this year, and would field as a viable opponent to our senior senator, Diane Feinstein, whom I just do not like.

To me, the Senate is the perfect place for Newsom: the bridge between state and national politics, where you’re elected locally (if by local, we mean state) but legislate (and yes, I think he would make a good legislator with his impressive command of facts) nationally.

True, he would have to wait for that seat (Barbara Boxer is doing an excellent job as junior senator) until 2012. But chances are that the then 79-year-old Feinstein will hang her hat six years from now. And who knows—she might have the balls to back Newsom.

He should hang onto running the city, as he’s up for reelection in 2007. When his term expires in 2011, he will have the comfort of leaving office and immediately beginning the run for national office.

Granted, I didn’t vote for Newsom for mayor back in 2003. I was, admittedly, a die-hard Matt Gonzalez supporter. But like many people who pulled for the Green Party candidate, I’m pleased with the job Newsom has done. From gay marriage to supporting the striking hotel workers to fast-tracking citywide wi-fi, he’s shown savvy time and again, and almost always for the good of the whole city, not just the business elite cronies of Newsom’s predecessor, Willie Brown.

So, I’ll start beating the drum for “Newsom for U.S. Senate 2012″ today. You heard it here first.

Went to Café Du Nord last night to see Quasi. I approached the band with low expections (which were later born out), but more tellingly, I waved aside the possibility of either of the opening acts being worth listening to.

Regardless, a friend and I arrived early enough to hear the entire set of the first band, Bedroom Walls. A few songs into it, we realized it actually sounded quite good, and was coming into the back room of the club at a considerate and wholly reasonable volume.

We got up and went into the main music room. There we witnessed this septet crone their sweet “romanticore” melodies, much in the way water flows over smooth rocks in a steady stream. Sorry, the band inspired poetic thoughts.

Anyway, check them out if you get the chance. A few tracks are available on their website, and there’s a place to purchase some music. The band even has one album for sale on iTunes.

Read this and look back into your browser’s address field. I swear, Safari and Firefox are acting up, rendering this obviously farcical story as coming from the Times. I mean, shouldn’t it say http://www.theonion.com or some such mock news site? Can this be a real story?

That brings up something else. I think it’s time to scrap the notion of objective journalism. Stories like this are a perfect example of how some of the shit going down is begging to be ridiculed. The lack of such by outlets like the Times betrays the anachronistic nature of the newspaper industry.

My friend Lisa at Good on Paper appears on a podcast over at Design•Sponge.

Listen here.

The other day, a friend and I challenged each other to memorize the U.S. presidents. It had been since both of us were about 12 or 13 (which I suppose makes it technically a matter of recall, not memory-building), and the first round of the challenge simply involved listing and party affiliation.

I’m happy to report that, four days into the game, I’ve got it down. Unfortunately, I cannot think of a way to accurately convey a representation of my newfound (refound) ability. But if you notice a lanky individual walking around SOMA in San Francisco mumbling “Tyler, Whig…Polk, Democrat…” that would be me. Most likely.

Someone told me of this awhile back, but it bears repeating: type “worst president ever” into Google and note the top result.

Less jovially, fourth on the list as of this writing is a well thought-out article in Rolling Stone by Princeton Professor Sean Wilentz. It lays out the rational, acedemic argument that Bush at least shares chambers with the worst presidents in the history of the United States of America. Read this article.

While I’m on the topic of The Onion, I thought I should shine the light on a story about Russ Feingold (did I mention I like Russ?) from a few years back.

I’ve been off work for a little over a week now. This was partly by choice, and part by necessity.

I took a break in my freelancing schedule to sneak down to Texas to meet my nephew, see my family and old friends, and get some amazing barbeque. It was a great trip.

I got back to SF last Monday night, and, well, haven’t been doing much of anything since.

Then a good friend alerted me to a story she had seen in The Onion recently. It was about a guy who took the week off, but, amazingly, didn’t accomplish much:

“This was the week all the shit I’d been putting off for years–big and small–was going to get done.”

I strangely relate.

Things I was able to accomplish:

* I started reading a couple of books: Adventures on the Wine Route, by Kermit Lynch, and now Bacchus & Me, by Jay McInerney. Oh, and been drinking a lot of wine, both in and out of conjunction with reading these books.

* I cashed in about six months of coins at Coinstar. Grand total? $11.17.

* Finally got around to seeing The Crying Game. Eh. Besides being dated, I found it cheesy and not too compelling. Love fellow Texan Forest Whitacker though.

* Went to a blind wine tasting at the house of some good friends. That was a first, and perhaps what spurred the reading spell mentioned above.

* Read an amazing story by Anthony Lane in the “Journeys” issue of The New Yorker. It’s about the new crop of European discount airlines. Hilarious and informative, a lot like its author.

* Played music with a friend. It had been awhile, but was a lot of fun.

Did a fair amount of assorted other reading, seeing friends, and generally fucking off.

What a break it’s been. And I’m actually happy to go back to work tomorrow, drunk and/or hungover on this break.

UPDATE:
Thanks to evicious for tipping me off to a video Spike Jonze did for Gore back in 2000. Here it is, all 13:12 of it.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. The groundswell of “Al Gore for President” has begun, at least for me.

Last week, I watched the trailer for An Inconvenient Truth, a new movie about global warming. (In my opinion, no well-made movie, book, or essay can come too late on this topic.). The film’s narrator is Al Gore, whose (in)famous line, “I used to be the next president of the United States” is uttered right there in the trailer.

Joel Achenbach at The Washington Post speculates on Gore’s posturing himself for another go at the top job. Achenbach’s analysis is less than convincing, but it got me (re-)thinking the possibility of someone with nothing to lose or proove taking over the reins of the good, broken ship. The Post blog links out to a review of the film by David Remnick (editor at The New Yorker). Remnick, always eloquent, muses on the alternate reality of a Gore presidency having transpired over the last six years, and even suggests the bright future of two more years of such.

I’ve always thought of the run-up to national elections as more or less synonymous with sports talk. So much hot air is blown by blowhards showing their political teeth, their bravado and machismo running amok just so one of them can say he or she was right. Big deal.

I’d rather sit back, make a little noise for the candidate of my choice, and just see what happens.

Came across this nugget this morning. Will someone please explain how a filmmaker (Gurinder Chadha) can drift from decency (Bend It Like Beckham) to a project with little or no worth (the cinematic version of the ’80s evening soap Dallas)? Maybe it’s because the show about J.R. Ewing hits close to home (grew up 30 minutes away, watched the show religiously), but really. My generation just doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

And to top it all off, the washed-up John Travolta will play J.R. and JLo will be Sue Ellen. Actually, that’s fitting. One was in his early 20s and from…New Jersey? The other…well. She was born (surprise) and around 10 or 11 when J.R. took it like a man. I guess the best thing I can say about her playing the wife of the toughest, most ass-kicking character ever to grace the primetime airwaves is…”no comment.”

This American Life has finally ditched Real Player as their format for free downloading of the program.

I clicked the MP3 icon and an .m3u file downloaded to my desktop, which iTunes, my default audio player, promptly began to run.

I’m really, really happy about this, though you still cannot legally put the file on your iPod, at least not that I know of.

A couple of years ago, while I was still in journalism school, I met a student through a group project who came up with an idea, in print magazine format, for a forum in which Bay Area residents could share stories of life on SF’s public transportation. (For those of you not in the Bay Area, or not familiar, buses and trains in San Francisco are refered to, simply, as Muni.)

We kept in touch, and over the years, that idea evolved into a website, Muni Diaries.

A few months ago, we started working with a developer friend of hers, and are now making real progress toward launching the site. We have a little more UI development left, plus content generation and site design. No estimates of when we launch yet, but soon.

If you ride Muni, or know someone who does, and you have stories, please send them in. It can be about anything you feel is remarkable, just as long as it happened on or has to do with public transportation in San Francisco.

Reading George Packer’s article on the situation in Tal Afar, Iraq, in the April 10, 2006 issue of The New Yorker.

The article mostly discusses the success U.S. and coalition forces have had in that city (especially contrasted with slash-and-burn failures in places like Fallujah). The article doesn’t ignore difficulties in the ever-changing situation in Tal Afar, or Iraq as a whole. But Packer’s assessment is fair. The article discusses the plan of one officer (Colonel H. R. McMaster) to actually take the time to try and understand the psychology of the enemy, to understand why Iraqis fight Iraqis.

But what I wish to comment on here is a passage toward the middle of the article. Packer describes a conversation he had with a mustachioed Iraqi colonel respected by the Americans. The Iraqi officer, Colonel Majid Abdul-Latif Hatem, is asked if civil war is preventable. He responds:

“At any moment, there will be war between the two sects [Sunni and Shiite],” he said. “I want to tell you the truth.” He repeated the word in English. “Right now, you are observing the men of the Iraqi Army, and seeing what’s on the outside. But I know the interior of them. My men are not coming here for nationalist beliefs, for one Iraq. They are here because they need work. So don’t be surprised if they stand and watch killing between the people here.”

The passage reminds me of the fact that a “nation” called Iraq is entirely a Western construct. The formerly imperial British were given most of the area after World War I, and despite granting a modicum of independence in 1932, the Brits retook the region at the outset of World War II, concerned about Iraq’s Nazi leanings.

Following the war, a British occupation began, and lasted until a military coup in the late 1950s. Then a series of what I’m calling irrelevant coups brought the Ba’ath party and Saddam Hussein to power in 1968. If you don’t know the basic history from that point on, I feel sorry for you. Read more here.

The point I want to make is not necessarily that it takes a native iron fist to hold these disparate groups together. My thoughts are that maybe dividing the country up isn’t such a bad idea. Odd, you may say, given my opposition to the plan to carve the Omaha school district up into racially-identified sections. But Iraq is different.

Iraq doesn’t have a Brown v. Board of Education. They don’t have a preamble or a Bill of Rights. They didn’t have a Civil Rights movement, or Women’s Suffrage, or, god forbid, hippies.

The closest analogy would be that Iraq has had civil war. I sometimes think the U.S. was wrong to fight our Civil War. So many people died, and for what? To force people to change their racist ways, only to have them carry their program on in a new fashion. It must’ve all boiled down to economics, the need to keep the South in the union because of its agriculture. Sound familiar?

The West (and increasingly, China and India) need a unified and reasonable Iraq because of its oil. I’m not saying the war is all about oil. I’m saying it’s about the misguided idea that you can force people like the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds to live together peacefully, so that you can then get the oil you need. It’s a foolish idea, borne out in the past 80 or so years of bloodshed.

The passage from Colonel Majid reminded me of the difficulties any army faces in trying to force these age-old rivals to make peace, hold hands, and sing Zippidy Do-Da.

My favorite desiger (not the soon-to-be minority party) featured in Daily Candy today.

How did we all miss this lunacy???

Omaha, Nebraska’s school district will be divided into three racially distinct districts??? And one of the bill’s biggest supporters is the state’s only African-American state senator?????? And it was his amendment to the bill that established the “race camps,” one for black students, one for Hispanic children, and one for whites?????????

I’m so close to giving up. Someone tell me how in the hell this can happen in 2006. Please.

Back from Texas now. Enjoying that rare spectacle of late: California sunshine.

I’ve had time to reflect on the admittedly breathtaking admission of my last post, in which I claimed to have cooled off from my aversion to kids and babies.

It’s true that I was happy to meet my nephew. It’s true that I found him cute, and that he and I shared a “moment,” laughing at each other.

But a few days later, I was hit hard with the overwhleming dread invovled in raising the damn things. I started to see what my brother and his wife go through day-to-day, how they are more or less prisoners in their own home, how consumed they are with every little aspect of their son’s existance.

And I realized, or perhaps I should say, was vindicated on the fact that I’m pretty sure I will not have children. I’m just not at that point where the desire to have one outweighs all the sacrifices and hard work involved.

Yes, I would be the first to admit the selfishness inherent in such a declaration. But there’s also a line of thought that suggests it’s ultimately a selfless act. I don’t believe in bullshit, and I try to have my BS detector on at all times. This philosophy does reek a little, like it could be horse shit. But it also makes sense.

Those individuals (like me) for whom the mere thought of conceiving and having children is more or less repulsive are perhaps doing what could’ve accidentally been their children a favor. Perhaps their revulsion stems from the fact that they might not make the best parents, so by not actually becoming parents, they are doing the kid they’re not having (and the world?) a favor.

Okay, my mind hurts a little now.

In conclusion, I love my nephew just as I love the rest of my family. He is family, after all. But I come back to the childless Bay Area more certain than ever of my position. You can all breathe a little easier now.