A Kinky Weekend

I think Jerry Garcia might have had a weekend such as this in mind when he wrote, “what a long, strange trip it’s been.”

I’m in Texas, which I used to refer to as “The Cultural Demilitarized Zone” or “Below the Smith and Wesson Line.” I’ve mostly been in Austin, but did go to 100 miles of strip centers and freeways known as “Houston” for part of the day on Sunday. Austin is a great city but if you can at all avoid Houston, you’d be ahead of the game. Sorry about that one Phil.

The purpose for this trip was to help out an old friend named Reid who is running part of the campaign for Kinky Friedman for Governor. For those of you who haven’t heard of Kinky, he’s a irreverent country singer whose band was called Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. He’s friends with Willie and Waylon and the Boys and also toured with Bob Dylan so he has a little reach musically.

He’s got a few songs that are worth a listen; one is called Sold American and the other is They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore, which is a great satirical song on racism and bigotry.

Reid and I had the pleasure of having dinner with Kinky last night as he had a “big ol’ hairy steak” and it was quite a Texas adventure. He was joined by a lady friend and his longtime friend and former band mate Jeff Shelby who is determined to go by the name “Jewford.”

Reid is a bit of a musical savant and has introduced me to a number of offbeat musicians – some of them who are pretty good. Reid began the dinner by singing show tunes at Kinky’s request which lasted up until the steaks arrived. The singing was punctuated by generous belches from Kinky and Jewford. Since we were in tight quarters – a point that Kinky rarely let pass by saying if he was governor he’d get a better table – the tables near us heard the strange combination of South Pacific and bad manners. He lost about a half dozen votes to the table behind us, but probably picked up another 30 just by chatting with people who came up to meet him.

Kinky has a unique campaign style and even more unique slogans. He says he’s running for governor so he can begin the “dewussification” of Texas. He’s for gay marriage, explaining that gays should have the right to get married and “be just as miserable as the rest of us.” He says he is neither pro-life nor pro-choice but pro-football and, on the death penalty, he says, "I am not anti-death penalty, but I'm damn sure anti-the-wrong-guy-getting-executed." His two main slogans are “How Hard Could It Be?” and “Why The Hell Not?”

Will he win? My guess is it’s a long shot. But he will make the campaign much more interesting in Texas, and his down-to-earth, home-spun style is something that is sorely lacking in politics.

Forgetting the Past

I thought I could try this out on you first, just in case what I come up with is either unworthy of cheap blog space or otherwise irrelevant at least compared to other more pressing stories. I’m not sure how much of this will hold up to the discourtesies of investigative journalism but I have to get it off my chest somehow.

Thanks in large part to my subsidizing a college education at a California institution, my son became knowledgeable on the subject of Latin American history. In most circles this would draw a yawn or at least the close-out of all discussions and arguments, a “so what?” To avoid embarrassment of paying for but not receiving a proper education on any subject, I began to do my own research so I could say “so what” whenever the boy brought up one of his tidbits of historical fact on Latin America.

The more I read and listen, the more I realize how badly we Americans have behaved in the region during the past century. Iran-Contra will go down as a misguided footnote compared to the evil deeds our leaders sanctioned to rescue the poor underclass south of the border from other evil deeds perpetrated from other proxies.

Don’t misunderstand, I believe there were willing evil doers waiting to take advantage of us leaving our backdoor unlocked and unguarded, but keeping the argument based in simplistic “us versus them” terms misses the point by a wide margin. We did many of our nasty things for the sake of protecting corporate interests and regional hegemony. I’m not sure history will treat those acts as noble.

For example, there is ample evidence that CIA-sponsored assassins whacked the president of Chile and, on a roll, the leaders of Panama and Ecuador within two months of each other. When we didn’t feel killing was useful, we helped organize coup d’états in Guatemala, Peru, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador (again).

Panama’s Omar Torrijos’ crime was to sign a treaty with Jimmy Carter to take control of the Panama Canal, and Jaime Roldós of Ecuador wanted a few environmental impact studies done before Shell Oil destroyed the rain forests and displaced thousands of indigenous people without regard to their welfare. Reasonable people can agree that signing anything with Jimmy Carter can be grounds for a mini-mental exam, but murder hardly justifies the crime. And, while we’re pumping oil out of Ecuador and have a fancy military base in there, history may prove that Roldós’ desire for prudence was justified.

The last half of the 20th Century was a confusing and confounding time and I’m not so naïve as to believe there weren’t important stakes confronting U.S. policy makers as they took strong measures to keep Marxist influence out of our backyard (if only we had been half as successful at keeping Marxists our of Congress and our major media). And, even though Jesus said to love our enemies, he never said we shouldn’t have any.

There were plenty of activists working against our interests for the past 50 years. But here’s the deal, we have to look at what we gained from taking out unfriendly governments and installing, in some cases, brutal regimes. In the understated way that roosting chickens come home, I’m afraid we’re now worse off than if we had left the whole place alone decades ago.

By year’s end, there will be only two governments in all of Latin America that will be universally considered friendly to the U.S.: Colombia and El Salvador. All other countries will have tilted left with many led my devout Marxists. We will likely even see the return of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and a Mexico that may become a less-friendly neighbor than Canada, if that’s possible. The new leaders of Latin America will accomplish their leftist takeover by using ballots where they couldn’t succeed years ago with bullets. Sure, they will be helped along by money and assistance from Fidel Castro and his ugly stepchild, Hugo Chavez, along with money from narco-terrorists and other evil gangs, but they can’t force the people to vote against their will and that, for the moment, is against America.

Why this out-of-character, mild anti-American rant slipped by my censors and is important is best summed up by a minor philosopher who had one great line. George Santayana wrote in his Reason in Common Sense the immortal words, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I look at our tactics around the world and can’t help wonder if we’ve learned anything and if there isn’t, somehow, a better way.

The "Death" Of Customer Service

Be sure and cancel your credit cards before you die. This is so priceless, and so easy to see happening, customer service being what it is today. A lady died this past January, and Citibank billed her for February and March for their annual service charges on her credit card, and then added late fees and interest on the monthly charge. The balance, which had been $0.00, now is somewhere around $60.00. A family member placed a call to Citibank and this is approximately how it went:

Family Member: "I am calling to tell you that she died in January."
Bank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."
Family Member: "Maybe, you should turn it over to collections."
Bank: "Since it is two months past due, it already has been."
Family Member: So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?"
Bank: "Either report her account to the frauds division or report her to the credit bureau, maybe both!"
Family Member: "Do you think God will be mad at her?"
Bank: "Excuse me?"
Family Member: "Did you just get what I was telling you - the part about her being dead?"
Bank: "Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor."

Supervisor gets on the phone:

Family Member: "I'm calling to tell you, she died in January."
Bank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."
Family Member: "You mean you want to collect from her estate?"
Bank: (Stammer) "Are you her lawyer?"
Family Member: "No, I'm her great nephew." (Lawyer info given)
Bank: "Could you fax us a certificate of death?"
Family Member: "Sure." (fax number is given)

After they get the fax:

Bank: "Our system just isn't set-up for death. I don't know what more I can do to help."
Family Member: "Well, if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep billing her. I don't think she will care."
Bank: "Well, the late fees and charges do still apply."
Family Member: "Would you like her new billing address?"
Bank: "That might help."
Family Member: "Odessa Memorial Cemetery, Highway 129, Plot Number 69."
Bank: "Sir, that's a cemetery!"
Family Member: "What do you do with dead people on your planet?"

A Crack In The Mirror

There comes a time in everyone’s life, I suppose, that we take a long look in the mirror and don’t always like the reflection. I’ve been in a reflective state of mind for the past week or so and I decided there are some things I don’t like about myself and I would like to share them with you, my friends. In the end, there will be a short test so pay attention.

Number one, I am a dreamer who tends to tilt at windmills. Having one’s head in the clouds is better than having one’s head in the sand, but if you look at the win/loss expectancy, then burying one’s head leaves less room for disappointment. To give some kind of perspective on the levels of my dreaming, and therefore optimism, I picked the lowly Sacramento Kings to win the NBA Championship. Mind you, this wasn’t done with the head but with the heart and therein lies the problem with being a dreamer.

The mirror also tells me that I am not good at following through on things. It’s kind of weird because I am always there for others to assist in helping them reach their objectives, which just happens to include follow-through. When it comes time to take care of myself, I am a no-show. What would Freud say about that and why would I listen to him since Freud was a known coke-head? With or without the drugs, I suspect it would set off alarm signals.

The recent proof of poor follow-through is in the blog and the others things I have given up when I was really into blogging. I haven’t posted much lately, partly because I have been busy and partly due to the ruse that I was going to spend my writing energy finishing a novel I began two years ago. I had 405 pages written on the novel one year ago and I have 413 pages now; some of it jumbled and some of it not too awfully bad. This is my history: I start off with great enthusiasm and then slowly it drifts away until I lose track of what I was working on. This is true with diets, work projects, and remembering to take out the trash. I know this happens to most people but I sweat it so much I wonder why I haven’t learned to beat it.

I have a strong suspicion the mirror would tell me I tend to see people’s potential rather than who they really are. I turned this naïve attribute into a nifty phrase and call it “Mike’s New Best Friend Syndrome.” I usually get burned by this and only have a few heroes left. I suspect I will have even fewer by the end of the year, but the best part about this affliction is that I will have a gaggle of new Best Friends to disappoint me by the end of the year.

The mirror wouldn’t be completely negative and, anyway, sometimes negative traits can be taken as a positive in the right context. I like to live in right contexts so I have to say the mirror would comment that I find comfort in staying in the middle, allowing the momentum of events to dictate my decisions and that I am sentimental to a flaw as I still feel the pain of moving from Michigan 35 years ago and miss too many old friends. I would be told I am a sucker for bittersweet romantic movies, I’m kind to strangers (also to a flaw), curious without remembering what it did to the cat, and have an unusual flair for expressing myself. I’m also difficult to please and find it even more difficult to please myself; I will always be searching for the greener grass when it’s pretty green right in front of me; that I have a debilitating illness for autos and I am already trying to figure out how to tell Mrs. Laz that I want to trade my car with 6,000 miles on it for a new S430 (maybe I just did if she’s reading) or, even, perhaps this $140,000 Bentley that I swear if I get one I wouldn’t want another new car for another six months.

All of this is to say that my odd personality traits are what keep me from writing on my blog and sharing my weird thoughts with you all.

I thought for a moment to write about how odd it is that Muslims are rioting and killing people and buildings over one not too classy cartoon when we’ve had thousands of political cartoons about Catholic priests and negative stories and cartoons about celebrating Christmas and Christianity in public. And one could throw in the articles that appear daily on the evils of Zionists in the Arab press. All this attack on “our” religions without a single shot fired. How quaint. I was even thinking about cowboys and wondering what I would do if my nephew told me he wanted to play cowboy with the neighbor boy. I might say, “No!!!!!!! Not you too! Not so young!!!” Instead, I decided to tell you what’s really on my mind, or was it my heart? Who can tell?