Baby It's You (part 2)

(The second part of my latest piece for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung)

Lady Gaga and company exhibit a particularly American perspective: each of them assures their listeners that they are all superstars, gangstas, or in Perry’s case, explosions. Many Americans go through life certain that one day, they will be rich, or famous, or both. For us, being “okay” means being “super.” Normal, unremarkable self-esteem is-- like leaving Afghanistan-- not an option. Put another way, American self-worth is worth more.

Speaking of money, might it be that all of these pop odes to empowerment have something to do with the fact that the US economy is in the toilet, and Americans are feeling, well, a little weak? In desperate times, pop culture often morphs into something more escapist or consoling—think about The Wizard of Oz (1939), or Star Wars (1977). As if in response to the mere suggestion that the dollar is down, Pink’s “Raise Your Glass” practically pole-vaults out of radios, televisions and computer screens, and roars, “We will never be, never be, anything but loud.” To underscore the idea that the USA is back and better than ever, the video clip for the song features images of both Uncle Sam and Rosie the Riveter, the WWII American factory heroine. At times, “Raise Your Glass” seems to be addressed to some sort of outcast “you,” a rebellious, marginalized “nitty, gritty, dirty little freak,” but then Pink, like Ke$ha, switches to the royal “we.” So this, at last, is what truly underlies empowerment pop: Narcissus.

Last April, Dr. Nathan DeWall, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky, published the results of a computer analysis of pop music lyrics from 1980 to 2007 which claims to show that the narcissism (and anger) of the form has significantly increased in the last thirty years. Two of the study’s co-authors had already beat him to the punch by publishing the 2009 book, The Narcissism Epidemic. Is it foolhardy to draw generational conclusions from a study of the wit and wisdom of Beyonce, Eminem and the Pussycat Dolls? Yes. Yes, it is. But do take a look at Pink’s video for her second (!) recent empowerment anthem, “Fucking Perfect.” In the last scene, a once-troubled woman tucks her younger self into bed, and gives her a tender kiss on the forehead. The singer intends this to be a song to oneself, a kind of message from the future, when everything will be Okay, Pink pretty, pretty promises.

In one of the few essays to explore why Pink et. al. seem to be hitting the same note, Pitchfork pop critic Tom Ewing made a surprising connection to the recent rise of social media. While search engines like Google can make you feel overwhelmed and lost in a universe of information, Facebook and Twitter make you feel special, unique, even Important. These days, he writes, “We are all born superstars: permanently consulted, endlessly special, but perpetually vanishing into the datamass too.”

This is not a particularly American quandary, but imagine what must run through a poor little pop singer’s head these days when she sits down to write, or in Ke$ha’s case, to text her next song. “How can I please my audience, please myself, and continue to make tons of money?” Which brings us back to that US flag dress she wears in the video for “We R Who We R.” As my Austrian wife is fond of reminding me, Americans are some of the only people in the world who signal their national identity with the word “we.” We Americans do love a good flag dress. In fact, it may be that for us, the only thing more empowering than empowerment is patriotism.

This year, the insightful US journalist and computer programmer Paul Ford published an essay entitled The Web Is a Customer Service Medium. Empowerment pop may only be a sign that popular music is no longer a medium of guitars, slick production and catchy lyrics, but instead, simply a matter of customer satisfaction.

By the way, thank you for your attention. You’ve all been absolutely perfect readers.

Baby, It’s You

(I'm posting the first half of my latest assemblage of potshots and half-baked notions for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. As a subject, especially for US readers who have had to suffer through many, many playbacks of Katy Perry's "Firework," it may seem late. But they say that the best place to watch a parade is from the front and from the rear.)

The American pop star Ke$ha has been called many things, but “smart” is not one of them. Nevertheless, one of her recent videos features a revealing scene, wherein the singer, a fabulous disaster of glittery rags and mis-applied mascara, stops dancing long enough to change into a flimsy US flag “dress.” She then bleats the title lyric to “We R Who We R,” and … jumps off a tall building. It may be the most idiotic fusion of self-affirmation and self-destruction in a music video, ever. Or it may be something else.

Upon first listen, Ke$ha’s song appears to be a hymn to unashamed individuality, to the joy of being young, dumb and quite pleased with yourself. Despite her use of the first person plural, “We R Who We R” is just one in a remarkable string of recent US hit singles which all seem to say to the listener, “You are a beautiful, perfect superstar, everyday, in every way.” From Pink’s “Raise Your Glass” to Lady Gaga’s “Born this Way,” US artists have been injecting so much empowerment into the airwaves, it’s a wonder the whole planet isn’t hugging each other. This isn’t entirely unprecedented—who could forget Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All?”--but why is American pop music so decidedly encouraging at this moment in time?

For an answer, we should start with the songs and the singers themselves. And I have to admit that, although I like the way she looks in a cupcake bikini, Katy Perry’s “Firework” is easily the most annoying song in this wave of feel-good schmaltz. Her stut-ut-uttering delivery of the lyric, which builds to a bellow as the synthetic strings soar into the Fourth-of-July sky, is slightly more pleasant than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Ms. Perry has explained the song by saying that, “Everybody can be a firework, it’s just all about you igniting the spark inside of you.” Fine. Why does this sound so much like a cheerleader stooping to reassure all of the unpopular kids that they can, one day, be just like her?

“Firework” is fascinating musically, too, if only because it’s so difficult to discern exactly what is making the sounds we’re hearing—was there an actual guitar, piano or snare drum involved in the production? This is both typical and ironic: almost all of these pop songs about being yourself are—texturally—quite synthetic. The message is, ‘You are a unique human.’ The medium is uniquely inhuman.

Within the micro-genre of empowerment pop, as she does elsewhere, Lady Gaga tries to top everyone. “Born This Way” not only plagiarizes Madonna, it super-sizes her. The song isn’t just unapologetically disco, it’s indestructible-motivational-gay-pride-rainbow super-disco. It could be interpreted as a response to a recent wave of tragic suicides by gay Americans. But although it instructs the listener to “love yourself,” Ms. Gaga has never sounded more like someone else. Which doesn’t mean “Born This Way” isn’t a great song.

Okay I’ve Become That Parent

(Last Thursday, before Anette came home from the hospital, Adinah and V. got into another World War 4. After I waded in and disarmed the insurgents, we sat at the breakfast table and I brokered a treaty. I asked the two of ‘em, “What rules can we have in this house to make things better?” Then I wrote down what they said, and made them both sign it. I signed the damn thing as well. V. decorated the rules with little stickers of panda bears and surfing lizards. Adinah translated the document into German, then made a big sign that reads “Unser Regeln (Our Rules).” We taped the entire declaration up on the refrigerator door. Here are our Rules.)

1) We can be more quiet when Mom is asleep.

2) We can ask Mom what she wants (to do, to eat, etc.)

3) We can clean our room when Mom or Papa asks us to.

4) We will not be screaming at Mom (or Papa) (at bedtime or any other time.)

5) We can disagree, but we can solve our problems by talking about them.

6) We need to be gentle with each other.

7) We will listen to each other better.

Another Exotic Saturday

I dropped by Prosi, Vienna's best international grocery, to buy some taco shells and refried beans on Saturday. The street outside had been blocked off and a stage set up for the Prosi Strassenfest Exotic Festival. I scanned the stands selling food from Zambia and Ecuador, coffee and tea from Ethiopia, and cookies from, um, Poland. I had formed my plan for the day.

I took the subway home, picked the kids up, and got back there as fast as I could.

Just as we arrived, a tiny Indian dancer swept onstage, twirling around in a classical style mixed with a few Bollywood moves and yoga poses. "Watch her hands," I said as I squatted next to Adinah and V. She spun and fluttered them like she was letting loose magic birds.

In short order, we saw a demonstration of a homegrown fusion of African and Shri Lankan dance, then a Viennese Samba troupe, and then a batch of belly dancers with huge, Theda Bara-style capes. V. loved all this boogie. Soon she was swiveling her hips, grabbing her crotch, and giving the world her best Johnny Rotten sneer. This is how V. rocks out. One day, she will be onstage with Justin Timberlake or Lady Gaga, whichever lasts longer.

For about the fortieth time, I asked the girls if they were hungry yet. Adinah gave me a barely enthusiastic, 'Yeah,' and we were off! I steered the posse to the nearest stall, which turned out to be Tanzanian. Adinah is usually a pasta-bread-rice gal, but she surprised me by asking for a spicy beef turnover. I snapped up a roasted chicken drumstick. V. just wanted the sweet vanilla fritters. Uh uh, real food first, I insisted.

We spun over to the Indian booth, and Adinah got her (curried) rice with chapati, which V. also nibbled. I got the spicy chicken and lemon pickles. Ouch. Then V. got those fritters at last.

Then it was henna tattoo time. At that stand, the girl in the sari, who looked like a member of the Upper Austria caste, explained that if she put a design on the girls' hands, they'd have to keep their hands still for two hours. HA HA HA! Also, she only had a dark brown henna, which didn't look like it would be visible on Adinah's chocolate skin. We did it anyway. And just as Ms. Sari finished up with them, it started raining.

We were afraid the rain would wash off the dye, so both girls covered their tattoos as we ran for the subway. Two hours later, Adinah and I scratched the henna off her hand. Underneath was a pretty brown rose.

Then we giggled as we climbed into V.'s bed, where she was already sawing zzzzz's. We scratched off her henna--somehow she'd kept it basically intact--and now she had a nice new rose, too.

It was a nice day.

the nightlife era

Steve Shelley was in Vienna last night. He’s taking time off from Sonic Youth to play the drums for a band called Disappears . They’re good—a real straight-ahead railroad charge of spiky and spacy guitars—and it was great to see Steve bashing hell out of his kit in a hammerblow sort of way.

I’ve known Steve for about 25 years, so it was fun to visit with him and exchange sightings of some of our more loony rocker friends. He is also an unabashed Classic rock head, so I could (relatively) shamelessly confess to him that I’ve only recently “discovered” the Allman Brothers and well, James Brown. He gave me a few tips about both, then promised he’d send me some MP3s. Oh boy!

I haven’t been in a rock club watching a live band in about a million years, so that in itself was cause for rumination. Everything looked the same: the fanboys bumming cigarettes from each other in the front row, the blond bartendress built like a fireplug, the looks of surprise and pleasure on the guitarist’s faces. The sweat. It’s a great world. I wonder how much longer it will last.

I just don’t know how bands can tour anymore—gotta be so expensive, and to what actual financial or public relations gain? Matter of fact, even local bands must be going extinct. It’s always been a young person’s game, and always financially iffy, but right now? Sheesh, how long can one put off earning a living, just to bring the heavy riffage to a niteklub?

As I watched Steve wacking the toms with the same boyish half-grin he’s always grinned, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to show this world to my daughters?’ But I don’t know if the rock club will still exist by the time they become old enough to enter one.

Needs versus Wants

Need: Chips and salsa
Want: Nachos

Need: Motorhead-Ace of Spades
Want: Deep Purple-Who Do We Think We Are

Need: Bic Medium Ball Point pens (black or blue)
Want: a laptop

Need: my family
Want: my family in good spirits

Need: Robert De Niro
Want: George Clooney

Need: a hot bath every once in a while
Want: Sauna Night with Anette

Need: a public library
Want: Facebook, Pirate Bay, Demonoid, all blogs

Need: long underwear
Want: my fuzzy gray pimp coat

Need: coffee
Mindless Self-Indulgence: ginger tea

Need: Barack Obama
Want: a hero

My First Therapist

Ouch.

That hurt a little.

* * *

So Anette and I decided to go see a family therapist. We thought it might help ease the chaos in our house, maybe help us avoid some of those special Shouting moments.

So we get to the place on the appointed day, and we meet the good doctor. She talks to the kids for six or seven minutes, and talks to Anette and I for more than an hour. At the end of it, she says, “The kids are fine.” Then she looks at me and says, “But you, I want to talk to.”

Eeep.

I flashed on a close-up of Anthony Hopkins, wearing that cute mask, in The Silence of the Lambs. I never actually thought of myself as a fruitcake, but what the hey, everyday’s a journey, right?

But the doctor, who I’ll call Frau M., said some sensible things. She actually said some of the same things I’ve been saying about our family dynamic for awhile now. Anette smirked a couple of times and said to me, “You like her, don’t you?”

Still, the idea of seeing a shrink was a bit, um, daunting. Scary. I said as much. The doc put on her best quizzical face and said, “Why scary?”

“Well, you want me to talk about some personal stuff,” I replied, “And I don’t even know you, do I?”

I agreed to try it. I mean, back in the day when I interviewed that French performance artist who broadcasts her own plastic surgery operations, and she asked me to eat foie gras with her, I did it, didn’t I? Would this really be any different, any more scary, any more icky-squishy? No.

I went back to her office, alone, the other night. We had a very expensive 85-minute conversation. It was sort of exhausting.

But I think it was also…good.

We started off talking about some of the challenges of parenthood, then she took me back, back, farther back to my own childhood, and some of my challenges in those days. As we talked, she found something that happened to me—a little thing, honestly—and she started turning it over in her hands. Or, really, asking me to turn it over in my head. She asked me to go back in time and talk to my seven-year old self, to help him. That was cool. Because I could do that, you know? It was easy for me to be a dad, big brother, hero--whatever—to that kid, because I’m all grown up now. I’m a man.

Then she brought it all back around to me trying to deal with V. in a better way. Now I think I can do that too.

And it made me think about my Dad and my Mom and Adinah and my life in a different way too.

Today, I went back to work, and met the usual mix of good, bad and ugly. But I felt like Mr. Clint Eastwood—cool, glacially chilled, unmoved by both nonsense and aggression.

No. That was a cheap movie metaphor. Here’s a better one. I actually felt more like that guy in Office Space, who gets stuck in a psychiatrist-induced trance, and goes to work not giving a fuck. And everything is just No Big Deal, my friend. No problem, hey that’s okay, sure, that sounds…fine.

Here's the second half of my Sueddeutsche Zeitung article on underground culture and Austin Texas. It was published on Saturday, Oktober 16.

Searching for that Lost Cool Something

One of our greatest living philosophers, Grandpa Simpson, once said, "I used to be 'with it', but then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn't 'it', and what's 'it' seems weird and scary." Maybe only the jugendlich understand ‘it.’ So back in Vienna, which is where I call ‘home’ these days, I asked a fifteen-year-old friend how he finds out about new music. His words were 2010, but his method: classic. “Usually my friends give me a link.”

I asked the same of a colleague’s fourteen-year-old son, who has recently discovered punk rock in the recordings of Green Day. He told her that he finds out about bands from concert posters and handbills, and from the opening bands at those concerts. Sounds a lot like my methods of thirty years ago.

On the other hand, my Austin friends, being older Texans and therefore contrary, roundly dispute the notion that the underground is dead. “Bullshit!” says Davy Jones, guitarist for the Hickoids, Austin’s oldest country punk band. “Hickoids are known by a tiny group of folks, but sales and the nature of the material make it Underground, Cult, Counterculture, whatever you wanna call it today. It's not successful in any normal business sense of the word- it’s so niche.”

Another friend, who I once knew as Control Rat X, drops some very old school science on me. “What has been done will be done again,” he says. “There is nothing new under the sun." Then he tells me he’s quoting from Ecclesiastes 1:9-14. Gee, I always thought it was a record critic who had said that.

On a late summer afternoon, downtown Austin is like the Velvet Underground—all white light and white heat. Unlike the centers of some US cities, this part of town has never been successfully rehabilitated, and the lower blocks of Congress Avenue are a bit shabby. But one afternoon, as I stumble along the Avenue in the blinding, skin-searing heat, I remember to tip my hat when I pass number 316. This is the former site of the Vulcan Gas Company, a legendary sixties club which may be the true birthplace of psychedelic music, since it was the preferred haunt of the notorious Texas acid rock group, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Back then, everyone played at The Vulcan when they passed through Austin, from John Lee Hooker and Moby Grape to, well, the Velvet Underground. Today, 316 Congress Avenue is a Patagonia sporting goods and outdoor apparel super store.

The Armadillo World Headquarters is now a parking lot, and for the week that I’m in Austin, I involuntarily turn my head towards it every time I pass, searching for some trace of the first rock club I ever entered. The Armadillo was an ugly hangar with bad acoustics, great nachos and a crowd that ranged from cosmic cowboys and pink-haired punks to state politicians and off-duty policemen. I remember seeing Devo there in 1980, and goggling at one of the club’s murals, which depicted an armadillo bursting out of the chest of BB King. Then and now, the Armadillo would meet almost any standard definition of an underground club, and that’s how I remember it. But it wasn’t underground at all—Time magazine and Rolling Stone both wrote it up at the time. In fact, Frank Zappa recorded a live album called Bongo Fury there. This 1975 document of what I thought was an underground scene was distributed to the world by…Warner Bros. Records. When I look at that parking lot today, I think it may be time to revise our definitions of underground.

My host in Austin is my old friend Rich, who was also once the drummer for the Kamikaze Refrigerators. A few hours before I leave town, I am puttering around in Rich’s immaculately renovated, slightly kitschy nineteen-fifties house. Rich is in the next room working. Then I hear music. It has the unhinged tone of the Pixies, and all the leather mask perversity of Lubricated Goat. With a dash of Devo. I like this music. “What is this?” I ask Rich.

“Oh, it’s Adult Rodeo,” he shrugs. “Little local band who was playing around here a few years ago.”

Adult Rodeo aren’t the new Radiohead, but they sound weird and fresh. I believe I have made a discovery.

I guess I can leave Austin now.

one night at the book store

“Open 24 hours” is not a phrase uttered lightly in Vienna. In fact, it’s not uttered at all. Most of the stores, boutiques, and trading posts here shut down by 6 or 7. But as a patriotic American, I still have the right to confuse shopping for entertainment. So last night at 7:30 pm, I really only had one choice: the Thalia.at superstore at Landstrasse. It’s Borders for Wieners.

Does anyone go to bookstores anymore? I can now report that yes, they do, especially when there isn’t anything else to do. Last night I was just another clod who was shuffling around, gathering up a bunch of books I had no intention of buying, just so I could indulge in a little “late-night” libro-philia. The tables, chairs and banquettes were mostly occupied, largely by people who were awake.

I plopped down with six items: Sebastiao Salgado’s Africa (beautiful, astonishing but ultimately clichéd black and white photographs of the Continent); a coffee-table book about cathedrals (did I not mention I am addicted to big picture books?); a smaller book about a Viennese movie poster artist who was working in the forties and fifties (nice local color); a black and white graphic novel about Stu Sutcliffe (who was he again? A fifth Beatle, right? Wait, this is in German!); a gargantuan new Taschen book of vintage funk and soul album covers (uh-oh, there goes thirty Euros!); and another graphic novel called The Night Bookmobile.

After a few pages of the Taschen book of funk and soul art, I knew I would have to possess it. The Night Bookmobile, on the other hand, looked sort of amateurish, and the author’s name--Audrey Niffenegger—meant nothing to me. The title is what put the hook in me. ‘Bookmobile?’ I thought. ‘That’s a phrase I haven’t heard in—oh--forty-five years.’

CAUTION: Middle-Aged Jaunt down Memory Lane to Follow! When I was seven, the Bookmobile kicked ass! The Public Library in my town had lots of branches, but it also had a book-filled Winnebago that drove around then laid anchor in various supermarket parking lots. It didn’t really have a lot of stuff in it, and looking back, I’m sure it was the same things I could have gotten at the smaller libraries. But there was something so cool about climbing up into a big recreational vehicle full of copies of Charlottes’ Web, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and those Alfred Hitchcock mystery stories for boys. Anyway….

So, The Night Bookmobile turned out to be a great, though slightly macabre, sorta sad book. A very nice story actually. I won’t ruin it for you. But it’s about a woman who loves to read. And after reading it, as I left the superstore and started back down the stairs to the subway trains, I felt all gooey inside. I’m really too young to feel nostalgic, but I miss books a little.

Now I live in Screen World. I’m looking at screens all day: my computer at work, my computer at home, my other computer at home, my wife’s computer, the tv screen, the screen in the u-Bahn station, the screen in the U-Bahn train. In New York, of course, one may watch tv in the back of a taxi now. Whoo-hoo. And the thing is, Screen World is sort of cold.

But a good book? Whoa, that is hot stuff. It’s really delicious to luxuriate in a long, totally fascinating history book (or novel or biography) by a writer who not only has style but really knows her or his shit. Books don’t have emoticons. Books have complete sentences. Many of them avoid slang! No one ever writes ROFL in a book.

I’m going to read one now. After I finish this post. And check Facebook. And send that e-mail.

victory!

Here's one weasely excuse for not writing Euro Like Me often enough lately: my first German language newspaper story! Sort of. I wrote this article in English and the nice people at the South German translated it for me. Maybe I will get to do it again, we'll see.

Anyway it's about being cool and underground, neither of which I know much about, but it's also about Austin, Texas, my hometown. I'll try to post the English text a bit later.

Home Alone Sunday Listening

(pretty much in this order)

Alexei Rybnikov & Dmitry Rybnikov-Through The Thorns To Stars (Bootleg)(soundtrack to Humanoid Woman)

Ron Geesin - Electrosound

Buddy Holly - Not Fade Away (The Complete Studio Recordings and More)

Mike Oldfield-Tubular Bells

The Jimi Hendrix Experience-Axis Bold as Love

Joni Mitchell-Court and Spark

Various Artists-Hotel Costes Volume 4

Pentangle-Basket of Light

Sol Kaplan, Gerald Fried and Alexander Courage- Star Trek Original Television Soundtrack Volume Two: “The Doomsday Machine” and “Amok Time”

Grace Jones-Warm Leatherette

Captain Beefheart-Doc at the Radar Station

Elton John-Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Why I Work

Some of our friends here don't work because their partner has a job which brings in enough money for the house. Other friends are working in low-paying jobs which they love, but that means they also need "state subsidies"--government benefits--to help pay all the bills.

Back in the States, some of our friends are out of work, and don't want to be, but they don't want to take that Walmart job yet. I can understand that. So they start eating into their savings, if they're lucky enough to have any.

But, speaking as one who's currently lucky enough to have a job, I know that at times I have worked all day, for little or no money, to create something or solve a problem which ultimately seems sorta minor. Sometimes I look back at my day and wonder, 'Is that all I got done?'

That's why I'm wondering 'why?' this morning. Why do we do it? Obviously, most of us big people have to work to pay the bills. But besides that?

I think my parents taught me that one should try to find something one likes to do, then try to get someone to pay you to do that. That is still what I believe, what I tell young people who ask me, 'What should I do?' This idea is underneath my only answer to the work question. We work because we want to. We like it.

I work because I get a kick out of doing something well. When I'm teaching or taking pictures or writing, and it's going well, it's like I'm pushing beyond myself, like a kind of transcendence. I forget time, my body, most everything and I'm just...doing my thing.

Sometimes I go farther. The other night I had to get out of the house. I didn't want to go to the movies, or to the Prater to play pinball. I got out onto the street, started taking pictures, felt the spring air on my skin, and two hours later, I was standing at a train station, staring up at the moon. I had been making photographs, and loving it, but now I just gawped at that moon like a little kid. I felt the pure pleasure of just looking at something sort of mysterious. I was beyond beyond myself. Just being. I wasn't taking pictures and I wasn't working. I was just acutely aware of the beauty of a moment. I was just alive.

It only lasted for a minute. But it was really something.

Weird World

I signed into Facebook for the first time three years ago, mostly because I was writing an article about social networking sites. Thinking back about it, my piece was a complete misread of how Facebook would really impact my generation. Most of my first Friends were students of mine--half my age--at the university where I as teaching. So I didn't network with them much. (I do sometimes think before I click.)

Now, like a lot of people, I find that Facebook is trying to eat my life. I have nearly three hundred Friends, many of whom I actually know, and I look at my goddamn page, like, eight times a day. And I have a job.

One thing that Facebook and My Space et.al. have given us is the freedom to enjoy a new variation of Drunken Dialling. Instead of getting blotto and calling up ex-girlfriends, now we can all locate, text and then Skype with people we haven't spoken to in thirty years! With whom we probably have nothing left in common!!

One such figure who has emerged out of my dubious, blood-soaked past is my old high school friend, Noel. Back in the day, Noel was a young man of many interests--these included pinball, photography, Drama club girls, and the collected works of Rush. So we were a good match, Noel and I. When I learned how to use a 35 mm camera, Noel was one of my first subjects. he posed playing his electric guitar, sans electricity, in my back yard. In the first series, he wore a kimono, then he took off his shirt, and put on a Navy Admiral's hat, just like Jimmy Page would have done. That was Noel, and I as in thrall enough to photograph the whole thing sans embarrassment.

Thirty years later, just after he found and Friended me, Noel started leaving comments on this blog, and he tried to instant message me a couple of times. But I wasn't ready to get into the way-back machine.

I did read some of his Status Updates, and did look at his flickR page and some of his beautiful night photography of abandoned gas stations and factories.

A couple of weeks ago, after the House passed the health care bill, Noel posted several links to articles about it, including a now infamous piece by the conservative writer David Frum. It was an interesting piece, and Noel's Facebook comments on it were interesting too: smart, measured, funny. Then another acquaintance of his, guy who would probably call himself a "fiscal conservative," jumped into the thread and ranted for many paragraphs about how health care reform was going to turn us all into Stalin-hugging Martians, etc. etc. And Noel just went off on the guy--told him 'Your ideas suck, you're not my friend, and I barely remember you from Lanier Senior High School.'

It was a pretty raw Facebook moment.

So the other night when I got home from work, somehow I felt like reaching out to my old friend. A few minutes later, there we were, face-to-face again after thirty years. Same nose, same face, older of course, but I sensed that with a little prodding, he might be ready to make a Monty Python joke. Or at least laugh if I made one. And he was wearing a t-shirt that read, 'The Man The Myth The Legend.'

He was sitting in a study or a home office with shelving behind him, but other than that, I don't know where he was. Guess that's the nature of the Skype cold call.

And what do you say to a metalhead you haven't seen since high school?

Actually we didn't talk about Zeppelin or Uriah Heep at all. We tried to catch up. Having read Euro Like Me, and also looked at my flickR page, Noel knew a little bit of my story. He said something like, 'So you've had an interesting life...?' But from everything he told me, his life has been pretty lively too. Suffice to say, he's had triumphs and tragedies, and he's survived with an ability to reflect upon both.

It was really great to see him again. He's the same guy I always liked, way back when.

I feel like a wide-eyed farmboy saying this but, by golly, the world is an amazing place these days. Amazing and weird. It’s bizarre to try to telescope your life to someone else, to summarize thirty years--the adventures and the tears—into a short, um, video-graphic(?) conversation. But we did it, sort of.

Maybe Facebook and Skype and this sort of virtual contact really just confirms that one never really loses friends. They’re always with you—in your mind or on your screen.

Now I want to do it with someone else. Is that wrong?

it began in Africa

Currently, V. knows two things about Africa. It is (1) where her biological father comes from, and (2) it's where Barbapapa goes to set free all those animals he rescues from the zoo. Barbapapa being the large pink blob creature who can form himself into any shape, who always helps other creatures out, and who had his own cartoon show here in Europa in the seventies--still beloved by children of all colors.

So we do occasionally try to broaden our girls ideas about the Continent. This afternoon, we took them to a blowout organized by the local African Womens' Coalition today. It was advertised as an event celebrating Black History Month (which was last month, wasn't it?), but actually it was just a party for kids of color. Which was fine, thank you.

There was face-painting and some delicious chicken and rice, but mostly the party consisted of two very sweet (and patient) young men with dreads leading a gaggle of black, brown and caramel-colored kids in a series of games for close to five hours without a break. Including ours, the kids numbered about twenty-five at the height of the party, and ranged in age from two to twelve. Meanwhile, the parents--black, white, adoptive and/or bio--sat on the sidelines as the wild rumpus raged.

It was nice.

I think I've learned to (mostly) check my cynicism when I observe other parents, especially other white adoptive parents of brown and black kids. I try not to play Who's the Most Perfect Parent in the Room (Answer: ME!) I try not to be too over protective, nor too involved in the proceedings. I try to remember that even when the kids are dancing, nobody in the room wants to see me get funky. That would be wrong.

But still, parties like this are pretty intense. You can't make any assumptions about which language anyone does or does not speak, and it's always dicey trying to figure out which kid belongs to which big person. If you see, as I did today, a tomboyish ten year old girl who's slightly heavy, and seems to want to disappear inside her baggy clothes, and her mom, a tiny, nervous, slightly pinched and blonde woman who doesn't seem to be paying much attention to her daughter, you can't think, 'Oh, yeah, I know what's going on in their house.' But obviously, I still do.

And I have to try to set aside all sorts of self-loathing and racist poison in my brain. It's still there. Maybe it's inside of most people. All I know is I'm still working on it.

And that's nice work if you can get it.

A Hunkpapa in Vienna

Sitting Bull has been appearing all over town. A late period photograph of him--red eyes burning through the viewer--adorns a poster for a new exhibit at the Museum of Ethnology Vienna. The show is called Sitting Bull and His World. A few weeks ago, we decided we would like to see it. Then our friends Andy and Ursula, who also adopted their daughters, Teresa and Emily, from Ethiopia, decided to join us.

The other day, I mentioned our plan to Rosa, our radical history student babysitter, and she shook her head. "You know that's a bad museum, right?" she asked. She told me that this Museum of Ethnology possesses an Inca headdress which was stolen from its last Peruvian owner. The government of Peru has asked for its return, and the Museum said...Nope.

We went to see the show anyway. Man, that was some squeaky clean American a-history right there. The text placards of the show made frequent mention of the Lakota and the Sioux moving to reservations, and of their "awareness of the need to adapt," but scant mention of the betrayal, germ warfare and murder which forced them to those places. The exhibit named no causes, only effects. White people, if mentioned at all, were portrayed as the ones who gave the Indians horses, as patient negotiators, as brave initiators of "police actions," like the one which killed Sitting Bull at last.

In other words, bullshit.

Many Europeans are ignorant of some of the basic facts of American history; others tend to regard Native Americans as an exotic species. And a museum here is just as unlikely as any in the world to use the word "genocide" in an exhibition, even when it's appropriate. (Part of a near-universal unspoken agreement to avoid that word, lest we mistakenly tell the truth about something.)

I grew up with a different view of the Native American experience. My father was a social worker on a Sioux reservation in North Dakota, and he often told us stories about Woody, a WWII veteran he met there. My father (and mother) told me as much of the truth as they knew about what happened between Native Americans and the Great White Father. But I think they also taught me to be proud of these amazing people who lived in North America so long ago. They made me feel like Sioux people were part of our heritage as Americans, our story. Crazy, right? What a concept!

Once, when my father visited me in New York City, I took him down to the National Museum of the American Indian. After walking through it, my dad couldn't stop talking about the Comanche. He insisted, with no little admiration, that Comanche horsemen were so skilled that nineteenth century European horse soldiers began to study and imitate Comanche strategies and maneuvers.

I wonder if the Lippizaner trainers over at the Spanish Riding School know that....

New Sensation

So anyway, I've got a new thing. And now it's infected the whole family.

Her name is La Roux. And seeing as I'm a bit pop retarded these days, I've only just heard her music in the last few months. I will honor the slick magazine tradition, and also avoid assuming that everyone out there has as much time for pop junk as I do, and explain that La Roux appears to be about 23, styles herself like a new wave cross between K.D. Laing and Tilda Swinton, and sounds like Jimmy Sommerville (as a girl?) singing for Depeche Mode, with a very sight 21st century twist.

Don't know if the same can be said for US radio, but during our ski-town holiday, La Roux could be heard bouncing off of every wall. Particularly her single "Bulletproof," which is snap-crackle-bleep genius.

Now Adinah, V., Anette and I are all singing it as we put on our snow boots, or cook dinner, or do anything else involving locomotion.

A few years from now, my daughters will probably be into Austrian hip hop, or some other god awful thing. So, for now, I enjoy our shared interest in the new wave of new wave.

An Edition of One

In August, I wrote about beginning to put together a lifebook for Adinah. (In this post.) I used a large photo album, pictures, text, a few maps, some Ethiopian currency, an ID slip from a children's hospital and some Winnie the Pooh stickers, all to tell the story of who our daughter is and how she came to be with us. I tried to write it from her perspective, not mine (that is, I made no references to Black Sabbath or knarly skater babes.)

I finally finished it in October, and gave it to her. She really likes it.

Here's some photos. Now I've got to start making one for V.

Reasons to be Bad

1) "People respect the Bad."

2) "Nobody ever listens to me."

3) "I'm bored."

4) "I'm mad at Mama because she's never there for me."

5) "I'm mad at Papa because when I try to do something grown-up, he treats me like a kid, and then when I want to be a kid, he expects me to act grown-up."

6) "I'm mad."

7) "I'm an exceptionally well-paid underworld mastermind and douche-lord."

8) "People look at me when I'm bad."

9) "It's better to be feared than to be loved."

10) "I tried being 'me' and nobody understood that."

11) "All I wanted was a Pepsi, and she wouldn't give it to me!"

12) "I don't like Mondays."

13) "I don't like you."

14) "I'm Bad because my brother is Good."

15) "I feel bad."

16) "Someone hurt me--maybe it's my fault."

Shot Sequence #23: (stills from Post-Structuralism and its Discontents a.k.a. Scream of the Soul Shredder)

One Who Got Away

I'm almost 48 years old, but I haven't lost too many people. My beautiful and young friend Jon died; a great magazine writer who had greatly influenced me, and whom I worked with briefly, Lou Stathis, died; and my father died. Then there was my gramma Inga.

Inga Lund, daughter of Ole and Tomine Lund, was a second generation Norwegian-American. She was a strong, sensible woman who didn't suffer fools gladly. She married John Blashill, and they had three children: Richard, Helen, and Donald James, who became my father. They were poor. John Blashill died when my father was two years old, so Inga had to raise her three kids by herself after that.

She always called my dad "Donnie."

After my dad and his brother and sister had left home, Inga moved out to her brother Oskar's farm. Oskar sometimes worked sixteen-hour days, and Inga took care of the cooking and cleaning for him. When I was a boy, we always visited Inga and Oskar at the farm. One summer, we picked and ate fresh strawberries until I turned red.

Years later, after I'd finished college, and Oskar had died, my father and I went to visit Inga in South Dakota. She was selling the farm, which had always been profitable, and finally moving into town again. One afternoon, after she had withdrawn a couple hundred thousand dollars from one bank so she could move it to another bank, we stopped for lunch at a diner. Gramma Inga was usually a pretty sober sort, but as we sat down to eat, she grinned, patted her handbag, and said, "Go ahead, Pat--order anything you want. It's on me."

A few years after that, Inga had a stroke, and her health gradually deteriorated. In the last few years, she didn't always even recognize my father when he came to visit her. And because of this, I thought I had already said goodbye to her. But then, when she died--my gramma!--it slammed me. Even if you expect it or think you're prepared, death can surprise you.

Maybe it's the only way to understand the word "forever."

Anyway, in case you are wondering, dear reader, there is a hook to this post, and it's sad news. On Saturday, September 12, my wife's mother, Resi, died. She was two weeks shy of her 80th birthday.

She will be missed.