Seven words he'll never say again

RIP, George Carlin.

from the HuffPo:
by David Hochman


Somewhere in heaven, George Carlin is probably watching Lou Dobbs right about now. At the end of the Playboy Interview I did with him a few years ago, he was full of thoughts about the meaning of life, his legacy and what was next -- if anything -- after this life was done, and that's when he started musing about cable news.

Carlin was a big thinker. While conducting the interview, I spent three days with him in Las Vegas, a city he loved and hated and where he was still doing stand-up a week before his death yesterday at age 71. At each session, some of which lasted five hours, Carlin held forth on every imaginable topic -- from the color of farts to the solutions to global warming (unrelated topics, incidentally). His mind was so expansive, he kept stacks of Post-it notes around his Vegas condo so he could write down random musings that might find their way into a routine or book or letter to his daughter. Then he would record those thoughts onto various iPods and later transfer the files to his computer. Even as he approached 70, his mind was so loaded with data it needed its own zip drive.

Although he was one of the most successful comedians of his generation and a bestselling author, Carlin didn't have an easy life. He struggled for years with drugs and then heart problems and his fortunes came and went. At one point he owed four million in back taxes. Another time, on a trip to Hawaii, his daughter, Brenda, then 11, made him sign a contract so he wouldn't snort cocaine for the rest of the vacation. But by the end, Carlin had found something that looked like peace -- sobriety, financial stability and love with Sally Wade, a woman he called "the sweetheart of my life." Even growing old was interesting for him. It gave him more material.

"The older you are, the more noises you make," he told me. "Standing up, sitting down, it's like you need a fuckin' lubricant. I agree with Bette Davis who said, "Getting old is not for sissies." But it's just aging, so I say, fuck it. There were handicaps to being 10, there were handicaps to being 40, but the richness of memory, the richness of acquired and accumulated experience and wisdom, I won't trade that. At 67, I'm every age I ever was. I always think of that. I'm not just 67. I'm also 55 and 21 and three. Oh, especially three."

At the end of days of interviews, I asked Carlin what he imagined heaven would look like, and he gave an answer that was appropriate considering his TV had been turned on the entire weekend to Headline News. To the end, Carlin loved being in touch with the big world around him.

"The best afterlife for me would be to be able to sit comfortably and watch the world on a kind of heavenly CNN," he said. "To be able to have my remote and say, 'Okay, there's an uprising in Spain. Let's watch that. Or to watch China finally take over the fucking world. Because there's a billion of those motherfuckers and they're going to eat our lunch. I would love to get the thousand-year view on the decline of the European birthrate or the "Muslimization" of Europe that's talking place; the explosion of Latin American culture in the western part of the United States.' Just sit back and watch. India and Pakistan, both, have nuclear weapons and they fuckin' hate each other. I'm telling you, somebody is going to fuck somebody's sister and an atom bomb is going to fly. And I say fine. You know? I just like the show. This world is a big theater in the round, as far as I'm concerned, and I'd just love watching it spin itself into oblivion. Tune in and watch the human adventure. It's a cursed, doomed species but it's just interesting as hell. That's what I want heaven to be. And if it's not like that, then fuck it. I'll just kill myself."

Since we were on the subject, I thought I'd ask what he'd like his tombstone to say. Carlin didn't miss a beat.

"I'm thinking something along the lines of, "Jeez, he was just here a minute ago."

reading material

Back at school, one of our oft-repeated conversations goes something like this:

"Ms. P, why don't you like soccer?" one of the life-long, die-hard devotees of "the beautiful game" will ask.

"Because I'm an American," I reply with a shrug, every time. Because part of my job is to drive them insane.

But at lunch I'll let them show me video of Christian Ronaldo or check scores from the Cup qualifying, and they're always asking if I'm going to watch the US play, or if I saw what happened to Argentina, and sometimes I know the reference. That's also part of my job. Knowing my fondness for other sports, they may be trying to convert me, but we all know I'm never gonna appreciate "football" as they do, or, you know, at all. And yet this fourteen page story about youth soccer in Georgia is the best thing I've read in a while. Because, in both places, it's all about the kids.

Who he?

Every time I get to thinking that perhaps the baby brother and I aren't so opposite after all, aren't, perhaps, best represented by a Venn diagram with vast empty spaces in the intersecting middle, I am once again corrected:

Yesterday the early word came that Monday's super-duper extra-ginormous concert announcement is indeed Springsteen on a Saturday night in August, glory hallelujah. The 23rd, to be exact.

Since he at least pretended to consider going with us to the St. Patrick's Day show in M'waukee, I speedily forwarded the news to my only sibling. To which he responded, "my concert calendar for August is Neil Diamond, August 29th."

I'm sorry, what? That's six days apart; what's the conflict? And, more urgently, given his apparent preference, is my baby brother actually an old woman?

home brew

The brainwashing has been very effective. That's just about all I can come up with. Perhaps, I posit, this is the same kind of primal thinking that kept the serfs from killing their lords. Because it's not about flag-waving, it's not about money, it's not even about the beer. But to a person, every local I talk to has the same, dead-serious, gut-level reaction to the notion of our brewery being sold.

It's just wrong.

We realize, of course, that, technically, Anheuser-Busch is a multi-billion dollar corporation owned by countless shareholders, the vast majority of whom have never set foot in St. Louis, Missouri. We fail to grasp the relevance.

We understand that the Clydesdales and Grant's Farm and even the brewery tour (which some of us haven't even taken) are just marketing gimmicks. We don't care.

We know that the Gussie is dead, and baseball team has been owned by a different bunch of rich guys for a while now, and the stadium will be called something else whenever a higher bid comes in. We choose not to think about it.

It's all just part of the place we call home. I could attempt to explain it more fully, if you're ever in the neighborhood. I've got Fat Tire, and Landshark, and Shlafly's Pale Ale (a real local beer), and something called Trinity that I haven't even tried yet, and thus supplied I'm sure we could come up with an excellent explanation of the psychology behind these imaginary ties that bind.

Getting dirty while cleaning up

Tonight, finally, a week into the great flood of 2008, I got dirty. And sweaty.

It felt good.

As depressing as it was to drive through a downtown that now resembles a third world country, I'm inspired to see that legendary Iowan can-do spirit in action, and prouder yet to finally be part of it.

Even Dubya seemed to get it.

"Sometimes you get dealt a hand you didn’t expect to have to play," Bush said today after surveying the damage in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. "It’s not a question whether you’re going to play it. The question is how you’re going to play it.

"I’m confident the people of Iowa will play it well," Bush said.

Yes, Mr. Lame-Duck and Lame-Ass President, Sir, we will. And we'll need a whole lot of government aid, but we're not about to wait around for it.

Finally able to access most flooded areas freely during the day, residents are attacking in force. Just in on the local news: all barricades to come down tomorrow, though the overnight curfew remains in effect. That means there will be even more curbside piles and piles of debris -- carpet, drywall, appliances, furniture, etc.

On a rare open evening, I was able to pitch in for a couple hours at the home of my son's former baseball coach and occasional personal trainer. We tore down the drywall in what seemed like minutes compared to hauling it to the curb.

There were about 10 of us when Lisa and I arrived, including Vicente. He didn't call anyone. He didn't need to. A fellow baseball parent was there all day. Former players pitched in. It was sweet.

Good news, bad news or vice versa

-James Kern, director of Brucemore, estimated that up to 25 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places were damaged in the flood, though Brucemore was not.

- A team of preservation experts is being assembled and will be headquartered at the Brucemore Garden House to start the recovery effort specifically for the cultural attractions that were damaged.

mail

A day without e-mail is-- complete your own metaphor, please. The thought of twenty-four hours without my habitual form of communication pretty near gives me a twitch. I e-mail across town; I e-mail across continents and oceans. I e-mail one word replies and ridiculously long letters in conversations that have been going on since before the birth of my eleven year old child. I count as dear friends women whom I only know through my inbox. And yet the other day, I scribbled one of them a note--the keyboard is hell on the penmanship--and sent it the old-fashioned way, with an overpriced stamp. Perhaps it has arrived in California by now, I'm not sure, but we've got some time: the wedding is not 'til next week.

For after nineteen years, and two children, and countless other legalities--adoptions and powers of attorney and all that--my friend and her woman can finally get married, and so next week they are. Just now I've gotten an e-mail describing their happy trip down to the county clerk for the license--and I type this with a warm smile. If only I could be there for cake! But I can't. So I sent them a note for their memory book.

My impulse to put pen to paper struck me as kind of silly; if I thought stationery were necessary to genuinely express my thoughts to my far-flung friends, my Gmail wouldn't be nearly so cluttered, and my life wouldn't be so nearly so rich. The odds of me making it to the post office regularly or keeping a supply of stamps is small, to be honest. I'd end up writing great letters in my head, and never get them sent. But this occasion is special, and perhaps I wanted to acknowledge that in a way that one more e-mail wouldn't seem to do. Either that or I had some colored paper, and I wanted to better fit in to their rainbow theme. One or the other or both.

Good to be odd

Today it was announced that the city's water capacity had increased to 50 percent, meaning loosened water restrictions. You still can't -- or shouldn't -- wash your car or water your lawn, but you can take a shower, if only every other day. Odd numbered days for people with odd numbered addresses and even days on even addresses. We were all pleased to live on the odd side of the street.

Father's Day

I've little doubt my kids will make an effort to honor dear old dad tomorrow. It won't be their best effort, but it will be an effort.

It's not that they don't care, just that the flood changed everything. Tonight I should be sleeping off another record-setting Relay For Life, but it was postponed. Tomorrow I should be watching my son pitch his 14U baseball team to the league championship, but it was canceled. Tomorrow I would go on a 30-mile bike ride, except I'm not sure how.

I showered this afternoon, RAGBRAI style! A late afternoon storm brought a much-needed opportunity for hygiene. Floodwaters are receding faster than anticipated in Cedar Rapids, but Coralville and Iowa City are next. Suddenly my 1.5 mile existence doesn't seem so bad.

But, for the whole of Cedar Rapids and much of Iowa, recovery awaits.

25,000 evacuated in CR alone.
12,000 remain without power in CR.
$376 million damage to CR homes.
CR drinking water in great peril.
2,500 guardsmen deployed in Iowa, including a neighbor who feels like this is why he enlisted.

Now what?

My City of Ruins

My city, indeed, is in ruins, ravaged by a flood that is expected to crest tomorrow morning at 32 feet -- a full 20 feet above flood stage and 12 feet above the record. Please pray for Cedar Rapids. This is going to be a major blow to my hometown.

The Cedar River has flooded roughly 3,200 homes and many businesses in Cedar Rapids, forcing around 8,000 people to evacuate as the water continues to rise. Coe College, which lies just outside the city's 500-year flood plain, wasn't spared. After floodwater breeched the edge of campus, which houses the physical plant and the power supply, the college shut down and transported the 100 or so students on campus for the summer to our rival school -- Cornell College.

The ground floors of City Hall, the County Courthouse and the County Jail, all housed on an island in the river, are submerged in the churning water. Streets between Interstate 380 and the river are submerged up to the roofs of buildings. A train bridge was swept away in the current and all the city's bridges are under water.

Because of a power outage at a water treatment facility, the city's water system is operating at 25 percent capacity and residents are being urged to limit use to necessary human consumption.

MidAmerican Energy has cut gas to about 5,500 customers, and anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 Alliant Energy customers have lost power. Those with utilities, like me, thankfully, are being urged to conserve.

"This is an endurance competition for the public and the citizens," City Council member Brian Fagan said. "It twill flex the ties that bind us as a community."

Fagan said the scope of the damage is "all-encompassing" downtown.

"The situation is changing dramatically by the hour, and so is the image of the city," he said.

My city of ruins.

Friedman: Obama on the Nile

by Thomas Friedman
NYTimes.com

This column will probably get Barack Obama in trouble, but that’s not my problem. I cannot tell a lie: Many Egyptians and other Arab Muslims really like him and hope that he wins the presidency.

I have had a chance to observe several U.S. elections from abroad, but it has been unusually revealing to be in Egypt as Barack Hussein Obama became the Democrats’ nominee for president of the United States.

While Obama, who was raised a Christian, is constantly assuring Americans that he is not a Muslim, Egyptians are amazed, excited and agog that America might elect a black man whose father’s family was of Muslim heritage. They don’t really understand Obama’s family tree, but what they do know is that if America — despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 — were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name “Hussein,” it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations.

Every interview seems to end with the person I was interviewing asking me: “Now, can I ask you a question? Obama? Do you think they will let him win?” (It’s always “let him win” not just “win.”)

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America’s image abroad — an image dented by the Iraq war, President Bush’s invocation of a post-9/11 “crusade,” Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing U.S. harbors — than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years.

Of course, Egyptians still have their grievances with America, and will in the future no matter who is president — and we’ve got a few grievances with them, too. But every once in a while, America does something so radical, so out of the ordinary — something that old, encrusted, traditional societies like those in the Middle East could simply never imagine — that it revives America’s revolutionary “brand” overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned.

I just had dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with two Egyptian officials and a businessman, and one of them quoted one of his children as asking: “Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?” And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, “no.” It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around.

These Egyptian officials were particularly excited about Obama’s nomination because it might mean that being labeled a “pro-American” reformer is no longer an insult here, as it has been in recent years. As one U.S. diplomat put it to me: Obama’s demeanor suggests to foreigners that he would not only listen to what they have to say but might even take it into account. They anticipate that a U.S. president who spent part of his life looking at America from the outside in — as John McCain did while a P.O.W. in Vietnam — will be much more attuned to global trends.

My colleague Michael Slackman, The Times’s bureau chief in Cairo, told me about a recent encounter he had with a worker at Cairo’s famed Blue Mosque: “Gamal Abdul Halem was sitting on a green carpet. When he saw we were Americans, he said: ‘Hillary-Obama tied?’ in thick, broken English. He told me that he lived in the Nile Delta, traveling two hours one way everyday to get to work, and still he found time to keep up with the race. He didn’t have anything to say bad about Hillary but felt that Obama would be much better because he is dark-skinned, like him, and because he has Muslim heritage. ‘For me and my family and friends, we want Obama,’ he said. ‘We all like what he is saying.’ ”

Yes, all of this Obama-mania is excessive and will inevitably be punctured should he win the presidency and start making tough calls or big mistakes. For now, though, what it reveals is how much many foreigners, after all the acrimony of the Bush years, still hunger for the “idea of America” — this open, optimistic, and, indeed, revolutionary, place so radically different from their own societies.

In his history of 19th-century America, “What Hath God Wrought,” Daniel Walker Howe quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson as telling a meeting of the Mercantile Library Association in 1844 that “America is the country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations.”

That’s the America that got swallowed by the war on terrorism. And it’s the America that many people want back. I have no idea whether Obama will win in November. Whether he does or doesn’t, though, the mere fact of his nomination has done something very important. We’ve surprised ourselves and surprised the world and, in so doing, reminded everyone that we are still a country of new beginnings.

Live, from the other side of the world

Right now there's a fifteen year old girl doing me a favor in some big city in the south of China. I love my life. She has flown for twenty-five hours and still has a six hour bus ride to go before she finally, finally, finally gets back home. It's midnight there but not to her body and who does she know on the right side of the planet to be awake and have her e-mail open? Well, that would be me.

So as she doesn't sleep in some darkened hotel room--her father is there--we are trading text-message-y e-mails about her endless journey and the fact that now that she's there she'd rather be here because "China = no good" --did I mention she's fifteen?--but while I suggest she may feel different once she sleeps and sees the rest of her family and friends, nothing can get too deep in six word sentences. And besides, she's on to figuring out how she can go outside and buy some street food even though she only has U.S. dollars--did I mention she's fifteen?

A few messages later, that plot is abandoned, too, but it's no matter. It's a little closer to her morning, a fraction of her mission accomplished. Back here in her yesterday afternoon, I haven't thought about why the phone isn't ringing for the longest stretch of the day. A favor I didn't even ask for, completed all the same.

Orphan of the Storm(s)

It's just like 15 years ago, except it's not. Then as now, it rained -- or threatened to -- every day. Then as now, I didn't give it much thought.

Then, I was a first-time parent of a perfect baby boy. Now, the 15-year-old "golden boy" and his 11teen-year-old sister are no-less of a challenge; and great sources of joy.

And when it's your birthday and your game is canceled and you get your choice of where to go for dinner, only I would select the place we always go, the place you were nearly raised. Except now there are two of us.

quiet

There's nothing wrong with nothing. So says she who currently shares the house with nobody, not even music or TV, just the sound of the dryer and a suspiciously loud frig. But I'll think about the looming possibility of a new appliance later; my mind is uncharacteristically empty, nothing the seductive summer trend.

I know this state of quiet suspended animation is a put-on, but I do not much care. I know that soon, say tomorrow, I'll admit to wondering if the phone will ring or if a message will be delivered with a question that may just change things. But tomorrow is tomorrow and today is full of silence, even in my head.

The End of The Innocence

To date I've gotten by on having once been a kid as my parental credentials. Results are mixed, but my kids are exactly that -- mine, I mean. As a dad, a son, and a daughter, if we bat .500 we're all-stars.

But I've never been further off the mark than last night, when the man-child shunned tradition for team, Famous Dave's for McDonald's, and a nap for clowning around on a school bus with the guys.

I don't blame him at all, of course, especially after manhandling the opponent and pitching a gem in his first official appearance on the mound as a high school baseball player.

I was once a kid, sure. In many ways, I still am. But I was never a high school athlete, let alone one playing above his grade level -- nor, performing below potential in the classroom.

So I continue to make it up as I go. Hoping to do the right thing. At least that's what I was pondering over lip-smacking barbeque as the boy was devouring a Big Mac somewhere.

the next day

"So apparently fast reading runs in the family," she says, and I look up from the new David Sedaris that I'm a quarter of the way through. I start to ask what else she doesn't know about her mother, but she's already down another aisle, intent on finding something to trade in on birthday gift cards. And then before I can shoplift another chapter she's chosen books with appeal that escapes me and after a few minutes of the regret that a black car with black upholstery always brings in the first real heat of summer, we're home.

Home to where wrapping paper and gift bags and homemade cards litter the living room and the breakfast spread left for the slumber party girls still hasn't been cleared from the table. Perhaps if someone would take out the trash. It has been a perfectly lazy day, aftermath to a perfectly fun party that stretched way past the wee hours. It would probably have made a better impression for me to have been awakened by something other than a doorbell rung by a porch-full of mothers, but for now I'll throw my lot with the house-full of girls who were on the other side of the door, doing whatever they wanted in a perfectly innocent way. Just having fun with their friends, unconcerned with appearance. Perhaps even by the time my car cools off things will have changed. I know these carefree days are numbered. But we're not to zero yet.

sometimes I love technology

Maybe it's because I can hear her voice, or maybe it's because I know how much she wanted out, Out, OUT of her mother's regimented house five months after she arrived, but my second random summer student contact in as many days is making me smile all out of proportion:

Subject: HI
Sent: Wed 6/4/2008 3:44 PM
To: P., Allison

How are you?
Next tuesday,I go back china for my summer>,<
I'm real happy!
BUT,i can't finish my summer school....TOO BAD
Do you want to have chinese something?~

=..=This you e-mail .Right?

step one

Phone call

"I'm sorry to bother you. I know it's not a school time."

"You're not bothering me. What's up?"

And he goes on, during this long distance call, to talk about a girlfriend who has really good grades and papers--she was born in Miami--and a need for a scholarship and what could I tell him about that? He says she's going to St. Louis University and maybe she is and maybe it's the community college and which one is irrelevant and I don't ask, don't try to figure it out. Instead I try to explain over the sound of his open truck door about FAFSA and spell out the URLs that I know for the government forms and the group that gives money to Hispanic college kids in St. Louis and then it's time for him to go back in to work.

"It's always good to hear from you," I say. And I can see his smile and hear it in his reply. And I remember that he would have graduated this year, too, had he not dropped out.

It's summer break, on the calendar, for those of us that live that life. But school. . . school is never out.

Graduation Day

For two hundred-sixteen of the capped and gowned it was once in a lifetime; the rest of us are old hands. We don hoods we never remember how to fasten. We inspect shoes and ties and look for contraband we don't really expect to find, except maybe. We joke and take pictures. Tap our feet at the tardies. Resolve minor emergencies. Straighten tassels. We walk in to the same song that we always walk in to. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Applaud, walk out, well done.

That's the annual outline, the habitual action, but it is not the story of graduation day, not of this or any year.

This year was a hug from one member of the social studies department who'd just survived his first year with six of my kids and me cornering his colleague to ask after one of my supposed graduates, "But did he really pass? I mean, really?" Ms. P. might put cash in graduation cards, but she doesn't believe in gifts.

This year was a spontaneous, genuine standing ovation for one of the class speakers, a young woman who did not clank when she walked like the other, overachieving participants, so weighted down with awards and medals and other proofs of their specialness. Perhaps there is no high school prize for the gift that she has, to say the right thing at the right time, confidently and well, but we won't forget her, and I know she'll remember the applause.

This year was spotting one of my families in the bleachers and realizing my seat three down from their daughter likely means that I'm in more than my share of video footage. I smiled but resisted the urge to wave.

This year was good. The main address was by turns funny and thoughtful, and the choir only inflicted one treacly "I'll remember you all until I die" song upon us. The feeling in the gym was more of enjoying the moment than counting the minutes and that is in itself a graduation gift. Most years we're all as desperate to be finished as we were when the board member gave her totally inappropriate "be glad you're not starving in Africa" speech, but even if it had all been as uncomfortable as that few minutes were today, I would have been glad to be there, because this year, and every year, are all about seeing things through.

It's about seeing that kid walk up and get that diploma, about being there one last time. Sometimes it feels like, "We did it." And a muttered, "thank God." More often it's, "You did it! Good for you. Now off into the world." As if it's ever uncomplicated. It's about shared satisfaction and long roads traveled and occasional gratitude, though more often implied than expressed. It's about setting aside worries about what comes next and accepting, "Well, at least they have that."

Tonight the Class of 2008 is celebrating, already moving on. As, I suppose, am I. The difference is that I know exactly where I expect to be, twelve months hence, whenever graduation day falls. I know who I hope to see walk across that stage, and I know how I hope to be feeling. But I get ahead of myself. Really far ahead of myself. I'll get back to the Class of 2009 in August, but today is June. And tomorrow, finally, is Summer.