We drove up to Chicago to see my mother-in-law over Thanksgiving, and in the hours it would take to finish preparations on the turkey and stuffing and pies and Brussel sprouts and potatoes and more, I snuck out to catch a matinee of Milk at the Century Centre Cinema on Clark and Diversey.
I barely got a ticket, so many other people had the same idea. Now, you can call me gay, straight or Christina Applegate, as long as you don't call me late for Thanksgiving dinner, but the movie transfixed the packed house and nobody was leaving early to take a turkey out of the oven. The crowd applauded at the finish.
The film is about the first openly gay elected official in American politics, Harvey Milk, a city supervisor in San Francisco in the 1970s. His persistence to be elected, campaign after campaign, despite the odds, came at much personal cost. He received threats. He lost partners. But "indefatigable" was his middle name. Harvey Indefatigable Milk. Ultimately, it cost him his life.
"Impregnable packaging has incited such frustration among consumers that an industry term has been coined for it — 'wrap rage.' It has sent about 6,000 Americans each year to emergency rooms with injuries caused by trying to pry, stab and cut open their purchases." – New York Times, Saturday, November 14, 2008
My kin date back many generations within a sect of the extremely thrifty. My grandmother saved oleo stick wrappers to grease her cake pans. The story goes that two of my clan invented copper wire by spotting a penny on the ground between them.
I get off on being cheap, big time. It's in my genes.
It's nothing at all. White light. I am tired. I am weary. I could sleep 4000 years, a thousand dreams that would await me.
Every so often, searching for my mainline, I play The Velvet Underground, a rock group whose records I have owned for forty years. The Velvet Underground never gets old to me: the first album with Nico, White Light/White Heat, Loaded, the redundant eponymous one later. Those four, mostly. The Velvet Underground are like The Beatles. I have never been a heroin addict, but I have read the works of William Burroughs, word by cut-up word, so I consider myself entitled. Plus, I saw The Velvet Underground perform live. More about that later.
The plane lands. A pleasant man stamps my passport and customs officials are actually smiling.
"Welcome."
I am concerned. People are taking off their shoes and laughing as they put them into those big, gray trays. Something is wrong with this picture. Where is the elbowing, the anxiety, the anger?
Apparently, America had a do-over in my absence. I read about it on the plane, in the Times. After 9/11, we had been given the good will of the world. But then we blew it, until last Tuesday, when we got a second chance.
November 2, 2008 Cholula, Puebla — Mexico.
About three years ago, Hugh Phillips packed up the office he had established for migrant workers and bade Champaign-Urbana farewell. He made his home in the old, old town of Cholula, Mexico, which he claims dates back 3,000 years.
I joined him here last week, fleeing election anxiety. It's almost working.
Today, I will be writing a review of Michaelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film Blow-Up. It will be a meandering discourse as a means of distraction, a way of blurring my own awareness of the daily slough of lies and hate in which we drown (the news). Please take your seats.
I voted. They allowed that this year. You go out to the County Clerk's office, say, "Mark, I know it's weeks early, but hit me up," and they let you do it right now. They even give you the sticker.
I tried to be first in line, but an older couple, obviously having dressed in the dark to beat me, claimed that privilege. It felt good to get it out of the way. Now I can stop studying CNN and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Then, improbably and fortuitously, I broke a tooth. Since I don't have to be around for election day, and since I broke a tooth, I have the perfect excuse to leave the country entirely. I no longer love it, so I am leaving it, just as people have sometimes-not-so-kindly requested of me over the years.
The only complete Shakespeare play we read at my minuscule high school was the Voldemort of the canon, the one they never name aloud, you know, Macbeth. The Scottish play. The jinxed play. 19th century theater riots and so forth.
We learned that Macbeth's fatal flaw was ambition. (It is remarkable how similar the story is to the other Mc story in the headlines today, someone also ambitious for power and willing to flip on any issue or abandon any car-wrecked spouse to claw his way up.) I was the true believer. I learned the lesson. Ambition, bad. Got it. I took it literally.
When I found myself wearing a tie and applying for a job with an ad agency at a relatively advanced age (39), the hiring executive asked about my long-term plans. I told him I wasn't ambitious. I just wanted to write the most perfect, functional ad copy imaginable. I had freelanced at other ad agencies for the previous couple of years and it had been fun. This was my first job-job. It meant I'd commute one hour and sit in my own office (8 to 5).
The exec frowned. "Sometimes you have to be ambitious," he warned, "or you don't get anywhere at all."
I didn't understand. Wouldn't the ambitious ones be washing blood off their hands and swearing at spots?
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