Glass Shallot by Adam Baer

RECOUP Ep. 4: Taking Up Space Together

So, I've been doing a podcast with the writer Eva Hagberg called Recoup that has earned some attention from the LA Times. In this episode, however, I speak with my spouse, who is a clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist. But the episode is really funny. It's not a pandemic / coronavirus episode, and I urge you to check it out. Thanks for all the positive attention and five star reviews on Apple. We're getting so many listeners from all over the world, and as terrifying and sad as this pandemic period has been it has offered me, as a homebound lifer of cancers and rare diseases, a lot of light and hope. If you don't want to head over to your podcast app of choice you can listen to this episode below with an embedded player. Thank you again, and please share. It's word of mouth that's really helped us so far, and we want to keep doing this to help people. You can always write in to us with your questions or concerns about uncertainty, chronic recuperation, disability, social isolation, and everything in between at [email protected].  -- Adam Baer

The Pressure to Say You're OK on the Stupid Cancer Show

 The Stupid Cancer Show had me on for a second time last night, and it was a roiling good time. The entire show's funny and informative, and my segment at about 24:30 takes us through an op-ed I wrote for the Los Angeles Times called The Pressure to Say You're OK. We also discuss asking the hard questions as cancer survivors--which include money questions and billing practices for a chance at financial transparency--as well as how recently the hospital associated with my alma mater (Johns Hopkins) decided I owed them thousands of dollars without me ever having seen a doctor there! Crazy but true, and the hunt for money to pay for this imaginary medical work only took a year to quash. Listen to the show right here.--Adam Baer

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Go to Music School -- Just Go to a Better One

A few days ago, an op-ed columnist in the New York Times wrote that he didn't think his kid should transfer into a music school. Today, Fred Bronstein, dean of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, responded in the Times. It's a strong, smart statement that takes the piece's headline literally, emphasizing "training" musicians "attuned to their communities" who should be "effective communicators, educators, entrepreneurs, audience development experts and citizen-artists." But there's more to be said on that issue.

I'm a former Peabody student, and I say that if you have the talent and determination, you should go to music school. It's one of the best things that I ever did with my life. It filled my soul and trained my brain to accomplish many other things, including serious writing projects. I'm a big believer in the humanities, and as a musician from a family of musicians, I wanted the immersion in music that they had enjoyed beyond the pre-college music conservatory. But I simultaneously attended Johns Hopkins' separate Arts & Sciences undergraduate program, and I graduated in 2000, a bad time to go to music school. Back then, the older classically oriented ones like mine (Peabody is the country's first conservatory), weren't designed yet to teach students what they really needed to know as the Internet was growing. They were experimenting. But schools that emphasized popular genres like the Berklee College of Music were leaps and bounds ahead, especially with respect to getting students fluent with digital and business.

The issue now isn't really whether or not you should go to music school. It's how strong is the school you want to attend? How well will it train you to be a musician-plus today? Sure, you can go to music school, study an instrument, composing, history, and theory--and you can learn the practical stuff on your own. But you really ought to ensure that you have your sights set on the realities of our time and that the music school you choose really does teach all of its students (maybe even as a "core") the following: business (especially entrepreneurship but also management, marketing, arts administration, contract negotiation, and financial skills); technology (app development, coding, UX, digital production for all genres [hip-hop, pop, songwriting, etc.], recording, video, engineering, music and sound editing for media/entertainment); music education; writing; arts advocacy; film/media composing; and IP/copyright law, as well as perhaps public health (!).

I have long appreciated Columbia University's "core curriculum." Music schools have always had a version of their own, consisting of theory, ear-training, lessons, etc. But now they need new ones full of required courses and skills assessments--it's not just about supplementing music classes with languages and the humanities or intros to the good things that Bronstein mentions (Peabody is lucky to have him). Courses in these subjects need to be authoritative and leave students with strong skills. They need to be practical and effective. I'm asking for a lot, but that's what the world asks of you as a musician, or as any kind of creative professional. So, schools: Please partner with media companies, music publishers, tech startups, small businesses, independent artists, more community schools. Add incentives. Stress the requirements beyond music skills. Stress that these are music skills.

I studied the violin at Peabody while attending Hopkins, but I live in Hollywood now, consult on music and work as a writer, journalist, and editorial content strategist. My first job out of college was at NPR; they hired me to be a cultural producer with a specialty in digital, but getting that gig was a bit of blind luck (although I knew how to code), based mostly on the fact that I'd published music criticism in the Washington Post. I would have benefitted so much from even a few of the aforementioned extra classes. Recording was available at my school, but it was a highly specialized degree program track. So, too, music education. These things were not stressed as necessary for everyone. But they were, and they are critically necessary now. A student at a great music school shouldn't have to learn Logic in an Apple Store.

What's great, though, is that Peabody is now poised to do this as an entity owned by Johns Hopkins University, and Bronstein says he's devoted to the cause. But it should be reiterated that I graduated from college 15 years ago, and Peabody was not moving on these things nearly quickly enough, even though it had been owned by Hopkins for a while. I have great hope for future music students, but also some words of advice: Double-degree program with a university. Or, even better, something new and singular that blends two types of schools like Hopkins and Peabody more seamlessly. That's what I tried to do with my program, and eventually I only took one degree (my Arts & Sciences B.A.). The Music School as a template for higher education needs to evolve more quickly and comprehensively for the sake of all musicians as well as those who will move into other fields while using their music skills. The great music that we love will be thankful.-- Adam Baer

 

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You're (Probably Not) Ending Your Emails Wrong

Cheers, Best, Peace. Lately, a lot of people are claiming that we end our emails wrong. I get it. As a journalist and writer/editor I've emailed with usage hounds for years, seen all the permutations. To date, "Warm best" remains the creepiest/funniest email closing that I've ever received (though it came from a kind teacher with stellar writing chops, so when I'd see it, I'd just laugh, call it Affectedly Endearing).

My take on today's valedictions may be a little contrarian. Despite the well-meaning advice offered in this piece that advocates for the death of email closings, I still use "Sincerely" sparingly, and more often, "All best" (rarely just "Best," which often seems cold). "Sincerely" isn't--or, rather, doesn't have to be--"fake." It's not when I use it, and come to think of it, anything that "warms" up "best" today in our icy Bot-times seems considerate. 

That said, I'm also fine with never signing off, especially in short social or business communiques; sometimes that's the code two people follow. But it's nice to treat others the way you'd like to be treated. So if a colleague or friend goes to the trouble of signing off with a closing, I'll sign off with something. There's still a large population of people who'd consider it rude not to sign off, and I'd hate to hurt their feelings because I choose to live on Twitter. 

Maybe I'm getting warmer as I approach my personal best (best = old, right?). Maybe I see where my professor was coming from. All I know is that I also happen to like it when someone who has sent a significant "letter" signs off with something sincere--whether it's "Sincerely," "Seeya," "Stop, Collaborate, and Listen," "Cease and Decist," or "Slades," a slangy combo of "see you" and "later" that my brilliant wife invented. 

Hasn't this has gone on long enough?

Take care,

Adam Baer

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My Rare Disease, and the One Guy Who Might Erase It -- by Adam Baer

A lot of you know I've had cancer(s). That it's been tough, that I've been given the chance to write about it. And that I am lucky to have great health insurance. However, what many readers may not know, even if you've read my work, is that buried in a piece for Harper's Magazine that I published I talk about having a malignant tumor in the base of my skull (not my brain) called Chordoma. The piece makes it clear that I continue to live with it. But to make it more clear, this is one of the rarest diseases in America, and very few people, save for the generous experts who have to date saved my life with surgery and radiation and management, know what to do with chordomas, including a lot of doctors and researchers.

Of course, we're living at a time when a researcher might figure out an ever-better treatment. But a tiny portion of the population may not realize that this silent, fatal disease and its treatments force us to perpetually fight terrible side-effects (among them, the very serious condition of social isolation), and that if this is just one of the cancers you have/have had, life is never "OK," even if you do your best to make everyone around you feel like it is, lest you seem stranger, weirder, more of a reminder of everyone's mortality, a guilt-inducer. Rarer.

At any rate, the guy linked to in a few sentences is pretty much the only one of our generation, without an MD or PhD, working really hard to lead research and other programs that may help people with this specific rare disease. He and his foundation deserve serious support. His name is Josh Sommer, and his non-profit is called Chordoma Foundation. I'm ashamed that I haven't been more vocal about him and his work over the years, and that most times I don't want to read about this one of my diagnoses. But on a day like today, when I have questions about a certain drug that I need for one late effect of a previous cancer treatment, something that might make my chordoma worse, a question that cannot be answered, I feel lucky that Josh is doing what he does. This call for support is long overdue.

I hope that you read about Josh, and back his group. I learned that I have (a) chordoma because of an incidental MRI taken because of headaches. That means that many other people can have it, and that it can be less rare than we think, because who gets head MRIs for no good reason, and who looks into the heads of the deceased? I'd hate to learn of one more person suffering from this deadly problem, but it's highly possible, and that -- not any sympathy for my situation -- is why I posted this. People with chordoma are often told they may only live seven or ten years.

Some of us who've had the advanced treatments and surgeries are optimistic about living a lot longer, but we could be wrong. Josh, and the people he's working with, are not living in the vagaries; they are living and working for change in the now, and they don't feel their job is done with just one magazine article that appears to be a book review. I hope that I can help them more, and that you may decide to allocate some of your disposable income and time to help them, too. -- Adam Baer

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The Day Paul Mazursky Changed My Life (RIP)

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The Day Paul Mazursky Changed My Life (RIP)

"What are you talking to me for?" asked Mel Brooks. "You need to talk to more Jews. Younger JEWS. Call Paul Mazursky."

Brooks was speaking to me for a Rolling Stone magazine piece about funny studio-executive notes. I'd heard of Mazursky's name, knew some of his movies, but had not connected that identity to the guy who had acted in recent episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the character "Larry David" would eventually kill via stress.

Mazursky had directed various important films about romantic relationships, had shared my New York background. I didn't know if the magazine would use his quotes, but I'd thought they'd appreciate me trying to get some good stories from someone who had been around some amazing sets.

I went to Mazurksy's Beverly Drive office, told him that Mel Brooks had sent me.

"What does he want?" Mazursky asked. "Oh, right. You're the kid."

"I'm the kid," I said. I was in my late twenties.

Next, Mazursky asked me about my background. He wanted to know everything. He'd said that he'd read something about me, something about cancer that his assistant had showed him. He told me very funny stories about the author Isaac Singer. Oh, and did I have cancer?

I said that it was hard to answer that question: Does anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer ever stop having it? 

He laughed.

"My daughter," he said. "My daughter--"

Silence. Then tears.

Mazursky broke down in front of me. He bawled. His daughter also had a tumor, he'd said. She'd just been flown to a top hospital near us. He didn't know what to do. He was looking into "the guy who worked on Ted Kennedy at Duke." 

Did I have suggestions, connections? What could they do?

The phone rang. Mazursky answered, gestured at me to stay.

"Yes, OK, that's the guy," he said on the phone. Then to me: It's Jeff Berg, you know him?"

Mazursky was speaking with one of Hollywood's most powerful talent agents who had been helping him make contact with a specific surgeon. He kept me in the office while he spoke with him. Then we talked some more.

I gave him the best contacts that I had, including one top neurosurgeon at Cedars-Sinai who had graced the cover of Time magazine.

He asked me to stay. "Let's talk," he said. "I'm sorry--"

"Don't worry," I said.

Then I sat in Paul Mazursky's office for an hour while he asked me more about my various medical problems related to surviving multiple cancers, the people I knew, the doctors, the therapies. He was suffering.

Eventually, he got a call from the hospital doctor that the agent had recommended. He answered the phone but asked the guy to hold before thanking me, saying that I should come see him again.

"I have so much to tell you about my career," he said. 

I have this entire experience taped on one of my many old Olympus voice recorders that doesn't work with my Mac.

I shook Paul's hand, thanked him, reassured him that his daughter would be OK (as if I could know).

Then I went home and watched three Mazursky movies in the next couple of days.

I would not write about this experience until now, the day that I learned of Mazursky's death. His daughter had, in fact, died sometime after our meeting. But I am thankful that I got a chance to spend time with Paul, perhaps lend a hand in the moment, an ear, whatever. 

I should have called him back to check on him and his family, but I kept putting it off. He had help, I told myself.

I don't put things like that off now.

RIP, Paul Mazursky.

 

                    -- Adam Baer, @glassshallot

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A Los Angeles Autumn, Raymond Chandler-style

So many silly faux-facts in this LA Weekly listicle about Autumn in LA, so let it be said, this naturalized Angeleno born in New York longs not for "the seasons" or Autumn in New York" but rather for the winds Raymond Chandler mythologized in the following quote the Weekly is so smart to remember: "There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Ana's that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen..."

"Speak, Malady" in Harper's; "Speak, Memory" Still Rightfully Everywhere

My recent Harper's essay, "Speak Malady," in which I rock, roast, and melt at medical tourism meccas Boston, M.A., and Rochester, M.N. [PDF link] --Adam Baer

 

Medical Marijuana in LA: "Hit and Miss" in the Financial Times Magazine (FT Weekend)

 

This weekend, The Financial Times Magazine runs a hopefully informative and humorous personal essay [PDF] about my mysterious health travails and experience with LA's medical marijuana world at an crucial point in the battle to legalize cannabis in California. It's also online in web-friendly html page-format here, @ FT.com.

Naturally, I thought long and hard about what kinds of supplementary material I could offer on my blog. But we sadly only present words and stuff we can roll and/or bake into Web code  Glass Shallot. In that spirit, then let me offer a small chunk of text my editors and I had to cut at the last minute for page-space. It concerns the first dispensary I visited in Hollywood, one of the shops LA will close, where the system -- and the product -- actually worked very well. (Text below)

 

 

"More concerned with convenience than finding a boutique shop that sold Valrohna chocolate cupcakes, I first visited Druggie Christmas Tree Girl’s dispensary: a dank space above a seedy Hollywood motel, manned by a hulking Middle Eastern guy with a shaved head, wearing an elegantly dizzying Ed Hardy T-shirt. He screamed my name the way some thug had screamed at Jason Statham in an action movie I once reviewed. Naturally, I trusted him.

     “What iz dis?” the guy asked, taking my letter through a little hole in the wall that separated the real store from the waiting room.

     “It’s my doctor’s recommendation," I said.

     “I never see something like dis, yo.”

     “Well,” I said, “It’s real.”

     “I see dat, dude. But I still gotta call.”

     Yes, this sketchy drug-dealer type was calling a nationally lauded physician because of me. 

He left the window, I heard some mumbling. He reappeared minutes later.

     “You in,” he said. “He OK it.”

     “You spoke with my actual doctor, not some nurse or assistant?” I asked. 

    “Totally,” he said. “Now whaddayou want?”

     I walked into a tiny, smoky space through a cage-protected door, and he showed me some 10 canisters of fragrant weed. I asked for something to alleviate pain – nerve pain, if that meant anything?

     “Bubba Skunk,” he said. “That’s you shit.”

    “That’s my shit,” I concurred, handing over $50 for a pill bottle filled with buds.

     “How much should I use?” I asked.

    “Howev much you want, homeslice.” 

Then I left, and as I waved my new drugs around the seedy eastern side of Hollywood Boulevard, as a man in a doo-rag drove by me on a miniature bicycle powered by a tiny motor, my wife grabbed the bag and told me to hide it.

“But it’s legal,” I said.

“But this isn’t Brentwood!"

--Adam Baer

extremely original facebook-status updates from my network, posted during tonight's debate

In Chronological Order, from the most recent:

1. Mr. V "is mad that Joe the plumber just charged me 250,000 to unclug a drain."
    COMMENT: "I want his publicist. Dude's gonna be on Entourage next week."
2. MS. X "is watching the debate. thank you dvr. thank you."
2. MS. Y "thinks an angry old man sitting across the table from world leaders is NOT something I want."
3. MS. A "wouldn't call Palin a "role model" for this woman."
4. MR. C "is wondering if anyone knows a good plumber."
    COMMENT: "Plumbers do not pay taxes. They get paid in cash. And like waiters, they do not declare and pay taxes on a good portion of their independent income. Most plumbers make more than teachers, police, or fireman. So the candidates should have picked a teacher or lumberjack or barrista as an example"
5. MS. A "pro-choice doesn't mean pro-abortion, a-hole."
6. MS. F "thinks Obama is a class act."
7. MS. T "is thinking McCain doesn't know he's on split-screen."
8. MS. E "thinks McCain looks and sounds desperate"
9. MS. F " is amazed at Obama's restraint."
10. MS. F "wants to know what the Great Society was... I must not have been paying attention in American history."
11. MS. F "thinks McCain is really grasping..."
12. MS. G "is debate."
13. MR. V "is not going to hold back when watching the debates."
14. MS. J "knows her autistic kid is in good hands with Sarah because she 'understands special-needs children.'"

10 days since updating anything on Facebook, and I have to say, I feel such so clogged with  unexpressed emotion, I just don't know what to do...

Freudian slips, Up There

Here's to her Alaskan highness Freudian-slipping in the statement: "John McCain is the man to leave--LEAD..."

yvette siegert: benching books from times square with zeal

Yvette Siegert, the young and exceedingly talented Columbia instructor, poet, and New Yorker editorial staff member, has finally been given a public forum in the form of, yes, a blog. New Yorker blogs may be obvious references, but what you should know about Siegert, the author of The Book Bench, is that she's not only a voracious and reliable book-scene correspondent; she's eminently qualified to tell us the backstories behind the books while remaining highly literate in the world literature field and so damn likable that you would never go wrong following her advice about what to read. Way to go, New Yorker! You've got a blogger who will literally change the way the magazine reaches the online book world and the readers to whom it caters. See The Book Bench as soon as possible, and watch for much, much more from Shallot friend Siegert.

preparing for the rapture

In order to set up shop in this here Los Angeles, I drove across the country in well under a week a number of years ago. My only companion was my brother, and if it wasn't for his devotion to putting the heartland on our odometer in the wee hours of the morning, it might have easily taken us an extra month. Or worse, we would have had to stop in Missouri. I mention Missouri because it's hard to forget. I don't remember the road we took to pass through the state, but I do remember that before a biblical-level storm, we passed only two types of establishments, which alternated on the interstate every 20 to 30 miles. First it was a church. Then it was a pornography village. Rinse. Repeat. And by village, I mean community: As I recall, the little porn compounds included adult video stores, strip clubs, and other types of establishments for the one-stop shopping every God-fearing Missourian needs. Well, maybe I dreamed some of that up but I don't think so. And if Daniel Radosh, author of the excellent new book "Rapture Ready," has anything to say on the matter, I'm sure he'd agree that there are some major contradictions in the world of evangelical America. In fact, "Rapture" discusses the commercialization and proliferation of this idea of devoted faith as represented in pop culture. Funny? Sometimes. Scary? Sometimes. Truthful? Always. I pray that you check the book out and visit the bitchin' multimedia appendix.

us vs. them

On Peter Scoblic's blog, the prescient TNR editor and now lauded author explains the motivation behind his very important new book, "U.S. vs. Them," taken from a post he submitted to a book club from the Talking Points Memo.

But after watching way too much of HBO's "John Adams" and Showtimes's "The Tudors" (What can I say: my wife likes the historical TV; I'm not much better for my "Top Chef" and "Magnum, P.I." obsessions) I have to wonder if the history of conservatism doesn't also fuel the creative decision-making in Hollywood, from the nearly historic writers' strike to all of last year's pro-life movies (think again if you thought Juno was "alternative") to the forthcoming Stone movie "W" and even Mssr. Ironman, portrayed by the perhaps most liberal actor Hollywood has seen since, well, Charlie Chaplin.

From Scoblic's post:

"[W]hat I found was that the Bush administration's foreign policy bore a striking resemblance to the conservatism that developed after World War II under the tutelage of William F. Buckley, Jr. and the magazine he founded, National Review. Buckley and colleagues like James Burnham advanced a view of the Cold War not as a struggle between superpowers but rather as an apocalyptic struggle between good and evil..."

Buy the book for a lot more, and when you're done with the truly important issues, see if you don't find some parallels in every form of entertainment--politically related or not--that's marketed to the world. What's frightening about the Bush policies is that they aren't even original. And that they could very well continue. As for Magnum Tom Selleck sitting on the board of the NRA, well, there are some elements of conservatism I will just have to live with.

huffpo'ing immigrant health reform

And the fight rages on:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-baer/keep-kids-covered----espe_b_99213.html

VOTE FOR ME: A COMMODORE 64

 "Styles make fights — or so goes the boxing cliché. In 2008, they make presidential campaigns, too. ...Yet, according to design experts, the candidates have left a clear blueprint of their personal style — perhaps even a window into their souls — through the Web sites they have created to raise money, recruit volunteers and generally meet-and-greet online. On one thing, the experts seem to agree. The differences between hillaryclinton.com and barackobama.com can be summed up this way: Barack Obama is a Mac, and Hillary Clinton is a PC."—The New York Times, February 19, 2008

Today, I, Adam Baer, announce my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States. But I am not a Mac or a PC. I am a Commodore 64. And I mean business—but in a Donkey Kong kind of way. 

Let's start with the obvious. I am bulky and shaped like a breadbox. I'll take up real American space in the Oval Office. And I won't have the capacity for extreme detail, speedy platform changes, or impressive light shows. I'm only eight bits. Which means I'm simple. Which means I won't even know how to deceive you. Or hire people who know how to use me for their own personal gain.

You'll be able to slide old-school floppy disks into my attached drive, perhaps to play one-dimensional games. (I'm fun and by my very nature only able to see one side of things.) But you won't be able to program me to do damn near anything useful in today's world.

I'll be the kind of candidate we need: way behind. You want me to know about something happening in real time? You'll have to plug a dial-up modem into me and pray I actually connect. I'll take our country in the direction we all really want to be headed with all our accusations of plagiarism, speeches vs. action, and number-fudging: backwards.

Sure, there are emulators out there for use on the most innovative of computers. Lots of people have tried to be me, dreamed to be me. But I am the real thing: beige, heavy, slow, and full of glitches. Sometimes I just shut off. Other times, I'm your best friend: your escape into virtual worlds that look nothing like real life--finite, comforting spaces where filling up a pint of beer or swinging ever-so-slowly on a vine over a river filled with pixellated alligators, will take you away from the everyday.

Why care about global warming, education, terrorism, healthcare, the economy, foreign affairs? Pick me and we'll never have to worry again. We just won't have the capacity to do anything--bad or good. Unless you consider procrastinating progress. Because I'm great at procrastinating. I think I would have invented it if I had been given the capacity to process that kind of conceptual stuff.

Just draw the blinds, spin some Supertramp, and we'll have the best time together. Because that's what this country really requires: some 1980s basement fun, right? Hey, I won't even tell if you choose to smoke up a little in front of me or talk dirty to your girlfriend. I have no capacity to speak, except in drones! I keep things BASIC--literally.

Sure, I like music, but I'm not going to offer you catchy campaign orations or songs like the others. I'm just going to blip and bleep. I'm literally going to offer soundbytes and remain proud of them. 

Plus, I'm not too portable, so it's going to be hard for me to travel. Which means I'll keep our country out of trouble overseas. I'll just stay put. You may not even see me out and about in your country. I'm used to being alone, it's OK.

What's more, I don't have any special interests. The people who make me are nowhere close to as powerful as those Mac and PC CEOs. I think the people who make me may even be dead. So there you go. I'm an orphan. No important family behind me running their own agenda, no corporate tie-ins. But I could be wrong. I can't think. No possibilities here for artificial intelligence—what, you thought the real kind was available elsewhere?

More impressive, I think, is that I didn't invent the Internet. In fact, I don't even know how to use it—and I don't claim to know anything about that "Web 2.0."

But I am accessible. Want to get in touch with me? Just contact me over your BBS. We'll trade a few words, and you'll have better communication with your commander in chief than you will have ever dreamed.

Most important, however, I….Sorry, DISK ERROR. That's going to happen if you vote for me, I guess.

But wouldn't you rather have a president that can't hide his or her mistakes? With me, there are no secrets. No fancy packaging. No calming fonts or manipulative creative spins. No "thinnovation" or hidden memory card readers. No celebrity endorsements or product placement. No invisible signals permeating my body, connecting me to streams of information sent via WiFi or 3g networks I can use for my own attempt at world domination.

I just don't have an opinion on damn near anything--real, phony, or undeveloped and ever-changing. Feed information to me, and I'll spit out some real (if terribly uncomplicated) results. They might be correct, they might not be.  The process might make a lot of noise and take a long time. But it will be pure, honest interfacing.

As for my web site, well, you're lookin' at it. A note sent to some magazine writer's blog. A note I could have just printed out on my dot-matrix friend over there, but that I also thought it would be wise to share with someone a little more advanced, just this one time.

I'm the form-meets-dysfunction autopilot you're secretly looking for with all your gripes about politicians: unreliably safe, eminently limited, unable even to comprehend anything that isn't based in fact or arcane code. Just plug me in and see what happens. You won't regret it. And won't that be a change.

Obama's Concern for Chronics

[Cross-published at The Huffington Post]

NOTE: See addendum below this piece to as a response to HuffPo commenters.

IN A RECENT New York Times piece, Paul Krugman, one of my favorite columnists, explains how the numbers can't deny that Hillary's health plan is better than Obama's. But what "better" means here is relative even when stats and dollars are an issue. The idea is that Hillary's plan calls for a mandate and will result in more coverage dollars per person. You can't argue the logic of strong economic research. But what excites me about Obama is his less-than-bright-lining look at things. He's got a realistic hold on the healthcare crisis even if his plan is less likely to insure everyone immediately.

More powerful, he's also clearly interested in eliminating waste that contributes to hard-to-explain hardships for sick people. And from the standpoint of someone somewhat young with chronic health problems in the wake of serious cancer, it was damn-near J.F.K.-inspiring to hear him discuss healthcare in the past by leading with talks about insured Americans who had survived cancer but now face secondary problems and an endless onslaught of salary-zapping bills.

To be sure, getting everyone insured is of paramount importance. But so is realistically looking at how one can make that happen over a span of time so that it happens correctly in the nuanced way that it should. Does Obama have specific ideas for how to stop hospital and doctor billing fraud? For how to get cancer survivors better quality of life as they age and new bizarre conditions come their ways because of the toxic chemicals and treatments they were forced to endure to be able to vote in this election? I haven't exactly heard them. But if there's one thing that keeps people going after they've been very sick and now have uncertain futures, it's hope. And Obama gives me, a survivor of an autologous stem-cell transplant for pediatric lymphoma, hope.

Hillary? I just wouldn't trust her looking out for me at the infusion center if there was another chance for her to win some more powerful support from someone across the street. I wouldn't look to her for thoughtful looks at the small problems facing patients double-billed by hospitals, giant corporations, in fact, who often charge $150 facility (or in some cases, emergency room) fees in addition to outrageous doctor fees just because a physician chooses to practice inside a hospital-owned professional building a few blocks from the actual hospital building--what I call the branding-inspired Mayo Clinic model.

What's become evident, however, is that the sufferers and survivors of chronic diseases in America should band together to endorse a candidate based on the specific issues of getting and keeping not-just-OK-but-excellent insurance after a war has been waged against our bodies. Medicare, for instance, recently stopped paying out for some instances of immune deficiency treatments like intravenous immunoglobulins (which is also used to treat auto-immune diseases affecting the nerves, muscles, and joints, to say nothing of its promise for Alzheimer's and other conditions). Someone needs to ask the candidates about this.

Universal health care is vital. But if some of us devoted to it aren't alive—or well enough—to fight for it as the years pass, voting for someone's broad promise of more coverage dollars for everyone when they may not really care about the details for those sick people lucky enough to already have insurance isn't going to help. If there's one thing sick people know, it's that there are a hundred questions to be answered and solved after deciding on a treatment plan.

There's a way to live more healthfully on the left side with insurance – and that doesn't mean just swallowing our severe insurance and medical care issues because the rest of the country isn't insured. Let's look at the problem in a complex, multi-angled manner, and not jump to the flashiest, sexiest solution just yet.

When flight attendants tell you to make sure your air mask is secured before you help others with theirs in the event of an emergency, it's about not being self-interested or conservative. It's about being smart. And while Obama's thoughts about healthcare may seem like an immediately smaller and less comprehensive band-aid for the country's uninsured, they may also be the most realistic and nuanced on the ticket because they come from someone who sees that this problem is a lot larger and more intricate than it seems.

---

Response to HuffPo commenters:

Don't teach me about the value of hope vs. the value of insurance. I know it all too well. But I also know it matters who's holding the cards. And it's never you as the patient. So in this case hope matters. Because I simply wouldn't trust Hillary holding the cards that concern my medical treatments--what's allowed, what procedures, what payouts, when. Obama has shown concern not just for universal health coverage but for a growing population in America: the chronically ill, the survivors who now face mysterious secondary conditions (and secondary can mean 5 or 6 or 12 of them). So to anyone who doesn't understand the above piece, let me say it clearly: More coverage dollars and an immediate quick-fix mandate doesn't mean jack if it means that the person in control won't necessarily grasp or care about the nuances involved in high-level medical treatments once plans are put into place. Obama has shown the most important quality here: human concern. My biggest nightmare is waking up to find Hillary with her hands around some patient's IV, discussing the economic worth and political value of his or her treatment with an insurance company.

aclu does it for the thrill of privacy

[Cross-published at The Huffington Post ]

Today the AP reports the ACLU is arguing that all those adventuresome spirits who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy. Public Bathrooms! And this is the ACLU fighting on behalf of Sen. Larry Craig. Call me crazy--or just a politician: But it's not like this wacko news is coming from the Scientology Celebrity Centre or Dr. Phil. It's coming from the ACLU. (While I know the organization isn't officially a Democratic one, c'mon.) Larry Craig needs the ACLU's help? Who's steering the ship these days?

The last time I had sex in a public bathroom—be nice, and allow a humble writer this wet-and-wild, oh-so-sanitary dream—I had no belief that my act was private. That's why I had sex in the bathroom. It's the trill of the public space that drives me and my multiple random partners. I can't speak for Craig, though. As if trying to withdraw a guilty plea in a case like this isn't silly enough? I hardly think public sex is disorderly conduct as defined by the American legal system. It's straight-up disorderly but in the more attractive, entropic kind of way. Still, them's the rules in this here country.

The point concerns privacy. Privacy isn't provided where we need it most: in the HIPAA-protected halls of our finest hospitals as doctors and nurses and health workers speak patients' names and diagnoses aloud before they render it incredibly difficult for you to get your own records—all due to "privacy." When I log onto my e-mail account, I see adds related to the subjects I've written about; I know bots aren't human—though I do suspect they're more human than some of us. Still, it's nice to know there's no privacy in e-mail. Or snail mail: More than a few letters in the past few months have arrived at my home opened and clearly fondled. I know it's exciting to read about what I owe my dentist's office--or to see a paltry check from a low-paying magazine--if not to steal one!--but at least have the decency to seal the thing back up empty.

Furthermore, I can't so much as go somewhere without the GPS chip in my cellphone—I bought it thinking it'd help me get somewhere quicker and easier—telling some large governmental agency where I am. (I guess it will save me if I go into the wild--but it will also tell them when I'm in public bathrooms having my sex.) Even this blog post will refer to an IP address that will let all of you know I'm sitting on my couch in Southern California. Thankfully, there's no record of what I'm watching on cable--wait, wrong again.

But fortunately, what I had for breakfast *is* private. It's my personal business if I should choose to eat three whole eggs and cheese when the men's magazine I write for tells me under my byline to eat egg whites. But if I buy those egg whites in a restaurant, where they take my credit card number—some still exist where they leave the full number on your receipt, as we all know—I've clearly given up my right to privacy.

And let me just tell you: sometimes I eat naughtier food than just three eggs. Sometimes I get fries. And sausage. And shakes. So why in [insert divine being here]'s name should a senator—or anyone—get a right to privacy in a bathroom where they have chosen to have sex? And why should the ACLU lobby on this person's behalf when he contrasts so clearly to the issues for which they used to stand?

I don't have the answers. But I will not stop asking the questions. Unlike Tom Cruise in his recent Scientology video, I don't "know." In fact, it seems I just know less and less every day. And I'm proud to admit that in public.

A New Definition of Eco-Conscious

There was a time when Umberto Eco meant the world to me. I was a young college student, flooded with the "brilliance" of the postmodernists, and eager to lap it up. But I always found it sort of funny, all this meta-thinking about meta-thinking, all these linguistic symbolisms and academizing of pop culture. I even remember a friend and I mocking the titles of our new university classes: "Towards realizing deconstructionist comprehensions of the French fry's representation in popular culture as a symbol of both deliciousness and death." '"The Popular Semiotics of "Is": "To be" in our political theater." You get the idea.

At any rate, Umberto Eco was often our voice of reason. He took the postmodern movement somewhere sensible. He made us laugh, he laughed at himself, told great tales, and he qualified what soon became a rampant nonsense-parade.

So I wanted to like his new book: "Turning Back the Clock: Hot wars and Media Populism." That's why I reviewed it in today's S.F. Chronicle Book Review. But things didn't go exactly as planned.

Have a read:  "Eco takes critical look at war, Mel Gibson in 'Turning Back'," San Francisco Chronicle, December 16, 2007

more on the wga, from a wga wannabe

Yesterday, after reading Alec Baldwin's hilarious and somewhat brilliant HuffPo rant about how writers should create a Web site to out the worst production executives--yes, I read other blogs, but it's hard to hang out in Hollywood without people sending you HuffPost rants about the WGA all day long--I had lunch with a good friend and unemployed WGA member. (And yes, this is the sort of writer who should be employed: he's hilarious and smart; aware of the world around him; he won't create another "Yes, Dear"; and he still believes in his art even though he's met the worst of the worst at the most popular of America's TV writers' rooms.) Eventually, our malcontentedness resulted in a discussion about the state of the Union--in LA, that means WGA, wouldn't you know--and really, how could we avoid it? Our thoughts? How: A) What's probably going to happen if things don't settle down is that the studios will lure the writers with kids and houses back to work as scabs (10 showrunners already returned to work, though the WGA won't name them--what solidarity!), and then create a new studio-based union with the help of ten bigwig writers--say, the Apatows of the world--who will likely receive massive deals that eclipse whatever they already have to start an entirely new business model with far less protection for writers than what existed before. Abysmal idea, yes? What I wondered, though, was why the media companies don't just cut the fat during all this nonsense: Do the D-girls and boys with USC B.A.'s making $200K a year really help out other than just running their Blackberry batteries dead and overcharging their expense accounts at Katsuya? Do they even have business degrees from schools that teach innovation? And can't the media business be taught about as easily as, say, manicuring? One thing's for sure: talent can't be bought by a grad school degree or $3 million development deal. Yes, I'm aware that NBC doesn't matter at all to GE--the cash the corporate behemoth brings in from scud missiles and CT scanners, to say nothing of money lending and other strategies, renders the profit that NBC might make for them as less-than-tiny. But why not step in and realize that they can improve that albeit tiny profit, not by screwing writers out of their mortgages, but by sending their moron-robot execs back to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, where they probably wouldn't have ever made it to assistant manager to begin with? Look: Half of Hollywood's writers will always be unemployed. That's the way high-stakes career choices work. But now that the WGA is going to force all writers--even the unemployed--to picket for 20 hours a week (and track said writers with little plastic cards they will have to swipe! *[let's forget for the moment, that one or two of these writers might actually need those 20 hours to work at, say, Home Depot, to afford egregious union dues and salary percentages for all this brilliant "protection"]--why doesn't GE and AOL Time Warner and the Sumner Redstones of the land make a statement by giving these creatives a chance to make some money while cutting the fat in their own TV exec staffs? Let the D-people go to real jobs and then let's see what they think about being an unemployed writer. What's funnier--funnier, scarier, what's the difference today?--is that these D-people don't even realize how tenuous their jobs are--they're happy to look down on the writers, for the most part, and they don't even get that their qualities--being able to crunch numbers and make reservations at Providence--are far less valuable than creativity. Sure, the creativity that all these writers apparently have hasn't produced much in recent years--but that's because no one's letting them do anything interesting, and all the young innovators can't get meetings with good agents who don't specialize in YouTube or FunnyorDie development (such a worthwhile endeavor). So, I summarize: The producers are worthless; the media companies are blind; the WGA is straight-up rude to its high-paying members; and the writers are looking for ways to pay the bills, because for as many $200K writers I know, there are equal amounts of $20K writers holding onto brilliant pilot and feature scripts that would make Charlie Kaufman look like an NYU film-school freshman. What's the answer?  Write for magazines until the WGA wises up that we deserve representation, too! At least we currently have no union overlords dying to get a piece of our paychecks. For the moment...

Why Glass Shallot?
Because we don't kowtow to anyone--even a gentle old man named Sumner--who invites us to lunch at subpar Ventura Blvd. sushi purveyors.

would you like a little jew in you?

I think it was John Stewart (did you know his real last name: Leibowitz?) speaking to a supermodel years ago on MTV when I first heard the joke. The model discussed her ethnic background: she had "a little Native American in her," some Indian, some Scottish, some Brazilian. Stewart then asked her if she had a little Jew in her. The model said no. Stewart countered: Would you like to?

It was a funny moment, and it was a joke that Stewart could make, being Jewish, or at least of Jewish heritage. I, too, am Jewish in that it's my cultural makeup. I'm agnostic but still identify as a Jew because it's a culture even if it's not one specific race. (Plus, I'm wholly Ashkenazi, and we have our own genetic diseases, which I consider a rule for determining whether or not you belong to a race or ethnicity. If you're at risk for something that can kill you because of inbreeding that led to you having one cultural makeup, well, welcome to the "having a race" club. Or something.)

But I digress. Recently, while writing a story about direct e-mail publicity and marketing, I took notice of an e-mail I frequently receive from a PR firm representing Nextbook.org, a great magazine concerning Jewish culture. I respect this publication but don't know how they found my address. Perhaps it's because I'm a writer or blogger, and they just have a good PR team that looks for coverage under many stones (including blogs where the writer might post schmaltz recipes). That's probably the case. But I also have Jewish friends who receive notices from synagogues when they move to new cities. How do congregations know when new Jews move to town? Odd.

As for Jew-on-Jew humor, I'm usually in favor of it, especially from purveyors who share a somewhat common sense of gravitas: Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, even Sacha Baron Cohen (who definitely isn't anti-Semitic by acting as an anti-Semite and showing scenes of people in America offering glimpses of their fucked-up social views). I have never felt that these jokes about Jewish life are anti-Semitic, though some of the more conservative Jews definitely get cranky about them. In fact, I make fun of what being Jewish in 2007 can be like, too--for instance, needing to eat salted cured meat on a regular basis because my body chemistry requires it to produce a specific kind of irony-fuel.  Or the fact that I'm glad I didn't marry another Ashkenazi, so my children might actually have good musculature. You get my point.

One team of writers and directors who cross the line in my opinion, however, have a new biopic-spoof movie coming out soon about a Johnny Cash-like character. I'm not allowed to discuss the film before its release, so say the PR people. But I have to say something without mentioning it, and I'm sure you'll put the pieces together.

lessons learned

I have not written about the James Kim travel tragedy yet, but I was proud to be a part of his writers' community and had happily met him at conferences full of life-sucking journos who never acknowledged just how fun even a boring day of work could be. Needless to say, when James was reported missing, I was shocked and became passionate about trying to help. When he was found the way he was found, on the day he was found, I was aghast. His father has now written a very important op-ed in the Washington Post. I think that instead of focusing on the press-conference-heavy day-before of the annual Consumer Electronics Show, the tech community, for one, should read this piece, and take steps to help James's father in his mission. He's right: It's abominable that James is gone, and he could have been saved were it not for people who don't do their jobs right and use the significant advances already available. Forget about new plasmas and MP3 players for a day, and read this: The Lessons in My Son's Death. [via Beef] P.S. It wasn't widely discussed but Elliot Von Buskirk's remembrance of his friend really opened up this discourse about how America can mess something like this sort of a rescue up. He wrote: "James' body was found Wednesday by one of four helicopters paid for by the family. Although some rescuers had reported seeing a flash of light near him from their helicopter, by the time they arrived at the location, it was too late. I could go on and on about the tragedy of someone so well-loved being found dead after being missing for eleven days, with a full-fledged search not starting until about a week after the Kim family went missing, as well as the fact that the family had to fund the helicopters themselves, but that's not the point right now." Elliot was right. At the time. However, now that a month has passed, we must mobilize to make sure this sort of thing never happens to a domestic traveler again. In the meantime, give to the Kim family.

new york times glosses up crazy david lynch

If enlightenment and, well, Bliss, overtook you as you read this weekend's New York Times story on David Lynch and his "shockingly peaceful" life as a proponent of Transcendental Meditation, I'm sorry to say that the puff piece completely missed the mark on this extraordinarily creepy marriage. Instead, it chose to gloss over the Absolutely Cultyclimate of Mr. Lynch's attempt to snatch the brains of  young people--especially those with means--who just perpetually want to learn a little about their favorite movies. Want a trustworthy first-person account of Inland Empire's finest and the cool buddies he's mind-melded with over at the Maharishi's? If world peace is the only thing driving David Lynch, Tom Cruise is, in fact, my long lost alien Messiah.

You read it here first:  Lynch Mob.

Celebritizing the Africa Crusade

After seeing Blood Diamond recently--how happy I was to learn about this film's release during the year that I would once and for all purchase an engagement ring--I felt like a number of other film critics: I saw how Jennifer Connelly's poorly drawn, do-gooding journalist character only cementedthe media's commitment to Africa but went wrong--why not show a journalist with a little less self-righteousness and hence paint the true picture I'm shown from foreign correspondent friends? But more interesting to me was this recent and daring Walrus article about the Hollywood Africa connection. Charity comes in many forms. Often from Canada! (In that spirit, check out Eric Grossberg's conflict-free diamond business, Brilliant Earth.)

guess i'm not rich enough to read (or write for) the ny times

So since according to today's NYT Magazine, the  "the rest of us" make $130K (and you know who you are, because I sure as hell don't), we would be socially responsible to give $13K in charity in order to make a dent in the global poverty problem. Beautiful. If only the shmucky people who made this graphic after reading Peter Singer's frighteningly humane article understood that too many people who read their magazine don't fit these humble financial profiles. Did you ever think that maybe some middle class people read the paper? I write for the NYT sometimes and often keep my mouth shut about problems I have with certain articles. (You think getting blacklisted doesn't happen anymore? Ha.) But this is just plain silly--and insulting. I don't buy the paper--I buy it online--because of the cost, not because I don't like holding newsprint in my hand (I do). Maybe, then, as this article's author and producers would have it, the NYT is just too rich for my blood, even when it's free. (Oh, by the way: DO you know how much the country's best newspaper pays for short tech articles? $75. BEFORE TAXES. That's certainly in line with their $132K to $13K ratio. Guess us freelancers just need to pitch more and work even harder. Yeah, that's the way to join the upper echelon and live charitable, poverty-reducing lives.) [P.S. Yes, I know the NYT can ask me to take down their graphic, but hey, it was just so powerful, so brilliant, I couldn't help but try to expand its reach. Maybe, though, there should have been a graphic for the majority of people I know who read the NYT--extremely charitable people who make far less than $132K. I'm all for encouraging greedy rich people to give, but this image is just too exclusionary and too much a sign of who the Times sees as their most important readers to leave me with a happy taste in my mouth this holiday season.]

everbody hates patricia

First, Patricia Heaton, supermarket scab (as in she led the revolt against the supermarket workers that made my neighborhood Albertson's even suckier), showed up on TV spewing right-wing evil. Now, she's trying to thwart stem-cell research. Patricia, do you even realize that you were probably the most replaceable actress on the show that will support you for the rest of your life? I guess knowing you don't make an impact in the workplace must force you to stand up for your political beliefs, even if they're stupid. But at least we know what we're dealing with, right? (Sorry, Raymond fans.)

[via Bodyhack]

little by little

I don't know how (alcohol? smack? that drinking chocolate they sell at Whole Foods?) Glassshallot compatriot Sacha Zimmerman managed to get both Bill Clinton and George Bush V1.0 to write forwards to her new Reader's Digest book, "For America: Simple Things You Can Do To Make The Country Better," but onion-skins off to her. Sacha's written "a call to action,volunteerism, and passion in a country where citizens are the life blood of a prosperous nation--not politicians and not celebrities." I might disagree with her on one point. Sacha: Don't tell me Beyonce isn't the vital, nutrient-rich plasma of that sexy hematologic soup called Hot U.S.A. Red.

advice i need to take

Glass Shallot friend and writer extraordinaire Hannah Wallace published this uncommonly  enlightening review of Nina Planck's "Real Food: What To Eat and Why" in the LA Times Health section a few weeks ago. Did you see it? The LAT Health section is so on the ball these days that a doctor I just saw in the Bronx said he never misses a page. We here at the Shallot are very glad Hannah's helping them in their plight--especially on the issue of how industrial food will be the end of us. Do read the review when you can: Apparently, drum roll, lard is good for you. (And no, my writing this has nothing to do with my perhaps self-destructive love for the Bacon of the Month Club [p.s. I only give memberships as gifts to unflinching carnivores these days]).

[p.p.s. Nina Planck's Web site is worth a visit.]

Mother Nature's Son

I've got an op-ed in today's LA Times about the Abraham Cherrix case. (You can read it below by scrolling past the explanatory pre- or post-text and  clicking on the post-continuation).
 

It was an honor to write, but I should reiterate and/or expand upon a few things where I have the space.

1. I do, of course, realize that the Hoxsey Herbal method has been proven ineffective by many. Still, I view the issues in this case--that any government can control how a family treats a mature, young man's body, and that said young man may be forced to call the county his parent--absolutely worth serious discussion. Having gone through chemo, I do not, as a rule, view Cherrix's parents as trying to help their son euthanize himself. And neglect? Well, I definitely believe in many of the chemotherapeutical treatments available--and certainly, the main Hodgkins protocols have proven themselves time and again--but once more, we are all allowed to make choices. And with parental consent, an articulate 16-year-old  may certainly choose another path without governmental intervention. This is America.

2. I did, in fact, receive a stem-cell bone marrow transplant, and this treatment, along with radiation, did send my Hodgkins into what I hope will be a permanent remission (so far, so good after nearly 10 years). However, the stem-cell transplant I received is what's called an "autologous" stem-cell bone marrow transplant. What that means is that my doctor extracted baby cells from my blood in a process called aphoresis, and then infused them after high-dose chemo knocked my blood cell counts down to zero. The important fact being that these were my stem cells, and that this isn't the sort of stem-cell therapy that may be available if we can help overturn George Bush's very stupid recent decision.

That said, transplants like mine are solid proof that keeping those controversial stem-cells alive will likely cure many diseases. I'm a walking piece of evidence.

Now you may be thinking: Great, Adam, but how then can you make a case for Mr. Cherrix and his family? Well, here's how: I didn't say that chemo wouldn't or doesn't work. All I said is that the Cherrixes should be able to choose the therapies they believe in. And hell, the kid already went through chemo. It's not like the people called Western medicine stupid from the get-go and asked their kid to munch on basil, singin' everything's gonna be alright. Telling a young adult what medicine (s)he needs need to take, and then legally disowning him or her  (even 50%) from his or her parents, is inane -- and no less serious than telling a woman she doesn't have the right to choose.

3. I love my parents, and do not harbor any resentment about medical choices made in my past. But it needed to be mentioned that these decisions were made for me as a young man with Hodgkins. And that the treatments chosen come with some of their own long-term effects. Just like the disease. Just like marijuana. Hell, just like tomato sauce.

4. To answer some reader and friend/colleague questions: I am gettin' by in spite of all the doctor visits and strange effects. I am aware of probiotics, enzymes, etc. And I am behind mind-body and Eastern medicine. I actually treat myself with many alternative therapies--including exercise and healthy eating-- in concert with Western medicine. Just in case that wasn't clear.

5. My long-time oncologist is a wonderful man and doctor, and the original version of my article contained a line about how he's become a friend and mentor I trust deeply. I also value many other doctors who have helped me and continue to try to help me.

6. Thanks for reading, and if you're new to this blog, please stay tuned for more opinions on health, politics, culture, as well as personal tales of comedy, irony, triumph, self-discovery, and ocassionally, a little hardship.

scoring, not settling:jan kaczmarek in an l.a. times discussion with adam baer

Meeting film composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, who won the Oscar for "Finding Neverland" and is building Poland's equivalent of Sundance, it became evident to me just how much personality has to do with success in a creative endeavor. You can be the most inventive, pioneering artist, but if you don't like to breathe, look at the world, play, improvise, jump into situations and see how you can fit into them, you're definitely missing something. Jan's interview was also unique for me, because there was no hurry. I've conducted interviews with other people in which both parties enjoy the conversation and it doesn't feel rushed. But this conversation was perhaps one of the most natural and limitless. If, in fact, I hadn't had to run home and write the piece, we might have spoken longer. Jan's directors  echo this sentiment. They told me they like to work with him because he's always happy to open another door and see where it takes him. Read the LA Times profile from this Sunday's Calendar section--it's copied as text after the jump if the LAT link doesn't work--and see how a talented film composer can weather Hollywood politicking and actually stay true to the vision that brought him here.

kickin' the drugs: suddenly not so smart

In the last two days, I have read two stories about seemingly upstanding people going bonkers for having gone off their drugs. And by drugs, I mean anti-depressants. And by mentioning this, I am NOT, please let it be said, on the side of Scientological freaks who think anti-depressants are the work of the devil.  Still, it's an interesting story: First Peter Braunstein, the WWD journalist who sexually tortured an innocent woman and then led cops on a national chase, claims that he committed his crime for having kicked his Prozac habit after he lost his insurance (I do not have sympathy for this man, please let it be said again, but this is what he's claiming). And now comes the story of otherwise sane and wealthy Jeff Reardon, former star relief pitcher and a mainstay in my1980s  baseball card collection, who apparently lost his son last year, stopped his medication recently, and wound up robbing a jewelry store. What's going on here? I have to wonder as I'm facing my own potential health insurance crisis. Thankfully, there's no concern of having to find a way to keep taking some kind of drug. But what if there was one? Would I go off the deep end and rob or abuse someone? Not likely, of course. But the Reardon story does seem unusually bizarre, and I can only wonder that since all crazy movements like these begin in threes, who our lucky third famous deviant med-kicker-turned-criminal will be. If only someone could find some L.Ron-modeling big-flick action star's old, nasty bag of Paxil and charge him with kidnapping that poor young thing  he has clearly  zombified. Dare to dream...

Happy Holidays from Los Feliz Shallot

Lovell Health House by Richard Neutra, 1928. Shot in Los Feliz, CA;  December, 2005.

Los Feliz Hills. Shot in November, 2005.

Ennis-Brown House by Frank Lloyd Wright, 1942. Shot in Los Feliz, CA; November 2005.

Stefani's Sunset. Shot in Los Feliz, CA; December 2005.

grey lady propositioned

Jonathan Alter's piece on how Bush summoned the NYT top brass down to D.C. to discourage the paper for running with their Snoopgate story. It is stories like this that push me towards the rap escapism of Chris Parnell. Tru dat.

working class hero

As if you don't read the local newspaper, let us remind you that John Lennon was killed 25 years ago today. BBC's Radio 4 has a well-balanced Internet tribute with lots of audio, including Lennon's 1970 interview with Jann Wenner. Speaking of JSW, Rolling Stone's "Lennon Lives Forever" site features the same file as a podcast, as well as an interview with Pete Hamill and lovely writings by Mikhal Gilmore. NPR's Steve Inskeep has a Morning Edition remembrance of a Lennon Dick Cavett show appearance (eh). My peeps  over at GQ's Men.Style.com choose to remember JL for his "delightful acerbic-bastardness" (cool, but I'm not diggin' y'all calling his music "spotty"). You can see video of live performances of "Imagine" and "Jealous Guy" at MTV.com. Fordham's WFUV has special Lennon-audio features online all day. And I'll just offer my tribute with a reposting of the following words:

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be

the anxiety pipeline

For me, taking in "Syriana," wasn't a pleasant experience. That's not because I don't support George Clooney and his film's message (I do). That's not because I found the film weak (I didn't: I agree wholeheartedly with David Denby's assertion that it's "outrageously complicated" and feel as if the scenes are nastily curt and the product of an Internet-age screenwriter but that in the end, things come together, the camerawork and acting impresses, and I buy the simultaneity.) Nor was the movie unpleasant simply for broaching subject matter I don't like to think about (I think about this subject matter often, which, I hope, explains my need for comedy). "Syriana" was unpleasant, though not in the redemptive way, because I felt as if its form, while impressively emblematic of the blogosphere and current media landscape, was too manipulative for a viewer raised on multi-tasking, Web site links, and too many cable channels. In "Traffic," Stephen Gaghan's multiple drug-trade stories seemed better connected and fleshed out. The threads were strong, they didn't reek of anomie or seek to cause chest pains in its viewers. In "Syriana," the stories and scenes felt more than nastily curt; they felt random and explosive like dirty bombs that explode in distant locations killing innocent people. To be sure, I'm a fan of using form to communicate messages in a narrative. And this technique, of jumping from one semi-related story to another in a film over the expanse of oceans and cultures, gets right to the perimeter, if not to the heart, of many problems plaguing our world. But  "Syriana" left me with free-floating anxiety lacking specific cause when it should have left me with concern for its subject matter. It might have worked differently, of course, for someone who isn't already concerned with its subject matter, and it should, certainly, be seen by people who don't delve into pop culture for reasons of fun and escape. Still, I felt like the script needed better connections, more shape and depth to its individual stories, and less of a suicide bomber's  technique. Hence, the most gripping portion of the movie for me: 10 seconds of Clooney driving across the desert, while Alexandre Desplat's minimalist score sang; the music of the moment--playing urgently repetitive cells beneath long, searching melodic cries--speaking to the historic, conflicted pain pulsing in the ground. Music that tied together much more than a script that, for all its ambition, drama, and responsible urgency, could.

P.S. Desplat also wrote the music for "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" -- my favorite crazy pianist film of the year.
P.P.S. The line I stood in at L.A.'s Grove mall to get into the movie was impressively long. This as Range Rover after Range Rover dumped more happy buyers into the outdoor consumer paradise than I had ever seen at the site.
P.P.P.S. In response to numerous queries, I am not related to Robert Baer or Max Baer, for that matter.

the holiday blues

Embarassingly, I hadn't known about buyblue.org until Alex Ross told me about it, but now that I'm up to speed, I have to ask y'all: Have you checked out the site's Blue Christmas 2005 list? It's nice to know how to vote intelligently with your wallet--I'll just ignore that a well-meaning, responsible list of gift sellers isn't referred to as a "Holiday" list in this Chrisma-Chana-Kwanzakkah world--but I do think the list is interesting for another few reasons. Take the question of why red-seeming XM is the list's preferred satellite radio company? Isn't Sirius, with its far more blue-flavored programming, Mel Karmazin-steered administriation and Howard Sternified free-speech politics enough to warrant a look at another network? Or is all that blue behavior a facade? Here's the answer (for now). And what of the fact that nearly all Yankee Candle-lighting, Southern Comfort-drinking right-wingers I know swathe themselves in threads spun by Ralph Lauren and Christian Dior? If only they knew...And how about Michael Jordan-endorsed Nike's new political balance? Think Tiger, Kobe, and skater extraordinaire Paul Rodriguez care who's writing their checks? Happy "winter festival" shopping!

C.I.Animals

And you thought being snubbed by Lindsey Lohan -- or worse, The National Book Awards -- was harsh. A new look at C.I.A. Interrogation Strategies.

[thanks, Martin]

discovery

Radar uncovers Judy Miller's mobbed-up background. We can't blame everything on Fredo.

Lynch Mob

David Lynch has frightened the living hell out of me again. This time, though, his tool isn’t a crazed movie monster-man living behind a Hollywood dumpster. No, David Lynch is terrifying in real life. Possibly simple and a lot less interesting than any of us ever thought, or possibly maniacal and as up to no good as those on the good ship Sea Org. Or so his appearance at USC last night made clear.

David Lynch has started his own foundation dedicated to raising $7 billion so he can make transcendental meditation (TM) available for students, and help build in Washington, D.C. a university for world peace. Sounds pretty evil, right? Well, that’s the point. On the surface it sounds completely beautiful, if the work of a wackadoo -- something only a right-wing conservative would have the guts to criticize (God forbid there exist some sensible, conformity hating democrats who feel raped by any organization that tries to control their minds).

Surprise: There is nothing wrong with meditation, yoga, expanding one’s consciousness, and promoting peace. There is nothing wrong with emphasizing our global connections to each other (except for the fact that all that lack of hate will result in movies that bore us to death). And Lynch is clearly as right as ever, as he said to a hall full of cultish filmschool followers: George Bush could stand to do a little meditation. For all of the institutions we have erected to explicitly produce soldiers, we should devote some to creating peacemakers. Um, ok.

But David Lynch, and his colleagues, including this man and this man (and please visit the Web site for their Maharishi University of Management to listen to their unusually creepy podcasts), aren’t exactly going about their agenda the way qualitative yogis or emotionally mature and centered cultural leaders with smart political ideas should. No, the team--which is traveling around the country’s richest universities and hoodwinking students with bad neurological science to promote the TM practiced by the same Maharishi who both taught and swindled the Beatles (according to the Beatles!)--is using Lynch's already cultish following to build what seems like plans for a cult. A band of calm young meditators with money who will do (and fund) anything he wants. Like, for instance, sending Mssr. Hagelin (linked to above) to the White House as a devoted instrument of the Maharishi. I know that would never happen (and that it would still probably be an improvement), but still.

Last night’s event went like this: David Lynch, in all his black-suited glory, appeared with the caveat that he doesn’t like to speak in public (a fact that proved completely untrue as the night wore on), and then proceeded to solicit questions from the audience for a presentation that on paper should have been meticulously planned out. Well, guess what? It was meticulously planned out. People seemed to be stationed in the audience to ask the man specific questions (the first one, on his feeling about the “light in Los Angeles”).

He then went on to construct numerous circular sentences that didn’t answer specific questions about how to meditate, or why money is required to do so. Terms and phrases he threw out over and over without further clarification included: “diving in,” “pure consciousness,” “bliss consciousness,” “being,” etc. It was like speaking to my yoga teacher in Topanga Canyon. Which is fine. Bring on the creativity-enhancing Bodi Tree bliss. The problem, though, is that all this nonsense didn’t elucidate Lynch's intentions: it didn’t explain his exact plans for the $7 billion (why is meditation so expensive to provide?), or why he was organizing a presentation that felt like a first date at the Scientology Celebrity Center, or how he met these “scientists” (including Hagelin, the super-string theorist) he works with, or anything about ayurvedic medicine, or how he came to partner with all these other “doctors,” or, or. OR!

Lest we forget, the event was also obviously being filmed and photographed by people who could have been Lynch’s staff, smiling stage-bound onlookers who looked like they had focused on numerous audience members for large amounts of time as the man spoke (images of Ingmar Bergman's Magic Flute, in which audience shots cut from one to another, were impossible to ignore).

Was this all a stunt? Part of a forthcoming film? A giant performance art project Lynch will continue to perform until the purple box known as his life is closed for good?

The next segment of the evening nearly (just nearly) convinced me of that conjecture. I default to Aaron Swartz’s blog for a more detailed explanation of the “scientific” portion of the presentation, in which Hagelin described modern physics and jumped abruptly into how meditation can be used to keep stress and crime levels down (again, surprise). This before Dr. Fred Travis did an EEG on a “student’s” brain on stage – where this student came from wasn’t discussed, but the one doctor did note how he had been doing TM since the age of five (highly probable, no?). The point of the EEG was to show how brain waves calm down and align themselves during TM, but there was no way to prove 100% that an actual EEG was happening on stage, and there was obviously no true science to prove that the kid was doing TM.   

More disappointing, Lynch wouldn’t really answer any questions about his films or filmmaking except for offering superficial comments--he did admit to being excited about creating a virtual-world video game, and he did flaunt bliss about new giant flatscreens with perfect resolution. But whenever someone asked a scientific question, he either deferred to his doctor friends or spoke in Vedic code. When asked what the monster-man behind the dumpster in Mulholland Drive symbolizes, he said very little. He explained how opening up his consciousness brings him ideas, which baits other ideas and strings them together. His belief about why film matters? It allows us to tell stories. His answer for why he includes so much disturbing matter in his films despite being a peace-loving TM devotee? If there's struggle, let it be in your films, not your life.

Is Lynch just an ex-hippie who’s tired, as he said (and I paraphrase), of $7 billion going to the production of three-and-a-half B1 bombers that can’t even protect us on a day like 9/11? Is he just a yoga-toting Hollywood creative who got hooked on TM, and let the Maharishi's men convince him it is his duty to change the world? Is he a live-action Abstract Illusionist who's laughing at us right now (doubtful)? Is he Ringo Starr?

Watch the show he’s touring with from an appearance at Emerson College and decide for yourself. All I know is that no one in last night’s audience (including me) had the guts to get up and ask this man anything sensible, and the whole thing felt so violating I couldn’t sleep last night. If Lynch is really just trying to spread relaxation and peace among students who he worries are bound for lives devoid of creativity and rife with tension and war-making and right-wing politics, then fine.

But why the cultish presentation? Why the secrets? Why the pseudoscience to prove something everyone already knows about the benefits of meditating? Why the pyramid-scheme-style manipulation? Why the desire for the princely sum of $7 billion if not for a plan to try to amass national power and build a society of followers? And why ask for it from impressionable young people who attend ritzy colleges? What in God’s name is going on here?! And why hasn't Katie Couric [editors note in December 06: This was written awhile ago], the Serious Journalist Du Jour interested in getting some Real Hard Facts about the country's kookiest religions, lined up an interview with Mr. Elephant Man?

David Lynch Bliss Resources created after this initial post:

Beliefnet interview: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/184/story_18457_1.html

SF Chron: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/06/LVG9MFIG9L1.DTL&hw=David+Lynch&sn=001&sc=1000

not a fun reminder to return to but

How could I not link to this important Op-Ed piece by Mr. Wilson?

[Thanks, Martin]

mel's malibu passion

Who would have guessed that the real "Passion of the Christ" was beachfront real estate?

A very swaggerific new year

I don't know what's funnier: That, along with fellow displaced (and plenty of freaky) new Angelenos, I attended free Yom Kippur services at the Laugh Factory yesterday* -- only to emerge on Sunset and be told by a cop while crossing the street to stay put before a stunt car comes screeching around the corner. Or how about Jonathan Kiefer's newest Film Flaneur column: a hilarious open letter to movie industry marketeers.

*A sincere thanks to the club, actually: As you probably read in my Larry David post, there aren't too many other places for a casually observant Jew to rock the High Holidays for free.

levity, or stay away from mr. softie

Remember Amy Fisher? I went to high school with her. Hard Copy took over my school, and the name Buttafuoco took on Hamlet-esque proportions to all of us enthralled with the opportunity to postpone our AP Bio homework for a chance to tell NY Post reporters how the demure Ms. F chatted with our Social Studies teacher just minutes before leaving to pop a cap in Mary Jo. The question, in an age where even Amy Fisher has moved on, needs to be asked, however: Why can't I escape Joey?

[Via LA.com and Defamer.com]

all adams, all the time

I didn't get a chance to attend the premiere of the John Adams-Peter Sellars opera "Doctor Atomic," but I'll be damned if Alex Ross hasn't made me feel guilty about it. (I kid.) My point, of course, is that the grand, poetic, and insanely thorough music-historical piece Ross has about the making of the art work in this week's print edition of the New Yorker isn't his only gift to anyone interested in history, harmony, science, or politics. Supplementary materials -- from a contemplative photoblog from his California travels to links that point to other pertinent critical assesments of the piece -- are currently live on The Rest Is Noise. Sadly, I, too, can't provide much of my folder of Adams writings online -- an interview about his 9/11 paean from the NY Sun and an essay on my passion for his music from Symphony magazine only exist in print form, to say nothing of all the reviews. But if you've actually gotten through all the (far more pertinent and profound) Atomic stuff and want to read a three-year-old Slate piece on why the NY Phil asked him to commemorate 9/11 back in '02, here ya go.

leftover genius

Reasons Why I Never Win A $500,000 MacArthur Genius Grant
(unlike this lobsterman)

1. Always thinking about the $500,000, and how I’d use it to never have to think again. Must stop this. Geniuses do not think about money. They probably don’t even know what it is. They’re busy thinking about other things. Genius things. What’s more, geniuses don’t want to stop thinking. Stop wanting this!

2. Often moving from state to state, studying for new Driver’s License tests at DMVs across the country. Know too much about the legalities of unrestrained animals in pick-up trucks and how much distance I must keep from fire-station driveways. This is keeping me from learning stuff that would free me up to pioneer genius ideas. Solution: Stay put. Geniuses don’t move.

3. Obsession with previous grant-winning genius ideas, and how they work. Rule #1 for becoming a genius: Do not think about previously developed genius ideas and the geniuses living wonderful lives for having thought them up. Real geniuses don’t think about anything other than their genius ideas. That’s what gives them the time and space to become geniuses. Duh.

4. Fish. I hear on satellite radio that fish makes you smarter, hence increasing your chance to become a genius. Of course all that mercury could kill me. But then I’d be a dead genius, and what’s hotter than that?

5. I am not hot. I see in movies that geniuses are hot. Plan for next year: Get hotter, and genius will follow.

6. I read too much. Reading books by geniuses will only keep my mind busy with other genius ideas (see reasons #2 and #3), and reading books by non-geniuses will only perpetuate my obsession with how certain people are clearly geniuses and certain people aren’t.

7. Lists. I make too many. Lists take time, and I’ll need time if I’m ever going to become a genius.

8. Half-ass attempts at humor. Funny may be smart, but there’s nothing funny about genius!

9. Location, location, location: Find out where geniuses hang, and meet more of them. It’s rumored on the Internet and Cable TV that previous genius grant-winners vote on who becomes a new genius. How can I win if no one genius-like knows anything about me or my genius ideas? (Worry: Will spending time trying to meet new geniuses rob me of the time I need to become a genius? Time management is key here. Geniuses clearly excel at time-management. See reason #7.)

10. Robots. Must buy robots to help me execute my forthcoming genius ideas. Geniuses without robots are just normal smart people – everyone knows that.

11.  Cultural deficiencies. Stop snoozing through Stockhausen concerts and looking for the snack bar in art museums. If genius culture doesn't appeal to me, I'll never be a genius. Then again, if geniuses always consumed genius culture, they'd never get anywhere. Seek guidance on this issue. All geniuses have support staffs that provide good guidance. If it takes some time and money to hire such a staff (so much for reasons #1 and #9) so be it.

11.  Am weak and don’t belong to a gym. Will need to pound and out-muscle other geniuses for my spot on the genius queue once I develop my forthcoming genius ideas and meet other geniuses who have yet to win a grant. Leaving everything to chance is what has heretofore accounted for my non-genius existence. Also: learn how to punch like a ninja. Once I annihilate my genius competition, I will not only be a hot, strong, fish-eating genius with robots in his grasp. I will be a ninja genius. The first one ever.

real genius

There's just so much genuis here, the *glassShallot staff often has to nap every 30 or 40 minutes just to remain fresh enough to take it all in. Don't believe us?  Be gone! For the reverent, however, we couldn't help but notice how many bonafide GENiuses we were able to cover this year. Geniuses, at least in the estimation of those who dole out the $500,000 MacArthur grants. In no particular  order, this year's *glassShallot/MacArthur geniuses are:

1. Marin Alsop (see Brahms CD, second from top, reviewed in LA Times)
2. Jonathan Lethem (who got a great *gS review in the SF Chronicle)
3. Aaron Dworkin (ok, we never wrote about this influential music educator, but he seems to be a genius to us!)
4. Ted Ames (an uncommonly virtuous assistant in the Great Gefilte Fish-off)
5. Joseph Curtin (a luthier who makes violins far too great and expensive for the virtual factory workers bringing you this enlightening Web content to ever slack off, lest they never upgrade their instruments to wooden boxes of the sweetness-caliber that Mr. Curtin produces).
6. Claire Gmachl (the subject of a forthcoming lead profile article to run in Stuff Magazine's new babe-a-liscious quarterly scientist-shopping insert, "Laser!")

Other geniuses [MacArthur]

in god we (must apparently) trust

From David L. Kirp's thoughtful piece about national disaster management in today's SF Chronicle:

That the Federal Emergency Management Agency mismanaged the Hurricane Katrina relief effort is old news. But there's more to FEMA's failure than simple bungling. The Bush administration's core belief that faith-based organizations can do the job better than the government or experienced nonprofits has compounded the problem. Immediately after the hurricane, there were only two secular organizations to which FEMA's Web site urged that contributions be made; all the others were faith-based. What's worse, in at least some instances, FEMA relied on faith-based charities to spearhead the emergency-relief effort, regardless of whether they had expertise.

[thanks, Martin!]

 

W: he got game

I have always had a problem with the existence of speechwriters. I believe a president shouldn't be elected if he can't write the words the country needs to hear. Of course, speechwriters are more than just scribes -- they dramatize, they stage-manage, they seduce. But I think a president -- even one I like -- should know how to do that too. On his own. With a few notable exceptions, Hollywood, The New Yorker, and Knopf and don't pay writers who can't fictionalize, reason, and manipulate their way out of a rhetorical corner. Our taxes shouldn't either. David Kusnet's TNR piece on last night's Bush speech is therefore enlightening in a way others aren't. A former Clinton speechwriter, he puts (his sensible) politics aside for a moment to discuss how it was the order of Bush's rhetoric, as well as his dramatic setting and elegiac tone, that may have rendered last night's Katrina speech successful (I'm not sure I was swayed, but surprise: I'm not exactly the most middle-of-the-road voter). "By the time he arrived at the question of whether his administration should be held accountable for responding too late, with too little assistance and too much ineptitude," Kusnet writes, "Bush had gotten much of his audience nodding in agreement." It was classic seduction or "social dynamics" -- in other words, something terrifyingly similar to techniques used by Neil Strauss and other professional pick-up-artists in The Game to make otherwise uninterested women open to their social advances. The question is, did Michael Gerson, the "lyrical" Bush speechwriter and, in Kusnet's words, "evangelical Christian who now serves as a domestic policy adviser," study the Mystery Method? Or is he more into Speed Seduction? Or Real Social Dynamics? All I know is that if W. had found me sipping sweet fruity drinks at the Saddle Ranch and used some of that New Orleans drama to open up the heavily peacocked three-set I was hanging with, I, and all my air-tight liberal scruples, just might have been puddy in his soft, caring hands.

Curb Your... Militarism?

Am I crazy or does Larry David say he in this article that he served in Vietnam? [Just kidding: But then what exactly is he saying about the worth of college? He clearly didn't attend my oh-so-fun alma mater.]

mood theory

Lesson No. 4678 in How to Option Your New Novel For Big Bucks and Then Some: Write a "complicated" multi-character narrative about Hollywood evils, and then go on the Huffington Post talking about how the book is utterly unfilmable and you never, ever, want to direct.

I had my Hollywood moment. It's not that I would turn down an opportunity to be adapted (there are a couple of stories by me optioned at the moment), but I don't need it. It's just icing on the cake. As I said in 1997, movies are a particularly good billboard for a book. Movies need fiction and literature more than vice versa, because literature is where most of the genuine takes place. I don't want more fame, power, or influence. I sort of get uncomfortable with that kind of thing. I just want to be able to keep writing.

Rick Moody on his new book, The Diviners. [via Huffpo]