James Taylor...As If We Need Reminding

Now that the elections are over and we can exhale Cockatoo has been looking at videos we were too nervous to watch when they occurred.   Exhibit A, the incomparable James Taylor at the Democratic National Convention, here.  Sixteen minutes of that most perfect voice, singing melodies that are woven into our DNA, with lyrics--snark- and irony-free lyrics--that still have the power to nudge out tears.  But wait, there's more!  Consider this audience--all races, both genders, all abilities, swaying, singing along, and just enjoying the hell out of the performance. 

Beautiful.

Travel + Leisure Subscription Lapse

Instead of harrumphing about how shallow we find T+L nowadays--how overly concerned with cool shopping and boutique hotels--we will, instead, merely remark that we apparently are not the demographic for this journal.  There's hardly a full page of prose to be found, anymore.  Perhaps to keep up with the television/smartphone age where folks have no more patience every page had garish charts and info boxes and snarky quotes in silly fonts.

EAT.  SHOP.  SEE+DO.

We won't spend time on the confluence of advertising and articles.  If memory serves a recent issue had an essay about a certain brand of watch.  Watches do in fact come in handy when travelling but we didn't see why this particular brand of timepiece needed to be singled out. 

Grumblings aside, the photographs, though, still stop one in their beauty.  There's one of Page 84 of two Indian gentlemen holding some beautiful textiles, grogeous yellow and red.  The simplicity of the shot contrasts with the richness of the hues, the craft needed to create the rugs. 

This disenchantment with T+L  is especially sad as it was our first introduction to non-family vacations.  Cockatoo used to spend part of the high school summer break  with her Godmother who had a collection of T+L.  We would pore through them excitedly, as if trying to pin down the fact that, really, one can actually get on a plane and go to another country.  

Cockatoo can never truly give up on T+L.  It--along with a college course on the Renaissance--did provide the spark that got us to Florence, a place we've visited twice and long to see again.  (Last time we stayed Oltrarno, steps away from the Piazza Santo Spirito, pictured.)

Still, one worries.  Could a working class person look at today's magazine and get that same sense of possibilities?  Or would they look at the astronomical rates of the featured hotels and decide travelling isn't for them?

Forward! The Election and Bicycle Wrap-Up

It's taken us all this time to absorb the enormity of the President's re-election. Obviously we are delighted. We are grateful that this bright, decent, hard-working and empathetic person will continue to build upon the enormous task of righting the country from the deviancies of George W. Bush's terms in office. While the progress has been slow there's no denying we're moving in the right direction.

Although we haven't gone too deeply into Gov. Romney territory we became increasingly troubled during the campaign with the idea that somehow, despite the polling numbers on Daily Kos, the Governor might somehow slip into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His flaws ran the gamut from farce (the Mitt-astrophic overseas trip during the flawlessly-run London Olympics) to mean ("No one ever asked to see our birth certificates") to the outright disdainful (being far too grand to condescend and make the case for his presidency to 47% of the public. In a democracy.) Even now he's muttering to his donors about how the President was re-elected because he gave "gifts" to people; he's dim-witted enough to think the brouhaha last summer was about "free contraceptives," not insisting that employers offer women employees all contraceptive options available under the insurance plans for which women paid premiums.

Well, we knew he drove to Canada with his dog strapped to the roof of his car, and witnesses said in high school Gov. Romney tackled a kid in high school and cut off his hair. Nice to know that $300 million in filthy Koch - Rove money couldn't obscure his essential character. Please proceed into oblivion, Governor.

As for Congressman Ryan the less said the better, unless the person doing the saying is David Letterman. Letterman Ryan Top Ten

What can we expect in President Obama's second term? (Besides, according to the defeated Teabaggers, socialism, Adam marrying Adam instead of Eve, and foodstamps?)

We don't know but there's this: We bought a new bike a couple of weeks back, a lovely Giant Escape. It's aluminum, some six pounds lighter than our previous bike, Carmella, and shaves 5-8 minutes off our commute home. The first Monday on it we felt a panic since it's a bike for a person half our age and twice our fitness level. But then we realized: This bike could make us a better rider.

May President Obama feel a lightness in his heavy, heavy tasks next term, may he slice through resistance with continued grace.

Endorsement: President Barack Obama

Perhaps we're in the minority here at Anyone's Cockatoo but we like - appreciate - President Barack Obama more today than we did four years ago. (And four years ago we were deliriously smitten.)

We like that he never whines despite being handed a Bush-generated house a'fire.

We like that he seems to be thinking constantly about how to make things better for the American people.

We like that he cut out the financial institution middle-men in the student loans system so as to be able to give out more student loans. (Sometimes he'll make a speech on the subject and we think, "What, again with the student loans?" But that's how one gets people out of the poverty / the working class and into the middle class, so good on him.)

We admire him for taking a chance on the auto industry bail-out, and are glad that it paid off for the workers and the country.

We admire him for (1) realizing that it isn't right that people - Americans - go bankrupt and/or die because of our insurance company-dictated healthcare system and (2) fighting with every ounce of muscle to get the Affordable Health Care Act passed and signed into law. BFD, indeed!

Again, we like that he never whines, despite the insane, racist, dog whistles and direct attacks he's been subjected to. A lesser man would not have handled the nonsense with such grace. Particulary egregious is the oddly-coiffed New York man demanding proof of the President's academic records, passport records, etc. It puts us in mind of the publisher who demanded that the black abolitionist get a white man to vouch for the authenticity of his book.

We like how comfortable PBO is in his skin - whether with world leaders, grieving townspeople, or the NBA champs, PBO always strikes the right tone.

Michelle Obama.

We like how he incarnates the best of this country, this experiment in democracy. A smart, hard-working young man with a non-cookie cutter background gets to be POTUS. And we're all the better for it.

We're moving in the right direction and he clearly deserves a second term.

Would just ask in the second term that he ools-it-cay with the ones-dray - the targets can't be worth the cost of civilians; stand up to the rat bastards at the NRA; and for the love of God, sign some executive order only allowing public financing of campaigns - and no televisions ads.

And here's the punchline about PBO: For all of the insinuations of his otherness, his supposed exoticism, at the end of the day do you know what he his? With those exquisite manners, the self-deprecation, the work ethic, the sincerity? HE'S A MID-WESTERNER. Yes, his father was from Africa, and yes, he happened to have lived in Hawaii and Indonesia. But his character - the content of his character - is that of a plain, ol' mid-westerner. You know, the good folks Fox News commentators claim to adore but, it turns out, don't know one when they see one.

Cuts

It was a small cut, maybe a quarter inch. We were weilding a scissor-point against a seamed canal on the side of a new bra. Pinch, poke, pinch. We cut ourself when the scissors slipped, making a small slice alongside our middle finger. It turned red, but wasn't near deep enough to bleed.

The object was to pry out a tiny yet diabolical strip of clear plastic. It was the shape of a short, slightly wide popsicle stick. It's purpose on either side of a bra? Who knows. Someone's antiquated notion of how the glands should appear in a blouse, under a tee-shirt. As if we were Marilyn Monroe or some other performer. All I knew is that they hurt like heck, and even if they did gave us a silhouette that made people stop, stare and applaud I didn't want the ridiculous discomfort.

Imagine being pinched hard on either side of yourself. All frigging day.

Looking how we want to look and feeling how we want to feel is a basic human right.

I fingered the pieces of plastic and wondered what kind of sick, twisted bastard would inflict such a thing on half the country. Well, the answer was in the question.

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Cockatoo is perhaps the last progressive in the country to just become aware of NYT reporter's Nicholas Kristof's Half the Sky, a book about the obstacles placed in front of women throughout the developing world. The documentary was on television last week and it was beautiful, maddening, lovely and crazy-making.

While we were relieving our garments of pinching plastic strips, somewhere on earth - in Africa - little girls were in a hut, bound, their trauma and pain coalescing into a lifetime of physical difficulties. An unnecessary, malignant act performed in the crudest manner.

Kristof, along with a progressive African health worker, and his crew were in a hut in (we believe) Kenya. They listened to an ancient, ancient woman talk about her "job" of grabbing the girls for the "ceremony" and performing the mutilation. She said she performed ten mutillations a day.

(Cruelty engenders cruelty, and we had a sick fantasy of the reporter turning off the camera, just snapping the crone's neck on the spot, and back on camera, claiming it was self-defense. Fool-proof, really; who would expect such a thing from journalism's biggest bleeding heart? And actress Diane Lane who accompanied him looked sufficiently pissed off to corroborate any "she came at me with a knife" story Kristof concocted.)

Obviously the only answer for ending mutilation is education, education, and since we're at it, more education. Westerners needn't go into full-on screed mode; the best thing, I think, would be for other African women, like that wonderful health professional in the film, to just lay out the facts to their sisters:

Mutiliation leads to infections, dismenorrhea, and makes basic hygiene difficult. It increases the likelihood of maternal death.

A tiny cut endured for my rights and freedom. A mutilation because...we've always done it? Tradition? To reign in the mere threat of promiscuity?

There are cuts and there are cuts.

Carmella's Little Sister

We're a bit ashamed to report that the process of searching for and researching a new bike has become as pleasurable as actually riding. We've been finding ourself in shops talking about aggressive geometries, comparing aluminum to steel, and handing our driver's license and credit card to random dudes in exchange for a block's length long test ride.

The poor kid at my favorite shop (approx. three visits in the past couple of months)! He must be thinking, I just want to sell bikes, not be priest-slash-therapist to some boomer who desperately needs a life.

I've had two dreams about bike shops. Walking inside a new one is like a lucid, wide-awake dream. The smell of the tires, the hope everytime one turns over a price tag.

The possibility of falling - finally falling -in love.

So, no decision yet. There's a frightening risk that all of my research will be for nothing: I saw a bike painted "claret and silver", a rich, luscious purple. (We are swooning even as we type it.)

Courage, Cockatoo! Enjoy the process!

Nuthin' Says "Summer" Like Wallace Shawn & Tony Kushner (Really)

What a treat to read the interviews with playwrights Wallace Shawn and Tony Kushner in the Summer 2012 issue of the Paris Review. In Anyone’s Cockatoo's dotage we have shied away from literary magazines, having been scarred by a newsstand-bought copy of The Three Penny Review a couple of years ago (our subscription had long lapsed). We tried our best to make sense of the articles, the fiction, and the poetry but came up blank. Worse, we didn’t recognize any of the contributors; the names could just as easily been the enrollment list of an international pre-school for how ignorant we were.

But we digress.

Anyone’s Cockatoo was fortunate enough to see Wallace Shawn perform his one-person play "The Fever" on stage during the Los Angeles Festival of Arts. Shawn recounts that the play was “pretty brutally denounced” by critics, but what were people fed a diet of bland, conventional plays to make of this millefeiulle of a monologue?

The Fever’s narrator is recounting his experience in an unnamed country that, as he’s holed up in his hotel room, is going through some vague kind of turmoil. Vague to the narrator, one should add; the people and victims on the street know exactly what’s happening. It had been happening to the oppressed since forever.

He remembers his privileged childhood, how coddled he was. He thinks of his current life where he holds the Right Opinions and so forth. And that all of it means nothing.

Shawn says in the interview, “I was trying to explain to all the nice people out there how it could be possible that from our point of view we’re so nice, and we’re so lovable, and we’re so cute, and so sensitive, and yet from the point of view of people who are weak and powerless we are an implacable, vicious enemy.”

Not an idea any American – critic or not – would be eager to lap up.

There is a line in the play that we’ve remembered all of these years – decades – later. Gene, a friend of the narrator, is a proud holder of Wrong Opinion. In today’s currency maybe some appalling Limbaugh-Fox Commenter-Tea Party Congress critter amalgam. The narrator has an epiphany – he realizes that his desires for what he wants (a certain kind of coffee, a comfortable life) are more a part of his identity than the lovely charm he has, the Right Opinions he holds.

“I’m no better than my friend, Gene”, he admits sadly.

We can laugh at what one commenter called the “failfest” of the Republican National Convention last week-- the sociopathic lying, the full flowering of Obama Derangement Syndrome, the desperate attempt to palm off rotten goods to the American public. Even so, as Anyone's Cockatoo makes our way around town, seeing and passing people hauling all of their possessions in trash bags, loons with matted hair and nasty clothes, the thought “I’m no better than my friend, Gene" resonates and indicts.

It should serve as a spur to action.

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Tony Kushner (Angels in America) is, of course, much better known than Shawn (although some people may recognize Shawn from his many character actor roles over the years).

Anyone’s Cockatoo read some snarky, shark feeding frenzy criticisms of Kushner’s latest play, 'The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures."

We concede the title is gaggy. We also admit we haven’t seen the play; let's hope it's a line in the play that's supposed to test the audience's gag reflex.

Would just comment, though, that his interview reads lively and, yes, intelligently. Kushner is passionate about Herman Melville (!), recounts his studies with a professor who had studied under Bertholt Brecht, and cites Proust on the topic of writers’ fears. Maybe that’s typical water cooler chitchat for the sophisticates who tore apart the play; I don’t know. I’ll just say that here in Hooterville, where strip mall hair salons announce “Moe Hawks” and menus offer “Ice Tea”, the Paris Review interviews with Mr. Kushner and Mr. Shawn were a delicious summer escape.