In the days leading up to the Iraqi elections, everywhere I seemed to turn there was someone telling me what a farce these elections were, how no one was going to turn out, how excluded the Sunnis were going to be, and how this was such a distraction from the things that really mattered in Iraq, like security. Oddly enough, most of these arguments came from self-described liberals, despite the fact that if I remove all references to time and place, the thoughts outlined above would be considered decidedly unliberal.
Now that the elections have occurred, many people are racing out to declare it a failure or at best a mixed blessing. I find this upsetting, because it just goes to show that there are no depths that partisan brainwashing can’t reach. This event is one of historic significance, and yet some people still wring their hands about an unbalanced assembly or the resumption of violence.
Of course, most of these people are very intelligent individuals whom I respect a great deal, which exacerbates my disappointment. It’s almost as if too much knowledge and too much reflection can be a bad thing. And it doesn’t just end with the war in Iraq. Issues like Social Security reform are hot topics. And depending on who’s vision of the future (future growth, future demographics, etc) you believe, you can come up with wildly different ideas about what should be done.
And that, my friends, brings me to the point of principles. Principles, while simplistic, offer us some guidlines on how to live and behave, in an uncertain world. One principle is the priciple of democracy. Another principle is the principle of property rights. I would suggest that we be far less willing to compromise our principles in the light of unfavorable conditions or unpopular decisions.
I just wanted to share with all you pokerbloggersoutthere a recent encounter I had with a “journalist”. The emails are unedited, except for the removal of the person’s name.
Subject: Re: article
From: xxx@redherring.com
Date: Wed, January 19, 2005 3:40 pm
To: carter@cubanlinks.org
still playing online poker?
Subject: Re: article
From: “Carter Rabasa”
Date: Thu, January 20, 2005 8:30 am
To: xxx@redherring.com
To be honest, no. I took a bath one fateful night, and have since
withdrawn from the world of online poker. I still play, at home, in AC,
and in Vegas, but not online.
Subject: Re: article
From: xxx@redherring.com
Date: Thu, January 20, 2005 1:08 pm
To: carter@cubanlinks.org
when you sy take a bath, what do you mean?
Subject: Re: article
From: “Carter Rabasa”
Date: Thu, January 20, 2005 12:53 pm
To: xxx@redherring.com
I mean I lost thousands of dollars.
Subject: Re: article
From: xxx@redherring.com
Date: Thu, January 20, 2005 1:11 pm
To: carter@cubanlinks.org
you know you cant tell a reporter “thousands” without me asking “how many”
Subject: Re: article
From: “Carter Rabasa”
Date: Thu, January 20, 2005 12:55 pm
To: xxx@redherring.com
It’s because you’re a reporter that I’m not telling you.
Subject: Re: article
From: xxx@redherring.com
Date: Thu, January 20, 2005 1:13 pm
To: carter@cubanlinks.org
listen, clearly this is not for a story!
i’m done with reporting that.
i have too many ppl who lost thousands!
Subject: Re: article
From: “Carter Rabasa”
Date: Thu, January 20, 2005 12:58 pm
To: xxx@redherring.com
I’m not too worried about it. I won a couple G’s in Vegas and AC, so in
the end I think it all evened out. I don’t spend too much time thinking
about it. Besides, now I have time to actually go to the gym and read a
book once in a while. Imagine that.
Subject: Re: article
From: xxx@redherring.com
Date: Thu, January 20, 2005 1:37 pm
To: carter@cubanlinks.org
um, guess what
i DO need to interview you, the guy i was supposed to interview who LOST
money and QUIT playing just told me he doesnt want to do it anymore. but
he lost WAY more than you.
PLEASE!!!!!!!!!
i was supposed to turn it in to my boss in an hour!
Subject: Re: article
From: “Carter Rabasa”
Date: Thu, January 20, 2005 1:26 pm
To: xxx@redherring.com
I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that. But I can ask around and see if
someone else wouldn’t mind talking to you. Do you need to interview
someone who lost money? What about someone who’s done well?
Subject: Re: article
From: xxx@redherring.com
Date: Thu, January 20, 2005 1:46 pm
To: carter@cubanlinks.org
yeah, i have a guy who was a lawyer and he quit last year and started
gambling full time. he makes about $20k per month!
i havent spoke to anyone who lost money and STOPPED
damn, this sux! but really, it’s not your problem. and it really doesnt
make the story any worse
it’s just that i have a quote from the gambling association or whatever,
talking about gambling addiction, etc
Very, very shady my friends. Be careful who you talk to out there.
This past weekend Greg, Margaret and I trudged through the snow to go see In Good Company down at the Loews in Georgetown. I was apprehensive about seeing this movie, especially with fare like Million Dollar Baby and Hotel Rwanda on my to-do list. But I figured In Good Company would work for the three of us, so down we went.
So, even I was a bit surprised at how much I liked this movie. And no, it’s not just because the character played by Topher Grace is named Carter (although that elicited smirks from Greg and giggles from Margaret throughout the length of the movie). This movie, in many ways, is a rejection of the slick and arrogant 80’s and 90’s in favor of post-war America where a man’s word meant something. Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid) is a husband and father of two who rises at 4:30 in the morning to go to work and yet finds time during lunch to play tennis with his daughter (Scarlett Johansson). He’s a paragon of what it means to be a “good man” and through his eyes we share both the sacrifices and pain as well as the fruits of such toil.
Carter Duryea (Grace) is the hot, up-and-coming MBA brat who is selected to replace Dan as the head of a very successful ad department. Out with the old, in with the new. Of course, the new consists primarily of firing people and trying to create synergy between disparate parts of a global empire (think cereal and cell phones).
The film in turn takes us in the expected direction of Carter’s comeuppance and Dan’s reassertion of his domain. However, the performances are so affecting and the message so compelling for the cynical amongst us, that the movie works. You want to be Dan Forman someday. You want Carter to see through the fog of artificial ambition and connect with the things that matter in life. You can feel his emptiness of growing up without a father and the awe that Dan inspires in him, to be so loyal, so loving, so fair, and so good.
As I walked out of the theater, I thought to myself of all of the ways that related to the Carter in the film. I’ve often talked about the void I felt in my life in regards to the hands-off manner in which my father raised me. The lack of advice, direction, and connection. I felt that I could relate to Carter’s innate longing for a father-figure to serve as a model for a life well-lived. I snapped out of these thoughts as we reached my own father’s home. I almost walked right by, I was so deeply lost in thought. The next couple of hours were great. My dad made us Morrocan chicken and rice, which turned out to be delicious. The conversation veered from topic to topic, as it often does, and I soaked up the warmth of an evening well spent.
It was after dinner that I realized that I needed to stop complaining about everything that my dad wasn’t, and be grateful and proud of what he is. When my friends meet my father, they often tell me that they better understand why I am the way I am (Margaret was virtually speechless as we were walking home from dinner). Which of course means that I’m much more like my father than I’m wont to admit. Which, I think now, is fine by me. My dad is at once a disciplined and a hilarious man, who made incredible sacrifices for me and my sisters when we were growing up. If I can be half the man that my father is, it’ll be a good start.
It’s funny the things that pop into your head when it’s one o’clock and you’re listening to music in bed. I’m thinking to myself, why do people tend to listen to happy music when they’re happy and sad music when they’re sad? (I leave my current state of mind to your inquisitive mind) Then it struck me, what’s so great about being an artist anyway? What can they do that we can’t?
One answer would be that they can manifest in tangible form what normal people can only feel. A breathtaking painting, a sorrowful song, an astounding film. And in these fully formed works we can look through the fog of our own emotions and feelings and more fully connect with who we are. A writer can inspire in that he or she can put into words what we can only loosely grasp around the edges.
And if you take this a step further, it’s a terrifying idea, really. That I can walk around and roil with feeling and not be fully in touch or congnizant of what it going on is horrifying. The Why’s and the How’s coming hurtling from all directions, and only knee-jerk response and social norms keep the train on the track. But when you’ve tuned out the world and have your hands clasped around your headphones, the static fades and you can make sense of yourself again. If only for a little while.
I’m in the midst of reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I’m about a third of the way into it, and I find myself both desperately wanted to continue reading and to stop. I can scarcely describe the anxiety I feel when I read Franzen’s depictions of the lives his characters live. As the chapters creep by, we are introduced to the members of the Lambert family, each more frightningly dysfunctional than the last. I’m currently learning about the horrors of being Gary Lambert, a successful man with a beautiful wife and children who currently may or may not be in the grip of depression. At the moment he’s fighting with his wife…
Despite serious losses, he remained confident of victory. Since his very first fight with Caroline, twenty years earlier, when he’d sat alone in his apartment and watched an eleven-inning Phillies game and listened to his phone ring every ten minutes, every five minutes, every two minutes, he’d understood that at the ticking heart of Caroline was a desperate insecurity. Sooner or later, if he witheld his love, she came knocking on his chest with her little fist and let him have his way.
That passage is symptomatic of my dilemma reading this book. I see slivers of myself (both past and present) in some of these characters. Patterns of behavior long thought burried or beaten poke through me like weeds on a sidewalk. During flashes of intensity or stress, circuits blow and malfunction permeates situations I find myself in. I guess reading this book, in some ways, is like a ostrich taking its head out of the ground. Scary, but somewhat inevitable.
Like just about everyone, some of the strongest memories of my adolesence and high school involve the music I grew up listening. And like a soundtrack to my life, WHFS (99.1) was there to expose me to bands that I might not have heard elsewhere: Garbage, Radiohead, the Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, etc. I even met one of the loves of my life at the venerable HFStival.
Tragically, HFS is no more. The wise owners of HFS (Infinity Broadcasting) have decided that their station and signal would be better suited to providing Spanish/Latin music and content. Hooray salsa!
I almost fainted when I heard the news, but in truth, I wasn’t too surprised. Infinity Broadcasting is doing their best to compete with Clear Channel in the race to homogenize the airwaves, alienate listeners, and literally reduce the radio broadcasting industry to a smoldering wreck.
And you know what? I’m cool with it. Fuck Infinity. Fuck Clear Channel. Fuck them all. Long live:
Satellite Radio (Sirius, XM)
Small, independant low-wattage broadcasters
Internet radio/streamcasts/etc
Of course, these alternatives will never reach mass-market fruition without help from all of us. We need to do whatever we can to ensure that the FCC keeps its hands off of satellite radio and low-wattage broadcasters. We also need to push Congress to apply the same rules to Internet radio that it applies to broadcast, which at the moment, is not the case. The fee structure that Internet radio stations must adhere to is radically different than broadcast, in that they must pay per user. So, the more listeners they have, the more they pay to the music industry for the right to play their copyrighted material. Broadcast radio has no such obligation, they play a flat fee per song they broadcast.
I really can’t even begin to describe the sheer insanity of New Year’s night in New York. Let’s just say that words were exchanged, tempers flared, cell phones were thrown from moving cabs and cameras were lost. So, if you’re looking for pictures from New Year’s at Bar Nine, ask someone else. If you’re trying to get in touch with me on my cell, think again. Hopefully, these things will be rectified in due time. In the mean time at least I have some stories to tell.
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