John Adams (b October 30, 1735 - d. July 4, 1826

John Adams, the second President (1797-1801), was also the first one-term President.  Despite his massive accomplishments, he has somehow fallen between the cracks and is not nearly as revered as the members of Virginia Dynasty (Washington, Jefferson, Madison).  There is a Washington Memorial and a Jefferson Memorial in DC, but, as far as I know, no Adams Memorial.

This is partially due to his misfortune in having to follow Washington.  He took over the Executive Office at a time when the split between the Federalists (particularly Hamilton) and the Republicans (in the form of Jefferson and Madison) was exposed at last.  With Washington in office, his legendary figure kept the spirit of the Revolution alive.  When Adams took over, it was time to have the public debate about the form of government and, ultimately, what he Revolution had been about.  Adams was on the Federalist side of the divide, but he was led, along with the Federalist faction itself, into ruin by the strong will of Hamilton and his increasingly far-reaching plans for Federal power (e.g., the controversy over the New Army).

His failure to find the immortality of Washington and Jefferson also seems to have been a matter of personality.  Adams seems to have been both blessed and cursed with a kind of perverse contrarian streak.  This certainly liberated his thinking and made him clear-eyed about many popular subjects (unlike Jefferson, he saw that the French Revolution was headed for disaster), but it could also make him small, combative and overly angry at the world.  Where Washington was aloof and serene and Jefferson ethereal and complex (and self-contradictory), Adams was more direct and acerbic and this could make him an object of scorn and ridicule.

Unlike, say, Jefferson, Adams was at every major Revolutionary event, from the Stamp Act Congresses to the Second Continental Congress to the Constitutional Convention and played a major role in all of them.  In later years, Adams was particularly vexed by the fame accorded to Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence, arguing that Jefferson had been chosen as a mere prose stylist to memorialize ideas that had been put forward by men like Adams himself over the previous years.  Jefferson had barely spoken a word during the Second Continental Congress.  Indeed, he was far ahead of most in his vision of independence from Great Britain as the way forward.  In old age, Adams raged against the increasing reverence accorded to July 4th as the seminal date in the Revolution.  The fact that this trend tended to elevate Jefferson also irritated him no end.  He saw history as a messy affair, filled with uncertainties and contradictions, and he disliked the tidy narrative of inevitability that was developing around the Revolution.  Sadly, his own acerbic personality and his periodic rages tended to render his attempts to set out his account of the era almost unreadable.

Which is a shame, because not only is Adams worthy of a place among the great marble leaders we revere today, he also holds the unique distinction among the early Presidents of not being a slaveholder and being an abolitionist.  In that respect, his moral compass was a good deal more precise than Jefferson's or Washington's.

Credit Where Due

I do tend to bash the Grey Lady quite a bit these days, but mostly because it sometimes seems intent on destroying its own great legacy.  But the paper's breaking of the Spitzer prostitution scandal and today's op-ed calling him out for his "arrogant" public statement are reminders of how good the paper can be when it is on its game.

By Contrast...

What the f*ck is going on with Eliot Spitzer??

His first year was an unmitigated disaster and he had almost managed to make himself a complete lame duck governor.  That's no small feat.

But a prostitution ring??

I think it is safe to say that he has managed, in one year, to firmly secure a legacy as one of the worst Governors of New York in modern history.

UPDATE: He's gone.  Jeebus.

Slack-Jawed Further Update:  He has NOT resigned?  Is he on crack?  We may find out soon that he is!

George Washington (b. February 22, 1732 - d. December 14, 1799)

As promised, the first in a weekly report of Misanthrope's 2008 President-a-Week reading festival.

What a way to start and what a time to start.  "Father of the Country" is such a cliche, that it is easy to forget just how extraordinary Washington truly was.  It is also fascinating to review his approach to the Presidency and how drastically different it is from today's view of the office.

The text I chose was Joseph Ellis' His Excellency: George Washington and the man that he describes is a force of nature.  Washington was physically imposing (he was 6' 3" at a time when that was a gigantic height; by comparison, Alexander Hamilton was 5' 7") and seemed to be impervious to death.  There is story after story of Washington riding into a hail of bullets during the Revolution with the calm confidence of one who believes he cannot be killed.  He was also an unquestioned leader of men and there can be no doubt that his personal commitment was the single most important factor in keeping the underpaid, underfed and under-equipped Continental Army together until the British would blunder in to the trap at Yorktown.  I confess to finding myself tearing up when reading about the privations endured by the Army during the lean years following Saratoga, sufferings that struck me deeply because I know that many of my ancestors on my mother's side (12 in all) were suffering there with him.  It is an everlasting testament to his character and strength that those men, after suffering so much to follow him, loved him with a devotion that is deeply moving.  And it is in this aspect of his character, his ability to endure and to remain the last man standing until victory was his, that Ellis locates the source of much of Washington's greatness.

In peace, Washington's decision to lay down his sword and commission at Annapolis and allow the new country to grow under civilian government is another testament to his unusual personal strength and honor.  When compared against any  other revolution in world history, the bloodless developments after success and the Treaty of Paris stand virtually alone.  It was in large part due to personal loyalties and devotion to Washington that the tumultuous period of his Presidency was bloodless and calm.  In a very literal sense, he simply "presided" over the government and held himself above the existential debate that was playing out in the new federal government.  There is no doubt that Washington was a devoted Federalist and that Hamilton was his man, but he was also a close friend of Jefferson (at least until Jefferson betrayed him and began to insult him behind his back) and he let the eternal debate between local and federal government play out in a peaceful manner.  Over 200 years later, it is still being played out today.

Inevitably, one must confront the fact that Washington was a slave owner and that he did not free his slaves until after his death (and after Martha's death for those slaves that were part of her dowry).  Towards the end of his life, he was acutely aware that his slave ownership (he stopped buying slaves early on) was antithetical to the cause for which he had spent so many years of difficulty.  One is struck by the chances lost.  For example, during his first term,  a petition from a group of Quakers appeared before Congress to introduce the gradual abolition of slavery.  Normally this would not have been taken up seriously as even the anti-slavery northern delegations knew that the issue could tear the young government apart.  This petition, however, was signed by Benjamin Franklin, the only other Revolutionary figure with a stature equal to Washington's.  One must wonder what might have happened had Washington signed his name to it as well.  But Washington believed the new government could not survive such a divisive measure and let the moment pass.

If you are only familiar with the general outlines of the Washington story, it is well worth going back and reading it in full.  I was surprised at how moved I was by the story, by Washington and by the reminder of how incredible and extraordinary, in the most literal sense of the term, the American achievement was between 1775 and 1799.

Maybe Today Is Not the Day

Obama's key foreign affairs advisor, has resigned over comments she made to a UK newspaper in which she called Hillary a "monster."  (Yeah, I know...no arguments here.)

There will be much hue and cry from the Obama faithful about how she was railroaded, etc.  Unfortunately, she also managed to blunder in a BBC interview in which she essentially said that Obama won't be able to get U.S. troops out of Iraq in 16 months, as he says in his stump speech.

This all comes on top of the revelation that key economic adviser Austan Goolsbee had assured Canadian officials in private conversations that Obama's anti-NAFTA pandering was just campaign talk and not to be taken literally.  And foreign policy adviser Susan Rice admitting on television that neither Hillary nor Obama are ready to take that "3 AM" call yet.

And, now, Obama's intelligence advisor is on the record as disagreeing with Obama's position on FISA.

Are any of these missteps horrific? Not really, although if Powers is meant to be in a senior foreign policy position she should be more aware of using diplomatic language.  Calling Hillary a monster was kind of a bush league mistake.

That being said, this weird trend in Obama's camp suggests two things. 

First, a lot of Obama's policy talk is just pandering for votes and he shouldn't necessarily be taken at his word.  Sure, politicians do this all the time, but isn't Obama's whole campaign based on the lofty notion that he would not be an "old politics" candidate?

Second, it suggests to me that Obama is a bad manager.  A slip here or there is part of the game, but four advisors with very close relationships with Obama screwing up so royally tells me that he is not keeping on top of his policy team.

On top of it all, Hillary has managed to push him way off message and into a desperate, flailing attack mode.  How did Obama get from "audacity of hope" to "when is Hillary going to release her tax forms"?  

Crikey.  Somebody needs to send an adult to Obamaland to crack some freakin' heads.

One Down, 42 to Go

The Scottish Lass and I were in Washington, D.C. this past weekend for the 40th birthday of a very old and dear friend.  We took advantage of the trip to visit Mount Vernon, the home of the first President of the United States, George Washington (b. February 22, 1732 - d. December 14, 1799).  When contemplating this trip, I decided that it would be a good impetus to launch a project I had been thinking about for many years.  

As a result, I am now on my "President-a-Week" reading program.  For the next 42 weeks, I will be reading  biographies of the Presidents of the United States in chronological order.  No, I will not be reading Grover Cleveland's biography on two non-consecutive weeks.

The time frame of the project requires that some decisions be made.  For example, choosing a Washington biography turned out to be incredibly difficult as many of the "standard" bios are as large as 7 volumes.  That's a level of detail (and reading commitment) that seems out of step with the spirit of the project.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is a series of biographies edited by Arthur Schlesinger that are nice introductions, but are a little too light.  In certain cases like Millard Fillmore (to whom I happen to be distantly related - typical, huh?) these may have to suffice as there are, frankly, almost no biographies to be had.  But when the subject is a major figure like Jackson, I have searched for a more substantial text.

Where I have read biographies (about 12 of them, by my count, including next week and the week after), I am going to look for something that adds a new perspective.

The chronological program is going to make for some rough periods.  Let's just say that April (Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore) is going to be brutal.

Anyway, week #1's selection was His Excellency George Washington by Joseph Ellis.  More thoughts on Washington later, but I leave you with Opal's summary after our visit to Mount Vernon: "He's like the 18th Century Superman."

MagDog Update

Maggie went in for her third chemo session yesterday and we got a bit of good news.  The echocardiagram showed that the tumor has not grown since the last session.  This is a very good sign in fibrosarcoma, which tends to grow very rapidly.  Another piece of good news was that her blood chemistry remained normal following the use of carboplatin, the new drug she got last time.  As a result, we were able to increase the dosage for that drug in this round, which should be helpful.  Having stabilized the disease somewhat, the next goal is to start shrinking the tumor.  The vet is investigating what might be available to us in terms of radiation therapy as that would give us a huge boost in reducing the tumor.

All in all, a good result for this stage.  We are very pleased.

With the Correct Note Selection, You Can Write An Entire King Crimson Record

This is a pretty fun way to write a 10,000 note piece really quickly.

Was the Misanthrope Right?

A couple of days ago, I shook my head at another loopy economic idea ("patriot employers") coming out of the Obama camp that begs you to stop taking him seriously.

In that post, I noted that I was surprised that Obama would be talking such nonsense when he is advised by very respected free-market economists like Austan Goolsbee.  There's no way he's been suggesting this kind of nonsense as policy to the campaign.

Well, look who Canadian television is naming as the Obama campaign source who told the Canadians to ignore all the heated anti-NAFTA talk as "campaign rhetoric."

BTW, note to Obama and Clinton:  It doesn't make you look like you are going to "repair America's image" when you start blathering on about how you are going to hold our two largest trading partners at gunpoint until they do what America wants.

Misanthrope Comments, McCain Listens

Misanthrope on Wednesday at Instapundit.

John McCain on Thursday on the campaign trail.

Remember that when McCain starts to try and defend "Tales from Topographic Oceans" while campaigning.

Seeing the Truth

Click here for the best coverage of the Obama-Clinton debate I have ever seen.

What White People Like

Best blog I've seen in a while.

Every Time I Think the New York Times Reaches the Bottom...

Reading the New York Times lately has become a very depressing experience.  The paper has always had a left-leaning editorial slant, but the reporting was generally high quality and substantive.  I don't really mind papers having a bias.  It's honest to admit that you believe certain things and that you are reporting through that prism.  It helps the reader evaluate what you are reporting.

But when did the New York Times suddenly decide that a few people "questioning" something is the basis for a hard news item?  First it was the ludicrous article about McCain and the "questions" about his "affair" (we don't know, we have no evidence, but we're just sayin'...), brilliantly taken down by Michael Kinsley in this piece on Slate.

Now it's this piece of nonsense from the Times about "questions" over whether McCain, who was born on a U.S. military installation in the Panama Canal Zone, is a "natural born" U.S. citizen for the purposes of the Constitutional requirements of the Presidency.  Who is doing the questioning?  The paper quotes an associate professor at Catholic University's law school and, uh, nobody else.  It then goes on to quote numerous sources who make it clear that this isn't even close to being an issue.

Here's a more informed story on the issue, one that references, you know, actual laws and stuff.

What the heck is going on at the Times these days?  It's like they've lost their minds completely. 

Crikey.

New New Deal Anybody?

Every time I get close to thinking that Obama might not be so bad, I read another one of his loopy ideas like this and I wonder how we can possibly be considering this guy seriously.  Just the term "patriot employer" is so redolent of creepy government interference that I can't believe he is putting it forward.

I'm astonished at this because one of his economic advisors is a very serious free market economist (and college classmate of mine) Austan Goolsbee.  For some reason, I cannot believe he signed off on this nuttiness.

This Was Surprising

Rasumussen is reporting that Obama's negatives are 43%, up from 36% last year.

I was pretty shocked to see this as 43%, that's Hillary Clinton territory.  

The interesting number was the "depends on the opposition" number - 18% for Obama and 29% for McCain.  It looks like McCain has got his work cut out for him.

Who Lives in a Pineapple Under the Sea?

SpongeBob in your pants.

To be fair, it can be used orally or under the arm as well, but I would suggest having a clear policy with your spouse to avoid mistakes.

The truth is, some percentage of children will grow up to be adults who find themselves with cartoon characters on sticks protruding from their rectum anyway.

WTF?

This is just creepy.

And what is it with British Airways these days???

Unelectable at any Speed

Nader is back.  Did he cost Gore the 2000 election?  In a narrow sense, I suppose this is true.  There is no doubt that the people who defected to him were not former Bush voters.  But let's face it.  Gore ran a horrible campaign and is a very hard person to like.  And let's also face it, he was running against a guy who didn't really have very impressive credentials, which makes his loss even more appalling.  So, yeah, Nader cost him some votes, but Gore did the real damage. 

(I also don't think the case is that strong that Perot, with 19% of the vote, cost Bush the 1992 election.  If Perot hadn't run, it would have been a closer race, but Clinton still drubbed Bush in the Electoral College 370 to 168.  Even if you flip some of the larger states (e.g., New Jersey, Colorado) that went Bush in 1988 back to his column, you don't get a win.  Perot's main effect seems to have been to ensure that people could forever point out that Clinton was not elected President by a majority of American voters.)

Nader polled only 0.3% of the vote in 2004 and wasn't even on the ballot in several states. Given the way Obama is likely to run away with New York and California, where I suspect most of the hard core Naderites can be found, he isn't nearly a match.  In fact, he will probably drop out before polling day.

Also, Obama is not Kerry or Gore.  While I may decry the national silliness and swooning over Obama, I do not in any way make the mistake of assuming that he is an empty suit.  Whatever his policies, Obama has been running a near perfect campaign and has shown himself to be very shrewd.  Despite a maddening reliance on rallies and slogans, he is a formidable candidate.  Voters go to guys like Nader and Perot when they are frustrated with their own main party candidate.  I suspect that people who chose Nader over Kerry or Gore are not going to be as frustrated with Obama.

One Crazyland thought that popped into my head was a campaign where Bloomberg also throws his hat into the ring.  That would open the door for a Hillary independent run.  And Huckabee could stay in as well.  It'll never happen, but it would be massively entertaining to watch Obama versus McCain versus Hillary versus Huckabee versus Nader versus Bloomberg.

Ha

SNL does pull out the goods from time to time.

First, as much as I hate him, Huckbee can laugh at himself.

Second, I love the takedown of Obamamania and Hillary's delusional cackle.

Further Crimson-related Note

If the eminent Professor of Pocketology known as DJ Macho LD were to form a band with the Misanthrope from scratch, I am convinced it would sound like Fripp's early 80s band League of Gentlemen.

Quotation of the Day

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher."

Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Star Wars...those nutty STAR WARS

Oh my God, this guy nails it.

I confess.  He's right.

Here's the follow-up.

The story about the guy asking for shoes in the Wal-Mart is priceless.

Seriously?

A couple of nights ago I was at a dinner where one of the attendees started to talk about the passing of Fidel Castro.  I almost fell out of my chair when he immediately trotted the tired old line about how Cubans had "universal health care and high literacy."  

Seriously?  People still cling to this line of defense for Castro?  As I said to this person, "If you gave me control of the army and the police, the ability to jail anybody who dissents and a series of outside donor states who propped up my economy, I'm sure I could deliver the low-quality health care you are describing to everybody."

Is the bar really this low?  Even this guy had to admit that Castro had built a police state and utterly destroyed the Cuban economy and infrastructure, but somehow this was a fair trade-off for access to medical clinics.

As I said, I almost fell out of my chair because I would have thought that even the most devoted fellow-travellers had seen the light about Castro in recent years, particularly after the clampdown he began after September 11, 2001, when he knew that the outside world was no longer watching.

It beggars belief, but what was more frustrating was that this guy kept trying to back track and claim he was not supporting Castro or excusing him.  That argument might have held water if I didn't learn later in the dinner that he had actually been employed as a PR person by Castro to help him improve his international image.  (His one contribution - ditch the fatigues for something casual, like a jump suit.)

You can't make these people up.

Red

As many of you know, the Misanthrope, he is the fan of some of the 1970s progressive music. (Okay, no more Manoloblogging.)  

This is partially because when I was learning to play guitar and I was attracted to some of the virtuosity of guys like Steve Howe and partially because I get bored with the simple harmonic structure of rock very quickly.  I don't know how to square any of this with my adoration of The Who.

At any rate, I happened upon a live performance video of King Crimson (the current "double-trio" version) and it got me looking to dig back into my Fripp collection.  Sadly, most of it was on vinyl and most of that was stolen in my junior year of college.

So I went to iTunes to see if I could pick up "Discipline," my favorite Crimson album.  Nope.  No Crimson on iTunes.

This led to some web searching and I came upon Discipline Global Media, the company that now distributes Crimson and related music and also promotes other new artists.  The Rosenbergs, a band I remember seeing with Dfactor in Dumbo back in 2000 or so, were with DGM for a while.

This introduction and series of small essays by Fripp is, I think, fascinating for all those who have been interested in the "label for artists" dream and the frustrations of working with large record companies.  I have to commend Fripp for his clear-eyed review of where things went wrong.  He understands, having run things from the other side, that record labels are businesses and that businesses need to be run for profit.  And this leads to decisions that are unrelated to artistic love of the music.  Sometimes the artist you love and want to promote is simply not going to sell records.  And that has to be agonizing for somebody who started a label for the purpose of putting out music that would not otherwise be heard. 

(Side note: E.G. Records, Crimson's label in the late 1970s and 1980s, was actually run out of the 4th or 5th floor of the apartment building I grew up in.  I used to see Robert Fripp in the elevator four or five times a week.  The only problem was, I was too young to know who he was and I didn't pick up the guitar until I was 14.  It kills me that I didn't get a chance to talk to him after learning about him.)

On a related note, I was geeky enough to sit through a very long but fascinating documentary on Yes last night.  I really only like the "classic" three records (The Yes Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge) with the occasional track on a later record, but I became engrossed in the interviews about the periods before and after that era because of the monstrous band politics and the absolutely shocking business mistakes the band made.  Their first manager signed them up for something like an 18 album deal with Atlantic!  They sold their publishing rights in 1970 to buy a PA like the one they had seen for the band Iron Butterfly!  They were so screwed that the ended up touring constantly to pay off their debts and live their lives.

Yeah, I know, it's a common story (although selling the publishing for a PA is a new low), but in the documentary they compared Yes with Atlantic label mates Led Zeppelin and noted what an incredibly good manager Peter Grant was.  And I have to wonder if Grant's excellent management might have been why Zeppelin was so consistently good musically.  Touring constantly meant Yes rarely had six months off to recharge or write material without getting on a bus or plane.  And their output started to suck pretty rapidly because of it.

Anyway, enough snowy day ramblings.

Eh...

Much fun is being had with the report that Hillary Clinton's campaign spent $95,000 at a deli in Iowa during the caucuses.

For those of us who live in NYC, this figure seems about right.  At my local deli, $95,000 only buys three cups of coffee, a package of Ho-Hos and that little vial of Energy Drink in the red and orange wrapper.

The Power of Love

Dfactor's blog Waved Rumor is an excellent one-stop shop for all things rock related.  I stopped by there today and found this gem.

When I saw the date, I knew immediately that this was the series of concerts that my cousin Janie (pronounced, "JAN-EE," as it is short for "Janice" - she was named for the Misanthrope Mom) attended in 1977.  What makes the story legendary in our family, however, is that she was too young to go by herself.  Things were pretty loose back in 1977 in New York, but not all parents were okay with having a 12 year old girl go to Madison Square Garden to see KISS.  

The upshot was that my Aunt Phyllis, who must have been about 47 at the time, went to every concert and sat with Janie.  I can't even imagine what she must have made of this at the time.  Aunt Phyllis reached 21 years old well before Rock'n'roll got started.  Her teenage memories are of the 1940s and WWII.

Anyway, it's pretty amazing that she was willing to sit through what must have sounded like WWIII just so her daughter could go.

Serenity

Wallace and Maggie find a sunbeam at the beach house.

Blood in the Streets, the Town of New Haven

I was saddened to see that the Yankee Doodle is in danger of closing.  I'm not really surprised though.

When I was in college, New Haven was pretty much a dump.  There's no way to hide it; the place was devastated.  And I know that I often thought how nice the city could be (it was once considered one of the best places in America to live).

As they say, be careful what you wish for.  Soon after I graduated, the city and the campus began to improve considerably.  This, of course, meant rising rents.  Demery's, the site of so many delightful Friday night fights, was turned into an Au Bon Pain.  The pizza place near my residential college where they sold crack out of the kitchen closed and was replaced by nicer shops.

Obviously, it is nicer, on the whole, to have a cleaner, more pleasant campus.  The downside of these changes is that awesome institutions like the Yankee Doodle get squeezed out.

In my Senior year, I lived off campus on Park Street and I think I must have eaten at the Doodle 3-4 days a week.  Two eggs, coffee and toast cost $0.80.  A hamburger and coke was something like $1.50.  The place only had a few stools in a mini-diner format and it closed at 2 PM.  I quickly learned that the owner did not want to be friends with the students (or most of the customers) and I would often chuckle into my eggs as some newbie would come in and try to befriend Rick or his daughter.  Although the Doodle was sparse, it was never downtrodden or dirty.  It was a total timewarp from the 1950s, when, it seemed, they also froze the prices.

A group of alums have banded together to try to save the Doodle and I intend to contribute.  At the very least, I owe Rick the real value of all those meals I got there for next to nothing.  There is no doubt that the real estate value (given its location in the middle of 7 of the 12 residential colleges) is too high now to make it work on its own.  But there is nothing wrong with devotees banding together to try to preserve something that made the lives of so many undergraduates just that much better for decades.

P.S. - When I was there, the record for the hamburger eating contest was 12.  I am still certain I could have held the title briefly in that period.  The record is now in the mid-twenties, which is deeply disturbing.

McCain/Romney '08?

Romney is about to endorse McCain, giving him his delegates and securing the nomination.

Romney never really got me excited, but I think he is a smart, serious guy and he would address the McCain age issue very well.  I think a lot of people would feel comfortable knowing Romney would be the back up if McCain got sick or stepped down after one term.

And, mercifully, it would shut Mike Huckabee the fuck up.  I cannot stand that guy and he should not be allowed to gather anymore support for 2012.

Rock 'n' Roll

Last night, the Scottish Lass and I went to see Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll with Brian Cox and Rufus Sewell.

First of all, Brian Cox could read the ingredients from a box of Wheaties and he'd still be cool.  No, I'm not silly enough to claim that he was the better Hannibal Lecter, but he's just always enjoyable to watch. (IMDB tells me that he and Anthony Hopkins have shared three roles - Lecter, Titus Andronicus and King Lear.)

Rufus Sewell, eh, not so great but Stoppard gives him a lot of lines that are, shall we say, tough going.

At any rate, I can't say I loved it as I think Stoppard bit off a bit more than he could work with in a single play (the story of Czechoslovakia post 1968, "useful idiot" intellectuals at Cambridge who played at being Communists but never saw what was really happening, the navel-gazing silliness of the flower power movement in the 1960s), but I must commend it to Chrispy and StinkRock for placing, of all people, Syd Barrett in a central role in the play.

Indeed, they play a bunch of early Floyd in the little breaks between scenes, including "Astronomy Domine" and "Jugband Blues."  (Bizarrely, they also play "Vera" from "The Wall," which is a great little tune.)

The play was so wordy and overwrought in places that it was a bit difficult to sort out what Stoppard was trying to achieve, but as I see it this morning, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd seem to be a kind of metaphor for all of the "revolutionary" spirit of the 1960s.  Barrett is a pure force of beauty who succumbs to insanity.  The machine he helped build, Pink Floyd, becomes a commercial mega force, no doubt skilled at what they do but lacking something of the pure nature of the Barrett craziness.  This template is overlaid on the events in the Czech Republic, where the Plastic People of the Universe are the apolitical force of nature that does more good than all the intellectuals who claim to take up the mantle of the people.  It's not clear whether or not Stoppard is claiming that the beauty is inevitably linked to being mad.

Yeah, as I said, it's a bit hard going for a single play.  But it was so unexpected to see the ghost of Syd raised on Broadway and with such affection.  If StinkRock and Chrispy look, they can probably find discount tickets as the show is ending in 6 weeks and the house was nowhere near full.

Yes, Russians Are Basically Crazy

I was taught to play guitar by a Russian and I can tell you that Russians are amongst the most unique mix of intense intellectual and scientific achievement and flat out, moonbat, wingnut, craziness on the planet.

This article reminded me of my teacher.  He was a very smart guy and he had been trained at one of the best conservatories with the best teachers.  And he was very wise about many difficult subjects.  But every once in a while he would tell me that Russians had invented cars that ran on spiritual fuel or machines that could fly to the moon on chocolate and he would be totally serious.

There's something awesomely eccentric in the whole thing.  It's kind of like British eccentricity with a deeper, sadder soul suffering at its core.

That's why my German car only runs on oil.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

Awesome van.

Is Anybody Actually Surprised?

If you didn't think Obama was going to try to bring the New Deal back from the dead, you were deluding yourself.

A Mixed Bag

Just got back from the vet.  The ultrasound showed a small increase in the size of the mass on her heart, but the increase was nothing compared to what would have been expected in this period of time.  That may sound like a hollow victory, but the vet was actually quite pleased with the result and with Maggie's total lack of side effects from the first round of chemo.  We are in the fight now!

So, we are switching the chemo cocktail today to include carboplatin, a DNA alkylating agent (it attaches an alkyl group to DNA to prevent replication; this is effective because cancerous cells replicate quickly) that is very potent but also myelosuppressive.  That is to say, we need to watch Maggie's blood chemistry because the drug suppress her bone marrow activity.  This can result in a weakened immune system.

As always, I will monitor the Biscuit's well-being and comfort, but I am glad that the initial chemo has shown efficacy and that we are able to hit the mass again with a different drug.

Maggie is a tough little dog and I am convinced that our sapphire bullets of pure love have helped her in many ways.

Okay, I Have to Admit It

I am now officially sick and tired of Barack Obama.  This whole thing is so over the top for what has been, so far, no substance at all, that it is beginning to sound more like a cult than an election campaign.  The guy gives a nice stump speech.  Great.  He seems bright and gentlemanly.  Nice.  And I certainly love that he has made Hillary look like the phony she is.

But Obama is surely just as much a phony.  He is long on "uplifting" speeches and extremely short on policy and platform.  Change, change, change - what the hell is he, a bank?  Change to what?  For what reasons?  Change everything?

Blech.

He makes us feel like everything is going to be alright because we are all standing at a "special" moment in history and we can all save the country if we can just "unite."  This is, of course, complete and utter horseshit.  Democracy is not about unity.  It is about disagreement, but civil disagreement.  "Unity" is the kind of crap that you hear about in, dare I say it, totalitarian societies.  It is the sophisticate's patriotism by another name.

And I, for one, have had enough of it.  Uplifting speeches accomplish very little.  What is needed are solid ideas, well thought out and vigorously, but courteously, pursued and defended.  That's not unity, that's a functioning democracy.

Somehow I think this whole carnival comes crashing to a halt if he gets the nomination and has an opponent with more experience and different ideas.  Bring it on.

(As a side note, I am also heavily amused by the constant comparisons between JFK and Obama.  The fact is, JFK would probably be the nominee of the Republican Party today.  He was a vigorous internationalist in foreign affairs who was prepared to send American troops in harms way and who used the CIA to assassinate political leaders.  The Democrats would have a heart attack if he were actually President today.)

This Really Happened to Me

At last, a scientific explanation of the shivers you get after peeing.

This effect was responsible for one of the coldest feelings I've ever felt in my life.  I was hiking the Inca trail in Peru to Macchu Picchu with a tour group.  The local porters that came with the group would set up tents at night and we would eat around a campfire under the most incredible blanket of stars I have ever seen.  (Side note: Quechua, the local language spoken by the porters when they were not speaking Spanish was the basis for the dialogue spoken by Greedo in Star Wars IV:  A New Hope.) (Additional side note:  Han Shot First).

After dinner, I retired to my tent, but about an hour into sleep I had to pee.  So I got up, put on a fleece and went outside to pee over the side of the ridge on which we were camping.  Once I got done, however, I began to shiver uncontrollably and was overwhelmed by the deepest cold I have ever felt.  The high mountain air, which had seemed mild moments before, was suddenly colder than Antarctica.  I had to sprint back to my tent, where it took me 15 minutes to relax my jaw from the chattering teeth.

Coming up soon:  Other bodily function stories related to my time in Peru, including the story of the deaf guy taking a shit on 800 year old Inca ruins in full view of 150 people.

Laughing in Her Sleep

A commenter on Stink Rock quoted the old Microdot song "Biltmore Clock" (I'll post the song if somebody tells me how) in response to a mention of Bill Boggs.  The song was my homage to growing up in New York in the 1970s and 1980s when, let's face it, the place was an open sewer - but an open sewer with a heart.  Anyway, the commenter was right to connect the name to the song, but the New York television presenter was not the person I was naming in the song.

She was actually a homeless person who slept on a grate on Second Avenue in the 1980s who became a test case in the Koch administration's attempts to commit mentally ill homeless people.  For some reason, that affair was New York in a nutshell for me.

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for those days in New York.  No, I don't want to return to the days when the subway cars were covered in graffiti and God knows what else.  But something wonderful got sucked out of the city during those final years before a massive new tide of wealth turned it into the yuppie playground it has become.  If you can believe it, when my parents moved into our new apartment in 1977, the landlord gave them two months free rent as an enticement to sign the lease.  Looking back, there's no way that my parents could give us the life we had back then at today's rates.  For a brief period, the inmates were running the asylum and it was CHEAP.

So here's to all the old head shops on every corner, the Irish bars with briskets from the Eisenhower administration still stewing in a steam plate, the Monkey House at the Central Park zoo, the big yellow cabs, the jazz clubs that once ran along 54th Street, where I grew up, the crazy drummer in Central Park who spray painted his hair black (yes, he was real, not just a character in "Taxi Driver"), and all the other wonderful old school New York things that were dead and gone by 1990.

Holy Fucking Shit

The Misanthrope is in awe of the Giants.  

When the game started and the Giants began that first drive that ate up over half the first quarter, the Misanthrope turned to the Scottish Lass and said, "The Giants are playing this thing perfectly.  They will score first and Brady will have been sitting on the sidelines, getting cold, for the first ten minutes of the game."

And it just got better.  The Giants defense swarmed Brady so effectively that they eventually got into his head.  You could see the defeat in his eyes when he walked out of the locker room for the second half.  Doubt had been placed where there had been little doubt the whole season.

As the game progressed, I thought that the Giants defense would start to tire and make mistakes.  And they did start to lose some steam.  But somehow they found another well of energy and they put in an unbelievable showing to the end.  Those guys really believed in themselves.  It was absolutely awe-inspiring to watch.

But the play that few will ever forget was Manning twisting himself free from what looked like a game-ending sack to drop and hit Tyree to keep the dream alive.  

Insane.  Just insane.

Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love

I apologize for the lack of update on Maggie.  As you can imagine, it's been a very emotional issue for both me and the Scottish Lass.  

We saw the oncologist last Tuesday and the prognosis is extremely guarded.  They did an ultrasound and saw what looked like some evidence of the re-emergence of the fibrosarcoma on the heart.  There is a small chance that what they saw was merely fibrosis and scarring from the surgery, but they think that is unlikely.  Unfortunately, if this comes back again, surgery is not an option because the heart would now be involved directly.

Maggie had her first course of chemotherapy that day.  There is literally no record of a fibrosarcoma in the heart sac in the literature, so the doctor has no way of giving odds of success.  Maggie is doing combination therapy of doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide, two drugs that have shown efficacy in fighting fibrosarcomas, albeit in other parts of the body.  In typical Maggie fashion, she showed no side effects from the doxorubicin.  She slept for a while after the infusion and the next day she was right as rain.  She's one seriously tough little bitch.

We have a follow up in two weeks to see if the drugs have had any effect and if there is any evidence of the disease growing.  One thing that must be borne in mind is that chemo for dogs is not given at the same dosage (adjusted for weight) as for humans.  When doctors first started treating dogs with drugs, the owners were appalled at how sick the dogs were getting from the chemo.  As a result, veterinary oncology is more focused on providing as much quality time with the animal than on attempting to cure.

So, it is difficult.  But Scottish Lass and I have taken the attitude that we are going to be as positive as possible and hope for the best.  If the news is bad, at least we will not have wasted our remaining time with the MagDog in sadness.  I've taken to holding her for long stretches an imagining my love for her cleaning her heart of the disease.  Silly, perhaps, but it can't hurt.

For now, though, it's kind of a bizarre situation because Maggie is 100% normal.  There is no evidence at all that she is sick in the least.  She is jolly and active and happy and shows no signs at all of discomfort.  So, at the least, I view that as a positive.

Some Bad News

Just got word from the vet that the third histopathology test, which was performed by a specialist in difficult cases at the University of Colorado, showed signs of fibrosarcoma.  I have yet to speak to the oncologist about what they found, but it is kind of a mixed bag.  The good news is that surgery is the main treatment and Maggie's was about as successful as they come.  The bad news is that the specialist did find some evidence of malignant cells even in the margin of healthy tissue that the surgeon removed.

Fibrosarcoma is a tumor of the connective tissues and it is typically not metastatic.  It is, rather, locally invasive.  This is good news.  The presence of malignant cells in the margin of the resected tissue is a bummer though.

More updates as I hear them.

My God

October 23, 1982 -  My friend Cory Notrica's bar-mitzvah.

Delta is the Worst Airline

I got to San Francisco this morning.  Unfortunately, my bags did not accompany me.  Nobody at Delta seems to have a clue where they are.  Now, when I call the lost baggage number, it is just busy.

With no business clothes, this trip is becoming pretty pointless pretty fast.  

If you can avoid it at all, I implore you:  NEVER FLY WITH DELTA

Where Was This Hillary All Last Year?

The media are making a big deal out of this moment in the Democratic debate.  The story seems to be that Hillary was overly angry or out of control.  Now, I am certainly no fan of Hillary.  If she is elected, I'd seriously consider moving to London for the next four years.  But I don't see what's so bad about this moment.  Her essential point, that making soaring speeches about change is not sufficient, is actually the strongest argument against Obama.  The vibe around him has become so messianic that it is getting a bit ridiculous.  Even if he turned out to be the greatest President in history, Obama is not going to be able to live up to this hype.

The President's job is not primarily to give exciting speeches to the public.  His job is to push his policies through by working with or (sometimes) outflanking Congress.  This is something that is overlooked far too often.  President Bush may be despised by many because of his policy choices,  but he has run rings around Congress and proved to be uncannily successful at defeating resistance from the House and Senate.  His one misstep was on amnesty for illegal immigrants, but that was due more to a complete mis-read of the nation's mood than to Congressional maneuvering.  Remember, that was a bi-partisan initiative.  (And, not inconsequentially, something on which McCain can still be hung in this election.)

So, much as I despise Hillary, she is making a valid point.  Being President is about execution.  That's why they call it the Executive branch.  She's probably not in the best position to make this particular criticism as she doesn't have any real executive experience, but her criticism of the constant bleating about change is pretty spot on. 

And this is really my biggest concern over Obama.  He is intelligent and passionate.  He communicates well and connects with people.  This would give him a powerful shot at being elected with a large majority and, thus, a reasonable mandate.  He is smart enough to surround himself with good policy advisors.  But I can't see anything in his background that gives me confidence that he knows how to be an effective executive who can push his agenda through Congress.  This is why Americans do not typically elect Senators to be President.  They elect Governors.  I don't know if this is a conscious choice for most, but somewhere, voters seem to cotton on to the idea that you should elect somebody with executive experience for the executive job.  This campaign is unusual in that there are really only two real candidates with executive experience (Romney and Giuliani).

Which is why a McCain/Obama race is so interesting.  There is no advantage on political executive experience there.  They are both Senators, but Obama has so little track record in the Senate that he is not open to the attacks on his record there.  McCain is more open (although he is in an unusually strong place on Iraq because he was such a vocal critic of the conduct of the war and Rumsfeld), but the flip side of that is that he has a ton of experience by comparison and he can make a credible case that Obama is far too green by comparison. 

And he'd be right.  I'd prefer it if Obama ran for Governor of Illinois and came back in a few years with a successful record there.  He'd be pretty much unstoppable then and I would feel comfortable that I knew what we were getting.

Cold Air, Bright Lights

The view from last night's flight courtesy of Mano.

Insert Your Own Joke Here

It's tough to be a monkey when your mate needs the private jet, the house in Hamptons and the winter house in Aspen.

Some Humor

How can this guy be so stupid as to think it is not America's fault?  What does he know about Iraq anyway?  Doesn't he understand that sophisticated people just know that the UN can only do good?

Some Many People to Hate, So Little Time

The Misanthrope was supposed to be in San Francisco for his best friend's birthday today but he is not.  Instead, he is wired with coffee and working on about three hours of sleep (due to a very enjoyable night with Mano, the Scottish Lass and her lovely friend from London who is staying with us this weekend) and muttering under his breath about never flying Delta again.

My flight this morning to SFO was cancelled due to the crazy weather that has been battering California.  The equipment for the flight never made it out of SFO last night.  Obviously, Delta (an acronym for Doesn't Ever Leave The Airport) called all of the passengers last night and told them the flight was cancelled, right?

Uh, no.  They told me at the airport, where I had arrived on time at 7 AM because nobody had called me to tell me the flight was cancelled last night.

So I called Delta to re-book the flight.  First, I spoke to some guy in a call center in India who asked a lot of questions, took up about 10 minutes of my time and then said, "Okay, I will now transfer you to somebody who can make the booking."

Then I spoke to a woman who had clearly lost her lust for her work a long time ago.  She put me on hold for 12 minutes and then came on to tell me she had my flight rebooked for tomorrow...except, wait, no, sorry, that flight is actually sold out.  It seems that all the people Delta DID call last night took advantage of the early notice about the flight cancellation to rebook, eating up all the seats on the other flights.

Then, my cell phone dropped the call.

I worked it all out eventually, although I will not get to SF until Monday, but along the way I got to hate so many people.  To borrow a phrase from the late, great Bill Hicks, I am a camel of hate and today I was able to fill my hump to capacity.

Speaking of Hillary

There was a fantastic email yesterday with a mock press release from Deanna Favre stating that she was taking over the QB position because, even though she had never actually played football, she has been married to Brett for 11 years.

When it comes down to it, that's pretty much Hillary's whole pitch, isn't it?

More Cowbell...uh...Horsepower!

This article struck a chord with me as it mirrors something I've been thinking and saying for some time.  Environmentalism has been sold poorly to the public for too long.  The whole thing is always presented as some kind of moral crusade where compliance means eating tasteless gruel because it is good for us.  It's always about some kind of sacrifice.  In the case of topics like anthropogenic global warming (which I am beginning to suspect is going to be viewed by future generations as a bizarre quasi-religious hysteria based on awfully weak evidence), it is hard to escape the impression that many of the eco-evangelists are more interested in beating down capitalism and technology than they are in the science of global warming.  

This allows the opposite side to spend all its time arguing against the anti-capitalist and anti-technology agenda instead of dealing with the issue of efficiency.  I have long thought that many of the so-called "green" technologies could be adopted and pursued more easily and broadly if they were simply marketed as good old fashioned Yankee ingenuity and thriftiness.

So it comes as no surprise that this guy is doing something that Detroit seems unable to do.  They spend too much time building ugly cars and lobbying in Washington to avoid increases in fuel efficiency standards.

Overjoyed

It may be a bit premature to start singing "Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead," but I was delighted to see Hillary get pummeled in Iowa. Last night we had a visitor from the UK staying with us and when she found out the result, she expressed disappointment and said, "I kind of want to see a female president." The Scottish Lass immediately replied, "So do I, but I want a HUMAN female."

But my joy extended also to Obama's victory. Yes, the Iowa Caucuses are bizarre, often meaningless and hardly the model of democratic process, but it is pretty clear that he has the energy and momentum in this race while Hillary is stuck in neutral. It will be particularly enjoyable watching Hillary meltdown because she pushed so hard to move the primaries early to avoid a bruising nomination fight. Now that she has lost the lead, that strategy looks likely to backfire on her as she has little time to fight the inevitable "Obama the Conqueror" momentum. If he repeats in New Hampshire, I think it is over.

Which is fantastic. I want to believe in Obama. I think he's probably a really great person to hang out with. He is clearly intelligent and thoughtful and I think he has passion. Unfortunately, when you look at his platform, it mostly boils down to using the government to solve all problems. And I have been less than impressed with him when he is asked questions about difficult issues. It is not sufficient to blather on about the "politics of hope" and pretend that disagreement will magically disappear just because an appealing person is President. But there is still time and the general election campaign will shake a lot of this out.

On the Republican side, I don't see Huckabee sustaining his strength in New Hampshire. I think the real winner in Iowa was McCain because Huckabee put such big dagger in Romney's by-the-book campaign. McCain has been quietly surging in New Hampshire and he could breakout with a strong showing there. Rudy is the X Factor.

But the most enjoyable thing about the results from Iowa was looking forward to an Obama-McCain race or an Obama-Giuliani race. It would be such a pleasure, particularly in the latter case, to see two articulate, intelligent candidates debate. Let's hope that such a race happens and can re-invigorate our sclerotic political process. With Iraq fading as an issue, Bush departing and a Democratic Congress with the lowest approval ratings in history (even below Bush's - how incompetent do you need to be to be less liked than Bush??), everything is up for grabs in this election.

How Many?

20

Find a Sonography school near you

New Project

After thinking long and hard, I have decided that my next project will be a series of guitar jams with lyrics entirely taken from the comments section of YouTube videos of guitar players like Eddie, Vai, Satriani.  The combination of righteous anger, poor spelling, impenetrable syntax and total ignorance is just too fantastic to ignore.

Who's in?

Misanthrope Leads - The MSM Follows

More on fertility rates in the US and Europe.

God Bless the New York Post

Truly, the New York Post deserves the Nobel Prize for Headline Writing.  It's so hard to pick a favorite as they are all gems.  Who can forget the cover photo of disgraced New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey after admitting his affair with his Israeli security adviser?  The headline? 

Alien versus Predator

Well, the good folks at the Post have outdone themselves again.  As I noted below, Ike Turner died last week.  The headline?

Ike, 76, Beats Tina to Death

That's just awe-inspiring copy.

The Return of Sat...uh, the MagDog

She's baaaaaack.

The Scottish Lass and I went to pick up Her Satanic Highness on Saturday night.  It had been 3 days since her surgery and she had been ahead of schedule on all fronts.  They removed the chest tube quicker than expected.  She was weaned off the IV drugs quicker than expected.  Basically, the dog is made of fucking titanium.

When we showed up, we didn't know quite what to expect.  When we saw her on Thursday, she was still very groggy from all the pain meds and didn't look happy at all.  We expected the nurse to bring her out wrapped in a blanket, only her little head sticking out with a plaintive look.

What actually happened was that the Iron Bitch STORMED out of the hospital and into the waiting room.  Once outside, she was trotting as fast as she could down 15th Street.  Because the wound is on her chest, you can't really see it most of the time.  You could have been forgiven for not realizing that anything at all had happened to her this week.

Once home, she availed herself of a big bowl of kibble and then went straight to her dog bed.  Instead of sleeping, she sat on her haunches for a while, like a Queen returning to survey her kingdom.

It was a huge relief.  

So, we have a couple of weeks of heavy pill rotation coming up.  She's on five pills, twice a day.  Luckily, the vet recommended a treat called "Pill Pockets," which have a little hole in which to place the medicine.  She wolfs those down like she hasn't eaten for weeks, so the meds should be no problem.

Plus, that zipper scar on her chest is fucking bitchin'.

Yup

The end of Europe?

This article reminds me of a conversation that I was having with some friends of mine last Fall.  They are a married couple.  She is Italian and he is half-German/half-American.  Among other subjects, our boozy post-dinner conversation turned to differences between America and Europe.  We got on to the subject of the high level of benefits that European governments provide to their citizens.  In particular, we started talking about the level of paid maternity leave required by law and other related pregnancy benefits.

My Italian friend was arguing the standard line of well-educated, upper middle class liberals that these benefits were crucial.  When I asked what public good was being served by having such a high burden on employers, she responded that it promoted childbirth and population growth.  The problem, as I pointed out to her, was that European birth rates are amongst the lowest in the world and trail a slew of nations with no such benefits.   If that is the public policy goal of the benefits, it isn't working.

As this article points out, however, Europeans have gotten used to a level of government benefit and support that is probably politically impossible to reduce.  At some point, these countries are going to buckle under the weight of their social welfare systems and their weak economies.  

There are many wonderful things about Europe and certainly many things that Americans could learn from the Continent.  In fact, one thing that frustrates me no end is the tendency of Americans to reflexively take the position that everything is done the best here, better than anywhere else.  As just a small example, consider the difference in public transportation integration between European and American cities.  Coming home to JFK and grabbing a horrible, smelly cab is downright embarrassing after having been in, say, Zurich. 

But the truth is that the lovely mirage of long-vacations, short work weeks and lavish government benefits with no negative consequences is not sustainable much longer.  It's no coincidence that young, ambitious French people are abandoning Paris in droves for London, where they might be able to gain something from hard work and long hours.

I Guess We Are All Just Making Vibrations in the Air

Whether it is strings, drumheads or something else, I guess all music is really just making vibrations that travel through the air.

It's a little less distinguished than all vocal performances like, say, Bobby McFerrin or the French singer Camille, but it's all the same concept.

Don't You Sass Me Now Anna Mae!

Ike Turner is dead.

Every time I hear his name, I think of the time I saw "What's Love Got to Do with It?" on television once in a summer house I shared with a gaggle of women.  I didn't really know anything about Ike or Tina Turner except that he supposedly beat her.  So, to be honest, I was really just waiting for that part to show up in the movie because the other stuff was pretty dull to me.  Let's face it, if the "triumphant" part of your story is producing "Private Dancer," the story isn't so good.

So there I was, sitting with about 10 women in the living room, when the first scene of Ike's crazy, violent temper finally comes on.  Without thinking, I cried out with a fist-pumping, "Yes!!!"

Maybe I shouldn't have told that story.

Two Down, One To Go!

Just spoke with the surgeon.  Maggie is out of surgery and doing very well.  They did have to cut open her sternum, so she will have some awesome pain meds, but the operation went about as well as it could go. 

They were able to remove all of the mass and a nice margin of healthy tissue around it.  That's the best possible outcome.

We will have to wait 5-7 days for the histopathology report to determine if it is cancer and to know if the margin was big enough, but for now we have had the best possible result.  It's a huge relief.

Unsurprisingly, Maggie has won the hearts of the staff at the vet hospital, as we found out last night from the nurses.  I fully expect to go in tomorrow and find Maggie in her bed, surrounded by nurses laughing at her jokes as she sips the bottle of booze they smuggled in for her. 

Decision '08

I think this is a must-see item for all interested in next year's election.

Seriously, how low can these guys go?

Waiting - Part Two

We visited the Iron Bitch last night and this morning and she looks much, much better.  In fact, you'd hardly know that she has been so sick.  That made us feel really good, although I couldn't help but feel bad that the poor pup doesn't know what she's about to go through.

So, in a few minutes, she will go into surgery and they will try to remove all of the 4 inch tissue mass and whatever portion of the pericardium is involved.  This is some pretty serious surgery, so the first hurdle today is getting her through the procedure itself.  She's a very tough little beagle and should do well, but it is nerve-wracking nonetheless. 

The second hurdle will be knowing if they could remove the whole mass.  They can't fully visualize it using ultra-sound, so they won't know until they are inside whether parts of it are too close to sensitive nerves or vasculature for removal.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that the whole mass can be resected completely.

And that's where we will be at the end of the day.  The procedure takes about an hour and half, so we should know by 5 o'clock how things have gone.

The last hurdle will be the histopathology report on the tissue mass.  Obviously, we are hoping it is non-cancerous, which would indicate a very good prognosis for her.

In the midst of our stress, we had to laugh when we realized that this whole thing is classic Maggie.  Only she could have a huge tissue mass near her heart, a heart sac filled with nearly half a liter of fluid and, by the way, a GI parasite that needed to be flushed, and still walk around with nothing worse than a strange cough.

That dog is tough, I tell you.

Some Good News

I just spoke with the veterinary cardiologist, who is absolutely incredible, and got the good news that the fluid from Maggie's pericardium did not test positive for lymphoma.  Now, lymphomas do not tend to exfoliate that much, which means that there are not as many cells to detect in samples, so this is not a guarantee that it is not a lymphoma, but it is a good start.  It also doesn't guarantee that it is not a sarcoma or a carcinoma, but we won't know until the surgery is performed, which will be tomorrow.

The surgery itself is major and I am pretty nervous about that.  The mass is too big (10 cm - about 4 inches!) to remove through thorascopy, so the next step would be to scan her and use a rib spreader to clear enough space to remove the mass.  The most involved would be to actually open her rib cage, but that is pretty drastic.  Unfortunately, there is no way to know until tomorrow.  Amidst my anxiety, I cannot help but marvel that surgery this complex has now become almost commonplace for veterinary medicine.

So, two major hurdles remain.  First, the successful completion of the surgery.  I will let everybody know how that goes tomorrow afternoon.  It is definitely scary.  It is not possible to tell before getting into the chest whether the entire mass can be removed, so we won't know for sure that they can take every bit out until it is done.

Second, the post-surgical biopsy will tell us if the mass is cancer or not.  If it is, then she'll need to take some anti-cancer drugs for some time post surgery.  If it is not, well, assuming no complications, we've reached the best of all worlds.  According to the doctor, removal of the pericardium doesn't have a negative effect on lifespan for the dog.  So there is hope for a very good outcome and I am just going to concentrate on that to get me through the next 24 hours.

Updates to follow, but first a thank you to all of you who have sent me such kind words.  Dog people are really good people and, thankfully, my friends are also really good people.

Waiting

I was all fired up to come back from Australia and post some photos about our trip and then write some stuff about working with my friend Mano Felciano on his show last Sunday at Crash Mansion.

Unfortunately, life doesn't work out that way.

My last post, about Maggie and her sedatives, was funny at the time but it is less so given what has transpired in the last 48 hours.

Maggie's cough resolved, but when we got home, she looked like she had lost a lot of weight and she wasn't acting right.  Hard to explain why, but you just know when your dog ain't right.

By Sunday, she was breathing only in little short breaths, which I figured was a result of continued throat infection or maybe congestion in the lungs.  So I took her to the vet on Monday morning.

It turns out that the pericardium, the tissue sac that surrounds the heart, was filled with what later turned out to be 400 ml (about a quart) of fluid.  Maggie was breathing so shallowly because her heart sac was filling up 1/3 of her chest, compressing her lungs.  As a result, what I thought would be a trip to the vet to get some antibiotics turned into a sprint to the emergency room to have the fluid drained.  Given her size and the amount of fluid, nobody could believe she was walking around so normally.  I can't even begin to imagine what would have happened had I hesitated and scheduled the appointment for later in the week or next week.  So, lesson number one - IF YOU THINK YOUR DOG ISN'T "RIGHT" GO TO THE VET IMMEDIATELY. 

They drained the fluid at the emergency room and she is doing much better now.  The nurse called this morning and told me she was "eating like a champ," which sounds like the little piglet, so I am relieved.  Above is a photo we snapped last night during visiting hours.

Unfortunately, the cause of the fluid build-up was a large tissue mass in the pericardium.  We are awaiting the result of the blood tests right now to determine if it is malignant.  It is also possible it was caused by a viral or fungal infection, which would be a more welcome result than a cancer.  Luckily, the full-body scan they did of her last night didn't show any tissue masses or tumors anywhere else in her tiny beagle body.  

Still, this waiting is killing me.

It's a strange thing to have a dog in such distress.  As anybody who knows me can tell you, I adore my dogs.  And I was an absolute wreck yesterday due to the lethal combination of intense jet lag (only about 9 hours of sleep in three days), lack of food (I was so wound up all I could get down was three cups of coffee) and having to keep a stiff upper lip during some business calls and meetings during the day.  But it's just not possible to explain that you want to cry because your dog is in a life-threatening situation.

At any rate, there were many, many tears yesterday and many sad thoughts about preparing for the possibility of a life without the Magdog.  And I reflected that loving a dog is really about the loving of the dog and being the one responsible for protecting and caring for her.  People will tell you that they get unconditional love from their dog, but the most wonderful and also, in these cases, most painful part is being the one who must love and care and, in the worst situations, make difficult decisions.  We are not there yet with Maggie, but in the midst of this scare I was able to glimpse how love can make you strong enough to ensure that there is no needless suffering.  I truly hope we do not get there, but I will admit that I am scared.

Orange Sunshine

Readers of the Misanthrope will be well acquainted with the satanic doings of the beagle known as Maggie.  Even in the depths of her evil, she is a supremely entertaining dog.

Today was a highlight, minus the evil.  The poor Magdog has been suffering from a bronchial infection and has had a persistent, hacking cough.  I took her to the vet this morning, who gave her antibiotics and something call torbutrol, a cough suppressant with "mild sedative effects."

I mushed 1/2 a tablet into a bit of doughnut and got her satanic highness to swallow it...or at least most of it.  She tried to pick the tablet out of the doughnut and just eat the doughnut.

Well, it turns out that "mild sedative" is, perhaps, a bit of an understatement.  Within minutes, Maggie was staring blissfully at one of my guitars with her lower jaw slack and her rear legs splayed.  I swear I heard her talking to Wallace about this awesome set at the Hartford Civic Center in 1982 when they played "Box/Drums/Space/Terrapin."

Easily the most entertaining thing I've watched in weeks.  I've got to do some experimenting to see how many of these pills I need to take.

Let's see, I'm about 9 times Maggie's size....

Opportunities Available in All Walks of Life...

...in Australia!!

Yes, the Misanthrope and the Scottish lass are headed to Australia on Friday for two weeks of fun, sun and didjereewangoloos. For those of you just tuning in, Scottish lass moved to Australia when she was 12 (after a brief year in South Africa, where her parents took one look at the hatin' going on and got the family the hell out).

To prepare, we watched a couple of excellent documentaries about Australia, notably "Wolf Creek." It was heartwarming for the Misanthrope to know that he has kindred spirits in Oz.

On the itinerary - Syndey, Brisbane, the Big Pineapple (in Woombye, near Nambour - still no word on whether Princess Amidala is coming) and the Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo.

Look forward to photos of the Misanthrope cuddling cute Koalas and murdering backpackers in the Outback!

In the future...

...the aviation industry will be run entirely by dogs, mostly beagles.

More revelations soon.

Wait for it

Just wait.  

Don't fidget.  

And stop playing with it or it will get inflamed.

Plane Crash on the Upper East Side

The Misanthrope has received many emails requesting commentary on yesterday's plane crash on 72nd Street in Manhattan. There are still some things that are unclear about the chain of events, so I will hold off on a longer post for the moment.

I will take this opportunity to point out that calls from Governor Pataki and others to "tighten up the airspace" around New York City are misguided and pointless. For the sake of argument, let's say that Lidle had been in contact with air traffic control throughout his trip on a filed flight plan. How exactly would that have prevented the accident?

The answer is that it wouldn't. Pataki and others are playing into a fantasy that many non-pilots have that air traffic control can actually control planes and that some higher force intervenes the second there is a deviation from the "flight plan." It's just not the way it is. Even if we got rid of the special exclusion zone from the Class B airspace that Lidle was flying in and required all planes to be on a flight plan at all times, that wouldn't prevent anything. If Lidle's final trip was an accident, he wouldn't have been able to control the result. If somebody were to fly through New York airspace with a clearance from, say, LaGuardia tower (the controlling authority for the northern half of the New York Class B airspace), they could easily deviate from course and crash into a building long, long, long before a jet could even be scrambled.

There is sadness in the pilot community every time somebody goes down. With this crash, there is also great consternation that uninformed politicians will use it as a pretext for erecting an Air Defense Identification Zone around New York. This would be a bad policy result. The Washington ADIZ has been a disaster for general aviation. Let's not make the same mistake in New York.

Some thoughts on potential causes of the crash after I check with some sources.

For Ted, Chrispy and Tony

Boobies.

O! Canada!

Head of the CBC steps down.

Who said Canadians were dull?

Against My Better Judgment

I had boycotted the recent tour by The Who, partially because of the outrageous prices and partially because, no matter how irrational it is, I still show up at their concerts half-expecting to see Pete walk out in a white jumpsuit with a cherry red SG and a stack of HiWatts. As a result, the concert is always fun but disappointing.

But I had read some reviews of the recent tour and they were generally positive, so when a pair of tix (offered by the lovely Scottish Lass with whom the Misanthrope has spent so much time of late) were offered to me this morning, I broke down and agreed to go. With a new record coming out, Townshend appears more engaged than in recent years, so I am interested to see how they are.

By contrast, last week I went to see the fantastic M. Ward at Webster Hall (tix courtesy of the delightful Carrie). I first discovered M. Ward at Southpaw in 2003 when he was the middle opener of Vic Chesnutt. At that show, he was playing by himself with just an acoustic guitar and his harmonica, but I was so struck by his songs and his guitar playing that I immediately bought his records. The upside of that discovery has been the chance to see a true talent in his prime. It's nice to see a show where he plays the songs I want to hear because they came off his most recent record. At Webster Hall, he had a full band (two drummers!) and he seemed, for the first time since I started seeing him, to be fully in control and connecting with his audience. If you want to hear great songs with great guitar playing, see him whenever he comes to your town.

Now, off to fantasyland...

Il Retorno de Cavaliere

Sorry for the long hiatus. The Misanthrope has been consumed by business for the last two months and been very hard to reach.

But that is about to change, as I head into my first real vacation in quite some.

Wait for it...

Dalai Lama

I just came across this interview with the Dalai Lama from London's Daily Telegraph.

There were two paragraphs that had my jaw on the floor.

The first one -

Although he is known for his tolerant, humane views, he is a surprisingly harsh critic of homosexuality. If you are a Buddhist, he says, it is wrong. "Full stop.
No way round it.
"A gay couple came to see me, seeking my support and blessing. I had to explain our teachings. Another lady introduced another woman as her wife - astonishing. It is the same with a husband and wife using certain sexual practices. Using the other two holes is wrong."

I had to read that one a couple of times to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting it. I really had no idea that Buddhism had any prohibitions against homosexuality.

The second one -

The Dalai Lama is no innocent when it comes to realpolitik: he regularly chats to Nelson Mandela, debates ethical issues with the Pope, and knows many world leaders personally through his attempts to highlight the Tibetan cause. Although he appears not to approve of the war in Iraq, he nevertheless admires President Bush.
"He is very straightforward," says the Dalai Lama - and it's clear that this is high praise indeed. "On our first visit, I was faced with a large plate of biscuits. President Bush immediately offered me his favourites, and after that, we got on fine. On my next visit, he didn't mind when I was blunt about the war. By my third visit, I was ushering him into the Oval Office. I was astonished by his grasp of Buddhism." (emphasis added).

Who knew that Bush was such a keen student of Buddhism?? Or that the Dalai Lama admires him?

Curiouser and curiouser...

And While You Are At It...

As the conflict between Israel and, well, almost all of its neighbors continues to escalate, I cannot help but wonder if Israel is not uniquely positioned to strike at Iran's nuclear capabilities again. It's not a newsflash the Hizbollah is controlled from Tehran (albeit through Syria). There appears to be an opening here for Israel to solve a lot of problems for everybody.

Just a thought.

Pete, You Must Be Joking

I got an email today from The Who.

For the low price of $59.99, I can purchase "Platinum Membership" in The Who 2006 Tour and buy tickets four days before they go on sale. Tickets that are already absurdly priced.

Now, any reader of this blog will know I love The Who and that Pete has always been my hero.

But it pains me to see the band revert to its usual form and just come across as a bunch of money-grubbers, looking to cash-in however they can.

Let's review.

This is NOT The Who that is going on tour. It is Roger and Pete, backed by session musicians. For completely unknown reasons, Pete is bringing his brother along to play rhythm guitar. All of these guys are excellent players (well, I have no idea about Simon Townshend; his playing is so superfluous), but they are not Entwistle and Moon. The band was barely credible after Moon died to begin with and Entwistle's departure utterly dismantled the Who sound. To quote Pete himself, this is more like "The Who on Ice."

Which is fine, up to a point. I admit that I still love to see Pete play and enjoy his banter between songs. And if, as he promised at Knebworth, the band does start to play some rarities, it will be a vast improvement over sleepwalking through "I Can't Explain" for the 10,000th time.

But the ticket prices, the Platinum memberships, the overall chutzpah of pretending that this is a real Who tour is starting to grate. And the honest truth is that Pete tends to mail it in for these shows. I can't tell you how often he was sitting back and letting the band play while he noodled indifferently or abused his tremolo bar like a 13 year-old who had just bought his first electric guitar. By the way, what the hell is Pete doing with a tremolo bar on his guitar anyway?

So $59.95 so I can be a few rows closer to this thing?

Hey Pete: Fuck You.

Heil Kitler

I always knew cats were evil.

Syd Barrett - R.I.P.

Syd Barrett has died.

Like most people my age, I came at Pink Floyd through the successful commercial albums of the 1970s. I vividly remember listening on WPLJ to the concert broadcast of the band at the Nassau Coliseum in what must have been 1980. Back then, WPLJ was New York's rock station of choice - back when classic rock was just "rock."

But I still remember the day I brought home, at long last, the vinyl of Piper at the Gates of Dawn. This was actually a tough record to track down back then, as I recall and the chase made it seem even more mythic. I tried all the usual (now long-gone) spots - Disc-o-Mat, Sam Goody's, Crazy Eddie's, but they looked at me like I was nuts when I asked about this record. I'm pretty sure the guy at Disc-o-Mat didn't actually believe there were any Floyd records before Meddle. I had to have this record made by this mad genius just before he dipped into the void.

Of course, when I finally got it on my Pioneer turntable, it was like listening to a different band. But what a fucking band! I listened to that record endlessly over the course of that winter. I didn't play guitar yet, so I had no idea how any of the sounds were made or what was going on. It was just pure sonic pleasure.

Syd's tragedy and his slip into the void was really just another crazy rock tale to me until a few years ago, when I was watching a special on Floyd on VH1 with my ex-girlfriend. She didn't know the history of the band, but she was nearly in tears when she watched Roger Waters tell about how he lost his friend. It must have been horrible for Roger to sit there and watch Syd go down with so little he could do about it. It was easy to miss that part amidst the amusing anecdotes about Syd's eccentricities.

So, here's hoping Syd found some peace at last.

BTW, I refuse to put on "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" today. The appropriate music is Piper itself.

Charity Drive

I think it's time that we all chipped in and bought a red brick wall for Stinkrock to stand in front of.

If we raise enough, we can also get suspenders and a striped shirt for him.

Abatement ab initio

Holy cow!

Apparently, Ken Lay's death before a full appeal of his conviction means that he goes to his grave innocent in the eyes of law.

I miss Chrispy

Please come back.

Six Degrees of Shame

Jackson recently posted in defense of his love for questionable metal bands like Saxon. This brought back many fond memories of devouring the latest issue of Guitar for the Practicing Musician. In particular, it reminded me that I would often learn the solos and parts for songs I had never heard - usually by bands like Krokus or Accept. I remember the first time I heard "Mr. Crowley" by Ozzy. I already knew how to play it. Weird.

Anyway, Jackson, our bad tastes have a scary intersection. It turns out that in 1984 one of the members of Saxon went on the road with prog supergroup GTR. GTR was the unholy pairing of Steve Howe from Yes and Steve Hackett from Genesis. I bought the record. I saw the concert.

My shame knows no bounds.

Wait a Sec...

I thought we were supposed to be losing in Iraq.

Then this happens.

Somehow this move doesn't strike me as the action of the side that is winning.

Transition

The Misanthrope did not get into the New York Marathon this year through the lottery, so he has shifted plans and will be doing the Mighty Hamptons Triathlon in September.

Now, I know we have many serious triathletes among our readers, so any training tips are appreciated.

In the short term, the Misanthrope must ask the difficult questions.

At what point do I break down and buy the proper racing swimsuit (aka 'banana hammock") and train in that?

Post thoughts in the comments section.

You Stay Classy England

Go England.

Lunch with Friends

Today I had lunch with a close friend I have known for ages and it has put me in a very good mood. There is really nothing like catching up with somebody you've known for 21 years.

Do yourself a favor and pick up the phone and call an old friend today. You'll be happy you did.

Mama's Boys

What a BS way for Italy to win; an Oscar winning performance by a prima donna who probably lives with his mother.

Then again, 90% of the Italian team probably live with their mothers.

Hearing Damage

A friend sent me this story about a ringtone that is supposedly audible only to teenagers and people in their early 20s.

Straw poll - How many Misanthrope readers can hear it?

Post your results in the comments section.

The Who at Knebworth 2006

Some thoughts on the show later, but first, a few photos for our readers.