Things You Should Know When You Go to a Jazz Jam

The majority of jazz music is defined by improvised collaboration, and whether you are a professional with the night off or a nervous student holding a gig bag at a nightclub doorway, one of the most exciting and satisfying things a jazz musician can do is participate in a jam session. This article doesn’t seek to advise you on how to improve your playing or your jazz knowledge; it is merely intended to help you step into jam sessions with greater comfort and confidence.

Tuesday Night, 7PM to 9PM

Most clubs that feature live jazz have regularly scheduled sit-in sessions, usually during early evening hours on off nights. They are a great way for young musicians to develop real world experience and for established musicians to play with old friends and meet new players. The tradition of the jazz jam session goes back a long way and has a variety of protocols and traditions that vary from session to session. They vary so widely, in fact, that a first recommendation from this desk is to get a feel for the session before deciding to sign up, or perhaps, before even bringing your instrument into the club. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, there are as many kinds of jazz jam sessions as there are kinds of jazz. Some lean more toward standards and the great American songbook, some have a be-bop orientation, some lean toward post-bop modal material, some are more oriented to fusion, and so on. If you lack the vocabulary the session is using, you probably won’t be comfortable trying to fit in, and attempting to drag a session out of what it has already established as its character and into your own bailiwick can be an unwelcome imposition. It is always best to identify and respect the tradition the session is seeking to present, and if it isn’t your bag, well, maybe that’s not the session for you. Have no fear, though: there is a jam out there somewhere that celebrates the style you most want to play.

Second, even if the session fits your appetite in terms of idiom, it may not match your playing level. Although they are fewer and further between than they once were, there is still some component of the jazz “cutting session,” a high-level competitive steeplechase of a jam session in which the local jazz cognoscenti do their best to intimidate one another into having an off night and set upon newcomers with a particular viciousness. Those sessions are satisfying and fun if you can indeed hang at that level, but if you can’t even, or even if you can’t quite but you jump in anyway, it can be an unpleasant experience for you and for the band.

Baby Steps Before Giant Steps

At a jazz jam session, when you get called up as a horn player with a rhythm section already on stage, you will sometimes be able to call the tune. If you have practiced the head of a jazz tune and know its changes well, I recommend talking to the host of the session before you go on, and telling him or her the tune or tunes you are prepared for. I have never seen a jam session host throw anyone to the wolves after that kind of outreach.

It's also not unheard of to bring lead sheets in, especially for a singer who prefers odd keys. There is a certain monotony that can come of selection after selection of jazz standards, each with identical arrangements, so while it's not cool to take over the vibe of a session, it absolutely is cool to bring in printed sheet music for the bass player and piano player to follow. It's a fine line, one that you'll have an easier time locating if you check out the session a little bit before you decide to join in.

It’s good to bring a couple of backups in mind as an alternative to your big number, as someone else might already have played it that evening, or it might be the bass player’s least favorite song to play, or maybe it was the piano player’s ex-husband’s favorite song. There are many reasons a bandstand suggestion gets passed over, so you should show up at the session with a minimum of three songs prepared, each of which resides logically within the framework of the session. I recommend at least ten exhaustively prepared songs, but if you don’t have three right in your pocket and ready to go, perhaps your time is better spent developing repertoire than it is bringing just your favorite song to the jam.

Nice-to-Know and Need-to-Know

There exists a deep and rich catalog of jazz material, but there are some songs that rise above the nice-to-know category and find themselves instead in the need-to-know category. I have culled a list of ten songs here that are more than a good idea to have in your repertoire when attending a jazz jam session. In many circles, not knowing these ten songs will quickly identify you as not having done the minimum amount of preparation. After each song title is one or more DGRs (darn good reasons) for learning them, along with an inspirational quote.

All The Things You Are

You get to practice your ii-V sequences in five different keys. “Disneyland can wait, Ma. I’m going to practice my ii-V sequences!”

All of Me

Up-tempo peppiness for your Dixieland chops. Amuse yourself with some ii-V changes and a counterclockwise circle of fifths. “This song is great for making up humorous alternate lyrics.”

All Blues

This one has a three feel, and you can hear the changes coming from a mile away. Blues musicians, this is a good way for you to put a toe into the water. “Trumpet players get to break out the Harmon mute on this one.”

Autumn Leaves

It shifts between G major and its relative minor, E minor, and offers vast soloing opportunities over both structures. It was recorded more in Bb/G minor, but was printed in the wrong key in the famous "Real Book," a much relied-upon collection of tunes. Be prepared for both! “Such a great melody, even Sting couldn’t resist appropriating it (Moon Over Bourbon Street).”

Blue Bossa

It has an R&B equivalent in Mustang Sally and a bluegrass equivalent in Wagon Wheel, in that it's called a bit too often, but you need to know this tune. Here we get to contrast a major II-V7-I sequence with a minor ii-V7-I. “Don’t threaten me with a good time!”

Footprints

Wide open for glorious runs and arpeggios, and it is in three. There's a hipper (correct would be more accurate) turnaround that a lot of bands don't play; the hipper turnaround is a nice-to-know, but the tune itself is a need-to-know. Ask the band if they play the turnaround F#m7b5 / B7/ Em7b5/ A7, and if they begin to squint, expect the D7 to Db7. “Here is a Wayne Shorter composition that is easy to understand and play.”

Girl From Ipanema

This song, if there is one, is the definitive bossa nova. “Gentlemen, you don’t know it yet, but your future wife is in the audience and she wants to sing it.”

Green Dolphin Street

It starts with Imaj7 and goes to Imin7 in the first four bars. Add in the ii-V7-Is, and the soloist can make a real statement. The pros tend to play this one in Eb, though it's in the "Real Book" in C, so you can get a clash on some bandstands. “Books have been written about this one song.”

Song For My Father

This song is generally played in F minor, and everyone in the band will understand if as a horn player you cannot contain your joy over that fact. “It’s in F minor! It’s in F minor!”

Summertime

It can be a disaster, and it is beloved by great and dreadful singers alike. Keep your fingers crossed! In the case of a fine rendition, this is an opportunity for you to complement a singer’s performance. “Understand the lyric, its place in Porgy and Bess, and stress your sensitivity to the vocalist; you just may play something extraordinary.” 

Watermelon Man

Pentatonic joy for one and all. “Pentatonic joy for one and all!”

This is a nice list of tunes to know, because they cover a wide range of tempos, keys and feels. Footprints is a bright jazz ¾, Watermelon Man is a funk groove, Song For My Father is usually played with a Latin feel, All Blues is a blues with an unconventional turnaround, Summertime and Girl From Ipanema are favored by a lot of vocalists, and Footprints, Blue Bossa, Autumn Leaves and Green Dolphin Street are each rewarding to learn, and carry with them a certain jazz credibility.

Who’s the Boss?

If you called the tune, guess what? It’s you. If you have a tempo in mind, you have two choices. Count it off yourself, or communicate your preferred tempo to the drummer. I like to leave it to the drummer because it is within his or her area of specialty and because the band is accustomed to taking the count-off from the drummer already. I recommend stating the name of the tune and the key in a clear and authoritative voice. Something like this: “Autumn Leaves, key of B flat. Right about here.” Then snap the tempo and give an indication to the drummer that you’d like the cue to come from behind the kit. That indication can be a nod, a point, or a verbal command. Let’s say the drummer’s name is Sparky. You might say something like, “Autumn Leaves, key of B flat. Tempo right about here (snapping your fingers). Stomp it off, Sparky.”

Generally speaking, the horns will play the “head,” or the main theme of the tune. After the head has been played, sometimes once, sometimes twice, the band will instinctively look to you for cues. I recommend taking the first solo if you called the tune. This eliminates one instance of having to cue a soloist, but that is nothing you need to stick to religiously.

After all of the soloists for that tune have had their shot, cue the head again, often done by pointing at your head. It is worth noting here that not every player on the stage needs a solo on every tune. Pay attention to who has soloed recently and who hasn’t, and cue them inversely. Have your second tune in mind and ready to go in case you were so awesome that you are asked to stay. You may be called upon to pick the tune again. Select it and say it clearly, and see if there is any objection from the band. If not, snap your tempo and once again call out to your drummer: “Stomp it off right about here, Sparky!”

Oh Won’t You Stay

It’s bad form to play your songs and then leave the club. When the players at jam sessions have stayed to listen to you, you should stay and listen to them. You don’t have to hang around until the last bar and get thrown out, screaming as they drag you away, “More jazz! I need more jazz!” Sticking around for a minimum of two performers after you is a good rule. The moments following your stage time is an opportunity to talk to some of the other players, make connections, or bathe in the adulation of your followers.

Most of all, have fun with it. Take your music seriously in the practice room and at your performances, but less so at jam sessions. There’s not a lot at stake on Tuesday at 7:30, so relax and enjoy the shared music and humanity you find there. It is a place to learn, to make mistakes, and to accept the mistakes of others, so just stomp it off, Sparky; I’ll see you around the jams.

I stumbled across a five-year old essay on Donald Trump.

Some thoughts on Donald Trump...May, 2011

Now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, Donald Trump may be the world’s biggest asshole. Hyperbole? Perhaps. But I hate this guy. I have on many occasions made reference to my demographic insignificance, the fact that things I like are generally not commercially successful, and that the things I don’t like often are. My favorite types of music are jazz and bluegrass. Neither are big money makers. My least favorite music is cheesy R&B power ballads (Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Michael Bolton, etc). Hugely successful. So, my white-hot, blinding detestation of Donald Trump may likewise leave me with few cohorts, but I know what I feel, and I really, truly hate this guy.

I have been aware of Donald Trump for many years now, and have hardly given him a second thought. My assessment of him has never been positive or negative per se, rather I have traditionally not had an opinion one way or another. I have always recognized his egotism as pathetic and laughable, and have generally regarded him as a cartoonish embodiment of a stereotypical American business tycoon, an entity that served as a sideshow bit player in the landscape of news and media in America. Donald Trump. Ha ha ha. Rich jerk with stupid hair. Who cares? Perhaps I am relatively alone on this point, but once he presumed to aspire to the presidency, I began to care. I began to hate Donald Trump’s guts.

I have previously referenced my demographic insignificance, but I can’t imagine that I am utterly alone in this. While Doc Watson doesn’t sell a mountain of records, he does sell a few, and likewise, I suspect that there are others who previously didn’t pay a second thought to Donald Trump who now recognize him as a smarmy, vile toad of a man; a boor, a rude, classless lout who chose to punk America in a vainglorious ruse to slake the thirst of his limitless ego without regard to the damage and disruption suffered by the nation that afforded him all of his success.

Then he launched his big lie about running for executive office and hitched his star to the tired out non-issue of Obama’s birth certificate in an attempt to discredit the president as the driving precept of his cardboard replica of a presidential bid. No new ideas, no forward thinking, no opinions on American 21st century challenges, just a cowardly sabotage of his president, all for the sake of a lie. He never intended to run this year, but was completely comfortable lying to me, to you, and to America. This exemplifies the contempt and dismissive attitude with which he regards the average American. We are a joke to him, an ignorant mass, a vast pool of fools that is there to be manipulated. He is a cynic and scoundrel of the highest order who views the American social and economic landscape as his combined playground and toilet.

Every step of the way on his bogus intimation of a presidential run was another opportunity for soothing his pathological need for self-aggrandizement. When Obama finally sighed, rolled his eyes and produced the birth certificate, Trump expressed his feeling of “honor” at having forced this hand. Well guess what? The few people in America left who didn’t already believe Obama to have been born in America at the time of the "big reveal" still don’t. They are the same deluded fools who believe Bin Laden either to be still alive or to have been dead for years. There is a part of the American population who either due to their racism, ignorance or addiction to Fox News prefer to exist in a bubble that deflects any common sense with regard to this president. The number of minds changed because of the presentation of the long form birth certificate is zero. So what was accomplished? Nothing but a further division of the already vast fissure in American society.

Donald Trump is an ineloquent, selfish jerk. He is also a liar and a coward, and knowing that a non-cartoon businessman like Mitt Romney or an informed statesman like Ron Paul would make a meal of him in the primary debates, he floated his phony presidential bid in a disgusting ploy to enhance his branding and to get a few more eyeballs on his excruciatingly unentertaining television show. Then he bailed out before he had to defend his legitimacy. To hell with this guy. I’d urge a boycott of his income properties and his television show, but what good would it do? I am, as I have said before, demographically insignificant.

What Every Trump Supporter Has in Common is Their Having Been Fooled

Donald Trump is ahead of us on a thing that PT Barnum figured out a century ago; that there is a sucker born every minute. HL Mencken was all over it too: "No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

I am not suggesting that all of Donald Trump’s supporters are stupid. Many are, make no mistake about that. Many, many, many of them are. And not just good old folksy, C-student stupid either. I mean full-on ice cream cone to the forehead stupid. And while there is plenty of stupid in the Trump camp, it does not compose anywhere near the entirety of Trump’s following. What all Trump supporters do have in common, however, is that every one of them has been fooled. The more you support Trump, the more you have been fooled. If you more or less like what he says and might vote for him, you’ve been a little bit fooled. If you have four Trump signs, one in each of the four windows of your dismal apartment, you’ve been completely fooled.

And Donald Trump knows how to fool people. He has been connecting with the reality TV demographic for more than a decade now; he knows how big it is, how unfulfilled it is, how simple it prefers its truths, and how it aches to identify the architect of its frustration. Take terrorism, for instance.

Trump’s solution to foreign terrorism in the US is to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. This idea resonates with the Honey Boo Boo demographic, because most of the people who like this idea don’t fly internationally. The disruption involved in banning Muslims from entering the United States on airplanes would cripple entire airlines, disrupt commerce and pleasure trips to an unprecedented level, and cause phenomenal ill will across the world, all to a net result of zero. It would be a bold gesture, yes, but oftentimes, as in this case, boldness has stupidity as its concomitant. The idea of banning all Muslims from travel into the United States is breathtaking in its stupidity, and yet, it resonates.

The loyal Trumpster will stand arms akimbo with shaking head and muttering, “Whatever it takes, man, whatever it takes.” This despite the fact that more people are killed by armed toddlers in America than are killed by foreign terrorists. This wildly disproportionate and illogical approach is attractive precisely because of its boldness. Its implausibility is born of inexperience with international travel and an understanding of how the United States fits into it. Wholly apart from the financial, political and family disruptions, assuming such a program could be implemented, what would be the verification methodology? Where does it take place? Would there have to be a new global norm for passports? Would they all need to be recalled and stamped with the individual’s faith now? Or does the interrogation happen at the airport?

“Mister Mohammed, are you Muslim?”

“No ma’am, I am Zoroastrian.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Um, quick, what’s the Avesta?”

“It is the chief Zoroastrian text.”

“Right this way, sir…”

Let’s be serious. Anyone who was trying to get in by ducking the ban could claim to be Bahá'í. Might you encounter a discussion with an Alawite as to whether the syncretistic aspects of the Alawites places them outside Mr. Trump’s definition of what a Muslim is? Who is going to arbitrate all of these theosophical quibbles? Who is going to determine that so-and-so is or isn’t a practicing Mandaeist? There are a fair number of Yarsanists and Samaritans in the Middle East, as well as pockets of Shabakists, Ishikists, Ali-Illahists. How do you tell a sunny Christian from a Sunni Muslim? Okay, I’m being ridiculous, but you get my point.

This all makes sense to Trump’s television audience though, because if you reduce it to the rubric of “Ban All Muslims,” it takes on a simplistic, feel-good sense of having made a bold step after all of this mealy-mouthed pussyfooting we’ve been doing. It quickly identifies itself as a stupid idea once you even begin to think about it, but that’s the other side of the coin Trump traffics in; the seeming fact that it doesn’t quite sound stupid until you actually do begin to think about it. The trick then becomes to keep people from thinking about it.

Give people an idea, a big, stupid idea, and then quickly move on to the next big, stupid idea. Like the wall. Which sounds good to some people. Again, until you actually start to think about it. And once you do, you quickly realize that it is as stupid as the idea of trying to identify one and a half billion people as being ineligible for air travel to the US. With immigration currently at sum zero, it is something of a solution without a problem. Add in the mass deportation component, and people like the idea even better. The reality of a crumbling farm industry alongside parents being ripped away from their children and loaded onto railcars is part of the not-thinking-it-through that Trump is counting on. Again, the trick is to sum up the big, stupid idea in three words, and then move on to the next big, stupid idea. Ban all Muslims. Build the wall. Deport the illegals.

Trump’s trick of getting people not to think works because it’s easy and it can feel good in the moment if you are sufficiently angry and resentful. A powerful personality has identified the enemy and boldly pledged that he would do something to vanquish it. Something big, something bold. And they have faith that he can and will, because they’ve seen him perform forcefully in boardrooms. 

Episodes of “The Apprentice” have availed them fly-on-the-wall status, and they saw firsthand the prowess of a powerful leader. Of course it’s just a silly cardboard replica, a Potemkin village of an office environment with no actual consequences in the downside and a sudden and unrealistic return on the upside. No one learns a thing from it, and the only winner, as always, is Trump himself. But this is the lazy thinking of Trump’s audience: the desire for easily identified heroes and villains, for predictable justice in terms of consequence and rewards.

It is easy, binary thinking. People need either to be fired or hired. Not developed, managed or educated. Countries need to be thought of as either good or bad and deserving of either subsidy or invasion, and not much else in between. Through his rhetoric, Trump has instructed his slack-jawed, doe-eyed, zombie-like followers to appeal to their basest instincts for guidance rather than any long-codified core ethics and morality.

As rooted a thing as civic education, sports environments and academics are, those places where most Americans learned how to get along and work in teams, it can all fall to dust in an instant with the right appeal to fear and resentment. Trump understands all of this. He is exploiting it, and it is irresponsible and I think highly detestable of him. Just because you can do a thing doesn’t always mean you should, and in this case I believe he shouldn’t have, and that he has orchestrated all of this is to his great shame. He has reawakened a sleeping giant of racism and hatred that was on its way to across-the-board social unacceptability.

The real damage is that Trump has fooled a lot of people into thinking that it’s okay to be judgmental, prejudiced, unforgiving, violent and cruel. And it’s not. Trump is wrong, and his followers have been fooled. The other piece of bad news is that when this has passed, with Trump not being president, he is going to betray every single one of his supporters and return to business as usual. And where will they go then?

Trump's Poly Sci 101 Machiavelli Lesson

 

Trump’s decision to exploit the misery that he pretends to know how to assuage speaks to his depraved level of indifference to the health of the nation, and now quite literally to the health of the supporters and protesters who attend his rallies. The methods he is employing are classic, textbook, and frankly, a little hackneyed. They represent the techniques you find in Machiavelli’s The Prince, and you can hear them echoed almost literally in any State University freshman political science class.

He follows the recommendation of “native troops” being the most desirable (read that as disaffected whites), far better than a mixed army, or one coopted on loan from other sympathetic kingdoms (read that as the Republican establishment). The hardcore Trump people are Trump people alone, and indeed in calculated obeisance to their leader’s rhetoric, are being transformed into a mobile army as much as they are a political support group. Fistfights are common, encouraged from the podium, and are now viewed by Trump supporters and the ghoul media as a requisite feature of a Trump rally.

What would a hockey game be without the fights? It is now an expected part of these events, and will remain so from now forward. If at this point you attend a Trump rally and there aren’t a few ejections for you to scream and swear in the direction of, you’d feel like you got ripped off. If there’s a fight, so much the better, and imagine, just imagine if you got to tell people you were at the one where the guy got killed.

Other pure Machiavelli is to articulate very few and very large themes, and keep them in the people’s minds throughout The Prince’s command of them. These themes are grand in scope and are not spoken of in detail, and are not essential to be acted upon at any time, yet they must be maintained as ideas.

There are provisions also for managing mass disillusionment once this kind of promissory governing style becomes unconvincing, but as Trump’s bluff hasn’t yet been called and potentially wouldn’t be until the third or so year of a presidency, if he sticks to the book, he’ll force his faithful to find their faith again, or at least act as if they do. Your heart won’t matter as much as your obedience will. Deceit, brutality and betrayal are not only in the toolbox, they are all enthusiastically recommended.

It has taken a great deal of courage on the part of Trump supporters to finally give in to their long-held beliefs rather than suppress them in the name of social unacceptability. I am serious when I say that. They possess a very real sense of resentment of large groups of people whom they perceive as having a common characteristic that works to the detriment of their own reality, and of the general reality of the country they love. They have stifled this disdain for a long time because they understood that it was not civilized to do otherwise.

Trump has told them being civilized is not the way to look at that social pressure. He advises instead it be characterized as “political correctness” and that now rather than a virtue, it was a thing to be rejected and even vilified. With Trump’s wind at their backs they stand and deliver, unapologetic of their racism, bigotry, antipathy and hatred. It is like a group of cockroaches in a tenement kitchen whose leader has told them they don’t have to scatter when the kitchen light comes on anymore.

It has taken some courage for them to step out into the light with their darkness, and they are still suspicious of the new world Trump has given them, but they love it, and they are ready at a moment’s notice to defend it violently. They feel this hatred at the bogeyman in their hearts and when their leader says it’s okay to express it with fists and rage it is game on. The saddest part of this whole spectacle is that when Trump goes away, which I honestly think he will, he’s not going to take them with him. He’s going to do business as usual and find some other way to stroke his limitless ego, but this ethnocentric, xenophobic and quick to violence strain into which he has single-handedly breathed a newfound sense of personal credibility will remain, and it will be seeking a new sync for its energy.

Blaming the poor, immigrants, other races and religions and maintaining second-class citizenship for women has always been an integral part of many modern Americans’ personal codification. It is sad, but it is true. In addition to these deep-seated prejudices, however, in most parts of the country there has always been an understanding that this kind of talk in social circles and this kind of  attitude informing public policy were both bad ideas. Whereas bigotry, xenophobia and racism lite were once upon a time a lot of people's dirty little secret, for many, Trump has released that Kraken.

This now almost nostalgic unspoken social pressure created a cognitive dissonance in a lot of people, and as such had a prayer of initiating internal dialog on the matter.  That erstwhile dynamic of there being an understanding that prejudice by law and by creed had been rejected by society probably changed some minds to a more progressive disposition, as it is well known that the way someone reshapes their viewpoint on a subject is by coming to it themselves. Browbeating rarely gets you anywhere past the brow. Still, brows are beaten, and that is what a failing Trump presidency would require. The authoritarian streak of his concept of governance is, to his credit, being laid out frankly and without circumspection or apology in this primary season.

Another Machiavellian old faithful is to create unrest as a pretext for quelling it. According to the Chicago Police and according to the University Police, last night’s event was not cancelled on their recommendation. It was purely a call from the Trump campaign. The cancellation was made via a terse, two-sentence announcement from the podium, and that was it. Witnesses to the event and video documentation indicate that the unruliness only began after the cancellation announcement. Any professional events management company would have their best talker take the podium to try and manage hostilities and initiate calm. It may be an already circulating conspiracy theory, but it strikes me that the Trump campaign favors newsworthy events, and here was a beauty that might have been avoidable. Did they orchestrate the fracas? In a word, yes.

I am inspired to reread The Prince, though I no longer have it. I must, and I shall order it soon. Between November 11^th and January 20^th, if worse comes to worst, we all should read it, just so as to know what to expect.

Some Thoughts on Replacing Scalia

Regarding the GOP stonewall on Scalia’s replacement, by my amateur reading of it there is no “use-by” date in the Constitution that precludes the president’s right, indeed his obligation, to nominate a successor in the event of a sitting court member’s death. It’s not a carton of milk. There are eleven months left in Obama’s presidency; he was elected twice, the last time by five million votes and an electoral landslide. This is a thing he gets to do.

Offended by a rash of executive actions in recent months, McConnell et al are determined to slog through one more tough year of maintaining zero output from the legislative branch, with this item being the chief remaining prize. The closing of Guantanamo bookending Obama’s presidency as a campaign promise in 2008 and now with its remaining 90 prisoners proposed for relocation, they would love to stifle that as well if only for its symbolic effectiveness as a yoke of failure the punditry could lay across his presidency. But still, keeping the Supreme Court of the United States in a non-functioning state is the current prime directive of the Republican senate. I can barely grok how sick this is.

Displaying all the maturity of a schoolyard spoil sport who takes his ball and goes home so none of the kids can play, McConnell and the gang of eleven members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have signed a letter stating their intention to kill the process with inertia. Now that’s leadership. Obama could nominate the hangin’ judge of the GOP’s dreams, a full-on Adam’s rib, Noah’s ark death penalty enthusiast and brutality apologist and they wouldn’t even know it because they won’t meet with him or her, nor will they schedule a hearing. It’s outrageous.

I imagine Mitch McConnell as a little boy when his mother told him to clean his room, with his little fingers jammed into his ears and saying “blah blah blah” as his even in youth prodigious wattle shook like Jell-O in the mold. What an infuriating bunch of jerks these eleven members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are. They are the whores and hirelings of some number of dozens of fat cat donors, and the goal of obstruction for obstruction's sake that was plainly stated in 2008 is now in its endgame. Whether it’s pandering to fundamentalists, industrialists, militarists or racists, if it impedes the president, the answer is always going to be the same: “Yes sir, right away, sir, whatever you say, sir.”

Dog Thoughts

Debra gets home after I do on Tuesdays and Fridays now, which means I feed our beagle, Sam, when I get home. He has been in the house, with doggy door out to a small yard for the day, which combined with some pretty swanky sleeping arrangements constitute the criteria typically imagined when invoking the phrase, “a dog’s life.” Still, from the dog’s perspective, it must bear some equivalency to an open-air prison of sorts, a kind of Palestine in the Los Angeles suburbs, weirdly lorded over by an irreligious Jew and a similarly disposed Catholic. By the time I park and get to the door, his toenails are tapping a novel in Morse code across the vertical panes of glass that flank our front entance. He doesn’t stop until I am inside the door, at which point he launches himself at me in a series of corkscrewing trajectories and emitting a river of continuous yelps. I bow to him and extend my arms, and he calms enough to place his front paws on the insides of my forearms and we bury our heads next to one another and we wriggle in calm nonsense for a moment. He breaks our clinch and darts toward the kitchen. He will be fed.

He eats a half of a can in the morning and a half of a can at night, and after dinner (about fifteen seconds later), he begins a second Saint Vitus dance, one that cajoles me to get the leash and climb the local hills to a dirt mound with a view, a journey with incline enough to get us both panting. The trip up those hills, while largely single or double story suburban ranch houses with drought-resistant lawns, stone arrangements and cacti, also features a few sudden small conifer groves with dirt patches, and it was in one of these that Sam found a dead rat tonight, probably having staggered away from a nearby house in his death throes after eating the D-Con, a front paw on an opposite breast, tearfully sparing his family the piteous sight of him dying, “Ma, they got me, they got me good this time ma, take care of the kids, ma, I can’t…let them…see me…like this!”

I had been letting Sam lead the way to that point, rushing when he rushed, having picked up a scent, and stopping when he stopped, having lost it. So he had his snout well into the maggoty rat by the time I figured out what he was onto and drew him away with the leash. He launched a loud, focused hound bleat and I praised him for his excellence as I led him away from the carcass. I had a tissue so I scrubbed his gob of death bugs and we continued on up the hill. The next adventure in the mighty quest for a tired beagle was the dump. And of course I had forgotten the bag. But what this animal did for me, what this magical creature did, was to pull over into the next little miniature pastoral area between houses for his sworn duty. He chose a spot in loose dirt below, with an ample supply of more loose dirt and fallen leaves right nearby. There was a steep embankment that tumbled down a good fifteen feet just another foot away. I covered the Los Angeles Steamer in loose dirt first, then in fallen leaves and gave it a sweet little boot over the lip of the ravine. 100% biodegradable, and with an El Niño predicted, I guarantee that thing will not see the springtime. On we went.

Sam went berserk at the next little forested area, and it was something really special. Another dog’s shit. Here he had just made some, so it was only natural he review the work of his peers, see where he might need to sharpen his game a bit, maybe get some ideas about style or content. Who knows what goes through a dog’s mind? Not me, certainly, as I have never had a dog call me Dad so I’m pretty new to all of this. I have a suspicion though about the opinion dogs have regarding the way things smell. They don’t qualify them per se. They identify them, but even though their sense of smell, especially hounds, is around forty times more sensitive than a human being’s, they don’t establish nearly the spectrum of nauseating to intoxicating that humans ascribe to smell. The difference between suddenly presenting someone with a fly larvae-ridden rat corpse and a cup of freshly brewed coffee is dramatic. The beagle makes no such value judgments. I see the beagle’s sense of smell as being able to differentiate what a thing is and where it is with a stunning accuracy, the way most people see colors or the way Mozart heard music, vividly, in great detail, without question. What does not particularly exist within the beagle purview is much of a qualitative assessment. The gradations boil down to good, better, best.

Better would be what food smells like, best is what people food smells like, and good is everything else. I don’t think anything smells bad to a dog. Shit smells like shit, dead rats smell like dead rats, and both can be filed under “good.” Sam is a not only a good dog, he is a springboard for endless ruminative amusements.

A lamentation for Paris

Why write if you don’t have answers? It’s like forgiveness I guess, of which I have none right now. It’s like forgiveness in that it’s for the forgiver. Writing is for the writer. A lucky and uniquely skilled few writers have legions attuned to each word, but those must be the writers with answers. After all, who needs more questions, especially from a writer? Readers have plenty of their own. So I’ll write some thoughts on it all just to pass some time with it, to be still with it for a moment. I’ll post it I’m guessing, but for now it’s for now.

Squad terrorism describes this thing I guess. That’s its type, its genus, coordinated and simultaneous, kind of in the Mumbai tradition. Commandos. Death squads. So damn sick. Arranged, but scattered, an assault on bars and restaurants and a young band. So I guess that was it. Youth. Kill a bunch of kids. It seems to be a fierce jab with a spear of so dull a point as to mean nothing. Is this the new version of the new warfare? It’s asymmetrical and now it’s nonsensical as well? Enough of looking for poetry in murder, I suppose.

What is it then? Maybe I’ll try a few answers. Politically it is born of our love affair with the House of Saad and our indirect funding of the tools of oppression against the average Saudi schmuck, who runs for solace to the Saudi mullahs preaching a uniquely Gulf State Wahaabist Islam that extolls violence against the infidel. Historically, it is born of a century of capricious blunders in the Middle East that have not taught us either how to partner with or exploit the region. Economically it is born of reliance on oil. Practically, with Iraq now gone to the dogs, or the Russians anyway, our most potent ally in the Middle East (besides Israel) might be Iran. That’s how inside out the Middle East is right now. East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. But we keep trying. The urge now is for vengeance, but that’s been tried before. We in the US are experts in blind lashings out in vengeance’s name, and it does not work. The one thing that has not been tried, disengagement, is impossible absent a dramatic social shift in the West and a dramatic intellectual shift in the East.

So those are my answers. And they’re not answers at all. They’re thoughts. I recommend you be suspicious of anyone with definitive answers on this. People better informed than me might have the next level past a thought, which is an idea. Ideas are good. The next level past an idea though, is an answer, and as pertains to the Middle East, anything characterized as an answer should be suspect. But, if you’re bound and determined and you’re looking for answers, you can go on Twitter and find more than 140 characters who have it all figured out in less than 140 characters. Most of what I have here is more questions, and a parting thought that apart from its rich cultural heritage, France has a noble history of the greater good eventually prevailing in politics, so let’s hope she can begin to make sense of this and find a way to mend her greatest city. Mon coeur est brisé.