Indianapolis | The Electron Pencil

03/07/2015

Al Jazeera America, Amy Schumer, Bloody Sunday, Comedy Attic, David Masciotra, Daylight Savings, Dayna Thompson, Homeless, Indianapolis, Jared Thompson, John Lewis, John Mellencamp, LeRoy Robinson, March (Book One), Nate Powell, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Selma Alabama

Hot Air

Rights Without A Home

Well, whaddya know? Our big sister up to the north, Indianapolis, this week passed a law to protect the homeless.

The homeless, for pity’s sake.

How very retro of the Circle City. Hell, you’d think this was 1964 or something. This development is so earth-shaking that the story is being carried in Al Jazeera, for chrissakes.

Not only that, AJ notes, there a whole goddamned “movement” to protect and care about those w/o McMansions or even well-appointed refrigerator cartons in this holy land. Can Al Jazeera be talking about the same country I know?

Home?

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Acc’d’g to the story, homeless-protection laws are being passed in places like Washington, D.C., Madison, Wisconsin, and Duluth, Minnesota. Okay, these three are People’s Republics, primarily run and inhabited by subversives, preeverts, and pointy-heads whose political and philosophical spectra run only from pink to red. But Indy?

Yes, Indy. Under the new law, awaiting the mayor’s pen, the homeless would be guaranteed “the rights… to carry out basic human functions such as sitting, standing, eating and sleeping in public areas.”

Heavens. Gov. Mike Pence surely tossed and turned all last night. Not only are the homeless not billionaires, thereby not worthy of due respect in this Free Market, Ayn Randian, I-got-mine-and-to-hell-with-you nation but they’re not even hundredaires! How can a patriotic American even think about them?

Apparently, Indy Council guy LeRoy Robinson has been thinking of them. He sponsored the bill. I didn’t know anything else about him, but I like him.

LeRoy Robinson Of Indianapolis

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So I did a little digging into this Robinson character. Is he a Russian plant? A member of ISIS? Kim Jong Un’s man in America? Perhaps all three?

Here’s what one prominent Indy att’y said about him when he was running for his City Council seat:

I have watched Leroy grow since childhood into a very well rounded young man with a passion for his community, education, and public service.

Evidence, perhaps, that he wasn’t born in Kenya like some other elected officials we know? We’ll see.

He’s a former schoolteacher, which automatically should disqualify him from US citizenship if the likes of, say, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker have their way.

Last fall, Robinson displayed on his City Hall desk a sign reading “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” along with four other council members.

I’m liking him more and more.

Funny thing is, he’s a Christianist, which should be cause for me to sniff dismissively. But maybe — just maybe — his religious belief has inspired him to care about silly things like education, justice, and the homeless. If so, he sounds to me like an honest-to-gosh follower of Jesus Christ — as opposed to those who say they are but aren’t.

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Tears Of Joy

The National Weather Service is going way, way, way out on a limb and predicting high temperatures over the next five days to range from 43º today to 56º Wednesday.

I think I’m gonna cry.

Can It Be?

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House Boy

It was learned these last couple of days that no House Republicans were slated to attend the 50th anniversary celebration of the first of the Selma marches and the Bloody Sunday police riot that shocked the nation — well, some of the nation — on March 7th, 1965.

John Lewis (Foreground) As The March Commences

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Today’s celebration has been attracting pols like bumblebees to bright pink flowers. Jeez, even George W. Bush says he’s going to attend (of course, he doesn’t have to worry about alienating Right Wing voters anymore.) Everybody, it seems, wants to get in on the civil rights act. Everybody that is, except Congressional Republicans.

The tsk-tsking that all Republican members of Congress had better things to do today — including get their cars washed, shoot a round of golf, and clip their toenails — came as an embarrassment to the GOP. So last night, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told the world that, yes, he’ll be in Selma this afternoon.

Perhaps he’ll see what it’s like to be a token.

In any case, do you need any more evidence that no matter what Republicans say, they really, really don’t give a shit about dark-skinned folk?

Hey, while we’re on the subject, here’s a reminder. You oughta get yourself a copy of the graphic novel, March: Book One, illustrated by B-ton resident Nate Powell. It’s the story of then-civil rights activist and current US Congressguy John Lewis’s road to Selma. Lewis was clubbed on the head by one of Alabama’s state troopers and suffered a fractured skull that day fifty years ago.

John Lewis Hits The Ground

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Here’s my January 2014 interview with Powell on WFHB and here’s a longer interview I did with him for for the April 2014 Ryder magazine.

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Daylight Savings

Set your clocks ahead tonight, woohoo!

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Son Of Seymour

This should make a certain percentage of Bloomingtonians happy and a certain percentage nauseated: a new biography of John Mellencamp will be released next month. Titled Mellencamp: American Troubadour and written by David Masciotra, the book is being published by the University Press of Kentucky and is due on booksellers’ shelves April 6th.

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I don’t know why it is but tons of my adopted town’s citizenry love to tell stories about how their girlfriend’s brother-in-law once ran into Mellencamp at some hardware store and the rock star emeritus was all kinds of a-hole-ish. Sometimes I think peeps expect guys like Mellencamp to pump their hands and say, Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a fan. Can I pay for all your stuff? I s’pose it never occurs to folks that they might be the hundredth person to grab him by the arm that morning and stutter, You’re…, you’re…, that guy…. Right?

Or, maybe he is a jerk. I dunno. Read the book and find out.

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She Likes Us! She Likes Us!

Search me as to why I missed this a couple of months ago but let’s celebrate it now: Comedian Amy Schumer named the Comedy Attic one of her 10 fave clubs in the country in USA Today.

All the rest were pretty much big city joints — the Gotham Comedy Club in New York, Punchline in San Francisco, Hollywood Improv in LA and the like. Schumer’s list ran in the paper’s January 11th edition. She had this to say about Jared & Dayna Thompson’s place and our thriving, throbbing megalopolis:

It’s the Midwest, but they’re nobody’s fool. The people are smart, and I love the culture there, and the restaurants and the bars. It’s kind of a happening city.

Funny Girl

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06/08/2013

Your Daily Hot Air

You Say You Want A…

Okay, if you want to overthrow…, um, what- or whomever, I’m with you. Count me in for the revolution as long as certain global archcriminals get scalped.

Case in point: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia. I wish I had his address. I’d throw eggs at his front window, at the very least.

Evil Prince

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The Prince has sued Forbes Magazine in a British court for libel. The editors of that biweekly paean to wealth and two of its reporters, according to the Prince’s filing, wronged him when they stated that his net worth is $20 billion, rather than the more accurate (or so he claims) $29 billion. The bastards!

Honestly, what can you expect from a guy whose bazillions are laundered through a corporate entity known as Kingdom Holding Company? Really? Kingdom? He owns a hefty chunk of the right-wing media colossus News Corp. as well as slices of Apple and Citigroup. As the (alleged) 26th richest human on Earth, he’s not just part of the 1 percent, he’s of the .000000004 percent. Four freaking millionths of one goddamn percent!

Revolution, my friends, now.

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Brilliant

This just hit me.

I want to sell T-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers with this motto on it. Maybe even have it inscribed on my head stone. It is the single truest, most direct, punchiest thing any of us can ever say.

Here it is:

This’ll Make Me Bazillions!

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Of course, you can have your choice of jerk photos. Ayn Rand. Chris Brown. Lloyd Blankfein. Kim Kardashian. Anyone in power at Monsanto. You get the idea.

Simple. Straightforward. Don’t be a jerk.

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Tarnished Genius

I’m no big fan of Bobby Kennedy. He and his bros had their political careers bought and paid for by Big Daddy Joe, whose fondest dream was to become the Boss of America through them. The Kennedy boys were entitlement personified. They treated women like dirt. They were so sexually acquisitive that they verged on being predators. They were in thrall to mobsters and wannabes. They were liberal when liberalism could get them votes, then they turned around and were conservative for the same reason.

But they were smart. And they did care about blacks and the poor. So I won’t throw the babies out with the bathwater.

After the whacking of JFK (by L.H. Oswald, alone, natch — I’m no conspiracy theorist), Bobby essentially had a nervous breakdown. He came out on the other side a different man. A better man, I might add. A man who had the courage to speak to what could have been an angry, potentially violent crowd one night here in Indiana.

Bobby Kennedy Breaks The News

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It was April 4, 1968. RFK was flying into Indy for a quick campaign stop. As the plane was about to touch down, the captain informed Kennedy and his staff that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. Bobby’s handlers told him it would be suicide for a white man to tell a crowd of black people that one of their leaders, one of their heroes, had been killed. Let’s not land, they begged him. Let’s go somewhere safe.

And Bobby said no. The plane landed and he gave this speech on the tarmac, completely extemporaneous and without notes, one of the finest in the history of this very, very imperfect nation:

Ladies and gentlemen.

I’m only going to talk to you for just a minute or so this evening, because I have some, some very sad news for all of you. Could you lower those signs, please? I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause for the effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black — considering the evidence, evidently, is that there were white people who were responsible — you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization — black people amongst blacks and white people amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust, of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poem, my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair,

against our will,

comes wisdom

through the awful grace of god.

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King — yeah, it’s true — but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love, a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past, and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

And let’s dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Thank you very much.

Kennedy died of a gunshot wound to the head 45 years ago Thursday.

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Revolution

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02/07/2012

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.” — Jean Cocteau

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THE COWBOY WAY

Ol’ Willard Romney wuz campaignin’ in one of our bee-yoo-tiful, wide-open western states t’other day. Some folks wuz havin’ theyselves a big shee-bang fer Cowboy poetry.

Now, Willard (y’might know him as Mitt, but his god-given name is Willard, shore ’nuff!) knows how how to make hisself feel right t’home, doncha know?

(Aw, for chrissakes, enough of this hayseed, six-gun patois.)

Now then, Romney appeared before a Nevada crowd, many of whom wore cowboy hats. Romney himself would not deign to don a Stetson, probably because his coiffure has landmark status and must not be altered or marred in any way.

But the Republican aspirant for president did sweet talk the crowd. He told them they were just like the cowboys of our holy land’s lore. He told the crowd they possessed “…(t)he heart of the cowboy, the love of freedom and the outdoors and nature being celebrated this week….” The crowd, natch, went wild.

You know, because cowboys were rugged individualists who carried sidearms, were loyal to their horses, and roamed this great land looking to right wrongs and dispense common sense justice. The cowboy is America, see?

Gene Autry, American

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Um, not so fast, Mitty-baby.

The truth about cowboys is that many of them were society’s outcasts — Mexican immigrants, blacks, and native Americans. They wore rags, slept on dirt, and served as ranch hands because, well, there wasn’t anything else for them to do.

Here’s a physical description from a dude ranch website:

In reality, the Cowboy didn’t dress like the Cowboys of the movies. A Cowboy wore whatever he could get his hands on. Cowboys and other laborers wore what was called “ready-to-wear” — “hand me downs” — second-hand clothing that had been discarded by the higher classes…. The typical Cowboy hat would have been pretty much any hat of the era. The wider brims were to keep the Sun out of their eyes…. The origins of the Cowboy boot are well-researched and started life as riding boots for the marauding Mongol tribesmen…. (All sic.)

A Real American

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Here are some more facts about cowboys:

Cowboys worked boring 18-hour days
They were small men because speedy horses couldn’t bear the weight of big lugs like John Wayne
They rode any horse they could get their hands on
They were startlingly young
They didn’t have gunfights with native Americans, desperadoes, or each other
The word “Cowboy” was derived from Mexican Spanish.

Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics is local.”

That present day philosopher and hot air issuer — me — says, “All politics is theater.”

Then again, perhaps the only truth is, “All politics is bullshit.”

And it probably will continue to be so as long as people swoon when they’re bullshitted. Imagine some pol of the future telling a crowd, “You have the spirit of the homeless and the pluck of illegal immigrants!”

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NON-COWBOY POETS

That local poet — not a cowboy, though — Ross Gay roamed the streets of Laredo…, er, Bloomington yesterday passing out flyers for the Indiana University Creative Writing Visiting Writer Series.

The ink-stained gang will welcome noted rhymer Nikky Finney Thursday, at 7:00pm, at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Grand Hall.

Finney

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Finney is one of America’s most celebrated black poets — hell, she’s one of America’s most celebrated poets, period. She copped the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry for her latest collection, “Head Off & Split.”

Finney grew up in an activist atmosphere. Her daddy-o, Ernest A. Finney, Jr., was the defense attorney for the Friendship 9, a group of black college students who’d tried to desegregate a South Carolina lunch counter in 1964. Finney herself became an activist for progressive cause around San Francisco after graduating from Talladega College. She also wrote poetry and worked as a photographer.

The noted poet Nikki Giovanni helped her get her first book of poetry, On Wings Made of Gauze, published in 1985. Since then, Finney’s become one of America’s biggest things in the field of meter.

Hey, her reading the day after tomorrow is free. Do yourself a favor and lend her an ear.

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IF A TREE FALLS IN THE WOODS AND NOBODY’S THERE…

Now that the Super Bowl orgy/holy mass/satanic ritual/football game is over, does the city of Indianapolis still exist?

Indianapolis, Before It Was Razed

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Just wondering.

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LIE TO ME

A good liar depends upon a victim who’s perfectly willing to be lied to.

As an example, I had a brief, fiery fling about 15 years ago with a woman who I later learned had lied to me about everything up to and including what she liked on her pizza. (No lie — I’d told her I preferred sausage and green peppers and she said, “Oh my god, this is so spooky, I do too!”)

The first gift I ever gave her was a CD by the then teenaged Jonny Lang, mainly because it featured this song. BTW: where’d that little petzel (Yiddish — go ahead and look it up) get that voice and that knowing outlook on life?

Anyway, once I became honest with myself, I realized I knew she was lying from the very first word she’d ever spoken to me. I loved every lie she told me.

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12/29/2011

2 Comments

An American in Paris, Andy Warhol, Ben Joravsky, Bloomington Indiana, Bridges of Madison County, Caskie Stinnett, Elvis Presley, Foot Fetish, Gene Kelly, Goethe, Gout, Henry VIII, Hypochondria, Indianapolis, Jerry Abramson, Leslie Caron, Louisville Kentucky, Monroe County, Pate de Foie Gras, Robert Fulghum, Robert James Waller, The Third City, Thomas Hardy, Vi Simpson

The Pencil Today:

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TODAY’S QUOTE

“The trouble with being a hypochondriac these days is that antibiotics have cured all the good diseases.” — Caskie Stinnett

Read On To Find Out Why I Put Up This Pic Of A Big Toe (And Its Buddies)

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MY DOPEY DISEASE

Life is not fair. We should all know it. The only people who cry about this state of affairs are those who expect life to be fair.

That, of course, is what kindergarteners think. BTW: Remember the rage for that gooey book by Robert Fulghum — “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”?

The man should have been incarcerated (right after Robert James Waller, whose “The Bridges of Madison County” hit it big around the same time.)

And who’s heard of Fulghum (or Waller) in the last decade or so? They’ve been swallowed up by the anonymity they so richly deserve.

Criminal

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Life has nothing to do with kindergarten.

Anyway, I didn’t post yesterday because I spent the morning in my doctor’s office. The diagnosis: gout.

Isn’t that the dumbest goddamn disease you’ve ever heard of? I mean, honestly.

It doesn’t kill you. It doesn’t maim you. It just hurts to high heaven, to the point where you can’t even sleep at night.

Ridiculous.

And its image really, really stinks. Unless you’re knowledgeable about it, the first thing you think of when you hear the word gout is some fat slob like Henry VIII, gorging himself on fatty, rich foods until his body rebels against him.

Slob

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Nobody’s gonna hold a charity walk for that.

The truth, as my old pal and colleague Benny Jay found out a couple of years ago, is another story.

Benny’s my age but as trim as a 25-year-old. He eats like monk, rarely drinks, and runs every day. I really hate him. Yet he got gout. The docs told him he had a genetic predisposition for it.

When I first heard he had it, I immediately chided him: “So, you’ve been eating all the wrong crap, huh?”

If You Eat Pâté de Foie Gras, You Deserve Gout

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I thought he was going to clobber me. He set me straight about what a straight-arrow he is (did I mention I hate him?) He really educated me about gout, too.

So when it felt as though a safe had fallen on my left big toe Monday night and I came to the conclusion I had gout, I didn’t put myself through the self-flaggelation that most sufferers do.

Still, gout is stupid. And life is not fair.

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A WARNING FOR YOUR OWN GOOD

Don’t google pix of big toes, as I had to do to find the image above.

I didn’t know exactly what I expected to find. Figuring it’s the Internet and I was looking for images of a certain body part, I suppose I thought most of the results would be porn sites. The human capacity to fetishize things for masturbatorial gratification is positively amazing.

To my dismay, the vast majority of big toe images were 73 times more disgusting than any foot porn could be. (And BTW: did you know Goethe, Thomas Hardy, Elvis Presley, and Andy Warhol were foot fetishists? Man!)

For god’s sake people, take care of your toes!

And while we’re at it, men should never wear sandals. Yeah, I know, it feels comfortable, but the rest of us don’t want to see how you’ve ignored toe care for the last 20 years.

Women Can Get Away With It

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TWO HEARTS BEATING AS ONE

In more pedestrian matters (hehe, a pun) the Herald Times yesterday ran an editorial calling for consolidation of the Monroe County and City of Bloomington governments.

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That’s what Indy did with Marion County back in 1970. They call their set-up Unigov. Louisville, Kentucky and Jefferson County did it, too, in 2003, dubbing their marriage Metro Louisville. Former mayor Jerry Abramson used to brag that his town had become the 16th biggest city in the nation. Unfortunately, no one else bought into that conceit.

The editorial cites the county’s election day screw-up and the County Auditor’s credit card mini-scandal among the reasons the two entities should merge.

We’ll be listening for the reactions of the folks in Ellettsville, Stinesville, and Smithville.

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FOUND MONEY

State Senator Vi Simpson wants to get her hands on some of that $300 million of state money auditors found laying around last month.

Vi Simpson

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Apparently, she’s interested in directing some of that dough toward state school districts that have had to endure — mirabile dictu! — some $300 million in state cutbacks of late.

Doesn’t she know these are more prudent, conservative times we live in? And she wants to throw away money on kids’ educations? Sheesh.

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AN AMERICAN IN PARIS

Just a little taste from what I consider one of the 10 greatest American movies ever made. Sheer pleasure for the ears and eyes.

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The Electron Pencil

Category Archives: Indianapolis

Hot Air

Rights Without A Home

Home?

LeRoy Robinson Of Indianapolis

Tears Of Joy

Can It Be?

House Boy

John Lewis (Foreground) As The March Commences

John Lewis Hits The Ground

Daylight Savings

Son Of Seymour

She Likes Us! She Likes Us!

Funny Girl

Share this:

Like this:

Your Daily Hot Air

You Say You Want A…

Evil Prince

Brilliant

This’ll Make Me Bazillions!

Tarnished Genius

Bobby Kennedy Breaks The News

Ladies and gentlemen.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust, of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poem, my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair,

against our will,

comes wisdom

through the awful grace of god.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King — yeah, it’s true — but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love, a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past, and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

And let’s dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Thank you very much.

Revolution

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