11/11/2016
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Big Talk

Hot Air

Your Big Talk Links

Hey kiddies, did you miss last night’s Big Talk episode? Worry not — here are links to both the WFHB Daily Local News Feature and the unabridged version of my chitchat with Margaret Taylor, proprietor of the Book Corner.

‣ Thursday’s DLN feature — listen here.

‣ Monday’s taping session with Margaret — listen here.

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And stay tuned next Thursday, November 17th, for my scheduled tête-á-tête with Steve Westrich, owner and founder of The Bishop, one of Bloomington’s top live music venues. As noted here earlier in the week, I’d been hoping to have award-winning poet and Indiana University creative writing professor Ross Gay on next week but we weren’t able to nail down a taping session date just yet. Again, stay tuned; Ross’ll be with us soonly.

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11/11/2016
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Democracy

Hot Air

It’s What’s For Dinner!

‣ Three days in and I believe, in my head, what has transpired, but in my gut? Hell no, I still don’t believe it.

‣ Lots of people on the Left are busy blaming each other for the victory of L’il Duce Tuesday. The pouty rhetoric is getting thick and uncivil. And here, we thought the Republicans were going to be the ones cannibalizing each other in these post-election days.

‣ Newsweek shipped copies of its commemorative Election 2016 issue. We got a number of copies at the Book Corner Wednesday. Its front cover is a wall-to-wall snapshot of the grinning candidate the editors, obviously, were certain was going to win. That candidate is identified as “Madam President.”

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Last night I googled “newsweek madame president ebay” and the first hit was an eBay item for a single copy of the edition. It sold on Nov. 9th at 5:33pm for $799.

‣ I dunno about you but I’m getting the same vibe on the street I got in the days immediately after the 9/11 attacks. And at least three separate people have said to me, “It’s like there’s been a death.”

‣ The wholly unexpected victory of L’il Duce really screws up his plans doesn’t it? The man wanted to start a cable TV operation that’d speak directly to the chronically aggrieved and the terrified white male demo. Now those gangs are in power — what do they have to be aggrieved about? I’m sure they’ll find something; they always do. But the President of the United States can’t really run around starting media empires while in office. Then again, this is Donald Trump.

‣ I get the feeling we’re in for a good twenty-year stretch of one-term presidents. L’il Duce‘s triumph came about largely because the dull-witted among us wanted change. L’il Duce ain’t gonna change the entire gov’t so those folks’ll be chomping at the bit again come 2020. And scads of liberals and progressives want new blood, too. We’re in for a roller coaster ride, babies.

‣ Nobody asked me but I’ll offer my advice to the Democratic Party anyway. Two pieces of advice, as a matter of fact.

  1. Lose the Clintons. I hate to say this. I voted for Hill. I thought she did a fine job as Sec’y of State and I was confident she’d be a terrific prez. I certainly am not blaming her for the loss, as some on my side of the fence are doing these days. But the truth of the matter is she’s toxic. So is Bill, but she possesses a value-added odium-trigger. It’s called a vagina. There’s a solid swath of the citizenry that can’t bear the idea of a woman being president but it’s a distinct minority. Problem is when you throw the deep, visceral, almost pathological hatred of her on top of that, suddenly the rabidly anti-Hillary demographic approaches 50 percent of the voting populace.
  2. Lose the sticks. My mother used to call all places well outside the city “the sticks.” The rural voters of the great, vast emptinesses stretching from the Mississippi-Missouri River system westward to the continental divide of the Rockies are never, ever going to vote Democratic. Nor are Indiana farmers, Georgia truck drivers, or Kentucky meth lab operators. They despise the cosmopolitan, diverse big cities that are the stronghold of the Democratic Party — or at least should be. The cities historically were, but then after the victory of St. Ronald in 1980 the Dems became scared little bunnies and started standing on their heads to court the voters in the sticks. Remember Michael Dukakis all gussied up in tank commander drag? How about John Kerry pretending to be a rough and tough outdoorsman? Forget it, Dems! Go back to your roots and speak directly to the working woman, the inner city man, the Latino, the black. The letter carriers and garbage haulers. Secretaries and nurses and schoolteachers and window-washers. Speak for the entire LGBTQ community. Call on the Arab immigrants. Give voice to the concerns of the Central American émigrés. All these demographics have grown considerably enough to provide you with victories in the future. Millions of people in the cities feel the Democrats have abandoned them — and they’re right. Now, roll up your sleeves and get them back, and welcome all the new bunches that the white supremacist wing of the Republican Party can’t and won’t tolerate.

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Dukakis & Kerry: Play Acting For The Sticks Crowd

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Democracy

It’s comin’ to the USA, Leonard Cohen sang in 1992. Well, it’s here — and it’s got an awfully ugly face.

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11/10/2016
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Big Talk Thursday

Hot Air: Incoming

The L’Il Duce Show

All this mass psychoanalyzing of the voting populace, with seers, tea-leaf readers, palmists and op-ed columnists trying to divine why the citizenry elected L’il Duce has thus far missed the point. First off, the citizenry really didn’t at all elect him — the Electoral College will despite Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote by +200,000. That’s a topic for another day. But, acc’d’g to the rules of our game, he’s the winner, so we have to grin and bear it.

Only I won’t be grinning and I’ll bear this…, well, not at all.

Anyway, the topic of the day is Why Did the Nation Vote As It Did?

The one, single most important factor is never really discussed and that’s this: Tens of millions of people voted for L’il Duce because he was a TV star. That’s it. Put your slide rules away, sociologists. Turn off your scanning electron microscopes, cultural anthropologists. And pack up your Smith-Coronas, all you wits and wags. The reality television-addicted populace knew L’il Duce as the star of The Apprentice and that was good enough for them. TV — or the movies — makes anything real to most folks. Had George C. Scott opted to run for president in 1972, the only reason he wouldn’t have won would have been because a huge swath of America would have written in “Patton,” instead.

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You think people read candidates’ position papers? That they scour the news magazines and gather ’round the old console RCA to listen to learned observers and investigative journalists discuss the pros and cons of this candidate and that one? Nope. They watch mind-numbing television and come away convinced that what they’re looking through is a window to the real world. On TV, Trump was bold, resolute, commanding, almost kingly in his mien. That is what we want in a president. And that, thanks to tens of millions of us who’ve been anencephalized by the flat screen, is what we’ve got now.

You want to bash Hillary Clinton for blowing this thing? Fine, hold her feet to the fire because she didn’t have the foresight enough to star in a reality vehicle entitled The Public Servant.

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Big Talk Thursday

Tune in late this afternoon to the WFHB Daily Local News. My guest on Big Talk, the regular Thursday feature on the DLN, will be Margaret Taylor, proprietor of the Book Corner. She’ll tell us how the independent bookseller got its start here in Bloomington and, while she’s at it, fill us in on a bit of local history as well.
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Tomorrow, I’ll post the link to the feature podcast as well as the complete, original recorded interview with Margaret.
As for next week, my guest probably will be Ross Gay. He’s in, but has yet to commit to a taping appointment. Stayed tuned for developments.

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Too Late

Corporate journalists at last are refraining from pulling punches when writing about the incoming president of this holy land. Take this line from CNN’s story yesterday afternoon about what L’il Duce‘s victory means for Barack Obama’s legacy:

… [T]he first African-American president will stand on the inaugural platform next to Donald Trump, who stoked divisions and preyed on people’s racist fears, including through lies and insinuations about Obama himself. 
Well, whaddya know? Heaven forbid CNN or any of the other for-profit news peddlers around the nation would have described the Trump phenomenon in such stark terms before this worst-case scenario was thrust upon us.
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My Mind Races

A few more impressions as I attempt to scrub the fallout from Black Tuesday’s mushroom cloud off my seared skin and soul:
‣ As of late Wed. eve., I was beginning to feel as though my world was no longer spinning out of control. One thing that helped was the call for me to straighten out a friend who had fallen into a deep, morose funk over the triumph of L’il Duce. Other friends said we each had a responsibility to help others through this emo-morass. So I made it my biz to get back into the swing of life — and to tell my pal in no uncertain terms that he had to hold his head up, or else.
‣ One of my little mind tricks was, essentially, to begin looking at the presidency as something quite a bit less important than I’d viewed it before Nov. 8, 2016. Helping in that effort was the very fact that the president-elect has, himself, diminished the office in a way never before seen on these shores.
‣ As for the Murrican people, I will never, ever, ever again be shocked by the sheer stupidity of the masses of them. Someone quoted H.L. Mencken:
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
So, acc’d’g to Mencken’s lights, the American democracy is now perfect.
‣ The drive home from Democratic Party county headquarters, where I covered the proceedings for WFHB radio Tuesday night, was made bearable only when I slipped Nick Drake’s Pink Moon disc into the CD slot. Drake’s simple vocals and complicated chord structures relaxed me as a drug would.
‣ For a brief few hours, I found I couldn’t have cared less about my beloved Cubs’ World Series triumph a mere week ago. What I perceived at the time as a life-changing event was transformed, against my will, into nothing more than another sports score. It is indeed nothing more than that but for a fleeting few days I was able to pretend it took on a significance far and away above. Sometimes, pretending helps us get through the long, baffling day.
‣ I’ve been trying to imagine a more unlikely, risible president than the incoming L’il Duce. What in this world could be a crazier idea than that of D. Trump becoming the leader of the free world and commander-in-chief of the most powerful military the planet has ever seen. From the Left, Michael Moore? Jon Stewart? Stephen Colbert? No, not a one of them would make the dubbing of Trump seem relatively rational. How about from the Right? Glenn Beck? Alex Jones? Joe Arpaio? Uh-uh. We have hit the nadir, babies.
‣ Lots of folks are shrieking about the big, bad, evil media and the role it played in the ascension of L’il Duce. Generally, I eschew knee-jerk condemnations of The Media, mainly because I detest demonization, but in this case I’ll have to side with the crowd. Corporate media made Donald Trump and corporate media acted as a de facto PR agency for his seemingly quixotic campaign. This wouldn’t have happened 50 years ago, back when TV news still retained a shred of decency. Investigative reporter Wayne Barrett spoke with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! yesterday and told her of the transformation of the medium’s news operations over the years. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, maintaining a good, hard-hitting, independent news operation was the price each TV network paid in exchange for its license to use its sliver of the limited electromagentic spectrum. CBS, NBC, and ABC’s permission to use their respective slots on the airwaves have been worth billions — nay, trillions — of dollars to the corporations that have owned them. It was a handshake agreement and so, written on the wind, but the networks for a few year at least early in TV’s history felt obligated to perform the public service of providing real news with no concern about it as a profit-making enterprise. Then, things changed. Now, TV news depts. must earn money, meaning they must garner the biggest audience possible. That means giving people what they want rather than what they need.
And in this case, that meant giving them L’il Duce as opposed to a qualified, respectable candidate for leader of the nation.
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11/09/2016
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The Turning Point

Hot Air

Random thoughts on a day when rage and grief make it nearly impossible to string ideas and words together in any kind of cohesive manner.

The Loved One and I got up this morning, sat on the sofa, and cried.

I cried in the shower as well.

When I woke up, I had this delicious fantasy wherein while I tossed and turned through the night, Hillary Clinton had miraculously garnered enough electoral votes from the scant remaining states that hadn’t yet reported when I’d drifted off and — voila! magic! the hand of god! — won.

It gave me succor for a precious moment.

Renaldo Migaldi, editor at the University of Chicago Press, whose forebears lived through Mussolini’s reign writes this:

Many of my family members, including my father, lived under fascism for years. It was significantly worse than anything we’re likely to see here. They lived their lives, and they made it through. And so will we.

Richard Lloyd, professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University, writes this:

I really enjoyed the many posts yesterday of friends, especially women, thrilled to cast their vote for Hillary Clinton. I was too. I’m really not interested in hearing about what was “wrong” with her as a candidate. Nothing was wrong with her. She is not corrupt and she ran a serious, dignified campaign capping a lifetime of committed public service. I’m proud of her, and proud to have supported her, and my heart breaks for her, and for all of us who share her vision for an inclusive America.

At last America has thrown off the sheep’s clothing that we, a nation, care about others — others outside our boundaries and others within. We care about wealth. The more, the better. We’ve elected very rich men to the presidency in the past. There were Roosevelt and Kennedy, to name two. But they had thoughts. They had philosophies. They had a modicum of love in their hearts for those who were broke, who were impotent, who were hopeless. The incoming president has none of these tender feelings. He ran, and he was elected, for the sole reason that he’d amassed an enormous amount of money. We now, unabashedly and unapologetically, worship wealth. These other objects of worship we pay lip service to? God. Our fellow sisters and brothers. Decency. They are as nothing today. Never has America been more true to itself than it was yesterday.

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I’ll be able to do quite well, thank you, without constant social media reminders of the shocking things the incoming president will say or do. We know what he’s capable of. He’s going to continue to deliver.

And that goes for any alarming uglinesses of his followers, who’ve no doubt been emboldened by his terrifying victory yesterday. Yes, yes, yes, lunatics will set fire to sleeping homeless men, white supremacists will assault people of darker skin, men will continue to piss all over women. Don’t sit back and tut-tut these inevitabilities. Your keyboard outrage will be meaningless. Fight back with everything you’ve got.

We, who’d spouted optimism in the lead-up to yesterday, underestimated the depths of selfishness in the hearts of tens of millions of our fellow citizens. No, wait — we overestimated the nation. America’s too smart to elect Donald Trump president? My ass.

Yesterday afternoon, Mayor John Hamilton told me he was nervous. I told him he was being silly. I ticked off my predictions — as delineated herein Monday morning. Last night, in the middle of the hall where the Monroe County Democratic Party candidates and faithful had gathered, I whispered into his ear: “The next time I try to tell you what’s going to happen in an election, I want you to turn me around and kick me, hard, in my fat ass.”

My most enduring memory of last night was of Shelli Yoder, after having delivered her tear-jerking concession speech, walking away from the podium and, first, hugging her husband tightly and for long minutes, and then falling into the arms of county party chair Mark Fraley. The two off them heaved and sobbed as children would. Yes, sure, they mourned their own perceived personal defeats, but I like to think they were crying for the nation as well.

Another enduring memory: The evening began in an atmosphere of hope and excitement. Then, sometime around nine o’clock, it was as though someone had flipped a switch. The room turned to a tomb.

I watched Todd Young deliver his valedictory without actually hearing his words. You heard it here first: Todd Young is in play for a strong White House run in 2020.

Keep in mind the real president of this holy land will be Mike Pence. The nominal incoming president will be gallivanting around the world play-acting as a king.

Mere days ago, pundits were speaking of the death of the Republican Party. Their only only mistake — they were preparing to embalm the wrong party.

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton won the popular vote! That’s two presidential candidates I’ve voted for in the last 16 years who’ve won the vote but lost the election. Democracy, my ass.

I’m in no mood for any faux-brotherhood, kumbaya, let’s-all-work-together bullshit. These self-centered, skin-color obsessed, women-hating, mammon-idolizing apes cannot be worked with and, more to the point, I refuse to play nice with them. They crow to the heavens that they love America but the truth is they hate Americans. They hate me. And you. They must be resisted. They must be fought.

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11/08/2016
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Vote

Hot Air: We’re All Women Today

Wishin’ & Hopin’

The fantasy: After today, we enter a two week period wherein pix of this face…

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… rapidly become less and less in our faces, until we gratefully and to the everlasting benefit to our mental health can wipe any traces of it from our collective memory.

The reality: This orange-skinned rectal polyp is clever enough to find ways to put his smug mug before us repeatedly until either he or we, whichever comes first, find solace in the grave.

If you thought Fox News was infuriating, just wait ’till you catch the glimpse you’ll promise yourself you’ll never take but in the end cannot resist, like looking at a picture of the decapitated victim of a car wreck, of his sure-to-follow new television venture.

And speaking of Fox News, how many of you out there would have guessed that this holy land would ever produce a presidential candidate who’s even too out-there racist, misogynistic, nativist, self-centered, chronically-aggrieved, and proudly uninformed even for that selfsame “Fair & Balanced” outfit. Fox News, after all, made its bones catering to to an audience that lovingly wallows in that cesspool of human flaws. I know I never thought it’d happen.

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Simplification

And before we wrench our elbows and/or shoulders patting ourselves on the back, we on the Left — whether by microns or miles — have shown a disturbing, growing tendency to rival the wingnut Right in wacky, daffy pronouncements. To wit: a commenter on social media last night wrote this:

Bill [Clinton] by signing NAFTA, created the causes and conditions under which Trump got his foothold… Therefore if you vote for a Clinton, who will create more of the same causes and conditions… you don’t get to blame me if Trump gets elected. It is YOUR fucking candidate who created this mess in the first place!

Just to clarify, this commenter was a Bernie Sanders supporter reacting to ongoing soc. med. peer pressure to vote for Hillary Clinton. And the commenter has distilled at least 400 years of white male supremacist, visceral “thought” — more accurately, a species-long history of such — to one simple, easy-to-swallow, demonizing dictum.

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The dumbing-down of America, apparently, crosses all philosophical and political lines.

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History, Babies

Not that I’m so in love with HRC that I want to marry her. She is, after all, the wife of and philosophical twin of a man who, when he first announced his intention to run for president in 1991-92, was my pick as the worst of a passel of Democratic wannabes for the nomination.

Nevertheless, I present to you (fingers crossed — toes, too) the first female president of the United States of America.

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That makes me happy.

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11/07/2016
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Playing Politics

Hot Air: Seeing Things

Eeny-Meenie, Chili-Beanie, The Spirits Are About To Speak

I’ve just been noodling with one of my stable of political insiders. This woman/man will be in attendance tomorrow at the Indy Convention Center, the state election night HQ for the Dem Party. S/he’ll be rubbing shoulders with gubernatorial candidate John Gregg and senatorial hopeful Evan Bayh. Together, s/he and I doped out tomorrow’s election.

Our crystal balls polished to a glittering sheen and lithium-ion battery-charged, here’s what we foresee:

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So, you see, my insider and I disagree only on the Indiana senatorial race. My reasoning? Same as it was when Todd Young first ran for Congress against incumbent Dem Baron Hill in 2010 — Young is a youthful, good-looking, former Marine who’s not a deranged Right wingnut. That’s an unbeatable combo in this state. As for Evan Bayh, if you think the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is iffy about HRC, well, friends, Bayh makes her look like George McGovern. At best, Hoosier Dem voters’ll ink in his box while holding their noses. At worst, they’ll ignore the senate race altogether.

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I’m pretty much on the fence about Shelli Yoder’s chances. This congressional district has had the leftward juices gerrymandered out of it, save for Bloomington and perhaps one or two of the cross-river suburbs of Louisville. These little pockets of Democratism may not be enough to counter the very solid red rural and smaller town terrain of the rest of the district. My Insider thinks I’m all wet but s/he does say this: Even if Shelli wins tomorrow, she’ll be a loser in 2018 when she won’t have a presdential turnout to help her keep her seat. Too bad, that. I dig Yoder the most of all the major candidates I inked for back on the first day of early voting in Indiana.

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The Election Beat

Speaking of election night, just a reminder: I’ll be one of the anchors of WFHB radio’s live coverage as the returns trickle in. We’ll have a remote desk set up at Opie Taylor’s eatery/drinkery on Walnut Street, the local Dems’ command post. I’ll be grilling party sachems as they either exult or cry real tears. Give a listen tomorrow, Tuesday night starting at 6:00pm, the microsecond the polls close in the Hoosier State.

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11/05/2016
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Erratum

Hot Air

The Tall One & The Big One

Tall Steve Volan contacted this global communication colossus to set me straight. I reported here Thursday that Volan, Bloomington city council member representing the downtown area, has championed a brand new parking commission to handle issues related to curb congestion, the municipal garages and surface lots, and the parking meters in this sprawling megalopolis.

I wrote:

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He and I had chatted briefly about the commission idea the night before at Nick’s English Hut while watching Game Seven of the planet-changing World Series [BTW: my beloved Chicago Cubs won it all — did you know?] We agreed to go into detail about it at a later time. When I typed up my post the next day I simply went to the Herald Times story on the council meeting and based the above on it. It was wrong and so was I. Here’s Tall Steve’s admonishment:

Hey Big Mike — Just a quick note: Ernest Rollins got the story wrong in the HT article too. The Parking Commission didn’t get a committee hearing last week when it was supposed to. During second reading Wednesday, Council decided to pass it anyway. It’s the law now. Maybe update your article?

Thanks, Steve. I’m sorry I got it wrong. Correction made.

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Bridge, Not A Wall

Here’s my secret code for opposition to a [ugh, gag] Trump presidency:

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It’s an opening bridge hand. The proper bid if the player holds it, is two, no trump. Ergo, my new Facebook cover photo, a play on words:

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So, if and when the cut-rate Mussolini occupies the White House, those of us with a shred of sanity and decency left can flash the symbol to each other in solidarity.

Strength, babies.

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11/04/2016
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Chitchat

Hot Air

Big Talk Links

Two posts in the same day — aren’t you the lucky Pencillista!

Catch yesterday’s WFHB Daily Local News Big Talk feature with hand-crafted, wooden puzzle-maker Marc Tschida here.

If you want to hear the entire hour-long interview, go here.

Tune in to the Daily Local News at 5:30pm next Thursday, November 10th, when my guest will be my boss-arina, Margaret Taylor of the Book Corner. A Bloomington institution (and some might say most of us who work there belong in an institution), the Book Corner has anchored the intersection of Kirkwood and Walnut for more than 50 years. The independent bookseller’s history goes back a lot further than that, though. Margaret’s got all the info and she’ll share it on Big Talk.

Until then.

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11/04/2016
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Saviors

Hot Air

World-Changers?

As I type this, zillions of people are gathering on the streets of my beloved hometown to eyeball and adorate the 2016 World Series champion Chicago Cubs, who are parading down Michigan Avenue a mere two days after changing the course of world history. And it’s a glorious, sunny day both here in So. Cent. Ind. and the Windy City, which is only right and fair.

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The Faithful Gather In Grant Park

[Image: Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune]

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The parade kicked off earlier at Wrigley Field (or, as my fave public radio booth announcer, Annie Corrigan, referred to it, endearingly, yesterday AM, Wrigley Stadium) and is wending its way down to the bandshell in Millennium Park. I assume Kyle Schwarber et al will thereupon be assumed, bodily and soul-ly, into heaven.

While grooving on the glee of it all from afar, a couple of thoughts occur to me:

  1. Watching the World Series games on Fox, I’ve concluded sports fans must be the flaccidest fkers extant. Every other ad was for boner pills. Man, Cub Nation’s gotta be the floppiest-appendaged assemblage this side of a castrati convention
  2. Goddamnit! For two days in a row now I’ve still had to get up early in the morning to earn a dime. The Republican Candidate for President (RCP) has not apologized for his very existence and withdrawn from the race. Civil war still rages in Syria. We’re still burning fossil fuels. The Kroger people continue to insist I pay for my groceries. Jeez, this World Series championship didn’t really change a thing. We’ve been conned!

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Trust Me, I’m A Liar

This is fascinating. New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert, who specializes in science, thinks she’s got the Republican Candidate for President sussed out. In her Daily Comment piece dated yesterday, she begins by wondering how in the world a greater percentage of American voters, acc’d’g to a poll, feel the RCP is more trustworthy than Hillary Clinton.

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Kolbert

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After all, the RCP is a pathological liar, if one is to trust the findings of the various fact-checking orgs. busily at work these days vetting his each and every utterance. And trust them, I do. Kolbert sez the citizenry of this holy land trusts the RCP because he doesn’t deny he’s untrustworthy. She writes:

Donald Trump is the kind of jerk who authentically, genuinely, unabashedly inhabits his own jerkiness. The indifference to reality he’s displayed on the campaign trail is the same indifference he displayed as a businessman, a husband, a boss, and a taxpayer. His narcissism, petulance, and whatever other character flaw you care to choose aren’t under wraps; they’re on view for all to see and hear. In this sense, he truly is the real thing.

We are one eff-you-ed nation.

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The Fascism of Reality

People talk about The Market all the time, especially my more antediluvian friends. Loyal Pencillista, the Lake County Republican, for instance, extols the Free Market as a cross between the very hand of god and some kind of sexual nirvana — and if you can sniff out the double- or even triple-entendre embedded therein, you’re not alone. The Market, free or slightly less so, will protect us from ourselves, it will put everyone to work in a swell job, it’ll clean up the environment, it’ll allow the superior among us to continue to amass billions of dollars, and — hell — it just may even make ED-afflicted, increasingly minoritized aging white men less cranky, which would be miraculous indeed.

Now, I trust the “Free” Market about as much as I’d trust my brood of two dogs and two cats to have vacuumed, washed dishes, and folded the laundry by the time I get back home this eve. That Hayek guy, in front of whose sacred icon the Free Marketeers are obsessively genuflecting, is about as spot-on as, oh…, say the People’s Temple’s Jim Jones was back in the ’70s.

Nevertheless, I trust The Market, unfettered or not, in one arena and that’s the success of failure of the everyday, local entrepreneur. If a woman or man opens a store and no one shows up, well, that’s tough but the market, such as it is, has spoken. You can cook up a fab pizza and if no one drops in for a slice, you close your doors. That’s business.

Two respected, iconic local businesses are in hot water these days. The Players Pub and Boxcar Books both are clinging to precious life by their fingernails. And both are depending on the largesse of the local pop. for further sustenance — they’re begging for dough through crowdfunding websites.

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I’m not a big charity-giver in the first place. I’d rather sit next to a homeless dude and talk to him about his day than pitch quarters over to some do-gooder org. that purports to end the problem of homelessness if only I whip out my wallet. I’m not against charities; it’s just that I prefer the personal touch rather than the detached solution of giving donations and then telling myself what a swell egg I am for it. In any case, I find the idea of businesses setting up crowdfunding operations, well…, dopey.

If neither Players Pub nor Boxcar Books can make a go of it peddling their wares and services, they must close their doors. That, again, is business. It’s mean. It’s sad. But reality is a son of a bitch.

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Hey Hey, Holy Mackerel

What else?

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11/03/2016
1 Comment
At Long Last

Hot Air: Heaven

The Mountaintop

Now whadda you think I was doing all last night and into the wee hours of the AM?

Yep, I spent the historic eve/morn with a motley crew of Cubs fans and revelers at, first, the Uptown Cafe and then our entire gang moved over to the venerable Nick’s English Hut where we cheered our boys on to victory. Our little army started out with B-ton fixture Kelly Wherley, attorney Amelia Lahn, international student exchange matchmaker Michelle Bird, Hoosiers, Rudy and Hill Street Blues director David Anspaugh, and a couple of visiting lawyers from Evansville who had the good fortune (misfortune?) to be sucked into riding our emotional roller coaster with us.

Eventually, Farm Bloomington chef Bob Atkins joined us, and then we lost Anspaugh and the Evansville barristers. The remainder of us dashed over to Nick’s around the sixth inning, where we watched with knotted stomachs and gaping mouths the Cubs cough up a seemingly comfortable three-run lead in the eighth inning. Tall Steve Volan was the master of ceremonies at Nick’s and we were joined by dancer and 4th Street Arts Fest volunteer coordinator Tamara Loewenthal. Our crew experienced severe emotional distress as the game seemed about to be lost, then won, then almost lost again before my beloved Cubs finally emerged victorious in the Cleveland rain in the 10th inning.

[BTW: Tall Steve had missed the first part of the game attending to his duties on the Bloomington city council. That august body had the effrontery to meet as usual on Wednesday night even though Game Seven was scheduled and the chance for world history to be changed loomed. I advised Tall Steve to quit the council and watch the entire game with me but he declined, the fool.

Still, Tall Steve escaped council chambers in good time to watch the meat of the contest. This after he was able to move a significant piece of legislation along — his proposed local parking commission was given the thumbs up by the council in a preliminary straw poll. The commission idea now will be tweaked and written up as law for eventual passage, Steve hopes, by the council at a later date.]

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A Confident Tall Steve & A Fretting Tamara

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Baseball fanatic and theater man Eric Paris Van Gucht writes on his blog this morning: “[L]et me tell you – it does feel like heaven.”

Oh, it did — I think.

Josh Timmers writes on Bleed Cubbie Blue:

The only words I have are THE CHICAGO CUBS ARE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS! [His caps.]

No one has ever typed those words on the internet. No television announcer has ever said those words. No radio broadcaster has ever said those words.

Kirkwood Avenue was transformed into one long block party from Indiana Avenue all the way down to Walnut Street after the final out was recorded. Our little crew poured out onto the street where we met Herald Times photog Jeremy Hogan. I seem to recall Kelly Wherley joyously grinding his hips into mine as Hogan snapped away. Sheesh, if I ever run for office those negs’ll torpedo my campaign forthwith.

I’m a tad iffy about my memories and feelings because I’d begun self-medicating after Cleveland’s Rajai Davis tied the game with a home run in that terrifying eighth inning. I tell you, Ketel One oughtta be dispensed only by prescription. And speaking of prescriptions, I wonder what might shrink this throbbing skull I’m experiencing this morning.

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Me, Before The Roof (Almost) Caved In

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Carsful of happy collegiates cruised the boulevard, the strains of Steve Goodman’s “Go, Cubs, Go!” pouring out of them.

My hand still hurts from slapping so many high fives.

As for my feelings, even now, as I type some eight hours later, I can’t describe them. I’m still numb. Yeah, I thought about Ma, the Cubs fan who’s responsible for my 50-year heretofore unrequited love affair with the team. She handed in her lunch pail in early 2014 just before this current iteration of the team began to become dominant. She’d have loved every minute of last night. Bad timing, Ma — you should have hung around a couple more years. I didn’t cry this time, though. I cried like a baby a week and a half ago when the Cubs finally made the World Series. Tall Steve can attest to that. This time? I suppose stunned is the best descriptor I can come up with. And I’m still stunned.

I’d like to say, as Lynn Schwartzberg wrote, “So, this is how it feels, wow!” but I can’t.

I know this, though: Now that my Cubs have won a World Series, I can let sports go. Yeah, no sporting event or achievement will ever be able to top this one. Beginning in 1969 when the Cubs broke my heart for the first of many times, I’ve been obsessed with seeing that wrong righted. Now it has been.

As the famed ancient sports writer, Paul the Apostle, once observed, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Last night’s triumph was my graduation. My only-now-unknotted stomach and my aching head will thank me.

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Election Night Coverage

It’s set: I’ll be covering the doings at the Democratic Party’s Bloomington election night HQ Tuesday night for WFHB radio.

The Dems will gather at Opie Taylor’s on Walnut St., hoping to bring their national, state, and local banner carriers home to victory. WFHB will have a live remote table at the bar/restaurant where we’ll do live reports and interviews. A mess of folks will be responsible for the coverage, including tech geeks, runners, remote producers, executive producer Joe Crawford, Ass’t News Director Sarah Vaughan, and vols at the station making sure our words get to your ears. I don’t know the names of all the on-scene, behind-the-scenes staff but as soon as I get wind of them, I’ll flog them herein.

I dunno about you, but I’m pumped for Tuesday, November 8th.

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Big Talk

Speaking of interviews, it’s Big Talk Thursday. My guest late this afternoon will be hand-crafted puzzle maker Marc Tschida. Marc has been an arts advocate and tireless worker in the music and theater scenes locally for eons. Now, he’s going full-time into jigsaw-puzzle making. His distinctive, collectible puzzles feature images of Bloomington and South Central Indiana as well as pix of works by local artists.

Big Talk is a regular Thursday feature of the Daily Local News. Tune in at 5:30 late this afternoon. If you miss the broadcast, don’t fret — you can catch the podcast on the WFHB website. And the mostly-unedited, full-length original interview will be posted on this communications colossus immediately after air-time (or, more accurately, as soon as I get around to posting the audio track.)

Talk to you tonight!

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