You're The Top

I'm currently hooked on Anything Goes again. In my car I've got equal doses of Elvis, Chris Isaacs, Michelle Shocked, Lefty Frizzell, George Brassens and Bonnie Riatt cranking, with occasional Yoyo Ma doing super sad Bach solo cello, but then I just can't get enough Anything Goes. Cole Porter was some incredible lyricist AND he wrote the music. Jeez.

You're the top - you're the Coliseum.
You're the top - you're the Louvre museum.
You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss.
You're a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet, You're Mickey Mouse.
You're the Nile - You're the tower of Pisa.
You're the smile - on the Mona Lisa.
I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop.
But if baby I'm the bottom, you're the top.

You're the top, you're Mahatma Ghandi.
You're the top, you're Napoleon brandy.
You're the purple light of a summer night in Spain.
You're the National Gallery,
You're Garbo's salary,
You're cellophane.

The story's simple — a 1930's jaded nightclub singer, Reno Sweeney (originally played by Ethel Merman, boy, I'd kill to hear that version) takes a cruise from New York to Southampton, England on a big cruise ship.

Actually, I just reread the plot and now I see it's insanely complicated. (Thanks to P.G. Wodehouse and his friends.) The best part is the gangster dressed up as a clergyman — Reverend Dr. Moon — he wears a priest's collar and carries a machine gun under his frock.

I mean I carry the machine gun — that is, I did in high school when I played Bonnie in the play and got to be his gun moll and right hand girl. It also meant I got to perform one of my favorite songs in the show — Heaven Hop.

Anyway, if you were wondering what all this blogging and connecting is REALLY about — it's clear to me. We're casting for one big travelling road show musical! AKMA as the Dr. Moon, Jeneane as Reno Sweeney, David Weinberger as Sir Evelyn Oakleigh, Rageboy as Billy Crocker, Doc you can be the ship's captain. Get your tap shoes ready. Yes, we're coming to a theatre near you.

[BTW, this is my favorite version of all the available CD's.]

And In The End

All fun must stop! Seems to be a universal truth. After a wonderful morning meeting AKMA and Margaret, we were back to earth, heading to the motel to drop our new "favoritest" blogger off at his hotel. Best of all, after assembling BC Bones and meeting them in the flesh, AKMA slipped me a copy of his book and we were on our way back to Boston.

You Did!

AKMA even with such a busy day and away from home, I can't believe you beat me to the screen and outblogged me, but ... I'll be back with more soon.

I actually just wrote up our visit only to have it blow up. I always consider that a helpful nudge from the great above to edit the thing down by a few thousand words. I'm editing, I'm editing.

How Can One Car Get That Way?

Back from our very brief trip down to Connecticut to meet AKMA and Margaret. We were gone 24 hours. True we did stay over at our good friend's place in Norwalk, so we had to pack overnight bags which meant the car started getting a little filled up. Yes, travelling with a kid means the requisite trunkful of Hot Wheels, books, Legos, swim fins and every other darned thing they are convinced they can't leave home without. But golly, it took me so long to clean out the car this afternoon when we got back, looks like we'd been on a safari in Africa for three weeks.

Bless Me Elaine, For I Have Sinned

I confess, Elaine, I blew it, please forgive me. I was suddenly feeling sad that day and did a hide-under-the-covers afternoon disappearance.

Brilliant Blogger Elaine of Kalilily Time and Blogsisters fame was here in the Boston area Tuesday and even though we made an attempt to talk by phone, we never pulled it off. But really, it was all my fault. I'm sorry I missed you.

Her blog has great stuff about her visit with her daughter, who I did end up talking to, just as Elaine had left, just missing her.

I love the stuff on her blog most days and especially today about Eve Ensler. Her exegesis of Chris Locke's recent newsletter piece is not to be missed.

C'mon Andrew

How is it that Andrew Sullivan doesn't have anything to say about the lead story in all the papers — that Bush had advanced warning of Bin Laden threats in August 2001? Or did I just miss it?

Up Close and Personal

David Weinberger wrote this week in his JOHO journal about the personal nature of blogs and mentions Chris Locke, Mike Golby and me. Thanks David for the mention, but I have to say I was crushed when you insulted me by saying,

Take someone who doesn't have RageBoy's penchant for laying himself out as his own best argument: Halley Suitt. Halley is normal the way the rest of us are normal (i.e., not the way RB isn't).

Don't you know I'm a Chris Locke wannabe?! I don't wannabe normal like everyone else. I'm having a helluva time emulating my hero. I mean I write lots of words like Locke, I do have a deck of Tarot cards, but I'm otherwise a rather ordinary no-drink, no-drugs boring at-home blogging mom with a 6-year-old infatuated with SpongeBob and a husband at work.

There must be some household product I could swill to meet Rageboy on common ground -- say, Spray N'Wash? And no reason to avoid sniffing a little Magic Marker now and then, when you're helping junior with homework, for a quick afternoon high. This death thing gets boring after awhile. I need to spice it up. Both Chris Locke and Mike Golby have infinitely more fascinating worlds to decode.

Meanwhile, as for UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL, as usual Doc shows us all up by mentioning blogging wifi-ishly in the john on his blog yesterday. Surely he got 12,000 hits based on that and not what Steve Jobs had to say. I loved it.

A Tall Ladder

Seems lately there are so many disturbing events — you name it, suicide bombings, politicians shot at point blank range, war, hunger, global warming, potential nuclear annihilation conveniently scheduled for the 4th of July weekend — it would give even the most optimistic of us pause. It surely keeps the faithful of us not far from prayer, heads bowed, hands nervously pressed together.

I've lost track lately whether my occasional free-falls into sadness are due to specific recent events worthy of grief and mourning (i.e., my dad's death over a month ago now), or if there is a larger languishing despair we are all grappling with in these extremely uncertain times. Some mornings I feel I am struggling to get out from under a heavy wet felt blanket of hopelessness. And I tend to be a fairly upbeat and optimistic person! I fear for those with darker tendencies.

I wish I had a tall ladder I could climb and sit on top to see the big picture. If I had some perspective to know it's 1774 or 1861 or 1933 or some other hard time. Times that tried men and women's souls, but times they could recall and recount and gain strength from. Our times make you wonder if we're spiraling down into the end of time.

So today, I bless the mundane that gets me back into the flow of life — children must eat! And they must eat hot sticky orange macaroni and cheese. And my son choses to eat a giant bowl of the stuff with a 1/8 teaspoon measuring spoon, a tiny shovel to make the task a compelling challenge. And to watch him makes me laugh. And so, we continue on.

Carter's Flyto

Peterme has posted a most interesting piece about a magician named Carter. A contemporary of Houdini's, you must check out the weird and wonderful posters this guy used to advertise his many magical and mystical talents. Carter's "Flyto" looks like one scary ghost.

Hi Si!

Chatting on the phone with AKMA's son, Si. We had an interesting talk about home schooling. I told him to write about it on his blog and give us some links. Very interesting subject.

BTW, here's a link to some folks that have started building new alternative high schools. They're called The Big Picture Company. The book I mentioned, Si, is called One Kid At A Time.

Raymond Armed But Not That Dangerous

Eric Raymond's new blog: Armed and Dangerous is not to be missed. His ideas have always been more dangerous than any firearms he packs. Thanks, per usual, to Doc for pointing it out.

Thanks Yahoo!

My Yahoo email's been dead in the water since yesterday — feels like 3 weeks — and go ahead and try to find a shred of customer support (an actual email address) on their site. I did find these encouraging words in their terms of service agreement.

YAHOO MAKES NO WARRANTY THAT (i) THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, (ii) THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE, (iii) THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE SERVICE WILL BE ACCURATE OR RELIABLE, (iv) THE QUALITY OF ANY PRODUCTS, SERVICES, INFORMATION, OR OTHER MATERIAL PURCHASED OR OBTAINED BY YOU THROUGH THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR EXPECTATIONS, AND (V) ANY ERRORS IN THE SOFTWARE WILL BE CORRECTED.

David Weinberger Speaks

I finally got a chance to ask David Weinberger a few questions about his new book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined. Here's what he had to say:

Question: After writing The Cluetrain Manifesto with co-authors Rick Levine, Christopher Locke and Doc Searls, what was it like to write your new book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, completely solo?

What a relief not having to carry those three sluggards on my back!
"No, RageBoy, let me show you how it's done." You try to teach them, but you
know it takes an enormous amount of energy, like training voles* to play the violin.

Ah, but perhaps you wanted a serious answer. It really wasn't that
different because each of the four of us wrote our own sections alone.
It's not like we holed up for three months in a house, came down in our
bathrobes for breakfast and read one another's drafts.

The biggest difference is that I can't hide behind the three of them
with this one. If people don't like it, I can no longer blame it on the
trained voles. Although, of course, I still intend to try.

[*Vole: "Any of various rodents of the genus Microtus and related
genera, resembling rats or mice but having a shorter tail and limbs and
a heavier body."].


Question: Can you talk about the process of writing you book, the day-to-day challenges and concerns? For instance, weren't you still finishing it on September 11, 2001?

Yeah, I was doing the final copy-edit and some innocuous passages
suddenly became sinister. I decided to take out a passing reference to a
"big smoking crater" at the beginning of the last chapter, and some of
my claims about Americans feeling like we can manage our way out of
anything didn't seem so obvious any more. (It's a powerful delusion
though that keeps re-exerting itself, even now.)

But, 9/11 aside, the day to day of it was frustrating and difficult. I did more
rewriting than I've ever done. And writing a book is attempting to solve a puzzle
for which there may be no solution. As you well know, I was very close to
chucking the whole project about half way through because I couldn't write a single
chapter that was worth reading. Once I'd gotten one that didn't seem terminally
stodgy, the others came more easily. David Miller and Lisa Adams, my agents,
were very helpful at this pre-show-it-to-your-editor stage. Amanda Cook at
Perseus was great also.

Also, I was posting my drafts every day at smallpieces.com, even
stuff I knew was pure crap. Very embarrassing. On the other hand,
comments and encouragement from people who started out as
strangers not only improved the book but literally kept me from
giving up on it. Thanks, Halley.

Question: What are you saying when you suggest "The Web celebrates our imperfection, ludicrous creatures that we are."

Business is anal-perfective. It's incapable of admitting that its
products aren't perfect even though we all know that. Marketing just
naturally assumes we want to see idealized images, and we have learned
not to trust those images. But slickness on the Web feels out of place.

Besides, fallibility is a requirement for conversation. If you don't
have even a smidge of a sense that you might be wrong, you're lecturing,
not talking. And almost all jokes celebrate that fallibility.

There's something liberating about not having to polish what you write.
Post it and run. That's one reason weblogs are so much fun. (AKMA
brought this up in his weblog the other day, citing Dr. Johnson.)


Question: Explain what you're saying when you say that the web "is the elite's nightmare of hoi polloi, the rabble, the mob that originally spurred the building of ivy-covered retreats."

Pretend you're an academic trying to put together an anthology of
literary criticism of Moby Dick. Consider the manuscripts that come
through the mail from accredited scholars. Now google "Moby Dick."
Examine your attitude. That's what I mean.

Most institutions are there in part to authorize and authenticate. When
we find other ways to do what they do without going through the
institutional channel, the institutions are right to be scared about
losing their grip and purpose.

Question: What do you mean when you say "The knowledge worth listening to --
that is worth developing together -- comes from bodies."

The rest of the passage says: "for only bodies (as far as we can tell)
are capable of passionate attention, and only embodied creatures, their
brains and sinews swaddled in fat and covered with skin, can write the
truth in a way worth reading."

The main point of that chapter is that historically we've reduced knowledge
to mere objective facts. But we need more than that and we are more than
that. We humans don't process information: we argue, shout, joke,
celebrate, wail, etc. Human knowledge comes from and embraces passion.
The connection to the body, which is rather tenuously expressed in the book
I'll admit, is that we are creatures who have to care about who we are
because we are in bodies abuzz with desires. And as bodily we die so we
know (as Heidegger puts it) that we are always at issue.

Question: What about "The Web helps us to embrace without embarrassment who we really are." What do you mean by that?

The overall theme of the book, which emerges slowly (which is one reason
I have so much trouble saying in a couple of sentences what the book is
about), is that the truths the Web uncovers are in fact the truths of
our lives in the real world as well, although our "default philosophy"
in the RW is alienated from these truths. Some of those truths are
embarrassing because we are not what we pretend to be. I think the Web
lets us be more of what we are -- at least in the talky, social ways --
than we feel we can afford to be in the real world.

Question: What trends on the Web do you see developing since the time you finished your book, that seem significant to you?

Oy gevalt. The virulent industrial-governmental attacks on Internet
freedoms that threaten to cripple the best chance for making free speech
and free markets the global norm (the stupid fucking bastards). The
emergence of weblog communities with very strong voices. The coming
collapse of the telcos. WiFi-based neighborhood networks bringing
broadband to anyone with a wireless card. The continued need for a layer
(at the edge!) that shows the Net as my set of social groups.

I Want A Mom

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of the noisy, whiny Rugrats tv show. But Rugrats In Paris, the movie is great and all about how Chuckie Finster searches for a mom. The Cyndi Lauper song, "I Want A Mom" is really terrific.

Cyndi Lauper - I Want a Mom That Will Last Forever

I want a mom that will last forever
I want a mom to make it all better
I want a mom that will last forever
I want a mom who will love me whatever

I want a mom that'll take my hand
And make me feel like a holiday
A mom to tuck me in that night
and chase the monsters away
I want a mom that'll read me stories
And sing a lullybye
And if I have a bad dream to hold me when I cry

Oh,
I want a mom that will last forever
I want a mom to make it all better
I want a mom that will last forever
I want a mom that will love me whatever, forever

When she says to me, she will always be there
To watch and protect me I don't have to be scared
Oh, and when she says to me I will always love you
I won't need to worry 'cause I know that it's true

I want a mom when I get lonely
Who will take the time to play
A mom who can be a friend and a rainbow when it's gray
I want a mom to read me stories
And sing a lullaby
And if I have a bad dream, to hold me when I cry

Oh,
I want a mom that will last forever
I want a mom to make it all better
I want a mom that will last forever
I want a mom that will love me whatever, forever
I want a mom that will last forever
I want a mom to make it all better
I want a mom that will last forever
I want a mom that will love me whatever, forever
I want a mom
I want a mom
I want a mom that'll last forever
I want a mom that'll last forever
I want a mom
I want a mom
I want a mom that'll last forever
I want a mom
I want a mom that'll last forever
I want a mom that'll last forever
I want a mom..

Mom Home Womb Tomb

Mmmm, Mmmm, Good! Mmmm, Mmmm, Good! That's what [moms who make] Campbell's Soup are, mmmm, mmmm, good. Alma Mater, do you know what it means? Go look it up yourself. I'm not telling.

On Mother's Day, listen to all those resonant "mmmm" sounds. Belly sounds. Belly full of warm soup sounds. Belly full of warm milk sounds. Belly full with baby sound.

And there's no better irony than the words "womb" and "tomb". One box you fight your way out of at birth. Same box men are fighting their way back into every Saturday night, from the moment they see a pretty girl in a pretty skirt on a pretty street. "There's a girl my lord in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me." And then the pine box that takes you back into the ground to the tomb, a box to enclose you forever. Even the "mmmm" sound of tomb has the death knell sound to it. Mmmm, the bell tolls.

My Mom

On Mother's Day here, there's a sharp piece of glass lodged under my heart, it pricks at my heart every so often today, to know my mom isn't here anymore. Surely she's here in spirit though, when I think of all the funny practical stuff she taught me. She grew up in OOOOOOOOOOOklahoma where the wind goes sweeping down the plains, spending a good deal of her teenage years reading voraciously or watching movies in the local bijou to learn how rich people in New York City drank tea from china cups. At 18, she plunked down the money she'd been saving for years to buy a train ticket to Manhattan and leave her cow town behind.

She loved describing her arrival in New York in 1936, which was 100X more swell than she even dreamed, but her embarrassment to have nothing to wear but her homemade calico cowgirl dresses. She set about getting rid of the dresses and her hick accent and her love of cowboy songs. These stories always amazed us, since we were the urban and suburban result of growing up in NYC at 80th Street between Madison and Park, Riverdale, NY and later Greenwich, CT with a mom who looked a lot more like Jackie O than Patsy Cline. We weren't rich, but riding a wave of 1950's prosperity, my dad's ability to talk anyone into another job in the booming Madison Avenue advertising biz of the time, and my mom's relentless push to give her kids a better upbringing than the dusty Okie life she'd lived.

Still, she was that energetic unlikely paradox of downhome no-nonsense candor and big city polish. Her advice on marriage, "It's easy to find some guy to screw you, what's hard is finding a guy who'll give you a good backrub."

What she was best at, as so many moms are, was making you feel everything was going to be okay — as long as you made your bed first thing every morning. I still make my bed first off, even in hotel rooms, believe it or not.

Whatever else she was, she was just an enormous amount of fun. Sometimes she served us dinner backwards starting with dessert, "just for the hell of it." She was playful and silly. When I was in my teens, despite her big brood of five kids, she took the time to plan a week vacation for each of us, alone with her. I remember being in Puerto Rico with her and one Saturday night she proposed we sit in the lobby, pretend to be waiting for someone, but just spend the evening looking at all the weird people going in and out and just make cracks about them, which we did and had a hilarious time doing it. She was a killer Charades player, she could trounce you at Scrabble, she did The Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in ink.

She was smart as a whip, but never got a chance to go to college. But even into her 70's she was better read than any person I know. Once I was arguing about politics with her, something I'd read in The New York Times by some prominent journalist. She stopped me cold and looked at me incredulously, "Didn't you read his piece in Rolling Stone?!" she says to me. And, of course, she was right, the same writer had written a seminal piece in RS, but I'd missed it. I walked away from the kitchen table stunned, chastened and thinking, "I'm 30 and she's 70 and she's reading Rolling Stone and I'm not?" It wasn't about that magazine, it was about the fact that she was a tireless and deep reader.

And did I mention, she loved me? Loved me with a unconditional but tough love that didn't seem to have a limit. I could always count on looking into her face, being stopped dead by those pretty green eyes of hers, flashing back one message loud and clear, "You're my darling daughter, you can do no wrong, I love you so."