Small World, Small World

I recently finished last week's New Yorker magazine. As most New Yorker readers will attest, one is often finishing one edition even as the next is stuffed into the mailbox out front each week.

I was interested to read the magazine's profile of ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin, who as had a part of some of the election '04 kerfuffle. Halperin is publisher of The Note, ABC's influential on-line political tip-sheet.

More importantly (to me), he is also the brother of David Halperin, who was lead singer of the 1970's rock group The Ramblin' Beach Guys (RBG's) and is no mean commentator himself. I had the pleasure of playing guitar with the RBG's during the band's heyday, when we were highly influential among a small cadre of our classmates at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda Maryland.

It got me thinking ("where are we now?") and googling...

David, as linked above, is involved with the Center for American Progress. He was also a part of the Dean campaign and worked for a time at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

Our drummer was John Heilprin. I've been thinking about John lately; partly because of the confusion between Halperin and Heilprin that we always dealt with and partly because, as I spoke with a colleague recently about helping kids choose colleges, I reminisced about John and my week-long college-visit road trip through New England our senior year of high school. John's a reporter now. The most recent work I've found suggests he's working for the Associated Press.

Danny Miller played lead guitar. I think Danny became a film editor. I haven't been able to track him as well as I'd like.

John Krivit played bass, then switched to singing and playing a little guitar. I knew that John had owned a recording studio in Massachusetts for a while. My latest search finds him on the faculty of The New England Institute of Art. Or maybe on the faculty of Bay State College. Maybe both?

Our bassist was Steve Stavros. Of Steve, I have found nothing so far. There was also Gene Mage (I think that was the name) who played occasional saxaphone. A quick Google turned up this guy. He feels like the Gene I remember; he was a go-getter. But that was a long time ago and Gene was only partly a part of the band.

So that's what I've found out, so far. Now, if any of these fellows use Google Alerts to capture mentions of their names (and the Google spiders crawl through this blog) , maybe I'll hear something and will update this memory.

This Is My Congressman

UPDATE (12/23/04): I just revisited the archives here and find that the great photo of Congressman Castle in costume is gone from them State GOP website. Luckily, this nice portrait of the Congressman as a congressman replaced it. I'm guessing someone thought that having a shot of Mr. Castle as Frankenstein's creature on-line was a bad idea. I guess I can understand that. I stand by my opinion, though, that even in that costume, Mr. Castle's good-guy-ness shone through.

Delaware has only one seat in Congress. Our incumbent is Michael Castle, seen here in a Halloween Parade in Newark recently (Photo thanks to the State GOP website). What struck me first about this picture, and what stays with me, is how nice Mike Castle's smile looks, even surrounded by a goofy costume and floured-up with pancake make-up. This is, oddly enough, a great picture of the Congressman. It captures his innate "niceness."

The Vote Is In!

Hooray! Someone voted in Meaningless Poll #1 (at last), bringing the vote total to a nice round 10. Now we can analyze the data.

According to our latest not very scientific polling, readers of "Mike's Musings" prefer to eschew obfuscation by a possibly significant majority. Seventy percent of our readers choose to eschew, while only a thirty percent free thinking minority choose to endorse.

No respondents chose to encapsulate obfuscation. Our analysts speculate that this may be due to the fact that to encapsulate obfuscation may not be physically possible, though scientists at the Defense Department reportedly may or may not be pursuing something that may or may not be related to this concept.

Credit for the idea behind this poll should go to my brother John, who on the occasion of my taking a job as a radio news reporter many years ago advised me to "Eschew Obfuscation" at all times. This phrase has become my own personal mantra in my developing career as an information pusher.

At all times, I try to eschew any and all forms of obfuscation. Unless I want to employ obfuscation for comic effect.

One More Vote....

We need one more vote on "Meaningless Poll #1" so that we can present the statistical results. So far, nine votes have been cast. One more will make it really really easy to do the math....

Sometimes Things Just Line Up That Way...

I had a nice reminder this evening that the universe does indeed have a sense of comic timing all its own.

I am pitching in as part of the stage crew for my local community theater group (The Possum Point Players) and their production of Noises Off. This is a very funny show by playwright Michael Frayn that requires two complicatedly complete set changes. Several of us join in with the entire cast in rotating three large, two-tiered platform/wall units, two pair of stairs, two rooms of furniture and assorted theater flats -- twice -- to enable the players to present first a cast rehearsing a play, from the front, then performing the play, from backstage, then performing the play again from the front. A comedy in three acts.

The show itself is hilarious and the players do a fine job. Our set changes, however, are chaotic enough to provide drama and humor themselves. Tonight, as I dragged a staircase from stage right to stage left, I heard two theater patrons chatting in the front row.

"I had heard that this was the best part of the show," said Theater Patron One to Theater Patron Two.

"Why yes," Two replied, "We can always rush out to the snack bar right before the Act Two curtain."

But all that to one side.

This evening, as I left the house for my new exercise routine of flat-dragging, I happened to snatch up the latest edition of the New Yorker magazine, which came in today's mail. During Act Two, I was standing backstage paging through the magazine and planning which articles to read and in what order. I came upon a full page photo of a dapper looking man sprawled on a garden seat. It was a profile of the man who wrote the words wafting through the teaser curtains to me.

As I scanned the profile -- "A Dry Soul Is Best; Michael Frayn and the drama of betrayal" by Larissa MacFarquhar -- I was struck by how balanced life can seem.

Book Preview: The Unfinished Twenty-First Novel in the Aubrey/Maturin Series

Great Scott, what a cruel tease this may turn out to be.

W.W. Norton this month is publishing the start of what would have been the 21st Aubrey/Maturin novel. Called simply "21", the book is three chapters left unfinished on Patrick O'Brian's desk at the time of his death. In 144 pages, it begins the next chapter of the series, with newly promoted Aubrey, now a Rear Admiral of the Blue, under orders to sail to the South Africa station.

I know I shouldn't, that it will not do justice to what O'Brian may have been able to do with the material had he lived longer, but I will likely buy it, and read it, simply because of the great pleasure I have had from the Aubrey/Maturin books over the years.

For the uninitiated, the first novel in this series was Master and Commander, which leant its name and some of its substance to the movie starring Russell Crowe. If you haven't delved into this set of books, start here. Read. Repeat.

By the way, I note that this is being published along with a new collection of the full series. Who pulled Matt's name in the Mahaffie family Christmas drawing?

Book Review: Prairie Nocturne

Prairie Nocturne is the latest "Two Medicine Country" Montana novel from Ivan Doig. I came across the novel in the "new books" section of the Lewes Public Library the other day. Doig is on my internal list of authors whose books I will check out, or buy, almost automatically (others are folks like the late Patrick O'Brian or Bernard Cornwell). I first found Doig through his novel English Creek and I have, I think, read most of his stuff.

Prairie Nocturne is not Doig's best. It's a fairly slow novel and I found it hard to follow in places. The story is a bit melodramatic. Still, Doig's great skill is in drawing strong characters and evoking a rich mountain and prairie landscape for them to people. As soon as I'd read his first, I knew that some day I would have to spend some time in Montana. I have not yet had a chance, but I know that I will.

Prairie Nocturne takes an interesting turn in exploring racism in the American west at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries. It also follows the process of schooling, rehearsing, and performance in the realm of theatrical singing that I found interesting.

In the end, the story resolution was strong enough to leave me feeling pleased with this book, and I can recommend it, though I also more strongly recommend several others, notably English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and Ride With Me, Mariah Montana all of which explore this place and these people over several sections of time.

John Stewart Fires on CROSSFIRE

John Stewart, host of the Daily Show, slammed the hosts of CROSSFIRE yesterday (CNN.com - Transcripts). The Daily Show, of course, is a satire of television news that airs late nights on the cable channel Comedy Central. Oddly, it has become a preferred source of real information for a whole generation that feels that this satire of the news is more to be trusted than the "real" news shows.

Tucker Carlson (right-wing CROSSFIRE yeller) and Paul Begala (left-wing) brought Stewart on expecting light-hearted banter about the presidential candidates. What they got was an earnest, if bemused, plea to stop making an unintentional mockery of democracy.

The audio is here (in MP3 format) and there are several sites offering video files (I used this one). The heart of it, I think, is here:

STEWART: . . . I made a special effort to come on the show today, because I have privately, amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being bad.

BEGALA: We have noticed.

STEWART: And I wanted to -- I felt that that wasn't fair and I should come here and tell you that I don't -- it's not so much that it's bad, as it's hurting America.

CARLSON: But in its defense...

STEWART: So I wanted to come here today and say... Here's just what I wanted to tell you guys.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: Stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.

It's interesting. It started out looking like the sort of comedy bit that Stewart often undertakes on his own show. He tends to play a wide-eyed naive role sometimes to point out an issue, but eventually let's on that he's playing a role and pushes the joke to absurdity to underscore the point. In this case, he stayed with it to the point where I was not sure whether he was kidding, or serious. Ultimately, it started to become clear that he was, more than usually, serious. Don't get me wrong, he held on to the role of "jester," but he had a serious message to bring.

This appearance is discussed in great depth on several big-time blogs (notably on MetaFilter) and some of that discussion is worth a look. I guess what struck me was that here was a guy saying to these clowns just the sort of thing I've wanted to say for a while now.

I have a rare form of "faux-Tourette's" disease that only appears when I'm alone in my car, listening to the news, and something truly asinine comes across the airwaves. It manifests itself in a sharp expletive and a stabbing motion of my right fore-finger towards the "change-station" button. More and more, watching the mainstream television coverage of politics, I feel that same urge, but can't give in to it while in the presence of impressionable young minds (the girls are doing fine, by the way).

This made me feel better. For a while.

Self Censorship

I was thinking about posting something about the sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill O'Reilly (Boston Globe story, to pick one of many) . But then I remembered that,

1. My Mom, my Wife, and my Daughters might read it,
2. The plaintiff seems to have had a tape recorder and a reporter's ear, and
3. The suit itself (which is available on-line) reads like something that I wouldn't want anyone listed in item 1 (see above) to read, at least not on my weblog.

So. Never mind.

What's Wrong With Massachusetts?

Is it just me, or does it sound to the rest of you like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are running against the state of Massachusetts rather than against John Kerry and John Edwards?

I haven't exhaustively Googled this, but I keep hearing sneering references to the state, to "a Massachusetts Senator," to "judges in Massachusetts," and the like, from the incumbents.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think that they drive way too fast in Massachusetts and I understand the strong passions stirred up by the eternal debate over Manhattan vs. New England Clam Chowder, but is Massachusetts really that bad a place?

I am surprised that there's not more of a clamor against these attacks in the Bay State.

UPDATE: I Googled, but I forgot to look at Slate, where there was an article on this subject yesterday. The article (Lay Off Massachusetts: George W. Bush doesn't get to choose which United States he's president of) helpfully collects many of the quotes that have bugged me lately.