The American Pile

A New Year's Day Prayer

• A New Year's Day Prayer Department: May the baseball strike resume. May all players declare free agency and demand trillions. May the owners remain obstinate assholes forever. May they convert the stadia to landfills and fill them to upper decks with nuclear waste. May the fans find alternate lives. Forever and forever and forever, over and over and over again, world without end, until we are all dead. Amen. (January 1, 1997)

• America Online is offering subscribers a chance to "share Rosie O'Donnell's personal scrapbook" by just clicking a couple of times on the "AOL Member's Choice" icon. How did they know this was the last missing piece in my quest for a full and happy life? (January 24, 1997)

Incredible News

• Incredible Universe, the 17-store chain of electronics outlets, has pulled the plug and is closing them all. Each Incredible Universe store boasted five football fields of retail space under one roof. One opened in Indianapolis about two years ago. Losses exceeded $230 million in 1996 alone, according to the parent, Tandy Corp. of Houston. Good.

Including The Insidious Bias of Its News Programs

• Guests touring CNN headquarters in Atlanta are told by guides that CNN employees recycle over 200 tons of trash annually.

• Judge Drewpup has dismissed the only black juror from the O. J. Simpson civil trial proceedings. How far we've traveled. Twenty-five years ago nobody would have thought of mentioning the person's race in this story. Today race is everything and they would never think to omit its mention. (January 31, 1997)

• Say adios to Jack "Jersey Red" Breit, who died of cancer January 31 in Houston. Breit was a pool hustler tutored by such all-time greats as Minnesota Fats and Willie Mosconi. He operated a pool hall in New York where the movie, "The Hustler," was filmed in 1964. "Most people who know will tell you he was the greatest pool player of all time," said a longtime friend, Dennis Glenn. Another legend goes to ground.

Gettin' Sedimental Over You

• Pinned to the community bulletin board inside the West 38th Street Marsh Supermarket is a plaintive message from someone trying to recover a stolen brown leather trenchcoat, in which the former owner tells how much he valued the stolen coat. Identifying marks ("cracks in the back area where you sit") are noted, and the writer then adds that he "had personal sediments attached to the coat" and really wants it back. At first I took this to be merely an effort to say the coat had sentimental value. I snickered sanctimoniously, then caught myself short: it could be true, could it not, that the owner really was referring to personal sediments attached to the coat? I'm so tempted to call to ask, but I don't think I will.

• Add to the list of great malaprops: affletes, as in IU really has recruited some talented affletes for next year's team.

Crow Loves Freedom, But Not Wal-Mart's

• Singer Sheryl Crow is reinventing herself as she launches her latest national tour, but she still doesn't get it. The Boston Globe's Steve Morse, in a pre-concert preview published in Indianapolis a few days before Crow's arrival here, talks about the singer's "fight against Wal-Mart's censorship" (which began in September of 1996) and quotes the 34-year-old warbler saying that "people really need to take notice of the fact that Wal-Mart has a monopoly. . .and they're censoring what it is you can purchase. I just think it's evil. And they're doing it under the guise of caring about people, and that's simply not the truth." Crow and her publicists and handlers are outraged that Wal-Mart has refused to offer one of her albums for sale in its stores. The album contains a song with a lyric Wal-Mart found insulting:"Watch our children while they kill each other with a gun they bought at Wal-Mart discount stores." What Crow and the rest don't get is that this is not censorship. This is simply a business declining to offer a product for sale. No crime in that, no censorship, merely a decision Wal-Mart and any business is entitled to make in a free country. Crow of course is free to sing whatever she wants. She apparently believes that once she's sung it, then retailers are required to offer it for sale. I'd much prefer to believe that in her silly little heart of hearts Sheryl Crow knows the claim of censorship is fraudulent, but that she makes it merely to stir up publicity and hype record sales. Either way, it's no compliment to Crow. March 6, 1997)

• A high-school honor student jailed in Indianapolis for his role in an anti-fur demonstration is being force-fed by state bureaucrats after the lad went on a hunger strike. Tony Wong has lost 21 pounds in his month-long fast. He was charged with trespassing last November and put on probation. When he violated his probation--obviously the lad believes laws apply only to the rabble--a judge had him arrested and jailed. This type of story presents one of the central riddles of American civilization: Why does the state force-feed people? It is a free country, and if a citizen doesn't wish to eat, why should he be forced to? I say let 'em starve themselves if they wish. (March 26, 1997)

• USA Today reported April 1 that Social Security disability claims are rising rapidly due in large part to "new illnesses" such as stress disorders and carpel tunnel syndrome. As more folks get the scent of new spots at the federal trough, new diseases are inevitable. (April 1, 1997)

Well They Are, Aren't They?

• Dozens of students skipped school in Cincinnati--and doubtless millions more did so across this great nation--so they could be first in line to buy new $140 Michael Jordan designer basketball shoes, according to a March 29 Scripps Howard News Service story. Most of the truants had parental permission and many were accompanied by their parents, who seemed quite enthusiastic themselves about this opportunity to nail down life priorities. Dennis Matthews, principal at Cincinnati Withrow High School, took a sour view of this. "It just shows how twisted parents' priorities are," he said. He noted that some parents have declined to pay school fees and cry impoverishment when the school asks them to settle these accounts. "These parents are saying shoes are more important than school." Precisely, Dennis. Might as well face facts in this brave new world. Stores across the land reported they were swamped with teen-agers, children and adults when the Jordan shoes went on sale.

• A new R-rated film titled Grosse Pointe Blank is being hyped in advertisements as "More Fun Than 'Pulp Fiction'. " The latter was a vile, sordid, stupid film of no redeeming social value. Grosse Pointe Blank must be a strange film, indeed.

• The official seal of the State of Ohio's Department of Taxation includes this motto: "With God All Things Are Possible." How has this escaped the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union and other Religious Left wackos? (April 14, 1997)

• Human civilization will be making progress when someone invents a vitamin B pill that doesn't stink. (May 19, 1997)

• Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's been doing a lot of handwringing lately about the specter of inflation and the danger that rising wages are going to blow this thing wide open, destroy our nation. Odd that he doesn't have a moment's lost sleep when some fatcat executive gets a $90 million buyout or a $110-million raise. It's only dangerous when the rabble threaten to make wage gains.

• Here's a clue about the state of our great nation: the largest employer in the country? Manpower, a temporary employee agency.

• Visitors to Marengo Cave, a national landmark underground limestone cave network near Milltown, Indiana, are treated to a sound and light show at the conclusion of their hike through the caverns. A tape-recorded message quotes Genesis saying that God created the heavens and the earth, and so on and so forth. How do they get away with this outrage, this blatantly offensive religious display in public? Later, in another part of the cave, the guides illuminate a rock outcropping with an American flag, an equally dangerous notion! This must be stopped! Where is the American Civil Liberties Union when we need it? (May 26, 1997)

• I sit in my cave looking out over the band of woods bordering our back yard. Dense green foliage has filled in the view, hiding the railroad embankment and tracks and the neighboring houses. Gordon Lightfoot sings Triangle, All the Fair Young Ladies, Christian Island in the background. The melancholy that's ridden me all my life creeps in. I long for someone to share this with--this emptiness, this wondering, this longing for a connection, these cosmic questions. But we are lucky if in our entire lifetime we find even one such kindred soul. The fragmentation of modern life makes it highly unlikely, should such a soul ever be found, that you'll end up living in proximity to them. More likely, hundreds or thousands of miles will separate you, sometimes whole continents. It comes down ultimately to this: We are all of us alone for the journey. That is life's sentence. The joke, obviously, is on us. (June 8, 1997)

• My wife's prescription insurance plan has sent customers a notice that "in order to provide better service to all customers, we have begun requiring payment in full with your order." What kind of person writes these notices? Every last one of us knows that "better customer service" has absolutely nothing to do with the new policy, yet the company, Anthem Prescriptions, insists on foisting this preposterous language on us and apparently actually believes its own stuff.

Justice Rears Its Dopey Head?

• Indiana University's diversity programs coordinator has sued the university, alleging racial discrimination and retaliation. Good!

• Indianapolis has been chosen as a test market by Shell Oil Company in still another invasion of what precious little remaining private space we have in our lives. Shell and CNN have joined forces to install video screens on gas pumps so customers can be bombarded with advertising and other information while pumping gas. They plan to go national with the idea in a few months. This will really improve the quality of American life.

• Jakob Dylan, the son of legendary rocker Bob Dylan, pouts at us from the cover of the June 12 Rolling Stone. It's obvious he's inherited at least one thing from his father: that calculated look of sallow, sullen dishevelment, topped off with perpetual "bed hair." Jakob's clothes look cleaner than anything his father ever wore, though. (June 8, 1997)

• It's Flag Day. My wife, Mogo, and I hung out an American flag and left it up all day just to piss off the Religious Left. (June 14, 1997)

• A pleasure to see the Timothy McVeigh jury step up to the plate, not flinch, and return guilty and death penalty verdicts. The bleeders are howling as they always do about the death penalty not being a detergent to crime. That's not the point. The points are two: the death penalty certainly will deter Timothy McVeigh permanently, and two, it exacts vengeance on behalf of a society which has a right and duty to do so. (June 15, 1997)

• It will be 15 years or more before McVeigh is executed anyway, if indeed he ever is. In an innocuous little news story in the June 15 Indianapolis Star, which briefly profiled the jurors, I've spotted solid grounds for an overthrow of the verdict. The McVeigh jury included Fred Clarke a computer programmer who admitted he listens to Rush Limbaugh; Roger Browne, who admitted he is a Methodist and that he is growing deaf from attending too many Grateful Dead concerts; and Doug Carr, a janitor who confessed he reads the Bible once a week. James Carville is doubtless already busy at work on this, ferreting out damning information for the defense. How the defense slipped up and allowed three persons with openly religious tendencies to get on this jury is beyond me.

• How about a lifetime ban for the following, from whom we've seen and heard enough to last a lifetime: Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Donna Shalala, Maya Angelou, Howard Metzenbaum, Alan Alda, Garry Trudeau, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Socks Clinton, Roger Clinton, Tommy Smothers, Dickie Smothers, Bette Midler,The Rainbow Coalition, Dean Martin, Manuel Norriega, Bo Schembechler, Bianca Jagger, Jimmy Swaggart, David Brinkley, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, John McEnroe, Don King, Larry King, Coretta King, Michael Jackson, Spike Lee, Jim McMahon, John Thompson, Vidal Sassoon, Alan Dershowitz, Jose Canseco, The Gabor Family, Jesse Jackson, O.J. Simpson, Frank Zappa, Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, Amy Carter,Michael Dukakis, The Reagan Children, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Rep. Barney Frank, Joan Rivers , Lloyd Bentsen, Ex-Rep. Buzz Lukens, Ed Koch, Donald Dinkins, Richard Simmons, Sonny Bono, Cher, Bob Trumpy, Tawanna Brawley,Marion Barry, Jane Pauley, Morton Downey, Jr. , Tony Mandarich, Rev. Al Sharpton, John Denver, Madonna, Sean Penn, Donald Trump, Ivana Trump, Marla Maples, Woody Allen,Mia Farrow,Frank Sinatra, Oliver North, Jim and Tammy Fay,George McGovern, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, Sylvester Stallone, Pete Rose, The Washington Post, Pat Nixon, Stephen Gobie, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Willie Kennedy, Joseph Kennedy, Jane Fonda, Ted Turner, The ACLU, Harrison Salsbury, Ed Asner, Buddy Ryan, Mick Jagger, George Steinbrenner, Imelda Marcos, Michael Kinsley, John "Air" Sununu, Jesse Helms, Contras, Sandanistas, John Updike, Alexander Haig, Rep.Jim Wright, Rep. Ron Dellums, Rep. Maxine Waters, Eddie Murphy, S.I. Hayakawa, Garry Wills, Carl Rowan, Albert Shankar, Gary Hart, Bob Woodward, Yasser Arafat, Sen. John Kerry, Arthur Schlesinger, Fawn Hall, Timothy Leary, Roman Polanski, Bert Lance, Tip O'Neil , T. Boone Pickens, Carl Icahn, Louis Farrakhan, Ivan Boesky, Jessica Hahn, Edwin Meese, USA Today, Esquire, Walter Cronkite, Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Barbara Jordan, Sally Quinn, Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, Gloria Steinem, Sen. Chuck Robb, Lowell Weicker, Daniel Schorr, John Connally, Mario Cuomo, Anita Hill, Phil Donahue, Cat Stevens, Bob Barker, Cesar Chavez, Tony Coelho, Laurence Tribe, Paul Schaffer, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Geraldo Rivera, Geraldine Ferraro, Christopher Dodd, Vernon Jarrett, Robin Givens, Bella Abzug, Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Hercegovinians, Macedonians, Bosnians, Brian Bosworth, Eric Dickerson, Ted Danson, Lyndon LaRouche, David Duke, Garrisson Keillor, Gore Vidal, William Sloan Coffin, Arsenio Hall, Pat Schroeder, Sister Souljah, Leona Helmsley, Ed Vrdolyak, Carol Moseley-Braun, Oprah Winfrey, Axl Rose, Shannon Doherty, Anna Quindlen, Charles Jaco, Wolf Blitzer, Mike Ditka, Rickey Henderson, Bob Knight, Bobby Bonilla, Barry Bonds, Chris Collinsworth, Rob Dibble, Lou Piniella, Dean Smith, Denny Crum, Darryl Strawberry, Charles Barkley, Isiah Thomas, Chuck Person, Albert Gore, Sen. Joseph Biden, Dan Quayle, Tipper Gore, Wayne Newton, Bobby Fischer, Henry Kissinger, Mayor Richard Daley, Tom Foley, Richard Dreyfus, Jack Nicholson, Charles Keating, Roseanne Barr, Andrew Dice Clay, Victor Kiam, Jeff George, Deion Sanders, Tom Wolfe, Howard Stern, Andre Agassi, Sinead O'Connor, Jerry Brown, James Carville, Oliver Stone, Fabio, The Naked Guy, Deney Tereo, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, Barbra Streisand, Michael Bolton, Sen Bob Packwood, Queer Nation, ACT-Up, The Religious Left, The Religious Right, Sam Wyche, Michael Milken, John Chaney, Marlee Matlin, Pam Carter, California, Sen. Christopher Dodd, New York State, New York City, Sen. John Warner, Jerry Lewis, Ice-T, The British Royal Family, Magic Johnson, Elton John, Sen. George Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, Bob Beckel, Ellen Goodman, Gov. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Eleanor Clift, Bjorn Borg, Lou Holtz, Dick Rosenthal, Mike Royko, The Benneton Company, Salman Rushdie, Sam Donaldson, Rep. Henry Waxman, Spike Lee, Bobby Inman, Cornell West, Lute Olsen, Frank Zappa, Dick Morris, Nancy Kerrigan, Tonya Harding, Jeff Gillooly, Shane Stant, Sen. John Glenn, Lani Guinier, Cokie Roberts, Peter Edelman, Marian Wright Edelman, Robert Bly, Reggie Miller, Black Jack McDowell, George Bush, Richard Darman, Nicholas Brady, John Frohnmayer, Christo, Robert Mapplethorpe, The Simpsons, William Kunstler, The McLaughlin Group, F. Lee Bailey, NAMBLA, Rep. Charles Rangle, Judy Woodruff, Johnny Cochran, Mike Tyson, Rep. Barbara Boxer, Albert Belle, Rep. Dianne Feinstein, Dennis Rodman, Hugh Downs, Mike McCurry, Rep. David Bonior, Judge Lance Ito, Harold Ickes, Webster Hubbell, Meg Greenfield, Susan Webber Wright, Sheryl Crow, Burt Reynolds, Tony Randall, Rex Reed, Dick Morris.
  
  Some of these creatures may be dead. If so, let's hope they stay there. Being dead doesn't keep you off the list. And now a dilemma: I know the list is incomplete. But if I keep waiting, watching for names to add, it'll be maybe never before it gets shipped out. So I'll stop here, life's work (temporarily) incomplete. But at least we keep it movin'. (June 15, 1997)

• So Iron Mike Tyson went berserk in the ring last night, bit off part of his opponent's ear, and had to be forcibly removed from the ring. Anyone who's shocked hasn't been paying attention. Tyson's life is one long unbroken howl of depredations against fellow human beings. Any self-respecting society would have permanently incarcerated such a person long ago. But Tyson walks the streets of America an icon-god, worshipped by legions, paid homage by media and assorted glitterati. Mike Tyson, Dennis Rodman and the rest are drum majors, advance scouts for the barbarian hordes massing to overwhelm civilization. We deserve them, and what's coming. (June 29, 1997)

• How long before the big media smirkers and apologists for everything trot out their tired list of excuses for Tyson's behavior, stage protest marches in cities across America, editorialize fatuously that it wasn't Mike's fault, that somehow we all are to blame for this?

• The National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service is proposing we push back the filing deadline for tax returns to May 15 or June 15. This will give people extra time to file, to reduce errors on their returns, and eliminate or relieve the huge onslaught of returns that arrive around the 15th of April. Here's some news for the commission: all this will do is produce an onslaught of returns around May 15 or June 15. Doesn't anybody on this task force know a thing about human nature?

• Polls were out within hours stating that about one American in five believes Melissa Drexler, the New Jersey teen-ager who gave birth to a son in a toilet at her high school prom, murdered it, dumped it in a trash can, and raced back to the dance floor to boogie with her sweetie, should not receive the death penalty. Who is to say? Who has the right to judge? These were themes expressed by Laura Caplinger, who told pollsters the girl's parents may well be at least partly to blame, for disapproving of their daughter's unwed pregnant status. How long can it be before Melissa has her own TV mini-series, a talk show, a fat book contract, personal clothing and sneaker lines and designer fragrances? Madison Avenue smells a winner here, and I do, too! Where do I go to invest?

• Sears Roebuck has been fined about a quarter of a billion dollars for doing what all of us should do more of--hounding deadbeats to make them pay their debts. Sears is obviously out of touch.

• Several Indianapolis public swimming pools have had troubles with violence recently, according to the Indianapolis Star. City police shut down two pools last weekend after teen-agers shattered restroom mirrors, broke shower stalls, and left water faucets running. Police Capt. Joe Schmid told the Star that people have grown more disruptive at pools and public parks since he came to work 20 years ago. Fights, drinking, threats and assaults--often against lifeguards and police--are more common now, he said, and people even bring firearms with them. A city pool official said the Most Recent Unpleasantness erupted when the teensters became angry because they didn't want to pay the entry fee all guests are charged. Schmid said it's routine for lifeguards and uniformed police to be threatened and cursed at--"it's MF this and MF that." The disintegration continues. . . (July 3, 1997)

America's 'Wheelchair Problem'

• A candid glimpse at American society popped up in early June in an anecdote involving a Midwestern shopping mall's "wheelchair problem." The mall was hoping to resume making wheelchairs available to handicapped shoppers, but wasn't optimistic. The mall did this until a few years ago but had to stop "because all the wheelchairs were stolen." Then a drug store in the mall began loaning wheelchairs, the story went, "but theirs were all stolen, too." What to do, what to do?

• You coulda knocked me over with a feather when I read a June 17 account in the Chicago Tribune on the latest study showing that American television portrays business people in overwhelmingly negative ways. Twenty-nine percent of all crimes and 30 percent of all murders on TV are committed by businessmen. "Prime-time TV," the report concluded, "shows a cynicism toward business that it does not show toward any other job or profession."

• The present and the future peeked through the thin veneer of civilization last week at Wisconsin basketball coach Dick Bennett's summer boys basketball camp. Bennett, the Chicago Tribune reports, is deeply upset by the unruly behavior of many in the group of 300 boys ages 10-13. Fights, vandalism, constant disobedience and rough play so upset Bennett that he lectured the lads' parents at the close of the camp July 13, and is considering canceling future camps for this age group, generally fifth through eighth graders. Careful observers will hardly be surprised. Teachers, parents, and others who work with young people can testify that the societal disintegration we've witnessed at older age levels over recent years is poisoning our children, too. Frequent news stories of ghastly crimes committed by children are regular reminders of this. The day will come when Stephen King's movie, Children of the Corn, in which children organize and plot to kill all adults, will be playing in every neighborhood, but on the streets and in our homes instead of in movie theaters. (July 15, 1997)

• The Indianapolis Business Journal of July 14-20 reported that welfare reform has become a bonanza for local agencies involved in training and placing welfare recipients in jobs. Four years ago, the IBJ noted, the state of Indiana had only one vendor for such services. In mid-1997, it has 125 contracts with 54 companies. Marion County alone has awarded over $11 million in contracts to such agencies as Goodwill Industries, TTI of Indiana, Eastside Community Investments, and others. Entrepreneurs smelling a buck to be made at the public pot are surging into the field. The story reported that there are critics of the various state's efforts, however. Tucked away at the end of the article were revelations that a 1996 study showed that only one of five welfare recipients referred to Indianapolis businesses for a job were actually placed, that "about half failed to show up for training or placement" and that only about 10 percent who got jobs were still working after six months. TTI said that of 401 people it had placed in jobs between July 1995 and December 1996, only half worked at least six months. "A good number of people find it very difficult to make this transition (from welfare) to the world of work," observed one TTI official. This must have caught many in the welfare industry by complete surprise.

Yeah, And It Tastes Bad, Too!

• USA Today editorialized in its July 18-20 weekend edition against the technique of "morphing" in popular films such as Forrest Gump and most recently in Contact, a movie about space aliens. In the latter, film-makers used film clips of Presidential news conferences and artfully spliced them to make it appear that Slick Willie was addressing issues included in the film. USA Today felt this was in "poor taste." This was half right. What's in poor taste is the Slick Administration, which has debased and degraded the office of the Presidency and turned the White House into a whorehouse. (July 18, 1997)

And One Garbage Can Wasn't Big Enough To Hold 'im!

• Author William Burroughs died August 2 of a heart attack in Lawrence, Kansas, and Chicago Tribune writer Achy Obejas offered an orgy of wailing and lamentation at the tragic loss. Burroughs, grandson and heir to the Burroughs business machine empire, certainly rode a different horse than most of us. He was educated in private schools, served briefly as a glider pilot in World War II, and once shot and killed his second wife while playing a William Tell game, according to the Tribune. He was considered a founder of the so-called Beat Generation, a group of hippie writers, artists, poets, and others noted for their rebellion against The Establishment in the 1950s and 1960s. Obejas' comprehensive obituary noted that Burroughs' 1959 book, Naked Lunch, was a "landmark" effort and generated huge publicity and a years-long obscenity trial, and that another of his books was an "hallucinogenic feeding frenzy" highlighted by a Burroughs character being--and here's something Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch can really relate to--"consumed by his own anus." Obejas paid due homage to Burroughs's "over the top (writing) style" which was influenced by the author's "longtime heroin addiction" and which often bypassed such apparently trivial matters as plot, narrative, and character development "in favor of an urgent, visceral approach." (This sounds suspiciously like code for: Burroughs couldn't write.) Later, Burroughs "pioneered a writing style called 'Cut-ups' in which he cut up pieces of his own writing, mixed it with text from other sources, then glued it back together." The Tribune's scribe noted the decedent's dabbles in what the obituary described as "music," and quoted several authorities who praised Burroughs's "staticky" voice and noted his influence on such rock legends as Throbbing Gristle, Jesus Lizard, Bob Mould,and Kurt Cobain. Obejas recounted, somewhat breathlessly, I thought, the legendary story of how Burroughs discovered a special painting technique: he tied cans of spray paint to pieces of wood and then blazed away at the cans and the wood with a shotgun. . ."the inevitable explosions of garish and tactile color pleased Burroughs." His first customer, the legendary Timothy Leary, paid $10,000 for one of these works of art. Burroughs, according to author James McManus was "enormously influential, especially on artists who go into the inferno and report back. He was into sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll before anybody else. . .his influence on gay literature is immeasurable." His longtime companion, James Grauerhiolz, somehow survives.

• The international edition of Newsweek July 28 devoted 17 of its 58 pages to the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace and the suicide of his killer, Andrew Cunanen.

• A Cosmic Question which occurred to me while watching the billions and billions of pigeons swarming around Old Town Square in Krakow, Poland: If you prevented a pigeon from bobbing its head, could it walk? One of the big research foundations ought to look into this.

• Cosmic Question Making The Bumper Sticker Rounds These Days: If a synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest have to drown, too?

• One of life's magic moments slipped past in August without the sort of attention it deserves. Norma Lyon, who bills herself as a "butter artist," created a six-foot high replica of Elvis Presley sculpted from 400 pounds of butter. It was featured in the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines and drew huge crowds who filed past a refrigereated dairy case to pay homage. Lyon has also sculpted a butter cow for the state fair for 38 consecutive years, and is said to be planning a butter sculpture of The Last Supper for 1998. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman visited the Elvis exhibit and, confirming he is a Slick Willie appointee, was quoted by the Baltimore Sun saying "My heart started to beat fast when I saw him."

• Little can be added to the exhausting coverage of Princess Diana's death and funeral earlier this month. USA Today (Sept. 8) provided a hard-hitting and comprehensive wrap-up of the ordeal in which it noted that even a day after the funeral "thousands of people" (many carrying flowers) were still wandering London's streets from Kensington Palace to Harrod's to Buckingham and on over to Westminster Abbey. Parks around Buckingham Palace were filled with mourners sitting silently with blank faces asking the cosmic question: "Where do we go from here?", and that the British press, pushing Christ aside, already has decreed a new title for the era: A.D., for. . .After Diana. Meanwhile hucksters were busy rushing to market all the inevitable ancillary spinoff products: rock songs, Diana dolls, a TV miniseries, a PBS documentary, a Broadway play, Princess Diana cereal, candy bars, and soft drinks, a biography, an autobiography, the papparazzi candid photo collection (some snapped even as rigor mortis was setting in!!!), the clothing and swimwear line, the cosmetics, perfume, hotel chain, cruise line, mutual fund, motor oil, lingerie, lawn furniture, condoms and more! more! more! And unless I miss my guess about human civilization, a thousand years from now the world's streets will still be filled with wandering slackjaws, all carrying flowers, wondering what to do, and keening, "Where do we go from here?"

• The last several years have seen this great nation inundated with ads which close with a voice-over reading legally required mumbojumbo unintelligibly at supersonic speed. Slow down, slow down, I keep saying to them. Like Ross Perot says, the devil's in the details, and I want to hear them. If Congress really wants to make this a better country, it should pass legislation establishing a maximum speed at which advertising copy may be read on radio or television.

• And while Congress is at it, let's have a ban on the latest broadcasting fad, copy readers with exaggeratedly deep bass voices. You can just see him, all puffed up, basso profundo, struggling with every fiber of his being to be a macho guy. What marketing genius ever decided this impressed listeners, anyway?

• Wretched Excess, Part I: The Wall Street Journal September 11 spotlighted the latest American fashion rage: alligator-skin shoes, which are taking Detroit--and soon, one just knows, the nation!--by storm. The Journal quoted Rodney "Rock" Smith, a 35-year-old clothing store manager, explaining that he owned about 20 pairs of "gators" which cost him between $400 and $1,200 a pair and that if it weren't for all those shoes "I could have a brand new car paid up" . . .but inexpensive shoes "just don't meet my standards." Rock revealed that he'd recently worn a $1,050 pair of lime green dandies to a downtown nightclub and drew special attention from the ladies. "A woman sees a man with gators and knows he's got something going on," quipped Smith.

• Wretched Excess, Part II: The Journal uncovered the fact that Cecil Fielder, a former Detroit Tigers slugger now playing for the New York Yankees, buys his gators by mail and has "a couple hundred pairs" in his closet.

• Wretched Excess, Part III: The Journal found a Baptist minister in Detroit who uses his gators to make a "spiritual statement." He told an eager reporter that he often went barefoot as a boy, used Crisco oil to shine his shoes, and says his gators today speak volumes about the goodness of God. "They represent me, the statement that I want to make," he said. "I have arrived."

Yup, I'd Give It All Gladly. . .

• For the second time in the last 15 months I went to a Gordon Lightfoot concert Sept. 19 in the Murat Theater. Like the first, it was a religious experience for me. The crowd this time was a bit rowdier. Scattered through the audience were a few cretins who couldn't resist shouting during the performance. It worsened after intermission. One could only conclude it was fueled by halftime liquor hawked in the lobby, or by drugs, stupidity, or rudeness, or all four. The Murat's ushers and management chose to do nothing about it and I wouldn't have expected them to. After all, we're talking paying customers here, and this behavior was no doubt mild measured by the Murat's crowd over a year's time. It was my uncanny good fortune to hear some of my more obscure Lightfoot favorites such as Triangle, Christian Island, and Cold on My Shoulder. Few experiences in my life can top hearing this man's music, and in the 48 hours following the concert I believe I've figured out why. Many of his songs create the same images in my mind--they remind me of a time in my life I recall with great longing and regret, approximately between the ages of 18 and 23, a period when I spent a great deal of time with close male friends drinking beer and talking about our lives and the problems of the world. Those were incredibly good times. From a distance of 30 years they seem to have been carefree times, but of course they were not. But they were rich and meaningful times for me, spent in the company of friends who were bright, intelligent, outrageous, funny, curious, ridiculous, pathetic, and silly, full of stimulating conversations and shared longings, pain, joy, and absurdities. I cared about those friends much, much more than I realized. Those times and those friends have largely disappeared from my life. One is even dead. And now the realization that those times are largely gone forever hits particularly hard. In the 1960s Bob Dylan recorded a song--"Bob Dylan's Dream" that said then what I feel now. It was a narrative about a young man taking a train trip west, falling asleep, dreaming about "the first few friends I had." Dylan confessed that he wished and wished in vain that he could be together again with those wonderful friends, and he'd give all he owned gladly "if our lives could be that." (September 21, 1997)

• There is at least one good thing about being dead: you won't be around to see the even viler world your children will get to live out their lives in.

• Simon DeBartolo Group has completed the purchase (for $1.1 billion) of Retail Property Trust, owner of a dozen shopping malls on the East Coast and around Chicago. Simon finessed two other suitors, The Jacobs Group of Cleveland and New England Development Co., in this deal by entering the bidding late, then raising its offer until the others folded. Tucked away in the Indianapolis Star account, though, was a one-sentence snapshot of American society. It was this: "Retail Property, however, will owe the pair (of losing bidders) a $39 million break-up penalty for not going through with the proposed merger." So, for botching their attempted purchase--for doing nothing, actually--Jacobs and New England Group will split $39 million dollars in reward. This, friends, is how the big boys play the game while the rest of us slog back and forth to our miserable, crappy jobs every miserable day of our lives, over and over and over again until we are dead. Then our heirs get to inherit the piddly nickels and dimes we managed to save, and our pale green naugahyde furniture, too. (September 28, 1997)

Only The Select Few Hundred Million Need Buy

• Today's Chicago Tribune carried a full-page ad for the Princess Diana "Queen of Hearts" doll. Offered by the Society for the Preservation of History (code for: maker and seller of junk bric-a-brac to fools who'll discover there is no aftermarket except garage sales for any of it ever again, so long as there is a human being alive on the face of this earth, and after that, too), these treasures are "hand-crafted of the finest porcelain" and bear an engraved and numbered "solid brass plate" and a "stunning certificate of authenticity." Advance orders ($198.95, shipping included) are being taken in limited numbers (code for: limited only to as many billions of you select, discriminating dopes as can be flimflammed into ordering). But because of "overwhelming demand" (code for: the boss is demanding we sell this hideous trash) there has been imposed a limit of two per household (code for: each microbe and bacterium on your owned or rented property--whether in the soil, the air, or upon your own body--constitutes one "household"). Trailing not far behind at a discreet and somberly respectful distance was our old friend, The Franklin Mint, which by mid-October was announcing with full-page ads its Diana "porcelain portrait doll," a 16-inch high figurine ( $195) dressed in what Franklin bills as "the only authentic replica of the stunning designer gown with bolero jacket" which Franklin bought months ago at an auction of some of the Princess's used clothing. Franklin trotted out spokeswoman Mona Astra Liss to tell breathless reporters that Franklin waited until six weeks after Diana's death to roll out its doll. USA Today quoted Liss saying at a press conference announcing its commercialization of the late Princess, that the Franklin Mint was "very concerned about not commercializing her" until the time was "appropriate." Franklin also revealed its plans to sell a Princess Diana plate and a tiara ring, and that it would donate $1.5 million from product sales to Diana's charities. Meanwhile, the big plate company, The Bradford Exchange, rushed into print with full-page ads extolling its beautiful machine-painted oval plate--"A Tribute to the People's Princess--Help Keep Diana's Light Alive"--bordered and trimmed in platinum for only $29.95 plus $3.69 postage and handling. Bradford, too, promises to make a "personalized donation" in my name to the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund if I order now. (October 8, 1997)

Shakespeare Was Correct, Too

• S.A. Shapiro, a Milwaukee attorney, has sued a suntan lotion company because he got a sunburn on vacation. Shapiro is demanding $5,000 (why so little?) for breach-of-warranty. He claims the product, identified as Nivea Sun, which advertises a sun protection factor of 2 (and explains on its label that it's only for people who rarely burn or have a deep-based tan--though Shapiro's suit doesn't mention that part) "provided no prevention of sun-burning." He's mad, by God, and he wants to be paid for it. Shapiro--dare we say it?--appears to be just another Snopesian grifter looking for a free vacation or a lottery victory. He's a fine example of why one of the planks in The Kratchlow Plan for Shaping Up The World ought to be passed immediately: a provision for "counter-suers" who ceaselessly roam the United States filing counter-lawsuits against the motley assemblage of con-artists, flim-flammers, sensitivity freaks, foot-stamping activists, aggrieved victim cultists and just plain assholes who clog up the court system with their own baseless and insipid legal actions. My guy--sort of a Guy Grand with a flaming case of the ass and limitless billions of dollars with which to pursue justice for the rest of us--would immediately file countersuits for a minimum of $100 million in damages, and would mercilessly hound each defendant so long as that defendant lived, and then hound his or her descendants, spawn, relatives, goldfish, pets, estate, friends, co-workers, neighbors--whatever's necessary to drive all trace of them permanently to earth. What say? Care to play along?

• The world's confessional binge continues with an October admission by the International Red Cross that it now acknowledges its "moral failure" for keeping silent while the Nazis murdered millions of Jews in the 1940s during World War II. In the over 60,000 pages of documents the IRC just released to Israel is ample evidence the Red Cross was aware of the Holocaust but ignored or discounted the reports and evidence it was receiving. The IRC admitted in August that following a 'thorough investigation' by the German Red Cross, the international organization "concluded the reports were unfounded." My instinct tells me that the Red Cross was far from the only group which was peculiarly disinterested in what the Nazis were doing. I'll bet that if the truth is ever known it will be clear that nobody on either side of the war, including the United States, Great Britain, France and the rest of the Allies, cared about the atrocities. And why? I suspect it was a combination of moral cowardice, normal human indifference to anything not affecting us personally, and because the Nazis were doing a discretely approved erradication of victims who were generally disapproved of, anyway: Jews, homosexuals, radicals, intellectuals, journalists, the mentally and physically handicapped, Catholics, social and political undesirables, and troublemakers and inferiors in general. No doubt there was big money at stake, too, as witness--to pick just one business example--the Swiss banks' willingness to go along with the looting and plundering. All to humanity's everlasting shame.

• Attended my first IU football game of the current sorry season October 11. Bought seats from a scalper at half price and joined a crowd of about 35,000 to see a 31-6 loss to Michigan State. Before the opening kickoff, the public address system began reminding us of all the opportunities to shop both at the stadium and at the nearby IU Athletic Outfitters (formerly our beloved Big Red Gift Center). The booming voice kept it up all afternoon--shop, shop, shop, shop--just in case we fans had forgotten what our national religion is. There are few places on earth you can go and not have somebody jump out from behind a bush and try to sell you something. We're far from finished with it, too. The day will come when they'll come to your house with guns, break in, kidnap you and take you to a mall where you'll be forced to shop (while surrounded by heavily armed mall and local government troops, of course).

• Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene makes his living commenting on social trends and human interest items and today he talked about advertising and the stunning proliferation of brand names on clothing and other products. At the end of his column he noted what may be a breakthrough for the hucksters. . .a Colorado school district has signed a $7.3 million deal with Pepsi which gives the soft drink company "exclusive marketing and advertising rights" for its products in 140 schools. The same district--Jefferson County, with its captive audience of 88,000 students--is negotiating a $2 million deal with US West, a telephone company which will put its name on the high school football stadium. Betcha we're light years from finished with this concept, too. The rule in today's society seems to be no matter how insane a script you write, real life will top it. (October 20, 1997)

Shhhhhh, Maybe It'll Go Away

• The Indianapolis Public Schools system has been in massive turmoil for years. Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, in another peace-making effort, called for public forums to discuss the problems. Over 300 people attended such a forum October 27. The Indianapolis Star's account said that parent after parent trooped to the microphone with one mandate: "The negative talk about IPS needs to stop."

• Prince Charles and 13-year-old Prince Harry of Great Britain joined a crowd of 27,000 screaming teen-agers November 1 at a Johannesburg rock concert in their honor. A huge coterie of press people drooled all over themselves covering the gala. The British rock group Spice Girls met backstage with Charles and Harry and there was smooching, wiggling, foot-shuffling, goosing and giggling all around. Spice Girl Melanie Brown, who in May playfully pinched Prince Charles's buttocks, joshed with the prancing young prince. Her equally provocatively-dressed teammates, Posh and Baby and two others, joined in the playful frolicking. USA Today reporter Luke Baker noted that Prince Harry was "blushing deeply and beaming from ear to ear" at all the attention. And who could blame the lad--a teenage boy surrounded by all that fine young writhing poon. South African President Nelson Mandela met the Spice Girls earlier that day and told reporters, "These are my heroes. This is one of the greatest moments of my life." Indeed. (November 3, 1997)

At Last, A Nation That Stands For Something!

• The Wall Street Journal reports that a crowd of at least 10,000 people showed up in downtown Tehran for the public hanging of a convicted serial killer, a taxi driver dubbed "the vampire." Victims' relatives whipped the condemned man before he was strung up on a construction crane.

• A new Louisiana law allows a motorist who believes someone is forcibly trying to steal his car while they are are inside to shoot the suspect. The law makes such killings justifiable. Good!

Proving Her Metal As A Journalist Department (or: Putting The Peddle to The Meddle)

• Melissa Anelli, a reviewer for the Georgetown University student newspaper, the Hoya, gushed with praise in the October 31 edition for the actors in a presentation of a stage play version of Oliver Stone's cult film classic, "Talk Radio." She was particularly dazzled by the performance of Georgetown student Mark Shalhoub in the lead role of radio talk show host Barry Champlain, at one point noting that the difficult role forced Shalhoub to "prove his meddle onstage."

Of Course, Nobody Had The Slightest Idea

• Stories about World War II complicity in the strangest places with the Nazis continue to bubble to the surface like mushrooms. The New York Times reported at the end of October that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York melted down $23 million worth of Nazi gold bars it bought on the world market and re-cast them in the 1950s, replacing the swastika with the seal of the United States. The Times said the U.S. Treasury knew the bars had been looted from Belgium and the Netherlands by the Nazis but there was no evidence it knew the gold had come from Holocaust victims. (USA TODAY, November 1-2, 1997 edition.)

Yeah, But They're Our Racial Preferences

• Although the Supreme Court on November 3 upheld California's Proposition 209 by refusing to hear a suit claiming it was unconstitutional for the state to forbid racial preferences, opponents of the new law angrily denounced the decision and vowed to fight on with more lawsuits, foot-dragging, resistance on all fronts, and even refusal to comply with the now required dismantling of what are euphemistically called affirmative action programs. The American Civil Liberties Union hissed and stamped its feet and promised more court action. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and the Berkeley City Council renewed their pledges to ignore the now-validated law and continue to resist. Wacko Religious Left activists, kooks, and victim groups began organizing protest marches. Howls of outrage, anguish, and angst blanketed the nation. This is odd, indeed. When conservatives do this sort of thing, it's meanspiritedness. When bleeders do, it's moral courage. Sorry for peeking.

• Sleepers, a film starring Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, and Kevin Bacon, raises troubling moral issues in a way I haven't seen since Paul Newman left us dangling at the end of Harper a decade or two ago. Sleepers is set in the Hell's Kitchen slum in New York and is the story of four or five young people growing up there. It's filmed in that golden haze so popular in period pieces. A prank turned disaster sets the stage: three of the lads, then about 14 years old, steal a hot dog vendor's cart, which, as the boys flee, careens down a subway stairs and crushes an innocent commuter. The lads are sent to an upstate New York reformatory. There they are brutally sodomized, tortured and abused by their guards. One young inmate dies from a beating by the guards. The young men serve their sentences, and return to Hell's Kitchen to resume their now traumatized and forever changed lives. One joins the mob and later dies in a classic Mafia hit. One becomes a lawyer. DeNiro plays the role of a neighborhood priest who has known the boys and their families since they were born. Hoffman doesn't appear till the second half of the film but is excellent as an attorney trying to resurrect his drug-stained career. A neighborhood Godfather figure plays a secondary but important role. A delicious plot for revenge is hatched with the villainous guards as its target. Issues of vengeance, revenge, justice, family--familiar Mafia movie staples--are explored and DeNiro is placed in a position near the film's end which challenges his faith and conscience. The film is a rollercoaster of emotions for the audience: the prison scenes of the guards abusing the boys are harrowing, yet there are moments of great humor and joy, and the film's ending is deeply poignant. This is a "Does the end justify the means?" film. My answer was yes. (November 14, 1997)

• A clue to the personal progress I've made lies in the fact that for the first time in countless years, I do not have a copy of the upcoming season's IU basketball schedule. And some months ago I let my charter subscription to Inside Indiana, a publication devoted entirely to IU sports and one I would have killed for in an earlier life, expire without renewal. (November 15, 1997)

• Clues About America Department: Over Thanksgiving Weekend, these newspaper headlines were seen: "Stampede to Shop!" (in a Tennessee newspaper). . ."Let The Shopping Begin!" in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. . .and the lead story on the a.m. news Sunday Nov. 30, on Channel 5 in Nashville, was about mobs of local shoppers blitzing Nashville area stores over the weekend. USA Today headlined the frenzy. Shopping is America's national religion.

No, It's Professorism

• "It's lookism." --Ekua Omosupe, a Cabrillo, California, Junior College professor who teaches, of all things, "criticial thinking" and African-American studies, and who wears a nose ring, quoted in USA Today Dec. 9 in an article about how nose rings, tattoos, shaved heads and assorted other bodily mutilations and adornments still haven't become acceptable for employees in American corporate boardrooms and offices, or even your local Burger King. Omosupe decried this, and claimed the "dominant culture" has a "prejudice about how people should really look" and that "we live in a culture that really pushes us to be the same.

• Bon Appetit magazine has surveyed 5,600 readers about "How America Eats," and included a category of "Your favorite thing to eat while standing in the kitchen." The answer, for a society crying out to know: cookies, by a tiny margin over leftover pizza. Thank God there are publications out there that courageously face the issues torturing Americans. (December 17, 1997)

• Associated Press reports from Dederick, Missouri, that America's last workable Minuteman II missile silo was demolished Dec. 15 as part of a 1995 arms reduction treaty agreement. There were 150 such silos in Missouri and over 1,000 around the Midwest and northern U.S. What they don't know about is the one I have in my back yard, carefully camouflaged but in bristling working order. There's no sight quite so compellingly beautiful as those super-hardened steel doors folding back and that sleek midnight black brushed titanium nose cone rising slowly out of the pit amid fluttering eddies of fuel vapor. We remain coiled, ready, here on Doglog Drive.

• Burrowing through paper piled on my desk, I uncovered these notes about the March 17, 1986, funeral of Margaret Brown, mother of a friend of mine, and of my own mother: Back at the Maverly Brothers Funeral Home again. So soon, it seems. It was April, 1983, less than three years ago, that I was here for my own mother's funeral. Margaret was Mom's pal from years back. I enter the casket room. For an instant there was a strong resemblance to those terrible days in 1983. The same color of casket, Margaret also in a sweater with a gold chain necklace, large eyeglasses, the same "suntan" makeup on her face. She lies there, saying nothing. I thought I saw her chest rise, as if breathing. Only my imagination. Such an empty feeling. The Reverend Drewpup bashes his Bible for 15 minutes. Then Reverend Wiley Spradlin steps up. He is tall, fair-skinned, with white hair and a booming voice. He gives the appearance of tilting backward. He "personalized" the moment by talking haphazardly about Margaret, about her being an organist at the Presbyterian Church, a dedicated organist, a wonderful organist. He uttered not a word about the Margaret Brown practically everyone in the room knew, a warm, cheerful friend and neighbor, whose wry sense of humor was such a delight. I mutter beneath my breath as they drone on. What crap! Why isn't the funeral oration business competitive? Surely we can do better than this. Torrents of Scripture and pap follow: we all know where Margaret Brown is now. . .we troop by the casket. I hug her son, Joe, and hold on, trying to tell him that I know what he's feeling. Are we ever so miserably alone as at times like these? Beside Joe are three little kids who've lost their grandma. I shudder and choke. The pain is awful. Later, we load up Margaret and ride to the cemetery overlooking the river and our home town of Scorched Corners. Likely I'll be planted here some day. Recitations. We're all numb on a raw spring day. The grave yawns. People drift away. Adios, Margaret. You lit up a room with your laughter.

The Utter Magic of Motley Crue

• The heavy metal rock group Motley Crue blew the doors off Indianapolis's Market Square Arena last fall in a two-hour concert that drew 6,000 roaring devotees and earned nearly a perfect rating from the Indianapolis Star's reviewer, Marc Allen. I missed the show, but Allen's review makes it plain the Crue didn't disappoint. Allen gushed about the screaming, fist-pumping crowd and declared the group certainly proved it's not washed up, even though the Arena was only one-third full. The obvious high point for Crue afficionados--and, indeed, any of us aspiring to higher callings-- came when drummer Tommie Lee, once and maybe still married to the spectacularly pneumatic Pamela Anderson, hauled a video camera into the crowd and sweet-talked several women into exposing their honkers for display on MSA's giant overhead screens. Then, "just to be fair," the Star said, Lee exposed his own testicles. A magic moment, truly. (December 31, 1997)
  

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