So we all have our guilty pleasures in life right? Tammy likes to buy clothes, get manicures/pedicures and go to her holistic doctor, her chiropractor and her acupuncturist. I’m much more simple- I enjoy an hour once a week at the comic book store comparing the Ultimate Marvel Universe to the new reboot of the DC Comic line. But it seems I now have a new guilty pleasure- watching the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls.

The premise of the show is quite simple- blonde Paris Hilton wanna-be ends up broke because of her Bernie Madoff wanna-be father has lost all their fortune… Paris Hilton meets sassy, busty waitress, friendship is born of said meeting. Add stereotypical Asian guy, stereotypical Eastern European guy AND Garrett Morris for good measure. Put this mix in a hipster section of Brooklyn and you have the show 2 Broke Girls.

Oh- did I leave out the fact that they also have a horse living in their apartment? Silly me.

So from this description one would think this show is stupid and not funny. And to several people this is true. Tammy and I watched the episode of the “hipster 90s horse party”… while I thought it was quite humorous, Tammy was rolling her eyes the whole time and saying “not funny” to every line I thought was funny. This got me to thinking if I like the show for all the wrong reasons. For example, Kat Dennings as Max is the stereotypical sassy busty waitress. Back in the 70s, I guess you could liken this show to the sitcom Alice and Max is the Flo “KISS MAH GRITS” character. In fact, the more I think of this, the more I see that this show is not Laverne and Shirley, but a combination of that show and Alice. Max gets all the good lines, the funny lines and Caroline (Beth Behrs) has to play the Paris Hilton straight girl (oxymoronic without doubt).

Whitney Cummings is the producer of the show. I dig her even if she is a Howard Stern disciple. But of course with Howard Stern comes the stereotypical racism, and in this show we see the stereotype manifest in “Han the Asian guy”. It’s obvious a caricature and a bad one at that… but for some reason I love this character. Whether it’s the fact that he thinks flash mobs are still cool or that hipsters are still hip, he is a very likable person on the show. If only he was not such a stereotype. But does good comedy demand that? My favorite comedy of the 70s was Sanford and Son and the stereotypes were what made the show so hilarious. So perhaps I’m just a bit uptight when I shouldn’t be!

I will admit I love the show for the way it skewers hipsters. Again a very easy target… and again I fall victim to the humor in it. And while I am certain there are all sorts of hipsters (who can forget the lovable Afro-centric hipster of the Arrested Development era who was a brother in arms with the jazz-oriented Afro-centric hipster of Digable Planets fame?). Or the groups of faux-bisexual/lesbian hipsters who worshipped Ani DiFranco until Ani DiFranco went back to being just a little folk singer with a rabid bisexual/lesbian base? In 2 Broke Girls, we see the modern hipster being skewered. And I suppose the 2 subsets of hipsters I see in the show are the “arty hipster” and the “frat boy hipster” (with their female counterparts). Since there really are no high end universities in the Canton area, I don’t really see a big frat boy contingent, but of course with our “Arts District” we see the arty hipster getting his drink on around town. I cannot really say much about them since I have become more of a homebody as of late but the clash of cultures isn’t as evident here as in New York City. Obviously, the boroughs have seen themselves become gentrified whereas Canton is still struggling to keep a few restaurants open. The interaction between hipsters and the common folk isn’t that noticeable here… the hipsters tend to keep to themselves in the downtown while the other folk eat at the chain restaurants of Belden Village. But it gives me great pleasure to see Max give the hipsters the business in the show.

I wonder if I like the show because Kat Dennings is so very snarky. Yes, only 40-50% of her jokes hit the mark, but I don’t know… I have always adored snarky girls. I think their snark (if you are involved with them) is just a cover for them being intrigued by you. They want to get to know you better so they use their snark to hide that feeling because they don’t want to seem vulnerable. Obviously a waitress is using the snark to either get a better tip or get the hell away from annoying customers. Say what you may, I think Kat Dennings does an excellent job on this show. And yes, she has a nice chest… and she knows it.

Much like I do not like shows like Paranormal Whatever and House that Tammy loves, I won’t expect her to like 2 Broke Girls. She doesn’t even like The Walking Dead for god’s sake (but I am waning on that too, but that is fodder for another entry)! I hope that shows like 2 Broke Girls can survive in a time when reality TV has taken over the minds of the mindless masses. I was fortunate to grow up in the golden age of the sitcom… the Norman Lear 70s. And while I’m sure 2 Broke Girls might have been an afterthought then, in 2011 it seems like a breath of fresh air to me. As long as I don’t stand behind the horse when it’s doing its business.

Ya know, I am reveling in the sense that I am a homebody over the last year or so. It used to be that I had to go somewhere, do something to get away from the here and now. And while I still want to go to Paris and hang out in Europe, I’m finding that I like my home a lot. Since we bought this house in Jackson Township 3 years ago, I feel like I finally have a sense of being rooted to a place that I call my own. And I really have not had that since I was a kid growing up in Bloomingdale Ohio. And we are doing house related things like getting a new colored and stamped decorative patio put in and having the old standard grey concrete one removed… we are getting our lawn resodded and I’m even thinking of having a “music room” built in the basement. It’s funny how you begin to think differently as you get older.

My hip is better, but it’s still not great. I only go to the gym once or twice a week, but I’m really revamping my diet and I’ve been losing weight which puts less stress on my hip. And of course, the slimmer I am, the more energy I have to do things like yard work and other sundry household chores.

I’ve also been doing a lot of reading as of late. A couple of my friends from the gym have started a book club with me, and we are going to read Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho as our next project. I just finished up his Imperial Bedrooms yesterday and I guess I had forgotten what a sexual sensual writing style Ellis employs. And of course it’s mostly conversational writing, noting that requires a lot of thought… but I am really digging reading a lot more. I’ve also ben having the owner of my local comic book hangout get me the hardback editions of the graphic novel series Y: The Last Man. I read the first volume (Issues 1-10) and it seemed very sexist to me… in the books, for some strange reason not yet revealed, all the men in the world have died save for one guy and his pet male monkey. In this new world, women are running things and some are Amazon freaks who cut off one of their breasts to better use rifles and such… and any man must be eliminated because, well men are the root of all evil. It’s intriguing me so far, the artwork is very impressive but I don’t know… the whole notion that women would be aggressive and almost “man-like” in the way they deal with things is just another example to me of how twisted and evil human nature is. I know people who always look for people to be kind and helpful like a baby kitten’s purr, but that is such an illusion. I guess one if fortunate if one can live in that imaginary fog, but that’s not me.

Tammy has jumped jobs once again… she was leading the audit department at the Westfield Insurance Group and doing a lot of work with auditing the banking side of the business. Apparently, she was so good at finding flaws in the bank’s procedures that they made her head of the banking side’s fraud and compliance department. And I think she’s finally happy with what she is doing and how her life is going. It always amazes me at how when I first met her at the gym she was “just a secretary for the mall” (her words) and now she’s got this high end job for a major corporation. I just say behind every powerful woman there is a good man hehehe…

Even though I don’t comment on a lot of your LJs, I do read them. And since most of you who are on my f-list are on my Facebook, I guess it’s OK to neglect the LJ since we are more real time interactive on FB, no? Perhaps this is another way in which I am different... I don't really consider myself writing for anyone but myself. It's not so much a journal as a record of the time and place I am at that time.

I’m starting my Sunday morning off listening to Brahms Symphony #4, which is so amazingly light and dreamy. I’m not a big fan of symphonic music (must be the Chopin in me) but this is really great stuff.

http://youtu.be/yCaaPaQx5zg

I suppose it’s impossible for me to read a book without knowing something about the writer… so in reading On The Road, Scroll Version I think I got past a lot of the “which character is this” business that is part of reading the published edition. But with that being said, the “autobiographical nature” of the book is somewhat tainted to me. Tainted in the sense that I believe it to be based on fact, but it’s been embellished and sanitized even in the Scroll Version (in my opinion).

I can’t help reading this book and not thinking it is a love letter to Neal Cassady from Kerouac. No matter what Cassady does, and he does a lot of stupid stuff, Kerouac still sees him through eyes that know no hint of disapproval. The guy even leaves Kerouac in the throes of dysentery in Mexico City, this wonderful buddy… and yet at the end all Kerouac is thinking of is Neal. While on a personal level it really makes no difference to me if Kerouac was bisexual, it is something I have to think about in my reading of the book because I see it as a long love letter. And perhaps this sense of closeted bisexuality combined with a need to be true to his Catholic faith was why Kerouac ended up a reclusive alcoholic who could never have a lasting relationship with anyone, even his God. It’s just seems to me that throughout the book (especially after the first cross country trip, where Kerouac doesn’t go with Cassady) the theme is a longing to be somewhere with Cassady… whether in Denver, New York or San Francisco. And I’m of the opinion that if this need to be with each other was based on love, then On The Road takes on a whole new meaning… the reason to be on the road is not to find “IT”, but to be with each other… if Kerouac was never going to settle down in a truly gay lifestyle with someone (like Allen Ginsberg was comfortable in doing) then this time to be with Cassady was truly “IT” for them.

I will freely admit that I find authors who can be stylish with their work to be authors I want to read. I’m probably going to revisit one of my fave books of all time, Cane< in the next couple of weeks. But as with Cane or The Waste Land or Ulysses, not only do the words and story matter, but the way in which it is presented matters as well. Although I suppose you could call the Kerouac stream of consciousness experimental in a sense, it really started to wear on me after a while. His descriptive technique on the first journey cross country was magical… not as magical as say, reading Garcia-Marquez, but I could really see the vast plains of the middle of the country, I felt a connection to the hitchers he rode around with… but all that wonderful description goes by the wayside when Neal/Dean enters the story. To me, the book revolves around Dean at that point and Jack/Sal becomes a mere chronicler of what is occurring. Combine that with the stream of consciousness that now becomes just a “we did this we did that” instead of conveying the feelings of Kerouac like the first section did… and you turn what could have been a great book into a good book.

All in all, I have to look at Kerouac and see a person who cranked out a book that captured the sense of Americana that post-World War II men may have enjoyed. The need to be free to travel away from the perception of the America Dream… that notion that to raise a family, buy a house and retire in that house didn’t appeal to a segment of America, and that segment gave the book its ability to be seen as one of the cornerstones of post-war American Lit. I enjoyed reading it- it held my attention… and I have to thank my friend Kim From The Gym for reading along with me. It was great to get her perspective because she read the published version of the book and her questions about connections between the real characters and the aliases made me dig deeper into the background of the characters that I would have just reading by myself.

I still don’t consider myself a fan of The Beats. Even though Kerouac didn’t come from money he managed to hook up with a bunch of guys who did have money, who travelled the world, not just America looking for kicks and trying to downplay traditional American life. It seems that Kerouac would have enjoyed a “traditional American life” but he was tortured by too many demons to be able to embrace that. And I don’t really know if he lived a comfortable life… did he make tons of money off On The Road and therefore never had to worry about working? I saw his panel discussion on Buckley’s TV show and a year before he died he was a broken down drunk, still seemingly belligerent and uncaring not only about himself but life in general. I find it hard to see him as a likable person and I certainly didn’t see anything likable about him translate onto the pages of On The Road. I see a guy who worshiped Neal Cassady and I guess I don’t think Neal Cassady was worth the hero worship. But the beauty of the novel is that (to me) this relationship comes through and never wavers, no matter what happens in the process of trying to find IT.

So those of you who are on my F-List, being the very cool and unique people that you are, have probably seen Darren Aronofsky's amazing film Pi at one time or another. And even though he has made it big(ger) with films such as The Wrestler, Black Swan and Requiem For A Dream, I always come back to Pi as being my favorite of his films. Because...

(a) It's Black and White! I just have a thing for B&W... films like The Seventh Seal, Through A Glass Darkly, Eraserhead... can you imagine them in color and how it would take away from the beauty of the films? I think the notion of math being the driving force behind the film, and the equations and solutions in math are generally tied to finite "black and white" scenarios make sense for this film.

(b) Obsession=Pain As I was watching the film last night, I was thinking about how we all search for something, try to become better at something... and in the process of getting to "it" there is always pain involved. Max Cohen's search for the magic code of numbers to crack the mystery of the numerics of the Stock Market have him taking drugs, having massive headaches, becoming delusional and seemingly always being in pain. But isn't that the universal notion- no pain, no gain? As I limp around with my damaged hip, I think about what Tammy said to me yesterday. She saw one of our friends who used to work out at Bally's who now works out at Powerhouse... and our friend was talking about "the good old days" when we all hit the aerobic floor like maniacs. The friend said she couldn't do it anymore because her hip and knee are damaged. So Tammy told her I was basically the same way... and that I was that way because I tried to go too hard. Tammy just did it nice and steady, didn't try to be Icarus and reach the sun... so she still is going at it in aerobics class. But it was wonderful to bask in that zone when I was really hitting it hard on an aerobic step when I was king of the floor. And I don't sit here with my hip pain wondering if it was worth it- IT WAS WORTH IT. I guess I didn't get as close as Icarus because I am still living to tell the tale.

(c) The Magic Method To Cracking The Stock Market This film resonates in so many things I do. One of the chapters of More Money Than God talked about using supercomputers to "crack the code" of the swings in the stock market. A guy named James Simons used a network of supercomputers and never hired economists to figure out where the market was going... he only wanted mathematicians, computer engineers and physicists on his team. To Simons, the stock market (as looked at from a general sense) had too much human interaction. The emotions of the people who played the market did not have to be factored out... but factored in as a part of the mathematical equation. By reducing human reactions to "signals" that could be defined by an algorithm and seen as just another piece of data in the grand equation, Simon's Medallion Fund returned an average of 39% from 1989 to 2006 and Simon's became a multi-billionaire. That sense of finding the code... when Max Cohen is sitting in his tiny apartment surrounded by computers... I think of that sense of math leading to money. Although in Pi, Max was looking for the code for personal satisfaction, not money. And of course, this is why Pi is a fictional film and Simons is a billionaire.

(d) And I thought Kabbalah was all about wearing a string and channeling Madonna Of course I'm not the world most religious person and I really didn't think of Kabbalah as anything more than a wacky cousin to Scientology. But the notion that the Torah is in essence a numbers system is intriguing. I know that I've seen some wacky shows on TV where televangelists are trying to say that there is a "Bible Code" that explains everything from Hitler to the Second Coming, but to me that's all BS. And while I think this Kabbalah stuff is pretty much goofy as well, I liked the way the film presented it as an alternative to calculating stock market trends and how the Hasidic Jews tried to play upon Max's being a Jew in order to get him to work with them. That whole notion of "you are one of us, so you have to be first and foremost loyal to us" is something I've felt in my life so many times and rejected just as many times...

If you haven't seen Pi in awhile or heaven forbid you've never seen it- you should check it out. I don't think Darren Aronofsky gets his props for being an amazing writer/director... I think in the grand scheme of things, he's better than David Lynch at this time in his career. Where Lynch relies on the obscure and losing the viewer in intricate mazes (except of course for The Elephant Man, which to me is Lynch at his best), Aronofsky presents characters that are flawed (usually by obsession and madness) and allows us to look inside of them. Lynch in my opinion always wants to keep the viewer on the outside and not really be privy to what is going on inside the person... or at least he presents the insides as something "too complex for the average viewer". Which is fine and good I suppose, but it's just another reason why a film maker like Ingmar Bergman is seen as a universal genius and Lynch is that "odd quirky guy who makes strange movies."

If I am up at 3:20 AM to write a post, then you know it's been in my head all night... after I blew through the San Francisco section of On The Road, I read the amazingly good section of Jack's time with Bea Franco (Terry) among the Latino folks in California. It resonated for me on so many levels, most notably being that the white privilege that I saw in the earlier section is now gone and he becomes "the other". And this is where I begin to really respect him, not so much his writing (again, the Capote "this is typing not writing" is evident), but for his honesty in documenting what is happening. He is in a world that is not his own, none of his friends are around... and he makes his decision to stay based not on getting drunk or hanging with his Columbia buddies, but rather because he's met someone who he cares for. He's content to live in a tent or sleep out in the cold as long as he is with Bea/Terry. And in a sense, being not part of that community and culture gets washed away from him... he's just a guy who has found someone to love. But you know the love is not going to work- whether it's because Jack has to keep moving or this is a woman who already has a kid and she isn't going to fit into his world... you just get a feeling that no matter how much he tries to enjoy the experience of picking cotton or hanging around with one of her brother's friends who smells like manure, it still isn't going to be enough to keep him in this place.

Fast forward to the here and now... I was recently talking to a guy who lives here in Jackson... he has a son who is playing summer basketball where his son is one of only two white kids on the team... they play their games in the inner city. This guy tells me how uncomfortable he and his wife feel going there to play, while the son enjoys it. "I guess I feel the way that one of those black families feels if they had to live in Jackson," he tells me as I sit there trying not to say, "dude- I am the fucking other each and every day and you're trying to tell me your fears of it?" Perhaps I have become that sort of quasi-Invisible Man that Ralph Ellison wrote of... but again, maybe I am reverting back to my feelings while reading the Malcolm X book... am I that invisible to people that they no longer see me as the black person in a white world? I certainly don't want to be that... I want people to know that this is not a rosy picture and that every day there is some form of subtle racism I have to endure. These moments when I can see someone reacting as the other amuse and sadden me because these people are so used to NOT being in that situation that when they are thrown there (usually of their own doing, so again, they still have the power of choice)they act as if they are living in some sort of Nirvana where it's all about love and happiness. Part of this naive nature comes through in Jack's relationship with Bea... he comments that he is happy to pick cotton as long as he can come back to his little tent with his meager money to be with his woman... he learns to love the word manana because there's always hope for a better tomorrow so we might as well get drunk today. I think that his feelings for Bea/Terry are genuine- but if the love is true (which of course it really isn't) then why isn't he trying to find a way to make a better life for them? Nope, it's just another example of adventure on the road.

As much as I love this section, that sense of privilege, even when he has to hide in a barn or in a back alley so Bea's family doesn't see him, still shines through. She cannot escape her place in life... but all he has to do is hit the road again to continue his adventures. And then somewhere down the road, he writes about this little Mexican who loved to screw him and cook him meals and asked for little in return. It's romantic in a backhanded sort of way. WHere Bea/Terry has no safety net, all Jack has to do is wire mama and tell her he needs some money and he's good to go.

I'm enjoying the way that I am viewing this book because I don't think it's the typical take on it. While I enjoy his descriptive passages and how the open road allows him to drink these beautiful sights in, I still see him as an interloper in a world he can experience and then jump out of whenever he's bored with it. He can tell the story as someone who has been through the experience, but I'm not getting the sense that it is changing him. And when you look at his real life, the way alcohol took over and destroyed him... one can say, well he couldn't help it, it's a disease and he fell victim to it... but he seemed to revel in getting drunk on the road, it's all part of the adventure... so maybe he found himself on the road, and that self with a rich relationship not with the unique characters, but with his best friend The Bottle.

Truman Capote said of On The Road, "that's not writing- that's typing". I could say he was wrong in the first section I read, the part where he is on the road and meeting all these wildly unique characters... the description of how the landscape is vast and seemingly endless. But as I read the San Francisco section, I can see where Capote may have been coming from. There is very little of the beauty of the travels to Denver because Kerouac is for lack of a better word, stuck with Henri Cru and his caustic girlfriend in a little shack on the outskirts of San Francisco. He has to work at a job he doesn't like with people he doesn't really like. It seems that his only joy was washing clothes in the Bendix machine out back of their shack. There's nothing lush about the writing here, and perhaps that is because there was nothing really lush about the experience. I know when I was in San Francisco, I was right on Fisherman's Wharf and there was always some action going on... on of my fondest memories was going into this little bar right on the wharf and all they played all night was reggae dub music. Tammy hated it of course, but I just wanted to talk to the people and let the music flow over me. But I was not on my own in a strange place- I was on vacation in a place where I had plenty of money and eyes wide open. And I suppose that is the thing about traveling for the sake of travel... one can lose themselves in the experience because in a sense it isn't "real". When Kerouac has to work his job as the faux policeman, the wanderlust is gone, he is reduced to basically the same person he was back in New York. I wonder what kept him in San Francisco as long as he was there...

One other thing I can say about how I travel... I have never been on a vacation where I simply "rested". I know people who go to the same place every year because it's comfortable they know the place... it's basically like being home, but not home. So how is that a vacation? I thought vacation was a way to escape from home. Hell, I can sit on my back porch with a tall glass of something good and read a book and save the money associated with going "away"...

ANother thing about the San Francisco section... the notion of staying with someone and being "the third wheel" seems very awkward to me. In Denver, Kerouac had several of his Columbia friends around and about.. in San Francisco he had to depend on the hospitality of Henri, and I think that is just a recipe for disaster... at one point Henri puts the grocery list up on a wall to imply that he is paying for a lot of food... I mean, I'd never want to be in that situation. And when you stay with someone, if you are a decent guest, you usually have to adhere to their schedule, their lifestyle... and after the wonder of being on the road, of being in Denver with a whole bunch of friends, to be tied down to a bad job in a bad situation in San Francisco would not be something I'd want to do.

Again, the descriptions of this time didn't take me away- they made me feel bored and eager for this section to be done. But of course, people who love the book will say that's exactly what Kerouac wanted to convey- that if I could sense this time of being stagnant was pressing on Jack via the way he wrote the text, then he accomplished what he was trying to accomplish, right?

I came into the reading of On The Road thinking it was going to be one of those books by a drunken spoiled rich kid from the East Coast who wanted to “experience life on paper” by writing about his “adventures”. The thing I dislike about spoiled rich kids from the East Coast who go on adventures is that in the end, they are not authentic… these people who hike across Europe or go to East Asia to explore are one of the primary reasons why Americans are hated so much internationally. They bring their sense of (mostly) white privilege and look at the people of the region as these exotic specimens that they love to take pictures of and then go home and tell stories to their spoiled rich friends. These people pretty much disgust me. I know back in the day when I was in Jamaica, I tried to get away from the resort area as much as I could… I would go into Ocho Rios and explore the town itself. And in a sense, when I was driving around Jamaica, I felt I had a bit more of an edge than the white folks who were at the resort because being a person of color, I found myself accepted more than people who were not black. And this is the first thing I think of when I’m reading On The Road. I’m trying to place myself in the situations Kerouac had… and as I have read the first journey, from New York to Denver, I am thrilled with his writing style (again, I’m reading the scroll and the chopped up edited published version) and his descriptive powers. I mean, part of me can feel myself riding in the back of that truck with a bunch of hobos crossing Nebraska and Colorado… I can feel the people pressing against me in Cheyenne Wyoming during the Old West Days… but I know that like those white people in Jamaica who had to stay on the resort, I probably could not do this discovering America thing because these people either didn’t care about their lives or they had the safety net of privilege.

The thing I most connect to is the vision of the stars in a naked black sky… if you have never experienced this, it is beyond words… when I was growing up out in the country, on summer nights I would take a blanket and lay on the hill behind my house and just watch the stars above me… it was like they were this illuminated blanket covering me, letting me know that I was never alone. And perhaps for me, the sense of travel was encompassed in those stars; in the winding of the small creek through our property… those little bits of wonderful magic took the place of hopping a freight train and going off to find the rest of the world. I can remember so vividly hearing the train whistle blow in the night air, calling out to someone to hop on board. In my head, perhaps that someone was me even though I knew I’d never leave Bloomingdale, Ohio until it was my time.

And when it was my time, I did go away… to Boston to school, but perhaps my favorite adventure was when Tammy and I flew into Phoenix, rented a car and drove up to Flagstaff Arizona where we spent the night in the Hispanic part of town (and where we got lots of odd looks from everyone when we were the only non-Hispanic people in a Pizza Hut)… and then we drove on up to the Grand Canyon where we first hiked the South Rim and then went down into the Canyon to the Phantom Ranch… when Kerouac talks about the West being so big and so vast… I think about when I first saw the Grand Canyon and I thought to myself, “I AM SO SMALL”. It was my smallness that stayed with me for those 3 days we were there… that and the 100+ degree heat (we hiked in August!)… the foul smell of the outhouses, the feel of the earth below your feet, know that this massive canyon had been carved away from the rocks over millions of years... getting to the bottom and hearing the Colorado River racing to get somewhere, always wanting to get somewhere. And after we left, we stopped in Sedona Arizona which seemed like a tourist trap… but we hike up into the side hills where the Indians had once lived and we could go back into their little rock caves.. and as we drove back toward Arizona we saw how the red rocks gave way to pine trees which gave way to cactus which gave way to the sprawl that man has created in Phoenix…

So as of right now, I’m not seeing on the road as some great epic book… but it is giving me touchstones to memories of times I have been on the road… either in my head or in literal terms… the interaction with the world, becoming part of a world that is not your own.

So today is the birthday of one of my favorite LJ friends of all time! And this is the amazing thing about the Internet... I have never met Adrienne but I feel that I know her as well as someone I see here in Ohio everyday. We all use LJ to convey this that and the other, but we can still have a bit of a shadow over our lives because, well, it's LJ and you don't have to be totally honest in your statements. I adore Adrienne because over the years she has let people see into her world via this medium. That takes a sense of bravery along with honesty and I'm fortunate that she has both to share.

Of course, anyone who reads my LJ knows that I have this aversion for "The South". And where does this come from? I suppose that I have read too many books and seen too many photos of what can happen and what has happened to people there... and since I live in Ohio, I don't want to ever go there or be a part of that culture. But Adrienne makes me think that my feelings may be wrong. Or... maybe that she is not a product of the South... perhaps she is this universal sort of persona that would fit in anywhere she went. And there was this time when she posted a video of her at a pool with her nephew I believe... and her voice had that silky smooth Southern accent to it that I loved! So I don't know- I tend to think that it's Adrienne that is unique to her surroundings :-)

She is also amazing in the sense that I have been able to watch her turn into this hardcore athletic woman over the years. From all my time of going to the gym, playing sports and such, I know how hard it is for a man to be part of an athletic culture... and I'm all the more impressed by how she embraces the weights, how she will take to the road and run her ass off, how she wants to be the best at whatever she does. She inspires me everytime I read her posts about her latest exploits!

I guess when I look at myself, I am cautious about who I know and who I allow to be in my world. So I'm always struck by what a kind heart Adrienne has... the saga of her coworker who was her roommate for an extended time always had me shaking my head saying, "wow, I could never do that, I could never open my house to someone like that." And some of the things that she talks about... how she sees the world and the people in her world, how she wishes she could do even more for them... I mean, she would be the perfect girlfriend or wife for someone!

And of course we both share the common bond of being tall. I'm 6'5 and she is 6'1... and although I have many "less tall" female friends, I always lovelovelove my tall female friends because they walk with a sense of pride in their height, they don't shy away from it. When I see a picture of Adrienne either doing some crazy CrossFit competition or running a road race, I see a woman who is comfortable in her body and strong in her interaction with the world.

Happy birthday to you my faraway friend- and know that I'm thinking of you today and I'm feeling very blessed that I have gotten to know you over all these years :-)

It’s sad to have a little knowledge about how the world works. Then you see how pointless political parties are… how pointless religious views are. Those monikers are for the weak, the undereducated. It gives them something to argue about, to feel superior to someone else, and to rally around. It really doesn’t matter if Obama is president or if Reagan is president. Presidents are only figureheads for policy- the real power in the world is wielded by a few people who control the flow of money and commerce.

Let’s ask ourselves… if you were a country, would you want jobs to flow out of your country so you could save a few pennies on clothing? I mean, when people were working and factories were strong, did you hear anyone saying “hey, I don’t think this is the right way to be- I think we should ship these jobs out of the country.” Who really made that statement, and doesn’t it go against what is “the American way?” Or has the American become nothing more than a cliché?
I don’t think individual countries really care about each other. After all, that’s certainly not “the American way”. The American way supposed embraces making money, having a home and a mortgage and having kids and sending them to school so they can become better than you were. At least that is the way that things used to be. Globalism has changed all of that, and yet we sit around arguing about what the conservatives can do to change things or what the liberals can do for the people. Are people so brainwashed, so stupid to see that there’s really nothing you can do as a run of the mill average American/European/Asian- that everything is being manipulated by globalism and there are a very small percentage of people who making profits, CRAZY profits, from it.

I think are still stupid enough to believe that they can become a George Soros or a Julian Robertson. They believe that myth (created by the people in power) that the little guy can become the big guy if he works hard and does things in an honest manner. The funny thing is, those that make the CRAZY profits from global market manipulation are neither honest nor hard working for that matter. In reading the book More Money Than God, these people are in general are simply focused on making more money than they can ever spend and they really don’t care who they crush in doing it. They look at those people they step on as inefficient, lacking the knowledge to do what they do. And they are right. Again, I always go back to George Orwell’s 1984 because he was so right… the masses are simply tugged one way or another depending on what will maximize the pockets of the rich. One moment we are enemies with Vietnam.. then they are our friends… one moment we are helping rebels in Afghanistan battle the evil empire of the USSR… a few years later we are killing Afghans and looking at the Russians as our allies. The only difference between Orwell’s vision and what is happening now is that the names are different.

We are kept in our little boxes, constantly crying that things like abortion or health care are what make the greatest difference in the world. The people who control markets are shadowy figures who could care less about abortion or health care. If one of their children needed an abortion, not only would she get one, but she’d get one by the finest doctor money could buy… and health care is the same way.

When I listen to people like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity it amuses me that people think that these pawns of the elite speak for the common man. Again, you have an example of people who don’t have to worry about health care or where their next meal is coming from.. people who don’t have to worry about mortgages being paid. They fan the flames of discontent by attacking the Democrats who in reality are not really different from Republicans in the grand scheme of things. Being one party or the other isn’t going to get you anywhere in the grand scheme of things. Neither party being in power represents a sea change in the way that Hitler coming to power in Germany or the clerics coming to power in Iran fundamentally changed the way those countries functioned, and in essence, changed the way the world worked. But through it all, that small group of people that controls the flow of money still function. They pick winners and losers in the battle the little people fight in the name of god and country. Come on, let’s get real.. if speculators really wanted to, don’t you think they could call America to the carpet for the massive debt that is (seemingly) bleeding us dry? And when you see the price of gas going up or down, do you really think it’s because we are fighting in the Middle East? Don’t you think you should be looking at how speculators manipulate the markets, shorting commodities futures when they want to make a few bucks?

All in all, I think these people see humanity as a toy to be played with. They are not human… they are monsters who have for generations been who are connected, who throw a person a bone every now and then to keep the hope alive in the masses that “yes they can”. In my opinion, these people are beyond the caste system that is the basis of the population of the majority of countries now.

It’s also amusing to me that they know exactly how to keep the masses happy with their manipulation. In pitting one group against another, it keeps the essential question from being asked- why is there such a disparity between the haves and have nots? Issues like class warfare mean nothing to the people who can speculate and twist world markets- if you get angry over a term like class warfare, then you are essentially just a drone who isn’t intelligent enough to see what is really going on in the world. But what can you do? Are you going to take to the streets like the Nazis did? Are you going to chop their heads off like the French did during their revolution? The elites have learned from the mistakes of the past. They allow just enough chaos to keep the uninformed wallowing in their state of confusion. They give them TV and radio and other forms of soma to keep them comfortably numb.

I’m not one of those conspiracy people. I only know that the uprisings in the Middle East are only allowed to go on because they really don’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme. Read More Money Than God- maybe then you will be able to see at least a little bit of the surface residue that we can actually document.

First of all, I am not a citizen of the City of Canton. However, I do work in the City and pay city taxes (as the head of Canton's City Council's Finance Committee loves to tell me).

I hear from differing sources that "the city is strapped for cash", that "the city had a big surplus when Mayor Creighton left and now they are one step away from deficit spending" and "there is no such thing as economic development in the City of Canton".

I was listening to the Ron Ponder Show on WHBC the other day and the mayor was on. By the way, I like the Ron Ponder show, except for Ron's penchant for telling corny jokes. So the mayor is on telling everyone that he's all ears and wants to hear how the City can save money. He wants to hear from the citizens and how they propose to do it. Of course that statement came with the caveat that "some things like union contracts and the like cannot be cut". So this is my first problem with the city government- obviously, as revenues decreased (if this was indeed the case) why didn't spending go down accordingly? If you are locked into bad union contracts and if certain members of the city administration who are NOT union employees would not take a pay cut, then it seems like the City is in that proverbial place- stuck on stupid.

So of course the majority of people are going to go to the website and post a bunch of inane ideas without doing any research first. I don't want any of my friends to be inane, so I present a link to the site of what the 2011 appropriations are. Now most people are not going to go through the 35 pages of this .pdf file to see what's what... and the powers that be in government KNOW THAT. If you've ever read Franz Kafka's The Trial, you know that trying to figure out what is happening in a government is like diving into a bottomless pit. And government KNOWS THAT. Of course being the cynic that I am, I believe the mayor has come up with this scheme in order to try and save his job since this is an election year for him (and right now it looks like he won't even win his party's nomination to even try and run again). From what I understand, this situation of having to find dollars from one fund and put them into another fund, or to try and shift monies in anticipation of other monies coming in has been going on for several years. The head of council's finance committee sees it for what it is, calls it for what it is, but he cannot get people on council to hold the mayor's feet to the fire. The budget has to be passed, the ponzi scheme has to continue. And most people don't care about things like this because look at how most people spend- they want a nice house, a new car, the latest electronic gadgets... and who cares if they can't pay for it... they can declare bankruptcy or let their home get foreclosed on and move on. The mismanagement of an individual and his finances doesn't have the impact that the mismanagement of funds in a city government does, but both are a sad statement on the City and country in general.

I am sure that anyone who looks at this .pdf file can see plenty of places where monies SHOULD be cut. The sad thing is that like Josef K in The Trial, I am sure that the government people would give you a vague reason why it cannot be done. In their opinion, the budget is already slashed to the bone and to say otherwise would give the impression that they had not been good stewards of the citizen's money. And we can't have that!

When I have a question about how businesses should be run, what makes them tick, I like to go to my favorite entrepreneurial diva, Abby Kerr. Abby brought up some very valid points... Canton has become a suburb-based city, and unfortunately for the City, Jackson Township has built its own little empire separate from Canton. I mean, who needs to come to downtown Canton when they live in Jackson, can buy anything they need in Jackson? Given this big strike against the downtown, why would anyone want to take the risk of starting a business there?

Abby also believes that if downtown housing were actually brought into play for young professionals, this might be a catalyst for growth. When I think of what the vision of Canton seems to be for "downtown housing" it seems that they have placed all their eggs in the white elephant basket of that "hotel that is going to be luxury condos". Remember back in the day when the former mayor said she was even going to move into one of them? Has anyone went past that place lately? It looks to be in about the same state of disrepair that it was when the former mayor was mayor. In order to be forward thinking, the city needs to jettison itself from that hotel as condo debacle and try to invest in small loft apartments over some of the buildings in the downtown. There have to be some very nice spaces above some of those buildings down there... I look at the "Courtyard Centre" place and the building across the street from it on Cleveland Avenue and I think that this is the center of town on Cleveland and Tusc, and the buildings just sit there empty and dead. And for any businesses that are trying to make it in the downtown, it just puts a damper on the general look of the downtown. Again, Abby brought up a great point- why not try to get grant money to fix up a block of storefronts, get some people in there who have an intelligent business plan and the financial fitness to succeed and let them be the catalyst for change instead of relying on a marketing group who thinks the downtown can come back to life by painting a bunch of trash cans and putting some styrofoam heads on the side of a building.

I've also asked a lot of people who work downtown what they think, and one theme that comes back again and again is the parking situation. Or lack thereof. It really makes me wonder how the boomtown days of the downtown accommodated a lot of cars. Or back then, did people simply take a bus to get downtown? Needless to say, you can't really find a parking lot, a city lot or anything to park and walk to your destination in 2011. In a world where the car holds dominion over all things, how can your downtown be viable if you don't have ample parking?

I don't really think that people feel afraid to be downtown, but I believe they need something to bring them downtown. The only place I can see to have some sort of new building with some architecture that is different from the drab brick that lines Cleveland and Market is the green space area. It hasn't really done anything to enhance the downtown... people use it during First Friday, but what about a 3rd Wednesday? As I drive downtown during the day, hardly anyone uses the space. Of the City has an Economic Development department, it either needs to be overhauled or do something to get some sort of business on that green space. I still think that if you brought in something that people would flock to for fun, people could find their way back downtown. I always think of a place like Dave and Buster's which caters to mindless fun.. just eat, have a good time and play games. Piggyback that with a co-op grocery store or organic market and I think you could have a goldmine. But again, we are dealing with City government and all the hurdles that a company would have to jump, especially if they were not local, especially if they didn't want to cater to the notion of something that would have to work hand in hand with the Arts In Stark vision of downtown...

Finally, the City of Canton has one of the most envied entities in all of America- what city would not kill to have the Pro Football Hall of Fame? Instead of setting this up as a two week event (that takes a whole year to plan) why not try and reach out to the Hall and see if they could have something based in the downtown? A theme restaurant, a tour bus that leaves from the Hall and goes through the downtown, something, ANYTHING more than the let's concentrate on 2 weeks mentality that is there now. Again, a lack of cooperation is evident. The Hall of Fame Committee took the Ribfest out of downtown because some downtown businesses felt it presented "a security hazard" or at least that is the story that is bandied about. So the downtown shoots itself in the foot yet again and the Ribfest is banished to the Outer Siberia of the Stark County Fairgrounds. So people flock there and the downtown stays dark and empty during the 2 weeks of the festival.

I need to read more about downtowns that thrive- what are the factors that make it happen? How could they be applied to Canton? In looking at the situation as a casual observer, it appears that there are several organizations that have their own turf and don't want to compromise and share for the common good. Add to that a City government that seems to be at odds with itself and you have a recipe for disaster. Or maybe it is just an inevitable consequence of progress that downtown Canton will never be anything more than government buildings and a few restaurants that come and go for whatever reasons, shady or not.