Now that I'm writing plays I have to start giving a shit about theater (which I've always thought of as kind of gay). For example, today we lost William Gibson the author of The Miracle Worker (not to be confused with the sci-fi author of the same name whom ever promises I'll love and I never do.) And I wish he were here to send him off.
rating: 5 of 5 stars Fifteen-hundred-and-sixteen pages later and I wish John Updike had written more. This is an amazing achievement of a story and I love every page of it.
Backstory:
In 2005 I was staying in Italy with a recovering professor of mine. I think when you are twenty-three and you're touring Italy with a girlfriend you should have a grand old party. But I ended up staying at Unsworth's house for a week solid. They even insisted that we return the rental car and they would arrange to get us to Assissi and Perugia.
Unsworth was 75 then, northern English and resembled all the tweedish parts of Sean Connery. At night we watched the BBC news at 8 ("What is the world coming to that the BBC stops twice in a half hour for advertisements>") and sat up at night drinking wine while Barry recited Homer in Greek ("Untranslatable.") and his wife lamented how Americans don't have great heros like Achilles.
Barry and his wife both spoke highly of a short story I had written in college. I was surprised that either of them--let alone Aira--had read it at all. He said it reminded him of something. "Updike, John. That American fellow. You might enjoy his Rabbit novels."
Rabbit Run
When I returned to New York I went to the Strand and purchased the Everyman's Library edition, which included all four of the novels. I read the first volume with joy. It was about a twenty-three-year-old male with misgivings about the world in 1959. I described a cute little American rust-belt town which I would have driven through on my way to school the year before.
Rabbit Redux
A year later I was at a loss for something to read and so I hauled out the giant volume and started on the next quarter. This meant enduring the ridicule of others at work (I had a steady job then!). Updike wrote this one in 1969 in the shadow of a changing America. One that needed more parking lots and where leaders were assassinated and black people were louder on the bus (what happened to that old streetcar?). In this novel man walked on the moon and linotypers like Rabbit would soon be out of business.
Rabbit is Rich
But I was not. Last spring when I got back from tour I was thin, hungry and out of work. I didn't have the money to buy a new novel to read and so I pulled the volume out again. This one took place in an oddly familiar world of 1979. Muslims were terrorists. Gas prices went through the roof and Detroit was fucked. People flocked to foreign car dealers, like the one the main character's father-in-law left in his will. Our hero is now the only Toyota Dealership owner in town during the end of the Carter era. He joins a country club and dabbles in wife-swapping. Probably the most fun about reading these novels is watching the town and its people grow old. People who were toddlers in the first book are now trying to be car salesmen. That old, exotic "Chinese" restaurant in town is now something else. The son who was once a prelingual inconvenience has already been a teenage and now he wants to drop out of school and become a car salesmen, like his dad and grandpop. This is because he knocked up his girlfriend.
Rabbit at Rest
Almost twice the size of the earlier books, 500 pages. But what excitement! The year is 1989 and by some wonderful twist of fate Rabbit's son Nelson Angstrom is now the chief salesmen of the 1989 Toyota Corolla--my first car! Rabbit is semi-retired and his son seems jittery. What is it with him? Hopefully he doesn't have that new disease that, that A-I-D-S virus that the gays have. In this story all the other plot lines also mature in fun ways. Rabbit's nurse in the hospital is the daughter of a girl Rabbit used to date (his daughter??). His son is still married to the girl he knocked up in college and they have another son. That chinese restaurant has become a healthy place that serves all kinds of salads. Growing Pains is officially the only show on television where every single character is despicable.
As soon as I turned the final page I missed the characters already. What will happen to the jittery son now that he's admitted he had a problem with blow? Will they lose the Toyota dealership? Luckily, apparently, Updike also wrote a book of short stories called Rabbit Remembered a couple of years later. I guess I'll order that today.
In his youtube address this week Obama made reference to one of my favorite poems.
Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?
A theater producer wants to talk to me about adapting Mercutio. I'm almost positive that this is going to be one of those things I never follow up on just in case it doesn't work out later. That's a life philosophy that has never failed anyone yet.
I am in the long tedious process of applying to the Obama White House. I also submitted a Christmas story to the "Modern Love" section of the New York Times. I am quite sure I will never hear back from either submission.
Today I was going over the horrifyingly long post-application disclosure process. Luckily I think I might be able to skip this part. I hope so. Because I'm already running into problems.
I:1. Please Furnish Copies of all resumes and biographical statements issued by youor any other entity with your discretion or with your consent in the past ten years. How many resumes have I made up since 1998? Jesus Christ. My first thought is to just include my writing resume, but then in an effort to be honest am I to include my DJ'ing resume? Bartending? What about my work last year as a backup dancer? Japanese Food Network?
II:13 Electronic Communications: If you have ever sent an electronic communication including but not limited to an email, text message or instant message that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family or the President-elect if it were made public please describe. Fuck. Uhm. How long do these messages last? Most girls who had phones in 2007 have probably deleted my messages by now. As a rule I don't IM. My emails all have a satanically precise non-disclosure notice on them. But, hmmm...you had to include text messages, didn't you? From 2002-2007 any text message I sent after 10:30PM would certainly be an embarrassment to me and the President-elect. My family would probably just laugh, though.
II:14. Diaries. If you keep or have ever kept a diary that contains anything that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family or the President-elect if it were made public please describe. On the one hand: my website shows my extensive support for Obama, including back in 2004 when I helped the other DJs in Chicago do a fund raiser for him locally. On the other: maybe the President-elect wants to know more about the disgusting underbelly of New York City. He might also be interested to learn more about my thoughts on break ups. Perhaps Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel also has freakish ex-girlfriend sightings on public transit.
III-IV This section gives me a free ride since it deals mostly with organizations, loans, trusts, partnerships, etc. Luckily: I'm poor!
V: Tax Information Fuck.
33. Please include all federal and state tax returns from 2005 and all subsequent years. Goddammit. Now I wish I had those filing cabinets.
VI:42. Please list any lawsuits you or your spouse have brought as plaintiff. Am I supposed to tell Barack Obama that I got back two grand from companies that stole from me? It looks so petty.
VI:45. If you have ever been investigated by any law enforcement agency...Night in jail?
VII Domestic Help. In 2005 I hired a woman from a cleaning service. I then asked her to come back on her day off and paid her the full amount instead of having the cleaning service pay her $9/hr and keep my $120 (for 3hrs of work). I only did this once, though. And it was 2005 and I used to make alot of money.
VIII Miscellaneous
57. If applicable please list the names, addresses and phone numbers of cohabitants in the last ten years. A cohabitant is a person with whom you shared bonds of affection, obligation, or other commitment, as opposed to a person with whom you lived for reasons of convenience (roommate). Great. Now I have to go track down Annie and Amanda (wherever the hell they are) and ask them to be on their best behavior.
58. Please provide the URL addresses of any websites the feature you in either a personal or a professional capacity (e.g. Facebook, My Space, etc.) So glad I'm not gay! Go ahead and look up my stupid websites. I'm just glad I never online dated. I'm especially glad I don't have to submit manhunter.com pages.
59. Do you or any members of your family own a gun?...Please describe how and by whom it was used and if any injuries... Nope. Not since Easter 1916! Free ride on this one.
60. Have you had a complete physical within the last year? Please describe your overall help and any medical treatment you are currently receiving. Uninsured since 2000 (quick exception 2006-7) overall health good. Starting to get fatter with age. Not significantly, but it still makes me feel somewhat like I am wearing a thick and unsupportive cummerbund.
61. Have you had any association with any person, group or business venture that could be used--even unfairly--to impugn or attack your character and qualifications for government service. Yes? All of them? I was in the goddam liberal media, then I worked for a major record label (way worse!). I've worked in nightlife since 2004 so I guess that quite frequently I have been with persons, groups and business ventures that impugn my character and qualifications.
65. Do you know anyone or any organization, either in the private sector or in government service, that might take steps, overtly or covertly, fairly or unfairly, to criticize your nomination, including any news organization? If so please identify and explain any potential basis for criticism I was about to say "no" but then I remembered that in 2002 I was a correspondent for New England Cable News I got really snippy with the anchor. When I worked for the newspaper they would try to get us to work with the local news and bring attention to our stories. I hated this 1) because we didn't get paid. 2) they had a studio in the newsroom which made it look like the sea of desks behind them were all their hard working reporters and 3) they were such idiots. I would love to get my hands on that tape some day. But, yes, I'm sure the goddam liberal media of Springfield, MA would take covert, unfair steps to discredit me.
The Audacity of Hoop. Now that I am a cyclist in New York City, I am forced to care about things like which bike racks we will use in the future.
Today the DOT announced that after a lengthy design competition, a jury of six—including sodden cyclist David Byrne—chose "Hoop" (pictured) out of the ten finalists. It's the work of two Copenhagen designers, Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve. "Constructed of cast metal, the design is elegant yet sturdy enough to withstand New York cyclists’ harsh treatment," the DOT said in a statement.
News you can cling to from the The Telegraph UK's list "50 Facts You Might Not Know About Barack Obama"
• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics • He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball • His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili • His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini • He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father • He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed • He has read every Harry Potter book • He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali • He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can't stand ice cream • His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars • He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia • He can speak Spanish • While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead • His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea • He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn't • He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia • He can bench press an impressive 200lbs • He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be addressed by his full name • His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville • He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister's fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived • His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy • He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year, with much coming from sales of his books • His favourite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest • He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck • He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee. • His favourite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees • He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date • He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker • He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol • He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician • As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine • His daughters' ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7) • He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside • He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal • His house in Chicago has four fire places • Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita • He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry • He uses an Apple Mac laptop • He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300 • He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits • He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes • He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (£13) • His favourite fictional television programmes are Mash and The Wire • He was given the code name "Renegade" by his Secret Service handlers • He was nicknamed "Bar" by his late grandmother • He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds • His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso • His speciality as a cook is chilli • He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were "street urchins" • He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life • His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government
But they left out #51 probably because of space limitations. "Barack Obama is incredibly handsome and has really good taste, even though both scrabble and poker are equally gay for different reasons."
Maybe twenty seconds ago I ran into Annie on the Long Island Railroad. Actually, I ran past her. I was late to a DJ gig. I hadn't seen her since the night I was arrested.
Since I am a diseased* person I immediately thought how hilarious it would be to turn around and surprise her. She went left at the stairwell to the subway transfer. I went right!
My computer is still in the shop so when I bolted past her I felt like a freshly showered Fab Five Freddy with my DJ equipment in hand and my leather jacket in full force. . Although, really, carting a crate of records probably just made me look like a guy whose girlfriend just threw him out. That's when I ran smack into the back of a magazine stand. The way I had chosen was closed for construction.
But never fear! I doubled back and walked behind her in a pedestrian detour. I couldn't believe it was really her. She looked bonier than the last time I saw her. But I recognized that pale milky skin, the Chicago Irish nose. That curly red hair. She stopped dying it that deep fuschia tint, but it was definately her. She had a fast walk and I smiled as I noticed she was wearing her fiftieth pair of obnoxious designer jeans.
Annie! After two years and her asking me never to speak to her again-- there she was. I couldn't believe it but I must confess that by heart was racing.
I want nothing to do with this girl whatsoever but I can't miss and opportunity to make an ass out of someone. Especially me.
She swiped her card into the turnstile and I followed behind her. The train was at the platform. Not my train though. I wasn't willing to blow my evening and ride an awkward 2 train transfer into manhattan just for a joke.
She walked faster, her stern brown boots galloping toward the open train doors. The doors shut and she turned around. "Ann--!"
A redheaded girl glared at me the way you glare at strangers in this city. It was not Annie.
*The original version of this post, which I tapped out on my iPhone said "Since I am a diseases person." which made the story so much more sinister.
For anyone out there who cannot adjust to life after the campaign, Newsweek has done us a great service of making at 50,000 word history of the election. This actually reminds me alot of David Foster Wallace's excellent essay about McCain 2000. I'm a huge fan of all the information that gets lost in the new cycle. In DFW's story it was great to actually read the true and complete details of McCain's crash landing into the lake in the middle of the city he was bombing.
In this essay we get the jewels of Obama that we can't always hear over the crescendo of angels. He has kind of a blaring halo. And we miss out on shit like this:
On the eve of his speech to the Democratic convention in 2004, the speech that effectively launched him as the party's hope of the future, he took a walk down a street in Boston with his friend Marty Nesbitt. A growing crowd followed them. "Man, you're like a rock star," Nesbitt said to Obama. "He looked at me," Nesbitt recalled in a story he liked to tell reporters, "and said, 'Marty, you think it's bad today, wait until tomorrow.' And I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said, 'My speech is pretty good'."
And my new favorite:
In an audio tape obtained by the magazine, Obama says: “So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I fucking changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective.’”
Tonight after my usual Sunday night comedy show with Eugene Mirman I started thinking of things I wasn't able to include in the current draft of Mercutio. To the best of my research I've decided that the action in Romeo & Juliet takes place in the rule of Cangrande della Scala of Verona before the extinction of the Capelletti. So 1319.
Lots of things that I like to think of as Italian didn't exist yet. Clementines didn't grow on trees. I also wanted Mercutio to have the cyclical world view that one gains from Ptolemy. Sadly even the fatalism of the Plague was just four years away.
I started to dwell on all of these things that weren't included in the book. And then I started to think that was okay. If I had a story that included everything it would be called life. It would be boring, hard to follow, disheartening and over way too quickly. So I'll stick with the story about the guy who has never had an orange that's really easy to peel.
Saturday night I got a call from a strange number; it asked if I could DJ that night in Williamsburg. It was actually perfect timing because my previous plan for the weekend night was to watch the downloaded bootleg of the brilliant My Fellow Americans and try not to eat anything that cost money.
The first thing I did was text Jackie and see if she could come out with me. She's always been my goodluck charm when it comes to these things.
Every night since the election I've had dreams where I'm campaigning. They get intricate. Some of them have surprise endings. Last night I was campaigning in secret for the Republicans under a team lead by Tom Cruise. Lately I feel more and more like I should be doing something else in my life. So does Tom Cruise, apparently.
My computer is still in the shop so Jackie and I played shit from her iTunes and a bunch of fun records she bought in Iceland during their economic collapse last month. I also had the selection of mix CDs I made in 2004 which includes a rather crude tape I made very early on in my DJ'ing career. At the time I think it was a mix I made using every single "soul" record I owned.
It is really bad. Some of the records skip. About halfway through it appears that I forgot to play another song after one faded out. But I keep it in my bag and it comes in handy when another DJ comes in and you have to give up the booth and let him set up. I've been known to let it play for a full half hour and dick around with my friends. Theo and Caleb came down and I remembered that I actually like working Saturdays.
It felt great to be back in action. I love watching girls go apeshit when I play Shirley Ellis. Jackie brought a Springsteen record that she bought at Kim's for a dollar. We let it blare through the crowd early on to watched all the Jersey boys pump their fists and beyond the palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard. The girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors and the boys try to look so hard.
Unlike the piece of shit CD decks at Beauty Bar or the unnecessarily space-age ones at most clubs, these had the response of a synth. Fading in and sampling were so easy and fun that not mixing around would have been more trouble.
On election night I spent the last possible half hour knocking on doors. "There's still time to vote! As long as you're in line by 7 they have to count your vote!" The other field organizer took off in his car and I trudged on foot through the dusk-lit streets of Flagler County Florida.
The streets down there are part of a massive, but still uncompleted plan of building a residential city alphabetically. I spent the final hours in the "F" section. I took Florida Park Dr. to Flamingo Dr. and weaved in and out of Fleetwood Dr., Filbert Ln., Filmore Ln., Firtree Ln., Fischer Ln., then back down Flamingo Dr. to Federal Ln., Ferris Ln., Fernwood Ln., Felter Ln. and back up Fleetwood Drive.
That entire day I had spent organizing a call center and canvassing station where grandmothers called other grandmothers and encouraged them to vote on behalf of their children and grandchildren. I had 80 year-old husband and wife teams (who could barely walk) go teetering from house to house, parking their Cadillacs in front of each one, slowly heading to the door, knocking and then eventually making their way to another house.
It was amazing.
At seven the polls closed in the main part of Florida and we tore back to the office to start calling voters in Pensacola (the next timezone).
At 8 PM I was calling voters in Colorado when the job phone rang. "Hang up the phone," the voice from Tampa said.
"Why?"
"You need to go out and celebrate with your volunteers. McCain lost Pennsylvania and he can't recover from that. It's over."
We had planned to meet up at a small local airstrip restaurant next to the runway where people fly their Cesnas and whatever else killed JFK Jr and my grandfather. Somewhat hilariously this restaurant is called "High Jackers."
I walked into the restaurant and one hundred people stood up and cheered. Over the blare of CNN they started chanting "Yes we can! Yes we can!" One of the campaigners brought me the final totals sheet. We won the county by 600 votes.
It was a wonderful scene. Everybody's little kids were there. Each time another state closed their polls the whole room erupted into shouts of joy.
When that party started to fizzle out we went back to our main office in St. Augustine where the local democrats were hosting a party at a local comedy club. These local democrats had lost. But everyone was there just the same to watch.
It was like the end of a Hollywood movie. The girl who had picked me up from the airport the week before was drunk and glad to see me. The volunteer who put me up in his house all week bought me a beer.
Obama spoke to a crowd in my old haunt of Grant Park Chicago, near the hip hop club where I first saw him speak in 2004 when I was just a lowly bartender. The projected this speech onto the wall.
Everything about it had the air of a new era. It was New Year's eve-esque. All the cheering and the happiness. In the morning we all awoke hung-over but smiling. Each of us sort of promised that this year would be different. We would go to the gym more and apply to graduate school. We were going to call our parents more often and take fewer cab rides.
Sadly, though, it was like the last day of camp. We all promised to stay in touch. But already things unravelled. Among the airmatress posse only one couple survived. Some of the others didn't even make it through Obama's uplifting and thrilling moment before they dealt with the reality. That tomorrow would come and they would have to squeeze out their airmatresses and say goodbye to whomever they'd been having squeaky airmatress sex with since the primaries.
Just four years after Barack Hussein Obama gave that speech in Boston he flew home to Chicago and was randomly selected to special security searches. They patted him down and had him take off all his clothes. They searched his luggage and tested it for bomb making materials just because of his strange sounding name and ambiguous ethnicity.
But now, in 2008 I was the lucky winner of the random TSA search. There I stood with half a dozen of Jacksonville's security team. The scoured over my passport while they gave my shoes and MRI and swept through my luggage. They tested my underpants for gunpowder residue and flipped through my Murakami for godknowswhat.
"Why are you travelling to New York?"
"I live there."
"What were you doing in Florida?"
"I work for Obama."
They all felt terrible. The extra security check takes almost twenty-five minutes and they wanted to know all about the campaign and what Obama is like in person. There I am, standing in my socks while being frisked, surrounded by six or eight black guys in security uniforms, fielding their questions.
My cab driver on the way home stuck his hand through the partition and said, "I want to shake your hand, sir."
It was an amazing campaign and I am really glad I got to be a part of it. I feel wonderful, if exhausted, all over. I'm also out of a job now and it's going to be pretty hard to get back into nightlife after this.
Epilogue
When I got home from the airport I went through my mail. In it was three settlement checks from a company I had worked for in 2005. They were stealing from us and I caught them. Three years later I got back a quarter of what I made then. That's a start.
I came back to New York and discovered that I was a hero to cab drivers everywhere.
America is a nation where on the last day of one month you can knock on a strangers door and ask them for candy. But on the following Tuesday those same people will curse you out if you ask them to vote.
Tomorrow will be the longest day of my life and I'm pretty much out of things to say. I have no idea how we are going to pull this off. Everyone around here is trying the same dirty tricks as always. The worst part is I met hundreds of Obama supports who, like the girl at Taco Bell today, aren't registered to vote but would vote for Obama.
The miracle of tomorrow is getting my entire county to work. My three hundred pound Jamaican volunteers will all have to make phone calls. My obnoxious Texan volunteers are going to have to go into neighborhoods and knock on the doors of total strangers. Old Jewish women from Jersey are going to have to pull up to liquor stores in the projects and invite strange men into their minivans.
Today I had an 89 year old registered democrat tell me, "I am a true southern man and I will never vote for anyone who has a drop of negro blood in them. Hopefully he will break his chalk white hip.
There's nothing else I can do or say except wake up with everyone else at 4:30 tomorrow and get out the vote.
So, with nothing else, I bring you twenty-four-year-old Meghan McCain's top-ten favorite songs.
1 A Million Miles From Home Ultraviolet A New Day 2 Beautiful, Dirty, Rich Lady GaGa Beautiful, Dirty, Rich - Single 3 Nature of the Experiment Tokyo Police Club A Lesson In Crime 4 Kingdom of Doom The Good, The Bad & The Queen Kingdom of Doom - Single 5 Sad Song Au Revoir Simone The Bird of Music 6 Ain't That Peculiar (With Sly Stone & El DeBarge) George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love 7 It's Not Over Yet Klaxons Myths of the Near Future 8 Golden Years David Bowie Best of Bowie 9 Brooklyn Mos Def Black On Both Sides 10 That's Not My Name The Ting Tings We Started Nothing
Like most people I put myself at the center of my own life story. If my life I am Jerry and you're all a bunch of Newmans. But if I had to admit something right now it would be this: If this election office were The Office. I would be Dwight Schrute.
It's really embarrassing to admit this. I really feel terrible about it. I fucking hate my out-of-state volunteers.
I'm in charge of a small county in Florida and my election nightmare is that Tom Brokaw will smile into the camera and say, "Once again this election hinges on Florida and this time all eyes are on Flagler County where thousands of voters are still uncounted because volunteers from the Obama campaign went on a wine-cooler run and crashed campaign-financed rental van into the public library polling location."
I have a delegation that took a fucking bus in from Texas to volunteer. I was so excited to have all these accents to talk to all the rednecks in my county. Of these ten volunteers is a mother-son team who clearly sold this as a free chance to go to Florida. The campaign was so pleased to have them that they rented two vans for the group. However they are using these vans to drive down to the beach and eat sea food.
Most of what we need them to do involves calling undecided voters and making sure they can get to the polls. The campaign has paid for five cellphones to facilitate this. Yesterday one of the volunteers took the phone and its charger home with her and didn't show up to the office today.
That same woman took the van today because she said she had to drive one of the volunteers to the airport because she had to leave a day early. Instead she took 6 of the volunteers with her to go to an Obama rally two hours away.
The other three volunteers that I have left took off most of yesterday to go see Joe Biden. They worked hard all morning and they were young and excited. They came back today all excited. "Joe Biden kissed me on the cheek!" "I got to shake his hand!" They gleefully got into the van with a map and a thousand door knockers. "How are the polls? Are we gonna win?"
"If we can get everybody as excited as you are we are going to win," I told them. "We lost Ohio by 9 votes per precinct. So if we all get that many people to the polls we will be in good shape. The key now is to get people there early and to make sure they don't give up when they see the long lines."
"We gonna win Florida!"
They're adorable and I'm really glad that they're young and excited for the campaign. For the rest of their lives they will be able to smile at the first president they ever voted for and feel very proud of themselves (if we win).
My own prejudices are my big problem here. I am unnecessarily offended that we have campaign tourists. These are the same kind of tourists who come to New York in fanny packs and sneakers and complain about all the walking they do. The reason I'm mad at myself is that this is no worse than having a couple of volunteers from the next county dropping by to pitch in for an hour or two when they can.
It reminded me of my favorite story in Dubliners. "Ivy Day in the Committee Room."
"That's the way it begins," said the old man.
"The thin edge of the wedge," said Mr. Henchy.
The old man distributed the three bottles which he had opened and the men drank from them simultaneously. After having drank each placed his bottle on the mantelpiece within hand's reach and drew in a long breath of satisfaction.
"Well, I did a good day's work today," said Mr. Henchy, after a pause.
"That so, John?"
"Yes. I got him one or two sure things in Dawson Street, Crofton and myself. Between ourselves, you know, Crofton (he's a decent chap, of course), but he's not worth a damn as a canvasser. He hasn't a word to throw to a dog. He stands and looks at the people while I do the talking."
On a brighter note: I had Chic-fil-a for breakfast! Holy shit can those bible-thumpers brew a coffee! The tater tots were too hot to touch and the bacon-egg-cheese-biscuit was just fucking divine. "Have a blessed morning!" they said as I left the drive thru. I did!
I knocked on another house today and the kid who answered was 19, Florida white trash kind of kid who was a genuine undecided voter. But the first words out of his mouth were, "How could you ever vote for someone who goes to church for twenty years with a racist like Jeremiah Wright?"
I was ready to leave him alone but then he added, "I mean, don't get me wrong I think the country's in terrible shape and Obama is a tremendous speaker and god knows we need that after living with Bush for eight years--a man who can't even string a sentence together. What am I supposed to do? McCain isn't that great and Palin is terrible but how am I supposed to vote? I'm 19. Obama says he's going to raise taxes on people making more that $250,000 a year. When am I ever going to make that kind of money?"
It was weird to me because I immediately realized that I was dealing with a man of protestant upbringing. Even Republican Catholics are looking at the screen going, "So what? His priest is only racist?" My grandfather was a deacon and he referred to the church janitor as a "jigaboo."
I don't really think that Catholics are the only people who sit through a racist/sexist/homophobic/anti-choice sermon while they check to see which of the neighbors will be at coffee hour.
(The ad above came out today in Pennsylvania and is, coincidentally, not paid for by John McCain.)
Leaving New York is always weird to me. In New York you define yourself in many small but important ways*. For the past twenty years in New York people my age were concerned with whether or not they are a a yuppie. Yuppies as we all know have expensive metal refrigerators and eye cream and have extra meals on the weekend called "brunch." Years ago these were people who ate fish that hadn't been cooked and went to go "work out" after work.
These differences are always ridiculous. Friends will call on sunday and ask, "Wanna meet for brunch?"
And I'll say, "I'd love to meet for Lunch." Because I'm obnoxious and I can't stand the thought of my brother calling and saying, "Can I call you back? I'm in the middle of an unnecessarily over-used portmanteau."
"You mean you're having lunch at three in the afternoon and its your first meal of the day but you don't want to feel bad about drinking through it?"
"Right because it took us forever to get a table and there's two-for-one mimosas." (On a long enough time line these things become main stream.)
But today I woke up in my host house in Florida and I was told that we weren't canvassing until noon because some of our volunteers have to go to church. I was excited! A sunday morning off in a strange city!
"Great so can the New York delegation get brunch--" the word was out of my mouth before I could help myself. "And then read the sunday paper?"
No. Instead we had to head straight to our foreclosed house and get to work. Instead of breakfast I stopped on the way to get allergy pills (Foreclosed Florida is very moldy) and vitamin water). This took half a fucking hour because I am working in the meth-capital of Florida and you need proof-of-ID to get fucking Claratin.
I was in the line for twenty minutes while the retiree at the counter squinted at my passport. "Where's the date of birth?" I showed him and when he needed to add my address he started flipping through my stamps, beholding each one in wonder as he looked for my home address.
Since I am a brilliant New York elite I looked down at the signature pad and figured I'd help things along by signing off on the "I understand that Claritin is a controlled substance..."
This somehow blanked out his screen.
He got mad at me. I got mad at him and by the time the third manager came over he found the clerk trying to cram my passport into the credit-card scanner.
"Is this your only form of ID?"
"It's my ID."
"Well, I need your information and here we use drivers license numbers. I don't make the laws, sir. Congress makes the laws."
I was going to keep fighting with this perfectly reasonable man, but I realized I was just being a cranky east coast yuppie who missed brunch.
*See Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents" re: The Narcissism of Minor Difference
Today I woke up at 7:09 got in the shower and got picked up at 7:22. I had a headache the size of Flagler county. Normally I don't get hungover or get headaches even, but today I had both. I still had it at eight.
I may have mentioned this but my field office is in the little girls' bedroom of a foreclosed house. Just as an illustration of what the fuck is going wrong in our world: The woman who owned this house (until its foreclosure) rents a house in another town and spends all of her free time volunteering for the campaign. Today she got a knock on the door from the Sheriff at her rental home telling her that the home she's renting is now in foreclosure and she and her daughter may have to move out. Right now her best bet is to move back into her old house because the bank that foreclosed on it went under.
She owed so much money that the water was shut off before she had to leave. We have no running water and I'm running out of ways to pretend that I'm on an important call when I'm really just peeing on the side of the house.
The saddest part of the past twenty years in politics is that people rarely vote in a constituency. Poor white people vote for republicans because they decided long ago that they were republicans. I wish I could shake these people and be like, "You think he's going to spread the wealth? What fucking wealth do you have that you're afraid will get spread? Your $300,000 mortgage on your house that now worth $150,000?" But I don't.
Chauncey, however, does. He was my canvassing partner today. A veteran of Desert Storm and Kosovo, Chauncey went into real estate during the boom, both him and his wife. When the bottom fell out they had to sell their cars and move into a rental property. For no apparent reason this guy donates time he does not have to the campaign. Chauncey is also one of those un-official small town mayors. He costantly has to stop somewhere and say hi to a friend or blow by a buddy's dealership to bullshit for a few minutes.
He and I went out canvassing today. When we pulled into one of these awful neighborhood made several knocks on empty and foreclosed houses. A gaggle of dudes down the street kept and eye on us as they washed their fishing boat and drank the last few beers in their cooler. They sat in the various pickup trucks in the driveway.
As we got down the street I realized that they were a house on my list. I walked over and introduced myself. "We're all for McCain," the leader said.
"Great guys," I said. "Have a good afternoon."
"Take care guys," Chauncey said and then hollered back. "By the way how's that trickle-down economy working out for you?"
Just fine. He replied, Just fine.
We just got back to the main office at nine and everyone agreed, "Why did we send the New York DJ into the weirdest county we have in Florida?"
"Seriously." I said. "A woman came to the door at noon in her pajamas. Her five year old wearing just a t-shirt. She said she couldn't vote because she was a felon. She couldn't have been 27."
"Welcome to Florida."
"Yeah but...." (they didn't get it). "But she was white."
Anyway, now I'm back at my desk and no one's talking to me.
Someday I want to write one of those Hollywoodland Hollywood movies. In it I want the page-10 scene to be a hollywood major player re- discovering a has-been actress via her late-night save-the-children ad.
"Look at how she cries over the orphaned children of Africa!"
