Category - commentary

Acerbic observations on the state of the world, art, politics, and culture.

Welcome to Facebookistan

October 6, 2017
Paul Schatzkin
commentary, Digest
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The largest country on the planet. Also the largest religion. Belief is optional. Also, you can check out any time you want but you can never leave.

Does Even Mark Zuckerberg Know What Facebook Is?

“There are real consequences to our inability to understand what Facebook is. Not even President-Pope-Viceroy Zuckerberg himself seemed prepared for the role Facebook has played in global politics this past year. In which case, how can we be assured that Facebook is really safeguarding democracy for us and that it’s not us who need to be safeguarding democracy against Facebook?”

. . .

“Maybe he’s doing research and development, reverse-­engineering social bonds to understand how Facebook might better facilitate them. Maybe Facebook is a church and Zuckerberg is offering his benedictions. Maybe Facebook is a state within a state and Zuckerberg is inspecting its boundaries. Maybe Facebook is an emerging political community and Zuckerberg is cultivating his constituents. Maybe Facebook is a surveillance state and Zuckerberg a dictator undertaking a propaganda tour. Maybe Facebook is a dual power — a network overlaid across the U.S., parallel to and in competition with the government to fulfill civic functions — and Zuckerberg is securing his command. Maybe Facebook is border control between the analog and the digital and Zuckerberg is inspecting one side for holes. Maybe Facebook is a fleet of alien spaceships that have colonized the globe and Zuckerberg is the viceroy trying to win over his new subjects.”

October 2, 2017: The Day
Facebook Became Insufferable

October 2, 2017
Paul Schatzkin
commentary, Digest
2 Comments

I’ve been trying to avoid the news today. But just a moment ago I took a one-minute scroll through Facebook and learned that Tom Petty is dead, or near enough. “Full cardiac arrest, no brain activity, DNR” etc etc.

He was 66.

For a moment, that news provided a diversion from the day’s dominant story: yet another mass shooting event, this time in Las Vegas. 50+ killed and hundreds injured (mostly probably from the ensuing stampede) when somebody opened fire from a 30th floor hotel window onto an open field filled with a crowd for a country music festival, headliner Jason Aldean running from the stage once he figured out what was going on.

And so once again all the typical responses… the meaningless “thoughts and prayers,” the relentless outrage, the exhortations to talk about gun control -v- the exhortations to not talk about gun control “so soon” after so many people have been senselessly slaughtered by the kinds of weapons that nobody should have access to, at least not legal access, but then you know how that works, if guns are outlawed yada yada yada…

So this morning when I started to do my typical mindless scrolling… I just realized, “today is the day that Facebook became insufferable.”

And then I had to resist the temptation to actually put that thought on Facebook. I’m sure it would have offended a lot of people who felt righteously, grievously offended that so many people they never knew had been killed, because that’s what we’re all conditioned to do now when this happens again and again and again and again etc ad infinitum ad nauseam…

Later in the day, I thought of something that I read or heard about Hugh Hefner after he had his last wank last week at age 91. Somebody pointed out that Hefner had made his fortune largely “on masturbation.”

Now, I would say, that Mark Zuckerberg is the contemporary equivalent, though not strictly in the literal sense.

It is almost ironic that Facebook doesn’t permit anything that is even slightly, obliquely pornographic (i.e. “no female nipples” – regardless of their “artistic” merit), because arguably all of the content on Facebook is some form of mental masturbation.

It is a billion people a month (many several or even dozens of times a day) “getting off” on their own expressions of moral outrage, or gentle metaphysical platitudes, or pictures of their babies, or whatever the fuck floats their boat.

With a user base measured in the billions, Facebook creates the illusion of an audience of thousands when in most cases – i.e. those that are not already celebrities and thus have a large “social media following” (George Takei comes to mind, and remember he got his start being a spaceman on TeeVee 50 years ago) our posts only show up on a few dozen other users feeds. It’s somewhere between an echo chamber and a masturbatorium – a word I had never heard before the actor Brian Cox used it in a scene from the movie “Running With Scissors” : “You can’t go in that room, that’s my masturbatorium”.

Facebook is a masturbatorium that we let everybody in to.

Anyway, when I looked at Facebook this morning, it just seemed like a relentless rerun of years of self indignation. With every post I felt like “where have I seen this before?” Oh yeah, right here on Facebook the last time. And the time before that. And the time…

So… fuck it.

One of the things that got me hooked on Facebook years ago was when web browsers started to offer the “pin tab” feature – where you always had a small tab conveniently situated on the edge of your browser window for websites that your return to often.

Once THAT feature was enabled, I basically had Facebook at my disposal all the time. It was just one click away. It was like when I discovered “one hit pot” back in 1969. I’ve been stoned on Facebook ever since.

And that (I think) was before it all went mobile, and Facebook became the thing that I went to almost impulsively on my phone. Wait, who am I kidding? “Almost impulsively?” No, it was definitely impulsive. Like a rat in a cage, pushing the button for another endorphin pellet. Dozens of times a day. I supply the content, Zuckerberg gets the money. Who are we kidding.

And don’t even start me on the fucking Russians.

Lately I’ve been saying “I feel about Facebook the way I felt about scotch and vodka just before I quit drinking (almost 30 years ago).

And today, I dunno, something just finally snapped.

I closed all “pin tabs” on my browsers.

And I deleted the Facebook app on my phone. I replaced it (in the dock on the bottom of the home screen) with the podcast app. Maybe I’ll listen to more podcasts.

But I did go back to Facebook for a minute, just to confirm my suspicions. But instead of gun-violence induced righteous indignation, I got the news that Tom Petty had a heart attack and died at age 66.

Well, fuck me, I’m 66, too.

Or, wait… maybe he’s not dead?

Oh, fuck it. Ya just can’t believe anything any more.

*

Update 171005: Yes, I violated my own quarantine and posted a link to this from my Facebook page. Save one comment re: Scott Kozicki needing a haircut, I have not posted anything to the Infinite Random Trivia Generator all week. If you care to comment on what I have written/posted above, please share those sentiments in the comments section here. The boycott now resumes…,

Harvey and the Lionel Trains

March 20, 2017
Paul Schatzkin
commentary, Digest, Harvey & Ellen, personal, Writing
1 Comment

I think I’m goin’ back
To the things I learned so well in my youth
I think I’m returning to those days
When I was young enough to know the truth
Now there are no games to only pass the time
No more electric trains, no more trees to climb
Thinking young and growing older is no sin
And I can play the game of life to win

–– Carol King

Trains1955-op_8abelhj6h120

Harvey, Arthur, and the 736 Berkshire

For Christmas in 1954, my father bought, set up and gave to my older brother an elaborate set of Lionel trains, tracks, and accessories.

In our family photo albums, there is just one photo of Harvey operating the trains, my brother Arthur looking on in gleeful fascination as the cast iron 736 Berkshire electric locomotive “steams” by; Just out of the frame, circles of chemical-pellet induced smoke are puffing out of its little smokestack.

In the 1950s, Lionel trains were the quintessential under-the-tree expression of America’s post-war prosperity. The Lionel Corporation had found a way to flourish during the war, by retooling their assembly lines to manufacture servo motors for military equipment instead of electric motors for toy trains. Once the war ended, the company repurposed those servo motors in the first post-war generation of its marquee product.

Our family was sufficiently prosperous (the family business produced ceramic household tile at a plant in Keyport, New Jersey) that our parents could afford to give their kids the very best: that Berkshire locomotive with its smoke puffing stack and whistling coal car was top-of-the-line, but that was just the start of the layout. Arrayed within the circle of tracks were equally high-end accessories:

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What I Am Not Going To Say
At My AA Meeting Today

January 28, 2017
Paul Schatzkin
commentary, Digest, Writing
2 Comments

I’m going to go to my AA “Home Group” this morning. This is what I probably will not “share” with the meeting:

Hi, I’m Paul and I’m an alcoholic.

I feel compelled to say something today that’s going to sound like AA heresy. But I feel like I have to speak my truth here even if it means becoming the first person to ever be excommunicated from AA…

I don’t really know but one or two of you here, so most of you have know way of knowing what a tough time I’ve been having over the past year. My wife decided last – well, it’s been almost a year now – that she needs to live in Portland Oregon, where her two adult sons and her now one-and-a-half year old granddaughter live. And as you can see, I am not in Portland, Oregon. I have been to Portland at least a dozen times since ‘the kids’ moved there in the early ‘aughts, but I’ve never felt like I’ve wanted to live there. After more than two decades, I’m rooted here.

Welcome to Portland!

Welcome to Portland!

And as a recovering alcoholic myself, it’s hard to fathom how I am going to live in a city that greets you getting off the plane with a huge sign that says “Give In To Beer.”

Thursday night, I learned that a dear friend had died this week, most likely from complications of alcoholism. He was only a year older than I am. I think that news kinda put me over the edge…

Which brings me to yesterday. Yesterday was a day off from a new job that I got last summer which has absolutely been my salvation over the past 6 months. I like the work, it truly takes me out of myself and makes me a better person than I am when when I’m by myself. But sometimes the days off are challenging because, well, there’s nobody to talk to.

Yesterday, I felt knots in my stomach, that spinning wheel of loneliness and sadness, fear and despair. As I said later to my sponsor, I was having a tough day…

In the middle of the day, I made some calls and sent out some texts, to see if there was somebody in my orbit who could meet me for lunch or coffee. All those overtures came up empty. People are busy.

At one point, I was driving around town and started thinking, “maybe what I need is a meeting…” I had no idea where there was one in the middle of the day on a Friday. I was in town, driving around, and thought about going over to ‘202,’ but… I just couldn’t quite convince myself to do that, either. It wasn’t until later in the day that I fully realized why.

I didn’t go to 202 for the same reason that I don’t go to more AA meetings like this one: because I really dislike the whole format and structure of these gatherings.

A couple of years ago I ran across a TED talk by a Scandinavian counselor named Johann Hari that talked about the antidote to addiction being not just abstinence but connection.

Connection. That is what I was longing for yesterday. And sadly it is not what I get at these meetings. I don’t really get a meaningful level of connection and engagement from sitting through an hour of extemporaneous 3 minute monologues. And I really don’t like the unstated pressure to be witty and profound if and when I take my own turn to ‘“share.”

So mostly I come to these meetings, sit in silence, and hope I get to hold a girl’s hand when when we all stand up to recite the Lord’s Prayer (which I usually don’t actually recite. It’s a Jesus prayer and I’m a Jew.).

I know that the whole “no cross talk” structure of these meetings is essential to their decorum. But jeezus, sometimes what you really need is to actually talk to somebody. The absence of dialog defeats my whole purpose of being here. It actually makes me feel more isolated when what I need is something… not superficial. When I need the give and take of an actual conversation.

In the realm of recovery, I know that I’m one of the very lucky ones. The compulsion to drink or smoke or sniff (my primary drug of choice for nearly 20 years was pot; thank god I never got in to heroin or crack…) completely left me after, I dunno, somewhere between 30 and 60 days. That was back in 1987 – 29+ years ago – so I don’t really remember. I just know that there are a lot of recovering alcoholic types who struggle with the compulsion every day. That’s why the program insists that recovery is “One Day At A Time.” So I know that I am among the most fortunate of recovering ‘polyholics.’

What I’m trying to say here is: when I’m feeling isolated and alone – the very conditions that might spark a round of drinking if my sobriety was not as strong as it is – the last thing I need in the world is to sit in a hard chair feeling like a lame loser because I’m not to going to be as entertaining as the guy who “shared” before me or the woman who will share after me. But that’s the structure. And I sometimes I just fucking hate it.

I come to these meetings because they give me the opportunity to at least experience and be grateful for – if not actually “share” – my sobriety, and the fact that I because I quit sipping, sniffing and puffing nearly 30 years ago, I am still living – even it that presently means struggling with some of the most difficult choices I have ever had to face.

I have an “altar” of sorts in my home on which rest photographs of my ancestors, and also the photographs of several friends whose lives were cut short by their addictions. I have another photo to add to that collection now.

But jeezus, sometimes you just want to talk to somebody. Sometimes you just need a hug.

Don’t get me wrong. I know damn well that I would not be alive today had I not started going to AA meetings back in 1987. And I come to meetings so that I don’t take that gift of sobriety for granted.

But yesterday, I needed something else.

OK, I guess my three minutes are up.

Thanks for listening.

RobinWilliams

Where’d Paul Go??

January 2, 2017
Paul Schatzkin
commentary, Digest, photography, Writing
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I can’t really know if anybody besides me has been asking that question, but if you’re one of the regulars around here (the numbers may not be legion, but the affection is sincere…) you may have been wondering why the frequency of posts to this site dropped off dramatically in the second half of last year (2016).

At least, I hope somebody noticed, and even if nobody did notice, I’m going to attempt to explain the absence.

So, where did Paul go?

He sorta went into hiding for awhile. His innate tendency to be reclusive and withdrawn when things “go all pear-shaped” got the better of him for several months.

Or, rather, maybe, he just had the wind kicked out of him, and he’s been trying to catch his breath.

Or maybe he’s been thrown into the middle of a lake and is treading water, trying to figure which shore to swim to.

Yeah, that’s it. Treading water.

Chalk it all up to disruption on a personally cosmic scale.

– – – – – – –

I remember exactly when the fabric of my universe started to tear: April 29, 2016.

Ann and I were in Portland, Oregon. She got back in the car and said,

“They want me to start August 1st.”

At that moment, the Big Bang Theory went into full reverse and my Universe started to implode….

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Playing The Hand We’ve Been Dealt

October 28, 2016
Paul Schatzkin
commentary, Digest
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Friday October 28, 2016

I’ll finish my second cup of coffee
then toast a bagel
so that I’m not hungry
when I fire up
the old red truck
(which rolled off the assembly line
while Harry Truman was President)
and head down
to Pegram City Hall
to vote.

Yes,
I’m going to vote
for Hillary.

Surprised?

Despite all my reservations
despite my concerns
that the a vote for Her
is a vote for Corporate Oligarchy
is a vote for a status quo
that is clearly not serving
some significant portion of the populace
– white, rural (my peeps!)
– urban under-educated (we love the under-educated!)
those “salt of the earth” types
for whom Donald-fucking-Trump
seems like a viable alternative
when what he really represents
is …
(was it Michael Moore who said this?)
… a Molotov Cocktail
that the proles can throw
into the Palace of the Establishment.

As in:
Here, take THIS
you game-rigging
East Coast
Ivy Leaguers.
Suck on this
flaming bottle of rage.
#Her2016?
#Guillotines2020.

But when it comes down to
actually pulling a lever
as much as I would like to
#CrushTheDuopoly
it ain’t gonna happen.
At least, not this year.

This year, we have to
hold our nose
swallow our idealistic pride
just do what we can
to keep (what’s left of?)
a once bold experiment
together.

Or do what Bernie says we should do.
Or as Andrew Sullivan said
just grow-the-fuck-up
and do what has to be done.

It’s unfortunate for Hillary, I guess
that the climate around her ascension
is so toxic.

It’s unfortunate, too,
that her life and career
have unfolded as they have
although had it been any different,

had she not entered the public arena
at the side of her charismatic husband
[compelling human interest story in the NYTimes this morning]
and then she had to pretty much stand by
while he self destructed
and then saddle herself
with all of that wreckage.

So you wonder
what it might have been like
if she’d emerged through some corridor
other than as Bill’s spouse
but that’s pointless speculation.

We’re all here to play
the hand that we’ve been dealt.

Sure, she’s got a lot of baggage
Who has lived on this planet
for nearly seven decades
and not accumulated
their share of shit?

(Certainly not
Donald-fucking-Trump
who has taken every day
of his 70 years to evolve
into a steaming sack
of human excrement)

But underneath it all
one occasionally gets a glimpse
of a genuinely exceptional
if equally flawed
flesh blood and bone
woman.

It’s hard to separate
the actual person
from all the mediated data points.
Who really knows
what she is really like?
I mean, who,
outside of her tight inner circle
if even them?

We’re certainly not going to get
any sense of that
from television, or – especially – the Internet
– that digital echo chamber
that does such a great job
of re-telling us what we already know.

We just have to play
the hand we’ve been dealt
and take some solace
in knowing that voices we respect
like Bernie
like Andrew
like Elizabeth Warren
are all in the same boat.

So I will dip my oar
in the swirling ocean of crazy
pull my solitary stroke
in Her direction,
hope she can steer us
to some shore of (relative) sanity,
and then pray that the polls
are reasonably accurate.

Otherwise….
Kool-Aide, anyone?

 

What Did He Just Say???

October 12, 2016
Paul Schatzkin
commentary, Digest, personal, travel
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So here’s what all the fuss is about...

This is 17 month old Juniper Rae, Ann’s first and quite possibly her only-ever grandchild. She is the primary reason why Ann decided to pull up stakes and move to Portland back in July.

Sunday night, we all – Ann and I, eldest son James, younger son Robert, Rob’s wife Melissa and Juniper – all tuned into the professional verbal wrestling match aka “The Presidential Debate” btw Hillary and Drumpf.

Her parents don’t let Juniper have a lot of screen time, and she doesn’t see much TeeVee, so this was an exception. But as you can tell from her expression, even a 1-year-old can look at Trump and wonder whatthefuck just came out of his incoherent noise hole.

Oh, and I have to put a dollar in the “swear jar” for saying “fuck.” Actually, I put in two dollars. Figured I may as well pay in advance for the next one…

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week

September 17, 2016
Paul Schatzkin
commentary, Digest, music
1 Comment

This past Thursday night I attended the sold-out opening screening of “Eight Days A Week” – director Ron Howard’s ode to The Beatles that focuses primarily on their touring years, from 1962-1966.

It is hard now not to think of The Beatles as anything other than a phenomenon – Beatlemania! – and an iconic force of musical nature. They were all of those things, but what this movie so effectively reminds us – as John Lennon famously said somewhere in the “Beatles Anthology” – is that they were “just a band.”

But oh my, what a band…

With vintage photos and film clips from the late 1950s and early 60s, “Eight Days A Week” shows us four guys who grew up together (OK, maybe not so much Ringo, who joined The Beatles just as they started their recording career, but he shared their scrappy Liverpool origins). It was essentially John’s band from the beginning, but part of his gift was his ability to recognize in Paul and George talent and ambition equal to his own.

The mission of the documentary is to trace the full arc of their years as a touring band: from the clubs of Hamburg were their sound was forged, to the Cavern Club in Liverpool where they found their audience, and eventually around the world, where their concerts were drowned out by screaming fans. Throughout the arc we are watch as the role “pop music” in the cultural firmament is transformed in front of our eyes and ears.

But the full power and sheer artistry of The Beatles is more fully conveyed in the 30 minutes of concert footage that follows the documentary.

Here are The Beatles in a truly epic setting: Shea Stadium in New York – the first performance of their final tour in 1966. They dash out on the field and climb atop a stage that looks like a boxing ring erected over second base, in the middle of the vast expanse of a baseball field, 50 yards away from the nearest fan, some 56,000 of whom are screaming their heads off through the entire show.

Still, you can’t help but be impressed with the quality of the performance. The set includes both covers and originals, opening with “Twist and Shout” and ending with “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help.” Showing the complete concert after the documentary is its own tour-de-force; it reminds us what the phenomenon was really about: the sheer power of skilled musicianship, the intensity of accomplished artistry.

The documentary is a 90 minute setup; the concert footage is a 30 minutes payoff – the undeniable proof of everything postulated in the film.

Ron Howard’s film also reminds us just how much “Beatlemania” was a reflection of the times. In America especially, The Beatles arrival in February 1964 was the medicine a grieving nation needed after the shock of the Kennedy assassination. Their appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show carved the opening cracks in what would eventually become the “Generation Gap.” We are reminded of the tumultuous history that The Beatles were part of, from the conflagration in Vietnam to the Civil Rights movement.

One detail in the documentary that surprised me addressed the matter of race as it is uniquely experienced in America: The Beatles had a clause in their contracts that declared that they would not play for segregated audiences. A voice over from Paul McCartney explains how foreign the whole idea of segregation and Jim Crow was to their experience in England.

Howard deftly gives all four Beatles nearly equal screen time for retrospective commentaries. The surviving Beatles, Paul and Ringo, appear on screen several times in their current incarnations; There are equal amounts of archival footage of John and George looking back on their years as Beatles. Their commentaries lend a “Rashomon” like perspective to the whole experience.

The Beatles 1966 tour ushered in the era of the stadium concert – despite technology woefully suited for the purpose; George explains how Vox built amplifiers especially for this tour: “I think they were a hundred watts…” – and much of the audio was piped through the crackly stadium PA system: “Now playing at second base… The Beatles!”

I think it was Ringo who described the aftermath of what would history would record as The Beatles final live performance, the last concert of the 1966 tour at Candlestick Park in San Francisco: After the show the band was raced out of the stadium grounds in what Ringo describes as “a meat wagon” – a bare metal armored police wagon, the kind that ferries convicts to prisons. It was pretty much within those lurching steel confines that all four Beatles decided “we’re not going to do this any more…”

Freed from the demands of a touring schedule, The Beatles dedicate themselves to the studio. There is footage from the EMI studio at Abbey Road of audio tape loops strung between tape machines… and then there is “Sergeant Pepper.”

From there the documentary quickly traces the remainder of The Beatles recording career: 5 albums in three years, from “Magical Mystery Tour” to the “White Album,” “Abbey Road” and the “posthumously” released “Let It Be” (which was released after the band announced its demise early in 1970).

The movie ends with the most footage I have ever seen from The Beatles last-ever ‘concert’ – that day in January 1969 when they set up on the roof of the Apple Corps headquarters in London and played to the people on the street below. It’s more than three years since the last time they performed “live” together, and the footage proves, once and for all that The Beatles were still, and always were, a great fucking band.

*

“Eight Days A Week Is” playing at The Belcourt. Info and tickets here. It will also be released to streaming video via Hulu next week. A subscription will be required. So go see it in a theater with good surround sound.

What Ever Happened to
The Age of Aquarius?

August 16, 2016
Paul Schatzkin
commentary, Digest, music
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The Oracle of Facebookistan has reminded me that this week is Woodstock Anniversary Week. It’s some odd anniversary, like 47.

I have already composed and posted my recollections and reflections on the subject.

This is an excerpt from a book (or maybe it’s a one-man show?) that I was working on earlier this year. I kinda hit a wall with it, and then life happened. I’ll get back to it one of these days…

Whatever Happened To The Age of Aquarius?

That’s the first of three installments, just follow the links at the bottom of each to get to the next.