Tonight’s Sopranos – SPOILERS

The final countdown is on, and if tonight’s episode is any indication, it’s going to be a thrilling ride. Chase & co. wrote/directed Johnny Sac’s demise beautifully, was such a powerful symbol in an episode laced with references to waning legacies, mortality and the struggle for redemption. The diner scene was derivative, sure, but the crew’s shooting of the sequence was extremely intelligent and cool.  And hey, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best.

 

Pins and needles over here.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

I spent August-September of 1997, when I was unemployed and new to Oregon, reading every novel Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote. Was a great summer. He will be missed.

 

HGv6 – top 5 Vonnegut novels

 

1. Cat’s Cradle

2. Slaughterhouse Five

3. Deadeye Dick

4. Breakfast of Champions

5. Player Piano

 

What do you think?

 

UPDATE: NPR had a great tribute to Vonnegut Thursday night, with comments from other American writers. John Irving mentioned something Vonnegut said to him once – "He hated semicolons. He called them hermaphrodites." What a great line.

So I’ve been thinking about the Iraq War lately…

…ever since the previous post about Hillary Clinton’s vote and her refusal to own up to the giant, awful mistake it was. Is it understandable that future political aspirations motivated votes by Clinton, John Edwards, Harry Reid and other democrat leaders? Should we be ok with it? The conversation boiled over in my head tonight when I heard a radio report about the shanigans going on in Washington between Congress and the Oval Office, each grandstanding their indignation in a silly political power struggle. It all strikes me as shameful.

 

Told a co-worker about a flight home from Portland to Indiana five years ago, when I happened to be seated next to a woman who was heading back to see her brother off to Iraq for his tour. She was in her mid-forties, and she told me he was pushing 50. 50 and going to Iraq. I don’t know the rules/age limit for sending soldiers to war, and frankly I can’t remember the exact circumstances that led to his being called up to fight. I suspect he’d enlisted in the Reserves some time ago and was nearing the end of his obligation when, as damn bad luck would have it, his number came up. The president’s men created a phantom war and the cowards in Congress approved it. A 50-year-old person with a life and family gets shipped out. Pretty jarring to say the least.

 

A few days later, before boarding my flight back to Portland, I was sitting in Indianapolis International nearby a gate where several young soldiers were also waiting to board – they were all dressed in Army standard issue desert fatigues, minutes from shipping out to Iraq. One fella caught my eye – some tall, lean, young kid (I’d guess 18 or 19) standing apart from the group, hunched over with arms draped around his wife or girlfriend, trying to fight the urge to break down sobbing. Eventually he lost the fight. Head buried in her shoulder trying to muffle his outburst, both of them tearful and shaking. It was one of those moments where you wanted to just stand up and shout, why is this happening? what the hell is this for?! 

 

This is probably the moment that solidified my view of the war. I had always had philosophical issues – considered it an amazingly illogical response to 9/11 – but these two experiences reminded me this was not a philosophical thing, it was a real thing involving real people, many of whom would die. 50 and 18, with sisters and girlfriends. The wrong war. Not noble or moral and, as we now know, ineffective and damaging.

 

President Bush, Clinton, Edwards, 75 other senators and 296 members of congress should not be given a pass for voting in favor of the war. There are a few things that, naive as it it may sound to cynics, should always supercede politics. For instance, a decision over whether to send teenagers and baby boomers into battle to die. The first questions should not be, "how does my vote impact my political future?" or "will I appear weak?".  It should be "could I send my son or daughter, brother or sister into this fight and live with myself? Is this worth their lives?"

 

And then, "do the ends justify the means?" and "what outcome do we want and are we ready to achieve it?"

 

In short, I guess the answer to whether I’m ok with a senator protecting her political future by voting in the affirmative remains…absolutely, positively, 100% no.

 

 

 

 

 

5 questions of conventional wisdom

 

1. Is Joe Montana the greatest QB ever? 

Conventional wisdom: Yes.

Hipster: Not even close.

Have you read The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis? He’s got it right – Montana gets too much credit for the Niners’ championships. The real all-time great was Bill Walsh, who created and implemented the most sophisticated and innovative offensive system ever seen in pro football. He changed the game forever. Montana was simply the guy who made the right throws to the right guys at the right times. It’s why Jerry Rice is not the greatest receiver of all time. It’s why Boise St. finished in the top 5. It’s all about the system.

 

2. Were Guns n’ Roses as influential on popular music as the Beatles, Elvis and Buddy Holly?

CW: No way.

Hipster: Absolutely.

The latter three are noted for having changed the sound of future pop music from bands/artists to follow. Remember what pop music was like before GNR? It was dominated by lightweight glam bands, goofy jingle pushers and yuppie pre-hipsters. Now, remember what happened after GNR – music got darker, less poppy, more cynical – witness, grunge. It was a cultural shift on the order of the others listed above – and though their decline was far more rapid (and silly), their brief era of dominance changed the sound of pop music from those to follow. It’s true.

 

3. Did Reaganomics work?

Liberals: Blaspheme!

Hipster: Probably.

Though my liberals friends may gasp and cringe, it’s probably true. I’m not a fan of how he went about it, but when you are able to view the long-term impact objectively, the truth is the enormous wealth generated by huge tax cuts for the rich did lead to re-investment and staggering growth, which did cause a trickle down effect. I’m not an expert (hence "probably"), but ours is the richest country in history since his presidency. And the wealth is more ubiquitous than in any major civilization in history. And anyway, the better question is, are Americans as happy as they can be? No, not in most cases.

 

4. Can we conquer all major deadly diseases in our lifetime?

CW: You will die.

Hipster: You will live.

Ok, lots of people have predicted this – but, as I understand it, curing major diseases is less about solving an elusive mystery and more about speeding processes and crunching information. We have seen, and will continue to see, exponential increases in information processing and storage through technology (not to mention forward evolution in cognitive functions and information storage in the human brain). We’ll get there in 50 years or less, I say.

 

5. Which political talking head combo sucks more: Bill Maher & Al Franken, or Rush Limbaugh & Ann Coulter?

CW in both camps: We’re right. They’re wrong.

Hipster: They both suck. 

Nothing usurps life out of politics more than closed-minded loud mouths who care more about their own celebrity than contributing anything meaningful to the national political discussion. Maher and Franken, like Limbaugh and Coulter, are entertainers at best. They are social scourges at worst. They are not experts. They are obnoxious, egomaniacal business success stories who are revered only by people who are intellectually stunted, gullible, part of the scam, or a combination of the three. They are a poor white man’s version of Death Row vs. Bad Boy, only they fire sound bites instead of bullets. They should be laughed at but never taken seriously.

According to the NY Times…

Hillary Clinton is going more hard-line in her unapology for voting to support the Iraq war. To wit:

“If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from,” Mrs. Clinton told an audience in Dover, N.H., in a veiled reference to two rivals for the nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Wow. Did she hire Dubya’s speech writer or something? Same hubris and intellectual inflexibility of our current prez. Why not just admit it was a terrible decision made in the name of political expediency? She knew it, we knew it, why not just admit it?

Guess what, Senator, the with-us-or-against-us strategy will not work with me or anyone else I know. You lost our vote in 2002 when you put your own political future ahead of the better interests of this country. Deal with it.

I’m going with Barack Obama, the one guy who called BS on the Iraq War from the beginning.

What if the AMA film smoking rule was back-dated?

So the AMA has launched a campaign to get Hollywood to assign ‘R’ ratings to films featuring characters who smoke. It’s kinda funny to envision what would happen if their new standard was applied retroactively.

 

Tom, of Tom & Jerry fame, was known to light up from time to time. I heard Wilma Flinstone had an on screen smoke too once. Re-file them under adult anime?

 

David Straithairn smoked maybe 10 packs in Good Night & Good Luck. By AMA standards, we’d prolly have to call this otherwise PG-rated movie…NC-17? 

 

A&E’s "Intervention" is one of the more powerful TV programs on earth. It regularly shows kids and adults shooting up, whoring themselves, vomiting etc. The subjects also routinely smoke. Re-list it on the Spice Channel?

 

Two daytime sitcom legends, Greg Brady and Kelly Kapowski, both confronted smoking (one tobacco, the other pot) in very special episodes of the Brady Bunch and Saved by the Bell. Would the AMA cast that to late late night TV, shown simultaneously with unedited Comedy Central movies and the Girls Gone Wild commercials?

 

You get the idea. Smoking in movies causes kids to smoke like video games teach kids to kill and music to do drugs. I hear they’re also considering going back and editing movies like Breakfast at Tiffany’s so the mindless viewers aren’t seduced by Audrey Hepburn’s irresitible cancer drags. What, pray tell, would the AMA have her hold instead? A chicken flauta?

 

Speaking of which, considering the "epidemic" that obesity is becoming in the US, should we expect the AMA’s next frontier to be getting R ratings for movies that glamorize eating? Would Big Night and Water for Chocolate be hard-core porn in the AMA’s world?

 

AMA: get back to driving up health care costs. You have no place in pop culture.

 

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHOUCH!?!

@$!#$!!

 

-Dom

And another thing…

So Mom and Dad put all these clothes on me this morning and take me off to see the doctor for my first check up (nailed it). It’s all yuppie kid brown and rainbow and whatnot, with a matching hat. They squeeled. Me, I was pretty annoyed – too many layers that were too constrictive, and the baby seat strap is uncomfortably situated, if you get my meaning.

 

Making matters worse, they put a cookie-on-a-stick in my hand and snap a picture. Take a look – do I seem happy? Note to mom and dad: 1) I’m always hungry, 2) I can’t eat solids, 3) putting a cookie next to my head when I’m hungry, and then taking a picture for your own amusement is full-on bologna.

 

We’ll see who laughing when I launch a three-phase attack on my diaper around 3 AM. And again at 4.

 

Peace out,

Dom

 

 

Guest blogger: Dominic

Hi everyone. I’m Dominic, son of "hipster." Dad is feeling a wee tired and asked me to fill in for today’s update. He’s tired? Just four days ago, without any reason whatsoever, these knuckleheads went and turned my world upside down (or, more accurately, right side up since…well, you get it). I was just floating there all warm and snuggly, getting food through a direct link with that Mom person, and they went and cut her open and yanked me out naked as the day I was, um…

 

Anyway. Felt it was a good opportunity to drop a note to everyone to say thanks for all the friendly comments to Dad’s post below – turns out I am damn cute, and it’s a testament to readers’ sharp eyes and intellects to say so. Please, go on you wise and wonderful old people.

 

Now then, I hate to be pessimistic but it’s been a helluva few days. First my blood sugar drops right after the harrowing incident described above, then they take me to the nursery and stick tubes in my hand and start pricking my foot every couple of hours. Top it off, Dad was constantly coming in and staring at me as I tried to sleep. Goes like this – I’m sleeping, Dad walks in, I ignore the laser gaze for a few minutes, and then, sure as I’m typing this, he leans in and kisses me with that coffee breath of his. I mean, it’s like he’s never seen a baby before. Yeah, the glucose count is stabilizing, whoop-dee-dum, how’s about we celebrate by letting a baby get some sleep without ol’ stubbleface-coffee-guzzler bugging me at 1 AM?

 

At least Mom’s around. She’s gone through prolly more insanity than me these last few days – to recap, they pump her full of who-knows-what, make her stew for a day, make her use all the energy she’s got left to push me out, and then perform major abdominal surgery because my mellon’s too big. And yet she dutifully wakes up every two hours to feed me. I really love that. Best part is she still smiles and seems to enjoy herself, even when I’m hammering her with defcon 1 shrieks and shakes. Ah, what a great woman.

 

So back to the point, we’re still here in the hospital resting up. Good news is I’m in Mom’s room now, finally out of that godforbidden nursery. I’m feeling good, everything’s in working order, the nurses have stopped their persistent jabbing, and now it’s all about sleeping and feeding before we head home tomorrow.

 

All in all, the ‘rents look happy and tired. I’m pretty whipped too, I’m hungry and my toosh just made that weird gurgling sound again. I have to go. Thanks again for all the well wishes, look forward to meeting you all soon.

 

Peace out,

Dom

Welcome, Dominic Joseph Hipsher

Early this morning our son, Dominic Joseph, was born. He is pretty big (9 lbs 5 oz) and very tall (22.5 inches). He got his dad’s frame and his mom’s adorable face – perfect all around. He comes to us after roughly 22 hours of labor and, ultimately, a c-section to get him across the finish line. I’ve posted the first two pics of our little man to your right.

 

Mom and son are healthy, happy and exhausted. They’ve gone through Hades these last couple of days. My happiness is mixed with a heavier cut of relief – it’s amazing to go through the process, and extremely humbling to be powerless over it.

 

Anyway, the news is great from NE P-town. Much more to come, including more baby pics we took with a real camera.

 

Cheers!