Baby Bumble Bee

A new take on an old classic.  Yes, Conner’s totally over it, but that’s what the sedatives do.  And now for a sharp turn deep into mundane silliness…

America, according to West Side Story

Don’t sue me, okay, because I can’t afford it.  And after the last couple of weeks on Wall St., neither can you.  And that fact got me wondering about the mythology of the American Dream…

original lyrics:

AMERICA

ROSALIA
Puerto Rico,
You lovely island . . .
Island of tropical breezes.
Always the pineapples growing,
Always the coffee blossoms blowing . . .

ANITA
Puerto Rico . . .
You ugly island . . .
Island of tropic diseases.
Always the hurricanes blowing,
Always the population growing . . .
And the money owing,
And the babies crying,
And the bullets flying.
I like the island Manhattan.
Smoke on your pipe and put that in!

OTHERS
I like to be in America!
O.K. by me in America!
Ev’rything free in America
For a small fee in America!

ROSALIA
I like the city of San Juan.

ANITA
I know a boat you can get on.

ROSALIA
Hundreds of flowers in full bloom.

ANITA
Hundreds of people in each room!

ALL
Automobile in America,
Chromium steel in America,
Wire-spoke wheel in America,
Very big deal in America!

ROSALIA
I’ll drive a Buick through San Juan.

ANITA
If there’s a road you can drive on.

ROSALIA
I’ll give my cousins a free ride.

ANITA
How you get all of them inside?

ALL
Immigrant goes to America,
Many hellos in America;
Nobody knows in America
Puerto Rico’s in America!

ROSALIA
I’ll bring a T.V. to San Juan.

ANITA
If there a current to turn on!

ROSALIA
I’ll give them new washing machine.

ANITA
What have they got there to keep clean?

ALL
I like the shores of America!
Comfort is yours in America!
Knobs on the doors in America,
Wall-to-wall floors in America!

ROSALIA
When I will go back to San Juan.

ANITA
When you will shut up and get gone?

ROSALIA
Everyone there will give big cheer!

ANITA
Everyone there will have moved here!

Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
© 1956, 1957 Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright renewed.
Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.

McPalin no McDucks Story

I think perhaps the most lucid 30,000-foot view of the prospect of Sarah Palin becoming Vice President (and very likely President within a couple of years) was articulated recently by Matt Damon when he compared the possibility to a “really bad Disney movie.”  When you realize the truth in his comparison, realize also that this is the script – the playbook – the McCain campaign is following.  Running a campaign is all about writing a story, and they’re writing their story according to a generic formula with which we’ve all got womblike comfort – the Disney formula of plain-old-gumption triumphing over massive, sophisticated machineries.  In the Disney movies, it always turns out those machineries are dopey and weak (which of course they’d have to be for a hockey mom to stare down Putin), but that fairy tale conception of the world doesn’t usually reflect reality.  That’s why these movies make so much money: they are rooted in fantasy and they facilitate a deeply craved escape from reality.  A real McCain/Palin presidency won’t follow the movie-version path.

Real tragedies happen.  McCain/Palin is a tragedy of epic proportions waiting to happen to the American people and the world.  Let’s not invite us in as if it’s an innocent remake of The Mighty Ducks.

Biography

First off, I’m an Information Architect for a living. Owing mainly to that, I’ve got a real love-hate relationship with the more cannonical organizational schemes for websites. Especially blogs. Now, most of the time I live in the -love- side of the street, but all these blogs, microblogs, whatevers, et cetera are playgrounds and I kind of treat them as such. So hopefully you’re not the kind of dork who gets all self-righteous if the “About” page is off-topic. And if you are, well, I love you but get over it.

So when I grabbed this blog address a few years ago, here’s what was going on: I had used wordpress as a stand-alone on a number of sites, including my own, way too personal blog site. Any veteran WP users can attest to the spam/hijack vulnerabilities that such installations represented. After a couple of years of it, I was fed up. I got tired of the constant vigilance involved with maintaining WP on my server, so I was drawn to this easier way.  I found a kickass subdomain on WP, traded in my domain addiction for simplicity, and washed my hands of the hassle.  I’ve been let known that I “should” post a lorem ipsum generator on this site, but there are a bundle of good ones out there already. If that’s what you’re looking for, follow this link.

Second off, I do relatively serious stuff a lot of the time (read: work). Which makes me a frustrated artist. Yeah yeah, it’s a stereotype, but it reflects reality. It’s not to say my job’s not creative, because it sure can be and often is. But I went to school not once, but twice, for fine arts. BFA 1994 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (no, I wasn’t pals with David Sedaris, though we shared writing workshop teacher Jim McManus) and MFA 1997 from the University of Oregon. Both degrees were, more or less, in painting. I taught painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design from 1997-2001. I showed and sold paintings pretty intensely. Painting was my life until my second son was born, which was only 8 years ago. So to end up practicing something as straight-laced as IA for a career means there’s a flipside that needs some serious outlet time. No single dumb blog’s got the facets to be the everything, but this is sometimes a good start.

Some of the rest, in no particular order:

I also spend cycles analyzing anatomies and classifying various types of tweets and trying to figure out the inflection of that galaxy.
I’m genuinely into the structures, movements, & relationship potential of social networking.
I paint when I can, I make things like furniture and dinner and all that jazz.
If you’ve ever gone to a Rite Aid to buy pencils and been shocked to find one in your pack of 10 replaced with a counterfeit pencil made entirely of wood, lacking lead or eraser, I may well be the responsible party.
In 1998, I opened an online confessional called confess-it.com, and received/collected thousands of mostly boring submissions – and a handful of the most disturbing confessions I’ve ever read. Confess-it.com is online today, but updated and changed and operated by New York State Council of the Arts.
I’m also responsible for a modest number of photos on flickr, and you can check them out but I’m not making any quality claims.
I’m the single father of three totally kickass kids who challenge me to grow more than I’m comfortable with nearly every day.

If you want to get in touch with me, use the contact/comments thingy on this site. I get stuff, and I write back. Follow me on twitter too if you don’t already. Find me there at www.twitter.com/texburgher and follow. And be good. Until then,

Geoff

MVM: Spandau Ballet’s True

After a twitter link-sniping exchange a few weeks ago, True (by Spandau Ballet) found its way into my ironicaly named youtube favorites file.  These guys’ sincerity make Rick Astley blush. So true…