Westboro Baptist Church to Picket Joe Paterno’s Funeral: An Open Letter To All Joe Pa’s Fans

Hi, folks. I know you’re still digesting the news of Joe Pa’s death and trying to contextualize it as part of the Jerry Sandusky scandal’s narrative. That isn’t easy. Obviously, you loved Paterno and your grief is completely legitimate. The man had failings. OK. So do you and I. And he absolutely needed to do more to help the young people Sandusky was raping. That, as I’ve heard repeatedly today, will be the first paragraph of his legacy no matter what. And so, I don’t envy you your emotions right now.

I’m not writing this to talk about Paterno, but about this:

Disgusting, no?

Here we see the Phelps agenda—publicity for their madness. Now it’s come to the Penn State campus, or it shortly will. And you have to figure out how to deal with it.

Here are some suggestions. It’s possible to see the day of Joe Pa’s funeral as a way to celebrate his life (while not forgetting what happened re: Sandusky and those children, because we are not entitled to forget, any of us), partly because Westboro is part of the mix. Do your best to marginalize these lunatics. Rather than vent your spleens and inasmuch as these idiots deserve that issue, a counter-demonstration designed to mock and ridicule Westboro’s agenda works far better than any show of anger. These people live on your anger; that’s one aspect of their particular breed of insanity. Therefore, starve them. Mock them. Use them to your advantage. Ridicule makes it more likely they’ll remember their experience for next time. Unfortunately, we all know there will be a next time, somewhere. So don’t imagine you can put an end to Westboro, because you can’t. You can make them feel like homemade shit while they’re in Happy Valley, though.

I was angry when I first read about Westboro’s plans, sure. Still, you don’t need to give in to your justifiable rage when/if they show up. Honestly, the best option is mockery, laughter, satire, out-and-out ridicule. Show them to be the fuck-clowns they truly are.

Laugh them into silence. Ridicule them back to their lair. Mock them so completely they might never want to emerge again. You’ll be doing yourselves and others a real favor.

Again, my condolences. All Good Wishes. John.

Lisa and the Little Things

I’d like for you to imagine the place where you live.

Imagine the personal articles you associated with your spouse.

Now imagine having to discard them. Your partner is dead.

That’s been life lately. One room at a time, slowly because there’s simply so much to consider (clothes, books, accessories, spices I’ll never use, etc.), so much to discard because Lisa will not be returning to claim them. In an angry separation, of course, such items could be used as weapons; in this instance, they almost become relics.

Take for example her perfume bottles in the bathroom. I’ve had to throw them away; to look at them was like having little knives in both eyes. Now there’s very little of Lisa in that room; there’s a great deal more, of course, but I’ve had to think of in terms of one room at a time, not doing more at any one stage than I can, and leaving that room bare enough I can begin to re-decorate, a little.

As I’ve said, it’s the little things that hit and hurt the hardest. So they need to be replaced, these reminders, by whatever the survivor thinks should go in those places instead. Lisa’s grandmother Ann had it right; after her husband’s death she moved things around, and created new rules—for example, smoking was now permitted anywhere in the house, because as it was her place now, the rules were hers to make. Still, most often I’d find her in her favorite living-room chair pulling gently on a menthol cigarette, listening to the sounds outside as the next train from the coal fields passed not five hundred feet away from her back door.

There were always those trains. Lisa loved them as a childhood memory; I thought for certain one would crash and we’d all be toast.

I cannot imagine Ann’s life now; she’s lost her husband, daughter, and grand-daughter all within the space of a couple of years. She stays home much of the time as well. She’s a lovely woman, no kidding, and she has all my respect.

Meanwhile, Lisa’s soon to be interred at a cemetery near that house she loved, within earshot of those trains; her grandfather’s crypt is in the same room. Under the circumstances, that’s the ideal. She always mentioned several possible wishes, but returned each time to this. Therefore, that’s it. Now, I won’t be going there; I’ll be seeing her in a much more vital way when it’s time. Still, simply fulfilling her choice will be a wonderful thing. Be thou sure.

A bottle of women’s vitamins. Skin-care products. Brochures for performances and festivals she never got to attend. Those are the little things. Sometimes it hurts to come across them. It seems that I don’t want to throw these things away, in a fit of magical thinking (if I keep the house the way it was when she left, maybe she’ll come back). We’re past the one-hundred day mark, and it’s far too late. We all know she won’t be coming back, no matter how much we all want her to walk in through the front door of our lives again. She was never into practical jokes anyway. It was never like her.

When I’ve finished this ghastly task, then I’ll know how empty this apartment truly is. I don’t look forward to it.

SUNSHINE SPEEDWAY TO REOPEN; Now The Question Is When

Folks, I am VERY happy to pass along the word that the venerable Sunshine Speedway in St. Petersburg, Florida, long the home of the Gulfcoast Classic and the breeding ground for God alone knows how many amazing drivers, has passed into the hands of Robert Yoho, driver and, now, benefactor. It’s hard to imagine the fan interest on opening night, but if there’s not an absolute turnaway crowd I will be amazed. This is one of those all-too-rare stories in racing that fans everywhere rightly ought to celebrate. Once at Eldora Speedway I saw a guy wearing a T-shirt that read HERE’S A GOOD IDEA….TEAR DOWN A MALL BUILD A RACE TRACK. I love that. In fact, that strip-mall where Heidelberg Raceway used to stand strikes me as ripe for Caterpillars and renewal.

But in the case of Sunshine Speedway (or whatever it’ll finally be called), there’s no need. It was never torn down in the first place. And now we know it will again find use as a race track. The history speaks for itself; all you have to do is Google the name and you’ll see it for yourself. some of the greatest drivers in racing history have driven there, and now we’re about to be treated to the generations succeeding them. Personally, I can’t wait. Honestly, I plan on going at some point, with my daughter and her two kids, just to have that generational experience of passing on this singular tradition. The boys will absolutely love the loud engines and the way the ground shakes beneath their small feet. They’ll look up and—I swear—I believe they’ll say “Grampy, this is cool.”

Which it absolutely will be. More news from this small space as well as many others.

A Few Green Shoots

Survival, like loss, is something you can count in the simplest of terms.

As an example, today I decided to go downtown to Queen St., and Steve’s Music Shop. For years I’d been missing a little electronic keyboard I had—now, I never played it well, mind, but I liked at least making sounds I thought were interesting. Sometimes that enthusiasm carried over to the computer keyboard as well.

So—I found something. A Yamaha I could afford, not a toy but all the same it doesn’t cost three grand. Lisa would’ve been less than pleased, I think, if I’d done this while she was alive. Our/my place isn’t that large. She’d have had a right.

If only she knew what I’m thinking of doing to the blue room that had been her office….maybe this won’t happen, but electronic drumset prices are significantly down from past years, you see….

Fact is, though, I’m trying to find ways to occupy myself, make some sort of way forward. Trying to learn a little more about music represents one way; the Yamaha will rest near the computer, so this workstation will feel even more like “a fully operational death star.” Enough so for me, anyway. Or, rather, living star.

The point of course is the rediscovery of joy. You have to recover it when it’s lost. The alternatives are unworkable. It doesn’t much matter what that thing is: the great actor Peter Cushing threw himself into his acting after the death of his wife, and oh, by the way, that effort resulted in his being cast for a central role in the original Star Wars film. That must have felt like a completely Pyrrhic victory for Cushing; here he was, performing in a truly huge movie in box-office terms, but his beloved was not there to celebrate with him. That would’ve meant that any such occasion would come with a by-then familiar ache.

That ache, that loss. It’s like the way you’d feel if you’ve been run through like Frodo had been; forever after, you remember how deep the sword went.

You don’t need to justify yourself to a soul if you walk into a CD store and buy a knick-knack for a bookshelf, or hang a rude painting, or proudly display your collection of classic porn. All you need is to remember you are surviving one day after another. Then stitch those days together.

Re: Losing Lisa: Because Everything Always Echoes

Jan 3, 10:00 p.m.

This goes into the I sure as fuck did not expect this file: After yet another sojourn to York by bus to drop off still more ghastly forms, I waited in a line for a Keele bus home and wound up meeting a 20-something woman who I thought might originally have Somali roots, though I don’t know that with any certainty, and her completely adorable boy-in-stroller. They played together as she tried her best to entertain him. Turns out it had been awhile since they’d seen each other—all day, in fact. He’d been in day care while she attended class. Her joy at simply riding in his presence was a glorious thing to witness.

When we got to talk, I learned her husband had been killed in a car crash, a T-bone job straight in the driver’s door. I know from experience in racing that you won’t easily survive one of those in a passenger vehicle; that’s all there is to it. Meantime, the son wanted to play with mommy’s toque, so mommy took off her son’s toque instead and hid her face in it. He liked that. Then he looked over at me. I took off my toque and did the same thing. It seemed to crack him up that everybody was playing games with him.

Daddy wasn’t coming home either; October ninth was Daddy’s birthday, too.

Apparently, everyone’s marinating.

Once we got to Keele, they were going my way on the subway. The escalator wasn’t working, so she needed help getting the stroller up to the next level. Old man’s turn to help. No problem. All the way up those stairs I thought about what she’d had to endure, what that young boy had lost, what a future negated for nothing. Nothing of the kind should ever have happened to her.

It is impossible to make up moments like that, as it would’ve been impossible to make fiction from Lisa’s death; it was already too twisted for even my colleagues, twisted as we all are. The truth does that to you. Believe you me, sports fans, I have seen my fair share of truth. Now I look forward to irreality.

Her tragedy occurred in May. Her husband’s birthday was October ninth. I kid you not.

I’m getting back out, a little at a time. I still don’t deal well with others, and I’d still rather stay at home with the cats, watching races and trying not to write imitation Hemingway sentences. But I mean to get well. And when I say NO FUCKIN’ PRISONERS, best you take me at my word. You’ve never seen me like this.

FUCK—I’VE never seen me like this.

Sunshine Speedway: Reborn? PLEASE SAY YES!

I’d like to pass along some news that would surely be welcome if it comes to pass. Years ago Sunshine Speedway, a fast 1/4-mile paved track in St. Petersburg, was forced to close. The track later came into use by the state of Florida as a test facility for traffic-related infrastructure. In retrospect, this turned out to be a godsend since it meant the track surface remained intact. Now, it seems that people are talking about buying back the property and returning it to race-readiness.

How many times do you get to see this happen? Not very damn many. Too often, of course, it’s the other way around. The list of ghost-tracks is endless, but the ones that always hurt me were the destruction of Heidelberg and the closure of Golden Gate Speedway in Tampa, both great tracks with steep histories. For a long time I imagined that Sunshine would join that list, but—maybe not.

My family moved to Florida in 1972, meaning that I started seeing shows at Sunshine from about 1973. During that time many of America’s greatest stock-car drivers towed there: Trickle, Eddy, Rusty Wallace, Don Biederman, Junior Hanley, Red Farmer, how many Allisons (2 generations, in fact), et al, against the best drivers from both coasts of Florida. Dick Trickle, for example, learned on several different occasions about lapped traffic in extra-distance races, how tough they can be to negotiate. Dick Anderson and Jim Fenton were the teachers. And the lessons were good.

I should also mention two people who announced races there, Larry MacMillan and Bob Schmidt, two of the nicest folks I ever met in racing. One night they shared duties; somebody noticed a couple of people had climbed the hill behind turn one and were standing there watching the heats. Schmidt said, “Gentlemen, if you would please move back from that area. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt.” When they returned, MacMillan had the mic. “Hey! You! If a car kills you all, it’s not on our insurance, you know that, right? Get off the hill!” They were as talented as announcers get—the really good ones learn how to be colorists, turning play-by-play into a dramatic account. The really good ones turn language and pitch and tenor into art. These two guys were the very best.

Thomas Wolfe famously said that “you can’t go home again.” Maybe not. But if Sunshine Speedway does reopen (by any name), it’ll feel like home. Hey—somebody save me a beer and a hot dog, wouldya? Is the back row of the grandstands all taken yet? Let’s look over the railing and see who’s towing in.

Damn, that’d be fun.

(This is for Jim Fenton, with my thanks.)

Ron Paul Acolytes: His Mask Is Now Off; You Must Now Know Him For The Psychotic He Is.

Folks, I don’t know how to break this to you, but Ron Paul is psychotic. He’s led you on these past several years hoping you’d never see behind that genial mask. But that’s all it is: a mask. His real face is twisted and hideous, likewise his policies and the beliefs underlying those policies.

Have a look if you dare at the interview with Jake Tapper. He knows he’s responsible for every word in his “Survival Newsletter,” which ideas would laughable if Paul weren’t deadly serious about becoming President. He knows what he wrote, remembers what he thought, and yet he cannot cowboy up and admit what we all know to be true.

And so do you, acolytes.

I meet you here in Toronto as well as on my occasional travels to the U.S., made all the more occasional because of people like yourselves. I’d rather not have to argue idiocy, such as removing all U.S. foreign aid, which is as ridiculous a notion as anything floated by the Repub field. Sure, America needs to take care of its own, but isolationism has never worked as a strategy and in this interconnected global marketplace, isolationism is now for all intents and purposes impossible. Let’s leave aside the idea of what would happen to the economies of dozens of countries around the world, and the havoc that would create. I don’t like wars either, but imagine removing U.S. troops from around the world and sending them all into the domestic workforce en masse. Think there’s unemployment trouble now? And believe me, the military would be letting go of people left and right, on its face a good thing but the troubles would be endless, to say nothing of the treaties the U.S. would be breaking the moment President Paul enacted his lunatic ideas.

I’m sure some of you are ashamed of yourselves. You should be. You let yourselves be led around but an insane old man with dreams of personal power. I know some of you are brought low by this because I no longer see/hear you defending him, certainly not with the same vituperation you’ve shown in the past. It’s looking like this mountain of “revelations” has finally become too much for you to ignore. On some levels I feel sad for you. On others, look—you should’ve read more deeply, thought more critically, skeptically, but of course your schooling never prepared you for that. Instead, you were taught how to take the test without knowing or caring what facts meant.

But now, acolytes, Ron Paul has lost his mask. Now you have to look at him for what he truly is—a psychotic who does not have your interests at heart, only his own. Unfortunately, you no longer have a choice but to believe it because he’s standing before right now, as he is. Look at him. Then leave him to wither under Texas anonymity.

Ron Paul’s Campaign Flaming Out, Thanks To His Racist, Homophobic History: AND NOT A DAY TOO SOON, EITHER

In the past week, we’ve seen the Ron Paul campaign finally receive the serious scrutiny it deserves. Apparently, it didn’t take much digging since Paul signed his name to the texts that have him in such trouble now. Some of us with a bit of historical memory remember Paul’s previous campaigns, in which he wouldn’t even bother to deny that hate speech appeared under his name—which is the whole point—so that his present repudiations mean absolutely nothing. Paul’s just another craven politician trying to assume the reins of power. That’s all. He’s nothing special, and these recent revelations have pulled the curtain back to reveal him as he is: The master of Oz.

Paul’s trying to pull what he must consider to be an especially slick end-around, by saying “I didn’t write them.” That’s bullshit. The publication was called the Ron Paul Newsletter; there’s no disavowing that. And of course, the texts themselves—if Ron Paul didn’t write them, maybe Rand did—are hateful, boastful, prideful in a vision of America that never has existed, and hopefully to God never will.

And now, we see that he originally did admit to having written these texts himself. Consider for just a moment the madness of that prose. We aren’t talking here about Gingrich’s frickin’ laser-beams in space but a vision of America that no one should ever want.

His supporters in the States and here in Canada leave me cold. I’ve talked with people here, mostly young and otherwise disaffected from Canadian politics, who see Paul as some kind of panacea, mainly for his support of drug legalization but also because they’ve swallowed the Kool-Aid and have bought into his fantasies, never knowing what else he believes. Some days I think these people are simply an insult to the idea of intelligence, but on others it seems they’ve just been deluded by a redneck cracker shyster whose son if anything is even worse, if such a thing is possible. But they believe, by God, they believe that if Ron Paul could only become President, everyone’s worries would be solved.

If that was to happen, our current worries would become the least of our worries.

Don’t be duped, people. Ron Paul is a bigoted old man who’s willing to lie about himself, or indeed about anything that might help him achieve his goal of power for the holy fuck of it. He only looks genial, people; underneath that mask he’s another American Rightist monster, and his son is no different. I keep bringing up Rand because it seems the father’s also got it in mind to prepare a future for the son, which would make sense though it remains an alarming prospect. I’m grateful this news is appearing now; it means that the Paul campaign will wither on the vine as it should, and the Repubs will be left with either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich, either of whom will become chum for President Obama come the general election. Still, I don’t want you to forget the lesson of the Ron Paul campaign: It’s up to the people to vet their candidates, to find out everything possible, and then make judgments on whom to support, and anything less means the people are failing one of their most important requirements of citizenship, to elect the best possible people for the job. Stop settling. Demand more. And don’t believe the surface; dig.

Re: Ron Paul, It’s Time To Say a Few Unsayable Things

Whenever the subject of Ron Paul comes up (an occurrence more common here in Toronto than Americans might think), his supporters react with a fervor one simply does not see with other candidates. OK—often, the first thing I often hear is “He’ll legalize weed, dude!” As a matter of fact, he’s come out in favor of legalizing all drugs. I disagree, by the way. There are reasons soft drugs are called soft; we’re talking about plant-based material unrefined in any toxic manner, not, say, Oxycontin on which my wife overdosed. I’ve seen what Amsterdam is like at night; a guy walked up to me on the street and asked me if I wanted to snort some heroin of the end of a pin. I respectfully declined, and kept moving. Ron Paul’s America could look like that.

I repeat: I don’t care how good his ground game is in Iowa, although if he wins the caucus it will destroy any legitimacy that part of the process has become. I don’t think I’d miss it, actually. It’s arcane and finally meaningless. It’s no bellweather.

Now to the news about Paul’s newsletter. Various right-wing figures, like Larouche, used to use this method to keep an operating base going. The Religious Right used the same methods, as did the JBS. Paul’s disavowals aside, you’ve got to admit that the rhetoric contained therein was incendiary even for the nineties when PC speech was making societal inroads, for better and for worse.

Let’s start with the surface of this text. The grandiosity is worthy of Gingrich, which is saying something. “I have unmasked the plot for world government,” etc. Voters dismissed him in the nineties as much for the wildness of his rhetoric as the madness of the ideas themselves, and he deserves dismissal today.

He has disavowed these newsletters, but they appeared under his name and apparently it was in fact this basis for his income during that period. It would be like a fiction writer (very like) saying, “I repudiate everything I wrote twenty years ago. I didn’t even write it. So it came out under my name? So what?”

So this:

If someone produces a letter I wrote in the nineties, and sent it under my own name, quite likely I’d either have some vague recollection of it or would be forced to recognize that if my name means anything I have to vouch for having written it. Wouldn’t matter what I’d said. If I’d written it, I have no choice but affirm I wrote that material. Then I’d have to explain where I stand today, and either defend the earlier text or—then and only then—turn to repudiation. I wrote that, yes, but I no longer believe it. Ron Paul is trying to get away with an act of subterfuge: “I didn’t write that.” He’s trying to get away with that even though his signature appears on the newsletters. They’re titled with his name. His current logic cannot stand up to scrutiny.

Now as to substance. Wow. The MJ piece calls it “an appeal to paranoia,” so let’s consider his audience as we go. Who’s he speaking to? I think it’s the then-unformed but thoroughly present Tea Party sympathies he knows so well in his native Kentucky.

Now, look: It’s not as though I think Paul could ever actually win the presidency, but I’m certain of this—a world in which that could be possible would make the one we’re currently living in seem ridiculously quaint by comparison.

But—OK—weed would be legal. I’ll give you that. I agree that soft drugs should be legal, including hash and organic hallucinogenics (mushrooms). No question. But that cannot be the basis for one’s support of any candidate. Don’t be one-issue voters, is my point. I’m haunted by the memory of that guy in Amsterdam, and that would be the least of America’s worries. Does anyone, for example, honestly believe that the rest of the world would simply allow him to withdraw all foreign aid? Really? That would cause economic collapse on an unimaginable scale, a monetary black hole from which nothing escapes. Paul’s view of the world is so limited that he can’t see the impact of that decision. I’m afraid his loyalists suffer the same problem.

So, let’s see: The world would be fucked, chaos would reign under President Ron Paul. And that’s supposed to be a good thing?

Oh, right. At least weed would be legal.

Richard Thompson’s “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me,” In Honor Of The Iraq War’s Close

If you haven’t heard this, here’s your chance to see RT play it close up. This song’s now been featured on Sons of Anarchy, but here it is, performed in all its full-throated acoustic glory.