Bryant Lake Bowl

You could hear people bowling while we performed, in the air, a little in your ears too.

Yes

Obama vs. the Phobocracy


By Michael Chabon
Monday, February 4, 2008; 12:00 AM

There are many reasons not to support Barack Obama's candidacy for president, but every one of them is bad for the same reason.

Because I have come out publicly for the senator from Illinois, I am often called upon to listen as people offer up -- with wistfulness and regret, or with a pundit's show of certainty, or with a well-earned but useless skepticism -- their bad reasons for not giving Obama their support. For a long time now, I have listened to these people with forbearance and with a sense of duty -- not to some principle of open debate or of the inherent merit in the free exchange of even meritless ideas, but rather out of obligation to the candidate whose cause I champion.

Because Obama appears to be a patient, forbearing man with a gift for listening, I figured I owed it to him to play the thing his way. So I have nodded and looked into their eyes and hummed sympathetically as people gave their reasons and made their excuses and generally offered up, as if they were golden ingots of profound wisdom, the handful of two-penny nails with which they plan to board up the windows of their hopes for themselves, their families, their country and the world.

But now, with everything seeming to come down, at last, to the first Tuesday in February, and in the wake of an all-out, months-long push by the cynicism industry to cook up an entire line of bad reasons ready to heat and serve, I admit that I'm getting tired of listening to rationales from people who know that Obama is a remarkable, even an extraordinary politician, the kind who comes along, in this era of snakes and empty smiles, no more than once a generation.

Oh, sure, most of these people tell me they would like to see Obama become president. No question, he comes off as at once brilliant and sensible, vibrant and measured, engaged and engaging, talented, forthright, quick-witted, passionate, thoughtful and, as with all remarkable people whom experience has taught both the extent and the bitter limits of their gifts, reasonably humble. In a better world, people tell me, in theory, sure, having a president like Barack Obama sounds great. But not, you know, for real. Not in the base, corrupt, morally spent, toxic and reeling rats' nest that we like to call home. Things are so bad we just can't afford to waste our votes, people tell me, on some fantasy super-president with magical powers. We need someone electable, someone, as I have been told repeatedly in the past year, who can win.

Of course this misses the point; it misses all kinds of points. In a better world, if there were such a thing (and so far there never has been), we would not need a president like Obama as badly as we do. If there were less at stake, if our democracy had not been permitted, indeed encouraged, to sink to its present degraded and embattled condition not only by the present administration but by a fair number of those people now seeking to head up the next one, perhaps then we could afford to waste our votes on the candidate who knows best how to jigger, to manipulate and to conform to the vapid specifications of the debased electoral process it has been our unhappy fate to construct for ourselves.

Because ultimately, that is the point of Obama's candidacy -- of the hope, enthusiasm and sense of purpose it inspires, yes, but more crucially, of the very doubts and reservations expressed by those who pronounce, whether in tones of regret, certainty or skepticism, that America is not ready for Obama, or that Obama is not ready for the job, or that nobody of any worth or decency -- supposing there even to be such a person left on the American political scene -- can be expected to survive for a moment with his idealism and principle intact.

The point of Obama's candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy.

Since I started talking and writing about Obama I have come to see that this ruling fear, and nothing else, lies at the back of every objection or reservation people raise or harbor regarding the man and his candidacy.

Fear whispers to us that white voters have a nasty tendency to tell pollsters, friends and neighbors that they support an African American candidate, then go into the voting booth and let the fear known as racism pull the lever.

Fear tells us that ugliness, rage and brutality are the central facts of human existence, that decency and tolerance are luxuries on whose altar our enemies will be only too happy to sacrifice us.

It is through our fear of falling prey to the calamity and misadventure from which the media promise faithlessly to protect us -- a fear manufactured and sold by the media themselves -- that we accept without question the media-borne canard (tainted, in my view, by a racism as insidious as any that hides behind the curtains of voting booths) that Barack Obama, a seasoned and successful 46-year-old husband and father of two, a man sweeping into the prime of his life with all his sails and flags unfurled, is too young and inexperienced for a job that demands vitality and flexibility and that, furthermore, has made nonsense of glittering resumes, laughingstocks of practiced old hands and, in a reverse of Popeye's old trick, ravenous alligators out of years of accumulated baggage.

Fear and those who fatten on it spread vile lies about Obama's religion, his past drug use, his views on Israel and the Jews. Fear makes us see the world purely in terms of enemies and perils, and leads us to seek out the promise of leadership, however spurious it proves to be, among those who speak the language of that doomed and demeaning, that inhuman view of the world.

But the most pitiable fear of all is the fear of disappointment, of having our hearts broken and our hopes dashed by this radiant, humane politician who seems not just with his words but with every step he takes, simply by the fact of his running at all, to promise so much for our country, for our future and for the eventual state of our national soul. I say "pitiable" because this fear of disappointment, which I hear underlying so many of the doubts that people express to me, is ultimately a fear of finding out the truth about ourselves and the extent of the mess that we have gotten ourselves into. If we do fight for Obama, work for him, believe in him, vote for him, and the man goes down to defeat by the big-money machines and the merchants of fear, then what hope will we have left to hold on to?

Thus in the name of preserving hope do we disdain it. That is how a phobocracy maintains its grip on power.

To support Obama, we must permit ourselves to feel hope, to acknowledge the possibility that we can aspire as a nation to be more than merely secure or predominant. We must allow ourselves to believe in Obama, not blindly or unquestioningly as we might believe in some demagogue or figurehead but as we believe in the comfort we take in our families, in the pleasure of good company, in the blessings of peace and liberty, in any thing that requires us to put our trust in the best part of ourselves and others. That kind of belief is a revolutionary act. It holds the power, in time, to overturn and repair all the damage that our fear has driven us to inflict on ourselves and the world.

And when we all wake up on Nov. 5, 2008, to find that we have made Barack Obama the president of the United States, the world is already going to feel, to all of us, a little different, a little truer to its, and our, better nature. It is part of the world's nature and of our own to break, ruin and destroy; but it is also our nature and the world's to find ways to mend what has been broken. We can do that. Come on. Don't be afraid.

mchabon@gmail.com

Michael Chabon's novels include "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" and, most recently, "Gentlemen of the Road."

The Places We Stayed

In Minneapolis:
Beer that was hard to open and a movie
A two year old named Ella who had a larger vocabulary then I
Organic Food
Retro house with nice floors

This is where I am

waiting to get picked up. The guards in the different galleries sing or dance when you look at them and then tell you about a new piece in the museum. Its cool, but really confusing at first. Oh, art.

Listening to Lauryn Hill in Minneapolis on a really cold night

and missing you

Duluth and the Cutest Puppy Competition

Duluth is very pretty and hasn't been too cold. Its been in the high teens this whole weekend! Our shows were well received and we had alot of fun, but not as much fun as going to the Duluth Cutest Puppy Competition!!! There were 40 puppies!!!! And they were all the cutest! Here are some highlights. We also saw an otter eating a fish on the ice. What a weekend!

On the Road

It only took 13 hours, 3 stops, and some very rich pastries to get to Duluth!

This ain't charades

they even got antacid!

The Crimes and Confessions of Kip Knutzen
Written and Performed by Deke Weaver
Featuring Isaac Bloom & Zoe Schwartz
Directed by Jayne Wenger
Original Music by Poster Children’s Rose Marshack & Rick Valentin

January 25 & 26 at 7:30pm
Tickets $10 sold at the door starting at 6pm

You want funny? We got funny. You want sad? We got sad. You want hockey pranks with a dead guy? Sure, we got that. You want the steamy sexy under the northern lights? We got that too. You want talking pheasants? Yeah. We got it. The Crimes & Confessions of Kip Knutzen: A Hockey Way of Knowledge - written and performed by award-winning performer/playwright/media-artist/emperor /former-goaltender Deke Weaver, directed by Jayne Wenger, supported with original music by Poster Children’s Rose Marshack and Rick Valentin - is a performance with soul, truth, love, old radio-style sound-effects, fish huts, church youth-groups, rabid ice arenas and frozen prairies bursting at the seams of a small northern Minnesota town.
Awkward and elegant, goofy and holy, The Crimes & Confessions of Kip Knutzen: A Hockey Way of Knowledge is born from a drunken orgy of Garrison Keillor’s warmth, the ribald tragicomedy of John Irving, Kevin Kling’s straight shooting humor, the movies Fargo and Slap Shot, and the magic-realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Carlos Castaneda.

Turnaround, every now and then I get a
little bit lonely and you're never coming around
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a
little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a
little bit nervous that the best of all the years have gone by
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a
little bit terrified and then I see the look in your eyes
Turnaround bright eyes, Every now and
then I fall apart
Turnaround bright eyes, Every now and
then I fall apart
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a
little bit restless and I dream of something wild
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a
little bit helpless and I'm lying like a child in your arms
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a
little bit angry and I know I've got to get out and cry
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a
little bit terrified but then I see the look in your eyes
Turnaround bright eyes, Every now and
then I fall apart
Turnaround bright eyes, Every now and
then I fall apart
And I need you now tonight
And I need you more than ever
And if you'll only hold me tight
We'll be holding on forever
And we'll only be making it right
Cause we'll never be wrong together
We can take it to the end of the line
Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time
I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark
We're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks
I really need you tonight
Forever's gonna start tonight
Forever's gonna start tonight
Once upon a time I was falling in love
But now I'm only falling apart
There's nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart
Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there's only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart
Turnaround bright eyes
Turnaround bright eyes
Turnaround, every now and then I know
you'll never be the boy you always you wanted to be
Turnaround, every now and then I know
you'll always be the only boy who wanted me the way that I am
Turnaround, every now and then I know
there's no one in the universe as magical and wonderous as you
Turnaround, every now and then I know
there's nothing any better and there's nothing I just wouldn't do
Turnaround bright eyes, Every now and
then I fall apart
Turnaround bright eyes, Every now and
then I fall apart
And I need you now tonight
And I need you more than ever
And if you'll only hold me tight
We'll be holding on forever
And we'll only be making it right
Cause we'll never be wrong together
We can take it to the end of the line
Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time
I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark
We're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks
I really need you tonight
Forever's gonna start tonight
Forever's gonna start tonight
Once upon a time I was falling in love
But now I'm only falling apart
There's nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart
Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there's only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart

2008

I wish she lived with me

Time Well Spent

Not even baked goods stop a rat king

sometimes you have to make some hard decisions around the holidays.

Home For the Holidays

My Old fave, Maeby surfs the web, and an old friend

Duluth

DONE

F you 19 hours. I hated you.

oops!

Natalie help up some scissors and I accidentally ran into them a few times with my hair. Its really short!

A Big Deal

I am soon going to be working on a real (professional?) show with my performance art teacher. Its totally a big deal. I get to tour the country (go to Minneapolis and Duluth, MN) and perform the show there for two weeks and then come back to Urbana and run it for two weeks here. This show is directed by a woman flying in from San Francisco, SPECIFICALLY to direct it. Did I mention I'm probably getting paid? WATCH OUT THEATER CAREER, HERE I COME.

http://blb.ciceron.com/calendar.asp?date=1/31/2008

Graham Roumieu

one year ago exactly

I wish I were in Stockholm walking around Christmas markets in stead of writing papers!

a little show con't

there was also this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL-hRMx_UBU&feature=related

A little show

I had a performance art show this weekend and this is one of the pieces I did. Thank you to Laura for the lovely documentation. Happy Holidays!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFaRwc9cViE