RIP

One of my favorite musicians died last week at 40 years old.
Lance Hahn was the guitar and voice behind two great punk rock bands (Cringer and J Church) that came out of the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 80s and early 90s.
He died Oct. 21 after falling into a coma 9 days earlier from complications related to kidney disease.
Hahn’s lyrics were always pretty fun, and even though he didn’t write the song “Marie Provost” (it was by Nick Lowe) I always enjoyed the song’s true story of the early cinema actress who fell from stardom and was later found dead in her apartment — gruesome material, to be sure, but it was delivered in a fun and ironic way that made it kind of light:
“The cops broke in and they looked all around/ throwing up everywhere on what they found/ the handiwork of the little dachshunds/ the hungry little dachshunds.”
Anyway, aside from all that, Hahn — especially in his earlier work — had a good way of appealing to the angsty little teenager that I was at 16, and while I was looking at the lyrics to one of the songs he wrote while he was in Cringer (and probably not much older than 16 himself), I could still see that.
The song was called Confession and it was a good one — I like the lyrics, especially the phrase “I’ll admit that life is grey/ But I carry on anyway/ I’ll admit that things may not get better/ But something makes me go on and on.“
In any case, 40 seems too young for anyone to die, but in Hahn’s case, at least he left some great records and there’s more than one former teenager (I’m raising my hand right now, anyway) that got a lot of comfort from them at some pretty bad times.
Thanks, Lance, and rest in peace, man.

Weekend Notes

Big weekend. Lotsa fun. Here are some details:

I saw a couple of great movies:

Friday night, I watched Planet of the Apes. I actually hadn’t seen it in its entirety in what I’m guessing is 12 or 13 years, so it was a nice way to spend the evening — kind of like catching up with an old friend. I know that sounds nerdy, but hey, that’s who I am.
The movie has everything I love about science fiction and the 60s — it’s full of action (not the Michael Bay, exploding cars and bloodied hero type of movie action, but action no less), great dialogue — and subtext. Oh how I love meaning in my geek movies.
Planet of the Apes, in case you’ve been hiding under a rock since the 1960s, is about three space explorers who volunteer for a trip that will take them hundreds of light years away from Earth in the space of about a year. Even though they’ll age only about one year, because of the physical distance of the trip, they’re actually about 2000 years into the future. They know they’ll never return home.
The group lands on an Earth-like planet and finds that there are humans there — but they’re mute and primitive. Ruling the planet as humans are talking apes, who quickly imprison one of the humans (Charlton Heston) and suspect him of being some kind of mutated man who poses a threat to the ape society.
The movie is full of commentary about human society (duh) is full of the fairly typical 60s movie theme that nuclear weapons are bad. And it’s got one of the best twist endings ever. I knew what was going to happen, but seeing the movie in full for the first time in ages, it still felt powerful.

Favorite line: “You cut up his brain, you bloody baboon!”

Sunday, I watched Martin Scorsese’s first gangster film, Mean Streets.
It stars Harvey Keitel and Robert DeNiro as a couple of low-level mafia associates against the backdrop of early 1970s Little Italy. Another thing I’m a big fan of is a good mob movie, and this didn’t disappoint. In fact, if you’re a fan of Scorsese’s later mob work like Goodfellas and Casino, I’d go so far as to say this is a must.
DeNiro especially was great to watch, partly because he’s so young, and partly because his character is such a loser. His roles as Sam Rothstein (Casino) and Jimmy Conway (Goodfellas) bear little resemblance to this role — in Mean Streets he’s no good, he’s dumb, he’s self-destructive, and it does him in.
The movie is a little harder to watch than later Scorsese fare — I think that has to do more with when the movie was made than anything else — it’s dark and at times frustratingly too quiet or too loud, but it’s worth it and it really adds to the film’s character. That’s kind of how I picture New York in the 70s.

Favorite line: “We ain’t gonna pay because we don’t pay mooks.”

I recommend either movie.

I watched the end of the World Series:

I hate the Red Sox.

I even did some work:

I interviewed Bill McFadden, who has worked here in Lee County (as well as Chatham) as a provider of immigrant services for several years. He helps people get their citizenship papers, and he worked at CCCC for years as director of a program that led to what he says is a mostly-stable immigrant population here in Lee County. I’ll be writing a story about him later this week as part of our Nuestros Vecinos series on the immigrant population here in Lee County.
I found McFadden to be one of the more interesting people I’ve met through my job at The Herald, and I think my talk with him is going to lead to a really cool story.

And there was even some politics:

I got a call Sunday night from Charles Taylor, one of two candidates seeking the Ward 2 seat on the Sanford City Council. Incumbent Dan Harrington is also seeking the seat.
I’ve known Taylor basically since I started my job here at the paper and he’s always been a good guy to deal with. When he called me last night, he said he wasn’t calling me in my capacity as a reporter but rather as a citizen of the ward he’s seeking to represent. He’d gotten a list of voters throughout the ward and was calling every single one and personally asking for their vote.
Now, my job kind of precludes me from telling any candidate for any seat that I am or am not going to vote for them, and I told Taylor as much last night, but I also said that I was impressed that he’d call as many voters as he could and speak with them personally.
Too often, I think politicians spend time only talking with each other or with their political supporters and forget that the vast majority of voters don’t have a whole lot of interest in the workings of city hall or the state capitol or even D.C., other than to make sure their basic services — police, fire, water, trash — get delivered. Taking the initiative to talk to potential voters was a good move.

Finally, over the weekend my blog reached 2,000 hits. I know I started kind of slow on this and I don’t know who all is reading this thing, but thanks to whoever you are. This has been one of the funnest parts of working here so far.

World Series

The World Series starts tonight. I don’t care what anyone says. This is better than the Super Bowl, the National Championship Game, the U.S. Open (tennis and golf), one of those UFC tournaments, and the X-Games combined.
So we’ll see the Colorado Rockies, first-timers to the series, against the Evil Empire Jr., the Boston Red Sox. I fear the Red Sox, though, and I fear another year-plus of cocky, all-of-a-sudden Red Sox fans talking about how great their team is.
The Sox are looking good, though, especially seeing as how they came back from a 3-1 defecit to defeat the Cleveland Indians in the ALCS.
But there are arguments for the Rockies as well — so I’m not that worried. If Colorado can manage to take one game from Boston at Fenway, then they have a shot at winning. Colorado’s stadium, Coors Field, is pretty unique in the effect it has on pitchers. So the Red Sox will lose some of the advantage they might have had in that regard. They’ll also lose something in offense when they go to Coors because the National League doesn’t have that pesky designated hitter rule. Jayson Stark at ESPN notes that the Rockies will have to choose whether David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis or Mike Lowell sits out the games at Colorado.
Stark’s analysis is a little bit rosy in favor of the Rockies, but I’m siding with him.
I can’t take another winter of pink Red Sox jerseys and green Red Sox hats and trash-talking Red Sox fans.
Go Rockies!
Game 1 is 8 p.m. today at Boston.

Sanford City Council, Ward 5

Incumbent Linwood Mann and challenger Earl Barker discuss the issues. A second challenger, Ervin Fox, was not present.

Vote early!

And another thing

I don’t want to hear a word about those Red Sox. Go Rockies!

Sanford City Council, Ward 2

More debate video. This is the debate between incumbent Dan Harrington, who was appointed to the Ward 2 seat following Cornelia Olive’s election as mayor, and his challenger Charles Taylor.

This is another race that I see being too close to call.
What’s interesting to me about this seat is that it’s had a fairly high rate of turnover in recent years, which (obviously) will be even higher if Taylor is elected. For a number of years (that number I’m not sure of, unfortunately), J.T. Kirkman held the seat until his death in March of 2003. Kirkman’s wife Jo Ann assumed his place on the board but was defeated in her re-election bid later that year by Olive, who was elected two years later to the position of mayor. That’s when Harrington was appointed to the seat. That’s four people holding the seat in as many years — and it could be five if Taylor prevails in a couple of weeks.
Vote early!

Coming out of the broom closet

So J.K. Rowling, over the weekend, announced while speaking at some kind of Harry Potter symposium, that one of the characters in her seven-book series was gay.
Read about it here.
Okay. I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books. I saw the one of the movies, the second one I think, and thought it was pretty take-it-or-leave-it. So I’m not a part of the gigantic social movement that J.K. Rowling’s books have become (despite my love of many other things that are fantasy and science-fiction related).
That said, I can say with complete certainty that the presence of a gay character would have absolutely no bearing on how I view the series. It just seems kind of whatever to me.
But I characterize Rowling’s move as totally weak.
Should George Lucas holds a press conference today to reveal that Yoda was gay? Should J.R.R. Tolkein’s heirs issue a statement affirming Gandalf’s heterosexuality? Will Gene Roddenberry’s unearthed memoirs explicitly state that Kirk and Spock were, in fact, an item?
Just to be clear — my issue is not that a character in a story I’ve never cared about is gay. My issue is that for all the hype, and news stories about cultural relevance, and fans who are dying for more, these characters don’t exist outside of the literature. That’s how fiction works. So J.K. Rowling can have it in her head that one of her characters is or isn’t gay, but unless that’s in the text, she shouldn’t go back after the fact and tell her readers — outside the context of her story— how to view that character. It’s cheap and, frankly, dishonest to the people who she became rich off of.
If she thought it was a big deal, why didn’t she reveal the character to be gay during the course of the story? That’s all I’m saying.
People may not have liked it (although from the reactions I’ve read, people seem to be just fine with it) but at least Rowling would have been true to her story.
This just looks to me like one-upmanship — Rowling can keep “revealing” secrets about the now-defunct series for as long as she desires, the way I see it — and a desire to stay relevant (ie, in the news).
Rowling’s work is often criticized by some Christian groups for allegedly promoting withcraft (silliness, if you ask me — literature is full of things like that) and she said this revelation will give those groups further basis to criticize her.
That sounds more like the statement of someone hungry for attention and controversy than someone who cares about their art.
I’ll take Star Wars any day of the week, thank you very much.

Science fiction

Any real science fiction fan worth his or her salt has taken a lot of doodoo for being a real science fiction fan.
There are a lot of ways to defend my love of Star Trek and Planet of the Apes, but I really couldn’t say it any better than this guy did.
Kudos, my man.
Warning: there’s a slight bit of colorful language in the post I linked to. Nothing offensive, but I thought I’d let you know before you dive in.

Broadway Town Council public forum

Only four of the candidates (Woody Beale, Lynne Green, David Harrington, and Clem Welch) made it to our forum this past Monday, but it’s my understanding that the full slate of candidates (which is rounded out by George Bates and John Eldridge) will be present at a Broadway-only forum to be held Nov. 1 at the Broadway Community Center. In the meantime, watch the video from our forum:

Politics Part 2

My entry about Steve Brewer and Mike Stone from two days ago (click here to see it) needs some clarity.
I’ll say first that the entry seems to have been responsible for three consecutive days of the most traffic that this blog has ever recieved, so apparently there’s interest. Even though nobody has commented on the blog publicly, I did receive an e-mail from Brewer who cleared up a misconception I had.
Brewer at Tuesday’s city council meeting took Stone to task for calling the council “self-serving and inwardly-focused” and “average-at-best.” I made a mistake in thinking Brewer meant Stone made those comments at Monday’s candidates forum, and when I couldn’t find any record of those comments at the forum, I pointed it out.
Turns out, Stone did make those comments. They appeared in The Herald on Oct. 10 in the Q&A section in which Stone and his election opponent, Lora Wright, each answered a series of questions.
Brewer said in his e-mail to me that the statements he made were not about politics.
“My comments Tuesday night were not about the political race,” he wrote. “It was about someone attacking the council and the city and spreading misinformation.”
I hesitate to call the statements Brewer references misinformation — I think it’s more a matter of semantics than anything else — but I’ll reiterate what I said a couple of days ago: This sort of debate is ultimately good for the city and for the voters.
In any case, don’t forget vote!