"Oh, it's Presidents Day. Some people have the day off."

My outburst, on glancing at my Twitter feed this morning. Excuse me for not sufficiently valuing the generic President of the United States, but I remember when we knew exactly which day Abraham Lincoln was born on and that it was a different day from the one George Washington was born on. We had Lincoln's Birthday and Washington's Birthday, and we paid tribute to them separately and individually. I'm not trying to be an insufferable old fogy here doing a back-in-my-day routine, but without a day off, which I don't have, Presidents Day means nothing to me. It seems to me we talk about Presidents — past, present, and future — every damned day. How about a day when we don't think about the government?

Here's a Talking Heads song: "Don't Worry About the Government."

I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me

Here's a Bob Dylan lyric: "I'm on the pavement, thinking about the government."

"I was thinking about Baader-Meinhof. Patty Hearst. Tompkins Square. This a song about living in Alphabet City."

So said David Byrne, explaining his song "Life During Wartime." I'm thinking about that song today because I'm reading Greg Mitchell's blog — OccupyUSA — in The Nation:

Today’s song pick for Occupyers everywhere: Talking Heads’ classic “Life During Wartime.”

Here are some of the lyrics to the song:

Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons,
packed up and ready to go
Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway,
a place where nobody knows
The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,
I'm getting used to it now...

Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit?
Heard about Pittsburgh, P. A.?
You oughta know not to stand by the window
somebody might see you up there

So... what kind of mood are you going for there, Greg? Creepy? Paranoid? Genuinely threatening violence? Or just stupid?

Now, "Life During Wartime" is a great song. I played it all the time back in the 1970s when it first came out. Like Greg Mitchell, I'm old. (I was born in 1951, and he was born in 1947.) Unlike Greg Mitchell, I can't imagine telling young people today to adopt one of the great old songs of my youth as their present-day music to protest by.

I like to think that young people today have built up plenty of resistance to the nostalgia of Baby Boomers. The Revolution Chic of my generation-mates is not cute and not cool. It's embarrassing and dumb.

Think for yourselves, people.

"32 Pictures You Should Have Seen Before The World Was Supposed To End."

I'm for #30. Or 29. Oh, I don't know. Animals are cool, except when they're not.

"You may ask yourself: How much oil is in there anyway?"

Letting the days go by... crude oil flowing in the Gulf...

(Via Paddy O.)

"Blasphemy!" — a 3-part musical about the afterlife, playing now in Madison, Wisconsin.

"Act I, 'Rapture,' takes place 10 years from now in a dystopian world where Republicans never relinquished power after losing the 2008 election. Instead, we have President Palin.... There are some great moments in Act II, set in Purgatory... Yet Act III, set in Paradise, falls a little flat..."

Isn't it the truth? You make it to Heaven, and then, after a while, it's boring. You can entertain yourself with the thought of how bad the alternative would be, but how long can you keep that up? A million years? You're just getting started!

But unlike the actual afterlife, a play about it is only a couple of hours or so, and you're entirely free to walk out whenever you want.

***

Bonus music — emphatically not from the aforementioned musical:



"Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens."

The words mean something, "but not if you try to figure them out."

Says David Byrne in this 1983 Letterman appearance, that's talked about in this really long NYT article calling Byrne "Indie Rock's Patron Saint." ("Once the archetypal nerve-racked data-age persona (his famously uncomfortable 1983 Letterman interview is on YouTube, if you need a reminder), Mr. Byrne is today much more mellow.")



I rather think Byrne is doing a performance there, don't you? Nowadays, the Times tells us, he's "comfortable in his skin" (a phrase that has always bugged me for some reason):

He seems comfortable in his skin, chatty and quick to laugh; his conversation ranges energetically from computerized embroidery machines to a recent visit to a neuroscience lab in Canada with his pals from the Arcade Fire. (“We didn’t get a chance to get into the M.R.I. machines,” he said, “but we had a lot of fun.”) He has even become a blogger, and a self-disclosing one at that.

“I was a peculiar young man,” he wrote in a reflective entry last April. “Borderline Asperger’s, I would guess.”

Hmmm... well, then I guess he wasn't just acting. I forgot about his blog. Here it is.

ADDED: John, on watching the clip: "He acts like Billy in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.'" (Remember, we watched that recently.) He's right! Now, we're listing to "Talking Heads: 77." Me, looking through the old records: "It should be easy to find. I know it's orange."



I was saying that's my favorite.

Here's some politics:

I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in washington, D.C.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me

Some civil servants are just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they try to be strong
I'm a lucky guy to live in my building
They own the buildings to help them along

It's over there, its over there
My building has every convenience
It's gonna make life easy for me
It's gonna be easy to get things done
I will relax along with my loved ones

We played "Talking Heads: 77" so many times... in 1977! You have to try to imagine how that sounded then, when rock was arena rock and disco was everywhere.

My second favorite: "More Songs About Buildings and Food." But if you want to play that, you'll have to take it down from the picture frame hanging on the wall:

About killing that mockingbird.

Jeremy Freese is taking a poll about whether Truman Capote wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird."

And I promise you I wrote that sentence without the slightest thought of adding to today's blog theme! Man, I have got to be careful if I venture out of the house today. I think the animals are...

I start thinking about the song "Animals" again:

I know the animals...Are laughing at us
They don't even know...What a joke is
I won't follow...Animal's advice
I don't care...If they're laughing at us.

They're never there when you need them
They never come when you call them
They're never there when you need them
They never come when you call them down down down down.

They say they don't need money
They're living on nuts and berries
They say animals don't worry
You know animals are hairy?
They think they know what's best
They're making a fool of us
They ought to be more careful
They're setting a bad example
They have untroubled lives
They think everything's nice
They like to laugh at people
They're setting a bad example
(Go ahead) Laugh at me.

I heard a squirrel skittering around up there -- what was it? -- on the roof? Or was it the attic? Or the extra bedroom? You know all the leaves fell from the oak trees in one day yesterday, and now it looks all desolate out there... I've got to be more careful. Are there squirrel holes in the house that I'm not seeing? Is that a cracked nut? Is that a rabid dog loping down the street?

Is it time to record podcast #18?

Hey, did you know I wrote a little law review article about "To Kill a Mockingbird"? Here, you can read it. I'm responding to Steven Lubet, who wrote a feminist attack on Atticus Finch for the way he cross-examined the woman who accused Tom Robinson of rape. An excerpt from my piece:

Atticus deeply believes in the law and as he performs his duty, he patiently waits for the day when the others who work in the system will also perform their duty. Law is not a lofty institution, but a "working reality" that necessarily depends on the routine performance of duty by good people like Atticus and the lawyers he inspires.

Atticus accepts the Robinson case just as earlier in the book he accepts the job Sheriff Tate asks him to do: shoot a rabid dog. Indeed, his handling of the trial parallels the shooting of the rabid dog. Atticus possesses extraordinary skills - as a lawyer and as a marksman - but he does not seek occasions to display them or profit by them. The sheriff calls on Atticus when a dog must be taken down in one shot, and the judge comes to him when an inflammatory case needs a lawyer. A neighbor tries to explain the restraint of this man who had avoided using his shooting skills for thirty years:

"[H]e's civilized in his heart ... I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things. I guess he decided he wouldn't shoot till he had to, and he had to today."

100 top albums of the 1980s.

Speaking of Prince, why was "1999" only #16 on Rolling Stones list of 100 top albums of the 1980s? Here's the top 20 (go to the link for the full list):

1.London Calling, The Clash
2.Purple Rain, Prince
3.The Joshua Tree, U2
4.Remain In Light, Talking Heads
5.Graceland, Paul Simon
6.Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen
7.Thriller, Michael Jackson
8.Murmur, R.E.M.
9.Shoot Out The Lights, Richard and Linda Thompson
10.Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman
11.Get Happy!!, Elvis Costello
12.It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy
13.Diesel And Dust, Midnight Oil
14.So, Peter Gabriel
15.Let It Be, The Replacements
16.1999, Prince
17.Synchronicity, The Police
18.Dirty Mind, Prince
19.New York, Lou Reed
20.Pretenders, The Pretenders

One answer is that they gave him the second slot for "Purple Rain" and even put "Dirty Mind" at #18. ("Sign o' the Times" is #74.) Another answer is that the list was made in 1990.

What looks really out of place on this list today? Maybe my younger readers will agree with me that this list reeks of Baby Boomer.