Taste test

     Harry Caray stopped drinking in July 1994 after a fall in Miami landed him in the hospital.
     "Hey doc, when can I have another drink?" his widow, Dutchie Caray, remembers him asking. The doctor replied: "When the Cubs win the World Series."
     So from then on, until his death in February 1998, the great Cubs broadcaster had a bottle of Budweiser placed in front of him but would really be sipping Anheuser-Busch's nonalcoholic beer, O'Doul's.
     Harry didn't have a lot of choice. Many bars don't stock NA beer at all, and those that do tend to have a choice of one, so people who drink nonalcoholic beer, for whatever reason, are left hanging.
   
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Double America

Glenn Ligon, "Double America" 2012

       The hostess at Eureka Burger in Claremont, California told us it would be a 90 minute wait, so we trooped back to Ross' dorm, a few blocks away, to watch the Republican presidential debate.
     "Do you think there are people who watch this for the discussion of issues?" said Ross. "As opposed to watching it for entertainment, like we do?"
     I don't know if "entertainment" is the word I'd use. One of these men could be president, and the choices to from bad (Jeb Bush) to worse (Donald Trump) to please-God-kill-us-now-and-spare-us-the-torture (Ted Cruz).
    I suppose seeing them scratch at each other could be entertaining in the sense that horror movies are entertaining. 
     But those aren't real. And this is real. Or realish, anyway. The only comfort I take is that the world these people are describing bears so little resemblance to the world as it actually is. It's as if there are two Americas, and the Republicans see the one that is all dark disaster—"Crippled America," to use the title of Donald Trump's latest book. 
     And another America where, over the past seven years, the economy was guided back from ruin, millions of uninsured people have gotten access to health care, terrorists have been largely kept at bay. That's the America I see, one whose greatest peril are those who would save it by ramping up its greatest embarrassments, torture and religious fundamentalism, intolerance and fear. A topsy-turvy world where Guantanamo Bay represents America at her greatest.
     Speaking of fear. Saturday afternoon, news of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia reverberated across the world. Just as terror attacks undermined Ben Carson's campaign, reminding voters that we live in a dangerous world, and sleepwalking neurosurgeons murmuring inanities just won't cut it, so the vacancy in the Supreme Court could mobilize Democratic voters swooning over the let's-change-the-world impossibilities of Bernie Sanders to remember that we dwell in the real world where elections have consequences. 
    Or maybe that's a partisan notion now. Republicans seem eager to negate the idea that elections matter, at least elections where Democrats win. Naif that I am, I actually expected a few days, a few hours, of head-bowed false piety toward the fallen Scalia before the political cat fight began.
    A few minutes was more the case. The corpse was barely cold—it took an hour after the news was confirmed— when Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement:

   “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president."

     This is in perfect harmony with the GOP view of Obama all along. He is not a person, not an American, not a Christian, but some species of impostor, a fraud steeped in illegitimacy, who should have never been allowed to run, never mind win, whose every act as president is treachery and treason and folly.  Obamacare is a failure, not because millions of Americans now found themselves insured. It's a failure because Obama did it, and it must go. Everything he championed is wrong.
      The GOP position is not as alarming to me as it might be for those of us grounded in the world of fact. Climate change is real whether Republicans recognize it or not. Eleven million undocumented immigrants are here whether the GOP views them as persons or not. Gays don't make worse spouses or parents than anybody else whether Republicans accept it or not.
     And Antonin Scalia died, and must be replaced. Whether Mitch McConnell likes it or not.
     These facts will all manifest themselves with or without Republican permission. The extreme weather we've been seeing will worsen, the coasts will erode. The children of those 11 million are citizens, and they will increasingly resent how their parents have been treated, and flex their political muscles. The genie of accepting gay marriage will never go back in the bottle. And Scalia will be replaced.
    Maybe not by Obama. The Republicans control Congress, and they can stall and thwart the nomination process, no matter how qualified, preferring a deadlocked Supreme Court to one with another Obama nominee. That would be nothing new. They have shown a taste for paralyzing government when they don't get their way, like petulant children knocking all the snacks to the floor when they are refused another.
    But the American people get to watch them in operation. And the American people are not stupid -- well, some of them are not stupid. Somebody elected Ted Cruz to the senate from Texas. Somebody turns out to Donald Trump rallies. But 51 percent of the American people are not stupid.
     Such is my fondest hope, anyway. That is not a fact, but a hunch, a prediction. We will find out whether it is a fact or not come Nov. 8.

Heading home

     Travel is a bit like dying, or rehearsal for it anyway. You bid farewell to life as you know it, your comfortable routines and familiar places, and find yourself conveyed to a world where you do not exist, or didn't up to now, a city of strangers, going about their business blithely ignorant of your existence. 
     Though unlike death, you get to come back, to return to your world, waiting for you. Which is the flip side of travel. Yes, you find new places—Edie and I enjoyed exploring Joshua Tree, investigating Los Angeles, dropping in on our son at Pomona College. But then you get your old life back, buffed to a shine by absence, the old routines given a bit more pizzazz, because you've had a little absence, and the heart has indeed grown fonder. That's also part of travel, a benefit that isn't as romantic or exciting as new discovery, but just as important. Maybe even more important. Because while discovering new places is valuable, re-discovering your real place in the world is vital. Because one day you'll leave and never return, and someone else will take your place. But not yet, and it's a blessing to be reminded of just how good it is to be home.  

California Week #6: Warning! Life carries risks!

     The notion that people in California are crazy, or at least crazier than the rest of the nation, is probably outdated, similar to considering New York dangerous, when Chicago has triple the Big Apple's homicide rate. 
     But old notions linger. I was excited, driving out to Joshua Tree National Park, to pass Mount Shasta, the focus of Chicago's I AM Temple (what, you've never seen the UFO cult's building downtown? 176 West Washington Street; pop on by) which, not to impoverish their beliefs by summary, are convinced there is some kind of secret alien base located within. 
      And you can't go to a place of public accommodation without being hectored by California's safety nazis, in the forms of signs desperately trying to wave you off whatever activity you might be so reckless to consider, whether it is the consumption of seafood in a restaurant, or of alcoholic beverages in the bar, or sit in an area where people might light up a cigarette. 
     Those, I'm used to. But the sign above, at the Azure Hotel in Ontario, California, seemed a new twist.
    Without dwelling on its content, the sign illustrates the innumeracy of warning. Could a person with "active diarrhea" perhaps be prevented from leaping into the pool, to the misfortune of whoever cleans it? Sure, it's possible. Would, for every one of those persons, there be a thousand other healthy individuals who would have their pool-visiting experience diminished, if not ruined entirely? Bet on it.

      Not to mention the diminishment of the entire idea of warnings. A warning should by definition be something rare, pointing out a real, immediate danger — steep cliffs, electrified rails — not conjure up notional harm, such as bursts of incontinence afflicting swimmers mid-pool.
     I believe government has a role in addressing the woes of society; that said, it is not responsible for eliminating them all, and shouldn't try. A warning on a cigarette pack is a good thing, to remind die-hard addicts of the price they may pay. And the First Lady trying to encourage kids to get moving and be less fat was a worthwhile use of her time. But we don't want a government compelling the posting of nauseating placards to warn off those with the runs. It opens the door for all sorts of esoteric concerns, "Leprous children should not enter the ball pit." Life is full of risks, and living will kill us all, someday, every one of us. Is it asking too much that we are allowed to enjoy ourselves, a little, before that sad day arrives?

California Week #5: Even noble Homer dozed.

     Family Weekend at Pomona College. Loooong day. A very interesting hour conversation—I was in the audience, not conversing—with Michael J. Fox, whose daughter Skyler goes to school here. He was honest, funny, and had a positive message about coping with difficulties. The audience stood and applauded at the end.
     But I'm too beat to relay it any better than that. Or to do a post at all, really. 
     Except for this, of course, which I suppose counts as a post, of sorts, albeit not a very long or a very good one.  
    In my defense, as Horace writes, in his Ars Poetica: "Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus"— "Every once in a while even the good Homer nods off."  A line often used to forgive scribblers their lapses, though it has a wonderful anachronism built in. Back then, poets were singers, literally, sitting with a lyre in the corner of some banquet room, waiting for the nod to begin their tales of brave Ulysses and beautiful Helen. As the evening wore on and the wine flowed, even the best of them, Homer, might be caught snoring against a pillar (especially Homer. There's a quote from antiquity, along the lines of, "You can tell, from the Iliad, what a lover of wine Homer was," though I can't recall its author).

    Twill do for today. If you ever get to Santa Barbara, and can manage it, I'd recommend the Santa Barbara Biltmore, pictured above.  It's nice.

California Week #4: Blundering into The Broad

Balloon Dog (Blue)  by Jeff Koons

                                      Los Angeles Public Library

Untitled, by Jasper Johns

     There was no hope. The No. 1 sight on our Los Angeles to-do list, The Broad, the hot contemporary art museum that opened last September to raves, is much too hot for the likes of Midwestern mice like us. My wife tried to get tickets a month in advance: all sold out. My son advised us to do what his college pals do: get in line when it opened—maybe we'd only wait for an hour or two. Which we might have done, but by the time we got to LA it was mid-afternoon.
     Instead we wandered downtown, visited the Deco lobby of the Fine Arts Building and the sphinxes at the Los Angeles Public Library, another 1920s spectacle. There's a cool museum of express delivery and banking in the Wells Fargo Building, and we looked at that.
     "In Chicago, all they have is a stage coach in the lobby," I said. The most interesting tidbit I learned is that the famous Pony Express, racing mail from St. Joseph, Missouri to California, debuted in 1860 and was made obsolete by the intercontinental telegraph by 1861. A reminder that technology hurtling past our business models is nothing new.
     Fun. As for The Broad, well, we'd have to save that for another time, when the popularity cooled enough so that the uncool people could stamp our cowflop-covered boots at the door, shake the hay from our hair, and squeeze inside for a gander.
     Around 5 p.m. we found ourselves down the street from The Broad, an astounding concrete honeycomb designed by architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfrowhich. Out front was an ad hoc network of rails and time placards, like some kind of line control system from Disney World.
     Ever the optimists, we figured,, heck, couldn't hurt to ask. So we get chuckled at by some hip security guard? The place was open until 8 p.m., and yes, we could go in, right now. Here's a ticket. Have fun. They were niceness itself.
     "I didn't expect it to be that easy," I murmured to the guard, who smiled.
     It's free to get in
     Oh. My. God. Ed Ruscha. Jeff Koons. Jasper Johns. Robert Rauschenberg. Cy Twonbly. A jaw-dropping collection of names and images. My brother-in-law regaled us with the story about how this couple, Eli and Edythe Broad, teased the various museums around LA with their fabulous art collection—some 2,000 works and growing by an artwork a week—then told them all to go fuck themselves and opened their own museum, right next door to Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall.
     I'm not an enormous fan of modern art—I'm happier in the French Impressionist wing of the Art Institute. But The Broad's collection is really first rate, including the best of Jeff Koons' whimsical stainless steel sculptures, such as the enormous Balloon Dog (Blue). It certainly puts Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art to shame. And having given up hope and decided we wouldn't even bother trying to get in, it was a wonder to find ourselves somehow miraculously inside. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

California Week #3: Western rebellion and flat-out fun

Redwood Forest

     I'm in California, hiking in Joshua Tree National Park and visiting my son at college. So to mark that, I'm re-visiting some columns that take place in the Golden State, such as this, from our epic trip out West in 2009. Stay warm Chicago, and I'll be back next week. 

     KLAMATH, Calif. — An open letter from the management of the Redwood Hostel is posted in the kitchen of this homey, 100-year-old inn overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It warns that the State of California, in the midst of a massive budget crisis, is debating whether to "close the majority of state parks, including the gorgeous Redwood State Parks," and urging all those who love nature to the ramparts in their defense.
     "This is California, land of protest and public comment!" it reminds us, suggesting we post our concerns online.
     That might not be enough this time. Just as in Illinois -- facing its own crisis, though not on the biblical scale of California's -- where social service agencies flocked into the streets last month, decrying the severity of the cuts they're facing, so here the public is slowly grasping that California is not dealing with the usual, dangle-the-baby-out-the-window threats that always manage to vanish at the last minute, but something new: a vastly constricted economic reality hurtling at them like a canyon floor.
     California is beginning "the biggest downscaling of government in history," according to the Los Angeles Times, and while the plan to indefinitely shut 220 California state parks -- roughly 80 percent of the system -- got scaled back, for the moment, state government spent itself into this mess, and with its ability to raise taxes hamstrung by voter propositions, the only solution is to slash its way out.
     People praise the democracy we live in, but, as with so many popular beliefs, that's just plain wrong. The United States is not a democracy, thank God, it is a republic. Meaning that instead of enacting laws by the direct vote of citizens, the way they did in ancient Greece, we elect representatives who pass laws for us, based on public opinion and, ideally, their own common sense.
     California is an exception because it has direct democratic involvement in the legislative process, via ballot propositions, like the famous Proposition 13, which capped real estate taxes, shifting the burden onto income and sales taxes. So when the economy sours and people lose their jobs and spend less, money stops flowing in to the state. Which is why, in hard times, when people need state services most, the money to pay for them isn't there.
     While in Illinois, simple political cowardice prevents politicians from raising cash the government needs, here, their choices are constrained by law.
     The daft proposition system affects life in other ways -- you can't walk into a public place in California without seeing a large sign warning you that there are cancer-causing chemicals lurking within. Go to a fish place, and the menu will, in essence, advise against the eating of fish.
     Speaking of laws. Lest the whole column be about tax woes, I should update our trip here because the journey took an interesting detour, seemingly outside the realm of legal authority. We left Salt Lake City and headed toward Reno to meet my wife, who was flying to join us.
     Near the Nevada border, I spontaneously exited the highway at Bonneville, having grown up reading about rocket cars setting speed records there.
     You drive about three miles and find yourself in a fantastical white, empty place -- the legendary Bonneville Salt Flats. The horizon is a perfect straight line with only hazy blue mountains in the distance and a cloudless sky.
     The road ends, smoothly blending into the flats. There are no warnings, no directions, not so much as an orange safety cone. You are free to do what moves you. Most people stop, gawk and leave. But I felt obligated to ease the van off the road.

   "You wanna learn to drive?" I asked Ross, as we blasted through the void. He said yes, and we switched seats. If this seems grossly irresponsible -- he is 13 -- I'd point out that there was nothing for him to hit, and while I was slightly concerned he would careen into another joy-riding vehicle, there was only one other car, far off, like a ship in the distance.
     The boy drove quite well, for a novice -- when he got up to 60, it occurred to me that he might cut the wheel abruptly and roll us, so I gingerly explained the fine points of turning.
     He didn't drive long -- this place is indeed very flat, but it's still a natural formation, and I couldn't be certain there wouldn't be a two-foot ditch somewhere ahead. After I imagined the grim prospect of a phone call home, explaining the trip was scrubbed while we wait for a Honda axle to be trucked to Nowhere, Utah, I made Ross slow down, and instructed him on some less exciting fine points, such as the fact that the "R" on the transmission stands for "Reverse" and not "Rest," as he so charmingly assumed.
     The downside is that driving became an unapproachable trip zenith for him. The Redwood Forest could have been heaven on earth -- a fair enough description -- and it couldn't come close to joyriding the salt flats. Laws are a marvelous invention and can, when not screwed up by amateurs, result in good. But they can also lead to an over-regulated society where you can't eat a french fry without being scolded by the government. It is refreshing to know there is still at least one place where the grid ends, where the road peters away into freedom, and you can plunge forward into emptiness and seize a bit of adventure.
          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 26, 2009