French pension problems on their way here

     My brother, freshly back from Paris last week, reports piles of garbage everywhere.
     “Though it’s French garbage,” he observed. “More refined.”
     Until rioters set it on fire, that is. All burning garbage is alike.
     It’s the result of the nationwide protests that have rocked France for weeks, outcry over the national retirement age being raised from 62 to 64.
     We should be watching this unrest carefully here in Chicago, a city with a nearly $34 billion unfunded municipal pension liability. Double the size of the annual city budget. It’s almost funny to see our two mayoral candidates talk about how they’re going to finance their pie-in-the-sky, cop-on-every-corner dreams of urban perfection by digging into the sofa cushions and holding bake sales and cutting corruption. One dollar in five spent by the city services its pension debt. The next mayor will be lucky to maintain the status quo, to send the occupying army of retirees their checks while continuing to put out fires. We should scrap our motto, Urbs in Horto, “City in a Garden,” and replace it with Urbs in Foraminis, “City in a Hole.”
     It’s fun to sneer at the French — socialist shovel-leaners complaining about their sweet retire-at-62 perk shifting to a not bad retire-at-64. But at least they’re trying to do something. Our solution is to sell the family silver, or parking meters, kick the can down the road, and hope for a miracle.
     I should point out that U.S. Social Security also kicks in at 62, though it starts out at such a pittance, the general advice is to wait as long as possible, so it can grow into something you can scrape by on, maybe.
     If I combine it with the smoldering scraps of our exploded newspaper pension, and judicious, this-has-gotta-last-me sips at my 401(k), and it might add up to a kind of subsistence. I certainly won’t be nursing a pastis at a cafe on the Rue Mouffetard.
     Then again, I might be an oddity. Most of my fellow columnists have already hung up their spikes — whether defenestrated by the corporate butchers who bought the Chicago Tribune or shown the gate for an ill-considered joke at the Washington Post or various colleagues stepping down at the Sun-Times.

To continue reading, click here.

'Everyplace else is a location'

Barcelona

     I was in Barcelona last October, crossing the Ramblas toward our hotel, one of those wide, wide intersections by Catalonia Square where armies of people come thundering across the street. I looked down at my feet, where the tiles were designed by architectural genius Antoni Gaudi, at the mobs of people, and cars, and bicycles, vibrant urban life, and had a thought I've been reluctant to put in the newspaper.
     "Now THIS is a world class city!"  Yes, Barcelona has more than a million fewer residents than Chicago (though Madrid has slightly more). And yes, that may have been the thrill of travel, of seeing new wonders, eating new foods in new places. But Chicago, in its reduced post-COVID, post-George Floyd form, hasn't gotten its mojo back. Something tells me a NASCAR race won't help.
    What's a world class city? One that doesn't have to ask the question.

    Yes, running down your home is never a good idea. The American returned from abroad who speaks with a slight accent and is gushing with unusual wonders — journalists get into museums free! — is a cliche, and a bad look.
     That said, I thought of my moment in Catalonia about the third reader who said, "Give us a third column!" when I cut Hollywood director Michael Goi off at the end of my second piece on our interview without going into detail about his putting Chicago in its place as a film capital. I started with the above observation because I didn't want to let Goi go anywhere I wasn't willing to go myself. It seemed cold compensation for keeping me and my readers fascinated for two days, maybe three, depending on how this turns out.

     Though offering a civic reality check, however unwelcome, is one role of the journalist.
     And there was something unusual about that interview. Since we talked on Zoom, I taped it, rather than typing as he spoke. The first column of course related to his journey to Hollywood as an Asian-American, the topic of the moment. Transcribing to the recording, I wrote the interview, and it ran far too long. Normally, I'd have taken what I wanted, and not necessarily even listen to the rest. But I turned in the column — at over 1000 words, almost 50 percent longer than usual — then not only did listen, but kept typing it out, figuring I might use it later. When I finished, I clicked the wrong button and lost half a dozen paragraphs of his remarks. So I groaned, tapped my fist on the desk, and then listened again, and typed it again. That never happens, and what prompted me to write the second column, about interviewing for a job.  I figured, why wait?
     I could have sliced off the top, about the tension between ethnicity as a draw and a distraction, crowding out other aspects that are also of interest. Perhaps greater interest. But I like that line of thought. It doesn't get said enough during our Carnival of Identities. So I briefly summarized what he said about Chicago.
     Four readers asked for a third column, even demanded it. That's a lot. So while I'm not a short order cook, here goes.
     I asked Goi about raising kids in Los Angeles — he has three children, two teens and a preschooler. He agreed that raising children in Los Angeles can be a challenge.
    "Personally, I'd rather live in New York City," he said "I think growing up in Chicago and not just dealing with the snow , but dealing with everything, it kinda makes you tough and makes you understand how to navigate different people and personalities. It's different if you have to take the 'L' and interact with people than if you are driven in a car to school as happens in Los Angeles. But this is where the film industry is, where dad's work is, this is where we are."
    Goi sees an honesty in Chicagoans that might be harder to recognize among those remaining in the daily claw and grind of the city.
   "Most of the people I work with who are from Chicago, a lot of us already knew each other, knew what we were all about," he said. "Part of the nice thing, there is no bullshit. You can't bullshit another Chicagoan. They'll see right through it. That's refreshing in a lot of ways. The fact you know when somebody tells you something, no matter how you don't want to hear it, you're hearing the truth. That's incredibly valuable. I appreciate that candid way of approaching things. I never feel there is anything I have to hide anyway, being able to talk to Tyrone Finch (producer of ABC's "Station 19,"actually hailing from Cleveland) or Joey Mantegna or Charlie Carner (producer, known for "Blind Fury" and "The Untouchables" TV series). Any of these people I know from Chicago in this business, we know they're not going to be any level of deception in our relationships." 

Michael Goi

     

     Pretty to think so, as another former Chicagoan, Ernest Hemingway said.  I would counter that the supposed Chicago attribute of savviness is at odds with the notion that Chicagoans are inherently honest with each other, even Chicago expats in a distant city. But that's what he said, and he obviously believes it.
The part that came next pricked up my ears, for being red meat in the water for film board booster sorts:
    "The film industry in terms of the decisions being made in terms of what shows will actually be made is still based in Los Angeles," he said. "Everyplace else is a location, including Chicago. New York City, Atlanta, New Mexico, Vancouver. They're locations, They will pick up and travel to shoot at whatever place on earth is the cheapest to shoot in that moment  of time. People deceive themselves in some locations. I remember when doing shows in New Orleans, 'American Horror Story.' New Orleans at that time was getting a lot of work, I did a seminar and said, 'As soon as you stop being the cheapest place on earth to shoot, all these productions are going to pick up and going to move to wherever is the next cheapest place on earth to shoot.' And it happened to them. They didn't think it was going to happen to them. It happened a year later. Atlanta, Georgia, enacted tax breaks that were much more favorable and everything picked up and left New Orleans and went to Georgia. 
   "In this industry, you accept being part of the traveling circus. If you are going to survive in this industry, you will be packed up and shipped out to wherever is the cheapest place on earth to shoot at that time. It sounds very glamorous: 'Oh wow, you've done two, three movies in South Africa. You're done two movies in Morocco.' It sounds very glamorous. It's more the reality of what you have to do to stay in this business and make a living in it. You have to be able to go work in these places."
      I know nothing about making movies except that being on a movie set is like watching paint dry. But the above struck me as having what I call "the tang of veracity." It sounds entirely true.  Anyway, I think I've gotten my money's worth out of my hour with Michael Goi. I can't say we got on — he was very dry, very professional, with zero interest in me or in chit-chat. But he had that rare quality of being honest and forthcoming, and I had to share it with you.

Works in progress: Steve Sheffey

   The Judgment of Solomon, by Leonaert Bramer (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Writing for publication is daunting. Even for a single twig snap in the vast bonfire of the internet. So when I mentioned that I would consider submissions from readers for EGD's "Works in progress" Saturday feature, I did not expect a lot of waving hands. In fact, there was only one, this week’s guest writer, Steve Sheffey, active in Democratic and pro-Israel politics. In college he submitted a piece to NU's humor magazine, “Rubber Teeth,” which we rejected. I can’t say that it was an error or that I regret, or even remember, it. But he requested another chance to submit a piece, and this time the answer was yes.

     Thank you, Neil, for inviting me to pinch-hit today. I’ve been reading your work since college and it’s an honor to contribute. 

     You would think that someone who’s been writing a weekly newsletter on pro-Israel politics for 17 years would have come up with a simple definition of “pro-Israel” by now, especially since he calls his newsletter “Steve Sheffey’s Pro-Israel Political Update, which The Forward referred to as “the Chicago Jewish newsletter that even Republicans have to read.” But it’s not that easy. 

     Israel is different from most political issues because disagreements stem from a common understanding of the facts. No one wants to get Covid; whether you favor wearing or mandating masks depends on whether you think masks work. Whether you favor getting vaccinated or mandating vaccines depends on whether you think the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks. These are facts. 

     Aside from the extreme right, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and settlement expansion in the West Bank is accepted as fact. The historic, national, and religious connections of Jews to the land that is today Israel and the West Bank is accepted as fact by all but the extreme left.      

     But these facts lead to different conclusions. Someone who supports the concept of a Jewish, democratic State of Israel, as I do, will oppose the occupation and oppose settlement expansion because only a two-state solution, one state with a large Jewish majority and one Palestinian state, can guarantee Israel’s survival as a Jewish, democratic state. 

     Someone who opposes the concept of a Jewish state can point to the occupation and argue that the answer is one binational state, a state that might have a lot of Jews but that will be democratic and not necessarily Jewish. 

     Similarly, one can oppose proposals by Israel’s ruling coalition to eviscerate Israel’s Supreme Court because one sides with the Israelis who want Israel to remain democratic, or one could look at the same facts and see proof that Israel’s government does not support democracy and is not worthy of U.S. support. 

     I call my newsletter “pro-Israel” not because I reflexively support any decision made by Israel’s government: I differentiate between supporting the State of Israel and the government of Israel, just as I differentiate between supporting America and supporting Donald Trump (or, for that matter, Joe Biden). 

      Rather, I call my newsletter “pro-Israel” because I want my readers to know that the candidates and policies I support are consistent with the belief that only by working toward a two-state solution – and giving up the notion of a Greater Israel comprising Israel and the West Bank – can the State of Israel remain safe, secure, Jewish, and democratic. Anything less than that is not good for Israel, good for the Jews, or consistent with the values that form the bedrock of the U.S.-Israel relationship. 

     A two-state solution is not politically possible now. Israel’s current government doesn’t want it and whether current Palestinian wants it or not, the Palestinian Authority is too weak. But Israel needs a two-state solution for its own sake, let alone to realize the aspirations of the Palestinians, which is why those of us who support Israel should oppose steps by Israel’s government that make a two-state solution less likely. 

     Some argue that it doesn't matter what Israel does because the Palestinians want not an end to the occupation of the West Bank but an end to Israel itself. Some probably do, just as some Israelis want a Jewish state from the river to the sea. The reality is that millions of Palestinians aren't going anywhere. Millions of Jews aren't going anywhere. Palestinians see the rebirth of Israel as a catastrophe, a nakba that conflicted with their national aspirations and led to displacement and worse. Jews see the rebirth of Israel as a modern miracle that realized 2,000 years of national aspirations and provided a needed safe haven from centuries of antisemitic persecution. 

     Neither side has to give up its narrative or accept the other side's narrative, but both sides must realize that the only path forward, a two-state solution, requires both sides to give up sovereignty over land that they believe should be theirs and both sides to accept that previous sins of the other side may never be fully redressed. And everyone who cares about Israel has a duty to speak up, whether for or against the policies of whatever government is in power. 

      That’s not everyone’s idea of “pro-Israel,” but it's mine. If you like what you’ve read, or if you’re curious, I’d love for you to join the thousands of people who read my newsletter. It’s free, it’s once a week, and you can sign up here or email me at steve@stevesheffey.com.

Talk about your passion

Michael Goi, right, directs Gary Oldman, left, in the 2019 horror movie "Mary."

     Identity expands and contracts. Let me try to explain. I’m Jewish. Jewishness can be a lens to view the eternal, to focus on ethics, knowledge, belief, ritual. Or it can be a set of blinders, the way some ultra-Orthodox sects neglect to teach their children math and science. This holds true for all religions, ethnicities, races. They can both widen and narrow.
     Take Wednesday’s column. Columbia College pitched veteran director Michael Goi because he’s Asian American and the success of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” has thrown attention on Asian heritage in Hollywood.
     That was one reason I agreed. But only one — the rest is because making movies is interesting work. Goi was a font of razor-sharp professional insight. As it was, Wednesday’s column ran 50% longer than usual. Even so, after turning it in, I realized I’d left out perhaps the two most interesting parts of our talk, because they were off-topic.
     First, what Goi said about job interviews. This is relevant because people nowadays move from job to job, interviewing constantly. Goi said something that I have never heard before from anybody in any profession.
     “The job interview is my favorite, favorite part of this business,” he said. “If I could get paid to interview and never have to do the job, I’d be perfectly happy. I always tell people they should embrace the job interview process. The only time that a job is going to be perfect is during the job interview. Because you don’t have to worry about all the stuff you have to worry about if you get the job.”
     Don’t try to flatter the interviewer.
     “People freak themselves out about the job interview and try to read the room and try to predict what it is they want to hear,” Goi said. “I don’t do any of that. That’s how you convince them that you’re not right for the job. They can tell that you’re lying. They can tell you’re just saying things to make them feel better.”

To continue reading, click here.

Farewell to Kenzaburo Oe.

 

   What prompted me to take Japanese fiction in college. I can't remember. The need to fill an English credit, no doubt. And some youthful desire to be of-the-moment; Japan was certainly cutting edge in the early 1980s — their economic miracle running full bore. They were the future. 
     I easily recall the novels we read. Some early stuff: "The Tale of Genji." "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon." Yukio Mishima's homoerotic "Confessions of a Mask."
    And "A Personal Matter" by Kenzaburo Oe. Mishima might have been the romantic hero, with his personal army of acolytes and his disemboweling himself on television after some daft failed coup. But he was also a right wing nationalist asshat. 

     Oe was the guy I could relate to, or more particularly, his character of Bird, a feckless instructor, dreaming over his maps of Africa, his name an ironic comment on his earthbound soul. Bird's wife gives birth to a child, killing the dream of Africa, and the child has a skull deformity. 

     While she is in the hospital, Bird goes on a bender, pinballing around Tokyo, visiting old girlfriends in his sports car.  There's a very Japanese scene where, hung over, he vomits in front of his class, and a student runs over to the puddle, falls to his hands and knees, gives it a whiff, and announces he smells alcohol. I used one passage from it in "Out of the Wreck I Rise:"

Guillaume Apollinaire

      "Bird himself was wary of the craving, occult but deeply rooted, that he still had for alcohol. Often since those four weeks in whisky hell he had asked himself why he had stayed drunk for seven hundred hours, and never had he arrived a conclusive answer. So long as his descent into the abyss of whisky remained a riddle, there was a constant danger he might suddenly return."

      But that wasn't why I love the book. It was a single paragraph that bowled me over at 21 and still does. Bird and his girlfriend take the child and plan, in essence, to deliver it to an abortionist and have him killed. There's a scene in an ambulance where he looks down at the child and thinks:     

"Like Apollinaire, my son was wounded on a dark and lonely battlefield that I have never seen, and he has arrived with his head in bandages. I'll have to bury him like a soldier who died in war."

     I'm not sure how beautiful and sad that reads yanked out of context. And I shouldn't say what happens in the book — you should read it. I will say that Oe's son Hikari was indeed born with a similar deformity, one that kept him at the mental level of a 3-year-old for the rest of his life. A nevertheless meaningful life where he became known as a composer of flute and piano music.
     Oe died Monday. He was an important literary figure in Japan, noted for pushing back against that country's tendency toward conformity and militancy. Oe won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994, so he doesn't need my plaudits. But I felt the need to say goodbye to him anyway. Maybe it's time to read "A Personal Matter" again — I never read it a second time, because the first reading stuck with me clearly for 40 years. That itself says something about a book.

‘Dreaming is not enough’

Michael Goi (left) directs Lady Gaga in 2015 for an episode of FX's “American Horror Story.”

     Michael Goi doesn’t want to hear your movie idea.
     “I will not engage in a conversation with somebody if they start out with ‘I’ve got this great idea for a movie,’” said the veteran Hollywood director and cinematographer. “No. Go out and make the movie and show me the movie.”
     He tells young people trying to break into the film industry: You don’t need fancy equipment. Everything you need is between your ears and in your back pocket.
     “You live in an era when there are no excuses for not making a movie,” said Goi. “You say you want to be a filmmaker; go out and make a movie. You can shoot it on your phone. You can edit on your tablet. You can post it on social media platforms for the entire world to see. All these things are no longer barriers to you.”
     Speaking of barriers. Goi was pitched at me by his alma mater, Columbia College, as an Asian American filmmaker, in context of the success of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
     But as much as I tried to focus on the first part of that equation, his being Asian American, we kept returning to the second, filmmaker part. He worked on “Glee” and “American Horror Story.” He was executive producer, director and cinematographer for “Avatar: The Last Airbender” on Netflix and on Saturday just finished up shooting the next season of ABC’s “The Rookie.”
    A reminder that real-life individuals do not always easily accept the job as ethnic role models.
    For instance, Goi was at the Dolby Theatre for the Oscars Sunday night.
     “It was good,” he said. “I thought the show moved well.”
    And?

To continue reading, click here.

Flashback 2007: "Time to pick up the pace"

     Today being Pi Day, I thought I would reach back into the vault and disinter another column about the mathematical holiday, there being quite a few, given my boys' inclination toward numbers.  

     Though in this case I'm torn, since this is from the day when my column ran over a thousand words and filled a page. Do I present the single, pi-related tidbit, in recognition of readers' social media-stunted attention spans? Or the full range of comments and risk alienating the easily-bored? I decided, since some readers have time on their hands, to go with the latter. Though feel free to skip to the second item, read that, and call it a day. No one will know.

OPENING SHOT

     We're still at war, right? In Iraq. In Afghanistan. American soldiers dying every day?
     I mean, it didn't end suddenly and nobody bothered to tell us, right?
     Because there was Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who you would think has a million urgent matters on his plate, the first dozen involving keeping our troops from being scattered alongside dusty foreign roadsides.
     Yet there he was, pedaling furiously away from his ham-headed comments that homosexuality is morally wrong, batting aside demands for apology, as if this were the most pressing military issue facing America today.
     Make no mistake. The "Don't ask/Don't tell" policy is institutionalized deceit and cowardice, and itself immoral, in that honesty is a virtue, one that some of us would rank even above the glittering good of heterosexuality.
     And one day, the military will rid itself of this particular phobia, and finally join the rest of the civilized world.
     But that can wait until 2008. First things first.

A BIG SLICE OF DELICIOUS PI

     Today is Pi Day or, to be precise, π Day, since March 14 can be written as 3.14 and the irrational number we call π — well, some of us call π — begins 3.14 before sailing off into infinity: 3.1415926535....

     And yes, I wrote that from memory, but only because my oldest son has "Pi-Offs" with his pals, where they compete to see who can remember the most digits of '. ("Shouldn't you boys be off smoking somewhere?" I want to ask them.)
     In case it has been a while since math class, ' is the ratio between a circle's circumference (the round part) and its diameter (an imaginary line through the center).

     Fixation with pi is surprisingly common — go to mathematicianspictures.com and you will find a blizzard of slick pi merchandise: pi t-shirts and pi mugs and pi posters, including a 4-by-8-foot, $200 monster displaying the first million digits.
    Some people, it seems, are hungry for pi. "It's pretty astonishing isn't it?" said David Blatner, author of The Joy of π. "It's the only mathematical constant that any educated person knows. [But] pi is also a fascinating mystery. It's infinitely long. That's very strange, and completely non-intuitive. To this day, I hear from people who believe they've figured out pi to the last digit, or discovered that it's really 3 1/8 or whatever."

     Meanwhile, at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, students from the Key Club and Mu Alpha Theta boards will be celebrating Pi Day today by selling $1 slices of pie with proceeds going to charity.

BIG GUN OR NO BIG GUN?

     That is the question up in the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, where the American Legion ignited a dispute by donating the World War II howitzer that sat in front of its former Pfingsten Road headquarters to the village.
     They want the weapon next to Village Hall, and there was a meeting there Monday night to air opinions on the matter:
     The anti-gun people said, basically: A gun is a weapon. Weapons promote violence. Violence doesn't solve anything. A big gun next to the village hall would send a bad message to our youth, promoting war, violence and militarism.
     The pro-gun people — many wearing their VFW watch caps — said, basically: A gun is a reminder of war, where soldiers sometimes are called upon to give up their lives in defense of our freedoms. A big gun next to the village hall would remind our feckless youth about the sacrifices made in their behalf.
     I went there, not to report, but to put in my resident's two cents, which can be summarized as: I grew up in a small town not unlike Northbrook where our town square had a Civil War cannon and a plaque made out of scrap from the battleship U.S.S. Maine. The only reason I know there was a Maine, or that it blew up in Havana Harbor in 1898 is because that plaque is there. Hard as it is to believe, with all these W.W. II vets still here, but the years will pass and memory will fade. If you place the howitzer next to the Village Hall, without question there someday will be children in Northbrook who only know there was a World War II because they noticed the big gun sitting there.
     I meant to add that there is an obvious compromise — place the gun, but allow the peace cohort to protest there, filling the barrel with daisies or whatever. That seems fair.
     But it's nerve-wracking speaking in public — even for a big media star like myself — and before my time was up, I fled back to my seat, heart pounding, mouth dry. (Editor's note: the gun got the nod). 

NO 'PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT'

     You do not read the University of Minnesota Press catalogue. But I do, which is why I have a copy of Murat Aydemir's Images of Bliss: Ejaculation, Masculinity, Meaning in my, ah, hands.
     I ordered it, thinking it would be one of those pleasant omnium-gatherum cultural histories. The reader, cringing and entranced, would be led through a spunky view of world history, beginning with Onan and ending with Cameron Diaz's special hair gel in "There's Something About Mary."
     My plan was to read the book and present the fascinating parts to you. Alas. I had forgotten the ability of academics to take even the most promising subject and bury it in verbiage. Here is a representative sentence:
     "Placing semen on a semantic axis consisting of the oppositions between past and future, retrospection and anticipation, belatedness and precipitousness, the third and final dimension concerns temporality and historicity."
     That was in the introduction. By the first chapter, we are thrown Derrida and all those French guys who have made such a hash of academia. I began to skim, figuring there must be one interesting tidbit, somewhere, to share with a general audience.
     There wasn't.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE

     Jim Seguin of New Lenox was kind enough to send this fun nun pun:
     Several elderly nuns were in their third-floor convent one night when a fire broke out. The nuns took their habits off and tied them together to make a rope to get out of the burning building via the window.
     After they were safely on the ground, a news reporter came over to one of the nuns and asked her, "Weren't you afraid that the rope you made out of your habits could have broken, especially since they are so old?"
     "No, of course not," the nun replied. "Everyone knows that old habits are hard to break."

      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 14, 2007