Dance party revolution

We had a fabulous time at the music festival. 17 Hippies (below) was out of sight, with fun, genre-mixing surprises in their songs. They had a cinematic feel, combining Central European moodiness with American tough-guy movies. Kind of like Weimar Germany cabaret meets Dennis Hopper in Wim Wenders' The American Friend, all with the rootsy polka-like klezmer sound of Central Europe.

March Fourth Marching Band, from Portland, OR, absolutely rocked our world. Check out their steampunk drum racks here and here. The Marching Band got into some really deep beats, mixing up the Meters funk interpretation of the New Orleans sound with the charisma of a street band. Given the creativity pouring out of these arrangements, I have faith again in the world.

Final comment. I think world music festivals have been known for earnest folk music and pure, authentic roots musicians, and that aspect still remains a part of them. But it's the big, talented, irreverent ensembles that really make a festival. Both of these groups had 15-20 people on stage and they were both super tight. Getting all those people organized and on tour is authentic enough for me.

Teacher

The AO took BB into school today rather than putting him on the bus. The object, given her easy schedule on Thursday mornings, was to poke around a bit, maybe get the teacher to talk about how things are going. Since he rides the bus, we feel at some disadvantage because we don't ever see him at school. Well, the teacher did that. She volunteered that she liked having him in the class, that he was a good kid. Then she leaned in, like she tends to do, and said, he is a little emotional. He tends to get frustrated and cry when things aren't going right. But he's working on it, she assured AO.

I don't know quite what to feel. Yes, he is a little emotional, it's true. There's nothing inherently wrong with it. After all, I tended to be emotional too. I could feel existential about it. Why does the curse persist? But we'll try to see if he grows out of it. Usually, he has a harder time when he's hungry or tired. We know that none of the kids eat much at school and that they only give them about 10 real minutes to eat. So this could be contributing to it. All things considered, I think he's been dealing with the stress of starting school pretty well. We spoke with the mother of one of his classmates who said things were going so badly with the disciplinary nature of the room that she was wondering whether to change classrooms. We heard about this. Some boys thrive in this particular teacher's classroom and others are miserable. But she is a pro.

In any case, I have to be careful that I don't try to eradicate this aspect of BB - you know hating in my kid what I hate in myself. Nature gave him the proclivity and he's just going to have to learn to live with it. But trying to eliminate it completely would be like trying to convince a left handed person to be right handed.

17 Hippies

We are planning to attend an annual world music festival in the region, and will be paying dearly for a six-hour babysit. This will be the longest we'll have someone here babysitting both kids. I don't envy our babysitter.

At the festival I'm looking forward to seeing MC Rai, who plays electrified Rai--essentially North African reggae--and 17 Hippies, who are from East Berlin and play something called the Berlin style, a mix of folk music, chanson, gypsy, and klezmer. Party music, in other words, with a former communist exuberance. Let's dance!

MC Rai @ The Chicago Cultural Center

Free market China

Apropos yesterday's post, I realized that two of my examples of free market effects came from China.  Interesting story. Fresh Air recently broadcast an interview with a journalist based in China, who was detained at a Chinese factory compound while investigating the toy recalls.  What became clear to him while he tried to convince his captors that he wasn't a spy is that the police (both local and national) and the political apparatus had absolutely no power to free him.  His fate was in the hands of those running the factory.  

Similarly, what has people up in arms about the excesses of the private contractors working for the TSA is that they are unaccountable. They can detain you in much the same way.

Of course, it's nothing new. Corporatism and authoritarianism have always gone hand in hand. It reminds me of the good-old Progressive days, when Pinkerton detectives shot labor organizers and strikers.  

City-State Halliburton

I've come across some interviews of Naomi Klein, whose new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, debunks the assumption that free markets go hand in hand with free societies. She uses the metaphor of torture to analyze how radical free market types use shocks and disasters to create free market zones. Shock events like natural disasters, wars, and revolutions leave a population acting as though it has been tortured, left feeling weak and without a stable identity. It's been part of the Chicago School's program to take advantage of the periods following these shocks to rid a society of its social programs and regulations. They've used this scheme to destroy so-called mixed economies in order to establish pure free markets: ones in which toys are made with lead, for example, or dog food contains melamine or a private security company like Blackwater can massacre civilians.  She claims that it was utilized extensively in South America, like in Pinochet's Chile, and is now being used in Iraq. Here's a short film she made with Alfonso Cuarón, the director of Children of Men.

One can make the case that the Bush administration also tried to do it in the U.S. following 9/11. Remember Bush pushing an "ownership" society? It probably isn't going away. Some days it seems the only thing that can save us from Terror are the many contractors hired by Homeland Security.

Virtual worlds

I like the idea of spending time in a virtual world.  All the media reports I encounter about worlds like Second Life suggest that one can have fun.  There are nightclubs, concerts, interesting architecture, and lots and lots of avatars flying about in search of engaging conversation.  There is even a level of perversity I couldn't possibly find in my real life.  I've read the novel Snow Crash, which apparently inspired the founders of Second Life.  There avatars move through worlds that are both thrilling and challenging.  Like a Hong Kong movie, they battle each other with swords.

But all I ever feel in Second Life is incredibly bored.  My basic avatar has wandered alone through pixelated, monumentally empty spaces without so much as an uptick in my heartbeat.  I can fly, but where is the excitement?  I know I should try something like World of Warcraft, with its guild communities of warriors, but I just don't have the time.  I suppose like any social relationship, a virtual community is only as good as the time you put into it.  Maybe.  I read something recently that suggested people in Second Life don't move out of the basic proscribed roles that one might find in a sorority.   Rather than experiment with different roles, their basic goal is to conform. The object is to buy things and what people generally purchase first are things like big tits and tight muscles. But someone studying the emotional dimensions of the online world, Sherry Turkle, suggests that virtual worlds are places to experiment with one's emotional range.  I'd like to think that this is possible. Unfortunately, I just can't spare the time from the emotional roller coaster that is my reality-based life.

Yellow curbs

What the BB learns in kindergarten, besides how to write his letters and listen to six graders on the bus talk about their boners, are rules.  He tells us that keeping to all the rules (walk only down the right side of the hall!) is hard, but that he hasn't broken a rule yet.  It's gotten so bad that he won't let us park in a yellow zone because he knows it's meant only for loading.  He worries about expired meters, speed limits, a myriad of warning signs.  The world to him has now become a place that proscribes.  Of course, he doesn't take seriously the rules that we've tried to establish in our own home.  Watch how you play with your brother, keep small things like marbles put away in a bin, don't yell at the table.  Insolently, he ignores us.  But here he learns that rules can also be bent.  Perhaps this is how it should be.  

Newborn

Yesterday, I saw a three-day old baby.  When I was young I didn't realize the thrill of seeing new life.  In fact, I had to have my own kids before being invited to share the experience of the newborn.  Now, I'm let in to the sanctum. (Some readers may know these people personally, so email me if you're in the know.)

Three days old!  What is really odd about newborns is that they look kind of old, wrinkly, wise, and Buddha-like.  They weigh nothing, but all the human things logged into our genetic code are there.  This baby had absolutely beautiful lips.  Every baby has something distinctive, but her little feature made her seem especially cute.

It's a privilege to see a new baby.  Thanks to my friends for procreating.  

Walking off of chairs

I had both kids on my own this afternoon. They had their usual wind up time, with BB running back and forth throwing and kicking a ball and LB trying to get in his way. A one year old tackling a five year old makes me tense, but somehow they'll eventually learn each others' limits. LB, in particular, needs to learn some limits. He discovered in the last few days that he can crawl up into an easy chair. This afternoon he started standing up and simply walking off the chair. He is starting to learn to walk down steps instead of turning around and crawling backward. But an easy chair is a little different from a step. So over and over I ran over to "save" him from falling flat on his face. I almost moved the chair downstairs. LB thought the whole exercise was hilarious.  My attempts to look grim and disapproving have so far failed.

Wearable art

For better coverage on the woman arrested today for wearing a fake bomb see this boing boing post.   Boston police-types overreact again!   It wasn't supposed to be a bomb, a hoax, or even a stunt.  She's an MIT student and was just picking someone up at the airport wearing her regular hoodie.  The hoodie happened to have painted wire that lights up built into it, but it's simply wearable art.  That's what people do at MIT.  The AP report says something about how suspicious it is that she had play-doh on her hands.  Play-doh!  The AP also includes an official saying she's lucky she's not dead.  Haven't they heard of Tasers?  It's what everyone else in a uniform is doing.   

Our adventures with TSA include taking itty bitty shoes off a one year old to be scanned.  Having our toy bag (with its plastic dinosaurs and Thomas Trains) searched carefully each and every time we go through security.  And now my laptop always gets tested, turned on, and the like.  I finally figured out that they flag my laptop because last year I took it apart to change the hard drive.   I'm sure that there are little scratches around the laptop's tiny, little screws that give off all kinds of red flags.