Month: December 2018

2018 in Review – Grow up and see the world

~ Randy Blazak ~ Leave a comment

December 31, 2018

It’s a universal truth – time passes more quickly as you get older. The span from 1970 to 1978 seemed to be a millennia when I was a kid. The jump from 2010 to 2018 was just a minute. And it doesn’t seem much has changed in those years (other than the fact we had a sane intelligent grown-up in the White House). The #1 song the first week of 2010 was Ke$ha’s “TiK ToK.” Think about the change of music from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1968 – Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” to Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard it Through the Grapevine.” What was new in 2018?

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It’s hard to sum up a block of 365 days. When I think of every stupid thing Donald Trump has done in 2018, I also think of Black Panther, the March for Our Lives, and the massive blue wave that brought the grown-ups back to Congress in November. It seemed like this would be the year that Mueller brought down Baby Trump, but let the man take his time and do it right. There are currently 17 (known) investigations related to Trump. There have been numerous indictments, guilty pleas, and prison sentences so far in this “witch hunt.” Trump is the guy who famously said, “I surround myself with the best people. I know the best people.” 2019 will be fun.

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The madness of King Donald aside, 2018 on the home-front has been an exciting year that has seen my feet stepping on to more airplanes than ever. My work on extremism has taken me all over the world, including a UN workshop in Abu Dhabi, UAE, as well as scholarly meetings in Oslo, Norway and Washington DC. There were a few presentations in NYC, one in Chicago, and a ten-day community leader exchange to the UK to study countering violent extremism programs. My participation in DC on a congressional panel on hate groups was covered live on C-SPAN. And I did dozens of local presentations and trainings. Andrea came with me for the Oslo (via London) trip and I had a blast bringing Cozy with me on one of the New York trips. (That girl can now hail a cab.) So many highlights.

Every time I left the USA, people wanted to understand what’s happened to America? How could we let something like Donald Trump happen? I had to remind them that all countries have problems with isolationist nationalist demagogues. We just happened to end up with one who was a TV star. This also weighed heavily when Andrea and Cozy went to Mexico this year and we had to have multiple plans in case the racist Trump immigration policy (You don’t hear about any Canadians being deported) separated mother and child at the border.

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On a personal level, the search for full time work continues. But I seemed to be working a lot, regardless. I clocked in a full year of teaching at Portland Community College with some of the most amazing and dedicated students I’ve ever had in my almost 30 years of teaching. I conducted numerous diversity trainings and led workshops for teachers. This year saw the birth of Randy Blazak Consulting LLC, to facilitate the work I do on criminal cases and consulting projects for the city. And of course, there were the weekly educational bus tours with the Fair Housing Council of Oregon. The best part was the fact that Andrea began her teaching work at Portland State and we could grade papers together.

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I don’t know how to summarize a year. It seems like we started the year with a government shutdown and here we are again. I do know that Cozy went from 3 to 4, and that’s a light year in child development. She started the year ballet dancing in the living room and she’s ending 2018 by teaching us how to hula dance. My favorite new thing has been Andrea and my YouTube channel, Vinyl Fetish, where you can find us (often after too many drinks) discussing records. 2018 whizzed by like a whir of images; Finding Andrea in a record store in Oslo, Cozy heading off to see a Broadway musical (Frozen), me seeing Donald Trump in the back of his presidential limo, tweeting as he pulled into the White House. I have a feeling 2019 will be much more real, especially after the Democrats set up shop in the House.

I didn’t keep up my furious blogging schedule in 2019, but I did get some good pieces out (along with a piece for Huffington Post). Of the 43 articles on a wide variety of topics, my piece on Brett Kavanaugh and bro culture was the most popular post, followed by my Handmaid’s Tale-inspired “America is Becoming a Dystopian Nightmare: What Do We Do Now???” There will be plenty to write about in 2019 as Trump’s house of cards caves in, Cozy turns 5, Andrea and I settle into our roles as teachers, and patriarchy tries to desperately hold on to its violent reign of terror.

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Let me revisit one of my favorite moments of 2018, meeting Gloria Steinem at a event I was speaking at in Manhattan. I asked her how she was explaining the whole Trump thing. She said, very clearly, that the moment a women is most at risk of being murdered by her abuser is when she is finally breaking free of him. We won’t be murdered. Let’s break free in 2019.

 

2018 WTW Posts

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Let’s End Duality: Make America Grey Again (January 4, 2018)

In Defense of the Classroom (January 12, 2018)

Our White Supremacist President (January 16, 2018)

Gender – Nature vs. Nurture 7: Baby – Toddler – Girl (January 25, 2018)

Confronting Ableism by “Looking” in the Mirror (February 5, 2018)

On becoming the working poor or How I robbed Peter to pay Paul (February 9, 2018)

The Vinyl Fetish Club is here for your sexy music needs (February 14, 2018)

America is eating its young. Maybe it’s time to get the hell out. (February 15, 2018)

Generation Z will turn this gunship around (February 23, 2018)

My Conversation with Gloria Steinem (March 2, 2018)

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Masculinity Isn’t Toxic. Toxic Masculinity Is (March 9, 2018)

Dad Love: An Open Letter to Non-Breeders (March 19, 2018)

What Do We Give the World? (March 29, 2018)

Jukebox Hero 3: Right Here, Right Now Watching the World Wake Up (April 5, 2018)

Dropping F Bombs and White Privilege (April 12, 2018)

Talking About Gender and Violence in the Middle East (April 19, 2018)

Incels: Just the latest chapter in the war on women (April 26, 2018)

Jukebox Hero 4: I’m Wide Awake – U2 (Part 2) (April 29, 2018)

Get out of your country! (May 15, 2018)

Entering the Phallic Phase: Psychoanalytic Feminists, Help! (May 24, 2018)

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Guest Essay: The Status of Women by Andi Barrios (May 31, 2018)

Thinking about Racial Reparations (June 10, 2018)

Watching America die, I sent a Statue of Liberty to Donald Trump (June 20, 2018)

America is Becoming a Dystopian Nightmare: What Do We Do Now??? (June 28, 2018)

We’re all intersectional (just some more than others) (July 6, 2018)

Witnessing the end of the American Century from the former British Empire (July 14, 2018)

Imagining a Time After Nations (July 20, 2018)

What I’ve Learned about Countering Violent Extremism (is the opposite of what I’ve been told to believe) (August 3, 2018)

What Do We Do About the Nazis After Charlottesville? (August 11, 2018)

My best friend is 4 (August 17, 2018)

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Can I be a feminist, too? (August 24, 2018)

She ain’t heavy, she’s my daughter: Trying to understand child abuse (August 31, 2018)

Are you “friends” with a Russian bot? Taking a stand against idiocracy (September 13, 2018)

Stop saying racists are bad people (September 21, 2018)

Brett Kavanaugh and Bro Culture: Let’s Look in the Mirror (September 28, 2018)

Columbus Day: Celebrating child rapists (October 7, 2018)

Taking Manhattan with a 4-year old (October 23, 2018)

President Trump is not smart enough not to throw America into a civil war (October 29, 2018)

At which mass shooting will your loved ones be killed? (November 8, 2018)

I’ve been given a small space, against the wall (November 19, 2018)

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Stone Mountain is a rock with a lot of racial baggage: Finding solutions (November 22, 2018)

“I just had to let it go…” On Parenting and Mortality (December 8, 2018)

Dad’s Top 10 Favorite New LPs of 2018 (December 20, 2018)

2018 in Review – Grow up and see the world (December 31, 2018)

 

 

Dad’s Top 10 Favorite New LPs of 2018

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

December 20, 2018

Does the music of 2018 sound any different than the music of 2008? I’m just asking. The top three albums of ’08 were Lil Wayne’s The Carter III, Coldplay’s Viva la Vida, and Taylor Swift’s Fearless. The music of 1978 (Best selling LP: soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever) was light years from records of 1968 (Top seller: Are You Experienced? by the Jimi Hendrix Experience). Is new music new in any way? I mean there’s good stuff but it seems like we’re in a stylistic holding pattern. Maybe I’m just getting old and don’t know where to look. Other than Greta Van Fleet (who sound more 1968 than 2018), there wasn’t any new music that I went apeshit over.

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This was a great year to pick up vinyl but my long-standing tradition of weekly record shopping went right out the window as the finances tightened.  The high point was buying vinyl all over the world, including New York, London, Leeds, Oslo, Chicago, Washington DC, and even Abu Dhabi. All of it ended up on Andrea and my new YouTube channel, Vinyl Fetish. The channel gave us a great opportunity to talk about our favorite records, often after a night out on the town. There was more vinyl consumed than CDs this year, but most of it was old jazz sides.

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We also really dialed back the live shows. There was a point in my life when I saw live music six nights a week. (The seventh night was cheap beer night at the Stein Club in Atlanta.) Between the traveling, the budget, and the fact that our babysitter went and had a baby of her own, there weren’t too many nights rocking out. But some of the highlights were seeing Mexican greats Café Tacuba in Portland and jazz legend McCoy Tyner at Blue Note in Greenwich Village. We saw the great Bowie tribute band, Bowievision, twice. One of my most blissed-out moments was seeing the classic ska band, The Dekkertones, in a London pub full of skinheads. Yes, I skanked.

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Regardless of all the new music I missed in 2018, the top two are albums I played to absolute death. The first was the “new” John Coltrane album, Both Directions at Once. The tracks were unreleased gems from 1963 that were found on a shelf somewhere and turned into an album by his son Ravi. The pure thrill of  hearing a new Coltrane album full of brilliant improvisation by his greatest quartet (including McCoy Tyner) was beyond measure. The packaging on Trane’s old Impulse! label was top notch. And my video review did pretty well, too!

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The other was Paul McCartney’s Egypt Station. I’ve bought each new McCartney album on the day of its release since Wings’ London Town (Friday, March 31, 1978). Some have been brilliant. Paul at age 76 is still brilliant. Like all his albums, I was unsure at first listen but it just grew and grew on me and I’m still not tired of playing it. His epic tune “Despite Repeated Warnings” (in the vein of “Band of the Run”) is the perfect take-down of Trump (“Take away the keys and lock him up”) and an affirmation of the will of the people (“Yes, we can do it!”). When most geezers are making peace with their maker, Paul is firing on all cylinders, creating an album were each song is chocked full of insight and tasty treats. I just wish he didn’t feel the need to take the act on the road again with the same old band and a voice that is no longer built for three-hour concerts. You’re good, Paulie. The studio is your domain. Show the kids how it’s done.

So I didn’t have enough this year for a Top 20, but here are ten albums I absolutely loved this year.

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  1. Paul McCartney – Egypt Station
  2. John Coltrane – Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album
  3. Paul Weller – True Meanings
  4. Kacey Musgraves – Golden Hour
  5. Greta Van Fleet – Anthem of the Peaceful Army
  6. Janelle Monae – Dirty Computer
  7. Bruebeck Brothers Quartet – Timeline
  8. Pistol Annies – Interstate Gospel
  9. Darling Machines – Darling Machines
  10. Father John Misty – God’s Favorite Customer

And it’s next on my “To Buy” list so I fully anticipate that Elvis Costello’s Look Now belongs on that list somewhere. Here’s to a better income in 2019 and the joy of purchasing more new music. And to something interesting happening.

 

 

 

 

“I just had to let it go…” On Parenting and Mortality

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

December 8, 2018

December 8th is always a rough day, marking another year without John Lennon in the world. A 78-year-old Lennon would be pretty cool but he will never be more than 40, the age he was when he was shot by a “New York gunman” who happened to be from the Georgia town next to mine. That moment is forever frozen, just like December 7th is for another generation. I remember making a vow on December 9, 1980 that I would never laugh again as a silent protest against the insanity of taking this sage out of the world.

I did laugh again, a lot. And tried to keep the messages of the forever-young Beatle in the front of my head. This blog is inspired by him and named after his song I heard on 96 Rock that morning the moment I realized that he was actually dead. For the billions on earth born after the night he died in the back of police car on its way to Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hospital (that includes my wife and daughter), the ghost of John Lennon is omnipresent. Just ask Cozy to sing a few lines of “I am the Walrus.”

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What attracted me to John Lennon as teenager was his wisdom, born of pain. I would read every interview with him I could get my hands on and dissected song lyrics for glimpses of directions for my own confused life. His final album, Double Fantasy, released three weeks before his murder, was full of useful tidbits. I didn’t immediately connect with it because it was the songs of a 40-year-old bouncing off 16-year-old ear drums (although I did love the weird new wavey Yoko songs that were closer to the B-52’s than the Beatles).

Now that I’m a father, I understand the wisdom, and ultimate heartbreak, of that 1980 album. Cozy is now the age John’s son, Sean, was when he started recording the tracks for Double Fantasy. This includes the song for Sean, “Beautiful Boy.” In it John is filled with the deep optimism that comes with parenthood. “Every day in every way, it’s getting better and better.” And the pure thrill of seeing the world through your child’s eyes. “I can hardly wait to see you come of age. But I guess we’ll both just have to be patient ‘cause it’s a long way to go.” Three weeks after the world first heard that song Sean would have his father stollen from him.

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I’ve met Sean a few times and I always want to just give him a hug. His memories of his father are from the perspective of a pre-schooler. There was never a Father John teaching him an E chord on the guitar or nervously explaining the difference between (all you need is) love and sex. His John Lennon is the one shared with the rest of humanity. While it’s the natural order that parents die before their children, it shouldn’t happen that quickly.

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The day just has me reflecting on how I really want to stick around as long as possible to give Cozy the maximum guidance, protection, and exposure to my sick living-room dance routines. As an older parent, I might not make her 30th birthday party and hope I can be there for her college graduation. (The good/bad news is that Blazaks tend to live a long time.) I have to make this time matter because I might not be around to clean up any messes later. When I think about serious risks to me (I have been known to jump out planes and mouth off in biker bars), now the thoughts immediately go to my daughter. I don’t that Nazi to kill me, not because it will hurt, because who will explain to Cozy the dangers of mall jazz and boys who think they are all that? I mean, seriously.

The tragic end of John Lennon reminds me of how we are all here such a short time and do not control when our exit date might be. The rumor was that John was planning a tour in 1981 and I would have been in the front row. It didn’t happen but he made the absolute most of his 40 years. Each stage was focused on making his world a bit better, whether opposing a war or just making bread. That’s the best thing you can give your child, no matter how long you last in this world.

However far we travel

Wherever we may roam

The center of the circle

Will always be our home

Yeah, yeah, yeah