A Valentines Poem for My Beloved Wife

February 14, 2016February 15, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

February 14, 2016

The Song of Sirens

I am a child of Daedalus

Who designed the Labyrinth to imprison our monsters

With wax and feathers attached to our arms

He told me not to fly too low

The sea would pull me into its waves

He told me to not fly too high

The sun would melt my wings

But I saw your face in the sky

And I reached up for your cheek

As I could feel the wax melt

Burning my legs

I only wanted to reach up, up, up

And I fell to earth

I fell below the earth

The Sirens collected me from the waves

And sang me your song

“The sea and sky are only blue

They are both too small for you

The time as arrived to be free

Spread your arms and

Come with me.”

Falling and flying at the same time

Detached from the profane world

Into your bosom

The warmth healed my bones

Your breath filled my lungs

In your eyes were cosmos

Give me infinity to explore

You are the great mother of creation

I am humbled before your power

You are the sad daughter of colonization

I want to nurse your soul to bloom

You are the honored judge of mediation

I am schooled by your soft wisdom

You are the seductive goddess of fascination

I want to dream inside your womb

Like a wanderer who steps off a cliff

I chose to depart the muddy road

Toward the glow of your beauty

My right arm grabbed by the archangel Raphael

And lifted to a new heaven

I leave the mortal pain below

To be born again in your resolute love

Pushing back against trolls

February 10, 2016September 6, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 41 Comments

February 10, 2016

My mother once called me here in Portland and said, “Randy, I just Googled you. There are some people who really HATE you!” Hi mom, welcome to the Age of the Internet Troll. She had stumbled across a white supremacist website where racists were having a field day bashing me. I have dedicated my life to studying them and their impact on the world so they don’t like me much. I have been branded by them as a “race traitor” and among other things (Jew, homosexual, pedophile, Yankees fan). It’s hard to go to an actual Klan rally these days so these rocket scientists spend all their free white time on the internet.

There is a neo-Nazi version of Wikipedia called Metapedia. For a long time they had an entry on me that described me as a “wheezing Ashkenazi Jew,” promoting a “Zionist curriculum” at “Portland College.” I’m sure my Presbyterian parents would get a kick out of that.

Racists have posted my office number and pictures of my house on line, but it never really bothered me. It meant I was doing something right. It’s the character assassins that I worry about. Behind their anonymous devices the trolls can take you down out of sheer boredom.

I was trying to track the traffic to this blog last night and Googled; blazak feminist blog. The usual stuff comes up and then a link to an article entitled, “Dirty Jew Perv Info.” It is a pretty extensive thread accusing me of sleeping with students for grades (and being a Trump hater). I almost threw up when I read it. There are a number of fake Rate-My-Professor entries from supposed students who supposedly had to have sex with me to pass a class. They were all posted the same day, the fall of 2015, more than year after my last class at PSU. It’s pretty obvious that they were created by one person but there’s a lot of people who believe whatever comes up on their screen. (No, Michigan did not outlaw gay sex.)

I’ve been teaching college classes since 1989 and ever since then I have had to deal with the rumors that I sleep with my students. So let me put this to rest right fucking now. 1) Nobody has ever gotten a grade in any of my classes for any other reason than an objective evaluation of their class performance. There is no favoritism for anybody. This is the sacred relationship teachers and students have and I am honor-bound to respect it. 2) I have dated handful of former students (aka adults) in my over 25 years as a teacher, after they had been in one of my classes (not during). People often meet at work and that’s where I work and if everyone is a consenting adult, nobody should care. As I have mentioned, Andrea was in one of my large intro-level classes and we barely even spoke until after the class was over. We are blissfully married and I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t believe in the incredible power of the love gods to connect two people who were meant to be together.

That doesn’t stop tongues from wagging and fingers from typing. Some of my (overwhelmingly positive) Rate-My-Professor reviews hint at this alleged favoritism and it pisses me off to no end. There is no actual human being that can say, “I got a better grade because I did this naughty thing for Blazak.” There are plenty of fake human beings it seems, but no real ones. There’s even a horrible website that is used to cyber-bully people called The Dirty. It has a post called, “Slept with the Old Teacher at PSU for an A.” First of all, I’m not that old. Second of all, the woman in question was my girlfriend for over two years and the pictures are from our Facebook pages. But it’s one of the top hits that comes up when you Google me. Great.

I’m not sure why I’m such a target. I understand why the Nazis and Trump thugs hate me, so maybe it is just coming from them. (Just look at the 519 comments on one of my Trump posts.) I also think the fact that I’m a man who embraces feminism makes me an easy mark. I know there are many women who think men can’t be feminists and I understand that. There are also men who see me as a “gender traitor” for espousing feminist values. I’ve been accused of “using feminism” to lure mindless females into my sex trap. I’m not even sure how that would work. It sounds like a movie on the Lifetime Channel.

I bring this up for a couple of reasons. The first is that now that my wife and I have a daughter, I really have to think about her safety. These trolls have put our home address on the internet and I have made it my business to know what unstable people are capable of doing. I’d also like to protect my legacy for her. There’s a good chance for a large chunk of her life I won’t be around to respond to the troll narrative and I would prefer her not to think I was a scumbag. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life but I’ve worked hard to be respectful of even people I passionately disagree with.

Second is the impossible task of managing your online reputation. Will Rogers once said, “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.” Or the half second it takes to spread one career destroying rumor. I don’t doubt that the HR ladies who came after me so hard were using this manure as their fuel. It would never stand up in the court of law but their’s is a court of hysteria that’s becoming more and more of an issue. As someone who is back on the job market I don’t feel comfortable telling people to just Google me without forwarding this blogpost first.

As a feminist there are a ton of issues to unpack here, including the nature of power imbalances in relationships. I have to state very clearly that there is a power imbalance in EVERY relationship, especially between and a man and a woman in a patriarchal society. Two twins could be dating (I know) and the one who was born first would have power that the other wouldn’t. It’s how you manage that imbalance that matters. Is it coercive or cooperative? And this thing of treating women in college as “girls” who have no mind (or libido) of their own is inherently anti-feminist, denying women their own agency. So if someone gives me the exact criteria in terms of what age differences is “abusive” let me know and I’ll call Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones and let them know if they are safe from the Sex Police in the Hollywood HR office.

Can you tell I’m a little pissed off? I’ve worked hard to build a career that makes a difference. I’ve certainly posted things on the internet that I regret, including when I was mad. It’s a medium conducive to impulsivity and verbal diarrhea. There’s lots I’d like to scrub. But this troll trend is scary. If you can’t build yourself up you tear somebody else down with zero blowback. It explains why good people don’t want to run for office.

It may be a problem of my own creation. I’ve made a career out of provoking people. Most of the time it’s in hopes of opening up larger discussion about things like white privilege and rape culture. But I’ll admit it, sometimes it’s just for sport and I should reel that shit in. I love my wife and daughter with a force that is mighty so I want to protect them from this completely pointless noise. Maybe it gives me a little insight into how Hillary Clinton feels. As someone who occasionally wrestles with depression, I have to remind myself that the people who actually know me actually know me and good people don’t believe everything that they read on the web.

Somedays I think the internet should just be unplugged for good.

NOTE: I recognize that not all trolls are Nazis or Trump supporters. Some have advanced degrees of education and work in universities.

How David Bowie Bent My Gender

January 12, 2016January 24, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 8 Comments

January 11, 2016

This is a strange bifurcation point on our blue planet. From this point on there is no David Bowie to share the world with. Like people born after 1980 who claim John Lennon, or those born after 1959 who claim Billie Holiday (as they have a right to), every child born after today will never anticipate hearing David Bowie’s new song on the radio or changing their fashion to fit Bowie’s new style. It’s all just back catalog now. He can’t be truly their peer. Fortunately there’s enough there for future generations to mine for inspiration.

I awoke this morning to a message from my friend Roy in England that just said, “Sad day for music.” A sense of dread swelled up. I know that I am likely to witness the passing of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Patti Smith. What will the world be like without them? For the moment we share the same sunlight and oxygen supply. When there is a lunar eclipse, I know that Paul McCartney and Toni Morrison are looking at it, too. I know there is a chance that I could bump into Smokey Robinson or Elton John getting coffee in an airport somewhere in the world. We share this tiny globe together.

But not with Bowie. He is gone so unexpectedly. I was in New York City all weekend and was waiting for today to get Blackstar, his heralded new album. The beginning of the next phase of Bowie in our lives. Would there be a tour? Would I get a new haircut to look like him? Again? I should have found him on his deathbed there in Manhattan to thank him. A kiss on his alien eyelids.

For those of us that came of age in the 1970s, David Bowie was more than a “rockstar.” He was an avatar of our awkward young selves as gangly beings who had just fallen to earth, genderless and omni-sexual. I was an Apollo kid so it started with “Space Oddity,” and imagining the astronauts circling our troubled planet. But when Ziggy Stardust arrived, I could see clues to a third path, somewhere between male and female that was beautiful and personal. Glam rock was liberation, even if was just the thought of it. “Rebel, rebel. You’ve got your mother in a whirl ’cause she’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl.”

That was the beginning of me wanting to grow my hair long. Endless battles with my mother (“Boys with long hair are all on drugs!”) and my father (“Why would you want to look like a girl?”). Each half inch it grew, you’d get called “fag,” and “queer,” in rural Georgia. (Of course, once Willie and Waylon grew their hair out all that ended.) If word got around you were a Bowie fan, that was like declaring your homosexuality. “You must be AC-DC like him!” I didn’t really care. The music came from some place magical. His self-declared bisexuality created a safe zone for us as we engaged in our own space exploration. My sexuality was never an issue. The sanity of the world I expressed it in was.

All us misfit kids had Bowie. Before punk roared in, we had Bowie to speak for us and to tell us we were wonderful. “Rock and Roll Suicide,” must be an anthem for so many young people, both then and now, who feel zero validation from the straight world. It’s a reason to reject suicide as an option.

You’re watching yourself but you’re too unfair

You got your head all tangled up but if I could only make you care

Oh no love! you’re not alone

No matter what or who you’ve been

No matter when or where you’ve seen

All the knives seem to lacerate your brain

I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain

You’re not alone

In fourth grade, when the other kids were obsessed with the Captain and Tennille, me and my little goon squad were memorizing “Young Americans,” and “Fame,” (listening for John Lennon’s voice). It was like a secret society. You had to say, “Oh yeah, Deep Purple rocks!” and then find out what kid in the neighborhood had a copy of Diamond Dogs you could borrow, being sure to hide it from your parents’ gaydar.

Bowie always defined gender non-conformity. Wearing make-up, dying his hair, wearing a skirt on Saturday Night Live. In a culture obsessed with a simple gender binary, what could be more rebellious than that? Boys keep swinging! For all us kids that didn’t quite fit in the butch boy/femme girl box, we had permission to mix and match and create something completely new.

My first sociology professor at Oxford College who radicalized me in so many ways had a bit of blind spot around queer issues. I remember him trying to make the case that we are all sexual but socialized to be heterosexual and if that process gets messed up we end up confused, “like David Bowie.” I remember thinking, Wait, that’s not right. Bowie’s not “broken,” he is just free and rebelling against social constructions of gender. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

So, yeah, I have every piece of music that Bowie has released (except Blackstar, which is sold out all over the city). I have b-sides and oddities. Have you heard the soundtrack to The Buddha of Suburbia (1993)? You should. I’ve seen him in concert several times. My favorite moment was at Live Aid in London in 1985. I was right front for the global event. All my favorite stars were there. I should mention that I really hated Bowie’s Let’s Dance album when it came out in 1983. It was such a commercial piece of fluff compared to 1980’s Scary Monsters (although it has aged better than I have). So I was supremely bummed when he opened with “Modern Love,” my least favorite Bowie song. But then he played “Heroes,” and it could not have been more perfect. We were there trying to feed the world, just for one day. There were tears everywhere. Bowie transformed us.

He transformed us many times. He loosened us from our moorings. He made being smart and aging into your 60s look really, really cool and never stopped playing with our weird obsession with gender roles. All the kids that got beat up for being “Bowie fags” can have the last laugh (the ones that weren’t murdered, at least). Now that he’s dead, everybody will claim him as their own.

He’s never not been with me. His ex-wife, Angie Bowie, was my first guest speaker at Emory, delighting my students with tales of Ziggy and Iggy and the glam explosion. I courted my wife, Andrea, with mix CDs that linked Bowie songs to Nina Simone songs. When Cozy was born, I sang “Little Wonder” to her repeatedly (and “Space Oddity” when I strapped her in her car seat). And she’s napping to Station To Station as I write this. I want her to have the sexual and gender freedom that was so hard for us over forty years ago. But for all the goon squads out there, Bowie made it a lot easier and cooler.

A lot will be written this week about the Thin White Duke as a “chameleon” and all the ch-ch-changes he went through, the movies he made and the fashions he inspired. I just think about us kids who didn’t fit in who got to feel that we had a very special space boy on our side.

My Little New York Patti Smith Dream

January 10, 2016December 31, 2021 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 8 Comments

January 9, 2016

I’m sitting in a bar on West 72nd Street in Manhattan. This is John Lennon’s block. John Lennon, the househusband and patron saint of this blog. I often come here on trips to New York, a solemn pilgrimage to consecrated pavement, blessed by his blood, thinking I will see him and his death will all have been a bad dream, conjured up by Rosemary’s devil-eyed baby. I walked the block, past the Dakota and thought about how many times he did the same. I’m sure it’s changed a bit since 1980. The Starbucks and the tour busses (“And to your left you’ll see the spot where Beatle John Lennon was murdered.”) weren’t there during the last days of the Carter years. And when it happened we thought our love affair with guns was finally done. On this Saturday the Dakota is draped in sheets and scaffolding. At first I thought it was a Yoko Ono performance piece as she still lives in the Victorian castle overlooking Central Park. Turns out the old house is just being cleaned.

But most of this short trip has been spent in Greenwich Village (although I did hike up to the East Village this morning for some perfect pierogies at Veselka Café that happily took their time melting on my tongue). As long as John has been in my life, Patti Smith has been there almost as long. At least since I read about her in rock magazines in my teenage bedroom in 1976 Stone Mountain, Georgia; the wild woman, chanting, “Go Rimbaud!”

The dirty, nasty world of CBGB’s on the Bowery is where I wanted to be, not in my Ted Nugent-loving southern suburbia, draped in pink and blue Laura Ashley curtains. At age 14, I got the Easter album after hearing “Because the Night” on the radio and tried to dissect the poetry imbedded in what was then considered “punk rock.” High on rebellion. Words can carry you. Maybe I can do that, my pimply brain thought. Maybe I can write a line that will take on a life of its own.

After my piano-playing mother, Patti was my first exposure to the energy of the goddess artist. There was a raw feminist power to her, unrestrained by gendered expectations. Her hairy armpits were mocked on Saturday Night Live when Gilda Radner did her “Candy Slice” character. It was all wild abandon to a boy trapped in the suffocating Bible Belt. I’d sit in front of my stereo speakers like Hendrix kneeling in front of his burning guitar. Give me more, I’d beg.

The first time I saw her play live, I was in a state of ecstasy. It was at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland in 2001 and when she played “Gloria,” I ripped my shirt off thinking I was being ushered into a Roman orgy. There’s track from that show on her 2002 Land album. She’s reading from Ginsberg’s Howl and you can hear me screaming like a banshee. The only drug I was on was transcendence. And now my artist wife is deep under her spell. Our own Frida Kahlo with a rock band and a return to Portland on Andrea’s birthday.

After seeing her last Wednesday night with Andrea, performing 1975’s Horses front to back (including the prose-rhapsody of “Birdland.” Oh, how long I’ve waited for you!), I decided to take her new book, M Train, with me to New York, where I would be interviewing at a wonderful university. It’s a brilliant free floating tome about travels and not being able to write this particular book. It’s like her version of a Seinfeld episode. By the time I landed, I had the first hundred pages dancing barefoot in my head.

As it turns out, the book unfolds around the world but mostly in Greenwich Village, near where I was staying in Chinatown. Much of it begins at Café ‘Ino on 21 Bedford Street, just past 6th Avenue. I must go there, I thought on the plane, and have black coffee and toast at her table! Of course, in rapidly transforming New York City, Café ‘Ino is gone gone. It closed in 2013 and now is a lovely Italian bistro called Cotenna, where I had a sumptuous penne al fungi and a glass of red wine and imagined her sitting by the window, scribbling in her notebook.

The other Patti spot is Caffé Dante, around the corner on MacDougal. They didn’t open until noon and it was 11 am on Friday, so I walked up the block to Caffe Reggio, an old favorite of mine. I was traveling light, just my laptop bag with the Mac, M Train, a few pens, the latest issue of Beatlefan and the new Village Voice with a caricature of Donald Trump as a fascist demagogue on the cover.

I found a seat surrounded by fellow literary travelers all enclosed in the café’s red womb-like walls, waiting to birth some brilliant thought or first line. A young guy next to me was reading Kerouac, an older fellow (who I’m sure I’ve seen there before) was reading Lacan: A True Genius and kept putting the book down with a “Holy psychoanalysis!” look on his face. I had my copy of M Train and a cappuccino, keeping one eye out the window in case Ms. Smith walked by. But my singular mission was to spend some time in her world through the pages of her book.

As my year of writing winds down it’s time to put myself back on the market. Parenthood demands a stable income, but my mind is still floating in the ether. A winning Powerball ticket bought on St. Marks aside, I’d really like Cozette to know her father as more than the guy sitting on the couch writing while drinking endless cups of coffee. So on MacDougal I developed a fantasy about running into Patti before my interview with the provost. I’d grab a seat next her at Caffé Dante and mention our prior meeting at Powell’s Books in Portland when I showed her my Cobain homage in my book of poetry to her Dylan homage in her book of poetry.

“So what are you doing here in New York?” She’d ask.

“Hoping to land a job. I was a criminologist at a university in Portland for twenty years…”

Her attention would zip up a few notches. As it turns out, Patti is obsessed with crime shows on TV. I remember when I first heard her mention this, at a concert at the Crystal Ballroom, I thought, What? Patti Smith watches TV??? I thought she only read poems by doomed bohemians. I watch TV! I wonder what else we have in common. Does she buy wine based on what the label looks like? Because I totally do that!

I’d continue with the story of how I was forced into a position to choose between love or my job and I chose love without hesitation, resigning my tenured post to become a stay-at-home-dad.

“That’s horrible,” she’d say. “I’ve heard professors can be targets like that.”

“It turned out for the best. I’ve had time to write and be with my daughter. But I’m ready to go back to work. I’ve got a meeting with a university here at 2 o’clock. Do you think you could give me a special blessing? It would mean a lot to me and my family.”

“Well, I’m not Pope Francis,” she’d say, “but okay.” Then she’d make the mark of the cross on my forehead like she had holy water on her fingers instead of coffee and I’d be Joan of Arc, ready for battle. And that’s how our long friendship would begin.

A friend on Facebook reminded me that Patti was performing in Los Angeles the next night so I wasn’t likely to see her strolling down MacDougal, eating a falafel from Mamoun’s. Still, I felt her there, standing on the corner of 6th Avenue and Houston, sending me on my way as I mis-sang the lyrics to “Kimberly.” Give me your starry eyes, baby.

I don’t want to mention the name of the university for fear of jinxing my chances (or the greater fear that evil conspirators in Portland will catch wind and work their black magic on it), but the interview went really well and the university administrator, as providence would have it, was a Patti Smith fan. On top of that, the AirBNB where I stayed in Chinatown had an autographed copy of Horses outside my room. All the stars of the northeastern cross were aligned.

After the interview and lunch where Café ‘Ino once was, I went to Caffé Dante for coffee and a dessert that I felt I’d earned. I needed some writing time and got a few scenes for the new book down, including one deep discussion between the two main characters about farting in airport men’s rooms. (I’m not pretending to be Fredrico Garcia Lorca here.) I tried my rusty Italian on the waiter and he told me in slightly less rusty English how expensive this city had become but that there are still small places for artists.

New York seems warm for early January. Yesterday people tossed their Christmas Trees on to the sidewalks to be sent God knows where, but Christmas decorations still hang above Columbus Avenue and in Little Italy, near “my” flat. This morning at Veselka a group of young Russian immigrants came in and sang Christmas carols. The Russian Orthodox calendar must be different than ours, I half remembered. Maybe this would be a magical place to raise a child, I thought. The carolers wore wonderful costumes including a Grim Reaper. Joyousness!

My fantasy of New York has always been the dirty boulevard of Lou Reed songs. Trash and Vaudeville. But now as the parent I have to reimagine that fantasy. It’s horribly expensive and the school situation seems impossible, people tell me. And what if I lost Cozy on the A Train or in the Museum of Modern Art? (Although there are worse fates for a child.) But then again, she could grow up in the absolute center of the world and sit in cafés on Saturdays in the Village, maybe bumping into Patti Smith. Or John Lennon.

Addendum: I finished M Train on the flight from Newark to Seattle. I was laughing and then crying and then I just wanted to write. Read this book, but be sure to find a good café in which to do it.

Afterword: Well, the job ended up going to some kid fresh out of Harvard. I guess I could have used the blessing from Mother Patti after all.

The Kid’s First Trip to the ER: Anatomy of a Panic

January 4, 2016January 4, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

January 4, 2016

Happy new year! You probably figured I’d be writing about the militia standoff in Burns, Oregon today. Well, some things are more important than domestic terrorists trying to bring down the U.S. government one federally owned gift-shop at a time. Cozy had to go to the hospital last night!!!

If you’re not from Portland you might not know that the El Niño god gifted us with a beautiful winter storm yesterday. It was Cozy’s first chance to really play in the snow and she loved it. Wrapped in my scarf from 1976 (notice the bicentennial colors – Patriot!), she was a joyful snow bunny. We had to drag her back into the house. She could have walked around in it all day. It was a magical Sunday and we were careful not to let her slip and dislocate an elbow.

Later the snow turned to freezing rain and the whole city became a skating rink. So I walked up to the Thai restaurant to get some dinner. (The pineapple fried rice at Thai Noon is worth taking over a federal building for.) I had just placed the order when my phone rang and it was Andrea in a panic.

“We have to take Cozy to the emergency room!”

“Why? What happened?”

“I’m so sorry.”

I felt like I’m about to vomit at this point. “What happened?” I asked again.

“I was just playing with her, swinging around and she can’t move her arm!”

Okay, first some relief. She didn’t guzzle any Draino or fall out of the window on to the frozen ground. Dislocated elbows. These things happen. So I hot-footed it home on the cold ice to figure out how bad it was. I could see Andrea in the window as I got close to the house. She had baby wrapped up in a blanket and there was no screaming. Maybe it was a false alarm and I could go back and get the food.

Cozy seemed a little dazed and when I tried to get her to lift her left arm it just hung there, limp. My heart sunk and I feared the worst. How can my daughter get that softball scholarship with a bum arm? When an MC says, “Raise your hands in the air,” how is she going to feel with just one arm up? And will this ruin her chances to win American Ninja Warrior and fund dad’s luxury retirement home? So we had to get straight to the ER and see if George Clooney could save our child from a lopsided life. (A special shout-out to all my lopsided friends. As a stroke survivor, you complete me.)

I should say that I once had my arm pulled out of its socket. I was 18 and living in London. I went to see the Lords of the New Church play in a hotel ballroom in Hammersmith and was slam dancing when I went one way and my right arm went the other. You can’t imagine the pain. This bloke in the pit with me said, “Hold on mate, I’m a paramedic! Let me fix that for you!” And in the middle of the crowd he shoved my arm back in, more pain and then just fine. Back to slam dancing. Punk rock!

So I know my 16-month-old girl was in pain but the fix was just a quick drive away. The problem was that by that point the roads were iced over so bad, we might all die on the way. And there was absolutely no way we could make it down the Alameda Ridge to get to Providence Hospital, where we are fully insured. So we decided to take a slow and steady drive to Legacy Emmanuel Hospital (insurance covers emergencies) and hope we didn’t get t-boned by a zamboni (any other night that would be fine). Andrea sat in the back, repeatedly apologizing to our daughter and me. I was secretly thankful that I wasn’t the one who had done this. It so easily could’ve been me.

Legacy Emmanuel has a new space-age Children’s Emergency wing (think the 1970’s version of Tomorrowland. Portland is that post-modern) and the folks there were amazing. After I slid into the parking lot, we bundled baby up for the next step of the adventure. Would they have to operate? I expected to find a waiting room filled with kids who slipped on the ice or had their tongues grafted to frozen poles, but it was empty and Cozy went right in.

The condition is called “Nursemaid’s Elbow” or “Babysitter’s Elbow” (yeah, Dad’s not getting the blame) and it’s as common as macaroni on the floor. (Radial head subluxation for you medical students.) The elbow ligaments of kids under 3 are really spongey and it’s not difficult for a tug on the arm to pop the elbow out of it’s groove. Sort of like a slot car going off the track. You just have to put it back on. The nurse said it happened to her brother while eating Cheerios, five times. (Maybe those weren’t Cheerios.) So the doctor would work her magic and by kindergarten we wouldn’t really have to think about it.

The nurse worked at distracting Cozy with colored lights. (Note: Cozy loves colored lights. Plan trip to Vegas soon.) The doctor was very gentle with her and let us know there would be a little bit of pain and then she should be good. Andrea held Cozy, who seemed confused by all the fuss, and the doctor gave her forearm and little tug and twist. Some screams and then a look that said, “Holy shit, that feels better,” and in two minutes she was lifting things with her left arm and acting like it never happened. Amputation averted.

But what an emotional roller coaster. We both felt horrible that this happened to our precious child. As I’ve written about in my numerous “Dad Love” posts, I couldn’t be more emotionally attached to this little bean butt. She’s the thing I got the most right in my life and I have one job and that’s to keep her safe. Andrea feels the exact same way and that’s why she was in tears in the Emergency Room. Fortunately the doctor had seen this scenario a hundred times and said, “I’ve seen this scenario a hundred times.” She told us how common it was and that parents always feel like the most horrid parents each time they bring their limp-armed kid in. It all works out.

Afterwards I thought Andrea might say, “Please don’t tell anyone this happened.” She really is an amazing mother to our girl. Instead she wanted me to post my picture (I was trying to play photo journalist dad) and let other parents know that a) you should be careful swinging your toddler around, b) this happens all the time, c) it can easily be fixed with no lasting or chronic effects, and d) you are not a bad parent because you popped you kid’s elbow out. You don’t have to hide from Child and Family Services in a wildlife refuge in rural Oregon. (See what I did there?)

So we are just going to be a little more careful with our peanut butter. She doesn’t get swung around for a few more years. There’s still throwing her up in the air and dragging her across the wood floor in a laundry basket. What could go wrong?

Survived 2015? How about thrived in 2015!

December 31, 2015January 1, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

December 31, 2015

To be honest, twelve months ago I wasn’t 100% certain I’d be here today. At least not sitting in the baby’s nursery in our house, writing while she napped. I was fending off what was described by one of my colleagues as “academic McCarthyism.” One more witch hunt and I was done. I’d worked to become a sociology professor since my freshman year at Oxford College. I made it to the highest rank of full professor in a career that I think made a difference in the world. Then a small band of very powerful bureaucrats made it so bad that I just walked away. But I didn’t really walk away from anything. I walked toward my family and my art.

I really thought 2015 was going to suck. How could I live without my students and my university support? It actually turned out to be maybe the best year of my life. Thanks to my iron-willed wife, Andrea, and the magic of our baby, Cozette, everything seemed to just fall into place. Our Kickstarter project was more than successful, giving me the financial support to work on the new novel. We spent seven amazing weeks living in Mexico, most of it on a beautiful tropical island where I spent my days either teaching or scuba diving with sea turtles. I still had my classes at the University of Oregon and much of the time I just enjoyed watching Andrea paint and Cozy become a toddler with her very own personality. Three truly is a magic number.

But I didn’t want this post to be about me and how awesome I am because I turned a turd into a golden nugget. It’s about three words I once heard Joseph Campbell say in The Power of Myth documentary; three words that became a bumpersticker but also an easy answer to that pesky “meaning of life” question. Follow you bliss. Follow your bliss. Follow your bliss.

Life has so many obstacles. Some are small. How do you handle a kitchen floor that is eternally sticky from a baby throwing food on it? Some are big. How do you help family members who don’t seem to be able to help themselves? Some are massive. What do we do about the endless amount of toxins in our food? There are almost 8 billion people on the planet and they’ve all got a busload of problems. If you’re one of the few mega-wealthy folks, like Donald Trump, your main problem is what to do to cure your boredom. (“How about I run for president? It will be fantastic!”) Meanwhile, the rest of us are just figuring out how much money needs to fall out of the sky so we can get the gutters fixed, or at least afford the organic avocados.

You can see how people get beat down. Some just give up. It makes me wonder how many of the over 300,000 suicides each year in the United States are just some form of protest against modern living. Against the mass of bill collectors and traffic jams and broken appliances and kids who aren’t happy because they don’t have the latest phone and and and so much noise. No wonder drugs and alcohol are so appealing to Americans. A whole Latin American drug trade exists for the benefit of over-stressed Americans who want a mental vacation on Saturday nights (or a bit of the hair of the dog on Monday mornings).

I really understand why people turn to their gods and goddess to provide a bit a sanctuary from the din. There is something awe inspiring walking into a Cathedral that men have built as a tribute to their faith in the great unknown. But then the facts are often that that House of God was often built on a real house of horrors. The first time I visited the Cathedral of St. Vitus in Prague (where my great grandfather was in the seminary), I was stopped in my tracks by the majesty of its grandeur. It was truly sublime. But then I learned that all that gold and opulence came from the raping and pillaging that was the Crusades. Oh, well. Anyway, lots of religious people kill themselves every day, so maybe it’s not the only direction out of the clamor.

This year for me has been about bringing things down to the micro. I’ve spent so much of my life focused on global matters that I’ve neglected my own evolution at times. In college, I was more concerned with affairs in Central America than how my own family members were doing. In grad school we built shantytowns to protest South African apartheid, but I didn’t do much to tear down the walls in my own life. And my work at the university was dedicated to helping my students engage in the world in a meaningful way. Now I had a chance to engage in my world in a personal way.

There’s so many cliches around parenthood, but it really does change you. Your ego just gets turned upside down. Part of that is seeing that you can’t really make big changes in the world until you’ve made big changes in yourself. To have this year of self-reflection and quiet from the rush rush of higher ed work has been a great gift. To have a partner like Andrea to guide me through it has been a privilege that I didn’t want to waste.

So 2015, the year I wrote The Dream Police and short screenplays and blog posts. The year I listen to jazz and “The Wheels on the Bus.” The year I worked for the National Institute of Justice and did a hundred TV interviews. The year this blog went crazy viral because of a few timely posts about the threat of Trump. And the year I watched my daughter learn to walk and talk. The happiest moments were when I just followed my bliss, just writing a page or helping Cozy to put her rain boots on. Those small moments when I chose to do the things that made me happy and not worry about the things that threatened that happiness. Letting go, like some magical Van Morrison song, into the viaducts of your dreams, to be born again.

Life is interstitial. It’s between the structures we spend our time building. It’s the magic moments between the cracks, where something unexpected grows. Life can be hard. It could always be worse, right? But it could always be a little bit better as well. No matter how much money and privilege we have, we can’t fight the hands of time. Even Donald Trump will be dead at some point. (I can hear him say now, “Death is over-rated. Really, death is not very good. Believe me. I can do much better than death.) Every single person has a right to get discouraged. You may even have a right to quit.

The lesson is that if you can do what you love, even a little bit, you are winning. Even if your house gets destroyed by a winter tornado. Even if you get laid off. And yes, even if someone you love very much does not make it, you can find little moments of joy between the cracks that make the whole nightmare worth it. In the future, when I think about 2015, I won’t remember filing lawsuits or the colleagues who faded from view. I won’t remember the dread of pulling out WIC vouchers at the check-out line of grocery store. I won’t remember contemplations of giving up. I’ll remember evenings when Andrea was painting, I was writing, we had a bottle of wine open, John Coltrane on the stereo and our baby was asleep, dreaming of sea turtles.

Happy new year! 2016 will have some of the best moments of your life. I promise.

Dad’s Favorite Discs 2015

December 28, 2015December 30, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 8 Comments

December 28, 2015

Despite the fact, now that The Beatles are streaming on Spotify, there is a whole new generation of kids that will never listen to Rubber Soul straight through, I’m still a firm believer in the album format. Artists like Kendrick Lamar can have a complete musical vision that can’t be represented by one track. Some, like Bjork, will actually wrap it in some wonderful album artwork. And some will release a set of songs that you just can’t stop playing. For me that was the 9 track album a hero of mine from my teenage days, Paul Weller. Andrea and I both played the hell out of it and it will still be on heavy rotation in the new year.

It was hard to hang out in record stores this year with a wild monkey living in our casa. I even fell behind on my three favorite music podcasts (Sound Opinions, All Songs Considered, and Alt Latino). Most of the year was spent watching Cozy transform from a baby into a toddler, and on planes and writing my ass off. But there was still plenty of music in the house and the one thing we learned in 2015 is that Cozy Valentina loves to dance, especially to hip hop and Latin music. And she likes record stores, too.

The six weeks we spent in Mexico helped to infuse her with her native rhythms. Our weekly “Sunday Funday” fix of Cuban music on the beach and the endless playing of Osmani Garcia and Pitbull’s single, “Taxi,” had her up on her feet and shaking her diaper. The other day I was playing some dreary Bob Dylan and she figured out how to get the CD out of the stereo and replace it with a Bomba Estero disc. She hit play, climbed on the table and danced. She’s mama’s girl.

There was a great theme of classic jazz this year. The amazing DJs on KMHD got me through the ups and downs of 2015. They provided much of the soundtrack while I worked on my new novel, The Dream Police. The year culminated with a show at the Village Vanguard in New York City a few weeks ago. The Christian McBride Trio provided an evening of bliss in the world’s most historic jazz cellar.

We actually did manage to get out and see some shows this year thanks to some much appreciated babysitting. We went to see Patti Smith, Algiers, Madonna, Genders, Emily Kinney, La Santa Cecilia and Paul Weller. Andrea made it to shows by Sleater-Kinney and Elle King. And Cozy went to her first two concerts with us this year, U2 in Vancouver and then The Waterboys in Portland.

As I predicted, I bought a lot less music in 2015 (and a lot more diapers). But here are 20 releases from 2015 I really enjoyed. I’ve been a Paul Weller fan since he was in The Jam in the late 1970s and I think his latest is one of the best things he’s ever done. Seeing him play these songs at the Wonder Ballroom in October was beyond thrilling. And I have to say how excited I was about a new ELO album. It may really just be a Jeff Lynne album but it captures what was great about the group in the seventies; the music that inspired my last book.

Paul Weller – Saturns Patterns
Jeff Lynne’s ELO – Alone in the Universe
Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
Algiers – Algiers
The Waterboys – Modern Blues
Bomba Estereo – Amanecer
Sleater Kinney – No Cities to Love
Kacey Musgraves – Pageant Material
The Decemberists – What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
D’Angelo and the Vanguard – Black Messiah
Madonna – Rebel Heart
Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly
Bob Dylan – Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Best of the Cutting Edge
Modest Mouse – Strangers to Ourselves
Keith Richards – Crosseyed Heart
Bjork – Vulnicura
Brian Wilson – No Pier Pressure
Lana Del Rey – Honeymoon
Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear
Pete Townshend – Truancy

You can stream tracks here on my Spotify 2015 Top 20 playlist.

Honorable mention: Waxahatchee – Ivy Trip, Bob Dylan – Shadows in the Night, The Flaming Lips – With a Little Help From My Fwends, Ringo Starr – Postcards From Paradise, Protomartyr – The Agent Intellect, Various Artists – PDX Pop Now 2015

I love year-end lists. They typically serve as shopping lists (or at least streaming). SO much music to catch up on. I bought a Kedrick Lamar track over the summer but the album topped so many year-end lists, I finally purchased the whole thing and now I get it (but it loses points for all the “bitch” talk). It will be on heavy rotation in 2016. But it’s going to have to compete with the new David Bowie album out on January 8. And I know I need to get into Grimes and give that Sujan Stevens album another try. But what all about the great stuff that I’ll be ranking a year from now? When am I going to listen to that?

I have a lot of catching up to do. I’m sure when I get the latest albums by Alabama Shakes, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Dwight Yoakum, and Young Fathers I’ll wish I had listened to them in 2015. Cozy just wants more salsa and hip hop. I’m setting aside some album time when Cozy goes off the college.

Go back 1 year! Dad’s Favorite Discs 2014

Why George Bailey (and I) didn’t jump off that bridge.

December 23, 2015December 24, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 10 Comments

December 23, 2015

Who doesn’t love all the lights and spiked eggnog? The Fox News war on Hanukkah aside, there’s lots of smiles in this season of holidays. But for so many, Christmas is a time of deep sadness. Even the best seasonal songs are downers, like “Blue Christmas” and “ Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (“Next year our troubles will be miles away”). It’s a myth that suicide rates go up over the holidays but it makes sense to a lot of people that between the economic pressures to buy more crap, absent loved ones and your drunk uncle who won’t stop complaining about ISIS, the exit door has a strong appeal.

On top of this is the uplifting, then soul crushing, then uplifting again Christmas movie, It’s A Wonderful Life. The 1946 film was a sleeper hit thanks to UHF and late night movie showings in dozens of Decembers. It’s rightfully become a classic, brilliantly executed by director Frank Capra. That close-up shot of the face of George Bailey (completely inhabited by Jimmy Stewart) when he realizes he is experiencing something more than a lucid dream has surely inspired every little David Lynch to see that film has the potential to slam every human emotion into one brief scene.

I’ve seen this film more than any other and it is burned into my consciousness. When I fell through the ice as a kid, I worried about losing my hearing. When I lectured about bank fraud to my criminology students, I talked about Mr. Potter’s savings & loan grab. And on the Christmas Eves that I was alone I just wanted to get drunk in a bar like Martini’s. Flaming rum punch! We assume everyone and their buffalo gal has seen it.

Capra takes on the dark matter of suicide and puts a Christmas bow on it and then hits us over the head with the message that our lives really do matter. George Bailey decides not to kill himself, instead returning to his family and friends. Then Clarence gets his angel wings and Zuzu’s petals grow into a garden. “We’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.”

The dark matter of suicide has been a theme in my own life, as anyone who has read The Mission of the Sacred Heart could guess. The first time I stood on the edge, I had just turned 16 and was overwhelmed by the chaos in my family (and probably too many viewings of Quadrophenia). I thought about throwing myself in a lake in Stone Mountain, Georgia that was probably three feet deep. Then there was Pont Neuf above the Seine River in Paris and the fantasy of the romantic death. The big one was in 1998, with a brief failed marriage and an assumption that “all you need is love” was a giant lie. (I still had a lot of self-reflection yet to do.)

I was pulled off a cliff in Ecola State Park by a cop from Seaside, Oregon who was very honest about his own rough patches. I agreed to go into therapy and it was the beginning of the journey to understanding what this suicidal impulse was. It’s something that runs in the family. There have been a bunch of attempts by others in my clan, but we all came out the other side better people. It seems silly or stupid to people who have never been encased inside an inescapable darkness, but I know there are plenty of people reading this who have been down in that pit.

The first part of therapy is the intervention. Stop doing dangerous things! So the immediate message is this – Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. So true. If I’ve learned one thing in my 51 years on earth is that, at some point, everything will be in the rearview mirror. You are going to get knocked down in life. You are measured by how you get back up. Survive and thrive. Some seriously great stuff is coming. The other quick mantra you get is that suicide is an inherently selfish act. You check out and leave the people who love you with a lifetime of pain. So don’t be a dick on your last day.

When you are in the grips of depression, sometimes it’s hard to see that. The psychiatrist immediately put me on Zoloft which made me feel like I was mainlining espresso. But it gave me a plan. I wanted to know why is it so hard to actually kill yourself. So I started writing the story of Mission and I promised myself I wouldn’t kill myself until it was done. And then when I finished, I had my answer and decided that life was worth sticking around for. The fact that others have told me that my story helped them with their suicidal issues means I must’ve found a valid answer.

Most of us depressives have our favorite way to imagine our grand finale. For some it’s the peaceful sleep of an overdose, or a violent but quick gunshot to the head. For me it was drowning, the idea of returning to the water. Then someone told me that drowning is actually the worst way to go. You just can’t win.

While I was writing the book, I was having a lot of conversations about suicide with a friend of mine named Heather. I was so wrapped up in fixing myself, I didn’t see how deep her struggles were. In 2008 she jumped off a parking deck, leaving a wonderful husband and 5-year-old daughter behind. She was a PhD. and well revered in her field but completely consumed by her depressive thoughts. Mission is dedicated to her. If she had decided not to jump, she could’ve gotten to see how much her daughter now looks like her. Instead she must be haunted because of her mother’s impulse to exit.

These things have a tendency to stick around. By the Christmas 2008, I was in a similar spot. Christmas morning I watched Wonderful Life and balled my eyes out. Then a radio program about suicide came on. (Merry Christmas!) Someone had interviewed the handful of people who had survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and they all said the exact same thing. The second after they jumped, they all said to themselves this; I want to live. More sobbing but something that people like me need to hear.

Therapy has been a wonderful friend. Besides working out why this “feminist” kept having similar problems with the women in his life, I got a better picture of my suicidal ideations. It’s about escape and control, getting the last word and checking out on your own terms. It’s not that different from the guys that shoot up their workplaces or schools with the intention of dying in a hail of police bullets. But you don’t get the privilege of looking down from heaven and saying, “I really showed them!” You’re just dead. (This is why religions really have to make suicide a big No No. The fantasy of the afterlife might make watching the aftermath of your death pretty appealing. “Oh, that asshole’s sorry now!”)

I think my suicidal impulses really started to disappear that day in 2014 when we first heard Cozy’s heartbeat. My whole world changed in that moment. It was no longer about me but this child, about protecting her and making the world a better place for her. When she was born, my very sense of self was transformed. There was only one priority, making her and her mom happy.

The blues still come back. I’ve got a whole legion of racist skinheads, psychotic bigots, neo-Nazis, and now Trump cultists that would like me to drink an arsenic smoothie and they occasionally make my life hell. The university witchhunt that culminated last winter had me back in that black hole and I re-upped my Zoloft. I was in similar place on Christmas Eve, on the verge of losing “everything.” But it was different this time. I had a mandate to stick around and fight for my child and her generation. Cozy cured me of thoughts of diving into the Willamette River. I want to be there for her to the last moment. And I don’t want to miss a second of her own wonderful life. I would never want her to suffer the way every single child of suicide has suffered. I might be living in a box under a bridge, but I’ll be there. In a box under a bridge. I’m sure Frances Bean Cobain would take that. (And the Zoloft sits unused in the medicine cabinet if you need some.)

That moment when George Bailey is back on the bridge, praying to live, is a gift. It’s the moment that most folks have the second after they’ve jumped and it goes unanswered by anything but the last moment of pain. There is always joy ahead. As bad as things get, they always get so much better. If I had jumped at any of those points I would have missed all the bliss that was ahead for me. That incredible Sonny Rollins song KMHD Jazz Radio played in the middle of a rainstorm yesterday. The moment yesterday when Cozy rubbed her face in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And Andrea’s beautiful face when I dropped her off for work this morning as she said, “Take care of my baby today.” How could I even have imagined forfeiting that? There are surely some hard times ahead, but there are many more moments of bliss like that.

Social media reminds us of how many totally miserable people there are out there. Some are truly suffering from depression. Some are just sad, sad people who want everybody to hurt the way they do. They haven’t found the strength yet to see the root causes of the negative patterns in their lives. I’m sure they all have had moments on that bridge in Bedford Falls. I would say to all of them, there is great joy ahead that is worth sticking around for. One minute with Andrea and Cozy is the reward for not quitting this mortal coil, easily worth all the emo months of dwelling on my grand demise. And there’s a lot more of those beautiful minutes ahead. So stick around, okay? And dance by the light of the moon.

If you’ve never seen It’s a Wonderful Life, it’s streaming for free here: WONDERFUL

NOTE: As my friend Dave just pointed out, George does in fact jump off that bridge, but it is to save Clarence Oddbody, AS2.

A Star Wars for Our Daughters

December 19, 2015December 20, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

December 19, 2015

There are no major spoilers in this post about The Force Awakens, including anything about the Wookie-Ewok wedding at the end of the film.

Now that the long wait is over, I can reveal what makes The Force Awakens perhaps the best Star Wars film of the series. This opinion is greatly influenced by the fact that I am now the father of a little girl and have a vested interest in the world being a fairer and kinder place for females.

When the first Star Wars film came out in 1977 I was a 13-year-old boy waiting in line for the first screening at the Lefont Tara theater in Atlanta. The word was out among comic book and sci-fi fans that this was a different kind of space movie. I bought a program that listed all the actors who would soon be icons. When that giant Empire ship moved across the opening scene, all our jaws dropped. I don’t remember any girls in the audience but there must have been a few.

Later that year, at the Atlanta Comicon, I entered a costume contest. We didn’t call it “cosplay” yet. In honor of the Marvel Kiss comic book, I went as Paul Stanley. I was beat out by a Jawa and a Sand Person. Star Wars had taken hold of the universe.

When the third Star Wars film, The Return of the Jedi, came out in 1983 I was a 19-year-old college boy (I saw it opening day at Phipps Plaza in Atlanta). This is the film where Princess Leia (Carrie Fischer) is enslaved by the grotesque Jaba the Hut and forced to wear a bikini with a chain around her neck. The image was featured prominently in the movie posters and promotional materials and is the only thing a lot of fanboys remember about that film. I should point out that badass Leia ends up strangling Jaba with that chain in what could be viewed the greatest feminist metaphor in all film history. (Similarly, I’m sure some claim Game of Thrones is feminist because a few of the many rapists on the show get beheaded. Um, no.)

But that image has remained iconic among the sci fi boy world. Not the killing of the slaver but the eroticizing of the slave. Carrie Fischer has said how much she resented director Richard Marquand putting her body on display in that scene. But how many boys wanted a slave Leia of their own? I’m willing to bet that 99% of comic conventions have at least one “Slave Leia” cosplayer in attendance with Jaba the Hut-like boys getting wood right and left. Even Kim Kardashian has worn the outfit. So there’s that.

I try not get sucked into the pop culture hype machine (Adele, meh.), but I would be lying if I didn’t say my 13-year-old self was reawakened by the fact that J.J. Abrams was doing the next chapter of Star Wars, the follow up to The Revenge of the Jedi. Besides the cool Star Trek/Star Wars link, Abrams is just two years younger than me and has the same reverence for the Skywalker mythology.

And a mythology it is, deeply rooted in the most ancient heroic tales. If you’ve never heard religion scholar Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth) discuss the links between Star Wars and the ancient myth of the reluctant hero, you should. It’s a life-changing analysis. These are old tales. But they are typically stories about boys and men.

That’s why The Force Awakens is such an absolute joy. Yeah, it’s great to see our old heroes rolled out of the prop closet. (Harrison Ford looks only a bit more rusted than C-3P0.) But our reluctant Skywalker hero is now a female named Rey, played genderlessly by newcomer Daisy Ridley. The nearly all-male cast of the original has been expanded to include plenty of amazing female actors, including Fischer, Game of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie, and Oscar award winner Lupita Nyong’o.

The cast is also much more ethnically diverse, including Finn, the other reluctant-hero, played by black Brit John Moyega, and a Latino X-wing fighter named Poe (Oscar Isaac). This made my Mexican wife very happy but of course it infuriated racist trolls and Donald Trump supporters who lamented the “political correctness” of the casting and mounted a pointless #BoycottStarWarsVII campaign on Twitter.

Having a female hero like Rey surely means a lot to the scores of female fans. When Finn tries to hold her hand during an attack by the bad guys, she rips her hand away and assures him that she can take care of herself. And that’s the sub-plot of the film. What at first appears to be a “damsel in distress” scenario gets turned on its head and here comes our girl to the rescue. (Sorry if that’s a spoiler.) Even Han Solo recognizes her badassness. She’s ultimately a Skywalker-Solo hybrid who drives a giant movie on her never uncovered shoulders.

There’s sort of a sad test to measure the “feministness” of a film called the Bechdel Test. Do two women in a movie have a conversation about something other than a man? Lots of “chick-flicks” have a female heavy cast but the dialogue is often about their men (i.e. every Jennifer Lopez movie ever made). The Force Awakens has several scenes that pass including one with (now) General Leia Organa and Rey.

J. J. Abrams has a teenage daughter so I have to think he thought of her and how her experience sitting in a theater would be different than a girl sitting in the theater in 1977. Abrams and producer Kathleen Kennedy have given us an epic tale that puts a female protagonist at the center for at least three films (Star Wars 8 and 9 are scheduled for 2017 and 2019). Along with this year’s successful Mad Max film, it serves to rewrite the narrative that boys like action and girls like romance. (The other side of ledger would be films that deal with the romantic emotional lives of boys and men. Where is this generation’s Woody Allen?)

When we think about movies and video games that are targeted at boys and boyish men, there are usually lots of explosions, chases, shooting, and scantily clad women who need to be rescued. It’s a male-driven narrative. The Force Awakens has plenty of those tropes but seriously tweaks the primary one and that may be a game changer for a generation of fanboys and their sisters.

Like 1977 (and 1980 and 1983), I was in the theater Thursday for the opening night of The Force Awakens. I had our tickets months in advance. I could barely contain myself with excitement as I fell through a time hole to my adolescent self. And like 1977, the theater audience was 90% male. (Do these guys have wives or girlfriends? Some brought Star Wars toys, though. That may be part of the puzzle of patriarchal pop culture.) When the John Williams score started and the Star Wars logo appeared on the screen, we all screamed with approval (as we did whenever any of the original cast of characters and spaceships appeared). The film was wonderfully loyal to the original trilogy in all the important ways, but was a huge departure in one very significant way. Hopefully that evolution continues. Carrie Fischer made it clear to her young female cast mates, “Avoid the slave girl costume.”

Andrea and I always have a good conversation after a film and it was immediately clear how important it was to her to have a female protagonist in such a massively hyped film. She loved having a hero that looked like her. It was a subtle message buried inside an epic tale that all those boys in the audience will hopefully digest without even thinking, Oh, the main hero was a girl! That’s how change happens. After our post-film analysis, Andrea excitedly said, “I can’t wait until our daughter is old enough to show her this movie.” Me either.

Explaining the world one tragedy at a time.

November 30, 2015November 30, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

November 30, 2015

The world can seem so chaotic. Does it ever take a break?

Sometimes, in my line of work, things get a little busy. I’ve been getting a lot of media time lately. From local hate crimes to the global terror alert, from suspected Klan activity in Oregon to responses to the Black Lives Matter movement. Throw Paris into it and a few other issues in the news flow and I’ve been in overdrive lately. I’ve written about playing the role of “expert” in the media and hopefully I mentioned that I never get paid for any of it. But there’s a reason I’m on your TV.

The world can seem so chaotic. But a lot of it is our media-saturated culture. Sociologist (and now Lewis & Clark University president) Barry Glassner wrote about this in his 1999 book, The Culture of Fear. Just think about the local news. When I was a kid it was on for a half-hour at 6 and 11 pm. The local news in Portland starts at 4 am and then occupies at least 8 hours of daily broadcasting on each channel until 11:35 pm. That’s a lot of space to fill. And “if it bleeds it leads” can drive each one of those hours. Terrorism abroad, mass shootings at home, and a story about packages being stolen off porches for good measure. It’s enough to keep a person inside their house and watching TV. Suffice it to stay, research shows that the more TV people watch, the more fearful they are of the world.

I can either try to ignore it or subvert it from the inside. So the reason I say yes to most local, national, and international media requests is that it provides an opportunity to slip a critical perspective into the shockingly uncritical news paradigm. And this is usually a feminist perspective. For example, the numerous mass shootings I’m called to comment on must include an analysis that this is male violence in a culture that promotes violence as an acceptable means for men to express themselves. Can you imagine if all these shootings were by females?

So we hop from crisis to crisis trying to patiently explain things to people who are often resistant to anything other than the explanation that fits their picture of the world. A perfect example is the folks who blurt “All lives matter” in opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement. These people are either ignorant (which is something we all share about different things) or they are straight up racists. So here is the simplest explanation I can offer these folks: “Black lives matter,” means all lives matter, including black lives that have been devalued by the criminal justice system and racism in general. Got it? It does not mean your white life doesn’t matter. Now shut the fuck up.

Often I offer an analysis to try to explain a very complex social problem and what gets on the air is a three second sound byte that really doesn’t explain much. That’s why I prefer live TV and radio because you can go for the one point that really want to make. I learned this the hard way when I appeared on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor. Bill O’Reilly just talked over me the whole time. One of my conservative friends emailed me and said, “You just should have yelled over him.” I guess that’s how Fox rolls. Lesson learned.

There is a root cause that links most of this together and it’s patriarchy. Friday’s shooting at the Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic is an obvious example. Conservatives wage a war on women’s advancement and rights. A Trump follower commented on this blog recently, “Does your wife bring home the bacon while you blog and change diapers or take of your children? Very manly there. Get a real life fool.” Trump, Fiorina and others spread lies about Planned Parenthood to their war-loving moronic minions who just want to bomb SOMETHING. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that this week’s domestic terrorist (aka, right-wing white male) attacks a women’s health center with an AK while ranting about Obama and “baby parts.” This is what patriarchy looks like.

There is also feminist perspective on the racial issue. The dehumanization of other people, including African Americans and Syrian refugees (who my cousin compared to snakes and Ben Carson likened to rabid dogs) starts with the dehumanization of women. Religions with male gods do this especially well. It’s easy to claim power over someone who you think is a child or an animal or a thing. Or a terrorist.

There’s just not a lot of places to get the macro analysis in the mainstream media. We just get little corners of the real issues that are at the core of the nightly news stories. Where is bell hooks or Noam Chomsky being interviewed on the news? Lord knows, there’s enough time to fit them in. But instead we get sound byte analysis for the short-attention span masses. Here’s a clip of Trump mocking a disabled person. Here’s a talking head saying his followers could care less and on to the next non-story.

I became a feminist in my head a long time ago because it helped to explain the big picture throughout human history. I became a feminist in my heart with the arrival of my daughter and the hope the world could finally make a great leap forward for her generation. That the trifles of Trump and travails of war would become artifacts of the past. (This optimism may come from watching too much Star Trek.)

And I’m happy to take my show on the road. Last week I was in Washington, D.C., making a case for the re-evaluation of hate crime laws at a meeting of criminologists from around the world. This week I’m off to New York City where I’ll be discussing how plea bargains institutionalize racism at a university in Manhattan. You can’t shut me up. These issues are too important. And yeah, I’m going to continue to be pissed off at the people who choose not to get it. Their world is changing and they are becoming an obnoxious minority (not a “silent majority”). But that keeps me going and at some point we can talk about the big picture.

See ya in the funny papers.

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Watching the Wheels

Feminist Fatherhood

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