Writing to Live: The birth of the “rock novel”

December 14, 2016December 15, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 5 Comments

December 14, 2016

The second edition of my 2011 novel, The Mission of the Sacred Heart, just came out so I thought I’d write a little about the hell of writing it just in case you had a tortured artist on your gift-giving list.

The twentieth century ended not with a bang but a whimper. I was in the throes of a classic Randy heartbreak. (I hadn’t yet accurately identified the pattern or the appropriate response.) I was going through a divorce with a woman I had met in a poetry reading in Augusta, Georgia. We got married after the Atlanta Olympics and I brought her to Portland, mistakenly thinking that I was ready to be in a partnership and that she was ready to settle down.

I tried to comfort myself with the idea that it was just a “starter marriage” (A Gen X hot topic at the time), but there was a trip to Cannon Beach with the thought of hurling myself off an appropriately dramatic cliff. Long story short, I didn’t, but got into therapy and got on an anti-depressant called Zoloft. There was other suicidal behavior in my family so I began to wonder what that impulse was about and, more importantly, what was it that stopped most of us from actually doing it.

Since I had been pretty successful as a spoken word artist in Atlanta, I thought it was time to write something longer than a poem. It was musician Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles who had given me a copy of Sophie’s Choice to encourage me to follow my fantasy of becoming a writer. Now I had the start of an idea for what might be an important book – Why is it so hard to kill yourself?

It’s not a rock opera

Someday I’ll write a whole thing about the joys of locking yourself in the room in the days before the internet and even MTV and listening to record albums. Suffice it to say, I did it a lot in the 1970s. When I was 13, one of my favorite albums was A New World Record by the Electric Light Orchestra. For those out of the loop, ELO’s schtick was that they played rock music with a string section (like how Chicago had a brass section). Very Beatle-inspired pop that infected the airwaves. This album had songs with compelling characters, like opera singers and a guy on a telephone and an alien, and a mother on a corner with a baby.

My teenage brain, alone in my room, strung all the songs together into one long narrative. Maybe I was listening to The Who’s Tommy too much but I believed I was listening to a “rock opera.” It all seemed to fit together to well.

When I got a CD version of the album 20 years later I realized it was just a bunch of songs, not a concept album. But then I thought, “What if someone were to write the story I first heard all those years ago? It could be a rock novel!” Adding a few contemporary themes, like homeless youth and turn-of-the century-depression, and you have a new genre!

Late night on the iMac

Between preparing lectures, going to shows, occasionally sobbing, and inhabiting Portland dive bars like I was Sinatra with an ungodly thirst for Jack Daniels, I’d write away. I was translating my funk and the world it existed in, trying to find the answer to this question. The ELO album played over and over as I used it as a template for my story about a small group of Portland creatives, a gutter punk with a baby and a dude who may or may not be an alien. I’d bash away at my aqua iMac as I lived with these people; Zak, Lenny, Cozy, Telly, and Lucinda.

By the last chapter, I had the answer. Why we hold on. And a wonderful story about the power of music to move us through the tar pits of our lives. On December 31, 1999, I took a draft of the manuscript into the desert at the Warm Springs reservation and read it as the sun set on the century. I burned the pages to keep warm and hoped my hard drive back in Portland was safe from the Y2K bug.

It was really the writing of it that saved me. During that period I also co-authored a great book on suburban delinquency, bought a house, weened myself off the Zoloft, and took a visiting professorship at Emory University. I suddenly didn’t need the book, until I did again. That’s when I self-published it in 2011. It’s done pretty well, getting some amazing attention, and now it’s been optioned by a screenwriter in Hollywood for a future film project. And it all came out of a moment when I thought there might be something better to do than throw myself into the sea because my heart got beat up.

Why we stick around

The answer that I reached on the last page of The Mission of the Sacred Heart is that we stick around to see how things turn out. In our deepest moments of sorrow, sometimes it’s hard to see the countless moments of joy and lay ahead of us. If I had jumped I would have missed so many blissful moments; drives across the country, being inches away from Patti Smith as she sang “Gloria,” seeing Andrea walk into a room for the first time, hearing Cozy say, “I need to poop,” and more to come. Why walk out before the movie ends? Even Speed 2 had a pretty cool ending.

The sequel to Mission, The Dream Police, is now out and getting a positive response. I thought it was time to clean Mission up a bit, fix the cover, and take out a few less evolved terms in the story. (Sorry history, “retarded weathermen” and “big boobed Asians,” as funny as they sounded, have been revised.) Mission had an important impact on some folks who were going through the same thing I was, so it has served its purpose, but it’s still a timeless story about those moments and how we survive them with the power of a good song.

I’m not intending to write a trilogy. The Dream Police may be the last time we see Lenny, Zak, and Cozy. But who knows? I just want to get these books to people so they can be as good friends to them as they were to me.

The Mission of the Sacred Heart is available here on Amazon and Amazon Kindle.

Delayed gratification and Santa’s Advent calendar

December 7, 2016December 9, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

December 7, 2016

Why wait? That was the question I got from a small group of teenage boys. I was leading my Thursday night discussion for a bunch of boys in a court-ordered residential facility in Northeast Portland. It was the late 1990s and these kids were on the verge of being locked up in juvie, but were the “at-risk” youth that still have a chance to not get sucked into the vortex of the criminal justice system. So a judge sent them to a group home and on Thursdays I was their counselor.

I was trying to share with them the simple joy of Pez, something I cherished from my own youth. I was carefully loading the tiny candies into a Popeye Pez dispenser. Some were going sideways and others were falling back out.

“Why don’t you just eat the candy?” asked one kid.

“No, wait, it’s gonna be great. The candy comes out of Popeye’s larynx,” I said.

“Why wait?” asked another.

It was a valid question. I mean, it’s not the greatest payoff in the world. Why not just eat the damn candy without all the hassle? Suddenly the Pez dispenser became a metaphor for a fading American value – delayed gratification, symbolic of a grand cultural shift. Sometimes the wait is part of the payoff, y’all. I know you want it now, but…

I was reminded of this because I bought Advent calendar for my daughter for Christmas. I loved them as a kid and this is the year Cozy’s really getting into the holiday. (Although she freaked out a bit at meeting the Macy’s Santa.) I liked the day-to-day anticipation of the arrival of the big event. Each day you get to open a window and get little surprise, making it one day closer to Santa’s orgy of gifts. The initial Advent calendars were created by the German Lutherans in the 19th century but they’re probably now mass-produced in Chinese factories for the Western world. You can get them cheap pretty much anywhere. You don’t even have to be Lutheran.

So I picked up a calendar called 24 Chocolate Days ’til Christmas (made in a gluten-free factory in Canada) to introduce Cozy to the tradition. When I pulled it out on December 1, she yelled, “Santa!” I explained to her that we open one door each day until Christmas and there’s a treat behind each flap. Day 1 was a little chocolate choo choo. She was thrilled. Then I told her we’d open the next door tomorrow. She was not thrilled about that. In fact she threw a screaming fit, laying on the floor, yelling, “No! No! No!” I mean, why wait?

I resisted the temptation to just give in. It would’ve been so easy. She’s a real heartbreaker when she’s sobbing. But I thought this would be a valuable lesson about delayed gratification. Now a week into it, she seems to be getting it. You’ve gotta pace yourself and spread the joy out.

For years I assigned a book in my criminology class at Portland State called Crime and the American Dream by Stephen Messner and Richard Rosenfeld. It makes the case that the elevated crime rates in the U.S. are a product of our “by any means necessary” values. For example, it’s not how you got your wealth/car/college degree, it’s that you got it. So if you embezzled/car-jacked/cheated to get it, no big whoop. It’s having it that gets you the points. It reminded me of the unofficial American motto, “You can never be too rich or too thin,” (explaining a lot of white collar crime and eating disorders). Just think of Donald Trump ripping off the chumps at Trump University while Melania gulps the postpartum diet pills. Look where that got them!

We live in a culture of immediate gratification. I used to have to wait forever just to hear an album I wanted. Now I just pull anything and everything I might want up on Spotify. Remember taking your film to the drug store and waiting a week to see the pictures? How about waiting for a letter to come from your beloved? Please Mr. Postman! (When my grad school girlfriend was studying in Paris, I would torture my Atlanta letter carrier with that song.) Now if something takes more than 30 seconds to get we are convinced the wifi has been hacked by the Chinese.

If you celebrate Christmas, you know that by 3 pm on Christmas Day the letdown has arrived. Is that all there is? “Christmas” is the anticipation of Christmas, the build up. Much of life works that way. Sweet anticipation. Of Friday at 5 pm, or a first kiss, or Election Day. I want Cozy to enjoy the journey at least as much as the arrival. How you got there matters. One door, one piece of Canadian chocolate at a time.

Butterflies for the Children of Aleppo

December 1, 2016December 16, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 5 Comments

December 1, 2016

What can we do? Can we dance while the children of Aleppo are being slaughtered? Can we smile while the last doctors pull the ball bearings from Russian-backed Syrian regime cluster bombs out of the spines of toddlers? The monarch butterfly only lives for six months. Do we have a right to enjoy its beauty knowing that its wings will soon be broken against the wheel? What can we do? What did you when you saw little Omran in the ambulance? What will we do now that we have seen him?

The siege of Aleppo continues unabated. The once bustling city has been hollowed out by Syrian and Russian jets dropping barrel bombs that spread explosions of shrapnel which decapitate children every single day. The innocent civilians cry to the sky. “Where are you, world? How are you letting this happen to our loved ones?” And the world Tweets something clever, indifferent. #WeirdBathroomConvos

History will ask where we were in 2016 while this horror happened. Just like it asked where where were in 1994 during the Rawandan genocide and where we were in 1975 during the mass killings in Cambodia. We are always in the same place; dancing with our eyes closed.

In 1993, I was in eastern Europe, doing my dissertation work on new fascist youth movements. The civil war in Yugoslavia was in full swing and Bosnian refugees were streaming out of the country with horror stories beyond belief. I tried to make it to Sarajevo, but the city was under a murderous siege and all travel in was closed.

It was a sunny day in Prague so I went to Josefov, the old Jewish quarter, to soak up the sun and some relevant history. There was an exhibit about the internment of Jews in the German concentration camp in nearby Terezin. Toward the end of the war, Hitler didn’t want the world to think his camps were so bad, so he invited the Red Cross to tour the camp in Terezin. The barracks were cleaned, prisoners that were sickly were quickly shipped off to Auschwitz, and the children were given art supplies to show the kindness of the Nazis.

What kind of art would children in a Nazi death camp create?

The exhibit had some of their art preserved over the decades. The art was their escape. Amid certain death they drew pictures of red birds and green butterflies flying though perfectly blue skies.

Later that day I was in the Old Town Square in the Staré Mesto part of Prague. In an abandoned storefront people had created an exhibit about the war in Yugoslavia to raise awareness about the violence nearby in the Balkans. The exhibit included art by Bosnian Muslim refugee children whose parents had been killed by Serbian soldiers.

When kind of art would the children of ethnic cleansing create?

Crayola crayon drawings of red birds and green butterflies flying through perfectly blue skies.

I walked outside and wept that this was happening again. And this time it was happening on my watch. I sat down in the Charles Bridge over the Vlatava River and wrote this.

Terezin Revisited

Kids in cages, kids in camps

Kids on TV, kids on maps

Crayon dreams of simple pleasures

A blue bird and a yellow sun

cross with grey sketches

of a brother being hung

Playground mortar shell

interrupts an afternoon soccer match

Late night round up

Out of bed shouting family snatch

The innocent monsters of childhood

are traded for the nightmare monsters of mankind

Kids in cages, kids in camps

Kids on TV, kids on maps

Twinkle, twinkle, night lights off so far

Doomed by the brands of moons and stars

Red rockets fly from mountain tops

Yellow bayonets from ghetto cop cars

When I grow up I want to be alive

I want to be married to a brave prince

with Mommy and Daddy smiling

But instead I go to Srebrenica or Auschwitz

“Never again” is an empty cry as Sarajevo’s children

relive the genocide plans of the ruling mind.

I wonder what type of art the children of Aleppo are creating now, in those precious moments between bombings and siblings dying. I imagine drawings of red birds and green butterflies flying through perfectly blue skies.

Andrea and I have been crippled by the images of Syrian children creeping into our mundane lives as parents in America. How can we look away? We are somehow complicit as “strong leader” Putin continues to bomb civilians. What can we do? Could butterflies help?

Andrea made the decision to use her artistic shoulder to slow the wheel. She is doing a series of paintings of Monarch butterflies, the symbol of her home in Michoacan, Mexico and symbolic of the great migrations we make to live and reproduce. She will be debuting them at my reading at Music Millennium on Saturday. All proceeds go to UNICEF Aleppo Relief. They will also be available on her website (andreabarriosart.com) for only $40 (they come with a little easel). It’s one way relieve an ounce of the suffering of children who do not deserve the hell of adult politics.

In addition, 10% of the sales for my new novel, The Dream Police, are going to UNICEF Aleppo Relief. It’s not much but if the book does well, it might be.

I think of all the places that children suffer from the actions of adults; Syria, South Sudan, Chicago. I think about food contaminated with plastics and guns in schools and lead in water. I think about how much we don’t think about our children and I want to turn into a butterfly and fly away.

Please help UNICEF help Syrian children by donating here: UNICEF

Watching the Wheels turns 2 and can use the potty!

November 23, 2016November 23, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

November 23, 2016

Well, when they say “time flies,” they really mean it. Two years ago, Cozy was an infant, Andrea was off to work at Planned Parenthood, I was enjoying my parental leave from Portland State University and the country seemed in good hands. Now, Andrea is working at a great law firm, Cozy’s hanging with her posse at daycare, I’m looking to return to academia and the country is about to be handed to a buffoon who wants to use the White House to build his anemic hotel empire. A lot has changed since I started this blog.

I’ve had a productive year as a writer. My second short story was published in an amazing collection called A Journey of Words, forever linking the words “ants” and “Uranus.” Most significantly, my new novel, The Dream Police, is out and currently being read by actual people. The first few reviews on Amazon are wonderful. It couldn’t have happened without the amazing support I got on Kickstarter. As if in a dream, when people asked, “What do you do?” I’d just say – writer.

The real great leap forward has been Cozy and her brain. Like last year, we celebrated her birthday on Isla Mujeres in Mexico. She turned two and her verbal skills just went though the roof! We went from a limited vocabulary (in both English and Spanish) to full sentences in a flash. Her brain is connecting concepts and linking them at lightning speed. Instead of “hat,” it’s now “Cozy’s hat” or “Mama’s hat.” Possessives! That’s huge! Pretty soon she will be jamming on verb tenses. It’s an exciting thing to watch evolve.

I think any new parent will tell you, one of the best parts of this phase is that the kid can tell you want they need. When she was a screaming baby, we’d wonder, “Is she okay or does she just need a boob?” Now she can say, “Tummy hurt” and “Where is it?” (Which usually refers to Rocco, her beloved pet rock.) It’s liberating to be able to have actual conversations with this former-baby.

She’s off to daycare now a few days a week and loves going to “school.” She puts on her little backpack and heads off for a day of art projects, Spanish lessons, and walks around the neighborhood, including past “the big castle” (aka St. Andrew’s church). When she gets home she goes to her books. “I’m reading!” she exclaims. My nerd in training. Have I mentioned her love of The Beatles yet? Just ask her to sing, “Hey Jude.”

This blog has been a great place to explore her development and the development of the world she is inheriting. I’ve tried to keep the focus on issues related to gender and feminism, but my work is also about racism and the abuses of power, so how could I not discuss Trump, Black Lives Matter, and yoga pants? The blog has had over 400,000 visits. The pieces on Trump have been most popular but my blog on breast feeding dads continues to get creepy viewers by the score.

There is definitely a parallel between Watching the Wheels and Cozy Blazak. Both can walk on their own and are learning to talk in world where it’s not given that we’ll just get what what we want. How will liberals advance in the Un-united States of Trumpland? How will a little girl grow up safe in a country where voters elevated the symbol of rape culture to the highest office in the land? There will be plenty to write about in the next year as we guide our daughter through this backward moment in out history.

The biggest change this past year has been in me and my desire to get back to work. Andrea and I were in New Orleans last week for the annual conference of the American Society of Criminology. I was reunited with my colleagues who do research on hate crimes and terrorism. It was a reminder of how important my scholarly work is, especially now as we see hate crimes on the increase. I was just on a program on Al Jazeera discussing the climate of hate in Trumpland. It was a tap on the shoulder, reminding me that I am a global voice on this issue. I’m incredibly proud of how The Dream Police turned out but it’s time to get back into the trenches.

So come along for a ride on this 2-year-old toddler of a blog. You KNOW there’s some good stuff coming. At least before Trump shuts down the free media.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bring on the anal phase!

November 15, 2016November 15, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 5 Comments

November 15, 2016

What goes in must come out. That’s the mantra for the transition from the oral phase to to the anal phase. Sigmund Freud may have gotten some bits of our psychological development wrong, but, at least in Western culture, potty training is a watershed moment. (Are desert nomad toddlers potty trained? I don’t know.) Suddenly, “poop” becomes the most important word in the entire language! Poop!!!! There’s a bit of an anal fixation in the house at moment. Just ask Cozy.

I tried to calculate how many diapers I’ve changed in the last 27 months. It’s gotta be over 3000. (I know my wife has change a few, as well.) I’m about done. Let’s get this kid on the john, stat!

Doctor Freud put a lot of weight on this stage of child development. The first phase is the ORAL PHASE, taking up the first two years of life. Here, baby is just a raging ID, feeding its hella selfish “pleasure principle” by sticking anything and everything in its mouth: binkies, boobs, toes, Cheerios, checkers, and mortgage checks. Cozy was a freaking Hoover. I’m surprised I didn’t have to Heimlich the house keys out of her esophagus. The oral phase is just me, me, me! Feed me! Wipe my ass! Vote for my best interests! It’s exhausting.

The oral phase is followed by two years in the ANAL PHASE. “Me” is balanced out by “They” as Selfish Baby learns there are external rules to play by, called “society.” You just don’t eat whenever you want, there is mealtime. Get a good night’s sleep because day is wakey wakey time. And you can’t crap in your pants forever, we have something called a TOILET. (Although, this past week, adults were excused for profusely pooping in their pants.) So potty training is one of the ways we first learn about the expectations of the culture we live in.

Freud put a lot of weight on this rite of passage. It’s meant to balance the pleasure seeking Id with the socially oriented SUPEREGO. Think of a devil on one shoulder (The Id) and an angel on the other (The Superego). The head in middle is our EGO and decides who to listen to. If parents don’t potty train a child in time, they can become an Id-driven sociopath. (Don’t mention Trump. Don’t mention Trump.) But if the potty training is too severe, parents can produce Superego-dominated little neurotics. Jerry Seinfeld must have been potty trained at 6 weeks. So a lot of weight is placed on parents not to create future serial killers.

Cozy is starting her Superego training. It must me nice to have someone change you whenever, but she needs to start letting us know when she has to go. Even just after she goes would be helpful. We’re spending more and more time on the potty, trying to make something happen. I like to grunt like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “Constipation Blues,” to give her the hint to put her back into the effort. She’s starting to get it. She’s currently obsessed with farting, so we’re almost there. (Sorry, Mom. That’s on me.)

For Freud, potty time is supposed to be “They” (society) time, but it can also be me time. I’ll see her sitting on her IKEA kids’ potty with a book or singing to herself, or just pondering the merit of the electoral college. As much as I’m ready for this to be the norm, I don’t want this sweet child to inherit my neuroses because I was in a rush to cancel the diaper service.

They must be smarter at her daycare because she had a BM in the toilet last week (getting a blue star!) and I’m still trying to coax a tinkle. I feel like the balance of her entire personality rests on this process. She seems strangely comfortable in a wet diaper which has me worried she might become an arsonist or an ultimate fighting fan. She’ll say, “Daddy, poop,” not when she needs to drop a deuce but when she’s trying to get out of taking a nap. Psychopaths tend to be highly manipulative. Should I start to worry?

When I was a kid in the seventies, I knew hippie parents who had their children in diapers to almost puberty. Those kids are now all Tea Partiers. But I also don’t want Cozy to be so afraid of pooping in her pants that she becomes sadistically anal retentive. That’s what Virgos are for.

The responsibility is almost too much to bear. I know we’re not the first parents to hold our child’s future psychoses in our sweaty hands. I’m anxious for any helpful hints on this project. We want poop in that pot.

11/8 > 9/11: Trump’s body count starts now

November 10, 2016November 14, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 17 Comments

11/10/2016

I woke up on the morning of 11/9/2016 in a fetal position hoping I had just had a long lucid dream in which Donald “Pussy Grabber” Trump had just been elected president. Of the United States. Of America. My two-year-old daughter had her hand on my cheek and her face inches from mine. “I’m sorry,” she said with her little lisp and eyes cast down.

“Why are you sorry, Bug?” I asked, knowing the weight of America’s election day drunk dialing was falling right on her tiny little shoulders.

“I farted,” she said. And with that I was awake in a new paradigm, where hillbillies had thrown the entire country into the potty.

I flashed to the terrorist attacks on the morning of 9/11/2001 that slaughtered almost 3000 people. Then I feared the election of Donald J. Trump is going to make that day look like a mild SARS outbreak.

Wednesday morning, I unplugged my social media for a bit. I grew up in Klan town in Georgia so my Facebook friend circle is filled with those “non-college-educated white males” that were crucial to Trump’s path to victory. I didn’t want to hear them braying, thinking Trump’s vacant policies would help them in any way. There were enough white males cheering on neo-Nazi and white supremacist websites. Former Klan Grand Dragon David Duke all but took credit for Trump’s win and delivering the South for the alleged billionaire.

The last post I saw was by a white guy of my peer group who wrote, “Relax. We lived through Reagan.” I thought of all the people who did not live through Reagan, including the thousands of Americans who died of AIDS because the president ignored the epidemic as just a “gay plague.” He could have done something but he turned his back on his fellow countrymen as they suffered some of the most excruciating deaths imaginable.

Elections have consequences and those consequences are never paid for by the people at the top. Hillary Clinton will be fine. Even the white guys in red hats yelling at Trump victory parties like they were at a frat house gang rape will be okay for the most part. (Although they might think about cashing out their 401Ks toot suite.) I began to think about all the likely casualties of a Trump administration and it quickly surpassed the 9/11 body count.

A brief sketch of coming casualties

I thought of the Americans who will die when they are thrown off of their health insurance. Trump has vowed to cancel the Affordable Health Care Act as soon as he takes office in January with a promise to replace it with some vague “open market” alternative. Millions of men, women, and children (including my family) will lose their health safety net and will, again, have to chose to go forgo treatment and preventative care. This will cost lives.

I thought of the women who will, again, die from back alley abortions. Trump has made it clear that he will end a woman’s reproductive rights by stacking the Supreme Court with “pro-life” judges. Justice Ginsberg can’t live forever so this return to those desperate days may come quite soon. Add to that the women who will die of various cancers because they couldn’t get screenings at Planned Parenthood, another target of Trump’s pandering to the religious right.

I thought of the people who will die because of the loosening, non-enforcement, and/or canceling of safety, health, and environmental regulations. Trump has said most of these regulations are unnecessary and get in the way of “job creation.” We now have a president who believes global climate change is a “Chinese hoax,” so I have to count the related environmentally-sourced deaths as he ramps up carbon-based fuel industries. Anybody remember Black Lung?

I thought of the women who will be raped and sexually assaulted as his “Move on it” misogyny has been given the seal of approval from the American voter. The president of rape culture is moving into the White House. Likewise, the casualties from hate crimes inspired by his “America first” rhetoric will only increase. Americans and residents who are Muslim, black, or brown (like my wife) are not as sure they will “live through Trump” as my white friend of Facebook. There are already reports of Trump supporters in liberal Portland, Oregon screaming the “N word” at black residents on the street. After one day of “President Elect Trump,” there are reports of hate incidents all over the country. It could get very ugly.

I thought of the people who will die in the justice system, in jails and prisons and on the street, just as Obama’s reforms are starting to get underway. Their lives matter. But stock in private prisons is surging as America anticipates a new war on minorities (sorry, “War on Crime”).

I thought of the refugees escaping the hell of wars we helped start who will die because they can’t find refuge for themselves or their children as Trump has sworn to shut down the border on “Day 1” of his administration. I thought of the Central Americans who escaped violence to find safety and security as (undocumented) immigrants who will die when Trump’s deportation force sends them back to the hell they escaped from.

I thought of all the American troops who will die as Trump’s “bomb the hell out of them” diplomacy goes into effect with war after war. Just like the over 4000 Americans in uniform who didn’t survive the Bush Administration because they were killed in Iraq, the Trump body count will mount, as this zero-experience commander-in-chief who dodged Vietnam plays with his flesh and blood toy soldiers.

I thought of the global body count as he alienates our allies from our overseas struggles. Body counts from withdrawing humanitarian aid around the world. Genocidal body counts as he promotes the sale of nuclear weapons to South Korea and Saudi Arabia.

I thought of the deaths of young Americans from suicide, bullied for being gay, or Mexican, or Muslim. The Trump Effect in schools has already been well documented. And then there’s deaths of girls from eating disorders as they starve themselves to be a Trump 10 and not a “fat pig.” I thought of the Americans who will suffer as he translates disrespect and cruelty into “so much winning.”

3000 deaths in Trump America? That might be a good day. And where 9/11 brought us together as a nation, 11/8 has ripped us apart.

Who are these red state people?

I know the people who voted for Trump. I’ve been studying this demographic for 30 years. It’s the “White-lash” (as Van Jones called). There’s a segment of White America that couldn’t handle a successful black president, devoid of scandals, while they faced their own hardships. They became obsessed with him just like the racist skinheads I studied in 1989 were obsessed with the Huxtables on The Cosby Show. Rural America blamed Cliff Huxtable/Barrack Obama for the changing complexion of small town life and Rust Belt America blamed him for the globalization (that took off under Reagan) that was stealing their solid wage unionized jobs. Those folks are in for a shock if they think anti-union Trump is going to bring back their line position at General Motors.

Sure, Trump managed to find a few women and people of color to climb on to his fact-free train, but let’s face it – This election was all about the push-back. It’s the same push-back that the Klan rode to mainstream appeal in the 1920s. Then it was the pushback against immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (aka, Catholics and Jews) under the banner, “100% Americanism.” Now it’s the pushback against immigrants from south of the border and the Middle East under the banner, “Make America Great Again.”

Donald Trump is the greatest recipient of white male privilege in modern history. If any other person had stumbled though just one of his foibles, it would have been over. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had children with three different husbands and bragged about her sex life on Howard Stern. Imagine if President Obama said his opponent was holding secret meetings with “international bankers” and that he could do anything to any woman he wanted, because he was a “star.” Do you think Fox News would let that slide? Donald Trump lied to his followers on a daily basis they ate it up like coprophiliacs eating shit with a spoon. I wonder if that teflon will keep working for four years. But he was the white man, so he got the job over the actually qualified female. Happens every day in America.

So what’s next?

First I would like to tell the world that most Americans did not vote for Donald Trump. In fact, most of Americans who voted didn’t vote for Donald Trump. Clinton won the popular vote. But America has as an arcane electoral system that gives the few hundred people who live in a hamlet in North Carolina essentially the same say in the contest as the few million that live in Oakland, California. So know we’re not all crazy.

Secondly, as we enter a period of one party rule headed by a potentially sociopathic charismatic authority who wants to build a Supreme Court in his image, know that the founding fathers gave the power hungry a ticking clock. The 2018 mid-term elections are just around the corner, so if we can flip Congress before Trump burns the Reichstag, we might be safe from a fascism. Might. And then it’s Elizabeth Warren for president in 2020!

The big lesson is in how we talk to those “non-college-educated white males.” I’m certainly guilty of over using the word “moron” and perhaps, “mouth breathers” on my Facebook page. We were characterized as judgmental elitists and it was probably accurate. That position only served to push them away from anything approaching an intellectual discussion and into Trump’s cult of personality where simple slogan’s ruled the day. “Crooked Hillary!” “Build a wall!” “Trump the bitch!”

Trump is not going to build a wall, or ban Muslims, or lock Hillary up. The Constitution should prevent such folly. But he could amass a pretty massive death count before he realizes he probably should have stayed in his golden tower instead of moving into the People’s House on Pennsylvania Avenue. If we want to limit the damage, we gotta figure out how to talk to these knuckle draggers. Sorry, I mean economically fragile Caucasian-Americans.

Take some time, hug your children, go for ice cream, and then get back into the fight, but this time, try some dialogue. There should be some down-time while these boys in red hats wait for their wall to appear. The whole world is watching us.

My toddler has flown the nest and I don’t know what to do with my hands.

November 3, 2016May 16, 2017 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

Nov. 3, 2016

Today is Cozy’s first day in daycare and I’ve come undone. We’ve been attached at the hip for the last two years, two months, and two weeks. Except for my work-related trips and her time with her family in Mexico and Salem, she’s never been out of my sight; maybe in the next room, fast asleep. Now I have actual child-free time and I’m not quite sure what to do. Write a novel, perhaps.

My wise wife suggested we put our daughter in daycare a few days a week so I can get things done. I’m always complaining there’s not enough time to get things done. Things like writing, and cleaning, and working on the house, and getting a goddamn job. The day is spent entertaining the kid. Yesterday we spent an hour just in the sandbox at the OMSI “science playground.” Sand is pretty scientific, until you start dumping buckets of it on little boys’ heads. Well, that might be social scientific with a big enough sample.

There’s a great daycare place in our neighborhood that’s in an old church. The woman who runs it told me that the Black Panthers served meals to Portland families there in the 1960s. Pretty cool place for a radical toddler. We signed Cozy up and I began to fantasize about dropping her off when the doors opened and picking her up right before they locked up, and all the things I would do in the hours between. Hours! Get things done hours!

I bought her new rain boots and a backpack and she was so excited when I told her she was going to “school.” She wouldn’t take her backpack off (or her bike helmet, for some reason). I wrote a little note for he teacher about Cozy. “She’s a little Leo lion who loves all the animals and making animal sounds. Just ask her what an elephant says.” This morning when Andrea and I dropped her off, she was so ready to go, in her pink dress and hat. (I tried to stop the pink thing, I really did.) And with a few besitos, that was it. She was out of the nest.

It’s only been a few hours but I just want to go and check on her. I should’ve asked if this place has streaming nanny-cams. Maybe an app. Did she take a nap, have a snack, pour a box of crayons on a baby? Where is my child???

It’s been strange that, for the last year, my best friend has been a two-foot tall munchkin that likes to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle.” When she says, “Come, Daddy. Cubbies!” I just don’t really want to be with anyone else. We have a tight connection of the heart, as Bob Dylan once sang. There’s such a bond after two years of stay-at-home parenting. We’re like a synchronized bath tub swim team, in each others’ heads. I don’t know if she cares about the outcome of this election (although I did let her mail my ballot for Hillary Clinton so she could brag about it later). I do know that I care when The Count announces the number of the day on Sesame Street. (“Daddy, come! Count!”)

A friend of mine who left work to take care of her small children told me how it’s both joyous and depressing because you miss your “outside” work life. That’s exactly right. I do miss being a full-time full professor and having deep water-cooler conversations with my peers (often about how corrupt the administration was). I didn’t have to explain to anybody that Milk Duds were not “poop.” It was given that that was understood. Or time just to sit at the bar and shoot the shit with likeminded shit shooters. Andrea and I have amazing conversations, but child-time has seriously diminished my normal adult interaction. I might even drool, occasionally. Pudding!

So for these two days a week I should make a “get done” list. So many things. We’re turning the basement into an apartment and I need to get out an promote my new book and maybe fill out a few applications and… but if you see me in the coffee shop or/and the bar, please come talk to me.

Note: Okay, I just drove by the daycare facility and saw Cozy on the playground, with a teacher, pointing at a bird. She was probably translating.

What drugs go well with a toddler?

October 26, 2016October 27, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

October 26, 2016

I’ve learned that you need three things if you have a two-year-old. You need plenty of rags, a subscription to Netflix (for Beat Bugs), and lots of drugs. Lots of drugs if you want to survive even a day. My drug of choice is caffeine, but I’m in the market for something more appropriate for my needs as a stay-at-home dad.

The first order of business in the morning, before I can even look my daughter in the face, is to get the pot dripping the black gold. Lately, my dealer has been a Portland roaster called Kobos. Their Ethiopia Yirgacheffe blend is like a spike in to my vein.I pour that first cup, half of it spills on the kitchen floor and I don’t even care. I’ll keep the java flowing through her breakfast in a high chair (with Cheerios hitting the kitchen floor in a Portland version of the fountain show at Bellagio), and the trip to take Mom into work. On good days, we’ll drive-through Starbucks on the way, where I’ll beg them not to put a plastic stopper in my latte and pray that no Stumptown Coffee loyalists spot me crouched behind the steering wheel like a junkie cheating on his supplier.

When the coffee pot is empty there’s always another on deck. And it tends to go quick. I think Cozy is stealing slurps from my Star Trek Enterprise mug when I’m not looking. It’s my fault. When she was a baby, I’d let her smell everything at the grocery store as we shopped, including the dark roast beans. Now, instead of screaming, “Cilantro!” she yells. “Coffee!” It’s really quite cute/embarrassing.

In the beginning, it was out of necessity. Everyone knows new parents don’t get much sleep. When I was a punk rock teenager, we used to get coffee at an all-night diner in Atlanta called The Majestic, just to come down from a night of terrorizing the city. Same thing with a newborn. But it changed when Cozy turned two. Last August, about a week after her birthday she had a meltdown in the Mexico City airport. She wasn’t going anywhere. I remember thinking, “I need something stronger.” As Huey Lewis once horribly sang, “I want a new drug.”

Just the “Do you need to poop or not?” question is enough to put me on prescription pain meds.

So I’m open to suggestions.

I know five states are voting on recreational marijuana on Election Day. We’ve had that here in Oregon since last year and it’s been a huge success. I’m not much of a pot smoker but I went to my neighborhood weed shop and bought a bag just because I could. On the way home, I waved it at a cop and he just smiled. Edibles are more fun, but pot generally makes me sleepy and I wanna be ready if I have to do some kiddie CPR or find her always lost copy of The Cat in the Hat. Plus, I’m working off the baby weight and don’t need to be spending my days with the munchies, eating blocks of cheese or the corners off of The Cat in the Hat (Cozy’s already done that).

Methamphetamine seems more practical than heroin or LSD. There’s never enough time in the day to get the chores done and I’ve heard speed freaks have super clean houses. That might be because they’ve sold everything off. (Has anybody told people on that show Hoarders about this?) But I’m kinda vain and would like to keep as much hair on my head and as many teeth in my mouth as possible. On the plus side, we could probably cancel the diaper service because I would be washing them out myself, probably on our front porch in my underwear.

It seems like ecstasy makes the most sense. The Love Drug. You just want to give free hugs when you’re on X. But then I think I’m already on it. There is some endorphin wave that seeps out my brainstem into my entire body whenever I look at my daughter. Yesterday a worker at the gym asked her, “So what’s your name?” And she answered, “Cozy!” It was the first time she ever said she was her name. I melted in a puddle and could barely climb on the elliptical machine afterwards. When I put her to sleep we just lay on the floor, face to face, staring at each other. She smiles and I feel like I’m living in a psychedelic cartoon; the end of Yellow Submarine when the Blue Meanies have been defeated. “Beatles?” she’ll quietly ask. I exist on a plane of perfection.

Maybe my daughter is the only drug I need. I know if either of us are down, there’s one word that brings things up. “Bubbles?” And if either of us are stressed out, we have total permission to shout, “ice cream!” and walk up to Salt & Straw for a cup of Chocolate Gooey Brownie. When it’s time to chill, “Hey Jude” always does the trick. She whispers the na-na-na-na-na-na-na part. And I’m high as a kite.

I hope you don’t mind if I bogart this kid.

Can you lead an authentic life in this mortgaged world?

October 20, 2016October 20, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

October 20, 2016

There are plenty of books out there about living a “purpose driven” life. There also lots of rap songs about “keepin’ it real.” It’s basically the same thing. Are your actions in line with your values? Or maybe you’ve sold out to the Man, sold your soul to the Devil, or drank the Kool Aid. We want authenticity in our humans.

This presidential campaign has been full accusations that people are fake. Trump is not a true conservative. Clinton is not a real progressive. Ben Carson is not an actual brain surgeon. But all of us are vulnerable to this accusation. Our identities are works in process and constantly in flux. Nobody is a perfect anything. I’m a feminist but I own the soundtrack to Baywatch and it’s probably not for the music. Busted.

We’re all hypocrites on some level; never quite living up to the vision of ourselves. Maybe not even close. We hate it when our favorite artist becomes huge and moves into a mansion in Beverly Hills, but we’d probably do the same damn thing. “I need more room for my rescue gerbils!”

I bring this up in this short blog post because it is an issue for anybody on the job market. Now that Cozy has turned two and The Dream Police is out, getting back to work is a priority. Since higher education has been eroded by the “new model” of declining tenure-line positions in favor of adjuncts and online classes, my next chapter will very likely be outside of academia. But what? I’ve been a college professor for over twenty years.

So that’s where the value check comes in. I’ve got two possible vectors outside of the classroom. The first is to do something rooted in my work around equity and social justice, or criminology. I applied for a couple of great Department of Justice gigs in DC, but the feds tend to hire from the inside. The other vector is that I get to write and get paid for it. Maybe The Dream Police or The Mission of the Sacred Heart (which is currently in the pipeline in Hollywood) will get picked up by a major publishing house. I’d love to get a paycheck to just sit in the coffee shop and write my weird stories.

I think I’d be really happy working in either world, but it’s not always that easy. Especially when you have a kid. And a mortgage.

So you start thinking, “What else could I do?” I could totally be a letter carrier but it would be about a 50% pay cut from my last gig. I could run for office, but I’d have to vet myself, and that might get ugly. How far out of my comfort zone would I go? If I was offered a $100,000 a year position working for Monsanto, would I take it? (No) The Koch Brothers? (Um, depends.) Nike? (Oh, OK). I’m sure the CIA knows I’ve visited the “Careers” section of their website (not that I’d past the “Have you ever been a communist” background check. (But if I can, call me, girl!)).

Before you judge me as a sell out, it’s like this – Yeah, I have down-for-the-program-and-up-the establishment values. But I’ve also got a precious daughter who is gonna need school supplies soon and I promised my wife I’d take her to Paris while she was still young enough to imagine living in an art studio in the Latin Quarter. So I might sell my soul a little bit. I think there are a lot of parents who have faced that reality and made the choice of the road most taken.

I’ve lived my dream. As a tenured professor I was fulfilled by my work every single day. I’m okay with bending the dream for my family. Maybe a socially progressive Portland agency needs a community outreach officer. Or maybe the CIA will hire me to neutralize the coming Trump militia. I could really be good at that.

Donald Trump for President of Rape Culture

October 10, 2016October 10, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 11 Comments

October 10, 2016

Let’s hope this is my last blog post dedicated to Candidate Trump as his schadenfreude campaign circles the toilet. One more “teachable moment” for the country that the Trump train wreck has gifted us.

I was going to call this piece, “Will Donald Trump Grab My Daughter’s Pussy?” now that that word is more relevant to the 2016 election than “down-ballot.” I have to think Trump’s marriage gets turned over to the lawyers after election day and he will start “moving on” other women “like a bitch.” I’m going to hope his targets are over the age of 13, but with Trump, we don’t know.

Federal Judge Orders Hearing in Donald Trump Rape Lawsuit

Feminists and academics (and feminist academics like me) have been writing about rape culture for a while now. We’ve been writing about it existing in frat houses and rap songs and every other episode of Game of Thrones. It’s the normality of sexual violence against women. The numbers vary depending on the study and methodology, but roughly one in four women are willing to report being victims of sexual assault. Anybody willing to listen would guess the percentage is a hell of a lot higher, especially when you include sexual assaults of young girls. (Plenty of research backs this up.)

If you are a female, you know this is true. If you haven’t yet been victimized you know it is always a looming possibility. If you are a man, you either plug into the concern about the women in your life and work to make them safe (including standing up to “locker room talk”), or you are part of the problem.

Rape culture is rooted, first, in patriarchy. The most popular God in our culture is a male and He lets his men know that women are objects to be conquered. There’s plenty of sanctioned rape in The Bible, so it’s not a new idea. The belief is that women’s (and girls) bodies exist for male pleasure; to look at, to have sex with, and to kiss and grab whenever the spirit moves them. Females are certainly not autonomous humans with the right to control their own bodies. That’s a male privilege.

So rape culture isn’t just the epidemic amount of rape that happens every day against our daughters, sisters, mothers and soap opera actresses. It’s more than a Robin Thicke song, as well. It’s the normalization that women exist FOR men’s enjoyment. One example would be beauty pageants. Imagine a beauty pageant owner who would brag about going backstage to see the contestants naked and making the bathing suits smaller to see more of their bodies. What would we think of that man? Would he make a good leader of the nation or a good leader of a rape culture? If you want them to be the same thing, you are a defender of patriarchy.

This brings us to Trump 2005 and his little bus ride with douchey Billy Bush, the poster boy for white male privilege. We’ve all heard the tape by now, as well as Trump’s half-assed “Clinton is worse!” apology. (Getting caught sucks.) There are two important discussions here for the nation at this important crossroads.

The first is one is obvious. Is this over-ripe frat boy who brags about sexually assaulting women and, while his third wife was pregnant, boasts about trying to bed a married women, qualified to be elevated to our highest office? Does this misogynist have the right to represent our great nation that is 50.8% female? What message will that send to our daughters as well as the rest of the world?

For me, the larger question is, what will be the impact of Donald “Grab their pussies” Trump have on this insidious rape culture? Many of his cult already view him as a “god” and we’ve seen Trump’s aggressive rhetoric translating into hate crimes and a spike in schoolyard bullying. How many boys and young males are now going to reject “sexual violence education” as “political correctness” in favor of just grabbing women and girls like Trump does? Will my daughter have to add the fear of Trump-inspired gropers to her anxiety about who claims a right to her body? This man being awarded the Oval Office would give budding douchebags license to follow their sexual drives unchecked. Be like Trump! WWDD? Move on her like a bitch!

We’ve been trying to figure out when the “again” was in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. Clearly, it’s at least before the existence of laws against sexual harassment.

And this is the part where I feel compelled to explain to the “But Bill Clinton…” Trumpists that Bill Clinton is not running for president. Feminists had a hard time with Bill in the 1990s, believe me. It might be news to conservatives, but wives are not their husbands. Hillary Clinton is a separate person. (I know that might be hard for these people to process.) She has her own thing goin’ on.

Look, I’m glad Trump has apologized and has said he wants to be a better man. That’s awesome. I’m on my own journey and am a better man than I was in 2005. But I’m not not running for president and I’m not sure we would have Trump’s mea culpa if that live mike hadn’t captured him off camera. The difference is two-fold. Unlike Trump, I’m willing to admit I’ve made a ton of mistakes and am using each one to be a better man (not waiting until everyone else finds out about it). Secondly, I acknowledge that this issue is deeply systemic. It affects everyone I care about, including my wife and my daughter. Out of my love for them and the mighty women and girls in the world, I am busting my ass trying to undo rape culture. This includes my role in propping it up. Trump and his droogs deny the existence of rape culture (and white privilege, and climate change, and…)

Also, I’m guessing I’ll be a better 59-year-old man in 2023 than he was in 2005. Just a hunch. But let’s imagine that he spent 69-years as a committed misogynist and dramatically changed his assessment of patriarchal privilege in year 70. Yeah, right. He’s a very old dog. We might as well just imagine the fallout if there was a 2005 tape of Hillary Clinton bragging about grabbing men’s dicks. Lord.

It’s funny trying to see the Trump camp try to rationalize this pig of a man. “Well, Trump said Bill Clinton said worse things!” Again, Bill is not running for president and, at this point, you’re really gonna believe anything that Donald Trump says? “Well, women loved 50 Shades of Grey!” As I wrote in this blog, feminists took great issue with that crappy book. Besides Christian Grey is a fictional character who, like Bill Clinton, is not running for president. Those Harry Potter books are pretty popular but I don’t think America wants a president who claims to cast magic spells either. (Okay, that might be more fun than this.)

Trump’s lurking behind Secretary Clinton in the second debate like a creepy clown or stalker only seemed to be in line with his predatory manner. He again sloughed off his praise of sexual assault as “locker room talk” (3 times) and then quickly shifted to his go-to mantra about ISIS “chopping off heads” and people “pouring into our country.” He might be bad but at least he’s not ISIS, y’all! You had to think that Melania Trump, painfully smiling in her appropriately named Pussy-Bow blouse, was just waiting for all this to be over.

Singer Billy Bragg used to say that when Americans elect a president they elect a president for the whole world. In 2016, let us elect a president for all the women in the world and strike a very loud blow against rape culture.

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