Election Days of Yore: 

A Retrospective of the Last 20 Years

Presidential only -- I'm not counting the mid-term elections.

 2004 -- This was the year I learned a valuable lesson -- don't listen to the echo chamber. Take any predictions with a grain of salt huge fucking barrel of salt. Huge.

I was living in my studio apartment in St. Paul and working at the temple. I was pretty psyched as Election Day approached, because I thought G-Dubs would be defeated. All my friends and coworkers seemed sure of it. They were all like, "Yeah, Kerry's got this. Let's face it, everyone is sick of this Bush/Cheney bullshit." I knew exactly one person who was voting for Dubya (a single-issue voter whose issue was Israel), and even she thought that Kerry probably had it in the bag. That's what the mood was like in Minnesota; nobody really thought Bush would get in again. 

Election Day came, and it was clear early on that Bush was ahead. I was flabbergasted. "But....but....what about the war no one wanted? The phantom WMDs? Bush is an idiot! Cheney is evil! I thought we were all on the same page? Hello?" 

I went home that day and didn't bother to turn on the news. Instead I smoked some herb and watched a DVD I'd checked out from the library, Novocaine, a black comedy starring Steve Martin as a dentist and Helena Bonham Carter basically reprising her character from Fight Club. It was a distraction. When the movie was over, I switched on PBS to see that Bush was fucking winning the election. I was beyond bummed, so I decided to watch Novocaine again. (I didn't have cable, so PBS was pretty much the only station that came in on the antennae. Needless to say, I rented a lot of DVDs back then.)

2008 -- A much better year all around. When Election Day arrived, I stopped off to vote after work, then came home. I was invited to my friend Katy's election party, so I texted and said I'd be there a little later, I just wanted to lie down first. You know how it goes, I didn't think I'd fall asleep, but I did. Two hours later I woke up, like, shit! It was dark and my windows were open, and I could hear what sounded like cheering and celebrations outside in the distance. I threw on a sweatshirt and sprinted the few blocks to Katy's. As her house came into sight, I ran up looking all wild-eyed and disheveled. There were some partygoers hanging out on her porch and I just yelled, "HEY! Did Obama win?" They responded with raised cups and "woo-hoos," and I was like, "YES!" 

The party was awesome, by the way. Katy's parties always kicked ass. After a while we all walked over to 26th and Lyndale to join a massive crowd of people who were celebrating outside Treehouse Records, holding Obama signs, cheering at cars who honked in support, and basically just looking at one another and going, "Holy shit, it's happening!" 

It's one of my favorite Minneapolis memories.  

2012 -- This election was pretty boring compared to the others. I mean, I remember the jokes and soundbites: Mitt Romney's dumb "binders of women" comment in the Presidential debate and Biden openly laughing at Paul Ryan throughout the VP debate. But other than that, it was all rather even keel. I miss uneventful elections like this one. Give us more of those, please, where we're not all out of our minds with terror. 

One notable fact--it was John's first time voting in a Presidential election (he became a citizen in 2009). So that was something. After we got home from the polls, I changed into my swimsuit and hit the pool, since we were living in Baton Rouge and it was like 85 degrees outside. 

2016 -- Oh, fuck that. Fuuuuuuck that. I'm not going there.

2020 -- I thought Trump was going to win and I refused to look at my phone or watch TV or listen to any news at all. I popped some Xanax, made a cup of Tension Tamer tea, and took to my bed, where I binged episodes of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood on YouTube for the entire day. I highly recommend this method for dealing with stress. It does help. (Xanax is optional, but Tension Tamer tea is essential.) 

And Trump LOST the election, just like he deserved. We still didn't get rid of him, but at least the fucker was out of the White House.

2024 -- Oh shit, I don't know. I'm tempted to do what I did last time: unplug my brain and spend the day in the Neighborhood of Make Believe. I did get invited to some watch parties, so I may hit those. 

Why this song? 

'Cause I dig it, baby.

Sometimes It Snows in April

Damn, it just doesn't feel real, does it? The headline "Prince Dies at 57" still does not compute, and it's freaky to even type that. I had the same issue with Bowie's death. It's like both Prince and Bowie were sort of these ethereal figures--almost supernatural--like it was just sort of understood that the rules of the universe did not apply to them. They were on a higher plane than the rest of us mortals. 

My writer buddy Dan Kennedy said it best: 

As shocked as I was by Bowie's passing, the fact that Prince is gone just seems harder to fathom somehow. My friend Marcus posted on FB that although both deaths were a huge shock, Prince hits closer to home (for Gen-Xer's like us) because, growing up in the '80s, Prince was "our guy." I totally agree. 

"Little Red Corvette" (1982) was the first Prince song I remember being aware of. I recall my sister and other "big kids" really digging it, but I was just sort of neutral (also, at nine years old I was more obsessed with horses than current pop music). Then in 1984-85 there was an amazing explosion of artists and albums that coincided with that sort of musical awakening a lot of kids have at around 11 or 12 years old and I discovered Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince--specifically the Purple Rain soundtrack--which blew my mind. 

I saw Purple Rain (the movie) when it premiered on HBO in the summer of 1985. It was so dark and "adult" that it's funny to think of my little 12-year-old self watching that. I mean, my family (along with everyone else in our neighborhood) had gotten premium cable a few years earlier, and it was a big thing for us neighbor kids to secretly try to catch "the dirty parts" of movies like Porky's and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (or if we were feeling really brave, one of the Friday the 13th movies) when we were at each other's houses. But Purple Rain was a lot racier than the typical teen sex films of that era, so I'm pretty sure it was one of those movies I sneaked out to the living room to watch at like 2am while my mom and stepdad were sleeping. That was something I got really good at: creeping into the living room and turning on the TV so it was barely audible and sitting like five inches from the screen so I could hear the movie while simultaneously listening for my mom in case she woke up. (In the event that she did, I would switch off the TV, race into the kitchen, and pour myself a glass of milk so it would look like I'd just gotten up to get a drink. Back in the day, we had to be really creative with stuff like that. I think kids today have it a lot easier, they can just watch whatever they want to on their smart phones and their parents probably don't have a clue.)      

Speaking of access, everyone knows by now how impossible it is to find Prince clips on YouTube; the only ones that exist seem to be live performances from award shows (which are awesome, admittedly), and the only Purple Rain clips viewable online are the ones from the trailer.

I guess this is indicative of how many times I've seen Purple Rain over the last 30 years (um, a lot), because there are a few little flashes of scenes I don't recognize: 

00:28 -- Apollonia in a barn? WTF was that? 

00:51 -- Prince getting smacked around by his dad (I think?) at what looks like a rehearsal space?

Marcus, help me out....do you remember any of this? I'm also unsure about the snippet with the cop car driving by Morris and Jerome. I'm guessing they were deleted scenes, but I want your opinion. 

_______________________________________________________________

Anyway, Prince is gone, and it sucks. I have more to write on this subject but I'm still getting my head together. 

(Psst...looks like someone posted the video for Take Me With U in the past few days, but it will probably get yanked ASAP, maybe by the time this goes up.) 

People V. OJ Ep 5

Holy shit, I totally remember this! 

I've been wondering about this Hodgman character and waiting to see if the show would address his sudden absence from the trial, because it's one of the incidents I remember quite well. 

Turns out, yep--they did! But in a totally melodramatic it-didn't-really-happen-that-way fashion. 

In the show, they had John Hodgman (Marcia Clark's litigating partner) suffer a heart attack and dramatically keel over right there in court after getting all pissed off at the defense (specifically, Johnny Cochran). Watching that scene, I actually shouted "Bullshit!" at the TV, because I didn't remember it going down like that. Turns out, I was right.  

From Vanity Fair: 

According to Toobin, it was during a closed-door meeting among Clark, Hodgman, and D.A. Gil Garcetti, after the opening statements, in which the discovery failures were revealed and where Hodgman started to feel chest pains. Paramedics were called and he was treated for a temporary stress condition, which did result in his stepping down from the case.

From a writer's perspective, I can see why they took some license with that, even if it was a bit over the top.

Here's what I remember...

The first week of the OJ trial, I was sitting in class talking with my friend Heidi and some other people from school,* and someone mentioned that one of the prosecuting attorneys in the Simpson case had been rushed to the hospital with chest pains the day before. That's when my classmate Cindy said disdainfully, "Yeah, he's having chest pains because he's lying! He knows he's lying!"

It's worth pointing out here that Cindy--a "good ole girl" from Texas--had an African American fiance and two bi-racial children. Cindy was cool; extremely blunt, very funny, and a blast to hang out with (she was part of a group of us who would sometimes high-tail it over to the nearby Chi-Chi's for nachos and margaritas at lunchtime), although she was obviously one of those "OJ is innocent!" people, a stance that I think had something to do with the fact that she was a white woman living in the black community.

The racial tension surrounding the OJ case is something that is definitely not exaggerated for the sake of the show, as it was a very real and very unfortunate aspect of the whole thing. It couldn't be avoided, especially in LA circa 1994-95, when the LA riots following the Rodney King verdict had happened just a few years prior. It's easy to see why the defense team played the race card like they did. Were they dirty opportunistic shyster assholes for doing so? Oh hell yeah. But still, it was pretty much a no-brainer. Of course they'd make it all about race, especially when Mark Fuhrman made it so damn easy. That's why I totally believe the scene where Christopher Darden tells Cochran he hopes they can be respectful to one another in the press, and Cochran goes, "Brother, I ain't trying to be respectful. I'm trying to win." It's another moment comes off a bit melodramatic, but--even if it didn't happen--it totally seems like it would have.

    Oh, just kiss him already.

On another note, I think Robert Morse is perfect as Dominick Dunne. I always get so excited when actors from Mad Men pop up on TV shows and movies.  

Burt Cooper!!!

The dialogue in the judge's chambers where Ito says something like, "I know you have a special interest in this case because of your daughter's murder" was a bit ham-fisted but I guess it was necessary because at this point most people probably wouldn't know or remember that his daughter, actress Dominique Dunne (she played Dana, the older sister in Poltergeist) was strangled by her ex-boyfriend in 1982. Trivia: her murderer, a chef named John Sweeney, really did get off with a ridiculously light sentence (6 1/2 years, and he served only 3 1/2) and soon after his release got a job as head chef at a fancy restaurant in Santa Monica. Upon learning of this, Dunne and his family decided to serve up some Goldman-style realness, standing outside the restaurant handing out flyers that read "The food you will eat tonight was cooked by the hands that killed Dominique Dunne." Soon after that, Sweeney quit his job and left town.

Dominique Dunne in Poltergeist

In yet another strange Hollywood murder coincidence, Marcia Clark was the attorney who prosecuted Robert Bardo, the crazy stalker famous for killing actress Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989. At least in that one, Clark was able to send the scumbag down the river (he got life without parole). I've read a lot about that case, and it's super creepy. One of the things that surprised me was how young Robert Bardo was--only 19 years old--when he killed Schaeffer. You wouldn't think that to look at him, because dude looks at least 35 in photos from the trial, but I guess all that crazy can age a person. By the way, I'm too superstitious to post a photo of Bardo's creepy mug on my blog. Google him if you're curious, but be sure to wear garlic around your neck and sprinkle salt around yourself for protection (I'm only half-kidding) because ewwwwwww. As another blogger wrote, you can almost hear the demon wings flapping inside his head.  

I was glad to see that the show included the infamous "redecorating" of OJ's mansion, where the defense went in and cleared out photos of OJ posing with (white) Playboy models, golfing buddies and girlfriends, replacing them with African art and photos of black family members...supposedly some of the photos they planted there were of random black people OJ didn't even know. And I love that Coolio's "Fantastic Voyage" played over that scene, because how appropriate is that? 

What's the deal with all those rappers wearing button-down flannel shirts at the beach? 

Didn't they get hot?

It also reminded me that Coolio actually did do a song that I liked back in the day, because I hated his one other hit, "Gangster's Paradise," which was so annoying and inescapable that year. (For the record Weird Al's take on it is sooooo much better.) 

*I attended school to be a court reporter from 1993 - 1995. It came to a sudden end when the school folded and declared bankruptcy. (The bright side? I got my student loans forgiven!) I was about 6 months from graduating. Needless to say, I ended up going in another direction job-wise, one of many "Plan B's" I took during my twenties, which was really a decade full of "Plan B's".

Dad's second grade class photo.
Centralia, Illinois

Happy Birthday Dad

My father would have been 84 years old today. I thought I'd post a few of my favorite photos of him throughout the month. 

Dad's 40th birthday.
I was born two years later. :-)

Mom and Dad's wedding, June 1st, 1971 (on his 40th bday, see above)
They got married at a park at midnight--my Mom's idea--in Tulsa.
A friend officiated. 

Me and Dad. He's making sure I don't eat the dandelion.

Dad's birthday, a few years later (me in the background--maybe about 8 years old?)
I love this photo. And I miss our yellow 1970s kitchen.

Dad and me, crashed out in his favorite armchair.

Hanging out on the banks of Lake Michigan.
Shortly after Dad moved to Sheboygan, WI (post-divorce) to work for Kohler.

More photos to come this month.