A-Rod admits steroid use--cue the wide-eyed indignation.

While Madonna is doing a black-and-white photo layout for W magazine (which, from the few pictures I've seen, is unfortunately reminiscent of Susan Sarandon playing aging millionaire playgirl Doris Duke in the recent HBO movie BERNARD AND DORIS), New York Yankee Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez is doing what looks to be a "modified hangout" (to quote an old Watergate-era term regarding the doling out of just a little bit of truth) regarding use of illegal steroids.

Online commenters have fascinating things to say about the continuing use of performance-enhancing substances in professional baseball.

Here are a couple of choice two-cents-worth statements from the SPORTS ILLUSTRATED website, following a wire-service item from THE NEW YORK POST:
I just don't understand why people spend so much time worrying about A-Rod and what he took. If MLB didn't even have a rule against steroids, then how can you fault these guys for doing it? The blame should be on MLB not on the players, because players will do ANYTHING to give themselves a comtetitive advantage. Now if you were caught doing it AFTER a rule was put in place, then you're a cheater, but if it happened before hand then what can you really say???I think that everyone who is getting their panties in a bunch over this really needs to GET A LIFE!! Personally, i feel that any grown man spending ANY amount of time worrying about other grown men, is kinda suspect anyway... Just shut up and watch the games. Who cares about the other stuff anyway!

Every time someone else admits to taking steroids, it makes it easier for the next guy. That's the good news. The only way this whole story will come out is if the people who were responsible feel that the stigma is beginning to break down. When it's a hundred guys instead of three, you'll be surprised by how quickly the outrage evaporates.

Log on here for a diverse set of opinions about the man now known as A-Roid: http://www.fannation.com/truth_and_rumors/view/90173-a-rod-agitates-yankees?eref=fromSI

[UPDATE 2/11/09] An article from Tim Marchman on Slate.com: http://www.slate.com/id/2210814/

Plus an article arguing for a "Truth and Reconciliation" commission to "wipe the slate clean" regarding past steroid use: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-i-abrams/truth-and-reconciliation_b_165343.html

Processing random moments of Grammy ceremony 2009.

1. Mrs. Coldplay (aka Gwyneth Paltrow) introducing Radiohead.
2. (tie) I'd thought I'd never live to see Queen Latifah having to prompt the crowd to applaud Dean Martin getting a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Grammy--much less Stevie Wonder getting visually drowned out by end credits/promos on the telecast.
3. Katy Perry's performance of "I Kissed A Girl"--proving that most other current female stars (ranging from Lily Allen to Estelle to Jennifer Hudson and even to Taylor "I want to be Shania in the worst way" Swift) make up in talent what they may lack in terms of Ms. Perry's gorgeous hollowness and status as the co-savior (along with Coldplay) of EMI.
4. Radiohead's surprisingly effective version of "15 Steps" with accompaniment by some USC Marching Band members.
5. Paul McCartney and Neil Diamond seemingly getting less time--combined--than Kid Rock did.
6. The New Orleans tribute. Definitely a highpoint.
7. The Bo Diddley tribute--which makes me wish John Mayer would do nothing but release instrumental blues-guitar records.
8. The female pop/soul torch being passed from a blurry-eyed Whitney Houston to Jennifer Hudson.
9. The end of any hopes for a Led Zeppelin reunion tour--with deserved Grammys to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss for RAISING SAND.
10. As he ages, music legend T Bone Burnett (who produced RAISING SAND) looks more and more like William Randolph Hearst.

A coda of sorts to the Christian Bale controversy..

By now, the furor surrounding Christian Bale's long-ago profane outburst (aimed at cinematographer Shane Hurlbut) on the set of TERMINATOR: SALVATION has subsided (much to the relief of the fanboy sites, who are probably scared to keep mentioning it lest Warner Brothers get mad and deny them access to scoops).

Awhile back, I was an extra and stand-in, and there are stories I could tell about actors, directors, assistant directors and one particular cinematographer in various states of apoplectic rage (a couple of times that rage was aimed at me).

One anecdote I can mention is: On the Malibu set of a TV-movie starring Jackee Harry (227, SISTER SISTER), an extra (thankfully, not me) missed a cue. The director (probably best known for the original PROM NIGHT with Jamie Lee Curtis) ran out onto the set after "cut" was called. He screamed at the extra: YOU BLEW THE SHOT!!!!!!! I could see crew members looking at each other, aware that the shoot (in its early days) was going to be an endurance test.

Needless to say, the extra didn't care for that kind of treatment, walked off the set--and presumably he got his pay voucher, was taken back to his car and drove away from the whole megillah. I don't remember ever seeing him again on a set in the remaining seven years I worked in the business.

Sometimes, people working on film/TV projects will blow up at someone they perceive as inept and/or unattentive and then apologize afterwards. Other times, they opt for cruel insults (usually in front of the crew) in a normal tone of voice--perhaps along with firing on the spot or a "you won't work with me again" taunt (another Bale tactic).

Regarding the Bale situation, numerous people have argued that we don't know the full context of what happened before and after the outburst. And, now that Bale has offered a public apology regarding the incident, any further questions are likely to be put to rest.

Finally, an irony that went unmentioned during the past week's media tempest: Bale, when filming the 3:10 TO YUMA remake over two years ago, was apparently an even-tempered good guy in his dealings with the crew. And this was over the course of a shoot that involved Russell Crowe, whose past tantrums will go unmentioned here.

Critic/commentator Dave White on Steve Martin's recent film career.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28981274/

To add to the above, here's this zinger of an opener from THE ORLANDO SENTINEL's Roger Moore in his review of THE PINK PANTHER 2 [full disclosure: I thought the first film surprisingly not bad--certainly better than the long-running series' nadir, Blake Edwards' 1993 son-of-Clouseau swansong with Roberto Benigni]:
Someday, we'll stroll through the Steve Martin Wing of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, admiring his collection, and we'll appreciate what he had to do to pay for his Picassos, Seurats and Edward Hoppers.
Until then, we endure the Cheaper by the Dozens and Pink Panthers with a grimace, remembering the comic he once was.

Although Martin's now the Bob Hope of his generation, perhaps it's better that he's making formula comedies than preserving his high-art muse on film--considering what a dry, parched endurance test that SHOPGIRL (based on Martin's novella of the same name) was.

Matt Taibbi on Tom Daschle--written long before Daschle's tax problems.

Something to read in the wake of Tom Daschle's resignation as President Obama's health-care czar and his withdrawal from Secretary of Health and Human Services nomination due to tax payment problems: http://www.rollingstone.com/blogs/taibbiunbound/2008/12/the-whore-factor.php#more

The mainstream media doesn't seem to want to dig as deep as Taibbi in terms of Daschle's past record as an advocate for the health insurance companies' keep-things-as-they-are policies.

Instead, there's some wailing today about how Obama's health-care "reform" is being imperiled by the Daschle resignation. Here's the Associated Press' Jennifer Loven: http://news.aol.com/main/obama-presidency/article/daschle-taxes/324156?icid=200100397x1218191867x1201179453

Sportswriter in flames over Michael Phelps' pot smoke.

http://jay-mariotti.fanhouse.com/2009/02/03/phelps-vow-to-kids-goes-up-in-smoke/

No comment except to say that this kind of cultural conservative "you must be a nonsinning role model 24/7/365" hysteria will probably eclipse a recent TMZ scoop about Miley Cyrus and some of her posse pulling their eyelids back to enact the timeless dumb and demeaning stereotype of Asians: http://www.popeater.com/music/article/miley-adds-racist-gag-to-already-long/326727

I'm now a member of the Bad Review Club!

It's been a banner fortnight for bad reviews of artistic output. First, Bruce Springsteen took a fair amount of flak for his latest album WORKING ON A DREAM being, in some critics' viewpoints, little more than nonessential pop music with subpar lyrics. Then, Ron Rosenbaum (a critic/essayist I used to read when he still wrote for THE NEW YORK OBSERVER) weighed in on Slate.com with an angry takedown of Billy Joel...an artist who basically said good bye to pop/rock in 1993 and surfaces only occasionally to do play-the-old-songs tours either by himself or with Elton John. Rosenbaum christens Joel as "The Worst Pop Singer Ever" here: http://www.slate.com/id/2209526/

And then, it became my turn.

G. Murray Thomas, who used to publish the NEXT poetry-reviews-and-events-calendar magazine, now is a reviewer for poetix.net. Recently, he reviewed a chapbook of mine called YELLOW TREE RED SKY. The review can be found at this link, along with deserved praise for a chapbook by Pasadena's Mary Torregrossa and a peeved, he's-coasting take on Billy Collins' recent BALLISTICS: http://poetix.net/reviews.htm

This is the first time I've experienced an in-print review of a book of mine--and if Murray had given it boundless praise, I would have written a blog column about it too.

Essentially, Murray disliked the book overall, while offering some praise for a couple of poems and meant-to-be-constructive criticism (which, whether taken or discarded, should always be welcomed by reviewees).

But it seems like one particular poem in the book caused an inflammation of discomfort in Murray. The poem is called "it's not just you" and I'll reprint it here:

it’s not just you

I read the news today, oh boy
about the lucky poetry venues
that made the grade
it made me kind of sad
to know you ushered me in
ten years ago
and are now letting me and others know
about the poetry venues
that are too highfalutin
for cheap entertainers like me
I remember a lot of poets
no longer active on the scene
(or in some cases not on the scene at all)
who were mainstays ten years ago
now even if a few of them came back
they probably wouldn’t be accepted
in the new poetic order
it’s not just you that’s making things clear to me
I’ve been told to get educated
and upgrade my craft to be taken seriously
but I like being a cheap entertainer
and committing the sin of being easy to understand
so it’s time for me to go quietly
into that gentle night
reserved for sig rumanns and margaret dumonts
declaiming into microphones

about their hot new pantoums
as the audiences go
mmm, mmm, mmmm
in approval
if it doesn’t make most hosts
and some audiences go
mmm, mmm, mmmm
it just isn’t poetry anymore

[The poem makes a brief reference to a column Murray wrote citing favorite LA/OC poetry venues: http://poetix.net/reviews_of_venues.htm ]

Now, let's print a few excerpts from the review to examine Murray's references to this poem:
Terry McCarty is up front about his ambitions for his poetry. In “it’s not just you” he states “I like being a cheap entertainer/ and committing the sin of being easy to understand.” This would seem a pretty easy ambition to live up to.

Yes, he is easy to understand. There is not a single poem here where I wondered, for even a second, what the poem was about. (With the possible exception of “shya lebuff,’ but that’s only because I’m not up on my pop culture -- who is Shya Lebuff anyway?) That’s fine. I’m not one who considers being easy to understand a sin in poetry. In fact, I believe that the audience should be given, at the very least, an understandable entrance into a poem.

However, if a poet makes being easy to understand their ultimate goal, he or she is usually in trouble. More on that in a minute.

But in all his poems, he refuses to go very deep. His poems skim across the surfaces of his subjects. Also in “its not just you,” he writes “I’ve been told to get educated/ and upgrade my craft to be taken seriously,” an option he rejects in favor of being the aforementioned “cheap entertainer.” While it would be easy to read this as mere laziness, I prefer to take him at his word —that his ambitions like somewhere other than “well-crafted” poems. But he seems to have confused depths of meaning with craft, and rejected it as well. The result is he prevents himself from even hitting his own modest goal.


If McCarty doesn’t want to make his audiences think, I guess that’s okay, But if that is the case, I do wonder why he’s writing poetry.

Philosophical differences aside, I do like the poetry of Murray's I've read and even recommend his one sold-in-regular-bookstores-and-Amazon compilation COWS ON THE FREEWAY.

[And, for some further context as to Murray's poetry ideals, here's a rave review for Milo Martin (ex-Onyx reading host) by Murray in this column from November of last year: http://poetix.net/reviews_1108.htm]

But I do take some exception to being called lazy (even if its just an inference) and having questions put to me as to "why" I'm writing poetry.

When I began going to open-mikes almost eleven years ago, there were coffeehouse and independent bookstore readings that made room for just about everything, like a variety show: "serious" literary poetry, traditional rhyme-and-meter verse, monologues, stand-up comedy, musicians, etc. etc. And Murray seems to have cast his lot with the hosts and influential poets in LA/OC that seem to think that only "serious" poetry should be allowed with the other subsets I mentioned above actively and/or tacitly discouraged.

I remember a few years ago at the Moonday reading at Village Books in Pacific Palisades when, after reading on the open-mike, Holaday Mason (a well-known L.A. literary poet) performed her five minutes. The late Anne Silver (then a Moonday co-host) spent a minute or two copiously praising Holaday for her work--and, to me, the message was ultraclear; I was too depth-free and craft-poor for such a distinguished reading. I got Ms. Silver's message--and never returned to the reading again.

Time to say it again: for poetry to flourish--particularly at a time when there will be renewed jeers over the idea of the arts being essential in a near-Depression economy--a big tent needs to be pitched.

It's not to be expected that all poetry will be to the liking of everyone--tastemakers, professional/amateur poets or civilians who prefer merely to attend.

But at some point the "poetry community" needs to stop pushing the poetry-eugenics nonsense that poems should be nothing more than gilded creations engineered to be admired for their complexity and intricacy--sort of like building a scale model of the QUEEN MARY in a Sparkletts jug or (to steal a phrase from the late Robert Mitchum) construct a replica of the Taj Mahal from matchsticks.

Otherwise, there's going to be an increase in boring, arid, intended-more-to-impress-than-enlighten-or-even-stoop-to-entertain "craft-conscious" word art which will likely go unremembered a month from now--let alone a decade or even a century.

[UPDATE 2/4/09: Here's an example of what I described in the last paragraph. One of Robert Pinsky's weekly poetry picks for SLATE: http://www.slate.com/id/2210318/]

Re the anger at greedy corporate execs--it won't do much good.

I liked this column by Maureen Dowd that appears in today's NEW YORK TIMES: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/opinion/01dowd.html?_r=2

And it is rather pitiful that the corporate/Wall Street CEOs/majordomos are hunkering down, determined to hang on to what they feel are hard-won perks (lavish expense accounts, fit-for-a-monarch living and working quarters, superplush personal jets--not to forget multimegamillions of parting gifts in cash/stock options) while the public gets poor products, abysmal customer service and, in certain cases, going-out-of-business sales to digest.

[UPDATE 2/3/09: Wells Fargo, after taking over Wachovia and receiving bailout money, plans a lavish employee party in Las Vegas: http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/bbdp/wells-fargo-another-bailed-out-firm/327746]

[UPDATE 2/4/09: Wells Fargo, after an outcry of protest, canceled the party: http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/bbdp/wells-fargo-another-bailed-out-firm/327746?icid=200100397x1218250358x1201186513]

Recently, I read a laudatory profile of Barney Frank in THE NEW YORKER. Frank optimistically predicted an economic recovery by 2010 (presumably before the midterm elections).

If such a recovery takes place on Frank's schedule, I'm assuming that America will return to doing business in the same old ways it did prior to the Wall Street meltdown of this past September.

And, once again, cretins like Jack "GE" Welch will feel comfortable enough to spout tough-guy downsizing palaver in books and over the airwaves.