Note to Readers + Olympic Withdrawal Syndrome

I want to begin by thanking all J's Theater's readers. I haven't done this in a while, and these are slow days, but the site stats state that people are dropping in, mostly from the US, Canada and the UK, but also from other parts of the globe (most recently and most frequently, Russia, France, Indonesia, Ukraine, and India, which amazes me), so I appreciate it. I also wanted to let readers know that because I've instituted Ghostery (which blocks Net trackers) in two of my primary browsers, I cannot seem to comment on posts. I had figured out a way around this by allowing Google Friends and Google Connect to pursue me without hindrance, but that no longer seems to work. If anyone has any suggestions, do let me know. I can read your comments, but I haven't been able to respond for months.

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All around women's artistic gymnastics gold medalist Gabby Douglas

As is always the case every four years when the Summer Olympics roll around, I say I'm going to watch only a few events and not get sucked into the vortex of compulsive viewing, and then, when the two weeks of competition are over, I feel hung over, or perhaps more accurately, feel withdrawal symptoms. Until 2016, in Rio de Janeiro, there will be no more Olympic track and field races. There will be no more Olympic men's and women's artistic gymnastics. There will be no more Olympic men's and women's tennis, or road racing, or track cycling, or swimming, or rowing, or any of the other sports I love to watch.  There won't even be any more Olympic diving or women's beach volleyball--Hallelujah! But today I even miss the three-time US champions in that sport, although I really wish we saw a bit less of them and a bit more of some of the other sports, smaller though their viewership may be.

The world's fastest man ever, Jamaican Usain Bolt

Like many others across the Net I found myself complaining about NBC's TV and Net coverage, which was alternately excessively jingoistic, infuriating, infantilizing, sentimental, soporific, and as the awful video focusing on women's bodies exemplified, just plain sexist and misogynistic. It began with the annoying delayed broadcast of the opening ceremony, which I enjoyed (it felt very British; I mean, what positive things is the UK commonly known for? Its royalty, its long, continuous successful government, its monarchy, its extraordinary literary contributions, its amazing contributions to contemporary popular music, its mostly successful multicultural aftermath to its brutal colonial and imperial history) and mostly grew worse. There was the incessant focus only on American athletes and on those sports that the US teams and individual competitors were most likely to earn gold medals in. There were the human interest stories that were tiresome 20 years ago--we can look this stuff up online, NBC!, there's a thing called the Google, and another thing called the Wikipedia, and...--and still are. There were those extremely grating Mary Carrillo outings hither and thither, that simply ate up time that NBC could have devoted to, oh, sports! And then there was that interminable, maudlin Tom Brokaw paean to Britain's steadfast response to the German threat of invasion during World War II. (Why oh why do we ever have to see or even hear clips of you-know-who? Just. Stop. Giving. AH. Airtime. Stop. It!)

Gold medalists Mexico celebrate their victory over Brazil in the men's soccer final

Perhaps it all had to do with money. I took that to be the rationale behind the sports it showed in prime time and late at night (which was always better). The best aspect of NBC's offerings, however, turned out to be the streaming video. Yes, there were commercials every 15 seconds--or however long it was--but the quality, at least on my home cable modem connection--was quite good, and I could watch any sports in real time. I did this for a few, like men's and women's artistic gymnastics. Mostly I checked Yahoo! and the London Olympics 2012 website, which was so easily to read and follow, listed all the athletes, times and results, and should be the model for future games.

Félix Sánchez of the Dominican Republic, after winning 400 m hurdle gold

I won't recount the numerous highlights, since they've been amply covered, but I will list a few of my favorite moments. First, there was the incredible performance by the US women athletes; they accounted for the majority, I believe, of the US's 104 total medals, especially the golds. Congratulations to them, and of course to all the competitors at the games. Congratulations also to host UK, for pulling off a drama-and-terror-free extravaganza, from start to finish, and for also achieving its astonishing medal haul. Among the individual athletes, perhaps my favorite was 16-year-old Gabby Douglas, who became the first African American woman to win the gold in the women's artistic gymnastics all around, and the women's team also taking the gold. I still get a little choked up about the former achievement, and Douglas has been a delight to watch since. I hope she inspires many other young people to keep pushing even when, as was the case for her family, it was an incredible financial and logistical trial to keep going.

Louis Smith of Great Britain, on the pommel horse; the UK team took bronze

I also must give props to Michael Phelps, who, despite the hype, really showed what a champion is, by coming back and winning even more golds and other medals, in individual and relay races, and setting a standard that probably won't be equaled anytime soon. There was main man Usain Bolt, who despite the naysayers blew past his competition in record time in the 100 m and 200 m, and with his Jamaican teammates, set another record in the 4 x 100. I was as riveted by all the American women runners too: Allyson Felix, Carmelita Jeter, Sanya Richards Ross, and the rest, who won their races and relays, and let the world know that even if the male athletes weren't keeping pace, they were ready to set it. Double amputee Oscar Pistorius showed tremendous heart in his races, getting as far as the finals in the men's 400 m and 4x400m, while American Manteo Mitchell ran a leg of the 4x400m prelims with a broken leg, yet did not give up, helping the US men to advance to the next round.

The women's 4x100 record-setting relay team

I loved that some older athletes also did wonderfully at the games. There was Dominican American Félix Sánchez, now 35, winning the 400 m hurdles again for DR, reprising his 2004 gold in Athens, after having faltered badly in 2008 as his grandmother was dying. He broke down after winning and was so shaken with joy that he could not stop crying on the medal stand. Also, Kristin Armstrong, at age 39, returned and won a second gold in the women's cycling road individual time trial. There was Serena Williams, now 30 and a Grand Slam tennis winner (with five singles titles at the Australian Open, 1 single title at the French Open, five Wimbledon titles, and 3 US Opens) earning her first gold in women's singles, and then returning the next day to win the doubles gold with her sister, tennis champion Venus Williams, now 32.

Kirani James of Grenada celebrates his victory in the men's 400 m finals

Some newbies also took surprising golds. There was American Jordan Burroughs, from Camden, New Jersey, who defeated his Iranian challenger, Sadegh Saeed Goudarzi, to win a gold in the 74 kg freestyle competition. There was 19-year-old Kirani James, of tiny Grenada, winning the men's 400 meters, a race Americans have long dominated. In another surprising outcome, 19-year-old Trinidadian Keshorn Walcott received the gold medal in the men's javelin throw. A number of young American women took golds, silvers and bronzes in swimming, including 15-year-olds (!) Katy Ledecky (US) in the 800m freestyle, and Ruta Meilutye (Lithuania) in the 100m breaststroke, and 16-year-old Ye Shiwen (China) in the women's 200m and 400m individual medleys. A US coach, however, cast Ye's victories in doubt, publicly questioning whether she had been doping, which enraged many Chinese officials and fans. Several athletes were sent packing for doping, including one for having (accidentally, he claimed) ingesting a little weed. Uh huh. Though the gymnastics judging required some redos, bringing a silver to the Japanese men's team and pushing the British into bronze status, and a bronze as well to American Natalia Raisman in the floor exercises final, the shakiest sport this time through appeared to be boxing, where some of the officials calls looked more than subjective, and accusations have since flown about possible match fixing.

The finals in the women's keirin race, which Briton Victoria Pendleton won

I'll end by recounting a response to a friend and fellow sports lover who was questioning the relevance of one particular competition, equestrian dressage. Why, he asked me on the phone, was this elitist sport--one could easily throw sailing and a number of others, including diving into this category--still part of the Olympics? Only rich people had ever been interested in and could afford to do it, as he put it. Perhaps he was reacting to the brouhaha surrounding Rafalca, the horse owned by Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's wife Ann. I don't know. But I pointed out to him that in fact dressage had a much older history; it was the purview of infantry officers as much as the aristocracy, going back centuries. I was reminded as we spoke of a question I always asked my Northwestern undergraduate introduction fiction writing students whenever we read the opening of Anton Chekhov's famous story "The Kiss": "What," I will often say to them, followed by some prompting, "is he describing." Almost none of them, except the few who ride horses regularly, knew. Here is the Chekhov quote (translator unknown):

At eight o'clock on the evening of the twentieth of May all the six batteries of the N---- Reserve Artillery Brigade halted for the night in the village of Myestetchki on their way to camp. When the general commotion was at its height, while some officers were busily occupied around the guns, while others, gathered together in the square near the church enclosure, were listening to the quartermasters, a man in civilian dress, riding a strange horse, came into sight round the church. The little dun-coloured horse with a good neck and a short tail came, moving not straight forward, but as it were sideways, with a sort of dance step, as though it were being lashed about the legs. When he reached the officers the man on the horse took off his hat and said:

     "His Excellency Lieutenant-General von Rabbek invites the gentlemen to drink tea with him this minute. . . ."

     The horse turned, danced, and retired sideways; the messenger raised his hat once more, and in an instant disappeared with his strange horse behind the church.

In this opening section, I let them know, Chekhov not only tells you what's going on, with concrete facts and details, but he shows you who you're dealing with. That horse "moving not straight forward, but as it were sideways, with a sort of dance step, as though it were being lashed about the legs," and which "turned, danced, and retired sideways," is an emissary of a military officer, an aristocrat, Lt.-General von Rabbe[c]k, and is performing dressage. Chekhov could have just used this term or its Russian equivalent, but instead, he describes, and thus shows, the gentility of the officer extending the invitation. This officer's home will be the site of the accident that transforms, at least momentarily, the story's protagonist, as all readers of "The Kiss" know.

Yonemitsu of Japan celebrates his victory against Kumar of India during the men's 66 kg freestyle wrestling final

Where am I going with this? There are sports, like track and field, wrestling and rowing, that probably date back to the oldest Olympics games.  Few of us ride horses regularly or can afford to, but in the long history of human existence, horses, like dogs, cats, cows, pigs, chickens, and a few other species, have been beside us every step of the way. What now seems very elitist once had specific meaning and importance, and we ought not forget this. Moreover, like Chekhov, in London, at least for two weeks, athletes from all over the world didn't just tell us what they could do, that they--we--could compete side by side without rancor or enmity--but they showed us, for the most part, the best of what human beings can do in competition and working together, whether competing on a BMX track or in a kayak on whitewater rapids or on a soccer field. It's four years till Rio, and it's going to be an impatient wait for me!

Poem: Qiu Xiaolong

Qiu Xiaolong
(Confucius Institute, UNSW)

This morning in the New York Times I came across an Op-Ed essay entitled "Intrigue in Chongqing," on the rise and precipitous fall of former "princeling" Bo Xilai, whose alleged corruption and spying activities doomed him, as did his wife's alleged involvement in the murder of a British citizen. I had read several stories on this case, which calls for novelistic, dramaturgical and operatic treatment, but I'd never heard of its author, who'd once suffered the indignity of having Bo steal his ping-pong racquet and, who, based on the details in his essay, is the son of a "capitalist" who'd been punished as a "counterrevolutionary"; writes detective novels; and is planning to include some of Bo's story in a future book, but also knows enough Chinese literature to quote from the ancient Chinese classic, The Book of Songs.  According to the Times, Qiu Xiaolong (裘小龙 1953-), "author of the forthcoming novel Don’t Cry, Tai Lake," penned this piece, and I learned via his byline that he's a resident of St. Louis. That made me even more curious, naturally.

So I searched and in seconds found his website, which announces that he is a "NOVELIST AND POET." I kept reading. The site offers a brief, thorough introduction:

Qiu Xiaolong was born in Shanghai, China. He is the author of the award-winning Inspector Chen series of mystery novels, Death of a Red Heroine (2000), A Loyal Character Dancer (2002), When Red Is Black (2004), A Case of Two Cities (2006), Red Mandarin Dress (2007), and The Mao Case (2009). He is also the author of two books of poetry translations, Treasury of Chinese Love Poems (2003) and Evoking T'ang (2007), and his own poetry collection, Lines Around China (2003). Qiu's books have sold over a million copies and have been published in twenty languages. He currently lives in St. Louis with his wife and daughter.

Wikipedia additionally informed he had raised money for the students who participated in the Tiananmen Square Revolution of 1989, thus he thought better of returning to China after a trip to the US for research on a book on St. Louisan T. S. Eliot.  Qiu has, it's clear, received a great deal of praise for novels, and at least one has been made into a movie. I checked out his poems. One of the first I came across is the one below; it's unclear whether he wrote it initially in English or it's a translation, but either way, it's pretty tight. (I would say that as hard as it is to write proper prose in another language, it's even harder to write do so with poetry.)  On the back cover of Lines Around China, republished now as Lines Around China: Lines Out of China, he even sports a blurb from Mona Van Duyn (1921-2004), the former Poet Laureate of the United States in 1992, and a highly lauded writer, who received the 1971 National Book Award for her collection To See, To Take (Atheneum, 1970), and the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her collection The Near Changes (Knopf, 1990).  I also know of her because when I was growing up, she was one of the famous writers living in St. Louis (the other local bigwigs of that era were William Gass, Stanley Elkin, Howard Nemerov, and Donald Finkel, most of them associated with Washington University in St. Louis, which is also where Van Duyn taught too).

I can't tell whether Qiu is affiliated with Washington University (though he did receive his MA and PhD in Comparative Literature from there, which makes me think he must have had some direct contact with Gass, at least), but a Mona Van Duyn blurb is the biz, and I do like this poem, which is a lighthearted poem about poetry, so I'm posting it. When I get the opportunity, I'll also read one of his mysteries. They do sound worth the while.

(Bonus: The Browser's "FiveBooks Interviews" with Qiu Xiaolong on Classical Chinese Poetry)

POETRY

Back home at 8:30
with five or six small fish in the pail
including the baby blue gill
which could hardly count,
a water snake, its triangular head smashed
into a rotten persimmon--still, not
a too bad day, I have to say, a sunburned nose
peeling under the scrutiny of my wife
who, discovering a China-like map
of mosquito bites on my bare back, snaps:
What's the point--nine hours
under the scorching sun, you have
to buy the gasoline, the drink, the bait,
two hot dogs, half a pack of Camels, and
now these tiny fish, three bucks' worth
in a market, you are really hooked.

An accountant, she sees no point
calculating a split-second
of catching the golden sun
in silver scales.

Copyright © Qiu Xiaolong, "Poetry," from Lines Around China: Lines Out of China, Saint Louis: CreateSpace, 2008. All rights reserved.

Ai Wei-Wei's New York, 1983-1993 @ Asia Society

Some people have an eye for their times. I don't mean they just see it for what it is, or more clearly than others, or more fully than those around them. They see more deeply into it, almost penetratingly so, and if we're fortunate, they may capture this vision in some form in which they can share it with others. The artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未), perhaps best known today as one China's leading persecuted dissidents and, before the Chinese government's recent harassment of him, as one of the visionaries (along with the Swiss architectural team of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of  Herzog and de Meuron) behind the remarkable 2008 National Stadium, the "Bird's Nest" which was the main Olympic stadium venue in Beijing, is one of those people. Ai has left his mark in a variety of areas in the visual and plastic arts and architecture, ranging from the extraordinary stadium to the Beijing Village East experimental art collective he founded in 1993, to his China Art Archives & Warehouse (CAAW), an experimental archive and gallery, whose building he designed.

While active in making art of all kinds, from site installations to interior design to books, Ai has also followed the path of his father, the poet Ai Qing, who with Ai's mother, Gao Ying, was sent by Mao Tse-Tung's government to a labor camp in 1958 for allegedly being a "rightist" in the Communist Party; in addition to speaking out against the Chinese government's suppression of human rights and cultural and political freedom, he has specifically criticized certain government actions or nonactions, such as the corruption endemic in the Sichuan local government in the years preceding the horrific 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which thousands of children were killed because of shoddy schoolbuildings. His outspokenness has led to repeated detentions, including this year, when on April 3 he was arrested on charges of "economic crimes", which provoked an international outcry, with his release coming finally on June 22, just before China's Prime Minister, Wen Jiaobao, was set to visit Europe.

Ai's ability to see through to the heart of things, even in a potentially alienating environment, is clear in his photos from his 1983-1993 stay in in New York, which are on display at the Asia Society.  The show, "Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993," opened shortly after his release, on June 29, and runs until August 14, 2011. I highly recommend it. Featuring 227 photographs (out of an estimated 10,000 he took), by Ai, printed by inkjet on Fantac Innova Ultra Smooth Gloss, it manages to sketch two worlds which intersected through Ai's eyes: one was the world of Chinese immigrants, many of them dissidents intellectuals and artists in exile, many of them young, a few now world-famous (like Tan Dun), and the other was New York and the US of that era, wracked then as now by economic crises and a heaving class divide, but also marked by racial strife, the AIDS pandemic, the dying glimmers of the punk and indie music scenes, and so much more. Ai, with little money but skills and hustle, managed to capture an incredible amount of what was going on, in vivid images that sometimes appeared ready to break open into mini films, or they at least suggest or depict enough narrative that a short seems hidden in them.

(iPad) Drawing of young Tan Dun, based on photo by Ai Weiwei

I took quite a few notes on what Ai, who studied for a while at Parsons and lived in Brooklyn, the East Village and the Lower East Side, managed to snap, though the Asia Society provides an exhaustive list but no commentary, except of the audio sort. In addition to lots of snapshots of attractive, languid young friends and colleagues and their children, people like Dun, Zhou Lin, Chen Kaige, Hu Yongyan, Bei Dao, and Hsieh Tehching, many of whom like the gradually thickening and visibly exhausted but intellectually energized Ai were barely hanging on, busking or painting portraits or gambling to keep food on the table and art supplies at hand, he also snapped The Pyramid Club, Allen Ginsberg visiting his E. 3rd St. apartment, Andy Warhol, grafittied subway car interiors and exteriors and stations (the last of which have made a return, despite the cameras), abandoned buildings on the Lower East Side (many of which are now luxury condos), the homeless, a young African American man, planted in front of a subway station, with a sign announcing that he had AIDs and urging passersby "PLAES HELP"; one of his own early shows, the "Safe Sex Solo Show" in 1988, which would have been even harsher in its irony that many might imagine today; scenes of police brutality; the Tompkins Square Park Riots, a popular uprising against the forces of gentrification that has been almost completely erased from popular memory today; protests in pre-reconfigured Washington Square Park, as well as photos of heavily armed police patrols passing through it; police finding a gun in a grassy lot at Bowery and Delancey Sts.

Others feature a young Al Sharpton, both emerging from a town car and leading the Tawanna Brawley protest in 1988; an early Wigstock; ACT-UP protests in 1989; and a punk concert in 1990, which features banners describing the NYPD as the "Army of the Rich" and "Class War Thugs," while another states that "Community defense is not a crime." Talk about ironies! One of the most telling photos shows a young man in 1990 wearing a t-shirt that says "I'M NOT GOING! DON'T FIGHT FOR THE OIL BO$$ES," which was as appropriate then as it would become in 2002-3, or in 2008, or for any young people considering a military whose commander-in-chief would be willing to send them into an unnecessary, unexplained and unconstitutional war in Libya or Yemen or wherever big oil considerations led him.  In fact one of the shocks of this exhibit, like others I've come across indexing that earlier era, which I vividly remember and lived through, was how much of the worst of it remains, even as other aspects, like a seriously run-down and dangerous New York, no longer exist, except in the popular memory and consciousness. In fact one of the photos details the murder of a compatriot portrait artist, Lin Lin, lost to the easy street violence of that era, when New York did not just feel out of control, but was. By the time Ai departs for China, physically heftier and with a decade of American life under his belt, both the city and the country were on an economic upswing, and one of the final photos, astonishingly enough, shows then-candidate Bill Clinton in one of his final 1992 campaign stops in New York, on the Lower East Side.

We know how that narrative unfolded, and Ai's photos give us glimmers of what was and what would be; Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol are gone, as are some of the Chinese exiles he photographs, but the planes returning from the Persian Gulf and Operation Desert Storm in 1991 represent metonymies of the wars that still continue, of the state of endless war we've been in now for decades, in the Middle East, in Latin America, in Africa, in South Asia, all over the globe.  The photos also metonymize the immigration that would increase immeasurably during and after the period in which they were taken; we live in a substantially different and still changing country because of this, and because the ghostly traces of neoliberalism that papered over the world Ai presents here, the "cure" that gave us a troubled but real economic boom just after Ai left and a troubled but false one a decade later, a destructive explosion from which those now holding the US and other nations in a chokehold are benefitting from greatly. Ai faces his own challenges, as do his peers, as do we all, but he has done us an extraordinary favor by sharing his vision of New York and the US at a crucial earlier period. It takes us back while also piercing deep into our present moment. See it before it's gone.

From the Asia Society's website:
Ai Weiwei on political awareness

Malawi Conviction, Colonialism & Other Thoughts

At the end of my post on IDAHO, I linked to Reggie H's post, which mentions the horrific show trial the Malawi government staged to convict Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20 (at right, photo: Eldson Chagara/Reuters), for the "crimes" of buggery (sodomy) and gross indecency. Gukira, in commenting on that post, cited the trial's tragic outcome: yesterday, Monjeza and Chimbalanga were convicted and sentenced to the maximum 14 of prison after having held a symbolic wedding ceremony. The magistrate, Chief Resident Magistrate Nyakwawa Usiwa Usiwa, imposed this sentence because, he argued, "the public must be protected....Malawi society is not ready to see its sons marrying other sons, nor daughters marrying daughters. It is immoral in our society."

This conviction, while horrendous in its cruelty and homophobia, was not an isolated incident; in fact, back in February, the Guardian Online reported on the Malawi police's operation against gay and lesbian people, parallelling similar campaigns in other parts of Anglophone East and southern Africa, including Uganda, where the parliament is debating a bill that would impose life imprisonment on anyone convicted of having same-sexual relations, and which had earlier broached the death penalty for gay people; and Kenya, where gay people have been arrested for participating in a wedding ceremony.  Back in Malawi, as the Guardian UK notes

A 21-year-old man was recently sentenced to two months' community service for putting up pro-gay rights posters, and a senior minister expelled a woman from her town even after a court acquitted her on charges of having sex with two girls.

The sentence the two men in Malawi face is horrifying, as is the vitriol directed at them by many members of the public and the people affiliated with various "Christian" churches. In the case of Uganda, in particular, there has been much discussion and criticism of the role of fundamentalist US Christian churches and missionaries, who have been actively fomenting anti-gay rhetoric and legislation in Anglophone Africa. Yet taking a broader historical and geographical view, I've come to see that it's frequently in former British colonies--especially in the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and South and East Asia, where homophobic legislation and rhetoric are strongest.  (On the issue of anti-gay legislation, penalties, and public vehemence against LGBTQ people compare Jamaica to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, or even Haiti, for example; or Nigeria to Niger, Mauretania or Cape Verde; or Egypt to Morocco or Tunisia; or India, until fairly recently, to Indonesia or Thailand.) This is hardly an ironclad rubric, but it does seem to bear out (and I'm certainly not the first to cite it.) What I guess I've not worked out is how European colonialism, and in specific, the British rule, appears to have often led, across the globe, to these extremist Christian-centered anti-gay regimes. In the case of Southern Africa, both colonial and imperial legal approaches and cultural practices, and the religious fundamentalism, have obscured and in some cases prior cultural and social traditions in which same-sexual behavior, performances and practices were accepted (cf. Luiz Mott, Will Roscoe, Stephen O. Murray, James H. Sweet, J. Lorand Matory, et. al.)

Back Up & Running

And now, finally, I'm back to my previously scheduled program, many stones, three surgeries, two stents, and a month and a half later, just as the summer, unfortunately, is winding down and the academic year is about to barrel in. Neither C nor I thought in July that things would turn out to be so complicated, but such are the body's vagaries. If I say that neither of us would like to see the inside of a hospital anytime soon, or spot evidently crazed people who later turn out to be one's nurses, or overhear hospital staff regaling each other about homeless people's chicaneries to get food, or juggle any of the countless forms required every time you set foot near the patient intake center, or I don't think I'd be stretching. But throughout the medical professionals, like C, have been exemplary, so let me say thank you. The experience yet again highlighted for me the necessity of comprehensive, truly universal health insurance, and the urgency, for all of us, not only to elect people at every level of government who will support it, and then to hold them fast to its implementation as soon as possible.

As I posted before, I greatly appreciate all the get-well wishes, posted here or sent via email. They've truly been a balm.

***

Many J's Theater readers know that had I been feeling better, I was likely to post shots from a major athletic extravaganza like the Beijing Olympics. But I had vowed to myself before the events took place not to promote them in any fashion on this site, mainly because of host nation China's horrendous record, past and recent, in so many areas of human and political rights, and because of the ongoing bloody repression of the Tibetans and other social, political and religious dissidents and minorites there. (Let me be clear that in calling out China I am not absolving the United States or any other country). It just so worked out that I was in constant enough pain during the period of the Olympics that I was unable to post anything (I could barely type at certain points), but I was captive and lucid enough that I watched most of the televised events, especially towards the end. The Chinese really know how to stage mass events and win gold medals, no? Does anyone think they won't be atop the gold and total medal counts by the next summer Olympics in 2012, in London? And will the corporate press ever live down the shame of covering for the Chinese authorities and, as they've done during both major US party conventions last week and this week, failing to do their jobs by reporting on the serious issues in China and the attempted protests, the imprisonment and the suppression of dissent?

As I said, I was couchbound for weeks, and watched a slew of events, including ones I little enjoy like beach volleyball, team handball, and shooting (which turned out to be pretty interesting). My favorite athletic moments beyond the more obvious ones, such as the swimming races, which, despite the Michael Phelps hype (though he admittedly was unbelievable), or the US men's team's (the "Redeem" team) basketball games, provided great drama, or the gymnastic competitions, which naturally received a lot of press, not least because some of the Chinese female gymnasts were visibly underage, were numerous. They included the individual and team victories by various US fencing squads (women's foil, women's and men's sabre); the gold victory by the all-black French epee fencing team (above left), and the bronze by French baby giant judoka Teddy Riner (at right); the triumph by the lone out gay male athlete in Beijing, Australian Matthew Mitcham, in the mens' 20 m platform diving (though NBC saw fit to suppress his victory celebration with his partner); the medal victories by athletes from tiny countries, like the Dominican Republic's boxers or Togo's kayaker or Panama's long jumper; and the gold, replete with a compelling background story, won by men's under 55 kg freestyle by Henry Cejudo.

One of my favorite sports, track and field, did not disappoint. I believe I watched nearly all the running events that wer televised, including the marathons. Most exciting I thought were Usain Bolt's spectacular victories in the men's 100 and 200 m, the Jamaican women team's 100 m sweep, the American men's 4x400 race, and the last minute victory by American Sanya Richards (below, with her fellow relay team members) of the women's 4x400 race, which almost felt like it had been scripted in a Hollywood; Romanian Constantina Tomescu's breakaway victory in the women's marathon, which required a gutsy decision by the winner to push herself as much as possible and then not let up; the 1-2-3 victory by the Americans in the men's 400 m and 400 m hurdles; and the blazing triumph that bespectacled 110 m Cuban hurdler Dayron Robles turned in.

On a sports listserve I belong to, I commiserated with other fans about NBC's coverage, but I have to say in retrospect that things weren't so bad overall in part because some of the less popular sports (equestrian; weightlifting, etc.) were broadcast, just not on NBC. Between MSNBC, USA Networks, Oxygen, and Telemundo, and NBC's online site, it was possible to see a great deal of what was taking place in Beijing, often live. Thus I got to see the rowing events, wrestling, soccer, baseball, and quite a bit of other stuff that wasn't featured on the main channel. (I suspect, however, that some sports, like modern pentathlon, were just not broadcast at all. Oh well.) I hope this becomes standard policy for the future.

***

I have been following the political races too, and watched most of the Democratic convention and about as much of the Republican one as I could stomach, which is not much. Whatever my quarrels with Senator Barack Obama's positions, detailed on this very site over the last year or so, I was utterly moved and impressed by his acceptance speech last Thursday. The speech itself was prehaps less soaring that some of his other ones, but the performance overall, which includes the setting, the history-making quality of the event, its significance for our political culture, nearly brought me to tears. It has been interesting to note the contrast between the tones of the two conventions, the quality of speechmaking and political rhetoric at the one last week, a great deal of it inspiring, visionary and hopeful, and this week (so much of it acid, detached from the problems we face as a society and as a world, and in complete flight from the debacle of the last eight years. The political commentary by the punditocracy I've found almost uniformly abysmal, with the sole exception of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. (Who thankfully will be getting her own show next week!)


(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Most of the people on air appear less informed about basic aspects of the party's and candidates' platforms, their histories, their ideologies, and what they're saying and how they're saying, than my two cats. They are very good at regurgitating talking points issued by the McCain campaign and RNC, or reciting whatever they've read on Drudge Report. I expect Fox always to be at the bottom, and they do not disappoint ever, but the major broadcast channels, as well as CNN and even PBS, have proved to be quite bad. Watching Charlie Rose the other night, with "liberal" Al Hunt (Mr. Judy Woodruff?) downplaying or simply not broaching every valid criticism of the unqualified and constantly lying, self-described "barracuda" that John McCain has chosen as his Vice Presidential pick made me want to puke.

And can I just say this: it really says everything about John McCain that he picked someone who has lied, blatantly, in each of her first three public appearances since being named to his ticket. Think about that: on each of the first three times Sarah Palin spoke as the Republican VP pick to the American people, she blatantly lied, not just about one issue, but about multiple ones. Most obviously, she lied about that "Bridge to Nowhere" in Ketchikan. Congress canceled the earmark in 2005, taking the issue off the table. Let's state this again. Congress canceled the earmark IN 2005, TAKING THE ISSUE OFF THE TABLE. She was not elected UNTIL 2006. Yet she still advocated for the earmark in 2006 while running for office, and when Congress sent the money, without specific requirements for the bridge, she used it, in part to build a "Road to Nowhere"! Last Friday, she said before the paltry crowd in Dayton and the world that she had "told Congress" no thanks—I know her boss is clueless about Google, but is she? How dumb does this woman think we all are?

In addition to the cynicism it displays about the political stakes we face, the sexist assumptions that women would vote for any woman, and in particular this social and religious extremist, and sheer contempt for politics in general, McCain's selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin undergirds one of Obama's fundamental critiques of McCain last Thursday: the Arizona senator, in addition to being out of touch, too far to the right, and lacking in any principles, has terrible judgement and a reckless temperament, both of which this choice embodies.

As people close to me will testify, I was very disappointed with Obama's selection of Senator Joe Biden, whom I think of as a Washington insider whose foreign policy instincts and pronouncements I've tended to find pretty suspect. He essentially agreed with Hillary Clinton and John McCain on invading Iraq, with poor excuses as to why, and on the Georgian crisis, he's been pushing almost the same line as the Bush administration. (Why on earth have none of the Democrats called more forcefully for bringing Russia to the table to discuss the situation? It's clear that McCain's campaign is hitched financially, via advisor-lobbyist Randy Scheunemann, to Georgia's leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, but the Democrats aren't also on Georgia's payroll, are they?) I was much more in favor of Obama picking someone like Montana's governor Brian Schweitzer, for example, who really brought a lot to the ticket, including ideological and geographical diversity. Schweitzer would have been a fresh face with substance behind it, unlike Palin, and as he showed at the convention last week, he possesses that coin that the establishment media seek like a jones: the man's a geiser of authenticity, real, unvarnished folksiness. From the perspective of several weeks, however, I'll give Obama the benefit of doubt. I think he and his team were right, and Biden looks like a very good choice as running mate, especially compared to Palin.

As of today Obama retains his national lead as well as leads in many states. But I was born and grew up in a state, Missouri, in which there are many people—perhaps not a majority, but close to it—who will find this woman's personality and the establishment media's bowdlerized version of her personal history, scrubbed almost completely of the pertinent and highly disturbing facts, quite appealing. There are more than a few places across the country, in Missouri and elsewhere, in which the politics of resentment and ressentiment, as well as cynicism, subterfuge, sub rosa racism, and host of other dangerous crap, which the GOP is playing to the hilt, very well may prove effective. So I worry. I really do.

But then I also keep in mind that the basic facts of today, the rising unemployment rate, the dodgy financial system and the collapsing real estate market, the rising costs of living, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the steady tide of news about un-Constitutional activity that emanates from the White House—all of it may trump the exhausted and yet still caustic ploys the Republicans and their allies are turning to, it may trump the relentlessly flogged narrative of the POW-hero-"maverick" the press repeats like a mantra, and it may trump the presence of this dangerous, horribly unqualified woman whom the McCain campaign is itself so unsure of they will not let her near their very "base," the establishment media, they have quickly turned against like rattlesnakes in order to cow.

But as I've said it will not be easy—and not one of us who wants someone other than John McCain and Sarah Palin in the White House (and yes, there are options such as Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente, Ralph Nader's traveling roadshow, and various folks on the right, like Bob Barr, who'd be worse than McCain-Palin) should assume it will be.

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On a completely different note, the one and only Jennifer Saunders (French and Saunders, Absolutely Fabulous) will have a new show on US TV, a sendup of daytime talk shows entitled The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle. It headlines Sunday's upcoming Sunday Comedy Block, starting at 9 pm EST. I can't wait!

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In a few days I'll try to post some reviews and other things. I haven't gotten half as much reading as I'd hoped to, certainly far, far less than last summer, but I haven't been totally idle, or addled.

I did get out to the opening of CONTRANYM, a show curators Kelly Kivland, Alisoun Meehan and Chris Stackhouse mounted in the New Voices, New York series at chashama ABC gallery, in the East Village. The gallery itself was a toaster, but the art, by Robert Delford Brown, John Cage, Victoria Fu, Stephanie Loveless, and Brian Kim Stefans, was cooking in the best way.

In addition to chatting with the curators and Brian, I had the opportunity to meet fellow Cave Canem poet Myronn Hardy, whose book of poems The Headless Saints appeared earlier this summer. Here are some photos from that event. Enjoy!


The crowd at Contranym

Brian Kim Stefan's digital film, "Scriptors"

Part of the collaborative Robert Delford Brown "Fluxus"-style piece, "Explosion of a Tile Factory"

Inside and outside