Waiting For Obama

Way back in November I started grousing about why, having elected a new President, we had to wait two and a half months for him to take office. In Britain, and in most other countries with a parliamentary system, the new Prime Minister goes straight to work the morning after the election.

It's tradition, of course; our lengthy interregnum (it used to be considerably longer, as some of you will know; until halfway through FDR's Presidency, Inauguration Day wasn't until the 4th of March) was established at a time when our newly elected leaders had to make their way to Washington on horseback over uncertain roads in the dead of winter. And of course there was (and still is) that ridiculous rigmarole with the Electoral College: regardless of what happened the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, a new President isn't actually elected until the middle of December.

Never mind, though, the waiting is nearly over now, waiting that has been especially frustrating and fraught with anxiety this time around as a leaderless and seemingly rudderless country has continued to stagger toward financial Armageddon. Outgoing Presidents understandably diminish in significance as the time for their departure nears, but Bush has plumbed new depths in the lame duck Olympics, presiding over what might be more properly dubbed a zombie administration. Dead as a doornail yet still twitching, still capable of running amok and wreaking havoc.

In contrast to the unholy presence still stalking the White House, we have a President in waiting who, for the first time in many people's memory, looks, acts and speaks like a President. I know some of you felt that Clinton fit this bill, but while he was more adequate to the task than most, he never fully convinced me. The first Bush, while downright statesmanlike when compared with his son, was still a bumbling martinet that someone memorably described as the human equivalent of post-nasal drip. And as for the present Bush, well, the best that can be said for him is that he's lowered the standards of governance to a point where a Kang and Kodos duumvirate could look appealing.

I've had the TV on in the background all afternoon as Obama's train journeyed down the Eastern Seaboard on its way to Washington, and I stopped writing to listen to his speech in Baltimore. I don't mind admitting that the man had me in tears. Maybe I'm entering my second childhood, but I haven't been so inspired, so filled with hope and anticipation, since as a starstruck 13 year old I waited for John F. Kennedy to mount the Capitol steps.

If anything, I'm more impressed with Obama. If he hasn't quite reached the rhetorical heights that JFK soared to, he's getting very close, and I find his overall message more consistent and substantive. Watching him pull together a governing coalition when, at least on paper, none is needed has been a wonder to behold; it's getting harder by the day to find even a Republican who has much bad to say about the man.

With the exception, of course, of right wing talk radio. "The radicals have taken over," Sean Hannity bellows, but he barely seems to have his heart in it. Even Rush Limbaugh sounds resigned to a near-term future of growing irrelevance. This could all change, and quickly, if Obama makes a spectacular mistake early on, but so far the man has barely put a foot wrong. It's almost scary, in fact, to see the awe and devotion he commands. I don't think there's been an American politician in my lifetime, any and all of the Kennedys included, who came close. I suppose one can't help wondering what would happen should he choose to use that power for evil purposes, but part of his strength is that on one wants to think of him as being capable of such a thing.

Obama has done a superb job of convincing us that he plans to be President of all America, and that being the First Black President is almost incidental to him. As it may well be, but it's hardly incidental to the tens of thousands of African-Americans who turned out to watch his train come through or to hear him speak in Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore. Or who are already gathering on the Mall in anticipation of Tuesday's swearing-in. An enduring image for me will be the husky black man who stood alongside the train tracks somewhere in Maryland as the President-elect's train came rolling through with Obama and Biden waving to the cheering crowds.

Slightly rough-hewn and wearing a peacoat and watch cap, he could have been a warehouseman or a dock worker, or the slightly menacing character you might consider crossing the street to avoid if you're out alone late at night. He stood watching impassively until just before Obama came level with him, and then suddenly, somewhat awkwardly, pulled off his watch cap and stood there bareheaded in the January chill until the train had passed.

What I'm getting at is that this man did not look like someone in the habit of taking his hat off for anyone, had probably not planned on taking it off for Obama, and yet was caught up in the moment just as so many of us, of all colors and communities and religions and parties, were caught up and lifted up by a President-to-be who, rather than pander to our base self-interest, spoke to what is noble and admirable in us as a people, who rather than offer us a chance to line our pockets and feather our nests, challenged us to look more deeply into ourselves and what we are capable of offering to one another.

I normally avoid like the plague any reference, other than caustic, to the hippie songs and sentiments of my youth, but it's hard not to be reminded of that line advising writers and critics to "keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again." Something momentous is happening in America, something potentially more momentous than anything I can recall, and where it will end is anybody's guess ("Don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin"), but it's impossible to deny that the times indeed are a-changing. Six months, a year or several from now we may be moaning that it was not at all the sort of change we'd bargained for, but for the moment I'd prefer to suspend disbelief and cynicism and let myself get caught up in this great national (and worldwide, really) outpouring of hope and faith.

With that in mind, I'll be leaving for Washington myself on Monday, intent on somehow being a part of it all. I don't have tickets to any of the events, and chances are I'll never get close enough even to see the new President in the flesh, but I want to be there nonetheless, to be in my own small way part of history. 41 years ago, acting on a similar impulse, I jumped into a friend's car and rode 16 hours so I could be there for the siege of the Pentagon in October 1967. At the time I was part of a ragtag army of disaffected youth who openly espoused the destruction of America; today I travel with a far mightier army, one far more representative of the true nature and spirit of this nation, come to celebrate and save it.

Back To "Normal"

I didn't immediately blog about the end of the Fest because I was kind of exhausted, and had to get up very early the next morning to drive to Tampa, and also because for me (and I think for a lot of people), the Fest kind of petered out on the last day rather than wrapping up with a resounding bang.

It seemed as though there weren't nearly as many as shows on Sunday, and that those that were happening tended to conflict with each other or be on opposite sides of town, forcing people to make difficult and sometimes dispiriting choices. Also, a cold (at least by Florida standards) wind blew in along with some rain, and most of us weren't really dressed for it, and on top of that, people were pretty worn out from tramping all over town and (not in my case personally, but for many others) staying up all night drinking and/or trying to sleep on bathroom floors in hotel rooms with one bed and 17 occupants (the room, not the bed, that is, though I can't vouch for every situation).

Pretty much every representative of the PPMB and New York pop punk crew was on hand for the double-barreled finale of Short Attention and the Ergs. Non-PPMB Festgoers may not have known exactly what to make of Short Attention (though they seemed to like them), but went completely insane for the Ergs. My misguided masochism led me to stand right up front for them (perhaps it was some mad macho posturing attempt to prove that a 60 year old can still handle himself in the pit), and it proved to be a bit more challenging than the Avail pit, though the stage divers and crowd surfers tended to be a bit less beefy. I still took a moderate kick to the side of the head from one doofus, but also played a crucial role in sending several others crashing to the floor.

By the time the Ergs finished - around 8:30 pm - there wasn't much else going on in the other venues. There was a Small Brown Bike reunion, but I'd never got into them the first time around, and some band called Seaweed, whom I remembered as being vaguely big sometime back in the 80s or early 90s. I think they had long hair and were kind of in that Nirvana vein, but whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me, so I stood around with the rest of the Ergs crowd outside Common Grounds, renewing old acquaintances, making new ones, and trying to stay warm. Eventually I ended up in one of those 17-person hotel rooms for what was supposedly a "party," but looked more like a bunch of guys and on or two girls lounging around drinking beer while the last World Series game played silently on the TV.

It was still technically my birthday, remember, so I left on my own and got some Krispy Kreme donuts in lieu of a birthday cake (I seemed to have become immune to the smell, which was a bit worrying), and headed back to my hotel to sleep. In the morning I made it to Tampa in record time, caught a plane to Washington, and despite my aching feet, did some sightseeing, taking in the White House, the National Mall, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol. I'd seen the first three previously, albeit briefly, but this was the first time I'd ever got a good look at the Capitol. Pretty snazzy, I must say, though I'll have to go back another time to take the tour and see the inside.

In prior visits to Washington, I'd been mainly occupied in protesting (1967) or seeing an Avail show (1994 or 95), and hadn't really had more than a cursory look at anything. I did walk past the White House in 1967 - this was back when you could still get a lot closer than you can now - and imagined I saw President Johnson looking out an upstairs window with the weight of the world on his shoulders. It was later that same night when I met two teenyboppers from Baltimore down near the Jefferson Memorial, where we in turn were picked up and given a place to stay by a young man who worked for Senator Fulbright and had a picture of himself as a teenager shaking hands with John F. Kennedy. I may never be able to prove it with any certitude (unless I meet him again and ask him), but I'm about 99% certain that our host that night was a 21 year old Bill Clinton.

My sightseeing this time was cut short by my sore feet and temperatures that were way too chilly for the wardrobe I'd packed with Florida in mind. I ended up staying indoors after dark instead of investigating Washington's night life, assuming it has any (it certainly didn't in the neighborhood where I was staying, where everything, even the Subway and the Starbucks, seemed to close up by 7 pm). The following morning I caught the train back to New York and arrived just in time for the long-awaited Weakerthans show.

My friend and hero John K. Samson had grown a beard for the occasion, prompting me to ask him if he was honoring the spirit of Gainesville, though his beard would have been far too neat and kempt (I know that's not a word, but it should be) for the Fest crowd. Perhaps they in especially high spirits because of having the next day off, but for whatever reason, the Weakerthans played a full hour and forty-five minutes, something that would be unforgivable in most bands, but in this case was still barely enough. They did two encores which together added up to almost a show in themselves, and ran through nearly half of the songs from their new album, of which "Sun In An Empty Room" hit me with the most impact, especially followed as it was by "Left And Leaving."

As I explained to John afterward, the last three and a half years for me have been all about empty rooms and leaving places behind; first Spy Rock, then London, and finally Berkeley. I especially remembered the look of the Spy Rock house as I said my last goodbyes to it, with the sun spilling though the windows and splashing off the wood, looking so rich and warm and inviting and at the same time so desolate and forlorn.

And I guess I feel a bit desolate and forlorn myself at times, cut adrift from so much of what was familiar and waiting for my new life to take form. Part of my problem in the past was that while I was always ready to try new adventures in new places, I could never quite bring myself to let go of the old ones, so I'd find myself in the uncomfortable and untenable position of trying to live several places at once.

Now there's just one place, here in Brooklyn, and while my present living circumstances are not completely ideal, I can't think of anywhere else I want to be. It's still not quite home, but more and more it's beginning to feel that way. Tearing across Manhattan today on a series of errands, arguing with an intractable bank clerk who didn't want to let me open an account there because "you don't live or work in the neighborhood," zipping up my fleece and shivering slightly as another foretaste of winter blew in off the Hudson, I thought, yes, this is my life now, and you know, it's a pretty good one.

The Fest So Far

New York seems so far away at the moment, especially because my trip down here was not the straightforward affair it might have been. Knowing I was going to miss my old friends Pansy Division and the Avengers, who will be playing at New York's Knitting Factory on Saturday night, I made a side trip to Baltimore to catch them on Wednesday.

Baltimore looked better than I remembered it, perhaps helped by the fact that Matt from Dead Mechanical and the Sick, Sick Birds took me in hand and guided me to not one but two fine dining establishments, the first where we had an excellent Afghani meal. My review, apart from the very good food: "This place has tablecloths. I usually can't afford to eat at New York restaurants that have tablecloths."

We then had a second dinner with members of the bands (actually, just dessert for us) at the charmingly bizarre Zodiac Cafe and Bar, very close to the Lo-Fi Social Club, where the gig actually took place. It was a long and leisurely meal, full of scandalous sex and tour stories (I had none of my own to offer, but it was fun to listen) before we had to dash through the now-pouring rain for the show itself.

Which was good, but I'm in a hurry to finish this Fest post so I can get back to the Fest, so let's just cut to the following morning, when I caught a train to Washington DC's very impressive Union Station (never been there before; it puts New York's Penn Station to shame), where I had a few minutes to step outside and marvel at a few fancy buildings before hopping on the similarly impressive Washington Metro, which is just like San Francisco's BART (same builders, I believe) except that it's cheap and it works. Anybody connected with BART should be ashamed (if those vampires of public transit were capable of such an emotion) to see how much better Washington has done with its system. It took me to National Airport in 23 minutes for (I think) $1.45 (compared with 65 minutes, three separate trains, and almost $6 to get to SFO), and I got a plane to Tampa.

Tampa was the home of the much ballyhooed pre-Fest show, which turned out to be about a thousand drunken beardos, some of whom were actually quite nice, and about a hundred regular people milling around inside and outside a skate park on the edge of, if not right in the middle of one of Tampa's, shall we say, less affluent neighborhoods. All the bands sounded like Crimpshrine with beards, which could be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending, but I couldn't stick around too late (apparently the show went on till 4 am), so I left around 11 and drove to Gainesville, rested up, and on Friday afternoon met up with PPMB luminaries Chris Grivet, Chadd Derkins, Carla Monoxide and Chelsea Short Attention for an alligator hunt which proved fruitless, though we did turn up a whole slew of giant snapping turtles.

After that I explored a bit of Gainesville before the shows actually started, featuring yet more bearded Crimpshrines, but also the poppier sound of the Methadones and the now almost legendary SoCal veterans Toys That Kill. We stopped in for about 45 seconds of Naked Raygun before Grivet proclaimed, "Okay, it's history and I've seen it, let's go." I will say that the NR singer looked as though he hadn't aged a bit since I last saw them sometime in the 80s. That was impressive. The music, not so much.

Apart from that, most of the time was spent hanging out on the sidewalks of University Avenue, watching the freak and beard parade stroll and stumble by. Oh, and at the very first show of the night I found myself standing behind my onetime business partner and co-founder of Lookout Records, David Hayes, whom I hadn't seen or spoken to (apart from a couple email/internet exchanges) in at least 10 years, probably more. He was sporting - what else? - a beard, and seemed rather startled to see me at the Fest, as well he might be, since up until a year or so ago, I would have been startled to see myself here as well. Unfortunately he left before anyone turned up with a camera, but maybe today or tomorrow.

Okay, I'm off to see the Max Levine Ensemble, Delay, Vagina Sore, Jr., the Ringers, possibly Avail and American Steel, and about 10,000 other bands. Next time you hear from me it will probably be my birthday, which starts at midnight tonight and, thanks to the end of Daylight Savings Time, carries on for 25 rather than the usual 24 hours. Wish me well or not as the case may be; the fact remains that I'm at the Fest and you're not! Well, except for you sad Festgoers reading this on your Blackberries, of course...