Floating on the Moon

I came across an old note I'd written back when I first started thinking about the whole Why Your Life Sucks concept. It mentions, among other BRILLIANT adolescent thoughts, that the characters would "see the beauty in the everday". That's what this post is about, albeit I had to travel to Iceland to see it.
I'd read about Iceland in a magazine and had been intrigued. Back in 2000, my family was going to London for Christmas, so I took off a few days early and did a stop-over in Reykjavik. It was absolutely wonderful. However, as everyone probably knows, Winter is not the best tourist season for Iceland. For one, it's damn cold. But most importantly to me, the tourist, it is dark most of the day. There was no light in the sky until about 11 am, and then it set insanely early, like 4 pm. So any touring had to be done quickly. Here is some poor video (I needed a tripod) I shot while I was there:



That music is from Iceland's own Sigur Ros who recently released a new EP and a live DVD that would be well worth checking out if you're into that sort of thing.
The frozen volcanic landscape made it seem like you were visiting the moon. The best part was going to this place called "Blue Lagoon" where hot thermal sea water had filled in the volcanic rock and made a natural, therapeutic spa.
Floating there amidst the snow covered rock in a warm, soothing pool with the steam rising and being backlit by the low lying sun was one of the most peaceful, beautiful moments I've known. It's just one of those moments that hit you and make you aware and you know you are in it and of it and connected to all around it. What the great Spalding Gray called a "perfect moment". I truly saw the beauty in the everyday at that moment.
There was one benefit to going to Iceland in Winter, and I always think about this as our own Southern days grow darker ever earlier and when, as we approach the holiday season, people start putting up their Christmas lights outside of their homes. Look at the picture at the beginning of this blog. That is a cemetery in Iceland. I can't tell you how many of these we past out in the vast countryside. The crazy thing was--they outlined and decorated their cemeteries with lights! The big fat bulb kind, not the small, skinny bulb kind. It was really beautiful. I asked about it, and again, it was due to the lack of daylight and was seen as a hopeful way of fighting the darkness--in this case that means a lot more than you'd think. I'll be putting up my own lights soon. I hope they'll shine through the darkness to reach you, and you too will find them beautiful.

Who Still Believes in a Place Called Hope?

Back in 1996 when Bill Clinton was President and the United States was held in higher regard around the world, I made a documentary about the Whitewater investigation/witch hunt that was being conducted in Arkansas by Kenneth Starr and his Republican cohorts. At the time, Mike Huckabee, a Republican, was Lieutenant Governor of the State of Arkansas. I admit to having been pretty skeptical about Huckabee, a former Baptist minister whom I had seen speak at Boy's State a few years earlier. He had the whole audience of high school juniors in the palm of his hands, laughing at his jokes, and buying his right-wing agenda. It was frightening and unthinkable that this man could become Governor one day.
But that was exactly what happened. The Whitewater trial (the original investigation being about business dealings with Jim McDougal, not about Whitehouse interns) brought about the removal of office of Jim Guy Tucker, thus allowing Mike Huckabee to become Governor. And there he remained for the next ten years.
I must say I'm very grateful that former Governor Huckabee agreed to sit down with my friend Stephen and I over ten years ago and let us question him for the afternoon. I found him to be very personable and generous with his time and answers. And, surprisingly, I found that much of what he said was hard to disagree with on a fundamental level. I think part of this was the fact that he is good at reading the room and saying the right thing to the right audience. The point being, he wasn't as scary as the figure I first encountered at Boy's State. Later, once he became Governor, I had other opportunities to work with him and again found him to be pleasant and down-to-earth.
Now, Huckabee is running for President as a Republican. It is a pathetic group of individuals to be sure, which no doubt has led to Huckabee's surprising underdog rise despite his paltry fundraising effort. Just last week the New York Times did a special video profile on him. So far his campaign highlights have included denying the theory of evolution and calling abortion a "holocaust" that has led to our need for immigrant workers. I don't think he has a chance of winning the Presidency. But then again, just over ten years ago, I never would have believed he would be the Governor for the following ten years.
Like President Clinton, Mike Huckabee also grew up in a town called Hope.
While we asked several serious questions, we also asked a few fun questions in between to try and catch our subjects off guard and keep them from giving boring political speeches. For example, we asked Mr. Huckabee who was his favorite Beatle. His answer, fellow bass player Paul. For this question, we asked him, "If you were to become President, and the U.S. was attacked by aliens from another planet, what would you do?" This was his answer:

So, you heard it here first, friends. If you vote for Huckabee you may end up being turned into "liquid paper" (?) and he will immediately roll over and surrender. For a Republican, that's a pretty wimpy answer, considering they like to start wars without cause or planning. But it also raises another question for me. Did he think, back in 1996, that one day he might run for President? Or was that only something he thought about later? I bet Bill Clinton knew he would run for President back when he was a little boy. I don't think you run for the presidency on a lark. Unless you're a billionaire. Or Stephen Colbert.

Happy Birthday, iPod

Last week, that beautiful little life-changing device turned all of six years old. Sadly, like poor Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles, nobody paid much attention. We all took it for granted that we could carry an immense personal library of music in our pockets, flicking or scrolling our way through the thousands of songs that have become the soundtracks to a life, whether it sucks or not.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I did not own a first generation iPod--the 5GB model. I know it seems shocking coming from someone who spent this past Saturday installing the new Mac OS onto their computer the day after it was released. Not to mention the fact that a mere couple of months ago I stood in line to be the 20th person to purchase an iPhone at the AT&T store in West Little Rock (for $200 more than it could be acquired today). But it's true. However, I already HAD an MP3 player, lest you think I was woefully behind the times. It was a 128MB piece of shit manufactured by Rio. At the time I was self-employed and the hefty price of the iPod seemed an extravagance I couldn't afford. A few months later I was visiting my friend Chope in Santa Monica and he was proudly showing off his 10GB iPod. In fact, at that time, Chope was more of a poster boy for Apple than I was, what with his brand new iMac and his mastering of the iLife suite of applications (I still can't use iMovie--it seems contrary to my theories of editing, whereas I look at it as putting pieces together, iMovie is more about removing what you don't want). On that visit, Chope shamed me into purchasing my first iPod--I splurged on the 20GB. It was one of the best purchases I ever made. A few months later that iPod provided the soundtrack to my road trip back to L.A. for my second life in Southern California, 10 blocks down California Avenue from Chope and his iMac (and of course, his lovely wife Ali). I'd go running with that iPod, but I had to learn when to slow down and hold it steady so the buffer could reload, otherwise it would crash.
By the time they came out with the 60GB iPod, I was back living in Little Rock. And then fast-forward to the introduction of the iPod Nano--I got the 4GB which was the biggest at the time, and I got it in black, to contrast my traditional white iPod. That was on January 11, 2006. I know because I had the date engraved on the back, along with Apple's stock price at the time, a high of $83.90.
That was really the big news last week, when Apple released their quarterly report and the stock shot up over $186. The continued sales of the iPhone, the release of Leopard, and iMacs newer and sexier than that one Chope had on California Avenue, along with all of the other Apple computers had sent profits soaring. As a long time stock holder and Apple user, that is a good thing. At six years old, the company itself has already renamed it iPod Classic to distinguish it from the all of the other incarnations. Just six and it's a classic--it took Coca-Cola a hundred years to achieve that.
But that's not what is important or what is to be celebrated on the iPod's birthday. It's the music that fills each individual iPod, and the way that music influences our lives, comforts, and lifts us. There is nothing like a song to trigger a memory for me--a full-fledged three dimensional memory where I can literally look around and what was going on in 360 degrees.  It is as if I was there, present again at the moment, hearing THAT song in THAT place. Old photos don't do that for me. The only thing I remember is what is there in the frame. Video is worse--it replaces the reality, the tape becomes the only memories I have of the moment. But a song can sneak up on me and trigger a memory or remember where I was at a certain time. But those memories are for a future posting.
I would like to bring your attention to a new addition to the links. Mr. Coco Suave himself, Jeff Baines is doing a weekly music blog, complete with a song of the week that you should not miss. I doubt anyone has influenced my musical taste or turned me on to new bands in the past 15 years more than Baines. I can still remember the exact moment he told me to check out Belle & Sebastian. I hadn't even gotten home, listening to "The Boy With the Arab Strap" (on CD), before I had to turn around and return to buy their previous CD "If You're Feeling Sinister". I needed that more than you could possibly imagine. In fact, there must have been strains of "Get me away from here, I'm dying" fading into the night as I drove West five years ago.