Chances Are

 Chances Are (Nov. 3)

  Take a walk in the park, take a valium pill

 Read the letter you got from the memory girl

 But it takes more than this to make sense of the day

 Yeah it takes more than milk to get rid of the taste”

  “Sleep the Clock Around,” Belle and Sebastian”

In the Richard Russo novel “Chances Are,” about three college friends who reunite in 2016 at age 66, Mickey Girardi, a musician and sound engineer still into late-Sixties style Rock and Roll, ridicules his buddies’ musical tastes, labeling Lincoln’s phone choices of Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis elevator music and Ted’s alt rock favorites – The Decembrists, Mumford and Sons, and Belle and Sebastian – faggot music. As one who’s into alt rock, I dig The Decembrists and Mumford and Sons but had never heard of Belle and Sebastian, a Scottish band that’s been around, I learned, for over 20 years.

Sarah Martin

Checking YouTube, I discovered several music videos for such tracks as “I Want the World to Stop,” “Another Sunny Day,” “Sister Buddha,” and “I’m a Cuckoo,” plus a 2014 full “Austin City Limits” concert and a live 2015 appearance at Lollapalooza, Berlin. Among the many members are several keyboardists, with the vocals mostly featuring co-founder Stuart Murdock and Sarah Martin (below).  Belle and Sebastian even put out a song called “Piazza, New York Catcher” that makes an illusion to rumors about Mets backstop Mike Piazza possibly being bisexual (“San Francisco’s calling us, the Giants and Mets will play, Piazza, New York catcher, are you straight or are you gay?”) The band’s name comes from a French novel, “Belle et Sebastien,” about a six-year-old boy and his dog.

Thanks to Richard Russo, whose favorite is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, I’ve discovered a rich vein of excellent music. In fact, I found three Belle and Sebastian CDs at Chesterton library.

Mickey, Lincoln, and Ted calll each other by their colleges nicknames, what Russo calls “avatars of their younger selves.”  In high school I went by Jimmy; in college best friend Rich Baler (“Bakes”) called my Lanezer.  During my softball career it was Dr. J.  Now, close friends and family call me Jimbo or JBo.  For a guy fast approaching 80, I’ll take it.

College was the site of my brief pugilistic career. Bucknell had a freshman Phys. Ed. requirement that included a boxing component with extra-large gloves that when sparring were supposedly less likely to cause injury (that was the claim).  An interfraternity tournament was part of year-long sports competitions involving the dozen frats.  I had pledged Sig Ep, which had no hope of beating out the so-called jock houses, yet wanted to avoid the indignity of finishing near the bottom in the standings.  So not to be penalized, Sig Ep needed to have a full slate of contestants; thus pledges were consigned to be the guinea pigs. I dispatched my first opponent, another luckless pledge, due to having longer arms. Bout number two, I found out later, was against the defending champ.  I landed a few soft left jabs without much resistance for about 30 seconds before getting decked by a hard right.  More stunned than hurt, I decided to stay down for the count rather than prolong the mismatch.  Thus, my unwanted boxing career came to an end.

The Chicago Bulls have signed Maurice Cheeks as assistant coach to Billy Donovan, whose assistant he was with the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Chicago native graduated from DuSable High School, starred at West Texas A & M, and was drafted in 1978 by the Philadelphia 76ers. He was point guard for the 1983 NBA champs, whose star-studded team, coached by Billy Cunningham, included Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Andrew Toney, and Bobby Jones. When he retired after 15 years (the first 11 with the Sixers), the future Hall of Famer was first in career steals and fifth in assists. He was head coach for three NBA teams before joining the Thunder in 2015. Cheeks once said, “Execution down the stretch is the key,” and with the game on the line his teams wanted the ball in his hands. 

In 2003 young contest winner Natalie Gilbert started singing the National Anthem prior to a Sixers game when she suddenly got confused and lost her composure. Head coach Mo Cheeks joined her at the mike and began singing with her. The crowd and players joined in and by the end Natalie was belting out the final verse and the crowd erupted, many with tears in their eyes, in a standing ovation. Google it, and I guarantee it will get you choked up. Welcome back to the “Windy City,” Maurice Cheeks.

Untethered 

    “When did America become untethered from reality?” Kurt Anderson, “How America Went Haywire,” The Atlantic (2017)

Election Day has morphed into election week. The initial results were absolutely disheartening, as Trump appeared ahead in key battleground states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. As votes came in from urban areas and the counting of mail ballots began, Biden gained the upper hand in Wisconsin and Michigan and narrowed the gap in the Keystone State.  Even so, the expected Democratic gains in the Senate and House were not happening, as Trump’s lies – that Radical Democrats would defund the police, take away private health care, threaten white suburbs, and fraudulently steal the election, combined with Republican scare tactics, appeared to be having an effect. Bright spots were Arizona, where Biden and Senate candidate Mark Kelly (below) are ahead, and Nevada, where the former vice president has an apparently safe lead. After three full days, Biden’s leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia are growing, and most remaining votes are from urban Democratic strongholds.  Trump’s strategy, to get the vote stopped where he was ahead and continue the count where he was behind, has hopefully failed.  Twitter has even begun to prevent his baseless tweets from appearing. In contrast, Biden is urging calm and acting presidential.

Anti-Trump Republican Kurt Anderson traced America’s “lurch toward fantasy” to aspects of the American character, such as belief in rugged individualism, extreme religious beliefs, an anti-intellectual strain, and susceptibility to conspiracy theories and con artists from B.T. Barnum to Trump, in Anderson’s estimation, an amoral grifter resentful of the establishment. In the 1960s, the postwar mainstream consensus collapsed, with the radical Right gaining a foothold in the Republican Party with Barry Goldwater’s nomination in 1964, and the Vietnam War fracturing Lyndon B. Johnson’s liberal coalition.  In academia the postmodernist belief that truth is relative became the precursor to Trump apologists’ defense of “alternative facts.”  By accusing the mainstream media of disseminating fake news, attacking Congress and the courts, and now threatening to refuse to abide by the election results, Trump has become a threat to America’s political system.  As Josh Barro wrote:

 The problem is that the Republicans have purposefully torn down the validating institutions.  They have convinced voters the media cannot be trusted; they have gotten them used to ignoring inconvenient facts about policy; and they have abolished standards of discourse.