Peter Pumpkinhead

“He made too many enemies
Of the people who would keep us on our knees.”:
“Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead,” XTC

Friday: My upset NCAA predictions bombed. Bucknell lost by 29 and MSU made up a 23-point deficit but lost by two. The two favorites eliminated were Louisville and Vanderbilt.

At 6:58 a.m. the NBC local news Dance Friday song was by Internet sensation Rebecca Black, whose music video for “Friday” “went viral,” getting over a million hits on the day it premiered. The cool-dancing weatherman called it the lamest song he’s heard in a long time. That may be true, but the video is cute and, I’m sure, resonates with teens. I was hit number 15,802,204. The 13 year-old was on “Good Morning America.” Cody Brotter in Huffington Post claimed the rap portion by producer Patrice “Pato” Wilson (the chauffeur in the video) is enough to make Wiz Khalifa look like Langston Hughes. Someone has out a parody with Bob Dylan supposedly singing the lyrics. They start out, “7a.m., waking up in the morning/ Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs/ Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal.”

Had an unusually vivid dream last night. In a building similar to Purdue North Central’s to talk with History faculty, led by an old man with a cane took me to a lower level where various faculty members, not necessarily historians, were sitting, I explained what Steel Shavings was about in a nervous voice, not sure why I was doing so. I asked if anyone taught recent American history – perhaps to see if they wanted to have students keep journals or maybe because I wanted to teach a seminar – and someone said sarcastically that a guy teaches Business and Industry. That’s all I remember.

A Chesterton Tribune front-page story quoted environmental Herb Read, who said that the Japanese reactors were the same design as what NIPSCO had proposed for Northwest Indiana.

Ron dropped in for an hour to discuss his Woody Guthrie project (he wants me to proofread a couple chapters) and upcoming lecture on folk music at Northwestern. We talked about the Bob Dylan’s old girlfriend Suze Rotola, who died recently, and mutual friend Izzy Young, founder of the Folklore Institute, who’s coming to NY soon.

Enjoyed the whodunit “The Lincoln Lawyer,” with Marisa Tomei sparkling as lead Matthew McConaughey’s ex-wife and “Fargo” guy William Macy as his long-haired private investigator. I’ve always liked courtroom dramatizations.

Saturday: WXRT highlighted 1992 and played “Peter Pumpkinhead, which may have been about JFK, Jesus, or merely a pumpkin. One line goes, “Plots and sex scandals failed outright, Peter merely said any kind of love is alright” – perhaps a reference to Mary Magdalene or Marilyn Monroe. Robert Blaszkiewicz turned me on to XTC, a British band that virtually never toured and whose 1992 CD “Nonsuch” was also the name of a Tudor palace built by Henry VIII. After mailing gifts to Californians Crosby and Addison, shopped at Chesterton’s Wise Way, a first, and found good deals on sweet pickles and Oreos similar to chocolate mint girl scout cookies.

As if the Japanese nuclear crisis isn’t enough, now we’ve leading attacked Libya eight years to the day after the Iraq invasion. Obama is directing the action from Brazil, there with the family on a good will trip. “Dutch” Reagan was canny enough to limit military intervention against Gaddafi to a relatively inexpensive onetime effort to kill him, which cowed him into semi-behaving himself. Obama is claiming we are acting as part of a broad coalition, but the Arab “partners” are unreliable at best. Libyans in the eastern part of that country might be more anti-American than Gaddafi was.

Before driving to the Hagelbergs for bridge and Chinese food watched a forgettable remake of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” only this time with the guy (Ashton Kutcher) white and the upset dad (Bernie Mac) black. Hot daughter (Zoe Saldana) was Neytiri in “Avatar.”

Sunday: headlines reminiscent of the BP oil spill indicate the crises in Libya and Japan won’t soon be over. I went one for four in gaming, barely edging out Tom and Dave in St. Pete. I kept Tom’s Egezia game to study the rules some more. Home for Michigan against top-seeded Duke. Had the Wolverines won, I’d have looked like a genius and been back in contention in the NCAA pool. Up a point Duke missed a shot but got the rebound, then made one of two free throws. Down two with a few seconds left, Darius Morris drove the lane and missed a runner. Had he passed to a guy on the right wing who had been draining trees all afternoon, they might have won.

Niece Lisa stopped in with Oliver and Grace after hubby Fritz took off for Jamaica. Kids had loved our house on Maple Place but explored nearly every inch of the condo. They played Shooters with me and followed me downstairs while I was folding the laundry to find some of Toni’s toys where the creatures wiggle when you push in the bottom. Getting cookies for them, I told Grace the jar was designed so parents could hear noise if kids took the lid off. She appeared a few minutes later with cookies and bragged that she got them without me hearing any noise. For dinner Toni made delicious sirloin tips with pan fried noodles and corn.

TCU was slaughtering Purdue so badly I turned the sound down and listened to the Portland band The Decembrists’s CD Beth gave me as a belated birthday present and then “Duke” on vinyl. At halftime I talked to Gaard Logan, who had no interest in the NCAA tournament and promised to email me her reaction to the unsettling world events. Phil still wants to go to California with me and will give me dates he is free after his semester is over.

Monday: heard Weezer's “Troublemaker” on the way to school. The chorus goes: “I’m a troublemaker/ Never been a faker/ Doin’ things my own way/ And never givin’ up.” Voodoo Chili did a great version of Weezer’s “Beverly Hills” that always got the crowd singing the chorus. My favorite Weezer song is “Island in the Sun.” In the car one cannot resist singing “ hip hip hip hip” along with them. It’s such an upbeat song about young love except for the end, when the last line goes, “We’ll never feel that anymore.”

Jeff Manes emailed me his comments to a Post-Trib column by Rich James defending unions and the Indiana Democrats who fled to Illinois rather than allow Republicans to engage in class warfare against the middle class. Manes wrote: “Thanks, Rich. We’re the 51st state of the union. Don’t tread on us {Governor} Daniels and (Speaker) Bosma.” Someone in turn called Manes and James two-bit whores, edited to read “$$ clowns.”

Sylvia Gibbs inquired who the Delaney Housing Project in Gary was named after? I told her about Reverend Frank Delaney, who founded Stewart Settlement House and pointed her to “City of the Century.”

Took four Shavings to Bob Mucci for the dollar Anthropology Club sale. He gave me a Credit Union receipt from 1985 that had been in a book I’d donated when I retired. Bulls beat Sacramento by 40 points enabling Coach Tom Thibodeau to rest the starters for tomorrow’s contest at Atlanta.

"Annie"

Cressmoor being closed for the summer, Clark Metz and I met at Ray’s Lanes, whose proprietor Mark Milsap is one the area’s premier bowlers. Mark’s brother wagered a dollar that I’d lose to Clark. Nine pins down, I got six strikes in the third game to win series by 12 pins. Clark vowed to get revenge next time.

Tom Wade and I were planning to watch Dave play singles in the Post-Tribune tennis tournament, but rain delayed his match so the three of us got in three board games. Dave won them but lost his match 6-4, 6-4 to a top seed.

Saturday was opening night for “Annie” at the Star Plaza. Rebecca played the part of orphan Molly. The Radisson was offering rooms for $69, and we had five of them for the various relatives. From the opening line through numerous musical and dance numbers Becca was fantastic, a natural. Afterwards, the cast came to the lobby, signed autographs, posed for pictures, and received bouquets. Among Dave’s friends who came were Missy and Mary Ann Brush (sporting a new tattoo honoring deceased hubby Tim, “Big Voodoo Daddy”) and an E.C. Central grad who is going to Harvard. The play, based on the comic strip “Little Orphan Annie,” takes place during the Great Depression, and characters include President Franklin Roosevelt and cabinet members Harold (Ickes) and Frances (Perkins). Annie doesn’t have a red Afro until near the end. Daddy Oliver Warbucks adopts her upon discovering with the help of the FBI that her parents are dead. Producer Charlie Blum, also the Star Plaza CEO, makes a cameo appearance as radio host Bert Healy. We saw Blum do a terrific job as Henry Higgins in “The Music Man.” A week ago he had a pool party and sleepover for the entire cast. Rebecca loves him. We were on the Gary Centennial Committee together and his advice was to plan things that have “sizzle.” He’s really good for Northwest Indiana.

All the kids loved the motel. Toni had to halt an ice-throwing fight near the vending machines. We were a party of 18 for the breakfast buffet (Lisa’s husband Fritz Teuschler, a Navy Commander who is the executive officer of the ROTC program at Notre Dame, was playing golf). The night before, Fritz stopped at a service station after taking his mother to Midway Airport, and someone asked if he was a gym teacher at Crown Point High School. He replied, “No, I’m from Indiana,” thinking he was in Illinois, but in fact he was in Indiana. The indoor pool had a cool waterfall. Second cousins Tori and Nickolas tousled in the pool and seemed enamored of each other. At that age (around ten) I had a crush on Judy Jenkins. Smiling broadly, Michelle’s daughter Sophia came to me with a beach ball and a big smile on her face and, as in French Lick, we tossed it around. Oliver joined in and twice took a tumble on the pool’s slick periphery. I told his dad to keep an eye out for swelling on his right arm, but Fritz said, “He’s a tough kid; he’ll be OK.” Grace got out of the water and gave him a hug, wetting the front of his clothes. Unflappable, he said, “She likes to do that.” On the way to see our condo Fritz had a Grateful Dead tape on and said he’d seen the band about ten times, mostly during college. Oliver thought the music was all right but preferred the Beatles. Fritz said he knows the words to most Beatles songs. Fritz and Lisa loved our poster called Ronald Reagan’s world that portrayed the Soviets as the bad guys and California as God’s country. The Northeast was the land of “welfare bums” while in the South lived “real Americans.”

I started “Impeached: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Fight over Lincoln’s Legacy.” Author David Stewart previously wrote “The Summer of 1787,” when the Founding Fathers defined “impeachable offense” in a deliberately vague way. Alissa noticed the book while we were at the hotel pool and wondered if any other President besides Clinton had been impeached. I told her that Nixon resigned over Watergate before the full House voted on articles of impeachment that had been approved in committee. I am enjoying the character studies and examples of the overheated rhetoric. Senator Charles Sumner hardly ever spoke extemporaneously and rehearsed speeches in front of a mirror. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens was born with a clubfoot and insisted that his mulatto housekeeper, Mrs. Lydia Hamilton Smith (rumored to be his mistress) be called Mrs. Smith. Before being sworn in as vice-president Johnson took three stiff gulps of whiskey and then launched into a totally inappropriate and incoherent speech. Secretary of State William Seward was almost stabbed to death the night Lincoln was shot. The Henry Kissinger of his time, he sucked up to Johnson, who, Carl Schurz wrote, “bites at all about him like a wounded and anger-crazed boar.” Stewart emphasizes the bribery and corruption in Washington during that time (members of the Whiskey Ring paid handsomely to ensure that revenue agents weren’t replaced). With widespread betting on the outcome, gamblers were handing out bribes. Senator Edmund Ross of Kansas, heralded by John F. Kennedy in “Profiles in Courage,” was a grafter beholden to a notorious Indian trader. The impeachment process, although flawed, allowed the country to avoid resorting to arms during the constitutional crisis.

Rabbits ate the spinach in Suzanna’s garden. We often saw bunnies at Maple Place, but they didn’t bother our herbs and sorrel. Deer wreaked havoc on our flowers and shrubbery, however. Suzanna sent a neat photo of her four daughters and a bluegrass music website. In the Seventies we went to bluegrass festivals with the Mike and Janet Bayer.

“The Onion” newspaper spoofed Al Gore splitting with wife Tipper, who had been a critic of heavy metal albums. There’s a photo of him in a Megadeth t-shirt reaping the benefits of a bachelor life style. Gore is quoted as saying, “For the first time in three decades I get to play the kind of music I like without someone nagging me about what a bad influence it is. And I get to crank it up as loud as I want. It sucked because we always had to listen to garbage like Carly Simon and Lyle Lovett all the time. That stuff is lame, man. If it doesn’t have big balls and bigger riffs, get it out of my stereo.”
Reporter Andy Grimm, who’s now with the Chicago Tribune, called in connection with an article he’s working on comparing corruption in Chicago and Northwest Indiana. I told him the absence of a healthy two-party system might have something to do with it as well as the need in the past for Democratic candidates to raise money running against the corporate-funded Republicans. I told him that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the stereotype of “corrupt Lake County politicians” since the two politicians I know the most about, Mayor Richard Hatcher and Sheriff Roy Dominguez were honest and civic-minded. In fact, the things the two Gary officials (Clerk Katie Hall and Township Trustee Dozier T. Allen) most recently convicted did were relatively small potatoes compared to more sophisticated gimmicks employed by others, such as funneling business to one’s old law firms. Our whole system of campaign funding invites corruption.