Achenblog

Apparently it's a national holiday -- the much-beloved Third of July. This means that instead of working hard we must all commit ourselves to playing hard, frantically relaxing, going out of our way to have more fun than is humanly possible, culminating in a crab feast in which our hands are shredded as we attempt to extract tiny morsels of meat from creatures not designed to be eaten.

Already this morning I hit the Billy Goat Trail with great gusto. Musta hiked 1, maybe 1.25, who knows even 1.375 miles -- a heroic distance. The machete turned out to be unnecessary due to the path having been blazed at this point roughly as wide as the Beltway. Seriously you could move a house on that trail and still have passing room on the right and left simultaneously.

We are now officially slipping into vacation mode. I'm preparing for the Italy trip by boning up on my Spanish. As you know I've found that if you speak Spanish in Italy with sufficient arm gestures and sound effects you can usually survive.

I heard an awful rumor that you can't just wander into a restaurant in Rome and eat, that you need reservations like months in advance or something. Is that true even of Olive Garden? Pizzaria Uno? i can't wait to see how big the portions are at the Maggiano's of Rome.

I also heard a disturbing report that many of the most popular tourist sites in Rome are in ruins. Story of my life, always late the game.

The huge question is whether I will have all the right adapters and surge protectors and stuff like that over there, so that when I plug in my laptop it doesn't explode. I hope they have the Wee Fee as they say in France. I'll try not to write anything that insults the entire country and makes me a pariah. Because that would be wrong.

[More to come]

We have long known that the U.S. went to war with Iraq under a false premise -- that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The standard narrative has always focused on GWB's cowboy motivations for pushing for the war and selling it to the American public. Now we read that Saddam wanted the world to believe he had WMDs because he feared looking weak in the eyes of Iran. Thus his refusal to permit weapons inspectors to snoop around was not (as Bush argued) because he was hiding weapons, but because he was not hiding weapons and didn't want his military emasculation exposed. This would all seem farcical in retrospect were it not so thoroughly slathered in tragedy.

--

Mark Sanford has to resign. And why shouldn't he? Does he believe that he owes it to South Carolinians to stay on the job? Yeah, he's really devoted to the people of his state -- on those occasions when he's not (wink wink) hiking the Appalachian Trail. The strong suspicion here is that Sanford wants to keep his job so that he has a place to go other than home, where he's a pariah. (Why not just fly back to Argentina? The perfect ending to the love story. Sell the movie rights!)

--

A quick follow-up to yesterday's item on what we do and don't do here in the news business.

We've become rather platform-obsessed. The ideal reporter is described as one who can tweet while podcasting. If you're coming out of J-school, please tell us you are so wired into the new technologies that you have bluetooth implanted in your teeth. But here's a talent that I find refreshing: Writing well. Show me you can put together a compelling sentence. If you can somehow mix intelligent ideas with vivid prose, fortified with original research, polished to a shine, I'll follow you to any platform you care to occupy. I'd even read your book!

[more to come]

This is an exciting day at the Post because there are all these amazing structural changes in the editing and copy-flow process that I would explain in detail were I to have even the vaguest understanding of them.

There have been lots of meetings and memos. Entire departments have vanished. Where Financial used to be there's now a Taco Bell. Fact: They've told us that, in anticipation of a major architectural renovation of the newsroom, we should pack our belongings in boxes and take anything truly valuable to our homes. Um, sure. Like I believe that. Whatever happened to the decency of giving a worker a simple pink slip?

What's this all mean? I am the last to know. But probably the governing concept behind all these changes is "More Cowbell."

It is also an actual fact that there's a new thing called the Universal Desk. I don't know if the Universal Desk exists as a real object or merely as a Virtual Universal Desk. But obviously this is good for me, personally, as it would strongly suggest that the company has decided that its future depends on more articles about things like black holes, gamma-ray bursts and the Milky Way's possible collision with the Andromeda Galaxy. Unless there's some subtlety to the phrase "Universal Desk" that I'm missing.

Journalism is obviously in flux. In such moments, it's important to remember what we do well and what we don't do well.

Housekeeping: I'm going to Italy next week and don't know how much I can and will be blogging. It's vacation, and thus the default position is that I won't post anything. Of course, that's the default position much of the time even when I'm working. Has there ever been a blogger with such an astounding capacity for silence? It's my singular gift. The stuff I didn't write yesterday was genius, trust me.

Anyway, there may be a few things popping up on blog in the next hours and days as I try to clear off my desk. We're all moving desks while they reconfigure the newsroom to make it more 21st Century. I'll be throwing some stuff away, and throwing some other stuff on the blog. Possibly at random. [Reader: "Why did he just post a blank taxi receipt?"]

Now, it does seem that I should write more about Michael Jackson, since apparently the Anderson Coopers of the world are still on MJ 24/7, and that might indicate that some people out there are still interested. I find that my interest in a big story evaporates pretty quickly. But I do want to point you to Von Drehle's excellent piece in Time on the young Michael Jackson.

I'd forgotten that Michael Jackson had a signature move called the Robot.

You can see some more examples of it in this montage on YouTube, the first at about 1:03 of the video:

[more to come...]

Now, finally, I know how I'll be remembered. I know how my name will pop up on Google 17.0 (debuting 2150 A.D.).

See, we had this reunion in Hogtown. It was my high school's 75th anniversary, and we had a little variety show and a gala and, most importantly, late night gabfests by the hotel pool. As with all reunions there's ritualistic sharing of biographical and reproductive details, but at some level people don't even need to talk -- just showing your face is enough. You had me at hello, etc.

We've reached the point where the past is surpassing the future as the dominant increment of our lives. We adjust by tending to our memories as if they were hothouse flowers. We all have our war stories. Jeepers, we survived Hogtown in the 1970s. (Disco was our 'Nam.)

We're about one reunion away from the full efflorescence of replacement-joint conversations. You know you're a good friend when you remember not only the names of your old friend's kids, but also which knee is new.

Because this was an all-school reunion, lots of accomplished alums showed up and received plaques for managing to make something of themselves. But everyone combined was only fractionally as famous as one alum in particular -- Rodney Mullen. As you surely know, Rodney is the greatest skateboarder ever. He's also a totally cool dude. "Authentic" is the word that instantly comes to mind. Like, after the reunion, he was going to go skating through the wee hours of the night. He was going to hit the schoolyards of Hogtown, looking for excellent pavement and picnic tables (for jumps). The point is, he really lives the life.

The guy does stuff on a board that defies physics. He can levitate! He can make the board flip up in the air and remove a speck of food from between his teeth -- stuff like that.

And here's the key data point: He's the younger brother of my classmate Sara, on whom I had a monster crush circa 1974, necessitating marathon phone sessions (at that point I was not sufficiently mature to be in the same room with the love object, but I could talk a blue streak).

So this is how I'll be remembered -- as a minor footnote in the Wikipedia entry for Rodney Mullen.

And that's cool with me.

[From baggage claim in Jacksonville...]

MJ's death has inspired a predictable amount of numbskull commentary of a nature that makes me glad that I've mastered the art of skimming and then instantly forgetting what I've just skimmed. The nonsense gets no purchase on my brain at all. But I just flew into Florida for a reunion thing, and, glancing at the boodle, I see that someone named DJ15 has dared to compare MJ unfavorably with Donnie (or was it Donny?) Osmond, a slur so vile that I cannot let it pass:

Who are you trying to convince? Jackson stole every move he knew from James Brown, Little Richard, and countless others that came before him. I saw J. Brown on numerous occasions, and every move he made was faster, cleaner, and better executed than any Jackson ever made. James Brown's voice was much stronger and more mature and had ten times the range of Jackson's. By comparison Jackson's voice as a ten-year-old boy was better than average, but absolutely no better than Donnie Osmond's. Yet, Jackson never grew up, and neither did his voice. Jackson lived in relative exile and died as an accused child sex offender. Where is Donnie Osmond today? Oh, Donnie is probably at home with his family living a normal happy life. Sorry Donnie. But then, mama always said "If you can't say something nice..."

First of all, everyone stole from James Brown and Little Richard. That's practically required, by law, of every pop star. You know what that bumper sticker says: If stealing from James Brown, Little Richard and Chuck Berry is outlawed, only outlaws will make pop music. A little band they used to call the Beatles got started by aspiring to steal that stuff better than anyone else. Ditto the Stones. As for MJ, even if he was derivative in certain respects, in totality he was (like the Beatles and Stones) completely unique -- what we used to refer to here in the Deep South as "sui generis." You might argue that he benefited from a lot of hype and publicity and his own willingness to feed the celebrity machinery (which turned on him as he got weirder and weirder -- witness the "tributes" on TV last night that had plenty of cringe-inducing moments), but go track down a YouTube of him performing, in those white socks, Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough. That should end the discussion.

What a sad moment. Michael Jackson may not have been perfect, but he was part of the soundtrack of our lives the last 40 years. At his best, he was the best.

Not long ago I showed my kids a YouTube video of Michael Jackson demonstrating the moonwalk, circa 1983. Like that talent scout said of Fred Astaire: "Can dance a little."

My kids never knew Jackson at his peak, when he was the most popular entertainer on the planet, and millions of copies of "Thriller" flew out of the record stores. It wasn't as good an album as "Off the Wall," which got heavy rotation at the dance parties at my college, but when "Thriller" came out, music videos were the rage, and everything came together to propel MJ to the highest level of the business -- what you might call the Elvissphere.

What a rough life, though. He never knew a normal childhood. His personal travails, legal problems involving accusations of child molestation, plastic surgery obsessions and other eccentricities turned him into a punch line.

So maybe some people forgot over the years just how great he was. He was amazing at the age of 10, when he was singing "ABC." But he was even better in his early 20s, when he had Quincy Jones producing him in "Off the Wall" and "Thriller."

He lived to be 50 years old. But maybe he was always really 10. He never seemed to know how to live life as an adult. For now, we'll put all that aside, and think of him at the height of his power -- singing and dancing so well he seemed to defy the laws of physics. I'm pretty sure there's never been anyone else like him.

It feels voyeuristic to read these e-mails, but it's hard not to look. Is there something called being love-drunk? Mark Sanford's rambling, confessional press conference would potentially be the classic example.

He's down there for five days. Then Stanford steps off the plane Wednesday morning in Atlanta, and he's still either love-drunk or he's got what Diana Ross would call a monster Love Hangover. And then he goes in front of the cameras and it's a debacle for the ages.

Sanford's next job (he'll need one imminently) could be advice columnist for the lovelorn.

Political sex scandals have become a dime a dozen. What we don't tend to see are love scandals. If the governor was merely doing the Alpha Male politician thing, and looking for a conquest, he presumably wouldn't have needed to go all the way to the southern hemisphere. But this was apparently the real deal. Love, actually. The big one. The governor fell for an Argentinian bombshell. He wasn't merely brought to his knees by love; he was pancaked.

Now he's walking around with the accordion body. Like the coyote after the anvil falls on him.

--

John Dickerson cuts him some slack and says there is too much heartless glee at Sanford's self-immolation. And here's Will Saletan: "I think he loved this other woman. I think he still does. And he won't belittle or renounce that love because it was, and is, something real."

It's bad enough that Mark Sanford skedaddles off to an adulterous tryst in Argentina, but now we learn, via emails published in The State newspaper, that Sanford is also guilty of the sin of overwriting. This we cannot forgive:

"You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details .... "

He is channeling his inner schoolboy. Some politicians pander, but this one pants, grunts, wheezes, while recycling stale phrases that he's probably used so many times in so many come-on e-mails that he's programmed them on the F9 key. The reference to the night's light is meant to scream SENSITIVE, even as he has only one (or two) things on his mind. Then he kills the mood by going "meta" at the end.

Here we see the problem: These guys need speechwriters who can work the night shift pounding out heavy-breathing e-mails. It's just so sad to see them fend for themselves. And then being forced to confess the adultery, the deceit and the betrayal AND the typos.

Update: Can someone out there explain what it is, exactly, that Sanford is describing in the following email passage:

"I went out and ran the excavator with lights until the sun came up. To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the back ground, the tranquillity that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning clouds - and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt."

I think he's digging a hole. (And he needs to stop digging.)

The nine people killed on the Red Line on Monday were just going through their normal lives. Read the story today. It's a tragic tale in part because of the randomness and suddenness of misfortune.

None of us is immune to catastrophe. There are things beyond our control. Sitting on a Metro train is not supposed to be dangerous. And usually it isn't. You play the odds in life. You park your fears in a corner of your mind -- otherwise you'll go crazy. And you have to assume, when you wave goodbye to a loved one, that it's not for the last time.

From the story:

It was an ordinary work day for Cameron Williams on Monday. He cooked himself breakfast, then surfed the Web and did some light cleaning around the house while he chatted with his aunt and grandmother in the afternoon.

Just as he was preparing to go off to his night contract worker job downtown, he stopped on the porch of the Takoma Park home he shared with his grandmother and talked to his aunt about the weekend. Maybe he'd go to Carter Barron.

"Then he turned the corner and headed to the Metro," Shirley Williams said of her 37-year-old nephew, the oldest of five brothers who grew up in the city and graduated from Coolidge High School. "I watched him until I couldn't see him anymore."

We all would like bad things to happen for some kind of predictable reason. But as Marjorie Williams once wrote, misfortune is random (she was pointing out that, contrary to the implications of some people, she hadn't caused her own cancer).

The investigation of the Metro accident is ongoing. We'll eventually know the various reasons why it happened. But there's no reason, at a certain level, why some people were killed and the thousands of others who take the Red Line (like I do, routinely) were spared. It could have happened anywhere on the Metro system. These people were victims of misfortune completely beyond their control.

Maybe it makes sense to go through life assuming this day will be your last. But probably the opposite is true: A serene existence presumes that there will many more days to come. You should feel some connection to the older person you're almost certainly going to be in five, ten, 30 years (and thus go easy on the ice cream and pizza). And you have to get on that train even though you don't know absolutely for sure that you'll get to your destination.

--

In the boodle, kguy writes:

"I'd quibble with the idea that a serene existence presumes that there will many more days to come. I'd say rather that a serene existence proceeds from personal comfort with the idea of one's death, either because of religious conviction and belief in an afterlife, or as I believe, that death is a logical and inevitable part of the cycle of existence and fear of death is both irrational and a great big waste of time."