The Billiken's Bluff

“It coulda been so sweet, too,” Joe Pesci laments in Casino, looking back on how divided loyalties and rampant ambitions finally tore down the Mafia’s boldly-imagined Las Vegas kingdom. Right now, Democrats might relate. 2008 was supposed to be their chance at building a shiny empire in the desert, where after eight years in the political wilderness they could finally break away from all the bad blood of an older politics and seize power before their bosses knew what was going on.

Months ago, they had their kingdom locked up. The opposition incumbent was widely detested and sinking deeper in the polls. A costly and unpopular war was dragging on, with No End in Sight and no progress on the front pages. The economy was slipping, markets bearish. And rising from the American ashes, a captivating new icon was stirring the hopeless with promises of change, unity, and Hope You Can Believe In.

This victory could be felt, tasted. It was as if all they had to do to seal the win was avoid some outlandish blunder. With plenty of experienced Democrats in the race, they were free to nominate anyone other than, oh, maybe some extreme character like an elite-seeming far-left radical on a friendship level with terrorists and racist fanatics or something. But ha, avoid something like that and it would be theirs, theirs at last!

Oops.

This week’s Pennsylvania primary demographic breakdown pretty much tells the tale of how that leap of faith is working for them. Turns out, Barack Obama is having some huge problems charming those Democrats he would need to win the White House. Pretty much every Democra-graphic except blacks, adoring college kids and wealthy ex-hippies bolted to Hill-dog like they were under Bosnian sniper fire.

I have to lose my idols
to find my voice

and write something of my own

How I filled my weekend, verbatim:

You start telling the story thinking you're the hero and when u get done talking you realize...



I left a trail of fire behind me

How do you get from here to the rest of the world?




Look him in the eye - it don't matter who he is or what he's done - you look him in the eye





Can u see these two riding tame?



A hun a visogath a barbian at the gate



Man u act like u on the trail of polpot or something



You got your rice-a-roni profits



Gotta respect the depths



Things change one moment the ice cream truck be the only thing u wanna hear
And the next thing cops calling and the heron be the only thing u can hear











U want it to be one way whens its the other



I ain't no suit-wearing' businessman like you... you know I'm just a gangsta I suppose...



You're name going to ring out



I had such fucking hopes for us



This is the other part of the game.



Analyze stocks, we'll be buying lion heads and Clarks




If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.



"I feel it now: there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has need me.."



I do not expect old heads on young shoulders




One of our best weapons, contented worldliness.



We want cattle that can become food. He wants servants who can become sons.





An increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.



Everyone tends to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.





He can be made to take a positive pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent.



I now see I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.

The Wire or its absence.



The business end of a shotgun









OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

The LORD SAID to Samuel:

"Fill your horn with oil, and be on your way.



I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for I have chosen my king from among his sons."



As Jesse and his sons came to the sacrifice, Samuel looked at Eliab and thought, "Surely the LORD's anointed is here before him."





But the LORD said to Samuel: "Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him.



Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart." In the same way Jesse presented seven sons before Samuel,





but Samuel said to Jesse, "The LORD has not chosen any one of these."



Then Samuel asked Jesse, "Are these all the sons you have?" Jesse replied,



"There is still the youngest, who is tending the sheep." Samuel said to Jesse, "Send for him; we will not begin the sacrificial banquet until he arrives here."Jesse sent and had the young man brought to them.



He was ruddy, a youth handsome to behold and making a splendid appearance.



The LORD said,



" There - annoit him, for this is the one!"



Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand, anointed David in the presence of his brothers; and from that day on, the spirit of the LORD rushed upon David.



The word of the LORD.

Why I want to vote for Barack Obama for president and Charlie Wilson, Congressman (D. Texas) for an MTV Movie Award or whatever.




Someone from Fox News or Georgetown Law asked me to justify, to flesh out, flush out, my support for Barack over Hillary, to translate superficial groupie love into issue-based Lincoln Douglas factoids.

The problem with presidential statistics here in the U.S. of A. is that there are more facts presented on NPR re: Pakistan's Bhuttos and Mushareffs and a Mighty Heart than on our presidential hopefuls, veritably Ishmael. So in our country (as opposed to Pakistan where I can draw on facts and character, if I were allowed to vote in the general election next month) I will draw on gut feelings, rap lyrics, references, and the sound of a man or woman's name.

I, Gotim, want to vote for Barack Hussein Obama and am trying to get my 92 year old Grandma to vote the same way. She's old school in all the right ways. She understands what life was like before the internet and before WWII.



From what I can gather we both appreciate Obama's college basketball prodigy, Indonesian worldliness/schooling, Harvard Law school education, and ability to speak in well-constructed paragraphs. All of those facts translate from NY Times print to NPR radio to blogs. But there is something we can't agree on because of Hillary and his age.

This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears. Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; a perfectly upright and stoical bearing.

I like the fact that my elder still whispers that Obama is "black". But she is wise enough to know that she likes that she can potentially elect someone that she whispers is "black". That our options now are a 1st Lady or a negro with, what feels like, hundreds of North African Arab names. Ultimately this is a beautiful thing for a 2nd generation Syrian Country Club Catholic who has always been told that she is so much alike everyone else that you'd never know she was Syrian or Arab to begin with.

What choices!



She remembers when Kennedy wowed crowds with his best Brad Pitt before anyone tried to be a movie star besides the president.

She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.

So when I'm asked why Barack over Hillary or Obama over Clinton I respond Pitt over Stone. Right? who wouldn't? Barack could potentially be Denzel and George (Clooney) and some new actor with all of the Middle East and Africa in his surname. Or a Gabriel Garcia Bernal. All billikened into one parcel, perfectly.



He made dog fighting indie cool before Michael Vick made it main stream not so cool.

Cannes believed in this before CNN and CSPAN didn't.



Barack more eloquent than the current incarnation. He's as eloquent as the previous incarnation. Bill Clinton was almost black, Barack Obama is black enough. Bill was flying along with too little turbulence so he was corralled for marital indiscretions. Barack Obama, due to blogs and DVR HD cable has already been uncovered. He's human in that he has written his biopic. He's mentioned that he's snorted. He's had mild property issues. He's tangoed with Oprah. He's born of reality and doesn't need to reference earlier generations. Bill Clinton was ordained before America went Online. Barack Hussein Obama has already been discussed in chat rooms, blogs, and photoshopped on Perez Hilton with coke in his nostril. He can campaign and be president without scandal because like Gotim or N. Dot he has a Facebook profile.


Heros warts and all.



If he had a tattoo we'd have seen it already.



Someone the liberals and the youth will always be fascinated with. Like Darren McFadden or LaDaian Tomlinson playing QB. Some unorthodox shit the crowds love.

He is Hussein unhanged, he's almost Osama. He can't be blamed. He is our antidote. Born with the surname Alexander the Great. Not George or Bob. His parents didn't quite understand how this would work, but somehow they did. His name would solve problems, not create them.

A president like the last scene from Shawshank. That is absolutely all we need. One scene like that. One quotable line like a true author. One crystal blue sea from the president even though we've seen this all in HD previously, remastered.





The audacity to be inspired. He or she must inspire this time around. My father didn't understand why Reagan won or why things like Arnold winning California could happen.

We grew up on this shit. This is what we are, who the world is actually. Hollywood isn't American it's global, English speaking.

This is what cultured persons speak about in Mumbai or Bombay, Manhattan or my house. My uncle and grandma bought a LCD TV with HD quality and rented Unfaithful. I saw Richard Gere in Central Park introduce the Dhali Lama before traveling to Bangkok and before taking up power yoga in my living room.

A human like bill and jfk and matt damon. We need a superhero who can inspire greatness - walking on the moon and moonwalking, micro waves, rhymed couplets and iambic verses. And we need their alter ego someone who has sinned, or more importantly someone who has lived and knows better than to apologize for that.

This is why Barack Hussein Obama, the most spectacular of the candidates, unafraid to tell the auto union that they need to be dismantled, eloquently, must be elected.

I'm reading Charlie Wilson's War and then I’ll seen the movie, but from what I've heard already, Charlie is pissed that Tom Hanks isn't cut out of a more debonair fabric, the Greeks hate a Hoffman - too pasty and paunchy, the Saudis need an Obama; and we have him. Charlie is better looking than Tom Hanks. Gust is more shadowy than Phillip Seymour Hoffman could ever be; even in an Oscar worthy performance. But Barack Obama is better than imagined. He is what the directors and the producers dreamed about for this scene, race mixing and mixing until you have a perfect blend of everything.

Now pull your straws and cross your caucuses.

Sometimes rap and politics intersect on the way to work. Flipping between sports radio, Imus (returned), NPR and Power 105.1.

Kanye's latest:

If somebody would've told me a year ago
it'd go, get this difficult
Feeling like Katrina with no fema
Like Martin with no Gina
Like a flight with no visa

Later at the gym, DJ Clue and Ghostface repping Desert Storm, the record label, not the early 90s military operation, on my ipod.




Later leaving gym, back in the car, on N to the P to the R (you know who you are):

Oprah endorses Obama and I think this makes sense for everyone involved.







All reach the same conclusion - DESERT STORM sounds imposing, street strong, good way to body an opponent and attract a constituency to post yellow ribbons on their doorways.



Oprah sells.
Oprah hates rap music, she does not endorse it.
She does endorse Obama.
Obama played basketball in college.
Basketball is intertwined with hip hop, clearly.
David Stern does not endorse hip hop.
Stern does however endorse Outkast who he enlisted to perform at halftime of the 2004NBA All Star game.
Andre 3000 at times has embraced hip hop.
He is certainly responsible for the only song that I have ever encountered that has caused multiple tables of diners at a restaurant in NYC to burst into spontaneous gyrations during their meals.
2004 Democratic candidate General Wesley Clark referenced Hey Ya during campaign stops in 2004.

There is a thread somewhere here. Pop culture, maybe, or American culture, rather, (dan). All from the same tradition, translated differently, reinterpreted maybe and reused for varying purposes but all born out of comic book nuclear fallout. Satellites and kaleidoscopes. Chaos, watermelons, clocks, everything.









Kevin Garnett's I Got Seven Mack 11’s, About Eight 38’s Nine 9’s, Ten Mack Tens reported here years back.




Rap music and military missions the same target in their infrared - shock and awe.

This line from Jay-Z's American Gangster inspired from a movie screening (not directly from the Blue Magic of Frank Lucas) of Denzel's Frank Lucas, rings true and false just the same.





[not an optical illusion my man, verily, that is a Window's Vista styled pocket square in Jigga's left breast pocket]

So do we care if Oprah tells us to vote for Obama if we might have anyway? Why not get your news from Jon Stewart? [writer's strike and outdated reruns not withstanding.] Do we care if the American government borrows pop culture, employs comic largesse in the naming (and dreaming) of its military operations? Is it insulting to those who are killed in those operations (specifically those not from the American pop culture tradition), or is it to be expected - as American as Apple Pie (fight power with power, cliches with cliches, you shake what yo' mamma gave you so to speak - curse US political leaders while wearing an I Love NY baseball hat and applying for exit visas from Morocco)? Do we care if Jay-Z borrows screenwritten crime from the silver screen, which in turn borrowed from real crime, drugs, misery, poverty and Vietnam?

"Actually believe half of what you see/ None of what you hear, even if it's spit by me/ And with that being said, I will kill niggas dead."

Talk more.

Detente.













There is peace at the gym despite hormones that would seem to argue otherwise. Testosterone fueled weight lifters don't jump one another when they brush past one another. Two women training and working away their second child might tussle over the nuance between a set and a rep and if you leave for the water fountain what does that mean in terms of ownership of the vacated thigh machine? I have seen this.

Our fearless leaders understand Pervez Musharraf. Military man, wears a suit, keeps a neat mustache, glasses and an orderly haircut without any headdress. They can do business with a man dressed like this. He doesn't crawl on all fours, he sits upright, he keeps his prayer mat stashed at home, wears shoes indoors and can converse with Tim Russert on Sunday mornings, Eastern Standard Time.



Between you, me and this isolateral machine everyone is transparent at the gym. Genetics trumps energy and effort. The biggest of the regulars dress subdued and requires less maintenance at the gym. Those who want to talk about high twitch muscles wear back braces and headbands, sleeveless shirts, and bluetooth headsets from 2005.

I don't do sets I go until I can't move my muscles anymore

I'm trying to rebuild, or just build myself one morning at the gym at a time. No militaristic regime here. I'm going at it haphazard-like. Nothing systematic like eating a tub of ice cream to put some tangible weight on your depression. A little too much office chair sitting and a few too many pizza lunches consumed while walking from kitchen back to the desk. So like the appearance of love handles, some small muscles are peaking through. Woody Allen wisdom - 90% of life is just showing up is turning out to be true.



I'm also gaining respect from the mosly older men there for coming day in and day out before work, in order to do more work. The Boy's Club. These are the new rich, the Porsche and Bentley. These are Local 131 iron workers union dressed in the brotherhood sweatshirt. discreet muscles, big foremans though used to wield rivet guns and haul scrap. These are some old folks too trying to train and sip gatorade with their Lipitor. There are also the infirmed - physically and psychologically - like the guy who needs two canes to walk into the building and presumably same two canes to hoist his way into his two work out outfits. A Bear Sterns Under-Armour style mesh track shirt - "Bulls Run on Wall Street" and a long sleeve cotton number that is a more generic Bear Sterns offering. He can't breathe. His back is bent. He mumbles something like Google while Sportcenter plays on the TVs above the treadmill.

But it's not all bumps on a log, or men - there are the Benazir Bhuttos - serious women ready to dodge landmines and nouveau-fangled I.E.D.s. Witness one ipod commercial of a woman working out. She dances through the gym taunting stationary machines and bikes, pied pipering through the aisles keeping her ample ass respectable in leotards.



There are bodies who have it partially right - who you want to like but are too focused on building isolated strength while ignoring growing masses, tumors - looming. Like this guy stomach pregnant with possibility, but can't see past his cut off shirt and the end of his arm. You fall in routines, sometimes they are the wrong ones.







Familiarity does not breed contempt, it breeds respect. Better the Devil you know. The old immigrant rather than the new.



The familiar war rather than the invisible one. We used to have a phone direct from Washington to the Kremlin to avert crisis.



Trying to piece together the feeling, the need, that landed me in this routine. My tooth was stung by the sugar and the cold in the iced coffee on the way to work - late Spring - and i'm trying to understand how much goes into something like this. I brushed and flossed more vigorously that night and the weeks after, switched from soft bristle to medium and the gums receded. I was told I needed minor surgery and felt like i was falling apart a bit too quickly and joined the gym in June to take care of everything physical that was within my reach to shape.



What causes all of this? The amount of ankle showing through a garment?



A hair dresser by trade, personal trainer by choice (and gym-officially-issued-shirt), wears back brace, cancer and breast cancer rubber bracelets - he is a fighter. He squares off against weight bearing support columns and trusses. Shadow boxes against empty gym equipment, practices a brand of ultra flexible Kama sutra karate - part missionary thrust against the floor or an unsuspecting under-inflated exercise ball. He stands at impossible angles keeping balance like a flamingo holding a 25 lb weight plate. Alfredo (born Alfred - 3rd generation always assimilates in reverse and reverts, reclaims ethnicity - namely in the name) has no children. His exercise regime is so unique it appears learned deep in the jungles of Laos at the mouth of a river a dawn and dusk via a guru who never encountered a coca cola can. It is not a mystery though why he has no customers as a personal trainer.







Personal trainer wearing Oakley sunglasses, the reflecting kind does have customers - at least one. He dons a razor shaved head, chews gum constantly even while drinking coffee and is not muscular. He speaks of highly-technical aerobic video theses like negative weight produces high twitch muscle. He, himself tells a large man lifting three 45 plates per side on the bench that while he (himself) he can replicate that amount of weight and owes this strength to negative weight.




The gym is located adjacent to a house cleaning service and a nail salon. This results in a number of latin and asian women at the gym between shifts. This results in me feeling cheap having cringed at the $35 per month fee at the gym - considering, comparing wages.





A regular - tall asian with clearly a different races build is accosted by a small older italian who is built like a terrier. And wants to talk about back when Tawain was called Formosa and Asians always had to explain themselves.





The dude who cleans the toilets and cringes when someone takes a shit or changes in the locker room without covering with a towel says "it's not supposed to be fun it's work". Hoping he is a recovering addict, some explanation to frame this job, this man.




Sometimes the Squeeze isn't worth the Juice.

The reason that LL Cool J goes to a local gym in Queens, NY when he can afford to build one or ten in his house.



The power of crowds. Drawing on the energy of the guy on the bench press. Taking that and pushing through 7 extra crunches. Or the girl on the treadmill next to you who is pretty and still running so you aren't about to stop running even though you're inhaling slight razor blades with every breathe.



And the warm sun as you exit the gym.



Bin Laden is not hiding in the gym. I am sure of this.