A Hope To Change

It occurred to me last Sunday while reading the newspaper that, more and more, I've been spending what many may seem as an inordinate amount of time reading obituaries. I'm absolutely fascinated at the glimpse of a recently deceased life and their final punctuation before heading off into the infinite abyss.

It's entirely sad how many people die from cancer at such a young age. Those are the hardest to read for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I've reached a point of middle-age where many of the dead are far younger than I. Sadly, these people die far before their full potential has been reached, probably hanging on for their every last breath to make sure that the family they leave behind, including small children, are prepared to live and thrive without them. This is why the cancer obituaries nearly always include the persons "courageous battle" with the disease that they succumb to. While it may read as cliche, it's a well deserved observation.

One obituary from last Sunday jumped from the pages and made me smile though. It was a 74-year-old man that had left a little parting wisdom that we can all take solace in. The man (his name escapes me) believed that, "what people need most in life is compassion and love. They don't need advice and most certainly don't need judgement".

Wow.

Those words stuck to me, like blame on a politician, as I watched the Presidential transfer of power on Tuesday. The outgoing President, head held high with no visible regret, handed the reigns of responsibility to an eager new President that will now be in charge of balancing a temperament of blaming his predecessor and accepting full accountability for his administrative decisions.

There was glaring irony noted in the inaugural proceedings as well. Seeing Dick Cheney being wheeled from the White House in a wheelchair, part metaphor and part severance package, was a picture of ultimate mortality, a reminder that we all reach the same fate in the end.

For some, the end seems to come too soon, while others outlive their shelf life. That's not mine to judge, however we have varying media to nudge our conscience to tell us what we think.

Life is not nearly as quizzical as what's being sold to us through soulful chicken soup, purpose driven pontification or new age karma from an Indian guru.

I am (we are), quite simply, a sum of the choices we make in life, and that's what I (we) will ultimately be judged on. With that, I agree with the obituary philosopher.

Love is a great place to start.

And an even better place to end.

Changes At The Musings

When the Musings first launched last June, I promised that I wouldn't allow it to be reduced to a daily journal that chronicled my somewhat pedestrian personal waltz through mid-life. I had a pretty simple plan, actually. Pick a topic, whether it be politics or pop culture, barf a few thoughts and sit back to see if anybody gave a hoot, holler or pay-no-nevah-mind.

Well, along the way nearly 18,000 clicks have entered Rushmore to read what the daily academy had to spew. Pretty damn humbling, considering the fragmented syntax that I've been throwing at you. We all have a weakness, and mine appears to be the dangling participle.

I'm having a hard time keeping up with the daily writing grind. Heck, with diapers to change and a dental implant world to tend to (that's my racket), I often find that I'm falling behind. Put simply, I have blog fatigue.

Due to the global recession, frequent writers block and sheer laziness, the Board of Director's and Chief Editor of Rushmore have unanimously approved of a restructuring plan that will change the format of Musings From Rushmore Academy.

Beginning Sunday, 25 January, Rushmore will become a weekly rag with a fresh layout, promising to be no less thought provoking - albeit ambitious as hell - than before.

See you next Sunday. Have a great week.

Young President, For Now

Take a good look at this young, dapper man. It's the freshest you'll see him look during the course of the next four-to-eight years.

It's amazing how the rigors of the office of the President drips off each man to serve. The before and after shots of a president, spanning their entry into office and final exit out the door, always make me wonder why anybody would want the job in the first place.

I suppose the speaking fees earned after office make it all worth while.

Daily Irony: Our New Treasury Chief

I smell a quagmire looming for President-elect Obama. It turns out our incoming Treasury boss may need a bigger calculator.

Obama tapped Timothy Geithner to head the Department of Treasury several weeks ago. It's now though, only a few days prior to his senate nominating hearing, that we learn Geithner waited several years to pay income taxes on a business he owned. Making matters a bit stickier, Geithner continued to employ an undocumented citizen as his housekeeper, long after knowing her immigration status had lapsed.

Irony is amusing. Hypocrisy is ugly.

This is both.

Make Way For An Articulate President

When Barack Obama takes over as president next week, our country will say goodbye to garbled grammar and curiously assembled rhetoric, and the word will be pronounced nuclear again.

I'm going to miss the Bushisms of the past eight years.

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

“Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech.” - At a ceremony welcoming Pope Benedict XVI to the White House.

“The fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there’s jobs at the machine-making place.”

“I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office.”

“Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?”

“They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the commander in chief, too.”

Finally, my all-time favorite that I simply can't get enough of.

“Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.”

I'm already feeling a bit misty eyed with nostalgia.

Obama's Blackberry Endorsement

note: portions of this post are copy/pasted from a New York Times article

President-elect Barack Obama has repeatedly insisted that it's going to be very difficult for the Secret Service to get the incoming president to relinquish his Blackberry by the time he's sworn in as our nations 44th Commander-In-Chief.

“I’m still clinging to my Blackberry,” Obama said Wednesday in an interview with CNBC and The New York Times. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.”

For the maker of Blackberry, Research In Motion, it's brand advertising that isn't costing them a dime.

Marketing experts suggest that the Obama endorsement would run Blackberry more than 25-million-dollars, and perhaps as much as 50-million.

Obama is an ideal marketing representative, agents say — popular, constantly in the news and explicit about his attachment to the product.

“You always want the celebrity to be a good fit with your brand, and is anybody considered a better communicator right now than Barack Obama, or a better networker?” said Fran Kelly, the chief executive of the advertising agency Arnold Worldwide, who estimated that an endorsement by Obama would be worth $25 million. “It couldn't have a better spokesperson.”

Mr. Shabelman put the value even higher, at $50 million or more, because the endorsement is worldwide.

“The worth to a company to have the president always talking about a Blackberry and how it absolutely is a necessity to keep in touch with reality?” he said. “Think about how far the company has come if they’re able to say, ‘The president has to have this to keep in touch.”

Stay tuned to see if our next president turns in his Blackberry. I guess we'll just have to let the White House IT team figure out a way for Obama to Facebook.

Notable Quotable: A New Beginning

"I look forward to a great future for America; a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose."

-President John F. Kennedy

Political Fatigue

Oh, Rushmore, I'm so tired. Absolutely exhausted, in fact. 24-hour cable news and talk radio have marginalized our intellect to the extent of sapping every ounce of original thought.

Everyone's an expert these days. Simply tune into your favorite left or right hacking mouthpiece, nod along in agreement and prepare to "debate" family and friends. Our mouths are moving, but the marionette in control is media conjecture, assumptions and a sickening array of hyperbole.

Civility be damned, I guess. We're all shaped by our cultural surroundings. I can spot a Hardball, Countdown, Dittohead or Factor disciple a mile away.

The absolute worse offenders are blog regurgitates, those that believe anything they read on the internet as fact, provided it tucks into their own stubborn ideology, and pass it on as wisdom through an email attachment.

It's time for the customers (all of us, myself included) of media to take accountability for how damn seriously we take political opinion from others that have no credentials beyond our own, other than the pancake of makeup they wear for the camera or their dramatically sarcastic inflections.

There is plenty else to watch on cable. I'll take an old Meredith Baxter Bernie movie on Lifetime over the garbage that Fox and MSNBC are pimpin' every night. Join me, will you?

I'll make the popcorn.

Cirque de Senate

California Senator Dianne Feinstein has echoed common sense calls for seating the next junior Senator from Illinois, Roland Burris. Majority leader Harry Reid will finally check his ego at the Senate door and remember that, as a nation of laws, there is no legal authority to bar Burris from his seat.

Illinois Governor Blago Fonzerelli played the Democrat controlled Senate like a dime store fiddle. When the Senate unanimously stated last week that any appointment the Fonz made would be denied entry to the Senate, Blago threw caution to the wind and said the hell with ya, appointing Burris to fulfill the remainder of President-elect Obama's Senate term.

Burris is a fine man and tested public servant that managed to serve scandal free in Illinois for several years. That alone should be cause for celebration.

Heck, all Burris wants is to join the same club that housed the likes of Jessie Helms, Larry Craig and Strom Thurmond. By comparison, Burris appears to be a throwback to an era where politicians were statesman.

Let Burris in, pack up the circus and get to work.

Bumpy Ride On Revolutionary Road

"And where are the windows? Where does the light shine in?...forgive me, but I haven't got the answer to that one. I'm not even sure there are any windows in this particular house. Maybe the light is going to have to come in as best it can, through whatever chinks and cracks have been left in the builder's faulty craftsmanship, and if that's the case you can be sure that nobody feels worse about it than I do...God knows there certainly ought to be a window around here somewhere, for all of us."

-Richard Yates, from the short story Builders

Ever sentimental for a raw metaphor, the late author Richard Yates chronicled the fallibility of the human experience and the resiliency of the human soul better than any other writer of his time. And so is the readers experience in Yates's novel, Revolutionary Road, a well guarded literary masterpiece that is finally reaching its long overdue mainstream recognition through the Sam Mendes (American Beauty) directed film adaptation starring Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio.

I, ever the sucker for cliches, am here to say that the book is much better than the movie. It didn't have to be though.

Mendes handled this project like a high school stage director. At times the characters seemed to be mocking themselves in a sort of, "look, I'm being ironic" kind of way. In particular, Mrs. Givings (Kathy Bates) appeared to be winking at us the entire time with her over-the-top, suggestive inflections. As for Leo and Kate, they played a great, well, Leo and Kate. Ultimately, the star power of the main characters, Frank and April Wheeler, might have had a mightier impact in the care of lesser known actors.

Famed author Richard Russo, a student of Yates at the Iowa's Writers Workshop in the mid-60's, once noted that each Yates character carried the weight of being big dreamers that consistently fail. After all, in America, the bigger you dream the harder you fail. With Yates though, the protagonists failure was universally accepted, and even expected, due to the enormity of the dream in the first place. Once at the crossroad of reality and vulnerability, the characters veneer is slowly peeled away, layer by layer, like an onion that's been idle on the kitchen counter for a week, permeating the entire house with a stench so repulsive that it seeps into the homes occupants clothing and taken out into the world to horrify the rest of us and, ultimately, they succumb to the low expectations that they had saddled themselves in the first place.

Author Robert Lacy, a friend and former student of Yates, said it best, when he referred to Yates's "seemingly congenital inability to sugarcoat". Indeed.

Revolutionary Road is bleak (insert understatement here), thought provoking and a grind to witness. The movie is mostly fodder, however only when compared to the book. Left to stand on its own without comparison to the book, Mendes posted an admirable effort. Yates though, never to be outdone long after his passing, would likely note the irony in Mendes the director, dreaming big to capture Revolutionary Road, only to fall short after he had it all in the palm of his hand. For Mendes, solace can be taken for taking on a project that may have been a little too ambitious.

So where does the light shine in? For all of us, this is daily consideration as we forge ahead, fail, succeed, celebrate and despair our collective human drama.

Don't dismiss this film outright, but rather embrace it with low expectations, the kind that Yates demanded of his characters. Then, be certain to seize the films intent more vividly in the pages of the book, Revolutionary Road.

Plenty of writers write about real life. Richard Yates wrote about life that is real, and he did it exceptionally well.

Minnesota Welcomes A New Senator

Guilt By Association In Illinois

Let's ruminate the political viability of Roland Buriss, the man that Illinois Governor Blago Fonzarelli has appointed to fulfill the remainder of President-elect Obama's U.S. Senate term.

Buriss has done nothing wrong. In fact, he enjoyed a long and squeaky clean public life in Illinois before entering his twilight years. The guy is so far removed from Blago that, by comparison, Obama would be about as tight to Blago as the Governor's "football".

Football is what Blago calls his great equalizer, a Paul Mitchell hairbrush.

Can we be intellectually honest, please? Buress is being marginalized due to an association with a corrupt governor, and it's not only unfair for Senate Democrats to deny him his legally appointed Senate seat, it also smacks of blatantly ugly hypocrisy.

Personal associations do matter in life. 52% of the electorate - myself included - decided that Barack Obama escaped close ties with a racist pastor and a loose affiliation with an admitted domestic terrorist and elected him president.

Roland Burris deserves the same benefit of the doubt.

Best Actor Of Our Time

If the craft of acting is about taking risks, there's a reason why George Clooney and Brad Pitt are nearly unwatchable. And it's the reason why Philip Seymour Hoffman is the best actor going these days.

While the predictably staid Clooney and Pitt continue to play a moderately tweaked version of themselves with their every film effort, PS Hoffman has channeled an eclectic array of characters throughout his career.

I'm geek'd to head to my neighborhood turboplex to finally see Doubt this week, where Hoffman takes on the unsavory role of Father Flynn, an alleged pedophile Catholic priest.

To really appreciate PS Hoffman though, go back to his initial foray into film with his role as the smarmy prep school adversarial brat in Scent of a Woman. Al Pacino took full-throttled "hoo-hah!" critical acclaim for his part in this Oscar darling, however it was Hoffman that turned in the most genuine performance that has stood the test of time during cable reruns.

The essence of Hoffman can be captured through his roles in Boogie Nights, Magnolia, The Savages and Capote. Heck, you can even throw in Along Came Polly for a lighter dose - and guilty pleasure - of his brilliance.

Enjoy.

As You Wish

Great call, gang. The polls have closed and the peoples voice has been heard with a loud and clear mandate. The Princess Bride is your top film pick of movies to help laugh through the recession. In fact, it was the only movie to exceed the 50% voting threshold, preferred by 51% of poll respondents.

Rushmore finished second with 23% (I admit that I voted twice for this one), with Sixteen Candles, Fargo and School of Rock coming in at 16% each. All told, five great movies to put in your NetFlix que.

President-elect Obama, please take note of a little Princess Bride wisdom.

Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Talkin' 'bout A Resolution

This year I resolve to write less and say more (I can actually hear your deep sigh of relief). That said, I imagine I'll fail miserably.

Let's put one final coat of lipstick on the pig that was 2008.

Hope, change, on the way.

Happy new year.