'Bred Crumbs

12:05 PM Warning: What I say in this Crumb may be unpopular. With everyone.

When a discussion of current affairs broke out last night during Dojo practice, I found myself in an unfamiliar and bothersome position. I was the most politically conservative person in the room.

The gist of the talk was make peace, not war. It was taken as obvious that the answer to this big-ass problem we have now is to divert the bulk of the military spending to vast humanitarian aid. Someone pointed out before I could that a massive food shipment to, say, the people of Afghanistan would face the same distribution hurdles that Ethiopian aid did, but nonetheless it was treated as gospel that gutting the armed effort and showering the people with food would end hatred of America and thus terrorism.

And my gut reaction was not Of course but How naive.

Further, there were statements about the evils committed by America without mention of the evils committed on Sept. 11. There was angst about the hate crimes being inflicted on people in this country since then -- a shop was vandalized about a block away from me the other night -- without any outrage over the gigantic hate crime committed that day. There were dire assumptions that the stripping away of our civil rights was well under way (though it wasn't said how) without recognition that our civil rights are far advanced compared to most of the rest of the world. (Maybe not compared to, I don't know, the Netherlands, but certainly compared to, oh, Afghanistan.)

Again I was amazed that the Bay Area embraces tolerance and other virtues still unfortunately castigated by many others as "liberal" while failing to realize its common views are left of the national scale. There is sometimes as much of a distortion here of the country's reality as there is in Kentucky's eerily all-white enclaves. One of the gang last night was surprised to learn that neighborhoods in Boston aren't awash in "Hate-Free Zone" signs the way ours are. I was surprised he was surprised.

And I have to remind myself that what felt last night like being frighteningly on the right was in fact being in a place I'm in all too often. The uncomfortable middle. Where no doctrine feels correct, where no extremity of opinion provides catharsis -- where no solution seems complete or even workable.

I don't know whether this middle-ground, all-around doubt is the cause or the result of my cynicism. I do know that since a certain catastrophic Tuesday, that cynicism has advanced to the degree that I don't even trust nature. As San Francisco's summer arrives on schedule, I drove to work this morning noticing how beautiful a day it is -- and immediately remembering that it was just as pretty on Sept. 11.

I'm aware of the ridiculousness of that, and I keep it in check. Meanwhile, back in the middle ...

A lot of people around me are flying American flags. A lot of people around me are flying peace flags. And I don't feel right waving either one, because each is tagged with a weight far beyond its surface meaning. Flying the stars and stripes now doesn't suggest merely that you are an American, and flying the inverted Y and circle now doesn't suggest merely that you want peace.

I won't fly the American flag because, even though the past couple of weeks has made me realize how much I appreciate my freedoms and value the American way of life (whatever that means), I see in the brandishing of that flag a dangerous jingoism and a vengeful, costly wish for war. And I won't fly the peace flag because -- clear though it should be that a retributive assault with weapons will only escalate the death and pain everywhere and relieved though I am that our leaders are showing surprising restraint so far in avoiding that -- I fear that, because whoever wiped out those thousands of lives on the East Coast was certainly fueled at least partly by fanaticism, unilateral pacifism would also cost the lives of many more Americans. Peace sounds very nice, but I just don't think it's that simple.

There's a big peace rally in Dolores Park tomorrow, and I'll probably go, if only because such a remarkable thing will be happening just a few blocks from me. But I doubt I'll stay long. I suspect that if you don't show up at the rally absolutely certain that Love Is The Answer, there'll be no room for debate.

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10:36 AM It's nice to see technology advancing where it counts: in the manufacture of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

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Robbie points out some creepy corporate weirdness: that guy who supposedly fast-fed his way to slimness (hailed with delicious and timely snarkiness on the website "Jared Fogel is the American Dream (results not typical)") is no longer named "Jared."

According to the commercials, he's now "Subway's Jared."

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09:52 AM For a while, it looked as if Enterprise would be merely mediocre and dull. Halfway into the two-hour debut, it seemed nothing about it would be worse than its Diane Warren theme song.

Then it happened -- the most gratuitous sex scene in the history of filmed things.

There was nothing to truly recommend Enterprise even up to that point. Not surprisingly, the writers/producers could not get their Trek-bound heads around the grand potential of the premise -- humankind's first venture past the solar system, its introduction into the universal community. Instead, it gave its reckless first captain -- another depiction of the dangers of nepotism, since Scott Bakula's character is supposed to be the son of some key Earth leader -- a lame excuse to launch his starship, and off we went on a muddy by-the-numbers pseudo-adventure. As in the sorry finale of Star Trek: Voyager*, the crew/actors showed no indication of the magnitude of the cosmic things happening to them. And as always on modern Trek franchises, the characters were uniformly colorless, with only an annoying trait to inform each one (the hick, the fey Brit, the plucky doctor, etc.). And then there's the token Vulcan, a collageny, tightly-clad woman in the Seven of Nine mold. She's pouty and angrily sarcastic, pretty much ignoring the supposed emotionlessness of Vulcans even as the other characters repeatedly refer to it.

And then came the gratuity.

After a planet escapade, the cowboy and the she-Spock were ushered into a blue-lit room to "decontaminate" each other. Which involved rubbing gel all over each other's taut and distinctly erect body parts.

All that was missing was a bad Casio soundtrack and someone arriving to repair the copy machine.

This went on for what seemed like hours -- it was hard to tell because I was laughing so hard. The two hard-bodied space rutters were talking to each other during their mutual full-body massage, but you could tell the dialogue was more meaningless then usual because all the while the camera was fixating on various oily blue love muscles.

It was nightmare fodder. It's on UPN again this Sunday night. You must witness it.

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Spooky -- flipping channels this morning to escape news, I landed on the Sci-Fi Channel as a tight zoom-in showed a finger pointing at Kabul on a map. As it happened, today's episode of The Time Tunnel involved the Khyber Pass, an Afghani tribal chief, and battle against Westerners. Our heroes of course win, thanks in no small part to the native "madman" who pulls a Jame Bond and tells one of the time-travelers the whole plan before not killing him.

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Here's a fun game for you. Put in their correct order the following activities that -- the above Time Tunnel anamoly aside -- constitute my new morning routine:

(A) Shave.
(B) Wake up.
(C) Turn on the TV to make sure nothing horrible has happened.
(D) Shower.
(E) Take five minutes to glean what little actual information the networks have to impart between talking heads and dire speculative reports.
(F) Eat breakfast.
(G) Make coffee.
(H) Turn to a PBS channel and entertain naughty thoughts about the Kratt brothers**.

* Perhaps the third-worst series finale ever, behind those of Twin Peaks and Seinfeld.
** The cute and forever underlit Zoboomafoo hosts, who enthuse about animals and live in a mud-floored house (with sexy results). The show makes a recurring to-do about "going to the closet," and innocent innuendo abounds. This morning's best line: after a misguided attempt to imitate head-butting bighorn sheep, one of the brothers declares, "I like pillow fights better!"
Quiz answers: B, C, E, G, D, F, H, A.

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12:50 PM What the hell are you doing here? You should be reading The Onion's amazing attack-on-America issue.

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04:27 PM It happened again today: as the launch of another sure-to-suck Star Trek series approaches, another friend expressed a fondness for Scott Bakula. The charm of the ex-Quantum Leaper eludes me. I don't hate him or anything, but to me he seems cut from the same unremarkable cloth as noted Hollywood performer William Paxton Pullman. Certainly no one to hang a series on. But if my smitten comrades are any indication, Enterprise's producers seem to have made a good move choosing him. Dare we hope that this sudden burst of skill will also extend to the writing?

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Real, joke, or both? 'Blogless Rachel passes along this job ad:

Interviews have begun for the incredibly sought-after job of assistant to the food editor of Vogue magazine, Jeffrey Steingarten. ...

Jeffrey's current assistant, Gail, has successfully finished her two-year term, and he is looking for someone to replace her. The ideal candidate should be equally effective at library research, shopping and cooking, repairing Xerox machines, speaking foreign languages, mise-en-place, writing clearly, doing errands, and eating in fabulous restaurants. The ideal candidate should be a complete omnivore, or at least be eager to become one. The ideal candidate does not, of course, exist. But Jeffrey is looking for someone who comes close and is at the beginning of her or his professional career.

Salary is negotiable, within limits. Jeffrey's assistant is paid by the hour as a Vogue freelancer, receiving, as he once did, no benefits whatsoever, but ample expenses.

Applicants should fax their resumes to Jeffrey Steingarten at 212-242-1043. Please include a paragraph about your cooking experience, domestic or professional. Please also indicate whether you are familiar with Jeffrey's book or his articles in Vogue.

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An openly gay man has been appointed U.S. ambassador to Romania, with a refreshing lack of right-wing foot-stomping.

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02:00 PM The pundits -- New York-based, of course -- have declared that, in the wake of the national crisis, irony is dead. But to paraphrase a writer colleague, yes, we got that memo, and we promptly tore it up. So, fortunately, did Ironminds, which sees the aftermath as a chance to trim some pop-culture fat. This means you, Carrot Top.

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12:34 PM Saw an episode of the not-so-classic series Space: 1999 last night. Looked as if someone watched 2001 and assumed it meant that stories about space could have random endings. What an odd, odd show -- but what a groovy theme song.

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