The Tanuki Ramble

Merry Christmas

   

I'm off to the States!  Merry Christmas everyone, stay safe,  and God bless every one, left and right!   Be back around the second week of January!

(Wood block print by Kawase Hasui)

Aural Fruitcake

This joke may have gone the way of  "groovy"and other artifacts of my generation, but I meant "fruitcake" as in an undigestible Christmas gift that you really wish you didn't get.  Well, in case you're a true blue musical masochist, or happen to be one of the ones who knew me when and want a glimpse of my current state of degeneration, then you'd better pour yourself a stiff one and click on. 

One of my students, Saki Yoshida (in the video, she's the girl wearing the tie), has her own blog, which you should check out here.  Now that's a dedicated language student, who blogs in the language she's studying!  She also captured, for better or worse, a few choice moments of our Christmas party, my school's last one. 

In one of the rare guitar-trombone duos (J.J. Johnson and Joe Pass the only other one that comes to mind), my co-culprit Mark and I torture the kids with our rendition of Pops' 'Zat You, Santa Claus?  Then Saki and Yukari Koshiba rescue the day with When Christmas Comes to Town (from Polar Express) and Santa Baby.  Go here for the vids.  I must say, the poor visual and sound qualities (I think they filmed these on a cell phone!) do wonders for my looks and playing/singing abilities, although they detract from the wonderful female vocals and trombone!

Mark and I also did something I'd patched together, a gypsy swing thing I called "Django Bells," (a minor key Jingle Bells based on Minor Swing) and I felt pretty damned proud of myself for coming up with the name.  Should have known that it was too obvious not to have been done before, and sure enough, a Nashville  gypsy-swing band called The Gypsy Hombres not only had a song by the name, but had used it as the title of their Christmas album five years ago!  You can listen to a bit of it here...although I have to say, in all humility, I like my version of Django Bells (since retitled to "Djangle Bells") better...although the Hombres' musicianship leaves me in the gypsy wagon dust.

Escapist Scapegoating

The big day is rapidly approaching, and I'll soon be crossing Santa's flight path as I jet not so far from the arctic circle on Christmas Eve.  If somebody told me back when I was a kid that I'd be sharing the troposphere with the jolly old elf on December 24th, I would have thought it was the coolest thing in the world.  Now, all I can do is grumble that my travel agent couldn't get me a flight a day or two earlier...and imagine the worst: delayed take-offs, blizzards, crowded terminals, battles over the right to the armrest with my next-seat neighbor... oy vey.

Mary Eberstadt, whom I've blogged about before, notes that I'm not alone in dwelling on my fears in this typically thorough piece about scapegoats.   Why on earth are some folks predicting doom and gloom at the hands of Mexican immigrants, Christianists, and George W. Bush?  Yes, I can see the dangers of an open-door immigration policy, believe in the separation of church and state, and find some of Bush's policies worse than ill-advised.  But as Eberstadt points out, the threat from these phenomena is nothing as compared to that of radical Islam.

Now before anybody starts throwing the H(ilter) word around, I should just type up a paragraph-long disclaimer about my conviction that the majority of Muslims are as reasonable and assimilable as the adherents of any other religion.   Unfortunately, you don't have to look too hard to find some real scary talk--and scary actions--from other Muslim  groups.  And I'm talking this century, mind you...

I identify as a Catholic, a poor one, alas, but I would be the first one to condemn as unchristian any Catholic group hacking off heads in the name of the Pope, St Peter, or Jesus Christ himself.  I'd like to think that most Muslims would do the equivalent.  Furthermore, these days, in spite of the greatest provocations against the feelings of Christians, it's extremely rare to hear about any Baptist suicide bombers, for example.  I have no idea why some believe practicing and and preaching Christians pose such as dire threat to American democracy, while on the other hand, some Muslim groups, whose rhetoric is like a cross between Pat Buchanan and Genghis Khan, are sacrosanct. 

Even judging by personal experience, I've met some Muslims whose wonderful modesty, decency, and piety go unjudged by other, more "free-thinking" friends, who would brand a Christian who forsakes alcohol or revealing clothes a "religious nut"...or worse.   Something weird is going on here, and it smells like denial.

One way to begin is to survey the main intellectual and political currents since 9/11, which investigation yields a fact both unexpected and significant. As it turns out, a flight from political reality has indeed been underway on both the left and the right in America in the years since that event, as well as accelerating into more advanced forms in much of Europe. To switch metaphors, in the wake of the 9/11 attack -- and later, related Islamist attacks on civilians, most notably in Spain and Britain -- many Western observers have responded not by absorbing what we now know to be true about our world, but rather by transposing those brute facts into other, safer, more familiar keys.

I'm not sure if I would, like Eberstadt, lump Buchanan-style demonizing of Mexicans with European anti-Americanism as different facets of scapegoating.  To me, the common denominator, if there is any, is that Islam seems more of a distant, exotic menace.  Too often, fighting with one's neighbors and peers seems more tempting than admitting a greater common threat--and  deferring all the insecurities and grudges that are much dearer to the heart.

I'm afraid that I'm not exaggerating much when I suppose that there are  some folks who would rather be beheaded by a jihadi than have a picture of their smilin' face next to that of George Bush at an Evangelical luncheon on the cover of the Washington Post.  So why are such people similar to whitebread Jesus-fearing minute men?  I think that Eberstadt nails it when she posits they both need a "scapegoat,"  which she defines in these terms:

One result of that transposition, the record shows, has been the creation of a world of political scapegoats for the unease and anxiety that are the unwanted companions now of Westerners everywhere. These scapegoats, perverse non-explanations for what really ails us, can be identified by features common to the breed everywhere: The passion invested in them by their antagonists is disproportionate to any real problem the scapegoat represents; they are invoked to explain more about the world than they do; they capture some part of the truth, i.e., have a degree of verisimilitude without which a scapegoat cannot exist; and -- also like scapegoats everywhere -- they pose no threat of retaliation for their overburdening. They are scapegoats in the classic sense: metaphorical beasts seen not in their own right and reality, but rather as communal vessels carrying a political and psychological weight beyond themselves for reasons of communal relief.

By all means, read the whole thing, if you haven't already.  Hat tip to the Instapundit, hate to admit it.  The guy blogs more in a day than I do in a month.

History by Dummies

One collection of stones on top of others is a pile of rubble, while another can amount to the Great Wall of China or Cathedral of Chartres.  Likewise, some historians obscure history by cynically throwing together historical vignettes and opinions while others reveal it by presenting the fruits of earnest research.

Oliver Kamm picks through the former and finds nothing but the collapsed remains of a facade. 

In other words, what happens when you seek the help of Howard Zinn to back up an assertion that the horrible carnage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were practically without military value in terms of the Pacific War (and not the cold war)?  (An even bigger rubble heap is the pointless collection of human misery that Zinn amassed - and was lucky enough to find a mass market for - in The People's History of the United States.) 

Kamm is kinder than I would be in stating that  "I am certain Zinn is an honest historian, but equally certainly – on the subject on which Media Lens has sought his advice, at least – he is an incompetent and ill read one."

Pinochet as political litmus

I'm confused about this whole Pinochet thing.  There seems to be no question that he was a vicious bastard, but was he, on the realpolitikal whole, better for Chile than the alternative?  Christopher Hitchens, brilliant writer but erratic thinker that he is, has no doubts, as he writes in a Slate article:

His overthrow of civilian democracy, in the South American country in which it was most historically implanted, will always be remembered as one of the more shocking crimes of the 20^th century.

Waiiiit a minute, Chris...that's a pretty tall order.  In a  century rife with genocides, wars causing the deaths of millions, amoral megalomaniacs like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the Kims of North Korea playing god with the fates of their nations, who's Pinochet to rate so highly? 

On the other hand, James Whelan thinks that in the final tally, Pinochet did more good than evil.

Six months before Salvador Allende was overthrown on September 11, 1973, Volodia Teitelboim told an interviewer for the Communist Party daily newspaper in Santiago that if civil war were to come, then 500,000 to one million Chileans would die.

Teitelboim knew whereof he spoke. He was then the No.2 man in the Chilean Communist Party, the third largest in the Western world (after France and Italy), and a senior partner in Allende's Marxist-Leninist government.

The Communists were then planning to seize total power in the country, though they were not in as much a hurry to do so as the Socialists, the principal party in the Allende coalition and one passionately committed to revolutionary violence. So the Communists and the Socialists shared the same goal - ending once and for all the bourgeois democratic state - but differed on methods. Allende, a Socialist, was somewhere in between, wavering between his own bourgeois tastes and the totalitarian temptation.

Allende had come to power in September 1970 with not enough votes to win outright election - only 40,000 more than the conservative runner-up - and so had to be voted in by Congress in exchange for a statute of guarantees drawn up by the Christian Democrat majority. A few months later, Allende told fellow leftist Regis Debray that he never actually intended to abide by those commitments but signed just to finally become president, having failed in three previous runs for the office.

In those first 2 1/2 years, Allende had plunged Chile into hell-on-earth chaos. Former president Eduardo Frei Montalva - the man more responsible than any other for Allende's ascent to the presidency - called it "this carnival of madness". Violence, strikes, shortages and lawlessness stalked the land.

The Supreme Court declared Allende outside the law. So, too, did the Chamber of Deputies in August 1973 in a resolution that all but demanded the armed forces seize power to rescue Chile from the inferno.

So, when the armed forces finally did act on September 3, they did so in response to the clamour of an overwhelming majority of Chileans and not as the jackboot power bandits of typical Latin American revolts. News stories about what happened on that Tuesday in September routinely speak of the bloody coup. It was no such thing. About 200 people died in the shooting on September 13 and a little more than 1000 in the first three months of virtual civil war.

But not the civil war the Communists were perfectly prepared to accept as their price for power: 500,000 to one million. Indeed, in all 17 years of military rule, the total of dead and missing - according to the only serious study - was 2279. The Chilean Revolution thus was, by far, the least bloody of any significant Latin American revolution of the 20th century, though you would never guess that from reading or watching news reports.

The Chilean revolution was different from other Latin American revolutions in another respect: it left the country far better off than the one it found. Indeed, Chile is the envy of the entire region for its spectacular economic progress and for the solidity of the institutions the military government created. Consider: Inflation was slashed from 600per cent to 6per cent; infant mortality rates came down from 66per 1000 to 13 per 1000; urban access to drinking water increased from 67 per cent to 98per cent; and living standards more than doubled.

Among others featured in an NRO Symposium on Pinochet (overwhelmingly favorable), my ideel Theodore Dalrymple, here under his real name of Anthony Daniels, uses his skills as a prison shrink to get to the real reasons that the strong man of Chile is so vilified.

The reason Augusto Pinochet was universally hated by leftists and many academics worldwide was not because he was so brutal or killed so many people (he hardly figured among the 20th century’s most prolific political killers, admittedly a difficult company to get into) but because he was so successful. There is no doubt that there was indeed much brutality and hardship in the wake of his coup, but unlike the much less reviled military dictators of Argentina and Uruguay, he actually achieved something worthwhile, namely the prosperity of his country.

Worse still, he did so by adopting the very reverse of the policies for so long advocated by third worldists and academic development economists, who were certain that the cause of the third world’s poverty was the first world’s wealth, and that everything would have to change before anything could change. His demonstration that a country could draw itself up by its bootstraps, by embracing trade, was most unwelcome. It forced a change of world outlook, never welcome to those who live by ideas.

That a hick general from a humble background should so obviously have done much more for his country than a suave, educated, aristocratic Marxist was a terrible blow to the self-esteem of the Left in every Western country. As for holding a referendum on own his rule and abiding by the result when he lost, that was quite unforgivable, setting as it did a shocking precedent for left-wing dictators.

I am pleased to admit that I found Daniel's comment after I had already commented on Hitchen's point of view. 

It seems that for both left and right, Pinochet  is an embarrassment.  For the left, his example shows that making omelets "for the good of the people" is a lie.  Pinochet actually did what Lenin and Stalin were claiming to do, as the USSR fell farther and farther behind the west.  To raise the standards of living and create a better society, Pinochet was more than willing to be brutal to some.  On the other hand, for those who champion market reforms and criticize socialists who overlook Castro's police state, Pinochet proves that Chicago Boys style economics doesn't always go together with democracy and rule of law.  The "Yes, they have little freedom, but look at the infant mortality rate" argument can cut both ways.

Niall Ferguson reminds us not to forget global politics.  In a world where there are going to be sonsofbitches no matter what we do, we might as well make sure that a few of them are ours.  Ferguson marks the passing of another 70s-80s icon, Reagan's ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, to make this point.

Kirkpatrick did not claim that these men were good. She simply argued that they were preferable to the alternatives, just as Chiang Kai-shek had been preferable to Mao in China, and Fulgencio Batista had been preferable to Fidel Castro in Cuba. South Korea was no democracy in the 1970s, but it was better than North Korea. Taiwan was still a one-party state, but one that was much preferable to the People's Republic of China, to say nothing of Pol Pot's Cambodia.

The reason our sonsofbitches were better than theirs, she argued, was that while conservative dictatorships undeniably preserved "existing allocations of wealth, power [and] status", they also "worshipped traditional gods and observed traditional taboos". Communist regimes, by contrast, tended to "create refugees by the millions" because their ideological demands "so violated internalised values and habits that inhabitants fled".

Moreover, conservative dictatorships were much more likely than Communist ones to make the transition to democracy, because they permitted "limited contestation and participation".

Very Burkean, that part about traditional gods and taboos. 

Pinochet also brings to light another uncomfortable point for both left and right.  If we say that his strong arm tactics were necessary to prevent chaos and the deaths of far more people, then can we conclude that Saddam Hussein, a sonofabitch's sunofabitch, should have been left in power?  I would say no on several counts.  First, he wasn't our SOB--at least for the last fifteen years or so.  Second, Pinochet's Chile was more prosperous than oil-rich Iraq.  Third, millions of lives were lost anyways in his futile war against Iran. 

But how strange it is to encounter the argument that Iraq was better off with Saddam in the same political neighborhood as that which holds the Pinochet condemners.  Give Hitchens credit in that he is consistent in his argument against both.

Oy to the world, et. al.

Times are tough here in Tanuki-land.  The high school connected to our outfit, where I teach one class in literature, has just announced that it will suspend recruitment and close out within a year or two. 

This is, of course, the inevitable result of countless management oversights, blunders, and incredible indifference to its main product: education.  Our outfit is ultimately run by an accountant.  It's kind of like finding yourself signed onto a cross-country bus tour planned and organized by a bus mechanic.   "OK folks, we're going to spend the first two thirds of our trip touring the truck stops of Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas as the flat terrain will be best for the shocks.  And heck, we won't even have to leave the interstates!"

I find it difficult to suppress the nasty wish that those whose are responsible for this pass we've come to will experience at least a part of the confusion and inconvenience (to put it mildly) that the students and staff have gone through.  Though to be honest, the clueless folks concerned may have been so removed from the actual workings of our school that they might never fathom even a tenth of the damage they have done.  Others closer to the action, I'm sure, will have their share of sleepless nights. 

As for the teachers, well, we're in it for the kids, and have to do our best even though it'll mean squat for us careerwise--and it galls  to put in free overtime for a racket that's given you the shaft.  In most jobs, I suppose, the drones treated this shabbily would drag their feet and do the minimum while they wait to be escorted to the front door.  In the meantime, they'd take the sick days.  Shuffle and reshuffle papers and look busy.  But such is not the path of virtue.   

And yet, in spite of it all, 'tis the season...isn't it?   I've been trying to keep my mood up by listening to some good  Christmas music.  Now, far be it from me to shill for anybody, but I've downloaded some true classics from Emusic.  I'm not getting a dime for them, by the way, and this is a purely unsolicited endorsement.  But I hope you'll check out some of these albums and bands.  You can listen to 30 seconds of the cuts for free, and I think you still get 50 free tracks if you sign on.  Or go out and buy the albums individually.  Either way, I'm sure they'll become a part of your Christmases for years to come. 

First stop is Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Anybody (of my approximate generation, at least) will instantly recognize the first few bars of Linus and Lucy, a piano driven, feel-good gem of a swingin' rock piece.  But the rest of the cuts, some featuring a deliberately selected group of amateur kid singers, is so wistful and sweet, the standards so familiar yet so fresh, and the new cuts so charming,  that you'll find that the album will satisfy a wide range of your Christmas moods.   These days, I find it nearly as essential as my morning pot of earl grey to get me going.

Disclaimer:  I am jug band fan.  My first experience of jug band music was with an odd group of guys called the Provincetown Jug Band that played the Boston Irish bars when the Cape was too chilly to find anybody to play to there.  That led me to check out classics like The Memphis Jug Band, newer incarnations like Jim Kweskin, and great compilations like Ruckus Juice and Chitlins.  I guess the  band I played with back at Chuck Wagon Honky Tonk Saloon in Fukushima was a jug band in most ways.  Ah yes, jug music has changed my life.

So it may be an acquired taste, but if you like good time music played loose but well, the vocals just off key enough to sound good, then you'll love the Christmas Jug Band.  Yeah, you'll do the band more good if you order their CDs directly from them, but you can get them for a song, ahem, at emusic.  Band members included grizzled old pros like Dan Hicks, ex Commander Cody members, and Van Morrison and Thunderbirds musicians. 

The Christmas Jug Band has some great originals (these from Rhythm on the Roof) like the polka-flavored stomper "Christmas Time Is Here" (not to be confused with an identically-titled tune from the Guaraldi album) and the homeless Christmas anthem "If I Don't Have a Chimney."  Oh, don't forget the rap song "Santa Don't Do It (Don't Shave on Christmas Eve):"  "Now you may know me as a jolly little FEL-low/But cut the cracks about the belly full of JELL-o." 

I'm also partial to their reworkings of jazz standards as Christmas songs, like "I Know What I'm Getting" ( "Exactly Like You"), "Twas The Night Before Christmas" ("Ain't Misbehavin"), "I'm Your Santa As Seen on TV" ("Sheik of Araby"), etc.   There are some songs you may want to play after you tuck the kids in for their long winter's nap, such as Uncorked's  "Santa Lost A Ho:"

But there ain't no joy cause just one toy is missin' from Santa's shack                             Cause he's never had a doll go AWOL once he got her in the sack.

The Christmas Jug Band plays the spectrum, from standards to blues to rap to rock, but if you want to swing hard for Christmas, The BSO is the way to go.  No, not the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Brian Setzer Orchestra.  He takes the Stray Cats' Rockabilly back to it's swing/boogie woogie roots and melds the power of an amped-up Gretsch to a full jazz band.  They make Christmas swing like mad.  There are two albums available, Boogie Woogie Christmas and Dig That Crazy Santa Claus.   I hope more are coming.

Now, I like Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby Christmas stuff as much as any body else, but I also enjoy Christmas tunes with a little edge, preferably as sharp as the shards of a shattered ornament.  The Klezmonauts have this edge, ecumenically putting chestnuts like "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen" and "Joy to the World" to a Klezmer beat.  And they don't stop there.  It's a rare cut on their album that doesn't shift genres at least two or three times; you'll hear strains of the Ventures, Ennio Morricone, James Brown, salsa, blues, and rock.  By all means, listen to Oy to the World and celebrate the birth of the world's most famous Jew.

Time to slow things down?  One of my students eats lunch in my office, and thought the Klezmonauts and Brian Setzer were"Kurisumasu rashikunai (not Christmassy).  He gave me no complaints with this album by guitar master Charlie Byrd.  Byrd's most famous for his bossa nova work with Stan Getz, but has a nice touch with the standards, as a listen to these albums will prove.  Being an amateurish guitar player myself (I won't dignify myself with the moniker of amateur), I care more about music than musicianship, and Byrd's the kind of musician that seems bent on crafting beautiful music rather than displaying his chops or carving out a place for himself among the innovators.  God save us from those who would save us from our own better judgment, music-wise.

Oh yes, there are more albums, like the blues-soul compilation "Merry Christmas, Baby;" my favorite active band, the Asylum Street Spankers' offering "A Christmas Spanking" (featuring a hauntingly beautiful "Silent Night" played on the saw!), the lounge lizard's dream, "Silent Nightclub," (featuring "Christmas in Las Vegas"), etc.  Check out this emusic member's list, which he calls "Christmas music which sucks slightly less than usual."

Bullshit.  S/he loves it as much as I do.  All year I gaze longingly at my Christmas music CD folder, and am in my glory when the Macy's parade finally gives us the OK to stark cranking the Christmas tunes.   

The bleak (for some) facts

Why should it be such a surprise that it's the church-going , family-oriented folk who donate more money, and not the blue-staters known for their tendency to lecture conservatives for being stingy and unfeeling to the unfortunate?

This has been out for a while now (and I did link to this story about a week back), but as I reread Bleak House, I can't help but be struck by how aptly Dickens pegged so many types of folks whom we still bump into today. 

Apropos of Mrs. Jellyby, whose children and husband have to fend for themselves while she dashes off letter after letter for her schemes to aid the poor in Boorioboola-Gha; Harold Skimpole, who condescends to let others support him on the assumption that they should be grateful for the chance to bask in their own charity; and Mrs. Pardiggle (a rival of Jellyby), who mandates that her youngsters give up their pennies to various charities; we have this:

We observed that the wind always changed when Mrs Pardiggle became the subject of conversation: and that it invariably interrupted  Mr. Jarndyce, and prevented him going any farther, when he remarked that there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.

The Japanese are crazy

I didn't say it. 

"The Japanese are crazy," or JAC, is the name of a website devoted to presenting tidbits from Japanese TV, some charming, some alarming, and others downright weird.  I mean, what to make of Hard Gay?  In Japan, where one hears hardly a whisper about same sex marriage, who would have thought that the biggest TV celebrity would be a buff ex-wrestler dressed up in leather hotpants and a pelvis in perpetual bimbo yusuri." (Bimbo yusuri is the Japanese term for...what the hell do we call it in English, when you jiggle your leg up and down as part of a nervous habit...just 'jiggling your leg'?).  Anyways, he's the guy you'll see when the current JAC video starts playing automatically.    Here, he's contrasted with the "Yong-sama", the slightly yesterday Korean actor who specializes in sentimental roles about enduring love.

The selections have been devastated by the recent YouTube crackdown on unauthorized use of Japanese TV, so you might draw some blanks.

I liked this one, in which they get a young  chimpanzee to walk five bulldogs several blocks to a cake store, where he's been instructed to pay for and pick up his own birthday cake, and then head back.   Be sure to click on parts II and III.  It should be pretty clear what's going on even if you haven't a lick of Japanese, so enjoy.

This one is good too, featuring a burriko, or an adult woman who acts like a little girl, who goes to the zoo.  I've seen a longer version, in which she begins by asking stupid questions about the animals, then tries to get the attention of a polar bear, who seems to have no interest in her charms,  It's only when she gets the idea of putting on a cute baby seal hat that things get interesting.  The order is scrabmeld in the version they have here, but you'll get the idea.

Parton's Sweet Sorrow

Congratulations to the winners of the "identify the source of the quote" contest.  Yes, it is indeed that buxom warbler of bittersweet ballads, Dolly Parton.  The song is quoted in this article, and the lines posted a few days ago are right at the bottom.  It just seemed so evocative, the rhyme so distinctly Appalachian, so auto-biographical, that it called out for a contest.

However, there seems to be a bit of a scandal.  I will have to consult with Tanuki Ramble's legal department about the legitimacy of consulting google to find the answer, as one contestant has admitted to doing and accused another (all right, the other) of doing as well. 

I'd hoped that the title of the post, "Heck, the Halls," would have been the clincher.  Solving it would include the same type of lexical sleuthery as needed to crack the "filthiest joke every broadcast on network TV" (read the whole thing, but scroll down about half way to get to the Sneedy part).

No disrespect to Dolly intended, though.  The woman is an amazing performer and apparently a genuinely decent person, extremely rare among the "amazing performer" set. 

Heck, the Halls!

Identify the following quote and win 10 free comments to my comments box!   Who sang and said,

'From grindstone to rhinestone I carry my pail, 'cause you can't drink the water if you don't dig the well.' That's kind of like how I feel.''

Clues: it's an American woman, and the terminal rhyme might provide more information about geography.