OUR EVENING OF JUBILEE

There are few times in life when the emotions of joy, relief, and the feeling of justification converge. When they all hit at the same time, tears and smiles spring forth. That's an almost clinical description of what happened in my living room, in the homes of friends, across the country and around the world, November 4, 2008. It's as if America, truly as a people, made collective positive movement--out of the darkness of these last eight years and into, at the very least, a glimmer of light.

There's no need for tired ideology, just truth: for the first time in a long time, the bad guys lost. The forces of fear, the punitive control freaks, the unenlightened and the dogmatic lost their grip on our country's destiny. The new President-Elect seeks to govern not by getting even with those who hijacked power in 2000, but by doing what's right for the country on a whole, and not just the richest or the most fanatic.

A s he said in accepting his landslide victory (364 Electoral votes...the most for a Democrat since Clinton in 1996), Barack Obama said it won't be easy. He told the truth. The "haters" in this country (our domestic version of "evil-doers") abound...and the ideological wack-jobs of the right still command angry hordes of viewers (via Fox), and radio listeners (who accept the vomitous rantings of Rush Limbaugh as gospel). He'll be attacked daily, but this guy has a tough skin, and not only is he book-smart...he's a brilliant tactical politician. What mistakes Obama will make, he'll study and not repeat.

Should he fail, at least he will have come into this with good intent. I think his opponent simply wanted to live out a life-long dream. And the less said about "Peggy Hill," the better. There's a passage from Dickens' A Christmas Carol, in which the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge two emaciated, disheveled children.

"The boy is ignorance, and the girl is want. Fear them both, but above all fear this boy," he tells the old miser.

On the Republican ticket of 2008, Dickens' warning rang true. In the case of real life, the male was want, and the female was ignorance. The Governor of Alaska dissembled and obfuscated every day of her two months as a character in this play. The G.O.P. should be ashamed (and some are) that a person so woefully unqualified was put in place to perhaps assume the Presidency. Holding power at any cost, in this case by manipulating its base with a glib, physically attractive person, does not constitute doing right by the country.

I apologize to Mike Judge and his character, Peggy Hill, for the comparison. Peggy is big-hearted and means well.


TURNING TO SPORTS, IT'S MANNY MANIA

In Los Angeles, for two months, we saw one man put a team on his back as if he were performing one of the 13 Tasks of Hercules. And if the Phillies hadn't been so damned good, Manny Ramirez would have lead the Dodgers to the World Series.

They got as far as game five of the N.L. Championship Series. For some of us, it wasn't enough, but reality demanded that was as far as they'd go. Getting to watch Manny Ramirez turn Dodger Stadium into a Fantasyland, which it hadn't been for years and years, was worth it. He'll probably not be back next season. The Dodgers may well pick up where they were in July, battling to stay at .500. But for a short, passionate time, we got to relive what it was like when the Dodgers ruled L.A.

Had the Dodgers won, at least baseball fans would have had a glimpse of what the World Series used to be, played in sunshine and shadows, and the relatively warm temperatures of early Indian Summer. Instead, we were treated to watching freezing fans in Philadelphia--alliteration, I know, but true. The length of the play-offs, the dominance of east coast teams, and the insistence of Fox that the games be played at night have all diminished the World Series as national spectacle.

Maybe someday, someone can figure out a way to save the Series from the rain and the frosty, late October temps of the Northeast without further damaging this treasured rite of Fall. Until then, I recommend a book of photos by Neil Leifer. On its cover are Jim Gilliam, Don Drysdale and John Roseboro, embracing as they leave the field at Dodger Stadium under sparkling blue skies, having vanquished the Yankees in Game Three of the 1963 World Series. We'll never see World Series play in the sunshine, again, but this vivid color photo (as is the case with many others in the book) brilliantly displays what once was...and what should be, again.


THE LLOYD THAXTON HOP

Those friends and family members who've kept up with this sporadic blog over the last year, may have noticed I've changed the layout. The original white letters on blue background was the same used by the great Lloyd Thaxton, who also blogged at this site. I chose the same layout as a tribute. My brothers watched Lloyd Thaxton's KCOP-TV Channel 13 show EVERY DAY when I was very young. I remember seeing Lloyd pretending to play a trumpet to (what I later learned was) Herb Alpert's "The Lonely Bull." He did something goofy each afternoon that made you laugh. More importantly, for teens like my brothers, he played the hits, showed the kids dancing, and brought on the likes of The Temptations, Bobby Vee, The Shangri-Las, and all the top groups of the '60's. Lloyd was a gifted, good-humored man, who passed away a short time ago

I believe his writings are still posted here, at http://www.lloydthaxton.blogspot.com/. Read them, if you can. He would have been ecstatic about November 4th, too.