American Taboo - Will there Ever Be Justice for Deborah Gardner?

I was interested to read this article about the bill sent to the President to expand AmeriCorps. It's certainly not a bad thing to encourage and incentivize national and community service (particularly now when we are living in Narcissist Nation -- two atomic middle fingers up to all you Ayn Rand-worshipping motherfuckers, by the way), but I was drawn immediately to the story because lately I've had the Peace Corps on my mind.

I spent the weekend reading this book about a Peace Corps Volunteer named Deborah Ann Gardner who in 1976 was murdered in Tonga by another Peace Corps Volunteer, Dennis Priven. Since I read the book initially (last year), I haven't been able to get Deb Gardner, nor her killer, out of my mind).

Deb Gardner was called "the most beautiful girl in the Peace Corps," and was pursued by many of the men she met while doing her service in Tonga. One of these men was Dennis Priven, a genius mathemetician and introvert, whose advances she gently rebuffed, telling him she only wanted to have a friendship with him. Enraged by this rejection, Priven decided "if I can't have her, no one will." One night, after a party on the island, he went to her hut with those classic tools of seduction, a 6-inch knife, a length of pipe, syringes, and a jar of cyanide.

A neighbor boy, who heard Deb's screams as Dennis Priven was stabbing her 22 times and was running to assist her, witnessed Dennis Priven open the door of her hut and try to drag her out. Realizing he had been spotted, Priven dropped her face down on the ground, jumped on his bike, and rode away, leaving her to die.

Deb's neighbors loaded the expiring girl into the bed of their truck and rushed her to the hospital. On the way, they asked her, "Who did this to you?" and she responded, "Dennis."

*********

So here you have your basic open-and-shut murder case, right? Well, actually, no. As I read the book, what I found most disturbing is how the US Government and the Peace Corps closed ranks around Dennis Priven, protecting him and basically overlooking the fact that at his hands, a girl was dead.

Dennis Priven, a brilliant sociopath, completely manipulated the Peace Corps country director, the Tongan government, the US Government, and even the other volunteers who thought of him as a friend. He told his friends who visited at the Tonga jail before the trial enough about the night of October 14, 1976, that I think they could be considered accessories after the fact. A Tongan jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity (a verdict that if you read the book you learn he completely manipulated -- he essentially counted the cards of the Tongan criminal justice system), and three months after he murdered Deb Gardner, Dennis Priven walked off a plane in the United States, collected his last Peace Corps paycheck, and walked away a free man. He then returned to his parents' Brooklyn home, got a job WITH THE GOVERNMENT, retired a few years ago, and still lives there, as far as anyone knows.

Guiltiest of all, I believe, is Mary George, the PC country director, who was more concerned with protecting the image of the Peace Corps than finding justice for Deb Gardner. Protect the Peace Corps at any cost, is how she approached the case. Mary George, may your soul burn in hell for eternity for this. Deborah Gardner's blood is forever on Mary George's hands, too, not just Dennis Priven's.

I remain flabbergasted by this case. It's a case of poisonous groupthink gone murderously, tragically wrong. A murderer, whom everyone knew to be a murderer, walked free and lived his life. How could the US Government let this happen and why can no one do anything to bring justice on this small and evil man Dennis Priven?

I have to wonder if Dennis Priven's neighbors and co-workers knew they were living and working next to a cold-blooded murderer? Did his ex-wife know that he was a murderer when she married him or did she divorce him when she found out? I have to wonder if this sociopath has killed again (NYPD -- any unsolved murders on the books? Check out Dennis Priven, or just frickin' bring him in on ALL of them, can't you? Just to harass him for the hell of it?). Don't ask me why this is so haunting to me -- it just is.

What do we need to do to get some sort of justice for Deb Gardner?

Sham-Ho!

So Vince the ShamWOW! guy got busted for beating up a hooker.

Why am I completely, totally, massively unsurprised by this? Doesn't old Vince just look like the kind of guy who needs to pay for sex?

(unzipping pants) "Now pay attention, 'cause we haven't got all day here. You gettin' this, camera guy?"

Dear Bobby Jindal: Do You Feel Like a World-Class Idiot Yet?

So Bobby, when you mocked the Volcano Monitoring line item in the President's stimulus plan, were you also waving off funds for hurricane warning systems and levee building? Oh wait, that's right, you were turning down the stim! So mock on, Governor, mock on, oh great hope of the Republican (and Democratic) Party!

See, I'll bet that line item was included based on recommendations from groups like the USGS and NOAA. You know, scientists. Guys who do things like monitor plate movement, earth core temperatures, and things that may enable predictions of earthquakes, volcano eruptions, and the like. I know you guys like to do things based on the science of making shit up -- I mean, your guys are the ones who watched a video of a plugged-in eggplant and determined that she could recover, and deemed clusters of cells stored in goo "snowflake babies," and you yourself banished Satan from a fellow classmate's body, so who am I to question your scientific credentials?

At any rate, despite your disparagement of the Volcano Monitoring systems, the Ring of Fire appears to be showing some pretty serious activity lately.

That underwater volcano that erupted last week in the South Pacific actually created a new island. Don't pretend you didn't see the youtube video, because even if you aren't a science nerd, it's really, really cool.

Then a few days later, Mt. Redoubt in Alaska erupted FIVE TIMES over one night. Ahem.

Today, an earthquake of 4.3 magnitude hit outside of San Jose -- feel free to keep referring back to that Ring of Fire map.

And lastly, today it was reported that TWO volcanoes may erupt in eastern Congo, which isn't actually part of the Ring of Fire, but still is indicative of some increased tectonic activity. (Remember that big wave that wiped out Southeast Asia on Christmas a few years ago? Earthquake.)

So, geologically speaking, things look like they are getting pretty interesting around the globe. And I can't help feeling a little smug that Bobby Jindal is getting some sort of tectonic smackdown. I really just wanted to talk about volcanoes and earthquakes, because I think they're pretty cool.

But one last thing. I think the WWE should name one of their pay-per-view specials "Tectonic Smackdown."

Update 3/31: From McClatchy today. Murkowski (R-AK) gets it.

Incident at the Laundromat

Apparently no good vacation day goes unpunished.

I took a couple of days off to use up some earned time before it expired, so today was able to run some errands without cramming them into those after-work hours or running around like a crazy person on Saturday and Sunday. You know, going to the bank to get my rent check, stopping in at the gym to update my card on file from WaMu to Chase so they can continue to receive my monthly donation...

I took a couple of loads of sheets and towels to the laundromat, too, since I knew it wouldn't be crowded at 11:30 on a Monday morning. Washed without incident, plopped everything into a couple of dryers, and ran over to the local 99-cent "Department Store" to see what fell off the truck this week. (Hmm, 100-packs of Melitta #4 filters for $3.99? I ran out of coffee filters this morning! Sold! Bars of Pears Glycerine soap for 99 cents? Sure! I carried around the $4 bright chrome silverware drainer, $8 curtain panels, and large bottle of $3 Johnson's Baby Lotion for a while before putting them all back. I'm getting a little better at that impulse shopping thing.)

I got back to the laundromat with a few minutes left on one of my dryers, and I opened it to see if my towels were dry. Well, they were dry, but with the dryer door wide open, the dryer continued to turn. Strange.

Suddenly (perhaps fed by the oxygen I let into the dryer by opening the door) my towels burst into flames! With the dryer still turning! So I'm looking into an industrial-sized cauldron of whirling flames, at which point, I slammed the dryer door, turned to the laundromat lady and said, "Ummm...I think we have a fire here." She toddled over and looked through the glass, but I guess the combination of me closing the dryer door (cutting off excess oxygen) and the tumbling, no flames were to be seen. She opened the dryer and pulled out all of my towels and sheets, which didn't have any obvious signs of having been on fire, and only the usual commercial dryer slightly crispy hot smell.

"I swear I'm not crazy," I said, as she gave me that look and went back to folding someone else's clothes. "Look!" I held up my red Ralph Lauren towel which, if you looked really closely at it, showed some evidence of scorching and showed it to the girl at the next dryer. All of my towels from that load do have a sort of singed look.

"You were remarkably calm about that," was all she said, and went back to unloading. You have to love New Yorkers who have seen it all.

I finished shaking and folding everything and went home, but the entire time those bags of laundry have been sitting in the corner, I've been giving them the hairy eyeball, waiting for them to spontaneously combust, as if some memory of flames might cause them to erupt again.

I figure it's only a matter of time before I hear sirens on Bushwick Avenue, look out my kitchen window, and see the Laundromat building going up in flames. Either that, or by opening the dryer door before the cycle was finished, I merely unleashed some demon from hell that didn't want my soul, but only wanted to consume my linens.

I know I just expended a whole lot of words to talk about a ridiculous 45-second situation at the neighborhood laundromat, but honestly -- What the Fuck?

Stayin' Inside When it's Nice Outside

It was the first nice day of 2007 -- the first truly spring-like day. Sunny and 75 degrees. One of those days when everyone in New York City walks around with big, druggy-looking smiles on their faces.

I was looking for a job at the time, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. On this April day, I decided to table the job search around lunchtime and go to the movies. (Terrence Howard in a Speedo. Worth an afternoon indoors, I'd say)

When I told a friend that I had spent the afternoon in a movie theater, he scolded me, predictably. "It's the nicest day of the year! And you went to the MOVIES?" I just shrugged. It's not like the first nice day of the year is going to be the LAST nice day of the year.

And I had to think: "Hello, Kettle? This is Pot. You're BLACK!" This is someone whom I have never successfully crowbarred out of his neighborhood to come to Governor's Island with me one single time.

Governor's Island is a tiny little spot in New York Harbor that was closed to the public until just a couple of years ago. It's only open for a few months of the year, and only on weekends.

I'm always surprised at how uncrowded it is. Maybe New Yorkers just don't have much use for a National Park (no alcohol allowed and all that)... But really, it's 800 yards from lower Manhattan, the ferry is free, and it's got the best view of the Statue of Liberty anywhere -- there's really no excuse not to go. I've spent many a placid Sunday afternoon sprawled in the grass under a tree, with a book, a sandwich, and a bottle of Gatorade. Sundays are better, as there is usually a concert on Saturday. There are no crowds, no people with loud radios, no loud ghetto-girls talking and cursing in their loud ghetto-girl voices, no screaming children (can you imagine taking one of today's video-gamed, sensory-overloaded kids to a Revolutionary War site that offers nothing but its own history?), no food sold on the island outside of the Hot Dog man at the ferry terminal. Cell service is spotty at best on the island (or was when I was last there)

There is always a nap -- once, so deep and peaceful I had to run for the last ferry of the day, though it looks like they've extended closing time from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm, so I doubt I'll come that close to being stranded again.

I take it back -- I DO understand why New Yorkers don't flock there. See, when New Yorkers leave the house on the weekends, they do so with the air that they have to be doing something. Unless they are getting onto a plane or train to some exotic destination (which may be no more exotic than say, Hudson, NY), where they might force themselves to relax and do nothing (right), their lives have to be defined by some activity or another. Going out on a nice day invariably involves jimmying an errand or two into the day. Stopping at Duane Reade to pick up shampoo, ducking into Petco for catfood. There always has to be a goal, or reason. Sitting quietly somewhere in their own city for hours on end is an anathema to them. I think they think it's wasteful or something.

Going to Central Park doesn't count, because Central Park actually has things to do, like go to the Zoo, the Boathouse, the Carousel, the Metropolitan Museum, Summer Stage, preen and be seen on Sheep's Meadow, play softball or soccer, ride in loops, go skating, take a carriage ride -- no matter what, the beehive of New York City is never more than 200 yards away, no matter where you are in the Park. Bathrooms are easy to find in Central Park (helpful bathroom hint for NYC Tourists: If you don't want to use the public park bathrooms, which have improved immeasurably from the days when you had to nudge drug addicts out of the way with your foot, go to Tavern on the Green or the Boathouse. Because they are on city property, they HAVE to let you use their bathrooms. If you're closer to the Met and with a group, have one of your group go in, pay a "donation" of one or two bucks -- suggested donation $12, but they don't blink when you slap down a single -- and take turns using the little metal tag to go in and use their bathrooms). But you are always aware that you are in the heart of the most lively city in America.

At Governor's Island, there is only the island. There is no there, there. (Who said that?) It's just an immaculately-maintained fortress with beautiful closed-up barracks and houses, perfectly groomed drill fields bordered by hundred-year-old trees (perfect for aforementioned lolling, reading, and sandwich-eating), a perfectly-paved perimeter path, and the occasional little concert or re-enactment. I was once surprised in my afternoon lollygagging by the sound of snare drums and military calls, and over a nearby rise a battalion of fully-costumed and armed "soldiers" appeared and staged a drill a hundred feet from my tree. This went on for about a half hour before they marched away, leaving behind only the smell of gunpowder and the blowing paper shreds from their cap guns. It's easy to forget you're in New York because the only sounds you hear are the seagulls and the occasional lowing ferry horns.

So, I make no apologies for missing the first nice day of the year when there are so many other nice days to come, and Governor's Island is opening on Memorial Day weekend, just a couple of months from now. And now that I've thought about it, I don't think I want to go with anyone else -- I think I'll just keep it in my pocket as a place where I go by myself, just for me.

The Body Remembers

I don't know what's up, but lately my body seems intent on reminding me of every prior insult I've inflicted on it. Particularly my knees.

I set out to lose a few libs because my knees started hurting. Usually if I lose 5 pounds or so, it alleviates the strain and my knees start working properly again. Simple, right? Lighten the burden, and the machine works better. HAH. As I've lost noticeably more than 5 pounds, my knees have decided to bring up every past transgression, like a nagging spouse.

Going up and down stairs, they bring up my cycling days. "Remember how you used to be a showoffy gear-masher out on Route 9W? HaHAH! We'll show you!" Wearing high heels: "Remember that time you blew out your left knee skiing? I'm back to remind you of that by making you feel like your knee is hyperextended and ready to collapse, even though you haven't had one bit of trouble or pain in over 15 years!! HaHAH!"

The body, it remembers everything. Even when you don't.

Onward and upward, I guess, and I'll keep on eating the good stuff instead of the crap. I remain optimistic that if I keep being thoughtful about what I eat, and continue losing weight, these phantom creaks will abate somewhat. I don't expect to feel like I'm twenty again, but the morning hunch-and-shuffle has GOT to go.

Those AIG Fuckers

Bonuses? BONUSES? Are you fucking kidding me?

After reading this, I think we need to organize a protest outside AIG headquarters downtown.

Everyone should bring two old pairs of shoes to throw at those motherfuckers who are going to collect bonuses that WE are paying for.

I hope they all fucking rot and die. Every single one of them.

Fucking motherfucking fuckhead fucks.

C is for Cookie

Isn't New York City the BEST?



Friday, March 3, 2008
Union Square Station
7:00 pm

Dear Rachel Maddow

Please do your viewing audience a favor and have some guests phone in their interviews. This woman's crazy eyes were so distracting I couldn't concentrate on the very smart things she was saying until I closed my eyes.

Oh, right, she was an NPR reporter.

A face made for radio, indeed.

Call me looksist, but I mean, really.

Let Citi Fail

Does anyone remember:

Manufacturer's Hanover?
Chemical Bank?
Marine Midland Bank?
The Dime?
Williamsburgh Savings?
Washington Mutual (though my WaMu card still works and the branches are still operating in NYC -- the upside is that I can now use Chase ATM's without getting bitch-slapped by a $3.00 fee)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. These banks all went away and the world didn't end.

Madison (With Mambo's Giant Head)

Because he can't stand it when I'm not looking at him.

Fundie Apostate

This guy is going to get crucified by the Right that he helped create (he used to be one of Dobson's guys -- blecccch -- but watch this (I watched live last night with my mouth open) and you'll see a teeny, tiny glimmer of hope:



I hope Rush Limbaugh challenges HIM to a debate. Can't wait to get myself to the NY Public Library and read his book.

It's the most entertaining 8 minutes of TV this week, next to Jon Stewart's deliciously vicious takedown of CNBC:

Bacon Explosion Brainstorm

I was describing the Bacon Explosion to someone tonight and I realized that it would be immeasurably improved by sprinkling the center layer of bacon with brown sugar and chopped water chestnuts.

This could merely be an excuse to make it again, but what's wrong with that? It's bacon.

Saturday at the Met

There's something about looking at art, isn't there?

I met my friend Alisa on the steps of the Met on this 70-degree Saturday afternoon (after we got 10 inches of snow on Sunday night!!!!), and we took advantage of my employer membership to waltz in for free, and who doesn't like a freebie? Courtesy of my employer, I can take a guest into the Met, MoMA, and the Whitney. Let the tourists pay full freight, I always say.

I always love going to museums with Alisa because she's an artist and I always learn something when we go to see art together. She's knowledgeable without being pompous, and amidst the tourists shuffling dutifully from painting to painting, giving each one approximately 5 seconds each, I'm getting a mini master class from a real artist!

I wanted to see the exhibit of American landscapes, because I happen to be completely in love with a giant Albert Bierstadt ("Storm in the Rocky Mountains") that lives at the Brooklyn Museum, a 7-foot x 12-foot painting that requires at least an hour to take in. It hangs alone on a wall with a bench in front of it so you can sit and absorb it. Today Alisa and I spent about 20 minutes in front of a single painting, dissecting it and discussing the details. Alisa always sees the light in a painting -- where it's coming from, where it's hitting, and how the artist depicts it.

The Met is completely overwhelming -- after 20 years in New York, there are still galleries that I haven't seen! You go in with a goal, and find yourself pulled by a tractor beam (or a glimpse of "Madame X" or a luminescent El Greco through a doorway) from room to room, and before you know it, you haven't seen what you half-intended to see in the first place. That's a beautiful thing, isn't it? I am always diverted by portraiture; today it was the portrait of Consuelo Vanderbilt and her son.

Visiting paintings with Alisa, we were the recipients of some glares, because we were clearly having far too much fun. Apparently, when you go to a museum you have to check your sense of fun at the door along with your twelve dollars and march grimly from room to room as if completing some duty that has grave national implications. We seemed to be the only people in the sculpture garden who were having fun (maybe because we didn't pay twelve dollars to be there), but I guess loud guffaws are completely outre at the Met. But -- at the same time Alisa gave me a lesson about Balzac's hands (wouldn't "Balzac's Hands" be a really good name for an indie album?).

We paid a visit to "The White Roses," even though the European painting galleries had the most annoying crowds we encountered anywhere in the museum (maybe that's where they feel they'll get their money's worth -- for me, I get more bang for my corporate ID in the armor or medieval art galleries.) I just wanted to say hello to the White Roses because it has a special place in my heart -- I remember the first time I saw it, turning a corner and there it was. There was nothing I could do upon my first sighting except start to cry. Call me a sissy. Now my feelings of affection for the painting are laced with some sadness that I will never get to have that feeling of seeing it for the first time ever again.

Feeling soul-scrubbed by art, and before full-blown art fatigue could knock us sideways (only sore feet and aging knees did that), we headed downtown to the Marshall Stack, which hasn't been graced by the presence of your Janey for nearly six months (after I delivered a venomous wine-influenced voice mail that went something like this: "You know, you alwaysh call me your friend, but it sheems that I always call you but you never call me so that tells me we're not really friends, so I guess we're not friendzzz, so... bye!"). Okay, so I'm immature at times; Matt doesn't seem to hold it against me, which clearly makes him a far better person than I am.

Needless to say, it was a great, great day.

Total aside: is it just me, the sake I drank, or spring fever, or is Saturday Night Live completely hilarious with The Rock tonight?

Wondering

I'm just wondering by what sorcery the guy I used to date (whom I admit to occasionally myspace-stalking, just to reassure myself the yep, he's still bugshit crazy and yep, he still looks like an ex-junkie), who was 45 when we met in 2006, is now only 46, according to his profile.

He must have found one of those elusive wrinkles in time.

I'm just sayin' -- what is it with men?

Rush to Judgement

Your Jane is heartily amused by the whole brouhaha going on right now with Rush Limbaugh, thrice-divorced, drug addict, Viagra smuggler, radio bloviator, traitor to his country, misquoter of the Constitution, and generally bloated toad.

Picture this: a men's room at the Port Authority, up on the 2nd floor, towards the 9th Avenue side. The stall doors are closed, but inside one stall kneels Phil Gingrey, and inside another Michael Steele has his pants around his ankles and his buttocks pressed to the hole drilled into the walls of the stall. Suddenly the door is flung open and a sweating, 400-pound bag of shit oozes in. It is Rushba the Hutt! He approaches the stall with Gingrey, unzipping. Well, you know the rest of the story (so sorry to the late Paul Harvey!). The Republican Party is now officially nothing but a series of glory holes for Rushba. I just want to know when we are going to see Bobby Jindal in a steel bikini chained to his side.

Frankly, I'm so happy to see Carville, Begala, and Podesta are back and have joined forces with Rahm Emanuel. This article from politico.com lays out the strategy pretty clearly: Instead of trying to drive a wedge between Republican legislators and Limbaugh, they instead counter-intuitively pushed them together, forcing the GOP-ers to try to disavow Limbaugh. They get Rush radio beatdown, and thus they are forced to crawl back and grovel publicly to Rush, thereby publicly aligning themselves with a guy who appeals to the swampiest, under-the-rock 20% of their party, and thereby alienating the more moderate majority.

It's evil psychological genius at its best.

Quoth Carville, "If your opponent is sinking, throw the son of a bitch an anvil!"

Republican Party, meet your anvil: Rush Limbaugh.

It also shows that these guys have totally crawled inside Limbaugh's psyche -- they know that he's such an egomaniacal turd, that despite his public protestations, he secretly DOES believe that he's the guy in charge of the party. He takes the bait every single time, guaranteeing that the cycle may go on and on for months. He's so narcissistically convinced of his own power that today he even challenged the President to a debate!

President Obama, after tossing out the casual comment in his first week about Limbaugh that was apparently taken as the first shot across the bow, has wisely stayed above the fray.

The thing the Republicans, and especially the Fat Turd, don't seem to get is this: President Obama and his staff don't have to try to be bipartisan with Rush and his dumboheads. They only have to try to be bipartisan with other legislators. E-lec-ted officials. And as Emanuel said somewhere, "We only have to try to be bipartisan. We don't have to succeed."

Smart, ruthless, and ballsy as hell to put it right out there. No hiding in the back room like that pasty fetus Karl Rove used to do. Hell, Rahm went on "Meet the Press" this past Sunday and came right out and said, "He [Rush] is the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party." I'd almost say that Rahm had a little twinkle in his eye while he said it.

The Rush-hole sounds crazier and crazier and crazier every day. I can't bring myself to listen to his show, but we're pretty much guaranteed clips on every news show, every day, so he's pretty inescapable right now. Did you catch the video of him at that CPAC conference? Coked out of his mind, as evidenced by the constant nose wiping and what about that jumping up and down thing?

Anyway, I was only a toddler when a bunch of hippies tried to levitate the Pentagon by meditating. Do you think if several million people, at the same moment, say, when Rush is on the air, concentrated hard enough, we could make his heart explode? On the radio? How cool would that be?

For Rihanna (again)

"...the battered woman gets a powerful feeling of overwhelming relief when an incident ends. She becomes additcted to that feeling. The abuser is the only person who can deliver moments of peace, by being his better self for awhile. Thus, the abuser holds the key to the abused person's feeling of well-being. The abuser delivers the high highs that bookend the low lows, and the worse the bad times get, the better the good times are in contrast. All of this in addition to the fact that a battered woman is shell-shocked enough to believe that each horrible incident may be the last."

"We all know the story: The murdered woman had reportedly suffered violence at the hands of the defendant for a long while, virtually since the start of their relationship. A few times, she had called the police, and once she even brought battery charges against him (he was acquitted), but the violence continued. The day of the murder, she hadn't invited him to come along to a social event, and not long after 10 p.m., she was stabbed to death. The defendant told a friend that he'd had a dream in which he killed her, but later his lawyers said she was probably killed by drug dealers."

Gavin de Becker
"The Gift of Fear"
1997

Of course, the victim in the anecdote above was Nicole Brown Simpson. May she rest in peace and may O.J. Simpson die a slow, disease-ridden death in prison.

Miss Rihanna, Annie linked to this article. I hope you read it.

Rihanna, please get out now, while you can get out alive. Or at least watch "What's Love Got to Do With It?" a few dozen times or call Tina Turner and speak to her directly. I'll bet she'll take your call.

Dear Rihanna...

You have made a terrible mistake in going back to Chris Brown. Forgiving him does not mean you have to take him back. You can forgive him and still WALK AWAY so he cannot hurt you again.

Ignore the people who say, "Well, we don't know what she did before he started wailing on her in that car." It doesn't matter if you did anything. No one ever, EVER has the right to beat someone black and blue and bloody, no matter what twisted justification may exist in his or her mind.

You are lucky - you have a few things at your disposal that so many domestic violence victims don't have. You are a celebrity -- so when it happened to you, it happened in public. By not taking him back, you can publicly draw your line in the sand and say, "No. This is never acceptable." You have the means, and I mean the money, to publicly protect yourself, and to escape your abuser. How many women don't, and end up stalked, terrorized, and dead at the hands of their abusers?

Abuse escalates.

Get out. Get out now. Otherwise I fear we will be reading about how Chris Brown murdered you over some transgression you committed only in his mind.

Esperanza Means "Hope"

Oh, man. So did anyone else catch "In Performance at the White House" last week? Stevie Wonder received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize from President Obama, and there was a tribute concert on Wednesday that aired on Thursday night. Aside from the fact that I was going to watch it simply for the Stevie factor, it reinforced my belief that this is the coolest White House -- ever! (I give you as further evidence the Earth Wind and Fire performance at the Governors' Dinner on February 22nd. Earth Wind and Fire! Stevie Wonder! At the White House! The white supremacists who make up the base of the Republican party must be shitting themselves. And somewhere up in Heaven, Bernie Mac is smiling.)

In case you didn't catch it, the entire concert is available on the PBS website. The highlight of the concert was, for me, a beautiful girl named Esperanza Spalding, playing upright bass and singing "Overjoyed." She turns it into a Brazilliant thing, bouncy and latin and, well, joyful. I love everything about her, from her giant Angela Davis afro to the big gap in her teeth that you can see when she smiles (which she does a lot). She's genius. Here's her performance, snatched from Youtube:



The other highlight was my girl India.Arie singing "Summer Soft." Clearly overwhelmed, whether by proximity to Barack Obama or Stevie Wonder (maybe both, I know either would knock me off my feet), Miz India at one point wipes a tear from the corner of her eye before collecting herself and offering a faithful, straight-on cover of the song, which is sort of a B-side cut from "Songs in the Key of Life" (that is, if anything off that record can be considered "B-side."). I feel a little better that she's the one who got the invitation to perform for Stevie at the White House, since I have to admit I never got over my resentment that she was robbed -- robbed! -- at the 2002 Grammy's by the less-talented, more-videogenic (I would argue that one with anyone), completely overrated Alicia Keys ("No One" is so freakin' annoying that I actually get angry when it comes on the radio.) Here's Miz India:



I hope they re-air it so you can see it too!