The 23rd Floor - v.2.0

Tricksters

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Typically, tricksters are disruptive mischief-makers; they’re liars and thieves who delight in playing pranks on overly serious human beings, but in the end, provide the clueless humans with what they need most to prosper and survive. In Japanese mythology, the principal trickster figure is Kitsune the fox, a wily rascal who serves nevertheless as a vital emissary between mankind and the gods. Having no such benevolent function, what foggy little Tanuki shares with his more evolved trickster counterparts is an enormous appetite for food, strong drink, sex, music, and dance. In fact, Tanuki is all appetite, he’s an ultra-sensual embodiment of the life force in its purest, most raw and innocent form. He’s a figure of fun and for fun, including the kind of fun the gods must have had when they danced the universe into existence. So, yes, in its own way, his role is profound.

Tom Robbins on Tanuki, a character in Villa Incognito

Read the entire Borders Interview.

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So, imagine with me a continuum.

On one end of this continuum, perhaps the right end, are serious twits like Ralph Nader. Everybody who is not in complete whooping denial knows that Ralph is correct about almost everything he talks about: Lethal corporate irresponsibility, effed-up consumer protection policies, the folly of limiting our electoral choices to two political parties, etc., etc.. We just find him boring. We’d rather watch The Simpsons. (Bart the Trickster!)

On the other end of the continuum is Idi Amin, or Pol Pot, or I suppose we could default to Adolf Hitler, except he actually exhibited some sort of twisted love for the German people, while our boys Idi and Pol wanted to kill everyone who didn’t serve an immediate egomaniacal purpose, including friends and family.

What the Trickster does instinctively - it has to be instinctively - and why we (almost) all love tricksters, is they assemble their personas with bits from both ends of the continuum, maybe even dangerously close to the extreme ends.

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I’m dead serious about this: If Ralph Nader re-assembled his persona to include a reputation for visits to titty bars, put on a little weight, maybe lost a few thousand bucks in Vegas, and could make it appear that it just sort of happened to him: we’d be hanging on every word.

This is why the Puritans who still steer the Ship of State, and still have our culture in a death grip, can never round up quite enough votes to bring down a Bill Clinton. The combination of Rhodes Scholar and bj vivant is just too cool for even that uber twit, Ken Starr, to lasso and hogtie.

[Even Jedgar Hoover, with all his spyware, couldn’t take down JFK (so far as we know) and JFK made Bill Clinton look like a third-stringer in the sport sex department. The combination of the urge to serve the good of everyone and hang out with Marilyn Monroe and mafioso is unassailable, except for when the bluenoses are packing heat.]

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I can’t believe the partisan political wiseguys don’t get this. They continue to believe that we won’t vote for anyone who inhaled or stayed through a whole stripper-gram at a bachelor party. C’mon! You’ve got to be kidding! We the people freaking put Charlie Sheen on the red carpet for an Emmy!

Let’s start with the dumb Dems. John Edwards, who was an early favorite of mine, can’t even attend the Dem Convention because of zipper problems. Ridiculous, but an accurate reflection of how much power the Puritans still have. (I’ll give the Puritans this: Edwards’ problem was that he ended up looking selfish, in the same way that Elliot Spitzer ended up looking like a phony, with all his Puritan talk at the same time he’s keeping a pet hooker. Selfishness and phoniness don’t look good even on Tricksters, although phoniness is worse than selfishness.)

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Then there’s the goober GOPs. Why bother expounding on God’s Own Party? They’re the Puritan Party, pure and simple. This is why when I kneel down by my bedside every night, I have the same prayer: “Dear God and/or Goddess, please let Barack Obama lead us out of the 17th Century into the 21st Century, and please let all the Puritans finally go extinct. I know even You must want that, because of the reputation they’ve given You. And bless all the animals and small children. Amen.”

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So, let’s have some fun. By default I’m a Barack fan, but he’s still way too upright and beyond reproach - I don’t think even Mean John McCain will be able to Swift Boat him - for me to be completely enamored. Let me run through a few possibilities for 2016:

Bill Maher - Close, but no Clinton cigars. I watch Real Time more faithfully than I ever went to church, but when it comes to being anti-religious, Bill is a regular Puritan. Too damn serious about it.

Al Franken - A few months ago, he’d have been my man. But, suddenly he’s distancing himself from some of his best material, because it may not sell in St. Paul, where he’s trying to get elected to the Senate. C’mon, Al, get some cojones! Actually, if it weren’t for a better candidate whom I’m getting to, I would actually vote for Al, because I think his Trickster instincts are still sound.

Jim Carrey - This is my guy. If you’ve caught him on Oprah or any other interview piece, it should be obvious why. This dude carries major do-good vibes coupled with total sexed-up inzanity. Just watch The Pet Detective, his breakthrough movie role.

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In fact, there’s my Dream Ticket for 2016: Oprah and Jim Carrey, and I don’t care who’s on top. We’ll have to make sure O doesn’t get too serious, but with Jimmy in the house, there’s not much chance of that.

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Errata

6 Oct 2008 - Extraneous Rant

Sometimes, when I’m at the office hacking away at these posts, I let the keyboard cool off while I jaywalk across my street to the conveniently located organic-and-mostly-vegetarian deli and coffee shop. The problem with an o-and-mv deli and coffee shop is that it tends to self-select a clientele with a higher than normal narcissism quotient. Yeah, I know: I’m one of the clients.

But, I’m there to make a quick selection - the cinnamon twist or Grandma’s Chocolate Cake - and swiftly make room for the next person in line to make their purchase and move on. I have my own Mr. Coffee back up in the office, so I don’t have to commit the supreme act of narcissism:

Imagining that the folks in line are entertained while you make them watch the overworked counter person jigger with three different nozzles on the Rube Goldberg expresso machine and carefully mix the doppio with just the right amount of one-percent from the subsidiary silver milk jug to create your own little personal java-script. Worse yet, imagining that if there are two of you, probably women, that the queue enjoys watching this show twice.

(In a burst of uncharacteristically ill-conceived menu expansion, I note that Mickey D’s has added the espresso thing to their menu. Bad idea. People at the counter or waiting in the drive-thru are not going to put up with this sh–, and, furthermore, nobody ordering at The Golden Arches is trying to build an audience.)

This is political. I blame the Democrats, even though they are my party of choice. (Sometimes my spouse asks about candidates when she’s filling out her mail-in ballot. She knows I follow the minutia of the local ballot items more closely than she does. My answer is always the same: “When in Doubt, mark ‘D’.”) That said, espresso machines tend to be over-represented in towns like mine, where our Nader vote in 2000 was probably Ralph’s benchmark. Maybe I’m missing some important data, but my hunch is that folks who voted Nader, because Gore was not Green enough, are more likely to make me effing wait in line with my cinnamon twist while they negotiate their instructions to the barista.

You want to know the real reason behind the economic meltdown? Mortgage bank and brokerage house personnel in NYC standing in effing espresso lines while they should have been examining effing loan applications and SEC filings.

I suppose, upon reflection, this is just a logistical thing. There could be one line - the blue line - for those whose self-esteem is built on believing they deserve the kind of time and attention to detail required to build a “flat latte, venti, with an extra shot, half-caf decaf cap, soy with a drip of skim,” and a red line for those who are willing to order regular coffee, for cryin’ out loud, so the line can keep moving and we can all get back to our keyboards.