The Global Scene Through Berkeleyan Eyes

Going Paparazzo

Posted in The Berkeley Scene, The Global Scene Through Berkeleyan Eyes on September 20th, 2016 by admin – Be the first to comment

by Steed Dropout
Sept. 19, 2016


Micah M. White, center in white shirt, a founder of Occupy Wall Street movement, and a new Berkeley resident. Photo by Ted Friedman.

The co-founder of Occupy Wall Street was based in Berkeley where his wife took a post-doc in rhetoric.

During an Occupy General Assembly at Bank of America Civic center Plaza, Occupy’s wife was sitting on a popular homeless bench when I got off a shot from nearby. She saw me take the shot and demanded to know why.

“You’ve got a doctorate in Rhetoric, you ought to know,” I rhetored. Rhetoric, has nothing to do with this. Yet that’s what I said.

The rhetorician complained about me to her husband, Occupy co-founder, Micah M. White.
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More Fucked Up Than You

Posted in The Global Scene Through Berkeleyan Eyes on September 15th, 2016 by admin – Be the first to comment


By Steed Dropout

Sept. 11, 2016


Photo by Ted Friedman

TRUMP THIS

Members of “Trump Nation,” as they like to be called, know that they are fucked-up.

“Dude,” a nation member told me. “Everyone knows I’m fucked up. My mother and father and all my many aunts and uncles were fucked up. now we have a national leader who truly represents us.”

But “…is having a fucked-up leader a good thing? we asked.

“Yeah,” the nation-member confirmed. “Knowing that he[Trump] is fucked up and we are fucked up, too. We feel a special connection more intimate than with NFL football players, who are fucked-up over drugs and spousal abuse.”
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The Mindful Journalist

Posted in The Global Scene Through Berkeleyan Eyes on September 13th, 2016 by admin – Be the first to comment

By Steed Dropout
Sept. 11, 2016


Photo by Ted Friedman

WHY OUR ATTENTIONS WANE

Any journalist worth his weight in dry-salami will tell you that “mindfulness” is over-rated.

This, an unavoidable conclusion, after a recent media-blitz recommending mindfulness for what ails the common man.

It is difficult to quarrel with the basic truths of mindfulness. Its opposites— distractedness, inattention—are unlikely to catch-on. Mindlessness would be a hard sell.

Mindfulness is here to stay. Like hearsay.
Like centeredness. Like the here and now.
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Trump Calls Christ a Loser

Posted in The Global Scene Through Berkeleyan Eyes on August 9th, 2016 by admin – Be the first to comment

by Hal E. Mooney
Aug. 8, 2016


You can’t say you didn’t see it coming.

First he picked a squawk with the pope.

Then he was having a bad week over his beef with the Muslim family who denounced him at the Democratic convention. Critics called him nuts. His problems continued.

Then he did the unthinkable, he called Jesus Christ “a loser,” adding, “I don’t want my religious figures to fail at life.”
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Why We Punks Do It

Posted in The Global Scene Through Berkeleyan Eyes on May 14th, 2016 by admin – Be the first to comment

by Steed Dropout
May 13, 2016

Photo by Ted Friedman.

Ray showed me the tree-trunk fissure that spontaneously appeared in everyone’s favorite Peoples Park tree, leaving the gnarly appendage with its seam hanging out.

The fissure, reportedly, occurred (miraculously) overnight. It was two days before anyone noticed the miracle of the spontaneous branch-split.

Maybe this fissure in the park was a sign.

Ray Gibson, an adept park philosopher and a root of wisdom, was lounging on the fissured limb. I joined him—out on the limb.

Gibson had recently witnessed a number of violent Southside attacks.
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Decline of Hip

Posted in The Berkeley Scene, The Global Scene Through Berkeleyan Eyes on April 27th, 2016 by admin – Be the first to comment

by Steed Dropout
April 26, 2016

PEOPLES PARK AT 47

WAVY AT EIGHTY

A joint with Jesus. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Funky Nixons were smoking a joint with Jesus.*
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America’s Asshole, Trump: a Literary Analysis

Posted in The Global Scene Through Berkeleyan Eyes on April 4th, 2016 by admin – Be the first to comment

by Steed Dropout
April 3, 2016

BEHIND HIS BEHIND

Trump’s Tower, by Ed Monroe.

America’s romance with assholes begins in the Bible (Cain) and ends with Donald Trump (Cain’s Kin).

Trump also owes Charlie Sheen, Dabney Coleman, Hulk Hogan, and Jack Nicholson, actors who burnished the asshole persona.

Novelist John Barth noted, a half-century ago, that it was impossible to depict a villain in the age of the anti-hero.

The lives of scores of actors and politicians have proven Barth right. (Yearly books on Hitler and John Wilkes Booth are in the hundreds). Now comes Trump, an anti-hero to end all anti-heroes.
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Trump Assassination Risk, Real or Reel?

Posted in Film Reviews, The Global Scene Through Berkeleyan Eyes on November 30th, 2015 by admin – Be the first to comment

by Steed Dropout
Nov. 29, 2015

TRUMP TRUMPS BEALE, ET AL.

Howard Beale, left.

I don’t know what to do about…the economy and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad.

You’ve gotta say, “I’m a human being, goddammit! My life has value!”
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Pleonasm Spasm

Posted in The Global Scene Through Berkeleyan Eyes on September 26th, 2015 by admin – Be the first to comment

by Steed Dropout
Sept. 26, 2015

OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP HATING BAD WRITING AND LOVE UNNECESSARY WORDS

“Black darkness, burning fire, and malignant cancer.” Perhaps you can spot the unnecessary words. String enough of these redundancies together and, brother, you’ve got a bloated sentence.

Here at Reporter, we live by the sword, whacking unnecessary words, like a Hemingway.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t lean–a trend in fiction and prose since Hemingway. There’s even software to turn your prose into Hemingway’s.

I had an editor once who asked me to write features like Hemingway, then this editor began adding words to my copy (awkwardly), ruining my rhythm and rime.

I made a supreme sacrifice. I quit.
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Selective Service Should Have Been More Selective

Posted in The Global Scene Through Berkeleyan Eyes on March 16th, 2015 by admin – Be the first to comment

by Steed Dropout
Mar. 16, 2015

“General Fuck-up.” That’s what my ROTC name tag said when I showed up for drill. Some hazing-happy fraternity brothers had promoted me to General.

ROTC was mandatory at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana 1957-61.

Here, Dropout learned he was a military misfit, but was slow to get the message.

Literature and film loves military misfits. From Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Saxophonist Lester Young–the ultimate army fuck-up, who was discharged for stowing medical marijuana in his boot-camp locker during WW2–Ensign Pulver to Stalag 17. Kurtz, (Marlon Brando), in Apocalypse Now, a major screw-up.
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