All sorts of things happened in the news in the last few weeks.
In my birthplace – Bronx, NY – ICE agents shot a Dominican man from point blank range in the driver’s seat of his car while his five-year-old son watched from the backseat.
Mamdani: “I will not stand by while ICE agents terrorize our communities.”
Mark Dec. 3 on your calendar because on that day there will be a livestream military execution by firing squad of a mass shooter courtesy of former Fox weekend host and current U.S. Department of Defense War Secretary Pete Hegseth, who hyped the event as a “no brainer” so people “understand there are serious consequences for this type of thing.”
And at a political campaign rally in Nebraska, our sitting POTUS claimed his war with Iran was about keeping our country safe, noting “they can take out a city,” and then suggesting without a beat that, “They can take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”
I know I didn’t hear that right!
That’s a lot of violence, a lot of guns and a lot of faux flex that reads insane when it’s meant to register strong.
No wonder so many rich celebrities are leaving town for Europe.
Bye Ellen. Bye Aaron Paul.
George Clooney, we said bye years ago. (Note: That was years before you wrote that Joe Biden-must-go editorial, right?).
Bye Rosie, even though you are here to visit.
Looking absolutely fab as the narrator for Rocky Horror
So long Richard Gere, Eva Longoria, Robin Wright, Courtney Love, James Cameron, Lena Dunham, Pam Anderson and Janet Jackson.
It’s not a value judgment. Mostly. I get it.
Though I do sometimes wonder how it is that the great, and Ohio-born, Timothy Snyder writes a brilliant book called On Tyranny, a sort of primer on what happens when a would-be authoritarian tries to take over a country and what to do in order to stop it, left in the middle of all this to move to Canada.
I mean I get it!
Well, I suppose it’s not easy to have that much of a public target on your back.
Said this gay, Jewish, blue-city-living Los Angeleno.
Who is staying put to the bitter end in these United States.
I know who we are
Even though both sets of my grandparents left Poland, Russia and Hungary back in the early and mid-twentieth centuries when they felt their countries of origin might no longer be safe for them.
I guess I’ve always done best when I’ve been pissed off at someone or something.
Observed this writer, blogger big mouth, college professor at a liberal arts school whose home campus was just voted the top most welcoming college to LGBTQ+ students on the east coast.
Come at me
As a mentor of mine once commented when I momentarily hesitated writing truthfully about my family in a screenplay years ago,
In for a penny, in for a pound.
And boy, was she right. Because in the end you have to stand your ground and fight for something, especially when the battle is still winnable.
My mentor… and Sally Field of course
I’m not a particularly courageous person. In fact, I’m pretty much a coward. And I detest violence in real life.
Except for that one time in the early nineties.
AIDS was still raging and I almost got into a fist fight with a gay Republican who furiously cornered the late gay hero Randy Shilts, author And The Band Played On, the seminal story of that pandemic, at a gay political event.
It was about to get real
Right after Randy picked up his heroism award, this mofo relentlessly chastised him for having the temerity to publicly insult Ronald Reagan in his acceptance speech for idly sitting by on his ass and not doing more to save the lives of thousands of our friends, among others, who were literally dying in the streets.
It took three people to hold me back from decking him (Note: The only and only time I raised my fists to anyone) and the calm words of my boyfriend (Note: Now husband) to talk me down mid-lunge as I was cursing him out.
See, one of my dearest friends was in a New York City hospital dying at the time so I was in no mood for lies and bullsh-t and platitudes.
My brain during this encounter
Of course, this is not the type of fighting or courage I am advocating for at the moment.
But what I am advocating for is the rage.
At the injustice, the racism, the barbarism and the lies being served to the American public like endless portions of Soylent Green we are required to eat up each day of the week. (Note: Look it up here)
That might be tempting when food is so expensive, but it will only poison us all in the end.
Don’t make me seriously consider
What we need to do is to not lose heart and channel those feelings to the ballot box.
Meaning VOTE.
If millions of us refuse to be cowed by a poison that demands we literally swallow each other whole and accept the status quo, or worse, I am convinced we will make it through this chapter of the American hunger games.
As much as I’d enjoy these looks
Because we will drastically outnumber all of those in the minority so determined to cheat us out of our values and value.
And if they still try to do it, or attempt any other funny business?
Well, there are plenty of other bold and brave strategies to employ.
But you can’t take to the streets if you no longer live here.
There’s something so damn ingratiating and infectious about people who love the work that they do and excel at it.
For instance, did you ever go to a restaurant where the waiter treats you like a guest at their home and through sheer force of will and great food manages to make you feel happier than you have all day? How about a classroom where the teacher is so animated you are suddenly fascinated by a subject that you previously would have walked twelve long miles to avoid? Sometimes it’s even a film, TV show or performer putting you under such a spell that you actually forget to check your email, texts or any other form of social media messages for more than two whole hours.
Well, I’m here to tell you singer-songwriter Jason Mraz is exactly that infectious, excellent and just so damned ingratiating whenever he’s performing onstage.
The Chair’s attempt at concert photography (call it the Blue period)
Don’t think I’m going all corny on you in either the messaging or the Mraz-ing. Yeah, even Mr. Mraz knows the cynical wrap about him always being Mr. Hippie Positivity and one of the first things he does in his shows is confess that he has more than his share of dark, depressing thoughts daily. But his work, as he sees it, is to take exactly what he’s feeling and make it into something artistic that maybe he, and in turn you and I, can feel good about.
Now, if that’s not a Labor Day weekend message, what is?
I had originally planned to write about the challenges of being part of a minority group this weekend, touching on the uprising of the Black community in Ferguson, MO over the police shooting of an unarmed 17-year-old boy. This would then be tied into the negative blowback Modern Family actress Sofia Vergara received from so many women (and the men who love them) across America for her willingness to flaunt her shimmying body on a 360-degree revolving platform at the Emmy awards. Which would lead into the chastisement I got from certain quarters for supporting her “subversion” of the Latina stereotype in a blog post here last week. This would all then culminate in how whether your minority is Black, Latin or gay like me (Note: I was even going to try to get the Middle East, Israel, Iraq and Isis in there) – the prejudice and marginalization are all various iterations of the same exact issue that, until recognized, will prevent us all from ever truly moving forward as a race, a culture or a planet.
Wow… that’s a lot.
I’ll bet now you’re happy that 1. all we’re doing is talking about Jason Mraz and 2. I happened to see him at a two-hour plus concert in Hollywood this weekend.
Except, it’s not quite as simple as that.
Mr. Mraz is one of the few of us lucky enough to have figured out how to merge his job with his passion. It may be difficult to think of him as a worker on Labor Day because he is so wealthy, famous and talented at the relatively young age of 37. Not only is he not in the 47% along with most of the rest of us, he’s in the very elite subset of the upper, upper 1%. The .001% Or the .00001%? I haven’t seen his bank account but two Grammy awards, a 5 and a half acre organic avocado farm near San Diego, a joint ownership in the hugely successful Gratitude Cafe restaurants, one of the most enduring hit singles to ever stay on Billboard’s top 100 chart (76 weeks) and a never-ending concert tour schedule of venues all over the world indicate he’s doing more than okay. Not to mention, his goal to be #RetiredAt40 and spend most of the rest of his time farming – or at least slowing down from the star musician’s life he has carved out for himself over the last decade.
Farmlife with Mr. Mraz
And yet – at essence he’s really just a worker. The fact that he’s treated as something more than that lies at our doorstep– not his. #ThinkAboutIt.
As a writer and a performer on the concert stage whose work has also been seen on television and in the movies, Mr. Mraz is at the very least a member of several or more show business labor unions. But even if he weren’t there is no denying he is an American worker and laborer – that is to say someone who contributes goods and/or services to society and whose efforts should be celebrated. Especially when it’s done exceedingly well.
So, how does one rise to the level of elite worker, which is not the same as asking – how do I become rich and famous? The latter is a byproduct of the profession one chooses to work at, one’s talents and a lot of timing and luck. (Note: And don’t let anyone else tell you any differently).
Well, since he’s obviously on my mind, let’s use Mr. Mraz as an example and have his actions tell us.
ATTITUDE
Well… which one is it?
You’d think hard work would be the number one value here but the ability to work hard really begins with your attitude. One of the lessons students get from me when they arrive in L.A. for a semester to do internships in the entertainment industry is that the people you work with will innately know whether you enjoy working there or not. This does not mean that every working moment of your day is a joy or a pleasure or even easy. What it does mean is that somewhere inside you want to dig in and get the job done or you wouldn’t be there in the first place. And whether you’re tired or in a bad mood, once you get going a certain pride in doing what you like takes over and you get caught up in the moment of putting time into a job to the best of your abilities in the given moments you have chosen to put in that day.
Mr. Mraz has mastered this. There’s a joy in his eyes when he performs. When he screws up the lyrics or a technical element of his show doesn’t work, he laughs it off or makes fun of himself. He’s planned out his program but he’s willing to improvise and engage his fellow musicians and his audience even if it means extending the length of his show. Instead of phoning in his performance or duplicating his recordings in front of you, there’s an easiness that assures you that you are in good hands and are about to see something unique because he never does any one song in exactly the same way. In other words, he doesn’t make you feel like he’s doing you a big, fat favor by being there because he wants to be there.
There are only a handful of performers out of the many that I’ve seen live that have the ability to do this. Bruce Springsteen is one. Perhaps surprisingly, the Grateful Dead were another. Bette Midler in her early days was a third. They make you feel as if there is nowhere they’d rather be than doing their work for you when they’re doing that thing they do so well. There’s a spring in their step. And it’s infectious.
WORK ETHIC
Noted writer and social scientist Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his best seller, Outliers, it takes approximately 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to become an expert in your field. Since there are about 8,765 hours in a year and most people put in approximately 2,080 hours at a full time job, this means it takes in the neighborhood of 5-10 years to become any kind of expert in your field. Other researches have expressed these thoughts though none of them guarantee that expertise will equal financial success or worldwide recognition.
How many hours have you put in?
It may not be surprising then that for every album released, Mr. Mraz has an estimated 70 leftover songs. This certainly wouldn’t come as a shocker to any writer or observer of pop culture or even dedicated worker of any kind. In fact, Bruce Springsteen himself, flaunting a thick dog-eared songwriting notebook on 60 Minutes some years ago, expressed similar thoughts. The problem is that an expert worker who does what they do well is revealing their final product to you in its most polished form. And when it’s that clear and well done it’s hard to believe it could’ve taken so many other discarded efforts to get to that place.
In Mr. Mraz’s case, this is quite reassuring to me since his seemingly infinite abilities at unforced rhyming and clever world play appear so natural that one assumes they had to be tossed off in numerous fits of immediate, savant-like inspiration. #HeMustBeLackingInOtherAreas.
A LIFE
After all, you gotta share the guacamole with someone!
I once had the false notion that to be that good at what you do took a single-mindedness that precluded anything else in the universe. Meaning that if you were an artist you locked yourself up in a dank room where someone put a tray of gruel outside your door (or you simply found some in a filthy refrigerator) and you were let out only to eat and shower for half an hour spurts each day before being shoved back in and locked up again. A personal life? Travelling? Leisure time connection with family and friends? Are you kidding? Oh no, there’s plenty of time for that later. Maybe. Once all this important stuff is done and I have the chance.
Great workers know this is completely wrong. They might be dedicated and they likely work long hours. But most have some engagement with the world or they could never rise to the levels that they do. In order to be a master inventor or executor of any craft you have to engage with the task and the world it inhabits. And since nothing in the universe exists in a vacuum this means – yeah, you have to participate and get out from behind the locked door.
I don’t know Mr. Mraz and certainly don’t expect any kind of kickback from his manager. Nor do I think every single song or task he takes on is perfection. What I have noticed though is that he has a life. He shows video from his tour to Antarctica, his farm in Bonsall (near San Diego – and it’s not “glamorous”) and frequently appears at benefits for underprivileged youths and the environment. He’s an avid vegan and yoga enthusiast but admits to loving weed and formerly adoring Mimosas and cigarettes. Plus, he’s had lots of girlfriends and more than a few long-term relationships (Note: I had to throw this in because, well…I had to).
Hiss and boo the sixties hippie mentality all you want. But they were THE SIXTIES for a reason.
GENEROSITY
Two is better than one
No, we did not cover this under the previous Life section. At this weekend’s concert Mr. Mraz spent a huge chunk of his time promoting and sharing the stage with a group of four talented female musicians called Raining Jane, who co-wrote all of the songs on his just released current CD, Yes. I highly recommend the CD. It’s clever, smart and uplifting. It will make you happy, especially in moments when you don’t want to be. You will not want to give in to it but if you keep listening you will. Really good work does this. It wins you over.
Here are some of the song titles: Love Someone, Back to the Earth and Shine. Tell me you don’t want to loathe what you perceive to be sugary and saccharine in our quite ironic world. And…how is that working for you?
I might have had similar feelings, though perhaps not quite as strong, before I took a listen and then attended the show. Not surprisingly JM and Raining Jane took seven years to finish the CD, many of whose songs are performed live on the current 35-city tour. The results of the time and care taken to put it all together show and they just might surprise you.
Of course, that’s what great work and workers do. Every time.
Once again, Mr. Mraz and company are not paying me for what I’m saying. Nor should any of you feel obligated to.
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