Rally to Restore Sanity Chicago: A Reasonable Idea That Became an Insane Event, or, TV Rally Crowd v. Live Rally Crowd

Earlier today, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held a massive rally at the National Mall in Washington D.C. titled “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear”, in which over a million people came from all over to attend.  It was broadcasted live on Comedy Central from 11am to 2pm Central Time.

    In Chicago and other cities, satellite rallies were launched for those who were unable or unwilling to make it to D.C.  The Chicago Rally, which was titled “Rally to Restore Sanity Chicago”, was organized by Angie McMahon, who had worked tirelessly for over a month to organize and sponsor this event.

    The Chicago Rally took place in Grant Park.  I arrived early to take pictures and get some quotes and brief interviews with several attendees for an article for the DePaulia.  It was shortly a few minutes before 10am and the area was almost empty.  There were only about 50 to 60 people, including volunteers.  “What if people don’t show up?” I thought.

    People did show up, a couple of thousand at least.  One of the best treats about rallies is the posters and their owners.  I admire that they take the time and effort to create a poster and carry it around all day.  Two fiftyish women traveled all the way from the small town of Dixon, IL to attend the Rally.  “It was a weekend trip,” said Sandy Schuler.  “We were in town since yesterday shopping but the main reason we came was for the rally.”  When I mentioned that Stewart stated that the Main Rally was not political, Rosemary Johnson disagreed.  “I think he was serious,” said Schuler.  “I think that it’s time that civil discourse was actually civil.”  She didn’t like the low tactics that most politicians were using to get attention.  Both women mentioned that they had volunteered for a campaign during this election season.

    Elaine Heggie and Laura Ingler, two twenty-somethings from the south suburbs, are fed up with the way politicians in general.  “Politics are fucked up!” Heggie exclaimed.  “It feels like that South Park episode where people had to decide between a turd sandwich and a giant douche,” said Heggie.  Ingler, who recently moved here from Michigan, feels that “(politicians) abandon everything they once stood for.”  Both young women are concerned that many people around their age are apathetic when it comes to politics.  Heggie mentioned she was once like this.  Things are different now.  “I pay taxes,” she said, “so I have to actually care.  They’re fighting each other (Democrats and Republicans) instead of helping out the people who elected them.”

    Rally Chicago volunteers David and Kaela were also vocal on their decision to help out with the rally.  “This is a reminder that there’s a moderate audience out there,” said David, “and that audience is being left out.”  Kaela believes that people shouldn’t have to settle for extremities.  “Politicians pander to the chaos,” she stated.  The negative campaign ads don’t help politicians, especially those from Christine O’Donnell, Rand Paul, Bill Brady, and many others.  “They are degrading,” she added.  “It feels like they are nothing more than aggressive salesman, pushing a product for us to buy.”

    While the intentions of McMahon, the guest speakers, and all those involved in making the rally possible were in the right place and I give them credit and respect for taking action instead of sitting on the sidelines, I’m not sure if this rally held up its name.  Like the Main Rally, I’m not sure what the exact purpose of the Rally was.  It wasn’t officially a political rally but a lot of people brought with them their political baggage.  I mean a guy, Rich Whitney, who is running for Governor on the Illinois Green Party showed up to speak for Chrissakes.  How is that NOT political?

    Of course, there were a couple of speakers present who were probably better off not being there, and they were not political, or even in accordance with the purpose of the Chicago Rally.  There was a Mitch Hedberg wannabe comedian who talked about sandwiches and used his jokes as a poor analogy on abortion.  “Some people say that a sandwich is conceived the moment the cheese is inserted,” he said.  “Others say it’s when the meat is placed between the slices of bread.”  I was very close to joining the chants of the TV Rally crowd, just so I didn’t have to hear this lousy stand-up.

    For an event that has the words “Restore Sanity”, it got a bit insane during parts of the early afternoon.  McMahon had brought in a Jumbo-Tron so the audience could see the live telecast of the Main Rally in D.C.  The Chicago audience was able to see the Jumbo-Tron throughout the 3-hour event but they were only able to watch (with audio) for only a small portion, which was roughly 20 to 30 minutes.  “It was insane to have a Jumbo-Tron and live feed and not use it,” wrote Erick Robertson on Facebook.  The audience had split up into the TV Rally crowd and the Live Rally crowd.  The TV Rally crowd wanted to watch Stewart and Colbert’s rally and the Live Rally crowd wanted to listen to the live speakers and performances that were on-stage.  Things got so tense that a security guard grabbed a mic from someone and told the TV Crowd that “they should have stayed their asses at home” if they wanted to watch TV.  There were both cheers and jeers, and much of the TV Rally people left.

    While I understand that this security guard was trying to get the audience to settle down, she didn’t have to be such rude about it.  The worst part is the organizers seemed to have condoned this woman’s harshness; not one person, even McMahon, stepped forward and apologized or even told her that how her behavior was out of line.  I was at the Chicago Rally to see the speakers, interact with some people who were part of the “85% of the moderates who were being overlooked by the mainstream media”, and of course, get a good story for my school paper.  I was in the Live Rally crowd but that security guard was out of line.  If I wasn’t at the Rally for the third reason I stated, I would have left, not because I wanted to watch the Main Rally, but this woman took me out of the Rally.  “She ruined the event, not the not the fact that the DC rally was not being shown continuously,” commented LeeAnn Morgan on the Facebook page for McMahon’s Rally. 

    “I think the Chicago rally was a fine idea,” wrote Vickie Hellyer, “but (they) should not have used the Stewart "Rally to Restore Sanity" name to represent the event. It should have taken place prior to or immediately after the airing of the Stewart/Colbert event.”  But how many people would have gone to the rally if the Jumbo-Tron wasn’t at the rally broadcasting the Main Rally?  Despite the fact that McMahon stressed that the D.C. Rally was not going to be the entire event, many people seemed to have been disappointed, especially when they cut off Ozzy Osbourne’s performance, which triggered the loud chants of “Turn on the audio!”  (The origin of the chants began with a woman a few rows behind me who wanted to listen to Sam Waterson recite a poem instead of two members from the Progressive Alliance.)

    I was sitting next to a group of college-age kids who were shouting back at the audience to pipe down.  “You guys suck!” shouted one obnoxious guy in a backwards baseball cap.  He had fallen to the same low as the security guard.  His immature shouts were filled with irony.  At the beginning of the Chicago Rally, McMahon spoke to the crowd.  “No matter what personal, political, or social backgrounds we all have,” she stated in her opening speech, “We will disagree without hate speech.”  This was about an hour before Obnoxious Guy and his posse began to shout at the TV Rally crowd.  I’m surprised that a fight didn’t break out (that I’m aware of).

    The Chicago Rally finally gave way to the Main Rally for the last few moments of their telecast.  Jon Stewart gave a comic yet poignant speech about America.  He used footage of traffic entering the Holland Tunnel in New York.  

“This is who we are (the cars), that’s a schoolteacher who thinks his taxes are too high…a woman with two small kids who really can’t think of anything else right now…another car is a Latino carpenter…Mormon Jay-Z fan…Every one of these cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear.  Often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers.  And yet these millions of cars must somehow find their way to squeeze one by one into a mile-long, 30 foot wide tunnel carved underneath a might river…and they do it, concession by concession, ‘You go then I’ll go, you go then I’ll go.’” 

    Now that I have seen the Main Rally on TV this evening and seen the highlights online, I wish that I had gone to THAT rally.  He described America in such terms that only he could make that would bring a nation, even for an afternoon, together in a union that has only been demonstrated through times of tragedy and legitimate fear. 

    What I got out of this afternoon was that we are a vast and diverse nation filled with millions upon millions of ideals, beliefs, backgrounds, and histories that have been used by fear-mongers, politicians, the mass media, and others with hidden and/or personal agendas to pit us against one another.  We cannot let our differences divide us but rather use those differences to work together and create a better nation, a better world.  Two years ago we elected Barack Obama on the premise that we wanted change.  “Yes we can” was the slogan he used during the campaign, and that is exactly what we were hoping for.  But we can’t change a nation solely on hope and catchy slogans.  We have to change a nation on actions, efficient strategies, by working together instead of working in competition and fighting each other instead of fighting for the people.  We need sanity in these United States and we need it fast. #

"In Treatment" case study

One of television’s greatest shows does not involve a “Glee” club, a “Modern Family”, a “Good Wife” and her struggles, a comedy writer’s chaos at “30 Rock”, or some “Mad Men” executives and the women who deal with them.  These are all fine shows but this one show I mention has a je ne said quoi (That’s French for “I don’t know”) quality to it.  At times it doesn’t feel like a TV show but something more personal and complex.  The show in question is “In Treatment”, an HBO character drama that had its third season premiere on October 25th and October 26^th at 8pm.  (Two episodes run on Mondays and two more on Tuesdays).

    “In Treatment” focuses on Dr. Paul Weston (an outstanding performance by Gabriel Byrne), a fifty-something psychoanalysis, and some of his patients.  Each episode is divided into sessions and lasts half-an-hour, and almost each session is in real time.  The main (and often only) setting for each episode takes place in Paul’s office, which takes place in his brownstone in New York.  The first two seasons have five weekly episodes; four of them were Paul and his patients and the fifth involved Paul’s therapy with his own psychoanalysis Gina (Dianne Wiest, who earned an Emmy in 2008 for her performance).  Past patients were portrayed by Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are Alright), Hope Davis (American Splendor, HBO’s “The Special Relationship”) and John Mahoney (“Frasier”), and others.  This season features only three patients and a new therapist for Paul.

    On Monday, we have Sunil (Irrfan Khan, “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Namesake”) is a retired widower who is coping with depression and has isolated himself from his son’s family.  He has a defeated look on his face when he talks and moves.  He is brought in by his son and daughter-in-law, whom he has staying with for several months, after he has isolated himself from the world.  He won’t shower, eat, sleep, or play with his grandchildren.  He is not fond of his daughter-in-law, a WASP-y control freak, and feels like his son has disappointed him.  “My granddaughter is named after a bottled water company,” he says after the son and daughter-in-law leave the session.  “My next grandchild might be called iPod.”  Khan delivers a witty and somber performance out of this defeated man.

    Frances (Academy Award nominee Debra Winger, “Terms of Endearment”) is a former movie actress who is returning to acting after a long hiatus.  She is having trouble remembering her lines for a play.  Frances also has a connection with Paul; her sister Patricia was Paul’s therapist many years earlier.  Patricia becomes a dominant part of their sessions.  I immediately saw the similarities between Winger and her character.  Winger was one of the most popular actresses in the 1980s and early 1990s before leaving acting for a lengthy period, only to re-emerge recently.  While she is entertaining to watch, I am unable to separate Frances from Winger.  I’m not sure if Frances is either genuinely talking or ‘acting’ during sessions (she is quite a diva).

    On Tuesday, we have Jesse (newcomer Dane DeHaan), a young gay photographer who would rather spend time taking photographers and frequent a bar run by two guys he occasionally beds than go to school.  “(Photographer) Ansel Adams didn’t finish high school!” he shouts as an excuse to not attend class.  He is not in therapy because he is gay, which is a relief, since this show does not have to resort to playing that card.  In fact, I’m not quite sure why he’s in therapy but he has been seeing Paul for a quite a while.  They fist-pump at the end of the session, “Knock the rock. Explode the rock”, which means that they have a decent doctor-patient partnership.  At times Jesse is also aggressive, closed off, and just plain rude to Paul.  This session sends Jesse into a tail-spin.  He receives a phone call that jeopardizes the work Paul and Jesse have done during their sessions.  These sessions feel at times like a father and son struggling to communicate with one another.

    Finally, we have Adele (Academy Award nominee Amy Ryan, TV’s “The Wire” and “The Office”), Paul’s new psychoanalysis.  Paul needs a refill on some Ambien so he can sleep.  He is not in the mood to sit down and talk.  Adele will have none of that.  She is also aware that Paul is not taking her seriously due to her age (she is in her thirties) and her limited experience.  Aware that he won’t get his prescription filled, Paul discusses his sleeping problems in detail and mentions a recurring dream where it’s implied that he is trapped.  Paul also mentions that he believes he has Parkinson’s disease, the same thing that killed his father recently.  At one point, he lashes out at Adele when she makes an assumption on his difficult relationship with Gina—and she strikes back (since this is HBO, this brilliant and tense dialogue between them cannot be printed for obvious reasons.)

    I am still amazed after two years that HBO has this show on the air.  Of course this is a network that often takes risks in its programming.  But this show stands out even on its home network.  HBO has “True Blood”, “Broadwalk Empire”, and “Big Love”, three shows that go all out on sex, violence, drugs, and many controversial subjects.  These shows have big scenes that have people talking for days on end.  “In Treatment” has no big scenes like “True Blood” or “The Sopranos”.  It has the aura of a stage play, where everything happens and nothing happens at the same time.  Instead of seeing a graphic sex scene between Sookie Stackhouse and Bill Compton, you see a patient discuss a sexual encounter (sometimes in graphic detail) with Paul.  In seasons past, there have been sessions where the Paul and his patients share intense, personal, and even heartbreaking conversations that I felt like I was eavesdropping. 

    During a television season with great and trashy entertainment, it’s a great privilege to have such a powerful and thought-provoking show that goes deeper into what’s on the surface. #

Not Listed

In addition to being a full-time student, a part-time blogger, and a no-time Tea Partyer, despite the fact that I think tea is a very good alternative to coffee when coffee is (very rarely) not available, I am also a contributing writer for The DePaulia, my school's newspaper.  I have been writing and taking photographs for them for about a month now.  I think they like it when photos accompany a story.  The chances of someone reading your story greatly improves when there's a visual aid, such as a photograph, or if you're artistically inclined, a drawing or cartoon.

Today I have not one, but TWO pieces published in the DePaulia.  I was also not mentioned in the Writers section on Page Two, which is the first thing I check every Monday.  When my name was not listed, two things immediately came up.  1) WTF?! and 2) Really, WTF?!

I was almost ready to throw away the paper when I opened it and turned to the Entertainment Section.  The first thing I saw was my review for the documentary "Catfish."  I turned the page back and saw my second article.  "Okay, both stories were published," I thought. "They were edited a bit more than usual, but they were published."

It still bothers me that I wasn't officially credited.  I'm sure it was a mistake and no one reads the section of the newspaper or magazine where they list all the editors, photographers, writers, various staff, and contact information.  My ego has been temporarily bruised.  Maybe this is what ghost writers and editors must feel like whenever their work is released and they don't get their dues.  Then again, ghost writers probably know that when they take on the assignment.

I can't let this mishap get to me.  I am convincing myself that this was a minor error, get off this soapbox, and will move on with my life.  Actually, I wonder who uses actual soapboxes.  That would make an interesting Halloween costume.  Too bad I'm already planning to be Clark Kent and Superman.  I wanna be Clark Kent half the time and Superman the other half.

-With love and regrets,

Eddie

BUSES VS. MYSELF, or Riding the Megabus

 NOTE: This was written while I was on the Megabus last night.  I didn't have internet access so i wrote this while killing time.  I started writing while we driving through Normal, IL and ended when the battery on my laptop was below 20%.

    I don’t like buses at all.  Buses and I don’t have a good relationship.  I hated riding the yellow school bus as a child, mostly because I hated sitting near a bunch of kids who were too damn noisy for 7am.  Also a bunch of kids, especially during fifth and sixth grade, liked to cause other people on the road to have fatal accidents by yelling obscenities out the window and mooning them.  I remember one kid once unzipped his school khakis and pissed right out the window.  A couple of my school bullies were on the school bus.  It was bad enough that I had to go to school but I had to deal with the bullshit politics of the school bus.  You couldn’t sit in certain seats because they were reserved for so-and-so.  I won’t go into it, nor do I want to.  All I will say is every time I see a yellow school bus I cringe and pity the children who are stuck riding them.

    I hate CTA buses because they it’s so easy to hate public transit.  I believe that public transit gets a bad rap.  I’m sure CTA buses wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t suck so much.  Buses are either too early or running late.  Or a bus will crash on the street.  if you miss a bus, then  you have to wait anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour for the next one.  Trains are not like that.  There is always a Red Line train arriving at the Fullerton Stop at least every ten minutes all day and night long.  Both northbound to the outer edges of the city like Rogers Park and Loyola, and southbound, towards the Loop, the South Side, and whatever the hell is at 95^th and the Dan Ryan.  Public transit overseas is much better than the crap we’re stuck with for our commute. 

    I’m sure the people in charge of the CTA are doing the best they can with the limited amount of resources they have and the state and federal government is unable to provide any more support.  But I still don’t understand how they are millions and millions in debt year after year.  And this is after they end up cutting services and laying off employees.  Every so often, we hear about their Doomsday plan, which sounds more like a cartoon villain will take over the CTA and crash all the trains and buses into one giant pile in the middle of the city and break out into potentially cool yet ridiculous laughter.  I think we should fire the people in charge of running the budget into the red, like the CEO, CFO, and whatever overpaid positions they make up and hide behind.  The only thing that bothers me more than the overpaid bureaucrats of the CTA is that one of them is now in charge of the Chicago Public Schools system.   You have a man who was unable to run busses and trains in charge of running the educational system of one of the largest cities in the country.

    The worst bus system I have ever encountered is American Coach.  This is the bus system that Walt Disney World used to shuffle its college interns around from the parks to their condo apartments back when I was an intern there in the spring of ’08.  Those buses were so shitty.  They were never on time.  Half the drivers were assholes.  And the buses never took us to any cool places.  They only took us to the three apartment complexes we resided in, the four parks where we worked, one super Wal-Mart somewhere in Kalazamkoo or whatever the name of the town that was down the road, and some mall that no one went to because we couldn’t either find the time or the money to go there.  I had never wanted to own a car more in my whole life than when I was living down there.  One of the first things people do when they move down there is to befriend someone who had a car and could take you places.  Almost everyone had at least one roommate who had a car, so this was fairly easy to accomplish.  All you had to do was to develop a friendship, or at the very least, not hate your roommate.

    The buses in Mexico are the most interesting ones to ride.  In the capital and most large cities, all the buses are under one organized mass transit system, like CTA.  In other parts of the country, like in smaller cities, Acapulco and other tourist traps, it seems like anyone can buy or lease a bus or something that resembles a bus, charge fare, and you’re in business.  I’ve seen people board those old Volkswagen vans at bus stops.  (Also, while they were designated bus stops created, zoned, and built by the city, buses would stop anywhere.)  I remember my dad always asking before we boarded a bus how much the fare was.  The fare was similar on most buses but there was no universal amount.  One bus could charge five pesos and the next bus could charge ten pesos.  Some buses would be air-conditioned and some buses had the windows permanently open so passengers could get a breeze during the unforgiving humidity they were trapped in.  I remember one or two buses that actually have lawn chairs for seats.  Lawn chairs.  Those were the ones that would charge five pesos.  If you wanted to sit on a regular and safe seat, then you were willing to shell out ten pesos.  Those buses also have air-conditioning and a working radio.

    Right now I am riding on a Megabus.  I am visiting some friends downstate for the weekend.  In the past I always traveled by train.  I love the train.  Its a smooth ride, its fast, plus if you’re lucky, you get to steal someone’s wi-fi and charge your phone and laptop thanks to electrical outlets that run on the side of the train right underneath the window.  I like those trains, especially the double-deckers with the bar, café, and the lounge with the chairs that go round-and-round and the glass ceiling.

    Rachel recommended Megabus to me.  I was skeptical but I told her that I would think about it.  Ten seconds after I told her this, I looked at departure dates and times at Amtrak.com.  It turned out that Amtrak prices had gone up.  Also, the train would not take me all the way to my desired destination.  Every train I looked at would only take me as far as Springfield, which is halfway.  From there, I would have to board a bus (a Greyhound bus! Ewww!) that would eventually take me to my location.  After looking at airfare, I gave in and bought a round-trip bus ticket on the Megabus.

    The megabus is not that bad.  I was expecting it to be tacky, maybe even terrible.  But so far, this megabus has been good.  Its a double-decker, which is neat because double-decker buses are better than single deck buses (see the double-deckers in London.  Those are the only buses that i would be willing to board.)  The bus driver is funny and says things like “We got only 15 minutes (for the pit stop).  I’m leaving at 8:15 sharp.  Please come back ‘cuz if you call customer service, the first thing they’ll tell you is that I don’t come back to pick up anybody.”  I have a row to myself, which is great because these seats are small.  I hope I have a row to myself on the bus ride back.

    I still don’t like buses.  I mean, I was looking at airfare before I settled to ride the Megabus.  I would rather spend more money to fly than go cheap and ride a bus across miles and miles of cornfields, faceless suburbia sprawls, and forests.  But I don’t have the money to go all out for a plane ticket at the moment.  I am a recently unemployed college student for chrissakes.  For now, I have this double-decker Megabus with the funny bus driver.  I hope we don’t hit a deer because that would be horrible.  I have to meet Rachel and Danny in 90 minutes.  This bus has to be on time.

From yours truly,

Eddie

AFTER-NOTE: The bus arrived at Union Station in St Louis five minutes ahead of schedule.  Rachel and Danny arrived fifteen minutes behind schedule.  They made amends by letting me DJ on the drive to a place called Shenanigan’s, where I drank some bitter-tasting beer from a plastic pitcher that I wanted to take home.

New Blog!

Two things debuted today on the Internet.  First, Team Coco, Conan O'Brien's YouTube channel, debuted earlier today.  This fascinating (but currently boring at 10:45pm) channel livestreams whatever is going on Team Coco's headquarters.  Right now, two men are placing a large easel painting in the middle of a hallway.  They laugh, wave at the camera, hi-fi each other and exit the room.  Classical elevator/lobby music is playing.  This is the kind of music that would make a person go mad within a couple of hours of listening to it nonstop.  I wonder if this music is used to break down prisoners-of-war in those 'secret' prisons.

The second thing that debuted today is this blog, The Awkwardness of Being.  This blog is special because this is my blog.  And like a lot of people from my generation, I was raised to believe that everything I ever did made me special.  So this is my special blog.  I am special, just like everyone else.

Back to Team Coco: A live nude model is going to pose for the empty easel painting.  Exciting!

A man is the live nude model.  Okay.  Its funny.  He is also being shown from the chest-up, just in case a child is watching YouTube at 10:50pm on a Wednesday. "I don't have a lot of experience as a model but I have a lot of experience being alive and nude."  He also mentioned that he lied to his mom that he's an artist.  "If I can just say that I painted this, that would be great."

Back to me: I am not sure what the exact purpose of this blog will be.  For one, it will require to write more often.  Specifically to finish writing something instead of starting something and either deleting it or just saving it on my laptop and never looking at it again.  I want to post something here at least once a week.

Also I want to meet other bloggers and writers via this site who share similar interests that I have and whatnot. I would also plan to read other blogs on a regular basis.  This would most likely occur while I should be reading for a class.

I guess that's all I have for now.  I need to pack for a trip I'm taking this weekend.  I'm off to visit some friends downstate.

-Three Cheers from Here
Eddie

P.S. I am going to try a few of these closings.  They might some lame but I will roll them out until I find something or give up altogether.