Pre-Turkey Downs

Before we declare war on poultry this week, let's take a breather and see where we are:

Bush is lambasted on a public tour overseas and his father steps in to assume the role of authority figure.

Iraq recognizes Syria for the first time since declaring war on Iran.

A high-ranking Christian government official in Lebanon is assassinated and Bush blames Syria and Iran.

Iran and Syria have been meddling in the affairs of other countries of the Middle East like they were our Latin America.

The Democrats are wondering whether to raise minimum wage, impeach Bush, condemn abortion and announce the next frontrunner for the '08 election.

Director Robert Altman died yesterday. While no one can nor should live forever, what a sad loss. Altman's filmmaking, while sporadic in quality, left this world a better place with more than a few masterpieces. M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville (for crying out loud!), Short Cuts and Gosford Park, just to name a few. The Long Goodbye with Elliot Gould and even Prairie Home Companion are films that will be watched for many years to come. I learned about Altman in a film class at the beginning of the Nineties during the renaissance of the Westerns. Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven resurrected good westerns (or, for that matter, "antiwesterns") and we watched and analyzed McCabe and Mrs. Miller, not a film I had heard of, wanted to see or thought would have been worth a darn. My life was changed in those short two hours as I viewed filmmaking from a reborn experience. I understood the importance of sound editing, I came to recognize the great talent of Julie Christie and see Warren Beatty as an amazing screen presence. He was 81. The Academy Awards will be all the emptier without Altman's presence there.

Chris Lefty Brown, as silly as he often is with his mix disc on the Amendments and all (I'm dying for a copy), is not often wrong in his heroes or books on heroes. He lent me the oral history interviews of U2's Bono and this book and its subject are truly amazing. Paul Hewson is a deep-thinking intellectual, an intelligent and eloquent man, a Christian who sees the real world in real terms (including his indulgent and leisurely lifestyle) and a man who tries in all settings, to see his faith as his understanding that God is bigger than everything he attempts to grasp. While we can sit and nitpick about the frivolity of the life of a rock star and how only money and privilege has brought this man the opportunity to impact the world, we must first understand that his passions and causes were always there. Bono also is one that uses his rock star status as, to coin Teddy Roosevelt, a bully pulpit in order to intelligently show world leaders that Third World Debt, pandemic disease and hunger and global imperialism all fly in the face of a Creator that would have us humans treating each other just a tad more civilly. I admire Bono all the more after having finished this book and upon closing the back cover had to stop and think whether any of his band's music could even hold a candle to the causes Bono's fighting for or the number of lives he's positively impacted. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Hope the tryptofan (sp) doesn't get you on Thursday.