Sunday Morning Magic

Dick Cavett and the magical Slydini
by Charlie Leck

Sunday morning, more than two hours before the sun will rise again, is a wonderful time. Just my black dog and I in my study, with only the desk lamp and the computer monitor throwing out any light. This creates a peacefulness that my soul just loves. I sometimes horripilate in moments like these.

Enter Dick Cavett and the morning becomes so special that one is tempted to call it holy. Cavett has something new on his blog [Dick Cavett’s blog, Talk Show]. This only happens every two or three weeks and that is the only thing I don’t like about his blogging.

On this particular dark and quiet Sunday morning, Cavett introduces me to the great Slydini. It was just the kind of encounter I needed on this morning. I didn’t want to read about Afghanistan or the ongoing, ongoing vote count for the Minnesota Senate seat.

Cavett fell in love with magic as a child and, eventually, Slydini became one of his great heroes. In his blog, he went on and on in introducing this great man as his friend, needing to conclude the introduction by apologizing if he had over-introduced him. I thought he had, until I watched the video of Slydini’s appearance on Cavett’s PBS show in 1977.

What a charming and wonderful man! What magic and gracefulness in his hands!

It’s a half-hour show. I thought I’d watch for five minutes or so. I sat transfixed by disappearing and reappearing cigarettes and silver dollars that smashed through tables and ropes and handkerchiefs that did all kinds of totally impossible things.

“This is real magic,” I thought. Slydini's audience sat immediately next to him. They could reach out and touch the great man. They could see everything, but they saw nothing.

“You knowa why?” He asked them in his stumbling Italian accent. “You noa watch right!”

Yet they watched so carefully that their eyes hurt and so did mine; yet, wonder of wonder, I saw nothing but glorious magical recreations of things that had been cut or tied so firmly together that they would never be single or separated again – except when they passed through the hands of the marvelous Slydini.

You lika magic? You-a-be sura to a-watcha d’clever Slydini.

No super electronics. No disappearing Tigers. No promises to make the World Trade Towers reappear. Just simple, elegant magic. Just amazing, transfixing hands.

Hold on to your bra as you do; for it will seem that Slydini is going to reach out through the years and through your monitor to swipe it from you.

Thanks again, Dick Cavett. No, you didn’t over-introduce your friend and mentor. You did just fine.

[Watch the Slydini/Cavett video ]

Aiming Low

About choosing Palin, Cavett says, “McCain aimed low and missed!”
by Charlie Leck

I just must have my Dick Cavett read every week [Talk Show by Dick Cavett]. He appeals to my sense of humor. I don’t much appreciate the obvious punch line jokes that lean toward silliness. I like the dry, hidden humor of guys like Will Rogers and Woody Allan and even Colbert. After they pull the trigger on a joke there’s just a slight pause before it goes off in your brain and you suddenly get it. A brother accuses me of not having a sense of humor. It’s probably more correct to say that I have a different kind of appreciation of humor.

This week, Cavett writes about Sarah Palin. He calls her “the wordsmith of Wasilla.” As evidence, he presents us with one of her sentences he found particularly poignant:

“My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.”

“Has she no first language?” Cavett wonders.

Cavett exhibits some deep curiosity about the lady’s loyal followers – the ones who ache for her to run again in 2012 – and wonders how Presidents like Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt and, perhaps, Eisenhower managed to get along so well in office without being soccer moms.

“Without being whizzes in the kitchen, whipping up moose soufflés? Without executing and wounding wolves from the air and without promoting that sad, threadbare hoax — sexual abstinence — as the answer to the sizzling loins of the young?

“(In passing, has anyone observed that hunting animals with high-powered guns could only be defined as sport if both sides were equally armed?)”

What has caused the Palin Swoon? Cavett wonders aloud and invites answers from us.

Damned if I know! Perhaps it’s something in the water. That’s the best I can do, so he’ll get no response from me.

Blog Junkie

There are good, bad and awful, but I love checking out the blogs!
by Charlie Leck

In absolute truth, I’m a blog junkie. I find more truth on the blogs than I do in the newspapers, which, in this day and age, are owned and controlled by massive, profit-seeking corporations. The Alternative News supplied by blogs get much closer to the truth. Here’s a little report on my morning reading of the blogs today (Friday, 12 September 2008).

David Letterman, in an opening monologue this week pretty much set to rest the question about whether Sarah Palin is ready to be President, revealing to us again that comedy often strikes deep at the heart of truth.

“I don’t think we need to worry about that because Bush has
lowered the bar so tremendously, I mean, I’m ready to be President.”

Now, in truth, that’s not funny! It’s a tragic truth.

David Zetland was a guest blogger on Freakonomics, one of my favorite blogs, writing about water and its future and the future shortages of water we can expect – in a nation that treats water so casually that “we water our sidewalk.” I urge you to read both of these blogs if you care. Part I. And, Part II.

A few days ago, I republished one of my blogs here at the request of a friend. The blog displays the incredible embassy that the U.S. is soon to move into in Iraq. The compound pretty much indicated the U.S. has very long term plans in Iraq. Now comes an Amy Goodman report about a “recently leaked draft of an Iraqui-U.S. agreement that outlines the long-term status of U.S. forces in Iraq.”

If you don’t read (or listen to) Amy Goodman regularly at Democracy Now, you’re missing one of the most important, insightful news writers in America.

A long time ago I wrote in disgust about the hundreds of millions of dollars that William McGuire made as the head of United Health Group. Need I emphasize the word health? While we wonder why health care and health insurance is so expensive in America, fat-assed executives skim nearly a billion dollars right off the top to pad their personal wealth. Now, legal settlements between McGuire and a host of government entities sound like it will cost the ex-executive nearly a billion dollars. [Here’s a story in our local paper about the settlement!]

Good! But, believe me, this is only the tip of the iceberg in the industry and it’s the American public that gets screwed!

Rachel Maddow has just launched a new show on MSNBC. That’s great. She’s wonderful and I enjoy her commentary. The problem is, just as it is in the case of Keith Olbermann, the only people who listen to them are the people who agree with them. Oh well, maybe the two of them can make us angry enough that we’ll get up off our lazy butts and join the fight to get rid of the right-wing, religious freaks who are taking control of our nation.

If you are a person of faith, but can’t stand the religious puke the right-wingers throw around – and you want something more rational and thoughtful, you really ought to spend some time every few days catching up with things at God’s Politics with Jim Wallis. You read some sensible and thoughtful commentary on the place of faith in our nation’s political struggles.

I also go to a blog called Healing Iraq regularly. I find it a pretty balanced read. They try to look at Iraq and what’s happening there in a very fair and accurate way. The state of the nation (Iraq) was a recent subject. It has been placed at the bottom of the scale in almost every category. Only Sudan is rated in more desperate condition.

“The height of the U.S. military surge in Iraq was a key factor in this year’s analysis of that country. And though Iraq’s score improved slightly, the gains that one might hope for—those that reflect fundamental, long-term changes—did not occur. The desperate predicament of nearly 4 million people driven from their homes, the abysmal state of public services, and the discord among sectarian factions have shown no real improvement. The incremental security and economic progress that has occurred are dependent on tenuous, short-term factors that could unravel at any time. Eager to cobble together a fragile peace, the U.S. military has armed dozens of new Sunni militia groups that could later turn their guns on the Iraqi government, their Shiite rivals, or the Americans many still regard as occupiers. Similarly, Iraq’s economy has improved only moderately, thanks largely to the spike in global oil prices, not Iraqi production. In short, progress in Iraq last year was negligible at best and deeply susceptible to reversal should the country suffer the kind of shock—a food shortage, a high-level assassination, an attack that unleashes ethnic hatreds—that has exposed so many states’ deep vulnerabilities in recent months.”

This is the mess that yet needs cleaning up. The cost to the U.S. is going to be staggering – even while we leave our own infrastructure and educational system without attention. Is this really the political party you want to vote for – to give them another 4 years to mess us up?

Andrew Sullivan, who blogs at The Atlantic, is another very balanced blogger. One can't accuse him of being to the left or to the right. He wrote yesterday about an Obama speech in which the Senator raised one of the issues that interests me most in these awful days – habeus corpus!

If you really have a strong theological bent, or want to, Our of Ur (by Christianity Today) might be a blog you’d like to visit and read. This thought comes from an essay posted there by Brandon O’Brien. It’s something we ought to really keep in mind.

“If we find our authenticity and identity in Christ, we’ll have to be prepared to stop judging our effectiveness by how people respond to us. We’ll no doubt be misunderstood by some. But we won’t, as some people fear, be disregarded or discredited for speaking or acting in each given situation according to the need. That doesn’t make us hypocrites. In fact, people are more likely to question your motives if you’re always affirming, always in-your-face, always cool and groovy.”

I’ll let you put your own interpretations on that and I won’t comment further.

For pure entertainment and reading pleasure I always find my way to Dick Cavett and The Talk Show. He posts about once a week and the reading is just wonderful. In his most recent blog he muses about how he would like time to ask Sarah Palin a question or two -- one being:

"I’d love to have the chance to ask her how being able to see Russia from parts of her state apparently qualifies her to deal with that vastly complex country more effectively than those scholars and diplomats who find themselves less proximate to its shores."

Enough! I hope you enjoyed this little tour around the blogs!