I’ve been entertaining my brother and his family in New York for the last few days, which is kind of redundant: the city is pretty entertaining on its own. The weather has been strangely cooperative with days more typical of May than July and no rain, something you could not say for the entire month of June. 

Among the stranger sights we’ve seen in our travels was a sign on the door of Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory saying they welcomed little people. That seemed to me like putting a sign on a topless bar saying We Welcome Men until I noticed the camera crew filming what appeared to be a dancing Benjamin Button on the ferry landing, and then a gaggle of can-we-still-call-them dwarves confirmed my suspicion: The Little People of America were having a conference nearby.

Almost as strange was discovering, upon our visit to the Metropolitan Museum, that the Francis Bacon retrospective was a hit: an out-the-door, through-the-window, fun for all ages kind of show, with little kids in matching YMCA shirts being paraded past his tortured portraits as if they were the Liberty Bell. Is Bacon ready for his Van Gogh close up? I can’t imagine his painful-to-behold triptychs adorning coffee mugs and shower curtains, nor Don McLean writing a song about Pope Innocent X — but the Bacon T-shirts were moving. Rather than a reproduction of his art work they were adorned with one of the Irish misanthrope’s beloved quotes: “Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.”

Amazing show, if you haven’t seen it. In my facile understanding of his biography, I always kind of wondered if maybe his work would not have been so hallucinogenically dark had he taken fewer hallucinogens and not drank so much. But seeing the progression, from the earliest show which purblind art critics misunderstood to the famously twisted self-portraits, I got a better appreciation of the consistent and undeniable dark vision — on informed by war and homophobia and loss and (yes) substance abuse. The portrait of his lover George Dyer, who took his own life, is particularly devastating: a shade unlocks a hotel room door and simultaneously disappears before your eyes…

My teenage niece Ali loved the show too. You don’t have to explain dark and twisted to anyone in the throes of adolescence, perpetual or not.  

Pundits have been saying for a while that the GOP needed to reinvent itself and yesterday Governor Palin put herself in the vanguard of the cause with a bold and surrealistic speech that owed more to the Situationists than the RNC. Sure, you can argue that Mark Sanford got their first with his rambling guess-what-I’m-talking-about confessional, but yesterday Palin set the bar.

Or, as she might put it, she knew when to pass the bar to victory. 

Now this kind of radical career rehab is not for the faint of heart; Britney Spears had to shave her head in public and go through a kind of painful chrysalis that few other conservatives could endure. (You may recall her big plug for Bush and the Iraq war, captured for all time in Michael Moore’s Farenheit 911.) Dangerous, yes, but now she is back on top of the charts and every bit the model mom she was before her Dada period. 

Truth to tell, Palin owes a nod to William Burroughs and Brion Gysin too. What other than their celebrated cut-up technique can explain quotes like this: “A good point guard, here’s what she does: She drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her head up, because she needs to keep her eye on the basket. And… she knows exactly when to pass the ball, so that the team can win. And that is what I’m doing. Keeping our eye on the ball. That represents sound priorities, remember, they include energy independence, and smaller government, and national security and freedom… and I know when it’s time to pass the ball for victory.”

Wow. If you fall into the trap of logic — wondering, for instance, who the guard is, let alone what constitutes victory in this particular game, and how the hell energy independence and freedom got on the court — well, you’re just asking the wrong questions. 

An act of insanity? You wish. We are the ball here and it is us getting played. Her career as a politician may be in jeopardy, though it is hard to tell these days just what you have to do to get permanently bounced from public office (retiring in disgrace is so 20th century!). But her career as a performance artist and world-class surrealist is assured. 

For Alaskans. And for Americans. 

I got a lot of grief for suggesting that Michael Jackson’s death was of less importance to some of us than, say, John Lennon’s or Joe Strummer’s — so I won’t make the mistake of denying the man his cultural significance and the import of this moment blah blah. But even the most hardcore Jackson fan might be starting to wonder about the wall-to-wall coverage it’s receiving on cable news. 

As readers of this space know, I’m sort of a cable news junkie. There is no other word for it since I know it’s bad for me and is doubtless shortening my life span. But as I pottered about my bedroom engaged in homely tasks I tuned into the Clueless News Network at 5 pm, thinking surely Wolf Blitzer et al would have some pulpy political juice: horrendous job numbers today, a new martial salvo from Jenny Sanford of her wayward husband, to say nothing of California issuing IOUs. 

The breaking news was the just released footage of MJ and dancers at a dress rehearsal at the Staple Center. I switched to MSNBC — wonk central, right? Chris Matthews sleeps on sheets with the US Constitution reprinted on them. But no! there was NBC’s chief political analyst Chuck Todd interviewing self-appointed MJ expert Toure about… the release of that video! 

“There was a moment when all three cable news networks were showing that video at the same time,” Todd asked while a little part of him went to hell. “What was the significance of that moment for you?”

“I didn’t actually see it,” said Toure. “I was driving home, having just been interviewed by MSNBC about Jackson…” 

After a moment of swearing I turned on the radio and listened to NPR news which featured extensive coverage of  the Marine push into Taliban country taking place in Afghanistan today — US casualties, people. It reminded me of why I support my local public news station (and so should you) and that it might be time to revisit the idea of getting our local cable provider to carry BBC news or, heaven forfend, Al Jazeera English. Those poor chumps seem to have missed the Jackson story entirely!

My daughter and I went to see The Taking of Pelham 123 at a matinee today. I’d just seen the original a few weeks ago and as much as I enjoyed Tony Scott’s high-voltage remake, I think I preferred the 1974 version with Walter Matthau as the hapless MTA dispatcher. It had a kind of schlubby grace, an adherence to city filth and dexterity that this new one only aspires to. You could almost smell the passengers on the 6 train sweltering on the tracks.

Driving home, we kept hearing snatches of Michael Jackson’s big hits on the radio and Franny asked me about the importance of MJ’s music in my life. As much respect as I have for the man’s talent and as kind as I want to be about the memory of someone who clearly had some demons in his dance mix, I couldn’t really give her a very satisfactory answer. “Well I wasn’t really into that kind of music,” I said, a little lamely while adding something about his electrifying performance of “Billie Jean” at the Motown 25th Anniversary Special. (Yeah he’s lip-synching but the look and those moves — part Elvis, part Liza — are still something to see.)

But what did Michael Jackson mean to me? Nothing really. When John Lennon was killed it shook nearly everyone I knew, not just because of the senselessness of his death but because of the kind of sense he made of our lives. Whether playing peacenik or performance artist he captured something of the sixties and even the seventies. But what did Jackson say about the eighties? That it was cool to make money, lots and lots of money, and that making lots of money was more valuable even than friendship — like the one he had with John’s  erstwhile bandmate Paul McCartney, who was a little miffed when Jacko bought the rights to much of the Beatles’ catalogue… 

Now it looks like drugs may have been involved in the singer’s death (shocking, I know) which puts him in that sad string of American superstar novas with Elvis and Marilyn — did he choose this destiny? It’s very American of course — think of Citizen Kane, dropping his snow globe as he breathes his last, remembering the innocent joy of his youth — and tragic, no doubt. It just don’t move me.  

Now when Joe Strummer died of a heart attack at about the same age, I was devastated. But I didn’t hear his songs on the radio all day. I had to go home to listen.

And I thought I had a lousy Father’s Day!

Watching the breaking story of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who admitted this afternoon that he was not hiking the Appalachian Trail this weekend as his aides had maintained but had in fact spent five days in the arms of his mistress in Argentina, I can’t help but wonder what it is about politicians and extramarital activities. Having been married a few times, I am more forgiving than some of marital mishaps — but look at the recent record of high-profile pols and their meltdowns:

Ensign, Foley, Craig, Edwards, Newsom, Spitzer, Patterson, McGreevey — and if you want to get in the Wayback Machine with me we can name-check Clinton and Gingrich while we’re at it. You can blame the pressure of running for office (and unfortunately, most professional politicians never stop running, especially when they have the job) and the sad notion that they are supposed to be family exemplars. Maybe it comes from trying to suppress all those other desires in pursuit of the big desire of being the king of whatever asteroid they aspire to rule. Or maybe it’s the bleach they use on their teeth. 

Sanford is already getting high marks for not dragging his wife out onto the public confessional with him, a political ritual that should really go the way of the pillory. Instead he got to humiliate himself alone, with a chorus of giggling teenagers behind him, a circle of hell even Dante could not foresee. Oh, what would the loved ones say?