Here’s What I Think…

I just spent three days in the Zona Rosa district of Mexico City, one of my favorite places in the world.  Traveling is my passion in life, and though I love my home in Los Angeles, I always get antsy if I don’t have a trip in the books.  But what made this long weekend so special was a seminal moment I had on Saturday night, in a lively bar full of fun and friendly patrons, where a Mexican man who only spoke Spanish was trying to have a conversation with me.  I never was the best student.  So much television in my childhood did a real number on my attention span.  I studied German in high school and can only remember how to say, “Where is the bathroom?”  But with great fanfare after a trip to Spain two years ago, I studied Spanish at the Beverly Hills Lingual Institute .  I got the basics, but never retained much.  Recently I began to watch movies on DVD with the Spanish subtitles zipping past on the bottom of the screen so I could associate words with their English equivalent.  I didn’t think it was working because I still freeze up when someone speaks to me in rapid fire Spanish.  But while I tried to speak to this man in the bar, words were more recognizable than ever before.  I actually understood what he was saying to me.  I could even respond and not have him give me a dumbfounded look.  I was, in a small way, speaking another language.  Next month I go to Spain and in addition to stopping in my beloved favorite European city Madrid as well as Barcelona where almost everyone speaks English, I’m hitting some smaller cities and towns where most people don’t.  This could be a real test for me in my quest to speak Spanish.  I’m well into my forties now, and regret not learning when I was younger, but hell, it’s never too late.

In response to a post I just received, I’d like to clarify just why I love New England.  Because New Englanders don’t let the media tell them who is going to win an election before they’ve had a chance to vote.  But after seeing all three Democratic candidates debate in Nevada last night, I have to say, they’re all impressive, and I think we’d be lucky to have any one of them as our next President.

So I watched the Paul Thomas Anderson epic There Will Be Blood over the weekend on a DVD screener.  I was impressed with Daniel Day Lewis’ magnetic performance, at least two thirds of the way through the film, before he went way over the top towards the end.  But was anyone else bothered by the music?  It was so intrusive, so relentless and uninspiring and distracting, I almost stopped watching the film half way through.  And without any prompting, two friends who saw the film said the exact same thing.  I haven’t liked a Paul Thomas Anderson movie since Boogie Nights.  Magnolia lost me when it started raining frogs and I skipped Punch Drunk Love altogether because the serious side of Adam Sandler doesn’t really interest me… and well, I was still getting over the frogs in his last film.  But he came close to winning me back (like he’s up at nights worrying about my endorsement) with this epic tale of an oil baron.  The first fifteen minutes of the film are riveting.  And then we hear the first chords of that annoying repetitive score.  I’m out.

I’m a New Englander.  I was born and raised in Bar Harbor, Maine.  My family has been there for generations.  I had a relative in the Boston Tea Party.  I spent half my life trying to get out of Maine and now I’m spending the other half of my life trying to get back.  I feel a closeness to all the other New England states, New Hampshire, Massachussetts, Connecticutt and Rhode Island.  So it is with great pride that I watched New Hampshire teach a good hard lesson to all the pollsters and pundits last night during the Democratic Primary.  Let me be clear.  I love Obama.  I love Hillary.  I think either one would be a brilliant President.  The bar is pretty low at this point given our current administration so even a moderate Republican like John McCain would be a vast improvement.  But I was taken aback by the viciousness of the press after Obama trounced Clinton in the Iowa Caucus.  There was a disturbing gleefulness about her third place showing there.  The expected bounce Obama enjoyed over the next few days translated into double digit leads in most polls coming into New Hampshire.  Many papers and TV news talking heads were already writing her obituary.  And then, something extraordinary happened.  She won.  Not a landslide.  But enough to be able to declare a resounding victory.  I always thought Obama would win Iowa and Clinton would take New Hampshire.  Now the race is on.  I can’t describe the sheer joy I felt watching the folks at MSNBC, Fox News and CNN stare blank-faced at the camera, unable to explain how Hillary pulled it off.  Some say her emotional moment on Monday, when asked how she carries on through this brutal process and she gave a thoughtful teary-eyed response, showed voters a side of her rarely seen.  Some say it was a purely tactical move on her part to “soften her image.”  That’s ridiculous.  Those same people accuse her of being robotic in her speeches and cold in her demeanor.  Yes, I’ll admit it.  She’s not that great of an actress.  She can’t force warmth on the voters.  And she shouldn’t have to.  Her job is to get the country back on track.  But that’s exactly why she could never create such a sincere and unguarded moment.  I’ll tell you what I think happened in New Hampshire.  New Englanders got fed up with the media telling them the election was over before they even got a chance to cast a vote.  And to quote the right leaning Drudge Report headline today, “Now the fun begins.”  I can’t even predict who is going to win the nomination (it’s even more of a mystery on the Republican side), but I will tell you this.  This has been a great week in American History.  For the first time ever, an African American man won the Iowa Caucus.  And for the first time ever, a woman won the New Hampshire Primary.  And come November, one of them could be the President of the United States.