Tides, a nonprofit organization that promotes social justice and a saner world, is about to start a big shindig called Momentum up in San Francisco.  Buncha people sharing ideas on how to do good.

The guest list includes former VP candidate John Edwards; Alex Gibney, the documentary filmmaker behind Taxi to the Dark Side and No End in Sight; Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain: the Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation; Premal Shah, president of cool microlender Kiva, a group I’ve been meaning to pimp here for some time; and tons of other people who do neat stuff.

It’s described in the literature as “where some of the most creative minds in the progressive movement come together to challenge, inspire, and rejuvenate each other.”

I’m not one of those creative minds, and my sciatica defies rejuvenating, but I’ll be attending as media.  Any really nifty challenging, inspiring and rejuvenating going on, I’ll mention it here.

Particularly hoping to snag a chat with the Kiva dude.  (Seriously, check out Kiva.  You lend a teeny amount of money — not donate; lend, like $25 or something, and with a repayment delinquency rate near zero, so you get it back — and people in the developing world get lives that suck less.  Possibly a lot less.  The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize went to one of the idea’s pioneers.  It works.  So Kiva up if you’re in the mood.)

More good ideas to come shortly, I hope.

Last Saturday night, I was walking home from late drinks with friends when I heard a loud metallic BANG about thirty or forty feet to my left.

I looked up, and two cars had collided, apparently at fairly high speed. And the vector product of their interaction sent them in a new direction: directly at me.

Yipe.

You don’t see cars coming right at you in the middle of the sidewalk very often. This was like one of those movie moments when a character looks up and sees a large, moving, out-of-place object — a falling building, a crashing plane, a strangely airborne car, etc. — that is about to suddenly kill him.

Two tons of metal were hurtling directly at my thighs. I’d have maybe half a second to do something about it.

Mostly, I said the word “shit” over and over. Also, I ran like hell. All I could come up with.

Fortunately, since the cars were also still braking and rotating, the one barreling most perilously at me slowed rapidly as its tires became perpendicular to the direction of travel, and I probably could have just stood there like an idiot (instead of running like one) and escaped. False alarm. No actual danger. (For me, anyway. One of the drivers seemed pretty hurt, although he refused medical assistance. The other driver is probably in pretty big trouble; she fled the scene, but a passing paparazzi — the same guy who got beat up on a Malibu beach recently, in fact — happened to see the accident and scribble down the license number.)

Still, for all of one second, I had pretty good reason to wonder if my number was up.

In the movies, that’s the sort of thing that gets people to reevaluate their lives, maybe improve their relationships or pursue their life’s dream or stop drinking or, hell, I dunno, join a gym or get that nifty sex change or at least form a freakin’ 4-H club or something. So for the last two days, I’ve been kind of waiting for my big insight or important life-changing decision.

Come on, insight! Here I am! Ready and waiting!

But so far… nothing. Nada.

It appears, shockingly, that running away from a large noise may have granted me no special knowledge.

What a ripoff. Makes it seem hardly worth almost getting killed in the first place.

I wonder if this is because (a) deep down, I truly believe my life choices are all very good, (b) I don’t, but I have no real interest in happiness whatsoever, or (c) something important is still brewing that I haven’t yet noticed.

All of these seem unlikely.

So, great: I don’t even have any insight about my own lack of insight. Well, crap.

Of course, if this sort of thing ever worked, Evel Knievel would have been the wisest man alive.

Man, Evel Knievel would have been like an oracle. With, like, robes, and a big throne, and people would have come to him with their problems, and Evel would have been all Obi-Wan, stroking his chin and gesturing somberly with his scepter, and then doling out advice in little aphorisms whose meanings would slowly unfold as the listener would contemplate and grow.

And then he’d, like, go jump over some sharks in a minibus. And then he’d come back and be even wiser.

But he didn’t. That is also disappointing.

Bottom line: if I’ve gained any larger awareness of the world to share from the experience, it is only this: all of us, brothers and sisters, everywhere on this green earth, should try, every day and in every way, not to get mashed by a Lexus.

This is my advice to you.


Last Saturday night, I was walking home from late drinks with friends when I heard a loud metallic BANG about thirty or forty feet to my left.

I looked up, and two cars had collided, apparently at fairly high speed. And the vector product of their interaction sent them in a new direction: directly at me.

Yipe.

You don’t see cars coming right at you in the middle of the sidewalk very often. This was like one of those movie moments when a character looks up and sees a large, moving, out-of-place object — a falling building, a crashing plane, a strangely airborne car, etc. — that is about to suddenly kill him.

Two tons of metal were hurtling directly at my thighs. I’d have maybe half a second to do something about it.

Mostly, I said the word “shit” over and over. Also, I ran like hell. All I could come up with.

Fortunately, since the cars were also still braking and rotating, the one barreling most perilously at me slowed rapidly as its tires became perpendicular to the direction of travel, and I probably could have just stood there like an idiot (instead of running like one) and escaped. False alarm. No actual danger. (For me, anyway. One of the drivers seemed pretty hurt, although he refused medical assistance. The other driver is probably in pretty big trouble; she fled the scene, but a passing paparazzi — the same guy who got beat up on a Malibu beach recently, in fact — happened to see the accident and scribble down the license number.)

Still, for all of one second, I had pretty good reason to wonder if my number was up.

In the movies, that’s the sort of thing that gets people to reevaluate their lives, maybe improve their relationships or pursue their life’s dream or stop drinking or, hell, I dunno, join a gym or get that nifty sex change or at least form a freakin’ 4-H club or something. So for the last two days, I’ve been kind of waiting for my big insight or important life-changing decision.

Come on, insight! Here I am! Ready and waiting!

But so far… nothing. Nada.

It appears, shockingly, that running away from a large noise may have granted me no special knowledge.

What a ripoff. Makes it seem hardly worth almost getting killed in the first place.

I wonder if this is because (a) deep down, I truly believe my life choices are all very good, (b) I don’t, but I have no real interest in happiness whatsoever, or (c) something important is still brewing that I haven’t yet noticed.

All of these seem unlikely.

So, great: I don’t even have any insight about my own lack of insight. Well, crap.

Of course, if this sort of thing ever worked, Evel Knievel would have been the wisest man alive.

Man, Evel Knievel would have been like an oracle. With, like, robes, and a big throne, and people would have come to him with their problems, and Evel would have been all Obi-Wan, stroking his chin and gesturing somberly with his scepter, and then doling out advice in little aphorisms whose meanings would slowly unfold as the listener would contemplate and grow.

And then he’d, like, go jump over some sharks in a minibus. And then he’d come back and be even wiser.

But he didn’t. That is also disappointing.

Bottom line: if I’ve gained any larger awareness of the world to share from the experience, it is only this: all of us, brothers and sisters, everywhere on this green earth, should try, every day and in every way, not to get mashed by a Lexus.

This is my advice to you.


Today’s Los Angeles Times contrasts McCain’s claims on how he dumped his injured first wife, the one who was faithful to him the whole time he was in Vietnam, for millionaire booze heiress Cindy Hensley, finding pretty sleazy behavior right in the public record:

A brief and final update on my buddy Mike Irwin, fighting stage four bone cancer since the startling and sudden diagnosis just a few months ago.

He didn’t make it. Mike passed away, surrounded by loved ones and at a reasonable amount of peace, this morning.

There are a lot of things I’d like to say about him, but I’ll keep it simple. He taught me a lot about stand-up comedy, about politics, and just about getting through life. Mike was funny, Mike was smart, Mike cared deeply about somehow making a more compassionate, rational world, but more than anything, Mike was kind. Everything else I could write would just be illustrations.

Last time I saw Mike was in his hospital room, the night before my flight home. We both knew it might be the last time we would see each other.

The conversation could have been kinda hard, but fortunately there was a good baseball game on, so we put it on, just like we used to do back when I lived with him in Chicago, back when we were both young and starting out not so long ago. We talked about the big things sort of in between the spaces of the game, just like we always did. We said the stuff we needed to say. And in between we cheered and booed. One last night of something like normality, right there amid all the tubes and pumps and horrible hospital crap.

It was wonderful.

I’ll always be glad for that night, both for his sake and mine.

If you’ve got folks you love you haven’t spoken to in a while, do. One of the most important things you can do while you’re here, I think. And you never know how fast the time can go.

btw, I understand some folks reading this might want to send a note of condolences. Thanks, but no need. It’s just grief. It’s part of life. If you want to, just take that energy and put it into hugging your own loved ones like you mean it. That’ll do more good. And maybe go over the the fund set up for Mike and his family and chip in a few.

Thanks.