Long Island is full of surprises. I’ve been doing house visits for a certain union on Long Island. I’ve been working in Lindenhurst, a town that is mostly known to me from those hypnotic station announcements on the Long Island Railroad (“Making station stops at…Wantaugh, Seaford, Massapequa, Massapequa Park, Amityville, Copiague, Lindenhurst and Babylon; Change at Babylon for the train to Montauk…”), which are stored in the same place in my brain as parts of the Nicene Creed and the pledge of allegiance. I’m not in the habit of spending time in Suffolk county, and it’s easy to forget that we live on an actual island that’s surrounded by water and docks. Lindenhurst feels like one of Maine’s lobster towns, but without all that pesky tourism.

When you get far enough south, these modest, working class houses have dock slips for backyards. When I don’t get an answer at the front door, I nervously look around back to be sure that no one’s escaping by sea. After all, in my rolled-up shirt-sleeves and tie I look a fair bit like a Jehovah’s Witness, and who wouldn’t take the opportunity to put some ocean between themselves and evangelicals at the door?

The great thing about working in a seaport town is the ready availability of fresh, delicious seafood. I finally satisfied my summertime hankering for fried clam strips at Southside Fish and Clam on the Montauk Highway. I momentarily disregarded concerns about a “red tide” and enjoyed the thick, meaty and delicious strips found there. I also enjoyed the terrific, honest-to-goodness oldies radio station heard there. B-103 is now the last oldies station in the New York Metro region after CBS101 was switched to the hated “Jack” format by its evil corporate parent. Unfortunately, its signal won’t even reach to Queens.

What I’ve noticed most often are the strange living situations that Long Islanders are forced into by low wages and high housing costs. Brothers, sisters, cousins, great aunts, grandmas and in-laws all under the same roofs (actually, some are in the garage, others the basement; more, I bet, are living on those boats in the backyard). Most of the Islanders that I meet who are in their 20′s plan to leave New York entirely. This jives with the experience of most of the people I grew up with on the edge of the world, and other people I’ve met along the way.

Long Island, as a housing development and a society, is scarcely 50 years old. Any society that cannot provide jobs, homes and schools for its young is a failed society. If only narrow-minded voters realize this as they vote down school budgets and lobby against apartment developments.

I think I’m over the dog thing. My parents are away this weekend, at a family reunion that I am boycotting, so I volunteered to dog-sit Alfred. I drove by my folks’ place in the late afternoon to pay the neurotic pup a visit and then take him to my apartment. I took him for a quick run around the backyard in order in order to expend some of his pent up energy from being cooped up in the house alone for the previous ten hours, and then for a nice long walk around the neighborhood in order to answer the call of nature.

Now, Alfred can be rather clever when it comes to sneaking food or prying open doors, but he can be a bit of a dummy when it comes to basic doggies duties. Still, it was a new one on me when I caught Alfie absent-mindedly peeing on his own front leg, and an even more disappointing surprise when I had to point out to him that he was missing his targeted tree by a good six inches.

I took the opportunity to hose him off in my folks’ backyard before we finally drove to Kew Gardens. Back at my place, Alfie took awhile to get comfortable in less familiar surroundings, but amused himself by barking and whimpering at the neighborhood dogs out my second floor window.

During dinner (mine), the excitement became too much for him and he started throwing up in the corner of my living room – on my stereo speaker! I needn’t have worried too much about that particular part of my home entertainment system as Alfred, always busy, set about a brief tour of my living room, pausing occasionally to spew a little more.

Both of our meals now dispensed with, and Alfred sitting contentedly with that same look on his face that we all get after a violent protein spill, I’m taking the opportunity to jot down this note to myself: Do not get a dog while you still live in an apartment.

Alfred is now nudging my arm. He wants a walk. Don’t forget to spay or neuter your pets, folks, and if you have a backyard, please consider adopting one of the adorable mongrels at the North Shore Animal League.

The recent, long-awaited announcement of plans for a successor to the Mets’ Shea Stadium opens the chilling possibility that New York City will be stuck with one of those stupid corporate-sponsorship name venues. From the Staples Center in Los Angeles to the MCI Arena in Washington, DC and, in between, those poor bastards in Houston who were stuck with Enron Field, corporate-sponsored naming rights have blighted our nation’s sporting venues.

This frustrating trend has reached as close as New Jersey where the naming rights to the Brendan Byrne Arena were sold to Continental Airlines (while the poor old man was still alive to see it), and…well, what the hell was the PNC Bank Center before it became a corporate ho? (How the hell is one supposed to find the stadium if the name keeps changing?)

With the impending demise of Shea Stadium – which is owned by the city – and it’s replacement with a privately funded stadium, there is a real risk that fans will be saddled with the “Snapple Apple Stadium” or the “Always Tampons Arena.”

The current stadium was named for William Shea, a lawyer and civic booster who attracted the expansion National League franchise to Queens in 1962. That precedent leaves fans with the unfortunate alternative of riding the 7 train to the “Doctoroff Dome.”

There’s really only one true alternative name for the Mets’ new home: Jackie Robinson Park. Jackie Robinson was, of course, the first black player in the major leagues, a superstar who led the old Brooklyn Dodgers to six National League pennants and one World Series Championship. Fifty years after Robinson broke the color barrier, all the teams in the major leagues retired his jersey number. New York went a step further and gave him the dubious honor of renaming the Interboro Parkway, the two lane death trap that runs from my beloved Kew Gardens to East New York (past Robinson’s grave in Cypress Hills), the Jackie Robinson Parkway.

A true honor would be naming the new home of Da Bums’ spiritual successors, the New York Mets, after one of our proudest heroes. Mets fans had better jump on the campaign to name our new mecca Jackie Robinson Park before the Citibank Coliseum makes us ashamed to be New Yorkers.

The wheels of civil rights justice sure do turn slowly in America. With a curious vigor, authorities are seeking convictions for two of the most famous lynchings of the mid-twentieth century, while the U.S. Senate has recently apologized for not reacting to all those lynchings in a timely matter.

Better late than never? “You’re still doing what you did in 1964,” protests Rita Schwerner Bender. Back in that Freedom Summer, Schwerner Bender and her then-husband, Michael Schwerner moved to Mississippi in order to register blacks to vote. They worked with a Queens College student named Andrew Goodman, and a local black activist named James Earl Chaney. These nosy Jews from New York and their uppity Negro friend drew the ire of the local Ku Klux Klan, whose support went all the way up to the local sheriff, who, on June 21, arrested the three men for speeding and allowed them to be carried off from the jail. Their bodies were found days later, beaten, shot up and burnt to a crisp in their car. The good old boys arrested for the crime were acquitted. Recently, local authorities arrested Edgar Ray Killen, a former preacher they argue was the ringleader of the long-ago crime. “You’re treating this trial as the most important trial of the civil rights movement because two of the three victims are white,” Rita Schwerner Bender complained to the press, after testifying yesterday.

Although famous for galvanizing the Freedom Summer activists in the North (and later inspiring a lame Hollywood movie), Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner’s lynching was by no means the first lynching in Jim Crow South, which dated back to the efforts to establish equal rights in the South right after the Civil War. Congress resisted taking action for 105 years, but their apology doesn’t make all those poor souls who were whipped, hanged, shot, stabbed or beaten any less dead.

Likewise, avenging the lynching that sparked the modern civil rights movement, the murder of Emmitt Till, will not put an end to the struggle for civil rights and equality that it inspired. But that hasn’t stopped the authorities from digging up poor Emmitt’s bones for a new autopsy. That boy’s dead body has already done its service to the movement. It does not deserve to be used as a prop once again.

Back in 1995, 14-year-old Till was visiting his uncle in bloody Mississippi when the brash Chicago youth had the audacity to whistle at a white woman. For his bad behavior, the kid was dragged from his uncle’s home in the middle of the night. He was dredged from the Mississippi River three days later, his bloated corpse riddled with bullets and stab wounds, missing an eye. When his body returned to Chicago, his mother insisted on an open casket to show the world what southern racists do to little black boys. The pictures from his wake sparked a movement. One month later, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for resisting racial segregation on the city’s buses, and Dr. King started the famous boycott.

Needless to say, those accused of Emmitt Till’s murder were acquitted (That could have been any little boy’s body, the all-white jury concluded). Now local authorities may prosecute surviving members of the mob that pulled young Emmitt from his uncle’s home half a century ago.

Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner and Till are martyrs. Their families long ago gave up hope that their killers (most of whom are dead, some of whom are merely old and infirmed) would go to jail. What their families, and those of us who are their children in the movement, need to see is not narrow justice for their specific cases, but, ultimately, “justice for all.”

We live in a country where, 140 years after the Civil War, 50 years after Emmitt Till’s murder and 41 years after the “Mississippi Burning” lynchings, only one out of 100 Senators is black, only one out of nine Supreme Court Justices is black, and none of the 100 state governors are black; cops still regularly pull people over for “driving while black;” blacks are twice as likely as whites to be without health insurance, blacks are twice as likely as whites to suffer from poverty. I could go on and on, but the obvious fact is that we do not have racial equality and justice in this country, and, in fact, we are moving farther and farther away from that goal. These prosecutions of ancient crimes are meant to distract us from continuing the work that was begun by Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner and Till. The ghosts of Mississippi demand action for today, not retribution for yesterday.

I just got an e-mail from Joe Hansen, International President of the United Food and Commercial Workers. Okay, it was a mass e-mail sent out over the union’s “Union Voice” list. The meat of it is significant, but not surprising. UFCW’s Executive Board has authorized Hansen to withdraw from the AFL-CIO. This makes UFCW the second union, after SEIU, to authorize its president to pull out of the AFL-CIO if the July convention proves dissatisfactory.

The five international unions that make up the Change to Win Coalition – SEIU and UFCW, Unite Here, the Teamsters and the Laborers – held a coming out party today in Washington. They voted on a constitution, by-laws and guiding principles, and then held a press conference.

That sounds like a rival labor federation to me.

It’s tempting to make comparisons to the old CIO. Of course, the political climate and times are very different from the 1930′s, and I don’t think there’s a real John L. Lewis or Walter Reuther in this bunch. However, the playbook is similar. The CIO started out as a coalition/federation within the AFL, and operated as such for a number of years before finally breaking with the AFL and competing. However, where the CIO was much smaller than the AFL when it split, and was still relatively smaller by the time they merged in 1955 (the AFL actually organized like the dickens during those twenty years, too), this Change to Win Coalition is actually a huge chunk representing between 35 and 40 percent of the AFL-CIO’s total members. If they did split, and were joined by the Carpenters and the NEA, the two competing federations would be roughly even.

I don’t believe they will split…this year. The disaffiliation votes are similar to strike authorization votes. Nobody’s going to undercut their lead negotiators by taking away their strongest threat. Expect the other three unions in Change to Win to likewise authorize a split, but don’t put too much stock in it. Do realize, however, that Change to Win now represents something more more real and fundamental than a personality clash among various union presidents. This is now very much a process or uniting and coordinating unions that are serious about new member organizing. It wasn’t just five international presidents who voted on Change to Win’s constitution today, but also 50 influential local leaders, including some (like Peter Ward) who are often seen as having their own agendas that are distinct from their IU’s.

I believe that Change to Win will act as a federation within the federation for at least the next few years. This is to avoid the raiding campaigns that would surely come with a split, but also to lead by example. They’re betting that their program (fewer, larger unions; strategic, coordinated campaigns) will result in major organizing successes for them, and a huge influx of new members, that other international unions will sign on. Or else, they’re cynically betting that if they spend the next five years growing, while other unions decline, then they will dominate the next AFL-CIO convention and can finally ram their agenda through.

I received a constituent mailing from my City Council representative Melinda Katz, or, rather, from “Speaker Gifford Miller and Council Member Melinda Katz…Working to Make Our City Cleaner and Safer.” Voters have long been accustomed to incumbents using taxpayer-financed constituent mailings to trumpet their dubious “accomplishments” during campaign season, but…using a constituent mailing as a blatant campaign advertisement for a totally different candidate and race? Shouldn’t this sort of thing be illegal?

Come to think of it, shouldn’t Gifford Miller have dropped out of the race weeks ago? I mean, who’s clamoring for another pretty white liberal whose word can’t be trusted to be our next Mayor? Twelve percent of the voters, apparently.

Well, keep at it, tiger! Don’t let ethics and campaign finance reform keep you stuck in last place. You can do it!

I saw Bobby Bare Jr. and a sampling of the Young Criminals Starvation League open for the Old 97′s last Thursday. Bobby didn’t fare too well with the crowd (Who would have? That audience wanted the Old 97′s, and they wanted them right away). The way the songs were reworked for a trio – excising those wonderful Stax horns – made it sound, at times, like generic “hard country,” and Bobby’s vocals were too low in the mix, so the audience missed some good lines.

He did win over a few with some funny jokes and that terrific cover of the Smiths’ “What Difference Does It Make?” Once again, I urge you to run out and buy BBJ’s latest record, “From The End of Your Leash,” from the good folks at Bloodshot Records.

The Old 97′s barreled through a typically entertaining set that clocked in just under two hours. I was reminded once again of how annoying I find the typical Old 97′s fan, who spend a good deal of most shows patting themselves on the back for being cool enough to be “in the know” of this clever little alt.country quartet from Dallas. Of course, they are ahead of the curve, but that doesn’t justify becoming a bunch of yodelling assholes.

Yesterday was Si Gerson’s memorial at the Tamiment Institute. There were many wonderful stories, memories and tributes from friends, family and comrades. It was good to meet Si’s daughter, Deborah, who invited me to speak, and his two grand-daughters, Timi and Frieda.

I was asked if I would post my comments on this website, which I shall in order to correct a few factual errors in my earlier post (which was written from memory, and didn’t benefit from the research I did last week at Tamiment) and to post a few scans I gleaned from Si’s archives.

Thank you. I worked with Si in the Coalition for Free and Open Elections, which Si played a vary large role in, serving as the organization’s secretary for many years, until I took over from him. CoFOE is a coalition of third parties and other pro-democracy groups that Si helped form, along with some of my comrades in the Socialist Party, and colleagues in the Libertarian party, the Prohibition party and other third parties – aimed at greater access to the ballot for third parties. I remember Si as a very good comrade, warm and friendly, a great source of information and enormously encouraging to younger activists.

When I met him, he asked me about my work, and I told him about stuff I was doing in the Young People’s Socialist League, and he perked up and told me what he had done in the Young Communist League, which included not only that excellent work in ending compulsory ROTC at City College, but protesting race discrimination in baseball. This story is largely forgotten in the whitewash of Branch Rickey magnanimously integrating the league. The fact is that race discrimination in hiring was illegal under New York State law, and the Young Communist League, and the Young People’s Socialist League and others, would hold demonstrations in the bleachers of Ebbets Field, demanding “Integration now!” It became a PR nightmare for Rickey, who decided to improve his image – and snatch up the best player in the Negro Leagues – before demonstrations and court orders forced him to integrate.

I tell my peers about Si’s life and achievements to underscore the point that socialists don’t have to be marginalized, that we can play an active role in civic life. We just have to be prepared to fight.

As I’m sure many of you know, Si Gerson was the focus of two huge controversies during the Popular Front era in New York. The Communist party, like many leftist organizations, was a part of the fabric of New York’s culture and street life, but not the government. Not until corruption investigations in the early 1930′s sent Mayor Jimmy Walker fleeing to Europe to avoid prosecution and temporarily wrested city hall from the grip of Tammany Hall – providing the first real opening for the left during this era.

The old Board of Alderman was replaced by a more representative City Council that would be elected by proportional representation. The Council elections were actually held on a borough-wide basis, with the number of seats apportioned to the boroughs based on population (say, 12 seats for Manhattan, 9 for Brooklyn, 7 for Queens and so on). So, in Brooklyn, for example, over 150 candidates would be on the same ballot for those nine city council seats, and the voter would rank as many of the candidates as he wished in the order in which he preferred them. So you could vote for a Communist as your first choice, an American Labor party representative as your second, a black Democrat as your third, a liberal Republican as your fourth, and on down the line until you couldn’t really stand the candidates that remained. Candidates had to receive proportional support in order to represent one-ninth of the borough.

If no candidate reached the magic number (the magic number was typically 75,000 in Brooklyn) on the first ballot, then counters would start at the bottom and redistribute the lowest vote-getter’s ballots (the guy who got two write-in votes) to their second choice candidates. As a candidate reached the magic number, his ballots would be taken off the table, and any new votes that were redistributed his way would instead go to the next candidate ranked on the ballot. And so it would go, with ballots being redistributed from the top – from candidates who had already reached the threshold and were awarded a council seat – or from the bottom, from candidates who had the least support until all the seats were filled.

This was New York City’s system for electing its City Council from 1937 until 1947. I hope this explanation isn’t too dry or unwelcome. I think it’s important that we advocates of representative democracy be able to describe this system of proportional representation that worked. I strongly recommend Si’s book, “Pete,” to scholars of NYC and leftist history for Si’s evocative day-to-day detailing of the campaigns and strategies, the vote counts and the convoluted workings of borough-based single transferrable voting – not mention fun memories of those Ebbets Field demonstrations. Hopefully we can look forward to a new edition of the book being published.

Young Si Gerson demonstrated a knack for campaign strategy and legalities, and managed the repeated campaigns of Peter V. Cacchione, a popular community activist and unemployment organizer in Brooklyn. In his first campaign, Pete Cacchione missed being elected to the city council by just 250 votes. But Si’s talent and hard work and the CP’s Popular Front alliances brought Si to the attention of Manhattan’s reforming Borough President, Stanley Isaacs, who hired him to be his Executive Assistant on January 1, 1938.

This was the first big “Gerson Controversy.” The city’s papers howled in protest. A Communist in government!? The New York World-Telegram was particularly nasty. One political cartoon portrayed Isaacs handing Si his appointment in front of a mass of forlorn-looking unemployed men. The cartoon Si, naturally, is waving a red flag that reads “Hurray for Stalin.”

Isaacs, for his part, shrugged off the controversy. In a typical letter to the World-Telegram, Isaacs objected to the paper’s editorial focus and defended his young assistant, saying:

“Anyone studying the rise of Fascism in Europe must have recognized the tactics employed. The very first effort was made to divide those who had faith in democracy into factions to destroy their unity…So far as I am concerned, whether I agree or disagree with the economic and social views of those who belong to the extreme left or the extreme right, will make no difference in my willingness to recognize their right, as citizens, and I shall continue to fill such posts as come within my jurisdiction where I may exercise the power of appointments with men best fitted for the job, without any discrimination because of race, creed, color or political affiliation.”

The controversy did not let up, however. Catholic organizations, in particular, targeted Stanley Isaacs’s “parlor Communist.” The Holy Name Society filed suit against the City, claiming that Si was ineligible for civil service because, as a member of the international Communist conspiracy, he could not honestly swear to uphold the constitution of the United States.

Si served in Isaacs’ office for three years, but eventually resigned because of the looming lawsuit and the city’s corporation counsel’s refusal to defend Si on the grounds that the Communist Party was not a subversive organization dedicated to the violent overthrow of the United States.

This allowed Si to focus back on Pete Cacchione’s campaigns. His rerun in 1939 (when Si was still embroiled in controversy on Isaacs’ staff) was derailed when his petitions were invalidated by machine hacks and his name was not allowed to appear on the ballot. Pete still received 24,000 write-in votes, but that was not enough.

Pete and Si knew that 1941 would be their year and focused on getting more than three times the amount of petitions needed to secure ballot status. Sure enough, Pete Cacchione secured the ninth and final city council seat in Brooklyn and became the first Communist City Councilman.

Pete was joined two years later by Ben Davis, the leader of the party’s Harlem organization. The early returns for Pete looked good on that 1943 election night – the highest first-vote count of all the candidates – 53,000 – and a shoo-in for re-election, but in Manhattan, there were reports of the votes from entire districts – Communist strongholds and minority districts – going missing. Please suspend your disbelief that not every vote in an election would be counted. Remember, this was a long time ago.

Pete, Si and their entire campaign team rushed to the location of the Manhattan count. Si, described in Davis’ memoirs as “the party’s ablest election worker” demanded that the vote count stop and the missing ballots be found and counted. A thorough search turned up nearly a thousand additional ballots – the margin of difference that sent Ben Davis to City Hall and created a Communist legislative team for the next four years.

In the council, Cacchione and Davis advocated rent control and price controls on bread and milk, ratification of subway fare increases by popular referendum, lowering city council salaries and introduced a host of anti-race discrimination bills. So popular was Cacchione that he won re-election to a four-year term in 1945 with the highest vote count in the borough: 75,000 votes.

When the war ended, Stanley Isaacs’ warning about dividing those who have faith in democracy into factions gained a new immediacy as Truman Doctrine Democrats set their sights on removing these two Communists from office.

They placed a referendum on the ballot to end New York City’s proportional representation. Big money went into the campaign to convince New York’s voters that there can be such a thing as “too much democracy.” Pete Cacchione gave his all in the campaign to defeat the ballot proposal, but he lost. Proportional representation was repealed and Pete’s heart literally gave out. He died in office, with two years remaining in his term.

The Communist Party, nominated Si Gerson to serve the remainder of Peter Cacchione’s term and thus began the other major “Gerson Controversy.” Under the laws at the time, a vacancy in office was to be filled by the City Council with a nominee of the party of the deceased legislator. Pete Cacchione was elected and twice re-elected to the City Council as a Communist – Row H. He, in fact, received more votes than any other candidate in Brooklyn. That same Communist Party nominated Si Gerson to serve the remainder of the term, but now the City Council’s Democratic majority was refusing to seat him because he was…a Communist.

Their paper-thin excuse was that the Communist Party did not have a ballot line in New York State and, therefore, was not a “party” under the law. Never mind the fact that the Communists had to collect about five times as many signatures as any major party candidate to get on the ballot and then received more votes than any of those major parties. The voters’ clear expression of their support for a Communist representative would be thwarted by a loophole.

A Citizen’s Committee to Defend Representative Government was formed to advocate Si Gerson’s placement on the City Council. Among those who signed on to the committee were Ben Davis, Mike Quill, Vito Marcantonio, WEB DuBois, some kid named Howard Zinn, representatives of 19 labor unions, five religious institutions and a number of good government organizations.

The Democrats succeeded in wearing down the clock and left Pete Cacchione’s seat vacant for two years. When Si Gerson ran for the seat in his own right in 1949, he received support from many of those same individuals and collected over 150,000 votes, but, without proportional representation, it was not enough.

Of course, Si had a very long and distinguished career after these early controversies, as an author and journalist and as a campaign manager. Si was an underutilized resource as a campaign advisor, and that’s all of our fault. Not just the Communist party, but to a large degree the Socialist Party, too, and the rest of the left, have largely abandoned independent electoral politics. And now we’ve lost an incredible resource.

I believe we should use this time to rededicate ourselves to some of Si’s biggest issues. Navigating the byzantine election requirements when working on Gus Hall’s presidential campaigns (The Truman Doctrine Democrats assaulted election laws across the country, beginning in 1947 and particularly after the Wallace campaign, ballot access laws became particularly onerous – tens of thousands of signatures with stringent requirements for getting a certain number of signatures in each county) convinced Si that third parties had to unite in order to pry open the political process, and that’s how the Coalition for Free and Open Elections came to be. Si always envisioned CoFOE being broader than just those third parties. David (McReynolds) misremembered the name of this group as the “Coalition for Free and Fair Elections.” That was actually the name taken by a breakaway group, led by the Libertarian and Green parties when they were experiencing real growth and victories in the 1990′s, and wanted to focus narrowly on lowering signature requirements. Si was very adament: free and open elections means not just lower petition requirements, but universal suffrage, campaign finance, proportional representation and a guarantee that all votes be counted. Mainstream politicians didn’t catch up with Si on this issue until we had a presidential election stolen from us.

I’m not sure if it means a local CoFOE or something else, but we should all unite on these issues, particularly proportional representation. We had it here in New York for many years, and it worked well, and now other cities are turning towards PR systems for their elections. We can win this.

I’d like to thank Deborah for inviting me to speak and the Tamiment Institute for hosting this memorial. In preparing for my talk, I actually reviewed Si’s papers, which are now housed but have not yet been catalogued by the library. I was searching for this needle in a haystack, information about Isaacs and Cacchione in 15 boxes of Si’s archives, and I found it right away. Si meticulously kept his papers in order so that they could be of use to future generations, and now that they’re here, I am sure they will be.

Though I’ve long been intrigued by trailers and reviews, I’ve failed to see any of Gregg Araki’s movies until “Mysterious Skin.” What I’ve missed in the past is not likely to be as remarkable and utterly affecting as “Skin,” which is easily the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.

Centered around troubled Kansas teens Brian and Neil, who shared a life-changing experience in the summer of 1981, the film leads inevitably towards their devastating reunion ten years later.

As an eight-year-old Little Leaguer, Neil (boldly played by “Third Rock From the Sun’s” Joseph Gordon-Levitt) was lured into a sexual relationship with his coach when he was eight years old. His voiceover narration makes clear that he was always attracted to men and was happy and proud to be so liked by “Coach,” who, remembered purely in flashbacks (it seems the movie was set in the 1980′s purely to salute that golden era for mustaches) is a kindly and likable figure (it’s up the audience to feel conflicted). The experience leaves Neil with a taste in older men that leads to him turning tricks that grow increasingly dangerous.

Likewise abused, Brian (Brady Corbet) blocked out the experience and finds only one logical explanation for his missing time: alien abduction. Whereas Neil grows up to be a jaded loner with self-destructive sexual impulses, Brian becomes a lonely geek with no clear sexual desires. Brian’s efforts to document dreams and repressed memories dredge up details Little League uniforms and another little boy that lead to his encounter with Neil, which brings the film to an abrupt end.

Neil remembers everything and fills in Brian, whose own memories come back in a flood as he recoils into a fetal position on Neil’s lap (Corbet’s performance is affecting). Neil, for his part, in voiceover, expresses regret and remorse that cast his whole narrative during the previous 100 minutes in question and leaves the audience reeling as the credits roll.

I’ve been asked to speak at Si Gerson’s memorial on Friday. In order to dig a little deeper into the Stanley Isaacs controversy and the Cacchione succession fight, I paid a visit to the Tamiment Library at NYU in order to look through Si’s personal files. The library has not yet had the opportunity to catalogue and file the 15 boxes of files that were donated this Spring, a few months after Si’s passing. Amazingly, I was able to find the files I was looking for quickly and easily.

Like most lefties with a long view, Si kept files for his own reference and for posterity. It’s all filed away by content type (articles, photographs, correspondence) and by subject. He’s got incoming and outgoing correspondence, thanks to the modern miracle of carbon paper. I recall corresponding with Si over CoFOE matters and thinking his typewritten, carbon-copied letters were anachronistic in the internet age. But, then, those letters were easily located, neatly filed away at the Tamiment library, and it’s made me worry about my own archives.

I’ve got so little saved on paper. I’ve regularly forwarded my files to Steve Rossignol, the Socialist Party’s archivist, who passes on material that becomes old enough to Duke University, but most of my files are on computer hard disk. I’ve managed to transfer files from hard drive to hard drive for about eight years now, but some hard drives have gotten lost along the way.

I have kept my computer files in a reasonable order (Free advice: incorporate the date, subject and recipient into the file name – such as 050211newsday_walmart.doc for a letter to Newsday regarding Wal-Mart written on February 11, 2005 – How else are you gonna keep all those Wal-Mart files straight over the years?), but hard drives fail and file formats change. Who’s to say any of this binary code gibberish will have any meaning sixty years hence?

More immediately, I’m concerned about the bulk of my correspondence, which is via e-mail. Beginning in 1998, I began saving incoming e-mails that I deemed important. In 2002, I began saving all outgoing e-mail, and in 2003, I began saving all incoming e-mail that wasn’t about Rolex watches, bigger penises, larger cumloads and moms I’d like to fuck.

The problem with saving e-mail is that you can’t really save it as discrete files (unless you’re completely anal and spend so much time filing correspondence that you don’t actually live a life worth documenting). It just gets saved as a big blob of a file that is forever associated with your e-mail program. For many years, my e-mail program of choice was Netscape, until buggy crashes and a huge archive of saved mail made it my program of no-choice. I’ve recently switched to Thunderbird, but almost wish I hadn’t. No e-mail program worth a damn seems to be able to import these files, and no program seems to be able to properly save and store my correspondence archives.

I’m seriously thinking about buying some carbon paper and dusting off an old typewriter, just like Si would have done.