The Official Rick Bell Blog

Pawns

Not much for reality television (except for a certain show featuring dancing B-list celebrities… I’m gay that way) I was surprised to find myself drawn to such a show that CNN has been airing lately—Make Me a President. Apparently cameras follow around assorted Senators and Governors as they vie for something called a “presidential nomination.” They don’t sing, eat bugs or wear loin clothes, but like all reality TV, this show features a diverse cast: The whacky war veteran with a quick temper, an oh-so-perfect pretty boy from Massachusetts, a bible thumper from the land of man-daughter marriages, the token black guy and some angry lesbian chick from New York. Each week someone gets voted off the campaign trail and the survivors preen for the camera and move on to the next round.

OK, so I know it’s not reality TV… sadly it’s the all too real state of presidential primaries in the U.S. But like reality TV, this whole campaign process is anything but real.

Take, for example, the recent made-for-prime-time“scandals” in the Obama and Clinton camps. Last week, Samantha Power, an obscure Obama foreign policy aide resigned after calling Hillary “a monster.” Less than a week later, there are calls for the resignation of an even more obscure former vice presidential running mate from the Mondale campaign after charges were levied that she said, “Obama’s only popular cuz he’s like a good looking black whigger.”

In an era when everyone knows the cameras are always rolling, do they really expect us to believe these were regrettable moments of candor? I’m not claiming these statements were scripted and planned… oh wait, I am… and here’s why:

When I was a boy (prepubescent and very, very sexy) I had an older bother that delighted in abusing me. On good days, he’d pin me down and break wind on my face. On bad days, he’d pin me down and have all his friends break wind on my face (after they had ingested a variety of expired condiments from our refrigerator door.)

Being that he was about a foot taller, five years older and significantly bulkier, I had little choice but to endure this assault on my olfactory senses. The only thing that kept me sane during the “gaseous” years was that on Sundays, when friends weren’t allowed over, parents were there to protect me and the TV was off, I was often able to lure him into a “friendly”game of chess.

For the sake of anonymity, I’ll just call this brother “Randy” or “Glen Randall Bell”… (Gosh, I hope none his clients are Google-ing “Randall Bell” right now…) Anyways, my brother may have been bigger, but God had apparently stepped out for a smoke break when Randy strolled through the line for brains. Beating him at chess, repeatedly and convincingly, was the only glint of joy in my otherwise noxious life.

Winning was easy because we had two very different approaches to chess. Randy assumed that--like checkers--the object of the game was not to lose any pieces. I, on the other hand, intuitively knew that chess was about strategic sacrifice. Pawns were meant to lay down their lives for the greater good. Even sacrificing the all powerful queen might prove strategic if it lured your opponent into a checkmate.

If I, with my public education and poor grasp of the rules of punctuation and grammar, had this figured out by the age of ten, do you think the strategists behind Hillary and Obama might be more than a little familiar with this concept? I’m not saying Samantha Power was a pawn--I’m sure three, maybe even four non-family members knew she worked for his campaign before her demise—but I’m thinking that labeling a woman with already high negatives like Hillary “a monster” might prove a little more advantageous than the policy paper on regulating Afghanistan rug exports that Sam was working on before her fall.

Well maybe Ms. Power was a pawn, you say, but Hillary would hardly risk losing an invaluable ally like Geraldine Ferarro just to brand Obama’s appeal as a “race thing.” I stand corrected, I’m sure the experience garnered from the two failed Senatorial campaigns she waged after losing in a landslide with Mondale is indispensible… come on people, Gerry makes a plastic pawn from a mismatched thrift store chess set look like look like a hand-carved Italian marble knight from a Sharper Image catalog.

Let the games continue... I’m believing none of it. But I will tune in to see who’s sacrificed next.

Metal Constipation

For months now my writing output has been, shall we say, almost nonexistent. I even attempted to set self-imposed deadlines to try to spur my creative flow. Yet my imaginative juices, like my urine stream as my prostate enlarges, failed to flow. I was stopped up, blocked, constipated if you will.

Wrestling with this, I walked between the piers at Newport Beach yesterday. Where had the spark gone? Was I tapped out? Where my meds off? Was I not getting enough fiber in my diet?

Midway through my mile and a half walk I noted, with alarm, that lack of fiber was not the issue. My bowels were active and alive, I was concerned.

At this point, regular readers might assume that I concocted an elaborate scheme to discharge waste material without using a proper public restroom facility. That was not to be so. I clinched. I walked (with haste). I relieved myself properly. But, as usual, I digress.

As I walked, I wrestled with the issues of mental blockage as my lower intestinal tract reminded me that this was the only blockage I would ever need to concern myself with. Then it hit. BAM! It was an epitome! (Or is that epiphany? Why is it that I confuse similar sounding words… I believe they are called homo-something words… not unlike my homo-something tendencies… but I digress yet again.

As I walked, an image flashed before me. I was at the airport the day before. As I waited to board my flight I noted a gaggle of business types frantically typing on their laptops as they carried on a hands-free conversation on the Bluetooth-enabled cell phone and scanned the paperwork beside them. For some reason, such people never fail to annoy me. Are they so freakin’ important to the survival of their employers that they must multitask for 15 minutes before they board their flights? Like my 85-year-old mother is fond of saying, they come across as complete “nimrods.” (She actually has a more descriptive term, but it’s not really suitable for a family-oriented blog.)

As I walked, I realized the airport multitaskers annoy me because they remind me of me at my worst. Just the other day I offended a friend as I sat watching TV and typing on my laptop. He was trying to share something of importance as I feigned listening. Apparently one of my courtesy “uh huh’s” of agreement was missed timed. He realized I was faking attentiveness and cut his sharing short.

I am a “tool.” A total and complete tool when I multitask. And the reason is quite simple. While my laptop has a dual-core processor, I was born with a one track mind. We all are. Though I may be able to walk, chew gum and drop kick kittens that cross my path, my mind can only process one thought at a time.

Since October, I have been trying to be Mr. Multitasker. From my PC in Arizona I can be simultaneously logged into three different client sites. I’ve been billing like a madman, yet the quality of my work output has suffered. I’ve been trying to do everything at once and I have fallen short.

As I walked, I realized that I must stop trying to do everything at once. It doesn't work for me. Like a fat lady on an all cheese diet I am blocked up. As I walked, I got clarity. Do one thing at a time and do it well. As soon as I internalized that concept the noise stopped and I got clarity. Through the rest of the day I put this thought into practice. As a result, I was more productive that I had been in months.

So now is my time to write. It is the only thing I am focused on. And the words, like the urine stream of my youth, are flowing. Monday posts are no longer a vague promise. Like genital warts, they will appear like clockwork. This is my vow… I’ll see you next week.