A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven

As much as I respect him. the late Pete Seeger was never one of my favorite musicians. He was, however, very much a hero to me. When confronted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, he didn't use the 5th Amendment - Constitutional though it may have been to invoke his right to avoid self-incrimination. Rather, he struck a more pertinent point by referring to the 1st Amendment and the principle of freedom of association.

Simply put, Seeger told the committee that it was none of their business what groups he belonged to, communist or otherwise. For his trouble, he was indicted for contempt of Congress and would spend several years dealing with the fall-out of that exceptionally principle decision.

Seeger told me about this in a phone call a little over five years ago. The ostensible purpose of the call was to clarify some rights questions about the release of one of his old concerts, but that took up maybe 3 minutes of the 20 minute phone call. For the rest of it, Seeger (I can't pretend a sufficient level of familiarity to call him Pete) gave me an unsolicited history lesson.

He told me about the world tour he and his family undertook once the HUAC situation had finally been put to rest. He talked about the Soviet Union and his belief that the post-revolution circumstances had made the emergence of someone like Stalin almost inevitable. Most memorably, he related an anecdote about Eleanor Roosevelt and the eminently graceful way in which she engaged one of her husband's mistresses after his death.

It's hard to recall another instance where such a brief slice of time left me feeling so much more enlightened and just in much in awe of someone. There's a school of thought that one should never meet their heroes, because of the seeming inevitability of disappointment, and perhaps Pete Seeger was the exception that proves the rule. He was never talking down to me - at least I never felt he was. Instead, he gave me lots to ponder and, now that he's gone, a very personal story to tell. I can only imagine how many lives he touched through music or conversation and will always be grateful that I was one of them.

A Perennial Soap Opera Bowl Contender

One of the nice things about being a football fan who's a transplant to DC rather than a native is that it allows me sufficient detachment that I can enjoy "The Burgundy and Gold" for what they are without any hang-ups about what they once were. What they are - and have been since the mid-90s - is a generally poor football team that despite the occasional good season is more entertaining for what happens off the field than on it. This week's firing of head coach Mike Shanahan following several weeks of drama is simply par for the course and only surprising for the way this end result seems absolutely obvious in retrospect.

Four years ago, the tandem of Shanahan and GM Bruce Allen was meant to signify that the lunatics were no longer running the asylum. Four seasons and a playoff loss later, it would seem that Shanahan was the coaching equivalent of the splashy free agents that made the Redskins less - rather than more - competitive. Perhaps the only saving grace relative to other free agent signings is that the $7M owner Dan Snyder will have to pay Shanahan not to coach the final year of his contract doesn't count against the team's frquently shaky salary cap situation.

Allen, for his part, has come out of this season without doing anything remarkably embarrassing, but you can't help but feel that's more a function of how little he seems to have done. Amusingly, for all the flak that Kyle Shanahan has gotten about being the head coach's son, it seems clear that Allen is the true standard bearer for nepotism in the organization. If he didn't have the same last name as one of the few great coaches in team history, Allen would surely have been part of Monday's walk of shame.

If he had a genuine say in the team's roster, then he's part of the problem. If he didn't have any say, it raises the dual questions of why he didn't leave and why fans should have any faith he can improve things. In either scenario, it's hard to accept his continued employment as anything more than the owner wishing to maintain a link with a happier chapter of the team's story. The more things change...

Happiness Comes in Unexpected Packages (2013 Edition)

I had some down moments this year, all within the realm of "first world problems", of course, but all things are relative. Like so many with such ultimately trivial problems, I found solace in pop culture. For me, the year was bookended by two unexpected - but remarkably welcome - returns.

The first was on January 8th when David Bowie marked his 66th birthday by releasing his first new music in nearly ten years, while the other was the November return of Paul McGann to Doctor Who to help set the stage for the story marking the show's 50th birthday. What made me so damn happy about these things is not just that they happened but that they were both so good.

In Bowie's case, The Next Day turned out to be his best album since either Scary Monsters or Let's Dance (depending on which denomination of Bowie-ism one follows). The term "return to form" has to some degree been applied to most of Bowie's post-Tin Machine albums, but The Next Day is arguably the first to deserve that designation. That's not because the albums from 1993-2003 weren't good - some of them were excellent - but rather because this one is the first since the early-80s that finds Bowie remaking a genre of pop music in his own image. 

In this case, that genre is "Bowie". Having proven - especially with Heathen and Reality - that Bowie was a genre worthy of respect, the man himself seemed excited to push it into new ground. The end result was as strong a collection of songs as he's had in years, work that evokes his 70s heydays (i.e. the albums/phases that some practitioners of Bowie-ism assert are the only ones worthy of attention) without sounding like retreads. It almost seems unfair to the album as a whole to pick favorites, but it goes with the territory to note that "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)", "I'd Rather Be High" and "You Feel So Lonely You Could Die" would be strong candidates for any Bowie compilation I'd put together.

In its 50 year history, over a dozen actors have played the lead role in Doctor Who on TV. Paul McGann, who starred in a mid-90s attempt to revive to show, was the 8th. Because it didn't lead to an ongoing series and the show's 2005 revival cast a new lead, McGann's first TV appearance as the Doctor was also his only TV appearance, making him the George Lazenby of Doctor Who. Despite the lack of screen time, McGann's portrayal of the Doctor remained popular with many fans, especially because he continued to play the role in a series of audio dramas, many of which aired on BBC radio. 

Despite statements that no past Doctors aside from David Tennant and the ret-conned incarnation played by John Hurt would appear in the story to mark the show's 50th anniversary, rumors abounded that McGann would have some involvement, even though the man himself denied them (albeit with enough ambiguity to keep fan hopes alive). That hope came to fruition on November 14th when a short prequel episode entitled "Night of the Doctor" was released online. Though ostensibly designed to tie up a bit of the show's continuity - and turn some of that continuity on its head - "Night of the Doctor" is more significant as both a tightly-paced piece of drama about a man forced to make a difficult choice and a valedictory for the actor playing that man. In the course of six minutes or so, McGann showed that, while his screen time as the Doctor, was limited his portrayal certainly wasn't. Aided and abetted by a sharply written script by Steven Moffat, arguably his best in a couple years, McGann displayed the kind of balance between humor and verbal bite that characterizes most of my favorite Doctors. 

Considering how much I enjoyed "Night of the Doctor", perhaps the most surprising thing is that  neither the 50th anniversary story that followed nor last week's Christmas special, which depicted yet another change of Doctor, felt disappointing. When 2013 started, I wasn't sure it would be a great year to be a fan of Doctor Who or David Bowie, let alone both. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong.