Jim Himes's Cultural Life.
A Congressman Confesses: He Loves Cocaine Bear.
Eight-term U.S. Representative Jim Himes’s cultural life is a revelation. It is marked by an absolute. He will fight you over one pizza, two beers and three episodes of his absolute the best series to binge. He howled on a plane while watching this year’s Cocaine Bear. (A reminder that Margo Martindale never puts a foot wrong even in a horror sendup.)
An accomplished drummer, the Greenwich Democrat shows his catholic tastes in music and literature. He might profit from some podcasts suggestions.
As a high ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Himes knows things you and I don’t, and probably never will. Let’s hope he took a suggestion made a few years ago and is keeping a journal destined to feature in someone else’s cultural life one day.
Just for the Oscar Peterson tribute and accompanying video from Ronny Scott’s you will want to share this edition with a friend—and subscribe yourself if you have not yet done so. It is for the ages.
Favorite Book/Author.
I love the 20th century Americans: Stegner, Roth, Hurston, Hemingway, Ellison. But towering above them all is Cormac McCarthy. Reading “Blood Meridian” is like falling out of an airplane, landing on your feet, and walking away. It is epic, captivating and obscenely violent.
McCarthy used English like Mozart used notes. You can’t quite believe what you are reading and when done, you will have gotten an education in the mythology of the West, humanity and the violence that courses below the surface of American life.
The book you are reading.
“Zero to One” by Peter Thiel. Thiel has a billionaire’s humility and leans way too far right for my taste, but in a conformist world, he thinks originally. A good antidote to some current groupthink.
[The Kindle edition is on sale on Amazon for $4.99.]
{Gerard Alessandrini’s parody explain’s Anna Karenina in 2:30 minutes.}
The book you couldn’t finish.
Anna Karenina. I know…“pinnacle of world literature” and all that. But nope, couldn’t do it.
The book you’ve long intended to read but never get to.
All seven Harry Potter books. And I’ve got two kids!
Most memorable live performance.
Bruce Springsteen, December 8, 1980 at the Philadelphia Spectrum surrounded by thousands of ecstatic Jerseyites. Clarence Clemons played saxophone. The E Street Band belted out “Jersey Girl” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”. Down the shore everything was alright, but in New York, John Lennon was killed that night, and nobody at the concert knew a thing because the internet was still a decade away.
Your best binge.
One large pepperoni pizza, two Half Full Bright Ales, three episodes of “Breaking Bad”. The best. Fight me.
Favorite TV series.
See above. “The Wire” and “Slow Horses” are also on the podium.
A YouTube video you find yourself returning to.
Boris Johnson, while Mayor of London, talking about Periclean Athens at the Legatum Institute. A college education in under an hour. Johnson is entitled, incautious and sometimes obnoxious, but his intellect sparkles.
Favorite piece of music.
Ouch. Impossible. But if forced, I’d say Oscar Peterson playing Blues Etude Live with Barney Kessel and Niels Pedersen in London. Every once in a while a musician or an athlete does something that isn’t entirely human. Watch the video of Peterson improvising boogie-woogie on the piano. Genius at work.
The music that cheers you up.
Bluegrass, or anything with a banjo.
Lyrics I wish I’d written.
Most of the songs in Spinal Tap. Special mention for: “You know what I want! Or maybe you don’t!”
Song that makes me wonder.
“Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd
Instrument you wish you’d learned to play.
Bagpipes. There are occasions when a piper is just the thing: memorials, weddings, the closing of Imperial barracks, boring Sunday afternoons.
Guiltiest cultural pleasure.
I’m the only person in America who thinks “Hudson Hawk” was a great movie, and embarrassed myself howling on a plane watching “Cocaine Bear”. So, I guess the answer is B Movies.
You wasted an evening.
Doomscrolling war movie clips on Facebook videos.
And now that the Facebook algorithm has my number it’s not just one evening.
A recent discovery.
Good Irish whiskey. I thought I was a bourbon man and many of my people come from Scotland. But with apologies to Kentucky and the auld sod, Red Breast and Jameson it is. For the full experience, pour out a glass and listen to the High Kings sing “The Parting Glass”.
Two podcasts.
I have never listened to a podcast.
The place I feel happiest.
At the top of a mountain, preferably in the Rockies. Summer or winter.
Books and movies for aspiring politicians.
“The Political Brain” by Drew Westen. There is no “how to” manual for politicians but this book comes close. Learn what the debate moderator was really asking when he asked Dudakis if he would support capital punishment for the murderer if his wife were killed. And how George W. Bush was able to paint John Kerry (he of three Purple Hearts) as a wimp.
A speech that continues to inspire you.
The day Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis in 1968, there were riots in cities across America. Bobby Kennedy, ignoring the warnings of the police, but at the urging of my former colleague John Lewis, went into a Black neighborhood in Indianapolis and spoke. Among other things, he said “We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization—black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another,” he said,“Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.” He also quoted Aeschylus from memory. There were no riots in Indianapolis.