Good

Posted on December 11, 2008

Santa Claus is getting serious. His summer workshop is thin on toys but stocking-stuffed with legislation and government reports. Yes, Virginia, Santa is a policy wonk. But considering Mr. Claus’ career before donning “the uniform” it isn’t so surprising. Mr. Claus, who legally changed his name to Santa Claus a few years ago, was Director of the Terrorism Research and Communications Center, served as Assistant Deputy Police Commissioner for the New York City Police Department, and as a law enforcement administrator in the Virgin Islands. Long story short: If Rudolf’s nose is red for any of the wrong reasons, we’ve got a problem.

But closest to Santa’s heart is children. From his home in a Lake Tahoe church (this Santa is also a monk) Santa is spearheading a national push to put children’s issues back on the political radar. Mr. Claus recently finished a 50 state “Bless the Children” tour, where he met with governors and lawmakers to discuss the plight of millions of America’s poorest and most vulnerable kids. The country’s methamphetamine epidemic, Santa says, has led to thousands more being taken into foster care. Child suicides are on the rise and child obesity is epidemic. It sounds like a job for Superman but this Santa says he’s up for the challenge.

WJ: So we hear you’ve got a gig for the other 11 months.

I do. My work is helping the 2 million children across the United States who are abused, neglected, exploited, abandoned, homeless or institutionalized. That represents one out of every 37 children in America. I’m also very concerned about the 400,000 American children who are already in the foster care system. More than 100,000 are ready to be adopted right now—if anyone was there to.

WJ: C’mon. Angelina Jolie can’t adopt everybody.

Ho, ho, ho. True. (Editors note: Santa didn’t actually say “Ho, ho, ho” but we think it adds something.) It’s wonderful when anybody is willing to step up and adopt. But considering that we have 114,000 ready for adoption in the United States, it’s a concern when a quarter of that figure is annual adoptions from overseas. By adopting American kids, we can take a lot of pressure off of our social services system.

WJ: You sound like you’ve become quite the policy expert. Mr. Claus Goes to Washington?

I view myself as a children’s advocate. A state will sometimes have legislation that’s worth moving forward, but their boss isn’t willing to do it. And occasionally a voice from the outside—particularly Santa Claus—can help move legislation through.

WJ: Okay, so “SANTA-PAC” is calling a governor’s office. How do you get his staff to (a) believe you exist and (b) put you on the calendar?

I say, “Hi, this is Santa Claus, calling to brighten up your day.” They pause and I continue explaining the work that I’m doing. My name recognition is higher than just about anybody in the world—except for Mohammad. Read more

Shades of Reflection

Posted on December 10, 2008

Vondel Park, AmsterdamPhoto by Amy Rollowww.amyrollo.com

Hollywood Reefer

Posted on December 7, 2008

I’m home alone on a Saturday evening, my laptop warm on the kitchen table, at least five ounces of marijuana set on the tabletop around me, stored in airtight jars. The jars to my left are half full. One has a sweet and sleepy bouquet, while the other is sharp like smelling salts. Four others stand in review to my right, a corner lamp brightening their golden-tipped lids. Their names evoke exotic locations, colors, animals, automobiles. One is grown by a white-bearded farmer who’s raised the same strain for thirty years. These buds, they say, are his Venus De Milo—and they’re in demand in many places. Yet here I sit on a Saturday evening, my telephone silent, nowhere to go. Nothing to do but write.

Who’d think it would be so difficult delivering marijuana? Two weeks open and just four calls. I’d done as suggested, I’m listed online. The phone was supposed to start ringing, right? I remember the words of a free-slinging friend. “Dann,” she said, a big grin on her lips, “this shit has a way of moving itself.” I wonder if that still is true? Maybe when breaking the law outright: If I sold to my friends, and soon to their friends, until I made one sale too many, and found myself in a little room with a hard wood bench and a low metal toilet, hunkered down for the night. But where was the revelation in this? This is, after all, a journalism project; a means toward trying to understand what happens when somebody plays the game straight? Read more

How

Posted on December 6, 2008

1. Go to bakery and order one big cookie .**

2. Request a bag “to go.” Don’t eat big cookie.  

3. Clear a flat, open workspace, where power tools would be appropriate.

4. Take hammer and pummel cookie into hundreds of small pieces.***

5. Slowly eat crumbs.

* Assuming a “poverty diet” of Top Ramen and tap water doesn’t do the trick.  
** For Christmas, gingerbread and butter cookies decorated in a rolled fondant can be substitutes. 
*** Hammer works best, but ex-girlfriend’s Burberry Trench Belt riding boots ($795) can be used for pummeling as well. 

Sharing: Barack Obama

Posted on December 3, 2008

A few months after my twenty-first birthday, a stranger called to give me the news. I was living in New York at the time, on Ninety-fourth between Second and First, part of that unnamed, shifting border between East Harlem and the rest of Manhattan. It was an uninviting block, treeless and barren, lined with soot-colored walk-ups that cast heavy shadows for most of the day. The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.

None of this concerned me much, for I didn’t get many visitors. I was impatient in those days, busy with work and unrealized plans, and prone to see other people as unnecessary distractions. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate company exactly. I enjoyed exchanging Spanish pleasantries with my mostly Puerto Rican neighbors, and on my way back from classes I’d usually stop to talk to the boys who hung out on the stoop all summer long about the Knicks or the gunshots they’d heard the night before. When the weather was good, my roommate and I might sit out on the fire escape to smoke cigarettes and study the dusk washing blue over the city, or watch white people from the better neighborhoods nearby walk their dogs down our block to let the animals shit on our curbs—“Scoop the poop, you bastards!” my roommate would shout with impressive rage, and we’d laugh at the faces of both master and beast, grim and unapologetic as they hunkered down to do the deed.

I enjoyed such moments—but only in brief. If the talk began to wander, or cross the border into familiarity, I would soon find reason to excuse myself. I had grown too comfortable in my solitude, the safest place I knew.

I remember there was an old man living next door who seemed to share my disposition. He lived alone, a gaunt, stooped figure who wore a heavy black overcoat and a misshapen fedora on those rare occasions when he left his apartment. Once in a while I’d run into him on his way back from the store, and I would offer to carry his groceries up the long flight of stairs. He would look at me and shrug, and we would begin our ascent, stopping at each landing so that he could catch his breath. When we finally arrived at his apartment, I’d carefully set the bags down on the floor and he would offer a courtly nod of acknowledgement before shuffling inside and closing the latch. Not a single word would pass between us, and not once did he ever thank me for my efforts. Read more

Hollywood Reefer

Posted on December 1, 2008

“What do you do for a living?” she asks, in that droll, I-don’t-really-give-a-fuck way that sums up Hollywood so well.

There are many ways that I could answer. I could say I’m a writer, flip a coin on whether or not she reads. Or tell her I work in medical supplies, if I want to kill the conversation. Or break it down legally: I’m the director of a licensed California non-profit, a caregiver to medical marijuana patients in accordance with state law. But often, should it get to the point where I choose to tell the humdrum truth, and it doesn’t happen everyday, I’ll say it softly, almost shrugging, as if my job is housed within parenthesis.

(I run a marijuana delivery service.)

Though it doesn’t matter how I say it—whether it’s a whisper or full-throated shout, the aftereffect is always the same: Heads square themselves on necks, as miniature bombs go off in both eyes, mouths working at every angle, as they try to wrap their heads around the news that I’ve just broken.

It usually takes a minute or two before I am deluged with questions. How did I get into it? Is it really legal? Am I scared when I go places that I’ve never been before? Scared I’ll be arrested, or that somebody will rob me, or god forbid  something worse?

It’s awesome to be reminded of all your catastrophic scenarios while out for a quiet evening with friends, trying to be a regular joe. But the truth is—of course, I’m afraid. Though that probably isn’t the operative word. A better one would be aware. I’m aware of what could happen. I’ve heard stories ending badly, and in terms of handling such awareness, at least a journalism background offers the sense that I’ve been tested before. Am I out of my depth? Most likely. But no more than when the gunman opened fire in the Capitol, or the starlet tried to use me to get back at her cheating boyfriend. As a reporter, you learn to think on your feet. To watch and then work around the long knives. I wanted to bring this skill to deliveries, control borne out of concentration, if for no other reason than merely believing I still held some small hand in my destiny. Read more

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