Guest Blogger on the Women's World Cup: Shaun Mullen

A sad update: My virtual good friend and literary colleague Shaun Mullin passed away from natural causes at his Stroudsburg, PA, home on December 12, 2019.

Shaun Mullen was born to blog. It just took a few years for the medium to catch up to the messenger. Over a long career with newspapers, this award-winning editor and reporter covered the Vietnam War, O.J. Simpson trials, Clinton impeachment circus and coming of Osama bin Laden, among many other big stories. Mullen was a five-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and has covered 12 presidential campaigns.

I was cyber-introduced to Shaun a few years back by a mutual friend after I read his terrific book,There's A House In The Land: A Tale of the 1970s, which centered around a band that we knew and played with back then. Our own band was also mentioned in one episode within the book. Shaun wrote a fantastic review of my own book, Back To Life: A Bladder Cancer Journey, and we have corresponded sporadically ever since.

I was in the process of composing a blog post about the patriotism of the US Women's Soccer Team when I read Shaun's post on the same topic this morning on his blog, Kiko's House. He nailed it, as usual, and he has agreed to let me share his post as a guest blogger on Frank-Incensed. Enjoy!

Don't Look To D.C, The Women's World Cup Team Is Real Patriotism On Display

We are not exactly sports fanatics, my love and I.  While I nominally follow the Philadelphia Phillies, at least when they're winning, we don't even have cable TV, so we bypass the 24/7 torrent of the sports industrial complex in a sort of insular bliss at the mountain retreat if you don't count the nightmare than Donald Trump has visited upon us.  But we are joyfully following the U.S. national women's team in the World Cup because it allows us to feel good about America in a time of migrant concentration camps, love feasts with ruthless authoritarian leaders and a new definition of Taking Our Daughters To Work Day. 

This is one absolutely fearless team.  The atleticism is breathtaking.  And the beer is really cold at the neighborhood tappy where we watched the matches against France and England, the latter to be long memorable for forward Alex Morgan's delightful troll of the entire English nation with her tea sipping gesture, pinkie properly raised, after scoring the go-ahead goal.   

That's what we fought the Revolutionary War for, right?   

Wrong.  We fought the Revolutionary War so a criminal thug can appropriate -- no, make that hijack and militarize -- the peoples' Independence Day celebration in Washington and beat his chest on the steps of the previously hallowed Lincoln Memorial for the enjoyment of Republican fat cat donors and other hand-picked VIPs.  And so he can emulate Vladimir Putin, who probably gets nice erections when he sees tanks in Red Square on national holidays. 

Incidentally, we're paying for our homegrown authoritarian's holiday party cum campaign event with millions of dollars diverted from a fund to fix up national parks, but then I'm sure that you got an invitation.   

No invitation?  That's strange.  

It's easy to see why Trump is so mightily pissed off with women's team's co-captain Megan Rapinoe, who has unashamedly dissed the president by saying that she would not be "going to the fucking White House" should the U.S. win its fourth World Cup on Sunday.   

Trump has returned the compliment by implying Rapinoe is a loser although stopping short of saying that the purple-haired winger is "not my type," his go-to rejoinder to Jean Carroll, the latest woman to accuse him of sexual misconduct. 

"I think I stand for honesty and for truth and for wanting to have the conversation," Rapinoe told reporters on Wednesday. "Looking at the country honestly and saying, 'Yes, we are a great country and there are many things that are so amazing and I feel very fortunate to be in this country.'  I would never be able to do this in a lot of other places. But that doesn’t mean we can't get better.  It doesn't mean we shouldn’t always thrive to be better."  

Down deep, if Trump has a deep, what really wounds him about Rapinoe is that she has worked very hard to become a premier athlete while he has stolen, abused, insulted and assaulted to get where he is.  Now Trump may be too much of a sociopathic narcissist to ever understand that.  Or despite his fake billions, why he will never have that most precious of commodities -- respect. 

For us, the women's team is a timely reminder of the American ethos amidst Trump's manifold grotesqueries: The promise of equality, the spirit of reform that yielded Title IX and laid the groundwork for American female soccer supremacy, a close-knit community of different backgrounds and sexual orientations, including lesbian and social activist Rapinoe, who has earned the title of national hero. 

So for an all-too-brief moment, my love and I are putting aside our shame and letting loose with a"USA, USA" or three.  You ought to try it.  Feels really good.

By Sean Mullen (used by permission of the author)

Portland, OR
July 3rd, 2019

Eine Nachricht von dem deutschen Volke

The Fire Down Below

Many friends have commented publicly and privately on my blog post of last week reflecting on Bob Seger and his Silver Bullet Band, and the interesting similarities between Seger and Bruce Springsteen (Was Bob Seger the Original Boss?) This engendered in yours truly an earworm of colossal proportion that has lasted the better part of a week. The song? My all-time favorite Seger tune, “The Fire Down Below,” a song so Springsteen-esque in its roll call of disparate American characters that it even includes a Rosie!

"The Fire Down Below"

Words and music by Bob Seger

Here comes old Rosie she's looking mighty fine
Here comes hot Nancy she's steppin' right on time
There go the street lights bringin on the night
Here come the men faces hidden from the light
All through the shadows they come and they go
With only one thing in common
They got the fire down below

Here comes the rich man in his big long limousine
Here comes the poor man all you got to have is green
Here comes the banker and the lawyer and the cop
One thing for certain it ain't never gonna stop
When it all gets too heavy
That's when they come and go
With only one thing in common
They got the fire down below

It happens out in Vegas happens in Moline
On the blue blood streets of Boston
Up in Berkeley and out in Queens
And it went on yesterday and it's going on tonight
Somewhere there's somebody ain't treatin' somebody right

And he's looking out for Rosie and she's looking mighty fine
And he's walking the streets for Nancy
And he'll find her everytime
When the street light flicker bringing on the night
Well they'll be slipping into darkness slipping out of sight
All through the midnight
Watch 'em come and watch 'em go
With only one thing in common
They got the fire down below

Portland, Oregon

February 9, 2019

Was Bob Seger the original Boss?

We went to see Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band last night at the Moda Center here in Portland. We had seen the band on their last tour here a few years back and loved the show. He scheduled what was to be his last tour in 2017, but completed only 13 dates out of 32 scheduled, due to a ruptured disc that required major surgery. Most thought that he would retire at that point, but he announced last year that he would make up the dates he canceled and add more. He also said it would definitely be his last tour.

It was a great show, if a little less tight and balanced than when we last saw him. He said he would play some obscure songs, and that he did, which was fun but inevitably led to the omission of some of his many crowd favorites. The high points of the two-hour show were very high indeed and intensely emotional, and the band was professional and high-energy throughout.

About halfway through the concert, it occurred to me how similar Seger is to Springsteen, and in so many ways that I had never considered. Sure there are lots of differences, and Springsteen is a musical generation removed from Seger, who had his first national hit and album in 1968. But consider the almost eerie similarities; after following them both for decades, I never have.

First, from day one of their careers, the band has belonged to them, and not just by carrying their name. They wrote all of their respective songs, were in charge of not only the musical but also all of the business decisions. 

And there’s so much more. From a musical standpoint, they both put together bands heavily reliant on keyboards in an era when guitar was king. Both prominently featured both piano and organ on their albums and in their live performances. Strikingly, unlike almost every other band back then, both had a feature saxophonist nearly all the way back to the genesis of their careers. More subtly, neither has been hesitant to add additional players and instruments, and to feature acoustic instruments in the live environment. I have seen both bands numerous times, both in their earlier incarnations as well as in their current iterations, and last night I was struck by how visually similar they are today on stage. Both feature back up singers and horn sections on risers to the sides. Both have two full-time keyboard players and dynamic and varied rock and roll percussion that goes beyond an energetic drummer, and both have the eponymous front man who is as much a musical director on stage as he is a mere lead singer. 

Lastly, both write songs that are uniquely American and incredibly heartfelt and truly meaningful. Think of “My Hometown” and “Turn the Page,” two songs that couldn’t be more different in musical structure or subject matter, and yet mine the deep emotion and longing of quintessential American personal experience.

The last great similarity is the love the audiences show these two artists when they play live with their bands. There is plenty of fan-love to be seen at concerts, but the love I feel at a Stones or a U2 concert is a kind of hero-worship or “aspirational love” if you will. With Seger and Springsteen it is intense and personal, and make no mistake, it is love.

Maybe Bob was really the original Boss …

Portland, Oregon
February 3, 2019