The Daring Spectacle: A Review

A few months ago, I started to read Mark Morford’s weekly column on SFGate. I was in love. His fluid, verbose, Tom Robbinsian,  snarky young Hunter S. Thompsoneque prose  aligns perfectly with my vibrations and connect to someplace in my soul which I reserve for epiphanies, cosmic revelation and orgasmic joy. I look forward to his column every week as a chance to swim in wine glass of text and examine a perceptive that eerily mirrors my own yet always leaves me thinking.

Knowing that I had missed years of his work, I ordered a copy of his book, a collection of his columns called The Daring Spectacle. Morford himself advises the reader not to read the collections straight through, but who the hell is he to tell me how to read his book? He warns that even he tires of his over-the-top, run-on-sentence, throw in a few words like yoga, vibration, and ecstasy style. He is right, there are times when the prose reads like a shtick, but over all this is an amazing book filled with funny, important, angry observations on human beings and how we function in a universe we are powerless to ever fully understand. But more than that, these essays are a tribute to the magical, mystical, maniacal observations we could all make about the world should we choose to look. 

I have added a few links below to some of my favorite columns, but I suggest you get yourself a copy throw it on your bedside table, backpack, toilet seat, coffee table and flip through it every time you want to be reminded that the world is an indescribable, wonderful roller coaster ride.

How To Sing Like a Planet: Me, I like to think of the Earth as essentially a giant Tibetan singing bowl, flicked by the middle finger of God and set to a mesmerizing, low ring for about 10 billion years until the tone begins to fade and the vibration slows and eventually the sound completely disappears into nothingness and the birds are all, hey what the hell happened to the music? And God just shrugs and goes, well that was interesting.

Behold, A Furry Blond Lobster: Knowledge is not fixed in stone. It is transitory and ephemeral and exists only so long as we pump it with meaning.

Dick Cheney Kills Birds Dead Because it is, in the final analysis, all about how you approach and engage the world, nature, yourself. It is all about with what degree of sacredness and veneration you walk the planet, treading lightly or stomping heavily, in awe of the interconnectedness or working to crush the beautiful and the weak for profit and hollow thrill. It is, after all, your choice. 

Please Kiss Your Old Toaster  What kind of energy do you want to cultivate? What kind of reverence do you want to experience? With what kind of step do you want to tread the planet? What the hell can you do every single day that makes the gods grin? Maybe, after all, these are the only real questions that matter.


Politics, yoga, sex, homosexuality, technology, art, music, nature, god, right-wing, left-wing, pain, joy...Mark Morford reminds us of what it feels like to be human. Let me know what you think.

Finally in a, "you gotta love social media for the access and connection it gives creator and consumer" moment:

Compaq and a Piece of String

Every once in a while you read a piece of journalism that makes you want to re-read it before it is finished. These types of Gonzo-inspired prose are seldom filled with facts, and you will seldom read them in the New York Times. Some would argue that these opinion filled exercises in snide, cutting edge, in-your-face prose are not journalism at all, but I would say that it is precisely this type of tidy, clever writing that may be the bitch slap most people need to wake them from their stupor.

Perhaps we are too far numb to realize what is happening in the world. Oil spills, death of phytoplankton, indefinite wars all over the globe in the name of fighting evil-doers, don’t seem to be doing it these days.

Enter Matt Taibbi and Mark Morford. Two of the finest journalist writing today. I could have easily Tweeted this article or shared it on Facebook. I could have simply cut and paste the article in full, and let you read it for your self, but I wanted to dissect it and carve out my favorite lines. Enjoy:

*All italicized sections actually caused me to pump my fists in the air and cheer.

You think the Taliban has this kind of time? The brainpower? We have cool iPads, MIT geniuses and supercomputers the size of France. They have a single, filthy 2001 Compaq Presario and some string. I mean, please.

It is this: Despite all our dazzling ultramodern technology, despite all those infrared goggles and laser-guided everything, despite 1,000 advancements in weaponry and body armor, stratagems and 3D mapping, war remains the most despicable, thoroughly miserable human endeavor mankind has yet invented, or will ever invent in this or any lifetime, and that includes "Jersey Shore," Microsoft Windows and Mel Gibson.

Let these 92,000 documents eliminate all doubt: war is our basest, most vile creation. Has been for 10,000 years. Always will be.

It goes on for days, the same tone, in the same way, snippet after snippet, scene after scene, horror after horror. It's like reaching into a giant basket of razor wire and shards of glass, trying to find the bottom that doesn't exist.

Whereas, the real thing is, well, nothing but endlessly ugly, sad, tedious, nauseating, deadening, exhausting, like peeling off a scab that never ends, like rubbing a grain of sand into your eye that only gets deeper and more painful, like driving down the world's longest desert highway stretching off far into the distance, potholed with bombs and dead bodies, war crimes and shrapnel, oil slicks and weapons contracts, all oversprinkled with a trillion American dollars raining down like fine green confetti.

From what I can tell from the WikiLeaks scandal, here is what it does not mean: It does not mean war is some sort of rugged Herculean manly uberpatriotic exercise in glorious freedom, justice, truth, that just might also, whoops, get a little bloody. It does not quite mean a noble force for good and democracy. It might have meant that once, long ago, for a shining moment, maybe, on the back of a coin somewhere. It hasn't meant anything near that for 1,000 years. Capitalism saw to that.

Because evil is more like Dick Cheney's tiny sneer, the religious nutball's weakest synapse, the wheezing death of the soul.

War is similar. It is no grand, melodramatic spectacle, no sepia-toned Spielberg movie narrated by Tom Hanks, no epic "Lord of the Rings" battle royale between ogres and kings. It's just page after page, bomb after bomb, report after report, endlessly and forever, numbing to the core, until history chokes it all down with a dry heave and an exhausted sigh.

I would give my left arm to be able to write with such clarity and wit. Kudos to you Mr. Morford you left me speechless. I just ordered his book.