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Welcome to The Feder Files. A new article/essay/story (by our esteemed editor) will appear as the spirit moves him. Be prepared for an extreme breadth of style here; these articles will range from light and not-so-light parody, to emotional personal stories, to cultural critiques and political rants. There will also be the occasional book or movie review, and more features to be added later.

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The Fourth of July-- Independence Day... The year of George Bush's Lord, 2008. Does it mean anything anymore?

Aside from whatever Big Bash Savings at the car dealers, or the mattress store or Freedom Bucks or some such nonsense at Burger King. (This weekend only, make your diabetes and heart disease twice as bad--get four grease-burgers for the price of one!!!)-- Aside from all that, who really knows or cares about the actual significance of The Fourth of July.
You get a long weekend, true-- That's no small thing in life where people work more and make less than they have for 50 years-- so, no sniffing at that from somebody like me who hasn't had a 9-5 job for 10 years...

And also you exercise your right as a free American citizen to eat too much crap at a picnic—get sunburn and poison ivy and maybe a couple of bee stings, if you're really lucky...
And, again, don’t forget there are incredible, once in a lifetime!!! (A flea's lifetime) deals at the Honda showroom or some big-ticket appliance warehouse. Spend that stimulus check—everybody knows its not enough to really help anyone’s financial situation anyway, so why not use it for a weekend at a casino or as down-payment on an All Terrain Vehicle that will destroy what little is left of the woods or desert (You're never going to pay the fucking thing off anyway!)

I can't connect, (no matter how hard I tax my old, addled brain), a 30% discount on a flat-screen TV and the idea, (the vision) of a dead American lying in a New England woods 230 years ago— bayoneted in the gut by some Hessian mercenary.
Once again, as with so many things I contemplate these days, I feel a generational gap...

George Carlin died the other day—and though I never actually met him, I miss him…

I don't know if he translated across generations or if it mostly was his original fans (and there were a great many of them) that were his constant audience across the decades.
If you were introduced to him at the beginning of his career, as I was, then you have to be near or over 60—but maybe because of his HBO specials and the internet, etc., Carlin reached across some small portion of the generational divide.

His comedy/satire came to prominence soon after Lenny Bruce’s death, and George Carlin was almost a direct inheritor of Lenny Bruce's revolution in "comedy"; comedy that was laugh out loud funny, but also, along with, and right after the beat generation, not so funny; dark, vicious, a straight, polished mirror held up to a twisted culture...
Carlin didn't jump right off the cliff like Bruce did, but he often worked on the rim of the canyon. And like Bruce, Carlin (can I call him George? I think I will cause I'm beginning to sound like an academic or performance art critic— Also, I had a special, almost personal attachment to him that I will explain as I go on…).
So, George… He, like Lenny Bruce, loved the way words sounded—the way they flowed and soared and dipped, like birds or music… You could see George moving his arms, using body English (or Irish) to shape and float and launch the words… He reveled in the way words expressed nuance, thought, feeling…
Both men were interested in the origins of words, and the way they were used and misused—the way the one powerful word could express completely (even directly contradictory) thoughts, acts or feelings.