mennonnotes

Join me at my newest new home on the web: masspurgation.com!

2006-09-20T08:04:00.000-04:00

Please join me at my new blog:

I will be moving my archives there, and you’ll be able to find all my op-eds, random notes, and rants, plus, of course, podcasts, pictures, and products (Martha Stewart, watch your back!). All in one place.

See you there!

CBS goes Soviet

2006-09-14T07:23:00.000-04:00

On CBS's The Early Show this morning there was a piece on Bush's uncharacteristic trip to Capitol Hill to promote his new terror bill, which was billed by CBS as "giving President Bush the tools he needs to fight the War on Terror." There followed a video-tour of Guantanamo interrogation chambers, complete with reclining la-Z-boys for prisoners. Then it was reiterated that the bill would give prisoners "more rights."

This shit is straight out of the Soviet propaganda playbook. The la-Z-boy was the touch I appreciated most, because it was so-o-o-o-o ridiculously OTT it gave the whole report an in-your-face, tongue-in-cheek feel. This is how truly contemptuous the government and the media are of the public. That the military could show the media to a room with a plush la-Z-boy, claim prisoner's are wined and dines during their casual Q-n-A's, and the media would present it as fact. It's the Daily Showization of "real" news. It would be comical if not for the fact that the continued atrocity of Gitmo is one of the best recruiting tools terrorists have got.

The truth is, the Bush administration needs no help with this sort of thing. The GOP has proven deft at pushing through legislation at the eleventh hour and using opposition to it against Democrats in tight races. That's why Bush is making so much noise right now, instead of clearing brush at Crawford. The media wouldn't even bother to cover the vote if he wasn't pointing the way for them.

Now they're helping him whitewash the bill as a tool against terror, instead of a future tool for terrorists. And any Democrats who oppose it will risk being seen as soft on terror. You've just got to wonder how many times the GOP can pull this off.

CBS: Rush Limbaugh afraid Islamo-fascists are going to take away his Viagra, etc.

2006-09-07T18:56:00.000-04:00

I'm not too impressed by CBS's retooled Evening News with Katie Couric. There are many reasons not to be impressed, in fact. Chief among them is probably Couric herself. That CBS is blowing its own horn for hiring the first female nightly news host on Network TV, when Cable News has been completely overrun by them for years, doesn't seem forward-thinking at all, but sadly retrograde.

And it shows what a heaping load Americans are dishing out and tucking into these days. I mean, Africa is more forward-thinking than we are when it comes to female heads of state. We haven't even had but one President who wasn't a frickin WASP. And we like to think of ourselves as the most advanced democracy on the planet, where anyone can come out of nowhere and end up in the oval office someday. Yeah, right.

One of the more depressing new features CBS Evening News is touting is their "Free Speech" segment, which has so far been a nightly iteration of various national cliches. That they are giving time to Rush Limbaugh in some attempt to seem balanced is ... I don't know what to call it, really. I mean, Limbaugh already has a venue to spout his nonsense. You know what he's going to say before he says it.

But like I said, that's what the high-speed "Free Speech" segment is really about. It's a little like the Bush administration placing enemies of good government in high government posts in the hopes that they will utterly destroy our faith that the government can do good by not trying to. You know, "heck of a job, Brownie!"-style. And Bush meant it. When your goal is to destroy people's hope and faith in the very possibility of good government, FEMA's utter failure in the wake of Katrina was a rip-snorting success!

Same logic applies to CBS's version of "free speech." If speech like this is free, I might be willing to fork out for speech in the future. Pay-per-Speech can't be far off.

Another thing that cracked me up on Monday -- Katie's big debut -- was the lead story by Lara Logan, about her travels with the Taliban. It was downright burlesque. Here she's traveling with the Taliban and griping that they're making her wear a veil. At one point she tells us, snearingly, "they made me cover everything but my eyes." And then she snaps at one of them, "Well, am I allowed to smile?" NO! BITCH! It's THE TALIBAN! That's WHY they're the freakin Taliban! And what is there to smile about anyway? I mean, WHAT IS YOUR POINT? CBS should have sent Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. It would not have been much different in the end, but at least it would have been more amusing.

Then she reaches the end of her journey into the heart of darkness, they show these ragtag Taliban "brazenly showing off their weapons." It seriously could have been something from The Daily Show.

Then -- and this is the last thing I'll say about CBS Evening News -- they showed part of a speech of Bush's from earlier that day where he parrotted his evil overlords' WWII analogies by comparing Bin Laden & Co. with Hitler and Stalin. And CBS took it upon themselves to helpfully illustrate the point by splitting the screen in three, showing Bush still giving his speech on the left of the screen, and Hitler and Stalin on the right. I'm not sure I see any kind of statement being made with it, but I could be wrong.

DON'T FORGET: BE VERY AFRAID

2006-09-07T17:40:00.000-04:00

Is it a coincidence that as elections near Mr. Bush is hammering home his be-very-afraid message again? He has been quoting Osama so often lately you'd be forgiven for thinking the two were in league -- running mates, even.

We can now see very plainly why Osama was allowed to slip away at Tora Bora. He was extremely useful to Mr. Bush in the last election, with a well-timed video, and you can see how Mr. Bush is relying heavily on him to win elections for the GOP this time around, too.

And I'm not just talking about endless speeches where Bush is unabashedly using Bin Laden as a bogeyman. Instead of seeing the fact that America's arch-nemesis slipped away as a point of shame, the President is very nearly taunting Americans with his supposed enemy's continued existence. Given this administration's penchant for fear-mongering at pivotal moments, it would almost seem strange if there weren't a "new" video released to coincide with Mr. Bush's latest terror blitz.

Indeed, now we have the release of a "new" video -- from FIVE YEARS AGO -- showing Bin Laden and his troops training for terror attacks. Yawn. Reruns AGAIN? The message here is clearly "don't forget, you're supposed to BE VERY AFRAID."

It resonates with a lot of people, no doubt about it. But it's such an unimaginative solution to the problems of an open society. There is a threat. It's real. That's not the issue here, though. The issue is to what degree it is being exploited for political and financial gain by those in positions to exploit it for such. And it's perfectly clear that it is being pretty shamelessly exploited by Mr. Bush and his cohorts.

I'm not saying anything everybody doesn't know. It's a formula. When the Communist bugaboo disappeared -- poof -- just like that, America was like the Red Sox after The Curse was reversed. We didn't know what to do with ourselves. Someone said it was The End of History. Nothing left to do but sit and twiddle our thumbs.

Terror is terror. You can't "win" a "War on Terror" by actively perpetuating terror, as this administration has done, and continues to do. But are we really terrified? The President seems a little desparate, doesn't he? I suspect we are not terrified enough for him.

Flakes on a Plane

2006-08-21T11:03:00.000-04:00

I had to comment on a couple stories I saw on TV this morning.

One was on The Early Show on CBS, where Harry Smith interviewed a woman who sat several rows in front of John Mark Karr, the sad clown in the never-ending JonBenet Ramsey circus, on his flight back to the US.

(I think Karr's real motive is to finally get his sex-change operation--he's hoping, like foxy Michelle Kosilek, formerly Robert Kosilek, who's serving a life-sentence for killing his wife, that once in prison the taxpayers will foot the bill for it.)

The somehow aptly-named Natasha Fagel (who looked like she'd fenagled her share of bagels), that random passenger who happened to be on the same flight as Karr and looks nothing like a six year old beauty queen (except maybe for the teased hair, rouge, and tiara she was sporting for the interview), says she didn't know who he was until after she deboarded, but when she found out... she was terrified. Sort of retro-terrified, I guess you'd call it.

Could this be any more pathetic? Not only is she retro-terrified, but she is retro-terrified of John Mark Karr. People. Please. Unless you're six, you have nothing to fear.

The other story was on the hipper, always acronymized GMA. They played a YouTube video ("Fireman in a Spin") of a fireman who had climbed into a frontloading clothes drier and had his buddies turn it on.

You couldn't even see what was going on in the video, really, but all four hosts were sitting on their big ugly couch snickering at it, for some reason. I could not for the life of me figure it out. I mean, morning shows are only minimally informative--so it's not like I was expecting hard news during the segment--but this was not even remotely entertaining. I mean, you want to see something really funny? Check out this hilarious YouTube video! Now, that's entertainment!

The funny thing about YouTube is it actually just struck a joint-marketing deal with NBC. According to CNET, "NBC has plans to upload promotional video clips of some of its TV shows, including 'Saturday Night Live' and 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.' The entertainment company, owned by General Electric, will advertise on YouTube and promote the site on some of its TV shows. Financial details were not disclosed."

But thank goodness we can look forward to more quality content like "Man Thinks He's a Cat" and "Fireman in a Spin"! (By the way, only as an afterthought did the giggling hosts at GMA caution, "kids: don't try this at home!"--I see a future tragedy unfolding.)

As for NBC. They couldn't compete with the business class passenger sitting three rows in front of the cross-dressing pedophile, and they certainly could not match a fireman in a drier. In desperation Today did a piece on "female sex-drive," and how it "plummets" after marriage.

Of sex in marriage, one woman said, "after awhile it gets a little boring."

Ladies. I want to clear something up. Just for the record. Guys don't do it because its particularly interesting. I mean, the average duration of coitus is 7.9 minutes with 100 to 500 thrusts per encounter. There's really not much time, what with all that thrusting, to make it all that interesting for you. Sorry. Look at it like this: eight minutes of friction, and you're free for the rest of the day!

Jill Carroll redux

2006-08-15T07:10:00.000-04:00

I was channel-surfing last night and stopped at Inside Edition, which had a short promotional piece on Jill Carroll, who's publishing her hostage memoir in serial form in the CSM. First of all, Jill, what's with the henna hair?

But aside from the bad hair, the thing that struck me was when the voiceover was listing Carroll's various ordeals, and came to this one: She reportedly had to "redo" a video "when she didn't cry hard enough."

Now, I would like to refer you to my observation of February 1st, 2006, when the video in question was released: "[S]omething about her hysterical plea seemed contrived. I'm sorry, but I could picture her captors, off-stage, directing her: 'emote! No, No! Cut! Jill, Jill, Jill, reach deep down, find the emotion! Let's do it again! Quiet on the set! Take 27, and... action!'"

Just so you know.

"Ooga Ooga," part 2

2006-08-08T18:36:00.000-04:00

You gotta love Craig's List. I check it every once in a while, though I've never gotten anything out of it. I used to do it in earnest. I do it now for mild amusement.

As a casual freelancer, it never ceases to amaze me the number of people out there who want something for nothing when it comes to "content." I've seen this as a freelance language instructor, too. The one who actually delivers the product always seems to be at the bottom of the food chain.

Here are a couple of typical ads under "writing jobs" (all typos faithfully preserved):

Freelance Writers Wanted for Men focused publication
Basically I am starting a Men's online publication, and I need writers. I have yet to generate an income for this project, so I will first state that you will not be compensated right away. If however we are sucessful, then we will all be able to get something out of this. Basically I need weekly articles along the lines of what you might encounter in Stuff, FHM, Maxium, ect. Music, food, sex, cars, sports, anything you can think of. I do need them weekly though, so it's important you keep to that deadline. I also ask that all the writers be from Boston. Your articles can be less formal, and you're more than welcome to consider them more of a blog. If you are interested email some writing samples, a resume, and I will send you the full detail on what I'm trying to do.
Start up
I am thinking about starting a new publication based on one of the best things about Boston...college life. I am looking for some help developing this idea. I do not have a writing/editing backround and would need one key person to help me get this crazy idea going. Everything is new to me so you must be willing to fly by the seat of your pants. I will be deveoping this idea with you...so be creative. College writers are welcome to "apply"...if you call it "apply" Hit me with an email, I will give you more details.

You can't take it seriously, of course, but it shows a kind of pervasive mentality about the value placed on the creative process, which has been downgraded these days to "producing content," as if it were an industrial process. There's already a name for that, people: hackery.

The thing that tickles me is that neither of these guys who've placed these ads brings anything at all to the table that I can see. Not even capital. No talent, no expertise, no money. Not even a respectable hack would be suckered into that.

I happen to have gotten roped into writing for a "network" of blogs several months ago. It wasn't a bad deal, actually, and I haven't lost anything by it. I was minding my own business, writing my T-rage blog at blogspot.com, when a twenty-something computer guy with a vision of a network of Boston-based blogs approached me (I mean, of course, that he e-approached me--no one approaches anyone in real life in Boston, unless they're a tourist or a mugger)--so he approached me with the promise of riches, and, as I was willing to do it for free on my own, I said, well, what the hell? If I can make a little something on the side, why not?

I did not have particularly high hopes for the site, as for generating capital. I think of it as a public service. But my new overlord assured me I would be making a cool grand a month "once the network got off the ground" (that was supposed to be by April of this year). I thought, hey, that's not just chump change. Plus he offered to build the site, host it, and promote it. I was thinking, who's the chump now?

Well, for his services he was going to take a cut, of course. Fair enough. But fifty percent of whatever profits might come from ads? Fifty percent? When I'm the one providing all the content? I thought, well, if he's really gonna promote it, then it'll be worth it. Five humdred bucks is nothing to turn up your nose at, after all.

In the early days of the network, he brought a few people like me in--people who'd already had sites up and going, and had gotten some press (T-rage! is in the Sunday Globe's "blog roll" regularly, and garnered a front page story with pics in the Herald soon after its debut), and he built some sites on themes that would round out the network nicely, and tried to recruit bloggers for them. But that has not worked out so well. At present count, there are sixteen blogs in the network, but only nine are active (two of which are mine), and several of those are only nominally active (two or three posts a month).

We tried cross-promotion, but quite honestly, there were sites in the network mine didn't jibe with or that didn't jibe with mine, somehow (like, for example, the painfully earnest Muslim Bostonian, which has been derelict since May). And anyway, when no one is reading any of the blogs to begin with, promoting each other is like a circle jerk. There were other sites I actively did not want to be associated with. For my own "brand integrity." I mean, he who lies down with dogs wakes up with fleas, right? Or, you could look at it like the old wine barrel riddle SHERMAN H. GROSSMAN of Needham wrote about in letters to the editor in the Globe yesterday:

Question one: If a barrel contains all manure but for one drop of wine, what it is? Answer: A barrel of manure. Question two: If a barrel contains all wine but for one drop of manure, what is it? Answer: A barrel of manure.

Know what I'm sayin'?

The extent of advertising in the network seems to be Google Ads, which are, of course, available to blogspot bloggers, too. I am unaware of any promotional work aside from a couple of press releases that didn't seem to generate much buzz. This has been disappointing. You'd think a local network would be able to hustle up some local advertisers.

So what happened here? Well, someone had an idea, and it was not a bad one, but it turned out to be more demanding in execution than someone thought it would be.

But getting back to "Ooga Ooga." What makes blogs popular is content. Good writing is what makes a good blog. And good writing has a number of components to it. Astute observations. Rendered with wit. Posted with some regularity. And spell-checked. And don't underestimate the last of these.

It's more than just throwing some crap out and seeing what sticks. Which brings me back to both of these very typical craig's list ads. These guys are sitting in front of their computers, scratching their balls, thinking, "I could do that! I could do that!" But, no, you couldn't. Basically, what you're looking at is being editor-in-chief, coordinating all this content you're advertising for. Which--even if you have only a handful of writers--is a full-time job.

Haven't heard from the guy who was building the blog network I'm a part of for at least a month. Late June it was, and that was in a comment to a post. When I have contacted him about admin issues--"business," no reply. He posted to his blog (which is sort of the network's anchor) just three times in July, and has yet to post at all this month. Granted, it's summer. But, it just goes to show.

a scanner darkly

2006-07-10T10:30:00.000-04:00

This is an ostensibly anti-drug movie you should do drugs before, during, and after seeing, if possible. Otherwise you'll get nothing out of it but a few laughs, a numb bum, and a pounding headache. It's trying for something dark (thus the title), but in the end it's a cartoon: the medium itself defies the message. The best moments are the most cartoonish ones, which are straight-up, old-school, three-stooges-style slapstick, not the maudlin, emotional bits that try to tug at your heart-strings.

That said, I enjoyed all the performances here, except for the bland Winona Ryder's (she may be an old hand at stealing sweaters from Saks, but she can't steal a scene to save her life). She is reunited in "A Scanner Darkly" with the bland Keanu Reeves, of course, but although I have generally been as unimpressed by him as her, I had a revelation about him in this role: he is his generation's Clint Eastwood. But rather than become a denizen of spaghetti westerns he's carved out his own specific subgenre of surreal kung-fu-inflected martyrological IT-guy sci-fi.

Also, as an animated character here he is more animated than in any of his live-action roles.

Robert Downey, Jr., who chews up the scenery as a motor-mouthed stool pigeon , and Woody Harrelson as an old-school stoner, are both terrific, too, but the real gem is Rory Cochrane, whom you'd never know was cute as a button in real life, since here he's twitching and foaming at the mouth most of the time.

That's because, like I said, the movie is about drugs. More specifically, about those addicted to them. The problem with this is that addicts are boring. The only people who can stand hanging out with people on drugs are other people on drugs (which is why I recommend taking some beforehand).

The addicts are only half the story, but you have to get to the other half through them, and, again, I think drugs are the only way. According to the press kit, “‘A Scanner Darkly’ tells the darkly comedic, caustic, but deeply tragic tale of drug use in the modern world.’ I would omit “deeply tragic,” myself, as I think it vastly overstates the case. The characters here are not tragic. They're comic. Yet another case of have-your-cake-and-eat-it-to-ism. You cannot have darkly comedic and deeply tragic. You have to choose. A vague sense of existential dread in someone with two synapses in his fried brain firing hardly makes an Oedipus Rex. Sorry.

But the movie is also about “America’s endless and futile war on drugs.” OK. Fine. But this is another thing you sort of need to take drugs to get too exercised over. I remember caring about it a good deal when I was in college, but not so much anymore.

The problem for the rest of us, those who aren’t currently on drugs, is that, storywise, once you take the plunge into that paranoid demimonde of drugs, you no longer have sympathetic, and more importantly, reliable characters or a sympathetic, or more importantly, reliable narrator. One of the things that most drugs eventually do is radically isolate people in their own subjectivities, precisely through the promise (and sometimes even the delivery) of a radical objectivity. They are emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually unreachable, and it is futile to try to get there from here.

Don't get me wrong, we are all more or less emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually in our own locked rooms. Some have been locked in by someone else, some have locked themselves in, some have merely misplaced the key, others have swallowed it. But occasionally we escape, or venture out when the weather's nice, and find others who have ventured out as well. On drugs, it's hopeless. You can't remember where you are, would need a map to find the door, and all your energy to get to it, have pissed yourself and have nothing else to wear if you did go out, and anyway you're face down in your own puke and and can't seem to recall which way is up, or even that there is an up. You can't even remember how to roll over, never mind that key in your hip pocket.

So the second half of “A Scanner Darkly”s equation—the big conspiracy theory—could as easily be a paranoid fantasy as a reality, which doesn’t make it less engrossing, if that’s your thing, but isn’t all that ominous and scary, either. You pretty much know where the whole thing’s going anyway.

There are some neat things to muse over, though. Could evil scientists develop a drug that is universally, instantly addictive, even to those without the “addict gene”? And then could the evil government co-opt it and start fucking with everyone for no reason?

Break out the bong, dude, and let's talk about it!

The Office

2006-07-07T06:48:00.000-04:00

There's a debate raging at Ground Zero about how the names of the dead should be listed. First of all, they need not be. You know, we've gone about as far as you can go with individualizing monuments to mass atrocities. It started with the brilliantly stark, perfectly appropriate Vietnam War Memorial by Maya Lin, and has morphed into the tacky chairs in Oklahoma City, with more to come at the Pentagon.

The controversy at Ground Zero--and it is becoming a bloody one--has to do with how the names of the dead should be listed. Representatives of the families of the dead seem to overwhelmingly oppose a random listing (with an alphabetically-arranged guide to help visitors to the site find the names), and are even divided on listing them alphabetically. They seem to mostly favor, in the words of one victim's mother: "listing them by who they were affiliated with at the time of their death. Stating where they worked or what they were doing that morning gives more individuality to their lives than a hodgepodge of 2,979 names."

I'm here to tell you, no, it doesn't. At least not to non-family members. I mean, maybe it is important for the families that we all know where their loved ones worked. I can't imagine why it would be in the big picture.

I think it's a piece with the appalling government buy-off of the victims' families in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe. Compensation, you will recall, was linked to projected income. A monetary value was set on each individual life, and you can bet the cleaning staff's weren't worth what a top exec's was. America found a way to make even death, the great equalizer, see dollar signs. But this should surprise no one. The first thing all of America was urged by our President to do in the wake of the disaster was to "buy something, no matter how small." Talk about retail therapy.

This is yet another sad, sad reminder of what these days defines the indefinable individual to even those closest to them.

I, personally, would be horrified to think that my family would remember me chiefly as an employee of a corporation, that finding meaning in my death would be linked to thinking of me in the office killing time surfing the net, sending faxes, hiding from an irritating coworker, or day-dreaming about my weekend, when the airplane struck my office building. Work is something you do. It is not who you are. It certainly doesn't make you any more individual than a name, or necessarily lend your life special significance.

Lois Returns/Jesus in a leotard

2006-07-01T11:23:00.000-04:00

I don’t know what all the movie reviewers are smoking these days, but Superman Returns, which has been praised to the skies, is utter shite. UTTER. SHITE. Did I stutter?

I keep hearing it called a chick-flick, too, but, please, my chick friends out there, tell me you can’t be so easily suckered into shite like this. I mean, here’s a movie produced, written and directed by men, based on a comic book hero by and for boys.

You know how these men made this a chick-flick? They turned the spotlight on Lois, whom they also turned into a crazy, raging bitch. Never, in the history of Superman has there been a Lois as utterly devoid of charm as this one, and as cruelly and crassly dismissive of poor Clark. You may have hated Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, but she had a goofy charm, and a bumbling goodwill that complemented Christopher Reeve’s shy, stuttering Clark. Kate Bosworth’s Lois is a cunt, pure and simple. This is not a chick-flick, it's a bitch-flick.

Now, it’s not like I’m a Superman fanatic. I'm not even a fan. I was never into the comic books. I watched the old Superfriends cartoon on Saturday morning TV when I was a kid, and saw the seventies movie franchise, but so did everyone else. I don't look to comic book superheroes as role models, and never did. And frankly it's the same to me what happens to them over the course of their careers. So I think I'm probably like most folks who will shell out ten bucks to see this bitch-flick. And the fact is: even on the level of mindless entertainment, it fails miserably.

There are no sympathetic characters. Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor and that cannibal Pomeranian are the only ones in the movie that are even remotely personable. Even Jimmy—who at the very least was always a fun homoerotic foil— is, in this version, a dead ringer for the nauseating former Cross-Fire flack Tucker Carlson. Eee-ooo. These characters aren’t even worthy of a kids’ comic book. Aside from Lex Luthor they aren't even fun. And we're supposed to take them seriously! Richard Donner didn't ask it of us in his 1978 version. His Superman and Lois were light-hearted and, like I said, a little goofy. But we liked them. Bryan Singer wants us to revere and worship his, and it's a bit much to ask.

You might ask it of kids, but this movie is too long, and too tediously paced to appeal to kids. I was in the theater with a bunch of them, and they were fidgeting all through it, and going back and forth to the john five and ten times to boot. You can't ask it of adults. You have to keep a sense of humor about a musclebound freak in bright blue tights who wears his underwear on the outside and sports a cape. No matter how cute he is, once you lose the sense of humor, the comic part of the comic book hero, you've crossed the line. This movie takes itself so seriously it's embarrassing to watch at times.

What plot there is can be summed up in the title: Superman returns. There. Save yourself ten bucks. There's hardly any plot here. As reported in the New Yorker, this movie is about real estate.

And there is, in fact, very little action. There isn’t a lot of Superman, even. What there is a lot of, as I've said, is Lois. Lois pouting, Lois crying, Lois chiding, Lois whining, Lois pleading, Lois grimacing, Lois grousing. Lois declaiming, proclaiming, complaining, and deplaning. Lois worried, trapped, panicked. Lois angry, Lois bitter, Lois bitchy. Lois confused, in despair, resolute. Mean, spiteful, acid-tongued. Mother Lois, jilted old-flame Lois, fiancee Lois, career-girl Lois, captive Lois, lifeguard Lois, savior Lois.

But, curiously, for all the attempts made in the ridiculous screenplay to give her emotional breadth and depth, as epic as Lois is in Lois Returns, the character still somehow manages to come across as totally flat. This Lois is even more a cartoon than the old cartoon Lois.

What makes the focus on Lois interesting is that it is obviously based on a certain pop-cultural idea of the feminist New Woman. A career woman, she has had a child out of wedlock whose parentage is uncertain. She retains a simpering, emasculated man-servant, Richard, (played ably enough by James Marsden), whose chief functions are to worship her, wait on her, take care of her son, and nag her to quit smoking.

Which is another thing. We all know the history of smoking and cinema are deliciously entwined. In the golden age of cinema a woman with a cigarette was a woman defying convention, a strong woman doing what was unladylike in public. Lois never actually gets to take a puff, but the cigarette (aside from being a not-too clever recurring bit of product placement) is a full-blown motif here.

This postmodern feminista has it both ways. We see that she has settled for her would-be mate, Richard (Dick), who needs a proxy--an airplane--to fly, poor sod. In addition, Richard has a stubby nose that makes him look, at times, like a little hedgehog. But he is a loving cuckold, and never betrays any suspicion that the child he treats as his own isn't. He is as devoted a father to his bastard son as he is a slave to his cheating fiancee. There is more than a whiff in this triangle of theories of behavior advanced by Evolutionary Psychologists. Women, according to theory, settle down with men like Richard, the gentle, loving, doting types, but especially when they are ovulating they go for guys like Superman, who prance around in their underwear showing off their big bulge and flexing their muscles. These big, hunky dudes don't make good partners (mainly due to the fact that they're all gay), but they've got the DNA the ladies want. Their job is simply to inseminate and then fly off in their blue leotards with their underwear on the outside, leaving the parenting to the pussies. It's rough, I know, but that's evolution.

So Lois is an avatar of both a pop-feminist-infused culture and a slave to her evolutionary instincts as well. This does not make her character compelling, however, just confused. And she never transcends confusion to experience catharsis, which the complexity of her character seems to point the way towards. She never summons the courage to choose between the men who love her (for what reason is the only real mystery in the film). Perhaps she wasn't ovulating at the time.

Of course, Bosworth & Co. have signed on to two more installments, so our feminist Magdelene (more about that in a moment) will have plenty of chances to redeem herself. I'm sure it will all be very exciting. My hope is that little Jahweh--er, I mean, "Jason," Superman's illegitimate son, will actually turn out by episode three to be the anti-Superman, and seek to destroy his father, before the latter is able to rapture all of Gotham.

But back to the movie that's out now. Don’t believe the hype: the special effects are not exceptional. They consist of a couple of obligatory scenes of Superman’s super prowess, like the one we have all seen, where the bullet ricochets off his eyeball, which was not in the least impressive, effectswise, although I heard appreciative oohs and ahs from the peanut gallery.

In addition to these scenes of super prowess, you’ve got your run-of-the-mill chase scenes. But the camerawork is too hectic (unlike the virtuosic sequences in The Bourne Supremacy, for example) for us to be drawn in and engaged. The scenes of violence and chaos flit across the screen without ever touching us.

Aside from these there are lots and lots of scenes of growing crystals and muddy underwater earthquakes.

There is a running gag, I guess you’d call it, where Frank Langella’s Perry White, editor of the Daily Planet, chides Jimmy, the budding boy photojournalist, for not being able to capture an iconic image of Superman. They are looking at a tiny blurred image of him flying between some skyscrapers. That’s what this whole movie felt like. The effects were little more than blurred images crossing the screen.

Which is not to say there were no iconic images. This Superman is always spreading his arms, striking a Jesus pose. It is so blatant as to be laughable. Such naked pandering borders on mockery. But your average Evangelical is flattered by all the attention he’s getting from Washington and Hollywood these days. Predictably, the Evangelical wedge of the web is abuzz with praise for Superman Returns:

Stephen Skelton, on beliefnet.com gurgles: “'Superman Returns' presents a gospel story as moving as 'The Passion of the Christ'--and possibly more affecting.”

We know those Evangelicals love gobbledygook, disconnected numbers and names and dates—dots that they can connect to get whatever result they crave, poor empty, desperate souls—and Superman Returns, as evidenced by Lois's character, throws in everything but the kitchen sink . Skelton takes the bait:

When Superman comes back to Earth, he finds a world much worse off than when he left. Most upsetting to him personally, Lois Lane--our Mary figure, with resonances of both the Magdalene and Mary the mother--has moved on. She has a fiancé and a 5-year-old son named Jason (which is a derivation of the name Jesus).

I've already heard from several Christians upset at this plot point--Lois Lane having a child out of wedlock. But I don't think that's the only interpretation. Watch carefully, and you'll find suggestions of virgin birth--not surprising, given the heavy gospel allusions throughout the movie.

… despite his broken heart, Superman must face a more far-reaching and potentially tragic challenge. Lex Luthor (our "Lex Lucifer") has been released from prison--like Lucifer released from the prison of the Abyss. Once free, Luthor immediately sets about his plan to create a worldly kingdom (sound biblically familiar?): Using land-forming crystals stolen from Superman's Fortress of Solitude, he plans to raises [sic] a new landmass in the middle of the ocean, obliterating billions of people in the process, paralleling the events predicted in the Bible for Armageddon. In an exchange laced with Satanic undertones, Lex's girlfriend Kitty, upon hearing his plan, reminds him, "You're not a god." Lex shoots back: "Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes and don't share their power with mankind."

In one of Superman's confrontations with his arch-enemy, Luthor stabs Superman in the right side with a kryptonite dagger, which recalls the spear that pierced the right side of Christ. Our superhero then undergoes a brief reenactment of the march of the Passion. Superman tries to crawl away from his persecutors while struggling under the weight of kryptonite poisoning. His recovery is only one of two resurrections he undergoes in the movie; the second even involves the discovery of the modern-day equivalent of an empty tomb.

Superman discovers to his horror that the entire landmass Luthor created is laced with kryptonite. Here, as in other stories of Superman, kryptonite represents sin: Not only does kryptonite cause great pain to our Christ figure, but it gives power to his evil enemies. In setting about to rescue the world from this deadly danger, Superman symbolically takes the weight of a world of sin upon himself. As in the Gospel story, this supreme act of sacrificial suffering has disastrous consequences and Superman plummets back toward the Earth--in the crucifixion pose, no less.

As a parable of Christ, "Superman Returns" is truly miraculous. And as a mainstream movie, the film has it all: solid storytelling, fast-paced action, eye-popping special effects (some used for Christic effect), and even romance. See it. Soar with it. And, just in case you go with a non-Christian, be prepared to quote book, chapter, and verse from this latest and perhaps best edition of the Kryptonian gospel--as well as from that original story it so clearly parallels.

The blatant pandering to the SuperJesus crowd is not subtle, though when seriously considered it should be insulting to Christians, it's so breathtakingly trivializing. Not to mention what must be a blasphemously ridiculous (emphasis on ridicule, here) depiction of their savior as a bodybuilder in a blue leotard that leaves nothing to the imagination who wears his red jockey shorts on the outside, and prances around in a cape. I mean, if that doesn't count as blasphemy, I can't imagine what would.

But it's no secret the studios have been proactive in courting Evangelicals. Superman Returns Director Bryan Singer gave an interview to beliefnet.com, where he demurely admits his movie is “a Judeo-Christian allegory.” In fact, his movie is a mess. It is an inexpert mishmash of disconnected pop-culture and cinematic references and silly, overt pop-religious images, that could as readily insult as flatter, according to how easily taken in by utter nonsense you are, and how receptive to blatant pandering.

After having read the beliefnet interview I have the distinct feeling Singer was encouraged by the studio to Jesus it up. The parallels are so silly and sloppy, obviously made to sucker in just the types who tune into beliefnet.com. If it makes you feel like you're winning your culture war, I guess that's something. Pandering in itself is the point.

But it doesn't hang together as anything but. Personally, I find it interesting that when Superman hovers above the earth hearing everything on the planet all at once (as he does, you know--he's also making a list and checking it twice, so watch out!), instead of deciding to intervene in all the domestic violence, rape, child abuse that's going on—after listening for a moment he zips back down to Gotham to foil a bank robbery.

So, for those having trouble telling Jesus and the Superman from Superman Returns apart I have come up with ten differences, so you can distinguish them if you see them both in, like, the same room (but it's funny how you never do, isn't it?):

1. Jesus wore a long, flowy white robe or a loincloth, and Birkenstocks (without the big wooly sox, people). Superman wears blue leotards with his bright red underwear on the outside, a big “S” on his chest, a red cape, and funky knee-high platform boots.

2. Jesus had a beard and long, flowy hair. Superman is clean-shaven with a slicked-up pompadour with a cute little curlicue in front.

3. Jesus’s father’s name was God. Superman’s dad’s name was Jor-El (not to be confused with jurel, A yellow carangoid fish of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, also called skipjack, yellow mackerel, and sometimes, improperly, horse mackerel).

4. Jesus was a carpenter by profession. Superman is a newspaper reporter.

5. Jesus had twelve disciples and a lot of funky hangers-on who followed him around everywhere. Superman has some superfriends but no disciples, and usually travels solo.

6. Jesus walked on water but did not fly. Superman flies, but does not walk on water.

7. Jesus did not knock up Mary Magdelene (unless you believe Dan Brown), disappear to outer space for five years, never once send a child support check, and then come back and try to get back in there. The Superman of Superman Returns, on the other hand, not only did all of the above, he also stalked Lois Lane (his Magdelene, according to Evangelicals), peeped on her with his X-Ray vision, eavesdropped on her with his superhuman sonar, and then creepily revealed to her that he knew exactly where she lived, and could see and hear everything, in case she thought she could get away from him. Can you say “restraining order”?

8. Jesus might be mistaken for Johnny Damon, but never for a bird or a plane, like Superman always is.

9. Jesus spoke Aramaic. Superman speaks English.

10. Jesus was black.

Who the hell is Sean O'Malley?

2006-06-29T18:57:00.000-04:00

For those of you who don't know, he is the Cardinal of the Boston Archdiocese, and there's nothing that gets him quite as riled up as gay marriage. He has spent most of his time since taking over the archdiocese a couple of years ago trying to divert attention from the scandal of the sex-abuse cover-up that rocked the archdiocese by demonizing gays and lesbians in no way linked to said sex-abuse or its cover-up. Obviously, blaming gays who had nothing to do with the culture of abuse and deceit in the Church hierarchy itself, which involved all manner of abuse, victimizing boys and girls alike, is the moral thing to do. I mean, why reform the hierarchy and punish the perps? Much easier to just level wholesale blame on people who had nothing to do with any of it.

Not very subtle, but then the Catholic Church isn't exactly known for its subtlety, is it?

So here's a man who works for an organization that brooks no dissent and has not shown itself to be very tolerant of debate, all the sudden infected with the democratic spirit (according to the Globe): "We urge that the legislators let everyone's voice be heard. Let the people vote." It was O'Malley's first appearance at a State House press conference, according to his office.

He has partnered in his effort to get a referendum on the issue with Governor Mitt Romney, a Mormon. Talk about an unholy marriage. Good-for-nothing Romney has said he opposes procedural tactics that would prevent an up-or-down vote. "It will not be a vote for or against gay marriage," Romney said. "No, it will be a vote for or against democracy."

Neither of these snake-oil salesmen are in any way qualified to lecture the rest of us about democracy. And any issue of equal rights and protections under the constitution is not for lobbyists, churches with their own internal issues to deal with, or hatemongers willing to forge as many signatures as necessary to get the issue on the ballot to vote on.

The saddest thing of all about O'Malley's gay-baiting-n-bashing is that it's such blatant pandering to the lowest, basest, sleaziest--the worst of which organized religion is capable. Marshaling people's earnest need of community against a segment of their community to divert attention from the sins of the Church's hierarchy is morally repugnant.

From the beginning this has been a PR issue, not in the least a moral one, for the Boston archdiocese. It is disturbing that this man, who has exploited this issue so cynically, is now issuing diktats from the State House with the Governor at his shoulder.

I have nothing against Catholics (after all, they say you should hate the sin, not the sinner). But, sad to say, Cardinal O'Malley is a sleaze. That is precisely why he was elevated to Cardinal by Ratzinger, who is also a sleaze. And why he is in cahoots with Romney, who is a supersleaze, too. It's just a big, ol' sleazy trinity.

Terror Porn, Part II

2006-06-21T07:08:00.000-04:00

Headlines today:

Abducted soldiers' remains are found

US pair reported tortured, beheaded

Al-Qaeda says new leader 'beheaded' kidnapped US soldiers

This is apparently the debut of Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, the man the US has elevated to new head of al-Qaeda in Iraq. That didn't take long, did it? It is a real question whether it matters who steps in as the "head" of an "organization" like al-Qaeda. And there is also a question as to whether the US genuinely believes it matters, or this is a kind of public relations issue for them.

To admit that al-Qaeda's nominal leaders are easily replaceable, that their martyrdom is built-in to their functioning as nominal leaders, would be admitting the futility of killing them, which seems to be the only strategy to "defeat the insurgency" we've been able to come up with.

The search for the two soldiers also resulted in the death and maiming of more soldiers, by the way. The Globe reports that, according to the military: "One US soldier was killed and 12 wounded during the three-day search [for the missing soldiers]..., while two insurgents were killed and 78 detained."

So, on and on it goes. No end in sight.

Terror Porn

2006-06-12T10:11:00.000-04:00

There are two issues I want to treat separately here. One is the "progress," per se, of "The War on Terror." The other is the increasing brutality of our public discourse on it, and the likely impact of this on the war effort, itself.

The death of Zarqawi, as I've said elsewhere, is, in my opinion, not a major victory in the war, regardless of whose terms you're applying to it. The fact that it dominated the news for three days last week, and through the weekend as well, is a sad comment on how far the media is willing to go to appease the administration's shrill cries for "more good news" from the Iraq campaign, even if the good news is really bad news in the long run.

We have every indication that the more the US and its media crow about having killed Zarqawi the more energized that loose confederation of international jihadists we think of erroneously as a salient conspiracy called Al-Qaeda, becomes. And the more we dwell on the methods of the hit (the eerie shot from thousands of feet above and the video game-like scene of the smart bomb blowing its target to smithereens), and parade his corpse for the television cameras, the more jihadists we recruit to their cause.

The so-called war on terror has become little more, as far as we can tell from media coverage, than a mafia-like game of tit-for-tat, where revenge-killing is heaped on revenge-killing. Within a year there will likely be another terror attack somewhere in the world, and the perpetrators will publicize it as revenge for Zarqawi's killing. By then, a new Zarqawi will have taken the old one's place.

And I'm obviously not the only one who thinks so. But when I tuned in to the CBS Early Show Saturday, an expert was telling us it didn't matter that in the big scheme of things this will only add fuel to the fire. He said the hit had merit on its own, regardless. "[Zarqawi] is a bad person, and he's been put into his grave, and that's where he belongs," the expert said. What are we, a nation of four-year-olds?

But this childlike summation of the Zarqawi hit caps a parade of images of the terrorist's corpse that, however they may be viewed as proof of Zarqawi's death by the US, will most assuredly be viewed as proof of US barbarism by those whose hearts and minds are supposedly at stake in all of this.

On the home front, complacency about the public parading of enemy corpses and the coarsening of our national discourse marks a moral departure of sorts. We are becoming the enemy. Rather than promoting justice and the rule of law, a world in which civility must prevail, we are engaged in a war of vengeance without end. And these images, and the dwelling on the lurid details of Zarqawi's death do nothing but contribute to this downward spiral.

This morning details from the autopsy were released and broadcast around the world. The reason we must assume for doing so is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Zarqawi is indeed dead. But this is both somewhat irrelevant, as those who believe he is dead will believe, and those who don't won't, but it also shows the desperation of the US to have something definitive to show for the over a quarter of a trillion dollars they've spent in Iraq so far.

The AP story on the autopsy paints a gruesome picture, in case you didn't get the point:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi lived for 52 minutes after a U.S. warplane bombed his hideout northeast of Baghdad, and he died of extensive internal injuries consistent with those caused by a bomb blast, the U.S. military said Monday.
"Blast waves from the two bombs caused tearing, bruising of the lungs and bleeding," [a military spokesman] said. "There was no evidence of firearm injuries."
The al-Qaida in Iraq leader also suffered head and facial wounds, bleeding in his ears and a fracture of his lower right leg.
[The spokesman] said an F-16 dropped a 500-pound bomb on the house at 6:12 p.m. A second bomb followed immediately after.
U.S. troops arrived at 6:40 p.m. and found Iraqi police at the site. He said a coalition medic treated al-Zarqawi, who lapsed in and out of consciousness.
"At 7:04 p.m. on 7 June, Zarqawi was dead," [he] said.
He added that no decision had been made on what to do with the remains of al-Zarqawi and his spiritual adviser, Sheik Abdul-Rahman, who also was killed instantly in Wednesday's airstrike.
"These autopsies were performed to make a definitive determination as to the cause of both Zarqawi's and Rahman's deaths," [he] said. "The scientific facts provide irrefutable evidence regarding the deaths of terrorists will serve to counter speculation, misinformation and propaganda."

We now routinely hear politicians, journalists, and talking heads on TV calling for hits, talking about killing (sometimes "eradicating") individuals. When a hit is executed we are then treated to extensive details as to the condition of the body and the means of death. Offered up as proof, it is really the same gloating we see in the enemy when they get one of ours, just without the ululating.

We know that mafia-style hits aren't going to end the war on terror, only perpetuate it. The parading of dead and mutilated bodies by US forces mirrors the same inflamatory methods of al-Qaeda. There will be a reciprocal act on their part soon.

More terror will not win the war on terror.

my semi-regular bullshit round-up, no.2

2006-06-08T06:35:00.000-04:00

I've been focused on this rally to keep bus and subway fares fair here in Boston, which is why I haven't been keeping this nonesuch and miscellany blog up-to-date lately. Plus, you know, there's so much bullshit going down every day, sometimes you've got to take a break or you just start stinking of it yourself.

I have no desire to become some kind of activist harpie (ever since I started trying to organize the rally, I've been meeting my share of them, and it's not a pretty fate). Activism, especially for armies of one, is the refuge of borderline personalities attracted to hopeless causes precisely because they are hopeless. They live to rage against the machine, but not really for the sake of justice or the greater good--they rage because it allows them to live out their persecution fantasies in public. Hey, we've all got them, but most of us keep them to ourselves.

I mean, if I told you one of my most nagging conspiracy theories is that the weather is out to get me, personally (like yesterday, when it didn't start raining really, REALLY hard until I got on my bike to ride home from work--what was that? I mean, clearly the weather is out to get me), you would probably think I was nuts.

Lone, self-styled "activists," I am coming to see, not only believe in conspiracies, but they always seem to be the target of them, too, somehow. I saw signs of the cancer of this kind of activism in me when I looked in the papers yesterday and didn't see anything on my little rally, really. And hardly anything on the hearing that followed it, either. I thought to myself, who can I call to demand redress? Why isn't the press covering this? What's really going on here?

But I didn't let myself go too far down that path, because it's like the kid in the bed-wetting commercial says: "I'm not gonna let it rule my life." Politics is a sad substitute for a philosophy of the good life. Politics is, at best, a philosophy for low-lifes.

So now that that's all done and dusted:

The big bullshit news today (aside from the weather in New England--temperatures in the fifties and a nor'easter in June??) is the "termination" of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, described in the media as al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, as if al-Qaida needs one. You know, the press has been reporting on this "terrorist cell" in Canada, which authorities have said were "inspired by al-Qaida," but not trained, funded, or connected in any actual way with al-Qaida.

What is shocking, in a bullshit way, about the media's milking the al-Zarqawi hit is that it seems to betray absolutely no notion that the death of its leaders, especially this manner of death, is not a blow to al-Qaida at all. We have no way to quantify "progress" except the body count, but the body count is really progress not for us, but for al-Qaida and the forces of radical Islam.

This is not a big insight. When you are dealing with what is more a philosophy of jihad which can be subscribed to by anyone, anywhere, than a static, identifiable organization--a corporation with Osama bin Laden as its founder and al-Zarqawi as its president and CEO--a philosophy which extols and encourages martyrdom, death, particularly at the enemies' hand, is a victory for them, not us.

Bullshit factor: 9.9/10

A related matter. We are obviously still in revenge mode with our war on terror, which means we are obviously losing it. What is disturbing to me is how easily we have become enured to the idea of "terminating" or even exterminating other people.

An incident like Haditha is not unusual in wars like the one in Iraq, nor is the reaction to it. Because no one in the press wants to come out "against our troops" the media reaction has been somewhat muted. I mean, given the circumstances, and the reaction to it amongst Iraqis. And that's bullshit. If our troops perpetrate crimes, even in war-time, they must be held responsible. Period. Otherwise, to echo that tired old cliche, "the terrorists win."

So we need to investigate not only what really happened in Haditha, but why. Is it the nature of this war? Could it be that the conduct of the war is actually working against its intended goals? Do we know what these goals are? Or is that part of the problem?

Bullshit factor: 9.7/10

The gay marriage theatrics in Congress this week were utter bullshit, too, but very worthy of the drama queens in the GOP. The whole circus shows the complete lack of regard for the dignity of average Americans that has become the main platform of the GOP, a party that has shown itself again and again willing to essentially promote violence against a segment of the population to pander to another segment of the population.

They just don't get it. President Bush, in a political speech on the topic Monday said: "For ages, in every culture, human beings have understood that marriage is critical to the well-being of families. And because families pass along values and shape character, marriage is also critical to the health of society. Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them." Hmm. Funny. That's something gay marriage advocates have been saying all along.

Bullshit Factor: 9.4/10

And last but not least:

Bullshit factor: off the charts.

my semi-regular bullshit round-up, no.1

I don't care about Barbaro

2006-05-23T12:00:00.000-04:00

I really don't.

White Float

2006-05-15T17:44:00.000-04:00

WASPs beat out cockroaches when civilization goes belly-up.

Went to see Poseidon Sunday with my friend Robert. Movies like Poseidon aren't good entertainment in and of themselves. The acting was unbelievably bad owing to an awful script. And we have seen better special effects. But as a cultural document of our time it's definitely worth a look.

Movies like this are products tailored specifically for mass consumption. That's really the sole point of them. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's entertainment value even in the washed-out stereotypes the studios think we'll identify with. It's like pandering politicians. Or your parents trying to be cool. Somehow they always get it wrong, but it's flattering they think enough of us to try.

My favorite character was Richard Dreyfuss's. In case we missed the fact that he's supposed to be GAY, the filmmaker's had him wearing a HUGE diamond stud in his left ear. There was, of course, nothing subtle about anything in the film, but you don't go to a disaster movie in search of subtle insights. I thought sure the Dreyfuss character would end up being the Shelly Winters of this version of The Poseidon Adventure.

But, sadly, while Dreyfuss was allowed to be gay, and to survive, along with only five other representatives of specific demographic groups (more about which later), he was not allowed to camp it up. At all. Talk about politically correct. BO-RING!

I want to be clear about this. I honestly believe there was nothing even subconsciously subversive about this movie, or any of the stereotypes it depicted. There was no reflexive irony. No meta. Which makes it especially ripe for ridicule, and sets it apart from Mission: Masturbation: III, even.

The two most interesting things about the characters are (a) how helpless and cloying all the women are, and (b) how only the WASPs survive.

As regards (a), are we finally seeing some kind of backlash against the GI Jane Feministas of the nineties? There are no bad-ass Sigourney Weavers here, nothing even remotely butch about any of the Poseidon girls. You’ve got a devoted Latina—a stow-away on her way to America to care for her sick brother. You’ve got a devoted mother, cute tot in tow. And you’ve got a devoted daughter/girlfriend (sure, she gives her overly-protective pop some lip early on, but it’s nothing more than innocent post-adolescent rebelliousness in the end).

The women have no special skills to aid in their, or anyone else’s survival. Their role here is pretty much to alternatively screech in terror, whine about their plight, and make unreasonable demands on their men. The men are eager and for the most part able to please. The gay one doesn’t do much to help anyone, but he doesn’t hurt anyone, either. Well, except for the immigrant busboy he kicks down an elevator shaft. But he only did it because the Alpha male, played by Matthew McConaughey clone, Josh Lucas, orders Dreyfuss to “SHAKE HIM OFF!”

You can tell Dreyfuss feels sort of bad about sending another minority to his death, being one himself and all, but in the new minority hierarchy (they released it around the same time as the new food pyramid) gays are now above illegal immigrants (but still, surprisingly, below satanists, who are tied with Mormons, go figure). You do what you gotta do.

It takes a little while to shake off the other darkie in the crowd, the castaway Latina, but finally they manage it. It’s a maudlin scene, and everyone cries, except the audience members who’d had enough of her mewling when she got all claustrophobic in an airshaft, of all places (I mean, she’s a castaway, for chrissake), and almost drowns our sexy Alpha with her flailing around and caterwauling. You don’t mess with our Alpha Male, chica.

The interesting thing about her demise by drowning (I mean, talk about unoriginal) is the reverence for her corpse everyone shows. Since there is zero character development, and we have been right there with them the whole time, we have no idea what she has done to endear herself to her cohorts. Unless whining, bawling, freaking out in air vents, and screeching, “I can’t go on!” are suddenly endearing qualities (guess I didn’t get the memo).

But, wait. It’s not only her corpse that is lovingly attended to, but her cross necklace, which it turns out can been used in a pinch as a screwdriver. Now that’s Practical Christianity. Thank ya Jesus! Halleluja!

Once the minorities are all shaken off (I mean, take a hint), the rest of the rescue is really a piece of cake. SHAKE ‘EM OFF, AMERICA! They’re holding us back.

Another thing I'm not sure I liked or thought necessary was the graphic depiction of death and dead bodies. This movie is chock full of dead bodies, of course, and at points it lingers on them to a degree that borders on perverse. Part of this, I'm sure, is an appeal to a generation of gamers that has finally come of age and expects the graphic and realistic gore they get in their video games. I don't. It's more than enough to suggest without having to see the impact of falling bodies, or to see them impaled or incinerated, or bloody, burnt, and bloated.

There is, in fact, something grossly misanthropic about it. We can laugh at the carnage when it is somewhat abstract, but when we see bodies burnt and piled in a heap in the wreckage, when the camera lingers on the bodies of the dead, we have to ask what the point the filmmaker's trying to make is. I mean, the fact is, Poseidon is not a serious film. It doesn't need these grave images.

Which brings me to my final observation. There are shamelessly unsubtle veiled references to 9-11. And the hunger to see the carnage, perhaps to force some sort of catharsis, as the victims’ statements in show trials seem intended to do, seems to justify the more graphic depictions of bodies being broken in our big screen disaster fantasies.

Because these are fantasies. The cruise ship is the height of decadent luxury our society has to offer, and when civilization is turned upside down, you get Poseidon. Who escapes when civilization crashes? Should we have anything but contempt for those who perished, trusting like sheep in their empty authority figures?

Fittingly if a bit ironically, when finally they emerge from the butt-end of the behemoth, the military is there to pluck them from the ocean.

Daniel Biechele sentenced

2006-05-11T07:33:00.000-04:00

Let's not get into the criminal negligence that went into going to a Great White concert in the first place. Today Daniel Biechele, who was stupid enough to light the pyrotechnics that ended up killing a hundred people who were stupid enough to go there in the first place, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, eleven of them suspended.

The thing I find puzzling three years later is the white-hot rage many of the victims' families still feel towards Biechele, who, granted, did something terribly, terribly stupid (I mean, apart from just being the manager of Great White), but without any malice, and who has taken full responsibility for what happened.

It's not always the case that vengeance satisfies. In this case, it would not have mattered one whit if he had been sentenced to a thousand years behind bars, because he was not guilty of what the victims’ families needed him to be guilty of. The rage they’re feeling is for the kind of senseless accident that takes thousands of lives every day, but for which most people have no one to blame.

Which is not to say that there are not precautions that should have been taken by bar owners, and things that should not have been done by the band, and the fire marshal (who granted the bar a license for more standing room, even after finding several violations of the fire code). But when one victim’s girlfriend told the judge that when you’re boyfriend leaves to play a show, he’s supposed to come home, it shows the futility of the whole exercise.

I mean, yes, when children go off to school, they're supposed to come home. When mommies and daddies go to work, they're supposed to come home, too. But sometimes they don't. And that's life. And at some point we have to accept the tragic in it and try to have a little dignity about it.

As always there are a couple ways to look at the sentence: is it a warning to other white trash pyro-hair bands, or is it merely a punishment?

The media is loving it, of course, because tears and cries of vengeance on contorted faces are just great news. Personally, I don’t think there should be cameras in the courtrooms, precisely because of this kind of pornographic coverage. I also think it’s enough in a case like this to have written impact statements submitted to the judge. However cathartic it’s supposed to be to have victims or their families confront the accused, it seems little more than medieval spectacle.

Even the great hoo-ha over the little girl who was paralyzed by a stray bullet and told the man who fired the gun she forgave him in court was too much for me. When the media isn’t being lurid it’s being sentimental. This was a way for the media to sentimentalize an epidemic of violence in this city, rather than do the hard work of looking into it in a real and significant way.

Bitchslap A Pundit

2006-05-09T14:42:00.000-04:00

Occasionally I get these emails from Amazon trying to sell me some of their overstock. But try as they might, they don't know me. Just because other people who bought some book I did are fool enough to buy some of the crap they're trying to sell me now, doesn't mean I'm going to, too. I mean, are we in Junior High? What's with the peer pressure?

So the latest was John Kasich's overzealously titled Stand for Something: The Battle for America's Soul. First of all, been there, done that, bitch. Where were you?

I found the description of the book particulalry original. "Kasich asserts that the erosion of moral values can be contributed [sic] to...disappointing leadership, the growing lack of ethics in business and sports, religious intolerance, and mass media and popular culture." Wow, this guy's really thinking outside of the box, isn't he?

Just the fact that he spent nine terms in Congress tells me what a good-for-nothing fucktard he is. But a quick look at Wikipedia proves he's even more of a worthless tool than I'd imagined: former U.S Republican Representative turned television show host for FOX News. He hosts Heartland with John Kasich, and also guest hosts The O'Reilly Factor, filling Bill O'Reilly's pie-hole with custard when necessary. He can also lick his own balls while picking his nose and farting the National Anthem.

Well, not really. He's not that talented. But at least that would be somewhat original. I mean, what rightwing blowhard doesn't have a show on Fox?

I'm working on a book of my own:

Sundays with Stephanopoulos

2006-05-07T09:04:00.000-04:00

Now, it's interesting how patrick Kennedy's little Ambien incident has morphed into a crisis for the whole Democratic party. There's no question Kennedy should resign, But when has a Kennedy ever resigned. You want him out, you better hire a good marksman. But whethr he resigns or not, this is obviously not a party issue.

Sleezebag Tom Delay was also on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, blaming Bill Clinton for the energy crisis. If Clinton had allowed drilling in Alaska, we would have a million barrels more a day, and no gas crisis, Delay said.

When confronted with Republican poll numbers in the gutter, he said it was the Democrats, and that we should get back to the issues: gay marriage and abortion.

When confronted with his own ethics troubles, he said, everyone's doing it, and it's the Democrats' fault.

POT-AY-TO, POT-AH-TO

2006-05-06T08:01:00.000-04:00

So now that Zacarias Moussaoui has had his day in court, where his real victory was to force everyone, including the judge, to behave like tweenies at a schoolyard tauntfest, I am grateful mainly for the fact I will not have to waste any more time than I already have wondering if it's zac-a'-rias or zacar-i'-as. The media never reached a consensus on this, and some newspeople flip-flopped from one mention to the next.

But I have to admit I will miss the courtroom caricatures of Moussaoui that had become a part of the daily news reports. They ranged from somewhat sympathetic depictions of a thin, rather meek Moussaoui, seen in the first four sketches raising his hand like a schoolboy, doing a gay-boy circuit party dance move (the judge would not let him take off his green jumpsuit so that he could do it topless, unfortunately), and standing at a podium looking refined, to somewhat less sympathetic depictions of a supersized, fat-lipped, hook-nosed, evil Arab menace in the several that follow:

Whether Massaoui had collagen injected in his lips and rhinoplasty over the course of the trial I don't know. I didn't hear anything about it, but then they never tell, do they? I mean, look at Sharon Stone. She swears she hasn't had any work done, either.

And the great debates about 9-11 and Moussaoui's role in it are now pretty much a thing of the past, too. At least in the news. The burning questions, like this one, posed to Ollie North on Fox's Your World with Neil Cavuto:

In case you're having trouble reading the caption there, Cavuto's question was "Could 9/11 have been avoided if Moussaoui was tortured?" It's a question. Not a very grammatical one, but never mind.

Anyway, now the fuss is dying down. The news reports have gloated on what a great and just legal system we have that would let a man like Moussaoui live, while lingering with a certain relish at the prospect of Moussaoui "rotting" in maximum security prison with no human contact except for prison guards and lawyers (ick--hardly a worse fate imaginable, is there?), in his tiny cell 23 hours a day with maybe--MAYBE--a black and white TV for company the rest of the time. I have even seen sketches on the news of what Moussaoui will look like sitting in his little cell, all alone, forever.

All of which is supposed to be cathartic somehow, but isn't. Moussaoui is a nut, and his role in the 9-11 attacks, if indeed he played any, is still not clear, and may never be. The brilliance of the hijacker's evil deed is that in addition to wreaking a kind of violence previously unimagined in our complacency, it also robbed us of any possibility of revenging it on those directly responsible. They actively, enthusiastically took from us any possibility of that age-old symmetry of reciprocal violence we see in, say, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

There is thus no real satisfaction, and no true catharsis in sentencing Moussaoui, who is a laughably pathetic stand-in for the hijackers, not to mention for that über of all über-bugaboos, bin Laden. So instead we fall back on musings on “what if he had been tortured” because we would like to imagine him being tortured, and flesh out fantasies of “ending his days” in “the Alcatraz of the Rockies,” because we want to imagine him dead and buried. We scribble our caricatures, warped by our impotence in the face of a worldview that refuses to recognize our reality, against which we have no revenge but the flight into fantasy.

infant anorexia is next

2006-05-05T07:23:00.000-04:00

Why wait?

There was a kinda sick report this morning on GMA. It was about baby fat, and how "it's not so cute after all." Those were the reporters last words, no joke. The report was all about how baby fat doesn't actually melt away, but could lead to adult obesity.

Which is bullshit. People, babies have always been fat, but adults have not always been obese. Don't blame the babies.

Fact: I was over ten lbs when I was born. I was a fat baby, if ever there was one.

Fact: I am now 36 years old, six feet tall, 175 lbs. I exercise regularly, commute by bike, work in the garden. I don't sit on my arse all day at work and then sit in my car for an hour in traffic on the way home, and then sit on the sofa in front of the TV all night. I don't gorge on snackies, fast food, or sodas. Period.

Point is: it's your diet and exercise regimen, bitches.

Stories like this are just irresponsible. Because you know there are fools out there who are going to see a story like this and then look at their babies, and say, Oh my God, my baby is too fat, and start the kid on a starvation diet.

Another story in the Herald the other day was about a former skateboarder out on the west coast who's come up with a line of toddler clothing called "pimpfants." "There’s the winsome 'Baby Beater' tank tops, the mini basketball uniform with 'Jr. Pimp Squad' across the jersey or the T-shirts that read 'My Mom Is a MILF.'”

The company's owner is a twenty-something, I'd guess, and as shocking as it seems, they are having children, too, now. I mean, when will it end? Enough, already! And of course, they have their own ideas about children, childhood, and child-rearing that the rest of us will have to live with for the rest of our lives.

"It was an anthology, not a novel."

2006-05-02T21:12:00.000-04:00

That's what Kaavya Viswanathan should have said, given new allegations of plagiarism against her. Apparently her book contains unattributed passages not only from Megan McCafferty, but from Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot, and even Salman Rushdie.

Immies or outies?

2006-05-02T08:42:00.000-04:00

The Globe has a front page story this morning about the immigrant rallies here in Boston. There was surprisingly little on the local news about local rallies, owing partly to a four-alarm fire in Worcester that happened right as the evening news was kicking off. The fire was "breaking news" and led broadcasts on all three networks.

Whether the local immigrant rally was more significant than a day-time blaze in a triple decker where no one was injured (even the old lady's cat got out alive) is a good question.

The Globe proclaimed: "Immigrant Day is felt most in Latino areas," like the Latino end of Centre Street in Jamaica Plain. So the consensus seems to be that the people most inconvenienced by the local immigrant rally were local immigrants themselves. Which is what happens when you live in ghettos, I guess.

It's like Goya closing shop for the day. It did not produce or deliver any goods in a show of solidarity with immigrants. But who buys Goya products? Immigrants.

I have personally been very impressed with how well activists have managed a population that is, in large part, not highly educated or well-versed in the "American way" of protest. They have stopped them from waving the flags of their native countries, after pundits expressed displeasure with this. They have stopped them (for the most part) from dancing around and shaking their junk for the cameras like it's a Cinco de Mayo celebration. This shows that they are assimilating nicely, I think.

And they have beautiful children, which is always a help. You will find pictures upon pictures in the papers (and in next week's Time, Newsweek, and so on) of little immigrant children swaddled in American flags, looking solemn and serious about American citizenship. Like so:

I say we let them in and start shipping our indigent white trash to Mexico. Make yourself useful and have pretty babies, or get the hell out of our country! And that means you, Britney Spears and Eminem!

But seriously. I still don't think the immigrants' shtick is airtight. Threatening not to clean white people's toilets? Not only does it lend a certain sordid tone to the protests, but, honestly, rich white people will always have someone to clean their johns. Count on it. That's why society was invented in the first place.

So if that's as indespensible as you can be, then, well, the truth is, you're not. Sorry. You might be doing the crappy jobs for cheap, but if you weren't, someone else would be. What happens to maids, nannies and dishwashers who complain? They get canned. Because replacing a maid, a nanny, or a dishwasher is not like replacing a rocket scientist. I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade. It's just a fact.

But let me speak directly to the immigrants in the room: your whole argument hinges not on your usefulness in society--we all know there will always be janitors, dishwashers and gardeners--but in the low cost of the labor for these services you provide, precisely because you are illegal. Making you legal nullifies this benefit to your employers.

You're gonna have to come up with something more persuasive than "we do the jobs you don't want to." Especially now that the Pentagon is hard at work on its robo-army. Can Rosy versus Rosalita be too far off?

it's a tribute, not a theft

2006-04-28T09:33:00.000-04:00

I’ve been following the controversy around Kaavya Viswanathan’s book with muted interest. Muted because, quite honestly, she doesn’t merit the attention she’s gotten from the beginning. And I mean, the very beginning. A half-million dollar advance for a seventeen-year-old’s literary opus from Little, Brown? It’s so cynical a marketing ploy it stinks to high heaven. You can’t blame Viswanathan for thinking it had something to do with her, when in fact it was a little like a kiddie pornographer sweet-talking a minor into posing for him, flashing her some twenties and telling her he’s gonna make her a star.

Of course it’s not Viswanathan’s fault, entirely. It is very much her editor’s and Little, Brown’s. It is the fault of a book industry which is styling itself after the Cola Wars. If Random House comes out with a coming of age story that sells like hotcakes, well, Little, Brown is gonna stick as close to the formula as possible, since, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Coke, Pepsi? Big Mac, Whopper? Ford, Chrysler? What’s the difference?

What’s happening in publishing today is simply what’s been going on in the clothing, automotive, fast food, and entertainment industries for decades. Sometimes a line is crossed, but more often than not, the crossing of the line inches the line itself a little further toward the ethical margins. For example, Little, Brown is pulling the book, but plans a re-release, capitalizing on all the press it’s getting, with a “revised” edition, the lifted passages scrambled so as not to look quite as plagiarized. The author retains her good name, and her advance, and everything’s back to normal, and everyone wins! Can’t wait for the sequel!

Viswanathan’s advance was obscene, no question about it, but it was also part of a ploy to sell the book. This is the Hollywood approach to selling the product, and again, while it violates something for those of us who look to literature for something more than mere consumption, it was more or less inevitable, given the way things are.

I mean, consider the history of hip-hop. I was at the gym the other day and they were playing one of those satellite R&B/hip-hop-lite stations, and I swear every song was based on a ripped-off riff from some eighties pop song, the most comical number of the day that day was one based wholly on the well-known riff from John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane”.

So, remember: there is no sin, and no shame, in loving a book so much you end up plagiarizing it. It’s a tribute, not a theft!

Bushie's latest little outburst

2006-04-19T12:31:00.000-04:00

"I'm the decider!" the President blurted out, when asked about calls for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation.

When pressed, he added: "You're not the boss of me!"

After which he stuck out his tongue at reporters, climbed on his Big Wheel, and tore out of the room, running over the foot of a journalist from CNN and almost knocking over a reporter from the New York Times.

His Chief of Staff apologized for the outburst.

"He has not had his afternoon nap," he explained, hurrying from the room after the President. "He hasn't even gotten his num-num."

"Considering the num-num," a White House Spokesman told reporters afterwards, "he's actually been very well-behaved."

The Tribulations (but not yet trials) of Saint George

2006-04-09T08:00:00.000-04:00

I was just watching the news on the local ABC affiliate (channel 4), and the anchorwoman was talking to George Stephanopoulos about Mr. Bush's latest shenanigans, specifically the revelation by Scooter Libby that the President authorized Libby's leaks.

Stephanopoulos called it "a big blow against the President."

The anchor called it "a big distraction."

This is how pussied-out the press is. First of all, they treat it like it's no biggie that the President broke the law, again, and that he then repeatedly and brazenly lied about it in public. Character? Anybody?

Secondly, if it is "a blow against the president" it is the president himself who threw the punch. As for the scandal (should it become one--and, yes, it should become one) being a "big distraction": what is it a "distraction" from, exactly? This is the modus operandi of this administration. This so-called "distraction" is the very thing that all the lies and prevarications are distraction from.

Later it was reported that "Washington" is considering airstrikes against Iran. It would not surprise me in the least if, hurting in the polls, the President and Congress resorted to a little shock-n-awe to rally the troops and whip up hysterical support for the party.

Spam: the Novel

2006-04-07T07:37:00.000-04:00

I have a confession to make. I know, now that Madonna’s done it everyone’s doing it. But, here goes: I love spam. I never open it, but I love those spam names it comes under. Whatever algorithm they’re using to generate those names I must have it. In fact, I’ve decided to write a novel in which all the characters’ names come from spams I’ve received over the years. It’ll be a picaresque, of course, which will allow for a maximum of characters, since my list of names is getting longer every day.

Our protagonist: the hapless Mazo Aben. His sidekick and sometime philosopher: Loughnane Tumulty, an escaped Saudi slave. Mazo’s unattainable lady love: Fanizza Medosch. His rival for her attentions: the devilish Kamrowski (not to be confused with the artist by that name, or Victor Komarovsky in Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago—he was played by Rod Steiger in the movie—although there are postmodern shades of the latter’s lecherousness in our Kamrowski). His evil sidekicks, Lickert and Kwit, have no scruples, and will do anything to accomplish his purposes, which, we will learn late in the narrative, are even more sinister than Mazo, or we, could have imagined.

Of the nearly impossibly long list of minor characters: Madam Pereyra Gusmar and her troupe of Merrie Whores, the proverbial Whore With a Heart of Gold, Mojica Morefield, chief among them. Of her charges, the most tragic is Topness Pauly, the tubercular whore, whose only dream is to become a stage actress, despite buck teeth, bad skin, and a terrible stutter (no one has the heart to tell her).

She dies in the arms of her “agent,” the drunkard and wastrel Greinke Kalkbrenner, after contracting syphilis from him in exchange for giving him consumption. Distraught and coughing up blood, the drunken Greinke carries the lifeless body of “Me Li’l Toppy,” as he affectionately called her, through the rainy cobblestone streets of Moznett, wailing, “Why? Why, Lordy, why?! Take me! Take me!” while the townspeople throw empty bottles and rubbish and hurl epithets like “syphilitic dog” and “slutty little consumptive” at them.

And as if in answer to Greinke’s question, as Providence would have it, stumbling blindly through the streets he (literally) bumps into the hot-tempered Nobleman Duenes Starcevic, Fifth Duke of Gafna Capral on the Sea of Idler Dawn, dropping the girl’s corpse at his feet, splashing his Sergio Grasso Bergamo Field boots with muck and slime from the gutter. Starcevic demands a duel that very day, in which poor Greinke, who has never handled a gun, is, of course, shot dead. But not before accidentally shooting out the good eye of Duke Starcevic’s Second, the exotic Yuri Kunishige, whose business in the Occident is shrouded in mystery until, having been blinded and seeking solace, he ends up in the boudoir of Mojica Morefield, who coaxes out his secret mission, which involves a certain Mazo Aben…

&c.

I was going for a kind of arty, cryptic cover up above, by the way--like, if you saw it on the remainders table at Barnes & Noble you might be like, "Spam? Why are there ruby slippers on the cover? Guess I'll have to read it and find out!" But there are certainly other possibilities. Among them, something sober, 19th centuryish:

I love how Penguin puts just any old thing, practically, on their covers, just as long as it looks venerable. Here, Bouguereau has the advantage of being both venerable and gloriously sleezy at the same time.

Or you could go with a more contemporary look, to snag those ironic pomo litty types, with a less cryptic but more provocative cover illustration, like this lovely Lucien Freud (one of my personal faves):

Any Freud is a sure conversation-starter. This is the perfect cover for a ride on public transit or an airplane trip, if you're looking to attract a little unwanted attention!

But the only sure-fire way to guarantee success, as everyone knows, is The Seal:

hard Times on the frontlines

2006-04-05T13:58:00.000-04:00

We tolerate banality in soldiers. Not only tolerate it, but expect it. That's the message I'm getting from The New York Times. TimesSelect, their online subscription site, invited four members of the U.S. military (but no Iraqis yet) to write about their daily lives. We have considerable nostalgia as a people for "our boys over there," and it really should be no surprise that TimesSelect did not ask any female soldiers to contribute, because in our nostalgic version there were no girls "over there". But there is a point at which nostalgia becomes an obscenity to the present and an insult to the past. And “Frontlines” is it.

What made the World Wars, and Vietnam, even, wars out of which great writing came was, in large part, I think, universal conscription. It spiced up the gene pool a bit, if you catch my meaning. It allowed for mixed emotions about war, and insights about the struggle for life and limb, instead of clichés and utter banalities about man’s oldest profession like First Lt. Lee Kelley's "things I miss" list. Among them: Being near his children. Eating a home-cooked meal. Fresh milk. Movie theaters. A nice, clean private bathroom with a porcelain toilet. Fast Food. Sex. A bathtub. His car. Highspeed internet. Sex. His dogs. Alcohol. Cable TV. Did he mention Sex?

Sex actually shows up three times on his list. With who, we don't know. "Wife" didn't make the list. It’s just the kids, the dog, the car, TV, and sex. Presumably there is a mother of his children, but nowhere is she mentioned by name, job-title, or even function.

And the last item on the list is very poignant, of course: freedom.

And it is poignant in a way, because we are all human, and we can all understand what it's like to be away from home, away from porcelain toilets, cable TV, and home pussy (‘cuz, as one freak I used to know used to say “ain't no pussy like home pussy”). But in a way it's pure cliché-laden bathos. It shows what some people want from this war, and wanting these things is the wrong reason to go to war. Sorry.

What adds to the theatricality (I hesitate to say phoniness, but if we are talking about a sort of childishly heightened sense of self-consciousness, there is that, too)—what adds to this are posts by folks back home in the comments section of the blog. The pandering and super-sized saccharine sentimentality of the entire project is most in evidence here, of course. This is a kind of liturgical exercise. A call and response. But it reeks of cheap sentimentality, too.

“Come home safe. Thanks for being there.” “Bless you and the troops. Get home safely.” “I’m crying so hard. Come home safely.” “your words stick like glue to my heart.”

What is understandable is a desire for service to a higher cause among soldiers and a desire for heroes back home, but this war makes a mockery of both. You either recognize that straight-up, or participate in the farce. Nothing you will say, as a soldier, will ring true without the recognition of that truth.

Warrant Officer Michael D. Fay, who has been home for a month or so, writes: “People have been constantly asking me…what it’s like to be home after being ‘there.’… If I were to answer with complete honesty (which I have a bad habit of doing) then the one word I’d use to describe how I now feel is homesick. Yes, homesick. Those who’ve been ‘there,’ meaning Iraq, would probably get it.” The truth is, those who have been to summer camp would probably get it. This is another cliché, another banality, that frankly does not justify all the effort that went into coming up with it. But the premise of Fay’s blog is that no one who has not been there can possibly understand what the soldiers are going through, and can therefore not comment with any authority on the war. But these are two utterly different things.

The purpose of war is not for the warriors to have something to bond over. That was Ghengis Khan and Attila the Hun. Or Crips and Bloods. It's the Mafia. Wholesone, corn-fed Americans: if you're looking to bond, join an intramural basketball team that isn’t costing America 150 million dollars a day, resulting in the loss of countless lives, and increasing the likelihood of terrorism immeasurably. Please.

The title of Fay’s latest post is “The Next ‘Best Generation,’” which clearly alludes to what Peter Jennings labeled the World War II generation, i.e., “The Greatest Generation,” and implies a comparison between the two that is not, despite what some would like to think, the least bit obvious. Any generation of men from anywhere can fight wars. Most have, in fact. This alone is commonplace.

In response to Fay’s post, among the usual schlock (“Roshan” writes: “We are embroiled in a task we must not lose, but the public… patience is ebbing badly exactly when we cannot afford to lose patience... Keep well, stay strong and know you are loved and admired by your fellow citizens.”), is a comment from an actual member of “The Greatest Generation” that’s worth quoting in full:

As an old soldier, combat parachute infantryman who lost a leg in Vietnam when commanding in the 101st Abn Division, I can empathize with the Iraq “heroes”. But I can not think about their “war” without recalling my years in WW2, Korea and Vietnam. And I recall experiences they never had…
living in a foxhole
going without a hot meal for ten days
worrying about enemy artilley and enemy aircraft
taking three days to get back to a MASH after wounds
not getting mail for two weeks and not ever talking to my home by phone
not even seeing a woman for months
losing friends who were captured and stayed as POWs
having the home front in the USA ashamed of me
getting $10 for monthly combat pay…not $750
getting nothing, not $100,000 for losing my leg
no rest every night with TV and maybe pool or ping pong to keep me happy until I slept in a cot with blankets
with so much more casualty in my commands that I can not write about it
Maybe that is why “war” and “heroes” are strange words for me.
Col (Ret) Mel Garten..CIB w/2 stars, MPcht Bdge with two stars for combat jumps

There is, finally, something supremely ironic, if not a little grotesque, in what has become an essentially mercenary army serving private and corporate interests, starting wars without provocation at great cost to the nation and great profit to said private parties, co-opting a nation’s patriotism.

I'm not so sure that universal conscription would not make us more cautious in the future. It would certainly not allow us the luxury of so easily sentimentalizing it.

the work we won't do

2006-04-05T06:47:00.000-04:00

The argument, oft-repeated by Bush and his drones, that illegal workers must be "granted amnesty" because they "do the jobs Americans won't" is despicable. This is, again, not about workers, or their humane treatment. It's about a class of people in America who don't want to pay living wages for labor.

Even conservatives see through the ruse. Mark Krikorian, at the National Review writes:

If the supply of foreign workers were to dry up (say, through actually enforcing the immigration law, for starters), employers would respond to this new, tighter, labor market in two ways. One, they would offer higher wages, increased benefits, and improved working conditions, so as to recruit and retain people from the remaining pool of workers. At the same time, the same employers would look for ways to eliminate some of the jobs they now are having trouble filling. The result would be a new equilibrium, with blue-collar workers making somewhat better money, but each one of those workers being more productive.

I don't think rounding up the millions of illegals everywhere in the nation is the answer. It would be hugely expensive, first of all. And with the government's demonstrated incompetence in these types of operations, totally unfeasible. But I don’t think they did themselves any favors in the PR department with their demonstrations. They looked more like revelers at Mardi Gras. And especially here in New England, that doesn't go over. If you are protesting bad policy you should go about it gravely, not treat it like a drag festival. I don't think it's a stretch to say that it seems to most legal citizens of the Commonwealth that illegals should behave meekly, particularly when they are petitioning the government of a state in which they illegally reside.

When one of the local television news programs covered a demonstration that took place at the State House on Tuesday, they highlighted a big, busty young chica shaking her junk for the camera. She was in a puffy pink coat, with a tight, tight t-shirt with the words "Social Director" emblazoned on it working the risers like a lap dancer on crystal in the cheap seats at a Sox game. It was enough to make any true Yankee's blood go even colder than it already is naturally.

When one "immigrant activist" was asked if she had a message for true Yankee and (I think) all-around nice guy Tom Reilly, candidate for governor, who didn't show up (the only gubernatorial candidate who did was his rival for the Democratic nomination Deval Patrick), she said: "The people do not know. When they don't see him here, they do not read the paper and monitor what his actions are."

They don't read the papers. Another good advertisement for immigrants, isn't it? And did I miss something here? Don't you have to be a citizen of the United States to vote in the Commonwealth's elections? Presumably legal immigrants who belong to communities with lots of illegal immigrants will only vote for candidates who acknowledge them, or something.

Whatever you think of immigrants individually or as a group, I think the assumptions upon which this administration's immigration policy is based are disgusting. Their mantra "the jobs Americans won't do" demonstrates an attitude antithetical to real American values, and shows, once again, what phonies and usurpers these GOP slobs are.

As for higher consumer costs, it's a tricky issue, I don't deny it. I'm not an economist. Higher wages for menial work are apparently invariably passed on to the customer. This could result, as I understand it, in consumers buying fewer of the goods or services proffered, resulting in loss of menial jobs in the sectors in question.

Taxpayers are already bearing the health costs of illegals, essentially subsidizing many companies' operating costs. Still, anyone who tells you that undocumented workers without language skills aren't ultimately costing companies money is a fool. They may be saving in wages and benefits, but quality of service, accuracy, and ultimately productivity all suffer. Which is to say nothing of how corrosive our current attitudes towards work and workers is on our vaunted moral values. I mean, just how low are we willing to go for low, low prices?

You don't have to be an economist to see that companies who hire illegals do so to avoid paying even the paltry minimum wage. Consumers feel squeezed, being constantly told that a living wage means higher prices on goods and services (many of which are already grossly inflated), and the circular argument becomes something like: if we pay the poor sods a living wage, the prices of everything will go up, and minimum-wage workers will just be back where they started, unable to make a living off a living wage. And this justifies the patently immoral choice to do nothing at all.

We make choices as a society. We seem to have chosen a society in which a certain caste of people do the jobs another caste of people consider beneath them. Rather than strive to provide a measure of dignity to work and to honor the dignity of workers with a living wage, we advocate the importation of laborers to do the dirty work we won't do for cheap. We openly acknowledge that our "lifestyle" is dependent on laborers who we knowingly pay wages far below a minimum wage that is already nowhere in the neighborhood of a living wage. The situation is shameful. The assumptions upon which the solution is based are shameful, but have become so commonplace that the President can not only speak as he has about the issue openly, but he can use as a slogan for a policy he views as compassionate this shameful mantra "the jobs Americans won't do".

The work Americans don't want to do is on their morals. And that's where work is most desperately needed.

Forget Jack Abramoff...

2006-03-30T08:34:00.000-05:00

Here's today's top story.

GOP zombies embark on yet another letter-writing campaign

2006-03-30T07:04:00.000-05:00

I got a kick out of this letter to the editor in the Globe yesterday, about how the doom-n-gloom liberal media is to blame for the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, because they're not reporting all the great things that are going on over there. I have issues with the Globe publishing propaganda, too. Like this letter to the editor. It does nothing but reiterate a stale, transparent and intellectually dishonest line peddled by the administration.

This is, after all, an administration that still will not allow the press to photograph the coffins of soldiers returning from Iraq. This is the administration that officially "embedded" giddy journalists with troops to ensure more sympathetic reorting. This war received nothing but positive press for the first phase of it (up until Mr. Bush's little fairytopia appearance to announce the end of combat). The press was pretend-critical through the shock-n-awe phase. They treated it like a sports event.

Reporting the bloodshed is the absolute least they can do to bring home to complacent Americans the cost of war.

The funny thing about the latest GOP meme is how doggedly Cheney had to hammer it home before his "troops" picked up on it and started their diligent little letter writing campaigns. I mean, the old coot's been crowing about it for weeks now.

But can a fraudulent email petition campaign threatening boycotts by "Christian" groups and mandating positive press coverage of all administration initiatives be far behind?

Bratz

2006-03-30T07:01:00.000-05:00

There was a story on the local Fox affiliate about how state legistlators are being swayed by their teenage kids to vote against raising the driving age in Massachusetts to seventeen and a half, using government once again as an entitlement club for the rich. The story focused on a dashing state senator from Wrentham named Scott Brown, and his beautiful, princess-like daughter, Ayla, a recent "American Idol" contestant, who is seventeen.

I have a much better idea. We could simply limit a family's car allotment, much as China has limited its citizens' baby allotment: one per family. With everyone wailing “but it’s not fair!” I suppose that would be the fairest solution. Because, as many people are arguing in chat rooms across the state, it’s the parents’ fault for providing their kids with racy wheels in the first place. Either limit the number of cars per family, or the number of kids, and voila! Problem solved!

I have heard almost no one arguing that their kids need the car to get to work, by the way. Glittery princess Ayla in her sparkling SUV would not have been able to drive herself to her “Idol” audition if the driving age was seventeen and a half, gasp!

Online Lawyer Source reports:

Auto accidents and teens statistics show that auto accident fatalities are the leading cause of death for young people in America. Teenagers comprise less than seven percent of the total population but are involved in fourteen percent of all auto accidents. Auto accident and teens statistics also show that teenagers are four times more likely to be killed in an auto accident than are people older than twenty five.

Frankly, the “but it’s not fair!” argument doesn’t cut it. I’ve heard that one for years from my tweeny nieces, and it has ceased utterly to resonate with me. And, not to sound harsh, but it’s not about what’s convenient for spoiled teenagers or their overindulgent parents. I’m worried about the other drivers and pedestrians who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when these bratz, speeding down the road listening to Radio Disney while yacking into their cell phones, mow ‘em down.

on the bushocracy front

2006-03-29T06:05:00.002-05:00

You have to wonder what Mr. Bush's definition of democracy, for which he claims to have gone to war, is. I've just read this in the New York Times:

Bush Opposes Iraq's Premier, Shiites Report

The American ambassador has told Shiite officials that President Bush does not want the Iraqi prime minister to remain the country's leader in the next government, senior Shiite politicians said Tuesday....

The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the head of the main Shiite political bloc at a meeting on Saturday to pass on a "personal message from President Bush" to the interim prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said Redha Jowad Taki, a Shiite member of Parliament who was at the meeting.

Mr. Khalilzad said Mr. Bush "doesn't want, doesn't support, doesn't accept" Mr. Jaafari as the next prime minister, according to Mr. Taki, a senior aide to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shiite bloc. It was the first "clear and direct message" from the Americans on a specific candidate for prime minister, Mr. Taki said....

In Washington, the State Department said it would not comment on diplomatic conversations, but Adam Ereli, the deputy spokesman, reiterated American support for "a government of national unity with strong leadership that can unify all Iraqis."

Mr. Bush has obviously misplaced his magic bag of fairy dust. Or he's been snorting it again.

the American Christian victim complex

2006-03-24T06:53:00.000-05:00

From Chris Suellentrop's Opinionator blog:

Andrew Sullivan says a new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has uncovered a new political constituency: “Christians for torture”: “If you combine those Christians who think torture is either never or only rarely acceptable, you have 42 percent of Catholics and 49 percent of white Protestants. The comparable statistic of those who are decribed as ‘secular,’ which I presume means agnostic or atheist, is 57 percent opposition. In other words, if you are an American Christian, you are more likely to support torture than if you are an atheist or agnostic.”

If you happened to read Nora Ghallagher's nauseating opinion piece in the LA Times last week, you'd think Christians were a poor, persecuted minority in this country. For those of us who grew up in the Church, today's self-proclaimed "Christians" have earned the scorn many feel for them, because they have taken, twisted and abused the Gospel, so that it is a shame for articulate, curious, compassionate people of conscience to associate themselves with the religion they were born into and the churches they were raised in.

More and more we hear victimizing "Christians" crying victimization themselves. It's not only hypocritical in the extreme, it is obscenely un-Christian of them. When the National Catholic Reporter can report that according to a Pew poll a solid majority of American Catholics and White Protestants are pro-torture, it is little wonder that people of intelligence and conscience wish to distance themselves from what the hypocrites are passing off as "Christianity".

These "Christians" should be ashamed. The fact that they are so relentlessly focused on their own imagined victimization while advocating the very real victimization of others deserves all the scorn people of conscience whose religion they've hijacked can muster. That may sound un-Christian, but, truth is, it's the lesser of sins in this case.

Adam, baby, we hardly knew ye.

2006-03-23T17:20:00.000-05:00

I wept when I saw this.

home again, home again, jiggity jig

2006-03-23T06:36:00.000-05:00

We flew Jet Blue, and I have to say I was well-pleased with the flight, the crew, the service, everything. I fly a few times a year, usually with whoever's got the lowest fare, and some of these airlines have nothing--and I mean nothing--and the flight attendants are assholes to boot. It's like you're in the army.

The thing that cracked me up the last time I flew down to Florida on an airline that shall remain nameless: when they came around with drinks, if you asked for a coke, they didn't give you the whole can. Not when they could get four of their thimble-sized cups out of one. I mean, that's pathetic. You start feeling sorry for the airlines when they can't even afford a can of pop per customer. And charging for earphones? I still think that's petty. And then charging you again for the movie (Jet Blue charges five bucks for their "premium channels" but you can watch several others at no charge), and then the movie is something like, The Shaggy D.A. or Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. You know what I'm sayin'? If I'm gonna pay five bucks I want Stud Farm, Swim Meat or Screw 2.

Not Jet Blue. You get CNN live. You get Comedy Central and Bravo and a bunch of other channels for free, so there's plenty of entertainment on hand should you need it. The planes are nice. Even the new terminal at Logan was lovely. The automated ticket thingy was fast and easy. The whole thing was a breeze.

So anyway, I was on the plane on the way back from Miami, watching something on my seatback TV, when Bush's extraordinary press conference popped up on my neighbor's. Extraordinary, because he so seldom has them. He had just ten solo press conferences in his first term (compared to 33 for Clinton and 60 for Bush, Sr.). So I started watching it on my neighbor's TV, without the sound, of course. You should try it. His erratic gestures, the hunching and shrugging and chopping the air. The facial expressions that go from exultation to scorn to bathos in the space of mere seconds. It's like he's been studying his emoticon chart, because, honestly, he's about as subtle as an emoticon.

I have also noticed, watching him, that the emotion, when it crosses his face, is almost an afterthought, like he says something, and then remembers all the sudden, "oh, I'm supposed to look [insert emotion here] now!" The expression always trails the phrase, always seems to come a split-second too late.

What was also interesting was the commentary on the screen. You know how, during the speech, the news network flashes little summaries on the bottom of the screen, presumably so that if you've just tuned in you'll be able to follow (but obviously it's obsessive editorializing--I think they should start including a laugh-track, too). So, I think it was CNN my neighbor was watching, but it might have been MSNBC or Fox, and a couple of the "talking points" were pretty funny. My favorites: "Bush: Iraqis have decided not to go into civil war," and "Bush: Iraqis had a chance to fall apart and they didn't."

Then you've got Cheney going on one of his charm offensives, saying really it's all the press's fault, because they're not reporting the good stuff that's going on over there. If it bleeds it leads, baby. Dick Cheney should know that better than almost anyone.

It's true, the press cheered you guys on when you started this thing, but that's because war is great for newspapers and networks. Almost as good for them as it is for Halliburton and Lockheed Martin. But it's also in the press's interest once you get going to report on your fuck-ups. That's news, bitches. Now you've got Cheney & Co. whining that the press isn't propagandizing their war to their satisfaction.

Well, cry me a river.

It's always someone else's fault for these guys, isn't it? And someone else's responsibility. There's a good piece by David Martin in today's Globe about that.

the plot thickens

2006-03-18T17:05:00.000-05:00

The view from here.

According to the doorman, the neighbor woman was not alone in her condo when she fell to her death. He'd heard that her sister, and perhaps a "gentleman caller" was there, and what he'd heard was that the woman's sister (who wasn't right in the head) was chasing her around the condo with a kitchen knife. She ran out on the balcony, cried for help, and then tried to climb over to the neighboring balcony to escape her. But, as we know, she didn't quite make it.

He said, she fell "a good ten floors" before clipping a fifth floor balcony with her head. He said it like she might have survived if not for that bit. Like, it was a perfect back-flip, until she hit her head on the diving board. He said there was a lot of gore to clean up last weekend.

Villa Vizcaya

Went to Villa Vizcaya, sometimes called the Hearst Castle of the East, with Pokey this morning, and the big QOTD was: OK, was James Deering, co-founder of Deering Harvester Company, and later VP of International Harvester, gay, or what? Mind you, we didn't show up with this burning question. But after you've looked around the place, well, it just seems odd, the whole idea of it, not to mention its execution. Sort of like if Liberace had been a Chicago Industrialist.

Deering, who never married, had Villa Vizcaya, an Italian Renaissance-style estate overlooking Biscayne Bay, built over a period of just two years, from 1914 to 1916. His favorite epoch in interior decor seemed to be Rococo (Pokey' too--he kept making me say "rococo," with the rolled "r" over and over again, he liked the sound of it so much), and our lovely tour guide kept emphasizing how feminine Rococo furniture was. But while there was never any suggestion that Mr. Deering was himself Rococo or feminine, he apparently suffered from B-12 definciency before it was known as such, and was anemic. Marie Antoinette was mentioned several times (I hesitate only slightly to say "repeatedly") as an inspiration to Mr. Deering.

Pokey and I were giving each other looks, as each room we came to on the guided tour was more Rococolicious than the one that preceded it. But what I found interesting was that all but a couple of the classical male nude statues in the house and on the grounds had their bits covered with a fig leaf. On the Ringling estate in Sarasota this was most assuredly not the case. Ringling let it all hang out. And Ringling wasn't gay. So, hmm. People are funny, aren't they?

Aside from the Rococoliciousness of it all, there were four pieces in the house that may have been clues as to Deering's orientation. Again, not that it's that important, but if cowboys can be gay why not captains of industry, too? So first and foremost in the j'accuse! department: a portrait of him by John Singer Sargent. While Sargent's sexuality isn't known, it is well-known he painted women in their clothes and men out of them. In the portrait Deering is clothed. But still. I consider it Exhibit A.

There were also at least two notable exceptions to the fig-leaf rule: two small bronze replicas of classical male nudes that definitely raised an eyebrow or two, but were glossed over with a brush of the tour guide's hand, a contemptuous chortle, and an "oh, those old things?":

Hmm? Naked satyrs prancing around in the Jungle Room? Or how about this very suggestively posed young Greek muscle hunk here in the atrium?

But the clincher for me was the tapestry in the Renaissance Room:

The Central scene of the tapestry depicts a man wrestling with a lion, and the lion is very clearly sporting a hard-on, as you can see from the detail in the lower right of the picture above. Could it be that Mr. Deerling was actually a Gay Beastialist Chicago Industrialist? We may never know for sure, but the possibility cannot be excluded.

Pokey considers it an open and closed case. I mean, isn't it "queer" that Deering was this big-wig industrialist but was spending all his time traipsing across Europe buying kitschy fire-sale antiques? That he was so obsessed with window treatments? You literally cannot speak of Vizcaya without using the word "exquisite". Which itself is enough to convict.

Not that it matters.

the scene of the stupicide

2006-03-17T18:02:00.000-05:00

Well, here it is. This is the "well" between the balcony where I'm staying and the next door neighbor's. This is where, last weekend, the neighbor lady, who was sauced, fell 17 floors to her death. I know it seems a little sensationalistic, but I had to get a snapshot.

But while I was out there on the balcony, I had one of those Roman Polanski moments, like from The Tenant. "I am not Simone Schull!" Like that.

So, needless to say, I came in pretty quicklike.

Fence or Farce or Fence and farce?

2006-03-17T08:54:00.000-05:00

One last bullshit issue for the day: illegal immigration. Just read this in the LA Times:

"Nearly 70% of Americans who responded to a study — supported by WeNeedAFence.com — believe that a secure physical barrier combined with a sensible worker program is the most humane solution to our current dilemma. The House has already passed a bill that mandates 700 miles of border fencing. We at WeNeedAFence have proposed a border security system consisting of six parallel physical barriers, plus a patrol road with effective detection devices. It is based on the highly effective Israeli fences in the West Bank and in Gaza. At 40 yards wide at minimum, such a system cannot easily be climbed over, tunneled under, cut through or rammed through without triggering devices that will alert mobile agents in time to thwart the attempted intrusion. We also propose up to 200 legal crossing points and patrol stations so that trade, commerce, tourism and legal immigration are not affected."

First of all, illegals are everywhere for a reason. They're taking the jobs Americans think they're too good for. If there weren't a market for cheap, black market labor, there wouldn't be so many illegal immigrants around.

Second, if the US would cultivate meaningful relations with Mexico, and Central and South America, instead of viewing anyone south of the border as akin to terrorists, like those at WeNeedAFence.com do, we might be able to work out a meaningful solution.

I have a relative in Southern California, and while she is sensible and moderate about most things, she is outspoken in her detestation of Mexicans. Her reaction to even the mention of them is immediate and visceral. That's the kind of sentiment WeNeedAFence is building on.

A giant "fence"--I don't know why we don't call it a wall, since the edifice described above is sructurally more like the one that divided Berlin than the one between my yard and my neighbor's--nor does it resemble a fence psychologically, but we live in increasingly Orwellian times, so I guess we can call it a fence--A giant fence may be a stop-gap in Gaza, because of terrorism there, but it is not a solution along our border with Mexico. It is a statement. Of Mexicophobia, for one thing. Or Latinophobia. Or something. They're brown-skinned and poor and dirty and brutish! And they're right on the other side of our border! And some of them are seeping through, contaminating our nation!

A new and meaningful examination of our relationship with the region would be a better approach than a wall, and might lead to an actual solution that could profit all parties involved.

my semi-regular bullshit round-up

2006-03-16T19:59:00.000-05:00

Bird Flu should be called "Bullshit Flu" with all the hype it's been getting. I think it's a way for people to imagine and talk about the possible demise of 50% of the human population (that's what a bird flu expert told ABC News we could look forward to, if the flu reaches our shores)--which 50%? The reds are hoping it's the blues, and vice versa. But the truth is it's wishful thinking. Now that we can't talk about things like eugenics, and dream of ideological purges, and long for genocides, we find ways to refract our native misanthropy through the the lenses of disease and disaster.

Bullshit factor: 8.2/10

This one's been bugging me ever since I saw that face-transplant lady on TV. A Golden Retriever chewed half her face off while she slept? She wakes up and doesn't notice anything amiss until she goes to light a fag and realizes she doesn't have any lips? I mean, what was she smoking? No matter. The woman clearly does not deserve a face.

Bullshit factor: 8.9/10

This whole "Operation Swarmer" should've been named "Operation Bullshit". On the news they showed pictures of troops assaulting a vast empty field (this is right up there with the Apollo "moon landing"--in fact, it might as well be the Apollo Moon Landing) while some bullshit general or other told reporters that what we were seeing was the Iraqis taking the initiative. 50 Black Hawks, Apaches and Chinooks. 1,450 Iraqi and U.S. troops. 41 arrests. "Operation Bullshit" is sure to cost taxpayers in the billions, but I'll get back to you on that.

Bullshit factor: 9.2/10

Senator Russ Feingold and his bullshit sissy censure ploy. If you're gonna make an ass out of yourself anyway, why not move to impeach?

Bullshit factor: 9.8/10
Pussy factor 10/10

fate of Wacko Jacko's abusement park in the balance!

2006-03-16T19:07:00.000-05:00

Does Neverland not look like the most depressing "amusement park" on the planet? It's kind of like, if you've ever been to Graceland, how small it is, and how cheap and tacky. Neverland is actually just enough of an amusement park to lure the more desperate kiddies. It's obvious. Just like Graceland could only look opulent to a poor boy born in a two-room house in someplace like East Tupelo, Mississippi, Neverland could only look fun to some poor kid from the ghetto whose folks can't afford Disneyland. I mean, all you need is a chintzy little choo-choo train, a cheap-ass carousel, and a rusty, beat-up old ferris wheel on loan from the Yalobusha County Fair, and you're set.

Krugman on McCain

2006-03-13T10:51:00.000-05:00

The Right's Man

By PAUL KRUGMAN

It's time for some straight talk about John McCain. He isn't a moderate. He's much less of a maverick than you'd think. And he isn't the straight talker he claims to be.

Mr. McCain's reputation as a moderate may be based on his former opposition to the Bush tax cuts. In 2001 he declared, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us."

But now — at a time of huge budget deficits and an expensive war, when the case against tax cuts for the rich is even stronger — Mr. McCain is happy to shower benefits on the most fortunate. He recently voted to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, an action that will worsen the budget deficit while mainly benefiting people with very high incomes.

When it comes to foreign policy, Mr. McCain was never moderate. During the 2000 campaign he called for a policy of "rogue state rollback," anticipating the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive war unveiled two years later. Mr. McCain called for a systematic effort to overthrow nasty regimes even if they posed no imminent threat to the United States; he singled out Iraq, Libya and North Korea. Mr. McCain's aggressive views on foreign policy, and his expressed willingness, almost eagerness, to commit U.S. ground forces overseas, explain why he, not George W. Bush, was the favored candidate of neoconservative pundits such as William Kristol of The Weekly Standard.

Would Mr. McCain, like Mr. Bush, have found some pretext for invading Iraq? We'll never know. But Mr. McCain still thinks the war was a good idea, and he rejects any attempt to extricate ourselves from the quagmire. "If success requires an increase in American troop levels in 2006," he wrote last year, "then we must increase our numbers there." He didn't explain where the overstretched U.S. military is supposed to find these troops.

When it comes to social issues, Mr. McCain, who once called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance," met with Mr. Falwell late last year. Perhaps as a result, he is now taking positions friendly to the religious right. Most notably, Mr. McCain's spokesperson says that he would have signed South Dakota's extremist new anti-abortion law.

The spokesperson went on to say that the senator would have taken "the appropriate steps under state law" to ensure that cases of rape and incest were excluded. But that attempt at qualification makes no sense: the South Dakota law has produced national shockwaves precisely because it prohibits abortions even for victims of rape or incest.

The bottom line is that Mr. McCain isn't a moderate; he's a man of the hard right. How far right? A statistical analysis of Mr. McCain's recent voting record, available at www.voteview.com, ranks him as the Senate's third most conservative member.

What about Mr. McCain's reputation as a maverick? This comes from the fact that every now and then he seems to declare his independence from the Bush administration, as he did in pushing through his anti-torture bill.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Guantánamo. President Bush, when signing the bill, appended a statement that in effect said that he was free to disregard the law whenever he chose. Mr. McCain protested, but there are apparently no hard feelings: at the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference he effusively praised Mr. Bush.

And I'm sorry to say that this is typical of Mr. McCain. Every once in a while he makes headlines by apparently defying Mr. Bush, but he always returns to the fold, even if the abuses he railed against continue unabated.

So here's what you need to know about John McCain.

He isn't a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don't have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around that legislation's central provision show that he's a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush.

He isn't a moderate. Mr. McCain's policy positions and Senate votes don't just place him at the right end of America's political spectrum; they place him in the right wing of the Republican Party.

And he isn't a maverick, at least not when it counts. When the cameras are rolling, Mr. McCain can sometimes be seen striking a brave pose of opposition to the White House. But when it matters, when the Bush administration's ability to do whatever it wants is at stake, Mr. McCain always toes the party line.

It's worth recalling that during the 2000 election campaign George W. Bush was widely portrayed by the news media both as a moderate and as a straight-shooter. As Mr. Bush has said, "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

McCain suffers from Stockholm Syndrome

2006-03-12T09:45:00.000-05:00

John McCain's recent call for Republicans to vote for President Bush in an informal straw poll of 2008 presidential hopefuls at a Republican conference Saturday night that Bill Frist won handily demonstrates the "Traumatic bonding" with torturers seen in victims of torture. McCain came in fifth with less than 5% of the vote, after his beloved tormentor-in-chief who garnered double that.

For a while there I thought McCain was a pretty good bet, but he's definitely got a screw loose, poor sod.

Second place in the straw poll, by the way, was Massachusetts' own Mitt Romney. He was a distant second to Frist, with 14% to Frist's 37%, but still. Is Frist-Romney really the Republican dream ticket? You thought Bush-Cheney was bad? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

The Cowardice of Congress

2006-03-12T09:04:00.000-05:00

The lame symbolic gesture of censure will come up tomorrow in Congress. Sponsored by Senator Russ Feingold, it's yet another example of legislators' abdication of their responsibility and role in the balance of powers. When asked by George Stephanopoulos this morning why not impeachment? Feingold told him: "This is a way without going too far, without causing a constituional crisis." This whole administration is a constituional crisis. It's like proffering a bucket to bail out a sinking ship because you don't want to cause a panic.

Bill Frist responded later, saying that the GOP was behind the President, "who is out there fighting Al Qaeda," as if Superprez himself was out there freedom fighting for each and every one of us. People, he's been to Afghanistan once, on the first of this month, four and a half years after US troops invaded the country. I remember one much ballyhooed occasion Bush visited Iraq: Thanksgiving '03. He teleconferenced with troops there last year.

Impeach the bitch, already.

The 2006 New England Spring Flower Show

2006-03-11T18:43:00.000-05:00

This is the first display you see when you enter the Expo Center. I thought it was just a tribute to the sheer gayness of it all, but Itchy pointed out that the theme of this year's show was "Welcome Home!"

The next thing you see if you bumble along to the left a little ways, in the Ikebana section, is what I heard some referring to as "the ikebana monster" and "ikebana explosion":

Awe-inspiring ikebana. Something to be feared. I think it looks a bit like the tornado that whisked Dorothy off to Oz, myself. All it lacked was the old bitch on the bicycle with Toto in the basket, cackling "and your little dog, too!"

And there was plenty more where that came from in the ample ikebana exhibition. Unfortunately, I was distracted by another, potentially more thrilling display. This one dedicated to post-apocalyptic night-gardening on the Cape:

If you walked down the debris-strewn path you came out on the other end in the land of the mutant orchids:

After that there was a wine-tasting booth, which made the whole journey worthwhile!

on the Ports flap

2006-03-11T08:16:00.000-05:00

Now that the Dubai Ports thing has been flushed, we're hearing how isolationist and xenophobic the reaction to the deal was in the first place. You've got Bush chastising us for "overreacting" when he didn't even know about the deal before it blew up in his face. And now a Washington Post-ABC News poll has found that 46 percent of Americans have a negative view of Islam, 7 percentage points higher than in the tense months after 9/11, when Muslims were often targets of vigilante violence.

Well, gee, I wonder why Americans would have a negative opinion of Islam, after--what?--two months of riots over some Dutch cartoons. It went on and on and on and on until it really seemed to have nothing to do with those cartoons at all. In a recent forum on the cartoon riots in Holland a Muslim participant, Tariq Ramadan, warned: "If we don't tackle it as it should be tackled this very simple cartoons issue could have, in the long run, a more damaging impact than September 11."

My question is: what is there to tackle? These cartoons were not the work of Nations in concert against Islam. They were the work of a handful of cartoonists and a newspaper editor with a chip on his shoulder.

But the riots were drummed up by Islamist extremists with an agenda and intent to provoke. And it's tiresome. And people are right to be wary and weary of this faction of Islam. Don't blame American xenophobes for this reaction, blame Islamist extremists. There is no resolution for them, except the universal rule of Islam.

As for the Ports, Bush has always done his best for his patrons. He is not President of the United States, he is President of The Haves-and Have-Mores Glee Club Cheerleading Squad. His allegiance is to the Saudi Royal Family more than to the State of which he is head. In other words, the interests of this President and these United States are not the same.

James Carroll's "Bush, Lies, and Videotapes"

2006-03-06T07:49:00.000-05:00

Read it here.

Carroll's always eloquent, eminently civilized editorials in the Globe are a godsend. What struck me as particularly trenchant in this one was the following thought: "a narrative that unfolds across the terrain of an inner life requires an inner life, and Bush shows no sign of having one." Which I have long thought myself. This isn't your average Bush-bashing jibe, because while Carroll is openly critical of Bush, and as an editorialist he has every right and reason to be, and while he is often outraged by Bush, again with good reason, he's not one for mere potshots. This is a thoughtful piece, and the fundamental flaw it points out deserves serious attention.

The real Olympians

2006-02-25T11:53:00.000-05:00

Joey Cheek: not as cheeky as Bode Miller, but managed to get the gold anyway

See, here's the thing. The guys and gals who've actually been bringing home the gold are photogenic and very decent people, which makes it all the more mystifying that anyone at all should care about pathetic Bode (or BOOOOO-DEE as they're now calling him at NBCOlympics.com) Miller, self-promoting Playgirl fodder Jeremy Bloom, and loutish Daron Rahlves. The much-touted promotional "Bad Boys" of Team America turned out to be a bunch of do-nothing big-mouths in the end, didn't they?

I just can't help but draw parallels between our poor choices in sports heroes and our poor choices in politicians. And this goes back to the ape-like USA! USA! USA! chant used to advertise the games that echoed the same at Ground Zero after 9/11. I know it's dangerous to draw such parallels, but I do think they're there.

Do we esteem naked ambition and self-promotion over talent and integrity? Boorish, bullish behavior over poise and decency? Well, it may be the cultural and historical moment we're in. (Ya think?)

The truth is we haven't done that bad for ourselves, medalwise, in Torino. We've won 23 medals in all, second place to Germany's 27. Of those, 8 have been gold (to Germany's 11). Not bad. Totally respectable, in fact. But we didn't obliterate our opponents. We did not annihilate our enemies. It’s not a problem unless you swagger in prepared to shock-n-awe ‘em, and then have to leave with your tail between your legs.

Maybe that’s why the media focus has been inordinately on those on Team America who failed to live up to the hype, while news that the perfectly delightful Joey Cheek announced he was donating his $25,000 bonus to his favorite charity elicited a yawn. OK, so Cheek’s no bad boy. He didn’t grow up in a log cabin without electricity and running water, and has not appeared half-naked in licentious homoerotic poses, wasn’t featured in the Sunday New York Times Magazine bearing his balls. And granted, speed skating is not as dangerous as barreling down a mountainside, but the winter Olympics is not all downhill and giant slalom. There’s bobsled, skating, and curling, for chrissake.

a shitstorm in a stinkpot

2006-02-22T08:02:00.000-05:00

Alan Dershowitz had an op-ed hissy fit in todays Globe over Lawrence Summers' ouster. Now, I don't feel one way or another about Summers. He ran Harvard like the gazillion dollar corporation it is. But then Harvard can fairly well run itself. The flap over his comments about girls and boys that got so much play around this time last year and garnered him his first no-confidence vote was blown out of proportion and showed the worst tendencies of the left in response to the worst tendencies on the right, it's true, but who really cares? It's a testament to the Harvard community's ridiculously bloated image of Harvard as a cultural force.

Now that Summers has said to hell with it, and will be off to bigger and better things, Dershowitz is getting all wiggy over the "coup d'etat engineered by some in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences." He's afraid that now "the most radical elements of Harvard will be emboldened to seek to mold all of Harvard in its image. If they succeed, Harvard will become a less diverse and less interesting institution of learning governed by political-correctness cops of the hard left. This is what happened in many European universities after the violent student protests of the late 1960s."

Settle down Dershy. I mean, seriously, how relevant is the Faculty of Arts and Sciences anyway? Dershowitz himself has been living in the Harvard bubble too long. I mean he's been a professor of law there for 42 years. This internal squabble is not anything any of us outside of the bubble should pay the least mind to. I don't think Harvard's going to change the way it does business. I don't think any of the more culturally relevant and economically viable faculties are going to be suddenly radicalized, and remake America in the image of afroqueer clit-lit theory, or whatever their secret radical agenda is.

It's a shitstorm in a stinkpot is all it is.

The Dylan of Downhill?

2006-02-21T08:14:00.001-05:00

It's all downhill from here, Bode baby.

Now the media's thrashing poor Bode Miller for turning out to be such a loser, or at least not the big winner that he was advertised as being. You know, you bitches set him up for a fall, and now you're kicking the poor sod when he's down. Turns out he is just another pretty face after all. Well, it's enough, I think. I mean, for most of us, a pretty face is more thn enough, isn't it?

But, really, the degree of disappointment is a little ridiculous. He's just some cute party boy on skis, not an American maverick, not an icon. That's the funny thing. You read the snarky commentary and you get the feeling it's at least partly about "falseness in advertising," like Miller had set himself up rather than just jumped on the media bandwagon and ad blitz around him. It was almost like the commentators were saying, "this dude advertized himself as a winner when he really wasn't."

The blame falls squarely on Bode. But what if he lost because there were six or seven other dudes we didn't know about who were just, um, better?

Truth is, Bode Miller qua Bode Miller means nothing to the media or the rest of us. Bode Miller is the latest (but not by any means the greatest) incarnation of the American dream gone bad. He's in illustrious company here. There are countless examples in our nation's short history. We love 'em when they're winning, but once their streak is over...

Bode is being scolded like a naughty child at best (in an interview with NBC's Brian Williams, for example) and excoriated as a "drunk-skiing jerk," a "career suicide," and "the biggest U.S. flop of the Olympics" at worst. But there is a strange satisfaction even in this narrative. Because while we love it when someone wins, we get just as much pleasure when after taking all the millions from product endorsements and having their face on the cover of Rolling Stone, they blow it all.

It's partly human nature--a simple case of schadenfreude--but it also serves as the flipside of our American Dream narrative. Bode Miller is the latest in a long line of cautionary tales. Bode had it, and lost it. As Mike Celizic put it here:

"The reality is clear that Miller took his talent for granted for too long. Last summer especially, when he should have been getting himself into supreme shape for the biggest skiing meet he’d ever be in, he partied instead.... [C]hampions ... work as hard as they play not because they love work — most of them don’t like it any more than the rest of us do — but because they want to win, and if that’s what it takes, that’s what they do."

So there's your problem. Bode rested on his laurels. But even worse than his lack of discipline is the essence of his character: "Miller has always portrayed himself as an artist." And you know how those artists are.

Described as "brash," "rebellious," a "roguish" "free spirit," Bode was an unlikely Olympian, and that's just what the media liked about him. I mean, aside from his scruffy, boyish, WASPy good looks and dreamy--some might say vacant--eyes. Like I've said, if he'd been brash, rebellious, roguish and free-spirited, and, say, Asian-American, nobody would know his name (Toby who?).

But you can't be too hard on him. He's an Olympic Athlete for the American Idol Age. Self-centered and self-indulgent, it's not about the nation, Team USA, or even the medal. It's all about Bode. "The American Cowboy". But that's what we esteem in our heroes nowadays, isn't it?

There is always a certain satisfaction in having our cliches confirmed. Even if we have to lose to do it.

Brokeback Barracks

2006-02-21T07:57:00.000-05:00

And you thought Brokeback Mountain was THE gay movie of the year. The only reason this one hasn't gotten as much press is because of that whole "don't ask don't tell" thing.

The Church of the Holy Makeover

2006-02-20T11:09:00.000-05:00

Of all the makeover shows on TV, easily the most ridiculously ageist is TLC's 10 Years Younger. I mean, obviously that's pretty much the whole premise. But still it takes it to dizzying extremes. Looking old--and especially looking older than you are--is not just negligent, it's a sin. I mean, first they take the willing victim--the penitent--and throw 'em in a plexiglass box, and parade 'em in the public square, where they have people gawk at 'em, mock 'em, and finally guess their age. All this while the preening pink-clad fashion priest Mark Montano (pictured above) berates them for their own good and, of course, for their eventual salvation.

It's very medieval.

The show is somewhere between Queer Eye, where makeovers are mainly private affairs and don't include any medical procedures, and the invasive bone-breaking of Extreme Makeover and public "reveal" of The Swan.

All of these makeover shows are quasi-religious to begin with. I once was lost, but now I'm found. So what if it happens to be by a bunch of finnicky queer eyes? But this one is the most overtly quasi-religious I've seen so far. The penitents subject themselves to public humiliation for their sins before they submit themselves to the scheming monks and evil priests who will finally transform them. But in this case it's not eternal life they're aiming for, or even 25 years of omnipotence, like Faust. It's enough to just knock ten years off their looks. Fair enough. I mean we live in an age of diminished expectations.

The host, the aforementioned Mark Montano, is actually less like a preening evil priest than a gay golem in a greased-up pompadour. Saturday I went to the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton to see the excellent Edges of Grace exhibition, and with all due respect, Montano reminded me of the "Little Homo" figure in Russell Bile's rather provocative porcelain sculpture, Onward Christian Soldiers (Little Homo, Jesus & Terri Schiavo). You have to admit there is an uncanny resemblance. I mean, were Montano to lose the pompadour, and be covered from head to toe in thick greasy black fur you would not be able to tell the two apart.

The TV makeover craze has certainly been a boon to bitchy fashionistas. But can someone tell me why anyone would go to someone dressed like Montano for advice on what to wear? It's like Carson Kressley on QEFTSG. I lived through the eighties, people. There's nothing the least bit funny about them.

But at least Queer Eye's got some cute queer guys. I mean, Kyan is practically edible. Thom is definitely cute, even when he camps it up. And even Carson, when he's bitchy, is bitchy in a lovable way. But then the show has a different dynamic because it's always guys who are getting the makeovers. The queer crew has got to be on its best behavior.

The crew of 10 Years Younger is lacking somehow, sorry to say. Hairstylist Jenn MacDonald has a dayglo paigeboy that makes her look like Prince Valiant on X. Would you trust this woman with your hair? Then there's dolled-up Damone Roberts, "considered the most gifted artist in the eyebrow business," whose flagship eyebrow salon is in--where else?--Beverly Hills. He's just way too eyebrowcentric for me. Especially with the boys.

For once and for all, there is nothing--REPEAT NOTHING--wrong with male monobrows.

And nowadays even just a little hair at the bridge of your nose is considered a monobrow in bad need of waxing. Leave it alone, bitches. People don't know when to stop. I mean, look at Jason Schwartzman. LEAVE THEM ALONE, JASON.

Even these Nascar bitches are getting in on the trend. Yeah, I'm talking to you, JIMMIE JOHNSON. Do you want to be mistaken for Joan Crawford? LEAVE 'EM ALONE, BITCH.

Separated at birth?

But of the crew of 10 Years Younger the creepiest of them all is the evil Doctor Botox, here. Dr. Guanche is its real name, and it has obviously taken the age-old adage "Physician, treat thyself!" to heart. Again and again and again. Its flesh is eerily flawless, sure, but honestly, who wants to look like a J.C. Penney's shop-window mannequin? Of course it has lost any and all facial expression it may once have had. It's probably 107 years old.

LAT-VI-A! LAT-VI-A! LAT-VI-A!

2006-02-16T06:41:00.000-05:00

Poor Team USA. Tied with Latvia in Hockey yesterday. We're starting to look like bunch of blowhards, aren't we? I know it's in large part the media's fault. They hype up posterboys like Jeremy Bloom and Bode Miller as a means of hyping the games themselves, but when the athletes they choose to hype don't live up to the hype, then what?

Neither Bloom nor Miller have lived up to the hype so far, that's for sure. I've seen Miller referred to in the press as "the American maverick" but if by that they mean "an unbranded range animal," they should have a look at his ski bunny outfits. Talk about branded. Audi, Barilla, Briko, Quattro--the kid's usually got so many brands plastered on him he's like a skiing billboard. He placed fifth in the Men's Downhill. Old Mr. Big Balls, Daron Rahlves, who's given new meaning to "nasty, brutish, and short," placed tenth.

Bloom's a master of self-promotion. And came in sixth in Men's Moguls. Team USA garnered a bronze in the competition, but since it wasn't won by an A&F model voted "Sexiest Athlete in Sports" it was a little disappointing for the media. I mean, first of all, Toby Dawson, who actually took home a medal, is Asian-American, and that's so NOT A&F.

Bloom's profile on NBCOlympics.com looks like a page out of Tiger Beat Magazine. It's pure, unadulterated masturbation fodder. "King of the Hill," NBC gushes. Dawson's profile is somber by comparison: "Admittedly not the best athlete" NBC concedes, but at least he's "consistent". On ABC this morning, Dawson got no mention. "The real hero," according to ABC, was Lindsey Kildow, who despite injuries finished eighth in Women's Downhill. Well, that's admirable. I mean, that she competed with her injury and all. But Dawson actually won. But he's not as cute as Kildow, much less Bloom, so who cares.

Aside from the choice of who to hype, though, is the way they're hyped. I think the lion's share of athletes conduct themselves admirably (although stories like this one on CNN about sub-par food service in the Olympic Village make Americans sound like spoiled brats), but the portrayal of Team USA in ads for the Torino games has tended to be as bullies barking USA USA USA! It's a lot of gorilla-like chest-pounding and posturing. Personally, I think Olympic athletes should conduct themselves as ladies and gentlemen, not loud-mouths and braggarts. They are, after all, our goodwill ambassadors. And the truth is, if you've really got the talent, you don't need the bombast.

Not to beat a dead horse, but look how Toby Dawson just went about his business and took home the bronze, while flashy-assed Jeremy Bloom left empty-handed. Is this a metaphor for America at large? For the inordinate value we place on flash, over substance? Not to mention the media's seeming unwillingness to grant hero status to Asian-American males.

I think the USA USA USA! chant itself is in bad taste. Is it sports or politics? I mean, you remember people busting out into the chant at Ground Zero when Bush showed up with his bullhorn. Of course it's more of a sports chant, but since 9/11 it's become a succinct statement of American foreign policy, too. The point of it is to shout down and drown out anything else. Period. But politics isn't sports, and the United States of America isn't Team USA. Promoting the Olympics with this politically-tinged bombast defeats the point of the Olympics themselves.

Cheney is off the hook

2006-02-12T17:09:00.000-05:00

The man must be stopped. Check this out.

"I am Blanquita Bananas and I'm here to say..."

2006-02-12T12:04:00.000-05:00

I was watching Howard Kurtz’s misnamed Reliable Sources on CNN this morning, and discovered another gem of the conservative movement: Blanquita Cullum (right), who was on the show to discuss the King funeral, all done up like a Babylonian whore. She’s as petty and vindictive as the dried-up Bay Buchanan, whose big argument for the president’s wiretapping powers, as I have mentioned before, is that he has the power to bomb people's homes. But each time she mentions this she elaborates on it a little more. She gets pretty gory with it. She’s like, “if we authorize him to bomb people’s homes and blow innocent women and children to bloody bits, their bowels and body parts splattered all over the rubble, then certainly he can do a little wiretapping if he wants.” Maybe she’s a Stephen Colbert-style Comedy Central plant? I mean, she can’t be serious.

Both Bay and Blanquita are so bitchy it surprised me when they started taunting Hillary for being “angry”. They’re already revving up for ’08. Kurtz showed some footage of an angry conservative talk show host (they’re proliferating like rabbits) who angrily condemned Hillary for being too angry to appeal to Americans. Blanquita patronizingly put in that, yes, she thought Hillary was angry, too, but she couldn’t imagine whyever for. And then cackled that every time Hillary got angry she spouted off and said something stupid and did her opponents a big favor, so Blanquita hoped Hillary would run. It would be so delightfully entertaining to see her lose.

The Hillary is too angry strategy is a rehash of the McCain is crazy strategy Bush used to secure his party’s nomination in 2000. These people are ruthless campaigners and live for character assassination. Can you imagine their elections for president of the Country Club or garden society? Bet they’re brutal.

For more on the Angry Hillary strategy, here's a recent op-ed from Mo Dowd over at the Times:

Who's Hormonal? Hillary or Dick?

The Republicans succeed because they keep it simple, ruthless and mythic.

In 2000 and 2004, G.O.P. gunslingers played into the Western myth and mined images of manliness, feminizing Al Gore as a Beta Tree-Hugger, John Kerry as a Waffling War Wimp With a Hectoring Wife and John Edwards as his true bride, the Breck Girl.

Now, in the distaff version of Swift-boating, they are casting Hillary Clinton as an Angry Woman, a she-monster melding images of Medea, the Furies, harpies, a knife-wielding Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" and a snarling Scarlett Johansson in "Match Point." (How many pregnant mistresses does Woody Allen have to kill off in movies before he feels he's reversed Dostoyevsky and proved that if the crime is worth it, there should be no punishment?)

Republicans think that men who already have nagging, bitter women in their lives will not want for president the sort of woman who gave W. a dyspeptic smile or eye-rolling appraisal during State of the Union addresses.

In "Commander in Chief," writers were careful to make Geena Davis's chief executive calm and controlled under pressure — even when her rival, played by Donald Sutherland, made an insulting menopause crack.

The hit on Hillary may seem crude and transparent. But in the void created by dormant Democrats, crouching in what Barack Obama calls "a reactive posture," crude and transparent ploys work for the Republicans. Just look at how far the Bushies' sulfurous scaremongering on terror, and cynical linkage of Saddam and Osama, have gotten them.

The gambit handcuffs Hillary: If she doesn't speak out strongly against President Bush, she's timid and girlie. If she does, she's a witch and a shrew. That plays particularly well in the South, where it would be hard for an uppity Hillary to capture many more Bubbas than the one she already has.

It's the riddle of the Sphinx that has been floating around since the selection of Geraldine Ferraro. Betty Friedan worried then that a woman seen as a threat to men would not get to the White House. But how can a woman who's not a threat to men get there?

The G.O.P. honcho Ken Mehlman kicked off the misogynistic attack on George Stephanopoulos's Sunday show. "I don't think the American people, if you look historically, elect angry candidates," he said. Referring to Hillary's recent taunts about Republicans, he added, "Whether it's the comments about the plantation or the worst administration in history, Hillary Clinton seems to have a lot of anger."

Hillary did not sound angry when she made those comments — she's learned since her tea-and-cookies outburst in the '92 campaign. A man who wants to undermine a woman's arguments can ignore the substance and simply dismiss her as unstable and shrill. It's a hoary tactic: women are more mercurial than men; they get depressed more often and pop pills more often. As a top psychiatrist once told me, women are "hormonally more complicated and biologically more vulnerable."

But as the G.O.P. tars Hillary as hysterical, it is important to note that women are affected by lunar tides only once a month, while Dick Cheney has rampaging hormones every day.

Republicans have also labeled men hysterical (from the Greek for "womb"). Howard Dean was skewered on the Scream. And when John McCain was soaring in the 2000 primaries, Bush supporters viciously whispered that his fits of temper signaled that he had come back from Vietnam with snakes in his head.

Senator McCain went over the top again this week in a letter to Senator Obama. Although Mr. McCain tried to cast his "I'm the reformer — you back off, new guy" letter as "straight talk" after an Obama dis, it was snide and bitchy, more like an angry missive of a spurned lover to an ex-boyfriend than a note from a respected senior senator to a respected junior one.

Mr. McCain could take a lesson from Condi Rice, who gets hyperarticulate and bristly when she's mad, but not bitchy. Or Oprah, whose anger at James Frey had a Mosaic dignity.

Hillary's problem isn't that she's angry. It's that she's not angry enough. From Iraq to Katrina and the assault on the Constitution, from Schiavo to Alito and N.S.A. snooping to Congressional corruption, Hillary has failed to lead in voicing outrage. She's been too busy triangulating and calculating to be good at articulating.

The Republicans can't marginalize Hillary. She has already marginalized herself.

USA! USA! USA!

2006-02-10T20:30:00.000-05:00

Daron Rahlves, an American athlete to be proud of.

From the Times: 'On his wedding day in the summer of 2003, Californian Daron Rahlves decided to "take the edge off." So he hired a stunt bride to make it seem as if his beloved had fallen into Lake Tahoe. "It worked," he says. "Totally freaked out her dad." Rahlves has been freaking people out for years. Undersize as a teenager, the downhill and super-G racer is still smallish — 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds — in disciplines dominated by linebacker-size Austrians. But Rahlves, 32, is also the most successful American male downhiller ever, a distinction enhanced in December, when he won twice and rose to No. 1 in the overall World Cup standings. With another win last month, in the Lauberhorn downhill in Switzerland, he's peaking at the right time. Less brash than Bode Miller, less alpha than Austria's Hermann Maier, Rahlves has something just as compelling: heart. "What's bigger about me," he says, "you can't see."'

Somehow, I don't think he was talking about his heart. And I bet his thingy's not that big, either. Dude's got "Napoleon Complex" written all over him, doesn't he? Whatever it takes.

USA! USA! USA!

in the news...

2006-02-10T17:41:00.000-05:00

There's this story about the landlord who set up cameras in his female tenents bathrooms. On CNN's Paula Zahn Now, they're advertising the "outrage" of the voyeur landlord with voyeuristic footage from the voyeuristic landlord's private stash. This is a little like NBC's "Perverted Justice: to catch a predator" series, where NBC becomes the predators' predator.

Wolf Blitzer's a riot. The other day I was watching (I was multitasking, people), and he's got some Vanna White-type chick that he turns to every so often, and she stands in front of this big touch-screen TV and reports on websites of interest. Yesterday's was http://www.expectmore.gov/ and Vanna raved about how "they" rated the performance of hundreds of government agencies, and how "they" had rated FEMA's performance "acceptable" or something. Never bothered to say who "they" were, of course. And needless to say, Wolf never asked.

This afternoon they were talking about Bush's revelation of a thwarted terrorist plot in LA in '02, for which it's implied we should give him carte blanche. They’re asking now when a threat becomes a thwarted plot. But instead of asking the “analyst” du jour if the administration might not be exploiting fears of terror attacks for political ends, which clearly they are, he asks who’s doing better with the public on “security”. "Well, Wolf," his analyst says, "according to the latest CNN poll, the Republicans are winning that one." Wolf thanks him and before the commercial break reminds us to stay tuned to CNN “all day and night” for our “security needs.”

a funeral fit for a King

2006-02-10T12:05:00.000-05:00

There’s been a lot of talk about the Reverend Joe Lowery’s speech at Coretta Scott King’s funeral, and whether or not it was appropriate to criticize the President there. I don’t know why the pundits and the hacks chose Lowery to pick on. The only one who didn’t make some kind of anti-Bush remark, veiled or otherwise, was Bush’s father. All I can say to Bush & Co. is you reap what you sow. Unfortunately for Mr. Bush, his people could not screen the audience this time, so he got a taste of how the other half feels. And it’s about time.

Rev. Lowery was not the only one to bring politics into it, and that’s partly because King’s legacy is not as some sentimental feel-good beauty makeover queen. Both she and her husband were public—and political—figures. She was as much an activist as a pacifist. And speaking truth to power was what they were all about. And that's what Rev. Lowery was doing. And I say bravo.

But isn’t it funny that instead of expressing outrage over Bush's budget cuts targeting the poor while hundreds of billions are poured into the black hole of Iraq, for the pundits and hacks it’s all about how improper Rev. Lowery was to criticize him? Which is the more important issue? Obviously, it's propriety. It’s impolite to criticize the President. Especially when he made such a nice effort to come down to this negro woman's funeral and make a nice speech. You should have better manners, Rev. Lowery. Shame on you.

While I enjoyed Rev. Lowery’s Seuss-like rhymes, and was moved by Maya Angelou’s electrifying speech, I have to admit I found Bill and Hillary to be speakers of particular interest. Bill Clinton, “America’s first black president” was greeted like a rock star. That was not surprising in and of itself. It was Hillary’s reception once she stepped into the limelight that I thought was telling. She garnered her greatest applause from one of Bill’s lines, which he set up beautifully: “I'm honored to be here with my president and my former presidents, and [pregnant pause] and…” His inflection, and the thrust of the phrase, as well as the fact that he was standing there next to his wife indicated that the rest of the sentence would be “and the future president.” But he didn’t have to say it. There was raucous applause that probably lasted a minute. With Hillary rolling her eyes and gesturing for the audience to settle down.

But when it came time for her to speak for herself they gave her a cool reception. Bill’s rambling speech had an intimate, unscripted feel. He didn’t have any notes, and he spoke in a chatty tone, punctuated by no less than sixteen pauses for applause and laughter, and many more “mm-hmms” and “amens” along the way. 16 to Hillary’s 3. That’s a rout.

Part of the problem with Hillary’s speech was that in tone and content it seemed self-serving and overtly political. She opened with what was surely meant to be a sly, but not too sly reference to 2008. “As we are called, each of us must decide whether to answer that call by saying send me.” It was obvious she thought the line would garner appreciative applause, but it got nothing. No reaction. She repeated the phrase twice more, in the middle and toward the end of the speech, and got the same reaction, which is to say stony silence. Even her husband seemed to have scooched away (he was not holding hands with her throughout, as has been reported) and was staring at his feet.

She clearly erred in drawing even implied parallels between herself and Coretta Scott King, which is obviously what she had attempted to do. Not only was it in bad taste, but it was received in the same spirit as recent pandering comments comparing the House of Representatives to a plantation, which she followed up with “and you know what I mean.” This was some more outsider-insider nudge-nudge-wink-wink “you know what I mean” business, and it went over about as well.

You get the feeling that if she runs in ’08 at least half of those who vote for her will actually be voting for her husband. She hasn’t got his gift, that’s for sure. But on the other hand, she’s at least as gifted a speaker as any of the presidents, aside from him, who preceded her at the podium. So what the hell, right?

Brokeback Shopping List

2006-02-10T09:41:00.000-05:00

Just got this forward from my friend Robert. Thought is was pretty funny...

Weekly Grocery Lists for Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist,Summer, 1962

WEEK ONE
Beans
Bacon
Coffee
Whiskey

WEEK TWO
Beans
Ham
Coffee
Whiskey

WEEK THREE
Beans
Bacon
Coffee
Whiskey
K-Y

WEEK FOUR
Beans
Pancetta
Coffee (espresso grind)
Whiskey
2 tubes K-Y

WEEK FIVE
Fresh Fava beans
Jasmine rice
Prosciutto, approx. 8 ounces, thinly sliced
Medallions of veal
Porcini mushrooms
1/2 pint of heavy whipping cream
1 Cub Scout uniform, size 42 long
5-6 bottles good Chardonnay
1 large bottle Astro-glide

WEEK SIX
Yukon Gold potatoes
Heavy whipping cream
Asparagus (very thin)
Eggs
Lemons
Gruyere cheese (well aged)
Walnuts
Arugula
Butter
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
6 yards white silk organdy
6 yards pale ivory taffeta
Case of Chardonnay
Large tin Crisco

"Dudes With Boobs"/"Numb & Number"

2006-02-06T08:48:00.000-05:00

I've been to see a couple of mediocre movies in the last week, one of which was at least amusing. In TransAmerica Felicity Huffman gives a praise-worthy performance as a soon-to-be MtF transsexual. The problem was that the movie, as a friend of mine said, turned into a sitcom midway through. I have always liked Felicity Huffman, though. There is something very Francis McDormand about her, don’t you think?

But does the banality of the plot say something essential about the banality of transsexuality in a Jerry Springerized America? I don’t know. I have known transgendered folk (they’re always referred to as “folk” aren’t they?) in my time, and have always found them to be as fabulous and flawed as anyone else, and while that may be one message the GBLT “community” would like to get across, there is something just a tad disingenuous in it, coming from folk who very clearly believe themselves to be more fabulous on the whole than the general population. It’s kind of like, aside from the burden of our fabulousness, we’re just like the rest of you. That’s why I think the appeal of transsexual road movies is limited. On the one hand transsexuality is fringe, but on the other, transsexuals in and of themselves are no more (though no less) interesting than the rest of us.

Transsexuality for me is pretty cut and dry. I mean, OK, so you’re a boy in a girl's body or vice-versa. You wanna go the distance I’m all for it. But do it and have done with it. None of this endless, “oh, by the way, I used to be a dude” shtick. Be it. Believe it. It’s like young gay guys who are always talking about their bisexuality. Mm-hmm. Once you haven’t been bi for ten or so years, it’s probably safe to say that for all intents and purposes you’re gay. No one's interested in hearing about the blowjob you got from your prom date anymore. It doesn't mean you were ever straight. Sorry.

People are incorrect for the most part when they assume other people, in general, are overly concerned with their sexuality. The only people concerned with it are probably your parents, if they don’t have any grandchildren yet, and anyone who wants to sleep with you (the number is always less than you think). Otherwise, your preference in partners is really not something that looms large in the collective unconscious. The world will move on through its grief on its own. And accepting it will let you get on with the business of getting laid.

Anyway, Itchy liked TransAmerica a lot. Said it was hilarious. I wouldn’t go that far. It was too predictable to be hilarious. But it was humorous and heart-warming. And enjoyable. And Itchy didn’t squirm or fidget at all through the whole thing.

For the first time ever, though I’m loath to admit it, I somehow forgot to silence my cell, and it went off during the movie. I usually have it set on vibrate anyway. It’s never set to “ring,” so while I suspect sabotage, I don’t know who I would blame. Maybe Itchy. I have harangued him on this topic ever since we went to see De Battre Mon Coeur s'est Arête and his phone went off. And he answered it. He says he didn’t like the movie anyway, but that’s not really the point. I don’t see how he could not have admired—nay, adored—Romain Duris in it, myself, but then there’s no accounting for taste, as everybody knows.

The other movie, which I saw last night, was Woody Allen’s Match-Point, which could have been called Numb & Number, and was nothing if not numbing. Thanks in part to the mind-numbingly numb performance of Jonathan Rhys Meyers. My film-going friend said she thought his character was supposed to be that way, and I agree, which is all the more reason the film should not have been made. It may be all the rage to make movies about vacuous characters we don’t care about and aren’t meant to, but that’s not the realm of art, that’s the realm of life. Life should imitate art, not vice-versa. This movie may be about Woody Allen’s unmitigated misanthropy, as some reviewers have suggested, but if it is, so what? Join the club, Woody.

There are many silly, incongruous things about the film that are the result of lack of discipline on the part of the writer/director. They’re too many and too silly to name, in fact. But one is the silliness, on many levels, of this most Jewish, most Manhattan of directors directing this most Waspy of British films. He doesn’t know the idiom and it shows in the lack of depth and color of all the characters, except for the hysterical Nola, played awkwardly by Scarlett Johansson, who is, tellingly, the only American in the cast. She is described in the press packet as a “femme fatale type”—which seems unfortunately accurate. No one in this movie is anything in and of him or herself. We are dealing with types. They don’t even aspire to be anything more than mere points in a not-very interesting polemic about the centrality of luck to success in life. Woody Allen himself has been famously quoted as saying “eighty per cent of success is showing up,” and he was apparently hoping that would work for him this time, but I don’t think it did. The rest of the cast showed up, too, to little effect.

He tried to liven it up a little, or give it some depth, or something, with transparent references to Crime and Punishment, with Rhys-Myers’ Chris as Raskolnikov, and La Traviata, with Johansson’s Nola as Violetta, I guess. Other than this there are scenes where he seems to think he can simply transpose the New York of 1977 to the London of 2005. The whole opera thing—I mean, when Rhys-Myers meets the Hugh Grant look-alike (Matthew Goode) who will provide him his surprisingly easy and swift entrée to high society, they connect over opera. Two men in their mid-twenties. I’m like, so is this Woody Allen’s long-awaited gay movie, or what? Two star-crossed opera queens meet over fru fru drinks at the country club? In fact, Rhys-Myers' Chris is so cagey throughout it would have befit the character to have had a secret gay lover, except that then he would have no reason to off him in the end. Gay affairs are so much simpler, it’s strange they haven’t caught on more.

There’s also a funny scene at the Tate Modern where Nola is staring intently and with what is supposed to be real interest at this gigantic, truly hideous piece of modern art. She seems to be the only person at the Tate who’s there to look at the art, and you just know everyone’s laughing at her. I mean, who really scrutinized Chris Ofili's painting of The Holy Virgin Mary, the one with the clump of elephant dung? You know, nobody really looked at it. It wasn't made to be looked at. It was made to be talked about. That's why the show was called Sensation. But here Woody’s got Scarlett studying this huge splatter on the wall like it’s a pointillist masterpiece. My rule: don’t look at it for any longer than it took to make it.

But the point was, these are people who go to the opera and to art museums, but is that really what the generation of people the movie centers on—even the blue bloods—really do? And not just do, but do passionately? In London? Don’t they go clubbing? Don’t they snort crystal meth and have group sex and throw up afterwards? What happened to that Woody Allen? Now that he’s old he’s treating young people in his films like they are too. Like everyone is. But no. Two randy young heterosexual men with huge disposable incomes don’t sit around with their legs crossed chit-chatting about their love of opera. Sorry. Even in England.

So everything in this would-be morality tale is off. As we were leaving my friend said, “there was no schlemiel” Not to mention no Schlimazel. But this is actually the capper, the final silliness of this silly movie. In a short scene from some other movie, but with the same bad actors, after Chris commits his Dostoevskian crime (for which he will, of course, go unpunished), he either wakes from a dream (or is in someone else’s dream—it’s not entirely clear) and offers a high-flown philosophical disquisition on the nature of the guilt he does not feel, which ends with him telling the ghost of one of his victims: “The innocent are sometimes slain to make way for grander schemes. You were collateral damage.” Of course, the grander scheme is… well, there isn’t one. It’s more like, “sometimes the innocent are slain to make way for, er, me.” Which is fine, but why not just say it? It would have been more in keeping with the character.

I did like the twist with the ring, on which the whole plot turns. It was nicely done, plotwise, though my moviemate didn't think so. I agree it wasn’t worth sitting through the whole movie for it. Plus the scene with the ring itself—when he tosses the ring it doesn’t look real. He used CGI. Woody Allen goes all CGI on us. Unfortunately, like the rest of the movie, it looked totally fake, too.

rumblings from evil niece no.2

2006-02-02T10:21:00.000-05:00

I got an email from another of my evil nieces, who's got to be thirteen by now, with the plaintive subject line: "HEy!!!???"

It read: "how r u..............im brillant i have a b/f named joey he goes to my church kewl huh............new subject???????lolim goin 2 church 2nite 2 eat and stay 4 uth groups & all my friends r gunna be there???? wat r u doin 2 nite???? email me bak!!!!! luv ya lots!!!!"

First of all. Children should be restricted from emailing adults until they can learn to spell properly, and punished severely for emailing them before they do. Punishment should also be meted out for sending e-cards and forwarding jokes and chain-letters that have been forwarded to them. I'm not sure exactly how this would work, but there's probably some way that an electric shock could be administered via email, so that when they opened my reply, they would get about 300,000 volts. That should probably be enough to stun them into using standard English, wouldn't you think?

This is definitely a meme thing. And this particular niece is particularly susceptible to memes. She's desperately desperate to be accepted by her peers. To be "kewl," as the kids (apparently) say now. The punctuation is also indicative of her desperation--and she is at least this insistent in person. You're like, where's your remote? Where's the volume knob?

The problem here is, I really don't want to encourage her. I don't necessarily want to discourage her, but the truth is, my love of standard English may be greater in the long run than my love for her. You know, "luv ya lots" means nothing to me. I don't recognize any of those words. You might as well be writing in Swahili, sweetheart.

I don't do kidspeak, either. If kids want to be fed, if they want something at the shop, if they need some money, they'll have to petition me in standard English. You may live in Kidworld, but I'm just visiting. Sometimes it's hard to resist--you get in a when-in-Rome mindframe, and kids are very controlling anyway. But, trust me, you must resist. Your dignity is at stake, and so is any hope for theirs.

I remember whenever you'd take one of them along on a drive, they'd reach for the radio dial like Radio Disney was a God-given right. And then, you smack their grubby little paws away (the driver's the DJ in my car), and they think they're gonna negotiate with you. It's like, I'm not your hostage, honey, you're mine. And anyway, you got nothing I want. I've got the cash, I've got the car. What do you have to negotiate with except my sanity. I mean, sure, you can hound me until I break, but then you'll never get another chance with me. And I'm not like your folks. When I say I'll lock you in the trunk if you don't pipe down, I will lock you in the trunk. When I say you're excommunicated, you are dead to me.

Kids think they'll eventually get what they want just by wearing you down. I mean, they've got all the time in the world. And they've got no scruples. They'll do anything in their power to get their way. They're parents pussy out on them, and they think the whole world will do the same. But so long as I'm bigger than they are, I'm the boss.

Anyway, I'm debating whether or not to dignify this email with a reply. It's not just the English language, it's the psychodynamics of my brother's family that are at stake here. See, I've had some correspondence with this niece's little sis, who initiated it. But when I wrote back, little sis got all excited. My brother even wrote to tell me how much she was enjoying our correspondence. So big sis gets wind of it. I mean, little sis is getting A LOT of attention out of this. And big sis wants some of that, too, understandably enough.

But then it feels icky. It feels like you're being coerced into corresponding with her. That you have to make sure each email you send is equal in length to the whatever you sent the other, and so on, lest you be subject to that worst of all tweenie cries: "it's not faaaaaiiiiirrrr!" That, and "but YOU said...", seems to be what breaks most adults. Because adults want to do the right thing. But they're playing two different ball games here, because kids don't. Kids are in a battle to death for finite resources like food and attention. Affection would be nice, too, but it's not essential. And none of it has anything to do with what's right or just. It's about the survival of the shrillest. But they see that appeals to fairness get their parents where it hurts most. If they can find the guilt button (it's the equivalent of the "easy button" for adults), they are ruthless about pushing it at the least provocation.

So I think insisting on some minimum standards is my duty as their uncle. I mean, I'm doing them all a service by being a dick about it, don't you think?

the state of the Tim Kaine's eyebrows

2006-02-01T11:32:00.002-05:00

Hmm. I'll be honest, I was in the middle of a multi-orgasmic sex-marathon last night when the President was giving his little speech, so I missed it. I'll read the speech itself sometime in the next day or so, I reckon.

I did manage to catch Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's rebuttal. Kaine has the mischievous look of a satyr, and despite the strange, halting cadence of his speech, there's something irresistible about him. There’s something slightly Jack Nicholsonish about him, too. It could be that arched eyebrow. We definitely need more politicians who can do that. Watch the eyebrow in action here.

Last night that irrepressible eyebrow—something just short of a wink—gave his speech a delicious subtext. It said things you can’t say on the national stage after a big, silly State of the Union address, when everybody’s supposed to pretend to take the presidential palaver seriously. It said, “listen, y’all—you and I both know this joker in the White House don’t know his ass from his elbow.”

Kaine (along with his arched eyebrow) was sworn in a mere three weeks ago, and already he's the darling of national Democrats who are in desperate need of fresh faces and new blood.

I saw Barack Obama last weekend on one of those Sunday morning squawkshows, and thought, God-amighty, man, speak English! Obama is smart, but apparently not smart enough not to act smarter than the rest of us. He's not as bad as John Kerry, who is not as smart as the rest of us and not smart enough not to act like he is, but that's small consolation. Barack, baby: you can't be a populist spouting Shakespearean soliloquies. It's the twenty-first century, sweetie. The vernacular has changed slightly since Elizabethan times. I would love to see someone as smart as Barack in the Oval Office, but, crikey, tone down the ten-dollar words, will ya?

And remember, people who are smart and funny are always preferable to people who are just smart. Just funny even trumps just smart. I don't make the rules, that's just how it is.

Anyway, on very first glimpse I sure liked this Kaine fella's eyebrows. After watching his bemused, delightful little rebuttal, I did some channel-surfing, and wound up watching the last few minutes of the dreadful Bulletproof Monk. The reason I watched was, of course, Seann William Scott's eyebrows, which rank among Hollywood's finest ever. What a delightful face he's got, too.

All in all, a good night for eyebrow watchers everywhere.

Jill Carroll: a modern-day Patty Hearst?

2006-02-01T05:56:00.000-05:00

Seeing Jill Carroll's latest video the other day, I had a gnawing, forbidden suspicion. Has she gone Patty Hearst on us? Yes, she appeared distressed, but not in the way we're accustomed to seeing weary and wary hostages at this point in their captivity. She looked healthier than when she was abducted, and something about her hysterical plea seemed contrived. I'm sorry, but I could picture her captors, off-stage, directing her: "emote! No, No! Cut! Jill, Jill, Jill, reach deep down, find the emotion! Let's do it again! Quiet on the set! Take 27, and... action!"

Now, hear me out here.

If you think about it, what we know of Jill Carroll is that she is sympathetic to the plight of ordinary Iraqis, that she has tried to be balanced in her reporting for the CSM, meaning she has not exactly been a cheerleader for the US in Iraq.

We know that the US has been practicing what the administration is calling "leveraging," which is basically state-santioned hostage-taking, in Iraq. The US military has on more than one occasion taken the wives of alleged insurgents hostage in order to get the insurgents to surrender (see more about it here, here, and here).

So what do you think an upstanding, conscientious woman like Jill Carroll would think about this? Who do you think she would be likely to side with? It's not even a question, is it? But when does a conscientious objection to what is clearly an illegal practice undertaken by your government become straight-up sedition?

Of course, this is just a hunch. But I don't think it's such a stretch.

more on "ooga-ooga"

2006-01-31T11:29:00.000-05:00

Is autism the result of having an “extreme male brain," as director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, says here?

superorgasmic turbosexy space-age technewtopia (yawn)

2006-01-31T09:33:00.000-05:00

I'm reading an excellent book by the ever-brilliant Roger Shattuck called Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography. Early on he's talking about the irony of technology--that for every one problem solved by it, there are ten more created. But we still cling to the essential narrative of modernity, which is that one day, in the not too distant future, we will find that ultimate solution to all of our woes.

No, not death, silly! Don't be so morbid! Someday we'll all live in, I dunno, hermetically-sealed designer homes where germs can't get us. And we'll have self-perpetuating, self-programming, self-cleaning robots do our sexual bidding. And the sky above our germ-free cyberbubbles will always be blue, at least according to our personal-programable weatherpods. And musak of our choosing beamed by satellite straight into our brains providing a suitable soundtrack for each and every minute of the day. And there will be no more strife. And no more hunger, but also fat-free, zero-carb alternatives that are as good as the real thing! And so on. You know it's in the back of your mind somewhere, too. This technewtopia.

I always think of my dad when I think of those little gadgets that are supposed to make life run like clockwork. That man was a sucker for any gadget that promised to free up your time, so you could...what? Play computer-solitaire, watch old World War II documentaries on the History Channel, sigh, fidget, and wait impatiently for your wife to come home from work so you can jump down her throat for being five minutes late, bicker for half an hour, watch Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and go to bed, get up the next day and do it all again? Well, it's a life.

When I was in Sarasota, I was very impressed by my aunt's cooking. You know I sincerely love my aunt, and I'm not being the least bit facetious here. She served up this great big breakfast, and I was like, "mmm, Aunt, this is wonderful!" She's like, yeah, nephew, and it's all frozen, from concentrate. Just add water, and whoop! Der id iz!

I mean, this is some funky space-age shit going down in the kitchen. It takes all of three seconds to prepare, and the thing of it is, it really is good. Not like when I was a kid, with those rubbery frozen waffles, chalky eggbeaters and grizzly fakin' bacon.

But then, you snarf it all down, and you're sitting there with your thumb up your ass with nothing to do all the rest of the day. Maybe the dishes, you say? Well, they've got this superturbo space-age dishwasher, too. We're talking Hemi-powered. This bad boy could turn Paris Hilton back into a virgin, that's how pristine your dishes come out. And it's got a dashboard like the friggin space shuttle on it. It can do almost anything--it even cleans cups and saucers that you left out on the coffee table via the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) effect (that's what the red "spooky action at a distance" button's for).

All these fantastical time-saving devices are well and good, if you're someone who really needs more time. But what if, as the old Styx song goes, you've got "too much time on your hands?" And it's tick-tick-tick-tickin' away with your sanity? And you just don't know what to do-ooo-oooo?

Sure, theoretically, you would be someone so full of vim and vigor, with such a loaded social calendar that even if you didn’t have to spend a minute of time preparing meals or cleaning the house, putting your face on, getting dressed, whatever, there still would not be enough time in the day to get all that electrifying living done. But the truth is, you finish your super-efficient, turbo breakfast with your ten cups of instant coffee, and then instead of saving the world for democracy, rescuing kittens from trees, painting the Seventeenth Chapel, and delivering Nobel speeches, you sit around watching Elimidate, and then catch Maurie doing his ghetto paternity tests, followed by a little Jerry Springer white-trash smack-down, maybe a Judge Judy screechathon, some Celebrity Justice. All the time waiting, waiting, waiting…for Oprah. I can't go on, I'll go on.

All I know is that mankind was obviously not meant to have so much free-time. I don't know what womankind does when it gets bored (mahjong anyone?) but mankind masturbates.

Sometimes technology is not the answer. Of course, it depends on the question...

more on the Oprahfication of Auschwitz

2006-01-30T07:17:00.000-05:00

I got a comment worthy of comment on the issue of the Oprahfication of Auschwitz this morning. It would not surprise me if it was from an old friend from Indy, who has had some personal dealings with Elie Wiesel over the years.

I anticipated some of the criticism here. I wanted to focus more on the book itself, and its lack of sentimentality. But inevitably its author will come under fire. While there’s a long list of Holocaust writers who’ve committed suicide, Elie Wiesel has gone on living, and has made his living as Shoah spokesman (or "salesman," some would say). Has he been utterly unselfish in this? Should he live in abject poverty to prove a point? And what point would it prove? It’s the Holocaust we're dealing with here, but it’s also his life, and he is entitled to make a living. He is also entitled to a hair-weave. He is entitled to every human foible, as far as I’m concerned.

But the insinuation that there is something unethical in his exploitation of his personal experience for personal gain does deserve serious attention.

Regarding Wiesel's speaking fee. A little cursory research at keyspeakers.com puts it in the range of $42,000. It seems steep, until you consider that it is the same as Phylicia Rashad’s. And it’s not much more than Star Jones’.

To give you some idea of the range for “diversity” speakers: even a nobody like Steadman Graham, whose only claim to fame is his fag hag, Oprah, commands $13,250. Danny Glover makes $30,000. Jesse Jackson’s fee is $50,000. Magic Johnson’s: $85,000. Whoopi Goldberg’s is a whopping $120,000.

The best-known motivational speakers, politicians, and past-presidents usually command well over $100,000 as well.

I don't personally know anything about the speaker's fees for funerals, and have been unable to verify the story, but I believe Wiesel is well within his rights to collect whatever speaker’s fees he can command.

As for the business of the Iraq War. Elie Wiesel has been entangled in Israeli politics for decades. To believe that anyone intimately involved in the fate of Israel could avoid unpalatable compromises and unholy alliances is naïve in the extreme. Nor is it particularly surprising that a supporter of Israel would support President Bush and his campaign in Iraq. I mean, on the one hand, you’ve got the US. On the other Iraq. US. Iraq. US. Iraq. Hmm. It’s a tough choice. Seeing as Iraq has been so kind and helpful towards Israel over the years, and the US has been so hostile. I mean, come on. Wiesel is, after all, a Jew and a Zionist.

Of course, largely because of the success of Night, Wiesel has become a prime target of Holocaust revisionists, who question whether he was even in a concentration camp at all. Impugning his intentions in collecting speaking fees is a step away from accusing him of flat-out fabrication, and from there, questioning whether any of it was true at all.

I think there’s ample evidence out there that the Holocaust happened. I myself don’t think it’s a fabrication of greedy Jews who want to make money by guilt-tripping the anti-Semites and cheating honest and guiltless nations out of billions. But there are plenty of very angry people out there who seem to believe that this is the case. They believe that the Holocaust is the latest in a long line of hoaxes, perpetrated by Jews at the expense of their own for their personal enrichment.

But wouldn’t the Jews have to be really, truly, utterly vile to do such a thing? And isn’t that what the anti-Semites would have us believe of them? And isn’t it strange that they would so willingly conform to such a caricature? And if they are as vile as all that, shouldn’t we draw up plans to round them up, and… hey, wait a minute. Is this the Wannsee Conference or what?

Six Million Little Pieces?

2006-01-28T08:12:00.000-05:00

In one of those strange nexuses so common in the jumble of our pop culture, the brouhaha over the “truthiness” of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces happened to coincide roughly with the 61st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and Oprah’s announcement that the next selection from her popular book club would be Elie Wiesel’s Night. I don’t know if the James Frey story, which smoking gun broke on January 10th, prompted the announcement a week later that Night would be her next book club selection. I hope not. But while the two are not in any way comparable or connected but by the magic of Oprah, they have now been linked in nearly every newspaper and media outlet by everyone from New York Times media critic Frank Rich to bubbly anchorblonde Andrea Jackson on “The Morning Buzz”.

MSNBC reported last week that the problem with Wiesel’s book has been opposite the trouble with Frey’s: while A Million Little Pieces is fiction wrongly categorized as memoir, many retailers have erroneously classified Night, a holocaust memoir, as fiction. They are now scrambling to correct the error.

I think Night can survive Oprah, but I’m not sure how it fits in with her plan for world domination. With the Frey flap behind her, she can now point piously to a stark, unadulterated and above all true memoir by the tireless Wiesel, well-deserving recipient of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. But can you imagine Oprah interviewing Wiesel on her show? Questioning him in that mawkish daytime talk show way that she herself pioneered? Flipping her big hair and dabbing away alligator tears as she looks into the camera to say “we’ll be right back after this commercial break.”

The problem with this pop-synergy is that Wiesel’s devastating memoir, unlike Oprah’s circus sideshow, is not only true, but utterly, unrelentingly, brutally true. For a woman who has basically branded, boxed, and sold sentimentality for the bulk of her career, I’m not sure what, aside from cynical face-saving, she hopes to accomplish with Night. We know Oprah chose Frey’s “memoir” because it had the melodrama, the silly hyberbole, and the sugarcoated ending we’ve come to expect from Oprah herself. It was the sentimental version of the survivor’s story, always easily enough identified as fiction. Sentimentality obscures the truth. In fact, sentimentality is an escape from truth.

There is an interesting phenomenon in highly affluent Western societies today, and we can see it in both the ex-communicated Frey and his former high priestess, Oprah. Perhaps because we know, implicitly, that our "standard of living," when compared to developing and third world countries is flat-out obscene, we find ourselves exaggerating our personal plight, however we conceive of it. For Oprah it was her weight problem, and race, and sexual abuse. For Frey it was his variously and wildly exaggerated addictions.

I have met people who have opened up at the least provocation, often without invitation, about all manner of trials and tribulations they have been through. The narrative usually ends the same: I’m a survivor. But it does no good to be a survivor without any particular adversity to have survived. I mean, “I survived being made fun of in high school for wearing braces and headgear”; “I survived not making the cheerleading squad”; “I survived growing up in suburbia”; “I survived a vacation in the third world without my Starbucks”; and “I survived without my cell phone for a weekend” just don’t cut it. Especially in a world where there is real evil, where women are raped en mass and they and their babies are hacked to death with Machetes, people are thrown in jail and left to rot for typing the wrong words “human rights” into their google search, a world of secret prisons and torture. A world where children are bought and sold, and work in sweatshops for pennies a day to make your sneakers. So you snack too much while you sit on your ass in front of the boob tube watching it all. Well, manage it.

We live in a victim culture, for sure. And it’s not just bleeding heart liberals and their minority minions doing the whining. From Catholics to Born-Agains, the right has embraced the culture of victimization, too. Our movie stars all have tales of tribulation. Our politicians routinely play the victim. Bush was a victim of bad intelligence, a victim of the liberal media, a victim of Democratic slander. Hillary sees a vast rightwing conspiracy with working class Americans as its target and her in the bull’s-eye.

While the priest abuse scandal is based in unfortunate fact, you have only to look at the eleventh-hour accusations against Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Bishop of the Episcopal Church, to see how easily abused the idea of “abuse” has become (From the report by Bishop Scruton of Western Massachusetts--the italics are mine:

“Canon Robinson put his left hand on the individual's arm and his right hand on the individual's upper back as he listened to his questions and answered them. This incident was in public view and was brief. The individual said Canon Robinson answered his questions and spoke no inappropriate words…. [L]ater in the convocation, while the two were standing in proximity… the individual turned to Canon Robinson to make a comment. In response, Canon Robinson touched the individual's forearm and back while responding with his own comment.”

I use this example not to downplay the real abuse, but to point out the desperate measures some are driven to take just so they can claim victimization, and, presumably, the righteousness that comes with fighting back. Our survivor narrative is obviously very often tied to our victimization narrative. Oprah’s much publicized weight problem, which she has finally overcome (though he’s still got a hair problem) was tied to sexual abuse she suffered as a child.

But what if your life really wasn’t all that bad? What if, really, all you can complain about is having to drive a beater to high school and not getting all the pussy you thought you deserved? Or that you had a big nose and your folks wouldn't pay for rhinoplasty? Frey kind of falls into this category, and his memoir typifies the desperate, degenerate search for a personal trauma trashy and flashy enough to have survived, and thus beef up the old hardship résumé:

“I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.”

In much of the world people are clawing and scratching to claim their humanity from forces of evil marshaled against them. But here where we have for the time being subdued the urge of men to enslave each other—we live in what Slavoj Zizek has called a “liberal-permissive” society—we’re so busy inventing torments for ourselves we can’t see the reality of the torments others are enduring, sometimes on our account. Instead ofcounting our many blessings and working to eliminate the suffering of others much less fortunate we’re searching in painful earnest for some source of suffering for ourselves.

Now granted, pain is radically subjective. Empathy only goes so far—no one can really feel your pain. I mean, watching someone having their fingernails ripped out is just not the same as having them ripped out yourself. People suffer in free and affluent societies, it’s true, but the things they suffer from are more often objectively bearable than what people suffer in poverty under tyranny. People in western democracies on the whole live lives more bearable than those subject to dictatorial or totalitarian regimes. Of course everyone suffers. That’s the human condition. But those of us who experience less suffering can in the best circumstances transcend our own suffering and actually see that others suffer more.

Instead of doing this—which if we can we must—here we are inventing trials and tribulations in the hopes of at least appearing to have suffered more ourselves (and certainly to have overcome our invented adversities). Partly this is boredom, the fruit of decadence. But it’s probably slightly more complex.

My theory is this tendency to exaggerate to a ludicrous, obscene degree our own misfortunes, and to display a badge of courage for overcoming them is a kind of guilt reaction to the genuine suffering we see every day beamed into our homes via satellite. It is abstract, yes, but it is out there. It’s really happening. We can turn it off, but it’s not going away. I may be mistaken in my belief that human beings are empathic by nature. But I think no matter how much of it we learn to stifle to get by in society, there is always a kernel of empathy, and that’s what’s causing the reaction.

It's like Niebuhr says in The Irony of American History (my poolside reading last week): "There are irresolvable contradictions between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and the ‘good life’…. The discovery of these contradictions threatens our culture with despair.”

The funny thing is, when you go abroad, and you meet people who have survived real horrors, from state terror to terrorism, from civil war to the gulag, you will find that they don’t bang on about it self-indulgently. And that’s how you know the truth of the tribulations they have survived. Sentimentalism is a substitute for depth of emotion, when there is no depth of experience to refer to. We want to suffer, because we know that suffering is essential to our humanity. But when you are actually suffering—really suffering, particularly at the hands of others, or of circumstances well beyond control or comprehension, the last thing you are doing is wallowing in it.

Elie Wiesel doesn’t emerge from the death camps “a new man”. There was no Auschwitz makeover. He came out a living corpse, his humanity systematically stripped from him. He doesn't glory or wallow in it, as Frey does his invented turmoils. There is no heroic end. There is no Hallmark moment. Nothing is all right. Ever. I’d like to see how Oprah spins that one.

Cuylenburches, Canalettos, and creepy clowns

2006-01-26T11:06:00.001-05:00

It may seem from my notes on the past week that all I did was sit on my ass in a speedo and watch TV with my aunt and uncle, when all of Sarasota was out there waiting to be painted red. Well, that's not entirely how it all went down. I spent the daylight hours poolside, and on the beach, of course. Did a lot of reading (Reinhold Niebuhr's prescient The Irony of American History--more about which later, and People Magazine), and since bedtime was kind of early and I didn't want to hang out in some cheesy Margaritaville bar on St. Armand's Circle chatting up the aging parrotheads, I watched a fair share of TV in my room.

But I did manage to get out on occasion, and, on a tip from a friend, visited the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. What a treasure trove that is. I had no idea. Aside from what you might expect from Ringling (i.e., a lot of circus memorabilia, which was fascinating in its own right, though not exactly my thing) there was a real art museum on the grounds with real art in it, too. There were mostly what I'm sure art-snobs would say were B-rate artists, and a lot of works by students of A-list artists, but there were some indisputably lovely pieces in Ringling's private collection.

Like these two below, for example (Antonio de Belli’s Flaying of Marsyas by Apollo and Frans Snyders’ Still Life with Dead Game) which were among my faves for the day.

It was actually refreshing to see works I had not seen before by artists I didn't know. Jan Flyt’s The Calydonian Boar Hunt (below) was another one I quite liked. This is a great scene of delightful carnage from Greek mythology, that has been done a thousand times, and this depiction definitely does it justice.

I do love scenes of carnage. But naked lads will do as well. And there were plenty here. Among my favorites were William Etty's, of course. He was well-known for his nudes, both male and female. In fact, it seems he never painted anyone fully clothed. His outrageous, flamboyant compositions don't disappoint. The Combat couples carnage and carnality, and you can't beat that combination. Unfortunately, I can't share it with you, because the painting was in an odd place high on the wall, and it was difficult to get a good shot of it without a flash.

Instead, here's the lovely Eros Revealing a Sleeping Venus to a Bashful Satyr, c. 1720, by Giuseppe Chiari. God, I love those bashful satyrs. I've met a few in my time.

But there were plenty of A-list works, too. There was an impressive gallery of enormous Rubens paintings. We're talking 12.5' X 17' here. And, as everyone knows, with Rubens, size mattered.

In the Venetian Renaissance room: Paolo Veronese’s The Rest on the Flight from Egypt had colors worthy of Titian.

The Belle Epoque Gallery was brilliant as well. But then, that was the Belle Epoque. There was not a painting in this room I was not taken with. There was (below, top-to-bottom) Pre-Raphaelite Sir Edward Burne-Jones's dreamlike The Sirens. And the eerie, inexplicable The Mystery of Life by Carl Marr. The stark, haunting French Artillery (An Episode in the Franco-Prussiuan War, 1870-1871) by Jean Baptiste-Edouard Detaille. Rosa Bonheur's gorgeous, simple Ploughing in Nivernais.

The experience of the museums and the grounds was also thoroughly enjoyable. There were docents giving tours, and while I didn’t stay with a group, whenever I found myself in one, I found the docent’s insights worthwhile and interesting. They didn’t have a script they recited by rote, but offered observations of their own. You could see their enthusiasm and it was infectious. There were volunteers (mostly retirees) with personality to spare to taxi you about the grounds in eight-seater golf carts. Everyone was laid-back and friendly, and sharing their knowledge and their stories and their personalities freely. That and the truly impressive collection and gorgeous setting, made for a lovely day. An absolute delight.

USA TODAY on the trouble with PBS

2006-01-24T14:50:00.000-05:00

PBS is getting a new chief, after Kenneth Tomlinson's reign of terror. There was a short piece on the new chief, Paula Kerger, in USA TODAY. I found this passage particularly interesting:

"Kerger takes over as PBS recovers from two controversies: accusations by former Corporation for Public Broadcasting chief Kenneth Tomlinson that PBS is too liberal and a flap over the kids show Postcards from Buster featuring a lesbian couple." [Italics mine.]

Now, we all know all about Buster. It's the interpretation of the Kenneth Tomlinson affair that interests me. The controversy was not in Tomlinson's accusations that PBS is too liberal. The controversy has to do with Tomlinson's stacking the CPB with right-wing political operatives and allowing Karl Rove to dictate PBS internal policy. The controversy has to do with Tomlinson abusing his position at the CPB so brazenly that he came under investigation by the State Department. The controversy is nicely summed up in the Inspector General's report that found he violated federal law to monitor and influence PBS programming, and used "political tests" to hire the president of the agency. The whole sordid, cynical affair is detailed at Timothy Karr's exellent mediacitizen blog.

Tomlinson obviously believed that the CPB was too liberal, but that's not where the scandal is here. And that's what's wrong with Ann Oldenburg's little article in USA TODAY. This kind of flip, distorted, bullshit "reporting" is rife in the so-called mainstream press.

amusing ourselves to death

2006-01-24T08:03:00.000-05:00

I forced myself to watch an entire hour of ABC's Good Morning America, from seven to eight. Here's the breakdown:

The big news was what the press is calling Bush’s "PR campaign" in defense of spying. This is a classic case of non-investigative journalism. The press is content to be played, and politicians are content to play them, so everybody wins, but us.

What we get is a rogue's gallery of scoundrels like Alberto Gonzales (is it a surprise that the man who proclaimed torture legal would argue in favor of the president's power to spy on Americans?), Karl Rove (who broke the news that the Demon-crats plan to run Bin Laden in '08, and keeps using the inane line, "if Al Qaeda is calling you we want to know about it"), and bald-headed freak and former head of the NSA, Gen. Michael Hayden, who assures us that had illegal wiretapping been the order of the day prior to September 2001, there would never have been a 9/11 to have to justify it to begin with. Hmm. You've also got a chorus of panicky conservatives saying it was going on under Clinton. You know it's bad when the "blame Clinton" mantra starts up.

This PR blitz is a freakshow, and should be treated as such.

Next came another in an endless line of stories on obesity, with some fat priest telling a reporter that his obesity was his business and he didn't want to have to see a doctor about it. Here's a priest telling other people to mind their own business. Hmm. Apparently there's some debate about whether or not a certain new diet pill should be available over the counter. I'm all for it. Whatever you gotta do, do it, and shut up about it already. You ever go to dinner with someone who's dieting? Spoils your appetite, doesn't it? They’re worse than vegetarians. At least with vegetarians you have the pleasure of eating meat to spite them, but with these diet-nazis, they want to bang on about themselves, and what they can't eat, and then they want your sympathy for ruining your meal!

Weather was next. Lots of it up in Boston. Here on St. Armand’s Isle it’s like paradise. I’m not looking forward to going back tomorrow.

Then, after an epic commercial break there was more on wiretapping. The funny thing is the tone was very casual, as if this was really not a big thing. Just something those crazy ol’ pols in Washington are fussing back and forth over. Charlie Gibson shook his jowls and rolled his eyes introducing his obligatory partisan guests to “discuss” the issue. He had the over-ripe Paul Begala, CNN’s “voice from the left” and dried-up old conservative hack Bay Buchanan, “debating” the legality of the wiretaps and the President’s PR blitz. But these little “debates” are worthless. We know exactly what both parties are going to say, and that neither will be convinced by anything the other has to say, so really it’s a reiteration of the party line, and reinforcement of what the acceptable parameters, the limits of the debate are. It’s a kind of highly stylized liturgical exercise, which shows as much what is proscribed as what is permitted in our theatircal "public debate" on the issue.

What you get out of it is the “talking points”. You can pick up the slogans and sound bites that stand in for real inquiry and debate. And then you’re supposed to recite them sagaciously around the water cooler later in the day. Here’s a nice phrase you can slip into your banter, from Bay Buchanan: we’re dealing with “enemy communications in a time of war” here, gosh darnit! Another good one: “The president’s job is to protect us!” BB also had a great argument for the legality of wiretapping (this is a direct quote, and no, I am not joking): “Clearly if he [President Bush] can bomb people’s homes, he can wiretap.” That one’s good to stun the opponent and then go in for the kill: “Americans are going to support that without question.” Because that’s what good Americans do. You’ll notice, these are not arguments so much as declarations and commands, which are handier than arguments when it comes down to brass tacks, anyway.

If you’re on the other side of the water cooler, you can say, as PB did, citing Senator McCain’s opposition to the president’s newfound omnipotence, that “this is not a partisan issue.” You can then quote chapter and verse of their own Bible to conservatives. Reagan: “trust but verify.” That’s the key. Try not to sound too strident. Try to sound more conservative than the conservatives.

Ford’s big reorganization was the next story. Diane Sawyer needs an eye-lift. There were two sad-eyed female anchors assuring us everything would be OK. It was a human interest story, see. They had some poor slob who’d been laid off mewling, “but we did everything they asked in that plant.” Golly, and that big, nice corporation didn't appreciate you? Well, McDonald's is hiring. And there's a nice clown in charge there!

Then came the Russian spying fracas. With the rock. After which came the obligatory crack: “Rock-n-roll!” snickered Robin Roberts, the token black anchorwoman. Tee heee heee! Laughed the others, as if something clever and funny had been said. Cut to commercial.

Back to Bush. Here we’re dealing with the illegal activities of an amoral administration and all the clowns in the media have to say, after a cursory, irrelevant “debate” is that our wacky prez has gone on “a humor offensive”.

“Bush goes Unscripted!” Big news after nearly six years in office. I mean this is how low our standards have plummeted. Weekly briefings before Congress and unscripted Q+A should be required of our president, as they are of the British PM, for example. I mean, who is this clown? We’re praising him for taking silly questions about Barney and Brokeback Mountain from a screened crowd? “He’s very relaxed, very relaxed” noted Robin. “Yes, very relaxed,” the others concurred. Well, of course he’s relaxed. Why shouldn’t he be? It’s the rest of us who should be nervous.

Then they went to commercial again, and came back with a story on that utter scumbag Scalia, the very personification of judicial hubris. He skipped John Roberts’ swearing in for some junket at a fancy resort paid for by The Federalist Society, a conservative group that often argues cases before the Supreme Court. There may be an Abramoff conection there, too. Not the least bit surprising.

More weather. The GMA weatherman—I don’t know his name, but breaking with morning show tradition, he’s not a jolly fat man—he’s outside the studio chatting with the tourists, and he’s like, “Did you know that January 24th is the official most depressing day of the year?” No one did. He asked a woman what she does when she’s depressed. She said she baked a big batch of cookies and ate ‘em all herself! Then he asked her husband, who sad he put on his speedo and looked at pictures of Hawaii. The meteorologist said something like, “Speedo! Dude, stay away from me!” And scooted away from him, and then laughed like he’d made a funny. (Notice how all these sods are always laughing at their own jokes?)

And can someone please answer me this? Why are Americans so freakin speedophobic? Here you’ve got guys practically in bloomers at the beach. Like I’ve said before, I don’t care if you go naked, but there’s not a thing wrong with speedos.

What I think is interesting is how girls’ fashions these days is getting skimpier and tighter all the time, while boys are wearing these big, clownishly oversized styles. It’s like they’re hiding themselves under their frocks, and frankly I don’t understand it. Is it because the ones who are showing it off actually have something to show off, and it’s shaming the others? Is it because our ideal of male beauty has become at least as exacting as the female version, and if you can’t achieve it, you have to cover up evidence of your “inadequacies”? It could be that it’s just easier to conceal weapons under a cassock. All I’m saying: personally I’m not afraid to don a speedo. And when you come bumbling down the beach in your big, goofy jams, well, who's the bozo?

Then came this twenty–minute human disinterest story on an all-female fire brigade. Hoorah for women firefighters! Um, is this news?

Finally, more on our friendly, folksy president. Awe, come on, he ain’t so bad! He’s jess tryin to protect us, y’all! And he's havin' himself a good ol' time doin' it! And that's what America's all about! And the American People KNOW it, too! In his historic unscripted Q+A “he got 61 laughs!” Charlie informed us. “61!” clapped Diane, her sad-eyes sparkling. “Like a pro!” chimed in Robin. Like a pro what? I mean, is he President of the United States or Dick Cheney's jester?

But hey, so long as Al Qaeda's not calling you (just hope they don't dial a wrong number, har har) and you're not disappeared by the CIA and renditioned off to one of their secret torture prisons, well then, yuck it up! IT'S ALL GOOD!

Canada feels Bush's wrath, soybeans next

2006-01-23T19:44:00.000-05:00

I was watching ABC World News Tonight (a misnomer, as it turns out, unless the world consists of America and the Middle East), and the anchorbimbo mentioned Canadian elections in which Conservatives seem poised to topple Liberals after thirteen years in power. During the blurb, that lasted all of a minute, the only thing ABC saw fit to say about the Liberals? They "angered the Bush administration because of their opposition to the Iraq war."

Why choose that particular (and particularly irrelevant) tidbit of information, of all the possible tidbits out there? They could've mentioned the no-confidence vote. They could've mentioned the ethics scandal that led to it. Instead they made an implicit, and misleading connection between the Liberal's lack of support for Bush's war and their failure in the elections.

Aside from this, why should it matter to us that Mr. Bush was angered? Is this news? I mean, why is ABC reporting the news from Mr. Bush's perspective all the sudden? When they report that, say, soybeans don't lower cholesterol as had been thought, do they say, "and this has irritated the president, who is fond of having his Chex with soy milk"?

slash and yearn

2006-01-23T08:05:00.000-05:00

Just got this brilliant comment on a previous post re: Brokeback Mountain.

just another day in paradise

2006-01-21T19:33:00.000-05:00

Celebrity sighting! Saw Sarasota’s most famous resident, Jerry Springer, last night, in the flesh! He walked past our table at the Columbia on St. Armand’s Circle while we were having dinner. I had to be restrained from pumping my fist in the air and chanting “Jer-REE, Jer-REE, Jer-REE!” Seriously, a hostess, two waiters and three busboys had to hold me down. It was a bit embarrassing.

Dinner was light. My uncle, bless him, pointed out a blonde at the next table. I’m not really into blondes, unless they’re very hairy. It's left over from one horrible summer back in college. I had this roommate named Cecil, who was a rugby thug ("a rugger but not a bugger," as he was fond of saying), very philosophical off the pitch (an adherent of moral non-cognitivism and eliminitivism in the philosophy of mind), a big blond (not quite the type Dorothy Parker wrote about), with the most magnificent coarse, thick, curly blond hair on his forearms, the back of his hands, his chest, back, neck, just everywhere. Looking back, he was built a bit like a wild boar, but there was something about him. I know, there’s no accounting for taste.

My Unk's pretty funny. Love him to death, but he's about the hangdoggingest good ol' boy you'll ever meet. We've been having this very deep ongoing discussion about Jen and Brangelina all week. I'm like, Angelina Jolie. Exhibit A: was married to Billie Bob. Exhibit B: tattoo of Billie Bob. Exhibit C: obvious collagen abuser. I mean, come on. People's lips stop growing by the time they're in their thirties, don't they? Hers just keep getting bigger and bigger. Pretty soon she'll be all lips. She probably gives great head, but as every man knows, you don't marry the girl who gives you great head. She's just not a keeper.

Look at Jen on the cover of US Weekly this week. Now, that's a pretty woman. But she's a weeper. You know, when she was on Oprah with the cast of Friends, right before they did their last episode, she was openly weeping. You wanted to smack her and tell her "get ahold of yourself, for the love of God, woman!" I mean, it wasn't anything to weep about. I thought, she can't be serious.

Unk says Brad'll be sorry for adopting those kids, because Brangelina's not gonna last, and then he'll be stuck with the child support for the rest of his life. I told him I didn't think Brad was very bright to begin with, and he probably wasn't thinking too far ahead. My aunt said that he hadn't let Jen pick out any of the furniture in their Malibu Barbie mansion. And Jen said you couldn't sit on any of the furniture. It was like, you had to sit on the floor. Who can live like that?

And I'll tell you something else about Angelina. If Jen's way too earnest for her own good (she's gonna keep getting hurt, poor thing--I mean, Vince Vaughn? Po-leeeze.) Angelina is cynical to the core. All this adopting and these mercy missions? Come on.

And Unk just loves Isaac, which is Isaac Mizrahi’s inexplicable show on the Style Network. Why don’t I have a show yet? Everybody else's got one. Do you have yours? Anyway, of course, I hadn’t seen it until my aunt introduced me to it. They both love it. My aunt and I had watched it earlier in the day for a little while. I didn’t get it. He waved his hands around and had too much product in his hair. And he never stops talking, even--or especially--when his guests are, too.

They're also addicted to this Dancing with the Stars. I don't get that either. Desperate washed-up never-weres learn to dance? And? Thank God they're not into Wife-Swap is all I can say. Celebrity Wife-Swap's next. Mark my words. And the government wants to find out who's looking at porn on the internet? Who isn't? I mean with crap like this on the tube, who wouldn't be? If you're gonna waste your time, why not get a nut in the end?

My aunt and I dropped into Leona Helmsley’s Sand Castle Hotel on the beach for pina coladas earlier and she told me how a year or two ago a couple had scandalized St. Armand’s Island by sunbathing nude right there on the beach in front of the Sand Castle! My aunt, God love 'er, who claims to be a former hippie, says she used to smoke “wacky tobacky” and lived in the Castro, was apparently instrumental in forcing the naturists to cover up. It’s against the law, she told me.

Well, then along comes Unk, a good Christian (and I mean that without irony), who was never a hippie, and thinks it’s a silly law. At dinner he said there used to be a beach—way up north—you had to go through the woods to get there—and you used to be able to sunbathe nude there. He said, there were all kinds of people there. Sure, there were gays, too. He's got nothing against 'em. As long as everybody minds his own business and nobody bothers anybody else. A man after my own heart. “Then a few years back,” Unk says, “there was a black mayor.” He gave me a significant look. “And he passed a law saying you couldn’t go nude, or even wear a thong!”

I am, of course, of my uncle’s opinion that if you want to go nude on the beach, especially a nude beach, well, what the hell? Why not? Whatever ya got, just don't jiggle it in my face unless you ask me first, is all I ask. But while Unk made it a condition that children shouldn’t be present, again I say, what the hell? Why not? Nakedness is natural. It doesn’t have to be this big, scary deal. I think the theoretical sexiness of it is what scares people. But only those who have never been to a nude beach could possibly think there's anything sexy about them. Once you go to a nude beach, you see how unsexy it all really is. Is that what we’re protecting our children from? The knowledge that nudity ain’t all it’s cracked up to be? We wouldn't want them to know that being a flabby, out-of-shape adult with hair everywhere it shouldn't be isn't quite as fab as we make it look with our frock's on, would we?

We Americans like to brag that we live in the free-est nation in the world, but even the Communists can go naked without somebody reporting them to the authorities. It's kind of like my cyberstalker, who feels my very presence on the internet is an affront. Well, don't go to my website, bitch! If people want to go naked on a secluded beach designated for that purpose and you don't, then don't go there! And quit fantasizing about it, because it ain't all it's cracked up to be, and the only reason you want to ban it is because you think there's something more to it than there actually is. People get so exercised over things they know nothing about.

Anyway, my uncle goes out for his morning walk and comes back an hour or so later with the paper. No matter what. He's a good guy, with the patience of a saint, practically. I mean dealing with my aunt. Lovely as she is, she's a bundle of contradictions. This morning we had to drag her away from her computer. She was playing solitaire! I mean, here she's got the two of us. It's sunny and eighty-plus degrees, and the sea's right outside the door, and she’s playing computer-solitaire. Which she could be doing back home, where it’s forty degrees and raining cats and dogs.

That’s how it is here. Every morning you get up, and whether you feel like it or not you’ve got to go outside and frolic, because the weather here is marvelous and it sucks back home.

Still, we were in Sarasota this morning at the farmer’s market, and one of the guys who had a booth there was saying how awfully hot he was, and how if it got any hotter he was gonna move north. So the grass is always greener. It definitely helps you bear the weather anywhere you are knowing what’s going on back home is worse, though.

We went to a place called Yoder’s for lunch. When my uncle suggested it, and I asked what kind of place it was, my aunt was like, "guess." Like I should know. She gave me a hint. "What’s the name remind you of?" She asked. I was like, Hooters? Like is it Swedish for Hooters or something? She said, "no, it's Amish!" I was like, Amish for Hooters?? Can’t wait to see this. But, my luck, it was just Amish for Amish. There was no Amish-on-Amish action anywhere to be seen. I did notice that one of the skinny, buck-toothed Amish beauties bussing tables was wearing a blue dress you could, unfortunately, see right through. Are they the ones who wear the magic underwear? She had her granny-panties on and a bra it looked like you'd have to be Houdini to get out of. Was he Amish?

The food was "homestyle," I guess you’d call it. But if I want homestyle cooking, I stay home. Because somebody else's homestyle is never the same. Especially the potato salad. You're never gonna find potato salad like mom used to make. But check this out: my aunt got a whole plate of fried chicken livers and two potato pancakes! I was all excited because the vegetable of the day was beets. It’s not like I eat beets everyday, but when someone happens to mention they’ve got ‘em, I’m on it. So they bring me my beets slathered in some kind of synthetic polymer disguised as beet-slime. Beets don't have slime in a state of nature and there's a damn good reason for it. If I saw it dripping off something in the state of nature I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole, I can tell you that. It was about as natural as a maraschino cherry. I don't know why the Amish think they can mess with my beets. It was down home cooking from a can is what it was. I could barely down one. Utterly indigestible.

The thing about the Amish is, you always think of Witness when you think of them, don’t you? Living in an idyllic sort of setting outside of space and time. And the men are strong and handsome, and the women are pure, and the kids are cute in their silly little suits and hats. But it's not like that. Do they have a dental plan? No. And that's only the beginning. Basically, they seem to be jumped-up white trash in silly suits straight from the late seventies. What they need is Isaac!

America Sodomized by the Sword of God

2006-01-21T10:55:00.000-05:00

I was reading this morning's Sarasota Herald-Tribune. There was a front page story about Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church (which is made up entirely and exclusively of Fred Phelps, his whacked-out wife, and their 13 kids) "protesting" at a US soldier's funeral. The first I heard of Phelps was during the Matthew Shepard memorial. He was responsible for those inspired "God Hates Fags" and "Matthew Rot in Hell" posters.

Now, the logic of these "protests" at soldiers' funerals (over twenty such "protests" have taken place to date) is utterly twisted. None of the soldiers was gay, that we know of, or had anything at all to do with the gay movement or culture or anything gay. Not that if they had the "protests" would be any more justified, but with no connection whatsoever they're just completely off the hook.

But maybe we're all just missing the connection. That's what Phelps is here for, to help us all "connect the dots". According to the article, Phelps claims "the United States is being punished by God for being friendly to homosexuals.... America is 'feeling the sword of God' because it is pro-gay. A disapproving God 'has become America's terrorist' and is sending soldiers home in body bags as proof.... Phelps claims the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States were God's punishment on a 'gay-enabling' nation."

The scary thing about it is it's only a hop, skip and a jump from Westboro Baptist to the 700 Club.

animatronic talking Bin Laden head?

2006-01-20T17:39:00.000-05:00

What's so far-fetched about that? Hmm?

a conspiracy just waiting to happen

2006-01-20T11:54:00.000-05:00

I'm not a conspiracy nut, really. I mean, I accept there are mysteries that will never be solved. Like the Kennedy assassination. We'll never know the truth about it. But I have to say, this whole Bin Laden thing right now is so friggin fake it's not true.

Bin Laden is either dead or utterly irrelevant. The timing of this latest audio tape is too convenient for the administration for my taste. I mean, here they're facing all this criticism about illegal wire-tapping (an anchorbimbo on MSNBC this morning referred to them, inexplicably, as "so-called warrantless wiretaps"--they are so called because that's what they are, bitch)--here's the administration getting heat for spying on Americans, so what better to do than resurrect the most salient symbol of 9/11--the bugaboo of Bin Laden?

Now Cheney can crow, "lookit! They're about to attack! Bin Laden himself says so! More wiretaps! More domestic spying! Do you all want to die?!?" If Bin Laden is alive he's on the administration's payroll. I see no reason to trust any of the intelligence organizations charged with authenticating the tape, either.

Scott McClellan, sounding, as usual, like a petulant child, in his press briefing yesterday: "Al-Qaeda started this war and we will end it at a time and place of our choosing."

Yikes. If that doesn't sound like more of this nutty masters of the universe neocon "we create reality" crap, I don't know what does. Still, it's a sort of Freudian slip. I mean, if what he says is true, why haven't they chosen to end this war by now? Does perpetuating it serve some other purpose, I wonder?

Like I said, I'm not a big conspiracy freak, but come on. The last time we heard Bin Laden he gave Bush the little bump that probably won him a second term. This will get him through any "frivolous" investigation of his illegal activities in office. And the press is once again reporting government propaganda as fact.

Just makes you think.

And how does Leif Garrett fit into it all? I mean, the morning news shows spent all this time on that mugshot of him. ABC had a huge segment with Donnie Bonaducci called "When child stars hit bottom." First of all, aside from some scrapes and scratches Leif Garrett doesn't look all that bad. He could use some product, but he's not beyond hope. Get those Queer Eye guys on it. They should do a "fallen child stars" segment. It could be a whole hour long. People would love it!

But my question is, is it merely a coincidence that these two big stories broke on the same day, or is there some deeper connection? Hmm?

Prisoner of Sarasota "Eee-EEEEEE!"

2006-01-19T09:31:00.000-05:00

I'm taking a little vacation from my vacation. My aunt has a place here in Sarasota overlooking the gulf. Sunset front and center every night. It's nice, but there's not much to do but wait for the sunset. I gather that's the point of Sarasota, though.

The flight was good, too. Not too crowded. I whiled away the time from Charlotte looking through the Skymall catalogue. It's brilliant. It's got everything, and more! From Harry Potter's wand and Batman's ninja sword letter opener (both just $29.50) to the magnificent "Mademoiselle Haute Couture" floor lamp (set of two: $750). They've got your necessities, too, of course, like silk dupioni lamp and chandelier cord covers (forty bucks each), the electric-eye trashcan (no germs! no hassle!), hot dog ovens, instant fire escapes, and the ever-popular animatronic talking chimpanzee head (it can be happy: "AH-ahhhhh!", feisty: "Ahoo-ahoo-ahoo!", curious: "Wha-ha-ha-ha!" and fearful: "Eee-EEEEEE!"). And that's just a random sampling, the tip of the iceberg!

I just checked my email. I have a psychotic cyberstalker who's been sending anonymous responses to my Metro op-eds ever since the "holiday tree" fiasco. That really got to him. I replied to his first, and he had what can only be described as a sort of cyberorgasm. Someone had finally paid attention to him!

He sent me a couple more rants, but my policy is not to post anonymous rants, especially ones including childish taunts. I mean, by second grade I had heard every conceivable "joke" based on my surname that you could imagine.

And honestly, first of all, there's not room enough in this blog for any more ranters. Secondly, you know who I am. I don't hide behind anonymity. And finally, mere name-calling isn't all that interesting to anyone, doesn't count as dialogue in my book, and I don't feel obligated to post it.

But here's the latest from my anonymous friend, and you tell me if I should feel bad for hitting the REJECT button on him...

"we all need to stop paying any attention to mr mmennonoonononononono.... The more we ignore him, the more his little internet blog will disappear and we can be rid of him. And Mikey, love the way you continue to cherry pick your responses and comments. You're a coward who hides the fact that 90% of the world disagrees with you."

I'm flattered my friend thinks that 90% of the world is reading my blog. And, by the way, if he is representative of 90% of the world, well, we're in deeper shit than even I had imagined. And what to make of the pathetic fact that he, himself, is obviously unable to ignore me? I sincerely wish he would. I mean, can it be that difficult? It's not like I'm Big Brother. There aren't huge billboards of me on every building. My voice is not being broadcast at top volume from roving minivans at all hours. I don't see the problem.

Here's an idea for my would-be tormentor: Start a blog of your own! ignoremmennonoonononononono.com would be a good name for it. There you could rant all you want, and act out all your repressed homosexual fantasies about me (because we both know that's what this is about, don't we?).

Or here's another idea: think of me as an exclusive, chi-chi, private club. And you as, well, not a member. Don't let the imaginary door smack your ass on your way out!

2006-01-17T20:57:00.000-05:00

George Stephanopoulos was cute as a button on the Colbert Report Monday. Watch it here.

money matters, or does it?

2006-01-17T07:53:00.000-05:00

I wrote about money in this morning's Metro. The truth is, I'm nowhere near as obsessed with my income as I might seem in that op-ed piece. I make enough to get by, and live pretty much the way I want to live, so I can't complain. My mother sends me new underwear every Christmas. I darn my own socks. Somehow my needs get met. But then my needs are fairly modest. I'm not particularly ambitious. I never aimed to have a big house and a humvee, or whatever it is you've got to have these days to keep up with the Joneses. And anyway, in my neighborhood, there are no Joneses. And it's not that rough keeping up with the Garcias, if you want to know the truth.

Not that I'm on the verge of Nirvana, or anything. I'm your typical samsarin. I've just learned to tie my expectations to my true earning potential is all. I don't really rely on money, though, to tell me anything about the value of things. I mean, meritocracy's a joke. You think Oprah's really worth a billion dollars? To who? For what? I mean, when a teacher in South Dakota makes $31,383 a year? That tells me what I need to know about the value of money right there, and that's why I don't think of it as anywhere near an accurate measure of the worth of people or things.

And anyway, I think the problem is more greed than money, per se, if that makes any sense. You could argue that a big part of the problem with the income gap is the obsession with the income gap. And it's as much a problem for the poor as for the rich. Fact is, the main difference between them is the money. The propensity for an intensity of greed is not the particular province of one class--it crosses class bounds. What differs is the amount you started out with: the greed factor's basically the same, but since it takes money to make money, the outcome, moneywise, is different depending on where you started out.

Obviously, the thing you've got to work on, if greed's your vice (I prefer lust myself, and sloth--lust first, and then a cigarette, and then sloth for the rest of the afternoon), your version of "enough" is what's got to change. I mean, you have to be clever to outfox your vices. So instead of "that Beemer would be enough" you just say "a bus pass will get me where I'm going." Problem solved. But then you've got to watch out for excessive eco-pride. Don't forget, pride's one of the seven deadly sins, too. If you're going to take the bus, don't be a martyr about it. If you do it even in part so that you can boast about it or chide those who don't, all you're doing is trading one vice for another. And you don't want that.

brokeback blockbuster

2006-01-13T10:38:00.000-05:00

In the falseness-in-advertising department:

Saw an ad this morning for Brokeback Mountain during The Today Show. When the ad's narrator says "...a love story..." it's not Heath and Jake who are on screen, rolling in the hay, but Heath and Michelle Williams, who plays his wife in the movie, rolling around in bed.

Hmm.

press gets an F on Alito hearings

2006-01-13T09:54:00.000-05:00

This morning on the morning news/talkshows there was sort of a wrap-up on the Alito hearings. The networks utterly failed to give the hearings any serious coverage. They are the ones who made Alito's wife's outburst the big moment, and in doing so undermined any serious discussion of the issues involved.

This morning the big question was: did the Democrats behave badly? Were they too strident? Were they insensitive? Were they rude? These are Entertainment Tonight type questions, the human-interest angle. But history will not be concerned one whit about Madam Alito's nervous condition and hurt feelings. The real issues had to do with Alito's record, his affable but evasive manner, his views on privacy, executive power, and so on.

The thing that's amazing about it is how brazenly, even proudly reckless and irresponsible the press has been in taking an incident cynically exploited for political gain and publicizing it for Republicans. Soon after the scene, George Stephanopoulos was grinning ear-to-ear reporting it. It was "the defining moment." But the Washington Press is not really all that interested in policy that will influence people's lives outside the beltway. They're on the lookout for intrigue. They're looking to dish. And so a tearful Madam Alito was on the front page of newspapers, and the debate turned to questions of propriety and etiquette rather than jurisprudence and the candidate's qualifications and views. Which was a coup for his sponsors, who don't want a serious discussion of the latter.

It was really a clear case of chasing a trivial aspect of an historical hearing, and forcing it front and center, and playing into the hands of partisan politicians in doing so. The press acts as if it's a tough critic of itself--that was the essence of the flap about the recent mine tragedy--but then when the opportunity to prove it comes, they fail the public every time. There may be mea culpas at some point, a pundit or two may ask, did we do the Alito hearings justice? or were we led down the garden path once again? But it always comes too late.

haute bourgeois angst

2006-01-12T10:41:00.000-05:00

Here.

King Yawn

2006-01-12T05:49:00.000-05:00

Went to see King Kong yesterday with my friend Robert. I was going to pass, but he insisted, said he'd heard from reliable sources that it was worth it. I had heard the same from unreliable sources, which is why I was going to wait until it came out on DVD, so I could FF through the plot parts and just go straight to the CGI. Basically, the movie is a three-hour advertisement for the X-Box game (pic, above). Which made the whole thing pretty boring, since they don't give you a joystick at the ticket counter. Nothing worse than watching someone else play video games for three hours.

That's really what Peter Jackson is: a video game director. His Tolkien adaptations were insufferably tedious, too. Not just a little tedious, but through and through. Here he offers up various plots and subplots that go nowhere and mean nothing, but that we are forced to endure before we get to the great ape himself, presumably the reason we've come to the movie in the first place. Jackson has no sense of pacing, and absolutely no sense of restraint.

This has become the single biggest problem in the film biz: mediocre filmmakers (the list is as long and tedious as their films) with budgets bigger than most third-world countries' GDP, who don't know when to say when.

At least half of this film--and that is no exaggeration--should have ended up on the cutting room floor. The interminable video-game-like dinosaur stampede, for example. I mean, Christ, after fifteen minutes we get it. And the CGI effects during those scenes were crap. I mean, it looked like a video game.

Another thing about the movie was its over-all tone, which was unresolved. Jackson seemed to want it both ways. At times it was winkingly ironic, at times it struggled for pathos which inevitably ended in bathos. These latter instances were the most embarrassing.

There was an inexplicable, unnecessary subplot involving a castaway, Jimmy, and a certain Mr. Hayes (the gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous Evan Parke)--the dialogue was so contrived it went well beyond parody--but when Hayes is splattered, I came to believe that the director actually wanted us to take it seriously. Jimmy is given inordinate attention throughout the first third of the film (my ass was numb even before we got to see any action, by the way), he is not treated as expendable, and then--boom--he's dropped. We don't know if he lives or dies when one of the lifeboats capsizes. You know, don't waste our time on a character like that and expect us to engage with him, and then just drop him from the plot without any resolution.

As for the big-name players.

Naomi Watts: cut-rate Nicole Kidman clone without the botox. Would like to have seen more skin.

Adrian Broody (I meant to misspell it there, by the way): what can you say? As he showed in The Jacket, his best assets are his abs. Which, alas, we don't get to see here. Brody is not handsome, though he has classic Hollywood film star magnetism. What dampens this is his seeming obliviousness to how honking big his beak is.

Jack Black: who is this awful little man and what is he doing in the movies? With his big round face, and too-small eyes, nose and mouth? He has no presence. Can't act worth a damn. And here he exemplifies the director's dithering when it comes to the tone of the movie.

Now, Thomas Kretschmann, who played Captain Englehorn, had something. He might even be forgiven for his roles in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, Blade II. In his defense, he was also in The Piano, with the cadaverous Broody, and Queen Margot.

What I will say is, this Kong was as expressive as they come. But still, I keep bumping up against this whole three-hour thing. However complex an ape might be, unless you're Dian Fossey, you don't want to spend three hours with him. (And that whole time he only learned one word in sign language!)

Jackson was so enamored of his Kong that every scene that set out to plumb the depths of the beast's soul was dragged out an eternity. I'm sorry, but as fascinating as Kong may be, he's not exactly a chinese box. He's jealous. OK, we get it. We don't need a ten minute close-up to figure it out. He's angry. Got it. Let's skip the twenty minute temper tantrum. A minute or two will suffice.

When he's in New York, and we see the whole Skull Island thing mirrored, he's rampaging through the streets, and Jackson apparently wants to make it absolutely clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is desperately seeking Naomi, so he has Kong pick up not one or two, but three screaming blondes off the street (one by one, of course, not all at once). We get it, already. You coulda shaved five minutes off the movie right there. I mean, I can't feel my legs!

It's really the same thing Spielberg does with his endless speechifying or Stone does by bashing us over the head repeatedly with the evidence. Modern movie audiences are a quick study. We understand you want us to admire how deep your Kong is. Point taken. Now can we move on with the plot, what plot there is, at least. I got a life to live, let's get on with it.

Restraint. Just a little restraint is all I ask. Kong showed it toward his little woman. Too bad Jackson couldn't show some toward his Kong.

who has put this pubic hair on my wife?

2006-01-11T18:32:00.000-05:00

Disgusting day in the Alito hearings. The media's loving it, of course. They did not, by and large, report on the substance of today's questioning, but on the "emotional fireworks" courtesy Republicans, and more poignantly by Madam Alito, seated in clear view of the cameras, at her husband's right shoulder.

The definitive moment in these procedings, the "someone has put a pubic hair on my coke"/"high-tech lynching" moment: Mrs. Alito running from the hearing room in tears because the big bad Democrats wanted to know more about Mr. Alito's membership in a club called Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a student group critical of the admission of women and minorities, of which he had bragged to Ed Meese when applying for a job in the Reagan White House. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) used the probe into Alito's CAP membership, which all the sudden Alito doesn't recall at all, as an opportunity to demonize Democrats. He put an effective end to questions on the matter by asking Alito, "are you really a closet bigot?" That's when Madam Alito fled the chamber in tears. Did she know it was a rhetorical question? Did she understand Sen. Graham was mocking Democrats with it? Did she miss her cue?

Cynical seems too mild a word for the whole scene. I mean, here's a man who's undeniably on the ropes when it comes to his record on women's issues. So to deflect criticism here's his wife (she's a woman, isn't she?) breaking down in front of the cameras. That'll show 'em who's the real misogynists, won't it? It's the Democrats, of course!

a queen's English

2006-01-11T05:24:00.000-05:00

A friend sent me an email last night I had to share:

"Yesterday when I was reading your piece about your new tv habits, all I could think (while rolling my eyes) was: Dude, knock it off! You're not some bloke in a posh flat in London sipping tea while watching your telly. You're a guy from Indiana living in freakin' Dorchester, MA, watching crappy shows on your tv, just like the rest of us. Yes, reality sucks. Well, at least you're not speaking with a Madonna like British accent."

I'm working on that last part.

Yes, with friends like this... but never mind. I guess "telly" was the straw that broke the camel's back. She didn't seem to notice that in the same entry, I refrained, for her sake, from using "flat" for "apartment," knowing how much it bothers her.

Obviously she doesn't like my little Britishisms and has told me so to my face. But in my own defense, I never use the word "posh," especially to describe my "flat". Personally I like the word "flat" because it's shorter and more to the point than apartment. Plus, apartment sort of sounds expansive, where flat sounds more compact, like my... living quarters are. If I wanted to be really "posh" I'd say "chambers".

It may sound a little pretentious now, but it's actually "apartment" that is the more pretentious word. If "flat" and "apartment" met in a dark alley, "flat" would kick "apartment"'s ass, that's for sure.

Another thing: I have a flat-mate, not a roommate, and no one says apartment-mate. But I share my apartment, not my room with him. And this sometimes causes confusion. I keep finding him in my room. "Well, we're roommates, aren't we?" No, I keep telling him, we're flat-mates. He's like, "what's that?" I'm like, apartment-mates, dude. He's like, "no such word."

It's like not having a phrase for "bon appetit".

So it's true, I would like to see Americans adopt "flat" and a couple other innocent-enough, and widely used Britishisms. Nothing as obscure as "knackered" or as arcane as "kerfuffle." We're importing these obnoxious Brits all the time. Simon Cowell and the Supernanny, and that bird who rearranges your closets. Why not import some Britishisms, too? Enrich the language. It's a kind of cultural exchange.

"Bloke," I like, and it's fundamentally non-pretentious, too. People say it's like "guy," and since we've got "guy" why do we need "bloke"? But "guy" is as flaccid and indescriptive as "nice" (which is why they so often go together). "Guy" rhymes with "why" and sounds whiny. It's nasally. And American English is already way too nasally. British English forces words further back, and makes you open your throat. Whatever you want to make of that.

What it boils down to: "bloke" is ballsier. It sounds "blokey," dunnit? "Guy" goes well with "gay". "He's a gay guy." And that's fine. I mean, if that's what you're going for. But you can't say, "he's a gay bloke." I mean, it's just not done. Doesn't make sense. Because "gay" still retains it's older sense of light, care-free, airy-fairy, none of which mixes well with "bloke." (And in British English a "fag" is a cigarette, so don't even go there.)

Anyway, I need as many words for the male of the species as I can get. The more the merrier.

Just for the record, a bloke would not be sitting in a posh flat sipping tea. He'd be on the pitch or down the pub with his mates having a pint. And that's another thing about "blokes." They have "mates". You can't have the one without the other. "Guy"? Sure, you can say, "he's just one of the guys," but it just means he's even more utterly nondescript and neutral in a crowd than when he's by himself. You unpack "guy" and there's really nothing in it. A "guy" is just a "guy". There is little more than gender implied (and as for that, it might as well be neuter). It implies nothing about class origins, tastes, pastimes, morphology, or propensity for hooliganism. It has no nuance at all. I mean, what do you think of when you think of a guy named Guy?

I understand my friend may have been trying to convey with her absurd sentence ("you're not some bloke in a posh flat in London sipping tea while watching your telly") the absurdity of a Hoosier using highfalutin words like "bloke," "posh," and "flat." All of which are monosyllabic, and none of which have any high-class pretensions in their original form. But, point taken.

As for "dude," Scott Kiesling, a linguist from the University of Pittsburgh, has deconstructed it, and says the word connotes "cool solidarity, an effortless kinship that's not too intimate.
Cool solidarity is especially important to young men who are under social pressure to be close with other young men, but not enough to be suspected as gay." Just compare "hey, guy" and "hey, dude." (You would not say, "hey, bloke.") "Dude" obviously has a nuance all its own.

I will say this: white Americans speak a washed-out English. "Wicked" is about as colorful as it gets in these parts. What makes British English so much more fun (just check out this compilation of English slang and colloquialisms used in the U.K.) is it's coming from a blokier culture. This seems counter-intuitive, because when Americans think of British English, they think of the queen's English. But only queens speak the queen's English.

Region and class play a larger role in British English than in the more standardized American version. There are some slight differences, based on region, in America, but the biggest distinctions are due to race and profession. White America's slang is either lifted from black America, or comes from the washed-out workplace milieu. I think there's a case to be made for Britain's richer store of slang coming from a more compact, more urban society. Because slang is the language of subcultures. It arises from shared experience, like all language. But in America, subcultures are increasingly abstract. Experience increasingly mediated.

Which means we're producing less new language. My friend would probably say, "you go to the inkwell with the language you've got," and she's got a point there, too. I'm importing another culture's slang, but that's because ours seems to be losing its nuance (except in business and politics). And the American subcultures that are producing slang are not subcultures with which I particularly identify.

(Some interesting articles on "language crossing"--from least to most academic: here and here and here and here.)

a worthy new year's resolution

2006-01-09T11:16:00.000-05:00

Go here, and help save the Brattle.

the joy of terrorvision

2006-01-08T17:48:00.000-05:00

I went ahead and bit the bullet, got a little thirteen inch Toshiba. We've got cable in the apartment, so as soon as I got it home, I plugged it in and we were off. It wasn't a big statement, not having a TV, it just was not my first priority. I'd gone without since October. The first couple of weeks were a little rough. I don't watch it a lot, but I missed Judge Judy and Dr. Phil and Katie and Matt. But I knew I'd see them again, which made the separation easier to bear.

The thing you forget when you go without the telly a while is how miserable and pathetic we're all supposed to be out here in TV Land. They don't come right out and say it usually, but it's the underlying assumption, and it's not so terribly subtle. That's how people sell you things you don't want or need, and that's TV's raison d'etre, pretty much.

Lester Holt was on NBC Saturday morning, with his crooked little smile and sad eyes, hawking "happiness makeovers." It was so poignant I almost wanted to cry. I popped 600 mgs of St. John's wort instead, and laughed and laughed. I couldn't have cried if my dog, my cat, and my two birds had all committed mass suicide in my tropical aquarium, taking the clownfish with 'em.

I was all set to have a productive afternoon this afternoon, when I made the fatal mistake of flipping to the Discovery Health channel. That's some riveting shit, let me tell you. Got totally sucked in, for, like, four hours. First it was Switching Sexes: The Aftermath, then The 160 lb tumor (pictured above), then The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off. I finally tore myself away during the opening minutes of Mystery Diagnosis. I was ravenous, had to eat something after all that.

I'm not knockin' Discovery Health, either. Some wild, funky shit, but very educational.

Good to be back, anyway.

hook, line, and sinker

2006-01-08T15:31:00.000-05:00

I was reading the Boston Phoenix on the train yesterday, and came across this gem of a ltte:

* * *

COMMAND AND CONQUER

Apparently, Mr. Editor does not yet know that:

1) We are in a global war on terrorism.

2) Iraq and Afghanistan are only two fronts in that war.

3) During wartime sacrifices (needed to keep our nation and you, Mr. Editor, free) must be made when lives are at stake.

There isn’t time to check with a lawyer, a judge, a court, or the ACLU. Immediate action is needed to keep us all alive — even you, Mr. Editor (See "Bush’s High Crimes," December 30, 2005).

If you or anyone else who is afraid of having his privacy invaded, possibly because of "something you want to hide," I can understand your discomfort.

To compare the wiretaps of the Nixon administration, solely for political gain during peacetime, with wiretaps during wartime to prevent another 3000 or more of our lives being lost — remember September 11, 2001, Mr. Editor? — is truly a sign of immaturity.

And if one keeps hearing the same lies about why we are at war "over there," and keeps spreading those lies through columns such as yours, of course all the folks who read it begin to accept it as truth.

Would you rather be free to promote a promiscuous society and see our nation turned into a Sodom and Gomorrah, or, let’s see, remember what happened to the Roman Empire, sir? Or does history not interest you at all?

War is hell, Mr. Editor. Nobody wants it. But it has been a reality since time immemorial. It is not an exact science, and plans and tactics must change with the circumstances. And I would hope you have a dictionary at hand to look up what torture is. Abuse is not torture. Chopping off heads and dragging bodies through the streets for TV cameras, as the enemy — the terrorists — has done is torture for all humankind. How shameful of the press to put us in the same category.

Mr. Bush is doing God’s work and performing the duties of his office that he was sworn to do when he took the oath to be our president and the commander in chief of our armed forces. I support him, as does the entire voluntary military community (not counting the few bad apples you find in any group).

Happy New Year to you and your readers. Thanks to our armed forces, we will have many, many more.

Gordon Brown
Watertown, MA

* * *

It's classic armchair warrior stuff, innit?

The gullibility of the letter writer is almost touching. It would be, in fact, if the taunting, sagacious Mr. Brown's faith weren't so thoroughly toxic, and didn't come at the cost of our civil liberties.

I particularly like the taunt: "If you or anyone else who is afraid of having his privacy invaded, possibly because of 'something you want to hide,' I can understand your discomfort." You all know I spent some time in the old Soviet Bloc, and Mr. Brown is precisely the type who would relish the possibility of going to the Party and informing on his neighbors. And this type was not exactly a minority.

We all know busybodies. Well, when they have the power of the State behind them, they easily become informants. And informants, under such regimes, have to know that for all intents and purposes they're murderers.

The thing to understand is this: the State needs no enticement to become more intrusive. The modern State tends naturally towards totalitarianism. It's just a fact. I know this will surprise you, but our own President once joked the best form of government would be a dictatorship. With him as dictator, of course. Can you imagine? But the truth is, from the State's point of view, dictatorship is certainly easier than democracy. From the ruling class's perspective it would be a lot more convenient if we could dispense with the niceties and just get down to good old fashioned masters and servants.

Keeping the State from overreaching into our private lives is like plugging holes in the dyke (we should use guys like Brown here to plug 'em up with). What I mean is it's always a losing battle, and it's never finished. There's absolutely no precedent to trust the wiley, evil bastards who usually end up in office (I mean, how else would you get there) to respect the limits for which our Constitution was written. Power corrupts. The more power you give 'em, the more corrupt they get.

I understand people want to believe in something. Something powerful, preferably. But Bush? That's a sorry-ass joke. And it's on poor sods like Brown, here.

No More Fare Hikes!

2006-01-07T20:09:00.002-05:00

The MBTA is floating another fare hike. If every time the T is in hock they can raise their fares, we can look forward to paying about a hundred and thirty bucks a trip by 2010. It’s not the answer, Dan.

If anyone reading agrees do two things:

1) write GM Daniel Grabauskas. His email is gm@mbta.com. Doesn’t matter that he doesn’t read his email. Send him a bunch with the subject line: “NO to fare hikes!” and tell him to take his fare hike and stick it up his ass. In so many words, of course. And then…

2) contact your local and state representatives (you can find their email addresses here–or if you do not know your local rep, go here, and once you have filled in the required fields and clicked the “find my election information,” scroll down to the “District Representatives” section, click on the appropriate link, and go from there), and demand that they LEGISLATE A FARE FREEZE, like the one that was in place all those years when we were paying 85¢ for the exact same sucky service(and it was not so long ago–up to 2003, when Governot Romney signed a bill into law allowing fare hikes).

#2 is actually the more important of the two points. Seems to me, this is about the only way to agitate for a cease-and-desist on fare hikes. Riders obviously can’t afford to boycott the T. They’ve got us by the balls, basically. That’s why the legislature should step in. And it is not inconceivable that they could do just that. After all, they have done so in the past.

A legislated fare freeze forces the MBTA to think outside the box instead of dipping into rider’s pockets every time they fuck up.

Feel free to post any other prescriptions you can think of. I’d appreciate hearing them.

if there is a God...

2006-01-05T19:07:00.000-05:00

...he will give Pat Robertson a mutant flesh-eating virus. I mean, for real, people. Pray with me. Pray hard, now!

The latest according to Pat is that Ariel Sharon's stroke is not due to the fact that he's nearly eighty years old and grossly overweight and has one of the most stressful jobs on the planet, it's God's punishment for "dividing Israel". How original, Pat.

"God considers this land to be his," Robertson said on his TV program "The 700 Club." "You read the Bible and he says `This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, `No, this is mine.'" What is God? Like, four years old?

Later in the same broadcast Roberston reminded his audience of what happened to Rabin. "It was a terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless he was dead," he said.

another mining tragedy in the can

2006-01-05T07:29:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine from Indiana wanted to know my thoughts on the mining tragedy in West Virginia that's been all over the news.

First off, I should say I've been without a TV since mid-October, when I moved to my new place. It's not a matter of principle, it's just priorities. A TV was not at the top of the list of necessities when I moved in. I didn't have anything of my own when I left the old place, not even a bed. So that was first on my list, then a desk and chair, lamps, and so on. I had my trusty old laptop, and there was a strong wifi signal in the building, so I figured the web would be enough. But it's really not.

I mean, my experience of the mining tragedy is limited to variations on the same wire story that have appeared in the major papers, with two or three pictures of the grieving families. When I went to lunch with Itchy yesterday, to a pub in the Savine Hill (which Itchy calls Stab-n-kill) neighborhood here in Dot, I realized what I'd been missing. It was another media blitz along the lines of the Terri Schiavo thing. And if you didn't have a TV it was easy to ignore it all. Print media just doesn't have the same capacity to envelop and overwhelm.

Katrina would have been much more manageable, as far as the administration was concerned, if it hadn't been beamed live into hundreds of millions of homes. It was an event far away that felt intimate. Our emotions would not have been stirred so if we had been reading about events a day later in the papers. Katrina was fairly unfiltered as it unfolded. Likewise 9/11.

Seeing the way people react in real time is fundamentally different from reading about the reaction in the paper, or on the internet. So, to be honest, I didn't get it. I mean, about the mining tragedy. It's an unfortunate story I read in the paper.

There was another incident back in '02 that some of you may recall. The Quecreek incident had a different outcome, the one that so many were expecting in this one. But ultimately, the outcome of that media orgy was tragedy, too, as you can see from this riveting report on its messy aftermath.

Once the human interest aspect of the story fades, nothing much changes. As the Times reported in today's lead op-ed, "the Sago mine, with more than 270 safety citations in the last two years, is the latest example of how workers' risks are balanced against company profits in an industry with pervasive political clout and patronage inroads in government regulatory agencies. Many of the Sago citations were serious enough to potentially set off accidental explosions and shaft collapses, and more than a dozen involved violations that mine operators knew about but failed to correct, according to government records.

"Sadly, in the way mines are often run, the $24,000 in fines paid by the Sago managers last year constituted little more than the cost of doing business. In the Appalachian routine, miners balking at risky conditions down below can quickly forfeit their livelihood if they have no union protection."

For the media, it's just another mining tragedy in the can. For us, it's an unfortunate form of entertainment. It should be a political outrage, but politics does not favor the powerless.

evil nieces

2006-01-04T13:54:00.000-05:00

One of my evil nieces sent me one of those evil e-cards for New Year's. I didn't bother to "open" it until just now, and as expected it was loud. It was a big smiley face with a party hat, and streamers all around. Very festive. And the first thing she wrote in the message was: "Did u find a girl friend if so whats here name?" She's nine and a half. She also demanded to know what I got for Christmas, of course. I didn't want to admit to the lump of coal (Santa has been reading my Metro op-eds, apparently) so I made something up.

I wrote her back:

"Thanks for the e-card. It sure was LOUD.

"You asked if I had found a girlfriend. Did someone tell you I had lost one? Usually you can go to the girlfriend lost-and-found, and if you have I.D. and can tell them what she looked like (approximately), they can find her in the back somewhere. They file them under hair color, I think. I've just been putting it off, I guess.

"My friend who is a psychologist told me that when someone asks you a question, usually they want you to ask them the same question back, so: did YOU find a girlfriend?..."

This particular niece has been obsessed with my finding a girlfriend since she was four, by the way. It's the first thing we ever had a serious discussion about, in fact. In those days it wasn't "have you found one," it was "where is she?" Like I had her bound and gagged in the trunk of my car.

I recall telling her then that my girlfriend had died in a terrible conflagration on the off-shore oil rig where we had met and consummated our love. But only after having suffered fourth degree burns over 98% of her body. Somehow, though she looked like a giant beggin-strip bacon-flavored dog treat (I mean, after the accident), her beautiful flaxen hair had survived the hellish flames with ne'er a single singed split-end. Oh, how I loved those tresses. I could lose myself forever in her braids.

But because it was the Evil Doctor Hybrid who had destroyed our little off-shore paradise, and I was the only one of the entire crew to escape unscathed, due to my Olympic-grade swimming skills, and my ability to speak dolphin, it was my duty to go after the Evil Doctor, exact my revenge, and save the world for Big Oil. I had to leave my forever love behind, alas, with only a lock of her flaxen hair and my memories of our passionate lovemaking under the stars in the middle of the gulf on our rig to sustain me.

My niece wanted to see the hair, of course.

Well, see, that's the thing, I told her. Later, when I caught up with him, Evil Doctor Hybrid nearly had me skinned, and I escaped with nothing but my skin. Sometimes you have to leave what you love behind.

What was her name? She wanted to know. Kids always ask those nettlesome questions you never expect.

Um, she was called... "She Who Has No Name," I told her. She was Indian, see. Native American, I mean. That's a translation. In her language it was, um, "Steve." But names are really irrelevant, aren't they? I mean, it's just something for people to call you, but what's in a name? We are all ultimately the great "I am," all unnameable, aren't we?

She agreed we were. And it's not like four year olds are easily convinced.

So anyway, she has been pestering me about it ever since.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic/Syriana

2006-01-03T05:59:00.000-05:00

Finally went to see "Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic" at the Kendall the other day. Not too much to say about it. It would have been a good HBO special, something you're flipping channels and come across, good for a few laughs. The much-touted un-PCness of it amounted to lines like "If God gives you AIDS, make lemonAIDS," and insights on why "chink" is a more acceptable slur than "nigger". Quite rightly, Silverman points out that we make fun of those we aren't afraid of.

Comedy is always about pushing the envelope, somehow. There are a couple of jokes about 9/11, but what would be most offensive to those apt to be offended isn't any punchline of any joke, but the way Silverman mocks the solemnity of the memory of that day. In fact, the last "scene" of the movie has Silverman's awkward "understudy" doing several of her most supposedly offensive jokes while the audience looks on stone-faced. Translation: a lot of the humor is in the delivery. And Silverman is clever about it. When she is at her most daring jokewise she protects herself and her audience by offering up the lines in an obviously put-on persona: basically a brunette variation on the dumb blonde. She makes offensive remarks, but not as Sarah Silverman.

It's postmodern comedy, I guess you could say, because it assumes everyone's in on the big joke, that we all know Silverman's playing a role--we're not only laughing at the jokes, not even primarily at the jokes, but at that clueless character who would tell them. And Silverman, in the meta realm where she is the real Sarah Silverman (this is getting awfully complicated, isn't it?), is saying, look at this spoiled, clueless JAP! So in a sense she's making fun of the clueless JAP who is making fun of the "chinks" and the "niggers".

As a kind of meditation on the nature of political correctness, as it's been marketed, it's not very enlightening. If being irreverent and un-PC simply means you can utter racial slurs with impunity, or reduce whole populations to stereotypes, then being PC isn't all that bad, in my opinion. It's relative, isn't it? It's funny to call someone with Downs Syndrome a retard unless your daughter or your little brother happens to have it. Then it's not all that funny. That's the thing about epithets and slurs.

But people who are obsessed with a PC conspiracy (some call it "soft totalitarianism") are missing the point that, really, in its moderate form, it's just a substitute for civility in modern multiculti Western democracies. So many different cultures and subcultures intermingle in our free market societies that something someone belonging to one of them does is bound to rub you the wrong way. Maybe it's something as innocuous as the food they eat, or that they look different or speak with a funny accent. So you make fun of their food or their faces or their funny accents. Sometimes it's in an innocent way, but sometimes it's malicious. Social censure rightly kicks in when it veers toward the malicious.

A typical comment in an anti-PC chatroom is: "every time someone apologizes, PC has won another one." Or (idiosyncratic syntax intact): "So why dose he have to appoligise? we live too much in a world with their touchy feely stuff and where its consitered wrong to insult anyone except if their a conservative christian who oppses revionist history,evolution,new age paganism and other such stuff" or "I've been watching some of the Twilight Zone Marathon and it hits me more now than ever that what scared us back then has become reality today" (all of which were found here).

PC excesses abound, don't get me wrong, but there's a bigger picture here, of a society in perpetual transition, where demographics are constantly changing, and privileges of race, class and gender are temporary. Understandably, this pisses people off. What I read in anti-PC rants is certainly no better than what they're ranting against. Exceptionalism; the victimization of the majority by minorities; the fear, paranoia, and hatred that attend social change. And so on.

As I've said elsewhere, harping on the excesses of Political Correctness, real or imagined, does have its purposes. It's a way of framing issues, first of all. But mostly it's a way to rail against diversity, affirmative action, sexual harassment suits, gay marriage, even handicap parking, without having to own up to outright bigotry. This doesn't mean that Affirmative Action, for example, was a perfect social program, or that busing was a smashing success. It doesn't mean that it's not irritating when the parking lot is full except for those ten or twelve handicap spots that always seem to be vacant. It doesn't mean that sexual harassment policies have not on occasion been abused by those they were meant to protect. It does not mean that you have to agree with civil unions.

What it does mean is that in civil society, in our public discourse, regardless of whether or not we agree, we make an effort to confer basic respect, acknowledging publicly the dignity afforded every citizen. That means, no name-calling, first of all. And it extends to epithets, like "colored" that have a problematic history, as well as to slurs. Words have weight. We have a duty in democratic discourse to safeguard the dignity of all participants. Do people go overboard? Like I said, it's relative.

But it's clear this is what irks those who harp on PC's excesses. Wider use of gender-neutral terms bugs some people. But the truth is, we live in a society in which gender-neutral terms are often appropriate and accurate. When you scratch the surface, it's really that fact that bugs the people obsessing over it. And about all you can say to those people is: get over it.

Censure has always been a tool of social groups, and there have always been off-limit behaviors, gestures, and words. They reflect the values of the group. You will not be thrown into prison by the PC Gestapo if you use words like "faggot," "nigger" and "kike" but you may find you don't get invited to many dinner parties. Unless you're Sarah Silverman.

Anywho. That was awfully heavy, wasn't it?

But not half as heavy as "Syriana". Yikes. I will admit that one of the main reasons I went to see this one was George Clooney. I'm not a big fan, but when I saw his new look... is it just me or is he not tons sexier with the extra heft, the bearish beard, and that sort of terrified fuck-me look in his eyes he's got all through the film? Even in a torture scene that rivals anything Schlesinger or Tarantino has come up with. I mean, would you rather have your teeth pulled--without anesthetic, duh!--your ear cut off, or all of your fingernails pulled out one by one?

Director Stephen Gaghan takes us through a twisty tale that would have been a thriller if it had had a plot to begin with. It's kind of impressionistic, is the thing. You emerge with the basic idea, though: government is organized crime. Some of the same murky territory Spielberg is interested in exploring in Munich Gaghan explores here. "Bob," the Clooney character, doesn't know who he's working for in the end, just like Avner.

And like in Munich and Paradise Now, we are introduced to terrorists and suicide bombers, and more than cursorily. Here, as in the other films, the terrorists are not exactly unsympathetic. In Munich the Palestinian terrorists are made more understandable by their speechifying, which is echoed almost word for word later in the film by Avner's Zionist mother.

In Paradise Now, the story is told entirely from the Palestinian side, and we are shown the poverty and hopelessness of the suicide bombers' milieu.

Syriana shows us something similar, and ties it in with the evils of big oil. When one oil company is bought by another, a bunch of Pakistani workers are told to amscray. Two of them find their way (don't ask me how) to a kind of radical religious school in the idyllic countryside of Whereverabia, where formerly disaffected youths are being groomed to become suicide bombers. Still, it's a pretty neutral portrayal I would say, until the end, when they blow up an oil tanker instead of a bunch of innocent civilians somewhere. I'm not saying it couldn't or doesn't happen like that, but at least Paradise Now looked its subject matter squarely in the eye. The human cost goes beyond the suicide bombers themselves. Both scenes end in a fade to white, by the way.

There were silly cinematic conceits in Syriana, too. The idea that a Saudi Prince would be as naive and lax in regards to his own security as the Saudi Prince in Syriana is, particularly when he is supposedly some big-ass wannabe reformer. In one of the final scenes, the CIA is satellite-tracking his convoy of identical SUVs--identical except, of course, that His Royal Highness's SUV is the only one with a sun-roof. He wanted the one with the big bulls-eye painted on the roof, but they didn't have it in stock.

There are also needlessly conventional touches. Each of the characters we've followed, none of whom, except maybe Clooney's, we give a rat's ass about, is given a short scene in the film's quiet coda, that we may know their individual fates. The most gratuitous and annoying is the final scene where Jeffrey White's character comes home to find the mysterious personage who has been menacing White's character's home-life throughout the film sitting on his front steps, drunk. The scenes with the two of them have a mock-mysterious feel. Is this his alcoholic father? His leather daddy lover? A stalker? The answer is: WHO CARES. Matt Damon's character's wife is similarly extraneous. To a point, OK, but to see them reconciled in the end didn't give me goosebumps. I wanted him to hook up with Prince Fancy-pants with the bulls-eye on his forehead, personally, but it was not to be. Damn that CIA!

Whatever happened to good old-fashioned thrillers without the domesticating influences, is what I wanna know. A gesture is all it takes to humanize a character. Good acting and writing give characters their depth. Adding superfluous characters in an attempt to do this adds nothing but length to a movie, and Syriana was quite long enough without daddy and wifey along for the ride. In fact, I think White's daddy was thrown in because all of the other characters had a back story, and Gaghan thought, well, what the hell?

But still well worth the trip.

The cinema was not crowded, by the way. My friend Robert and I went to a very early showing. Everyone was middle-aged and looked boring, which was fitting, I suppose. There were two dumpy broads who sat down the row from us. One talked through the previews, and I thought, OK, no problem. But the way she was chattering it was like she had a lot to say. You know how some people are, and it was all very urgent. Probably her friend had suggested the movie, so that they could spend an obligatory couple of hours together but she wouldn't have to listen to her bang on the whole time. No such luck. She yacked through the whole friggin movie. I'm not kidding.

While I was reconciled to suffering in silence, dreaming up violent deaths for them (and substituting the big blonde who was doing all the talking for George Clooney during the torture scene), Robert was not. At one point he turned, snapped his fingers and hissed at them! I almost pissed my pants.

But as is usually the case, this only emboldened them. Try politely asking someone not to smoke, or confronting someone on a cell phone. I guarantee you will get your head bitten off. You will be denounced, degraded, called every dirty name in the book. You and your family will be threatened with bodily harm, or death. And if you are the one on the receiving end of the polite request, nine times out of ten you will be the one biting heads off, denouncing, degrading, and threatening dismemberment and death. Isn't it funny how things that annoy us to no end when someone else does them, when we're caught doing them arouse murderous ire in us, though, truth is, we're the offending party. And it's way beyond mere defensiveness. There must be a name for this specific phenomenon in the DSM-IV. Help me out here, people.

There was a letter in the "Oh, Cruel World!" section of the latest issue of the Weekly Dig that summed it up pretty nicely, I thought:

"To all the chickenshit pussies who get all hot and bothered whenever I talk on my cell phone, take more than two seconds to get money out of my wallet, drive only 20 miles over the speed limit (rather than your preferred 47), or otherwise do anything that wouldn't be such a big fucking deal to any human being who isn't a neurotic loser in desperate need of a swift kick in the ass: Don't roll your eyes at me. Don't sigh. Don't mumble under your breath—or over your breath when I'm too far away for it to be clear that you're actually talking to me. Don't send anonymous letters to local papers that I don't read. Instead, tell me what the fuck I'm doing that's getting your panties wedged so far up your crack that you can taste your own shit. Get the stick out of your ass, the chip off your shoulder and the sand out of your vagina, and grow a backbone."

Hmmm... if I had to choose between the "neurotic losers" and a paranoid, megalomaniacal psychotic loser like the one who wrote this rant... hmmm. Lemme get back to you on that one.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic
Skip it.
3.8 on the film snob-o-meter.
2.1 on the fidgetron.

Syriana
Recommended.
5.5 on the film snob-o-meter.
7.9 on the fidgetron.

Bareback Mountain

2006-01-03T05:56:00.000-05:00

It was only a matter of time.

Breakfast on Pluto

2005-12-27T07:55:00.000-05:00

Well, my dear friend Mr. Fidget and I decided to give it another go. We went to the Kendall this time, where there were two options at the time we'd chosen: Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, and Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto. Originally, when Itchy had suggested Pluto I'd said, wouldn't you rather see Trans-America? I mean, both are transgendered affairs, and I figured the latter would be more conventional, basically a drag Fandango. The thing you want when planning a film outing with a fidget is forward momentum, and road flicks have got to have that, if nothing else, right? Plus the spectacle of Felicity Huffman playing a MtF transexual, basically a woman playing a man playing a woman, seems very compelling to me. from the trailers, Huffman is utterly convincing in the role. (Even the name Felicity Huffman seems like a drag name, doesn't it?) But Trans-America's not playing anywhere yet. So the choice was between Jesus and Pluto. And something about the latter, from the trailers I'd seen, seemed a little too arty-farty for the mood I was in, plus I was pushing hard for Jesus because I felt like the stand-up pace and lack of a plot would be the perfect antidote for the fidgets (although I didn't say it this time).

My friend seemed resistant to the Jesus is Magic plan, from the get-go. We were still bickering about it when we got to the ticket counter, where a sort of surly-looking art-film Asian-American asked us what it would be. My friend told him of our quandary, and he had no hesitation. He said, sorta snide-like: "Sarah Silverman is not funny. She belongs to the 'airline food' brand of stand-up from the '90s--she's just not cutting edge." Well, hmph. I bet he wouldn't say that to Sarah Silverman's face.

I was like, ooh, so we look "cutting edge" to you? I mean, for this punk--he was probably in his teens in the nineties, and it seems like a million years ago, but it was only yesterday to me and Itchy. What's wrong with the '90s, anyway? Weren't they the '60s standing on its head, or something? Didn't we have a hipper President then? Wasn't the blowjob the handshake of the '90s? Who could sneer at that? There's nothing naughty about the noughties. It's all terrorism and tax cuts for the rich, and post-millennial post-apocalyptic post-traumatic stress syndrome. I mean, the handshake is the handshake of the noughties. Cutting edge my hairy arse.

And what the hell is the "airline food school of stand-up" anyway? I'm thinking Sarah Silverman must have made some off-color jokes about Asian-Americans.

But that's really all it took to tip the scales, so it was Breakfast on Pluto. I'd still like to see Jesus is Magic, just to see if it's really all that un-PC. Have you noticed that un-PC is the new black?The poster compares her to Lenny Bruce, but we'll see about that.

Anyway, I'm not sorry we went to see Breakfast on Pluto, and the surprising thing was, Itchy didn't fidget through it. I was waiting, but it never happened. And it's not that it wasn't a fairly fidgetable film. There was definitely a fidget factor. On a fidget scale of one to ten, Pluto comes in at about a 5.5, I'd say, although there's a 3% margin of error. If it were not for the enchanting Cillian Murphy of 28 Days Later fame, the fidget factor would have gone through the roof.

First of all, rule number one: a man in a dress is at least as compelling as a woman in a dress, although in a different way, strange as it may seem. Why? We can get into that some other time. I think it's a question worth pursuing. But Cillian Murphy's Kitten is even more compelling than most men in dresses could ever hope to be. (There were times when he reminded me of Dina Martina, who had an almost unfathomably hilariously bizarre show at the Vixen in Provincetown all summer.)

The story is basically a picaresque, with Kitten's search for his birth mother framing the tale. The strength of Murphy's performance is that eventually we accept him for what he is without having to slap a label on him. The movie is not really about sex or sexuality, it does not seek to plumb the depths of why young Patrick becomes Kitten, even as it depicts Kitten seeking the answer to that question. But it's not so unusual to spend your life asking the wrong questions or seeking irrelevant answers, after all. Nor is it a waste of time. Kitten's singleminded pursuit of his birth mother leads him to a bigger truth. And that's how it is.

That's why, like Brokeback Mountain, Breakfast on Pluto is not a tale confined to the sexuality or gender identity of its protagonist. (Which is also why it's true that Brokeback Mountain is not a "gay film".) But Neil Jordan breached that old blood-brain barrier long ago. I mean, he's the one who gave us The Crying Game way back in 1992. His mixing of politics and cross-dressing makes you wonder if transvetitism or transexuality is a metaphor. I mean, is it a particularly apt metaphor for the Irish? For Ireland? I have read some interesting commentary of the book on which the movie's based suggesting that Kitten's transvestitism represents crossing borders. At any rate, it seems pretty clear that for the director, transvestitism is a handy metaphor for something.

The film is, in fact, filled to the gills with characters in "drag". Liam Neeson as a priest in his priestly skirts. Brendan Gleeson whose job at a small amusement park requires that he dress as a giant rodent (later we see him as the warden of the Tower of London). Prostitutes. Soldiers. Cops. It's all drag, isn't it? To some extent the movie--or a stream within it--is about who we are when we take off the costumes. Kitten never does, but it's at least partly because drag isn't drag for Kitten. Or at least, she doesn't hide under it. She reveals herself through it. But it would be a mistake to think of Kitten, in her movie incarnation, as a beacon of sexual freedom. The character in the book is called "Pussy," and her new, toned-down nickname in the movie fits her toned-down sexuality. It's not a movie, in the end, in which sex or sexuality is a major theme. Gender identity, yes, to some extent, and that to some extent as some sort of metaphor, but not sexuality, per se.

Whatever it all means, it's Cillian Murphy's movie, and he is an absolute joy to watch. He is able to wring emotional depth out of a character that might have been just another jock in a frock.

Recommended.
6.3 on the film snob-o-meter.
5.5 on the fidgetron.

the best Christmas EVER!

2005-12-25T19:05:00.000-05:00

I say that every year, and every year it's true! And this year it's truer than ever! Considering how I despised Christmas as a kid, nowadays it doesn't take much to please me where Christmas is concerned, and the older I get seems like the less it takes, which is the wonderful secret of growing up, isn't it? I find such pleasure in small things now, in a way I would have sneered at and mocked in the days of my foolish youth.

Itchy and I went to the zoo yesterday. Franklin Zoo not too far from here. It was fairly deserted, as you'd imagine. It was almost eerie, walking around looking at all the empty pens, and then all the sudden you'd come upon a peacock on a park bench, or hear the sound of a lion roaring in the distance. Poor lion. He was skin and bones. And all the animals, from the capybara to the blue-tongued skink in the rain forest exhibit were obviously bored out of their little heads. But you always feel especially bad for the primates. We were watching the silverback gorillas watching us--there's a little baby called Kimani who was on her mama's back, and kept playing with herself. There were two women in VOLUNTEER shirts watching them, too, and chastising Kimani for touching herself and Mama for snatching food from right out of baby's mouth. But who are they to be chastising the gorillas?

The VOLUNTEERS didn't acknowledge us though we were only a couple feet away, and when I asked one of them what the wires that lined the display were, she was sort of snide about it. They're for containment! she snapped. Zap! Ouch.

This morning Itchy asked me which animal reminded me of him. None really. I mean, there weren't that many animals there in the first place, and none that resembled him overmuch in any respect. He reminded me that usually when someone asks a question of you what they really want is for you to ask them back, which is something I always forget. So I said, OK, which animal reminded you of me? And he was like, guess. Criminy, I don't know, the skink? He said, no, the baby gorilla. I'm like, eh? He's like, you've got the same kind of build. I don't see it myself, but I didn't pursue it. I'll take it as a compliment, somehow. I mean, Kimani was cute, for a gorilla. I used to have a lover by that name, by the way, who was even cuter than the baby gorilla.

Mama was not very charming, but Papa, above, was this philosophical type. He was thoughtful and kept to himself, contemplating the mysteries of his cramped little universe (or planning his escape). I mean, you have to feel for these poor creatures, particularly since their behavior, expressions and mannerisms seem strangely, sometimes uncomfortably familiar.

The Mandrills were not as sympathetic, but then they look less like us than the silverbacks, don't they? And as a rule of thumb, human beings seem less kindly disposed towards those who look less like themselves, and in more or less direct proportion to the resemblance or lack thereof. Plus, the Mandrill's are so pornographic. No concealed ovulation here. Can you imagine human society if our more modest females didn't have concealed ovulation? It boggles the mind to think how different everything would be if evolution had taken just a very slightly different turn.

On our way out, we talked about what changes might make the zoo a bigger draw. There's a lot of potential there. What they need to do is hire some big-name do-nothing CEO at an unnecessarily, outrageously exorbitant fee, and build a big, beautiful gift shop right at the entrance, with a Starbuck's in it, and quadruple the entrance fee. If it doesn't cost enough to get in middle class people won't feel like there's anything worth seeing inside. But if the cost of admission is outrageous even if all the animals are stuffed or made of papier-mache, they won't admit it. As long as there's something to buy in the gift shop, that is. And a Starbuck's.

Plus, feed the Goddam animals. Don't the Geneva Conventions apply here? You can't starve a prisoner. That lion was trying to roar--but it was kind of a pathetic sound he was making. Because he was too weak to really roar like a lion should roar. Itchy was like, that's how they get when you all you feed 'em's Alpo. And the gorillas. Those VOLUNTEERS tossed them a few carrot and celery slices. Mama Gorilla was eating the straw off the floor. I mean, come on.

Later in the evening we went to the early Christmas Eve service at Trinity Church. I had never been inside, but, to be truthful, while it was nice and all, it was nothing special. I knew almost as soon as we got there it was a mistake to have come. You got a bunch of white people in the pews who can't carry a tune and that Phantom of the Opera organ music. There were a couple of Midieval pieces--a cappella--that were lovely, but other than that everything, regardless of how glorious it was meant to be came out sounding like a funeral dirge.

The sermon was informative rather than persuasive, listing who Christ was born for. "If you're x,y, or z, then He was born for you." The point was obviously that He had been born for everyone, so that went on and on and on. It was an exhaustive inventory. There was one line I jotted down, because I liked it, and that was "He came to hallow being human." And that seems to me to be something quite practical a Messiah could do.

We left during communion to have margaritas at a steakhouse down the street. If they did the Last Supper today, they'd probably have it catered, with a fully-stocked cash bar, and I'm sure a couple of the disciples would order margaritas, so I felt totally justified. I wonder if they'd have had bloody marys? Judas probably. Peter would have had whatever The Lord was having. Such a brown-noser. I'm just surprised Christ couldn't see it.

Oh, but the part I most disliked about the mass was the greeting, or "The Peace" as it was called in the program, where you turn to your neighbor and say "The peace of the Lord be with you," and they say, "and also with you." I wasn't really feeling the love, if I'm to be a hundred percent honest about it. And anyway, I like doing things in my own time, and my own way. That's probably what I get my nose all bent out of joint over when it comes to church-going. It's always stand up! Sit down! stand up! On your knees! Say this! Say that! Stand up! Sing along! Sit down! Shut up! Now drop and gimme twenty! No wonder Christians are so friggin bossy. Monkey see, monkey do, right? I feel like screaming, hey! You're not the boss of me! But, you know, you go to church, you gotta know what you're getting into. I like the pomp and circumstance, but I can do without the audience participation. Next year I'll take in a concert instead. Bach or Handel, or something like that.

Like I said, we went to a steakhouse afterwards, had a lovely meal and got tanked. Woke up (a little hung-over, maybe) to a good, old-fashioned Christmas-morning shag, had brunch, napped the afternoon away, and made a bunch of phone calls in the evening, to relatives and friends. Got up to speed on all the gossip back home.

All in all, a very Merry Christmas.

Munich

2005-12-24T08:23:00.000-05:00

***SPOILER WARNING: Plot and ending details follow***

Went to see Munich last night with this friend of mine who's a real fidget. But he said there were three movies he was up for seeing: Brokeback Mountain, Syriana, or Munich. Not only had I already seen Brokeback Mountain (I wrote about it here, and here, in fact) but it's a long-enough film, and one in which nothing really happens (aside from a little sodomy in a pup tent *yawn* and that's in the first twenty minutes). Brokeback Mountain is a movie about deferred choices and sins of omission, more than anything. So the thought of seeing it a second time, especially so soon after having seen it the first time, much less with a fidget was...well, it was out of the question. Syriana, I have read, is a bit scattered and unfocused, as for plot, and very complicated--to the point of being indecipherable. It's been compared to Traffic. It probably would have been perfect for someone with Adult ADD, like my dear friend, but I was particularly interested in Munich for a number of reasons, so that's the one I chose.

I'll get to the movie itself momentarily. It clocks in at nearly three hours (about the same length as the new installment of the Harry Potter franchise), and while it's an emotionally complex film with a lot of action, it's still a tough one for a fidget not to fidget through. And since we saw it at Harvard Square in one of the smaller theaters upstairs, and he's a big, tall bloke, it was all the worse. He wasn't the only one. There were some students right behind us. One of them hit me in the head when he came in and took his seat, and didn't say "excuse me," or anything, and then proceeded to kick the back of my seat at fairly regular intervals throughout the film. But, you go to see a movie in a cramped little theater, and you get what you get.

There was also a bum two seats over and one row down, who was talking to himself. I say he was a bum because he had that peculiar smell--of stale beer and cigarettes, when they have infiltrated every atom of your being, when it's Bud, not blood running through your veins. He got up midway through the movie, and went out to have a smoke, I guess, and when he came back he missed his row, and sat down at the end of ours instead, right on top of somebody's coat! After a couple of minutes, the guy whose coat it was was like, "erm, excuse me, I think you're sitting on my coat." The bum was like, "ssssshhhhhh!" They got it straightened out eventually.

So after the movie (which I will talk about in greater detail in a minute, I swear) my friend and I went to have a beer and a bite to eat, and I said something about his fidgeting. First he denied it outright. Then it was like, "I didn't fidget that much." I mean, relative to what? Then, he struck back: "you're a film-snob!" he said. Because he fidgets, I'm a film snob? Partly this was a reaction to my admitting that when we go to movies (and we have seen many together), his fidgeting is a factor for me. I at least acknowledge the reality of his fidgeting, and opt for films that are as reasonably fidget-proof as films these days can be. He found that patronizing, apparently. I said, it was purely practical. He then told me I should not have said anything about it, at least not to his face. I shrugged. It's not like he doesn't know he fidgets. He can't not know, right? And personally I don't think there's anything wrong with factoring in fidgeting. The fidget factor is real, and why shouldn't we acknowledge it?

I don't know if I'm really such a film-snob. I suppose on the snobbery scale, where zero's, say, Look Who's Talking Now and ten's maybe Warhol's Empire, I'm probably a six. But the problem is everyone's film-snob index is different. If, for someone, Look Who's Talking Now is a ten, then what do you do? Not that that's the case here, mind you. But I'm afraid this incident has thrown our joint film-viewing future into doubt. No more Frog and Toad At the Movies. No more Itchy and Scratchy Out On the Town. The fidget and the film-snob. Hmph.

One thing I did that would have annoyed me if I were him (did you get that?) was three times during the film I leaned over and whispered something to him. About the film, of course. But you can be sure I was showing off my level-6 film-snobbery whenever I did. The first time, it was when Daniel Craig appeared, and I whispered "he's the new James Bond." He's not very suave in Munich, but he has an undeniable magnetism. Very sexy in a Steve McQueeny kind of way. I might actually go see a Bond film if he's playing Bond. Up to now, there's been no other Bond but Sean for me. Which is perfectly appropriate for a level-6 film-snob, don't you think?

The next two times I leaned over to whisper, "that's Budapest." I lived in Budapest for five years and many scenes in Munich that are supposed to take place in Paris were filmed there. I recognized Andrassy ut, a very--and very deliberately--Parisian grand boulevard in Pest--several scenes were filmed in front of the opera house there, and other scenes took place on Vecsey u. between Szabadsag ter and Vertanuk ter, right around the corner from the Parliament on one end, and the American Embassy on the other. You could see the Soviet monument at the end of the street (though the big gold Soviet star was missing), and the very distinctive Hungarian National TV (MTV) building in the background. That added levels to the film for me. And I could not contain myself. I felt I had to let my friend in on it.

He returned the favor, as for whispering, when the always, always scrumptilicious Mathieu Kassovitz is dispatched by a bomb in the last hour of the film. "Did he blow himself up?" My friend asked. Well, it seems so, but it was, as many things were in Munich, somewhat ambiguous. But I wasn't going to whisper all that. So I whispered back, "yes." On reflection, I do think it was a suicide, myself.

As for the film itself. It is the best, most mature Spielberg film I've ever seen. It was not flawless by any means, but it is as close to flawless as the director is ever likely to get. And it is a peculiarly, and powerfully Jewish film, too. Much more than the very-nearly vile Schindler's List, even, for which Spielberg felt he needed the goy intermediary of Schindler to bring the story of Shoah to a mass audience. There was no such intermediary here, although Eric Bana's Avner is never seen sporting a yarmulka or anything. More important, the story is the kind of dialectic Judaism fairly invented.

Spielberg has a penchant, like Oliver Stone, for clobbering his audience over the head repeatedly with whatever message he is trying to convey. He cannot be serious without getting all didactic. And I have felt that, like Stone, he thinks the gravity of the film, its seriousness, is related to its length. The longer a movie, the more serious it must be. But one of the most serious, emotionally and intellectually complex, and moving films I have ever seen is a little over ten minutes long (laugh if you like, but it's Yuri Norstein's Hedgehog in the Fog). One emotionally dense film that came out this year that gives us no less than four richly imagined and beautifully-acted characters and clocks in at a measely hour and 28 minutes is The Squid and the Whale. The strange alchemy of film pays no head to ordinary time. We can watch a four-hour epic and have no feeling whatsoever for any of the characters in it (Alexander, anyone? Or how about Troy?) or we can develop a deep attachment to characters in, like I said, a ten minute short. That is the mystery and magic of film.

But while Munich is occasionally too something--or too everything--thanks in part, I think, to the coupling of screenwriters Tony Kushner of Angels in America fame and Eric Roth of Forrest Gump, its characters are real-enough, richly-enough acted by an indisputably incredible cast, that we do come to care for them, which is the absolute minimum requirement of a film, if the director expects you to spend three hours of your life watching it.

The Forrest Gump aspects of the film are the characters themselves, who are touchingly human. Eric Bana's Avner is the undisputed protaganist, but he is not the moral center of the film. He is the Everyman who never reaches a conclusion, who never articulates his moral quandery, and is still conflicted at the end. The Moral center of the film is Mathieu Kassovitz's at once Gump-like and supremely Speilbergian bomb-maker. He is mercifully underplayed by Kassovitz. his character risks becoming precious, but blows himself to bits before he does. He could have ended up a speechifying caricature, but Spielberg, showing what must have been superhuman restraint, allows him only a few short lines that provide the only unequivocal expression of a moral conscience in the film. It is a beautiful, urgent scene (that was filmed, I think, in Eiffel's Nyugati train Station in Budapest), and it comes off as utterly human. Avner is never able to articulate a moral argument for or against what he is doing, but he pays an enormous price, emotionally for doing it.

The Kushner bits of the film seem to me to be structural. I found Angels in America affecting at times but also affected in the extreme, which fit the subject matter, although the last forty-five minutes of the HBO miniseries were overbearing (not to mention interminable). Here the bits I'm willing to bet Kushner had more of a hand in come off as contrived, and take us out of the narrative in order to force a point. The jarring flashbacks--or "imaginings"--of the scene in Munich by Avner at key points in the film remind us that this is an exercise. I think if Spielberg had foregone flashbacks and left the chronology intact, it could have been as powerful a film, if not more powerful than it was. The final "flashback," that takes place as a shell-shocked Avner is fucking his wife, approached the ridiculous on every conceivable level.

There were lots of typically Spielbergian touches, and there were a couple of Schindler moments. The dialogue between Avner and the PLO operative about the importance of having a home is mirrored near the drawn-out denouement of the film (drawn-out denouements are also a Spielberg specialty) when Avner's mother says basically the same thing. The scenario that allowed for the first soliloquy demanded suspension of disbelief in the extreme, but was apparently the only way Spielberg could humanize the Palestinian perspective.

Which brings up the issue of "equivalence" that some critics are so up in arms about. The idea is that showing the Palestinian side is tantamount to excusing the crimes and condoning the methods of groups like Black September. I don't think Spielberg ever reaches "equivalence" in Munich. What he seems more interested in exploring, in the character of Avner, is not anything to do with "equivalence," but more with the extent to which, as Lynn Cohen's Golda Meir says, a nation or people is forced to compromise its highest values, and the implications (both personal and political) of such a compromise for those who are forced by circumstances to make it.

Spielberg makes it perfectly obvious that he is speaking not only to Israelis here, and not only about Munich, but to Americans after 9/11. The very last shot of the film frames Lower Manhattan with the Twin Towers center-screen.

You too can be a super-sized Superman!

2005-12-23T07:46:00.000-05:00

I was talking to a friend of mine about the upcoming Superman Returns, and he said he'd heard that actor Brandon Routh's tool was so monstrously huge Warner Bros. demanded it be digitally minimized. You can see where the rumor started here.

Until it appears in the New York Times or The Christian Science Monitor, I refuse to believe it. And anyway, anybody flitting around in his spandex underwear is going to have a more or less obscene bulge, or two or three. That's just the nature of comic book superherodom. And no disrespect to Brandon Routh, who I'm sure is nice enough, and well-enough hung and all, but I think it's a PR thing. Advance buzz. Warner Bros. leaks some silly manufactured rumor about their new horse-hung superhero, and word spreads, you know? I heard it's positively elephantine! Let's go see it at the IMAX theater!

I'm giving away trade secrets here, but you can thank me later. For the fellas who want to look supersized in spandex, here's a tip: IT'S ALL IN THE BALLS, boys. You can actually buy underwear and swimsuits specially designed with the patented "sling support system" to "give your boys a lift," and enhance your package (see handy diagram at left). It's kind of like a push-up bra, but only lifts, doesn't separate (ouch!), thank goodness. Don't ask me how I know this, by the way. I have this friend, you know, who has a complex...

Anyway, if you're on a budget, a cheaper solution is a cock ring, and the advantage is you can then mix and match it with any old ratty pair of briefs you've got laying around in your filthy flat.

In my opinion, too big a bulge is a bit of an embarrassment. Better to be discreet, and then when you whip it out, watch their jaws drop. Most everybody knows the size of a flaccid thingy has little to do with how it is when fully inflated. There are showers and there are growers.

But there's a bigger issue here. In our phallocentric culture isn't it about time balls got their due? The testicles do all the hard work, but the phallus gets all the glory. Doesn't seem fair. And speaking of glorious phalluses, the truth is when you're dealing with a man's manhood you need to make a distinction. Consulting Jung here can be instructive.

In Modern Man in Search of His Soul, he bashes Freud on the issue of signs and symbols. He says, "It’s well known that the Freudian school operates with hard and fast sexual ‘symbols’; but these are just what I should call signs, for they are made to stand for sexuality, and this is supposed to be something definitive. As a matter of fact, Freud’s concept of sexuality is thoroughly elastic, and so vague that it can be made to include almost anything." To prove the point, he uses everybody’s favorite psychoanalytical body part:

"Take, for instance, the so-called phallic symbols, which are supposed to stand for the membrum virile and nothing more. Psychologically speaking, the membrum is itself…a symbolic image whose wider content cannot easily be determined. As was customary throughout antiquity, primitive people today make free use of phallic symbols, yet it never occurs to them to confuse the phallus, as a ritualistic symbol, with the penis. They always take the phallus to mean the creative mana, the power of healing and fertility, ‘that which is unusually potent’. Its [mana’s] equivalents in mythology and in dreams are the bull, the ass, the pomegranate, the yoni, the he-goat, lightning, the horse’s hoof, the dance, the magical cohabitation in the furrow, and the menstrual fluid, to mention only a few of many. That which underlies all of these images—and sexuality itself—is an archetypal content that is hard to grasp, and that finds its best psychological expression in the primitive mana symbol."

Are you getting what I'm getting at here? "It never occurs to them to confuse the phallus, as a ritualistic symbol, with the penis." The way it stands, a big bulge of saggy, flaccid bits is just a penis and testes in a wrinkly old fleshsack. Flaccid, it's really not good for much, sexually (or symbolically) speaking. By showing off your big gooey, flaccid wad, you say nothing about your potency, which is presumably the point of showing it off. For that, you'd do better to buy the "balls-in-one briefs" here, top left. It arranges your bits in a more traditional cock-n-balls configuration, as you can see. Much better than the Sleepy-time for Mr. Pee-pee briefs above. Since antiquity "ye olde cock-n-balls"--standing proud--has conveyed the message: "hic habitat felicita": here lies happiness! I mean, if you go to the ancient city of Pompeii, you'll see it (bottom left) perfectly preserved on almost every corner, in the pavement, on the houses, everywhere. With the cock-n-balls, you get the best of both worlds. Sure, the phallus still gets top billing, but the testicles are respectably represented. They cannot, at any rate, be denied.

You won't see a flaccid peter anywhere in Pompeii, by the way. And that's because flaccid, it's just a penis, boys. But standing proud, it's so much more: it's a phallus. Penises are purely functional (and their function is not glamorous--they funnel liquid waste out of the body), but phalluses are invested with symbolic, even magical qualities: from them comes life, happiness, mana. When you're sporting that superwoody, it's not just any old thing, either; it's transformed, as if by magic, into the ur-phallus. Just as when the pope puts on his miter, he is no longer just any old pope. He is THE Pope. It is a kind of sexual transubstantiation (the phallus thing, not the pope thing).

Now, as I was saying, you wouldn't know it by looking at the proliferation of phallic monuments, and our generally phallocentric culture, but balls are the big thing, just like the song by AC/DC says. When people want to say somebody's got character, or courage, what do they say? "He's got balls." What do they say when they want to put you down? "Don't be such a dick," or "what a dickhead."

Testicles are obviously the unsung heroes of the reproductive process. Why isn't our culture more testiculocentric, then? Well, one problem is, how to represent testiculocentricity? Can you imagine The Washington Monument with two big gold domes at the base? We'd find it too vulgar, because while testicles do all the hard work, they just aren't anywhere near as glamorous or photogenic as the phallus at full-sproing.

And to add injury to insult, they're left out in the cold on the doormat while the phallus is invited in to the warm, cozy womb! And that's really the key to their lowly status. As much as we pay lip service to testicles, you've got to admit they're not worth much all by themselves. The same cannot be said of the phallus. Even castrati, even eunuchs, can still get it up, so long as their castration was post-pubertal. So maybe balls deserve their second-class citizen status after all.

The phallus is the thing, evolutionarily speaking, as Dr. Jared Diamond has pointed out (I've talked about it here). The female of the species seems to think size does indeed matter. In fact, as a species we are putting inordinate biological resources into pumping up penis-size. It is a case, as Dr. Jared suggests, of runaway selection. But it's really the ladies who are in charge of that whole process. So it's not men who are necessarily to blame for all those phallic monuments. It's because that's the bit of the apparatus that delivers the goods (in so many ways) that it is a potent symbol for both genders.

Doesn't change the fact though, that it's the balls that make the wad. You can't walk around with a woody all day. Big balls are what women see when you're stuffed into those Levi's, or that the boys are sneaking peeks at when you're prancing around on the beach in your thong (don't pretend you didn't know you'd "wandered" onto the gay beach, either). Whether your rod matches the expectations generated by your wad, only she (whether she's a she or a he, or a he-she or a she-he) knows.

Ah, the phallic fallacy. Will balls ever get their proper due? I say, buy yourself a pair of those balls-out briefs and wear them proudly. And to Warner Bros. I say, don't touch Superman's wad! Think of Lois and Jimmy!

keeping the Christ in Christmas and the id in I.D.

2005-12-22T08:23:00.000-05:00

Common sense has prevailed in a rare, refreshingly candid refutation of Intelligent Design as a scientific theory. The media has handled the ID snake oil salesmen with kid gloves up to now, lest they fall victim to a bias toward reality-based, erm, reality. Proponents of ID have been taunting sensible folks, testing our tolerance for nonsense, and it was way past time for a serious smack-down. ID does not belong in science class, period. Maybe in sociology class, in the chapter on the madness of crowds. Or in psychology texts, under "denial" or "delusion" or (I'll get to this in a minute) "impotence/omnipotence" or "victim complex."

The relevant question all along has been something like: how does mention of ID in science class, or anything about ID itself help the nation's children prepare themselves for a world and a competitive market that both require knowledge and daily application of scientific inquiry? What does saying that cellular communication is too complicated to figure out, so it must have been invented by God, do to promote the kind of critical thinking needed to master the modern milieu? Nothing.

Believe in God to your little heart's content. Most scientists do. No one is suggesting such belief be banned or punishable by death. There is no Atheistic-Evolutionist cabal dreaming up a Holy Inquisition. No one is out to get you. There is no War on Christmas. Santa is safe. Isn't all this hysteria getting a little, I don't know, repetitive?

Once and for all: belief in the theory of Evolution does not conflict in any way with belief in God. What it conflicts with is the literal reading of the Biblical account of creation in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. That's what's at stake. Whether we will pay tribute to the literal reading of the Biblical account of creation in the Old Testament Book of Genesis in science classrooms or not. Period. This is a fringe Fundamentalist crusade, not a Christian one. Most sensible Christian people want to give their children the tools to succeed in the world. As for PR, all I have to say to the fundamentalists out there is: you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

As for shoving creationism down captive children's throats in science class. It's not a good time for it. Studies have shown that Americans have fallen way behind in the sciences. Here we are a society that takes advantage, to an unparalleled degree, of the amenities scientific research and development have produced, saying science and the scientific method are either at best, unimportant, or at worst utter nonsense. It's the height of decadence, is what it is. I mean, we're certainly not falling behind in consuming products that the scientific method alone has made possible.

We are Christian consumers, marching righteously to the Mall of America! We don't really understand where technology comes from, but that's OK, as long as we've got lots of it to amuse and entertain us! God will provide! God gave us X-Box, after all! 'Lectricity? Oh, that comes from Heaven. We flip this here switch, see, and an angel flies up to Heaven and asks God real nicely to turn on the lights, and when God says OK, the angel comes back real quick-like, and turns 'em on. Cell-phones? Why God invented them, too, of course. I couldn't never understand how to make one myself, so he must have!

That's about the level of intelligence you need to subscribe to Intelligent Design.

It's obviously not about promoting intelligence in our children, or encouraging them to pursue lines of rational inquiry or to think critically about the way things are and how to make them better, all of which science does. That's the thing. Science is optimistic. The religious mountebanks who are peddling ID are end-timers. They don't believe in this world, or in their own children's future, much less yours.

When you look at how the proponents of ID have reacted to this week's court decision barring it from mention in science classrooms, you get a sense of what ID is really about. It's not science, it's psychology.

There was an op-ed piece in yesterday's USA Today by John G. West, an associate director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture (which is basically a legitimate-sounding front for the ID political agenda). West, typically disingenuous, insists that ID is "not a religious-based idea, but instead an evidence-based scientific theory that holds there are certain features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by an intelligent cause." In other words, it doesn't have to be God who "digitally encoded" our DNA, it could have been space aliens, or, heck, why not the devil? This is the blabadee-bla part of ID and is of little consequence, since it ponders the unknowable to no purpose.

He goes on (ingeniously applying the old "I'm-rubber-you're-glue" defense): "Evolutionists used to style themselves the champions of free speech and academic freedom against unthinking dogmatism. But increasingly, they have become the new dogmatists, demanding judicially-imposed censorship of dissent." This is a bit of sophistry, attempting to equate science and religion, when they are apples and oranges. What makes science is its method. How that method is applied, or what that method reveals may have implications for religion, somehow, but the two are different realms of inquiry, entirely.

And he goes further, succinctly stating the appeal of the ID movement to those in it: "Now, Darwinists are trying to silence debate through persecution." This is essentially the same thing Falwell's fundies are saying when they insist there's a war on Christmas, or Christianity in our culture: we are the real victims. The battle for ID in the schools is a battle to claim supreme victim status. Here you're spewing nonsense and trying to force it down everybody's throat, and when they finally say, "all right, that's enough," you cry victim. It's a little childish, isn't it?

I mean, here we have cries of victimization from those who would have forced teachers to capitulate to their dogma, just as the Pope forced Galileo to. The mandated mention of ID in science class was not about truth, or advancing our children's education so that they could succeed in the real, not some faith-based fantasy world; it was about power. And now that they have been rebuked, the victimizers are claiming victimization. Seriously though, can you say "cry for help"? But it's so boring. They're so, so boring.

I suspect that if we ignored them they would go away. There aren't nearly as many of them as their disproportionate mention in the media would suggest. Let's try it.

Or here's another solution: if you're one of these people, speak up, and we'll set up a little reserve for you all, where you can go and have your way and do as you like (I warn you: it won't be as much fun since you won't be able to impose it on anybody else). You can go and live just the way Adam and Eve did in the Bible story, since that's how God created you. That means, no cars, TVs or cell phones, because that's science. Good riddance, and God bless!

here's to another 86 years!

2005-12-21T18:53:00.000-05:00

Good for Johnny Damon! The Sox are all set to launch another 86-year losing streak. They couldn't handle victory, could they?

Now Sox fanatics, a legendarily whiny bunch, are--what else?--whining that Johnny's a greedy pig and a turncoat to boot, but why shouldn't he get what he's worth on the market? Because a bunch of schlubs have their hopes and dreams pinned to their Sox? Newsflash, bitches: YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. That's something the Yankees know that the original yankees further North have apparently forgotten.

Bostonians aren't the most charming lot, but they apparently think they possess something that should inspire loyalty. I got news for y'all. Johnny can get admiration, adulation, adoration, and all the rest Sox fans have to offer in New York. You want to show your appreciation, put your money where your mouth is. This is America, not Soviet Russia. People work for money here, remember?

"In bed with the enemy," Dan Shaughnessy wrote of Damon in the Globe. But the Sox are, and always have been, their own worst enemy. They win one World Series in 86 years, and then set about with great fury to figure out exactly how to lose them for the next 86. I for one BELIEVE they'll do it.