Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Andy Hallett Dies
Thirty-three is too young. Andy played Lorne, the green singing demon with a heart of gold on Angel. He died after a five-year battle with heart disease.
I feel so badly for his family and friends. The news report says his dad was with him when he died. It's just not the natural order of things for parents to bury their children.
Rest in peace, Andy.
via Whedonesque
Monday, March 30, 2009
Monday Movie Review: The Hunger
The Hunger (1983) 7/10
Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and John (David Bowie) are ancient vampires living in modern (1983) Manhattan. Although Miriam is immortal, John begins to age after hundreds of years of youth. Then they discover Sarah (Susan Sarandon), a doctor researching the cause of aging. Directed by Tony Scott.
I know I saw this movie in the theater. I remember being in a theater in 1983 or 1984 (might have been second run) and seeing this, and yet I remembered nothing about it except finding it confusing.
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It is confusing, no doubt about that. The stylized use of inter-cutting is dizzying, and the mechanics of the plot are left largely to the imagination. And yet, and yet, and yet...The Hunger is something like an encapsulation of everything that fascinates about vampirism. It is sexy, artsy, and dark. It lavishly favors style over substance, and makes that a virtue. In fact, where The Hunger is weakest is in trying so hard to have a plot at all. It works best as a visual and sensory trip outside the confines of what-the-hell-is-this-anyway.
It's kind of ahead of its time, really. It was before Michelle Belanger. It was not before Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire was published in 1976), but certainly before she was her own cottage industry. Yet here is The Hunger, showing a connection between vampires and a dark nightclub scene that would later morph into Goth. Miriam and John go out, listen to Bauhaus, dance with New Wavers dressed all in black, go home with two of them, have sex with them, and eat them. That there is nudity is absolutely right; this is absorption is the sensual experience.
...and depending on your tastes, you may hate this movie. Because there is all this artsy inter-cutting, and there is this stupidly obtuse plot, and a lot of veils, a lot of gauze, and crumbly corpses. This is definitely a matter of taste.
The movie mostly stumbles in showing Sarah's side of things; her age laboratory is thinly drawn—a bunch of white coats and monkeys—and I could have done with less lab and more Miriam and John. But one scene, in which John visits Sarah's facility, is perhaps the best and most haunting the film has to offer.
Plus there's the sex. Because it's definitely true that any movie in which Catherine Deneuve has naked encounters with both David Bowie and Susan Sarandon is worth seeing.
(Would you offer your cross-post to the wolf with the red roses?)
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Delusional
Shorter actual Andrew Klavan:
The mainstream media (a.k.a. the Matrix) don't want you to listen to Limbaugh because they're afraid he'll wake you up and set you free of their worldview. You don't want to listen to him because you're afraid of the same thing.Limbaugh is an ineffective spokesman for the Republicans because he makes no effort to persuade; he simply assumes that what he says is so self-evidently true that anyone listening will be persuaded. As Klavan illustrates, that's how Republicans in general feel about their ideology--and that feeling stands in the way of any serious attempt to expand the party.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
It Takes a Thief
Shorter David Broder: "Only Republicans can save Democrats from acting like Republicans."
Friday, March 27, 2009
The Road to Republican Recovery
Not everyone is laughing at the Republican not-really-a-budget (which might as well have been written by not-really-Joe the not-really-a-plumber). Jennifer Rubin, for example, thinks it's just swell:
While they have yet to spell out exact figures or provide the comprehensive budget itself, the “Republican Road to Recovery” does preview their plan and goes some distance toward shooting down the Democrats’ spin that Republicans have “no ideas.”Ideas? How about this one: "Limits the Federal Budget from Growing Faster than Family Budgets"--a task the Republicans have made more difficult in recent years by making sure family budgets don't grow at all. Really, how can they say Republicans have no ideas?
Of course, when you look at the
That might seem...what is the word...crazy, but it really isn't. To understand this plan, or plan-to-have-a-plan, you just have to reorder the words in the title: the 'recovery' they're after isn't ours, it's theirs. Let's say it passes, unemployment shoots up to 25%, and the whole financial system collapses. Step 3: Republican profit!!!
In other words, this document amounts to an acknowledgment that they're pinning their hopes on catastrophe. Everything they say or do has to be understood in the light of that reality.
Friday Random Ten
Savage Republic - Ivory Coast
RZA - Samurai Showdown
Befores - Hishizora-No-Drive
Jam - This Is the Modern World
Stan Ridgway - I Wanna Be a Boss
Ayalew Mesfin - Hasabe
Eddie Angel - Deuces Wild
Dengue Fever - Hold My Hips
Young Marble Giants - Searching for Mr. Right
Essential Logic - The Order Form
I think this qualifies as 'eclectic'. What are y'all listening to today?
This week's below-the-fold video goes topical, with a song about executive compensation...
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Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Wednesday Wildflowerblogging
Coastal Morning Glory (Calystegia purpurata) along the Miwok Trail, Marin Headlands.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Edge of the World
Mt. Diablo from the Sunrise Trail, Briones Regional Park. This is our green season; in another month or two this will all have dried to golden brown.
If you look very closely, you can see a little bit of snow on Diablo, just to the left of the peak.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Monday Movie Review: Things We Lost in the Fire
Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) 7/10
Audrey (Halle Berry) and Brian (David Duchovny) are happily married, but fight over Brian's friend Jerry (Benicio del Toro). Jerry is a drug addict whom Audrey distrusts, but Brian insists on helping. When Brian is killed, Jerry and Audrey need each other's help to mourn.
Things We Lost in the Fire is a beautiful movie, in that it is gorgeously filmed, and that it is about its characters, and doesn't go for easy answers. The thing that is most remarkable about the script here is that Jerry and Audrey are individuals, they are not "the widow" and "the junkie," and I think ninety percent of writers who attempted this script would make them exactly that.
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On the down side, it's also a very self-conscious movie. For every exquisite shot, there's a look-at-me-I'm-exquisite shot. And while these look-at-me shots are genuinely beautiful, waving at the camera detracts from the story.
The same could be said for the script, with writing that occasionally underlines that the story will not play out in a conventional way. There is one conversation, between Jerry and one of the Burke children, that is more or less, "I want this story to follow conventional movie arcs." "But it won't." And it was smartly written, make no mistake, but a little obvious.
And yet, I am so touched by the vulnerability of these people. Audrey, who is wealthy and apparently competent, and strong and smart, all these things, and yet broken, and not broken because her husband died, but broken because she's a human being with parts that break, those parts we all have, and losing her husband removed all the veneer from the brokenness. Berry is at her best in these vulnerable roles. Give her a superhero or someone street smart to play and she's flat and relies on her beauty and a certain snappiness, but give her some pain and some weakness and she sinks deep into her huge round eyes and digs in. This is her best work since Monster's Ball.
Del Toro, on the other hand, really isn't an uneven actor. He's always this good. And Duchovny? I have no idea why he gets as much work as he does, but he doesn't detract.
The pacing is slow, sometimes glacial, but it works. This isn't an action movie, it's a story of healing, and of not healing, and it's lovely.
(Things we lost in the cross-post)
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Sunday Sierrablogging
Looking down on Lake 10,200 from the north side of the LeConte Divide, John Muir Wilderness.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Why Stop with the Tarp Bonus Babies?
The funniest thing about all the hysteria about HR 1586 is that its really just too narrow to be of any use. After all, if the House and the Senate had just agreed to pass a tax of 90 percent on everything *anyone* makes in income and bonuses over, say, 250,000 dollars a year wouldn't that just be *a damned good start* on raising the taxes on the top marginal bracket like we've all wanted Obama to be able to do?
aimai
Friday, March 20, 2009
Friday Random Ten
Brian Jonestown Massacre - (David Bowie I Love You) Since I Was Six
June Brides - In the Rain
David Bowie - Red Money
Nick Cave - Ain't Gonna Rain Anymore
Tunji Oyelana & the Benders - Ifa
Stan Ridgway - Ring of Fire
Budos Band - Budos Rising
Billie Holiday - Gloomy Sunday
Young Marble Giants - Salad Days
Divinyls - If Love Was a Gun
What are y'all listening to this morning? Bonus vid below the fold...
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9/11 Changed Everything
Even, according to Peggy Noonan, the presidential administration presiding on 9/11:
...The Bush administration made a great point of saying, when they were explaining what U.S. intelligence is up against, that the challenges are constant and we only have to be wrong once, fail once, for the consequences to be deeply painful. What the Bush administration was doing, in part, was admitting that they might be in charge when something happened....September 11? Osama? Jet planes? Bygones. The GOP takes a mulligan, thankyouverymuch. Which is another case that nobody but nobody could have predicted...
In Memoriam Natasha Richardson and Terri Schiavo
In all the craziness of our new failing economy, and the bonuses, and the taxing of the bonuses, I want to take a moment to remember Natasha Richardson and Terri Schiavo. Because their tragic deaths ought to remind us of how much has changed in our country since the election. Natasha Richardson's death touched me, horribly, because it seems that she died the same way my niece Natasha died five years ago at age nine. Bleeding on the brain or brain stem is quite a common way for people to die, or to become paralyzed (there was a diary about this up at Kos from a diarist whose son remains paralyzed from the nose down *to this day* from undiagnosed bleeding on the brain.) But my personal grief, and my respect for her family, would have made me shy away from commenting on her death except for this one fact: her family was allowed to let her go without the interference of an out of control cabal of right wing Senators, Congressmen, Administrative Hacks and gibbering lunatics. Perhaps if the situation had dragged on a bit longer we would have seen the streets filled with hysterical white teens with their mouths taped up, or ranting old testament hucksters looking for a hand out, or even Bill Frist rising from his crypt to examine footage of Ms. Richardson in The Parent Trap to proclaim her "perfectly fine." But instead this poor woman and her family were left alone to make the hard decisions that families, and families alone, can make. In the midst of the horror and the sorrow we have much, as a country, for which to be thankful.
aimai
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Important information on how to watch a movie
This weekend, I met my son's girlfriend. But wait, that's not the information. This sophisticated young lady, who has taken film history classes, had never seen Four Weddings and a Funeral. So that's what we did. We laughed, we cried, we bitched about Andie MacDowell.
So I taught her my trick. Here's how it works: You take Four Weddings and a Funeral, and you stand it next to Notting Hill. Then you squint really hard.
The result is Four Weddings and a Funeral, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. The perfect movie.
57 layer interdimensional Chess My Ass
Look, much as I love the big guy I think its time we admitted that he, Geithner, and Summers are not, in fact, playing Romulan interdimensional Chess here. Unless the big sleight of hand was to use Geithner and Summers to so destroy the reputation of Capitalism and of Wall Street that he can fire both of them and nominate Paul Krugman and the Ghost of Karl Marx to run the economy and have them breeze through the committees and seize control of the helm of the new socialist economy. And I suspect that is not what is going to happen.
aimai
OK, Susie Madrak's take on the Budget and Steve Benen's on "The Pivot" gives me a little hope that Obama is going to make a go of it, even without the ghost of Karl and the presence of Paul.
Wednesday Wildflowerblogging
Common Large Monkeyflower (Mimulus guttatus) along the Sweeney Ridge Trail in San Mateo County.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Comparative Stupidity
So when the WaPo assigns Ceci Connolly to write about comparative effectiveness, you have a feeling it's going to be a train wreck.
You might guess that the very first quote in the article would be from Betsy McCaughey, whose employer pays her to lie about healthcare.
You might even guess that McCaughey's quote would say comparative effectiveness "treats health care the way European governments do", and "limit[s] growth and innovation". And you would be right.
But there's one thing you probably wouldn't have guessed: that Connolly would say something like "[comparative effectiveness] is even gaining cache with the public." (So, um, who's hiding what? where? huh?)
Ceci Connolly: when she's done enough violence to the facts, she goes and slaughters the language.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Monday Movie Review: The Watchmen
Watchmen (2009) 6/10
In an alternative timeline, it is 1985. Richard Nixon is in the fifth term of his presidency, the world is at the brink of nuclear war, and masked heroes have been made illegal. Most heroes retired, but Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) has refused, and continues to function as a vigilante. When The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is killed, Rorschach suspects that someone may be going after "masks;" his efforts to contact other retired heroes sets off a chain of events. Directed by Zack Snyder.
Full disclosure: I've read the graphic novel Watchmen maybe four times. Maybe five. I can't review the movie as-is, I can't un-read the novel I've read, or remove the knowledge of it from my brain. I'm not one of those geeked-out people who can't abide any deviation from the original: Movies are their own medium, and slavish recreations of books in movie form tend to be soulless and flat. Nonetheless, there's no way to refrain from comparison, and I won't try.
It's possible that Zack Snyder wanted to make a unique movie, using the graphic novel as a jumping-off point, sort of Hitchcock to DuMaurier, but that doesn't explain his absolute visual commitment to the original, down to specific frames, which makes every change seem deliberate and glaring.
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The visual styles, despite this commitment, are very different. Snyder is a slick, pretty storyteller with a lot of whiz-bang. Moore's story and Gibbons' illustrations are gritty and hyper-realistic. In the book, the costumes look (as costumes will) a little goofy, and that's part of the point. In the movie they look gorgeous.
The original is a deeply violent and unsettling work. The film ups the ante on all the violence. In a film struggling to fit in a complex story, where a lot had to be cut out, you have to wonder why every fight is so extended, why the camera lingers (as the comic did not) on dripping gore in scene after scene. I think it's counter-productive, for example, for Rorschach to tell his "origin" story, which is horrifically violent, after so much film violence that (a) Snyder has to make it even more violent, and (b) its impact is reduced after an hour of numbing horror.
The fights are more "super" as well. A scene where Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre II (Malin Ackerman) are are attacked by, and defeat, four gang members, becomes a scene where they defeat, nay decimate, about a dozen. The filmmakers forgot that these are ordinary people, not mutants or aliens.
You can look at it, as I said, as a different animal. Snyder wanted to make a super-cool movie about ultra-violent costumed heroes who kick ass and hang it on a Watchmen frame. I'm not into that movie. The book had a point; lots of points, about why it is that someone might become a "hero," and what that might mean about them. That there is no such thing as a hero and even if there were, it wouldn't help. If they can kick ass and then happily flex, that meaning is lost.
I'm reminded a little of The Right Stuff (bear with me, here). I was a big fan of that book. When news of the film production first appeared, it was said the entire opening third, about test pilots, was going to be ditched, and only the astronauts' story would be told. But the meaning of the astronauts in the book is built on the foundation of their predecessors, the test pilots.
Likewise, the meaning of the 1985 Watchmen is built on the foundation of their 1940s predecessors, the Minutemen. We see them in an opening flashback montage, and two of them are main characters: The Comedian and Silk Spectre (Carla Gugino), but we never really get to know them. Silk Spectre in particular is utterly dumbed down.
Both Sally, the original Silk Spectre, and Laurie, her daughter, are stupider and less interesting in the film, and there is something vaguely misogynist about the whole thing. There's an extremely touchy and important scene, involving an attempted rape, which I want to address as a separate post. Suffice it to say it is problematic in both the book and the movie, but the movie is way worse in terms of things like misogyny and rape apology.
The acting is very uneven. Malin Ackerman is flat out awful, and Jackie Earle Halley is stunning. Jeffery Dean Morgan proves he's more than a sexy ghost. Billy Crudup has the hardest job, playing a man transformed into something inhuman, losing touch with his humanity. He has to be absolutely cold while still showing glimmers of confusion and grief. Crudup nails it in the one role I thought would be impossible to play. Matthew Goode, meanwhile, has an apparently more straightforward character, but he doesn't have the heart for it.
The soundtrack was utterly awful. I mean bad. Clichéd to the point of being like a high school kid's basement project. Ride of the Valkyries, 99 Luftballoons, Sounds of Silence: Really? Really??? And the orchestral soundtrack was even worse, overblown and self-important.
You may have heard the ending was changed from the novel, and here is where Change Is Good. It was smart to change the ending, it was done with integrity, and it worked.
There are a lot of great, thoughtful reviews of Watchmen out there. This is perhaps my favorite so far. Snyder hits us over the head with loud crashes, slo-mo revolving camera actions shots, and accentuated violence, most of which was unnecessary. There is violence in the graphic novel, of course, and it does play an important role, but it is more concerned with the philosophy and psychology of violence rather than showing guts splattered against the ceiling. There does need to be some visualization of the violence in order for it to have an impact within the film, but I feel like Snyder stepped over the line in order to satisfy some sort of fetishistic fascination with gore. The raw, organic images of graphic violence also don't seem to fit in the slick, distanced world Snyder created -- it always feels a little forced, never a natural occurence [sic] within a convincingly-created world.
This one too:Not since John Woo has this much mo been slowed. Run it all at full speed, and this is a 90 minute film.
I actually think the slo-mo is part of Snyder's obsessive and unfortunate commitment to portraying specific frames of the comic book. When the slo-mo briefly stops, I feel like I'm looking at a panel in a comic. And what's the point of that, really? I've already read the comic, I'm here to see a movie.
So again I'm back to, why make this movie? Because you think it's cool and the material is available to be filmed? That's so sad.
(Who watches the cross-post?)
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Sunday Sierrablogging
"Iceridge Lake", an unnamed lake between Ridge Lake and Iceland Lake in Emigrant Wilderness.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
NRSCC Calling!
I just got a personal call--meaning a live person called me--from the NRSCC (National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee or something). I was so dumbfounded that they called me, a registered Democrat living in the bluest ward of the bluest city in the bluest *&^%$ state that I took the call just to hear what they wanted. Well, they just wanted to ask me one simple question, ma'am "Do you believe that wasteful spending and bailouts will help the economy?" Well, I certainly did! Slight pause and then, very politely, the gentleman said carefully "Well, I can certainly understand your perspective, ma'am, now just wait one minute for a little message" and then he got off the phone. That's all they've got? Seriously? And they are down to peddling this shit to people like me?
aimai
Friday, March 13, 2009
Friday Random Ten
Colin Newman - Order for Order
Electric Guitars - Continental Shelf
Shriekback - Devil's Onions
Shonen Knife - Faith Healer
Negativland - Christianity Is Stupid
Ghedu Blay Ambolley - This Hustling World
Sonic Youth - Superstar
Ofo & the Black Company - Allah Wakbarr
Slits - Heard it Through the Grapevine
David Bowie - Stay
Two classics of '70s Afro-Funk, two semi-obscure post-punk tunes, three great covers, and one great slice of absurdist brilliance. What are you playing this morning?
Bonus video below the fold. More...
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Going Galt: The Rapture for Libertarians
Read this galty goodness from Hilzoy:
And tell me if you don't think that Going Galt isn't The Rapture for Selfish People? Not only because it contains the fantasy that millions of people just like your imagined perfect self have dissapeared from polite society but also because all your focus seems to be not on their new life--in Heaven or in Galt's Gulch--but on how sorry all the motherf*&^% losers you left behind are. The bible of the Rapturists, The Left Behind series explicitly makes the case that the only interesting thing left is to see how the people who *didn't* get raptured live out their desperate little lives after Jesus has left the building. Call it displacement or projection but the reader--or the viewer of blogginheads in this case--is meant to be in the position of a potentially saved person who learns the awful fate of those who refuse to be saved. Its a cautionary tale. If heaven could sell itself we'd have a 27 part novel about that. But it can't because the individual is, apparently, more motivated by spite and a desire to see his neighbor suffer than he is by hope of a pleasant eternity with g-d.That's not what Rand meant by Going Galt at all. In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt decides to withdraw his creative and productive efforts from society. He is going on strike, and he convinces other creative, productive people to follow him. Here's what happens when someone Goes Galt in Rand's novel:"He's quit! Gone! Gone like all the others! Left his mills, his bank accounts, his property, everything! Just vanished! Took some clothing and whatever he had in the safe in his apartment–they found a safe left open in his bedroom, open and empty–that's all! No word, no note, no explanation! They called me from Washington, but it's all over town! The news, I mean, the story! They can't keep it quiet! They've tried to, but...Nobody knows how it got out, but it went through the mills like one of those furnace break-outs, the word that he'd gone, and then...before anyone could stop it, a whole bunch of them vanished! The superintendent, the chief metallurgist, the chief engineer, Rearden's secretary, even the bastards! Deserting us, in spite of all the penalties we've set up! He's quit and the rest are quitting and those mills are just left there, standing still! Do you understand what that means?"
In the same way the would be Galtians real fantasy porn isn't what they'll do with all their freedom from the clinging masses but how without Megan McCardle's prose or Dr. Helen's psycho-therapy millions will burn and die or otherwise be unable to function. Glenn Beck's "bunker of doom" combines with the fears of the top bracket to produce a world in which taxes bring about moral destruction and economic collapse and we all get to watch! Its the perfect marriage of capitalism and religion.
The best comment over at ObiWi is
Free Advice
Now that yet another of Obama's picks has gone down in flames let me explain something very, very, very, slowly. You can get Genghis Khan in for HHS if you have *someone scarier* queued up afterwards. Does anyone remember why the Dems pretty much rolled on almost all of Bush's various appointed Hacks--including Alberto "I don't recall" Gonsalezs? Because we knew, or thought we knew, that if the first one went down the next to be nominated would be light years worse. And we were probably right since, as it turned out, each one *was* worse than the last (Remember Ashcroft? man, those were the days). Obama should have nominated Chas Freeman and put into the queue behind him a *&^%$ Palestinian activist and said "he's my next choice." As for Hilda Solis she would never have been held up at all if he'd que'ed up Andy Stern or Randi Weingarten or anyone else who was notably even farther left.
Anyone Want to Rent a Van and Go?
Harvard Box Office
1350 Mass Ave
Located in Holyoke Center
Phone 617.496.2222
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3rd Annual Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism
Presented by: Harvard Secular Society & Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy
Location: Memorial Church, Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA
See a TV icon speak about his life as a Humanist! Academy and Emmy Award-nominated Writer & Director Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly, Dollhouse) will receive our 3rd annual "Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism" as part of the can't-miss event that 1st recipient Sir Salman Rushdie called "Atheistmas".
*More details:* We're delighted that Joss Whedon, the Academy Award and Emmy Award-nominated creator of the TV shows Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this past summer's media-redefining Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and the new Fox show Dollhouse (premiering this Friday, February 13), will receive the 2009 Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism. Whedon will discuss his experience in film and television and his humanist values.
The award, previously presented to novelist Salman Rushdie and punk rocker (and evolutionary biologist) Greg Graffin, is sponsored by the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard and the Harvard Secular Society. The ceremony will take place on Friday April 10 at 8pm, in The Memorial Church in Harvard Yard. Preceding the presentation of the award, Mr. Whedon will give a short speech about his life and work as a Humanist. The award ceremony will be followed by a Q&A session with Mr. Whedon, as well as a signing opportunity in the church.
Whedon has a devoted following of fans, including the online web community whedonesque.com. In addition to his art, he has also been active in promoting women's rights through his work with Equality Now, an organization that honored him in 2006.
His speech to that group shows his passionate commitment to the positive values of Humanism.
Run Date(s): Fri 4/10 Only Tickets On Sale: Tuesday, March 03, 2009
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Democracy Must Be Destroyed in Order to Preserve Democracy
Watching Maddow on EFCA the other night, I was struck by how clearly this battle highlights the organizing principle of the Republican party: people who are accountable to voters should have less power than people who aren't; democratic institutions are a threat to democracy, and autocratic entities are the embodiment of freedom. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
'Freedom' means letting the peanut processor decide what's good for you, rather than the regulators who answer to your elected officials. 'Freedom' means letting the automakers decide what mileage and emissions standards should be, instead of letting your elected state government weigh in. And 'freedom' means letting your unelected boss unilaterally control every aspect of your working life, instead of you getting a vote on how things work.
All the Republican bloviating about EFCA being a "threat to democracy" is, like everything else they say, 100% projection. Republicans love 'democracy', defined as 'flag-waving and parades and unmaimed soldiers in uniform', but they hate democracy (as we understand it) and will fight it wherever it rears its subversive head.
Video below the fold. More...
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Public Intellectuals Ain't What They Used to Be
Alternative Title: Damned with Faint Praise.
Ross is late-twenties-year-old public intellectual with the sensibility of a 60-year eminence grise, the range of a Hitchens, the pitch of a conservative AJP Taylor, the conscience of a Neibuhr and the intellectual honesty of his frequent sparring partner, Andrew Sullivan.
Wow all that in one sweet, sweet, white boy package! Does all this boil down to "A jumped up college republican poseur who wears a mental sweater, drops obscure literary quotes, hacks away at historical references, pretends to a religious conscience and has zero intellectual courage or consistency other than the purely self interested?" Because that's how I'd translate it.
Wednesday Wildflowerblogging
California Huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) along the Brooks Creek Trail, San Pedro Valley County Park.
Just FYI
Bush flees White House - again - for a month in Texas
But his staff calls this trip a working vacationBy Scott Lindlaw
WASHINGTON - President Bush seems to bolt from the White House every chance he gets. He begins a month-long vacation on his Texas ranch today, and by the time he returns he will have spent nearly two months of his presidency there.
Associated Press
And that doesn't include the many weekends he's spent at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.
The White House calls the Texas trip a working vacation and notes that he'll have staff with him to help him attend to presidential chores. He also plans trips outside Texas a few days each week, using the 1,600-acre spread in Crawford, near Waco, as his base.
But there is no denying Bush's impulse to get away from the office.
"I think it is so important for a president to spend some time away from Washington, in the heartland of America," he said the other day, discussing his love for the ranch he and Laura Bush bought two years ago with proceeds from the sale of his share in the Texas Rangers baseball team.
"Whenever I go home to the heartland, I am reminded of the values that build strong families, strong communities and strong character, the values that make our people unique."
Bush prefers wide-open spaces where he can run, hike and walk his dogs to the confining White House environs. He also says he likes to get in touch with "real" people outside the Beltway.
He has spent 14 weekends at Camp David, bringing paperwork and an aide or two along. He played host to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain there. Bush also logged a long weekend last month at the family's Kennebunkport, Maine, compound, throwing horseshoes, playing golf, fishing.
Heartland tour
Sensitive to suggestions that the president might be loafing, the White House has dubbed the remainder of August as Bush's "Home to the Heartland Tour."
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
He's Just Complaining Because He Knows He's Inferior
You just can't make up this stuff: Beck: Stem-cell research will lead directly to the search for a new ‘master race.’
Just keep marching off that cliff, guys. Beck and Hannity and Limbaugh all say it's okay, and they wouldn't lie to you.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Monday Movie Review: Hounddog
Hounddog (2007) 7/10
Lewellen (Dakota Fanning) is a poor southern girl in the 1950s, obsessed with Elvis. Her father (David Morse), whom she hates and adores, beats her. Her grandmother (Piper Laurie) preaches to her. The void in her might be filled by singing, or by her father's new girlfriend (Robin Wright Penn), or not at all.
Moments, it seems, after filming wrapped on Hounddog, word got out that it featured a scene of Dakota Fanning (then 13) being raped. Mired in controversy, the film was unable to find distribution. I'm not sure what the availability is now. I saw it as part of an event at the family shelter where I volunteer.
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You can definitely find fault with Hounddog. There are times that the filming is absolutely beautiful, and times when it's so self-conscious you just want to roll your eyes. There's a difference between being good with the camera, and showing me you're good with the camera. Director Deborah Kampmeier doesn't always know the difference. The plot relies heavily on a Magical Negro, some of the symbolism is as heavy-handed as the camera work, the resolution is painted as a happy ending but clearly isn't, and I found a real confusion in the sense of place (like, where are they exactly? What state? And where is the concert venue at which Elvis sings, which is so important to the story?).
For all these flaws, Hounddog is a movie worth seeing. It has a clear story to tell, about coming of age, about snakes in the grass, about all the forces in the world lined up to prevent a pretty together girl from becoming a pretty together woman. A lot of the symbolism is effective and compelling, and there's something effective about the sultry effect of a hot Southern summer; it's atmospheric and hypnotic. The use of music is excellent; because Lewellen is connecting to herself through Elvis, that's crucial, but the soundtrack stretches past the obvious.
David Morse always knocks my socks off, he is one of my favorite actors, and he doesn't disappoint here. He begins as a quietly threatening force, and when an accident changes him, he is persuasive in that role as well. Dakota Fanning is a striking young actress; she has some of the natural power of Jodie Foster at that age. In fact, the whole cast is remarkable.
And what of the rape? There is nothing explicit shown; no underage nudity, although you may have otherwise, and no prurience. This story is Lewellen's, and the experience is hers. It's painful to watch, but it's a pivotal crisis and the story can't be told without it.
(You ain't nothing but a cross-post)
Quote Of The Week (Last Week, Anyway)
"[Jason] Mesnick [The Bachelor on the reality show of the same name] then dumped his fianceé [the winner of the contest between 25 candidates] Melissa in favor of the first runner-up, Molly, and -- this being America -- he did that to her face, on national television. According to Entertainment Weekly, Mesnick is now the most hated public figure in the country, so of course the Republican Party claimed him as their new leader..."
-- Peter Sagal on Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Taxing the Randroids
If the U.S. government vanished overnight, how much wealth would Bill Gates still have?
Steve M. had a great post the other day that correctly identified the nature of today's Republican ideology:
What these people have cooked up -- I don't know whether they actually believe it or not -- is a "one drop" theory of communism, comparable to the "one drop" rule of racial categorization. Any adjustment in the current distribution of wealth, even to tax rates barely different from the Clinton era's in their progressivity, is indistinguishable from Marxism-Leninism.Steve goes on to suggest that they put their money where their mouths are:
I've always believed it would be perfectly fine to let Randians and Paulbots opt out of having anything to do with the icky government. I'd be happy to exempt them from taxation.All reasonable...but we can go a lot further than this. Which is where the opening question comes in.
... On the condition, needless to say, that the door must swing both ways. Drive on a road built with tax dollars? Pay. Walk on a government-funded sidewalk? Pay? Get mugged? House burning down? Dying of a heart attack? No cops, no firefighters, no government-funded emergency services unless you pay, pay, pay. All government services: a la carte.
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Just about everything these Galt wannabes own--property, stocks, bonds, cash--would have vastly diminished value, or no value at all, in the absence of government. Every dollar they've earned has depended on conditions created or contributed to by government. Conditions like a common currency, for example. Domestic stability. Enforcement of contracts and property ownership. An educated workforce. Transportation and communications infrastructure.
And it goes without saying (but I'll say it) that the more wealth they have, the more they have benefitted from these conditions--the more value they have received from government.
We've always defended progressive taxation on the humane principle that the people should pay the most who can most easily afford it. Rather than arguing the point, Republicans sidestep it by adopting the bogus Randian 'principle' that Redistribution Is Murder. (Or theft. One of those.) Which morphs naturally, inexorably into the One Drop Theory.
But of course the basic assumption behind this (that government is for welfare queens, and the Galt wannabes don't really need it) is ludicrously wrong. It isn't about the ultra-wealthy 'keeping what they earn'; it's about them externalizing the costs of acquiring and maintaining their wealth. Progressive taxation isn't just 'fair' in a humane sense; it's also 'fair' in the sense that the people with the highest rates are also getting the most from government. That's the point we have to start hammering in response to the Republicans' vulgar Randianism.
Friday, March 06, 2009
Friday Random Ten
Eno - The Great Pretender
Ruins - Love of Sun
Wire - It's So Obvious
Wax Tailor - The Tune
Bob Marley - Exodus
Shriekback - Exquisite Corpse
Dengue Fever - Woman in the Shoes
Alemayahu Eshete - Yetentu Fegratchen
Cracker - Gentleman's Blues
Essential Logic - The Beautiful and the Damned
What are y'all listening to this morning?
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Ghost Malls (!)
As seen on Steven Colbert, now reported in the Boston Globe. Best of all, its little Tommy Friedman's Family Business. Its the Circle of Life.
Children's Literature, Liberalism, and Unreliable Narrators
Susan of Texas, one of my favorite bloggers of all time, over at The Hunting of the Snark is very kindly hosting a spin off discussion of children's books and politics, or the politics of parenting through literature, or something. It is thread pulled from a winding post at Alicublog where my joking on the subject caused some of dear posters to assert that parental liberalism expressed in the form of Stankanovite literary criticism would turn a promising generation of progressive children into reflexive Alex Keatons. If you are reading books with and to your children, remember those halcyon days, or just like to talk about books, narration, theology, psychology, inter textuality, inter subjectivity, children and fantasy hop on over.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Wednesday Wildflowerblogging
Little Elephant's Heads (Pedicularis atollens) in Post Corral Canyon, Emigrant Wilderness.
Why Is Thomas Ricks Pretending Iraq is World War III?
I just heard a few minutes of NPR's puff interview with Thomas Ricks on his new book "Why We Live in a Military Dictatorship." He told a slack jawed NPR interviewer, quoting Former Ambassador Ryan Crocker in 2008, that "the things for which this war will be remembered haven't yet happened," To which his apparently childlike interlocutor responded, awestruck, "oh my goodness, you mean as of 2008 the war has barely started?" No, he means that idiots like you don't grasp that disaster yet to come are unanticipated by the chattering classes and Ricks and the other historians plan to make a mint off of dragging this out.
Also, launching himself into the spotlight, Ricks quotes himself approvingly for observing that "this war is going to change Obama more than Obama is going to change this war." He followed this up by a patient explanation that, although we live in a democracy where the people might choose not to prosecute a war against a fallen, irrelevant, foe actually we are obligated to do whatever the generals want. Well, he didn't mention the word democracy. But he did instruct the interviewer on the fine points of what General Odierno "wants to see happen" and how General Odierno wants troops there "well into Obama's second term." If not for the next twenty five years. I can't tell because I turned the whole thing off at that point.
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Query: I get that in a major world war, for example, with a large proportion of the country under arms and on a war footing, fighting a battle on two or three fronts against mass armies, the opinions of the generals may matter on the prosecution of the war. But that isn't this war. And event hen the decision for how long and whether to be *at war?* That has long been believed to be the purview of the people, united, in the form of their representatives of whom only one is the President, and none are the generals. It is the people who decide whether its worth it to them to foot the bill-- This has been true since democracy began. And even under Bush's unitary executive it was the executive and not the military that decides on a given course of action.
This notion that Obama has to do what the generals tell him to do in Iraq strikes me as absurd as telling me that Reagan had to keep troops in Grenada one minute past his personal deadline in that "lovely little war." Or Thatcher in the Falklands. It is anti democratic in every sense. But neither Ricks nor his interlocutor seemed to have the slightest grasp of that fact. The Bush years have pushed us farther down the sewer of militarism and authoritarianism than we have begun to grasp.
aimai
Toothless in Boulder
OK, ABC seems to have blinked and to have revised the original "stupidest story ever written" and replaced it with one that is marginally more longwinded and slightly less fully frontally moronic. And. Yet. Dr. Sharon Poczatek, who runs her own dental practice in Boulder, Colo., said that she too is trying to figure out ways to get out of paying the taxes proposed in Obama's plan. "I've put thought into how to get under $250,000," said Poczatek. "It would mean working fewer days which means having fewer employees, seeing fewer patients and taking time off." "Generally it means being less productive," she said. Supportive readers found that to be very frightening. She's been disincentivized! She "won't work as hard" and "fewer patients will be seen" and as a result she'll "have fewer employees!" Pretty soon we'll all be staggering, toothless, through the streets of Boulder while unemployed Dental Hygienists tug at our togas and offer us blow jobs. And all because her hard work was not rewarded. But wait, as it turns out, it isn't her hard work at all. Her real plan is to have: All of a sudden miss hard work turns out to have simply been earning income on her dental hygienist's work. That's an old, old, capitalist story too. But when we own a racehorse we don't talk about how much money we earned because we were so fast.
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Not to gnaw on a dead dentist but in the original story, and its hundreds of defences (see tbogg and the comment threads over at ABC) our heroic dentists and lawyers were working so hard that they were sacrificing time for money. Their lives ruled by a combination of honest greed and ambitious individualist altruism, they were working day and night. Under Obama's rapacious tax scheme they have realized that they will never see their hard work rewarded and, instead, the money they make by working harder (longer hours, more clients) will go to the undeserving poor. Both women quoted in the article then explain angrily that they will be forced to let their clients go--the lawyer is particularly passive agressive about this move and plans to cut loose the oldest and weakest first. Its Obama's fault that some little old lady capitalist will go without proper representation! What next? First they came for my lawyer and I didn't object because I pay by the hour and the advice is awful, then they came for my dentist but I didn't object because I have a full set of dentures, next they came for my tax accountant...
The Dentist was particularly annoying. Her solution, as per the original article, was to find any way to lower her income so that she doesn't end up in the hated top bracket. Originally she proposed to do this by working fewer hours, turning away clients and for that reason being forced to cut the hours of her dental hygienist. This is the heroic fantasy of capitalism, by the way, that jobs are "created" out of thin air and ambitious, greed by the captains of industry and small business owners rather than created out of something we call "demand" and "disposable income" that arise from the needs and paychecks of ordinary working Americans. I knew this myth was pernicious but I was only glancingly familiar with it because up until the recent depression I didnt care what stories the wealthy were telling each other over the punchbowl.
The original article was gutted, spitted, and roasted all over these internets with the following points made: A) marginal tax rates apply to the dollars earned in each bracket until you fill the bracket. So you only pay the higher rate on the small portion of your income that pushes you ove the limit. B) Under the worst conditions you are only paying 3 percent more (roughly) on a portion of your income and you may be paying less on the bulk of your income in the lower bracket. C) So when you earn an extra 10,000 dollars all of that money isn't being "taken" by the tax man but only about 2,800 or so. ( As the current edition of the article drily states in the real world people don't turn down an additional X dollars just because its really a slightly smaller remainder than they originally planned on getting.
In addition we explained at length that there was more than one dentist or lawyer in the world and if one or the other or even all of them choose to go "john galt" on us and withdraw their precious services capitalism and need have a way of righting the sinking dental ship since some other, hungrier, dentist will simply fill the drill. And quite possibly for a lower rate of remuneration.
But, they cried, this will result in a lowered tax base since they imagine that everyone in the upper tax bracket will simply "reduce" their income until they fall under the 250,000 mark and thus that some imaginary "lump sum" won't be generated for Obama's evil socialist schemes. Of course lots of people paying a higher amount in a lower tax bracket is a good thing for Obama's tax policy and for the country as a whole. But this is higher math so lets not go there.
My personal favorites over at Tbogg were the various people who said they'd reduce their income and play golf (golf course fees are hugely inflated, as are memberships in country clubs so reducing your income might make that less feasible, or less fun, than it sounds today) and the guy whose wife said he'd drop out of the system and take medicare two years early.
But my favoritist favorite moment came last night when I saw the updated, in semaphore version of the ABC story where they painstakingly and painfully and, if I may say so, very awkwardly try to sandwich their original very stupid interview quotes with an actual explanation of how dumb these people are and how little they grasp the nature of capitalism or taxes or the free market. I particularly love this part:Marginal or graduated tax systems like the one in the U.S. means only the money earned over a certain amount -- $250,000 in the case of Obama's proposal -- will be taxed at an increased percentage.
Which is meant to give the readers and the idiots who were interviewed a kind of "out" implying that, naturally, the average American was thinking about those other marginal or graduated tax systems used in the galaxy of oinga boinga and just needed a gentle reminder to grasp what was happening to them every April 15th. "Oh, American marginal tax rates?" One imagines Dentist Potocka saying, "I must have misheard you. I knew that."
But, despite coming along with the little broom behind their own interviewees ABC still lets them have the last stupid word and, indeed, they are revealed for the absurdist performance artists we knew them to be."her dental hygienist work fewer days, and byl (sic) seeing fewer patients."
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Monday, March 02, 2009
Monday Movie Review: Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) 6/10
Former hitman El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) accepts a job offer from deranged CIA agent Sands (Johnny Depp) because the target is the man who killed his wife (Salma Hayek). Directed by Robert Rodriguez.
I don't usually watch cooking shows, but there was this one time I was watching Emeril, and he took out the pork he'd been cooking, and I was all "mmmm," and then he spooned the vegetable dish that he'd prepared on top of the pork and I thought "Oh wow!" and then he dished the sauce that he'd made on top of the pork and vegetables, and I thought YUM!" and then he took the lovely raw sliced somethingorother he'd made and piled it on top and I thought "ehhhh" and then he spooned ANOTHER sauce on top of THAT and I thought "Yuck."
This is exactly like watching Once Upon a Time in Mexico.
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The movie is a sequel to Desperado which, in turn, followed El Mariachi (which I didn't see, but I'm told Desperado is more a remake than a sequel). Desperado is a rather elegant affair, simplistic in the beauty of its sex, violence, and cartoonish hyper-reality. It is there to be beautiful and vulgar and bold, and it strips away any unnecessary elements (like, say, dialogue) to achieve that end. There are some oddball characters weaved in (Cheech Marin, Steve Buscemi, Quentin Tarantino), but their participation is limited. This is a movie about El Mariachi, his guns, his lover, and his guitar. Period.
Whereas Once Upon a Time in Mexico is about the kitchen sink. There's El Mariachi and his quest for revenge, and there are guns, and there's even a guitar. There's also a one-eyed bartender (Marin), a deranged CIA agent, an evil drug-runner (Willem Dafoe), an expatriate American with a little dog (Mickey Rourke), a gung-ho border patrol agent (Eva Mendes), a plot to assassinate the president of Mexico, another plot to assassinate the assassin, at least 3 different revenge plots, a depressed former FBI agent, and an alcoholic hitman.
I'm tired just typing it all.
What happens is that all the fun gets swallowed up by a movie that can't decide which fun to have. Like standing in the middle of an amusement park spinning around from all the choices, but never getting on any of the rides. Ten minutes here and ten minutes there are sections of a great movie that didn't get made. It's sloppy work.
You can't fault any of the actors, each of whom is given a chance to do a little bit (or a lot) of bravura performance. You can see why they wanted to. It looks like it was a lot of fun for them. And it's probably the kind of movie that's a lot of fun to find while channel-surfing. It's made for skimming. But to actually sit through it, intentionally watching it from beginning to end, is not, in the end, any fun.
(El cross-post)
Not Quite
I really admire John Amato's work but this time he's just off target. Citing uber right wing propagandist Alex Castellanos saying this:
"Alex: Listening to Barack Obama is like having sex, the worst it ever was, was excellent."
He interprets it to be a dog whistle for this:
"....he's trying to dehumanize President Obama with childish sex jokes and in an way feminize him sexually which in the sick recesses of the Castellanos class, will make him a less effective leader."
But that's not right. Its a totally different dog whistle--not the "feminizing" one and certainly not the "dehumanizing one" which though similar aren't at all the same. This has to do with the struggle on the right wing over two different ways of accounting for, and discrediting, Obama as a speaker and as a leader. On the one hand there were and are right wing propagandists and voters who insist that "Barry...uh..." is practically suffering from a speech impediment and is almost too stupid to do other than read a teleprompter very, very, badly. This group spent a lot of time complaining about the "hypocrisy" of the left for attacking Bush as stupid when it was "obvious" that Obama was as much or more of an empty suit as Bush himself. Lets call them the "who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes" school of Freepers and propagandists. Then there were the more subtle serpents, of the Karl Rove and Alex Castellanos variety. They realized very quickly that Obama could be, and as it turns out will be, the next "Great Communicator" and they choose a different mode of undercutting him and his legitimacy. They overemphasize his charm and political and oratorical skills. Thus, every speech is going to be the greatest--and if it isn't they will discover him to be in decline. Every political act must be perfect, or if it isn't then his presidency is over. Lets call it the "kill him with kindness" routine. Its a variant of concern trolling where Rove, or Castellanos, shakes his head in generous awe at what a great speechifiyer Obama turns out to be, leaving the audience to remember "slick willy" and to imagine that underneath all that awesome word power is a liar and a cheat (the sex crack). But, of course, slick willy itself was a made up nickname which was no more than a clever inversion and perversion of the power in Reagan's own nickname "the teflon president." What is virtue in a Republican will always return as a flaw in a Democrat, at least as long as we are listening to Republicans tell the tale.
aimai
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Sunday, March 01, 2009
Sunday, um, Snowblogging
The view from our back door at 9:30 this morning:
And at 11:00:
(Sorry for the blurry cell phone pics. Of all the days to misplace the camera…)
Posted by: smadin | March 12, 2009 at 01:28 PM