Sunday Sierrablogging

Lake 10,200 on the LeConte Divide, John Muir Wilderness.

QOTD: Do Ask Do Tell Edition

Richard Clark in this morning's Washington Post:

[T]he decisions that Bush officials made in the [post-9/11] months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Thus, when Bush's inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock -- a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea.

I believe this zeal stemmed in part from concerns about the 2004 presidential election.... [emphasis added]

The rest is history.

[Edited title.]

More Stupid than Crazy, or More Crazy than Stupid?

Responding to a new low from Andy McCarthy (he thinks Judge Sotomayor isn't qualified to be on a jury), John Cole muses: "I wonder when McCarthy will get around to asking her about her birth certificate."

Commenter Dennis obliges with a link to this:

By the way, has anyone bothered to vet Sonia Sotomayor's birth certificate?

Or will she be the first illegal alien nominated to the Supreme Court by the first illegal alien to serve as president?

Well, no.

In fairness to this dumbass, Ben Domenech made the same mistake, and his family is from Puerto Rico.

Critic's Corner

Jay Leno had a show?

Friday Random Ten

Angelo Badalamenti - Red Bats With Teeth
Zombies - Got to Get a Hold of Myself
Nick Cave - Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart
Residents - Smelly Tongues
Link Wray - Rumble
Joy Division - Day of the Lords
Budos Band - The Proposition
Byrne & Eno - Help Me Somebody
Buttersprites - Kokeshi Doll
Combustible Edison - Solid State

Solid state indeed--this one actually hangs together pretty well, I think. Super-awesome bonus video below the fold.
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QOTD: EmotiCon Edition

Three for your money today, and we open the bidding with Peggy Noonan's errant stab at defining the concept of empathy:

(Maybe that's what they mean by empathy: Where you come from enters you, and you bring it with you as you rise. But if that's what they mean, then we're all empathetic. We're the most fluid society in human history, but no one ever leaves their zip code in America, we all take it with us. It's part of our pride. And it's not bad, it's good. [parenthesis unclosed in original]

Shaper of recent American domestic history Michael Gerson, fresh from his hometown of Oblivious, shows the limits of Noonan's parochialism with a classic line:

Just imagine the frustration and anger of standing before a federal judge who is predisposed against your claims for racial reasons of any sort.

It's classic because Gerson is speaking here primarily in defense of (and in empathy with) his fellow lily-white American citizens of Ricci v. DeStefano, who are like Gerson, of course, members of the least (by several orders of magnitude) racially-persecuted group in the nation. He really does have to imagine.

From there to David Brooks, who this morning has up one of his weirdly fairly-sensible columns:

...[E]motions are an inherent part of decision-making. Emotions are the processes we use to assign value to different possibilities. Emotions move us toward things and ideas that produce pleasure and away from things and ideas that produce pain.

People without emotions cannot make sensible decisions because they don't know how much anything is worth. People without social emotions like empathy are not objective decision-makers. They are sociopaths who sometimes end up on death row.

Or at the Washington Post or, heck, in the White House.

(Cheap shot? Sure. But in a world of Noonans and Gersons, Bushes and Cheneys, I'm afraid my empathy extends only so far.)

Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Tiburon Mariposa Lily (Calochortus tiburonensis) on Ring Mountain in Tiburon--the only place in the world where this rare, endangered species grows.

More pics below the fold...
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All Class, All the Time

A sampling of wingnut reactions to the first-ever nomination of an Hispanic-American to the Supreme Court:

• Mike Huckabee: refers to Sonia Sotomayor as "Maria" Sotomayor


• Rush Limbaugh: "she's not the brain that they're portraying her to be, she's not a constitutional jurist. She is an affirmative action case extraordinaire and she has put down white men in favor of Latina women."


• Paul Mirengoff: "Che Guevara in Robes?" ("Hugo Chavez?...Fidel Castro?...Daniel Ortega?...Nah, I'll go with Che--stick with the classics!")


• Senator James Inhofe (R-Stupid): "it will be important...to weigh her qualifications and character as well as her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender, or political preferences."

Don't ever change, guys.

round robin trivia

I'm crazy busy, but I posted the first question.

Northern Junco

The Most Boring Bird in the World

Monday Movie Review: Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School

Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School (2005) 9/10
On an isolated road, Frank (Robert Carlyle) comes across a devastating car accident. He calls 911 and waits with Steve (John Goodman). Since the dispatcher told him to keep the victim talking, Frank learns that Steve was on his way to the Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School for a fated meeting.

When I first saw an ad for this movie, it looked interesting. Then I saw terrible reviews: 22% on RottenTomatoes, 2 stars from Ebert, and I passed.

Well, the other night Arthur and I saw a preview for it, and it just looked so charming, so I took a chance, and my oh my I'm glad I did.

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The movie follows three paths; Frank and Steve by the roadside, and then in the ambulance, Steve's childhood, during which he attended the titular school, and Frank's life following his encounter with Steve. The tone is poignant, sad, wistful, and fantastical. There's something of the fable in this story, something as if Frank has gone down the rabbit hole, and the Red Queen is Marilyn's daughter (Mary Steenburgen), still teaching dance as if forty years had not passed since Steve's fond memories of his childhood.

Steve wants to meet the girl he loved when he was twelve years old; the girl he promised to meet at the dance school on this day. Certain of the rightness of this reunion, he crashes on the way, and presses his ticket onto Frank to go in his stead, and tell Lisa he tried to make it. Everyone in this story lives atop a terrible pain; Steve alludes to a dark choice made long ago, Frank attends a widower's therapy group where no one seems to be getting much better, Miss Hotchkiss's daughter pretends her mother had not been dead for thirty years, and on and on.

In this fable, everyone can either carry a burden or put it down. Everyone can change or stay the same, and dance is the means by which they will discover what to choose. It is tender and sentimental, but not corny, and it is populated by wonderful characters: Meredith (Marisa Tomei), her lunatic companion Randall (Donnie Wahlberg), Gabe (Adam Arkin) who is full of anger at his late wife, and really, a host of familiar character actors who make the action light and funny and charming.

Some movies are fables. They are not meant to be closely examined for what really would have happened. They are magical tales, and the qualities of a musical (although this really isn't a musical) are there to clue you into the fantastical elements, so that you won't be too bound up by the need for veracity. Still, some people are going to hate that sort of thing. I'm not one of them.

The original 1990 short film, concerned only with the school as it was in 1962, is included on the DVD.

(Deborah Lipp's Blog of Movie Review & Cross-post)

Sunday Sierrablogging

Lower Recess Peak Lake at sunset, Mono Divide, John Muir Wilderness.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, Everyone!

America, filled with optimism that the road ahead can only lead to better things, packs up the Edsel and heads off for the long weekend.

Friday Random Ten

Cracker - My Life Is Totally Boring Without You
Television - Little Johnny Jewel
Boiled in Lead - Tape Decks All Over Hell
Monks - I Hate You
Ahlam - Taleb Maachoo
Camper Van Beethoven - Skinhead Stomp
Dengue Fever - Pow Pow
84 Rooms - Half Hour Later
Dead Moon - The Dead Line
Carl Bradney - Slipping Into Darkness

What are y'all listening to this morning?

Sociopath of the Week

This guy whipped around the corner from Park Presidio right in front of me as I was crossing Cabrillo, then made an illegal U-turn, apparently to avoid the extreme hardship of driving around the block--and the whole time, he was yakking on his cellphone.

Feingold Blocks Bill to Honor Reagan

Here's an item that could be in one of those silly Facebook games: Things I Love That Everybody Else Hates. Meaning, of course, the congressional practice of attaching ostensibly unrelated amendments to bills before the House or Senate, and the gamesmanship around that practice. In this case, it's Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) blocking a Republican bill to commemorate Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday.

It may just be about the procedural pragmatism of moving legislation by attaching it to another, more popular bill; that happens all the time. However -- and forgive me if I'm adding two and two and getting five -- I think I see a subtext.

Feingold’s amendment would establish two commissions to study the internment and restrictions of German and Italian Americans and Jewish refugees during World War II, and it is unrelated to the Reagan bill. The Reagan measure would establish a commission to plan federal and state celebrations around Reagan’s centennial birthday in February 2011.

I suspect it may not be totally unrelated, although the connection is a subtle one. It's about history, and who gets to shape it. The Reagan presidency, like our treatment of ethnics during WWII, is a dark chapter in our history. It would be better off forgotten than viewed through the rose-colored glasses conservatives have provided us with their relentless, partisan revisionism.

Read more...

Feingold’s spokesman said that the noncontroversial bill would be a good vehicle for the internment amendment, which he said is also noncontroversial.

I think Feingold is daring the Republicans to risk being seen as indifferent to real, sad truths about our history at the same moment they are practicing bald-faced triumphalism, ramming propaganda down our throats while there's anybody alive that remembers the real Reagan legacy; e.g., Iran-Contra, Bitburg, trillion-dollar national debt.

Now that we have decided not to prosecute the Bush administration for its crimes against humankind and the Constitution, and remembering that Reagan openly and repeatedly flaunted his violations of the Constitution, I guess it's only a matter of time before conservatives are pushing for a national celebration of Bush's birthday as well.

Unless a crafty and honest Democrat like Russ Feingold stands up to them, of course.

History is too important, from the standpoint of lessons learned, to allow it to be shaped by partisan politics. Feingold gets this, and raising the lesson of internment camps, etc. is a totally appropriate reminder.

[A] spokesman for Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), said if Feingold’s amendment is truly noncontroversial, he should simply go through the regular committee process and move it to the Senate floor.

What our children's children learn about what went on in our lifetimes is at stake. Let the pissing match begin.

[Cross-posted at Blue Mass Group.]

Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Milk Maids (Cardamine californica) along the Miwok Trail in the Marin Headlands.

California Special Election

Today is election day in California, and the air is tingling with an astonishing lack of enthusiasm. Maybe because all we have left are bad choices, or maybe really really bad choices. Calitics makes a good argument against all of the initiatives--in effect, they mitigate the short-term crisis but lock in bad policy (spending caps, e.g.) in the long term.

What Calitics doesn't offer is a plausible path to a better result. Despite 30 years of grim reality, Californians still seem to believe in the anti-tax fairy, who delivers all the goods and services of government without anyone having to pay. Worse, for some inexplicable (but probably related) reason, California voters overwhelmingly support the 2/3 majority requirement for passing a budget; when 35% of the legislature holds a gun to California's head, 60% of the voters are right there with them. We don't need initiatives to lock in bad policy. That shit is locked in already.

Here's the official voter guide. Figure it out for yourselves; I sure as shit don't know what to do.

Your trivia is served

Come play.

Bumblebee

These guys were all over this Adirondack crabapple tree last week. There's a good rear view here.

Monday Movie Review: Mozart and the Whale

Mozart and the Whale (2005) 10/10
Donald (Josh Hartnett) has Asperger's Syndrome. He runs a group for other people with Asperger's, austism, and other socially-isolating disorders. When Isabelle (Radha Mitchell) joins the group, a tentative romance begins.

I see a fair number of movies. And most of them are good, because I'm picky and I read reviews and I have no taste for "so bad it's good." I see many movies I like, admire, and recommend. But I don't fall in love all that often. I don't often say, "Oh, my," with stars in my eyes after seeing a movie, and that's what happened with Mozart and the Whale.
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So I saw this movie with my son, and he has Asperger's, and that kind of colors everything, doesn't it? I mean, I rearranged my Netflix when he came home from college so that there were movies we would want to see together. But this could all have backfired. Because Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a part of Asperger's, not getting it right can be painful, and any sense of humor about sensitive subjects is right out, and overall, I was fully prepared for him to run out of the room. (As an aside, the movie opens with the unusual disclaimer, "This movie is a work of fiction based on a true story." Most movies use a shorter "based on a true story" statement, and I am 100% certain that the longer version was needed to appease the OCD of Aspies being depicted.)

So where was I? Right, run screaming. He didn't. He loved it. It may be his new favorite movie (except he has a whole OCD thing about calling things his favorite). He declared Isabelle "my perfect woman." He related to the characters, who were not cute or pretty or comic relief fodder or disgusting or charming or inspiring or heroic or any of the other things that we expect to happen to real people when they become movie characters. In fact, the only way Donald and Isabelle were movied-up is that they were played by breathtakingly pretty people.

The whole thing works. The supporting cast (including Rusty Schwimmer, Gary Cole, and John Carroll Lynch) do the job. The filming is understated and warm. The cinematography and set decoration work to convey these people and how they place themselves in the world. The love story is unbelievably touching. And the sum total is that you feel enriched just to have watched it. Just to have been there, witnessing the act of loneliness being eased by love.

Just see it, 'kay?

(Cross-post and the Movie)

Sunday Sierrablogging

Near Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.

FOX Renews "Dollhouse"

I'm really excited, and surprised, by this. "Dollhouse" is dark, thought-provoking, and frequently downright disturbing. And, in the course of a 12-episode first season, it didn't hit its stride till halfway through. It was buried on Friday nights, paired first with "Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles", a show I liked a lot but one that suffered a sophomore slump mid-season, and then with the already-cancelled "Prison Break".

But, as Maureen Ryan points out, the TV world has changed.

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Could the tyranny of the Nielsen overnight ratings be over? If a network like Fox, which is not known for its sentiment and softness, renews a show like "Dollhouse," the paradigm has surely shifted.

Fox didn't renew "Dollhouse" because the show's fans would have been sad about the Joss Whedon show's untimely death. Fox doesn't care about how viewers feel (you saw "Moment of Truth," right?). No, Fox renewed "Dollhouse" because it thinks it can make money off the project -- enough to keep the enterprise profitable.

Fans have always been passionate about their favorite shows, but now they have far more ways to show it. Viewer passion translates to increased viewing in all these different arenas, which ultimately translates into more money in the pockets of the media companies.

The lesson the networks should learn from this new paradigm: Take chances.


The campaign to renew "Dollhouse" probably wouldn't have caught fire had Whedon never been allowed to make the weird, unsettling, unexpectedly moving and complex show that he ultimately came up with in the second half of "Dollhouse's" season. When shows are given time to develop, when they're allowed to be different, when they're allowed to be ambitious and strange and challenging -- all that can lead to the kind of fan passion that we're talking about here.

"Dollhouse" pulled big audiences via DVR and online viewing, and pre-orders of the season 1 DVD have been very strong (it's currently #9 in Amazon's sales rankings of TV box sets). Viewers today aren't limited to the ones who can sit down in front of their TVs each Friday night 9/8 central. And a good thing too; most of the cool people are out doing fun stuff while I'm at home glued to the tube. I wouldn't want them to miss out. :)

From what I'm reading, I can glean that FOX expects reduced costs and a new creative direction for the second season. I have a tiny, niggling fear that the show will develop "Murder One" syndrome, retreating from the absorbing arc of the last six episodes back to "assignment of the week" episodes in order to attract more casual viewers. I really, really hope that doesn't happen. Joss Whedon is a consummate storyteller, and he and his writers excel at bringing fascinating characters to the screen and letting us watch them grow. More of that, please!

And big thanks to FOX for taking another chance on this show.

Friday Random Ten

Hüsker Dü - Sorry Somehow
Duke Ellington - Caravan
Nirvana - Lake of Fire
Wire - 1.2.X.U.
Joey Ramone - What a Wonderful World
Essential Logic - The Beautiful & the Damned
Ultravox - The Wild, the Beautiful, & the Damned
Fastbacks - Rocket Man
Cracker - Been Around the World
Telephone Jim Jesus - Faces All Melted

Love the juxtaposition in 6 and 7. What are y'all listening to this morning?

And below the fold, a video...
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Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Coast Paintbrush (Castilleja affinis) at Crissy Field in the Presidio. Couple more pics below the fold...
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Along the Sweeney Ridge trail in San Mateo County:

No. More. Wire. Hangerrrrrzzzzzzz!!@1

If Cohen Dearest has told us once he's told us a thousand times: clean up your Dirty Fucking Hippies, or I will clean them up for you! Here's the heart of today's installment:

Blogger Alert: I have written a column in defense of Dick Cheney....

[C]an we also find out what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it?...

...If even a stopped clock is right twice a day, this could be Cheney's time.

Honestly, Richard. Next time just show us your panties and be done with it.

Gray Catbird

The Catbird pair and I will keep a close eye on one another all summer long. Here one of them (the sexes are look identical) lurks near me in the Prairiefire crabapple. Their return from a Florida or West Indies winter getaway coincides with the absolute prime days of this beautiful tree, which is now simultaneously carrying buds, blossoms, leaves and fruit (leftover from last year).

You can sample the Gray Catbird's spectacular jazz stylings here.

Monday Movie Review: I Married a Monster from Outer Space

I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) 7/10
On the eve of his wedding, Bill Farrell's body (Tom Tryon) is taken over by an alien. Marge Farrell (Gloria Talbott) quickly realizes she is married to a stranger, and gradually is able to confirm her fears, but how to get others to believe her?

I absolutely watched I Married a Monster from Outer Space for the giggles, and ended up impressed by its subtlety. It doesn't deserve its campy title.

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In the opening moments, Bill is overtaken and the cheesy alien costume and special effects are revealed: No Cat People here! Instead, the horror is personal and romantic. The young newlywed was so in love, but this man is not loving; her life is isolated and hellish, but not in a way she can explain. Meanwhile, cold, unfeeling aliens take over this small town. When we see that cops are among the aliens we know that help will be hard to find.

There is a surprising amount of sexual and social subtext in this film. Long before we learn that the aliens have breeding as a goal, there are long camera pans to one or the other of the Farrells going upstairs to bed, there are hookers and party girls trying to gain interest from both normal men and aliens, and finally, there is a visit to the family doctor; Marge is concerned about her fertility. Which means, yes indeed, that she is having sex with the unfeeling stranger who terrifies her; enough sex to expect that she'd be pregnant by now. That's creepy.

The whole thing is put together with subtlety and intelligence, although there are also gaps and missed opportunities in the narrative. Certainly this is not Invasion of the Body Snatchers; despite a very similar theme, it lacks the power of a true classic. But it is thoughtful, and tense, and has all sorts of lovely grace notes. Music is one: Most B movies tend to abuse music in a way that may well violate the law; this movie hits the right balance of expression without hammering a point home. The ending was satisfying and exciting, and not at all what I expected.

There's also an enormous amount of sexual politics that the writer never intended. It's just there, like the classic fifties cars. Aliens only overtake male bodies. Ultimately, we learn the aliens themselves are all male, but why does that matter? Our human, oxygen breathing lungs are no problem for the methane-breathing aliens, why should it matter whether or not they overtake bodies with penises? It's simply the writers who cannot visualize a male in a female body, even a tentacled, glowy male. Similarly, if only male bodies are being overtaken, why not rally the women to fight back, rather than risk approaching men who may or may not be compromised? It never occurs to anyone in the film. How could it? Women are helpless creatures good only for love and sex, both the human and alien males agree on that.

Am I underestimating screenwriter Louis Vittes? Is the gender role thing there on purpose? I doubt it; surely a moment of dialogue would have been dedicated to it if it was really a part of the theme. Yet it is one of the films most fascinating components.

(I Cross-posted an Alien!)

Sunday Sierrablogging

Waterfall along Evolution Creek downstream from Evolution Valley, Kings Canyon National Park.

Karma's a Bitch-Slap

Josh Marshall, a long time ago in an election far away:

Let's call it the Republicans' Bitch-Slap theory of electoral politics.

It goes something like this....

One way -- perhaps the best way -- to demonstrate someone's lack of toughness or strength is to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves -- thus the rough slang I used above. And that I think is a big part of what is happening here. Someone who can't or won't defend themselves certainly isn't someone you can depend upon to defend you....

Hitting someone and not having them hit back hurts the morale of that person's supporters, buoys the confidence of your own backers (particularly if many tend toward an authoritarian mindset) and tends to make the person who's receiving the hits into an object of contempt (even if also possibly also one of sympathy) in the eyes of the uncommitted.

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Since that time, of course, we got a presidential candidate who was able to work around that dynamic. Better still: this now describes the dynamic within the Republican party. Party leader offends Limbaugh; Limbaugh slaps him down; party leader caves; party leader looks weak and pathetic.

The whole party looks weak and pathetic.

This is a particular problem for a party that values above all else the appearance of strength. The crackup is happening now because the single unifying principle for Republicans was the authoritarian impulse, and now there's no authority. When they had the president, they could organize around defending him; when they had a candidate, they could organize around getting him elected. Now there's no one, and now--suddenly!--they notice that the people they voted into office to drown government in a bathtub instead went on a massive spending binge to reward their contributors and expand their own power.

The contradiction itself isn't the problem; the problem is that there isn't any single leader who can harness their authoritarian impulse and keep them from noticing the contradiction. So the astroturf teabagging takes on a life of its own, in a way that should give no comfort to party leaders. So luminaries like not-Joe the not-Plumber decide to go their own way.

Because power was their raison d'etre, the loss of power is their undoing. Karma's a bitch-sla

Friday Random Ten

Floyd Cramer - I'm Not Your Stepping Stone
Kurtis Blow - The Breaks
Sister Double Happiness - Red Temple Prayer (Two Headed Dog)
Savage Republic - Moujahedeen (instrumental)
Pine Box Boys - 56, AR
Big Dipper - Guitar Named Desire
Shriekback - Devil's Onions
Tinariwen - Arawan
Mulatu Astatqe - Metche Dershe
Wimple Winch - Rumble on South Mersey Square

What are y'all listening to this morning? Vintage Kurtis Blow video below the fold...
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Have you heard the one about the empathetic Republican?

I'll let David Broder tell it:

When I saw him in his hotel room at the San Diego convention, Kemp asked me, "What's the first thing I do when I make a speech?"

"You take off your jacket and roll up your sleeves," I said, having seen the ritual a hundred times.

"You know," he said, "Dole's wounds -- he can't even do that for himself." And Jack Kemp wept.

I hear he was inconsolable over poor John McCain losing count of his houses.

Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Fremont's Camas (Zigadenus fremontii on Coyote Ridge, Marin Headlands. More pics below the fold.
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On the headlands near Point Arena.


In Edgewood County Park, San Mateo County.

Trivia

...has been up for a couple of hours but I forgot to tell you.

Nightblooms

Monday Movie Review: Son of Rambow

Son of Rambow (2007) 8/10
In 1982, two boys become friends. Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is deeply imaginative, lonely, and forbidden to watch TV by his strict religious family. Lee Carter (Will Poulter) is a troublemaker, frequently punished in school. With Lee's movie camera and Will's script, they set out to make "Son of Rambow" in order to win a young filmmakers contest.

There should be room for little movies. Son of Rambow will not change your life, or the world, or filmmaking. It is not, by and large, extraordinary. It is the very definition of a "small" movie. Its budget appears low, its stars are unknown, and its concerns are the delicate moments in young lives. It's almost hard to figure out how to review it. It's just this lovely little movie, so what is one to say?
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It's 1982. Will's father is dead. He carries a journal with him everywhere; richly illustrated, it is an adventure tale with monsters and heroes and a father being rescued. He has never seen television or a movie, but he is busily creating them in his journal. He is incredibly sheltered and innocent, but his geekiness is not overdone. It's enough to know that he's absorbed in his own book. There are no scenes of him being teased or ostracized, but it's pretty clear that he has no crowd, no friends, no life outside his inner creation. When Will visits Lee's home for the first time, he sees his first movie: First Blood (the first Rambo movie, which Lee is making pirate copies of), and he's stunned. He's simply floored; adventure, heroics, explosions—it's his fantasies come to life. He begins to rewrite his adventure tale to make his imprisoned father "Rambow," and give himself Rambo's abilities.

Meanwhile, a busload of French exchange students have arrived at Will and Lee's conservative English school, and one student, Didier (Jules Sitruk) makes a huge splash by introducing his New Wave style and disaffected sensibility.

What happens is uncomplicated, comical, and engaging. The characters are not exactly profound or complex, but they are uniquely themselves. Will is no stereotypical geek, Lee is not a clichéd "bad boy," and Didier is unlike anything or anyone. Most of the fun is in the making of Son of Rambow; the insanely clever setup of stunts and effects is fun to watch, and also a bit of meta-commentary on making a low-budget film. As things get more complicated, they get less fun, which is what we might expect an indie filmmaker to say. But the movie retains its fundamental innocence, unencumbered by commentary on filmmaking or anything else.

(Son of Cross-Post)

This excellent piece on Slate about the miracle that is Cokie Roberts' on air commentary reminds me that I had the pleasure of hearing her say this, this morning:

On Gentleman Jack Kemp's passing:

“He used to say that as a Football Player he had showered with a lot of people most Republicans never meet. And you know , the party has had a lot of trouble attracting Minorities and Women.”

Sunday Sierrablogging

The Glacier Divide from Lake 10,200 on the LeConte Divide, John Muir Wilderness.

Would You Buy a Vision of America from These People?

According to Reihan Salam, the GOP has lost even the cabbies:

But Specter isn't the only Republican who has given serious thought to leaving the party. On a recent trip, I met a businessman who had voted Republican in every presidential election since 1984, the year he turned 18. He started listening to conservative talk radio in the early 1990s, a decade he remembers as the time when he started making serious money as a car salesman. As the housing market boomed, he turned to selling real estate in southwest Florida, usually to recent immigrants. But about two years ago, after an expensive divorce, he lost his own house to foreclosure, and he started working several part-time jobs, including driving a livery cab. Then he wound up in a car accident. He was lucky that the medical expenses were covered under his auto insurance, because he didn't -- and still doesn't -- have health insurance. This gentleman has had a bad run. Yet he wasn't complaining. He did have the sense, however, that today's Republican Party is out of touch with people like him.

"[S]erious thought" is not something the Republicans want such gentlemen fooling around with. No good can come of it.

Friday Non-Random 10 11: Semi-Obscure Postpunk Classics

I keep forgetting to bring my iPod with me on Fridays; last week I went with the music I had on my computer at work, but this week I'll go entirely non-random. Here (in no particular order) are 11 favorite postpunk tunes:

Blue Orchids - Work
Young Marble Giants - Credit in the Straight World
Lines - Stripe
Fire Engines - Candyskin
Essential Logic - Moontown
Delta 5 - You
SpizzEnergi - Mega City 3
Flipper - The Lights, the Sound, the Rhythm, the Noise
Tuxedomoon - What Use?
Au Pairs - It's Obvious
Electric Guitars - Continental Shelf

Post your own non-random list of whatever in comments.

Time for my Patented "No Name" strategy

So Obama is going to get to appoint a new Supreme Court member to replace Souter. I'm thrilled--as long as its not Deval Patrick whose name I saw mooted recently. With all due respect to my governor, for whom I voted, the guy's the Michael Steele of the Democratic side--a lightweight, corporatist, with a reverse midas touch. Obama has some fantastic women to pick from, and I hope he takes one of them. But I think its time for my patented strategy--which they failed to take with previous nomination battles. Obama should set up three alternates from most moderate to raving, tearing, leftist--is Andrea Dworkin dead?--and make it clear that if they shoot down the first one he's going to keep nominating progressively leftwards until the Republican party has simply exhausted all its lines of argument. This has a twofold utility--first, if you call the first one a man eating lesbian vagina dentata you haven't left yourself much rhetorical room to go after the second one, and even more so for the third. Second, you are aware that your strategy of denial and obstruction, such as it is, can only make things objectively worse since the President has made it clear that he won't move towards compromise with you. And thirdly, and its not part of my strategy but its related to it, the Democratic Senators should go en masse to both Harry Reid and Specter and say that they are keeping a little list and every time Arlen acts like a Republican or gives even rhetorical help to the Republicans they will insist that a year be shaved off his hypothetical seniority in the 2010 term. Shortly, Specter will have lost whatever seniority Reid promised him, or have moved strongly to a position identical with Obama's stated wishes.

aimai
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