what was i thinking when i let go of you

there's a peculiar irony, two intertwined ones actually, to being single and actively dating in one's mid-30s and beyond. if you have a good job that keeps you busy and you also occupy yourself with lots of "extra-curricular" activities it constrains the time necessary for getting to know someone and making the right choice.

the first irony is a product of the very experience we count on to help us make good decisions sometimes results in us using too narrow a filter. the other (and related) irony is that often we get into those extra-curriculars not just for the intrinsic value of the activity itself but to meet people with whom to be friends or lovers. even though most of us won't admit that out loud, we know it's true that the single among us do these things as much to meet potential mates as anything else. and those of us who tend to be active will be more attracted to more active people. couch-potatoes and active people rarely are a good match.

for simplicity's sake i'll suggest that you can put any date into one of three groups -- no, maybe and yes. sure, there are stronger maybes than others, but the point here is to be brief...(yeah yeah, i know it's an essay about the dangers of too quickly and ruthlessly cutting to the chase)

clearly there are times when you know for certain something won't work. and usually (hopefully) it's obvious to both people right away. but sometimes that decision gets made not because the person is truly incompatible, but because of life's demands. we feel the need to cut to the chase, to quickly and efficiently filter out the noise from the signal. and in that rush we probably put a "maybe" too quickly into the "no" pile, usually based on some checklist derived from experience and used exactly because we're so busy that we feel we need the filter. and not that this is a bad thing. if you don't learn from experience you're going to make the same mistakes over and over. with the availablity of on-line dating sites, even if there's a dry spell of meeting people through traditional means, it's been made very easy to go back to the aquarium and pick out a new fish or three. it's perceived as no big loss to maybe throw back one that you at first thought didn't suit you. (related to all this but its own essay is how the myth of "instant chemistry or nothing" has been drilled into us thanks to hollywood and in particular shows like the bachelor(ette)).

when you both know it's a maybe is when it gets most complicated. here's where you really need to put in a bit of time to figure it out. but when both people have ski trips, shore trips, running clubs, soccer games, softball games, book clubs, volunteer work...before you know it your week, weekend and month is booked. so the potential of the "maybe" fizzles, as would any flame die for lack of proper fuel and attention. it takes some courage to step away from standing commitments and get to know a maybe or two (or three). it also takes some work between meetings...e-mails, phone calls...enough to keep things going but not too much to come off as clingy or needy.

even when we meet the obvious "yes" our schedules are so pre-booked that it can be a week between meetings. you still have these prior commitments. you still have lots of people counting on you to do things. but you really want to get together with mr/ms yes. you also don't want to be "that guy" who just dumps his friends and softball team every time a woman gets hold of him. and here you see it as even more important to make the time, that you feel there's something immediate and pressing at stake. but still...you have things to do.

and what if we make the wrong choice between two definite maybes, or between what we thought was a yes and a definite maybe? what then? go back to one you let go but are still intrigued enough by that you can't get her out of your head? that takes some courage and letting go of pride on both ends. again, with on-line dating you can easily just turn your profile back on and pick from the new arrivals who come in daily (which is a whole other essay on disposable society). but you don't know until you ask.

so for all we think we've learned getting to this point it almost works against us in terms of making snap judgements, and for all the desire to stay active who's got the time to make the time?

hope springs eternal

Ahh...opening day. (**) Is there a better combination of words to capture the essence of early April? Every team's in first place, nothing but blue skies, green grass and 162 games of promise ahead until October.


Will this be the year the Braves finally don't win the NL East? (yeah, I'm calling you out Darren). For the record, I don't see the Phils winning it this year, maybe (and it pains me no end to say this) the Mets.

Will the A's finally get over the hump?

Will the steroid investigation (more stupidity from Selig) dominate talk and relegate what happens the on the field to the background? Or will the players take control of the game? Will the Giants season be nothing but a circus? Will anyone care when Bonds passes Ruth?


** yeah, yeah...the openers are technically at night this year. still, it's the first day of the season...opening day.

april fools fun from google

Not as grand as an outpost on the Moon, but damned funny nonetheless. Particularly the "tour".

pure pop goodness

The Essex Green - Don’t Know Why (You Stay)

On myspace, with more song samples.

(via you aint no picasso)

marrakesh express

As a travel destination, Morocco has always been "on the list", but then it's a pretty long and indiscriminate list as I'm up for going anywhere. There isn't a part of the world I'm not interested in seeing. Heck, I'd love to see Baghdad...just not in the near future. That said, Morocco has long been one of the more appealing possibilities...just never in, say, the Top 5 at any particular moment.

Reading this article in The Atlantic, though, has vaulted Morocco, particularly the Atlantic coast areas that Tayler writes about, to near the top. Sure, Casablanca, no wait, this Casablanca and Marrakesh would be great. I love urban travel, meandering thru cities, seeing the sights.

But something about the way Tayler describes the people, sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the outlying areas makes me want to spend about 2 weeks getting lost along the coast, hanging out with easy-going locals, eating freshly caught fish that's grilled up and served with lemon and a baguette. Apparently there's good surfing in Morroco as well.

I'd also like to get to Egypt soon, particularly while I still have my own personal tour guide living there. Tunisia might be a nice stop along the way to Morocco. At least according to tour guide. Hopefully my having a Danish passport won't be an issue by then.

three cheers for three day weekends...

thank you cesar chavez!

standing in the shadows of love

from nasa, a view to earth during the eclipse

saxophone started blowing me down, i was buried in sound...

stuck in my head....

Wilco -- Handshake Drugs live version from Kicking Television. John Stirrat's bass playing on that track is just killing me.

Voxtrot -- Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, & Wives

Almendra...traditional old school Cuban salsa song.

nothing like the sun

today's eclipse, from the sf chronicle, via reuters.

departure lounge

(bumped and updated with picture and links)

thanks to free interweb service, live (**) blogging from mccarren airport in vegas. 9:40pm...i should be in the air now, on a flight from vegas to sfo. but no, thanks to a maintenence issue the flight i was supposed to be on out of phoenix was cancelled. not delayed, cancelled. quick work got me booked on the next set of connections, meaning a 1:20am arrival. meaning i should get home in the 2am range.

...the scene at sfo, around 1:45am...

bleh. on top of that, the constant din of the slots at the center of the circular gate area is annoying to say the least. not only that, america west has seemingly oversold every flight today (including this one about to take us to sfo), so it's hard to be nimble with options. and the boarding areas have been insanely crowded.

at least the wedding was fun (a bit too much fun maybe). how can you not like a wedding with a low key and casual ceremony, good bbq ribs and chicken, good beer, a bluegrass duo, abundant pez, croquet, whiffle ball, an "after-party" (responsible for a bit of the "too much" for lots of folks, evidently), and a cactus league baseball outing (a's-rockies, featuring a homer by frank thomas in his a's debut *plus* an appreance by jose mesa for the rockies) the next day? all that and seeing folks i hadn't seen in way too long. so flight delays be damned, it was well worth the trip.

** well, not technically live. blogger seems to be having trouble publishing posts. so this is posted at 2:30am, as I finally get home.

ps -- apparently there was a mini-me sighting in the terminal. i'm not normally good with celeb spotting, but he's someone i reckon i would recognize had i been party to the sighting.

(update...monday 8:30am...somehow i made it into work despite not getting to bed until 3am. can't vouch that i'll be all that productive today, but i'm here)

eaten by her own dinner

given my current bleary-eyed state i doubt i'll make it to the porchlight reading tonight, which is a shame. the theme is kitchen confidential, and the stories will center on life in the restaurant biz, which is how i spent my college (and some post-college) years.

my new favorite band name

Martian Memo to God...music's not half bad either.

can't get there from here

First impression of Phoenix? Driving north on 51 to get from the airport to the hotel, it was impossible to exit the highway. The first three exit ramps were all closed for some sort of road work...new paint for the lines maybe. There was no action, just highway patrol cars at the first two, and a DOT truck at the last. You figure they could have done every other one, so that all the exiting traffic wouldn't have gotten off at the first available and jammed things up. You would have thought that, but you'd be wrong.

Also, Phoenix reminds me of SW Dade county (FL). Flat (well, the valley part, obviously not the mountains around the city), lots of traffic and strip-malls and 4-way intersections. Bleh suburban blight.

(update)...seems that it was a protest against legislation that would impose severe crackdowns on illegal immigrants that was most likely responsible for the shut-down of the exits.

i'll follow you into the dark

A few weeks ago I wrote about a few Oscar nominated movies that sent Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer into a tizzy. I finally got to see one of them, Paradise Now, which Krauthammer called a "sympathetic portrayal of two suicide bombers". The film centers on Khaled and Said, two friends living in the West Bank town of Nablus, tapped to go on a mission to Tel Aviv.

Contrary to Krauthammer's assertion (and as proof that he probably didn't see the film) it's far from a sympathtic portrayal of the Palestinian resistance movement and the use of suicide bombing as an effective means of insurgency. It shows the human side of an action that most of us only experience the end result of via news outlets. Paradise Now brings to life not only the bombers, but the people they leave behind.

The film certainly has harsh things to say about how the Israelis treat West Bank Palestinians. It by no means, however, shows the resistance as a pure endeavor. The men leading the cells, those who send young men off to die, are not given a flattering portrayal -- Jamal in particular comes off as a cross between a smarmy and manipulative televangelist and used-car salesman...feeding his recruits an ersatz spirituality dressed up in promises of rewards in heaven. He is, thanks to one very effective shot, cast almost as a Judas to the cause of Palestinian self-rule.

Taken apart from its specific context, the film is as much about the fine line between conviction and doubt. In context it gives voice to those left behind, showing them to wish more that their loved ones were still with them rather than having willfully died and killed for a cause. The two lead actors, particularly Kais Nashef who plays Said, are riveting. The dialogue never gets too maudlin and the preachiness is kept to a minimum. Worth a spot high up on your netflix queue. Up next for me is The War Within, which covers similar ground but set in the context of a planned attack in New York City.

goin' to the chapel...again

tomorrow i'm heading to a wedding in arizona. then another is coming this memorial day weekend back home. that'll make 9 weddings (well, 8 plus a post-wedding party that was a couple months after a private family service) since memorial day weekend 2004. four of those weddings happened between march and august of 2005. in 2 of the 9 i was the officiant ("ordained" by the universal life church) for friends...it's pretty cool, officiating for people you know and love. that's a lot of nuptial bliss i've been witness to lately.

wow

click to see it bigger and better.


(thanks, ian)

the people that you meet in your neighborhood

from doing a bit of sleuthing, i'm pretty sure that i live around the corner from a (now demolished) cottage where japhy ryder lived in the dharma bums. or in real life, where kerouac crashed with ginsburg. my roommate is also pretty sure that our place is in one of the neighborhoods where david eggers lived with his brother in a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. and a friend of mine claims to have stayed in the house where benjamin braddock lived (with mr. roper as his landlord..well, not mr. roper per se, but normal fell) while chasing down elaine in the graduate.

and then there's david lodge's book changing places, which despite the fictional name for the town is definitely set here, with the school as the obvious setting.

why mention all of this? there's really no point except useless triviality and the need for me to spend a few minutes thinking of something other than this work-related analytical problem which is kicking my ass and withering my ego.

finest worksong

good god, it's these kind of work hours why i didn't go the "normal" route (law, for instance**), the kind a kid raised in a middle-class suburban home should go into. i'm not built for this 60-hour/week stuff. but so it is this week, even though it's more or less a four-day work week what with me off to phoenix friday for a wedding (though i will be working on the planes, in the aiports (change-over in vegas). but the next 5-6 weeks looks to be hellacious (i'll bet you thought i was gonna say "hella"). even if i had a ticket to the new pornographers/belle & sebastian show tonight, it would be iffy that i could actually be there. bah.

** ps - though i'd probably be good at being a lawyer...i'd make lots more money, but i'd also look about 20 years older than i am and be even more a curmudgeon than i am. maybe even have morphed into total miserable prickdom. so yeah, no lawyering for me.

pps -- i'd like to note, that my use of post-scripts is in no way related to the fact that i've read and liked stuff by david foster wallace or david eggers. i just tend to tangentialize (and use parentheses), kinda like them, sometimes like tom robbins.

nervous and shakey...

...(honk if you remember the del fuegos)...

that's not the issue, though...the 3 recent quakes are --

a 3.7 followed 4 minutes later by a 2.7 then 90 seconds after by 1.4.

it's probably time i get my quake kits together for the house and car.

** update at 2:40pm...a bunch of small aftershocks in the 2.0 to 2.3 range...as active a day as we've had since i've been here.

the birth of the cool

"two days, that's the industry standard"...

"laugh all you want, but if you call too soon you can scare off a nice baby who's ready to party."

"I know I shouldn't have called, I mean, my friends said I should wait two days."

god bless swingers. what a fun movie. like comfort food, can be watched over and over (even for me, considering that i was once dumped right after watching it with a gf) and it produced some memorable (albeit now dated) catch-phrases. it launched vince vaughn and gives jon favreau something to talk about during "dinner for five" (is there a show where he doesn't reference something from the movie?).

it's also, as far as i'm concerned, one of the many things responsible for the death of level-headed dating in this country.

for all the moaning over concepts like "s/he's just not that into you" we lose sight of the fact that there are plenty of times when he or she is that into you and perhaps thanks to the socially conditioned push to search for the bigger and better thing or perhaps thanks to the idea that its uncool to just let go and go with the moment we let good opportunities pass us by. good opportunities to be happy.

it's silly to worry about acting on the feeling after a great first or second date. it's just silly to have what you do after a great date judged by some standard of "cool" or other crazy misconceptions that wanting to again and often see someone who excites you is considered "clingy" or "needy". sorry, but this is a load of crap.

when something feels good right away there's a reason it does. so you go with that feeling...you don't pull back. you don't worry.

because just once is all that it will take.

of course, dating and romance shouldn't really be all that level-headed. i should know as well as anyone.

for the better part of the last two years i've playing it cool. assiduously avoiding even the tiniest bit of vulnberability. all it got me was a bunch of first and sometimes second dates, a few half-stabs at relationships and the odd meaningless "thing". and it's left me feeling cold inside.

so now with things settled that i know i'll be living here for a while, i took a risk. i let a crush in on the chance that it would take root -- the payoff when that happens can be a wild rush. it was one of those things that wasn't just an "it would be nice if it worked out" kind of thing**, but rather a "this should work out" kind of thing. you know, a bowled over and wow kind of thing. the "dare to be great situation" i've been looking for.

sadly (and surprisingly), no go. it was the first time in a while i got seriously bummed at something not taking. but all it cost was a couple of days in a fog, nothing that a good brunch in the city sunday morning and then a soccer game (tie notwithstanding) that afternoon couldn't help to lift. the upside is i'm feeling more alive than i have in a while. sure, the move out to the bay area was somewhat of a rush, but not like this. that was more the logisitcal rush, and the possibilities of a great new job and living out here. this crush rush was pretty good while it was in full flow. and even the come-down has had my senses tingling.

so despite a bump in the road i've resolved that it's better to let the vulnerability in, to just go with the crush. the being guarded, the attitude of "bah, other fish in the sea"? no. i'm too much the romantic to go back to that. letting the crush in, acting on the impulse of a good thing, not pulling back for fear of breaking some assinine rule...that's the way to go.

because to get that phenomenal rush again, just once is all that it will take.

**ps...the "it would be nice if it worked out" kinds of things are great...more often than not good relationships aren't based on immediate "wow", but take a few dates and some sorting out. which is the subject of another ramble about snap judgements, probably coming soon.

wind your spring

three cheers for the vernal equinox...

ok, ok...we can get a panda

currently playing on the ipod in my brain

Belle & Sebastian -- Another Sunny Day
The New Pornographers -- It's Only Divine Right
Paul Kelly -- I'll Be Your Lover
Wilco -- Jesus, Etc
Silversun Pickups -- Kissing Families
Nirvana -- Been a Son
Plimsouls -- A Million Miles Away
Raconteurs -- Steady as She Goes
Billy Bragg -- Greetings to the New Brunette

when i'm 64...

i've been saying for a while now that when the time comes i wouldn't mind retiring to coronado island in san diego. as for what got me thinking that to begin with? this:

greetings to the new brunette

Or rather, new blog face. It was time. I needed a change. This is sleeker, not as green (not that there's anything wrong with green). Not as busy. Sleek and simple is the new black.

wrong 'em boyo

Ugh. Now I know why Annie Proulx was peeved and Ang Lee was disappointed that Crash was voted Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain.

Ugh. It's not just that I really liked Brokeback. Crash is just...horrible. The first 30 minutes were enough for me (though my roommate is presently sticking it out). Maybe it's the distracted and somewhat agitated mood I'm in, but....ugh. Not a likeable character so far, and...well...as others have said...ugh. Shite.

"bold" move by stanford...what's next?

Since I do sometimes take work time to make quick posts about non-work-related issues, thought I'd discuss something professionally related...

Seems that Stanford University has decided to not charge tuition to students from families with income less than $45,000, and to reduce the family contribution for students in the $45K-60K range. Tuition at Stanford is almost $33,000, and total cost of attendance is about $47,000, counting room, board, books and other expenses. Low-income students will still be required to pay room and board and their own personal expenses. The move eliminates the up-to $2,600 contribution that low-income families were expected to pay towards tuition and reduces by half the average $3,800 contribution from the next income bracket.

The new policy is designed to broaden the economic diversity mix of Stanford's undergrad population, hopefully by encouraging low-income but talented students to apply, where the fear is now they are scared away by the high cost of attendance. It's the next big move in a series of events that began in the late 1990s when Princeton changed its approach to aid, replacing loans with grants for middle-income students. Since then many expensive colleges and universities have followed suit, hoping to quell the criticism they get for tuition increases that have far outstripped the rate of inflation.

In the end, this move by Stanford is a very inexpensive statement -- first it's expected to cost them no more than $3 million a year, chump change considering that they sit on an endowment valued at $12.2 billion (yes, billion). As former Stanford President Donald Kennedy noted a while back, it's "unenviable" to look so rich yet always be begging for money in major fundraising campaigns. Second, they most likely won't be admitting more new freshman than the roughly 2,900 they take in each year, nor will they be lowering admissions standards to any significant degree -- it will still be a very competitive admit pool. This move may spur an increase in applications and enrollments from very talented lower income students, maybe not. It will certainly make them more competitive in the race to enroll more low-income underrepresented minority students.

The key question is of course, will anyone follow suit? Harvard's endowment is twice that of Stanford's. In 1997, Time reporter Erik Larson asked why the University of Pennsylvania couldn't provide free tuition with an endowment valued then at over $1 billion. This is a fair question, which has underneath it the basic question of whether higher education is a right or a privilege.

Related to all this, the folks at The Institute for College Access and Success have a database available that contains information on loan usage across campuses. Worth a look if you're interested in the issue.

mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is

Poking around the Billy Bragg site while writing the last post I was reminded of this song, and reading the lyrics I'm struck that despite being written 20 years ago and for a country an ocean away, it's perfect for today, especially in the context of the Russ Feingold's censure resolution. Something about which you can do your part, by taking five minutes and contacting your Senator and urge that they support the resolution.

Ideology
When one voice rules the nation
Just because they're on top of the pile
Doesn't mean their vision is the clearest
The voices of the people
Are falling on deaf ears
Our politicians all become careerists
They must declare their interests
But not their company cars
Is there more to a seat in parliament
Than sitting on your arse
And the best of all this bad bunch
Are shouting to be heard
Above the sound of ideologies clashing

Outside the patient millions
Who put them into power
Expect a little more back for their taxes
Like school books, beds in hospitals
And peace in our bloody time
All they get is old men grinding axes
Who've built their private fortunes
On the things they can rely
The courts, the secret handshake
The Stock Exchange and the old school tie
For God and Queen and Country
All things they justify
Above the sound of ideologies clashing

God bless the civil service
The nations saving grace
While we expect democracy
They're laughing in our face
And although our cries get louder
Their laughter gets louder still
Above the sound of ideologies clashing

way over yonder in the minor key

Billy Bragg, tonight on Conan.

Watch, you should.

And if he comes to your town, go see him. Sadly, nothing in the Bay Area on this leg.

And wow...this new box set moves right to the top of my wishlist.

And also, if you're not sure about Billy, free mp3 downloads of 'The Price Of Oil', 'Must I Paint You A Picture?' and 'Take Down The Union Jack (Remix)'.

double happiness

a long overdue travel expense check came today, meaning a trip to the bank, meaning on the way back stopping by the brazil fresh squeeze cafe for lunch. mmm...crunchy chicken salad sandwich.

holi moli

This looks like a fun time.

(thanks, saurav)

i say temple, you say owls

Sadness but no surprise at hearing that Temple men's basketball coach John Chaney has decided to retire. He's 74 years old and has coached with such intensity for so long, he looks worn down. I went to Temple for undergrad, and Chaney has been Temple basketball for a long, long time. It'll be hard to imagine anyone else on the sidelines.

I didn't like how he sometimes overplayed the race card, especially in response to the NCAA trying to raise academic standards, but I admired his efforts to find guys who needed college for a leg up on the social mobility ladder, and then instill into them discipline and work ethic via 6am practices and staying on them about school. He helped lots of guys who likely would have not othewise have had a shot to go to a decent college (or might have gone to a place like Cincinnati and get used by Bob Huggins), and lots of these students earned a degree.

malenga! (possible sopranos spoiler)

I'm guessing I'm not the only one who said "holy shit!!" at the end of the Sopranos last night (spoilers in the linked stories...don't read if you don't want to know just yet). Interesting that they had no previews for next week.

Oh, and I found at least one death pool/betting site. I'm sure there are more.

another rainy day, trapped inside with the train set

sunday round up...

In the middle of a massive flickr upload of a bunch of old stuff that was residing at fotolog (it looks to be a rainy day, and the soccer game was cancelled, so might as well get to one thing I've been putting off). The overall flickr interface and experience is much better. Seeing the South America photos brings back good memories of the trip.

Wow was Joe Biden ever awful on Meet the Press this morning. Normally he's an annoying over-bloviating windbag, but today he was strident and off his game. Didn't look at the camera or at Russert, mostly looked down, stumbled over his words. He stands no chance at the Dem nomination in 2008, and would be a horrible candidate in a general election. He always comes off as too angry. I don't understand why he's running. Meanwhile George Allen kept making me think of Seinfeld character David Puddy.

Went to a reading last night at Edinburgh Castle. Short story by Daniel Handler -- or as more people know him, Lemony Snicket (and Handler looks nothing like I imagined) -- and a dramatic adaptation of a Gus Van Zandt story. Preceded by wine and cheese at Hotel Biron.

walking in l.a.

Some photos of downtown Los Angeles, from the March 3-5 trip mentioned recently.

I have this odd fascination with Frank Gehry. He's cleary very bold and inventive but some of his buildings, particularly the business school at Case Western University, seem so out of place for their surroundings. You can see the Case Western building from way atop the cemetery where Harding is buried...your eyes can't avoid it as it dominates the staid Cleveland scenery. The Experience Music Project building in Seattle works a bit better, situated as it is next to the Space Needle.

The Disney Concert Hall fits in perfectly to its place. It is LA, so the bold and borderline absurd are to be expected. And this building is bold. My words can't do it justice, so for more info you should go to this interesting look at the design at Arcspace.

dysfunction junction

Finally got around to seeing Capote last night, and for discussion purposes it's a good complement to The Squid and the Whale which I saw a couple of weeks ago. Both center on insufferably egotistical New York-based writers, albeit one with a bit more notoriety and success than the other. Both Jeff Daniels's Bernard Berkman and Truman Capote are real people, the Berkman character fictional but apparently not too far removed from the real-life father of Squid writer and director Noah Brumbach (who wrote The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which also deals heavily with paternal-filial relations and egomaniac creative types.

There's not a scene in Squid which isn't uncomfortable to watch. From the screwed up family dynamic that's set up in the first scene on the tennis court, to the pretension and smug stupidity of Berkman and his eldest son, to the mom's philandering, to the youngest son's acting out with alcohol and masturbation (and speaking of uncomfortable, the acts are portrayed fairly graphically, which is cringe-worthy as the kid {played by Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates's son Owen) is all of about 10 years old..how do you direct that without self-consciousness)...the film is one big trip to the therapist's couch for Brumbauch, and entire skeletons are hauled out of the closet for the audience to examine. Plenty of films have dealt with divorce, and many from the point-of-view of the kids...none that I remember have done so in a way that either sparks instant recognition for anyone who's been through some messy family stuff or provides a "there but for the grace of god" moment for people who grew up in happy families. And speaking of child stars, or at least former ones now grown up...Anna Paquin plays a grad student who sleeps with the elder Berkman while she teases his son. Anna Paquin, the little girl from The Piano. When did she grow up?

The real-life Truman Capote doesn't come off very well. He's portrayed as a self-absorbed drama-queen who uses Perry Smith (and to a lesser extent Richard Hickock) to write "In Cold Blood". At first his affection for Smith is apparently genuine, as he thinks Smith and he are both cut from the same cloth, and Smith just had the worse luck and made the poor choices to be weak and a criminal. The worm turns when Capote realizes that Smith is as much using him to get access to lawyers and beat the rap when it's obvious that Smith and Hickock are guilty. A fantastic juxtaposition is the scene where Capote is basking in the adulation from a well-received public reading from the unfinished book while Smith sees a fellow death-row inmate be walked into the hanging warehouse and later wheeled out on a back-hoe, one arm hanging off the lip of the well. Each sees his future played out, the consequences of the murder taking their lives in starkly different directions. In the end Capote can't wait for Smith and Hickock to meet the hangman so that he can finish his book. The depth of Capote's self-absorption comes when longtime friend Harper Lee is celebrating her own success, the film premiere of "To Kill a Mockingbird". Capote can't even be bothered to offer her sincere congratulations, preferring to wallow in his own martini-induced miasma of self-pity, churlishly lamenting that the stays of execution are preventing him from being done with the book.

Regarding the Oscar-worthiness of Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance...well, it's always hard to be totally objective after the fact. I mean, I'm watching it knowing he won, how can that not affect my own view? Three of the nominees for Best Actor were for roles where the actors portrayed real people who had plenty of visual evidence left as to their mannerisms. While it's certainly a challenge to portray a real person regardless whether the actor interprets or imitates, I thought Heath Ledger's performance was all the more amazing because he had to create his character out of whole cloth. And his character was much more complex than Joaquin Phoenix's Johnny Cash or PHS's Truman Capote.

the waiting is the hardest part

HBO, Sunday, 9pm...our long national nightmare of waiting will be over. Someone, somewhere, has gotta be running an on-line Sopranos death pool, right?

wait a minute honey, gonna add it up

Randomalia...

A few weeks ago I went to see The Adventures of Cunning and Guile, a series of dance duets by Chris Black and Ken James, and featuring art by Lark Pien. Very inventive and fun. staged in the galleries of the Cartoon Art Museum, which is worth a visit on its own.

We had a power outage last night. That in and of itself isn't weird. What was odd was that I woke up about 10 seconds before the lights went out at 2am. My eyes just snapped open, looked around, I heard the dull thud of the power stopping, and then my alarm clock went dead. Took about 45 minutes to get back to sleep. I awoke just before the electricity came back on at 6am, though it's hard to think of that as unusual since that's when I wake up every day during the week. Still, I woke up about 2 seconds before the power came back. Eyes just snapped open, and "bam", on came the juice.

Soccer season starts up again this weekend, weather permitting. The "learn to play keeper somewhat competently" experiment continues. It's a fun new challenge, and it's less wear and tear on the acl-replaced left knee.

Some good live music coming this way in the next few weeks, including various Noise Pop shows, the New Pornographers & Belle and Sebastian together on one bill, Rhett Miller, and just for the hell of it, AC/DShe, an all-girl AC/DC cover band.

Finally, did you ever have that feeling you were on the verge? That after some time treading water you were about to hit the rapids for a wild and fun ride? The last week or so, I haven't been able to shake that feeling. I'm not exactly sure why, but I can't wait to find out.

up on the catwalk, follow-up

Three cheers for Chloe Dao winning this season of Project Runway. I missed Daniel's collection, but saw Chloe's and Santino's. All through Chloe's I was thinking "wow", and all through Santino's I was thinking "that's, uh, nice". And again, me, not a fashion guy.

Anyway, to make up for two days running of fashion-related reality tv posts, I'll spend the next few days on baseball (the Phillies are going to suck this season) and soccer (I can't wait for the World Cup this summer) and beer and monster trucks and guns and chewing tobacco and other manly pursuits. Except that I don't really dig on anything in that list after beer.

more cowbell

I went on a musical binge last week, and caught up with some things I'd wanted to get. Mostly catch-up of not-so-new stuff...

Johnny Cash -- At Folsom Prison: I've heard the highlights before, but the show in it's entirety is incredible. Cash is warm, funny and engaging with inmates in a Caifornia prison known for being a very hard place to do hard time. Periodic interruptions from a prison official to call inmates to see visitors remind the listener where the show is taking place. The set is full of songs about men who are in prison or should be, and Cash is often laughing in the middle of these very somber stories, probably as reaction to how his audience is responding to him putting their own experiences to song. It's especially jarring in "25 Minutes To Go", a run-down of a condemned man's last half-hour, including his watching the gallows being tested and his last meal of beans.

Wilco -- Kicking Television: Live in Chicago: Wilco have become the latest band, to me anyway, to have inherited the old Clash designation as the only band that matters. Jeff Tweedy's moved from being a No Depression hero to a pop experimentalist. I've always been impressed with his willingness to take chances, to take his songcraft beyond the alt-country scene and mix some Stax-Volt soul, Beatle-esque pop and Brian Wilson-like imagination. Kicking Television documents a few live shows taped in Chicago, and captures the band pushing the songs in all directions. To see them at work, put the film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart in your Netflix queue. While not as riveting as the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster, it's worth a watch if you're a fan.

The Strokes -- First Impressions of Earth: An improvement from the last record, and a slight departure in sound. Gone is the distortion on the vocals, and in fact they're farther up in the mix this time, perhaps owing to Julian Casablancas finding out that he can actually sing (though it's a bit hard to take him seriously when he sings in his trust-fund baby world-weary voice that "I don't want to be judgemental"). They're not afraid to try different things, moving away from merely trying to repeat themselves and actually taking their sound and doing something new with it. From having seen them live a few years back I realized that drummer Fabrizio Moretti and Albert Hammond Jr. were the musical heart and soul of the band -- the best players, and the focal point for the songs. But on this record, bassist Nikolai Fraiture takes a great leap forward. His playing is very inventive, driving the songs like he hadn't before.

Belle & Sebastian -- The Life Pursuit: A while back, my friend Kieran tried to get me into Belle and Sebastian, but for whatever reason, it didn't take. A bit too fey for my tastes I guess, but I could recognize that there were some good songs there. The Life Pursuit has a fuller sound than previous B&S, and (to me, anyway) better suits the songs. Have only spun through it once, so need more time, but it's quite a good pop record. One listen to "Another Sunny Day" and it'll be stuck in your head for days.

Still to be listened to...

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals -- Jacksonville City Nights
Franz Ferdinand -- You Could Have It So Much Better
Sigur Rós -- Takk...

i wanna be your dog

now this is an awesome dog...born without two front legs, yet still gets around...

(link opens video...thanks to gr)

in for a penny, in for a pound

First, if you aren't listening to KEXP, you should be. Second, if you do listen but haven't pledged to KEXP, you should support the station. Fund drive's going on now. Hurry hurry -- give your dough, get your swag.

why did you build me up, buttercup?

Poor Bud Selig. All he wanted to do was stage a multinational baseball extravaganza. It's bad enough that lots of stars didn't buy into the idea, were discouraged from playing by team management, were hurt, or were worried about getting hurt before the season, and thus aren't playing.

But now the World Baseball Classic is about to be overshadowed by the mother of all steroid stories.

Two San Francisco Chronicle writers, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, have a book coming out, with an excerpt running this week in Sports Illustrated. They claim that Barry Bonds, fueled by jealousy and resentment over Mark McGwire's home-run heroics, has knowingly been taking steroids since 1998.

It's going to totally blow the WBC out of the water, be the big story as the regular season starts, and will make a complete circus of the Giants' season.

Can't wait for opening day!

for a honky-tonkin' good time....

...50 cent haircut.

saw them saturday night at the knitting factory in hollywood (thanks to the band and pam for the guest listing). lots of fun...power-pop chord changes over rockabilly/honky-tonk rhythms and songs about lost love, found love, drinking, politics and life.

the other band on the bill, sacred cowboys, features w. earl brown (from deadwood and there's something about mary {franks and beans!}). good players, but overall a sound too derivative of lynyrd skynrd. though i gotta say, the keyboard/banjo player guy was pretty cool. the most genuinely rock-and-roll guy in the band.

krauthammer takes on hollywood

Charles Krauthammer often comes across as your nutty cranky uncle -- writes and says things that make you laugh and shake your head at the same time. But usually he's tilting at hefty windmills, things that are important, even if he spouts utter nonsense about those things.

His column today takes on Hollywood in general, and the movie Syriana in particular. His main point is that the Oscars this year are doing a disservice to America by honoring the evils of the Middle East. He starts out with:

Nothing tells you more about Hollywood than what it chooses to honor. Nominated for best foreign-language film is "Paradise Now," a sympathetic portrayal of two suicide bombers. Nominated for best picture is "Munich," a sympathetic portrayal of yesterday's fashion in barbarism: homicide terrorism.

But until you see "Syriana," nominated for best screenplay (and George Clooney, for best supporting actor) you have no idea how self-flagellation and self-loathing pass for complexity and moral seriousness in Hollywood.

I think Krauthammer needs to have his perspective changed on the nature and purpose of art.

First, from everything I've read Paradise Now is not so much sympathetic as it is trying to tell the story from both sides. Art is supposed to make us rethink our world. It's ok if we come away from a piece with the same position on an issue – at the very least that work should inform us and also challenge us to see the entire picture, not just a narrow point of view. An even-handed approach doesn't mean that people will come away thinking suicide bombing is ok, but would it be that bad if the film at lest shed some light on what drives people to such extreme action? Would it kill the average American to see this point of view, even if he doesn't come away agreeing with it?

Same with Munich. Again, I haven't seen (my movie-going was sadly limited this year), but every review of the film I've seen (and this is corroborated by friends who've seen it) notes that one of Spielberg's main points was to show the psychological and emotional cost to the Israeli Mossad agents as they hunt down the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the massacre of the Isaeli Olympic athletes in 1972. I don't see how that makes the original act sympathetic, but hey, crazy Uncle Chuck's on a roll, why derail it?

Finally, he calls Syriana's creators anti-America. All because they essentially tell a fictionalized story of the interdependence between our reliance on Middle Eastern oil and a foreign policy that thus must support unsavory regimes. This isn't self-flagellating fiction, it's reality -- c.f. Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.

Krauthammer outlines the plot, and then drops the dime:

What is grotesque about this moment of plot clarity is that the overwhelmingly obvious critique of actual U.S. policy in the real Middle East today concerns America's excess of Wilsonian idealism in trying to find and promote -- against a tide of tyranny, intolerance and fanaticism -- local leaders like the Good Prince.

Hey Uncle Chuck -- some of those intolerant, fanatical tyrants? We've been propping them up for a while. But don't let facts get in the way of a boilerplate conservative rant against liberal Hollywood.

glenn greenwald

Greenwald has fast become my favorite long-form political blogger. His two posts this week on the NSA scandal, the first a rundown of new info and the second an astute analysis of the Gonzales letter to Congress are very compelling reads, especially the dressing down of Gonzales.

If you're not reading him, you should be.

forget the panda...can we get a moose?

please? please? the norweigans are depending on us!

(thanks, kathy)

shake me, all night long

A couple of quakes rolled through today, a 2.8 followed by a 3.4 10 minutes later.

I'm still new enough to the area that I don't take the smaller ones in stride. After a few years I'm sure it'll take a 6.0 to make me dive under my desk.

we're going through a hole in the sky

no matter how many times i see robyn hitchcock play, i always feel like i've seen a show made for that night, not a repeat of the same show he played the night before in the next city over. and i know this to be true because when i worked for a&m records a while back, and worked the "globe of frogs" record to retail and college radio, i saw him play a 4 times over 6 nights in nyc, boston, trenton and philadelphia. what struck me then was that each night's between-song patter was different, extemporaneous riffs on the absurd that only robyn can pull off. the set lists changed enough each night, anchored around selling the record (they were on their first major-label tour, so were playing it somewhat safe).

so seeing him at slim's tonight was yet again a new experience. his backing band this time were the minus 5, led by young fresh fellow and part-time r.e.m.-er scott mccaughey, and including peter buck on bass (during the minus 5 set) and guitar (for robyn).

i'll have to admit that i've never been a young fresh fellow fan, and the minus 5 don't really do it for me. that said, mccaughey's a good singer and a fine instrumentalist. for whatever reason his songs have never been my thing.

but robyn has always been my thing and tonight was no different. he bounded on stage with a big smile, a drink and greeted us with a hearty "hello groovers", then began an acoustic set led off by syd barrett's "gigiolo aunt" and including "one long pair of eyes" and "beautiful girl". buck, mccaughey and the minus 5 drummer then joined robyn for the remainder of the set, featuring a smattering of new and old, including "madonna of the wasps" and "if you were a priest". the between-song highlight was a 5-minute run through the plot for magnum force, the movie that inspired the song "a man's gotta know his limitations, briggs". a wonderful set, proof that i can see robyn countless times and he'll never disappoint. all that and i made a new fan for robyn.

"i wanna destroy you" was the crescendo piece of the night and though it's, what, 20 years old (?), robyn's dedicating it to george, condi, donnie et al, made it as relevant as ever.

so, a reminder...

I wanna destroy you (4x)

I feel it coming on again
Just like it did before
They fill your mind with boredom
And they lead you off to war
The way we treat each other
Really makes me feel ill
And if you're gonna fight
Then you're just dying to get killed

I wanna destroy you (4x)

A pox upon the media
And everything you read
They tell you your opinions
And they're very good indeed

I wanna destroy you

And when I have destroyed you
I'll come pickin' at your bones
And you won't have a single atom
Left to call your own

can we get a panda?

please? please? i promise to take care of it.

(thanks, ian)

little decisions are the kind I can make

...how i imagine our white house at work...

the inspiration...

blind acceptance is a sign, of stupid fools who stand in line

the flilthy lucre tours aside, the sex pistols have pretty much always told the music industry to go screw itself, so it's no surpise to see this headline:

"Sex Pistols Flip Off Rock Hall"

yes, they've told the rock and roll hall of fame that they won't be at the march 13 ceremony, and have done it with their usual sense of overly self-conscious rebellious iconoclasm.

the hand-written note on the lydon/pistols website reads (spelling/grammar errors left in tact):

"Next to the sex Pistols, rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain. Your museum. Urine in wine. We're not coming. Were not your monkey and so what? Fame at $25,000 if we paid for a table, or $15,000 to squeak up in the gallery, goes to a non-profit organization selling us a load of old famous. Congratulations. If you voted for us, hope you noted your reasons. Your anonymous as judges, but your still music industry people. Were not coming. Your not paying attention. Outside the shit-stem is a real Sex Pistol."

johnny lydon may often be full of shit, but you gotta admit that he does most everything with some style and flourish.

it's not cheating if i'm with you

say you're eating dinner while watching a cooking show and lusting after the food being prepared...is that like making love and fantasizing about someone other than the person with whom you're in bed?

mystery achievement

back when i was in 7th grade i wrote an essay about wanting to be an olympic athlete. something about the thought of reperesenting your country as a top athlete really got to me, even though i was a scrawny (though reasonably athletic) kid. my english teacher, mr. bundy, commended me on the piece. since i can remember, i've been entranced by the idea of the olympics, as much as the competition (and this was before i found out the the athlete's village was one giant pick-up joint, the hooking up apparently enabled, if not encouraged by the ioc and sponsors.).

anyway, i love watching them, especially sports that i wouldn't necessarily be all that into were they not part of the games -- swimming, track and field, luge, bobsled and of course, curling (and admittedly, yes, this helps). oh and moguls, but then this helps as well.

this year, though, it's been a giant bore. i watched a few hours of it during the week, and with the exception of a few curling matches, the canada-swizerland hockey game and any of the hockey games in which finland played, it's been bleh.

well, not totally. snowboard-cross was awesome, and short-track speedskating is fun, and not just for the spill-factor.

but there have been no compelling stories featuring winners. the big stories have been about the over-hyped who for various reasons, couldn't deliver and were less than sporting or gracious about it. though to be fair, weir has taken the gold for "Best Use of the Games to Become A Bigger Celebrity", narrowly edging out the flying tomato.

though come to think of it, the french guy who won men's downhill gold...that was a thrilling moment. last guy down the run, not expected to do much as he's still recovering from a knee injury, and steals the top spot with a daredevil run. that was a good story, even if it had a short shelf-life.

those surprise moments were just too few and far between. yeah, it was great that the japanese girl won her country's first gold in that sport, i mean, competition. but she did it because the favorites fell. if they'd all stayed on their skates, she's 3rd at best.

usually i find myself at the end of the games almost not wishing they were over. this year i keep wondering when they're finally gonna end.

{addendum...watching the games makes me want to go to torino. looks like an amazing place for a winter vacation}

that said, i still would love to be an olympian. 2010 is far enough away to get together a danish bobseld team, right?

lip service is all i ever get from you

For a guy who's supposed to be the guardian of our nation's secrets and intelligence, CIA Director Porter Goss seems to be out of the loop.

In this piece in today's NYT, a whinefest about intelligence leaks, he is both outright lying and disingenuously lying, committing lies of commission and ommission.

His point is:

Revelations of intelligence successes or failures, whether accurate or not, can aid Al Qaeda and its global affiliates in many ways. A leak is invaluable to them, even if it only, say, prematurely confirms whether one of their associates is dead or alive. They can gain much more: these disclosures can tip the terrorists to new technologies we use, our operational tactics, and the identities of brave men and women who risk their lives to assist us.

The head-shaking comes because of an example he uses to make his point, and an example he ignores, which would have more on target.

One example Goss uses to stress the importance of keeping secrets is:

Recently, I noticed renewed debate in the news media over press reports in 1998 that Osama bin Laden's satellite phone was being tracked by United States intelligence officials. In the recent debate, it was taken for granted that the original reports did not hurt our national security efforts, and any suggestions that they did cause damage were dismissed as urban myth. But the reality is that the revelation of the phone tracking was, without question, one of the most egregious examples of an unauthorized criminal disclosure of classified national defense information in recent years. It served no public interest. Ultimately, the bin Laden phone went silent.

Only one problem...this story has been pretty much discredited in this WaPo story from December 2005, Goss's whining to the contrary. Moreover, it wasn't any US press agency that was responsible for the leak.

President Bush asserted this week that the news media published a U.S. government leak in 1998 about Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite phone, alerting the al Qaeda leader to government monitoring and prompting him to abandon the device.

The story of the vicious leak that destroyed a valuable intelligence operation was first reported by a best-selling book, validated by the Sept. 11 commission and then repeated by the president.

But it appears to be an urban myth.

The al Qaeda leader's communication to aides via satellite phone had already been reported in 1996 -- and the source of the information was another government, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan at the time.

The second time a news organization reported on the satellite phone, the source was bin Laden himself.

Causal effects are hard to prove, but other factors could have persuaded bin Laden to turn off his satellite phone in August 1998. A day earlier, the United States had fired dozens of cruise missiles at his training camps, missing him by hours.

Not only that, he seems to have completely forgotten about a rather egregious leak that outed a covert CIA agent. And now it seems that Libby was ordered by VP Cheney to disclose classified info. Makes you wonder how likely it was that the Plame leak was done at the Veep's behest. Then of course there's this little gem from the Post today:

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Until BushCo I was under the impression that the CIA was supposed to be above politics, not an agency at the beck-and-call of the President, not part of the army of spin doctors that the administration needs to cover its ass and make up slam-dunk certainties.

say what you will

Though he's considered the dean of Beltway pundits, David Broder's toolery has been exposed before, most effectively by Eric Alterman.

So while it's a disappointment, it's hardly a surprise to read this little gem from his column today:

Every Democrat on the committee signaled in the hearing a readiness to make needed adjustments in the FISA statute, as Congress has done five times since 2001 to provide more flexibility. The Democrats clearly had heeded Karl Rove's recent speech to the Republican National Committee, signaling an intention to tag them -- once again -- in the 2006 campaign as being soft on terrorism.

They went out of their way to avoid that charge, with Ted Kennedy even applying some reverse English to the argument, by suggesting that al Qaeda suspects might beat the rap in court by their lawyers' successfully challenging evidence obtained through surveillance conducted under questionable legal authority.

I love how he frames this as "Rove speak, Dems jump", as if the Dems were the obedient dog. Broder puts them in the passive, reactive mode. God forbid he frame it as "Rove once again exploited national secrurity for politics, falsely accusing Dems of..."

Look, we do have issues with the party not being effective at crafting a message and for sure the party has, since the Cold War, had to fight the perception that it is weak on national security. However, reality shows us that most Dems are quite serious about real and effective solutions to protecting the country from terrorism. It's discouraging then, to read more b.s. "conventional wisdom", framed in a way that puts Rove in charge, and doesn't call Rove on this disgusting campaign tactic. I would like to think that Broder knows better, but sadly he doesn't.

Perhaps it's time for a few firm but cordial e-mails to the dean, to let him know that people are tired of lazy punditry.

I’ll be what I am, a solitary man

The overriding focus of discussion about Brokeback Mountain has naturally been about the love affair between two men. To be sure, a major motion-picture telling the story of a love affair between two men spanning the 1960s and 1970s in the big sky country of Wyoming is worth talking about. But the film is not just about “gay cowboys eating pudding”. There much more going on.

Mostly I saw it as a character study of a man, Ennis Del Mar, who has a profoundly sad inability to get out of his own head and connect with other people. People are drawn to him – his lover Jack Twist, wife Alma, eldest daughter Alma Jr., bartender Cassie Cartwright. Yet Ennis struggles to reciprocate their attraction, subconsciously but overtly keeping people at a distance, never deliberately showing his true self. When he does open up and flash a bit of unabashed emotion (excitement over going “fishing” with Twist), it takes his wife and the audience by surprise.

To be sure, it is beautifully shot and the acting is first rate. The landscape shots are lush and spectacular and stand in sharp contrast to the interior scenes that Ang Lee frames in a way that's evocative of the American realism period of painting of Eakins and Hopper -- stark images conveying loneliness and empty space. Heath Ledger plays Del Mar with just enough reticence and vulnerability to make the character a tragic hero. Jake Gyllenhaal’s Twist is a bit less fully realized. He's definitely trying to be a young romantic, wanting to seduce everything in his path, but there's something about Gyllenhaal the actor...he doesn't carry the emotional weight that Ledger does, and seems small and meager by comparison.

the sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine

The owners of the mining company should be brought up on 12 counts of negligent homicide. From the Washington Post:

Time and again over the past four years, federal mining inspectors documented the same litany of problems at central West Virginia's Sago Mine: mine roofs that tended to collapse without warning. Faulty or inadequate tunnel supports. A dangerous buildup of flammable coal dust.

Yesterday, the mine's safety record came into sharp focus as officials searched for explanations for Monday's underground explosion. That record, as reflected in dozens of federal inspection reports, shows a succession of operators struggling to overcome serious, long-standing safety problems, some of which could be part of the investigation into the cause of the explosion that trapped 13 miners.

In the past two years, the mine was cited 273 times for safety violations, of which about a third were classified as "significant and substantial," according to documents compiled by the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Many were for problems that could contribute to accidental explosions or the collapse of mine tunnels, records show.
<...>

**********

The media, this so-called anti-business, anti-Republican liberal media, is almost as much to blame for the deaths, and that's as much a deal as the idiotic and unprofessional reporting that told the world that the miners were all alive.

Good investigative reporting -- of the likes of Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Jacob Riis, Jack Anderson and pre-fame Woodward and Bernstein -- has gone the way of the rotary phone. And it's this kind of reporting that exposed a meat-packing industry that was killing people, exposed life in NYC slums, exposed corrupt politicians from Boss Tweed to Nixon. They were in full-throttle during the Lewinsky thing, but only in it for the titillation. "Reporters" dig for the next missing blonde chick but don't work to expose real problems like the Sago mine.

These miners died because of a lack of enforcement of safety codes and a lazy press. Its OSHA, the EPA, FDA and other agencies that should be there to protect us. When they fall down the Fourth Estate (the press) needs to be there to call them into account.

Let's not let the union off the hook. They're as complicit in the deaths as the mining company and the press. They should never have allowed their rank-and-file into that mine and should never again allow workers to go to demonstrably unsafe mines.

These miners died because of a business climate that falsely proclaims how burdensome safety regulations are and because the press has left its balls and vigilance at the door in a trade for access and glamour. China allows its citizens to be expendable cannon-fodder for industry and "progress" (dam failures, chemical plant explosions). The Soviet Union did the same (Chernobyl) The number of deaths is astounding -- do some research on it. The level of government complicity and the callousness of government response in these and other nations we condemn for human rights abuses is even more astounding. We should be better than that.

some kind of monster

i'll start this by saying that i'm not a metallica fan. have never dug their music. so why use netflix rentals for the documentary "some kind of monster", which details the making of metallica's "st. anger" album? because the reviews were pretty good and i have some experience in the music biz, including in the studio and dealing with fucked up band dynamics.

i'd read the stories about how hetfield and ulrich were major assholes -- control freaks who didn't let kirk hammett or jason newstead have much in the way of creative input, how they mercilessly hazed newstead after he took over for the dead cliff burton. if you read the rock press you read the 'alcoholica' stories, you read about the groupies. ulrich makes news going after napster. but you also read about an incredibly successful band.

so it's quite a shock that the movie starts with conflict, newstead leaving the band just before they commence recording what would become "st. anger". also, the band has brought in a $40K/month life-performance coach to help them with their issues. the sessions begin with nothing demoed, evidently a departure for them. but hey, they're rich, they can afford to dick around in the studio. also, the plan is for everyone to contribute both musically and lyrically, again a new thing.

the sessions aren't yielding much but fighting between hetfield and ulrich, with hammett playing his usual peace-maker. after a particularly bad fight, hetfield storms out of the studio. he doesn't come back for a year, going into rehab. upon his return the band slog thru recording and finish. they also hire a new bass player, rob trujillo, from ozzy osbourne's band.

the crux of the film is not the artistic process itself, but the interplay between the art and personal reconciliation. simply put, these guys have major issues in how they deal with each other. their lives having come to a crossroads of age {they're all at or near 40} and their material wealth great and musical legacy strong, they need to find out how to be challenged to create and how to get out of the dysfunctional rut that will keep them from moving forward artistically.

there are some powerful scenes from therapy sessions and meeting, scenes that make the viewer feel like an intruder. but they resonate with real pain and emotion. notable is a meeting between dave mustaine and lars ulrich. mustaine, kicked out of the band almost 20 years ago, *still* harbors major resentment towards hetfield and ulrich for the way they dumped him {though he acknowledges he deserved it, given his alchoholism..which is saying something considering how much these guys drank}. despite that mustaine's band megadeath sold millions and millions of records, he still acts like a wounded child, his self-esteem stuck at being measured in terms of his relationship to metallica's success and that he wasn't there for it.

hetfield's post-rehab change is remarkable -- he emerges as this sensitive, caring family man who openly professes love for his bandmates. the directors do a great job of developing his character.

it's a layered and complex film about real relationships. and from experience i know that being in a band is very much like a marriage or other romantic relationship. you put so much of yourself out there, you're so vulnerable and the only ting that keeps you going is your trust in your partner{s}.

so get the movie. make sure to also get the bonus disc {shipped separately if via netflix}. it's an amazing piece of work. this non-fan still doesn't like metallica's music that much, but i came away with a fair amount of respect for them, in the sense that they embarked on a risky path of personal and artistic change, and doubled that risk by letting cameras chronicle every minute.

new year's in vegas

photo set...

for my first time in vegas, why not during the new year's holiday? if you're gonna do over-the-top sensory overload, no time like when it's as crowded as possible. it's supposed to be second only to nyc/times square in terms of number of people gathering.

anyway, first day+ was hanging with a friend who lives in henderson. mellow, just eating, drinking, watching hockey.

the vegas experience starts the next day, thursday. meet up with my friend j (knew her in miami, now she's a photography student at parson's in nyc) and get to the hotel, the excalibur. there's a medieval theme that's definitely played out in the architecture, and to a point in the entertainment and a few of the restaurant names. the rooms themselves were fairly generic. just a small faux medieval tapestry hanging on one wall, and the bedframes had vaguely gothic/olde englishe style carving.

anyway, the strip hotels, especially the newer ones (bellagio, wynn, venetian, paris, new york new york ,mgm grand luxor, mandalay bay, cesear's palace) were HUGE. some were set a good 3-5 minute walk back from the sidewalk.

each had a different vibe (theme aside). the mgm grand felt old-school/old money. dark lighting, wood paneling, chic (almost deco) design. across the street, the tropicana goes for middle-brow cheese. slot machine noise is all you hear, there's $5 blackjack with a lively crowd. played a few hands and had the coolest dealer -- a laconic and world-weary asian dude. great counterpoint to the boisterous crowd at his table. playing the same game at the $10 or $25 tables at luxor was stuffy and boring. at new york new york somewhere in the middle.

the bellagio and wynn are going for super-high end style. nice touches in each...marble flooring with cool in-lay, luxurious pool areas. at wynn it was almost defeated by this gigantic animatronic frog. the mirage (home to sigfried and roy) has a jungle theme augmented by a beautiful (live) tiger on display in a zoo-like area as you walk towards the main casino floor. felt kinda bad for the cat...smallish area, people gawking. at one point he was pawing at the door to get back to his secluded area, but the keepers must not have seen or heard him. looked just alike a housecat trying to get past a closed door -- on his hind legs and pushing/pawing.

the eating was good and (surprisingly) expensive. at the newer hotel restaurants you get good food, but for more than you'd pay at a conventional restaurant in a city. but then, this on a major holiday weekend and without any comps. but good sushi at a place in cesear's palace, and a good new year's dinner at wolfgang puck's restaurant in the mgm.

we took one day and hit lake mead and the hoover dam. awesome, especially the trails around the lake and the colorado river leading towards it. the hoover dam is an awesome engineering marvel. the design of the buildings and statues reflects its deco-era construction.

the older part of vegas, the downtown, is decidedly unglamorous. very bright neon lights flashing quickly. it's the golden nugget, four queens, glitter gulch strip joint. much more down-to-earth vibe. the fremont street experience light show is ok...more a technical marvel, but worth seeing. also, per usual, i found a good dive bar (at the art bar) and a good mexican place (casa don juan). kinda places locals go to, decidedly non-touristy.

new year's eve itself was ok. lots of events in every hotel. the strip (las vegas blvd) is blocked to traffic and people can walk on the street. by 11pm it's packed, to the point where it's impossible to walk all that far. fireworks up and down, including a synchronized display from new york new york, the mgm, and excalibur (they're each at the corners of the strip and tropicana ave).

getting anything done takes forever. it's a long walk to anywhere from inside the hotels. getting out is a chore (a design feature to keep you in) and with the crowds and the urban design it's like a quarter mile to to get from the hotel lobby to a street corner.

verdict -- worth going for the experience. i'd like to go back when it's less crowded and when room rates aren't at gouging levels (our rate for the 31st was 3x the rate for the 29th). might have spent more money on dinners and shows if the room hadn't set us back so much. but they still got lots of my dough.

let them read cake

the headlines on the cnn website, as of 2pm today...

MORE NEWS
• Lawyer in Saddam Hussein case kidnapped
• DeLay all smiles in booking photo | WATCH
• Teen arrested in slaying of TV legal analyst's wife | WATCH
• CNN/Money: Retailers ready to bet on deep discounts
• Search resumes for kids in San Francisco Bay | WATCH
• Watch: 'The shark pulled her completely under' | Read
• Jennifer Aniston photographed kissing Vince Vaughn
• Behind the Scenes: Toppled cemeteries add to woes
• Watch: Revelry returns to Bourbon Street
*************

yes, that jennifer aniston and vince vaugh were photographed smooching is news on the order of hussein's lawyer being kidnapped and the kids thrown into the sf bay.

and cnn (and the rest of the media) wonder why they get slammed.

clap your hands say overrated

ok, i've tried to like clap your hands say yeah, i really have. i mean, the singer's from philadelphia, so i have a hometown stake here. they play decently melodic songs (though the vocals leave a bit to be desired for such blatantly pop material), there's the verse-chorus-verse thing that gets me every time .

but really, i can't do it.

kexp can play them all they want, the music press can jizz over them, but sorry, they just don't do it for me. i'm not worried about losing the few hipster cred points that i have, so i'll say it...OVERRRATED. they're not bad, just, i don't know, not worth the hype.

all the news that's fit to stink

how fun must it be to be a ny times employee right now? you've just recovered from jason blair and now judith miller has shit the bed in epic style. others have already done the topic great justice, so go here and read (see in particular the linked wapo and e&p stories linked therein):

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/9/1447/51937

and then there's thomas friedman. i've held on reading him, mostly out of habit and inertia. but then we wrote this (accessed via lexis/nexis, not times select {which is another rant in and of itself}):

****
The president's speech on terrorism yesterday was excellent. He made clear, better than ever, why winning in Iraq is so important to the wider struggle against Islamo-fascism. But it only makes me that much more angry that he fought this war as though it would be easy -- never asking for any sacrifice, any military draft, any tax hikes or any gasoline tax -- and that he tolerated so much incompetence along the way.
****

ok, i know his isn't exactly a ground-breaking observation, but the depths of his toolness has sunk to new lows. this is just staggeringly shameless hypocrisy. he wants to have his cake and eat it too, only to turn around and tell you that he never had a slice of cake to begin with.

i wonder how much of this rah-rahing now is to cover his ass for his apologies for supporting the war. i'd respect him so much more if he'd just come out and admit that the premise of the war was wrong, not just that the execution has been faulty.

he is an utter tool, and is fast becoming an irrelevant read for me.

on the bright side, david brooks, who i consider a hack mainly for his, uh, hackneyed approach to dichotomizing the world has written a couple of decent columns of late discussing the role of education in the social order. it helps that he's come around to my way of thinking about the college access question in terms of "college capital", but i like that he's taking on the issue in a substantive way. i also like that he's starting to realize that even his own side is bereft of a moral center and has sold the american ideal down the river for the benefit of holding onto power. keep it up, david, you'll be a progressive liberal before you know it.

sing me spanish techno

it's been a few weeks of musical excess, which is the point for right now. in a fit of conspicuous consumption that would make veblen cringe, i've bought maybe a dozen cds of late. the quick and dirty...

somewhat newer (well, newer since i last posted) stuff:

* this post's title namesake album. twin cinema from new pornographers. the best of the three np records so far debuted at #44 on billboard's album charts, a rather astonishing feat for an indie power pop record. their show a couple of weeks ago had me in a good mood for days (and reaffirmed the fact that i want to marry neko case...not only does she have a great voice and write good songs, she looks great in a short, black cocktail dress). "sing me spanish techno" is one of my favorite songs of the year

* oranger -- new comes and goes. san francisco band which has apparently been "on the verge" for a long time. bass player matt harris is also in the posies, and the bands have been touring together to support their new records. "crooked in the weird of the catacombs" and "radiowave" are the highlights, and there's not a bad song on the record. the production's a bit too clean and in the midrange...a wider sonic spectrum for the guitars would be nice...makes it seem like they're holding back. live show is a bit like that as well...good, but just a bit too clean and controlled. still, a very good record.

* the hold steady -- separation sunday. apparently a concept album about a teen girl in suburban Minneapolis, torn between the allure of drugs and sex and the pull of her Catholic upbringing. craig finn's talk-singing about the dark side of life evokes a velvet undergound vibe, but with big classic-rock power chords. the perfect soundtrack to a stroll thru the lower east side or the mission.

* maximo park -- a certain trigger. british power pop with arena pretensions. "gone missing" and "apply some pressure" stand out. between these guys, arcade fire, franz ferdinand and bloc party the 80s new wave scene lives on. i just saw a listing for a mudhoney show, so the 90s grunge revival is just around the corner.

out for a while, but for whatever reason (laziness, working too much, moving cross-country) i just got around to them now:

* joe strummer & the mescaleros -- streecore. it came out almost 2 years ago and somehow i just got around to getting it last month. listening to it is both enjoyable and depressing. "coma girl", "get down moses"

* superdrag -- last call for vitriol. last album from the knoxville band, made as john davis was undergoing a life change which included sobriety and getting religion. too bad, but probably time. only so long you can keep on making good records to little or no attention, but by this point they were starting to sound tired. "baby goes to 11" is the best of the set.

the big pink

so the posies kicked off their tour here the other day, and it was quite a show.

the setlist was pretty much what you'd hope for. most of the hits and a good selection off the new record. i realized that the last time i had seen them live was at the exact same club about 12 years ago when i was in town for the gavin report music conference. how odd then, that a few songs into the set they start to list all the times they'd played at the club, and asked who had been to the shows.

ken stringfellow got ripshit drunk during the set. overdid the rock-star bit too much for a small club. spits all the time, rock star poses. at the end of the regular set he takes off his shirt and plays the last song with his pants half-way down his ass. the last song also featured him trying to smash up the keyboard.

comes out for the encore wearing only underwear, and pink briefs at that.
they had to be his gf/wife's. at least i hope. they brought up a ton of
people on stage (including scott miller of game theory/loud family) for the last couple of songs. didn't trash equipment but tossed stuff around. it was first night of the tour, and i can only imagine their stage tech guy thinking "it's gonna be a long fucking tour".

openers death ray davies and oranger were pleasant surprises. hadn't heard either band before (though a friend told me i'd like oranger) but loved them.

on the way home tonight...

...stopped by an ostensibly normal looking guy...

him: excuse me, is there some kind of ordinance?
me: huh?
him: the squirrels, along delaware street. they're marching right down the street.
me: [quizzical look]
him: i mean, i'm from colorado and i've never -- is it some kind of ordinance, the squirrels running wild?
me: this is berkeley, everything runs wild here.
him: oh, ok.
me: [quickly walks away before he can start in again]

this is news?

Courtney Love Fails Drug Test

I figured this is a calendar entry for her, not a newsworthy happening.

It's about as much a surprise as TO's meltdown.

because susan said i had to

updates of randomalia...

* i recently had my green card renewed, during the process for which i had to be fingerprined. by ins. now, i'm applying for citizenship. and during the process i need to be fingerprinted. by ins. why can't they just use the ones on file? the lady on the phone didn't know, but i need to go back to the ins office and have them done again. so they waste my time and their money (which is kinda my money too).

* is there anything that can make you feel more single than going (without a date) to four weddings in five months? plus the pressure of living up to the model of the owen wilson wedding crasher?

* it's a longer story in itself as to what happened, but suffice to say that when on the day of a long plane ride you get asked if you've recently had any horrible travel experiences, do not blithely say "nah, for the last 9 months or so, no problems at all...all flights on time". you're sure to that very day spend hours in a plane on a tarmac and not get home until 1am.

* in charlottesville on saturday i picked up chuck palahniuk's book "invisible monster", which came out in 1999, after fight club the book, but before the movie. i started and finished it sunday on the plane from dulles to dallas (including the *two* hours on the tarmac in dallas). anyway, i notice that mr. palahniuk seems to like jaws getting shot off (don't worry, this isn't a spoiler, it's on the back cover as a plot teaser) and other issues of double-identity. i haven't read anything else but fight club and some story excerpt, but these two things repeat in these books. kinda like how in a john irving book there's always a kid who dies or is disfigured, adultery and pets with odd habits. recurring leitmotifs are great, but please, shake things up once in a while.

i'd write more but we have a fire drill in a few minutes.