Palin and the Third Estate

Was reading a review in an old Victorian periodical about the French Revolution and found parts of the diagnosis eerily familiar:

M. Isuard, a deputy of some influence, and who, as such, was employed to harangue and quiet the mob on the memorable 20th of June, 1792, was, on the following 3d of August, accused in the Chamber of having sold himself to the English cabinet. Now, let any one consider for a moment what would be the defense of an Englishman in a similar case. He would bring testimony--he would allege his own previous character--he would retort on his assailants--in short, he would regularly plead his cause. What is the defence of the Frenchman? He unbuttons his waistcoat! He lays bare his breast! 'Malheureux, ouvre mon coeur et tu verras s'il est Frances!' ['Blackguards, open my heat and see if it's French!']

Such scenes might appear only ridiculous. But it is a source of danger in every country, that men seldom believe that what is ridiculous may also be formidable. People laughed at the follies of the New Assembly. They laughed at the clenched fists, furious interruptions, frothy declamations, and turbulent politics, which knew of no better security against despotic power than a feeble government. But those days of laughter were only the first acts of the piece.

Seder at the White House

Damn anti-semites.

Duck Theathon!

I was trying to think of what to say about the passions of the Frum, sacrificed to Conservative Shibboleths, then realized there aren't any conservative shibboleths left. Oh, maybe one new one: Don'tCriticizeTheGOP (harder to pronounce than you'd think). As Frum pointed out in the blog post that cost his job at the American Enterprise Institute (and presumably his AEI Diners Club discount card):

But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Yeah, it's uncomfortable when one of your own points this out. I guess tough love hurts. The entire episode recalls last September, when the conservative establishmen went similarly apesh*t after Frum wrote the following (that time, in a column):

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party

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The maxim: "Do as we say we say, not as we said." All of which reminds me of that old Bugs and Daffy saw:



During the last election (and throughout the healthcare debate), I was dreaming of a day when there would be principled conservative arguments that found airtime in the public forum. Perhaps I'm wistful for something that never happened -- think Bill Buckley's challenging interview of Noam Chomsky on Firing Line. Sure, there are Ross Douthat, and Reihan Salaam, and (formlerly) Frum -- but I was waiting for the day when their distinctively marginalized ideas received a broad airing in conservative and republican circles (I mean in a New Big Tent, not the New York Times). Looks like I'll be waiting a while.

Ronald Reagan Will Rise from the Grave and KILL YOU

The following is a recording of Reagan railing against (then proposed) Medicare. For Reagan, "Health Insurance" == "Socialized Medicine" Just sayin'.



Or, as he put it in the Phil Collins video, "That's some nurse!"

Eat Your Health Care

Was emailing with my friend Doug about the Party of No and their gripes that their Waterloo plan for Health Care turned out badly (who'd a thunk that they'd end up being Napoleon?).

Anyway, he mentioned something John Stewart said recently:

You lost. It's supposed to taste like a shit sandwich.

Well I just finished my shit sandwich, leftover from last night (appropriately enough, Italian stuffed pork loin -- thanks Talented Videographer!), and it was FUCKING AWESOME.


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John Hughes vs. Judd Apatow

Sacrilege! Blasphemy!

Was talking last night to The Talented Videographer about John Hughes -- we rewatched Ferris Bueller's Day Off and were marveling at what a brilliantly improvisational and tightly edited film it was (just think about those two merits together). And we were trying to think who might fill that role today. I'd put in Judd Apatow. Sure, there's no Ferris Bueller yet, or Breakfast Club. But John Hughes also did Uncle Buck and Home Alone 3. Anyway, most of Apetow's stuff is pretty uneven; but here are the 3 minutes that redeem Forgetting Sarah Marshal:



Sometimes I'll be riding the train or laying in bed, and think, "Die, die, die ... I can't!" and it makes me laugh *every time.* Now that's staying power.

The End of Publishing ... turns out not to be so bleak.

This is an ad that DK books developed. It's pretty sharp (via Sullivan):



Callooh! Callay!

Inglorious Annagramattica

Kinda wish she'd been our wedding videographer:

Gotta love the French...

Almost everyone's heard of the Milgram experiments in the sixties; a participant is ordered to administer increasingly high voltages to an actor who feigns death. Along with the Stanford Prison experiments, Milgram's research is one of the major reasons modern university research has to go through an institutional review board (IRB) that examines the ethical implications for human subjects. Well apparently the French are familiar with the Milgram experiments too, and came up with the nifty idea (in an apparent bid to solidify their trade relationship with Japan) of making a game show:

Life Under Arctic Ice Sheet

Looks like things are cookin' under the polar ice. NASA drilled below the half-mile-thick Ross Ice shelf to an isolated underground sea and found this:




We all know what happens next ... Killer Prawns from Outer Space!

Chatroulette Meets Pianoman

The other night I was having dinner with some folks and had a single, enormously uncomfortable encounter with Chatroulette. If only we'd met someone like this guy (Via Sullivan):

Bigelow: 2, Sanity: 0; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate the Oscars

If any of us set out to list the gripes that range from annoying to down-right infuriating about the Oscars, we'd run out of web space before entries. But let me put it to you simply: name a single award ceremony where three of the top four awards (best picture, director, male and female actor) went to the folks that you felt deserved it. You might point out that, it's in the nature of selecting among the top five (or ten?!) in each category that people will disagree over which was best. Fair enough. But every year in the post-Oscar soul searching I get an earful and see a string of articles about various categories where the wrong person or film wins.

This year, I've mostly seen congrats to Bigelow for netting best picture and best director. And the coverage has been positive (yay for breakout women!). But a cold dose of reality: The Hurt Locker was a decent, but only marginally above-average film for an Oscar nominee. It had solid direction, some key performances, interesting editing, and a lousy, lousy script.

The only thing that made me want to vomit more than screenwriter Mark Boal's egregiously inflated ego while accepting two awards was the absolutely f*ing ridiculous line that starts the movie off: "War is a drug." And the only thing that could rival that line for vacuousness is a performance by Keanu Reeves -- and thankfully, he introduced The Hurt Locker at the Oscars, which means we got to actually hear Keeanu deliver the line with the appropriate depth of thought and sentiment.

By the way, as Keenu began to say that "War .... is a drug" I ducked behind the couch -- instinctively I suspected that he was violating the Pauli exclusion principle. But then I blinked and realized that Pauli's rule only applies when the two objects have some sort of substance.

Contrast, for a moment, the way that Bigelow's movie opens with say, the new Star Trek. In Star Trek, as you recall, it's not (per a grade-school essay) a f*ing quote, or even an image, but a naked sound -- an evolution of the particular flavor of Star Fleet sound effects that marked how J. J. Abrams' movie would both engage and depart from Trek films past. That was a brilliant use of sound editing, no? Of course, The Hurt Locker won the f*ing Sound Editing award, too.

I could go on about how "War is a drug" degrades the complexity of war, perpetuates the stupidity of "The War on Drugs" mentality, or even the "War on Terror." I could note that in fifty years they'll still be studying Avatar as a key chapter in the history of cinema, and film students won't even recognize the name "Hurt Locker" except on trivia night, as the answer to "Which film won Best Picture instead of James Cameron's 2009 classic, Avatar?"

Instead, I'll just recommit to last year's resolution: when Oscar night rolls around next year, and I'm inevitably dragged to another Oscar-watching party, I'm bringing headphones and a good book.

Benjamin and the digital aura

Wonder what old Walter would make of a video like this:

Nobody Beats The Drum - Grindin' from nobody beats the drum on Vimeo.

This video as sweet example of the growing movement to recreate the digital aura through analog effects. I think Benjamin would eat this up. I think that the logic of it also suggests that his anxiety about the loss of aura in the age of mechanical reproduction was premature. It's pretty clear, despite the near perfect reproducibility that digital technology offers, that it can also offer something deeply "authentic" and deeply unique. It's not as if virtual worlds and video games create themselves.

Dog crack

Videos like this really put me in my place. There's no way The Talented Videographer will ever love me like she loves this video. (Via Sullivan)

Is Avatar is a remake of The Dark Crystal?

Last night we put in one of the all-time great films of the 80s, Jim Henson's Dark Crystal. In it, a young male "Gelfling," raised by a technocratic race, has to leave after a prophecy is discovered that predicts a resolution to the conflict between the world's races. He is taken briefly under the wing of a natural scientist who studies the world and knows what the larger conflict is all about. But he's then separated from her and flees to the jungle to escape some large black pursuing creatures.

The forest is filled with flora and fauna that remind you vaguely of underwater life, from giant sea anemones that suck their fronds back into a central trunk, to small white seeds with helicopter fronds which fly. The gelfling is attacked by a small dog-like creature, but is saved by a strange gelfling woman of the forest, who knows its secrets and can talk to the animals there. She teaches him how to ride giant striding horses, and later, to fly. She has the same high-cheekboned features he has -- though they both remind you vaguely of Michael Jackson.

It turns out that another clan of the technocratic race (we don't realize they're related until the end) is exploiting the resources of the planet by sucking "essence" out of its creatures. There's a final battle, the rule of the technocrats is over thrown (and they fly off into space), and the races of the world learn to live in harmony. So, yes, Avatar is a remake of the Dark Crystal.

I'm not saying that Avatar is exclusively based on The Dark Crystal. There is clear indebtedness to Frank Herbert's Dune as well as Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. Most important, the tie-in to video games and virtual worlds was an inspired innovation. But if the plot as well as visual production of Avatar doesn't draw heavily on Jim Henson's masterpiece, I'll eat my shorts.





This also reinforces the incredible achievement that The Dark Crystal represents. In the age of CGI, no one will ever make a movie with the complexity of Henson's using exclusively analog techniques again. It's also a testament to the imaginative work and vision that it took to realize a world that is every bit as rich and detailed as Avatar's using cloth, wood, and strings.