Slap-dashery

The Working Poor

2010-03-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

Casey McGahee rolls pretzels for Auntie Anne's at the mall during the offseason.

Life Sentence

2010-03-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

Before being farmed out for more experience, Bob Wiesler made quite an impression in the Yankee training camp. Wiesler's big problem appeared to be control. He just couldn't put the ball over.

"What would happen," wondered a reporter, "if he were roomed with Tommy Byrne, the wild man of the Yankee staff?"

"Neither of them would be able to get into the room," somebody said. "They wouldn't be able to find the keyhole."

Mack's No Difference

2010-03-08T22:36:00.000-08:00

George Earnshaw was pitching against the Yankees one day and having his share of trouble. His chief jinx was Lou Gehrig, who smacked two homers into the right-field seats. After the second clout, Manager Connie Mack yanked George, who started for the showers.

But Mack called him back. "Sit right her, I want you to see how Mahaffey pitches to that fella." Gehrig came up again and Mahaffey turned on his power. Crash! This time Gehrig sliced a homer into the left-field stands.

A long, awkward silence followed. Then Earnshaw nodded. "I see," he said, "Made him change direction."

Even more on mash-ups

2010-03-08T13:05:00.000-08:00

The Rumpus reviewed Reality Hunger by David Shields today and it made me think more of what we were talking about earlier about mash-ups. This is how Shields structures his book -

Reality Hunger is a 205-page compilation 618 numbered paragraphs, only a handful of which are written by Shields. The rest are quotes from a wide range of writers, entertainers and thinkers: everyone from Homer to Herzog. It may take a while to realize this, as the paragraphs lack attribution (although they are listed in the back by the order of “Random House lawyers”). Shields sums up his intent thusly: “My interest is to write the ars poetica for a burgeoning group of interrelated (but unconnected) artists in a multitude of forms and media (lyric essay, prose poem, collage novel, visual art, film, television, radio, performance art, rap, stand-up comedy) who are breaking larger and larger chunks of ‘reality’ into their work.”

I don't understand this fascination with not attributing quotes in writing. What is gained from this (besides avoiding looking like Bartlett's Famous Quotations, as the reviewer notes)? Maybe I'm missing the point, not having read Reality Hunger, but having thought about it, I've soured on Hegemann's argument for including paragraphs of other people's books into her own -

“There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” said Hegemann in response to accusations of plagiarism.

...

If a d.j. can thread together twenty different songs and package the end product as her own, why can’t a writer? This seems to be the question Hegemann is using as a defense.

I never really bought the justification, but ignored it since the only included example in the article was a character who quoted from a blogpost and the book never mentioned that the character was quoting somebody, which I think is alright, although the utility of having a character quote somebody is only gained when the reader is aware that the character is using somebody else's words and then thinks, "This character is the type of person who memorizes quotes from (wherever) for use in conversation." It would make sense that a professor of Shakespeare might use quotes from Shakespeare in daily conversation without attribution, but nothing is gained for the reader if the reader is unaware of it or the reader will start wondering why this character speaks in iambic pentameter in the year 2010. Books don't need to change to stay modern. What is happening is that the remix culture of movies and music is giving movies and music stylistic choices and forms that books have always had. It's not just because of technological advances that allows mash-ups but also the accumulation of the language of film into our culture. Here is Julian Sanchez on remix culture using the brat-pack/Lisztomania mash-up that progressed to the kids in Brooklyn 'covering' the video to the San Francisco hipsters who make a similar video in response as an example of "how remix is becoming a platform for collective expression by—and conversations between—social groups" -

Or, a more filmic representation of the same argument, here is a scene from Swingers that is itself a comment on how the characters in Swingers wish to see themselves as cool as the characters in Reservoir Dogs -

Paraphrasing Sanchez, when we live in a world saturated with digital media, copyrights are no longer just about incentivizing the creation of new work, but about how much control we get to have over our social reality, and that's where the argument for the unattributed co-option of other people's words into books falls apart because the point of mash-ups or remixes is not to diminish the role of the original author, but to highlight how this art has succeeded in influencing and being subsumed into our culture and even our personalities. Books have always had the ability to convey that truth through stylistic voices, like if a kid in a book kept on using the word 'phony' we'd know that the kid probably sees himself as an heir-apparent to Holden Caulfield. Authors shouldn't be looking towards mash-ups as the future form of the novel, but towards how the people who make and relate to remixes and mash-ups see, identify, and communicate their world. The challenge is that so much of the vocabulary we use to place ourselves in the world is through images rather than language. It doesn't mean that the most truthful/honest way of representing our reality is through film or television, but that the words authors use to present character's inner lives need to identify back towards cultural images as opposed to words. James Joyce could use a "style that borrows from (and parodies) the prose of both moralizing, sentimental literature and consumer-oriented women’s magazines" to convey the inner life of a girl, Gerty MacDowell, in the Nausicaa section of Ulysses. The tv show, The Hills, might serve a similar use for a current author who wanted to define how a girl sees herself in the world today, but the author would have to create the vocabulary to communicate that reality to the world - there is no prose to borrow/parody in The Hills - but I think an author has the ability to communicate that view of the world in such a way that the reader is aware of what the author is doing without the author having to resort to explicitly referencing The Hills like, "Gerty sat in the restaurant discussing her crush on Brody to Angela with the intensity learned from hours studying Lauren Conrad." Going back to Hegemann, an author could show that a girl relates to Lauren Conrad by having her read her book and then blockquoting a passage of Conrad's book into the other book, but why would you not attribute the source of the quote if the whole point is to show that the girl relates to Lauren Conrad? I'm at a loss, maybe I need to read one of these books I think about all the time.

Anyway, whatever. This is all probably self-evident for you, but I promised Scott I'd write about something besides baseball today.

Hair-Raising Order

2010-03-07T08:43:00.000-08:00

Bobby Bragan, Braves manager, takes every defeat to heart. Once, when his team was in the middle of a losing streak, he walked into his favorite barbershop, where he received a gushy welcome from his barber, who then asked, "How will you have your haircut, Mr. Bragan?"

"In deep silence, please," snapped Bobby.

Godzilla Haiku

Out at Home, Safety First

2010-03-06T09:09:00.000-08:00

Here's 2 because I missed yesterday -

Out at Home

Colorful Larry McLean used to catch for the Giants. Once, with a man on second, the batter shot a single to right on which the runner tried to score. He made a desperate slide, raising a cloud of dust. McLean was bowled over and the ball knocked out of his hand. The runner, however, missed the plate.

McLean scrambled after the ball, picked it up, and turned to make the tag. Alas, the dust was so thick that he couldn't distinguish the runner from the umpire. All he could see were four feet. He tagged each foot as fast as he could.

"I don't know which of youse is which," he exclaimed, "but one of youse is out!"

Safety First

Trailing Philadelphia by a run in the eighth inning, Detroit put the first two men on base and then elected to bunt. Ferris Fain, the daring Athletic first sacker, plunged in, grabbed the bunt, and threw to third. His throw eluded Pete Suder and the runner scored the tying run standing up.

"Darn it, Ferris!" sputtered Connie Mack when the A's came back to the bench. "I don't want you ever to try that play again!"

Most of Mack's employees would have sat down and sulked. Not the high-spirited Fain. "What did you want me to do with the ball?" he bellowed. "Eat it!"

"Well, by golly!" Mack yelled right back. "It'd be a whole lot safer in your mouth!"

Safe at Home

2010-03-04T19:20:00.001-08:00

Some years ago, when Joe Medwick was in his prime with the St. Louis Cardinals, he toured Europe with a group of entertainers. Upon reaching Rome, the troupe was granted an audience with Pope Pius. His Holiness politely asked each the nature of his business.

"I'm a comedian," answered one.

"I'm a singer," replied another.

Then came Medwick's turn. With simple dignity he said, "Your Holiness, I'm a Cardinal."

Anthony Witrado of the Journal-Sentinel asked Fielder if the celebration was worth the ball in the back.

"Hell yeah," Fielder said. "That's something I did with me and my teammates. It has nothing to do with them."

"You're damn right it was worth it."

Courtesy of NBC Sports

Incarcerated Pantherfaces

2010-03-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

My school -

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee officials said they had to use pepper spray Thursday to help break up a rally at the campus after some protesters became violent while trying to enter the building that contains the chancellor's office.

Sixteen people were detained and 15 were arrested during the afternoon rally, university spokesman Tom Luljak said. The rally coincided with rallies at colleges nationwide, criticizing the rising cost of higher education.

Luljak said university police sprayed pepper spray in the air and called the Milwaukee Police Department for help after some protesters attempted to storm Chapman Hall, the building that houses Chancellor Carlos Santiago's office. Protesters were punching and kicking officers while some also threw snowballs and ice at the officers, Luljak said.

Video! There was some better video of cops getting pelted with snowballs on the 5:00 news, but I don't want to bother looking for it.

I'm not a protester because I can't really bring myself to feel so strongly about a position that I'll let some person I don't know direct me in some goofy chant while standing next to a guy with the American flag draped around him but I agree with them (even though UWM is still pretty cheap in my eyes, especially after Creighton). It's a question of priorities, and as long as the state feels comfortable passing costs onto students it won't stop. Do we really think the California model is the way to go?

The governor's plan aims to bring back the days when the state funneled more money into University of California and California State University classrooms than into its prisons. It has been at least five years since that has been the case. It comes at a time when tuitions are soaring and course offerings are being cut.

The state's public universities, long considered an economic engine and a source of pride for California, have proved to be an easier target for budget cuts than other major programs, which are protected by politically powerful unions, deep pocketed corporate interests or federal laws limiting the state's ability to cut.

"What does it say about a state that focuses more on prison uniforms than caps and gowns?" Schwarzenegger said. "The priorities have become out of whack. . . . Thirty years ago, 10% of the general fund went to higher education and 3% went to prisons. Today, almost 11% goes to prisons and only 7.5% goes to higher education."

Wisconsin already spends 73 cents on incarceration for every dollar spent on education. More -

Between 1987 and 2007, Wisconsin actually cut its support for higher education by 6%. Only 6 states reduced their investment in higher ed by more. During the same period, Wisconsin increased corrections spending by 251%, 8th highest nation, despite a declining crime rate.

Wisconsin's incarceration rates are higher than the neighboring states of Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa and the state's African American incarceration rate is the nation's highest.

Lumps for Dessert

2010-03-03T14:35:00.000-08:00

Bobo Newsom was getting his lumps from the Athletics. The score mounted rapidly and by the seventh inning the A's showed a 15-0 lead. Bobo came back to the dugout wearing a disgusted look.

"What's eating you, Bobo?" asked a teammate.

"What do you think?" snarled the angry pitcher. "How can a guy win any ball games if you don't give him any runs?"

More Pavement

2010-03-02T20:34:00.000-08:00

GQ decides to list Pavement's 10 best songs. Pavement is so great that I can't really argue with any of the songs they picked, but to leave off "Here" is a travesty.

Grist for the Miller

2010-03-02T19:33:00.000-08:00

In the heyday of the Yankees' Murderers Row, Koenig once led off an inning with a triple. Lazzeri scored him with a line double. Then Ruth and Gehrig smote terrific homers. That brought up Dugan, who shortened up and laid down a perfect bunt single. Manager Miller Huggins came storming out of the dugout. "Idiot!" he bellowed, "I ought to fine you a hundred bucks for breaking up a rally!"

Seems similar to what it would be like playing under Dusty Baker.

Subversion

2010-03-01T19:22:00.000-08:00

Just as it has always been with Williams and Musical, the players always crowed around the batting cage when Willie Mays steps in to take his practice licks. Down in Phoenix one spring, Jose Pagan gasped as Willie blasted one ball after another out of sight.

Finally, Jose shook his head. "The Constitution of the United States just has to be wrong," he muttered.

"What do you mean?" asked Coach Whitey Lockman.

"Well," the light-hitting shortstop snapped, "doesn't it say that all men are created equal?"

Braves to the End

2010-02-28T23:22:00.000-08:00

When Dick Culler was with the Braves he seldom saw any action. Sibby Sisti was the regular shortstop. One day the Braves wee losing by a lopsided score and Manager Billy Southworth, deciding to rest Sisti, told Culler to warm up and get into the game. Then, as an afterthought, he asked one of his coaches what the score was.

"It's 9-2," his assistant informed him.

"Sit down, Dick," Southworth ordered Culler. "We ain't giving up yet."

Can't Get Him Out

2010-02-27T13:44:00.000-08:00

One day during the 1949 season, Ewell Blackwell fanned Stan Musial on a curve that escaped catcher Dixie Howell and enabled Musical to scamper all the way to second.

Manager Bucky Walters of the Reds heaved a sigh. "That guy Musial is so good," he groaned, "that even when he fans, a team is lucky to hold him to two bases."

What's the Pitch?

2010-02-26T17:07:00.000-08:00

The battery for the Braves Al Javery, pitching, and Phil Masi, catching. The first Pirate stepped into the batter's box - and laced the first pitch into right field for a triple. The next batter hit the right-field wall for a double.

In short order, the Pirates collected a home run, a double, a triple, a double, and another triple - each one on Javery's first pitch - that high, hard one.

Manager Stengel (this was 1943), in disgust, waved Al to the showers. Then he called Masi over and asked, "What kind of pitch was he throwin', anyway?"

"I don't know," Masi replied. "I haven't caught one yet."

Things that get me really excited

2010-02-25T21:05:00.001-08:00

David Simon talks about his new series, Treme, but, more excitingly, what his next project could be -

The next project, in terms of producing, is this mini-series based on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. It was an act of terrorism in war time that shocked the entire nation and it resulted in some very rational immediate reaction on the part of the government and then some other things that were irrational and destructive, right down to military tribunals.

I'm so pumped for this that I'm afraid I can only be disappointed.

GQ on Pavement

2010-02-25T13:04:00.000-08:00

Chuck Klosterman interviews Stephen Malkmus for GQ -

"I said, I suppose you don't like sports." I tell him that I do like sports. I tell him that—honestly—I'm probably more qualified to talk with him about sports than I am to talk with him about Pavement. Immediately, everything changes. He's no longer irritated, except when I suggest that Greg Olden might be no better than Erick Dampier. For the next forty-five minutes, we discuss our respective fantasy teams, pretty much nonstop. I cannot exaggerate the degree to which Malkmus enjoys fantasy sports; he almost seems to like them more than music. His fantasy football team was devastated by the loss of Ronnie Brown to injury, but he's stayed in the playoff hunt by picking up Vikings wide receiver Sidney Rice. ("You could just immediately tell he was going to be Favre's guy.") The most productive player on his NBA team is under-publicized Pacers forward Danny Granger, but he's more satisfied about stealing the Nets' Chris Douglas-Roberts off the waiver wire. Malkmus does not watch the NHL, yet he still participates in a fantasy hockey league. He's that kind of guy. I don't even try to talk with him about rotisserie baseball.

After almost an hour has passed, I realize we need to start talking about music, partially because that's the motive for this story but mostly because Pavement is a band worth talking about. We leave the restaurant and jump in his Audi; he rolls a cigarette with a Dutch brand of tobacco called Samson. I notice that Malkmus does not wear a seat belt, nor does he tell me to wear mine. I am immediately more comfortable.

Malkmus goes on to say that he barely thinks about music anymore, which probably explains why his solo albums are getting better and better.

Of Mize and Men

2010-02-25T10:28:00.000-08:00

When Johnny Mize played with the Giants, he wouldn't or couldn't bend down to catch a ball. In fact, he refused to field anything not hit straight back at him.

This moved the humorist, Goodman Ace, to wire Manager Leo Durocher: "Sir, before each game an announcement is made that anyone interfering with or touching a batted ball will be ejected from the park. Please advise Mr. Mize that this doesn't refer to him."

Time Flies On

2010-02-24T20:40:00.000-08:00

During the years he protected right field for the Cubs, Kiki Cuyler was famous for his throwing arm. Against the Giants one afternoon, he cut down Travis Jackson trying to score from second on a single.

As Pancho Snyder, Giants third-base coach, passed the Cubs' bench, the boys gave him the business. "How'd you like that throw, you big blubberhead?"

"He couldn't do it again in a hundred years," Pancho growled back.

A few innings later, Cuyler again cut down Jackson trying to score from second on a hit.

Thereupon one of the Cub bench jockeys thrust his head out of the dugout and yelled at Snyder, "Hey, meathead, time sure does fly, doesn't it?"

*rimshot*

Taft plays golf.

Book 6, Rebirth of a Nation

2010-02-24T12:49:00.000-08:00

I haven't read many books in February. I just finished Rebirth of a Nation by Jackson Lears last night. Lears describes the political and social movements of 1877-1920 as one of continual regeneration and rebirth. He doesn't explicitly parallel it to the current era (until the last page or two), but the parallels can seem striking to a reader looking for them. Lears made the case in the recent Atlantic Monthly article by James Fallows, "How America Can Rise Again" -

“Historically, the prospect of imminent decline has been used as a rallying cry, to get Americans committed to whatever is the agenda of the person doing the rallying, often the elites,” he told me. He added that while much of today’s “free-floating populist anger” reminded him strongly of the mood of the 1890s, in light of the long history of such concerns, “we can rightly raise a skeptical eyebrow at the shrillest predictions of imminent catastrophe.”

Nearly 400 years of overstated warnings do not mean that today’s Jeremiahs will be proved wrong. And of course any discussion of American problems in any era must include the disclaimer: the Civil War was worse. But these alarmed calls to action are something we do to ourselves—usually with good effect. Especially because of the world financial crisis, “we have seen palpable declines in the middle class’s standing and its sense of security for the future,” Jackson Lears said. “I think that was a good deal of what was behind Obama’s election—that same longing for rebirth that we have seen in other eras. It is rooted in the familiar Protestant longing for salvation, but is adaptable to secular arenas. Obama was basically riding to victory as part of a politics of regeneration.” Barack Obama’s very high popularity ratings just after the election suggest that even those who now oppose him and his policies recognized the potential for a new start.

The most interesting aspect of the book was the arguments between those who wanted an imperial America and those who either remembered the devastation that war causes and those who saw war as not only necessary but beneficial to forging men's best qualities and purging the contemptible. Lears points out that even those who opposed war on moral grounds sought out other avenues through which to generate the attributes society desires in its people. William James looked for the "moral equivalent of war" -

We should get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is temporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of one's life. I spoke of the "moral equivalent" of war. So far, war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until and equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of organizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other just as effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a question of time, of skilful propogandism, and of opinion-making men seizing historic opportunities.

I think this era in American history is fascinating, and I've only come to realize that as I've been able to imagine these historical figures as a resident of Deadwood.

Son Dial

2010-02-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

Dean Stone, Houston pitcher, came from the park and found his little boy talking to the young son of Pete Runnels. Stone, Jr., was telling Runnels, Jr., that his father was a boxer.

"You're crazy," retorted young Runnels, "your dad plays baseball for the Colts."

"No siree," answered Stone, Jr. "I listen to the radio and the man always says, 'There goes Stone, he's been knocked out again.'"

*rimshot*

The Shanty, Baseball Jokes

2010-02-22T19:05:00.000-08:00

If you guys don't regularly check out The Shanty, you should. I'm gonna start making posts over there as well as here.

I borrowed "Baseball Laughs" by Herman L. Masin from Jolene this weekend and, since baseball season is almost upon us, will be copying down one joke a day until I run out. There's a bunch so I hope it lasts through the season. These are, bar none, the most insane, non-sensical collection of jokes I've ever come across, but that's not saying much.

The description on the back of the book -

Maybe you can't tell the players without a scorecard, but you can tell the funniest stories ever to come out of a horsehide. You'll find them all in this collection of screaming line drives. Everybody - fans, frogmen, and bird watchers - will get a chuckle out of this prime assortment of screwballs, knuckleheads, and dipsy-doodles.

It took me a minute to translate that, but I think what it means is that it is awesome.

Let's begin -

Have A Ball!
Basically baseball is a duel in the sun, fought with horsehides and hickory at sixty feet, six inches. It's a grim, serious business. But funny things to happen. Almost every dugout has its share of characters - odd balls with bats in their belfries - who'll often come up with line drives funnier than anything on the Bob Hope Show.

Joe's Strange Kirke

Jay Kirke was a fabulous screwball whom Joe McCarthy managed at Louisville. One afternoon Kirke muffed a signal which cost Louisville the game. McCarthy, livid with rage, told Kirke to meet him in the clubhouse after the game.

McCarthy paced the floor savagely. He waited and waited, but Kirke didn't appear. The longer Joe paced, the more furious he became. Most of the players were dressed when the door opened. There stood Kirke - and a priest.

"Come in, Father," said Jay. "I want you to meet my friends."

*rimshot*

More on mash-ups...

2010-02-20T16:06:00.000-08:00

TJ left an interesting comment in the previous post that I want to talk about, but it's the weekend and I have other things on my agenda. I do want to address this, though -

i wonder what it is about music mashups that they almost always end up as primarily hip-hop/dance. mashup artists could be working with 5-6 songs at once, but what comes out always functions as a hip-hop or dance song: the beat is the driving 4/4, uptempo, syncopation, etc., all characteristic of the same genre. no doubt there are historical reasons for this pattern, as the artform emerged out of that genre and its technological innovations. but the idea of a non-hip-hop-based mashup really excites me.

There are tons of mashups that aren't hip-hop related. Just a quick search of youtube got me this -

And this -

And let's not forget this atrocity -

Also, while I have some problems with the narrow paradigm TJ defined as what constitutes a DJ, if you accept that "creating a new sensory (narrative?) unity, a unity which then might subsequently comment on the unities of the respective pieces previous to the mash up" as the mash-up's definition then you could lump in certain types of cover songs who has a similar raison d'etre like Limp Bizkit doing "Faith" (not gonna link it). But I think that takes a very limited view of what a DJ/producer/whatever you wanna call it can do. There's stuff like this guy who remixes The Beach Boys with itself in the style of how he imagines J Dilla would do it -

Anyway, when I was thinking of what Hegemann I thought a little of The Dead Milkmen doing "Bitchin' Camaro" where they discuss going down to the beach where their favorite cover band Crystal Shit is playing a concert and the Milkmen start singing something like, "Love me two times babe, once for tomorrow, once cause I got AIDS". Is it necessary for them to cite The Doors? (Having re-listened to the song I realize that they do say, "they do a Doors song" and "you have a good Jim Morrison impression", but they also joke that they hope The Doors have a good sense of humor and won't take them to court for their 10 second appropriation, which I guess this discussion is all about.)

Update -

Just remembered this mash-up I saw awhile ago that is pretty good -

Barthes & mixing

2010-02-19T13:52:00.000-08:00

Rusty at The Shanty Blog has a nice post exploring the German writer who copied some of her book from other sources without citation and claims (here)-

“There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” said Hegemann in response to accusations of plagiarism.

...

If a d.j. can thread together twenty different songs and package the end product as her own, why can’t a writer? This seems to be the question Hegemann is using as a defense.

My comment -

It would be premature to defend Hegemann having not read her book and seeing the extent and use of copying, but from the examples in the NYTimes article it definitely seems Ellis is overreacting. One example -

Or as one character, Edmond, puts it in the book, “Berlin is here to mix everything with everything.”

A powerful statement, but the line originally was written by Airen, on his blog.

- It doesn't seem like it would raise an eyebrow if the comment being co-opted was more well-known.

This might actually become more of a problem as our society or our sub-cultures begin to get more and more fragmented. James Joyce would never have to cite that Stephen Daedalus is quoting Shakespeare in Ulysses, but will it be necessary for someone to cite Manderfeld quoting from The Big Lebowski? Maybe for the reader's benefit, but I can't imagine how much exposition I'd have to pack into just one conversation in order for someone who is not fluent in the cultural touchstones that my friends all share to understand the subtext. Fiction books will begin to have reference pages as large as non-fiction books, like liner notes in hip-hop albums listing where every sample originated from. Or maybe, with the advent of e-readers, every bit of recycled material will be hyperlinked to the source. To use Ulysses again, Joyce wouldn't have to consistently reference imagined newspaper articles and horserace outcomes from June 16th, but use the actual articles and the actual races. I don't know if that would add or detract from a novel, but I don't think a newspaper reporter should feel his work plagiarized in that instance, even if his name is not cited within the novel. I don't know if I personally would want to read something like that, but I don't see how it would be wrong to write something like that.

This reminds me of the argument David Foster Wallace makes in E Unibus Pluram that "the belief that images are basically just mimetic devices" is something that separates younger writers from the generation that precedes it. That television, for young people, is a part of our reality - not something just to look at - and to ignore television and advertisement and products (and what they signify about the buyer/user) would be to ignore how we interact with the world (which makes his professor's insistence to avoid "trendy-mass-popular-media" incomprehensible to DFW and his fellow students). Anyway, I could see the internet doing the same thing for words, data, ideas - I mean, just look at this blog post. We don't just passively interact with words; we cut/paste, copy and link to, share our thoughts about a book we haven't read with people we haven't met, etc...

One last thought - you might be interested in this recent article from The New York Review of Books that makes the argument that the globalization of literature has made writers generalize their books to the point where a lot of local color and cultural distinctiveness is wiped away.

"Kazuo Ishiguro has spoken of the importance of avoiding word play and allusion to make things easy for the translator. Scandinavian writers I know tell me they avoid character names that would be difficult for an English reader."

Deadwood: Japan

2010-02-17T19:18:00.001-08:00

Why is it that only mediocre to awful shows like Law & Order, CSI, and NCIS get franchised and set out into fresh police departments with new, semi-famous actors at the helm? I'd totally watch a Wire-like dissection of other cities, or watch backstage of another type of television show that the Muppets are trying to put together. All I could think of after looking at these pictures is how cool a Deadwood-type show set in mid-19th century Japan would be -

Via chrisocial

What to do with Prince

2010-02-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

Wezen-ball throws out a little multiple-choice question about the future of the Brewers organization -

The Scene
It's mid-September at Miller Park and the Brewers are playing the Cardinals. The two teams are neck-and-neck for the division lead. It's the bottom of the ninth inning and the Brewers are down by one. Ryan Braun is standing on second after a single up the middle and a badly thrown ball on a poor decision by the second-baseman. Prince Fielder is standing at the plate.

The Question
What are Brewers fans hoping for right here?

The Fans

* Travis is a 22-year old Marquette student sitting in the rightfield bleachers - the Miller Lite Beerpen - wearing an unbuttoned, pinstriped Prince jersey, drinking his fifth Lite of the game and eating his third Italian sausage.
* Frank is a 47-year old second-shift factory worker whose been going to Brewers games off and on since Paul Molitor's rookie year. He celebrated on Wisconsin Avenue with the team after the 1982 World Series. He's sitting in the leftfield loge outfield seats (right in the sun!) and drinking a High Life.
* Jason is a 29-year old administrator who has only lived in Milwaukee for the last 5 or 6 years. He loves watching an exciting young team and is happy to get his 20-pack every year. He tends to read sabermetrically-inclined blogs, but still appreciates someone like Ichiro!. He's sitting in the upper deck, right behind home plate, drinking a Lakefront Riverwest Stein.

The post goes onto explain that the future of Prince Fielder on the Brewers will come down to the Travis' and the Jason's fighting it out - either holding onto Prince and hope to strike lightning either this season or 2011, or trading him for prospects sometime this year. The Brewers Bar plays out the scenario -

The Brewers are middling in 4th place or so in July, and are closer to last place than first place. Knowing that Prince Fielder is going to be looking for a record decision in arbitration next winter, do you consider moving him at the deadline, like the Rangers did with Mark Teixeira in 2007?

As much as I hate to say it, I think you not only have to consider it, but you have to pull the trigger.

The catch? These days, when teams are much more conscious about their prospects, it's much harder to get the kind of haul that Texas got for Teixeira. Hell, the Yankees lost out on Roy Halladay because they refused to part with Jesus Montero, an all-bat-no-D catcher that would be average at best at first base or DH. If the Yankees of all teams are refusing to part with prospects, it's going to be hard to get the equivilent of Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Neftali Feliz, and Elvis Andrus for Fielder.

The toughest part for the Brewers if they do decide to trade Fielder is knowing where to start. In theory, you're trading Fielder because you want something in return that's more certain than the pair of compensation picks you would get from letting him hit free agency. Contrary to what would be the public opinion, you're trading Prince Fielder so you can stay competitive in the short term -- if you try to compete by having him on your team and you let him walk, you'd still have to spend time waiting for those comp picks to develop (and there's a good chance they never will). Why not trade him while his value is still high, and get players that are closer to contributing at the Major League level?

I'd be very disappointed if the Brewers kept Prince Fielder long-term. Not that I don't enjoy watching him bat, but c'mon, the guy is an overweight, no glove 1st baseman - this shouldn't be that tough of a decision.

X-Rated Band Names

2010-02-17T12:24:00.000-08:00

Oh Mander at The Shanty Blog wondered at the end of last year why so many bands were using "fuck" in their name. The Wall Street Journal comes out today with an explanation: all other band names are taken -

Among more than 1,900 acts expected in March at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, are bands with the names And So I Watch You From Afar, and Everybody Was In the French Resistance...Now! The f-word is part of 100 band names in a media database maintained by Gracenote, a unit of Sony Corp. that licenses digital entertainment technology.

For the generations of musicians who have taken up guitars and drumsticks, picking a band name has been as crucial as teasing out a distinctive style—and usually the name comes first. For a lucky few, a word or phrase can become iconic. The Beatles, before they were legends, were briefly the Silver Beetles, a nod to Buddy Holly's Crickets. Jerry Garcia discovered the name Grateful Dead in a dictionary.

The last decade's digital revolution not only transformed the way people listen to music, it changed the way bands establish identities. In the past, identically named acts often carved out livings in separate regions, oblivious or indifferent to one another. Now, it takes only moments for a musician to create an online profile and upload songs, which can potentially reach listeners around the world.

Lawyers say that has raised the stakes in trademark disputes, which almost always hinge on which band first used the name commercially, and where.

I appreciate the growing creativity in band names as it is easier to search for them in Google. I tried to listen to the Girls album that came out last year and gave up after finding it near impossible to locate at the time. Christ, it took me a minute just to locate Girls' wikipedia page.

Ugly Betty meets The Phantom Menace

2010-02-17T12:08:00.000-08:00

I had no idea that so many scenes on television are filmed on a green screen like Star Wars. If Jack Bauer isn't actually sitting in front of the Capital in D.C. then I don't know what I can believe anymore.

Ridin' wit Hitler

2010-02-16T19:50:00.000-08:00

This might have been a more effective way for Audi to advertise -

From Alterdestiny

Buffy was a hippy?

2010-02-14T23:09:00.000-08:00

The Onion lists 11 television characters who were given dubious and incongruous taste in music. It's spot-on and introduced me to this fabulous clip from Sabrina the Teenage Witch -

I always thought that Jess' taste in music was strange in Gilmore Girls, but thought it stranger that a show that, off the top of my head, name dropped Sonic Youth, The New Pornographers, The Distillers, The Shins, and Nena used that treacly song by Carole King as its theme song.

And I'm not a Carole King hater. I enjoyed the soundtrack she did for the TV show "Really Rosie" -

That could have worked for Gilmore Girls. I also didn't like Dean on Gilmore Girls.

Killing mosquitos

2010-02-14T21:47:00.000-08:00

Lasers used to kill mosquitoes.

Writing about numbers

2010-02-14T19:17:00.000-08:00

You should really be following Steven Strogatz's weekly blog at The New York Times where he is writing about math starting with the fundamentals -

I have a friend who gets a tremendous kick out of science, even though he’s an artist. Whenever we get together all he wants to do is chat about the latest thing in evolution or quantum mechanics. But when it comes to math, he feels at sea, and it saddens him. The strange symbols keep him out. He says he doesn’t even know how to pronounce them.

In fact, his alienation runs a lot deeper. He’s not sure what mathematicians do all day, or what they mean when they say a proof is elegant. Sometimes we joke that I just should sit him down and teach him everything, starting with 1 + 1 = 2 and going as far as we can.

Crazy as it sounds, over the next several weeks I’m going to try to do something close to that. I’ll be writing about the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there who’d like to have a second chance at the subject — but this time from an adult perspective. It’s not intended to be remedial. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.

His latest post starts out explaining negative numbers and ends up covering balancing theories by way of World War I.

This Strange Hydration

2010-02-12T15:39:00.001-08:00

Another mix. Download here. It's mostly remixes. Synths and drum machines and reverb. I feel ashamed but not enough to pretend I don't enjoy it.

Tracklist -

1. Badly Drawn Boy - The Shining (The Avalanches Good Word For The Weekend Remix)
2. YACHT - Psychic City (Classixx Remix)
3. Annie - Heartbeat (Royksopp's Mindre Tilgjengelige Remix)
4. Little Boots - New In Town (Fred Falke Remix)
5. Stars - What I'm Trying To Say Pt. 2 (The Dears)
6. Washed Out - New Theory
7. Mayer Hawthorne - Green Eyed Love (Classixx Remix)
8. Feist - I Feel It All (Diplo's Plastic Remix)
9. Pharcyde - Passin Me By (Hot Chip Remix)
10. Cut Copy - Hearts On Fire (Knightlife Remix)
11. Becoming Real - Let The Right One In
12. Wu Tang vs. The Beatles - Back In The Game
13. M83 - Kim & Jessie (DatA remix)
14. Phoenix - Love LIke A Sunset (Animal Collective Remix - Deakin's Jam)
15. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Some Trees (Merritt Moon)
16. April March - Mignonette

How to expand your market

2010-02-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

Cross-promotion!

This is like when I found out tomacco was real.

From copyranter.

April March

2010-02-12T11:18:00.000-08:00

She used to be an animator for Ren & Stimpy and now she animates my dreams.

Bradley Center

2010-02-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

The fourth oldest arena in the NBA gets what I thought was a charitable review by Stadium Journey, but the faithful show up in his comments section to defend the stadium and shine a light on the blasphemy.

My new jam

2010-02-09T17:37:00.000-08:00

Heard first on this pretty good mixtape called If You Had Any Love In Your Heart by Midnight Energy. You can get that here.

Bucks rumor mill

2010-02-09T15:46:00.000-08:00

Gery Woelfel reports -

Some people in the know claim the Milwaukee Bucks are dangling veteran point guard Luke Ridnour, who is having a stellar season, along with veteran forward Hakim Warrick and young forward Joe Alexander, whom the Bucks chose with the eighth overall pick in the 2008 NBA draft but have since soured on.

Having only been following the NBA and the Bucks for the past 4 months I have no idea how to judge this trade talk with concern to salary cap and contract considerations. Or, really, have any idea as to how the Bucks should pursue adding to the already really good Bogut-Jennings combo. I can say that Luke Ridnour has played fantastic this year and it would be sad to see him go. Warrick has played well of late and it is pretty fun to see him try and fulfill want I can only imagine is his goal to try and dunk from every place on the court in a game. Screw Alexander.

Baseball Jeopardy

2010-02-09T10:28:00.001-08:00

Thank god it is a snow day because this might take up the rest of my day. Big League Stew asks the hypothetical question, "Would you bet everything on Final Jeopardy! if the category was related to baseball and you were winning by enough that you had already assured your victory?" As in - would you risk losing the game for the chance of doubling your money on what would probably be an easy question for someone familiar with baseball. Not being a gambler, I would probably play it safe. I also know that if I Cliff Clavin'd a question on baseball that I'd probably fall into a deep depression that only a Brewers World Championship could cure (as in never).

That post led me to my new favorite internet thing - J! Archive. An archive of every Jeopardy! game dating back to 1984. And the site is set-up in a way that makes it as easy to test your own trivia knowledge as reading Trivial Pursuit cards to yourself. Fantastic.

SNL SOF

2010-02-08T21:41:00.000-08:00

I see Eric reviving "Screw You Ronald Reagan, You Can Go To Hell" at his daughter's wedding.

Kid criminals

2010-02-07T19:48:00.000-08:00

These kids out here, they a new breed. I ain't ever seen a thing like this before. It's the end of the world now.

Around :50 -

Super Bowel Movement

2010-02-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

A reminder of what you're really going to be watching this Sunday -

What happened to the days of pulling for organizations, teams, and players whom best demonstrate the virtues of team work and heart and will power? Who overcome the challenges of a determined opponent on the level playing field of competition? Of blood, sweat, and tears? I guess in our coddled, emasculated, socialist society any overt demonstration or celebration of these qualities is offensive, too Darwinian, too Randian, too capitalistic.

As Obama expressed, socialists and bleeding hearts have warped even sports and rooting into a meritocracy based on sympathy that often has nothing to do with the teams themselves but what they represent externally to the game. Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts don't have a serious sympathy card to play. Sure, they can try to play up the angle of their rookie wide receiver and Haitian native Pierre Garçon as a "beacon for Haitians" but the Saints trump this with an entire city of victims. Advantage Saints.

Pavement

2010-02-05T13:17:00.001-08:00

With the news that Pavement is playing Pitchfork Fest this year you might be interested in reading about their reunion here.

There was a British comic who once said, “They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian—well, they’re not laughing now.” The statement, in the way that it seems to be a proof of its own theorem and the way it kind of eats itself before our eyes, does fairly well in describing the career of Pavement. “A lot of accidents went in our favor,” says Nastanovich, who is as reliably modest as he is talkative, which is a rare combination. I tell Malkmus that it all seems fairly straightforward, the low-key-ness included. “Yeah, we were earnest,” he says. “We didn’t really expect people to like us and think that we were good and special. The defense mechanism is occasionally to say, um, ‘Well, it’s not that important to us,’ or, ‘Those are those the breaks, we tried our best.’ Which was just kind of reasonable. It was all kind of bewildering and that was just a way to kind of keep our cool.”

I ask Bob, Scott and Stephen if there is a sports team that they feel is expressive of the spirit of the band. I suggest the 2007 Boise State Football team, which, in an upset, won the Fiesta Bowl with a combination of trick plays, sideburns, anti-anxiety medicines and just general northwestern joi de vivre. Bob reels off stats and philosophies, and reiterates President Obama’s call for a playoff system. He sees some similarities between the band and the team, but adds, “I don’t know if Pavement is really the powerhouse that Boise State has become.” Kannberg says, “We were always pretty cocky, yet at the same time we were surrounded by people at our label who were very grounded and grounded us.” Malkmus, a fan of Oregon State football and their “jailbird outlaw status,” and due to the fact that his grandpa went to school there, is also very sporting with the Pavement/Boise State comparison: “We have our share of gadget plays. And we were undersized. And we have our loyal fans from our little neck of the woods.”

Here is some musicians' opinions on Pavement. I want to go see Pavement but the idea of going to Chicago and wading through a festival makes me anxious.

Translating Ulysses

2010-02-05T12:56:00.000-08:00

An Atlantic Monthly article from 1995 describing the process of translating Ulysses into Chinese.

First, they adapted Chinese-language tools to the challenge. Most Chinese names have three syllables (Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai); the Chinese transliterations of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus have seven each. Stephen's is rendered phonetically--"Si di fen . Di da le si." The unusual number of characters, the midline period between them, and the use of a few classical (rather than simplified) Chinese characters are all unmistakable signals to the Chinese reader to ignore the meaning and just note that it signifies a name. (A literal translation would be "This-base of a fruit-fragrant. Enlighten-extend-coerce-this.") The practice is similar to using "#%*&!" to indicate a curse in English; a reader doesn't delineate each symbol but just consumes the meaning. Bloom, wandering through a newspaper office, reads in type the name of the friend whose funeral he has just attended: mangiD kcirtaP (Patrick Dignam backward). In Chinese the eight characters used to render the name are likewise reversed. When the moral pub owner, Davy Byrne, "smiledyawnednodded all in one," the issue was trickier. Chinese characters are never smooshed together. Xiao and Wen used a quirk of Chinese grammar that implies simultaneously occurring actions.

They also adapted Chinese styles to Joycean ones. Molly, Leopold, and Stephen all have interior monologues, and all sound different. Molly is not very well educated. She occasionally misuses difficult words, and her thoughts, in the famous soliloquy that ends the book, have an earthy resonance. Stephen, the teacher and literary scholar, is philosophical. And Leopold is a middle-class bloke with a big heart who often thinks about sex and bowel movements. So in the Chinese, Molly is rendered in working-class Beijing slang, Stephen mostly in classical Chinese, and Leopold mostly in a mixture of modern and classical that dates from the early twentieth century. By varying the styles, the translation manages to convey the differences in character among the three.

Don't show TJ

2010-02-03T22:00:00.000-08:00

In a couple decades every bee will be as large as your fist...

I enjoyed this

2010-02-03T21:53:00.001-08:00

Rolling Stone doesn't like music

2010-02-02T21:30:00.000-08:00

Rolling Stone doesn't give out many 5-Star albums. They only gave 3(!) albums 5-Stars in the 90's - Slanted & Enchanted, Automatic for the People, and Metallica's black album. And they haven't gotten much better. Here's a complete list of the albums Rolling Stone has deigned with perfection. It's ridiculous of them to refuse to stick out their necks at all when reviewing their albums, and it really shows how safe they play it when they hand out 5-Stars to reissues. Their lack of ANY 5-Star hip-hop albums from the 90s has got to be the most egregious fail of a music magazine of all-time. I was going to list albums that should have been obviously given 5-Stars but I've lost my enthusiasm for this subject so I'll just say Illmatic and OK Computer and wonder how Mick Jagger's 2001 solo album Goddess In The Doorway snuck onto their list.

Free Fallin

2010-02-01T19:01:00.000-08:00

157 people have survived being thrown from a plane and then crashing into the ground. 42 survived from falls of over 10,000 feet. Here is a handy guide if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. It doesn't hurt to be informed.

Hamsterdam in Vancouver

2010-02-01T18:38:00.001-08:00

Matthew Power writes in Slate about how legalizing drug use in a building in Vancouver has worked towards addressing their drug problem. Within a government-sanctioned supervised injection site called Insite, users can do their drugs 18 hours a day, 365 days a year.

A counter was laden with clean needles, sterile water, cookers, filters, tourniquets, alcohol swabs, condoms. The database includes more than 2,000 users, identified only by code names, and an average day will see 645 injections. There are always two staffers and two nurses on duty, standing by with oxygen masks and syringes of the overdose drug naloxone. To date they have intervened in more than a thousand overdoses without a single death.

The idea of supervised injection sites is not original to Vancouver. There are approximately 90 worldwide, in eight countries: The first was opened in Bern, Switzerland, in 1986, and when Zurich closed "Needle Park," the Swiss launched supervised injection sites nationwide. The Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and several other European countries followed suit, and a site in Sydney, Australia, opened its doors in 2001. The operating principle is simple: If injection drug use is going to occur regardless, why not create a space that mitigates its dangers? That way, say its proponents, lives will be saved and the spread of disease will be checked. The risks of unsupervised injection are manifold; public drug users are often rushed and are less likely to have sterile equipment and practices. In Vancouver, researchers described addicts drawing up puddle water to mix their drugs, or doing "shake and bake," mixing the drugs in the syringe without first cooking out their impurities. Such techniques can cause gangrenous abscesses and endocarditis, a bacterial infection of the heart valves. Public users are also less apt to test their drugs for potency. "What's really difficult on this job is finding out that people use elsewhere, because the site's not open 24 hours a day, and they die of an overdose," says Fisher. "If people aren't using here, they're using behind a dumpster."

Cemetary Junction

2010-02-01T18:29:00.000-08:00

New film written/directed by Stephen Merchant/Ricky Gervais. I can't make out half the words in the trailer but I trust it will be great.

Book 5, On Beauty

2010-01-31T19:44:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed this book. It's the first novel I've read by Zadie Smith and, after having read Changing My Mind earlier this month, can safely say that I love her. My reaction to the book is so strong and personal I find it embarrassing so I won't get into it.

'Tell me about it," said Zora, and flicked open the carton.

And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.

Yeah, no. Gonna watch Marie Antoinette.

The Magical Mystery Chamber

2010-01-31T19:23:00.000-08:00

Wu-Tang vs. The Beatles mixtape here. Haven't listened to it, yet, but listened to a bit of Got Your Money and it's pretty great.

rewatch, remember, rejoice

2010-01-30T13:27:00.001-08:00

Why do you even ponder passing?

Milwaukee sewage

2010-01-26T17:33:00.000-08:00

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage Department released this 7 minute video documenting their successes of the past year. It's cooler and more interesting than it has any right to be, especially the underground tunnel/train that I had never seen before. Would it be that hard for other departments to do something similar?

Breaking up like a big banana

2010-01-26T17:21:00.000-08:00

Dikembe means banana and other things you can learn from Conan when he was a little child -

Gloomy forecast

2010-01-26T16:46:00.000-08:00

Fascinating article in the Columbia Journalism Review that tries to explain why so many TV weathermen are climate change deniers. The article explains a little bit of the history of the TV weatherman and the amount of trust the public has in them.

Twenty-nine percent of the 121 meteorologists who replied agreed with Coleman—not that global warming was unproven, or unlikely, but that it was a scam.* Just 24 percent of them believed that humans were responsible for most of the change in climate over the past half century—half were sure this wasn’t true, and another quarter were “neutral” on the issue. “I think it scares and disturbs a lot of people in the science community,” Wilson told me recently. This was the most important scientific question of the twenty-first century thus far, and a matter on which more than eight out of ten climate researchers were thoroughly convinced. And three quarters of the TV meteorologists Wilson surveyed believe the climatologists were wrong.

...

When asked whom they trusted for information about global warming, 66 percent of the respondents named television weather reporters. That was well above what the media as a whole got, and higher than the percentage who trusted Vice-President-turned-climate-activist Al Gore, either of the 2008 presidential nominees, religious leaders, or corporations. Scientists commanded greater credibility, but only 18 percent of Americans actually know one personally; 99 percent, by contrast, own a television. “Meteorology benefits from the fact that we’re just about the only science that has an individual in people’s living rooms every night,” says Keith Seitter, the executive director of the American Meteorological Society. “For many people, it’s the only scientist whose name they know.”

...

Among the certified meteorologists Wilson surveyed in 2008, 79 percent considered it appropriate to educate their communities about climate change. Few of them, however, had taken the steps necessary to fully educate themselves about it. When asked which source of information on climate change they most trusted, 22 percent named the AMS. But the next most popular answer, with 16 percent, was “no one.” The third was “myself.”

This was my favorite game to play with a dictionary

2010-01-26T10:24:00.000-08:00

It seems like they're trying to take all the fun out of school when they ban the dictionary alongside dodgeball, smoking in the bathroom, and statutory rape.

It Will Burn Unchecked

2010-01-25T19:30:00.000-08:00

Ran across this photo of a California forest fire reflecting over a Koi pond, but I can't post the photo on the blog. I thought the title of the photo was awesome, though.

Fire crews have gone for the night...it will burn unchecked till morning.

Right, anyway...here's a mix I made over the weekend while I was watching the Bucks destroy the T-Wolves on Saturday. It's not that upbeat and it's pretty long (90ish minutes) and you've probably heard most of the songs, but I think it flows pretty good. If that's enough for you, you can grab it here.

1 - Max Tundra "61over"
2 - Aphex Twin "Milkman"
3 - Manitoba "Crayon"
4 - Death In Vegas "Girls"
5 - Fuck Buttons "Colours Move"
6 - Future Of The Left "Throwing Bricks At Trains"
7 - Japandroids "Wet Hair"
8 - PJ Harvey & John Parish "Black Hearted Love"
9 - Bat For Lashes "What's a Girl to Do?"
10- DNA feat. Suzanne Vega "Tom's Diner"
11- The Streets "It's Too Late"
12- Moby "South Side"
13- Pavement "Mussle Rock (Is A Horse In Transition)"
14- Dump "When You Were Mine"
15- Jon Brion "Phone Call"
16- Air France "Collapsing At Your Doorstep"
17- Alarm Will Sound "Avril 14th"
18- Moby "God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters"
19- Kelis "Millionaire (ft. Andre 3000)
20- Clinic "Distortions"
21- LCD Soundsystem "Someone Great"
22- Fugazi "I'm So Tired"
23- Belle & Sebastian "I'm A Cuckoo (The Avalanches Remix)"
24- Generationals "Faces In The Dark"

Graphic Involvement

2010-01-25T18:33:00.000-08:00

For the past couple of years, Nicholas Feltrum has given out survey cards to every person whom he had a meaningful encounter with. At the end of each year, he organizes all the data into several aesthetically pleasing graphs. Like coffee spoons, I think it would be so comforting and so satisfying to be able to have my life measured and presented in such a way. The whole process, though, would probably lead towards my navel morphing into a black hole of existential despair. As it is, I'll stick to recording how many times I watch the video for South Side, in a given week, as the measure of how my life is going.

Good lord, the video ruins that song. ("Yes, Joey, it's the video that ruins that song.")

Update: And here we have someone who is finding meaning listing her graphic involvements.

When I was a kid, I collected things. At one point I was into key chains—I put every new key chain on a string and wore it around my neck at all times, even though it was long and heavy and I was 3’9”. I just liked having it with me. It was fun to look at when I was bored.

That’s a little bit how my list feels: each new experience is something I get to string onto the chain and keep, even after the relationship—or just the relation, as the case may be—is over. One sits comfortably against the next, and when I look at them together I can find patterns in the sequence.

As time goes on, the emotional power of each muddled, fraught experience fades, and it becomes something I can digest—something I can work into a story and draw meaning from.

Oswald for Alderman

2010-01-24T20:07:00.000-08:00

My good friend, Kole Oswald, is running for alderman for Appleton's Common Council, District 16. Visit his website here. I know you, Sam Binder, may live in his district. If not, maybe some of your friends would be interested in voting for a smart and gifted young man to help guide Appleton into the future.

I want the same things you want: clean streets, well-maintained parks, a responsive Police Department, numerous and affordable Parks and Recreation services, and most importantly, the conviction that the tax dollars we pay to the city are being spent responsibly and creatively. I'll address your concerns, big or small, diligently and as quickly as I possibly can. Make no mistake- District 16 will be heard loud and clear at City Hall, if you elect me as your alderman.

Both Appleton and our 16th district will face great challenges in the years ahead. Our largest commercial property, the Copps Grocery building on Calumet Street, will be vacant by the middle of this year. Rapid commercial growth at the edges of Appleton's boundaries continues at the expense of districts like the 16th, which lack a highway exit to attract development. 2010 Census results could spell changes in city services, as well as new representation for some of our neighborhoods in District 16--Appleton's south side districts have had their boundaries redrawn repeatedly over the last several decades. When we also consider Appleton's accelerating ethnic diversity, the proliferation of new media and social networking, and an aging baby-boomer population, it's clear that we're headed for new and exciting times that call for new and innovative approaches.

Sunday Morning

2010-01-24T10:54:00.001-08:00

From Awful Library Books

Why I won't miss newspapers

2010-01-23T18:08:00.000-08:00

Mike Nichols, writing for the J-S, thinks it is very, very bad for Tom Barrett that Scott Brown won in Massachusetts.

in caso di fallimento

2010-01-23T17:54:00.000-08:00

Tom's Diner

2010-01-23T14:04:00.001-08:00

I can't remember ever hearing this song before hearing it in the background of Untamed Heart, but it's pretty great and has an interesting history that I was unaware of.

Suzanne Vega's song "Tom's Diner" was used as the reference track in an early trial of the MP3 compression system, earning her the distinction of being the Mother of the MP3. It was chosen because her a capella vocal with relatively little reverberation was used as the model for Karlheinz Brandenburg's compression algorithm.[5] Brandenburg heard “Tom's Diner” on a radio playing the song. He was excited and at first convinced it would be “nearly impossible to compress this warm a capella voice.”

"Tom's Diner" takes place in Tom's Restaurant at 112th Street and Broadway in New York City. Exterior shots of the same restaurant appear in the television sitcom Seinfeld as the eatery where Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer hang out. The DNA remix of the track was so popular that it inspired many cover versions—the best of which were eventually collected by Vega on an album titled Tom's Album.[5] A variant of this version was the inspiration of a remixed version of Julee Cruise's "Rocking back inside My Heart". Nick at Nite did a remake of the song in the mid-1990s for a commercial advertising I Dream of Jeannie, in which the chorus is set to the theme from the show. The remixed version of "Tom's Diner" was later sampled by hip hop artist Nikki D in her hit single titled "Daddy's Little Girl", the title track of her debut album. Other versions include sampling by rapper Tupac Shakur, and relatively unknown underground New Orleans Bounce artist Sissy Nobby. The song titles are "Dopefiend's Diner" & "Loopy" respectively.

Panoramic Video

2010-01-22T19:16:00.000-08:00

CNN has a video posted of walking around a little area in Haiti. It was shot on a panoramic camera so while the video is playing you can move where you want the camera to be pointing in real time. It's pretty cool. Like the future. Although you are watching a bunch of Haitians who just lost all their stuff.

Time to rewatch this

2010-01-22T19:03:00.000-08:00

Book 4, Nickel and Dimed

2010-01-22T16:33:00.000-08:00

Read this lounging at Dan and Matt's when they were out. I figured it would reinforce beliefs I already held and it did. Poor people got it tough, minimum-wage entry-level service sector jobs are soul-crushing, and Wal-Mart sucks. Thought this paragraph at the end of the book was nice -

Guilt, you may be thinking warily. Isn't that what we're supposed to feel? But guilt doesn't go anywhere near far enough; the appropriate emotion is shame - shame at our own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on - when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently - then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The "working poor," as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else. As Gail, one of my restaurant coworkers put it, "you give and you give."

I've also been skimming through this online-only magazine whose latest issue compiles memorials given for David Foster Wallace. Zadie Smith's is a (much) shorter version of what she wrote in Changing My Mind.

Things I was unaware of

2010-01-21T13:52:00.000-08:00

When the ice melts, play hockey underwater!

USA UWH promo video from USA UnderwaterHockey on Vimeo.

Book 3, The Book of Basketball

2010-01-21T12:13:00.000-08:00

With Brandon Jennings and Andrew Bogut getting me all excited about basketball again this year I was able to kill this 736 page brick of a book with relative ease. Simmons reminded me what I loved about watching the NBA in the 90s and sent me scrambling to Youtube to check out classic bits of Larry Bird and Magic and Isiah. The anecdotes of players smoking and drinking before and after games in the 50s and 60s kept the sections on players I was ignorant of interesting, although it did sometimes feel like reading a book report.

Maybe 736 pages is too much Simmons to take in a short period of time, but his pop culture references and jokes got repetitive and tired real quick (especially for someone who reads his columns regularly where the same analogies and jokes are repeated). Every other player reminds him of a porn star or a scene in Boogie Nights or about a female celebrity who is a slut or a drug-addict or married a crazy dude. Most of my complaints are echoed here, but I gotta point out an analogy that made me scratch my head both times it came up -

If playing point guard is like mastering Grand Theft Auto, then the final mission should include the following things: your handle is so superior that opponents would never even think of pressuring you full-court; you can dribble to any spot on the floor at any time of the game, and if you need to do it, you can always get to the rim and/or draw a foul if your team needs a hoop; no teammate would dare bring it upcourt if you’re on the floor; every teammate who grabs a defensive rebound immediately looks for you; and defenders play four feet off you at all times because they don’t want to have their ankles broken, which means you’re starting the offense between the foul line and the top of the key on every possession.

and

June 2008.I hate comparing anyone to Jordan, but what Kobe has shown over the past four months has been Jordanesque—not just his ability to raise his game in big moments (which he always had), but the way he picks his spots, keeps teammates involved and then arbitrarily takes over games and puts them away. If being an NBA superstar was like playing Grand Theft Auto, then that would be the final mission, right?

I think I beat GTA3 when it first came out, but I cannot connect the dots between the gameplay of GTA and being an NBA point guard or NBA superstar. I can't imagine Simmons not being able to come up with a better analogy than this, and I don't know why he liked it so much he repeated it twice. Just thinking it over for a minute I think I could come up with something more fitting using a Simmons template. Like, "Being an NBA superstar is like being a great director like PT Anderson or Quentin Tarantino. Fading superstars want to play with you (Reynolds, Travolta), you know who your best scorer is and keep feeding them the ball (Wahlberg, Jackson), you make normally one-note or untalented players seem better by giving them the ball where they can succeed (Rhames, Heather Graham), and you can always step up your own game to put the game away (the scene with the gimp, the drug dealer scene with Alfred Molina). You could even extend the analogy to bad point guards/directors - you'll never be considered the best and even be ripped apart if you're too flashy and distracting from the game/film (Iverson, Michael Bay). You'll gain the respect of people in the know if you stay out of the way and don't draw attention to yourself, but you'll need the aid of a great team/cast/script to win anything (Stockton(?), name an indie film(?))." I don't know, it could use work. But I still think that GTA comparison sucks.

Simmons is also guilty of one of my biggest pet peeves - the sportswriter who says he hates numbers and stats while using numbers and stats to form the basis of his arguments. Ahhh, whatever. This paragraph also really bugged me -

This relentless campaign inadvertently hampered the sex lives of all red-blooded American males between the ages of eighteen and forty for the next eight years. For the first four years, everyone was terrified to have unprotected sex unless they were shitfaced drunk. For the next four, the guys weren’t terrified but the girls still were, although it’s possible they were just out of shape and didn’t want us to see them naked. Then the Paris Hilton/Britney Spears era happened, women got in shape and started dressing more provocatively, we figured out that you had a better chance of winning the lottery than getting HIV from conventional sex and it became a sexual free-for-all. Of course, I was married by then. Awesome. Thanks for ruining my twenties, Magic.) Did we really need to know about his elevator trysts, threesomes and foursomes, or bizarre philosophy about cheating on longtime girlfriend Cookie? Was Magic educating America’s youth about HIV or affirming and reaffirming his heterosexuality? The lowest point: Magic appeared on Arsenio’s show right after the HIV announcement and was asked about his sexuality. Magic said that he wanted to make it clear, “I am not gay.” The crowd applauded liked this was fantastic news, and even worse, Magic reacted to their homophobia like there was nothing wrong with it. It wasn’t his best hour.

I don't consider myself all that politically correct, but, christ, after 600 pages of stripper jokes, porno jokes, fat girl jokes, ugly girl jokes, and hooker jokes (not to mention the accompanying theories behind fat girls and ugly girls) and I started to feel slightly embarrassed I was reading the book. But then Simmons finishes it off with an epilogue about Bill Walton that was really great, reminded me that I like Simmons and I finished off the book feeling okay.

But, oh yeah, he focuses an entire chapter on the hypothetical of what team would we want to field in a winner-takes-all game against Earth-destroying Martians and doesn't bring up Space Jam once! That's inexcusable, because then the answer answers itself, Earth's team would consist of Michael Jordan, Bill Murray, and the Looney Tunes, and that's a winning team.

The Half

2010-01-19T09:42:00.000-08:00

Nate's Madison buddies Dirt Dogg and JB have a free download of their album up here.

Family Photos

2010-01-18T12:24:00.000-08:00

More here.

Old Timey Baseball

2010-01-13T12:09:00.001-08:00

Footage from the the turn of the 20th Century. It's amazing. I suggest listening to the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack while watching it.

Treme

2010-01-12T10:56:00.000-08:00

Trailer for the new David Simon HBO show -

69 Love Pictures

2010-01-11T15:46:00.000-08:00

Some artists are drawing pictures for each song from The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs. It's called How Fucking Romantic -

William Burroughs' Stuff

2010-01-11T14:49:00.000-08:00

William Burroughss Stuff

Book 2, Eating the Dinosaur

2010-01-11T13:09:00.001-08:00

Like George Costanza ordering pesto, I don't know why I continue to read Chuck Klosterman. It's probably because I have no choice if I want to read someone compare David Koresh to Kurt Cobain; he's got that market cornered. For the most part, Klosterman's contrarian positions and strange comparisons make for an entertaining read, but taking in an entire book of his in a short amount of time makes me want to rip out my hair at his argumentative style, where things that could be presented rather matter-of-fact seem self-consciously couched in philosophical jargon to make it sound more interesting. In a chapter about how he hates laugh tracks, he writes -

When Liz Lemon says something on 30 Rock that isn’t funny, there’s always the paradoxical possibility that this was intentional; perhaps Tina Fey is commenting on the inanity of the “sitcom joke construct” and purposefully interjecting a joke that failed, thereby making the failure of her joke the part that’s supposed to be funny.

Or: Bad jokes can be funny (or see: Kenny Bania or the entire show-within-a-show plot arc in Seinfeld, which existed purely to comment on the inanity of the "sitcom joke construct" and did it with a laugh track. Not to defend laugh tracks.)

Klosterman is aware of the worth of what he does, but sometimes seems overly satisfied with himself, which can edge him into asshole-ville. Here he describes himself-

I understand Turtle’s motivation and I would have watched Medellin in the theater. I read Mary Worth every day for a decade. I’ve seen Korn in concert three times and liked them once. I went to The Day After Tomorrow on opening night. I own a very expensive robot that doesn’t do anything. I am open to the possibility that everything has metaphorical merit, and I see no point in sardonically attacking the most predictable failures within any culture. I always prefer to do the opposite, even if my argument becomes insane by necessity.

It doesn't bother me until he is just utterly satisfied with something stupid -

unasked question about The Office: In both the American and British versions, the program is shot as a documentary. The characters are directly interviewed and often acknowledge the camera crew with knowing glances. But why is this office being filmed? Why is someone making an around-the-clock documentary of these ordinary people, even when they leave the building? What is the purpose? And when, in theory, would the filming conclude?

In the British version, the Christmas Special revolved entirely around re-visiting the people in The Office 3 years after the documentary was released and they were originally made famous. I haven't seen it in a while, but David Brent's entire story in that special revolved around how he has been trying to milk the little celebrity he attained to start his music career. They haven't dealt with this in the American version, but they most definitely have in the British. I wouldn't be surprised if the American version followed something similar in its final seasons, or not. Whatever.

Credit-Card Therapists

2010-01-11T10:09:00.000-08:00

Fantastic article about the techniques credit-card companies and banks use to collect debt, and how they use information gleaned from credit-card use to increase their profits -

Santana had actually already sought permission from the bank to settle for as little as $10,000. It’s an open secret that if a debtor is willing to wait long enough, he can probably get away with paying almost nothing, as long as he doesn’t mind hurting his credit score. So Santana knew he should jump at the offer. But as an amateur psychologist, Santana was eager to make his own diagnosis — and presumably boost his own commission.

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Santana told the man. Santana’s classes had focused on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a still-popular midcentury theory of human motivation. Santana had initially put this guy on the “love/belonging” level of Maslow’s hierarchy and built his pitch around his relationship with his ex-wife. But Santana was beginning to suspect that the debtor was actually in the “esteem” phase, where respect is a primary driver. So he switched tactics.

“You spent this money,” Santana said. “You made a promise. Now you have to decide what kind of a world you want to live in. Do you want to live around people who break their promises? How are you going to tell your friends or your kids that you can’t honor your word?”

The man mulled it over, and a few days later called back and said he’d pay $12,000.

“Boom, baby!” Santana shouted as he put down the phone. “It’s all about getting inside their heads and understanding what they need to hear,” he told me later. “It really feels great to know I’m helping people in pain.”

Shakespeare at Bowl

2010-01-08T17:16:00.000-08:00

Someone, god bless their soul, decided to rewrite all of The Big Lebowski as a Shakespearean play with fantastic results -

On our most holy Sabbath I am sworn
To keep tradition, form and ceremony.
The seventh and the last day rests the Jew;
I labour not, nor ride in chariot,
Nor handle gold, nor even play the cook,
And sure as Providence I do not roll.

It's a veritable treasure trove of possible Facebook status updates sure to amuse and confuse.

Book 1, Changing My Mind

2010-01-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

Finished Zadie Smith's book of personal essays, Changing My Mind, yesterday. Thought it was fantastic in the way personal essays can be fantastic, i.e. able to explore subjects the reader may not be familiar with while keeping them engaged with the questions being explored. Having never read Their Eyes Were Watching God, I was still drawn to Smith uncovering what it means to personally identify with a book or her elucidation on what soulfulness is -

sorrowful feeling transformed into something beautiful, creative and self-renewing, and - as it reaches a pitch - ecstatic. It is an alchemy of pain...to be soulful is to follow and fall in line with a feeling, to go where it takes you and not to go against the grain.

She has an essay on the many voices of Obama that is online here, a piece on the death of her father and comedy here, and an article on E.M. Forster here.

My favorite essay in the book is the last on David Foster Wallace and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. I've read it twice now and each time came away with a deeper appreciation of not only DFW, but also of Smith, who has the ability to make DFW more interesting, and the ability to write criticism that is art in its own right and not in relation to what it is commenting on. It's long, but anyone who enjoys DFW should set aside a little over an hour and go read this at Barnes & Noble. It's worth it.

Something I Like

2010-01-07T13:10:00.000-08:00

That I came upon by accident

Fictional Reality

2010-01-05T19:58:00.000-08:00

I'm about half-way through the 3hr documentary "Los Angeles Plays Itself", which is a video-essay of the city of Los Angeles using 191 movie clips to show the evolution and degradation of Los Angeles.

The picture above is of Bunker Hill in Los Angeles. LAPI documents the deterioration of the neighborhood from its idyllic family area of the 1940's in films like Shockproof, to the noirs of the 1950s like Kiss Me Deadly, with the area ending up as the post-apocalyptic wasteland of The Omega Man. It also shows the history of LA landmarks like the Pan-Pacific from its height hosting sporting events and presidential speeches and its appearance in movies like Suspense and Johnny Eager to its destruction, which is on display in Xanadu until, in the movie, it is resurrected as a roller disco. From this -

to this -

Thom Anderson, the creator, is real upset about the portrayal of his city and his bitterness really adds to his narration. Worth seeing if you can find a copy.

Texas Textbooks

2010-01-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

Check out this article about the successful movement to alter school textbooks in Texas -

The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan...

In the run-up to the 1994 election, Leininger’s political action committee, Texans for Governmental Integrity, sent out glossy flyers suggesting that one Democratic incumbent—a retired Methodist schoolteacher and grandmother of five—was a pawn of the “radical homosexual lobby” who wanted to push steroids and alcohol on children and advocated in-class demonstrations on “how to masturbate and how to get an abortion!”

...

The ultraconservatives argued that they were too light on basics like grammar and too heavy on reading comprehension and critical thinking. “This critical-thinking stuff is gobbledygook,” grumbled David Bradley...

I can't find these people too funny considering the implications this could hold for other states -

And when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas. The reasons for this are economic: Texas is the nation’s second-largest textbook market and one of the few biggies where the state picks what books schools can buy rather than leaving it up to the whims of local districts, which means publishers that get their books approved can count on millions of dollars in sales. As a result, the Lone Star State has outsized influence over the reading material used in classrooms nationwide, since publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers. As one senior industry executive told me, “Publishers will do whatever it takes to get on the Texas list.”

...

This was not unusual: while publishers occasionally produced Texas editions, in most cases changes made to accommodate the state appeared in textbooks around the country—a fact that remains true to this day.

The article explains that the influence of Texas has historically been balanced by the "liberal-pull of California", but California won't be buying any new textbooks until 2014 because of the state's budget crisis.

More David Simon

2010-01-04T18:02:00.000-08:00

For those who thought the Vice interview with David Simon is too short is the original 79pg proposal for The Wire. I haven't read it yet, but I can tell you that McNulty is listed as McArdle through the entire thing, which would have completely ruined the show had they not changed the name.

And here's McSweeney's transcript of David Simon's commentary for He's Just Not That Into You:

You can decide for yourself whether or not the title cards should be there. I'm not sure I'm fully decided about them. He's Just Not That Into You is really about subtext. There's lots going on under the surface. The characters talk incessantly about whether or not they should get married, so what are they not talking about? Bingo—they're not talking about the fact that the local media and advertising industry is collapsing, or that no one is paying any attention to the changing demography of Baltimore. There's a humor and a pathos in that omission. I think it adds a desperately needed levity to a few of the more cynical exchanges. It's almost like Greek tragedy, that in their blindness to their surrounding community these characters are digging each other's graves. Where's the collective guilt here? It's completely absent, and that's what should distress you, not the resolution of the crisis in their relationship.

The BAC limit

2010-01-03T18:53:00.000-08:00

A South Dakota woman blew .708 last month. In March of last year, a Poland man lived to forget the tale of how he had a BAC of 1.23.

The instructor in my driver's ed. course told us of a man who lived in the Wisconsin northwoods who drank a half-liter of whiskey every morning for breakfast. This man, according to my instructor, could no longer bring his BAC below the legal limit without risk of dying so he got an equivalent of a doctor's note saying the police could not arrest him for merely having a BAC over .08. I doubt this is true, but I like to believe it - otherwise my excuse, "I'll die if I stop drinking!", would sound ridiculous.

Counting Books

2010-01-03T16:37:00.000-08:00

Keith Law read 86 books last year. Since my mom bought me a Kindle for Xmas I need a different way to advertise my reading habits then reading at Starbucks and Barnes & Noble so I'll keep track of all the books I read this year on the blog. We'll see if this goal can keep my interest long enough for me to reach the double-digits.

Currently reading:
The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons
Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith

Any suggestions?

Prospective Superheroes

2009-12-29T16:01:00.000-08:00

Tape Measure Man -

Watermelon Smile

2009-12-27T10:47:00.001-08:00

Most uncomfortable Youtube...

Depression Christmas

2009-12-24T15:21:00.000-08:00

murderhiking

2009-12-24T14:08:00.000-08:00

Funniest thing I've seen in the past hour -

Doin' Dirt Is A Part Of Livin'

2009-12-22T14:27:00.000-08:00

I skim off the top like a politician. 2 mash-ups using Dead Prez -

It surprises me that rap-rock sucked so bad cause some of my favorite remixes use indie rock as the beat. I haven't spent much time listening to it yet, but Blakroc (the guys from The Black Keys with rappers like Q-Tip, RZA, Raekwon, Mos Def...) might turn out to be an exception.

The Phoenix Suns All Night Long

2009-12-22T13:22:00.001-08:00

It's impossible to hate the Suns.

David Simon Interview

2009-12-19T13:08:00.001-08:00

Vice has a gigantic interview with David Simon up. It is fantastic and worth the 40 minutes you'll have to devote to read it. A lot of information I was unaware of with The Wire and his response to how people reacted to The Wire.

The Wire tried to imply—and I felt it being from Baltimore, and I think Baltimoreans felt it, but I’m not sure how well it conveyed for the rest of the country—the value of the city as the essential American experience. We’re an urban people. Eighty percent of us live in metro areas. I don’t buy the whole Republican convention with its small-town values and “We represent the real Americans.” I live in Baltimore. I’m concerned with big-city values and I live among real Americans. I could give a fuck about the other 20 percent of the country. I care about how we live together in cities. I think there were some people who watched The Wire and said to themselves, “You know, why don’t they just all move away? That city’s unredeemable.” We never felt that. I’m vested in Baltimore and I love it, just as I now spend part of my year in New Orleans and I’ve always loved New Orleans.

Oll Right

2009-12-18T15:11:00.000-08:00

An Italian musician wrote this song in gibberish to sound like English -

See more funny videos and Music Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Where's Wallace?

2009-12-18T12:52:00.001-08:00

Where's Wallace?!

Astronomically Accurate Ant-Size

2009-12-17T15:30:00.000-08:00

Feel it.

A Star Wars Man

2009-12-17T13:37:00.000-08:00

Alyssa Rosenberg has a nice response to a weird article by Wesley Morris in the Boston Herald. Morris is dredging up the tired argument that Hollywood has a representational void of the American brand of masculinity. Alyssa addresses the absurdities of the argument well -

He sees elements of it in everyone from Clark Gable to Clint Eastwood, and complains that it, whatever it is, is lacking in younger men of today. If he had a firm definition to work from, it might be possible to make that exclusion definitively. But Gable and Eastwood are really only two points on a continuum, and not even definitive end points of it...But just because we've moved beyond once kind of dominant performance for men doesn't mean a total loss: if you lose one kind of role, but gain many others, I think that's probably a net benefit for male actors across the board.

Morris sees the beginning of the end for the Gable-era masculinity with the popularization of the Method form of acting, which doesn't make much sense at all. I can't be certain at all, but were people complaining about the loss of real men in Hollywood when Paul Newman and Marlon Brando and Al Pacino were the leading men? Instead, I think, like most things in my lifetime, the argument can be traced back to Star Wars. As Chuck Klosterman put it -

Studied objectively, Luke Skywalker was not very cool. But for kids who saw Empire, Luke was The Man. He was the guy who we wanted to be. Retrospectively, we'd like to claim Han Solo was the single-most desirable character - and he was, in theory. But Solo's brand of badass cool is something you can't understand until you're old enough to realize that being an arrogant jerk is an attractive male quality.

But the argument that the new generation of American male actors was not masculine enough, at least in my lifetime, I think started with Titanic and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. You could try, like Morris, to validate your argument by couching it in historical comparisons, but a more defensible argument would be to say that Kate Winslet looked too old for DiCaprio, and that turning Darth Vader into a whiny brat and casting Hayden Christensen were two decisions that even my 13-year old self knew was completely wrong. And so, when all those kids who grew up wanting to be Luke Skywalker realized that Han Solo was the cooler character (and the only one with a chance at getting the girl) they were forced to watch the single most evil character of the trilogy turn into Luke Skywalker Sr. It might even lead people to speak in rhetorical circles trying to argue the lack of stoically cool male characters years after the fact - and especially whenever DiCaprio has another movie coming out like The Aviator where his youthfulness can be a distraction - when there is no such crisis at all.

Griffy & Valentine II

2009-12-17T11:21:00.001-08:00

I posted this picture of my grandmother's and aunt's dogs back in October and since then they've both passed away. Griffey, the golden one, was on his way out for awhile. Valentine, though, was only 7 when a tumor was discovered in her mouth on Monday. Valentine's health deteriorated way too quickly. We had just gotten her to jump through a hula hoop. Last month I had her jumping in the air 15 times in a row before a cookie reward. She got real tired over the past couple weeks, and couldn't coax much more than a tail-wag on the suggestion of a walk. I thought it was surprising, and a good sign, that on Tuesday she gave a poodle jump before a walk, but apparently it was just a last hurrah. She had an appointment for a specialist today at 8:30 am, but she suffered two seizures yesterday and had to be put down.

Lakers + Refs > Bucks

2009-12-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

Yo, that's a proof. Yahoo! discusses the heartbreaking 'loss' last night -

Ep. 486: Cry Foul from The Basketball Jones on Vimeo.

Brew Hoop does the necessary work in pointing out that the Bucks did, technically, miss many opportunities to put the best team in the NBA away, but that sort of mature view, placing the responsibility on the players, is just a bullshit fairy tale when you're playing against the Lakers at home. They don't need the help!

The Yahoo guys focus on the most egregiously bad call in the game, but there were many others. Just horribly officiated, but the Bucks hung in there and are still making this a very enjoyable season and making me glad that I decided to follow the NBA again. Here's Brew Hoop detailing the rest of the officiating -

The game officials (Joe Forte, Marc Davis, Phil Robinson) didn't wear Kobe jerseys themselves, but from start to finish they favored the Lakers. They were bad enough to make some calls that went in Milwaukee's favor too, but even if the score was tied after 48 minutes, nothing really evened out tonight.

The Lakers got the 50/50 calls, sure, but they also got 60-40 calls, 100/0 calls.

Just not good. The worst at the Bradley Center this season, and I've only missed a couple.

There are myriad specific instances, like when Bogut felt the slap heard 'round press row. No call. Or when Kobe got that and-one call on Bogut to bring the Lakers within one in overtime. You remember, the one when he may have traveled, may have charged, and definitely didn't get fouled.

"I don't think it was a foul on Bogut, or whoever they called the foul on. But he's (Bryant) a great player and he's going to get the benefit of the doubt," Charlie Bell said.

Nobody thought it was a foul on Bogut, except the onlybody who matters.

To make matters worse, Los Angeles felt entitled to get calls, you could see that, and despite the foul disparity in their favor, they still griped; both Ron Artest and Lamar Odom picked up technicals for dissent, and at (at least) one point Bryant gave the official the stare-down all the way down the court.

The refs were applauded a few times tonight. Sarcastically, by the crowd.

Forgetting Aaron Rodgers

2009-12-16T22:31:00.000-08:00

The last couple of days has found Matt Taibbi's name pop-up over and over again on the blogs over his recent piece on the Rolling Stone piece he wrote about the ubiquitousness of the finance industry in Obama's White House. Unfortunately, it seems that everyone missed the other article Taibbi wrote in the December 10th issue of Rolling Stone. For some reason, it's not online (neither are any of his other sports articles) so I'll copy the important bit down, see if you spot the glaring omission -

But Favre not only hasn't made the big mistake, he's actually played like a Hall of Famer all season. The list of quarterbacks who can throw the deep out with regularity and challenge the whole field is really short - it's basically Tom Brady and Peyton Manning and Drew Brees, occasionally Philip Rivers. And Favre. And that's it.

Even Ben Roethlisberger, accuracy-wise, has been a mess this year compared with Favre. The supersophemores Joe Flacco and Matt Ryan both took big steps back. Jay Cutler has completely sucked balls. Eli Manning lately is playing he's got a giant tick sucking on his decision-making center. And Matt Schaub and Matt Hasselbeck are just guys.

I don't know if I should thank Taibbi for being able to write an entire article about Brett Favre without mentioning the Packers or if I should ignore him completely for failing to mention Rodgers' very good year and most obvious comparison point to Favre. Regardless, I'll double down on this -

There is a school of thought out there that Favre shouldn't get credit for any kind of feat this season because (a) he whined and schemed his way out of two different teams, the Packers and the Jets, and (b) he did so precisely to get himself to the Vikings, playing opposite an A-list defense and behind a monster offensive line, handing off to a snarling beast of a running back, Adrian Peterson, whose very name makes strong safeties everywhere shit their pants in terror...you'll hear people say that even JaMarcus Russell might look like an NFL quarterback on this current Vikings team.

I do feel protective towards Aaron Rodgers, though, against the criticisms of Wisconsinites who can't divorce themselves from Favre and against the national narrative that seems to view him as the kid sitting alone on draft day, the kid sitting on the bench for 2 years, and then the kid who, having usurped the QB throne as Favre whined about loyalty, has to be compared to the predecessor's myth. Despite the 6-10 record he played well last year, better than Favre, but because Favre had that 6 touchdown game early in the year it seemed every week brought a new lamentation that Thompson backed the wrong QB.

Now this year, Rodgers is having a fantastic season, basically carrying the offense despite a weak line, but Favre took his revenge in the 2 regular season games, which feels like the only thing that matters. It's obvious the Vikings are the better team, but I'm still hoping for the Packers to run into them in the playoffs. Regardless of whether the Packers win or not, or whether Rodgers has a good game or not, or whether Favre continues to tear my soul from my body, this story isn't over. As TNC put it regarding Vince Young -

Likewise, for Vince Young, but even more. That drive yesterday is why I watch football. For people who think it's only about the hits, I'd show them this. There's something almost super-biographical about it. I called football a narrative earlier this year, and maybe that's not quite right. Myth, maybe? Watching a guy go from the bottom, watching him come back better at his job, and then, against incomparable odds, arrive at a moment where it all depended on a choice, is resonant. (Especially when, like me, you've spent a good part of your life considering yourself a fuck-up.)

The ending I want to see is Rodgers destroying the Vikings and Favre throwing a pick to Woodson to end the game, but if Rodgers and the Packers lose to Favre in the playoffs it'd be devastating in a way that matters. In a way that would alter the lens people viewed them with. And I'd continue to back Rodgers.

deep thought for the day

2009-12-15T08:17:00.000-08:00

I‘m interested in how people personally decide to refuse a technology. I’m interested in that process, because I think that will happen more and more as the number of technologies keep increasing. The only way we can sort our identity is by not using technology. We’re used to be that you define yourself by what you use now. You define yourself by what you don’t use

- The Technium

I've got 7 pages to write in the next 5 hours.