A Little Debunking

This article in the San Francisco Chronicle might have done with some fact checking:

"This much is fact: The three-story, six-bedroom Dutch Colony-style house was at 112 Ocean Ave. in the village of Amityville on Long Island. At the end of the paved driveway was a small sign: "High Hopes." On Nov. 13, 1974, at 3: 15 a.m., 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot to death all the members of his family: his father, Ronald; his mother, Louise; his sisters Dawn and Allison; and his brothers, Mark and John. No one in the neighborhood ever reported hearing the rifle shots. Defeo claimed that he had heard voices urging him to commit the murders and that a "shadow ghost" had been beside him as he pulled the trigger. He was sentenced to life -- and remains in prison today. The next owners of the house -- George and Kathy Lutz and their three children - - moved in on Dec. 18, 1975. Oddly, George Lutz resembled DeFeo in the way that his hair, mustache and beard were shaped. The couple fled from the house 28 days later, leaving all their possessions behind."

No one heard rifle shots because it was 3am and the houses on that block aren't all that close together. Someone was shot in my neighborhood once. It was 2am, and I heard seven quick pops from what turned out to be an AK-47. The pops sounded like they might have been shots, but I wasn't sure until the next day when a KING 5 cameraman told me what all the police activity was about. If I'd been asleep, I doubt the shots would have stirred me.

DeFeo's story actually changed several times during the investigation. His first story had him awake between 2 and 4am, watching a movie on TV. He heard his brother in the bathroom around four. He showered and got ready for work. He arrived at his father's car dealership around 6am, unusally early for DeFeo, who never took work seriously. At noon, he left to fart around with his friends. They mall-walked and drank. During the day, DeFeo, or Butch as he was known, called home several times, expressing worry about what happened to his family. That evening, Butch ran into a bar, screaming that his family had been killed. He told police that a mob-connected family associate named Falini might have committed the crime sometime during the afternoon in furtherance of theft.

This story unravelled quickly. Butch had successfully disposed of the murder weapon and shell casings by depositing them in a storm drain, but the shipping box for the .35 Marlin rifle was still in his room. Also, the police quickly realized that because the entire family died in their beds still wearing their bed clothes, it was unlikely that Butch's story of a late-morning or afternoon killing was true.

Butch quickly changed his story, claiming that Falini and another man whom Butch couldn't describe woke him up at 3am and took him from room to room and made him watch them shoot his family. After Falini left, Butch disposed of the rifle and shell casings. This story had a some obvious problems. Why would the killers leave Butch alive? Why would the killers bother taking him from room to room instead of shooting him along with the others? Why would people intent on mass murder arrive at the house unarmed? How did they know Butch DeFeo owned a weapon? And, even more problematic: why would Butch Defeo, having just witnessed the murder of his family and having just been left alone, do the killers the favor of concealing the rifle and shell casings?

Butch's final story, that voices told him to kill, was part of an unsuccessful insanity defense--unsuccessful largely because of DeFeo's poor acting ability. This had been a problem for him before.

Butch DeFeo and his father had long had a violent relationship, and Butch had threatened to kill the old man several times. Butch, in his early twenties, lived off an allowance his father gave him. (His father also bought him a car and a speedboat.) He didn't feel he was getting enough, however, so he concocted a scheme to augment his bank account. He was sometimes trusted with depositing the money from his father's dealership in the bank. A couple of weeks before the murders, Butch was handed $21,000 in cash and checks for deposit. Butch arranged to have a friend pretend to rob him, then they spent the next couple of hours divvying up the proceeds. Neither the cops nor Butch's father bought the story. After all, why would a man who'd been mugged and lost thousands of dollars wait two hours to call the police? Butch's father confronted Butch with the story. Butch's response was almost boilerplate in the family, "I'm gonna kill you."

And so he did. No ghosts or goblins. No hokey gates to hell or flying pigs. All we have here is a greedy, psychopathic young man who murdered his family for the money.

As for the Lutzs, well, guess how scared they were of this supposedly evil house. Three days after George Lutz abandoned the house from hell, he returned to hold a garage sale on the property. Several families have lived in the house in the thirty years since the murders. None of them have suffered from anything worse than having idiot tourists banging on their door in search of demons. Lutz's story has turned out to be utter balderdash, though it's still good for a sweeps week ratings goose for "20/20" or "History's Mysteries". While the Lutzs may have been creeped out by living in the murder house, the real scare came in the form of bills. They'd overextended themselves buying the huge Dutch Colonial. The heating system worked poorly and needed to be replaced. (This explains the cold spots they reported.) And New York State property taxes had forced others to sell the property over the years. Essentially, the Lutzs gave the house back to the bank.

You can read all about the DeFeo crime here.

You can read about the Amityville Horror Hoax here.

Michael Bay Continues to Crappify The World

Stephanie Zacharek hurls stones at "The Amityville Horror", a Micahel Bay production, in a really, really wonderful way:

"'The Amityville Horror' marks the first time I've ever walked out of a movie I've been assigned to review. It's a badly made movie, but face it: We all see plenty of those (and we even enjoy some of them). But even if "The Amityville Horror" will be completely forgotten in a year's time, I think, as part of the cycle of carelessly but often expensively made pictures that Hollywood studios are increasingly putting before us, it's still significant. I wasn't shocked by "The Amityville Horror," or outraged by it: I felt nothing but disdain. As a symbol of what some filmmakers and some studios think the public will buy, it's a horrific piece of work. How dare anyone put this piece of crap in front of me. How dare anyone put it in front of you."

Give him another hit in the head, Stef. And another! And another!

Oh, to be in England

I'm not English, but given the way this country is going, there are many days when I'd like to be. Anyway, with the Brits preparing to decide Tony Blair's fate in a few weeks, there's a quiz where you can determine who you'd vote for.

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Liberal Democrat

Your actual outcome:

Labour -3
Conservative -29
	Liberal Democrat 44
UK Independence Party -3
	Green 14

"You should vote: Liberal Democrat"

"The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership."

"Take the test at Who Should You Vote For"

Now there were some issues in there--transportation taxation and such--that I claimed neutrality on. My lack of Englishness leaves me unfamiliar with the particulars of those issues, so I might be more Tory or more Labour than the poll suggests.

Matt Yglesias pointed me to the poll. Within the post he also makes the argument that the invasion of Iraq, while not in the U.S.'s interests, was in the interests of Britain. It's an interesting notion. My trouble with it is that I'm not sure what British interest the Iraq invasion served exactly. Absent the U.S., I doubt the British would have tried to summon up a coalition of the willing to strike Iraq, so I suppose the answer is the maintenance of political intimacy with the U.S. My question is whether the Iraq invasion actually served that goal, or whether the concordance of Tony Blair with George W. Bush (a man widely despised in England--a charm of the country surpassed only by its red omnibuses) was enough to make the British public question the wisdom of the "special relationship". Clearly the Brits are unhappy with the idea of being Bush's, or America's, poodle. If the French and Germans can walk away from the U.S., why not the U.K.? Surely that's a question the voters of Britain will be asking, not only over the next few weeks, but also over the next few years. Should the Brits decide to blow us off, or at least, side more with the Continent than with us, it wouldn't be the first time that a politician's policies did the opposite of what he wanted.

What makes all of this sad for Tony Blair is that the reaction of the British public was easy to predict. The British public was against the invasion long before U.S. voters started to notice its stench. I'll never forget the scene where Tony Blair got the slow clap, a devastating signal of contempt, from some middle aged housewives after a television Q&A on Iraq. Still, he never listened to his electorate. Instead, he swallowed every morsel of Bush's nonsense, passed the lies unmediated to the British public, and committed his country to a failure. He'll probably eke out a victory on May 5th, but it will be with a greatly reduced margin in the House. His party will blame him, as they should; and Gordon Brown will become Prime Minister sometime in 2006. How might Mencken have put it? "He came into life a hero, a Galahad, in bright and shining armor. He was passing out a poor mountebank."

Mitch Albom Caught Lying Again

You can read about it over at King Kaufman. (Though you have to watch that stupid "Revelations" commercial. Fuck. The apocalypse had a fucking end, but do shows about the apocalypse end? Nooooo. Though, now that this show is spending millions to turn ordinary objects into crosses and outlines of the Virgin Mary on TV, will the blowhards who claim to speak for the red states finally clam up about how Hollywood never reflects their values? Ha. Ha. Silly me. Give up a tool that shakes down the rednecks? I'll gladly bite my tongue, Mr. Van Impe, thanks.) Apparently, Albom made up a story about a couple of college players at the NCAA tournament getting together to share kitchy memories of their college careers. This is obviously a naughty thing to do in journalism and shame on him. Still, I'll leave it to those in his profession to give him the heavy pistol whipping he deserves for this crime.

I prefer to beat him up for his incursions into my domain. I don't usually pummel bestselling authors, primarily because it opens me to charges of sour grapes. Beyond that I recognize that developing a commericially viable, freshly familiar piece of fiction for the airplane and beach set is a skill that merits its share of respect. This is especially true of someone who is able to do it over and over. These are the people who keep the publishing industry running for would-be midlisters like me, and I give them grudging props for it.

Still...

What Albom writes is codswollop. Pure, 100%, dyed-in-the-wool crap. "Tuesdays with Morrie" and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" cheaply sentimentalize the deaths of old people in ways so gooey that the words should have been poured over pancakes instead of paper. To Albom, apparently, death is kind of like the last pages of a math book, the place where all of life's answers reside. (If not for you, then at least for the people who show up once a week to hang out with you to absorb your wonderful social conscience even as they cross picket lines. If the character in TWM had crossed picket lines, the book would have contained a useful irony to cut the treacle, but no. It was Mitch Albom, not his alter ego, who crossed.) This he combines, much like talking-to-corpses huckster John Edward, with the idea that the dead are happy to be dead, that they've learned their lives were good, that their feelings of regret lack justification, and that where they thought they were foolish they were in fact wise. So not only is death the last pages of a math book, it's the last pages of a math book where we turn out to be right, even with the problems we weren't sure about at the time. This is, to me, one of the worst cliches in all of fiction. It eliminates from fiction the central tension needed for fiction to work--the possibility that the character might fail, might be wrong.

What's at stake for an Albom character, really? If he's old, he's pretty much guaranteed to die somewhere in the text, and he's pretty much guaranteed to be enobled in the process. It works commercially because we're all going to die and we all desperately want to believe that all the confusions and contradictions we've suffered during our breathing period will be resolved to our satisfaction in the end. Still, if that's how life works out, what exactly are the risks? What's the difference between dying in an attempt to save a child from an amusement park accident at 83 and croaking from a massive heart attack while snorkeling in the Bahamas at the age of 46? We're all working from the same math book, so we'll all get the same answers. And, once again, we're always right, even when we think we're wrong. If everybody's right and good and moral and noble and ultimately without reason for doubt, what's the point?

In writing what he does, Albom betrays the very heart of what makes fiction a meaningful art form, and chooses to do so in the name of fiction. Instead of lying in the service of truth, he lies in order to convince us of bigger lies. His fiction aims to tell us that there are no problems, that all is well, and that we are all good in more or less the same way. If these things were true, there would be no need for fiction, or for art.

To wrap this I offer the words of a much finer artist: Tom Stoppard (from "Arcadia"):

"It's all trivial--your grouse, my hermit, Bernard's Byron. Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise, we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final."

Charles and Camilla

I don't usually think much about the problems in the Windsor House. The tribulations of people who go on vacation for a living don't interest me. But isn't it about time everyone laid off Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles? I realize that the gods are currently realigning the stars to give Diana a constellation of her own, but she was never the woman Charles liked. Theirs was a PR marriage, meant to burnish the Windsors' image and avoid a stupid Protestant/Catholic controversy. (Buck House is probably the last household in England where such things matter a damn.) Charles had always wanted Camilla, and his eyes never wandered from her, even as he married and they both aged. Now that Charles is in his fifties, he's gone ahead and married the older woman who has loved him for thirty years. Why is this so bad? It's not like the man is catting around with Lindsey Lohan or Paris Hilton. Camilla shares his tastes, hobbies and interests, and has long been devoted to him.

Rich guy marries longtime companion. It's not a storybook ending; it's much better.

Google Maps

Yes, we have George Bush, Osama, Delay, medocrity in music, and "Revelations" on TV. (When did Jack Van Impe and his daft wife get a development deal with NBC?) The world is turning to shit, but there are places to have fun. Try Google Maps. They show satellite photos of the locations you type in. I've seen not only my current house from there, but my grandmother's old place, and two childhood residences. Thanks to Google Maps, I need never return to Tooele again. That makes it all worth it, doesn't it? Doesn't it?

Frankly, no. But it's still pretty cool.

Confusion Reigns

Ah, rumors...the facts of the entertainment world.

Yesterday the rumor was that Daniel Craig had been offered the role of James Bond. This rumor started in the British tabloid _The Sun_, made it as far as BBC News and, as recently as five minutes ago, NWCN News (my local cable news channel). There's just one problem, well two really, Craig and his agent have denied the report. EON will neither confirm, deny, nor discuss. Much of the British press has returned to speculating that Pierce Brosnan will return as 007 when _Casino Royale _ starts filming in October.

_The Sun_ apparently received a leak from EON productions, and though I'm not averse to the idea that _The Sun_ made things up, it's more likely that this was information from someone who thought he knew more than he did, or it was a tactical leak designed to influence negotiations with another actor and keep the press in suspense. Daniel Craig might be a bit miffed, but considering that this is the most publicity he's received on this side of the Atlantic, he should be pleased. (My first reaction was "Who the hell is Daniel Craig?")

I do have one real piece of information to cheer about. Sean Connery will be James Bond in the next Electronic Arts 007 video game. He and his (younger) likeness will appear in an adaptation of _From Russia With Love_.

Delay's Future

I haven't written much about Delay because others are doing such a good job tracking his fall. Still, I wonder...If Tom Delay is forced from the House and indicted, how long before he becomes a senior official in the Bush White House?

Sin City Review

Majikthise and Yglesias went on about the movie long enough that, when the opportunity arose this afternoon to check it out, I did just that. It was a matinee show at a Cineplex over in Bellevue, and the crowd was a fairly sparse collection of comic book guys. (When they travelled in pairs, I thought of Jack Sprat and his wife.)

The movie, directed by Robert Rodriguez is structured in the same, linked story manner that Tarantino favors. (Tarantino directed one of the segments but I wasn't sure which one). Like "Pulp Fiction" the first and last "Sin City" stories follow a single narrative thread, while characters who appear briefly in either of them take over for the second and third parts. What follows is a lurid, pulpy tale of big city corruption where you separate good and evil characters not so much by their willingness to spill blood as by the way they regard women. (This raises a question about Josh Harnett's character in the vignettes that bookend the movie. I won't say what the question is. Go watch the movie if you want to know.)

That said, the connections between the vignettes was weaker here than they were in "Pulp Fiction". All of Pulp Fiction's episodes revolved around Marcellus Wallace and his crime empire, so the stories tended to be either about what life was like inside Marcellus Wallace's world, or the hope of characters to find a place beyond his influence. While the corrupt Senator played by Powers Boothe had the potential to become such a villain here, he didn't present his credentials in the story until the middle of Story #4. Until then, we heard about him, but we didn't know how much of a role he played in events. And the events of story #3 seemed so distant from #1 and #4 that in retrospect I'm not sure why they were in the same movie. #3 did have its moments, of course. The guy who gets the arrow with the message on it reminded me (probably deliberately) of a similar scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". I laughed at that. Indeed, all the stories are fun, but I felt at the end more like I'd taken a tour of this world than experienced a full satisfying narrative in it.

The production design of "Sin City" is one reason to go watch it. Most comic book adaptations fail to incorporate the visual style of the comic books into their designs. "Sin City" is different. Frank Miller's images seem to come to life. The movie looks like a series of animated panels from his books. The credits say Rodriguez shot the movie in Austin but I'll be damned if I saw anything resembling Austin, Texas anywhere on the screen. This movie was filmed on location in Frank Miller's mind's eye, and I was glad to be there for a while.

Book Meme

I read about this on Majikthise. Nobody passed it to me, but I thought I'd play anyway. (I'm so lonely.)

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to save?

John Gardner's "Art of Fiction" (Ayn Rand wrote a book with the same title. You might want to read her fiction before entertaining her advice. Or, for a similar and less costly experience, you might want to stare directly into the sun until your retinas fry.) or Kafka's "Amerika", whichever one fits best in my secret hiding place.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yeah, Elizabeth Bennett really got to me. What does she see in that Darcy guy? For a sweet, savage time I was hot for Fermina Daza in "Love In the Time of Cholera". I also lusted after Dido from The Aneiad and Circe from The Odyssey. As you can see I, like the women Strom Thurmand (Dana Carvey) described in the SNL-Clarence-Thomas-hearings sketch, prefer stories with costumes that transport me to another place and time.

The last book you bought is?

I've been poor lately so I haven't purchased much. The last book I received as a gift was Julian Barnes's collection of short stories "The Lemon Table".

What are you currently reading?

Right now I'm rereading George Kennan's "American Diplomacy".

Five books you would take to a deserted island.

1. The Boy Scout Manual (Good first aid and outdoor living tips. I can use the rest for kindling).
2. "Moby Dick"
3. Kafka's "Der Schloss"
4. "Lenin: A Biography" by Robert Service
5. "The Ice Age" by Me (There's always more revising to do.)

Will Bitterspice pick it up from here? I don't know anyone one else who maintains a blog, so I can't pass it further. (Remember how I said I'm so lonely.) Anyway, we'll have to wait and see.

Brosnan is Back?

IMDB reports that Pierce Brosnan is probably going to return as James Bond after all. You can check out details (or rather rumored details) here. Apparently, Sony, the Broccolis, and Brosnan are going through the same dance that the Broccolis and Roger Moore went through before "For Your Eyes Only". Indeed, this moment in Bond history is remarably similar to that last one. 1979s "Moonraker" was a special effects action spectacular just like "Die Another Day". Like "Die Another Day", "Moonraker" received tepid notices but earned a spectacular amount of money. Roger Moore was 51 when "Moonraker" came out. Pierce Brosnan was 50 when "Die Another Day" premiered. In both cases the producers said after their films' premieres that the Bond series had gone too far with their big budget action sequences and that the next film would show us a less gadget driven, more realistic 007.

Brosnan probably hopes there will be one last similarity. The Broccolis paid Roger Moore astrobucks to return as James Bond, and he made them sweat over the subsequent contracts for "Octopussy" and "A View To A Kill". He made enough to go into semi-retirement.

Here's hoping Brosnan does as well. I'd like to see him back, and for all he's done to revitalize the series I'd like to see him bleed Sony for every nickel they've got.

Bush Finds a New Corpse To Ride

The Pope should give him a more comfortable trip than Schiavo did. A few wet words and grim frowns at the funeral and Rove figures he can bag an three to five point pop for his guy in the polls (higher among the Catholic groups Rove has long coveted). For an administration committed to "the culture of life", it's strange that they're at their most focused when somebody dies. It's kind of Damien Thornish of them, really. Still, from Bush's point of view, better a dead Pope than a live one who needles him about Iraq and Abu Ghraib.

So, add the Pope to the list of Bush's steeds:

JP II
Schiavo
1,500+ U.S. Troops
Uncounted Thousands of Iraqis
150 Texas Death Row Prisoners
Whoever died in Vietnam so he could run campaigns and snort coke in Alabama.

No wonder Bush needs a ranch.

My Friday Random Ten

Mine is different from Majikthise's because I include spoken word stuff in my iTunes Party Shuffle.

1. "Blacks Aren't Crazy"...Chris Rock, Born Suspect
2. "Burning Hell"...R.E.M., Dead Letter Office
3. "Dogs"...Pink Floyd, Animals (subject of one of my favorite WKRP bits)
4. "Good Times" Aretha Franklin, I Never Loved A Man the Way that I Love You
5. "Pigs on the Wing (Part Two)"...Pink Floyd, Animals
6. "Zeke the Freak"...Isaac Hayes, The Best of Isaac Hayes: the Polydor Years
7. "Fresh Tendrils"...Soundgarden, Superunknown
8. "Mack the Knife"...Louis Armstrong, The Great Chicago Concert
9. "Piano Concerto in C"...Mozart, Great Composers: Mozart (Disc B)
10. "Old Man Kensey"...R.E.M., Fables of the Reconstruction

Just Curious

In most sports, the emphasis is on the championship round of the playoffs or the tournament. We have the Super Bowl. The World Series. The Wimbledon/U.S. Open/French Open Championships, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup and so on. Why is it that College Basketball emphasizes the semifinal round--the Final Four--instead of the NCAA Championship game? All the pre-tournament hype is about "The Road to the Final Four". I'm not complaining. It just always struck me odd. Can someone out there explain what the deal is?

Worst of the Oughts

I did a best of some time ago. Now for the flip side. These are the ten worst movies of the last four years and change. Though they have caused me less pain than the Bush administration has, I can't imagine who they'd brag to about it.

In no particular order:

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Glitter
Battlefield Earth
Pearl Harbor
3000 Miles to Graceland
Freddy Got Fingered
The Beach
Gigli
Crossroads
Tomcats

Have I seen all these movies from beginning to end? Of course not. But I have seen enough of all of them to know that they pushed me to limits I didn't want to know I had. (It took me three tries just to get through parts of "Battlefield Earth". The first time I watched it I fell asleep during the opening credits and awoke as the closing credits ended. They say that in such situations, the body is kind.) I've seen most of Glitter, getting off the bus only when Carey, Dice and her friends begin their debate on the impact Brown v. Board of Education had on subsequent interpretations of the 14th Amendment--oh, wait, sorry, I meant their debate about which of them sucked the most. They all won. I got through two hours of Pearl Harbor, but when the movie insisted I expend energy to insert side two, I thought of things I'd like to insert into Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer instead. (I'll start with a pair of railroad ties heated to 2,500 degrees fahrenheit...) Did I really have to sit for another fucking ninety minutes to find out that Josh Hartnett would give his life so that Ben Affleck might live because Ben Affleck's name is the one above the title? If Michael Bay had directed the production of Romeo and Juliet in "Shakespeare in Love", Romeo would have died saving the life of Mercutio during the epic exploding grenade duel and Hummer chase, after which Mercutio would marry Juliet and they'd name their first child Romeo while waving the American flag and staring into a glorious sunset. Mostly I remember getting really into dusting and paying bills while "The Beach" was on TV. I saw all of "Star Wars Episode II". (Sigh)

Note. "From Justin To Kelly" would probably bump "Crossroads" off the list if I could summon up the will to watch it. I can't do it though, kiddies. I'd hate to see what my Netflix recommendations would look like if I stuck that pile of offal in my queue.

Spider Man 2

I've been laboring to figure out why I wasn't as fond of "Spider Man 2" as I probably should be. The movie benefitted from a will-written script. The actors played their parts well. The direction, the music, the special effects, they were, as Henry Rollins is wont to say, striking. Why, then, did it leave me cold?

Now I could be glib about it and say simply that Peter Parker faces the same dilemma that Superman faced in "Superman II", but faces it in a less interesting way, but that doesn't quite cover it. What makes his dilemma less interesting?. He's a superhero, so is Superman. I pondered and pondered, for many sleepless minutes, when help from an unexpected source rescued me.

"Kill Bill, Volume 2". Bill's discourse on Superman, late in the film:

"An essential characteristic of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero, and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When he wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic that Superman stands alone. Superman did not become Superman, Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears, the glasses, the business suit, that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak, he's unsure of himself... he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race."

It is this distinction that to me made the difference. Peter Parker's unwillingness to include Mary Jane in his risky, web-slinging hero-life struck me as unnecessary and even a little patronizing. Surely M.J. knows how much risk she's willing to take on for her friendly neighborhood lover-man. Why not give her the chance to beg off instead of making the decision for her? Parker's main problem really is that he doesn't have a problem; he only thinks he does. Now this is true of a lot of people roaming the planet, but because the solution to the problem is for Parker to say to himself, "Could you stop being a dork for five seconds and recognize that when a woman who looks like Kirsten Dunst wants you, and there is no real reason to say no, you should stop trying to think of a reason to balk and kiss her?" I kept saying to the screen. "You don't have to give up your powers, Parker. You just have to cut the shit."

Contrawise, in order to be with Lois Lane in "Superman 2", Superman has to give up being Superman and transform himself, forever, into Clark Kent. To follow Bill's reasoning, Superman needs to become the character he'd assumed as a critique of a weak, cowardly, unsure human race in order to marry Lois Lane. Consider for a moment how huge that is--a man willing to become what he's mocked for a lover. The length of Superman's fall becomes clear to him shortly after he renounces his powers, when a bully in a diner beats poor Clark Kent to a pulp. He sees his blood for the first time, and jokes they should hire a bodyguard. Lois says to him "I don't want a bodyguard. I want the man I love." Clark Kent replies, "I know, Lois. I wish he were here."

Now that's irony. Big buttery slabs of irony. Superman became Clark Kent so that he could be with Lois, yet in doing so he parted with the identity that Lois fell for. The joke is on Superman, and how painful it must be for him (in every way) to endure the punch line.

So there it is. Thanks, Bill, for clearing it up.

That Was Pretty Fucked Up Right There

While spending the weekend with my parents--my dad's 85th birthday was Friday--I caught the movie "Deadfall" on TV. It's a bit hard to explain the movie. It's sort of James Bond/The Grifters/The Hustler/Red Rock West only not as good as any of them. Because it's hard to figure out exactly what the movie was trying to do, I have to judge it a failure. It was, however, an entertaining failure, as I kept wondering which major or minor Hollywood star would turn up in a role next and how far over the top he'd go. This is the cast, which you can measure for scenery chewing potential:

James Coburn (in a dual role)
Michael Biehn
Nicolas Cage
Peter Fonda
Charlie Sheen
Talia Shire

Chris Coppola directed the movie, and the connections most assuredly helped. (The cast contains several family members, like Cage and Shire.) I shouldn't (and won't) mock too much. Francis Ford Coppola started just as shakily, shooting the abysmal "Dementia 13" around Roger Corman, who was shooting his own film on the same location for most of the day. From what I understand, Chris shoots crime re-enactments for "America's Most Wanted" and continues to look for his big break. He hasn't got it yet, but if he should find it, I don't want anything nasty I say about him to bite me in the ass.

Ech!

Majikthise points us into the direction of the magical verses of fake-nobel-laureate Dr. William Cheshire, that guy who says Tracy Schiavo is conscious despite her lack of cerebral cortex. I warn you. Should you go criminally insane and actual read that poem, you're in for a long sit full of strained rhymes and hackneyed imagery.

Okay, you twisted my arm. I'll analyze a segment of it and plum the Vogonesque depths of Dr. Cheshire's orthography:

If lost in County Rockingham,
A North Carolina mystery
Distorts one northbound exit ramp
Which enters highway two-twenty.

(The "two-twenty" in the final line throws the rhythm off and calls undue attention to itself, while adding virutally nothing aside from geographic trivia. Wouldn't "highway twenty" have served just as well? Of course the rhyme of "mystery" and "twenty" is desperately strained and ugly, and the "If lost in County Rockingham" is disgustinly faux-British, giving an olde tyme air that 'tis unsuited when tasks describing contemporary scenes there be.)

Don’t lessen your pressure on your brake
Or leave your car unoccupied,
For gravity reversed may make
Your unattended auto slide –

(Not if I set the parking brake it won't. Besides which, is there really substantial danger that I'm going to blithely decide to park on the exit ramp of a main road? You're not supposed to park on them at all, you know. Well, maybe I'm betraying my ignorance of North Carolina traffic laws. Anyway, the poet essentially breaks an ordinary sentence into two lines, then strains to find two fake poetic lines to complete the rhymes. "Gravity reversed may make"? It's one hell of a diction shift, as if some open-mic poetry slam twit had interrupted a driver's ed lecture.)

Uphill – defying Newton’s law!
Bewildered witnesses to this
Will ask, by what strange twist or flaw
Do opposite directions switch?

(The opening of the stanza is awkward. "Uphill" should have been in the last line of the last stanza. Evidently, Cheshire thinks that placing a hyphen at the end of the line indicates that the first line of the subsequent stanza is a continuation of his thought. Elipses or commas would be more correct if he wanted to place particular stress on "uphill" while signalling continuity of idea. And, again a traffic question. Wouldn't such people instead ask, who is this idiot and why did he leave his stupid car on the stupid exit ramp to roll around on its stupid fucking own? Is he out of his fucking mind?)

From slip to creep, from roll to rush,
The car let loose will plummet thus
On slopes too steep for eyes to trust.
Without true bearings, fall we must.

(First, as Mark Twain points out, there's an enormous difference between the right word and the almost-right word. "Plummet" is a verb meaning to drop straight down, in a like manner to the plummet, the metal bob of a plum line. Unless the car rolls off a cliff, the car is not going to plummet. The car can coast, slide, drift, ramble, rumble or race down a slope, but it can't plummet. Also, what is a slope too steep for eyes to trust. At what point does that take place. The vertical references surrounding the slope create the illusion, not the slope itself. Under ordinary conditions, we're pretty good at judging slopes, and well advised to trust our impressions. It's part of what's kept us alive for so many millions of years. Also, again a right word objection. Nothing in this situation is falling, things are sliding.)

Which way is up? Which way is best?
Confusion frames experience.
Whilst heavens rotate East to West,
Surrounding landscape orients.

(Which way is up is a silly question to ask? In places where such optical illusions happen, our sense of slope may be imperfect, but we still know, in a general way, which direction is up and which is down. Indeed, it's because we have a strong feeling of how gravity generally works that the slope illusion confuses us. We still know that the sky is up and the ground is down. And what does that have to do with which way is best? Sometimes up is best, sometimes down. Sometimes you're fucked whichever way you go. But why pound on that when we can hit "Surrounding landscape orients". What does the surrounding landscape orient? And why is it given agency? The surrounding landscape doesn't actually do anything. Observers examine the surrounding environment. In the biz we call it personification, and it has its uses. But because the line is unclear, it's hard to see what's gained in using the personification device.)

Our sense of vertical depends
On how the mountains shape this scene;
An optical illusion bends
Perspectives once erect to lean.

(True, but I was way ahead of you there. I learned that stuff when I was seven.)

When looming mountains lift our view
To north horizon upward nudged,
Inclining frames of reference skew;
A level path we cannot judge.

(Yuck. "To north horizon upward nudged"? "Nudged" is not a happy choice. The looming mountains and lifted views plummet back to earth in its syllables. It would be a better rhyme with "judge" (in that it would actually rhyme with judge) if it were in the present tense. But it's not, to its inclusion isn't even defensible on those grounds. Ugly. Ugly. "Inclining frames of reference" calls no real image to mind--quick, what does an inclining frame of reference look like?)

So how much more should we, therefore,
Rely on valid moral points
Of reference when we first explore
Requests oddly for death by choice?

(I'm confused. We've just been over how physical frames of reference can be skewed while appearing solid, yet now the rhetorical question wants me to rely more heavily on moral points over which people are much more likely to disagree? It is, presumably, a moral conflict that inspired this-uh-poem. If I were to stand next to Cheshire on this exit ramp, we would both experience the same optical illusion. Our senses would be fooled in the same direction. It's safe to say, however, that we experience moral questions in profoundly different ways, even though we're responding to the same event. How do I know his moral points are valid, or applicable, in the circumstances? Can't I have different, but equally valid, ideas about morality? How did morality acquire a clarity and solidity that physical experience lacks? How does he know his seemingly valid moral notions aren't, in fact, skewed by twisted frames of reference?)

The road that medicine could take
Toward doctor-assisted suicide
Would be a terrible mistake
Against which now we must decide.

(I could try to defend this stanza by saying that the use of "road" means to extend the exit-ramp-illusion metaphor, but that seems like a stretch to me. More likely he was simply using a cliche. The rest is more position paper than poetry.)

The Dutch have demonstrated well
The slippery slope along which we
Proceed once doctors cannot tell  
A lethal dose from therapy.

(If doctors can't tell a lethal dose from therapy, they're simply badly trained, not misguided. Because the Dutch generally have better health care than we do, I don't think that's the case. Slippery slope is another cliche. Maybe he could have gone British and said it was "the thin end of the wedge". Neither is especially poetic. "Proceed" is a poor word. Again, my I suggest "slide" or "tumble"? )

I think you get the idea here gang. This poem is bad. It is poorly written and thematically confused. The writer does not possess the sort of mind that would win a Nobel Prize, or even the sort of mind that should have graduated high school. My students do better than this, and for many of them English is their second or third language.

Not Modest, Just Tired

Peace, woman! I've been too busy to fool around with that. Modesty's got nothing to do with anything! Yes, true believers, my novella, "Escape Velocities" received the honor of being named a notable story by the friendly folks at StorySouth. You can read all about it here.

Don't ever claim I'm not shameless!

Raider Notes

Ira Miller of the San Francisco Chronicle caught up with Norv Turner at the NFL meetings and came away with the impression that Oakland will be going to a 4-3 defense as their primary alignment next season. That may explain their lack of appetite for new linebackers. The Raiders are heavily stacked at the defensive line positions with Brayton, Hamilton, Sapp, Washington, Irons, and Tommy Kelly, but are thin at linebacker. (If you check out their depth chart, it has lots of gaps right now.) By going to the 4-3 alignment the Raiders would be able to play to their depth, perhaps pick up a linebacker or two in the draft, and maybe another one after June 1st, and function. They may throw in some 3-4 alignments. Derrick Burgess has played at OLB in a 3-4 set, as has Grant Irons. They may also, because Robb Ryan is, after all, a Ryan, add the 46 alignment into the mix. (For the uninitiated, the 46 alignment is one in which the strong safety becomes a fourth linebacker, lining up close to the defensive line. The 1985 Chicago Bears were its greatest practitioners, employing it not only to stop the run but to rush the passer. Because four men are close to the line instead of three, the 46 combines the unpredictable blitz packages of a 3-4 with the initial surge and penetration of a 4-3. The only drawback is that the corners and safeties are under added pressure to stay with their men. Teams can beat this defense deep.)

In other news, Turner says that there are a couple of teams interested in making a trade for Charles Woodson. I doubt we'll end up with two first round picks, but given that these teams are negotiating with Al "Leave them Bleeding In the Dirt" Davis, we should see a generous package. Also, FB Robert Konrad, a veteran of the Miami Dolphins, appears ready to come to Oakland. I love a big fullback who can catch, and, though it seemed like a minor thing to some, I thought we lost a lot when we allowed Jon Ritchie to escape to Philadelphia. This move gets us a good every-down fullback, and allows Zach Crockett to return to his more traditional role as he-who-scores-short-touchdowns.

My Favorite Movie Romances

I'll list ten, in no particular order.

1. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"--Love transcends our desire to forget. The movie struck me as a powerful example of how integral love, even failed and doomed love, is to our lives.

2. "Love, Actually"--It'll be the first of two Richard Curtis films on this list. Who knew that Curtis, who cowrote the "Blackadder" and "Mr. Bean" series, could put together such entertaining couples? The scenes where two members of a film crew up a relationship while doubling in lighting tests for an erotic movie's sex scenes are, all on their own, worth the price of a ticket.

3. "Adam's Rib"--Hepburn and Tracy at their peak skewer each other deliciously in this 1949 romantic-comedy where they play married lawyers on opposite sides in a case. It's hardly the first story where the two lovers bait one another mercilessly from beginning to end--see "Much Ado About Nothing"--but it is a very good example of the form.

4. "Arsenic and Old Lace"--And you thought the family in "Meet the Parents" was difficult. Cary Grant stars as a man making a quick stop to visit his aunts on his way to his honeymoon, when he discovers that his aunts have taken on a new hobby: murdering lodgers and having Grant's crazy uncle bury them. (The uncle thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt and that the graves he's digging are part of the Panama Canal.) In the meantime, Grant's cousin Jonathan and his little pal Peter Lorre, show a deep interest in murdering Grant and his new bride because Jonathan resents both his cousin and the stunning news that the aunts' body count matches his. Will Grant's marriage survive these shocking revelations? Will he? You'll have to watch to find out.

5. "Murphy's Romance"--Because movie romances always end with the correct couples together, there's seldom any suspense. That's the case here, but what makes the movie work is that the lovers, played by James Garner and Sally Field, are so carefully observed and smart. We know they'll get together as soon as Field clears a few complications out of her life, specifically the surprise appearance of her ex-husband. The ex-husband, who's also well played, doesn't really stand a chance against Garner's Murphy, but he nevertheless sustains the movie and gives both characters opportunities to define themselves against him. What I like most about the movie is that the characters dictate the pace of the film, instead of moving around according to the needs of the plot. There are certain advantages to working in a formula. You can get to know the characters while the plot takes care of itself, and these characters are worth knowing.

6. "Four Weddings and a Funeral"--Like "Love, Actually" this film throws a number of adorable couples into a pot and sees who gets together with whom. The coupling of Hugh Grant's and Andie McDowell's characters is made inevitable by the movie poster, but the other couples come together, as the nurse from "Rear Window" would say, like two taxis on Broadway. What works best about the film is its acknowledgement of romantic disappointment. There's a perfectly adorable potential coupling in the film that never works out, causing intense suffering for one of the characters. And of course, there is death.

7. "Victor/Victoria"--Love is strange, but seldom does a couple get together like this. Victoria is a despairing singer, played by Julie Andrews, who, with her gay friend Caroll Todd (Robert Preston), invents a new stage persona for herself--as a man, pretending to be a woman. She's a hit, and she attracts the attention of a nightclub owner (James Garner) who falls in love with her/him. She falls for him too, but can't admit to him that she is, in fact, a woman, because it would spoil her act. Caroll Todd also finds an interest, in the person of the nightclub owner's bodyguard (Alex Karras). Hilarity ensues.

8. "Tootsie"--Another gender-bending comedy, this time with the man in drag. Michael Dorsey, a despairing actor, comes up with a plan to get work after his agent tells him that no one in New York, L.A., or the Outer Mongolian Goat Theater Society, will hire him because he's so difficult. He becomes Dorothy Michaels, and immediately lands a role on a big-time soap opera. He falls in love with one of the cast members (Jessica Lange), but can't admit his true gender because...well, you read the Victor/Victoria review. Anyway, a couple of guys also fall in love with Dorothy, creating no end of trouble--especially because one of them is the Lange character's father. Hilarity ensues.

9. "Casablanca"--You know the damn story, a fight for love and glory.

10. "The Princess Bride"--I'm getting tired, so I won't go over much here. For all the special effects of Lord of the Rings, this is my favorite fantasy romance. It's light, but has genuine emotion. It's funny and wise. It has Peter Cook playing a clergyman. What else do you need? Well, maybe you need me to stop. This post has grown long. Would you like me to quit?

As you wish.

George F. Kennan Died

"American Diplomacy" sits next to my bed. I re-read it for pleasure. I'll miss him.

Other Best of the Oughts

These movies almost made it for me, and probably would make it if I were in a slightly different mood:

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "The Matrix Reloaded", "The Tailor of Panama", "Finding Nemo", "A.I.", "Minority Report", "Whale Rider", "Pollock", "Chicago", "Monster", "Adaptation", "Far From Heaven", "High Fidelity", "Gosford Park", "The Pledge", "One Hour Photo", "Insomnia", "Frailty"

In Other News, Violent Cults Sadden Charles Manson

Tom Delay is upset about partisanship.

Stop Playing Nice With Pundits

Beltway Democrats would do well to read this post from Josh Marshall on why Democrats should blow off the D.C. chattering class. Bottom line, they're not our friends. These people would throw a drowning man an anvil. They take stupid people seriously and smart people lightly. They're rich enough that they don't have to care whether government is good or not, so for them it's all a giant cocktail party where caring enough to actually know what you're talking about is so uncool. It's high school with suits. The Republicans blow them off routinely, which actually makes pundits treat them better. (Like many high school kids, they're interested primarily in attracting the approval of people who don't like them.) Democrats should learn to do that. The last Democrat to have a truly cozy relationship with the press was Jack Kennedy. Lyndon, Jimmy, and Bill all took it in the teeth. It surprised Lyndon, who thought he could do as well as Jack did and tried endlessly. (The Kennedy's sabotaged many of those attempts, but Lyndon did a lot of damage himself.) The D.C. crowd blew up Jimmy Carter before he could even get started--who was this upstart from Georgia to tell us how to run things? Bill Clinton treated them all roughly because he knew he had no friends among them, and it was this, as much as anything else, that helped him survive. Now, in the era of Fox News's 24-hour pundit fest, the Democrats need to get used to the idea that, in D.C. anyway, they have no friends. It's time for a bunker mentality guys, because if this isn't war, what is?

It's Joe-ver Between Us, Mr. Lieberman

Joe Lieberman thinks his fate was sealed with blogger types--I didn't know I was a type but okay--was sealed with a kiss (from the New Yorker):

"Lieberman is a study in the dangers of steroidal muscularity, becoming an outlier in his own party. (He has edged to the right as his running mate in the 2000 election, Al Gore, has moved leftward.) His fate was sealed with a kiss, planted on his cheek by Bush, just after the President delivered his State of the Union address. 'That may have been the last straw for some of the people in Connecticut, the blogger types,' Lieberman told me."

Actually, Joe, the camel's spinal fluid was dripping out long before then. The photo of the Bush kiss was merely a symbol of how you've given this White House political cover on a host of major issues these last four years. Whether it's torture or banking dereg or the bankruptcy bill (a bill he only voted against when his vote no longer really counted, in a maneuver which makes me wonder whether his few defenders should cite his voting record) Lieberman is Rosencrantz and/or Gildenstern to Bush's Claudius and to the moneyed interests on Wall Street. What's more, he likes to go onto Fox News and bash Democrats who disagree with him. For someone who votes with the Democrats 80% of the time, wouldn't you think he'd devote himself to attacking the Republicans at least occasionally? Hell, I still haven't forgiven him for trying to give the Republicans political cover during impeachment by delivering that moralizing harangue on the Senate floor. Your president, a charter member along with you of the DLC, is threatened with impeachment and removal from office because he lied in a lawsuit deposition about a private sexual affair that had diddly-shit to do with running the country, an impeachment that would have been a disaster not only for the Democratic Party but for the country as a whole, an impeachment driven by right-wing ideologues whose personal hatred of the President was such that they wanted to put the entire country on hold so that they could parade what they'd discovered about how the President spent his free moments, and you, Mr. Lieberman, go out onto the Senate floor and give that impeachment drive a fig leaf of bipartisan respectability?

Of course, he voted against it later.

I think it was Lyndon Johnson who said of some wayward Democrat that he'd rather have on the inside of the tent pissing out than on the outside pissing in. This doesn't work with Joe Lieberman, because he has the nasty habit of pissing inside of tents that he's in. What does he do for us that any other Democrat in the Connecticut state legislature couldn't do? And what does he do to hurt us that no other Democrat in the Connecticut state legislature would ever do? Riddle me that, Bull Moose.

My Best of the Oughts

Majikthise has her best of the oughts list. Now I have mine.

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. Lost In Translation
3. Kill Bill Vols 1 & 2
4. Million Dollar Baby
5. Requiem For A Dream
6. Mystic River
7. Before Sunset
8. Memento (even with the plot flaw)
9. The Incredibles
10. Sideways

Go over to the old site to see my best of the 1990s list. Bitterspice has a new review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind here.

Update: Phoebe Evergreen asked what the plot flaw was in Memento. You can see my attempt to answer in comments, which word limits cut off. Essentially, I responded to IMDB.com's defense of Leonard Shelby's remembering his own short term memory problem by saying that true cases of the condition they're describing obliterate memories of everything following onset, diagnosis included. Some patients, who come to the condition via chronic alcoholism (the usual route, as I understand it), may remember a doctor telling them something about memory loss before their defect became profound.

Further, Leonard Shelby's coping method would probably prove more debilitating than helpful, because amnesia patients confabulate fantasies and long term memories to create false short term memories. As a consequence, he couldn't guarantee his own reaction to the tattoo that's supposed to let him know who he is and what, in general, he's doing.

That said, without this plot element "Memento" has no story. And because it was a fast paced, intelligent, witty and altogether involving story that kept me guessing until the end and haunted me long afterwards, I'll grant it the one conceit that made it all possible.

Good night, Ms. Evergreen, wherever you are.

Raiders Finally Add Some Defense

Len Panquerelli informs us that the Raiders have picked up Eagles defensive end Derrick Burgess, signing him to a five year, $17.5 million deal. He had a very good post-season with the birds this year, recording three sacks in the NFC title game and Super Bowl. It's hardly a blockbuster move for Oakland, and we'll have to wait and see whether he develops into a great DE/LB for us or is another Larry Brown. Here's what Scouts Inc. thinks of him:

"Burgess is very active, plays with a nonstop motor and is a solid one gap defender. He is not an explosive edge rusher that can beat tackles with pure speed, but he does have a quick first step and is so tenacious that he is tough to keep blocked. He does a nice job with his hands, plays with good leverage and is at his best on the move when he is involved with line stunts and penetrating inside. On the edge, he works tackles with double moves and is relentless in pursuit. He can hang in there at the point of attack vs. the run against most teams, but gets engulfed by the elite power running teams and tackles in this game. He is active, but not overly physical and if he gets locked up and you run right at him, his quickness and athleticism can be neutralized. If he gets caught in a double team, he is in trouble as he is not strong enough to stack, shed and slip through. He is a better pass rusher at this point than he is a run stopper, but he is only 27 and there is room to develop if he can remain healthy."

You Bet Your Ass I'll Endorse It, Sporty

Politology seeks to establish a coalition of bloggers from right, left, and center, who are outraged over the bankruptcy bill that will begin ass-raping consumers as soon as Bush scrawls an X on its dotted line. Count me as on board, and let me know what I can do.

The Latest from the War Is Peace File

Bush now says that private accounts are a safety net for the risks of Social Security.

George, is there a history of insanity in your family? Wait, scratch that. Is there any history of sanity in your family?

Howard Dean is Simon Templar

Episode III "Not For Kids" or Adults, or Carbon Based Life

George Lucas tells us not to bring our moppets to see Star Wars Episode III. This strikes me as a strange instruction, considering that the presence of Jar-Jar Binks and the decision to start the trilogy with Anakin as a cute little boy saving the galaxy betrays Lucas's desire to grab the kid market. We're just going to leave the young'uns hanging on this one, George? Then what the hell did we make them sit through the nauseating love scenes of Episode II for? Where's their payoff?

Well, fuck it. Lucas lost his bearings years ago. How else could he avoid recognizing that his vision for hell is not only a cliche, but a cliche Peter Jackson visited just a few years ago when he took us to Mordor to climb Mount Doom? A planet of nothing but Volcanos, George? Did you just call up Jackson and ask for his unused footage? Will Anakin also have to face a big-ass poison spider? Will you cut Christopher Lee out too, only to add him to the Special Really-Frigging-Long-You'll-Have-To-Sit-Through-Twelve-Different-Endings version of Episode III? (With that maneuver, "Return of the King" probably caused me permanent bladder damage.)

Talk like this threatens my already limited, I'll-catch-a-matinee-it-a-month-or-two-after-it-comes-out interest in Episode III. Do I need to see Hayden Christensen brood in front of hackneyed, computer generated infernos? I don't think I'm the only one out there who anticipates the new Star Wars video games more than the movies. The video games, you see, are of George Lucas, but they're not by George Lucas. They feel an obligation to keep me amused, entertained, and otherwise happy. I remember a time, a long time ago in a Hollywood far far away, when George Lucas didn't think that was too much to ask of him.

Pick Our Battles?

Citizen X is my 2nd favorite serial killer movie, mainly because of the lovely exchanges between the two leaders of the Chikatilo investigation: Fetisov and Burakov.

Burakov: You think a man is what he says, don't you?
Fetisov: He is if he talks for a living.
Burakov: A man is what he fights for.
Fetisov: I don't fight for anything.
Burakov: I know.

I bring this up because kos (Link above) provides a set of excuses for why Democrats in marginal districts are voting for this miserable bankruptcy bill. What it comes down to, for kos, is the need for Democrats to pick their fights with the Republicans, to conserve their strength for the really big fights, and all that sort of mature sounding jazz.

No.

Not only is that my response to kos on this topic, but it should be the Democrats' response to, well, pretty much everything the Republicans want to do this year. Right now, they're using our "focus on social security" strategy to push through all manner and type of awful legislation on Medicaid, the budget, bankruptcy. They're fucking over our state governments, and playing us for punks.

I remember how the Republicans handled Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, and while I admired none of it, (With my persistent cough, that national health insurance would have come in pretty handy about now. Thanks Bill Kristol for NOTHING.) I did notice their ability to oppose multiple ideas at the same time. Gays in the military, health care, the budget, the stimulus package, Clinton's nominees all in a one year span. They won some, they lost some, but they did a lot of opposing.

Democrats need to shed their fear of the "obstructionist" label. What is so terrible about obstructing bad law? Isn't that what legislators are supposed to do? Maybe if we did some serious obstructing, the Republicans might feel some need to return to the "reality based community". Maybe the Bush administration would establish a record by promoting a policy that makes sense and doesn't shaft the poor. Maybe a Democratic voter could finally, with a straight face, complete this sentence when speaking to a Republican, "I prefer the Democrats because they fight for me."

Crush the Pricks

From Matt Yglesias:

"Near the end of a long somewhat equivocal post on the pending bankruptcy bill, Jane Galt makes an important point: "easy bankruptcy is one of the great unrecognized strengths of the American economic system. Easy bankruptcy is what frees people to be entrepreneurs, to take risks without fearing that one wrong move will destroy them forever." Quite so. She should also consider taking on the point that insofar as the current system really is prone to abuse, the bill in question largely fails to halt that abuse since Republicans would never do anything to make life harder for rich people. I was a little wishy-washy on this topic as of a couple of months ago, but when you think about it the whole idea is really moronic."

Speaking as a potential victim of Bush's bankruptcy bill, I would say that it is not only a moronic idea and a sop to banks who want to gain their freedom to take huge risks by spoiling everyone else's; but it is, like Social Security, a moral issue for the Democratic Party. In this one you line up with the working people and the poor, or you line up with Citibank. There's no middle position here. Now a lot of us are already taking it in the ass with punitive fees from credit card companies, and thanks to an earlier dereg bill a lot of us are also in deep to payday loan people. (Including many troops that the administration supports--except when they need actual help.) This bill is pretty much legalized pillage, and any Democrat who votes for it needs to lose his plum committee assignment immediately. He needs to get a primary challenge. He needs to lose, and he needs to go to hell.

Critiquing A Million Dollar Critique

I had a rather better reaction to Million Dollar Baby than Jim Emerson, the editor of RogerEbert.com, did; but his essay critiquing the film does deserve to be taken seriously even if, on several points, we disagree. You can read it by clicking above, then read my responses to selected bits below:

"'Sideways' is a movie about characters who reveal themselves slowly and unexpectedly throughout the film; 'MDB' is more of a movie about familiar character types – specifically, movie archetypes. One movie is a picaresque comedy with undertones of failure, loneliness, lost youth and disappointment; the other embraces similar themes, but in the form of a surrogate-familial love story, a boxing movie, and a Greek tragedy. By temperament, I happen to be more fond of the former than the latter."

I'm not going to get into the relative merits of "Sideways", a film I also liked a lot, but I do want to spend some time on Emerson's last sentence, because I think it crucial to his analysis. His central thesis is, after all, that "Million Dollar Baby" fails when it deviates from established forms--whether F.X. Toole's short stories or their generic forebearers. He claims that "Million Dollar Baby" is "a surrogate-familial love story, a boxing movie, and a Greek tragedy." (We'll leave aside that the picaresque and the road picture are also familiar forms.) While I don't quarrel with the surrogate-familial portion, I'm not convinced that "MDB" is an exemplar either of the "boxing movie" or of "Greek tragedy".

What exactly is a "boxing movie"? If it's a genre that simply contains boxing as a central feature, it has to embrace a wide variety of plots, from "Rocky" to "Raging Bull" to "Requiem For a Heavyweight" to "Tyson" to "Million Dollar Baby" to "Great White Hope", all very different films in style, structure, and themes. In "Rocky", the fight becomes a chance for a down-and-out loser like Rocky Balboa to have one great moment, which has less to do with winning than surviving with the champ. "Raging Bull" is about a man who is a master inside of the ring but can't handle anything outside of it--the same can be said, of "Tyson". "Requiem for a Heavyweight" is about how greed breaks the bonds that hold fighter, trainer, and manager together, leading to tragedy. "Great White Hope" is about a boxer who, though a rising star, suffers the hatred of the white fans and the disdain of the black community. "Million Dollar Baby" was about how difficult, and dangerous, the obligations of friendship could become. All of these stories contain boxing, but they're not structurally similar, employ different characters, and set different tones. It's hard to how he can call movies involving boxing "boxing movies" anymore than he can call movies involving real estate salesmen "real-estate-salesman movies". ("Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Babbitt" are very different stories involving the same job.)

As for "Greek tragedy", I wonder how Emerson made the mistake of believing Eastwood intended to make one. The tragedy of "Million Dollar Baby" would not be one that Aristotle would recognize. It would be a stretch to compare Maggie's failure to heed Frank's warning to "protect herself at all times" with hubris; neither is it reasonable to conclude that Maggie's fate in the movie was in some way fated at the beginning. The movie has multiple subplots, missing all three of the unities. It does not deal in the classical devices of reversal or recognition, and its lead character is not brought down because of an inner perversion that spoils all of her nobility. If anything, the same passion that fueled Maggie's rise in the ring also fueled her suicide, a trait more familiar to Shakespearean tragedy than to the Greek (See "MacBeth", "Coriolanus", "Lear", "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet", or "Othello"). Indeed, with the Danger and Family subplots, and the chatter with the priest just before Frank heads off to give the poison to his Maggie, the entire story seemed to me to owe a good deal more to the Bard (whom Ben Jonson took to task for his messy plotting) than to Sophocles.

I can see the advantage for Emerson in invoking the Greeks. The plot structure suggested in the Poetics is rigid, making it easy to hold up to "Million Dollar Baby" in order to accuse it of failure. But since Eastwood never tried to make a film according to that structure, it doesn't surprise me that the finished product didn't conform to it.

This leaves us with "surrogate-familial love story". I'm not an expert in this particular form, having never heard of it until just now, so I suppose I'll have to leave Emerson that one. Of course, Emerson doesn't give us a primer on this genre's rules, so it's hard to say where Eastwood may have failed to follow them.

On to individual complaints:

"For me, that point first comes when Frankie and Maggie go to Las Vegas for the big fight … and Scrap stays behind. In a tightly woven, classically plotted film, you don’t suddenly leave your trusty sidekick character (and your narrator!) behind for the climax of the story – especially when he’s been established as virtually the only friend in the world for the two other main characters. It’s completely unnecessary (except that the movie splits in two here, with the “Frozen Water” story taking place at the Hit Pit and the “Million Dollar Baby” story continuing independently in Vegas)."

Actually, that's not the climax of the story. That won't come until later, but why split hairs? I must admit I wondered about Scrap's decision as well, but Morgan Freeman sold me that he had his reasons for hanging back and I went with it without too much thought. Further I'm dubious that he would have served much of a function in the championship fight scene if he had gone. In a tightly woven, classically plotted film, you don't bring characters to the scene who serve no purpose in it. (Morgan Freeman gave a perfectly good reaction shot from his bed while he was watching the fight on television.)

"Perhaps the corniest and most unconvincing moment in the movie comes when Scrap hauls off and punches Shawrelle for beating up on Danger. In the story, it’s not an old, one-eyed man who KOs a boxer in his prime, but the owner of the gym for whom Scrap works. That man, Curtis “Hymn” Odom, is much younger closer to Shawrelle’s age and still at his prime fighting weight. In fact, Scrap used to train him, and now he works for him. The only reason Hymn isn’t still fighting is that “he got a detach eye.” It makes a lot more sense that this guy could and would clock Shawrelle than ol’ Scrap."

Yeah, but, while it's established that Shawrelle is in his prime, it's also established that he really isn't any good. He has no heart, as Scrap says early in the picture. He can throw a punch but he can't absorb one. My impression was that Scrap took Shawrelle out because he surprised him and Shawrelle forgot what he was supposed to do in response. Mentally, Shawrelle is a poor fighter. Now, it probably would have been a better scene if Eastwood had followed the Toole story and had Odom knock Shawrelle out; but it would have added another secondary character to the piece whose sole function in the story would be to knock Shawrelle out. In a plot that Emerson already thinks is messy, why would adding more characters do it any favors?

"Why would Scrap write to this missing daughter to recount a story about another daughter-figure that Frankie loved and then was forced to help die? What is incommunicado-daughter supposed to make of that little tale? To Scrap, the story shows that Frankie was a tragic figure and “a good man” (not a “heroic” figure, as some anti-euthanasia right-wingers have claimed). But it would have been more satisfying, and less preposterous, if he’d just told us that, and let Frankie’s daughter be."

Search me why he does it. I doubt he thinks his letter will have any better luck than Frank's did. Since we don't know what separated Frank from his daughter it's hard to say. (I don't remember whether Scrap knows the reason for the estrangement or not.) Maybe he hopes it will help or will at least show Frank's daughter a side of Frank she never knew. What is she supposed to make of that little tale? I don't know, neither does Scrap maybe. Does Mr. Emerson? Also, I rather like that he was telling this story to someone, rather than talking to the air.

"Richard T. Jameson, in Variety, has written about the exemplary use of the stool in the boxing ring, as a semi-comic recurring motif that suddenly turns tragic. That’s the movie’s classical bloodline showing through to its best advantage.

"But, to me, “Million Dollar Baby” seems a little too calculated to be convincing; it’s so self-consciously “classical” and fussy in its austere design, that it seems clinical – more of an exercise in filmmaking than a fully reazlized film. At times it made me think of a paint-by-numbers masterpiece, if there can be such a thing.

"Anyone familiar with classical story structure, for example, will perk up when Maggie tells the story of her lost father and his German Shepherd, Axel. This occurs, on cue, in the movie’s second act, and if you’ve been paying any attention, you pretty much know where the movie’s going from there on (though in the book, Maggie tells this story in the hospital, as part of her attempt to persuade Frankie to help her die). In this kind of traditional picture, when a girl tells her new father-figure a fond story about her real dad who had to shoot his beloved dog when old Axel went lame … well, that’s the rest of your story, right there."

Yeah, but for me that only operated in retrospect. At the time it read to me as colorful character detail. I hadn't been expecting her to end up in a position where she might want to be put to sleep. (By the time she broke her neck in the ring, I'd pretty much forgotten it.) So if Mr. Emerson could really see where the movie was going from those lines the first time through, I must get the name of his optician. Also, why is this on cue? What was the cue? I don't remember there being an obvious cue.

As for Eastwood's treatment of Maggie's parents, I'd say it didn't strike me as outrageously over-the-top. The scene where Maggie's mother describes her as an embarrassment wasn't gratuitous. Though Maggie's mother wasn't conscious of it (most likely), it struck me as the ultimate double insult. "Imagine," her subtext goes, "that you could be an embarrassment to someone like me. Do you know how low that makes you?" From the look on her face when her mother attacks her, Maggie is more conscious of the full meaning of that insult than her mother is. It's the condition she'd be hoping to escape through boxing and through the gift of the house--and her mother tells her no, you're still there. You're still lower than me. Maggie's crime, where her mother was concerned, was in trying to be anything better than her mother. For me, the question of the hospital scene is whether these characters would be likely to act in this way under these circumstances. The answer strikes me as a yes, because their objective in the scene is not simply to get the house, but also to put Maggie squarely in her place. Greed wasn't the only emotion at work in this scene. Envy and schadenfreude showed up as well. When the mother stuck the pen in Maggie's mouth it was a final attempt to humiliate and infantilize her. Would the scene have played better Toole's way? If you decide that all Maggie's mother wanted was the money, but that was not what Eastwood decided.

Finally, there's the issue of Maggie's suicide:

"This brings me to my final major problem with “Million Dollar Baby,” which is Maggie’s transformation from a fighter (in every sense of the word) to a would-be suicide. We all bring our own baggage to the movies we see, and maybe it’s because I have fought my own battles with suicidal depression nearly all my life that I just didn’t buy Maggie as the suicidal type. Yes, we are told that paraplegics and quadriplegics often go through a suicidal phase – though, as some have pointed out, it is likely to be most serious once they have been through rehabilitative therapy and realize that this is about as much as they’re ever going to recover. But ever-spunky Maggie doesn't convey that level of despair and resignation. Her choice, therefore, seemed more a function of structural symmetry than one of human suffering, dictated by the plot rather than by the character."

Yes, Maggie's character was spunky, but she was spunky in a particular direction. Her sustaining drive was to fight in the ring. Most world class fighters have trained since childhood to do it. To start at Maggie's age would require extraordinary dedication to the trianing of her body and brain to the task of knocking another person unconscious. To lose all that, forever, to an ordinary career ending injury--detached retina, broken eye socket, torn rotator cuff, or organ damage--would be traumatic enough. To lose the entire body--to become a head--for a world class athlete would be a special kind of hell. It would mean never again doing the one thing in the world that she trained to do. Even athletes who retire from the sport because of simple age often need extensive counseling to face a life outside of their sport. (Each NFL team has an office dedicated to that.)

Hell, we're all terrified of one particular form of ruin. For me, it's profound brain injury or disease. Alzheimer's scares the shit out of me. The idea of losing memories, losing me, even as I sit there and watch, makes me physically sick. I think I could take anything but that. Cut my arms off, give me tumors, fire bullets through me, I'll fight to overcome them all and live; but show me a future with Alzheimers and I'll fight to die because I'll figure I'll have seen all I need to see.

That's where Maggie was, and as I recall she said as much toward the end of the film. There simply wasn't anything else she could think of to want in this world, and a future paralyzed scared the hell out of her. Would I have made that choice? Not under those conditions but maybe under others that scare me as much. I didn't need, as Emerson says he did, a longer period to watch her cope with it. I've written such transitional scenes many times over the years, and have always removed them later because I knew they were meant to make me feel better, not to simulate how real people make decisions. In real life decisions come quickly and often appear unearned to the outside observer. How much rehab would have allowed us to feel good about Maggie's decision to kill herself? How many tearful fights with Frank would the film have to parade for us? Three? Four? A dozen? Perhaps we could wheel in the obligatory scenes with psychiatrists and social workers. I'm sure they're stashed away somewhere in stock footage for the occasion. To bring us back to Greek tragedy for a moment, how many transition scenes were there between Oedipus's discovery that he'd murdered his father and married his mother and the time we see him blind and ragged. None. He runs off, and afterwards Creon and the Chrous describe what happened to Oedipus and Iocaste offstage. Fast forward to Shakespeare. Romeo needed no transition scenes to bring him to suicide in the crypt. He'd made the decision within seconds of hearing Juliet was dead. Othello went just as quickly after he'd leared what a fool he'd been to trust Iago. The rage he'd turned outward on Desdemona, then on Iago, he finally turned upon himself--a victim of his own passion. To use a more contemporary example, Keller in Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" kills himself within moments after a letter Keller had never read from his dead son reveals that his boy hated him for having filled planes with substandard parts. Transition scenes would have been a waste. Lesser writers stick them in a futile effort to convince himself and his audience that the person has earned a ticket out of life. Like funerals and wakes, such rituals are for us, not the victim.

The way it's done in "Million Dollar Baby", in its suddenness, stings more. It forces on us the question of whether what she wanted was justified, whether she was giving up too easily, and what Frank's real moral responsiblities were to his friend. And we're still stuck with those questions, some of the most awful that can be asked. People are still fighting about it, and will still be fighting about it, in the months and years to come. If this quality alone doesn't make "Million Dollar Baby" a great film, I don't know what does.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Blogging Is Dark, Terrible Work

The Ian Fleming society, speculating on the sort of James Bond we're likely to get when the next actor walks in the gun barrel, tells us that we should look for a younger, sadder 007:

"As part of this emphasis upon character development, Campbell also touched on Bond’s possible relationship with Vesper Lynd, the agent assigned to assist 007 in his struggle to defeat Le Chiffre, the main villain. Bond falls in love with Lynd, but (in the novel) she is a double-agent. When Bond discovers this, his emotions change dramatically and he quickly develops his famous cold steely exterior, referring to her as a ‘bitch’.

“'The door is open for Bond, emotionally', said Campbell. 'He’s in love with Vesper and he sees there’s another side to all of this, that life might be far more pleasurable, more gratifying, than being a secret agent. And ultimately that door is slammed in his face, which makes him the tempered steel kind of guy that we know.'"

Over the last twenty years or so, we've gone through a number of "tempered steel" disappointed heroes in movies and TV shows. Some might start with the "Lethal Weapon" series, where Mel Gibson plays a tortured cop who mourns his dead wife; but James Bond had a hand in it as well. The casting of Timothy Dalton as Roger Moore's replacement brought us a moodier, grimmer Bond, who did everything, from sipping martinis to kissing the girl, with a hint of regret. What really got the momentum going for this kind of hero, however, was 1989s "Batman".

"Batman" not only influenced set and costume design for big budget pictures, but also the leads of movie romances. It centered itself around the ultimate in tortured heroes--Bruce Wayne, who lost his parents to gunmen and dedicated his life to avenging himself on the costumed freaks of Gotham. He was a bigger hit than 007 and Martin Riggs combined. (The Bond franchise was flailing by this point. "Licence to Kill" received decent notices, but drew mediocre crowds to summer movie screens.) People paid big money to watch a hero sit in his dimly lit home, looking as haunted as the Bergman knight who plays chess with Death, until crime in Gotham inspires him to put on his costume and rev up his awesome, yet shadowy, car.

Romances function as wish fulfillment. We want to see the knight fight both the dragon and the giant, win through, and kiss the fair maiden. Indiana Jones has to get the lost Ark and the girl. Agent 007 has to kill Red Grant and get the lovely Russian defector to fall madly in love with him. We want to be these guys. They're powerful, witty, imaginative--everything that we're not. (Or, at least, that you're not.) If the knights of Arthurian legends behaved as real knights behaved--burning villages and slaughtering the peasants in ways that would make Kissinger blush--would we really want to spend time reading about them? If Indiana Jones had to spend all day sifting through dirt and cataloging pottery shards, would you want to be him? If Bond occupied his time going to blind drops where his Joes (disgruntled minor bureaucrats mostly) deposit abstruse governemnt secrets and filing reports, who'd bother?

In the past, for the most part, our heroes have carried with them a certain love of life and adventure. Odysseus certainly had his down moments. (Though for him, a down moment means being trapped on an island with a gorgeous nymph who wants his body.) But for much of his adventure he seems to enjoy being Odysseus, often to the detriment of his crew. The whole foray into the realm of the Sirens, for example, seemed to be adventure for the sake of adventure--terribly risky under their circumstances. Not to meantion that the whole lot of them would have been better off if Odysseus could have kept his damned name to himself during the Cyclopes encounter. Things ended badly for the Arhurian knights, but they had some fun along the way, wiping out giants and canoodling with maidens. And for more contemporary heroes this was once true. M's first ultimatum to James Bond was that he give up his favorite gun (the Baretta .25) or lose his "00" number and return to "ordinary intelligence duty". It took this for Bond to accept his PPK. After Superman reveals himself to the world by performing his first mighty deeds in "Superman: The Movie", his father's image in the Temple of Solitude says to him, "You enjoyed it." Even Dirty Harry seemed to like himself, even though he despised nearly everyone else. He could accept a come-on from the sexy woman upstairs without bombarding her with details about his miserable, downtrodden cop life. Stakes got high in these stories, and the heroes sometimes had their bad moments; but overall, they knew it was good to be them.

Now, it appears, our Romances fulfill a different wish. It's hard to say what exactly. Maybe the disappointments of real life don't seem disappointing enough; or maybe in order to identify with the hero we need him to be more like us: sad, lost, and frequently alcoholic. We want to believe that a person can change the course of mighty rivers while still feeling like shit. It was this attitude that Pierce Brosnan's Andy Osnard mocked in "The Tailor of Panama".

"Just between us, I'm MI6's man in Panama. It's dark, lonely work...like oral sex, but someone's got to do it, Harry."

Apparently some of us want to see ourselves, or have wanted at any rate, as dark, lonely men, battling an uncaring world, trying desperately to find in it power, fulfillment and love. I don't have any grand social theories about why this is--a greater sense of anomie in a world dominated by television and lying governments seems awfully generalized--but it's probably something along those lines. What else could explain the switch from a Bond who'd do anything to continue "00" work to a Bond who blames an old flame for his need to stay in it?

I'm not really in sympathy with that. I've had my fill of tortured, lonely heroes. Anakin Skywalker lowered the whole notion of it to camp in "Star Wars: Episode II". Give me heroes like the ones in "The Incredibles" or "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" who actually enjoy what they do, who have a sense of humor about themselves and their adversaries, and who can kiss someone without making me wonder which dead relative their partner reminds them of.

Hunger For Dictatorship

You may read this excellent essay from the American Conservative magazine by clicking the title of this post. A sample:

"It is necessary to distinguish between a sudden proliferation of fascist tendencies and an imminent danger. There may be, among some neocons and some more populist right-wingers, unmistakable antidemocratic tendencies. But America hasn’t yet experienced organized street violence against dissenters or a state that is willing—in an unambiguous fashion—to jail its critics. The administration certainly has its far Right ideologues—the Washington Post’s recent profile of Alberto Gonzales, whose memos are literally written for him by Cheney aide David Addington, provides striking evidence. But the Bush administration still seems more embarrassed than proud of its most authoritarian aspects. Gonzales takes some pains to present himself as an opponent of torture; hypocrisy in this realm is perhaps preferable to open contempt for international law and the Bill of Rights.

"And yet the very fact that the f-word can be seriously raised in an American context is evidence enough that we have moved into a new period. The invasion of Iraq has put the possibility of the end to American democracy on the table and has empowered groups on the Right that would acquiesce to and in some cases welcome the suppression of core American freedoms. That would be the titanic irony of course, the mother of them all—that a war initiated under the pretense of spreading democracy would lead to its destruction in one of its very birthplaces. But as historians know, history is full of ironies."

Bush 2005 Desperation Tour

If Bush's foreign policy reminds me of a hyperactive toddler, Bush's Social Security pitch reminds me of a desperate guy who won't stop pestering a woman for a date. He's about to go on a sixty-day, sixty-stop tour to sell a plan nobody wants, a plan that becomes less attractive the more it's sold. Now I'd have thought he'd just cut his losses and give up, but the Iraq War has taught him one thing: if he just keeps stamping his foot and screaming eventually he'll wear us all down and we'll agree to give him what he wants.

Of course, it should be amusing to watch Bush abase himself. Maybe we can be cruel and make him do humiliating things. "We might consider your plan, Mr. Bush, if you eat this bucket of cockroaches." "Oh, I'm sorry Mr. Bush, one of them scuttled away. Forget it. Although, we might reconsider, if you get naked, smear yourself with elephant dung, and run through Central Park yelling 'I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener.'" "Oh, I'm sorry. You jogged past the Public Theater. Forget it, smelly."

It's official

The Raiders are now officially Randy Moss's home.

In actual news, the Raiders appear to be closing in on Jets HB LaMont Jordan. You'd have to pay to see the story, but ESPN describes the talks between the Raiders and Jordan as serious and believes they'll strike a deal within days. Of course, these deals can vanish in a hurry, and Jordan's people might be letting the word out to let Tampa and the Jets know that the train is leaving the station. If the Raiders make the deal, it should give them the durable power runner they need in the backfield, taking pressure off Kerry Collins and helping address the Raiders' abysmal time-of-possession figure in 2004. (They were dead last.)

There's no further word on a trade for Charles Woodson. Davis, Lombardi, and Turner may decide that having traded away Napoleon Harris, they can't afford to allow Woodson to leave. If Woodson begins negotiations with another club, as is his right as a non-exclusive franchise player, it should be everywhere. I'll keep listening.

What Takes Two Germans, Ultrasound, and 22 Months?

Inseminating an elephant.

The New Spring Line of Threats Is Coming Out

James Wolcott smells a rat, a big fat neocon rat:

"Couple of weeks ago on Tina Brown's Topic A, Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman squawked about Iran's support for terrorism in general, Hezbollah in particular. Now I don't pretend to be the Mideast savant Jonah Goldberg is, but my dim understanding is that Hezbollah's fight is with Israel, they pose no direct threat to the United States; ergo, let Israel fight its own battles, for which it is more than adequately equipped.

"But Zuckerman's offhand mention got my spider sense tingling, triggering a faint suspicion that Hezbollah was being groomed for the next big scary terrorist threat to Our Way of Life now that Al Qaeda's fear factor was receding."

Let's see. We're mad at Syria, Iran, a terrorist group in Israel, Venezuela, and Canada(!). We're kind of pissed at Russia and China. The Europeans are pissed at us, and mock us for our thin efforts at making nice--strongly reminiscent of George W. Bush's efforts to make nice with the Democrats after the 2000 election. We're ignoring North Korea, even though its batty leader routinely threatens to incinerate large swaths of the Earth. We're trying to rebuild two nations, Iraq and Afghanistan, on the cheap. Weren't the Bushies supposed to be the adults who bring focus to foreign policy--unlike the feckless amateurs of the Clinton administration? Can't they finish one problem before creating another? They're wandering over the world like a todder in a department store, pulling the adults to and fro yelling "Ooh, look at that. I want that. Ooh, look at that, I want that."

No wonder I'm so tired. Living with the Bush administration is like living with a two year old who never ages and can't stay out of the sugar.

Anyway, now the neocons are looking at Hezbollah, so that they can justify going after a) Syria or b) Iran or c) (a country to be named later). They're writing their position papers saying why we must strike a,b, or c now or the world is doomed. These press releases have been assembled into a book called "Lightning out of Lebanon." The board of directors of the group releasing this book boasts several neocon names, as well as a now famous neocon kisser who thinks he still has the Joe-mentum. The media, for whom worry and shock are meat and bread, will help them as much as they can; and the lie will once again outrace the truth. Hezbollah's anger is directed at Israel. They've never shown international ambitions, though they might if the US starts fucking with them.

In the meantime, the Sudan grows even worse, the insurgents blast away in Iraq, and the North Koreans sift their uranium. And the band plays on.

Major Announcement

The Raiders tells us that we should prepare for one. I'm assuming that, in one of the great anti-climaxes of all time, they'll tell us that Randy Moss is coming to Oakland. Mercurial as the Raiders are, however, it could be anything.

Stay Tuned.

I've had lots of work to do

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.