i decline to accept the end of irony

I believe that irony will not merely endure: it will prevail. Just give us a few weeks to enjoy this already.

And anyway: "All the news that's fit to print."

Ironic, idn't it.

she loves the bare, the withered tree

Of course, as noted here, autumn is the season of nostalgia. It is the season of nostalgia because it is the season of passing to nothing, of slipping away. It is the season of old age and death, and in our old age we are nostalgic. Spring is the season of birth, summer the season of life, autumn the season of death, and winter is the season that corresponds with nothingness. Birth, life, death, nothing: these are the conditions we pass through, and each has its season.

Autumn is the oil wheeze of the family car, or the leafblower engine.

A note: Sidney Lumet, commenting on "The Verdict," said he wanted autumnal colors in chiaroscuro for the story of a middle-aged man pulling himself out of a drunken half-death. The character is not nostalgic -- except, perhaps, for the black-and-white photograph of his ex-wife -- but the movie itself has a timeless feel. In the colors, the leather, the suits, the whiskey, it lives in an eternal past. Only in a Polaroid can Frank Galvin see the life of his vegetative-state client: only in a photograph can he see the long-forgotten spirit of life. And yes, Polaroids are the color of autumn, of memory, of nostalgia.

A note: I've forgotten almost everything from Professor Burrows' "Photography and the American Novel."

An of-course note: as Bart Giamatti tells me every year, autumn breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.

A polaroid from Pepi Ginsberg:

Democracy in America

Sorry, my friends, but the television broadcast of two Presidential candidates taking safe two-second sound bites out of questions pre-screened by conciliatory corporate broadcasting suits are not what might be described as a "town hall." See Yglesias for a critique with examples.

This is a town hall:

In the town meeting the people of a community assemble to discuss and to act upon matters of public interest--roads, schools, poorhouses, health, external defense, and the like. Every man is free to come. They meet as political equals. Each has a right and a duty to think his own thoughts, to express them, and to listen to the arguments of others. ...

[I]n that method of political self-government, the point of ultimate interest is not the words of the speakers, but the minds of the hearers. The final aim of the meeting is the voting of wise decisions. The voters, therefore, must be made as wise as possible. The welfare of the community requires that those who decide issues shall understand them. They must know what they are talking about. And this, in turn, requires that so far as time allows, all facts and interests relevant to the problem shall be fully and fairly presented to the meeting. Both facts and interests must be given in such a way that all alternative lines of action can be wisely measured in relation to one another. As the self-governing community seeks, by the method of voting, to gain wisdom in action, it can find it only in the minds of its individual citizens. If they fail, it fails.

Alexander Meiklejohn, in "Free Speech and its Relation to Self-Government" (1948)

Now of course, in a modern mass democracy with a multi-trillion-dollar GDP, it's difficult to approximate the old-fashioned New England town meeting. But surely there's some better way than the repetition of stage-managed questions over three or four months, isn't there? Are the issues of government too complex, or the voters too unqualified or too short of time, to follow anything but this glimpse of policy seen through a glass, darkly? Would the tone of political news coverage improve if we could open up the campaigns through the internet or other media?

Can't we do better than our celebrity journalism?

Edited 10/9: note the evolution of language that has expanded the meaning of 'town hall' from its original humble wooden statute.

Johan Santana is your new bicycle

One game out of the Wild Card, two out of the East, with two games to play. (in Shea. potentially ever.) And Santana throws a nine inning shutout. These days make all the worst ones worth it.

A note: one year ago, with our backs to the wall, John Maine took a no-hitter late into the 161st game. Hopefully this second-to-the-last game thing is no prediction, no cosmic pattern, no harbinger of things tomorrow.

Edit: ... but in the end it was. (8 October 2008)

la musique ... au lavromat!

First, there were the Concerts a Emporter. Which were great. Then I stumbled upon The Felice Brothers playing in the back seat of a taxi. Awesome band, but threatening exhaustion of the hip-music-in-unexpected-places (yeeeah!) concept. Now, looking up a performer from the World Cafe, I see someone has started a public laundromat performance series. Sic transit gloria mundi.

This is an awesome song, even without the horns from the 60s-era R&B band to hold him up.

Note: apparently the "Lavomatik sessions" are also in France. Does every decent English-speaking musical group have to put up with dozens of calls from dudes with digital camcorders every time they want to play the City of Light?

the long dark nighttime

Also, saw The Dark Knight yesterday. Still trying to process it. On the one hand, I enjoyed the hell out of it. A big, ambitious, serious comic book movie that chewed over some decently big ideas. Some excellent suspense: each of the Joker's nightmare plots raised the stakes, and each new twist lived up to the expectation. Then there was the Joker himself: I think Ledger knocked him out of the ballpark, as a cinematic character, though I haven't read the comics. I think I even caught of hint of Jack in his delivery, too, though for the most part his lines were delivered in a creepy, realistic, delightful savoring of dialogue that matched his oh-so-flesh-and-blood painted-and-suited-up madman. The character's 'theme,' as it were -- the strange electronic hum that accompanied his various plots -- might have been heavy-handed, but it worked. Brilliantly.

... and yet, perhaps that terrifying hum suggests why I remain ambivalent about the film. Yes, the leitmotif was off-kilter and terrifying: a hipster banshee's wail for a topsy-turvy, recognizably modern city. But it felt like the punch of a collapsing boxer, because the rest of the movie seemed at times distant, unreal. This was a nightmare show seen through a glass, comfortably. For all the Joker's plotting, the city collapses in the background; I never quite felt drawn into the claustrophobia of a truly great thriller. Nor, for all the much-vaunted murders, did I ever feel a true sense of loss, much less pathos -- not because the plot wouldn't have supported it, but because Nolan's directing never built up any characters in such a way. The death of the judge? Of the Commissioner? Of the vigilante Batman? They were told, never shown. Dawes' demise was a little too sudden, I think, and somehow lacked the tragic sense of an innocent life cut short by cruelty. The final scene could have gone down that dark path, but I think the scriptwriters were correct that the film couldn't bear the death of Gordon's kid.

Too, unlike, say, Hannibal Lecter, this Joker, for all his pitch-perfect shambling, drawling, and giggling, never quite looms out of the dark night with quite the primeval horror of that scene in the ambulance towards the end of "Silence of the Lambs".

In part, I think the blame lies with the director. The action sequences were badly edited, it's true, but the rest of the movie could probably have stood some cleaning up and restructuring. Is that the end of analysis? No, but it's all I've got at this point. I hope to see this again, perhaps to enjoy it in IMAX.

Keith Uhlich's and Stephanie Zecharek's critiques say a lot more about the editing than I ever can, though I think Uhlich underestimates this film by far too much.

why i will never be a freelance journalist

Before I bought my copy of Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland" last month, I checked Amazon for a copy of his book about Barry Goldwater, "Before the Storm." Not only is it reputed to be an amazing book, but it seemed like a good book to read before writing about Goldwater-esque fictional characters. Unfortunately, the book is out of print and Amazon only offered used copies for more than $100.

Turns out the NY Times guy saw the same price tag I did, but decided to turn it into a blog post for the Paper of Record.

How did the booksellers arrive at these figures, which seemed prohibitively high and oddly precise (would it have been $131.10 had one fewer page been dog-eared by the original owner)? And why wouldn’t at least one seller have tried to undercut the others? I e-mailed the store proprietors to find out.

poppy pop pop

As not an odam pointed out when I found this song, I'm about five weeks behind the curve. So it goes. This is awesome, and Zooey Deschanel is magnificent.

Disney Douche

Via DB1, a vomitastic pop song that sounds like the Disney Channel but with lyrics by Vinny and Paulie, written in their garage before heading down to the Shore. Check out dem tans!

Also, if you're going to be in a third-rate boy band, fine. But at least dance sufficiently well that you don't need Battlestar Galactica-esque tight camera swoops to make your moves seem competent.

oh, hell yes

Lou Reed's concerts of the "Berlin" album will be a feature film shown at Film Forum. Only problem is that it opens the same night as "Dark Knight".

http://www.filmforum.org/films/loureedtrailer.html

Dear Ira.Glass: Bridge for Sale! Must Act Now!

The host of "This American Life" speaks in a NY Times Magazine profile of Rush Limbaugh:

“Rush is just an amazing radio performer,” says Ira Glass, a star of the younger generation of public-radio personalities. “Years ago, I used to listen in the car on my way to reporting gigs, and I’d notice that I disagreed with everything he was saying, yet I not only wanted to keep listening, I actually liked him. That is some chops. You can count on two hands the number of public figures in America who can pull that trick off.”

Glass compares Limbaugh to another exceptional free-form radio monologist, Howard Stern. “A lot of people dismiss them both as pandering and proselytizing and playing to the lowest common denominator, but I think that misses everything important about their shows,” he says. “They both think through their ideas in real time on the air, they both have a lot more warmth than they’re generally given credit for, they both created an entire radio aesthetic.”

GAH. I used to listen to Rush every now and then while driving the FM-less blue Volvo down upstate interstates. And the guy isn't warm, at least in the way Glass means. The guy feeds off anger. His humor is mean-spirited. He protests he is the reasonable common man, while his audience huddles around the silent sneering spectre of old-school rascist, nativist, hatred. The bullying is wrapped up in half-truths and careful omissions. There is nothing to like in Limbaugh's broadcasts if you disagree with him: they inspire only disgust, like catching a friend cheating on their significant other.

I understand that the reporter is interviewing you for a few kind words, but that can be done without finding anything likable in Rush's ugly, ugly approach to the world.

digging deep in the vaults for this one

Another favorite favorite. The old man has more mischievousness in one rotating leg than Will Ferrell had in an entire career.

count the time in quarter tones to ten

A dreary night on the internet -- I can no more bring myself to write an e-mail than I could those godawful law papers. Procrastinating socially? Really, what on the green earth? So, moping melancholy mad, pipe a tune to dance to, lad: a favorite from the favorites list. Can Ansay, via the redoubtable CptCluster:



And I thought I'd lost that happy feeling forever.

Netflix is a demanding bitch goddess

It's 8:40pm, which means it's time for me to finish making dinner and pop in tonight's disc from Netflix (The Last King of Scotland). It'll probably finish by 11:30, at which point I'll spend another hour or two watching the commentary and goofing around on the internet. Then I'll try to get to sleep. Thus passes the Summer of Jaunty Jon.

Not to lay this all at Netflix's feet, but ... goddamn, that company gives me a great excuse not to read. I bought Nixonland two weeks ago and I'm still only 300 pp. into it (MLK, RFK shot; a nation turns its lonely eyes to Dick). Still meandering my way through Bukowski. And it would be nice if I started studying for the Bar at some point.

But my Queue stands just shy of 290, and there are so many movies I want to get to: nothing I'm particularly desperate about (few films seem "important" or exciting to me as, say, the prospect of Nabokov or Melville) -- yet it's so easy to work through that damned list, and so frustrating to watch it stall cat Before focking Sunrise when there are all those Bergmans and Peckinpahs I've been waiting a year or two for. Not to mention Deadwood! And the prospect of more Deadwood! I think it hurts, too, that I want to get at least 5 rentals in a month in order to "save" compared to renting the same movies from Blockbuster -- and once I hit five, I want to squeeze in as many more to pull ahead (or catch up for all those months of law school when I couldn't bring myself to put Sylvia into the DVD drive).

There's something perverse about the way the movies are eating up my time this summer -- or maybe something microcosmic, suggesting the way video is replacing text as society's basic media. It's been so long since I've been a great reader. Or maybe it's that in high school, in Albany, in Connecticut, I read because I had nothing better to do when I got bored of Goldeneye and shooting basketballs at a hoop. Every now and then I pick up a book that demands my attention, pulls me in for hours, keeps me up all night -- but it's rare, frustratingly sporadic. I'm not sure why. Perhaps the topic would suit a longer essay, Franzen-esque (what was the point of his "death of the novel" essay, again?) ... maybe I'll turn one out for Kaleidoscope in a few days. Or maybe a stoopid comic piece for The Morning News.

At least I haven't wasted much time on this blog.

a refreshing recollection

Today at BarBri, Professor Michael Simon covered Evidence II: Witnesses. And he actually taught something interesting that I don't remember hearing before: witnesses on the stand can have their past recollections refreshed by anything at all. Thus, it would be perfectly appropriate for counsel to hand the witness a bottle of Rheingold (My beer, the dry beer) to help them recall past items or events. He then demonstrated the technique with a can of Bud.

In any event, the lecture draws up from the mind this other memory, and mixes it with doctrine: middle-aged Marcel on the stand, having long abandoned thoughts of times lost, handed a madeleine and a cup of linden tea, holds the damp dipped morsel beneath his moustache as the scents waft up and release from his childhood the relevant testimony.

I Frackin' Love Brown

Two days after my visit to the Ivy Film Fest, a Tom Friedman lecture occasions this story and some beautiful headline-writing in the Herald:

Times columnist pied in face by activist

Male accomplice threw political pamphlets

A female audience member ran on stage last night and threw a green pie at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who had just begun a lecture on environmentalism in Salomon 101. The woman had been sitting in the south side of the auditorium's front row when she pulled the pie out of a Brown Bookstore plastic bag that had been tucked in a red backpack and leapt out of her seat.

...

Friedman appeared uninjured and ready to continue his lecture, titled "Hot, Flat and Crowded," but audience members encouraged him to clean himself off. He left the auditorium and returned five to 10 minutes later to deliver the lecture.

The pamphlets thrown by the male accomplice identified the pair as the "Greenwash Guerillas," who wrote that they were acting "on behalf of the earth (sic) and all true environmentalists."

Apparently Friedman's Cliche Travelling Band got two standing O's, too. Brown students: stuffwhitepeoplelike-esque sheep or pie-tossing communists. And yet I wouldn't trade my time there for the world.

Socratic Method

Media Czech asks some anti-abortion protesters to think through the consequences of their preferred policy. Sarcastic, but I doubt they cared very much.

I decided to go up to the young female students who were passing out their "genocide leaflets" to the students walking by and chat.

I asked each one if they wanted to overturn Roe vs. Wade and make abortion illegal. They all said yes, of course. I asked them if abortion was murder. They all said yes, of course.

I then asked each of them, once this is made illegal, what the preferred prison sentence should be for a woman that has an abortion.

The first girl I talked to seemed bewildered by the question. She literally had never thought about that before. She was willing to stand in front of these horrible pictures and accuse people of murder and genocide, yet she had never even thought what type of penalties women would get if this was made illegal. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights, so I let her go to ponder just what in the hell she's doing out here. ...

Epitaph on a Bunch of Ballplayers

The San Francisco Giants have removed most of the more prominent Barry Bonds-related sigange from their ballpark.

These, in the days when heaven was falling,
The hour when season ticket holders fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their steroids, and are indicted.

Their shoulders: bulwarks erected;
They swung, and drove balls into the Bay;
Without inspections, they injected,
And saved the greatest game for pay.