Discourse.net

Listen to new Byrne/Eno Album

David Byrne has made an online stream of the new Byrne/Brian Eno album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, available:

I’ve been enjoying Brian Eno’s music since high school, and Byrne probably almost as long. In interviews, both men also seem like particularly interesting people. (It would be nice to live a life where one got to hang out with people like that!)

I’m going to have listen to Everything That Happens Will Happen Today a few times before I decide what I think of it. On first listen, I like it, but I’m not sure it meets my insanely high expectations.

Randy Pausch

Watch It Spread and Mutate

Bill O’Reilly Flips Out (20-year-old incident placed on YouTube) —> Stephen Colbert mocking O’Reilly —> Bill O’Reilly Flips Out — DANCE REMIX —> ?

Something Uplifting For a Change

South Florida Daily Blog calls this the Best Sport Story Ever.

Who am I to argue?

'Smoke on the Water' Japanese Style

Smoke on the water - Ancient Japanese style

(Via The Stumblng Tumblr, who calls it “strange, but good”)

Surreal Indeed

Salvador Dali on the 60s (?) game show “What’s My Line”

Cute Ad

This is a pretty cute ad: DOTHETEST.

(Found via Seth’s Blog. His comment is “My suggestion is that you spend thirty seconds watching this video. … You were going to spend how much to distract me from what I was doing?)

DeLong on the Signaling Effects of Professorial Clothing

Brad DeLong could probably make the NYT style section worth reading.

Here’s part of a fun sartorial essay of his, somewhat mistitled Cosma Shalizi Criticizes One of the Sartorial Geniuses of Our Age. It’s a hoot.

A professor’s clothes—supposed to lie somewhere on the spectrum between total nudity and the purple-red dress of a Byzantine emperor—need to serve four purposes:

1. To make the appropriate people envy, in an appropriate way, the professor’s (actual or counterfactual) spouse.
2. To make the professor comfortable.
3. To make the students more willing and eager to learn.
4. To take a particular stand on the great debate between the courtier Lord Chesterfield on the one hand and the intellectual Samuel Johnson on the other, summed up in Johnson’s remark that Chesterfield’s fashion-centered advice to his illegitimate son taught the boy “the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing master.”

I will pass over (1) as requiring a knowledge of evolutionary biology and a working aesthetic sense—which disqualifies me on both counts. I will pass over (2) as requiring a knowledge of biological thermodynamics which I do not have, save to observe that the traditional tweedy professor male academic clothes are, from a thermodynamic point of view, appropriate only for some British or New England campus without effective central heating. But I will say:

With respect to (3):

• I have found that wearing my doctoral robe to class is counterproductive. It
  • is hot pink, and
  • leads my students to think that I may be crazy, or
  • am making fun of them, unless
    • the class is on the medieval university, or the middle ages more generally—then wearing the doctoral robe can be very effective at focusing the class
• I have found that running shorts and a t-shirt is also counterproductive. The students think that:
  • I was too self-absorbed to figure out it was time to leave the gym, or
  • I am too self-absorbed and eager to get to the gym

But does this mean Brad thinks I shouldn’t wear a bow tie to class? And why is he wearing a tie on his blog photo?

The New Camelot Will Have a Sound Track

This video is a phenomenon. I say that as an outsider to its charm. Not as a criticism, but in a spirit of bemusement. Hard-edged political — and non-political — types all over the blogosphere are emoting about it. Watch it.

Yes, it tugs faintly at my heart - it’s lovely on the ear, and nicely produced with lots of beautiful people. But I want wonky policy from my Presidential candidates, not an invitation to a Rorschach test. So it leaves me if not cold, than at most lightly warmed.

But that’s just me. Like I said, it seems to be on target to be a very big hit. If you feel the power, get the ringtone.

Performance Art

Via Crooked Timber: Frozen Grand Central Station, this video of a brilliantly silly piece of performance art.

Geek Art(ifacts)

Via Eszter’s Blog, a link to the wonderful and funny Understanding art for geeks - a photoset on Flickr.

You need to know some HTML and spend too much time online to get all the jokes, but even without many will be funny. Half a dozen made me laugh out loud and most made me smile. (Warning: One or two were in bad taste.)

Here’s a sample, a Wikipediaficiation of Cristiano Banti’s, Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition (1857):

The Internet Is a Giant 'Topping' Exercise

When I took Theater Studies 100 as a college freshman, one of the exercises we did was a “topping” exercise. You had to tell a story, and somewhere in it you had to show that something was even MORE than you first realized (the fish was big, really big, really really really big — I mean BIG, humongously big, elephantinely big, giant big, Tokyo-stomping-monster big…it was so big I couldn’t finish it).

Well, it just struck me that the Internet is a giant topping exercise. Whenever you find a weird video (or whatever), there’s always a weirder one. This one stars Mike Gravel, so it has a head start, but it makes the most of it.

(spotted via Scholars & Rogues)

Then again, one of the many points of the topping exercise was that you often make a point stronger by being quieter. Does that work on the Internet?

The End of the World

GW Bush sings (in a Rex Harrison sort of a way) The End of the World As We Know It.

This one might actually make your head explode.

So do we have a new art form here — mashing up samples to make unlikely/impossible singer/song combos? If so, it’s a temporary thing. Part of the fun is that some of the rivets show. When the technology gets so good that it becomes child’s play to make Hillary Clinton do a duet with Dick Cheney on “I Got You Babe,” then it won’t be fun any more.

Obligatory link to Sonny & Cher (1965) and much more interesting link to two of the less likely people ever singing “I’ve Got You Babe” (1973).

More Strange Music

OK, I think this is a bit weird, a more serious piece of strange than Stairway to Somewhere: someone has set a complaint to music. And not just any complaint, but Mackris v. O’Reilly, the infamous sexual harassment complaint filed against TV bloviator Bill O’Reilly and settled for an undisclosed sum.

There’s a video with a lengthy excerpt of this work at O’Reilly’s Sexual Harrassment Lawsuit Sung Like Handel’s “Messiah”. And here’s how they describe the project:

The piece is a setting of the sexual harassment complaint lodged against Fox News pundit, Bill O’Reilly, by staff producer, Andrea Mackris, in October 2004 and recorded at its world premiere in January 2007. It includes all memorable moments from the original complaint and more – paranoid rants, clumsy sexual innuendo, and the famous falafel fantasy. Composer Igor Keller has produced this concert-length work in the form of a baroque oratorio, in the style of an updated Handel’s Messiah, for 28-piece chamber orchestra, 26-voice chorus and three soloists. It’s an oratorio for the 21st century!

There’s also an extensive FAQ.

I’m in no position to judge from the excerpt if this this is good art or not (although I am suspicious). I did go see “Jerry Springer: The Opera” the last time I was in London, and despite what one might think about the idea of basing an opera around Jerry Springer, it was good. So who knows.

Stairway to Somewhere

I don’t know if I should be calling this video brilliant, perverted, or a wakeup call for western civilization or all of the above.

Sotted via Boingboing’s Cory Doctorow who writes,

This superb video mashup from The Beatnix takes fuzzy footage of the Beatles in concert and seamlessly converts it to a pleasepleaseme-esque rendition of Stairway to Heaven. John Scalzi promises it’ll make your head explode and he’s not far wrong.

W00t the Heck?

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year is …. “W00t”.

I’m not a great language purist (I’m a Webster’s New World fan, and don’t much care for the overly prescriptivist American Heritage), but I don’t know that I would call this interjection from leetspeak a ‘word’ exactly.

I’d have gone with ‘waterboarding’ myself.

Truly Bad Movie Meme

An anonymous purveyor of electronic chain letters, whom I’m guessing is Ann Bartow, has tagged me with the ‘Truly bad movie meme’.

The rules of the game are to “name the worst film I’ve ever paid money to see”. To show I’m a good sport, I’ll play along. Part way. But I don’t think I’ll ‘tag’ anyone as that might seem intrusive. Yes, I will break the chain.

As it happens, I am not a movie guy. I resist going, a source of some marital disharmony until the invention of the PC DVD player. So my universe of contenders is small, as I only go out to films if I think the probability of liking them is absurdly high. And I hardly ever watch them on DVD either…

But even in this small universe, it’s absolutely no contest. A whole bunch of us in college went to a law school film society showing of a film of considerable legal importance but, it turned out, no redeeming social value whatsoever. Had I not been wedged solidly in the middle of a very long row in a large law school lecture hall I would have walked out after about 15 minutes, but as it was I stayed for the entire ugly and — worse! — boring, boring thing and kept thinking that surely at some point they’d introduce a semblance of plot. Yes, I’m talking about Deep Throat. Horrible. And very hard to see the ‘redeeming social value’ in it either, which may be one reason why I’ve never been able to work up enthusiasm for teaching the pornography line of First Amendment cases, even though I still believe that censorship is ultimately more dangerous than cultural drek.

Does this mean Ann will now disown me?

Runner up: the DePalma remake/ripoff of Phantom of the Opera, Phantom of the Paradise. Can’t think what possessed me to go to that. Actually, it was the reviews. What did they know.

Metacafe Gets Mean

In the course of a snapshot of metacafe, which tries to paint the site as a happy retro-dinosaur stuck in web 1.0 of viral video — you know, so 2005 — the NYT Bits Blog has this little aside about Metacafe’s evolving standards of good taste,

Viral Videos Still Rule at Metacafe: Over the last year, the site has moved from what Mr. Hachenburg describes as a European sensibility to an American one. In other words, there’s now less sex and more violence.

More violence is not progress in my book. I wonder what drove this move?

It used to be that you could tell when there was a recession going on by magazine covers — in bad times the women’s mags got a lot more brazen about putting SEX in their headlines. (Not sure if the same applies to lad mags — have they been around long enough?)

Is the Internet counter-cyclical?

GOP Cthulhu

Over at Crooked Timber, probably the only group blog I’d ever even imagine being a part of (no, that’s not a trawl for an invite, I’m happy here), Henry Farrell has some fun with the GOP’s logo at Starry Wisdom:

I’m sure this is fundamentally immature of me, but the new Republican National Convention logo set off a train of associations in my head (and prompted me to spend half an hour doing some basic Photoshop work to bring these associations to the foreground)

And there’s a graphic to go with it….

This will be my last drugged elephant post. Until next time.

Subliminal Seduction, GOP Style?

I blogged about the awful GOP convention logo the other day, with the glassy-eyed elephant doing the tango, or whatever is going on. Here it is again if you missed it the first time in Annals of Bad Logo Design:

Comes now the suggestion that there’s a method to this madness, one inspired by Wilson Bryan Key:

The elephant’s trunk makes the “S”, the lines on the back makes the “E”, and the elephants crossed upper legs makes the “X” for an example of subliminal advertising applied to a political symbol.

Could be….

Annals of Bad Logo Design

Maybe I’ve gotten to the age where you lose touch with the Zeitgeist, but from where I’m sitting there’s been a rash of really bad high-profile logo design recently.

It started with the UK’s atrocious logo for the 2012 games:

Then Miami got into the act with a new logo for the Downtown Development Authority. This one isn’t actually as bad, but it’s local so it feels worse than it probably is:

Plus, the justifications for it were just inane: “Not having the O’s makes it more creative,” said one Board member. Eh?

I think it looks silly, perhaps even illiterate, and fear it will confuse foreign tourists. But I do take some solace from SNAFUed’s analysis: “you really want the young people to go downtown, and they are definitely used to missing vowels from text messaging, so why not?”

Now, though, comes the winner in the lousy logo sweepstakes: The new GOP logo for their 2008 convention:

The GOP press release says that this elephant is triumphant, but I’m with Colin McEnroe, who says This Is Your Elephant on Drugs.

I do think, however, that the people suggesting that this pachyderm has a “wide stance” designed specifically for the convention in Minneapolis are going a bit far.

On Bow Ties

PrawfsBlawg posts on Bow Ties, kindly lumping me among the “young men.” I’m now old enough to appreciate that.

The question which sparks the discussion is from an “anonymous female reader,”

I dare you to do a post on bow ties. I don’t know much about male sartorial inclinations. But what’s up with the young men and bow ties? Geoffrey Rapp, Michael Froomkin come to mind. I’m sure there’s more. Is it for gravitas?

You should do a post about tie choice for all you fellows out there (for the ladies, Miranda Fleischer did one on hair down vs. ponytails and there have been many posts about wardrobe choices for classrooms on Prawfs). See if there’s a two-tailed distribution for bow ties: the very young and the very old, or the shooting-for-gravitas and the shooting-for-gravestones.

In fact, the reasons for wearing bow ties are legion, and most have nothing to do with a quest for gravitas, quite the contrary:

• Harder to get soup on it;
• Socially sanctioned minor rebellion which exposes constriction of carotid artery custom as really silly;
• Fits more easily in a pocket;
• Stand out in a crowd — when meeting people for the first time can tell them, “look for the guy in the bow tie”;
• If it’s good enough for Justice Stevens, it’s good enough for me.

(Suspenders, now, that’s another story…)

Did I mention that back in the early days of the internet, I was, I believe, the first person to post online directions on how to tie a bow tie?

Previous bow-tie posting: What a strange question.

Highly Recommended: "The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters"

Suppose Jane Austen were alive today, did speed, and wrote a Steampunk James Bondish story set in the Victorian era but with an amateur tea-drinking female as the lead character. The result might be something like a tame version of Gordon Dahlquist’s “The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters”.

I’d call it the thinking man’s beach novel, only it’s much too good. Apparently it took ten years to write — but secured a $2 million advance, which is astronomical for a first novel.

Do you read blogs? What are some of your favorites?
Two favorites would be Firedoglake, a superb political blog run by Jane Hamsher and Christy Hardin Smith, and then GoFugYourself, run by the “tar-hearted” Jessica and Heather, which is superbly vicious.

Do not start this book late at night.

Market Failure

How is that I first heard of Harvey Danger yesterday? And not via Pandora, but via this peculiar bit of lip-synching hosted at we-want-to-be-your-friendly-video share/repository vimeo? (Actually, it doesn’t compare all that badly to the band’s video for Flagpole Sitta …)

Seems that Harvey Danger has been around for over a decade — it’s not going to be my favorite band, but it’s an appealing and energizing mix of rock, rockabiliy, punk, and lyrics with just enough references to be interesting. I bet they are a blast in concert.

Cross One Off The List

I’m Sorry I Read It: James Grimmelmann reads Chambermaid — the supposed roman à clef by a former law clerk to Third Circuit Judge Dolores Sloviter — so you don’t have to.

Le Plus Ca Change (Army Dept.)

Joan Baez Unwelcome At Concert For Troops. The Army won’t say why.

“I have always been an advocate for nonviolence,” she writes, “and I have stood as firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago… . I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that’s why I didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“In the end, four days before the concert, I was not ‘approved’ by the Army to take part. Strange irony.”

…

“One of my more cynical friends said, ‘They let the rats in, why not you?’ ” Baez said, laughing, referring to a recent exposé of living conditions at Walter Reed.

Pandora Wish List (Updated)

I want two things relating to Pandora.

1) I want Congress or the courts (or the agency itself on rehearing) to overturn the appalling decision of the Copyright Royalty Board (the CRB) setting an unreasonably high fee for the webcasting statutory license in the United States — that will charge Pandora and other internet radio stations so much for the right to broadcast that it would put them out of business.

[Update: Whoops. Seems the CRB appeal board has already rejected the appeal of its earlier ruling. It’s on to the DC Circuit now. And that’s sure to be uphill. Join The campaign to save net radio. (Or, maybe, some organization that looks more able to achieve the goal?) Congress, are you listening? ]

2) There ought to be an easy way to create a station based on everyone who’s covered a given song using those covers as song seeds. I want a one-click way to use every version of “Louie, Louie” or “Major Tom” as joint song seeds.

Something Cheerful

After that last post, we need something life-affirming. Meet The Zimmersband.

It might cheer you up.

If you can’t be bothered to follow the link above (which has information about the band that made me smile), here’s their first video:

What I'm Listening To

I’ve been listening to Pandora a lot lately. I have a bunch of stations defined, in varying degrees of bakedness, plus a few stations defined by other people. But what I do most of all is use Pandora’s “Quickmix” feature, which allows one to select some or all of one’s defined stations; Pandora then cycles among them randomly, a song at a time. So I get an eclectic and unpredictable station when I want it, and a more targeted station when I want that.

If you have any interest in what I’m listening to, you too can ride along on Froomkin’s Pandora ‘Quickmix’.

As I understand it, the way this works is that what you get will be determined by the same algorithm as determines what I get, but it won’t necessarily be the identical songs. Plus, I get to alter which of my stations are in the mix on a rolling basis (and I do!), and also to modify my stations, also on a rolling basis. When I do either of those things, that changes the algorithm which determines what you hear.

But, as I understand it, you don’t get to change what I or others hear. All you can do is stop listening, mark a given song as something you don’t want to hear again for a month, or (up to six times per hour), skip to the next song.

At this writing I have it set for a fairly broad mix, which includes a little folk, a little comedy, a little weirdness, some great solo singers (mostly female but including Leonard Cohen) and quite a lot of 80/90s pop and especially (then) alternate rock. I find I can’t work to rap, so that’s out of the mix, yes even Gil Scott-Heron, except sometimes on the weekend.

Rock on Pop? I Think Not.

I was going to link to Dylan Hears A Who!, which was an amazing, wonderful and awful, so-close-to-Bob Dylan you wondered if it was him performance of Dr. Seuss’s classic works including the Cat in the Hat.

I was going to say that the only way you could tell it was a parody is that the real thing isn’t quite so monotone (except on the worst parts of Desire) Even so, I think it will change the way I see Dylan — but not Dr. Seuss. But I forgot to post the link last week and it mouldered in some queue.

And now it’s gone:

Another "Please Tell Me this Is a Photoshop Job"

The Mind Reels

Please, please, tell me this is a photoshop job:

(Spotted here.)

OK Go a Go-Go

There may be more to this OK Go phenom than I grasped (see Notes from the Cultural Treadmill). The video has spawned a bunch of spin-offs. In addition to the Lego version noted by Ann Bartow in the comments, there's a pretty funny chipmunk style version.

Update: Just noticed that Prof. Grant McCracken has posted a followup on the OK Go video:

The Ok Go video I noted last week continues to tug at me. It is an arresting piece of work, but I can't say why, exactly, it should exercise fascination. On its face, it's dorky guys engaged in a dorky project. (Perhaps 90s in this way but still, surely, too dorky actually to fascinate.)

At first, I thought that the power of the video come from the juxtaposition of synchronized dance and a rock band. Rock bands are obliged never to exhibit anything so ordinary as coordination. Cool in our time has been consistently defined by a refusal of anything so individuality-killing as this. For instance, the Beatles were the last band to wear a uniform, and no band in recent times has worn anything coordinated except as a rather good joke.

But no. I think there is something else going, and if you will indulge me I am going to see if I can figure it out.

Notes from the Cultural Treadmill

As regular readers may have noticed I have great respect for (and even greater fascination with) the views of MIT prof and culture boffin Grant McCracken on most subjects other than Yale.

So of course I pay attention when Prof. McCracken writes of the new OK Go video that You have to see this video,

It's not like anything I have ever seen before. It is astonishing, in a very low key, very low tech, utterly wacky, entirely brilliant way.

...What new developments in contemporary culture does this portent? It's kind of like syncronized swimming without the swimming? Rock and roll has always made a near fetish of being more rough than ready, more chaotic than formed. And this most be one of the reasons this video is such arresting (and arrested), so genre busting, so sincere on the one hand, so ridiculous on the other.

Judge for yourself. For me, it's not the greatest video, although it does look like an impressive exercise routine. Admittedly, the Rockettes and synchronized swimming always left me cold too.

On reflection, I guess I'm impressed they did it in one long take, but only in a dog-on-hind legs kind of a way.

Obligatory disclaimer: My wife, the international finance law professor, wishes it known that Prof. McCracken is right and I'm wrong.

Update: Showing again that the time between 'net fame and traditional MSM adoption is shrinking quickly, I just read that OK Go performed on the MTV Video Music Awards show last night. So it looks like MTV agrees with McCracken too... (Not that OK Go actually got an award.)

Meet the Class of 2010

Via Legal Theory Blog: Coming to a Classroom Near You:

Undergraduates this year; law students in Fall 2010.  Here are some their characteristics from Beloit College's mindset list (following the link for the whole list):

• The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
• They have known only two presidents.
• For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt.
• They are wireless, yet always connected.
• A stained blue dress is as famous to their generation as a third-rate burglary was to their parents'.
• The Moral Majority has never needed an organization.
• DNA fingerprinting has always been admissible evidence in court.
• "Google" has always been a verb.
• Text messaging is their email.
• They have no idea why we needed to ask "...can we all get along?"
• They have always known that "In the criminal justice system the people have been represented by two separate yet equally important groups."
• They have rarely mailed anything using a stamp.
• Being techno-savvy has always been inversely proportional to age.
• Public school officials have always had the right to censor school newspapers.
• There have always been live organ donors.
• They have never put their money in a "Savings & Loan."
• Dolphin-free canned tuna has always been on sale.
• "Outing" has always been a threat.
• The U.S. has always been studying global warming to confirm its existence.
• They grew up with virtual pets to feed, water, and play games with, lest they die.

Brian Eno Watch

The Guardian, 'Working with someone is like dating' describes a Brian Eno collaboration with ... Paul Simon? Surprise indeed.

Then they drop the bombshell that Eno recently reunited (in the studio) with Roxy Music for a new album. (But they won't tour together.) Be still my '80s heart...

Further Evidence that the Remake Is Usually a Mistake

Ann Bartow informs us that the classic Internet idiocy, the Hamster Dance had a so-called sequel, although it doesn't advance the plot at all and sounds worse without being funny. And now it has a remake. OK, the remake is less bad than the sequel, and even has a funny bit, but even so, why bother?

Are there any remakes in any medium that improve on the originals? All I can think of off the top of my head is Civ II, which I prefer to think of as an upgrade, anyway. (And Civ III was worse...). Please note that I do not count as a remake an adaptation, say of a novel to film, which is a whole different nest of snakes.

The rule for sequels being worse than originals isn't as absolute as the rule for remakes--especially in literature which has seen many fine series such as the Forsyth Saga and the Aubrey/Maturin books--but it's pretty strong too, isn't it?

Geekster Rap

Now this is joy: a rap song about cryptography! And of course it is called Alice and Bob. It's by MC Plus+, and I found it via Bruce Shneier who's mentioned in the song. Lyrics here, and an article at Wired.

Dept. of Improbable Mashups

Coincidence or sign of the times?

Something about the moment is spurring Bush-Beatles mashups.
I am the Decider (Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo) and Imagine. Both recommended.

Grant McCracken Is Interesting

I suspect that Grant McCracken's deconstruction of marketing blog, This Blog Sits at the (Intersection of Anthropology and Economics) is filled with rare insight interspersed with some small bits of utter nonsense.

But I do not have great confidence in my ability to tell which is which.

Let's look at some recent items:

I think he's got Sony dead to rights.

There's music advice I can't evaluate, although it sounds plausible.

Somehow, I have the feeing that the piece on vicarious adventure is missing something -- rather than there being a new market here waiting to be born, it seems to me that the better "me blogs" already fill the niche. I understand the idea that some rich people might want more tailored experiences, but I suspect they're rich enough to go have them directly themselves. I think what McCracken wants (although he doesn't know it) is better search, or the blog version of what he wants for music.

McCracken's deconstruction of Pink's Stupid Girls video puzzled me. He seemed to be beating up on it, then said he liked it, just didn't like Pink's explanation for it. Personally, I'm fine with the video. It's a little obvious and heavy handed for my taste, but it has two arresting images that I like: one of the little girl flouncing her hair, and one (overused but still good) of Pink in glasses doing a political speech that evokes a cross between Eva Peron and Hillary Clinton.

I fear he's right about clutter, want him to be right about Donald Trump.

The item on the virtues of the small is beautiful marketing strategy of Birkenstock persuaded me, and the one on Australia's national marketing plan charmed (I have a particular interest in branding nations). The piece on the dressing gowns at The Topaz hotel seemed very well observed; a little creepy, yes, but credible. (On the other hand, the item on the "Yalies of Harvard Yard" may or may not describe something real about Harvard, I wouldn't know, but it gets most of Yale horribly wrong.)

But surely the item on M. Night Shyamalan's AmEx commercial is the current tour de force. Not having seen the actual commercial before reading the essay, I can't help but wonder, though, whether anyone less attuned than McCracken (or Roland Barthes) would get all this from the ad.

Whatever it all is, there is a real mind at work here, tackling things I don't often think about and am happy to have explained to me. Plus it's a joy to read.

Note to self: look out for his book.

(Previous posting about McCracken.)

I'm Impressed

Usually I experience a movie trailer as a good reason not to see the movie: either the trailer is awful, or it has all the best parts, or it has all the plot, so why bother. (Or it has icky voice-overs by that deep-voiced guy who does all the voice overs, or the same intensifying chorus that they use for effect in so many action movies and expect me to react to in a Pavlovian fashion.)

But the trailer for 'A Scanner Darkly' not only has none of these, but it makes me want to see the movie.

In Case You Were Having Doubts

Ska-Punk (!) words to live by from Reel Big Fish: Don't Start A Band.

False Dichotomy Alert

OK, the basic message, that sudden riches tends not to cause happiness, is one that studies of sudden lottery winners tends to support.

That said, I still think this is a false dichotomy:

Three Cheers for the Same Old Thing: Much as you might embrace a chance to rebut the assertion that you would be happier with daily foot rubs for life than with $100 million, Dr. Gilbert, whose data is winningly compiled in "Stumbling On Happiness," due from Alfred A. Knopf in May, said his research clearly supported that message.

I'm sure that if you have the $100 million there is some way you can arrange to get the foot rubs.

That said, I'm prepared to believe this part of the article:

A corollary finding is that a single big payoff - a fat raise, an Hermès Kelly bag, a hot cha cha date - affects people's essential happiness much less than a routine of small delights. And Dr. Gilbert, for one, is sold. He has found, for example, that one of the best things about being at Harvard is not the prestige of his position but that he can walk to work from his house in Cambridge.

I live about two blocks from my office, and it's wonderful.

Deconstructing a 'Professional Fan'

I always enjoy watching brains at work, even when a ferocious intelligence is deployed to deconstruct a MasterCard advertisement. Look in as Grant McCracken picks apart Peyton Manning: the man and the brand.

It's an Unfair Rap

Musically, George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People (mp3) is a real catchy bit of rappy pop. [Warning: lots and lots of 'bad' words.] And the feeling is raw and real, and I always appreciate that in my music.

But politically, the title, and a good part of the content, is an unfair rap. The Bush administration has an admirable record of appointing African-Americans to top posts. And despite the occasional strange incident, I don't think it is a racist administration. Rather, it's thoroughly classist. Kleptocratic even.

For as far as I can tell, what George Bush -- and his team -- don't care about is poor people. All poor people. No sympathy (in the sense of a sympathetic or shared understanding) at all.

[Spotted via Boing Boing, which has full details on this remix ("by The Legendary K.O, Words by Big Mon and Damien a/k/a Dem Knock-Out Boyz") of the Kanye West single "Gold Digger" -- it's a mash in of his unscripted comment on an NBC special, which NBC then censored when it provided a delayed broadcast to the west coast.]

I Spot a Trend

It seems to me that there are a number of connections (not all of them wonderful, either) between this Swedish library initiative to allow library patrons to check out living people for a 45-minute chat and this London Zoo exhibit.

Mighty Mashup

A while back, probably in the DangerMouse era, about half of everyone who is anyone in the techno corner of the blog world got very excited about mashups. Former DJ that I am (a fact that inevitably shocks my students, proving that they clearly have a very partial image of their professor), I went and started downloading mashups.

But they just didn't do that much for me. Maybe I'm too much the purist or something.

But here's a marvelous mashup that I think really works, producing a new whole that equals the sum of the very classy parts: No One Takes Your Freedom. Wish I knew who it was by. It's by DJ Earworm. Is there more where that came from? And, yes, there's more where that came from!

Free Advice

Here's some free advice:

Do NOT listen to The Future Bible Heroes' "Losing Your Affection". Not even if Neil Gaiman endorses the band. The problem isn't that it's especially wonderful or awful, although it's not at all bad, but the lyrics rattle around in your head for DAYS.

Who needs to through the day with lines like

• "I would rather rub the hair of a bear in her lair/ In the opposite direction," or
• "I'd rather be the queen at the guillotine/ in a bloody insurrection" or, most insidious of all,
• "I would rather be the dog food in front of the dog/ than be losing your affection."

Note to self: Avoid WVUM until it's safe again.

Eurovision Constitution

I’m not officially guest blogging until tomorrow, but couldn’t resist commenting on the Eurovision Song Contest . I have always thought that this contest was an example of how very bad a harmonised European culture could be. And these days this harmonised European culture is often expressed in English. But it never really seemed to matter - after all, no-one has to watch the thing. This year, however, it may matter more because of the imminent Dutch referendum on the EU’s constitutional treaty. EUobserver cites an article in De Telegraaf on 21 May which reports angry Dutch reactions to the contest based on the prominence of Eastern European countries in the final. Just one more piece of evidence that the referenda on the constitutional treaty may in fact be referenda on enlargement (although odd because a number of the Eastern European Eurovision participants are not members of the EU).

Gorillaz in the Mist

Gorillaz: Feel Good Inc. — it’s very pretty, it sounds good, but does it mean something? Not that there’s anything wrong if it doesn’t…

Wallace and Gromit Ride Again

Wallace and Gromit have a movie coming out this fall, The Curse of the WereRabbit!

There’s a trailer and also a short about the making of the movie accessible via clicking “video” at this site. The short is spoiled by some pretty dorky narration, but it will interest true fans.

Er, Helena Bonham Carter has a part? Well Gromet, that’s almost as good as cheese.

A Literary Note

Dragons | Jane Austin > Jo Walton, Tooth and Claw.

[English translation: Dragons Jane Austinified results in Jo Walton’s delightful Tooth and Claw. Slight, yes, but lots more fun than “Little Women”.]

Note: the Amazon link embedded above sends the commission to ICANNWatch.org.

Film Reviewing At Its Finest

I just saw “Sideways” which is a remarkably good movie. Googling around to try to find out the origin of the title, I found this outstanding review:

Entertaining? Definitely, although this is a very subtle movie. It’s got NO explosions in it whatsoever.

Says it all, really.

Stranger Than Demented Conspiracy Theories

Ken MacLeod, the wondrous science fiction writer, unearths something beyond the imagination of a lesser science fiction writer. In fact it’s so demented that, given the source, I had some doubts as it its plausibility. But there it is:

The Early Days of a Better Nation: Do you find modern art baffling and depressing? Have you ever wondered if it’s all a ridiculous hoax? Don’t worry. It’s meant to be baffling and depressing, and it is a ridiculous hoax. According to American leftist James Petras’s review of Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders,

[the]CIA and its allies in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) poured vast sums of money into promoting Abstract Expressionist (AE) painting and painters as an antidote to art with a social content. In promoting AE, the CIA fought off the right-wing in Congress. What the CIA saw in AE was an “anti-Communist ideology, the ideology of freedom, of free enterprise. Non-figurative and politically silent it was the very antithesis of socialist realism” (254). They viewed AE as the true expression of the national will. To bypass right-wing criticism, the CIA turned to the private sector (namely MOMA and its co-founder, Nelson Rockefeller, who referred to AE as “free enterprise painting.”) Many directors at MOMA had longstanding links to the CIA and were more than willing to lend a hand in promoting AE as a weapon in the cultural Cold War. Heavily funded exhibits of AE were organized all over Europe; art critics were mobilized, and art magazines churned out articles full of lavish praise. The combined economic resources of MOMA and the CIA-run Fairfield Foundation ensured the collaboration of Europe’s most prestigious galleries which, in turn, were able to influence aesthetics across Europe.

So the whole hegemony of boring decadent rubbish art that has been inflicted on us for fifty years, from Jackson bloody Pollock to Damien fucking Hirst, has all along been a CIA plot.

Never could quite see the point of Robert Motherwell myself. This is certainly the most close-to-rational account I ever heard.

MacLeod’s coda is biting:

Socialist Realist art now commands higher prices than that of the dissidents and the Western-imitative official art of perestroika. The market has taken an ironic revenge on its votaries.

The Ultimate in Bad Taste

This, to me, is about the weirdest thing I ever read in the newspaper. Well, after invading Iraq with too few troops because someone else, living elsewhere, attacked the World Trade Center. Or that the US is systematically torturing people, and elite lawyers are writing opinions justifying it or working out strategies to allow the torturers to avoid prosecution.

In Death, Loved Ones Can Live On As Diamonds: When William Lucas’ mother died nearly two years ago, he found an unusual way to keep her memory close at hand.

The general contractor from Kitty Hawk, N.C., had some of ”Momma Luke’s” ashes converted into three synthetic blue diamonds, each about a third of a carat. One is set into his wedding band.

'Liquid Sky'--Still Controversial, But More Expensive

I remember going to see Liquid Sky in college, intrigued at what sort of indie art sex/drugs/rockNroll movie could get a rave review out of the Wall Street Journal. (I suppose that combination tells you something of what I was like then, and probably now.)

How bizarre to discover that DVDs of Liquid Sky now sell for $200! (Why so much? Why didn’t / don’t they print some more?) And how interesting to see the customer reviews at Amazon, including several saying ‘best movie ever’, and several saying ‘worst movie ever’—notably the guy who suggested it would be cheaper and about as much fun to flush your head down the toilet, then cover yourself in peanut butter and sit near an anthill.

FWIW, I liked the movie.

The History Boys

I just saw the National Theater’s performance of Allan Bennett’s new play The History Boys, thanks to a barrister friend who was able to get tickets.

This is simply a spectacular play, brilliantly performed by an outstanding cast. It was even better than Bennett’s The Madness of King George III, which I saw years ago in its first run at the National. And that was a great play and a great production (better than the film, I thought, although there’s always a tendency to like the one you see first best).

Londoners are so spoiled when it comes to theater. When Caroline and I lived here we went to an average of more than one play a week. It is easily the thing I most miss about London. (Number two, oddly enough, is doing my weekly shopping at the Dalston Market.)

A mathematician friend has an extra ticket for another play at the National on Saturday that he is going to let me have. Tomorrow morning I’m going to TKTS to see what I can scare up. That makes three. Friday is complicated as I have appointments out of town, but I could either (horrors) book a full price ticket by phone, or see if I can get to TKTS early enough to catch my train after buying a ticket. That would make four.

I suppose going to a matinee on Saturday as well as an evening performance would be gluttonous. But I’m tempted.

(Recommendations from any readers who happen to be in London or know about what’s on gratefully welcomed.)

Something Is Right With this Video

We’re fans of Sarah McLachlan’s music in this household, so it’s a pleasure to report that her new video, World On Fire, is something beautiful and special. (Spotted via David Weinberger’s contribution to the new Personal Democracy Forum).

Jacques Derrida, RIP

Jacques Derrida is dead. I never got to meet him, but my brother once interviewed him, and produced what amounts to a journalist’s intro to Derrida and deconstruction.

Movie Idea

Godzilla meets Pikachu. Or even Godzilla meets Pokemon. Inspired by Pokemon and by Bambi Meets Godzilla.

Parents of younger children will understand.

NYC Film Event

If you happen to be in New York city this Tuesday, you are invited to Cinewomen’s presention of a “mini-retrospective” of short films by my friend Eva Saks at the Pioneer Theater as part of a program called “LIFE: WILD, WOOLY & WONDERFUL.” Eva turned her back on a likely career as an academic to become an entertainment lawyer, and then turned her back on that to go to NYU film school.

The Cinewoman web site says,

Place: 155 East 3rd St. (off A)
For more info: www.twoboots.com
Box Office Opens: 6:30PM
Seating: 6:45PM
Free Beer/Pizza Party: 9:00 - 10:00PM

Eva has been writing to all her friends expressing the fear the theater will be empty, so it will probably be overflowing with interesting people, which could be fun.

Update: I will be in LA, but tell Eva I sent you…

A Modern Parable

CNN reports that, “A church’s plan for an old-fashioned book-burning” ran into an unexpected snag: the fire code.

Preachers and congregations throughout American history have built bonfires and tossed in books and other materials they believed offended God.

…just good ol’ fashioned, traditional book-burning, who could object?

The Rev. Scott Breedlove, pastor of The Jesus Church, wanted to rekindle that tradition in a July 28 ceremony where books, CDs, videos and clothing would have been thrown into the flames.

…rekindle the tradition, geddit?

Not so fast, city officials said.

“We don’t want a situation where people are burning rubbish as a recreational fire,” said Brad Brenneman, the fire department’s district chief.

So it’s a rule of general application, not one aimed at political speech, and thus very likely consistent with the First Amendment.

I don’t know whether to be appalled at the idea of modern book-burning, amused at the effectiveness of this pettifogging regulatory obstacle, cheered by the thought of book-burners who can be stopped by an anti-pollution ordinance, or fearful of how this is going to be spun as a symbol of the evils of the modern regulatory state…

Michael Moore's 9/11 Rated "R"

The Cosmic Iguana reports FAHRENHEIT 9-11 GIVEN “R” RATING. The MPAA stated that the rating is for the film’s “violent and disturbing images and for language”.

I haven’t seen the film so I can’t say I know this is wrong, but given the violence that gets allowed into PG-13 films — I won’t take my kids to them (yet) — and the fact that the film is about what it claims are real rather than fictional events, I am suspicious. (On the other hand, Passion of the Christ got an “R” rating, and many people consider it to be all about Truth…)

Then again, if the film has, say, images of torture, do we want (older) kids to see it? Half of me says no, half of me says we should encourage them to see it.

Air Howler May Spice Up Air America

According to today’s incomparable Daily Howler, Bob Somerby will be on the radio soon. It sounds like can’t-miss radio:

THE O’FRANKEN ADVENTURE: Our entire staff guest-stars today on Air America’s inspiring show, The O’Franken Factor. Our segment starts at 12:30 Eastern. With Al’s enthusiastic permission, we plan to discuss Wittgenstein’s “private language argument,” although our presentation is fairly tight and may not take the entire segment. Punch line: “If they told us that when we were sophomores, we wouldn’t have had to take Descartes or Kant!” Of course, if you try to do this on conservative radio, they give you this look like you’re nuts.

Excitement builds in the radio world. We certainly hope you’ll be listening.

I’ve listened to Air America a few time in the evening and found it to be just plain awful. To be fair I haven’t heard either of what I expect would be the best shows — Al Franken’s show and Florida’s own Randi Rhodes. But what I have heard is pretty pathetic.

In contrast…no, by any standard, the clips of the Daily Show the Comedy Network puts online are absolutely fantastic.

Eric Alterman Feels Slighted -- for a Reason

Eric Alterman complains that his book got ignored by major media because it made them uncomfortable:

The book got almost no attention in the media; the only significant review was the one published in The Washington Post, who gave it to Reagan/Bush/Fox News operative, James Pinkerton. Still, with next to no media attention, the book entered the Times extended best-seller list and stayed there four weeks. I’ve never before published a book that was so thoroughly ignored in the media, nor one that started out as a best-seller.

I haven’t read it. I imagine that the book review editors most likely would say that didn’t review it because they thought it wasn’t that great, or was like a lot of other anti-Bush books being published these days.

Probably just about every author thinks that his book deserved more and better reviews, so one should treat all such complaints with healthy scepticism. And it’s certainly the case that not every best-seller gets reviewed. Diet books, sleazy potboilers, and many genre fiction such as scifi/fantasy books sell well but don’t get much attention from newspaper reviewers.

But when was the last time a non-fiction political book was a best seller and didn’t get reviewed in major newspapers? Maybe the last time such a book accused those papers of mis- (if not mal-) feasance?

Feel the Outrage

Maybe it’s my not having a TV (that’s a subject for a whole separate series of posts), or maybe it’s living and teaching in South Florida (where sunbathers are topless and students are highly variable in their clothingness), but I have to wonder whether the almost always unnamed supposedly outraged critics who call this pornographic or even “indecent” exist in any substantial numbers. So far I’ve seen one, just one, name beside FCC Chairman Powell’s—that of Jan LaRue, chief counsel for a group called Concerned Women for America, whom AFP quoted as calling it a “pornographic show”.

Pornographic? One breast for a few seconds? Compared to who sits in corporate stadium boxes and why? Or who paid for the stadium and how? Or, for that matter, compared to the various teams’ cheerleaders?

Yes, Miami is different, and there are no doubt colder places around where people dress up more, and where undress is more of an issue. But even there, I gather that the sales of skin mags and skin vids are high. I’d sort of gotten the sense that the country was getting over its neo-Puritanism.

So even if these hordes of shocked football fans are more than a creature of the newswriters’ imagination, I have to wonder to what extent they are representative of this great nation, or just rather unusually prissy.

If asked, I’d say that the pornography on the air is the violence and cruelty that forms staples of many TV shows. The mean-spirited humor, the portrayal of so many characters as morons, the willingness to serve up news shows that swallow political lies whole or, worse, produce new ones. I could go on and on and on, but you shouldn’t take my word for it, I don’t have a TV set. Instead, visit Billmon’s nicely redesigned Whiskey Bar, and see what he has to say.

Who knew football fans were such wimps?

P.S. The Concerned Women for America are something. I guess the site is real, but you have to wonder about a group with that name whose homepage defines its “core issues” as:
- Definition of Family [being against gay marriage and the ACLU]
- Sanctity of Life [against all abortions & morning after pill]
- Education [for ‘abstinence’ education, against ‘homosexual agenda’, for ‘accurate biology texts’—i.e. opposing ‘Darwinist activists’]
- Pornography [against]
- Religious Liberty [10 commandments must be posted everywhere]
- National Sovereignty [against gay rights and against the UN]
- Miscellaneous [“Gibson’s The Passion of Christ Faithfully Presents the Gospels” and support for GW Bush’s judicial nominees]

Today's Art Commentary

What he said: Lenz Blog.

A Book and a Film and a Meal

We’ve been goofing off. Wednesday we head back to the US—a long day flight after we change planes in London.

Highly recommended book(s): Alastair Reynolds, Redemption Ark, the third in a series beginning with Chasm City and Revelation Space. Almost as good as Ian M. Banks’s best, and far better than his latest.

We wanted to see the Return of the King, but it was sold out so we took what was available and saw Love Actually, which turns out to be a surprisingly fun film. It’s silly, frothy, full of simplistic plots that collapse if you think about most of them for five seconds, but it is wonderfully acted by an all-star cast, and is much more fun than I would ever have expected. Even the miscast Hugh Grant isn’t as annoying as you might fear, and Alan Rickman is superb. (Other cast members include: Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Martin Freeman, Martine McCutcheon, and a very funny dual cameo by Rowan Atkinson).

Very highly recommended if you are ever in the area: The Original Third Eye, a tiny Nepalese restaurant in Didsbury. Not worth a large detour perhaps, but great to have only ten minutes walk away.

Cat in The Hat, The Movie, Falls Flat

The film does not shine
It’s a ripoff, they say
Which we knew in advance
From the adverts they play

Anyone who mistreats a children’s classic deserves what they get. The Cat in the Hat was one of my favorite books when I was little, and I enjoyed reading it (over and over) to my kids when they were little.

The reviews of the new Cat in the Hat movie are scathing, and I’m not at all surprised: When I was in New York last week, I saw an advert on TV for some product in which the movie version of the Cat in the Hat explained to two stock children (‘Gee Cat, thanks”) why they should use this cleaning product instead of others — Cat in the Hat, big spot on wall, get it? Ick.

Stands to reason that anyone who would prostitute a children’s icon like that lacked the sympathy with the material to make a good movie. Let’s hope they go broke.

Update: The marketing is much worse than I ever suspected.

LOTR3 Without Saruman?

Slashdot | Saruman Completely Cut from ‘Return of the King’

Far be it from me to venture into the culture wars, but this is nuts.