Inquiring Minds

Reasons not to type things up from the New Yorker, part one.

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It's a popular device to promote a love of poetry to have your students bring in song lyrics and discuss them as such. Loosely, they are. But it takes reading something like Joni Mitchell's poem in the New Yorker to realize that that eliding of difference between the forms isn't necessarily a good thing. If you read her poem as a poem, it's kind of crappy, with pretty amateurish imagery and line breaks. If you pretend, once you turn to page 2 (it was spread over two pages, and since I'm a folder of this magazine, even though they're on the same spread, I had a chance to think "this isn't very good" before I saw the author's name) and realize it's Joni, that she's singing it, it turns out quite nicely. It fits with her verbal phrasing. That break between "Bad Dreams are good" and "In the Great Plan" is just the sort of little hiccup she likes to throw in vocally on a repeated element. So what's the difference between poetry and lyrics? Lyrics aren't as tough as poetry (either to write or to read) because they have music to shore them up. Poetry, on the other hand, can work as lyrics or it can work as poetry (see, e.g., John Cale's version of "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night") because it's better structured to begin with.

Intellectual Insecurity

I continue to think that one reason Top Chef is popular is not only because we all (most, that is) like to eat and think our opinions about comestibles are infallible, but also because it continually reveals truths about human nature, at least as much through the audience perception of the how (carefully crafted by the writer/editors) as through what we witness on it. For example, last night's mid-episode poll, in which we were asked which chef we would most like to see go home, which resulted in a few votes for Brian, Casey, and Dale, but a whopping 69 percent for Hung. Yes, the dude can be an a-hole, but he's also the most talented chef of the bunch by far, even hampered by his occasional arrogance. Why do people hate him so much? Because he represents the success of knowledge and technique? I wasn't necessarily rooting for him at the beginning of the season, but I appreciate doing things the right way, and that's what he stands for. I'm not saying rules can't be broken. They certainly should be. And, of course, all judgments are contingent upon the final result: how it tastes. But there are centuries of techniques and history in chefdom, and someone who both recognizes that and performs using them is impressive. I mean, whoopee for the other three, but I don't see technique as incompatible with soul and I'm not threatened by it.

Lil' hobby

Way short Glenn Richardson: Did you read my acronym, people? It's pretty obvious my plan is awesome.

What I really enjoy is his presenting himself as an outsider to politics, a voice for the people as opposed to all those other elected crooks, when he's been in office since 1997. Clearly a fresh new voice.

I did, however, enjoy his brief photo album on his Georgia legislature home page.

Notice

As in ON notice.

My gmail is 94% full. This is ridiculous, right? Come on, google, gimme more space.

Movie Diary

There was more that I didn't get to yesterday.

1) 300: The last of a trio of rented disappointment. Am I glad I didn't see this on the big screen, or would the largeness of the images have trumped the utter retardation of everything else? We'll never know. So, the thing is, when Robert Rodriguez did Frank Miller, he managed to tone the hypermasculinity down a little by using good and understated actors. I feel either really bad for or really mad at ol' Dracula 2000 for his performance. Although, let me say that there is a cheesy appeal to the whole thing. They're nothing if not committed to this worldview, even if it is awfully crotch-centric. Having flipped through the comic the other day, too, in a bookstore, it also seems to be a fairly accurate adaptation visually. Minus the metal soundtrack that kicks in occasionally. But can you really get behind a work of art that presents as its heroes people who are intolerant of difference or deformity? I mean, if you're not in top physical condition, joining the Persians seems like a pretty good idea. Yes, I realize this is the opposite of the lesson of Happy Feet. It's the side I usually come down on. I just couldn't deal with gross penguins. The limb hacking stuff is well rendered, but even cutting off people's legs in slo-mo gets old fairly quickly.

2) Reno 911!: Miami: Sort of too loose, but that accurately describes the tv show as well, and it's funny pretty much the whole way through. I do tend to get a little annoyed with stuff that's mostly improvised (Curb Your Enthusiasm aside) because it has that loopy, slightly lost feeling to it, as though things are spiraling slowly out of control. I think that says more about me and my desire to nail things down than it does about the movie, although if you're comparably compulsive you might have the same reaction. Basically, some scenes go on a little long, but, as said, it is funny.

3) Disturbia: Pretty solid and a little surprisingly so, considering the tendency of idiots to fuck up good source material. Of course it ain't no Rear Window, but it doesn't strive to be. It just wants the simplest boiling down of the premise: dude stuck in small area, bored, watches neighbors, murder, plus hot girl. Mostly, Shia LaBeouf sells it. He's not too goofy or too brooding, despite the way his character is written. His anger seems appropriate and fairly real. He's just as annoying as most teenage boys. Also, David Morse does his evil thing, which he's good at but completely typecast in now, in a Gary Sinise way in that, even if he's not set up as evil to begin with, you can almost guarantee he'll turn out that way. So, it was vaguely thrilling, which is most of what one asks of a thriller.

Publication

A little box on Lord T & Eloise. I think they're kind of worth your time, so maybe you should go check out the music a little.

Movie Diary

1) Happy Feet: America, what kind of crack are you on? How this movie not only won the Academy Award for animated feature-length film but was widely popular and successful is a complete mystery to me. Really. Usually I can come up with reasons. But all there is to this is a tap-dancing penguin (and, in this case, I'm not rooting for the underdog; in this case, among penguins, he's a genetic abnormality and Elijah Wood translated into a permanently half-pubescent penguin with a bowtie is just creeping me out way too much for me to hope for his procreation and genetic survival; I mean, ew!) and some butchering of some good songs. Mr. Brown and I talked a lot about the flaws in the storytelling, the wild jumps in time and space that are unexplained, the poor angles, and so on. You'd think George Miller had never made a movie before, let alone a good movie. I guess the point is that he hasn't made an animated movie, but you still have to film coverage, right? Also, it's possible that I don't care about tap dancing, although I do love Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. Maybe I just don't give a shit about Savion Glover, despite his tremendous technical skill; or perhaps it's that I wouldn't mind seeing him really perform rather than constantly seeing his skills used to promote this or that, including penguins. So maybe it's that America was more ready for an environmental message? Meh, it's not that strong either. Really, it's tap dancing penguins. For nearly two hours. And I haven't even mentioned the penguin boobs, the way the females have more of a waist and a delicately shaped decollete... Full-on creepiness. Maybe you can explain what you were on, America.

2) The Simpsons Movie: Nicely done, if brief, but a godawful theatrical experience at the dollar movie palace, a.k.a. redneck heaven. Good jokes somewhat ruined by idiots who appear never to have seen the show and groan in disgust at the sight of two men kissing. Whew...

Read

Just a little more on the food issue. I can't help it. It's always packed with stuff. Jane Kramer's profile of cookbook author Claudia Roden is only blurbed online, but it, too, is interesting. The part that raised my ire was her dismissal of any newer cuisine:

She has a horror of fusion food, "on principle," although she allowed that nothing she ate in Asturias was quite so "fusion" as the dish called "Egyptian sushi bottarga" that she was served on her last trip to Cairo, in 2003. ("I was giving seminars to Egyptian chefs," she said. "I told them, 'You've got to have your food. At the time of the Mamluks, you had three hundred recipes; now you make only four. Don't do fusion, please!'") Pepe Iglesias, a local food writer who was Roden's touchstone on the Asturian trip, had told her that there were now twenty-five serious young fusion chefs in Asturias, and after a few days' eating she ventured the opinion that that was perhaps more "creators" than a barely touristed province of a million people needed.

A lot of stuff that's called "fusion" is rotten, an excuse not to know anything about history or technique and just throw a bunch of nonsense on a plate, but dismissing culinary innovation out of hand seems foolish. It seems like a gesture of principle rather than bending to deliciousness. Peasant food is marvelous stuff too. We should probably be eating all of it.

Also, non-food-related but in the same issue, Joan Acocella reviews a new translation of the Paradiso and writes beautiful stuff about the divide in Dante studies, although she comes down in a different place than I do. For one thing, I really can't get behind a blank verse translation. If you're going for accuracy, isn't that a pretty big part of the picture? And while I suppose you can read anything any way that you want to, it seems to me that you really don't understand Dante unless you have a decent amount of context. It can be big-picture stuff. It doesn't have to be the specific allegory in each presented case. But you need enough so that it seems like you're reading it from the inside out. Otherwise, the Paradiso is boring, which is exactly what she's arguing against. Also, why does no one ever mention Sayers in these things? She even provides a simple explanation for notes.

Read

In some ways, it's a good thing that Judith Thurman's article "The Fast Lane" (yes, I'm still working my way through the food issue of the New Yorker) isn't online as more than a blurb. Especially if you want to read and eat breakfast at the same time. But it's also great like the best of her writing: pointed, funny, amusingly enmeshed in the world of the very rich. There is a fabulous section on the history of enemas, however, which I can't bring myself not to type up for you:

Whatever the risks, however, enemas have been used ritually and medically since ancient times--by the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Essenes, the Mayans (who diluted them with hallucinogens), and in medieval Spain, where the procedure was known as "playing the bagpipes." The late Princess of Wales was not the only royal enthusiast. In 1480, a timely enema saved Louis XI, or so he believed, from an attack of apoplexy, making him an ardent advocate, and the world's first doting dog-lover to douche his pets. By the seventeenth century--the enema's "golden age"--primitive bellows made of an animal bladder attached to a wooden or bone tube were replaced by a piston-and-cylinder device of copper or porcelain, which was known as a clyster. Itinerant clysterers plied their trade throughout France, and at Versailles courtiers collected deluxe pearlized and silver models, which they used up to three times a day. Louis XIV, a colossal eater, has been nicknamed the "Moon King" for holding court while an attendant administered one of the two thousand scented purges he is said to have enjoyed during his long reign. (Poisoned clysters became a popular murder weapon for the aristocracy; one would rather not imagine how these dark deeds were avenged.)

There's also more great McPhee (not online), including a discussion of what bear tastes like, which I've had several discussions on since. I'm intrigued by it. I like gamey, and I like fat. Nor am I opposed to eating things that would eat me.

Movie Diary

The Ringer: Rented it looking for something stupid for my cold-addled brain to be able to grasp and got what I planned on. There was a brief moment of hope that the Farrelly Bros had, in fact, directed it, and then, during the watching, a long sort of sadness that they were really slipping and had left Providence completely behind. And then, at the conclusion, relief that they'd merely served as producers. I mean, it's not terrible. I've seen many, many worse movies. And it has a bit of that sweetness and appreciation of freakdom that their movies have. It's just also, appropriately, a little retarded. For one thing, the movie appears to think the Special Olympics would be held in a small town in Texas, instead of being a huge deal. It ignores all the athletes with physical disabilities who compete. Even when it's trying to make a point about these people being real athletes, it kind of sucks at making that point because Johnny Knoxville's character is able to compete against a guy who looks like a real runner. On the other hand, Brian Cox gets to tear up the screen a little, which is rarely a bad thing. Also, I am intrigued by the Kids of Widney High, who performed a couple of pretty good songs.

Publication

Hey, the new Manu Chao is fun.

Lil' hobby

Isn't the point that it's ridiculous to have a law that doesn't allow a beer and pizza joint to be next to a church?

One might also point out that merely having a computer in the classroom hasn't exactly vaulted Georgia's elementary schools to the top of the heap in performance nationally. Perhaps some of the funds being used to give Miffy and Chip a free education could be directed toward an age where they might make a bigger difference?

Does this editorial mean I should get my own Taser for whenever anyone around me acts in a less than polite fashion? Because... yeah!

Viewing Diary

Heroes, season 1: So, Jared gave me this on Thursday last and we finished it last night. Six days ain't bad for 25 episodes. That's because it's a pretty good show, especially for nerds. I think the reason we didn't get into it in the first place is because it airs Mondays, and we had a previous commitment (at least for half the TV-viewing year), but so be it. We're hooked. It doesn't make me feel like I'm in the company of some of the smartest people in the world, unlike the absolute best TV. I can see some large plot devices coming. But it's got a lot of characters, good acting from a large cast containing many people I like, and, you know, a really fantastic premise. Superheroes! And some supervillains. And a coming very scary nuclear explosion. It's a well-structured show in that they know just when to leave you at the end of each episode, and the building toward the final one isn't awkward--that is, it doesn't feel stretched on the way there. At least not on DVD. I'd forgotten what a big fan I am of Greg Grunberg, and it's nice to see him have a real part again, although I kept expecting him to die after just a few episodes. We'll see how well it translates to real-time watching. It may depend on our ability to set our VCR properly, as we may be out of town and sans TV on Monday evening.

Lil' hobby

This "Don't tase me bro" thing seems very emblematic of some current problems in our society. First, when someone says "don't," do you? And second, mentally disturbed attention whore or not, is the appropriate response to obnoxious speech not only suppression of that speech but physical coercion? Yes, the guy may be crazy. Yes, he wouldn't politely shut up. It may have been necessary to remove him from the room. But there are always better ways, no? Let him yell a little longer. What harm, other than aggravation, is it doing?

Police Blotter (it almost seems like a sweet relationship edition)

Arrest: On Sept. 9, deputy Bryan Yoder was patrolling Epps Bridge Parkway when he saw a red pickup speeding. The car accelerated causing a loud exhaust noise and Yoder chased the pickup into Clarke County. Yoder lost contact with the vehicle in the Timothy Road area, but as he and another deputy searched through the area, they spotted the pickup parked at Terrace Business Park. They saw a man walking away so they approached him and the man said he was looking for an apartment to meet his girlfriend. Asked if he was driving the pickup, he said yes. As they talked, a black Mustang drove in and stopped and the woman who was driving identified herself as the suspect's girlfriend. She said they had been at the Cracker Barrel and had an argument. She said her boyfriend called her to say the cops were after him and what should he do. She told him to stop and face the music. Lincoln Curtis Barnett, 23, of Roswell was arrested for obstruction, reckless driving and attempting to elude. He told deputies he was sorry.

Also charged with that wha-psssh noise...

Oconee.

Publications

Review of Wilma's EP.

Grub Notes hits up Gnat's Landing (!) and Fresh Air Bar-b-Que.

Dudes

Hey, Athens. And beyond. You're pretty awesome. Thanks for the best birthday ever. There would be pictures here if the only two we hadn't taken are from the very end of the night, after nine hours of chillin'. They're not super flattering. Oh, yay! Ms. DePrima has one that I like.



30 rules so far.

Lil' hobby

Great TV v fundamental opposition to vigilantism. Which wins? As always, arguing on the same side as child molesters (potential or actual) doesn't win one a lot of friends, but aren't these "Perverted Justice" people kind of living up to their name? What kind of person spends his/her spare time on something like this? Oh, right. They can make up to $100,000 per episode.

ABH realizes Contract with America was nonsense, fourteen years after the fact?

Credit where credit is due so far to the university for abiding by the total watering ban, although the $1,000 fine for second-time violators is pretty much a drop in the Athletic Association's big ol' bucket.

Publication

Review o' Curtis.

Read

Adam Gopnik's piece about experimenting with localism re food is up on the New Yorker website. Is it a little precious and a little focused on his kids? As always, yes. But it does have this particularly nice consideration of the movement:

here are powerful arguments against localism: apart from the inevitable statistical tussles about exactly how much fuel is used for how much food, the one word that never occurs in the evocation of the lost world of small cities and nearby farms is “famine.” Our peasant ancestors, who lived locally and ate seasonally from the fruit of their own vines and the meat of their own lambs, were hungry all the time. The localist vision of the tiny polis and its surrounding gardens has historically led to bitter conflict, not Arcadian harmony.

It is even perilously easy to construct a Veblenian explanation for the vogue for localism. Where a century ago all upwardly mobile people knew enough, and had enough resources, to get their hands on the most unseasonable foods from the most distant places, in order to distinguish themselves from the peasant past and the laboring masses, their descendants now distinguish themselves by hustling after a peasant diet.

This may be so; but the fact that one can explain everything in social life as a series of status exchanges does not mean that social life is only a series of status exchanges. It was cool to be a liberal in 1963, but that did not make liberal attitudes to race foolish. All human values get expressed as social rituals; we place bets on which of the rituals are worth serving.

Movie Diary

The Holiday: Not unbearable, the way Nancy Myers's last movie was. Still, despite all the preachiness about being strong and having "gumption" in her movies, despite the lengthy background about women in movies from the 1930s and 1940s having character and guts, she still doesn't seem to like them very much, or at least to have difficulty not writing them like idiots. I know it's so that they can change in the course of the movie, but they don't change enough or into anything that's much better. There's some nice acting stuff in this movie, though, mostly from Jack Black (who has to turn it way, way down, usually a shame, but it works here) and Jude Law. Also, they work the cozy vibe pretty well. Of course, they also don't solve any of the problems in the movie by its end. Slapping on a scene where everyone dances in the same house at New Year's is meant to distract you from the fact that several of these people are going to have to find new jobs, and which ones are they?

FO

I made this for my whole sister, partially to wrap the rest of her birthday present in. Unfortunately, it's not very soft, due to the yarn I picked, which is some kind of variegated Red Heart. But it was on sale, and it has very cute, bright colors, which are somewhat muted or muddled by the pictures of it on the red sofa. All rooms in our house mess with colors in photography. Maybe we need to create a white area. Actually, we have white areas. It's just that those are the rooms full of junk because no one goes there, which is why we haven't done them up properly (i.e., with color) yet. Anyway, easy pattern to memorize, knits up quick, and produces fairly impressive-looking results. Woo.

Lil' hobby

Clearly, it's much more important to cram in another Everybody Loves Raymond rerun than to let the United States continue to experience the soothingness of Braves baseball on a regular basis. A hearty fucking middle finger to this, even though it shouldn't affect my ability to watch games.

Dudes, you know Condi and Colin don't count. Not really. Now, I'm not saying Cynthia McKinney isn't crazy. She tends to get overly riled and start accusing the government of massive conspiracy. But that doesn't mean she doesn't have a point every once in a while, and her complaints about being stopped by the police officer at the Capitol might be one of them. It's pretty obvious that many African Americans don't feel part of the political process or represented in its results in this country, right? Well, why is that? Are they all a bunch of wackos? Or might there yet be racism that should be pointed out? Again, one can argue with the tone of the noticing, one can argue with some of it, one can call her an attention-hungry loon, but she wasn't always wrong about everything.

Yes! When Athens is completely covered with unusable housing, the market correction will be sure to kick in completely. And then all our problems will be solved.

Is this what I'm getting for my birthday? It's about damn time!

Read

Of course the New Yorker is keeping Calvin Trillin's piece on Singapore street food from you, making you seek out a physical copy. This summary, while strictly accurate (and how does one get this job summarizing articles for their website, which must be oddly satisfying, despite the thwarting one is in charge of), doesn't capture the joy of the piece, which is almost so exhilarating as to make one want to charge off to Singapore, ready to eat everything in sight. The mere idea of grouping one's street food vendors into areas controlled for food safety and with chairs and tables is inspiring, less because of the parasites it eliminates (although I'm sure it does) and more because the clustering allows one to consume a much greater variety of foods with ease. The space in Athens would no doubt be quite small, but if one could be found and established, wouldn't it lead to a multiplying of specialization? Each of the 80 to 100 vendors in one space in Singapore pretty much does one thing, leading to them most likely doing it well. On the other hand, the space would have to be downtown, open-air, and with late hours, as the intoxicated are highly represented among street food consumers in Athens. Also, it would make me sad not to see JB by the 40 Watt.

We also learn, crucially, that it is illegal to carry a durian on a public conveyance in Singapore. Not for the spikiness. For the smell.

Movie Diary

Hot Fuzz: Okay, already. These guys are fucking geniuses. That's a given. I've been trying, instead, to think about why, and the major thing I've come up with is the concern with precision, which is a very different approach to humor than the Apatow school of improvised sloppiness. That sounds like I don't like Apatow, and that's not the case. I'm definitely a fan, and it's not fair to characterize that whole currently predominant trend in comedy of just spewing out whatever and then editing it down (but maybe not quite enough) as entirely his. Freaks and Geeks, for example, is fairly tight. But it should be clear that that approach, the "put it out there and cut it down later" approach, is a lot of where it's at right now in the movies Apatow is associated with, whereas Wright/Pegg are into getting it correct. Yes, there are deleted scenes for this movie and outtakes, but one of the latter in particular, while it of course contains the requisite amount of cracking up, also features Pegg mentioning that he's forgotten a word in the line, and not a crucial word, I believe, but a subsidiary one, without which it would still make sense, and that, even if there had been no unscripted laughter, they would have had to reshoot the scene. That's emblematic, no? The tightness of it all multiplies and leads to their need to tie up loose ends, which is very satisfying for a compulsive. Anyway, I'm saying there might be a divide in comedy. I'm also saying that Simon Pegg is a terrific actor. He's almost a different person in this than he was in Shaun of the Dead, with his face all squinched up. Another thing that's impressive here is that it's not just working in parody, which is easier. The film has its own bizarre little moments that don't reference anything, like the model village fight, but are no less funny for not doing so. It's like it ate all the buddy cop movies out there, then vomited them up as something new. You can distinguish chunks of Bad Boys II in there, but there's a whole lot of unrecognizability. Anyway, just go back and read the beginning of this again. They really are geniuses.

Lil' hobby

It's being scaled back to more of a Vault...

Actually, even Vault is probably slightly above the status quo, but I couldn't let the joke opportunity go by.

Police Blotter (Extreme Hotttness edition)

Theft: On Aug. 31, an employee at Murphy's USA gas station reported that a gold Toyota van stopped and a man pumped $38.32 worth of gasoline and left without paying. The man was described as a white, with a mustache, a large hickey on his neck and wearing a black hat. The van was registered to an Athens woman.

The hickey's not even the funniest thing in this report (the article is).

Complaint: On Aug. 28, deputy Donald Carr was dispatched to Royal Food Store in Ila, where he met with a man who said he was threatened by an Ila man. The victim said he dated the other man's girlfriend about four years ago and the man constantly is causing problems. He said the man once pulled out a big stick and said he was going to kick some rear end.

What I should be doing is correlating "rear end" with who's doing the reporting. Charles, are you required to use euphemisms in your reports?

Oconee. Madison.

Publication

Just a lil' CD review of The Everybodyfields. Note that I was fairly ill when I wrote this and probably did not feel like being subjected to any more of a downer.

Quiet morning

There is little nagging at my brain this morning and so there is not much to write about.

I've finished Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (Edward Fairfax translation), and it was marvelous stuff, as well as a little bit creepy, but you mostly don't care about that.

The largest portion of my time over the past week + two weekends has been devoted to football, and while there has been some crappiness associated with that, it's mostly been soothing and great and everything it should be. It also meant I got to see this video last night. Small children need to have bigger roles like this, as opposed to ones where they have to cover up their predatory nature with cutesiness. Children, as Weeds keeps demonstrating, are much darker and weirder than we tend to think they are, and that may be what attracts them to dem Bengals.

Movie Diary

The Covenant: You know, I came pretty close to forgetting I'd watched this, which probably isn't a very good recommendation for it. The box makes it look awesome. Warlocks! And boarding school! And directed by Renny Harlin, for whom I have an avowed weakness (much like Verhoeven, but even less critically acclaimed). Harlin generally knows how to direct a movie so that it's pretty entertaining--quick moving, not meditative, and full of explosions. The problem with this one is probably partially that it's PG-13, meaning no exploding people. The other problem is that it's just not clever. Sure, there's some okay stuff with spiders, and there's a lot of homoerotic staring each other down, but the witchiness never gets fully exploited. Basically, if you haven't come out of the closet yet, and you can't rent R-rated movies, then you should rent this if you want to see some naked dude asses, but there's not much of a reason to otherwise. It's no Eko Eko Azarak.

Lil' hobby

Here be some of the problems with that "one diploma" approach. Namely, not enough teachers to teach what it would require, no real effort to work out what it means for special education students, and not really much difference between the current system and the proposed system except for these difficulties and some theoretically good PR. Also, there's this expectation: "extra math and science classes are a positive in a time when more jobs require computer and tech-savvy employees." So, hands up, everyone who uses their precalc in their current employment. Science I can see. Math is a harder sell as far as relevance to technology for most people. Mostly, this is being pushed because, supposedly, higher expectations mean better results. Can we please have mathematical justification of that statement? Especially if you're going to use it to push more math...

Read

When you don't like the candidate being reported on to begin with, Peter Boyer's (or indeed any New Yorker writer's) political profiles are much more bearable because you're not constantly going, "but..." and "hmmm..." and "there's a good reason for that." Such is the case with his long piece on Giuliani, who turns out to be perhaps more comprehensible but no more appealing. Here's a bit of both:

Over the years, Giuliani has often spoken of his childhood in Brooklyn, giving special place to a story about the discordance of growing up a Yankees fan in the shadow of Ebbets Field. His father, Harold, a Yankees partisan from East Harlem, once dressed young Rudy in Yankee pinstripes and sent him out to play in the Dodger-mad streets of Brooklyn. Too young to have any say in the matter, Rudy was set upon by the neighborhood toughs, Dodger fans all. A gang of boys seized him, placed a noose around his neck, and threatened to lynch him. (His grandmother intervened.) In one recounting, to John Tierney, of the Times, a dozen years ago, Giuliani said that the incident was his proudest moment, because he refused to renounce his team. “I kept telling them: ‘I am a Yankee fan. I am a Yankee fan. I’m gonna stay a Yankee fan,’ ” he recounted. “To me it was like being a martyr: I’m not gonna give up my religion. You’re not gonna change me.”

Giuliani has said that the experience reveals much about his character: he is, by his account, the stalwart, the lone defender of the cause, even unto martyrdom.

Sure, I admire someone who stands on principle. I do it myself quite often. I've been accused of being inflexible about it, too. But the fact remains that what these lines illustrate is that Giuliani is a Yankee fan, and that's a very hard thing to overcome in order to get not only my vote (it wasn't going to happen anyway, due to his Il Duce-esque idea of power), but also a lot of other people's. It means he sides with the powerful. It means his feelings of oppression are entirely circumstantial and rare, much like many a conservative who claims to feel that his/her political voice has been smothered. I'm not saying it doesn't happen from time to time, but rooting for the Yankees is like, well.... actually, it's a bit like rooting for the United States, especially in the Olympics. I think I've written on here before about how, although we say we like the underdog, that's a big lie in our culture. We like winners. Oh god. Giuliani's going to be president...

Read

Clearly, it's essential for people who don't know who Corbin Bleu is to read this little Talk of the Town piece on High School Musical. It might even make them fans in some way. Mostly, it will provide them with an amazing new way of expressing enthusiasm, as contained in this paragraph:

Outside the “G.M.A.” studio, two lines snaked around the block: one for ticket holders, one for standbys. About seventy people into the standby line was a group of sixteen-year-old girls from Ramsey, New Jersey, each holding a sign: Sam Campbell (“WE LOVE YOU ZAC”), Katherine Wilson (“WE LOVE YOU CORBIN”), Megan Naude (“ZAC ATTACK”), Regina Guinto (“PLS HUG ME IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!”), and Lauren McCarthy (“HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL ITS LIKE A RAINBOW IN MY EYES SO NICE I LIKE IT”). “We had, like, seven cups of coffee, and Red Bull,” Katherine, who was wearing a tank top and plaid shorts and was shaking uncontrollably, said. “We stayed up all night. I’m not lying. None of us slept.”

Also, if you thought Carl Jordan was crazy wrt all the light pollution stuff, you really really need to read "The Dark Side," by David Owen, which should make a convert out of you, largely because of this paragraph more than because you'll all of a sudden realize you love stars:

Much so-called security lighting is designed with little thought for how eyes—or criminals—operate. Marcus Felson, a professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, has concluded that lighting is effective in preventing crime mainly if it enables people to notice criminal activity as it’s taking place, and if it doesn’t help criminals to see what they’re doing. Bright, unshielded floodlights—one of the most common types of outdoor security lighting in the country—often fail on both counts, as do all-night lights installed on isolated structures or on parts of buildings that can’t be observed by passersby (such as back doors). A burglar who is forced to use a flashlight, or whose movement triggers a security light controlled by an infrared motion sensor, is much more likely to be spotted than one whose presence is masked by the blinding glare of a poorly placed metal halide “wall pack.” In the early seventies, the public-school system in San Antonio, Texas, began leaving many of its school buildings, parking lots, and other property dark at night and found that the no-lights policy not only reduced energy costs but also dramatically cut vandalism.

Stars are great and all, but this is what we call "sense-making." I'm not sure if leaving more places dark combats fear of the dark very well, but, gosh, this is a good argument.

Lil' hobby

Kind of my favorite lede this week. And surprisingly not originating from Wayne Ford.

Voter ID seems here to stay. What sucks about the whole thing is that you can't argue "this law is useless," which leads to a lot of overstatement on both sides. Please note the comments of the bill's sponsor:

State Sen. Cecil Staton, R-Macon, who sponsored the bill, said he was pleased with the ruling.

"I feel vindicated that this frivolous lawsuit, like the ones brought before, has been dismissed," Staton said. "It is important that our elections remain free from potential voter fraud. Our election laws are some of the finest in the nation, and it is important that the people of Georgia know that their vote counts on Election Day." [emphasis mine]

Potential??!! The bill's sponsor admits it's bullhonky.

I like the filing of this Walter Jones column under Opinion. I also suppose I should have been paying more attention to these proposals to begin with, but it's not a shocker that Oxendine is opposed to giving people insurance. I mean, isn't that his job? To guard all the insurance like a pitbull?

Lil' hobby

More hoobly-hoo-haa over the change in alcohol policy locally, which ended up swinging from background checks to requiring doormen and servers in bars (bars, mind you) to be at least 21. Not that either of these solves the problem. Not that there necessarily is a problem. Jim blogs about how the staff and the commissioners have an adversarial relationship and Blake blogs about how the full commission doesn't pay attention to committees and the official editorial gets very huffy about how background checks would have been a better move because one doorman was technically a sex offender (but what kind?). Well, actually, they back off that, but it does still assume that background checks would keep the unqualified out and let the qualified in. Has that, you know, been established? Has it been established through anything other than Chief Lumpkin's anecdotes that there's a real problem with door staff? I guess this is how the committee members feel, a voice in the void.

Also, McGinty has noticed that we differ on the idea that letting neighborhoods make their own decisions is good. It seems to be a philosophical difference. Let me ask again, what's not working about the system now? And is what's not working a failure of the system or a failure of individual commissioners? You could point out that they don't have enough time to listen to everyone, due to full-time employment, and I would say that, rather than move toward factionalism in neighborhoods and more work being done by people who know less what they're doing, I still support paying the commissioners a salary that would allow them not to have other jobs.

Tonight, To-NIGHT, To-NIGH-IGHT

Oh, hey. I think I know him.

Really, you should come to this art opening thing. It's free. There will be chips and cookies. Also, it's early and it's in a bar. What more do you want, Athens?

Publication

We gots a review of Emily King's East Side Story. If you are looking for a new Lauryn Hill because the old one got too crazy, she'll probably do nicely.

Police Blotter (mysterioso edition)

Dear David Gordon Green, I have the beginning of your new movie...

Property Found: On Aug. 28, a resident of Greensboro Highway said he observed a green truck stop on the highway below his home. A white woman got out of the truck and began walking down the road, then she turned around and went back to the truck. The truck then traveled south, but turned around and came back up the road. The resident said he saw a photo album get thrown from the truck and land in his yard. The truck then turned around again and left going south. The man said he looked in the album and saw several pictures and decided to turn it into the sheriff's office.

Any interpretations of the mysterious phrase herein?

Harassment: On Aug. 25, deputy Jeff Strickland went to a home in Comer where a woman said another woman was calling and making threatening statements. As they talked, the offender called again and the victim put her on speakerphone. The woman began shouting and said she was coming over to kick the victim's rear end and slap a knot on her kids. Strickland got on the phone and identified himself, telling her not to call the house again. The woman hung up. Arrest warrants are expected.

Oconee. Madison.

I kan haz fluffeehed?

Yay! The Internet! You try to google a colloquial name for a Chinese meatball, and you find the current best thing ever.

These ones were victorious at something. Cuteness, most likely.

You think you're so adorable, DJ Baby Pandas? Well, if I ever have an iPod that works fairly consistently, I will defeat you as DJ MossyPossum.

Publications

Grub Notes hitz Fatz (and Starbucks, for sammiches).

Also, a review of local Nick Light's new one and an expansion of ideas expressed here earlier about Kanye West's video 2.0 for "Can't Tell Me Nothin'."

Viewing Diary

1) The Last Mimzy: Not really very sciency, despite the presence of a science teacher as an important (?) character. Comes across more like What the Bleep..., actually, in terms of being sort forcefully magical and invested in innocence in a really stupid way. From having seen the trailers, one thinks it also might be about genius, but only one character, the little girl, is intelligent at all, and she's way too cutesy. Everyone else seems continually frustrated with being human. It's like a movie full of raw edges as this family scrapes against each other, meaning there's lots of secrecy and yelling and acting like idiots. In a family drama, this can work, but not in a kids' movie that hasn't been put together very smartly.

2) Battlestar Galactica 2.5: One thing I'll say for this show is that, even when it's a little clunky about it, it really explores some interesting issues, e.g., what do you do about abortion when the human race has been reduced to about 40,000 people? It's a political show without a bent in one direction. Also, demonstrating "one year later" through hair styles (both head and facial) is a little hilarious.

3) The Fountain: Chris Hassiotis, Jeff Fallis, you dudes are going to have to tell me what it is you see in this movie. I will say one thing: it is perhaps less aggravating than either of Aronofsky's previous feature films. But it's also a little less interesting. Yes, I get that it's a poem, but I'm not sure it's a very good poem, and it's probably a much better movie if you smoke the reefer. Loose connections between thematically related things is not exactly something new, filmically, and, therefore, it's not inherently interesting. It's not that the movie doesn't make any sense--it does make some--but that the sense it makes is not either entertaining or illuminating. Man has hubris and thinks he can conquer death? Whoa, dude. Also, isn't the conclusion a bit new-agey? I dig the flower explosion, and it's mostly kind of pretty, but on the whole, a bit fat meh.

Lil' hobby

Yes, it's marvelous that some liberal folks around Chase Street Elementary have decided to invest (not fiscally, but faith-wise) in the school. It shows that there's at least a small segment of the Athens population that can stick decently well to their ideals. But the willingness of people to volunteer their kids to attend their neighborhood school certainly doesn't mean school choice should stick around as an option. If anything, it demonstrates more clearly why it doesn't need to/shouldn't exist.

This is a brave letter. And an important one. Still, as I was discussing with Mr. Brown the other night, one specific thing that would help lower the teen pregnancy rate is the male pill (or patch or what-have-you). I'm sure Travis Henry doesn't want to be paying child support for his twenty-five children. I'm sure a lot of dudes who make a lot less feel the same way. Sure, there are some macho issues to overcome, but making it available certainly wouldn't hurt. Condoms should be used in a widespread fashion, but more as a backup/a means of STD prevention, due to the potential for screw-ups. They're better than nothing, and they're very cheap, but the average success rate of preventing pregnancy is far higher with less complicated methods.

FO

The colors aren't totally accurate on these pictures, as I thought it might be nice for you to see the pattern. It's more of a dark purple and then a soft lavender. The scarf is pretty easy, knitted from a simple 10-line lace pattern and then blocked. Ooh, blocking. My first adventure there and I went the steaming route rather than dunking the thing in water and waiting for it to dry. If it's going to be on an ironing board anyway, it seems a lot easier just to mist it a bit, and it dries much faster (presumably). Anyway, it's going off to my half-sister for her birthday, and it's done with Caron Simply Soft, which I continue to be a big fan of, due to its softness, cheapness, lack of squeaking, and wide variety of colors.

Imago

Yeah. I gots a camera. Sometimes it doesn't just have to be about words.



Well, are you ready for some of it? Hate it for valid reasons if you must, but there is something about the rush of color coordination and concerted effort that comes with late summer and fall Saturdays in Athens, even if you don't love the foozball. It, at very least, makes one feel the presence of something larger than oneself, even if you choose to characterize that something as mass consumerism and overconsumption.



This is the tragedy of flip flops being fashionable. Perfectly healthy mannequins are being mutilated...