Antidisingenuousmentarianism

Casey and I are having some disagreements over John Updike's views on criticism. And here is what I emailed him, but it really seems more like a blog post than an email:

I don't have a problem with polite reviews. Nor do I necessarily have a problem with less polite ones. Updike's generosity of spirit in writing book reviews, however, is one I aim to emulate in my own reviews (although they ain't so much of books). I don't see what's wrong with granting the author some credit. It's not really done enough. Sometimes it adds up to wussiness, and sometimes it is merely being kind and fair.

Benjamin, on the other hand, does not seem to me to be talking about book reviews. He's talking about literary criticism, which is distinct, in that it's less "should you read this?" and more "here is what I think."

Maybe I'm just not a big fan of polemics. It's why I tend to get pissed off in class when no one else seems to enjoy the literature. Even literary criticism can be kind to the author.

Here is another distinction: people get paid for writing book reviews and not for literary criticism. I'm not sure where I'm going with that point, but I think it should be made.

Basically, after continuing to reflect, I'm still not sure I agree with most of Benjamin's points. Criticism is a moral question? Polemics should be practiced and is the proper role of criticism? I'm not faulting Walt. No doubt he was high as a kite when he wrote his list, and it's very entertaining and aphoristic and all that. But this is not a view of criticism I share, even taking book reviews out of the picture.

Edit: Duh I am a dope. Here's the relevant Tumblr page. Scroll down to January 29.

Labels: arguing, literary observations

My favorite thing about this article on local affordable housing and what prevents its development is in the comments, where someone says that if landlords didn't have to pay such high property taxes, they'd charge less rent. Yes. I'm sure they'd reduce rates.

Snicker. Pole tax.

Doug, either a statewide tax or the ability to impose a regional one will do. One is better, but both are possibilities for funding mass transit expansion.

I think Charles McMullan thinks Obama makes a lot more money than he actually does.

Labels: ABH, opining

I forgot, yesterday, to point you to Noah Baumbach's "Mouse au Vin," one of the rare Shouts and Murmurs pieces that's worth not only reading but re-reading, although it consists just as much of melancholy as of humor, unsurprisingly.

And here is yet another stellar Jill Lepore piece, this one on the history of newspapers in the United States. What they've generally been for is poking sticks at power. It doesn't address nearly as well what the future is, although it pretends to.

Finally, David Denby's review of Notorious is kind of cute. He says things like:

Still, the authenticity issue lingers around hip-hop, which is a cunningly crafted show-business phenomenon as well as an expression of urban culture. What I wanted from the movie was some clarity about Biggie Smalls’s motives and a sense of how much of him was created and how much was genuine.

And

The songs still have a coruscating insistence, and I would have liked to learn more about the professional details—how Biggie wrote the songs, how much rehearsal and how many retakes were needed to get the music into its final form.

I'm not saying his review of the movie isn't accurate. It seems like it would be. But complaining that a biopic of a murdered rap star produced by his family doesn't focus enough on rehearsal is kind of bizarre. And Denby doesn't seem to realize that urban culture can craft its own show-business phenomenon--it doesn't have to be imposed from the top down.

Labels: New Yorker

Atul Gawande's "Getting There from Here" isn't the best-written piece on health care ever, nor is it among his strongest articles for the New Yorker, but that's not the point. It's basically a letter on the health care system saying that no country with socialized medicine or any form of national health care got there overnight. They've all built on previous systems, and while this may make the results less than perfectly neat, it's worth a little messiness to provide coverage for our uninsured. It's an important article.

Ben McGrath's article "The Dystopians" is not online, and maybe that's a good thing. I don't think it's intended to make the reader fearful--if anything, it's amused at a distance in tone--but even I couldn't help getting a tiny bit nervous, and I'm not particularly paranoid about the future of this country. I suppose even those nerves dissipate by the end, when a collection of Vermonters (yeah, those people, whose state is a perennial contender for most nutso--I'm sure they're happy Utah and Alaska exist to take the focus off them) gather to plan for secession for the United States. James Howard Kunstler gets off some good lines, though, and there certainly is some schadenfreude to be had in his pronouncements, like the one about the college students who always want to speak with him: "They're all studying to be hedge-fund managers. . . . And they're going to end up supervisors of rutabaga pickers." At least they'll be supervisors. No doubt the rest of us will be picking the damn rutabagas.

And then there's Aravind Adiga's short story, "The Elephant," which I was surprised to find myself enjoying. I'm sure it has something to do with the prevalence of the word "motherfucker," but it also has to do with what that word conveys, which is the ultimately impotent rage of the poor. It's a little long, as a story, but it's nicely placed in this issue, especially alongside the two articles mentioned above.

Labels: New Yorker

I agree. I'm still not sure I like the idea of resorting to tag fees to fund trauma care in principle--it's a bit like cigarette taxes; you can't fund everything that way--but in practice, it's a very workable and necessary solution.

Nancy Denson does bring up some good points. Still...

Labels: ABH, opining

Girl with a Pearl Earring: Snoozefest. This movie is extremely pretty, but when it is not being ridiculous, it is being boring. It sounds like the book might be a little better, but still, it's quite a reach, isn't it, to think that Vermeer spent a great deal of his time explaining to his maid how to mix oil paints? Also, Colin Firth is burdened with a very silly hairdo. So is Cillian Murphy, but he's better able to pull it off, even if his full outfit looks vaguely Chinese. The thing about Colin Firth is that he really should be allowed to be his clean-cut self. He's the opposite of Colin Farrell, who would look grubby even freshly shaved and neatened up and popped into a tuxedo, and he (Firth) looks kind of miserable the whole film, especially peeping creepily around a corner at ScarJo to catch a glimpse of her hair. That is an extremely awkward moment. Maybe you should watch it with the volume off, but probably not.

Labels: movies

RIP John Updike. You were a pleasure to meet, the one time I was able to, and although the reading you gave was not the most exciting thing in the world, you were wonderful to be around, courtly and tall and stooped over to listen. You had a lovely handshake. What I think I've liked most about your prose is its pulse. You clearly enjoyed the heck out of being alive but in a Richard Wilbur way rather than a Jim Morrison way, with a deep sense of the wonder of small blessings. Waking up. The dampness of flowers. Feeling healthy and at ease in one's yet-young body. The happiness in a hamburger and in being somewhere illuminated and full of people. I know Updike believed in a power above himself, but that's not how it came across. Rather, he was a quiet hedonist. I'm glad we got a long time and a lot of books. Now God preserve John Barth and Alice Munro. At least for the next few months. I can't take the continual dying off of my idols.

Labels: obituary

This sucks, guys. I'm sorry.

But on to nipping at your heels. Look, Broun's idea is not a good one. Read this James Surowiecki column on how people spend or save tax rebates. Now revise.

I suppose this is a sin tax of sorts. But I can't say I'm opposed.

Here's the question about turning College Square into a pedestrian mall: Why? Do pedestrians have a problem navigating the area? Is College Avenue a major artery for cars? Neither seems to be true. So... I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea. I'd just like to see a better argument in favor of it.

Labels: ABH, Flagpole, opining

Complaint: On Jan. 18, deputy Jeremy Wasdin was dispatched to a home on Oak Lake Trail, Watkinsville, where a 44-year-old woman said she had been threatened by a 13-year-old boy. The woman said the youth was in a golf cart and he had "flipped her off," then called her by a vulgar name and threatened to kill her. The woman wanted to file a juvenile complaint. Wasdin then met with the boy and his parents. The youth denied the accusations, but he said she did use her vehicle to block his path, then began yelling at him. He said he told her to "shut up, you vile woman." However, he said he never threatened her. The parents said there have been ongoing problems with this woman and they think she is lying.

Or that 13-year-old is really out of place living in Oconee County, with his Wildean turns of phrase.

Arrest: On Jan. 20, deputy Shane Partain was patrolling U.S. Highway 78 and stopped a white car with dark-tinted windows. The driver said he was 46 years old and gave his name as James Mitchell. Partain ran the name through the system but got no results so he asked him again, and the man said he'd never had an ID. The man said Partain could ask his boss, who had pulled over his truck in front of them. Partain asked the driver of the truck what the other man's name was, and he said, "That's Kenny, Kenny Thomas." Partain asked the other man why his boss would say that, and the man replied, "That's just what they call me" and continued to say his name was James Mitchell. Partain called Athens-Clarke police who said the man had just been released from jail on a drug trafficking charge, along with the man he called his boss. "Mitchell" said he wasn't that man and that he hadn't just been released. Partain got permission to search the cars and then released the truck driver and "Mitchell's" passenger. He took the other man to the Oconee County Jail, where he finally admitted his name was Kenneth Anthony Thomas, 46, of Evans Street, Athens. Thomas was charged with giving a false name to a law enforcement officer, and Partain found out he also was wanted by Barrow County authorities for theft.

Oh heck. I'm not going to bother to change the names on that one.

Arrest: On Jan. 18, deputy David Carr was on routine patrol about 11 a.m. on Georgia Highway 98 when he stopped behind some vehicles at a red light. When the light turned green, he saw a blue Ford Ranger make a right turn and he noticed its brake lights were out. Carr stopped the pickup, and the driver said he had come into town for some snacks. As they talked, Carr smelled alcohol and the man said he hadn't drank anything since the previous night. He was taken to jail where he read .24 on an alcohol test and was charged with DUI.

"Snacks" is probable cause.

Oconee. Madison.

Labels: police blotter

Well, there was supposed to be a Grub Notes today, but it didn't run. I may just go ahead and post that Kanye review myself, also.

Labels: Flagpole

You really should check out this video of Martha Stewart trying to get her new cat out of its carrier. About 7:45 in.

Labels: Martha, video

Task force! Yeah!

Dude, I love Coca-Cola with near Pentecostal fervor, but I'm not sure they should be sponsoring a recycling competition. For one thing, isn't their move toward plastic bottles and away from cans more wasteful? I have no figures to back this up--it's just an impression, based at least partially on the presence of the cap.

Labels: ABH, opining

Jill Lepore's article on the rise of the breast pump has already been much discussed, and for good reason. She's a sharp and wonderful writer, and she makes her points well. Central to the article is the idea that, while the breast pump has provided a small measure of liberation for working mothers, it in no way compensates for the lack of adequate maternity leave in this country, which is a very good point. Here is a lovely aside, encased in parentheses:

(A brief history of food: when the rich eat white bread and buy formula, the poor eat brown bread and breast-feed; then they trade places.)

That really does sum it up in a sentence pretty nicely, depressing as it may be.

Her article is immediately followed by Tad Friend's on movie marketing, "The Cobra," which is almost too much delight in a row. It's already been much quoted, but here's another bit:

The collective wisdom is that young males like explosions, blood, cars flying through the air, pratfalls, poop jokes, “you’re so gay” banter, and sex—but not romance. Young women like friendship, pop music, fashion, sarcasm, sensitive boys who think with their hearts, and romance—but not sex (though they like to hear the naughty girl telling her friends about it). They go to horror films as much as young men, but they hate gore; you lure them by having the ingénue take her time walking down the dark hall.

You heard it here. Young women are responsible for character development in horror films and scared of onscreen fucking.

Finally, there's "The Enforcer," Samantha Power's article on Gary Haugen, founder of the International Justice Mission. She does a very good job walking a tightrope, addressing both the advantages of his evangelical Christianity in doing his work and the shortcomings of that work. The thing that bothers me most is that Haugen's strong belief in the rule of law as the foundation for a functional society seems to be undermined somewhat by the methods by which his organization conducts brothel raids. Clearly, it's difficult to complain when IJM is rescuing five-year-olds from sex slavery, but I suppose that's the point. Still, it's a fair and thoughtful article, and I'd bet his mission doesn't suffer for donations due to it.

Labels: New Yorker

Yes but it's been sharing in that discomfort. Even if one were not to argue that people need their jobs, when cuts in that area are made and the number of students at the university keeps increasing, students receive much crappier services. They can't get the classes they need to graduate on time, for example, which means they stick around longer, taking up space that's needed for new students and screwing up the credit hour situation, the latter of which results in less funding for the university.

Labels: ABH, opining

1) American Teen: A tiny bit slick, as was Nanette Burstein's previous film, The Kid Stays in the Picture. I've seen complaints that it's far too MTV, by which I think people mean that everything kind of looks good and clean and the kids are deliberately putting themselves into categories, and everything happens pretty neatly, probably because of the skilled editors. But it's really well made. And, while it's undoubtedly edited (you do need to do that to make a movie), it's just so effective. You end up liking all of the kids, even the evil ones who make people's lives miserable, perhaps because you see so much of them. Yes, it's partially the usual stuff that the movie poster that alluded to The Breakfast Club would make you expect, but some of it isn't, and more than anything it's the way Burstein must have made them feel comfortable with a crew around. Or maybe that's just the way teenagers behave these days if they watch a lot of Made and True Life. You'd think they'd be more image conscious than to laugh with near-demonic glee while sending everyone in school a topless photo of a classmate with the subject line "pepperoni nipples," but apparently not, and it's a better film for it. Mostly, they all feel so fragile. I kind of want to protect all of them, even the popular ones.

2) The Seventh Seal: I can finally check this motherfucker off my list! It wasn't delayed by dread--more coincidence--but I can advise you not to dread it, or maybe I'm just a Bergman fan discovering she is a Bergman fan. There is a bit of philosophizing, and the dialogue is occasionally rather weighty, but what stays with me is the amount of clowning. Von Sydow is beautiful and terrifying as he stalks around, all massive and blond and noble, and you certainly do want to look at him when he's onscreen, but Bergman's sympathy is clearly with the little people, the actors and the peasants and the tradesmen, and on the side of life rather than death. Death has been catching up to Antonius Block because he is a dealer of it and because he has little in the way of joy, not because he sees the existential void on the other side. And Jof and Mia deserve to escape because of their happiness, which is so easily brought on by a bowl of fresh milk and some wild strawberries. It's kind of a wonderful movie and not hard to watch.

3) The Safety of Objects: A stupid and disrespectful adaptation of the A.M. Homes short story collection. All of her stories are about different characters. The writer/director Rose Troche has decided to cram all of them (excepting maybe one) into a weird, overlapping muddle about four families on the same block. The result is a yucky mess, but she could have overcome it if she hadn't also decided to rewrite half of them in major ways to create more drama and connection. I understand that you can't have Barbie fucking in a movie, probably, but you also don't have to create new material that provides something not there at all. Homes's stories are about gut-punch and atmosphere, not plot, and this adaptation wastes a good cast on material made inferior.

Labels: movies

I believe that headline should read "Some College cuts irk area rep." I mean, I suppose we should be thankful that Mr. Smith isn't in favor of general cuts to the university system, especially considering his chairmanship of the committee that doles out funding to it, but I'm pretty sure UGA eliminated its MA in Buggy-Making some years ago.

The university system should eliminate programs and departments that are not longer relevant, Smith said, though he would not say which ones he had in mind.

Dude. Are you afraid of the art department? Spit it out. It's not as though he doesn't have access to what departments/colleges are allocated what money. Anything other than specifics is posturing.

Also, this might still be a little bit of a turf war, with Augusta upset that MCG's funding is being cut while money allocated to the new med school in Athens is still there, but they do kind of have a point. The problem, as always, is that construction funds are fairly inflexible, but that's not always a bad thing. If it were otherwise, you might end up with some half-built structures.

Finally, Mr. Winders's column offers some good advice. It is amazing how far a small personal sacrifice from those most able to make it can go in terms of creating goodwill.

Labels: ABH, opining

So, the New Yorker skipped an issue for me, but I can still read Wired. Not quite the same, but this article on private, man-made islands, "Live Free or Drown: Floating Utopias on the Cheap," is interesting as an example of the government-phobic mindset. God. Freaking. Forbid. That I ever have to go to one of these theoretical islands. There's just a fundamental mistrust of the way you have to set things up to run a country:

Friedman launches into what he calls "my standard rant"—a spiel about government's shortcomings and why they're so hard to repair. In his eyes, government is a sclerotic monopoly that can count on high customer lock-in thanks to inertia and the lack of alternatives. "Government is an inefficient industry because it has an insane barrier to entry," he says. "To compete with governments on existing land, you have to win a war, an election, or a revolution." He points to the democracy that emerged from the American Revolution as the last successful rollout and attributes the subsequent dry spell to the lack of uncolonized space on the map. "We've run out of frontier," he says.

Guy. Inefficiency is not always an evil. Sometimes it's just a fact of life. And sometimes it's a force for good, depending on who's in charge. This dude could also try voting or running for a local governmental office, but that seems far too small-scale when you can build your own island without any rules...

Labels: Wired

Ahem. Not that the news Lee Shearer reports that UGA could have layoffs in FY10 isn't bad (and he does a beautiful job pointing out a. how much the university system's budget's been cut over the past seven years and b. how the cuts made in 02-03 were never fully restored, something that's not really part of the public consciousness), but this shorter and less fact-filled piece about school nurses (possibly) being cut is probably even worse. So, if a kid dies due to an asthma attack at a school that doesn't have a nurse, does Perdue think the parents aren't going to sue the hell out of the state and win? Yes, everyone has to cut, but public health, and this does fall under that, is a really bad area to start slicing when people are already losing their health insurance when they lose their jobs. Piling a serious disease outbreak, or even just the regular load of this and that, onto an already stressed system in the middle of financial effedness is just really, really not a good idea.

Dr. Adams's state of the university address seems to have been fine. People are definitely going to bitch about an increase in parking fees, and in some cases rightly so, but it's also true that the parking at your house is free if you don't got a job. And that doesn't mean we should all be thankful every second of our lives for those jobs, but it does mean, you know, a little realism. Pointing to history was a good idea, too:

In 1841, the legislature decided UGA was elitist and cut the school's budget in half - then eliminated its budget entirely the next year, Adams said before citing several other crisis points in UGA history.

The legislature is not helping by asking why out-of-state students pay more than in-state students (and, perhaps, more than they would have paid if they stayed home). I believe the answer, dudes, is that the university needs money from somewhere and you are not exactly handing it out.

Thank you, Kelly. Even if it's just that it's bad PR for the ACC govt., it's a good point. On the other hand, I do get how government budgeting works. Would there be a way to scale back the project? Or, um, make it seem as though more of that money is being spent fixing the hair-curling stench just off College Station Road?

Labels: ABH, opining

Graphic Classics: Arthur Conan Doyle: Four stars might be overstating it a bit, as this compilation of short Conan Doyle adaptations by a bunch of different artists and writers is pretty mixed, but the stories themselves are almost all pretty entertaining, and while there are a couple of Holmes stories included, there are many more that don't feature ACD's most famous character. Rick Geary's version of "The Copper Beeches" is one that does, and it's as wonderful as all his stuff, one of my favorites in the book, along with J.B. Bonivert's "The Los Amigos Fiasco" and Antonella Caputo and Nick Miller's "The Castle of Gloom." Unfortunately, some of the adaptations, while the stories don't suffer all that much, are pretty poor, muddying what's actually happening and just generally contributing to a lot of annoyance. John W. Pierard's "Captain Sharkey" is an example. Good story, full of pirates and dastardliness, but the art and panel plotting are a mess. I suppose that's what happens when you select a bunch of comics people who seem to smoke a fair amount of weed. Still, I'd recommend the book, and I'm interested to read a bunch more in the series. I like the short format, and I've discovered some new artists. [4 stars? more like 3.5]

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: I totally see why this was rocking the sales charts at Amazon. Almost all of the good and funny young-adult books I've read recently are told from a female perspective, but Kinney's is from that of a teenage boy, and it reminds me most of Barbara Park's Skinnybones, which I remember making me laugh until my stomach hurt. This isn't quite that hilarious, or perhaps it's that I was ten when I read that and thirty when I read this, but it did make me giggle occasionally and smile throughout. It's a weird fusion of novel and comic, but it works, and it makes the read absolutely fly by. Nice use of unreliable narrator makes it not preachy in the slightest--it's much more entertaining when the guy telling you the story is kind of a delusional jerk (and he does redeem himself in the end). [4 stars]

Labor Days, vol. 1: We never managed to review this for Shazhmmm, but I liked it a lot, so that's a shame. Didn't know much going in, but it's quickly plotted and has enough Grant Morrison-ness to keep things more interesting than normal. I would absolutely read more of Gelatt's stuff. [4 stars]

Yotsuba&!, vol. 1: I started out confused (not helped by reading right to left both in terms of panel structure and pages) but ended up delighted. This is a weird, hyper little book about a weird, hyper little girl, and it's the first real manga thing I've read, so I'm not sure what's a convention of the genre and what's just oddness. Anyway, while there's a lot of yelling and pointless running around, it's of the happy kind, not the angry kind, and Yotsuba's enthusiasm for everything is fairly contagious. It makes me want to walk around with my eyes wider open than they usually are. [4 stars]

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules: It's less well structured than the first book, and while I'm happy for Jeff Kinney, I hope he doesn't just keep doing the same thing over and over--it's entirely possible that he will. Basically, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is surprisingly well organized and well plotted, with a real narrative that runs throughout the book, even if you could just be amused by the pictures and their divergence from the story, but Rodrick Rules seems to contain less. It's more elaboration on what's already been set up than any new kind of thing. Still, it's fairly amusing and not bad. [3 stars]

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return: Actually, I borrowed The Complete Persepolis, but I only read the second half, having already read the first. I was a bit worried this time around, having seen the movie adaptation and found it disappointing, that I might not like Satrapi's voice as much, but I think the second book only suffers a little in comparison with the first, and that's probably mostly from familiarity. It's still an excellent memoir and a nicely stripped down way to approach the genre, and I still appreciate her asshole personality. [4 stars]

Treasury of XXth Century Murder: The Lindbergh Child: Geary makes the transition from 19th to 20th century pretty seamlessly, and this was definitely a very interesting case to pick, something I've always heard alluded to but never with the facts laid out. It's all very trademark, including the introduction of doubt about this and that at the end, which is a Geary signature. [4 stars]

And, of course, since the last time I updated this, tons more at Shazhmmm.

Labels: comics

Godawfully late. I think I kept wondering if I'd find any more that coincided with anyone else's lists, but there's simply not much overlap, and sometimes it's because I listened to the stuff and thought it was just okay (Q-Tip, Robin Thicke) and sometimes it's because I did not bother to listen to it. I still have the Of Montreal record sitting shrink-wrapped on my kitchen counter, so I can't weigh in on that.

1. Ruby Isle, Night Shot
Dude, I'm pretty sure I said this was hitting number one on my list before the album came out, and it's not that I couldn't back out if I wanted to. This is the internet. Changing your mind is allowed. But I don't want to change my mind. I find this record both simple (fucking rock!) and complicated (substitutions of a non-rhyming word when you're set up to expect a rhyme, for example) at the same time, and I can't think of a time when I wouldn't want to listen to it. I still feel like I'm preaching to the void a little, but I'll keep on doing it.

2. Kanye West, 808s and Heartbreak
That review should run next week. What I believe I said, once upon a time, is that I admire the dude for not being afraid to fuck up, that in fact he seems to have a drive to do so in public, that Kanye West wears his emotions right under the surface and there is a refreshing humanity about the guy, even when he's being an asshole. There are a lot of ways in which this album is a failure, but it's got balls and some very good songs.

3. Solange Knowles, Sol-Angel and The Hadley Street Dreams
This may be ranking higher than some other records due to a hard drive crash that wiped out most of my stuff but not it. Still, it's a shiny little nugget that seemed to get really overlooked at the end of the year.

4. Royal Bangs, We Breed Champions
Very enjoyable both live and on record. I am a keyboards sucker. Especially a sweaty keyboards sucker.

5. Murder Mystery, Are You Ready for the Heartache Cause Here It Comes
When I'm looking at my list of possibilities, this is one from which I remember more songs than not, which doesn't mean I listened to it constantly. It did get wiped out, and I can still run the songs in my head. It's not ambitious, but it's charming.

6. Excalibrah 09
Is that even the title of this record? Anyway, the league contributes another really enjoyable record. Three great songs from it can be enjoyed here. Don't you have a show coming up, Brah?

7. Parenthetical Girls, Entanglements
Ambitious but not charming? It stuck with me as impressive.

8. Trav Williams, The Trickle Down
A local but my favorite rap album of the year (the Kanye don't count). I haven't listened to his new one yet, but I've been steadily more impressed.

9. Duffy, Rockferry
Justifiably omnipresent.

10. Cars Can Be Blue, Doubly Unbeatable
Yes, they are an obnoxious mess, but I really liked this record anyway. It's fast, loud, short, and melodic.

Go ahead. Tear me a new one. Singles list is up next and then I can flush 08 away.

Labels: lists, music

The Mist: A fairly solid Stephen King movie, with some things that elevate it a bit above the average and some things that drag it down. In the latter category, I do understand that some tension and time need to be built up/expire before the twist ending is revealed (and it's a good 'un), but holy God Frank Darabont does not know when to say when with the slo-mo and the wailing music and for the love of Pete I get the point would you just quit it already. Basically, that dude could always stand to cut at least half an hour out of his movies (sometimes an hour and a half), and this one is no exception. It mostly consists of monsters eating people (yay!) and people arguing loudly (a King standard and one that gets annoying in a hurry--why does everyone in his stories behave as though they're right on the line between civilized behavior and picking up a machete to kill their neighbors?), and it looks really good, which is a nice thing Darabont brings. It's all very sharp and colorful, and the mist itself is beautiful stuff, with its swirling and such. It's a good movie to go into not knowing a whole lot, and so if you haven't heard much, maybe I should stop talking now and those who have seen it (Chris Hassiotis, I'm looking at you) can talk about the ending in the comments?

Labels: movies

Theft: On Jan. 13, deputy Andrew Corbin met with a man who walked into the sheriff's office on Experiment Station Road, Watkinsville. The man said someone came into his house and stole his bolt-action rifle. He said he leaves his house unlocked so if someone breaks in they won't tear up his door.

It does have other consequences though.

Arrest: On Jan. 9, deputy Gary Floyd was dispatched about 6:40 p.m. to Ed Coile Road, Hull, where a woman saw a white van driving in and out of the trailer park. The driver appeared to be under the influence as he was shouting out his window. As he left, he hit a row of mailboxes. Another witness confirmed the account and provided a lead on the man's identity. Floyd drove to the location on the same street and saw the van parked in a yard. The pickup's lights still were on and the engine was running. The van's doors were locked, and the driver was slumped over in the seat passed out. Floyd knocked on the windows for several minutes before waking the man, who took about five minutes to open the door. Floyd could smell alcohol when the door opened. The man could barely speak and Floyd asked if he needed an ambulance. The man said no, he was just drunk. [Egbert Souse], 35, was arrested for DUI and having an open container of Keystone Light beer, but he refused to take an alcohol-level test.

Does the refusal count if you already admitted it?

Oconee. Madison.

Labels: police blotter

It was nice, right, that Inaugural speech, but it was really more about the moment than about the power of those particular words being spoken. I mean, it wasn't his best. It was a little heavy on the smiting of enemies and the greatness of America. Did Lincoln talk about the latter at length after the two sides had beaten each other to a bloody pulp, a considerably worse and more divided situation than the one in which we now find ourselves? No, he appealed to individuals and to their "better angels," which, you know, Lincoln is a high standard to which to hold people, and I think Obama is sincere as he can be in his patriotism, but I'd rather just be told that this is a new age of responsibility than that plus how great we are, umpteen times. That is grouchiness. Still much less lame than Clinton's first inauguration and considerably less rambly, although I don't think the poetry has improved.

Labels: politics

1) The Wrestler: I'm beginning to think that Darren Aronofsky is not only a moralist but also, possibly, not all that smart. That said, he's managed to make by far his best and least annoying film, credit for which I'm going to give overwhelmingly to the actors, especially Mr. Mickey Rourke, who really is about as good as you've heard. The script is not particularly well written on the whole, and while Jared was right when he pointed out that a lot of these characters probably would speak in cliches, they still do, and the narrative mostly follows well-trodden ground. The impressive thing is that Aronfsky is mostly able to restrain himself from degrading his characters. Mostly. It's really very close to traditional Hollywood entertainment, with a few exceptions. This all sounds like I hated the movie, and I want to make it clear that I didn't. While watching it, I mostly enjoyed myself a lot. And Rourke gets a big, big thumbs up, less even for his commitment to doing the stunts than for his emotional subtlety. I know he can't move his face a whole lot, but he seems to make it even more stretched out and awkward than it is, leaving just his eyes to do most of his emoting, and he makes it work. The scene where he finds himself almost not hating his work behind the deli counter is definitely the highlight of the movie. It also looks great, bathed in color and light. But there is still something grating about the way it's put together, in the end, and I'm going to blame that on the dude I've seen three other extremely irritating movies by.

2) Mirrors: Definitely not face-rippin' (i.e., awesome) despite the fact that it contains actual face-rippin' (i.e., rippin' of someone's [Amy Smart's] face), which is the reason I wanted to see the movie. This is a massively silly creation, full of portent and seriousness at times, but also containing a tremendous number of shots in which someone (usually Kiefer Sutherland) looks at a mirror and then back at what it should be reflecting, numerous times. We get it. The mirrors aren't showing reality. They're evil. Kiefer's kid seems to get it a lot faster than he does. I've liked Alexandre Aja's stuff before, while not exactly classifying him as a great director, but this is only not the dumbest movie of 08 because The Happening also came out last year. And it's still, probably, in contention with that. I don't want to discuss the ending, in case you still, like me, want to see it despite its lack of promise, but believe me that it ramps up silliness yet further. It was relatively entertaining in its stupidity, though, so I didn't quite feel like I had wasted two hours of my life.

3) Supernatural, season 1: Good job, dudes. I like this show. It's not up to Whedon levels, but it manages to be fairly consistently compelling. Little to say here other than that I will watch season 2.

Labels: movies, TV

So are there a lot of nonprofits trying to get out of paying their property taxes who really should be paying them? Or is this a voter ID situation? And why do churches get stronger protection? What does selling chicken mull have to do (directly) with spreading the word of Jesus? Here's the list of tax-exempt organizations in Clarke County, if you want to do some digging.

Labels: ABH, opining

I keep meaning to write a bunch about the jokes on 30 Rock and how knotted and grammar-based they are (which doesn't make them less funny, but more so), but I don't know if I've got a long thesis to work out, Barthel-style. Most of this was inspired by two jokes:

1. The repeated ones about Kenneth the page and his southern background.
2. A Blaffair to Rememblack.

The first set consists of redneck/country person jokes about the South, which are fairly standard but keep moving more and more in the direction of ridiculousness, despite the fact that Kenneth is mentioned as being from Stone Mountain, hardly a rural area, which is something that I'm sure the writers all know, knowing Mr. McBrayer, but choose to ignore in the writing. The point is that these are jokes about jokes about the South, to some extent, and while funny is the number-one master of how they get written, and I doubt Tina Fey would deny that jokes about the toothless and Appalachian are inherently funny, still, there is definitely some kind of meta-quality about them.

The second inspired a good bit of discussion in the car over whether it was the same joke as The Blunch Black of Blotre Blame on The Simpsons, and the concurrence was that it is, rather, an extension of that joke and no doubt a nod to it. At least The Blunch Black of Blotre Blame is a horror movie, a genre in which Blaxploitation worked, while A Blaffair to Rememblack would be yet another remake of An Affair to Remember, a sentimental love story and not one that most people would think would benefit from the addition of pimps and hos (although those who didn't like Sleepless in Seattle might think it would). Second, while the new joke title does still contain the word "black," its grammatical construction is more bizarre than either the fictional film on The Simpsons or any of the real ones, like Blacula and Blackenstein. Part of the appeal of the joke is not only in the tenuous relationship of Blaxploitation to hankie-soakers, but also in the possible misapplication of the rules of constructing such a title, even though those rules don't fall within Standard Written English. Finally, A Blaffair to Rememblack is of course associated with Tracy Jordan, whose character is just as much a joke about minstrelsy (and perhaps about oversensitivity to such) as Kenneth's character is about southern stereotypes. It's as though the show is espousing the same philosophy as many an idiotic "politically incorrect" comedian--all jokes are fair game--but doing so in a much smarter way.

Labels: TV

Billy the Kid: I'd almost encourage you not to watch the extras on this DVD, if that's how you see the movie, or at least to skip the interviews with the director. She's made a really great film, but there's little that's illuminating in those few clips. I wouldn't let all the quotes about it being inspirational scare you away, either. Really, it's sort of like American Movie for kids, in that she found this unique character and luckily caught a lot of his personality on film. There's a whole lot of discussion in her interview about how the movie is a mirror and people see in Billy what they really see in themselves, and there's some truth to that, but at the same time, it's more like a pond, in that the reflective surface is incidental and also not all that accurate. You definitely have to recognize that Billy's a big weirdo, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I was an extremely awkward adolescent myself, especially in junior high, and the moments where Billy, other than camera and filmmaker, is alone and behaves as such--jamming on his guitar, for example--are very nicely done, in that they really should make you think of yourself and your own ridiculousness. Basically, I laughed through this entire film, but I'm saying half of that was in recognition. The other half was "at." I'm not sure he possesses wisdom beyond his years, as a lot of the quotes from critics seem to say. If you talk fairly constantly, you're bound to come out with something profound. He does have rad taste in music. This is turning out to be quite a poor discussion of a documentary you should really see, especially if you've ever been prone to keeping your tics a little too close to the surface. It's very good at taking an interesting character and showing, simply through continued demonstrations of who he is, his commonalities with the rest of us. We humans are silly things.

Labels: movies

You know what is worse than a UGA Alert system that calls you automatically at 6:30 a.m.? One that calls back a few minutes later and says never mind. Woo!

Labels: UGA

1. I meant to blog yesterday about how Jared had said the previous day was a bad day for dudes on fictional islands. But I forgot to, so consider it done here.

2. Martha Stewart said on her show this week, when asked, that her favorite animal is dinosaurs. After she said polar bears. Martha is an eight-year-old boy.

Labels: TV

Nonprofits should be even less profitable! I understand where the county is coming from, but it's not very likely that Nuci's Space will buy a downtown hotel any time soon. Some trust is required, I suppose.


Hi. We like our genetic monstrosity of a bulldog. It is not that we are unaware.

And enforcement is based on what? I'm not saying this shouldn't pass, but it's more symbolic than anything else, right?

ABH editorial comes down on the right side of an unbelievable bill.

Labels: ABH, opining

Peter Hessler's latest Letter from China, a shorter and yet more rambling piece called "Strange Stones," isn't available online, but it's a really pleasurable read, despite the fact that it mostly boils down to, "Dude, let me tell you about this guy I know." His meditations on the Peace Corps and the ways in which it has different effects than intended are pretty great:

Sometimes I thought of the Peace Corps as a reverse refugee organization, displacing all those lost Midwesterners, and it was probably the only government organization that taught Americans to abandon key national characteristics. Pride, ambition, impatience, the instinct to control, the desire to accumulate, the missionary impulse--all of it slipped away.

This issue also contains Michael Robbins's marvelous poem, "Alien vs. Predator," which has been much linked and much posted, but little discussed. Here it is again.

Praise this world, Rilke says, the jerk.
We’d stay up all night. Every angel’s
berserk. Hell, if you slit monkeys
for a living, you’d pray to me, too.
I’m not so forgiving. I’m rubber, you’re glue.

That elk is such a dick. He’s a space tree
making a ski and a little foam chiropractor.
I set the controls, I pioneer
the seeding of the ionosphere.
I translate the Bible into velociraptor.

In front of Best Buy, the Tibetans are released,
but where’s the whale on stilts that we were promised?
I fight the comets, lick the moon,
pave its lonely streets.
The sandhill cranes make brains look easy.

I go by many names: Buju Banton,
Camel Light, the New York Times.
Point being, rickshaws in Scranton.
I have few legs. I sleep on meat.
I’d eat your bra—point being—in a heartbeat.

So, I do see why it's an appealing poem. It's absolutely verbally lovely, and it sweeps one away with its mix of pop culture and more obscure reference. But what, in the ever-loving hell, does it mean? What is it about? The title is usually a help in these cases, but I have picked my brain and see no direct links. Yes, this does sort of sound like what Alien and Predator would say to one another, in their pre-fight interviews packed with boasting, but that's as close as it gets. And, in any case, why that as subject? Really, I think the appeal here is rhythm- and sound-based, not contingent upon (and, perhaps, actively opposed to) cogent statement. I talked about this a little with Casey, and he pointed out that it reminds him of early 1980s freestyling. Or contemporary freestyling. It's flyting, I suppose. Also, more obviously, a big part of the appeal is indeed that it has this title and these references and appears in the pages of a magazine still thought of as because it sometimes is stodgy. I suspect, though, that even devoid of context it might be a popular poem, especially with a young generation. Point is, your analysis is welcome. If I had a class to teach, I'd set this in front of them and see what they had to say.

Sidebar question: Isn't this the second really good poem in the New Yorker over about the past year to mention Best Buy? And what the heck does that mean?

Labels: New Yorker, poetry

Kevan Williams has some good points about school architecture, ones that are unlikely to be implemented, but good points nonetheless.

So is this private ambulance service more expensive, on the whole, than having the hospitals provide it? I know it's not more expensive to them, but that's because they're asking Oconee and Athens-Clarke to kick in, and it's almost a form of blackmail, isn't it? Because you can't not have adequate ambulance service or a) you're doing a disservice to your citizens and b) your murder rate is totally going to go up, due to the inability of the injured to reach the hospital in a timely manner. I'm not saying I don't support paying for it, but the whole idea of for-profit hospitals is, you know, icky, especially when they're making a profit due to taxpayer subsidization.

How about proposing free flying cars for everyone in 2025, Sonny?

Labels: ABH, Flagpole, opining

Arrests: On Jan. 1, deputies responded about 1:30 a.m. to a home on Chestnut Hill Road and found [Josiah Tulkinghorn], 52, bleeding on the ground. EMS was called. The man's son, [James Steerforth], 25, said he was at home drinking when his father came home. They were sitting in a Mustang on the property when [James] asked [Josiah] why he wasn't a good parent. [Josiah] then slapped [James]. The two men decided to go in to eat, [James] said, but they continued to fight once inside. [James] didn't want to fight in the house, so he called [Josiah] outside to fight "like a man." [Josiah] kept beating and hitting [James], and he couldn't find anything to fight back with until he grabbed a propane tank, the son said. [James] said he hit his father in the face with the tank. Then he got scared he had killed [Josiah], so [James] started calling family members and friends to tell him what he should do. Deputies said they would take out warrants on [James] for aggravated assault and on [Josiah] for battery.

Happy New Year!!

Arrests: On Jan. 2, deputy Victor Green was on patrol shortly before midnight Jan. 2, when he saw a 1996 Chevrolet S-10 pickup with a faulty taillight traveling on U.S. Highway 441. He stopped the pickup near Crystal Hills Drive and upon speaking with the driver, Green smelled marijuana. He asked if anybody in the car was smoking marijuana and the driver, [Harold Skimpole], 19, of VFW Drive, Watkinsville, said "not today." [Skimpole] and his passenger, [Prince Turveydrop], 19, of Old Farm Road, Watkinsville, both consented to searches. Some cocaine was found in [Skimpole]'s pocket, and a bag of marijuana and some digital scales were found in a bookbag held by [Turveydrop]. Both men were arrested for possession of the drugs.

I believe "not today" constitutes probable cause, too.

Theft: On Jan. 4, deputy Mark Jerome met with a 48-year-old Danielsville woman, who said her daughter and her two friends came to the house to get a stereo. After they left, she found someone had opened her wallet, which was on a coffee table, and stole a $100 bill. The woman said she called her daughter because she needed the money to pay rent, but the daughter said her friends might have spent the money on cigarettes.

They are getting expensive these days.

Arrest: On Dec. 31, deputy Gary Floyd was dispatched to a disturbance at a home on Jack Sharp Road, Colbert, where a couple was having an argument. The wife told Floyd that her husband hit her with a baseball bat, but not hard, and he punched her in face causing a bruise. Floyd approached her husband, who had chocolate cake all over his face, and asked him what happened. He replied he didn't remember. [Sam Weller], 41, was arrested for battery.

Almost uncommentable upon.

Oconee. Madison.

Labels: police blotter

Keyshia Cole. Man, I know Al thinks she's getting better, but I think she's gotten less interesting with every album. Maybe I just like a feistier R&B songstress. Anyway, she has her third record out and I'm not so big on it. Brandy, too, is straying from what shows her off best. Also, I swear to god, I did write a review of 808s and Heartbreak, like more than a month ago now. I've just been waiting until it runs to post it. So be patient if you are interested.

Also also: Grub Notes revisits La Dolce Vita (yum) and checks out Redeye (good, but a little crazy).

Labels: food, music, writing

There's a decent response in today's paper to Jim Thompson's editorial on the school system, which ran over the weekend and seemed to contend that the ACC board was making the switch to neighborhood schools out of cynical motives that would involve improving the entire system (horrors!), rather than continuing to run schools for the wealthy and schools for the poor. I tend to think the BOE doesn't think exactly like so, but if the end results are what he describes, I'm sure we can all live with it or send our kids off to private school.

Yes, yes, I know he means it would only give the appearance of improving the system. I happen to think it would actually do so. The public school system is supposed to serve as a melting pot, a cradle of socialization, and encounters with those of different race, class, etc. are valuable. Hence, my favoring of this revision.

Labels: ABH, opining

The "Home Repair Is Homicide" series. For those who find Bob Vila's instructions on how to patch up your hot water heater less than stimulating... "Pass me that 5/8 socket wrench," the detective growled. "I think there's someone lurking behind these lovely old pocket doors."

Labels: literature

Jeffrey Toobin's large profile on encompasser of multitudes Barney Frank is a pretty entertaining read, due more to Frank than to Toobin. The congressman specializes in the previously unsexy area of housing, with a deep interest in providing affordable housing, and some of the most interesting parts of the article to me focused [or should I say "focussed," New Yorker?] on his attempts to provide funding for that in creative ways. Frank seems to have a great deal of respect for government without counting out the upsides of partnership with private institutions, and he knows how to get things done. These two paragraphs, toward the close of the article, were obviously interesting to whoever picks the pull quotes slapped at the beginning, as well as to me:

Frank’s mordant view of human nature presents a contrast to the sunnier approach of President-elect Obama, a difference reflected in their dispute over Obama’s choice to have Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor, give the invocation at the Inauguration. “Obama tends to overstate his ability to get people to change their opinions and underestimates the importance of confronting ideological differences,” Frank told me. “It’s one thing to talk to somebody. I talk to more conservatives than anyone, because I’m trying to get legislation passed. But it’s another to make Rick Warren the most honored clergyman in the world.” In California, Warren supported Proposition 8, the successful anti-gay-marriage referendum. “Now, when we fight Warren in California, we are going to hear, ‘Oh, yeah, but Obama picked him for the inaugural.’ He doesn’t deserve that honor. And I don’t want to hear that the other clergyman at the inaugural, Reverend [Joseph] Lowery, supports gay rights. I didn’t vote for a tie in the election.”

Frank worries that Obama’s evenhandedness may prove to be a political liability. “On the financial crisis, Obama said that both sides were asleep at the switch,” Frank said. “But that’s not true. The Republicans were wide awake, and they made choices to oppose regulation. They had bad ideas. He says, ‘I don’t want to fight the fights of the nineties,’ but I don’t see any alternative to refighting the fights of the nineties if we want to change things.”

Partisanship isn't always bad, and it's good to have a congressman who understands that, especially one who's a loudmouth.

Elizabeth Kolbert's article on Van Jones, "Greening the Ghetto," is too short but likewise interesting, mostly due to what feels like Kolbert's skepticism. Jones is a great salesman, everyone seems to agree, and some of the people have good points and others don't. Here's the opposition:

Meanwhile, the basic premise of Jones’s appeal—that combatting global warming is a good way to lift people out of poverty—is very much open to debate. Economists generally agree that the key to addressing climate change is to raise the cost of burning fossil fuels, either directly, through a carbon tax, or indirectly, through a cap-and-trade program. Low-income families are the ones that would be hardest hit by such a cost increase. They could be compensated through some kind of rebate, or a cut in other taxes; it’s been proposed, for example, that revenues from a carbon tax could be used to reduce the payroll tax. But it’s not at all clear that the number of jobs created by, say, an expanding solar industry would be greater than the number lost through, say, a shrinking coal-mining industry. Nor is it clear that a green economy would be any better at providing work for the chronically unemployed than our present, “gray” economy has been.

When I presented Jones’s arguments to Robert Stavins, a professor of business and government at Harvard who studies the economics of environmental regulation, he offered the following analogy: “Let’s say I want to have a dinner party. It’s important that I cook dinner, and I’d also like to take a shower before the guests arrive. You might think, Well, it would be really efficient for me to cook dinner in the shower. But it turns out that if I try that I’m not going to get very clean and it’s not going to be a very good dinner. And that is an illustration of the fact that it is not always best to try to address two challenges with what in the policy world we call a single-policy instrument.”

Matthew Kahn, an economics professor at U.C.L.A.’s Institute of the Environment, noted that public-works programs have a history of inefficiency. Why would an environmentally oriented public-works program be any different? “How do we make sure this isn’t just a giant green boondoggle?” he asked.

Economists may lean market philosophy en masse, and Matthew Kahn's point isn't necessarily relevant (is Jones talking about doing things the most efficient way? and what kind of efficiency are we talking about anyway? short-term or long-term?), but, you know, is it a floor wax or is it a dessert topping? The idea that green jobs will save our impoverished, our environment, and our economy is a rosy one, but it needs to have something more than a sales pitch behind it.

Labels: New Yorker

This week on This Week, the roundtable featured George Will, Peggy Noonan, Tom Friedman, and Newt Gingrich, i.e., three conservatives and a centrist Democrat, trying to tell Obama what to do. This is what we can look forward to for at least the next four years: the non-victorious party trying to make itself as relevant as possible. Not that we don't have to work together, but the previous eight years weren't very different. That group of four would have been just as likely to make up said table at that point. Are Democrats shy? Katrina Vanden Heuvel must have been busy this week.

Labels: politics, TV

Featuring two things we should have watched a long time ago and one TV show I find inspiring.

1) The Pianist: So it's good, but it's only middling Polanski, and it's not like it's the end-all be-all of Holocaust films. Brody's good too, but hardly revelatory--it's not his fault that the role is passive, but Szpilman isn't required to do much but react to people and doodle around on his leg with his hands, practicing the piano unconsciously at all times. He's at his best at the end, startled, bearded, and starving, darting from place to place like an animal, no doubt the bit with which Polanski had the most experience. There are a few amazing parts of the movie, and they're the parts for which one has to avert one's eyes, when you realize that Polanski is treating what happened like a horror movie, or maybe it's that his horror movies mirror what happened. The utter lack of humanity with which the German officers go about their business--dumping an old man in a wheelchair out of a window, running over people on the street--is fairly similar to the way Jason Voorhees goes about his, and the idea of shooting all of this from the perspective of the apartment across is very Polanski. There's also what seems to be a deep anger at the passivity of the Jews, most palpable in a scene where people are selected from a line, asked to lie face down, and shot one by one in the head, with a brief respite for the last one while the officer reloads his gun, which seems to go on forever and still he lies motionless and waits. I can't say what I would do, but it's an interesting scene. I'm still trying to work out the role of art in it. In some ways, it seems as though Szpilman survives because he's an artist, and not because it gives him any transferable skills, but because a few people appreciate what he does and think he shouldn't perish. But is it right for them to select him because of that? And does Polanski relate at all?

2) In the Bedroom: It's a little too long and a little too slow at times, demonstrating its short story origins, but the place from where it comes also provides it with advantages, as with the subtlety of the title. I didn't love it, but I liked it. The music is good. Wilkinson is great, especially when wordless. It might feel more tragic if Nick Stahl weren't such a creepy dude. It's a smart film, on the whole, and Todd Klein seems to have a gift for working with actors in quiet situations.

3) Parking Wars: Gosh, this show is addictive. It's kind of silly in the editing, but there are a number of great characters, and, as a whole, it's an interesting diagnosis of some problems with society, or perhaps humanity. It's rare that I feel great sympathy for the offenders. Even if they have a sob story on this day or that one, it's still pretty clear from the show that, you know, they could have paid their parking tickets (if they're getting booted) or paid better attention to the signs. People are constantly rushing out, yelling, "I was only parked there for 30 seconds," but it's not like the signs say, "30 seconds of leniency allowed." You know you're taking a chance when you park illegally, and if you get caught, so be it. The lack of respect that offenders have for these bureaucrats is incredible. The thing is: what if it weren't set up as a bureaucracy? Would that be more fair? Would it help to keep the streets of Philadelphia clear and traffic flowing smoothly? There's a reason it's a big, faceless bundle of rules with little flexibility. The amount people argue is huge, and the points they have very small. So you might as well not allow a whole lot of room for it.

Labels: movies, TV

I suppose one of the great advantages of having Toby Young, whose job description is less "food critic" and much more "professional asshole," as the new judge on Top Chef is that one gets to revel in the looks of scorn Tom Colicchio throws his way. I think it's pretty clear that Colicchio can't stand him, and rightfully so. Young spends so much time and energy thinking up insults that lose their sting by the time they finally make their way out of his mouth in their entirety that he doesn't seem to think about the food itself hardly at all, a severe sin in Saint Tom's book, as it should be. Even when Young commented, un-insultingly, on Jamie's scallop dish, explaining how the fennel had an anis-y taste, Colicchio shot daggers from his eyes, as if to say, "Nuh fucking duh, you wanky douche. That's what fennel tastes like. It's like commenting on the orangey taste of an orange." I pity Tom for his situation, but it at least compensates for the enforced presence of Young by the Bravo producers.

(Sidebar: Stefan may be a cock, but I think he's most consistently cooked stuff I'd want to eat.)

Labels: Top Chef

So I ended up going to bed at 11 last night, after practically falling asleep on the couch at various moments over the previous hour, meaning I had to find out the results of the BCS title game this morning, and I suppose I'm happy, but it's also nice not to watch Florida actually win. I hate myself for rooting for them, in a dark and conflicted way that shows the intersection of Elizabeth Wurtzel and college football, and every time I yelled in favor of a good tackle, I thought that I'd have to say the equivalent of a Hail Mary to make up for it. Still, you cannot have a team whose band comes out playing a show tune, even if it is an awesome and thematically relevant show tune, win the national championship.

Labels: football

But this is also, potentially, a tale of opportunity. I kind of want that sweatshirt. So would a million other hipsters. This is what Cafe Press is for.

Labels: fashion

There are some again at Shazhmmm, including more year-end lists. Don't you want more? I haven't even made my album and singles lists yet.

Labels: comics

Away from Her: Sarah Polley adapts an Alice Munto story. I think for a long time I kept mixing this up with Iris, considering their subject matter (age, Alzheimer's, lady writers), but I should have it cleared up now, as this isn't autobiographical, or at least no more so than most of Munro's stuff. Polley does a fine job adapting the story, which you can read here, for the screen, and I wanted to wait to write about it until I'd read (or most likely re-read--but I don't remember the first reading) it for comparison. I expected, of course, to prefer the story in all aspects. Sarah Polley is good, but Alice Munro is great. Also, material from which things are adapted tends to be superior to the adaptation, especially when it's literature to film, as so much tends to be lost from books. Maybe that's why it's wise to pick a short story and specifically a Munro one, as they contain enough detail and happenings for a film without necessitating you leave big things out and also not requiring you add big things in. So, sometimes I prefer the story, and sometimes I think the film may be better, or at least Polley understands Munro enough to amp up the Munrovianness of the story. For example, the story actually follows a strict chronological structure, which is unusual for Munro, so the movie decides to mix it up and tell it in a more dramatic way, in pieces. This is a good move. I could see Munro thinking that it's not what she intended--after all, if you're writing a story about the inevitable progression of Alzheimer's, the straight narrative line is more accurate and depressing--but I think it works really well. The movie's a bit more dramatic in general, and this isn't always a good thing. Or maybe it really is true that whatever version of something you experience first, you prefer. Julie Christie's really great in it, and everyone else a little less so, plus the role of Kristy, the nurse, is definitely bumped up into greater profundity. Polley knows enough, though, to take the best lines from the story into the movie intact, and her costumes and sets are smartly chosen, the latter full of the clear, bright Canadian light. It's an adaptation made with love, definitely.

Labels: literature, movies

So I would tell you to go read Patricia Marx's New Yorker article "Kosher Takeout," in which she follows two kosher inspectors around China (apparently, it's a burgeoning business) in her usual inimitable style, which involves making fun of everyone with whom she has contact, but it ain't, of course, online. What I was really trying to figure out, in the process of reading, is why she went to China in the first place. Some months ago, the magazine ran one of her shopping pieces, which focused on Shanghai, so did she go for that and get this out of it? Or the other way around? Or perhaps neither?

There's also a nice, but short, article on Will Oldham by still newish hire Kelefa Sanneh, which examines the idea of anticommercialism that doesn't want to be seen as such. I think. Oldham is an odd guy to get a handle on, and the concert Sanneh describes reminds me considerably of his appearance here in Athens a few years ago, during which the power went out and also everyone who happened to be near the swimming hole saw him in short shorts. Anyway, that's not my favorite thing I discovered. That's his trinity of heroes:

“Ornery” also happens to be the title of a profile of the country-music singer Merle Haggard that was published in this magazine, in 1990. To Oldham, Haggard, like R. Kelly, is a living hero. (In this trinity the third member is Leonard Cohen.) He says that fond memories of that story, which was written by Bryan Di Salvatore, persuaded him to coöperate for this story, although not without trepidation. In Di Salvatore’s piece, Haggard is discovered in the kitchen of his tour bus, with his feet stretched out under a table, “naked except for a plaid flannel shirt and après-ski boots.” Oldham says, “That’s, like, an ideal for me. That’s such a great life.”

I don't know about that, but that sure is a nice set of three.

Labels: New Yorker

And lord only knows what silliness is yet to be revealed. I agree with the thrust of this editorial, mostly, but I'm not optimistic.

Also, these Pilgrim's Pride layoffs are absolute balls.

Pilgrim's Pride is eliminating the night shift in the Athens plant as a cost-cutting measure, Atkinson said.

"Part of our plan is to improve the company's competitive position and return to profitability," Atkinson said.

The nation's largest chicken producer, Pilgrim's Pride has been hurt by high grain prices, an oversupply of chicken and a softening demand for poultry, Atkinson said. In addition, the Pittsburg, Texas-based company has been saddled by debt due to the acquisition of rival Gold Kist Inc. in 2007. That $1.3 billion acquisition now is the primary cause of its large debt load, analysts say.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Dec. 1 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas, claiming that as of Sept. 27, the company had $3.75 billion in assets and $2.72 billion in debts.

That is, more money in assets than in debts.

Labels: ABH, opining

Trespassing: On Dec. 27, deputy Timothy Nix met with a Bishop woman, who had become concerned over the actions of an Elberton man who wanted to befriend her. The woman said she met the 38-year-old man about three months ago through some mutual friends. About two weeks ago, he helped her move into her Bishop home. At that time, he told her he was developing some feelings for her, but she told him she only would like to be his friend. About 8:15 p.m. Dec. 26, the man sent her a text message saying he had a Christmas present for her and asked if could he bring it by. She told him she didn't feel good and not to come over. However, about 30 minutes later she and a friend who was visiting, heard a knock on the door. The two women looked outside and saw the man on the front porch. They did not answer the door and about 15 minutes later they saw him leave on foot. They left shortly after this, but returned to the house about 3 a.m. The woman said she found a door forced open and inside found where someone had smoked cigarettes and drank several cans of Budweiser. They also found a note from the man saying, "Sorry about your door. I'll fix it. Couldn't get in touch w/ no one." The woman said she now is afraid of the man and doesn't want him at her home.

Also, do you like me? Check one, yes or no.

Dispute: On Dec. 24, police were called to a domestic dispute on Jeremy Drive, where an 18-year-old man became irate after he received a gift card as a Christmas gift. He was asked to leave the residence.

See? They are pussying out.

Theft: On Dec. 25, a clerk at the Kangaroo on Georgia Highway 72, Comer, reported that a man came into the store and stole a box of Tide detergent and box of Bounce fabric softener. The suspect had been barred from the store because of stealing in the past. The 31-year-old suspect could not be found.

Did y'all check the laundromat?

Oconee. Madison.

Labels: police blotter

Clear influence. This is not nearly as bats as it could be, though.

Labels: advertising

I'm not really a big fan of sin taxes, for the very reason that they kind of seek to label things as sins. So this suggestion that we create a tax on visitors to strip clubs, while it would provide a needed source of state revenue, isn't really a fair one. Why not tax those attending church? Why not tax those attending Little League games? Why not tax you more on pork than on other meats? (Also, please note somewhat ironic name of involved congressman.)

Fred Willard's going to be in town.

Labels: ABH, opining

One I forgot and one new viewing.

1) In Bruges: So Jared kind of convinced me that it wasn't quite as good as I thought it was initially, that its methods of late-1990s Tarantino imitation aren't so special, that it peters out at the end, that it thinks it's considerably cleverer than it actually is, and I think he's right, but the movie still has some showy charms. For one thing, it is funny, and for another, it's got some wonderful actors in Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, and it always makes me happy to see the latter living up to his potential, something I think I've only seen him do with comedy so far. The dialogue is quick, and while it may overestimate itself, it's still smart and cruel. And it all kind of makes me want to go to Bruges, which I'd guess has seen its tourism jump a bunch since the film came out. I'd rewatch it, definitely, especially if it were on cable, especially as I harbor suspicions that it might be about Purgatory or something of the sort.

2) Burn After Reading: One of Los Bros Coens lesser works, to be sure, but a wonderfully polished little thing and, I suspect, one that will be looked back on with an even better attitude. It's a sharp joke on all the thrillers of paranoia we've been experiencing over the past decade in film, making its point even in the electronic noise with which text scrolls across the screen and the slowly zooming shots from high perspective that open the film. Sure, they cast George Clooney because they wanted to see him play an idiot again, but they also cast him because they wanted to assemble the sort of cast that wouldn't necessarily be automatically Coen. If you just saw the list of people in the movie, you could totally mistake it for a serious spy thriller (one with a small character role for Frances McDormand). So this is what happens when idiots see far too many of those movies (a classic Coen device--see, for example, the Dude attempting to shade a piece of scrap paper to discover what piece of information was written on it, only to discover a drawing of a penis). The pacing is off, and it ends too abruptly, but everyone is good and funny, especially Malkovich, and it's all very entertaining.

Labels: movies

Okay, so the expansion of media to the point where you can't just get the weather on a website without being bombarded with travel planning tips and local headlines and so on sort of sucks. But then sometimes it sort of doesn't.

Labels: kitty

I don't think I like this whole "subscribe to the online version of the New Yorker" thing. All the fiction used to be posted for free, and now it seems to be wandering over into the pay section. And it's not that I can't read it. I subscribe, after all. But I can't link it, and doesn't literature want to be disseminated? This is mostly pissy talk because I can't link either the Alice Munro or the Colson Whitehead story from the winter fiction two-week issue that was out over Xmas etc., which are the best two examples of short fiction in there. Arg. The two that do appear on the website, Roberto Bolano's "Meeting with Enrique Lihn" and Donald Antrim's "Another Manhattan," aren't particularly good. Both those dudes are uneven, in my brief experience, while Munro is solid, and it was a particularly wonderful story of hers.

I can link the Zadie Smith personal history piece, on her father's death and her family's sense of humor, which contains this lovely bit that is about neither of those bigger things:

We had been tight as thieves as children, but I’d barely seen him since Harvey died, and I sensed us settling into the attenuated relations of adult siblings, a new formal distance, always slightly abashed, for there seems no clear way, in adult life, to do justice to the intimacy of childhood. I remember being scandalized, as a child, at how rarely our parents spoke to their siblings. How was it possible? How did it happen? Then it happens to you.

This serves as an example of what I like so much in Smith. She has a very clear vision of relationships, especially family relationships, the way we treat each other when we are blood and how much less close we can be, at times, than people who choose each other's company. And it makes me miss my sister.

Also, you should read Dana Goodyear's piece on the rise of the cell-phone novel in Japan, despite this bit:

Some feared that the cell-phone novel augured the end of Japanese literature. “Everyone in publishing received this as an enormous shock to the system, and wondered, What is happening here?” Mikio Funayama, the editor of Bungakukai, a respected monthly literary journal, told me. “The author’s name is rarely revealed, the titles are very generic, the depiction of individuals, the locations—it’s very comfortable, exceedingly easy to empathize with,” he said. “Any high-school girl can imagine that this experience is just two steps from her own. But this kind of empathy is largely different from the emotive response—the life-changing event—that reading a great novel can bring about. One tells you what you already know. Literature has the power to change the way you think.” For the January, 2008, issue of Bungakukai, Funayama assembled a panel to answer the question “Will the cell-phone novel kill ‘the author’?” He took some comfort in the panel’s conclusion: the novels aren’t literature at all but the offspring of an oral tradition originating with mawkish Edo-period marionette shows and extending to vapid J-pop love ballads. “The Japanese have long been attracted to these turgid narratives,” he said. “It’s not a question of literature being above it. It’s just—it’s Pynchon versus Tarantino. Most people have a fair understanding of the difference.”

I'm not saying there is no difference, but I doubt the point is that they work in different genres.

Labels: New Yorker

Here is a review of a collection of little punk-rock band Cause Co-Motion's singles and EPs, which are very short and pretty enjoyable.

Also, the year-end wrap-up of Grub Notes, which I don't think I've linked yet and which contains a best-of of sorts, though not in name.

Also also: I'm sleepy being up this early. Worst part of vacation is readjusting.

Labels: food, music, writing

This is at least most of the stuff I watched over the break.

1) Ghost Town: Peters out into sentimentality and silliness toward the end (which is a disappointment in some ways), but still has some nice aspects and, duh, Ricky Gervais, who manages to make his character both incredibly unappealing and utterly identifiable-with, for those of us who have problems with humanity as exemplified in the individual. I wish it were smarter, and the central conceit isn't even pursued all that much, but there are good things about it.

2) Still Life: Proof that I can, in fact, knit and watch a movie with subtitles and a language I don't speak even a little at the same time, provided that movie is mostly pretty pictures of landscapes and very little and very slow talking. Those landscapes are indeed beautiful, and there is something sad and compelling in the film's portrait of modern Chinese life (in which industry overtakes everything else, shown through, for example, migrant workers hired to demolish buildings located below the future waterline of the Three Gorges Dam), but in the end, it's too painterly and slow to engage my interest all that much.

3) Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: The songs are pretty good, and John C. Reilly is quite committed, but it's too broad in its comedy and, really, too faithful to Walk the Line, which has its own biopic flaws but remains, in the end, a fairly good movie. It's like spending a great deal of effort making fun of No Country for Old Men or something--it can be done, but there's so much to mock that's less competent to begin with. Jonah Hill, as is often the case, is a bright spot.

4) Big Nothing: Any interest in seeing Simon Pegg play an American? Not really? This is kind of that late 1990s noir-comedy crime drama thing, but fairly light-hearted and decently well put together. It's not great by any standard, but it's appealing enough and sometimes funny.

5) Nicholas Nickleby: My guess is that this isn't the strongest of Dickens's novels, as the plot is a bit simplistic in its good v evil depiction, but this movie is just cozy as all fuck, jam-packed with wonderful English actors (and a few other nationalities) who get to have fun with their character turns and plenty of Victoriany fireplaces and snowflakes. Nathan Lane and Barry Humphries(in lady form) are particularly great, as is Jamie Bell. Nicely timed, TV-wise, as far as coinciding with hard economic times and villainous promoters of speculation in the stock market.

6) Two Weeks Notice: Execrable. Let me tell you one thing about this movie. Sandra Bullock's character is a compulsive eater when under stress. At a picnic, she eats far too many chili dogs, then suffers abdominal difficulties of an urgent nature while on the road with Hugh Grant. As they're stuck in traffic, there's nowhere to go but to the facilities of a nearby RV, which Grant's character gallantly commandeers. I think it's kind of a major plot point, this happening, and maybe it's supposed to mean that you should never be embarrassed around the object of your amours, but dear god, perhaps you should be, especially if you haven't even confessed those tender feelings yet. Please don't watch this movie.

7) Backdraft: Badly dated in some ways, but the effects, which I understand were a major reason to see the movie, aren't quite so much. The fires still look cool. You would be advised to skip over much of the human drama, though, which is silly and clunky and contrived. De Niro is good, but not used very much, and ditto for Donald Sutherland, in a nice little character role. I think perhaps it's a much better movie if you are Scots-Irish or sympathetic with those who are, or if you have a great deal of love for cocky dudes who put themselves in harm's way continually yet seem not to make the appropriate preparations for their families. If you don't think Ron Howard's improved as a director, you should really watch this again.

8) Man on Wire: I have conflicted feelings about this film, which provokes both a great sense of wonder (intended) and a sense that something is missing at the core (not). I don't know what it is, exactly, that I want to be there that is not. Maybe it's a little too magical at times? The reenactments are well done, and the cinematic touches throughout nicely incorporated, but it all feels a little like inferior Errol Morris. Only Errol Morris hasn't ever, I'm pretty sure, showed a stock image of a plane taking off when someone talks about a plane taking off. The historical footage of Petit and friends running around a field in France, planning the wire walk and doing somersaults in amazing, bright-colored jumpsuits and overalls, is maybe the best stuff in the movie. It's very good, but it's lacking the kind of greatness Petit himself possesses.

9) The Brave One: I guess I assumed I would like this better than The Accused--I like revenge movies and I like Neil Jordan, despite his efforts to make me not--but it turned out to be pretty weak, plus its plot is fairly disturbing at the end, and not in a good way. The initial attack, while it strives for realism, is just a disjointed mess, and there's some extremely weird intercutting between Foster and her fiance being treated at the hospital and their last sexual encounter. She plays traumatized well, of course, but the way everything plays out and her extremely serious conversations with Terrence Howard are just... silly.

10) What's Up, Doc?: My favorite thing we watched over the vacation. Peter Bogdanovich isn't just a fey goofball with an ascot, no matter how he's come off in his acting roles of late. He's a dedicated nostalgist with a light touch, and there are very few movies in color that manage to capture the atmosphere of 1930s screwball comedy at all, let alone so darn well. It's all beautifully choreographed, and even the touch of having Ryan O'Neal pop some professorial glasses on the bridge of his perfect nose, while remaining thoroughly hunky otherwise, is a classic one of the genre, from Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby to Gary Cooper in Ball of Fire. The movie also contains a chase scene that is damn incredible and hilarious, in both cases because it's so breathtaking and audacious. Also, it's stupid of me to think I don't like Babs Streisand. Sometimes I do, and this is a wonderful role for her.

11) Syriana: Clooney's great in his fatness, moving with an entirely different stride (although it's sad to me that he leaves uneaten fries on his plate). It's as though the fatness has gotten everywhere, even into his soft hands, and it's a great transformation. Everyone else is merely good, and the movie tries to contain too much in too small a space, meaning not that you have to work hard as a viewer (not a problem) but that things feel unexamined or shunted off to the side. Gaghan needs either a bigger budget or a firmer editorial eye. Worth the watching, though.

Also: Project Runway season 4 (the second best I've seen, after season 1, and I'm now missing only season 3), tons of Made (always a pleasure, despite its contrivances and adherence to gender roles), the two-hour 24 movie (in preparation for the new season--gosh, it's awfully down on the UN), the rest of True Blood (so silly but so darn watchable), and more, including football.

Labels: movies, TV

Young people, heed this advice: Never marry someone who doesn't love the movies you love. Sooner or later, that person will not love you.

Labels: advice, movies

So these are all the things I was working on in December, and maybe a little in November. A scarf for my stepmom, in a seafoam pattern and a soft gray yarn:



A sort-of formal head sleeve for my 21-year-old brother-in-law, who usually cuts the sleeves off T-shirts and wears them on his head, made with Knit Picks Swish DK:



A pair of mock-croc socks for my mom, made with Knit Picks Palette in Ivy and converted from double-pointed directions to magic loop.



And a pair of fingerless gloves (the classic endpaper mitts) for my sister, which I finished just a few days ago (also in Knit Picks Palette, with masala and teal), and I hope aren't too tight.



I also made a pair of mittens for my now three-year-old little pal but forgot to photograph them. They weren't super exciting, but I did learn to make I cord.

So, basically, I about knit my fingers off over the past month, but the results were pretty good. Socks and colorwork are impressive, and they're fun to knit. There was some cursing involved, but it was minimal.

Also, I finally uploaded all my stuffs to Ravelry. Whew.

Labels: knitting

Damage: On Dec. 19, deputy Chad Parr was dispatched to the parking lot of Oconee County High School, where someone had spray painted an expletive and drew pictures of a man's sexual parts on the pavement. Someone also drove a vehicle across a soccer field causing damage, the cost of which was was not estimated at the time of the report. Three cans of white hairspray, which were purchased at Party City in Athens, were found at the scene.

Rough economic times indeed.

Harassment: On Dec. 19, Cpl. Bryan Yoder met with a Brittain Estates Drive man, who said a woman called his house about 8:30 p.m., but he couldn't understand her foreign accent. He told her she had the wrong number and he hung up. She called back five minutes later and told him in clear English, "I'll blow your ---- off." She then hung up.

Five minutes is what it takes to learn a phrase phonetically.

Arrests: On Dec. 17, deputy Gary Floyd and Lt. Burl Johnson responded to a report of a fight outside Diamond Hill Grocery. When the deputies arrived, some of the people still were arguing and were separated by the deputies. Witnesses said [Jim Stark], 17, had punched [Mallory Knox], 22, of Veterans Drive, Danielsville, in the mouth. Deputies were told a group of women were pulling up their shirts and showing off their breasts, when the women began to fight. The fight moved into the nearby trailer park where two men, ages 47 and 49, went out to break up the fight. However, one of the men had some of his teeth knocked out and the other was a cut on his head. [Stark], [Knox], [Cherry Darling], 19, and [Candy Darling], 39, both who lived at the location, all were charged with affray.

There is nearly a novel here.

Damage: On Dec. 21, deputy Michael Free met with a resident of Black Creek Church Road, Danielsville, who said she went to her car this morning and found someone had scratched "I love you" into the car body. The woman said she never heard anything during the night and had no idea who might have caused the damage.

Well, obviously someone who loves her...


Oconee. Madison.

Labels: police blotter