Jamknife

Spreading My Wings

2010-12-08T15:52:00.000-08:00

I'm very excited to reveal that on Monday, December 13th, I'll be starting a new job at Twitter. I'll be a software engineer on the Storage team, helping build large-scale, durable systems to store the large amounts of data Twitter handles daily.

When I resigned from Google, back in May, my plan was to work on various projects of my own, including a travel-related website (http://www.skyjinks.com) and, most importantly, a screenplay. But after a few months of self-employment I realized that I missed working with great people. I also noticed that having a lot of time to devote to these projects was not helping me get them done any faster. In fact my productivity took a sharp nosedive. Since only a fool would stick to a plan that isn't working, I decided to change tack and apply for a job. And I'm particularly happy that this job is at Twitter.

Being around great people was one of my main criteria in deciding where I wanted to apply. And I've always had high regard for Twitter on this count. I know many Twitter employees from my past life, and every single one of them is someone I like, respect and would love to work with again. And the people I've newly met there during the recruiting process have been just as impressive. The flock, as Twitter employees are collectively known, are friendly, talented and motivated. I can't wait to start working with them.

What, you ask, of my other projects? Well, that's what nights and weekends are for. The screenplay, in particular, will still receive significant attention. It has to - I have to deliver it to the producer sooner or later. But, as Lucille Ball once said, "If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it." And it turns out that I'm happiest when I'm busy.

So put me to work, Twitter!

Golden Gate Bridge Tower Tour!

2010-07-15T18:07:00.000-07:00

Today I got to do something very, very few people will ever get to do: climb up to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge!!

I'll mention right now that I am not allowed to post photos from the tour, but I'll be happy to email some to you on request. It'll be worth it. The views are absolutely unique!

How did I get to do this, you ask? Well, an acquaintance of mine who works for the bridge set it up as a huge favor. Unfortunately it's not available to the general public.

There was some chance the tour would be canceled due to fog. Here in Noe Valley (alright, fine, The Castro) it was sunny and warm, without a cloud in the sky. But the bridge apparently has weather of its own, due to it straddling the tumultuous meeting of ocean and bay. However the tower cameras confirmed that there was enough visibility to justify a tour, so up we went.

Here's how it all went down: I arrived at the administration building on the west side of the toll plaza, where I met the other visitor (only two can go up at one time) and our awesome guide. She gave each of us a hard hat and a waiver. After signing my life away, and confirming that I am neither claustrophobic nor agoraphobic, we got into the back of a little bridge cart, and our guide drove us onto the east side walkway. It was slow going, honking along the way at pedestrians, bikers and tourists. Eventually we arrived at the south tower, which was less fogged-in than the north tower.

If you run or bike the bridge you've probably been curious about the service hatches at the foot of each tower. It was a fun moment when the guide whipped out a key, unlocked the hatch, and we walked into the base of the tower, leaving the jealous tourists outside.

Inside the hatch is an elevator the size of a small phone booth. This is where not being claustrophobic came in handy. As the three of us rode up in proximity usually reserved for couples on their wedding night, our guide explained that this was the original elevator built when the bridge was constructed in the 1930s. It took a full 5 minutes to ride the 500 feet to the top.

Once out of the elevator, you climb up a couple of steel ladders, eventually emerging out of a very narrow hatch onto the platform at the very top of the tower. Words cannot describe how awesome this is. As you emerge your eyes are immediately drawn down the suspension cables to the road bed, where you can watch tiny little cars weave their way through traffic.

The views, as you'd expect, are beyond outstanding. We were above the fog, which rolled in and burned out as we watched. I'd had no idea fog was so dynamic. The city side was more heavily fogged in, but we got some great glimpses of downtown and of Sutro tower. The views of Marin were clearer, but it was looking down onto the bridge itself and the surrounding bay that provided the most unique and spectacular sights.

Besides the views, strolling around the top of the tower is an experience in its own right. There's something surreal about being up there, next to the huge communications dishes, walking around to the outside of the turrets to explore new camera angles. We're used to seeing the top of the tower as tiny and the bottom as huge. Having that sense of scale inverted was unique and wonderful. Most of all, it was a trip just to be somewhere you're not really meant to be, somewhere that only a relative handful of people will ever have the good fortune to visit.

After 15 minutes of ooh, aahs and shutter clicks, we headed back down the ladders, down the elevator, out onto the walkway and back to normality.

What a rush!

Fava Bean Stew Recipe

2010-06-21T13:54:00.001-07:00

My friend Darya, purveyor of top food blog SummerTomato graciously allowed me another guest post, this time about fava beans. (you may remember my previous post).

The post, apart from extolling the virtues of favas, includes a fantastic recipe for Greek fava bean stew, that happens to be one of my favorite dishes and is also really easy to make.

See the full post here. Enjoy!

You Say You Want a Revolution

2010-05-19T01:41:00.000-07:00

At Miami International, the immigration officer asked me what countries I'd been to on my trip.

"Just Cuba", I answered, trying to sound nonchalant.

"How's Castro?" he asked with a smile. And with that I was through. No questioning, no extra documentation, no cavity search. Admittedly I was in Cuba legally, on a mission to the Jewish community. But I was still expecting a bit more of a grilling than that. I guess they figured that anyone in Cuba illegally wouldn't be so forthcoming about admitting it.

I'd flown out from Miami a week earlier, to Santiago de Cuba, the 2nd-largest city on the island. I was traveling with a group from the San Francisco Jewish Community Center, to visit and assist Cuba's 1500 Jews. They don't face any particular discrimination, but life on the island is tough for everyone, and many families get by on whatever their friends and families in the US bring them.

The Jewish community in Santiago de Cuba is tiny - 65 individuals who struggle to keep their culture alive. They were very appreciative of our visit.

Of course, aside from visiting the Jewish communities, we had plenty of time to tour the country... In Santiago we visited the famous San Juan hill, where Teddy Roosevelt charged the Spanish line in 1898, Jose Marti's tomb, and the Castillo del Morro, an old fortress on the bay.

The Castillo del Morro in Santiago

After two days in Santiago we flew on to Havana.

Visually, Havana remains frozen in the 1950s - the buildings and, especially, the cars. Everywhere you look, lovingly maintained, pristine old Chevys and Fords trundle along beside gorgeous old buildings, some newly restored, but many crumbling and peeling. Noticeable is the complete lack of branded storefronts - no 7-Elevens, no fast food. And it's delightful. I fear the day when Cuba liberalizes its economy and the US lifts the embargo, if it means golden arches on every corner.

A gorgeous old building near

Parque Central, Havana

That said, after a week of eating Cuban food, I'd have considered a Big Mac if one were on offer. The delicious concoctions served in Cuban restaurants in the US bears no resemblance to the bland rice-and-bean plates that are ubiquitous in Cuba. It's not just that they can't get the ingredients, it's that, apparently, the Cuban cuisine we know in the US was invented here. Those dishes are unheard of in Cuba, much like General Tso's chicken in China...

1950s wheels

We visited the old city of Habana Vieja, the monuments of Centro Habana and the newer neighborhoods of Vedado and Miramar. We got to tour Hemingway's villa, a cigar factory and many other great places. And, of course, the several Jewish communities in the city. I even managed to get a morning of diving in, at the Marina Hemingway.

Lovely as Cuba is, you can't escape the chronic poverty. The average salary in Cuba is around $30 a month. Life is tough for most people, a result of the pointless and cruel US embargo, and a regime incapable of making the most of the few resources that are available.

Cubans are very proud of their country, and most support Castro and the revolution, even if they grumble about shortages and, when they dare, their lack of freedom. Images of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are everywhere, so it's easy to dismiss Fidel's popularity as the product of 50 years of propaganda. But there's more to it than that. For all its many faults, the regime has succeeded, at least, in providing basic housing, basic food, good education and excellent health care to every Cuban. No one is homeless and no one is hungry. Everyone goes to school, and life expectancy and infant mortality rates are on a par with those in the US.

Che is everywhere

The comparison locals make is not to Western-style democracies, but to the US-supported Batista regime, which was far worse than the current government. There are surely better ways to achieve social justice, and the lack of political or personal freedom in Cuba is inexcusable, but it is too simplistic to assume that people would rise en masse against the regime if they could.

Before I traveled to Cuba I was pretty sure that the US embargo is ridiculous. Having been there and seen its effects close up, I can now say it with certainty. The embargo is childish, vindictive and cruel. It has forced even greater hardship on 11 million people who have known little else throughout their history, and it has not even achieved its desired effect. All it has done is push Castro first into the arms of the Soviets and now into the arms of China and Venezuela.

In fact, despite that fact that I don't smoke cigars, and don't know anyone who does, I was sorely tempted to bring back a box of Cohibas, simply because the US government forbade me to. The threat of a large fine prevented me from following through, although, to be honest, I was unlikely to have been caught. More to the point, I would have spent a ton of money on a product that was likely to have dried up and fallen apart in the back of my closet a couple of years from now...

When it comes to almost every other totalitarian government in the world, including many far worse than the Cuban regime, such as Saudi Arabia, the US ostensibly believes that engagement and trade are the right way to export freedom. This should hold equally for Cuba. Their problem is that instead of oil they have a large group of angry exiles concentrated in a swing state. But if the US is ever to conduct a foreign policy based on principle rather than expediency, it should start by lifting the embargo on Cuba.

My SummerTomato Guest Post: 6 Reasons to Eat More Sardines

2010-04-19T23:16:00.001-07:00

Check out my guest post on popular food blog Summer Tomato!

http://summertomato.com/6-reasons-to-eat-more-sardines/

A few days ago we were told the last sardine cannery in the US closed its doors for good. A symbol, so the story goes, of how far sardines–once a staple of working-class pantries across the nation–have fallen out of favor with the American palate.

But if you get past the bad “last sardine factory canned” puns, this narrative starts to seem, ahem, fishy. Because, in fact, the sardine is like Bad Company, alive, well and making a comeback. (Continue on summertomato.com)

Epic

2010-04-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

You never know how a 10-year band reunion tour is going to go.

Bands you liked are usually still good 5 years after their peak. That's just a hiatus really. And a bunch of old fogies that cobble together a reunion tour after 20 years of "side projects" are usually just cashing in on a new generation of suckers and are predictably crap (Simon and Garfunkel being the happy exception).

But 10 years after the high point is the unpredictable border line between credible artistry and cynical profit-taking. For every awesome 90s band tour (Pixies, Jane's Addiction) there seems to be a disappointingly mediocre one (The Cure).

So when I heard that one of my favorite bands, Faith No More, were reforming for a tour I was incredibly excited, but also apprehensive. I had seen them live in 1995 and 1997, and those are still among the best shows I've ever seen. Could they live up to their own high standards? The answer, as I happily discovered last night, is "hell yeah!" And also "wow".

Mike Patton's voice has lost none of its range and charisma, and the band can still pound out a song with that combination of abandon and precision that Faith No More always excelled at.

They opened with a sincere cover of "Reunited" by Peaches and Herb, reminding the audience of how well FNM cover ballads without being ironic (think "Easy", "Midnight Cowboy"). We got a few more tastes of this later in the show - A cover of "Ben" by Michael Jackson (Patton pulls off a superb MJ pastiche), another of the theme from "Chariots of Fire", and even a version of "Poker Face" sounded genuine despite beats that should have sent Lady Gaga running for shelter.

But we were soon onto favorites too numerous to list, such as a great rendition of "Land of Sunshine" and a blistering romp through "Midlife Crisis", reminding us that, despite it being so overplayed back in the 90s, it's a truly excellent song. "Ashes to Ashes", a favorite from their last album, sounded just as fresh as it did back then, as did crossover hit "Epic". But a true surprise was saved for the encore, when Chuck Mosley went on stage to sing a few songs (including "We Care a Lot") from his days in the band. A classy move by all parties, considering the past acrimony.

To sum up: Faith No More have still got it, and then some. See them if you can.

Book Review: The Alchemist

2009-12-02T12:30:00.001-08:00

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

My rating: 1 of 5 stars
There are two ways to look at The Alchemist: as a work of literature and as a moral fable. Unfortunately, and despite its astonishing popularity, it doesn't score well on either count.

I won't bore you with the plot details, but in a nutshell: Santiago the Spanish shepherd boy leaves his known life behind to search for his "Personal Legend" in the deserts of north Africa. En route he encounters various characters, such as the titular Alchemist, who help him on his way, if a rambling series of cliches masquerading as philosophical wisdom can be considered helpful.

As a work of literature, it's trite, redundant and its dramatic elements are very weak. Instead of a protagonist who must grow, change, learn or overcome obstacles to achieve a goal we have one who knows, or is given, the answer to every dilemma as soon as it's posed, and who is basically led by the nose directly to his target by no less an authority than God himself, thinly disguised as "the Universe". No dramatic tension is allowed to linger for more than half a page before being forcibly resolved.

The Alchemist has been compared to The Little Prince. But whereas the latter's simplicity is charming, the former's is merely infantilizing. In Saint-Exupéry's incomparably superior novella the lessons are hard-earned. In The Alchemist, they are spoon-fed to the characters and to the reader in the manner of a church sermon, using mystical psychobabble terms like "The Soul of the World", "Master Work", and of course "Personal Legend".

This patronizingly religious aspect of The Alchemist illustrates its even more comprehensive failure, that as a moral fable. The Little Prince draws its broadly-sketched caricatures with charm and empathy: we are supposed to learn from the king, the lamplighter and so on, but we are not supposed to despise them. The Alchemist, however, can scarcely contain its disdain for those who don't drop everything to follow their so-called Personal Legend.

As an example, I give you this insidious passage:

The old man pointed to a baker standing in his shop window at one corner of the plaza. “When he was a child, that man wanted to travel, too. But he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside. When he’s an old man, he’s going to spend a month in Africa. He never realized that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”

“He should have decided to become a shepherd,” the boy said.

“Well, he thought about that,” the old man said. “But bakers are more important people than shepherds. Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open. Parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds.” “In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own Personal Legends.”

Get it? A hardworking man who puts bread on people's plates and supports his own family with dignity, is now worthy of nothing but pity and disdain because he didn't follow a childhood dream.

And then there's this brazen claim:

"Everyone believes the world's greatest lie..." says the mysterious old man.

"What is the world's greatest lie?" the little boy asks.

The old man replies, "It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie."

Coelho fails to acknowledge that this pursuit of "Personal Legend" is a plaything of the privileged few. How does a 14 year old boy living hand-to-mouth in an Indonesian sweatshop follow his dream? How does he even articulate one? In what way can a rape survivor in a Darfur refugee camp, follow her "Personal Legend"? Her "Legend" is not to travel or find treasure. It is to have her dead family back. It's to undo her terrible violation. It is, in short, tragic and impossible.

The lives of most of humanity, are to a great degree controlled by fate. Their life is a struggle to survive. The real universe does not conspire to help people achieve their legend. Rather, it throws insurmountable obstacles across their paths. Yet Coelho is telling every downtrodden person in the world that their plight is due to their own spiritual failure, and that to see the world as it is, without the rose-tinted spectacles of empty truisms, is "the world's greatest lie". The Alchemist sneers with the certainty of a true believer at those whose priorities are hardscrabble rather than mystical. It is the well-known condescension of the religious absolutist to the unbeliever: I am right, and you are unworthy.

There is much to criticize, also, in The Alchemist's blatant sexism, where men are supposed to drop everything in search of their dreams, while abandoned women are supposed to feel privileged to pine for such men. And if you're expecting the treasure that the shepherd boy eventually finds to be metaphorical, prepare for disappointment. Turns out, it was all about money.

In the end, The Alchemist is morally deficient nearly to the point of outright evil. Stripped of the mystical mumbo jumbo, The Alchemist is almost Ayn Randian in the selfishness of its absolute commandment: follow your own personal destiny, whatever it is, whatever the cost to you or to others. Although, in a way, it's actually more slavish than selfish. At least in Ayn Rand's world, you master your destiny. In Coelho's world of religious prostration, your destiny masters you.

View all my reviews >>

Two-Way Street

2009-11-10T23:50:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I attended the first J Street conference in Washington DC. Arriving at the hotel, I figured I'd see right-wing protesters, but there was only one sad eccentric wearing a yarmulka and a swastika. The organizers expected 1000 attendees, but 1500 showed up, leading to conference rooms bursting at the seams, a raucous atmosphere and a lot of fun. Especially at the evening reception. Few things are more entertaining that watching Jewish political dorks trying to get their groove on the dance floor.

The plenary sessions included a keynote speech by Gen. Jim Jones, President Obama's National Security Adviser, a panel with members of Congress of both parties and another with several senior current and former Israeli politicians. Smaller breakout sessions touched on such topics as the Geneva accords, US interests in the region, the settlements, NGOs in Israel/Palestine, civil society in Israel, human rights in the occupied territories, Palestinian perspectives on the peace process, and, most significantly, what it means to be pro-Israel.

Perhaps the most fascinating session was an eloquent townhall debate between J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami and Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism. Yoffie, a mainstream yet reliably liberal voice, defended Israel's actions in the Gaza war, while asserting his support for the two-state solution and the need for Israel to provide full civil and human rights to all those who live within its borders. He also made a questionable distinction between "ideological" settlements east of the security wall and the settlement blocs west of the wall, the so-called "suburbs of Jerusalem". Ben-Ami responded by pointing out their many areas of policy agreement, while calling for a full settlement freeze and criticizing Israel's assault on Gaza as unwise, excessive and disproportionate to the threat being countered. Personally, I agree with Ben-Ami. Indeed, it seems to me that the knee-jerk defenses of Israel's actions in Gaza often stem more from cognitive dissonance than from genuine justification. Others may feel differently. But let's agree at least that neither position is beyond the pale.

The consensus at the conference, even among the critics of J Street who were invited to speak, was that any robust pro-Israel stance must support the two tenets of Zionism: that Israel must be a Jewish state, and a democratic state. And all agreed that this requires a two-state solution. Indeed, if you accept those premises then you'd be giving the rules of logic a run for their money by suggesting any other policy. And once you accept the two-state solution, its parameters are fairly clear: E.g., no settlements on the one hand, and no right of return on the other. J Street diverges from its critics primarily over the Gaza war and how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions, but even on these issues J Street's positions are nuanced and reasoned, even if you happen to disagree with them.

There are also differing points of view on J Street's position that the US must play a robust role in the peace process, with the traditional AIPAC stance being that the US role should be limited to supporting Israeli positions. Again, I agree with J Street on this one. Let's not forget that engaged US administrations helped bring about the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, while an Israeli government left to its own devices, with passive American support, could do no better than the disastrous Gaza disengagement. Furthermore, supporters of J Street, and, for that matter, AIPAC, are American citizens first and foremost. What kind of politics is it to suggest to your own government that their policy in a region should be dictated exclusively by the government of another country, albeit a close ally? In the end, the US must act in its own interests in the Middle East.

It emerges, therefore, that, with a few quibbles, the policy positions J Street endorses are within the boundaries of mainstream Israeli, and American, politics. The two-state solution is the official policy of the governments of the US, the Palestinians and Israel. It is widely accepted in Israel from Likud leftwards, is supported by a large majority of US Jews and is essentially endorsed by AIPAC. Other positions may be more controversial, but are still within the confines of the "Zionist" political discourse in Israel. Israeli attendees at the conference included Ami Ayalon, Amir Peretz, Meir Shitreet, and other MKs from Kadima, Labor and Meretz. Congratulatory letters were sent by opposition leader Tzipi Livni and President Shimon Peres. None of these people could reasonably be accused of not being pro-Israel.

Notably absent from the conference, however, was Israel's ambassador to the US, or any other Israeli government representative. While members of the coalition Labour party spoke at the conference, the official stance of the Israeli government was one of disdain, alleging that some of J Street's position endanger Israel. Of course there's no need to take this overheated rhetoric too seriously. Accusing anyone you disagree with of destroying the country is par for the course in Israeli politics. the inflammatory rhetoric about J Street not being pro-Israel stems more from the threat J Street presents to entrenched interests than to any rational analysis of the issues.

What should be considered seriously, though, is the foolishness of the Israeli government's refusal to engage with its friendly critics. J Street is here to stay, and here's why. The American Jewish community is overwhelmingly liberal. They voted for President Obama in numbers exceeded only by those in the African-American community. And younger Americans also voted for Obama by large margins. This overwhelming support for liberal politics, while primarily domestically oriented, does influence how people think about the Middle East.

Furthermore, younger American Jews don't have the same sort of relationship with Israel that their parents do. The older generation sees Israel in emotional, almost mystical terms, and they back their allegiance up with political clout and donations. Many see Israel as a second nationality, and they take criticism of Israel very personally. Not because they would necessarily disagree with the criticism if they looked at it dispassionately, but because, as one member of Congress put it, "Israel is put upon by everyone, so at least we should always defend it".

Younger, politically active American Jews tend to see Israel very differently. They like Israel, and feel an emotional connection, especially those who've been on Birthright trips, but their identity as Jews is far less tied into Israel than that of their parents. The primary Jewish orientation, if any, of activists of the younger generation is not Israel but Tikkun Olam. Across the country, young Jews are synthesizing their Jewish identity and progressive politics into social and political activism. They increasingly view unquestioning support for Israel as incompatible with their values, and their national identity is overwhelmingly American. As such, they support active US engagement in the peace process for the simple reason that it is in America's interest. And they form their opinions on Israel not according to what Israeli government propaganda tells them but according to their own view of events and their own moral compass. These opinions may or may not concur with specific policies that J Street currently holds. That's not really the point. J Street represents a larger trend, of a community taking an active role in forming its political identity.

Extrapolate these trends 20-30 years into the future and you get a Jewish community that wants a connection with Israel, but only if that connection is a two-way street. If Israel says, in effect, "we want your political support, and your donations, but we're not interested in your opinions", people will tune out. The only way to keep the next generation engaged with Israel, Birthright trips notwithstanding, is for Israel to listen to them. Therefore bickering over this or that J Street policy is beside the point. Long term, the real choice will not be J Street vs. AIPAC, but J Street vs. nothing.

Nostalgia Audio of the Day: "Kodachrome" by Paul Simon

2009-06-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

In memoriam of Kodak's recently discontinued color film stock:

Book Review: The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

2009-06-07T14:43:00.000-07:00

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Unconsoled is an astonishing, compelling, yet frustrating masterpiece. One that the reader will continue to think about long after putting down the final chapter.

In it, Ishiguro melds the self-important, obsessive yet ultimately impotent first-person narrative of several of his novels, notably The Remains of the Day, with a high dose of the surrealism only hinted at in his later novel When We Were Orphans, to create a highly readable yet sometimes infuriating book.

Mr. Ryder, a world-famous pianist, arrives in an anonymous Central European town. The townspeople grovel over his celebrity, constantly referring to the mysterious cultural crisis he is there to solve. Ryder is ever eager to please the locals, yet he has little grasp of why he's visiting their town and shows no ability to control his own destiny.

Events move beyond Ryder's control as he is dragged through a serious of maddening diversions. Ryder, and the rest of the townspeople, accept their dream-like, surreal world as completely normal: a door in a cafe far out in the woods opens back into the center of town, miles away; A two-floor elevator ride accommodates a ten minute conversation with a hotel porter; Ryder is able to perceive events and conversations that he has never witnessed.

Significantly, Ryder shows no surprise that people and objects from his childhood in England keep appearing, or that a woman he's just met acts as if she's his wife, stirring up maddeningly vague intuitions of a past and present relationship that he nonetheless goes along with.

Like in an anxious dream, every attempt to complete one errand creates a new diversion that takes Ryder further away from his goal. At first he takes these frustrations in his stride, while each new twist provides tantalizing hints about his past and his troubled childhood and early life. Yet tension increases as Ryder's performance nears, his ultimate purpose still unclear to him, although apparently not to the inscrutable townsfolk.

Ryder blunders through the town as an unreliable narrator, knowing less about his reality than the characters he interacts with, yet willing to go along with their explanations and excuses, incorporating them into his experiences and recycling them as his own. As in his other novels, Ishiguro seems here to be discussing how memories of the past, fragmented and unreliable as they may be, inform the present and give it meaning.

A common theme binding all Ryder's experiences and memories seems to be the flawed nature of human relationships, particularly those of parents and children. All the characters he interacts with have somehow harmed or disappointed their parents, their friends, their partners or their children. All are chasing around for some way to right the past, to find consolation in reconciliation, to regain their pride. All require Ryder's help to put their relationships right, much as the town itself needs him to help fix the murky crisis and return the city to its golden days of cultural ascendancy.

All these other characters' conflicts seem to mirror aspects of Ryder himself. The book keeps returning to the nature of his relationship with his own parents, yet this relationship is never explained, only hinted at. The final chapters of the book are a heartbreaking deflation of Ryder's own hopes regarding his parents and a yearning for the simple need for meaningful human contact, while remaining as cryptic as ever.

One way to examine familiar things in a new way is to change your viewpoint. Another, more fragile way, is to alter the background against which you examine them. Do so too prominently and you end up in the realms of science fiction. Do so subtly and you get a work as nuanced, strange yet moving as The Unconsoled. The book pits familiar human emotions and foibles against a world uncannily similar to ours, yet also eerie and disturbing. It is precisely this unusual backdrop that allows us to experience those emotions, fascinatingly, in a new way.

The Unconsoled challenges the reader to find a frame of reference against which to inspect it. At first, our sense of realism holds out hope that future chapters will explain away the surrealism through some mundane device. But Ishiguro is too skilled to allow such a clumsy resolution. If it's a dream, then there is no waking. If it's an allegory, then there is no moral. The novel ends without a big reveal. And while accepting the surrealism of its world, without being able to rectify it against the linearity of ours, is infuriating, what meaning is to be found in this strange and beautiful story we must find ourselves.

View all my reviews.

Nostalgia Video of the Day: "The Wrong Girl" by Belle and Sebastian

2009-05-14T22:43:00.000-07:00

Such a sad sentiment buried under such a gorgeous tune!

My votes on the CA Special Election Propositions

2009-05-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

In a nutshell: NO on everything.

Why? The Guardian actually wrote a well-researched, painstaking, convincing, shockingly non-smug review of the propositions that concluded with NO:

http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=8469&volume_id=398&issue_id=429&volume_num=43&issue_num=31

Whereas the Chronicle condescendingly threw down a set of recommendations for YES votes with no explanations at all, as if their readers were small children.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/24/EDQ3177TU9.DTL

At the end of the day, these propositions were crammed down our throats by a Republican minority, and it's telling that some of the "pro" arguments in the Voter Information Guide were written by the Chamber of Commerce and similar right-wing groups.

Of course my "show me your friends" argument is somewhat compromised by the fact that the only opponent to Prop. 1C in the Guide was right-wing nut job Bob Huff. But still, lottery is such a regressive way to raise money that I had no problem voting that one down.

And, by the way, Prop. 1F is a silly joke. Do legislators really think we're that easily distracted?

The big, important ballot battle will come up in 2010 - when hopefully we'll get to repeat the stupid two-thirds rule that places the state's governance at the mercy of a small minority of extremist Republicans. And hopefully we can repeal Prop. 8 at the same time...

For now, it's best to reject these, although with so much bipartisan endorsement, they are almost certain to pass.

Jerusalem Half-Marathon

2009-03-29T01:12:00.001-07:00

Most of you know that I grew up in Jerusalem. In fact, I spent 20 years them, from age 5 to 25 and some of my favorite nostalgia takes place in its diverse neighborhoods.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that for a few years now I've wanted to run the Jerusalem half-marathon, so I can revisit some of these youthful haunts while breathless and achy. And this year I finally got my wish...

I was going to be in Israel anyway (thanks to my sister's conveniently-timed baby) and my brother-in-law Avishai (other sister's husband) was planning on running the half. So I was excited to sign up, not least because of our friendly running rivalry. Avishai is 7 years younger than me and a former army super-commando, which for some reason did not deter me from declaring that I'd beat him.

I arrived in Israel a few days before the race, hoping to get over the jetlag in time. Fat chance. Fortunately it affects me mostly in the afternoons, so I felt good for the morning race.

The weather forecast was for 60 degrees and partly cloudy with a light breeze. Perfect for running. So naturally when I arrived at the Hebrew University stadium on race day it was 70 degrees and sunny. Beautiful weather for most activities, but a little overheated for running. Still, I threw on a hat, slapped on some extra sunscreen, planned some extra water intake, and figured I'd be fine (which I was).

Over 3000 runners crowded into the stadium, although only 700 or so were there for the half, the rest going for the 10K. The race was pretty well organized considering it was run by the municipal sports authority rather than a private race organizer. The Jerusalem municipality is not known for its organizational capacity, but I guess they've been doing it for 17 years, so they've figured it out by now.

At 9:15 we started out, and we rushed out of the stadium onto the streets of the Nayot neighborhood. I went to HU, so I knew the stadium and the area pretty well, and it was fun to revisit them early on in the race. The first mile was a pleasant downhill, which we used to fan out while trying not to think about having to run back up it at the finish.

As we headed towards the Valley of the Cross (site of a famous monastery) the grade changed to a mild uphill, which slowly got steeper until we hit Sacher park (where we used to have barbecues on Independence Day), by which time we were climbing pretty steadily, and starting to feel the sun. We looped around the park for a couple of slow miles, then hit a last tough uphill towards the Israel Museum (where I took art classes as a kid) and the Knesset (Israeli parliament), where things leveled out and I was able to pick up some speed.

Miles 4-5 were decently flat, as we wound through the Beit HaKerem neighborhood (where I used to have after-school classes) towards the Jerusalem Forest (where I used to go hiking). Mile 6 was a nice modest downhill through the forest, which I used to take a Gu, knowing what was coming up.

And what was coming up was an excruciatingly steep climb back out of the forest, and up to the top of Mount Herzl (where Yitzhak Rabin is buried in the national cemetery). Mile 7 was my slowest mile of the race, a stately 9:30, as I struggled to keep my legs going against their will. The sun was beating down pretty harshly by now, and the grade seemed to keep getting steeper. Finally we rounded a corner and saw what we'd been hoping to reach: Yad Vashem, the national holocaust memorial. Not a cheerful sight at the best of times, but it signaled the end of the hill, so we were pretty inappropriately excited.

Mile 7 was also when I started to be really sorry that the song stuck in my head was not, as I had hoped, "Hell's Bells" by AC/DC but this sappy Israel folk song which happened to be on the radio the morning of the race...

Miles 8-10 were mostly downhill, as we recovered all the elevation we'd just gained. I picked up the pace again, and sped off past my high school, the Kiryat Yovel neighborhood (where my Grandma lived), Malha stadium (where I used to go watch basketball games) and down towards the Jerusalem zoo, the railway tracks and the Teddy stadium (where I used to go watch soccer matches). The drivers around us were not happy about the road closures, and didn't mind showing it by honking angrily at the runners.

Miles 11-12 were a modest uphill back towards Nayot and that last uphill mile to the stadium. At the start of that last mile Avishai caught up with me, after lagging for most of the race, and we raced together to the finish, past a slightly crazy lady who came out of one of the houses to scold us for not running faster. As we pulled up that hill and into the stadium Avishai's youth and burliness came into play as he pulled ahead, and finished 50 seconds ahead of me.

Still, I crossed the finish line at a respectable 1:43:00 (chip time), 166th out of 723 overall, and 54th out of 223 in my category. Given the heat and the hills, I'm pretty pleased with that. And the opportunity to run by so many national and personal landmarks was remarkable.

I'll beat the kid next year...

A Convenient Untruth: The Pope Lies About AIDS

2009-03-17T11:08:00.001-07:00

Once again, a religious leader has made an outrageously false statement in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. The Pope, on a visit to Africa, has shamelessly proclaimed that condoms will not halt the spread of AIDS.

This is not some minor superstition or a matter of opinion. This is a bald-faced lie, and thousands or more will die because of it.

It took the Vatican hundreds of years to accept their errors and endorse Galileo, Darwin and others, not that this endorsement carries any weight in the scientific community. How many years, and how many lives, must we lose before they accept the truth about AIDS?

If this charlatan of a Pope had the courage of his conviction, he'd say that, "yes, condoms halt the spread of AIDS but I oppose them anyway because of my absolute opposition to contraception" that would, at least, be honest. Disgustingly immoral, but honest. Then his followers in AIDS-ravaged Africa would have a true choice about whether to risk their lives to follow the church's proscriptions, or follow the best practices of public health and help prevent the spread of AIDS.

However the Pope has no such courage. So he spreads doctrinaire lies and claims that condoms won't even help. And, as usual, he will not be the one to suffer for his lies. No, that fate will be left to untold numbers of African Catholics who will remain ignorant on how to prevent their own infection. It's well-established that religion thrives on ignorance. But in this case, it seems, for the religion to flourish, its adherents must die.

Going Galt? A Nation Shrugs Along With Atlas

2009-03-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

You may have encountered the Going Galt meme. Apparently various right-wing bloggers and free-market fundamentalists are combining their outrage at Obama's economic plan with their sophomoric obsession over "Atlas Shrugged" (AKA "The Catcher in the Rye" for assholes) trying to create a movement dedicated to withdrawing their contributions to society, a la John Galt, the selfish protagonist of Ayn Rand's unreadable doorstop.

Yes, outraged at the idea of people earning over $250,000 having their tax rates restored to those of the pre-Bush years (Remember how bad things were back in the 1990s? All that peace and prosperity?), these captains of industry, if hate and ranting can be considered industrious, are going to "Go Galt" in protest at Obama's "war on success" and leave the rest of us to wallow in the resulting economic depravity.

Oh no! Whatever shall we do without the stellar contributions to society of Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Rick Santelli or anyone who works for Fox News? How about bonus-grabbing executives and Wall Street managers and analysts?

Given the current devastation caused by the unrestrained free-market greed and selfishness promoted by this sorry crew, I think we'd do alright in the end. I mean, we might not have the skills necessary to build an entire economy out of a giant ponzi scheme, or to gamble away trillions of dollars when it all inevitably comes crashing down, while still cutting ourselves giant paychecks either way, but I think we can probably do without any more of that sort of Atlasian genius, don't you?

So by all means, Go Galt, sore losers, and take as many CEOs and Wall Street types with you as you can. Can you imagine a world without these folks? I can, and it has unicorns in it.

Last word, or rather WØRD, on the matter goes to Stephen Colbert:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Rand Illusion

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
NASA Name Contest

Jonathan Krohn is Tory Boy!

2009-03-04T07:02:00.000-08:00

In all the brouhaha about the Rush Limbaugh - Michael Steele crazy-off, you may have missed this speech at CPAC, by adorable 13-year old conservative moppet Jonathan Krohn:

The creepiness of a child seemingly possessed by the ghost of Mitt Romney brought to mind Tory Boy, one of British comedian Harry Enfield's finest creations:

As Jon Stewart put it, there isn't a nurple purple enough...

On the plus side, even after Jonathan grows into his precociousness, he'll still be young enough to enjoy the next conservative ascendancy, by which time most of his CPAC audience will be long past retirement...

PG

2009-03-02T09:53:00.000-08:00

In order to protect the delicate sensibilities of my younger readers, some of whom have apparently yet to be born, this blog is now (mostly) an expletive-free zone.

Instead, here is a picture of adorable puppies:

Ticket to Ride

2009-02-27T10:12:00.000-08:00

Since I found out a few days ago that Leonard Cohen will be playing the Paramount in Oakland on his upcoming first tour of the US in 15 years, naturally I was giddy with excitement.

I'm signed up for Ticketmaster presale notices, figuring that getting a head start on ticket purchases was worth the spam. So while the public sale isn't until Monday, I was supposed to be able to buy presale tickets at 10:00 AM today, with a handy presale password.

Knowing that the show will sell out fast, I was prepared. At exactly 10:00 I followed the link in Ticketmaster's email, typed in the password, chose my tickets, and was greeted with...

Sorry, no tickets are available.

Damn.

Multiple attempts at all ticket price levels yielded the same failure.

It turns out that American Express owners had an earlier presale. It also turns out that scalpers have American Express cards. So the entire presale allotment flew off the virtual shelves, almost entirely into the hands of online "ticket brokers". How do I know? By 10:05 dozens of those tickets were on StubHub, eBay and other online scalping sites.

Instead of going into the hands of the fans, tickets mostly end up in the inventory of online ripoff merchants who provide absolutely no value to society, and profit simply by manufacturing scarcity and controlling supply. Remind you of anything in the larger economy?

Ticketmaster seems to have no interest in fixing this. In fact, since they have their own "TicketExchange Marketplace", they may well be actively encouraging it, since they then profit twice: once on their extortionist "convenience fees" from the original sale, and once from a cut on the markup the scalpers take.

This has to end. And it could end tomorrow if Ticketmaster introduced these simple provisions:

All sales are will call sales.

Tickets can be picked up only on the evening of the show.

No one can buy more than 4 tickets on a single ID.

A scalper in NJ cannot show up in Oakland to collect 50 tickets and sell them online at a fat markup. Yes, there are disadvantages, such as it being harder to sell on your ticket if you genuinely cannot make the show, but people who already buy will call tickets somehow manage to solve these problems, and any such inconveniences are worth the benefit: This could destroy online scalping overnight, and put tickets back where they belong: in the hands of the fans.

So why isn't it happening?

Of course I have no expectations from a dubious monopoly like Ticketmaster. Why should they care about music fans? But the government could, and should, step in. Ticketmaster is effectively a monopoly. Anti-trust regulators should require them to take effective measures to keep tickets out of the hands of touts. And to all you free-market fundamentalists: I don't want to hear your tired and discredited tropes. This "free market" in ticket scalping benefits no one except the scalpers and their corporate allies. The artists don't benefit from an inflationary aftermarket, and there is nothing 'efficient' about keeping tickets out of the hands of the biggest fans and into the hands of the richest ones.

But government intervention is not the only way to solve this problem. I would prefer to see the artists take a stand. Leonard Cohen, the reason you can sell out these venues is that millions of people like me loved your music, bought your albums and went to your shows over the years. We should be the ones who get to buy the tickets. You should not allow them to become a commodity in an online speculation market that provides no benefit at all to you or to us.

If enough prominent artists stood up to Ticketmaster (I'm talking to you, U2 and Coldplay) things might change. The days of Fugazi and Pearl Jam going their own way are over, but artists can still work their influence from within the system. The people who deserve your tickets most are the biggest fans, the ones willing to act quickly to get tickets and then actually show up to your show. It should bother you that most tickets you sell are to people who don't care about you or your music, but merely want to cash in on your popularity.

And finally, we the fans have to stop playing along. I, for one, will participate no longer in this charade. Never will I buy a ticket off StubHub, eBay, Ticketmaster's exchange, or any other scalping site. Let them all rot. The purpose of going to a show is to be part of something meaningful, moving and enjoyable. It's not just so you can say you were there. And participating in a system that turns our beloved artists into shills in a scammy nationwide scalping scheme is the exact moral opposite of why we liked their music to begin with.

If I fail to buy a ticket at face value, I will not go to this show. Yet I, and the hundreds of others left outside, will remain bigger fans than the people who used money to muscle their way in, with the help of tawdry ticket touts and an uncaring ticketing monopoly. And perhaps on that night I'll stroll over to Cafe du Nord, or The Independent, or another of the many small venues San Francisco is blessed with, pay $10 at the door and listen to some anonymous band. Who do you think will be having a more genuine experience?

Rainbow Over the Google Campus

2009-02-23T10:28:00.000-08:00

This is the view that greeted me as I got off the shuttle this morning:

Glorious, right?

Even though I'm an atheist, I always feel like a rainbow is the universe telling me it'll be OK. It's as if god is taking time out of his busy smiting schedule to tap me on the shoulder and say "hey, don't worry about it, I've got your back".

Perhaps a similar feeling is the origin of the story of the first rainbow, in Genesis:

And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will look upon it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth." God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth."

Nostalgia Video of the Day: "Army Dreamers" by Kate Bush

2009-02-17T11:14:00.000-08:00

Vatican backs Darwin. Science: "who gives a damn?"

2009-02-11T22:45:00.000-08:00

It took them 500 years to vindicate Galileo, and now Darwin gets his turn at being retroactively validated by the Catholic church.

But here's the thing: Who cares? The Vatican endorsing scientific fact is about as relevant as me declaring that I've finally, after much study, concluded that Tiger Woods is, in fact, a decent golfer. You don't get a lot of smart points for propounding something when the evidence for it has already been articulated repeatedly for 150 years...

Nostalgia Video of the Day: "Unfinished Sympathy" by Massive Attack

2009-02-09T09:42:00.000-08:00

An absolute masterpiece from Blue Lines, which is pretty much the Sgt. Pepper of Trip Hop.

My old house is now 'art'!

2009-02-08T15:16:00.001-08:00

On Sunday I saw this on display in the lobby of the Pacific Place building on 4th St. in SOMA:

http://www.alan-george.com/root/index.php?gallery=domesticatedℑ=082Q6027-32_1200_1200_x_1200.jpg

I recently moved out of that house after living in it for 5 years!

It's available for $800, in case you were wondering. The photo, not the house.

Nostalgia Video of the Day: "Weak" by Skunk Anansie

2009-02-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

The constitutional law dress code: Jacket required, civil liberties optional.

2009-02-05T15:53:00.000-08:00

According to former Bush White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, Obama not wearing a jacket in the oval office is akin to setting fire to the bill of rights.

"The Oval Office symbolizes...the Constitution, the hopes and dreams, and I'm going to say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court and a dress code on the floor of the Senate, floor of the House, I think it's appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President."

See? It's the symbols of the Constitution that matter, not its actual content. Presumably ordering torture, suspending habeas corpus and wiretapping American citizens' phones without warrants are still OK, as long as you wear a jacket.

Much like at French Laundry.

"Property Tax Reassessment" letter is a scam

2009-02-04T20:35:00.001-08:00

If you live in California and recently received an official-looking letter from "Property Tax Reassessment" at some PO Box in Los Angeles, shred it. This is not a government agency. it's a bunch of assholes trying to scam you out of a "service fee".

See here for details.

Suck on this, East coast

2009-01-15T12:49:00.000-08:00

The view from my living room right now:

It's 71 degrees, the sky is blue as can be and there's not a cloud to be seen. San Francisco is awesome.

Gaza: Another grim milestone on the march of folly

2009-01-05T15:23:00.001-08:00

As an Israeli, the current assault on Gaza makes me sick to my stomach.

Yes, Hamas are an odious terrorist organization. And yes, their repeated firing of rockets into Israel to deliberately target civilians is reprehensible and in violation of international humanitarian law.

But there is such a thing as proportionality. In ten days Israel has killed almost 600 people in Gaza, and wounded thousands more. Even if we accept the IDF's claims that most of these were Hamas combatants, and we go along with their overly-broad definition of 'combatant', that still leaves hundreds of innocent civilians dead and wounded, many of them children, and hundreds of thousands more on the brink of humanitarian disaster: Without power, shivering through the bitterly cold winter, hoping to survive the night's bombings. Food and medical supplies are low, hospitals cannot cope and property damage is extensive.

In comparison, Hamas rocket fire has killed 18 Israeli civilians in the last 8 years.

Now I am absolutely not belittling how awful it is to live in Sderot or one of the other southern Israeli towns constantly bombarded by Hamas rocket fire. And Israel has the right and indeed the obligation to protect its citizens. But raining devastation and destruction without any sense of proportion cannot be the solution.

How have we learned nothing from the Lebanon war in 2006? Does anyone really think that this new war will prevent Hamas attacks rather than simply escalate them? If Israel thinks it can bomb Hamas into submission, well, consider this: That's exactly what Hamas thinks about Israel. And if Israel refuses to be cowed by Hamas rockets, why does it think Hamas will be cowed by Israeli rockets? Is it simply because Israel has more devastating fire power? All that calculus will do is encourage Hamas to pursue even deadlier means, like attacking "soft targets" abroad, such as Jewish community buildings in South America, Africa or Southeast Asia.

Until this scenario plays out, the immediate price of this folly is being paid by the people of Gaza, and, to a lesser extent, their counterparts on the Israeli side of the border. It's easy, and even partly true, to lay the responsibility for the suffering in Gaza at the feet of Hamas. Certainly, Hamas was playing with fire by continuing to attack into Israel despite multiple warnings of the consequences. But in the end the bombs raining down on Gaza are being fired from Israeli jets, and you cannot simply shrug off your moral responsibility when your military kills civilians by saying that the overall goals of your military campaign are just. And that's without even considering that the true goals of this campaign may have more to do with Israel's upcoming election than any true military strategy.

Gaza may be the most miserable place on earth right now. No one in Sderot, rockets and all, would ever dream of trading places with any Gazan, even on a good day. If this violence were going to achieve anything, we might argue about whether the price was justified. But we already know how this will end. And the end will benefit no one.

Israel cannot achieve militarily its stated objective of halting all rocket fire. We all know that rockets will fall on Israel on the last day of this campaign, just as they did on the last day of the Lebanon war. Until then Israeli ground forces will encounter fierce opposition in a house-to-house war of attrition that will cause grave casualties to IDF troops, as the shock-and-awe of the air assault gives way to the grim futility of ground combat. In a day, or two, or seven, Israel will limp towards a cease-fire, its objectives largely unmet, while Hamas, bruised and bloodied, will be able to declare victory simply for surviving, and will begin to recruit from among the shell-shocked and radicalized survivors its next generation of suicide bombers.

So what should Israel have done? There are no easy solutions. Some military action may have been appropriate, but the goal of any action should have been an immediate cease-fire agreement, not a futile attempt to beat Hamas into submission. Unfortunately, this may only make them stronger.

As I follow media reports, and various twitter and blog posts, I am struck by how little people in Israel seem to care for the fate of the people of Gaza. The focus on the suffering of the people of Sderot is absolute, as if no other horror counts for anything. This attitude of "we should only care about our own" is the same one that causes Palestinians to support terror attacks on Israel. If people in Israel were willing to acknowledge the horrors of Gaza then I could accept a debate on whether this devastation is somehow justified. But I see too little acknowledgement of the suffering Israel is inflicting on the 1.5 million Gazans. For too many Israelis this suffering simply doesn't exist, let alone need to be justified, so hard have our hearts become.

Of course the suffering of Israelis in Sderot is not in Palestinian hearts either. But is the moral standard of Hamas the one Israelis want to hold themselves to? In reality Israelis do want to be percieved as moral and just, but unfortunately it seems that the way to achieve this is through denial - if we declare that anything we do is just, we can sleep at night. And if this means ignoring the fate of 1.5 million of our next-door neighbors, so be it.

Analysis: US Media Coverage Of Gaza Invasion Largely Biased Towards Israel

2009-01-05T00:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003926518

In other news:

Pope is Catholic.
Bear shits in woods.

Tonite It Shows

2008-12-18T10:54:00.001-08:00

In a just world, Mercury Rev would sell out AT&T park, and the Jonas Brothers would be working at Burger King. Fortunately we don't live in a just world, so last night we got to see one of the best live bands around from the intimate comfort of the Independent.

Mercury Rev at the Independent, San Francisco, 12/17/2008

The show opened and closed with Snowflake in a Hot World and Senses On Fire, off new album Snowflake Midnight. But this was not a case of a band foisting mostly new material on fans eager for some old favorites. In between we got Holes, The Funny Bird, Opus 40, a haunting piano solo version of Tonite It Shows, Black Forest, and many others (although no Goddess On A Hiway). The encore began with a performance of The Dark is Rising so lush and orchestral it would make the best Hollywood scores shrink away into the corner of the room with their tails between their legs.

The Dark Is Rising

Because the thing about Mercury Rev live is that their set consists entirely of crescendo. Song streams into song with no pause even for applause, the emotional tension getting ever higher until by the end you're pretty sure your heart will burst. Songs like The Funny Bird, that sound 'merely' grand on their albums, soar to unimaginable heights on stage, leaving you to wonder if there's any theoretical upper limit on feeling. As the show finally ends, all this emotion drains out of you in a rush, and you know in your heart that you've witnessed an artistic moment profound and beautiful. A more intense catharsis you will likely never feel.

A great live band will profoundly move some part of you. Supergrass will move your feet, Green Day your torso, They Might Be Giants your brain, AC/DC your groin, The Smiths your self-pity, The Rolling Stones your wallet...

But it's a rare band indeed that can genuinely move your heart. And Mercury Rev are, at least for me, that band. Live, they dig into your emotions, remind you of every happy moment of your life, and every sad one. Delivering you ultimately into a state unique and profound: the happiest sadness, or the saddest happiness.

They are playing again tonight. Run, don't walk, to see them.

Opus 40

'Fame' remake: Stop messing with the classics!

2008-12-10T09:13:00.000-08:00

I wanna live forever?

Sorry 'Fame', if these bastards get their way, they will have killed you, in all your leg-warmer-and-sparkles glory.

Note, mind you, that this is not a remake of the cheesy (yet much loved, by me and all my friends) mid-80s TV show. It's a rehash of the original, much edgier 1980 Alan Parker movie. I remember watching that movie as a 12-year-old, thinking it would be like the TV show, and being shocked by its gritty portrayal of 1970s urban decay, when I was expecting 1980s day-glo escapism. Yet does anyone doubt that this stupid remake will be more 'High School Musical' than 'Midnight Cowboy'?

Whenever I hear of a film being remade, my first question is always "what was wrong with the old one?" In some cases remakes are justified, such as when technology allows you to more fully realize the previous film's vision. But more often they are a cheap attempt to cash in on name recognition, memories and prior affection.

In this case I greatly fear that the powers that be are trying to wring one last squeeze out of the 'Fame' brand, cynically tipping the hat to the Jonas Brothers generation. In fact I'm surprised they didn't cast Miley Cyrus.

'Fame' had its flaws, but it had a great cast and phenomenal music, written, as most good music is, to appeal to the heart, the mind and the feet, not directly to the wallet.

For example, this glorious song by cast member Paul McCrane (who much later and balder portrayed Dr. Romano on 'ER'):

Or this, the greatest graduation song ever (yes, it's originally from 'Fame'):

And of course, that ubiquitous title track. No one over 30 can fail to start tapping their toes when hearing that opening power synth...

I'll bet that the songs in this new 'Fame' will sound more like they've been composed by a computer programmed to make the youth of America into merchandise-buying Stepford kids. Much like Zac Ephron, come to think of it.

Perhaps sole returning cast member Debbie Allen can extract something decent out of this awful, awful idea? I doubt it. Once again, a bunch of soulless, money-grubbing studio execs have taken a giant shit on my childhood.

To lament this sad turn of events, I leave you with probably the most lip-synced-in-front-of-the-cassette-player song of my generation:

Polonius's Advice to Laertes on Flaky Californians

2008-12-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

Many of you know that I hate how flaky people are here in Northern California. I won't go into that rant again now (and you can read it in my Yelp review of Flaky Americans if you like).

But I cannot put it as eloquently as Shakespeare, who, in Hamlet, gives the following lines to Polonius, as part of his advice to his son Laertes:

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade.

Written in Pencil in the Sealed Freight Car

2008-11-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

Here in this carload
I, Eve,
with my son Abel.
If you see my older boy,
Cain, the son of man,
tell him that I

-- Dan Pagis, 1970

It is the end of history!

2008-11-19T15:38:00.000-08:00

The seas have parted, the dead have risen from their graves, strange beasts roam the land, and Chinese Democracy is out! And it's actually good!

http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/chuck_klosterman_reviews

Video: Friends of Moneypenny

2008-11-11T13:32:00.000-08:00

Remember that drinks do I had before Christmas? Moneypenny brings James along. So I said, 'hi James, we've got mulled wine, and I think there's some beer in the fridge'. Cock asks for a martini!

Ignored Netflix Movies Fight Back

2008-11-11T11:49:00.000-08:00

The classic movies you never watch have something to say.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1889404

As chance would have it, I AM currently watching Lawrence of Arabia...

Nostalgia video of the day: "Gone 'Til November" by Wyclef Jean

2008-11-10T16:59:00.000-08:00

Embedding is disabled, so you'll have to click through, but it'll be worth it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17cmBnziQw4

Gorgeous, haunting song.

My Spastic Eyelid

2008-11-09T15:08:00.000-08:00

Check it out:

I'm not doing that! It's spazzing of its own accord. It doesn't hurt, but it's a weird and slightly uncomfortable feeling.

I've looked this up on medical websites, in case this turned out to be an early symptom of some rare disease that causes your brain to melt, and what they have to say is, more or less: "We don't know what causes this, there's nothing you can do about it, it may or may not go away, and isn't it irritating?"

Thanks, medical science.

Best. Editorial. Ever.

2008-11-09T08:38:00.000-08:00

Frank Rich in the NYT calls out the Republicans and the media for all the conventional wisdoms Obama so skillfully destroyed on Tuesday.

Money quotes:

So let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.

And

Though Rove’s promised “permanent Republican majority” lies in humiliating ruins, his and Bush’s one secure legacy will be their demagogic exploitation of homophobia.

Why I've been in Reno for almost 3 weeks

2008-11-03T22:35:00.000-08:00

To quote Newsweek's What to Watch For on Election Night:

The key area to watch in Nevada is Washoe County (Reno), which John Kerry lost by 4 points in 2004 but where the Obama campaign has registered thousands of new voters. If Obama wins Washoe, that means the state—and probably the country—is his.

Tomorrow is when we bring this thing home, and Reno is where we bring it.

Wish me luck...

The Daily Show finally calls McCain out on his dickish use of air quotes to dismiss women's "health"

2008-10-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

Money quote: "John McCain has finally put the concerns of women where they belong: in derisive air quotes. "

See also this.

What a toolbox.

Reno 411

2008-10-26T15:21:00.000-07:00

You may be wondering why this blog has been silent for a while.

Some of you know that I'm in Reno, working on the Obama campaign. Unfortunately I don't have the time to blog about my experiences, nor am I allowed to. I will discuss what I can after the election, but until then I'm afraid this blog will consist mostly of random observations and YouTube links.

Speaking of which...

Stay away from potential targets whose names are shorter than 140 characters...

2008-10-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

An army intelligence analyst with no sense of proportion and too much time on his or her hands has written a report on Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter.

Money quote: "Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences."

Watch out for those subversive vegetarians and atheists everyone...

How I voted (and why), including all ballot propositions

2008-10-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

The sanctimonious hippies at the Bay Guardian publish their self-righteous endorsements every election, so why shouldn't I? And I promise not to smugly use the term "progressive" quite as often as they do.

I just sent in my mail-in ballot, and here's how I voted, for what it may be worth:

President and Vice President: Barack Obama and Joe Biden

I mean, c'mon.

United States Representative: Cindy Sheehan

Yes, Cindy Sheehan has become a bit of a gimmick. And yes, she sometimes talks shite. But she means well, and, having paid the ultimate price for the folly of the Iraq war, she stands as a bold symbol of resistance to that folly. If I thought there was a chance in hell that she'd actually win I might not try this protest vote. But this is the safest seat in the universe for Nancy Pelosi, and so there's no harm in sending a message. And the message is: Madam Speaker, it's time to actually BE the crazy liberal the right will tar you as being regardless of what you do. No more capitulations: not on Iraq, not on FISA, not on the malfeasance of the Bush administration, not on financial "bailouts" for corporate America. For god's sake, grow a pair. Of course, by the time the message gets through the Bush administration will be through too, but it's time we held our representative accountable for her appalling lack of courage and leadership in the past couple of years.

Member, State Assembly: Tom Ammiano

It's not like I'd vote for the Republican.

Judge of the Superior Court, seat #12: Gerardo C. Sandoval

The incumbent is apparently quite conservative. This is not an election for supporting conservative incumbents.

Member, Board of Education: ?

Seriously, I have better things to do with my time than figure out who should sit on the board of education in San Francisco. It's not like they're going to start teaching creationism. I leave this one to people who actually have children in the SF school system.

Member, Community College Board: ?

Ditto. Do we really need to directly elect every freakin' position in city government? Can't someone just appoint these guys?

Bart Director, District 9: Tom Radulovich

He's the incumbent, and apparently he's doing a great job.

State Propositions:

Proposition 1A: YES

I am a fan of high-speed rail, and California could really benefit from such a network.

Proposition 2: YES

I've just finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, so don't get me started on confining farm animals...

Proposition 3: YES

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children? The SFBG is against this because some of the money might go to (shudder) private hospitals. Screw you, hippies.

Proposition 4: NO

This has nothing to do with protecting minors and everything to do with restricting abortion rights.

Proposition 5: YES

Keeping small-time, non-violent drug offenders out of our overcrowded prisons and in rehab seems like a win for all.

Proposition 6: NO

We don't need to spend more money on the prison-industrial complex. Let's spend on preventing crime in the first place, huh?

Proposition 7: NO

While this seems like a pro-alternative-energy proposition, it's actually just a boondoggle for specific corporate interests. The Sierra Club are against, and who am I to argue with them about environmentalism?

Proposition 8: FUCK NO. NO NO NO NO NO

If you need me to explain this one, you haven't been paying attention.

Proposition 9: NO

Like 6, this is another "tough on crime" wank-fest from conservative interests.

Proposition 10: NO

This is just T. Boone Pickens trying to rip off California taxpayers for his own benefit. Don't buy into the environmental-sounding name. Again, the Sierra Club are against.

Proposition 11: NO

Something does need to be done about redistricting, to prevent gerrymandering. But this proposition would give far too much power to the Republican minority in the state, and has no guarantees of fair representation of different California communities on the redistricting commission. The unintended consequences of this proposition would likely be even worse than the current shambles.

Proposition 12: YES

Money for veterans. This is universally supported by pretty much everyone.

San Francisco Propositions:

Proposition A: YES

I do not want SF General to collapse in an earthquake.

Proposition B: YES

The city does need more affordable housing. I almost voted against this, because the SFBG's endorsement of it was so fucking sanctimonious. But cooler heads prevailed.

Proposition C: NO

I don't see what problem this solves. Why shouldn't non-executive city employees be on boards and commissions?

Proposition D: YES

Sounds like a nice project, actually, and everyone seems to be for it.

Proposition E: YES

Recalls are too easy right now.

Proposition F: NO

The SF Bay Guardian's cynical rationale for supporting this is that it'll boost progressive turnout. I prefer not to have the mayoral election swamped by the presidential election, so we can focus on the very different issues in each.

Proposition G: YES

This just fixes an oversight in a 2002 charter amendment, allowing a certain group of city employees the right (already enjoyed by others) to buy back unpaid parental leave and earn retirement credits for that period. This is supported by pretty much everyone.

Proposition H: NO

Public power seems to me to be a solution in search of a problem. It's the SFBG's pet cause, but just because they've got a bee in their bonnet about public power doesn't mean we have to go along with this expensive and unnecessary bid to take over PG&E. I'm not a fan of private utilities, and I have no problem with publicly-owned ones. But that's not the current state of affairs, and things are not so bad that we need to change it. We have bigger fish to fry than this.

Proposition I: NO

Prop I has one of the provisions of H (creating the office of an independent rate payer advocate), without the meat of H. It exists primarily as a fallback for the no-on-H vote that still wants that provision, but it seems a bit unnecessary to me.

Proposition J: YES

Streamlining the planning permission process seems like a good idea.

Proposition K: NO

The SFBG supports this one, fueled by what seems like an unrealistic view of prostitution. The notion of Julia Roberts as the plucky hooker with a heart of gold is appealing, and self-employed sex workers do exist. But in practice prostitution is largely a vile industry of human trafficking, abuse, violence and, in some cases, slavery. Decriminalizing sex work may seem like a net plus for the real victims of prostitution (i.e., the prostitutes themselves), but it takes away from law enforcement some of their best tools for fighting the entire ugly phenomenon. But don't take my word for it. Ask Gloria Steinem, who opposed proposition K.

Proposition L: YES

The Community Justice Center idea seems like a good combination of law enforcement and social services.

Proposition M: YES

Harassing tenants is bad.

Proposition N: YES

Increasing the transfer tax on very expensive ($5M+ properties), mostly large commercial properties, is a good source of revenue for a city starved of it.

Proposition O: YES

This is a technicality on how 911 services are funded. I'm kinda shocked that this is even on the ballot. Surely the mayor and the board of supervisors have the authoritah to make these sorts of decisions?

Proposition P: NO

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Proposition Q: YES

This closes a loophole that currently allows partnership income to dodge payroll taxes.

Proposition R: NO

A few months ago I saw the pranksters behind this proposition drumming up signatures in Dolores Park to have this put on the ballot. While naming a sewage treatment plant after President Bush would give us a giggle, it's ultimately childish, and disrespectful to those who've lost so much due to Bush's malfeasance. And anyway, it's insulting to sewage.

Proposition S: YES

It seems like a good idea to identify the sources of funding for budget set-aside measures.

Proposition T: YES

Yes. This expands existing substance abuse programs to meet the growing need. It's spending money to save money, since those who don't have access to these programs are more likely to end up needing expensive emergency room treatment.

Proposition U: NO

This one is silly. The city has no business telling its congressional representatives what it thinks about the Iraq war. We've already voted for our congressional representatives directly.

Proposition V: YES

The SFBG treats the JROTC as a fascist recruiting tool for child soldiers. In reality, it's a valuable after-school program that has helped many young people find necessary, positive life skills, like discipline and team spirit. Only a small fraction of JROTC grads end up in the military, and the JROTC has a very positive relationship with the LGBT community - one which will hopefully spread to the wider military community. Unless you're an incorrigible self-righteous, smug hippy, you recognize that, for all its faults, we do need a military force. And having it engaged in a liberal community like San Francisco is beneficial for the country, as well as the kids involved.

Hiding bigotry behind other people's children: The evil of Proposition 8

2008-10-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

I had prepared this nuanced, reasoned argument against Proposition 8. I was planning to coolly and respectfully engage the "yes" argument in order to rationally rebut it. I was willing to give the motives of the proponents of Prop. 8 the benefit of the doubt, in the spirit of Jonathan Haidt's explanations of moral roots of liberals vs. conservatives (and his talk is well worth watching).

But I'm not going to. Instead I am going to get very angry and yell and scream at the top of my lungs for people to FUCKING VOTE AGAINST THIS EVIL PROPOSITION!

Why? Because of this. If your argument consists of running around shrilling "won't somebody PLEASE think of the children" then you deserve to be treated like the cartoon character that you are. To be a bigot is bad enough. But to mask your bigotry behind the innocence of children, to use other people's kids as an excuse for your intolerance, is unacceptable.

The gay couples I know who have kids are all outstanding parents. I hope one day to be as good a parent as they are, and to have the privilege to raise children in as loving, protective and caring a family. So don't tell me that this is all about the children. What's really at issue is your homophobia.

So you're uncomfortable with the notion of homosexuality. I understand that. It's OK. That's your right and no one expects you to feel differently. But this proposition isn't about your squeamishness, it's about other people's rights. Gay couples will raise families and have children with or without your consent. Proposition 8 won't change that. All it will do is make people's lives more difficult. On adoption, on inheritance, on visitation, on all the other legal aspects of marriage, some people will face unfair obstacles, while others will not, for no reason other than your discomfort with the idea of same-sex relationships. And who will be hurt most by these obstacles? That's right, the children, whose interests you claim so unconvincingly to have at heart. Because if you think for a second that writing discrimination into the California constitution is somehow going to make gay families go away, you've got another think coming. Those families are going to be around either way. The only question is, how many obstacles do you want to place in their path?

I have tried to put myself in the shoes of a gay couple. I have tried to imagine what it would feel like to know that millions of my fellow Californians will go to the polls to vote on whether I should have the same rights as them. I can't, any more than I can imagine what it would have been like to be Black during the civil rights movement. I can only assume that it's terrifying, frightening, insulting and humiliating. Is that really what you want to inflict on your fellow citizens?

We're all human, and we all have our prejudices. But at the ballot box, as in our daily lives, we should strive to be the best people we can be. We should have the decency to recognize that those prejudices are not worthy of us. Proposition 8 is horrible, and it must fail.

McCain authors a bill establishing a registry of the email addresses of online predators

2008-10-15T15:13:00.000-07:00

Because those creeps would never think to set up a new account...

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/mccains-sex-off.html

Does he think that email addresses are like physical addresses? That you can only have one? (or, in his case, seven?)

Man, he really does not understand the internet.

McCain unveils plan to zap the credit crisis with a giant "laser"

2008-10-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

Dr. Evil's polling numbers could hardly be worse than McCain's though.

The new No on 8 Ad

2008-10-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

If you can, please help the No on 8 campaign fund their media buy to get this message out, by donating at: http://www.noonprop8.com/

November 4th: Anatomy of a political murder then and now

2008-10-14T01:10:00.001-07:00

It was a warm autumn night in Tel Aviv. I was walking back from the peace rally outside city hall, still thrilled at having stood up with tens of thousands of my fellow Israelis to support Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin's peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

It was November 4th, 1995.

As I was about to cross the street, A motorcade tore across the intersection, through the red lights, sirens wailing. Only when I got home did I hear the news: those limos were carrying Rabin to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead minutes later. An Israeli religious fanatic opposed to the peace process had shot Rabin as he left the rally.

I can barely remember the next few days. For me, and for millions of Israelis, it was as if the bullets had torn into our own flesh. Dazed, mourning, shocked, we gradually resumed our daily lives.

But not all were in mourning. In the Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, and in the fanatical Yeshivas in Jerusalem, many openly rejoiced at the news of Rabin's death. Some rabbis considered the murder divine intervention, god ridding the land of the "scourge of the Jews", as they called him. The simmering culture wars now erupted across the country, between proponents (left- and right-wing, secular and religious) of a civil society, who valued justice and the rule of law, and religious fanatics who believed only in a radical, racist, biblical interpretation. And straddling the fence between these two camps was Israel's greatest political opportunist, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, by all accounts, should have belonged firmly in the civilian camp. A scion of an elite Israeli family, Educated at MIT and Harvard, a firm believer in Friedmanite economics, and a thrice-married philanderer, Netanyahu was an unlikely hero of the religious fanatics. However, after ascending to the head of the opposition Likud party, Netanyahu, sensing where his votes lay, wasted no time in rabble-rousing against Prime Minister Rabin's Labour government.

In the months leading up to the assassination the right's rhetoric became increasingly violent. At anti-government rallies, often attended by opposition leaders, chants of "death to the Arabs" and "death to Rabin" became increasingly common, as did burning Rabin in effigy, usually dressed in an Arab keffiyeh. Netanyahu paid lip-service to renunciation of violence. Yet, at the height of the anti-Rabin hysteria he marched at the head of a column of protesters bearing a coffin with Rabin's name on it.

It was in this atmosphere that Yigal Amir, Rabin's assassin, decided to carry out his crime. As he later told investigators, he felt emboldened by what he saw as the support of an entire community. The atmosphere of lawlessness, created by the explicitly violent tone of right-wing protests coupled with the implicit assent of the right's political leaders, led to Israel's greatest political tragedy.

As we approach election day, ironically held on the 13th anniversary of the Rabin assassination, the lessons of that awful day are not far to seek.

We are now seeing the stirrings of another campaign of hate, led by crazed wingnuts, but tacitly encouraged by Senator McCain and Governor Palin. Now, as then, a moderate leftist political leader is smeared as an outsider, an enemy, a friend of terrorists. Now, as then, the tone at right-wing rallies is becoming ever more vile and violent. Now, as then, the other side's leaders try to ride the tiger while paying lip service to civility. With a nudge and a wink they stir up the worst instincts of their worst supporters, hoping to, somehow, come out on top, forgetting that they who sow the wind reap the whirlwind.

Do John McCain and Sarah Palin want Obama assassinated? Of course not. Do the violent supporters at their rallies? Almost certainly not. But every time McCain or Palin stand by as someone yells "terrorist" at a rally, somewhere in America, someone moves closer to taking that link to its violent conclusion. The irresponsible rhetoric radiates out in concentric circles from the mainstream to the fringes. McCain and Palin have branded Obama a friend of terrorists. Some supporters, hearing this, will conclude that Obama himself might as well be a terrorist. Other supporters, further to the fringes, hear this and conclude that Obama is a mortal danger to the security of the nation. And somewhere, in the far reaches of the outermost circle, someone moves closer to taking that premise to its murderous conclusion. They will truly believe, based on the rhetoric they've heard, that they have the support of a large movement who will praise them for saving the country from a terrorist.

My message to the Republican candidates is simple: your words matter. Senator Obama will almost certainly be our next president. I'm sure that, deep down, you know this to be true. How you act between now and the election will almost certainly not change its outcome, but it will change your legacy. It's not yet too late to be remembered as the candidates who, even while losing, showed grace, responsibility and foresight in forcefully opposing the violence of a small minority of their supporters. Or you can be remembered as rabble-rousers, who set the spark to a tinderbox of racism and hate-mongering and stood back sanctimoniously as the flames engulfed our democracy.

McCain and Palin may think it's all just rhetoric, fair game to win an election, but they are, probably without meaning to, helping unleash a wave of political violence that may lead to murder, either Obama's or one of his supporters. Which could be any one of us working on the campaign.

And you can't just stuff that genie back in the bottle on November 5th.

Hong Kong

2008-10-14T01:02:00.001-07:00

Finally back from my Asian jaunt. I had a great time. Hong Kong is a pretty unique place. It's like the bastard child of Tokyo and London. The most impressive things about it are the buildings, but they only become more impressive when viewed against a natural backdrop, say from the Peak.

Anyway, pictures:

Hong Kong - October 2008

And a short clip from the night Symphony of Light show, taken from a boat on Victoria Harbour:

Taiwan

2008-10-06T03:19:00.001-07:00

A splendid week in Taiwan ends tomorrow, when I fly off to Hong Kong.

If you've always thought of Taiwan as "that place where motherboards come from", think again. It's an amazing place.

Taipei is like an amalgam of the good bits of Tokyo and Bangkok, but without the crappier features of the latter. Great food, night markets everywhere, excellent public transportation, interesting sights.

Chiang Kai-Chek Memorial Hall, Taipei

Once you go outside the city though, it's all lush greenery and fabulous waterfalls. This island is very wet, and consequently very green. Taroko gorge, in the east, is like Yosemite, but with marble instead of granite.

A pagoda, suspension bridge and waterfall at Taroko NP

Beitou, North of Taipei, is a village renowned for its hot springs. The water comes out of the ground almost boiling. By the time it gets to the bathing areas it's cooled down enough that I was able to have an invigorating dip.

The hot springs at Beitou

Yesterday Annie and I went to Wulai, an aboriginal village with an excellent waterfall, and today I went to Yehliu, a fishing village on the North coast which has a geological park containing unusual rock formations created by wave erosion. Unfortunately the rural buses up there are not numbered, nor are they signed in English, so I had to get on every bus and point to the name of my destination in chinese in my guide book hoping the driver would nod me on... I made it there eventually.

The waterfall at Wulai

Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to go down to the south, where there are supposed to be glorious beaches and dive sites. Next time!

See more photos (but still only a fraction of the hundreds I took):

Taipei - October 2008: Album 1

Eastern Taiwan & Taroko National Park - Oct 2008

Taipei, Wulai and Yehliu - October 2008

The Great Schlep: Getting Jewish grandchildren to convince their Florida grandparents to vote Obama

2008-09-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

Sarah Silverman recommends it, so it must be a worthy cause, right?

Money quote: "Barack Obama is circumsupersized!"

Ralph Nader, losing his marbles, talks to a parrot about getting freaky with a lady panda

2008-09-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

Ralph Nader eccentrically whines about getting no media coverage:

Money quote from the man who wants to be the next President of the USA:

"Sometimes I think I have to dress up as a panda and go over to the zoo and cast some amorous glances at a female panda... To be or not to be... a panda."

Ralph, perhaps the media ignores you because you're a narcissistic pisshead with marginal support, whose only electoral role is to throw elections to the greater of two evils. Oh, and you talk to parrots about pandas. That might also have something to do with it. It's time for your medication now.

News Flash: John McCain can't take heat, wants out of kitchen

2008-09-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

Apparently, McCain will suspend his campaign (whatever that means) and postpone Friday's debate, to "focus on the crisis facing the US economy". Naturally, he's called on Obama to do the same. Apparently McCain is incapable of running a campaign and voting on a bill at the same time, which bodes interestingly for the competence potential presidency, don't you think?

After stripping out the double-speak, here is McCain's real announcement:

"My friends, I am well on the road to losing this election. My hail-mary VP pick has not helped me fundamentally alter the race. I am flailing around to find a campaign message, but nothing I try seems to stick. I have tried lying my ass off, but that hasn't worked. My attempts to focus the campaign on bullshit instead of issues has backfired big time with this economic collapse, destroying my credibility with voters. "

"My fellow Americans, I need a time out to regroup. I need to find some way to regain credibility on the economic issue, perhaps by some empty posturing. I would like to suggest that my opponent voluntarily suspend his campaign right when he's at a distinct advantage, so I can use the time to figure out some new way to slime him. I will perhaps also use this time to refocus Sarah's policy cramming sessions onto Econ 101. "

"Thank you, and god bless America."

My time at Camp Obama

2008-09-23T23:02:00.000-07:00

No, there was no campfire and no s'mores or hot cocoa. But I still had a fascinating time.

We congregated Sunday at 8 AM at Hastings College of Law, for a 12 hour marathon session learning how to be Deputy Field Organizers for the Obama campaign. We spent the day getting to know each other, learning the ins and outs of how to communicate with voters, work with other volunteers and how the campaign works.

I'm obviously not going to give any numbers away for Republicans to read, but I will say this: I was very impressed by how the campaign is organized.

When you hear Senator Obama talk about how the campaign is really not about him but about the volunteers, you're probably thinking that this is just the usual spin. But I have to tell you - this campaign really is different. I expected to spend the whole day listening to talks about how awesome Senator Obama is and how awful his opponent is. But as it turned out we spent most of the day talking about each other. Senator Obama was mentioned only sporadically. Senator McCain was not mentioned at all.

Rather than the goal of the organization being just to win the White House and go home, this campaign is focused on building a real grassroots movement, a liberal equivalent to the network of Evangelical churches that powers the Republican grassroots. But this movement connects people not on the basis of religion but on a shared vision of a more equitable and just civic society. It has brought together a motley collection of new activists: union organizers, seniors, environmentalists, minorities, the handicapped, social progressives, gays, and people who care about making this country the best it can be. Winning the election is just the first step.

We spent much of the day getting to know each other, connecting and networking in ways that will be incredibly valuable to us working on the campaign. Everyone brings a different story, different skills and different desires to the campaign. The best lesson I learned on Sunday was how to fit such a diverse group of people together into a functioning campaign unit.

And this is how the entire campaign is organized. The most important things we learned were not Senator Obama's positions on this or that, or any of the nuances of polls or politics, or who does what in which state, it was about the basic organizing principles of the campaign, which are:

Respect, Empower, Include.

This whole campaign is built not on the hero-worship of the candidate, but on connecting and empowering regular citizens. I know this sounds hopelessly touchy-feely, but most of my readers know me as a cynic, so if I'm talking like this, you can be sure it's true...

I mostly work and socialize with people like me. The connected, wired, Facebooked Silicon Valley crowd. Spending a day working with Bob, a Jewish retiree, Elizabeth, an African-American diversity consultant, Laure, a journalist, and many others from all walks of life, opened my eyes to the amazing people all over this country, just itching to make a difference. After that, making phone calls and canvassing for votes seem like just a step on a road to something bigger and better.

If you want to get involved with the Obama campaign and help make history, I highly recommend Camp Obama. You can sign up here. And if you can't attend but still want to help out, talk to me about travel to Nevada.

And now, In Naomi Klein's own words...

2008-09-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-klein/now-is-the-time-to-resist_b_128433.html

The Bailout: The Shock Doctrine unfolds before our eyes

2008-09-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

Naomi Klein's excellent book The Shock Doctrine chronicles the cynical use of disasters, natural and man-made, physical and economic, to ram through unpopular economic policies. These typically include deregulation, spending cuts and privatization. The theory is that populations in the immediate aftermath of a disaster are in such a state of shock and disorientation that they are incapable of objecting to policies involving the wholesale transfer of public money and responsibilities to the private sector. Think of it as economic Shock and Awe.

And what have we today in Washington? As Paul Krugman points out:

"...after having spent a year and a half telling everyone that things were under control, the Bush administration says that the sky is falling, and that to save the world we have to do exactly what it says now now now."

And what is this urgent policy that they want our fear to drive us to accept? The use of absurd amounts of our tax dollars to reward the worst, most irresponsible behavior of Wall Street. Effectively the Bush administration would like its swan song to be the channeling of hundreds of billions of public dollars directly into the pockets of the private sector.

It would be a fitting end note for an administration that has spent its entire time in power doing little other than hollow out the government and transfer as many as possible of its assets and functions to the private sector, usually in an atmosphere of secrecy and corruption, and under the cover of disasters such as 9/11, Katrina and the Iraq war. Except that this bailout makes Halliburton look like small potatoes.

The administration calculates that our fear of market turmoil will compel us to accept their plan, which includes granting unheard-of spending authority to the Secretary of the Treasury (whose resemblance to Lex Luthor now seems even more sinister) with no congressional or judicial oversight or review.

It is not to late to stop this travesty. There will, and probably should, be a bailout. But we must insist that its terms are fair to taxpayers and homeowners, and that this is not just a massive early Christmas present to the Wall Street incompetents who caused this mess in the first place.

Please take a few minutes to write to your representative, or to the editor of your paper of choice, and support their current scrutiny of Bush's scurrilous plan. Tell them that you are not panicked, and neither should they be. Panic breeds bad decisions.

John McCain, meet Phil Gramm

2008-09-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

Remember Phil? He was a co-chair of your campaign? Called us a "nation of whiners" a few weeks back? Still advises you "informally"? Rumor has it that you're considering him for Treasury Secretary in your administration? Yes, THAT Phil Gramm.

Anyway, I listened with interest today as you promoted tighter regulation of financial markets, excoriating the greed-driven loose regulatory framework that allowed shoddy debt to be obscured. Quite right.

I thought you might be interested in what Phil here has to say about this. After all he was one of your top economic advisers. He is also responsible for anti-regulatory legislation that helped create this mess. He also created what was later termed the "Enron loophole". And given how that turned out, that can't be good, right? Oh, and given your strong statements about corruption and "Washington business as usual", you might be interested to know that Phil apparently received over a million dollars in campaign contributions from the financial services industry during his Senate tenure, which he spent mostly loosing them from the constraints of oversight. Fun stuff.

Anyhow, John (I can call you John, right?) here are some things you and Phil might want to chat about: given your past statements, and the company you keep, are you for, or against, regulation of complex financial instruments? Or were you for it before you were against it? Or vice versa? Is there any consistency left in your campaign utterances? Or is it all just blatant pandering?

In fact, let me phrase it this way: do you actually believe a word that comes out of your own mouth any more?

Anyway, you two talk among yourselves...

John McCain wants to take his ball and go home.

2008-09-18T18:03:00.000-07:00

CNN reports that John McCain accuses Barack Obama of seeing the economic crisis as "political opportunity".

Er, Senator McCain? If the economy is not a legitimate political issue, then what is? No one forced you to say stupid things about it in front of a camera, or have one of the architects of the present mess as a top adviser. You did all those things on your own. So suck it up.

What good was Lehman Brothers, anyway?

2008-09-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

From an article in today's Washington Post:

"At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, what good was Lehman Brothers, anyway?"

Rick Wright, RIP

2008-09-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright died today aged 65, after battling cancer.

I've loved Pink Floyd since as far back as I can remember. "Dark Side of the Moon", "Wish You Were Here" and, of course, "The Wall", opened my eyes to the boundless ambition of album-driven music. While their early stuff, with Syd Barrett's unique, madcap combinations of psychedelic madness and the innocence of nursery rhymes, is still haunting and evocative after all these years.

He will be missed.

Samples of his contributions as a composer:

"Remember a Day", from "A Saucerful of Secrets":

"The Great Gig in the Sky", from "Dark Side of the Moon":

Nostalgia video of the day: "Brimful of Asha" by Cornershop

2008-09-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

A britpop classic from the late 90s. Wish I knew what it was about though.

The other 9/11

2008-09-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

Today we mark the tragic terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. Thousands of innocent people lost their lives in a deliberate act of concentrated barbarism aimed squarely at the heart of American political, military and economic power.

But today is also the anniversary of another deliberate act of barbarism. That act, and the years of suffering that followed, was not aimed against America. On the contrary, it was actively supported by the US government and by some of the country's most esteemed intellectuals.

I am referring, of course, to the 1973 coup in Chile.

On 9/11/1973, the Chilean military seized control of the country, replacing democratically elected president Salvador Allende with dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Unlike 9/11/2001, with its single shocking morning of intense violence, 9/11/1973 was relatively bloodless, with only a few dozen deaths, including Allende's. But that date was just the opening salvo in an all-out assault by the CIA-supported junta on civil society in Chile.

Throughout the 70s and 80s thousands were murdered or "disappeared" by the regime. Tens of thousands more were incarcerated and tortured. Freedoms and rights were brutally curtailed as the regime forced radical corporatist economic "reform" on a people that did not want it or vote for it, all the while cheered on by neoconservative luminaries such as Henry Kissinger and Milton Friedman.

On a day when we remember a tragic act of violence perpetrated against our own nation, we would do well to also note the tragic events of 1973, not least because of our own government's collusion with their perpetrators.

The 9/11 terrorists set out to strike at the heart of our way of life, and in that, at least, they failed. For the vast majority of Americans, life is much the same now as it was 7 years ago. But the strike at the heart of leftist Chile's alternative was, sadly, far more successful. The support of American leaders and academics for the barbarity of the other 9/11 should shock our conscience and stain their reputations in our eyes forever.

Reminder: The Glasvegas debut album is out on Monday

2008-09-05T23:01:00.000-07:00

And I know you're all eagerly anticipating it, right?

If not, prepare to meet your new favorite band:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vpkq4vl1vk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dquK43zFfKc

Nostalgia video of the day: "Sit Down" by James

2008-09-04T18:44:00.000-07:00

Dedicated to Misha and to all other Americans who have, strangely, never heard of this song. This was pretty much the biggest Madchester anthem ever.

If this song doesn't make you want to wave your arms in the air, then you need to get out more.

Why I have a crush on Gloria Steinem...

2008-09-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

In the LA Times, Gloria Steinem writes by far the most sensible and eloquent critique of the Sarah Palin pick.

Money quote: "So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom."

Jon Stewart eviscerates Republican hypocrisy (but in Dick Morris's defense, he is a lying sack of shit...)

2008-09-04T11:02:00.000-07:00

Shock! Karl Rove stripped of "most cynical fucking bastard in the universe" award. Title reissued to John McCain!

2008-08-29T23:31:00.000-07:00

Well, that didn't take long. No sooner had I accused Rove of being the most cynical fucking bastard in the universe when McCain outdid his new mentor by a mile by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate.

So apparently, by some insane logic comprehensible only to former POWs, Barack Obama is not experienced enough to be President, but Sarah Palin is fine??????

It's not unreasonable for candidates to pick running mates partly for electoral purposes, but we still expect at least an appearance of suitability to the role. It's a worn cliche that the Vice President is a heartbeat away from the presidency, but in 72-year-old cancer survivor John McIrresponsible's case, that heartbeat could well give out. Actuaries across the nation, computing the Republican candidate's life expectancy, must be shitting themselves.

Palin, apart from her obvious cluelessness, is also ideologically extreme: she's anti-abortion (including, apparently, even exceptions for incest or life of the mother) and she believes that creationism should be taught in schools. The evangelicals are licking their lips, but the rest of us can only weep.

Selecting Palin is such a transparent, pathetic attempt to pander to women, that it's beneath contempt. And it's pretty insulting to Hillary voters to imply that they'll vote for a right wing nut job, anti-abortion, anti-science ticket just because there's a woman on it, no matter how hopelessly out of her depth she might be, or how opposed to their principles.

What a maverick move. Stay classy, John McCain.

The most cynical fucking bastard in the universe award goes to...

2008-08-28T22:54:00.001-07:00

Karl Rove! Well, no surprises there.

What did he have to say about Tropical Storm Gustav, currently bearing down on the gulf coast:

"The Republicans can't seem to catch a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather"

See, the real victims of those pesky August hurricanes, such as Katrina, are not the people whose lives and possessions are destroyed. It's not those who were abandoned by an incompetent, venal government during the disaster and then sold out by that same government so that reconstruction dollars could flow to cronies instead of to the people that needed them.

No, the real victims here are the Republicans. Poor guys. After all, just because they fucked everything up and fucked everyone over doesn't mean they should be held accountable, right? What right does Gustav have to come along now and remind everyone of their utter failure three years ago? Or disrupt their pitiful diverse-collection-of-old-white-men convention? Really, those gulf coast whiners not only have no possessions, but no consideration.

In any case, this bullshit isn't even genuine. This hurricane is actually a godsend for the Republicans and Rove knows it. It gives Bush and Cheney a plausible reason not to attend the convention, and McCain doesn't want the toxic twosome there anyway.

The only reason they were attending was because not attending would have drawn even more attention to them, but now Bush gets a photo-op astride a FEMA rescue boat, McCain gets an albatross-free convention, and Cheney gets to sacrifice a virgin on the bayou during the full moon, or whatever it is he does to keep his body from melting until he's finally reunited with his bartered soul in Satan's dark dominion.

In summary, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Karl Rove is a complete fucking wanker. Fucker.

The Comeback Kid comes back again

2008-08-28T10:17:00.000-07:00

Bill Clinton's speech last night at the Democratic National Convention was superb.

Gone was angry, petulant Bubba from the primaries, and back was President William Jefferson Clinton. Articulate, forceful, gracious and sincere, his eloquence and charisma reminded us why so many people liked him to begin with.

After Hillary's great speech the night before, I think it's safe to say that the Clinton legacy within the Democratic party is safe and sound.

Nostalgia video of the day, Outside Lands special edition: "Mary Jane's Last Dance" by Tom Petty

2008-08-25T11:49:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately embedding has been disabled for this video, so you'll have to click through to see Tom Petty doing dodgy things with Kim Basinger's corpse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdTYcnUBADw

Diebold, is your spokesman really named "rig-all" ????

2008-08-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

Oh dear.

Not only are Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold) admitting that their electronic voting machines lose votes (presumably mostly votes for Democrats), but their spokesman is the unfortunately-named Chris Riggall.

Do you really want to put election-rigging in people's minds as they read this?

Obamamath: minus signs don't matter.

2008-08-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

According to an Obama stump speech I heard on the radio yesterday, under Bill Clinton the average family's annual income rose by $6000, while under Bush it dropped by $1000. Obama emphasized that this was "A $7000 swing!".

Er, no. Actually it's a $5000 swing. Or a $1000 swing, or a $6000 swing, depending on when you start and stop measuring, but the one thing it definitely is not is a $7000 swing.

Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential prick.

2008-08-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

Best. Typo. Ever.

Thanks, Associated Press.

Pictures and video from the Obama fundraiser

2008-08-18T22:09:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege to attend Barack Obama's record breaking fundraiser at the Fairmont hotel last night. It was a really fascinating experience.

Firstly, I got to rub shoulders with the great and the good, and pretend like I belonged among them. Best acquaintance made: the guy who runs the San Francisco Giants.

Then Jackson Browne performed, at one point inviting Graham Nash on stage. Now I can usually take or leave Jackson Browne, but he was actually surprisingly great. Just right for the event. On the other hand Graham Nash was in one of the greatest bands ever, so it was momentous for me to be two rows away from him.

Graham Nash and Jackson Browne

Then an ascending chain of campaign hacks got the crowd more and more worked up, until House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came on stage and introduced Obama. She makes a much better impression in person than she does on TV, I have to say. The cackling laugh was nowhere evident.

Nancy Pelosi Introducing Obama

Finally, Obama came on stage and spoke for about 20 minutes. It was a minor variation on his standard stump speech. I'd heard it before on the radio and seen it on TV, so nothing much stood out contentwise, apart from his assurance that his campaign was not going to take Republican attacks lying down. "I am not John Kerry" he seemed to be saying, not in so many words. But despite the fairly conventional speech, he still electrified the room. I always thought that Bill Clinton was charismatic, but Obama is in another league. It's very impressive to meet people with that quality, who is also probably quite capable. It's a stark change from still-President Bush's unique combination of incompetence and lack of eloquence.

The man himself

Seriously, if the Democrats can't win the presidency this time, they should probably give up and go back to their knitting.

Finally, here's a little video for y'all:

Obama at Saddleback

2008-08-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

After Saturday's Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, right-wing pundits are wringing their hands with glee! Obama seemed OK, but McCain won! His answers were more appealing to evangelicals! He got more applause! His answers were more concise! (read 'simplistic and pandering').

How foolish. Obama's goal wasn't to "win" this forum, whatever that even means. Evangelical Christians are not his crowd, to put it mildly. This was, to use a basketball metaphor, like playing an away game, 3 on 5, facing uphill, after spotting your opponents 30 points.

No, all Obama needed to do on Saturday was demonstrate that he's not Satan. And he seems to have achieved that amply. He cannot and did not need to convince devout pro-lifers that he will do more to protect the rights of blastocysts than his opponent. His goal was tomake people already inclined to support him on pocketbook issues, yet hesitant over religious issues, comfortable with the idea of voting for him. Time will tell if he's succeeded or not, but to judge his performance as a failure based on the fact that McCain drew wider applause is just silly.

Even I got caught up in Phelpsmania!

2008-08-17T00:09:00.000-07:00

After a week of rubbishing the Olympics, I have to admit that even I got caught up with Michael Phelps's amazing run of gold medals and world records. Particularly since he seems like such a fine-spirited athlete.

Given the magnitude of his achievements he could well afford to be an arrogant shit. But he actually seems very humble, grateful and gracious to his teammates and competitors. It's the stuff legends are made of.

Nostalgia video of the day: The Spitting Image parody of Wham

2008-08-15T11:15:00.001-07:00

Funniest song parody ever:

Olympic bullshit III: Naomi Klein is far more eloquent than I

2008-08-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

Speaking of No Logo, here's what Naomi Klein has to say about the Olympics.

Money quotes:

"These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarian communism -- central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance -- harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism."

"The goal of all this central planning and spying is not to celebrate the glories of Communism, regardless of what China's governing party calls itself. It is to create the ultimate consumer cocoon for Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cell phones, McDonald's happy meals, Tsingtao beer, and UPS delivery -- to name just a few of the official Olympic sponsors."

Olympic bullshit II

2008-08-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

Furthering my opinion that the Olympics are a ridiculous media show in which message control eclipses all other values, the IOC has had a "Free Tibet" protest video yanked, citing "copyright infringement". Apparently a video of a projection of a photo of the Olympic rings on the side of a building constitutes a severe intellectual property crime.

Now of course we all realize that the copyright issue was just a pretext, and that the real issue is to keep the official narrative of the games going by stifling all anti-Chinese expression. But it's funny how, when convenient, the IOC portrays the games as a big kumbaya, coming together moment for the world, and then turns around and acts like any other large corporation.

No Logo's discussion of the erosion of free public space is more relevant than ever...

Apparently John McCain has no sense of irony...

2008-08-11T16:11:00.000-07:00

John McCain has sharply criticized Russia for its invasion of Georgia.

"Whatever tensions and hostilities might have existed between Georgians and Ossetians, they in no way justify Moscow's path of violent aggression."

"Russian actions, in clear violation of international law, have no place in 21st century Europe."

You tell 'em John! Who would ever justify invading, on trumped-up pretexts, a foreign country that poses no real threat. Oh, wait...

Flat or round, it certainly has no shortage of stupid.

2008-08-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

The BBC exposes people who claim to literally believe that the earth is flat. Well done, Christianity.

Not that I care much for "flat world" as an overwrought metaphor either.

Nostalgia Video of the Day: Factory Records Special

2008-08-10T02:26:00.000-07:00

In honour of the fantastic film "24 Hour Party People", a double-header of two of Factory Record's finest moments:

FAC 13: "Transmission" by Joy Division:

FAC 272: "Step On" by Happy Mondays:

Have the Olympics jumped the shark?

2008-08-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

Is it me, or does it seem like the Olympics are becoming rather pointless?

I don't just mean Beijing 2008, but the whole Olympic enterprise. I used to be pretty engaged when the games came around, but I remember not being nearly as excited about Athens as I was about Sydney. And now it turns out that I am rather apathetic about the current festivus.

Feeding the Media Beast

The Olympics used to be mostly a sporting event with some glitz and glamor thrown in for effect. Now the games are mostly a pretext for a giant media event. The actual nature of the sporting events on a given day of broadcasting seems as arbitrary as the made-up contests on reality shows. In fact that's what the Olympics are becoming: the world's most expensive, most tightly scripted reality show, in which the athletes are playing just another role. The sports are relegated to the role of "content", whereas today's media is all about coverage and meta-coverage. The actual thing being covered is secondary. See coverage of the presidential election for more examples of this...

Now don't get me wrong, I'm certain that on the ground, in the heat of competition, the athletes epitomize the Olympic spirit. I have no beef with them. At least those of them not on cocktails of performance-enhancing drugs. But what we see at home are the thick layers poured on top of those athletes' performances, a carefully choreographed charade designed primarily to sell Coca-Cola. It seems like most people I talk to are into the Olympics primarily because it's been packaged as a must-see event, and not because of any huge love for anything actually going on in the games. So why do we watch it? As George Costanza memorably put it, "because it's on TV."

The Show Must Go On

As with any tightly-scripted event, message control is paramount. Don't believe me? Check out this nugget of news. Cyclists on the US Olympic team were required by the US Olympic Committee to apologize to Olympic organizers for the horrific crime of being photographed wearing the face masks given to them by that same US Olympic Committee to fight Beijing's notorious pollution. Apparently everyone has to bend over backwards to appease the host country, even if it means glossing over its record-beating pollution levels, not to mention its abysmal human rights record, it's ties to Sudan and its defiance over visa denials and restricting web access to journalists. Headlines like "Beijing puts on a show for the world" are exactly right, albeit referring only to the opening ceremony and not the big fake show of global unity choreographed by the world's largest dictatorship.

And it's not as if the games are particularly good for the host city. A huge chunk of a country's wealth gets diverted into massive construction projects that are then only used for 3 weeks. In many cases the hosts end up with a big bill to pay and several white elephants dotted around the city looking to be put to use. Not to mention that environmental impact and the general drain on resources. The Olympics are highly irregular events with unusual demands on transportation, accomodation and infrastructure. Wouldn't it be better to spend that money on the long-term needs of residents?

A Sane Schedule of Sporting Events

It's high time the Olympics were either canceled or at least significantly scaled back, and made more distributed in time and location, so they can cost less through greater use of existing infrastructure. It's not like we care that much about the events anyway. There are three types of Olympic sports: The ones we never normally pay attention to but love in the Olympics (athletics, swimming, gymnastics), the ones we normally love but are unimportant in the Olympics (tennis, cycling, basketball etc.) and the ones we simply never pay attention to (equestrian, wrestling, rowing etc.).

The sports in the first category could be amply covered by their existing world championships. Yes, these events do actually take place! Look it up. They just don't get the saturation media coverage. But the world championships in athletics or swimming are just as thrilling as the Olympic events, just not bundled together in an insane package of "every sport you can imagine, and several you can't, crammed into two weeks".

The sports in the second category could be eliminated from the Olympics entirely. Who cares about Olympic tennis when we have 4 Grand Slam events a year? Olympic football is a joke, when we have a World Cup or European Championship every two years, not to mention annual club competition. And basketball? The US has to beg its millionaire NBA players to spend their summer risking injury only to lose to Argentina in the semis.

And as for the third category, well, it is kind of nice to be exposed to weird sports every few years. We could have the major sports' championship events partner with those of the minor sports. Think about it: The 2010 Football World Cup and Synchronized Swimming Championships... Or we could make the summer Olympics be just about the sports weird sports. Kinda like the winter Olympics...

It's Time For a Reset

So true, yes, the FIFA World Cup is also a bloated media monster. BUT- it's not that big in the US, which takes some of the edge off, it's focused on a single sport, and a highly popular one at that, and most importantly - it has a discernible climax and a single winner. The Olympics, on the other hand, get anticlimactic surprisingly quickly. Everyone talks about the opening ceremony, but then the thing fragments into dozens of shards. There are still a few highlights - the 100M finals, the marathon, the gymnastics. But overall things stay pretty diffuse. The Olympics, unlike most other events, are not building towards one big finish but a hundred little ones. This is not the stuff drama is made of.

Perhaps a new, gentler, smaller, kinder, cheaper Olympics could be a breeding ground for some true drama. Not just for hyper-achieving anorexics and steroid abusers, but for loveable losers like Eddie the Eagle and Eric the Eel, now all too scarce.

Another venerable franchise, the James Bond movie series, recently benefited greatly from a "reset". It's time to reset the Olympics.

I guess you can never have too much V1aGra...

2008-08-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

Naturally I use a Gmail account for personal mail. But I also have a Yahoo! Mail account I use for registering on websites and so on, when I'd rather not give out the same email address I give to people who actually know me.

Anyway, it looks like Yahoo's spam filters, never that good in the best of times, collapsed today. I've spent all morning discovering that I may have won various lotteries I don't remember participating in, and that total strangers think my penis isn't large enough.

What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

2008-08-08T08:44:00.001-07:00

In case you missed it due to all the Olympic hoopla, Russia and Georgia are now at war.

Nostalgia video of the day: "It's Oh So Quiet" by Bjork

2008-08-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

Doesn't this one make whatever kind of day you're having that little bit better?

Learning about humanity from robots: Why WALL-E is a masterpiece.

2008-08-02T19:40:00.000-07:00

The trailer did not look promising. Really, Pixar? Zany robot antics? Android slapstick? Automatons playing paddle ball and crashing into supermarket trolleys? That irritating comedy-trailer-voiceover-guy yammering on until, if you closed your eyes, you could see Eddie Murphy in a fat suit?

What we got in WALL-E, as it turns out, was a masterpiece. Not just, as most critics would have it, "another winner from the geniuses at Pixar" but a watershed event in mainstream film making.

This is not to detract from Pixar's other triumphs, such as "Finding Nemo", "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" to name my personal favorites. These are all excellent films. In fact, with the exception of "Cars", which was 'merely' good, it seems that Pixar outdoes itself with every new release. But WALL-E is in another class entirely. It's a transformative movie, that will raise forever our expectations of what a mainstream, family-friendly film, animated or otherwise, can achieve.

This is, after all, a movie with almost no dialog. Its main characters are machines. It takes place in a dystopian future in which life on Earth has been littered to extinction by planet-escaping humans. Its visuals are stunning, yet haunting and disturbing. It deals with commercialism, corporate excess, the environment, obesity, and what it means to be human. It references similar themes in movies such as Blade Runner, The Matrix and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Oh, and did I mention that it somehow covers all this and more with a G rating?

Drawing the universe

Visually, WALL-E has raised the computer animation bar yet again. We've come to expect each Pixar offering to outdo its predecessor, as the company improves and develops its technology. Yet even against that expectation, WALL-E still manages to astonish. The opening scenes, as our viewpoint snakes around trash skyscrapers shadowing abandoned office towers, expand the scale of the animated world to planet size, dwarfing even the oceanic scope of "Finding Nemo". Later on in the movie we get another shift, to the final frontier of scale, the universe itself.

Yet for all the grandiosity of scale, not an iota of detail is lost as we zoom in to focus on our protagonist, hapless janitor robot WALL-E. A lesser production might have used flashy visuals and fast motion to draw our attention away from the difficulties of making an identifiable character out of a speechless, barely-humanoid trash compactor. This film, however, renders every speck of rust on WALL-E's body, every mote of dust on the parched earth, as lovingly as it does stars and planets. You can easily imagine how the cartoon environment would feel to the touch. There's a sense that if the action were to zoom in onto individual molecules, a la "Powers of Ten", they would still be visualized with the same evocative depth and texture.

This is the first Pixar movie to incorporate live action scenes, albeit only as clips shown to characters within the CG world. Some are original, others are clips from overwrought 1960s musical Hello Dolly, the cultural artifact dearest to WALL-E's heart. The integration of live action into the animated world is so seamless that one can't help wonder what lies further along that technological axis. Pixar may be showing us a first glimpse of a new frontier of technology and storytelling possibilities, in which the best features of live action and animation are merged in previously unexplored ways. I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

Where does value come from?

Yet Pixar's qualitative edge over competing CG animation houses has always been about far more than technology. While Dreamworks and others have striven primarily for yucks and giggles, throwing about contemporary pop-cultural references that go stale almost as soon as they hit the screen (imagine WALL-E as a farting robot voiced by Will Smith...), Pixar has always put story first. Thematically, WALL-E is their most ambitious undertaking yet. Darker, more disturbing, more cynical and yet also more uplifting than any Pixar film before it. Stylistically, this movie takes the maxim "show, don't tell" to a logical extreme, unfolding a complex story with almost no dialog, starring characters with no power of speech. This would be hard to do in any movie, but in a G-rated summer blockbuster it seems audacious beyond hope. How gratifying, then, that it works so well.

The first part of the film takes place on a future Earth, destroyed and abandoned by humans. As it turns out, it wasn't the 20th century environmental bogeymen of nuclear war or the hole in the ozone layer that made the planet uninhabitable. It wasn't even the crisis du jour of global warming. Instead, it was good old-fashioned littering. The detritus of centuries of consumption pile up in every nook and cranny on the planet and in orbit around it, until the human race takes off for the stars, leaving WALL-E and his kind behind to clean up in their wake. Overseeing this literal and figurative mess is the global megacorporation, government and sole economic provider Buy'n'Large. The premise of WALL-E is an arrow aimed straight into corporate domination's heart of darkness, and it's all the more remarkable coming from a G-rated family film.

But those who view WALL-E as liberal, anti-corporate posturing are missing the point entirely. At its heart, this is a film about what we value and why, about what makes us human. In one of my favorite moments, WALL-E, scavenging for mementos of the lost world he inhabits, finds a velvet jewelry case, tosses away the diamond ring inside and hoards the pretty blue box contentedly in his motley assortment of artifacts. If you take away the trappings of economy, society and culture, what would we value? What would we find beautiful? What we would consider worth preserving?

Robots reflect on humanity

The answers lie in the second half of the film, in which WALL-E finds himself aboard a giant space ark populated by the descendants of the humans who fled our trashed planet centuries earlier. Literally cradled from birth to death by the ubiquitous service machines of the Buy'n'Large corporation, humans have become obese slabs of barely sentient meat, floating around on flying beds, communicating exclusively by computer. In a brilliant touch of irony, while WALL-E and his robotic romantic interest EVE discover the human joys of love, the human beings themselves are flesh-and-blood robots, programmed only to consume.

Even more ominously, in one scene we see robots that are vastly huger versions of WALL-E hurling the spaceship's trash out into the void. The ship's mission is to boldly litter where no man has littered before, until the entire universe is filled with garbage, a monument to the folly of mankind at its worst.

And yet, WALL-E and EVE's arrival on the spaceship signals that the time has come for humans to return to Earth. But those humans' struggle with the notion of repopulating the planet is really a struggle to return to their humanity. Before repopulating Earth they must first learn the value of a true connection with another person, of a touch, of holding hands, of all forms of love. And it's here, as in all truly great movies, that we relearn something we already knew: that the value of any thing stems from how it affects our relationships with others, this being the true essence of humanity at its best. As a token of love, a diamond ring is priceless. Without that love, it's a cold hunk of metal and glass. If we lose sight of this, our consumption ends up merely consuming us. WALL-E's humanistic climax is a cathartic moment rare in contemporary movies, made all the more unique having been brought to us by a squat little animated robot. at the core of a movie aimed squarely at an all-ages popcorn-munching audience lies a beautiful articulation of a universal theme that most "serious" movies can't touch.

Even the end titles are a triumph, showing images of robots and humans working together to replenish the Earth, while moving through all periods of art, from cave paintings to post-impressionism. It's a bold statement about how the scope of this movie extends, like art, across the great questions of the span of human history, but one that is fully justified. It's a fitting close to a film already drenched in superlatives.

WALL-E is a lock for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. But I reckon it has a decent crack at Best Picture. Hell, even "Presto", the hilarious short preceding the main feature is more entertaining than most movies I've seen in a while. But beyond awards, you have to wonder: Pixar have conquered the universe. Where can they possibly go from here?

Crossing the Federline

2008-08-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

Radar presents a hilarious discussion of the origins of the term "Douchebag".

Money quote: "Tool is perhaps douchebag's closest synonym. However, it has been observed that someone who goes from being a total fucking tool to attain full douchebag status has 'crossed the Federline.'"

Bush or Batman

2008-08-01T22:33:00.001-07:00

It looks like the notion that President Bush thinks he's Batman is not confined to the Wall Street Journal:

http://www.snotr.com/video/1459

Although according to this he thinks he's the Adam West 1960s Batman, not Christian Bale vigilante Batman. Presumably he's about to land Osama bin Penguin with a stiff "Kapow" to the side of the head, followed by a stern lecture to Rove-in, the goy wonder, about the evils of alcohol.

Only 5 months until the free world is once again led by an adult.

Nostalgia video of the day: "Shine On" by The House of Love

2008-07-31T21:52:00.000-07:00

Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet

2008-07-31T16:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/al_gore_places_infant_son_in

Money quote: "Al Gore—or, as he is known in his own language, Gore-Al—placed his son, Kal-Al, gently in the one-passenger rocket ship, his brow furrowed by the great weight he carried in preserving the sole survivor of humanity's hubristic folly."

Nostalgia video of the day: "It's My Life" by The Animals

2008-07-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

"Anyway, we delivered the bomb."

2008-07-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

Today is the 63rd anniversary of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, made famous by the following monologue from Jaws:

http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=9523

Delusional McCain fundraises amidst "San Francisco Values"

2008-07-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

Money quote: "I will compete and I will win in the state of California". Uh huh.

And what is up with him fundraising in San Francisco, usually designated by Republicans as the modern day Gomorrah?

I suppose our money's still good for them, even though our values are, apparently, destroying America. You know, like equality and entrepreneurship and all that gay stuff.

Joe Buck sees reds under the beds

2008-07-29T10:43:00.000-07:00

Jon Voight mouths off on Obama, who apparently is Malcolm X, Stalin and Pol Pot all rolled into one giant red menace.

That's Numberwang!

2008-07-28T11:54:00.001-07:00

So that those of you to whom I've mentioned That Mitchell & Webb Look know what I'm talking about:

Numberwang:

Bawdy 1970s hospital:

SS Officers:

The boy with an arse for a face:

It's shark week!

2008-07-27T16:32:00.001-07:00

If you have no interest in seeing a crazy South African guy ride a great white shark's dorsal fin, go back to your knitting.

For the rest of us a timely reminder: shark week starts tonight on the discovery channel.

'Reluctant' my ass

2008-07-27T11:09:00.000-07:00

John McCain likes to play up the myth that he's reluctant to talk about his captivity in Vietnam. This didn't stop him from talking about it at length on the campaign trail in Maine last week.

Not only is this 'reluctance' complete nonsense, since he talks about his service and captivity all the time, but it's also superfluous. It is completely reasonable for him to talk about his service as much as he wants. Why is he even bothering to be so disingenuous, when no one would fault him for mentioning it 24/7? It's an essential part of his biography and he has every right to bring it up whenever he likes. So why pretend to 'reluctance'?

Of course, whether talking about the Vietnam era will influence voters today is another question. But regardless of whether it's wise to do so, if the McCain campaign wants to talk up their candidate's service record they should stop being so coy about it and just do it.

What, however, is not legit is implying that his opponent is unpatriotic and would, as McCain artlessly put it, "rather lose a war to win a campaign". That is such a scurrilous accusation, that McCain should quit whining about his supposed lack of media attention and thank his lucky stars that the media isn't beating him over the head with that quote. So much for a civil campaign.

Kudos, State Department

2008-07-26T22:16:00.001-07:00

I applied for my US passport on the afternoon of the 15th, and paid the expedited processing charge, which was supposed to get me the passport in two and a half weeks.

A mere week later, my passport arrived. You don't usually think of government bureaucracies as models of efficiency, but I have to take my hat off to the passport office.