Category Archives: Popular culture

Art restoration

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John72
This is one for you art lovers out there. My roommate from my USC days recently took part in the special pre-demolition reception for former inmates of the Honeycombs. He will remain nameless for now — all I will say is that he was an art major, and that is him at the bottom of the above image.

As you see him, he has just restored a graffiti work from his early Gonzo-minimalist period — or restored it as well as he could, working in a hurried fashion before the university authorities could notice he had slipped away from the group.

By the way, my roommate was the responsible one in our duo — he kept his side of the room spotless, with all his art supplies neatly stacked and categorized, his clothes put away in the closet. He was the one with the short, conservative hair. I think he even used to make his bed.

My side looked like a waste dump, featuring pots with week-old food cooked on with my contraband hotplate, sloppily-hung posters and dirty clothes. The finishing touch was my mountain of State newspapers, not one of which I ever tossed, constantly spilling over to his side, and earning me the sobriquet "Ratso Rizzo" (we had both seen "Midnight Cowboy" over at the Russell House). He still calls me that, even though I’ve cut my hair and shaved.

Connoisseurs of early-1970s, 4th-floor Snowden culture will recognize the above hastily-penned reproduction as only dimly evocative of the original, once-thought-to-be-immortal work that was scratched deeply into the paint that coated the concrete-block wall. It was located over the elevator immediately across from our room, and was still there when I took my bride by there on our honeymoon three years later. I was proud to play the docent and explain to her the history behind this treasure. She was suitably impressed, I think — she was speechless.

Unfortunately, the original was lost to a later renovation of the building — probably about the time they put those sissy dividers in to make separate shower stalls in the floor’s one bathroom.

But all is not lost! My roommate and I are planning a guerrilla revisit to the site in the next few days, and hope to restore the original to its rightful place, so that the building’s boisterous spirits will lie at rest when the Big Crash comes. If you would like to help in bringing about this once-in-a-lifetime testament to the (adolescent) human spirit, your cash gifts can be sent to this blog.

We need a new axis of evil

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Ahmadinejadthin_2Kimthin_1Saddamthin_1
The President didn’t send me a copy of his speech today, so I haven’t read it. (What? You want me to go look it up? I’m way too lazy for that; just ask Mary.) But Joe Biden was kind enough to send along his response, and one phrase particularly grabbed my imagination.

Among a litany of what he sees as the administration’s faults, he said "five years after 9/11, each member of the so-called ‘axis of evil’ is more
dangerous."

I got to thinking about it, and he’s got a point — about two out of the three, at least.

Well, the likes of Bush and Biden might talk about this stuff, but I’m a man of action. If things haven’t worked out with this Axis of Evil, I say let’s chuck it and get us a new one. The one we’ve got has been ornery and uncooperative, and with the whole world to choose from, I think we can do better. Yes, the current members will likely protest — indeed, Iran and North Korea have put a lot of effort into being evil lately, and they won’t think they deserve to get sent back down — but the country needs an Axis that we can unite behind and feel better about.

Our new Axis should consist of nations that are irritating enough to make the list, but less likely to cause so much trouble. They should be countries that we could take if we had to, but less likely to let things get to that point.

Just to start the ball rolling, I hereby present my Top Five candidates for the New Axis of Evil. Maybe y’all can suggest other likely objects of vilification, or at least help me winnow this one down:

  1. France. They hate us already, and we don’t much like them. They won’t fight, but if they did we could finish it pretty cleanly. You can trust them — when they surrender, they really mean it. They already have the bomb, but they only use it to get a rise out of Greenpeace. I think we could do business with these guys.
  2. Argentina. The Brits took Argentina all by themselves, when they were way past their prime. It has a temperate climate. If we need an excuse to invade, we can always claim that they’re still hiding Nazis. If we don’t find any, we can said they sent them to Chile just before we got there. I’ve always felt bad that the U.S. doesn’t pay enough attention to South America, so this would address that problem as well. (Sure, we could go with Venezuela, but Chavez wants in so badly, and I just wouldn’t want to give him the satisfaction.)
  3. Russia. You might say we’d be biting off a bit much — they are much heavier hitters than any of the current lineup. But think about it: Back when they were a superpower, we stood toe-to-toe for 40-plus years, and it never came to blows (not directly, anyhow). And Putin’s been a real pain lately. Besides, they’ve got oil.
  4. Switzerland. The whole civilized world has been fighting for a century, and these slackers have sat it out. What makes them so special? I’ve had it with them doing nothing but making cuckoo clocks and sitting on all our money. Sure, their Army has the benefit of some highly advanced pocketknife technology, but that doesn’t stack up so well against an F-18.
  5. California. It thinks it’s a country already, even to the point of making treaties with our allies. Most Americans don’t like it any more than they like France — or not much more. Mainly, I just think Ahnold would be a much more fun to demonize than Dear Leader.

That’s my list so far. What do y’all think?

Chiracthin_1Putinthin_2Ahnoldthin_1

Sunday grownups column

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Dreaming of a world in which
grownups are in charge again
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
REMEMBER when everything from politics to marketing to fashion to entertainment was aimed at grownups?
    Take television: While we kids owned Saturday morning (“Mighty Mouse” and such), prime time was keyed to the buttoned-down square world of people who had come up during the Depression and reached maturity — a sort of maturity most of us would never know — during the last war that this nation could get it together enough to see all the way through.
    “Popular music” was made by these old guys in suits with short, slick hair who looked like they could as easily have been bankers. Perry Como. Andy Williams. The height of hipdom was Dean Martin. He showed he was daring and edgy by walking around with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. Pretty sad. (A friend and I would compete as to who could more closely lampoon him: “Oooh, ah think ah’ll go over an’ sit on da cowch…”).
    Every once in a while, they’d throw us a bone. Ed Sullivan, the squarest guy who ever lived, would on rare occasion devote five minutes of his hour presenting something “for you youngsters.” But when he said that, we never knew whether he would be bringing out the Rolling Stones or Topo Gigio, the talking mouse. These morsels were presented within an adult context, as curiosities from an alien culture that adults could smile down upon indulgently.
    Once, these brothers called Smothers tried to have a show that was sort of different. But the grownups put a stop to that.
    So much for popular culture.
    Take politics. It was so quiet and low-key that for the longest time, I didn’t even know it existed. Ike had always been president. (I was born in 1953.) Then this shocking thing happened in 1960. Two guys stood before the nation asking us (asking the grownups) to pick between them to determine which one would replace Ike as president. It came down to a popularity contest. That brought the presidency down a bit in my estimation. Before that, if I had been familiar with the phrase, I would have assumed Ike was “president by the grace of God.”
    I guess it never occurred to me that there was an alternative to Ike being president because back then, even political opponents accepted that that the president was the president, and were content to wait for the next election to have their say.
    And when they had their say, they were so grown-up about it. No mindless pandering to voters’ selfish impulses. Go back and read excerpts from the Kennedy-Nixon debates. Forget how they looked. Their words were so lofty, so respectful, so intellectual, so well-informed. They debated like… grownups. It was weird.
    Time passed, and I went off to college, just as things were starting to change a bit. (It’s a little-acknowledged fact that for most of us, the ’60s really didn’t happen until the ’70s. Go back and look at high school yearbooks; you’ll see what I mean.) Then I got married, went to work, had kids, and suddenly it was the ’80s.
    MTV. I couldn’t believe it. It was like the very best few seconds that you might have squeezed out of a year of boring television in the early ’60s — only 24 hours a day, every day of the year. But I didn’t have much time for it. Work, mouths to feed. One maturing experience after another.
    And then the millennium passed, and I looked around again, and the kids had taken over. In the grocery line, I was surrounded by headlines that would have insulted a 12-year-old’s intelligence in 1962. I flipped through the channels now available on television, and there was nothing on that any grown man would want to see. OK, there was “House.” But he was overwhelmed by programs that put such an ironic twist on the word “reality” that I guess it just goes over my head. Or under it.
    (I did see one recently that my very grownup wife likes, but only because she likes anything with dancing. All you could hear throughout the show was the kind of screaming that you heard in small bits when The Beatles came on. Only this adolescent keening wasn’t for anything special or exciting; they screamed for everybody. They screamed when people said hello. Here’s the really weird part: What was this show about? People doing the fox trot. It was like Lawrence Welk with semi-nudity.)
    Once, we played war with toy guns, and if we were really daring, we played marbles “for keeps.” Now, kids join gangs to play war with real guns. For keeps.
    How did those who think and act on a childish level get to be in charge? I never got my turn.
    That’s why I celebrated last weekend’s aggressive crackdown on underage drinking in an editorial headlined, “The grownups strike back in Five Points.” For once, maturity was asserting itself as dominant over the random raging of the ungoverned id. It gave me hope. I dared to dream.
    In my dream, a swarm of determined grownups swoop down on the Democrats and Republicans, toss them all aside, and put up a couple of thinking adults for us to choose between for president.
    They compete to see who can say the wisest and most mature things. They tell us we have to stop burning all that oil, and that we have to pay taxes to help come up with an alternative. They tell us that we have to accept the fact that we are the strongest country in the world, and that with that power comes responsibility. They tell us there’s no free lunch — on Social Security, Medicare or anything else. If we build in a flood plain or on a sandy beach, they tell us we should have known better, and maybe this will teach us something. They’ll say the FDA should regulate nicotine. They tell us to stop whining, sit up straight and eat our vegetables.
    I’d vote happily for one of them. And if the other won, I’d respect that. I’d be a man about it.

David Brent advises Microsoft

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If you’re a fan of "The Office" — the original, of course, not the American imitation — you might want to take a look at the two "training videos" Microsoft commissioned from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. According to the WSJ, Microsoft is trying to run down who leaked these clips, which feature Gervais as nightmare boss David Brent, and were intended to be seen only by Microsoft employees.

The Gates crowd already got YouTube to take them down, but they’re still available on Google Video. Here are the links:

See David share the kind of business wisdom that got me where I am today.

The King is dead, but only technically

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Jelly_donut
We all know what today is. Even those of us who are forgetful, or those heathens who don’t swear fealty to The King, should know after this story was in the paper
yesterday.

The front-page promo for that story asked readers whether they remembered "where you were the day Elvis died."

Well, I should hope so, seeing as how I was probably the first human on the planet outside of Memphis to know of his reputed demise. I wrote a column about it on the 25th anniversary, which in honor of the occasion I will repeat in its entirety here:

ELVIS AND ME, OR, THE KING IS DEAD, BUT ONLY TECHNICALLY
Published on: 08/16/2002

By BRAD WARTHEN, Editorial Page Editor
MY GOOD FRIEND Les Seago was the man who told the world that the King was dead. But before he told the world, he told me.
    I’ve always appreciated that, even though it didn’t do me much practical good at the time.
    On Aug. 16, 1977, Les was the chief Memphis correspondent for The Associated Press. I was the slot man on the copy desk of The Jackson Sun, which meant I had been at work since 5:30 a.m. By early afternoon, the paper was on its way to readers. I had also been a stringer for Les for years, and I was used to his calls to see what was going on in our area. But he didn’t have time for that this day.
    Was it too late to get something in? he demanded. Well, yeah, it was, just barely, but why…?
    It looks like Elvis is dead, he said, explaining quickly that he had a source, anElvissullivan ambulance driver from Baptist Hospital, who told him he had just brought Elvis in, and he was pretty sure that his passenger had been beyond help. Gotta go now, ‘bye.
    He must have broken all speed records getting it confirmed, because I had just begun to tell my co-workers when the "bulletin" bell went off on the wire machine as it hammered out the news.
    Les himself was found dead at his home two years ago, at age 61. Though his career had spanned many years and he had covered Martin Luther King’s assassination, The Associated Press identified him in his obituary
as the man "who filed the bulletin on the death of Elvis Presley." His ex-wife Nancy said "He wasn’t wild about Elvis, but he was glad that he did break the story." That was Les.
    Sometime after that phone call, it struck me as odd that the ambulance driver had been less than sure that his passenger was dead. According to the details that later came out, it seems he would have been able to tell. Maybe they didn’t let him get close. I don’t know. But I remembered that uncertainty years later, when all the live Elvis sightings began to be reported. While it is my considered opinion that anyone who thinks they ran into the King at the Circle K is a couple of jelly doughnuts shy of a Graceland breakfast, the way the man lives on in the hearts of his fans is almost as hard to believe.
    Don’t get me wrong. Elvis meant a lot to me, too. One of my family’s earliest home movies shows me at the age of 4, gyrating with a plastic guitar and shouting out "Hound Dog." I still think the kinetic essence of rock ‘n’ roll has never been expressed better than he did it in "Hard-Headed Woman." When my family moved to Memphis in 1971, I didn’t even know it was on the Mississippi River. But I knew that it was where Elvis lived.
    Memphis was fond of Elvis, but in a calm sort of way. His last series of concerts in his hometown, at the Mid-South Coliseum, had to be extended to seven performances to accommodate the demand. (I was there for one of them. I sat close enough to learn how to do that hip-shaking thing, which I will only demonstrate on special occasions.) But the town never made a fuss over him. He was the King, but he was also just this guy who rode his motorcycle around town and occasionally dropped in at a dealership to buy a Cadillac for some complete stranger.
    It was only after his death that he became an industry. That’s because, in a twist that Joseph Heller might have written, the whole world started coming to Memphis to see Elvis only after he wasn’t there anymore.
    The craziness started a year after that phone call from Les. I was in Memphis covering the simultaneous police and fire strikes that were making national headlines. A group of us were hanging around outside the main police station downtown, waiting for something to happen, when something did — although we didn’t recognize it. A couple of really attractive French girls came up to us to ask, in broken English, how to find Graceland. We had all started trying to tell them by gesturing with our hands and speaking very loudly when some wise guy from The Tennessean showed us all up by giving them directions in French.
    After they had left, we thought to wonder why they wanted to go to Graceland. Didn’t they know Elvis was gone?
    A year after that, my paper sent me back to Memphis, this time to document the bizarre fact that people were still flocking to visit the King’s grave two whole years after his death. The Elvis industry was just starting to gear up in the Bluff City. I interviewed one of the first of a long line of Elvis impersonators, checked out a statue that was about to be unveiled, and went to Graceland.
    In those days, the family was still living in the house, but they didn’t mind folks coming up the driveway to see the grave as long as we behaved. Nobody sold tickets. Uncle Vester Presley sat on a folding chair out at the oft-photographed front gate greeting everybody. That’s where the line began. After chatting with Uncle Vester, I wandered up the queue interviewing fans at random. They were from all over this country, plus a group from Leicester, England.
    As respectful visitors gazed down at the graves of Elvis and Gladys, I talked with a young man with a walkie-talkie who was helping keep an eye on the crowd. He was one of E’s karate and racquetball buddies, now a sort of impromptu security guard and keeper of the flame. He must have liked my attitude, because he decided to share something special with me. Guiding me discreetly over to a corner of the house, he had me peer into the rear grounds. "See that ol’ pink Cadillac back there? No, back there… see it?" He went on in a hushed, reverent tone: "That’s the first car he bought his momma."
    You can still see the pink Cadillac — for a price. You can even go inside Graceland now. You buy a ticket across the street, somewhere in that awful, plastic, glittery block full of trashy souvenir shops, and some stranger drives you over on a bus.
    When we visited Memphis this year, some of my kids did the Graceland tour. They thought it was pretty cool. I think it helped them, who never knew the King, get a little more in touch with their essential Elvisness. As for me, I have yet to visit the Jungle Room. Elvis himself hasn’t invited me in. Yet.
    Write to Mr. Warthen at bwarthen@thestate.com.

I would not be able to forget this anniversary even if I tried. Chris Roberts former reporter and computer whiz at The State, has brought me a jelly donut on this date each year for longer than I can remember. Even now that Chris has left the building to go teach at the university, he still manages to deliver. He sent the one pictured above via a colleague who was visiting the campus. Without that happy coincidence I’m not sure what he would have done, but Chris is a man sufficiently in touch with his essential Elvisness that he would have managed some way.

Thanyuh, Chris. Thankyuverimuch.

Elvises

Ricky Bobby reconsidered

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Nights_3_1
Having been warned away from "Talladega Nights," and having dutifully passed on the warning to you, I feel duty-bound to pass on any new evidence I encounter to the contrary.

I was sitting in a waiting room this morning, and had just heard via whatever "news" program was on the tube that always seems to be on in such places that the saga of Ricky Bobby had been the big money-maker over the weekend. This caused me to feel very superior to all those folks who had been duped into wasting their hard-earned means on something that I knew better than to go see.

Farrell1_1Then I found, among all the magazines that I would never read (with titles like "Self," which I suppose is some sort of libertarian think tank journal), a copy of the Sporting News . In it was a "My Turn" column under the name of the fictional Mr. Bobby himself, under a picture of Will Farrell in his NASCAR outfit.

And it was funny, in a snickering sort of eighth-grade locker room kind of way — which means it was wittier than most of the comedies Hollywood turns out these days. If whoever actually wrote this had anything to do with writing the picture, maybe it’s better than I had heard.

And if they didn’t get this guy to write it, why not?

Talladega

Important warning

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Farrell
Do not, repeat, do not go see "Talladega Nights."

You may think it will be in the classic, high-brow comedy genre as "Old School," but you would be wrong.

Two of my daughters went to see it. I, having a premonition, did not join them. My hunch was correct. The best parts were in the previews. Yes, it’s that bad.

Just providing this in the public interest. Of course, if you’re compiling a "Top Five Worst Movies Featuring Will Farrell in this Decade," you may be obliged to attend. Otherwise, stay away.

You’ve been warned.

Big Brother, we hardly knew ye

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As time goes by, I get less and less comfortable with the culture in which I live.

This morning, got an unsolicited alert from the Realplayer folks inviting me to check out a link called "Big Brother live video feeds!"

I thought it was an Orwell reference (which, I suppose, in a tacky-distant-relative kind of way, it is — just not the way I was thinking). I figured maybe it was live feeds from one of those observation cameras so many communities have been putting up in public places. I thought it would lead me to a lively discussion between privacy advocates and those of us who are just fine with such augmentations of law enforcement capabilities.

Imagine my disappointment.

Hey, it’s not that I’m some sort of culture snob or anything. I hate opera, and I like action movies. Last night, I kept groaning because the womenfolk in my house wanted to watch some sort of "reality" show involving a dance competition, just when I was getting into a Firefly episode that I hadn’t seen before. I own the series on DVD, and have been making my way through it slowly. The ladies made the perfectly valid point that I could find out what happened to Capt. Reynolds later, so after griping for a few minutes, I just went to bed early.

We all have our tastes in junk. It’s just that the stuff I like gets canceled before it completes its first season (I will admit I only became a fan after the fact, when my son persuaded us to go see "Serenity"), and the gorram "reality" shows go on and on and on.

As Jayne would say, "Where does that get fun?"

Technical difficulties

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Yes, I know the display on the main page of my blog is messed up. I’m trying to fix it. So far, none of the usual stuff is working. Basically, every change of format in a post — indented type, or italics — is imposing itself on every item below it, and never switching off. The coding and everything looks fine, but it’s fouled up.

The good news is that for the first time ever, pictures are displaying on the main page. I don’t know why that’s happening, either.

As I say, I’m working on it, but under difficult conditions, including:

  • The fact that I’m very busy today doing my real job, the one I get paid for.
  • You know how maddening it can be to have a song running through your head, and you can’t get rid of it. I have that, only with aggravating circumstances: It’s a song by a fictional band (Stillwater in "Almost Famous") running through my head:   

    "FEE-VAH DAWG, bah-bah-da-buh-BUM-BUM
    Scratchin’ at mah back daw….ba-DUM-BUM…"

A colleague suggested I get professional help, but I don’t have Lester Bangs‘ phone number, and anyway, I think he’s dead.

Now, let’s see how all those format shifts I just did further complicate my problem…

The Kingpin moves in

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In response to my last rant about the governor refusing to debate, one of my readers referred to his opponent as "Doc Ock."

Well, the governor may not be afraid of Doc Ock, but if you ask me, the whole gang of them — Doc Ock,Kingpin_1 Spider-Man and the Green Goblin — ought to be very afraid that The Kingpin is trying to muscle in on this very same territory. He’ll stop at nothing, and he’s just about as strong as Spidey.

He says he only interested in casinos, but that’s just the start of his strategy. He’s made no secret of his wish to run the entire state.

He is pictured at left at the offices of The Daily Bugle, where he was threatening Editor J. Jonah Jameson.

He’s running under an assumed name, but you can’t fool an old Marvel fan.

W is Gilligan; Al is Mr. Howell

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I’ve gotta say, there is an interesting and (largely) thoughtful conversation going on between the political extremes via comments on this post.

I should say though, "bud," going by objective standards of comedy, Al (and I call him that because, Goretuxway back in 1984 when he was running for the Senate, he kept telling me to call him that) is doomed to be funnier than W. W may be infuriating, he may seem dumb, he may mangle the language — and the latter two are good comedy fodder, no question — but you just can’t beat a pompous smart guy. Al’s funnier just out of the block. He gets a head start, and W can’t catch up.

Let’s use the Gilligan’s Island standard (which I just made up). I never found Gilligan to be that funny — average guy, although stupider. Infuriating in the way he kept throwing away opportunities to get off the island. "Infuriating," to me, isn’t funny.

But Mr. and Mrs. Howell were a complete hoot. Why? Because they were so upper-class and pompous and impervious. You couldn’t hurt them by laughing at them; it didn’t matter. (Mr. Howell would dismiss W. with his ultimate expression of derision: "A YALE man!!!")

Al is Thurston Howell, with a good dollop of the Professor thrown in (the pedantic manner; having to be the guy who knows it all, etc.). By himself, of course, the Professor isn’t funny; but combine him with Mr. Howell and you’ve got something special.

Sure, reasonable people can disagree. Some will find Gilligan funnier. (And yes, I know W is just as blue-blooded as Al, but he doesn’t seem to know it, and he doesn’t act like it. He’s a Gilligan. And Cheney is the Skipper, as played by Brian Dennehy.) I just think they’re wrong.

Note that none of this is to be confused with the eternal argument over whether Ginger or Maryanne is hotter. (Obviously, it’s Maryanne.)

How about, “Let’s Beat Up Burnett and Beckerman?”

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You know that stuff that Sweet Virginia needed to scrape right off her shoes (sorry, no links, you have to get it)? They must have been hip-deep in it when they thought up this one.

By far the most unlikely star of a prospective fall situation comedy
is that still-active lead singer of the Rolling Stones, who has signed
on to an ABC pilot for its fall schedule. Just to increase the degree
of unlikelihood, Mr. Jagger shot his scenes for the New York-based
pilot in a hotel room in Auckland, New Zealand, last week.

That
was the culmination of a saga at least as whimsical as the premise of
the show, which, for now, anyway, is titled "Let’s Rob Mick Jagger."

The writing team that came up with the idea, Rob Burnett, long David Letterman’s
executive producer, and his partner, Jon Beckerman, had previously
created the NBC comedy-drama "Ed." As Mr. Burnett outlined the tale in
a telephone interview, he and Mr. Beckerman "wondered if there was a
way do a serialized comedy — something like a comedy version of ‘Lost’
or ’24.’ "

Hatched in numerous meetings, the concept centered on
a janitor for a prominent New York building, to be played by the
character actor Donal Logue.
Down on his luck, the janitor sees a celebrity on television wallowing
in his wealth during a tour of his new Manhattan penthouse. Enlisting a
crew of similar ordinary but frustrated accomplices, the janitor
conceives a plot to rob the big shot’s apartment, a story line that
would unfold over a 24-episode television season.

Well, for one thing, serial comedy’s been done. Check the original BBC version of "The Office," which is highly unlikely to be topped by this high-concept freak.

For another thing — and this is the awful part — if I thought Mick would be nearly as much fun in this as he was in "Freejack" (which is on a list I haven’t yet completed of "Top Five Cheesy Movies that are Fun to Watch"), I might even tune in. For the pilot, anyway.

Morbid curiosity will take one a long way. Television counts on that.

Lennon’s distinction

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    "The journey was terrible, but the trip was all right."

— John Lennon, responding to an interviewer who asked how he had enjoyed his trip to see the Maharishi. I heard it today on "Beatles Brunch" as I was driving to Mass. Of course, the interview clip was connected to their just having played "Sexy Sadie."

I don’t know what it means, either. Trite drug reference? A statement that the whole meditation scene was OK? Meaningless wordplay of the kind that Lennon reveled in? Dunno. I just liked the sound of it.

Maybe that’s why I bought all those records.

Mau-Mauing the Flak-Throwers

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My post earlier today linking to something in The Wall Street Journal reminded me of another piece that I never shared with you. It was in that paper (and yes, I do read other things) a week ago today: An interview with one of my all-time favorites, Tom Wolfe.

Have you ever wondered about the politics of the man who wrote Kandy-Kolored, Tangerine-Flaked, Streamline Baby, The Right Stuff, and other brilliant, thoroughly enjoyable works of journalism/social criticism before he turned into a somewhat-painful-to-read novelist? Well, if you read The Guardian, you wouldn’t wonder.

That’s all right; I don’t read The Guardian, either. But thanks to what he’s written in the past, there were no surprises for me in this passage from the WSJ:

Mr. Wolfe offers a personal incident as evidence of
"what a fashion liberalism is." A reporter for the New York Times
called him up to ask why George W. Bush was apparently a great fan of
the "Charlotte Simmons" book. "I just assumed it was the dazzling
quality of the writing," he says. In the course of the reporting,
however, it came out that Mr. Wolfe had voted for the Bush ticket. "The
reaction among the people I move among was really interesting. It was
as if I had raised my hand and said, ‘Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell
you, I’m a child molester.’" For the sheer hilarity, he took to wearing
an American flag pin, "and it was as if I was holding up a cross to
werewolves."

George Bush’s appeal, for Mr. Wolfe, was owing to his
"great decisiveness and willingness to fight." But as to "this business
of my having done the unthinkable and voted for George Bush, I would
say, now look, I voted for George Bush but so did 62,040,609 other
Americans. Now what does that make them? Of course, they want to say —
‘Fools like you!’ . . . But then they catch themselves,
‘Wait a minute, I can’t go around saying that the majority of the
American people are fools, idiots, bumblers, hicks.’ So they just kind
of dodge that question. And so many of them are so caught up in this
kind of metropolitan intellectual atmosphere that they simply don’t go
across the Hudson River. They literally do not set foot in the United
States. We live in New York in one of the two parenthesis states.
They’re usually called blue states — they’re not blue states, the
states on the coast. They’re parenthesis states — the entire country
lies in between."

The wonderful thing about this is the way Wolfe catches modern "liberals" out in their own lack of self-awareness so neatly: He sneaks up on them. Just, as Wolfe chronicled, Ken Kesey took the steam out of an anti-war rally with a harmonica and a couple of verses of "Home on the Range," the King of Coolwrite sneaks up on liberals by being an artist and intellectual. They think they are among their own, and then "… UHHH … Ohmigod! YOU voted for BUSH?" Once his prey is paralyzed, he slices and dices it. He makes jullienne fries out of ’em.

I’d love to see him do the same to modern "conservatives," but dressed the way he is, they’re liable to spook before he gets close enough.

What do I have against both of these groups? They quit thinking. They bought their values off the shelf years ago as a complete set; they’re completely unprepared for anything that doesn’t fit in their little boxes. The Wolfe scene above reminds me of a passage in Bridget Jones’s Diary (yeah, I read it; I wanted to know what the women in my family were going on about). I mean the bit in which Bridget has already fallen for Mark Darcy, and they’ve gotten together and are dating (actually, maybe this happened in the second book), and she finds out quite inadvertently that he votes Tory. She is aghast: How could he? When he asks what’s wrong with being a Tory, she is unable to come up with a coherent answer. Why? Because she hasn’t really thought about it, ever. It’s just that everyone she knows takes it as gospel that all decent, caring people vote Labour. What is this? Mark’s a human rights lawyer, for goodness’ sake…

Between Bridget and Wolfe, I prefer Wolfe, who by contrast told The Guardian:

"I cannot stand the lock-step among everyone in my particular world.
They all do the same thing, without variation. It gets so boring. There
is something in me that particularly wants it registered that I am not
one of them."

There’s a character flaw in there somewhere (one that I’m afraid comes out in his novels), but he’s so refreshing, I’m willing to overlook it.

The Burning Questions

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A colleague brought to my attention this quote from NAA Chairman Jay Smith on McClatchy‘s Gary Pruitt and his contributions on
the NAA Executive Committee:

Treasurer Gary Pruitt — the
tennis-playing, philosopher-quoting aging rocker (The Ramones still rule in his
world) and head of The McClatchy Co. in Sacramento — blends hisPruitt_crop_2 varied interests
with a cool, calculated approach that believes readers will always want quality
first. The go-to guy when consensus building is required, Gary is right about
readers, as he is about so many other things.

Yeah, but which is his favorite Ramone? And what about The Clash? And how could The Ramones rule a world that has Elvis Costello in it?

So many burning questions. I guess we’ll just have to wait until this all shakes out to learn the answers.

But I’ll mention it here

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A colleague and I were having lunch today with Tom Davis, whose title I’m always forgetting but who was described in a recent news story as "the governor’s deputy chief of staff and his top liaison to the
General Assembly" (see why I forget it?).

Most of it dealt with the rough couple of weeks he had had with the blowup between Gov. SanfordDavis and House Republicans over his spending cap, and the defeat Sanford forces suffered over the billboard issue.

But it strayed when he admired my discipline (after all, it’s a Friday in Lent, and he and I are both Catholic) in not only abstaining from meat, but forgoing dessert. Unwilling to take undeserved praise, I reminded him of my severe food allergies, and he said something about how I was kind of like Meg Ryan’s fiance in "Sleepless in Seattle." I suppose that’s right. (You ever notice how often allergies and asthma are used in the movies as shorthand to indicate weakness of character or lack of attractiveness as a mate, which is how it was used in this one — completely at odds with my own experience, I might add? Let a character take a quick puff on an inhaler, and you know that sooner or later, he will be found wanting.)

Anyway, Tom (shown above, in a photo that doesn’t do justice to his Pullmanesque qualities, but is the only picture I have) then mentioned something about that character having been played by Bill Pullman. At that point, I  exercised great restraint by not observing how much Tom looks like that actor. I was proud of myself. I mean, you never know — Tom might have been insulted. I would never, ever wish to embarrass him or make him feel awkward in public over such a trifle.

Of course, the blog is another matter.

Dances with Pretension

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Yes, Mark, of course we despise "Dances With Wolves!" It’s pretentious, silly, boring, condescending, tedious and intellectually offensive. The worst thing about it was that Hollywood thought it was profound, and that just confirms so much about Hollywood, doesn’t it?

You see, this "epic" — which I believe lasted about 14 hours, but it may have been longer — was intended to teach Deep Lessons to us hicks out here in Flyover Land all about the Noble Red Man. It seems that Hollywood had just discovered the American Indian, and learned that he was treated badly by the white man, and was going to teach all of us about it, because of COURSE we couldn’t have heard about it out here.

Never mind that the theme of the Noble Savage had been done to death in the early 19th century by James Fenimore Cooper, as any literate person (a category that, as near as I can tell, does not involve anyone in Hollywood) would know.

Or that the theme had become so passe that Mark Twain brutally satirized it later in the century. And remember, Twain was a very liberal, free-thinking sort, but he could not abide pretension.

Or that Hollywood — John Ford, no less — had decades previously given the subject serious, respectable treatment, in a way that might make even John Wayne feel guilty about the white man’s role.

Or that Hollywood, in a more thoughtful era, had even satirized that. In fact, let’s consider "Little Big Man" for a moment. It had fun with almost every Western cliche you can think of, including that of the noble, mystical Red Man (and yes, that was, is, and always will be a cliche, which is my point here — the people making "Dances with Wolves" were not sophisticated enough to know that; they actually thought they were breaking new ground, and that is what is so embarrassing and offensive about it).

"Little Big Man" paid the American Indian the compliment of treating him as a human being, rather than as a stereotype, positive or negative. Director Arthur Penn had the good sense to give his Indians — who, appropriately enough, referred to themselves collectively as "the Human Beings" — the full range of human attributes. They were brave, silly, wise, stupid, tragic, comic and so forth.

The best bit in the whole movie was when Chief Dan George, the wise, earthy Grandfather, decided it was "a good day to die," and went out and lay down to do just that. Of course, the viewer thinks, "Wow, Indians can really do that? I guess it’s because they’re just so much more attuned to the universe than we are." A few moments later, raindrops hit his apparently lifeless face. He opens his eyes and asks Dustin Hoffman whether he is dead yet. A relieved Hoffman says no, so Grandfather gets up with the younger man’s help, shrugs and says something to the effect of, well, maybe some other day would be a better day to die. Or so I remember; I don’t have it at hand to check.

It was so down-to-earth, real, fallible and human. And for those reasons, Grandfather actually is noble — unlike the cardboard cutouts of "Dances With Wolves."

Do you see what I’m saying?

As for "Apocalypse Now" — I’ll deal with that, at least in passing, in my next post. As it happens, my thoughts on it are sort of the opposite of Dave’s.

Such excellent bad cinema!

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Ow! Ow! Those are some awful ones! As Count Floyd would say, "Really, really scary! And in 3-D!" In fact, y’all have reminded me of so many wasted hours, and raised so many bad-movie vistas, that I’m going to have to think awhile, and maybe come back tomorrow with my own list. (Besides, I just got in after 10 hours on the road driving back from Memphis.)

How will I ever narrow it down? In fact, I’m wondering — should we have two categories? One could be, "movies that you would expect to be awful," such as "Plan 9" or anything from Ed Wood. I think "Night of the Lepus" and some like that would fit in that category. (I mean, as opposed to those Bruce Campbell vehicles that should have been bad, but turned out to be such classics.)

Second category would include such big-budget, much-anticipated flicks as "Dune," "Waterworld," and AAAUUGGHHHH "Dances With Wolves." I had forgotten some of those movies, they were so bad. Those are some great suggestions. In fact, I can see a whole wonderful SUBcategory of "books you liked or even loved, and looked forward to the movie for years, but were excruciatingly disappointed." "Dune" would by no means be alone there. Think, "Bonfire of the Vanities." (I’ve got a really bad feeling Tom Hanks may be about to repeat that mistake in "The Da Vinci Code." You know who should have played the lead in "Bonfire?" Kelsey Grammer. He has the chin, the accent and the precise pompous air that the character needs.)

Oh, and in a whole other field, here: Extra points to Uncle Elmer for coming up with "Pi." Excellent choice, my friend. It shows an excruciating dedication to seeking out the worst in cinema.

Oh, one other thing: As a golfer, I must defend Mr. Costner for having made "Tin Cup," and for his goofy turn in "Silverado." And I enjoyed "The Untouchables," although the largest credit for that belongs to Sean Connery (AND Charles Martin Smith AND Andy Garcia). But "Dances with Wolves" pretty much threw away any merit those performances got him. I’ll bet that one made more sense in German, Herb, nicht wahr?

In fact, let’s kick him again for one nobody mentioned: "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves."

Distraction

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Well, here I stand, in the same spot where I stood when I wrote this, and in complementary circumstances. Consider this one a bookend to the other.

The last one was written two or three weeks after I started the blog. It reflects energy and excitement at playing with my new medium. It also reflects the fact that I was just beginning my caffeine fixation at the time, and a single grande cup of Starbucks House Blend could set my brain into creative (or at least, fanciful) overdrive. Also, that earlier flight of fancy was an attempt to distract my mind from the fact that I was here because this is where my mother-in-law lived, and she had just a few days before fallen and hit her head and gone into a coma.

As I write this one, I am weary. I’m still pretty much devoted to the blog, but without that initial excitement. Caffeine has become a thing I need to function, rather than a rare treat. I just finished my second grande of the day, and there is no creative rush. The problem with my shoulders (perhaps intensified by the caffeine) has become a more-or-less constant pain, which becomes worse when I lie down, making a full night’s sleep nigh impossible. I just took a muscle relaxer, which I washed down with coffee, but I still remain self-deceptive enough to hope it works. And yesterday, we buried my mother-in-law, whom I loved very much.

But I’m not here to write about that. I’ll continue the Hemingway thing to that extent. (As Jake said to Lady Brett near the end — and I just went to the bookstore’s shelves to check the quote — "You’ll lose it if you talk about it," to which she responded, "I just talk around it.") Since I was not alive to be there on June 6, I have to say that yesterday was my Longest Day. It will take some time for me to digest the years of profound experience packed into those few hours. The digesting, and the unpacking of the memories, will be something for me and my closest loved ones, not for a public blog.

No, I’m here to distract myself. So I went skimming the New York Times site, and ran across this. Which brings up the question, was or was not David Lynch’s "Dune" the worst film in history? I mentioned this point in passing in a previous post — this seems to be a self-referential day for this blog — but the topic didn’t really take off that time.)

I’m quite sure it was, but I’m open to any interesting — and distracting — arguments to the contrary. If it was NOT, in your mistaken opinion, the worst film ever, tell which one you think was, and give me the reasons why. (And I’ll be glad to elaborate later as to why Lynch holds the title.)

Better yet, to return to an earlier, abortive attempt to start a new and fun category, give me your Top Five Worst Movies Ever, with short explanations on each. After you’ve jogged my memory a bit, I’ll come back with my own list. And yes, you may include "Plan 9 From Outer Space," if you insist. But don’t you think that one’s a bit obvious?

Sure, this is silly, but work with me here. If you want substance, go back to this one. Cindi’s doing substance for me today. I’m doing trivia.

You gotta believe

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So I see there’s this guy coming to Columbia to talk about how the Church can win back Americans lost in "soulless materialism." That sounds good. Then I see the guy is described as a "priest." But I see that in his picture that he doesn’t look like a priest.

Then I see that the Rev. James Allen is an Episcopalian, and retired at that. Oh. That explains the civvies. Okay. Anyway, maybe this is just my own prejudice as a Roman, but I’d just as soon see the Church wither away as save itself by the means he suggests.

Basically, it’s that same old depressing mantra you hear more and more these days: Here’s his way of putting it: "The emphasis on ‘right believing’ is what divides people, and it is only one theme of the Bible," opines the Rev. James Adams, founder of something called — and this is a heads-up in and of itself — "The Center for Progressive Christianity."

Well, maybe that’s so, if you’re speaking from your Cambridge, Mass., home. But down here among the great unwashed, among folks who’ve actually read the Bible (or, in my case, large swaths of it — remember, I am Catholic), it strikes a very dissonant chord.

Excuse me, but isn’t that what a religion is: A certain set of beliefs? If you don’t subscribe to those beliefs, you don’t subscribe to that religion. It’s a free country, and the door swings both ways. It’s up to you. If your goal is to be a megachurch, then you take the marketing approach and give the "customer" what he wants: Entertainment, gymnasiums, child care, coffee bars and the like.

But if you really want to discern and follow God’s truth, you’re going to have to be a grownup and accept a few "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" that you didn’t get to vote on. In other words, you’re going to have to be humble enough to submit to something greater than your own capricious will.

As for the Bible — yeah, there’s some parts in there about parting seas, and massacring one’s enemies, and a Lion’s den, and some songs of praise, and quite a bit of fornication here and there, but the fundamental heart of it is mostly about what we’re supposed to believe and do. In fact, it’s hard to imagine it being the continuing best-seller it is without those parts. Without the morals, it would pretty much be a collection of curious ancient literary antiquities like the Epic of Gilgamesh or some such.

He says that to be more welcoming, the Church needs to be a place of "open, free discussion where nobody has to be made wrong."

Now I find myself wondering: Would no one be wrong? How about somebody who decides that all that "love thy neighbor" and "judge not lest ye be judged" stuff was for the birds, and that it was OK to hit people over the head with a hammer if they didn’t agree? I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with such a Church, and I sort of doubt that Rev. Allen would, either.