Category Archives: Top Five Lists

Pandora needs a “like it a LOT” button (although it’s doing pretty well without one)

Here’s a conundrum…

Pandora, the “internet radio” site that attempts to use your feedback to shape “stations” that play stuff you like, has a pretty simple system for your input: After you enter a song or artist (or multiple songs or artists) that you’d like to hear, it guesses what else you might like based on that, and you click on either a thumbs-down button meaning “I don’t like this song,” or a thumbs-up meaning “I like this song.”

That’s it. No gradations of feedback. It’s way binary; ones and zeros. I try to click on one or the other on most songs. I don’t sit there poised with the mouse, but every few songs I ALT-TAB back to Pandora to catch up with my decisions (except when I’ve gotten lost in my work and lost track of what I was “hearing,” and even then if I’m familiar with the song, I render a judgment).

But I find this frustrating everyone once in a while. Most of my “likes” mean, “I don’t mind if you keep this in my mix.” But every once in a while, they play me something I really, REALLY dig.

Examples… I have a lot of stations for different kinds of music, but recently I’ve spent a lot of time defining one called “Brad’s All-Purpose Station.” In the “I don’t mind if you keep this in my mix” on that station, I’d include “After Midnight,” “Angie,” “Another One Bites the Dust,” “It’s Money That Matters,” “Long May You Run,” “Oh! Darling,” “Smoke on the Water,” and so forth.

But there are other songs that I want to make sure Pandora knows I really like a LOT more than those songs. It may be an all-time favorite, or a really good song I seldom here and don’t own a copy of, or something I’ve occasionally heard and loved but didn’t know the name of… all sorts of reasons. Into that category I’d put: “Sexy and 17,” Another Girl,” “Baby, It’s You,” “Badge,” “Adagio for Strings,” “Bring it on home to Me,” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “Gymnopedies (3),” “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (the Al Green version!),” “I’ll Cry Instead,” “In Germany Before the War,” “I’ve Got A Woman,” “Naked Man,” “New Amsterdam,” “Simple Man,” “Werewolves of London,” and others. Oh, and on that last one: I’d much rather hear “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” or “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” but neither has yet been offered.

When I hear one of those, I want to say, Whoa, I’m sorry I clicked “like” on those last 10, because this is what I REALLY like! Don’t just lump this in with those… But all I can do is click again on the “like” button.

OK, so I’m frustrated that I can’t give more nuanced feedback, but here’s the perplexing thing: In spite of that, Pandora does an increasingly excellent job of guessing what I’ll like. As time goes by, I hit that “don’t like” button quite seldom.

Contrast that to Netflix, which gives me five levels of feedback, from one to five stars — and yet remains pretty much clueless as to what I’d like.

Not that I haven’t put the time in… I’m sort of embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve rated 2,144 movies on that site. I keep thinking, Give ’em more data, and they’ll figure me out. But they don’t. You give “Casablanca” five stars, and Netflix assumes, “He likes any movie that’s more than 50 years old.” Yeah, it’s probably a little more sophisticated than that — but not much.

Frustrating. But kudos to Pandora.

Maybe they thought they were voting for the Rev. Al Green

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That’s my latest theory to explain the victory of Alvin Greene in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. They thought he was Al Green. (Never mind that this is South Carolina and Al’s from Memphis; just indulge me for a moment — I’m on a roll here.)

And if that’s what those voters were thinking, well then, who can blame them? Certainly not I.

A few days ago, I was listening to Pandora while blogging, and had to stop what I was doing to listen fully to an awesome track by the Rev. Al. It was an unlikely song to be so awesome. It was “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?” Yep, the Bee Gees tune.

Now, I feel about the Bee Gees sort of the way Rob in High Fidelity (my very favorite book of the last 15 years, which I know I mention all the frickin’ time) felt about Peter Frampton. (In fact, I feel more that way about Peter Frampton than I do about the Bee Gees, because some of their pre-disco stuff was good. But their disco sins are difficult to forgive.) If you haven’t read the book, you may remember the scene in the movie. Rob and Dick and Barry go to hear this new singer in a club, and as Rob enters, he hears the strains of “Baby I Love Your Way,” and grimaces, “Is that Peter F___ing Frampton?” and almost leaves. But he listens, and is so enchanted with what the singer does with the song, that he says to Dick and Barry, “I always hated this song,” and they moan a sympathetic, “Yeahhhh…” and then he confesses, “Now I kind of like it…” and they moan, “Yeahhhh…” (Here’s the scene, by the way.)

OK, so sexual attraction was also involved there. But I know that with Rob’s highly refined pop music sensibilities, he would also have been blown away by Al Green doing that Bee Gees tune. It was amazing.

Where was I? Oh, yes… so if that was why folks voted for Alvin Greene, all is forgiven.

The Fix lists Top Five nastiest SC races ever

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We are truly legendary, to the point that political junkies sit around up in Washington dreaming up Top Five lists about us, a laHigh Fidelity, such as “The five nastiest South Carolina races ever.”

At least, Chris Cillizza at the WashPost‘s The Fix does.

And it’s a pretty good list even though it’s awfully heavy on stuff that happened during my own career. He does, to give him credit, give a mention to the legendary Preston Brooks, but the Top Five are all 1978 or later.

Given that limitation, it’s a good list. He counts them down thusly:

5. 2002 Republican governors runoff: This is the one I wrote about yesterday (at least, I wrote about the GOP effort to come together AFTER this nasty battle), between Mark Sanford and Bob Peeler. Peeler’s campaign, run by party regulars, was inexcusable, as Cillizza correctly recalls: “In one particularly memorable Peeler ad, a Sanford look-alike is shown stripping a soldier down to his underwear to illustrate Sanford’s alleged attitude toward military funding.” Yep. I remember it well.

4. 1978 4th district race: The abominable campaign against Max Heller, featuring anti-Semitic push-polling by Carroll Campbell’s pollster. I was in Tennessee at the time covering Lamar Alexander and Jake Butcher, but I’ve heard plenty about this from my good friend Samuel Tenenbaum over the years.

3. 1980 2nd district race: Also before I came home to SC, but I knew the players later: Lee Atwater, on behalf of Floyd Spence, told the press that Tom Turnipseed had been hooked up to “jumper cables” — a reference to shock treatments he had received for depression as a teenager.

2. 2010 Republican governors primary: That’s the one we just lived through. Or rather, are still living through. If we live.

1. 2000 Republican presidential primary: The filthy tricks that George W. Bush’s campaign used against John McCain to stop his candidacy and give Bush the momentum to go on and win the presidency. Not sure this was necessarily the nastiest by SC standards, but it certainly had the most profound impact on the world. I firmly believe that otherwise John McCain would have been our president on 9/11 and thereafter, which would have been better for us all. That knowledge of how South Carolina let the world down was very much on my mind when we pushed for McCain’s victory in the 2008 primary. (I also felt responsible because the newspaper — over my strong objections — endorsed Bush over McCain in 2000.)

They keep talking about us. And they will continue to do so, until we turn our backs on all this stuff. Which is why I’m rooting for Vincent Sheheen.

I’m in an elevated state…

Top Five Sports Movies Ever

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This post was inspired by my having inadvertently run across someone else’s list of best sports movies. There are several others out there — such as this and this and this — if you want to go look. My own may be incomplete, because I have yet to watch “Raging Bull” all the way through (I’ve got the DVD, I just need to block out the time), and I really need to go back and see “Body and Soul,” which I may have seen once when I was too young to appreciate. Those are the two that crop up on other people’s lists that I haven’t adequately vetted.

But unless one’s life is over, one’s Top Five list is always incomplete, right? So here’s mine:

Hoosiers (1986) – This just has it all – the more or less obligatory underdog storyline, the nostalgia, Gene Hackman (in his best role ever), Dennis Hopper (ditto, and then some – he’s the best thing in it), Barbara Hershey (and not a seagull in sight), and a team of non-actors who succeed as no actors could in making the action more real than real. You may surmise I have a particular affinity for a story about a fiftyish coach in need of professional and personal redemption (starting with a job). And yet, I was first impressed with that theme 24 years ago, and even then there was a personal identification. And I suppose we could have a long discussion about the difference between White Ball and Black Ball, and the nostalgic pleasure that a gray-haired White Guy might get from watching some basketball from back in the days when traveling was still against the rules, and everybody wore black Chuck Taylors. But beyond all that, just an awesome flick. And don’t forget, it’s based (loosely) on a true story.
Rocky (1976) – When this came out, it was the first new film I could remember as plain and simple and sincere as this. And there’s been little to touch it since. This is like a plain granite block of a movie – the basic, unadorned stuff from which all good movies that touch the heart are made.
The Natural (1984) – Thank goodness they went all Hollywood on this one, and slathered on the gauzy sentimentality, because it was exactly what this story needed. In Malamud’s novel Roy Hobbes was a brutish antihero, a case of natural talent invested in an unworthy creature, not a guy you particularly wanted to see succeed (and he didn’t, by the way; the ending leaves you feeling dead and empty inside). Redford’s frayed farmboy stoicism, modified only by a tendency to get misty-eyed and lyrical on the subject of baseball, worked perfectly. The ultimate baseball movie, when you’re feeling reverential about the game (when you’re feeling less so, go with “Major League”). Favorite little slice of life: Pop and Red in the dugout during practice, trying to stump each other with “Name that Tune.”
Vision Quest (1985) – As a former high school wrestler myself, I can attest this is THE definitive high school wrestling movie. OK, there isn’t a lot of competition, but that just makes me grateful that when Hollywood made this one attempt, they got it right. Matthew Modine perfectly expresses the awkwardness of being an intelligent, introspective young guy trying to figure out life (favorite example: – he’s trying to impress the girl by complimenting her musical taste and when she says it’s Vivaldi, he says, “Yeah, Vivaldi – he’s great” in a way that utterly fails to convince that he’s ever heard of the guy. Another: He confides to his teacher that he thinks he’s suffering from priapism. Also, before I let you out of this parenthetical, the scenes shooting the bull with Elmo the dishwasher are gems.), and while “coming of age movies” constitute one of Hollywood’s most overworked genres, this is possibly the best such attempt ever. While there was never any danger of my becoming state champ and I never had a hot 21-year-old semi-bohemian chick come to live with me when I was in high school, this feels like what life was like at that age.
Chariots of Fire (1981) – Just thought I’d throw in a posh, arty, nonAmerican film to round out the five. Not that this one doesn’t deserve the honor. Like all good sports flicks, it displays what is best about sport, in terms of its capacity to lift the human spirit (as Elmo explained to Loudon in the clip linked above). Favorite scene – the quiet little homily Eric Liddel offers in the rain after a race, which is as powerful an expression of faith as you’re likely to find in a major Hollywood movie.

That’s my Top Five, and I’m sticking to it — for the moment. But a couple of those choices were a little arbitrary in light of the competition. And as much as I want to preserve the unities of Nick Hornby’s Top Five concept, here’s what I would include also in the second five of a Top Ten:

Breaking Away (1979) – Almost made the Top Five, but it seemed that it was only marginally a sports movie. Wonderfully goofy film about a young guy trying to find his place in the world and meet chicks, and the lengths he’ll go to. Kathryn may be offended by what the kid’s Dad says about “all them “eenie” foods… zucchini… and linguini… and fettuccine. I want some American food, dammit! I want French fries!”
The Endless Summer (1966) – The classic surfing quest movie. The documentary travels the globe in search of the perfect wave. Which is what all of us surfers (and I’m really stretching the definition of “surfer” when I say “us”) would do given the time and money.
Major League (1989) – Also almost made the Top Five, but I only wanted one baseball movie there, and this one wasn’t reverential enough. But this one captures how much FUN the game is, both for players and fans. Favorite line: Bob Uecker’s gloriously goofy hometown-announcer’s understatement when he describes a pitch that goes about six feet astray as “JUUUUST a bit outside…”.
Tin Cup – (1996) Throw me out for including a Kevin Costner flick, but this is WAY more apropos than “Caddyshack” as an evocation of what golf is about. And it’s got Cheech in it, advising Cup that he can win the bar bet with “a hooded four-iron.”
Eight Men Out (1988) – Nice treatment of a key chapter in real-life baseball mythology, helping you understand how the Black Sox scandal could have happened, and how Shoeless Joe could have gotten caught up in it. D.B. Sweeney’s Jackson is a thousand times better than Ray Liotta’s generic effort in the overrated “Field of Dreams.” A great cast, including John Cusack and Charlie Sheen, and a great baseball movie. Say it ain’t so, Joe.

You’ll note that all of my Top Five are from the 80s except for “Rocky,” which just missed that decade by four years. And if you drop out “Endless Summer” and “Tin Cup” (which would stretch the span to 30 years), my whole Top Ten covers a 13-year period, from 1976 to 1989. I don’t know what it is about that period. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I was particularly impressionable. Or maybe it’s that film-making reached just the right pitch during that era. “Rocky” came along when irony had taken such a hold that such a simple, sincere film seemed a throwback, although with modern grittiness — and to some extent that describes something all of the best ones had in common. It’s hard to imagine a character as layered and conflicted as Norman Dale in a movie made in the 30s or 40s (and absolutely impossible in the 50s). Hollywood didn’t think enough of its audiences then. Movies were less frank, less realistic. There’s no way, for instance, a character would have been as obsessed with his sexuality (in a healthy way) as Loudon Swain in an film made before “The Graduate.” Not that that’s everything; it’s just an example. Except for wonderful quirky films like “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” (far better than the remake “Heaven Can Wait,” by the way), sports figures were just a little too monolithic, and their treatment too hagiographic, for my latter-day tastes.

Or maybe there’s some other explanation. In any case, these are the ones I see as best. What would be your picks?

Top Five Southern Novels of All Time

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Did you see that list of Top Ten Southern novels of all time that Joey Holleman wrote about in the paper Sunday? Were you as outraged as I was to see Huck Finn down at fourth place? Seriously, folks — the only question to be asked about Twain’s masterpiece is whether it’s the greatest novel of any kind ever, much less best “Southern” novel.

Mind you, this is not Joey’s fault, he’s just reporting on the list compiled by the magazine Oxford American.

Now, right off the bat, you have to figure that any mag that calls itself “Oxford” anything is going to be prejudiced in favor of a certain person, even if it is based in Conway, Arkansas. And sure enough, the list kicks off with a Faulkner work, Absalom, Absalom!

And here’s where we get into my own blind spot: I’ve never read Faulkner. Oh, I’ve tried, back when I was young and felt like I had to in order to be an educated person. But a page or two of Faulkner, and I felt like I needed oxygen. I decided that I must hold my breath until I reach the end of a sentence or something, which can be deadly with Faulkner. Anyway, I never got very far. I’ve got several of his books sitting on a shelf to this day, awaiting me. Personally, I intend to read Finnegan’s Wake first, which means Faulkner will have to wait awhile. Sorry, Bill.

So basically, we have a problem in judging this list — no publication called Oxford American could possibly be unbiased with regard to Faulkner, and I’m not in a position to judge when they’re giving him too much credit and when they’re not. So we’re just going to have to throw all the Faulkner books off the list. Sorry again, Bill, but them’s the rules I just made up.

Since three of the 10 were thus tainted, that leaves us with a Top Five list plus two, and now that we have the Faulkner distraction out of the way, we can see more clearly that the list does, indeed, fall short:

1. “All the King’s Men,” Robert Penn Warren, 1946, 80 votes

2. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Mark Twain, 1885, 58 votes

3. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee, 1960, 57 votes

4. “The Moviegoer,” Walker Percy, 1961, 55 votes

5. “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison, 1952, 47 votes

6. “Wise Blood,” Flannery O’Connor, 1952, 44 votes

7. “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston, 1937, 41 votes.

See? Huck Finn still isn’t first. In fact, it comes in second to All the King’s Men. Now I’m perfectly willing to assert that All the King’s Men is a wonderful work, one of the best ever — for about three pages.

Seriously, you can read the good parts of All the King’s Men in the “LOOK INSIDE!” feature at Amazon.com, and be done well before they cut you off. I’m talking about the stretch that goes from that wonderful ode to Highway 58, and ends with the paragraph that tells you everything you need to know about Sugar-Boy, ending with:

He wouldn’t win any debating contests in high school, but then nobody would ever want to debate with Sugar-Boy. Not anybody who knew him and had seen him do tricks with the .38 Special which rode under his left armpit like a tumor.

Great stuff. (Never mind that it should be “that rode under his left armpit like a tumor,” or that there’s no reason a grown man would participate in a high school debate anyway. It’s still great writing.) After that, it’s kinda downhill with all that decadent Southern nobility and corruption-of-idealism-by-power stuff. Go ahead and stack the first few pages of Huck Finn up against it, why don’t you — and then tell me it doesn’t hold its own. Never mind that the whole tone changes to deep and dark in the middle part, or then shifts back to that broad farce tone when Tom Sawyer gets back into it at the end. The greatest Southern novel — indeed, the greatest American novel — should have unevenness and inconsistencies. I wouldn’t give shucks for any other way, as Tom Sawyer would say.

Beyond that — well, I’d put Mockingbird ahead of Warren, too. As for Walker Percy — while I’ve read The Moviegoer, and enjoyed it near as I can recall, I was never tempted to re-read it, which means it wouldn’t make it onto a top anything list of mine. (I actually have a clearer memory of Lancelot, which I did not like. That whole “Southern Man as severely dysfunctional loser” theme leaves me cold; a few pages of it is a gracious plenty, as my Aunt Jenny would have said. It’s why I didn’t read past the first chapter of Prince of Tides, and regretted having read that much.)

The absence of Gone With The Wind is of course a deliberate snub, based on its not being highbrow enough or cliched or politically incorrect or whatever. Perhaps it was too popular. And no such list would seem complete to me without either God’s Little Acre or Tobacco Road, if not both. What, the Oxford American folks don’t like books with hot parts? Or are we only concerned with the troubles of the upper classes, and don’t have time for working-class dysfunction? Caldwell’s novels were certainly way Southern; you’ve got to admit that.

We can’t blame the editors of the magazine entirely, since the list resulted from a poll of “134 scholars, scribes, and a few mystery guests.” There is something vaguely un-Southern about this. Subjecting things to a vote seems kinda Yankee to me, like a New England town hall meeting or something. A true Southern list should be drafted by one quirky individual who doesn’t give a damn what anybody else thinks. At least it wasn’t true Democracy, since the electors were hand-picked — in a process that helps us understand why the list has more than a whiff of snootiness.

So now that I’m done tearing down this list, I should post one for y’all to tear down. So have at it:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
God’s Little Acre, Erskine Caldwell
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell

OK, one last admission — I haven’t actually read Gone With The Wind, either. But I heard about it so much from my eldest daughter when she was growing up that I feel like I have. And I wanted to put it on the list just to cock a snook at those pointy-headed types who ignored it in the OA poll. I thought about putting Pudd’nhead Wilson at No. 5, just to load my list up with Twain the way they did theirs with Faulkner, or even saying “a Faulkner novel of your choice” in that spot, just as a grudging acknowledgment. But I didn’t.

A Top Five list that leaves much to be desired

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So I was reading a review in the WSJ this morning about an incomplete Vladimir Nabokov novel that has been released posthumously, and probably should not have been.

And that got me to thinking about great writers who write in English even though it’s not their first language, and I thought it would be cool to draft a Top Five List of such writers. This would be challenging, and more highbrow than a “Top Five Side One Track Ones” list.

Trouble is, I can only think of two:

Joseph Conrad, who as far as I’m concerned could occupy the whole list alone, even if you don’t go beyond Heart of Darkness. He packed meaning in and around English words in ways that native speakers never thought of. (Or perhaps I should say, “of which native speakers never thought.”)
Vladimir Nabokov.

And I must admit I’m not too sure about Nabokov. People tell me he’s brilliant, but his “masterpiece” has always sounded kinda perv-y to me, kind of Roman Polanski, you might say (which suggests a Top Five Perv-y Directors Whose First Language is Not English, which would also come up short, I’m afraid). So I’ve never read it. A case of judging a book by its synopsis. I mean, I loved A Clockwork Orange despite its disgusting themes — partly because of its creative use of another language (Russian) melded with English slang to create a new language altogether, come to think of it — but I haven’t been interested enough to give Lolita a try.

Anyway, as I wondered who might be third, fourth and fifth on such a list (and maybe second, too, since I’m not sure about Nabokov), I learned that there is a whole publication devoted to such writers — a publication that even sponsors something called the Conrad-Nabokov Award (which provides a broad hint that maybe those two are in a class by themselves). Here is how it explains itself:

This is the third issue of Shipwrights, and perhaps it’s a good time to pause and reflect. This journal is an experiment, really. It may be the only international magazine specifically dedicated to publishing the work of “de-centered” (second-language English) authors. It is, thus, one representation of the linguistic effects of globalization. As the number of second-language speakers of English in the world continues to balloon, it’s interesting to consider a possible future day when we won’t even notice whether a writer in the English literature market is a native anglophone or not. After judging the Conrad-Nobakov Award, Ms. Burroway remarked, “It’s hard to believe that these authors are writing in English as a second language, for all of them have superior command of it.”

Bet you didn’t know that. Not that you needed to.

My Top Five (plus one) local radio stations

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By the way, I should add to my Daniel Schorr diatribe that I love NPR. If I could only listen to one radio station, that would be my choice. That doesn’t mean I have to be crazy about everything I hear on it…

Which reminds me that I was talking radio with a friend today about favorite radio stations. The radio spectrum is so broad that I hesitate to try to create a Top Five list, since there could be a station I haven’t ever heard that would be my favorite if I did hear it. But what I can to is provide a list of the six buttons pre-programmed on FM1 in my truck. I’d be interested to hear what y’all like as well — maybe I’ll do some reprogramming:

S.C. ETV Radio, 88.1 — Or sometimes, 91.3, but the one out of Sumter has more news, which is mainly what I listen for. I like classical music, but NPR is just so well done. The material is better organized and presented than any almost print medium in this country, which is saying something for radio.
WUSC, 90.5 — One of my kids was once a DJ at the station, and I keep it programmed for when I want to hear something really unique.
Steve FM, 96.7 — Yeah, the station ID messages can be really grating — that tedious “we’re deliberately sounding unprofessional” tone — but the song selections are pretty good about 50 percent of the time.
WXRY, the Independent Alternative, 99.3 — The best of the largely contemporary formats locally, near as I can make out.
WWNQ, Flashback 94.3 — Oldies, pure and simple. (This station used to have a format that played Country classics, and for a C/W format was pretty listenable, but a year or so ago they went to mainstream oldies.)
WTCB 106.7 — Occasionally, when there’s no music on the other commercial stations, I switch to this one — and will sometimes stay for a song or two, if they’re playing 80s stuff. (Not my era, but I turn to different stations for different things.)

By the way, those are not actually in order of preference — those are the assigned buttons. You’ll note that No. 5 is out of order. That’s because it replaced a station that replaced another station that DID fit between 99.3 and 106.7.

Of course, about half the time I’m listening to a CD instead — often something I’ve burned from one of my old vinyl albums.

And while blogging, I often listen to Pandora. Two current favorite “stations:” My Erik Satie and Solomon Burke stations. (I threw that in so that the Barrys out there could not sneer at my mundane radio tastes.)

’25 Best Conservative Movies’

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As y’all know, I am inordinately fond of movies, and also of Top Five Lists and their lesser cousins, Top Ten lists and other denominations.

So it was with interest that I perused this one put together by National Review, “the 25 best conservative movies of the last 25 years,” which are described as “great movies that offer compelling messages about freedom, families, patriotism, traditions, and more.” It’s not a list it would have occurred to me to compile, since I don’t think in those left-vs.-right terms. And in some cases NR has to put an odd spin on them to make them “conservative,” but in others I see the point, to the extent that it matters. Who cares? A good movie is a good movie. But I perused it with interest, as I do all such lists. Here I add a little of my own commentary on each (for the magazine’s commentary, follow the link):

The Best Conservative Movies
1. The Lives of Others (2007): This WAS wonderful, and if you haven’t seen it, order it from Netflix or whatever. It’s in German, with subtitles — so Herb should especially like it. I think maybe it made No. 1 on this list because it was one of the last movies William F. Buckley saw, and he raved about it. Well, the man always had good taste.
2. The Incredibles (2004): This was good, but would not make any kind of “best 25” list I would compile.
3. Metropolitan (1990): Never saw it.
4. Forrest Gump (1994): OK, fine.
5. 300 (2007): Didn’t like it all that much. Too artificial.
6. Groundhog Day (1993): Definitely a Top 25 on any list, but this is one where the “conservatives” are missing the point, although they’re certainly right to say, “Theologians and philosophers across the ideological spectrum have embraced it.” You know where I first heard about it? In a homily at St. Peter’s. Msgr. Lehocky was impressed by it because the entire point of the movie is that the only way Murray’s character can escape the pointless treadmill of his existence is to live one day that is perfectly lived for other people, NOT for himself. “Conservatives” of the über-selfish, modern libertarian variety have to overlook that obvious message to like this flick. Again, it’s not about the value of “the permanent things,” but about living for OTHERS. But I’m glad for them to like it anyway. Everyone should.
7. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006): Haven’t seen it.
8. Juno (2007): Yes, it was wonderful. And yeah, it had a “conservative” message in that if affirmed life. Although I’m still, after all these years, trying to figure out how affirming life got to be “conservative.” Yet another way that Roe has distorted the way we think, and even the way we think about thinking, in this country.
9. Blast from the Past (1999): Very enjoyable, and yeah, it spoke up for traditional values.
10. Ghostbusters (1984): Bet you didn’t know that this one was political. Neither did I. The justification for this call is pretty thin. It seems mostly based on the bad guy being from the EPA, and Akroyd’s hilarious line: “I don’t know about that. I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results!”
11. The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003): Yeah, OK — I can see that.
12. The Dark Knight (2008): Again, seems odd on this list. And while it might be one of the best 25 new movies I’ve seen in the past year, I wouldn’t elevate it above that.
13. Braveheart (1995): Saw it. Hated it. The first sign of Mel Gibson’s obsession with characters who are gruesomely tortured to death, which is all I remember of it.
14. A Simple Plan (1998): Never saw it.
15. Red Dawn (1984): Well, of course. And I enjoyed it for what it was, minus the political preaching. I enjoyed it on this level — there were times as a high school student I would have welcomed the fantasy of paratroopers suddenly landing in the schoolyard and shooting up the school, so that I’d have a good excuse to grab some friends (including girls) and some guns and run up into the mountains for an extended adventure. Didn’t you think thoughts like that in school? OK, never mind…
16. Master and Commander (2003): Yes, folks, this is why I posted this entire item. As y’all know, I’m always bringing up O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin books here on the blog, and nobody ever engages the subject, which is a big disappointment. This offers me another excuse. And yes, if you’re reaching for it, I guess this movie extols conservative virtues. (I guess it didn’t strike me because, having grown up in the navy, the conservative values it portrays are ones that I, and John McCain, take for granted.) As NR says, the H.M.S Surprise is “a coherent society in which stability is underwritten by custom and every man knows his duty and his place.” Granted. And Jack Aubrey is as Tory as they come. But then the stories are equally about Stephen Maturin, who is after all a former Irish republican, who detests authority from that practiced by naval officers to that assumed by Buonoparte. But Stephen is no modern, milksop liberal — although strangely, in the movie version, he is portrayed that way (right up until the moment he boards the enemy ship sword in hand, which the movie makers really didn’t prepare the viewer for, since at every moment up to that point you were given the impression he was a pacifist or something). Yeah, the movie was great, but the books are a thousand times better — whatever your political orientation. Some of y’all go read them, so we can discuss them here.
17. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2005): Didn’t see it; never particularly wanted to. I’m guessing you had to read these books as a kid to be interested.
18. The Edge (1997): Never saw it.
19. We Were Soldiers (2002): This was OK, but not any kind of top 25. An ironic choice for NR, since it was written by Joe Galloway, who was there. If you’ve read Joe’s columns, you know what I mean. He doesn’t see the world their way (or mine, either).
20. Gattaca (1997): Yeah, it was OK. Worth seeing. Not that great, though.
21. Heartbreak Ridge (1986): This movie stunk up the place! I can’t get past the first 10 or 15 minutes. Awful acting. Cartoonish depiction of the Corps. Yeah, I was hoping this movie would be what NR seems to think it was. But it wasn’t. Not one of Eastwood’s better efforts.
22. Brazil (1985): Hated it. Yeah, it had its cool parts — DeNiro’s guerrilla repairman, for instance — but on the whole a bummer. I hate these nihilistic, hopeless tales that go to such lengths to conjure a world in which life is useless and meaningless. Isn’t life depressing enough?
23. United 93 (2006): A fine film, a fine tribute. Not a Top 25, though.
24. Team America: World Police (2004): Never saw it; never wanted to. (You get the idea that they included this one for ironic effect or something?)
25. Gran Torino (2008): Just saw it SUNDAY NIGHT, and it was great. My wife and I had a rare night out. It surprised me that she wanted to see it, and one of my daughters almost talked her out of it (we considered going to see “Slumdog Millionaire” instead, which would have been OK, but I really wanted to see this one). Well, we both loved it. The reviews that rave about it are not exaggerating. Clint Eastwood just gets better and better at his craft.

The magazine then listed 25 “Also-Rans,” as follows:

Air Force One, Amazing Grace, An American Carol, Barcelona, Bella, Cinderella Man, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Hamburger Hill, The Hanoi Hilton, The Hunt for Red October, The Island, Knocked Up, The Last Days of Disco, The Lost City, Miracle, The Patriot, Rocky Balboa, Serenity, Stand and Deliver, Tears of the Sun, Thank You for Smoking, Three Kings, Tin Men, The Truman Show, Witness

Of those, several should have made the Top 25, being way better than most on the list that made it, specifically:

Air Force One — Nothing like a president who kicks terrorist butt personally. He’d have my vote. Aside from that, just a well-done action flick, as only Wolfgang Peterson can make ’em. (Although you know what I liked better? “In the Line of Fire.” Not for its conservatism, but for its communitarianism. What? You don’t remember Eastwood saying repeatedly how much he loved public transportation?)
Bella — Beautiful flick, although the parts that flash back to the terrible thing that happened are hard to take. It helps to understand Spanish (the movie’s sort of bilingual), but it’s not necessary.
Knocked Up — A real hoot, and of course we know about how it’s an unconventional evocation of traditional values. It’s still a hoot.
Serenity — A little preachier than the original series on the whole anti-Nanny State thing, but the characters and the action make it easy to ignore. Why did “Firefly” not last? Because it was too good, I guess.
Witness — Another of Harrison Ford’s best. Excellent fish-out-of-water drama.

Heck, even “The Island” was better than most of those that made the list…

Oh, just to finish the job. If I were to pick a Top Five List from among the above 50 — just Top Five, regardless of political “message” — I’d go with:

Groundhog Day
The Lives of Others
Master and Commander
Air Force One
Serenity

Mind you, if I were compiling a list of Top 25 from the past 25 years without restrictions, it would include a lot of flicks not among the 50 above. Such as “Almost Famous,” “American History X” and “Apollo 13,” and that’s just the A’s. How about you?

Historians: Lincoln is tops; W. ranks 36th

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Just for a talker, I thought I'd share the results of this C-SPAN survey on how historians rate the leadership of presidents:

C-SPAN RELEASES SECOND
HISTORIANS SURVEY OF

PRESIDENTIAL
LEADERSHIP

Abraham Lincoln Retains Top
Position;

Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush
and Bill Clinton Advance Since 2000 Survey; George W. Bush Ranks 36^th
Overall By Historians

(Washington, DC, February 15, 2009) – Timed
for Presidents Day 2009, C-SPAN today releases the results of its second
Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, in which a cross-section of 65
presidential historians ranked the 42 former occupants of the White House on ten
attributes of leadership.

As in C-SPAN’s first such survey, released in
2000, Abraham Lincoln received top billing among the historians, just as the
nation marks the bicentennial of his birth. George Washington placed second,
while spots three through five were held by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore
Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, in that order.

Based on the results of historians surveyed,
George W. Bush received an overall ranking of 36. Among other recent
Presidents, Bill Clinton who was ranked 21 in the 2000 survey, advanced six
spots in 2009 to an overall ranking of 15; Ronald Reagan moved from 11 to 10;
George H.W. Bush went from 20 to 18, and Jimmy Carter’s ranking declined from 22
to 25.

As in 2000, C-SPAN was guided in this effort by
a team of academic advisors: Dr. Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University; Dr. Edna Greene Medford, Associate Professor of History, Howard
University; and Richard
Norton Smith, Scholar in
Residence at George Mason University. The team approved the ten criteria, which
were the same used in C-SPAN’s 2000 Survey, reviewed the list of invited
participants, and supervised the reporting of the results. Harvey C. Mansfield, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government at
Harvard, also consulted on the names of invited historians with an
overall goal of geographic, demographic, and ideological diversity.

“Bill Clinton and Ulysses S. Grant aren't often
mentioned in the same sentence – until now. Participants in the latest C-SPAN
survey of presidential historians have boosted each man significantly higher
than in the original survey conducted in 2000. All of which goes to show two
things: the fluidity with which presidential reputations are judged, and the
difficulty of assessing any president who has only just recently left office,”
said Richard Norton Smith.

“As much as is possible,
we created a poll that was non-partisan, judicious and fair minded, and it’s
fitting that for the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln that he remains at the
top of these presidential rankings,” noted Dr. Douglas Brinkley.

“How we rank our presidents is, to a large
extent, influenced by our own times. Today’s concerns shape our views of the
past, be it in the area of foreign policy, managing the economy, or human
rights. The survey results also reinforce the idea that history is less about
agreed-upon facts than about perceptions of who we are as a nation and how our
leaders have either enhanced or tarnished that image we have of ourselves.
Lincoln continues to rank at the top in all categories because he is perceived
to embody the nation’s avowed core values: integrity, moderation, persistence in
the pursuit of honorable goals, respect for human rights, compassion; those who
collect near the bottom are perceived as having failed to uphold those values,”
concluded Dr. Edna Medford.

Full rankings for each of the 42 presidents are
available at
www.c-span.org/presidentialsurvey <http://www.c-span.org/presidentialsurvey>

Methodology

C-SPAN’s academic advisors
devised a survey in which participants used a one ("not effective") to ten
("very effective") scale to rate each president on ten qualities of presidential
leadership: "Public Persuasion," "Crisis Leadership," "Economic Management,"
"Moral Authority," "International Relations," "Administrative Skills,"
"Relations with Congress," "Vision/Setting An Agenda," “Pursued Equal Justice
for All,” and “Performance Within the Context of His Times."

Surveys were distributed to 147
historians and other professional observers of the presidency, drawn from a
database of C-SPAN's programming, augmented by suggestions from the academic
advisors. Sixty-five agreed to participate. Participants were guaranteed that
individual survey results remain confidential. Survey responses were tabulated
by averaging all responses in a given category for each president. Each of the
ten categories was given equal weighting in the total scores. Overseeing the
2000 and 2009 tabulations were C-SPAN CFO Robert Kennedy and Dr. Robert
Browning, a political scientist who serves as director of the C-SPAN
archives.

Note that presidents might do well in one category, not so well in another. For instance, Bill Clinton made the top ten on "Public Persuasion," but was sixth from the bottom on "Moral Authority." Which makes sense.

I was going to construct my own Nick Hornby-style Top Five List, but I found it hard to argue with the one that the historians came up with:

Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Harry Truman

I hated that my favorite Founder John Adams didn't make the Top Ten — he came in 17th — but it's hard to argue with. His greatest contributions to the nation came long before he was president, and however much I like him, he was not that successful a president (probably the greatest thing he did as president was surrender power peacefully to Jefferson). Sort of like the fact that I LIKED Jimmy Carter, but can't say he did that great a job, accomplishment-wise.

My biggest hit ever: McCain on ‘that little jerk’ Graham

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The kind words some of y’all offered about my video on this last post — which featured Lindsey Graham talking about Sarah Palin — reminded me of something I noticed just the other day.

Remember how I used to bore y’all with my Top Five Lists of which of my video clips were getting the most play on YouTube? Well, I sort of got out of the habit there for awhile (partly because I was tired of being depressed by the fact that three of my Top Five were clips of neoNazis at the State House), but the other day I looked, and lo and behold, the above clip from more than a year ago had come out of nowhere to top my list.

The last time I’d taken any notice of my stats, my top videos were at around 20,000 views. All of a sudden, the clip I shot in the Vista on the night of the first GOP presidential debate in South Carolina — way back in May 2007 (is it possible it was that long ago) — had shot up from nowhere to the top spot, at 45,000 views! It’s the one in which John McCain, standing on a podium with Henry McMaster and Bobby Harrell, looks out into the crowd and says,

… and I know that little jerk Lindsey Graham is around here somewhere.

Of course, being all about giving y’all the full story, I also posted the full, unedited context of that joke, in which McCain went on to say nice things about his buddy. But that context — which is sort of worth watching for the way my shaky handheld style captures the confusion and crowd excitement, although inadvertently — isn’t nearly as popular. It’s been viewed less than 1,000 times.

Obviously, on YouTube, brevity sells. So does irony.

One last note: I’m happy to say that my critically acclaimed "Who Resurrected the Electric Car?," probably my finest job of video editing ever (considering the low-res images I work with), stays in the number three spot at 28,000 views — right behind the not-so-acclaimed "Sieg Heil at the State House" and "Hillary’s Heckler."

Anyway, enjoy.

If we DO have a run on the banks, can I be George Bailey?

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After posting my last post, I went to find this scene from "It’s a Wonderful Life" — one of my All-Time, All-Category, Top Five Movies (in fact, I listed it on the blog as my No. 1, but I go back and forth on that). Interesting thing, when I went to YouTube and typed in the title, the bank run scene came up second — which makes me think others have that scene on their minds.

Surely things aren’t that bad, are they?

Well, if it does come to that, can I be George Bailey? I want to be the reassuring guy who says, "Just remember that this thing isn’t as black as it appears," just before the sirens go by. Then I can say,

No, but you’re… you’re, you’re-you’re thinkin’ of this place all wrong, as if I had the money back in a safe. Th-th-The money’s not here… why, your money’s in Joe’s house, that’s right next to yours, and in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Maitland’s house, and, and a hundred others. … Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then they’re gonna pay it back to you as best they can, now what’re you gonna do, foreclose on them?

I’ve always enjoyed that, a nice communitarian lesson in how a healthy community operates economically.

Of course, if you’d rather get 50 cents on the dollar from that free-market monster Mr. Potter, wull-wull-wull go right ahead, but don’t then don’t come crying to ol’ George Bailey… No, wait: I guess George wouldn’t say that, would he?

Top Five courtroom dramas

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Got this e-mail yesterday from a local trial lawyer:

Mr. Warthen

Read with interest your brief comments about Ms. Brockovich’s appearance at our convention. Why not come listen to her before you judge? You might actually learn something.

By the way, Jonathan Harr, who wrote "A Civil Action," (the book is much, much better than the movie) spoke by invitation to a group of trial lawyers, hosted by former AAJ president Ken Suggs, a few years ago. Signed my copy of the book! And the lawyer who was portrayed (Jan Schlictmann) has been invited numerous times to speak to our group. Ask your daughter, Elizabeth — we trial lawyers have open minds!

First, I have a daughter who is a lawyer, but her name is not Elizabeth. I’m leaving this lawyer’s name off to protect him from my daughter.

I replied by saying I didn’t know I was "judging," I thought I was just riffing on the blog as usual. And sorry, but I really didn’t like the movie. I did mention another I liked — "Runaway Jury."

This brings us to the fact that we haven’t had a Top Five list in days. How about a Top Five Coutroom Dramas list? Here’s one to start the conversation with:

"12 Angry Men" — Nothing else can touch this, of course. It’s to courtroom dramas what "High Noon" is to Westerns.
"To Kill A Mockingbird" — Very close second, and even maybe a better movie — but only part of it happens in the courthouse.
"A Few Good Men" — Does military justice count? I think so.
"Witness for the Prosecution" — Just to get all snooty and throw in some foreign accents.
"Primal Fear" — Edward Norton’s breakout, and certainly scariest, performance. Richard Gere almost disqualifies this one, but Norton saves it.

Other candidates?

But what are Obama’s Top Five?

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The Republican National Committee seems to think it has some sort of "gotcha" with this frivolous little item from Entertainment Weekly , apparently based upon a stunningly shallow interview with Barack Obama.

This is apparently part of a series of RNC releases that they call "Audacity Watch," which provides further proof of the lack of wit among partisans, as if any were needed.

Anyway, here’s the "article" from EW that the RNC refers to. The implication on the part of the GOPpers seems to be that Obama has been caught discussing something silly and beneath the dignity of one who would be president.

But I don’t see it that way. Unlike our pal Lee (such things are beneath him), I think a person’s cultural proclivities are indicative of character, and I do want to know about them. My complaint with EW, and the reason I call the interview "shallow," is that it doesn’t go deep enough even into this shallow end of the character pool.

They don’t even provide a Top Five list! That’s just inexcusable. So he likes "The Godfather" — big deal. That tells us nothing. Everybody (except bud) likes "The Godfather." The real clues to his character — the test as to whether he has the judgment and, dare I use the word, discrimination to be president — is in the OTHER four movies on his "Top Five" list.

And what about TV shows — assuming Obama has ever watched TV, which many Americans doubt? (And no, I don’t watch it, either, but I did when I was younger.) We are informed that he likes "The Dick Van Dyke Show" — an excellent, primo choice — but that is listed AFTER the saccharine, anachronistic, smug "M*A*S*H," one of the lamest hits in the history of the idiotic box. Where are his other picks? Does he redeem himself? We are not told.

The item does tells us that there are lists on Obama’s Facebook page, so finally we get somewhere. His Top Five movies:

Casablanca
Godfather I
Godfather II
Lawrence of Arabia
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Good. Very nice touch with "Cuckoo’s Nest" — very cool, not too obvious. But "Lawrence of Arabia?" Respect it as a David Lean masterpiece, fine. But who lists it as a favorite? Seems pretentious to me, the sort of thing that one reads that he should like it, and puts it on the list to impress people. And, given the subject matter, what does this tell us about his likely Mideast policy? Must give us pause.

And mind you, I’m not even going to get into his choosing Stevie Wonder on a list with Miles Davis (pretentious again), Coltrane and Dylan. I’ll let Jack Black’s Barry, purveyor extraordinaire of Top Five lists, pass judgment on that.

Now, does anybody know where we can find a similar list for John McCain? This could be important, people, so get on it.

Top Five movies adapted from TV (original cast)

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This is a category that kept popping into my head back when I was doing this post and this one. With "Sex and the City" fans all atwitter about their gal pals being back, I thought first, "would a Sopranos reunion on the big screen be a good thing?" I decided not, as a large part of its appeal was its serial, episodic nature, day-in, day-out, life goes on (except for those who are whacked).

But this raises the question, "Can any TV series yield a movie worth the price of the popcorn (which, when you think about it, is a pretty high standard)?"

And the answer is yes — just look at "Serenity." So I compiled this list. Admittedly, it’s a pretty restrictive list, and doesn’t contain any movies that would make even a Top 100 list from among films in general. And I’m not allowing movies inspired by TV series, but with a different cast — a la "The Untouchables," or "The Addams Family." So the list is what it is. And what it is is an excuse to urge you to see "Serenity" if you haven’t. The rest is just a nod to the Top Five art form, in keeping with the Nick Hornby standard:

"Serenity" — I saw this without having ever seen "Firefly," upon which it is based, which means I was like most people in the known ‘verse. "Firefly," probably the best sci-fi series ever, lasted less than a season. I now own the whole catalog on DVD, including several episodes never aired. How to describe it? Basically, it’s a classic western translated to outer space (in the vein of the "Outland" remake of "High Noon," only wittier), complete with the residual tension of the Civil War thrown in. The protagonists are a motley ship’s company built around a captain and exec who were Browncoats (rebels) back in the war. Their side lost to the Alliance, which rules all the core planets in the settled universe, and their ship (a Firefly-class relic named "Serenity," after the pivotal battle in which the Browncoats lost the war) bounces around the frontier fringe planets (where Alliance authority is shaky), making an iffy living off of smuggling and other shady enterprises. There are all sorts of cool little side notes in this future world, including the fact that their Old West diction is laced with Chinese-derived profanity — when they’re not resorting to such everyday epithets as "gorram," and "ruttin’". The characters are a lot of fun, especially Jayne the mercenary, and Kaylee the mechanic. And the best news of all is that you can see and enjoy "Serenity" without ever having seen the series, and it gives nothing away. But after you see the movie, you’ll want to see the series. Oh, one more thing — the Browncoats are essentially libertarians who just want the authoritarian Alliance to leave them alone. But I enjoyed it anyway. It was shiny.
"The Simpsons Movie" — It lived up to the standard set by the series, which is all you can ask.
"The Blues Brothers" — This one’s kind of obvious, to the point that I’m almost embarrassed to include it. Everybody picks this one.
"The Naked Gun" — A fitting translation of "Police Squad," it is what it is (just to thoroughly overwork a phrase).
"Batman (1966)" — Give me a break on this, too. I was 12 years old, and it was everything I expected.

As you can see, a very restrictive category. I would have included "Wayne’s World," but I wasn’t going to allow more than one SNL spinoff (and as long as I’m being absurdly pedantic, I probably shouldn’t have included either of them, since a skit is not a series). "Star Trek" fans would probably have included one or more of those films, but I was never really into that ‘verse.

Top Five Harrison Ford flicks

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We had a list in the paper Friday, compiled by someone with Newsday, that purports to be of Harrison Ford’s 10 best movies (among which, sadly, I hear his latest would not be a contender). The list had its good points and bad points. Basically, it lacked discipline. With Harrison Ford, you only get serious when you try to come up with a Top Five List. Here’s mine, unranked:

Blade Runner — The one de rigueur item on the list, for aesthetic reasons if none other. The film buff’s Harrison Ford movie, if not his most popular (and not my favorite).
Star Wars — A.K.A. "Episode IV: A New Hope." Note that I include this rather than The Empire Strikes Back. Sure, the plot of the latter is built more around Han Solo, but he defines the character in the first film. After that, the freshness, and the fun, is gone. Han is at his best before he becomes heroic, when he is the brash rogue who had not yet decided to do the right thing.
Air Force One — My kind of president, with my kind of foreign policy set out in the "Be Afraid" speech: "Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from
doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not
political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over.
We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no
longer be afraid. It’s your turn to be afraid." And don’t forget Gary Oldman’s villain — his best line is when he says "smart bomb." Like many action movies, this requires suspension of disbelief, but Wolfgang Petersen makes that easy and pleasurable.
Witness — In this one, Ford represents Modern Man with all his violent foolishness, the "English" among the Amish, and this is what he’s good at — Regular American Guy out of water. Also featuring Danny Glover as a bad guy, which was running against type, but he carries it off.
Raiders of the Lost Ark — The Regular American Guy resplendent, letting it all hang out in a story based in an All-American story-telling form — the old-style adventure cliff-hanger serial. East meets West in a most stark fashion — Indy comes up against the masterful scimitar-wielding opponent, gives an "I don’t have time for this" shoots and shoots him. He’s scared of snakes, and just making it up as he goes along. As regular as a guy gets.

Close contenders for the list: "The Fugitive" and "American Grafitti" But the former is more a showcase for Tommy Lee Jones’ talents, and his part in the latter just isn’t big enough. I also liked "Regarding Henry."

Dissed by ‘Foreign Policy’

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Foreign Policy magazine is inviting readers to vote for their Top Five Public Intellectuals. Here’s the link. As you can see, there are 100 "intellectuals" listed.

One Hundred. And yet, I didn’t make the list. Tom Friedman — sure, HE made the list. And the Pope, too — and you know, I don’t even like this Pope as much as the last one…

I’m reduced to being like one of those pathetic celebrity freaks at a premiere, standing alongside the red carpet, hoping to see an intellectual I recognize: "Oh, LOOK, there’s Salman Rushdie! I know him — I met him at a reception over at Andrew Sorensen’s place! I had my picture taken with him (and I’m still waiting to get a copy, I might add)!"

It’s sad. So then I pore over the list, looking for the biases of the compilers. Hmmm. I see four guys who are mainly known for being famous atheists, so is that … no, there are several religious types other than the Pope. Wait, what’s this — how can you have a "Muslim Televangelist," since "evangelist" refers to a proclaimer of the Gospel? No way. They could have put me in that guy’s place…

Oh, well. At least I can pick my own Top Five. Here they are, in alphabetical order, with the rather thin rationales for each:

Pope Benedict XVI — As I said, no John Paul the Great, but a smart guy, whatever you think of him. And he has one of the world’s bulliest pulpits. I figure if you’re looking for public intellectuals, we’re talking potential for influence, right?
Umberto Eco — Did you read The Name of the Rose? I did, and was impressed. (Not so much by Foucault’s Pendulum, though.)
Tom Friedman — Hey, I had to give a nod to somebody in the trade. And he has potential to have more public influence (and for the good, I’d say) than almost anyone else on the list.
Vaclav Havel — Based on the cool factor. Both a playwright and a paradigm-busting political leader.
David Petraeus — There is no more practical or unforgiving testing ground for an idea than the battlefield. By applying his ideas, he turned around both facts on the ground and the political momentum in this country. No mean feat.

I almost put Robert Putnam on there, just to get somebody with communitarian cred. But you can’t have everything in a Top Five list. In fact, if you don’t shoot from the hip, you can’t get your list done. Reflect too much and it doesn’t work.

And believe you me, the most famous names of the moment are likely to dominate here — unless the Foreign Policy readers ALL go esoteric, just to prove how smart they are, which is a distinct possibility.

But this list was compiled with an eye to celebrity, and provocation, for that matter. For instance, I find Robert Samuelson more intellectually impressive than Paul Krugman, but Krugman made the list (provocation) and Samuelson didn’t. And I’ve had the privilege of engaging in long conversations with both Al Gore and Lindsey Graham, and guess what — while Al’s no slouch, Lindsey’s smarter. But with his Nobel and his Oscar, of course he was chosen (also, in defense, he’s WAY more influential, thanks to that celebrity).

Have I ticked off enough people yet? I’m sure I have. OK, smart guy — who’s in YOUR Top Five?

Strange moments in cinema

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This being Sunday, I’m not going to go to all the trouble of compiling a full Top Five List on this subject. But if I did, I think this one would make the list.

Have you seen the recent Will Smith vehicle, "I Am Legend?" I did, and I suppose it was OK. But having seen it, I recalled that I had not seen the 1971 flick of which it was a remake — "The Omega Man," which in turn was a remake of Vincent Price’s "The Last Man on Earth," which was based on the 1954 Richard Matheson sci-fi novel, I Am Legend.

So in honor of the recently departed Charlton Heston, I ordered "The Omega Man," and watched it last night. It was OK, although it’s cheesy production values were approximately those of the average made-for-TV movie of the period. Overall, the Will Smith version was better, although more maudlin.

But in one respect, "Omega" beat the more recent version all hollow. In term of evoking sheer weirdness, Will Smith watching "Shrek" and maniacally reciting all the line along with the DVD doesn’t accomplish much. To get that full, apocalyptic, world-has-already-come-to-an-end feeling, you have to see the scene in which Charlton Heston goes into a movie theater, cranks up the projector and watches "Woodstock," and recites the dialogue from that. You know at that point that everything that can happen in this world has happened, and then some.

You just haven’t seen "out of character" until you’ve seen the man who was both Moses and head of the NRA channeling a blissed-out flower child asking, "If we can’t all live together and be happy… if you have to be afraid to smile at somebody… what kind of a way is that to go through this life?"

It’s a grabber in the same league as the last scene of "Planet of the Apes." It will leave you muttering, "Charlton, we hardly knew ye."

And if you don’t believe me, here’s the video. You can skip the rest of the flick; this is the good part.

Next, I’m going to order "Touch of Evil."

Voting by YouTube

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Readers may have noticed that I take an interest in which of my videos seem to be most popular — more of an interest than readers themselves take, judging by the few comments on my Top Five Videos posts. Fine. But maybe you’ll find this interesting.

It just occurred to me to compare videos posted at roughly the same time featuring competing presidential candidates. The results are interesting — OK, they’re interesting to me. But I’m going to share them anyway. If you’d like to look at the raw data to draw your own conclusions, my videos are listed chronologically, with the most recent first, at this link. For the most popular, with the most-watched first, click here. But here’s what I’ve noticed glancing over them just now:

The cleanest comparison you’re likely to find of this sort among the Democrats who were still in the race at the time of our primary is in these three videos I posted the same day (MLK Day). They feature Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama speaking at King Day at the Dome. All are of poor quality, but of roughly equally poor quality. The Obama one is probably worst, because I was the farthest away when he was speaking. But what interested me was that the Obama video was watched 390 times, the Clinton video 150 times, and the Edwards clip 16 times. That’s a bigger margin than the actual vote. I wonder how the demographics break down? No way to tell.
Before you start feeling bad for Hillary, though, remember that my "Hillary’s Heckler" video is still my most- watched ever, at 17,019 views. You have to wonder, though — are people watching it because they like Hillary, or because they like to see her heckled? Difficult to tell. I will say that if you try reading the comments, it won’t make you feel better about the electorate.
The only presidential candidates to make it into my all-time Top Ten are Hillary, Stephen Colbert, Jeri Thompson (you might object that she wasn’t technically a candidate, but that would be ungallant of you, and besides, neither was Colbert), and Joe Biden. Ol’ Joe got there in spite of the wretched quality — it was from my phone. Oh, I forgot — John Taylor Bowles. You may have forgotten Mr. Bowles. He’s the Nazi party candidate. Make what you will of the fact that all three of the clips I put up from the Nazi rally at the State House a few months back are in my Top Five, which means having more than 10,000 views each.
Fred Thompson (that’s Jeri’s husband) may be out of it technically, but here’s an interesting fact. I attended a Thompson event and a Huckabee event on the same night, shooting video at both. I posted them at the same time. The Thompson video was of markedly poorer quality, because of the angle and distance (I was right up against the platform at the Huckabee deal). As I reported at the time, and as you can see on the videos, the energy level was much higher at the Huckabee event — a phenomenon borne out in the voting on primary day. But that has nothing to do with page views — the Thompson video has 1,396 views, giving it Top Twenty status. The Huckabee clip was only watched 172 times. Go figure.

That’s all for now.

Hillary Uber Alles — on video, that is

1 Reply

Can I call ’em or can I call ’em? P.T. Barnum’s got nothing on me when it comes to knowing what the public wants. On Aug. 25, I predicted the following:

But wait — my Hillary’s Heckler video is moving up at an unprecedented
speed, having passed 6,000 views in only 3 weeks. (What’s faster than Blitzkrieg?)
I’m thinking that within a month, that clip of Mrs. Clinton and her
detractor at the recent College Democrats’ confab will outpace
everything, and put the Nazis in its shadow.

And here we are on September 19th, and my heckler video, shot during the College Democrats’ confab at the end of July, is now my most-watched video clip ever. It’s also the first ever to surpass the 8,000-view threshold — and it shows no signs of slowing down. (Yesterday, it was in third place.)

This is a good sign for the public’s tastes, as it finally eclipsed the previous favorite, which shows a Nazi leader talking about the Confederate flag on our State House steps. (OK, maybe a heckler isn’t the height of good taste, but it’s an improvement.) I’m also proud that my critically acclaimed "Who Resurrected the Electric Car?" — probably my finest use ever of my celebrated voice-over technique, not to mention its social relevance — is holding firm at third place. Indeed, until the heckler’s last-minute surge since yesterday, it was in second place.

Yeah, I know — nobody cares about this except me. But it takes a lot of work to produce these babies, and so I care a lot. That is, I care enough to bring you once again my Top Five Most-Watched Videos:

"Hillary’s Heckler," only 6 weeks old, zooming at Ludicrous Speed to 8,059.
"Nazi Presidential Candidate Defends Confederate Flag"
— 5 months old, with 7,906, this was the fastest-riser
ever before Hillary.
"Who Resurrected the Electric Car?"
— 6 months old, still probably my masterpiece in terms of sheer
artistry (the YouTube critics give it 5 stars). 7,810 views and also rising quickly. This is the feel-good hit of my repertoire.
"The Alpha and Beta of Thomas Ravenel"
— 11 months old, with 6,996 views, and falling farther behind as the scandal fades into the background. T-Rav is no longer box office magic.
"Nazis Defend Confederate Flag II." My shameless exploitative sequel, shot and released the same day as the first hit, a la LOTR. 5,269 views.

bradwarthen.com

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Hillary Uber Alles — on video, that is