Center Fielder or Breakfast Cereal? You Be the Judge

He Whose Name Is Not To Be Spoken In This House Any Longer, and good riddance, has been replaced -- and not just by an equally good ballplayer, but one who also bears the greatest name in the game since Kenesaw Mountain Landis: Coco Crisp. Mmmm. Sweet, chocolatey, snap-crackle-poply Coco Crisp. I just want to say it over and over again until I have to jump and pee like a puppy.

You Again?

Go away. I'm still busy. Go bother Harry Hutton, who exemplifies the paramount virtue to which bloggers, indeed the entire Internet,* should aspire: he amuses me. With posts like this:

ECONOMIST SOCKED ON THE SNEEZER IN FRIDGE ROW

Oh Post 1950s economy,
Why is it that you fill me with such bonhomie?

From the Ode To The Fiscal Structure Of Post-1950s Western Society With Reference To The Works of J. K. Galbraith. Read the whole thing. Or don't- it's no skin off my nose.

I once had a fist fight with JK Galbraith. True story. He was in the Red Lion in Tooting mouthing off about the world economy. “Growth is slowing,” he said, “as the housing market cools and consumers rein in their spending.” Terry the Pole overhears, and comes over from the fruit machine. “Don’t be a cunt," he says. "I’m a consumer, and I just bought a new fridge.” Then he headbutts him.

We all piled on Pole’s side, because he had indeed bought a new fridge.

Incidentally, I happened to read that as I was thinking about naming the blog you're reading, and briefly thought about some combination of 'bonhomie' and 'anomie' until I remembered that that's already been done to perfection. Curiosity drove me nonetheless to anomie, a single-entry blog that would be the ultimate marriage of title and content if there weren't genuine sadness alongside the weltschmerz. www.bonhomie.com, as you would expect,

dedicates itself to the world of plastics. Bonhomie represents the best manufacturers of plastic processing machinery, moulds, ancillary equipment and plastic products for export from India. Thousands of these moulds and machines are operating with satisfied moulders all over the globe.

Like Harry Hutton, Bonhomie Enterprises demonstrates the right and proper use of the Internet.

*This phrase is an example of false palindrome.

How Do You Say "God Hates Fags" in Latin?

Geez, these popes can go on and on. Benny16 writes a 71-page encyclical about love, and he expects me to read the whole thing? An encyclical is not the same thing as a papal bull, incidentally, but I'm reserving judgment on whether or not it's bull until I've had a chance to slog through it. He should learn to abbreviate the way they do on the Internets, like "Shorter God: I am love, but don't let that keep you from stepping across jurisdictional boundaries and helping to deny civil rights to homosexuals, because I read somewhere that they're an abomination in my sight." I'd suggest that over at his blog, but he's probably got comments turned off.

If You Can't Say Something Nice, At Least Say Something Clever

Naptime reading. Awwwww.

Apologies for not posting the kind of trenchant, exquisitely developed and profoundly informed essays that you, imaginary reader, have come to expect. When work piles up and deadlines loom if not pass quickly by, I maintain my record of perfect attendance on blog duty by hastily packaging a link in a flimsy wrapping of snark; it's the bloggy equivalent of those email joke relays that invariably carry as a subject line some variation of "check this out." I prefer to regard this not as a failing, but rather as a virtue. I haven't just learned to blog -- I've learned to blog lazily. In just three short weeks!

So anyway, check this out. It's a masterpiece of invective and a great find by Tbogg. I don't want to harp on Him Whose Name Is Not To Be Spoken In This House Any Longer, but this was nice:

33. Johnny Damon

Charges: Any baseball player with highlights in his hair should be faced with the same penalty system applied to those using performance-enhancing steroids. It’s ruining the game. And if a ball player is going to grow a beard, it should be a Charlie Manson/Thurman Munson scraggle of bushy whiskers, not a neatly manicured and softly conditioned frame for your pretty face. The only thing that got Damon to step into line and quit hair-farming was a 52 million dollar check from the New York Yankees. Boston prayed for the multi-bladed Gillette that officially made him a Yankee to slip while gliding over his Adam’s apple and spill his lifeblood into the bathroom sink.

Exhibit A: Going from the Red Sox to the Yankees is like fucking the guy that murdered your husband.

Sentence: Killed by barrage of hurled D cell batteries when he takes the field at Fenway next season.

I'd argue that he shouldn't be higher on the list than Michael Brown and Rush Limbaugh, but I realize that that's just splitting hairs. No. 1 is not W(orst-ever), as you might reasonably expect, though his No. 2 is indeed No. 2. No, W rates third, just ahead of you. Yeah, you read that right. Apparently, you suck.

While we're on the subject of choice invective, today Atrios reprised this classic review of Bill Frist's self-penned family story:

This is a fascinating study of the extraordinary mix of in-breeding, animal sacrifice, and corruption required to produce the world's worst human being. Coming from a family of mildly despicable cheats, the Frists had a leg up on normal human beings...but it still took an enormous amount of laboratory work and careful training to produce not just a self-involved twit but an unspeakable monster.

This book is Frankenstein of our century, a marvellous account of the line between science and morality, and the "Dr. Frist" character is a chilling reminder of the true evil inherent in all humanity...even if readers will find Dr. Frist himself an impossibly overdrawn character. Surely, no actual human could be so evil. Neverthless, he stands like Shelley's monster as an emblem of the path we as a species must never take.

By damning this "Dr. Frist" character and the bizarre process that created him, this sterling work serves as a moral guide, a hope for the future.

Meanwhile, Things 1 & 2 aren't wasting their time with blogsnark, because, bless them, they still have time to read books, even though they're years away from actual reading. On their way upstairs to bed they like to dismantle Daddy's fiction section on the landing, poring over the books while making up little dialogues and narrative fragments. Faulkner, Kafka and Henry James have been especially popular, but today at naptime Thing 2 grabbed Lord of the Flies and took it to bed with her. I asked her what it was about when she woke up, and she said:

There was a caterpillar on that leaf. And Peep was there, and a wolf. The wolf said, "What are you looking for?" and Peep said, "I'm looking for a snail."

Me Fail English? That's Unpossible!

Again I Ask: Separated at Birth?


Via First Draft, a few snippets of the "I didn't break the law, and anyway it was just for you rubes" tour.

So the death tax was put on its way to extinction. I said, put on its way to distinction, the problem is the way the law was written, it's coming back to life in 2011, which is going to make some interesting estate issues, particularly in 2010.

Failure to make tax relief permanent is a tax raise on the working people and the small businesses in this country.

If you're a restaurant owner in here Loudoun County and a restaurant owner in Crawford -- I think there are a couple of restaurants here. If not, there will be. No, there is a good one, The Coffee Shop -- I mean, Coffee Station, excuse me.

These good docs who have got the great compassionate job of taking care of youngin's, they're getting run out of business because of frivolous and junk lawsuits.

One of the reasons why the uninsured is going up because the cost is going up.

I'm proud to tell you that my friends that I knew before I became in public office are still my friends. One of the coolest things to do in my presidential work, one of the -- (laughter) -- seeing if you're paying attention up there -- (laughter) -- things I like to do is to welcome my buddies, and Laura feels the same way, people we grew up with -- we both grew up in Midland, Texas. I remember having some of my friends that I went to 1st grade with, a guy I grew up across the street with, Michael Proctor, they came up to have dinner at the White House. You know, and they kind of walk in there. You can imagine what it's like. It's a great honor, pretty awe-inspiring deal. They walk in there and, kind of, "What are you doing here, Bush?" You know? (Laughter.)

My job is decision-maker. I make a lot of decisions.... I think the worst thing that can happen for decision-makers is to get a filtered point of view.

See, one of the problems we've had that shows -- what we found out in New Orleans there's not -- there wasn't a lot of -- we take -- some things we take for granted like the generations passing assets from one generation to the next just didn't happen in the African American community, and should.

Remember when this stuff was pretty amusing? Neither do I.

Meet the Press with David Brent

Separated at Birth?






Senator Obama, can you comment on how I should pimp my ride?

Oh, and did you see that movie last night with Denzel Washington?

Native American Tale Blogging 2

A twofer this week from A Kayak Full of Ghosts, the startling collection compiled and translated by Lawrence Millman, who is best known as a travel writer (Last Places, Lost in the Arctic, An Evening Among Headhunters). Like The Wishing Bone Cycle, it takes a writer's approach, as opposed to an anthropologist's; it reflects Millman's keen sense of the absurd and his economy of language, and is unconcerned with classifications, mythologies and other academic considerations.

The tales, gathered from a variety of tellers Millman encountered in his travels, are brutal, playful, scatalogical and mysterious in varying degrees. Many involve sex, death, metamorphoses and deprivation. "I heard about a local woman named Keligasak," Millman writes in the forward about the first tales he gathered in Greenland, "who ate three generations of her own family during the terrible famine years of the last century, when winters were stuck together, in the Greenlandic phrase, 'like copulating dogs.'"

The Louse and the Worm

In the beginning, men did not have any lice on their bodies. The lice traveled about in tiny kayaks from fjord to fjord. Then one day a louse and a worm were paddling their kayaks and they decided to race toward land, to see who would be the first to climb onto man. Man's armpits were so warm and enjoyable that they chose them as their destination. Thus they could be heard as they paddled, shouting: "The armpits! The armpits!"
The worm was the better paddler, but his thongs broke owing to his powerful strokes. So the louse overtook him and came to land, and settled forever more in man's armpits. When the worm finally arrived, he crawled into the earth and hid there out of shame.

"I Am Only Shit!"

A woman was menstruating and thus no one would give her anything to eat. One day she caught sight of a whale far out in the sea. She had become quite hungry, so she waved her hands and exclaimed: "I am only shit! I am only shit!" And the whale began to swim toward her. Soon it swam out of the water and onto dry land, right beside her. "I am only shit," she said. And the whale died.
Such holy words!

That'll be all for now -- Quisuktunga.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has apologized.

Kidding! Actually, her response has been to spin, as Digby put it concerning another recent episode of media obfuscation, like Tonya Harding on meth. As she furiously skated backward from her false claim that Abramoff gave money to Democrats -- the unequivocal assertion that "he had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties" -- she did, inevitably, bump up against the boards of hard fact and had to admit that, um, "He didn't." But what a trouper! Steadying herself in just a few sentences with an assist from the firm hand of Michael Crowley, she executes a flawless triple Malkin:

So why would it cause me to be called a "right-wing whore" and much worse?

Witness three printable examples:

"Yes, the WAPO needs an enema, and Howell should be the first thing that gets medicinally removed."

"You Deborah Howell, stop lying about Democrats getting money from Abramoff. Democrats do not control anything in Washington, so why would he waste money bribing them. Think and do your research, and stop being an idiot."

"This rag must be something that I pulled off a barscreen at a sewage treatment plant. Howell is simply a paid liar. How this creature endures itself is something I don't understand. What a piece of flotsam."

You see, it's not like I did anything wrong. It's those libruls. They're unhinged, you see.

Fortunately, her boss, Jim Brady, is a kind, kind man. Rather than make her atone for her mistake and fess up in no uncertain terms -- the way you'd have to do at the daily where I used to work -- he shuts down comments on the Post blog and rushes off to defend her with rightist enabler Hugh Hewitt.

But when she wrote it in the column, it was phrased in a way that made it seem like he was personally giving money to the Democrats, of which there isn't proof of that at this point. So on Thursday, she put a clarification up, and we had already been getting hundreds and hundreds of comments about her column, and they were very, very nasty, using words that I didn't even know existed.

Here's a snapshot of the deleted comments, so you can judge for yourself. I'm not sure just which words the executive editor of a major American daily might not have encountered before, but if Brady is unfamilar with "fucking," "shitty," "incompetent" or "whore," he ought to read his email more carefully.

UPDATE from the fabulous Firedoglake: Bloomberg 1, WaPo 0.

Nice Chairmanship You Got There. Be Too Bad if Something Happened to it.

Don't have HBO but want to get a taste of The Sopranos? Tune into the latest in Ohio politics. Money quote:

Asked if Ney planned to step down if Bennett urged him to do so, Ney said: "I would say if he asked me to step down that he'd better look in the mirror because glass houses break easily." (Hat tip to Atrios for the catch.)

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to confess that the Sopranos reference was merely a cheap attempt to seem au courant with pop culture. Our family may be the last in America never to have seen the show -- not so much as a minute of it. If you're one of those readers who like to shower bloggers with gifts and you're tempted to buy me this, don't worry about it -- I can always pick it up at the library. Just send the $306.20 and I promise to use it for extra bandwidth when I've achieved Kos-like traffic. Or I'll use it toward, you know, a simple, humble, energy-efficient new fridge.

Harbingers of Spring

On a rainy day in the middle of a dismal, sodden winter, a sudden ray of sunshine: Theo's back! Which should remind us, pitchers and catchers -- including Arroyo, who just signed a new three-year contract -- report for duty in less than a month. So let's pause for a moment and replay the 2004 ALCS in our heads.

Mmmmmmm. That was nice, wasn't it? And -- this is true, I swear on the eyes of my children -- the rain just stopped, the clouds parted, the sun came out and OPB promised dry weather beginning Sunday. My heart soars like a hawk.

He Whose Name Is Not To Be Spoken In This House Any Longer is still gone, of course, as are any lingering feelings on my part. He is dead to me. If you haven't gotten over it yet, I recommend the comments, many of them howl-inducingly funny, from Bill Simmons' excellent ESPN blog. One of my favorites:

Johnny Damon: looks like Jesus, throws like Mary, and betrays like Judas ...
(And that just came out of the mouth of a Jewish girl. What do I do with my No. 18 Red Sox jersey now?)

To which one can add only: draws a paycheck from the Antichrist.

Congressman, You Have the Floor

Bad Actors

Welcome to anyone who's made it here on the (too kind) recommendation of notre ami Matt, whose unapologetically French surname makes his political allegiances all too clear. If you haven't had a chance to read the great Gore speech he passed on, you can listen to it here (and you can always remind Matt that he's more than welcome to be part of the winning Writ Small team). Option-click if you're using a Mac (or right-click in Windows, if I recall correctly, and if you use Linux, you undoubtedly know what you need to do), and you'll get an mp3 that you can catch at your convenience.

Convenience is key, of course. You and I have precious little time for reading, and since we'd rather use that time to finish Proust or catch up on all that unread email, to keep current we rely on the radio on our job sites and in our kitchens, cars, offices and studios. And if you're like me -- and who isn't? -- you end up listening a lot to Nice Polite Republican news, especially the network's flagship program "All Things Considered" (as in, "all things considered, we're better off playing nice").

Yesterday ATC's Melissa Block had a nice, polite chat with David Dreier, chairman of the House Rules Committee and such a reliably partisan hack that he was among the few House members discussed as a successor to Tom DeLay. (We'll set aside for now the matter of Dreier's hypocrisy on gay issues. Some of his supporters argue that his sexual orientation is irrelevant, and in a sense, they're right: his voting record is hateful and discriminatory regardless. At least, according to his Wikipedia entry, "Among bipartisan polls of congressional aid staff, Dreier is consistently ranked as the best dressed member of the House of Representatives.") Asking Dreier to weigh in on GOP lobbying reform proposals is pretty pointless from a journalistic standpoint, because you know going in that all you're going to get is spin. It's especially pointless if, like Block, you don't challenge a word he says, even a brazen lie like -- best swallow that coffee before you read any further -- "The Republican Party has been, and continues to be, the party of reform. We are very proud of the way we've been able to bring about a greater degree of transparency, deliberation and accountability to this institution."

You don't have to listen too long to hear more of this hard-hitting journalism. Last Friday during the weekly meet-up with E.J. Dionne, an indignant David Brooks declared that the Democrats on the judiciary committee had tried to destroy Samuel Alito. Normally Brooks doesn't stray into O'Reilly territory on NPR, but that's the word he used -- destroy. Dionne, Robert Siegel and Nina Totenberg let it pass without comment.

And I've got a brother-in-law who thinks that NPR is the left's counterpart to Limbaugh. Oh well, at least they're not CNN.

The Megaplex 17 at Jordan Commons v. the Globes

Larry Miller: Car dealer, Utah Jazz owner, censor

Righty tighty whities were all in knots after the Golden Globes the other night, when the Hollywood homo-pinko elite once again forced its unholy agenda down the throat of impressionable America in the form of Brokeback Mountain, TransAmerica, Capote, Syriana and The Constant Gardener. And who decides the winners of the Globes? Quelle surprise -- it's the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Well, some Americans just ain't buyin' it, contract or no.

The Megaplex 17 at Jordan Commons in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy decided to pull director Ang Lee's cowboy love story at the last minute on Thursday night, despite having agreed to play the picture. The theater is owned by Larry H. Miller, who also owns the Utah Jazz, a National Basketball Association team.

"It's the most despicable practice that any exhibitor can do," Focus' head of distribution, Jack Foley, told Box Office Mojo. "It was a flagrant dismissal of a commitment, and without even a phone call. So I'm not in business with him anymore. It's a breach of contract. It's unethical. We can sue him."

Calls to the Megaplex 17 resulted in "no comments" in regards to why Brokeback Mountain was yanked. "You're not going to get any comment from us on that," said Dale Harvey, General Manager for Megaplex Theatres.

As of Sunday, Megaplex Theatres' Web site had Transamerica, a comedy-drama about a transsexual parent, listed for Jan. 20 in their "Coming Soon" section, but the movie has since vanished from their schedule.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has been the Megaplex 17's top draw in recent weeks, grossing over $27,000 this past weekend. "It's a family show, and we generally do well with those," Harvey noted.

The Megaplex 17 is showing Hostel as well. Though No. 1 nationwide, the sex-and-gore saturated horror picture ranked fourth at the theater with $10,700. [Thanks to Lawyers, Guns and Money for the link.]

If only there were more Larry Millers to protect God-fearing folk who just want a bit of good, clean carnage without same-sex spit-swapping. Sadly, it seems, there aren't nearly enough; the $14 million film's worldwide grosses were pushing $35 million as of yesterday.

Haven't seen it yet myself. The missus and I haven't been to a movie theater together since well before Things 1 & 2 were born. I did manage to catch Winged Migration at the end of its run when the rest of the family was down at the in-laws. Since I have a special affection for depressing films, I'll be sure to grab Brokeback Mountain when it comes to the library; once they come out with Brokeback Mountain II: Cowgirls Are My Weakness, though -- hon, you're on your own. I'm going to the pictures.

Deadly Sins

My parents used to have this set of cocktail glasses with the names of the seven deadly sins etched on them. Since glasses never come in sets of seven, the maker had added an eighth sin, "Choosing the Wrong Side." As someone who generally votes with the NotRepublican Party, all I can say is "mea culpa."

Given a choice between Nancy Pelosi and Arlen Specter, I'm generally led to believe that the former is on "my side." You know, Nancy Pelosi, she who speaks truth to power:

SAN FRANCISCO — Swarmed by antiwar protesters, Rep. Nancy Pelosi on Saturday called the invasion of Iraq "a grotesque mistake" but rejected calls for President Bush's impeachment.

Shouting to be heard above the boos and catcalls at a rowdy community forum, Pelosi — the leader of Democrats in the House — urged her constituents to instead channel their anger and energies into the 2006 midterm elections, when control of Congress will be at stake.

"I think we should solve this electorally," she said, standing on the stage of a school auditorium with roughly three dozen sign-waving demonstrators at her feet.

Granted, she was talking about the Iraq war, such a dense stew of deception, wrongheaded policy, shortsightedness, wishful thinking and cynicism -- and yes, illegality -- that to sort out actual crimes from grotesquely bad politics would call for the lawyer equivalents of the firefighters sent into Chernobyl. She wasn't addressing the issue so blatantly illegal to all but the most faithful of the administration's adherents, the NSA wiretapping. I'm guessing she'll carefully tiptoe around that one, because when it comes to legal matters, she seems not to have too much of the fight in her:

"I do not see a likelihood of a filibuster," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif. "This might be a man I disagree with, but it doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court."

Senator Quisling Milquetoast (D-Your State Here) undoubtedly takes comfort in her leadership. Meanwhile, Arlen Specter -- who I'm led to believe is on the "other side" -- says impeachment's on the table.

Would it be too much for the presumed opposition to, at the very least, point out how low the party now in total power put the bar for impeachment just a few years ago? Would that be such a sin?

I'm delighted to pass on that, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, the First of all Ladies has weighed in on the spying issue:

ACCRA, Ghana - First lady Laura Bush said Sunday that the U.S. government is right to eavesdrop on Americans with suspected ties to terrorists, but a top Senate Republican joined a chorus of lawmakers who think domestic spying is on shaky legal ground.

Say what you will about the Laura2006, she does get regular system updates.

Native American Tale Blogging

Let's make this a regular feature, shall we? Our first entry comes from Jacob Nibènegenesábe's The Wishing Bone Cycle, an extraordinary set of Cree narrative poems that begins the collection of the same title compiled and beautifully translated by Howard Norman. Published in 1976, when Norman was in his mid-20s, it's a wondrous book of arresting originality -- one of the best books ever, actually. The narrator is a man who has found the "wishing bone" of a snow goose killed by a lynx and learned the bone's metamorphic powers; he's a trickster who wishes things and situations into being.

Once I wished up a coat
wearing a man inside.
The man was sleeping
and when he woke
the coat was on him!
This was in summer, so many asked him
"Why do you have that coat on?"
"It has me in it!"
he would answer.
He tried to take it off
but I wished his memory shivering with cold
so it wouldn't want to remember
how to take a coat off.
That way it would stay warm.
I congratulated myself on thinking of that.
Then his friends came,
put coats on,
and slowly showed him how they took coats off.
Even that didn't work.
Things were getting interesting.
Then his friends
tried to confuse the coat
into thinking it was a man.
"Good morning," they said to it,
"Did you get
your share of fish?"
and other things too.
Some even invited the coat to gossip.
It got to be late summer
and someone said to the coat
"It is getting colder.
You better go out
and find a coat to wear."
The coat agreed!

Ha! I was too busy laughing
to stop that dumb coat
from leaving the man it wore
inside.
I didn't care.
I went following the coat.
Things were getting interesting.

"...and Gerald Fitzpatrick!"

Surprise, surprise. They're swift-boating Murtha.
Any bets on when they adopt the following classic strategy to deal with a certain troublesome prosecutor?

"More often a Rove campaign questions an opponent's sexual orientation. Bush's 1994 race against Ann Richards featured a rumor that she was a lesbian, along with a rare instance of such a tactic's making it into the public record—when a regional chairman of the Bush campaign allowed himself, perhaps inadvertently, to be quoted criticizing Richards for "appointing avowed homosexual activists" to state jobs.

"Another example of Rove's methods involves a former ally of Rove's from Texas, John Weaver, who, coincidentally, managed McCain's bid in 2000. Many Republican operatives in Texas tell the story of another close race of sorts: a competition in the 1980s to become the dominant Republican consultant in Texas. In 1986 Weaver and Rove both worked on Bill Clements's successful campaign for governor, after which Weaver was named executive director of the state Republican Party. Both were emerging as leading consultants, but Weaver's star seemed to be rising faster. The details vary slightly according to which insider tells the story, but the main point is always the same: after Weaver went into business for himself and lured away one of Rove's top employees, Rove spread a rumor that Weaver had made a pass at a young man at a state Republican function. Weaver won't reply to the smear, but those close to him told me of their outrage at the nearly two-decades-old lie. Weaver was first made unwelcome in some Texas Republican circles, and eventually, following McCain's 2000 campaign, he left the Republican Party altogether. He has continued an active and successful career as a political consultant—in Texas and Alabama, among other states—and is currently working for McCain as a Democrat."

Incidentally, finding a reference to this strategy -- in this case, from Joshua Green's Atlantic Monthly piece on Karl Rove leading up to the 2004 elections -- is pretty easy. Google "rove+homosexual," and it's two clicks away from the first page that comes up. Surprise, surprise.

Put on a Happy Face

Donald Rumsfeld shows where to position the corners of the mouth, while Joint Chiefs head Gen. Peter Pace provides the "Before" pose.

With the Soviet Union long gone, we'll never know what it was like to live in Ibansk, the setting of Aleksandr Zinovyev's satirical 1976 masterpiece The Yawning Heights; the place, whose name translates roughly as "Fuckburg," was a wellspring of bitter black humor where the cynicism of the Soviet system reached an apogee of absurdity. Of course, these days we regularly get a pretty good glimpse:

When the stress of the war in Iraq becomes too severe, the Pentagon has a suggestion for military families: Learn how to laugh.

With help from the Pentagon's chief laughter instructor, families of National Guard members are learning to walk like a penguin, laugh like a lion and blurt "ha, ha, hee, hee and ho, ho."

No joke.

(snip)

"We believe our program prevents hardening of the attitudes," says Scott, in one of his wordplay aphorisms that beg for a rimshot. The founder and chief executive of the World Laughter Tour is psychologist Steve Wilson, who calls himself "Cheerman of the Bored."

"The guiding principle is to laugh for no reason. And that's one of the reasons it works so well for military families," Scott says. "There's a lot they have to be stressed over, a lot of worries, a lot of concerns." (Spasibo to Dependable Renegade for the catch.)

I looked for an April 1 dateline on this, but no, it was published on Friday the 13th. No joke, indeed.

China, India to US: Neener, Neener, Neener

Thing 1 and Thing 2, back in the day. There's more where they came from, or LA, if necessary.

This just up from Sam Roberts of the NYT:

If the experts are right, some time this month, perhaps somewhere in the suburban South or West, a couple, most likely white Anglo-Saxon Protestants or Hispanic, will conceive a baby who, when born in October, will become the 300 millionth American.

Presumably he means the 300 millionth living American, because I'm guessing we're still outnumbered by our deceased countrymen. Or do you lose your national identity when you die? At least you still get to vote in some precincts.

More important, shouldn't there be a prize for this, like some stores used to have for their eleventy thousandth customer? What about one of these? And with that in mind, I'm not disqualified by not being WASP or Hispanic, right? I mean, it says "most likely." And what about "perhaps somewhere in the suburban South or West"? If I'm feeling frisky, do I increase my chances by checking into a Motel 6 in Beaverton rather than staying within Portland city limits? Oh -- hold on a sec:

"The 300 millionth will be a Mexican Latino in Los Angeles County, with parents who speak Spanish at home and with siblings who are bilingual," said William Frey, a demographer with the University of Michigan Population Studies Center.

That raises the bar significantly. But, look, we were thinking about sending the girls to Spanish-language preschool, and we'd be happy to speak Spanish around the house. What's Spanish for 'refrigerator,' anyway? So we don't have a drop of Hispanic blood between us -- I'll glady hop a flight to LA and find a, you know, surrogate. I can't see as my wife would mind. Those fridges cost like 12 grand.

Can somebody get back to me on this ASAP? October is only nine months away.

Putting the "Elle" Back in "Les Nouvelles"

Catch made a keen observation on broadcast news with an international perspective last month, an insight so compelling it's been echoing throughout the blogosphere. Frankly, I'd forgive American TV news its vapidity and right-wing bias -- I'd even dust off the TV set and plug it in -- if only it offered this.

Bottoms

Exhibit A: Alito's chin.

Following this afternoon's vigorous game of dodgeball with Dianne Feinstein, Sammy the Snake relaxes with a refreshing slurpee courtesy of the mind-numbingly dim Jeff Sessions. (Note to the people of Alabama: I know that some people think you're all stupid. I don't, but I humbly suggest that your image might improve if you were to stop electing real-life versions of characters from The Simpsons.) Yet despite his craven approach to the proceedings, which he apparently believes are intended for slavering tributes to the nominee peppered with attacks on Democrats on the judiciary committee, Sessions did manage to achieve a moment of inadvertent, blinding truth in Abramoff-era Washington: "Most of us on this side of the aisle would not like to have our record scrutinized in the way yours has been."

The Times' Op-Ed on "Thirty Questions for Alito" remains up on their site, and it's safe to say that if Sammy were to answer, honestly and thoroughly, only those of Stanley Fish or Kenji Yoshino, we'd have better hearings than we've had thus far. In fact, I'd be satisfied with the answers to these questions:

Five things I’d ask every Supreme Court nominee if I sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee

1. If you knew to an absolute moral certainty that you could capture and consume a live infant without being caught, how many do you suppose you could eat in a weekend?
2. Have you ever been spanked erotically by someone who was not your current legal spouse? Just yes or no, please.
3. Nominee, do you regard these slacks as accentuating my basket in an un-senatorial fashion?
4. Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about…your mother.
5. Kindly rise, and sing the 1979 hit, The Piña Colada Song, also known as Escape.

Honesty, though -- there's the hitch. According to the AP, "Asked repeatedly about whether the Supreme Court should have decided Bush v. Gore, the case that settled the 2000 election," -- one of Scott Turow's questions -- "Alito declined to answer, saying he hadn't studied the case." (hat tip to Tbogg for the catch.) Again, my head explodes. Literally.

As we listen, the twins, who will turn 3 next month, are having a quasi-theological discussion.

Thing 2: Santa doesn't have a bottom.
Thing 1: Santa DOES have a bottom.
Me: If Santa doesn't have a bottom, how does he go poop?
Thing 2: (giggles, pauses, shakes her head) No.

This is not to suggest that Thing 2 lacks keen critical skills on the subject of bottoms. Just yesterday while we were out walking, she spotted a woman whose ample backside was clad in very tight hot pink sweats, and she observed (loudly, and from a distance of maybe 8 feet), "That lady has a big, BIG bottom."

Zugzwang

The underlying cynicism of the Alito hearings is too much for my delicate constitution, not to mention the increasingly frail-seeming Constitution that all the players earnestly pledge to uphold and defend. It's a strange kind of government porn, the legislative and judicial bodies coupling with the barest suggestion of passion on a bed of solid bullshit trimmed in mock gravitas -- or maybe it's just some goofy sport like this. The chess boxing thing started as performance art in September of 2003, and just to establish my bona fides as a cultural visionary, I offer this piece written a year earlier for my pal Terry Ross's mag Black Lamb.

“QUICK, NAME THIS SPORT: RIVAL world champions, a shady multi-millionaire commissioner, drug testing, boycotts and shapely young women parading around in skimpy costumes. If you said Professional wrestling, you get partial credit. The correct answer, of course, is chess. The governing body of world chess, led by its eccentric president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, has launched an all-out campaign to remake this most elevated of intellectual exercises into a fast-paced, high-stakes spectacle suitable for prime-time television.”
-- Lev Grossman, Time Magazine

A frigid wind blew through Minnesota last Saturday night, but fans inside the Mall of America in Bloomington worked themselves into a hot lather of anticipation over this winter’s top sporting event: the first-ever FIDE-WWF matchup. Emboldened by the popularity of chess-playing heavyweight boxers Vitaly and Vladimir Klitschko, promoters promised more thinking outside the 64-square box, pitting current world champion Vladimir Kramnik against perennial favorite “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

The soft-spoken champion entered the arena in a blue button-down, yellow cardigan and grey slacks; his opponent, vigorously pumping his fist at the roaring crowd, in a leather briefs-and-vest ensemble adorned with a glittering skull. This kind of sartorial unorthodoxy hasn’t been seen in the chess world since Bobby Fischer showed up for a 1967 Skopje tournament dressed as a milkman.

Kramnik drew white and opened with d4. Austin responded with a Chicken Wing Hammerlock, then rejected the subsequent Queen’s Gambit by treating Kramnik to an Airplane Spin followed by a Monkey Flip over the board, putting him literally on the defensive.

Now playing Black, Kramnik adopted an atypically conservative Orthodox Defense, concentrating his forces toward the center; Austin then eschewed the Rauzer Variation in favor of the Scorpion Leg Lock. Here Kramnik found himself in a doubly precarious position. His knights, the sole line of defense for a rank of insufficiently developed pawns, were vulnerable to capture from White’s bishops, and his trachea was pinched between Austin’s massive thighs. He judiciously chose the Capablanca freeing manoeuvre, which Austin answered with a swift blow from a folding chair, bloodying Kramnik’s nose and eventually forcing Qxf6.
Though Kramnik appeared hamstrung in the midgame, he asserted control of the center files with quiet finesse, despite Austin’s use of the Power Bomb and Figure Four Fold Over Double Armbar. Following 22.Rxa1 23.Rxd1 Rxd1+ 24.Bf1, White was up a Queen but nonetheless doomed; neither the Camel Clutch nor the Atomic Drop could prevent 25.a5 Rxf1#.

In a typical departure from FIDE rules, Austin ignored Kramnik’s checkmate and put his own crushing finish to the match with his trademark Stone Cold Stunner, after which he deposited the grandmaster into the ringside seats. Declaring himself the winner, he bellowed that he would demolish the best that chess had to offer. Engineers at IBM have eagerly taken up the challenge, and are currently retrofitting Deep Blue into the cab of the 11-foot, 1500 horsepower Eradicator monster truck.

Borking: It Worked for Bork

There's loads of excellent Alito coverage over at SCOTUSblog, Firedoglake and Lawyers, Guns and Money, to whom we owe this memorable line: "Conservatives are right about one thing: calling him 'Scalito' is unfair. To Scalia." I passed on the opening remarks because fanatico-hypocritical bluster about judicial activism and constitutional law from lunatic blowhards like Sam Brownback and Tom Coburn sends my blood pressure through the roof, plus it makes my eyes crossed so I can't type. I did catch some of the lofty oratory from those two, who would be a really entertaining pair of characters if only they were fictional. As they go from paying lip service to Lady Justice to getting down to the real business at hand -- overturning Roe, naturally -- their artlessness is almost endearing. Brownback actually said, "We are at our best when we help the weakest. The weak make us strong." No, he really said that -- and then my head exploded. I mean, my head literally exploded. Because when I think Sam Brownback, I think Sermon on the Mount. Though some would think Sermon on Brownback Mountain.

Matthew Yglesias has caused a fuss with his argument that there's not much point in fighting the confirmation. Perhaps not for Senator Quisling Milquetoast (D-Your State Here), but if you've got one more chance to filibuster before the Republican leadership exercises the nuclear option, now would seem to be a pretty good time. So if you're a moderate Democratic senator reading this blog -- unlikely, I admit, especially since I haven't gotten around to letting people know it exists -- mark my words: Don't be a big girl's blouse. Bork the sumbitch.

Well, it was coughing up blood last night

Classical music is still not dead, which is a good thing at least in that I make a tiny bit of money from knowing a little about it (and from pretending to know even more). But it's suffering the death of a thousand cuts; the lacerations include some notorious insults and injuries as well myriad minor irritations. Among the latter would have to be counted the pedantic posturing of its most fatuous devotees, the ones who alienate would-be fans by gushing over obscure masterpieces while name-dropping all the long-deceased musicians who made those definitive out-of-print recordings that you, you pathetic amateur, have never even heard of. You usually encounter these twits in record shops and the lobbies of concert halls, your eyes welling with tears of frustration and boredom as you desperately try to get out of earshot, but once in a while one rears its tiresome head in, say, Salon.

George Rafael's review of Jane Glover's Mozart's Women begins:

With the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth upon us, expect more "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" ringtones, Wolfie bags, coffee mugs, T-shirts and Mozart Kugels than you can shake a stick at. There'll be a deluge of hastily slapped together CD compilations as well, of which I can recommend most anything on DG, London, Decca, or Phillips. (Personally, I go in for "historical" or "vintage" recordings, Beecham, Brain, Furtwangler, Gieseking, Klemperer, Schnabel, Schwartzkopf, Serkin, et al.) As for the "Authenticity/Original Instruments" movement -- the reigning orthodoxy of the last 40 years -- it's trial and error mainly, the label "authenticity" often being used to cloak indifferent or uncertain playing; William Christie's "Les Arts Florissant," [sic] saacharine [sic] sounding at best, springs to mind. Yet, to be fair, Raymond Leppard's recording of the "Mass in C Minor" is a must have.

This is a pointless, throat-clearing lede graf, but let's let the editor share the blame and let that go. Rafael recommends yet-to-be-released "hastily slapped together CD compilations" from four of the top labels; whether he omitted Hyperion, Harmonia Mundi, EMI and others because they're unlikely to slap together compilations hastily or because he wants you, dear innocent reader, to avoid pernicious influences, he doesn't let on. Then there's the name-dropping, so exquisitely attuned to connoisseur cred that he includes the hornist Dennis Brain (and they're in alphabetical order -- I'd love to see what he could do with my sock drawer).


It's the last bit, about early music, that's the real clinker; it's not a different yet valid opinion, it's unadulterated, know-nothing bullshit of the first order. A "movement" that has been "the reigning orthodoxy" for 40 years consists of "trial and error" by incompetent musicians? What absolute crap. The references to "authenticity" and "indifferent and uncertain playing" sound as though they were cribbed from other hacks a quarter-century ago. No one in period performance seriously argues the aunthenticity claim anymore, and few did in the first place; musicians involved in early music are among the least indifferent I've ever met, and to suggest that they're inferior to their counterparts in the rest of music is an ignorant slur. You'd think that a purported Mozart authority would mention the brilliant violinist Andrew Manze, who's been doing loads of exhilarating Mozart recently, or at least be less obvious about his evident unfamiliarity with the field. William Christie? One of the greats, and he hires great players and singers. His vividly imagined and finely executed staged performances of Lully a few years ago were amazing. You don't want to mess with Christie -- I met him after one of those performances, and he threatened to kneecap me with a theorbo when I asked for his autograph.

The Big Man

Mike Caracciolo, the kid from Brooklyn, has a computer, a camera and a URL. If the Internets carried nothing but the body of work he has achieved with these simple tools -- and a gift for raw expression that would have left Baudelaire gasping in admiration -- their existence would be justified. From the homepage go to "Videos" and choose "Bat Day" under "Highest rated" to see the man at the height of his powers. The genius of it -- like a diamond bullet. If David Mamet wrote a War on Terrorism speech for Dick Cheney, this would be it.

Cat Blogging is Like, So Last Year

But maybe it's so old in blog-years that it's retro.

The one on top, doing a fair imitation of the lion in Maurice Sendak's Pierre, specifically the scene where "They pulled the lion by the hair. They hit him with the folding chair," is Pärt. I named him after the Estonian composer, which was a mistake because a) it was pretentious, and b) there is no cat less like his namesake. The composer Arvo Pärt has said, "Silence is harmony;" the cat Pärt yowls incessantly for food, door opening, kneading and attention in general. He's a particularly needy dog trapped in a cat's body. The shaven bits on his legs testify to his Christmas present to himself, an emergency cashectomy on my wallet courtesy of our veterinarian, who informs us that there's more medical intervention to come -- though he never once suggested that, you know, we could just let things run their course.

The one on the bottom is Bailey, his sister, whose hobby is slinking, and who will allow only me to pick her up. They're from the same litter; their mother was a sleek black animal that my then girlfriend, whom for years after our relationship I called "The Antichrist," brought when we moved in together. She hadn't been spayed -- the cat, that is -- and when she went into heat, she dragged her ass all over the floor until the girlfriend let her out to get impregnated by all the scrofulous toms that used to lived around the neighborhood. Pärt's sire was an old, gaunt Siamese who looked like a rectangle with legs, and Bailey's was a foul beast vaguely resembling a tabby. There was a litter of three 13 years ago this summer, one of whom we gave to neighbors. The other two have behaved like a three-legged stool missing a leg ever since.

So there you have them, 20 pounds of neuroses wrapped in fur. Bastards.

SOS Photo op

SoS, that is. The AP offered its just-the-facts-ma'am story shortly after the fact, and then David Sanger weighed in with a rather more pointed assessment. Any hope that the gathering of former Secretaries of State and Defense might have been intended honestly to bring the wisdom of elders to bear on the current debacle rapidly runs aground on the details:

But if it was a bipartisan consultation, as advertised by the White House, it was a brief one. Mr. Bush allowed 5 to 10 minutes for interchange with the group - which included three veterans of the Vietnam era: Robert S. McNamara, Melvin R. Laird and James R. Schlesinger - before herding the whole group into the Oval Office for what he called a "family picture."

Just another bit of kabuki, then, from the White House stage managers, but gosh, they love to put on a show. No doubt it will come in handy when Bush, staying the blind course on the recommendations of Rummy, Condi, Jim Beam or --most frightening to contemplate -- his own inner directives, can claim consultation with the ghosts of administrations past.

Problem is, it's flawed even as a photo op. Without Kissinger and Weinberger, you couldn't get five bucks on eBay for an original print, except perhaps from policy wonks thrilled by the McNamara-Albright-Haig combo. And where's Warren Christopher? I can just imagine him, Baker, Cheney and Bush reminiscing over the heady days of November-December 2000. Wacky times.

War Effort

With Epiphany and thus the end of the Christmas season just two days away (I'm not sure when Chrismukkahzaa officially ends), I ought to point out that this foot soldier did his duty in the recent war. The following review of the Oregon Symphony's Christmas deal is not the version that appeared in The Oregonian -- it was shortened and softened in the editing -- but you, imaginary reader, deserve the original.

The weeks before Christmas were normally festive,
but Bill O’Reilly, John Gibson and others were restive.
“The secular liberals! They want Christmas banned!
In the War on Christmas, just where do you stand?”

Then Saturday night they took in with dismay
the Oregon Symphony’s Christmas display:
a pops celebration, schmaltzy and slick,
with glitzy dance numbers and singing and schtick,
and trees and presents and woolens and satin --
but just two songs mentioned Jesus, and one was in Latin.
“Is this about Christmas?” the warriors cried.
“They said ’Happy Holidays!’ They called it ‘yuletide!’”

The program was made up of Christmasy fluff,
Percy Grainger, Cole Porter and that sort of stuff.
There were costumes and dry ice and bells of a sleigh,
14 dancing Santas, and Margie Boulé,
and that story by Dickens in stage adaptation
(especially strong was Scott Coopwood’s narration).

“Insufficiently holy,” Fox news pundits opined,
but the crowd at the Schnitzer did not seem to mind.
No obviously Christian intent was displayed,
but they ate it all up -- if there’d been more, they’d have stayed.

And the pundits, their grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?
The secular threat to our culture’s unending --
but could Christmas be more than just praying and spending?
Maybe Christmas,” they thought, “is no cause for a war.
Maybe Christmas. . . perhaps. . . means a little bit more.
Maybe the memories Christmas begets
involve not just angels, but elves and Rockettes.
And symphony pops, when all’s said and done,
is kitschy, perhaps, but perhaps also fun.”

A modest contribution, I know, but as Churchill so movingly declared, "We shall fight them in the concert halls, we shall fight them in the black-box theatres, we shall fight them in the twee little coffeeshops with the work of earnest but technically wanting local artists on the walls."

Critics and How Not to Be Them

Supposing you wanted to see a review of a movie -- say, Munich -- and you wanted to hear from someone who really knew and cared about film, who could provide context and elucidate ideas while at the same time doing what most of the popular cinema commentariat apparently considers its only duty, that is, to say what the movie's about, who's in it and how much the reviewer liked it. You might hope that some of the credentialed types in the print and broadcast media might have risen to the challenge for a change, or you might be fortunate enough to stumble upon this by Roy of alicublog, who does not, as far as I know, draw a paycheck for movie reviews.

Meanwhile, the newspaper of record offers a longer-than-usual but text-hole-wastingly-self-indulgent critique. But the Times' real critical gem of the week comes, naturally, from überkulturkritiker David Brooks, who in an addled pretend-confrontation with Linda Hirshman spits up:

Children, at least, understand parental power. In "Eminem Is Right," a Sidney Award-winning essay in Policy Review, Mary Eberstadt notes a striking change in pop music. "If yesterday's rock was the music of abandon, today's is the music of abandonment." An astonishing number of hits, from artists ranging from Pearl Jam to Everclear to Snoop Dogg, are about kids who feel neglected by their parents. This is a need Hirshman passes over.

Which is worse? That Bobo relies on an essay built from cherry-picked examples and half-assed logic, or that he has so obviously taken no effort to acquaint himself with the music he's talking about? -- an effort that would cost no more than a few mouse clicks and the time he normally spends organizing squadrons of straw men. "I'm not just a square," he seems to say, "I'm also a hack." Perhaps he was just trying to emulate Allan Bloom's immortal analysis of popular music in his loathsome The Closing of the American Mind: "[The culmination of our vast technology is] a pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms, whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth by imitating the drag-queen who makes the music."

Hey David, I heard that if you play The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema backward, you can clearly hear voices telling you not to bother paying for Times Select.

Are You a Critic or...

It would be a shame to let my shiny new blog -- please don't leave fingerprints -- go without a post for more than a day. As it's 11:54 pm and I'm a slow typist, I'll make it short with an anecdote: At a semifinal recital at the Van Cliburn competition in 2001 (which I was covering for The Oregonian), the woman seated next to me saw me taking notes and asked, "Are you a critic, or are you a writer?"

First Things First

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