Archive for December, 2009
Things That Look Like Other Things IV
by Josh K-sky on Dec.25, 2009, under Movies, Travel
Earlier this week, with the assistance of the gentleman from the last post, HJ and I rode into the Grand Canyon on the backs of mules. It’s neither entirely wrong nor entirely right to call it more luxurious than hiking the canyon, but relieved of watching your footfalls, you certainly have a much better chance to watch the landscape change than do the hikers.
And change it does. From the piñon forest at the top, you descend through full-on deserts and semi-arid scrub.The Colorado River at the canyon’s bottom leads through varied environments, from red rocks naked and Martian to lush riparian habitats. The uncanny effect of moving vertically through these zones*, finding them nested one right atop the other, put me in mind of Gus van Sant’s 2002 film Gerry, in which Casey Affleck and Matt Damon do little else but go for a walk, get lost, and nearly both die. One of the most unsettling elements of the film is that though the two men remain on foot the entire time, the location shifts dramatically over the course of their hundred minutes, from sand dunes to salt flats, from Utah to Jordan to Argentina. The shifts aren’t subtle, visually, but they go unremarked upon; the effect amplifies the characters’ dangerous inattention to their path, and heightens the feeling that they’ve come unmoored from their world and their lives.
the landscape changes
This, in turn, put me in mind of another movie in which a critical element changes without comment (save, perhaps, the film’s title):
Luis Bunuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire gives us a sexual battle between a couple that is really a triangle: Mathieu must content with the temperamental nature of his elusive Conchita, made more so by her portrayal by the Betty-and-Veronica pairing of Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina. As with the landscape in Gerry, the character of Conchita appears played by two different actresses with neither comment nor easily comprehensible logic.
This episode of Things That Look Like Other Things has been brought to you by things that do not look like themselves.
Extra credit, Gerry: “Nothing Happens To No One, The Death Trilogy of Gus Van Sant” by Holly Myers at n+1
Political Correctness
by Josh K-sky on Dec.22, 2009, under Travel
“Does anybody know what this here implement is called?”
Mumbles. Crop. Whip.
“No, see, in the interest of political correctness, The Man has prohibited us from ever using the word ‘whip’. So we call this a ‘mule motivator.’”
The chief of the Grand Canyon mule rides had the expert comic patter of tour guides, refined and rehearsed through day-in, day-out operations, leavened with cowboy poetry. Funny to hear ‘political correctness’ (at base, an ironic way of stating your opposition to civility) lingering on. He had his laugh lines down to a science (HJ’s mule was introduced to her as “Suicide”; her name was actually Marcy). This one stuck out–weird if you follow it through. Is it politically incorrect to say ‘whip’ because it suggests the stain of slavery or just the abuse of animals?
Technically, the implement is called a quirt.
We Are All With Stupid
by Josh K-sky on Dec.14, 2009, under Politics
I have no more patience for complaints about the stupidity of the electorate. Stupidity can mean a great number of things. Innocence, credulousness, parochialism, and lack of education (or even political interest) all fall under the category of stupidity when we talk about other voters besides ourselves. Neither party can win without stupid people. For those whom the sad facts of birth, environment or fortune have left stupid, Democrats should have compassion.
No, our problem is with asshole voters, who make up a solid section of the Republican base. They are our enemies. We must ever seek to defeat them, except for a slim margin whom we must work to convert, not by playing to their assholishness, but to the better angels of their natures.
Blaming the stupid for political problems is weak sauce, and John Emerson makes this point at greater length and depth:
Unless you regard everyone without at least a master’s degree as stupid, the facts do not justify the Democratic or progressive disparagement of stupid voters. In 2008 high school dropouts were Obama’s best educational demographic at 63%. Voters with advanced degrees were next best at 58%, with HS graduates and those with some college giving Obama respectively 52% and 51% of their votes. At 50%, college graduates without advanced degrees were Obama’s worst demographic. Thus, when people talk about “stupid voters” what they’re really talking about is an internal split within the most-educated 28.8% of the population — between those with BAs and BSs and those with MAs and PhDs.
This illuminates two clichés of American political debate: first, the “elitist Democrat” idea, and second, the culture wars. Those who most resent the elite Democrats are themselves college graduates, and as Gelman recently has recently shown, the culture war is a split within the more prosperous and better-educated class, and not a split between educated liberals and ignorant conservatives. Democrats often speak of the religious right as hillbillies and trailer trash, but they’re more likely to be well-off, complacent college graduates.
Say It Ain’t… Aw, Just Shut Up, Joe
by Josh K-sky on Dec.11, 2009, under Politics
In 1995, Senator Joseph Lieberman gave an address at Yale University to a small crowd. I don’t remember what he was speaking about, but I do remember joining with a few friends to disrupt the speech. About six of us, from either Guerilla Theater or the Radical Student Front, marched into the room during the middle of speech and walked back and forth with picket signs until his aides hustled us out of the room and told us that whatever our complaints, the Senator’s record showed that he was a friend of progress in America. Maybe he had been. I hadn’t known the guy’s roll calls up and down. But you don’t get a pass for voting for gay teen suicide.
Lieberman had recently joined forces with the charming Jesse Helms to strip federal funding from schools that counseled gay teenage students that it was okay to be gay. I don’t remember the exact wording of our signs, but we made the connection that teen suicide rates were highest among gay teens and that Lieberman’s actions were boosting the numbers. We weren’t subtle.
Today, Lieberman threatens to filibuster the public option. I really wish we’d pied the fucker.
On Vacation
by Joshua Malbin on Dec.08, 2009, under Uncategorized
Won’t be back until the new year. Josh K-sky will just have to keep you entertained with movie stuff and links from his Google Reader (see new feature in right-hand column).
Pleasure in the Misery of Others
by Joshua Malbin on Dec.08, 2009, under New York, Politics
Joe Bruno’s going to ja-ail! Joe Bruno’s going to ja-ail!
Joseph L. Bruno, the former Senate majority leader who, until his retirement last year, was one of the most powerful figures in New York politics, was found guilty on Monday of concealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from a businessman who sought help from the Legislature.
…
After deliberating for nearly seven days, the jury of seven women and five men in Mr. Bruno’s trial found him guilty of two felony counts of mail fraud.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
New Story: “The Handsome Man”
by Joshua Malbin on Dec.08, 2009, under Uncategorized
If one wanted to be uncharitable to me, one might suggest that I made up an extreme version of a type who annoys me, and then made him suffer. Enjoy.
Good Christmas Albums
by Josh K-sky on Dec.07, 2009, under music
Christmas Songs by Diana Krall. Her interpretation of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, no matter how sultry it gets, rises and falls on the brittle truth in the song: Next year our troubles will be miles away, but we can hardly think about anything else tonight.
The Raveonettes released Wishing You A Rave Christmas this time last year. I heard Come On Santa last year along with their The Christmas Song, but the one that’s really got me is the Phil Spector classic Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), also done by Death Cab for Cutie.
Low’s Christmas album turns 10 years old this year. Like all things Low, it drowns in slow sadness here and there, but Just Like Christmas is a fantastic track — a jingle bell Scandinavian road movie that clips along on big drums and seasonal warmth with just a hint of melancholy.
Top 10 Comics of the Decade
by Joshua Malbin on Dec.06, 2009, under Comics
I included some series that began in the late 1990s if most of their run occurred in the 2000s.
Honorary Mentions: La Perdida, Incognegro, Loveless, Persepolis, Dogs and Water.
10. Fables by Bill Willingham.
Fairy tale characters have been evicted from their Homelands by a relentless Adversary and must get by on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, at least until they figure out how to fight back. Fun as hell.
9. Powers by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming.
I’m including Oeming (the artist) here because Powers, the story of an ex-superhero cop and his partner trying to police supervillains, mainly makes my list on the strength of its page layouts. The scripts, included in many of the trade paperbacks, show that Bendis described those layouts in great detail, but Oeming realized them.
8. Berlin by Jason Lutes.
It’s the late 1920s, before the Nazis take over, with Brownshirts and Communists fighting in the streets. The book is beautifully drawn and written, if a little slow. I just wish he’d actually publish it more than occasionally.
7. The Goon by Eric Powell.
A comedic cross between zombie and crime fiction, early issues of The Goon feature such unforgettable concepts as a mule prostitute and “fish squeezin’s.” If Powell had kept up the insane energy of the first fifteen issues, I’d probably have this even higher, but the last dozen or so have been disappointingly serious.
6. DMZ by Brian Wood.
Another one that could be higher on the list if it hadn’t declined a little recently. The Iraq War has precipitated the United States into another civil war, and the two opposing armies face each other uneasily across New York Harbor, the rump United States in Brooklyn, the Free Staters in New Jersey. In the middle is the DMZ of Manhattan, and from there junior journalist Matty Roth files his reports.
5. Queen & Country by Greg Rucka.
In the late 1970s, the British network ITV ran a series called The Sandbaggers, a spy show that mostly took place in the headquarters office building and dealt with bureaucratic headaches but was nonetheless totally gripping. Greg Rucka revived the concept for Queen & Country, though he put in a bit more action and centered the story on one of the field agents rather than the Director of Operations. Still gripping.
4. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore.
It’s a concept so perfect and obvious you can’t believe no one ever thought of it before: assemble the greatest heroes of 19th-century popular fiction into a steampunk SuperFriends. The first two volumes were excellent, though Moore’s attempts to extend the idea into the 20th century have so far felt a tiny bit strained.
3. Rex Libris by James Turner.
From my review of Vol. 2: “Rex is a 2,000-year-old librarian at the Middleton Public Library, the greatest library since the the burning of the Library of Alexandria, where Rex started his career. He is a member of Ordo Biblioteca, the secret international order of librarians charged with guarding human civilization, and Rex Libris the comic is his autobiography, published by minor comic magnate B. Barry Horst of Hermeneutic Press.”
2. Palestine by Joe Sacco.
Palestine was originally published in a series in the 1990s, but no one read it until it was collected in a trade hardcover in 2001, so I’m counting it. An examination of daily life in the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli occupation, Sacco’s comic does the invaluable work of humanizing Palestinians for an American audience.
1. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.
Unquestionably the best of the decade and in the top five ever, Fun Home is also probably the smartest graphic novel or comic book I’ve ever read. Not only is the writing erudite and richly layered—Bechdel uses Proust and Joyce to navigate her way through her own history, retelling the same episodes over and over in light of new understanding (something like the protagonist in The Good Soldier)—the art is incredibly careful and sophisticated.
Dumb Jeans
by Joshua Malbin on Dec.04, 2009, under New York
In another fifteen years we’re all going to laugh at today’s stupid jeans fashions for men—(1) belted mid-thigh and (2) skin-tight all the way down the calf—more than we ever laughed at bell-bottoms.
All the kids wearing them need to get off my lawn.