Tell The Rambler, The Gambler, The Back-Biter

    For those of you still to see it, there's a new Johnny Cash video out.  (You didn't think death would stop the Cash machine, did you?  He's just gone spectral.)  Of course every celebrity and mock-celebrity with a free minute tried to inch his or her way into this one, so the roster includes Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Dennis Hopper, Keith Richards, Johnny Depp, Graham Nash and Kris Kristofferson, an astonishing number of whom have been perilously close to being cut down for ages.  It's not a bad video, all considered, but Cash's voice is downright spooky.  You can watch it below and play your own game of spot-the-star, or follow this link to watch it in full-screen mode.

 

Seeing Bono in that video, I'm reminded of Johnny's contribution to the otherwise dreadful Zooropa album so many years ago.  You can hear the song by following this link, though I recommend closing your eyes as the video plays.  Johnny going out with a Bible and a gun just doesn't correspond with Final Fantasy, no matter how you slice it (or shoot it, one gathers).  After those tunes, though, you might want a giggle or two.  

Overlooked Yet Again

    And once more, I just don't make the cut.... *pout*   Excuse me--- I'll be at the bar, whining with Neil Young and John Ralston Saul....   *sniff*  

Tidying Things Up A Bit

    Well, it took me long enough, but I have finally got around to making some minor changes to this blog.  Specifically, there's now an RSS feed you can add to your news-readers, as well as the function that will allow you, should you inexplicably feel the urge, to email posts to whomever you like (or dislike, as the case may be). 

 

    Most significantly, however, you'll notice I've switched the comment-handling from Enetation to Blogger.  For now at least, I'm leaving the comments open so you can post immediately and even anonymously; hopefully spam-bots won't compel me to change this.  I have also retained the comments from Enetation for archival reasons, so you should be able to read what has already been written, but the option won't be there to use for future posts.  This phasing-out may make things a little confusing or unsightly for a while, but not, I pray, for too long.  We'll see how it all goes. 

 

    And, yes, in case you're wondering, this blog DOES progress only at a snail's pace.  Sluggish is as sluggish does. 

The Juice Trap

    Anyone else reminded by this of The Simpsons' version of Hamlet?  "Hey, I didn't use that much poi---!" 

    (CORRECTION: Okay, I buggered up the quote a bit. See the original episode here.)

 

    Can we vouchsafe that to continue living on this planet you have to be smarter than Homer Simpson?  Curiously enough, that would eliminate even a few professors I know.

 

    Also, an interesting blog discovery here.  Check it out.

The Story Of The Hurricane

    There's a reason they call her "Hurricane Hazel."

    To put this in a kind of context, the Not-So-Good Doctor was five when she first took the Mayor's office. Yup: five.

    Video hadn't killed the radio star yet.

    Dallas was just getting started.

   The breakout movie-stars that year were Christopher Reeve and John Belushi, and people were still listening, without even an ounce of shame, to The Bee Gees, The Commodores, Debby Boone and--- Gawd help me--- Anne Murray.

    People actually used the word "boogie" without sneering, and irony hadn't yet settled in as a permanent cultural condition, thus explaining most of the sartorial horrors of the time.

    John Travolta was only on his first incarnation, still to prove Ovid didn't know the half of this mutatis mutandis thing after all.

    The Shah was still in charge in Iran, and the White House was being run by a peanut-farmer from Georgia.

    And, well, this guy was just glad to have his driver's license back.

    If all that doesn't warp your minds, consider this: most of you reading this blog hadn't even been imagined yet, much less conceived.

    And some people wonder why she's regularly described as a force of nature. The more things change....

Shelley, He Can't Be Serious

    Sadly, yes, he is--- but don't call him Shelley.

    If you can make lines like these scan, you're a better man than I:

All gaily dressed soon you'll go
To the great Provincial Show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.

--- from (I kid ye not) "Ode on the Mammoth Cheese"

I dare ye, I dare ye all, to come up with verse that's worse. (So much worse it needs a nurse / before it ends up in a hearse?)

You Don't Say...

    Discretion being the better part of valour, let me respond to this with two words:  No and shit.  You can elect to add the name Sherlock to the end of those words should you find yourself so inclined. 

He Stoops To Pander

    Having said very little about the Liberal Leadership debate (save for noting the Iggster's stupidity for agreeing to tinker with the constitution), this blog can now say that another candidate has fully disqualified himself.  This has "Bad Idea" written all over it in sequins.  It's also the sort of gesture that only a flailing fool would make, which means the numbers really are trending toward Rae or Dion. 

Promises, Promises

    Because these aren't Kennedy Democrats....  Clinton Democrats would, but they'd leave a helluva mess....  

In A Word, That If Not One Ought To Be By Now

    Duh....  Captain Obvious is surely groaning somewhere, and explaining to the ghost of Mother Teresa that it's not her, it's him. 

    (Ironic result for a Paul-ine study, non?)

Believe It Or Not

    Alas, I'd rather not.  Sad that; even when he was hissing his way through material beneath him, he was always peculiarly watchable.  Few actors have ever been able to upstage ("up-screen"?) Jack Nicholson, but Palance is one of the handful that did.  His scene-chewing bits in Batman are still more firmly fixed in my memory than Nicholson's supposed tour-de-force.  It may be time to watch Shane again.

    FOLLOW-UP:  Just read someone describing Mr Palance as "Chuck Norris before Chuck Norris was Chuck Norris."  Really, he was Christopher Walken--- and he HAD more cowbell. 

    AFTER-THOUGHT:  Alternate answer to above:  He was also Harvey Keitel, without (mercifully) the nudity. 

    AFTER-AFTER-THOUGHT:  A movie they should have made:  Palance and Lawrence Tierney as aging gangsters trying to finish each other off.  Now that I would have paid handsomely to see.

A Modesto Proposal

    And some academicians wonder why they're perceived as smug and tactless....    Someone evidently skipped the lesson about looking the gift horse in the mouth.

 

    Frankly, I'd sooner lop off one of my arms than give even a single penny to my alma mater, which still has the gall not just to call around looking for money but then to provide my information to insurance companies and the like.  Mind you, at one point not too long ago, I might have given something back, but not now; my alma mater got a hell of lot more out of me than I ever got out of it, and some of us develop the wisdom not to compound our mistakes any more than we must.

Because This Blog, For One, Welcomes Our Homosexual Overlords

    ... and their Italian grandmother.  Because Pelosi = NAMBLA and the hysterical gay agenda.   

    Remember when I said the partisan hackery seemed muted?   Oh, it seems so long ago, Nancy....

    UPDATE:   Let the internal immolations begin!   (By the self-proclaimed waterboy, no less.)  Rush, after all, couldn't have had anything to do with Republican losses, could he? Hmmmm....

This Just In (or Out....)

     Oh, no!   They ginned Rummy!

     Those bastards!

     (Wow, that didn't take long....)

Er, About Last Night....

    (And unlike other times I have to say those words, I don't have to hide my eyes and inch politely toward a doorway.  )

    It looks like I started drinkin' for no reason last night.  The neighbours downstairs managed to have a relatively ruckus- and shenanigan-free election, and though the actual results still won't be known for some time, it at least seems there were no especially galling acts of dastardly derring-do. 

    Before I say anything about the results, though, I want to say something about the conduct of things.  Simply put, the fire-breathers on both sides were on their best behaviour last night, which was both refreshing and reassuring.  The partisan hackery that's been so prominent (to say nothing of virulent) in recent years was so relatively tempered, I almost thought I had stepped through a time-warp back to 1992.  The spinners from both parties managed to let some honest observation sneak through, and just as importantly, they were relatively gracious.  Obviously, I think this a good thing, but I also suspect it reveals what really happened last night, a sea-change in the sense of political carriage.  The rabid rhetoric of division and stark partisanship was replaced with surprising deliberativeness and candour, a stunning final-hour substitution considering all that preceded it.  It's as if the houligans put on their Sunday best and decided to behave themselves.  Colour me impressed. 

    There are other points to be noted about yesterday's events, many of which are intriguing indeed:

• Yes, the Dems won the House, a plurality of the governorships, and they're poised to win the Senate, however barely (pending result-auditing in Montana and Virginia).  I don't think this is any declaration of faith in the Dems.  The message to the Bushies is this:  Enough's enough.  The electorate has finally put a leash on the President, and it's about time.
  
  
• Feminists can rejoice at the closest yet there has been to having a woman in the line of succession.  Nancy Pelosi will be second in line for the Presidency when the House convenes, something not to be dismissed given the VP's health history.
  
  
• Not one Democratic incumbent lost his or her seat.  Not one.  That's certainly significant given the various breaches of the Republican barricades. 
  
  
• Quote of the night, from Stephen Colbert:  "Sorry, Jon, I couldn't hear you over all the liberty!"
  
  
• Symbolically-classy act of the night: Jon Stewart calling upon a special correspondent for his response to the vote, Dan Rather.  At the very least, it allowed Rather, however marginally, to continue his decades-long presence on TV on election night, even if only as a four-dollar gopher in a two-dollar pelt.
  
  
• Independent voters swung heavily toward the Dems, which may I think account for the relatively muted partisanship in the final coverage. 
  
  
• Gee, the evangelical vote got quiet, didn't it?  Simply put, and with only half a pun intended, the cavalry didn't come charging in to save the Republicans, as it did in 2004.  Or, to change horses mid-metaphor, the enablers didn't show up at the intervention, which is usually a tacit admission that Yes, Virginia, There Is A Problem.
  
  
• The biggest surprise of the election is the one that's being given the least reportage, that the so-called "Young Vote" (35 and under) actually materialized.  Yes, Godot finally fucking arrived.  I have a funny feeling this will eventually be described as the Jon Stewart Effect (^TM pending), as the usually lackadaisical young cynics decided at long last they had to put something behind their disaffection.  This was an election for the disenchanted generally, but it seems this section of normally-absent voters, perhaps smarting from the results of their inaction in 2004, finally stood up while the evangelicals stood down.  And that, as Mr Frost would have said, made all the difference.
  
  Whether or not this is a onetime event remains to be seen.  I'm inclined to think this an anomaly, as the ironic-minded decided to be serious just long enough to give the President a good public spanking.  When the time comes for choosing something, rather than merely rejecting something, they'll probably return to the margins of ambivalence.  But this is the vote to watch: if it shows up again in the next election, there truly could be the beginning of a significant change in the way politics is done in the U.S..  I won't hold my breath, though.
  

So, there we are.  The Yanks, much to my own (and very pleasant) surprise, finally did what I think they needed to do, and reshuffled the deck.  (What is it about politics that forces one to resort to so many clichés and commonplace metaphors?)  It had to be done, not just to smack the Bushies down, but to realign the American political scene with larger international perspectives calling for consideration and caution. 

    That so many conservative Democrats got voted in is suggestive in this regard, because it seems the electorate indicated that while it wants to hold to its largely conservative line, it also doesn't want the rigid dogmatism that has lately come with it.  The defeat of some moderate Republicans, like the decent Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island, wasn't a rejection of moderates.  It was in fact a call for moderation among the Republican stead, and the moderate scalps were rejections of the "-R" and what that brand has come to represent.  The message, then:  Clean up the Republican name, or we'll hire a Democrat to replace you.  And we'll do it, too.  Or so it seems, at least, from the view from here, up in the freezing nose-bleeds.

    And with that, I'll end the political prattle and let everyone turn their collective attention to the issue Americans really care about, the one with deeply profound and possibly traumatizing ramifications.  You know what I'm talking about.  I mean, like, how could you not???? 

Me and Mr Jones

    Mid-afternoon and the Not-So-Good Doctor has accomplished absolutely nothing.  Instead he's settling in with a beer as Media Player blares-- believe it or not-- Tom Jones and The Art of Noise's version of "Kiss" through the speakers.  Ah, yes, Tom muthafuckin' (literally?) Jones.  I'm not sure whether or not I should be ashamed to admit that.  I should probably be more embarrassed by the fact that in the time it took to type those sentences, Mick Jagger has started screeching and growling his way through "Out of Focus."  Yup:  Jagger solo.  As the kids used to say, "Like, who does that?!?!?"  *shrug*  I belong to another era.  (Correct that, for the kiddies:  I soooooo belong to another era.)  There's always something deeply disquieting about feeling anachronistic at thirty-something.  And people wonder why I drink....

    Not much new to report from these quarters, save perhaps for a few short-notes on matters inchoate, insensible and almost entirely irrelevant, but here we go anyway:

• On Drinkin' Early: I'm going to legitimate it as preparation for this evening, as I wait for the best chance for the Republicans to get kicked in the teeth to go swirling down the drain like so much chocolate syrup.  As a Canuckistani, these elections shouldn't matter a jot to me, but strangely they do.  It's rather a matter of hoping (against hope) that the Yanks will remove their blinders and take the sweet, sweet chance to give President Shrub and his sycophantic snarlers a well-earned repudiation.  But I'm somewhere between pessimistic and cynical, because even if the electorate votes for detentation, I'm not at all convinced the results can be trusted given the highly suspect machinations of the Roving Lunatics.  I have a funny feeling we're going to witness a Republican resurgence as astonishing as the Taliban's.  So brace yourselves for something positively Lazarean this evening, though most of the world will not rejoice to behold the resurrection.  (And for which the Democrats will half-appropriately blame John "Hari-" Kerry.)  Whatever happens, I'll be glad I'm Canadian, for oh-so-many reasons, not least of which is and will be that our elections are invariably done in one day, without the hue and cry of banshees in a mosh-pit.  Hence the beer: something to steel me as I prepare for the double-duty tonight of toasting and lamenting at the same time.
  
  
• Roll With It, Baby:  Latest track:  The Spencer Davis Group, "Gimme Some Lovin.'"  Just cut me open and start countin' the rings.  (Bring a calculator if you attempt the same with Stevie Winwood.)
  
  
• Tolerate This:  In other Fishy matters, there's a review of Wendy Brown's Regulating Aversion by Stanley Fish that's worth a read, even if it strike me as a bit of (forgive me) piscine in the wind.  I do agree with him, though, on a buried point about "the mistake of theory, or the mistake that is theory."  Theory, at least in the humanities, reminds of Joyce's Ireland for being the fallow sow that inevitably eats her young.  Insert your own jokes here about the other white meats.
  
  
• Death Of A Ladies Man:  Poker players, as many of you know, develop notions about which cards to play based on their individual experiences.  Legend Doyle Brunson, aka "The Godfather of Poker," notoriously refuses to play Ace-Queen because he has lost so much money with that hand over the years.  I have realized now the hand that I should never, ever play, and the irony couldn't be apter.  Nothing kisses me with death more than pocket Queens, easily the hand with which I've lost most.  Infer from that what you will; you probably won't be wrong.   
  
  
• Got GILF?:  This blog reports, you decide.  (I suspect a reverse version would include the familiar figures: Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Patrick Stewart, maybe Leonard Cohen.)  Forgive this blog for observing that Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) is still, er, there galore.  Somebody should consult Tom Jones for comment.
  
  
• Holey Smokes:  If you missed it, check out Jon Stewart's coverage of the Haggard scandal from last night's The Daily Show.  (Click on the pic of the newsdesk at left to go to Comedy Central's website.)  Oh, the things we put ourselves through....  Er, well, not "we,"  kemo-sabe....
  
  
• Haggardy And:  Okay, I confess.  While writing this, I dug up some of the recordings Tom Jones did with --- gasp!--- Van Morrison over the years, including their surprisingly good reworking of the otherwise vapid Van tune, "Sometimes We Cry."  (Then again, Johnny Cash singing Trent Reznor would once have seemed just as unlikely.)   The mere thought, however, of Van Morrison singing "Sex Bomb" should certainly be enough to cease the world from spinning on its axis.
  
  
• Plathitudes and Plongitudes:  Some of you may have heard about the recently discovered sonnet by Sylvia Plath.  I'm of mixed feelings on Plath, but this one I think best remaindered into history.  Judge for yourself.  Expect, however, further reams of academic argumentation about what a bastard Ted Hughes must have been.
  

• Stupor-System:  Forster would surely have balked at this, but writing this entry reminds me that preliminary lubrication surely makes it easier to "Only Connect."  Read that sentence in the panoply of ways it allows.  (Forgive, though, the forced split infinitive.)  And perhaps somebody should consult Tom Jones for comment--- or maybe an American evangelist.  Methaphorically speaking, of course.

So where is this stream of semi-consciousness going?  Damned if I know.  (Damned if I ever do.)  But the connections are many and eerie, and I wonder if the message nascent in the lot is that hucksterism somehow, even miraculously, prevails and even thrives against all of the suggestive odds. 

    Who am I kidding? 

    (You knew this was coming sooner or later, so altogether now, and wave your arms as you know you should, in cheeky and paramount glee....) 

    It's not unusual, / It happens everyday, / No matter what you say, / You'll find it happens all the time.... 

    And discard your underwear at will.

I Know I Should Find This Ironic, But Really I'm Just Bored As Hell

    Reading this article, I was reminded how much of a minority I seem to be in, though the author clearly ought to learn to distinguish between ubiquity and ubiety.  The Simpsons may be long in the tooth and well-past its prime, but Family Guy has demonstrated something I didn't think possible, the original wisdom of TV executives.  FG has become painfully, excruciatingly, brain-wrenchingly AWFUL, every joke a flashback tiresomely and forcedly teed-up and and then putted to the green.  (Yes, putted.  Is there any gag on that show that doesn't run ten-times longer than it should?)  There's nothing about the resurrected show that isn't predictable ("it's just like that time...."), belaboured (enough Indiana Jones, Star Wars and That Girl references, please...), or derivative.  Oh, and SMUG, as one gathers only an undead show can be.  "Funnier" than ever?  Hardly.  FG is the Republican party of contemporary satire: all lip-service to itself, laughless and often mean-spirited lip-service that can't, and doesn't even bother to try to, conceal its desperation.  In one season, FG hit a nadir which The Simpsons, even at its worst, hasn't yet neared because it has not forgotten how to maintain its balancing whimsy.  FG, well, it has become a cartoon version of Dennis Miller, pretentiously polymathic and utterly humourless.  Once it was on par with The Simpsons; now, it's absolutely no better than the Air Farce or 22 Minutes: loud, obnoxious, and so hamfistedly puerile as to suggest the wit of an angry twelve year-old.   When the show's fans finally figure this out, I'll welcome the chance to put the zombie Griffins back into the ground.  In fact, as Peter would say, that'd be freakin' sweet.

Topsy-Turvy, or London's Airy Dare

    I received today a notice for a conference at the University of London called "Antisemitism and England."  If any of you out there somehow remain uncertain as to why I have become cynical about academia, let me simply offer these "questions to be addressed" to testify in that regard:

To what extent have the terms 'antisemitism' and 'Englishness' become redundant?

How much use do they retain?

Rather "leading the witness," don't you think?  Alas, such "questions" are rigorously de rigeur these days.  And to think, I wasted so many years studying Antisemite language and literature....    And Hitler?  One assumes now that (rouse the chorus please!) now it's greatly to his credit / that he IS an Englishman!

    Pettifogging with a parody of Pinafore?  But of course.  I was, after all, born sneering. 

Awl-Oeuvre Twist

    It's a punster's dream, which is exactly why the Not-So-Good Doctor's just going to leave this story alone.  Yup.  (See, he does have some restraint after all.)  Pun away, my pretties....

    Key quote, with emphasis added:  "Unsure about what to do, police called for a fire engine."  Because pick-axes and a ladder were clearly necessary. 

By Many A Wind Instrument

    I've been thinking lately about Goodnight and Good Luck --- and the legacy of chaps like Murrow, including Cronkite, McNeil and Lehrer--- as stories like this one dominate the Canadian news media and the American media wail endlessly about John Kerry's foot-in-mouth disease.  It's no surprise that the Culture of Injurement prevails so certainly in these cases, but it makes me wonder what the onetime Deans of journalism would think of this sick fascination with non-stories with which people can be mock-offended. 

    Not really offended, of course; one dolt referring to another dolt as a bitch or a former Presidential candidate's ineptitude with expression don't directly offend anyone, except insofar as people want to be offended by these idiocies so they can assume the stance of righteous umbrage.  I wonder if Murrow or Cronkite or any of their ilk would have been so ready to organize news priorities around such wilful victimizations that are really nothing more than platforms for people to grumble, grouse, and by extension, aggrandize themselves to others with their supposed superiority.  Yes, everyone; we know you'd never call a woman a bitch, even though you use the term regularly, and you'd never screw-up a bad joke, much less one at someone else's expense, even though you do it all the time.  We know you're above those things, so let's move on and shut down this circus of sanctimony before someone responding to you recalls the time you called so-and-so a bitch and exacerbates this headache-inducing stupidity. 

    It's tempting to say that the news media have more in common with Barnum and Bailey than they do with Murrow and Cronkite.  It's tempting.  The apter comparison, though, wouldn't be with those notorious figures of spectacle and noise, but with Iago and Lady Macbeth, baiting us to behave against our better instincts.  And oh how foolish we are when we fall for it--- and become downright bitchy as a result.  Such endemic outrage serves mostly to sour our tempers, and to distract us from the things we should really be noticing.  What do you think is more important, John Kerry making an ass of himself, or this all-but-unreported event?  (Unreported in North America, anyway.)  One has the capacity to change the geopolitical climate as we know it.  The other, really, is just an opportunity for aerothermal release.  See if you can figure out which is which--- for thereby hangs a tale about what we choose to hear, the continuous clowning of wind instruments, winding us up with aggravating and distracting airs.

    But never mind; Kerry on, as you were.  Until later, good morrow and good luck.