Doin' It To Death

    I never really thought I'd had to write this post.  More later on this very, very sad event, but it seems you can now count the genuine titans of modern music on one hand.  If you don't already own in, buy Startime! when you raid the stores, and we know you will, on Boxing Day.  Until then, take in Wikipedia's lengthy bio of the man, which even still only provides a broad summary of his astonishing legacy and impact.  The man practically invented funk, revolutionized R&B, and made the modern concert into the kinetic, mercurial marathon it now so often is.  And, breathtakingly, he was still a better dancer in his seventies than most are in their twenties.  A titan, a bad-ass stand-on-the-scene outta-sight muthafuckin' Titan. 

 

    But today's about celebrating a famous and even inspirational birth.  Let's do that now.  Happy Humphrey's Day, Happy Humphrey's Day everyone.

 

    Now I gotta get ready to act as a jungle jim for little ones.  Merry, well, you know....

The Twinkie Defense

    Now and then, I'm occasioned to temper my cynicism.  Sometimes that's a bit like swallowing one's tongue, especially considering how much this age tends to render yesterday's cynicism into tomorrow's prescience.  Even more oddly, those occasions tend to happen with figures normally dismissed out of hand.  Not long ago, I remember having to concede a few virtues on the part of Justin Timberlake, of all people, when he not only showed class in acknowledging an award he received really belonged to Johnny Cash, but then demonstrated a surprising degree of comic skill on Saturday Night Live.  In both instances, you could have knocked me over with a feather, but suddenly I had to give young Justin not just a new look, but worse--- credit.  He was so easy a target, and then suddenly he's showing glimmers of promise.  One begins to wonder if some bizarre carnivalism is setting in, whereby the good become awful and the awful become good.  It's a good thing, I think.  Proves you can still be pleasantly surprised.  Proves *I* can still be pleasantly surprised.

 

    So it's with a bit of happy trepidation I'm being forced to rethink Leonardo DiCaprio.  For me, he'll always be the little brat they brought in to "young-up" Growing Pains, which was like taking broken-down Lada and painting the bumper.  And of course, there's the stuff he's most famous for, the twinkie stardom of Titanic and The Beach, to say nothing of his plainly risible attempt at Shakespeare in Romeo & Juliet.  By that point, it was easy to deride him as a child-star who finally showed potential (in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and The Basketball Diaries) and then sold out to setting a-flutter all the hearts he could.  He's still smirk-worthy in many ways, but it finally occurred to me today that the chap's making a Napoleonic assault toward legitimacy.  Since 2002, he has cozied up to Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorcese, and with each film he started to show more and more, wait for it, Genuine Acting Talent.  Gangs of New York was a bit of a mess, but with The Aviator and The Departed, he has been cultivating credibility.  But, I'll admit it; after The Departed, I would probably have said the first of its merits was that he got shot really well in it.  In the head.  From out of nowhere.  By a character we had largely forgotten.  Cooooooool....  All us not-so-pretty boys were not-so-secretly tittering with girlish glee.

 

    Then the bastard goes and does Blood Diamond.  Yes, the movie's preachy and a bit heavy-handed, yadda yadda yadda.  But for the first time, I saw something new in little Leo:  charisma.  Who knew?  It's a solid performance, it staggers me to say; it staggers me further to confess he reminded me of Humphrey Bogart more than a few times in it, and not simply at the level of awkward imitation.  He finds a snarl that isn't just snarkiness or petulance; he finds a menacing charm that's really rather impressive; he finds, forgive me, a leonine charisma that I had not imagined he might be able to convey, much less possess.  And, damn it, he pulls it off.  The movie offers lots of vignettes that seem meant to draw him, or his character at least, against the Bogart model.  There are bits right out of Casablanca (a get-out-of-here goodbye, no less), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Diamonds!  Diamonds!), The Big Sleep and Key Largo, as if to demand the comparison.  And--- Gawd help me for saying this--- little Leo doesn't come off too badly in the comparison. 

 

    Yes, that is hard to admit, damn it.  If he had failed, just imagine how many African Queen jokes we could have made.....

 

    But, suddenly it seems the boy has mettle, that he's finally going past that boyishness that puts him on magazine covers with despicable regularity.  So, I have to give the chap his props.  Maybe those three films with Scorcese helped him refine his sense of gravity, and to roughen some of those too-too-fine edges.  Colour me impressed, for now.  So I guess I owe little Leo a little mea culpa for the not-so-little fun I've made of him over the years, which I offer now, even if that cynical bastard in me hopes he gets suckered soon into Titanic II: Return of the Waifish Drowned.  Told from the iceberg's point of view, of course....  

 

    (See, eating crow isn't too awful.  Just do it one bite at a time.)

Why, You Shouldn't Have....

    I guess if you're going to pander, you might as well go for the gusto.

 

    Sorry, updates unlikely today.  Recovering from nearly two straight days of household renovation.  Oy vey. 

And Always, Twirling, Twirling, TWIRLING!

    Just in case you were jonesing for more angstrionic whingeing, it seems the diva of vapid-fire dialogue, that whirling dervish of allusive verbal diarrhea, is about to spin again.  Prepare to be dazzled by the dizzying display of dottily drivelsome damseltude!    Delight!  Delectate in the demi-grandiloquent dippiness!  The delicate debuDantescan drollery!  The delirious directionlessness!    The tediously dainty, dimply, Dopaminic digressiveness of it all!  I'm dillying!  I'm dallying!  I'm depressurizing!  Whee!!!!

 

    Whoa.... Damn, I'm getting ditzy just thinking about it....  Excuse me a moment while I throw up and grow my Y-chromosome back....

The Cutting Edge; or, Just A Little Off The Top

    Oh, an eternal dilemma:  to halve and halve not....  Er, NYT, just a little tip:  Point taken.  (Ahem.)  But no man wants to see the words "circumcision" and "halved" in the same headline.  Ever.  That is all.  You can go about your business.  Move along, move along.

I Was Gonna Make Espresso

    It's always sad when a class act like Peter Boyle passes.   Some of you may want to refresh yourself on two of his funniest moments from Young Frankenstein:  this one, featuring top hat and tails; and this one, featuring an almost unrecognizable Gene Hackman.  Unfortunately he had to do a lot of schlock over the years, but his performance in Joe was terrific.  He'll probably now be best remembered for Everybody Loves Raymond, which is something of a mixed blessing.  The show has become such a staple of syndication it necessarily garners the hatred that comes from over-exposure; but it also had the audacity (these days, anyway) to deliver the equivalent of a one-act play each week, in which the actors were responsible for generating and sustaining comedic momentum.  Boyle, in that ensemble, had to be the anchor by making a broad caricature believable and funny, and he did it did brilliantly, almost effortlessly.  In other hands, the words "holy crap" would have become tired on their third utterance; he turned them into an arabesque, each time slightly different, each time disarmingly, and almost inexplicably, riotous.  I should add another adverb there:  Unfailingly.  Few comedic actors, and even fewer comedians, learn the fine art of dealing with an inevitable line or an inevitable reaction; Jack Benny was probably the great master of this, and Johnny Carson and lately Jon Stewart its most obvious practitioners; but Peter Boyle was one of the select few that could act in this tradition and make it look easy. 

 

    RIP, Good Sir. 

 

    Now I have to watch Young Frankenstein again.  With holiday shopping heating up, maybe we all should. 

In Perfect Harmony....

    It seems Zelda has tagged me with a meme to name 5 songs that represent how I feel right now, including one Christmas song.   I should reject this out of hand for insisting on a Christmas tune, but it's Zelda, so here goes, assuming the added level of difficulty of not citing anything by Bob Dylan, Van Morrison or Leonard Cohen:

1. Ray Charles, "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (there, that gets the Xmas selection out of the way); alternate answer, Three Dog Night, "Joy To The World"
   
2. John Lee Hooker, "Chill Out (Things Gonna Change)"
   
3. Frank Sinatra, "That's Life"
   
4. Stevie Nicks, "Sometimes It's A Bitch"
   
5. The Band, "It Makes No Difference"; alternate answer, "The Weight"

Ah, not an especially ecstatic list, but then again 'tis the season.  M'kay, let's tag RB; I'm sure he needs something to do. 

Them Little Indians

    It hardly needs saying what I think the key quote is in this entry.  

Every Man and His Humour

    Something tells me Christopher Hitchens' pipeline of hate-mail has finally dried up.  I suspect, however, this piece should renew his supply. 

    Nice to see at least that Hitchens hasn't sacrificed verbal elan for the sake of political correctness; I imagine more than a few columnists are sorting out their indignation to respond to phrases like "bless their tender hearts" and "cunning minxes that they are." 

    Key quote:  "For men, it is a tragedy that the two things they prize the most—women and humor—should be so antithetical.  But without tragedy there could be no comedy."  True enough, that. 

Hasta La Vista, Baby...

Some key ways in which a Microsoft product is like a Significant Other:

• It's unfortunately necessary: there are too many things fun and functional you just can't do without it.
  
  
• In fact, you're probably stuck with it a priori; you're just expected to have it. People will wonder why you don't.
  
  
• On first encounter, it takes forever to get ready, telling you all the while, "Please be patient." As it prepares itself, it's in contact with its support team and exchanging all kinds of information about you, but you shrug it off because it looks good--- and, frankly, you're excited because it promises that you'll be able to do stuff with it that other products wouldn't let you do.
  
  
• At first, everything seems cool. At first. Keep in mind that what you like about it at first will become what you hate most about it later.
  
  
• Once it's in your life, it takes right over and starts telling you what to do. But you let it, for the reasons stated above.
  
  
• It has an almost unnatural fondness for cookies, which you casually dismiss as one its little eccentricities.
  
  
• It messes with your library first, promising to "organize" it. You learn quickly, however, that what's Yours is Its--- and what's Its is Its. This is okay, you tell yourself, until it takes you two hours to find something you used to be able to find in a minute.
  
  
• No matter what it suggests, it is NOT as limber as it proclaims to be. "User-friendly," you'll discover, applies to other people using it, not you.
  
  
• Once it is completely settled in, it insists on keeping track of everything you do. Then it goes off and does whatever the hell it wants to do and doesn't tell you a thing.
  
  
• Before long, not only is it chewing up half of your resources, it's also becoming wildly unpredictable. Or, in fact, predictably unpredictable: you just sit there, waiting for something to go wrong, which invariably it does.
  
  
• And when something does go wrong, it's your fault. There's also no arguing with it. Ever. So there. This, by the way, is that mysterious Sixth Law you heard about in high-school science class, but of which no one ever spoke directly. Now you know.
  
  
• Of course, it never tells you what's wrong. (Occasionally it offers "details." These will provide no help whatsoever.) It will simply, and almost huffily, stop responding. Quite often, you'll just have to give up, shut everything down and consign yourself to the interminable process of restarting. This will work for a while, but sooner or later, it won't--- and your product will insinuate that you are to blame for damaging or corrupting it. You may even have to bite the bullet and bring in another programme-- or worse, another person-- to help fix things.
  
  
• Soon enough, you're changing everything for its sake. If something is incompatible with your Microsoft product, it has to go. Eventually, you'll realize it has its tentacles everywhere.
  
  
• Two words: Usage Rights.
  
  
• Even occasional engagement with your Microsoft product will soon involve you in its dubious suggestions about things you need and ergo Must Have. Perform a minor task, and you'll be directed, with no trace of subtlety, to places to go to buy stuff you really don't want. Your product wants other products--- and even if you won't buy them, it will keep showing you ads, hoping you'll just cave to its pressure. Sometimes you will. This will stop nothing.
  
  
• Dare to flirt with a non-Microsoft product, especially those Open Source sluts that are just giving it away, and it'll feign compatibility with it until it can undermine those Other Products appropriately.
  
  
• As a matter of course, you'll soon be spending most of your time maintaining and updating your Microsoft product, ripping your hair out as you do. Pretty soon, you'll tell your product to update itself behind your back just to avoid the incessant asking.
  
  
• It'll turn out, your Microsoft product isn't half as stable as it suggested, nay assured, it was. Each week will bring a fresh array of insecurities and contradictions with which you'll have to deal like Alan Alda in a triage scene.
  
  
• But when you attempt to address those insecurities, your Microsoft product won't simply ask for validation. It will demand it. Constantly. And you will oblige it, because you have to.
  
  
• Eventually, it'll stop recognizing your equipment, and all those "plug-and-play" promises will become bitter memories of why you got yourself into this mess in the first place.
  
  
• After a while, you'll realize your product has become bloated, sluggish and downright impossible. Your misery with your Microsoft product will tempt you a million times to leave it, but you won't because it'll prove too much a central part of your existence. You depend on it. Besides, if you try to get rid of it, it'll probably take half your stuff with it. So, you mutter expletives under your breath when you deal with it, and you entertain fantasies of the day you'll finally rid yourself of it, even if you never do.
  
  
• Never do, that is, until a new Microsoft product presents itself, and you go through the maddening process of deciding whether or not to ditch your miserable old product for the new one. All that updating behind your back by your old product will force the issue, as it all but shuts itself down in preparation for its replacement. (And, yes, probably takes half your stuff.)
  
  
• Before you know it, you'll have to make the leap to the new Microsoft product: there are too many things fun and functional you just won't be able to do without it. In fact, you'll just be expected to have it. People will wonder about you if you don't....

Woolly Bully

    All together now:  ~~ One of these words doesn't belong here.... ~~  (At least according to the pictures I most certainly have not seen.   )

Carleton 'Tards

    Ah, Canadian universities: as ever, sanctuaries for tolerance and diversity....

The New Authorised Version

 

And yet, not a word about secondhand smoting....

     Marx was wrong when he said that religion was the opiate of the people; it's the crack-cocaine, complete with its dependency, agitation and paranoia.  Oh, and its persistent insistence on having its demands met.  

All Over Again: Some Vues From The Cheap Seats

    Managed to see a couple of the flicks new to theatres, including Casino Royale and Deja Vu.  The former, I'd shrugglingly say, is only a marginal improvement over the recent Bond excursions.  Yes, it figures Bond in darker terms, and cheekily plays with--- or plays away--- some of the Bond mythology, but the action sequences are ludicrously true-to-form, and so about as thrilling as tap water.  Daniel Craig's turn as Bond is fine, even if he looks like Prince Charles' blond-headed nephew, and Eva Green sizzles reliably, though she's given precious little to do.  I gather, however, the filmmakers could only muster enough irony for the irrelevant flourishes regarding martinis and swimsuits.  The specious spectacles are as impossibly contrived as ever, with a high-altitude fight-sequence that's a birch's-leap away from Crouching Tiger, and a poker game that's obviously scripted by someone who knows the game but has never played a hand.  And only Bond could have a heart-attack in the middle of a poker game--- and return to the game with an undepeleted chip-stack.  So don't believe the hype, or any of the reviews; it's just more of the same, with a few cosmetic touch-ups--- or touch-downs.  As for the inauspiciously-titled Deja Vu, the less said the better.  It's just a cross between Minority Report and Laura, executed with the sophistication of Timecop.  It also proves a law that hardly needed re-proving, that any movie that fucks around with time eventually ends up fucking with itself--- and leaving time sadly wasted. 

 

    More delightfully, I've been rediscovering the many virtues of two older macabre comedies, Arsenic and Old Lace and the original The Ladykillers.  Of the former, I have to confess I had forgotten how good Cary Grant is in it:  his performance is a manic aria of antic genius, that characteristic cool of his as much a victim of the comic action as any of the bodies in the basement.  It's all farce--- and farce on top of farce, on top of farce, a kinetic piling on of ridiculously exasperating complications--- but it's a brilliant exercise in infectious lunacy, thanks largely to a terrific supporting cast that includes Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, and Jean Adair and Josephine Hull as the dotty old aunts with the deadly decanter.  Most importantly, though, the movie's still laugh-out-loud funny.  I assure you, you'll never be able to hear the word "charge" again without chuckling, and certainly no movie in film history uses a bugle more effectively. 

    What Arsenic does for the bugle, The Ladykillers does for the minuet, Boccherini's in fact, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a better example of comic menace than Alec Guinness' performance, a parody of his friend (and onetime biographer) Kenneth Tynan that's touched with bits from Alistair Sim and Raymond Massey for good measure.  Guinness gets most of the laughs, his eyes somehow droller than droll, and it's a hoot how he weaves subtlety into what might otherwise be described as a caricature.  There's a bare second, for example, in which he manages to make Boccherini seem funky, but it's a perfect little arabesque that's both broad and wry at the same time.  (Tom Hanks tried creditably for both of those qualities in the Coen Brothers remake, and failed on the latter.  The temptation toward shamelsss mugging was probably just too great.)  The movie's not perfect--- it wraps things up a little too abruptly--- but it's still a hell of a lot of fun; and it and Arsenic and Old Lace will cause you keep your distance from those little lopsided old ladies.  They only seem harmless. 

 

    Is it worth adding that I also saw Robin Williams' Man of the Year?  No, it's not, save to make two brief notes: first, that it's one of a number of movies shot partially in my neck of the woods lately; secondly, that Williams has, I think, become terminally unfunny, the only laugh in that celluloid craptacular coming from Lewis Black, one of the few living practitioners of the manic aria.  Of course, the script is bad--- very, very bad--- and the flick goes entirely off the rails when it decides to follow the dead weight that is Laura Linney on a storyline.  (She's a vaguely competent actress, but she has a vampirical effect on every movie she's in, sucking every fluid ounce of life out them, like Meryl Streep used to do before she got cheeky.)  Robin, though, has become everyone's boring uncle.  He gestures wildly and says things that are supposed to be edgy and audacious, but it's all schtick and noise and distraction that's distracting no one.  He's not an expired talent by any means, as his dramatic roles prove quite well; but I'd suggest he look back on some of his great comedic forebears, like Cary Grant and Alec Guinness.  The former has a lot to teach him about sustained mania, and the latter a lot about going beyond the predictabilities of broad comedy.  Right now, Robin's movies are closer to Casino Royale and Deja Vu than they are to The Ladykillers or Arsenic and Old Lace.  They're familiar before we even see them, as contrived as they could possibly be, and they leave everyone too much apprised of time too sadly wasted.  Not just ours, frankly, but his.

Art's Like That

    I realized the other day a few more books that have mysteriously disappeared from my collection, including John le Carré's The Honourable Schoolboy and Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before.  When did I realize this?  Natch, while watching the film version of Eco's The Name of the Rose.  Take a moment to savour the irony.  (And all four of you that do will impress the Doc immensely.)

 

    Where did said books go?  Alas, if only I could say "honourable schoolgirls."   

Noblesse Oblique?

    A pithy observation, at a tilting slant, from Wallace Stevens, truer now than when he said it sixty-odd years ago:

There is no element more conspicuously absent from contemporary poetry than nobility.

    --- from "The Noble Rider and The Sound of Words," The Necessary Angel

Stevens' notion of nobility is considerably more complex than I'm indicating here, but even taken at the superficial level, the assessment seems on the mark.  I wonder if this has anything to do with my don't-give-a-shit mentality toward most contemporary poetry.  A note toward a supreme contradiction? 

'Tis The Season

    Forget the usual Christmas pap: enjoy the funniest two-and-a-half minutes from Saturday Night Live in years, featuring the magnificent Darlene Love. 

 

    (My younger readers here will probably only know Ms Love as Danny Glover's wife in the Lethal Weapon movies, but those of you a bit older will remember her for having one of the most distinctive voices in pop/soul-music.  She still sounds great.)

Conversation Pieces

    In the spirit of Overheard in New York and its kin, a few random chunks of conversation from recent days, mostly (and regrettably) noted, as the 'Lizabethans used to say:

• "She's got more than a little junk in the trunk.  She has a giant dump."  
  
  
• "A gangbang's the only way to go."  Said by a young woman in a context I don't even want to know.  One imagines she'll be a loving and loyal wife one day; perhaps the prototype of the soccer-team mom?  (A voice for Conservatism in the next twenty years, like the hippies that came to vote for Reagan?)

Less memorably, after a bit of a chat in which my knowledge of poetry came up, I was asked, "Are you gay or what?"  No, I said, I'm as miserable and sardonic as they come.  Obviously, my attempt at a quip fell largely flat, but for once I'm rather pleased to be so negligible.  Oh, the bewilderments of accidental company....

Under Milked Wood

    Hold hard, those ancient minutes in the cuckold's month. 

Dryden Pressed

    Watching some of the speeches from the Liberal leadership candidates last night, it occurred to me that the main reason Ken Dryden isn't in better shape is that he isn't in better shape.  Almost universally respected, he gave by far the best speech last night and demonstrated real strength for rough-and-tumble of campaigning.  The only reason I can gather for his weak showing is that he doesn't look like the typical Prime Minister: he's bulkier than the average leader, something that's not as absurd as it sounds.  Think Martin, Chretien, Trudeau, Turner, Mulroney, Campbell, all of whom were either lanky, like Trudeau, or average-with-a-gut, like Martin.  An odd thing to note, of course, though I wonder if there's something in the optic-driven political world that demands leaders in Canada be, if not "lean and hungry," then at least acceptable approximates thereto.  I can't help but wonder if that's what subconsciously influenced the formation of the Top Four.  Instead, Dryden gets dumped to the ignominious laureate of being "the conscience of the party," which is roughly equivalent to a suitor being told what a wonderful friend he is.  The best man never wins; he gets nudged, and then pressed, to the side, where he's remaindered to wistful stalwarcy.  It's a shame.  He deserved better.  Then again, maybe he's better off not being baloney's bridegroom.  There's no way that stuff's good for ya.

 

    FOOTNOTE:  Yes, I know there's no such word as "stalwarcy," but "stalwartness" is such an ugly word.  I like my invention better.

Brace Yourselves For Some Weighty Tomes

    Because, one suspects, slim volumes would be out of the question.

 

    I'll still have to wait, I assume, for the Balkanization of academia to allow a programme in Lanky, Cranky Canajian Studies.

Justin Time

    Gee, the punditocracy is getting increasingly antsy about the Trudeau fans and the notion of a true Dauphin, isn't it?  (If nothing else, Wherry's reference is irresistible.)  It seems that with every week there comes a new piece snarking, or implicitly snarking about, Justin Trudeau and the supposed cult of succession forming around him.  I hadn't realized that Canada was governed by the laws of primogeniture, but apparently it is, if the columnary calumny is to be believed.  Or perhaps it's merely the preternatural fear, sorely gathered, of what the Trudeau name can do, even when the Trudeau in question is ostensibly ex-officio.  Or maybe it's just the result of the Martini hangover, the myth of patrilinearity having bitten people once, and the hair of that dog seeming less a cure than invitation to make the same mistake twice.

    But just about everywhere--- in the dailies, on the telly, in the blogitorium--- it seems the truly urgent matter of the coming Liberal Leadership Convention is to dampen the would-be Dauphin before he can catch fire.  Only the candidates for the leadership and their acolytes seem to care about the contest itself.  You'd think the commentariat had received some sort of Delphic message that scared them bloodless or provided them faith, predictably proclaiming that some young and upstart beast must be slouching towards Bethlehem.  And yet the lad, as far as I can tell, has never been on the wrong side of an issue, curried a hypocrisy, or presented himself as anything other than a relatively decent chap who just happened to have a famous father.  Were he not Trudeau's son, and were he doing exactly what he's doing now, he'd be receiving endless praise from the chattering classes.  His charisma wouldn't be regarded with suspicion, his looks wouldn't be ridiculed as a symptom of superficiality, and his arguments wouldn't be dismissed out-of-hand as the prognostications of a privileged heir-apparent.  He'd be the Barack Obama from Montreal, just an up-and-comer rather than the Second Coming.

    His father's critics--- and they remain a bitter and unforgiving many--- seem to have more invested in perpetuating the Trudeau mystique than Justin does.  (He haunts them still indeed.)  It's the primary basisfor their often-sniggering attacks against him.  Engaging the man or the issues would serve only to expose their own inadequacies, not least of which is a churlishness that's really childishness masked as cynical celebritism.  Worse, this is faux-cynicism rather than warranted-cynicism, snarkiness guised as experiential criticism.

 

    For the record, I should be the first to want to rip young Justin to shreds; he's younger than I am, better-looking, infinitely more charismatic, and a onetime English teacher to-boot.  (And he's nobler by half, but let's not acknowledge that, SVP.)  I should resent the hell out of him on those cheap grounds.  But I don't, and that's no statement on my part.  I don't resent him, much, the bastard, and I can't.  That would be resenting him--- and wanting to resent him--- for my own inadequacies against his standard.  But maybe that's where most of criticism he's now receiving is really coming from.

    Give the lad the credit he deserves, and then measure him accordingly, for good or for ill.  Time will tell soon enough if he's the true Dauphin, as it did with Paul Martin, if there's anything to it all.  Let's not buy in prematurely to the myths of the Trudeau fans--- or the Trudeau-phobes.  Let's instead allow him to prove or to disprove himself, in the fullness of time. 

And, Uncharacteristically, This Blog Will Refrain From Comment

    Because, as ever, the scabbard is mightier than the (s)word. 

 

    (And even if only RK appreciates that pun, this blog will call itself content. The NSG-Doc's just Latin it all hang out today...   )

Absolutely, Positively and Unequivocally The Last Post On This Nation Business

    The last word on lunacy should go to a satirist, but here in Canada we'll have to settle for a less heroick Dryden.

    Key quote, even if it's more visceral than reasoned:  "This feels wrong because it doesn't feel as serious as it must be."  No-pucking-kidding.

Slowed To Joy

    In case you thought the seventh-inning stretch went on forever....  (Mind you, by the Ninth, who's still keeping score?)

    Favourite quote: "As I walk in, the Andante is in progress, and it engulfs me in what feels like the pure, concentrated essence of Beethoven."  Who knew Ludwig could be made to seem like orange juice?  And the less said about the "essence" of Beethoven, the better. 

More Than You Think

    Some titles are wrong on so many levels.  

Caped Kennedy, or The Last Of This Nation Consternation

    I know I've been writing a fair bit about this nation fiasco-in-the-making, and normally I'd be one to say enough's enough once I'd reached three posts in a week on any subject, regardless of how much it got under my skin.  That in mind, I'll try to keep myself from ranting, and merely direct your collective attention to the sharper arguments of Michael Bliss and Andrew Coyne.  (See also Coyne's remarks on what I called the Empsonian wet-dream of this lunacy.)  Both are right, though both will surely be decried in most political quarters for being hysterics.  Except.  Except, except, except--- it seems there's finally one major, or potentially major, political figure coming out against this, and in doing so he's making himself, well, a lot more major--- er, generally speaking.  My guess?  In doing so, Kennedy will gain enough support to vault him past Dion and Rae at the Liberal Leadership Convention.  This is a wedge issue of huge proportions, and Kennedy's position as the lone opponent of this silliness seems already to be garnering him support from people previously indifferent and even hostile to him.  This is an issue significant enough to make Liberals vote on it rather than a leader per se, and Kennedy's (rightly) about to reap the rewards of it.  No sooner do I write him off than he seems to come back with a vengeance.  Expect him to start making appearances in red and white tights with a Canadian flag hanging from his shoulders.  *shudder*

 

    One more thing.  As much as I love the idea of Gilles Duceppe having his ass handed him by the PM, I'm not so set on my plate of schadenfreude that we should support this farce.  Many are claiming this motion demonstrates canniness on the PM's part, and maybe it does; but if so it demonstrates a canniness only in terms of the short-term political results.  The real problems will come in the long-term, as we try to figure out what the hell this language commits us to, and what it might, and likely will, eventually invite. 

 

    There.  Now, I promise:  Not a word more about this aggravating silliness.  After all, I'll need to pick up some aspirin before the real headaches begin.

Straightening Out Your Longfellow

    While it's nice to see Robert Donat remembered on this list, this blog would vote for Sally Kellerman from Back To School.  Her sultry reading of Joyce is worth the price of the rental alone.  (Actually, I saw it in the cinema when it came out, which tells you something about how old I am.  It's a little hard to believe she was almost fifty at the time.)  As Rodney Dangerfield puts it, a little star-struck by Ms Kellerman: "I like teachers.  If you do something wrong, they make you do it over again." 

 

    BTW, she also does an a rather good reading of Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle...," which summons Rodney, stirring back from exhaustion in a series of oral exams, to offer an exegesis that would have made Dylan laugh: "It means... I don't take shit from no one!!!"  Make sure to follow the link to hear Thomas' reading; it's justly famous.

Country Matters 33 1/3: The Final Insult

    You have to love the way in which most of the major media outlets are slagging those of us that think the recent "nation" debate something between ill-advised and potentially disastrous.  Apparently, most of us that oppose this ridiculousness are either upset ex-Reformers, or diehard Trudeauistes (Tru-does?  Tru-bucks?).  Frankly, I don't mind being of a slagged party, because it usually tells me I'm on the right side of an issue rather than the wrong one.  But there's something truly--- madly, deeply--- dubious about a gesture that is about to receive support from all of the major political parties, that is broadly claimed as historic in some circles and technically meaningless in others, and that depends on dicing language, in two languages no less, finer than Paul Sorvino's garlic in Goodfellas.  Shouldn't this remind all those of us that were alive through the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords that there's something deeply problematic, and almost certainly amiss, about the shenanigans at hand?  Why is it that the primary objectors to this nation-thing are removed by at least one step from the primary positions of power and/or concern?  It's as if we're being asked to sign a document without reading what it says, which is exactly the technique that was applied in the admittedly more-complicated Meech and Charlottetown scenarios.  Even before one gets into the parsing of the legalese--- all of which remains, as far as I can tell, an Empsonian wet dream--- the delivery of the text alone should raise collective suspicion.  We're being asked to buy now and pay later, to sign the contract now and worry about the installments later.  And, damn it, we've been through this before.  We should know better.

 

    So why don't we?  Or, perhaps more accurately, why won't we?

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

    Call it the Height Report.  (Too obscure?  Probably.  Oh well.)  This explains, however, why the greatest lotharios of the past century were, in fact, Boris Karloff, John Carradine, and that guy who played "Lerch."  And Peter Mayhew, whose Wookie-nookie must have been legendary....

 

    Key quote:  "The author's name has been changed[.]"   Perhaps for fear of standing out?

 

Country Matters, Part Deux

    Providing this article is to be trusted, the following ought to be considered significant, with my own emphasis added:

The Prime Minister's original instinct had been to stay out of that particular fray.  But as the debate took on new life under the impetus of the Liberal leadership campaign this fall, that preferred option became less and less realistic.

It also became increasingly apparent that if he had to step in, Harper would choose his Quebec future over his Reform Party past.

"Had to" I'd still strongly dispute.  In fact, I'd argue, strenuously and with Neo-Conic fervour, that he should have listened to his original instinct.  (See the exchange entre RK and Yours Not-So-Truly.)  Then again, I shouldn't say much.  Most of my biggest mistakes have resulted from distrusting my instincts, so I'm probably in kettle-pot territory.  But someone-- someone, anyone!-- should have told the PM not to succumb to the Liberal version of reality.  Or, at least, that there are no winners in suicide pacts. 

    FOLLOW-UP:  Key quote from this piece, courtesy Marjory LeBreton: "You can never go wrong when you do the right thing." The appropriate response, as most of us know all-too-well, would have been, "Oh, yes you can, you most definitely can."   (Hence not only the word "martyr," but every damned book Graham Greene ever wrote. And Henry James and John le Carré and that Spanish guy they call Cervantes.... )

    FOLLOW-UP-FOLLOW-UP:   You know things are wonky when I'm agreeing with Warren Kinsella and Andrew Coyne-- and both of them seem to be looking to Bob Rae (wtf?!?!?) for leadership. Welcome to the Bizarro-world of the common cause.   Perhaps Mr Harper should contact Mr Harper....

If Not Only My Heart

    Note to my executor:  Don't let LiLo deliver my eulogy.  Weep, wail and rend garments, okay, but for Darwin's sake, don't let her say anything.

Country Matters

    Does anyone else remember that scene from A Christmas Story in which the kids stand around the frozen flagpole, daring the one kid to stick his tongue against it? 

 

    Of course you do. 

 

    Amnesiacs remember that scene. 

 

    Everyone remembers that scene. 

 

    Except, of course, the Prime Minister. He evidently didn't learn that you don't take the bait of the triple dog-dare.  Aw, fudge....    

 

    (Those of you looking for the Not-So-Good Doctor over the next several months will be able to find him drinking by himself and singing Ray Charles' "Here We Go Again" in a tragic stupor.  Or kneeling in the snow, screaming furiously at the sky, "You maniacs!  Ah, damn you!  Damn you all to hell!")

Give Peace A Chance

    But what about the people that like the rough stuff?       Key quote:  "Even a stupid one is OK."

Ceaselessly Into The Last

Lola: What if you die some day?
GK: I will die.
Lola: Don't you want people to remember you?
GK: I don't want them to be told to remember me.
--- from A Prairie Home Companion

    Robert Altman has died at 81.  People shouldn't need to be told to remember him, but I wonder how many people will.  If you haven't seen A Prairie Home Companion, this blog encourages you to do so tonight and speculate on the best way to remember one of the last truly independent film directors.  Prairie is wistful, whimsical, critical, cynical, meditative, museful, doggedly stoical and yet utterly charming.   More envoi than elegy, more celebration than lamentation, there's something roughly Prosperan about it, a final enchantment in which his characters sing and dance ceaselessly into the last. 

    Then go rent any of his classics--- M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player, Gosford Park, to name just a few.  It'd be the best way to remember him.  Or maybe for some of you, to discover him.

The Quality of Mercer

    Some candidates get skewered during election campaigns.  Others get stuck on spits and have apples shoved in their mouths.  This weeks's porcine victim:  Dianne Haskett, Conservative candidate in London-North-Centre, rotisseried to a sweet and succulent delicacy--- with a maple-glaze, of course--- by that roilsome and rapscallionly roast-master, Rick Mercer.  Mmmm, I love the smell of Tory in the morning....

    (Ms Haskett running in a bi- by-election?  How appropriate....)

Burstyn At The Seems

    Alas, the ever-active Captain Obvious strikes again.  Nay, madam, they know not seeming....

Abrading Grace

    Word to writers:  Make sure you don't muck up the very first freakin' word of your article.     

 

    As for the subject of the suit, let's simply say this Torquemadan wannabe deserves it.  If there is a such a thing as poetic justice, the court will find against her before even a scrap of evidence is presented. 

Some Random Imputations

    Just a few odds and ends:

• Playing poker recently, I had my first chip-and-a-chair experience.  Down to nothing and holding on to my place at the table like an ingenue clings to fame, I managed to forestall the inevitable and prove myself the gum my competitors couldn't get off their shoes.  Circling the drain (let's see how many tired metaphors I can use) for the better part of an hour, I just kept holding on and holding on until the chip-leader knocked off the other two remaining opponents.  Then it was David and Goliath all over again, without the spectacle but thankfully the same result.  It was a short battle: five (or maybe six) hands later, it was all over.  Which just goes to show, yet again:  Don't underestimate the little guy.  He might just fuck you up after all. 
  
  
• Finally saw Superman Returns and Woody Allen's Scoop, trifles both but harmless ones at least.  The former was groanless but forgettable, while the latter was innocuous fare with some good lines but no direction.  Scoop, in fact, reminded me of an undergraduate essay, with its occasional chuckles and rarer insights patched together with duct-tape, willpower and a little bit of charm.   On the cinematic subject, some of you may want to check out Reel Fanatic's blog right here. 
  
  
  
• Two beautiful quotes from Theodore Dalrymple's piece on another Doctor J, much larger and wiser but arguably half as idiosyncratic:

  The necessity for honest self-examination, if avoidable misery is to be avoided, could hardly be more eloquently expressed; and it is one of the most serious defects of modern culture and the welfare state that they discourage such self-examination by encouraging the imputation of all miseries to others, and they thus have a disastrous effect upon human character.

  
  
  And this one, beautiful in the most unfortunate way:
  
  

  Johnson found his Boswell, as the saying goes, but it would be truer to say that Boswell found his Johnson.

  
  
  (I love it when academics, normally so acute to double-entendres, blurt so blatantly, even if it's the perfectly honourable Dr Dalrymple.)  It's a minor tragedy that no one reads the Actually Good Doctor, save those studying 18th century lit, and many of those brave souls flee from the Doctor like young women from the elder Wyatt.  I used to draw pretty regularly from Doctor Johnson when I taught Shakespeare, but I know quite well I was one of the few that did, because Johnson was regarded with the dutiful but chagrined reverence--- aka the "we're-horrified-so-horrified-we-have-to-pay-lip-service-to-this-guy-but-we-do-because-we're-supposed-to" treatment--- largely reserved these days for Plato and Aristotle.  That sort of snobbishness is now coolly and regularly described as "Johnsonian," even if Johnson receives that snobbishness more than he issued it.  This reminds me of a question posed by Harold Bloom in The Western Canon in his chapter on Dr J:  "If canonical values are exiled completely from the study of literature, will Johnson still have an audience?"  The answer, of course, is obvious:  yes he will, but it will be a smaller and smaller audience less and less prudent in its judgment, and increasingly prone to confuse judiciousness with judgmentalism.  Oh, never mind; it's already here.
  
  
  
• I fear this video will scar me forever.  (Beware, it may scar you, too.)  Consider it proof-positive that some people should never be allowed to own web-cams.  *shudder*  I think my spine just went cold.  Mongolia-in-January-cold.  Skinny-dipping-in-the-Ross-Sea-cold.  Hillary-Clinton-cold.  ("Why, Bill?"  "Because she was there....")

And with that traumatizing clip (or my perhaps more traumatizing riffs afterward), I'll shut-up and see if there's a way we can make Malthusian theory practicable in the internet age.  Hey, don't rule it out--- as I said, never underestimate the little guy.  Especially if he's already found his Johnson. 

Too In The Bush

    It's not often I find myself reading historians in Rolling Stone, but consider this a worthwhile exception as Princeton's Sean Wilentz makes an easy case, that George W. Bush is probably the Worst President in (American) History.  In a way, yes, this is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel (who does that anyway?), but sometimes the most obvious things are also those that most demand further consideration.  A bird in the hand?

According To Thy Bond (No Moore, No Less)

    You know it's November when the more interesting movies make their debuts.   The pre-Christmas season is the time for companies to release their Award Pictures, the ones they expect will gain sufficient acclaim to jump to the top of the list for Oscar consideration.  (The Academy is notorious for having only a two-month memory.)  So this weekend we have three movies coming out which have been much-lauded pre-release:  Bobby, For Your Consideration (appropriately enough), and Casino Royale.  Bobby has a dream cast--- Martin Sheen, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Fishburne, William H. Macy, to name just a few--- and deals with the death-knell of a well-mythicised golden age of political integrity.  For Your Consideration is another Christopher Guest improvisational-invention, featuring his stable of regulars that includes Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard and Eugene Levy.  Both films are Altmanesque in their own ways and both, I suspect, will garner cult followings at least, the former for its Grand Hotel-like star-power, the latter for its generic quirkiness; and for both, the early reviews are generally good.  So there's some Stuff to screen, even if more for the discerning viewers than the groundlings that might opt to see The Grudge 2 once more instead.

 

    From a larger historical sense, though, the most interesting picture is Casino Royale.  By all accounts, the new Bond entry attempts a genuinely new take on the form, and so most of the reviews will spend much-too-much time prattling on about Daniel Craig's performance.  (Dana Stevens' vapid and digressive piece for Slate leaps, nay vaults, to mind.)  The premise of presenting Bond in harsher and less cartoonish manner is promising, and so for the first time, I'm looking forward to seeing a Bond movie, whenever that finally happens.  Dorks and doofi like Yours Truly, however, will be watching the critics as much as they'll be watching the movie to see how well they respond to the key change.  Surprisingly, Anthony Lane, while readable as ever, somehow doesn't seize the opportunity as one expects he would.   I think he's (again, surprisingly) almost bettered by Manohla Dargis for NYT, whose review is surely less studied but sharper in its lancing sensibilities.  Lane seldom gets out-bitched, so this is a rare feat.  As much as I like Lane's description of Eva Green's Vesper Lynd "as a Bond woman-- a Bond Lady of Shalott," there's a flimsy stretchiness to it; Dargis' compliment that her "talent is actually larger than her breasts" is wryer, even if it's sophomoric in nature.  Sometimes flippancy trumps esotericism.  (That I think Eva Green drool-worthy has absolutely nothing to do with my estimation.  Absolutely.  Nothing.   )  Interesting item to note in the critical regard: none of the reviews I've read have had effective endings.  One wonders if there's a significance to this.  They all seem to taper off, like the American President pronouncing a polysyllabic word. 

 

    Considering all this, I'm left with a poser.  The Craig Casino Royale, we're told, is a kind of prequel, an offering meant to put into context the James Bond we have known all-too-well over the decades.  No problem with that, except for this: if this Bond, the Daniel Craig Bond, is supposed to be the pregenitor of the following (or preceding?) Bonds, why cast Judi Dench as M?  She is the M of the late Bond, the super-cartoonish Bond.  Are we intended then to imagine that she and Bernard Lee, the original M of the movies, are the same person?  Or is Dame Judi's character one who starts her career with Bond, goes away for a while, and then demotedly returns to take over her old position?  Had they signed anyone else to play "M," this would not have been an issue; we'd simply have assumed a precursor in that position.  But this one casting choice strikes me as creating a credibility problem, even if it's probably niggling at something we're just not invited to question.  Maybe one should judge matters according to the Bond at hand--- no more, no less. 

 

***

 

    And, yes--- acknowledging what I wrote above-- I probably should have written a stronger ending, but, damn it, I'm not going to bother.  I'm not getting paid for this, so what do I care?   Unless, of course, The New Yorker finally realizes what a deadly bore David Denby has become and decides to look north-by-northwest for a replacement. 

 

***

 

    ODD FILM-RELATED ADDENDUM:  The NYT obit on Jack Palance notes that Palance understudied for Anthony Quinn in the 1948 stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire (and later took over for Brando in same).  That's a performance I imagine would have been as iconic as it might have seemed odd.  Think of Palance's persistently subsumed ferocity--- and conjecture it finding material fitting for its release--- and what a counterpoint it might have provided for Brando's version.  Palance's Stanley, I suspect, would have been more barrel-chested, more throaty and jagged, and almost definitely more menacing.  But Palance was just a working actor, while Brando was a star right from the start.  It's tempting, though, to suggest that the inevitable contrast for that legendary Stelllaaaa would be a simple star-lover.  (And there's a joke only RK, and/or some of his more attentive students, will get.)  Palance, however, might have been apter.  He'd have invariably become dark matter.

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????