The Daily Digression, which covers pop culture and beyond...
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___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 4 - 5, 2009
Bill Clinton: President Obama's most powerful foreign policy tool.
[photo of Clinton by Paul Iorio]
Clinton's successful negotiation of the release of Laura Ling
and Euna Lee reminds us that he is still the most repsected and
effective American foreign policy player on the world stage.
My guess is that if a Cuban missile crisis were to occur, it
would be Obama's judgment plus the former president's negotiating
skill that would solve it. Biden may have extraordinary foresight,
Hillary might have a mastery of issues, but it's Bill Clinton who
has the ability to -- what's the word for it? -- get it done.
* * * * *
So great to see Laura Ling and Euna Lee walking to
freedom in Burbank this morning. I've been
fascinated by this case for months, and have even
written about it as a journalist (click here:
http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=8500),
and I think part of my fascination with it has to do with
the fact that when I was much younger -- barely 19 --
I traveled alone by local train behind the Iron
Curtain during the Cold War and was even briefly detained by
the Yugoslav authorities in Zagreb before traveling on into the
most Soviet of Iron Curtain countries, Bulgaria.
So I definitely understand what it's like
to cross a tough Communist border and to be detained
in a country at odds with the U.S. You can read
my account of the journey (based on my own
contemporaneous journals) at:
http://ironcurtaintravels.blogspot.com/
But I digress. Paul
____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 4, 2009
Palin's New Life: Divorcee, Crusader Against 1st Amendment?
Sarah Palin's attorney emailed this pdf (above) to
a small-fry blogger/kindergarten employee a couple days ago,
threatening legal action if he didn't remove
info about her from his blog. [click it to
enlarge it]
To hear the blogs tell it, and the reports are astonishingly
widespread, Sarah Palin is about to divorce husband Todd
and move to Montana, where she will probably spend a lot of
time denying stories that both she and Todd had extramarital
affairs that led to the breakup.
At this early stage -- the reports started emerging just
last Saturday -- it's hard to confirm much of this stuff.
But it should be noted that some of the blogs reporting
the info have been highly credible and ahead of the curve
in the past (for example, the Alaska Report was the first
media outlet to have reported that McCain had chosen
Palin as his running-mate).
Whatever the veracity of the claims, one thing is certain:
since resigning as Governor, she has become a dedicated
crusader against the First Amendment, seemingly picking
on every podunk blogger in cyberspace in trying to suppress
rumors.
Like most right-wingers, Palin doesn't understand a core
truth about free speech: when one tries to suppress
information, that information becomes even more public
than it would have been if you hadn't tried to quash it.
In fact, this column would not be covering the situation
had Palin not used a sledgehammer against an Alaska preschool
employee who runs a blog -- theimmoralminority.blogspot.com -- that
cited sources saying Palin's marriage was on the rocks.
Believe it or not, Palin actually had her attorney send the
blogger (he writes under the name Gryphon) an email pdf threatening
legal action if he didn't take down the report from his
website (letter is posted above).
Picture that for a moment: she's threatening to have a
high-powered law firm serve legal papers to some guy in
front of five-year old kindergarten students for
writing a blog that has miniscule circulation.
Can you imagine what this sort of behavior would have
translated into if she had become vice president of the
United States? Palin's orientation is so small-scale
and petty, her mind-set so censorious, that she would have
probably tried to suppress almost every story written
about her by media outlets of all sizes -- and
would have been able to use the apparatus of the federal
government to do it.
Incidentally, if the rumors are true, they would sure go
a long way toward explaining why Palin made the alarmingly
unusual decision to step down as Governor. 
As we all know, the best way to show your law firm
has stature is to have your attorneys pose with dead fish.
(Above, lawyers with the firm that reps Palin (Clapp, Peterson,
Van Flein, Tiemessen and Thorsness), as shown
on its own website!).
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- By the way, wanna know who Sarah Palin
is said to have had an affair with? Dude's name,
according to numerous blog and media reports,
is Brad Hanson, snowmobile dealer and former business
associate of Todd's. (Word is he can get you an
Airwave Rear Shock for a deep discount!) Again,
impossible to confirm at this point. Here's his pic:
Is this the goatee that caused Sarah Barracuda to abandon
that pesky 7th Commandment?
________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 3, 2009
Counting Crows Plays a Hometown Show in Berkeley
After a rousing encore of "Mr. Jones," still the
most irresistible song in the Counting Crows catalog,
Adam Duritz went to the mic to talk about politics and
his former hometown, Berkeley, Calif., where he had
just finished a generous set with numerous collaborators
at the Greek Theater (7/26).
Referring to Berkeley, Duritz said: "This city
was founded on the idea that we believe in things.
Well, you can protest all you want, but the way
to make it happen is to show up and vote. Believe
me when I tell you I don't give a fuck who
you vote for."
Then Duritz closed the show with Woody Guthrie's
"This Land," a song that seems to be gradually
evolving into the U.S.'s de facto national anthem.
"This is a very old song written about our country,"
Duritz said, intro'ing the tune. "At the time it was
written, if you sang it, you were thought to be a
Communist. The truth of the matter is, it's the most
American of all songs."
Musically, however, the highlight of the night came
with the surprise appearance of trumpeter Chris Bogios
of the San Francisco Symphony, who performed with the
Crows on "Carriage," a truly sublime and bootlegable
moment. (His son Jim Borgios is the Crows's drummer.)
* * * *
Last Friday's Earth, Wind & Fire/Chicago Show
Several nights after the Crows's show, Earth, Wind & Fire
and Chicago took the stage at the same venue (7/31).
I was skeptical at first. After all, Chicago without
Peter Cetera is not really Chicago; and Earth,
Wind & Fire without Maurice White is not truly EW&F.
And I'm always a bit wary of oldies bands on package
tours that include, say, The Grassroots (featuring the
original bassist and all new members!) plus the Dave
Clark Five (with the founding drummer and a bunch of
session guys).
Still, the configuration of Chicago that played here did
include vocalist/keyboardist Robert Lamm and the group's
original horn section, an essential element, so they did sound
very much like Chicago. And this version of Earth, Wind
& Fire featured Philip Bailey, whose falsetto is the
trademark of many of their classics, so EW&F also
sounded very much like EW&F.
And as the show progressed, one tended to forget
about the absence of Cetera and White, if only because
most of the music was so enjoyable, as number one hits
from the 1970s flew through the air like arrows, one
after another, with half-forgotten zingers always
aiming for the heart, and sometimes hitting it,
inciting widespread dancing and smooching.
Of course, the bands's two separate catalogs feature
very different material, though one of the high points
came when EW&F performed its own quite amazing
arrangement of Chicago's "Wishing You Were Here."
The magic of EW&F has always been its cool hot flame,
on display here in vintage form, and never hotter than
when it played encore "Shining Star," which turned the
place into a dance floor (for the record, I heard the
show from the hill above the theater, where everyone
was dancing at the end).
Meanwhile, Chicago played top ten hits like it was
giving out candy, always aiming to please, from the
show's opening salvo -- "Saturday in the Park" and
"Make Me Smile" -- to the concert finale, "25 or
6 to 4."
All told, a surprisingly satisfying double bill.
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 31, 2009
satire
Exclusive Transcript of the Meeting Between Crowley, Gates and Obama
(with apologies to Francis Coppola and Mario Puzo!)
A waiter brings bottles of beer to guests seated
at a table on the White House lawn.
SGT. JAMES CROWLEY: How's the beer here?
PROF. HENRY LOUIS GATES: Good. Try the
Blue Stripe. It's the best in the city.
CROWLEY: I'll have it.
GATES (to the waiter): Capiche?
The waiter nods, opens the bottle and pours the beer.
GATES (to Crowley): I'm gonna speak Harvard
to Barack.
CROWLEY: Go ahead...
GATES: Mi dispiace...
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Forget about it.
GATES: What happened -- the interruption of your
health care plan -- was just business, not intended. I have much
respect for your public option plan -- but you must understand
why I blew my top.
OBAMA: I understand, but let's work through
where we go from here.
The waiter brings another beer to the table.
OBAMA: Come si dice? What I want -- what's most
important to me -- is that I have a guarantee: No more
distractions from my health care plan.
GATES: What guarantees can I give you, Barack?
I am the hunted one! You think too much of me, kid -- I'm not
that clever. All I want is a truce.
OBAMA: I have to go to the bathroom. Is that all right?
CROWLEY: You gotta go, you gotta go...
* * *
After the get-together, Obama visits Gates at his hotel room:
GATES: Barack, I wish you would have let me
know you were coming; I could have prepared something for you.
OBAMA: I didn't want you to know I was coming.
Obama shuts the door.
OBAMA: You heard what happened to my health care plan?
GATES: Barack, I almost died myself.
OBAMA (shouting): To my health care
plan! To the central issue of my presidency. One of the
reasons I ran for office.
A long pause.
OBAMA: I want you to help me take my revenge.
GATES: Barack, anything -- what can I do?
OBAMA: Settle these troubles with the Cambridge
police department. They're a distraction.
GATES: Barack, I don't understand. Look, I
don't have your brain for big deals -- but this is a street thing.
Why do you ask me to lay down for them, Barack?
OBAMA: [a long pause] You know,
my father taught me: keep your friends close but your
enemies closer. Now, if Crowley sees that I interceded
in this thing on his behalf, he's going to think his
relationship with me is still good. Capiche?
Gates nods head.
OBAMA: That's what I want him to think. I want
him completely relaxed, and confident, in our friendship. Then
I'll be able to shift my focus to health care and find out who
the Blue Dog traitors in my party are who are stopping the health
care plan.
CUT TO: The bedroom of Bill and Hillary
Clinton's house, late at night. Bill and Hillary are sleeping.
The telephone rings, Bill picks it up.
BILL CLINTON: Yeah?
VOICE OF MITCH MCCONNELL: Bill, this is
Mitch, Mitch McConnell. We need some more help.
BILL: Mitch, Jesus Christ, what the hell time
is it?
HILLARY CLINTON (groggy):Who's that, honey?
BILL CLINTON: Shhh!
VOICE OF MCCONNELL: Listen good, Bill.
BILL CLINTON: What are you calling me
here for? I don't want to talk to you.
VOICE OF MITCH MCCONNELL: We're setting up a meeting
with the Blue Dogs -- they say they're gonna go for our deal.
BILL CLINTON: Oh, God --
VOICE OF MITCH MCCONNELL: Are they on the level?
BILL CLINTON: I don't know anything -- you got
me in deep enough already.
VOICE OF MITCH MCCONNELL: Just go along,
everything will be all right. Mike Ross and the Blue Dogs
say they're willing to make the deal. All we want
to know is if they're on the level.
BILL CLINTON: You guys lied to me -- I don't
want you to call me anymore.
VOICE OF MITCH MCCONNELL: Obama's not going
to find out we talked.
BILL CLINTON: I don't know what you're talking about.
Bill hangs up the phone and sits up in bed.
HILLARY: Who was that?
BILL: Ahh -- wrong number.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 29, 2009
One very smart local TV news anchor in San Francisco
came up with the best question that anybody has yet
asked about yesterday's international swimming
competition: Why didn't Michael Phelps wear the
superior swimsuit?
And the question is really quite bright. In yesterday's
200-meter freestyle race in Rome, Phelps was
wearing last year's hot innovation, the Speedo LZR, not
this year's, the Arena X-Glide. All the other swimmers
had the option of wearing the Arena but Phelps and others
chose the inferior Speedo (and it now emerges that Phelps
was offered the polyurethane suit but didn't wear it
because he had signed a contract with Speedo).
Let's be real. Phelps didn't wake up yesterday
morning saying, "Gee, let me wear something
bulky that creates a lot of hydrodynamic resistance
so that I can be fair to those who aren't clever
enough to wear something better." No, Phelps
wanted to wear what he felt would reduce
drag and resistance as much as possible.
Only problem (for Phelps) is that -- guess what? -- somebody
invented something better. And it doesn't use a motor or a
propeller and doesn't administer steroids like a patch,
so it's completely legit.
Some say the polyurethane Arena should be prohibited
because it's too close to a floatation device. But every
swimsuit is, to some degree, a floatation device, and the
superior ones have greater buoyancy and less drag. Buoyancy
is the point, or part of it, after all.
As Phelps well knows, if you build a better bong,
the world will beat a path to your doorstep!
And equating the Arena to an aluminum bat in baseball
is a false comparison. Aluminum bats, which hit balls
with far greater force than wooden ones, are not used in the
major leagues, largely because of safety issues
related to pitchers being hit with baseballs speeding
at 100-miles an hour. There is no such safety issue
involved with a polyurethane suit being worn by a swimmer
swimming in his own lane in a pool.
There is, however, a dangerous tendency among some to
criticize almost any new innovation (in any field)
because that person didn't come up with it or use it
first. In many cases, envious people say there is an
unfair advantage merely because they weren't smart enough
to have taken advantage of a legitimate advance in technology
or approach. Losing competitors in every profession
have a habit of saying, "Hey,that's a clever and fresh
way of doing things -- no fair!"
The polyurethane suit does pretty much what the Speedo
does -- except it does it better. And that's why Phelps (and
his allies in the sports media and those associated with
Speedo) are acting like a bunch of sore losers, because
they know Phelps could've used the better brand if he
hadn't been locked into a contract with Speedo.
Fact is, all suits have inherent advantages and disadvantages.
The only way competitive swimmers could truly be on
an equal footing with one another is if everybody
swam nude (which might be great for TV ratings but a nightmare
for Standards & Practices). Even then, of course, there would
still be, uh, other elements of the bodies of (unequally endowed)
swimmers that could create drag.
Germany's Paul Biederman, using the best technology legitimately
available to him, as any other swimmer could have, won fair
and square and should be duly congratulated by all.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 24, 2009
He's Saad, I'm Glaad
Osama bin Laden's son Saad bin Laden, 27, is saaid to have
died (27 years too late, I might aadd) in an American bombing
raid earlier this year.
To celebrate the fact of Saad's death, a good thing for
the world, like the death of a tumor, here's a song I
wrote and recorded last year called "I Shot Osama
bin Laden." http://www.paulioriosong.vox.com/
Enjoy!
[cvr art for "I Shot Osama bin Laden."]
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- Someone asked me whether I'm also the producer
of my own music. Yes. I write everything, perform
everything, produce everything that appears on my
albums. Literally everything -- from the initial
songwriting idea to the finished track to everything
in between -- is solely my work. Only in 2005
did I use an outside producer for an album, and
that album didn't work out and has since been
withdrawn from circulation. But even in that one
instance, way back in '05, the outside producer was
essentially just a tech support person (and we
haven't spoken to each other in years).
____________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 23, 2009
Anyone who has lived in Hoboken , New Jersey, for any
length of time knows its city government has always been
incorrigibly corrupt. For honest everyday people, living
there can be a fright if you're at odds with someone at
City Hall (or with a businessperson associated with
City Hall).
So it was heartening to see the FBI put the handcuffs on
the newly elected mayor of Hoboken, the mayor of
Secaucus and others in the venal infrastructure out there
this morning.
To note the housecleaning, I'm posting a song I wrote
while living in Hoboken and recorded last year in
California: "Old Fashioned Mafia Town." Here's an
audio link: http://www.paulioriosong.vox.com/
But I digress. Paul
________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 18 - 22, 2009
On the 40th Anniversary of the First Moonwalk, My
Conversation with a Moonwalker
I've interviewed many stars and celebrities over the
decades, from Woody Allen to Richard Pryor
to Lawrence Ferlinghetti to Frank Zappa, and one
that I'm particularly proud of is my Q&A with Alan Bean,
the fourth person to walk on the moon, one of only
12 human beings who can truthfully put "moonwalker"
on a resume.
In this one-on-one, I wanted Bean to describe
exactly what it was like, on an experiential level,
to walk on the moon. And Bean (who also has a thriving
second career as a visual artist) talked about
it in vivid, painterly detail. (For the record,
Bean went to the moon in November 1969, as part of
the crew of Apollo 12, which included the late
Charles “Pete” Conrad, Jr., and Richard F. Gordon.)
I conducted this interview on October 13, 1998, but
got around to publishing it in 2004, when I
sold it to the Austin American-Statesman, which
ran it on July 18, 2004. Here, on the 40th
anniversary of the first lunar landing by astronauts,
is the (mostly) uncut interview with Bean. Fasten your seatbelts!
IORIO: WHEN YOU STEP OUT ON THE MOON, WHAT DO YOU SEE?
BEAN: It looks bright outside but you're fairly dim inside...It's
like coming out of the house at night onto a
patio that's super brightly lit...You're saying, "Look at this!
This looks so different than when I was inside.'"
It looks scarier. You're saying, "Look at this place, it's
not like any place on Earth. And I hope my suit
doesn't leak because if it does, I'm dead. And look at
those rocks. And look, there's Pete [Conrad,
Commander of Apollo 12] over there, jumping up and
down -- that looks like fun." And then you let go of
the ladder to start to move and you start to wobble around,
and you think, "I'm going to fall down and I don't
want to; I might cut my suit."
...If you've looked at TV [footage] of Apollo 11...you'll
see they're bouncing around continually at first. It's
easier to stand up when you're bouncing around....If you try
to stand still in a spot, it's much more difficult
than just kind of moving around a little bit, because
naturally you'll move in the direction you're leaning, and
that'll keep you from leaning farther.
IF YOU HAD FALLEN, COULD YOU HAVE PUNCTURED YOUR [SPACE SUIT]?
BEAN: We worried about it, we worried you could. You've got
a cover layer over it but we said, "Those
rocks are sharp." It's funny: you know things and yet you
don't know them until they really happen...I fell
down a couple of times on the moon -- most people did -- because
there are dust layers there, and under the
dust are rocks, and it's like you’re running through snow,
and there are rocks under the snow that you don't
see. You trip every once in a while.
But with light gravity, things fall much more slowly, so
when you trip you start to fall down much more
slowly. Sometimes you can run under your body and catch
yourself, where on Earth you would've really
fallen down. Nothing happens real fast like on Earth.
,,,To get up, just give it a little push with your hands
and you'll stand right back up again. The first time I
tried to stand, I gave a push with my hands and nearly
went over backwards I pushed so hard...
Someday, when they have the Olympics up there in a big dome,
it'll be fun. It'll be fun to watch the high
jump, because they're going to jump fifteen feet or
something, and they're going up very slowly and keep
going up and up, almost like a football. Then they're
going to come down very slow....No telling what pole
vaulting would be like up there!
DID YOU HAVE THE TEMPTATION JUST TO JUMP AS HIGH AS YOU COULD [ON THE MOON]?
BEAN: We did that, but don't forget we were in these
bulky suits, so even though you could jump and go
up a long ways, it was so slowly that you went up and
were pulled back.
What I found was the problem was not jumping up high
but...the minute you jumped off the ground, you
never pushed through your center of gravity really
perfectly. On Earth, you jump up and land right down
again, so it's no problem. But [on the moon], you're
going up, and all of a sudden you see you didn't push
through your center of gravity, and you see you're
starting to lean to the left.
When I was running [on the moon], I always felt that
I was over-rotating forwards, backwards, left or right,
and each time I landed I would think, I've got to hurry
up and land, I'll never make it." And then when I
would touch down, I would push off and try to make a
correction in the other direction. Then I would
overcorrect. [laughs] So it was like I was reeling
across the moon....It was a constant balancing act almost.
You had to look where your foot was going to land every
time. You couldn't run and look ahead, because
you'd go into a crater. You had to make sure you didn't
step on rocks or twist your ankle...It would be fun to
do it in a bubble without the suit on.
YOU SAID EARLIER THAT, VISUALLY, IT'S LIKE NOTHING ON EARTH.
BUT IS THERE ANY POINT OF COMPARISON?...IN YOUR SEVEN
AND THREE-QUARTERS HOURS [ON THE MOON], WAS THERE ONE MOMENT
WHEN...YOU SAID, "THIS LOOKS LIKE THE MOJAVE"?
BEAN: It looked like volcanic fields that we had practiced
on in Hawaii and Oregon and Ireland and
Mexico and some in the southwest [U.S.]...except there's
a lot more dirt around [on the moon]. With the
dirt on Earth, the rain washes most of it away, particularly
the fine stuff, so usually the volcanic fields...have
more rock exposed. Up there, the rocks are around but
all the little chips that have been knocked off the
rocks are still there.
So I thought, initially, it looks sort of looks like
volcanic fields....However, it never looked like any place on
Earth because of the incredible sun, because the sky is a patent
leather black instead of a nice blue and because nothing
moves up there. The only things that moved when we were
up there were the two of us and our shadows. Nothing
else moves. We'd never been to places like that on
Earth. Even in the desert you can look up and see maybe a
wisp of a cloud go by....It's so still, so dead. I never
for one second felt like this could ever be a place on
Earth, even though parts of it looked like other places
we'd been. It's an unearthly place, an out-of-this-world
place.
AND YOU TURN AROUND AND LOOK AT THE EARTH...AND IT'S THIS
BLUE WATERY MASS?
BEAN: You're on this [moon] that's black and white and the
whole universe is black and white, except on
Earth. And there is this blue and white marble. And
also, it changes. You do some work and look at the
Earth an hour later, and it has moved 15 degrees. So some
clouds have moved to the right, the part that was
in the shadow 15 degrees has come out.
WHAT'S IT LIKE UP THERE [ON SKYLAB]? YOU WERE THERE FOR FIFTY-NINE DAYS IN
CRAMPED --
BEAN: We weren't cramped -- we had a big Skylab. I've never
heard anybody come back from space for no
matter how long and say, "Well, we didn't have enough room."
Because when you can float around...it
always seems like you have enough room. I've never heard an
astronaut say the spacecraft was too little, but
I've heard lots of astronauts say, "We need better food" or
"We've got to invent a better sleeping bag" or
"We've got to get bigger windows because we can't see out."
As [lunar module pilot] Bill Anders on Apollo
8 said, "It's like going through Yellowstone Park in a tank
and looking out the little window."
...People complain about the fact that it's kind of
messy up there for pooping and urinating. It's like
camping out [but] not as much fun as on Earth.
WHAT [FEATURE] FILM BEST CAPTURES THE SPACE EXPERINECE?
BEAN: "Apollo 13," easily. "Apollo 13" was as good a movie
as could be made about space flight as I knew it.
* * * *
* * * *
The best line about remembering the events of 1969 came
from Meredith Vieira on today's "Today" show: "Forty
years ago I was alive -- that's depressing."
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 17, 2009
Remembering Walter Cronikite
The only time I ever saw Walter Cronkite in person
was in the early-1980s at the Black Rock building in
Manhattan. He was alone in the elevator lobby on an
upper floor as I walked by behind him. I remember he had
a terrific red tan, and when I passed, he turned his
head all the way around to look at who was walking by.
And I was about to stop and introduce myself and say a
few words, but his elevator arrived and he got inside.
That backwards glance will stick with me forever; you
could sense he was genuinely curious about whatever
entered (or didn't enter) his field of vision.
Cronkite died today, and it's almost impossible to
overstate his influence, especially on the boomers
that came of age in the Sixties and Seventies. To me,
his finest hour on TV -- and he had many fine ones -- was
the one I saw as a politically active 11-year old in 1968:
his coverage of the Democratic National Convention,
particularly the famous incident in which Dan Rather
was decked by security goons on the Convention
floor for merely asking why a Eugene McCarthy delegate
was being ejected from the hall. Cronkite, moderating the raucous
gathering from a booth, had clearly had it with cops and security
people being violent to the press and others.
"I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, Dan,” said Cronkite.
And there he was, the most trusted source of news in America,
calling the authorities "thugs." That made a big impression on
me as a kid. He wasn't mincing words or prettifying things or
doing anything but calling it as he saw it and as it was.
He died at age 92, meaning he was a year younger than JFK
(which also shows the staggering amount of time and
history that our 35th president was robbed of). Cronkite lived
exactly twice as long as JFK, despite the risks of his
profession, and maybe his longevity had something to do with
the fact that, as I saw first-hand, nothing ever got past him
unless he took an unflinching look at what it was.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 16, 2009
Bruno Hoaxes Ron Paul!
U.S. Congressman in a compromising position!
[photo of "Bruno" by Paul Iorio.]
The main astonishing things about "Bruno" are 1) how
Sacha Baron Cohen, in his cinematic guises as both Bruno
and Borat, has avoided being assaulted and seriously
injured by irate prankees; 2) how he could
find celebrities who, at this late stage, were still
unfamiliar with either Bruno or the phenomenon of
Baron Cohen himself.
I mean, Paula Abdul was not aware of Bruno? And Ron
Paul hadn't heard about how Borat famously hoaxed
Bob Barr and Alan Keyes back in '06? Evidently not.
The most striking part of "Bruno" is the hoaxing of
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who is caught on film genuinely
losing his temper in a very politically
incorrect way after being pranked by Bruno.
The sequence in which Bruno tries to seduce the
Republican Congressman (imagine if this had been
the Larry Craig of a few years ago!) begins with
the Austrian fashion icon entering Rep. Paul's hotel
room and asking if he would like some Champagne.
BRUNO: Do you want some Champagne?
RON PAUL: [nervously] No Champagne, no.
BRUNO: I'm going to light some candles, if it's
OK....Has anyone ever told you you look
like Enrique Iglesias?
RON PAUL: [grunts "no"]
BRUNO: Of course not. You're much cuter.
Bruno then puts on music and dances a bit, as Ron
Paul -- his antenna finally up, albeit a bit too
late -- stands and pretends to read a newspaper.
When Bruno takes off his pants and stands at the
door, that's the last straw.
RON PAUL: [pushing the half-naked Bruno out of
the way and shouting angrily] Get out of here!
Alright, this is ended. [to his own people, still hollering
and pissed] That guy is queer to the blazes. He took his
clothes off. Let's get going. He's queer! He's crazy!
He put a hand on me, he took his clothes off!
(By the way, fair game. Ron Paul is a guy who wanted
to become president of the United States; well, here's
how he responds in a pressured situation. If Obama
had been pranked by Bruno, could you imagine the same
tantrum? Not a chance. Obama would've kept his cool,
smiled that smile, and said, "Sorry, guy, not into that
sort of thing," and left the room.)
Paula Abdul also gets the treatment. At first, Bruno
lures in Abdul by asking a couple softball questions
that feed into her instinct for self-promotion.
BRUNO: So tell me about your humanitarian work. How
important is it for you to help people?
PAULA ABDUL: [while sitting on a person paid to be a
chair] Helping other people is so vital to my
life. It's like the air that I breath and the water
that I drink. You give love to other people and you get
love back in spades.
Then Bruno rolls out a food buffet that is on top of a person's
naked body.
ABDUL: [shocked] Oh, my god!! This is really not for
me. I'm sorry this is really not right. [And then
she runs off in horror.]
As Abdul runs off, Bruno pleads, "Come back, please!"
Paula Abdul, caught in Bruno's web of lies
(and sitting atop a person paid to be a chair!).
[photo of "Bruno" by Paul Iorio.]
Another memorable bit is this one between Bruno and a
self-defense instructor:
BRUNO: How do you spot the homosexual?
INSTRUCTOR: Very hard to do. Because many look no
different than myself or you. It's kind of like
terrorists...
BRUNO: But obvious things to look for?
INSTRUCTOR: Obvious is a person who is being extremely
nice to start with.
BRUNO: So someone approaches you...and is very very nice
to you, you know that they are homosexual?
INSTRUCTOR: Most likely.
And what follows is a marvelous and surreal bit of
choreography in which the instructor trains Bruno in
how to defend himself against someone coming at him
with a variety of exotic dildoes (you have to
see it to believe it).
Other funny scenes include one in which Bruno tries to
negotiate peace in the Middle East with an Israeli and a
Palestinian.
BRUNO: Could the Palestinians agree to give the Pyramids
back to the Israelis?
PALESTINIAN: This is in Egypt, not in Palestine.
BRUNO: I don't care where you put them. Give them back.
He also jets off to a Lebanese refugee camp where he
meets with a hard-line militant.
BRUNO: Can I give you guys a word of advice? Lose the
beards. Because your King Osama looks like a kind of
dirty wizard or homeless Santa.
LEBANESE MILITANT: [through a translator] Get out!
Get out now!
[Again, fair game. Bruno is interviewing a guy
whose terrorist beliefs are based on his reading
of only one book (and not a very good one, at that), The
Koran. The militant is arguably more superficial
than Bruno himself.)
All told, "Bruno" is (as everyone says) not quite as funny as
"Borat," though it still has plenty of hilarious sequences
and is funnier than some critics say it is. I've always
thought Bruno the character was incompletely
conceived in that his Nazi side should've been developed
more than his gay side (think of the possibilities if
Bruno had infiltrated and hoaxed some Aryan Nation
groups who thought he was one of them, a worshipper
of the gay Hitler).
But the Ron Paul and Paula Abdul segments are pretty
much worth the price of admission, or at
least the price of a DVD rental.
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 14, 2009
I know I'm a compulsive thanker, but I must say
many thanks to Marshall "Hussein" Stax for playing
my new song "Kim Jong-il" last night on KALX (along
with my own tribute to the NBT). Free stream of "Kim"
now posted at www.pauliorio.vox.com! Juche, baby, Juche!
But I digress. Paul
_______________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 12, 2009
Last Night: Death Cab, Andrew Bird, Ra Ra Riot -- and Sunshowers!
There was natural magic onstage and off last night in
Berkeley, Calif., as Death Cab for Cutie and two primo
indie acts performed while nature itself almost upstaged
the show with sunshowers, weird sunlight and a massive
rainbow.
"This is a song about a day like today and a night like
tonight," said Death Cab's Ben Gibbard, referring to the
weather. "The song is called 'No Sunlight.'"
And then the band, as confident and masterful as
ever, started into the tune: "More clouds appeared/the
sky went black/And there was no sunlight/No sunlight."
Also mentioning the rain from the stage was opening
act Andrew Bird, who lately has been the headliner at
other gigs and had most of his set here accompanied
by a steady drizzle.
"You ok?," he asked the crowd once the showers began.
"It's nothin', right?" The crowd cheered. Bird tried to
make everyone forget about the precip, building tension
from note one.
As Bird played an immensely enjoyable "Fitz and the Dizzyspells,"
from his new EP of the same name, the rain seemed to awaken
nearby exotic birds who began to chirp along with Bird's own
prodigious whistling (Bird makes novel use of whistling and
the violin, which he occasionally plucks like a mandolin,
like no one else in pop music).
After Bird finished his set, the rain stopped and sunlight
scattered through the hilly woods like an orange fire. "A
rainbow, a rainbow," a woman started shouting, pointing to
a big rainbow in the southern twilight sky. (By the way, I
heard the whole show in the hills adjacent to the Greek
Theater, an open-air venue.)
Minutes later, the real magic began, as Death Cab took
the stage with a double blast from "Plans," its 2006
breakthrough album, which comprised around a third of
its setlist. And then a taste of "Transatlanticism," the
band's most critically praised album, before playing
a couple tunes from its new CD, "The Open Door,"
the best being "My Mirror Speaks," well worth
checking out.
Tracks from '08's "Narrow Stairs" sounded weightier
than they did at first listen last year, with the high
point of the entire show being the long version of "I
Will Possess Your Heart," which worked up a groove and
momentum that was almost hypnotic.
Opening the concert for both Death Cab and Andrew Bird was
Ra Ra Riot, who've roared out of Syracuse University in
the last few years to become one of the more promising
bands in indie rock. The group is touring behind its
debut album, "The Rhumb Line" (and has already
appeared on Letterman and at top festivals); it's the
sort of stuff that kicks in after a second
or third listening, and the highlight here was the
infectious and catchy "Can You Tell," which shows why
the band is generating lots of enthusiasm, not least
of all from Death Cab's Gibbard, who dedicated a
song to the Syracuse band.
"Here's an old song...from our first record, and it goes
out to Ra Ra Riot," said Gibbard from the stage, intro'ing
"President of What?"
By the time the whole three-band shebang ended, the rain
was gone, the ground was almost dry -- and Bird had
turned 36. It was cooler, then warmer, and I felt
vaguely as if the seasons had changed, but to
what, I didn't know. Perhaps to an imaginary fifth
season.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- By the way, before "Death Cab took the stage,
a pre-recorded disc played a welcome surprise through
the p.a.: "You're My Favorite Thing," a 25-year-old
post-punk nugget from The Replacements, and it sounded
fantastic. So much so that I began to think of how great
it would be if the surviving Mats were to re-unite
(bringing together Paul Westerberg, Chris Mars and Tommy
Stinson, if that's even possible). People tend to forget
how great that group was, both on stage and in the
studio, until they hear a prime track. A reunion tour
would turn on a whole new generation to a massively
influential (and very, very fun) band that should be
better known than it is today.
___________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 11 - 12, 2009
A 25-Year Old Recluse, and His Own Private Nukes
The rising son? Said to be the only publicly-available
photos of Kim Jong-un as an adult. [from a South
Korean newspaper, via the Daily Telegraph]
In the wake of President Obama's trip to Moscow, it's
clear the central problem with nonproliferation policy
is and has always been hypocrisy, the paternalistic
notion that one set of nations can be trusted with
nukes but another cannot. Obama has gone a long way
toward removing hypocrisy from the equation by saying,
ok, we'll reduce our nuclear arsenal, and in return
we expect you, North Korea and Iran, to take an
equivalent action, to not develop nukes at all.
(By the way: oh, how these meetings with Russian leaders
have changed; legend has it that Boris Yeltsin used to
show up at summits, saying, "Take me
to your liter!")
Jokes aside, the unfunny truth is that the DPRK
will soon become a nuclear power, if it
isn't already, and there's not much we can do about it.
Any U.N.resolution authorizing the use of force
against the DPRK will always be vetoed in
the Security Council by the PRC (and Russia), though
President Hu Jintao, who sometimes acts as if Kim is his
Agnew, can always be persuaded to vote for a
non-binding resolution that has all
the impact of an impassioned letter to the editor.
Meanwhile, six-party talks always amount to mere
two-party talks and impasse.
Frankly, the DPRK could get away with anything (short
of attacking Seoul or Tokyo) without suffering much
more than a strongly-worded condemnation.
And let's be real: Kim Jong-il is not testing nukes to get
attention. We say that he's trying to get attention
as a backhanded insult, a way to infantilize him
and his regime.
No, he's developing weapons of mass destruction for
the same reason we have them: for self-defense. Kim
doesn't send out press releases every time he
fires off a Taepodong or explodes a nuke; in fact, we learn
about it only through our own seismographic info. The DPRK is
doing this stuff in private, and we're the ones publicizing it and
saying they merely want attention.
Further, the DPRK has not put Euna Lee and Laura Ling in prison
in order to get attention or to have a bargaining chip any more than
the United States is incarcerating Charles Manson for those
reasons. North Korea has put them in prison because it believes
they broke one of its eccentric laws -- and the punishment there is
almost always universally (and absurdly and tragically) harsh.
By the way, the campaign to spring Lee and Ling might be more
effective if there was an appeal for their release by film
stars and movie moguls rather than by U.S. government officials.
You see, Kim Jong-il really does follow movies closely and
always has, and he might listen more attentively to Hilary
Swank than to Hillary Clinton.
Kim may have the ambitions of a film maker, but not the talent.
I've read many of Kim Jong-il's writings, mostly essays,
and what comes through is that he's no Robert Towne (and
certainly no Mao). I mean, he's not stupid but his writing
is shockingly lousy, plodding and autocratic, far from
the aphoristic wisdom of Mao (even when translated into English
by Kim's own editors in Pyongyang).
Kim's intellectual development might have been stunted by the fact
that his college education happened at a university named for his
dad, who was running the country at the time (what prof
would've risked flunking him?).
That lack of education may account for his persistent
delusional dream of re-unifying the Korean peninsula.
Kim and many others are evidently unaware that the division of
Korea is not a modern invention. The peninsula was
divided as far back as the Han dynasty and divided again during
the T'ang era; in the modern age, it was artificially
unified as a Japanese colony for around 30 years in
the 20th century, a colonial relationship that ended very
badly, as we all remember, with the atomic bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in '45.
The good news about North Korea is that
we might have caught a break; Kim is said to have
had a stroke last year, is in declining health and
recently sent his sons to Beijing to beg for advanced
medical equipment to treat his ailment, which
can only mean his illness is unusually serious
(word is he has pancreatic cancer).
He could have been one of those dictators who
lives and rules in good health until age 90.
Instead, we probably won't have to deal with him
much longer.
The bad news is his successor -- son Kim Jong-Un, who
is only 25 (or 26) -- might be worse. Given his age
and temperament (he's said to be a lot like his dad,
and has a taste for Claude Van Damme flicks), he's
probably prone to making rash, callow hot-headed
decisions that could be dangerous for everybody.
In terms of U.S. policy: whatever we're doing now
seems to be pushing the DPRK away from disarmament.
The key question is this: What was the international
community doing in the spring of '08 that convinced
Pyongyang to topple its own reactor tower at Yongbyon?
Whatever the world was doing then to persuade Kim to
de-nuclearize, it worked, and we should do it again.
Even during the ancient Han Dynasty, the
Korean peninsula was divided between north and south.
[from the book "Historical Atlas of Empires," by
Karen Farrington]
- - -
And in the later T'ang dynasty, Korea was
similarly splt. [from the book "Historical
Atlas of Empires," by Karen Farrington]
- - -
I walked by Current TV's headquarters in San Francisco recently,
which is near the bayfront and AT&T Park, a baseball stadium
and concert venue. And I felt sad thinking that Euna Lee and
Laura Ling must have enjoyed this very fun area of town, which
is so radically different from the landscape they're in now.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
* * * *
Scandalous Picture of the Day!
Seeing is believing, right? Here's a shot of U.S. Senator
Mel Martinez taking indecent liberties with an 11-year-old
boy! Looks like inappropriate touching to me. Scandal!
[photo published in today's online edition
of The Washington Post.]
* * * *
I have a friend who is not very artistically
smart who visited me a few years ago and, after
hearing my latest album, pompously asked what
the "theme" of the album was.
I told him that I was no fan of the idea of
superimposing a conscious theme on a work
of music or art, that any theme (if there is one)
should emanate organically from the work itself
and not be forced upon the music. Theme, unless
it is organic, is generally a contrivance, and
I prefer to allow the unconscious
to shape a work as much as possible.
But my friend still had these high school
English teacherish ideas about writing and
music that he hadn't outgrown and
needed some convincing.
"OK, what's the theme of Rubber Soul?," I asked him. "What's
the theme of Who's Next, one of the greatest albums of
all time?"
He didn't have an answer, and I could see that I
was getting him to re-think "all the crap he learned in
high school" (to coin a phrase).
The greatest pop albums of all time were collections of
songs that fit together intuitively, for reasons that
can't be fully consciously explained -- and that's the
most genuine and authentic way of shaping a work.
What about an album like the Beatles's "Sgt. Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band," which (supposedly) has a
deliberate unified structure?
Does it? Think about that for a moment. Was "Sgt. Pepper"
really a themed album? The best insight about "Sgt. Pepper"
comes from John Lennon, who once stated that the idea
that that album had a theme or concept was really false. I
don't have the exact quote in front of me, but Lennon said
that if you take away the reprise of the title
track near the end, it's just a collection of songs
that has absolutely nothing to do with the "theme" of
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." I mean,
"Within You, Without You" had zero to do with the idea
of "Sgt Pepper." And the rest of the songs didn't
go with the concept at all.
But the album fits together -- frankly, despite the
forced concept, not because of it.
So to those who ask what the themes of my albums
are, my answer is: I don't work that way and never will.
I simply write songs that feel right and put them together
on an album in a juxtaposition and sequence that works.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 3, 2009
The Best American Film of 2009 (So Far)
In "Public Enemies," Johnny Depp compares
favorably to vintage Pacino.
Michael Mann's new film, "Public Enemies," is not
just the best American movie of the first half of
'09, but also the best gangster picture in around
20 years, a symphony of violent light that must
be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated.
The movie stars Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, the
bank robber who terrorized the Midwest in 1934 and gained
fame for his legendary prison escapes and chases
from police, all dramatized here as vividly as
cinematically possible. Depp is as charismatic as he's
ever been, recalling no less than Al Pacino
in the first two "Godfather" films.
Depp's Dillinger sums himself up to a gorgeous hat
check attendant (Marion Cotillard) this way: "I like
baseball, movies, and good clothes and fast cars
and whiskey -- and you. What else do you need to know?"
Also notable is Stephen Graham as Baby Face Nelson,
Dillinger's number two, as brutal and breathtaking as
chilled vodka; and the soundtrack, one of the best in
years, featuring vintage, dangerous-sounding Depression-era
songs that mix magically with the robbery scenes.
And the film also draws a devastating portrait of
J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), the autocratic
founder of the FBI, who obsessively pursued Dillinger
and is shown here as callow, bureaucratic and always
trying to take credit for the achievements of others,
as in this scene in which he's quizzed
by a U.S. Senator:
SENATOR: How many [felons] have you actually caught?
HOOVER: We have arrested and arraigned 213 wanted felons.
SENATOR: No, I mean you, Director Hoover. How many?
HOOVER: As Director, I administer.
SENATOR: How many have you arrested personally?
HOOVER: [pause] I haven't arrested anybody.
SENATOR: You've never arrested anybody?
HOOVER: Of course not. I'm an administrator.
SENATOR: With no field experience, you're shockingly
unqualified aren't you, sir?
Hoover's agents, after many missteps, eventually got
Dillinger, outside a movie theater in Chicago, exactly
75 years ago to the day (this July 22); Mann, as always,
finds fresh, surprising and memorable ways to show the
carnage.
And the denouement might actually bring a tear to your
eye, making this a real rarity: a gangster movie that's
not just suspenseful and visually stunning but humorous
and moving, too.
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 2, 2009
The New Nixon Tapes, "Frost/Nixon," Title VII, etc.
Last year bumper stickers cropped up in my neighborhood
that said something like "Bush Makes Me Nostalgic For Nixon."
But I've never agreed with the stickers or the progressives
who say George W. Bush was worse than Richard Nixon as
president.
Look, I'm no Bush fan, but he was far preferable to Nixon
in almost every significant way. Whatever else you might
think about Bush, W. was transparent, unbigoted, and
there was almost no difference between the private Bush
and the public one. W.'s sins were mostly those of omission,
Nixon's of commission.
In other words, domestically at least, Bush had a laissez-faire,
less-government approach that led to neglectful policies,
disasters like the Katrina response and the partial collapse
of the U.S. economy. Nixon, however, was more predatory,
aggressively using the apparatus of the Federal government
to ruin political opponents.
Last week a new batch of Nixon tapes was released by the
National Archives that, once again, confirm almost
every nightmare we've ever had about him, one of the most
shocking being his racism. Abortion, said our 37th
president, the product of a mixed marriage between a
Quaker and a Methodist, may be necessary when there is a
pregnancy between "a black and a white." Hard to fathom
the sort of mind that would say such a thing.
The new Nixon tapes are reminders of why progressivism,
and even its more radical variants, made a lot of sense
in that era.
Nixon's Watergate-related crimes were so egregious that I
think Congress should seriously consider passing a bill
that urges courts to reevaluate the criminal cases of
citizens convicted of crimes committed in the course
of group political action between January 1969 and
August 1974, allowing judges to give greater weight to
such mitigating factors as abuses of power by the U.S.
government and by Hoover's F.B.I.
So, for example, if, today, some sixtysomething guy
who was unfairly caught up in a group arrest during, say,
an anti-war protest in 1970 wants to get his official
rap sheet cleared, such a law would make it easier for
him to do so.
I think there has to be some sort of additional formal
acknowledgment by the government that the Nixon regime
operated outside accepted legal frameworks -- and the best
way to do that might be to allow a reassessment of
legal cases involving dissent in those years.
The tapes also spurred me to revisit last year's
"Frost/Nixon" film and the actual Frost broadcasts
that it was based on. "Frost/Nixon" is beautifully crafted
and engaging but fundamentally flawed in its elevation
of Frost to a level that is way beyond his relatively
minor cultural and journalistic significance.
And some of the most riveting parts of the real Frost
interviews with Nixon weren't dramatized in the feature
(such as the real-life part when Frost nails Nixon about
the paying of hush money to the Watergate burglars,
citing 16 audiotaped examples of Nixon directly approving
such payments).
Some say this is the closest Nixon came to being put on
trial, but if that's so, Frost was the wrong prosecutor,
because he lacked the professional finesse of, say, the
best "60 Minutes" interviewers. For example, instead
of telling Nixon, "I would say,'that is an obstruction of
justice,'" Frost should have said something like, "What would
you say to someone who calls that an outright obstruction
of justice?" Frost repeatedly assumes the posture
of an advocate or prosecutor, not of a disinterested
journalist.
In the actual Frost Q&A, Nixon has the air and anger
of a generalisimo in a military coup. One gets the sense
that he saw his own vice-presidency of the 1950s as a
case of being second-in-command during America's military
regime -- Gen. Eisenhower's presidency -- even if Ike himself
never saw it that way. Elsewhere, unprompted, Nixon brings
up a characterization of H.R. Haldeman as a "Nazi storm
trooper" as though that excites him in some way. And when he
says, "I let the American people down," Nixon has a slight
smile on his face, as if he's really saying, "I finally got to
stick it to all those people who tormented me."
No wonder he got along with the despots of the
People's Republic of China, who we now see more
accurately as human rights violators and autocrats.
Nixon fit right in with the dictators who wanted
to quash peaceful dissent by shedding blood, and lots of it,
if necessary.
Sure, opening the door to China was a progressive move -- nobody
is going to deny that. But factoring in what we now know
about both Nixon and China, we can see his PRC policy as
motivated by a simpatico between a would-be dictator and the
genuine articles.
The conventional wisdom has always put Nixon in the moderate
wing of the GOP of '68, along with Nelson Rockefeller and
George "Brainwashed" Romney, but that's because the
conservative wing of the party at the time
was co-opted by George Wallace and his segregationists.
The ultra-conservatives had spun-off, and the only ones left
in the GOP (besides marginalized Goldwaterites) at the
time were so-called moderates.
Today, conservatism is rooted in supply-side Reganomics,
now discredited and really just a white-collar reformulation
of George Wallace's basic gist. What I mean is, in the
1960s, Republicans said, We don't want to use the government
as a tool to give black people equal access to institutions
and to their own rights. But after Reagan in the 1980s,
conservatives dressed up that belief in different clothing,
saying, We don't want to use the government as a tool to
give blacks fair access to the money that could
liberate them.
It's a different era in other ways, too. It would be
almost impossible to imagine America electing a president
as racist as Nixon today. And the fact of Barack Obama's
electoral triumph should spark a reevaluation of race-based
statutes and policies. For example, the assumptions
around Title VII protections appear to have been built
for a different era, a time when even the president of
the U.S. was full of irrational ideas about blacks (and
Jews and Italians and...).
In the recent Supreme Court case Ricci v. DeStefano (aka,
the New Haven firefighters case), the disparity of the
test results at issue is perhaps more convincingly
explained by the self-fulfilling prophecy brought
about by rulings such as the one Sonia Sotomayor was a
part of on the Second Circuit. If you signal to people that
they will pass a test whether they fail it or pass it, then
you are creating a disincentive for them to study for that
test. And that dynamic may explain the disparity better
than the Title VII assumption that a group's failure is
circumstantial evidence of its victimization by
discrimination.
Sotomayor's decision was more correct at the time she
made it and would have been more just at any time
before the U.S. presidential election of 2008, which
proved beyond a doubt that racism and bias are not as
prevalent or as debilitating as we once thought they were.
In the wake of the Obama election, which proved
that an African-American progressive can win amongst
white voters in red states (against a strong conservative
opponent), we must rethink some of the assumptions around
Title VII, much as we would reassess the disability
status of a person who was once unable to walk
but can now run and win top track and marathon
competitions.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 28, 2009
Wilco (The Concert)
Wilco performed last night in Berkeley
(above, a picture of Jeff Tweedy from '07).
[photo by Paul Iorio]
Jeff Tweedy and Wilco were soaring from peak to peak
last night on stage in Berkeley, Calif., topping themselves
with almost each new song. By mid-set, Tweedy was clearly
jazzed.
"I have to tell you, I think this is my favorite place
in the world to play," Tweedy said, referring to the Greek
Theater, where he was playing a sold out gig in support of
his band's new album, "Wilco (The Album)," due Tuesday and
already the number one non-Michael Jackson CD on Amazon.
And then he started strumming the opening chords of
"California Stars" -- and it would be hard to imagine
louder applause if Clapton had just ignited "Layla" -- and
singing Woody Guthrie's words and his own melody:
"I'd like to rest my heavy head tonight on a bed of
California stars..."
Under the California stars on this midsummer night, almost
everyone clapped and sang along (even in the hills above
the Greek where I heard the whole show) to a tune
that has an undeniably powerful effect on audiences,
perhaps the greatest song about the Golden State since
"California Dreamin'" itself.
As the gig progressed, the peaks got higher: an irresistible
"Handshake Drugs," an unstoppable "I'm the Man Who Loves You"
and the band's new single, "You Never Know," an instant Wilco
classic that recalls CCR and the Beatles without sounding
explicitly like either. (Also, an impressive "You're My Face.")
Anyway, this tour is just getting started, so see it if it
comes to your town (unless you're averse to enjoying yourself).
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 27, 2009
Last Night's David Byrne Show
I went to David Byrne's concert last night in Berkeley,
Calif., wanting to hear Talking Heads's classics, but
left the show humming a few of the new ones like
"One Fine Day" and the title track of his latest
album, "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today," a
surprisingly strong CD that I had underrated until
several hours ago.
That said, the dozen or so Talking Heads tracks he
and his band performed were exciting, particularly
"Life During Wartime," whose main riff now sounds
like a classic rock thing; "Once in a Lifetime,"
which comes to life magically onstage (even for
people listening in the hills above the theater, as
I was); and the unexpected "Road to Nowhere," which
he hasn't played much on this tour.
It was wonderful to hear Byrne sound as fresh
and un-burned out as he did when I first heard
him perform (in 1979 in New York's Central Park,
headlining a concert that included brand new arrivals
The B52s).
Last night, Byrne was affable, loquacious and in very
good humor: "It's great to be back here at the Greek
Theater," he started, as the crowd thundered. "...Appropriately,
we'll be doing some Greek tragedies. Euripides..."
Byrne continued his droll banter. "...You are welcome to
take pictures...We ask you, politely, to delete the
pictures where we don't look so good," he joked, before
energetically launching into openers "Strange Overtones"
and "I Zimbra."
His Berkeley gig was the last U.S. date of his tour
(or at least the last announced date); next, Byrne
goes to some real Greek theaters, in Athens and
elsewhere in Greece.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 25, 2009
Remembering Michael Jackson
Shocked, saddened by the unexpected death of Michael
Jackson, a pop music genius if anyone is. I saw him
in person only once, in '86, at a press conference in
New York, where he stood smiling on a stage in his
neo-Sgt. Pepper outfit, letting others do the talking,
speaking maybe ten or fifteen words. I remember
thinking he seemed overly stage-managed by his handlers
and was wishing he'd loosen up a bit.
At the time of his death this afternoon, he was preparing
to re-invent himself a la Garland, but instead ended up
resembling her in another way.
Back in 2007, on the 25th anniversary of the release of
"Thriller," I wrote this about Jackson for the Digression:
Now that the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson's "Thriller"
is being celebrated, perhaps it's time for a fresh
re-evaluation of Jackson. A good place to start is
the footage of the Jackson Five's first performance,
in 1969, on "The Ed Sullivan Show" (available on
disc three of Sullivan's "Rock 'n' Roll Classics" series).
Sullivan is not just enthusiastic but in genuine awe
after watching 10-year-old Michael and his brothers
light up the place with "I Wonder Who's Loving Her Now."
And he applauds Diana Ross, who's in the audience, for
her gargantuan A&R find. "The little fella in front is
incredible," says Sullivan of Michael, seemingly dazed by
the performance.
Michael Jackson's performance was both dazzling and sad;
dazzling because you could see what an epochal talent
Jackson was; but sad because...well, he looked and acted
more like a pressured adult than he does today. At age
10, he acted sort of like a 40-year-old, and at age 40,
he acted sort of like a 10-year-old. The anxious expression
on his face tells us everything we need to know about
the very adult pressures he was being saddled with
as a kid (show biz deadlines, contracts, complex cues,
etc.).
Sure, we all danced to the sounds of Michael Jackson's
lost childhood -- sounded great, didn't it? -- but many
of us now have no sympathy for or understanding of
the all-too-human flaws that loss has produced.
_____________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 16, 2009
Tehran Spring
Echoes of the Green Revolution were felt as far as Berkeley,
California, on Sunday when passionate protesters (above)
rallied to condemn the results of the so-called "election"
in Iran. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
Another shot of Sunday's protest. [photo by Paul Iorio]
Unfortunately, it's hard for the United States to
claim the clear moral high ground about the rigged
election and subsequent brutality toward protesters
in Tehran. After all, we denied victory to the
victor in our presidential race of 2000. We
shot unarmed student protesters at Kent State in
1970. We brutally beat dissenters in the
streets of Chicago in 1968 (while making sure
television networks couldn't cover the violence
live). And then, like a chain-smoking parent
telling his son not to smoke, we (the biggest
nuclear bomb maker of them all) forbid them
to have their own nuclear weapons.
So when we look at Tehran, we look in the mirror at
our own moments of right-wing oppression. Let's
condemn it there, but let's also stop it when it
surfaces here, too.
* * *
You know, I was not at all offended by David
Letterman's joke about Bristol Palin. And what's
with this brand new comedy rule that
you-can't-make-jokes-about-minors? "Seinfeld"
did it all the time (remember the episode about
George looking at an underage girl's cleavage?).
Jonathan Swift even joked about eating young
children (see: "A Modest Proposal") in a
satiric piece that irony-deficient people did not
understand. (For the record, Swift never
apologized for "A Modest Proposal" -- and he
shouldn't have.)
No, Letterman bowed to a cynical politician
who willfully misread his joke in order to
score points on the campaign trail.
That said, I am offended by the fact that
Letterman (or one of Letterman's writers) ripped
off one of my original ideas that I published in
my June 1, 2009, Daily Digression. I posted
a humorous bit -- "An Excerpt from Bob Woodward's
Upcoming Book on the Obama Administration" -- on
the morning of June 1. And that night (or the next
night) Letterman did his own "excerpt from Bob
Woodward's book on the Obama administration."
Does it feel right that a millionaire
comedian can rip off the ideas of a small
entrepreneur who writes an online column like this
one? Does that pass the fairness test for you?
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 5 - 8, 2009
A label on a U.S. government map of the Pyongyang area
stamped "Distribution Limited -- Destroy When No Longer
Needed." (I found it (and other rare maps) at a map
archive at the University of California at Berkeley.)
Just before they were busted near
the China-North Korea border last March, Current TV's
Laura Ling and Euna Lee found themselves within sight
of a North Korean winter wonderland of snow-covered
peaks, seven and eight thousand feet high, ranging
from slate gray to white. On that day, the shallow
Tumen River, the border between North Korea and
China, was looking less like a river and more like
a continuation of the ice that was already on the
ground, according to photos taken around that time.
For the crime of crossing the border without a visa
(and there is some dispute about which side of the
line they were on), Ling and Lee have been sentenced
to twelve years of hard labor (doing logging or mining,
in all likelihood).
That sentence, by the way, is effectively a death sentence
for many prisoners, who are forced to work 12-hour days
of strenuous labor on dangerously small amounts of food.
(Read about it in detail at
http://www.hrnk.org/hiddengulag/part1.html.)
And this is one of the least sensitive areas
in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
(DPRK), a desolate patch in the far northeast where
almost nobody lives (the only real city in the
vicinity is Yanji, on the China side, which is
around the size of Oakland, California).
The case of Ling and Lee underlines this lesson:
the best way for any outsider -- tourist or
journalist -- to see that northern
area is from deep inside Manchuria (with binoculars),
because that border is something of a Venus
Flytrap.
As for visiting the rest of North Korea from the
inside, forget it, if you're a U.S.citizen;
North Korea is as reclusive and secretive as
it's reputed to be. In the unlikely event that
you are allowed entry, you would almost
certainly be restricted to visiting Pyongyang,
and only certain parts of Pyongyang at that,
in a group led by a DPRK-approved tour guide.
Visitors would do well to heed the warnings and
advisories about travel to North Korea posted
on the U.S. State Dept. website, among them:
your hotel room and phone conversations may
be bugged; you can't take pictures of anything
without permission; you can't pay for anything
by credit card or personal check; you can't
bring anything resembling pornography into the
country; you can't take the subway or buy a bike;
it's illegal to dis ruler Kim Jong-il; if you
develop a medical problem, you should avoid
surgery (because "functioning x-ray
facilities are not generally available"); and if
you run afoul of the many eccentric, arbitrary
laws of the DPRK, you're on your own, as America
has no diplomatic relations with the North (you would
have to cry to the people at the Swedish Embassy in
Pyongyang, a "U.S. protecting power").
Whew! Still want to visit? If you could visit,
you might want to start with the most private
place in all of the DPRK: the Nuclear Research
Center at Yongbyon.
It would be an exaggeration, though
not much of one, to say that more Americans
have walked on the moon than have visited
the nuclear facility at Yongbyon, which
seems as sealed and insulated as the heavy lead
casks used for spent fuel rods.
Nestled in the Myohyang Mountains on the
winding Kuryong River, at the point where the
river becomes shaped like a horseshoe or a "U"
(as in Uranium), Yongbyon is the heart
of the nation's nuclear weapons development
program.
A rare detailed map of the Yongbyon area
(U.S. Army map, 1945).
Not only is access to the center heavily restricted,
but the only major highway to Yongbyon -- the
Myohyang-Pyongyang Expressway -- is from
Pyongyang and said to be for official use only.
In other words, when Kim Jong-il wants to drive
to see his budding nukes, if he drives, he has
to take the Expressway north for around 60 miles,
traveling for around 90 minutes through plains and
mountains on a highway that is, presumably, almost
completely car-less and truck-less.
Around halfway there, he'd pass near the city
of Suchon, site of a major uranium mine, and
then veer northeast through the Myohyang
Mountains, coal mining country.
After Kim arrives at the nuclear facility
area -- he probably exits the freeway near
a town called Kaechon -- he likely continues
by local roads near the Kuryong to
Yongbyon.
The nuclear facility, which is reportedly not
linked to the rest of the DPRK's electrical grid,
includes structures for fuel fabrication,
uranium processing, assembly of fuel elements,
etc. -- in other words, everything required
to makes nukes. Photos from a tower-toppling
event at the site in 2008 make the center
look like a factory in a green river valley.
Satellite photos make it seem something
like a warehouse district or a
Burbank movie studio backlot for a nuclear
disaster flick.
But Yongbyon is the real deal. Fueled by nearby
uranium mines, with facilities for reprocessing
plutonium, Yongbyon is currently back in
operation, according to Kim Jong-il's own
recent public pronouncements. And it's widely
believed that Kim might soon have fully
functioning Taepodong 2 missiles, which could
deliver a nuke as far as the Golden Gate Bridge.
Several miles to the west are far more modest digs:
the residences of nuke plant workers (the Homer
Simpsons of the DPRK), according to online maps.
All told, there's probably a better chance that
Yongbyon will be visiting America (so to speak)
than that Americans will be visiting Yongbyon any
time soon.
Far more accessible is Pyongyang, though that's
not saying much. (For the record, I've never had the
pleasure of visiting North Korea!) But it is possible to
catch a flight into the capital from Beijing (and there
have been irregular charter flights from Vladivostok,
Russia, in the past).
Pyongyang is a big, vertical city -- slightly larger
than Chicago -- built mostly after
1953, after the Korean War destroyed much
of the previous city.
But if you're looking for bars and restaurants,
they're as scarce as street crime here, which
is to say, almost non-existent.
Built on the flatlands and low hills around the
Taedong River, Pyongyang is full of tourist sights designed
to praise and glorify the current and past
governments of the DPRK.
Remember the Pueblo? Well, the North Koreans sure do,
and they now have that U.S. Navy ship -- the U.S.S. Pueblo,
which was captured by the North Koreans in 1968 after it
allegedly strayed into its territorial waters -- on display
in the river that runs through the capital.
Then there's North Korea's Statue of Liberty -- the Tower of
the Juche Idea -- a granite, riverside tower
topped with a bulb shaped like a flame, which dominates
a good part of the Pyongyang skyline. (Juche, by
the way, is the guiding philosophy of modern North Korea,
promoting self-reliance as a universal goal in both personal
life and governmental policy.)
The city's subway, the Pyongyang Metro,
seems more like an oddly ornate bomb
shelter, around 360 feet underground,
reportedly a record depth for a major
city subway system. Even official photos reveal
an overdressed facility, what with all those
chandeliers and colonnades -- not to mention
the propagandistic mosaics and art at many
of the stations.
To the northwest, there's an attractive hilly
neighborhood called the Peony Hill (Moranbong)
District, with elevations to around 300 feet (not
quite as tall as, say, San Francisco's
city heights). Near the Peony District is North
Korea's Harvard University (such that it has
one!): Kim il-Sung University, where Kim Jong-il
studied economics in the early 1960s. Government-released
photos of the campus make it look drab, sort of like
a combination meat-packing plant and reform school.
A U.S. government map (stamped "Distribution
Limited -- Destroy When No Longer Needed") shows
that the most notable landmark in the Pyongyang area
is a large reservoir to the city's southeast that's
absent on many other maps of the region.
A confidential U.S. government map of the greater
Pyongyang area that shows details that aren't on other
maps of the area (like that huge reservoir to the
southeast of the city).
Farther north is the international airport, where
virtually all passengers are either coming from or
going to Beijing.
Much farther north is the Yalu River, which forms
most of the border with China, and it's wide and
partially clogged with islands claimed by both
Manchuria and North Korea. It's an almost entirely
mountainous region whose star attraction is Mount
Baekdu, the highest peak on the peninsula at
nearly 9,000 feet, with a lake near the top
that straddles a once-disputed border.
Other areas along the Yalu are less idyllic,
according to photos published by Reuters and
other news organizations; the landscape around
Hyesan, for example, is a forest of
factory smokestacks; some of coastal Sinuiju,
in the far northwest, looks very dilapidated.
Finally, truly adventurous travelers looking
to enter the DPRK through a relatively weak
border can try taking a train from Russia into
the first North Korean town over the line, Tumangan.
(There are recent reports of lucky westerners
making the trip successfully and safely). The
two countries share both an eleven-mile border
in the northeasternmost part of the DPRK (which
is around 90 miles west of Vladivostok) and railroad
tracks, and those who make it to the peninsula can
continue their rail journey to the nearby port city
Najin (there's great cod fishing in Najin Bay, they
say) and even farther on to Pyongyang.
Unfortunately, making the reverse trip and getting
out of the DPRK is a much harder task, as Laura
Ling and Euna Lee now understand all too well.
C.I.A. map of the Russia-North Korea border area.
* * *
Satellite photo of the Yongbyon nuclear facility
(with my own annotations). (From the freekorea.us site.)
* * *
Some think this is the mansion where Kim Jong-il
stays when he's visiting his nuclear center
at Yongbyon, though it's impossible to confirm if
that's really his house. (I printed this out
from the freekorea.us website.)
* * *
The Yalu River border, near Sinuiju, China (map shows the
numerous islands in the Yalu that make the border
ambiguous). [Army Map Service, 1945]
* * *
Map of Pyongyang, from "The Rough Guide to
North Korea" travel guidebook.
* * * *
A C.I.A. province map of North Korea (2005).
* * * *
SIDEBAR
Juche, baby, Juche!
Appreciating the Oeuvre of Kim Jong-il
Kim Il-Sung University, economics major, class of '64!
[photo from nordkorea-info.de website]
If you're planning to visit North Korea anytime
soon -- and now that that naton is opening up,
this might be the time! -- the U.S. State Dept. wants
you to know that it's a criminal offense to dis
the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il while there. In fact,
as a tourist, you might be called upon by your
government guide to show some sign of respect to
the Dear Leader a few times during your stay.
So it might pay to bone up on some of the
many published writings of Kim Jong-il, who
has weighed in on a wide range of
topics over the decades, many of them far
from his collegiate major, economics.
In this 1968 essay -- "On the Direction Which Musical
Creation Should Take" -- Kim shows his own singular,
uh, taste as a music critic, as he raves against
all piano playing and praises a new song about his
dad! Here's an excerpt:
"I have called you creators here today to tell you
which direction musical creation should be developed
for it to conform with the Great Leader's revolutionary
thought on art and literature. Recently some success
has been achieved in musical creation. However, many
shortcomings are still evident and these must be remedied.
Among the songs that have been composed recently,
"General Kim Il Sung is Our Sun," "The Azaleas of our
Homeland" and "The People Sing of the Leader" are very
good....These songs are suited to the sentiments
of our people and are also easy to sing because
their melodies are elegant and yet soft and gentle.
Songs that are too jumpy with melodies that rise and
fall too sharply are both difficult to sing and unsuited
to the sentiments of Koreans...If composers are to
produce good songs, they must, above all else, have
a correct stand and attitude concerning music.
The Great Leader taught us that music, like all
other forms of art, should serve the revolution
and the people.
Listening to the song "General Kim Il Sung is Our Sun,"
I once again felt deep in my heart that the leader is
a genius of art...
From now on, woodwind instruments should be used as
little as possible in instrumental music. The use of
the piano should also be reviewed. The piano does
not stimulate the interest of people very much
because it disrupts that melody when it is played.
The frequent use of the piano, in accompaniment, is
outdated and does not suit the tastes of our people.
In the future, the piano should not be used in a
performance or accompaniment by a single person.
Songs should be accompanied mainly by a small
instrumental ensemble. An orchestra of our national
instruments should be developed."
-- essay from "Kim Jong-il: Selected Works" (1992),
Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang.
A sample of The Pyongyang Times's tough, skeptical
investigative coverage of Kim Jong-Il, shown here at
the dawn of his reign in '95.
But I digress. Paul
________________________________________________
TRHE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 4, 2009
A line Obama should've added to his speech in Cairo:
"He who doesn't want to be treated like a stereotype
shouldn't act stereotypically."
____________________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 3, 2009
Wow! According to MySpace, my new song
"Life's Just a Single Blast" has already been
played hundreds of times by visitors to my MySpace
page -- and I just uploaded the song to the site
around a week ago!
I'm grateful and glad listeners are
connecting with the tune (and I'm thankful great
radio stations like KCRW and KALX have aired it).
Check it out (and download it for free) at
www.myspace.com/paulioriosongs.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- Yes, all songs on my MySpace site were
composed, performed and produced solely by me!
____________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 1, 2009
Hey, dig those pics of Barack back when he was a member
of Sly and the Family Stone! Very phresh! And now
he's hangin' out in the West Village, too. I'm liking
this guy more and more!
And, the other day, I heard a recording of him singing, and
-- guess what? -- he's not a bad singer at all. He croons
plenty better than Clinton (Bill, that is) plays
sax. He should cut a record.
* * *
Excerpt from Joe Biden's tell-all memoir, "Biding My
Time: My Years as Vice President," which I'm guessing
will be released around 2025:
"You know, I never really had the chemistry I
should've had with some of Obama's inner circle. I
think a few of them always thought they
were just a little bit better than cup o'-Joe Joe
Biden, the Amtrak-riding senior Senator who never got
in the Georgetown swim. I have to confess I was shut
out of too many decision-making meetings and my advice
went unheeded too often."
* * *
Excerpt from Bob Woodward's upcoming (and unwritten) book
on the Obama administration:
President Obama's voice on the telephone was tense,
agitated, unlike his usual calm. The President
wanted to talk with Vice President Biden in
the Oval Office, right now, post-haste.
"I do have some business in Wilmington this morning,"
the vice president said.
"Cancel it," said the president tersely.
"Yessir, I'll be right over to the Oval Office,"
Biden said.
When the vice president arrived, Obama wasted no time
getting to the point.
"Joe, what were you thinking?! 'Everyone should stay away
from crowded places' because of the H1N1?"
"I'm sorry Mr. President -- a poor choice of words on
my part," said the vice-president, scratching the part of
his head where he had had surgery years before.
"I know you know that's exactly the sort of thing
that can cause a panic, Joe."
"I didn't mean for it to come out that way," Biden said.
"Joe, you know I love your frankness, your candor. That's
why I picked you," continued the president. "But let's try not
to stray from the script anymore, ok?"
"Yessir, Mr. President."
* * * *
Well, some of you have heard my new song "Life's Just a
Single Blast" on KCRW, KALX and other great radio
stations (thanks a lot to those stations for playing
it, by the way!).
Now everyone can hear "Life's Just a Single Blast"
on MySpace. Just go to
www.myspace.com/paulioriosongs to listen to it.
I must admit that of all the hundreds of songs
I've written over the years, "Life's Just a Single Blast"
has connected with more listeners than any of
my other ones. And I'm real glad people seem
to enjoy it! (You can download it for free for
now -- it's on me.)
(P.S. -- I'm posting new uploads to MySpace every few
days so you can have a fresh selection of the many
songs I've written and recorded. Today I added "Time
Begins to End." Of course, every song I've posted
is composed, performed and produced solely by me.)
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for May 20, 2009
Maureen Dowd Should Take Six Months Off
And not just because she plagiarized Josh
Marshall's Talking Points Memo in her
column last Sunday -- though that's a serious
journalistic felony -- but because she's
becoming predictable, repetitive, stale,
off-key. She needs to freshen up her prose,
do something else for several months and
then come back to her twice-weekly column.
First, the plagiarism scandal, which resonates
in Dowd's case because: 1) she actually defended
the disgraced Jayson Blair in print in the early
stages of the scandal that almost brought down her
newspaper, and 2) there have been several
instances (and I've mentioned them in the Digression
over the months (search columns posted below
for the name "Maureen Dowd" to find them)) where
she appears to have swiped unique coinages or phrases
or ideas of my own (to cite only one example, I
coined the term "Palinista" to refer to supporters
of Sarah Palin last year and the very next day she
also used the word "Palinista," which had not been
used by anyone else up to that point).
In the current Maureen Dowd plagiarism case,
she plagiarized, virtually verbatim, an entire
paragraph from Marshall without crediting him.
Here's what she wrote:
"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why,
if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to
happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was
looking for what was essentially political information to justify
the invasion of Iraq."
And here's what she plagiarized from Marshall:
"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the
torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly
during the period when we were looking for what was essentially
political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."
Now, according to media blogs, she's justifying
herself with what appears to be a transparent lie: that
a friend discussed the idea with her on the phone, and
then she repurposed that idea for her column.
So we're supposed to believe that her friend
discussed the idea with her using Marshall's
exact words?! And that Maureen took word-for-word
dictation from her friend?! You expect us to
believe that?! That's High Cheney, Maureen. No
wonder you believed Jayson back when.
Now there appears to be a second excuse: that
she cut-and-pasted the passage and
then mistook it for her own. (Hey, she
wasn't writing a book, for crissakes, just
a dinky column!)
So in addition to her plagiarism violation, she
now now has a credibility problem, too. As her
dad the cop probably told her: sometimes the
cover-up is worse than the crime.
And as I mentioned, she's also becoming too
predictable. I mean, here's my own imitation of a
typical Maureen Dowd column:
"W was a president without a precedent when it came to torture,
but might the closing of Gitmo turn out to be a precedent
without a president?
Is Barack Obama second-guessing his own decision to
shut down the un-American detention center designed to
defend America?"
Typical (and right off the top of my head, too). There's
too much word reversal, idea reversal stuff, and
labored convoluted wordplay. She should take
six months off and come back to the paper around
Thanksgiving.
But that won't happen. She'll get a pass (much as
the far less well-known and far less-talented Edward
Guthmann got a pass at the San Francisco Chronicle).
Why? Because if you're friends with the right
people in journalism, your editors will overlook
almost any transgression. If you're not,
you'll be fired for merely misplacing a comma.
* * * *
Californians to California: "Drop Dead"
Funny thing is, the election in California
yesterday, in which almost all of several
ballot propositions to raise taxes were
defeated at the polls, seemed to generate
more media coverage in the national press than
locally. I live in the Bay Area and didn't
vote, and I usually do, and I don't know
anyone who did. There was almost zero buzz
about the ballot measures -- and most
of the local news coverage was about the
low voter turn-out.
I know: if the propositions had passed, they
would have helped to solve the huge budget
shortfall that the state government now has
to offset with deep spending cuts.
But in this recession, when everybody except
the state of California seems to be getting a
federal bail-out, I and most Californians
echoed that famous New York newspaper
headline of the 1970s and, on Tuesday, said
to the state, "Drop dead!"
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for May 3, 2009
Last Night's Van Morrison Show
There are tales and legends of Van Morrison concerts
at which Van rides a sunbeam up through the cumulus
clouds and into centrifugal orbit -- and last night's
show in Berkeley, Calif., or part of last night's
show, was sort of like that.
I'm referring to his performance of "Like Young Lovers
Do," which simply overflowed with melody into the
open-air Greek Theater and up to the hills above
(where I heard it) and into the clouds, where I'm
sure that deities from Zeus to Krishna were
sitting, catching a freebie, catching the
sounds of heaven on Earth, on this
intermittently rainy night.
"Then we sat on our own star and dreamed...,"
he sang, and he sang it as if he had just
freshly composed it, with the lyrics, of
course, just sounds, a way to facilitate
emotion, given that Van generally sings
(or scats) along the contours of the feeling
of the moment, whatever that sounds like.
Whatever. If you haven't yet discovered the
live version of "Like Young Lovers Do," do
so. (It's available on his "Live at the
Hollywood Bowl" DVD, released a couple
months ago.) By the way, can you imagine
what David Hidalgo and Los Lobos could
do with that one?
The design of the concert was to perform
his entire "Astral Weeks" album, after
a warm-up set of Van classics, so
"Like Young Lovers Do," the peak of
a concert full of peaks, came around
mid-way through the "Astral" segment.
Earlier, Morrison had performed "Moondance,"
reimagined in a jazzier arrangement, an
irresistible "Wild Night" and a version
of Them's "Baby Please Don't Go" that had
people dancing wildly -- plus plenty
of radical scatting that made it seem
like Van was trying to re-invent singing
itself.
This tour is well worth checking out.
And you can see him on Leno this Wednesday.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 29, 2009
Suddenly, unexpectedly, the balance of
political power in the United States has
come down to one single individual: the
guy who used to play Stuart Smalley on
"Saturday Night Live." Who'd-a thunk it?
* * *
Now that the state of Florida is
considering offering car license
plates with a picture of Jesus Christ
on them, here are a couple captions
to go with the pic.
"Right Guard Dry: never let them see you sweat!"
"Gee, Dad," says Jesus from the cross, "thanks
a whole lot -- you were a huge help!"
* * *
I've decided that Bill Maher is a funnier Lenny
Bruce -- or (more accurately) a funny Lenny
Bruce.
* * *
I don't have a pet dog, but if I ever get
one, I've decided to call him or her Rolf.
But I digress. Paul
[picture of crucifixion by unknown artist]
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 27, 2009
"Dr." Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ph.D.; "Those who
believe fact-based truths are racist" is
the level of a lot of what he says. [drawing
by Paul Iorio]
Funny thing about personal experience; it doesn't
always have a direct, linear effect on what
you do or say. A songwriter, for example, can
have personal tragedy or trauma in his life and
still continue to write mediocre songs. But
another writer who is merely moved by someone
else's tragedy or trauma can come up with a
work of genius like "Hey Jude" (as Paul McCartney
did, loosely playing off circumstances
surrounding John Lennon's painful divorce
from Cynthia). Interesting that Lennon
himself, as brilliant as he was, never came up
with anything nearly as moving that directly
related to his marital break-up.
Likewise, lots of soldiers endure the trauma of combat,
but very, very few come up with a work on the order of
"The Naked and the Dead" or "Platoon." Most soldiers
who have seen friends die on the battlefield write
only banalities and doggerel and are unable to
transform their experience into meaningful art.
One of the greatest war novels ever -- "The Red
Badge of Courage" -- was penned by someone who
never saw a day of combat, Stephen Crane.
And, likewise, one can have an education and still
not be educated at all. Witness Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who has a Ph.D. but is still
"astonishingly uneducated," to quote
Columbia University president Lee Bollinger.
The latest evidence of that was his appearance on
ABC's "This Week," in which he said the following:
"The Holocaust, if this is indeed a historical event,
why do they want to turn it into a holy thing? And
nobody should be allowed to ask any questions about
that? Nobody study it, research it,
permit it to research it. Why?"
One wonders about such a mind. If Ahmadinejad doubts
the Holocaust, what else does he doubt? The existence
of gravity? The fact that the Earth is round? Does
he have the same problem with all fact-based truth?
Does he only accept mythological truth?
And Ahmadinejad seems to be drawing a feeble
parallel, saying, See, you're as totalitarian in
the West as we are when it comes to something
you hold sacred.
But that's not true. If he wants to deny the Holocaust,
we in the West say, go ahead. We allow you the freedom
to publicly say and write that the holocaust didn't
happen. Sure, people might get angry, but there would
be no deadly riots in the streets as a result
(the way there were riots after the Jyllands-Posten
published the irreverent Mohammed cartoons).
What Ahmadinejad and other fundamentalists don't
understand is there are many different tools with
which to respond to something offensive (e.g.,
boycotts, civil disobedience, opinion pieces,
etc.). But, when offended, too many Muslim
extremists choose homicide from their tool kit -- as
their first and only response.
My feeling about newspapers and public figures that
deny the Holocaust is that they bring on their own
punishment: lack of credibility. Who would ever
take such a source seriously again?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is:
too many members of the U.N. General Assembly --
and too many Ph.Ds with disdain for
fact-based truth.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 26, 2009
The Dalai Lama Visits Berkeley, Calif.!
Free Tibet buttons (which, by the way, aren't
free) on sale outside the theater where the Dalai
Lama appeared in Berkeley yesterday afternoon.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
--
Students hanging out of dorm windows at
the University of California to catch a
glimpse of His Holiness.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 23, 2009
What Ever Happened to Al Gore?
my own Al Gore sighting, as seen at
around two o'clock this afternoon in
Berkeley, Calif. (above).
[photo by Paul Iorio]
I was wondering the other day: where did Al Gore
go? He seems to be the only first-rank Democrat
who hasn't become an Obama appointee or subsidiary.
In fact, he's been sort of invisible since November.
Well, I got my answer this afternoon. Gore was
speaking at the University of California at Berkeley,
and I dropped by to listen.
And I am here to report first-hand that he has
not reverted to his post-Beatles break-up beard,
that he seems almost younger than yesterday,
even slimmer than when I last saw him (two-and-a-half
years ago at a Prop 87 rally), though grayer, looking
much like the ex-president he'd finally be now, if
he hadn't been unfairly blocked from taking
the job he won in '00.
And on this day after Earth Day, his speech was
vintage Gore ("The entire north polar ice cap is
melting right before our eyes....."), though the
actual reason for his appearance was a
groundbreaking ceremony for UC's Blum Center.
For those wondering: Gore didn't mention whether
he'd run again for president in 2016 (or whether he'd
pull a -- banish the thought! -- primary challenge
in 2012).
* * * *
Obama's First Hundred Days
Barack Obama may well become our greatest
president since JFK and has probably already
inspired as many people as Kennedy did by
'62. Time will tell. But one hundred days
into his presidency, he still seems a bit
like the hip, super-smart substitute teacher
at the experimental school who does wonders
with the students and maybe can even help
junior get out of his funk! (And wouldn't
it be great if we could put him on staff
permanently?)
Joking aside, Obama seems to be made for this job.
I don't think there's another recent president
who has had fewer mis-steps and made fewer
mistakes in the post-inaugural months. And
he's checking off his campaign promises, one
by one, doing exactly what he said he'd do during
the election season.
I bet some of his supporters must be thinking
that this might be the time to repeal the 22nd
Amendment (because he's only going to be 55
when he finishes his second term, if he wins
in '12).
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 22, 2009
The Rise of Religious Tyranny
(and Why Blasphemy Makes More Sense Than Ever!)
The badly-educated religious totalitarians who
wrote this trashy U.N. resolution (above) probably
would've stoned Copernicus and Galileo for "religious
defamation." (Has Obama condemned it yet?)
--
The new U.N. logo?
--
Written by lazy plagiarists who shamelessly
stole supernatural tall tales from "The Book of the
Dead," the Hammurabi Code, etc.
--
Now that it's finally being released in
the U.K., might Bill Maher's very funny
"Religulous" run afoul of Britain's
antiquated blasphemy laws?
And so the United Nations's so-called Human Rights
Council -- a mis-named group dominated by Muslim
fundamentalist sympathizers that (by the way) has
yet to formally condemn the many human rights abuses
under Sharia law -- has drafted a
resolution condemning what it calls "religious
defamation."
Free speech, says the non-binding resolution
passed a couple weeks ago by the General
Assembly, should be restricted to protect
"morals and general welfare," which
pretty much opens the door for censorship
by any government for any arbitrary reason.
Because the backers of the resolution, led by
Pakistan and cheered on by Hugo Chavez, obviously
did not do much critical thinking in drafting it,
let me ask the questions they should have.
Are you aware that religious defamation is what
scientists like Copernicus and Galileo were accused
of? Are you aware that many major advances in
science and philosophy throughout history were
once called blasphemous by religious literalists?
If you're against "defamation" of religion, then
why aren't you also against defamation of
political groups, governments and individuals?
Is it a human rights violation to make a joke
about the Saudi King? Is it a human rights
violation to ridicule the Republican party?
If not, why not? If I consider
my political beliefs more sacred than
my religious beliefs, then why shouldn't
my political beliefs be equally protected
against defamation? By defamation, don't
you really mean...merely criticizing
religion?
Lately there has been a lot of platitudinous
talk about showing respect for various
religious fanatics. But certainly there
are some people and groups not worthy of
respect. For example, bin Laden
and his followers are not worthy of respect
(just as the Ku Klux Klan and Charles Manson
are not worthy of respect). Others who have
not earned respect are: the Muslim
fanatic who murdered Theo van Gogh, abortion
clinic bombers, Islamic militants
who kill people because they're offended
by a mere cartoon. (Muslim militants have
apparently become the new Rodney Dangerfields!)
You see, the people who wrote that U.N.
resolution misunderstand the real problem,
which is religious totalitarianism and
the tyranny of absolutism. Muslim
fundamentalists simply don't want to give
Western progressives the same freedoms that
progressives give to fundamentalists.
In the U.S. and in most of Europe, we
say: if you want to prohibit pictures
of Mohammed in your mosque, you can do so.
You can lay down the law within your
mosque and forbid any drawings of
deities. That is your freedom.
But Muslim fundamentalists do not reciprocate.
They don't want to grant secularists the
freedom to display pictures of
deities if that's their choice.
The people who wrote that U.N. resolution
don't understand that Mohammed, to me,
is a figure from history, not from
religion -- and I will portray him (and
Napoleon and Hirohito and Plato
and Mao, etc.) any way I choose, thank
you very much.
It's disturbing that even Britain has
blasphemy laws on the books, but,
thankfully, that hasn't stopped the recent
release of Bill Maher's very funny and
wise documentary "Religulous" in the U.K.
In "Religulous" -- the top grossing documentary
of '08, yet unfairly shut out from the Best
Feature Docu category at the Oscars -- Maher
shows wit worthy of Groucho as he takes
apart the supernatural plagiarized tales of
the Bible.
One of the best parts of the film is when
Maher shows how the supposed biographical
details about Jesus (e.g., the virgin birth,
the resurrection, his ability to heal the
sick, etc.) are suspiciously similar to and
seem to have been lifted from stories about
the lives of deities from centuries before
the supposed birth of Christ (e.g., Mithra,
Attis, Buddha, etc.).
In other words, the holy tall tales told
for centuries in ancient Egypt and India
were such a great box office draw in Cairo
and Bombay that the writers of the Bible
couldn't help but steal some of the best
bits for their brand new character, Jesus
Christ, star of a sketch in which a father
(God) is OK with having his only son
murdered by a mob. (How heartwarming!
And one of Melissa Huckabee's favorite
stories, by the way.)
And the way the Koran steals from the Torah,
you'd think the holy wars would be about
copyright infringement!
Elsewhere in the Bible, Maher notes, there are
supernatural yarns worthy of Marvel comics.
As he notes, it's astonishing that otherwise
smart adults actually believe cartoons about
a talking snake, a man living inside
a whale, and a virgin birth.
By the way, Ray Suarez's comment that fewer people
went to church less often in America in the 18th
century may be true, but it's also true that
far more people back then took the Bible more
literally than they do today; as science
continues to explain phenomena that the Bible
had attributed to supernatural forces, the
overall trend is, generally, away from
fundamentalism.
As I said, a terrific docu. I only wish Maher
had interviewed the loony former mayor of
Inglis, Florida, who memorably banned
the devil from her town! Also wish he had
been able to use Tom Lehrer's "The Vatican
Rag" for his segment at the Vatican.
To digress for a moment: I've always thought
that if the story of Jesus Christ were true,
and it's probably not, and if Jesus were
to come back to life and to Earth, Jesus
would probably not be well-liked. I mean,
after the initial novelty of Christ's
resurrection wore off, people would get
very tired of Jesus throwing around his weight
and saying arrogant and egotistical things
like "I am the way and the light" and "I
am the son of God" and "Hey, babe, you
can't worship anyone but me." Imagine him
demanding a good table at a crowded restaurant
because "I'm the son of God." After two or
three months of this, I can imagine people would
want to crucify him all over again!
Anyway, see "Religulous," if you haven't already.
And put that U.N. resolution to good use -- in
the bird cage.
But I digress. Paul
[U.N. resolution from www.un.org; satiric U.N.
logo by Paul Iorio (Mohammed drawing from
Jyllands-Posten); Holy Bible from
ancient-future.net; "Religulous" image
from the Lion's Gate DVD.]
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 10 - 12, 2009
New on DVD: "Slumdog Millionaire"
The TV biz is murder in India, no? They actually
dish out torture for suspected game show
cheating? I can't imagine the authorities
could torture someone more if they thought
he knew where bin Laden was hiding. (I hope
Regis isn't like that!)
That said, the quiz show subplot is
surprisingly secondary, or almost
secondary, and doesn't even fully kick
in until the 90-minute mark, despite the
film makers's contrived attempts to show
how the questions on the TV program relate
to past experiences in Jamal's life. Still,
one wonders how a guy raised in bookless
squalor came to have such an expanse of
knowledge (and such fluency in English,
too!). In somewhat similarly-themed
movies about braniacs, like "Quiz Show" or
"Good Will Hunting," one gets a real sense
of a character's brilliance permeating other
parts of his life -- but here, Jamal
doesn't seem exceptionally bright
off screen.
Also, he's handed over to the cops (by
the host of the show, no less!) and
suspected of fraud (an accusation that
even makes headlines!) and then is allowed
to return to the program for the final
round, all freshened up after a session
of torture, his reputation restored.
But such loose ends can be overlooked
because the film making -- by the guy who
directed "Trainspotting" and the writer
who scripted "The Full Monty" -- is genuinely
seductive. Despite its flaws, "Slumdog" is
gripping, harrowing, scalding, touching,
suspenseful, twisty.
Everyone (rightly) talks about how impressive
Dev Patel is as Jamal, but the real unsung
actor here is Madhur Mittal, the guy
who plays the older version of Salim,
who benefits from some memorable lines
and makes the most of some very
small lines (e.g., "Still?!,"
which Mittal makes so poignant; it takes a
resourceful actor to draw out the vast meaning
in that one small word).
But Mittal is also the victim of an oddly
conceived scene in which he covers himself
with money in a bathtub (it would have been
better if he had filled the tub with dough
and then put a match to it, saying something
like, "Hey, Javed, here's your money").
Movie could've easily been more multidimensional,
showing how some of the elements of "Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire" are much like the capitalist
system itself, in that you can lose (or gain)
everything with a single risk.
Still, it's well worth seeing, though not the
best movie of 2008 (that was "The Wrestler,"
which itself could have been far greater if
the film makers had merely added 15 minutes
of footage dramatizing The Ram's glory days
as a wrestler; instead, it's like "Raging Bull"
without LaMotta's early period).
The dance sequence finale is winning, a sweetener
that's necessary in order to counterbalance the
brutality elsewhere, which threatens to overwhelm
one's overall memory of the film.
DVD has no extras of note, no deleted scenes,
but the film is so meaty that you don't
notice that.
* * *
Bravo to Madonna Ciccone for donating money to
the earthquake victims near L'Aquila, Italy.
Far less admirable is Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi, who surveyed the tent city of those
made homeless by the quake and said it looked
"like a weekend of camping." And I guess he
must think the Nazi concentration camps were
just a huge slumber party.
* * *
the perfect song for Good Friday and Easter!
* * * *
Turns out that the face of pure evil is
(evidently) a Sunday school teacher, the
granddaughter of a pastor. (Above, the
official booking info for the suspected
Tracy killer.) By the way, if she did
do it, you can bet it wasn't the first time
she had done something like that. Are there
any similar unsolved murders in the area of
L.A. County where she lived before last year?
In all likelihood, she wouldn't have been
so brazen as to commit an abduction
in broad daylight (and in public) if
she hadn't done it before and gotten
away with it.
* * * *
Newt Gingrich has once again proved how heartless
he is by calling the hoopla around the First Pooch,
Bo, "stupid." Aw, c'mon! Thatza cute pup. Look
at those boots. And you gotta love the name, redolent
as it is of Bo Diddley, who would be smiling right
about now. The best White House pooch in a
long time (and better than the one that bit that
Reuters reporter!).
* * * *
One way to manage the pirate problem off Somalia
might be to have the Coast Guard or Navy send out
decoy ships (posing as private vessels) on a regular
basis to those waters. Then we can capture and
jail the pirates who take the bait, creating a
huge downside for the bandits, reducing their
confidence and incentive.
* * * *
People continue to ask about songs I wrote
for my album "75 Songs," which I self-released
last year. (And I must say I'm very grateful
to those who have connected with my songs
and have played them on the radio!)
A couple people asked about how "Time Begins
To End" came about, and another asked about
"Chasin' You."
"Time Begins To End" is perhaps the most
personally cathartic song I've written,
in that I felt better after writing it.
Based loosely on the very sad experience
of having seen my father just before
he died of cancer.
I wrote "Time Begins to End" in my apartment
in Berkeley, Calif., between late December 2007
and early January 2008. I began
writing the song in late November 2007 when
the line "asleep at the wake" came to me
out of the blue. In late December '07
and early January '08, the whole song came
rolling out of me, melody and lyric in
one piece.
Finished it on January 13, 2008, and (as
usual) sent it to myself in an email,
presented below:
* *
And (below) here's the line I came up with that gave
birth to the track:
* *
"Chasin' You" has a different origin. I
wrote that one in 1981 during my New York
years, put it on a 1994 cassette of my
own songs, which I didn't release until
1998, when I put together around a dozen
of my songs on a cassette tape
and sent it around (to around ten people!).
[None of my songs was released on CD
until late 2005 -- except "Ten Years Ago."]
I wrote most of "Chasin' You" while living on
West 74th Street in Manhattan. And I wrote
the rest in '85 after I had moved
to a new place on West 110th St. that
had a broken window (actually, the whole
window frame was pushed from its hinges
after I tried to buttress it during a
hurricane -- yes, a hurricane! -- in New
York City in the late Fall of '85).
Anyway, through this busted window I could see,
in a nearby apartment building, a really hot
looking woman who was dancing in her room
virtually naked. And that's when I came up
with (among other things!) a new song,
or a fragment of a song, that went,
"Fortunate for me, good luck dances naked
in broken windows."
But I was unable to develop the fragment, though
I found it fit well as a sort of cryptic coda
to "Chasin' You," and that's how that part
was written.
the "broken window" in my apartment (above)
on the Upper West Side from which I once saw a
beautiful woman dancing naked (fortunate for
me!), inspiring part of my song
"Chasin' You" in the 1980s. (window wasn't
broken when this shot was taken!)
* *
"Chasin' You" (number 9 on the list, above) was one of
around 17 songs I had written that I was going to
release in 1994; most didn't get released until
1998 (on cassette tape, to around 10 people!). None
of my songs was released on CD until late 2005 --
except "Ten Years Ago."
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 9, 2009
Kurt Cobain died 15 years ago this week,
which means he would've been 42 by now,
older than John Lennon ever was, but only
halfway to a full lifespan, which
should've ended naturally sometime in
the 2040s, in mid-century, after he had
created at least a couple dozen new
albums, both solo and with Nirvana and
perhaps with others, too.
But he ended it way back in the 20th
century, in the pre-Internet era, so
long ago that no undergrad currently in
college could have a contemporaneous
memory of the release of a brand new
Nirvana studio album.
Anyway, to mark the 15th anniversary, here
are some original photos I shot in 2002 of
Cobain's house and of other Cobain-related
locations in Seattle. Several photos from
this series were published
by the Washington Post in 2002,
accompanying a story I'd written and
reported about Seattle for the paper.
But most of these shots have never been
published, so I thought I'd share
them here.
a bench marked with graffiti about
Cobain, next door to Cobain's house. [photo
by Paul Iorio]
* * *
the house where Cobain killed himself.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
Cobain lived in the Madrona district
of Seattle, on Lake Washington. (As you
can see, I was there on a very rare
blue-sky day in Seattle!) [photo by Paul Iorio.]
* * *
Seattle's Re-Bar, site of the "Nevermind"
record release party, from which Nirvana
was bounced for food fighting! [photo
by Paul Iorio]
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 8, 2009
A friend asked me the other day what I
meant when I wrote a particular line in
my song "Love's the Heaven You Can't Reach."
The line she wanted to know about is:
"She's living in a hole/the pilot light
has gone from blue to yellow/you can
almost see the CO in the air."
I wrote that line after going to an
apartment (I won't say whose!) in the
Bay Area in '08 and feeling dizzy
because of the air quality in the
place. I suspected there was CO in the air
and noticed that the pilot light on the
heater was a sort of sickly yellow. Later,
at my computer, I Googled "pilot light" and "CO"
and found that one major indicator of CO emission
is when a gas pilot light goes from a healthy
blue to a flickering yellow. So I put that
detail into the song, which is sort of about
a woman living a boho Lower East Side
existence, and it fit nicely.
I wrote "Love's The Heaven You Can't Reach"
as I've written almost all of my songs, on
the tape recorder, with the lyric and melody
coming simultaneously. (And then, as I also
always do, I emailed the song to myself
so that I would know exactly when I came
up with it. Hence, for what it's worth, I
know I finished "Love's The Heaven" on
August 9, 2008, at around 9:30 AM! (A nifty
device, this email thing, eh?) Studio
version is from an August 19 session, by
the way. For anyone interested, here's
the top of the email I sent to myself:
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 6, 2009
The word is out: Crime, the pioneering San Francisco
punk band of the 1970s, will definitely appear on
Marshall Stax's show on KALX radio next week!
For those unfamiliar with his program, it
features music by the unsigned and the
unsung, happens every Monday at 6pm, and
is one of the more inspired shows on the
airwaves. (And I'm not just saying that
because he has played my own songs on
KALX from time to time; I'd still tune in,
even if he didn't air my stuff!) Anyway,
his show is called the Next Big Thing and
(I think)it's streamed live on the web -- and
the Crime appearance should be
well worth checking out.
* * * *
I just wrote a story with John D. Thomas
for the online edition of Playboy magazine;
it's a humorous look at all those
misleading ads that A.I.G. and other financial
services firms ran before the recession,
and here it is:
http://www.playboy.com/articles/ad-it-up-financial-institution-ads/index.html
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 5, 2009
On the Sunday morning talk shows this morning,
all the expert analyses of the North Korean
missile test omitted one of the most chilling and
truly dangerous elements of the launch:
the fact that Kim Jong Il recently had a
major stroke. As any medical professional
would tell you, strokes can easily turn
someone into a clinical paranoid or create
other kinds of mental illnesses.
Which is doubly troubling in Kim's case,
given that the North Korean leader had
obvious paranoid tendencies before
the stroke.
Isn't this what we've all been worried about
since the birth of the Bomb: that some
deranged leader will become mentally unstable
enough to start lobbing nukes? I guess we
should be truly alarmed if Kim starts talking
about his "precious bodily fluids."
It's altogether possible that, a year from now,
President Obama will be saying stuff like: "If you
told me a year ago that my main foreign policy
concern right now would be American involvement
in the war between North Korea and Japan, I'd
have said you're wayy off."
* * * *
Good for George Stephanopoulos for questioning
Obama advisor Susan Rice about the
administration's silence on the horrific flogging
of a 17-year old Pakistani girl by the Taliban
for refusing to marry some local geezer (or some
such "offense") -- an act of violence that is
all the talk in Pakistan and elsewhere lately.
Susan Rice was so outraged by the brutal beating
that she even went so far as to call it
"inconsistent." How Dukakasian.
I know what they're probably thinking in the White House:
let Zardari handle it; it will only harden
the Taliban position if the Great Infidel (aka, the USA)
weighs in with predictable condemnation.
Maybe. But the application of Sharia law
in this sort of way is a human rights
violation, plain and simple, and we should
call it exactly what it is: barbaric.
Cultural relativism doesn't apply in this
case, any more than it did when Dr. Mengele
did his medical experiments in Germany in
the 1940s.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 4, 2009
Editing Maureen Dowd
While reading Maureen Dowd's latest column in The
New York Times (3/5/09), I couldn't help but think
that perhaps she needed the help of an editor
this time.
So I've decided to present Dowd's column here,
along with my own editorial comments and suggestions
(in bold caps):
Barack Obama grew up learning how to slip in and out
of different worlds — black and white, foreign and
American, rich and poor.
The son of an anthropologist [WHO BARACK NEVER KNEW
AND ONLY MET ONCE], he developed a lot of “tricks,”
as he put it, training himself to be a close observer
of human nature [YOU'RE SAYING THAT AS IF HE LEARNED
THAT BY BEING THE SON OF AN ANTHROPOLOGIST, BUT (AS
I SAID) HE NEVER KNEW HIS DAD], figuring out what
others needed so he could get where he wanted to go.
He was able to banish any fear in older white folk
that he was an angry young black man — with smiles,
courtesy and, as he wrote in his memoir, “no sudden
moves.” He learned negotiating skills as a community
organizer and was able to ascend to the presidency
of the Harvard Law Review by letting a disparate
band of self-regarding eggheads feel that they were
being heard and heeded [THIS PART READS LIKE A GLOWING
OBIT, MAUREEN. BTW, ARE YOU IMPLYING HE WAS
BEING DECEPTIVE AND DUPLICITOUS, MAKING THEM
FEEL THEY WERE BEING HEARD AND HEEDED WHEN
IN REALITY HE ACTUALLY DIDN'T GIVE A DAMN
ABOUT THEIR VIEWS?].
As Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard law
professor who mentored the young Obama, put it,
“He can enter your space and organize your thoughts
without necessarily revealing his own concerns
and conflicts.” He can leave you thinking he agrees,
when often he’s only agreeing to leave you thinking
he agrees. [YOU QUOTE OGLETREE'S ONE-LINER AND
THEN SLYLY SLIDE IN YOUR OWN AMENDMENT TO HIS
QUOTE, SORT OF MAKING IT LOOK LIKE OGLETREE IS
SAYING BOTH THINGS, WHEN IN FACT YOUR STATEMENT
IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM WHAT OGLETREE IS SAYING
AND, AGAIN, YOU (NOT OGLETREE) SEEM TO BE
IMPLYING THAT OBAMA HAS A TALENT FOR DECEPTION,
WHEN IN FACT HE SEEMS MUCH MORE TRANSPARENT
AND HONEST THAN YOU MAKE HIM OUT TO BE.]
He privately rolls his eyes at the way many
in politics and government spend so much time
preening and maneuvering for credit rather
than simply doing their jobs. Yet with that
detached and novelistic eye that allows him to
be a great writer [SOUNDS LIKE YOU'RE
FLIRTING WITH BARACK], he is also
able to do a kind of political jujitsu,
where he assesses the bluster and
insecurities of other politicians,
defuses them, and then uses them to his advantage.
Gabriel Byrne’s brooding psychoanalyst on
“In Treatment” might envy Barack Obama’s
[YOU'RE STILL USING FIRST AND LAST NAME
FOR OBAMA THIS FAR INTO THE PIECE?] calming
psychoanalysis in Europe. He may not have
come away with all he wanted substantively
[INADVERTENT UNDERSTATEMENT].
His hand was too weak going in, and there was
too much hostility toward America, thanks
to W.’s blunders and Cheney’s bullying. But
he showed a psychological finesse that has
been missing from American leadership for
a long time.
“Each country has its own quirks,” he said at
his London press conference, indicating that
you had to intuit how much you could prod
each leader.
W. always bragged about his instincts, saying he
knew whom [WHOM? YOU SOUND LIKE A BUTLER. READ
STRUNK & WHITE] to trust based on his gut. But even
with the help of psychologists putting together
profiles of dictators and other major players for
our intelligence services, Bush and his inner
circle were extraordinarily obtuse about reading
the motivations and the intentions of friends
and foes.
How could it never occur to them that Saddam Hussein
might simply be bluffing about the size of his
W.M.D. arsenal to keep the Iranians and other
antagonists at bay? [HEY, I HAVE ALWAYS
BEEN AGAINST THE IRAQ WAR, BUT YOU'RE BRINGING UP
A POINT BUSH COULD EASILY KNOCK DOWN. BUSH WOULD
RESPOND WITH, IF A BURGLAR AT YOUR DOOR CLAIMS
TO HAVE A GUN, YOU HAVE TO ACT AS IF HE DOES
HAVE A GUN, EVEN IF HE DOESN'T. BUT IN THE CASE OF
IRAQ IN 2003, SADDAM HUSSEIN, YOU MAY RECALL,
WAS CLAIMING THAT HE DID NOT HAVE W.M.D.s.
FURTHER, OUR MISTAKEN BELIEF THAT HE
DID HAVE W.M.D.s WAS NOT BASED
ON HIS PAST BOASTS.]
[WHILE YOU'RE POINTING FINGERS ABOUT
BEING OBLIVIOUS: HOW COULD YOU HAVE
NOT SEEN THAT JAYSON BLAIR WAS DISHONEST
AND FRAUDULENT, EVEN WHEN THE EVIDENCE
AGAINST HIM HAD PILED UP? AS I RECALL, YOU
DEFENDED BLAIR IN AT LEAST ONE OF YOUR
COLUMNS -- BEFORE YOU WERE PROVED DEEPLY
WRONG. WHY SHOULD WE BELIEVE THAT YOU
CAN DETECT A FUTURE JAYSON BLAIR WHEN
YOU COULDN'T DETECT A PAST ONE? IF YOU HAD
HAD YOUR WAY, BLAIR WOULD STILL BE AT
THE PAPER, PROBABLY RUNNING IT AS A #2 TO
RAINES BY NOW. (BUT I DIGRESS.)]
W. bristled at French and German leaders
because he thought they were condescending
to him. He thought he saw into Vladimir Putin’s
soul until the Russian leader showed his
totalitarian stripes.
W. and Condi were so clueless about the mind-set
of Palestinians that Condi was blindsided by
the Hamas victory in 2006, learning the news
from TV as she did the elliptical at 5 a.m.
in the gym of her Watergate apartment. {HOW
COULD CONDI HAVE KNOWN THE ELECTION RESULTS
BEFORE THE ELECTION RESULTS WERE ANNOUNCED?]
The Bush chuckleheads misread the world
and insisted that everyone else go along
with their deluded perception, and they
bullied the world and got huffy if the
world didn’t quickly fall in line.
President Obama, by contrast, employed smart
psychology in the global club, even on small
things, like asking other leaders if they
wanted to start talking first at news conferences.
[BUT OBAMA'S "SMART PSYCHOLOGY" AND
PERSUASIVENESS GOT HIM ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE AT
THE G-20 IN TERMS OF CONVINCING THE EUROPEANS
TO GO ALONG WITH SENDING COMBAT TROOPS TO
AFGHANISTAN, HIS MAIN REQUEST.]
With Anglo-American capitalism on trial and
Gordon Brown floundering in the polls,
Mr. Obama took pains to drape an arm around
“Gordon” and return to using the phrase
“special relationship.” He gave a shout-out
to the Brown kids, saying he’d talked dinosaurs
with them. [SOUNDS LIKE HIGH W.]
He won points with a prickly Sarkozy when he
intervened in an argument about tax havens
between the French and Chinese leaders, pulling
them into a corner to help them “get this all
in some kind of perspective” and find a
middle ground. Mr. Obama also played to the
ego of the Napoleonic French leader, saying
at their press conference, “He’s courageous
on so many fronts, it’s hard to keep up.”
[HE PROBABLY JUST SAID THAT ABOUT SARKO TO
GET HIM TO PONY UP SOME TROOPS FOR AFGHANISTAN;
BUT SARKO SAID NO, DESPITE OBAMA'S
FLATTERY.]
Soon Sarko was back gushing over his charmant
Americain ami. [YEAH, BUT DID YOU CATCH THE
FOOTAGE OF SARKO JEALOUSLY WATCHING EVERY
MOVE OBAMA MADE AROUND HIS GORGEOUS WIFE?]
Having an Iowa-style town hall in Strasbourg
with enthusiastic French and German students
was a clever ploy to underscore his popularity
on the world stage, and put European leaders
on notice that many of their constituents
are also his.
Like a good shrink, the president listens;
it’s a way of flattering his subjects and
sussing them out without having to fathom
what’s in their soul. “It is easy to talk
to him,” Dmitri Medvedev said after their
meeting. “He can listen.” [YEAH, BUT THIS
WAS NO "LISTENING TOUR"; REMEMBER, HE
ALSO LECTURED THE EUROPEANS ABOUT THEIR
WRONGHEADED VIEW OF AMERICANS, AMONG OTHER THINGS]
The Russian president called the American
one “my new comrade.”[PUTIN WAS EVEN MORE PUBLICLY
ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT BUSH AT FIRST, BUT IN THE
END THEY BECAME AS ADVERSARIAL AS TWO
COLD WARRIORS.]
Mr. Obama, the least silly of men, was even
willing to mug for a silly Facebook-ready
picture, grinning and giving a thumbs-up
with Medvedev and a goofy-looking
Silvio Berlusconi [I'LL AGREE WITH YOU THERE;
BERLUSCONI IS AS BUFFOONISH AND CLASS-CLOWNISH
AS TRACY MORGAN.]
Now that America can’t put everyone under
its thumb, a thumbs-up and a killer smile
can go a long way. [GO A LONG WAY? REALLY?
THEN HOW COME HE COULDN'T CONVINCE A SINGLE
EUROPEAN LEADER TO DEPLOY TROOPS TO AFGHANISTAN?
THE "KILLER SMILE" ALSO DIDN'T STOP THE RIOTS
IN THE STREETS EVERYWHERE HE VISITED, WHICH
YOU ODDLY FAILED TO MENTION.]
But I digress. Paul
[The April 4, 2009, Digression was revised
on April 8.]
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
For March 25, 2009
[An online magazine has just bought (and says
it will publish) a version of the Digression that
appeared on this day. So I'm taking it down from
this space and will provide a link to the
published piece later.]
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 24, 2009
"A Whole Host" of Obamisms
Sure, many presidents and public figures sometimes
find themselves unable to stop repeating certain
words or phrases during a speech, and President
Obama, at his news conference tonight, was no
exception.
Like Richard Nixon repeatedly saying he could
have easily taken the easy path, or George W. Bush
telling us the presidency is "hard work," President
Obama now has his own pet phrase: "a whole host."
At tonight's Q&A session, he used "whole host"
seven times; for those who missed the
repetitions, here they are:
-- "...the FDIC could step in, as it does with a
whole host of banks..."
-- "the American people are making a host
of sacrifices"
-- "It is going to take a whole host of
adjustments"
-- "There are a whole host of veterans' issues"
-- "There are a whole host of people who are students
of the procurement process"
-- "Let's do a whole host of things"
-- "So there are a whole host of steps"
And the phrase is catchy, too; his press secretary, Robert
Gibbs, was using the phrase earlier in the day.
Prior to the Obama era, "whole host" was
perhaps best known pop culturally as a phrase in
a well-known James Taylor song, "Carolina in
My Mind," which Taylor playfully altered this way:
"With a holy host of others standing 'round me
Still I'm on the dark side of the moon...."
I expect the president will probably be
using the phrase in a whole host of new
ways in the future.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 23 - 24, 2009
Obama's Appearance on "60 Minutes" Last Night, etc.
It's official: President Obama already has
seniority among former presidents, having
served longer in the White House than our
ninth president, William Henry Harrison, who
dropped dead around a month after his inauguration.
So if Obama were to quit his job today -- and
I hope he doesn't -- he wouldn't be the
president with the shortest tenure.
On "60 Minutes" last night, Obama showed us the
White House-as-a-family-residence, and that
got me wondering about the particulars of
presidential living (not that I'm thinking
of running for anything). But I wondered:
would I be covered by a lease during my
tenancy at the White House? Would I be
effectively classed as a renter, with the
rent paid by the federal government? Would I
have to pay a security deposit?
Sounds like Obama is, effectively, a temporary
tenant who has to vacate in 3 years and several
months, unless he wins the 2012 election.
Suppose I came into the White House and said,
not for me, not my style. Too 19th century. But
I'll keep it as my nominal residence, while
actually residing in, say, Arlington, in a
21st century A-frame place with modern sculpture
and a grand green front lawn, where I'd feel more
comfortable. I'm the president -- I can do
that, right?
Look, I can understand relocating to D.C. as
part of the job. But why do you have to live
in a one-size-fits-all house that
still has all the smells and stains and ghosts
of your predecessor?
In other words (and let's be frank), Bush's
Crawford friends, some with b.o. and dripping
bar-b-q sauce and mud, probably left their own
unique imprint and odor, and I would want to get
all that deep-cleaned immediately. (Remember the
"Seinfeld" episode with the smelly car? Sorta like
that.) But what if the cleaners have done their
best and yet I'm still smelling 43 and his
frat buds? Or, what if I just can't stand the
idea of sleeping in the same place
where you-know-who slept for eight years?
I guess I'd feel stir crazy and cooped up in
the White House. I'd be looking to get out
and take solitary walks at every opportunity.
I'd have to find a way. Could I wear a
super-realistic face mask that makes me look
like I'm a completely different person -- and
then take a walk in the woods? If not, then
who's running things around here: me or my
security people?
And what if the president -- who is the decider,
after all -- decides to veto his security
peeps and insists on going to the grocery
store on his own, without anyone else? Can his
security people overrule him? Suppose the president
says, "So arrest me." Can Secret Service
agents then detain or bust the president
and physically stop him from going to the
grocery store? Would they have to handcuff the
prez and place him in a detention area?
I mean, how would that look? Everyone would ask
whether there's any difference between a president
and a prison inmate. Everyone would wonder why
the president has the power to drop
nukes and annihilate life on earth but doesn't
have the authority to buy a pack of smokes
at the 7-11. Shouldn't the commander-in-chief
have the last word?
Frankly, I don't think I'd last even as
long in the White House as William Henry
Harrison. Not enough power in the position.
* * * *
STUPID BUMPER STICKER OF THE WEEK!
A more stupid bumper sticker than "9/11 Was an
Inside Job" probably does not exist (although
"What Has Any Afghan Ever Done to You?,"
which cropped up after 9/11, is
a runner-up in the idiocy sweepstakes).
Also, note the adjacent leftover "Dennis
Kucinich for President" bumper sticker, which
just shows that Kucinich -- who is as
smart about domestic policy as he is unwise about
defense issues -- has a way of attracting foreign
policy crazies.
If any fresh proof were needed of Kucinich's
foreign policy ineptitude, check out his
recent statements opposing President Obama's very
necessary deployment of 17,000 troops to Afghanistan,
reported prominently on the the Russia Television
(RT) news service, which can sometimes seem like
a propaganda arm of the Kremlin. (The Kremlin,
of course, has a personal interest in opposing
our involvement in Afghanistan, because
Medvedev/Putin probably wouldn't want to
see us succeed where their nation failed
militarily in the 1980s. Moscow conveniently
forgets the U.S. was attacked in '01 by
terrorists based in Afghanistan and backed
by the Taliban government there -- and the
people who attacked us are currently regrouping
in that area. So, obviously, we want to
stop that resurgence.)
Like former Sen. George McGovern, a World War II
vet, I am against some wars, not all wars,
and Afghanistan is a necessary one. Pacificism
merely means the other guy's violence
prevails.
As I wrote in this space a couple years ago:
those who spout platitudes like "war doesn't solve anything"
are just spouting platitudes. Yes, war should be avoided at
almost all costs, but -- hmm, let's see -- war stopped slavery
in the United States, war stopped Adolf Hitler in Germany,
war stopped bin Laden's proxy government in Afghanistan.
Sometimes you have to counter-intuitively light a backfire
to stop the main fire, you have to inject a little smallpox
to get rid of smallpox. (That's where guys like Howard Zinn
and Noam Chomsky, who were once wise in their younger days
but not in their post-9/11 older years, make big mistakes
in judgment, not understanding such a central paradox. But
then we all get old.)
With regard to the Afghanistan war, I side with Sen. John
Kerry, another vet, who not only supported that conflict
but said we should have gotten in sooner (why on earth did
we wait till October '01, giving bin Laden a chance to
escape?!) and should have stayed longer to bomb Tora Bora.
What exactly did the anti-Afghanistan war activists
suggest we do in the weeks after 9/11? Serve bin Laden
a subpoena in the neverlands of Tora Bora? And what
if his protectors had started shooting? Then we're
shooting back, right? Well, hey, that's precisely
what war is!
So "war doesn't solve anything" is one of those
platitudes -- like "love conquers all" and "I am
the way and the light" -- that really, when you
examine it, isn't very wise or true and doesn't
make a whole lot of practical sense.
And let's hope that we don't let the national trauma
of the Iraq conflict cloud our collective judgment so
that we don't see that the next war, if there is one,
may be very just. A patient traumatized by
inept surgery may be overly reluctant to
have a necessary operation in the future.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 22, 2009
New on DVD: "Milk"
Take it from me, a hard-core, incorrigible
heterosexual: "Milk" is magnificent.
The story of late-blooming politician Harvey
Milk, a city councilman (they call them
supervisors in San Francisco) who served for
only a year but broke new ground by being
openly gay and putting gay issues defiantly
front and center, this biopic is
riveting, inspired, carbonated, airborne.
Sean Penn disappears into the role of Milk as
magically as Robert DeNiro became Jake LaMotta in
"Raging Bull" all those years ago. It's on that
level, easily.
Josh Brolin is also brilliant in his very
knowing, very smart psychological portrait
of a deeply repressed homosexual,
assassin Dan White, a role that probably should
have been expanded (if only to show how financial
pressures contributed to White's mental illness).
"Milk" is also a vivid evocation of a long-ago
counter-culture era (and scenes are packed with
such obsolete phenomena as record players,
typewriters, unprotected sex, landlines and the
San Francisco Chronicle).
The Anita Bryant footage is priceless; she almost
comes across as an actress in an ironic
performance trying to portray a truly
ludicrous holy roller, which is exactly what
she was.
And excellent use of Bowie's "Queen Bitch" and
Sly's "Everyday People" in the film (Tom Robinson's
exciting but unjustly forgotten "All Right, All
Night" would've fit perfectly here).
Also, S.F. supe Tom Ammiano makes a nice,
passionate cameo.
But don't look for any deleted scenes of note
on the DVD; evidently, all the magic was used
in the picture.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 20, 2009
Visiting A.I.G. Execs is Only the First Step
"Well I'm going to the mansions where Pfizer
lives/the mansions that they built by ripping
off the sick/I'm gonna tell 'em that they can't
do that no more/There's a deep discount on aisle
four/I'm stealin' medication," goes the lyrics
of one of my latest songs, "Stealin'
Medication," which has actually gotten some radio
airplay in recent months.
As the composer of "Stealin' Medication," I was
gratified to see this story --
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/nyregion/20siege.html --
in today's online edition of The New York Times,
reporting about a group that is
taking its anger about the A.I.G. bonuses to
the streets where the executives live.
Great idea. It's what I've been advocating in
this space and elsewhere for a long time: bring
your protests to the neighborhoods where venal,
overcompensated executives live -- and make some
noise there. Those excessive bonuses are
both the symbol and the reality of exactly
what is unfair about the accumulation of
wealth in America: the wrong people are
rewarded.
More than talent, more than hard work,
gaming the system, along with
nepotism and luck, will make you wealthy and
successful in the U.S.A.
Let's be real: those execs at AIG are failures,
incompetent in their own fields, yet they're
fabulously wealthy. Explain
to me how that happened so we can stop it from
ever happening again, at A.I.G. or elsewhere.
My advice to protesters is to put
your time to really good use and target
the heads of companies that make
profits off sick people (e.g., the
major pharmaceutical and health insurance
firms). After all, the execs
at companies like Pfizer and Merck are
basically saying to the uninsured: "go bleed
to death if you can't afford our medication;
it's survival of the fittest in the jungle
out there."
So let's adopt their attitude. Let's take that
very same approach to the rich execs at
the pharma companies. Maybe some picketers will even
be motivated to block their streets and sidewalks.
Maybe other protesters will refuse to come
down from their trees until the execs
make medication affordable to those who need
it.
In other words: exert leverage. Do what they're
doing to us. And remember: almost no harsh protest
tactic could possibly be as callous as denying medication
to sick people who can't afford it.
This is clearly a new era, but President Obama
can take us only so far. In order to get
meaningful health care reform (and business
compensation reform, for that matter), there must
be a combination of official action from the
White House and Congress and
effective acts of civil disobedience,
targeting bad corporate actors where they live.
So come down from your trees, you eco-protesters.
Come down from your occupied buildings,
you anti-Iraq war people. Come put your
resourcefulness and energy to better use
by targeting immoral, unethical, overcompensated
CEOs at the palaces they call home.
Practice on the AIG execs first but then set your
sights on an even nobler target: the residences of
the heads of the pharma and health insurance
firms.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 19, 2009
THE SIXTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQ WAR
Last Night's Attack on a Marine Recruiting Center in Berkeley
Exclusive photos
Last night, on the eve of the 6th anniversary of
the U.S. invasion of Iraq, anti-war protesters
(we assume) vandalized a Marine Corps Recruiting
Center on Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley, Calif., smashing
plate glass windows and splattering paint. This
is how it looked at daybreak this morning, its
broken windows replaced with wood.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
Red paint tossed by protesters on the wall of the
Marine center. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
Paint splattered walls and gates of the Marine
center and of an adjacent business.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
The controversial memorial, in Lafayette, Calif.,
to American soldiers who have died in Iraq. Here's
a shot of it in April 2008, when the number of
dead stood at 4,039 (the number has since been
updated to 4,925).
[photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
* * *
The Great Recession is everywhere you look these
days. This morning, during an early morning walk,
I snapped this shot of a homeless man sleeping
on a sidewalk next to a Kinko's picture window
in Berkeley. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
Another shot of the homeless man, sleeping next
to shelves of Kinkos's multi-colored paper.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
One more picture of the man sleeping outside a
Kinko's store. [photo by Paul Iorio]
But I digress. Paul
_______________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 18, 2009
I Was at Britney's First Concert in L.A., Ten Years Ago....
my ticket to Britney's debut live show in L.A.
Haven't seen Britney Spears's "Circus" tour yet,
but I actually did get to see her on her first
tour in 1999, when she performed her debut
concert in Los Angeles at age 17.
Though her first album, "...Baby One More Time,"
had been released only five months earlier, her
following was already intense and massive. She
was playing one of those multi-act stadium shows -- at
Dodger Stadium on June 12, 1999 -- headlined by
one-hit flash Ricky Martin (who I didn't stay
to see) and Will Smith (who I was covering for a
newspaper).
The eclectic pop fest, dubbed Wango Tango, also
featured Nancy Sinatra (doing a fine "How Does
That Grab You?"), an exciting Blondie and a
solid UB40 -- and there were lots of stars in
the audience, too (when Kobe Bryant strolled
down an aisle, carrying himself like an emperor,
the crowd stood and watched his every move).
When Britney appeared, the entire composition of
the audience suddenly changed into an aggressive
all-female, all-teenage mob that seemed to view
me -- the only middle-aged male there (hey, I was
working!)-- as their unwelcome daddy and
chaperone, who they wished would just go away.
I half-thought I was going to
be lynched at one point.
Britney performed on a stage crowded with several
dancers and bandmates doing mass-synchronized
dancing that looked exactly like an aerobics class.
The fans in front of me, standing on chairs, were
so loud I couldn't hear much. And before I knew it,
around 20 minutes into the set, her first concert
in L.A. was over. Her legend, of course, was
just being born.
* * * *
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, edgy last night on Ferguson's show.
With "Seinfeld" in constant syndication, and with
"The New Adventures of Old Christine" a fresh
presence in prime time, a lot of people tend to
take Julia Louis-Dreyfus for granted. One
tends to forget how spontaneous and unpredictably
funny she can be -- until you see her in an
appearance like the one last night on "The Late,
Late Show with Craig Ferguson." She started off
funny, got funnier and then edgy as she
let loose some talk that was completely bleeped
by Standards & Practices and that
seemed to take even Ferguson aback. Would
love to hear the uncensored footage.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 15, 2009
Just listened to the new bin Laden audiotape,
and the first thing that struck me was he sounded
sort of dehydrated, which -- who knows? -- might
be related to his kidney disease, which (in some
cases, doctors say) can feel like the worst
hangover imaginable.
So there is hope!
He also comes out against wine, folks (so I'm sure
he'd be no fan of my recently released song "The
Wine Song," which goes, "I want wine, I want wine,
I want more and more and more wine...").
And he denounces radio, too, and singles out
the BBC for condemnation (which means he
wouldn't like the fact that "The Wine Song"
was recently aired by a radio
station -- double blasphemy!).
Elsewhere, he talks about morality (which is
sort of like Charles Manson lecturing on good
and evil), speaks repeatedly about "temptation,"
talks a few times about "reaching shore" (but,
thankfully, doesn't plagiarize
my song "Drowning Man," which is also about
reaching shore), says something about spears, and
plays the Middle East card rather than justify
his own mass homicidal actions.
And, yeah, he mentions the Koran several times,
though it's unclear what good the book does
him if it guides him only to evil acts.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 14 - 15, 2009
Al Jazeera, staffed with steno secretaries for
al Qaeda who pose as reporters, once again carried
water for bin Laden (such sweet boys!) and won't
tell us where the water came from, which makes
the "network" a bit of a collaborator with bin
Laden, wouldn't you say?
You guys at al Jazeera probably didn't even try to
trace the chain of custody of the latest audiotape
from bin Laden. Maybe you could give us a hint as
to which part of the world it might have come from.
(Sounds like...?)
Let's just say that if bin Laden causes more
bloodshed -- and he will, or will try -- that
some of the blood will be on the hands of
you folks at al Jazeera, because you could've helped
us catch him. Most of the "reporters" at the
"network" can barely conceal their pathological
closet sympathies for bin Laden and his religious
psychos. You guys aren't hiding it well.
The job of a journalist is not to turn in people
like bin Laden, you say. But it is your
job and responsibility when there are
extraordinary circumstances involved. You're
citizens first, journalists second, and you could
save many thousands -- maybe millions -- of lives by
doing the right thing and trying to find where he's
hiding -- and revealing that info to the authorities.
Let me provide an example that you guys
at al Jazeera might understand. Suppose
(and let's hope something like this never occurs)
the wife of the head of al Jazeera were kidnapped
by a terrorist group, and one of your reporters was
able to score an interview with the head of that
group. Are we to believe for one moment that
al Jazeera wouldn't bring all its resources
to bear to find out the location of the interview
and to alert the authorities about where it
was taking place?
Of course they would. In that instance,
al Jazeera would (rightly) be acting more like
cops than reporters -- and would certainly make
no apologies for doing so. They would surely cite
"extraordinary circumstances" in justifying their
actions and their scuttling of confidentiality
agreements.
Well, there you go; you've just agreed that
a confidentiality agreement is not always
inviolable.
It's amazing how people suddenly
see the light with such clarity when an
example is given that involves their own
self-interest.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- Last night's "Saturday Night Live" was one
of the unfunniest in recent memory, standing as
vivid proof, if any were needed, that
Tracy Morgan is not funny. Morgan is under
the misimpression that a bad joke told at
a low volume will miraculously become
funny if you shout it. (Also -- suspicious
sin of omission: why no Jim Cramer sketch,
which would've been a perfect fit for SNL
this week, and everyone knows it. I wonder
which one of Cramer's contacts at SNL or NBC
got such a sketch idea dismissed.)
* * *
How refreshing to hear Congressman Barney
Frank (D-MA) say it honestly and directly
on "Fox News Sunday":
"I'm for a single-payer health care plan
like Medicare."
And he's right: the easiest way to provide
universal health care in the U.S. is to simply
expand Medicare until everyone's covered.
Right now, given the stigma of "single-payer"
among conservatives, incrementalism may be
the best the Obama administration can do.
But the most painless path to universal
health care probably lies in the gradual
expansion of a program that's already
in place.
* * *
Dontcha just hate all those people on TV
interview shows who say (whether it's true
or not), "This was a team effort," "There
is no 'i' in team," "We all checked our egos
at the door," "This wasn't about me but
about the group," etc., etc.?
All well and good if that's true. If something is
really a team effort, then by all means label
it as such.
But can you imagine Picasso unveiling "Guernica" and,
with false modesty, saying, "Ya know, 'Guernica'
was a group project, and I want to thank the team,"
or if Leonardo had displayed "The Last Supper," saying,
"And thanks to the team that made this possible -- it
wasn't just me!"
As I get older, I find that the people who talk the most
about a project being the result of "teamwork" are
generally the ones who had least amount of input into it.
_____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 12, 2009
New on DVD: "Rachel Getting Married"
Yeah, it's Demme's best feature film in 15 years,
though that's not saying much, given the fact
that his best movies were all made before '94.
The core problem with "Rachel" is the lack of focus
suggested by the inadequate, slightly off title;
after all, the movie is not about Rachel
or her wedding as much as it's about Kym and her
return from rehab, the much more compelling story,
and as such it should've been titled something
like "Home for the Wedding," with its focus
shifted accordingly and more decisively.
It feels like a combination of "Interiors" and "The
Return of the Secaucus Seven," though it would've
been interesting to have seen Kym evolve into
something other than what she was at the beginning
of the film. (Character growth is the element that
makes so many Woody Allen pictures greater than
most others. Remember how Dianne Wiest's character
blossoms by the end of "Hannah"? Or how our
perceptions of Cheech in "Bullets Over Broadway"
shift dramatically as the movie progresses?)
Here, Kym at the beginning is Kym at the end,
unfortunately.
The "grant me the serenity blah blah" rehab scenes
follow the memorable ones in "Traffic," in which
the counselors are either dim and bureaucratic or
platitudinous and cloying (and "Rachel" may be
the first major feature to note that the personal
stories told in group therapy sessions -- which
always leak out, despite guarantees of
confidentiality -- are often as untrue as the
tall tales of James Frey or Herman Rosenblat).
I love the Sayles-ian dishwasher competition, though
I wish Kym could've been worked into it (perhaps she
could've freaked out when she was unable to pull a
stuck dish from the washer, much as she couldn't pull
Ethan from the car seat all those years ago).
All told, the movie is fascinating from start to
finish, despite its flaws (e.g., the focus problem
noted above; the fact that major
plot elements (like the car wreck and the
mother-daughter fight) aren't integrated into
subsequent sequences). And what a surprise to see
Debra Winger all grown up, looking like late
Carole King and attractive in a brand new way.
The DVD includes a generous helping of deleted
scenes, all justifiably cut -- except the funny one
in which Kym meets and greets old friends in the
wedding reception line.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 10, 2009
Don't Do Anything for The Taliban That
You Wouldn't Have Also Done for the Ku Klux Klan
Lots of talk in the Obama administration these days
about the possibility of negotiating with the
Taliban in Afghanistan, or having Karzai do so.
My response is this: it depends on how you define
the Taliban. If you mean the people who backed or
worked with Mullah Omar, the answer is a flat-out
no; we shouldn't negotiate with any of those people.
In fact, we should jail or kill most of Omar's
top brass, once we find which caves they're
hiding in.
But if you're referring to the brave folks in
Afghanistan who were only nominally allied with
the Taliban but stood up to (or tried to stand
up to) Mullah Omar and voiced opposition to, say,
the bigoted Taliban policy of forcing Hindus
to wear yellow stars on the streets of Kabul,
and thought it was wrong to throw in with bin
Laden, then I say, yeah, talk with
such courageous individuals. Reward them with
a place at the table. We must reach out to those
in Afghanistan who were the equivalent of the
underground resistance during Nazism (even if
they were part of a self-interested group
like the Northern Alliance).
But to those who backed Omar (and, by extension,
bin Laden) who now sidle up to us hoping for
a concession, we must tell them what Bill McKay
told a corrupt Teamster in "The Candidate":
"I don't think we have shit in common."
Let's not reward, explicitly or implicitly, the wrong
people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, even if it
would bring a quicker peace. We don't need that
kind of peace. I would much rather see continued
war -- war that would kill killers planning, say,
dirty bomb attacks on Manhattan right now -- than
a peace that results in Omar's right-wing lieutenants
sharing power in Kabul.
Our guide to policy should be this: don't do
anything for the Taliban that you wouldn't have
also done for the violent terrorists of the
Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s in America.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 8, 2009
Kashmir Border Drawn in Plutonium
I took a taxi from Oakland, Calif., today and
chatted with the driver, who said he was originally
from India. Talk soon turned to last Fall's
Mumbai attacks, and he was passionate about the
tragedy, angrily blaming Pakistani militants and
cursing the Kashmir crisis for helping to create
the climate that caused it.
As I listened to his tirade against Pakistani
militants, I realized this was almost certainly
the temperature throughout much of India: hot
toward Pakistan and ready for
cold vengeance, with Kashmir a way too convenient
flashpoint.
Both sides are profoundly pissed -- and all nuked up,
too. Both sides have barely budged a substantial inch
since '47, it seems. Both sides's competing claims
in Kashmir are now complicated by separatist demands
and counter-claims by China. And the Mumbai
attacks, recently traced to members of the
Lashkar-e-Taiba of Pakistan, have added accelerant
to the tinderbox.
If Kashmir blows in a nuclear way, the body count
could be unthinkably massive -- and the nuke cloud
could travel over....China, or anywhere in the neighborhood,
creating a potentially unprecedented humanitarian
catastrophe.
Yeah, I know, there are lots of global hot spots.
Yeah, we have to establish a two-state solution in
the Middle East. We need to rein in the
increasingly ill Kim Jong Il. We have to
sit down with Ahmadinejad and read him the riot
act. And, most important to U.S. security, we
absolutely have to stop the resurgence of the
Taliban in Afghanistan.
But it's all too easy to imagine breaking news coming
out of Islamabad and Delhi about multiple nuclear
strikes throughout both nations, with each side claiming
the other fired first, with casualties in the millions.
And then we'll wish we had had the foresight to spend
more time on Kashmir than on, say,
Gaza, where nukes aren't really in play.
The line of control in Kashmir is, post-Mumbai,
drawn in plutonium. Hillary Clinton and
Ban Ki Moon should hold a summit with Zardari and
Singh to definitively resolve the Kashmir crisis
so that all parties recognize the borders and LoCs
in the region. (Perhaps there should be (yet another!)
sub-Secretary of State to focus on the region.)
It's unlikely a single summit will settle things; deep
underlying tensions between Hindus and Muslims in the
area are fueling the disputes. But if most Indians
are as enraged at Pakistan as my cabbie was yesterday,
I bet any minor spark could set the whole
region ablaze, possibly radioactively.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 6, 2009
Fresh evocation of American suburbia by San Francisco's
own Robert Bechtle titled "'60 T-Bird" ('67 - '68), now
on display at the Berkeley Art Museum.
[photo by Paul Iorio.]
Visited the Berkeley (Calif.) Art Museum
yesterday and its "Galaxy" exhibition, an
eclectic collection of paintings
BAM hasn't shown for awhile. Highlights include
Magritte's striking "Duo," Warhol's silkscreen
"Race Riot," a couple engravings by William Blake,
a drip painting miniature by Pollock, Rothko's
"Red Over Dark Blue on Dark Gray" and Robert
Bechtle's "'60 T-Bird." (I did a
double-take on the Caracciolo, thinking it
was a Caravaggio, whose style Caracciolo
thoroughly rips off.) Galaxy runs until nearly
Labor Day at BAM.
* * * *
"Are times so stressful that our young president
is going grayer a mere six weeks into the job?,"
asked The Washington Post the other day.
Isn't it more likely that Obama was using
hair dye during the campaign and is only now
showing his real gray? In any event, we elected
him for the gray matter inside (not outside)
his skull.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 2 - 3, 2009
A New Crime Wave? 
According to KALX radio's Marshall Stax, Crime, the
seminal Bay Area punk band, may be re-uniting and might
appear on his show, The Next Big Thing,
in the near future. Above, a vintage Crime poster from
a recent exhibit at the Berkeley (Calif.) Art Museum.
(Also, many thanks to Marshall for playing two
new songs of mine, "You're Gettin' Played" and "The
Riot Noise (Off Avalon Green)," on tonight's Next
Big Thing!) [photo of poster by Paul Iorio.]
* * *
Someone asked me what inspired my new
song "The Riot Noise (Off Avalon Green)." I started
writing it after walking into a riot that erupted
in Berkeley, Calif., on September 5, 2008. (I actually
ran into the riot to snap the shot that is the
cover of my upcoming album of the same name.)
In my song, the line "I don't know who threw
the chair but that was no excuse to shoot bullets
in the air" was suggested by this AP photo of
another riot, in Thessaloniki, Greece, on December
7, 2008, where violence escalated after a protester
tossed a chair at cops:
(photo: Nikolas Giakoumidis)
But I digress. Paul
The Daily Digression is not sponsored
by AeroShave! (photo by Paul Iorio.)
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 2, 2009
And so we're all supposed to believe that
Bernie Madoff, when he was chairman (not merely
a senior vice president or COO) of
overly-respected Nasdaq, was ethical
and honest? I don't buy it. My business
experience tells me that, generally, a person
exhibits the same sorts of tendencies at
one company that he or she does at another, more
or less. It strains credulity to believe
Madoff only became corrupt in recent years,
and was, prior to that, a model of ethics and
probity. It probably takes a lot of practice
over many decades to become as expertly
nefarious as he became in his sixties.
What does the fact that Madoff was chairman of Nasdaq
tell us about Nasdaq? If you scratched the surface
beneath the fortunes of Madoff's colleagues at
Nasdaq, do you honestly think they'd come up clean?
(Is there such a thing as a completely clean fortune
in America? Was there ever, considering America
was founded on the mass theft of labor via
slavery? Isn't it true that any bum can amass
wealth if all his workers work for free? I digress.)
If one can't trust the former chairman of Nasdaq,
whose later clients/victims included savvy, respectable
folks like John Malkovich and Steven Spielberg, then
who can one trust in the investment world?
BTW, check out the Google News Archives to see how
glowingly some news organizations covered Madoff in
the 1990s. Reminds me of how some financial journalists
today still quote and give credibility to sources
at discredited companies like Moody's, which either
fraudulently or negligently gave triple A ratings
to firms that failed mere months later.
Uh, let's see: Moody's was waay wrong
about fundamental aspects of the
economy, and yet you're still quoting people
from the company. And I'm sure you'll continue to
quote them in the future, throwing good money
after bad in order to justify crappy
journalistic decisions.
[I wrote and posted the above column at
around 12:30am on March 2, 2009; some
of the ideas I originated here were
later echoed by a guest on PBS's "NewsHour" around
15 hours after I posted the ideas here.]
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 24, 2009
The other day I saw a sight from the Pleistocene
era: a McCain bumper sticker on an old, rusty GMC
truck. And I thought, could there possibly be
any sight so yesterday on the planet?
Then this morning I got my answer. There was
old-fashioned Jim Cramer on the "Today" show,
thundering like a Brontosaurus about how the
horse-and-buggy is not disappearing and how talkies
will never supplant silents. And I realized, yes,
there is something more antiquated than a McCain bumper
sticker on an old GMC truck.
Cramer -- an over-amplified defender of discredited
free market policies who wants President Obama to
pass the jellybeans and say "things aren't terrible" -- just
can't get his mind around the fact that unregulated
capitalism has fallen and failed as surely and
decisively as communism fell nearly two
decades ago.
By the way, Cramer shouts too much. I mean, if
this is how he is on camera, can you imagine what
he's like with subordinates? I wonder how many of
his co-workers have accused him of creating a
hostile work environment. That old style of a
rich (and wrong!) boss shouting at poor
subordinates is, thankfully, going down
the toilet as fast as unregulated capitalism
is -- and good riddance.
Why give airtime to this guy and others
like him (such as Zandi of Moody's)? After
all, Cramer and his kind -- the
supply-siders -- have been proved wrong. They
were (and still are) oblivious to the unacceptable
inherent risks of the unregulated marketplace.
Why not give TV airtime to those who
have been proved right?
* * * *
[cartoon/caption by Paul Iorio, 2009;
drawing by unknown artist.]
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 23, 2009
Slum Enchanted Evening
Time was, prior to 9/11, the Oscars were held in
what seemed like the early spring rather than the
late winter, and it fit better there. When
I lived in Los Angeles in the 1990s, and covered
aspects of the Academy Awards as a reporter, the
Oscars weren't handed out until almost April.
I remember it was like a federal holiday in the
area, and I'd walk through West Hollywood on
the way to pick up my tux or something
and see people all dressed up in their suburban
driveways in the middle of the afternoon, preparing
to drive to the Oscars or a related event.
And it seemed the trees were just starting to
bud and everyone was coming out of hibernation
and there was a sense of re-awakening all around.
But since 9/11, the ceremony has been held
in the dead of winter (which -- admittedly -- is
hard to define in L.A.) as if the Academy
was trying to throw off terrorists by shifting
the typical date of the Oscars.
Last night's ceremony was yet another late-winter
event, and I watched it on TV in Berkeley, Calif.,
and don't have much to say about it, except the
following:
-- It is becoming exceedingly easy to predict
the winners (I predicted all the major ones,
except for Winslet) just by looking at the
winners of the various guild awards.
-- Hugh Jackman worked out better than one might
have expected, though Steve Martin was so funny
in his brief appearance that I began to wish he
was the host. Bill Maher was also a welcome
gust of truth and wit and perhaps he, too, should
be considered to host the 82nd awards ceremony.
-- I wish Alicia Keys had sung something (she's
such a genius as a singer that she virtually sings
when she talks).
-- Very gracious of Sean Penn to have praised Mickey
Rourke from the podium.
-- In another century, in another era, I'm convinced
Kate Winslet would have become a genuine Queen of
some country.
-- Having five actors descend on the actor
nominees felt more like a rehab intervention
than an appreciation.
-- In the old days, if a Woody Allen movie were nominated
in any category, it would also be nominated for the
best director or best original screenplay
prize. It's telling that recent Allen movies are
now noted for something other than his direction
and writing. (He is in something of a late Chaplin
(post-"Monsieur Verdoux") phase.) Cruz's performance
was indeed notable, though it worked only in tandem
with Bardem's.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 20, 2009
Here're a few everyday photos I
recently shot around my neighborhood in
Berkeley, Calif.:
a novel, leftover bumper sticker for You-Know-Who!
* * *
the rainy season has arrived out here, and
this is what it looked like last Sunday.
* * *
occasionally, we have bouts of severe fog in Berkeley
that are almost like heavy smoke, such as this one
last year.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 14 - 16, 2009
Roman Polanski, and Why All Charges Against Him Should Be Dropped
Roman Polanski is one of the most reflexively brilliant
people I've ever interviewed. Talking with him, one
really feels the pull of genius, in the sense that
he spontaneously puts a fresh angle on
whatever moment you're in and causes you to
re-think what you're thinking. When you've finished
a conversation with Polanski, your mind is somewhat
altered, your view of the world is a bit
different, you come away charged and alive to
the possibilities out there.
I landed my interview with Polanski -- a rarity
and a scoop at the time -- through the late Richard
Sylbert, an enormously gifted production and set
designer of classic films by Polanski, Mike Nichols
and others, and a very close friend of the
director's.
Sylbert seemed to think of a film as a place that
one can return to repeatedly, like an old family
living room from childhood, and hence he designed
locations in movies that millions of us do
return to each year, via cinema (e.g., the
Braddock family home in "The Graduate," Mrs.
Robinson's bedroom in "The Graduate,"
Ida Sessions's apartment house (with its
claustrophobic, parallel outdoor walls that
seem to be closing in on Jake Gittes),
Evelyn Mulwray's foyer (the site of so much trauma),
and on and on. The lives of lots of moviegoers were
partly lived in those spaces, and Sylbert made sure
they stuck in collective memory.
I had planned to talk with Sylbert for only ten
minutes or so to get some quotes for a Los Angeles Times
story on "Chinatown" that I was writing but we hit
it off (as reporter and source) and our conversation
went on for well over an hour. He was
evidently impressed with my expert knowledge
of "Chinatown," which I'd seen hundreds of
times, and at the end of the interview
asked, "You want Roman's phone number?"
And I said something like, yeah, sure.
Keep in mind that getting an interview with Sylbert
himself was a bit of a coup in those days, as his
number was deeply unlisted. (In late 1998, I had
an advantage over many other journalists in that I
had already been using such pre-Google search engines
as Alta Vista and HotBot, which led me to the unlisted
number of a relative of Sylbert's, who referred my
message to Richard.)
Anyway, I called Polanski and left a message on his
answering machine, not expecting much to come of it.
Some time later, I caught a message on
my own machine, and it was unmistakably
Roman, calling from Paris. We exchanged calls back
and forth, and then set up a phone interview for a few
days later, when he would be on a family vacation in
the Dolomites.
A couple days before 1999, I interviewed Polanski
in-depth about "Chinatown" and a bit about other
topics, but the central subject of my article
was "Chinatown," his best film by a fair margin,
in my view, though there are many other high peaks
in his oeuvre (I'd rank "Knife in the Water" higher
if it had come before "L'avventura"). (I'd go on
to do other interviews for the "Chinatown" piece
in early '99.)
My interview with him was the basis of articles
I wrote and reported for the July 8, 1999, issue
of the Los Angeles Times. (A top editor at the paper
said that my story had generated more reader response
than any other article that had appeared in that
section of the Times; I'm flattered that film
aficionados have told me they never completely
understood the film until they read my articles;
an uncut, updated version of the story appears
on my website at www.paulliorio.blogspot.com.)
A few years after creating this cinematic masterpiece,
Polanski was caught in a scandal somewhat similar to
the one that almost prematurely ended the career of
Leonardo da Vinci centuries earlier. Leonardo, accused of
having an affair with an underage model in Verrocchio's
studio, was almost jailed and trashed by the
Florentine authorities -- and imagine the loss to the world
if he had been.
Fact is, there aren't many bona fide geniuses on the
planet, and the human race can't afford to throw them
out as if they were yesterday's Yuban -- unless there
is an absolutely compelling reason that fully overrules
mitigating factors.
And the Samantha Geimer case was never a compelling
enough reason to toss out a world class director like
Polanski. (It was, after all, not a case of murder,
an exponentially more serious crime that no western
nation condones.)
Apart from the narrow legal concerns that are currently
in play in the case, perhaps we should also begin to
rethink and debate the big picture issues about the
basic fairness of such prosecutions and whether we
tend to overstate the seriousness of such crimes
in the States.
First, what Polanski did would not have been illegal
(or at least would not have been prosecuted) had
he done it in his home country (France), his native
country (Poland) or the place where he sometimes
vacations (Italy). Laws regarding age-of-consent vary
wildly from decade to decade and from nation to nation
(and even, to some degree, from state to state
in the U.S.).
As footage in the recent documentary "Roman Polanski:
Wanted and Desired" clearly shows, Polanski seemed to be
genuinely and completely unaware that having sex with
a teenager was illegal in the U.S. In many ways,
this was a case of how the sexual provincialism of
a nation created a high-profile international injustice.
Here's an analogy everybody might understand. Suppose
you visited one of the northern provinces of Nigeria,
where Sharia law is in effect, and suppose you were
in your hotel room innocently playing a mandolin while
your girlfriend was resting on the couch. You might
very well hear a knock on your door and find that the
local police want to arrest you for violating Nigeria's
Sharia law that prohibits playing the mandolin,
particularly in the presence of a woman (look it up;
it's actually against the law in some
parts of Islam).
If the Nigerian police had led you away in handcuffs,
your reaction would be something like: "What're you
talking about? I had no idea such a thing was illegal
in your country. Who would make such a law?" And
they would say, "Playing a mandolin is explicitly
prohibited by Sharia law in parts of Nigeria, and
you, sir, are under arrest."
And you would respond with, "Nobody ever told me this
was against the law in your country. How was I
supposed to have known that? Who was the person
designated from the Nigerian government to tell
me, as I arrived at the airport in Lagos, that
mandolin-playing was illegal in Katsina province?
Did somebody at the airport hand me a list of things that
are illegal in this country but legal in my own?"
Analogously, that's very similar to what happened
in Polanski's case. As I noted before, he was
arrested for something that isn't really a
crime in his home country, and when he was busted he
seemed to be completely unaware that he had done
something illegal. How can it be fair to fully
prosecute someone for behavior that we never told
him was illegal?
If the crime was so serious, then how come the
so-called victim has repeatedly said she was far
more traumatized by Judge Laurence Ritteband's
handling of the "unlawful intercourse" case than
by what she did with Polanski? I think most would
agree today that everybody -- both the "victim"
and the accused and everyone in between -- would
have been far better off if the whole incident
had never been brought into the legal system and
had been handled as a private matter between families.
Don't get me wrong: I would never consider committing
an act similar to the one that got Polanski in
trouble -- and I think aspects of his behavior in
that case (using Quaaludes, for example) are not
very defensible. But just because I wouldn't do
such a thing doesn't mean that I think it should
be prosecuted as a serious crime warranting
excessive legal penalties.
It would seem to be common sense that behavior
that is virtually legal in Vancouver shouldn't
get you a 20-year sentence if you do the same
thing several miles down the highway in Seattle.
I'm not saying there should be international
standardization of laws -- there shouldn't be,
because each nation has its own traditions and
practical realities. But a sensitivity to
cultural differences should be factored into cases
like Polanski's (or into the hypothetical case of
an American prosecuted for playing a mandolin
in Nigeria).
In the current climate of witch hunting and hysteria,
it's not likely Polanski's conviction will be
tossed out now or anytime soon, despite the new evidence
brought to light about malfeasance committed by the
disqualified judge in the case.
Maybe Polanski will just have to heed the hard truths
of "Chinatown" itself, and say to himself:
"Forget it, Roman, it's Santa Monica."
* * * * *
Regarding the Michael Phelps story: it's
not like he was accused of selling pot.
He just took a toot off a bong, standard
behavior for guys that age. Leave 'im alone!
* * * * *
Re: Roland Burris. I told ya so. (See my
column, below, titled "Don't Seat Burris,"
January 7, 2009.)
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 12, 2009
Surely, You Must Be Joaquin'.(Or Maybe Not.)
I watched the Joaquin Phoenix interview with
David Letterman in real time last night and
was riveted by what initially looked like
a major actor committing career suicide on late
night TV. I thought, this is either
Johnny-Cash-kicking-out-the-lights-on-the-Opry-stage
or an Andy Kaufman-style hoax. As I thought
about it through the day today, I was starting
to wonder whether it was a Phoenix-Letterman
collaboration along the lines of "The Late Show"'s
Johnny-the-Usher bits.
If not, it ranks right up there with Lennon's
infamous behavior at the Troubadour or Brando's
eccentric late interviews or Norman Mailer's
drunken TV appearances.
Either way, an extremely entertaining departure
from the usual movie promotional fare.
* * *
An interesting fact that I just unearthed: did
you know that only seven popularly-elected U.S.
presidents have served two, full, consecutive
terms? Only seven of our 44 presidents! (According
to my own research.)
It breaks down this way. Thirteen presidents served
two complete terms, but four of them -- George W. Bush,
Monroe, Madison and Jefferson -- were not winners of the
popular vote in at least one of their elections.
Wilson "served" two terms but was actually in charge
for only six years before a stroke incapacitated him
and made him a merely nominal commander-in-chief. And
Cleveland's terms weren't consecutive.
Meanwhile, eleven of our presidents served less than
one complete term in the White House.
* * * *
So, sadly, the Guarneri Quartet begins to end its
existence with a few dozen final shows in North
America, 45 years after its birth.
When I first saw them, in June 1972, when the
quartet was eight years old, they were the new kids
on the classical block, and they would give
controversial interviews comparing classical
composers like Beethoven to Bob Dylan and the
Beatles.
In those days, their performances of the late
and middle Beethoven quartets were causing quite
a buzz, and I was completely blown away (as a 14 year
old!) when I heard them play the No. 11
in F Minor (the so-called "Serioso"), the last
of Beethoven's middle quartets and the one to which
I keep returning 37 years later.
You can still catch the Guarneri in various cities
through June (and there'll be a handful of
performances in October, too), but after that,
there'll be only the recordings.
* * *
Thought I'd share this I picture I shot of the
Hollywood Bowl from an interesting vantage point:
Mulholland Drive. Circa 2000.
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 11, 2009
Perfect DVD for President's Day Weekend: "John Adams"
As an evocation of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson
and Benjamin Franklin, who really should have been the
central subject of the series, "John Adams," the 2008
HBO mini-series now on DVD, has almost no peer on the
big or small screen. The black hole is unfortunately
the characterization of the title character,
John Adams, second president of the U.S. and
an even-handed figure during our revolution.
John Adams is played here by the usually impressive
Paul Giamatti, who portrays Adams as something
between a sad sack and Jimmy Olsen, looking (without
his wig) a lot like Uncle Fester of "The Addams
Family" -- and 2% from being an inadvertent comic
caricature.
Unfortunately, Adams's life was not as eventful
or fascinating as Lincoln's or Jefferson's or
Franklin's or even Obama's, for that matter,
so we have one episode devoted mostly to the time
Adams caught a bad case of the sniffles in Europe
and we get to see him cough a good deal.
The portrait of Abigail Adams, the second First
Lady, alas, is also flawed. Played by the almost always
winsome Laura Linney, who leans too heavily on being
smugly amused here, Abigail Adams comes
off as someone who is constantly, privately seeing
her husband as an object of ridicule, constantly
chuckling about him to herself.
Elsewhere, much is made of the cultivation of son
John Quincy, but there, unfortunately, is no
foreshadowing of what a mediocrity he'd become
in adulthood.
Yes, the series is based on a book by one of our
best historians, but, frankly, I've lost faith
in the veracity of a lot of history. As I've
gotten older, I've seen people I know covered
in the press, and sometimes their published
life stories are so wildly inaccurate that they
almost qualify as fiction. And this is the 21st
century, when primary documents and firsthand
remembrances are preserved like never before.
Back in Adams's time, a lot of what passed as
fact was almost surely sheer myth.
An example. Look, I love Hillary Clinton, but let's
be real: in an earlier century, her story about
sniper fire in Bosnia would have been stamped by
all historians as the stone cold truth. Yet it
was debunked only because -- incredibly -- there was
actual video footage of the event (and of the sweetest
little sniper you've ever seen!).
So you have to wonder how many stories of
Revolutionary War derring-do are actually,
factually true, and how many are the 18th
century equivalent of, uh, sniper fire
in Bosnia.
Anyway, this is a mostly terrific mini-series -- you
come away feeling as if you've really met
Washington and Franklin -- and it's perfect
for President's Day, though the quality drops off
precipitously after the second episode.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 11, 2009
Should We Cap Anchor Salaries at a Half-Mil?
The banking crisis and economic collapse has
opened up -- or should open up -- a wider-ranging
debate about paying executives exorbitant salaries
when their companies are failing.
How about the news biz itself? What about the
massively excessive salaries of executives at top
newspapers that have been failing for years? Some
daily newspapers are losing a million dollars a
week, yet their top executives are paid multimillion
dollar salaries. For what are they paid? To run
the paper into the ground?
Perhaps the salaries of all tv and print journalists,
and associated executives, should be capped at half
a million until their organizations return to
profitability. Or maybe there should be a rule: no
journalist should make more than the president of
the United States. Because a reporter or anchor
who "earns," say, 16 mil a year, is too out of
touch with the everyday concerns of 99%+ of the
citizens they serve. Which probably accounts for
the oddly lacadaisical attitude of a lot of tv
journalists toward the health care crisis in
this country; when they ask questions about it
at news conferences, there is an abject lack of
urgency in their tones.
TV viewers might get a better understanding of the
news they receive if the networks used captions
beneath the faces of the talking heads and anchors
and correspondents who they air (such as: "The
anchor reporting this health care story makes
$7 mil a year; his health care costs are
completely covered, and then some; his
mother-in-law is a top executive at
Pfizer"; or "Correspondent reporting this story
about overly-generous CEO pay makes $11 mil a
year, which is more than the combined salaries of
hundreds of midlevel employees at his company;
and he has a book deal from a company with a huge
stake in the pharmaceutical biz." Etc.
Those who make $9 mil (or whatever) a year in
broadcast news made it because they (or their
agents) were clever at leverage. Because if
they were really worth that money, their companies
and their TV programs wouldn't be failing right
now. If, say, Katie Couric were really worth the
multimillions, her show wouldn't be in third
place; her ratings are roughly below or equal
to the ratings earned by her predecessor anchors,
which suggests one could probably put one of
many correspondents in that spot and have the same
ratings. Which means that last place is rewarded
with something like $15 million.
And to the CEO or anchor who says, "Fine, go ahead
and cap my salary; I'll go somewhere else," we
should start calling that person's bluff. If,
say, Couric balks at having her salary cut to
half a million, let her go. Where would she go?
The other anchor spots are already taken. CNN
would be her only alternative. She'd likely
end up running Larry King's show, and that
would be no real thorn in the side of her
former employer. (And even if she did end up
on a competing news program, one assumes she'd
bring her failing ways there, too.)
Likewise with the heads of the failed banks.
If we cap their salaries at half a mil, to
what collapsed financial institution
would they go for more gravy? And if they
did go elsewhere, they'd probably bring along
their ineptitude there, too.
I'm starting to think it's possible that the
election of President Obama is the first
major symptom of revolutionary change to come,
not the revolutionary change itself. I think
the whole nation has awakened to the
massive, callous, fundamental unfairness of
undeserving people earning millions of dollars
a year while many of us can barely pay our
basic bills.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 9 - 10, 2009
After walking home this afternoon (and dodging
Berkeley's traffic cops, who seem to have become
ubiquitous in recent days), I immediately
turned on my favorite radio show, KALX's "Next
Big Thing," and was thrilled to hear Marshall
play my latest song, "Doctor, Please Restore My Youth,"
around an hour ago. Many thanks to the station
and Mr. Stax!
* * * *
Twenty years ago this Saturday, the Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, via fatwa, sentenced novelist Salman Rushdie
to death for blasphemy. Though formal advocacy of the
death sentence by Iran has largely ceased, there are
many Islamic hard-liners who still want to do him in for
writing "The Satanic Verses" in 1988.
A couple weeks after the '89 fatwa, I covered a rally in
support of Rushdie in Manhattan that was interrupted
by a bomb threat and wrote about it and associated
issues for the East Coast Rocker newspaper in its
March 29, 1989 issue. Here's that story (and
another piece that has not been published until now):
from The East Coast Rocker newsaper, March 29, 1989
We Must Send These Fundamentalists a Clear and Sharp Message
By Paul Iorio
The rock world has finally started weighing
in with its belated condemnations of the
Ayatollah Khomeini's death sentence
on novelist Salman Rushdie. Unfortunately,
certain factions have chosen to use
oppressive tactics to fight the Ayatollah.
Nowhere has that been more evident than in
the organization by several U.S. radio stations
of boycotts and burnings of records by Cat
Stevens, due to the singer's backing of
Khomeini's death threat.
Without a doubt, Stevens's support of
Muslim terrorism is completely damnable,
though record burnings are not the proper
way to vent one's outrage. Indeed,
suppressing Stevens's work on the basis
of his political or religious beliefs is doing
the Ayatollah's job. We should be able
to hear Stevens' music just as we should
be allowed to read Rushdie's books.
When we respond with such a boycott,
by fighting fascism with fascism, we defeat
ourselves. We should combat Khomeini
by making sure that Rushdie's "The Satanic
Verses" is sold and displayed by major
book chains.
And Viking Press should heed
NBC-News's John Chancellor's suggestion
to call the Ayatollah's bluff by bringing Rushdie
over to the U.S. for a publicity tour.
We must send these fundamentalists a
clear and sharp message: no political
or religious leader, not even in our own
country, will intimidate or terrorize us into
limiting freedom of expression.
One can condemn Stevens's approval of
the Rushdie death contract without boycotting
his music, just as one can deplore poet Ezra
Pound's Nazism without condemning his
brilliant Cantos.
Certainly there are grounds for not airing
Stevens's songs, but those grounds are
aesthetic, not political; his wimpy folk lacks
any semblance of edge or energy, enduring
guilty pleasures like "Peace Train" and
"Moonshadow" notwithstanding.
We've had enough censorship from
religious fundamentalists -- from Falwell
to Khomeini -- and should put religious
extremists of all faiths on notice: they have
absolutely no business imposing their
private beliefs on a secular society. Period.
How does one deal with bomb threats and other
violent acts by those who wish to stifle free
speech? Norman Mailer, speaking at a recent
PEN reading of "Satanic Verses" in Manhattan
that I attended (and that was delayed by a
bomb threat), gave advice on how to handle
telephone bomb threats, which, he noted,
only cost a quarter to make. Quoting Jean
Genet, Mailer said to tell such callers:
"Blow out your farts."
* * *
In January 1996, I wrote and reported another story
related to the Rushdie affair. For this piece, I walked
around Manhattan with a copy of "The Satanic Verses"
prominently displayed, visiting both everyday places
and locations where the book might raise eyebrows and
tempers. The idea was to see how provocative
the novel was seven years after the fatwa. Here's
my report (which has never been published):
page one of manuscript (click to enlarge it)
* *
page two of manuscript (click to enlarge it)
* *
page three of manuscript (click to enlarge it)
* *
fourth and final page of manuscript (click to enlarge it)
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- There has been a lot of talk lately about
there not being enough "respect" for various
religious right-wingers in Iran and elsewhere.
Could you please tell me how religious militants
(e.g., the backers of the Rushdie fatwa, those
who supported the 9/11 attacks, etc.) have earned
that respect? Could you please tell me why
such religious militants merit respect?
Could you please tell me what specific actions
they have taken that are worthy of respect?
Am I supposed to "respect" the fact that they
respond with homicidal violence when they
object to a novel or an editorial cartoon? Why
should I respect that?
In my view, most religious militants are
worthy only of contempt. And disrespectful is
as nice as I'll be toward them.
P.S. -- Why are we still listening to rich
twerps like Mark Zandi of Moody's, which (either
negligently or fraudulently) gave top
ratings to companies months before those
companies collapsed?
Isn't there something deeply wrong and
disingenuous about some TV news people (who are
making multi-million dollar salaries) who interview
Zandi and other millionaires (who were virtually
complicit with those who caused our financial crisis)
and say, "Tsk, tsk, off with the heads of the rich"?
Sort of like King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
telling the French revolutionaries, "We're looking
for the culprits, too."
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 9, 2009
Top o' the Grammys!
Alison Krauss, Robert Plant performing in
Golden Gate Park, October 3, 2008.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
The Grammys got it right last night by giving
top awards to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
for their "Raising Sand" collaboration -- and
"Please Read the Letter" was the song to honor,
too. Anyone who was at the penultimate
show of Plant and Krauss's 2008 tour, at Golden
Gate Park in San Francisco last October, saw
an audience that got naturally high from
the moment it heard the opening drumbeat
of "Letter" and then became exhilarated as
the song progressed. I went to a fair
number of concerts last year but not one
(besides the Plant/Krauss one) at which an
audience became so openly transported by
a single song. Looking forward to
"Raising Sand, Vol. 2."
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 8, 2009
Here're a few pictures I've recently shot:
Sullyville (aka, Danville, Calif.), Sully's hometown, shown
here around an hour before he appeared on Jan. 24, 2009. As
you can see here, the town is also proud of the fact that
Eugene O'Neill wrote "Long Day's Journey" when he lived in Danville.
* * *
Remember that night a few weeks ago when the moon made its closest pass
to Earth of '09? Well, here's how it looked in Berkeley, Calif.
* * *
A midnight shot of the barbed wire fence surrounding
eco-protesters in trees last Fall.
But I digress. Paul
________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 4, 2009
Was My Phone Tapped In the Bush Years?
A Reporter's Suspicions
As a journalist who has written for almost every
major newspaper in North America, and for a lot of
magazines, I wanted the 9/11 attacks
to be my beat in the years after 9/11. But it
never really happened. At the time, my
specialty was arts and entertainment journalism,
so making the switch to hard news was not easy,
particularly in that period when the newspaper
industry had begun to collapse, leaving
fewer publications to write for.
But in 2004, I did come up with a bit of a scoop:
Using the so-called Wayback Machine search engine,
I discovered time-stamped archived Usenet and chat
room postings on Muslim fundamentalist websites
that seemed to indicate, judging by the dates of
the messages, that some Muslim militants
knew about the 9/11 attacks before they occurred
and that word of the impending attacks might have
been in the air and involved a wider web of people
than just the hijackers and bin Laden's conspirators.
As a freelance writer, I decided to report the story
independently -- asking various government sources for
comment -- and then submit it to various publications.
Though I didn't contact the Joint Terrorism Task Force
(JTTF) for comment, I was called by the JTTF out of
the blue. And, frankly, I was more than happy to get
their perspective and, in the process, talk with
them about my reportage. (As The Washington Post's
Bob Woodward and others have always pointed out, you're
a citizen first and a journalist second, especially
when it comes to issues that could be a matter of
life or death.) My info, after all, did not come
from confidential sources but from obscure
Internet archives that I was not obligated to keep secret.
My interviews with the two JTTF agents were not for
attribution, meaning they spoke on the condition
that they not be identified by name. Suffice it
to say that I spoke to two of them, both
of whom called without having been first contacted
by me. I spoke with the first agent on July 22, 2004,
for around an hour, and the second agent on December
3, 2004.
To be honest, neither gave me the third degree and both
were sensitive to the nature of both their roles and
mine -- and both were refreshingly and unambiguously
un-bigoted about Muslims.
The only red flag came at the beginning of the conversation
with the second JTFF agent on December 3. This call came
the day that Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy
Thompson made his famous remarks about the U.S. food
supply's vulnerability to terrorist tampering, which
was, by the way, one of the plots discussed in
some of the Usenet messages I had uncovered.
Anyway, that second agent said that he had initially
reached my AOL answering service and asked me
about what sort of phone service I had. "Do you
have service through AOL?," he asked.
"No, through ATT," I said.
At the time, I didn't think much of the exchange.
But shortly afterwards, I realized that he had
been a bit too curious about who provided my
phone service. This was a JTTF agent, after all.
I thought, uh oh, I bet my land line is going to be tapped.
In the subsequent months, certain mundane but distinctive
details from my personal phone conversations
seemed to be getting around to people who didn't
know me. At first, I thought, maybe it was
just a nosy neighbor. My apartment, after all, is in
an apartment house whose units are way too close
together, and you can sometimes overhear conversations
in adjacent rooms. That might be it, I thought.
But I wanted to be sure. Suspecting that my land line
might be tapped, and wanting to rule out the nosy
neighbor theory, I conducted a test. I simply called
myself from a remote pay phone, left a message on
my own answering machine and waited to see whether what
I said eventually leaked out.
I took lots of precautions to rule out stray factors.
For example, I made the calls to myself from an
isolated pay phone at a place that could not
be overheard by anyone (on the far east side of
the Clark Kerr campus of the University of
California at Berkeley). I made sure that the
answering machine that would receive my message
in my apartment was muted so there was no chance
a neighbor would overhear it. And I left a message
that contained unique or very personal information
(or misinformation) that could not possibly be
known or said by anyone else.
I'm not going to reveal some of the things I said
into my answering machine -- too personal -- but I
can give an example of the sorts of things I'd say.
I'd always say something that had some sort of
security or confidential component, like: "I know
a journalist who interviewed Rumsfeld, and he tells
me that, off the record, Rumsfeld really can't
stand Tom Ridge. Hates him." Something fictitious
and distinctive that could only have come from me.
And, sure enough, each time I left such a message,
the info seemed to get around to complete strangers
in my daily interactions, usually within around
three or four days. For instance, I'd be in a line
at the grocery store and someone nearby would
pass by and say something like "he can't stand
Ridge." Something like that. Something that
sent a clear signal to me that my phone
line was being monitored.
After this happened a couple times, I quickly moved
to protect the privacy of friends and family members
who would call, switching almost all my telephone
conversations to my new cell phone and
using my land line mainly for dial-up Internet service.
That seemed to clear up the problem.
I must confess that I later saw the mischievous
potential of such a situation; after some
local sociopath (in an unrelated matter)
starting leaving vaguely threatening messages on
my answering machine for no reason, I decided to
use his name as a guinea pig in my experiment,
leaving a message on my answering machine along
the lines of: "[Name deleted] is always praising
bin Laden. Sickening." I did it half-jokingly,
still not knowing at the time whether my
phone was being tapped or not. Interestingly --
and this may be only a coincidence -- the
harassment from the guy ceased within a week.
As for my story, there was substantial interest
in it from CBS's "60 Minutes" and from the Los
Angeles Times for a time, but ultimately
it wasn't published or aired. As a freelancer,
I had to go on to other assigned stories and
couldn't continue to develop or pitch the
9/11 piece. (A version of it is posted on my
home page at http://www.paulliorio.blogspot.com/.)
So was my phone tapped or not? I don't know for
sure, though the circumstantial evidence strongly
suggests it was. Now that a new administration
is in place in Washington, with new priorities, maybe
I should request a copy of my FBI file and solve
the mystery definitively.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- Mostly masterful story in TNY about a region in
which I spent part of my childhood (and it happens
to quote my little sister, too!): southwest Fl.
The only big-picture element that Packer and his
sources neglect to mention is that the more
extreme hurricane seasons of recent years have
made that area a far less desirable place to
settle and do business. People simply don't want
to risk being wiped out every few years by a
Cat 3 or 4, and that's one (albeit only one) of
the reasons behind declining property values
in parts of that area. Remember Al Gore's famous
maps in "An Inconvenient Truth"? Climate
change, more than any other factor, will re-shape
that state in the coming decades.
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 30, 2009
So what will Springsteen play at the Super Bowl?
Here are a few scenarios:
MOST LIKELY SETLIST
opens with "Glory Days"
"The Rising"
"Working on a Dream"
ends with "Born to Run"
LEAST LIKELY SETLIST
opens with "New York City Serenade"
"The Angel"
"If I Was the Priest"
ends with "Drive All Night"
A SETLIST FOR TRUE FANS
opens with "Two Hearts"
"Rendezvous"
"Kitty's Back"
ends with "Glory Days"
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 25, 2009
Maureen Dowd's latest column truly nails
Kirsten Gillibrand, who spent around 20
inconsequential minutes in the U.S. House
before being promoted to the Senate by a feeble
governor not elected to his own post. As she notes,
Gillibrand resembles no one so much as...Tracy
Flick.
Why do we celebrate politicians who have never said
anything original, never written anything memorable,
never led the way on an issue when it was unpopular,
never risked everything to take a brave stand?
When someone like Gillibrand is elevated over
more deserving contenders, one has to suspect
that there are laundered favors or laundered
grudges involved.
Or perhaps the late Sen. Hruska has become more
of a prophet than anyone might have guessed
back when. He was definitely ahead of his time
in championing the rights of the mediocre, for
whom we now seem to have a fetish.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 24, 2009
I went to Danville to see Sully Today....
the Danville Green: epicenter of Sully-mania. [photo by
Paul Iorio]
I traveled to Danville, Calif., today to see
Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger make his first
public appearance since he saved 155 lives
last week by landing his crashing jet on
the Hudson River. Danville, of course,
is Sully's hometown, and thousands turned
out on the main Green to see and hear
speeches by him, his wife, and assorted
local politicians.
After his wife, Lorrie, introduced him
("I'd like you to meet my husband, Sully"),
he walked to the podium to enthusiastic
cheers and thanked the audience three times.
The crowd then broke into a spontaneous chant:
"Sull-ee! Sull-ee! Sull-ee!"
In person, he's taller, lankier and more
good-humored than he seems on TV, with an
easy laugh and a likable manner.
At the podium, he kept it brief. In fact,
here's the entire text of his speech:
"Lorrie and I are grateful for your incredible
outpouring of support. It's great to be home
in Danville with our neighbors and our friends.
Circumstance determined that it was this
experienced crew that was scheduled to fly that
particular flight on that particular day. But
I know I can speak for the entire crew
when I tell you: We were simply doing the
jobs we were trained to do. Thank you."
This was a proud day for Danville, an upscale,
distant suburb of San Francisco in a scenic,
BART-less part of the East Bay called the
San Ramon Valley. The place is almost
Capra-esque (people wait in an orderly line
to cross a busy street; a restaurant advertises
"the best tuna melt ever!"; even the manager
of a grocery store looks like the president
of a bank). And there's a sort of New England
gentility to some of the locals (who once
included playwright Eugene O'Neill
in their number).
At the ceremony, people in the crowd exchanged
Sully myths and gossip. One woman talked
(as if she had inside knowledge) about how
Sully had been seen cooly sipping a cup of
coffee right after the Hudson landing, as if
the whole accident had been a routine
procedure.
Of course, we'll have to wait until his
upcoming "60 Minutes" interview to learn
the other details about how a massive
tragedy was, against all odds, averted.
Sully holds up a plaque on a stage in Danville. [photo by
Paul Iorio]
Danville fans of Sully, after his speech. [photo by Paul Iorio]
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 22, 2009
So how is the Obama era being celebrated in
liberal areas like Berkeley, Calif. (the petri
dish of democracy)? This picture pretty much
sums up the mood here.
someone's car
in Berkeley, decked out as an Obama shrine. (I wonder if he can
clear the Caldecott with that on top.) ((photo by Paul Iorio)
* * * *
Here're a few other humorous photos I shot in
the last couple days:
* * * *
But I digress. Paul
[photos above by Paul Iorio]
__________________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 21, 2009
Notes on the Inauguration Ceremony
The ceremony was Greek, not Roman, in spirit,
memorable, not monumental, organic, not
contrived, and Obama's speech didn't overreach
or try to become something grander than it
actually was.
The closest he came to an eternally quotable line
like "Ask not what your country can do" was: "The
question we ask today is not whether our government
is too big or too small, but whether it works."
And I loved the inclusiveness of "We are a nation of
Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and
nonbelievers" (finally, a president who has the
sensitivity and courage to include "nonbelievers").
And then there was his marvelous slam that could
easily apply to the misguided, evil supporters of
bin Laden: "To those leaders around the globe who
seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills
on the West, know that your people will judge you on
what you can build, not what you destroy."
There were also stray lines that stuck, some of
them almost Dylanesque ("we will extend a hand if you
are willing to unclench your fist").
And I loved the way his ascension to the presidency
happened not with some predictable high noon sharp
speech but with live, original music that overflowed
naturally from the Bush years into the Obama era.
Elizabeth Alexander's poem was a marvelous
celebration of the quotidian, though, alas,
I don't think mass audiences have much of an
ear for even the finest poetry.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- Yes, close Guantanamo, by all means and with
due dispatch. But make sure that some of the seriously
violent criminals there are fully prosecuted and not
let out on some legal technicality. Keep in mind that
we have all sorts of degrees of due process in America,
and different standards apply to criminal, civil,
military and corporate cases. "Beyond a reasonable doubt"
is not always the level of proof required to convict
in the United States and probably shouldn't be the
level of proof needed to imprison some of the
mass homicidal folks at Gitmo. Using one of our other
standards in some instances would serve both
justice and security. And, by the way,
it's not hard to see that President Obama's
political career would be completely over
if even one of the Gitmo detainees were to be
released and went on to plot, say, a successful
dirty bomb attack on New York.
____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 19 - 20, 2009
"The Hour When the Ship Comes In..."
impressionistic/blurry photo of President Obama, back when
he was Sen. Obama, in an Oakland (Calif.) crowd in early
2007 by Paul Iorio.
__________________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 16, 2009
Sully Should Head the NTSB
In the folds of ordinary American life are hidden
some astonishingly extraordinary people who
generally toil in obscurity until some
freakish event brings their greatness into
the spotlight. Proof of that happened yesterday
afternoon, when Chesley Sullenberger made a
series of brilliant, reflexive, split-second
decisions that saved perhaps hundreds of lives.
I mean, the temptation for him to try to fly on
to Teterboro would have lured almost every other
pilot into untold tragedy and devastation. This
was spontaneous decision-making of the
highest order.
President-elect Obama should tap Sullenberger, who
is associated with UC Berkeley, to
head the National Transportation Safety Board. But
the way things are going, Sully may be drafted to
run for California governor in 2010. Lucky
Lindy never did what Sully did.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 14, 2009
If I found a brilliant surgeon who had just the
right specialized training and experience for
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 14, 2009
If I found a brilliant surgeon who had just the
right specialized training and experience for
an operation I was about to undergo, I wouldn't
drop him just because I discovered he hadn't
fully filed taxes in the past. Frankly, I wouldn't
care. I'd want the best surgeon I could find,
no matter what problems he might have in terms
of filing forms.
Likewise, with Timothy Geithner. The American
economy is on the operating table and in critical
condition. It needs a smart, super-competent
professional with specialized experience in
the areas that are currently in distress, and
Geithner fits that bill. Frankly, I don't care
about the minor mistakes he might have made in
the past in his personal life; the patient is
dying and in need of Geithner's expertise now.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 13, 2009
Well, Roland ("Trailblazer," if he should say
so himself) Burris is not our first
senile-seeming U.S. Senator. Hope he didn't
have to pay too much for the seat.
Is this the sort of "bold" future we're
talking about?
I must say that the Senate is showing such
a lack of spine lately that I would be very
surprised if it passes any sort of universal
health care legislation by this time next year.
Mark my words. Clip and save this. By January
2010, I bet we still have virtually the same
health care system in place. Welcome to 1993?
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- At this hour, Blogojevich, still receiving
hefty paychecks from the state of Illinois (though
deprived of the bribes he wanted to take), is
probably laughing all the way to Cristophe's.
I would have had a lot of respect for Burris
if he had told Blogojevich, "I won't play
ball with a corrupt official; I'm turning down
your appointment." Why are we rewarding people
like Burris when there are lots of whistleblowers
and quiet heroes out there who are neglected
on the sidelines? That's where the Dems'
partnerships should begin.
___________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 12, 2009
Bush, Frosty
Quote of the day:
"At times, you've misunderestimated me," President
Bush said to journalists at his final press
conference this morning. (Personally, I think
Bush may be mis-accusing the press.)
Bush also said one of his big mistakes was not
finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The
way he phrased it this morning, he made
it seem as if there had been some sort of Easter
egg hunt on the banks of the Euphrates and,
gee whiz, we couldn't find the booty
hidden there.
Truth is, the mistake was not that we couldn't
find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The
mistake was in erroneously believing
that there were WMDs there in the first place.
And with regard to Bush's "connecting dots about
9/11" bit: there's nothing wrong with connecting
dots if there are genuine links between terrorists
and a foreign government. But what Bush
did was to connect dots in order to draw an imaginary
or unfounded linkage between 9/11 and Saddam
Hussein, who virtually hated Osama bin Laden.
Bush might as well have drawn a link between
al Qaeda and the government in Mexico City.
* * * * *
QUICK CUTS:
What's the difference between a loan and a bridge
loan? Isn't every loan effectively a bridge loan?
* * * * *
Isn't the phrase "returning to the status quo ante"
redundant? No need to use "ante."
* * * * *
Can we please retire the very tired phrase
"fifth Beatle" and anyone who uses it?
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 11, 2009
Rather than seat Roland Burris, I suggest that Dems
wait until soon-to-be-Governor Pat Quinn appoints someone
like....Jesse White, the man who has refused to sign
Blogojevich's certificate of appointment. Jesse
White seems like the sort of profile in courage
the Senate could use right about now. Blogojevich,
under a cloud of his own hair-stylist's making,
does not deserve the victory that Burris's
seating would give him.
* * * *
Still haven't seen "Frost/Nixon" yet but have seen enough
clips to be sort of puzzled by it.
Look, I lived through the Watergate era as a teenager
who was virtually obsessed with the Nixon scandals
and all the media coverage about them. I was so
involved in anti-Nixon political activism at the
time that I actually was a marshal at and organizer
of a pro-impeachment protest when I was 15-years old
(and I was even covered in my hometown's main
newspaper at the time). But, frankly, I don't
even remember watching David Frost's televised
interviews with Nixon in '77.
In fact, I don't think I've ever watched one
of David Frost's shows from beginning to end, and
I've always been an avid TV viewer.
When I was a kid, in the 1970s, Frost always seemed
a bit remote, aloof, somewhat dense and square. As
a teen, I and my friends much preferred Cavett and
Carson, with an occasional dose of Susskind or
even William F. Buckley. In terms of electric
interviews, Cavett v. Mailer, or Buckley v. Kerouac,
loomed much larger in the zeitgeist of the era.
I can imagine that the new generation is a bit
confused by this film. They must be wondering:
Was Frost the guy who brought down Nixon? They
must be wondering: Was this an important moment,
mom and dad, when everybody in the post-Watergate
era was glued to the TV set to watch Frost
snare Nixon? I think the film makers are
guiding young people to the false impression
that this was a larger event than it actually
was (a reviewer at TNY touches on this
aspect, too).
You know what Watergate-related event truly scared
and charged everybody contemporaneously? The so-called
"Saturday Night Massacre," in which Nixon got rid
of the top guard of the U.S. Justice Dept. and
the Watergate special prosecutor, who
the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General
both courageously refused to fire at Nixon's behest.
On that night, on an autumn weekend in 1973,
with a succession of alarming news bulletins
interrupting that Saturday night's television
programming, you really got the horrifying
sense that the federal government
was truly collapsing and that we weren't
being told the whole story of what was
going on at the White House.
Now there's a moment in Watergate history
ripe for cinematic dramatization.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 7, 2009
Don't Seat Burris
Anyone appointed to the U.S. Senate from
Illinois can't assume office until his
certificate of appointment is signed by
the Illinois secretary of state. Why
should Roland Burris be an exception?
The signature of the secretary of state is a
de facto (if not intended) check on the unchecked
power of the governor. Should the governor make an
appointment that is clearly irresponsible or make
a rash appointment when he is in his political
death throes, the secretary of state can, in effect,
check that power by not signing on.
I don't know what's gotten into Dianne Feinstein
lately. Once admirable, she's fast turning into the
next Joe Lieberman, what with her apparent opposition
to Panetta and her backing of Burris. Filibuster
proofing the Senate seems further away than ever.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 6, 2009
He's good enough, he's smart enough, and, doggonit,
the people just elected him Senator!
Now that Al Franken has been certified
the winner of the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota
(though there will certainly be a legal challenge
from Coleman), all the Senate contests have now
been resolved (even if the appointments have not).
As you may recall, there were 11 Senate races that
were considered highly competitive back on election
day, and I offered my own predictions on who would
win each one (which I published in my November 4,
2008, Digression (see below), and posted at
4:15am on Nov. 4).
How did I fare? I predicted 11 of the 11
Senate contests!
* * *
Frankly, Leon Panetta may be just the right guy
to head the CIA. Some criticize him for not having
specialized experience in intelligence, but let's
be real: it was all those so-called intelligence
professionals who didn't see 9/11 coming. Maybe we
need someone (like Panetta) who can bring a fresh,
smart approach to the spy agency. He couldn't possibly
do worse than the team that ignored the red flags
about bin Laden in '01.
* * *
One of my favorite xmas presents this year was a
marvelous book of photographs of R.E.M. by David
Belisle, "R.E.M. Hello" (Chronicle Books) (thanks
to H!). It's packed with fascinating and often
revealing pictures of the band in the 2000s.
Anyone who loves this band the way I do will want
to see these pics.
Yorke and Stipe: melancholic genius overload.
[by David Belisle]
But I digress. Paul
________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 4 - 5, 2009
And the Best Picture Oscar Goes to..."The Wrestler"? Probably.
Finally saw "The Wrestler" this afternoon and must
confess I came out of the Metreon crying like a
wuss (to use the trade parlance of the film). Not
only is "The Wrestler" almost certainly the best
picture released in '08, but I'm trying to
figure out how many years I'd have to go back
in order to find a movie as poignant or moving
(though, admittedly, I've not yet seen all the major
movies of last year).
It is certainly comfortably in league with such
first-rank classic films about pugilists like
"Raging Bull," "Million Dollar Baby" and "On the
Waterfront," no doubt about it.
At times, it's like a top-grade episode of "The Sopranos"
and, at other times, achieves something close to the
brilliance of films by De Sica and other Italian
neorealists. (Director Darren Aronofsky and
screenwriter Robert D. Siegel should
definitely find some way to collaborate again.)
And what a resurrection this is for Mickey
Rourke, whose career had been left for dead years
ago by both critics and the movie biz. (Doesn't
it seem like not long ago when Rourke was playing
pranks with a popcorn box in "Diner"? ) Now he's
very likely to be nominated for a best actor
Oscar in a few weeks and seems the
favorite to win in a category that looked like
a lock for Sean Penn just last month.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if "The Wrestler"
were to win the best picture Oscar in February.
In my Digression of December 7, 2008, I wrote
that "Wall-E" was probably going to be
nominated for best picture -- and I think
that's still the case, though I also believe it has
far less of a chance to win than it did several
months ago. After seeing "The Wrestler," it's
obvious that "Wall-E" is soo pre-recession
in spirit, packing all the emotional wallop of a
brand new Subaru. And the buzz has also drifted
away from Penn and "Milk," which seems to have
peaked a bit too soon, and moved unmistakably
toward "The Wrestler," which captures the current
recessionary zeitgeist like no other major film
in release.
* * * *
Haven't yet seen "Frost/Nixon" but am surprised
Langella was cast, given that Nixon was the least
Italian of all our presidents (remember the bigoted
stuff about Rodino that Nixon said
on his tapes?).
* * * *
Also haven't seen "Rachel Getting Married," though
Demme is one of my favorite directors. Am impressed
with Anne Hathaway as an actress, but far less so
with her personal life, which (as she should know
by now) can easily undermine a career. How come
there's something about her that tells me she could
become the next Claudine Longet by the time
she's 40?
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 31, 2008
Happy new year, everybody.
For today's Digression, I'm publishing an unpublished
story I wrote and reported a few years ago on J.D.
Salinger. I'm proud of this story, as it reveals
brand new details about the reclusive author's
day-to-day recent life in New Hampshire. Very unfair
that it was not published by the newspaper for
which it was written (I think my editor chickened out
because Salinger and his people are famous for getting
litigious about anything written about him; but
every fact in this story is nailed down and solid).
Anyway, here's the story that certain mainstream
papers, probably bowing to pressure from Salinger,
wouldn't publish!
Tomorrow, by the way, is the author's 90th birthday
(so the piece has been updated a bit).
Salinger Turns 90 in January
What the Townspeople Think About J.D. Salinger
By Paul Iorio
J.D. Salinger will turn 90 in January, which means he has
now lived for 56 years in the tiny town of
Cornish Flat, New Hampshire, in seclusion. By all
accounts, he’s still as reclusive as when he was when
he first moved to town on January 1, 1953, back
when President Truman was still in the White House.
The author moved there around 17 months after the release
of his first and only full-length novel, “The Catcher in the
Rye,” at a time when he was “tremendously relieved that the
season for success of ‘The Catcher in The Rye’ is over,”
as he told the Saturday Review magazine in 1952. Little did
he know the season had just begun.
The townspeople of the Cornish Flat area seem to have grown
accustomed to him and usually leave him alone to live
his day to day life with his wife, a quilt and
tapestry designer around half his age, in a house
near a covered bridge (how fitting it's a covered
bridge!) that leads to Vermont. (He moved down the
road to his current Cornish house after divorcing
his previous wife in 1967.)
Most people in the area do not talk about him or
to him. But some do.
"People know who he is, yet he acts like nobody
knows who he is," says Lynn Caple, who runs the
nearby Plainfield General Store, where Salinger
and his wife occasionally stop in to buy the
New York Times and other items.
"Very straight-faced guy," says Caple. "I've only seen
him smile once. I've been here four years."
Other neighbors, like Jerry Burt of Plainfield, have
actually been to his house, which he says is at the
end of a long driveway and atop a hill on hundreds
of acres owned by the author. "We would
go over to watch movies in his living room and have
dinner with him," says Burt, who claims he hasn't
seen the author since 1983.
"He's got a big living room with a deck that looks out
over the hills of Vermont, way up high, very private,"
he adds.
Burt recalls one dinner party at Salinger's house
twenty-some years ago at which Salinger, who is said
to enjoy health food, served meatloaf. "No Julia
Child," he says of Salinger's cuisine. And
the conversation was rarely literary. "He talked
about movies and the gardens and his children," he says.
The books Salinger usually talked about were not novels
but non-fiction works related to “health, being your own
health provider -- and gardening."
Of course, none of the guests dared to mention
“Catcher.”
"You'd never even think to do that if you were around
him," he says. "He'd just give you a look. He's a
very tall man and stern looking. You just know not
to do that. He'd probably show you the door and
say, 'Don't come in.'"
“He never talked about his work except to say he wrote
every morning faithfully,” he says. “And he said if I was
ever going to be a writer, I would have to do that.”
He also says Salinger has a big safe -- like a "bank
safe" -- where he keeps his unpublished manuscripts. "I've
seen the safe, I've looked in it. And he told me that he kept
his unpublished [work] there....It's huge," says Burt. "You
could have a party in there."
At one get-together in the 1980s, Salinger screened Frank
Capra's 1937 film "Lost Horizon," about a group of people
who find a paradise called Shangrila tucked in a remote
corner of the Himalayans. "He liked all those old things,
those old silents, Charlie Chaplin," he says. (His
description of the Salinger party almost resembles the
scene in the 1950 movie “Sunset Boulevard” in which a
has-been screens old movies for friends in a remote house.)
Another neighbor, this one in Cornish, is much more
circumspect about what she says about Salinger and
takes great pains to defend him. “He has been a wonderful
neighbor,” says Joan Littlefield, who lives close to
him. “The minute we moved into the neighborhood, he
called and gave us his unlisted number and said,
‘We’re neighbors now.’”
Littlefield spontaneously defended the author against
some of the allegations in the memoir by Salinger’s
daughter Margaret A. Salinger, “Dream Catcher: A Memoir”
(2000). That book claimed, among other things, that
Salinger was involved in offbeat health and spiritual
practices, such as drinking urine and Scientology.
“This thing about telling him to drink his own urine
or something that I heard that somebody wrote about,”
said Littlefield. “...I think that if any of these
reporters did some research into Ayurvedic medicine
or the medicine of China or the Far East, they would
probably find out that the medicine people over
there recommend this sort of thing.” (Ayurvedic
medicine provides alternative health treatments -- including
urine drinking -- that have origins in ancient
India.)
Littlefield defends Salinger on smaller issues, too.
“Absolutely ridiculous things have been written about
him, like that they had two Doberman attack dogs,”
she says. “For Pete’s sake, they had two little
Italian hounds of some kind that looked like Dobermans,
and they were skinny and tiny as toothpicks!”
(Our requests for an interview with Salinger went
unanswered. The author is famous for not granting
interviews and has given only around six interviews,
some of them brief and grudging, to reporters since
the release of “Catcher.")
Most other people in the area see Salinger only when
he's out in public, if at all. “He’s great looking for his
age,” says photographer and area resident Medora Hebert,
who has spotted him twice. “He’s dapper, very trim.”
“It was a long time before I could actually recognize him
because he looked so ordinary,” says Ann Stebbens Cioffi,
the daughter of the late owner of the Dartmouth Bookstore,
Phoebe Storrs Stebbens.
But Salinger himself has said that he thinks others don’t
see him as ordinary. "I'm known as a strange, aloof kind
of man," Salinger told the New York Times in 1974. And
some agree with him: "He's a very strange dude," says
Hanover resident Harry Nelson. Burt agrees: “He had a
weird sense of humor,” he says.
What emerges as much as anything is that the
author is a serious book lover and serial browser
who shops at places ranging from Borders Books to
the Dartmouth Bookstore. “He was uninterrupted
during his hour or two of browsing for books,” says
a person answering the phone at Encore! Books in West
Lebanon, New Hampshire, describing his own Salinger
sighting.
“He does come in reasonably frequently,” says someone
who answered the phone at the Dartmouth Bookstore in
Hanover, New Hampshire, around 20 miles north of Cornish.
“He’s a pretty good customer here but doesn’t really
say anything to us.”
"He frequented the Dartmouth bookstore," says an
employee of Borders Books Music & Cafe in West Lebanon.
"I talked to people who worked over there one time;
they say he wasn't very nice, wasn't the most cordial
person. So I kind of keep my eye out for him
here, go my own way."
Adds Medora Hebert, "One of my daughter's friends
was a cashier at the Dartmouth Bookstore. And they warned
him, 'If J.D. Salinger comes in, don't talk to him,
don't acknowledge him.'"
And there have been many reports of Salinger
browsing the stacks at the Dartmouth College
library. “I’ve talked with people who have met
him in the stacks and whatnot,” says Thomas
Sleigh, an English professor at Dartmouth College.
Salinger is also said to enjoy the annual Five-Colleges
Book Sale at the Hanover High School gym, a springtime
sale of used and antiquarian books that raises money
for scholarships.
In Hanover, as in Cornish, he keeps to himself. "My
wife [says] Salinger always said hello to Phoebe
and no one else," says Nelson, referring to Phoebe
Storrs Stebbens, who was a year older than
Salinger (and incidentally shares the same first
name as a major character in “Catcher”).
And area booksellers say Salinger’s books are
displayed just as prominently as they would be
if he were not a local.
Then again, Salinger doesn’t have many books to
display, since he’s published only three besides
“Catcher,” all compilations of short stories or
novellas that had been previously published, mostly
in The New Yorker magazine. His last book,
“Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and
Seymour, An Introduction,” was released in
January 1963. His previous books were the bestsellers
“Franny and Zooey” (1961) and “Nine Stories” (1953).
(By the way, The New Yorker magazine actually
rejected "The Catcher in the Rye" when Salinger
submitted it as a short story/novella that was
substantially similar to the novel, according to
Paul Alexander's book "Salinger: A Biography.")
In 1997, he had planned to publish a fifth book,
essentially a re-release of his last published
work, “Hapworth 16, 1924,” which appeared in The
New Yorker in June 1965. The book’s publication
was ultimately scuttled.
But “Catcher” eclipses everything else he’s
done -- by a mile. It’s one of the most
influential 20th century American novels, a
coming-of-age odyssey about high school student
Holden Caulfield, who wanders around New York
after being kicked out of prep school. And
it's arguably the first novel to convincingly capture
the voice of the modern, alienated, American
teenager.
"Catcher" was successful in its initial run but not
nearly as successful as it would become by the end
of the 1950s, when it started to turn into a
freakish cult phenomenon. To date, it has
sold more than 60 million copies worldwide and
continues to sell hundreds of thousands more each year.
Over the decades, the book has appealed to a wide
range of readers that even includes certified
wackos (John Lennon’s killer had a copy on him
when he was captured). So it’s not surprising that
Salinger has had to fend off obsessive
fans even at his private Shangrila of Cornish
Flat, which has a population of under 2,000.
“People approach him a lot,” says Burt. “And they
stole clothes off his clothesline. They stole his
socks, underwear, t-shirts. And they’d come up on
his deck. It’s a huge picture window that
goes across the front of the house looking out to
Vermont...And he said he’d get up and open the
drapes and people would be standing there looking in.
It really pissed him off.”
And there was also a much publicized scuffle outside the
Purity Supreme grocery store (which he used to jokingly
call “the Puberty Supreme,” according to two biographies)
in 1988, in which Salinger reportedly mixed it up with
a couple photographers who tried to take his picture.
But for the most part, people in the area don’t bother
him.
“People in Cornish are quite protective of him,” says
Cioffi. “I can’t think of anyone who will tell you
a word about Salinger,” says a woman who answered
the phone at the Hannaford Supermarket in Claremont.
Apparently, Cornish is the perfect place to go if you
vant to be alone. “This is also a part of the country
where [writer Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn lived in his
enclave -- and his kids went to public
schools,” says Bob Grey of the Northshire Bookstore
in faraway Manchester Center, Vermont, referring to
the Nobel laureate’s former home in Cavendish,
Vermont, which is around 20 miles from Cornish.
“It’s the kind of place where, if you’re going to move
to be left alone, it’s not a bad place to be.”
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 23, 2008
Almost 30 Years After "All in the Family" Went
Off the Air....
Excerpts from my exclusive interview with Carroll
O'Connor -- unpublished until now.
"Archie Bunker...never laughed."
I was lucky enough to have interviewed Carroll
O'Connor a few times in the 1990s, most memorably in
1997, when he talked about (among other things)
"All in the Family," which went off the air
thirty years ago this April.
That conversation, which lasted a couple
hours, took place in a church in the
Westwood section of Los Angeles on Labor
Day weekend of 1997 -- Saturday, August
30, 1997, to be exact, a few hours before
Princess Diana got into a car wreck in Paris.
Most of the conversation was about a play he had
just written, "A Certain Labor Day," though he
also talked about "All...," adding previously
unreported backstage details about how the series
came into existence every week. Here are excerpts,
which haven't been published -- until now (except
for a few lines, which I first included in one
of my newspaper articles of 1997):
CARROLL O'CONNOR: Yeah, we used to sit
and talk about making lines funnier or inserting
something. But I always used to make sure that these
jokes were not just jokes, they were characters's thrust
and parry. And I wouldn't play a pure unadulterated
joke. I could do it. But I always thought
we were doing these little plays on "All in the
Family." And there was a little crisis every week.
Archie Bunker, for instance, he never laughed.
He came in bothered every night about
something that went on in the day. He had a
crisis a day. And then he had a crisis at home
with his son-in-law and his daughter. And crisis
is what people understand. From a purely pragmatic
point of view -- forget art for a moment -- crisis
is what the ticket buyers understand. Everybody out
there has a crisis. I take credit for being the
one who was driving every week towards a little
play. I'm [not saying] everybody else was going
the other way. But I was the principal -- I used
to sit around the table and say, "Why should anybody
want to see this?...What is in this little play
we're doing that makes it worth watching?"
IORIO: HOW DID YOU GET THAT CONSISTENT
LEVEL OF QUALITY EVERY WEEK?
O'CONNOR: ....Let's go for the crisis.
Let's put a crisis in. If putting a crisis
in means losing a few jokes, let's put the crisis in.
Every single week, we improvised something on the set.
And we used to have a script going upstairs [at CBS].
We used to use computers, the big Xerox computers -- I
mean, they were monsters in those days, those Xerox
things -- so we could send [dialogue]. The minute we
made changes, they rushed up and put in the new pages.
They'd come down with three, four new scripts every
day. We went through all kinds of paper! And Xerox
machines kept turning them out for us. We'd
improvise and...we'd have to go up and get the script
changed.
IORIO: DID YOU EVER HAVE PROBLEMS WITH
THE CENSORS?
O'CONNOR: The time when Archie
changed the baby's diaper, and there was
frontal nudity on the little boy ["Archie,
The Babysitter," aired Jan. 12, 1976]. They
decided they wouldn't do it. I must say
Norman Lear went to bat for us. He won the
day on that one. But I think that even then,
they fudged it. They let us do it and then
they...did a very fast shot.
IORIO: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE EPISODE?
O'CONNOR: There was one very important
episode when Archie and Mike get a little boozed and
discuss the origins of racism and Archie explains why
he thinks what he thinks ["Two's a Crowd," aired Feb.
12, 1978]. Locked in a liquor room, in
the storeroom. And Archie opens up. He doesn't
forswear racism, he just explains why he believed his
father about [assuming Bunker's voice] Jews
and niggers."
* * *
As it turned out, while O'Connor and I were chatting,
the world had suddenly changed in a tragic way,
unbeknownst to both of us. On my way home from
the interview, I heard the breaking news that
Princess Diana had been involved in some sort of
car crash. (But I digress.)
As I mentioned, O'Connor's show went off the air
30 years ago this April, though -- of course -- it's
still very much available on DVD, even if it's
(oddly) somewhat scarce in syndication.
I recently watched the entire fourth season of
"All in the Family" and was struck by how modern
most of it seemed. Some of the dialogue sounded
like it was written in 2008 -- like this passage,
which first aired on October 20, 1973:
HENRY JEFERSON: How come we don't have a black
president? I mean, some of our black people are just
as dumb as Nixon.
ARCHIE BUNKER: You ain't got a black president,
Jefferson, 'cause God ain't ready for that yet.
MICHAEL: Wait a second. What?!
ARCHIE: That's right. God's got to try it out
first by making a black pope, which he ain't done yet.
LIONEL: Maybe that's 'cause God ain't Catholic.
. . .
GLORIA: Is that all you can talk about, whether a
black man or a white man should be president?
ARCHIE: Well, what do you want to talk about, little
girl?
GLORIA: How about a woman president?
ARCHIE: Oh, holy cow!
HENRY JEFFERSON (aghast): A woman president?!
GLORIA: Mr. Jefferson, this may come as a big surprise to
you, but women are much more oppressed than blacks.
HENRY JEFFERSON: I don't see no ghetto for women.
GLORIA: What do you call a kitchen?
LOUISE JEFFERSON: I call it a prison.
HENRY JEFFERSON: Stay out of this, Louise, you're
talking foolish.
LOUISE: Do you know what Shirley Chisholm said?
Shirley Chisholm said that she ran into more
discrimination because she was a woman than because
she was black.
HENRY JEFFERSON: That's why she didn't get elected.
LOUISE: Right.
HENRY: Because she was talking foolish.
......
GLORIA: Mr. Jefferson, you've come a long way,
baby. But from now on it's we women who have
to overcome.
...
Sounds like vintage 2008 dialogue, eh? Right out
of the Obama-Hillary headlines, right? Ahead of
its time, no doubt.
But it was also very much of and about the 1970s,
too. The fourth season was the last one of the
Nixon era, coming at a point when the show had
accumulated enormous momentum and was knocking it
out of the proverbial ballpark every week with
an astonishing level of consistency. And it also
includes some of the most frequently syndicated
episodes (e.g. Archie takes a bribe from a
corrupt lawyer in exchange for dropping charges
against a mugger from a prominent family; a
seemingly washed-up unemployed colleague
visits the Bunkers and ends up landing a
job as Archie's boss; Archie celebrates
his 50th birthday (though it's hard to believe
Bunker was as young as 50 in '74; he could've
easily passed for 64).
Still, it's hard to call it the best season, because
the first four were really almost equally brilliant,
with the consistency starting to lag only in the
final four seasons, though it's also true that
some of the very best episodes were in the later
seasons (particularly the sporadically
inspired eighth season).
The best way to define the prime of "All in the
Family" is to recall favorite episodes from
memory. Let's see, there was that one that
everybody remembers in which Sammy Davis Jr.
kisses Archie (second season); the one where
right-wingers paint a swastika on the Bunkers's
front door (season 3); the show in which Archie
gets addicted to speed (season 8) -- among many,
many others. Generally, you're naming stuff
from the first four years.
The first season had a fresh, almost shock-jock
quality.
The second was dominated by Maude, who really
sort of overwhelmed the show (she soon had
her own spin-off series).
The third and fourth seasons were almost a
"Rubber Soul"/"Revolver" peak, with the 4th
introducing neighbors Frank and Irene Lorenzo
(amazing that Vincent Gardenia was given the
role, given the fact that he had played a
completely different (and unforgettable) character,
a wife-swapping swinger who Edith naively
invited to the house in the previous season;
and George Jefferson and his family (who, like
Maude, also got a solo series).
The 4th was also arguably Rob Reiner's best season
though Reiner, creatively, will probably be
remembered by future generations less for
his role as the blustery Michael Stivic than
as the film maker behind one of the funniest
films ever made, "This Is Spinal Tap."
And the crazy energy of Frank Lorenzo truly
spices up things, though one gets the sense
that he was originally written as a gay
character but was instead converted into
something more mainstream: an Italian
husband who loved to cook and sing
(just as the core ensemble characters
of "Seinfeld" seem as if they had been
initially written as roommates).
As for Archie: if you watch footage of former
Chicago mayor Richard Daley Sr., you'll see such
a remarkable resemblance between Bunker and
Daley that you'll swear the former must have
been modeled on the latter, and in fact he
might've been. Today, Bunker almost seems
like a dead-on caricature of Daley, right
down to the mayor's famous malapropisms.
(The Bunker character was fully created in
1970, only a couple years after Daley became
a villain to many for orchestrating the
"police riot" of 1968 in Chicago.)
Other times, Bunker is played as Willy Loman
for laughs (sort of).
It's interesting that O'Connor plays Bunker in
such a way that a right-winger could watch the
show and say, "What's so funny about that?"
His non-punch line punch lines were that straight.
Also, you can see Bunker's influence on the
Tony Soprano character in "The Sopranos,"
particularly in the mob series's later
episodes. (David Remnick, writing in
TNY last year, showed a fine ear for
dialect when he once wrote that Tony
Soprano "sounded more Summit than
Newark" in the first season.
Very true, though I would add that
his accent and manner actually shifted
from Summit to near Hauser Street in
later episodes.)
Things began to decline on all fronts for
the series during the fall season in which Jimmy
Carter was elected president. By late '76, the
landscape, culturally and politically, had
shifted. Nixon the dictator had been
overthrown. The revolutionaries were victorious.
Liberal paranoia, which had given the series
some of its tension, had dissipated. And
"All in the Family," which had had a lock on the
number one spot for most of the decade,
dropped out of the top five for the first
time -- and permanently.
Today, you'd have to be at least thirty-six
years old to even vaguely remember a first-run
episode of "All in the Family." But I'd find it
hard to believe that someone unfamiliar with the
show wouldn't find any episode from the first
four seasons hilarious in a meaningful way.
But I digress. Paul
[above, photo credit: photographer unknown]
__________________________________
THE DAILLY DIGRESSION
for December 19 - 21, 2008
Regarding the Rick Warren Invocation
I took a job at the San Francisco Chronicle
as a staff writer in 2000, and one of my first
assignments was to write about TV coverage of
the upcoming presidential election and the
candidates. At the time, televised debates were
being scheduled and Reform Party candidate Pat
Buchanan wanted to be included in them. So I
contacted all the major and minor presidential
candidates and asked if they would comment for
my article, and the only one who responded was
Buchanan, who phoned to talk about why he thought
he should be allowed to participate in the
debates. Great, I thought; I can use the
interview for my story.
Ran into my boss at the water cooler around
an hour later and told her the mildly good news
that I had landed an interview with one of the
presidential candidates for my article.
"Which one?," she asked
"Pat Buchanan," I said.
She looked horrified and talked as if I
had committed some terrible faux pas.
She was the top features editor at the paper,
a mostly terrific editor who could sometimes pull
magic out of the air during deadlines (in contrast to
some of the lower-level editors, who
ranged from plodding to downright
dishonest, to be honest, though almost all
of 'em were very nice people. But that's another
story.)
Anyway, she was disappointed because she
didn't like Buchanan and didn't want to give him
any ink.
I explained to her that I, too, despised Buchanan's
politics (probably more than she did) and that I was
personally to the left of Nancy Pelosi on some issues,
but thought Buchanan should be heard, particularly
at a paper where predictable liberalism was rampant.
This was journalism, after all, not advocacy, and I
was writing a news story in which Buchanan was a
player, so it was important that I include
him, no matter what my personal feelings about
his politics were.
She, on the other hand, likely came away from
the discussion thinking, ohmygod, I just hired the
wrong guy; he's been on the job for only a few weeks
and already is giving podium to guys like Buchanan.
(My previous journalism experience, by the way, had
been entirely in New York and Los Angeles, not in
S.F., so maybe that had something to do with it. You
see, I was taught at Spy/Washington Post/Los Angeles
Times, etc. to follow the story where the facts
led you, without fear or favor. But they had a
different way of doing things at the Chron, where
editors openly gave preferential and biased
coverage to personal pals, which sort of made
me nauseous. What made me more nauseous is
that top editors there were well-connected
enough to spin the situation into a narrative
that favored them, not the truth.
To digress further for a moment, here's an example
of how the Chronicle would give favors to personal
pals in its reportage. Context is this: a publicist
wanted to control coverage of a story I was writing, and
I politely but firmly refused his request. Publicist,
it turned out, was a personal bud of a top editor
(which wouldn't have changed my response even if I'd
known that fact). My editor(who is still at the paper, by
the way) criticized me (in a written evaluation, no
less!) for not doing a favor for that publicist
pal of a top Chronicle editor. And he was completely
open about it, too! Here's the evaluation, written
by my editor:
This S.F. Chronicle evaluation left me wondering:
gee, I thought you weren't supposed to do favors for
personal pals in journalism. (Yes, my editor actually
said I shouldn't defy publicists!)
[click to enlarge]
Anyway, I've over-digressed here. But I'm telling
this story because I identify strongly, in my
own microcosmic way, with Barack
Obama's decision to let Rick Warren give the
invocation at the inauguration. It's like something
I would do (and, as I just said,
like something I did do -- in an analogous way,
on a far smaller scale -- shortly after being hired
as a writer for the Chronicle). In politics (as
in journalism), a real pro puts aside his own
personal beliefs and allows someone with whom
he disagrees to be heard.
And in politics, there's practical value to that.
Because the worst thing you can do for your own
cause is to muzzle the opposition, to make them
feel as if they're powerless and have
no voice, to make them scared of the new power
structure. Because that's when they'll lash out
the most, that's when they'll gather in church
groups in huge numbers and bury you
in the next election.
But if you bring them into the dialogue, make them
feel like they're not invisible to the new regime,
you stand a better chance of convincing them to
compromise on certain issues later on.
Like gay marriage. Hey, I voted against Prop 8 and
thought it was a real tragedy that it passed, and I
also think that opponents of gay marriage like
Warren are despicable and, frankly,
backward-thinking. (And I'm a hard-core hetero!)
But let's let the man speak. Because if we hear
him, there's a better chance he may hear us in the
future on issues like gay marriage, a better
chance we might be able to convince him of
the wisdom of our point of view.
However, if there is no dialogue, there can be no
persuasion, or little chance of it. Which is why
I also advocate sitting down and talking with Hugo
Chavez, Mamoud Ahmadinejad and the Castro brothers
(but not with an irrational, homicidal fanatic
like bin Laden).
Proponents of gay marriage: get shrewd. Bringing
Rick Warren to the party is probably the most practical
way to convince him and his people to soften their
opposition to gay civil rights.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 17, 2008
Poor sweet Caroline. Prior to today, she
had more mystique, breathed a more rarefied air,
exuded a more untouchable grace. Now she has
to lunch with non-entities like the mayor of
Schenectady. Sort of like J.D. Salinger deciding
to come out of seclusion to do in-store promotion
for his new novel. The enigma becomes diminished.
The legend becomes too accessible, familiar.
Suddenly the person is no longer a "get" interview
or a rare thrill to meet.
Interesting that her mom, at around the same age,
also decided to take a relatively conventional job,
book editor at Doubleday, where she -- believe it or
not! -- came into the office on Park Ave.
on a regular basis to work (that's where I actually
saw her once, in the editorial offices there;
Jacqueline Kennedy remains the only Kennedy I've
ever seen up close and in person).
Not that the U.S. Senate is a "conventional" job,
though lots of conventional or at least politically
unremarkable people have held the position, among
them: Jean Carnahan (qualification: wife of a
governor), Hillary Clinton (qualification (at the
time): wife of a president) and Liddy Dole (qualification:
wife of a senator). So, in that context, "daughter
of a legendary president" makes her as qualified
as many who have recently served.
Let's face it, as I've written before (to quote my
Digression of November 16, 2008, posted below):
"Truth be told, the Senate has always been an easy
job. Anybody can be a Senator (though it'$ very hard
to actually be elected to the post). Politicians'
relatives without any experience in government have
ascended to the job and performed well. Because it's
a position in which your main responsibility is
to simply vote the party line (unless you're in the
leadership, where you're co-creating the party line).
Is there any other position in which you can
be away from work for years and have nothing
go awry?"
Yeah, Caroline may not be an arm twister or
wheeler dealer like lots of powers of the Senate
have been, and she's seems a bit too private for
politics, but she does bring a personal clout
and a powerful name to the table, which can go a
long way toward making her an effective member
of the legislative branch. Plus, she's exactly as
progressive as outgoing Senator Clinton has been
and enjoys an excellent working relationship with
president-elect Obama.
Senator Caroline Kennedy? We could do (and have
done) a lot worse, and it would be difficult to
do much better.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 14 - 15, 2008
One of the Problems with the Car Business
Ah, remember when car designs were memorable?
I know almost nothing about cars or the car industry,
but couldn't help getting caught up in the discussion
on this morning's Chris Matthews television show,
when everyone talked about their favorite cars.
I must admit I'm in solidarity with Andrew Sullivan of
The Atlantic, who, like me, doesn't drive and doesn't
know or care much about cars.
Oh, I used to drive, and still can, but don't, largely
because I didn't need a car when I lived in and around
Manhattan in the decades after graduating from college
and so got into the habit of not being dependent on
a car. Today, as a Bay Area resident, I'm perfectly
content with BART and its various forms of connecting
transportation, thank you very much.
But I'm certainly not oblivious to the vehicles
around me every day and suspect that one of the
problems with the car business today is its
lack of imagination.
When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, there used
to be really snazzy cars. When friends and neighbors
would visit, our suburban driveway always seemed to
be packed with lively MGs and Triumph Spitfires and
Fiats and even an Aston Martin or two. They had
style, character, personality, pizzazz, a sense
of fun. (And some even had that great lost
guilty pleasure: a fifth gear!)
And now everything is a Toyota. Not to knock
Toyotas, because If I were in the market for an
affordable car, I might end up with a Toyota, too.
(Because good luck getting parts
or repair service for an Aston Martin in this
part of the world in the 21st century.)
But cars today seem to look the same: generic,
bland, utilitarian, un-fun, with almost
interchangeable designs.
What happened to exciting design ideas? In the
1960s, even American cars had a sense of conceptual
daring, in their way. I remember when one of our
neighbors of the 1960s drove up with a brand new
Corvette (with retractable headlights) for the first
time, and all the kids (and adults) crowded around
it as if it were a UFO that had just landed on
Courtney Drive.
What happened to the wow-factor?
The only vitality I see out there in mainstream cars
is in the VW Beetle, whose semi-circular shape
is almost pop art in spirit. Even though they've been
around for awhile, they still look innovative
in contrast to the blandscape on the highways.
In the current homogeneous environment, even French
cars, once widely derided, are now a welcome contrast
to the vehicular sameness out there.
At least when you see a Citroen or a Deux Cheveux,
you're seeing something unusual and memorable
and quite unlike anything else, even if its design
doesn't quite fully work. (As writer Henry Biggs put
it on the MSN website: "...the French do occasionally
build cars if only to have something to burn next
time they decide to riot").
Look, I'm certainly not saying American car
makers should emulate the French, but if you were to
combine the U.S. utilitarian spirit with
Japanese efficiency and a European sense of
innovation in design, Detroit might actually come up
with something people want to buy. (Nowadays,
it's easy to spot an American car; just look
for a bulky vehicle that overdoes the steel and
chrome.)
Me, I prefer daring to safe mediocrity anyday.
Until the industry puts some inspiraton and
surprise back into its cars, I'll continue
to take the BART.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 12, 2008
Kudos to that Reuters reporter for being the only one
at yesterday's Obama press conference to ask the
president-elect about his health care plan.
The other esteemed journalists -- all fully insured,
I'm sure -- asked about Governor Milosevic, or whatever
his name is. Perhaps uninsured reporters, who more
fully understand what a callous horror the U.S. health
care system has become, should be assigned to ask
questions at the next Q&A session, because the
insured might not completely appreciate what a
five-alarm crisis this is for millions of Americans.
Yeah, I fully understand that the question from
the CBS reporter needed to be asked, but it's hardly
a tell-tale detail that Blagojevich somehow knew
that Obama wouldn't play ball in the governor's
nefarious game. The governor, like the rest of
us, knew Obama's reputation for honesty and, hence,
knew not to ask him to engage in horse-trading.
In any profession, in politics or elsewhere, a
person sets an ethical tone that tends to either
invite or discourage certain solicitations and
associations. And smart staffers can easily see
where a conversation is going and stop it before
it goes there.
In any event, the Blagojevich tapes are
exculpatory toward Obama. The real wonder -- and
it's damn near a secular miracle to anyone who
has been an honest professional in the midst
of corruption -- is how Obama managed to rise through
the ranks of Chicago politics and come out as
a genuine model of high-minded ethics. Amazing.
Less amazing is the shameful behavior of Jesse
Jackson, Jr., who seemed to go along to get
along, which is what most people do, unfortunately,
in such circumstances, because whistleblowing
requires enormous courage and risk. My own
hard-earned experience tells me that
when you blow the whistle on someone powerful --
whether in politics or journalism or anywhere
else -- the following generally happens: you
get fired, then smeared, then blacklisted in
your profession, and then the real bad luck
begins.
But I digress. Paul
________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 7, 2008
Does "Wall-E" Deserve a Best Pic Oscar Nom?
Wall-E: a star is boring? (photo from Pixar)
I'd really like to like "Wall-E." A lot of critics
I respect rave about it. But after watching it
two-and-a half times, I still find it a
bona fide bore.
The first time I viewed it, I fell asleep around forty
minutes in. The second time, I saw the whole thing
and got into it a bit more, but was still astonished
by how uninteresting it was for such a highly-praised
film.
Maybe it's me, I thought. Maybe I wasn't in the
right mood for it. So I tried it a third
time -- with 10 minutes of deleted scenes -- and
was still yawning throughout.
Problem is its occasionally flat visual effect, a
constricted style that looks like a computer screen
for much of the film. I don't care what novel
storyline or earnest message a film maker
intends, because intention and concept scarcely
matter, if there is no visual magic on the screen
(and there's very little here).
To be sure, there are some inspired moments, around
an hour in, during the space sequences, which soar
like no others here. But otherwise, it's just a
lot of mechanized stop-start motion that expresses
little except an overall lack of flow.
As for the love story, it's less Chaplin-esque than
"E.T."-esque, and hard to praise because it consists
mostly of Walle-E screaming "Eve" and Eve yelling
"Wall-E" (the name Wall-E is shouted at least a
hundred times or so, or so it seems).
The good news: if you cut the visuals and just
listen to the audio portion, with all its whirs
and beeps and musical loops and repetition,
it sounds sort of like a fascinating piece of avant
garde music, which makes it more deserving
of a Grammy than of an Oscar, though the
film will probably be nominated for best picture
on January 22nd.
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 4, 2008
I was just in San Francisco a few hours ago and
shot a few photos. Here they are:
Light through stained glass windows falls on columns
in Grace Cathedral in S.F.
* * *
A cat sleeps on a snoozing dog on Powell Street in S.F.
-- something you don't see every day! (Almost lost in the
cropping: a mouse is actually atop the cat.)
* * *
This is what the holiday season looks like in S.F.'s
Union Square.
* * *
And here are a few photos I shot several weeks ago:
A squirrel feasts on Halloween leftovers.
* * *
A voter (with child) on presidential election day,
at a polling place in Berkeley, Calif.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 28 - 29, 2008
If you're looking to watch some DVDs over
this Thanksgiving weekend, here are my
reviews of a few movies I've seen (or re-seen)
recently:
Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Conformist"
I tend to watch Bertolucci's films primarily for
their visual beauty.
Is there a more seductive light blue anywhere in the
world, offscreen or on, than the one in "The Conformist"?
It's slightly darker than powder blue, like a
light twilight snow in Central Park, or the comic book
blue of "Ghost World," an almost blue white (just
look at the scenes in the Paris store).
For deep blue, I go to Coppola, particularly the first
"Godfather" film, which looks the way it does largely
because Bertolucci (and ace cinematographer Vittorio
Storaro) led the way years earlier with "The
Conformist." Coppola's dark blue is that of the sky
at 30,000 feet, or of Frank Sinatra's eyes up close
(which I was lucky enough to have seen in person, from
around a foot away, on a movie set in 1980). But
I digress.
I'm more impressed with "The Conformist" as a fest of
shadow and color, that by-product of light, than as a
character study of a conformist. The film is remarkable
for, among other things, the way it makes shadows look
like they seemed in childhood, as huge mysterious things
that you could get lost in. His style of manipulating
shadow and light, later used so revealingly
by Coppola in the opening sequences of "The Godfather"
to suggest a contrast between good and evil, furthers a
stylistic throughline that appears to come from no less
than Caravaggio.
The film is also about the low angle of the sunlight
through the fog in the forest during the climactic
murder scene (even if that sequence has a continuity
gaffe; the snow disappears just as the professor
gets out of the car), a setting that is remarkably
similar to the "Pine Barrens" episode of "The Sopranos."
As a portrait of a conformist, however, it is lacking. If
Bertolucci, revising the Moravia novel, is trying to draw
a character who goes along to get along, who blends in
chameleon-like with whoever he happens to be with, who
takes the path of greatest agreement and least
resistance, then the title character, Marcello Clerici,
is not such a person.
Clerici is actually a sometimes contrarian and
contentious sort of guy, deeply committed to an
evil political ideology. He may be callous,
conscienceless and amoral but is far from chronically
malleable; after all, he argues with a priest during
confession, debates politics with his former
professor at dinner, and refuses to join in a group
dance even when surrounded by dozens
of dancers in Paris. Leonard Zelig he ain't (in
fact, "Zelig" could have easily been titled
"The Conformist").
Remember, the premise of the film is this: because
Clerici killed someone when he was kid (or he thinks
he killed someone), his life is shaped by his desire to
be normal and to fit in amongst non-homicidal regular
people. But the main problem with that premise is
that it doesn't follow that he would then commit
himself to a political organization that orders him
to kill political opponents. If the concept is that
Clerici wants to show how much he is an average
everyman non-killer, then wouldn't killing someone
be exactly the opposite of the conformity he's
supposedly trying to achieve?
Still, it's always welcome to see a great film that
exposes the cruelty and savagery of Nazi and
Nazi-associated fascists of the thirties and forties.
But for all the talk in the film about Mussolini's
people forcing dissidents to drink castor oil -- sort
of an execution by diarrhea, in some cases -- there
is not much shown onscreen of the imaginative
sadism of the blackshirts (the way there is in
Wertmuller's films or in Pasolini's scalding "Salo,"
which not only shows the trauma of torture but actually
traumatizes anyone who dares to view that film).
Dominique Sanda's portrayal of someone who
knows she is about to be murdered may be traumatic
enough for most viewers. Still, the most salient and
memorable imagery in "The Conformist" relates to light,
shadow, blue.
P.S. -- How telling that Bertolucci uses the E.U.R.
subdivision in Rome as the setting for a mental
institution, which is what it looks like today, for
the most part. Rather than the ultramodern city
of the future, the E.U.R. now looks clinical, cold,
sterile, like that odd building in Columbus Circle
(2 Columbus Circle) in Manhattan that nobody has
ever seemed to find a use for. (I was more
impressed with the E.U.R. as a kid than I am now.)
Also, the Vittorio Emanuele monument appears in
the picture, making me wish the Italian government
would dismantle it, piece by piece, and bury
it in landfill off the coast of Ostia Antica.
Look, I love most of Rome but can't think of
another major monument in a western European
city as overstated, pompous and arrogant.
(It would be impossible to imagine it in Florence.)
P.S. -- Some DVDs of "The Conformist" include
interesting interviews with both Bertolucci and
Storaro that are well worth checking out, if only
because of Bertolucci's characteristic wisdom and
insight. Here's what he says about directing actors:
"I always tell my actors, 'Please surprise me.
I need to be fed with surprises. Surprises are
nourishing.'" Very refreshing (particularly in
contrast to a dim editor I once worked with at
a Bay Area newspaper who used to tell me and other
writers to try to do the opposite -- "no surprises"
was his motto).
* * * *
Woody Allen's "Scoop"
I'm certainly thrilled with the unexpected
resurgence of Woody Allen's career in the
2000s and loved "Match Point" and am looking
forward to "Whatever Works." But "Scoop" falls
into the lower tier of Allen films
that are well-crafted but not really very funny.
I can't imagine that any serious critic would
recommend this one for its hilarity. It's sort of
like a U.K.-based re-make of the slight "Manhattan
Murder Mystery" with recycled bits from "Broadway
Danny Rose" and "Small Time Crooks." Sure, there
are some suspenseful moments -- the scene on the
boat is chilling -- but not all the movie's supposedly
tell-tale details hold up to scrutiny (e.g., why
would the murderer have hidden the key in a hiding
place that he knew Scarlett Johansson
had already discovered?). But I loved the Camusian
death at the end.
* * * *
"The Devil Wears Prada"
One of the great things about "Prada" is that
the audience becomes educated, along with Anne
Hathaway's fashion neophyte, about haute couture.
For example, in the beginning, I looked at
Hathaway's blue sweater and, with her dark hair
against it, thought it looked very pretty. But
Meryl Streep's character, with a rarefied
level of refinement in high fashion that Hathaway
and most people in the audience don't have, sees
right to the core of her fashion flaw, calling it
that "lumpy blue sweater." And gradually, Hathaway
(and moviegoers) realize that Streep
is...right. It is bulky. After Streep's description,
I couldn't see that sweater the same way for the rest
of the film.
Streep truly tops herself here, perfecting the
throw-of-the-jacket at either an assistant or a chair,
both of which she treats with equal disregard, and
the dry slicing put-down ("Is there a reason my coffee
isn't here? Did she go to Rwanda for the beans?").
"Prada" is entertaining and satisfying throughout, and
some of the deleted scenes are as terrific as the ones
that made the cut.
* * *
"TV Classic Westerns"
For those curious about the westerns that began
to sprout on television around fifty years ago, a
variety-pack of episodes from four series of that
era is available on DVD. Though there's no
"Gunsmoke," "Rawhide" or "Bonanza," there are
"Death Valley Days," "The Rifleman," "Bat Masterson"
and "Wagon Train."
The latter was the most popular of those included here,
or at least it was until ABC Entertainment, in an
incredibly boneheaded decision, decided to expand
it, a la "The Virginian," to 90 minutes, thereby
inadvertently killing it. (In one of the most
spectacular falls in ratings that I'm aware of, it
went from #1 to unranked in the top
twenty in a matter of months.)
"Death Valley Days" is probably the worst of them,
a series so old-fashioned it could pass for what
television might have looked like in the 19th
century, had there been TV in the 19th century.
"Bat Masterson" was the most eccentric and stylish
of them, what with Masterson's cane and dapper duds.
But the problem with the cane gimmick was that all
the bad guys always had guns, so showdowns inevitably
devolved into traditional gunfights in which the cane
was irrelevant or merely ornamental.
"The Rifleman," a succinct (half hour) weeknight series,
had a welcome punk edge to it and was almost, but not quite,
Eastwoodian in sensibility.
I never watched any of this stuff when I was a kid, which
explains my current curiosity, now satisfied enough to tell
me I didn't miss much back when.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 25 - 26, 2008
Season 7 Starts Shooting in a Couple Weeks
Reading "Mondo Freaks."
Two reasons to be cheerful in 2009: there'll
be a 7th season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
and a new Woody Allen movie, "Whatever Works,"
also starring Larry David.
Shooting starts on the next ten episodes of "Curb" in
a week or two, though there are no credible leaks on
whether Larry and Loretta become a permanent item or
if Cheryl remains estranged from her ex.
Those who have yet to check out the 6th season have a
treat awaiting them, because it may be the best so far, or
at least it includes the (arguably) funniest "Curb" episode
ever, "The Freak Book," which makes me laugh just thinking
about it. Yeah, I know, there have been plenty of other
contendas for best episode, to wit: "Lewis Needs a Kidney,"
which actually may be better and more resonant than
"Freak Book"; and such slighter, but only
slightly slighter, episodes like the hilarious "Krazee-Eyez
Killa" and "The Car Pool Lane" (and "The Car Salesman"
and "The Wire" and "The Larry David Sandwich," in which
Larry, while inside his wife, interrupts sex with her
because he can't resist taking a phone call
from his overweight manager Jeff, with whom he
seems to have better chemistry).
I vote for "Freak Book" because of the seemingly
genuine enthusiasm that Larry and Jeff have for
"Mondo Freaks," an exploitative coffee-table book
full of pictures of physically deformed people.
The second disc of Season Six, with only four
episodes, may seem skimpy at first, but it packs
a bigger wallop than most "Curb" double-discs.
Only problem with "Curb," which is otherwise close to
perfect, is its occasional plot deficiencies, storylines
that are often jerry-built, a weakness it shares with
"Seinfeld," which, as hilarious as it was, could never
really carry an adequate plot over the span of even
two episodes (remember the contrived mail truck/golf club
bit?). And that same sense of contrivance is apparent
in, say, the story in which Larry stages the mugging of
his wife's shrink, which leaves the viewer unwilling to
suspend disbelief -- and wondering why the police wouldn't
want to talk with the mugging victim and the main witness.
And then there are promising plots not taken, like
the one in which Leon robs people of their
jerseys, thinking they're Larry's jerseys; that
story could've easily bloomed into one in which Larry
winds up in a legal mess, accused of conspiracy to
commit strong arm robbery, because of Leon's
well-intentioned overstepping.
But "Curb" isn't primarily about plot but about
a set of tangled, complicated relationships that crash
and burn and recombine and uncombine and resurge
-- and sometimes resurge and disintegrate at the
same time, which is to say it's as close to life itself
as a great sit-com can get.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 20, 2008
Well, it's official. The only ones who don't love
Barack Obama are the religious right of America and
the religious right of Islam. Al Zawahiri
just sent his latest right-wing rant from the
15th century and -- surprise! -- he doesn't like the
progressive modern policies of Obama.
For those who don't remember al Zawahiri, he's
bin Laden's number two, a physician (albeit a
physician who hasn't yet learned that being overweight
is a big health risk). And I don't think he fully
understands that his and bin Laden's medical prognoses
have, with the election of Obama, just taken a
turn for the far worse.
You see, al Zawahiri, the president-elect has said
repeatedly that if his soldiers catch you guys in
their crosshairs, they have orders to shoot to kill.
And Obama is way smarter than Bush and more likely to
figure out where you're hiding. So get your cave in
order, because your reactionary ways are a-comin' to
a close.
As I've said before, I've got a bottle of marvelous dry
Tuscan red all ready for the great day when bin Laden is
declared dead. Can't wait.
Sure, we should and can negotiate with a lot of
despots we disagree with (e.g., even Ahmadinejad,
Chavez, Castro, etc.). But not with bin Laden or
al Qaeda.
The reason? They targeted apolitical civilians, Muslims
among them, in a non-wartime context. Civilians.
Deliberately. I still can't get my mind around what
those guys did in '01. Even in wartime, when
civilians are killed, they are killed by accident, not
by design.
And by the way, al Zawahiri, you have your facts
wrong about Obama's father. Yes, his dad did begin
life as a Muslim, but as soon as he got a first-class
education, at Harvard and elsewhere, he quickly learned
that all that religious stuff was just bullshit and
soon abandoned theism. Smart guy.
In any event, his son is obviously his own man and
was not raised by his father but by people who
were Christians, which accounts for his Christian
faith.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 18, 2008
Here's the best (and funniest) lede paragraph I've
seen in a long, long time. It was written
by Burkhard Bilger and appears in the new issue of
The New Yorker:
"Elephants, like many of us, enjoy a good malted beverage
when they can get it. At least twice in the past ten years,
herds in India have stumbled upon barrels of rice beer,
drained them with their trunks, and gone on drunken
rampages. (The first time, they trampled four villagers;
the second time they uprooted a pylon and electrocuted
themselves.)"
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 17, 2008
Mean Girl
It's hard to believe some can't see the fact that
Sarah Palin's national political career is sooo over.
She may be a presidential contender in 2012? Are you
joking? You think she might team up with Dan Quayle?
Honey, she just came off a stint as America's newest
National Laughingstock. People tune in to watch her
only because they want to see her screw up on camera.
They watch her the way they watch TV Bloopers.
For cheap kicks. To feel good about their own
failings. Her legacy -- forever -- is as Tina Fey's
sidekick (and, man, has the bottom dropped out of the
Palin-related humor industry, no?). Sarah,
we're not laughing with you, we're laughing at you.
Further, your meanness toward uninsured sick people
who need to see a doctor makes you an unsympathetic
figure. Go back to teaching creationism or
whatever you were doing before.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 16, 2008
A Sea of Udalls
Nobody's noticing it, but the U.S. Senate is
gradually being depleted of its
greatest talents.
Many of the leading lions will be gone in the next
Senate. Our best Senator, Barack Obama, has
found another job. Congress's greatest foreign
policy mind, Joe Biden, has also found employment
elsewhere. Ted Kennedy, sadly, has cancer and
is not expected to live far into the new year. Hillary
Clinton is in negotiations to leave her job, and so
is John Kerry. Even Dianne Feinstein is seriously
considering a gubernatorial run. (And since his
political sex-change operation, Joe Lieberman has
been of little use to either side.)
So who's left to perform before the C-Span cameras?
Two new Udalls and a Stuart Smalley (if we're lucky).
The Senate is now officially 2% Udall.
Truth be told, the Senate has always been an easy
job. Anybody can be a Senator (though it'$ very hard
to actually be elected to the post). Politicians'
relatives without any experience in government have
ascended to the job and performed well. Because it's
a position in which your main responsibility is
to simply vote the party line (unless you're in the
leadership, where you're co-creating the party line).
Is there any other position in which you can
be away from work for years and have nothing
go awry?
Still, there's at least one lion left, John McCain,
and here's my suggestion: appoint McCain Secretary
of Defense. No, hear me out. Do what some businesses
sometimes do. Appoint your main rival to a post
that you know he could not turn down. And then, a
year or so later, replace him with someone else, saying
that you and McCain don't see eye-to-eye with regard
to, say, the Kurdistan separatist crisis, or
whatever the crisis du jour is in a year. By so
doing, you've effectively fired McCain from the
Senate and put him into early (or earlier)
retirement. (Sort of like what Eisner did to
Ovitz on a different playing field.)
Remember, cabinet officials do not get tenure. This
is not a post at the Kennedy School of Government.
And this ain't a luxurious six-year Senate stint
from which you cannot be fired (even if you're caught
in a restroom trying to kiss an undercover dick, so
it turns out). Look at how long cabinet officials
have lasted in previous administrations. Mere months,
in some cases. A best case scenario -- and this is
stretching it -- is eight years, though most don't
last that long at all. And if you think the position
will bring immortality or household name recognition:
anybody remember William P. Rogers? George von L.
Meyer? Cornelius N. Bliss? (I think Cornelius
used his middle initial in order to distinguish
himself from the many others named Cornelius Bliss.)
On the upside, an Obama cabinet official does get
the satisfaction of serving someone who may turn
out to be the greatest president since Lincoln
himself. Or you can stay in Congress and risk
getting lost in a sea of Udalls.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 12 - 13, 2007
The Ten Commandments have some new competition.
A religious group in Utah has been promoting its
own alternative to the Commandments, called The
Seven Aphorisms, and wants to erect an Aphorisms
monument on public land, which is now the
subject of a hot new case before the U.S.
Supreme Court.
I, too, have my own alternative to the
Commandments, or rather an edit of the
Commandments that I'd like to share.
After all, the Commandments must have been
tough to edit back when they were first written
on stone tablets, which are nothing like the nifty
word processors we have today. If laptops
had been around in Moses's time, here's what a
good editor might have done:
1. I am the Lord thy God: Thou shalt not have false gods before me.
This is your lede commandment?! Wording this
in the first person makes God seem immodest -- and
as if it's a pick-up line at an orgy ("Hey, baby,
you can't worship anybody but me"). If you're
going to keep this as a commandment, find a way
to re-word it in the third person, even if you
have to quote someone else saying it
(e.g., "Thou shall not have false gods before
Him").
---
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Look, if you're going to be The Lord, you've
got to learn to take some heat and nasty words every
now and then. Scrap this Commandment.
---
3. Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath.
Awkward wording, to say the least. Also:
by "holy," I assume you mean "suspend all activity."
You're essentially giving everyone a license to be
lazy on a particular day and feel good about it.
No can do. Schedules are too tight in the modern
age. Scrap this one, too.
---
4. Honor thy father and mother.
Generally a good idea. But what about
the millions of people whose mothers and fathers
are not worthy of honor, who are
Nazis and rapists? Re-write.
---
5. Thou shall not kill.
In all instances? Thou shall not kill Hitler?
Thou shall not kill bin Laden? Thou shall kill in
wartime? Thou shall not kill in self-defense? Too
many exceptions to the rule. Go back and make it more
specific.
---
6. Thou shall not commit adultery
What if it's an open marriage and the husband
doesn't mind if you have relations with his significant
other? Too broad.
---
7. Thou shall not steal
Again, generally a good idea but too vague.
It's legal, for example, to steal something that
was stolen from you. During the French and
American revolutions, revolutionaries stole
almost all the property of the ruling elites.
Keep but modify.
---
8. Thou shall not bear false witness against a neighbor.
It's hard to disagree with this one, though
Ben Franklin said it better with "Honesty is the
best policy."
---
9. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife.
What's wrong with a little coveting now and
then? I know, coveting can lead to harder things
(which is what I've been hoping for lately!).
Also, does this apply to thy neighbor's husband?
Ditch this one.
--
10. Thou Shall not covet thy neighbor's goods.
This commandment gets outshone by the much
kinkier "neighbor's wife" commandment. Lacks pizazz.
Try combining this one with the 9th commandment.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- Tuned in to the CMAs earlier tonight, hoping
to catch a performance by Alison Krauss, but, alas,
she wasn't scheduled to play. I did hear Martina
McBride, who sort of swept me away. Every time I hear
McBride, I think, what an amazingly natural singer she is,
natural as a gale.
* * *
P.S. -- With the regard to the case of possible
plagiarism by Neil Halstead of my work (which I wrote
about in the November 10th Digression, below), let me
make this clear. If I sense that he or his people are trying
to reverse this situation and make it look like the
opposite is true, then I will definitely take this
dispute to a more formal venue so that the record
will be clear about this. (Hard drives and copyrights
don't lie.)
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 11, 2008
Now that the election results have been
mostly finalized, how did the Daily Digression
do with its pre-election predictions?
Let's see, I speculated about several possible
scenarios but wrote that the most likely outcome
would be 353 votes for Obama, 184 for McCain. The
final tally was 365 to 173, so I was close.
I also tried to predict the outcomes of the 11 main
competitive U.S. Senate races, and I was correct
about nine of them (though Chambliss still has to face
a run-off), and wrong about only one of the 11. (The
Franken-Coleman contest is still in dispute.)
And at what time did I call it for Obama on
election night? Well, I didn't post anything on the
Digression last Tuesday night, but I did phone a good
friend, an Obama supporter, to tell her that Obama
had just won the election. According to my cellphone
records, I made that call at 9:31pm (ET) Tuesday, more
than a half hour before the tv networks projected his win.
It was obvious Obama couldn't possibly lose once he'd
won Ohio.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 10, 2008
Last night someone made me aware of a new song,
"Witless or Wise" by a guy named Neil Halstead,
that seems to appropriate the melody of one
my own original songs. And sure enough, his song
does appear to be way too close in melody to one of my own
songs, "I Don't Know If I Know You No More," which
I posted on March 22, 2008, on the vibecat website
and kept up on the site for several months. It's
now on my album "75 Songs (Part 3)." Halstead's
similar song was released many months afterwards.
(I sent an MP3 of it to myself on 3/22/08 by email,
so that's its copyright date; registered copyright
was slightly later.) If anyone has heard both
his track and mine, I'd like to hear what you think
(at pliorio@aol.com).
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 9, 2008
The Rise of Self-Interested Progressivism
Look, I don't want to ruin anybody's Kumbaya moment,
but the stats are in: 70% of black voters in California
voted for a proposition banning gay marriage last
Tuesday, according to exit poll research by Edison Media
and Mitofsky International. And that means that the vast
majority of black supporters of Barack Obama in the
blue Golden State support their own civil rights but not
necessarily the civil rights of other groups.
There has been a lot of self-interested progressivism
in the last couple decades. When was the last time
gays marched for Chicano workers' rights
in the Castro? When was the last time blacks marched
for gay rights in Harlem? When was the last time
Hispanics demonstrated about environmental issues
in L.A.? When was the last time eco-activists
demonstrated for the single-payer health plan?
When was the last time black men marched in favor
of abortion rights?
It's almost comic to think those groups would do
any of that.
And it wasn't always that way. Back in the 1960s, Martin
Luther King used to speak out against the Vietnam War
almost as much as he spoke out on racial issues. Student
anti-war activists would march in support of
Cesar Chavez's farmworkers union in those days.
And Chavez's people would join the black civil rights
struggle.
There was a lot of welcome cross-pollination among
activists then. And people were not as concerned
with their own demographic groups as they were
with...justice.
And that just ain't the case anymore.
A contrast. When Rubin Carter was falsely accused of
murder in the 1970s, I and other whites supported
his struggle for justice. Sure, Carter was no saint,
but he was clearly falsely accused.
When Reade Seligmann was falsely accused of having
committed a monstrous assault in 2006, I similarly
supported his struggle for justice. But because his
accuser was black, most blacks at the time sided with
the persecutor -- Crystal Mangum -- not with the
persecuted in that case. (Yeah, the Mangum case is
a divisive issue -- which is all the more reason to
bring it up, so that all its associated issues can be
properly resolved. By definition, virtually every
struggle against injustice has been divisive.)
What happened to the thirst for justice in that
instance? What happened to the quest for truth?
One of the main illnesses in this country is the
attitude of my-ethnic-group-right-or-wrong. If an
Italian-American mafioso is accused of murder,
some Italian-Americans in certain neighborhoods will
not only stand up for the guy, whether he did it or not,
but they'll cite his prosecution as a case of ethnic
prejudice. He's one of us, they'll say.
Similarly, if a common black thug robs some guy
at gunpoint, some blacks will not only back the
criminal, whether he did it or not, but they'll actually
try to turn it into a political cause. He's one of us,
they'll say.
That tendency must stop. Period.
Instead of blindly siding with your own ethnic or
demographic groups from now on, why not try siding
with the person who is in the right, whose cause is
just? Instead of supporting the person
whose skin color most resembles your own, why not
back the person who is actually telling the truth?
That's the revolution that needs to happen next.
I don't think the gay guy who was just un-married
by Obama supporters -- who told him, "No, you
can't" -- wants to sing "Kumbaya" just yet.
But I digress. Paul
________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 7 - 8, 2008
Loose Thoughts on the New Era
1. If the current tableau out there were
"The Godfather": Bush would be Sonny Corleone;
Obama would be Michael Corleone; Lieberman
would be either Fredo or, more accurately, the
Abe Vigoda character at the end of the first film
("For old time's sake, Tom?"); Joe Biden would
be consigliere Tom Hagen; Rahm Emanuel would
be Clemenza; Oprah would be Johnny Fontane; Bill
Clinton would be Moe Green ("talking loud, saying
stupid things") or Jack Woltz; John McCain would be
Capt. McCluskey; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be Virgil
Sollozzo ("I hope you're not a hothead like Sonny");
Hyman Roth (the good side of Hyman Roth) would be
Warren Buffett; Jeremiah Wright would be Frank
Pentangeli ("an old man and too much wine");
Jesse Jackson would be Johnny Ola; Eliot
Spitzer would be Pat Geary; and the Talia Shire
character would be Hillary Clinton at the end
of the first film when she suspects
Obama had something to do with the death of her
husband's political reputation ("she's hysterical").
2. Joe Lieberman should not be let back in, and not
just because he was a traitor. If his seat had been up
this year, he would have been soundly defeated, so his
views do not reflect the current will of the people.
(Harry Reid is one steely guy, eh? Exactly what the
Dems need right now.)
3. Bob Dylan should be the poet selected to read
at the inauguration. Or Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
(Or maybe Melle Mel.)
4. Whenever possible, we should ditch the term
African-American and instead refer to the nation, not
the continent, from which the person's ancestors came.
Obama is a Kenyan-American. Most "African-Americans" are
actually west African-Americans (very few came from
Kenya centuries ago). The diversity on the African continent
is the same as the diversity on the European one. I'm not
called a European-American, but rather
an Italian-American (or someone with an Italian-American last
name), and those who came from the African continent should be
given the same level of individuality.
5. If a universal health care bill is not passed within
the first six to nine months of the Obama administration,
citizens can fairly assume that the same gridlock of '93
is in effect, that the revolution is stalled in traffic.
People should then start taking extreme civil disobedience
actions, e.g., by going to the primary residences of the
top executives of pharmaceutical and insurance companies
(and others who make profits off the sick) and staging
raucous demonstrations in front of their homes on
a regular basis. For starters.
6. The White House family dog should be a...beagle.
7. The rich bums who have run major financial services
firms into the ground should either be fired or be forced to
work at the federal minimum wage without health benefits,
pensions or bonuses -- if their companies want to see a
dime of bail-out money. That should be one of the
conditions. Let them work as their workers work. These
executives obviously have no special skills worth paying
for; if their MBAs and business experience led to
the collapse of their companies, then we can conclude
that even an unskilled, rank amateur could've
taken the CEO's job and done at least as
well. Start paying those guys what they're really
worth, not what they can unfairly leverage.
8. Maureen Dowd, we love you, but please, stop
flirting with Obama. He just don't dig you, babe.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- I'm a big fan of the Berkeley Art Museum (BAM)
and highly recommend the "Mahjong" exhibit currently
on display there, but I did ridicule their
Mao-era propaganda exhibit in a previous Digression
(see column of October 9), so I wondered idly whether
I'd be hassled by some disgruntled staffer
when I visited there yesterday.
Sure enough -- and it might be sheer coincidence -- I was.
While strolling slowly through the gallery, some
diminutive security person, who didn't identify herself
as a staffer, stood in front of my path, and I walked on
anyway, and she stood in front of that path, too, as
if she were a crazy person. So I walked on anyway
again, but she stood in that path, too, before
she finally identified herself as an usher or whatever
she was and asked that I check in my bag at the front
entrance, which I promptly did. (I bring this up
only because these sorts of things tend to get
distorted in the re-telling, don't they?) Note to
BAM: in the future, you guys should consider handling
such requests from a distance, clearly identifying yourself
as a staffer -- and not by standing in the way of
a patron.
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 5, 2008
So You Say You Want a Revolution!
It takes a nation of millions... [photo by Paul Iorio.]
But I digress. Paul Iorio
[above, photo by Paul Iorio of Obama speaking in Oakland in early 2007.]
P.S. -- Now that a racial barrier has finally
fallen, it's time to move toward taking down other
barriers -- for example, creating a climate in which
there are political candidates who don't think the
concept of god makes a whole lot of sense. (Oh, yeah,
and you also said an African-American could never
be elected president in this generation!) That's
the direction the human race is going, after all. The
defeat of Liddy Dole is a really good sign. She
called her opponent godless, and some voters said,
even if that were true, what's wrong with godless?
There's a tendency among some progressives to say,
let's liberate every unpopular or minority group
EXCEPT this one, the non-theists, because they're
too unpopular. If the black and gay civil rights
movements have taught us anything, it's that there
are always new brave stands to take, new mountaintops
to climb, new resistances to overcome in each new
generation. Let's start by taking "under god" out
of the Pledge, so that non-theist school kids don't
have their rights trampled.
* * *
P.S. -- One point that obsververs haven't brought
up is that the election of Obama is more a triumph
of the immigrant narrative than of the dominant
African-American narrative in this country. After all,
Obama was the son of a father who was born in another
country -- Kenya -- and came to the U.S. relatively
recently (1960s), which puts the president-elect in the
tradition of other first generation politicians
who attained high office. His late father was,
effectively, an immigrant to the U.S. -- at
least for the six years or so in which he lived
here as a student. (Or you could see him as a
Kenyan who briefly lived in the U.S.) Further,
Obama's dad and paternal ancestors did not live
through the various liberation struggles in the
United States over the centuries and decades and
never suffered as slaves here. So Obama's narrative
is quite different from the main African-American
storyline in the U.S.
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 4, 2008
Predicting Today's Presidential, Senate Races
My best prediction, based on all the major polls
and my own research, suggests there
will be a closer race in the electoral college
than most analysts now think. One clue is the
Kentucky Senate race, where Mitch McConnell is
now widening his lead over Bruce Lunsford,
suggesting that disenchantment with Republicans
in red states is not as intense as first thought
following the financial collapse last month.
If Florida and Ohio end up in the McCain column, as
they well might, the pressure will be on Obama to
find substitutes -- and the electoral
logic makes that difficult. I mean, if Florida is
not locked up for Barack, how can North Carolina or
Virginia be?
In the last analysis, I'm comfortable making a
prediction only about the likely range of results,
which I think will be between a 353/184 Obama win
and a (less likely) 274/264 McCain upset.
In the U.S.Senate, I project that at least eight of
the 11 main competitive Senate seats will go to the
Democrats. Here's the scorecard:
ALASKA: Stevens loses to Begich.
GEORGIA: Too close to call, but Chambliss has an edge.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Shaheen beats Sununu.
KENTUCKY: McConnell wins another term.
MINNESOTA: Live, from Minnesota, it's Senator Franken!
OREGON: Merkley over Smith.
NORTH CAROLINA: Dole is defeated.
MISSISSIPPI: Too close to call, but Wickers looks likely to win.
VIRGINIA: Warner by a mile.
NEW MEXICO: Udall beats Pearce.
COLORADO: Udall beats Schaffer. (What's with all these
Udalls, anyway?)
[posted at 4:15am, Nov. 4, 2008.]
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- Tomorrow morning, if Obama wins, I bet
newspapers all over the country will use the banner
headline: "Yes He Can!"
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 3, 2008
Yesterday's Jason Mraz Concert
"Can I ask you to vote no on Proposition 8?!," Jason
Mraz said from the stage last night to wild cheers
from the crowd, at his show in Berkeley, Calif.
This was, of course, around 48 hours from election
day, so politics was on everybody's minds, even if
Mraz's blend of pop, rap and reggae transported
his fans elsewhere for most of the concert. (By the way,
out here, in California, the debate about
Prop 8 -- which would ban same-sex marriage, and
is backed by one of the ugliest television ad
campaigns in recent memory -- is actually
eclipsing the presidential race in some quarters,
particularly in Berkeley, where Obama might as
well be running unopposed.)
Anyway, after Mraz's condemnation of Prop 8, he
launched into "Live High," a song from his new
album, "We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things,"
released around six months ago and already
certified gold.
But the audience's most intense enthusiasm was
reserved for "I'm Yours," his latest hit (currently
a number ten single, and one of the few songs in the
top ten that's not a Def Jam release), a reggae
tune that fans greeted with shrieks that must have
been deafening inside the open-air theater
(I heard the show from the hills above the
Greek, and the crowd was loud even there).
Near the end of the show, Mraz decided to have some
pure fun, shouting out, "Let's make this place a
party!," as the opening piano notes of The Foundations's
"Build Me Up Buttercup" rang out. Marvelous cover
(complete with "overdubs" from the crowd) of one
of the most perfect pop songs ever made.
Opening were an impressive British band from Brighton,
Two Spot Gobi, and Irish singer Lisa Hannigan (Damien
Rice's ex), whose music occasionally suggested
the aura of an enchanted forest.
* * * *
Andy Rooney had a funny one last night about the
predictable tradition of defeated presidential
candidates being gracious to their victorious
opponents. He quoted what the late, great
Henry Wallace said when Wallace was asked
to praise Harry Truman, who had just defeated
him in the '48 election: "Under no circumstances
will I congratulate that son of a bitch!"
(Ah, Henry, integrationist decades before
everyone else, universal health care supporter
decades before everyone else: if only
you could've lived to see the day that
might be coming tomorrow.)
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 2, 2008
OK, at ground level, the Sunday before Tuesday,
here's what I'm getting:
Even in noncompetitive California, where I'm based,
there are nasty TV ads that have cropped up like
poisonous mushrooms from the GOP Trust PAC
(goptrust.com), juxtaposing images of Jeremiah Wright
with Obama, resurrecting a controversy that had been
satisfactorily explained and resolved months ago.
I don't know if the spots are running in purple states
like NC, VA, MO, etc., where they could gain traction
and become a problem for the Dems.
Plus, the latest major polls in the big swing states
show an Obama lead of merely a point or two, which -- given
the wind chill factor of the Tom Bradley Effect -- translates
into a likely McCain edge in some of those states.
A 274 to 264 McCain win is not hard to imagine on Tuesday
night (even if a 353 to 185 Obama win is easier to
picture). Pundits who say Pennsylvania has to be in the
McCain mix for him to win: where do they get that?
My calculations show he could lose Penn and New Mexico
and New Hampshire, and still make 274.
To those who think 274 to 264 is out of the question,
I have 13 words for you:
Remember the evangelicals who were invisible to exit
pollsters in Ohio in '04.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- The lines for early voting are quite stunning, aren't
they? I haven't seen voting lines that long with my own
eyes since July 2, 2000, when I was in Mexico on election
day (I was there to cover another story for the Washington
Post), and Vicente Fox was in the process of turning out the
entrenched PRI and being elected president.
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 1, 2008
"After voting for Obama on Tuesday, come join our godless,
socialist jam session, and frug to the latest fad!"
* * * *
To John McCain's supporters: remember to vote on Wednesday!
* * * *
Obama supporters should heed these words from the Bible:
"Don't get overconfident." (Is that from the Bible?)
* * *
A very possible electoral vote scenario on Tuesday:
According to my calculations, it's possible McCain
could win 274, Obama 264.
By the way, check out the brand new Zogby numbers,
which now show Barack's margin within the margin of
error. Those who are in the lead in the final stretch
should always watch tendencies toward overconfidence,
implicit immodesty and ingenerosity to long-time
loyalists.
* * *
For the record, I was the first person anywhere to have
coined the word "Barack-a-docious." Granted, the word
hasn't exactly caught on anywhere, but if it ever does,
it started here.
But I digress. Paul
[Jam session photo above from ABC-TV.]
________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 30, 2008
Not sure whether Tina Fey's much-deserved newfound
surge of success on SNL will transfer to her
series "30 Rock," which is just too insiderish
to gain a big audience. It's sort of like the
meta-episodes of "Seinfeld" that featured a
television show within a tv show -- the least
effective episodes of that otherwise
almost flawless series.
Fey's Palin is an instant comedy classic, but
too bad she's wasting her genius on a character
so topical. Palin's 15 minutes will likely end
on Tuesday, and I bet she doesn't return to the
national stage in any substantive way (look at
how her poll numbers have dropped since voters
have gotten to know her). And her roguish
behavior in this final week -- "my daddy McCain
isn't going to tell me what to do!" is the way
she's been coming off -- will likely ensure she
remains a phenom -- in Alaska. Fey's impersonation
will probably seem as obscure and dated in 15 years
as SNL's Ross Perot does now.
The inspired spontaneity of SNL is often a thing
of wonder, but keep in mind that, even in its
golden years, it had as many misses as hits. Even
in its classic first season, entire episodes were
duds (check out the one hosted by Louise Lasser,
and the first one hosted by Elliot Gould, etc.).
Great artists from J.D. Salinger to Stanley Kubrick
have taught us that we should always aim for the
illusion of spontaneity, not spontaneity
itself, in works of art and entertainment. (I mean,
how many dozens of drafts did Salinger write of
the opening of "Catcher in the Rye" in
order to make it sound like it just rolled
off his tongue? And if you look at Bob Dylan's
recording studio logs, you'll see that his worst
albums were generally those he did in a day or two,
and his best were usually those he
recorded and re-recorded over a period of months.)
Keep in mind that the funniest movie ever made -- Kubrick's
"Dr. Strangelove" -- was the result of take after take
after punishing take. As a result, we have a work that
resonates down the decades, fresh as ever.
Even if Palin does become vp in January, it still
doesn't grant immortality to Fey's version of her. Remember,
Chevy Chase's Gerald Ford resonates today because it
was great comedy and because Ford was a president -- and
almost all presidents are remembered forever in the U.S.
Veeps don't have that sort of historical heft. (Quick -- who was
Ford's veep? Who was Goldwater's running mate? And,
while we're at it, who played Perot on SNL back in the day?)
No doubt, SNL is on a roll these days, but the stock in
Palin-related humor is very likely to dive precipitously
in a matter of weeks if not days. (I bet some of Kristen
Wiig's wildly funny characters out-survive Fey's Palin.)
Then again, I may be wrong about the durability of
Palin and Palin-related humor. If someone held a gun to
my head and said I had to predict a winner this Tuesday,
I'd say I can't. If the gunman insisted, I'd say,
"Probably McCain." Despite the polls. Why? Too
much racism in Florida and Ohio.
* * *
I was sitting around in Marin some time ago with some
friends when the talk turned to Stanford University,
where one of them used to teach. And I had just been
over there (to see the Cantor, a terrific art museum,
by the way) and was wondering why so many buildings
on campus were named after Herbert Hoover, a name
synonymous with disgrace, abject failure and
discredited theories. I mean, this fellow Hoover
brought such misery to millions of people because of
his wrongheaded ideas about unregulated capitalism.
So why is he now rewarded by having buildings at
one of the world's great universities named
after him? Unsuspecting or uninformed Stanford
students might get the wrong idea about this presidential
malpractitioner, second only to Nixon on most lists
of lousy presidents. Seriously, of the
43 presidents we've had, Nixon ranks 43rd and Hoover
ranks 42nd, in my estimation.
Anyway, the Stanford prof -- a very nice and smart guy,
incidentally -- offered an explanation, saying Hoover
had done some work earlier in his career that was
laudable and notable. (Though I must say that even if
that were true, it hardly eclipses his failures.)
I mention this because Hoover's name has been ubiquitous
lately in the presidential race, with both Obama and
McCain trying to make the other look like the 30th
president. Obama has a point in saying that McCain
resembles Hoover; McCain, after all, has been a huge
supporter of the sort of unregulated capitalism that
Hoover championed and that has gotten us in the current
financial mess. But I'm still trying to figure out how
on earth McCain can get away with calling Obama both
a Republican Hooverite and a socialist. That's
not only a stretch. It's almost surreal.
* * *
Out here in California, there's a ballot proposition
called Prop 3, and, frankly, I haven't really checked
it out, though if I did, I'd probably be for it.
Unfortunately, on heavy rotation on Bay Area TV
stations is a syrupy, annoying commerical
in which an "adorable" Jamie Lee Curtis "conducts"
an "adorable" chorus of children singing an "adorably"
off-key rendition of John Lennon's "Imagine."
Too adorable for my tastes. If I see that ad
one more time, I might just vomit from
sugar overload. (And I'm not the only one.)
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- There are some actors and musicians who
do come off genuinely adorable and irresistible
in settings with children, but Curtis, alas, ain't
one of 'em, at least not here.
________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 29, 2008
Great to see so many stars come out to
honor the late Paul Newman (and the Painted
Turtle)the other night in San Francisco. And
isn't it amazing how Julia Roberts can eclipse
everybody by simply walking into a room? As
dazzling as ever after all these years.
* * *
As brilliant as Patti Smith's "Horses" is, her
2005 live version of that album is superior to
the original in almost every way. I finally
got around to listening closely to it -- on the
double-disc legacy edition of "Horses," released
a few years ago -- and kept thinking the live one
should replace the original. (I was also reminded
how ballsy a track "Birdland" is.)
* * *
And I've been listening to The Rolling Stones'
"Singles: 1965 - 1967," which compiles each Stones
single from those years, with its b-sides, on
individual CDs. Great concept. Interesting
liner notes, too. They say Mick and Keith initially
didn't want "Satisfaction" to be released as a
single but were (thankfully) overruled
by the rest of the band. (Look how wrong you can be!)
I didn't know until last night that that was Nicky Hopkins
playing piano on the Rolling Stones' "She's a Rainbow."
Sure, everyone has heard that tune many thousands
of times by now, but think of how magical, unusual
that piano work is, dancing in and out of the
arrangement like a miniature toy ballerina, or
sounding like a child's music box. (By the way, am
I the only person who was an admirer
of Nicky Hopkins' solo album "The Tin Man Was
a Dreamer"? Don't know if it's even in print
anymore, and my own vinyl copy is long gone, but
"Waiting for the Band" and a few others are
terrific tunes.)
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 26, 2008
A Worst Case Scenario for Obama on Election Night
Oh, yeah, I see the poll numbers, but I also
remember the New Hampshire primary. Remember
New Hampshire? Obama up by double digits in
the pre-primary polls but losing by double-digits
when the voting actually happened. And
nobody could quite figure out why there was
such a disparity between the polls and reality,
though some thought the Tom Bradley Effect
might have had something to do with it.
Just in case you don't remember January 2008,
here's a news story posted on the CBS News website
just before the New Hampshire primary:
"Obama leads Clinton 35 percent to 28 percent with
Edwards getting 19 percent in the poll....The polls
had a margin of error of five percentage points...'It's
unimaginable to me that Obama won't win, and win by
double digits,' said CBS News senior political
correspondent Jeff Greenfield this morning
on The Early Show."
If the current crop of polls are as wrong as the
New Hampshire primary polls were, then here is how
election night might play out on November 4th:
ABC News begins its coverage on election night
this way:
CHARLES GIBSON: At this hour, the polls have
now closed on the east coast, and ABC News is ready
to project a winner in two swing states that
Senator Obama thought might fall in his
column: Virginia and North Carolina. In the state
of Virginia, we project its 13 electoral votes will go
to John McCain. This one was hotly contested, Sen. Obama
thought he had a shot at it, it was the key to his
theory of a changed electoral map, but tonight, ABC
News projects that Virginia falls to the GOP.
And in the state of North Carolina, same story.
Obama had campaigned vigorously there, had a lead
in the polls, but tonight it is going solidly for
McCain by a comfortable margin.
There is some good news for the Democrats at this hour
in that some of the traditionally blue states are, as
expected, staying blue tonight. New York, with its
31 electoral votes, and New Jersey, Connecticut and
Vermont, all projected to go to Obama, no surprise
there.
AN HOUR LATER:
CHARLES GIBSON: Polls have now closed in
the central time zone, and in all parts of Florida,
but ABC News is not yet ready to name
a winner in the Sunshine State, which, as everyone
knows, is a crucial part of both the McCain and Obama
strategies. But it is too close to call in Florida
right now, with early returns almost evenly
split between the two candidates, with a slight
edge for McCain, though we don't feel ready to name
a winner there quite yet.
And in Ohio, with around 10% of the returns in,
you can see McCain jumping to an early lead, 53%
to 47, though it is far too soon to call that
state for either candidate. Our exit polling is
showing McCain with surprising strength in the
Akron/Canton area, south of Cleveland,
where Obama had high hopes.
This cannot be good news for the Obama campaign
which has said it must win either Florida or Ohio
in order to win the White House, and at this hour
he is trailing in both states, though again, we
are not ready to project a winner in either.
Alright, big win at this hour for Barack Obama.
In the state of Pennsylvania, with a hefty 23
electoral votes, we project the Keystone State
will go for Obama, though the margin is much
slimmer than initially expected by our
exit pollsters. And in Michigan, also a must-win
for the Democrats, a healthy margin for Obama.
Polls are now closed in Missouri, a state Obama
thought was in play, so it can't be encouraging
for him to hear that it is leaning heavily for
John McCain. And in Iowa, where polls had shown
a big lead for the Democrats, it is too close to
call, with an almost 50:50 split of the vote at
this point.
OK, a bit of breaking news here, and it's big.
Our analysts at ABC think enough votes have been
counted in Florida to call the state, and to call
it for John McCain. So, George, it appears that
at this early part of the night -- and
remember, polls have not yet closed in the Mountain
and Pacific zones, so this is not over yet by a
long shot -- but it appears as if John McCain is
having a much better night than expected.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes, Charlie, far better.
This can't be good news for the Obama campaign. The Florida
win now puts the pressure on Obama to prevail in Ohio
because he knows he has to win there if he is to stand
a chance of reaching 270 electoral votes. He simply
can't lose both Florida and Ohio and expect to make it,
particularly now that McCain has already picked
up Virginia and North Carolina.
CHARLES GIBSON: In Ohio, McCain currently
has a two-point edge, which he has maintained all
night, but it is still too close to call,
especially since results in Cuyahoga County, an
Obama stronghold, have not been fully counted.
Shades of 2004, there are already allegations of
voting irregularities in that county that
will surely be investigated by the Secretary of
State in that state. So this is a developing
story.
AN HOUR OR SO LATER:
CHARLES GIBSON: It is now 11pm in
the east, 8 pm in the west, where polls have just
closed, and we are ready to project a
solid win for Sen. Obama in the state of
California, where he had been expected to prevail.
And in the GOP column, Arizona, home state of John
McCain, obviously, going for McCain by a wide
margin.
But the western swing states we're looking at -- New
Mexico, Colorado, Nevada -- are clearly trending
McCain in early returns.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Without those
three, Charlie, I really don't see how Obama could
possibly get to 270. And frankly, with those three it
still may not be possible for him to pull out a win
tonight. Looks like we're seeing the Tom Bradley Effect
in effect, as we suspected might be the case
all along, and trumping the economy as a
factor among voters. And already there
is anger in the Obama camp, particularly
about voting disputes in parts of Ohio,
with one senior staffer saying, "A second election
is being stolen from us, and we're not going to let
that happen," referring, of course, to the 2000 election.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 25, 2008
Imagine if someone had gone into a coma one year
ago and came out of the coma just this morning with
a full memory of everything that had happened before
his deep sleep. Imagine the awakening, with family
members filling him in about everything that had
happened in the past year. The news would
probably freak him out. Doctors might suggest
some valium.
Family members would start to tell him about the course
of the presidential election, and the former coma victim
would say, "Uh, let me guess: the nominees are Hillary,
of course, and Romney."
"Not exactly," a relative would say. "Things took an
unexpected turn."
"Oh, Huckabee got the nod, right?," the coma victim would
say.
"No, it's actually McCain versus, uh, Barack Obama."
And the coma victim would laugh and laugh. Oh, that's a
good one, he'd say. Barack Obama! Ha, ha.
"No, we're serious. It's Obama and McCain."
"But Hillary was a sure thing."
"Until people started voting, it turned out."
"So It's McCain/Romney?"
"No, McCain/Palin."
"Who's Palin?"
"That's what everyone's asking."
"Look, I've just come out of a coma and I don't
appreciate that you're messing with me."
"We're not joking."
"Then McCain has it locked up, right?"
"No. You're not going to believe this, but
Obama has a considerable lead and is widely
expected to win."
"How did this happen?"
"While you were asleep, most of the capitalist
system fell. Like the Berlin Wall fell."
"Oh, now you're making this up. The economy was going
great guns when I went into a coma. So unemployment's
a bit up?"
"More than that. Remember the capital markets sector
of the economy?"
"Yeah."
"Well, it's been nationalized."
"What? Did Hugo Chavez take over the government?"
"No, Bush did it all by his lonesome."
The coma victim starts sweating, turns red in the face.
"Doctor," says a relative. "I think you need to double the valium. "
* * *
If Barack Obama becomes president in January, and
that looks extremely possible at this point, all
the assumptions about power and prejudice and
progressivism will suddenly change in America. When
activists protest, as they surely will, in March to
commemorate the sixth anniversary of the start
of the Iraq War, they will be protesting a war run
by a black progressive president, Barack Obama.
"Stop Obomba's Bombs," the placards might read.
When leftists talk about how they want to "fight the
power," they'll be talking about fighting a black
progressive. When they talk about speaking truth
to power, ditto. When they talk about "The Man,"
ditto again. Likewise, when they talk about the person ultimately
in charge of the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the Justice
Department. And they'll have to re-think their
thoughts about America being a racist nation.
The whole idea of being disadvantaged in America will
also have to be re-thought if an African-American is
actually running the country. Some will inevitably say:
how oppressed can a black person be in the U.S. if
the most powerful person in the country is black?
Jokes about the White House being too white,
about a bunch of white men being in charge -- all
those perceptions and cliches and images (and t-shirts)
will be out the window if Barack is in charge.
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 23 - 25, 2008
Do Mess With Moody's
So satisfying to see executives from the main credit
rating agencies -- particularly Moody's, which has
had a lot of questionable dealings over the years -- taken
to task by Congress for giving triple A ratings to junk,
thereby helping to facilitate the current financial
crisis.
Moody's has been a bad actor for a while; it was
formally accused in the 1990s of essentially saying
to some companies, "You can either pay us to rate
your credit or we'll rate your credit for our own
amusement and spread the word through the industry."
Great to see them get their just desserts.
* * *
Liar Crystal Mangum has a new book out, "If I Did It"
(I think that's what it's called).
Question to the D.A.: Why didn't you prosecute that
bitch for filing a false police report?
* * *
Hey, people in the media and in the Pittsburgh PD:
the reverse B shoulda been a tell-tale clue for
y'all.
Let me make sure I understand this: a young woman comes to
you, saying someone carved a reverse B on her face. I mean,
was the mugger Leonardo da Vinci? Or maybe some dude who
carried a mirror with him when he defaced his victims. That
sounds believable on its, uh, face. I'm surprised some
tab didn't immediately dub him The Mirror Mugger!
Of course, a society that believes the tall tales of the
Bible -- love that one about rising from the dead! -- all too
easily falls for such stories like the one about the
woman with the reverse B on her face. Or the Jennifer
Wilbanks story. Or the Crystal Mangum story. Or the
Tawana Brawley story. Or the McMartin story.
Thing is, nobody in the media or in law enforcement
seems to get fired after falling for such obvious
lies. (And they're often way too skeptical about
tales that are actually very true! I once spent
a long time explaining to a friend, who was not
being very smart about a story I was relating, that
one can have massive internal bleeding from
blunt-force trauma (say, a speeding baseball
to the chest) without ever shedding a drop
of blood externally. But she was familiar only
with the cinematic version of injuries.)
So let's see who was gullible this go 'round. First of
all, the Pittsburgh PD, including (but not limited to)
one Diane Richard, spokeswoman for the
department.
Also, John McCain, U.S. Senator, who reportedly phoned the
woman, Ashley Todd, to express condolences. And Sarah
Palin, beauty pageant finalist, who also called
the woman with the reverse B on her face. And, crossing
party lines, Allison Price, spokesperson for Obama, released
a statement about "our thoughts and prayers" and all that crap.
And lots of reporters -- Ramit Plushnick-Masti of the AP,
among them -- also couldn't see through that reverse B.
I'm sure some dope out there still believes her
initial claim, saying "the photographic
evidence -- she does have a B on her face, after
all -- contradicts the official report."
And I'm sure Geraldo was in the process of setting up a trust
fund for the poor woman before she was exposed as
a liar. I'm all choked up.
* * * *
Thanks to those who emailed me about my recent
column, "She's Blaspheming as Fast as She Can,"
(see Digression, below). Glad you enjoyed it.
To those who found it offensive, let me just say,
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" (to coin a
phrase!).
Let me tell you what I find offensive:
An Iraq war vet sees combat that convinces him there
could not possibly be a god, at least not a benevolent
one. He raises a son and sends him to a public school
that he helps to finance with his tax dollars. He
tries to raise his kid according to his own private
spiritual values, making sure not to indoctrinate his
son into any religion, making sure he can choose
his own philisophical beliefs when he grows up.
But one day his son comes home and tells his dad
that they force him to participate in a group
religious chant at school every morning -- that's
precisely what the "under god" part of the Pledge
of Allegiance is -- and he doesn't feel right about
that. The dad is angry, tells school officials that
that's not how he wants his kid to be raised, that
in the U.S. the separation between church and state
also applies to tax-payer funded schools, that
public schools should not be taking sides on the religious
debate about whether there is a god or not.
Of course, school officials and others don't care a
bit about his complaint and continue to coerce his son
into joining a morning religious chant.
Now that's offensive.
Politicians and pundits who step on eggshells in order
to make sure they don't say or do anything at all to
offend Muslims, Jews and Christians, somehow leave their
manners at the door when it comes to treating non-theists
with a proper level of respect. Evidently, it's ok to
offend and disrespect non-theists, who are then asked
not to say or do anything that might be objectionable
to people of other religions.
Well, until that double standard is corrected, I will
continue to treat the world's great -- and not so
great -- religions with the the same level of respect
that is accorded non-theists in the
U.S. (if I feel they're so deserving).
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- If "under god" has no significant religious
meaning, then why include it?
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 22, 2008
If Early Voting Trends Continue, The Electoral Map
Will Look Like This On November 4:
Obama's on track to win 353 electoral votes to
McCain's 185.
Quinnipiac and Gallup, take a hike. Exit
pollsters, find the exits.
Early voting data has now arrived, and such info is much
harder and more reliable than mere polls, making
traditional polling seem sort of obsolete right about now.
And the results, in state after state, are astonishingly
blue. North Carolina's early voters, for instance,
have been Democratic by a healthy margin so far, which
would suggest an Obama victory may be in the offing
in this traditionally red state. But before Barack fans
get too excited, keep in mind that early voting
in N.C. in '04 was mostly Democratic, too,
and Bush ended up winning there.
Still, these '08 numbers are waay beyond '04. As of
yesterday, 56% of the early voters in N.C. were Dem
and 27% Rep (in '04, it was 48 Dem to 37 Rep, according
to a prof at George Mason U). In Florida, 56% of the
early voters have been Dem., 29% Rep. (I couldn't
find comparative data for '04). Nevada results are
also said to be trending Democratic.
If this continues, Obama will be on track to win
around 353 electoral votes, according to my own
calculations (see map, above).
Then again, there are still 13 days before the actual
general election, and events could create a whole new
political climate. If, for example, some foreign
policy crisis were to take centerstage, or if
black-o-phobia were to set in among voters, the map
could end up looking something like this
on November 4:
Obama's worst-case scenario: 283 for McCain, 255 for Obama.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 21, 2008
She's Blaspheming as Fast as She Can!
Well, at least it seems Sarah Palin isn't an
advocate of blasphemy laws, or we certainly
would've heard objections from her to a lot
of the humor on "Saturday Night Live," birthplace
of the Church Lady, where Palin appeared
last Saturday.
Still, it's hard to believe that her chumming around
on SNL is fine with people like Donald Wildmon
and his American Family Association, which
seems to have a fetish for boycotting all sorts
of companies and sponsors of TV programs it
deems un-Christian.
Maybe the religious right feels it has to keep quiet about
its kooky beliefs during this campaign season, or else
risk the election of a "Muslim" named Obama.
So I guess we can assume that Sarah Palin, the
American Creationist, thinks it should
be legal to blaspheme or mock the so-called Lord?
And she must think free speech covers -- oh, I don't
know -- the right to say that, say, the virgin birth
was a ruse by Mary to deceive Joseph into believing she
hadn't had an affair with another man? Might
make an interesting novel. And thanks to
the absence of blasphemy laws in the
USA, we're free to speculate about such things
without fear of prosecution.
Palin evidently -- i.e., she's not speaking out
against SNL, which has mocked religion since
its early days, and she was actually swaying with those
late night infidels! -- is ok with that sort of free
speech. Maybe she's more free-thinking than
we think!
Let's hope she's more liberal about blasphemy than other
religious fundamentalists, like those in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, who advocate -- and enforce -- a strict
set of very backward blasphemy laws.
Latest example is in Afghanistan. A 24-year-old student,
Parwiz Kambakhsh, simply distributed some info about
women's rights under Islamic law, and he was sentenced
to death. He appealed his sentence the other day, and
it was reduced to a mere 20 years in prison. That's
what passes for progress in the Karzai era. 20 years.
Which means Parwiz will be in his mid-forties
before he sees freedom -- if he survives his
prison term.
Blasphemy laws in Pakistan appear to be even stricter.
Here's part of the Pakistani Penal Code: "Whoever
willfully defiles, damages or desecrates a copy
of the Holy Quran or of an extract therefrom
or uses it in any derogatory manner or for any
unlawful purpose shall be punishable for imprisonment
for life."
Damages? Suppose I have a copy of, ahem, That Book, and
it accidentally falls into the toilet? Life imprisonment
for that? Talk about a broadly-written
law. Sheesh!
But that ain't nothing compared to long-standing Sharia
law statutes, which state the following (and I ain't
making this up): "It is unlawful to use musical
instruments -- such as those which drinkers
are known for, like the mandolin, lute, cymbals, and
flute -- or to listen to them. It is permissible to
play the tambourine at weddings, circumcisions,
and other times, even if it has bells on its sides.
Beating the kuba, a long drum with a narrow
middle, is unlawful."
I mean, where do they come up with this Sharia
stuff? Let me get this straight. Flute and lute:
not OK. Tambourine: OK, but only if it's being played
while cutting off part of a child's penis. And what
the hell is a kuba, anyway? Any restrictions on a
Strat with a wah-wah peddle and a whammy bar?
(By the way, who the hell would play a tambourine
during a circumcision? Sounds kinky to me.)
I know, it's hard to roll back the laughably
antiquated Sharia laws in Afghanistan and
Pakistan when you're dealing with a large part
of the population that was indoctrinated at a
young age in the madrassas. But Karzai and Zardari
need to find a way to begin the process of
modernizing their legal positions with regard
to blasphemy, if only to prevent more
injustices -- like the verdict against
Kambakhsh -- from happening again.
Back to to the blasphemous Sarah for a moment.
Sarah, stand before the congregation and be
shamed, speak in tongues, repent and wash
that devil Lorne right out of your hair
with holy water. Instead of being in the
devil's lair, aka Studio 8-H, shouldn't you
have been at home, nursing Trig and a grudge
against those who took "Death Valley Days"
off the air?
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 20, 2008
Whatever happens on November 4, the outcome will
probably seem inevitable, obvious in retrospect.
Yes, it was clear all along there was too much
racism in America for Obama to be elected.
Yes, it was clear all along that Obama had the
momentum and the grassroots support to win.
Yes, I'm not surprised it was an Obama landslide.
Yes, I'm not surprised it was a McCain landslide.
Yes, I'm not surprised it was the closest presidential
election in U.S. history.
You can make a case for all the above scenarios, as
we approach the gravitational pull of election day,
now two weeks away.
Everyone is talking about the Tom Bradley Effect,
but there are two other important electoral dynamics
few are noting.
1. THE OHIO '04 EFFECT -- Ah, remember that one?
Kerry was expected to win on general election day,
according to exit polls, but -- surprise! --
evangelicals came out of the proverbial woodwork,
spooked by the idea of a liberal winning -- and
by hot button issues like gay marriage -- and streamed
from the churches to the voting booths, giving Bush
a second term.
Well, that same dynamic may be writ large with
Obama -- writ large because of the black-o-phobic
vote not just in Ohio but in the Florida panhandle,
rural areas of Virginia and North Carolina,
and in the red areas of other purple states.
Come the morning of November 4, if it looks like
Obama's going to win, an army of rednecks in
pick-up trucks with confederate flag license plates
will suddenly wake from their Pabst Blue Ribbon
hangovers to drive to the polls to stop a black
from becoming president. Black-o-phobia
is one thing the polls may not be accurately
measuring.
2. THE 2007 DYNAMIC -- Remember 2007, the Pleistocene
Era, the early throes of Beatlemania, when it was a
wow-wee thing to see Obama attract 12,000 fans in
Oakland, Calif.? How quaint, now he's attracting
100,000 in Missouri.
But anyway, remember 2007, when pundits assumed Hillary
would be the nominee because there was no way mainstream
Dems would vote for Obama? Yet, throughout '07, there was
nagging evidence to the contrary? Huge crowds for Obama,
not so much for Clinton. Lotza contributions and enthusiasm
for Obama, not so much for Clinton. Yet, until people
actually first cast their votes in Iowa in '08, the party
line was still that Hillary would win.
That same dynamic may be repeating itself now, in that
the conventional wisdom (Obama can't win because of
racism) appears to be contradicted by big crowds and
polls that say otherwise. But keep in mind an
oft-forgotten fact: Obama almost lost the
nomination to Hillary in the final reel. It
could've easily gone the other way.
* * *
Didya hear Andy Rooney last night? He endorsed McCain
and Obama, saying he was mightily impressed
by the youth of both contenders. And he's as
sick and tired of William McKinley as the rest of us!
(I think that's what he said.)
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 18, 2008
The Daily Digression Endorses Barack Obama for President.
First, the Digression is not a political advocacy
blog. It's a mostly reported online column, and when
I cover and analyze politics, I try to do so fairly,
freshly, even-handedly. Just because I'm endorsing
Obama for president doesn't mean I'm not going to be
as critical of him as I am of John McCain, if he's so
deserving.
That said, I'm endorsing Obama because he makes
sense time and again on the issues that matter,
is on the right side of history, is unusually
persuasive. America is going where he's going,
and we can get there now or we can delay
progress for another several years.
With a President Obama, we stand our best chance
of getting health insurance for all
Americans, fixing the economy, mitigating the
effects of global warming, killing bin Laden
and stopping terrorism on a long-term basis by
shutting down the madrassas cesspool
that breeds jihadists.
McCain is a relic. He's still spouting the gospel
of unregulated capitalism, even as its pillars fall
by the day. It's astonishing how oblivious he can
be to the history in the making around him.
And his decision-making is sometimes reckless and
irresponsible, as his choice of Sarah Palin has made
abundantly clear even to leading conservatives.
And frankly, I'm uneasy about McCain. To be blunt,
when I see him in the debates, I get the sense of a
guy who was never properly treated for post-traumatic
stress syndrome, which has now, decades later,
blossomed into a monster in his mind, like a case of
syph untreated for way too long.
By contrast, Obama is surprisingly
well-adjusted, post-neurotic, temperamentally
suited for the presidency -- and refreshingly
honest (any other politician with his name would
have changed it to Barry O'Bama).
Plus, with an Obama presidency, we also get Joe Biden,
arguably the greatest foreign policy mind in America.
When I see an Obama/Biden bumper sticker, it feels
completely right in a way that, say, an Obama/Kucinich
sticker wouldn't. The Obama who intersects with Biden
is easily the best the U.S. can offer in '08.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 17, 2008
The Limits of Cool (and the Better Reason to
Back Obama)
I'm not as impressed with Obama's supposed cool
as many others are. Dukakis was cool, too, in much
the same way as Obama is, and that, it turns out,
was one of his least appealing characteristics in
the end, particularly when he was cool
when asked what his response would be if Kitty were
raped. We all learned that night that cool is not
the appropriate response in all instances to everything
life throws at you. Sometimes anger is the right
tool -- and, yes, sometimes violence is the only
proper response (if you had bin Laden in your cross
hairs, for example). Also, cool becomes complicit
at a certain point (when you're in a group of people
doing something objectionable, and you have to
stop them from doing it, for instance). And
cool becomes untenable at other points (witness
the broad-daylight mass panic on 9/11 around
the south tower when the south tower fell).
By cool, most pundits really mean unflappable, which
is even more of a Dukakasian term. Unflappable
may have been given a bad name in the '88 election, but
it is exactly the quality you need in a crisis, when, say,
someone has just attacked Washington, or
someone is trying to break down your door and kill
you. There are some people who get cooler when the
heat gets higher, and Obama is one of them, though
he has yet to show us the full range of responses he
is capable of in a crisis.
Rather than cool, the quality about Obama that
impresses me most is a characteristic common to
a lot of geniuses I've interviewed (from
David Rabe to Lawrence Ferlinghetti to Woody Allen
to Roman Polanski), and that is: radical common
sense, the keen ability to show the contours of reality
exactly as they are, without indulging in wishful
thinking or interested distortion.
As I said, cool will get you into trouble if the
right response should actually be anger (as Dukakis
discovered). But radical common sense -- that
ability to see that not all wars are bad, but the
Iraq war is, and that not all spending cuts are good,
but some are -- is what Washington has been missing
for many, many years.
Incidentally: funny thing about anger and cool;
it's much easier to be the former when you're
losing and the latter when you're winning.
George W. Bush's supporters were calm when the
2000 election results were cutting their
way -- but they had a Brooks Brothers riot
in Florida when the recount threatened
to topple their "win."
Many years ago, there was a brilliant "Saturday Night
Live" sketch in which a group of people had fallen
through thin ice on a lake and were screaming angrily
and desperately to people on the sidelines to help
them out of the ice hole. But the folks on the
sidelines, sitting comfortably in warmth, were
indifferent to their plight and openly aghast
at the rude level of rage expressed by those
freezing to death. While they were commenting
on the utter vulgarity of the anger of the
drowning people, the ice beneath those on
the sidelines suddenly broke, and they, too, became
stuck in an ice hole, and they, too, began screaming
angrily for help to anyone within earshot. As the
sketch ended, both groups were raging at the same
volume and in the same way.
Which shows that, for all of us, cool has its limits.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 16, 2008
A Second Look at the Final Episode of "The Sopranos"
I saw most of the final episode of "The Sopranos" last
year but didn't see the whole thing until yesterday, when
I rented the DVD.
So I didn't fully know how truly lousy it was. Easily
one of the five worst episodes of "The Sopranos,"
and I'm being nice.
I always thought the ultimate resolution would
be one in which Meadow became a criminal attorney
who ended up prosecuting associates of her father.
A Shakespearean clash of the generations.
But the actual final episode doesn't even hang together
in terms of basic dramatic compentency. What happened
to that plot element about everybody in the family
splitting up because of death threats? Are we to
believe that security arrangements were
all tossed aside for a casual meal in an open diner,
with all the family members gathered together without
even a bodyguard? And nobody at the table looks at
all nervous, despite the DefCon4 danger level.
Characterization of A.J. is inept. He comes off more
like a flashback of how Tony (or someone Tony's age)
behaved back in 1975. A kid like A.J., coming
of age in '07, would be into Lil Wayne and Jay-Z, not
Bob Dylan's acoustic period of 45 years ago. A.J., after
all, is not a throwback to a previous boho era in
any other way -- he's a typical, spoiled, suburban
Oughties guy.)
And in the unlikely event that a boy in '07 was
listening to "It's Alright Ma" and reading Yeats,
that would be far more laudable than someone
listening to pseudo-operatic wiseguy junk like "Cara Mia"
or reading mediocre Biblical verse (now
there's a ripe target for ridicule!).
What is obvious now on close DVD viewing is the
key clue about the ending that almost everyone missed.
Notice that Meadow runs -- frantically, anxiously -- to
the diner as if she wants to warn her family about
an imminent danger that she had just become aware of.
She looks like she knows something awful is
about to happen and wants to alert them before it does.
Why else would she be running -- and running in a state
of near panic? She's not late. They're not talking
at the table as if she were late, not saying things like,
"I wonder what's holding up Meadow" or "Where's Meadow?"
(By the way, nobody would be scrutinizing any
of this episode if it were not the very last one.)
Anyway, this one ain't "Pine Barrens." It ain't even
"The Blue Comet." It's a choke.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 15, 2008
A lot of bruised feelings at tonight's debate.
Touchy, touchy. "You ran an ad that said the
former chair of my steering committee once sold
bad hash at Woodstock." "Your aunt once sold Nazi
memorabilia on Ebay to pay her heating bill." Etc.
And then, after sniffling, they started talking to
their imaginary friend "Joe." Dear Joe, I will
click my heels and say there's no place like a
tax shelter. Dear Joe, deliver me from this
studio and Bob Schieffer's tough questions.
And there was McCain, looking like he had a glass
left eye, "flashing [his] madness all over the
place," to quote a Steve Forbert song. And there
was Obama, looking like he hadn't gotten enough
sleep last night, probably wishing the election were
tonight, now that the Quinnipiac numbers are as
ripe as they've ever been.
Obama probably should've shown more anger when bringing
up Palin's implicit incitement of hate at her rallies,
an ugly, dangerous phenomenon. The backward-thinking
religious fanatics that attend her speeches do in
fact shout, "Kill him!," and there are also reports
that she has winked and gestured affectionately at
fans in the crowd who have yelled death threats \
about Barack.
Serious matter. She'd truly better hope that
someone doesn't take a shot at Obama,
because if someone ever did (heaven forbid), angry
citizens would know exactly who to blame for helping
to create a climate in which that could happen.
There're already enough such threats on the Internet
(just Google the words "Obama" and "Aryan" to catch
the very latest assassination plots!), and Palin
should not be allowed to stoke that stuff.
All told, my guess is this debate won't matter a bit
on November 4th, any more than the situation in
South Ossetia matters now. New crises will
erupt between now and then that will probably
supercede everything we're talking about today.
Remember: an election is not a measure of who voters
prefer. An election is a measure of who voters prefer
on a particular day.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 9, 2008
The New Irreverence in Chinese Art
Puncturing sacred cows, post-Mao: Wang Guangyi's
"Chanel No. 5" (2001). [photo by Paul Iorio]
While traveling alone by local train behind the
Iron Curtain as a teenager in the 1970s, I saw a
lot of telling, unforgettable images of everyday
Communist life. One of the smaller memorable moments
happened after I was briefly detained in Zagreb by the
local authorities (for being an American, which was
sufficient cause for suspicion in those days). As
the train zipped along a rural area just north of
present-day Bosnia, I looked out the window and saw
hard-working, happy peasants using sickles -- as in
hammer and sickle -- to harvest crops in a vast field.
And I thought that it looked just like a Communist
Norman Rockwell painting, an almost laughably
idealized vision of collectivist propaganda -- except
it was a real-life tableau. (Of course, there were no
such soft-glow scenes once I crossed into the far more
brutal Bulgaria, where there were plenty of rifles at
checkpoints and unhappy-looking workers who had
supposedly lost their chains, but that's a whole
different story.)
I thought about those Croatian peasants with sickles the
other day, as I walked through the awesome new exhibition
of Chinese Communist propaganda art from the Mao era, on
display at the Berkeley (Calif.) Art Museum (BAM).
I wasn't in the museum for more than three minutes
before I began laughing out loud at some of the
romanticized posters and paintings depicting an always
benevolent Mao greeting grinning workers or leading
some heroic charge or posing with red icons of decades
past. A priceless collection.
Also on display at BAM, and equally fascinating, is
post-Mao, modern Chinese art that shows, beyond a doubt,
that China has been hurtling at warp speed toward not
just economic transformation but cultural and artistic
metamorphosis, too.
There are paintings that poke fun at Mao and at the
Communist traditions of his day, stuff that would have been
considered an absolute sacrilege a couple decades
ago -- and now is on open display.
There are Chinese equivalents here to Rothko, Pollock,
Klee and Warhol, and it's breathtaking to see how far
China has come in terms of aesthetic experimentation
and liberation.
The exhibition also includes one of the most inventive
and stunning installations I've seen in any museum,
Wang Du's "Strategie en Chambre" (1998), an expansive
work centered around the figures of Boris Yeltsin and
Bill Clinton surrounded by mountains of newspapers and
topped by pure magic: an uncountable number of multi-colored
toys hanging from the ceiling, giving the effect of a Pollock
painting in the air or of Klee mobiles that have multiplied
madly or of a swarm of exotic insects hovering.
An astonishing work.
The exhibition, "Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art From the
Sigg Collection," continues at BAM until January 4, 2009.
A bubbly Mao, oh-so-pleased to meet Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, in one of the dozens of pieces of
Mao-era Communist propaganda art now on display at the
Berkeley Art Museum. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* *
Detail of Wang Du's "Strategie en Chambre," featuring
dozens of multi-colored toys hanging from the ceiling.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 8, 2008
Last night, one presidential candidate praised bin
Laden and the other said he wanted to kill him.
It was McCain who hailed bin Laden, calling him
and his fellow Afghan warriors of the 1980s
"freedom fighters," and it was Obama
who said he wanted to "kill bin Laden."
The contrasts were stark elsewhere, too. Obama looked
comfortable, poised, Kennedyesque. McCain seemed like
he was waiting for a next round of interrogation from
his Vietnamese captors.
Obviously, McCain was coached to play it sotto voce
so as not to appear angry, but it had the opposite
effect; his idea of soft-spoken resembled a tense
prisoner talking low so the guards wouldn't hear him.
There were also failed attempts at jokes by McCain,
recalling the humor-impaired Nixon and Goldwater.
"You know, like hair transplants -- I might need one
of them myself," McCain joked at one point. Nobody
laughed.
And when Tom Brokaw asked him who he'd choose to head
Treasury, McCain responded awkwardly, "Not you, Tom."
Brokaw rolled with it in a good-natured way, saying,
"For good reason." But it was an inappropriate,
are-you-running-for-something moment.
Brokaw was right in trying to make sure
the candidates abided by the rules they had agreed
to -- but why did they agree to such lousy rules
in the first place? No follow-up questions by the
moderator and no rebuttals by the contenders made for
a constricted, repressed debate, until Obama finally
overrode the rules near the end and got the flow of
free speech going again.
Obama hit his high note with a passage that had some
of the force of a Shakespeare soliloquy. "Sen.
McCain...suggested that I don't understand. It's true.
There are some things I don't understand. I don't
understand why we ended up invading a country that had
nothing to do with 9/11..."
Obama could've made more of that, expanding it into
a real tour de force with: "And I don't understand why
McCain thinks the private sector can take charge of
our health care system when it can't even manage itself.
And I don't understand why a senator who votes
with George Bush 95% of the time thinks that he
represents a change from Bush. And I don't understand
why...." Etc.
Incidentally, at the end of the debate when the
candidates were milling among the people onstage, I
caught a camera shot on one network that showed
Obama reaching out to shake McCain's hand, and
McCain refusing the handshake and diverting him
instead to Cindy McCain, whose hand he shook.
To be sure, there may have been another moment,
off-camera, in which they did shake hands.)
Again, a bit Nixonish.
It looks more and more like McCain will be holding
a press conference on November 5th to say, "Well,
you won't have John McCain to kick around anymore."
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 6, 2008
Barack Obama has been taken to task
for his past associations, however remote,
with radicals from decades past. Isn't it time
the media started focusing on John McCain's defense
of right-wing extremists and outright fascists
associated with South Vietnam's Ky and Thieu
regimes of the 1960s?
McCain, of course, served in the U.S. Navy in defense
of Thieu and Ky, so one can understand his personal
reluctance to denounce the South Vietnamese leaders
who he sacrificed so much to support. He evidently
doesn't want to admit those five-and-a-half years in
a North Vietnamese prison were served for a big mistake.
Now that the passions of the Vietnam era have cooled
a bit, perhaps McCain can bring himself to say what's
obvious to most Americans today: Thieu and Ky
were neo-fascists, governing without popular support,
whose human rights violations equaled (or virtually
equaled) those of the North Vietnamese.
Ky, in particular, is indefensible by any measure of
modern mainstream political thought. Here's Ky in
his own words: "People ask me who my heroes are. I
have only one: Hitler. We need four or five Hitlers
in Vietnam," he told the Daily Mirror in July 1965.
Why does McCain, to this day, still voice support,
at least implicitly, for Ky and Thieu? At the very
least, McCain should, however belatedly, unequivocally
condemn Ky's praise of Hitler, if he hasn't already.
(My own research has yet to turn up a clipping in
which McCain has been significantly critical of
either leader.)
And why don't we hear outrage from pundits and
politicians about his support for Ky?
Yeah, I know, it was the policy of the U.S. government
at the time to back Ky and Thieu, but that's no
defense. If Nuremberg taught us anything, it's that
you can't hide behind I-was-only-following-orders or
it-was-the-policy-of-my-government when
defending your individual actions in wartime.
Maybe McCain thinks Ky is a maverick. Maybe
he thinks Hitler is a maverick, too.
Look, my dear late dad quite literally broke his
back as a U.S. paratrooper fighting against Hitler's
soliders in Germany and in Belgium. And he was among
those who busted open the gates of Hitler's slave camps
in western Germany, spring of 1945. What he witnessed
turned his stomach for the next six decades, and he'd
tell me about what he saw that day as a 19-year-old,
but only reluctantly, because it was such a bad memory.
So I know what a true patriot looks like.
A mere several decades later, we're supposed to
stand by silently as a major presidential candidate
says, "It's cool to support a guy who supports Hitler."
So now I'm nauseous -- about McCain's backing of Ky and
and about the silence, the lack of outrage about that.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- And don't give me that crap about Ho being
the greater evil. Ho Chi Minh had broad popular
support, north and south, and no designs
on neighboring nations, so we had no business
appointing a president for the Vietnamese
people.
[parts of my column today first appeared in my column of
June 7, 2008.]
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 4, 2008
Hardly Strictly Tops Itself with Krauss & Plant
Krauss, Plant and band at Golden Gate Park last night.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
"This is, seriously, the best festival I've ever been to,"
said T-Bone Burnett from the stage, after performing an
immensely enjoyable set with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
yesterday evening in Golden Gate Park in San
Francisco.
It was opening night of the annual Hardly Strictly
Bluegrass music fest, a free three-day extravaganza
featuring dozens of top rank folk-rockers, folkies and
singer-songwriters, among others, and the crowd was
bursting.
Burnett wasn't exaggerating. I can't remember the
last time I've seen such a sense of exuberant celebration
on such a vast scale, as if the city had just been
liberated and everyone had come to the park to rejoice
with beer, wine, smiling strangers, non-stop dancing -- and
the best live roots music of the year (for the record,
I had water, straight up).
The band seemed charged by the fact that the crowd was
charged, turning in a performance that was even more
electric than their show in Berkeley a few months ago
(and that's saying a lot).
As for Krauss's voice, I tend to run out of superlatives
when describing its beauty. Let me put it this way: I'm
a non-theistic guy but when I see and hear Krauss sing, I
know for certain there's a musical heaven.
Plant was almost Presleyesque (early Presleyesque)
in terms of charisma, stagecraft, vocal mastery.
And T-Bone's guitar work was often irresistible,
particularly when it resembled John Lennon's rhythm
playing with the early Beatles.
Hardly Strictly continues today and Sunday with an
incredible overabundance of greats, including
Elvis Costello, Iris Dement, Emmylou Harris and Nick
Lowe (all made possible by the massive
generosity of entrepreneur Warren Hellman).
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for October 3, 2008
Haven't seen the overnights yet, but I bet yesterday's
Biden-Palin match-up drew the largest audience ever
for any debate, probably largely because people wanted
to see a rank amateur slip and say something stupid
in front of around 60 million TV viewers.
Well, the slip didn't happen, and the headline is,
Palin Didn't Blow It, which isn't the same as
saying she won, because she didn't. It was Joe Biden's
to win, and he did so with Springsteenesque passion,
and when he got to the part about having been a single
parent and not knowing whether one of his kids was
going to make it, well, let's just say there
were a lot of undry eyes.
Biden showed heart and decency but also
confirmed he's still one of the smartest people
in the country on foreign policy. Not only did he
mention capturing and killing bin Laden (Palin didn't),
but he also showed the long-term path to
eliminating future Islamic terrorism:
education reform.
"There have been 7,000 madrassas built along [the
Pakistan-Afghanistan] borders; we should be
helping them build schools," he said. Biden sees
that Islamic terror will stop only when a new
generation of kids growing up in Pakistan (and
on the West Bank, for that matter) are
taught something other than jihad in class.
By contrast, Palin showed a lack of foreign
policy wisdom, calling Iraq the "central front
of the war on terror," despite the fact that
bin Laden and his gang are based elsewhere; and
saying "John McCain knows how to win a war."
(Does he really? The only war in which he fought,
Vietnam, was a defeat for the U.S.)
On domestic policy, she seemed oblivious to
the history-in-the-making going on in the financial
sector, as she spouted outdated cliches about
how the private sector handles things better
than the government. Evidently, she wants health
care to be run by the same private sector that has
just collapsed so spectacularly and that had to
be rescued by the government. (Maybe we should
put AIG and Lehman Bros. in charge of the U.S.
health care system.)
Still, there were no major gaffes on either side,
which means this debate is likely to be almost
completely forgotten by next Tuesday, when
Obama and McCain face off with Tom
Brokaw in Nashville.
* * * *
By the way, some cyber-hacker has evidently
been able to gain remote access to my email
account and may be sending emails from
pliorio@aol.com that are not from me. I'm
aware of this only because I received a sales
email from my own email address this morning
that I didn't send to myself. I'm going to be
working with AOL to solve this problem. In the
meantime, if anyone receives any sort of
uncharacteristic email from pliorio@aol.com,
please let me know immediately, because it may not
be from me! Thanks.
* * *
You know, when you do undercover journalism, as I did
in the 1990s, that targets a corporation like Moody's
(see below), you can expect that they're not going to
say good things about you. So if you hear smear coming
from someone at that company, tell them to shut the
hell up with their lousy fiction. (And feel free to
send me an email telling me what slander someone
there might be saying.)
But I digress. Paul
____________________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 29, 2008
As a journalist, I've been lucky enough to have
met and interviewed, usually one-on-one, some of
the greatest icons of cinema, from Woody Allen to
Tom Hanks, but, unfortunately, I was never able
to meet Paul Newman, who died the other day and
who I admired immensely.
I did, however, write and report about one of
his best films, "Cool Hand Luke" -- my favorite
Newman film, even if most critics prefer "Hud" --
in a story that I wrote and reported for The
Washington Post in 1994.
In my Post story, I asked physicians and other medical
professionals to assess the accuracy of the medical and
health information in feature films. And here's
what the pros told me about what would happen if a mere
mortal were to eat 50 eggs in an hour, as Newman's
character did in the film:
Doctors say Paul Newman's character in "Cool Hand Luke"
was behaving foolishly when he ate 50 eggs, most of them
hard-boiled, within an hour.
"I think you would get a protein overload," says
gastroenterologist Martin Finkel. "One would worry
about over-distending the stomach and rupture."
"You'd cause such an obstruction to your gastric
tract that you'd have constipation for days if
not weeks," adds Rose Ann Soloway, a specialist in
toxicology at the National Capital Poison Center.
"That's something that hard-boiled eggs do: they
really slow up metabolism in the bowels."
(The above is from my piece in the Post.)
Newman, of course, was exempt from the medical
realities that face the rest of us. Or at least
he seemed that way on screen, where he'll live on
forever.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 28, 2008
Regarding the financial crisis: what
rating did Moody's give AIG and all those failed
investment banks just before they collapsed?
Do those ratings constitute fraud or incompetence
on the part of Moody's? If Lehman had, say, a
triple A on Thursday and failed on Friday,
then of what value is a Moody's rating? Are some
news organizations hesitant to investigate Moody's
because they fear having their own credit
ratings downgraded? (Full disclosure: I did
undercover journalism about Moody's in '93 for
a story that never came to fruition, taking
a "position" there for several weeks when I
was actually collecting info about them. But
the piece didn't pan out. For the record, my
undercover journalism reporting was confined to the
period between late 1992 and mid-1995; the best
of those articles were published by Spy magazine
and Details magazine, and I've posted them, along
with other pieces of mine, at
www.paulliorio.blogspot.com.
* * * *
What John McCain Is Thinking Right Now
Maybe I'll ditch her after the election. Yeah,
nobody will notice in that dead zone just before
Christmas, and she can say, "Trig needs my undivided
attention" -- just like that National
Review gal suggested. After the election.
Then again, I might not make it to the White House
with Sarah dragging me down.
But if she quits now, it'll be the Eagleton kiss
of death. I'm indecisive, they'll say. And then
I'd have to break in a brand new running mate.
Meg. I always liked Meg. She reminds me of me.
True grit.
Standing up for 90 minutes really took it out
of me. And I'm trying to make amends with the
Letterman people, but they won't take my calls.
Ole Miss is pissed, too, 'cause I kept 'em
hanging.
But back to Sarah. She didn't tell me about
that affair with the snow machine racer some years
back. She didn't say, "Let me introduce you to my
family: here's my daughter the slut, my husband the
cuckold, and me -- the adulteress." She didn't
say that.
But the press won't find out about all that tabloid
stuff until after the election. For now, everyone
only knows she's not exactly the brightest light
in the greater Arctic Circle region.
Not sure if my melanoma's back. Saw a spot yesterday.
Not certain about it. Haven't even told Cindy yet.
I'll keep it to myself for now. Nobody has to know
until after November 4. And then on New Year's Eve,
when everybody's preoccupied, I'll tell the
world, casually, "Oops, look what I found, one
of those spots on my lower back."
Could be nothing. But what if it's serious? And what
if Sarah has to take over? She thought Kissinger was
president in the 1970s. It took me 90 minutes to explain
to her what a borough in New York City is. At the U.N.,
she asked for a Spanish translator in order to talk
with the Brazilian ambassador. How can I work up
the courage to tell her goodbye?
Would Meg take the spot? How about Carly?
A private sector gal -- that's what's needed for this
financial mess. Or maybe a gook. That might
smooth things over with the Asian vote.
Lieberman hates Sarah. Oh, he says he loves her, but W
has his phone tapped. You should hear the private
stuff he says. His memoir is gonna tell all.
HarperCollins wants him to title it, "Diary of a Traitor:
My Life On Both Sides of the Aisle," but Lieberman
wants "Remembrances of a Principled
Statesman," so there's a bit of a disagreement
there. And he knows about the snow racer, too.
And who is this Daily Digression fellow
anyway? That Oreo guy, calling me a failure
as a fighter pilot. That punk. Thankfully,
the big papers didn't run it.
I'll wait until after the Biden-Palin debate before
I think about replacing her with Meg. She might
do better than expected, if she keeps interrupting
Biden like she did in that debate in Alaska. Just
keep interrupting Joe, and if he overrides her
interruption, he'll look like a bully. Unless
Joe has some readymade zinger like, "Uh, governor,
in Scranton it's considered bad manners to interrupt
someone when he's talking." We'll see.
I wonder if Tina Fey is available?
But I digress. Paul
____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 27, 2008
Friday Night at the Fights
First, am I the only one who noticed that the
debate organizers seem to have placed Obama's
microphone too low? The apparently low mic,
which Obama even tried to adjust at one
point, caused him to lower his face and eyes
more often than he usually does, not his best
angle, and to become less audible
when he lifted and turned his head. McCain,
being shorter, was exactly the right distance
from his own mic, giving him the
advantage in the first ten minutes or so.
But then Obama hit his stride and started
singing that bit that went, "You were wrong
about Iraq...," and he was crooning.
And that's when I realized that he doesn't
resemble JFK as much as he does the early,
skinny Sinatra -- cool, self-assured, the
consummate master at the podium (though lately
a bit of Gwen Ifill's style seems to be
seeping into his persona).
But McCain acquitted himself well, too,
though he came off more like the president of
a small-town bank in a 1950s Capra movie.
Around an hour in, McCain got emotional about
losing the Vietnam war, and I have to say I sort
of got choked up seeing how he was so personally
invested in that conflict, as wrongheaded as that
war was.
After standing for around an hour, it seemed as
if the 72-year-old McCain wanted a chair. Notice
that between the 68 and 73 minute marks, McCain
used the word "sit" three times (Obama, talking
about the same subject, didn't use the word at
all). And then he became frustrated trying to
pronounce "Ahmadinejad," though he did score points
caricaturing what a meeting with the Iranian leader
might sound like.
McCain soon became overly bold, calling for
an across-the-board spending freeze, which Obama
shot down expertly, noting there are some programs
that are underfunded and others that should be
phased out altogether. (By the way, McCain
should retire that "Miss Congeniality"
line, which he used twice last night.)
All told, both candidates did well, with a slight
edge going to Obama.
* * * *
PHOTO OF THE DAY:
Here's a shot I snapped the other week of
a crowd lined up to watch eco-protesters in
Berkeley, Calif.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 26, 2008
Nice setlist for the Paul McCartney show at
Park HaYarkon, the biggest surprise being
"A Day in the Life," which he hadn't played
live anywhere until a few months ago, I hear.
Macca is apparently becoming less McCartney-centric
these days about the Beatles songs he performs,
as evinced by the inclusion of a Harrison tune,
"Something," which, truth be told, is effectively
a Harrison/James Taylor composition, though
Taylor has been too kind over the decades about
the swipe; a bona fide (as opposed to nominal)
Lennon/McCartney song, "A Day in the Life," which
is arguably a Lennon/McCartney/Martin composition;
a Lennon song, "Give Peace a Chance," credited
to Lennon/McCartney, though it's actually one
of the many "Lennon/McCartney" songs
that was not written by both of them.
By the way, if Lennon were still alive, and I were
McCartney, I would push to renegotiate the
Lennon/McCartney credit on all the Beatles
songs that were written either wholly by
McCartney or by Lennon, so that authorship
would go to the person who actually wrote each
track. I find it very unfair that a masterpiece
like "Yesterday" is not only co-credited to Lennon,
who didn't write a note or word of it, but that
Lennon is the first one listed as the composer.
Likewise, it's just as wrong that McCartney
is listed as co-writer of "Give Peace a Chance,"
a tune Lennon wrote alone and that the Beatles
never recorded.
Accuracy, transparency, honesty should trump all
else in both business and in the arts. The old
days of the 1950s, when some cigar-chomping
mogul named Morty would demand to have his
name listed in songwriting credits for a song
he didn't write, are long over. Of course,
the Lennon/McCartney partnership was never that
sort of thing, but "Lennon/McCartney" is also not
an accurate credit when it comes to a large percentage
of the Beatles catalog. Unfortunately, renegotiating
the record of authorship in Lennon's absence -- with,
say, Yoko Ono and the estate of Lennon -- wouldn't
feel right, particularly given that a deal's a deal
until both sides say it's not -- and they both agreed
in writing to the co-credit -- and that Yoko may not
be fully aware of who composed what
in each song.
One saving grace is that McCartney didn't have to deal
with a dishonest bandmate who tried to falsely
take credit for the brilliant melodies and lyrics
that he alone composed. He was spared
that nightmare.
Anyway, I'm digressing.
Regarding the HaYarkon show, which I didn't attend,
it's curious he played nothing from "Abbey
Road" (except Harrison's "Something"), the
Beatles's best album. Perhaps that's because
he has been playing the side two medley to
death since 1989. But still, there are
some unrealized possibilities in the "Abbey"
material; has he ever tried expanding
"Her Majesty" beyond a single verse? Or
playing "Golden Slumbers" as a free-standing song?
Also, he plays "Blackbird" all the time, but
why not try the exquisite "Mother Nature's Son,"
too? Maybe together with "Blackbird."
Has he ever performed "Another Day" live?
Does it not come off well in concert? I think
it's one of his very best singles, despite the
rep given to it by "How Do You Sleep," which
itself is not a very good tune at all. I frequently
play "Another" on acoustic guitar in my apartment
for pleasure and thoroughly enjoy it.
"Mrs. Vanderbilt" is a very smart addition to the
setlist, though I'd prefer an emphasis on "Ram"
material like "Back Seat of My Car," "Dear Boy,"
"Too Many People," "Monkberry Moon Delight," etc.
(Maybe he should play the whole album at Radio City
and encore with the entire "Band on the Run,"
Truth is, no single McCartney show could possibly
include even half of his greatest songs.
* * * *
Back in the day, after Nixon nominated a dope
for the Supreme Court, Senator Hruksa of Nebraska
defended the nominee, saying: "[The mediocre] are
entitled to a little representation, aren't they?"
Well, Hruska would have just adored Sarah Palin. Her
IQ in terms of political thought and general reasoning
ability is almost certainly somewhere in the 90s, which
makes her not just average, but something even better for
those with a fetish for mediocrity: slightly below
average.
To be sure, an IQ can be highly variable within a
given person; Albert Einstein's IQ in physics was off
the charts, but his verbal IQ was probably around 103.
So Palin may have extraordinary abilities we don't know
about yet -- maybe she's highly intuitive when it comes
to predicting which sled dog will lead in the Iditarod,
not an insubstantial talent for those betting in the
tundra -- but we do know this, or should know this,
by now: Palin is astonishingly stupid
when it comes to political thought and policy
reasoning.
And I don't mean just un-intellectual or
anti-intellectual.
She lacks even basic common logic and sense in that
area -- and the self-knowledge to stay out of an
arena in which she's clearly overmatched.
Which leads to the question: what was John McCain
thinking when he chose her? Is there something in
his character that caused him to make such a reckless
decision, or is it that his judgment has become
rusty with age?
Remember, McCain does have the instincts of a
fighter pilot -- but of a fighter pilot who failed,
almost fatally. He was shot down and did not succeed on
his final mission. Granted, that aborted sortie over
Hanoi might not have been his fault -- great pilots are
often downed, even when they're flying expertly and
wisely -- but, then again, it might have been the
result of McCain making an aerial maneuver
that was too risky and careless, bold in a
dumb way.
Like his decision to choose Palin.
The latest evidence of Palin's unbraininess was on vivid
display last night on the "CBS Evening News," in an
interview with Katie Couric that was even more
revealing than her conversation with Charles Gibson.
Here's an annotated transcript (my remarks are in bold caps):
COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of
your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?
PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between
a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land
boundary that we have with Canada. It, it's funny that a
comment like that was kind of made to -- caric -- I don't
know, you know. Reporters --
[OK, PALIN WAS ABOUT TO USE THE WORD 'CARICATURE'
BUT APPEARED TO BE UNSURE OF THE MEANING,
APPROPRIATENESS OR PRONUNCIATION OF IT.]
COURIC: Mock?
PALIN: Um, mocked, I guess that's the word.
COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy
credentials.
PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our, our next door
neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that
I am the executive of. [THEY'RE IN THE
STATE?]And there in Russia --
COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations,
for example, with the Russians? [EXCELLENT
QUESTION]
PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. [TRADE MISSIONS
BACK AND FORTH? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? ARE REPORTERS
FACT-CHECKING THAT CLAIM?] We -- we do-- it's
very important when you consider even national security issues
with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space
of the United States of America [AN INADVERTENTLY SURREAL
AND CARTOONISH IMAGE, SUGGESTING A GIGANTIC PUTIN
BALLOON AT A STREET PARADE], where, where do they go?
It's Alaska. [SHE'S NOT MAKING A BIT OF SENSE
HERE] It's just right over the border. It
is from Alaska that we send those out ["WE
SEND THOSE OUT" MEANS WHAT?; AGAIN, SHE'S NOT MAKING
SENSE] to make sure that an eye is being kept on this
very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there.
They are right next to, to our state.
So there you have the annotated version.
In the interest of fairness, if Palin would like to
explain herself or be interviewed by me for the
Daily Digression, I can be reached
at pliorio@aol.com.
* * * *
POLITICAL QUOTE OF THE DAY: On today's "NewsHour,"
Rep. Barney Frank was more persuasive than I'd ever
seen him. He rocked the place. And he had a
terrific one-liner, saying that John McCain's
return to Congress to help write legislation
that had already been largely written was
like "Andy Kaufman as Mighty Mouse" miming
"Here I Come to Save The Day."
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 24, 2008
Sen. John McCain (above) wants to postpone the presidential
debate because of the ongoing tragedy in Darfur. [photographer
unknown]
* * * *
Hope Paul McCartney's show tomorrow at Park HaYarkon
turns out very well. But keep in mind that this
isn't the first time McCartney has had to deal with
death threats from religious right-wingers.
In 1966, when he toured the southern U.S. with the
Beatles, Christian fundamentalists vowed to kill
the band during performances in Texas and
elsewhere, after John Lennon made controversial
remarks about Jesus Christ.
Forty-two years later, only the fanatics's robes
and sheets have changed.
* * *
You know, it occurred to me the other day: if some
folks in the Noam Chomsky faction of the American
left substituted the words Taliban and al Qaeda with
the phrase Ku Klux Klan, they would have greater
clarity about bin Laden and the Afghanistan war of '01.
And if the religious right of America took a hard look
at the Taliban, they would see themselves in the mirror.
* * * *
Missed most of the Emmys the other night, but did
catch Teri Hatcher's yellow dress, which may have
been the highlight.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 20, 2008
Last Night's My Morning Jacket Show
Jim James, rocketing. [photograher unknown]
Turns out that all the raves I've been hearing about
My Morning Jacket's current tour are accurate,
if last night's concert in Berkeley, Calif., was
any indication. At Friday's show, the band seemed
bent on doing nothing short of reinventing the
electric guitar jam for the late-Oughties, and
there were at least three or four guitar odysseys
that were thrilling, twisty, intense,
unpredictable and always awake to the
undiscovered possibilities of amplification.
And what a night for atmospherics! Fog turned
into mist and then into drizzle and then into
heavy fog and mist at the open-air Greek Theater,
while the group's light show (which I saw from
the hills above the theater) was caught in
the haze. At one point, a beam of lavender
in the heavy fog looked like a massive batch
of cotton candy in the sky.
Even band leader Jim James remarked on the
weather. "Thank you for waiting through the
mist and the rain," he said, noting that the
area looked like "a misty Scottish battlefield."
Then he and his band played a rousing "I'm Amazed"
-- the best song on their new album, and one of
the catchiest pop-rock tracks released by anyone
this year -- and the tune blazed like brilliant
autumn leaves in a grove.
"I love it when it starts turning Fall again, and
you start feeling nostalgic," James said, before
playing "Golden."
Last time he played this venue, in May, 2007, it was a
chilly night on the verge of summer, and he was doing a
solo acoustic set, opening for Bright Eyes and
(among other things) giving fans a preview of
"Touch Me, I'm Going to Scream (Part 1)"
a year before its release.
This show, supporting the amazing "Evil Urges" album,
was far more exciting and fun. Highlights included
"I'm Amazed," set-opener "Evil Urges," the Clashish
"Off the Record," the quirky "Highly Suspicious"
and the truly breathtaking, groundbreaking guitarwork
after "Run Thru."
This is one of the year's most exciting indie
tours, well worth checking out.
But I digress. Paul
[above, photo of Jim James from la.cityzine.com, circa March '08.]
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 18 - 19, 2008
The Antonioni Revival
A couple weeks ago, the Venice Film Festival screened
Carlo di Carlo's "Antonioni su Antonioni," based on
interviews with the late filmmaker Michelangelo
Antonioni.
Last month, the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, D.C. had retrospective screenings
of many of Antonioni's films, including some real
rarities.
And some of his movies are -- finally -- making it to
DVD in the U.S. (though I still can't find a copy of
his first color film, 1964's "Il Deserto rosso").
So there seems to be a bit of an Antonioni revival
going on.
Re-watching several of his pictures recently, I came
away with a new appreciation of "Blow-Up," underrated
by those who overrate "L'avventura." I now see more
clearly its central meaning, metaphysically and otherwise:
we never get the entire picture; as human beings, we
have incomplete information about existence. And the
closer we get to the truth, the further away
it gets.
That also explains why the main character picks up
physical fragments -- a plane propeller, a shard of
Jeff Beck's guitar -- much as he sees only fragments
of what he photographed in the park that day. Beautiful
metaphor.
And when he blows up a photo in order to solve a
mystery, the photo becomes only more mysterious,
more ambiguous. The more he sees, the less he sees.
It's like sitting too close to the amplifiers at
a rock concert; you end up hearing less when it's louder.
My only beef is the ending, the mime tennis match, a
clever idea that doesn't really fit with the rest
of the film. The irresolution plays less well than
it does in "L'avventura."
Don't get me wrong, I love cinematic irresolution,
but you have to make it work, as Antonioini
did in "L'avventura" (or as David Chase did, many decades
later, in the "Pine Barrens" episode of "The Sopranos").
Antonioni knew form could get in the way of
expression; if what he wanted to express didn't
fit the narrative formula of conflict/climax/resolution,
then he'd jettison form.
By the way, it's also a lot of fun (in this short
life!) to run into a flock of pigeons, snapping
pictures wildly, as the main character does in
"Blow-Up." I tried that a couple years ago myself, and
here's the photo I shot (click it to enlarge it):
The central metaphor of "Blow-Up"
also applies to the flock of pigeons
sequence, too, because people who get
inside a flying flock of birds see
them less clearly than those who
watch from a distance.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- If you'd like to read some of my other writings
on cinema, published in such publications as The Los
Angeles Times, The New York Times, etc., please go to
www.paulliorio.blogspot.com.
P.S. -- To any writer who wants to echo my original
insights on Antonioni and "Blow-Up": if you do
so, please don't forget to cite Paul Iorio as your
source.
_________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 18, 2008
So who knew the narrative would twist so unpredictably,
that the American economy would collapse so spectacularly
weeks before the presidential election? Pundits, hold
your predictions.
Also, I've never seen so many Republicans and Wall
Streeters become born-again socialists overnight.
Welcome to the fold. Solidarity forever, and all
that. Gee, I thought they were all for free markets
and de-regulation. This Sunday, let's hear George
Will admit he was wrong about unregulated capitalism
(fat chance).
And who knew Palin would start to fade like Sanjaya. Her
convention appearance now seems more like a stunt or like
someone slightly drunk who comes late to a dull party
and really livens things up but is soon forgotten.
* * *
Here're a couple photos that I've snapped in recent
weeks.
This one is of a sculpture, "Westinghouse-Fichet"
(1984 - 88), by French artist Bertrand Lavier, on
display at the Berkeley (Calif.) Art Museum. Consists
of an ottoman atop a refrigerator, a fresh juxtaposition
I'd never seen before.
* * *
Also, here's an everyday photo I shot the other week of
a street in San Francisco's Chinatown.
* * *
LOCAL NOTES: I sometimes videotape news shows when
I'm out and then fast forward through them later. The
other day, I noticed that the local CBS affiliate here
in the Bay Area had temporarily put its traffic reporter,
Elizabeth Wenger, in the anchor spot for one of its news
programs. All I can say is, wow, did she fill the chair
like a natural. Beauty, brains, youth. And a huge
future in broadcast news, I bet.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 17, 2008
What They Need's A Damned Good Whacking
Some rich, homicidal, transient Syrian-born guy,
whose family has more houses than John McCain, is
now spending his leisure time lobbing death threats
at the world's greatest living composer,
Sir Paul McCartney.
The "reason" for the threats is that McCartney plans
to give a concert in Israel to celebrate its 60th
anniversary as a nation.
And that's evidently not to the liking of one Omar Bakri
Muhammad, also known as Omar Bakri Fostock.
Muhammad/Fostock said the following to London's Sunday
Express in last Sunday's edition: “If he values his
life Mr. McCartney must not come to Israel. He will
not be safe there. The sacrifice operatives will be
waiting for him.”
"Sacrifice operatives"? Sounds like a job description
invented by H.R. Haldeman. Terrorism has finally
gone bureaucratic. Next they'll have Sacrifice
Management, Sacrifice Research and Development, etc.
Look, I've been warning in print for decades about the
encroachment by Muslim militants on free speech and
artistic expression. First they came after Salman
Rushdie for writing a work of fiction. Then the militants
said, no, you can't even draw a cartoon of their
prophet Mohammed. Then, earlier this year, they
scared away Random House -- Random House, no less! -- from
publishing a book ("The Jewel of Medina") that
included a fantasy about religious figures. And
now McCartney's on their hit list for taking a
political stand.
It's long been a slippery slope when it comes to
the demands of Muslim right-wingers. What's next?
Are they going to threaten theater-owners who
screen the new Woody Allen movie because
they consider it sacrilegious? Are they going to
demand that the Uffizi Gallery remove religious
paintings by Giotto and Raphael because they're
the works of infidels?
No, we should not suspend free speech every time
Muslim militants throw a temper tantrum. Islamic
extremists must learn to be tolerant of expression
that offends them and should understand that violence
is not the only way to respond to a disagreement.
Hey, I support the creation of a Palestinian state
and a two-state (three-state?) solution, but I also
say: happy birthday, Israel; you've long since earned
your sovereignty.
And bravo to Sir Paul for his bravery in rebuffing the
militants and for insisting the show must go on.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 16, 2008
Watching the Newly Released "Get Smart" DVDs (and Loving It!)
Agent 86, tracking down Yellowcake at Zabar's pastry counter.
Given its ubiquity on YouTube and its cult
popularity in recent years, it's hard to
believe "Get Smart," the 1960s TV series,
hadn't been officially released on DVD in
the U.S. until last month.
Watching most of the first season the other
week, I was reminded why this was one of the
funniest sit-coms in broadcast tv history -- one
of the five funniest, in my view (the other
four being "All in the Family," "Sanford and Son,"
"The Honeymooners" and "Seinfeld").
Like "Seinfeld," and unlike the other three,
it took a couple dozen episodes for "Get Smart"
to hit its full stride, and when it did -- near the
end of the first season, with the two-parter "Ship of
Spies," a nice blend of humor and suspense -- it was
as good as sit-comedy gets.
For those about to rent the "Smart" DVDs, my
suggestion is to start with disc four of the
premiere season, which includes the final (and
funniest) episodes of the first season. Disc
one is somewhat spotty, revealing a series still
searching for its identity, a show still framed
as a sort of Spy-and-His-Dog type
thing, probably in order to make it more
palatable to middle America.
There is, of course, the endless succession of
gadgets and inventions, like the hilariously
malfunctioning Cone of Silence (and the more obscure
Tube of Silence), gun phones, hydrant phones,
hair dryer phones and the truly astonishing
cologne phone! Plus peg leg guns,
violin guns, purse guns. In 2008, some of
these inventions seem simultaneously
futuristic and anachronistic (like that rotary
shoe phone).
And let's not forget the many inventive hiding
places of the ever-suffering Agent 44!
All told, it's as addictive as potato chips,
particularly in the late first season.
* * *
Other DVDs I've been watching lately:
"SANFORD AND SON" -- SEASON ONE:
Within 29 seconds of the first episode of the first
season, I was roaring with laughter. But after
the first half dozen shows, it becomes
less startlingly funny, though still enormously
entertaining.
Redd Foxx is riotous even when he's just sitting
in his favorite chair, though I can't help but wonder
how much more brilliant the series would have been
as a Richard Pryor-Redd Foxx vehicle, with Pryor,
of course, in the Lamont role.
"Sanford and Son" differs from the other four
greatest sit-coms listed above in that it's a
two-person comedy, which is harder to sustain
than such ensemble works as "Seinfeld," "The Honeymooners,"
and "All in the Family," which all had four main
regular characters.
Sometimes "Sanford" resembles "The Honeymooners"
without an Alice or a Trixie, though Sanford and his
son have more modest dreams than Ralph and Ed. Where
Ralph and Ed hatched extravagant get-rich-quick schemes,
Lamont and Fred just wanted to break even or turn a
modest profit, for the most part. And the two programs
shared at least a couple plot lines in common (e.g.,
finding a briefcase full of money and being confronted
by the crooks who own it; mistaking someone else's
dire medical diagnosis for his own, etc.).
The best of season one is "A Matter of Life and Breath,"
in which Fred, and then Lamont, have a medical scare
that turns out to be a false alarm
Sadly surprising that Foxx wasn't given a shot on
network TV until this series, when he was already
in his fifties.
* * *
"SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE -- THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (DISC EIGHT)":
Everybody has seen the very first episodes of
SNL countless times, but not as many have seen the
final few shows of the first season (which extended
until almost August of '76).
The quality on Disc 8 is variable, though there are
gems to be found, particularly on the program hosted
by Kris Kristofferson, which is must-see stuff,
powered by Kristofferson's presence in sketches
in which he plays, among other things, a congressman,
a tv ad pitchman -- and a gynecologist dating one
of his former patients. But the most hilarious sketch
is the tv cop show parody "Police State," starring
Dan Aykroyd -- an idea ripe for revival.
* * *
"THE JACK PAAR COLLECTION"
Interesting DVD, with both monologues and
interviews from "The Jack Paar Show" of the
early 1960s. Paar's style so influenced
Johnny Carson that the two could pass for
close cousins. On this DVD, his guests
include a mostly humorless Barry Goldwater and
Robert Kennedy, still emotionally
fragile in the months after his brother's murder.
But his most impressive guest was Muhammad Ali, back
when he was called Cassius Clay, who seems to have
invented rap on the Paar show on November 29, 1963,
when he rhymes while Liberace plays piano. It
occurred to me: if you were to put a hip hop beat
behind Ali's rhymes, you'd have a terrific rap track.
I'm surprised someone hasn't done that yet.
* * *
ANOTHER TV NOTE: For at least the third time in recent
months, Al Roker, on "Today," has used the line "Hey,
I've got some pictures of dogs playing cards!," or
some variation of that, which he always passes off
as a spontaneous quip, which it ain't. I think
he needs some fresh material.
But I digress. Paul
[above, photo of Don Adams from Seattle Times.]
__________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 14, 2008
Who Will Palin Choose As Veep When She Succeeds McCain?
Our nukes are about to fall into the hands of
the Taliban.
Lemme me explain. But first, the short math.
Pollsters say Florida's not in play anymore and
is out of reach for Obama. That means ditto
for everything redder -- namely Georgia, Virginia,
Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Nevada.
So let's see. The I-4 corridor ain't in play,
but metro Cincinnati is? That's humorous. Count
Ohio out for Obama. Count Wisconsin
out. Count the West Wing out, too.
McCain becomes #44 in January, and how long do you think
it will be before his melanoma recurs and metastasizes,
and doctors give him, say, six months to live?
(Look, I certainly hope that doesn't happen, but let's
look at realistic scenarios for a moment.) At his
age, the likelihood of recurrence is substantial.
And that's when our nukes fall in the hands of the
Taliban, aka Sarah Palin, who resembles Mullah Omar
(without the eyepatch) in oh so many ways (e.g., she's
a fundamentalist who acts like a book burning
religious crusader).
That's Palin, president number 45, who recently went on
Charles Gibson's show and casually declared war on, oh,
Russia, Iran, and other "spaz" nations, before heading off
to, presumably, dress a moose, whatever the hell that is.
She's likely to ascend to the presidency without ever
having given a national press conference, because I
doubt McCain will let her meet the press in the seven
remaining weeks till the election -- and after Nov. 4,
she doesn't have to.
The big question, for those with foresight, is: who
will Palin choose as her vice president when she
succeeds McCain? The answer is easy. She
would have to mollify the many moderates (not to
mention moderate-liberals and liberals) who would
be threatening mutiny and calling for her to step
down so that someone qualified could run the country.
And the only way for Palin to stop calls for
her resignation or impeachment (over, say,
Troopergate) would be to choose Joe Lieberman, who
would then reassure a trembling nation that the
mainstream is still in power and that he has arrived
on the scene to become Palin's Cheney.
* * *
Odd that Palin repeatedly referred to John McCain as
"McCain" in her second interview with Charles Gibson.
(What? She's not on a first name basis with her running
mate yet? Yet she repeatedly called Gibson "Charlie.")
* * *
Prediction: McCain starts using phrases
like "freak out."
Prediction: Obama starts using phrases
like "dern it" and "well, heck."
Prediction: Palin digs up some distant
gay cousin and trots him out, saying, "I love him just
the way God made him."
* * *
Tina Fey was funny last night on SNL as Palin, but
people tend to overstate the resemblance. After all,
Fey is a very attractive woman, Palin is not (Palin
misses being attractive by around 7%). "And I can
see Russia from my house" is a classic SNL moment.
SNL's season premiere was primo, at least for the
first hour. "Quiz Bowl," featuring a home-schooled
team; Kristen Wiig's glove commercial; and the Inchon
fight song sketch were absolutely hilarious. (Wiig
has a brilliant ability to play unhinged characters
in a manner that's both controlled and way
over-the-top.) But the high note was the Political
Comedian monologue on Weekend Update, which (unless
my Yuban was playing tricks on me) was a bit of comic
genius, or something quite like it.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 12, 2008
Sarah Palin is Fully Qualified to be the Principal
of a Public High School in Alaska
Charles Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin was a
magnificent piece of television journalism. Gibson
was even-handed, understated, more than fair, quietly
tough and unexpectedly lethal.
Palin sounded like an undergrad b.s.ing on an essay
question.
Incredibly, she claimed that Alaska's physical proximity
to Russia was one of her foreign policy credentials.
(Which, of course, would make the Mayor of Nome and
thousands of Eskimos experts on international relations.)
Gibson followed the logic of her claim and asked one of
the most brilliant questions of the political season:
"What insight into Russian actions, particularly in
the last couple weeks, does the proximity of the state
[of Alaska] give you?"
Palin's response was something you'd expect from a
not-so-bright candidate for student body president
of a high school: "They're our next door neighbors.
And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska."
Shockingly, she didn't even know what the Bush Doctrine
was (I knew instantly what Gibson was referring to,
with regard to the Bush Doctrine), and somewhat
less shockingly, admitted she had never traveled
outside America before her "trip of a lifetime" to
Kuwait and Germany last year.
And then there's her awkward use of language -- "We
must make sure that...nuclear weapons are not given
to those hands of Ahmadinejad" -- and Valley Girlisms
(she puts down "someone's big fat resume" like she's
talking about "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"; she says
the 9/11 hijackers did "not believe in American ideals"
(those hijackers were sooo grody!!!)).
In short, she's the new "American Idol" flavor of the
month -- and approximately as qualified as Sanjaya
or Fantasia to conduct foreign policy and manage
nuclear weapons.
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 10 - 11, 2008
The Seventh Anniversary of an Awful Day
I actually liked the twin towers, aesthetically. I
particularly enjoyed walking through the World Trade
Center plaza on early Sunday mornings, when almost
nobody was around, because that's when the architecture
seemed to come alive without the busy distractions of
tourists and office workers. When the plaza was windswept
and desolate, it reminded me of the Acropolis, and the
towers themselves looked like a pair of Stanley Kubrick's
futuristic monoliths in "2001: A Space Odyssey."
I used to think: this whole city may be gone
in 700 years but those towers will stand like the Great
Pyramids forever, there is no erasing them. I used
to think that a lot in my countless walks through
that plaza. I had high hopes for those towers.
When I lived in and around (mostly in) Manhattan
from 1979 to 1996, I photographed the towers from
every angle imaginable: through the sculptures in the
plaza, from the Hoboken ferry on the Hudson, from atop
the south tower, from atop the unfinished World
Financial Center in '85, you name it.
On this 7th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks,
let me share several of my own original photos
of the towers, which I shot in the
1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
The real tragedy, of course, was the death of
thousands of people in those towers, so let's all
remember those who died on that awful day.
I shot this pic in 1984 through a sculpture in the World Trade Center plaza.
* * *
The twin towers were the backdrop for a speech by Bill Clinton; I snapped this photo on August 1, 1994, at Liberty State Park in Jersey City.
* * *
An early nineties photo that I snapped from across the Hudson.
* * *
The twin towers, as seen from a hill in Hoboken, N.J.; I shot this in the 1980s.
* * *
Another picture I snapped from inside a nearby sculpture.
* * *
I shot this one from a boat on the Hudson (early nineties).
____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 10, 2008
Once again, The Daily Digression is first.
In yesterday's Digression (see below), I coined
the term "Palinista" to refer to supporters of
Sarah Palin. Today, in her column in the New
York Times, Maureen Dowd also uses the
word "Palinista."
For the record, I coined it first.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
EXTRA! for September 9, 2008
A couple hours ago, in Berkeley, Calif., eco-protesters
finally came down from the redwood in the oak grove
where they had been tree-sitting for the past 21 months.
There was no rioting or violence as there was last
Friday evening (see Daily Digression, Sept. 6, 2008), but
tensions were high until the sitters came down to earth
at around 1:30pm (PT).
I was at the scene a few hours ago and shot these photos:
Two activists voicing support for the tree-sitters earlier today. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
A protester from "CopWatch" watches cops who were keeping activists away from the oak grove this morning. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
The redwood where the final four tree-sitters sat, around ninety minutes before they came down from the tree. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
Yes, "Save the Oaks" t-shirts were on sale at today's protest. [photo by Paul Iorio]
________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 8 - 9, 2008
The Temporary Palinization of America
(The Rise of the Palinistas)
The B---- To Nowhere: She wants you to trust her with the launch codes. [photographer unknown]
If Sarah Palin had tried to run for president in
early 2008, she would have likely lost all the primaries,
trailing somewhere between Sam Brownback and Duncan
Hunter. As a complete unknown outside Alaska,
she would have had to meet the press and do interviews
in which voters would've plainly seen her vast
inexperience and lack of stature. Her funding would've
dried up, her mis-speakings would've been ammo for
Letterman and Stewart, and she would've dropped out
after the first couple primaries, fading back into the
Aurora Borealis just in time to host the next Iditarod.
In other words, she wouldn't have been able to earn
her spot on the presidential ballot -- though she's now
fully capable of being appointed to the ticket.
With a mere seven weeks or so until the general, McCain
can now cynically keep her away from almost all the top
national journalists -- and she can run the clock the
way she couldn't if she were a candidate campaiging a
year before the election.
Scripted by pros, stage-managed like an actor, Palin can
play "Tootsie" for several weeks, without having anyone look
too hard at who she really is. Meanwhile, lots of minor
pols now think they, too, are Sarah Barracuda -- or could
be, because Sarah didn't have any major experience before
ascending to the national stage, so it could happen to
them, too, they think. (By the way, get ready for
the Palinization of television advertising, an
onslaught of tv commericals for all sorts of products
featuring perky wifey types (Palinistas) saying things
like, "I'm just a regular PTA mom, and I don't know
much about history, but I do know about my history
with laxatives." Etc.)
If you believe she's qualified to be president, then you're
effectively saying there's no such thing as being properly
qualified for the presidency, that the presidency is an
unskilled position that a virtual amateur can do as well
as a pro.
I mean, it's one thing to be responsible, as she was as
mayor, for events like the "Fishing Derby" and the
"Alaska Arbor Day Celebration," and quite another
to be in charge of enough uranium and plutonium
to end life on this planet. (As for her experience
as governor of a state with the population of Charlotte,
North Carolina, it should be noted that she
has yet to serve a full calendar year in that
position.)
And a huge issue that the media is largely ignoring is
that she believes the religious theory of creationism
should be taught alongside the scientific theory of evolution
in the public schools.
That's akin to believing in voodoo or in a flat Earth -- and that's
what's called a red flag. It means, among other things, that
such a person lacks the mental ability to assess fact-based
evidence, which is not the sort of quality you'd want in a
Commander-in-Chief.
Imagine if Palin were to say she believes the world is flat and
that you can fall off the Earth by sailing across the Pacific.
You would need to know nothing else about her in order to
know she's not qualified to be president. Electing someone
who believes in creationism is like electing someone who
still thinks the sun revolves around the Earth (and,
astonishingly, one in five Americans still believes the
latter). Some pundits would note that truth, if they
weren't on such a sugar high from the jellybeans.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. --
Q: What's the Difference Between Sarah Palin
and Those Who Persecuted Copernicus?
A: Lipstick.
* * *
P.S. -- For those who think Palin's popularity is
sure to endure, I have two words for you: Ross Perot.
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 6, 2008
I ran into a mini-riot in Berkeley,
Calif., on my way to hear the Dave Matthews Band
perform at the Greek Theater several hours ago.
As I walked along Piedmont Avenue at around 7pm
(Friday), a violent scuffle broke out between police
and eco-activists trying to stop the University of
California from cutting down a grove of oak trees.
Here are some photos I shot of the mini-riot.
The guy on the ground clashed with cops and was tossed around and beaten pretty badly. (Sorry for the bluriness, but I was in the midst of the melee and being jostled.) [photo by Paul Iorio.]
* *
Two cops detain an activist (he's beneath a guy's bare arm at center left) while a crowd surrounds the cops and chants, "Let him go." [photo by Paul Iorio]
* *
A woman smashes a metal pot/drum with a bar in the middle of Piedemont Ave. [photo by Paul Iorio]
Needless to say, I didn't make it to the Dave Matthews show
until late (just as a 4.0 quake hit that part of the
East Bay, I found out later), though I did get to hear
around 45 minutes of the gig from the hills above
the Greek Theater.
I arrived as Matthews was starting "Eh Hee," a song he
released as a digital single a year ago, which was
followed by a song I didn't recognize and then by a
full-band version of 2003's "Gravedigger," which
got fans going.
"It's a lovely evening," Matthews said from the stage
after that one -- and it was. Cool, dry, crisp, like
the first night of fall (after a day of 100 degree
heat).
The crowd was even more enthusiastic about
2002's "Grey Street," featuring some spirited
sax playing by whoever has replaced the late
saxophonist LeRoi Moore, who died a few weeks ago.
Anyway, I didn't have time to hear the rest
of the concert, and walked home along Piedmont,
where I'd seen violence a few hours before.
Things had become considerably more harmonious
at the site of the protests; some guy was playing guitar and
singing some Bob Marley song, cops were
mingling and talking with the activists -- and
I strolled home.
But I digress. Paul
________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 5, 2008
Probably John McCain's best speech yet, though
that's not saying much because he's not exactly known
for his oratory. The problem with his "change" theme
is he's implicitly saying he disagrees with the policies
of the Bush administration, though he actually claims
he does not disagree with them.
When he made his entrance, he, frankly, looked a bit
like a senior security guard, casually checking to see
that the stage was safe and in order for the arriving
candidate.
What has been glossed over by some news organizations
is that his speech was interrupted at least three times
by noisy protesters, who were quickly, muscularly whisked
away, Beijing-style, by security guards. They seemed to
almost blow McCain's cool at one point.
After his speech, the body language onstage was
telling. Palin looked like McCain's fling (because she
acted like his fling), though you'd never say the same
thing about Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina. Sure, McCain
and Palin briefly acted the expected role of candidate
and running mate, but for the most part, McCain
seemed to be distancing himself from her and even
appeared to be a little miffed at her, as if he had
found out hours earlier that there was real substance
to the rumor that Palin had once had an extramarital
affair with a snowmachine racer. Meanwhile, he gave a big,
big wave in the direction of Whitman, almost as if to say,
"Hold on, Meg, you're on standby."
Ah, how soon we forget the lessons of Eliot Spitzer:
the most puritanical are often the most secretly
promiscuous.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
EXTRA! for September 4, 2008
Check out the sermons by Sarah Palin's pastor,
Ed Kalnins, staff crackpot at the way-out
Wasilla Assembly of God.
Plus, the inside word is that, yes, there is
some evidence to substantiate the charge
that Palin had an extramarital affair with
a snowmobile racer and biz associate of her
husband's.
So let me put all this together. A wild
and crazy church. A swingin' adultress
luv guv. And an underage daughter who's
havin' unprotected pre-marital sex with
an adult.
Sounds like the religious right has really
loosened up in recent years!
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for September 4, 2008
The First EyeWitnessNews Candidate for Vice President!
Now the McCain strategy is becoming clear: hire a
television newscaster as your running mate if you
wanna win!
Of all the skills required to become a successful
candidate, telegenicity is key.
McCain was looking for someone with the ability to look
directly into the camera and make it work, the ability to
play the space onstage, and a sense of what is
and is not effective on TV.
Palin's experience in broadcasting in Alaska has evidently
paid off. She has become the very first EyeWitnessNews
candidate for vice-president or president, and she
knows all the tricks and buzzwords.
News flash. Breaking news. We have a reporter on the way
to the scene now. This is developing news. We'll bring
you details as we learn them. Stay with us. Because
firefighters are getting the upper hand on that blaze.
70% contained. Everyone is breathing a sigh of relief.
They're lucky to be alive. We really dodged a bullet.
The tide has turned. What a difference a day makes!
Thank you for joining us. Stay tuned.
Yes, that's what a Palin presidency would sound like.
But could you please name one -- just one -- original
policy idea that she mentioned in her entire half-hour-plus
speech? Can you name one original policy idea that she
has ever had? If so, could you show me documentation
of that?
Unfortunately for Palin, her punch lines are already
getting stale. "Thanks but no thanks on that bridge to
nowhere": uh, Sarah, I think we already heard that one.
Like...last Friday. (Even Cindy McCain was almost
rolling her eyes in a cutaway shot.)
And then there was that odd appearance by McCain -- odd
in that he didn't properly close out his cameo
with a "see you tomorrow night" or something. Instead
he was led off the stage by nurse Sarah, who will make
sure gramps doesn't wander from the home and his meds and
onto the stage again.
Other notes on Night 3:
MITT ROMNEY: Inconvenient truth omitted from Romney's
auto-bio last night: he failed to mention that he came
from wealth, which gave him a gigantic advantage in his
later business pursuits.
And Romney's line about "homes that are free from
promiscuity" received an uneasy, embarrassed, tepid
response, the reason being that it's now known
the Palin home was the site of unprotected, underage,
unmarried sex. (At least we know they're not frigid in
Alaska!)
MEG WHITMAN: She looks sort of like a female version of
John McCain -- or John McCain's sister.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- The real double-standard about Palin is
that some female pundits, so relentlessly harsh
about the seemingly low IQs of guys like Dan Quayle
and W, overlook her obvious lack of stature and
appear to be charmed by Palin. If she were a guy
who called himself "an average hockey dad" and who
was as demonstrably mediocre and lacking in experience
as Palin is, a lot of female columnists would be
kicking the tar out of him. Instead, some who
ridiculed Quayle for every misspelling are making
excuses for Palin, suspiciously pulling their
punches.
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
EXTRA! for September 3, 2008
Lemme guess. Tonight, Sarah Palin will
give her Checker's Speech. Using the slick
broadcasting skills she learned in Alaska, she'll
get all choked up at the podium -- and then, in
a burst of righteous indignation and anger, she'll say
something like, "And to those of you in the news media,
I have a message for you: Leave my children alone!!!!!,"
and the audience will respond with three minutes of
wild applause.
Afterwards, some pundits will probably say the following:
"I think she might have saved her job tonight" and
"If there was any doubt going into the convention about
whether Sarah Palin could stand the heat, there is no
doubt anymore" and "Looks like she hit it out of the
hockey arena!"
* * * * *
Palin Ain't the Quayle of '08. She May Be The Harriet Miers.
Elderly John McCain, with less energy than he had
as a young man, gets lazy about vetting his first major
nominee. All he knows is he needs A Woman on the
ticket, and it really doesn't matter much which Woman.
(Is this how McCain will choose his Attorney General
and Supreme Court nominees if he's elected?)
And so, with the same gambling instincts he showed as
a fighter pilot -- instincts that, by the way, got
him shot down over the Hanoi metro area -- he made a
bold, careless veep choice and let the
devil take the hindmost, as they say in his parts.
Well, now the devil is taking the hindmost.
Because Palin is fast developing the distinct
aura of a nominee who gets ditched within a
week or so of being nominated. Yes, Palin may be
the Harriet Miers of Campaign '08.
The Daily Digression has been digging around and
found there are even more question marks
about her than the press has revealed.
For example, far from being universally popular
throughout her career in Alaska, it turns out that
she was the object of a recall campaign several months
into her first term as mayor. In early 1997, a group
of around 60 Wasilla residents (a huge number of
people for a town that small) formed Concerned
Citizens for Wasilla, which objected strenuously to
several of her early decisions and wanted her removed
from office.
It's worth noting that she ascended to mayor of Wasilla
from the Wasilla city council, a position so tiny that I
couldn't find any coverage of her race
in the main newspaper in the area, The Anchorage
Daily News.
So, effectively, Palin was a part-timer before she
became governor of a state that has a smaller population
than the city of San Francisco.
Also the Digression has learned Palin has not been
shy about putting daughter Bristol, even when she
was a child, in the media spotlight when it was to
her advantage -- and that her household was recklessly
permissive when it came to guns.
When she was merely 9-years-old, in 1999, Bristol Palin
was covered in the Anchorage Daily News because of her
rifle-shooting education. "First-time shooter Bristol
Palin, 9, recently learned how to handle a rifle," went
the piece in the ADN. Can I ask a common sense
question, or is it too old-fashioned to ask what
the hell a 9-year-old is doing in the vicinity of
a rifle?
[Incidentally, it's important to note that Palin defines
herself as an "average hockey mom"; Barack Obama has never
defined himself as an "average hockey dad" -- and neither did
JFK. So we must, to some degree, scrutinize her on her own
terms.]
The New York Times and The Washington Post have uncovered
their own info about her, including:
-- the state legislature is investigating abuse-of-power
allegations against her
-- she was busted for drunk driving in 1986.
-- for two years, she belonged to an eccentric political party
that wanted to put the issue of Alaska secession to a
ballot vote
-- the father of Bristol Palin's daughter, Levi Johnston,
describes himself as "a fucking redneck," according to
several news organizations.
Question not asked by anyone: if Levi was 18 when he had
sex with 17-year-old Bristol, then doesn't that make
him an adult having sex with a child? Is that illegal
in Alaska? If so, then how come sex crime allegations
are being levied (or not levied) in an inconsistent
manner here?
More later.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 3, 2008
Notes on Day 2 of the GOP Convention
There's something vaguely German about the whole gathering.
Even the music sounds like Wagner, though it isn't.
A few notes:
-- Norm Coleman: Reminds me of a Franklin Mint salesman,
practicing his sales pitch alone in front of a mirror the
night before going door-to-door. And what an ear for
catchy language: "Change the Republicans can
actually deliver."
-- Funny how the Repubs now claim to admire Martin Luther
King, when in fact they vehemently opposed him when he was
alive.
-- Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. Looks like
the Anita Bryant wing of the party. I half expected
her to welcome us to the Florida sunshine tree! Also
has an ear for catchy language: "Minnesota is a really nice state
that loves you!"
-- Tommy Espinozzzzzzzzzzzzzza
-- George W. Bush: Might've coined something with that
"angry left" bit. Not quite "nattering nabobs," but
getting there.
-- Fred Thompson: Calls Obama "inexperienced" but believes
Palin is qualified because "she knows how to field dress a moose."
-- Joe Lieberman. Hadassah looks like she's thinking, "Joe,
how did we sink so low? Joe, how did we lose all our Connecticut
friends?" Michael Beschloss had a nice insight on PBS, saying
that Lieberman's speech sounded like a barely modified version
of the scrapped speech he had written to accept the GOP vice
presidential nomination. (He may have to give that speech
yet.) Probably right.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
EXTRA! for August 29, 2008
After hearing Sarah Palin speak, I have to say
she sounds like the perkiest temp in the whole
typing pool.
A people person!!
And if she ever had to go head-to-head
with Ahmadninejad, why, she'd give that man 15
lashes with a wet noodle!
McCain has made an awful, cynical, dangerous
choice -- dangerous because McCain is old and
has health problems, and if he were
incapacitated as president, she would be the
one in charge of a nuclear arsenal that could
annihilate life on earth.
And get a load of these Churchillian aphorisms:
-- "Put people first!" (As opposed to what? Putting
iguanas first?)
-- "The people of America expect us to seek public
office and serve for the right reasons" (I'm sure
Vaclav Havel is hailing the arrival of a brilliant new
political poet.)
An "average hockey mom," as she describes herself, should
be in charge of average hockey teams, not of the most
powerful nation in the world.
McCain's strategic shrewdness (i.e., wedging into the
embittered Hillary-Ferraro vote) is neutralized by his
nominee's scary lack of experience, which inadvertently
inoculates Barack against such charges. A better wedge
would've been Kay Bailey Hutchison.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- By the way, Hillary and Geraldine should release
a joint statement by the end of today saying
that Palin is no friend of the women's rights movement
and does not speak for them or their supporters.
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 29, 2008
Notes on Day 4 of the Democratic Convention
Anti-climax. The expectations were too high.
You cannot will an "I have a dream" speech into
creation.
Barack's speech was prose, not poetry this time -- and
predictable prose at that (except for the moment when he
slipped and almost said, "The market should reward
drunk driving" -- now that would've been an
unpredictable moment!).
His "you're on your own" bit was classic, as were his
great lines about bin Laden ("We must take out Osama bin
Laden and his terrorists," and "John McCain says he will
follow bin Laden to the gates of hell but he won't even
follow him to the cave where he lives").
But he should know better than to use a come-on like
"This election has never been about me; it's been
about you," which sounds like the sort of thing a car
salesman or prostelitizing evangelical would say.
(Whenever I hear a salesman say that, I immediately
know it's about him, not me.)
It occurred to me while listening to him that
no matter who gets elected in November, there's
bound to be gridlock once again. I mean, Obama has
a job right now, and so does McCain, and we don't
see either of them magically ramming through
legislation or inspiring their Senate colleagues to
action, so it's hard to believe they'd suddenly be
able to do so by merely moving to the co-equal executive
branch.
In '93, the Dems had control of both houses of Congress
and of the White House and there was still partisan gridlock.
Perhaps the change that has to happen in Washington is
more fundamental than what Barack wants to bring about.
Maybe our political system needs to be re-imagined and
re-structured with a greater emphasis on direct democracy
instead of representative democracy. What I mean is, bills
and issues that are regularly voted on by Congress, and
that are regularly jammed in gridlock, should perhaps
instead be voted on by the public in ballot referenda. That
way, we can put, say, universal health care to a public
vote, and if the people choose it, it becomes law.
No gridlock. No partisan bickering. No need to reach
across the aisle to massage the interests of some
corrupt congressman who wants an unnecessary bridge for
his district.
Anyway, I don't expect Barack will see any appreciable
convention bounce from this speech, which means he may
have already peaked in the polls. We'll see.
But I digress. Paul
________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 28, 2008
Notes on Day 3 of the Democratic Convention
What a surprise to see Barack show up at the
convention center last night. Great move.
Like a gust of wind into a smoke-filled room. I've
decided that Barack is post-neurotic. He doesn't
seem to have the hang-ups that most of us do,
which allows him to move further faster.
And it was revealing to see him shake hands
with various Dems (it's evident he has great
personal chemistry with Nancy Pelosi). Also,
wonderful to see Barack's great-uncle,
Charles Payne, who helped liberate Buchenwald.
Joe Biden's speech was characteristically forceful
and poignant, particularly when he imagined,
stream-of-consciousness style, the thoughts and
anxieties of everyday Americans as they try to
make ends meet.
It's clear that Biden speaks Middle Atlantic
fluently and can talk Philly Cheesesteak, too -- a
dialect essential to persuading swing voters.
The protracted ovation for Bill Clinton was truly
astounding -- and his calls for unity sounded
heartfelt. And he scored some points noting
that the GOP had control of both the White House
and the Congress in 2001, enabling them to
implement ideas that proved disastrous.
Other notes:
-- Beau Biden seems to be made of the same stern
stuff that his dad is made of. And there wasn't a
dry face in the crowd when he described that
horrific car accident.
-- Harry Reid should lay off history and stick to
politics. Saying that World War II was
partly motivated by oil on the Russian front is a
stretch at best. A quick refresher course: Hitler
was invading everyone in the 1930s/1940s, whether
they had oil or not. Austria, France, the Netherlands
didn't have any oil, but he invaded them, too. The
opening grafs of his speech should have been
better edited.
-- John Kerry: Roared like he rarely did in '04.
-- Evan Bayh: predictable.
-- Chet Edwards: bland.
All for now.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 27, 2008
Notes on Day 2 of the Democratic Convention
More electricity than last night. If it wasn't
Hillary's finest moment at the podium, I don't
know what was. Funny, confident, spontaneous,
pithy: if she had been like this back in '07,
she might have won the Thursday night slot this
week. Lots of crowd-pleasing zingers: "No way,
no how, no McCain," "sisterhood of the traveling
pantsuits," etc. Plus, a stirring evocation of Harriet
Tubman at the end. (And, of course, any candidate
who opens with Davies has got to be gold.)
And the cutaway shots of Bill suggest he
might have a thing for her. (You think
they're having an affair?)
The big surprise of the night was keynoter Mark Warner.
I had no idea he was this great. Talk about
Kennedyesque. Came across like a guy who
knows how to get things done in an
innovative, effective way. Best line:
"In 4 months, we will have an administration
that actually believes in science."
But perhpas the most genuine moment of the night
came from the Republican mayor of tiny, cold
Fairbanks, Alaska, who looked like a throughly decent
fellow, his posture hinting at a lifetime of
shivering, his slightly too-large jacket probably
bought at one of the very few shops in Fairbanks
where you can actually buy jackets.
Other notes:
-- Montana governor Brian Schweitzer got the house
a-rockin'. Lots of unexpected pizazz.
--Did you feel the Steny-mania in the hall?
-- Janet Napolitano talked about "the burgeoning cities
and towns" in her home state.
--- Kathleen Sibeliuszzzz: better at governing than
at comedy. (To her credit, she didn't mention
"burgeoning cities and towns.")
-- And why the swipe at Franklin Roosevelt's
ahead-of-his-time vice president by a pundit on
PBS? Keep in mind that ol' Henry
believed what you probably believe now -- except
he believed it decades earlier.
Anyway, time to get back to the "burgeoning
cities and towns" in my region.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
EXTRA! for August 26, 2008
Well, it's official: the first night of
the Democratic National Convention was a ratings
dud for the broadcast networks, who cumulatively
attracted a million fewer viewers than they had
on opening night in 2004, according to
TV Week's E-Daily Newsletter.
And the reason is no surprise (read my review below).
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 26, 2008
Notes on Day 1 of the Democratic Convention
This is what Day 1 sounded like:
This son of a butcher, a baker and a candlestick
maker rose to heights previously undreamed of,
because he dared to dream the dream and hope the
hope and dare the dare and believe the belief, and
in his youth his father walked 50 miles through a
blizzard each day to get to his job in a steel
mill, where he was paid a mere dollar a day,
which he shared with his nine children
after he returned home from his daily
walk, sacrificing so that the new generation
would have a better life, but his spirit
was undimmed, his optimism undefeated, his faith
unquashed, his vigor undminished, his focus un-undermined,
even as his legs ached and he cried out for Extra
Strength Advil liquid capsules, as he drew succor from
his dream of a truly united United States of America,
in which black and white, blue and green, yellow and
red, chartreuse and violet, rich and poor, suburban
and urban, those who walk 50 miles a day and those
who merely walk 50 feet, those who believe, as he
believes, and still believes, that one America, one
nation, one vision, one people, shall prevail against
all divisions, blah, blah, blah.
And on and on. The stories of boot-strap triumph blend
together like a bunch of wallpaper, leaving the
audience with the false impression that wealth
in America isn't acquired mostly through inheritance,
as the facts show. Scratch the surface of almost
any rags to riches bootstrap story and you'll find that
the "self-made" person was actually the beneficiary
of government money or family money or drug money
or criminal theft or unethical business leverage
or a freakish winning at a casino or on a TV game show.
For now, such harsher truths aren't ready for prime time.
For the most part, the first day of the convention, as
seen on TV, was so overscripted and lacking in spontaneity
that it made the Oscars look like an experimental
improvisational performance.
Occasionally, and thankfully, the human element seeped
through all the calculation. Senator Kennedy's speech was
a highlight, if only because he looked surprisingly
robust and sounded like Classic Teddy, despite his terminal
illness. And the adorable Obama children virtually stole
the show, cutely interrupting their dear ol' dad, who
was piped in from Kansas City, Mo., showing everybody
what a real political star looks and sounds like.
Also: Caroline Kennedy looked great, sounded genuine
and has developed a slightly tougher edge that is
very welcome; she should run for Uncle Teddy's Senate
seat after he passes. Michelle Obama was winning
and quite a natural at the podium -- and also generous
(can you imagine Muriel Humphrey saying kind words
about Eugene McCarthy from the stage in '68?)
More later.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 25, 2008
Sorry to those who thought I'd be covering the
Outside Lands music fest in San Francisco last weekend.
As much as I wanted to attend, I couldn't because I
was holed up in the studio, doing final overdubs
on two new songs of mine, "Love's a Heaven You
Can't Reach" and "Three Minute Song," which I've released
today (my music site is www.pauliorio.blogspot.com).
In any event, I've covered multiple concerts by almost
all the festival headliners and subheds in the past
year or two (see below or in the Digression Archive
for my pieces on Radiohead, Wilco/Jeff Tweedy,
Tom Petty, Widespread Panic, etc.).
And keep in mind that Radiohead premiered their new
"In Rainbows" material at shows two years ago in the
San Francisco Bay Area and in a handful of other
cities (at concerts that no serious daily newspaper
in the Bay Area neglected to cover), while
Jeff Tweedy's unforgettable gig in Golden Gate Park
several months ago (following a Wilco show across the
Bay) was also a must-see and must-review event.
Anyway, now that my new songs have been released, I'm
back to Digressing!
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 23, 2008
Once again, the Daily Digression has been first --
this time, the first of the major blogs and
news organizations to have identified Joe Biden as
the likeliest veep nominee (see last Sunday's
column below).
And the Biden choice is perhaps the best strategic
decision in terms of vice-presidential picks since
JFK chose LBJ in 1960, as Biden complements Obama on
foreign policy the way Johnson complemented Kennedy
geographically. (The Biden selection probably won't
mean much in the opinion polls -- until the
vice-presidential debate, where Biden will surely
clean the clock of McCain's running mate.)
As a freelance journalist, I did some intensive
research around a year ago to see which of the
presidential candidates, if any, saw the 9/11 attacks
coming before the fact. And my digging showed that
Biden came the closest (by far) to sensing the clear
and present danger posed by the Taliban and bin Laden.
Listen to Biden on June 21, 2000, speaking on the floor
of the U.S. Senate: "We all know about Pakistan, the
gateway to Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden and his
buddies. Can anybody think of a better place to
beef up border security, so that terrorists can be
apprehended as they go to and from those Afghan training camps?"
Again, that was Biden in the year 2000, over a year
before bin Laden committed mass murder on U.S. soil.
And Biden had the danger sized up perfectly -- before
the fact.
To be sure, Biden wasn't completely alone in ringing the
alarm but he almost was. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was
also somewhat prescient in speaking out about the
Taliban. "The Taliban in their activities...there
[in Afghanistan] have placed them outside the circle
of civilized human behavior," said Pelosi, on June 13, 2001.
(The least prescient about 9/11? Dennis Kucinich.)
Candidates with hindsight are as plentiful as
gravel, those with foresight as scarce as gold.
In this case, the Democratic nominee for president
has chosen a running mate with the latter.
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 17, 2008
After deeply researching insider blogs,
convention schedules, travel plans
of both the candidate and his veep
contenders -- and applying simple common
sense -- I've arrived at an educated guess
as to who Barack Obama's running mate
will be.
In all likelihood, it's Joe Biden.
[posted at 6:44pm, Sunday, August 17, 2008]
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 13 - 14, 2008
I must confess I wasn't at all impressed by
the precision mass synchronization spectacles
of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.
They didn't express much except a punishing
level of rehearsal. Orson Welles was able to do
more with simple hand shadows in "Citizen Kane" than
the organizers of the Olympics did with their
Himalayan-sized budget.
That said, the folks at NBC (particularly Brian
Williams, Tom Brokaw, Bob Costas and Matt Lauer)
are doing a super job making it interesting even
to viewers who couldn't care less about things
like the 50-meter freestyle competition. (Lauer
had a particularly humorous moment last week
touring a building in Beijing called The Studio
of Exhaustion from Diligent Service.)
* * * *
It occurred to me yesterday that our next
president will be someone who wasn't born
on the U.S. mainland -- a first (I think).
* * * *
If you want to remember Isaac Hayes at his very
best, and you've already seen "Shaft," check out
the "Wattstax" DVD, which captures primo Hayes -- intro'd
by a circumspect Jesse Jackson, no less.
* * * *
The Enduring Ambivalence About Jethro Tull
Jethro Tull, reading the latest edition of
The Daily Digression?
Of all the major 1960s/1970s bands eligible
for induction to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame
who have not yet been inducted, few present a
more difficult problem of critical evaluation than
Jethro Tull. Watching a video of the band performing
in its absolute creative prime -- the period right
after "Benefit" and before "Aqualung," captured on a
DVD called "Jethro Tull: Live at the Isle of
Wight, 1970" -- I saw at once the reasons why
the band should be inducted and why they shouldn't,
though I lean toward the former view ("Aqualung" alone
should be their ticket in).
The DVD shows the band performing on the last
day of the Isle of Wight Festival of 1970, when
the crowd, having already heard The Who and
Jimi Hendrix on previous days, had dwindled
considerably. By day five, the audience was
gnarly, gamey, pissed off and fed up with
malfunctioning toilets and being pushed
around by fest organizers. To its credit, this
documentary/concert film, directed by Murray Lerner,
doesn't prettify this (or Tull's own performance,
for that matter).
Tull took the stage looking like they had just
stepped off the cover of "Benefit." Up close, you
can see that Ian Anderson had a case of stage fright
and, at least at this gig, was nervous, even dorky,
full of odd tics and idiosyncrasies, a strict
taskmaster who missed his own cues, while his
band was precise but clunky, for the most part.
It's when he puts down his flute, which he really
doesn't play very well, and sits with an acoustic
guitar for "My God" that you say, "Wow." Anderson is
relaxed, engaging, marvelously melodic, almost
hypnotic -- for the first three minutes and fifteen
seconds of "My God." And then he does embarrassing
schtick with his flute that even he sort of cringed
at in a 2004 interview included here.
I've long felt the band's best stuff was British
folk and folk rock like "Sossity," "Inside,"
"Reasons for Waiting," "Mother Goose,"
"For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me," "Slipstream,"
"Cheap Day Return," "Up the Pool," the "in the clear
white circles of morning wonder" part of "Thick as a
Brick" -- I almost never tire of hearing
those songs, none of which they played at Isle
of Wight. (Anderson should have hung out a bit
more with Maddy Pryor, by the way.)
Though the setlist here is disappointing (why only one
song from "Benefit"?), you see the dawn of
"Aqualung" taking shape, particularly on "Dharma
For One," where you can hear the band hurtling
toward its "Locomotive Breath" sound. (Turns out
Glenn Cornick had a lot more to do with the
overall sound during this period than you'd guess
from hearing the albums.) By show's end, the
previously angry crowd looked genuinely
thrilled.
The problem with bands that you enjoyed as a child
is that, in adulthood, you can't tell whether you
still like them because of nostalgia or because
of the group's musical value. I was barely
13-years-old, a suburban American kid living for
six months in Florence, Italy, when I first heard
of Tull. I remember the moment well: I was in the
front seat of a Fiat in central Florence in
November 1970, a couple months after Isle of Wight,
looking to the backseat where some cool older guy at my
school, St. Michael's Country Day School, was holding
a brand new copy of "Benefit" (with that "headband" cover)
and talking the band up.
At that time in Florence, "Woodstock" was in the
main movie theaters, "Led Zeppelin 3" was weeks
away from showing up in record store windows and
Italian singer Gianni Morandi had a big hit with a
protest song about the Kent State massacre.
But Jethro Tull, at least for a month or two in the
fall of '70, was the talk of the piazza, and their
melodies seemed to emanate from the medieval and
Renaissance alleys of the city, and there were rumors
flying that Tull was actually a group of 70-year-old men.
But the band's true heyday lasted only from 1969 to
1972, between "Stand Up" and "Living in the Past." The
subsequent albums, between '73 and '78, from "A Passion
Play" to "Songs From the Wood," were spotty at best,
though there are at least a few good songs or musical
moments on each. After 1978, they created almost nothing
worth listening to.
Even at their peak they were the object of an unusual
degree of derision. (I once heard the nickname Jethro Dull;
and the late, great Lester Bangs memorably eviscerated
the band with his famous line about Jethro Tull having
no "rebop.")
To be sure, they're not in the same league as the Stones
and the Who, though their melodies are more memorable
than those of a terrific band like Fairport Convention.
Tull can't be dismissed -- there's just too much good stuff
on albums two through six. "Live at the Isle of Wight,"
the best long-form concert by the group on DVD, is a
great way to take a close look at a band that still
provokes extreme ambivalence after all these years.
* * * *
A Year After "Sicko," Still No Universal Health Care
This time last year, Michael Moore's documentary
"Sicko" was stirring such debate about the U.S. health
care system that some thought the film might actually
spur some sort of policy change.
No such luck. Hasn't happened. The rich keep
getting richer off of the sick, who keep
getting sicker.
As "Sicko" notes, the government provides
free postal service, free police protection, free
education -- and nobody denounces those programs
as "socialist." Why not also provide
something as basic as health care?
Imagine if you had to personally pay the police
department every time you called 911 for an
emergency (though, on second thought, it is true
that in some communities in New Jersey and Louisiana,
I hear you actually do have to pay the cops!). Same
thing as paying for an emergency room visit.
Maybe we need to re-think our socialism-phobia,
which almost nobody else in the world shares. Let's
take that fear apart for a moment.
Since unregulated capitalism failed spectacularly
in 1929, the United States has adopted and adapted
and refined some of the best ideas of
socialism -- e.g., FDIC, unemployment insurance,
social security, food stamps, etc. -- so that
now we're -- thankfully -- a capitalist-socialist
hybrid nation, in a sense.
Even arch-conservatives have seen the absolute
necessity of having a baseline level of government
involvement and regulation, without which we would
have complete catastrophe on several levels,
as we found out the hard way in '29.
Meanwhile, the communists have adapted and adopted
some of the best ideas of American capitalism so that
Russia and China are now also socialist-capitalist
hybrids.
In other words, nobody won the Cold War. We became
partly socialist, and the socialists became partly
capitalist. The U.S. has social security, and China has
Saks Fifth Avenue. In the process, the Soviet Union
ran out of money and collapsed, which probably
would've happened anyway, whether they had been nominally
communist or not, given the fact that their economy has
long been based on main exports vodka and corruption.
(And their totalitarianism, which almost nobody defends
anymore, had more to do with their own political
traditions and history than with the theories of Marx
and Engels.)
In "Sicko," we actually see the spectacle of
Americans "defecting" to communist Cuba in order to
get health care -- and it's no joke.
Oh, I can hear the conservatives now, talking about
the lack of freedom in Cuba. But let's dissect that cliche
for a moment, too.
In the U.S., every dissenter is free to savagely
criticize President Bush in the most radical ways,
but there's no real danger or risk in that.
After all, we work for corporations like
Hewlett-Packard and Oracle and Xerox and GE, not
for Bush. And if you work for Hewlett-Packard,
I dare you to go to the office tomorrow and start
criticizing your boss in order to see how your First
Amendment rights hold up. I dare you to go to work,
wherever you work, and say, my boss is a bum and my company
is run by a bunch of fascist thugs. First Amendment or
not, you'd likely be cleaning out your desk before the
day is done.
In America, you have very limited free speech rights
when it comes to the domain in which you really
reside: your workplace, where you spend most of your
day. Your actual residence is the fiefdom of Xerox or
GE or Oracle, not the U.S.
So, yeah, it's true: there is a public sector
tyranny in Cuba -- but there's a private sector
tyranny in America.
Just watch the final scenes of "Sicko" -- in which
Cuban firefighters in Havana stand to honor the New
York area firefighters who died so tragically on
9/11 -- and you'll realize we have a lot more in
common with the communists than we care to admit.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 3, 2008
Last Night in Berkeley, John Mellencamp Declares:
"Hatred Elected George Bush"
Mellencamp performing last year (photo by Paul Iorio)
John Mellencamp has never been known to hold
his tongue about much, and last night in Berkeley,
Calif., on the final date of his tour with Lucinda
Williams, he let it all hang out.
"It's that hatred that's getting people killed overseas,
it's that hatred that's getting -- well, let's call a
spade a spade -- it's that hatred that elected George
Bush," Mellencamp said to cheers from the crowd.
He then paused, chuckled a bit and said: "I'll probably
get arrested for saying that," as if realizing he had
said something a bit extreme.
Several songs later, before "Crumblin' Down," he dialed
back a bit on his comments. "I didn't mean to start
preachin' but I did a little bit," he said, adding at
another point that a lot of people think he
should "shut up about politics."
Mellencamp also talked unusually vividly, even by
his own standards, about the infamous racial incident
that happened last year in Jena, Louisiana.
"Down in Jena there was some kind of problem, you
know, and people thought it'd be a good idea if they
hung nooses in a tree," he began. "...That's a bad
idea no matter how you cut it. Hey, here's a
good idea: [in an ironic, confidential tone]:
after the show let's all go...spray paint swastikas....That's
a good idea...That's not going to get a good result
no matter how you cut it. That is not the way we solve
problems. We're better than that." Fans cheered.
Then he launched into his song "Jena," played here a bit
like a Neil Young protest tune.
Mellencamp made his remarks at a sold-out gig at the
Greek Theater in Berkeley, last night (August 2),
supporting his recently released album, "Life Death
Love and Freedom." (I heard -- and recorded -- the gig
from the hills above the theater.)
His comments about "hatred" followed an anecdote he
told about an instance of racial discrimination he
experienced when he was a teenager in a rock band;
effectively, given the context of his story, he was
implying that racial "hatred" played a part in
electing Bush.
His remarks, however, didn't upstage his music,
which was, at times, as good as live rock 'n' roll
gets; in fact, there are only a handful of acts
-- the Stones, Springsteen, U2, R.E.M., etc. -- who
can play rock with this level of mastery and intensity.
The last segment of the show -- in which he played
several of his best-known songs in rapid
succession -- felt sort of like a jet quickly
ascending over mountain peaks; his versions
of "Crumblin' Down" and "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A."
had the irresistable force of the Rolling Stones
on their "Bigger Bang" tour, and it was almost
impossible not to dance (or not to move to)
the music.
Also notable were "Rain on the Scarecrow," a
defiant retort to anyone who thinks the Reagan era
was just an endless stream of jellybeans; "Check
It Out," the most enduring song from "The Lonesome
Jubilee"; and an unexpectedly strong "Human Wheels,"
as well as the half dozen or so new songs from his
latest album, "Life Death Love and Freedom," his best
CD in many years.
"Minutes to Memories," one of his finest songs, was
performed here solo acoustic, unfortunately flattening
a lot of the song's appeal, which has much to do with
its central guitar riff, absent here. For years,
I've enjoyed performing that song on acoustic guitar
for pleasure in my own apartment, and it works in a
bare arrangement, but only if you also include that
wonderful riff.
I remember Mellencamp splitting open Madison Square
Garden on December 6, 1985, with a vibrant, electric
version of that one, along with other tracks from
"Scarecrow," still his crowning achievement, in my
opinion. (That was the famous gig at which
Mellencamp generously offered to give everyone
their money back because he felt that a
slightly malfunctioning sound system was
diminishing the sound, when in fact it was
easily one of the greatest rock shows
I'd ever seen.)
Opening at the Greek was Lucinda Williams, playing
songs from her upcoming album "Little Honey," due
in October, and assorted songs from the past decade
or so, as well as a fun encore cover of AC/DC's "It's a
Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)."
Ever since I first heard her perform, in 1988 at
Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey, back when her
major song was "Changed the Locks," which she never
sings anymore, I've always had the urge to cry
whenever I hear her music.
I'm not joking: her stuff just breaks my heart,
and I get so sad when I hear it -- I don't know why
that is, though I do know that it has stopped me from
listening to her as frequently as I listen to, say, Bob
Dylan, whose brilliance she sometimes comes close to.
But remember: even at his most bitter and snarling,
Dylan had a marvelous sense of humor ("I can't help it
if I'm lucky" is worthy of a great stand-up comedian),
the missing element in her work.
I think the AC/DC cover is a really good sign. I'd
give a lot to hear her sing "You Shook Me All Night
Long."
my backstage pass to an AC/DC show in NY in '85.
But I digress. Paul
________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for August 1 - 2, 2008
"Laugh-In" Is Forty, Dick Martin is Dead
(But We'll Always Have Beautiful Downtown Burbank!)
Jokes about Ralph Nader, Fidel Castro, the
Olympics, tensions between Pakistan and India,
the obsolescence of cash -- with a special
appearance by Regis Philbin. Sounds like
a new TV series, right?
Nope. I'm describing the first episodes
of NBC's "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," now over
forty years old but so ahead of its time in many
ways that it still seems progressive.
Or some of it does. Clearly, the mod garb and
slang are hopelessly outdated, more associated
today with Austin Powers than with anything else,
as are most of the topical references and silly
sayings such as "You bet your sweet bippy"
and "sock it to me," which never quite made
it into the lexicon after the 1970s.
But get beyond those superficial elements and
you'll see that "Laugh-In," as much as "Saturday
Night Live," was an exponential leap forward
pop-culturally -- and in prime time, no less,
where "SNL" proper never resided. Even today, a lot
of the stoned humor pioneered by "Laugh-In" is
relegated to the 11:30 hour or beyond,
or to cable.
The main thing, though, is that the series, at
least in its first years, is still very funny.
I recently rented a DVD of disc one of the first
season, which includes two episodes from early 1968,
and laughed and laughed.
Some of the one-liners are almost worthy of
Allen and Perelman.
"My grandfather is a sexagenarian," says one woman.
"That's amazing at his age," quips Dick Martin.
And there are humorous moments from Tim
Conway.
"Hey, man, I don't want my kids hearing all them dirty
words in the movies," says Conway. "They get enough of
that at home."
Elsewhere, Conway plays The Great Nervo, who makes
predictions about events that have already happened.
The two most entertaining regular features were the
opening cocktail party, at which partygoers would
tell a joke that sort of aspired to the level of a
New Yorker magazine cartoon (though many fell far
short of that goal); and "The Rowan & Martin Report"
(aka "Laugh-In Looks at the News"), a forerunner of
SNL's "Weekend Update."
The latter had a future news sub-segment, reporting
headlines from 20 years in the future, 1988 (oh,
how quickly a future date in time becomes a date
from the past in any sort of speculative comedy or
drama). It even joked about Reagan becoming president.
Among the more humorous future news bits: "Item.
White House. 1988. President Stokely Carmichael,
in his office in Hanoi, today once again repeated
that the United States must get out of America."
Some of the sketches were more cutting-edge than
most prime-time fare today. In one segment, Rowan
and Martin covered campus riots, play-by-play
style, as if they were sports events ("the winners
will be invited to meet Berkeley in the national
championship").
At another point, Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop
play government officials writing a press release
about an international incident at sea, gradually
altering the facts so that an accident in which 15
Russians were injured by Americans is changed to
one in which 15 Americans were deliberately hurt
by a Russian submarine.
One great thing about seeing this on DVD is that
you can finally slow down the ultra-quick cuts in
order to read the placards and bumper stickers that
whizzed by way too fast when they were first aired.
For the record, here's what was invisible to viewers
in 1968:
"Lower the Age of Puberty," "Get Our Boys Out of Berkeley"
and "Bullets are Forever."
Other highlights are abundant: a French juggler who
juggles plates but ends up breaking all of them; a
sight gag in which someone flamboyantly waves a sword at
Dan Rowan, who casually pulls out a gun and shoots him
(a similar bit got a lot of laughs many years later in
the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark").
It's puzzling that other networks didn't counter-program
with their own knock-offs, though ABC tried and failed.
Ultimately, the show became passe by 1970 and was fully
eclipsed by the more outre "All in the Family" by 1971.
Its influence is still felt everywhere today from
"SNL" to "The Late Show with David Letterman," and
you can even see a stylistic thru-line from Rowan
to Letterman (though Letterman at this point has
become an original in his own category).
Last May, as everyone knows, Dick Martin died at
age 88, which is 23 years longer than his partner
lived. Their DVDs, obviously, live on, but rent
them with this caveat: get the "Laugh-In"
discs that have complete episodes, not
the best-of clip jobs, and stick to the stuff from
the early years.
* * * *
As soon as I finish reading the poems Coleridge
wrote on opium, the novels Hemingway wrote on booze,
the lyrics Lennon wrote on acid, and the works that
Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac wrote on a variety
of recreational drugs, I'll read Princeton's study
(scientific, I'm sure) describing the underrated University
of Florida as a "party school."
But I digress
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 27, 2008
Last Night's Steely Dan Show
reeling in the you-know-whats
Almost everybody coming out of the Steely Dan
concert last night in Berkeley, Calif., was
smiling wide, as if they had just gotten
laid or were about to. The show was that
satisfying.
A couple hours earlier, from the stage, in the
middle of "Hey 19," Walter Becker even gave some
advice to the romantically inclined in the crowd.
"Sometimes on a summer night, way up in the hills of
Berkeley...after a Steely Dan show...you head home
with your beloved, the object of your affections,
and there's only one thing in mind: showing her
how much, how very much, you love her," said Becker,
who then proceeded to talk about one way to
have fun with your loved one.
"Go to the liquor cabinet," he said, and find
the stuff labeled "'100% guaranteed'...If you
break the seal, you're gonna feel real," he said.
"You understand what I'm saying?"
The crowd roared approval, as the band lit into
a soulful verse celebrating "Cuervo Gold."
From the beginning to the end of this two hour-plus
gig, Steely Dan was fully dedicated to making sure
everybody within earshot -- even the people up in the
hills, where I was -- was aesthetically satisfied
and entertained.
The pleasures were many. There were exotic sounds
from quirky instruments turning up like rare animals
at a zoo. One minute, the tenor sax and the tenor
trombone would be re-combining into new combinations,
then there would be mysterious guitar riffs creating
texture, nuance. Plus, and most important, you
could dance to it all, which a lot of people did.
As the summer night progressed, hits and new material
and obscurities came vividly to life: my favorites of
the night were "New Frontier," "Black Friday," "Peg"
and finale "Do It Again."
And there was Becker's colorful intro of
Donald Fagan: "Lead singer, pianist, singer-songwriter,
composer, author, producer, star of screen, stage
and television, man about town, stern critic of the
contemporary scene, please welcome, if you will,
the original, the originator, the one, the only
one, Mr. Donald Fagan."
After the show, as I walked back home, through my
favorite park in the world, I realized that the show
had caused me, for a time, to hear the sound of
chirping birds and the rest of the world in a brand
new way, which is one of the reasons I was
smiling, too.
But I digress, Paul
__________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 27, 2008
A point missing in the discussion about
the surge in Iraq is that it's way too
early to declare "mission accomplished"
with regard to the lessening of hostilities
there. The surge is only a few months old,
and insurgents might easily re-surge later,
stronger than ever.
Remember: Tet was quashed, too, in early 1968,
but the guerillas came back with a vengeance and
fought on for several more years -- to victory,
in fact. (To be fair, McCain may not know about
all this, as I hear he didn't have access to
Cronkite in those years.)
Lately, McCain is sounding like a guy who drives
your car into a ditch and then wants to be
congratulated for replacing its flat tire, though
the car still remains in the ditch.
He's changing his heart
(you know who you are!):
McCain has flip-flopped
from advocating a "hundred year"
presence in Iraq to supporting a
"time horizon" for withdrawal.
* * *
Here's A New Idea for An Antonioni Exhibit....
In the U.S., the neglect of Michelangelo Antonioni's
work verges on the criminal. Up until
recently, even some of his most popular films were
not available on DVD domestically.
Which is why it's so welcome to see that the
National Gallery in Washington, D.C., is in the
midst of a gourmet Antonioni retrospective, spanning
his entire career and including rarely-seen gems
like "L'eclisse," the last of the trilogy that
began with "L'avventura," and (especially)
"Deserto rosso (Red Desert)," which I am dying to
see because I'm told it experiments with color
(and birds!) brilliantly. (Check out
coverage of the screenings at washingtonpost.com.)
As I wrote in the Daily Digression on July 31, 2007:
"I've always had the feeling that if Michelangelo
Antonioni hadn't been a film maker, he would've
been a post-expressionist painter, because that's
the sensibility he brought to cinema. In fact, he
seemed to see film as an almost purely visual
medium, and the best example of that was the
dazzling end of "Zabriskie Point," which was
virtually one expressionist painting after
another, if you were to still each frame. I was
always waiting for Antonioni to take his aesthetic
to the next level and make a two-hour film that was
purely painterly visuals, with no plot, no story."
Here's an original idea for a museum exhibit
that is long overdue: a photography exhibition of
stills -- blown-up still photographs -- of around
forty moments or scenes in Antonioni movies. I thought
of this idea after recently watching "The
Passenger" and finding that I kept pausing the
film just to savor various visual images that were
as powerful and resonant as many great modernist
paintings. This most painterly of auteurs should
surely have his moving paintings stilled and
displayed by a major museum.
But I digress. Paul
[photo of McCain from thewashingtonnote.com]
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 23 - 24, 2008
A few notes on DVDs I've watched (or re-watched)
lately:
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: After
re-watching it the other day, I was struck by
how Hitchcockian the suspense was (particularly
the sequence in which Josh Brolin sees Javier
Bardem's shadow beneath the door). The
first time I saw it, I was very impressed and
literally on the edge of my seat (to coin a phrase!),
but second and third viewings reveal flaws,
among them: suspense dissipates after the
first hour, despite a nice star turn by Woody
Harrelson; Tommy Lee Jones's opening VO segues
into Brolin's first appearance onscreen, confusing
viewers into thinking the VO was Brolin's
(further, what Jones says about "old-timers" and
generations changing hands doesn't really come
into play later in the film); it's not
believable that the cop in the opening sequence
would separate Bardem from his oxygen tank in
the squad car; etc.
More significantly, the two main characters are
indistinctly conceived. Brolin's character is
initially drawn sort of like Kris Kristofferson's
memorable sunuvabitch in "Lone Star"; but that
persona is soon supplanted by a more typical
Coen Bros. character: the bumbler a la William
H. Macy in "Fargo." And it's an uneasy combination,
likely the result of competing, colliding visions.
Likewise, Bardem's character, truly a singular
creation of American cinema, is nonetheless
indecisively conceived. In the early part of
the film, he's scripted as a serial thrill killer
who kills for killing's sake. But as the
movie progresses, the concept of his character
shifts -- not through evolution -- to that of
a businessman in the underground economy who
is semi-reasonably trying to get back
money stolen from him. There's less duality
here than flawed concept.
Still, a great thriller -- and probably as good
as "Fargo," the Coen brothers's peak to date.
* * *
THERE WILL BE BLOOD: Unlike
"No Country For Old Men," "There WIll Be Blood"
gets better with each viewing. It unfolds much
more naturally and organically, and has the epic
sweep of a best picture Oscar winner, which it
didn't win but should've. And it's probably the
first major film since Kubrick's "2001: A Space
Odyssey" to be wordless in its first fifteen
minutes or so -- but with all meaning perfectly
conveyed. Seeing this right after "No Country"
makes the latter look like a cartoon. Paul
Thomas Anderson is like Coppola and Polanski in
his ability to create a complex plot that
yields new revelations on fifth and sixth
viewings. The brilliance is everywhere:
the baptism by oil, the thunderstorm of gold,
the "milkshake" sequence at the end, the
"Peachtree Dance" moment of truth with
Henry, etc.
The plot is sort of like an entrepreneurially
legitimate version of the entrepreneurially
nefarious sub-plot of "Chinatown," in which
Noah Cross and others are trying to bump people
off their land in order to turn the land into
valuable property. Of course, Plainview is more
honest, even if he tries to give them "quail
prices" at first. (And good to see Eli Sunday
"repenting" before his death.)
* * *
JESUS CAMP: Fascinating docu
about the thoroughly nauseating indoctrination
of kids into fundamentalist religion. The sort
of manipulation of impressionable children
depicted here is not just disgusting; it's
child abuse.
It also proves beyond any doubt that most people
in the modern era don't come to religion
naturally but through warped, intense brainwashing
at an extremely tender age. Left to their own
devices, these kids might have gravitated naturally
toward the wisdom of Aristotle, Nietzsche, Sartre,
Yeats, Bob Dylan, etc. -- all better writers
than the anonymous folks who wrote and revised
and (badly) translated the Bible.
* * *
A MIGHTY HEART: I expected
an earnest, well-meaning work but was
pleasantly surprised at how consistently gripping
it was, from beginning to end -- a very satisfying,
moving movie that refuses to be exploitative about
the tragic death of journalist Daniel Pearl. And
Angelina Jolie disappears into Mariane Pearl
the way a great actress should. You know, with
all the tabloid headlines about her these days,
we tend to forget that she's a first-rank actor
(and you can almost believe she might be a
presidential contender in 2020).
* * *
GANGS OF NEW YORK: Funny thing
is, "Gangs" could pass for futuristic. As an
evocation of Boss Tweed's Tammany New York, it's
magical, convincing. But the style of its characters
is so inventive and unfamiliar that it's almost a
depiction of a future era of thuggery, the way
Stanley Kubrick/Anthony Burgess created ultra-modern
droogs, who dressed flamboyantly and spoke in
pseudo-Shakespearian slang (a characterization
that, by the way, was reportedly based on
real-life 20th century street criminals in
St. Petersburg who wore Edwardian garb and
had their own Russian dialect).
At times, it's like walking through pre-Civil War
New York, the way it must've really been. You
also see that, before the Civil War, parts of
America still had a tin-whistle Colonial
resemblance, while the decades after the Civil War
were more akin to the modern era (in fact, that's
when the grandparents of most baby boomers
were born).
Anyway, I digress.
A masterful film, even if it has neither the epic
perfection of "The Godfather, Part 2" nor the concision
of "Goodfellas." After seeing it a second time, I had
opposite feelings simultaneously: it should've
been edited down to something more succinct and it
should've been expanded by another hour.
* * *
GRIZZLY MAN: It's one of
the best documentaries of the decade -- and
not just because it features footage of
a guy hours and days before he was eaten by a
brown grizzly bear in Alaska, though that's one
of its draws.
It's also a penetrating portrait of someone
with a death wish, a clinically depressed alcoholic
who replaced booze with the natural adrenaline
released by hanging out with deadly animals. The
doomed subject, Timothy Treadwell, revered and
anthropomorphized and sentimentalized bears, a fatal
misjudgment. But before that judgment becomes fatal,
we experience his obsessive love of wildlife
and Alaska, the very picture of untrammeled
paradise, though it's telling to see that even in
these remote reaches of the far north, where there's
almost no human population, he's still as full
of anger and frustration as someone living in a
crowded slum (witness his tirade around 80
minutes in).
Ultimately, the foxes almost upstage the bears
in this film; you'll never think of a fox the same
way after seeing how much they look like a mere whim
(Richard Thompson's instrumental during
the fox chase sequence is immensely enjoyable).
In the end, Treadwell filmed his own death, but with
the lens cap on -- an apt metaphor for someone shutting
his eyes to the danger nearby.
* * *
C.S.A.: CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA:
Perhaps the most unimaginative mock-documentary ever
made. And I'm not saying that because I'm privately
offended by something in it, because I'm not offended by
it. I'm merely astounded by the degree to which the film
makers did not smartly (or even interestingly) (or even
competently) extrapolate from its premise to the future.
For the dim only.
* * *
DOCTOR ZHIVAGO: Finally saw the
double-DVD edition that was released a couple
years ago, though I must admit I have nothing
major to add to critical thought about this
flick right now. It has moments of indelible
beauty and other moments...not so indelible.
To my knowledge, no one has brought up the
fact that its theme song, "Somewhere My Love
(Lara's Theme From 'Doctor Zhivago')," is
overplayed to the point of distraction -- something
like 27 times. And while the theme is a classic
of its kind, the song doesn't seem to have an
ethnic Russian flavor the way, say, the music of
"Zorba the Greek" is distinctly Greek
and the music of "The Godfather" is Italian.
"Somewhere My Love" could as well be the theme
of a British period drama.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 21, 2008
The Next Coen Brothers Picture
The Fall movie season kicks off after Labor Day with the
Coen Brothers's comic take on paranoid movies, "Burn After
Reading," starring That "Oceans" Team Clooney and Pitt.
The next Coen Brothers movie, "Burn After Reading,"
is a C.I.A.-themed comedy starring Brad Pitt, George
Clooney and John Malkovich.
I've not yet seen the film, due in theaters after
Labor Day, a traditionally fallow period for
releases, but it looks to be a send-up of the
sorts of paranoid movies that Clooney has starred
in in recent years.
After "Michael Clayton" and "Syriana," I thought
Clooney's next project might be the feature film
version of "The Man From UNCLE," an idea I'm sure
is kicking around Burbank these days, or will be
once someone reads this.
Frankly, I think Clooney works better in movies
less byzantine than "Michael Clayton" and
"Syriana," Paranoid Movies of the kind I poked
fun at in a feature for the San Francisco Chronicle
newspaper in '97 that included a usable game board
for The Paranoid Movie Game, which I'm re-printing
here, for your enjoyment!
Have hours of fun with The Paranoid Movie Game! (I conceived and designed and wrote the Paranoid Movie Game for the San Francisco Chronicle in '97 (the only elements not authored by me are the drawings within the boxes).]
But I digress. Paul
[photo of Clooney and Pitt: photographer unknown.]
__________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 20, 2008
Last Night's Feist Show
Feist played Berkeley, Calif., last night
and was alluring, enchanting, impossibly
seductive. Hard to believe from
the fervent reaction of the mostly twentysomething
crowd that she wasn't always a Big Indie Star, but
as recently as a couple years ago, she wasn't.
"1234," of course, changed all that, and though
everyone has heard it a few million times,
the song is still astonishingly fresh and carefree
and irresistible -- perfect folk-pop magic, like the
memory of hiking through a forest as a child. Played
here at mid-set, it seemed to cast a spell on fans,
even the ones listening from the hills above
the theater, where I heard the show.
In a 90-minute set that featured much of her latest
album, "The Reminder," released around 15 months ago,
Feist was both bold and fragile, sexy and innocent,
guileless and knowing, spontaneous, loquacious, even
chatty, talking about everything from apartment living
to opening for Rilo Kiley. Highlights included
"Mushaboom" ("We'll collect the moments, one by one/
I guess that's how the future's done"), set closer
"Sea Lion Woman" and the second encore (don't know
the title of that one).
Opening act The Golden Dogs, a quasi-power pop
indie band from Toronto, is well worth checking out.
Very impressive set. I wish I knew the title of the
second song they played because it was truly
fabulous. Sort of a combination of the Velvets
and the Talking Heads and McCartney circa "Ram"
(and in fact they performed a wonderful cover
of McCartney's "1985"). I wouldn't be surprised
if they broke through in a big way.
The Golden Dogs, terrific band.
But I digress. Paul
[photo of Feist from buzzworthy.com; pic of Golden Dogs from True North website.]
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 18, 2008
OK, this is my last bit about that cover of
The New Yorker magazine. I just received my
subscription copy of the mag in the mail
(can't they put those postage address stickers
on the back, over the Saturn ad, so the covers
aren't defaced?).
Anyway, when you see the real cover, Barack looks
more like a U.S. Navy sailor during Fleet Week
than a practicing Muslim. And that empty chair?
They could've put Jeremiah Wright in that.
The other side of The New Yorker cover is,
literally, this advertisement (below) for the
Saturn Outlook luxury SUV, which sells for around
$30,000. Obviously, the front cover wasn't
so radical that it caused rich, conservative
back-cover advertisers to drop their ads.
"We hawk yer satire at the fronta da shop,
we hawk yer gas guzzler at da back."
But I digress. Paul
_______________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 17, 2008
No Riots Yet Over The New Yorker Cover
As The New Yorker's David Remnick noted last
night on "Charlie Rose," the best commentary about
his magazine's controversial Obama cover came
from Jon Stewart, who said the following:
"You know what [Obama's] response should've been? It's
very easy here, let me put the statement out for you:
'Barack Obama is in no way upset about the cartoon that
depicts him as a Muslim extremist. Because you know
who gets upset about cartoons? Muslim extremists! Of
which Barack Obama is not. It's just a fucking
cartoon.'"
And Remnick rightly wondered whether the cover's
detractors also took other satire, like "A Modest
Proposal," literally (which is something I also
wondered in my July 14th Digression, below).
Recently I read all TNY's cartoons from the
1920s to today, and one thing that struck me was
the courage it showed in the late 1930s and
early 1940s in skewering Nazism. Today, I see
that sort of welcome audacity in the famous
Jyllands-Posten cartoon series of 2005, which
is wearing very well with time.
The Obama cover: not quite as ballsy as this.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- Remnick is also right when he expresses
distaste for editors and others who say, "I get it
but let's not publish this because THEY may not get it."
I can attest that that sort of attitude
does exist among certain people in publishing; my
last editor, a senior editor, at the San Francisco
Chronicle (let's call him "David," though that may or may
not be his real name) once asked me to delete the word
"ubiquitous" from a news story because he thought readers
might not understand such a "big" word. People are smarter
than you think, I told him -- or at least they're smarter
than "David," who also thought the phrase
"quid pro quo" meant cause and effect. Look, I prefer
simple, direct language in news stories, but sometimes
a word just fits, as ubiquitous, a pretty common word,
did in this case. (By the way, how did "David" manage
to flourish at the newspaper, where he's still employed?
The same way Donald Rumsfeld flourished at Defense (and
convinced otherwise bright people to back the Iraq war
in '03): by lying, which I'm sure my former editor
will be doing once he reads this.)
__________________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 16, 2008
Once again, the Daily Digression leads the pack!
In my July 14, 2008, column (below), I noted the
"irony-deficiency" of those critical of the
controversial cover of The New Yorker magazine.
On July 15th, in the Los Angeles Times, James
Rainey also wrote about such an "irony-deficiency."
(July 14th, of course, came before July 15th --
and his story was a riff on breaking news, not a
piece that was six months in the making.)
Rainey probably didn't even see my blog before
he wrote his thing, but there is a problem out there
with big media companies ripping off the ideas and
language of bloggers who have low readership like
myself. The Daily Digression, and other blogs, are
becoming a sort of backwater for good ideas that
journalists with tight deadlines at big newspapers
can steal with near-impunity.
If you guys are going to pilfer my ideas, and I'm
not implying Rainey did (neither of us invented
the phrase, after all), take a few seconds to say
or write: "As freelance writer Paul Iorio put it."
P.S. -- And if the Rainey story is actually bait --
a deliberate nicking of my material in order to
provoke a response for which they have a readymade
retort (e.g., "that's typical Paul") -- my response is:
I don't care if it's bait or not. If you steal my
material, I'm going to note it publicly and to your
editors. And if it's merely an innocent matter of
my idea preceding yours, I'm going to make sure people
know who came first.
* * * *
There should be no compassionate release for
Susan Atkins. Let her die in prison -- that's
exactly what she deserves.
There are good, honest poor people out there
who have never committed an awful crime, who die
abusive, unspeakably cruel deaths because
they don't have money for the basics. Where is
the compassion for them?
Rather than focus time and energy on a homicidal
sadist like Atkins, let's instead focus our
generosity on poor people who are dying and in pain
because they can't afford medication, who are being
evicted by callous landlords who couldn't care less
that their tenant is dying, who are the targets of
muggers because they are weak from chemo, who are dying
in homeless shelters or on the street without even a
proper bed, etc. By contrast, Atkins has it made
in the shade.
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
extra! for July 14, 2008
The New Yorker Cover, and Sharpton's Irony-Deficiency
I actually talked once, one on one, with Al Sharpton,
in a telephone interview in late 1985, when I was a
writer/reporter for music trade magazine Cash Box
in New York. He was virtually unknown then and
organizing some sort of anti-drug benefit concert,
and I thought it would be a newsworthy item for my
weekly column, East Coastings.
It wasn't an in-depth Q&A, just a casual quickie
with some guy who was putting together a show for what
seemed like a good cause.
But around ten minutes into the conversation, I noticed
there was something really ugly about this guy Sharpton.
As gracious and nice as I was being to him, he simply
wouldn't let me be gracious and nice, and he kept raising
his voice as if he were trying to pick a fight.
And I would say something like, well, good luck with
the concert and thanks for the interview, and he would
shout for no reason at all as if he wanted an argument.
Strange, unpleasant fellow, I thought at the time.
It was only years later that I was told that Sharpton
was not the sort of activist he was pretending to be,
and that he was actually working as an undercover agent
for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (that sort of thing
is hard to confirm, but I've heard it from multiple reliable
sources). For the '85 conversation, he was directed to me
by a colleague who was, evidently, trying to cause problems
for me in some way or deflect attention away from himself
for some reason.
Let me further digress here for a moment to provide
full context. A few years later, as an independent
investigative reporter, working at first for the Village
Voice on spec, and then for a time for CBS's "60 Minutes,"
I did uncover disturbing information -- downright
nauseating information -- that linked my magazine Cash
Box with the worst sort of industry corruption. But keep
in mind, I was the one who uncovered and exposed this
nefarious activity. And, I should note, there were a lot
of music-news reporters at the time who didn't lift a finger
to voice support for (much less help) my investigation, even
though they knew full well what I had uncovered, and even
after I was nearly murdered in front of a shoe store on
West 72nd Street in Manhattan in a still-unexplained
assault during the week I went to "60 Minutes"
(October 13, 1990). [Advice for aspiring freelancers:
don't get physically injured while freelancing,
because you won't be able to afford to fix your
injury. You think the government doesn't care
about your health care?! Corporate America
cares even less.)
I say all this to show the landscape in which Sharpton, the
FBI agent, phoned me, one of the honest guys at Cash Box.
(For the record, most of the editorial people at the
magazine had a lot of integrity; certainly my
writer/reporter colleagues in New York and Los Angeles
were honest pros; but it was on the business side, mostly
in the Nashville bureau, where there was extremely corrupt
activity.)
Anyway, in the subsequent years Sharpton eventually
made a name for himself as an activist, though few of
his supporters seemed to know his apparent history
with the FBI -- and even fewer know about his past
today, it seems.
When the Tawana Brawley scandal broke in 1989, it
didn't surprise me at all to see Al, the blowhard
who I had interviewed years before, at the forefront,
this time shouting lies as loud as he could in front of
every camera he could find. I had already experienced
his pick-a-fight attitude and deception, and all of
that was on grand display during the Brawley affair,
when Sharpton lied, lied and lied again for
personal gain. And I have yet to hear him apologize for
his role in the Brawley hoax, and until I do, I will
never consider taking him seriously or believing a word he
says.
If I had lied the way he lied about Brawley, I would
have never worked another day in any field. So tell me
why he's still on the public stage? It's not like
the man has changed; he has gone from championing
Brawley in '89 to defending liar Crystal Mangum in
'06.
But there are other reasons why Sharpton is abhorrent,
e.g., his religious fundamentalism, which puts him in bed
with Pat Robertson, and not just jokingly, either. In the
years since Brawley, he has become indistinguishable
from a right-winger with regard to issues of
censorship and First Amendment rights.
The latest example is typical. There was Al, earlier today,
yelling like people couldn't hear him, trying to gain
advantage by criticizing the witty, controversial cover
of The New Yorker magazine that satirizes perceptions
about Barack Obama. Seeing him on various news programs
today, it was clear Sharpton really was out of his depth,
without the brainpower to take on the sort of high satire that
he didn't understand. I mean, the guy is such a religious
literalist that you wonder whether he even knows what
irony is.
But there he was tonight on some nightly news show.
"Michelle in an Afro wig, [Obama] in Muslim garb: it
plays on all the ridiculous notions that we
hope we're getting out of American politics," Sharpton
told one television reporter.
Clearly, Sharpton is irony-deficient. Does he also
not understand Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and
other serious satiric works of literature? Or pop
cultural touchstones like Elton John's "Texas
Love Song"? Does he take those works literally, too?
Until Sharpton decides to take some time out for a college
level course on satire, he really shouldn't be weighing in on
subjects he knows absolutely nothing about.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 14, 2008
Here are the two latest installments of my
comic strip series "The Continuing Adventures
of bin Laden, the Jihadist Pooch." (Another
dozen episodes are
at www.ioriocartoons2.blogspot.com.)
[Note: I know, I know -- every dog is unique and
has his or her own personality. Some dogs are
good-hearted, loving and even heroic, and they
don't deserve to be lumped in with a sick mammal
like bin Laden. So, to dog-lovers everywhere: it's
not my intention to de-individualize (de-humanize?)
dogs with my cartoon series.]
* * * *
QUICK NOTES: Bravo to The New Yorker for
its ballsy cover of Barack and his wife,
making satirically explicit the implicit,
unspoken, irrational fears of the American
ring-wing...the Washington Post's Shailagh Murray
is a smart addition to PBS's "Washington
Week"....Very cool of Little Steven to celebrate
Bastille Day on last night's "Underground Garage,"
must-hear radio...For the record, The Daily Digression
was the first media outlet to speculate about an appearance
by Ted Kennedy at Invesco Field in August (see Daily
Digression, July 9, 2008, below); a couple days
later, on July 11, on "The NewsHour," the
always-interesting Mark Shields talked about his
own fantasy of a Ted Kennedy appearance in Denver...New
Newsweek poll showing Obama and McCain within a few
points of each other is probably far closer to the mark
than the previous ones showing a double-digit Obama
lead; the presidential race is shaping up to be yet
another near-50:50 contest that will be fought and won
in places like Gettysburg, not in the mountains of
Montana. And to those who think race is not a
significant factor in the election, I say: race
would be a substantial element even if the
vice-presidential candidate -- and not the
presidential contender -- was African-American....OK,
someone pointed out to me that a certain woman
has a wedding ring on her left hand. True, but there's
always hope, however distant, that her right hand
is available! (Just joking.) (I think.) (HD TV
is quite revealing!)
I heard the Feelies reunion shows in NY and NJ were great. So when do we get to hear them in northern California? (Also, anyone know where I can buy a new copy of "The Good Earth"? As you can see (above), my vinyl version is worn out!)
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 11, 2008
Second Takes On Recent Concerts I've Heard
Listening to bootleg recordings of recent shows
I've heard, here are a few thoughts:
1) Mark Knopfler's "Cannibals" is a lot of fun
in concert, worth the price of admission in itself.
2) "Hot Corner" is the unexpected stand-out of the
recent B52s show in Berkeley, much better than
"Juliet of the Spirits," the 2nd single from the
band's new album.
3) Of all the songs Alison Krauss and Robert
Plant performed at their recent gig, "Please Read
the Letter" is the one I keep going back to.
4) If I rave any more about Jesca Hoop's set,
people might think I have a thing for her, so
I'll shut up.
5) The live verson of Death Cab's "I Will Possess
Your Heart" is addictive.
6) "Mr. Richards" is the best of the new
songs R.E.M. performed at its recent concerts
in Berkeley, though almost all the "Accelerate"
material is first-rate.
* * * *
Nothingness + Time = Matter
Thanks to those who wrote to me about my "A does
not equal A" philosophical argument (The Daily
Digression, July 1, 2008, below). As I wrote,
my premise, if taken to its conclusion, debunks
certain fundamental ideas common to most
religions.
In my view, religious people of almost all
faiths focus too much on the mythological
moment of Creation -- and scientists focus too
much on the Big Bang, the moment when the
universe supposedly began.
But that's not how to look at it. The most likely
explanation of "Creation" is this, in my view:
in the beginning, there was no beginning, because there
was complete nothingness.
And nothingness, of course, did not require a creator
or a moment of creation.
Nothingness also has no beginning and no ending.
But nothingness plus time -- an uncountable amount of
time, trillions and trillions of millennia -- equals
matter, because (as I've noted before) time
is transformative. So nothingness over a vast
expanse of time will inevitably produce some
sort of small irregularity -- a wisp of gas, for
instance -- that, in further time, will lead to
another bit of matter and then another, setting
in motion the unfolding of the universe we
have today.
The element that most thinkers leave out of the
equation when discussing Creation is time, which
is really another form of nothingness and merely
our own contrivance, a way that we organize successive
instances of nothingness (and being) and stack them
atop one another to create order, something.
Paradox, obviously, did not need a creator, either.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 9, 2008
The Unspoken Debate About Obama's Electability
An Imaginary Dialectic
ANTI-OBAMA: Let me get this straight: the Dems
are nominating a guy who can't catch a cab in parts
of New York City, yet can win old south
bastions like Georgia and Virginia, where the
Confederate flag still flies. That's realistic?
PRO-OBAMA: You pundits are all the same. You said he
couldn't possibly win that U.S. Senate seat in '04, and
he won. You said he couldn't possibly win
the Democratic nomination for president, and he has won it.
And now you're saying he can't possibly win the presidency.
Some pundits ought to consider another line of work.
ANTI-OBAMA: But winning primaries is one thing; winning
the general is another altogether. George Wallace won
primaries and was probably on his way to the nomination in '72,
thanks to intense factional support that would not have
translated into a presidential win. I'd love to see how
Obama plans to win, say, Wisconsin, which Kerry
barely took.
PRO-OBAMA: Have you seen the major polls lately? Obama is
way ahead, sometimes by double digits, in all the major
swing states, including Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Michigan -- even Colorado.
ANTI-OBAMA: Yeah, and he was leading by double digits in
the polls in New Hampshire before he lost the New Hampshire
primary by double digits. So what does that tell you about
the reliability of polls about Obama?
PRO-OBAMA: But the polls were completely accurate in most
subsequent primary states. And voters have consistently said
they are more concerned about McCain's age than Obama's race.
ANTI-OBAMA: How stupid do you have to be to think a racist
is going to admit to a pollster, a complete stranger, on
the record, that he is a racist and wouldn't vote for
a black candidate?
PRO-OBAMA: Then how do you explain the crowds at Obama
rallies? How do you explain 70,000 people at a rally in
Oregon, a state where there are something like 7 black
people, I think. And he's drawing crowds in traditionally
red states. He's even campaiging in Montana. When was
the last time the interior west was seriously in play for
the Democrats?
ANTI-OBAMA: Reminds me of the student who doesn't want
to do the hard work of studying for a calculus exam and
instead spends all night doing something even more
difficult -- but by volition -- like investigating
the 19th century origins of mass transit in his hometown.
It's fun for him to go to Montana. And it's
a lot more scenic than campaigning in old-fashioned machine
areas of Pennsylvania where some white voters will
simply not vote for a black person. Period.
PRO-OBAMA: Every credible poll has him winning
Pennsylvania by a comfortable margin.
ANTI-OBAMA: Tell me exactly when all those bitter
Pennsylvanians suddenly fell into Barack's column?
Wasn't it just weeks ago that he couldn't win Pennsylvania
from Hillary no matter how much money he threw at it?
PRO-OBAMA: The money advantage he had over Hillary was
small compared to the money edge he has over McCain.
ANTI-OBAMA: Funny thing, if Obama had less money, he'd
probably do more. He'd be forced into a more meat and
potatoes strategy, parking in, say, Monroe County, Pa.,
or Grant County, Wisc. -- counties that were
virtually 50:50 in '04.
PRO-OBAMA: He can afford to lose Monroe County because
he'll make up for it by racking up larger totals in
Philadelphia than Kerry did. What you're
not seeing is that we're dealing with a different
electoral map this time. You're driving through
Yugoslavia with a 1988 road map.
ANTI-OBAMA: Things have changed since '88, but not
so much since 2004. I could drive through Yugoslavia
with a 2004 road map.
PRO-OBAMA: In retrospect, you'll see how historically
inevitable Obama's election was all along. McCain is an
antique -- what's the famous phrase in "The Godfather"?
"Pensa all'antica." He thinks in old ways. He's Crocker
Jarmon, to mix movie comparisons. Even looks a
bit like him. Obama's McKay.
ANTI-OBAMA: Obama may be historically inevitable -- but in
2020, not this year.
PRO-OBAMA: You'll be convinced when you see his acceptance
speech at Invesco Field this August. Smart idea. Barack
alfresco. The Dems can literally clear the air. The opposite
of the tear gas of '68. Barack and Hillary can elope in the
Rockies. Bill can join the "fairy tale" that has now become
reality. And maybe the party can even persuade Ted Kennedy to
make a swan song appearance for a closing night curtain call
with, among others, Jimmy Carter, for that public handshake
that didn't happen 28 years ago -- showing that we may
have our family squabbles, but in a crisis or a general
election, we come together.
ANTI-OBAMA: That's the movie version. The reality is that
lots of Hillary backers are going to vote for McCain, no
matter who the running mate is. As the cliche goes, people
don't vote the bottom of the ticket. He could choose even
Al Gore and it wouldn't have an appreciable effect. In
the end, McCain will win at least 300 electoral votes.
PRO-OBAMA: In the end, Barack will win with around 300
electoral votes.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for July 1, 2008
Here's the latest installment of my comic strip
series "The Continuing Adventures of bin Laden,
the Jihadist Pooch!" Click it to enlarge it!
(Another dozen episodes are
at www.ioriocartoons2.blogspot.com.)
[By the way, those ubiquitous "Unlikely Alliance"
ads featuring Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson were
created months after my own Daily Digression
column of December 18, 2007, about what I
called "The Robertson/Sharpton Religious
Conservative Axis" (archived below).]
* * *
Bee Ballet
While listening to the B52s concert in Berkeley
on Sunday night, and watching people in the audience
dance inventively, I wrote in my notebook: "The B52s
are really choreographers, or choreographers in
reverse, in that their music strongly suggests,
even compels, certain dance moves by listeners."
Yesterday morning, I got an email from the
brilliant conceptual artist Jonathon Keats that
shows he had been thinking independently along
that line -- about external stimuli suggesting
choreography -- for longer than I have. Except he's
now taking the idea to a whole different level.
The premise of his latest conceptual art
work -- and I hope I'm getting this half right -- is
that plants and flowers will suggest choreography for
dancing bees. Keats has created what he
calls a "bee ballet" -- commissioned by the Yerba
Buena Center of the Arts in San Francisco -- made
possible by the planting of "hundreds of flowering
cosmos plants" in various neighborhoods in San Francisco
with the intention of having bees dance and buzz
around them in unpredictable patterns and ways.
With consultation from a Smithsonian zoologist, Keats
is creating choreography for bees by planting plants
and flowers that strongly suggest a pattern of motion
for the bees. But the audience will have to
imagine the dances created by the bees -- extrapolating,
of course, from the plant stimuli they're encountering.
Keats is sort of a 21st century combination of
Wittgenstein and Warhol, specializing in these
sorts of "thought experiments," as he calls them,
that dwell at the intersection of art, philosophy and
humor. (For example, he once sold his thoughts to
museum patrons and has literally copyrighted his
own mind.)
And he once mounted a petition drive in Berkeley to
create a binding city law, a Law of Identity, that
states A=A.
Yeah, I know that last one was meant as a bit of
absurdist humor, but the more you think about the
logic of it, the more A=A becomes less self-evident.
For example, the lamp-in-your-bedroom equals
the-lamp-in-your-bedroom. True or false? At first,
you say that that's obviously true. But then
you think about it and realize it's not so obvious at
all. Because the first iteration of the
"lamp in your bedroom" (A) happened a second or two
before your reiteration of "the lamp in your bedroom" (A),
so the second "A" is a different "A" because it
is conjured at a different point in time than
the first A.
Another example: if I were to say, "Paul Iorio equals
Paul Iorio," that's not really true. Because in
stating the equivalency, you're positing Paul Iorio at
two separate moments in time. And as Heraclitis once
said, "You can never step in the same river twice." Time
is transformative. Therefore, A does not equal A.
If you say "A" at 8pm and then "A" again at 8pm and
five seconds, the second "A" is not an identical
equivalent but a subsidiary reiteration of the
original A; you're saying the second A with the
idea that it is a copy, not the original.
(The implications of this demolish the idea of a
fixed soul, if you carry the logic forward, which
I won't do here because I don't have time.)
I could go on. (Of course, the preceding four paragraphs
about A=A are my own thoughts, not the thoughts of
Keats or anyone else.) But let me end with a photo I took of
Keats OuijaVote balloting system, which was on display
last winter at the Berkeley Art Museum.
For specifics about Keats's bee ballet, go to
http://www.ybca.org/tickets/production/view.aspx?id=6878 .
Keats' OuijuaVote balloting system.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 30, 2008
Last Night's B52s Show, Etc.
The first time I heard the B52's in concert was
in the summer of 1979, just as its first album was
being released. The quintet was playing Wollman
Rink in New York's Central Park and, if I'm not mistaken,
was opening for the Talking Heads.
I remember everybody in the audience seemed to
have a copy of New York Rocker, one of the great
music newspapers of the era, and a lot of people
were completely unfamiliar with the B52s, despite
the fact that local radio station WPIX (what
a fun and smart station that was back then;
remember the PIX Penthouse Party?) was playing
tracks from the debut.
From my perch in the rocks at the edge of
Wollman (where one could see and hear the whole
show perfectly), I was knocked out and thinking
I'd never heard anything like them before. The big
song of the night seemed to be "52 Girls," and
some people in the audience thought the name of
the band was 52 Girls, and there was one guy who
couldn't see the stage who was wondering whether there
were 52 girls in the band. Such was the mystery
and mythology surrounding the arrival of these wacky
space-age Athenians.
By this summer, punk had long since morphed
into various New Wave mutations, and the Ramones
had sort of gone Hollywood. (Their own Wollman Rink
show of '79 sparked open arguments among fans
leaving the gig; some loved it (as I did) and
some didn't; I remember "Don't Come Close," which
they didn't really play much after '79, sounded so
thrilling and buoyant that day.)
But getting back to he B52s. As I left the gig,
the main things I remember are that "52 Girls" was
the dominant song and the late, great Ricky Wilson was
the bandmember people were taking about most.
Fast forward 29 years later. Berkeley, Calif. The Greek
Theater. Last night. The B52s have returned after a
16-year absence with a new album, "Funplex," only their
third post-Ricky Wilson album since his extremely
untimely death in '85. The last time the B52s had an
album out, Bush was president, there was a bad recession
and Iraq was the center of foreign policy debate. In
other words, nothing has changed.
"Funplex" is a surprisingly vital album, and the
50-minute set the band played last night, as part
of Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" extravaganza
(I covered the 2007 edition of that tour in this
space), was very danceable and very enjoyable. Set
included a half dozen new tunes ("Funplex" and
"Hot Corner" were the best of those), classics
like "Rock Lobster" and "Roam," and lots of humorous
stage banter (including a dis of Larry Craig). Great
to hear them in such fine form.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 29, 2008
Massive Indie Star
It takes around 9 seconds to fall in love with
Jesca Hoop's music
Please let me rave embarrassingly about Jesca Hoop,
who opened for Mark Knopfler last night at the Greek
Theater in Berkeley. Her stuff is absolutely,
astonishingly, I'm-running-out-of-superlatives to
describe how brilliant a singer-songwriter she is.
Hadn't heard her name before last night, but I fell
in love with her music approximately 9 seconds into
her opening song.
Hoop understands that a three-minute song is its
own free universe, with as many time zones as you want
it to have, with melodies within melodies, with any
unpredictability you can get away with, using very
little sound to get a lot of effect.
In her five song set, she fell into melodies like water
into crevices, or a river into tributaries, and each
song -- "Summertime," "Money," finale "Seed of
Wonder," from her debut album "Kismet" -- topped the
previous one.
Amazing. I bet she'll she be as big as Feist within
a few years.
* * *
(and while I'm in a raving mood!)
Knopfler: Better Than Ever Live
30 years after his debut, he continues to astonish
Last night, Mark Knopfler played the fifth
date of his U.S. tour in support of his latest
solo album, "Kill to Get Crimson," a further
resurgence in a career that keeps flying higher
almost each time out.
Among the peaks of the show: "True Love Will
Never Fade," the first single from the new one,
which had the power of an "Oh Mercy"-era Dylan
ballad; "Cannibals," which felt like an open
air celebration in New Orleans; "What It Is," which
(to me) evokes a vintage western flick (especially
when you hear it in the hilly woods above the theater,
where I heard both Knopfler and Hoop); encore
"So Far Away," always a sure shot; and the most
riveting "Sultans of Swing" I've ever heard him
play in concert.
In the 30 years since "Sultans" and the first
Dire Straits album were released (30 years ago this
October), Knopfler has successfully
re-invented himself so often that he could
conceivably play a set with no Straits material and
still satisfy fans, who love getting lost
in his guitar playing much as people used to
hang on every note of Jerry Garcia's jams. As
marvelous as his singing is, perhaps he should toy
with the idea of performing a series of completely
instrumental concerts; I thought of this while
listening to the inspired jam at the end of
"Marbletown," when Knopfler riffed with his
pianist like great conversation or two rapid streams
merging. This is a tour worth catching.
But I digress. Paul
[photo of Hoop from Minnesota Public Radio; pic of Knopfler from wordpress.com.]
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 28, 2008
Last Night's Robert Plant/Alison Krauss Concert
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss played such a
terrific show last night at the Greek Theater
in Berkeley that one hopes they turn their concerts
into a live album/DVD and release "The Battle
of Evermore" as their first single, because
"Evermore," at least last night, was as awesome
as anything I've heard live in years, with Plant's
singing recalling his 4th album prime, and Krauss
trading and weaving vocals with Plant like a
great tapestry.
It was the undisputed highlight of this concert,
and even in the hills above the theater, where
I heard the show, fans were entranced, charged.
But this was no Zeppelin or Plant solo gig, not
by a long shot. In fact, it was as much a Krauss
concert as anything else, and was sooo T Bone in
sensibility, and was actually a true and seamless
fusion of disparate styles, as well as an ironic
reclamation by a British rocker of his American
roots. (Originality, of course, is often the
inadvertent product of failed imitation; on
the way to following in the footsteps of
various blues legends, Zep became something
else altogether: a bona fide original in
its own right.)
Highlights were everywhere. T Bone did a marvelous
"Primitives," with the memorable line: "The
frightening thing is not dying/the frightening thing
is not living."
Krauss hit high notes with Gene Clark's "Through the
Morning, Through the Night," from Krauss/Plant's
"Raising Sand" album, and with the
haunting, siren-like "Trampled Rose." (Though
let me take this opportunity to say there are
way, way too many songs in popular music
about roses, an overrated, predictable flower.
And there aren't enough tunes about, say,
the Venus Fly-Trap or Jimson Weed,
which would set an ominous Tone for a song,
dontcha think?)
But I digress.
There was also a fresh reimagining of "Black Dog"
on banjo. (Another way to have re-arranged that
one would have been to play it briskly
on acoustic guitar, scatting the main Page guitar
riff; try it -- it's fun.)
A couple missed opportunities: "Celebration
Day" could have been transposed for banjo to fine
effect (imagine that intro live!), and
"Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" could have leveled the place
in this context.
On the way home, I couldn't help but think of what
I'd written in this space before: that T Bone
should produce a musical version of "Robert Altman's
'Nashville'" for Broadway or Off-Broadway. The
main parts of "Nashville" are easily transferable
to the stage, and its music and story are fully
ready for rediscovery by a new generation.
For now, if I were Krauss and Plant, I'd provide
radio and MTV with their live "Battle of Evermore"
so everyone can hear it. Then again, it's 2008 -- an era
when everyone's a distributor! -- and that means it's
already all over YouTube. Check it out there.
But I digress. Paul
________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 27, 2008
One original photo I left out of the June 6th column
is a picture I took of Jim Campbell's "custom electronic
installation," part of his "Triptych" (2000), on display
at the Berkeley Art Museum. It's a glowing, space-age
looking thing on the wall -- and looks even more so
when you photograph it.
Part of Jim Campbell's "Triptych" (photo by Paul Iorio].
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 24, 2008
Here's the latest episode of my cartoon series "The
Continuing Adventures of Bin Laden, the Jihadist
Pooch!" (This particular frame was inspired by Jim
Borgman's Carlin-inspired cartoon of last week.)
My other cartoons in this series are at:
http://ioriocartoons2.blogspot.com.
* * * *
The other day, I came up with an idea for
a political bumper sticker, and here it is:
[Note: The Daily Digression tries to provide even-handed analysis and reporting about politics and pop culture (and beyond!) and does not formally endorse political candidates. If I come up with an interesting bumper sticker idea about McCain, I'll be publishing that one, too.]
* * * *
Strange story. French president Sarkozy heard a
gunshot on an airport tarmac today.
Rumor has it he immediately surrendered and offered
to set up a coalition government in Vichy.
* * * *
If you don't live in northern California, you
probably don't fully appreciate the current
atmospheric situation out here, which is
downright weird. Over the last several days there
have been what they call "dry lightning"
strikes -- hundreds of 'em -- that have
sparked hundreds of brush and wild fires in the Bay
Area and beyond. No one fire is especially
dominant, but taken together, they have created very,
very unusual air-quality conditions. What I mean
is, when you step ouside in the SF Bay Area, you can
actually smell smoke, as if a fire were nearby. In fact,
in Berkeley, where I live and where there are no fires,
I can smell smoke in the hallway of my apartment house
from faraway infernos. This is a first for me and a lot
of people.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 23, 2008
A mid-summer's day obscenity bust: Carlin's mugshot for Milwaukee Summerfest arrest, 1972.
There's now one less genius on the planet;
George Carlin has died.
I loved the guy's comedy, I really did. More than
any humorist other than Woody Allen, Carlin most
closely expressed my own feelings about religion, and
he was enormously bold and brave and funny about
doing so -- and a few hundred years ahead of his
time, too.
As he would be the first to admit, if he could, he's
not in heaven or in hell right now; he's dead, as we'll
all be eventually. But he created moments of pure
heaven while he was alive, which is the point (and maybe
the only point).
I've been fortunate enough to have interviewed
several of the greatest stand-up comedians of
all time (Richard Pryor, Woody Allen (who is also
far more than a stand-up)), but I never met or talked
with Carlin, and now I never will, which is only one
of the reasons I'm sad about his death.
police report on Carlin's Summerfest bust.
* * * *
Revolution is a powerful tool that should be
used only rarely and sparingly -- and only when all
legitimate channels are blocked and the level of
oppression is unacceptable.
If ever there was a case for revolution -- armed,
violent insurrection -- that case is vivid and
clear in the nation of Zimbabwe today.
Morgan Tsvangirai has withdrawn from the presidential
race because his supporters are being attacked and
massacred by allies of tyrant Robert Mugabe, who wants
to retain power despite his evident lack of popular
support. But Tsvangirai should do more than just
boycott the election; he should carefully and steadily
consider gathering weapons and arming guerillas for
a coup aimed at toppling the current regime.
Perhaps everyone should do the short math on this
one. Sanctions won't work (they rarely do). Condemnation
by the Security Council won't work (it rarely does).
Mugabe isn't going to budge (why should he?). And
Tsvangirai's supporters will continue to be targeted and
persecuted and killed (you can bank on that).
Let's hope the international community doesn't
vacillate about this situation Kofi Annan-style.
Unfortunately, Mugabe has made armed revolution
the only reasonable option for the oppressed in
Zimbabwe.
But I digress. Paul
[above, Carlin mugshot by unknown photographer.]
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
June 22, 2008
Last Night's Death Cab Concert
Death Cab for Cutie performed a sold-out gig
last night in Berkeley, Calif., playing over half
of its new hit album, "Narrow Stairs," its
follow-up to 2005's "Plans," which (in my view) is
the band's peak work to date -- and this concert
made a better case for it than for the new one.
The show peaked in the middle, with the double shot
of "Soul Meets Body" and "I Will Follow You Into
the Dark," which is a fabulous song to hear outdoors
in the wooded hills above the Greek Theatre, where
I heard the whole show.
The best new ones were opener "Bixby Canyon
Bridge" and first single "I Will Possess Your Heart,"
which is somewhat in the spirit of the hypnotic, extended-play
mood of Wilco show-stopper "Spiders (Kidsmoke)," which
has spectacularly re-invented The Long Song
for modern indie consumption.
Also of note: a marvelous "Crooked Teeth" and set
closer "Transatlanticism," which had surprising
momentum.
Death Cab is evolving in interesting ways, though it
still reminds me of the unjustly overlooked indie band
The Connells -- and I can't help but think Ben Gibbard
sounds a bit like a cooler, more genuine
Al Stewart, though the band has more heft than either.
Opening act was Oakland's own Rogue Wave, which caught
fire nicely during its last two songs.
* * *
The Tree-Sitters, Day Whatever
Walked by the controversial oak grove encampment in
Berkeley before midnight last night, on the way back
from Death Cab, and was astonished by the spectacle.
Two sets of metal barricades blocked the northbound
lane and sidewalk of Piedmont Ave. Two sets of barbed
wire fences surrounded the trees where environmental
activists have been living since late 2006 (see column,
below). Klieg-like night lights illuminated
the area like it was Stalag 17. Cops were everywhere.
Take it from my own first-hand experience: I have personally
seen Iron Curtain checkpoints inside Eastern Bloc countries
at the height of the Cold War that looked less fearsome
and fortified.
It's clear that what began as an act of vivid civil
disobedience has now become an out-of-control infection
in east Berkeley.
May I make a suggestion?
The sitters are confined to one tree, right? Then put
netting and cushions beneath that tree around 20 feet above
the ground. That way, if anyone falls, there will be no grave
injury. As it stands now, if someone falls and is
badly injured, then the university and the city will
have an exponentially more serious problem,
as well as a human tragedy. And the longer they stay
in the trees, the greater the chance of a mishap.
Currently, the mainstream student population at Cal
doesn't seem to care much about the oaks dispute.
(And frankly, as an issue, it doesn't rank nearly as
high in importance as, say, providing health care for
the uninsured -- now that's something worth
climbing a tree for!) But if one of the tree-sitters,
heaven forfend, were to be badly injured (or killed) as
the result of a fall, and if it were perceived to be
the fault of the authorities, you might have turbulence
similar to the People's Park riots of 1969.
On a more immediate level, a quick resolution of
this thing would free up police resources; it's
fair to say that last night there were probably
muggings and burglaries that were not prevented
because cops were deployed at the oak grove instead
of in high crime areas.
If the activists come down from the trees, they
can continue their protest by other means; if they
truly have popular support, they'll be able to
organize an effective boycott against
UC interests (they should study the effective tactics
used by Columbia University protesters to
force the university to divest from South Africa in
June 1984). While the sitters's cause may be just,
their tactics have gotten out of hand and are
backfiring.
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 19, 2008
The "Rad-Lab" on the Big Divide
This chemistry building and its chemicals, protected by this sign,
are mere feet from the Hayward earthquake fault in Berkeley, Calif.
[photo by Paul Iorio]
Many years ago, the powers that be in California
said: let's build a radiation laboratory, a chemistry
building, a sports stadium, an amphitheater and a
student dorm on an active earthquake fault that is long
overdue for a big temblor.
And so they went ahead and built those buildings
within a mile of one another on (or feet from) the
great quaking Hayward divide, which is due for
a big one soon.
Of all the places in northern California, why pick an
active quake zone for your so-called rad-lab? Oh, I know,
it's been buttressed and retrofitted to
the nth degree, but I also know that almost no structure
can fully withstand a direct hit from an 8.5 quake.
And the easternmost chemistry building on the U.C. campus
looks much more flimsy and far less fortified than the
Lawrence lab; anyone can walk by and see shelves of all
sorts of chemicals, safeguarded by a paper sign on
the window that reads: "Steal Here -- Die Here!"
And let's not even think about what would happen if an
8.5 occurred when Memorial Stadium and the Greek Theater
were packed with people. Or rather, let's think long
and hard about it.
Problem is, there's no way any of those places are going
to be relocated anytime soon, though it's worth asking:
isn't there a better place for Lawrence Berkeley (and its
paranoid border guards) than the hill above the fault?
I bring this up now because yesterday's superior court
ruling about whether the University of California can
expand an athletic facility into an oak grove (see column,
below) notes the danger of building on a fault.
The Hayward divide seems to be the root source of
a free-floating community anxiety that attaches itself
to smaller issues like the decimation of oaks. But the
far greater concern should be the hazardous overbuilding
on the east side of the UC campus and the placement of
ultra-sensitive sites on treacherous turf.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 17, 2008
Protests Over Oak Grove Escalate in Berkeley 
A demonstrator blocks a truck traveling through a protest against the
proposed destruction of an oak grove in Berkeley, Calif. (She claimed the
truck was affiliated with UCB.)][photo by Paul Iorio]
Early this morning, tensions surrounding the oak grove
protests in Berkeley grew considerably worse.
As most of you know, the University of California at
Berkeley wants to destroy a group of oak trees in order to
expand a sports complex on its property. But environmental
activists have been tree-sitting in the oaks since late
2006 to stop that from happening.
This morning campus police removed some of the
tree-sitters' supplies and fenced off the sidewalk
adjacent to the grove, where supporters of the
sitters had been regularly gathering.
This is all happening a day before a Superior Court
judge is expected to decide whether UCB has the
authority to begin construction on its long-delayed
project.
I arrived at the protests around 10:30 this morning
(June 17) and shot these pictures (click on a photo
to enlarge it):
A police officer looks on as a protester jumps atop a car in Berkeley. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
An activist plays a drum as protesters protest near the disputed oak grove. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
The save-the-oaks protest, as seen through a floppy hat. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
A police officer next to the barbed-wire fence surrounding the oak grove. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
The woman-blocking-traffic, seen from mid-range. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
The woman-blocking-traffic, seen in a tight shot. [photo by Paul Iorio]
* * *
Here is the court order (below) served on the tree-sitters and posted on the fence beneath the oaks. 
[page one] [photo by Paul Iorio]
[page two] [photo by Paul Iorio]
[page three] [photo by Paul Iorio]
But I digress. Paul
[posted at 4pm, 6/17/08
updated on 6/18/08]
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 11, 2008
No Gold Glitters Like Emmylou
I've heard Emmylou Harris perform twice in
the past couple years -- on her "All the Road
Running" tour with Mark Knopfler and at the
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass fest in Golden Gate
Park, where she appeared as Emmylou Coward at
a Coward Brothers show -- and came away from both
shows charmed and amused and impressed by how she
continues to grow artistically decades after
collaborating memorably with Gram Parsons on
"Return of the Grievous Angel."
"This Is Us" still sounds like a classic of
Oughties Americana, and her star turn singing
"The Scarlet Tide" with Elvis Costello was a highlight
of Hardly Strictly.
Now comes "All I Intended To Be," her latest album, and
there's already a bit of buzz around her original song
"Gold," though I haven't been able to hear the whole album
yet. I see there's a national tour behind it -- from Cheyenne
to Tennessee, as the song says -- but no California date
is listed, so I guess I'll have to be satisfied with seeing
her perform on Letterman tomorrow night.
But I digress. Paul
[Above, photo from 1970s -- photographer unknown.]
____________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 7, 2008
John McCain's Kind of Fascist? 
McCain has long voiced support, at least implicitly, for the regime of South Vietnam's former premier (and vice president) Nguyen Cao Ky, an open and enthusiastic admirer of Adolf Hitler. Has McCain ever denounced Ky? If not, why not?
Barack Obama has been taken to task
for his past associations, however remote, with
radicals from decades past. Isn't it time the media
started focusing on John McCain's defense of
right-wing extremists and outright fascists associated
with South Vietnam's Ky and Thieu regimes of the 1960s?
McCain, of course, served in the U.S. Navy in defense
of Thieu and Ky, so one can understand his personal
reluctance to denounce the South Vietnamese leaders
who he sacrificed so much to support. He evidently
doesn't want to admit those five-and-a-half years in
a North Vietnamese prison were served for a big mistake.
Now that the passions of the Vietnam era have cooled
a bit, perhaps McCain can bring himself to say what's
obvious to most Americans today: Thieu and Ky
were neo-fascists, governing without popular support,
whose human rights violations equalled (or virtually
equalled) those of the North Vietnamese.
Ky, in particular, is indefensible by any measure of
modern mainstream political thought. Here's Ky in
his own words: "People ask me who my heroes are. I
have only one: Hitler. We need four or five Hitlers
in Vietnam," he told the Daily Mirror in July 1965.
Why does McCain, to this day, still voice support,
at least implicitly, for Ky and Thieu? At the very
least, McCain should, however belatedly, unequivocally
condemn Ky's praise of Hitler, if he hasn't already.
(My own research has yet to turn up a clipping in
which McCain has been significantly critical of
either leader.)
the Daily Mirror article in which Ky praises Hitler.
But I digress. Paul
[I should note for purposes of full disclosure that I do
have a sister (who I'm very proud of!) who is in politics
in the south, but my opinions are not necessarily her
opinions and hers are not necessarily mine, and we
usually don't discuss politics.]
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 6, 2008
Jean-Luc Godard, May 13, 1968, the day more than a million protesters marched through Paris (photograph by Serge Hambourg).
Stopped by the Berkeley (Calif.) Art Museum yeterday
to see what was on display and was knocked out by
Serge Hamburg's photos of the massive protests of
May 1968 in Paris against the de Gaulle regime
(the so-called Days of Rage). On display are 35
pictures, most of them riveting, especially
the shot of all the great faces near the banner
"Sorbonne Teachers Against Repression"; a photo
of Jean-Luc Godard filming the protests; a poignant
shot of student leader Jacques Sauvageat, almost
tearful amongst his comrades; and a few telling
shots of older pro-Gaullist counter-demonstrators.
Also of interest at BAM is a separate exhibit of
photos, by Bruce Conner, showing Mabuhay Gardens, San
Francisco's Max's Kansas City, in all its late 1970s
glory. And there's a series of striking posters
for the punk band Crime that are worth checking out.
poster for a Crime concert, on display at BAM 
OK, equal time for Stanford's Cantor Arts Center; here's a photo I shot there a few years ago.
A couple more original photos: 
an ubiquitous sight in Berkeley: a bumper sticker for KALX, the best radio station in the U.S. (along with WFMU), in my opinion (and not just because they've played my own music!). 
OK, it's a hokey shot, but I snapped this picture several hours ago of a dog trying to drive a truck.
But I digress. Paul
[All photos (and photos of photos) above by Paul Iorio.]
______________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for June 2, 2008
Night Two of R.E.M. in Berkeley: The Jangle Is Back! 
R.E.M., pre-"Accelerate," pre-post-Berry.
Last night, R.E.M. played its second consecutive
show at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, Calif., and it
was even better than the first, pure proof that the greatest
jangle in modern American rock is back. And melancholy
is now, once again, danceable.
The news is the new stuff, from "Accelerate,"
which I covered in the previous column (below),
and that material sounds better each time out.
But what distinguished this particular gig was
the number of gems from the band's 1980s catalogue:
nine, which is more than they've usually
performed in recent years. And the choices were
mouth-watering.
Encore "Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)," which
the band hadn't played in the U.S. since December
9, 1985 (though it did play the song twice in
Europe in 2003, according to reliable setlists),
was as fresh and intense as ever.
(The first time I heard "Carnival" in
concert, at the Beacon Theater in New York in '84, it was
also done as an encore, and it caused people to dance
in the aisles as wildly as I'd ever seen rock fans
dance at a concert (outside of a Grateful Dead show).)
Even Stipe was impressed with his band's performance
of "Carnival" last night -- an endearingly ragged version
that made it sound like you were hearing the group
perform it at one of its earliest shows. (For the record,
I heard this Greek show in the hills above the theater.)
"We had not rehearsed that song in about four or
five years," Stipe said from the stage after "Carnival."
"It's been awhile since we've played it. But it
sounded great."
The crowd roared in agreement.
"So somebody post it immediately," Stipe said.
Elsewhere, "Disturbance at the Heron House," one of
the three or four best R.E.M. songs of all time,
was nearly perfectly played. "Heron" is the sound of a
band in its prime, with every element in harmony, a
pastoral rush like a waterfall or a drive through a
great forest.
Look, I could go on and on -- about "South Central Rain"
and "Auctioneer" and "Electrolite" -- but you get the idea.
I bet parts of the show will be turning up on
YouTube soon, so catch it there.
But I digress. Paul
[collage of REM by Paul Iorio using a photo from the "Chronic Town" EP by an unknown photographer.]
________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
EXTRA! for June 2, 2008
Remembering Bo Diddley
The only time I ever saw Bo Diddley perform was on
May 20, 1989, at Pier A in Hoboken, New Jersey,
where I was covering his concert for the East Coast
Rocker newspaper, which published my review around a
week later.
At the time, Diddley was middle-aged and largely
undervalued by a music industry that had made vast
fortunes off of his musical ideas. As I note in the
piece, his show was fascinating but more than a
little bit sad.
Here is a scan of my original manuscript (click on a page
to enlarge it):
[Bo Diddley review, page one]
[Bo Diddley review, page two]
[Bo Diddley review, page three]
[Bo Diddley review, page four]
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSSION
for June 1, 2008
Last Night's R.E.M. Show in Berkeley, Calif.
Last night R.E.M. played the Greek Theater in
Berkeley, Calif., the fourth date of its tour
backing "Accelerate," its first studio album in
four years and probably its best since '96's
"New Adventures in Hi-Fi."
When last seen at the Greek, in October 2004, the
band was touring behind a less successful album, was
booked at this venue for only one night, and Michael
Stipe was wearing a John Kerry for president t-shirt.
What a difference four years make. The Kerry t-shirt is
gone, the band is now doing two nights at the Greek,
"Accelerate" is selling quite nicely, thank you, and
the group has rarely sounded better in concert.
And some of the new stuff is good enough to
compete with their classics (and this is coming from someone
who is R.E.M.'s age and is therefore biased in favor of their
1980s oeuvre!).
In concert, new album peaks included surprisingly
strong encore "Mr. Richards," opener "Horse to Water,"
"Man Sized Wreath," the first single
"Supernatural Superserious" and "I'm Gonna DJ," which
has grown substantially since they played it here
in '04; the title track and "Hollow Man" were less
effective live (or at least that's how it sounded
from my vantage point in the hills above the theater,
where I heard most of the show).
A third of the roughly two-hour set was from "Accelerate"
but there was also a good deal of smartly-chosen vintage
material, most notably "Wolves, Lower," a thing of real
beauty here, like watching springtime erupt at time
lapse speed.
And the encore featured a double dose of "Fables of the
Reconstruction" in the order heard on the album:
"Driver 8" and "Life and How to Live It," a bit
of a thrill.
If I were creating the setlist with an eye toward
including neglected gems, I would definitely add "Shakin'
Through" and "Near Wild Heaven" to the set (and the less
rare "Disturbance at the Heron House," "Pretty Persuasion,"
"9 - 9" and "World Leader Pretend"). And I have to
wonder why the band is so averse to "Stand." Simply put,
that song is as fun as anything they've ever recorded.
Crowd response ranged from enthusiastic to extremely
enthusiastic. Some tie-dyed Berzerkeley dude was dancing
so wildly during "Wolves, Lower" that, when I passed him
and his swinging arms, I came an inch or two from
ending up in the local E.R.
Elsewhere, even security guards and police officers were
clearly enjoying the music (and the harmonious mood of
the event, too).
More on this show -- and tonight's gig -- later.
Ah, my first R.E.M. show. "Pretty
Persuasion" exploded the place. Fans danced
aerobically during the encores.
But I digress. Paul
[Full disclosure: I should note that I once sent a CD
of my own songs to the band's management but that
nothing ever came of it, and I'm not pursuing that idea now).]
_______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSSION
for May 28, 2008
It's all well and great that Yale University
honored Sir Paul McCartney a couple days ago
with an honorary Ph.D. Maybe this is also a
moment when we can try to figure out why no major
songwriter of the rock era ever spent a day as
a student at an Ivy League university (or at a
British equivalent, though Mick Jagger, with his
stint at LSE, which was a different sort of place
back then, comes close). Or at Juilliard.
To be sure, there are a lot of brilliant musicians
at Yale, its School of Music and its music department,
no question about it. But no songwriter of the caliber of
McCartney/Lennon/Dylan/Jagger/Richards/Townshend/Ray Davies/
Paul Simon/Brian Wilson/Buddy Holly/Chuck Berry was ever
a student, much less a graduate, of Yale or any other
Ivy institution.
In some cases, the genius of a given landmark band was
non-Ivy (say, Paul Simon of Queens College, or Dylan of
the University of Minnesota) while the supporting craftsmen
attended an elite school (Art Garfunkel of Columbia
University, or Peter Yarrow of Cornell).
Why has this been the case? Do admissions people put
too much emphasis on the SAT? Or could it be, to put
it crudely, that a flower best blooms in dung -- at least
initially -- and might wither and die in an expensively
manipulated Ivy environment?
No first-rank songwriter of the rock era has ever come out of an Ivy League university, though a lot of lesser side players did. Witness genius Paul Simon of non-Ivy Queens College, and non-genius Art Garfunkel of Columbia University. And (below) Bob Dylan (University of Minnesota drop-out) and Peter Yarrow (Cornell grad). 
Genius: University of Minnesota drop-out.
Non-genius: Cornell grad.
The school that nurtured McCartney's genius was the
Reeperbahn in Hamburg -- a tough, tawdry district of
whores and speed and seedy clubs that allowed the Beatles
to perfect their sound in 7-hour shows every night.
McCartney, a "graduate" of the Reeperbahn, may well be
the world's greatest living composer (it's probably between
him and Dylan, graduate of clubland in Greenwich Village)
and is arguably a better songwriter than Yale's own Cole
Porter was. I can't think of a Porter song as great as
"Yesterday" or "Hey Jude" or "For No One," and I know
Porter's work well.
By the way, I recently picked up a copy of "Cole Porter:
American Songbook Series," a terrific 23-track CD of his
songs performed by various artists, and wondered who the
singer of "Anything Goes" was. To my surprise, I found
it was Porter himself, and he had a not-bad voice by the
singer-songwriter standards of the current, more liberated
era, when voice is considered more important than merely
having a voice, when expression is valued over technique
(though "American Idol," which has also yet to produce
someone of the stature of McCartney (or of even a Badfinger,
for that matter), runs counter to this trend). To be sure,
Porter sometimes sounded as if he were reading it from the
sheet -- and the final verses of "Anything Goes" are as
wordy as a bad blackboard lecture.
The highlight of the Porter CD is Bing Crosby's "Don't
Fence Me In," which sounds as adorably American as any
non-country song before Woody Guthrie, and the nadir
is an awful reading of "I've Got You Under My
Skin," which Sinatra owns (the definitive "Skin" is on
"Sinatra at the Sands" with Count Basie).
While I'm digressing about CDs I've been enjoying lately, I'm
also enthusiastic about "The Best of Laura Nyro," two CDs
with 34 tracks that cover almost all of her peaks. Certainly,
Nyro is not in the McCartney/Porter stratosphere of songwriters
(she's not even in the same league as Carole King), but
is nonetheless sorely underrated -- and her songs are
probably ripe for a revival.
The best way to hear Nyro's songs is to forget or
unhear the better-known versions that were later
turned into hits by MOR acts like the
Fifth Dimension and Blood, Sweat and Tears.
Listening to "Eli's Comin'" fresh, suppressing the
memory of the Three Dog Night hit, one realizes how
intense it is and that a band like the Rascals
probably could've turned it into something special and
soulful with Arif Mardin producing (a gospelish group
could cut a great version today). Other gems include
a live "Sweet Blindness," the familiar "Blowin' Away"
and the more obscure "Save The Country" and "Stoney End."
Lately I've been listening to "The Best of Laura Nyro," 34 songs, some of 'em underrated, on two discs. (Obviously, she's not in McCartney's league but worthy nonetheless.)
- - - -
Recently re-watched the DVD of "The Aristocrats," which
I admire for its spirit of extreme outrageousness. I'd
love to see a sequel called "Taboo," with each joke
taking on a different sacred cow of some sort.
It's interesting that I didn't hear major controversy
about it back in 2005 (or maybe I missed it), because
you'd think it would have been targeted by fundamentalists,
who tend to regard a joke as advocacy of the joked-about
subject. (I mean, I used to tell jokes about taboo subjects,
Andy Kaufman style, decades ago -- during a very brief
period in my life when I actually performed stand-up
comedy -- and found that some of my dimmer pals took
my act as non-fiction autobiography (and some
still do, it seems!)
Anyway, the film is an equal opportunity offender -- except
when it comes to the ultimate daredevil sacred cow of
mainstream comedy: Islam. Now there's a
subject for a sequel.
-- -- --
Recently checked out a DVD called "Blind Shaft,"
thinking it was a quirky sequel to
"Shaft" in which John Shaft, a la "Ironside,"
continues his investigative work after
having gone blind. Wrong disc! Instead, it
was a riveting, ultra-realistic Chinese
feature from 2003 about criminality and
corruption in the coal mines of China. I hope
others make the same mistake
and rent it.
-- -- --
Haven't heard anything lately about David Letterman's
tick-head mishap. For those who haven't heard, a tick
became embedded in Letterman's back some time ago; it
was removed but the head of the tick still remains
under his skin, which, as any medical professional knows,
can be a very serious condition. We at the Digression
wish him a speedy recovery from his tick head crisis.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for May 22, 2008
"Do not go gentle into that good night/
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-- Dylan Thomas
[photo from Look Magazine]
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for May 19, 2008
Ah, yet another audiotape from bin Laden: what a
better reason for another couple installments of my
own cartoon series "The Continuing Adventures of bin
Laden, the Jihadist Pooch." (If you want to see
the previous 12 episodes of the strip, go to
www.ioriocartoons2.blogspot.com.)
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for May 13, 2008
To remember Robert Rauschenberg, who died earlier today,
here's a photo I shot of one of his works at the Norton
Simon Museum in Pasadena in 1999. It's called
"Cardbirds 1 - 7" (1971), a series of wall reliefs made
of cardboard.
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for May 11, 2008
The other day I saw a McCain bumper sticker in
Berkeley, Calif., for the first time and immediately
snapped a picture of it, as if it were a rare
variety of Macaw never before seen outside Natal.
Anywhere else, that sticker might not stick out, but
in Berkeley, arguably the most liberal place
in the nation, it did. Here it is:
the loneliest bumper sticker in Berkeley
I don't know if that means McCain is making inroads
in left neighborhoods or whether it was just somebody's
cousin visiting from Fresno, but I do know that, if bumper
stickers were ballots, Barack Obama would get close to
98% of the Berkeley vote. I have seen cars on Shattuck
that are like shrines to Obama, one with a cardboard
cut-out of him on the roof that probably
wouldn't clear the Caldicott Tunnel. There are
houses that look like Obama palaces, with signs
and pictures in every window. But you can hike
for miles in Berkeley without ever seeing a single
Hillary sticker or sign, though there
have been sightings, I'm told.
lots of these in Berkeley
But California ain't a battleground state. The
main swing states right now are Wisconsin and
Pennsylvania, without which Obama could not possibly
win the presidency. And, in fact, he might not be
able to win the general with them, if
Ohio or Florida also don't come aboard, though one
wonders how they could when even Oregon -- Democratically
reliable Oregon! -- is still a question mark,
as is Minnesota. (Anyone who thinks Georgia and
Virginia are in play is dreaming or joking.)
How is Obama going to do better than Kerry did in the
swing counties of the swing states? I'm talking 50:50
counties like Grant County, Wisconsin, and also
Iron and Washburn counties, which Kerry won by a goose
feather. I'm talking Monroe County, Pennsylvania, where
the vote was virtually tied in '04. It's hard to
believe Obama's money advantage over McCain will close
the gap (remember how Obama threw bucks everywhere during
the Pennsylvania primary but didn't budge in the polls?)
And the vice-presidential choice rarely affects the
outcome.
If Kerry could barely win Grant County, Wisconsin, how can Obama? Can he offset such losses here with big totals in Madison? Or will the black-o-phobic vote offset the Madison offset?
No, Obama's only hope is he'll rack up totals greater
than Kerry's in liberal areas that will compensate for
his loss of the more moderate precincts that went
Democratic in '04. In other words, the enthusiasm
of his supporters in Madison will make up for his
losses in Washburn/Grant/Iron/etc. counties. Or in
Florida, they think his true believers in Miami
will offset his defeat along the I-4 corridor.
But his edge in, say, Dade County, will likely be
neutralized by white backlash in the panhandle. The
same thing that energizes his backers in Miami will
also energize the black-o-phobic McCain voters in Pensacola.
Let's look at Florida for a moment. The way liberals
have traditionally won statewide is to mount up votes
in the Miami area in order to overcome the panhandle
tally, which is always solidly Republican; the tie-breaker
is, generally, the central, moderate, suburban I-4 corridor.
Sure, Barack will fire up his supporters so that he gets maybe
three percent more in Miami than Kerry did; but that
will be offset by the fact that McCain will win the white
panic vote in the panhandle (where people still drive
around in pick-up trucks with Confederate flag license plates,
looking like extras from the final scenes of "Easy Rider") by
maybe four percent more than Bush got in '04.
When pundits say race is not an issue, what they're really
saying is "race shouldn't be an issue" or "race isn't
an issue among my circle of friends" or "I don't want to
admit that race is an issue." But it is, and not just among
the sorts of rural whites or blue collar workers who will
vote against a black candidate just because he is black.
(Further proof that racism is still alive and well in
America, as if we needed it, came last week with the
public exposure of racist email between Secret Service
agents, who are not exactly construction workers.
Of course, that was just the stuff they put in writing.)
Age, not race, should be the salient contrast in November,
but probably won't be. McCain is almost as old as senile
von Hindenburg was in his final years as president of
Germany -- and is almost as likely to be seen by the
rest of the world as a telling symbol of an empire past
its prime in foreign policy leadership, if he's elected.
Obama is so young that he could run again in 20 years and
still not be as old as McCain is now. And he may have to run
again because, in 2008, there is still too much racism
in America and are apparently not enough black, student
and liberal voters to elect Obama this year.
Is Obama ahead in counties like Monroe County, Pennsylvania, one of the 50:50 counties of '04?
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for May 6, 2008
[cartoon/photo by Paul Iorio]
But I digress. Paul
__________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for May 3, 2008
A Brief History of the Next Few Years
-- Jeremiah Wright will appear on the season
premiere of "Saturday Night Live" in
October, acting in a sketch that sends up the
TV sit-com "Sanford and Son," in
which he plays Redd Foxx's character to
Obama's Lamont (Fred Armisen), who
he calls "a big dummy."
-- When McCain and Obama choose their running mates,
pundits will inevitably say, "Voters don't vote
for the bottom of the ticket" and
"Running mates don't usually help but can hurt
a candidate's popularity."
-- In October 2008, there will be fear of a surprise
terrorist attack that never materializes.
-- Around October 20th, people will start talking
about having seen Christmas decorations in
department stores and about how this must be the
earliest arrival of the season ever.
-- Around Halloween, Republican advocacy groups will
run TV ads in key swing states showing Jeremiah
Wright's rants, and McCain will, of course, denounce
the commercials, while saying he has "no power to
tell them to take down their ads, any more than
Obama has the power to tell Rev.Wright to shut up."
-- Obama will go hunting in Ohio and shoot at, and
miss, several geese.
-- McCain will misspeak on the campaign trail, calling
the Sunni insurgents "gooks."
-- Liberals will get giddy in late October when the latest
tracking polls show Obama within three points in
Ohio -- and ahead by one point in Florida!
-- On election day, it will turn out that the late polls
were wrong and that Obama loses Ohio by seven points,
Florida by 12 points and Wisconsin by five. McCain
wins Iowa and Missouri by double digits The final
electoral and popular tally is a massacre for the
Dems, ranking somewhere between the defeats of Duakais
and Mondale.
-- During the Christmas season, "Good Morning America" will run
a holiday segment titled something like: "Why You Hate Your
Loved Ones During Christmas Get Togethers."
-- The press will start speculating about who President-elect
McCain will appoint to his cabinet, and the list will
include lots of new faces from Arizona.
-- Someone will coin the phrase "the Arizona Mafia" to
describe McCain's inner circle.
-- The White House press corps will be reconfigured
to include local reporters from
Arizona news outlets who have covered McCain
in the past and have had access to
him. There will be glowing, puffy stories
about the new First Lady; beauty and
grooming magazines will run features about
how you, too, can look glamorous
like Cindy McCain in just 12 easy steps!
-- There will be a honeymoon period during which
leading Democratic pundits will say over-generous
things like, "President McCain is doing far
better than expected in bringing together disparate
factions." David Brooks will say, "The
grown-ups are back in charge in Washington." McCain's
approval rating in March will hit a record 77%.
-- Mother Jones, the San Francisco Chronicle and
the National Review will all run cover stories with
identical headlines: "Is The Democratic Party Dead?"
The Mother Jones and Chronicle stories will be almost
identical, while the National Review piece will not.
-- The honeymoon will last a few months, until McCain
starts over-using his veto pen. David Brooks will
call him "principled." Mark Shields will call him
"Vito McCain."
-- In February 2009, Katie Couric will resign from
CBS News to join CNN in order to helm a series
that is "still in development." She releases a
farewell statement that partly says, "I bear no
ill will as my ship sails on to ever higher peaks."
-- In the spring of '09, The Washington Post will run
a front-page bombshell quoting anonymous, tearful
White House sources who have borne the brunt
of President McCain's frequent temper tantrums. "The
West Wing has now become a hostile work environment,"
says one staffer.
-- By Labor Day 2009, there will be early
speculation about the 2012 race that
will include the phrase, "But in politics,
three years is an eternity."
-- The New York Times Magazine will run a cover story
during the holiday season of '09 titled: "The Maturation
of Hillary Clinton." Newsweek will be even
bolder, putting her on the cover with the caption:
"The Front Runner in '12?"
-- A serious Draft Gore movement will spring up by
January 2010. Tim Russert will try to get Gore to
announce his candidacy on "Meet the Press," but Gore
will only say "it's too early to decide," which will be
taken as a "yes" by jubilant Gore supporters.
-- Vicki Iseman will receive a seven figure advance
from HarperCollins to write a tell-all memoir
about her relationship with McCain.
-- President McCain adopts a pet German Shepherd
that unexpectedly becomes vicious and bites a CNN
correspondent on the leg at the White House. (A tabloid
is forced to apologize when it runs the headline
"German Shepherd Bites Pit Bull.")
-- The New York Times quotes West Wing staffers about
the insiderish power of Cindy McCain; one source says,
"If the First Lady doesn't like you, you're out."
-- During a "Where in the World is Matt Lauer?" segment in
Yemen on "Today," Lauer comes under sniper fire by
Islamic militants who call him "The Infidel Lauer." Later,
the relieved anchor says, "This one could've easily gone
the other way."
-- In the spring of 2010, the Washington Post
will run a front-pager revealing that McCain
has been secretly seeing an oncologist and that
there is widespread speculation in the White
House that McCain's melanoma has returned. McCain
heatedly denies the reports.
-- Those presidential health concerns are swept from
the headlines for a time in the summer of 2010 by
the most turbulent hurricane season since
2005 and a Category Five storm that takes dead
aim at, yes, New Orleans, destroying all the
rebuilding of the past few years.
-- McCain will seize the moment and heroically
helicopter into New Orleans's Ninth
Ward, personally handing food and water to
the devastated victims. But there
will be a moment of confusion when he
says, "We must help the people of Vietnam
in their hour of need." His poll numbers
soar, as everyone forgets about
the gaffe and about the Post revelations.
David Brooks will call him "action Jackson"
-- On Christmas eve of 2010, McCain will admit that, yes,
he has had a recurrence of cancer that is not
life-threatening. The Post, angry that McCain had
dismissed its earlier reports about secret visits to the
oncologist as "fantasies by a once great newspaper,"
harshly questions his credibility and suggests he
should consider resigning. The phrase "credibility
gap" makes a comeback.
-- There will be jokes about McCain's afternoon
naps at the White House after McCain is caught
dozing at a leadership symposium in Arizona. Time
magazine will catch flak for running a photo
of a snoozing McCain on its
cover with the headline, "The Credibility Nap."
-- Cindy McCain will appear in a controversial photo
spread in Vanity Fair wearing a queen's crown
and eating jelly beans.
-- As it becomes apparent that McCain will not seek
a second term because of health issues, the 2012
race moves into gear. Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney,
Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich all set up
exploratory committees, or hint that
they will.
-- Obama announces that he will not seek
another term in the Senate and will
retire from politics; shortly thereafter,
he files for divorce from his wife and
says he intends to relocate to Massachusetts,
one of the few states he won in '08, to live
with his "friend" Samantha Power.
-- Jeremiah Wright announces his candidacy for
Mayor of Chicago.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 26, 2008
Shining Light on "Shine a Light"
torn, frayed, mostly fabulous
I finally got around to seeing "Shine a Light"
and couldn't help but think it might have benefited
from a more straightforward approach cinematographically
instead of the incessant cutting that makes this more
of an editor's film than a director's film, though
anything Martin Scorsese is involved with is a
Scorsese film, period. Then again, any movie the
Rolling Stones are involved with is a Stones film,
period, so there is almost a tug of war between
strong-willed auteurs here, with Scorsese
seen pleading for a setlist at one point, which
he definitely could've used to block and plan
shots for his cinematographers who seem to be
scrambling frantically to catch pictures of lightning
after the lightning has already struck, though every
now and then they do catch and bottle a bolt
or two.
But it would've been nice if one of the cameras had
caught, say, Darryl Jones playing the bass intro
to "Live With Me" instead of focusing on one of
the guitarists or had shown Charlie Watts doing
that vintage drum roll that opens "All Down
the Line."
The setlist is a masterpiece, around as good as the
one at the Olympia show in Paris captured in the
"Four Flicks" film, though one can quibble at the edges.
Perhaps the better-live-than-on-the-album "You
Got Me Rocking" might've worked better than the
better-on-the-album-than-live "Shattered," which
I've never heard performed successfully live.
And "Sweet Virginia" or "Dead Flowers" could have
best filled the "country" slot reserved here for
failed joke "Faraway Eyes." And "Respectable" would've
been the perfect song to play with the Clintons
in the audience. And what about a nod to "Bigger Bang"
with "Oh No, Not You Again," the best of the new
ones live.
The choices are otherwise dead on; "She Was Hot," a
highlight, has terrific, unexpected momentum; "Loving Cup"
now sounds like it was written with Jack White in mind
all along; "As Tears Go By" has a real pulse, thanks to
Watts; "Connection" is one of the band's best
overlooked songs of the 1960s, though Keith botches it
here (he did a far better version in Oakland, Calif.,
shortly after this gig).
And each guest star tops the previous one, with
Buddy Guy leveling the place with "Champagne & Reefer"
and with offhand artistry that is assured, authentic
(he livens up the place much as Dr. John did in
"The Last Waltz"). Christina Aquilera, trading vocals
with Jagger on "Live With Me," is a powerhouse, a hurricane,
always blowing audiences away. (Wish they'd brought her
on for the Merry Clayton part of "Gimme Shelter,"
not played here.)
This is a concert film with spliced-in archival footage
that is often hilarious and rare while heavily favoring
self-promo bits in which Jagger one-ups various
interviewers -- as opposed to the Maysles brothers's
"Gimme Shelter," which shows Jagger at both his wittiest
and unwittiest (remember the "philosophically trying"
remarks?). Though the film doesn't pretend to be any
sort of definitive docu on the Stones, one still wonders
where Brian Jones is in all the vintage footage;
Jones has gone from being wildly overemphasized as a Stones
member to, today, being almost completely erased from the
band's history. That said, it's telling that the group
got only better in the years after Jones's death (see:
"Exile," "Sticky Fingers," "Some Girls").
They performed almost half of the "Some Girls" CD,
likely to remain their best-selling studio album of
all time, now that the dust has settled, though at
the time who'd have guessed that its unlikely combination
of disco and punk, warring genres in their day, would
have eclipsed both "Sticky Fingers" and "Exile." But it's
the closest the Stones have come to a diamond seller
like "Nevermind" or "Boston," which they've never had,
even if their cultural influence has been far greater
than all but a few in the rock era. Today, it's easy to
see that "Some Girls," released 30 years ago this June,
had a sort of shock jock element that made it popular
among millions of non-Stones fans, though that
element was partly excised in this film, with the
deletion of an explicit verse from the title track,
a song rarely (if ever) performed by the Stones.
I was lucky enough to have heard the very first public
performance of "Some Girls" material by the Stones, on
the first night of their "Some Girls" tour, June 10, 1978,
a couple days after the album's release, at the Lakeland
(Florida) Civic Center -- and I saw the group from only
several feet away.
As I recall, the new album was erupting unexpectedly,
so the band was in an extremely good mood at this
kick-off gig in '78. In fact, they seemed
downright giddy and manic and drunk on (among other
things) their own effortless rock 'n' roll mastery.
I remember seeing Jagger take the stage to the
opening chords of "All Down the Line," as flashing
lights briefly illuminated his leap into the air
(he looked just like a whip or a lightning bolt) and
remember seeing him physically and playfully
push Ron Wood to the side of the stage at another point.
And I remember how eerie and spooky it looked and
sounded to see Jagger right in front of me singing that
falsetto part of "Miss You" -- and he was singing it
live for the first-time ever.
A year later, with those songs still ringing in my
head, I moved to Manhattan, where I lived for years at
the Beacon, 25 floors above the theater where the
concert in "Shine a Light" took place. In those days
I used to travel to the Beacon Theater by...taking
the elevator!
Which is part of what makes that final shot of "Shine a Light"
(in which Scorsese directs the cameraman to film from
above the Broadway marquee to the rooftops of the Upper
West Side, literally between the moon and New York City) so
magical to me. And it suggests an even better flick: a
movie of a concert on the Beacon roof, a la "Let It Be," in
which the Manhattan skyline co-stars.
the Stones's bestseller, released 30 years ago this June
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 24, 2008
I was reading a transcript of the latest
audio recording from Osama bin Laden the
other day and wondering: is he dating? Does he
have a lover? Would bin Laden be a less violent
person if he had a sexual partner? Could we save
the world from his destructiveness by simply...setting
him up on a date?
Hence the origin of my screenplay, "Play It
Again, Osama," presented below:
Play It Again, Osama
By Paul Iorio*
INT. OSAMA'S BACHELOR APARTMENT, SOMEWHERE IN WAZIRISTAN
OSAMA BIN LADEN (to himself): What's the matter with me?
Why can't I be cool like the Prophet Mohammed?
What's the secret?
An imaginary Prophet Mohammed, wearing a fedora and looking
and sounding like Humphrey Bogart, appears from the shadows.
PROPHET MOHAMMED: There's no secret, kid.
Infidels are simple. I never met one that didn't understand
a slap in the mouth or a slug from a .44.
OSAMA BIN LADEN: Yeah, 'cause you're Mohammed.
I'm not like you. When you lost Aisha, weren't you crushed?
PROPHET MOHAMMED: Nothing a little bourbon and soda
wouldn't fix. Take my advice and forget all the romantic stuff.
The world is full of infidels to fight. All you have to do is whistle.
OSAMA: He's right. You give the unbelievers an inch
and they step all over you. Why can't I develop that attitude?
[mimicking Mohammed] Nothing a little bourbon and soda
couldn't fix.
[He swigs a shot of Old Crow, gags.]
CUT TO:
INT. TORA BORA APARTMENT OF DICK AND LINDA CHRISTIE (OSAMA'S FRIENDS)
LINDA CHRISTIE: Osama's calling again. We've got to find him a girl.
Somebody he can be with, get excited about.
DICK CHRISTIE: We'll have to find him a nice girl.
LINDA: There must be somebody out there. Someone to take his
mind off losing Mohamed Atta. I think he really loved Atta.
DICK [picking up phone]: I know just the girl for him.
CUT TO:
INT. OSAMA'S APARTMENT
Osama is preparing for his date, which is in an hour or so.
Again, from the shadows comes an imaginary Prophet Mohammed.
MOHAMMED: You're starting off on the wrong foot.
OSAMA: Yeah, negative.
MOHAMMED: Sure. They're getting the best of you
before the game starts. What's that stuff you put on your face?
OSAMA: Canoe. It's an aftershave lotion.
MOHAMMED: You know, kid, somewhere in life
you got turned around. It's her job to smell nice for you.
The only bad thing is if she turns out to be a virgin --
or an agent for the JTTF!
OSAMA: With my luck, she'll turn out to be both.
TITLE CARD: Later That Night....
INT. OSAMA'S APARTMENT -- LATE AT NIGHT
The doorbell rings and Osama opens the door. It's Linda.
LINDA: How did the date go?
OSAMA: It never would have worked between us.
She's a Shiite, I'm a Sunni, it's a great religious abyss.
LINDA: [laughing]
OSAMA: You're laughing and my sex life
is turning into the Petrified Forest.
Millions of women in the Northwest
Territories and I can't wind up with one!
Osama takes a seat on the couch and Linda sits next to him.
OSAMA: I'm turning into the strike-out king
of Waziristan!
LINDA: You need to be more confident, secure.
OSAMA: You know who's not insecure?
The Prophet Mohammed.
LINDA: That's not real life.
You set too high a standard.
OSAMA: If I'm gonna identify with someone,
who am I gonna pick? My imam?
Mohammed's a perfect image.
LINDA: You don't need to pretend. You're you.
Osama nudges closer to Linda on the couch.
The imaginary Mohammed appears and speaks.
MOHAMMED: Go ahead, make your move.
OSAMA: No, I can't.
MOHAMMED: Take her and kiss her..
LINDA (getting up to go to the kitchen): I'll get us both a drink.
MOHAMMED: Well, kid, you blew it.
OSAMA: I can't do it. We're platonic friends.
I can't spoil that by coming on.
She'll slap my face.
MOHAMMED: I've had my face slapped plenty.
OSAMA: But your turban
don't go flying across the room.
Linda returns with two drinks.
LINDA: Here we are, you can start on this.
MOHAMMED: Go ahead, kiss her.
OSAMA: I can't.
The phone rings and startles Osama, as he answers it.
OSAMA (into phone): Hi, Dick. Yes, she's here.
I was going out -- I had a Polish date.
He hands the phone to Linda.
MOHAMMED: Relax. You're as nervous as Abu Jahl was before
I beat his brains out at the Battle of Badr. All you've got to do is
make your move.
OSAMA: This is crazy. We'll wind up
on al Jazeera!
LINDA (into phone): OK, goodbye.
LINDA: Dick sounded down. I think
he's having trouble in Karachi. I wonder
why he never asks me along on his trips.
OSAMA: Maybe he's got something
going on the side. A fling.
LINDA: If I fell for another man,
it'd have to be more than just a fling.
I'd have to feel something more serious.
Are you shaking?
OSAMA: Just chilly.
LINDA: It's not very cold.
MOHAMMED: Move closer to her.
OSAMA: How close?
MOHAMMED: The distance of Flight 175 to the south tower..
OSAMA: That's very close.
MOHAMMED: Now, get ready for the big move
and do exactly as I tell you.
Suddenly an imaginary Mohamed Atta appears and
confronts the Prophet Mohammed.
ATTA [to Mohammed]: I warned you to leave my ex-lover alone.
Atta draws a pistol and shoots Mohammed.
Osama looks a bit panicky now that Mohammed is gone.
LINDA: I guess I'd better fix the steaks.
OSAMA: Your eyes are like two thick juicy steaks.
Osama kisses Linda, who recoils, pushing him away.
OSAMA: I was joking. I was just testing you.
It was a platonic kiss.
LINDA: I think I'd better go home.
OSAMA: You're making a mistake.
Linda waves goodbye and leaves the apartment.
OSAMA: I attacked her. I'm a vicious jungle beast..
I'm not the Prophet Mohammed. I never will be.
I'm a disgrace to my sex. I should get a job at an Arabian palace
as a eunuch.
The doorbell rings.
OSAMA: That's the vice squad. [He opens the door, and Linda is there.]
LINDA: Did you say you loved me?
Osama and Linda embrace and kiss and the scene fades.
INT. OSAMA'S APARTMENT -- THE NEXT DAY
MOHAMMED: That's all there is to it.
OSAMA: For you, because you're Mohammed.
MOHAMMED: Everybody is at certain times.
OSAMA: I guess the secret's not being you, it's being me.
MOHAMMED: Here's looking at you, kid.
*with massive apologies to Woody Allen.
-------
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 21, 2008
Oh! Ye bitter Pennsylvanians, come 'round to the polls,
but drink not from the chalice of disappointment and
woe, or seek succor by clinging to thy religion and
thy guns, when ye cast ye ballots in the Primary of
the Greatest Publick Importance, at least this week,
until next month, when the next state decideth.
Thou must not delayeth thy journey to thy polls with vain
prayer or the reloading of thy guns. Thou must not
cling to that which provides false solace in grim
times. Thou must not pray out of bitterness in thy
voting booth upon the altar of discredited touch screens,
or place thy bullets amidst the paper ballots that have
largely replaced thy touch screens. Oh, ye bitter
Pennsylvanians, put aside thy clinging and loading and
praying to dodge the sniper fire on the way to the
Primary of Publick Importance!
But I digresseth. Paul
_________________________________
ALL DAILY DIGRESSIONS PRIOR TO APRIL 17, 2008, CAN BE FOUND AT WWW.DAILYDIGRESSIONARCHIVE.BLOGSPOT.COM.
