Bad news for any future sons of mine…

Male attractiveness is not passed genetically from father to son.

Dan Quayle’s Russian Kin?

Russian Communist Party member’s attack James Bond for political points.  My favorite claim:

The party’s leader, Sergei Malinkovich, said: “Everyone knows that the CIA and MI6 finance James Bond films as a special operation of psychological warfare against us. This Ukranian girl sleeps with Bond and that means that Ukraine is sleeping with the West.”

I guess this means that Timothy Dalton is off the hook for the Bond franchise going on hiatus for several years… it was really just because the Berlin Wall had come down.

Media Counterstrike…

Socrates would likely approve.  A good way for the media to appear both neutral and a meaningful source of information, it has always seemed to me, was to ask questions that force people to explain themselves.  It’s hardly unpopular, 60 Minutes has done it for decades.  CNN Anchor Rick Sanchez gives it a try:

Has the age where media access depended on not asking questions like this over?  Was it just a blip in history that the Bush Administration was so remarkably disciplined?  Are new “old media” journalists learning from prior iterations of the political-media relations game, eager to tilt the scales more in their professional favor?  Is competition from alternative media making a difference?  Is there a market of consumer who is responding to this type of journalism?  (Query: Did Couric’s Governor Palin interview do anything to the long-term ratings to her broadcast?)  Interesting…

War Briefing…

You HAVE to see this Frontline piece on the Taliban/Al Qaeda probelm that waits for the next President…

Working the Refs…

There is no more perniciously undemocratic notion than the claim, “If I am losing a democratic argument, it is because of unfairness.”  Yet, we see electoral losers float this argument in the face of losses all the time.  The absolute immodesty the claim entails utterly reeks of stupidity.  If there are no conditions under which one would accept an electoral process to reasonably reject your position, then you are interested in democracy, you are interested in dictating.  

PS – This applies as well to those who still do not let go of Bush v. Gore on the left.  Yes, there are many reasons to accept that under very slightly altered conditions, Gore would have been President – but it can hardly be ignored the vast number of people who reasonably rejected Gore, that this rejection reflected an utter indifference to the political interests of vast swaths of American territory by candidate Gore, and the large sense of indifference between the two candidates when people went to the polls.  In short, party loyalists who lose elections: spare me your outrage.

From the New World…

I’m listening to Dvorak’s 9th Symphony.  Some thoughts on musical borrowing come to mind.  

• large parts of this piece sound an awful lot like Beethoven’s 9th.
• certain movements of this piece are familiar to me as part of James Horner’s Star Trek music scores (also heavily influenced by Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Frank Grimes, and Vaughan William’ Sea Symphony I would gather.)
• the beginning of John Williams’ “Duel of the Fates” sounds an awful lot like the beginning of the third movement.  

Both Star Wars and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan were put on the television a lot when I was a child because it was the era of VHS and HBO being novel things, and it was considered a way to entertain me when things were happening like when my family was in the process of moving when I was 5.  I always loved the music for both when I was 5, and so it is perhaps not surprising that my tastes have been reversed engineered to their sources.  Music critics sometimes lampoon film scores that sound “derivative,” but at least, in my case, they exposed me at a very early age to the power that classical composition can have in generating aesthetic sensations.  I have learned to appreciate the complexity of the compositions of Dvorak, Mahler, Vaghan Williams, Britten and other such inspirations for my favorite movie scores, but the movie scores are still fun to me.  

It is especially no surprise with Horner’s scores for Star Trek (yes, I like Star Trek, it’s been said), as the Star Trek director who hired him was a successful patiche writer.  Writing probably the best Sherlock Holmes story not penned by Sir Arthur and also writing and directing the quite wonderful movie Time After Time.  

Meyer told Jamer Horner that his Star Trek is “Horatio Hornblower in Space.”  In short, the Nicholas Meyer Star Trek films are themselves pastiches that include Star Trek as part of the great navel fiction of the twentieth century. What Meyer did in film, Horner did in song.

The point of this is that film scores like James Horner’s or John Williams’ are not highly original, but they are still highly creative.  They are intelligently pieced together ode’s to familiar themes, and I think that it is profitable to enjoy them as such rather than holding one’s nose and calling them derivative. 

After all, as I pointed out, Dvorak makes good use of paying tribute to Beethoven’s Ninth in his own Ninth.  One could call this “unoriginal.”  Or one could notice the parallel that they are both 9th symphonies, and that Beeethoven’s Ninth is about the rising tide of equality in Europe and Dvorak’s symphony is named for the United States, widely considered the place where equality has been best realized.  These parallels make tribute, not plagiarism.      

From this day ’till the ending of the world…

Happy Saint Crispin’s day.  Here’s what it means to Kenneth Branagh:

“High up above, Aliens orbit…”

The quite funny John Hodgman on the existence of extraterrestrials. I love the literal, almost Dylan Thomas-like literary quality of Hodgman’s humor.

Harrowdown Hill

I just discovered what Thom Yorke’s “Harrowdown Hill” is about: wow. 

Here’s the lyrics to the song:

Don’t walk the plank like I did
You will be dispensed with
When you’ve become inconvenient
Up on Harrowdown Hill
Where you used to go to school
Thats where I am
Thats where I’m lying down

Did I fall or was I pushed?
Did I fall or was I pushed?
And wheres the blood?
And wheres the blood?

I’m coming home
I’m coming home
To make it all right
So dry your eyes

We think the same things at the same time
We just cant do anything about it

So don’t ask me
Ask the ministry
Don’t ask me
Ask the ministry

We think the same things at the same time
There are so many of us 
So you can’t count

We think the same things at the same time
There are too many of us 
So you can’t count

Can you see me when I’m running?
Can you see me when I’m running?
Away from them

I can’t take their pressure
No one cares if you live or die
They just want me gone
They want me gone

I’m coming home
I’m coming home
To make it all right
So dry your eyes

We think the same things at the same time
We just cant do anything about it

We think the same things at the same time
There are too many of us 
So you can’t count

I was lured into the back of Harrowdown Hill
It was me lured into the back of Harrowdown Hill
I was lured into the back of Harrowdown Hill 
It was a slippery slippery slippery slope
It was a slippery slippery slippery slope
I feel me slipping in and out of consciousness
I feel me slipping in and out of consciousness
I feel me…

The horrendous feeling the song produces in my heart is that the songseems so familiar.  How many of us get up and go to work feeling like other people wish we weren’t there, are totally indifferent to our welfare, and indeed, our value?  For all of us that do feel that way about or next day of work, we do think the same things at the same time, and we still can’t do anything about it.  How many of us our living out a miniature version of this story?  Is it “so many that you can’t count?”

Pynchon blogging

I’m now past where I have read before in Against the Day. Only 900 pages to go. Something I think I have noticed so far. I remember reviews saying that ATD is Pynchon’s “most accessible” book. I think I know why. Pynchon’s usual MO is to tell traditional stories in ways that completely obscure their form so that we may see something substantive that form hides. Pynchon is on to something different here. Rather than disguising form, he is forcing several explicit and distinct storytelling forms to coexist in the same narrative. Even though it is still unusual, the explicit tropes of the forms make it feel more familiar in it’s narrative pattern, and thus, more readable.