Birds falling from the sky.
Mon, 01 Nov 2004

Browsing through my Plutarch the other day, I came across an anecdote in the life of Flamininus, the Roman consul who drove King Philip and the Macedonian army out of Greece. After Philip's army had gone, Flamininus attended the Isthmian Games, in the Greek city of Corinth, and issued a proclamation that the Greek cities were to be restored "to their own lands, laws, and liberties." At first the crowd couldn't make out the crier's words, and after a little confused murmuring they settled down so that the decree could be repeated. But when the crowd understood that the Romans, whom they assumed had come to replace the Macedonians as conquerors, had in fact given Greece back her freedom, they raised "a shout of joy...so loud that it could be heard as far as the sea." As Plutarch tells it, the shout was so great that birds flying above the crowd were struck dead by the shockwave, and fell to the ground.

In April of last year, Saddam Hussein fled Baghdad as the American army entered. It would probably be too much to ask for bird-killing shouts of joy from the citizens of Baghdad, but we did get to see Iraqis ululating in celebration, whacking Saddam's toppled statue with their slippers.

No doubt, their feelings were mixed. At the time, perhaps six thousand civilians had died in airstrikes. Something like ten thousand Iraqi soldiers - most of them pressed into service against their will - had been killed in the fighting, even though Americans dropped pamphlets behind enemy lines urging fighters to sit out the war for their own safety. The rest of the Iraqi army had melted away, eliminating the need for destructive street fighting in most cities...or so it seemed. The country's infrastructure - such as it was, after twelve years of sanctions - was largely intact. By May, President Bush was striding across an aircraft carrier in his flight suit, talking about democratic elections in Iraq, a bright future, all that stuff.

Now, let's suppose you accept the Chomskyan narrative that this was a war entirely about oil. It's an oversimplification, but there is truth to it. Certainly, the Bush administration has shown no inclination to dispatch troops to Sudan, for instance, even to stop ongoing genocide; let alone other, more obscure parts of the world, to secure human rights and democracy. The reason America gives particular attention to the medieval fiefdoms of the Middle East is primarily because of oil, and secondarily because those fiefdoms keep coughing up long-bearded fanatics to blow up discotheques in Bali, and synagogues in Istanbul, and every decade or so, with varying degrees of success, Manhattan's financial district.

But, okay, it was a war about oil. Americans were there to "steal" the oil which Iraq's government had formerly been using to enrich an elite sliver of Ba'athists, Sunni Muslims, and members of Saddam's own clan. The Bush administration's optimistic post-war plan involved selling Iraqi oil to the west in order to finance the reconstruction of the country. This would seem like a rather better use of the money than, say, building yet another ostentatious palace for Saddam Hussein and his sons, or buying weaponry to intimidate and occasionally massacre Iraq's religious and ethnic minorities. The no-bid contract for Halliburton may have been inappropriate, but it was far more transparent than the suitcase-full-of-cash approach that had defined Iraq's oil industry for the previous decade.

Still, one can understand the suspicions of the Iraqi people. With the Arab media broadcasting rants about Jews and Crusaders coming to steal Iraqi oil, with imams babbling that western values were tantamount to blasphemy and pornography, and with even the western media speculating loudly about Bush's cynical motives for the invasion, Iraqis can be forgiven for mistrusting the conqueror who was now guaranteeing them their "lands, laws, and liberties". Iraqis exercised their new liberty to gather in the streets by the thousands, shouting anti-American slogans, disbelieving the assurances of their new overlords. "American occupiers out now," shouted the Iraqis, when the administration floated plans to bring home a hundred thousand troops by autumn 2003. "Democratic elections now," shouted the Iraqis, when Bush promised free elections by January 2005. It was sort of comical. I mean, sure, there was some dispute about the timeframe. But nothing, you'd think, that couldn't be settled without resorting to random decapitations.

Instead of grumbling and waiting for the American forces to leave, insurgents took to sabotaging convoys with roadside bombs. When the Americans installed a provisional government to prepare the country for democratic elections, insurgents called them collaborators and gunned them down in the street. When the Americans tried to recruit a police force to secure order, insurgents drove cars full of explosives into the recruiting stations. And then Iraqis wondered why the Americans persisted in sticking around. Meanwhile, civilian casualties multiplied, and now the figure is at least sixteen thousand. If you browse the database at iraqbodycount.net, you can read exactly how all these people died. In the first few months, almost all the civilian deaths were caused by American missiles. As the war goes along, increasingly, they're being killed by car bombs and drive-by Kalashnikov-sprayings. The number of Iraqis killed by other Iraqis is beginning to outpace the number killed by Americans.

I'm not trying to put the blame on the Iraqi people. They're pinned between jittery American forces on one side, and a posse of bomb-worshipping nihilists on the other. I'm trying to draw an analogy between the self-destructive paranoia of Iraqis, and the self-destructive paranoia of George Bush's opponents back home.

Look at this administration's dubious achievements in Iraq. They began the war with just enough troops to scatter the feeble Iraqi army, and did, with alacrity. But when that army was defeated, overstretched American soldiers could only stand by while government buildings were sacked and looted. They were unable to protect the moderate clerics Ayatollah al-Khoei and Ayatollah al-Hakim from being assassinated by fundamentalist thugs. Meanwhile Donald Rumsfeld claimed it was a good thing that foreign jihadists were pouring across Iraq's borders unimpeded, because now America could fight and kill them all in one place.

The administration disbanded the Iraqi army, creating a pool of armed, unemployed young men with a grudge against the United States. They sent out vaguely-worded directives that seemed to sanction the use of torture against Iraqi prisoners, and when it turned out that prisoners were in fact being tortured, no-one bothered to do anything about it until pictures of naked Iraqis showed up on the evening news. The military could have targeted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before the war, when he was running a terrorist training camp in the American-protected no-fly zone of Iraqi Kurdistan; but that would've weakened the administration's justification for invading, so Zarqawi was left unmolested. Now he glorifies Allah by personally cutting off the heads of western aid workers.

What's exasperating about the Noam Chomsky - Michael Moore - Linda McQuaig school of interpreting foreign policy is that they rustle around in the curtains, pointing their flashlights up into the riggings and down into the orchestra pit, piecing together complicated conspiracy theories on the basis of sawdust, sandbags, and the angle of the lighting fixtures; while onstage, in plain view of everybody, a tragedy unfolds whose meaning should be perfectly clear to every spectator. Even if you believed every single claim George Bush made before the war - about the weapons of mass destruction, about the connections between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda, about the urgency of pre-emptively toppling dangerous regimes - (and I should say that I believed a good deal of it, and that I still believe some of it) - what's amazing about Iraq is that, even on Bush's terms, the war has been conducted with such head-smacking, heartbreaking incompetence. Yet not one member of the administration has been fired for his failures. Not one member of the administration has even seen fit to publicly acknowledge that things aren't going so well.

This incompetence is far more damning than the cartoonish supervillainies sketched by Michael Moore et al. Bush isn't a devious puppet manipulated into power by an oil-thirsty corporate cabal. In some ways, it's worse. He's the democratically elected President of the United States. His intentions are noble. He wants to use his power to improve the world. He's just really fucking bad at it.

In Iraq, nothing much will change if John Kerry wins the election Tuesday. There are no extra troops that Kerry could send there even if he wanted to. On the other hand, pulling out troops, with no-one to replace them, would lead only to more chaos. All a hypothetical President Kerry could do is wait while an Iraqi security force, of dubious loyalty, is painstakingly trained, and then hope that the Iraqis can keep the country from tearing apart as U.S. troops trickle out. This is exactly President Bush's policy, except that Bush pretends (and possibly even believes) that things are going smoothly, and that this has been his plan from the beginning. The only improvement Kerry would offer is a slightly more honest rhetoric.

I think Kerry's going to lose, though. And the reason comes down to Michael Moore. (I use Moore as a stand-in for the legion of left-wing talking heads just like him.) If I have a sensation not unlike acid reflux when I see Michael Moore on television - bearing in mind that many of my friends are hippies, and I'm generally sympathetic to liberal causes - then imagine how off-putting his pronouncements must appear to your average construction worker in Columbus, Ohio, or housewife in Tampa Bay, or any of the two or three percent of the American electorate who still can't decide between the two candidates. When John Kerry goes on TV and says, "Bush has a problem confronting reality, he's grossly mishandled the war, and he needs to be replaced," voters are sympathetic. When Michael Moore goes on TV and says, "Bush is a corporate puppet, he's killing Iraqi children to impress his daddy, and by the way, he isn't really the president in the first place," they wince and change the channel. I would too.

The only hope for Kerry is that Bush's cro-magnon reelection campaign will turn off as many voters as Michael Moore's conspiracy theories. Then, with luck, it will come down to a contest between the candidates' platforms and personalities, and on that basis, maybe, Kerry can win. Though he's a pompous windbag, I'm convinced that, in every single respect besides Iraq (where there's little he can do), Kerry would make a better president than Bush.

So that's what I'm hoping for, though I confess I won't join in the bird-killing shout that the hippies will raise if Bush loses. I'm about as tired of the smug self-congratulation of the left as I am of the reflexive tub-thumping of the right. But I'm hoping a few years of President Kerry - competent, cautious, diplomatic, and deeply boring - will put a damper on all the sneering and conspiracy-mongering from either side. Best of all, Michael Moore will have no further reason to go on television until 2008.

Tuesday Weld.
Wed, 03 Nov 2004

I'm sure many of you - certainly those of you with ties to the activist community - are going to be inundated with post-election rants this morning. I'll try to keep my rant short.

The most surprising comment heard on any election broadcast last night was made by the former Governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, on Jon Stewart's Daily Show. In contrast to all the campaign mudslingers spattering the discourse on CNN, NBC, and CBS, Weld offered a startlingly non-apocalyptic take on the evening's results: "What saddens me," he said, "is that the fifty percent of the population who voted for each candidate think that the other guy is a corrupt fool. I've worked with Kerry and Bush, and they're both bright, decent guys."

Now, Weld is a Republican, and it's easy to be magnanimous when your side is winning. But what Weld didn't mention is that he ran against Kerry in an ugly U.S. Senate campaign back in 1996. That campaign showcased one of those classic Kerry flip-flops that Bush has made so much hay out of. With the race close in the final days, Kerry violated an agreement he'd negotiated with Weld not to use his family's personal fortune to finance his campaign. He bought some last-minute negative advertising and squeaked out a win, meanwhile accusing Weld of violating the agreement first - a bogus claim. Weld has every reason to harbour a grudge. In fact, he probably does. But he didn't feel the need to air it on national TV. It was genuinely classy.

For the record, I was pulling for Kerry. I think Bush is an incompetent manager whom Americans should have taken the opportunity to fire last night. But let's relax. He's not going to bomb the French. He's not going to personally strangle every caribou in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. He's not going to send the National Guard to round up hippies and put them in bible college. He's not going to make Arabs sew felt crescents on their shirtsleeves. I'm even optimistic that, like his father, Bush will decline the opportunity to stock the Supreme Court with right-wing extremists. Bush knows that if abortion rights were overturned it would be an electoral disaster for his party.

There will probably be a lot of comments made in upcoming days about the freakish political inclinations of the American people - those bible-thumpers, those Big Mac eaters, those cattle-rapin' gun nuts. How can they continue voting for this guy when the rest of us are so certain he's a spazz? It should be kept in mind that, even in strongly Republican states like Montana and Kansas, one out of every three people voted for "our" candidate, Kerry. In the population overall, a sliver less than half the voters chose Kerry. In the electoral college, a break of less than a percentage point in Ohio would've meant a new president. If that one percent of Ohioans had shifted their preferences, everyone would now be gushing about how the American people had repudiated conservatism and chosen a radically new direction. It's silly to generalise about the whole country based on these results. All we've learned is that, for the second election in a row, the Bush team demonstrated marginally superior organising prowess in a handful of key states.

But in another four years, the Democrats get to try again. Hopefully with a candidate who's a little less stiff and pompous. Meanwhile, Bush will continue to spend freely while cutting taxes, advocate free trade while imposing tariffs, and equate tough talking with a sound national security policy. I sorely wish that this Republican President could be a bit more like William Weld and a little less like his cocksure self. But regardless, the world will survive. So everyone, please give your hippie friends a hug and tell them to calm down, it's gonna be alright.

Re: Tuesday Weld.
Wed, 03 Nov 2004

I'd never seen William Weld "in person" before, but from what I've read, I've always liked him. I understand he was going to run for president in 2000 if he'd won that senate seat. Most likely he would've gone the way of John McCain in the primaries - in fact, they'd have split the moderate vote - but I can imagine a President Weld who'd be sort of like President Bush with all the kooky protruding edges filed down. Tax cuts, maybe, but not without a balanced budget. Invading Iraq, maybe, but not without a genuine coalition. I guess it's too much to ask for moderation from a Republican president these days. Even McCain has to pretend to be buddies with Bush in order to get the family-values mafia onboard for 2008. But enough about America, I apologise for rambling. I'll keep it all inside until the midterms in two years.

Re: Tuesday Weld.
Thu, 04 Nov 2004

Olin Valby wrote:

What does concern me is the general observation that Canadians care more about what happens in the American election than our own.

Plato and Dion.
Thu, 18 Nov 2004

Plutarch's "Lives", 1200 pages long, has been sitting on my bedside table for two or three years now, and I've been flipping back and forth in it, reading and re-reading and creeping painstakingly forward, and I'm now just a hundred or so pages from the end. Last night I came across the story of Dion, the student of Plato's Academy who overthrew the tyrannical government of Syracuse and attempted to govern according to Plato's theories. It's a pretty ripping story, and once again I thought, maybe I can use this for a rock opera or a play or something.

I once considered writing a play based on Plutarch's life of Cato the Younger, but abandoned the idea cos I don't know enough about the Stoics. The problem with writing about Dion is that I don't know enough about Plato. I read "The Republic" a while back, and I fancy that I understood a fair bit of it. But still. If you're gonna write a play about a genius, you'd better be pretty smart yourself, otherwise you'll only draw attention to your own deficiencies. Remember that movie a few years back where Walter Matthau played Albert Einstein as a kind of loveable old Jewish busybody, meddling in Meg Ryan's love life? All the science-talkin' took place conveniently offstage. Einstein was reduced to a funny haircut. If you can't illustrate the central fact that makes the character interesting, what's the point? Why are you writing this movie, and not "Revenge of the Nerds IV"?

One would hate to reduce Plato to a thoughtful fellow in sandals and a dress. Then again...

SCENE: PLATO is walking at the Piraeus, lost in thought. Enter DION.

DION: Plato, old man!

PLATO: Dion! How's it going, youngster?

DION: I ain't so young anymore, old buddy. Gettin' stiffer in the ol' biffer, you know what I'm sayin'. How's the philosophy treatin' ya?

PLATO (with a deep sigh): Eh. Some days you got it, some days you don't.

DION: Not so good, huh?

PLATO: Ah, don't even get me started. So...what've you been up to? Speusippus tells me you're going to overthrow the tyrant Dionysius.

DION: Well, you know. I figured I'd get together all the exiles, have a bit of a bull session, kinda run the idea past them. And if they're into it...who knows? Maybe we'll hire up some mercenaries...sail to Syracuse...kinda take it from there.

PLATO: Worth a try, right?

DION: Shit, why not? I'm tired of sittin' on my duff while that sonofabitch wrecks the country. Not to mention marrying my wife off to one of his cronies. Hey...speaking of which...I mean, I know you've got a bit of a gripe with Dionysius...what with his dad selling you into slavery and all...

PLATO: Yeah, that kind of cheesed me off.

DION: Want to join the expedition? We could use a smart guy like you. And if things go well, you could be...I dunno, Secretary of Education, or something.

PLATO: Education? Give me a break. Secretary of State...maybe...

DION: Be realistic, old-timer. I don't think the people of Syracuse are gonna take too kindly to an Athenian Secretary of State.

PLATO: You mean they're still not over that whole business with the Athenian conquering army? Come on, that's ancient history. It's the 350s now.

DION: I'm just sayin'...

PLATO: Alright, alright. Anyhow, I'm an old man. I'll leave the killing and the swordplay for the stiff peckers like you.

DION: Well, don't say I never ask you to do nothin'.

PLATO: Yeah, yeah. So, what kind of government are you planning to set up?

DION: Glad you asked. In the short term, I'm thinking, a democracy.

PLATO: What!

DION: I know...

PLATO: Weren't you paying attention back at the Academy? Democracy is for suckers, Dion! Suckers!

DION: Hear me out. It's just a short-term thing. Get the people behind me, you know. Then I'm gonna bring in some advisers from Corinth - all on the hush-hush, you understand - and we're gonna work out an oligarchical-aristocratical constitution.

PLATO: Alright...I guess that's a little better...

DION: Keep that up for a generation or so, meanwhile molding a selected class of youngsters, with careful training in music, gymnastics, soldiery, and rhetoric, into an elite cadre of philosopher-guardians.

PLATO: Hmm...

DION: And then turn 'em loose and - whammo! The Perfect State!

PLATO: Huh. I'm impressed. Looks like you've thought it all out.

DION: Well, I'm still working on the details.

PLATO: Keep at it. I think you're going to make a good ruler. So let me ask you, Dion, what are your plans for Dionysius once you've got him in custody?

DION: That sonofabitch. Let me tell ya, I got a special treat worked out for him.

PLATO: Yeah?

DION: Hee hee, you'll like this, it's nasty. See, I stick 'im in this underground cavern, right...

PLATO: Uh-huh...

DION: And he's chained up so he can't move his head...hee hee...and he's looking at this blank wall...

PLATO: ...Yes...

DION: And there's a big fire burning behind him...and there's people standing behind him, between him and the fire...like, movin' around and stuff...castin' shadows on the wall...

PLATO: ...Uh...

DION: And he can't move his head, right? So he just has to sit there, watchin' these goddamn shadows on the blank wall! For the rest of his goddamn life! Ha!

A pause.

PLATO: Hmm.

DION: Well? Whaddaya think? Nasty, hey?

PLATO: It's interesting.

DION: Interesting? Is that all you have to say?

PLATO: It's giving me some interesting ideas...

DION: Yeah?

PLATO: Yeah...why don't we wander off over here and discuss it?

DION: Okay.

They start walking.

PLATO: You see, I've been working on this concept of forms...

They wander offstage.

Groucho in Canada.
Mon, 29 Nov 2004

I stayed up all night reading a biography of Groucho Marx. I came across these interesting Canada-related anecdotes:

1) Groucho once picked up gonorrhea from a hooker in Montreal.

2) The first time Groucho met Charlie Chaplin was when they were both performing on the Vaudeville circuit in, of all places, Winnipeg. Chaplin was getting $25 a week and owned one shirt, which he took off and washed every two weeks.

3) Another time, also in Winnipeg, Jack Benny passed Groucho's dressing room and heard laughter. Poking his head in, he found Groucho all alone, laughing at a book by the Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock. That's how Benny started reading Leacock, whom he considered to be the funniest writer ever.

It's surprising to me that Winnipeg was such a theatrical hotspot in the early years of the 20th century. I guess back then it was a relatively more important centre. In 1910, when up-and-coming stars like Chaplin and the Marx Brothers were performing there, Winnipeg already had 170,000 people, while Los Angeles only had half a million. Since then Winnipeg has pretty much stagnated. It still hasn't reached a million, and I expect this is the high-water mark. Eventually world population growth will slow and then reverse, and folks will drift away from Manitoba and Saskatchewan to more attractive climates, and future Canadians (if any still exist who think of themselves as Canadians) will regard the wind-eroded metropolises of the Prairies as artifacts of a doomed colonisation, the way we now regard the Viking ruins at L'Anse aux Meadows. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

9000 kilometres.
Tue, 18 Jan 2005

When we were walking through Manhattan on our first night in New York, I spotted an arch in the distance that seemed familiar to me. "I feel like I should know that arch," I said. "I wonder if that's Washington Square?" Sure enough, it was the arch at the entrance to Washington Square Park. It was weird because I swear I had no idea that the arch existed. But apparently, after seeing god knows how many movies set in New York City, the image was stored in my subconscious.

Strange walking down streets that are so immediately familiar from Seinfeld, Scorsese films, Spider-Man comic books. There's nothing especially distinctive about Manhattan's streets - no more distinctive than parts of Toronto or Vancouver or even Saskatoon, I mean. But every time you turn your head in New York City, there's a view you've seen somewhere before. It's like a constant state of deja vu.

The skating rink at Rockefeller Plaza is tiny, unbelievably small. You could toss a snowball from one end to the other.

You can't really see much at the World Trade Center. It's just a big construction site. But you get a sense of the scale of the catastrophe when you look at all the buildings surrounding it - every single one has some kind of structural damage, huge holes ripped in the side, crumbling walls held up by scaffolding.

Road trip.
Sat, 29 Jan 2005

Granted, many of the stories are of the you-had-to-be-there variety. What can I say about the tiny basement jazz club we found in Chicago, where you had to cross the stage and squeeze between the bassist and the saxophone player to reach the men's room? ...Or the French swing guitar band we saw in an obscure bar in Brooklyn, where Olin somehow befriended the bassist's girlfriend, who introduced us to the bassist himself, who, after the show ended, let Olin play his upright bass?

There was the blizzard in Chicago that emptied the freeways of all traffic except for us and the snowplows, and where the wind was so fierce that it sent me skidding along the icy sidewalk...Olin, drunk and toqueless and dressed in a light jacket, insisting that we wander the streets of downtown Chicago till we found our misplaced car - "If we head northwest and cover the streets in a grid pattern, we're sure to come across it" - until I forced him to hail a taxi.

John, the Chicago street hustler who extorted about twenty bucks from us and promised to hook us up with anything we wanted: "Party favours, women, guns, hand grenades..." We spent the rest of the trip regretting that we hadn't taken him up on the grenade. John nevertheless directed us to the coolest bars in town, and told us where to find the good strip clubs...by which he meant the "bad" strip clubs..."These places downtown, they won't even let you touch the girls. I'll take you to a place on the south side where you can roll up a twenty and shove it up a girl's ass."

Olin hitting on the oldest women in the bar in Chicago, and chastising me for failing to "close the deal" with the 35-year-old bar ladies that I'd invited to play pool with us...

Doctor Dirty inviting us into his home recording studio and playing us some of his newest tunes, then helping Olin & I record a rough version of our song Nerds in Paradise. I came home with a free copy of "Dr. Dirty's Sphincter - Unplugged", a live recording of classic dirty song parodies. Wish I'd remembered to get it signed...

Olin's cousin Karen Valby, who writes for Entertainment Weekly, and who spent a week on the road with former members of Guns N Roses, including Slash and Duff McKagan, and who is therefore the coolest person I've ever met...and who invited us into her office and told each of us to choose a book off her shelf, since they were advance copies that she got for free...then took us to a pompous Italian restaurant where, for unknown reasons, they projected old Fellini movies onto the floor of the men's room.

The baffling "Vaudeville" show in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, assembled and performed by a bunch of geeky 18-year-olds, in which Olin and I performed two songs (and received a gratifying positive review in the local community newspaper), and where Warren was coerced into demonstrating his favourite science experiment...

THE U.S. DEBUT OF "DR. SCIENCE"

The curtain parts. Warren emerges, carrying a stool and a box with a towel draped over it.

WARREN: It is I, Doctor Science, just arrived from the wilds of central Wisconsin to entertain you with scientific curiosities!

He places the stool in the center of the stage.

WARREN: I present you with...the Apparatus! DoodoodooDOOOO...

He makes a funny sound effect as he lifts the towel, revealing...an empty shoebox with a round hole roughly carved into the side. Fog is swirling around in the hole.

WARREN: But I hear you asking, Doctor Science, what could this amazing Apparatus be? Is it...a shoebox with a hole in it? Or is it in fact...a Vortex Generator? Let us test out the Apparatus and find out!

Winding up, he prepares to thump the plastic membrane on the back of the shoebox.

WARREN: Aaaand a one! Aaaand a two! Aaaand a...THREE!

He thumps the shoebox. A little puff of fog sputters out.

The audience stares, baffled. The briefest of pauses.

WARREN: Shoebox with a hole in it! ...Goodnight!

Warren ducks behind the curtain.

In the audience, Michael is laughing so hard he starts to cough uncontrollably.

Alright...I guess you sorta had to be there.*

--

* - Update, June 13 2008. Not so. Now you can simply watch the video.

Rock opera page / rock-n-roll party.
Sun, 20 Feb 2005

Jay Arnold wrote:

"The Wall" makes little sense at first but people love it! So why are they so hard on our show?

The thing about "The Wall" is, Pink Floyd had the budget and the experience to pull off their ridiculous ambitions. We were trying to do something similar on a budget of next to nothing. Plus, Pink Floyd were a famous band already; people didn't come into "The Wall" having no idea what to expect, as they did with 404. Pink Floyd didn't face the requirement to create an instant good impression, as we had to. Despite the "edgy" reputation of the Fringe, most Fringe shows I've seen have actually been pretty tame. When you're asking people to pay eight bucks to see an act they've probably never heard of, you need to get the audience on your side immediately, which is why Fringe acts tend to be heavy on broad physical comedy. We gave them a dude in a bed for a half hour.

I was a little worried that my tone on the 404 page sounded overly negative. I'm actually quite proud of what we accomplished; it was a noble experiment, and it didn't quite come off.

The Man clamps down.
Thu, 03 Mar 2005

I have to admit that The Man has been pretty easy on me these last few years. I've managed to get away with a heck of a lot of soft living on the government's dime: several ill-planned road trips, a couple rock operas, and a lot of emails sent from my cubicle when I should've been filling out my supervisor's travel claim forms. The fact that I have barely any accomplishments to show for these years of sloth I cannot, try as I might, blame on The Man. He doesn't make me stay up all night enjoying Carole Lombard library movie-thons. Nor can The Man be blamed for my current status of deepening poverty. He didn't ask me to spend my savings on recording time. The fact is, The Man has been extremely lenient. I can only be grateful to him.

Lately, however, The Man has been signalling that he grows impatient with my ways. First there was that letter from the Employment Insurance people, ordering me to report for a "group information session" on March 10, to learn about my "rights and responsibilities" as an EI recipient. Sure, it sounds innocuous, but I know this session is really just an excuse for The Man to get all us slackers together in one room and chew us out for our slacking. To this end, The Man has asked me to bring along a list of all the jobs I've been applying to over the last six months. This list, as you all could probably guess, is shockingly brief. Reckoning liberally, I can maybe stretch the list to one entry. A conservative estimate would be slightly lower.

"It is very important for you to come to this session," says the letter. "If you do not, your benefits could be stopped or refused." So skipping it isn't an option. I'm hoping that when I show up with my blank piece of paper and an innocent expression, I will escape official sanction, and that The Man will restrict himself to mere verbal abuse.

Another karmic thunderbolt struck me Monday night around 3 AM as Andrew and I drove home from our recording session. I was pulling out of the 7-11 on 8th and Clarence, where Andrew had just picked up a life-restoring Slurpee. Too impatient to wait for a left turn at the Clarence Avenue light, I pulled instead onto 8th Street and did a U-turn around the median to head east. I drove along feeling very pleased with myself for having shaved fifteen seconds off our journey, until a cop dropped out of the sky, lights flashing, and presented me with a $115 ticket. Which might not sound too steep, until you calculate that $115 represents 68% of my current net worth.

The ticket stung me. But it's the first one I ever got, and considering the number of times I've gotten away with far worse transgressions, I can't really blame The Man for finally putting his foot down. Jenn says I might be able to get the ticket reduced to a few hours of community service, and save the $115 for future slacking. But I'll still get the points on my license. Which is alright, I guess, cos I don't really know what the points mean. I'd prefer if no-one told me.

The Rule of Threes says that The Man has one more nasty surprise in store for me. As a result, I've been postponing my tax return.

Michael reviews the weekend.
Mon, 07 Mar 2005

A while back it occurred to me that maybe I should attempt brief reviews of every movie I saw. Primarily to keep my critical faculties from atrophying.

I think I'd make a lousy critic. When I strongly like or dislike a work of art, it's frequently beyond me to explain why. I tend to be a poor filmgoing companion for precisely this reason. I remember going to a movie with my then-girlfriend Eleanor in Vancouver - I think it was the A.S. Byatt adaptation "Angels and Insects" - and as the audience emptied onto the street Eleanor asked what I'd thought of it. "Don't ask me that," I replied, sounding rather more testy than I'd intended. We walked to the skytrain station in silence. I'd only meant that it was too soon after the movie ended for me to have formulated an intelligent opinion. (Even now, almost a decade later, I'm still not sure if I liked it or not. I do remember liking Kristin Scott Thomas.)

I'm a poor critic because I don't have any theory of what constitutes art, and in the absence of such a theory, it is difficult to evaluate whether a work of art is good or bad. Or even whether it is, in fact, "art". And yet, usually after reading a book or watching a movie (less often when listening to music, which to me is the most mysterious art form) I come out of it with a strong impression of "goodness" or "badness" or, most often, "okayness". Where does this feeling come from? I'm too stupid to explain it. I'm too stupid to say for certain whether the properties of "goodness" and "badness" and "okayness" are intrinsic to the works of art they describe, or if they exist solely in my mind - and if it's all in my mind, is there any point attempting to convince another person that my subjective response to "Angels and Insects", or any other artwork, is more valid than his?

But surely there is some property that good artworks contain, which bad artworks do not? Surely there is a difference between "The Man in the High Castle", a rather good book, and "Alongside Night", a badly-written and stupid book? Is it simply that the former attunes more successfully with inborn human traits or acquired cultural prejudices re good storytelling - that it more closely resembles our instinctive sense of what a good story is - that it pushes our buttons more effectively? If that's all it is - button-pushing - then I'm afraid all criticism is fundamentally meaningless. Because everybody has a different set of buttons. And if some yokel comes up to me and says "Alongside Night" is the most thrilling, insightful, and inspiring novel he's ever read, how can I prove he's wrong? I can't grasp the layout of his buttons any more than he can grasp the layout of mine.

Having said all that, I believe that "goodness" and "badness" do exist, that they exist outside of ourselves, and that however incapable we are of isolating them or even proving they exist, it's still important to try to identify them when we see them.

But I'm setting too large a goal for myself. All I want to do is record some of my reactions to some books and movies, in case some of my insights turn out to be interesting, for myself more than anyone else. I thought I'd start with the movies I've watched and the books I've read over this weekend.

GOODBYE MR. CHIPS (BOOK)
GOODBYE MR. CHIPS (FILM)

I took a long time getting around to James Hilton's "Goodbye Mr. Chips" because I figured it would be unbearably sentimental. I thought it would make me cry, and it did. I am always slightly resentful of books and movies that make me cry. I think it's because I mistrust emotional responses. I know how easy it is to be manipulated by swelling violins and soft-focus photography. The final seconds of the film version of "Goodbye Mr. Chips" provide a pretty good example of this. The adorable round-faced schoolboy moppet turns toward the camera and says, "Goodbye, Mr. Chips...goodbye..." This had me in tears, although I found the moppet in question extremely irritating.

I think my emotional reaction to the movie was mostly due to the memories it triggered of the much better book. All the anecdotes that in the book seemed so affecting were somehow muted in their cinematic form. Take the scene where Chips continues to teach his Latin lesson while the German bombs are falling all around the school. Chips bucks up his students' spirits by directing them to read a passage by Julius Caesar describing the warlike tendencies of the Germanii. What the movie misses is that Chips is an impossible old coot, and that this act of stubbornness in the face of war is of a kind with his intransigence in teaching the old-style Latin pronunciation.

By excising the "hmphs" that punctuate his sentences, by pretending that his terrible Latin puns are funny, by exaggerating the degree of his camaraderie with his students, the filmmakers make Chips more likeable, and therefore somehow less loveable, than Hilton's version. The point of Mr. Chips is not that he's very wise, or very funny, or really very anything, except old. He's an essentially boring, decent, cautious old guy who has devoted his life to a middling institution, and who dies more or less happy. In the book his final cheesy joke - "I've had children, thousands of them, all boys" - induces a slight wince, even as you tear up at Chips' self-satisfied reflection that his utterance will be repeated with pleasure around the playground. In the movie, the cheesy joke is played straight - and leads right into that irritating round-faced moppet - and it's just a bit too much, thanks.

Greer Garson is quite wonderful. I wish she'd had a few more scenes. Also, it took me a while to figure out that the young headmaster in the opening scenes of the film is the guy who played Freddy in the Leslie Howard version of "Pygmalion".

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER

Almost turned this off during the first couple minutes. Something about the irrepressible man-child loose in the city set off my Forrest-Gump-o-meter. Maybe it's just that he was such a crappy actor.

After that, all good. I was genuinely surprised by the ending - I guess I figured Singer would ride off into the sunset, having set the lives of all these idiosyncratic southerners in order. But the movie is sophisticated enough to acknowledge the painful inner life of the saintly misfit. No Forrest Gump here.

Sondra Locke is perfect. Now I'm going to have to hunt down some of her later collaborations with Clint Eastwood, including that movie with the orangutan.

MR. AND MRS. SMITH

Strange how movies from the thirties dealt with sex. The women were lithe and beautiful and frequently flounced around braless in low-cut and backless gowns. Carole Lombard could reputedly match up profanity-for-profanity with the average longshoreman. And of course everyone fucked around with everyone else. Yet everyone involved in the film industry was obliged to pretend that they adhered to a morality imported on the Mayflower.

So this couple discovers after four years of marriage that due to a technicality they were never legally married in the first place, and suddenly the wife is too shy to get undressed in her husband's presence? Get real. Imagine how great the screwball comedies might have been if they were allowed to occur in a sexual universe somewhat resembling this one.

Maybe the screwball genre is the logical outcome of this sexual schizophrenia? The only way to write a funny movie under the Hays Code was to take these ridiculous hang-ups to extremes?

Carole Lombard was simply a genius. Robert Montgomery also very funny, especially the scene in the restaurant, attempting to escape a bad blind date by breaking his own nose.

SHADOW OF A DOUBT

I have nothing really to say about this, except the ending always struck me as a bit of a letdown. A few seconds of struggling, and then Uncle Charlie just kinda falls out of the train. We don't even really glimpse how Teresa Wright manages to twist out of his grasp.

Now that I think about it, many of Hitchcock's climaxes seem a bit weak. "North by Northwest" - tension builds, tension builds, and then the feds arrive and in seconds it's all over. "Rear Window" - tension builds, tension builds, and then Jimmy Stewart loses his grip and drops and it's not such a terrible fall, really. "39 Steps" - a five-second shootout and that's about it.

Never cared for that square FBI man who falls for Teresa Wright. Maybe Hitch deliberately chose a dud for the leading man part...on some perverse level, you're kind of rooting for her to get together with Uncle Charlie.

TEA AND SYMPATHY

Another one of those good movies whose sexual politics are so antique that you have a hard time getting emotionally involved. What if the kid really were a homo? Presumably all the abuse would then be justified?

I'm really starting to like Deborah Kerr, though. I saw "Separate Tables" not long ago and thought it was nearly perfect (except for Rita Hayworth, who is a terrible actor and was beginning to look a little too puffy to pass for an object of unqualified lust). Kerr and David Niven are especially touching. Also the scene where Burt Lancaster admits that he's not in love with Wendy Hiller, and she accepts it with a heartbreaking English briskness.

ALONGSIDE NIGHT

Crappy libertarian sci-fi novel by J. Neil Schulman. My dad bought me this years ago, and I kept it around through numerous moves cos it looked like I might someday find it interesting. The premise is fine - America is crippled by hyperinflation (the book was written in the Carter administration) and an anarchist underground topples the increasingly oppressive federal government. I don't know enough about economics to challenge the basic premise of the plot, which is that a monetary system not based on gold or some other commodity will inevitably self-destruct. The fact that inflation has been well under control for about two decades would seem to suggest that Schulman overlooked a variable, but what do I know?

Apart from questionable dogma, the novel's biggest flaw is that it's hopelessly boring. Protagonist wanders from scene to scene killing time, intermittently getting in touch with the revolutionaries who are the actual agents of the plot. Runs into one of those flawless sci-fi girls - beautiful, sexually promiscuous, fascinated by the fiction of Robert Heinlein and the movies of the Marx Brothers, and, although not yet out of high school, able to argue laissez-faire economics for pages at a time. Together, in between satisfying their voracious sexual appetites, they read books, watch movies, listen to classical music, and always Schulman takes care to tell us exactly what they're reading, watching, and listening to - obviously because they're precisely the same things Schulman enjoys.

Interestingly, there's an afterword where Schulman criticises the writings of Ayn Rand for her absurdly superheroic characters. (The afterword is more readable than the novel, probably because the author is no longer compelled to break up his arguments into stilted dialogue among indistinguishable characters.) I never got more than halfway through "Atlas Shrugged" because I couldn't believe Rand took all this crap seriously; it read like a parody of a didactic novel. Schulman correctly diagnoses the main weakness in Rand's writing, but is hampered by an even greater weakness of his own. However loony, Rand was a fairly capable stylist, whereas Schulman is simply a crappy writer.

Anyway, now that I've read it, I'm putting "Alongside Night" on my discard pile.

A KISS BEFORE DYING

More popular fiction, this time by Ira Levin. Another one I'm finally moving from my read-eventually pile onto my discard pile. Levin wrote this when he was in his early twenties, which depresses me, because overall it's pretty good. Undermined by a disappointing third act.

Basically, the anti-hero is a handsome, slick social-climber who beds all three daughters of a wealthy industrialist. All he's trying to do is marry into the family, but plans keep going awry, forcing him to murder each daughter in turn, and move onto the next one.

By the time we get to the third act and the third daughter, we're all excited, because (we mistakenly assume) the murderer is finally going to meet his match. The eldest daughter has been built up as the cleverest of the bunch, and we look forward to seeing her unravel his deceptions. But then Levin pulls a trick and the father, the wealthy industrialist, winds up being the hero of the book. The third daughter is just as clueless as the first two.

I don't know why this bothered me. I certainly didn't see it coming. I guess something about the murderer's modus operandi demanded that his comeuppance come at the hands of a woman. Poetic justice, y'know. Perhaps it's unfair of me to hold the book to fault for failing to end predictably, but sometimes the predictable ending is the right one.

THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE

Never read Philip K. Dick before. Guess I was expecting something different. Enthusiasts comparing him favourably to Borges, etc., are right on track. Strange, wonderful, unnerving.

End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones
Mon, 07 Mar 2005

Joey died too early to contribute much to the making of this documentary, which is a pity, because obviously the real story here is Johnny vs. Joey Ramone. Dee Dee and the interchangeable drummers are interesting but secondary characters.

Joey Ramone, the shy liberal with a fondness for surf rock and '50s girl bands. Johnny Ramone, the outspoken conservative with a mania for "authenticity", defined as hewing unerringly to the 1-2-3-4 grinding aesthetic of their CBGBs years. In early interview footage, Johnny dismisses a question about Blondie and other punk acts going "mainstream": "If they wanna do disco, that's their business. We've still got our artistic integrity." What Johnny never grasped is that sometimes "artistic integrity" means something besides doing exactly the same thing, over and over again. Sometimes it means branching out, adapting, changing. The band's collaboration with Phil Spector might have been ill-fated, but I wonder what might have happened if Johnny had been more willing to relax and try out different things.

Eventually Johnny stole, and later married, Joey's girlfriend. Joey, the hopeless romantic, never forgave him. It's hard to imagine the kind of girl who could move so rapidly from one of these guys to the other - it would be like dating Woody Allen and then Arnold Schwarzeneggar. Anyway, the tale only burnishes Joey's image as the tragic loser-hero of rock-n-roll, the true raging id of male adolescent energy, much more so than the absurd Jim Morrison. Morrison is what we'd like our id to be, leather-pantsed and sexually dangerous. Joey is what our id really is: nerdy, angry at our parents, self-destructively violent, obsessed with horror movies, ambivalent about girls. I thank the gods that Joey Ramone ever existed. He showed us that there is a way to transcend, albeit imperfectly, the curse of being a freak.

Marmeluks.
Tue, 08 Mar 2005

You might have read that U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow has floated Bono as a possible candidate for the next president of the World Bank. It's probably just a cheap attempt by Snow to swipe a little of Bono's fame in order to get his own name in the papers. Or maybe the White House is trying to add a little pizzazz to a dull process that will inevitably end in the appointment of a graying academic, economist, or financier - i.e., someone "qualified" - to the post. Or who knows, maybe we should take the idea seriously.

Either way, I was inspired to vomit forth the following...

PRESIDENT BONO AND THE KING OF THE MARMELUKS

When Bono was President of the World Bank,
The King of the Marmeluks grinned in his lair.
He gathered the High Priests together to thank
Them all for their service, and offered a prayer
To the gods Ashtaroth and Belial and Baal,
Then summoned his Grand Vizier into the hall,
Took hold of his top-knot, and gave it a yank--
When Bono was President of the World Bank.

"The time has arrived," said the King. "To attack!
"We'll pour o'er the border in phalanx well-girded
And strike; and they'll be too surprised to fight back;
They won't see it coming; their thoughts are diverted
By movie-star weddings and must-see TV..."
He cackled and kicked the Vizier in the knee.
"Their minds," he said, "must be sufficiently blank--
They've made Bono President of the World Bank!"

Meanwhile we perused, in our quiet domain,
The hottest headlines in the Daily Gazette:
J-Lo had a baby named Apple Scout Rain,
Kid Rock and The Rock sang a poignant duet,
Pope Marky Mark canonised Saint Buddy Holly,
And Britney Spears married Boutros Boutros-Ghali,
Brad Pitt made a movie - and, oddly, it stank--
And Bono was President of the World Bank.

But now our tranquility died with a crack,
As the Hollywood sky split from sun to horizon,
And out of this fissure of infinite black
The Marmeluks thundered like stampeding bison.
They swarmed through the glittering city of fun,
And made Brad Pitt dance at the point of a gun,
And viciously ridiculed Hillary Swank--
When Bono was President of the World Bank.

The Marmeluks drove all in chaos before 'em.
They killed famous people on sight - how they hated 'em!
They sliced off celebrities' faces, and wore 'em
On top of their own faces - and imitated 'em.
They cheered for the Lakers, and sat near the floor
Where the cameras would spot them; embraced Michael Moore;
They even made movies - not ALL of them stank--
When Bono was President of the World Bank.

And who could've saved Hollywood from this fate?
If Governor Schwarzeneggar had been free,
He, all by himself, might have rescued the state...
But alas, he was off filming "Predator 3".
And as Marmeluks multiplied, week after week,
That movie-star glamour soon lost its mystique,
And the West Coast economy went into the tank--
BUT...Bono was President of the World Bank!

The King of the Marmeluks bowed at the knee,
As Bono sat there looking quite rock-star-esque,
In black leather jacket and form-fitting tee,
His feet resting on his mahogany desk.
"Dear President Bono, we're coming to grief,"
Said the simpering King. "We request debt relief."
And Bono leaned back, rather pleased with his rank--
It's good to be President of the World Bank.

Did you read yesterday in the Daily Gazette?
Look here - it says the World Bank has agreed
To wipe out the whole Marmelukkian debt...
And Marmeluk Martha has finally been freed...
And Marmeluk Brad and Jen got in a fight...
And Marmeluk Britney got wasted last night...
It's all back to normal - and who should we thank?
Why, Bono, the President of the World Bank!

Warren Beatty - Deborah Kerr.
Tue, 15 Mar 2005

I sort of expected "Reds" to be a load of propagandistic horseshit, but it's pretty even-handed. Whenever you get too exasperated with Beatty and Keaton and their revolutionary zeal, Jack Nicholson's Eugene O'Neil comes along and deflates their pretensions. (It's easy to forget, for all his hamminess in starring roles, that Nicholson is a damn effective character actor.) We get a hilarious glimpse into the quarrelsome, inbred world of the American communist movement - where a fight for control of the Socialist Party executive quickly escalates into a three-way schism among the Socialist Party, Communist Party, and Communist and Labor Party. But the movie is really about Beatty and Keaton's relationship. While Keaton's character is convincing, I found it hard to get a grasp on Beatty. Apart from being ridiculously handsome, his appeal lies solely in his maniac convictions. So when his convictions settle into dogma, what's left to like about him? After basically telling him to stuff his politics and get the hell out, Keaton travels across Scandinavia by foot to rescue him from a Finnish prison. This is perhaps an act of love, or perhaps of noble self-sacrifice, or both. But when they're reunited in Russia, and Beatty is dying in her arms, and it's clear that after all they've been through, she loves him anyway - well, why? It's a Hollywood convention - we're made to believe that Love Conquers All, even gross political naiveté. But with a little tweaking, we can turn "Reds" from a love story to a feminist tragedy: our heroine, after long resentful years spent trying to escape the glare of her husband's charisma, finally gives up her independence and accepts her wifely role. And as Jack Reed ascends into history's sustaining embrace, Louise Bryant disappears into...what, exactly? I wouldn't have minded a brief coda showing what happened to Louise after Jack's death. Was she stuck in Russia? Did she continue to write? Or did she dedicate herself, tragically, as so many wives do, to burnishing the memory of her saintly genius husband?

Speaking of Warren Beatty, "Bulworth" was on the late show a couple nights ago. I don't know what to make of that mess of a movie. What usually happens with polemical dramas is that the polemics get in the way of the drama, and I think that's the problem with "Bulworth"; Beatty's so intent on getting his message across that he doesn't notice how clumsy and uneven his movie has become. Still, it has its moments. There's something irresistable about the premise of a lifelong bullshitter who finally cuts loose and speaks the truth. It's the same thing that makes the first half of "Network" so giddily entertaining. But Chayefsky knew that the mad prophet is beloved more for his madness than for his prophecies. After a while, the novelty of the profanity-spewing anchorman, or the rapping senator, wears off, and all you're left with is the prophecies, and somehow the prophecies aren't all that interesting on their own. Especially when they turn out not to be true.

Don Cheadle and Oliver Platt are great in their small roles. Halle Berry isn't up to the task of redeeming an utterly ridiculous part. Warren Beatty's hard to figure out. He's not an unbelievable actor, in the manner of, say, Keanu Reeves; he always seems at ease and believable in his roles. And yet his characters are just as opaque at the end of his movies as they are at the beginning. He's always averting his gaze, always keeping the audience at a distance. This is frustrating. Or maybe the word is "challenging".

I watched "The King and I" again tonight. Continuing my Deborah Kerr kick. I dunno about Rodgers & Hammerstein - the more I see their shows (in their film adaptations, anyway), the more I'm forced to conclude that they basically coasted after "Oklahoma". "South Pacific" at least has a couple good songs, but it's hamstrung by its lame, albeit well-meaning, lesson in tolerance. "The Sound of Music", admittedly, is pretty good, if you can get past the relentless perkiness. "The King and I" has no really catchy songs, and far too often the director relies on closeups of adorable children to divert our attention from the fact that there's nothing interesting happening. I won't bother griping about the casting of Rita Moreno and that cheesy white guy as a pair of Burmese lovers. But the show's main failing is its utter cop-out of an ending. There are a thousand different directions the story could go after the climactic scene, where Anna intervenes to prevent the king from punishing his runaway wife. The least plausible, and the least satisfying, is for the king to suddenly and inexplicably drop dead. I recognise that the composers were working from a pre-existing source, and presumably they owed a certain fealty to the outline of the story. But come on. We're interested in the relationship between Anna and the king - let them have just one more good scene together. Alone. Not this drawn-out deathbed business with multiple wives, children, and the Prime Minister all looking on.

The Outline of History.
Tue, 15 Mar 2005

I'm reading H.G. Wells' "Outline of History". It's a terrific book. I've just reached the Prophet Muhammad, whose vaunted moral perfection the author delineates with an endearingly dry sarcasm. Wells was an opinionated guy, who viewed modern man as the inheritor of all the world's civilisations, and who was therefore untouched by any cultural sensitivity which might restrain him from pointing out the failings of other races and religions. So, for instance, he makes clear his high regard for the teachings of Buddha, but takes no pains to conceal a withering disdain for the accretions of mystical pomp and incantatory mutterings that characterise so much of modern Buddhism. He imagines Gautama returning to earth today and paying a visit to Tibet, where "he might go from end to end...seeking his own teaching in vain." In a vast temple he would encounter priests, abbotts, and lamas prostrating themselves before a huge golden idol bearing his name. And as he wandered on:

About this Buddhist countryside he would discover a number of curious...little wind-wheels and water-wheels spinning, on which brief prayers were inscribed. Every time these things spin, he would learn, it counts as a prayer. 'To whom?' he would ask. Moreover, there would be a number of flagstaffs in the land carrying beautiful silk flags...Whenever this flag flaps, he would learn, it was a prayer also, very beneficial to the gentleman who paid for the flag and to the land generally...and this, he would realise at last, was what the world had made of his religion!