Really like the NBA much anymore, but I have to say these 2013-14 NBA team previews that Bill Simmons and Jalen Rose are running over at Grantland are so wonderful.
My favorite ones, and I have watched just about all thirty of them, are the ones for the Golden State Warriors, the Miami Heat, the Spurs, the Brooklyn Nets, and the Houston Rockets.
My favorite moment was in the Warriors one when Bill Simmons mentioned to Jalen Rose that Andrew Bogut might not like how many minutes he would be getting in the rotation and Rose spoke for the coach of the Warriors, his former teammate at Indiana, Mark Jackson. They did a little animation for it, and Jackson says to Bogut, "Really big fella? We're trying to win games here. You got your paycheck, right? Then you're going to do what I tell you to."
I showed that to Renee and she really appreciated it. With her position now at regional, she can really identify with sports leadership and how neatly it fits in with retail corporate leadership, as well.
So, if you got some time to kill, watch 'em. They are real funny, and very good.
Champagning and campaigning! "Give the people what they want!"
There was a time, back in the late 80s and early 90s, when the Velvets were most certainly in my top five rock bands. But, that ship has sailed. It sailed a long time ago. Honestly, Lou Reed was my least favorite member of the group. I was more a Sterling Morrison kind of guy. Morrison was the unsung hero of the group to me. And, I liked Mo Tucker a lot, as well.
I wonder, also, if perhaps my once passionate love for the Velvet Underground had more to do with my passion for Lester Bangs. At that time I always carried a copy of Bangs' anthology book, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, with me wherever I went. Bangs' battles with Reed were legendary. As was Bangs' absolute hero worship for Reed, too.
And, there was a crummy diner, attached to a motel, north of the UT campus, on the east side of the highway that me and friends used to "eat" at all the time. I say "eat" because it was rare that any of us actually had any money. Most of the time we would just drink coffee and smoke there. Forever. Like just about every single restaurant in Austin, it was always open. And we would spend the wee hours of the night there after parties or shows, or just because we were bored.
At this diner, they always played the same record there, over and over again: The Velvets' third record, The Velvet Underground. If you are not familiar with the Velvets work, their third record is their most unusual, and it is by far my favorite, even if John Cale by this time had left the group. The eponymously titled third record was a much more somber and quiet affair. There was nothing like Sister Ray or I Heard Her Call My Name or Heroin or Lady Godiva's Operation on it. There was also a noticeable lack of guitar feedback or "racket" on the record. Most of the songs were very composed and still and had a church like aura to them. Reed and the others did feel free to include one last avant-garde art statement on the record, though: The Murder Mystery. Which is eight minutes of pretentious silliness, Reed and Tucker prattling on in a stream of consciousness stylee over both channels separately, while the band create a bubbling coffee pot sort of rhythm for the background. I hate the song now (and Bangs always hated it), but it did fit snugly in to the mysterious and religious like mood they were trying to create with this record. I imagine The Murder Mystery as kind of a The Name of Rose abbey whodunnit story.
I will always like the third record, and as much as I sort of came to despise Reed later in my life, and as I grew weary of the pretentious annoying and completely over-rated first two albums of the Velvets, that third record will always remain special in my life. First off because of the songs. Pale Blue Eyes, Candy Says, Some Kinda Love, What Goes On, and After Hours are all masterpieces. And, for once, it at least seemed like Reed was showing vulnerability, and that those songs, and this album, was not a carefully orchestrated art performance (i.e. calculated con job.) I said seemed. Reed was always a huckster to me, selling heroin and decadence and gayness and an underground street ethos to folks out there that were plenty desperate for it, even if he did not really mean it all the time. But, for that one record, for that seeming to mean it for once, I will always be thankful to you, Lou. Thanks.
Have fun up there with Lester, dude. He's gonna be hassling you non-stop.
Lubitsch decided to make a film about a philandering Polish actress, her ham husband actor, and the little Warsaw theatre troupe that "lead" the Polish Resistance in the battle against the Nazis. It is called To Be or Not to Be.
It was Carole Lombard's last film. She died in a plane crash, returning from a World War II War Bond Tour. She was thirty-three. She died before the premiere.
Suddenly, the knives came out for Lubitsch. Although the film was not a flop exactly, there were sluggish rentals, and the critics had a field day with the picture. Critics were furious that Lubitsch dared set a comedy in Poland during wartime. The most famous of those critics was the NYT critic, Bosley Crowther, who had this to say.
But, what I did not discover until recently, when I bought the Criterion bluray edition of this bonafide Lubitsch masterpiece, To Be or Not to Be, was that Lubitsch responded to Crowther in the NYT.
And Lubitsch's argument is so well written, is so simple, matter-of-fact, and elegant, that it just makes me love and admire the man all the more.
Here is a great portion of Lubitsch's majestic rebuttal:
The picture plays -- and that is the only important thing in this issue. It answers the question whether this unusual blend of moods is successful or not. It reminds me of the patient who took the wrong pill and got well. His doctors are still convinced that, according to medical science, the man has no right being in good health again.
And how about my taste -- or rather my lack of taste? Fortunately, I am not the only one accused of that crime. My codefendant is the American motion-picture audience. Not only the thief is guilty but also he who knowingly buys stolen goods. If I have shown bad taste in playing comedy against a Warsaw background, the audiences who are enjoying that kind of humor are just as guilty.
That leads to a basic question: Have audiences bad taste? My answer is definitely no. They are not always willing to accept sophistication, or on the other hand, they might laugh at things which the sophisticate considers too naive. But their instinct and intuition always guide them in the right direction when it comes to matters of good taste. I have never yet seen vulgarity or an off-color joke getting a chance with a motion-picture audience. All of us know that embarrassing single laughter against the protesting silence of the rest of the audience.
Why then do audiences feel at liberty to laugh during To Be or Not to Be, and at times very heartily? Aren't they aware of what happened to Poland? Did I try to make them look at the Polish background through rose-colored glasses? Nothing of the kind. I went out of my way to remind them of the destruction of the Nazi conquest, of the terror regime of the Gestapo. Should American audiences be so callous that those burning ruins of Warsaw make no impression on them? I don't think that any one of us believes that. On the contrary, the many audiences I observed were deeply moved whenever the picture touched the tragedy of Warsaw. Never once have they laughed at the expense of Poland or the Polish people. They laugh at actors, they are amused by the antics of "hams," they laugh at something that is in no way typically Polish but universal.
Do I really picture the Nazis so harmless that it might be a dangerous misleading of the American people by making them underestimate the enemy? I admit that I have not resorted to methods usually employed in pictures, novels, and plays to signify Nazi terror. No actual torture chamber is photographed, no flogging is shown, no close-up of excited Nazis using their whip and rolling their eyes in lust. My Nazis are different; they passed that stage long ago. Brutality, flogging, and torturing have become their daily routine. They talk about it with the same ease as a salesman referring to the sale of a handbag. Their humor is built around concentration camps, around the sufferings of their victims.
Are those people really so harmless? Do I minimize their danger because I refrained from the most obvious methods in their characterization? Is whipping and flogging the only way of expressing terrorism? No -- the American audiences don't laugh at those Nazis because they underestimate their menace but because they are happy to see this new order and its ideology being ridiculed. They have no sympathy with men who jump out of a plane without parachutes because a man with a little mustache says, "Jump!" They have contempt for people who get a perverted pleasure out of such serfdom.
I am positive that that scene wouldn't draw a chuckle in Nazi Germany. It gets a big laugh in the United States of America. Let's be grateful that it does, and let's hope that it always will.
************
That has got to be the most lucid, elegant, and eloquent artist's response I have ever come across in my many trains of thought travels. Lubitsch is the finest.
And, so ends my train journey, which began this early morning.
All my love,
Ardent
This sign hung in Billy Wilder's office, a constant reminder to him as he worked. Lubitsch was his mentor.
I am embarrassed that I did not make the connection. And, I had just watched Andrzej Wajda's film Danton a couple of days ago, to boot.
The first stop on my Eurail Pass was at Balloon Juice this morning. Where I saw this, Anne Laurie's open thread post about the damage done to the economy by the shutdown, and her link to Harold Meyerson's brilliant column last week.
The next stop on my journey was on the platform of my recollections of seeing Danton for the first time. While watching Danton, which is a fine film, if not the ultimate Masterpiece it seems to have been swinging the fences for, I was far too busy recognizing the obvious Polish Solidarność allegory that Wajda was making, comparing Lech Wałęsa's struggle to that of Georges Danton's. How obvious is the allegory? Plenty. Wajda shot the film, which was released in 1983, at the height of Solidarność's battles with their Soviet overlords, in France, and had Polish actors play all the Jacobin roles (the dominant bloodthirsty "East"), and French actors play the more moderate Danton throng (the underdog Wałęsa-led "West"). Naturally, the film was banned in Poland at the time.
"The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians."
************
But, per your indulgence, let me arrive at the next train station, which is a Hollywood version of Warszawa in 1942.
Ernst Lubitsch is an absolute hero of mine, and one of the finest filmmakers who ever lived. He was a German jew who escaped to Hollywood before Hitler took power. Lubitsch was always testing boundaries, but before World War II his main battle was with the Puritanical way Americans looked at sex. Lubitsch was one of the Pre-Code directing/writing legends that projected a sophisticated European attitude towards sexuality and relationships. And, he was no flop. In fact, the phrase, "The Lubitsch Touch" (a way of describing the seemingly artless verisimilitude that pervades all his best pictures) was attached to him during the Pre-Code era, and is perhaps only rivaled by Hitchcock's moniker as "The Master of Suspense." Lubitsch was a smash at the box office his entire career, and a critical darling, as well. Peter Bogdanovich said (I am paraphrasing), "Looking now at Trouble in Paradise, or any of Lubitsch's Pre-Code pictures, you wonder, 'What happened? How were American audiences so sophisticated at that time? And what has happened since then?'"
But, two days after Hitler invaded Poland, and on the same day England declared war on Germany, an English cruise line ship was torpedoed and sunk, the SS Athenia. Lubitsch's ten-month old daughter, Nicola (and her nurse) were on board and were saved. Ninotchka, Lubitsch's brilliant satire of Stalinist Russia and Communism was already in the can (Billy Wilder was one of the co-writers), and would be released the following month.
Everyone at the time must have known that Lubitsch would push the envelope again, this time politically, in answer to Hitler and Nazi Germany. And he did.
The Spitler Extremely Scientific Polling Organization (SESPO) recently conducted a poll over the last few weeks. Respondents were asked the following question:
Which do you like better, STAX or Motown?
Here are the results:
39% Motown 23% STAX 15% "What's STAX? I will vote for Motown" 15% "What's STAX? What's Motown?" 8% "What's STAX? I have no preference."
Which means that nearly two thirds of those polled did at least know what STAX and Motown were. More than half polled did prefer Motown, even if 29% of those total votes were essentially by default. More folks asked "What's STAX?" than voted for STAX. Four of the eight persons over thirty-five preferred Motown. Three preferred STAX (including my Wife and myself); and one, an English wine importer, asked "What's STAX?" and claimed no preference. A grand majority of folks under thirty asked "What's STAX?" and a grand majority of folks interviewed that were legitimate musicians, or had at least played in legitimate bands, preferred STAX.
************
As the title of this post suggests, the results were just about what SESPO expected. Such is the power of Berry Gordy's magnificent recording organization and publicity machine, and depth of insanely talented recording artists, that SESPO believes that it is possible that any time someone hears a Sam and Dave track, or an Al Green track, or a James Brown track, that many folks might naturally assume that it is a Motown product.
SESPO is not here to judge, however.
Instead, SESPO would like to share some STAX videos for you to enjoy:
Hey, I have gotten on board the Schadenfreude Express just like so manyrespectedothers, but really this whole latest debacle is not a laughing matter. This GOP hissy fit has cost us over twenty billion dollars, and achieved absolutely nothing for the GOP, Democrats, or more importantly the country.
Rafael Cruz has cynically used the TradMedia, what limited powers he has, and veterans in order to fill his personal campaign coffers, the coffers of Teabagging PACs, and get his lying smirking face all over the teevee all the time. This supposed voice of the real America did not even have the guts (thankfully!) to delay the Senate's vote on Wednesday, and instead held his own personal presser while Senate leadership was detailing the "deal" to the American public. It is strictly about self-aggrandizement for him, and his "mission" has nothing to do with honest to goodness public service.
The GOP did win one thing that not many are talking about. (Except digby, she talks about it every day.) The sequester needs to be repealed, and our nation deserves a real budget that will get the economy back on track and reduce unemployment. We need no more Grand Bargains. We need to stop talking about negotiating with the GOP about Social Security and Medicare. Those programs should never be up for discussion regarding our budget. The President stood tough this time. He is not up for re-election anymore, and he needs to stand tough again.
This is my new favorite blog. I learned about it from Alex Gibney in a feature interview he did for the NYT on Sunday. Check it out. They did great coverage of the implications and possible reaction from the Fed if the debt ceiling had not been raised.
Boehner's job is safe. The asshat GOP Reps have circled the wagons around him, and are blaming the TradMedia, skewed polls, and a disrespectful evil President Obama for getting their asses handed to them. And it is hilarious to see Pelosi bailing Boehner's ass out again, with over one hundred and ninety votes. Pelosi was a great Speaker, and she deserves to be Speaker again. She is a bona fide Political Powerhouse, and a fantastic Public Servant. (Yeah, San Francisco!)
Obama said it best a couple of days ago, that if you want to make or change policy in this country, "Win an election."
I believe that the Treasury and the Fed will use "extraordinary" measures to extend the latest Debt Ceiling Deadline (February 2014) to later in the year. I also believe that the GOP will do this all over again re a Government Shutdown in January, and that that is when some awful Grand Bargain deal will be reached.
This guy is back. Read the whole thing, but this should be the big takeaway:
3. Democrats face extremely unfavorable conditions in trying to regain the House.
Even if the shutdown were to have a moderate political impact — and one that favored the Democrats in races for Congress — it might not be enough for them to regain control of the U.S. House. Instead, Democrats face two major headwinds as they seek to win back Congress.
First, there are extremely few swing districts — only one-half to one-third as many as when the last government shutdown occurred in 1996. Some of this is because of partisan gerrymandering, but more of it is because of increasingly sharp ideological divides along geographic lines: between urban and rural areas, between the North and the South, and between the coasts and the interior of the United States.
So even if Democrats make significant gains in the number of votes they receive for the House, they would flip relatively few seats because of the way those votes are distributed. Most of the additional votes would come in districts that Democrats were already assured of winning, or where they were too far behind to catch up.
Consider that, between 2010 and 2012, Democrats went from losing the average congressional district by seven percentage points to winning it by one percentage point — an eight-point swing. And yet they added only eight seats in the House, out of 435 congressional districts.
In 2014, likewise, it will require not just a pretty good year for Democrats, but a wave election for them to regain the House. But wave elections in favor of the party that controls the White House are essentially unprecedented in midterm years. Instead, the president's party has almost always lost seats in the House — or at best gained a handful.
One might be able to construct an argument for why the precedent could be violated. The pattern of the president's party losing seats in the midterms has been very strong in the past — but political scientists aren't quite sure why this is the case. One theory is that voters may elect members of Congress from the opposite party as a check on the president's power. But if Congress instead is seen as the more powerful entity, voters might desire to curb its power instead.
Essentially, Democrats will have to persuade swing voters that having Republicans in charge of one chamber in one branch of government is more dangerous than yielding unilateral control of the government to the Democrats — at a time when President Obama is fairly unpopular, and when the signature initiative of the last Democratic Congress has been rolled out badly. Moreover, the voters that Democrats have to persuade about this are somewhat right of center, since the median congressional district is somewhat Republican-leaning and since the voters who reliably turn out at midterm elections are older, whiter, and otherwise more conservative than those who vote in general elections. It's not an impossible task for Democrats, but the terrain is all uphill.
A lot of people do not know this but the Democrats beat the GOP in the general House vote by about a million and half votes in 2012. The reason they did not take over the House was because the GOP kicked ass and had their voters come out in droves in all their elections. Red states gerrymandered their districts in order to preserve a GOP controlled House. The only flipping way you can change this is to vote Democratic in every single flipping election. All of them. Every time. Every year. All the time.
All right, enough with the lecturing. This blog will be a lot more fun in the coming weeks, I promise, with more Conversations with Nick C; a post on the Salinger movie; stuff about The Sopranos, Downton Abbey, and Foyle's War; a post about Pavement; more fun polls from the Spitler Extremely Scientific Polling Organization (SESPO); and much much more.
Here is a fun video to cheer everybody up in the meantime:
I love you all, keep watching this space,
xxxoooxxx,
Ardent
I am the kind of guy that after big US wins against Mexico likes to wear his Everton FC Landon Donovan jersey. And, I have taken some heat for it. Nothing at all really bad. Mainly some dirty looks, and one guy once said, "I really really hate that guy [Donovan]."
But, after last Tuesday evening, suddenly all my Mexican supporters love me, and are genuinely thankful to me as some sort of representation of the USMNT that allowed El Tri to still have a shot at making next year's World Cup.
I am going to enjoy it for as long as I can. Because I know that the next time these two nations suit up again against each other in a meaningful match, that all this love will most likely be forgotten.
************
A couple of notes:
* These qualifying matches against New Zealand for Mexico will be no walk in the park. The Kiwis were the only team to not lose a match in the 2010 World Cup. (They drew all three matches, including one against football powerhouse Italy, which essentially knocked Italy out of the tournament.) The Kiwis are a gutty and resourceful team that are very disciplined defensively, and make up for their lack of style and flashy form with simple hard work. They are bright in the corners and tough. And Mexico's bewildering problem right now, and has been all year, is they can not score. I have a Kiwi friend at work, too. So, these two matches in November will be essential viewing for me.
* Plus, your heart just has to sink for poor Panama. They have never been to the World Cup before, and were so close. First, Mexico scores against them late with a miracle bicycle kick. And then while Mexico is losing to Costa Rica a few days later the United States scores twice against them in injury time. Maybe next time Panama. Very sad.
* What is up with the guy watching Family Guy in the corner, too?
The debt ceiling will be raised and extended until next Summer. The Shutdown will end until round Xmas time, when we go through all this again, as the House and Senate debate the budget for the country. Paul Ryan and his crew will want to gut Social Security and Medicare, and the Dems will fight for revenue increases (taxes.)
There is a school of thought that the GOP will not at all be willing to highjack the debt ceiling again next year, what with the midterms happening in 2014. But, I am not convinced. The GOP seems to be so sociopathically unhinged these days that nothing those yahoos do or say anymore even remotely shocks me.
I am also not convinced about the debt ceiling being held hostage again next year because I honestly believe that many members of the GOP seriously want to default. They really do.
What a flipping mess. We will see how this deal goes down with the President and John Boehner today and see what happens next.
Right before I go to bed, and then the reality television show, The Shutdown, as I fall asleep, and then The Shutdown, yet again, when I wake up, and then The Thick of It before I go to bed, and, etc, ...
Please stay tough, guys.
Alright, folks. Here is the scoop: Boehner's latest deal is a complete non-starter, and he is offering it only to try and embarrass Democrats. In the past I would have believed that the Dems would have caved on this one, but I do not feel like that now. Boehner knows that he will not have enough GOP votes to extend the debt ceiling limit another six weeks (thanks to the Winger Teabaggers) and will have to depend on Democratic votes to pass the thing. The Democrats will naturally want the Shutdown to end and the Debt Ceiling extended until Fall 2014, and will demand those concessions for those votes. Boehner will not agree to this, and cry, "Bloody murder! These Democrats are treasonous! Why do they keep dissingus?" And, the Shutdown and Debt Ceiling impasse will maintain.
Kabuki Theater.
They are going to reach an agreement eventually on the Debt Ceiling. And, the GOP will cave. It could happen when Boehner comes crying to Pelosi for those votes like I just talked about. Which could possibly mean the Shutdown ends, too. Or, it will happen a different way, at the very last minute next week.
It is entirely possible that the Shutdown could go on in to November. Fucking travesty!
And, the GOP do not seem to be talking about the ACA (Obamacare) anymore. Is not that funny? Now, they want to gut Social Security and Medicare without any tax increases. Which, sadly, is something Obama has been very keen to agree to in the past. That is, like I have discussed before in this space, where we are most likely headed.
The story goes like this: There is a sixteen year old girl who is four months pregnant. She is under care of foster parents, because her mother is a drug abuser, and her father abused her. In Nebraska, if you are under seventeen years of age, you must have parental consent for an abortion. Her foster parents do not know she is pregnant, and would likely kick her out of the house if they did know, so she took her case all the way to the Nebraska Supreme Court for an exception to the law. The Supremes shot that down a couple of days ago. In their judgement the Supremes declared that girl is "not sufficiently mature" to get an abortion.
But, plenty mature to be forced to have a baby, right?
Makes you sick.
Please donate to Planned Parenthood or NARAL today. And, please vote in every single election.
This is one of the most criminally underrated songs of not just the Beatles catalogue, but rock music, period. It is about the most grown-up, and adult way at looking at romantic love in a rock song format that you will ever come across. Absolute genius. He was twenty-four going on twenty-five when he wrote it.
"Girl"
Is there anybody going to listen to my story
All about the girl who came to stay?
She's the kind of girl you want so much
It makes you sorry
Still, you don't regret a single day
Ah girl
Girl
When I think of all the times I've tried so hard to leave her
Except if it were not for all the terrible damage they are doing to our country. They are holding the nation hostage all in order to deny citizens the right to get affordable health care!
How messed up do you have to be for this crap? Whatever that amount is, is how messed up the GOP is today!
Jeez Louise!
"Dang, that volcano might blow any second. How's my hair?"
It is a four minute video of 'home movies' by Ingrid Bergman around the time she was making Stromboli in Italy in the early Fifties. It is a featurette on Criterion's recent Bergman/Rossellini Italian box set.
I have spoken of this before, how the US Congress went in to a tizzy regarding the "Notorious" Ms Bergman leaving her husband and child, moving to Italy, and hooking up with Rossellini, and how they tried to get her censured by the Senate (?!), and essentially blacklisted her in the United States. But I did not know of this, which I read in Dave Kehr's great NYT review of the box set:
These moments of grace — for that is what they are — can’t be filmed or dramatized in a conventional way, which would only lead to the postcard religiosity of “The Song of Bernadette” or “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” Instead, they occur off camera, in between shots, at moments when we are looking elsewhere or thinking of something else. They happen before we know they are happening, secured in a fierce, physical reality that would seem to preclude any kind of transcendence but which in fact is its vehicle.
Back in 1950, a Times correspondent contacted the Vatican’s film office, in what must have been the certain expectation of a juicy quote condemning “Stromboli.” Instead, the anonymous reporter wrote: “They expressed surprise when told that Miss Bergman’s films had been banned in some American cities. The Catholic censors’ criterion in judging a film, they said, is solely whether its contents are in keeping with high moral standards; the private lives of actors and actresses are not a factor.”
The private lives of actors and actresses are not a factor. Heck, even the Vatican gets it right some times.
And, I hope he stands firm on the latest GOP debacle. It is pretty frickin' hilarious how the press is savaging the GOP for their latest government shutdown on the same day that the main thrust of the ACA (Obamacare) goes in to effect.
Do not ever forget that the reason the GOP hate the ACA is because they know how popular it will be once it is up and running. Of course, there will be glitches, and problems, but once it is in full force, it will be very very popular. Heck, the Heritage Foundation (a GOP "think tank" and lobbying organization) essentially came up with the program for the ACA to begin with. Obama was extremely shrewd to embrace the moniker, Obamacare. Because, now and forever his name will be attached to good legislation that the GOP will always be attached to wanting to destroy.
