Verbosity!

Beyond Life and Death (Twin Peaks Finale, S2, ep. 22)

2010-11-12T11:48:00.003-05:00

Hey! Look at that! I've got a blog!

You'd think I'd forgotten completely, based on my inexcusable lack of posting. All I can say at the moment is that there's a good reason for the silence on my end, that it's nothing bad - quite the opposite in fact - nor is it related to my writing, but that it's something currently taking up a fair amount of headspace. When I'm able to talk more about it I will.

In the meantime, and beginning next week, I promise to start showing up here more than once a week. Please to accept these patented excerpts for Twin Peaks' final episode. It's been a fun ride, and I'm very grateful that you've taken it with me. The full column will post on Chud this afternoon. Next week brings "Fire Walk With Me," the Twin Peaks prequel film. After that it's on to the next show, and I hope you'll tune in and cast your votes.

And now, excerpts!

1)

I’ve talked for a while about Cooper’s resemblance to a knight, and the show’s willingness to paint him in that light. That aspect of the show comes straight to the fore in Beyond Life and Death; Cooper, Truman and Andy explicitly reference the King Arthur legend in talking about the location known as Glastonbury Grove. Note that there are twelve sycamore trees surrounding the grove, and that in some versions of the Arthur legend there are 12 seats at the Round Table occupied by Arthur’s knights, and one seat left open for the knight destined to find the Holy Grail. This seat was referred to as the Siege Perilous, and Bullfinch’s “Age of Fable: Vol. III” tells us that on the Siege Perilous, “No man could sit but he should lose himself.”. Might the Siege Perilous of Twin Peaks be the pool at the center of the Sycamore Grove? A gateway to a realm where “No man could sit but he should lose himself?” Isn’t that, more or less, what we see happen here by the episode’s ending – Cooper losing his true self? The show’s plot also nods toward Arthurian legend by having Windom Earle kidnap a “Queen” and bring her to Glastonbury grove, which mirrors a story told by Caradoc of Llancarfan inVita Gildae ('Life of St Gildas'), and by Chrétien de Troyes in Le Chevalier de la Charette, in which the evil King Melwas (or “Meleagant”) of “The Summer Country” kidnaps Guinevere from Arthur and brings her to Glastonbury.

2)

Mark Frost’s shooting script for the final Lodge sequence differs fairly significantly from what Lynch ended up filming. You can read the script yourself here, but some of the differences are (I think) worth pointing out. Frost’s script has Sheriff Truman glimpsing an Arthurian sword and shield in Glastonbury Grove. Lynch’s episode contains no such image, denying us any further concrete connections between the show and the Arthur legend. Frost’s script describes the Black Lodge as a kind of personal Underworld. Cooper interacts with what might or might not be the spirit of his dead father, working behind the desk of a rundown, Otherworldly motel. He becomes himself as a ten year old boy, then reverts back to adulthood in a blink (and this is one aspect that remains consistent between Frost and Lynch’s ideas – the notion of time as fluid and ultimately, maybe, meaningless).

Lynch’s episode contains none of this. His Black Lodge sequence strips away nearly all of Frost’s ideas and remakes it as a nonsensical nightmare. It veers away from borrowed symbolism to invent its own symbolism from whole cloth. Logic and narrative collapse in on themselves as Cooper makes his way through identical rooms and navigates endless red drapes, participating in a series of conversations that are like encounters in a sinister Wonderland. The Little Man might as well have asked Cooper why a raven is like a writing desk. By refusing us literal meaning the show somehow manages to create a sense of deeper meaning that we're able to touch the edges of, but not perceive clearly. And yet, the real triumph of this sequence lies in its curiously powerful “antilogic”; none of this makes sense, and yet it somehow does make sense to us on an intuitive, primal level.

3)

By 'ending' where it does, Beyond Life and Death makes Twin Peaks into a kind of twisted palindrome with bookending scenes evoking the senselessness of Evil. Like the Little Man's dialogue above, the show's narrative now reads the same backwards as it does forward: Evil lodged firm in the midst of what should be -would be, in a Just world - a place of trust, safety and shelter. Both the pilot and the final episode in part concern the taking of a young woman from this life, either by murder or by metaphysics. Both of these women are Queens – one of Homecoming, one of Miss Twin Peaks. If you’re willing to give yourself over, to invest in the reality of a finale this unreal, then the show achieves a kind of unsettling poetry in it's final moments. We're left totally unmoored.

On The Wings Of Love & Variations On Relations (Twin Peaks S2, eps. 18 & 19)

2010-10-22T11:32:00.002-04:00

Sorry for my total lack of presence here, folks. The work week, yadda yadda...

By way of apology, please accept these poppin' fresh excerpts from today's Lost & Found column:

1)

After several episodes of relative tedium Twin Peaks suddenly rallied this week, turning out two enjoyably idiosyncratic installments that advance the show's mythology, play on the quirks of the characters in a more organic, more satisfying manner than has been typical of late, and deliver both genuine laughs and genuine intrigue. These episodes reminded me of how much fun this show can be when it's pitched at just the right ultrasonic oddball frequency. There's still little of the creeping dread and Zen weirdness that Lynch's directorial hand lent to the proceedings but this still feels more like Twin Peaks than the other post-Leland installments. On The Wings Of Love sees a return to Cooper in conspicuous FBI gear, tape recorded missives to Diane (a ritual that ceased some time ago, and one that Cooper's character practically requires - his natural self-reflection and cockeyed observations finding a perfect outlet/signifier in his tapes), Gordon Cole's return to town, and a reflowering of Cooper's bizarro confidence and zen detective determination.

2)

Earle’s description of the White Lodge paints it as something out of a fairy tale, right down to the de rigueur opening words “Once upon a time.” Earle’s words also paint the White Lodge as something lost and gone from us, and the Black Lodge as something very much present and vital: there was a place of great goodness, there is another place. Whether or not this choice of words was intentional on the part of the writers, whether or not the White Lodge exists in the present, or in the past alone, the effect of Earle’s speech is to create the image of the White Lodge as a kind of lost Camelot – a place of harmony and joy and fraternity, a place not unlike Cooper’s idealized view of the town of Twin Peaks – a “brief, shining moment” that is now legend. In contrast, the Black Lodge exists (in Earle’s speech at any rate) in the here and now. And through this speech we learn that it is a “real” place, a physical location that can be found. Earle’s goals – previously assumed to revolve around vengeance against Cooper – are revealed as far more ambitious in scope. Earle wants to locate the Black Lodge and somehow harness its power. I’m a sucker for stories where mad men seek out items/places of ancient power/evil, and so Peaks’ sudden turn toward Indiana Jones territory presses all the right buttons for me as a viewer.

3)

On another note: I’ll come right out and say it: I love Ian Buchanan. Why isn’t this guy a supporting actor in a ton of comedies? He’s got killer delivery and sly timing and despite emerging during the worst section of this show he’s remained consistently entertaining to me. Yes, Dick Tremayne’s wine tasting adds nothing whatsoever to the show in terms of importance or dramatic heft, but unlike, say, Lana Milford, Tremayne is actually funny. I see that Buchanan was a cast member on “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” and I’m not surprised, just disappointed that we haven’t seen him pop up more frequently as a funnyman.

Wounds and Scars (Twin Peaks, S2 ep. 17)

2010-10-15T14:27:00.002-04:00

The Lost & Found column for Wounds and Scars will be up on Chud.com by day's end. In the meantime, please to enjoy these delicious, minty excerpts:

1)

We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re close. Following this installment there are only five episodes of Twin Peaks left to go, including the two-hour finale, “Beyond Life and Death”. I’m excited to get there, excited to see David Lynch finally return to the show and restore its previous glory, and I’m looking forward to finally talking in more detail about the strange mythology of this show.

But in order to get there it’s necessary to push our way through an episode like Wounds and Scars. Wounds and Scars isn’t a bad episode of Twin Peaks. There’s nothing that inspires the urge to stab one’s eardrums, as with the Evelyn Marsh storyline, but there’s nothing particularly interesting about the episode as a whole. It feels, for lack of a better word, mundane.

And that’s the overall-criticism I’d level at this stretch of the show in general. It’s mundane. The spark of madness that Lynch and Frost injected into Twin Peaks has dwindled away. The charged atmosphere built up over a season-and-change has dissipated in the wake of Leland Palmer’s death, leaving behind a show that moves with a languid, sleepy-lidded gait and no discernable purpose.

Plenty of stuff happens on Twin Peaks during this stretch of television, but little of it feels as though it matters. Even Cooper’s storyline has dragged, presenting us with a lawman drained of much of his former electric eccentricity and a nemesis who seems content to dash around in goofy disguises and play his flutes in between chess moves.

Where are the wonder and the terror?

The answer to that question lies with Lynch. Without his unifying, disorienting vision – without his singular ability to evoke existential dread and profound bemusement – the show has slowly been foundering. Nowhere in this stretch of post-Leland episodes do we find a single image as awful and powerful as the image of a demonic-looking Laura Palmer. Nowhere in this stretch do we find evidence of the spiritual evil that so effectively infected the show and its viewers.

2)

As if to make sure that we’re paying attention, the show’s writers have Cooper’s doppelganger/evil twin/shadow self, aka Windom Earle, comment on the rejuvenating qualities of “country life,” and so highlighting and triple-underlining for us the notion of Earle as a dark reflection of Cooper. In addition to this we also see that Earle is wearing a ring, just as Cooper does. Recall that Cooper’s ring has a kind of mystic/symbolic importance on this show (Bob and Mike’s relationship was a “perfect circle,” the group of people assembled upon the revelation of Bob’s identity forms a circle, Cooper’s ring – a circle – is taken by the Giant and returned on the eve of Cooper cracking the case, etc. etc.). Does Earle’s ring have a similar, negative mystic/symbolic importance? Signs point to “sure, why the hell not.”

Harris Gets Moral

2010-10-12T14:41:00.007-04:00

The Onion's AV Club has a quite-good interview with Sam Harris up this week regarding his new book, and his belief that science can help us to find a "universal morality." If you're interested in religion and/or morality on an intellectual/emotional/spiritual level it's worth a few minutes of your time.

I am sure that Harris is a good, decent man, but I don't much agree with his attitudes and beliefs toward religion as a whole. Too often he comes across as a really smart, really articulate zealot - an Evangelist who has replaced his cross with an equation. To wit:

The AV Club: ":Let's say science can and will make factual claims about morality. How then do you implement these moral truths to effect change in the world? Wouldn't these truth claims lead to a kind of moral colonialism where the so-called developed world that has arrived at these conclusions goes around the rest of the world to police or enforce these moral truths in other societies that haven't discovered them yet?"

Harris: "Clearly, if we could do that, we should do that."

This is nonsense, and it's kinda spooky to boot. Harris goes on at greater length on this topic, but the essential point is right there in that one sentence. I suppose we can take reassurance from this, at least: As long as your moral truths align with Harris' you won't need to worry about an invasive occupying force that proselytizes to you and attempts to convert you (sort of like a Crusade, one might say).

Never you mind that Harris' morality involves the sanctioning of the same sort of colonialism that he finds so dangerous when couched in religious terms. And nevermind that you may be wondering to yourself about things like "moral grey areas" and "situational morality" and "white lies" and the fact that different cultures have differing moralities. Native Americans thought that "owning" land was absurd. White settlers thought that they were absurd for having such a hippie-dippie philosophy, and murdered a ton of them. Who was "right"? For Harris it's as simple as food:

Harris: "Multiple right answers to moral questions doesn't at all mean that there's not a clear difference between right and wrong answers. The analogy I give for this is food. I would never argue that there is one right food to eat, but there are clearly many things that are not food that will kill us. The distinction between food and not food is still quite clear and scientifically salient."

Riiiiiiiight.

Except, things aren't quite so clear-cut outside of these rigidly-and-falsely-defined categories. Doritos are food, but eating Doritos is bad for me (and bad for anyone in my immediate breathing vicinity). So, are Doritos "food" or "not food"? If they are food, but they're "bad" food will I be allowed to eat them because I choose, using my free will, to eat them? Or will Harris come in and act all colonial with me? What if a certain food is a delicacy, but might also kill you? Like, say, Blowfish? Should the fact that blowfish is deadly when not properly prepared mean that no one should be permitted to prepare blowfish? Rationally, we know that it makes more sense to eat nothing but the healthiest of foods all day, every day. How many of us choose to do that, all the while knowing that we're being "irrational" in the process? We're not (totally) stupid. We know Doritos aren't good. But we also know that they taste good. And while that's irrational, its also pretty indisputable. What happens when a certain kind of morality "tastes" good to a group of people, but Harris and Co. decide that its "bad"? Who is the ultimate arbiter in that conflict? Reason? Whose reason? What happens to the losers when they refuse to get with the program?

I could play this game all day. Attempting to place food into two categories as some kind of illustration on ascertainable moral truth is to insist that there are only two types of women in the world: Gingers and Mary Anns (For the youngsters: This is a reference to Gilligan's Island).

And if this is true of food, then how much more true is it of moral decisionmaking? Harris is correct when he says that "Science is done in the context of a larger reality in which we know that there are questions we could not possibly answer, but we know they have answers." He is also correct to insist that the lack of an answer is no excuse for not seeking one.

Where he is arguably incorrect is in assuming that stating this sort of stuff absolves him from explaining why science is allowed to take this stance ("We can't explain it! But we know that there's an answer! And that answer is...maybe...string theory?") while religion is to be mocked and/or dismissed for the same sentiment ("We can't explain it! But we know that there's an answer! And that answer is...we think...God?").

/End Rant.

Slaves and Masters & The Condemned Woman (Twin Peaks, S2, eps. 15 & 16

2010-10-08T13:18:00.003-04:00

This week's Lost & Found column for Slaves and Masters & The Condemned Woman has been trapped in a piece of furniture for your (flabbergasted) reading pleasure on Chud.com.

Qur'anathon Day 4: In A Gadda Da Vida

2010-09-28T13:38:00.005-04:00

"We said: "O Adam! dwell thou and thy wife in the Garden; and eat of the bountiful things therein as (where and when) ye will; but approach not this tree, or ye run into harm and transgression/but come not nigh this tree lest ye become wrong-doers/and do not approach this tree, for then you will be of the unjust."

- Al-Baqara 2:35 (varying translations)

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." - Genesis 2:17

There are some striking narrative similarities between Torah, Bible and Koran. All three holy books contain references to Adam, Adam's primacy in God's creation, the naming of things, a blessed Garden, and the Tree of Knowledge. Missing from the Qur'anic account of this story: the name of Adam's wife. I'd be curious to understand why Eve's name is omitted from the Qur'an. Is it because "Eve" was a name given to Adam's wife at a later date in time? Are Eve's actions responsible for "the fall," as they appear to be in the traditional interpretations of Bible and Torah? That does not seem to be the case here, according to my reading of the text. The "blame" for their temptation is ascribed to Satan/Shaitan/Iblis, but it would seem from the text that both Adam and "his wife" were equally guilty in breaking God's rule.

Also of interest to me: The result of eating from the Tree of Knowledge (known only as "this tree" in the Qur'anic text) seems to differ greatly when one compares the Torah/Bible scripture with its Qur'anic equivalent. Eating of the Tree of Knowledge in the Bible/Torah leads to death. This is stated (as far as I can tell) unambiguously across multiple English translations. In the Qur'an, however, the punishment is not death - it is, variously, "harm and transgression," becoming "wrongdoers," and becoming one of the "unjust."

"And seek assistance through patience and prayer, and most surely it is a hard thing except for the humble ones," - 2:45

I've been reading "The Case for God," by Karen Armstrong, and upon reading this portion of scripture I was reminded of Armstrong's assertion that achieving a feeling of transcendence - learning to practice true religiosity - is hard work, in the same way that learning to sculpt or paint with some acumen is hard work. I like that the Qur'an advises us of this. I like that it reminds us of the difficulty inherent in transcending Self and achieving communion with Divinity. One of my personal quibbles with religion as practiced by some of my fellow Americans lies in the total lack of difficulty, committment and devotion required of its practitioners. There's a real sense that God has been transformed into an all-knowing Slot Machine; people are told that God will give them whatever they want if they just keep tugging the lever/praying away.

That view of religion seems like "cheap grace" to me, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer ("Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! And the essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite."). It demands little-to-nothing of practitioners, and it creates (to my mind) a sense of undeserved entitlement.

Enough high-horsing from me. Back to the text:

"And remember, We delivered you from the people of Pharaoh: They set you hard tasks and punishments, slaughtered your sons and let your women-folk live; therein was a tremendous trial from your Lord." - 2:49

It's not just Adam and the Garden that get mentioned in the Qur'an, much to my surprise. Al-Baqara also takes pains to link the God of the Qur'an directly to the God of the Torah/Old Testament. Unlike the Bible/Torah, the Qur'an does not have any apparent desire to educate its readers as to what Adam or Moses' story was in any detail. Instead, as noted by Talif Khalidi in his introduction, the Qur'an assumes familiarity with these stories and uses them to underline its points. We'll talk more about Moses in the next post. In the meantime, what are your thoughts? Have you anything to share with me and with the readers that might shed light on what we're reading? Are you finding these posts interesting/worth continuing? I welcome your thoughts, your observations, and your questions.

Back To The Theater

2010-09-28T12:54:00.003-04:00

I love me some Godfather, some Star Wars, some Indiana Jones, but the film trilogy that has always delighted me most consistently is probably Back to the Future. I adore everything about the first film and consider it to be a near-perfect piece of entertainment. Relentlessly smart, overwhelmingly charming, Oedipally-icky and rib-ticklingly funny, Back to the Future is a Classic Film. And on October 23rd and 25th, Back to the Future is returning to American movie theaters.

That's heavy, Doc.

I've already bought my tickets - why don't you join me? Let's celebrate a classic film together.

Checkmate & Double Play (Twin Peaks, S2 eps. 13 & 14)

2010-09-24T15:34:00.000-04:00

Hola, all!

This week's Lost & Found column has been kicked around by a crossdresser for your reading pleasure on Chud.com.

If you're enjoying it, please spread the word!

Welcome, U.S. Department of Justice

2010-09-23T15:24:00.005-04:00

Uh...Wow.

In the words of Mel Brooks, I'd like to extend a Laurel, and Hardy handshake to the good folks at the U.S. Department of Justice, who seem to have stumbled across this humble blog in their search for the meaning of "alif lam mim."

You may recall that I blogged about these undefined letters on Day 2 of the current Qur'anathon.

If the individual who chose to enter Verbosity based on the presence of that search term decides to stick around, I'd like to encourage them to comment as they see fit. I'm always happy to have more intelligent, inquisitive and compassionate people here. The next Qur'anathon posting will happen once I've submitted this week's Lost & Found column and attended the eagerly-awaited Deftones/Alice in Chains show scheduled for Friday evening.

Be good to one another,

MMorse

Qur'anathon Day 3: Al-Baqara (The Cow) Continued

2010-09-21T15:32:00.004-04:00

"And remember when God said to the angels: 'Kneel before Adam'; they knelt, all except Satan, who disdained, grew proud and became an unbeliever."

That's an interesting passage, because it lines up nicely with the commonly-held Christian belief in Satan as a fallen, prideful angel who refused to bow before the primacy of mankind.

More interesting, to me, is that this commonly-held belief has developed extra-biblically - meaning that the Bible itself does not explicitly support the notion of Satan in Miltonian, Paradise Lost terms. Christian belief in this conception of the devil is founded in passages like 2 Enoch 29:4 ("And I threw him out from the height with his angels, and he was flying in the air continuously above the bottomless."), and Isaiah 14:12-15 ("How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit.").

Compelling and poetic as these passages are, they don't serve to establish the familiar Satan-as-Bigot-Against-Mankind meme that's now (somewhat inexplicably) so much a part of modern Christian theology (for more on the historical context of these Biblical passages, check out this relatively-informative posting from Pastor Doug Roman). But it seems as though the Islamic faith has a firm textual basis in just such a belief - and it comes from Al-Baqara. I wonder how many zealous, anti-Muslim Christians realize that there's more textual support for Satan as prideful fallen angel in the Qur'an than there is in the Bible?

A Brief Conversation on Surveillance

2010-09-21T12:44:00.004-04:00

Co-worker 1: "You know they put in a bunch of new security cameras all through Penn and Grand Central Station? I feel so much safer."

MMorse: "We're turning into London. They've got cameras all over the place these days."

1: "They should put up more. These cameras are so good they can zoom in on you and see, you know, what you're wearing and what color your clothes are..."

Co-worker 2: "Doesnt that bother you though, in terms of your privacy?"

1: "No, not really as long as the cameras are in public and not in my house."

M: "What if there's a camera in public that can look into your house?"

1: "What do you mean?"

M: "Well, what if there's a camera in the street in front of your house? You just said they can zoom in, so what if they zoom in on your house?"

1: "Oh, that's okay. I keep my curtains drawn all the time."

That's verbatim.

Pass The Sentence

2010-09-20T11:43:00.003-04:00

This week's sentence:

"There are three rules to life."

Masked Ball & The Black Widow (Twin Peaks S2, eps. 11 & 12)

2010-09-17T16:46:00.004-04:00

This week's Lost & Found column has been dressed in drag for your viewing pleasure on Chud.com!

Qur'anathon Day 2: Alif Lam Mim & Al-Baqara (The Cow)

2010-09-16T13:43:00.008-04:00

Welcome back to Verbosity's Qur'anathon!

Twice a week I'll be posting on my thoughts as I read the Qur'an. It's already been an enriching and educational experience. For instance, I now know that "Qur'an" is preferred over "Koran," and future posts will reflect that fact out of respect.

On Tuesday we examined a tiny portion of the history surrounding the Qur'an, and I wrote briefly about The Opening - a poetic invocation which begins the text.

Today's posting concerns two topics:

1) Alif Lam Mim, and
2) The first several ayat of the first Sura, known as Al-Baqara, or "The Cow."

Alif Lam Mim, the "words" (actually letters) that appear at the beginning of The Cow, are known as Muqatta`āt - literally translated as "abbreviated," or "shortened." If my understanding is correct, the meaning of these Muqatta`āt is unclear, but some Muslim opinion has it that their inscrutability may hide secrets of the Divine (a notion that I like very much, and which reminds me in a way of YHWH, a Hebrew abbreviation for the "true" name of God whose pronunciation was lost to time). Other sources contend that the meaning of these letters is not knowable, and that assigning "Mystical" meaning to them is pointless. You can read more about this intriguing and fittingly-obtuse phenomena by clicking HERE or HERE.

The "Chapter" title Al-Baqara (The Cow) may refer to the golden calf worshipped by the people of Moses, or it may refer to another cow which was somehow used to reanimate the dead (Reason 1 for enjoying the Qur'an: cows are used to reanimate the dead). Wikipedia seems confused on this point. No less confusing are some of the opening verses of this Sura:

"Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing and there is a covering over their eyes, and there is a great punishment for them." 2:07

"if Allah had pleased He would certainly have taken away their hearing and their sight; surely Allah has power over all things." 2:20

"And if you are in doubt as to that which We have revealed to Our servant, then produce a chapter like it and call on your witnesses besides Allah if you are truthful. But if you do (it) not and never shall you do (it), then be on your guard against the fire of which men and stones are the fuel; it is prepared for the unbelievers." 2:23-24
And now, going back to The Opening for a moment...

"Merciful to all,
Compassionate to each!"

Really? How does this (admirable, beautiful) invocation square itself with what comes after it, in Al-Baqara? If God has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing and there is a covering over their eyes.." then does that not imply that it is God who is responsible for a person's unwillingness/inability to hear the "Good News" offered by The Qur'an? And if this is so, then how may we assume that God is "Merciful to all, Compassionate to each"?

We're dealing in antitheticals here - something that Verbosity reader Katie (author of the excellent blog "All Shall Be Well," linked below in the sidebar) pointed out on Day 1. How is God merciful to all and simultaneously proactively sealing people's hearts and blinding them and making them deaf to the revelation He offered to Muhammad? If Allah is compassionate to each then what's with this whole "fire made of stones and men" (a great, grisly image) thing?

This dichotomy - between boundless mercy and endless suffering - is one that has fascinated me since I first picked up a Bible and began exploring its pages. How can a Divine being be both fully-benevolent and yet also potentially malevolent to such extremes? Philosophers and Theologians have spent millenia wrestling with these questions and have spun out countless theories to accomodate for this weird discrepency, either by explaining it or by criticizing it. This split between a God who seems to want nothing but the best for his children, but who is also creepily-eager to blind his people personally so as to prevent them from recieving his grace, is bizarre and compelling and Mystical in the capital-M sense of the word.

One way to explain this discrepency is to assign both "positive" and "negative" aspects to the Divine. Another is to claim that God is ineffable, incapable of being fully understood in aspect or in motivation. Still another is to suggest that God is "merciful to all, compassionate to each" person who accepts his Divinity and lives by "the straight path," but this explanation fails to account for the actions of a God who seems comfortable stacking the deck by making some of his children fundamentally incapable of finding said-path.

What do you think? Is this seemingly-irreconcilable split explicable? Are we dealing, ultimately, with what amounts to a description of Nature itself - both its bounty and its wrath? How do you reconcile this?

They Eat Their Own

2010-09-16T12:34:00.003-04:00

Here’s some interesting news. Karl Rove and GOP favorite Mike Castle (R-Del) are now apparently “Republicans In Name Only,” or “RINOs.” If you’re not familiar with the term “RINO,” good for you. It means that you don’t spend much time reading the invective of crazed, double-thinking internet columnists and commentators. Basically, it’s the nastiest thing you can say about a Republican other than to claim that he’s “a liberal” (Oooooh).

After Christine O’Donnell’s “surprise” victory in the Primaries this week, Rove had this to say:

“It does conservatives little good to support candidates who at the end of the day while they may be conservative in their public statements do not event the characteristics of rectitude, truthfulness and sincerity and character that the voters are looking for… I mean, there were a lot of nutty things she has been saying that just simply don't add up... I'm for the Republican, but I got to tell you, we were looking at eight to nine seats in the Senate. We are now looking at seven to eight in my opinion. This is not a race we're going to be able to win.”

Pragmatic, strategic, analytical. These were all strengths for Karl Rove. Now, thanks to Tea Party fever, they’ve become severe liabilities. If you need any indication of just how divided the Republican party is at this point in time you need only to read the following comments from some of the Right Wing's craziest, most craven commentators:

Sean Hannity: “He sounds like a liberal, blaming other people!”

Sarah Palin: “"Well, bless his heart…We love our friends, they're in the machine, the expert politicos.”

(Note: “Bless his heart” is, as everyone knows, the Southern equivalent of “F*ck him.”)

Michelle Malkin: “Rove came across as an effete sore loser instead of the supposedly brilliant and grounded GOP strategists that he’s supposed to be. Expect more Washington Republicans to start sounding like Tea Party-bashing libs as their entrenched incumbent friends go down.”

Machelle Malkin Part Deux: “The conservative base is in full-scale revolt. This is a good and healthy thing. Close political observers of and on the Right know that the revolt against Big Government/Open-Borders Rove/Bush-ism has been brewing a long time…”

Really? A long time? You mean since they left the White House? Rove was practically the patron saint of Conservatism only two years ago. Now that he no longer serves the Corporate interests of folks like the Koch family (the ostensible creators of the Tea Party movement, and about the least "Populist" clan you can possibly imagine) and Rupert Murdoch he's apparently meat for the the beast.

Some of the comments from my Fellow Americans are as revealing as they are disturbing:

“This was stunning! I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Rove cranked up a one man smear campaign on live TV…”

“He’s went so dirty and combative .. I’m still reeling.”

Hey Karl, wake up and smell the Patriots! We're having a Revolution on November 2nd! And if the Voting Booth doesn't work, we'll go the old fashioned way.”

See what I mean? Revealing and disturbing. I empathize with the anger that many people in the “Tea Party” are feeling toward “the Establishment.” That anger is, frankly, well-founded. We’re in the midst of an economic recession that’s cost many, many people their jobs, their homes, and their feeling of overall safety. Our government is largely geared toward serving Corporatist interests over and above the interests of The People. Our elected representatives have consistently sold out their constituents for a piece of the Wall St. pie.

All of these are reasons to be legitimately furious.

And yet, the cognitive dissonance on display here is staggering. The notion that Republicans could be stunned by Rove playing perceived “dirty tricks” tells me that the people making these comments willfully ignored the countless instances during Bush’s administration in which Rove did just that. The fact that the economic difficulties we’re now facing as a country can be laid in large, undeniable part at the feet of a Republican administration who spent trillions of dollars on a war that was obviously, blatantly, desired and so poorly justified as to have been laughable – not simply in “hindsight,” as many of our spineless Media spokesheads are so fond of claiming in an effort to extricate themselves from deserved culpability, but at the time of its inception – seems not to occur to these people at all.

Where were they when billions of dollars in US currency was being lifted on pallets into Iraq, and then “stolen”? Or when the American military was being ignored in favor of private Military subcontractors with no obligation to follow long-standing and honorable codes of combat and conduct? Where were they when Rove and his slimy compatriots were working overtime to baselessly smear John Kerry in the 2004 election? Where were they when New Orleans was left to fend for itself, post-Katrina? Where were they when the crackdown on Civil Liberties – a crackdown that included the denial of entry into public Presidential speeches and the unconstitutional monitoring of communications, to name just two – that they now (in theory) decry was in full swing, was in the implementation phase, was in a “possible to be stopped” phase? Where were they when the financial bailouts they now rail against were being railroaded through Congress by the President they elected and the strategist that served him?

Why, they were cheering for Karl Rove of course. They were a-wavin’ their flags and shouting down all dissent as “un-American.” Remember that? Remember when criticism of Presidential policy was tantamount to treason for these folks? Because they sure don’t.

These days it’s all “we have the right – nay the duty – to fight against injustice!” When their Fellow Americans were suffering, were confused and angry by their own government’s willful, mocking refusal to listen, they were content to tell those people to shut up. But now that they’re suffering the ill-effects of their own misguided “Patriotism,” and now that a black man has entered the White House, it’s apparently time to burn everything down.

Then there's the fact that this "Populist uprising" is funded by anti-Government billionaires (the Kochs, the very "elites" these Tea Party folks claim to hate) and promoted with vicious regularity by Fox News - a multinational corporation whose business interests align nicely with all of this craziness.

Neither of these groups has the interests of "the little guy" at heart. They are gleefully, openly exploiting the base fears and anger of a population that has reason for their anger.

Well, isn't that just...despicable? Deplorable? Depressing?

Pick a D-Word.

The Pale King Crowned

2010-09-15T14:59:00.004-04:00

Mark your calendars with me - April 15, 2011 brings the release of David Foster Wallace's final novel, "The Pale King." The jacket art, designed by Wallace's widow Karen Green, is pictured above.

If I were to name the authors that have most influenced my thinking, my writing, and my very being David Foster Wallace would probably top that list. His unflinching humanism, his unceasing curiousity, and his erudite sense of humor are inspirations to me in my life and in my work. I felt palpable loss when I heard the news - something that hasn't happened since the death of Jim Henson.

If you're unfamiliar with Wallace's work may I suggest reading one of his more accessible pieces? Fans of Twin Peaks will likely enjoy his in-depth examination of David Lynch, which you can read right here (in truncated form), free of charge. And if you enjoy that I highly recommend picking up "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."

You're missed, Mr. Wallace.

Qur'anathon Day 1: An Introduction and The Opening

2010-09-13T15:50:00.016-04:00

Twice a week I'll be offering my thoughts and opinions on the Koran. If you'd like to follow along with me, or just want to refer to the Chapters (or "Suras") I'm discussing you can read along using this online resource. The translation I'm reading is by Tarif Khalidi, and while I've only read a fraction of it I can already recommend it.

Today's post is meant to hopefully give all of us a little background information on the Koran itself, before touching on The Opening - a short, poetic invocation that precedes the first Sura of the text. Thursday's post will focus on the first several ayat (or "verses") of the first Sura.

The word "Koran" (alternatively: Qur'an, Kuran, Quran, Coran...) means "recitation." Muslim believers (if Wikipedia and other online sources are to be trusted) believe that the Koran serves as the "verbal book of divine guidance and direction for mankind." It is named "The Recitation" due to the belief that the Koran was revealed to the prophet Muhammad through the oral recitation of the angel Gabriel over "a period of approximately twenty-three years." Muhammad then dictated these revelations to his "companions," who memorized them and eventually committed them to the written word - supposedly "shortly after [his] death."

Interestingly, and unlike the Christian tradition, there seems to be little disagreement among scholars over which "version" of the Koran is the "correct" version, since Caliph Uthman ibn Affan's order to preserve an official, standardized text appears to have resulted in an admirable degree of continuity and sameness between whatever competing versions exist.

One of the most striking features of the Koran - immediately evident even to my untrained eyes - lies in its nonlinear structure. Unlike the Torah or the Bible, the Koran makes no attempt to present an accounting of events in a linear, "historical" manner. We do not begin at "The Beginning." In this way the text presents itself as being without beginning or ending - a choice that pleases me immensely and that makes manifest in the structure of the text the sort of all-encompassing divine power that the body of the text purports to convey.

The Koran begins with "Basmala," an Arabic phrase meaning, depending on the translation "In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful," or (in my translation) "In the name of God, Merciful to all, Compassionate to each!" and each of the Suras (except the ninth, apparently) follows this pattern - an invocation to the God who gifted this book to mankind. I find the Arabic phrase beautiful to the ear and the eye - a poetic word that encompasses an impassioned statement.

Today's posting focuses solely on The Opening - a short prayer that's quite lovely:

"Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds:
Merciful to all,
Compassionate to each!
Lord of the Day of Judgement.
It is You we worship, and upon you we call for help.
Guide us to the straight path,
The path of those upon whom Your grace abounds,
Not those upon whom anger falls,
Nor those who are lost."

Lovely, right?

I'm especially fond of the phrase "Lord of the Worlds." I assume this refers to the "worlds" of the heavens, the earth, the "underworld" and perhaps the various planets known to Islamic society at the time of the Koran's writing (this is pure conjecture on my part). I'm also fond of the way in which the The Opening immediately and unambiguously asks to be kept from the path of "those upon whom anger falls." The Opening gives the sense of a man's longing for a peaceful heart and peaceful path to walk upon.

Islam has a reputation among certain peoples as being a "violent religion," but this Opening would seem to refute such an easy labeling. Such a designation strikes me personally as ignorant/disingenuous - not because some practitioners of Islam are not violent, and not because (I assume) there are passages in the Koran that I will discover to preach violence, or seemingly condone it, but because EVERY religion shares these qualities, and yet we lend to religions such as Christianity or Judaism an implicit understanding that the actions of radicals and the radicalism of some portions of these texts do not reflect on the entirety of a religion or its adherents.

Opening the Koran

2010-09-13T11:25:00.006-04:00

Did you pick up a copy of the Koran/Qur'an this weekend?

If you're like me you don't know very much about this book. You're maybe aware of some of its more famous and/or infamous passages, you're probably aware of the millions of peaceful practitioners of Islam, and you're almost certainly aware of its fringiest, most militant elements.

But how well do you know the actual book and its contents?

"And there are among them illiterates, who know not the Book, but (see therein their own) desires, and they do nothing but conjecture." - The Koran, Surat Al-Baqarah 2:78

Fair enough. No more assumptions from this illiterate. I intend to attempt a rudimentary understanding of this revered book. Care to join me?

Starting tomorrow I'm going to begin reading the Koran and briefly commenting on it here - an exercise that I think will be interesting and conversation-provoking; illuminating for myself and, I hope, for some of you. Twice a week I'll read and comment on one or two Surahs (also spelt as "Sura," and the equivalent of the English word "Chapter") from the above-pictured translation of the Qur'an, and I'll invite you to read and comment with me. I expect that when I'm done I'll turn my attention to both the Bible and the Torah - books that I'm much more familiar with overall.

This is in no sense an attempt to convert any of you into "believers." I will not be endorsing religion or excoriating the non-religious, except to the extent that I will gladly celebrate those passages I find inspirational/beautiful/moving, and will likewise be critical of those passages which I find troubling/confusing/contradictory. I welcome my atheist and agnostic brothers and sisters to join in this little experiment with me. A lack of belief in the divinity of the Koran does not negate the text's importance to human history (past, present and future) and as always your thoughts and opinions are encouraged and desired. What do the words of these books make you feel? Are you able to separate out your feelings (both positive and negative) regarding the institutions that surround these books in order to approach them solely as texts? These are just some of the questions I'd like to ask of you as we go. I'd love to hear your thoughts and recieve your own questions.

In short, I'd like to have a discussion. I'm hoping you'll want to join in it with me, whether you're a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Deist, a Buddhist, a Wiccan, an Atheist, an Agnostic, a Rand-ian Objectivist, or whathaveyou. Remember that Verbosity is a place of respect, treat your fellow human beings as you would like to be treated, and know that all are welcome.

Pass The Sentence

2010-09-13T10:43:00.003-04:00

You know the drill by now.

This week's sentence:

"He'd never seen a house on fire."

International Buy A Koran Day

2010-09-10T19:08:00.000-04:00

UPDATED:

Aaaaaand the burning is off once again.

Terry Jones is officially the new Axl Rose. Ten years from now he'll finally get around to it, and overall no one will really care. I can only hope there'll be a future collaboration with Buckethead.

Original Post:

So, "Pastor" Jones is a big ol' waffler.

First he was going to burn the Koran, then he wasn't, now he will, if people don't accede to his demands.

Hmmm....Threatening a malign act unless your demands are met? That's pretty much the definition of extortion. Or terrorism, if you're feeling cheeky.

At this point, I don't care what he does. What I'LL be doing tomorrow is buying a Koran. If you'd like to join with me in refuting religious intolerance then go out, buy a Koran, tell the cashier that you're purchasing it to replace any copies that terry "The Waffler" Jones will or won't burn, and take a picture of yourself with it. Send that picture to me at WhatIsWater@gmail.com. Let's show this namby-pamby nutjob what conviction and tolerance mean.

Lame Is My Name

2010-09-10T14:30:00.001-04:00

No column today, folks. The wife and I didn't make it back from our trip until Wednesday, leaving precious little time for watching and writing up the episodes for the week. Rest assured that next week's column will make up for these little speed bumps.

Thanks, as always, for your understanding and for your peepers.

International Buy A Koran Day

2010-09-09T10:31:00.007-04:00

"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." - Heinrich Heine

For those of you who aren't already aware, a fanatic named Terry Jones is planning an "International Burn a Koran Day" on September 11th. While I support Mr. Jones' Constitutional right to engage in a symbolic act of protest - the same way I'd support someone who wanted to burn an American Flag to make a point - I think he's a loon, and I think that this whole circus is far less about "protesting a religion of the devil," and far more about making Terry Jones momentarily (in)famous.

Inspired by Jones and by the misguided souls who plan to use the anniversary of a national tragedy to indulge in good ol' fashioned, baseless hatred, I'd planned on taking a trip down to the Ground Zero area and standing up for religious freedom there. But here's the problem with that: I'm just adding another body to a mass of people who'll be there with their own agendas and their own lunacies. What would I actually do once I was there? I'd be making a statement with my presence, but I'm increasingly unsure whether that statement would count for as much as it might if I took another approach.

So, instead of delving, probably ineffectively, into the madness sure to be all too prevalent down there - instead of legitimizing, in any way, the protest against the Cordoba House that is scheduled for that afternoon - I'm going to do something that will have a concrete (albeit small), immediate impact: I'm going to BUY a Koran on Saturday.

And I'd like you to buy one as well.

I'd like you to walk into a bookstore and purchase a Koran, and as you do so, I'd like you to say that you're buying it because you're a fan of religious freedom - that you're buying it to replace the copies burned by Terry Jones.

But that's not all. I'd also like you to spread the word. I'd like the people that you know, the people that you write for, The People in general, to know what you're doing and why. I want you to mobilize your friends, and get them to buy a Koran as well. It doesn't need to be nice, or expensive, or new. What matters - what always matters and will always matter - is finding a way to express, to ourselves and to those around us, an affirmation of basic humanity and decency. There will always be those for whom it is a pleasure to burn, as Ray Bradbury once taught us. Let there also always be those for whom it is a pleasure to preserve.

This isn't just about Islam, this is about every persecuted religious group: Quakers, Jews, Catholics, and on and on anon. For every religion there has been a group eager to burn them - symbolically or otherwise. And in every age there have always been those willing to oppose them in word and in deed.

Be one of those people. Join the Buy A Koran Facebook page. Send out a Tweet/email to those you know. Reach out by phone or in person and say to one another "there is power in small, individual acts." Be able to look your future grandchildren in the eye and tell them that you have always supported religious liberty when they ask you about the bigotry of these events.

This Saturday, let's buy more than they burn.

Spread the word.

"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." - 1 John 4:8

"We believe in Allah, and in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in (the Books) given to Moses, Jesus, and the Prophets, from their Lord: We make no distinction between one and another among them." - The Koran (3:84 AYA)

Vacation All I Ever Wanted

2010-09-07T13:43:00.002-04:00

You'll have noticed that it's quiet around these parts. The Lovely Wife and I have been enjoying a much needed (too short) vacation in the great, swelteringly-hot, state of Arizona. Horses have been ridden. Deserts have been explored. Pools have been utilized. Sunburns have been acquired.

Life es muy bueno, in other words. Vebosity will resume it's regularly-irregular posting schedule soon (probably Thursday, if not tomorrow). Until then: Be excellent to each other.

Arbitrary Law & Dispute Between Brothers (Twin Peaks S2, eps 9 & 10)

2010-09-03T09:19:00.006-04:00

This week's Lost & Found column for Arbitrary Law & Dispute Between Brothers has been abducted for your reading pleasure on Chud.com.

A Supernatural Sandman?

2010-09-02T10:26:00.004-04:00

It's comic book news/James Hibberd day here at Verbosity, as The Live Feed also reports that Warner Brothers is in the process of acquiring the television rights for Neil Gaiman's Sandman - maybe the single greatest self-contained comic saga ever created (Watchmen fans, commence hating!). Hibberd also reports that Eric Kripke, creator of Supernatural, is in the running to adapt the series for TV.

I love Supernatural for what it is - a pulpy, blue collar, self-aware monsterfest - but there's little of the poetry and lyricism that Sandman contains on nearly every page. That said, deciding to develop this property as a television show (as opposed to a feature film) is an enormously smart idea (in a rather obvious way). Sandman's story is sprawling, epic, and totally unsuited for compression into a two hour running time. Developing it for TV means letting its various-and-sundry subplots, side stories, digressions and quirks breathe in a way that's impossible to imagine on film.

There's a large part of me that would prefer never to see an adaptation of Gaiman's greatest work - who could possibly play Morpheus without inevitably making him less than the sum of his on-the-page complications? How to create the fantastic vistas presented without resorting to fake, ultimately-underwhelming CGI? How to negotiate the sometimes-stunning violence with an eye toward network broadcast (if network is the goal at all)?

And yet, it's Sandman - the one comic book I'd recommend to English majors, aspiring goths, geeks...heck, anyone. It's without a doubt my single favorite work of graphic storytelling, and it could very well be headed into our homes.

I'll watch it, that's for sure.

Fox & Key

2010-09-02T10:22:00.003-04:00

James Hibberd's The Live Feed is now reporting that Fox has picked up Locke & Key, the series I "reported" on earlier this week as being in development with Steven Spielberg godfathering, and Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman acting as Executive Producers.

Again, this is pretty excellent news. If you haven't tried Locke & Key may I recommend picking up the first volume of the series, "Welcome to Lovecraft"? You can click through my lil' Amazon advertising link and find it there waiting, impatiently, for your peepers.

The Presidencies of John Adams and George Washington Weigh in on Muslims and America as a "Christian Nation"

2010-08-31T14:07:00.004-04:00

"As the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims) - and as the said states have never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

- 1796 treaty with Tripoli, written under the Presidency of George Washington and signed under the Presidency of John Adams

(And yes, there is some question over the "legitimacy" of Article 11, since it does not appear in the Arabic translation of the Treaty. However, the English version, which did contain Article 11, was signed into law by Adams making any quibbling over this an essentially moot point)

Locke & Whee!

2010-08-31T12:29:00.004-04:00

James Hibberd's "The Live Feed" has reported that Steven Spielberg, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have joined forces to create a television show from Joe Hill's comic book series "Locke & Key."

This is excellent news, and I shouldn't have to be the one to tell you about it but as far as I know none of the "typical" sites (AICN, Chud, Collider, Dark Horizons) have noted this.

Locke & Key tells the story of the Locke family and its ancestral home, Keyhouse, the mystery of the keys and doors within that house, and the strange, somehow inhuman, multi-generational enemy that wants something from the family and their home. Fans of Lost and the early work of Clive Barker should be especially excited, as the book is heavily character-focused, steeped in mystery, and not short of grue, humor, or wonder.

Hill is the son of Stephen King, but he's established himself as a solid and popular writer in his own right. His book "Heart-Shaped Box" and his short story collection "21st Century Ghosts" are both worth a look-see. His novel "Horns" is deeply flawed and ultimately (to me) not entirely successful in living up to its initial promise, but it's also very well-written and very readable.

Locke & Key is one of three comics I still buy on a regular basis as individual issues, and if you're at all into the art form I'd highly recommend checking it out. It's available to purchase in collected form through Amazon - why not use my link to get there?

Beck to God

2010-08-30T16:03:00.008-04:00

"Something beyond imagination is happening, something that is beyond man is happening. America today is beginning to turn back to God." - Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck said some admirable, reasonable things on Saturday; things like "There is growing hatred in the country. We must be better than what we’ve allowed ourselves to become. We must get the poison of hatred out of us, no matter what smears or lies are thrown our way… we must look to God and look to love. We must defend those we disagree with." I can't find fault in that message, and I wouldn't try.

What I can find fault with, and do find fault with, is the essential emptiness behind those words. It is one thing to pray in public, to make a show of piety; it is another thing altogether to live by your words and demand of yourself real commitment to those words. Beck says that we "must look to love," and perhaps that is an admonishment directed as much at himself as anyone else. But I can't help hearing those words and then recalling these words:

“When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I’m just like, ‘Oh shut up’ I’m so sick of them because they’re always complaining.”

“The only [Katrina victims] we’re seeing on television are the scumbags.”

"The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be President would be ‘What the hell you mean we're out of missiles?’"

"I have been nervous about this interview with you because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies. ... And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way." –interviewing Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim U.S. congressman

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Beck routinely, gleefully, grows the very hatred he decried on Saturday. He spreads the lies and the smears he preaches against. And he spends precious little time "defending those who disagree" with him. But given Beck's seeming recommitment to "turning toward God" and my own desire to live by the words I spout here, I thought this quote might be of interest to him and to those in his audience who confuse self-righteousness with righteousness:

"But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, 'Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?' And He said to him: ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it: ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF. On these two commandments depend all of the Law and the Prophets.'” - Matthew 22:34-40

America cannot "turn back to God" until its citizenry embraces the spirit of this teaching. Jesus does not say "You shall love your CHRISTIAN neighbor as yourself." He does not say "You shall love your AFFLUENT neighbor as yourself." He does not say "You shall love your AMERICAN neighbor as yourself." He certainly does not say that "You shall love your CONSERVATIVE neighbor as yourself." And yet, for all of Beck's fine, carefully-scripted words to the contrary, that's the gospel he truly preaches. Beck preaches a gospel of intolerance, of fear and divisiveness and greed and devotion to country/politics/gold over God.

I would never be so bold or so blasphemous as to assume I know anything of God's "mind," but I do feel comfortable saying that people like Beck abuse the faith that people have in God for ends that are decidedly adverse to Christ's teaching.

"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." - Matthew 7:15

Pass The Sentence

2010-08-30T09:17:00.003-04:00

(For a brief explanation, click here)

"It rose over the crest of the hill like a rogue sun."

Drive With A Dead Girl (Twin Peaks S2 ep 8)

2010-08-27T14:08:00.003-04:00

This week's Lost & Found column for Drive With A Dead Girl has been stuffed into a golf bag for your reading pleasure on Chud.com.

Please spread the word!

Happy LOST Day!

2010-08-24T09:54:00.005-04:00

Today's an auspicious occasion. LOST, the complete muthafunkin' series, is being released. Commence your happy-dances.

I'm well aware that some folks were underwhelmed by the final season, and as I've said previously I can't blame them. There's a lot to love there, but there's also an increasing sense of frustrated/frustrating ambiguity that most people (myself included) weren't expecting at all.

We entered Season 6, aided and abetted by ABC's nefarious marketing department, convinced we were going to get ANSWERS, ANSWERS, ANSWERS! Instead, we got .....answers?

If you're like me, who found much of my enjoyment from the show in puzzling around its various mysteries, references, allusions and pop culture debris, then the final season served as a summation of all that had made LOST both energizing and aggravating. The answer to the puzzle was more puzzle, to put it too-simply.

And I loved it, warts and all.

Work on Back to the Island: The Book continues apace, and now that the complete collection has been released I'll be incorporating what we learn from that set into the text. But primarily what I'll be doing (at first) is simply enjoying a dip back into this show's singularly-intoxicating world. I know that many of you will be doing the same thing, and I'm looking forward to talking about it.

Have you picked up the set yet? Have you watched its special features? I'll be providing a space for us to talk about them in the near future. Consider this post an initial exclamation point of excitement.

Station Break

2010-08-20T13:02:00.003-04:00

Apologies, folks. This week's Lost & Found will be delayed until next week, as I'm in the throes of trying to assemble the Back to the Island book and deal with a rapidly-increasing work schedule.

You Keep Using That Word - I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

2010-08-19T11:27:00.016-04:00

The First Amendment reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment is a thing of beauty. I love it the way that some folks love the Second Amendment. And it irritates me thoroughly when people who should understand it by dint of their profession or their publically-expressed opinions are shown to have absolutely no idea what it means or how it applies.

First, "Dr. Laura" announced that she was leaving her cushy radio gig at the expiration of her contract following this incident.

Here's "Dr. Laura's" explanation for leaving:

"The reason is, I want to regain my First Amendment rights. I want to be able to say what’s on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special-interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors."

To say that the doc's understanding of her Constitutional rights is skewed would be understating things. The First Amendment (among other things) prevents Governmental interference with free speech - it does not prevent citizens like you and I from speaking freely about her bewilderingly empathy-free remarks and senseless wielding of the "N word." It does not prevent people from "getting angry." If it did then it would in fact operate in the EXACT OPPOSITE WAY its supposed to - by using governmental power to prevent the free expression of ideas.

I am the one-billionth person (approximately) to point this out, and I add nothing to the discussion by doing so. If you have the most basic grasp on your Constitutional rights then you don't need me pointing this out - it's obvious.

But it gets worse.

Sarah Palin chimed in last night on her now-legendary Twitter account with the following:

"Dr. Laura:don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence 'isn't American, not fair')"

This, ladies and gentlemen, was the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States - a woman who composes tweets with all the élan of a sixteen year-old girl on a pixie stix binge; a woman who also has zero idea of what the First Amendment functions to accomplish. According to Palin's (let's put it charitably) unique view of things, Dr. Laura's "1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence" which, in addition to being an incomplete (and awful) sentence, is about as flat-out wrong a statement of fact as you could possibly make. The idea that Schlessinger's 1st Amendment rights "ceased to exist" at any time is laughable. The idea that this woman could have been the second-most powerful person in the world?

Not so laughable.

Dr. Laura's First Amendment rights continued to exist throughout this brouhaha, and continue to exist right now, because there was never governmental interference involving her right to speak freely. The vocal criticism leveled at Dr. Laura came from private citizens and "free market" corporations - the very same kind of populist/corporatist activism that Palin pretends to champion when it suits her ever-Kaleidoscoping agenda.

If the First Amendment (a) was actually important to Palin she'd be vocally-opposed to preventing the free exercise of religion via governmental interference. That is, after all, the first sentence of the First Amendment. And yet, Palin continues to flog the "America is a Christian nation" horse, long after said-horse has expired. Palin and her supporters would object to my conflating the two, but I'm not sure why - they're the ones doing the conflating. Arguing for a "National Day of Prayer" that's mandated by Congress (as Palin has done) is to argue directly against the words of the First Amendment. To establish a National Day of Prayer is to have Congress make a law "respecting an establishment of religion." That's logic.

And if the First Amendment (b) worked the way she believed that it does, her words regarding the proposed Cordoba House in Manhattan would, in fact, mean that she was violating the First Amendment by (God help me) "trying 2silence" that community center.

So, here we have a woman who wants 2silence a community center by harnessing citizens to spread and enforce her personal worldview while simultaneously decrying that exact same thing in response to citizens who've criticized the doc's words.

Here we have a former candidate for Vice President without a basic working knowledge of the laws she'd be sworn to uphold. Remember that when she inevitably decides to run again in 2012/endorses someone similarly clueless.

If Palin's looking around for a winky-folksy 2012 campaign slogan that lampoons her hated opponent in the White House she could do a lot worse than "The Audacity of Ignorance."

PS - To read a cuttingly-precise, typically well-written satire of the whole "Mosque controversy" you should head over to Slacktivist. Even Christopher Hitchens, a man I would willingly and eagerly engage in probably-humiliating debate (for me, not him) on any number of issues, from imperialism-as-policy to his whole "God is not great" idiocy, thinks the "controversy" is ridiculous.

The Floor Be Yours, Mateys

2010-08-18T09:36:00.003-04:00

Today I thought I'd open the floor to those of you who want to share sites you enjoy frequenting, blogs you haunt, and other internet ephemera worth a moment of your fellow readers' precious time. What's entertaining you right now? Let us know in the comments!

Worst. List. Ever.

2010-08-17T11:30:00.008-04:00

Worse than the Oklahoma City bomber, apparently.

One of Verbosity's illustrious and much-appreciated readers brought this one to my attention (I'd link to the original article, but it loads as a blank page - perhaps a sign that its creators thought better of leaving it up):

Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history — have you ever wondered who the worst of the worst was? Well, we here at RWN wondered about that, too, and that’s why we decided to email more than a hundred bloggers to get their opinions. Representatives from the following 43 blogs responded…

(A bunch of sites I've never heard of are then listed)

All bloggers were allowed to make anywhere from 1-20 selections. Rank was determined simply by the number of votes received. Also, it’s worth keeping in mind that this is a fairly conservative group of bloggers and their selections reflected that. Also, I made a decision to combine the votes given to the Rosenbergs and Julius Rosenberg into one group since most people associate the two of them together. Some people may disagree with that decision, but I thought it was the best way to go.

Well, that’s enough about the rules — without further ado, the worst figures in American history are as follows (with the number of votes following each selection)…

23) Saul Alinsky (7)
23) Bill Clinton (7)
23) Hillary Clinton (7)
19) Michael Moore (7)
19) George Soros (8)
19) Alger Hiss (8)
19) Al Sharpton (8)
13) Al Gore (9)
13) Noam Chomsky (9)
13) Richard Nixon (9)
13) Jane Fonda (9)
13) Harry Reid (9)
13) Nancy Pelosi (9)
11) John Wilkes Booth (10)
11) Margaret Sanger (10)
9) Aldrich Ames (11)
9) Timothy McVeigh (11)
7) Ted Kennedy (14)
7) Lyndon Johnson (14)
5) Benedict Arnold (17)
5) Woodrow Wilson (17)
4) The Rosenbergs (19)
3) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (21)
2) Barack Obama (23)
1) Jimmy Carter (25)

You may feel free to clutch your head and scream.....now.

Apparently, the people polled for this list believe that Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama are/were somehow "worse" than Benedict Arnold, Timothy McVeigh and John Wilkes Booth. In what alternate universe can one justify such a perversion? Weirder and more uncomfortable still: This list was chosen from "Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history." Which means, going by the terms set by Right Wing News and those it chose to poll, that these voters think of people like Carter, Obama, Pelosi, Jane Fonda and Michael Moore as comparable to serial killers and mass murderers.

This is insanity.

I suspect that if you asked one of this list's contributors to justify it you'd recieve nothing but incoherent anger for your trouble. Questioning the opinions of people like these usually results in being told to stop acting "superior" or "elitist" (which I guess is code for "logical" and "skeptical"). Conservatives who possess a modicum of sanity have already questioned the population of this list, which tells us that no group is monolithic in its beliefs. It's as big a mistake to say that "Conservatives are nuts" as it is to say that "Liberals are socialists." That said, these specific folks are plainly deluded, and that's deeply sad to me. What are you being fed (figuratively speaking) to twist your sense of history this profoundly? When McVeigh places below Kennedy on a list like this what does it say about your sense of what actual "harm" to society looks like?

It makes me want to hug them all - an impulse stifled by the suspicion that they'd shoot me for the attempt.

If there's anything useful about a list like this one, it's that it gives one the ability to, as Sun Tzu and Rage Against The Machine have both advised, "Know your enemy." My personal beliefs teach me to love my enemy, for if you love those who already love you what reward will you get? That said, this powerful and admirable admonition makes these folks no less of an enemy overall - an enemy not to my person, but to common sense, to rational thought, to history itself - and love does not preclude us from insisting upon sanity in our public discourse. We as a people have a responsibility to insist on honesty and integrity from those we love - and to insist on these things is not to act "superior," or to "want to assert a radical socialist agenda" or whatever. To insist on these things is to insist on mutual respect, common ground, and acknowledgement that personal vendettas and personal dislikes do not equate to historical horror.

Did He Just Douthat Deux

2010-08-16T14:52:00.012-04:00

(For Part I, please click here)

Ross Douthat, NY Times columnist/editorializer, has elaborated further on why marriage equality is a bad idea (thanks to Silent Speaking for drawing my attention to this). This is interesting to see/read, since that elaboration serves mainly to keep underlining the same, ill-defined, indefensibly-vague opinion that hetero marriage is, like, special. Just because.

The marriage ideal that I’m defending would be in equally serious difficulties in contemporary America if homosexuality did not exist, because what it asks of straight people is in deep tension with what straight people want to do, and with the way that the incentives of modern life often line up.

Well, okay. But here's the thing - I don't see anyone lobbying to close marriage off to those who've divorced, nor to adulterers, nor to the infertile (because the biological ability to procreate is important to Douthat's conception of "traditional marriage"). In fact, many of the people who are so vociferously against the notion of gay marriage are on their second marriage (or their third), or are single divorced fathers with four children who decide, after crusading to crush gay rights, that they're gay.

It's nice that Douthat recognizes the difficulty inherent in maintaining a healthy, functioning marriage. It's not so nice that he can't see past his own prejudices to recognize that monogamous committment is admirable and difficult, period.

A stigma on racism, for instance, would hopefully exist even in a libertarian paradise, but it draws a great deal of its potency from the fact the American government has spent the last 40 years actively campaigning against racist conduct and racist thought, using every means at its disposal short of banning speech outright.

A little later on, Douthat will use the word "naive" to describe one of Greenwald's points. I find that blackly-hilarious, given Douthat's pie-in-the-sky conception of a "libertarian paradise," in which racism would be as equally stigmatised as it is in our own society. I assume that Douthat has never, ever heard of things like, say, child sex trafficking, which is about the most stigmatizable (is that a word) concept in the world. Despite this fact, there is a profitable trade in the abhorrent practice right here in the good ol' USA. If such a horror can exist in America, where it is outlawed, then racism can surely survive transplantation to a "libertarian paradise."

As for the rest of Douthat's thoughts here....isn't he arguing against himself? Is he really saying that the American government should not have "spent the last 40 years actively campaigning" against racism? It's not clear to me and, given the confuzzled tone of most of this response, it's not clear to Douthat either.

Douthat goes on to tie himself in rhetorical knots for a paragraph or so more, then winds up his incoherent stroll with the following:

So if Anthony Kennedy follows Walker and finds that the traditional legal understanding of marriage is unconstitutional — and, by extension, that it’s irrational and bigoted to think otherwise — it’s just naive to say that this won’t have a ripple effect in the culture as a whole. The space for arguing for the distinctiveness of lifelong heterosexual monogamy will shrink, and the stigma attached to such arguments will grow. Old-fashioned beliefs about marriage will be regarded more and more like old-fashioned beliefs about race. And as with the stigma against racism, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to define where the legal regime ends and the cultural norm begins.

Oh, for f*ck's sake.

One: Anthony Kennedy can't "find...that it's irrational and bigoted to think otherwise." That's not how Courts, Judges and the law work. They don't make moral judgments. What they can find - what Walker did in fact find - is that there are no rational, supportable bases to discriminate against the gay population when it comes to the state's handling of marriage.

It's not Walker or Kennedy's fault that such a decision will, in all liklihood, paint people like Douthat as bigots. Besides, Douthat's doing a fine job of painting that picture all by his lonesome. I'd argue he doesn't need Kennedy's help.

Two: Of course this decision (and a possible Supreme Court ruling on the issue) is going to have "a ripple effect on the culture." Where Douthat and reasonable, rational people part ways is in Douthat's choosing to define that ripple exclusively in the negative. Sure, there will probably be a bunch of gay divorces in the wake of legitimizing gay marriage. But guess what? Equality means equality across the board, and so long as we're allowing straight folks the state-sponsored right to get hitched as often as they want I don't see the point in denying that right to gay people. What other "negative cultural ripple effects" can Douthat see from his lofty perch?

Well, that'd be none. None that he'll come right out and say. And why is that? Well, absent evidence to the contrary I think we need to assume that it's because these other, unspoken, effects probably sound a little...bigoted to those outside Douthat's immediate circle. Were it otherwise one presumes he'd use those examples to bolster his larger point. Only, he doesn't, does he?

Three (and this is the "best" part):

"Old-fashioned beliefs about marriage will be regarded more and more like old-fashioned beliefs about race."

WTF? No matter which way you slice it, this sentence is pure bologna. What is Douthat even saying here? (a) That making marriage essentially open to any two consenting adults will somehow operate to discriminate against heterosexuals? (b) That making gay marriage legal will make heterosexual marriage look like an act of racism? (c) That his bigoted, exclusionary beliefs will no longer be tolerated?

Oh. Wait. That last one I can totally get behind.

Yes, Ross Douthat. It is true - in an age wherein gays and straights are treated equally and compassionately your "Old-fasioned beliefs about marriage" will indeed be treated "more and more like old-fashioned beliefs about race," in that they will be considered brutal, backward and shameful.

Maybe that's really what's happening here. Maybe all of this is an over-elaborate attempt to avoid the cultural reckoning that comes with social justice. Just as blackface became inappropriate when people woke up and realized that it was a dumb, racist, insulting act, perhaps columns like Douthat's will be similarly avoided by people of common sense and basic human decency.

One can only hope.

On The Shelf Preview: The Magicians

2010-08-16T13:06:00.005-04:00

I've just begun Lev Grossman's The Magicians, a story of fantasy and escapism in the Potter/Narnia vein told for an "adult" audience. I'm told it's quite good, and given both my childhood affection for Narnia and my more-recent affection for Potter it seemed like a fun read.

I'll have a review of it up in a week or so. Consider this a heads-up so that you can read it before I post my thoughts if you so choose.

Hope everyone had a great weekend.

Pass The Sentence

2010-08-16T08:49:00.003-04:00

(For a brief explanation, click here)

"Happy" Monday, everyone!

This week's sentence:

The Chevy peeled from the parking lot, its rear window shattering.

Demons & Lonely Souls (Twin Peaks, S2, eps. 6 & 7)

2010-08-13T15:51:00.000-04:00

The Lost & Found column for "Demons" and "Lonely Souls" has slipped on a pair of troubling gloves for your reading pleasure on Chud.com. You can order Fro Design Co's tremendous limited edition print by clicking the link that's available to you at the end of the column.

SPOILER WARNING: Do not click over until you have watched both episodes. Laura's killer is revealed.

Peaks in Print

2010-08-12T12:05:00.005-04:00

As I mentioned at the end of last week's column, Fro Design Store is designing a Twin Peaks art print in conjunction with Lost & Found. Well, last night I got a look at the finished print, and it's gorgeous.

I mean that without hyperbole - it's a beautifully-designed piece, one that I'm looking forward to owning.

I'll have a high-quality pic of it available here on Friday morning, hopefully in advance of the column being published. It's a real thrill to see the words "Lost & Found Commemorative" at the bottom of the print, and I expect that if the print sells decently this could become a semi-regular feature of the column. Limited Edition prints based off of shows as diverse as Deadwood, Carnivale, Max Headroom and Profit? Yes, please.

I hope you folks enjoy it!

Scenes From New Jersey, A One-Minute Play

2010-08-11T14:00:00.000-04:00

Scene:

The Meadowlands, New Jersey; Brazil vs. The US in soccer. Two men, G and M, sit watching the game.

The game's Announcer speaks. His voice is like God's voice - had God decided to pull an Orson Welles and do commercial work.

Announcer: "Tonight's game is sponsored in part by AT&T! AT&T - providing the fastest 3G service, the most coverage, and the best in business communications!"

G: "These seats are great. Hey, what's the train schedule like for the trip home?"

M: "Dunno. Let me check."

M takes his iPhone 3G from his pocket and attempts to look up the train schedule.

Announcer: "AT&T! Your world! Delivered!"

The phone flashes "cannot connect with server." M grumbles, tries again. And again. He waves the phone around, peering at it occasionally like a wary ape inspecting a Monolith. The phone now reads "No Service."

M: "Is this ironic? I think this is ironic."

G: "Gooooooooooooooaaaaalllll!!!!"

Great Scot(t)?....

2010-08-10T16:04:00.010-04:00

So. Ocasionally I'm going to put up an opinion piece about upcoming film/TV/entertainment projects. I like to read about this stuff, and once in a while I feel compelled to say something about it. If you read about something that you think is fun/cool/awful/bewildering, and you think I'd be interested in reading or writing about it, I encourage you to let me know. You can do so in the comments or via WhatIsWater@gmail.com.

According to Dark Horizons (and a number of other places), Tony Scott is attached to direct the film adaptation of Mark Millar's Nemesis - a comic book that has two existent issues to its name, neither of which is worth much beyond the essential core concept: Super-villian vs. Cop.

Tony Scott (aka Ridley Scott's brother) hasn't made a film worth sitting through since Crimson Tide, back in 1995. Since then, Scott's mostly been experimenting with visual techniques designed to blind, disorient and stupefy you. He calls these experiments "movies," but that's eminently debatable as anyone who's sat through Domino could tell you.

Mark Millar (presumably NOT Ridley Scott's brother), the man behind such titles as Kick Ass, Wanted, and The Ultimates, has plenty of sizzle in his figurative skillet, but far less red meat to speak of. His stories are, almost to a one, nihilistic tales of "heroes" that routinely murder/abuse each other/other people, and generally behave like psychotics off their medications. Which, given the general interests of many comic readers, means that he's phenomenally successful. I have nothing against shock value in my entertainment, but Millar tends to go for big "shocks" (Hank Pym beats his wife! Hulk wants to rape Freddy Prinze Jr.! A ten year-old girl is a mass murderer...err...vigilante!) at the expense of most everything else. Garth Ennis, a similarly-"shocking" writer, is much, much better at making you (a) care about the people he's writing about, and (b) laugh your @$$ off.

I was not a fan of Kick Ass: The Movie. What it seemed to amount to, more or less, was the first Spider-Man film, minus all the superpowers and most of the heart, but with more gay jokes. Nor was I a fan of Wanted, the other film created from Millar's work. Basically, both of these films are copies of other, better films. Wanted is Fight Club-meets-The Matrix, but without any of the intelligence or truly subversive intent so admirably abundant in both of those films.

None of which leaves me feeling very enthusiastic about Nemesis - a project that, as of now, is a carbon-reversal of Batman (here he's the villian, he wears white instead of black, and Jim Gordon is trying to stop him, not help him), directed by a man who seems to want to literalize ADD with his films. It promises "shock," but no awe.

Did He Just Douthat?

2010-08-09T15:12:00.009-04:00

Ross Douthat, columnist for the New York Times, has decided to weight in on Judge Vaughn Walker's now-historic decision (something I wrote about last week) which finds California's (odious, insupportable, inhumane, indefensible) Proposition 8 Un-Constitutional under the law.

Douthat gets credit for immediately lining up a platoon's-worth of justifications for opposing gay marriage, then roundly shooting them all in the face without hesitation. Were that all he'd done, I doubt I'd publish another of these eye-rollingly-earnest missives.

"Luckily" for you and for me, Douthat didn't stop there.

So what are gay marriage’s opponents really defending, if not some universal, biologically inevitable institution? It’s a particular vision of marriage, rooted in a particular tradition, that establishes a particular sexual ideal.

This ideal holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship. It holds up the domestic life that can be created only by such unions, in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their biological parents, as a uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing. And recognizing the difficulty of achieving these goals, it surrounds wedlock with a distinctive set of rituals, sanctions and taboos.

Let's stop there, shall we?

Remove the words "two sexually different human beings," "reproductive" and "biological" from that chunk of verbiage and what do we have? A definition of marriage that applies just as powerfully and as equally to gay Americans as it does to straight Americans. A commitment to lifelong fidelity? Check. Mutual surrender, arguably, of self-interest? Check. A domestic life in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their parents? Check.

What's missing? The ability to biologically procreate. So, all heterosexual marriages in which one or both partners is incapable of doing so, but nonetheless loving? You're not "the ideal." All of you children of divorce? You're not "the ideal" either. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, since you're presumably sane and functioning members of society who love and are aggravated by your family in largely the same measure as those "ideal" folks out there, but apparently Mr. Douthat just wanted you to know that, ultimately, you aren't measuring up to his invisible ideals.

And - by the way - those ideals being lionized so very vaguely by Mr. Douthat have been in place for less than a hundred years. So they are obviously Ancient and Wise and Should Not Be Disturbed. Not when it might somehow, indefinably, make some dude from the NY Times a little uncomfortable when he mingles with The Gays at Sunday brunch.

The point of this ideal is not that other relationships have no value, or that only nuclear families can rear children successfully. Rather, it’s that lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.

Oh, now I see. The point isn't that other relationships have no value. The point, apparently, is that they have lesser value. For no definable reason that Douthat can offer us.

That clears things right up. Oh, and also?

Horseshit.

Sorry, but sometimes you have to call them like you see them. Douthat pulls a (theoretically) impressive rhetorical trick here by lining up the Usual Ideological Suspects against gay marriage and killing them off all at once; he's apparently done this so that he can then, Lazarus-like, resurrect the hoariest, most insupportable, most insubstantial, gossamer-thin argument of all and drop it, as if in innocence, back into the substance of his editorial without us having noticed.

What Douthat is arguing for here, boiled to the essence, is the state-sponsored protection of his preferred family experience - an experience that, as he himself admits, is a decidedly new, decidedly Western conception of the Marital Institution - one that is already flawed aplenty, fractured from the blasé societal acceptance of things like divorce and infidelity:

Again, this is not how many cultures approach marriage. It’s a particularly Western understanding, derived from Jewish and Christian beliefs about the order of creation, and supplemented by later ideas about romantic love, the rights of children, and the equality of the sexes.

Or at least, it was the Western understanding. Lately, it has come to co-exist with a less idealistic, more accommodating approach, defined by no-fault divorce, frequent out-of-wedlock births, and serial monogamy.

So....what was Douthat's point again? How, exactly, do we get from the regrettable-but-Eternal fact of marriage's constant volatility to Douthat's contention that Walker's opinion was wrong?

If this newer order completely vanquishes the older marital ideal, then gay marriage will become not only acceptable but morally necessary. The lifelong commitment of a gay couple is more impressive than the serial monogamy of straights. And a culture in which weddings are optional celebrations of romantic love, only tangentially connected to procreation, has no business discriminating against the love of homosexuals.

Ah. That's how. Douthat, for all his posturing and his "reasonable tone," is apparently something of a bigot. No culture that pretends to a Democratic ideal has any business discriminating against the love of homosexuals - those folks being, in point of fact, a participatory body within that Democracy. The lifelong commitment of any couple, regardless of orientation, is more impressive than serial monogamy. Anyone who's been married longer than a few months knows that very well.

But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate. That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.

Well, that's a pretty string of words, but they don't mean anything - not if the Constitution means something to you. The United States does not discriminate against its own citizenry. Despite the obvious fact that this country has done so in its past and will continue to do so in its future does not, and should not, prevent us from losing sight of the ideals embodied in that formative document.

If Ross Douthat wants public acknowledgment of lifelong monogamy, unrestricted by bigotry, then he'll get that once gay marriage becomes a "norm." If what he wants are public acknowledgements of lifelong HETERO monogamy, then he'll need to be content with making those public acknowledgements from the relative comfort of his cozy, nation-wide editorializing berth at the Times. Because, no matter how the bigots twist and pull at Walker's decision it is solidly grounded in the Rosetta Stone of America's secular law - a law that We The People established precisely so that people like Ross Douthat couldn't decide that their marriage is worth more/is more special/is healthier/promotes-better-teeth-cleaning-habits than your marriage.

But based on Judge Walker’s logic — which suggests that any such distinction is bigoted and un-American — I don’t think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea.

Y'know, when a columnist misrepresents the law and its workings so fundamentally and so egregiously I think it's best to let the experts take over. So, on this last point - a point which mangles and warps the legal nature of this decision - just click on over and read Glenn Greenwald. He strips Douthat's legal fig leaf away faster than The Flash at a Red Bull Flugtag.

Pass The Sentence

2010-08-09T08:59:00.003-04:00

(For a brief explanation, click here)

"There were a good many reasons for the knife, for the blood and the silence, and chief among them were boredom and spite."

Laura's Diary & The Orchid's Curse (Twin Peaks, S2, eps. 4 & 5)

2010-08-06T18:09:00.001-04:00

The Lost & Found column for Laura's Diary and The Orchids Curse has been assassinated via spring-loaded knife for your reading pleasure on Chud.com: http://chud.com/articles/articles/24705/1/LOST-amp-FOUND-TWIN-PEAKS---SEASON-2-EPISODES-4-amp-5/Page1.html

Bending Toward Justice

2010-08-05T13:39:00.008-04:00

"Perry testified that marriage would provide her what she wants most in life: a stable relationship with Stier, the woman she loves and with whom she has built a life and a family. To Perry, marriage would provide access to the language to describe her relationship with Stier: 'I’m a 45-year-old woman. I have been in love with a woman for 10 years and I don’t have a word to tell anybody about that.'"

The US District Court for the Northern District of California has struck down the odious and indefensible Proposition 8. This is something of a watershed moment - a victory that will be studied (literally) in law schools for decades to come. As many folks have been quick to point out, this is just the beginning - this decision will surely be appealed, all the way up to the Supreme Court. But if and when this case arrives at the Court o' The Supremes it's going to change our society forever; it's going to change us in the best possible way.

Most of the people on this blog (myself included) weren't alive to see segregation struck down, or to witness firsthand the legitimization of interracial marriage. Because we arrived on the scene after the fact, these victories seem like common sense to many of us. The idea that a man or woman or child could be kept out of a restaurant due to the color of their skin feels Medieval, and yet the reality of that is only a few decades behind us.

For all the supposed differences between those "Medieval" times and this new civil rights movement there's one overarching similarity: Our children are going to look back at all this hullabaloo, shake their heads, and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Thank God for that.

Judge Vaughn Walker drafted the opinion for the court, and it's well worth your reading. Yes, some of it is dry, but this is genuinely history-making stuff. More importantly than that even: this is life-affirming stuff. It doesn't matter if you're straight or gay. Vaughn's opinion should make you feel proud to be an American; to live in a country where freedom has real, objective meaning. As Martin Luther King, Jr. famously wrote: "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." The road to this kind of freedom is long, too long by any humane standard. But slow or fast, Justice is coming - and all the bigotry in the world can't drown the rising sound of its approach.

"At oral argument on proponents’ motion for summary judgment, the court posed to proponents’ counsel the assumption that 'the state’s interest in marriage is procreative' and inquired how permitting same-sex marriage impairs or adversely affects that interest. Counsel replied that the inquiry was 'not the legally relevant question,' but when pressed for an answer, counsel replied: 'Your honor, my answer is: I don’t know. I don’t know.'"

And that says it all. When the lawyer representing the Prop 8 people can't honestly answer how gay marriage impairs or hurts the state's interest in "procreative" marriages, you've lost. Straight from the horse's mouth, folks. Why shouldn't gay people have a right to marry?

"I don't know. I don't know."

Do The Hump Day Shuffle

2010-08-04T12:37:00.009-04:00

(For an explanation, click here)

1. "I've Got A Theory/Bunnies/If We're Together" off Once More With Feeling, by Joss Whedon & the cast of Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Back in 2001 I had a friend who loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was one of those people who heard the title of the series, rolled my eyes and gave it no further thought whatsoever.

Then he showed me the Musical episode.

Once More With Feeling was, to my knowledge, the first episode of network television to attempt a musical since Stephen Bochco and Randy Newman's ill-fated Cop Rock. Nowadays they're almost common - and that's entirely because of Buffy's success in pulling something that audacious off so well. It's an extraordinary hour of TV, and I don't use that word lightly. Once I'd finished watching it for the first time I promptly went out and bought all of the then-available seasons - maybe the best DVD purchases I've ever made.

The music and lyrics, written by Whedon, affectionately mock and simultaneously pay tribute to everything from Andrew Lloyd Webber to Jonathan Larson to Lerner & Lowe to Stephen Sondheim. It's uniformly catchy stuff, and it's so smart and so well-performed by the cast (who are, largely, completely untrained singers if they're singers at all) that its almost scary.

If you've never watched an episode of Buffy, you owe it to yourself to try this one (and the similarly audacious-and-amazing "Hush").

2. "Rise" off Vulgar Display of Power by Pantera

Ah, memories: Nassau Coliseum. The 1990s. My brother and I watching as Pantera threatened to level the arena with their sound; lead singer Phil Anselmo tossing open cups of beer into a near-riotous audience as "Dimebag" Darrell shredded mercilessly on the guitar. I'll never forget that - nor the way in which the dude directly behind us drunkenly relieved himself all over our (thankfully empty) seats.

Beer, bad behavior and angry guitars - that's Pantera in a nutshell as far as I'm concerned.

These days I'm far more likely to pop in Deftones when I'm in the mood for something cathartic and aggressive, but I'll always keep Vulgar Display of Power around. It recalls long-ago summers and psyching myself up before football games; it reminds me of my youth.

3. "Falling For The First Time" off Maroon by Barenaked Ladies

One of my prouder moments in college involved my acapella group performing a Barenaked Ladies song FOR the Barenaked Ladies. They'd just come off stage at our school's annual Spring Weekend, and they were ANGRY. A group of meatheads and jackasses had spent the entirety of the band's set throwing drinks on the stage and on the musicians, catcalling, and generally being world-class, Grade A @$$holes.

Needless to say: when the school's Student Activities coordinator popped his head in after the fact to see if they'd be willing to hear us sing they were...less than enthused. Then-singer Stephen Page (now no longer with the group) was so ticked off that he opted to stay in the band's improvised dressing room and I honestly can't say I blame him (it was bad). To their enormous credit however, the rest of the group emerged and dutifully listened as we made our way through one of their tunes.

Hearing a band you respect tell you that you've made their day is one of the better feelings I've experienced. I highly recommend it.

Barenaked Ladies has a reputation as a "joke" band, and while they've certainly earned the appellation it's far from all they are - they're also a superbly-tight group that cranks out sparkling pop gems. Falling For The First Time is a prime example of this - a Summer-driving-song if ever there was one replete with a terrific, driving beat and catchy melody, an insanely-hooky/busy piano riff, and some cute/poignant lyrics.

On a sidenote: That video is AWFUL, yes?

4. "Angels of the Silences" off Recovering the Satellites by Counting Crows

Counting Crows gets a bad rap, overall.

Sure, Adam Duritz's vocals can sound a little whiny but so what? Conor Oberst doesn't get flack for that. I'll trade a little whine for a lot of great lyrics any day of the week, and Duritz delivers like UPS on that front - the man is a poet of sorts. This track is an attempt to weld Counting Crows' jangly folk-rock to the then-ascendant Grunge movement. It works surprisingly well for me, and the band would revisit the harder edges of their sound again to great effect on 2008's "Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings." I recommend checking that one out (try "1492" for another harder-edged number).

Yo, ADL: WTF?

2010-08-03T16:34:00.006-04:00

DEFAMATION: "An act of communication that causes someone to be shamed, ridiculed, held in contempt, lowered in the estimation of the community, or to lose employment status or earnings or otherwise suffer a damaged reputation." (Source)

From the Wall Street Journal's article on the "Ground Zero Mosque":

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said Ms. Khan's statements on transparency, inclusiveness and healing don't address the central point of his group's opposition: that the location of the center is insensitive to the families of the Sept. 11 victims. "If you want to heal us, don't do it in our cemetery," he said. "We are joining in with families who are not saying don't do it at all, but saying don't do it here."

It seems to be that the Anti-Defamation League is engaging in some good ol' fashioned bigotry here. It certainly seems as though these comments might further encourage others to see that Muslims are "shamed, ridiculed, held in contempt, lowered in the estimation of the community." Foxman, on the other hand, disagrees - he's said as much in a statement on the Anti-Defamation League's website:

The main charge was that an anti-bigotry organization had joined with the bigots. That false accusation was extremely painful and served to diminish and obscure the fact that our position on the Islamic center was carefully considered, clearly stated and consistent with our values and mission.

Well, that's fair. The ADL has stepped up and come to the aid of Muslim people on several occasions. That should not be overlooked here. They've done good, and that's good.

There are legitimate differences of opinion regarding the building of an Islamic cultural center at Ground Zero.

Okay...Stop right there.

The Islamic cultural center in question is not being built "at Ground Zero." It is being built three blocks away, on the site of an old Burlington Coat Factory. It is impossible to have "legitimate differences of opinion" on this issue when the issue is presented - as it has been presented here in Foxman's own words - disingenuously and falsely.

But let's set that aside for a minute. Let's talk instead about what Foxman is actually saying here:

"If you want to heal us, don't do it in our cemetery," he said. "We are joining in with families who are not saying don't do it at all, but saying don't do it here."

One: Ground Zero isn't a cemetery.

Two: It's not "your" cemetery. You don't own it, you don't rent it, and you ain't residing in it.

Three: If, for the sake of argument, it's a "cemetery" at all, then its a Muslim cemetery as well. Muslims died on 9/11. All the fearmongering in the world won't change this.

Four: Mel Gibson's unfortunate drunken rantings to the contrary, the basic fact that "the Jews" are in fact not responsible for all the wars in the world can be soundly and easily proven. Can we similarly agree that "the Muslims" are not responsible for the actions of nine psychotic men?

Five: Just how far away from "here" do Muslims have to build in order to be considered appropriate? Another 3 blocks? Another 10? A different neighborhood? Maybe one that's separate, but y'know, equal?

This is ridiculous. Utterly, bafflingly, ridiculous.

Pass The Sentence

2010-08-02T10:13:00.002-04:00

(For a brief explanation, click here)

This week's sentence:

"He let it go and watched it fall, end over end, into the gathering darkness."

Diane, It's Been A Rough Week

2010-07-30T09:03:00.003-04:00

Hola, all.

Apologies, but there won't be a Lost & Found column today. The week's been a long one, without much in the way of time to write up the episodes. I'll resume next Friday. Have a terrific weekend!

Thor Escapes

2010-07-29T09:40:00.004-04:00

So, say you weren't at Comic Con this year. And say that, hypothetically, you wanted very much to see the footage shown from Kenneth Branagh's Thor.

Hypothetically.

Then you might want to scoot on over to, oh, I don't know, a site like this one.

On The Shelf: A New King

2010-07-27T13:25:00.019-04:00

I'm something of a ceaseless reader. Stephen King once wrote (in On Writing I think, though I could easily be wrong) that he never goes anywhere without a book, since you never know when you'll need a mental escape hatch. Those are the words of a kindred soul. I cart books and magazine articles with me everywhere I go which is sometimes less than wise. Walking and reading is, typically, not a good thing. Still, I do it all the time. That being the case I thought I'd start letting you folks know what tomes I've got my nose buried in. I love having someone recommend a good book just as much as I enjoy reading someone's evisceration of a bad one. Here I'll do both, depending on the book and my enjoyment of it.

The Passage is one of those annoyingly-oversold summer books. They're omnipresent on the display shelves of bookstores and pop up on all the mainstream "What To Read For Summer" lists as well as in the hands of multiple Subway and Bus riders. If an album/book/crocheted-panorama/whathaveyou is being enjoyed by everyone and talked about on Good Morning America, I'm sometimes perversely compelled to skip over it in search of rarer gems* (this is why, despite its cultural ubiquity, I have not touched Stieg Larsen's Millenium Trilogy). I freely admit that this is weird behavior, but it's not (entirely) snobby behavior. It's not that I'm "too good" for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo or anything. I'm just wired, seemingly from birth, to look for the underdogs. The snobby part, self-admittedly, comes from the fact that some of the things which the larger culture embraces completely tend to be - to me - kind of....average at best.

That said, I'm not immune to the larger conversation happening around me, or to Big Popular Mainstream Entertainment**. I've devoured Stephen King's books since I first discovered his book IT at age 12, read the opening scenes in which poor Georgie meets the scariest clown of all time and then promptly hid its nightmare-inducing cover under a stack of other, more benign books as though they'd help to drain away some of the pure terror that it induced in me through literary osmosis.

I bring King up because Cronin's book gets a glowing (sneaky pun!) back cover blurb from the Master of Horror. That's not what attracted me to the book, but I did find it interesting since the novel is so far reading like early King - specifically The Stand (there's even a seemingly-'special' kid, one of King's most consistently recycled elements). This is very much a compliment. I'm impressed by Cronin's skill with his characters, by the way in which he's unspooling this addictive narrative and by the economy and force of his prose. The sentence "Now I know why the soldiers are here," which appears some twenty-something pages into the book, perfectly sums up the sure-handed approach that Cronin takes with this potentially uber-pulpy material. Cronin doesn't fall prey to typical genre traps; his characters are uniformly well-rounded and struck through with shades of gray, his plot turns are deftly executed, and his writing is spare and evocative. The basic spine of this book's story could easily be a terrible Sci-Fi channel miniseries. There's little that's truly original thus far in the macro details of the story (Mysterious virus? Check. Shady Military involvement? Check. Vampires? Double-check, since every bit of entertainment that's produced is now contractually obligated to feature at least one vampire) but the skill of the storyteller elevates it far above that.

I'm only 100 or so pages into this one, but I'd already recommend it. It's compulsively-readable, literary without being difficult/boring, pulpy and appealing without being dumb/obvious. I'm as vamped-out as anyone (keep in mind: I've seen ALL the Twilight movies, thanks to The Lovely Wife) and if folks were prohibited from releasing anything undead-related for a year or two I think the culture as a whole would feel a lot less dull/repetitive, but if you're going to read one vampire-related novel this year, make it The Passage.***

What about you? What're you reading this summer?

*There's a strange, indefinable difference between entertainment that's truly been embraced on a massive level by the public at large (see: The DaVinci Code) and entertainment that's been wholly-embraced by the critical/media establishment, which is NOT the larger viewing public (see: Mad Men). I'm curiously compelled to avoid the former, not so much the latter. The reasoning behind this is as murky and elusive as you'd expect.

**Film especially. I'm always up for a good blockbuster. Make of this what you will.

***For the love of all that is good and holy, don't make that book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Peanut Butter AND Chocolate?! Are You Mad?!

2010-07-26T10:26:00.014-04:00

EW.com:

"I’ve always been wary of an Avengers movie, but I never could put my finger on exactly why. Then, last week, LeBron James took his “talents to South Beach” to form an unprecedented basketball superteam, and I now totally understand my original misgivings. James shouldn’t be in the same uniform as new teammates Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, soaring past, through, and over mere basketball mortals from New York, Cleveland, or Toronto. In sports, as in physics, heavenly bodies like superstars are supposed to attract their own satellites. Instead, James’ Jupiter is about to collide with Wade’s Saturn. It’s simply unnatural.

Ditto The Avengers. Can you really imagine a world where Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and possibly the Hulk work out at the same gym?"

Uh...yeah, I can. There's actually a pretty well-established comic book out there that deals with this. It's called The Avengers. There's even a gym.

"Isn’t it the rare comic-book movie that manages to craft a believable universe that explains even one superhero?"

Uh...No. Not really. That is, unless the standards used to judge those films are different than the standards for every other film "genre." I mean, it's rare for ANY film "to craft a believable universe that explains" its characters. Just look to any of the dozens of disposable, inhuman romantic comedies churned out each year, or the cookie-cutter human life lesson films that inundate our theaters in the fall and winter, or the action films (sans the super-heroic) that consistently trade in logic and genuine feeling for anti-gravity fistfights and weightless, meaningless dialogue.

Now, it's very likely that the author of EW's barely-there article has no idea that an Avengers book exists. It's also possible that this person, for whatever reason, just has a legitimately difficult time wrapping his mind around the concept of different characters from different films interacting (Roger Rabbit must have BLOWN HIS MIND). But how difficult is it, really, to imagine this team of heroes working together? What kind of cognitive leap do you have to make to convince yourself that it can work, and (much more importantly) why on earth does that leap seem like a big one for Jeff LaBrecque? Does the coexistence of the mystic Force and Han Solo's non-mystical laser gun in Star Wars bewilder him? Does the murderer's row of talent in the Ocean's Eleven films frighten and confuse him?

Get used to this kind of article, because you're going to be seeing a lot of it. Once a media meme establishes itself its difficult to eradicate. In the coming months/year you are going to see countless entertainment site/magazine stories that pose variations on the question being asked in EW's article-ette. What I can't decide is whether this meme will be the result of the follow-the-herd mentality that's naturally a part of the journalistic culture online, or if it's indicative of something worse: a death of imagination.

As far as I'm concerned, if a child can take his Iron Man figure and his Captain America figure and create a compelling adventure in his own mind, then it seems to me that it is decidedly within the power of a film company to create an entertaining film from a group of properties that have, collectively, provided 3/4's of a century's-worth of wildly imaginative stories. Is that crazy? It doesn't seem crazy to me.

Pass The Sentence

2010-07-26T10:23:00.003-04:00

(For an explanation, click here)

This week's sentence:

If it hadn't been for Daisy, he'd have never left that place.

Coma & The Man Behind Glass (Twin Peaks S2 Eps. 2 & 3)

2010-07-23T14:57:00.000-04:00

The Lost & Found column for Coma and The Man Behind Glass has been tied up with its toenails painted for your reading pleasure on Chud.com.

Thou Shalt Not...

2010-07-22T17:20:00.005-04:00

"Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust." - Martin Luther King Jr., Letter From A Birmingham Jail

There are, in the final analysis, no good rational arguments against gay marriage. There are specious, illogical, and bigoted arguments galore for sure but they are, to a one, specious, illogical and bigoted. There are "religious" arguments to be made, but those arguments are (a) irrelevant in America, as we enjoy a separation between Church and State as regards the functioning of the law and (b) disingenuous to say the very least.

Anyone who wants to argue point (a) is in favor of a theocratic state. They should be dismissed both from your minds and from the larger public discourse. Theocracies are Dictatorships-with-training-wheels, and no intelligent American familiar with our history could support such a thing.

So, let us tackle point (b) for a moment, because I think it's an important one, and because I believe the utter hypocrisy on display continually needs to be addressed, no matter that it's been addressed before.

God tells His people in the Bible that its an abomination for a man to lie with a man (Leviticus 18:22), but he also tells His people that its an abomination for them to wear mixed fibers, to eat shellfish (Leviticus 11:10-12) and to consume pork (Deuteronomy 14:7-8). Yet, somehow, those shellfish-eating heathens and mixed-fiber-wearing sinners are still able to legally wed in this country. There is also, incidentally, a profound and unambiguous commandment against murder. Also, I seem to remember one regarding adultery: "Thou shalt...something something." And yet, somehow, murderer and adulterer alike are still able (if they ain't no homo!) to get hitched in the grand ol' US of A. Adulterers? Why, they can marry as many times as they'd like so long as they can find someone willing to officiate.

I'd like those opposed to gay marriage to explain how this makes sense at all - how its in any way "moral" or "just" or "right" to deny two loving, monogamous gay people the same legal protections and rights, the same access to the very word Marriage, that's currently enjoyed by numerous Donald Drapers all over America; to explain to me the selective enforcement of "Biblical law" that's clearly the root of this discrimination in a way that doesn't in turn make a mockery of that enforcement.

If they can do that, without tying us both into enough knots for a Three's Company reunion, I will reconsider my position on the seemingly-stark, unambiguous fact of their bigotry. I will also, in all likelihood, suddenly and improbably transform into a Unicorn.

Who exactly is being harmed when two homosexuals are able to legally commit themselves to one another? Some might say "the children" (and someone ALWAYS invokes "the children"), but those people are wrong. There is no (again reliable, rational, scientific, calculable, REAL) evidence that children of gay parents are in any way "worse off" than children of straight parents. Nor is there any evidence that having gay parents "makes you gay." So, the kids are alright, to steal the film title. And even if some kids did grow up to be gay - so what? How is it different than, say, the fear/belief that interracial households are "sociologically troublesome" for children - an argument that racists made over and over again in attempting to stop different races from marrying, from procreating, from loving one another?

On the other hand, how many people have been substantively, demonstrably harmed over the past several years by the country's (and the world's) over-elaborate, under-transparent, barely (if at all) regulated economy? How many jobs have been lost? How many children have suffered? How many marriages have ended under that strain? How many companies have folded, or downsized (or, in my favorite bit of sh*tty finessing, been "right-sized") in the wake of all of this?

I cannot make heads nor tails of current Conservative thought on this issue. The VERY SAME PEOPLE who want to ensure that two consenting adults in a committed monogamous relationship cannot say that they are "married," and who are willing to utilize the full might of the US government to achieve this result are the VERY SAME PEOPLE who demand that government deregulate industries, deregulate the markets, and generally-speaking, stay the heck outta the boardroom.

Put more simply: The folks who SAY that they want the government to have as little involvement in the lives of its citizens as possible clearly don't believe their own hype. And realizing this - knowing this with certainty - makes it easier to meet the challenge of this recurrent bigotry head-on.

MLK thoughtfully and patiently laid out the distinction between just and unjust laws in his Letter From A Birmingham Jail, and his words here serve, remarkably well, to remind us that unjust laws do not go away. There will always be a group for us to hate - be they black, or gay, or Muslim, or Martian, or whathaveyou. It is up to us to recognize this flaw in our collective character, and to work toward a greater understanding with our fellow man. It is up to us to demand just laws on behalf of our brothers and our sisters, be they black or white, Christian or Muslim, heterosexual or homosexual.

Do The Hump Day Shuffle

2010-07-21T13:50:00.008-04:00

(For an explanation, click HERE.)

1) "All to Myself," off The Philosopher Kings by The Philosopher Kings

My unplanned, hardcore tryst with the Canadian music scene rears its head again this week in the first shuffle-cut, a song from Canada's own Philosopher Kings. This album - their first - is also their best. Truly eclectic, and truly accomplished, the tracks on this album weave through R&B, rock, pop and honest-to-God jazz (I love good jazz, automatically making me older and more boring than you are), blending these divergent genres together in a way that feels smoothly cool and timeless more than a decade after its release. "All to Myself" is a perfect example of this - combining elastic upright bass and jazz-inflected piano riffs with a lounge-y, urbane crooning that's part Sinatra, part Maxwell, and all-good. You'll find a shiver-inducing cover of Bob Dylan's "Just Like a Woman" here, as well as one of the sparest, most affecting acoustic-guitar-accompanied ballads I've ever heard in "Ain't No Woman Around."

Subsequent releases found the Kings moving further away from the melting pot excitement they conjure here, and deeper into streamlined pop/soul, resulting (for this listener) in a less rewarding, less overall-interesting sound. But The Philosopher Kings remains a great, completely underappreciated album (at least here in the States - I understand the group is quite popular and well known in their native country), and one you ought to consider buying.

2) "Architecture," off Armistice by MuteMath

MuteMath, otherwise known as my brother-in-law's favorite band, pulls off futurist electro-rock very, very well. If you've ever loved Depeche Mode you'll love MuteMath. I don't, as a general rule, adore much electronic music. Much of it comes across to my ears as precise and "perfect" to an extreme that's deadening, or even boring, but MuteMatch cranks out electro-influenced tunes that still vibrate with emotion and humanity.

3) "Hey Jealousy," off New Miserable Experience by the Gin Blossoms

There are an awful lot of sad stories in Rock n' Roll. For my money, one of the very saddest stories belongs to Doug Hopkins. Hopkins was the guitarist and arguable lead-songwriter for the Gin Blossoms, an at-the-time up-and-coming Arizona band. The songs he wrote for the band, including "Hey Jealousy" and "Found out about you," were the songs that catapulted the band to sudden fame and fortune. Hopkins was also, by all reports, a full-on alcoholic, barely able to stand during the recording sessions for New Miserable Experience. Gin Blossoms' label gave the band an ultimatum: lose Hopkins, or we lose you.

And that is how an alcoholic, chronically-depressed, very gifted guitar player and pop melody writer found himself on the outside looking in as his former band mates and friends went on to (albeit, non-lasting) fame and fortune thanks to Hopkins' songs. Want to know what's even worse? The band withheld money owed to Hopkins for his session work until he'd agreed to sign over half of the publishing royalties due to him on the songs he'd crafted, which meant that when New Miserable Experience became a Multi-Platinum phenomenon, Hopkins wasn't even able to fully bask in the financial reward.

None of which is to say that Hopkins was a saint, or that he didn't arguably deserve some of what was coming to him (only the people involved can weight in on that). By all accounts he was a horror-show to work with - the kind of all-too-common victim of his demons who was, so it's said, a real sweetheart and a real sonofabitch depending on the second you caught him in.

Hopkins died the year after New Miserable Experience was released of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Long live Rock n' Roll?

4) "I Got Love If You Want It," off The Excello Singles by Slim Harpo

On a lighter end-note, I love me some Blues. I've got no idea what led to my appreciation for the art form - I grew up White, arguably well-off, and in the Northeast after all - but I suspect it's the same magnetic attraction that led to The Kinks recording Harpo's song. No matter your color, "the blues ain't nothin' but a good man feelin' bad, thinkin' 'bout the woman he once was with"(to quote the wholly-unappreciated little gem of a movie, Crossroads, which manages to make Ralph Macchio semi-interesting, and which features one of the most entertaining showdown sequences I've seen - involving guitar legend Steve Vai, the devil, and a battle of musical prowess that veers from blues licks to soul to rock to classical). Harpo was an excellent harmonica player (I dabble, am fairly decent, but do not possess Harpo's naturalism or his flair for fat, open-ended note playing) and has an excellently-strange, compellingly-nasal voice. If you've never spent much time listening to the Blues, don't start here. But if you're already a fan of the genre, Harpo's one to know.

That's it for this week. What's your shuffle?

Mosquerade

2010-07-20T13:54:00.017-04:00

I try to steer clear of the overtly-political in my online writing.

I do this for two reasons:

(1) It brings out the worst in other people. In one of my Lost columns I tossed in some half-baked attempt at getting a laugh that involved a (very) veiled potshot at former President G.W. Bush, and promptly recieved a dozen emails telling me to keep my [CENSORED] mouth shut about the politickin'. None of them were polite. To say the least.

(2) It brings out the worst in me. I think most people secretly believe that their POV is the correct POV. I'm not immune to this syndrome, and if the majority of the internet is any indication, neither is anyone else. There's very little rational discourse about political decisionmaking in this country, and that's a shame because (a) its necessary and (b) it acts as an important counterpoint to rumor-mongering, gossip and trivial nonsense. Why would I want to add to the catty mentality?

Nonetheless, I feel the urge to do a little politically-based rambling today, and not the rational kind. I want to speak from the heart for just a minute.

"Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real." - Sarah Palin, 'tweeting' about the plan to build a Mosque near the (still not rebuilt) site of the World Trade Center tragedy.

Ms. Palin, allow me to be honest (and to pretend to address this to you personally). You live in Alaska, a state that's about as ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse as a snowflake. The likelihood of your having spent even a modicum of time with a Muslim in anything resembling a comfortable, non-posed-and-vetted setting is, frankly, laughable.

It does not occur to you - has probably never occured to you - that there might actually have been Muslims in those towers when they fell. It does not occur to you that some of the firefighters and policemen who gave their service that day were Muslim. It does not occur to you that the groups of survivors in the aftermath - the families and friends and loved ones of the dead - contained, and contain, Muslim people. It certainly does not seem to occur to you that the entirety of New York City might actually contain peaceful practitioners of Islam who desire a place of worship.

None of this occurs to you, I assume, because you've led the sort of sheltered, homogenous existence that many people live. You've never been/felt compelled to venture outside of your own comfort zone, and your life choices have ensured that you'd never have to do so. Wasilla may be a great lil' place to raise your kids, but it's a dirt-poor excuse for real diversity.

So. Allow me to explain something to you:

Until you've spent more than a week in this amazing city living in something other than a lavishly-appointed suite, until you've ridden the public bus/subway with a literal rainbow of humanity's potential (from peeing bum to Mayor Michael Bloomberg), and voluntarily exposed yourself to what it actually means when you live in a melting pot, you don't get word one in this discussion. You don't get to fetishize a tragedy that for all its actual impact on your personal life might as well have occured in Russia. You don't get to weigh in on what's appropriate during the rebuilding process.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I looked out of my apartment window and watched the towers fall. I was blocked from trying to make my way downtown in order to help by sympathetic, stonefaced men in flack jackets. My calls to loved ones who worked in and around those buildings were delayed and denied, and though I'm very, very lucky not to have lost anyone I personally knew on that day I'll never forget the panic that comes with trying in vain to reach a family member and getting nothing but silence. That night, I walked empty city streets lined with enormous, intimidating military vehicles and listened as people of every religion, every skin color, and every class, tried to make sense of something profoundly senseless. The very first person to voice his sadness and his anger to me that day was a Muslim. We lived that tragedy - are STILL living that tragedy - every day; in the air we breathe, in the people we lost, in the city itself.

You watched it on the news.

And now, here you are, appealing to "peaceful New Yorkers" (a group which, one can assume, doesn't include Muslims as far as you're concerned, since "peaceful Muslim" appears to be a nonsensical word grouping like "Jumbo Shrimp" in your mind) and attempting to create an issue where there is no issue. Will there be a Mosque near/on/in/on top of Ground Zero? I don't know. And, frankly, I don't care. Because it doesn't matter - no matter how many pushy-fear-mongers-who-think-that-stunt-opposition-to-religious-symbolism-is-the-same-thing-as-doing-something-that-actually-counts-in-this-world insist otherwise.

I'm getting testy. I'll let Bloomberg handle the rest of this:

I think our young men and women overseas are fighting for exactly this, for the right to, of people to practice their religion and for government to not pick and choose which religions they support and which religions they don't. Sarah Palin has a right to her opinions, but I could not disagree more. Everything the United States stands for and New York stands for is tolerance and openness, and I think it's a great message for the world that unlike in other places where they might actually ban people from wearing a burqua or they might actually keep people from building a building, that's not what America was founded on, nor is it what America should become.

Amen.

Mea Culpa

2010-07-20T12:58:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the lack of updating, folks.

I'm sick.

Thanks for your patience, and I'll see you soon.

The Last Evening & May The Giant Be With You (Twin Peaks S1, ep. 7 & S2, ep. 1)

2010-07-16T15:04:00.000-04:00

The Lost & Found column for The Last Evening and May The Giant Be With You has been shot in the chest for your reading pleasure on Chud.com.

Please spread the word!

Do The Hump Day Shuffle

2010-07-14T16:15:00.005-04:00

(For an explanation, click HERE)

1) "Helena," off Why Should the Fire Die by Nickel Creek

By the time they released their last album (they've since placed themselves on hiatus), Nickel Creek had changed the face of bluegrass music by opening it up past the rigid traditionalism that had previously defined it. The trio quickly illustrated its restless, questing musical intelligence and wide-ranging taste by covering the Pavement song "Spit on a Stranger" for their follow up album, This Side. Why Should the Fire Die took the group further away from the "traditional" sounds of bluegrass, and into darker places. Helena is a perfect example of this, and one hell of a good song - one that builds upon itself almost entirely through the tension and anger that's projected, admirably, through the spare and ominous instrumentation that begins the song and that slowly grows until the pounding of the drums and the percussive quality of the strings give the angry, accusatory lyrics ("Helena, don't walk away/Did you hear one word I said/Oh well, I never really liked us anyway/And I forgot her, I'll forget you, Helena") a kind of rude catharsis.

2) "Pale September," off Tidal by Fiona Apple

In a just and orderly universe, Fiona Apple would be a bigger star than she is, would have had a more consistent, more consistently successful career, and wouldn't need to worry about battling for years with her record label before they'd agree to release an album. Sadly, this universe is the only one we get (that we know of!), and so its up to nerdy writers like myself to point you toward artists like Ms. Apple. Pale September is a very pretty track, but it ain't all that. For a better representation of Apple's copious, chanteuse-ian gifts, try the songs "Sleep to Dream," "Never is a Promise," "Paper Bag," "To Your Love," or "Fast As You Can."

3) "D'yer Mak'er," off Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin

What could I possibly say about Led Zeppelin that hasn't been said, multiple times and in multiple languages over multiple decades? Nothing, that's what. A good song from one of the most heavily-played albums of my formative years.

4) "Alone," off Where I Started by Wide Mouth Mason

For a period of a time I became unintentionally infatuated with Canadian musicians. I have no explanation for this, but I can tell you that it wasn't intentional. One day I looked up and realized that half the bands I'd gotten into that year were Canucks. It was an unusual and undeniable pattern, one that I'm still not able to account for. One of those bands was Wide Mouth Mason - a blues/rock trio that still has the ability to get my pulse up after a long day with songs like "Alone." I dig the heck out of the jagged guitar riff on this one.

A Week Of Independents: Day 3

2010-07-14T11:17:00.000-04:00

If you'd like to be branded Untouchable, just tell people that you appreciate Hanson. The effect, in most instances, is as if you'd instead said "Hey, you know who I can appreciate? CHARLES MANSON." Being "teen idols" acted as a kind of strange albatross for this band, and its taken them the better part of a decade to begin to shake that label. Can you imagine how frustrating that would be, as a creator?

That's the thing about Hanson - they get no respect from the general record-buying populace, but they get surprising respect from their fellow entertainers and, more recently, from the critical establishment. They also get genuine respect from me. For a number of reasons.

#1: They're talented musicians. Hanson albums have a tendency to sound samey as a whole, and I've always enjoyed their up-tempo stuff WAY more than the ballads, but they turn out some genuinely enjoyable pop gems on a consistent basis and that's nothing to sneeze at. I like blue-eyed soul music, and Hanson makes some pretty great blue-eyed soul. Don't believe me? Check out the video for their last single, "Thinking 'bout Something," which pays homage to the Blues Brothers AND features a marvelous, completely random cameo tambourine performance from Mr. Weird Al Yankovic.

#2: They're socially conscious in a way that I admire. For the album The Walk, all proceeds for the sale of their single, "Great Divide," were donated to an AIDS relief organization focused on Africa. They toured Africa and met with, worked with, and sang with the very people that money was intended to benefit. They got their hands dirty, and they got an incredibly important message of humane action and personal responsibility out to a new generation of young folks who have come up in an age where AIDS no longer holds the same electric terror that it did when I was growing up (and thank God for that, and for the recent tests showing successful eradication of 90% of the disease's strains).

#3: They're family-friendly. I like a lot of music, and while I love pumping the new Big Boi album when I'm with the adults, I'm reaching an age where I'm going to be dealing with tiny young people soon and I suspect that a constant diet of Public Enemy, He Is Legend, Patton Oswalt and vintage Pantera probably isn't a GREAT idea. That's where Hanson comes in - they're the musical equivalent of Bill Cosby's comedy: fun and squeaky-clean.

#4: As indicated by their presence here this week, they're proud Independents. After a clash with their record company in which, reportedly, the company rejected over 80 offered songs as "not commercial," the band broke from their label and founded their own. Their first independent release, Underneath, charted shockingly well, and became one of the most successful independent releases of all time. They've made a career their own way, in their own time, and in doing so have secured a much more interesting (and I'll argue, more permanent and respectable) place in the pop firmament by choosing to do so. Hanson may have found fame thanks to a record company, but they forged a career all by themselves.

Hanson will never be "cool," but as I'm aging I'm realizing just how shallow a pool "cool" really is. Who cares about that, other than teenagers and people who judge your worth as a person based on what bands/films/tv shows you enjoy?

I've outgrown both those groups, and I couldn't be happier about it.

Your Suggested Hanson Mixtape (with some samples linked):

1. You Never Know - off This Time Around
2. Ngi Ne Themba (I Find Hope) - off The Walk
3. Great Divide - off The Walk
4. Kiss Me When You Come Home - off Shout it Out
5. Get Up and Go - off Underneath
6. Blue Sky - off The Walk
7. In the City - off This Time Around (feat. John Popper & The Dust Brothers)
8. Thinking 'bout Something - off Shout it Out

A Week of Independents continues tomorrow! Be assured that no former teen idols will appear!

We Are Now Experiencing Technical Difficulties?

2010-07-13T13:48:00.001-04:00

Some folks have contacted me and informed me that they're unable to see the comment box here on the site, and so unable to post comments.

If you're having this problem please shoot me an email at WhatIsWater@gmail.com and let me know.

With thanks,

MMorse

A Week Of Independents: Day 2

2010-07-13T09:53:00.010-04:00

"We're an independent band and so we don't have to play by anybody's rules but our own. We decided to put the art before the commerce, and you know, put meaning in songs and try to be a part of a world community via the Peacemakers, truly, and that's what people have responded to. Instead of worrying about writing for radio, or predicting or following trends, we just shot the art from the heart and bingo - it worked." - Roger Clyne

Back in 1996 a little band named The Refreshments had their fifteen minutes of fame. Their song, "Banditos," got some airplay and a quirky video on Mtv, and the band contributed the theme song to King of the Hill. Then they recorded a second album, imploded, and got dumped by Mercury Records.

Booyah.

Lead singer/rhythm guitarist/main songwriter Roger Clyne crawled from the wreckage and decided that he was done with record companies. Striking out with his own self-financed label, Clyne packed his gear into a van, set out on the road with a group of like-minded musicians, and hasn't looked back since. Ten years later he's the head of a small, successful, homegrown business - one that he, his bandmates and his support staff have built from the ground up. You can buy Roger Clyne tequila ("Mexican Moonshine"), travel to Mexico for the group's annual Circus Mexicus show (a pilgrimage I'll be undertaking for the first time next year), purchase an entire wardrobe of Peacemaker-branded clothing, and help yourself to a catalog of great albums. Clyne keeps it all reasonably priced and in fact you can purchase the entirety of his catalog - nine CDs-worth of his work with The Refreshments and The Peacemakers - for fifty-five dollars.

Clyne and his compatriots cultivate an atmosphere of laconic relaxation and tequila-fueled fun. Attending one of their shows is a little like hanging out with a big group of drunken friends, and their live shows are often compared to Jimmy Buffet in terms of fan dedication and general alcohol-related shenanigans.

All of this would be interesting but essentially meaningless if their musical output weren't so consistently kickass. During the course of a decade, the Peacemakers have slowly evolved from shitkickin' honkytonk layabouts, to hard-edged, philosophical cowboy troubadours, to older-n'-wiser, zen-cool, Siddhartha-ian beach bums. And each step in this evolution feels earned, feels organic, feels a part of the life experience of these specific people. Roger Clyne won't ever order you to Evacuate the Dancefloor, or offer you his Umbrella-ella-ella, but he will spin you gritty, dust-caked tales of blood and avarice and broken promises ("Well I did before what I'll do again/So forgive me father if I have sinned/But the old wood cracks before it bends"), then offer up some pointed-yet-non-histrionic political commentary ("I'm hearing whispers from our history books/The Kings, Queens, Bishops, Knights and Rooks/And the blood they spilt the gold they took/was always first the pawns'"), then turn around and offer up a snarky Zen koan like "I'll be free as soon as you enslave me."

There's something for everyone in the Peacemakers' catalog. If you're a fan of tongue-in-cheek country-fried rock n' roll, there's "Honky Tonk Union." If you prefer more introspection and simultaneous fire with your southwestern rhythms you can try "Sonoran Hope & Madness." Need more Springsteen and Petty and poetry and muscular guitar licks? Try "Americano." Want a mental dip into cool, summery waters with some dark undercurrents? Check "No More Beautiful World" - it's the perfect album for sipping margaritas on any Eve of possible Destruction.

Sample RCPM:

Performing Americano @ Danny's North
Performing "Preacher's Daughter" @ Circus Mexicus
Performing "Green & Dumb" (Great footage/sound quality, and maybe their best song)
Performing "Jack vs. Jose," a song about a clash between Whiskey and Tequila drinkers.
Performing "Maybe We Should Fall In Love" acoustically with drummer PH Naffah.

A Week of Independents

2010-07-12T17:37:00.001-04:00

It's Independent Music Week here at Verbosity!

Monday through Friday I'll be celebrating the musical efforts of true independents - acts that have consciously foregone major label support/ClearChannel venues/payola and forged careers for themselves the hard way. I have a lot of admiration for all of these groups/individuals, and I hope you'll take a chance on some of them.

Today's spotlighted artist:

Common Rotation.

Let's get this out of the way: Yes, Adam Busch is the nerdy dude from Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Warren, aka the guy who made Willow really, really sad. Yes, he's also the co-lead-singer for Common Rotation.

That doesn't matter, though.

What matters is that Common Rotation writes and performs sparkly little pop gems (historically) and largely-effective folk/bluegrass songs (recently). What matters is that they do this, and make something of a living from it, entirely because they've worked to build a devoted fanbase from the ground up. They're successful, not because they've convinced a bottled water company to license their songs, and not because they've got a management company that's paying radio stations to play their songs, but because they tour hard and communicate well with their fans.

Openly contemptuous of the established music industry and ClearChannel's monopolistic business practices Common Rotation established a "Living Room Tour" in 2004, eschewing ClearChannel-owned venues, middlemen, and corporate promotion and literally playing in the living rooms of their fans - an experience they documented with the film "How To Lose" (you can view the trailer here).

I admire the group's ethos, their humor, and their way with harmony and melody. I'm a bigger fan of their pop stuff than I am of their recent turn into bluegrass and folk, but I enjoy everything they've recorded. Here's a random assortment of their music for you to try.

A Sampling of Common Rotation:

Covering Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel"

"Sit Down"/"The First Time"
CR covers They Might Be Giants' "Don't Let Start"
"Offstage Lines"
Joining The Indigo Girls on "Closer to Fine"
Covering Outkast's "Rosa Parks" with Martin Starr

You can visit Common Rotation's website for tour dates, music and merchandise by clicking here.

Pass The Sentence

2010-07-12T10:08:00.003-04:00

(For an explanation, click here)

This week's sentence:

"It glittered, blue-black, like a beetle's carapace."

Hope everyone's weekend was a good one!

Cooper's Dreams & Realization Time (Twin Peaks, S1, eps. 5 & 6)

2010-07-09T13:27:00.000-04:00

The Lost & Found column for Cooper's Dreams and Realization Time has donned an atrocious wig for your reading pleasure on Chud.com.

Do The Hump Day Shuffle

2010-07-07T14:23:00.006-04:00

(For an explanation, click HERE)

1) “Crying,” off Dear Science by TV on the Radio

My brother inadvertently put his finger on it when he referred to TV on the Radio as sounding “alien.” There’s a strange, otherworldly quality to the soundscapes that this group creates. That turns some folks off. That said: Dear Science is without a doubt their most accessible album to date and its one that you might really enjoy, especially if you’re the type of person who enjoys taking a risk with their listening choices once in a while. Folding an obtuse message about warfare and cultural upheaval into a mix of music that evokes the Golden Age of Michael Jackson as filtered through some deep-space transmission, “Crying” is a most-excellent song.

2) “Doesn’t Have to Be That Way,” off Blackbird on a Lonely Wire by Will Hoge

Will Hoge is a hard-touring musician who’s never quite “made it,” in a world where the concept of “making it” grows ever-more-nebulous with each passing year. While he’s bereft of Major Label Moolah and all the promotional viagra that said-Moolah buys, he’s amassed a devoted following through a touring schedule that would kill lesser men. There’s nothing particularly unique to the brand of barroom rock n’ roll that Hoge peddles in “Doesn’t Have to Be That Way” (far better and more memorable are songs like “Bible vs. Gun” and “Someone Else’s Baby”) but the man’s got passion in his voice and conviction in his heart, and that ain’t nothin’.

3) “I Huckleberry, Me,” off Big River – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Roger Miller/Daniel Jenkins

Big River is the musical retelling of Mark Twain’s beloved classic novel (Hey! Knuckleheads! Stop trying to ban it!), and it’s probably my second-favorite musical of all time. I love Twain’s original tale, and I love what the composer and lyricist Roger Miller accomplished with his score for the show. That said: this isn’t one of the better numbers in the show – for that, try “Worlds Apart”.

4) “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb,” off Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga by Spoon

Seems like today is Spoon Day here on Verbosity. First I quote the band for my itty-bitty Leno/O’Brien post, next thing I know they’ve popped up as the fourth selection in this week’s Hump Day Shuffle. I love the faux-oldies sound that Spoon conjures up on this album, the way that certain choices made in the way the songs are arranged and played give the feeling of touching another era. And I just dig the band’s deceptively-clean-and-simple sound.

That's it for this week's shuffle! Get on out into that big wide world this afternoon and celebrate Spoon Day!

Make With The Chin-Music 'Til He Canaries.

2010-07-07T11:23:00.009-04:00

Courtesy of AICN:

The second-quarter (April through June) ratings for “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” have hit their lowest level since 1993, the year CBS launched “The Late Show With David Letterman.” ...In addition, the first 17 weeks of 2010’s “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” averages in 18-49 well below the first 17 weeks of 2009’s “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien.”

I'm not a particularly vindictive person (or so I like to reassure myself), and yet I'm curiously pleased by this news. Conan's ascension to Carson's hallowed seat got me watching The Tonight Show (hereafter, "TTS") regularly for the first time in forever and his unceremonious dismissal provoked a surprisingly-personal reaction from me.

Some of that comes from my genuine affection for O'Brien - an affection that I realize isn't shared by all - but most of it comes from my dangerously-outsized sense of "fair play." During Leno's first year on-air as TTS host, the show averaged numbers comparable to Conan's. Had NBC displayed the same shallow faith in The Chin that they displayed with Coco, they'd have never possessed the stable Late Night hit that they scrambled to recapture by junking O'Brien. Now, thanks to their own lousy planning and their knee-jerk, short-sighted attitude toward rebuilding a beloved brand, it looks as though they've shot themselves in the collective foot.

Just desserts, says I.

The folks running things at NBC ought to listen to Spoon more often. If they did, they'd realize the wisdom in the words "You got no fear of the underdog - that's why you will not survive."

Rest in Pain & The One-Armed Man (S1, eps. 3 & 4)

2010-07-02T11:47:00.004-04:00

The Lost & Found column for Rest In Pain and The One-Armed Man has leapt onto a malfuntioning coffin for your reading pleasure on Chud.com.

Sorry for the delay, folks!

Do The Hump Day Shuffle

2010-06-30T16:14:00.007-04:00

Well, it's Wednesday.

....Sigh.

Here in America we've christened Wednesday as "Hump Day," signifying that Wednesday is the center of the work week - the "hump" we need to clear before we start coasting toward another blessed weekend. Sadly, it's not nearly as dirty as it sounds.

Music is a favored crutch in my life - I love discovering new songs, new bands, new sounds - and I thought it might be interesting (to me if to no one else) to use these interminable hump days as an excuse to write a little about music. Stealing a page from the AV Club's playbook, I set my iPod to shuffle, listened to the first four songs it selected, and wrote a little bit about each song. You can sample each song by clicking the individual links. I'll try to do this each Wednesday.

1) "More Bacon Than The Pan Can Handle," off Golden Delicious by Mike Doughty

What a perfectly nutzoid track to begin with.

Mike Doughty, formerly of bizarro-alternative "rock" group Soul Coughing, has carved out a nice solo career for himself as a singer-songwriter. Doughty has an unrivaled gift for employing strange words and phrases in ways that somehow add up and become weirdly meaningful in the context of his songs. At his best, he's a surprisingly affecting troubadour. At his strangest, he crafts tracks like this one, where Doughty samples totally random phrases ("Utility man! Por qua? Utility man! Bacalava!") and uses them to create a stream-o'consciousness triphop track that's as goofy as it is hummable.

2) "Shake n' Bake," off SRV by Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stevie Ray Vaughan is to blues music as Eminem is to rap music - a white man in a predominently-black field whose incendiary talent obliterates the question of race altogether for the listener. Who cares what color your skin is when you can play like THIS? Unlike fellow white bluesmen like Eric Clapton, Vaughan knows how to shred with true feeling. Listening to Vaughan cut loose on an instrumental track like Shake n' Bake, you can practically taste the Texas-tinged dust he's kicking up. I have very few musical regrets in my life - I've been lucky enough to catch most of the artists I truly admire in concert, but I'll always regret that I never had the chance to see this man destroy an audience in person.

3) "Persephone," off Turbo Ocho by Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers

If you have the chance to see Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers in concert, you take it. Don't ask questions, don't hesitate....just go. You'll have a great time, drink far too much beer, and end up with your arms around total strangers as they holler the words to every one of the bands many great songs. One of those songs is "Persephone," a tune that Clyne has described as "a love song from hell's perspective." It's simplicity itself - a few spare, alternating chords and an Explosions-In-The-Sky-esque lead guitar that carves out a quivering, mournful backdrop. Not one of his best songs (for that, try "Green and Dumb"), but a terrific example of Clyne's lyric-crafting strengths. The youtube clip I've linked to is of a stripped-down performance for radio, and it highlights the tune's intimacy.

4) "Kind of a Girl," off Tinted Windows by Tinted Windows

What comes to your mind when you hear the term "Supergroup"? If you answered "the dude from Hanson, the guy who wrote 'That Thing You Do,' the guitarist from Smashing Pumpkins who isn't Billy Corgan, and Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick," then have I got an album for you! I'll let you guys in on a little secret - one that's guaranteed to vaporize any coolness I've acquired in your eyes: I think the guy from Hanson has an AMAZING voice. Legitimately. For an example of said-voice, check out this track, which is pure, unfiltered power-pop. The faux-vintage video that accompanies it is kind of great. Overall, this album is samey-sounding and doesn't hit the heights I'd hoped for, but this single is tailormade to blast from car speakers in the summertime.

That's this week's randomly-shuffled selection. Share yours in the comments section!

In Praise of the Goofy Undead

2010-06-29T10:31:00.014-04:00

"Grr! Grrr, I say!"

Tonight I'll have the pleasure of escorting The Lovely Wife to a screening of Eclipse, the next in a seemingly never-ending series of movies about Glittery Vampires, Shirtless Werewolves, and the terminally-boring women who love them.

Yes, I said pleasure.

These movies make me laugh. Not in the meanspirited, dismissive sense, but in the goodnatured, along-for-the-ride-in-a-dark-room-filled-with-quite-literally-squealing-women sense. I recognize precisely why this series is so popular, and I recognize that my gender makes it impossible for me to connect with it in the same way that so very many women have connected with it, but that doesn't mean that I can't enjoy the films in my own way: as comedy. One of the best comedic moments of the decade involves Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, some wirework, and an utterly-hilarious, Looney Tunes-style run through the forest.

These films are Goofy (capital G intended), and I mean that in the best possible way. This quality is best exemplified for me by Jasper, a character that I'm dangerously close to flat-out loving based on his scant minutes of screentime so far, and on the most ludicrious facial expressions I've ever witnessed in a "vampire" movie. I'm told that Jasper and his VERY LARGE EYES play a much bigger part in the story of Eclipse, which has me genuinely excited for it. That, along with reports of a weird, uncomfortable scene involving a tent, a shirtless werewolf, a very cold, very boring woman and a voyeur vampire have me anticipating a great time at the theater tonight.

Please do not misunderstand me: I am not making fun of anyone who enjoys the Twilight series unironically. I admire your passion, and I'm frankly thrilled that so many women have found a series of books/films that encourage them to "geek out" with all of us nerdy boys. Lord knows that I've enjoyed films, shows and books that are definitively terrible - far worse than this Twilight business - so I'm in no position to judge anyone based on what they do or don't like. Never be ashamed of genuinely enjoying something - that's my philosophy. And if you hear me chuckling away in your theater as The Most Boring Yet Also Apparently Most Desirable Woman In The World is fought over by two guys who should really just take each other home and have Glittery, Furry gay sex? Well, know that I'm loving it just as much as you are. Viva La Jasper!

Traces to Nowhere & Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer (S1, eps. 1 & 2)

2010-06-25T14:41:00.000-04:00

The Lost & Found column for Twin Peaks (eps. 1 & 2) is going to come back in style for your reading pleasure on Chud.com. Please vote!

Prime(r)d For More

2010-06-23T12:10:00.005-04:00

Primer is one of the most interesting films you've never seen.

Shot on an infintesimal budget ($7,000!) by a first-time writer/director/actor/editor/composer(!!!), featuring no "name" talent, and containing a story that must literally be seen more than once in order to piece things together, Primer is fundamentally challenging, fundamentally intelligent cinema.

Rent it. Seriously.

Better yet, buy it. Click through my Amazon link on the sidebar and pick up a copy. Contribute some of your hard-earned cash to Art that was painstakingly crafted by a singular vision (literally), not a corporate processing plant. Ambition is to be celebrated, and Primer is nothing if not (insanely) ambitious.

Anywho, the point of all this giddy recommendationing is this: Shane Carruth, the writer/director/actor behind Primer, seems to be potentially moving forward on his next project. Chud.com reports that Rian Johnson - director/writer of Brick and The Brothers Bloom, both movies you should also rent - tweeted (uggghhh) the following news yesterday: "Shane is alive and well and has a mind-blowing sci-fi script. Let's all pray to the movie-gods that he gets it made soon."

Apparently, the title of the script is "A Topiary," and there's a site up now featuring the intriguingly-vague image posted above (and nothing else, or I'd link to it also). A site called Playlist apparently has the script for the film, which they've written up. I'm increasingly wary of spoiling myself on a film before I see it, so I'll be avoiding more details on this one and simply hoping that Carruth finds the funding he's looking for.

Twin Peaks Discussion: "Traces to Nowhere" and "Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer"

2010-06-23T11:59:00.001-04:00

Hola, all.

I'm working on the write-up for this week's episodes. Much fun is being had. If you've watched them and want to comment on them before the column posts you can do so right here. Friday brings the first opportunity for all of you to cancel the show/column and start over, and I have no idea what the result of that voting is going to be. Will you keep Twin Peaks alive? Or will it fade away again?

We'll find out soon. In the meantime this space is yours.

Two of you have started writing up the episodes along with me, and I encourage others of you who are interested in doing that to go ahead and try it. Send me a link to your work via email, or just post it in the comments.

To read "Holy Venom's" thoughts on the Pilot and on Traces to Nowhere, go to Ramblings Concerning Nothing.

To read Katie's thoughts on the Pilot, go to All Shall Be Well and All Shall Be Well.

You Have Now Been Updated

2010-06-22T10:18:00.005-04:00

I'm going to be tackling two episodes of Twin Peaks in this week's column. It feels right, and it'll ensure that we move more quickly through the shows I cover on Lost & Found. I'll likely do two eps a week going forward from this point, unless the installment in question deserves more verbiage than that.

Your homework for Friday: Watch Traces to Nowhere and Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer. If you're writing anything on the show as we go make sure to let us know in the comments. I'll be putting together a Master List of L&F participants here on Verbosity! so that folks can click through and check out your thoughts and hard work.

Have a great day.

Your Waffles Offend Me

2010-06-21T09:30:00.013-04:00

That's today's TeeFury design. Who knew that waffles and bacon could provide a helpful look at the power of symbols? Here are a few of the comments related to this image, taken from that same page:

"As a veteran I find this offensive."

"offensive."

"I am also a vet, and I don't find this too bad."

"I'mma say pass. I'm a big respect the flag person. Plus, i wouldn't want to listen to my retired soldier father complain everytime i wore it."

"It's clever and all, and anything invoking Homer's classic drool-line is worth considering, but these days anything that even remotely smacks of 'we're so freakin' awesome....USA! USA! USA!' just rubs me all kinds of the wrong way."

Uhh...Wow.

I could understand these comments better if the shirt pictured, say, a burning flag or the slogan "America! F*ck Yeah!" or something similarly political. But a flag made of waffles and bacon? What are the politics of breakfast foods? What's the offensive aspect here? What about this image "even remotely smacks of 'we're so freakin' awesome....USA! USA! USA!'"?

Americans have always had a quasi-religious relationship with our flag. We worship it, in a very true sense of the word. We attempt to keep people from harming it by creating laws; we have specific ways of treating, storing, and respecting it. We swear allegiance before it. We become aggravated by it because of the actions of our officials, or because we disagree with the direction of the country as a whole.

We do all of this for a piece of cloth - one that's probably been manufactured in Taiwan. We do it because of what that piece of cloth represents to us, personally.

All of which is to say that symbols are potent and bewildering things.

While I understand a veteran's pride in the flag - a symbol that represents the ideals that they've fought so valiantly for - there is a danger inherent in putting too much meaning into symbols. That danger is illustrated helpfully for us in the image above and in the comments it inspired. Scott McCloud's book, "The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln" (a ton of fun to read, although McCloud's computer-assisted illustrations are laughably dated and crude now - buy it through my Amazon advertising link!) has Abraham Lincoln address the modern-day American people on just this very topic, and this seems like a good excuse to republish that address:

"My friends. My fellow Americans. I can't tell you what you want to hear. I don't know how to be your symbol. Even in my day, I was a little too human for the job. [referring to the Lincoln memorial] It was you who built this temple. It was you who carved this body out of marble and set it on a throne. All I gave you was an old man's leathery skin to stretch out upon the drafting table, to begin to diagram your future.

...Not that it isn't flattering. Don't get me wrong. I did want you to like me. Why, in my day, it looked like I might be remembered as the worst president of all time. Now some say I was the best? That sure is nice. Of course, getting shot probably helped. Shot by Booth. Who, by the way, wasn't half the actor that his father was!

...What was I talking about? AH! Symbols, America, can be useful tools. But beware of those who would have you used by them! Some of their symbols are pictures, some are familiar phrases, some mere gestures. They are all designed to steal your hearts, America, but care little for your minds. It is your duty to assign both organs to attend them.

Otherwise, dear friends, there may yet come a day when a red, white and blue rectangle of weather-beaten fabric hoist upon a metal pole may be raised in importance high above the freedoms it once so humbly represented."

All of which is to say that sometimes waffles n' bacon are just waffles n' bacon, to mangle Siggy Freud, and that one might want to be aware of how beholden one is to a symbol as opposed to the ideals it purports to represent. When breakfast offends you it's safe to say that you might be taking things just a liiiiiiiiittle too seriously.

Pass the Sentence

2010-06-21T08:35:00.002-04:00

If you don't know the drill already, you can learn the rules of the game by clicking here. The short version: Add one sentence, and one sentence only, to the introduction sentence provided directly below. No one person can add two consecutive sentences.

This week's sentence:

The impact sent him tumbling end over end, the wind whistling as he fell.

Northwest Passage (S1, Pilot)

2010-06-18T15:09:00.001-04:00

The Lost & Found column for Northwest Passage, Twin Peaks' pilot episode, has been wrapped in plastic for your reading pleasure on Chud.com.

Twin Peaks (S1, ep. 1) Discussion

2010-06-17T13:55:00.000-04:00

I'm in the midst of writing up the Pilot for Twin Peaks. It'll post on Chud.com tomorrow. In the meanwhile, here's a space for you to discuss the episode. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, and I encourage you to let me know what your opinion of it is/was. Please, no spoilers as to the Killer's identity or the details of the final episode in the comments.

If you've got the ability to take screencaps of the episodes as we watch, or know of an online resource for them, could you let me know? I'd appreciate having the option to post pictures of the episode that I'm writing up, and I've so far come up empty-handed when it comes to episode-specific screencap sites.

Thanks so much!

Lost & Found: And The Winner Is....

2010-06-14T14:22:00.001-04:00

Click here to be taken to the full article, which gives some unsolicited advice on how to watch Twin Peaks, talks a bit about what's interesting to me about it, and generally rambles on for no discernable reason (an aspect I should look into copyrighting, since I'm so darned fond of it, apparently).

I'll be watching the pilot episode tonight. Check in tomorrow for the InstaReaction!

UPDATE: No Instareaction today, obviously. No time to watch last night (sadface). I've seen a couple of folks on Chud complain that the pilot episode is "slow" and "boring." I disagree, but I think that's a valid subjective reaction, especially because the pilot is intentionally paced as a kind of requiem. If you've never watched Twin Peaks before, let me suggest that you approach it the way you would an older film.

Pass The Sentence

2010-06-14T10:00:00.001-04:00

Lost & Found

2010-06-11T09:59:00.002-04:00

Lost & Found is here!

This should be fun. I hope you'll vote and spread the word. I'll have the results up here on Monday morning.

If you'd like to refer to the Master List, just click this link.

UPDATE:

Deadwood, Twin Peaks, Carnivale and Firefly are the clear front-runners so far. Who will seize the nonexistent-crown? Find out....on Monday morning!

Reviewed: Get Him to the Greek

2010-06-08T16:56:00.002-04:00

Get him to the Greek is not a bad film, but it's not a particularly good film either. What it is, essentially, is the kind of film that you might stop and check out when you come across it on cable a few years from now.

The folks behind Get him to the Greek have spent time explaining that they wanted to recapture the chemistry between Jonah Hill and Russell Brand from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" with this movie, but for all that talk there's precious little chemistry here as far as I'm concerned.

Maybe it's because the dynamic between them has shifted (no longer a creepy/funny stalker, Hill instead plays the sort of put-upon mostly-affable dude that Luke Wilson so handily, regularly and forgettably plays) or maybe its because, despite the fact that they spend most of the film traveling together, they don't seem to share the same general space in the film. This is not to say that either performer is bad. Just that they don't ever seem to truly connect, as if they're inhabiting different levels of comedic existence - Brand cartwheels around in a Looney Tunes-inspired landscape while Hill rolls about in Bakshi-ville to use a random-yet-somehow-apt point of comparison. No matter the reason, where there was once some fizz there's now mostly fizzle.

There's also a fair amount of slack to the proceedings in general, which is sort of strange, considering how much, well, stuff is stuffed into the film's running time. The main idea behind the film (Brand is an off-the-wagon pop star, Hill must get him to the Greek theater for a big show) is solid and simple - the kind of effective skeleton that a really great comedy could have hung from - but there's no sense of propulsion or tension to the proceedings. Instead, there's an ambling, "no real hurry, mate" feel to the overall thing that's curiously at-odds with the "beat the clock" nature of the premise.

On top of this, the film makes numerous pit-stops along the way to add characters like Snow's father, who, while managing to feel somewhat autobiographical, adds nothing of real worth to the film. Neither does Snow's barely-illustrated relationship with his son, or (despite my admiration for her work here) Rose Byrne's turn as Snow's Ex.

Cutting all of this stuff - being truly ruthless with the sprawl and honing in on what WORKS about the film (namely Brand's daffy inanity/intelligence and the film's willingness to go for some really bizarre/smart/stupid humor) would have resulted in a much tighter, much better film. What we get instead is an overall-average film - albeit one in which Peggy from Mad Men gets to be kinda funny.

It's not as though many of the individual bits in the film aren't, in-and-of-themselves, very amusing. Sean Combs makes an appealing, dingbat boss, Brand is generally fun to watch, Hill plays a respectable straight man to Snow's daft musician despite the disconnect between them, and there's genuinely surreal/inspired moments here that really appeal to me personally ("Are you Paul Krugman?" Combs' "werewolf" line), but (at least for this viewer) unlike "Sarah Marshall" there's not a lot of connective/emotional tissue holding the various skits n' bits together.

Pass The Sentence (06.07.10)

2010-06-07T11:15:00.001-04:00

Morning, all.

After a refreshing weekend and some time spent working on the inaugural edition of Lost and Found (up this week on Chud.com) I'm ready to start posting some of that non-Lost nonsense I promised all of you, and what better way to kick things off than with an undemanding ongoing feature?

Every Monday before noon I'll post an opening sentence - a starting point for all of you to build off of. That sentence will be intentionally open-ended, enabling you to construct something elegiac, something horrific, something comedic, or something else altogether from that initial root, depending on your collective whim.

To play along, copy my first sentence into the comment box for this post, and then add your own second sentence. The next commenter, copy the first two sentences and add a third, and so on and so forth until we've built a communal story/poem/senseless Frankenstein from our collective efforts. Feel free to take things in any direction you see fit, and to end/change things at any time. There's no time limit and no end-date; there's also no pressure to make this objectively "good" or "interesting" as a whole. Concentrate on writing a sentence that's genuinely interesting to you, and that logically (or illogically) follows from what's already been written. Approach the exercise as its own reward.

You can contribute as often as you'd like, but there's one firm rule: No person may make two consecutive contributions.

Here we go:

"There was no ignoring the Elephant in the room."

Let The Games Begin

2010-06-02T10:55:00.001-04:00

Welcome to "Verbosity!" - your one-stop shop for all things MMorse. Those of you who've followed me here from Back to the Island, thanks for making the trip; those of you visiting for the first time: Greetings, salutations, aloha, hola, wilkommen and いらしゃいます.

This site will feature links to my upcoming "Lost and Found" column on Chud.com (starts next week! Prepare for Wild Rumpus-ing!), interviews with various celebrity-types (look for my interview with Tim Roth, coming soon) and my random thoughts on whatever I feel like pondering.

It's also your space - a space for you to pontificate at length, with no worries about hostile commenters or steady streams of author-bile. It's your community - as much so as you'd like it to be - and there is only one rule:

Respect one another.

It is possible, contrary to popular internet belief, to disagree with one another - about entertainment, about politics, about religion, about anything - without making that disagreement personal and/or nasty. Argue and debate to your heart's content here. I encourage it without reservation. Personal insults/attacks, however, are verboeten. If you engage in that behavior your comment(s) will be erased.

No exceptions.

You'll notice that this site features ads. I'm told that doing this is a good way to potentially make a little beer money off of the free content I'm providing to all of you. If you're inclined, and you'd like to support my writing, I encourage you to make use of them when they interest you (as for instance: Glenn Greenwald's "How Would A Patriot Act" is a thought-provoking lil' book that's worth a moment of your time, and thanks to that banner ad I know that you can buy it used for $0.01). The more people that voluntarily choose to make use of this feature, the more time I'll have to devote to writing.

If you have no interest in supporting my efforts, or just hate the very idea of ads, feel free to ignore them. As with all things, it's your choice, and I appreciate your readership regardless.

And speaking of which: I'm serious about this being your community as well. To that end, if you've got a blog or a site where you create something for the benefit/enjoyment of others let me know about it. I'll link to it in the "What You've Written" section included in the sidebar of the site. Those of you who choose to follow Verbosity! will have your blogs/sites linked to automatically. Support your fellow fans and creators!

It'll be quiet here until next week, when I'll debut the first edition of "Lost and Found" and open up the discussion on it. Until then, enjoy the sun and please bookmark this page if you're so inclined. Thanks, as always, for reading.

Best,

MMorse

Lost & Found: The Master List

2010-06-01T10:48:00.007-04:00

The following represents the full spectrum of choices available for Renewal on "Lost & Found." If you'd like to add a cancelled show to the Master List, just leave me a note in the comments section:

• Profit
• Max Headroom
• American Gothic
• Dead Like Me
• Carnivale
• Pushing Daisies
• Invasion
• Twin Peaks
• The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
• Daybreak
• John from Cincinnati
• The Lost Room
• The Middleman
• Miracles
• Deadwood
• Harsh Realm
• The Tick
• Dollhouse
• Threshold
• Wonderfalls
• Swingtown
• Keen Eddie
• Action
• Point Pleasant
• Rome
• Nowhere Man
• Freaks and Geeks
• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
• Surface
• Greg the Bunny
• Earth 2
• Firefly
• Undeclared
• Kings
• Veronica Mars
• The Prisoner
• The 4400
• Better Off Ted
• Wiseguy
• Bakersfield PD
• Space: Above and Beyond
• The Riches
• Brimstone
• Better Off Ted
• Jericho
• Blake's 7
• Millenium
• Journeyman (not yet available on Netflix)
• Fantasy Island (unavailable on Netflix or to purchase)
• Dark Skies (unavailable on Netflix or to purchase)
• G vs. E (unavailable on Netflix or to purchase)