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August 29, 2003
RAIN RAIN GO AWAY
When I started writing for lexiphane.com, my one personal vow was
never ever to write about the weather. If I'm writing about the
weather, that means I've nothing left to say. But this is tangential.
After getting rained on all summer--especially during the weekends--it
now looks like our Labor Day weekend is
href="http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USNY0996_f.html">going to be
shit as well. Lexiphane.com therefore helpfully presents some
suggestions for indoor fun.
If movies are your thing, this could be your weekend if you're in
NYC. The Film Forum on west
Houston caters to fans of film noir as it screens Billy Wilder's
href="http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0043014/">Sunset Blvd.,
with William Holden and Gloria Swanson. Jumping ahead a few decades,
they're also showing Roman Polanski's
href="http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0071315/">Chinatown,
with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. If you commute to work every day
on the subway--especially the 6 line like myself--you'll want to catch
Joseph Sargent's
href="http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0072251/">The Taking of Pelham One
Two Three. That's all just at Film Forum. Midnights this
weekend will feature screenings of the camp camp comedy
href="http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0243655/">Wet Hot American
Summer at the AMC Empire 25 on 42nd between Broadway and 8th
Ave. Members of the cast, including former members of comedy troupe
The State, will be present to add to the revival atmosphere. Midnight
Friday continues the Two Boots Pioneer Theater's (3rd St. & Ave. A)
custom of screening the now-cult classic
href="http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0246578/">Donnie Darko. That
should not be missed. On a lighter and brighter note, the Oscar-
nominated documentary
href=http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0301727/">Winged Migration is
still playing at the Loew's Lincoln Center and the Village East Cinemas
on 12th and 2nd Ave. I've heard this is an excellent piece of work.
Finally, I highly recommend
href="http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0324133/">Swimming Pool,
which I'll review here in the near future. It's the story of a middle-
aged woman connecting with her sexuality after years of repression. Or
does she just have a really bratty teenage housemate? Check your local
listings for all times and locations.
Curling up with a good book more your thing? I
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcon
tent&id=5">reviewed Ty Wenzel's excellent memoir of life in the
service industry,
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/0312311028/qid=1062182897/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/103-6915268-
2251069?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">Behind Bars, last week and
can recommend it. I'm also currently reading
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140150749/qid=1062182965/
sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-6915268-2251069">The Portable Dorothy
Parker from the Penguin Classics series. She's hilarious and
not at all dated. I'd skip the poems though. Their persistent
cynicism and morbidity most likely will only appeal to the suicidal or
recently jilted. I'm also tearing through Eric Newby's
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/0864426046/qid=1062183059/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-6915268-
2251069?v=glance&s=books">A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, his
story of quitting the London fashion industry and heading off to climb
mountains in Afghanistan with a friend. Newby has his British humor
down cold: understated, sardonic, utterly hilarious. Whatever the
weather brings, I hope everyone has a happy and safe Labor Day weekend.
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:02 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
THE SPERMINATOR
Arnold Schwarzenegger must be a great campaigner because it's not
his first time
href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/doc_o_day/doc_o_day.html">pressing
the flesh, as they say. Here is he is pandering for minority votes
in a 1977 interview with a hardcore porn mag:
"Bodybuilders party a lot, and once, in Gold's--the gym
in Venice, California, where all the top guys train--there was a black
girl who came out naked. Everybody jumped on her and took her upstairs,
where we all got together."
Aside from all the frank revelations of sex and drug use, however,
there is an ironic passage at the end of the href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/arnoldinter5.html">article a> when Arnold discusses his acting potential:
"I'm looking for the right vehicles, and I pretty much
know what I want. Do you know Hemingway's short story The Killers?
I'd like to do a remake, play the guy the two mobsters are after--the
Swede [played by Burt Lancaster in the href="http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0038669/">original]. I
realize there's only one Arnold in the world, that there's never been
an Arnold before, and the one thing that won't work is my being an ass-
kicker on screen. If Rober De Niro kills in Taxi Driver it's perfect,
because he's a little guy and people are 100 percent behind him. For
me that isn't the right kind of role because I'm big and therefore I
have to play the opposite kind of guy. When you build a career, you
should never imitate anybody. If there's one thing I ought to do, it's
the unexpected. Whether it's The Killers or something else, I probably
should play the victim."
Of course, his entire career was based on the exact opposite of his
thoughts at this time. Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 1:33 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 26, 2003
OUT OF THE PAST
With all the tales of horror and mass graves now revealed in
Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it's a little unbelievable that some people feel
the liberation of that country was a bad idea. Many, silently
conceding the incorrectness of their previous stances regarding the
deadliness of an Iraqi war to U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians, now
focus on the supposedly dubious case that President Bush made for war
prior to its occurrence. There is a furor in the U.K. over accusations
that the rationale for going to war was based on the immediate
availability of chemical and nuclear weapons to Saddam Hussein, when
perhaps now it's possible he only had precursors. BUSH LIED is now a
bumpersticker slogan. It's interesting to go back and actually see
what case Bush actually made in the run-up to war. Here are some
excerpts from a piece the late
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&s
id=59">Michael Kelly wrote in the November, 2002
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/11/kelly.htm">Atlantic
Monthly:
Tagged:
Bush made the new argument reasonably well in an address to the United
Nations on September 12. Previously the Administration had
suggested that Saddam's regime posed an immediate threat to American
lives and that it was complicit in al Qaeda's efforts. The former may
be true, but it is hard to prove. The evidence for the latter has
eluded searchers. Now Bush instead stated that "our greatest
fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions
when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a
massive scale." Undeniable. And Iraq, Bush argued, was the "one regime"
that was likely to do that. Saddam's regime has a history of using
weapons of mass destruction in war, and had even used them against
Iraqis. Because of this singular history, the UN had in 1991 forced
Saddam to agree to a series of mandatory resolutions whereby he would
renounce support for terrorism, destroy all stocks of weapons of mass
destruction, and submit to unfettered UN inspections to ensure
compliance. As Bush noted, actually understating the case, Iraq had
broken all these promises, defied all these resolutions, and in general
"unilaterally subverted" the commands of "the world's most important
multilateral body." (A nice bit of reverse spin on "unilateral" and
"multilateral" there.) And by the way, Bush noted, Iraq had also defied
the will of the UN and broken the peace when, in 1993, it "attempted to
assassinate the Emir of Kuwait and a former American President" (the
latter also known as "my dad"). [emphasis mine].
So the case was built on Iraq's history of aggression and use of
chemical weapons alongside its refusal to honor countless U.N.
resolutions. No explicit requirement for the identification of
chemical or nuclear weapons once we were in Iraq was ever made. It was
enough to look plainly at Hussein's track record and acknowledge that
he would likely facilitate further attacks against the U.S. that could
make 9/11 look small scale. Presciently, Kelly writes of the certainty
that we will go to war and we will win it decisively. The only matter
left open would be what would become of post-war Iraq:
What remained after "Should we?" was not "Will we win?"--that is as
near to a given as one gets in war--but everything else. There will be
a war, and there will be an American victory, and then there will be a
postwar. Bush's father never gave his own postwar reality sufficient
thought, and so unleashed the intolerable danger his son must now
address (although the son is too observant of filial respect to say
so). It is this--the postwar, the promise that this time we will think
it through to the end--that the second President Bush must address,
publicly, explicitly, convincingly. He made, and will win, the argument
for war. He must make, and win, the case for a peace that can survive
the week after the war.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:41 AM | | Comments (10) | TrackBack
THIS IS JUST SAD
Exactly a week ago today I wrote about an article in The
Washington Post [see
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&s
id=214">BAD CARMA, 8/19/03] on the
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11747-
2003Aug18.html">low number of New Yorkers who are licensed to
drive. I criticized the piece at the time as being completely obvious,
but I have to give them credit for tackling the mundane a full week
before The New York Times could get to it. The Times piece
differentiates itself by being a first-person account of a woman trying
to get her license after a lifetime in the city not driving. It also
makes that woman Suzanne Vega of "Tom's Diner" fame. Ms. Vega's
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/24/nyregion/24feat.html?pagewanted
=1">article is actually entertaining--I don't think I'd want to
learn how to drive in NYC, but to the paper's discredit there is
absolutely no mention of the fact that The Washington Post
covered this topic just seven days ago. There's nothing sadder than
watching New York's paper of record playing catch-up in its own
backyard to its DC rival.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:20 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 25, 2003
A DAY AT THE URBAN BEACH
Took a trip out to Queens Saturday with some friends to what is
apparently the hipster mecca,
href="http://www.ps1.org/cut/main.html">P.S. 1. I think I actually
saw the ground between the boroughs shift as the trucker-hat contingent
migrated from Williamsburgh to Queens. P.S. 1 is a contemporary art
and performance space affiliated with
href="http://www.moma.org/">MoMA, also currently squatting in
Brooklyn's northern neighbor. Every summer they have the outdoor
courtyard transformed into a themed environment. This year the theme
was the beach and architects created large troughs of water and trucked
in a whole lot of sand. There's food and beer available and the whole
event, called WARMUP, is presided over by a succession of DJs. It's a
pretty good time that runs through August 30th so everyone's got one
more weekend to check it out.
Posted by Lexiphane at 2:36 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 22, 2003
BEHIND BARS
My
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcon
tent&id=5">new review of Ty Wenzel's excellent memoir of her life
as a bartender is up.
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/0312311028/qid=1061584863/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-6915268-
2251069?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">Behind Bars: The Straight-Up
Tales of a Big-City Bartender is a look at a woman's decade
behind the bar at a downtown restaurant and lounge.
Posted by Lexiphane at 4:57 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
GO WEST YOUNG MAN
Brother Tom is surely hitting the books hard down in
href="http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/index_40.html">North Carolina right
now, but he spent his summer extensively road testing the
href="http://www.tomhogarty.com/gallery/eldo">El Dorado. He's got
pictures up at his site,
including some of the
href="http://www.tomhogarty.com/gallery/wva?&page=3">Cadillac Farm
in Amarillo, Texas. The Farm was the most famous piece of work by Doug
Michels, founder of the Ant Farm--an art and design collective.
Michels died alone recently while hiking to a whale watching spot in
Eden Bay, Australia. Jim Knipfel wrote about his
href="http://nypress.com/16/33/news&columns/slackjaw.cfm">life and
premature death in The New York
Press a few months ago. The buried Caddies, long covered with
graffiti as they are in Tom's pictures, are going to be painted black
in memory of Michels.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:29 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
F.O.D.
Today marks the anniversary of the birth of Dorothy Parker, one
of the originals at The New
Yorker, regular at the Algonquin round table, and the subject
of Mrs. Parker and the
Vicious Circle. For your enjoyment I present one of my
favorites from Ms. Parker:
"I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
After four I'm under my host!"
One can learn more about Dorothy Parker and anniversary events
being held this weekend at href="http://www.dorothyparkernyc.com/index.html">Dot City. Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:41 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
FAME AS IT EVER WAS
Back in June, I was fortunate enough to catch the penultimate
performance of my friend Jenny in Josh Walden's Bjork-fest dance
theater piece All Is Full of Love, which I reviewed
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&s
id=127">here. I'm now happy to announce that Jenny is moving from
off- off- off- Broadway [Park Slope, Brooklyn] to 42nd Street and the
Great White Way. She'll be a cast member of the soon-to-be-opening
musical Fame. So check out its site
href="http://www.fameon42.com/">here and get tickets to see her in
the big time. She'll be the beautiful and talented one.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:28 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
COCO-COOL
The New York Sun [unavailable on the Web] has a great
picture on its front page of people on Canal Street in Chinatown
cooling off by drinking milk with straws right out of coconuts. Unlike
the cheesy Tiki- and Gilligan's Island-inspired images you're surely
thinking of, coconut beverages aren't unusual in Southeast Asia. The
coconuts--having been stored on ice--have their husks hacked off with a
machete, creating a squared, flat-bottomed cup of coconut meat. The
preparer them makes a final cut at the top and presents the coconut
with a straw to drink out the milk. In oppressive heat, there's
nothing more refreshing than gulping down the ice-cold milk, kept
chilled by its own natural container. I had one of these once in
Thailand and it was the best.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:14 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 21, 2003
WORST HEADLINE OF THE DAY II
It's not even noon and Reuters has already clinched honors for
the second time this week with the Worst Headline of the Day. They
engage in the logical fallacy known as post hoc, ergo propter
hoc, which means that something coming after an event is the result
of the prior action. Here's the headline: "Israel Kills Hamas Leader,
Militants Call Off Truce." There seems to be the implication of a
chain of events here. Israel kills the leader of a terrorist group,
therefore the militants end the truce. Damn those Israelis and their
truce-ending ways! The article
href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=2&
u=/nm/20030821/ts_nm/mideast_dc">goes on to explain that Hamas
claimed credit yesterday for the
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17324-
2003Aug19.html">suicide attack on a bus of civilians that killed 20
and injured more than a hundred. It's difficult to imagine what kind
of truce was in existence to call off if Hamas was already crowing
about blowing up men, women, and
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23056-
2003Aug20.html">children.
For an Israeli public that has endured the random,Tagged:
frightening toll of suicide bombings through 35 months of a violent
Palestinian uprising, the attack Tuesday that killed 20 people and the
bomber was one of the most unsettling, because an unusually large
number of babies, toddlers and children lost their lives or were
maimed.
At least six children died in the blast, and officials said that number
could increase because seven bodies were so badly mangled that
forensics experts have been unable to identify them. Nearly half of the
45 people who remained hospitalized today were youngsters and infants,
according to officials at the four hospitals treating the
victims.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:05 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 20, 2003
THE MIGHTY TIMES STRIKES OUT
I suppose following its everything-is-always-getting-worse news
bent, The New York Times
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/18/sports/baseball/18LITT.html">la
ments the fact that the Little League World Series can now be
enjoyed by more than just the people that make a trek to the locations
where the games are played, thanks to the League's cable deal with ESPN
to televise some of the games. I think it's kind of cool to see these
12-year-olds from all over the world playing ball on national tv and
then getting mentioned on SportsCenter, but I guess that just makes me
an asshole.
Fortunately, Slate's Jeremy Derfner punctures the Times'
pretensions about the non-existent halcyon days of idyllic baseball by
pointing out it's been
commercially and publicity oriented from its inception. Additionally,
one has to wonder if the author of the Times article has ever
seen The Bad News
Bears or The
Bad News Bears in Breaking Training. The kids drink beer,
smoke, and curse like sailors. Days of innocence indeed.
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:55 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A WORD FROM IRAQ
Baghdad blogger Salam Pax [his nom de cyber]
href="http://www.dear_raed.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_dear_raed_archive.ht
ml#106131034073894941">weighs in on yesterday's bombing of the U.N.
headquarters in Iraq. Some excerpts:
there is a friggin' Iraqi idiot now on Jazeera saying
that the security responsibility should be given over to the Iraqi
Governing Council. Fuck off, this is not about American presence in
Iraq. these attacks have nothing to do with the so called resistance.
These are fucking idiots who destroying all the efforts to help this
country get back on it's feet. the fucking Governing Council could not
control this mess the moment the Coalition Forces move out we are
plunged in chaos. We have entered a dark dark tunnel and we have no
idea what will happen now.
I am plunging into a fucking depression, do we have a future? is this
country going to be hijacked by shit extremists who want to prove a
point?
And this is from a guy who is hardly a restrained critic of
Coalition forces. Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 2:46 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 19, 2003
CALL ME LEXY
Someone set up a site that
href="http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html">accepts writing
samples, runs them through an algorithm, and claims to be able to
identify the gender of the writer with 80% accuracy. I copied the item
below into the site, hit SUBMIT, and got pegged as a female. I'm not
too worried, though. The site's record so far with 213 responses
show's that it is correct 50.7% of the time and incorrect 49.3% of the
time. That's about as statistically significant as flipping a quarter
and picking male or female randomly. I am going to try to butch up the
content though.
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:44 PM | | Comments (4) | TrackBack
AN AMERICAN JACKASS IN LONDON
"Street magician" David Blaine
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/19/arts/19BLAI.html?pagewanted=1&8
hpib">overstates the obvious in today's New York Times.
Referring to his previous feats--standing on an elevated platform,
standing in an ice cube, lying in a box--Blaine declares of these
network televised events "everything I've done before is irrelevant."
You said it my man. Of his new soon-to-be-televised stunt: "This one
is going to be different." How's he mixing it up? Instead of standing
high in the air on a pole or lying in the ground in a clear box, Blaine
will be standing high in the air in a glass box. For 44 days.
Drinking water and shitting in diapers. Can't wait 'til the special
edition DVD comes out for this one. For your recollection, here is my
account of Blaine's May 2002 pole standing stunt:
UNDERWHELMING or NYC OFFICIALLY BACK TO NORMAL
5/22/02
When the weather turns nice, lunch time crowds normally flock to
Bryant Park behind the main branch of the New York Public Library on
42nd St. So it was hard to tell whether the people there today were
simply out enjoying the sun as usual or there to gawk at famed "street
magician" David Blaine. Seven avenues is actually a little far for me
to travel just for lunch, so today I was in Bryant Park to gawk.
Let me tell you, as far as incredible stunts go, this one was pretty
underwhelming. I entered the park and looked around before finding the
80-foot-high pole that Blaine ascended for his latest feat. The goal:
to stand in place for about 32 hours. It looked like the little
platform that Blaine was atop had the area of a manhole cover. I
wasn't impressed. To emphasize the banality of his endurance test,
Blaine was doing what no obnoxious downtown hipster celebrity can
resist doing when out in public. He was talking on his cell phone. I
watched him for about 5 minutes while engaging in small talk with other
bemused spectators. We all moved on quickly. In the time I was
watching him, though, Blaine seemed to be keeping his circulation going
by doing a modified version of the White Guy Boogie (dancing around
without moving one's feet). The crowd did not react.
To put this in perspective, in the late 1920s, professional
stuntman Alvin Kelly sat atop a flagpole for 49 days. Being the 1920s,
he did not get a network special. I have to say that while not
entertained, I was pleased with the whole event. It was nice to see
New Yorkers gathering together and chatting about something less
spectacular than mere spectacle. Spring had returned, the sky was
blue, and some jackass was standing in place 80 feet in the air for our
amusement. I do love NYC.
David Blaine will be leaping to safety or plummeting to his death
live tonight on ABC. Check your local listings.
Posted by Lexiphane at 12:48 PM | | Comments (4) | TrackBack
BAD CARMA
Today's Washington Post has an
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11747-
2003Aug18.html">unshocking article on the low percentage of New
Yorkers that are licensed to drive. The piece says that only 25% of
NYCers are licensed to get behind the wheel, but that figure seems a
little high and I suspect it's padded by arrivals to the city by
drivers from elsewhere. While lighthearted, the WP seems to
belabor the obvious. Of course fewer city residents have licenses than
elsewhere. Growing up in the Hudson Valley, getting one's license was
an essential rite of passage because without it one was a virtual
prisoner in one's home. You couldn't so much as get to the store for a
gallon of milk without hopping in a car. In New York, you can go on a
week's vacation to your summer home in the Hamptons without a car.
The WP labels New Yorkers as "car-phobic", but I'd hardly
say that's the case. Owning a car is expensive, with loan or lease
payments, insurance, tickets, gas, repairs, and maintenance. While it
might be nice to have one, why would a New Yorker want to put up with
the hassle when they can get anyplace they need to be by subway, bus,
or taxi? Or in the case of blackout, just by walking? In the case of
really needing to get someplace not served by public transportation,
rent a car for the day and it's still a relative bargain. Even when I
need to get to suburban Mountainside, NJ to visit a friend--which is
comparatively speaking the dark side of the moon as far as NY goes--I
can still hop a bus at the Port Authority and be there in half an hour.
Need to get to Boston, Philly, DC or elsewhere? Take a cab to the
airport or Penn Station and catch a flight or Amtrak and you're there
car free. I got to Burlington, VT sans automobile a few months
ago!
I love to drive and relish every opportunity I have to get behind
the wheel. The fact is that there is no rational reason for someone to
have a car in New York City. Instead of focusing on the unlicensed in
NYC, the WP article should have been tracking down those
licensed 25% and asking them what the hell they are thinking.
ASIDE: I'm a licensed driver, although mine lists my
parents' address in upstate NY. Anyone who has civil libertarian
concerns about not being required by the government to carry
identification papers on you at all times should stay away from New
Jersey. I've been asked for ID by several NJ cops [nothing illegal
going on, I swear] and have been told that my NY license was
insufficient. When I asked why, they told me that being a resident of
NJ [as I was at the time] that I was required to have a NJ driver's
license. I would go on to explain that I didn't own a car, had no
intention of owning a car, and had no need for a NJ drivers license.
NJ cops would routinely take this answer disbelievingly, act as if I
was trying to pull some sort of scam, and tell me "tough shit" and
instructed me to get a NJ drivers license or else. So I moved back to
NY.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:09 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 18, 2003
WORST HEADLINE OF THE DAY
Reuters runs a headline today that is needlessly inflammatory and
somewhat misleading, albeit factually accurate in the barest sense.
href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=3&
u=/nm/20030818/ts_nm/attack_charity_dc">"Head of U.S. Muslim Charity
Sent to Prison" makes it sound like Enaam Arnaout is being jailed
for the crime of heading a Muslim charity. In fact, the article is
about how Arnaout pled guilty to charges that he misled donors to his
charity and misappropriated funds by channeling them to Bosnian and
Chechnyan militants rather than the needy women and children on whose
behalf he was supposedly soliciting. The judge even rejected
prosecutors claims that attempted to link Arnaout to Osama bin Laden,
although Arnaout admits he met with the leader of al Qaeda in
Afghanistan. So although it's relatively well known that al Quaeda and
OBL would use charities to disguise the terrorist organization's
financial infrastructure, the government failed to make its case, and
the defendant simply plead guilty to the crime of defrauding donors to
a charity for women and children. And the best headline Reuters can
come up with is "Head of U.S. Muslim Charity Sent to Prison"? How
about "Embezzler Admits Guilt in Defrauding Donors to Widows and
Orphans"? Isn't that a more accurate assessment of the true facts of
the case?
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:04 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
NO PHAIR, NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN
In case you've been under a rock for the past 72 hours, NYC and a
good portion of the rest of the Eastern seaboard experienced a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/nationalspecial2/">blackout
starting Thursday afternoon. I was in my office writing up some
reports when my computer hiccupped, the fluorescents surged, and then
everything went dark. At first I figured this was just a problem in
href="http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:DAgMiX0rp2sJ:www.bluffton.ed
u/~sullivanm/hood/hood2.html+the+news+building&hl=en&ie=UTF-8">The News
Building, but honking horns brought my attention to my window and I
could see that there weren't any traffic signals working at the
intersection of 3rd Ave. and 41st St. Interesting. Land lines were
still up and after a few calls it became clear that this was a citywide
problem and we were given permission to leave the building. No one had
to ask me twice.
Fortunately, I live a straight-shot 40 blocks up 2nd Ave. and
didn't have a lot of the concerns of those that had to hike back to
Queens, Brooklyn, or God forbid, New Jersey. My cell phone wasn't
making calls, but I did receive one from John in Boston. He told me
that the power was out not just in NY, but Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and
as far as Toronto. I tend not to believe initial reports on things as
big as this, but this was my first real indication that the blackout
was something more than a local affair. Walking up 2nd Ave. I fell in
with an older woman living on 64th and we speculated about the
likelihood of a terrorist attack, blackout shopping lists, and the
relative crappiness of our respective wireless plans. Emergencies make
New Yorkers chummy like that. Volunteers had stepped into many of the
2nd Ave. intersections to help direct traffic before enough police
could be deployed to do the job and I got home in relatively good time,
only stopping off to pick up some AA batteries just in case my
flashlight was dead.
Being hot and relatively uninformed necessitated a stop off at a
neighborhood bar to swap stories and see how people were holding up.
One neighbor had been trapped in a subway car and had to be led down
the tracks to exit the line. Damn, I've always wanted to do that. My
friend Walt walked all the way from
href="http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/">Times
Square, which he described as pure gridlock and where he witnessed
one driver punching out another when he wouldn't lay off his horn. The
bar manager's pregnant wife rolled up, being about a week shy of her
due date and looking uncomfortable in the heat. She had narrowly
avoided getting into an elevator moments before the power went out and
fulfilling every pregnant woman/elevator/blackout clich? in existence.
My free pass to a VH1 taping of Liz
Phair at the Roseland now worth less than free, I hung out and
watched the bartenders go into guerilla mode, cadging ice from
neighboring restaurants, stocking up on plastic cups, and managing to
keep at least a hundred open tabs straight in the dark. Rory, who
pulled a 16-hour double shift in no air conditioning was brilliant. By
the time it got dark my friend Kendra had found me and we spent a lot
of time outside on the sidewalk, drinks in hand, admiring stars that
had probably not been visible in Manhattan for decades. I saw the Big
Dipper.
Friday was a relatively uneventful wait for the power to come
back on. My building still had water so I did some dishes and took a
nice cool shower. Work was out of the question. I doubted I'd be able
to get into my office without electricity and even if I could there was
little point in it. Time was killed walking around the neighborhood,
catching up on reading, and enjoying the relative quiet of life without
television, stereos, and all the trappings of modern industrial life.
The power came back on in my neighborhood relatively early Friday
evening, depriving us of another night of candles and quiet, but it was
good to get the A/C working again.
My only other plans for the weekend was to go to Blues and BBQ at
Pier 54 Sunday afternoon. Robert Cray and others were headlining a
whole day of acts while restaurants such as Virgil's, Blue Smoke, and
Brother Jimmy's sold plate of ribs. As I got off the train at Union
Square, though, it started to downpour. By the time I got to the
Hudson, the bands had cleared out, I was soaked, and everyone was
huddled under too-small tents and tarps. Undeterred, I worked my way
through a plate of Blue Smoke ribs. They were cooked perfectly,
falling off the bone and not too dry. This could have been the result
of the puddle of rainwater that was filling my plate though.
It was a great three-day weekend and something I'm glad I got to
experience. While a lot of people were put out, I was never that
inconvenienced and I'm sure they'll reschedule that Liz Phair show.
And to cap it all off: the Yanks
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/18/sports/baseball/18yanks.html">s
helled evil Peter Angelos' Baltimore Orioles last night, 8-0.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:08 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 14, 2003
VINTAGE REVIEW
I just posted my review of In the Bedroom from last year in the
Reviews section
href="http://lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent
&id=4">here. I still think it was the best movie of the year in
2001. Although it was nominated for Oscars in five different
categories, including Best Picture, it failed to win any. I think that
takes away more from the Academy, however, than it does from the film
or the people involved in making it.
Posted by Lexiphane at 1:21 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 13, 2003
LET THEM EAT CAKE
Fidel Castro is about to turn 77 and this
href="http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=1541&u=/afp/20030812/e
n_afp/cuba_castro_030812173220&printer=1">Agence France Presse
story treats the Cuban dictator with kid gloves. It begins by
addressing him as "the world's longest-serving head of government." I
believe unelected tyrants of one-party nations tend to rule
rather than "serve" their people. Then these two sentences are placed
closely together in the story with little or no sense of irony:
But while Castro insists there is no "cult of
personality," warmest wishes are pouring in all over state-controlled
media.
The newspaper of the workers union, "Trabajadores," did not mention the
birthday but took the occasion to praise Castro as "our secret weapon,
holding the soul of a nation, in one word: Fidel."
Yep, no cult of personality in that country. Later, this
sentence is printed without criticism or comment:
He promised to stay on as president "until nature itself decides, not a minute less and not a second longer."How mag-fucking-nanimous of him! He won't relinquish his stranglehold on the island nation until its people can pry it from his cold dead hands. I say they hurry nature up a bit and go Ceausescu on his ass. Tagged:
Here are some laugh lines from whomever wrote this article:
Housing shortages hit crisis levels years ago. Insufficient subsidized food supplies, combined with low salaries that make purchasing nonsubsidized food prohibitive for most, are dawn-to- dusk frustrations for millions.How can these just be "the beginnings of problems" Cuba is dealing with when Castro seized power more than 40 years ago? Has the former pitcher just been warming up in the bullpen for the last several decades and only now getting ready to take the mound? And can we please stop referring to Castro's rule in Cuba as "the revolution"? It's been 40 years of economic and political stagnation in that country. Referring to the political climate there as revolutionary is to merely parrot the Stalinist propaganda of an intransigent tinpot dictator. The AFP author does concede that Castro's communist rule has left the country in shambles, but leaves out some important context:
Limits on personal freedoms also take their toll, and these are just the beginning of problems facing Cuba's revolution.
After 40 years of communism, more than 11 million Cubans do not have their basic needs met.Cuba's estimated total population is 11.2 million people, so when the AFP author writes that "more than 11 million Cubans do not have their basic needs met", what he or she means to say is that "nearly 100% of Cubans do not have their basic needs met" or "almost no Cuban has his or her basic needs met." All except one I suppose, the birthday boy himself.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:37 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 12, 2003
REVELATION
There has been a good deal of
href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=638&ncid=579&e=3&
u=/nm/20030812/en_nm/leisure_thepassion_dc">controversy over the
upcoming release of Mel Gibson's cinematic rendering of Jesus' final
days in his movie The
Passion. Some feel that the film is certain to stir up anti-
semitic feelings. I've recently learned that the film will be
controversial for other reasons however. Despite a stated desire to
adhere to the highest levels of biblical accuracy, The Passion
will apparently contain certain anomalies and anachronisms that
demonstrate the producer's subtle mark on production. They
include:
hockey mask who speaks only through a megaphone
eventual mistake Vatican II will be
are dispatched by a young, feral, boomerang-flinging follower of
Christ
Schlemiels
"Freeeeeeeeeeedoooooom!!!" Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 1:52 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AFFLECKTED
In an apparent move to effect some damage control and salvage his
reputation, Ben Affleck went on The Tonight Show last night to
engage in some self-mortification over his box office flop
href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0299930">Gigli. Schadenfreude
is taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune. I don't know what the
word is when you revel in your own humiliation. He decided to read off
some of the choicer quotes that critics have described Gigli as,
e.g. a "train wreck." Then I was shocked to hear him repeat that
perhaps the $3.8 million box office the movie did its opening weekend
was the result of the sale of two $1.9 million tickets purchased by Ben
and Jen and ascribed this joke to
href="http://www.bunsen.tv/2003_08_01_bunsen_archive.html#1060674640575
54844">Bunsen.tv. Regular readers of lexiphane.com know that I
link to Bunsen all the time--as does
href="http://www.gawker.com">Gawker. He's the progenitor of the
slogan
href="http://bunsen.tv/2003_03_01_bunsen_archive.html#200047351">Total
Fucking Victory as well as my former roommate. I hope this results
in a slew of hits to his site. This does raise the question, "are all
of Bunsen's celebrity encounters with the likes of
href="http://bunsen.tv/2003_06_01_bunsen_archive.html#200409199">Keanu<
/a>,
href="http://www.bunsen.tv/2003_08_01_bunsen_archive.html#1059704163096
53293">Walken,
href="http://bunsen.tv/2002_07_01_bunsen_archive.html#79383170">Ford
>, and others actually real?"
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:21 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 8, 2003
VICTIM OF OPPRESSION
The Washington Post has an
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31704-
2003Aug7.html">article about the end of the Dixie Chicks "Top of
the World" tour and how they're faring in the backlash following what
some considered unpatriotic remarks made overseas by the group's lead
singer Natalie Maines. Many have said that the ensuing boycotts from
many radio stations is evidence that her free speech rights are being
violated and she is the victim of a new form of McCarthyism. The group
is unapologetically playing the martyrs, appearing on a magazine cover
naked and covered in stick-on agitprop political buzzwords. The
article describes one fan walking around Nashville wearing her "Free
Natalie" t-shirt, although the reporter fails to inquire of the young
woman from what Maines should be freed. The harsh life of political
dissidents in the U.S. is described:
There was a time when the Chicks used to grub for
quarters, but now their luxury tour buses hug the curb outside the
Gaylord arena. Included in their entourage is a Pilates instructor,
caterers, playrooms for their children and tons of scented candles that
the Chicks burn daily.
To have the courage of one's convictions to speak out in a foreign
country, far from the fans you know would've booed you off the stage in
two seconds. You're my hero Natalie. Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 2:25 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 7, 2003
THE OLD SWITCHEROO
Freaky
Friday is opening this week and it's being billed as a remake
of the 1976 version that
had Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris switching bodies and getting a
glimpse of what it's like to be in a mother's/daughter's shoes. The
new incarnation stars someone named Lindsay Lohan as the daughter and
Jamie Lee Curtis as the mother. I swear to God, about the only
surefire way to get a movie made in Hollywood must be to suggest
remaking Freaky Friday as it is reworked every five years or so.
I can just imagine the pitch meeting for the latest version:
Studio exec #1: It's 2003, time to make another FreakyEverybody got that? If you find yourself walking down the aisle, or have already done so, it's not to commit yourself to a life of shared love with your spouse. It's so you can unite to procreate and further civilization. Santorum must be real smooth with the missus on Valentine's Day. And for all you men and women who for some reason find yourselves unable or unwilling to conceive a child, well you may as well go ahead and resign yourself to a life of loveless sexless loneliness, because that's what Santorum feels you merit. You know what, fuck it, such people should just go ahead and kill themselves. You're taking resources away from Santorum's breeding collective. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for picking up on this first.
Friday.
Studio exec #2: Yes except this time it'll be the dad and son instead
of mom and daughter.
Stuido exec #1: We did that already with uh, the drunk short guy and
the Growing Pains kid.
Studio exec #2: Right! href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0096380">Vice Versa, that was
before my time.
Studio exec #1: No, Vice Versa was Fred Savage and Judge
Reinhold.
Studio exec #2: Ok, you're thinking of href="http://us.imdb.com">Like Father, Like Son with Dudley
Moore and Kirk Cameron.
Studio exec #1: That's the one!
Studio exec #2: How 'bout we switch the formula up a little and have
the son and the mom change bodies?
Studio exec #1: That sounds a little creepy. It could come off as
Oedipal, what with the son having the option of seeing his mom
naked.
Studio exec #2: Good point. How about the daughter and dad switching
then?
Studio exec #1: You're not listening are you?
Studio exec #2: You know what? Fuck it. Let's just remake the damn
thing straight from the old script, same title and everything.
Studio exec #1: We'd save a lot on the development costs . . .
Studio exec #2: Sounds like a greenlight to me.Posted by Lexiphane at 3:11 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST
Bunsen brings up an href="http://www.bunsen.tv/2003_08_01_bunsen_archive.html#1060210222251
Tagged:
93302">interesting point: Arnold's gubernatorial campaign points to
some sort of href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0093773">Predator political
mandate. He predicts that Carl Weathers will become the next Secretary
of State. I personally would like to see Bill Duke as our
representative to the U.N. I can think of few more intimidating men
than 'Mac'.Posted by Lexiphane at 11:23 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
WHO LOVES YOU AND WHO DO YOU LOVE!?
"Vote for me if you want to live." Arnie's a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25285-
Tagged:
2003Aug6.html">running man.Posted by Lexiphane at 10:07 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A KEEPER
Whenever I give people a list of must-see movie recommendations,
Tagged:
I always include a little-seen 1992 documentary called href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0103888">Brother's Keeper.
It's tagged as "A Heartwarming Tale of Murder." It's not a story about
murder though. It's a story of four brothers living in up-upstate New
York who could conceivably be described as hermits. When one of them
is found dead, the community that has shunned them for decades as
oddities embraces the remaining three as their own. It's one of the
most moving pieces of non-fiction I've ever seen. The thing is, I've
only seen it once, years ago in a DC arthouse theater. The
Onion has news that it's now href="http://www.theonionavclub.com/reviews.php?review_type_id=1&issue_
id=209">being released on DVD and has a short review.Posted by Lexiphane at 10:01 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 6, 2003
SCHISM
Many people are either upset or ecstatic that the Episcopal
Tagged:
church's hierarchy has voted to href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/washpost/20030806
/ts_washpost/a21844_2003aug5&e=3">appoint its first openly homosexual
bishop. I personally feel the fact that Rev. Robinson abandoned
his wife and children when he realized his "true" self makes him sort
of a dodgy candidate for elevation as a religious leader, but that
doesn't seem to be too high on anybody else's radar. What this
incident does highlight is a growing divide in the Anglican church
between more conservative members and an increasingly liberal
leadership. While conservatives may feel as if they are fighting and
losing a rearguard action and liberals feel as if they are simply
progressing forward into modernity, these are both views that are
parochial in that they ignore the true movement of Christianity in
general as propelled by its growth in third world nations. Philip
Jenkins wrote about the phenomena at length last year in an Atlantic
Monthly article titled href="http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/10/jenkins.htm">"The Next
Christianity."The article describes the rapid growth in Christianity in
'Southern' regions such as Africa, Asia, and South America. There, a
new form of Christianity is spreading that he refers to as the Third
Church, as opposed to the Catholic Church and post-Reformation
Protestants. It is a faith that is characterized by a very literal
interpretation of the Bible, a strong belief in evil spirits and the
power of exorcism, and a worldview that most first world Christians
would consider very unsophisticated, conservative, and anachronistic.
It is almost counter-Reformist in nature.
Whether first world Christians like it or not, Jenkins writes
that the religion--both Catholic and Protestant--will soon be dominated
by such Third Church adherents and they are already starting to make
their presence felt. An example was given regarding Episcopalians
themselves. Disgusted with the leftward drift of the American wing of
the church, many conservative U.S. Episcopalians traveled to Singapore
and had themselves ordained as bishops by African and Asian Anglican
prelates. They then returned to the U.S. and established missionary
services, setting up virtual provinces within already Episcopalian
churches to minister to more conservative members. Talk about
preaching to the converted. Instead of trying to bring people to the
Episcopal faith, they were trying to bring the faith back to its
members.
It's an interesting article and should be of importance to anyone
interested in the reformation or evolution of religious institutions in
the U.S.Posted by Lexiphane at 3:00 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 5, 2003
FIVE STAR VENUE
Last night I went with two friends to see href="http://www.andystochasnky.com">Andy Stochansky at href="http://www.joespub.com/">Joe's Pub. One wouldn't be faulted
Tagged:
for thinking the place sounds like a Village dive bar, but it was one
of the nicest venues in which I've ever seen a show. Joe's Pub is part
of The Public Theater,
housed in what was formerly href="http://www.nyu.edu/classes/finearts/nyc/eastvil/astor.html">The
Astor Library on Lafayette between Astor Place and East 4th St.
The Pub itself only seats about 150 people on couches, at tables, or at
the bar, and it is swank. It's Gilded Age meets 21st Century Manhattan
and I was surprised tickets were only $12.Stochansky's set was as good as the one I saw at the Village
Underground back in February and he mixed in some new material amidst
most of the stuff from his href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/B000066BXG/qid=1060102865/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-6915268-
2251069?v=glance&s=music&n=507846">Five Star Motel album. The two
women I brought to the show had never heard of him before, but were
very impressed. Unfortunately, there were no albums available for
purchase.
The actual purpose of the show was a CD launch party for a woman
named Rachael Chase, who went on after Stochansky and played for about
an hour. She's a piano player/singer along the lines of Tori Amos, but
with a lighter happier tone. Her band included a cello player, which I
thought was pretty cool. Her performance was great and if she ever
comes to town where you live, I highly recommend checking her out.Posted by Lexiphane at 1:05 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 4, 2003
DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN, ONLY II
Back in April I criticized Senator Rick Santorum for his
Tagged:
assertions that the only reason anyone should be having any type of
sexual relations is if they were procreative in nature [see href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&s
id=94">DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN, ONLY, 4/23/03]. I thought this
was a pretty cold-fish view of human sexuality and that it revealed
Santorum as being an uptight prig. Some months later, he's decided to
extend this href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,93646,00.html">line of
thinking a little further down his blinkered ideological axis. It
turns out that it's not just sex that's meaningless without the
possibility of kids, it's also love and marriage that are
rendered worthless.Why? Because -- principally because of children. I mean, it's -- it is the reason for marriage. It's not to affirm the love of two people. I mean, that's not what marriage is about. I mean, if that were the case, then lots of different people and lots of different combinations could be, quote, "married."Then:
Marriage is not about affirming somebody's love for somebody else. It's about uniting together to be open to children, to further civilization in our society.So it's not about not recognizing somebody's love for somebody else. That's not what it's about. It's not being discriminatory against anybody. It's talking about the good that marriage is for our culture.
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:21 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 1, 2003
MOVIE REVIEWS
When I started this web site, one of its primary purposes was to
be a venue for movie reviews. That transition never occurred when I
switched from the old to the new version of lexiphane.com.
I'm slowly starting to post my old reviews up in the Reviews
section. You can view the
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=Reviews">Index
here. Or you can go directly to the ones I have posted already.
Here's one for
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcon
tent&id=1">Artificial Intelligence: A.I. One for
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcon
tent&id=2">Amelie. And one for
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcon
tent&id=3">Black Hawk Down.
Posted by Lexiphane at 4:34 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MAN U MISSION
Tim Howard played his
href="http://www.nypost.com/sports/38424.htm">last game at Giants
Stadium last night, but it wasn't for the U.S. League NY/NJ Metrostars.
He's been sprung from the B-List world of U.S. soccer and now plays for
Manchester United--possibly the most storied soccer club in England if
not the world. Manchester put a beatdown on Italian greats Juventus
last night and it refuted anything anyone ever said about soccer being
boring. The Red Devils, as they're known, beat the Italian team 4-1
with no small credit to Tim Howard, who debuted with several amazing
saves. Manchester currently has four goalies and it's unclear who will
get the starting spot at the next game in Philadelphia or once the team
returns to England's Premier league. I'll be rooting for the kid from
Jersey. New Jersey.
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:25 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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