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2011-02-06T20:55:00.002-05:00

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Review: Tennis Cape Dory

2011-01-22T21:57:00.005-05:00

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

Cape Dory arrives amidst the most brilliant bit of self-marketing by a new band since a pair of “siblings” named Jack and Meg White emerged from Detroit wearing red, white, and black. The story behind the band’s genesis, which you probably already know (Tennis is your new favorite band, right?), is so novel that its veracity is beside the point. It goes something like this: Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore, a now-married couple from Denver, scrounged for six years, bought a sailboat (the titular Cape Dory), and escaped their landlocked lives for adventure on the Atlantic. Early into the couple’s trip along the Eastern Seaboard, they discovered they had both played music in the past and had a passion to do it again. One night in a Florida Keys bar, while a Shirelles song played overhead, they decided to give songwriting a shot. After their trip was cut short (and after they were wedded on the deck of the Cape Dory), Riley and Moore returned to their old lives and wrote songs about their seven-month journey. Those songs became the musical travelogue known as Cape Dory. Tennis was born.

The story, which has gained the band instant indie interest, threatens to overshadow the music itself. The Myth of Tennis would be nothing more than cheap fodder for music journalists if Cape Dory weren’t so stunning. This is music that shimmers, sparkles, and swoons. Cape Dory is packed from stern to bow with lovely melodies, often delivered in the form of “oooohs,” “aaaaaaahs,” and “sha-na-nas.” Thin verses, driven by simple guitar hooks, give way to woozy, exuberant choruses. Toward the end of “Long Boat Pass,” arguably the album’s finest track, Moore sings with such joy and longing at once that I catch my breath every time I hear it. No origin story, however charming, can touch a moment like that.

Some early write-ups of the band have compared Tennis to Surfer Blood and Best Coast. Notwithstanding a mutual interest in beach imagery, Cape Dory’s slinky economy more closely recalls an album like Is This It than the reverb-heavy dullness of Crazy for You, or the enthusiastic, multi-tracked wackiness of Astro Coast. Riley and Moore are obviously inspired by the girl group sound, but their music is more of an extension of Blondie’s forays into the genre than, say, a slavish rehash of the Shangri-Las.

Though every song on the album references some part of the couple’s journey, either specifically (“South Carolina,” “Bimini Bay,” “Marathon,” and “Baltimore”) or indirectly (“Seafarer,” Waterbirds,” and “Take Me Somewhere”), these references are merely a means to an end. Cape Dory isn’t a maritime concept record, but an album of love songs as earnest and pure and innocent in sentiment as anything in Celine Dion’s oeuvre, songs that exist in the same universe a saucer-eyed Ronnie Spector sang about in “Be My Baby.” Cape Dory’s ten songs are devoid of any hint of edge or irony. We’re talking devotion, served straight up and often in the second person. Needless to say, many will find all of this a little too precious, saccharine even.

To be sure, Cape Dory is not a perfect record. It’s somewhat slight, not just in length, but in sophistication. A few songs anonymously blend into the next. The production can be muddy at times. But if Cape Dory doesn’t live up to the overblown hype that has built up around Tennis in the last six months, the problem isn’t Tennis, or Cape Dory, but the expectations surrounding both. Taken for what it is – a terrific collection of breezy pop and slow dance doo-wop – Cape Dory is undoubtedly a success.

Review: Robyn Body Talk

2010-11-25T18:08:00.003-05:00

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

No genre of music, not even pop, is more associated with frivolity than dance music. Dance artists are often seen as anonymous and their output disposable. Their purview, the club, is a hedonistic temple of drinking, drugs, and (ultimately) sex. Yet nothing damns the genre more than the fact that its purpose is first and foremost utilitarian – to move the human body.

Robyn Carlsson’s brand of dance music is not an exception that proves the rule, but a one-woman validation of the genre, of how great it can be (and sometimes is) when treated seriously. Her music demands that you dance, but also think, to feel the beat and your emotions, too. Robyn’s integrity, mastery, and playfulness make her devoid of any need for qualification. She doesn't make great dance music: she makes great music.

Her latest album, Body Talk, is the culmination of an almost year-long project. Eager to get her new material out to her starving fans (it has been five years since her last album, Robyn) she released two short albums, Body Talk Pt 1 and Pt 2, soon after they were recorded. Body Talk Pt 3, which will be released concurrently with the full-length Body Talk in many regions (including North America), completes the series with five new tracks. Body Talk, on the other hand, is a 15-track summation of this flurry of material. It features five songs off each of the three short Body Talk albums, resequenced into a new whole. It’s one-stop shopping for those sorry souls who have not yet gotten on board, as well as the official record of the Body Talk project.

There are two questions a review of Body Talk must answer: how good is the new material, and how well do all these songs fit together? The answer to the first question is – they are as consistently terrific as Pt 1’s first half, the high-point thus far. “Indestructible” get’s the full electro treatment, and while I prefer the acoustic version off of Pt 2, the song remains a gem. Its instrumentation cleverly augments the lyric. Robyn’s vocal melody is swallowed by the mix, while tracks and tracks of synths envelop her like a sonic armor. Indestructible, indeed. The sunny pop of “Call Your Girlfriend” hides a darker lyric. Robyn offers a new lover advice for how to ditch his girlfriend: “You tell her that the only way her heart will mend is when she learns to love again. And it won’t make sense right now but you’re still her friend. And then you let her down easy.” Even when she’s a homewrecker, Robyn has a heart of gold. On the delirious Max Martin produced “Time Machine,” she fires up the flux capacitor and speeds back in time at 88 mph to rectify her bad behavior. The best of the five is “Get Myself Together,” with a melody that rivals the album’s first two singles, “Dancing On My Own” and “Hang With Me.”

So how do these songs fit together? Surprisingly well, considering the somewhat disparate sound of each Body Talk album. Most of these tracks are anthemic, sing-a-long dance pop, with some more beat-oriented tunes thrown in for variety. However, none of the ballads from Pt 1 or 2 have made the cut, which means the album never gives you a breather. Body Talk has one major flaw: where the hell is “Cry When You Get Older?” The song is so far superior to most of the others that its exclusion is baffling. I also have some minor gripes about the sequencing of the album. “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do” sounds odd as anything other than an opening track, as it was on Pt 1. On Body Talk, it comes after the early high of “Fembot,” and ends up slowing the otherwise breathless onward rush of its first eight tracks. Also, the album sags about three-quarters of the way in, with its two weakest songs, “None of Dem” and “We Dance to the Beat,” placed back-to-back.

Still, Body Talk is an embarrassment of riches. I prefer listening to the short albums, especially for “Cry When You Get Older” and the ballads. But no matter how you consume it, Body Talk matches Robyn's brilliance, and further shows that no one puts music to a beat as marvelously as Robyn Carlsson.

Review: Rihanna LOUD

2010-11-22T21:59:00.005-05:00

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

What hath Madonna wrought? Over 25 years after her iconic VMA performance of “Like a Virgin,” we’ve finally reached the climax of the oversexed pop starlet. You can’t swing a bottle of Jack without hitting a female recording artist whose primary goal is to get laid. Even Rihanna, the Barbadian pop dynamo, got in on the act. On her last two albums, Good Girl Gone Bad and Rated R, she transformed from girl next door into an expletive-dropping nympho vixen. The often tuneful Rated R, with its guitar-laden mid-tempo jams, tried too hard to add menace and edge to Rihanna’s sound and persona. It was right there on its cover, Rihanna made up like the fifth member of the Misfits from the Jem cartoon, hand over eye and pissed off beyond belief.

What a difference a year makes. Yeah, Rihanna is still exploding f-bombs and purring about wanting to see you just in your skin, but she’s also relaxed a bit. LOUD, her competent fifth LP, is a halfway return to form. Take the album’s opening track “S&M,” an overt rebound back to the forward thrust of singles like “Don’t Stop the Music” and “SOS.” Even with its silly, shopworn lyrics (“I may be bad, but I’m perfectly good at it”), “S&M” is a fizzy joy. (A note to pop hitmakers: sadomasochism may have been titillating when Lou Reed sang about shiny boots of leather back in 1967, but today it’s about as tame as a stolen kiss.) In fact, “S&M” represents LOUD’s central flaw: moments of greatness are marred by egregious errors, and these songs vacillate between the two depending on your mood and generosity.

LOUD is best when Rihanna takes pop to less-travelled realms, particularly when her island influences show. “Man Down,” a reggae-infused mea culpa, is the album’s highlight. Rihanna pulls out a gun and shoots a man down with a wonderful “rum pap pap pum,” killing us softly with an effortless roll of the tongue. It’s a rare instance of enunciation elevated to art. “Cheers (Drink To That),” a celebration of imbibing complete with a (surprisingly killer) Avril Lavigne sample, wins this year’s award for Song Least Likely to Be Heard at an A.A. Mixer. The sequel to Eminem’s megahit “Love the Way You Lie” focuses on Rihanna’s portion and is all the better for it, giving up the goods straight-up and unadulterated.

If only the rest of LOUD were so assured. “What’s My Name” features a terrific hook in its verse, but is hindered by the inclusion of sad-sack rapper Drake (“the square root of 69 is eight something”). The generic Top 40 R&B tracks “Skin” and “Fading” are adequate filler, but filler nonetheless. “California King Bed” manages to best Liz Phair’s “My Favorite Underwear” with a central metaphor so bizarre that you almost forget its overblown melodic schmaltz. Almost.

It’s only been three years since Rihanna released the incredible pop anthem “Umbrella,” but the artistic distance between then and now seems vast. Though nothing on LOUD approaches that particular triumph, Rihanna still delivers some modest highs. To quote one of the album’s better tracks: I’ll drink to that.

Review: Taylor Swift Speak Now

2010-11-04T21:46:00.003-04:00

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. It was only a few days ago when I first discovered mine. I found myself bewildered, ashamed, and more than a bit unsettled. This kind of thing happens to regular people. Philistines, actually. I, however, am sophisticated, erudite, a Man of Good Taste. But, denial is futile. (As is resistance, it turns out.) So, in the spirit of the truth setting me free, I’ll say it: I love the new Taylor Swift album.

I’m being facetious, of course. Not about my high admiration for Speak Now – that’s very real – but about the implied notion that there should be at least a dash of shame added to the enjoyment of twangy pop songs about boys whose names end with the letter “Y.” If you need the modifier “indie” slathered over the word “pop” to make it palatable, stop reading now. If layers of irony, distortion, and/or electronic beats are required to swallow a catchy melody, this review, and this album, is not for you. The rest of us will be perfectly happy to feast on Speak Now’s bounty of pleasures without you.

In 2006, while her 16-year-old peers were spending their free time trying to get laid, high, or, at the very least, a perfect GPA, Taylor Swift was busy crafting a brilliant country-pop tune called “Tim McGraw.” Using the eponymous country star as a totem for nostalgia was a masterstoke, a winking, postmodern novelty that instantly distinguished Swift from the chaff regularly spat out by the mechanized Harvester of Pop also known as Nashville. The rest of Swift’s self-titled debut had a few songs that matched “Tim McGraw” – the banjo-driven, middle-finger flip of “Picture to Burn,” the searing “Should’ve Said No,” and the spirited hillbilly anthem “Our Song” – but as a whole, it was more endearing than it was accomplished. On her excellent 2008 follow-up, Fearless, Swift delivered a record-shattering pop behemoth, albeit one with a country accent. It redefined her as a precocious geek, an outsider hero looking in. “You Belong With Me” exemplified Swift’s new persona, and its accompanying video earned her the award that prompted Kanye West’s ridiculously ballyhooed VMA stunt. (Which is nonsensically “addressed” in the otherwise great Speak Now track “Innocent.”)

Too much has been written about Speak Now’s supposed tell-all confessions, particularly the details of Swift’s failed celebrity relationships. Though her record company, Big Machine, is mostly to blame, the music media haven’t exactly turned away from such an obvious marketing ploy. Sensationalism will sell records, but it distracts from the fact that Speak Now is, song for song, Swift’s strongest album. What difference does it make if “Dear John” is about John Mayer or some fictional John Doe? Or that “Back to December” may or may not be about that Teen Wolf who shares a first name with Swift? I know, Speak Now is just a pop album, which means it will get more attention from US Weekly than it will from Pitchfork, but Swift deserves better.

Speak Now is a career-defining album. It not only lacks a dud, but it also reminds you that a radio hit can be held to a higher standard and still exceed expectations. The album’s first single and opening track, “Mine,” firmly plants Swift in the fertile ground between Shania Twain and Kelly Clarkson, though closer to the latter. Swift’s marriage of pop and rock, with just a bit of country, is effortless and thrilling. Lean verses lead to explosive and exuberant choruses, with one impeccably crafted melody following another. “Sparks Fly” may be your absolute favorite song right now, but “Mean” or “Better Than Revenge” will surely replace it in a couple of days.

The album suffers from a couple of flaws common to most pop albums. It’s exactly two tracks too long: “Enchanted” and “Last Kiss,” fine songs both, slow down the pace of the record. The far-superior acoustic versions of “Back to December” and “Haunted,” found on the deluxe edition of the album, underscore the fact that most of these songs are heavy with too many tracks of instrumentation. Still, griping about a pop album’s overproduction is like complaining that rap music is too misogynistic or that experimental music is too weird. Well, duh.

Speak Now was solely written by Taylor Swift, which seems completely insane. The impressive popcraft of these fourteen songs could have been created by a small army of career songwriters. Well done, Ms. Swift. Speak Now is a well-earned tiara atop of Taylor Swift’s blonde tresses, an album that deserves to sell zillions of records. As it no doubt will.

Review: Avey Tare Down There

2010-10-31T20:38:00.004-04:00

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

In a recent interview with Spin, Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare) was asked how Down There was different from his work with Animal Collective. He responded with coyness worthy of Dylan: “It’s easiest to say there’s something about Down There that makes it more like Down There than anything AC has done.” Thanks for clearing things up, Dave. Statements of the obvious aside, the answer is technically accurate. Down There is a dark tangent broken off from the acoustic experimentation of Animal Collective’s early albums. Portner, being the primary artistic force behind the band, can’t escape certain elements of Animal Collective’s singular sound. Yet taken as a whole, Down There is different kind of beast.

The last we heard from Portner was the terrific Animal Collective EP, Fall Be Kind, which was an autumnal response to the Day-Glo summertime exuberance of Merriweather Post Pavilion. The EP was a shift in tone – complete with a spirited pan-flute jig and a Grateful Dead sample – but it kept with the pop continuity that began with Feels. Down There, Portner’s first solo album, is a retreat from Animal Collective’s catchier forays. Whereas bandmate Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) explored his (Brian) Wilsonian side on his third and most-recent solo album, Person Pitch, Portner is using Down There as an outlet for his more outré and abrasive tendencies.

Down There’s opening track, “Laughing Hieroglyphics,” begins as spacey jazz and devolves into a sonic collage of corn-popping-in-a-kettle percussion and swirling electronic noise, played backwards, forwards, and sideways. Uncomfy in Nautica? You bet. “Laughing Hieroglyphics” is followed by the equally disorienting “3 Umbrellas,” which features loud, processed guitar strumming over a pretty melody that’s nearly lost in the cacophony. Any hope that Down There would be Avey Tare’s version of Person Pitch is laid to rest here.

But just when you think Down There is going to be the inscrutable ejaculation of an artist eager to fuck with his fans, everything suddenly comes into focus. (Remember that album Portner recorded with his wife, where every song was played backwards? Me neither.) “Oliver Twist” is a riot, and given the right dance floor, an out-and-out stomper. The twin acoustic instrumentals “Glass Bottom Boat” and “Ghost of Books” are gentle and inviting, both reminiscent of Sung Tongs’ “The Softest Voice.” “Cemeteries” sounds like a séance at Wayne Coyne’s house, with a choir of the living and dead singing backup. If it weren’t for Portner’s distorted vocals, the driving mid-tempo “Heads Hammock” could be a radio staple. Well, a satellite radio staple. On the indie channel.

Down There concludes with its two best songs. “Heather in the Hospital,” a mournful and gorgeous dirge, was inspired by Portner’s sister, who battled a rare form of cancer (she survived). It’s profoundly moving, even if you don’t know the story behind the song. The warm extended tones that fill the song’s first half give way to synthesized harp arpeggios, like the transition music for a dream sequence, suggesting the stupefaction that accompanies repeated hospital visits and the potential loss of a loved one. “Lucky 1” is closest to being an Animal Collective song, which is probably why it was selected as the album’s first single. Portner sings, throat open, over a guttural electronic chug: “There have been days you feel so sad/ Glad you could feel better shape/ Today you like the lucky one!” “Lucky 1” is about how good news makes the bad instantly irrelevant. Though “Heather in the Hospital” is named after his sister, “Lucky 1” is dedicated to her.

If you’re still reading this review, it probably means you’re a diehard Animal Collective fan. Which also means you’re going to buy (or, god forbid, illegally download) Down There anyway. So this summation is for you: Down There is a strange, disjointed mess. You’ll love it.

I Agree, a Thousand Times Over

2010-10-26T00:15:00.002-04:00

Greil Marcus, on the greatest album ever:

Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited (1965). No matter how many times you might have heard it, a different song will appear as primary, the star around which everything else revolves—it could be “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”, one day, “Ballad of a Thin Man” the next, the title song for the next year, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” a year later, each different song casting all the others into a different relief. Then “Desolation Row” might make you forget that there’s anything else on the album at all. But if the album were simply “Like a Rolling Stone” and 30 or 40 minutes of silence, I still might pick it.

Review: Kings of Leon Come Around Sundown

2010-10-18T21:55:00.003-04:00

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

Fully admitting that there are a number of worthy candidates, and only if pressed, I would have to deem “Back Down South” the worst moment on Kings of Leon’s Come Around Sundown. Not that it’s the album’s worst song; on the contrary, it’s arguably the most sonorous and pleasant track of the bunch. But “Back Down South” so perfectly represents the phoniness that courses through the album’s 48 minutes that it deserves special attention. You can almost hear the Followill boys carefully plotting their new record’s SOUTHERN SONG during rehearsals: “y’all, there needs to be a fiddle, a slide gee-tar, and just in case folks don’t remember we’re from down yonder in Tennessee, let’s remind them in the song’s title.” Lest you think I’m being too harsh, consider the “impromptu” caught-on-tape hootin’, hollerin’, and high-fivin’ at the song’s end. I can’t help but think Kings of Leon are weirdly aping a song like Wilco’s “Casino Queen,” which has an identical hootenanny coda. But where “Casino Queen” is 2:45 of rollicking joy, “Back Down South” is wistful and downbeat: the self-congratulatory ovation at its end is beyond baffling. Were the boys so thrilled they made it through the take that they simply couldn’t contain themselves?

If a band has to fail, it’s always best when they fail spectacularly. There’s something almost pleasurable in witnessing an overreach so great that it’s not merely a train wreck, but a catastrophe that distracts you from a train wreck. The source of the pleasure isn’t schadenfreude, but a nagging question played on repeat: what the fuck were they thinking? At the very least, the listener is still engaged in the music, and in some perverse sense, that amounts to a minor success. Alas, Kings of Leon don’t even throw us that meager bone. Oh Come Around Sundown is plenty bad, but it’s also really boring. Worst of all, it has moments so cloying that I repeatedly had to stop listening to cleanse my aural palate with the sound of street noise.

How did a band once so wiry and scrappy transform into the worst sort of rock-radio pabulum? King of Leon’s debut, Youth and Young Manhood, by no means a great album, at least had the vigor typical of the garage rock revival of the early-2000s. Kings of Leon presented themselves as a capable, promising, and fun bar band. Instead of exploring their rawness, they polished their sound with each successive album, taking their cues from U2’s bombast rather than the Some Girls-era Stones sound that inspired their best early songs. The result was great commercial and critical success, in the form of the multiple-Grammy-winning “Use Somebody.” And they deserved the plaudits. “Use Somebody” sounds like a hit in every way. However hammy Caleb Followill’s vocal, “Use Somebody” is tuneful and cathartic, a worthy imitation of U2’s best. Unfortunately for Kings of Leon, a truism of the natural world applies to Come Around Sundown – lightning doesn’t strike twice.

That Kings of Leon are still being compared to other bands five albums into their career is not a result of critical laziness, but of the fact that behind every note is a zero, a non-entity. They were never worthy of their “Southern Strokes” moniker, but the U2 comparisons, however belabored, still apply. The Edge’s shimmering guitar delays, so iconic, abound on Come Around Sundown. “The End,” one of the album’s better tracks, begins with an inverse replica of the solo drum opening to “Bullet the Blue Sky,” and then goes on to borrow, via guitar, the low-high-low synth hook of the Killers’ “Smile Like You Mean It.” While most of Come Around Sundown’s residual checks are owed to Bono & Co., a few are also due to Aerosmith’s Nine Lives for “Mary,” Pearl Jam’s self-titled eighth album for “No Money,” and Bruce Springsteen’s Working on a Dream for “The Face” and “The Immortals.” Remarkably, even those sub-par albums are better than most of what’s on Come Around Sundown.

If Kings of Leon have an LVP, it’s lead singer Caleb Followill, whose affected vocals and foolish lyrics provide Come Around Sundown’s best howlers. Caleb’s vocals, in the past tossed-off and charmingly lackadaisical, are now wrought with fake squeaks and painful flourishes. Where another vocalist would sing “fight,” he sings “fay-ah-yah-hayt.” Sure, it’s an acceptable embellishment once or twice, but does every vocal delivery require a bucketful of extra syllables? We get it, Caleb. You’re pained. Really, really pained. The lyrics are even worse. The aforementioned “Back Down South” contains the following hand-me-the-rhyming-dictionary singsong:

Underneath the stars,
Where we parked the cars,
Ain’t showing signs of stopping.
Pretty little girls,
Naked to their curls,
Ready to lay in the coffin.

On “Mi Amigo,” Caleb Followill delivers a lyric that sounds like “she wants my asshole to sing a song.” In other words, a fart. It’s an unfortunate mondegreen – and the most apt description of Come Around Sundown that I can think of.

That’s So Gay/Lesbian/Straight!

2010-10-16T13:37:00.007-04:00

[Originally written for Swish Edition.]

OKTrends, the research arm of the online dating and hookup site OKCupid, recently released a statistical analysis of the “hundreds of millions” of its gay and straight user interactions. The findings were presented in a blog post entitled “Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex,” which is a worthy read for Christian Rudder’s wry observations alone. The results are fascinating, and sometimes counterintuitive. While Rudder presents the study as one about sex, its most interesting findings are about the personality differences (and similarities) between gay and straight men and women. The site analyzed the “essay text” of its users’ profiles for phrases “most correlated to a particular sexual preference.” In other words, the most common phrases OKCupid members used to describe themselves, given their gender and sexual orientation.

I’ve taken the most common user phrases from the site and put them into a simple table* (see below). OKTrends broke out the results into four categories: gay, lesbian, straight male, and straight female. I’ve displayed in bold any response that refers to a specific artist or artistic work (be it a book, movie, play, or TV show), rather than a generic word or phrase (like “my band” or “baking”). Also, I’ve highlighted responses that represent matches between the categories with the following colors: yellow for gay/lesbian, pink for gay/straight female, green for gay/straight male, purple for straight male/straight female, and blue for the one instance of an intra-gay match (thanks to a spelling quirk).

Let’s take a closer look at the results.

The first thing you’ll notice is that gay men are most likely to refer to a specific artist or work in their profiles: a whopping 84% of the responses. Gay men are followed by lesbians (54%), straight males (31%), and straight females (20%). So a gay man is most likely to define himself by his taste in culture, while at the other end of the spectrum, a straight female is most likely to define herself by a more general descriptor (“independent,” “church,” “close with my mom,” “flip flops” [?!]). The top phrases for each category are

Gay: The Devil Wears Prada
Lesbian: The L Word
Straight male: Band of Brothers
Straight female: “My girlfriends”

Remarkably, only straight females have actual human beings as their top phrase. Apparently gay men prefer to mention the fictional bitchiness of Miranda Priestly over the flesh-and-blood bitchiness of their closest friends.

There are a plenty of quirky choices here, and I could spend all day picking them apart. For brevity’s sake, here are some highlights by category

Gay – While the usual suspects are present (Kelly Clarkson, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Project Runway), there are also some genuine surprises. How to explain the handful of straight boy fetishes? X-Men, Final Fantasy, and Kill Bill are all mentioned here, but not on the straight male list. Notably, Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald appear, while the stereotypical standbys Cher and Bette Midler are MIA. (Though M.I.A, herself, is ninth on the list.)

Lesbian – In his post, Rudder notes that “The L Word” is by far the top phrase among gay women. Seems about right. Yet, while gay women so identify with their cable TV show, gay men don’t with their analogue, Queer as Folk (which doesn’t even make the list). The general phrases on the lesbian list add up to a perfectly descriptive whole when read together: piercings, social justice, a girlfriend, writing poetry, my animals, tea, obsession, mom, drama, sex. Sound like anyone you know? By the way, the word “sex” only appears on the lesbian list. Go figure.

Straight male – I thought professional sports would dominate the list, but only one appears unambiguously: UFC. It’s unclear if the other sports are listed as activities the guys enjoy doing (like hunting, fishing, poker, and golf) or as purely spectator sports. Still: no football, basketball, baseball, or hockey. What gives? Perhaps, since this is a dating site, straight males are trying to signal something unique about themselves…and in turn are coming up with the exact same answers. Also, notice “a few beers” makes the list, rather than just “beer.” As far as physical descriptors go, OKCupid must have an inordinate number of “tall, dark, and handsome” gentlemen. Natch.

Straight female – There must be a good reason why “lip gloss” is second on the list, ahead of “wine,” “horseback riding” and Jane Eyre. I mean, lip gloss is great, but wine is so much better. Maybe that explains why I’m a gay man and not a straight woman.

I realize I’m being divisive by accentuating our differences. So let’s take a look at what brings us together. Keep in mind that OKTrends weeded out the non-statistically unique responses. That’s why no phrase appears on all four, or even three, of the lists. But a few responses unite two of the lists:

Gay/Lesbian – No surprise that the highest percentage of the matches are between gay men and gay women (34%). All are artists or works, except for two: “came out” and, adorably, “cuddling.” Somehow, Stephen Chbosky’s novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower appears on both lists. Personally, I’ve never heard the novel mentioned by anyone I know – gay or straight. Is there a subset of homosexuals who adore MTV-published novels from the ‘90s that I don’t know about? This demands more research.

Gay/Straight female – Both are looking for “Mr. Right.” Lesbians and straight males, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about “Ms. Right.” They, perhaps, just want skanks. Who can blame them?

Gay/Straight male – Just kidding. Both gays and straight males mention “the right guy” and “the right woman,” respectively. So only lesbians are looking for skanks. Again, who can blame them?

Straight male/ Straight female – There are a bunch of country boys looking for country girls, and vice versa. I assume the country they’re looking for is the US, but one never knows nowadays.

Gay/Gay – “The theater” and “the theatre” both appear on the gay list. However they choose to spell it, gays love the stage. Someone alert the New York Times!

*Data courtesy of OKTrends: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/gay-sex-vs-straight-sex/

Yes He Can! Can't He?

2010-10-12T22:09:00.009-04:00

The case: Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America. The result: the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Well, at least until the Obama Justice Department inevitably appeals Judge Virginia A. Phillips' injunction, that is. What a topsy-turvy world! A Republican group scoring an important victory for gay rights? The Democratic administration fighting to keep the deeply unpopular status quo?

What the hell is going on here? Admittedly, matters more complex than I'm making them sound. The Log Cabins are generally out-of-step with their party. Yet, arch-bogeyman Dick Cheney favors gay marriage. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is bound by precedent to uphold the current law of the land. Yet, liberal-savior President Obama is against gay marriage.

Again, what the hell is going on here? Politics, of course. Regarding gay marriage, the Log Cabins, who have little sway, are hardly the voice of their party. And Dick Cheney has nothing to lose now. Obama, on the other hand, made what is most likely a politically motivated statement while campaigning, to appeal to the center, and now has to stick to it.

I doubt Obama actually believes gay marriage is a bad thing, and I think most Americans, be they for or against gay marriage, agree with me. Obama has already condemned DADT. He even pledged to end it this year. Yet, if Obama holds to a politically expedient position, what does that say about him? Will Democrats applaud his so-called integrity?

This is Obama's moment. I'm no fan of his, but I hope he lives up to his promise to end DADT. Obama has a choice: politics or principles. Now that he has the chance, let's see if, yes, he can make the right decision.

Update: Andrew Sullivan makes the same points, more eloquently of course.

Review: How to Dress Well Love Remains

2010-10-08T22:30:00.009-04:00

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

I went through three stages of emotion while I listened to Love Remains, in preparation for this review. My first few spins were filled with anger toward Tom Krell, the man whose nom de studio is How to Dress Well. I thought the album’s aural hand grenades – the overly muddy mix, the shrill squawks that appear out of nowhere, Krell’s reverb-heavy vocals, the endless buzzing distortion – were unnecessary, pretentious indie window-dressings. Were I not reviewing the album, I would have given up and thrown it aside then and there.

As I dutifully listened on, my anger turned into disappointment. Krell’s indelible melodies began to sink in. If it weren’t for its insufferable production, this could have been a great album, I started to think. Still, I remained intrigued.

It was “Decisions,” one of Love Remains’ later tracks, that led to my mini-epiphany. Halfway through the song Krell sings a cappella to a girl; he reminds her to check her cell phone for his call, and then, suddenly, with layers of tracks bleeding into each other, a glorious wall of wailing falsetto enters. At that moment, I learned to stop worrying and love Love Remains.

Love Remains sounds like a transmission from another dimension, one permanently frozen in 1992, where ghosts not only exist but also record radio hits. These songs are incredibly familiar yet never-before-heard. Tom Krell has so thoroughly synthesized the sound of late-80s/early-90s R&B that the album seems like plagiarism. In this sense, Love Remains reminds me of Ariel Pink’s Before Today, an album that has yacht rock coded in its DNA. But where Pink appears to have his tongue firmly in cheek, Krell plays it straight. And however lo-fi its production, Before Today sounds like Let’s Talk About Love next to Love Remains.

There are moments of pop immediacy (“You Won’t Need Me Where I’m Goin’” and “My Body”) and a few booty shakers (the terrific and pulsing “Walking This Dumb” and “Mr. By & By”) on Love Remains. But Krell is at his best as a Rhythm-and-Blues Midas, somehow turning ethereal chorales into slow jams. “Ready for the World,” ”Lover’s Start,” and “Endless Rain” are alternate-reality R. Kelly singles par excellence.

When I first heard Love Remains, I was certain Tom Krell was hiding his flaws behind the murk of lo-fi studio trickery, as an unskilled pop singer would hide behind the false gloss of Auto-Tune. The truth is, the album’s production is the co-star on Love Remains. As near-perfect as these songs are, the whole overshadows its parts. Brilliant and beautiful, haunting and singularly original, How to Dress Well’s Love Remains ranks among the year’s best albums.

I’m Only Gay for You, Bro

2010-10-07T10:14:00.005-04:00

[Originally written for Swish Edition.]

Has science finally caught up with the high fantasy of gay male porn? Here’s the scene, in its most fundamental form: two rippled, straight Adonis-types are showering in a locker room, most likely after football (or even better, rugby) practice. Eyes wander, linger uncertainly, and then fix upon the most manly features of the other’s too-perfect body. The next thing you know these two oh-so-very heterosexual men are engaging in acts of near-brutality. (The believability of the scene is inevitably marred by the sudden appearance of an industrial-size bottle of lube. So much for cinéma vérité.)

The source of the scene’s appeal, its fantasy, is that it would never happen in real life between two straight men. Most people -- peering through a Porky’s-style hole in the wall, no doubt -- would conclude that the two guys going at it in a locker room, no matter how adamantly straight-identifying in their normal lives, are really, really gay. After all, college girls hold a monopoly on sexual fluidity and experimentation. Long prison sentences notwithstanding, the following is the dogma of male sexuality: straight is straight, and gay is gay, and never the twain shall meet. Not so fast, says a recent national sex survey published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Slate’s William Saletan summarizes the study’s findings on homosexuality:

Apparently, a lot of people try gay sex, but only about half stick with it. By ages 18-19, 10 percent of men say they've performed fellatio. That number drops among men in their 20s and 30s. But among men in their 40s and 50s, 13 percent say they've done it, and 14 percent to 15 percent say they've received it from another man. Meanwhile, 11 percent of men aged 20-24 say they've received anal sex. For unknown reasons, that number declines in the next higher age bracket but then steadily rises in succeeding brackets, leveling off at 9 percent among men in their 40s and 50s.

Remember, these are "have you ever" questions. When men aged 20-59 are asked whether they've performed fellatio in the past year, the number is more like 6 percent. And only 4 percent say they've received anal sex in that time. But that's a big jump from 1992, when only 2 percent of men admitted to sex with a man in the preceding year.

Saletan doesn’t go the extra step and present the residuals between those who said they’ve engaged in gay sex at least once and those who’ve done it in the last year: the difference is 4% - 9%. Of course, this also includes gay guys who just haven’t scored in the last twelve months (believe it or not, they’re out there). Still, these numbers show there is a sliver of the heterosexual male population who have walked on the wild side and haven’t caught the gay bug and moved to Chelsea with their twink boyfriends.

Two more things to consider. The findings were, necessarily, self-reported. The effects of taboo and sexual-identity preservation means the number of straight-identifying men who have had gay experiences is likely to be higher. It takes a mighty secure straight man to admit to having once performed fellatio. Even so, the study’s findings do not represent a sea change in how we ought to understand male sexuality. We’re still talking small numbers (not even 10%), and it is only one study.

The Onion once published a hilarious satire of overly macho closet cases entitled “Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock?”. The “author” of the article, Bruce Heffernan, laments his numerous unwitting encounters with gay men:

Look, I'm not a hateful person or anything–I believe we should all live and let live. But lately, I've been having a real problem with these homosexuals. You see, just about wherever I go these days, one of them approaches me and starts sucking my cock.

Take last Sunday, for instance, when I casually struck up a conversation with this guy in the health-club locker room. Nothing fruity, just a couple of fellas talking about their workout routines while enjoying a nice hot shower. The guy looked like a real man's man, too–big biceps, meaty thighs, thick neck. He didn't seem the least bit gay. At least not until he started sucking my cock, that is.

Where does this queer get the nerve to suck my cock? Did I look gay to him? Was I wearing a pink feather boa without realizing it? I don't recall the phrase, "Suck my cock" entering the conversation, and I don't have a sign around my neck that reads, "Please, You Homosexuals, Suck My Cock."

I've got nothing against homosexuals. Let them be free to do their gay thing in peace, I say. But when they start sucking my cock, then I've got a real problem.

So: closet case, or regular old straight guy? Thanks to science, we may never know for sure.

Review: Four Tet There Is Love in You

2010-10-06T18:57:00.004-04:00

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

The closest approximation of pop construction on Four Tet’s There Is Love in You first appears 4 ½ minutes into “Love Cry” and ends about a minute and a half before the song does. Wave goodbye to the nice Approximation of Pop Construction, kids! Good riddance, I say to my own astonishment.

Though nothing on There Is Love in You will be lighting up the pop charts anytime soon, the album is never formless. In fact, form is everything here: the constant repetition of sonic motifs, the contrast of shifting timbres and sounds, the perpetual thumping of a beat. That said, the album is pretty much hookless, at least in traditional sense. Yet Kieran Hebden, the sole member of Four Tet, does something clever; he compensates with musical elements that do a hook’s job: the bouncing 8-bit beeps in “Sing,” the crystalline harp plucks in “Circling,” and the lyrical guitar line in “She Just Likes to Fight” all act like hooks, when they’re too just repeating motifs.

There Is Love in You is, for the most part, instrumental. In the few instances where a human voice is heard, it’s still usually just another element in the mix, like a hand clap or snare tap. Hebden keeps things to the essentials, adding nothing extraneous to these minimalistic tracks. The album has the elegance of a well-constructed sentence: it conveys its ideas clearly, unencumbered with unnecessary embellishment. Few musical voices speak at once, and when a new one enters, it usually means another has just exited. Yet each track reveals new depth with every listen. It took eight spins before I realized that I heard what I think is a sample of the opening line to the Chiffons classic “Nobody Knows What’s Goin’ On (In My Mind But Me)” playing on the horizon four minutes into “Plastic People.” This ambiguity (is that really what I’m hearing?) is even better than the sample itself.

But enough with all this technical analysis, what makes There Is Love in You a remarkable album is its hypnotic beauty. How does music this digital evoke such real emotion without having to delegate the heavy-lifting to a soulful gospel sample? I’ll leave that question to a neuroscientist. Or perhaps the best answer is another question: who cares? However the means, all that matters is There Is Love in You packs enough emotional wallop to make an emo band blush.

Still, this is not music for the casual fan of the electronic genre. As much as I find There Is Love in You compelling, even brilliant, many will find it boring and repetitive. It’s a demanding album – not to be taken with your Ritalin – which never veers into the day-spa-soundtrack territory of so much instrumental electronic music out there. That’s not to say that Four Tet has assigned the listener homework, either. Meet There Is Love in You halfway, and you’ll find that underneath all those blips and beeps thumps a very human heart.

****

2010-09-28T22:27:00.031-04:00

As far as American culinary plaudits go, a four-star review from the New York Times is like winning the Pulitzer, despite Michelin's attempts at stateside gastro-kingmaking. Sam Sifton, the Times' restaurant critic, who replaced Frank Bruni over a year ago, has not yet placed a quad-asterisk crown atop an NY restaurant -- until today. And the winner is...Del Posto, the first Italian restaurant to have that sacrosanct honor since 1974.

What makes this a story of note for us non-New York food lovers is the review itself. While any hack can write a smarmy take-down, only the best food critics can write eloquent praises that are enjoyed for their own merit. Also, a persuasive four-star review instantly puts a restaurant on the Must-Conquer List of every fervent and far-flung foodie.

Here are the opening paragraphs of Bruni's excellent 2004 review of Per Se, a piece that was the eventual-catalyst of an incredible meal, and a considerable budget re-allocation, of mine earlier this year:

The butter-poached lobster almost did it, but not quite. I had been wooed with succulent lobster before. The Island Creek oysters and Iranian caviar, mingled in a kind of sabayon that I was served during that same dinner and during others, made a seductive case. But I was wary of such ostentation.

In the end, it was a different night and a nine-course vegetable tasting, of all things, that made me drop any reserve, cast aside any doubts and accept the fact that I loved Per Se — and that this preening, peacock-vain newcomer deserved it.

I ordered the meal out of a sense of duty, with a heavy heart. Jicama ribbons? Warm potato salad? How transcendent could those be?

Silly, cynical, carnivorous me. The jicama was sensational, so packed with moisture and so faintly sweet that it could have been a new, undiscovered fruit, and the cilantro and avocado that came with it were like idealized essences of themselves, so flavorful that they seemed to have been cultivated in a more verdant universe. The bite-size marble potatoes in the potato salad popped like grapes in my mouth, and an exquisitely balanced mustard-seed vinaigrette gave them a subtle zing.

Lobster is easy; potato salad is hard. And a restaurant that turns a summer picnic staple into a meal-stopping, sigh-inducing dish — and makes that dish a legitimate course in a $135 tasting menu — cannot be denied. Per Se is wondrous.

Sifton's review seems limp by comparison:

Great restaurants may start out that way. But an extraordinary restaurant generally develops only over time, the product of prolonged artistic risk and managerial attention. An extraordinary restaurant uses the threat of failure first as a spur to improvement, then as a vision of unimaginable calamity. An extraordinary restaurant can transcend the identity of its owners or chef or concept.

And of course an extraordinary restaurant serves food that leads to gasps and laughter, to serious discussion and demands for more of that, please, now. The point of fine dining is intense pleasure. For the customer, at any rate, an extraordinary restaurant should never be work.

Consider Del Posto, which opened in 2005 on a wind-swept corner of that grim Manhattan neighborhood that is neither Chelsea nor the meatpacking district, in the shadows below what is now the High Line park. The restaurant’s owners, Joseph Bastianich, Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali, and its chef, Mark Ladner, envisioned a temple to Italian cooking to match any ever built to honor a European cuisine in New York, a 24,000-square-foot palazzo of mahogany and marble devoted entirely to the pleasures of Italian food and customer satisfaction.

Five years later Del Posto is that and more, a place to sit in luxury and drink Barolo, while eating food that bewilders and thrills — an abalone carpaccio to start your meal, perhaps, and absolutely a celery sorbetto to end it, as well-played Gershwin and Kern tinkle in the background.

Del Posto’s is a pleasure that lasts, offering memories of flavors that may return later in a dream: a tiny cup of spiced gazpacho, say, rimmed with a salty dust of dried capers; or a plate of the square-cut whole-wheat pasta known as tonarelli, with fiery little chickpeas, fried rosemary and bonito flakes in place of the more-traditional bottarga; perhaps a nectarine cooked into slow and amazing submission, with a savory grilled lemon cake and intense basil gelato. And, oh, that wine!

Here's the full review, not nearly as excellent as the food it describes.

Review: Antony & the Johnsons Swanlights

2010-09-26T14:16:00.010-04:00

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

Swanlights starts with a repeated mantra – sung first with a lilting warble and later with a soaring yowl, accompanied by some gentle piano notes, acoustic guitar plucks, a high-hat metronome click, and finally, after a swollen crescendo, a few grand cymbal rolls – just three words, the song’s title: “Everything Is New.” Well, not exactly. In fact, very little here is new.

Antony Hegarty has perfected a sound. What he lacks in breadth and variety, he makes up for with depth and consistency. Swanlights follows the template laid out by I am a bird Now and The Crying Light; it’s a collection of sparsely instrumented folk nocturnes and chamber lullabies, with a couple of esoteric art songs thrown in for good measure. But where Antony & the Johnsons’ previous releases were impeccably crafted and instantly gripping, Swanlights is looser, at times formless and even abstruse. Which is just a kinder way of saying Swanlights isn’t as good as its predecessors.

At their best, Antony’s songs inhabit a place of such intimacy and yearning that they can be suffocating in their beauty. Fans already know the sublime alchemy that occurs when Antony’s voice meets a devastating melody. Songs like “Hope There’s Someone” from I am a bird Now, “Blind” from Hercules and Love Affair’s debut, and Hegarty’s cover of Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” from the I’m Not There OST show that Antony, while being a great songwriter, is first and foremost an expert vocal stylist.

Nothing on Swanlights rivals his prior greatness, but a few songs come close. “The Great White Ocean” is the simplest of the bunch, just the singer, a stately guitar, and a seemingly timeless melody. It’s vintage Antony, as are its familiar themes of mortality and the bonds of family. Austere and aching, “The Spirit Was Gone” is another song about (surprise!) death, which lifts its hook from Paul McCartney’s “You Never Give Me Your Money” and puts it to great use. Yes, we’ve been here before, but when the familiar is done this well, why complain?

Swanlights shares a flaw with every other Antony & the Johnsons album: its songs have a tendency to blend together, making a collection of strong material seem monotonous and monochromatic. That said, there are a few left turns here, of varying success. “I’m In Love” is the most successful, and the album’s best track. Above a “primitive, offbeat rhythmic drive,” to borrow the words of Philip Glass, Antony sings a repeating eight-tone motif, while a Wurlitzer mimics in kind. The circularity of its structure suggests the perpetuity of finding a new love. It is pessimistic and hopeful at once. Love is lost and found, and lost and found, again and again and again. The album’s lead single, “Thank You For Your Love,” starts out sweet, its bright horn accents a relief to the album’s overall melancholy. Yet for as joyous as it first appears to be, darkness lies underneath. Antony sings thanks to love for saving him from “falling in the seizure of pain,” from being “lost in the dark blackness,” from his mind being “broken into a thousand pieces.” Antony pleads “I thank you!” over and over at the song’s end, and it’s unclear if his pain has been alleviated or exacerbated.

Even Swanlights’ least successful tracks are rescued by a smart twist or an interesting flourish. “Ghost” is closer to “art” than song, but its sixteenth-note ostinati flurries, which suddenly shift to half-time eighth-note pulses, are enough to keep the listener’s attention – a cerebral, if not emotional, payoff.Swanlights’ too-long and soporific title track is aimless for its first half, all drone and reverb, until a drum kit and piano mercifully add some structure to the mess. There’s a gorgeous song somewhere within the meandering “Christina’s Farm,” but you’ll have to wait for it (give It four minutes; it’s worth it). The worst offender is the Björk track ”Flétta,” if only for the great opportunity squandered. Whereas the wonderful Volta track “Dull Flame of Desire” used both vocalists equally, with the bombast they deserved, “Flétta” cedes to Björk’s duller tendencies. The song’s jaunty piano interludes at least inject some life into a largely stillborn track.

If Swanlights had matched the quality of I am a bird Now and The Crying Light, its lack of sonic growth could have been tossed aside as an afterthought, a minor disappointment. Being an inferior album, its similarity only heightens its flaws. Still, it’s almost unjust to nitpick when the overall product is this good. Swanlights is not the departure for Antony & the Johnsons that I’ve been hoping for. Maybe next time. (Might I humbly suggest an album of girl group covers?) For now, I’ll happily settle for a good, rather than great, album.

Exhuming Malthus

2010-09-23T21:44:00.004-04:00

Here we go again.

Slate has a good article on the forever-interest in the ideas of 18th century economist Thomas Malthus, particularly in the realm of fiction, specifically with regard to Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. To describe Malthus' central idea on one foot: human population grows exponentially, while natural resources grow arithmetically. The former will eventually outstrip the latter, leading to a population bomb that will detonate and obliterate us all.

No matter how many times Malthus is refuted, his ideas linger. Ultimately, Malthusians of all stripes are defined by their suspicion, if not hatred, for civilization. Malthus was in the news recently, thanks to the Neo-Malthusian nut who took hostages at the Discovery Channel earlier this month. His inspiration? A novel: My Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.

It almost makes you miss the influence of Karl Marx.

Let's Talk About Freedom

2010-09-20T22:00:00.032-04:00

I've just started reading Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, a book I planned on hating but am actually kind of enjoying. I've disdained Franzen (yes, my negative opinion of him has been that intense) since the whole Oprah flap back at the beginning of the last decade. I wasn't put off by some great offense against Her Highness of Daytime, but by Franzen's apparent smugness and snobbishness toward the economic gift horse that is the Oprah Book Club, by his attitude that he and his work (The Corrections) were too good for the sudden popularity that followed from Oprah's stamp of approval, that the vulgar "O" printed on the book's cover immediately tarnished its contents by marking it as "female fiction." Didn't he want people to read his goddamn book?

Anyway, it wasn't just spite that motivated me to pick up Freedom. It's too long a book to be read for the sole (and self-indulgent) purpose of further stoking some anger within me. No, I wanted to understand and be part of a conversation about an "important" literary work within the culture. I place quotes around the word important not to be snarky or contrarian, but to underscore the fact that Freedom's import is that it has prompted discussion in the first place, without me having to evaluate how important a literary work it is. It's not often that a work of fiction is discussed so ubiquitously, with angles of debate so multifaceted.

First there's the issue of the book's literary merit. Freedom has been overwhelmingly embraced by critics, with a few poison pens written in gleeful dissent. Then there's the reaction to the book's critical reception, which has become a debate about the nature of literary criticism and what it means to be a Great American Novel. Add to the mix questions of what happened to the popular "middlebrow" novel, why most people no longer read fiction, and whether a woman writer of literary fiction could ever grace the cover of Time, as Franzen did a few weeks ago, and you've got yourself some robust cultural discourse.

The last bit, of the media's attitude toward women literary writers, immediately cuts off any mention of J.K. Rowling, she being the clichéd 800 pound, and multi-billion dollar, gorilla. Of course, the modifier "literary" in front of "fiction" is central to all of this. When in recent memory have people, like real reg'lar people, many of whom are also the erudite consumers of the NYT's Notable Books list, clamored about and discussed a work of fiction? In the last ten years, it's only been in the context of young adult and genre fiction: Harry Potter, Twilight, and Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy exhaust the list.

And so, we talk about Freedom. While that's a very good thing on the surface, what about Franzen has established him as the literary topic of discussion? It's not merit alone. There have been a number of great, and for the most part popular, contemporary works that did not make the same splash, books like The Road, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Netherland, Tree of Smoke, and Middlesex, among many others. Perhaps it's because few other authors mix Franzen's prodigious ambition and ability with broad social commentary. While I almost completely disagree with Franzen's evaluation of America and Americans, there's no doubt that Freedom is the work of a writer in full control of his powers, one who is emphatically Making a Statement. Freedom's sweeping 23-page first chapter is proof enough of this.

Whatever the answer, the great debate over Freedom shows the reports of the novel's death within American culture are at least slightly exaggerated. And the townsfolk rejoice, however halfheartedly.

Song Break: Late to the Game Edition

2010-09-17T22:28:00.019-04:00

I'm just now getting around to listening to Hot Chip's One Life Stand. "I Feel Better," the album's standout, recalls the yearning of Hercules and Love Affair's "Iris" and "Athene." As with those tracks, "I Feel Better" is either uplifting or haunting, depending on the listener's mood. Joe Goddard's heavily Auto-Tuned vocal provides a sonic foil to the purity of Alexis Taylor's chorus (clearly inspired by Everything but the Girl's Tracy Thorn). Both trade off over synthesized strings and a simple kick-drum/ high hat/ snare drum beat. An instant contender for song of the year.

For Parrot

2010-09-16T20:18:00.020-04:00

Outside my window, half a block south, I can see candles flickering in the semi-darkness of the sidewalk. A small crowd stands in vigil. The occasional car honks in passing. There's a news van parked at the end of the block: a local television station has come to cover the event. All of this for Parrot. If you live in DC, you probably already know who that is.

Parrot was a pit bull who was shot and killed by a police officer last Sunday. There are conflicting accounts, but a few facts are agreed upon by the dog's owner, the MPD, and eyewitnesses. First, it happened in full view of a street festival that was in full swing in DC's Adams Morgan neighborhood. Second, Parrot and a poodle got into a sidewalk altercation -- both were leashed; the poodle may or may not have been bitten. Third, an MPD officer stepped in and subdued Parrot, before shooting the animal execution-style.

The crowd currently gathered in front of the Brass Knob, where Parrot was killed five days ago, and the presence of local media are a testament to how much this story has impacted locals, especially dog owners. I was shocked and sickened when I heard the news on Sunday. It didn't help that I own a dog that looks strikingly similar to Parrot, and that I live hundreds of feet from where it all happened.

A friend of mine knows the officer who shot the dog. Apparently, he is a dog lover (and owner) himself. Imagining the officer as a faceless cop, he's a monster who cares little for human rights (like property) and even less for animals. After hearing he may be a dog lover, he sounds like a human being who made a really, really bad snap decision.

To a certain extent I can understand. The officer was faced with a dog, a pit bull no less, who could have very well been dangerous, in the midst of a densely attended street festival. Allegedly, the owner's hand was bleeding. Maybe things looked worse than they were, and the officer did what he thought he had to do. Of course, this doesn't exonerate him. Disregarding the callousness of his public execution, he discharged his weapon in the midst of a densely attended street festival. At least Parrot was on a leash.

One good thing may come of this. The great public outcry, the disgust and anger that swelled with the news of Parrot's death, will, I hope, cause an officer to think twice before shooting a dog in the future, especially when no one is in immediate danger. Still, that's little salve for Parrot's owner.

I walked past the vigil on my way home earlier, before it got started. The crowd was solemn; a few eyes were red from crying. A woman handed me a leaflet with pictures of Parrot on it. Another handed me a dixie cup, to catch candle wax. And there stood Parrot's owner, wearing a white t-shirt, surrounded by strangers who were brought here on a rainy Thursday night to honor the life of a dog. Just somebody's pet. I still don't know if the feeling I had at that moment was profound hope, or sadness.

Adrian Fenty's Spectacular Defeat

2010-09-15T21:45:00.015-04:00

Was it Michelle Rhee? Fenty's aloofness toward the black community? His hubris with regard to his reelection campaign? The heavy whiff of nepotism that accompanied his appointments?

Megan McArdle thinks gentrification was largely to blame for Fenty's loss:

When it became clear that Fenty was going to lose, there was a lot of shock going around in the circles I live and work in--which is to say, mostly white professionals who live in DC's gentrified, or gentrifying, precincts. After all, there's little question that things have gotten much better under Fenty, and not just for white people. The truly abysmal schools are being reformed, parks are being built, crime is slowly improving, the city is getting streetcars desired by almost everyone except the folks who live directly on the tracks . . . so why did voters just kick him out?

I don't think you can quite explain it by saying that Fenty's modestly corrupt (too-expensive contracts have gone to friends, though those friends seem to have mostly done the work very well). Marion Barry has remained quite popular here through much more serious violations, and in general, the corruption now pales in comparison to the pervasive corruption that has been uncovered in multiple city agencies, which long predates Fenty's administration.

Most people agree that this is ultimately a proxy battle over gentrification. It's all rather nebulous, because of course Vincent Gray hasn't campaigned on rolling back gentrification. He seems to support all the services Fenty has expanded, with the possible exception of the school reforms. Instead, the theme of his campaign--and the more generalized opposition to Fenty--has centered around respect and process.

She continues:

Gentrification represents a real loss to people who can't afford to stay. They've lived in the city a long time; they have networks of friends and relatives, and institutions like churches, that are built around proximity. Why should they favor a city that provides more services--and then sees real estate prices spike, so that they can't afford to stay around to enjoy them? There are probably a number of voters for whom the status quo is vastly preferable to a situation where Fenty manages to improve the schools enough that middle class voters start a bidding war for homes in the district.

Certainly for the teachers and the taxi drivers--both groups huge opponents of Fenty--this is about real economic loss and changes to their jobs that make them less pleasant.

But no one comes right out and talks about the fact that they are now worse off; instead they talk about how Fenty has run roughshod over council process, or that he hasn't respected some group . . the teachers, the council members, "the community". So our mayoral election has become a debate over which groups in the city are worthy of respect, rather than what concrete improvements can be made in peoples' lives. Because in a city dysfunctional, there are no changes that make everyone better off.

I don't know whether the voters who selected Vincent Gray understand at some level that as long as the quality of life in the city continues to improve, gentrification will continue apace. Vincent Gray didn't force them to consciously make that choice; he made vague promises about things like inclusionary zoning which are supposed to keep more affordable housing in the district. These initiatives will not work, but at least they sound hopeful. And the people who voted for Gray are willing to hope because they think that he, unlike Fenty, respects their concerns.

The implications of her argument, if correct, are provocative. It only follows that a segment of D.C. believed things have been getting better, yet actively voted against progress. In fact, a recent poll showed that most Washingtonians thought the district was heading in the right direction. The same poll showed Fenty trailing behind Gray.

I think McArdle's argument is persuasive, but Fenty's bafflingly inept reelection campaign certainly played a large part in his loss. The Washington Post's surprisingly good analysis, published today, is the best argument for this view.

But I think McArdle nails it with her prediction of what to expect from Mayor Gray:

I don't know how good a mayor Gray will be--he seems like a nice guy, but nice guys often have a hard time getting things done in fractious cities, and his campaign platform is pretty empty of actual proposals. I think this is probably a tragedy for the utterly dysfunctional school system, but I doubt that Gray is going to do much to roll back the other changes, like the change in the taxi fare system, that have made the city a better place.

And for good or ill, I doubt he'll do anything about gentrification. Inclusionary zoning has, as far as I know, proven an excellent way to subsidize home building in poor neighborhoods, and to provide below-market housing for relatively middle class retirees, but it has not, as far as I am aware, ever succeeded in keeping a neighborhood's economic mix from changing. The forces altering DC right now are like a runaway freight train. In 2000, the population of DC was 30% white and 60% black; by 2006-2008, those numbers were 36% and 54%, respectively. Meanwhile, the percentage living below the poverty level dropped from over 20% to under 18%. On a demographic timescale, that is lightning fast. If gentrification keeps up at that pace, the lines are going to cross sometime in the next 10 to 15 years.

Vincent Gray could throw his body in front of the freight train and it wouldn't even slow down. The change in the city may stop on its own; no trend continues forever. But the city is now good enough that many affluent people who used to flee to the suburbs now want to live here--and their presence is attracting non-government services which make it attractive enough to lure still other people to follow them. Unless Gray starts an active campaign to make things worse, the core issue that seems to have animated this campaign is largely out of his hands.

Progress marches onward? Washingtonians can only hope.

Housewives, Totally Losing It

2010-09-14T09:48:00.008-04:00

Courtesy of Oprah and the continent of Australia.

(Mirrored on 100MC)

A Lady Gaga Takedown

2010-09-13T09:45:00.014-04:00

The Sunday Times (UK) published a devastating piece on Lady Gaga by the always wonderful Camille Paglia. Paglia, an iconoclastic cultural critic, is well known for her analyses of Madonna through the years, and for her controversial views on feminism and sexuality. Here's an excerpt from Paglia's criticism of Gaga:

Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna (as in her latest video-Alejandro) that it must be asked, at what point does homage become theft? However, the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich’s true heir. For Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface; she’s like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture. Alarmingly, Generation Gaga can’t tell the difference. Is it the death of sex? Perhaps the symbolic status that sex had for a century has gone kaput; that blazing trajectory is over…

Gaga seems comet-like, a stimulating burst of novelty, even though she is a ruthless recycler of other people’s work. She is the diva of déjà vu. Gaga has glibly appropriated from performers like Cher, Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Gwen Stefani and Pink, as well as from fashion muses like Isabella Blow and Daphne Guinness. Drag queens, whom Gaga professes to admire, are usually far sexier in many of her over-the-top outfits than she is.

Peeping dourly through all that tat is Gaga’s limited range of facial expressions. Her videos repeatedly thrust that blank, lugubrious face at the camera and us; it’s creepy and coercive. Marlene and Madonna gave the impression, true or false, of being pansexual. Gaga, for all her writhing and posturing, is asexual. Going off to the gym in broad daylight, as Gaga recently did, dressed in a black bustier, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels isn’t sexy – it’s sexually dysfunctional.

Compare Gaga’s insipid songs, with their nursery-rhyme nonsense syllables, to the title and hypnotic refrain of the first Madonna song and video to bring her attention on MTV, Burning Up, with its elemental fire imagery and its then-shocking offer of fellatio. In place of Madonna’s valiant life force, what we find in Gaga is a disturbing trend towards mutilation and death…

I wholly agree. In fact I wrote this about Gaga last year:

I've been listening to the deluxe edition of her Grammy-nominated The Fame, and I just can't understand why Lady Gaga has broken out of the club scene to become a genuine pop phenom. Yes, her singles are decent, and she knows how to market herself (and endear herself to the gay community). In that latter sense, she invites comparisons to a young Madonna. But the comparison ends there. Go back and listen to Madonna's first few records. Those songs were some of the best pop of the eighties. Other than the incredible, aforementioned "Bad Romance" (which is as close as she gets to Madge's early brilliance), her material is pretty middling.

So what explains it? Perhaps it's because she's an amalgamation of what people like about other pop stars. She embraces style and fashion (like Gwen Stefani), she's a little outre (like Bjork and Kelis), and she flirts with prurience (like a lite version of Peaches). But is she really greater than the sum of her parts?

I don't think so. I'm reminded of Gertrude Stein's description of Oakland, California: When you listen to Lady Gaga, you find there is no there there.

Apparently many find plenty of there there: she won eight VMAs last night, including the top prize for video of the year. So it goes.

Nine Years Later

2010-09-11T00:05:00.004-04:00

Photo via Slate.

Things Fall Apart

2010-09-10T23:44:00.021-04:00

Guess who said this of Obamacare:

[He] told The Associated Press this week that he considered the law “to be the greatest failure, modern failure, of political leadership in my lifetime.”

Newt Gingrich? Wrong. Rush Limbaugh? Nope. Glenn Beck? [Loud negative buzzer sound!] Barack Obama? Maybe in 2012.

It was former Georgia Governor Roy Barne, a Democrat. Here's the entire NYT article.

This sentence is particularly surprising:

Mr. Obama, when asked at his news conference Friday about Democrats who are running against his plan, said only that “people are going to make the best argument they can right now, and they’re going to be taking polls of what their particular constituents are saying and trying to align with that.”

I admit I'm a novice to the art of politicking, but Obama's admission seems too honest. His statement would have sounded cynical coming from a Republican. But when spoken by the head of the Democratic Party, who has every reason to sugarcoat and spin, his words peal with hard truth.

I Think I Need a New Eyeglass Rx...

2010-09-10T16:12:00.005-04:00

...because I just read this:

President Obama said Friday that if the midterm elections become a referendum on which political party has the most effective agenda to improve the economy, rather than a decision on its current state, "the Democrats will do very well."

And if the midterm elections become a referendum on which political party has the juiciest sex scandals, it will be a Republican landslide. Unfortunately for the Dems, the midterm elections will be a referendum on three economic issues: the financial and auto bailouts (this being the first election since), the stimulus bill (ditto), and unemployment. Oh, and health care.

Also, this is funny:

Obama highlighted several new economic proposals this week, including business tax breaks for research and investments, that Republicans have said are designed chiefly to appeal to voters this campaign season.

Republicans, please. Targeted tax breaks that purchase discrete and organized blocs of voters? Your lily-white consciences must be scandalized by the very notion.

(Mirrored from 100MC.)

Angry Mob of the Day

2010-09-10T14:35:00.003-04:00

News of Old Navy's pant-size inflation finally reaches Afghanistan.

From the NYT.

(Mirrored from 100MC.)

Another Victory

2010-09-10T09:38:00.002-04:00

DADT struck down by a Federal Judge:

Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court struck down the rule in an opinion issued late in the day. The policy was signed into law in 1993 as a compromise that would allow gay and lesbian soldiers to serve in the military.

The rule limits the military’s ability to ask about the sexual orientation of service members, and allows homosexuals to serve, as long as they do not disclose their orientation and do not engage in homosexual acts.

The plaintiffs challenged the law under the Fifth and First Amendments to the Constitution, and Judge Phillips agreed.

Détente

2010-09-10T01:52:00.006-04:00

Kelsey responds to my response:

I, too, am an atheist, and I struggle with the illogical, irrational and illiberal tendencies of all religions and Islam is no exception. I think for me (and probably for a lot of lefties) I often get unduly defensive because I have seen so many attack Islam on the basis of it's inherent violence in an attempt to paint Muslims as somehow subhuman.

Again, eloquent and well put. If only we were all as thoughtful as Ms. Pince. I'm glad Kelsey reminded me that some who seemingly share my criticism of Islam are the real subhumans. No doubt.

On Denouncing Islam

2010-09-09T22:36:00.017-04:00

Kelsey Pince, a friend and fellow blogger, responds to my previous post, eloquently (and patiently), via her iPhone:

The president and others speaking out understand that we're fighting the perception of being at war with Islam. The Quran burning would be seen as proof in many minds that we are, thus putting moderate Muslims in the unfortuate position of trying to defend a country that seems to hate all Muslims. Finally, having legitimate concerns about an occupied peoples reponse to this kind of provocation doesn't negate the idea that Islam is by nature peaceful.

Kelsey brings up a salient point: we are at war in two largely-Muslim countries. In this case, she's right, we have a complicated and fraught relationship with Islam. One that I didn't acknowledge in my short post.

Kelsey raises another, even more salient point: the physical text of the Koran is viewed, by Islam, as the literal Word of God:

Because it is the word of god, the only part of god believed to be sent to man, it's a closer comparison to Jesus himself than the bible. Burning the quran is roughly equal to someone burning Jesus.

According to the Christian holy book, "someone" crucified Jesus, that poor bastard. Some (many?) think that someone is the Jewish people. We rightly condemn these troglodytes for holding a grudge under the auspices of a ridiculous notion. In fact, we, the Urbane and Erudite, lampoon the nutty beliefs of Christians and Jews all the time. Think: anti-evolution (and science), anti-homosexuality, anti-sex, anti-abortion (and woman), transubstantiation, etc, etc, etc. Actually, these are mostly nutty Christian beliefs. All, except for transubstantiation, are shared by Islam.

And that's my point. There's a sensitivity and an over-accommodation by the left (and many on the right) toward the anti-liberal* religion of Islam that (again, rightly) is not offered to the anti-liberal religion of Christianity. Crazy is crazy. The only difference, if I call Islam crazy, I'm worse than those aforementioned troglodytes. I'm a monster.

I know that would-be Koran burner in Florida isn't worked up into a lather over the illiberality of Islam. He's a Christian pastor, for Christ's sake. But if I, an atheist, proposed to burn Korans for the cause of reason, would I receive thunderous applause? Disregarding the crudeness of the act -- I respect books too much to burn them -- is there not a unique acceptance of the wacky principles of this particular religion, even among the secular, that would result in a wave of disgust against me?

As for Kelsey's first point, we are not "at war with Islam," but we ought to be at war, intellectually, against the anti-liberal aspects of Islam (and those of Christianity, and every other anti-liberal philosophy). Any other response is cowardice, pure and simple. Political correctness demands that we treat all beliefs equally in public discourse. If so, why argue over our values in the first place?

*By anti-liberal, I mean in opposition to reason and individual rights.

Islam and Peace

2010-09-09T18:42:00.005-04:00

Am I the only one confused by the current narrative coming mostly (though not exclusively) from the left on Islam? Islam is a religion of peace, in fact "[it] is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace." As long as you don't make a Muslim angry: "You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan. This could increase the recruitment of individuals who would be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities." Both quotes were from President Obama.

A thought experiment: I announce that I'm planning on burning a pile of Tipitakas, to show how intolerant I am of Buddhism. Let's imagine the reaction. How likely would this be seen as the opening act of holy war? How would the worldwide Buddhist community react? Would my stunt garner reactions from General Petraeus and President Obama? Would it even be national news?

What does it mean to be a religion of peace?

Snapshot Review: Big Boi @ 9:30 Club

2010-09-08T23:25:00.030-04:00

Tonight Antwan Patton accomplished the impossible: he brought the usually inert DC concertgoer to life. For one sweaty hour at the 9:30 Club, bodies gyrated, hands swung high in the air, and the noses of the shorter among us spoke a silent "thank you" to the recent popularity of Old Spice. The not-quite-sold-out crowd (shame on you, DC) was a mix of frat boys, hipsters, stoners, and even a few hip hop fans. The only words of disappointment I heard at the end of the show were about its short length. Clearly, Big Boi didn't want to disrupt our sleep on a work night -- we were out by 10:40.

During the first third of the set, Big Boi and BlackOwned C-Bone (of Dungeon Family) ran through an extended medley of Outkast's greatest hits: among them "Rosa Parks," "So Fresh, So Clean," "Ms. Jackson," and "B.O.B." It was thrilling to hear some of the most spectacular rap music of the last 15 years performed back to back, yet the show began to sag under the weight of nostalgia. Kudos to Big Boi for shrewdly crafting the setlist. He got all the big hits out of the way before getting to the meat of the show, his solo material.

The evening's most welcome surprise was the crowd's reaction to Patton's new music. The ecstatic response that met the operatic choral hook of "General Patton" signaled we were all here for Big Boi, not Outkast. It spoke to the strength of his new album, or perhaps, more cynically, to André 3000's absence. Still, it's a strange day when "Shutterbugg" is received with more excitement than "Ms. Jackson."

Two highlights of the night. A few ladies from the audience were brought onstage to dance to three songs. At first, they awkwardly swayed in the wings, but as soon as Big Boi unleashed "The Way You Move," his great single from Speakerboxx, the ladies loosened up, and the stage began to resemble the loving misogyny of a good rap video. Later, C-Bone asked the crowd to throw him a bag of weed in honor of the next song, "Fo Yo Sorrows." His request was met halfway through, bringing the song to a hilarious halt.

It was strange to see Big Boi, an exemplar of his genre, and one-half of the one of the most successful rap groups ever, perform to a handful of die-hards. Yes, we showed him the love, and he responded in kind, but it was a scaled-down affair. It's tempting to fault the taste of the masses, those Philistines and fair-weather fans; after all, Lady Gaga sold-out the cavernous Verizon Center the night before. But tonight, a few hundred lucky individuals witnessed a remarkable hour of music in a small venue. So why am I grumbling?

A Simple Inequality

2010-09-07T00:01:00.019-04:00

I normally wouldn't blog about this, but I've been buzzing about seeing Big Boi live at the 9:30 club tomorrow. Jon Caramanica's NYT review of his performance at the Brooklyn Bowl, to clunkily paraphrase Bowie, only puts out my fire with gasoline.

Incredibly, the 9:30 club show has yet to sell out. People of DC: listen to Big Boi's stellar new album, witness his incredible Letterman appearance below, and buy your tickets now.

An algebra lesson, if you need it: Big Boi > Outkast - André 3000.

Feel free to check my math tomorrow night.

"Where the Streets Have No Name"

2010-09-05T01:13:00.051-04:00

It's not often that I rediscover how much I love a song. Being an obsessive, when I love something, I tend to suck it dry. I return to it so frequently that familiarity doesn't so much breed contempt, but indifference.

Earlier tonight, while I was working out at the gym, U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" popped up on my iPod's shuffle. It was as if I were hearing the song for the first time. I respect U2, and there was a time, years ago, when I listened to the band regularly. Tonight, the song halted me in my tracks -- literally. It came on while I was running on the treadmill. Two minutes in, I hit the machine's emergency stop button; I listened, out of breath, and sweat-soaked; the song ended, and I played it again and again and again -- three times! -- while awkwardly standing in place. Who cares what the employee behind the counter thought? We were the only ones left in the gym. And I was having a moment, thank you.

Maybe it was it was the increased circulation of blood through my brain, maybe temporal distance, maybe a random instant of aesthetic enlightenment. Whatever the reason, I was able to discern and appreciate the various elements of the song anew, and when I put them back together, I was in awe. So this is why people love U2. Suddenly, it all made sense.

The song begins with the signature cicada hiss of a Daniel Lanois production (a co-production with Brian Eno, in this case). A crescendoing, synthesized church-organ drone emerges, followed by The Edge's iconic delayed sixteenth-note guitar arpeggios, also with a crescendo, in 3/4 time. Both give the the impression that the listener is approaching a song already in progress, implying perpetuity and timelessness. The quarter-note pulse of Adam Clayton's bass and Larry Mullen Jr's kick drum enter the mix, and the meter abruptly shifts to 4/4.

The intro, almost two minutes long, feels like the slow extension of a tight metal coil that wants to fight back. Atop the rhythm section's frenetic stuttering, with a cymbal crash underscoring it, the vocal finally enters: Bono declares: "I want to run! I want to hide!" Release.

The verse brings increasing forward propulsion, and more stuttering. A tighter coil is pulled. Bono's sibilant vocal ("our love turns to russsssst!) soars over a swirling and glorious cacophony. Then, the chorus: the titular lyric ushers in another, greater liberation. Musical voices drop away, yet everything gets louder. The Edge' chiming, descending three-note guitar lick somehow makes the anthem more anthemic. Bono, open throated, sings of burning down love. Beneath him, the music is both lithe and fat. Stutter, stutter, stutter. Repeat verse and chorus.

And it ends as it started, back to 3/4, a drone, and The Edge's arpeggios. Decrescendo. A swift retreat from a song that will seemingly play on forever.

At Long Last, Pitchfork Announces the Best Songs of the Nineties

2010-09-04T16:00:00.003-04:00

All week long, Pitchfork has been counting down its top 200 tracks of the 1990s. Putting the untimeliness of the effort aside (and the snarkiness of my post's title), it's a well- thought out and argued feature, and a good springboard for debate (as any "best of" ought to be). Predictably, it follows the willfully iconoclastic slant the tastemaking site is both respected and reviled for. Here are some points of interest:

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" didn't make the top ten. Nirvana's rank (or non-placement) on any 90s "best of" list is an almost ideological signal of taste. Rank the band too high and you're Rolling Stone or Spin, firmly grounded in the alternative mainstream. Ignore the band altogether, and you come off as irrelevant, or admittedly non-rock (like Jazziz or Urb). Pitchfork splits the difference. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" lands at number thirteen on its list: reverent, but not fawning. The site offsets the ranking and recovers its cred by placing songs by Aphex Twin, Neutral Milk Hotel, and My Bloody Valentine ahead of it. All is well in indie-dom.

Where's Britney, bitch? While it may seem a given that pop music would get scant attention on a Pitchfork list, in the past the site has heaped loads of praise on pop-that's-so-good-it-transcends-its-lowly-genre. Think, Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone." In fact, Pitchfork included songs by Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake on its list of the best songs of the 2000s. Yet here there are some glaring omissions, the most notable being Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time," a song so damned good it belongs on a greatest songs of all time list. Where's the Backstreet Boys' "I Want it That Way?" Or even Madonna's "Vogue" (or "Ray of Light")? For as much as Pitchfork (sparingly) embraces pop, these omissions show how very too-cool-for-school and out of touch the site can be.

"It's the little differences." Throughout Pitchfork's list, an artist's less popular, more buzz-worthy work (to use MTV's parlance of the era) is substituted for the obvious choice. R.E.M. ranks at 72 with "Nightswimming." I love "Nightswimming." It's probably one of my three favorite R.E.M. songs, and I respect Pitchfork for calling it out. But it was chosen over "Losing My Religion." Weezer's "Say It Ain't So" is the site's number ten pick (ahead of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," natch). Weezer clearly belonged on the list, but "Buddy Holly" would have been the predictable choice, for all the right reasons. I think these taste-substitutions make Pitchfork's list interesting, and they reveal a high level of effort and deliberation on the part its writers, but they mar the list's "definitiveness." That said, it's easier to make a definitive list than it is to make an interesting one.

A high five to you, Pitchfork. For Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You," Belle and Sebastian's "That State I Am In," Smashing Pumpkin's "1979," and Bjork's "Hyperballad." All confirm why I respect you in the first place.

Stray thoughts on the top ten. Unexpected and eclectic, Aaliyah's inclusion being the case in point. "Loser" is higher than I would've imagined, though not undeserving of its spot. Same goes for "Common People" as the runner-up. While there's a paucity of pop (see above), the hip hop pics are pitch perfect. Before the top 20 was revealed, I assumed "Paranoid Android" would top the list. Instead, the honor went to Pavement. So, it's a wash.

The Death and Life of the Great American Bookstore

2010-08-30T22:41:00.077-04:00

I once worked at a flagship book "superstore" here in D.C. (and at a lesser location in South Florida, which is, not coincidentally, scheduled to close in a month-and-a-half). For nine years, I witnessed firsthand the once-nascent problems that are now bankrupting the two major bricks-and-mortar book chains, Borders and Barnes and Noble. Borders has been on the ropes for years, and Barnes and Noble, the nation's largest book chain, is now up for sale. Neither could prevent the rise of the internet, the primary cause of their fall. Still, there are four ancillary causes, listed below, that have accelerated the superstores' demise.

Superstores have become for-profit public libraries.

Borders and Barnes and Noble superstores are inviting places that encourage customers to browse for hours without purchasing anything. Welcoming customer service, plush leather comfy chairs, plenty of tabletop space, premium coffee shops, community events like book groups and open mic nights, and regular national events featuring famous authors and musicians, the very amenities that were meant to make these stores "destinations," turned for-profit businesses into open access public goods.

Here's an excerpt from a recent article in the NYT, on the closing of a Manhattan Barnes and Noble:

Ms. Kelly said she visited the store at least twice a week, usually heading upstairs to read magazines and to pick up a sandwich and cup of Starbucks coffee.

“They’re getting business out of me, I suppose,” she said. “Even though I’m sitting there reading magazines for free.”

When I worked for my former employer, patrons like Ms. Kelly were our regulars. Like my co-workers, I knew most of these regulars by name, and would affably chat with them daily. They were dedicated, yes, but hardly our bread and butter. More perpetual browsers than customers, they would spend hours camped out in the aisles with piles of books and periodicals. In return, they would spend a meager average ticket of around $2.00 a day. It would take at least 5-10 labor hours after closing to clean up after the campers, not to mention the time spent during operating hours dedicated to reshelving their messes -- time spent away from providing excellent customer service and actually selling books.

So, bookstores became libraries. It wasn't uncommon for parents to come to the information desk with school assignments and we, the over-educated booksellers, were responsible for locating their needed materials (this would often involve a good deal of book sleuthing usually reserved for a Master of Library Science). Later, we'd inevitability find the same teetering towers of books in a corner, left unpurchased. Older college students were more self-sufficient, yet the result was the same. They would come in and use our product to complete their homework, with their only purchase being a refillable mug of coffee ($1.75).

During the heyday of hard-copy book and multimedia buying, the customers who came in with the sole purpose of purchasing merchandise were able to subsidize the campers, the needy parents, and the college students. Nowadays, post-Kindle and iTunes, this business model is no longer tenable. The high overhead of a Borders or Barnes and Noble superstore cannot be covered by the sales of tall lattes and blueberry scones.

The superstore's massive footprint is an albatross.

Borders pioneered the superstore model in the mid-1990s. Before then, most bookstores were found in malls, and were the size of the European History section of your local superstore. Stand-alone stores like classic Barnes and Noble locations were larger, and included cafes (which conspicuously did not allow-in unpaid merchandise). However, their focus remained on books and the common "sidelines" found in most bookstores (e.g., calendars, book lights, and inexpensive tchotchkes). Borders changed everything. A typical Borders superstore had a book department that could easily swallow an entire Barnes and Noble. It, too, had a cafe (which conspicuously allowed-in unpaid merchandise), and, unlike the Barnes and Noble of the time, had a gigantic multimedia department. (Barnes and Noble followed suit, but their superstores were conservative by comparison. They basically beefed up their book sections, made their stores vertical, and added marginal multimedia sections.) The sheer size of a superstore, and the diversity and quantity of its merchandise, called for large back room areas for receiving and plenty of office space for administration. This meant that even lower volume stores took up a lot of space, which resulted in hefty rents and high payroll costs.

Again, all well and good during flush times. However, the very nature of the industry changed permanently in the early 2000s, thanks to Amazon and iTunes. The multimedia section in an average Borders store used to be about 2/3 the size of the book section. Today, most Borders stores no longer even carry catalog music; their "music sections" are merely two "browser" fixtures of new releases. The highest volume stores continue to carry a limited number of catalog titles (about the same as a Best Buy's backlist), but it's a far cry from the days when jazz and classical alone took up rows and rows of fixtures. Now that the demand for hard-copy music has dwindled, superstores are left with more floor space than they can use. Those former multimedia sections now look like graveyards, filled with the tombstones of empty retail fixtures. A depressing sight for customers and employees alike.

Deep discounting further undercuts the superstore's profitability.

One of the best perks of working at a superstore was the employee discount, which used to run between 25% and 33%, depending on your full-time/part-time status. Even better, once or twice a year we were treated to "employee appreciation days" that gave us a whopping 40% off of most of the merchandise we sold. Employees readily took advantage of the munificent discount, and would often spend hundreds of dollars on a single purchase (usually on gifts, since this occurred in December).

Today, 40% off is the norm. I get weekly e-mail coupons from Borders, and I'm surprised when the discount is less than 40%. The harsh reality for superstores is that more and more hard-copy book and music consumers are shopping at Costco, Walmart, and Best Buy, chains that often price these items at a loss to drive traffic. With the aforementioned online juggernauts, Amazon and iTunes, added to the mix, superstores have had to slash their margins to a hair's breadth to remain competitive. Theoretically, Borders and Barnes and Noble could have "made it up in quantity," but the weak aggregate demand of the recession economy has only made matters worse for superstores.

The superstore suffers from a confusion of purpose.

I remember the nadir of my bookselling career. I was merchandising a table of "summer items" at the front of the store, the highest-valued real estate of any retail firm. Working from my planogram, I carefully arranged cans of meat rubs, sets of barbecue tongs, jars of four different barbecue sauces, and -- the afterthought of the table -- some books on grilling. One of the stacked glass jars of barbecue sauce fell to the floor and broke; its thick and pungent contents splattered wide on the carpet. I may be making too much of this, but, at the time, the sight of a puddle of barbecue sauce in front of fixtures displaying the bestselling works of McEwan, Chabon, and Atwood was a disheartening wake-up call. What exactly are we selling here?

A common joke among the employees of my store was that we were only weeks away from selling cigarettes and lottery tickets. It wasn't too far from the truth. During my tenure, we sold gardening spades, video games, t-shirts, manicure sets, sushi-making kits, wallets, Dean and Deluca spice racks, board games, hand creams, fake eyelashes, $200 Star Wars lightsabers, and the classics of the Western canon. One of these things is not like the others. Which of them belong in a bookstore?

Our buyers had an admirable goal in mind, to make our stores places for one-stop-shopping. Ultimately, most of the above-listed items ended up being marked down to $1.00, since they were almost always left unsold and were non-returnable to the distributor. In retrospect, this lack of focus, on the corporate level, of the business' identity led the chain down a number of blind alleyways. There are many retail stores that conveniently offer one-stop-shopping experiences, namely big box stores like Target and Walmart. I doubt barbecue sauce and fake eyelashes top the shopping list of the average booklover entering a Borders or Barnes and Noble store. That said, I'm not a professional book buyer. What do I know?

My guess is Borders will go out of business in the next year, and Barnes and Noble will eventually return to its original model of modestly-sized bookstores that cater to a small population of book consumers. Ironically, the clear winner here is the once-beleaguered independent bookstore, the scrappy underdog that never lost sight of what it was selling. After all, with eBooks on the rise, purists (like me) who stubbornly enjoy browsing non-digital bookshelves will need bookstores to patronize, super or otherwise.

UPDATE: From Bloomberg.com:

Borders Group Inc., the second- largest U.S. bookstore chain, will start selling items from Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc., relying less on books for sales as more people use electronic reading devices.

Most of Borders’ more than 500 stores will create sections next month dedicated to Build-a-Bear, the maker of kits kids can use to craft stuffed animals, Chief Executive Officer Michael Edwards said in an interview. The new areas also will feature books and DVDs tied to the brand.

Emphasis mine. The excerpt speaks for itself. (HT Kelsey Pince.)

Review: Robyn Body Talk Pt. 2

2010-08-24T23:42:00.033-04:00

"It is really very simple, just a single pulse repeated at a regular interval," declares the fembot at the start of "Include Me Out," the second of seven galvanic dance tracks (and one acoustic ballad) on Body Talk Pt. 2. It is, of course, a general definition of beat, the backbone of all music, and the hallmark of the dance genre. As the title Body Talk implies, Robyn's purpose here is sub-genre bending, the study and exploration of dance music itself.

When Robyn Carlsson announced she would release three short albums in 2010, it was unclear how the individual units would relate to one another. Would Body Talk be a singular album, broken into thirds? Or, was Robyn releasing three disparate albums under a titular umbrella, each to be enjoyed on their own? Now that I've heard two of the three records, it appears the answer lies somewhere in between, though closer to the latter than the former. Both recall each other, while sharing and refracting off of a very large genre. Yet they follow a self-contained trajectory of beginning, middle, and end that best lends to individual consumption. If we're to think of the Body Talk series as siblings, Pt. 1 would be the precocious overachiever of the family, Pt. 2 the weirder, more cerebral middle child.

On average, Body Talk Pt. 2 is as good as its predecessor, though I was admittedly underwhelmed by it at first. It's a darker record, at times insular, icy, and (yes) even funny. Whereas Pt. 1, at its best, was infused with the warmth and exuberance of dance pop, defying you not to love it from the first listen, Pt. 2 hews closer to house and hip hop, opening up and paying off with each listen. To wit, the slinky minimalism of "We Dance to the Beat," a companion track to "Don't Fucking Tell Me What to Do." On the latter track, Robyn griped mantra-like about her personal failings ("My drinking is killing me. My smoking is killing me."). On the former she turns her attention outward, and over a Daft Punk bass line dances to the beat of "distorted knowledge passed on," "raw talent wasted," "an eviction next door," "bad kissers clicking teeth." Its lyrical repetition becomes hypnotic.

"We Dance to the Beat" is the first of three oddball tracks that form the heart of Body Talk Pt. 2, and set it apart from anything else Robyn has released. The other two, "Criminal Intent" and "U Should Know Better," are influenced by hip hop, particularly by the music of Missy Elliott. "Criminal Intent" finds Robyn legally accused of "conspiracy to engage in lewd and indecent acts and events." She unapologetically equates the terpsichorean with the sexual, as electronic sirens wail, beats thud heavily, and hands clap along approvingly. "U Should Know Better" is Robyn's most pugnacious track since "Konichiwa Bitches." With the help of Snoop Dogg (who appears to be everywhere nowadays), she trots the globe, letting the people of Earth know better than to fuck with her.

What makes Robyn such a remarkable artist (a pop artist, no less) is the seriousness and depth she brings to this often disposable genre. Yes, these are largely love songs. But more often than not, Robyn's vision of love, and of the world at large, is bleak. On the space disco of "In My Eyes," which opens the album, Robyn sings to her "little star" of deliverance from the artifice of everyday life via the authenticity of personal connection and, of course, through dancing. The song, with its ambient synths and hammering beats, is a sequel to her self-titled album's "Robotboy." But, where "Robotboy" was a call for self-correction, "In My Eyes" casts Robyn herself as the agent of salvation: "When you feel like it's all pretend, then you look into my eyes." Similarly, on the muscular "Include Me Out," Robyn begs her man to enter her heart, as his world falls apart around him.

Like its predecessor, Body Talk Pt. 2 is anchored by an incredible single and an even-better song that follows. On Pt 1, they are "Dancing On My Own" and "Cry When You Get Older," respectively. On Pt. 2, the incredible single "Hang With Me," which first appeared on the last album as an acoustic track, is followed by the even-better "Love Kills." "Hang With Me," seemingly a paean to platonic relationships, reveals itself to be about the inevitability of giving into "heartbreak, blissful and painful and insanity." A lament on Pt. 1, on Pt. 2 it becomes a celebration of falling in love in spite of the pitfalls that are sure to follow. "Love Kills" is her most pessimistic track yet. ("If you're looking for love, get a heart made of steel, cause you know that love kills.") Love hurts when you do it right? On "Love Kills" it is at best a bad case of Stockholm syndrome, at worst deadly, but for the most part, it's miserable. Yet "Love Kills" is propulsive and triumphant; Robyn's music ultimately undercuts her message.

The album's best track is its lone ballad, the devastatingly beautiful "Indestructible (Acoustic Version)." It further proves that Robyn is at her best as a balladeer (see the gorgeous "Eclipse" on Robyn). A string chamber ensemble is her sole musical accompaniment, their lovely arpeggios and galloping ostinato rhythms not too subtly recalling Karl Jenkins' famous De Beers piece "Palladio" (a diamond is forever, but it's also indestructible). Robyn finally gives herself over to romantic love, with full knowledge that she's previously "let the bad ones in and the good ones go." Her solution is to turn a song of experience into a song of innocence: "I'm going backwards through time at the speed of light. I'm going to love you like I've never been hurt before. I'm going to love you like I'm indestructible." With a heart made of steel, she dives in.

If "Hang With Me" is any indication, a dance version of "Indestructible" will be the lead single off of Body Talk Pt. 3, due later this year. This means the youngest sibling in the Body Talk cycle portends to be the wide-eyed optimist of the three. Only, by virtue of being the obvious expectation, it's also unlikely to be true. If Robyn has showed us anything thus far, expectations exist only to be defied.

Awkward Quote of the Day

2010-08-06T03:20:00.004-04:00

From the NYT:

Yet, the dread over the same-sex marriage issue was almost palpable as Mr. Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod tried to explain on MSNBC on Thursday that Mr. Obama opposed same-sex marriage, “But he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in federal agencies under his control.”

President Obama supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, except for, I mean, um, are we still on the air...?

How to Best Annoy a Monkey

2010-08-02T18:31:00.006-04:00

Introduce it to a flying squirrel. (HT Tyler Cowen, by way of Andrew Sullivan.)

Song Break

2010-08-01T22:27:00.004-04:00

With its regal horns and muted bombast, the new Walkmen track, "Stranded," is pure blue-eyed indie soul. Absolutely gorgeous.

Congratulations, Lisa Marie Simpson-Parkfield!

2010-08-01T18:06:00.004-04:00

After fifteen long years, the big day has finally arrived. (HT: Arts Beat)

Review: M.I.A. Maya

2010-07-23T23:42:00.015-04:00

I have good news and bad news for M.I.A. fans. The good news: 2010 has seen the release of a pretty terrific M.I.A. album. The bad news: that album is by Sleigh Bells, and it's called Treats.

Maya Arulpragasam has always been frustrating, by intention. A pop artist who wears political opinions like a penciled-in beauty mark or a weird asymmetrical hairdo, M.I.A. fancies herself a provocateur, when all we really want from her is compelling dance music. With every release, her efforts have resulted in increasingly diminished returns. Arular, her first and best album, was threatened by two interrelated flaws, her penchant for cacophony and an over-reliance on repetition. The material on Arular was so good that it managed to elevate its flaws into the realm of novelty, and ended up being better for them. These flaws were more pronounced in her great (yet wildly overpraised) follow-up, Kala, which contained some clunkers ("Hussel" and "Mango Pickle Down River") alongside some jaw-droppers ("Bamboo Banger," "Paper Planes," and "Boyz"). On Maya, M.I.A. has consolidated and emphasized her worst tendencies, while only intermittently offering the listener the smallest consolation of a good hook.

Lynn Hirschberg's much-discussed New York Times Magazine profile of M.I.A., unquestionably a hatchet job, seemed to confirm the once-sneaking suspicion that Maya Arulpragasam is intellectually vapid and artistically pretentious. Maya accomplishes the same result without Hirschberg's assistance. From the unnecessary typographical presentation of its title (/\/\/\Y/\), to the insipid and instantly dated references to internet culture (the iPhone, Google, and Twitter are all name-checked), Maya betrays the hopeless labor of an artist trying to construct something relevant and profound atop a foundation of sand.

Despite its self-reflexive title, Maya isn't a personal work, nor is it M.I.A.'s Self Portrait, her deliberate attempt to shed fans. Instead, it sounds as if M.I.A., so emboldened by her status as critical darling, assumed any tossed-off dreck would seem better by virtue of being her dreck. Or perhaps she's just run out of ideas. Either way, there's no excuse for the six-and-a-half-minute-too-long "Teqkilla," an aimless mess that hides beneath the belches of electronic tones and a too-familiar beat. "Lovalot," which opens with the insightful lyric, "They told me this was a free country, but now it feels like a chicken factory," only gets worse from there. On "Stepping Up," M.I.A. insists "you know who I am" over the braying of power tools. Yes, Maya, we know who you are. Only this song makes us want to forget.

There are moments where Maya hints at something great, before veering off course. "Born Free" begins with the thrill of an accelerating snare beat that launches into a sample of Suicide's "Ghost Rider." All is well, until M.I.A.'s inert and overly echoed vocal enters the mix, making it the second best song named "Born Free." Its accompanying (nine minute long!) music video is, incredibly, even more obnoxious. "Meds and Feds" features a signature guitar hook by Derek Miller (of the aforementioned Sleigh Bells) as its best element, but lacks the salve of Alexis Krauss' lovely voice. Where Krause tempers Miller's aggressive riffing, M.I.A. turns the song into the aural equivalent of a root canal, without the merciful respite of Novocaine.

Maya contains one unqualified success. "XXXO," a thumping Eurodance gem, is irresistible, with a chorus that demands the confines of a dark and sweaty dance floor. By being blatantly accessible, "XXXO" ends up being the lone left-field track on an album so desperate to incite. If M.I.A really wanted to be provocative, Maya would have contained twelve tracks like "XXXO." In other words, it would have been a Robyn album.

The cover art to Maya encapsulates what's so wrong with the album itself: a shambles of uninteresting and disparate elements that not only fail to jell, but end up obscuring an artist we've come to admire.

What the WHAT?

2010-07-23T15:13:00.004-04:00

I'm beginning to think Alvin Greene's candidacy is nothing more than an elaborate, Andy Kaufman-style prank. How else to explain the below, official, rap video?

Update: Greene's people didn't produce the video, though Greene says he wants to "make sure everybody hears it."

[HT Ezra Klein.]

Song Break: "Don't Call It a Remix" Edition

2010-07-22T21:40:00.009-04:00

The not very old is new again. Robyn's "Hang With Me," the first single to her next album, Body Talk, Pt. 2, has already been released as an acoustic track on her most recent (and still new) album, Body Talk, Pt. 1. It's the rare occasion where two approaches to the same song both succeed for different reasons. The acoustic version, with Robyn's gorgeous vocal accompanied by a quiet piano and a stirring string arrangement, is steeped in longing. The dance track, avoiding the whiff of mere remix, is confrontational: a taunt rather than a plead, all thanks to the miraculous power of a drumbeat.

The re-release of an album track as the lead single to a new album is a daring and audacious move on Robyn's part. That the new version nearly wipes away all memory of the other, while also strengthening the latter's wallop, only further proves Robyn's genius as an artist for whom the notion of "serious" pop music is no contradiction.

[Both versions are presented below.]

Baffling Understatement of the Day

2010-07-21T21:34:00.006-04:00

The NYT on Mel Gibson's marketability abroad:

Normally, foreign film markets are deeply forgiving of idiosyncratic behavior or the ravages of time when it comes to action-oriented male stars who have reliably turned out hits. [Emphasis mine.]

Talk about poor wording. It would be outrageous if a supermarket tabloid had described Gibson's sickening behavior, which covers the full gamut of hate (anti-Semitism, homophobia, misogyneny, and racism), in the flippant manner of an oddball quirk. To read it in the New York Times is scandalous. Does the Grey Lady still edit her articles?

Alvin Greene: Enemy of Communism

2010-07-19T21:05:00.006-04:00

Alvin Greene gave a speech yesterday to the Manning, SC chapter of the NAACP, one that managed to be as bungling and awkward as his interviews. The speech, mostly an amateurish string of bromides (even for a political speech), went from B- to A+ when he humbly proclaimed that America must "reclaim the country from the terrorists and the communists." Say what? Is this Alvin Greene's evaluation of America's majority political party (his own), or does he know something we don't about who's really pulling the strings in Washington?

The Kids Are All Right Review

2010-07-17T22:45:00.033-04:00

These are the times to warm men's hearts. First it was Toy Story 3, and now comes Lisa Chodolenko's The Kids Are All Right. Both have convinced my too-cerebral mind how much my hardened heart desires to be brought to the state of a pulsing glow. Both succeed because they have heaps to offer both head and heart. The close proximity of their release only underscores how few films even attempt the precarious tightrope walk between smart humor and sincere tenderness that they execute with such aplomb.

The Kids Are All Right is too uproariously funny to be a drama, and too earnest in its presentation of humanity to be a comedy. The closest comparison in recent memory is Judd Apatow's Knocked Up, a fine film no doubt, but one that never fully embraced its touchy-feely side. Why are serious writers and filmmakers so afraid of (or uninterested in) genuine positive emotion? Why are the sharpest comedies bitter and cynical satires? What does the say about our culture?

Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) are married parents of two teenagers, a nuclear family of the well-to-do liberal California sort. (If all film characters inhabeted the same universe, Nic and Jules would be friends with Meryl Streep's Jane Adler from It's Complicated.) While things are far from perfect -- Nic, an overstressed doctor, enjoys red wine too much, while Jules struggles to launch a new career (her third) in landscape design (don't you dare call it gardening) -- the two have an enviable, well-lived-in relationship. Joni (Mia Wasikowska), their eldest child and an overachiever who has just turned 18, is preparing to leave for college. Laser (Josh Hutcherson), who is aptly described as a "sensitive jock" and has the sole Y chromosome in the household, longs for an adult male presence in his life. The family's world becomes upturned when he convinces his sister to seek out and contact their anonymous donor father.

Enter Mark Ruffalo, whose Paul is the archetype of cool masculine worldliness. Not only does he own a hip, earthy restaurant that would make Alice Waters swoon (he grows his own organic vegetables), he wears a leather jacket, rides a motorcycle, and exudes sex. (Mark Ruffalo can't help that.) Paul is unhappy with his status as a listless Lothario. Once he meets his biological children, in a wonderfully awkward scene, he finds himself pulled into their lives as a new member of the family. The Kids Are All Right centers on how Paul uniquely disrupts and alters each family member's life, for better or worse.

Where a lesser director would veer into melodrama, farce, or (worst of all) polemic, Chodolenko subtly explores these tensions. She almost completely bypasses the fact that Nic and Jules are a married lesbian couple in what I assume is a post-Proposition 8 California. When the subject of their sexuality is explicitly addressed, it's in passing, tossed off like a fact of life unworthy of emphasis. In that sense, The Kids Are All Right is the next logical step from Brokeback Mountain, a film that couldn't escape its capsule definition as the "gay cowboy movie." The universality of The Kids Are All Right (we never even learn the character's last names) is what makes it the best gay movie since Far From Heaven (which also starred Julianne Moore). This is the story of a family, one that just so happens to have two women its head.

I regard Julianne Moore as an angel who walks on Earth, an actress of such radiance and ability that I would happily watch her perform as Tree #2 in a high school performance of Our Town, but The Kids Are All Right is Annette Bening's movie. Her Nic, the breadwinner and guardian of the family, whose facial expressions somehow communicate more than her impeccably written words, is the film's emotional center of gravity. In the film's best scene, Bening sings Joni Mitchell's "All I Want" acapella at the dinner table. That moment -- so funny, so ironic, so poignant -- will play next year, on the night she wins her first Academy Award. The rest of the cast is pitch perfect, especially Ruffalo, who plays Paul as a lovable and sympathetic fuck-up.

While watching The Kids Are All Right, I was reminded of Alexander Payne's Sideways, a (somewhat nasty) satire of the epicurean and boozy proclivities of the West Coast Liberal. Lisa Chodolenko is kinder, but a gently pointed satire underlies her film, though never at her characters' expense. Nic's tirade against composting and heirloom tomatoes is a riotous high point. (“If I hear another person talk about how much they love heirloom tomatoes, I am going to kill myself.”)

Before exiting the theater, while the credits still rolled, I half-jokingly asked my friend if he wanted to stay and watch the movie again. Not because I felt like I missed something, or because I thought a repeat viewing would reveal new depths, though both may be the case. Like a codependent, I didn't want to leave these characters behind, all of whom I'd come to love. And now, even as I write this, I feel like an addict: I can only think of my next fix, the next time I see The Kids Are All Right.

Inception Review

2010-07-17T01:29:00.022-04:00

Remember Calvinball? It was the game Calvin and Hobbes played in Bill Watterson's cartoon, in which the two would gleefully come up with new, and arbitrary, rules as the game advanced. I quote wikipedia:

When asked how to play, Watterson states, "It's pretty simple: you make up the rules as you go." Calvinball is a nomic or self-modifying game, a contest of wits and creativity rather than stamina or athletic skill....

Inception, the new film by Christopher Nolan, is a two-and-a-half hour game of Calvinball. Remarkably high concept for a film (a summer film, no less), it requires the viewer to keep in mind a parade of rules, right up to its final moments. It's a demanding film, though never impenetrable. But given its running time, and its dizzying action-heavy heist movie format, this film about dreams becomes soporific.

Visually, Inception is arresting, in the vein of Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze, where reality is malleable, and metaphysics is thrown out the window. In one striking sequence, a city bends perpendicularly, becoming an M.C. Escher lithograph. If you're unfamiliar with The Matrix, Synecdoche, New York, or The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, these surrealistic visual tropes may thrill. But at this point, seeing a locomotive rush down a city street, or a skyscraper crumble like the edge of a glacier, seems more clichéd than visually daring.

The twisty mobius strip plot of Inception is all about its clever construction, but like a mobius strip, its center is empty. It's also nearly impossible to describe in fewer than five paragraphs. The (very) short of it: humans have discovered a new method of espionage, to enter a person's dreams with the purpose of stealing secrets. That's easy enough. But it's also possible, albeit highly dangerous, to implant an idea into person's mind during sleep. This act, called inception, is our characters' goal. Have I mentioned Inception involves one or two rules?

I almost hated Inception, yet it lingers on. Nolan's execution of his frustrating material is elegant, especially in the film's latter half. The performances are mostly excellent (Ellen Page, I love you), with the sole exception of Leonardo DiCaprio, whose furrowed brow should have gotten top billing, beside its host. Speaking of DiCaprio, Inception invites comparisons to Shutter Island, a less sophisticated high concept film that has an equally ambiguous denouement. And like Nolan's own Memento, most of the fun here is in reuniting the puzzle pieces.

Maddening, yet oddly satisfying, Inception requires at least one viewing. If only to give you a reason to debate it, or if you're like me, to kind of hate it.

Assorted Links

2010-07-14T21:52:00.002-04:00

The scourge of cell phone autocorrect: "Heard about farts internship at the whorehouse?" More hilarity here.

Things look gloomy for Obama.

Chris Nolan's Inception: effusively praised, and eviscerated, making it seem even more intriguing.

Mel Gibson's rant, as presented by kittens.

Review: Big Boi Sir Lucious Leftfoot...The Son of Chico Dusty

2010-07-07T20:21:00.022-04:00

To read the reaction to Antwan "Big Boi" Patton's new album, Sir Lucious Leftfoot...The Son of Chico Dusty, is to witness the intersection of the whiplash of historical revisionism and a small cultural awakening (of which I, too, am guilty). Conventional wisdom has it that Outkast, arguably the most popular and critically beloved rap group ever, was the product of a polished MC (Patton) and a wild near-genius visionary (André "3000" Benjamin). Exhibit A, and the example par excellence, is Outkast's last album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, essentially two solo albums glued together. Dre's half was ridiculously hailed (largely, and understandably, due to "Hey Ya!"), while Patton's half was, to be generous, merely admired (when discussed at all).

History revised: seven years later, André's The Love Below sounds better in memory than it does playing through speakers. As is the case with the product of any visionary, the excitement of the new overshadows deep flaws. Speakerboxxx, however, sounds better than ever: tight, muscular, and assured. "Hey Ya!" got all the attention, but "The Way You Move" is nearly as wonderful and, since it wasn't as overplayed, it still sounds fresh.

The catalyst of this revisionism, via the advance tracks to Sir Lucious Leftfoot, almost three years in the making, was the realization that perhaps too much credit was heaped on André. The cultural awakening is realized with every repeated listen to the album proper. Lean by Outkast's standards (just 15 tracks), Sir Lucious Leftfoot is great throughout and shows that Big Boi doesn't lack for flourish, while also maintaining a staggering level of competence that approaches virtuosity. I don't mean to insult by faint praise: real competence is hard to come by.

Much like Janelle Monáe's The ArchAndroid, which Patton had a large hand in, Sir Lucious Leftfoot reaches an early artistic zenith with a triple play. "Follow Us", "Shutterbugg", and "General Patton" could each carry an album single-handedly. In the case of "Follow Us", the catchy modern-rock-radio chorus by Vonnegutt is elevated by the surefooted funk that surrounds it. "Shutterbugg", the album's giddy first single, pounces with an unstoppable beat ("cut a rug!"). The bombast of "General Patton", with its glorious sample of a Georg Solti aria, obliterates any notion that Dre was Outkast's only visionary.

Singling out these three seems unfair, as the rest of the album is nearly as great (see: "Shine Blockas", "Tangerine", "Hustle Blood", "Be Still", "Fo Yo Sorrows", etc.). The large roll call of artists (including the aforementioned Janelle Monáe) who contribute to the album never overtake Patton's gift -- the deft turn of phrase -- which is the album's true highlight. The surprise, and the bottom line, is that Sir Lucious Leftfoot is as good, if not better, than any Outkast release. André who?

Trainwreck of the Week

2010-06-30T00:49:00.009-04:00

I'm hardly a Courtney Love hater. Whenever I indulge in a Love takedown, I make it a point to say that Live Through This is one of the greatest albums of all time, and certainly among the five best of the nineties. Yet as was made clear in a recent appearance on Howard Stern, Courtney Love has lost it. And now comes this delicious poison-pen review, from the Washington Post, of Hole's 9:30 Club show last Sunday. Read it all here, but this sums up the tone of the piece:

When Love did get around to singing, her voice sounded as if something had died in her throat. Love has a blood-curdling howl, by far her most effective asset as a performer. She should have used it more on Sunday. During the choruses of "Miss World" and "Violet" -- two of her best and most popular songs -- she turned the microphone to the crowd and didn't bother singing. Other times she skipped lines in order to cough or take a sip of water or just . . . not sing. Of the nearly 30 songs (or song fragments), not even a handful were completed without some minor disaster.

Love took a request for "Rock Star" despite admitting that she didn't remember how to play it. She stumbled through half the song without strumming one correct chord. She played a new song, "Pretty Your Whole Life." It was bad. Half an hour later, she played it again. It was worse.

Assorted Links

2010-06-29T22:40:00.003-04:00

Questions for Kagan.

Lies, damned lies, and poll results.

New Big Boi streaming, and it's really great.

Super close-ups of crazy bug eyes.

Baby moose + sprinkler = omigosh [video].

Theory and Practice

2010-06-24T01:53:00.019-04:00

It's unconscionable that many on the left, people who are appalled by the political doctrine of Nazism, remain vaguely sympathetic to communism. That communist iconography is seen as a kitschy and cool addition to hipster gear is bad enough. But the deafening yawn that greets the politics of an outspoken communist (and Nobel-prize-winning) writer like Jose Saramago is sickening. A sharp, and nicely argued, op-ed by Jeff Jacoby on the recent death of Saramago shines a cleansing light on this dichotomy:

At this late date, there is no excuse for regarding communism and its defenders with one whit less revulsion than we regard neo-Nazis or white supremacists. Saramago’s communism should not have been indulged, it should have been despised. It should have been as great a blot on his reputation as if he had spent the last 41 years as an advocate of murderous repression and cruelty. For that, in a nutshell, is what it means to be an “unabashed’’ and “hormonal’’ communist.

Anyone who imagines that the horrors of communist rule is a thing of the past ought to spend a few minutes with, say, the State Department’s latest human rights report on North Korea. (Sample passage: “Methods of torture . . . included severe beatings, electric shock, prolonged periods of exposure to the elements, humiliations such as public nakedness, confinement for up to several weeks in small ‘punishment cells’ in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down . . . and forcing mothers recently repatriated from China to watch the infanticide of their newborn infants.’’) Communism is not, as its champions like to claim, an appealing doctrine that has been perverted by monstrous regimes. It is a monstrous doctrine that hides behind appealing rhetoric. It is mass crime embodied in government. Nothing devised by human beings has caused more misery or proven more brutal.

Some try to distinguish the doctrine of communism from its application. It's a noble theory, but it just didn't work in practice, they beseech. In fact (and I mean in fact), communism is wretched in theory, as was made clear by its practice.

What makes a theory good? My objection is not only political (or moral), but epistemological. A good theory is one that successfully translates in its implementation. If I had a theory that flapping one's arms will result in flight, how good is my theory? My intention, no doubt, is good. There goes the need for the aviation sector. Just think of all the oil that will be saved (a nice fuck-you to BP). But, as soon as dead bodies begin to pile up below cliffs, would the proper reaction be: well, the dead didn't flap correctly -- it's still a good theory?

Was it the depravity of the human body that prevented it from defying gravity? If man's body were "better," would the theory work in practice? When do you stop condemning man and begin to question the soundness of a theory?

An Odious Anniversary

2010-06-24T01:15:00.003-04:00

Via Cafe Hayek.

Assorted Links

2010-06-21T22:24:00.004-04:00

Dora the Explorer wants to make your kid fat.

Nefarious Nestle sends supermarket down the Amazon.

North Korea hires Chinese actors to root for North Korea.

Diet be damned -- I want a Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt.

Results Without Cost

2010-06-21T21:56:00.006-04:00

No surprise here, from an NYT poll:

Overwhelmingly, Americans think the nation needs a fundamental overhaul of its energy policies, and most expect alternative forms to replace oil as a major source within 25 years. Yet a majority are unwilling to pay higher gasoline prices to help develop new fuel sources.

All we have to do now is figure out how to have cake and eat it, too.

Toy Story 3 Review

2010-06-21T08:30:00.004-04:00

There's one certainty in life apart from death and taxes: Pixar delivers. While not every Pixar film is created equal, even the lesser films -- Monsters, Inc., Bugs, Cars -- are better than the majority of what Hollywood puts out in a typical year. The best ones -- Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Up -- are masterpieces. For me the aberration is Wall*E, a film that aimed for greatness (and in its first 45 minutes, achieved it), but was bogged down by its heavy-handed message.

Toy Story, and its first sequel, were wonderful, snappy buddy pictures. But even at their best, they never delivered the emotional wallop of Finding Nemo or Up. Toy Story 3 is the odd tertiary franchise film that bests its predecessors. It's the most focused (and thrilling) of the trilogy, and the most moving. Those 3-D glasses have a secondary purpose -- they hide tears.

What sets the Toy Story films apart from the rest of the Pixar oeuvre is their deep understanding of childhood. Here the series' themes of mortality, disposability, and devotion reaches a climax. Andy is off to college. Our beloved toys' very purpose in life, to be played with and loved, is threatened. Like the previous films, Toy Story 3 is a return-to-home adventure story, mixed with a large dollop of Prison Break. Yes, it's rollicking and clever, but Toy Story 3 is infused with tender nostalgia, without being sentimental.

Oh, it's really, really fun, too.

Assorted Links

2010-06-16T22:26:00.009-04:00

You: landing a jumbo jet.

Nintendo's new marvel.

Cop punches woman in the face [video].

The Pixar Method.

How to clean an oiled pelican.

Song of the Summer, 2010 (Nominee #5)

2010-06-14T22:26:00.005-04:00

The best summer singles are often dance songs. After all, an amplified melody set to an infectious beat is the very definition of the genre. A good dance song lives and dies by these two criteria, and Robyn's new single "Dancing On My Own" delivers handsomely on both. Robyn gives us her best hook yet, while a synth-driven beat stutters underneath. Lyrically, it employs a well-worn trope: seeing an ex with a new love, struggling with longing while remaining defiant. Which is to say, she puts what's best upfront: the music. Just try to get this one out of your head.

Robyn 'Dancing On My Own' (Official Video) from Robyn on Vimeo.

Making a Pretty Girl Ugly: Three New Releases

2010-06-11T21:26:00.046-04:00

A pretty girl is like a melody
That haunts you night and day,
Just like the strain of a haunting refrain,
She'll start up-on a marathon
And run around your brain.
You can't escape she's in your memory.
By morning night and noon.
She will leave you and then come back again,
A pretty girl is just like a pretty tune.

--Irving Berlin

Has anyone described the nature and effect of a good tune better than Irving Berlin? His comparison is so perfect that you can chart our culture's opinion of both pretty girls and pretty melodies along the same trajectory. Today, both are loved -- but not too much. They are celebrated and scorned, often by the same people. In the case of a pretty girl, she can grace the cover of Vogue, with all her flaws airbrushed away, and then the cover of In Touch, with the most minor imperfection emphasized by a damning red circle. In the case of melody, pop divas exalt it, while experimental bands deny its very existence.

The relationship between popular music and Irving Berlin's pretty girl has been, well, complicated. The songwriters of Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building judged the quality of their output by one criterion: marketability, i.e., tunefulness. Like prospective Hooters waitresses, ugly melodies needn't apply. The Beatles were a transition. Through innovative instrumentation, complex structure, and the beginnings of modern experimentation, they aimed at making the pretty girl smart, too. By the seventies and eighties, only hacks embraced melody without subverting it in some way. (But this was the case only at the time. Artists who, in the past, were seen as awful by critics of the day are now celebrated by the current elite. See: ABBA.) Today we've reached an unstable equilibrium. Kelly Clarkson can be openly loved by critics, but not as much as Animal Collective. Yet, even the Animal Collectives of the world often get their highest praise when they allow tunefulness to rise above their attempt at subverting it. (See: Merriweather Post Pavilion.)

As the line of demarcation between pop artist and critical darling has blurred, so has their output. Both seem uncomfortable in the other's clothes, but the "serious" artists seem more so. Three new debut albums exemplify this tension between embracing pop melodies and retaining indie authenticity: Male Bonding's Nothing Hurts, Sleigh Bells' Treats, and Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti's Before Today. All three are the aural equivalent of a nerd awkwardly wearing Juicy Couture. Or is it a jock posing in ironic thrift store attire?

Male Bonding is the most upfront with its melodies, insomuch as they're only buried in the mud of the album's mix and the low-fidelity of its production. The band's attempt at authenticity is tempered by the fact that its songs are bound to sound better (even great) live. I suspect by its third album, after having established proper indie credibility, Male Bonding will release a sparkling "breakthrough" record. Nothing Hurts shows how murky production can turn great material into a merely "good" album.

On Treats, Sleigh Bells take the immediacy of a simple dance-pop melody and turn up the volume to the point of near cacophony. The best description I've heard of the album was from an Onion AV Club critic. Before he heard Treats, he thought it would be something he could play at a picnic (given the glowing reviews that called the record "fun"). After hearing it, he imagined even the most musically savvy picnickers would demand to know what the hell they were listening to, as they rushed to turn off the stereo. Treats inserts its lovely melodies into your ear like a ice pick. (The gorgeous "Rill Rill" being the exception that proves the rule.)

Ariel Pink is a true oddball. He absorbs the best (or, some might say, worst) tendencies of eighties soft rock, and regurgitates them into his fractured pop gems. Throughout Before Today, Pink sends great melodies through a weirdo prism -- be it by randomly singing with a strange affect, or coupling pretty tunes with Zappa-esque bizarro lyrics (See: "Butt-House Blondies" and "Menopause Man"), or the various other tics that pop up all over the record. "Round and Round," one of the best songs I've heard this year, most deftly balances Pink's need to glorify and subvert a melody, often in the same breath. The song slyly slinks about before giving up a chorus so good that it's like a block of Velveeta liquefying in the microwave of your heart. Here, his restraint, his affinity to give us just so much of a good thing, pays great dividends.

As successful as Ariel Pink is, he can be as frustrating as Male Bonding and Sleigh Bells. All three clearly have the talent to give us great melodies, straight up. Instead, they often allow "authenticity" to mar tunefulness. Like a pretty melody, with a gigantic pimple on her nose.

Trainwreck for U.S. Senate

2010-06-10T23:02:00.006-04:00

Thank you, thank you, thank you, democrats of South Carolina.

Song of the Summer, 2010 (Nominee #4)

2010-06-09T22:05:00.004-04:00

"Point the biggest skeptic out, I’ll make him a believer," Drake says on "Over," the first single from his debut album. I'm not yet a believer, but I'm certainly intrigued. "Over" sounds less like a radio-friendly single than the opener to a non-existent Broadway-style hip hop opera. Drake does a fair amount of navel-gazing on the track (tempered by the usual rap-star bravado, of course), which endears me right out of the gate. Name checking Ebert and Roper doesn't hurt, either.

Here's a NYT profile of Drake. His bio is just as intriguing as the song.

Song of the Summer, 2010 (Nominee #3)

2010-06-08T21:49:00.007-04:00

Just for the moment, I'll ignore the very literal "male bonding" that occurs in video for Male Bonding's single "Year's Not Long." I wouldn't want to distract myself from the lo-fi wonder of the track. Better to focus on the rush of the main guitar lick, which demands a top-down convertible to blare from. Oh, who am I kidding? Look at all those hipsters making out!

Who's Afraid of Wal-Mart?

2010-06-07T21:06:00.013-04:00

The most readily accepted myth propagated by the enemies of Wal-Mart is that the superstore drives out mom and pop grocers when it moves into a new town. It's a myth that plays well with anti-corporate leftism, as well as America's general romance with small business over "the big guy." Even those who consider themselves "pro-business" often lament the destruction of a scrappy David at the hands of the smiley-faced Goliath of Bentonville. Yet, as economist Russ Roberts has noted, it's not the mom and pops who suffer when a new Wal-Mart opens -- it's other Goliaths, namely large supermarket chains.

The WSJ has an illuminating article that reveals the extent to which these large chains use feel-good populist channels to keep out competition:

As Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has grown into the largest grocery seller in the U.S., similar battles have played out in hundreds of towns like Mundelein. Local activists and union groups have been the public face of much of the resistance. But in scores of cases, large supermarket chains including Supervalu Inc., Safeway Inc. and Ahold NV have retained Saint Consulting to block Wal-Mart, according to hundreds of pages of Saint documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with former employees.

Saint has jokingly called its staff the "Wal-Mart killers." P. Michael Saint, the company's founder, declines to discuss specific clients or campaigns. When read a partial list of the company's supermarket clients, he responds that "if those names are true, I would say I was proud that some of the largest, most sophisticated companies were so pleased with our success and discretion that they hired us over the years."

Supermarkets that have funded campaigns to stop Wal-Mart are concerned about having to match the retailing giant's low prices lest they lose market share. Although they have managed to stop some projects, they haven't put much of a dent in Wal-Mart's growth in the U.S., where it has more than 2,700 supercenters—large stores that sell groceries and general merchandise. Last year, 51% of Wal-Mart's $258 billion in U.S. revenue came from grocery sales.

This phenomenon of economically interested parties hiding behind a more politically palatable cause is not new. Clemson economist Bruce Yandle famously named this tactic "Bootleggers and Baptists" in his 1983 article in Regulation Magazine. The name comes from his example of criminal bootleggers who quietly support religious groups in the enactment of blue laws, which increase the demand for their services by restricting the legal sale of liquor. What's fascinating (and disheartening) about the WSJ article is the emergence of firms, in this case the oh-so-perfectly-named Saint Consulting Group, who facilitate and profit from the maneuver:

Mr. Saint, a former newspaper reporter and political press secretary, founded his firm 26 years ago. It specializes in using political-campaign tactics—petition drives, phone banks, websites—to build support for or against controversial projects, from oil refineries and shopping centers to quarries and landfills. Over the years, it has conducted about 1,500 campaigns in 44 states. Mr. Saint says about 500 have involved trying to block a development, and most of those have been clandestine.

For the typical anti-Wal-Mart assignment, a Saint manager will drop into town using an assumed name to create or take control of local opposition, according to former Saint employees. They flood local politicians with calls, using multiple phones to make it appear that the calls are coming from different people, the former employees say.

They hire lawyers and traffic experts to help derail the project or stall it as long as possible, in hopes that the developer will pull the plug or Wal-Mart will find another location.

"Usually, clients in defense campaigns do not want their identities disclosed because it opens them up to adverse publicity and the potential for lawsuits," Mr. Saint wrote in a book published by his firm.

No doubt they don't. The type of person who makes opposition to Wal-Mart a badge of moral virtue would find it awkward to discover his bedfellow is actually a big bad corporation like Safeway, Giant, or Supervalu -- not the lovable corner grocer.

Song of the Summer, 2010 (Nominee #2)

2010-06-06T16:08:00.001-04:00

"Shutterbugg" proves two things:

Big Boi, uncoupled from André 3000, is an artist to be reckoned with
Scott Storch might actually have some talent

An obvious frontrunner.

Janelle Monae: Live in Baltimore, 5/30/10

2010-06-04T22:05:00.004-04:00

I realize Cultural Minefield is coming dangerously close to becoming the unofficial Janelle Monáe Fan Blog, but I had the opportunity to see her perform live at Baltimore's Pier Six Pavilion last week and feel compelled to report on the experience.

Monáe was the opening act for N.E.R.D. and Erykah Badu and, given the tepid response she and her bandmates received as they entered the stage in their signature hooded robes, it was obvious few knew who she was. As the indistinguishable figures swayed to The ArchAndroid's opening overture, backs turned to the audience, the crowd reacted with a mixture of curiosity and what the fuck is going on here?

Monáe disrobed on cue, dramatically revealing her tuxedoed self to the audience, and launched into the trio of "Dance or Die," "Faster," and "Locked Inside," without a pause between the songs. Despite being a neophyte, Janelle Monáe the Performer is strikingly similar to Janelle Monáe the Recording Artist: warm, exuberant, and surprisingly comfortable in her own skin. As Monáe glided across the stage, her band danced to the beat, and two black-spandex-clad women with comically-oversized white gloves flanked the audience, goading us to participate in the joyous noise emanating from the speakers. It was like a gospel show imagined by Walt Disney. The crowd began to take notice.

Monáe only performed one track off her Metropolis EP, the gorgeous ballad "Smile." For as much as it showcased her upper-register chops, it couldn't match the frenetic energy of the first three songs. Monáe righted the situation with her two closing numbers. "Cold War," performed with video of Muhammad Ali sparring in the background, was the first time that night I felt the same giddy surge of excitement I had the first time I heard The ArchAndroid. It was what I had been waiting for. The crowd responded in kind.

I hoped for left turn at some point, but Monáe ended the set with the slinky funk of her new single, "Tightrope." It was a great performance, but one that hewed closely to her recent television appearances, right down to the James Brown ending.

Had this been a headlining set, I suspect Monáe would have emphasized her knack for genre-bending. Instead, she (smartly) played to the crowd, who, for the most part, were won over. I was disappointed, though it wasn't her fault. I wanted a feast, but all Monáe could possibly offer in 35 minutes was an amuse-bouche. Delicious, yes. But I still left feeling hungry.

Setlist:
"Suite II Overture"
"Dance or Die"
"Faster"
"Locked Inside"
"Smile"
"Cold War"
"Tightrope"

Song Break: Tipper Gore Edition

2010-06-02T23:42:00.009-04:00

I dedicate this soul classic by the Flirtations to Tipper Gore, who was still being courted by Al when the song was released in 1968. Tipper, an outspoken music fan, should have listened to the sage advice of these lyrics when she had still had a chance.

Private Discrimination, Continued

2010-06-01T20:35:00.008-04:00

Commenting on my post on private discrimination, restaurant refugee writes:

The comparison between discrimination based on attire and that based upon race is a false construct. One chooses attire, one does not choose that latter. I understand that the author was making the point that the owners of the establishments cited in the post were practicing a de facto sexism and racism. However that ignores the larger point that business owners have a legitimate interest and prerogative to mandate attire and norms that contribute to the experience of all guests. Does the author similarly take issue with restaurants that require jacket and tie? Tennis clubs that mandate one dress is tennis whites? What about pools that limit swimming attire to that which was designed for that purpose?

I apologize if I was unclear. I support the right of private establishments to set the standards of decorum within their four walls, be it jacket and tie, tennis whites, or no high heels. My point was that some of these standards could be inspired by racism and sexism, and still remain perfectly legal. I return to the example of my former employer, the gay club that didn't allow high heels in the club. The purpose of that rule was never in doubt: it was meant to keep women out. And it worked.

I don't deny refugee's larger point: "One chooses attire, one does not choose [their race or gender]." But the discrimination involved in barring the former rather than the latter is a difference of degree, not of kind. That many women wear high heels to clubs is undeniable, as is the fact that many young black men come to Adams Morgan on a Friday night wearing Timberland boots and baggy clothing. Club owners are counting on the fact that violators of their dress codes will be unwilling to conform to their rules, that they'll just shrug and go somewhere else.

Refugee continues:

The Title of the Civil Rights act the author finds objectionable deals with “public accommodations” and provides that no business that provides such accommodations may discriminate. The author makes the libertarian position on the matter clear: discrimination is immoral but government should not prohibit private business from doing it. Let us suppose that the author is right. So when I hang a sign in my restaurant that says “Whites not served here,” I would be within my rights. If a white person enters in spite of that sign, I ask him/her to leave, s/he refuses, what then? Shall I call the police? Am I authorized to forcibly remove him/her? Shall the police arrest that person for trespassing? Shall we spend government monies to prosecute people in the aid of racism?

My answer to refugee's hypothetical is an unequivocal yes, it would be within his rights as the owner to keep white people out of his establishment. If the white person in question refused to leave the restaurant, refugee could call the police to remove him (just as an Adams Morgan club owner could for someone flouting their dress code). The question is, why would anyone want to patronize an establishment that openly discriminates against them? And would there not be a public backlash against any business that was so openly racist or sexist?

As for the expenditure of "government monies to prosecute people in the aid of racism," those monies are in part provided by the racist business owners via their taxes. I know it's hard to swallow, but even despicable individuals have the right to the protection of their property rights and the standards of trade they see fit to enforce.

All trade entails certain conditions between both parties, be it buyer or seller. A wacky homophobic landlord has the right to not rent me his apartment if he (likely) suspects I'm gay, and I have the right to deny him my business if I catch a whiff of homophobia from him. I'm better served to not be legally protected from his homophobia and have to suffer the subtle hostilities that would surely come later. Likewise, it would have been better if my former employer had posted a "no women allowed" sign in front of the club. I've witnessed the hostility the few women who made it into the club faced from some of the bar staff (and the male patrons). The reaction of those turned away by the "no high heels" rule tended to be some form of "fuck you." And rightly so. Had the women who managed to gain entry to the club known the spirit of the rule, I suspect their reaction would have been similar.

Finally, I never said the government is "inherently evil," nor did I mean to imply it. Within its proper scope, government prevents a civilized society from devolving into barbarism and chaos. Government isn't evil. It isn't even a "necessary evil." The proper function of government is unquestionably good. I don't think this contradicts my position that the government should have no authority to protect us from the private discrimination of troglodytes. Unfortunately, troglodytes have rights too.

Sex and the City 2

2010-05-31T20:42:00.009-04:00

I really wanted to like it. Even after reading the dismal reviews, I still wanted to like it. Unfortunately, Sex and the City 2 is embarrassing throughout.

The first film was largely successful as a coda to the series. It was fun to see the stories of these much-beloved characters reach a satisfying resolution. The conflicts writer/director Michael Patrick King concocts in the sequel maybe could have sustained two episodes in the series. But as a (two-and-a-half hour!) movie, it's a complete mess. That King thought transporting these characters to an exotic locale (Abu Dhabi) would breathe new life into this franchise shows he's run out of ideas. SATC 2 makes clear there's nothing left to be said about Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha.

The real shame is that SATC 2 tarnishes the legacy of a great show. I wish were forgettable. That would be an improvement.

Song of the Summer, 2010 (Nominee #1)

2010-05-31T02:38:00.008-04:00

I submit the buoyant "Rill Rill" by Sleigh Bells. Their debut album Treats is insanely loud and, at times, abrasive, but the sweetness of Alexis Krauss' vocal is the selling point. "Rill Rill", on the other hand, is sweet all around. A lovely indie-pop confection.

America's Insane Immigration Policy

2010-05-30T02:00:00.006-04:00

My mother, who has lived in this country for 27 years, just got her green card a few weeks ago. She is now, finally, a legal resident because I, a recently-naturalized citizen (two years now), was able to sponsor her. All of this was the result of my father's decision to marry an American, just so he could sponsor me. (At the time he knew he would ultimately succumb to cancer.) It was the best gift anyone has given me.

So, as an immigrant and an American-by-choice, this story in the NYT makes me incensed:

It was an unusual sign, even for a restaurant here along the Maine coast, where seasonal home-grown businesses are a way of life.
“Closed. Gone to try and get a new visa,” read the hand-scrawled message taped inside the window of Laura’s Kitchen, a cozy eatery that specialized in corned beef hash and omelets and where the tiny tables were still set with brightly colored napkins. “Hope to see you in the spring. Dean & Laura.”
The sign turned out to be overly optimistic. Dean and Laura Franks, a British couple who opened the restaurant in 2000, found that after nine years of running their business, they could not renew their visa, forcing them to shutter the restaurant and leave the country.
The Franks are among thousands of people who enter the United States each year on E-2 visas, which allow citizens from countries with which the United States has certain trade treaties to invest in businesses and work here. The visas generally are renewed every two years, but there is no limit on how many times they can be renewed. Still, they are not intended as a path to permanent residency or citizenship.
But now, immigration advocates say they are hearing more and more accounts of renewal applications being turned down. It has been an enigmatic process for the Franks, uprooting their lives even though they have paid all their taxes, own the restaurant and its adjacent rental house, and have no debts except a mortgage on their home in Arundel, about 35 miles away.
“This is the forgotten story of immigration,” said Angelo Paparelli, a prominent immigration lawyer in California. “The headlines deal with Arizona and border crossings, but these are real people too. This is what happens when you play by the rules.”

America's immigration policy is a disgrace. It treats productive individuals like criminals, who constantly fear deportation by a faceless bureaucracy, more concerned with following inane rules than the human beings whose lives they have the power to destroy. What's worse, if the USCIS suddenly sought 100% compliance it would result in the decimation of American economy, starting with the low-wage service sector, which is overwhelmingly employed by illegal immigrants. But that's not their goal. They pick and choose. They (rightfully) turn a blind eye to the kitchens of America's restaurants, the hotel staff who clean the sheets of American businessmen, the workmen who build our great structures. Yet the entrepreneurs who open businesses, who create wealth in the country, are singled out -- because they play by the rules.

Legislation Can't Stop Discrimination

2010-05-28T19:16:00.023-04:00

Liberals have declared open season on libertarianism ever since Rand Paul (not the namesake of Ayn Rand) said he disagreed with the parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that made illegal private discrimination based on race.

Bryan Caplan clarifies the standard libertarian position as such:

1. Government discrimination should be illegal.
2. Private discrimination should be legal.
3. Private discrimination is immoral.

I agree with all three points, but I want to make an additional point: you can't legislate away odious behavior; you only make odious individuals more crafty with their discrimination.

I used to work at a gay club that refused entry to anyone wearing high-heeled shoes. Ostensibly, the rule was for the safety of said patrons. The club has a couple of steep staircases, the managers claimed. People could get hurt. In reality, the rule was intended to keep out women, something many gay establishments quietly encourage. (The staff's general animosity toward the fairer sex always made me bristle.) Tellingly, even though the club actively enforced the rule, it was overlooked with regard to drag queens, who tend to wear the equivalent of skyscrapers on their feet. The club kept out women without having to post a sign saying "women not allowed." (It has since dropped that rule. Not coincidentally, more women can be seen on a Friday or Saturday night.)

Dress codes are used to discriminate against race, as well. I live in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of D.C., which contains a handful of popular bars. A few have "strictly enforced" dress codes posted in front that state anyone wearing the following will be denied entry:

Timberland boots
Hats
Baggy clothing
Long white t-shirts
Logos
Labels
Hoods
Jerseys
Athletic wear
Tank tops
Camouflage
Ripped clothing

In other words, the attire typically associated with rap culture, i.e., black male youth (ripped clothing being the only exception). The establishments don't say they won't allow young black men to enter, but their dress codes effectively do so.

Of course, there's more going on here than just outright hatred for women and black men. If asked, I'm sure the proprietors of the Adams Morgan bars with these dress codes would claim most people, black or white, who wear the above listed items tend to be more rowdy. I can attest to the fact that some of the young women who happened to wear high heels at the gay club tended to get loud and boisterous. (We saw a number of bachelorette parties come through on a regular basis.) Still, most women were barred entry by the high-heels rule, not just the minority of rowdy ones.

My point isn't whether these dress codes are right or wrong. The point is, they keep a specific subset of the population out, legally. Still, most establishments don't have these rules, since it's not good business to prevent customers from patronizing them. Besides, the most ubiquitous dress code,"no shirts, no shoes, no service," seems to skew white.

Racism, sexism, all the pernicious isms, can't be wiped away by legislation, like the swipe of some Utopian magic wand. The onus is on patrons, to support or withhold their business. My previous employer decided to remove the high-heels restriction, and business improved. Further, anyone is free to boycott or protest any business that has discriminatory policies. Private individuals have the right to be (or merely appear to be) horrible people, but they don't have the right to be protected from the economic consequences of their actions.

Review: Janelle Monae The ArchAndroid

2010-05-23T19:32:00.023-04:00

I was seventeen when I first heard Radiohead’s OK Computer. It was on display at the local Borders, a few days after its release. Having seen (and liked) the video for “Paranoid Android” earlier that day, I was intrigued enough to purchase the album, not knowing what I was getting myself into. When I got home I listened to the CD via headphones on my Sony Discman, my preferred method for listening to new music. The experience was jarring. As each song played, I realized I was hearing something new and great, but I didn’t know what to make of it. By the time “The Tourist” concluded the album, I was as perplexed and I was thrilled. I had never heard anything like it. So I did what came naturally: I hit play, and listened to it again, and again, and again. Within hours, it became my obsession, a new favorite.

I haven’t felt the same way about an album until three days ago, when I first listened to Janelle Monaé’s The ArchAndroid.

Landmark debuts are not uncommon in music, but Janelle Monaé does one better: she has released a debut record that sounds like a monumental release by seasoned artist, a magnificent third album. What to praise first about The ArchAndroid? Monaé’s incredible vocal instrument, which is as protean and virtuosic as her songs? The embarrassment of Monaé’s ambition, cinematic in its sprawl, which spans 70 minutes and covers genres never before heard, as well as the more familiar like English Folk, Disco, Top 40, R&B, Prog Rock, Soul, Psychedelia, Big Band, and even Easy Listening? The album's unabashed ebullience that hearkens back to Off The Wall-era Michael Jackson, early Prince, and the Innervisions of Stevie Wonder? The handful of songs that instantly feel classic (“Tightrope”, “Cold War”, “Wondaland”, “57821”), or the majority of others that are merely incredible (take your pick)? How to choose one criterion, when The ArchAndroid is equally defined by all?

Officially, The ArchAndroid is a concept album, parts two and three of a four-suite piece titled Metropolis, an homage to Fritz Lang’s classic film. (The first suite, which was released as an EP in 2007, is very good, but not in the same league as the full-length album.) Monaé has gone to great lengths to flesh out the concept of the work, which stars her alter ego Cindi Mayweather, a messianic android created to emancipate the androids of the 28th century from…blah, blah, blah. As outré as this all sounds, the great warmth and energy Monaé brings to the material allows the high concept of her vision to (happily) recede into the background. It’s there to parse if you want. The rest of us can simply enjoy the brilliance of the music.

It’s fitting that Janelle Monaé fancies herself an android; mere mortals couldn't pull off what she and her co-producers have achieved. In my review of LCD Soundsystem’s album This Is Happening, a couple of weeks ago, I said “though this year is already brimming with incredible releases, I doubt we'll hear anything better than [it].” I was laughably off the mark, as This Is Happening and The ArchAndroid were both released on the same day (last Tuesday). This Is Happening is fantastic, classic even. But The ArchAndroid is a masterpiece, a work of art – and the first of the new decade, direct from the 28th century.

Janelle Monae's "Billie Jean" Moment

2010-05-22T22:38:00.002-04:00

In music, all great artists require a breakout performance, an act of showmanship that is commensurate with their talent as recording artists. Michael Jackson heralded the arrival of his kingship with an extraordinary rendition of "Billie Jean" on the Motown 25th Anniversary Special. Twenty-seven years later, Janelle Monáe announced hers on the Late Show with David Letterman. It's a marvelous performance, which owes as much a debt to Jackson as it does James Brown. No, it's not on par with MJ's legendary moonwalking moment, but it shows that Monáe is the real deal.

To all the divas out there: you are now officially on notice.

Love = Janelle Monae

2010-05-21T23:14:00.009-04:00

It's a rare moment when you find your head spinning after listening to an album for the first time. Janelle Monáe's masterwork, The ArchAndroid, has left me in that happy and dumbstruck state. Heaping superlatives on it after three spins would only do the album a disservice. I want to write about it now, but all I can do is listen to it over and over again.

So for the moment, as I compose my thoughts, here's the video for the album's first single. One thing I can say: Monáe is the dictionary definition of a breakout talent, the kind that makes you excited about music and all its possibilities. I've spent the last few hours reading everything I can find about her. And the more I read, the more I realize -- I'm totally, utterly in love.

An Endorsement

2010-05-16T02:18:00.005-04:00

I first heard Jon Black's excellent "Gravity (Don't Let Me Go)" on a video game podcast I regularly listen to (of all places). Though it's not the most auspicious venue for a song this great, it's a great song nonetheless. And now I share with you.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://downloads.whoisjonblack.com/track/gravity-dont-let-me-go"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Gravity (Don't Let Me Go) by Jon Black&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Headline of the Week

2010-05-15T21:48:00.001-04:00

"Gay Marriage Opponents Inch Closer to Death."

Island Music

2010-05-13T20:00:00.006-04:00

Music critic Alex Ross has great profile of composer Michael Giacchino in this week's New Yorker (gated, unfortunately). Giacchino is best known for his integral work for the television series Lost, but he is also responsible for some incredible film scores, most notably the Oscar-winning score for Up.

Below are a couple of examples of Giacchino's talent. The first is the "Married Life" movement from Up, which is both charming and heartbreaking. The second is a video from Ross' New Yorker blog, which shows how Giacchino's music heightens the mystery and suspense of Lost.

The Glass Closet: Supreme Court Nominee Edition

2010-05-10T21:25:00.012-04:00

The opacity of Elena Kagan's sexuality is becoming a hotter topic than the inscrutability of her legal point of view. I admit, when I first saw a picture of her, I thought it: obviously a lesbian. Since my gaydar, however impressive, is hardly scientific, we only have Kagan's word to go by. Which means we know nothing.

Does it matter if she is? As a credential for the job, obviously no. Only her ideas matter in that regard. But Andrew Sullivan (someone whom I rarely agree with) makes a good point:

[Kagan's sexuality] is no more of an empirical question than whether she is Jewish. We know she is Jewish, and it is a fact simply and rightly put in the public square. If she were to hide her Jewishness, it would seem rightly odd, bizarre, anachronistic, even arguably self-critical or self-loathing. And yet we have been told by many that she is gay ... and no one will ask directly if this is true and no one in the administration will tell us definitively.

Kagan's sexuality, whatever it may be, is hers to reveal. She's is under no obligation to out herself. Likewise, the press has every right to investigate the matter, however unseemly that investigation will surely be. This apparent contradiction reveals the untenability of hiding who you are. It's nobody's business, but why keep it a secret? It's easy to invoke privacy -- why should it matter?! -- but the invocation itself implies shame.

And that is the real shame.

A Sure Betty

2010-05-09T20:30:00.003-04:00

It was a joy to watch Betty White, and the great female cast members of the last 15 years, host SNL last night, even though the material wasn't always as good as the guest stars. The two best bits -- the "Delicious Dish" reunion and Seth Meyers' "Weekend Update" -- are embedded below.

Review: LCD Soundsystem This Is Happening

2010-05-02T02:41:00.019-04:00

After one listen to LCD Soundsystem’s new album, I imagine a professional music critic will find herself:

relieved, as the review will essentially write itself
vexed, as it will be difficult to remain professional and not sound like a gushing fangirl

Thankfully, I am not a professional writer. I can go ahead and say it: This Is Happening is fucking awesome.

By god he’s done it. James Murphy, the creative force behind LCD Soundsystem, has managed to best himself. Sound of Silver was one of the great records of the last decade, but This Is Happening is even better. It doesn’t stray far from its predecessor’s format of sprawling tracks, laden with incessant hooks and beats, shrouded in yearning, leavened with wit, and unified into a whole that defies the pick-and-choose of the playlist. It's an album that demands a beginning to end listen. The lack of a departure might disappoint a few; This Is Happening is a sequel if there ever was one. Still, it’s beyond churlish to complain about music this marvelous.

This Is Happening begins with the startling “Dance Yrself Clean,” a track that starts spare: Murphy’s vocal, some drumstick patter, a bass pulse on the first beat of every measure, a hand clap on beats two and four. This hushed intro continues for three minutes before exploding into a yowling electronic romp, like a kick to a dance club's door. As far as first tracks go, you can’t ask for a more thrilling start, and it establishes the mode taken throughout the album.

Every song sounds like Murphy has consolidated his trademarks. “Pow Pow” mixes the spoken lyric of “Losing My Edge” with the playful pugnacity of “North American Scum.” (“Oh eat it, Michael Musto” is the gayest insult I’ve heard on a record. That’s a compliment.) “Drunk Girls” is “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House” with an IQ of 75, a rave up with exuberance to spare. Notably, it’s the only track that clocks in at fewer than five minutes (which probably explains why it was chosen as a single).

Like Sound of Silver, whose “Someone Great” and “All My Friends” formed the heart of the record, This Is Happening has two incredible tracks at its center: “All I Want,” with its triumphant guitar hook (lovingly stolen from Bowie's "Heroes") and soaring climax that belies its lyric (“All I want is your pity”), and “I Can Change,” a song New Order would’ve gladly included on a greatest hits record.

Stepping back and looking at an artist’s career trajectory can produce the same sense of admiration as listening to his output. James Murphy has transformed himself from a precocious wunderkind to an out-and-out auteur. Yet he remains just as self-effacing, shlubby, approachable, and lovable as ever. Murphy claims This Is Happening will be the final LCD Soundsystem release. Part of me hopes he keeps his promise. No matter what Murphy’s next project is – acid polka anyone? – LCD Soundsystem remains the best example of singer-songwriter dance music.

On This Is Happening, James Murphy aims for greatness, from the album’s instantly iconic cover, to the anthemic catharsis of its melodies, to the poignancy and charm of its lyrics. He overshoots his goal and delivers a stone-cold classic. Though this year is already brimming with incredible releases, I doubt we'll hear anything much better than This.

[This Is Happening will be released on May 18. It's currently streaming for free on LCD Soundsytem's website here. The hilarious Spike Jonze directed video for "Drunk Girls" is below.]

Does Courtney Love Write Her Music?

2010-04-28T21:04:00.007-04:00

With every subsequent album Courtney Love releases, either as Hole or as a solo artist, the once-kooky idea that her masterpiece, 1994's Live Through This, was at the least co-written by Kurt Cobain seems more and more plausible. Her last three releases, Hole's final proper album Celebrity Skin, her solo-record America's Sweetheart, and the new album by Hole-in-name-only Nobody's Daughter, feature a rotating cast of credited co-writers, among them Billy Corgan, Linda Perry, and Bernie Taupin.

On the surface, Love's heavy use of collaborators is not proof enough that Cobain had a hand in Live Through This. But listening to Hole's three proper albums in order, you can't deny something fishy is afoot.

Hole's first album, Pretty On the Inside, is a muddy, brash mess. The songs are amateurish and alienating, with no sign of the musicality of the following albums. Then there's Live Through This, a work whose quality was a stunning leap forward. It's not only one of the best albums of the nineties, but one of the greatest rock albums of all time. It's also sounds a lot like a Nirvana record. As I've remarked in this blog before:

Live Through This has one notable virtue, which lifts it aloft the above complaints and makes it compulsively listenable: its songs are incredible. They are gorgeous and furious, and almost always at the same time. This is the genius of the record. This loud soft loud, this melodicism with noise, this textural juxtaposition, is, of course, the trademark of the Pixies and Nirvana.

Sure, it's possible that Love absorbed Cobain's style by means of proximity. But even though Cobain didn't produce songs that match the quality of Live Through This until Nevermind, there were signs of Cobain's signature style and massive talent on Bleach. In Hole's case, the difference in sound and quality between Pretty On the Inside and Live Through This almost comes out of the blue, fully formed.

Hole's next album, Celebrity Skin, was released four years later, and sounded nothing like its predecessor. It's a good album, filled with shimmering power pop. Billy Corgan is credited on half the songs, but at the time, Corgan griped that he helped write more than he was credited for. Again, it's hard not to hear it as a Smashing Pumpkins album with Courtney Love at the mic. I've only heard bits and pieces of America's Sweetheart and Nobody's Daughter, but what I've heard sounds like the anonymous hack-rock of Linda Perry.

The schizophrenia of Courtney Love's music, and her heavy use of collaborators, reveals that Love lacks a musical identity. (Her lyrics, on the other hand, are unmistakeably her own.) So, is it possible, or even likely, that Love wrote the music to Live Through This? I'm not so sure anymore. Does it matter? Only as an exercise in music-nerd sleuthing. In the end, Live Through This remains a classic, be it the product of Courtney Love's talent, or the best album Nirvana never released.

Song (Without Words) Break

2010-04-28T01:07:00.001-04:00

My favorite movement of one of my favorite orchestral pieces. I miss my bass clarinet.

What Tolerance Is and Isn't

2010-04-27T20:37:00.005-04:00

The wisdom of Robin Hanson:

“Tolerance” is a feel-good buzzword in our society, but I fear people have forgotten what it means. Many folks are proud of their “tolerance” for gays, working women, Tibetan monks in cute orange outfits, or blacks sitting at the front of the bus. But what they really mean is that they consider such things to be completely appropriate parts of their society, and are not bothered by them in the slightest. That, however, isn’t “tolerance.”

“Tolerance” is where you tolerate things that actually bother you. Things that make you go “ick”, or that conflict with strong intuitions on proper behavior. Once upon a time, the idea of gay sex made most folks quite uncomfortable, and yet many of those folks still advocated tolerance for gay sex. Their argument was not that gay sex isn’t icky, but that a broad society should be reluctant to ban apparently victimless activities merely because many find them icky.

I've been guilty of misusing, and misunderstanding, the concept "tolerance." Hanson's point is so obviously true that it's forcing me to rethink tolerance.

Doesn't "tolerance" stand directly opposed to "integrity?" Isn't there a difference between "political" tolerance and "personal" tolerance? For example, the recent Supreme Court case (which Hansen cites) that struck down a federal statute "criminalizing the commercial production, sale, or possession of depictions of cruelty to animals." Animal cruelty is a heinous act, no doubt, but the very purpose of the First Amendment is to protect speech that may seem unpalatable to many (or most). Yet should those depictions be exempt from moral condemnation, i.e. "personal" intolerance? I don't think so. Just as I think Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow have a right to bleat their inanities, I need not remain quiet and tolerate their views. I can use any means available, like this blog, to be intolerant toward them -- except the physical force of the state.

Tolerance is only a virtue in the political sphere, to protect actions I may despise that don't violate the rights of others. Those crazies who think gays will go to hell have a right to say so. Politically, I must tolerate them. But personally, I have the right to be as intolerant as they are. Only persuasion, personal intolerance of those opposed to "gays, working women, Tibetan monks in cute orange outfits, or blacks sitting at the front of the bus," leads to acceptance. As Alex Tabbarok notes:

[G]ay rights have not advanced because of more tolerance per se, i.e. they have not advanced because more people are willing to accept behavior that bothers them. Advance has occurred because fewer people are bothered by the behavior.

Review: Rufus Wainwright All Days Are Nights

2010-04-25T20:04:00.021-04:00

I used to think Rufus Wainwright could sing the phone book and still produce a masterpiece. Listening to All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu, it sounds like Wainwright agrees. Unfortunately, we’re both wrong.

Wainwright, an artist whose self indulgence can be his greatest virtue, has finally been swallowed by it. Ironically, and fittingly, the self indulgence in question is the loose, stripped-down approach he’s taken on his latest record. Wainwright is notable, and equally loved and hated, for his oversized ambitions. This is the man who had the chutzpah to recreate Judy Garland’s classic Carnegie Hall performance song for song, and who has already composed an original opera. Beginning with his self-titled debut, and climaxing with his sprawling double-album magnum opus Want, Wainwright has been known for an excess of orchestration, sparkling and layered production, soaring melodies, operatic flourishes, classical and pop tendencies, and, ultimately, an over the top sensibility that few artists can execute with such panache. All Days Are Nights is a striking retreat: Wainwright, a piano, and, in one unfortunate section of the album, a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Fans of Wainwright, and I still count myself among the die hard, know that he is no stranger to solo performances. Days after Want One was released, Wainwright performed “Go Or Go Ahead,” one of his more excessively orchestrated numbers, solo with guitar. It was an electrifying and revelatory performance. For as baroque as his album cuts can be, most are just as moving and thrilling with Rufus alone at the piano or with an acoustic guitar, because most of Wainwright’s songs have, as their backbone, incredible melodies.

On ADAN, the opposite is true. The songs are nearly structureless and, given their short running time, they somehow manage to meander. True believers will no doubt credit the album for its stark emotion, and it is stark. But the emotional wallop of Wainwright’s music has usually been delivered by a devastating melody. While there are a few here, mostly the songs sound adrift, as if Wainwright hoped the directness of his approach would compensate for good construction.

Wainwright’s previous studio album, Release the Stars, suffered from a related flaw. Barring a couple of knockouts, most of the album buckled under orchestration that tried too hard to elevate material that was subpar. Still, it made for an engaging, if disappointing, listen. On ADAN the lack of orchestration only lays bare the weakness of the material.

The death of Wainwright’s mother, folk singer Kate McGarrigle, haunts the album, though she was still alive when he wrote the album. (She was battling cancer at the time.) The album’s best track, the achingly beautiful “Zebulon,” quietly burns with pain and loss. It's vintage Rufus, and a fitting bookend to another song for his mother, “Beauty Mark.” "Zebulon" concludes the album, and makes the ten tracks before it seem worse than they are.

All Days Are Nights is not awful. It's a middling album, best suited as background music, no more and no less.

New LCD Soundsystem Streaming Now

2010-04-18T18:48:00.002-04:00

This Is Happening, the new LCD Soundsystem album, is streaming on their website. And it's good. It's really good, as in: it just might be a classic. Yes, that good.

Another Preview of Obamacare

2010-04-18T18:34:00.003-04:00

Another excellent article on the health-care death spiral, this time in New York:

New York’s insurance system has been a working laboratory for the core provision of the new federal health care law — insurance even for those who are already sick and facing huge medical bills — and an expensive lesson in unplanned consequences. Premiums for individual and small group policies have risen so high that state officials and patients’ advocates say that New York’s extensive insurance safety net for people like Ms. Welles is falling apart. [...]

New York also became one of the few states that require insurers within each region of the state to charge the same rates for the same benefits, regardless of whether people are old or young, male or female, smokers or nonsmokers, high risk or low risk.
Healthy people, in effect, began to subsidize people who needed more health care. The healthier customers soon discovered that the high premiums were not worth it and dropped out of the plans. The pool of insured people shrank to the point where many of them had high health care needs. Without healthier people to spread the risk, their premiums skyrocketed, a phenomenon known in the trade as the “adverse selection death spiral.”
“You have a mandate that’s accessible in theory, but not in practice, because it’s too expensive,” said Mark P. Scherzer, a consumer lawyer and counsel to New Yorkers for Accessible Health Coverage, an advocacy group. “What you get left clinging to the life raft is the population that tends to have pretty high health needs.”

Freedom, Yesterday and Today

2010-04-16T21:46:00.000-04:00

In honor of Tax Day, and the debate that has been raging through the blogosphere, I've been thinking about our relative liberty today compared to the 19th century. The gist of the debate is whether Americans were more free in the 19th century, the apex of laissez-faire, given the fact that women, black people, and gays had little political freedom (by modern standards). Bryan Caplan leads the charge pro-Gilded Age, arguing that despite the lack of explicit political freedoms, women had more de facto liberty than they do today. His detractors abound.

It's undeniable that minorities (including women) today are more free qua minority than they were in the 19th century. But it's a moot point. The lack of political freedom for women, black people, gays, etc., was a fact of life across the globe before the 20th century. Sexism, racism, and homophobia were the standard, the status quo of human history. The 19th century was radical because it unfettered the economic activity of a huge portion of individuals (in this case, white males), whose subjugation was the norm throughout history. Yes, the 19th century was far from perfect. Still, name me a country from that era that exhibited our modern standards of equality.

The point that everyone seems to be missing is that America (and the U.K.) were the freest nations on earth, given that bigotry was the norm. Today, bigotry has largely been eliminated from the political sphere, but as a whole we are less free than the freest (straight white) men who existed in the Gilded Age.

I'm Not Surprised

2010-04-12T22:58:00.003-04:00

From the NYT:

In a new report, the Congressional Research Service says the [new health care law] may have significant unintended consequences for the “personal health insurance coverage” of senators, representatives and their staff members. [...]
The confusion raises the inevitable question: If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?

A good question to ask after the bill has passed, no?

Nanny State Watch: High Fructose Edition

2010-04-12T22:31:00.003-04:00

New York is on a roll. Now there's a proposed bill to ban high-fructose corn syrup. Personally, I try to avoid HFCS, but I also try to avoid sugar. As Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward notes, a calorie is calorie, whether it's coming from HFCS or sugar:

The substitution of real sugar for high fructose corn syrup is like the old riddle about which is heavier: A 10-pound bag of feathers or a 10-pound bag of lead? (Answer here, but we're going to ban anyone who needs to click through from Reason.com, so choose carefully.) A calorie of natural sugar is still a calorie. Weight gain or loss is determined by calories in vs. calories out. Ruth Kava, the director of nutrition at the American Council on Science & Health, a group that debunks food and health panics, says "I don't know how one supposedly distinguishes between ‘real' sugar and any other kind!"

The Health-Care Death Spiral Realized

2010-04-06T21:58:00.004-04:00

The Boston Globe reports on the shape of things to come:

Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts’ 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses.

In 2009 alone, 936 people signed up for coverage with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts for three months or less and ran up claims of more than $1,000 per month while in the plan. Their medical spending while insured was more than four times the average for consumers who buy coverage on their own and retain it in a normal fashion, according to data the state’s largest private insurer provided the Globe.

The typical monthly premium for these short-term members was $400, but their average claims exceeded $2,200 per month. The previous year, the company’s data show it had even more high-spending, short-term members. Over those two years, the figures suggest the price tag ran into the millions.

Other insurers could not produce such detailed information for short-term customers but said they have witnessed a similar pattern. And, they said, the phenomenon is likely to be repeated on a grander scale when the new national health care law begins requiring most people to have insurance in 2014, unless federal regulators craft regulations to avoid the pitfall.
“These consumers come in and get their service, and then they leave because current regulations allow them to do it,’’ said Todd Bailey, vice president of underwriting at Fallon Community Health Plan, the state’s fourth-largest insurer.
The problem is, it is less expensive for consumers — especially young and healthy people — to pay the monthly penalty of as much as $93 imposed under the state law for not having insurance, than to buy the coverage year-round. This is also the case under the federal health care overhaul legislation signed by the president, insurers say.

Trapped in the Glass Closet?

2010-03-30T20:30:00.010-04:00

The deafening collective yawn that greeted yesterday's news that Ricky Martin is gay got me thinking about a good article by Michael Musto, which Out published as a cover story a few years ago. Musto used the term "the glass closet," so perfectly put, to describe celebrities who are publicly gay, but officially sexually-agnostic.

While no sea change has occurred since the article's publication, in 2007, the notion of a glass closet seems quaint and unnecessary. Perhaps it's the saturation of openly gay celebrities in popular culture (Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O'Donnell, Neil Patrick Harris, Adam Lambert, Cynthia Nixon, Wanda Sykes, the Queer Eye guys, Rachel Maddow), coupled with recent political victories like the legalization of gay marriage in five U.S. states (and the District of Columbia) and the dismantling of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but being gay now seems as unremarkable as it should.

Yet some public figures stubbornly remain in the glass closet. Anderson Cooper and Jodie Foster (whose visages graced the aforementioned cover of Out) are the most famous examples. Cooper is a regular of New York City gay clubs, while Foster's sexuality is an open secret in Hollywood. Sure they have a right to their privacy, and it's no one's business anyway. But by having an openly-gay public life, while dodging the issue in the media, they implicitly imbue their sexual identities with the sour hint of shame.

The salient question is: what effect does coming out have on a celebrity's career today? Ellen and NPH are more popular post-outing than they were when closeted. Celebs like Wanda Sykes and Cynthia Nixon have seen no discernible change in their popularity either way. Since Ricky Martin's career has already declined, the effect of his revelation would have been more evident 10 years ago.

I may be naive, or so utterly cocooned in my big gay reality, but I doubt coming out would ruin many careers nowadays. We won't know until a current A-list celebrity comes out. Will it happen? I'm not so optimistic. I suspect no A-lister wants to be the one to test how their sexuality affects their career. It would take an act of great courage, something you don't witness often.

Still, hats off to Ricky Martin. Welcome to la vida homo, Ricky. You got the best reaction you could have hoped for: complete indifference.

Why Critics Matter

2010-03-29T21:01:00.011-04:00

Last week, the Boston Globe published a provocative Op Ed by Steve Almond, which argued that music criticism is a pointless, and at times pernicious, endeavor:

Wretched as I was, I loved being a music critic. I got to feel like a big shot, the one guy whose opinion (no matter how misbegotten) mattered.
But a funny thing happened on the way to my glorious career as the next Lester Bangs: I was dispatched to cover an MC Hammer concert. This involved lots of flashing lights and sparks. Hammer himself was wearing those ridiculously baggy pants and barking out lyrics about jewelry and torture.
I dutifully spent the evening scribbling witty insults in my reporter’s notebook. But at a certain point (after I’d fulfilled my quota of witty insults) I turned my attention to the folks all around me. They were enthralled. And what I realized as I gazed at them was this: I was totally missing the point.
The very idea of music criticism — of applying some objective standard to the experience of listening to music — suddenly struck me as petty and irrelevant. I spent several more months as a critic, but my essential belief in the pursuit evaporated.
I’d come up against a concept I’ve since come to think of as the Music Critic Paradox: the simple fact that even the best critics — the ones, unlike me, with actual training and talent — can’t begin to capture what it feels like to listen to music. Because listening to music is a collaborative endeavor. Fans don’t just sit there (as critics do) parsing the technical merits of a song. They bring to each song their own emotional needs: their lust and sorrow, their hopes and heartbreak.

Basically, Almond thinks that since fans are going to like what they like anyway, critics are only valuable as cheerleaders for the artists they love.

There are a number of problems with Almond's argument. The most glaring of which is that his (yes) criticism of music criticism can be applied to all types of criticism. Almond halfheartedly attempts to make a special distinction for music, "because songs are aimed squarely at our hearts. They’re meant to make us dance or weep or laugh." I think what he means here is that music is more of an emotional, rather than intellectual, experience. True. But music as an art form contains a number of intellectual elements: its craft and structure, its historical and cultural context, its literary merits (when lyrics are involved). The same can be said of the novel.

Almond misses the point by arguing music fans will like what they like no matter what critics say (as in his MC Hammer experience). Music critics don't write for the casual fan, nor do literary critics, art critics, dance critics, etc. Even film critics, the most populist variant, write for people who have a deeper appreciation for the art form. Steve Almond, as film critic, would have also despaired at the droves who enjoyed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, in spite of the evisceration it received from him and his colleagues.

So what value do critics provide? The cheerleader function (of which even Almond approves) is the most obvious. Critics are paid to consume mass quantities of an art form, and they primarily provide guidance within a sea of options. This is especially important with music, given the great quantity of it out there. Even though it's basically free of charge to sift through music online, time is still a high cost. In this sense, you could argue that music critics are even more important today. In the past, radio and music television could break a promising new artist. This is no longer the case. Though internet memes can often fill this role, music critics are invaluable as champions for the new.

But there is a second, equally important, function critics provide. They put artists and their works within a context, and give serious fans a framework for analyzing the artists and works. Good critics provoke further thought and examination, which is true even if the reader disagrees with their final evaluation. Sure, it's a process that could occur without critics, since the work itself provides the material for contemplation. But critics bring professional perspective, whether you agree with it or not.

Yes, like all fans, I like what I like. But I love to read a review and think: this critic nailed it, or blew it, or just made a really interesting point. Criticism engages me in art. That's why critics matter.

Next Stop, Nationalization

2010-03-24T21:46:00.015-04:00

I've been hearing advocates of the shiny new health-care legislation crow about the new America where (eventually) everyone will be covered. This is simply not true. Let's look at Obamacare's two central pillars for expanding coverage:

Banning insurance companies from rejecting risky individuals. (Thus guaranteeing adverse selection.)
Mandating that everyone buy insurance. (To combat adverse selection, and the dreaded death spiral.)

As Bryan Caplan notes here and here, intention and reality may not intersect:

If preliminary summaries of Obamacare are true, it looks like individual health insurance will soon be a better deal than employer-provided health insurance. In the individual market, you can now wait until you're really sick to buy insurance: "Heads I win, tails I break even." Firms won't have that gimme - and it seems more valuable than premiums' tax deductibility. Admittedly, Obamacare imposes a small penalty on individuals who don't buy insurance, and a moderate penalty on firms that don't provide it. But it still seems like it will be in the financial self-interest of many firms and their workers to get rid of insurance, and split the (cash savings minus penalties).

This means the result could be a full plunge into the death spiral. Rather than reducing health-care costs (something the law doesn't even attempt to do), they would skyrocket. For me, Obamacare is a boon. I could cancel my employer-provided policy, which I rarely use, and just opt-in when I need it. As Caplan says: "Heads I win, tails I break even." I would have to pay the penalty (which will be levied by the IRS), but that's still cheaper than my premiums and co-payments. In response, the government has three options:

Repeal the legislation. (Unlikely: just look at the twin financial catastrophes known as Social Security and Medicare.)
Dramatically increase the penalties for individuals and firms. (More likely, but politically unsavory.)
Nationalize the health-care system. (Depending on the political makeup of the government in 10 years, a real possibility.)

Given these possibilities, the third option seems the most likely. The cynic in me thinks this was the Dems' plan all along. They pass a bill that get's the camel's nose into the tent, only to get what they really want in a few years (also known as the Fabian model). Again, given the nature of the political process, it may very well work. Bad news for those of us who still value freedom, but by now, we're already used to bad news.

Klosterman + Pavement = Rad

2010-03-20T01:20:00.005-04:00

Chuck Klosterman interviews Stephen Malkmus, on the heels of the Pavement reunion. This is as self-recommending as a recommendation gets.

The article is great throughout, but this exchange is especially revealing. It shows how self-aware and honest Malkmus is about Pavement's music and legacy. Klosterman wonders:

Did having so many people insist that Slanted and Enchanted was brilliant change the way he [Malkmus] now thinks about those songs?
"Of course it does, in a way. But no matter how much positive feedback you get, it's never enough," Malkmus says. "I'm not a particularly needy person, but it always seems like every review could be better. With a record like Slanted and Enchanted, that was so much a timing thing, along with the fact that its flaws are a big part of what makes it good. It's not like some Radiohead record, where the whole thing is good. Our records aren't good in that way. Our records are more attitude and style, sort of in a punk way. We're good in the same way the Strokes are good. I think Slanted and Enchanted probably is the best record we made, only because it's less self-conscious and has an unrepeatable energy about it."

10 Influential Books

2010-03-19T21:28:00.020-04:00

A few days ago Tyler Cowen listed 10 books that influenced his view of the world, and kicked off a fascinating meme among bloggers. My list is below.

Like Cowen, I compiled from the gut. I read every entry, except for the last two, before I turned 21. Only one or two would go on a current list of favorite books, but their influence is undeniable.

Here they are, in chronological order:

Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park: The book that made me love the novel. Before I read Jurassic Park, at the age of 12, the only books that interested me were comics. Jurassic Park was the novel that made me realize books could enrapture without the aid of images (fractals notwithstanding).
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle: The book that made me an atheist. Before Cat's Cradle, the idea that god existed was immutable, self-evident. Vonnegut's apocalyptic parable was my first encounter with the notion that not only is religion ridiculous ("No damn cat, no damn cradle"), but that it's possible to think of it that way. Added bonus: Cat's Cradle was the first book that caused me to obsess over a single author. I went on to devour the entire Vonnegut oeuvre. For better or worse.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice: The book that made me love a good sentence. I read Pride and Prejudice in the summer before my junior year of high school, for AP English. I initially dreaded reading it. It seemed stuffy and out of date. Austen's prose grabbed me from the novel's iconic opening line. It was the first time I enjoyed reading a novel for its craft, rather than its plot or theme.
Toni Morrison, Beloved: The book that made me a critical reader. Another entry in the high-school-required-reading category, this time twelfth grade. I was determined to conquer Morrison's seemingly impenetrable style. By the end I realized some books that require effort actually reward you for it.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged: The book that most made me who I am today. This is the most obvious entry. Rand's novel presented a world, and a point of view, that still shapes me to this day. I would never have studied economics without it. And I would still be a socialist.
Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal: The book that made me certain that capitalism isn't only better than its antipode, but the only moral system. Atlas Shrugged made me a capitalist, Capitalism made me a crusader.
Robert L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The book that made economics personal. By the time I read The Worldly Philosophers, I was already interested in economic theory. But Heilbroner's book was my first exposure to the ideas of individual economists. Though I disagree with Heilbroner's perspective (as I did at the time of reading it), his enthusiasm for economic ideas was infectious. It cemented my decision to study economics.
Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: The book that grounded my approach to thinking about economics. Until reading Mises, my opposition to socialism was based in morality. Socialism showed, in great depth, why the price system is central to applied economics. It showed that socialism is not just wrong, it's impossible in practice.
Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis/Careless Love: The book(s) that made me a serious music fan. I had dismissed the music of Elvis, until I read Peter Guralnick's incredible two-part biography. That I'm now an Elvis fan is a happy consequence, but only a side note. Guralnick's bios showed that reading about music can be as rewarding as listening to it.
Bill Buford, Heat: The book that made me a foodie. I was a fat kid, so I've always loved eating. But I never appreciated food. Buford's account of working in the kitchen of Mario Batali's Babbo was the catalyst to my most expensive obsession: fine dining. Heat showed that food contains pleasures beyond being a terminus to hunger.

Alex Chilton, R.I.P.

2010-03-18T01:12:00.023-04:00

Alex Chilton died in New Orleans yesterday, at the age of 59. His band Big Star (co-founded with Chris Bell) sold few albums, but they pioneered the genre of power pop and produced two masterpieces in the 1970s: #1 Record and Radio City. His music influenced bands (like R.E.M.) who achieved the success Big Star never would.

Below are two examples of Chilton's brilliance, and one tribute to it. The first, "Thirteen," is a gorgeous and wistful teenage lullaby of rock. The second, "September Gurls," is quintessential power pop, and one of the greatest songs of all time.

The last is the Replacements' homage to Chilton, an apt eulogy:

If he was from Venus, would he feed us with a spoon?
If he was from Mars, wouldn't that be cool?
Standing right on campus, would he stamp us in a file?
Hangin' down in Memphis all the while.

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round
They sing "I'm in love. What's that song?
I'm in love with that song."

Cerebral rape and pillage in a village of his choice.
Invisible man who can sing in a visible voice.
Feeling like a hundred bucks, exchanging good lucks face to face.
Checkin' his stash by the trash at St. Mark's place.

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round
They sing "I'm in love. What's that song?
I'm in love with that song."

I never travel far, without a little Big Star

Runnin' 'round the house, Mickey Mouse and the Tarot cards.
Falling asleep with a flop pop video on.
If he was from Venus, would he meet us on the moon?
If he died in Memphis, then that'd be cool, babe.

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round
They sing "I'm in love. What's that song?
I'm in love with that song."

Like Paul Westerberg, I never travel far without a little Big Star. Alex Chilton will be missed, even if he's been forgotten.

UPDATE: Here's Rolling Stone's write-up of Chilton. Here's Pitchfork's. Here's the NYT.

Gorillaz Plastic Beach Review

2010-03-16T20:36:00.019-04:00

Listening to Gorillaz, Damon Albarn's virtual supergroup's debut album, twelve years later, reveals how much the band was more of an extension of Blur, two-parts britpop plus one-part hip hop, rather than the dramatic sonic break they seemed to be at the time. Moreover, the album sounds a mess compared to the cohesion of mood and sound of its follow-up, the excellent Demon Days. Plastic Beach, in turn, further deepens and consolidates the band's sound. Albarn has finally left britpop (and, for the most part, guitars) behind, in favor of symphonic flourishes and layers of synthesizers.

Gorillaz has always been a protean collective of artists shaped by Albarn, but it was possible to imagine an actual (cartoon) band playing its own music. On Plastic Beach, however, it's clear that Gorillaz is the vehicle of a singular genius. Even when Albarn's vocal is absent (as it is on much of the album), his force is felt more than ever, especially his incredible knack for melody, which only Stephin Merritt, his closest contemporary, rivals. Here Albarn is more composer than performer, one who allows his guest stars to shine (like Lou Reed, who recalls his former greatness on "Some Kind of Nature").

The sound of Plastic Beach is best expressed by "Empire Ants," which begins as a Dark Side of the Moon ballad that eventually gives birth, and cedes, to an electronic stomp led by Little Dragon. Its best tracks, "Stylo," "Rhinestone Eyes," "White Flag," bend and twist. The album also provides many straightforward pleasures, the giddy "Superfast Jellyfish" (whose chorus recalls the band's past heights), the gorgeous and appropriately-titled "On Melancholy Hill," and the equally-beautiful Bobby Womack showstopper "Cloud of Unknowing."

Plastic Beach trades big hits for consistency. No song matches the immediate brilliance of singles like "Clint Eastwood," Feel Good Inc.," or "DARE." Yet the whole towers over its parts, and Plastic Beach towers over its predecessors. This is pop music at its funky, oddball best.

Song Break

2010-03-12T23:23:00.005-05:00

In honor of the superb new Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach, here's Blur's finest, the gospel epic "Tender." It remains one of the great songs of the 1990s, and hints at the music Damon Albarn would explore with his cartoon supergroup.

Nanny State Watch

2010-03-11T21:31:00.006-05:00

The new target in the slip slide into total state paternalism is salt:

Some New York City chefs and restaurant owners are taking aim at a bill introduced in the New York Legislature that, if passed, would ban the use of salt in restaurant cooking.
"No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises," the bill, A. 10129 , states in part.

The legislation, which Assemblyman Felix Ortiz , D-Brooklyn, introduced on March 5, would fine restaurants $1,000 for each violation.

This is madness, but it's no surprise. The crusade against personal liberty always begins with the obvious villains (tobacco and alcohol), moves on to more dubious ones (trans fats and sugar), and eventually reaches the point of sick farce.

It won't end with salt. How much longer until we see bills that mandate compulsory exercise, or a complete ban on processed food?

(HT Radley Balko)

Reality Check: "That Kind of Stuff Makes Normal People Want to Throw Up"

2010-03-09T21:44:00.008-05:00

The good news: District gays can now legally marry. The reality check: some Washington Post readers found the front-page image of two men kissing controversial. From the Atlantic Wire:

Last week, same-sex marriage became legal in the District of Columbia, to the delight of some and the consternation of others. On March 4, The Washington Post marked the occasion with a front-page story, accompanied by a photo showing two young men sharing a chaste kiss outside the D.C. Superior Court. Michael Tomasky applauded the Post's decision to run the photo, calling it a bold and welcome move from a usually "provincial and cautious newspaper."

But according to Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander, the photo has drawn an unusual amount of ire from readers. In a column at Omblog, Alexander describes fielding "rants, often with anti-gay slurs," and hearing from more than one reader that a snapshot of two men kissing doesn't belong in a family newspaper. (One reader complained of the photo, "That kind of stuff makes normal people want to throw up," suggesting Dahlia Lithwick might have been onto something when she wrote about "the politics of disgust" in Slate this week.)

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