Democracy dies in darkness but who turned out the lights?

News media has been disinvesting in news reporting. It may seem perverse, but it's true. Reporting can mean a lot of money spent for accuracy and context, which is a big ask if that's not what your customers are paying for. So while you might think reporters are ubiquitous, they're more in the position of smiths who make horseshoes. The profession exists, but it's marginal. Most stories you see in the neverending news cycle are based on other stories, or nothing.

Pundits have held on quite well, though. Maybe because they tend to become recognizable brand names, which is valuable in a crowded field. But that may wind up being a case of diminishing returns, as it can be hard to tell one from another.

This story compiles a number of instances of journalists crossing over from factual reporting (to the extent they ever did that) and open advocacy. But what does it mean to take a stand when everybody takes the same stand? There's a large number of media figures who share the same opinions on what stories need to be shared and which can be swept under the rug. Pretty soon they're only talking to each other, plus a small cohort of "civilians" who agree. Which of course the voting base of the current President.

Then there are more florid examples. It's tempting to say that Siegel read the Rolling Stone "dominatrixes vs. vaccine hesitancy" story so you don't have to. But I did read it and found it painfully insipid. It's an attempt to make a familiar narrative sound new and exotic, maybe even erotic. Well, that last part really doesn't pan out.

Are “trans women of color” and “dommes” genuine authorities in America? No, but they are made into public idols that real power can hide behind. In theory, these totems of the marginalized are being “centered” by social justice movements that overturn historical power structures. In practice, the dominatrix, stripped of all authentic erotic power and allure, becomes a new kind of patriotic hero defending the civic virtues of the American middle class.

Perhaps a bit ironic, that.

Dig these hip sounds!

I can recall my introduction to Jimmy Smith, when Babs Gonzales phoned me from New York and blurted: "Hey, Brother 'B', are you hip to this organ playin' cat from Philly, named Jimmy Smith? He's a boss cat on the Hammond Organ." I would have merely listened politely, but when Babs Gonzales invested his hard-earned cash to call from New York, then I knew it was important. I immediately went over to the swingingest record shop in Chicago, the Met, and ear-checked some Jimmy Smith LP.'s.

That's Holmes Daylie, a DJ known to his listeners in Chi-town as "Daddio" Daylie, at the start of his liner notes essay for the Jimmy Smith album Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which also has a charmingly surreal cover of Smith--dapper in his tan trench coat--holding hands with a model in a hyena(?) mask.

These kinds of liner notes--hype, but an erudite kind of hype that respects the reader/listener--seem to have been a fairly common feature to music releases at one time. A sign that the distributors were making an investment of thought as well as money. I've seen this sort of text on old LP covers and a few CD reissues. Outside of best-of collections no one seems to bother anymore. Of course sales of music in physical media have cratered, but the fall-off seems to have preceded the rise of streaming and the web by some time.

Of shadows and shoes

Something that tickles me and might tickle you as well is a shadow puppet show based on one of the stories from 1,001 Nights. One of the lesser-known tales, it must be said. But the performers show an infectious enthusiasm for the material.

The image of an unlucky angler getting a shoe or boot on their fishing line is pretty widespread, at least enough to have its own TV Tropes page. I wonder if this tale was the origin.

Out there

May have talked about this before. It's late at night, about to go to bed. There seems to be a fair amount of activity on the road. Does make one wonder where the drivers are off to. Some, surely, are police and other emergency vehicles. But not all. So some of these drivers might be going to new places and have exciting mornings ahead of them. Others could have very restful mornings planned.

Let's get into character

 I just got finished watching Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood. I actually watched the first hour of it earlier in the week. In general I don't make a habit of splitting movies into two or more nights. But this one is pretty long--about two hours plus another three quarters--and I figured I could get more out of it if I were awake for the whole thing.

More openly than he ever has before, Quentin Tarantino returns to his childhood here. The pastiches, the music, the characters drawn from media of the late 1960s. They're all things that were in the air during his formative years. Which I recognize because much of it is mine as well. He's seven years older than I am, but that's just a few rounds of syndication for a show in reruns. But yeah, the yellow TV-style closing credits give it away.

Much of it is a hangout show featuring Leonard DiCaprio's fragile prima donna actor and Brad Pitt's self-possessed stuntman/chauffeur/companion. But there's tension here, because the movie also involves the Manson family. Their presence brings part of it into the realm of thriller, if not horror. In a move that's not too surprising coming from Tarantino, the Manson matter is resolved in a different manner from actual recorded history, but it's still pretty damn gory. Anyway, the extended mid-film sequence built around Cliff's visit to the Spahn ranch is a highlight.

There's a pretty good joke built onto the end of the end credits. Hate to think how many theatregoers missed that one because they didn't stick around.

Changing methods

If you've been around this blog for a while, you might remember this post. I've remembered it, chiefly because I was able to get it down in a fairly brief amount of time. And there it is.

Which led me to think. When writing fiction there might be something to the method of writing it down as a kind of Q&A dialogue like that. Not that the story will end up in that format. It probably won't. But this experience suggested that it's a way of getting the basics of a story down before the inner critic can put up roadblocks.

Currently I'm fleshing out ideas produced in a first draft in this style. It's going...well, it's going quicker than it often does, that's for sure. Which is a good thing. I needed a change. The old process wasn't working for me.

Case of the uh-oh's

 

(Above image by Mort Walker, new text by David Maliki)

Once more the populace--or at least minor intelligentsia--is acting like the end of the world is nigh. Obviously not for the first time. Maybe not the last either. Have all the previous apocalypses made people as humorless as this one has? Don't see how it would help in any case.

☂

So I was at home, doing whatever. Outside it didn't look particularly overcast. But then I heard thunder. Okay, a little ominous, considering that I was planning to walk to the supermarket in the near future. And indeed in short order it was raining heavily. Well, I figured I'd give it until about 4PM to clear up before I made any further decisions. 

Well in fact by four the rain had indeed cleared up, so the "down one hill, up another" foot trip went okay. I just had to make sure no car came through when I was walking past the big puddle. When I got out of the store it started raining again, but it was pretty light as I was walking home. Then when I'd been inside for a little bit it really opened up, so you could see rivers running by the curb. Then it stopped again.

So, maybe good planning on my part, but definitely good luck. Was that the tail end of the passing hurricane or what?

Diseducation

From White Hot Harlots, a Tumblr account of all things that I was put onto by a thread of other people I read, comes a bleak assessment of the current state and future of education in these here United States.

This, my friends, bodes very poorly for the future of education, regardless of whatever happens in the coming months. A movement that cannot articulate its own worth is not one that is long for this world. Teachers themselves are the only force that can resit the slow press toward the eventual elimination of public education, and they have embraced a worldview and comportment style that renders them absolutely unable to mount any worthwhile resistance. 

Part of what he talks about is the adoption of critical race theory (CRT) in the classroom. Some of the downsides of this approach are obvious to everyone except those who have power. CRT popularizer Ibram X. Kendi has said that discrimination that produces equity is antiracist. Well, I can't read his mind to tell you exactly what he has on it, but soldiers tend to take the general's orders at face value, which in the case of some ideologically minded teachers could justify all sorts of abuse. 

Then there's the question of whether CRT-based teaching really helps the kids it's supposed to. If it's even meant to do that, which, you have to wonder. One theory making the rounds now is that emphasizing the right answer in math class is whiteness in action. So the solution is to make math in schools fuzzier and more subjective? If that's the path schools take it's pretty easy to see what happens next. A few years down the road, jobs that require mathematical skill go to people who had tutors when they were school-age. No public schoolers need apply!

The idea of "social justice all day" in schools has been deeply endorsed by Randi Weingarten, current president of the American Federation of Teachers. She's also been instrumental in scaring schools off from in-person learning for the last year-plus. If your goal is to defund public education, you really have no better friend.

's heavy, man

 Just found this. The kettle drum has more sustain than most other kinds of drum, so it can be used in a different way. I know Ringo plays it on at least one Beatles song ("Every Little Thing"), maybe more.

Anyway, this is a neat little kettle drum composition. For most of it I didn't know if there was anyone else in the room besides whoever was holding the camera, so it was gratifying to hear the applause at the end.

A marriage made in hell

 "Is this the end of the world?" asks this essay by the Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland. Mercifully it's less literal and more philosophical than the header might make you believe. The end of the world lies somewhere in the future, but what space does it occupy in our consciousness.

And there's a crystal-clear passage.

The thing is, in the Seventies, the end of the world seemed much nearer than it does right now. Nothing worked back then, and everything was fading and imploding and being smothered in oil and soot. The Seventies with an internet would have been an utter pit of despair. Which reminds me: I was in Toronto in 2003 during SARS Classic, which had a 16% kill rate and, to be honest, the city didn’t feel even remotely as doomy as it does now during Covid, which has a pathetic kill rate of, what, 0.3%? That’s what happens with an internet everywhere around you: it’s this sleepless beast that roams everywhere, poking shit with a stick all along the way, and waking up every conceivable sleeping dog it finds with a clanging pair of concert cymbals.

Obvious facts, but not put together all that often. Of course the SARS virus of 2003 was objectively scarier than the COVID bug that came 16 or 17 years later. And obviously it didn't have the same kind of impact. SARS made it into some panicked headlines and gallows humor jokes, but national stay-at-home orders and universal masking that extends into the next year? No one was even thinking about it.

Yet Coupland is a little off. There was, of course, an Internet in 2003. I know, because I was on it. Different, more primitive and at the same time more variegated, but it was definitely there. 

People had cell phones at the time as well. Maybe not quite as many. But that's not the real difference. 2003 was still the flip phone era. If you had a cell phone, you used it for phone calls and not much else. Now millennials and zoomers have become acclimated to an etiquette where making a phone call when you don't absolutely have to is a faux pas.

Somewhere along the line phones became wired so that you could easily reach the Internet from them. For some it was more convenient. But that's the problem. When you can plug into the infosphere from anywhere you happen to be, then the Internet and all the people on it become the "it all" that you can't or won't get away from. That's how problems get blown up into 800 lb. gorillas.

The Devil is in the details

 Feeling in a John Carpenter mood again, I watched Prince of Darkness tonight. It has to be one of his weirder movies.

Carpenter wrote it under the pseudonym "Martin Quatermass." This gives a hint to his attentions, as elements of the plot do seem inspired by Nigel Kneale's British teleplays featuring the scientist hero, especially Quatermass and the Pit. The monster that menaces the church full of grad students and Donald Pleasence's priest is really cosmic entropy, although it may collaborate with/impersonate the Devil. Victor Wong's character basically is Professor Quatermass, except Asian-American.

While there's a small army of scary homeless people led by Alice Cooper, I don't know that I'd call this an actor-driven movie. Which might be why most of the cast have if anything gotten more obscure since the movie was released a quarter century ago, and is definitely why the leading man prompts the thought "preppie porn star" every time he's onscreen. 

But Carpenter is playing an interesting game here. The scenes are all very short, accompanied by a relentless electronic score. Seemingly calm at first, they come to evoke a creepy sense of things falling apart.

Yellow fellows

 Providence is just a biggish city, not an enormous one. Still, we do see things here.

The other day I was downtown (no one says "downcity.") There was a lady at the bus stop. She was pushing a wheelchair. The seat of the wheelchair was filled by a Minions plushie doll. She was yelling and swearing at the MInions doll.

Should I have talked to herr? I don't know.

All comes out in the wash

 I have a little cut on my thumb. I got it because there was a little shard of glass embedded in the sole of my shoe. I had to get it out in a hurry because a bus was coming and perhaps foolishly used my bare hands to do so.

This is not to complain. It hurts in a dull way, probably more annoying than anything else. The point I'm making is that I expect the pain to be less when I get up tomorrow morning, and a little less the day after that. Sleep truly is a miracle drug.

meow?

My downstairs neighbor has a cat. Tomcat, black, quite big for a housecat. All indoors, though.

That's something that makes me curious. How many cat keepers let their furry little friends go out. I've seen websites saying that it's just a bad idea. There are downsides to it, like predation of birds and the risk that they'll just take off and not come back. So can you lower the risk of those things to an acceptable level?

I mean, I'd say I'm more of a dog person, but I like cats and would like to think most cat owners are doing right by them.

Than curse the darkness

Do I like Wallace Stevens? No, I love him. He ranks at the top of my list of favorite poets, up there with Edith Sitwell and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Do I like dramatic poetry readings? Sometimes. Depends on what the reader brings to the poem. Even if they're also the poet, it varies.

Does this recitations of "Carlos Among the Candles" work for me? Actually yes. Mainly because it doesn't sound like a "recitation" at all. The woman performing it gets at the conversational tone Stevens often drops into. A tone that doesn't decrease the sharpness of the verse at all. And yeah, she makes the most of the props as well.