Make it a million, for when I get old

...Hell, those lyrics take on a new urgency in the Even Newer Economy, don't they?

10cc - Art For Art's Sake
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These guys were huge and great for a few years in the seventies. Then the lineup changed and they weren't quite as great, and later stopped being huge too. C'est la vie but they made some insane music.

Not sure the nascent music video art form was their friend. Whatever was supposed to come through with the artificial wind blowing in Lol's hair doesn't. Oh well, there is such a thing as dorky charm. I hope.

Newman's own, indeed

Does the passing of Paul Newman make me sad? There's a twinge, sure. But I have to give him posthumous congratulations as well. No matter how much success he had, he never stopped trying.

Does that make sense? What I mean is that he could have phone it in, and much of the public would have accepted it. But he approached his roles all the way through as challenges. Fun challenges, and he most often conquered them. Being a Hitchcock hero didn't really pan out, but Hitch must take a portion of the blame there. And even if he finally won an Oscar for what is basically a microwave pizza (really, Marty, you don't need the Rocky training montage, you're better than that) his own performance as a man who has gained security and lost his soul is hard to fault.

His first outing as Fast Eddie in The Hustler was an absolute wonder. Pool was his religion, and he was as charismatic as any preacher could be. Cool Hand Luke speaks for itself. And I found him to be a beautiful cartoon villain in The Hudsucker Proxy.

His most lasting work, though, may be Sidney Lumet's The Verdict. As Frank Galvin, his feet have more than the RDA of clay. He's an alcoholic lawyer with bouts of depression and self-pity that almost sink his clients. He also punches out his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend in a bar, played by Charlotte Rampling as a schemer, but not a completely unsympathetic one. Galvin is a man needing redemption. When it comes, it feels right. Not permanent, but earned.

Friday Random Ten with clarification

1. REM--Life and How to Live It
2. Ladytron--Ghosts
3. Elvis Costello & the Attractions--The Beat
4. Pink Grease--Remember Forever
5. Johnny Cash--Rowboat
6. Sly & the Family Stone--Stand!
7. Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderley--The Old Country
8. David Bowie--The Bewlay Brothers
9. The Beatles--Good Night
10. Yo La Tengo--Don't Have to Be So Sad

Yes, we're finishing with Yo La Tengo. Yes, the Johnny Cash song is the Man in Black covering Beck. No, I don't consider myself a hipster. And I don't think my friends would call me one either, although I wouldn't be offended.

Only raises more questions

McCain, who sounds like he's grumpy because they're keeping him up after his bedtime, plumped nuclear power because not only will it promote enerfy independence, but it will also help us fight climate change. Apparently, though, we prefer Iran to keep pumping out those greenhouse gases.

PS Oh God, no one else is calling him a maverick, so he did it himself. And trying to sell Palin as one too. I can't keep watching him while I'm sober.

Your moment of Modernist Zen

This is from a poetess and youtuber who goes by the name "Idlinfarm."

It's a Marianne Moore poem called "What Are Years?", one that the brilliant if somewhat psychotic Ezra Pound read in public as his memorial to her. It gets a very lovely reading hear too.

Poetry: never a bad thing to add to your diet.

Culture war is hell

Lisa : It is better to remain silent and be thought the fool, then to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Homer's brain : Uh-oh what did that mean. Better say something or they'll think you're stupid.
Homer : Takes one to know one!
Homer' s Brain : Swish!

Could I make this up? No, I could not. The right-wing tempest in this moment's teapot is a skit on Saturday Night Live lampooning the snooty provincialism of the Eastern Establishment press, specifically relating to Sarah Palin and Alaska. One pissed off lackey writes:

For the second week in a row Saturday Night Live has taken shots at Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin — but this time it moves from mocking to blatant smearing by suggesting in a skit that the Alaska governor’s husband, Todd Palin, was having sex with the couple’s daughters.

A quick aside. I found this in a random Google search. Not even remotely was I seeking this kind of nuttiness.

But it bears repeating: the New York Times is the target of the somewhat amusing skit. At least one of the commenters on rightpundits pointed this out, but he had to duck to avoid the katanas everyone else was swinging around like crazy. To believe that SNL was "suggesting" actual incest in the Palin family--even as a joke--you'd have to have a soggy box of baking soda where your brain should be.

The almighty base is still not really in love with John McCain. Sarah Palin is another story, but her supporters have taken on a passive-aggressive, persecuted stance. Now the GOP narrative seems largely built around victimization. A winning strategy? Well, if the options are that or defend looting the treasury...

Rest in peace... or something like it

Not much time tonight. Want to do some other-stuff writing, which I didn't get a chance to do earlier this evening when the laptop was BSODing up a storm. But I wanted to point out this reminiscence on the recently deceased Thomas M. Disch.

Disch could be a depressing writer, no doubt. To be frank, it may be a surprise that it took him so long to kill himself. He was also a sharp wit. In the novels I've read by him, the balance is a little unbalanced. After a while he runs out of things to do with his characters, besides kill them off in horrible ways. But he did some unnervingly good short stories (e.g. "Come to Venus Melancholy", "The Asian Shore") and was a gifted poet. He made more of a mark than he may have known.