Made it, ma

I haven't seen Peter Jackson's documentary series on the Beatles' Get Back sessions, but do find some interesting analysis and question in this review. The big question that Snowdon tackles is why they broke up when they did. If they didn't actually hate each other, if the sessions weren't all misery and boredom, then why not stay together a while more?

I suspect it was the prospect of being in the shadow of their own legend that prompted them. The idea of hearing the sentence, "They're great, but they're not quite the Beatles" applied to themselves. Since their reputation and impact in the 60s got quite a bit beyond rock stardom, settling down to mere rock stardom would have diminished them. So best to go out on top, while they were relatively still on top.

Consider the Rolling Stones. In the Beatles' absence they could finally occupy the top slot in the seventies. So they had a hot few years, then came upon a period of diminishing returns. Their last essential album is probably Exile on Main Street from 1972. Their last interesting album is probably Undercover, from ten years later than that. 

So a defensible decision on the Fab Four's part.

Plus ça change

Karen Lucic's 1991 book Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine contains some fascinating material on both sides of the title: the precisionist artist and the preoccupations of his time. 

His time was the early decades of the twentieth century, and the standardization of industrial production was having an effect in many areas of society. On Henry Ford Lucic has this to say:

Ford also embraced the emerging mechanistic attitude towards humanity; he even conceived of the body as consisting of interchangeable parts. "There is every reason to believe that we should be able to renew our human bodies in the same manner as we renew a defect in a boiler," he stated. He freely admitted that the principles of mass production limited personal freedom in the labour force and even claimed that most workers welcomed such a situation. "The average worker, I am sorry to say, wants a job in which he does not have to put forth much physical exertion - above all, he wants a job in which he does not have to think."

Is it a surprise that a titan of industry such as Ford held views that in a later era could be characterized as transhumanist? At least in part they could be. And maybe this shouldn't be a surprise. Technologists frequently seem to yearn for a human/machine marriage. In any case, he seems like he would be able to get rich now as well.

The work of Sheeler holds a lot of interest as well. The fact that he very rarely put human figures in is paintings makes him an ambivalent witness to his times.

Pants all folks! (Sorry, they can't all be good)

One typical guy thing that I tend to go is to wear and ignore clothes until they fall apart. Recently that happened with two pairs of jeans, which started to grow holes everywhere. Even in the warm months this would make me find kind of stupid, Ergo, time to buy new ones. 

One of the new pairs has narrow legs, somewhat elasticized. I think these are what are called "skinny jeans," and they're being sold at Burlington Coat Factory for about $15. So whether or not I bear any responsibility for killing that trend, it seems pretty dead.

The Harrington Files

The industrious British journalist Mary Harrington has two stories up today/yesterday. One of them hits a little more than the other.

In Unherd she examines reasons for very split reactions to the Rittenhouse verdict. There's something to be said--in general--about the conflict between Rousseauian and Hobbesian views on law enforcement. So begin the calls to abolish the police and replace them with social workers.

But Harrington misses or avoids the topic of race, which is really the elephant in the room. I don't know if I would say that racial politics have gotten worse--as compared to what? But they have gotten weirder. And high profile criminal cases tend to draw that weirdness in sharp relief, especially when the media subject whites to the full "those people" treatment. These kinds of takes are meant to divide, and they especially tickle white elites who get someone they can feel superior to without guilt.

Better is her story for The Critic regarding the trend of the upper professional echelons more and more being made up of women. For one thing, while I may have heard/read the term "elite overproduction" before, this article defines it in a very illuminating way. Also intriguing is her comparison of the differing ways that men and women compete. Of course these are broad tendencies not universal to each, but society does seem to be conforming more to one of these than it used to. Which means new challenges, still in the process of revealing themselves.

Something in common

On my bus route today I had Agatha Christie's The Pale Horse out, since I was in the home stretch of reading it. A woman noticed. She noticed a couple of times, since we ran into each other a couple of times She was tickled at seeing someone reading Christie. We had a nice chat about books and she recommended this used bookstore. Nice convo overall. Oh, she's married and there were no overtones or undertones or any of that, if you're wondering.

Woes

The header for this article on Saturday Night Live is a bit melodramatic, but the piece itself isn't bad. It gets some stuff wrong and some stuff right.

It's true that they're doing a lot of pandering to a small subset of terminally online liberals. Much of this can be put down to airing on NBC at a time when all the major broadcasters are committed to propping up the limp corpse of the Biden Administration. My caveat there is that politics as such has never been the show's strong suit. There have been some good impressions (i.e. Will Ferrell's George W. Bush) and the occasional winner of a political sketch, almost by accident. But the more interesting material has always lain in the weird concept stuff, the skits that run at 12:51 when only a few diehards in the audience are still fully awake. That the political humor is sucking more ass than usual is a problem, but not a fatal one.

A more serious problem is bloat. For most of the past decade Lorne Michaels had settled on 16 cast members as a maximum for what the 90 minute format could comfortably hold, and that sort of worked. But for the last couple of years the cast has been ballooning. Last season it had 20 performers. This season there are 21, everyone from last year except for two people, and with three more added. And this has happened because longtime veterans who should have moved on long ago get money thrown at them so they'll stay indefinitely. The result is that Season 47 frequently looks like DVD extras of Season 40.

Blog post that will inevitably be read at my treason trial

Man I just hope there's not another Civil War while I'm around. Because I'd be expected to fight for what will be considered the Union side. Okay, at this point it's more like I'd be expected to root for the Union side. And I just can't see myself working up any enthusiasm for that. Like the land and the climate. Fond of a lot of the people. The regime and its ethos, not so much. 

Anyway, by all means give peace a chance.

Wonder what Mick thought

 

Saw this a little while ago. It wowed me for reasons I have to explain a little.

Devo were one of the pivotal music video bands. They were doing film clips to go along with their songs about from when they started recording. And it was that generation of bands that convinced Viacom that a whole cable channel dedicated to music videos might be a viable enterprise.

The thing about videos is that it's easy to cheat. The band isn't really playing, the singer isn't really singing, and the whole thing can be edited for effect. 

Their signature robotic moves would at first blush appear to be a product of this process. But the above clip is from live TV. They really are doing the whole stiff limb thing, which I can't imagine is very comfortable while playing guitar, say. Yet playing guitar etc. they are.

It's also worth remembering that in 1978 there was no "geek chic" as we know it, so this was just coming out of left field.

Bugged

Richard Marsh's The Beetle was a wildly popular novel in its day, at the time overshadowing even Bram Stoker's Dracula, which is generically similar and was published the same year (1897). Somewhere in the early parts of the twentieth century it fell off the map, which means that it's ripe for rediscovery. An obscure not-so-little gem, at this point.

The title character is a sinister and androgynous figure from Egypt, who may or may not be able to turn into a large actual beetle but who definitely has scary mesmeric powers. He has set himself against Paul Lessingham, an orator and politician who has somehow offended the Cult of Isis. These two may be the key figures, but the four sections are narrated by four other figures. First up there's Robert Holt, a clerk reduced to vagrancy who has the additional misfortune of being controlled and used by the Beetle. Then there's Sydney Atherton, an inventor who hopes to take the Alfred Nobel career track of becoming a great humanitarian after developing a deadly weapon. He's Lessingham's rival for the affection of Marjorie Lindon, who follows him as narrator. Her love is so loud and sycophantic that it seems like it would become very tiresome to the object. And finally we have Augustus Champnell, Confidential Agent, a lesser Holmesian figure good for a sympathetic ear and not-so-reassuring reassurance. 

It's a solid Victorian entertainment, one that might have influenced Sax Rohmer and maybe even Edward Gorey. The overlapping narrators means there's also an interesting chance to see the same events from different perspectives.

Trying times

Premise #1: We have trials for a reason. The system is deliberative because deliberation is needed. When a person faces a judge and/or jury, matters of fact and law are in contention. Some standout cases might actually be easy, but more often they look easy to someone not involved in the process.

Premise #2: Politicized trials are bad. The "good trouble" rabblerousing, the quid pro quo of "convict or we riot"...That's all an industry, and a rent-seeking industry at that. We can all see that, right?

Truth to tell I only started paying attention to the case of Kyle Rittenhouse recently. What charges--if any--I'd find him guilty of aren't something I'm firm on. And that's okay. Only the jurors need to decide this. And--this here is an important point--they need to decide it in the course of the proceedings, not come in with a preconceived conclusion. But the way many in the media have been pushing for a particular endpoint and frequently distorting facts in the process strikes me as yet another failure of common humanity.

Wash/rinse/dry

I did some laundry today. Afterwards I walked up the hill to a bus stop and waited a few minutes before the bus picked me up. I could have just crossed the street to catch the bus, but then I'd be walking up the hill at the end. Overall I probably do more walking the way I do it, which is all fine and good. The view seems a little pleasanter this way.

I also started a new book today, which I read before, during, and a little after the laundry trip. It's a bit unusual. May get to blogging about it later on.

Mynah opus

 

I've been curious about what Mynah birds are like. There are a few birds that can mimic human speech, including some ravens. This Mynah is very distinct from parrots in terms of voice, appearance, and movement. Does have the skills, though. And seems to be a pretty good pet, for someone who's into it.

Hello Dali, you look swell, Dali

 

Salvador Dali is probably the artist who first comes to mind for most when they hear the word "surrealist." There's some irony to that. Andre Breton, the leader of the first Surrealist group, expelled him early on. And Dali himself considered himself more of a Classical artist. But his eccentricities have something to say about it. He couldn't help but be surreal regardless of what he called himself.

In the latter part of his career, from the 1950s onward, he spent an increasing amount of time exploring the medium of watercolor. It gave his work a lighter and looser feel.

Would it not be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?

I have heard some Biden skeptics compare him to Jimmy Carter while predicting failure on his behalf. The comparison doesn't really hold up, though. Carter was an outsider in Washington. He and Congress had clear differences. You could argue which side was more right/less wrong, but there were definitely sides.

The last thing Joe Biden is would be an outsider. He was elected to the Senate when the Vietnam War was still raging and stayed there until Obama swept him into the Vice Presidency. Nor is there much of a schism. The overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress appear to be all in on what his administration--whoever is running that show--proposes. So is the political establishment in general and most of the media.

Which may not be a good thing. Tuesday's results hint at the large number of Americans who don't love the agenda behind "Build Back Better" (or alternately "Why Did You Make Me Hit You?") Some in the party may be catching on that they've bet the rent on a pair of threes. James Carville, while no deep thinker, does seem to see that something's amiss. They don't seem in a hurry to do anything about it, though.

The hills are alive...

Providence is a quite hilly city, of course. In large part it's a bunch of little mounds surrounding a river. While the steep factor can be a pain in the ass when you're carrying something heavy, it's not without its upsides. Does give you a fairly good workout, which is something of a turnabout from the previous sentence. Another nice thing is that it affords a variety of views within a fairly small area.