More on Droid

So why did I switch to the droid?

1. My phone went kaput. Well that's not totally true. My old phone was a Palm Treo 680, which I have had since July 2007. It was my upgrade to the "trio" of phone/web/PDA. I've been using Palm devices for nearly a decade (I believe) - starting with the Palm IIIe, then the Palm Vx, and then the Treo. In all cases, I acted like a good middle-class Gen-Xer: I waited until the first one died before upgrading. This time, my Treo was a bit of a lemon from the git-go:
   
   
   1. The online activity was spotty and over time, I stopped having access to almost every webpage except, luckily, my email and yahoo. No explanation was available on the intertubes except possibly my SIM card was messed up. Lovely.
      
   2. The key factor was that the touchscreen just died. It started acting really screwy at first and finally, on Tuesday, the screen basically went dead.
      
   3. Ironically, the only thing that actually worked, still, was the phone. I lived without full web access for a few months, but when I lost the PDA, the thing was done.
      
      
2. My wife needed a new phone. She had a simple one (ya know, only a camera on it, har!) for almost 5 years by her reckoning. But it too needed to be replaced. She also started to hanker after the web/email uses that she saw others have.
   
   
3. Once we both needed new phones, we felt that we should get a package deal (not only on the physical devices but also on the calling plan). I used to have AT&T and it worked OK but I've grown weary of Luke Wilson's idiotic commercials and my rebel nature against The Man (Corporate Division) made me feel I should switch to Verizon.
   
   
4. The Kicker was that my brother had just gotten a droid and he liked it and showed off all the wicked cool features (youtube! google maps! metallic-droid sounds!)

So, it's been two days, how do I feel about it?

1. The sales process was slow and annoying. The six-foot tall ex-jock doofus who sold us the phones had no real idea what he was selling. He reminded me of what the house sellers must have been like during the height of the bubble: i.e. he had a product that everyone wanted but nobody really looked too closely at. As such, he wasn't prepared to answer any questions.
   
   
2. Quick analysis: This is not a PDA. It sucks at that big time.
   
   
3. This is not really a phone, it's a web-browser with a phone "app." More: Ya remember how weird it was when they first put cameras on phones? And we old-tech people made jokes about it. Basically, we realized, especially after a number of key testimony incidents, that it's good to have an easy access camera/video and while it won't replace a real camera, it's a nice thing. So too, the Droid, so far, is a pretty bad phone, non-existent PDA, but the web access is crisp and keen. So is the sound quality, for all you hip rad children who need that thing.
   
   
4. The Man (Corporate) lives well with the droid. It's a google product. And while I've said in the past that I like the company's plan to digitize every bit of information and place it online, they still seem to act like a "splitting" company. That's a term I use for companies, especially in tech, who force incompatibility with other techs. Apple is terrible about this, IMHO, which is why I refuse to get an Iphone... after my Ipod disaster (which forced me to use Itunes, which meant I had to convert all my files from Microsoft Media Player (which played both WMA and MP3) and modify the data of every one of my billion media files. So here, google apps work well on the droid, but why can't it run Flash? If Youtube works, and Flash doesn't, it looks like an arbitrary "split."
   
   
5. Why is it a bad phone? Because the keys disappear, when you talk, making it hard to end a call. The volume ringer is screwy and will turn on, or off, despite your previous settings. It's like a freakin' embarrassment timebomb.
   
   
6. And it doesn't work as a PDA. Yeah, I've got 10 years of great Palm programs which I can no longer use. And that's a serious loss. But so far, I haven't found a decent replacement on the Droid (possibly because it's too new, but probably because the market is now split between Droid/Iphone/Blackberry as opposed to the not "split" days under the Palm umbrella.

I'm giving myself another week with this. If I can't find a way to have it improve, then I may need to switch. Maybe a blackberry? That looks like it was made for adults...

First pic is yet another version of the Indiana Jones Droid Hieroglyphs. Second is from the 2004 Onion story of the camera-phone.

The Droids We Were Looking For

Yesterday, the wife and I, after a few weeks of struggle, succumbed and bought new phones. Droids. This is my first post on it - and while it's now possible to do this, it taint easy. So I'll wait for a real 'puter to tell the whole story.

Pic is of the hidden droids in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Purim Pic of the Littest Styx

My daughter in her cow costume Purim eve:

Cockney Rhyming Parenting

I declared back in 2003 that it should be heretofore known that Cockney Rhyming Slang is not cool. It's actually less cool for Britons to use it than Americans because we Yanks just assume everything in a British accent is fancy. Hence, Americans will consider high-class London, Manchester, Cockney, Irish, Scottish, and Australian all 'British accents' and high class. So if an American uses Cockney Rhyming Slang its usually in the same sentence with the word "gov'ner" and a few lines from Austin Powers.

When the British use it, though, it's the UK version of "jive talkin'" and it sounds ridiculous. White boys from Chicago suburbs aren't ghetto and pasty-faced Britons still sound irredeemably wussy even if they attempt to redeem some toughness with the Rhyming Slang.

Moreover, the entire concept is anti-meaning - the phrases are arbitrary and irrelevant. What thief needs to make a code for his wife ("trouble and strife," har har Andy Capp).

Parenting Use

Yet after that devastating rant of mockage, my wife and I actually found a use for Cockney Rhyming Slang that is both legitimate and practical. And thus my derision for the verbal form is now modified: if a person is actually employed as a thief/spy/parent and uses CRS in it's intended manner, then you are spared the otherwise heavy criticism automatically triggered in all right-thinking people.

I'll explain. Every parent, as you know, needs a special language so they can discuss things in front of the kids. My parents (and many of ya'lls, I assume) used Yiddish. However, while my wife knows many languages, I'm stuck with Hebrew and Spanish. The kids are learning Hebrew in school, so that's out, and Spanish is all over PBS (besides being intuitive for most English speakers, as this sound file attests).

So the other day, my wife, to her immense credit, realized that we should just use Cockney Rhyming Slang (we just had a Guy Richie movie marathon so it was in our heads). And it works! So here's some of our terms, for use for the public weal.

[Key: Original Term = CRS (Annotation)]

1. Nap = Ginger Snap (This is by far the best one, and most redolent of the original art form. Say the word 'nap' - even spell it out - and the kid dissolves in tears, hence we now say "ginger")
   
   
2. Lollipop = Boughs of Holly (We use sugar-free lollipop as a reward/bribe but if the boys hear the word, they go nutso in demanding them - so now we say Hollies. It may not work for long so our rejected backups are: "Seward's Folly" or "Lassie, Assuming She Was a Collie")
   
   
3. Television = Long Division (other options: "nuclear fission" or "gone fishin'" or even "double vision" which may be too close to the original; my wife thinks that this weak entry may need to go to "Telly" and then it could be "Jam & Jelly" which sounds satisfyingly like the original form.)
   
   
4. Blankie = Yankee Doodle (If a blankie is missing, it leads to more wailing, so we now use "Yankee" - doodle actually has other uses in our home; another option: "fish tankie")

Pic from here. Oh, see also this google book, cool eh?

Oscar Reax

I will give my full debrief soon, but before that I must post this awesome Oscar-mocking video from Cracked magazine online. When I was a lad, Cracked was a cheap Mad Magazine knockoff, but their online presence has been consistently funny, smart and sharp:

A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever -- powered by Cracked.com

Monkey Man

So my mother-in-law took my wife and kids to a live action Curious George show in Worcester. The eldest, Big B, likes the TV Show quite a lot and Jota goes along for the ride. As for me, I'm ambivalent: on one side, I have the adult male's appreciation for monkeys, on the other hand, the show is destructive and even terrible.

This is a PBS kids show and, you may not know, but PBS now has top level animated educational shows that I would have killed for as a kid (instead we had puppet shows and Reading Rainbow). So while there's some superlative stuff, e.g. Zula Patrol & Super Why, there's also Curious George.

Any thinking person will be driven batty by this show - it takes the conceit of the books that a monkey can act as a surrogate/metaphor for a child's sense of curious wonder, play down the freaky pre-War imperialism angle, yet play up the imperiling destructive power of the lead primate.

In nearly every episode, a different set of adults give George access to sensitive and/or expensive venues and he spends most of the episode enacting thousands or millions of dollars of property damage - often to irreplaceable or significant objects. And, after the adults realize that they've allowed such damage to occur, George bears absolutely no consequences! What a wonderful metaphor and lesson for our youth.

My favorite example is when George manages to flood the first few floors of his New York City high-rise domicile. Ha ha! As a former tenant of a flooded NYC building, this episode was both humorous and a PTSD trigger. Another example is when George is introduced to the train engineer booth which had a control set-up similar to an airport's tower. The trains needed the engineer to switch tracks, as they move at top speed, so they will arrive on time. The engineer, after telling our hero about the controls, decides to leave George alone in the booth while he departs for a long lunch. As he leaves, George hears radio calls for help from the trains and he uses his monkey ingenuity to switch the trains - potentially ramming each locomotive into others, resulting in death and carnage. Hoo hah.

Ironically, my boys haven't learned to emulate the destruction (yet) but they do like speaking like monkeys. Which sounded cute, at first, but is actually annoying.

Anyhoo, the live show. The tickets were expensive, and I asked if there was a trained monkey on stage - which would kinda justify the cost, right? I mean, add up your monkey chow, monkey cage interior design, and the rest and that means high overhead. But no, George was played by a dude in a monkey suit (see pic above). So I concluded that the cost must be going to pay for therapy for the kids of the guy in the suit.

Oscars 2010 - Analysis, part 2

A note about the acting awards: even though I, and everyone else, calls them, e.g. "best actor," the real title is "best performance by an actor" - which has some crucial ramifications.

Back in 2007 I quoted the TNR's Kaufmann why he doesn't judge the Oscars and he said: "Oh, I always watch the Oscar broadcast. I wouldn't want to miss the irritation--or the laughs. I'll never forget the year that Marisa Tomei beat out Vanessa Redgrave as best supporting actress." I liked this quote at the time, but it only makes sense if you describe the award as 'best actor' and not 'best performance.' Only a geriatric pompous gasbag would deny that while a person can be a better actor over a life-time, a specific performance, whether for the legitimate (read: obsolete) theater or a film, can be better than any other that year. It's akin to what I've heard about golf - people like the game because there's a possibility that on a particular hole, you can get a score better than the superstars, for that hole.

As such, when calibrating the acting awards, the voters may actually be rewarding a performance over an actor. And this is especially so when a performance is spectacular. The question is whether there's a curve; whether the pretty-boy leads who finally turn in a decent performance are given extra weight (a handicap, to continue - and exhaust my - golf metaphor) than others. Truly this is what has happened for Best Actress in the past - where some sexy - and popular - ingenue finally dials in a serious performance and is given extra credit. How else to explain the absurd wins of:

• 1997: Helen Hunt - As Good as It Gets
• 2001: Halle Berry – Monster's Ball (the most egregious of this already egregious category)
• 2002: Nicole Kidman – The Hours
• 2003: Charlize Theron – Monster
• 2005: Reese Witherspoon – Walk the Line
  

There are probably many more from the earlier years. Suffice to say, that this is a clear pattern, especially for Best Actress, and while it's possibly from a weird sexism of the above-mentioned octogenarians, I'd personally bet on it.

Best Peformance: Actor -- Odds; Nominees:

1. Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart (2009) *
   
2. George Clooney for Up in the Air (2009/I)
3. Colin Firth for A Single Man (2009)
4. Morgan Freeman for Invictus (2009)
5. Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker (2008)

OK, so while Clooney is awesome in general, he has won recently (Supporting in 2006), and is young enough to have a few more years of good potential performances. Renner is new and is honored to just be nominated (and I'm glad he's able to rise above his bad-guy turn in S.W.A.T.); Morgan Freeman has also won recently and since he plays his persona in every movie, I don't see his performance getting such a nod. Firth has been doing some good work recently, basically filling in Hugh Grant's soggy shoes, and his character is gay and oppressed - Milk may have, uh, milked that guilt award away. But, really, from all I've heard, the word on the street is that the voters are finally going to reward Bridges for his years of incredible work. As above with The Departed etc, there's no standout performance that can take away Bridges' lifetime (read: Big Lebowski) achievement award. I mean, it's his fifth nomination, with his first nom in his first starring role (The Last Picture Show) and he's never won.

Best Actress -- Odds, Nominees:

1. Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side (2009)
2. Helen Mirren for The Last Station (2009)
3. Carey Mulligan for An Education (2009)
4. Gabourey Sidibe for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
5. Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia (2009)*

I just see this as the classic battle between the Finally-Serious-Ingenue (Bullock) and the Truly-Great-Peformance (Streep).

Pros for Bullock:

1. She's been out of work for a number of years after spending her 20s as quiry-manic-pixie-girl romantic comedy leads. When she started work again, this past year, she returned with a vengeance: two romantic comedies and one drama (All About Steve, The Proposal and The Blind Side)
   
2. The movie she's in is racist as all git out, but specifically, just as racist as Crash, which won in 2004.

I'm outa time here (I just got home from an all-day-trip), so I'll say that the odds-makers are saying it's Streep, and A.O. Scott as well, and her performance was definitely wonderful (I saw it). She's also been nominated a billion times and has only won Best Actress once, even though she's the best of her generation, back in 1983! It's a real tough one - the stupid ingenue-award pattern, a la Halle Barre, vs. an overlooked superstar (like Jeff Bridges) who was great in Doubt, and others. I'm going to go with Streep on this and hope that it's because of the racism of "The Blind Side" in our Obama age. I'm going against my instincts, letting my intellect outvote my gut, but I'll gamble on it (although if I were a real gambler I'd put money on Bullock).

Best Supporting Actor - Nominees:

1. Matt Damon for Invictus (2009)
2. Woody Harrelson for The Messenger (2009/I)
3. Christopher Plummer for The Last Station (2009)
4. Stanley Tucci for The Lovely Bones (2009)
5. Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (2009)*

Oh this is another toughie. Plummer has had an awesome career and this is the only time he's been nominated, and he's getting way too old for other stuff. And he would win in a normal year (crushing even Tucci who is one of the best actors of this generation and who is also being nominated for the first time, for what I've heard is a so-so role, but who's young enough to get nominated again, especially because his work has been consistently great). But this is where the "performance" part of the award comes in: Waltz's performance was one of the best I've ever seen, and I think it trumps Plummer's lifetime achievement and Tucci's general awesomeness.

Best Supporting Actress

1. Penélope Cruz for Nine (2009)
2. Vera Farmiga for Up in the Air (2009/I)
3. Maggie Gyllenhaal for Crazy Heart (2009)
4. Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air (2009/I)
5. Mo'Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)*

Everyone says it's Mo'Nique (not Monique, not Monica, it's got a vestigial apostrophe like the umlaut of Spinal Tap), and that's good enough for me.

Best Original Screenplay

1. The Hurt Locker (2008): Mark Boal
2. Inglourious Basterds (2009)*: Quentin Tarantino
3. The Messenger (2009/I): Alessandro Camon, Oren Moverman
4. A Serious Man (2009): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
5. Up (2009): Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Thomas McCarthy

No time, no time. I'm hoping they'll award Inglorious because it was a genius film, but the leftover spillage will probably help The Hurt Locker.

Best Adapted Screenplay

1. District 9 (2009): Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell
2. An Education (2009): Nick Hornby
3. In the Loop (2009)*: Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
4. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009): Geoffrey Fletcher
5. Up in the Air (2009/I): Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner

District 9 is supposed to be excellent (I just got it from Netflix and haven't seen it yet). I did just see "In the Loop" and it's as sharp as a samurai sword. I hope it wins and it's likely to, since it's an allegory of the Iraq War (which people still are against) while District is an allegory about race and immigration (which is passe in Obama's America... at least according to the standard Hollywood meathead)

Oscars 2010 - Analysis, part 1 (Picture, Director)

Oscar Day is upon us and, as has been happening more often in recent years, I have had no time to read up or prepare for my predictions... which will make them as accurate as always. Sadly, I have seen one or two of the nominated films, which naturally biases my analysis. Maybe, after my planned success at the super-Lotto, I will have the time and means to watch all the films, but until then, I will continue my flawed merry way.

Method

The baseline, so far as I've seen, is that the voters are truly trying to choose the best but (a) because most people in Hollywood are high-school dropouts, it's not clear that my criteria are anywhere near theirs, and (b) the voters are swayed by a number of crazy biases that put predictions into the random category. Big biases are: (a) the producer voters, often in their 70s and 80s, are not only stupid and uneducated, they are prejudiced with archaic stereotypes about life and meaning (see below for applications of this), (b) many of the awards are given to make up for last year's Oscar mistakes, e.g. Sean Penn wins for "Milk" because "Brokeback Mountain" was rejected a 2 years before aaaand (c) [current events' issues] California had just rejected gay marriage.

To be honest, I used to think that the voters were sympathetic to (d) 'lifetime achievement' candidates, but I think that it's just the fourth prong of the general computation - that a majority of voters will choose lifetime achievement if (a) there's no clear standout candidate, plus (b) no mistakes or (c) politics. Again, see below for applications.

As such, I need to analyze the candidate's (a) history of past work, concentrating on the past 3 years and then lifetime, (b) general murmuring of the quality of performance, (c) the zeitgeist of Hollywood-idiot politics, and (d) commercial success (which I've discussed before, but basically since the Oscars are simply put an industry awarding it's top employees, success is going to be rewarded - this can be called the Titanic effect).

This year, I'm also going to Odds from here - because there's some social-psychological merit in the collective wisdom of crowds. My basic ballot (and links) are from IMDb. Predicted winner is marked with a star (*).

Best Picture -- Odds; Nominees:

1. Avatar (2009) *: James Cameron, Jon Landau
2. The Blind Side (2009): Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove, Broderick Johnson
3. District 9 (2009): Peter Jackson, Carolynne Cunningham
4. An Education (2009): Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey
5. The Hurt Locker (2008): Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier, Greg Shapiro
6. Inglourious Basterds (2009): Lawrence Bender
7. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009): Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness, Gary Magness
8. A Serious Man (2009): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
9. Up (2009): Jonas Rivera
10. Up in the Air (2009/I): Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman, Jason Reitman

Now remember that this year they've expanded to 10 movies and revamped the voting system - which will make predictions harder than ever. Yet, even then, almost everyone thinks that this is a battle between two powerhouses: Avatar and The Hurt Locker. I'll give pros/cons for those 2 alone because I don't have time to eliminate all the other movies, except for some quick comments:

Inglourious Basterds - the more time since I've seen the film, the more I feel that it's a masterpiece; both of Tarantino and of Borges-like meta-fiction. If there were no other strong contenders, then this would win - it would be like No Country for Old Men or The Departed - which were OK movies from great directors who got the top prize because the competition was weak. I happen to hate "No Country" and compared to O Brother, Where Art Thou? (which wasn't even nominated!!) it's just plain bad. But compared to puppy-dogs like
Atonement and Juno , or good-but-not-spectacular Michael Clayton or There Will Be Blood then the Coens were given their lifetime achievement award. Same can be said for Departed (vs. Babel; Letters from Iwo Jima; Little Miss Sunshine ; or The Queen) none of those four were quality enough to overpower the lifetime achievement of Scorcese... even though it was not his best film by a long-shot.

So sorry Tarantino; I hope you're still creative enough to make another brilliant epic like Inglorious.

Pros for Avatar:

1. It's one of the most lucrative movies in history - as of this week, it has grossed 2.6 billion dollars and it's still in theaters.
2. It has advanced film technology to the next level, just on it's own
3. It has restored the glory of the movie theater experience - and this is a big deal. Ya see, movies have been in competition with TV ever since the latter was born (e.g. it's why movies are 'letterbox' - to compete with TV's square screen). Personally, I avoid the theater because I enjoy movies 100x more at home. But my popularizing digital-3D, Cameron may have just saved the entire movie theater industry.
4. I've heard from others that it is derivative but fun. It's "Dances with Wolves" but with better explosions. And remember, Dances won.

Cons:

1. I've heard people grumble that it's derivative and dumb. Note, this really hasn't hurt a movie's Oscar chances in my memory. See, uh, Titanic.
   
2. I've heard people grumble that it's racist. This *really* hasn't hurt any movie. I was just thinking about this the other day: two of the biggest movies in Hollywood history are racist as hell: The Birth of a Nation (1915) - which glorified the KKK, and The Jazz Singer (1927) whose movie posters have a guy in black-face for goodness sake!

Pros for The Hurt Locker:

1. It depicts the Iraq War with "realism" (defined here as "it looks scary for people who've never been to war but has been derided by actual veterans"). As such, this movie can benefit from the Platoon - Deer Hunter effect. Not too shabby.
2. As above with 'Nam, many people in Hollywood want to be seen as 'serious' about a terrible current-event, and war is the best event to be current on. Most of the Iraq War movies have been turkeys. This is the best one yet (sez many many people). And that helps.
3. This is a war movie directed by a woman. That gets some votes, for a double glass-ceiling breaking (directing itself, and a war movie nukh).
4. This may be too weird vis-a-vis Hollywood politics, but Bigelow's cult classic Point Break (1991) starred Patrick Swayze who just died tragically, and that also could help.

After all has been said and done, I think that Avatar has too many pros, not enough cons. It's too freakin' huge and it did 3 things that nobody has done before (2 billion sales, grounbreaking new movie tech, saving movie theaters). Would Hurt Locker have beaten Inglorious without Avatar, dunno, but this one seems to be Avatar's win.

Best Director -Nominees:

1. Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (2008)
2. James Cameron for Avatar (2009)
3. Lee Daniels for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
4. Jason Reitman for Up in the Air (2009/I)
5. Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds (2009)

These two categories go together - and in an uncontested year they'll share winners, as the Wiki sez:

Invariably, the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture have been very closely linked throughout their history. Of the 80 films that have been awarded Best Picture, 59 have also been awarded Best Director. Only three films have won Best Picture without their directors being nominated (though only one since the early 1930s): Wings (1927/28), Grand Hotel (1931/32), and Driving Miss Daisy (1989). The only two Best Director winners to win for films which did not receive a Best Picture nomination are likewise in the early years

And according to this fun stat site it's very rare for Best Picture and Director to be separated:

1. 1972 (45th) Picture: The Godfather (director Francis Ford Coppola was nominated).
   Directing: Cabaret (Bob Fosse).
2. 1981 (54th) Picture: Chariots of Fire (director Hugh Hudson was nominated).
   Directing: Reds (Warren Beatty).
3. 1989 (62nd) Picture: Driving Miss Daisy (director Bruce Beresford was NOT nominated).
   Directing: Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone).
4. 1998 (71st) Picture: Shakespeare in Love (director John Madden was nominated).
   Directing: Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg).
5. 2000 (73rd) Picture: Gladiator (director Ridley Scott was nominated).
   Directing: Traffic (Steven Soderbergh).
6. 2002 (75th) Picture: Chicago (director Rob Marshall was nominated).
   Directing: The Pianist (Roman Polanski).
7. 2005 (78th) Picture: Crash (director Paul Haggis was nominated).
   Directing: Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee).

Given that, I think it's probable that they will be separated this year with Avatar as best picture and Bigelow as best director. Mainly because all the pros (above) for Avatar winning 'picture' are about its production and not its direction/art. Hence, I believe the voters will intentionally split the difference. Then again, like with Peter Jackson's win for the Lord of the Frodo trilogy, they could just bow down to Cameron's expertise... but since he won for the same honors for Titanic, I feel Bigelow's strong candidacy will pay off in this.

Part 2+ will be for the other awards.

Food Normalities

Note: this was a draft that was accidently published too early. It's a note to myself (in bad grammer): "why is salad = lettuce"

It's part of a larger investigation in the sociology of knowledge, focusing on food. In this case, the simple question, why did lettuce become the absolute basis for the thing we call "salad."

Pic from here.

Glorious Purimshpiel

I saw the most excellent film, Inglorious Basterds, earlier, but rather than wait for all my ideas to coalesce around it I just want to say, on this Purim day, that the movie works perfectly as a Purimshpiel. It's possibly the most gloriously violent (and sadly fictional) destruction of Amalek by Jews ever shown on film.

Pic from here of the awesome Bear Jew.

Gefilte Fish is a Funny Word

This is not a joke:

Oooooklahomaaaa!

Not sure why, but I was reminded recently about how much I like Jon Lovitz. It's this 80s Nostalgia stuff that we gen-Xers are allowing ourselves, who knows. Lovitz was consistantly weird and funny (and, evidently he beat up Andy Dick in 2007 - which is more than I'd dare imagine a comedic hero doing). Maybe the nostalgia was fueled by someone mentioning the state of Oklahoma.

So after looking all over the intertubes, I just can't find a clip of the super-wonderful Jon Lovitz SNL sketch from 1987: "Wedgie Fever." A sketch that permanently changed the nations view of, and pronunciation thereto, of Oklahoma.

I did find the pic from here though, and while searching the official NBC SNL clip site, I came across these two clips from the 80s which can satisfy some of the nostalgia cravings.

The first is Lovitz - who is underrated, possibly because he's quite strange - as Mephistopheles in the People's Court:


The second is possibly one of the finest from the Reagan era, if not all time. It's just a snippet of the brilliant sketch of Reagan as a competent world leader:

Me and the New Republic

We finally canceled our subscription to the New Republic. I'd like to contrast my relationship to TNR to two other magazines: The Atlantic, which I also canceled, and the New Yorker, which I've retained.

The Atlantic is a very good magazine, with a top-notch website and bloggers. But when the recession hit, I needed to cut back on frivolities, and I found that I was just not reading the Atlantic that much. Maybe a fifth or quarter of the issue. So out it went - but if my fortunes were better, I'd subscribe again because it's a quality product.

The New Yorker is both a quality product and an identity object. My family's been subscribing for decades, even through the execrable Tina Brown years, and it's part of how we see our life as public intellectuals. The writing is consistently superb - it's probably the finest source non-fiction around. They also employ fact-checkers, so you can actually trust what's between the covers. And they have cartoons.

Just a quick example of the New Yorker's excellence; last week's issue has an story about an international arms dealer, that you should read if you want to (a) know how accurate Hollywood action-thrillers are (e.g. the dealer, Monzer al-Kassar, is the son of a Syrian diplomat, buys weapons from a factory in Poland, lives in Spain, and uses third and fourth person proxies, in different countries, so to avoid violating flaccid international laws against arms trafficking; he's arrested in Spain in 1995 and after three main witnesses are compromised - somebody killed them or kidnapped their children - he's let free); (b) to know just how scary international intrigue is; and (c) read something you can trust, because as opposed to most books, magazines, and especially newspapers, everything in the article has been verified.

Anyway, what about the New Republic? Well, like the Atlantic, I found that I wasn't reading the magazine - or website - all that much. True, both magazines suffered from the end of the Bush era/2008 Election and the news-junky-dom that those terrible times created, but it's more than that. I found that I just couldn't trust what I was reading in TNR anymore. Here's why:

1. Very Bad Reporters - Top of this list is the uber-hack James "T" Kirchick. I even asked TNR to change their editorial policy and put the authors of specific pieces at the beginning of the article rather than at the end - not only to avoid the worst of their reporters (more below) but specifically for Kirchick who is a serial fantasist, hysteric, and all-around worthless presence. James Woolcott, not usually a person I'd quote due to his persona as bilious cat queen, was spot on when defending Joe Klein in a spat with Kirchick, stating:

   "Kirchick is the Eddie Haskell of neoconservatives, a calculating little suck-up whose obsequious pieties drip like melted plastic. (To wit: "Reached for comment, Kirchick said 'McCain spent five years in a North Vietnamese torture camp. He doesn't need lessons in the horrors of war from the likes of Joe Klein.'") If Commentary made a lunch box, Kirchick is what you find packed inside, between a banana and a hand grenade. "

   There's a certain amount bathhouse politics in Woolcott's assessment, true, and my opposition to Kirchick isn't solely based on his idiot politics (gay republicans, like black republicans, are mystifying to me considering the GOP party platform is explicitly anti-gay and even more so implicitly anti-minority), but is focused on his journalistic crimes: he makes stuff up, distorts everything else, and his continued presence in TNR made me doubt the higher editorial purpose of the journal.
   
   
2. Other bad reporters are there too, and I'd list them, but their names get confusing to me (there's like 11 Jonathans on staff) and the key is that some may get the facts right but when called on to editorialize - which is nearly all the time - their judgement/wisdom is abysmal. The mixing of editorialism and journalism is the next big issue:
   
   
3. TNR Moved from News to Opinion - I never knew if a story could be considered journalism or an editorial. Almost every piece seemed to advocate a position and it was getting maddening. Not only do I want to read journalism from journalists - I get opinions from better people, thank you - but the opinions presented were often purposefully marginal and loopy; what has now been labeled 'Contrarianism.' I first noticed this in Slate - which is why I stopped reading them as well, about 3 years ago. Every Slate piece seemed to be angled to present an opposition to conventional wisdom, which thus meant that facts were twisted or obviated and crazy ideas were emphasized, just to be hip/catchy/shocking/whatever. Since it was clearly a marketing strategy rather than an intellectual one, I swiftly chucked the website from my reading. But then the same tone/goal seemed to spread all across the intertubes and eventually rested uneasily in TNR (see next).
   
   

4. TNR Started to Champion 'Contrarianism' as an editorial policy - as stated above, Contrarianism (for how this is used by others, see this Economist piece) is a journalistic attitude of twisting a story's perspective to present a minority/marginal point of view. E.g. "eating cheese may lower cholesterol!" "Cheney says Obama is not a liberal!" "Spree Killers may eat too much cheese, are too liberal, says Cheney"). It's a terrible trend in journalism and it reeks of flop-sweat. This trend is especially sad given that the Obama administration is fighting gamely against the gnarled nihilistic nub of the GOP who have cynically contradicted everything the good-guys have been trying to do. But since TNR, Slate, and even the Washington Post (so I've been told), among others, are committed to contrarianism - the two intellectual tactics help each other. The GOP happily distorts facts and these journalists oblige with their own twists. It's hurting the country and I want no part of it.
   
   
5. The Website became unusable - at one point, early in 2008, TNR's website was still a place I could go to find out breaking news in politics or what-have-you. Now, I have no idea how to use the dang thing - there's thirteen different blogs, each sharing front-page space, and it's just an addled mess.

All told, TNR had to go, and I don't see returning any time soon.

Update 1: When searching for good pics for this post, which I do after writing it, I found this story from Oct 2009 about others who hate Slate's contrariansism. Nice to know I'm not alone.

Update 2: Just had a blinding insight - contrarianism has existed on the internet for a while, but it's generally called being a 'concern troll.' While they're not exactly the same, the attitude is similar enough that I think the epithet fits.

First pic from here, second from here. Third pic comes from some dude's 4-chan pile and relates to update 2.

High Two

When we describe our kids as geniuses, we often mean that they're precocious - i.e. that they exhibit thought processes of an age older than they are. Yet this presumption of precociousness is based on a parent's knowledge of what children are generally capable of and unless the parent is an expert in (developmental) psychology, medicine, or a child-care professional (e.g. teacher, PT, nurse, what-have-you) then the presumption could be wrong.

The 'genius/precocious' label is more reliable if the child exhibits actual adult behavior/cognition. Especially if the observed behavior/cognition is rare even within adults.

My middle child, Jota Minuscula, constantly amazes us with this genius behavior. He truly thinks outside the box and is also truly funny.

Story from last night: He and his older brother, Big B, were leaving home with their grandmother for a big-boy sleepover. I was holding their baby sister in my arms and Big B, who was dressed in his full winter ensemble, asked if I could hold the baby so he could give her a "high five" - which he did. Then Jota piped up: "No, not a high-five, a high-two because you're wearing mittens!"

Now, this whole observation would be moot if someone told Jota that joke - but we didn't know who did (I didn't). His mom admitted that she wouldn't have thought of that kind of joke, at least as an instant retort. As such, I need to assume that he just thought it up - especially because he's done stuff like that before. It's just the way his mind works.

Star Wars Revisited

I'm watching Star Wars (or as the neo-geeks call it now, "A New Hope" but as the nerds call it, "Star Wars") to see if it's apporpriate for my sons (yeah, that's the ticket). A few comments:

1. The ending sequence, the Battle of Yavin (a.k.a. The attack on the death star) is one of the best in movie history and has permanently elevated Lucas into the public discourse - it's why I even care about his later work and why I feel betrayed by his future crimes.

2. The Porkins Effect - This is what I'm now labeling the general status of Lucas' movie-making crimes. If you recall, and if you need help here's the online script, Luke's flight wing was the 'red team' with Luke as Red Five. One of his wingmates is Red Six, a.k.a. "Porkins":

INTERIOR: PORKINS' COCKPIT.

PORKINS: Red Six standing by.

Porkins, is, how do I say it, chubby. So, OK, I thought, maybe this is just a pilot nickname, like the Top Gun thing ("Maverick" "Ice man" "Certified Public Accountant"), but no: the official Lucas universe states that the character's name is Jek Porkins.

To review: despite all being White Anglo Saxon Protestant humanoids, many with classical Western names (Luke, Ben), sometimes they have made-up nonesense names (Han, Jek) that will be mixed up with real words (Solo, Porkins). And he's fat, so his name is Pork. As you see from the picture (more from here), many others have found this character problematic.

So what's my beef (pun intended) with Porkins? His name is childish, stupid, and unimaginative. And this impulse to turn fun, exciting, action into puerility is what overtook Lucas's latter films. This is related to the Ewok Effect, where serious matters are converted into cutesy-poo family-market pandering, but while Ewoks were meant to push toys, and thus demonstrates artistic integrity sacrificed for greed, Porkins is artistic integrity sacrificed for cheap laughs for six year olds.

True, both the Ewok and Porkins effects combined to create the dreaded, execrable Jar-Jar Binks, but my point here is to say that this impulse was present in even the first beloved film.

BTW, this looks like an awesome website made by fellow-travelers from my generation.

3. Inconsistencies between the Original Three and the Hated Last Three

Just for ease of use, even though the last triology were planned prequels, such that the first movie (A New Hope) is to be numbered 4, or somesuch, I declare here - in concert with all those born in the 1970s - that the original trilogy are to be numbered 1 2 and 3 while the last trilogy are to be burned at the crossroads at midnight and if they are to be referred to at all, they are to be known by their real-life chronology of 4, 5, and 6. Hear ye.

Ahem. Anyway, I am on record stating that the 6th movie, Sith, is the worst of the bunch. One reason it's atrocious is the ham-fisted attempts to make the prequels consistent with the original trilogy. Never mind that the technology of the latter trilogy is way better than what was to have taken place 20 years in the future, the biggest problem is that the entire tenor of the first three films - meant to resurrect the underdog resistance of WWII, think Casablanca - is totally undermined.

But besides tone, I now realize, seeing the first film again after a few years - possibly the first time since seeing Sith - is how many freakin' facts are wrong!

The best example is this dialogue between Obi-Wan and Luke:

LUKE: No, my father didn't fight in the wars. He was a navigator on a spice freighter.

BEN: That's what your uncle told you. He didn't hold with your father's ideals. Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved.

LUKE: You fought in the Clone Wars?

BEN: Yes, I was once a Jedi Knight the same as your father.

LUKE: I wish I'd known him.

BEN: He was the best star-pilot in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior. I understand you've become quite a good pilot yourself. And he was a good friend. Which reminds me...

BEN: I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damned-fool idealistic crusade like your father did.

What do we learn from this:

1. Obi Wan and Anakin were about the same age, and lived together in Tatoonie as friends,
   
2. "Uncle" Owen knew Anakin and Kenobi and didn't want them to go off and fight for ideals in the Clone Wars,
   
3. Anakin and Obi-Wan were already, or later became, Jedi Knights, pilots, and were already enlisting to go on an idealistic crusade.
   
4. The Clone Wars seem to be already about fighting for ideals, the implication is against the Empire, and there were air-battles and tactics fought and implemented by Jedis,
   
5. The "ideals" of Obi-Wan, shared by Anakin, are meant to parallel Luke's desire to fight in the rebellion along-side his boyhood friends - and thus we can learn more facts from this nearly explicit parallel (e.g. Obi-Wan's relationship with Anakin was as comrades in arms just like Luke and Biggs).

Enough. Basta. None of those facts, which are fascinating and would make a good movie/trilogy, are present in the latter three films. Which begs the question that I will resist putting in all caps: Did Lucas watch Star Wars even once before he made the second trilogy? Seriously! It's like he forgot what he did in the first three, remembered only certain details through the Southern California doobie haze, and make the latter trilogy consistent with invented facts and not the real ones.

4. Han Shot First, Just have to say it, again. It's a motto for those of us betrayed by the Crimes of George Lucas. Pic from here.

Video of the Day: A-Ha Family Guy

My brother reminded me of this, one of my favorite examples of the great moments the Family Guy is capable of (amidst the majority of unwatchable-ness):


I Dooon't Knoooow?!

Update: For the original video (for people like my wife who've never seen what may be the best video of all time)

What Is Normal?

The title is a subject I want to explore. Ultimately, it looks like I will be concentrating more on the Sociology of Knowledge, and this is a concept that has intrigued me. I doubt I'll be able to have this as my dissertation subject, whole or in part, but I've learned years ago to follow my brain when it comes to projects. If my brain likes it, then I should do it, because brain-likey is a pre-requisite for my completion of a subject.

The research plan is to identifying the normalizing disciplines: (1) law, above all others, regulates the standards of expectations of normal behavior. This is also a way of bringing in a study of or comparison with halakha. E.g. liability, contracts, etc use expectations of normal behavior, normal human body size, etc. (2) Medicine, does this almost as frequently, and in tandem with law.

Related to this system study will be a philosophic analysis of statistics and the "normal curve." This concept/tool is crucial for understanding the term "normal"'s use in many scientific papers - right now I'm doing a JSTOR-crawl through every article with "normal" in the title and most are from hard-science journals who, based on my quick reading, use 'normal' to refer to statistic normality based on the normal curve (e.g. "Relative Blindsight in Normal Observers and the Neural Correlate of Visual Consciousness").

The normal curve, for those who are statistics savvy, has some interesting implications for how the universe works under the seams, especially when you bring in the central limit theorem. This, as usual, gives the hard sciences, with their easy to isolate units, to have a non-political 'normal' while social science, with our gross smelly units, have socially constructed normality. More anon.

Pic from here.

Six Million Dollar Man Theme

I have an unnerving love for the theme song of the Six Million Dollar Man - and especially for the opening dialogue. Set to the background of bass-drums in a military cadence the dialogue is stirring, heroic, tragic, and totally cool. The following two versions of the transcript from here (fans should read the whole page):

Version one:
"It looks good at NASA One." Flight Com
"Roger." B-52 Pilot
"BCS Arm switch is on." B-52 Pilot
"Okay, Victor." Flight Com
"Landing Rocket Arm switch is on." B-52 Pilot
"Here comes the throttle." B-52 Pilot
"Circuit breakers in." B-52 Pilot
"We have separation." Steve
"Roger." SR-71 pilot
"Inboard and outboards are on." B-52 Pilot
"I'm comin' forward with the side stick." B-52 Pilot
"Looks good." Flight Com
"Ah, Roger." B-52 Pilot
"I've got a blow-out in damper three!" Steve
"Get your pitch to zero." SR-71 pilot
"Pitch is out! I can't hold altitude!" Steve
"Correction, Alpha Hold is off. . . Threat selector is emergency!" B-52 Pilot
"Flight Con! I can't hold it! She's breaking up, she's break—" Steve

Version Two:
"Oscar to NASA One." Oscar
"Roger." NASA One
"VP is armed switch is on." Victor
"Okay, Victor." Oscar
"Lighting Rods are armed switch is on. Here comes the starter, circuit breakers in." Victor
"We have separation." Victor [This is actually Lee Major's voice, as is the next one.]
"Roger." Oscar
"Inboard and outboards are on. Come a-port with the sidestick." NASA One
"Oscar?" Oscar
"Uh, Roger." NASA One
"I've got a blowout — vapor three!" Oscar
"Get your pitch to zero." NASA One
"Pitch is out — I can't hold altitude." Oscar
"Direction alpha hold is off — try trajectory emergency." NASA One [this may be a reference to the emergency rockets]
"Flight Comm! I can't hold it! She's breaking up, she's break..." Oscar

The above video was made by me combining a pic from here with the sound from here.

Temptations and Serious Music

I grew up listening to the Temptations. I got lucky, I guess, because my High School library in Ithaca had records (no CDs) and we had a record player at home, and I was able to listen (Leo Strauss would emphasize that I did not transfer these records to audio-tape for listening later) to this music over and over. I was primed to know the artists because I listened to Ithaca College radio for hours, especially on Sunday afternoons where they had, from 10:00 am - 12:00 pm "Breakfast with the Beatles" and 12:00-6:00pm "Classic Rock Sunday." I listened every week, for years. IC was a center for training professional broadcasters, so this wasn't hippie ganja-smoking alternative dumpage but well-trained jocks spinning quality music.

So, I had a good environment (IC radio), experience (listening for hundreds of hours), and resource access (HS library, record player at home) for choosing among many different types of music. It was at this time that I fell in aesthetic love with Jethro Tull (and to a lesser extent with the other Flute-Rock dudes, Traffic), but primarily with the Temptations. I also had access to the Four Tops, and the two bands are often compared (and confused with each other). It's not hard to see why, superficially, this confusion exists: 4 vs. 5 young black men singing syncopated R&B and produced by the same label (Motown).

Even though I felt that musically the Temptations were just plain better than the Tops, I couldn't begrudge the latter's top tunes: "Standing in the Shadows of Love," "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)," "It's the Same Old Song," "Reach Out, I'll Be There," "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got)," and "Bernadette." Yet, I gravitated to the Temptations who I subconscious appreciated on a greater level.

After years of listening, I realize one reason that I may have been attracted to the Tempts and not the Tops could be the inherent seriousness of the Temptations' songs and lyrics. Just now I did the research online and it's clear that there were main songwriting teams for each group, and they did not share, and that the crew behind the Tops (Holland-Dozier-Holland) wrote catchy love songs and the crew behind the Temptations, Norman Whitfield & Barry Strong, wrote serious deep music. To cite the Wiki:

[Whitfield/Strong wrote] the long line of "psychedelic soul" records by The Temptations, including "Cloud Nine", "I Can't Get Next to You", "Psychedelic Shack", "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)", and "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone",

Even without knowing that there were these distinct schools, just compare the themes of the top-scoring songs:

"Standing in the Shadows of Love" = The moment of realization when love goes sour
vs.
"Cloud Nine" = singer's faux-autobiography of poverty leading to drug abuse

"I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)" = uh, the singer can't help himself because he loves his woman so much
vs.
"Runaway Child, Running Wild" = the sad fate of teenage runaways

"Bernadette" = a woman, named Bernadette, makes lovin' hard
vs.
"Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" = the difficult life of broken families and deadbeat dads.

"Baby I Need Your Loving" = The singer, speaking to his woman, whom he calls 'baby', states that he needs her loving, in fact he got to have all of it.
vs.
"Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)" = a plea for sanity in a world beset by war, poverty, and declining trust in institutions of leadership.

I could go on, but you get the pattern. True, the Tempts had they cheezy songs as well (e.g. "My Girl") but I could make a claim that were deeper, more soulful, than the others, but I won't bother with that direction - because the Tops did not have deep songs and the Temptations had dozens - even from artists other than Whitfield/Strong.

This insight struck me the other day and a little googling confirms the stunning pattern, and why I recommend their music with confidence. That even though they are best known for their flashy costumes and choreography (allmusic states in the first line of their biography: "Thanks to their fine-tuned choreography -- and even finer harmonies -- the Temptations became the definitive male vocal group of the 1960s;") their serious music is why they should be given the most respect.

Pic from here.

Philipine Karaoke Killings

OK, this is from my wife. I've sent a link to the Dave Barry Blog (who amazingly has not referenced the story, possibly because he's face-deep in a beer filled kiddie pool in the Miami hosted superbowl. Anyway, this could be one of the craziest articles I've read: Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord. Some choice quotes:

"The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”" ... "In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” "

"Stand-alone karaoke machines can be found in the unlikeliest settings, including outdoors in rural areas where men can sometimes be seen singing early in the morning."

"But in karaoke bars where one song costs 5 pesos, or a tenth of a dollar, strangers often rub shoulders, sometimes uneasily. A subset of karaoke bars with G.R.O.’s — short for guest relations officers, a euphemism for female prostitutes — often employ gay men, who are seen as neutral, to defuse the undercurrent of tension among the male patrons. Since the gay men are not considered rivals for the women’s attention — or rivals in singing, which karaoke machines score and rank — they can use humor to forestall macho face-offs among the patrons."

Pic from here of some weirdness from Japan.

Who Knew Greece Was the Party Country?

From my brother, in today's Times story quietly entitled: Is Greece’s Debt Trashing the Euro?, we read this:

"Striking is a bit of a national sport in Greece. Last month, the country’s unionized prostitutes took to the streets, protesting unlicensed competition from Russian and Eastern European immigrants."

I am speechless.

Pic from here.

Groundhog Day Alert

The official song of Groundhog Day: I Got You Babe (played over and over and over)



By the way, you heard it here first (unless I mentioned it last year) that Groundhog Day and Tu B'Shvat carry the same meaning: that each day is 6 weeks before spring. Pigday if the pig sees (and/or doesn't see) his shadow, and Tu B'shvat can be either 6 weeks before the start of Spring - defined as Rosh Chodesh Nisan - or 10 weeks (in a leap year)

Maharat Becomes Rabbah

So the intertubes are aflame with the shocking, shocking, news that Avi Weiss's female ordinee, Maharat Sara Hurwitz, will now be called "Rabbah" (the female of Rabbi, and not "Fat Person"). See this JTA Story and the official pronouncement from their blog.

My reaction? In brief:


NB: The sound/film clip of Iago from Aladdin was made by me - but feel free to spread the code around the tubes...

Plasma! Dog Plasma!

Tex Avery Rules! Crazy Mixed Up Pup (1954):


Update: This was nominated for an Oscar in 1955, but lost to a Mr. Magoo! Note, even though some crank throws some hate on the Magoo on the IMDB page, it actually wasn't that bad. True, it's crazy that the best cartoon-maker of all time, Tex Avery, would lose any head-to-head contest, but we all know the Oscars are foolish. Anyway, determine it for yourself.

Robo-Land, Massachusetts Senate 2010

So Massachusetts is now in one of those teabagger fueled election death-struggles. Which means that for the past week or so we've been getting robocalls every few minutes or so. Robocalls, like mudslinging, turns voters off, not on and the candidates should know that. Karl Rove did - that's why he'd only pay for robocalls for his opponents (I think).

Anyway, the election tomorrow (Tuesday) is between a lackluster Democrat and a pretty-boy GOP walking-teabag cypher. The fact that we're in this place is scary to me, as a Democrat and a supporter of the president, but it's also a testimony to machine politics. We shouldn't be here, but here's why I think we are:

1. Martha Coakley is a poor candidate. Sadly, she's a combination of Hillary Clinton & John Kerry - an unimaginative, and mean, woman whose ambition overshadows her talent. I voted against her in the primary for this reason and were she in any fashion decent, this election wouldn't be so close. A sign of her paucity as a candidate is her desire to go negative early and often. Even when she was leading by double-digits in the primary, she attacked her opponents - one reason why I voted against her. And that undeserved hauteur - a hallmark of Kerry - is undoing her now.

2. Massachusetts screwed up the voting schedule - I said this before - there's a reason to have elections all at the same time. We should have had the primary on the November day and the special election soon after. Rather MA is forcing people to go to vote 3 times in close succession. It's expensive and time consuming. And unlike my fellow pundit-curmudgeons, I sympathize with good faith reasons for being unable to vote (with our 3 kids we're forced to find a babysitter or work out a way to switch places and go to the polls - not easy, and we both have time flexible jobs!) And voting in January in Massachusetts?! In-freakin-sane! The inevitable low-voter-turnout of the bad scheduling favors the crazy, under-employed, and committed - and in an off-year that means that opposition party.

3. Obstructionism Works - The GOP are better obstructionsists that Democats for a number of reasons: (a) conservatives, almost by definition, are against change which means they WANT to stop things, (b) the GOP is against government (pretty much) and so stopping legislative movement is part of their ideology, (c) the party, since Newt's time, has had remarkable voting unity - which helps obstructions.

In any case, the GOP obstructionism has given the view to the electorate that Congress isn't capable of doing anything and that helps the GOP depict themselves as the loyal opposition. Of course the truth is that they are continuing the despicable practices of their 2000-2008 reign... but most voters seem unable to capture that right now - aided by Coakley's hacky negativity.

Tomorrow may determine the end of the Obama era - just like Clinton's Democrats let him down from 1993-1994, so the stupid Democrats of 2009-2010 may end Obama before he can really begin.

Briefly stated, we need to get rid of the filibuster - it's become unconstitutional. Beforehand, the Senators, knowing they had a terrible weapon, only used it for the most severe cases. But the current GOP, like the gun-toting hillbillies who make up their core electorate, are using their weapons for everything. Sadly, it's time to take the gun away. I'll say more anon about that, though.