The flexitarians
On the rarest of occasions, I consider becoming a vegetarian. I'm not ethically opposed to eating animals. We've got our incisors for a reason. But I'm starting to buy into the fact that avoiding meat means more energy and less fatigue in my daily life, and that slowing the rate of meat production might also help to slow the heating of the planet. Experts
say.
That's why I was drawn to
this article which begins with the line-- "There's never been a better time to be a half-assed vegetarian."It's a thought-provoking feature that pertains to the vegan community's ethical dilemma over the consumption of honey, and their altruism in general, but I found this statistic interesting: Thirteen percent of U.S. adults are semi-vegetarians, meaning they eat meat with fewer than half their meals, while only one percent
never eat meat. That's a much bigger bandwagon for the half-assed herbivores than I had imagined. Author Michael Pollan summarizes the science of nutrition with three sentences, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Bad haiku, good advice.
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The latest John McCain television ad attempts to denigrate Barack Obama by linking him to vacuous celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, so imagine if you're Paris Hilton's father and you
previously made the largest personal political donation allowable by law to McCain's campaign.
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The Chicago Cubs are up for auction, and Mark Cuban is
considered a frontrunner among the final five bidders for the team. My money's still on John Canning, Bud Selig's buddy from Milwaukee, but what bugs me about the information in the linked story is the revelation that current Cubs owner Sam Zell also holds a minority stake in the Chicago White Sox. (That whole relationship between the Cubs, White Sox, and Tribune Broadcasting has always confused me.) Major League Baseball prohibits majority ownership in two different teams by any one entity, but it looks the other way on any arrangement short of that. What if minority ownership in one franchise amounts to a larger investment than majority interest in another?
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Rush Limbaugh's been
hinting that he might want to buy the NFL's St. Louis Rams. I would venture to guess that Limbaugh would not even be the most politically-conservative owner in pro sports, given what we already know about the fraternity. It might also be wrong then to presume him the first drug addict in their ranks.
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NBC News
just hired Tim Russert's son, Luke, to serve as political correspondent during the upcoming Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Luke recently graduated from Boston University. America is truly the land of opportunity.
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Get To Know: Presidential Candidate Barack Obama
Savage Mules
Dennis Perrin, a former writer for "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO, has a new book in publication in which he argues the case that the Democratic Party began as a war party hasn't changed its stripes since, despite its modern-day reputation as an anti-war party. The reality of the modern Democrats supported the "surge" in Iraq, gave Bush more money than he requested for his war, and voted through a defense budget of over $459 billion. This
link provides a Q-and-A with Perrin and Huffington Post's Christian Avard.
Says Perrin, "Voting for better Democrats just gets us more Democrats. All it does is keep the system in place. What should we replace it with? I don't know, but to know what that will look like [ahead of time] is insane. The whole process of social change is that you don't know how it's going to end. All you know is what your hopes and desires are in the present, and you build towards something."
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Thanks to one of our out-of-state readers for forwarding
this piece of overlooked Iowa news.
Is stripping an art? I think the answer to that question has to be-- it depends on who's doing the stripping.
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This blog posting was also emailed to me. (I get the message--my topics have been a little boring lately.) It might be the best thing ever written about a guest harmonica player on "Hee Haw."
Baseball's blackball
In Cooperstown, NY today, Goose Gossage, former Cardinals manager (the late) Billy Southworth, and three deceased executives. Not to be found at the podium was 91-year-old Marvin Miller, who revolutionized the game as director of the players union from 1966 to 1983.
Peter Dreier and Kelly Candaele (brother of former big leaguer Casey Candaele) explain how we arrived at this injustice.
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Adam Wainwright's strikeout of Carlos Beltran to end Game 7 of the 2006 National League Championship Series may wind up being the final post-season image of old Shea Stadium in New York, but Billy Joel was still
creating new memories with a series of Shea concerts this week.
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Roger Ebert wrote this week, "Sometimes I think I am living in a nightmare. All about me, standards are collapsing, manners are evaporating, people show no respect for themselves. I am not a moralistic nut. I'm proud of the X-rated movie I once wrote. I like vulgarity if it's funny or serves a purpose. But what is going on here?" The film that sparked Ebert's existential anguish is Columbia Pictures'
"Step Brothers".
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The immigration raid of Agriprocessors, Inc. in Postville, Iowa in May
still has the attention of
The New York Times. Working conditions at the meatpacking plant read like the muckraking accounts of turn-of-the-century Chicago in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Corporate America has managed to roll back the clock a full century on child and slave labor.
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Here's a
photo gallery from Comic-Con 2008. Remember to laugh
with them.
Thank you for being a friend
Estelle Getty, the veteran stage actress cast as octogenarian Sophia Petrillo in "The Golden Girls" in 1980, died yesterday at the age of 84. The Sophia character had suffered from a mild stroke that supposedly limited her ability to filter her comments, and this conceit allowed the diminutive Getty to claim many of the series' most comedic lines.
In the late 1980s, I became familiar with a concept called a "Q score," and it was first in passing reference to Estelle Getty. A "Q score" is the measure of the "likeability" or appeal of a product, company, or personality. It's used primarily by marketing, advertising, and public relations outfits . The higher the Q score, the more popular that subject with the general public, and Estelle Getty's was apparently off the charts-high. (Christina Applegate's score was also quite lofty, as I recall, as was-- one would suspect-- Tony Danza's.)
Getty had lived in Los Angeles since being cast in "The Golden Girls" (alongside Bea Arthur, Betty White, and Rue McClanahan). Her husband of 57 years preceded her in death in 2004.
Here's
Estelle in action, from YouTube.
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What information will you find in Saudi Arabian schoolbooks? For one thing, the answer to this query--
Is belief true in the following instances?:
a) A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.
b) A man professes that there is no deity other than God but loves the unbelievers.
c) A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers.
The kingdom's answer
here.
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Are men of genius
wise to avoid the entanglements of marriage?
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By my rough count, the home of the baseball Cardinals, Busch Stadium, features statues (or busts) of no fewer than the likes of Dizzy Dean, Red Schoendienst, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Ozzie Smith, Gussie Busch, Jack Buck, Enos Slaughter, George Sisler, Cool Papa Bell, and two of Stan Musial. A completed statue of Mark McGwire sits still hidden in storage, and they would have one erected to Jazz Age hitting star Rogers Hornsby too, if anyone could remember what he looked like.
But the White Sox dedicating a statue to their first base coach, Harold Baines, is going way overboard.
Salon's King Kaufman agrees. He suggests that all of baseball is suffering from
"statue inflation".
The balcony is closed
A great TV show, "At the Movies," is coming to a quiet end after 33 years. The name may live on, but current co-host Richard Roeper and long-time co-host Roger Ebert say they're leaving the Disney-ABC program as the syndicator looks to transform the movie review product into an "Entertainment Tonight"-style Hollywood tabloid show.
Oh, despair. The format of two critics seated in a balcony talking about movies may be more revolutionary in its simplicity now than in the 1970s when it was begun by Ebert and fellow Chicago film critic Gene Siskel, and the program is about to be transformed into the very last thing this country needs.
Ebert called the program "a wonderful experience" and said it "was a great loss to me when surgery in July 2006 made it impossible" for him to continue in an on-air capacity. Roeper, who took over Siskel's seat when the elder critic died in 1999, said in a statement that he plans to "proceed elsewhere with my ninth year as the co-host of a movie review show that honors the standards established by Siskel and Ebert." Ebert vowed, "The thumbs will return."
Even if that means going back to Chicago public television.
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The University of Iowa is going to have to explain why
they encouraged a student-athlete not to report a sexual assault.
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Our nation's finest political writer, Matt Taibbi,
predicted on Saturday that...
"The phony blue-red divide, which has been buoyed for years by some largely incidental geographical disagreements over religion and other social issues, is going to give way eventually to a real debate grounded in a brutal economic reality increasingly common to all states, red and blue."His is a must-read.
Favre sacks himself
I'm otherwise indifferent to the entire Brett Favre/Green Bay Packers retirement fiasco (except for its impact on my fantasy football team, the St. Louis Clydesdales InBev), but I have a warm regard for the tradition of athletes bowing out on their own terms.
Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith was my sporting hero when I was a child, and I had long anticipated and sentimentalized his eventual retirement. When the announcement from Ozzie arrived in June of 1996, it seemed forced from the hand of the team's newly-hired manager Tony LaRussa, who was uninterested in exploring, from the very beginning, the talents and winning-pedigree of the veteran shortstop he had just inherited. LaRussa favored for the lineup instead a now-forgotten 26-year-old replacement he claimed had "fresher legs."
It was a less-than-ideal situation for the prideful Ozzie to finish out his 15-year Cardinals tenure. The future Hall of Fame shortstop clearly would have preferred playing beyond '96, but the foresight of a midseason retirement announcement allowed for a sort of National League victory tour that was frequently dramatic and emotional. At each stop of the team's remaining road trips that season, Ozzie was honored on the opponents' field-- with gifts of appreciation ranging from a pair of fancy cowboy boots in Houston to a patch of possibly "magical" dog hair from the club owner in Cincinnati-- and the final lap was capped off with, not a retirement day, but a retirement
weekend to end the regular season at home in St. Louis, with much pomp, ceremony, and emotion.
Ozzie had a flair that way. (I'll bet he never misses watching an Oscars telecast.) He still had the itch to compete during the next couple years, but he quietly resisted offers from the San Francisco club and others to resume playing. He sensed correctly that his fans desired for him, and for themselves, a graceful, uncorrupted finale with his team of identity. Other notable sports stars-- Favre being just the most recent example-- seem to lack this same sense of time and place to appropriately wrap their careers, and the fans are stuck with these "he said, she said" media and tabloid soap operas involving the player, the team's front office, and then quite frequently, a second or third team.
Favre should have made his retirement decision a year or two ago, or made it clear to the contrary-- without all the hedging and backpedaling, laying out his plans for the future in full understanding and respect for the realities faced by an employer that will have to continue competition on the field long after he's gone off to that big knee specialist in the sky. It's not because he owed that to the franchise, his teammates, the fans, himself, or his friends and family. He owed it to the moment.
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The Radio Hall of Fame
passed over Howard Stern for induction again this year. That's a Hall of Fame then that doesn't seem like it's worth much. WHO-Des Moines sportscaster Jim Zabel, a former colleague and a hell of a guy, also lost out in his bid in the category of local/regional pioneer.
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Last weekend, Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente accepted the Green Party nominations for President and Vice President in Chicago. Acceptance speeches
here. When the law is tyranny, the order is revolution.
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What's next for Des Moines' Gateway Park neighborhood at the bottom of the hill?
The All-Star Game/Long live the King
I really enjoyed the All-Star game last night. I didn't arrive home until the 6th inning, but I still experienced plenty of high anxiety during my three hours in front of the tube. The longest Midsummer Classic in history-- 15 innings in duration-- had enough scoring threats, stranded runners, clutch plays, and boneheaded moments to fill four All-Star games. We're constantly reminded of what an exciting, dramatic sport baseball is. The action on the field rarely disappoints.
I did grow tired though of the uninterrupted bellyaching on the broadcast about the length of the game and the stress that was being placed on both the pitchers and the position players. Joe Buck and Tim McCarver should have been falling over each other describing all of the thrilling, sudden death action, and they're both great professionals, but instead we kept hearing about whether or not AL/Boston manager Terry Francona would be forced to use Tampa Bay pitcher Scott Kazmir in extra innings. What exactly is the big deal? Kazmir can't provide a couple innings in defense of his league because he showed up at Yankee Stadium on short rest? Both managers took their respective team into extra innings with three or four pitchers still available in the bullpen. What more do you-- or did you-- need in a 15 inning game? I say to them-- well done.
It should all be established in advance-- every pitcher selected for the game travels to the game under certain minimum and reasonable expectations-- two innings for starters, one inning for relievers. If you and/or your manager back home can't handle that level of contribution, there are plenty of other worthy pitchers around the circuit that would be willing to be named to the team. The Cardinals' Kyle Lohse stayed home despite being 11-2 with a 3.39 ERA at the break.
The American League ran out of position players during regulation, but the designated hitter rule was in place so there's really no reason the remaining players in the lineup couldn't all go at least nine innings, and many of them didn't even enter the game until the 8th or 9th. We'd have even more players available late if the starters weren't being pulled out of the game in the 3rd and 4th innings. Maybe that would also help the National League finally win their first game in the series since 1996. Did anyone expect the likes of Russell Martin, Ryan Ludwick, Dan Uggla, and Nate McLouth to come through in the late innings against the best closers the American League has to offer-- Mariano Rivera, Jonathan Papelbon, Joe Nathan, and Francisco Rodriguez? Where's Albert? What part of "this time it counts" am I not understanding?
As I've said before, I like the incentive of World Series home field advantage for the winning league of the All-Star game. During the 1990s, I got sick of looking at the game's starters dressed in street clothes by the time the 5th inning arrived. Baseball had a long tradition of league pride, and apparently this kind of policy is what's now required to restore the idea of ballplayers giving a damn-- at least until Pete Rose chooses to end his retirement. The popular complaint about the current policy is that a so-called "exhibition game" is being used to determine an important element of the postseason, but everyone seems to have forgotten that the previous determinant for home field advantage in the Fall Classic was alternating seasons. You can't be more indiscriminate to merit than that. Yet no one ever complained.
Next year, All-Star Game at Busch Stadium in St. Louis! They've got 12 months to try to get it right.
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Former Cardinals and current Cubs outfielder Jim Edmonds
got married this afternoon at the St. Louis County Courthouse. He tied the knot with a St. Louis-area woman while clad in a t-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. Like Mark McGwire before him, the Southern California native would seem to prefer midwest farmers' daughters to California girls.
I hope they get to honeymoon in October. You hate to put that off too long.
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I don't know what more to tell you about this Anheuser Busch sale (...but one of you asked). The forced buyout-- and it is being forced-- is disheartening to say the least-- a sad end to perhaps
the greatest American-owned and built company. Foreign board members will take over control of all aspects of the company. Divisions for packaging, entertainment, and theme parks-- 3 Sea Worlds and 2 Busch Gardens-- will likely be sold off. Employees whose positions aren't eliminated will go to work for a notoriously tight-fisted, anti-labor global conglomerate.
The InBev gang has a reputation for cost-slashing. Brewery executives likely won't be flying to work by helicopter any longer. Employees fear they may lose their individual allotment of two free cases of beer per month, to say nothing of their pensions. The company may not be long for the city of St. Louis at all, and plants could close in other parts of the U.S. as well.
Closer to home, this could mean for me and my compatriots an end to access and free public admission to Grant's Farm, a name change for both the Cardinals' ballpark and my own fantasy football team ("The Clydesdales").
I'll always be loyal to Budweiser though. Harry Caray was fired by Anheuser Busch and the Cardinals in 1969, but he continued to drink their signature beer and promote it for the rest of his life, because, he explained, it was simply the best tasting beer around.
Heaven knows the Busch clan didn't always behave perfectly throughout their five generations as King. They were guilty at times of being as crude, insulated, out-of-touch, and ignorant as any of the rest of the world's wealthiest 1%, but they're as much St. Louis as the Arch, and quite significantly the last prominent vestige of the 19th century German city. Busch patriarchs delivered to the White House, by horse wagon, the first legal beer after FDR ended Prohibition. The family name is on everything in St. Louis from colleges and hospitals to the ballpark to the animal cages at the zoo.
In one respect, it's akin to the mob surrendering Las Vegas to the corporatists in the late 1970s and '80s. There may be unprecendented development, growth, and profit yet to come, but it will never again be as fun.
The 11th Annual Chris Moeller Film Awards
You might be saying to yourself-- how can this be year number 11 of the CMFAs when the blog only dates back to 2004? That's a good question. And the answer is that I had a life before this blog. I lived and breathed, and loved, and laughed, and lost same as anybody else. I went to movies. Some good. Some bad. Some non-pornographic.
My first year out of college, 1997, was the jumping off point for film criticism. I was only employed on weekends at WHO Radio, and so weekday afternoons were often spent in dark movie houses as I dreamed of what the world on my own would bring. Would I overcome my "Pig Vomit"-like radio tormentors, as Howard Stern managed to do in that year's big-screen epic "Private Parts"? Would I one day pen a devastatingly brilliant script for a movie starring myself and my best buddy, like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in "Good Will Hunting"? Or would I put my trust in the wrong people, as Lefty Ruggiero tragically did in "Donnie Brasco"? Perhaps I would find myself one day like poor Matt Reynolds in "L.A. Confidential," dead on the floor of a seedy motel room with my throat slit, a pawn in the gay sex setup of a corrupt district attorney. The possibilities for my future were endless and thrilling.
These were the awards that were announced that year and after--
2006,
2005,
2004, and
1997 through 2003. By my estimation, 2007 was the best year in cinema since 1999, when Alexander Payne, Anthony Minghella, Spike Jonze, Mike Judge, and David Russell were each at the top of their game. Movies in '07 have helped to spark exciting new trends in everything from advanced motion-capture film to industry award recognition for independently-financed productions to teen pregnancy.
Oh jeepers creepers, I can't hold it in any longer. I have to announce the winners...
CMFA Top 5 2007Juno
Jason Reitman, dir
Lars and the Real Girl
Craig Gillespie, dir
Michael Clayton
Tony Gilroy, dir
No Country For Old Men
Ethan and Joel Coen, dir
And the 2007 Best Picture/DirectorThere Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson, dir
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Best ActressCate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Best ActorDaniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Best Supporting ActressJennifer Garner, Juno
Best Supporting ActorTom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton
Best Adapted ScreenplayPaul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Best Original ScreenplayDiablo Cody, Juno
For a movie to have a run time of nearly 2 1/2 hours, it better be the type of movie like "The Godfather" where you want to go out and purchase the DVD and then watch the movie twice a year for the rest of your life. "There Will Be Blood" fits that mold. Your eyes become glued to the central performance-- Day-Lewis as fictional prospector Daniel Plainview, who seems bigger than the screen itself. The movie has this sweeping grandeur as a period piece, and everything revolves around Day-Lewis. No character is on screen except to serve his purpose, both in production and plot. His unique acting performance echoes Brando while his character suggests Charles Foster Kane. Even in a solid year, I couldn't resist passing over a film of such grand tragedy for Best Picture/Director, or denying P.T. Anderson for his script recalling Upton Sinclair.
As great as Daniel Day-Lewis is, Cate Blanchett might be better. Pair them in the same movie and then shut down the industry for good. The clever maneuver of "I'm Not There," about the enigmatic Bob Dylan is that, of the six actors portraying the singer, only the woman is doing the actual impression. I doubt that Katherine Hepburn would have ever imagined that the same actress would win separate Chris Moeller Film Awards for portraying both her and Dylan. There's a well-publicized dearth of meaty parts for adult actresses in Hollywood, but Blanchett found a way here to bust through the ceiling.
"No Country For Old Men" was the most terrifying killer-on-the-rampage movie I've ever seen, probably because the plot, unlike others of its genre, was pulled off on screen as so plausible in real-life.
"Juno" was the
funniest movie of the year thanks to its wicked script and Ellen Page in the title role as a likeable, smart-ass teenager-- a more difficult combination to pull off than it might seem, and Jennifer Garner nearly brought tears as an affecting mother-to-be.
"Lars and the Real Girl" was the biggest surprise in both its tone and quality. The movie about an introvert from the northern woods (2006 CMFA winner Ryan Gosling) who intends to marry an inflatable sex doll was shockingly heartwarming and sweet. (The character doesn't have sex with the doll during the course of the narrative. They're saving themselves for marriage.) The film, though comedic, turned out to be more of a "Northern Exposure"-type whimsical production than a modern-day sex farce.
"Michael Clayton" was the second-best film of the year-- a suspense film with a conscience brought to us by George Clooney and his talented industry pals. The popular word to describe this type of legal thriller, I think, would be 'taut.' I gave Tom Wilkinson an award too for his performance here in pulling off the very delicate assignment of playing a man slowly toppling over the edge of madness. He took home the very competitive Best Supporting Actor nod, with apologies to TWBB's Paul Dano, "Juno's" J.K. Simmons, as well as to Casey Affleck in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and Javier Bardem of "No Country," whose roles I decided didn't really belong in the supporting category.
As for the rest...
"The Simpsons Movie" was just as good as I anticipated it would be, providing the pleasure of seeing the animated franchise's subtle and seemingly-effortless brand of social criticism for the first time on the big screen. It contained the funniest gag of the year in the movies when the residents of Springfield believe the town is about to be destroyed-- all the churchgoers run out of the steeple into Moe's Tavern, passing the tavern's patrons on a reverse course.
"An Unreasonable Man" was the Ralph Nader-centered documentary I promoted so heavily on the blog. You know I liked that one. I watch it on DVD time and again to get politically-impowered, and an anonymous contributor to the film
posted a comment on the blog in December of '06. If that was a hoax, I fell for it.
"Dan in Real Life" was a lovely little movie with appealing performances. Not the least of which was by Dane Cook.
I really despised "Black Snake Moan" not so much for the faux-confrontational and provocative exploitation of the central female character, played by Christina Ricci, but because it took so seriously the cliched premise of the redemption of white people by more soulful, spiritual black people. The topic of racism, and both races, deserve something with more meat.
"I Think I Love My Wife" found Chris Rock channeling French director Eric Rohmer. The comedian's direction was disjointed, but I hope he keeps reaching.
Kasi Lemmon's "Talk To Me," and comedies "Waitress," "King of California," and "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" were each rather forgettable. I put them here in the same paragraph to preserve space.
I don't understand the appeal of "Knocked Up." Judd Apatow dialogue isn't particularly funny, and to quote George Costanza, "I now less about women than... anyone in the world" but even I could tell in this film that the script was completely tone-deaf to the way women speak, think, and act. Aside from anything else, I didn't believe for a second that this woman, played by Katherine Heigl, wouldn't have an abortion.
Let's do "I Am Legend" all over again and make it about environmental devastation rather than aliens. The first half hour of the film was really interesting.
DON'T SEE "Mr. Woodcock." You think you might want to because it has Susan Sarandon and Billy Bob Thornton, and the previews make it seem a little like "Bad Santa," but don't do it. When it's over, you feel like Christina Ricci in "Black Snake Moan."
"Superbad"? Really? It struck me as just "Revenge of the Nerds" for those people's kids. The girls are cast, as always, with no depth of character whatsoever, and simply as plotting subjects for the horny teen boys who star. I wasn't able to detect a speck of talent or wit in Jonah Hill, who sucks the life from everything around him, including appealing co-star Michael Cera. He's downright toxic. Many of the scenes are not just unfunny, but unpleasant. I really couldn't care less whether Hill's character ever gets laid in his life.
"Zodiac" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" are each compelling views and are hereby officially recommended, but both check in at approximately 45 minutes too long. "Jesse James" looks especially beautiful, and has many standout performances, but don't tease me with Mary-Louise Parker and then do nothing with her. That's like having Albert Pujols on your bench in an All-Star Game and not giving him a chance to play. Oh, never mind.
I don't think "The Savages" got it quite right. I realize a character that suffers from dementia can't add much to the backstory and the dialogue, but that was a fault then of the premise, which required us to see the connection between the children, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, and their father. This is the kind of narrative that plays out better over a long dramatic series on HBO like "The Sopranos," where we first have time to come to care about the people before their mind fades. Hoffman's very good and Laura Linney has a license to print CMFAs, but I was bored a lot, and much of the time it seemed like Hoffman and Linney were in the middle of a big act-off competition.
"La Vie en Rose" was really good. I assume Oscar winner Marion Cotillard nailed the part of Edith Piaf but I don't speak French.
Wes Anderson's "The Darjeeling Limited" is too quirky by half, but are we surprised at this point? I think now he's just trying to piss us off.
"American Gangster" was pretty slick movie-making.
So was "Gone Baby Gone." It reminded me of last year's "The Departed" except I was surprised at the end.
"Into the Wild" was a failure on the central point that the main character was still a compete cipher at the end of the film. Director Sean Penn was certainly sympathetic to him, but like all-things-Penn, the movie was without irony or humor, and I found the character smug, self-righteous, and without cause for any sympathy at all. He treated his family rather contemptibly for the simple crime of being conventional.
Disney's "Enchanted" and star Amy Adams had me smiling from beginning to end. The film makes fun of the Disney style in the same warm and gentle way that Brando played off his own Don Corleone persona years later in "The Freshman."
"Charlie Wilson's War" was a bad political history lesson made worse by bad casting. Were we really right to be on any side during the Soviet/Afghan war? The scriptwriter forgot to tell us that the reason the mujahadeen went to war to begin with was because the Soviet-backed government had allowed female students to attend schools. The lesson of the conflict that eventually gave the world the Taliban, and which was completely missed by this film, was STOP MEDDLING. And can anyone watch Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts on film and ever forget that they're watching Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts? Sure, actors like Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe always played variations of their own style and image, but they also never accepted roles as real-life people. In "Charlie Wilson's War," Tom and Julia's characters have to sleep together offscreen so that America won't feel sympathy for Rita Wilson and that cameraman Roberts married. You'll find their scenes together sexy if you're turned on by watching James Carville and Mary Matalin spar on Sunday morning television.
And finally, a nod to "The Final Season," the movie about the Norway, Iowa high school baseball team near my hometown that rose to glory when I was likewise in high school. The feel-good sports tale starring Sean Astin and Powers Boothe was shut out of the CMFAs this year, but it was really their own doing. Mailing personalized "school consolidation ballots" to eligible voters was a clever publicity strategy, but it flew over too many heads. When its sequel comes up for award consideration, producers should just purchase an ad in
Variety.
Sam Clemens
It begins and ends with Mark Twain, American literary icon, humorist, social critic, and proud son of the Great Midwest. Ninety-eight years after his death, Twain's sapient mug graces the cover of this week's
Time Magazine. I was so excited when I saw a copy of the publication, I weighed the idea of climbing after it into the dumpster at the recycle center before remembering I could read the story
online.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to hear Twain's thoughts today about the internet and hundreds of other topics? If he were alive in 2008, I'm sure he'd have a few well-chosen words about America's latest folly in global militarism; I think he'd be tickled to see a kindred spirit like George Carlin scheduled to receive a comedy award named in his honor; and, as a comedian once noted, I'd
like to believe that he'd be busy dedicating himself to a one-man stage show about Hal Holbrook.
Talking down
It's the Obama folks that are stoking
this Jesse Jackson rhubarb. Distancing themselves from the liberal reverend and identity politics was a goal of theirs from the beginning, and Jesse has handed the campaign another
Sister Souljah moment. The dust-up has also helped to distract from Obama's recent FISA vote.
Jackson's rhetoric notwithstanding (I wouldn't want
my nuts cut off), Jackson is correct that Obama has to begin speaking to more than just personal responsibility when addressing issues of the African-American community and the underclass. Black America might benefit from a little "tough talk," but where's the "tough talk" for corporate executives, war profiteers, justice officials, lenders, and the rest of white America? A consultant-driven push to the right by Obama was to be expected, but it's disheartening to witness nonetheless.
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There's little doubt that
The Nation magazine will endorse Barack Obama for president, but yesterday they effectively filed
a lawsuit against him.
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What's the greener move--
buying a new hybrid car or buying a used car with decent gas mileage?---
HBO has ordered
three new pilots, and they all sound like winners to me-- fresh ideas offered up by talented people. We're very fortunate to live in the golden age of HBO--and Netflix, as the case may be.
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The same day I picked out my condominium unit last summer, I paid my first visit to the new grocery store in the neighborhood, Gateway Market. I decided that I could afford to purchase my first home provided that I never shopped at the Gateway Market. Yep, it's pricey. But its cafe has just been named one of the
10 best sandwich shops in America.
The intentional pass
The Brewers just added CC Sabathia. The Cubs just added Rich Harden. The Cardinals added...uh, Mark Mulder?
Mulder's long-awaited return to the Cardinals' pitching rotation on Wednesday, where the lefthander hadn't won in nearly 25 months, resulted in just a 16-pitch performance before a trip back to the disabled list. The St. Louis ballplayers competing valiantly above their heads in the National League Central Division need reinforcements badly and intra-organizational Band-Aids won't stop the bleeding. The pitching staff is plenty banged-up and fragile, but the offense may be sputtering worse, tallying only five runs during the three-game series just concluded this afternoon in Philadelphia, at the circuit's best ballpark for slugging.
The solution is Barry Bonds.
His agent says the unsigned outfielder could be ready for action in ten days, and he's yet to receive a single contract offer. There is no way-- repeat-- NO WAY this does can't make sense. A year ago at this time, Bonds was preparing for a start in left field at the All-Star Game, and for the entire season, he reached base in 48 percent of his plate appearances. Since May 1st of
this year, the Cardinals have managed to provide 134 at-bats to Chris Duncan, who is, like Bonds, a left-handed hitting outfielder doubling as a defensive liability. Duncan has responded by posting a .218 batting average, four home runs, 18 RBIs, and 16 walks to 32 strikeouts. Duncan may have the benefit of a father as team pitching coach, but Barry's pop, Bobby, played 84 games with the Cards in 1980. That's gotta be worth something.
The signing of Bonds would erase one of the team's largest and longest-standing deficiencies by providing left-handed batting order protection for Albert Pujols. The Cards wouldn't be forced to dip into the minor league reservoir (via a trade) to bolster the offense. Bonds, even at 44 years old, would likely sign for half as much money as a slugger that could post only half the production, and he wouldn't be looking for a contract beyond this year, keeping a pathway clear for a potential future outfield of Rick Ankiel, Ryan Ludwick, and prospect Colby Rasmus. The 27-year-old Duncan could subsequently be dealt for pitching help before the rest of the league realizes he's Ben Grieve.
Spare me the moral judgments and the hypocrisy. Bonds is no saint. His only confirmed miracle is having once convinced a woman to sign a prenuptial agreement waiving her right to all of his present and future earnings. But Cardinals fans, as a whole, are not a reactionary lot, and the team's clubhouse this year has already hosted five other players-- Ankiel, Troy Glaus, Ron Villone, Ryan Franklin, and Juan Gonzalez-- named in the Mitchell Report.
The Cardinals' front office has a responsibility to keep the team up to par with the Joneses. When an indisputedly-worthy would-be contributor is kept out of action, especially under such phony pretenses, it's a breach of the faith with the fans. When the Cardinals or any other team blackball or conspire against a player or group of players in such a deceptive and misleading fashion, there's a legal name for it and that's "collusion." (Google the word, and its Wikipedia entry pops up first, followed by the Wikipedia entry for "
baseball collusion.") It was practiced against African-American ballplayers for more than half a century, it's been practiced against free agents on and off again since the dawn of Marvin Miller and collective bargaining, and it's been a greater detriment to the competitive integrity of the game than steroids, gambling, or anything else the history books have recorded.
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Madonna's gotta be thrilled about
this publicity. Jose Canseco's a stain on the entire genus.
A lonely impeachment drive
Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has become a one-man crusader for impeachment in Washington. The former Democratic candidate for president is preparing to
introduce once again on Thursday an article of impeachment against President Bush for the offense of "taking our nation and our troops to war based on lies." Kucinich's actions are not welcomed by party leaders like Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Speaker Nancy Pelosi who fear the pursuance of the Constitutionally-mandated separation of powers during an election year.
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The U.S. Senate this week takes up an important bill involving tax credits for historic properties. This is vital legislation for the rebuilding of downtowns and historic neighborhoods in Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Iowa City, and other smaller Iowa towns damaged by June's flooding. The proposed amendment would increase the federal rehabilitation tax credit from 20% to 40% in flood-affected areas.
If you're an Iowan, you can use these Senate contact links...
http://grassley.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Homehttp://harkin.senate.gov/c/Every email and/or fax to your senator will help to save some of these downtowns and imperative neighborhoods that need assistance yesterday. And how often do I ask you to do shit?
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As featured in the next Sacha Baron Cohen movie.
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White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen will email you back--
a first-hand account.
The love-in
The consensus among St. Louis sports media types seems to be that Redbird fans should not have stood and applauded for Jim Edmonds when he came to bat in a Cubs uniform at Busch Stadium Friday night, but Joe Cardinals Fan obviously disagreed. Edmonds was greeted so warmly that
Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz went back to the well Saturday for
a column dripping with sarcasm following the "Jimmy love-in."
I had no problem with the fans' reaction. I would have joined in it had I been there. Edmonds means a lot to Cardinals fans, and it's ridiculous to argue that a warm reception in the 2nd inning of a ballgame played in early July is somehow an insult to the home team's pitcher, to Edmonds' replacement in center field, or to the home team in general. Miklasz wrote on Friday that cheering for Edmonds would be akin to being dumped by a girlfriend and then begging her to come back so that you can kiss her and relive the good old days, but who among us hasn't given a former girlfriend a standing ovation upon being reunited for the first time. And I can't buy into the notion that the Cardinals were "dumped" by Edmonds anyway. As best I can recall, the team shipped the outfielder-in-twilight to San Diego this winter in exchange for a second-tier minor leaguer.
I would even argue that the universally-recognized passion-- and
compassion-- of the Cardinals' fan base has created a terrific competitive advantage. Ballplayers take notice to this sort of collective fan behavior. They no doubt envied Edmonds on Friday evening, not because he had switched colors, but because it was evident that he had established and earned for himself a devotion of permanency that rises above the old Jerry Seinfeld adage about "rooting for laundry" in team sports. The small-market St. Louis franchise has already greatly benefited from superstars such as Mark McGwire, Scott Rolen, and even Edmonds agreeing to discounted long-term contracts. These players aren't being sold on St. Louis public schools. They're sold on playing in front of (pardon the phrase) Cardinal Nation.
Ray Lankford, Willie McGee, even near-greats like Joe McEwing each received hearty ovations when they returned to Busch Stadium in visiting uniforms. Why also give a Cub the added satisfaction of being treated differently? On Friday, I was watching the game on TV at a Chicago bar established by another fired Cardinal, Harry Caray. Thinking about Harry made me realize that we need to cherish the personalities and icons in this game and embrace what makes this particular rivalry unique. Nobody was calling on Braden Looper to groove a pitch to Edmonds or some such. The fans simply showed their appreciation, and Edmonds responded by going oh for 4, with three strikeouts. End of story.
To boo or not to boo
The Cardinals and Cubs duel this weekend in St. Louis and the occasion marks the first visit to Busch Stadium by Jim Edmonds in a visiting uniform, and he arrives as a member of the rival Cubs no less. Will Jimmy Ballgame be cheered for his eight years of exploits as a Redbird or booed for his shift in team loyalty?
Post-Dispatch columnist
Bernie Miklasz and Cards manager
Tony LaRussa have their ideas. What are yours, St. Louis boosters?
My blogging time is short. I'm off to Chicago this morning (coincidentally), and
will be present for part of the less-glamorous White Sox/Athletics weekend tussle. Decide for yourself now on Edmonds, but we're going to talk about this next week. Happy 4th.
Always Keep a Diamond in Your Mind - Tom Waits and the A-Train Concert Series - by Aaron Moeller
American music’s greatest iconoclast and junkyard poet, Tom Waits, brought his one of a kind stage show to St. Louis last week and played to a sell-out crowd at the Fox Theatre. Even had he never performed a note, it would have been worth the ticket – well, maybe a cheaper one – if only to see the glamorous old 1929 theater in all its architectural glory. Built to resemble an Indian temple, Hindu images abound and the theater itself is so overwhelming that one gets the sense it could potentially distract from many of the artists that may perform there.
This, however, was an ideal environment for Waits whose live performances always offer an abundance of theatrical style. As my buddy Nick and I entered the venue we could see the stage set, which looked fittingly like a workshop for musical experimentation – a slightly raised platform at center stage, with a small keyboard and pump organ to its right.
There was a drum kit without risers to the left and a number of instruments scattered around the stage, each seemingly waiting to meet in some strange musical configuration.
Hanging as a backdrop to the stage was a number of old fashioned horns and speakers, lined up in rows like a chain-link fence full of discarded hubcaps.
None too surprising, I suppose, for an artist known to sing at least a couple songs every night through a megaphone.
He kept us waiting but we didn’t mind. We sat for more than an hour after the ticket start time wondering to ourselves if perhaps Tom was backstage inventing a new instrument at the last minute to again radically alter his unusual sound for the umpteenth time in his career. The guy sitting behind me asked what my favorite Waits record was. I told him Big Time was my favorite. That’s the live album that served as my Waits introduction when I saw the concert film of the same name on Dad’s satellite dish during college. (I’d previously only known of Tom Waits as the guy who wrote “Jersey Girl”, the best Springsteen song that the Boss never wrote.) I told the guy it’s probably rare but I love “Falling Down” from that album, but also the series of six or seven songs that close the album. “God bless you," the guy said. "I tell people all the time that that album is the best.” Obscure, we agreed, but a sentimental favorite. Then the guy told me a story of first seeing that concert film in St. Louis, in the ‘90’s, at a theater that had previously served as a porno house.
Then the stage went dark and the crowd of St. Louis’ most hardcore hipsters erupted in applause as the shadowy figures took the stage.
The stage remained dark and after a few seconds the crowd settled down awaiting the first notes. “I love you, Tom!” someone shouted. “I love you even more than that guy, Tom!” “Bullshit!” the first guy replied.
“Lucinda”, a song recently released on Orphans, his box set of rarities, kicked off the evening. Waits stood on the small platform, raising his knees high and stomping them back down with the beat, raising a cloud of dust with each giant step. Waits also had a contraption on each side of the platform with foot pedals that produced the sound of a bell, essentially his own set of cymbals. Waits tours with a guitar and banjo player, a keyboard player who doubles on accordion, a guy on stand-up bass, a horn player that plays a range of instruments – saxophones, clarinets, harmonicas, etc. Tom’s son, Casey, is the drummer. A chip off the old block, Casey Waits bangs on any percussion instruments he can get his hands on. But it’s That Voice that defines the Tom Waits sound. Perpetually whiskey-drenched, the word gruff doesn’t quite do it justice. As I write this, I’m listening to my Dad’s dog barking and am picking up similarities.
“Way Down in the Hole”, was the theme song from HBO’s
The Wire.
It was the first tune most people recognized and got a huge response.
As usual, it sounded like Satan singing gospel music.
Then the miracle of miracles: “I’ve come five hundred miles just to see your halo…”, the first notes of my favorite song.
“She wants you to steal and get caught, she loves you for all that you are not/When you’re falling down, you’re falling down, she loves you when you’re falling down."
“Black Market Baby” name checks nearby Moberly, Missouri. (I know of at least three Waits songs that reference St. Louis, but he played none of them.) “All the World is Green” was the night’s only selection off 2002’s Blood Money and featured an even lovelier clarinet solo than on the album. “Heigh Ho” is also off Orphans and is indeed the same song from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, though you’d barely recognize it. The clanging-around-the-cellar arrangement seems appropriate given Waits’ fascination with dark fairy tales and is consistent with his workman-like, experimental musical identity. He’s eccentric, for sure, but strangely pragmatic and utilitarian of spirit, once pleading in song, “Come down off the cross, we can use the wood”.
“Get Behind the Mule” is the de-facto title track from Waits' 1999 offering,
Mule Variations, the bluesiest and best-selling album of his career.
This rendition was reworked but still rides its familiar bass line and blues harp. And all the great lyrics are still there – he’s still “digging all the way to China with a silver spoon/ while the hangman fumbles with the noose” and still “stirring my brandy with a nail, boys”.
This song is one of the all-time keepers:
“Pin your ear to the wisdom post, pin your eye to the line/ Never let the weeds get higher than the garden, always keep a sapphire in your mind/ Always keep a diamond in your mind.”
“Day After Tomorrow” is an achingly beautiful ballad about a soldier longing for home and found Waits strumming a guitar for the first time on the night. It was played to reverential silence and brought a standing ovation. Then Waits, known for unusual and joking stage commentary, addressed the crowd for the first time, introducing “Cemetery Polka” as written about some once-visiting relatives, who “came too early and left too late.” The song is from Rain Dogs, Waits album from 1985 that happens to be the best record anybody has ever made. Waits then moved to the keyboard for the first time and played another Rain Dogs cut, a strikingly re-worked “Hang Down Your Head”.
A run of songs performed at the keyboard and pump organ followed and found Tom in a more conversational mood between numbers, noting first that the band had just come from Oklahoma, then sharing a list of things he learned are illegal there, such as “shooting off a policeman’s tie” and “eating in a restaurant that’s on fire… that one’s just a misdemeanor though.”
He also noted that his family disapproves of the money he spends on unusual Ebay items, remarking that he recently purchased “the last dying breath of Henry Ford”, which he keeps sealed in a Coke bottle.
Tom also shared another factoid:
One ejaculation of semen produces 20 million sperm but only one of them survives
to fertilize an egg.
“So, remember, by the time we’ve all made it here, we’re already winners.”
“Lucky Day” is a barroom weeper from The Black Rider, a stage show score Waits once composed with Beat god William Burroughs, heavily influenced by a more European-inspired avant-garde sound. “Johnsburg, Illinois” is less than 2 minutes long but, among many candidates, is the most gorgeous piano melody the man ever wrote. His voice, harsh and broken, can still reach and find painfully delicate notes you’d never dream he could actually hit. Believe it or not, he has a falsetto. “Lost in the Harbour”, performed solo at the pump organ, was that one song of the night that always seems to happen. You're familiar with it, but don’t realize until you've heard it live that you loved it all along.
Tom returned to his platform for the night’s highlight, a four-year-old tune, “Make It Rain”.
“Without her love, without her kiss/ Heaven can’t burn me more than this/ I’m burning up all this pain/ Open up the Heavens, make it rain.”
He again stomped up a dust cloud throughout before the final chorus brought glitter showering down on the stage.
And the Tom Waits 2008 Glitter and Doom Tour found its name.
“Lie to Me”, a Chuck Berry-on-the-Moon rave-up kept the momentum going. The tunes stayed relentless. “Other Side of the World” is obscure and lovely. “Singapore” is a jaunty gem and reminds that “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”. “Dirt in the Ground” moans along and is cool in its morbid way. “What’s He Building in There?” is a spoken-word character piece in the voice of a paranoid man wondering about noises from his neighbor’s house. A single light bulb was lowered from the ceiling. Waits flicked it once with his thumb and forefinger and the light went out. “I broke it,” he said.
Tom Waits appeared on the music scene in the early ‘70’s, gaining cult fame as an oddball Beat poet and pianist, favoring jazz arrangements, telling tale tales on stage, and seemingly having just swam out of the bottom of a whiskey bottle.
Esoteric stuff, definitely, with a melancholy streak and an ear for heartbreaking melodies.
It was nine albums into his career, however – with 1983’s
Swordfishtrombones – that the act turned truly strange.
Waits had married Francis Ford Coppola’s personal assistant, gave up drinking and smoking, and fathered three kids.
His stage presentation, always theatrical, became more roughshod and psychedelic.
The lyrics, rhythms and arrangements began to expand beyond jazz and folk stylings, to suddenly fit no established genre. Whereas his previous music had been set in late night jazz clubs and was populated by down-on-their-luck dudes in rumpled suits, now his music was set at the carnival and was populated by circus freaks. Waits also began work as a film actor in a surprising number of big-name movies, always playing a character stranger than the last.
On this night, Waits played not one song from those first nine albums. Considering each of those records is filled with any number of sentimental fan favorites, Waits makes a case for being one of the most prolific and consistently brilliant songwriters we have, especially as you acknowledge that he's ignoring half of his back catalog. With “16 Shells from a 30-ought-Six”, which was the centerpiece of Swordfishtrombones, and then the title track of Waits’ next – and best – album, Rain Dogs, the man led us out of the main set.
“Goin’ Out West” was the first encore, notable as the only Tom Waits song I’ve ever seen on a jukebox in Cedar Rapids – at Bricks, a downtown bar recently flushed out with river water.
My brother has instructions to play “Anywhere I Lay My Head” at my funeral, though this live version fell an inch short of the album track, sans the memorable coda of a New Orleans funeral band.
Then with everyone already on their feet, Waits, still sitting at his keyboard, led everyone in a sweet-as-summer sing-along, a natural and bittersweet finale: “It’s such a sad old feeling, the hills are soft and green/ It’s memories that I’m stealing, but you’re innocent when you dream”.
Stuff to read this week
You'll hear from Aaron tomorrow, and you'll never guess whose concert he's reviewing this time. Here's a hint-- he's a composer, actor, and balladeer with a distinctive voice, who once said "I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy." Here are some unrelated story links to tide you over....
Who's doing more important investigative journalism than
Seymour Hersh at
The New Yorker?
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Candidate Nader has long been
a passionate advocate for sports fans.
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Opposition builds to ImBev's attempted purchase of Anheuser-Busch.
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Last fall, Central Iowans were emotionally spent following DJ Dick Youngs long farewell from oldies station KIOA-FM. Now the warm feelings have faded. Youngs is
suing the station for age discrimination.
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Look
what they found in Chuck Heston's basement.
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First, Jose Canseco, now
this. How can an otherwise-savvy woman like Madonna have such terrible taste in ballplayers? Doesn't she know Tito Landrum is
still single? And closer in age?
