"What we’re witnessing is the birth of a lost-cause mythology for the Trump presidency. His supporters are being told that if he is impeached and removed from office, it won’t be due to the fact that he violated his oath of office by inviting foreign governments to interfere in the American democratic process. His downfall will instead be precipitated by a shadowy cabal of partisan Democrats, bent on overthrowing him—and American democracy, by proxy—through corrupt and illegitimate means. The risk here, as with the original Lost Cause narrative, is that it will encourage far-right groups to assault and murder Trump’s political opponents."
You say "Lost Cause," I say Dolchstoßlegende, but we're treading in the same dangerous, fascist pool here regardless.
But I'm sure Mitt Romney's measured tweets will protect us all from actual right-wing violence.
If you're looking for a classic rock god with a ton of great deep cuts beyond their main gig, look no further that Ginger Baker. Also, he was fucking crazy.
R.I.P. Ginger Baker, who has probably pissed of God more than a few times since he got upstairs to that great band riser in the sky.
Joaquin Phoenix is a great actor, but putting the camera on him for two hours and letting him exude his inner Travis Bickle does not a complete film make.
I enjoy watching the dude act, but I wish they'd created the rest of a functioning movie around him. Deniro falls flat as the antagonist. There are some nice mood moments, and 1981 New York City is incredibly, starkly believable. (Yes, kids, Manhattan used to be the ultimate shit-hole.)
There are the bones of a great film here, but not nearly enough meat, moments of ultra-violence notwithstanding.
I saw Tarantino's latest, Once Upon A Time. . . In Hollywood last weekend and did some Very Serious Tweets about it. I think it's his best film so far, and would recommend it to anybody with a specific caveat -- the ending will make or break it for you. Without saying too much, I think your reaction will be similar to whatever you thought of the ending of Inglorious Basterds.
The performances were excellent. (I think Leo is actually becoming a better actor as he ages.) The music was amazing. (It's difficult to fault QT when it comes to any of his soundtracks.) And it was just quirky enough in the right places to move the story along without winking at you too much. (Lena Dunham is fine and unassuming, the Bruce Lee stuff goes by pretty fast but yeah, QT thinks he was an arrogant asshole.)
I might have more to say about it later. I think there's a ton of symbolism going on in the last three minutes of the film, and not so much through the rest of it. It's smart, at many times laugh-out-loud funny, and very much a love letter to old Hollywood, both as a place and an industry, both of which are long gone by now.
Over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, a perfectly cromulent question is asked -- if Trump loses the presidential election in November, 2020 (I'd put it at a solid 50/50 as of now) will he step down? Will he physically walk out of the White House and fly back to his gold-plated toilets in New York? More specifically, will his Republican enablers deny the will of the Electoral College? (They obviously don't give a shit about the popular will, c.f. Gore 2000 and Clinton 2016).
In this great experiment known as American Democracy, the answer is clear -- Who the hell knows?
"We’ve taken a blushing look back at some of the formerly hip tomes now shelved in that spectral section of the bookshop reserved for the irredeemably dated, the hopelessly irrelevant, the plain offensive. Their fate tells us a little something not only about why cult novels fade but also about how they’re made in the first place.
If there’s one lesson to be learned, it’s this: stay sceptical, dear reader. Don’t, for instance, rush to empty your home of anything that doesn’t ‘spark joy’ at the behest of a book that may yet turn out to be our own era’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. (Then again, if you do still have a copy of that particular avian-inspired title lurking in your bookcase, now might be a good time to pay a visit to the charity shop.)"
I'm always up for a good hate-on against classics, and I agree with some of this list while a few selections just fly over my head (nobody, including ultra-leftists I knew in graduate school, has ever recommended that I actually read Mao's Little Red Book).
Also, while some of these are pernicious examples of Dead White Male Worship in action, a few are harmless moments of books that are very much "of their times," i.e., dispensable. I know my mom and dad owned a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and I never read it. I'm not sure if they did either, but it seems like something you had to own in the 1970's.
The Catcher In The Rye? A perfect example of a book we assign to high school freshmen due to a lack of imagination. There are so many better coming-of-age stories out there that don't focus on neurotic teen New Yorkers, that have a broader appeal than smoking cigarettes and hitting on grown women. Not an awful novel, but certainly not a necessary one.
The Old Man and the Sea? I like it! I like Hemingway, drunken Sloppy Joe excesses and all! But how about the Nick Adams short stories instead, given the context of impending climate disaster?
Atlas Shrugged? Nobody reads this shit except for Republican congressman, right? I desperately hope so. I mean, just a single page is headache-inducing. Rand hate-wrote for conservatives wanting to hate-read about how poor people deserve it, good and hard. I guess you could argue it's worth a read, if only to plumb the necrotizing pathologies of Republicanism / Trumpism. But just a few pages will do, thank you.
I made it to my final Samsung Lions ball game of the season last Friday night. With a rain delay adding insult to injury, we lost 3-0 to the SK Wyverns from Incheon. SK are actually the best team in the league right now, so they'll be moving on to a traditional four team semi-final / final playoff series.
As you can see from my not-so-great picture, it was pretty damn empty. The ultras behind the Samsung dugout were there though, and they were singing and dancing through.
See you next spring, Lions.
Update: The KBO actually does a five-team format, with four and five doing a one game wildcard. Overthinking it, if you ask me.
"Young Japanese devotees of South Korea’s most successful cultural export still flock here to buy posters, DVDs and miniature figures of BTS, Tohoshinki and Big Bang, added Choi, who moved to Tokyo from South Korea two decades ago. 'But I hope Japan and South Korea can sort out their differences. We’re neighbours, so we have to get along.'
Relations, however, are far from neighbourly. Seoul has called on the International Olympic Committee to ban Japan’s rising-sun flag – seen by some Koreans as a symbol of Japanese militarism – from next year’s Summer Games in Tokyo. A recent poll found that South Koreans trust North Korea more than they do Japan."
I guess I'm admittedly biased here, but c'mon -- there's a reason Germany long ago outlawed the Nazi flag, but in Japan it's still O.K. to wave the "Rising Sun" battle flag.
The Replacements, "Talent Show" (Matt Wallace Mix)
Don't Tell A Soul divided Replacements fans at the time as being "too pop" but I dunno, I was listening to this on cassette pretty much non-stop in high school along with (ahem) Appetite For Destruction. My hormone-addled teenage brain saw no contradictions in this.
Dead Man's Pop is a new Replacements box set, and it's a doozy -- in addition to rarities, a hard-to-find jam with Tom Waits (!), and a smoking live set from Madison, Wisconsin in '89, the highlight is a "pre-mix," or a re-imagining of Don't Tell A Soul after it had been "polished" for radio by Chris Lord-Alge. If I've got it right, original engineer Matt Wallace sat down with the original tapes, pre-Lord-Alge, and pushed them into rougher, more intimate terrain.
Given that the entire project seems to have Paul Westerberg's blessing, it really is a must-have. Also, the idea for the re-mix came from Bob Mehr, who is the author of the fantastic Mats biography Trouble Boys.
Honestly, there's a lot going on here and all of it is great.
I actually really like Don't Tell A Soul and have since it came out in 1989. But being outside the Minneapolis scene, it was easier for me to just appreciate the album for what it was and not get caught up in the "Paul is selling out for mainstream success" stuff. Mind you, this was only two years before the neutron bomb of Nevermind, and already lines were being drawn that would pave the way for the capital-I Indie Rock movement and the inevitable backlash against, well, success.
If anything, I'd argue DTAS is really a try-out as Paul's first solo record. We all know his first real solo record was All Shook Down, which of course was The Replacements' last record.
Simple.
As for the sound, it's definitely rougher in a good way, and more ragged. The acoustic guitar doesn't disappear once the hook of "Talent Show" kicks in, but kind of fills and warms the whole thing. I'm willing to bet the drums aren't synced to a click track -- there are some interesting little fills, if not minor mistakes. The whole sounds more like it's recorded in a mom's basement than a real studio. The outro keeps in all the warts and all, which seems about right.
Anyhow, I really can't wait to get my hands on this and do a track-by-track comparison.
"'Climate change disproportionately affects women and girls around the world—they are more likely to be displaced, more likely to be living in poverty and thus more vulnerable to climate change’s destabilizing effects. It is also women and girls who are leading the global movement to ensure a livable future.'
Yet to conservatives, climate change activism has become wrapped up in the so-called 'war on men,' and Thunberg, as well as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with her championing of the Green New Deal, have come to symbolize all that they fear to lose. But for all their whining and their rage, as Thunberg said on Monday before the United Nations, 'The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.'”
And let's be honest -- "shut up and put on a dress, little girl" isn't criticism at all, it's the desperate plea of men who can't handle strong, smart women. (Of any age.)
I think I've got it now -- my Dead "sweet spot" is when they still had Pigpen and didn't have Mickey Hart. They were still a bar band, basically, and not taking themselves all that seriously.
I have very mixed feelings about The Grateful Dead, but I did see them live at least twice. (Maybe a third time? I'm a walking cliche I guess but I don't remember.) There are rare moments when I can put on a Youtube video of something from the late 60's or 70's and quietly get some work or grading done. By the 80's and 90s though everything is off -- sonically, spiritually, (ahem) chemically.
So this is a roundabout way of saying Rest In Peace to Robert Hunter, and to the glory of long, strange trips wherever we may happen to find them.
