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Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. I take my pronunciation from the late Harvey Korman in "Blazing Saddles" -- "I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!" |
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Friday, July 03, 2009No posting this weekendHeading up to Russian River for some much-needed R and R (Russian Rivering). Hoping to meet some Russians. .: posted by hornswaggler 12:50 PM| Wednesday, July 01, 2009Brooks and KrugmanDavid Brooks and Paul Krugman have something they agree on: Obama is poised to blow it on health care reform. Krugman's Friday column* was brilliant: When it comes to domestic policy, there are two Barack Obamas. As for Brooks, I don't agree with his take on the substance of the stimulus and health care bills, but the first half of Tuesday's column, regarding Obama's ceding of control to Congress when it comes to shaping legislation, is on point: (We) have to distinguish between two types of pragmatism. There is legislative pragmatism — writing bills that can pass. Then there is policy pragmatism — creating programs that work. These two pragmatisms are in tension, and in their current frame of mind, Democrats often put the former before the latter. It must have been difficult for Brooks to return to the dreary day-to-day world of politics. On Friday, having had to write about health care and Iran and other boring stuff for a couple weeks, he'd finally gotten to run free -- the wind in his face, his glasses jostling on his nose -- devoting some time to what's really important: his latest ramblings on sociological, psychological and philosophical shit he doesn't understand. The point of the column, as far as I can tell, was that, because some guy wrote a book about evolutionary psychology that pressed the argument too far, the entire field, in Brooks' view, has "had a good run" but probably is cooked. I have neither the time nor the energy to hit Brooks with a form tackle and wrap him up, so instead I'll dive at his feet on the sidelines by pointing out two things. First, here's how he starts the column: Has there ever been a time when there were so many different views of human nature floating around all at once? The economists have their view, in which rational people coolly chase incentives. Traditional Christians have their view, emphasizing original sin, grace and the pilgrim’s progress in a fallen world. And then there are the evolutionary psychologists, who get the most media attention. He has to come up with two "views of human nature" to support his opening sentence and the first one is economists and a world in which "rational people coolly chase incentives"? Yes, and the Sasquatch hunters have their view as well, in which we will never fully understand ourselves until we find and discover the secrets of our ancestral cousin, the elusive North American forest ape. "Rational people coolly (chasing) incentives" doesn't even explain economic behavior, let alone human nature. Look at the market meltdown. You could make the argument that each person involved in the financial crisis -- the bankers who were richly compensated for taking on obscene risk in search of short-term profit, a financial industry that created investment instruments so complex that the vast majority of people on Wall Street didn't know how they worked, the lenders who took advantage of aspiring homeowners who didn't understand they were getting in over their heads, and the homeowners themselves, who signed on for high-risk mortgages they couldn't afford -- pursued his own set of incentives in a rational way. You'd be wrong. But you could make that argument. Is the stock market rational? No. Certain decisions that are made in that context are, but there's a reason the words "irrational exuberance" and "panic" have been used to describe booms and sell-offs, respectively. But let's leave economics aside. Who in their right mind would say that "rational people coolly (chasing) incentives" is a legitimate view of human nature? Look at the life and death of Michael Jackson and his many psychofans. Look at what's happening in the Middle East. Think about the fact that Glenn Beck has good ratings. Reflect back on "Freedom Fries." Think about your own state of mind when you've been in love or depressed. Is any of this rational? The reality is just the opposite. The likely tragedy of the human race will be that our capacity for reason was ultimately thwarted by our primitive, irrational nature, that our technological development was never matched by emotional, psychological or spiritual advancement. (Thinking specifically here, as far as scenarios for the collapse of human civilization, of the increasing likelihood that global warming will create massive destabilization and territorial wars over resources.*) Toward the end of the column, we get another fascinating glimpse into the peculiar mind of David Brooks: Individuals are created by social interaction. Our identities are formed by the particular rhythms of maternal attunement, by the shared webs of ideas, symbols and actions that vibrate through us second by second. Shopping isn’t merely a way to broadcast permanent, inborn traits. For some people, it’s also an activity of trying things on in the never-ending process of creating and discovering who they are. That sounds purty and all, but when you go to the mall, do you see people in the midst of a "never-ending process of creating and discovering who they are"? That's a pretty generous description. If I were an avid shopper, that's what I'd tell my spouse the next time she complained about the credit cad bill: "Honey, why are you standing in the way of my never-ending voyage of self-creation and discovery?" That's a better euphemism, incidentally, than "wine tasting." It sounds so much more sophisticated to say you're going wine tasting than to say, "We're going up to Napa to get drunk." *He cites the remark by Obama that has become the clearest distillation of the disingenuousness behind the argument against the public option: “If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.” **Given population growth and the increasing scarcity of water in California, we're heading for a "Road Warrior"-esque dystopia in which aquifer-controlling warlords dispatch their minions across the arid landscape in vehicles with cow catchers on the front and gun turrets on top. .: posted by hornswaggler 7:48 AM| Tuesday, June 30, 2009Good stuff from John Oliver on Madoff behind bars
.: posted by hornswaggler 8:52 PM| Monday, June 29, 2009Little Man gives it up for "Transformers"The San Francisco Chronicle gave a positive review to "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." Granted, it wasn't a staff writer, but a reviewer from elsewhere in the Hearst chain. But still, what's with the Chronicle and Michael Bay? I still remember being dumbstruck when I saw that Mick LaSalle had given "Pearl Harbor" the thumbs up. "Revenge of the Fallen" has a 20 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 18 percent rating in the top-critics category. "Pearl Harbor" has a 25 percent fresh rating and a 23 percent rating among top critics. I haven't seen either movie, but that doesn't mean I can't tell with 99 percent certainty that they're bad. And yes, that makes me a snob. But I know enough about Michael Bay, from reputation and experience -- "Armageddon" certainly sucked, and the parts of the first "Transformers" I saw were underwhelming -- that there's no reason to give his movies the benefit of the doubt. I'm inclined here to put more stock in Stephanie Zacharek's review in Salon. Maybe one of these days though I should go on a Michael Bay movie-watching spree just to soak in the badness. Anyway, it's odd, the Chronicle's love for Michael Bay, Hollywood's premier schlock purveyor. (The paper gave the first "Transformers" the nod too, though that received better reviews overall than the sequel.) Incidentally, it would appear that Megan Fox's performance in this movie is a demonstration that a woman doesn't have to appear nude for her performance to be pornographic. Below is the shot of Fox on a motorcycle, her first appearance in the movie, that every review seems to mention.  Her role in the "Transformers" sequel, just like the first, apparently is not to act, but to pose, like a walking Maxim pictorial. I'm reminded of Jessica Alba's performance in "Into the Blue." The scene that really struck me from that one wasn't one of the most revealing, it was a simple shot where Alba was standing at a distance either on a dock or boat, yelling to someone off-camera, and she was in this hand-on-the-hip contrapposto that no human being has ever stood in except at the end of catwalk. And I have no doubt that the director or some of his top assistants spent a good 15 minutes discussing the pose and making sure it looked just right. So we'll see how Fox's career goes. When your name on the script may as well read Cleavage or Ass Cheeks, it's hard to make that transition to serious actress, so eventually the parts start to dry up. The career arc of the hot bad actress is long but it bends towards Playboy. Now, I don't know if she's as untalented as Alba, but if she keeps taking roles like this it probably won't matter. I suppose I can't fault her for making money off her looks, but if I were her agent I'd try to get her in a movie where the camera can't be charged with lewd and lascivious conduct for the way it frames her. .: posted by hornswaggler 9:05 PM| Sunday, June 28, 2009Bob OdenkirkI was listening to Odenkirk on Adam Carolla's podcast the other day and saw a link to this page, which contains four video clips and that's it. The first one, above, is "Craigslist Penis Photographer." The second, below, is Odenkirk playing God as a Hollywood shyster a la producer Robert Evans on "Real Time with Bill Maher." He did the same character once on "Mr. Show" ("Jesus, you're the tops, and you teach me something new every day") and it's equally hilarious here. .: posted by hornswaggler 9:29 PM| Thursday, June 25, 2009What did Michael Jackson have against Farrah Fawcett?(Post updated below, progressing from not caring to a digression on childhood influence and his impact on American culture.) All mention of her death has disappeared from the TV. The fact that I feel absolutely nothing about his death illustrates how far Michael Jackson fell into his bizarre, encapsulated universe -- becoming almost non-human, incapable of eliciting my empathy -- because "Thriller" was one of the most influential events of my childhood, culturally, along with "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones." When I was in third grade, I practiced moonwalking so much on the kitchen linoleum that my stepfather suggested I enroll in Moonwalkers Anonymous. That same year I drew a picture of Jackson singing in the middle of our classroom, mirrored sunglasses and all, that I was rather proud of. But my teacher caught me working on it in class and crumpled it up and threw it in the trash. I retrieved it and tried to smooth out the damage, but it was beyond help. I'm still bitter about that, Mrs. Dall. In that scene in "Thriller" where he's eating popcorn in the theater, enjoying the horror movie while his date cowers, he seemed so charming and normal. But that part of him, to the extent that moment reflected something real and wasn't merely an illusion, was eventually submerged and lost in the sea of his dysfunction. And on that cheery note, it's time to hit the sack. UPDATE: Just to show I'm not totally cold-hearted, here are the public figures whose deaths over the past few years: David Foster Wallace, Elliott Smith, Steve Irwin and Heath Ledger. That's it, unless I'm forgetting someone. UPDATE II: Okay. A glimmer of sadness/nostalgia. Just saw a clip of his performance of "Beat It" from the UPDATE III: Ah, the perils of memory. That performance was at the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever special in 1983, which makes more sense timing-wise since "Thriller" was released in late 1982. And I probably didn't see it live, maybe on a rebroadcast on MTV. And here it is. Rewatching it, it's pretty clear he was lip-synching, which is kind of a bummer. But I don't think anyone was thinking about that at the time. Besides, it's not like he couldn't sing the shit out of that or any other song. And it was his dancing that was the most electrifying thing about that performance. Most people, not just 8-year-olds, had never seen anyone move quite like that. There's the way he kicks his legs in and out while singing the verse (48-second mark) such that he seems to achieve movement and stillness at the same time, like a hummingbird; there's the moonwalk during the bridge (for a better version of the moonwalk from a technical point of view I'd go here, though beware, this is the stage where Jackson looked like Joseph Gordon-Levitt); and there's the way that by rapidly moving (18 to 28 second mark) from one posture to the next, and from frontal view to profile, he achieves a sort of illusion of continuous movement, like a human flip book. Right at the beginning, the pelvic thrusts with the hand on the crotch, which became a signature move for him, are probably a little much. Also, I like how at the 3:36 mark, right before the bridge, he gives the "Hee!" to one side of the crowd and the "Hoo!" to the other, driving it home with a forceful finger-point. Gotta make sure everybody gets in on the all-important Hee/Hoo action. Anderson Cooper made a point last night about how Jackson was the first black superstar and what that meant for America from the perspective of race. I know that I didn't think of him as black. It may not even have occurred to me, on a certain level, that he was black. He was simply Michael Jackson: magic man, god, enchanter. What that meant for millions of white suburban kids who didn't really have daily contact with black people but who nonetheless idolized Jackson would be hard to calculate, but surely it had an impact on how we perceived blacks and race in general. Over the next several years, some of the entertainers and particularly athletes who influenced me the most were black. I memorized Eddie Murphy's two standup albums, "Eddie Murphy" and "Comedian." My favorite football player was Mike Quick. And then Michael Jordan came along, becoming the idol of every kid in America, arguably the most popular athlete of all time and, from the late '80s through the mid-'90s, the most recognizable person on the planet, along with Jackson. The megastardom of Jackson, Jordan and Murphy in the '80s, combined with the increasing reach and sophistication of television and other media, transformed mainstream American culture. I would argue that, following desegregation, sports and entertainment, more than any other aspects of American society, have most closely represented a true meritocracy. If you're really talented, you have a good chance of succeeding, regardless of the color of your skin. NWA began as a primal yell of outrage from a group of kids from Compton, giving the middle finger to the white-dominated society that oppressed them. Now Dr. Dre and Ice Cube are each worth tens of millions of dollars. Hip hop is the dominant musical form in American society. Football and basketball are dominated by black athletes. Etc. etc. Anyway, I've gotten rather far afield. But the point is, and I'd like to make an original observation here: The guy was huge. I feel the best way for me to pay tribute to Jackson will be to perform pathetic imitations of his dance moves around the house. I tried that leg kick thing he does (1:03 mark) a few times this morning, much to my wife's bemusement. UPDATE IV: Having watched the "Thriller" video again, I have a newfound appreciation for the innocence of children. When he tells his girl, in that effeminite voice of his, that he's "not like other guys," I'm frankly surprised that as a 9-year-old I didn't shout at the screen, "Right, because you're gay?" .: posted by hornswaggler 9:12 PM| Tough assignment  I'd hate to be the one who has to break the news to this lady that Michael Jackson has died. I think she's going to be upset. .: posted by hornswaggler 4:07 PM| Wednesday, June 24, 2009"Have you ever been to ... Santiago, Chile?"Well, it's all over but the crying, and the laughing, and the schadenfreude, when it comes to Gov. Mark Sanford, but the best part for me remains when he first admitted he'd gone to Buenos Aires to drive the coast, and it quickly became apparent he was full of shit, because Buenos Aires has no coast to drive, other than a gridlocked highway and a muddy river delta. I was reminded of nothing so much as the scene in "There's Something about Mary" in which Matt Dillon, pretending to be an architect to impress Cameron Diaz, is confronted by his bullshitter nemesis in the museum: Norm: Really? Where would I have seen your work? On a separate note, it's pretty embarrassing how some media outlets fell for the desperate spin coming out of Sanford's office. And once again Josh Marshall's news instincts are shown to be better than those of most mainstream news organizations. UPDATE: This part, from the TPM recap, is priceless. Sanford was "writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids." Wanted to get away from the kids on Father's Day weekend. Should have registered on more bullshit meters than it evidently did. .: posted by hornswaggler 10:06 AM| |
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