Sports Saturday

Let this blog be a haven for Chicagoans looking to escape Blackhawk mania. Hockey has no place in the national conversation except for the Olympics.

Right now, there is nothing more important in the sports world or, barring a pesky little oil spill (can’t we clean that shit up yet?), the real world than the first place Cincinnati Reds. At the time of this entry’s writing (Friday morning) the Reds hold a one game lead over the Cards, meaning that no matter what, the Reds will still be in first place tomorrow. This weekend brings the foundering Astros into town, so hopefully the lead will hold at least until the Reds play the Cardinals at the end of the weekend. That series will end a streak of 20 games without a day off, finally giving the overtaxed bullpen a much-needed respite.

Even though the Reds have risen to first by beating some very bad teams (You know that when Roy Oswalt can’t beat the Reds Houston is playing poorly), there are a few reasons to be upbeat when considering the team’s potential for the rest of the year:

1) Starting pitching has been phenomenal and looks like it will continue to be. Cueto and Bailey have both sustained minor injuries, but nothing that should continue to cause problems throughout the season. Even better, unlike years past, if the Reds have an injury to a pitcher, there is a coterie of men in waiting who can make the jump to the Bigs, including this one guy named Chapman. Bronson is proving as able as ever; Aaron Harang is doing OK, and finally seems to be getting some run support; Cueto and Leake are both performing like BAMFs (but we should expect both to let off the gas a little bit as the season goes on, particularly Leake). Bailey is the wild card so far, but as said before, there are plenty of people in waiting if he goes haywire.

2) Scott Rolen. I thought it was a terrible move for the Reds to pick him up last year, and now I’m eating my words (or thoughts, rather, because I didn’t have a blog back then). He’s on pace to hit about 30 homers and has been batting a solid .280-.290 all year. Having him to hit behind Joey Votto has proven invaluable. It’s let Brandon Phillips move back to the 2-spot where he belongs. Oh, and by the way, can you say Clutch?

3) The Reds have been winning the type of game that they lost in years past. Asides from the 9th inning meltdown in Atlanta, the late innings have been good to Cincinnati. Something that I think is telling is that the last time
the Reds blew a 6-run lead in the 9th (April 27th, 2004 with the loss going to everyone’s favorite Rufio look-alike but least favorite closer, Danny Graves), it was the start of a 5-game skid. This year, the Reds were able to bounce back and win 5 of their next 7. They also seem to have snapped their club aversion to extra inning wins.

Now, all that said, there are also some very worrying aspects to this ball club.

1) The Reds’ wins have been coming in May, which continues to follow my adage: Bad in April, Good in May, OK in June, Abysmal in July. Couple that with the fact that the Reds are 9-11 against teams over .500 and you begin to see why there should be some worry. The boys take on some tough teams heading into the All-Star break, and I think we’ll know by then if they can really hang.

2) For all the depth the Reds have at pitching, there is relatively little of it for position players. If Scott Rolen, Joey Votto, or Brandon Phillips get hurt, that’s pretty much all she wrote. The outfield has a little give with Laynce Nix and Johnny Gomes both performing admirably, but let’s just hope the team can stay healthy for once – especially Rolen who is 35.

3) The Bullpen. Coco has been frighteningly spotty this year, only rarely getting the 1-2-3 ninth that he was designed to get. Masset and Herrera have also been giving up runs in spots where the team can’t afford it. The only guy who’s been an absolute Oak is Arthur Rhodes, who is ancient and has been over-performing like nobody’s business. But after those four guys, the bullpen gets pretty abysmal, so Dusty has been leaning on them pretty hard. I have a feeling that logging all the innings will catch up to them come August and September – why put in Coco with a four-run lead against Pittsburgh? Of course, it all has to look bad during this 20-game stretch when nobody is getting the rest they need.

But, for now, let’s enjoy the nice part of the Summer. It’s not too hot out and the Reds are in first goddamn place. They’ve looked good all year, and not “good for Cincinnati” but “major league good.” Aroldis Chapman is going to dominate when he gets here, and Joey Votto has the potential to be as consistent as Albert Pujols. If both those things happen, this team could contend not just this season, but for years to come.

Blockbuster hasn't a chance in Hell. That's the conclusion I came to after making a deal with a friend of mine to take advantage of her Netflix account's Instant Watch capabilities. The sheer volume of feature films, TV shows, and documentaries just available to stream instantly (not even counting the zillions of titles available for rental) is far more than enough to overwhelm the rental giant's modest in-store collection.

So far, Netflix has allowed me to satiate a few of my niche interests: Ken Burns documentaries, music rockumentaries, and currently... dare I say it... Anime.

For whatever reason I've always had a penchant for those cheaply made, highly stylized animated sagas. I began my foray into the genre in my youth with, don’t judge me, the Pokémon series. Yes, painful as it is to admit it, I was briefly attached to the story of Ash, Misty, Brock, and all of their little furry friends. It’s not a period of my life that I like to relive, but I contend that I was less interested in the show itself than I was brainwashed into liking it by what is still the best Game Boy game of all time, and arguably the best theme song of all time.

But it's great in any language!

http://swedishpoke.ytmnd.com/

But after I grew out of that phase, some time went by before I rediscovered Anime again, this time with the legendary Dragon Ball Z series. That show more than any other turned me on to the genre as a whole. I was wowed by the creativity of the storyline, its fusion of fantasy and reality, and the expressiveness of the animation style. At the same time though, the show was hindered by a childish tone, very short and occasionally unsubstantive episodes, and overly drawn out power-up sequences in which characters moaned and grunted for about ten minutes in preparation for giant attack sequence.

Asides from Pokémon, DBZ was arguably the first Anime show to make it big in America, and it helped launch the wave of similar shows on Cartoon Network’s original Adult Swim like Gundam Wing and Cowboy Bebop. Though I peeked in on these shows on occasion, I never got into them the same way I got into DBZ. Now in college, I was starting to become keenly aware that though some aspects of the shows were very cool, others were very childish. Not to mention that the genre seemed to have a sort of geekifying aspect to it, turning people who paid a great deal of attention to it into nerdy Japan-aholics.

Once again, though, I was able to come back to Anime, this time through a show called Samurai Champloo. “Champloo” is (apparently) a Japanese word that means a fusion between past and present, and the world of the show is utterly fascinating. It technically takes place in early 19th century Japan, when the country was still made up of rural villages, but peppered in are touches of the 20th century. My favorite example is this beatboxing baddie:

Tune to 1:35, or just wait till after the opening credits

Champloo also features some really ballin’ fight sequences. It should be noted that some of the people I know most interested in Anime are stage combatants who enjoy both the creativity of the fights and the fact that they use classic weaponry such as swords, daggers, and bow staffs not often found elsewhere.

But even Champloo suffers from some genre drawbacks. Chiefly, Anime shows have an aversion to the subtlety and pacing that is expected in Western culture. Creators adhere to a simplicity in dialogue and storyline that often devolves into a simple good vs. evil trope, or has an explicitly stated moral lesson attached to each episode. This makes the genre feel childish even as it depicts mature or even lurid content. I think this is mostly due to the divide between Eastern and Western traditions, and xenophobic as it might seem, I’d like to see the art form take on more Western characteristics, that is, put emphasis on character development, find more complexity in the plot arcs, make dialogue more realistic.

Which brings me back to Netflix. I’ve recently found that Netflix Instant Watch allows one to stream the entire Avatar: The Last Airbender series. This Anime show, which originally aired on Nickelodeon, was actually developed in America, and it keeps a Western sensibility in regards to things like plot arcs, transitions, and comedy (some of the jokes are actually quite funny for a kids show). At the same time, the world of Avatar is heavily Asian-influenced, with martial arts, Buddhist iconography, and Eastern clothing and design found throughout. Avatar is about a boy named Aang, a scion that must master the four elements (air, water, earth, and fire) in order to stop a hundred-year-old war. The premise is primal, and the fantasy world that is set up functions much like Tolkien’s Middle Earth. All in all, it’s a pretty darn good show, and a terrific kid show (it should be noted, by the way, that I first saw the show when babysitting 10-year-olds and was waaaay more into it than they were).

Though, in my opinion, Avatar takes quite a step in the development of Anime for Western audiences, it still suffers from a lack of depth, subtlety, and maturity typical of many TV shows meant for children. But thematically and in terms of setting, the show is brilliant. It represents a meeting between Western and Eastern forms of creativity, combining the expressiveness of Anime with the logistical prowess of Aristotelian writing.

In looking at Anime, there is a tendency to dismiss the genre altogether by focusing on its negative aspects (there certainly are some). Though Western culture has been exposed to the dramatic power of Anime, most notably through works by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle) and Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), it has also witnessed its downside– perhaps most pronounced in what is called “hentai,” that is, pornographic and sexually perverted animation. The misogyny of this type of animation, as well as that in many movies and TV shows (the potential rape of women is an Anime trope) has, to some extent soured our culture to the art form.

But I think that the story of the 21st century will be about the joining of East and West, artistically as well as economically. We’ve already started to see some examples of this in the movie industry, most notably with Slumdog Millionaire, and as time passes, transplants from East to West and vice versa will become more numerous and better developed. I believe that Anime will play a big part in 21st century culture, and artists should open themselves up to understanding and appreciating it as a creative form.

One of my all-time favorite Anime moments. Check out the lighting and the seething anger depicted on Edward's face. Just because it's a cartoon doesn't mean it can't be dramatic.

A word for Rand Paul

It's a rarity indeed when the High Horse Blog comes to the aid of a Republican candidate, but today's post will take a look at the much conflated and overblown issue of recent Kentucky Senate primary winner Rand Paul's remarks about the Civil Rights Act.

Maddow is a great interviewer, and even though she's a member of the 24-hour newsarazzi, she should be given credit for setting up such a long interview so to really give Paul a chance to explain his views on the subject. I do think after she's made her point, she continues to dig into him to score some political points, but overall, she gives him a chance to speak. In fact, at one point she says, "I'm sorry to interrupt you, go on sir." Can you imagine O'Reilly doing such a thing?

But, I think that she has helped make this issue far bigger than it has any right to be. Rand Paul has said that he fully supports 9 out of 10 points of the Civil Rights Act from over 40 years ago. The point that he expresses mixed feelings about (not, as some would have you think, disagrees with) is the one prescribing that businesses desegregate. Such problematic views are the reason that people like Rand Paul and his father Ron Paul will never be palatable enough for the Presidency, but that's not to say that there's absolutely no value in them. Why else would they cling to such beliefs that are obviously going to hurt them at the polls?

The point that Paul is trying to make is that by having laws that impede on private business in the way the Civil Rights Act does, you are inherently limiting freedom of speech which could potentially weaken the power of the first amendment. Granted, back in the '60s the risk to the first amendment was massively overpowered by the problem of widespread racism, but I think that what Paul is after is getting our country to see past the tangible effects of legislation and look into the future jurisprudential questions that such legislation brings up.

The Health Care Bill is a perfect example: About 20 states (all with Republican leadership I should point out) are bringing cases to court regarding the Constitutionality of the mandate that people buy insurance or face a penalty. I think this is another case where the need for health care reform overpowers the objections based on murkiness to the legal system, but the opponents are not without some reason. Does the government really have the right to insist that we purchase a particular product, in this case insurance?

Now, that debate is also colored by the fact that the cases raised against the health care bill are all done to score political points for the Conservative bases of the states in question, but Rand Paul is doing no such thing. I think that he has a very honest concern for the language of a particular law, and wishes that people could see how it makes for confusion. As he said about 400 times in the Maddow interview, he abhors racism and I think he is very supportive of the way that the Civil Rights Act changed the world for the positive. Rand Paul is not a racist.

I know an awful lot of people who would support banning the KKK from marching through cities, which is frightening because when public opinion is massively against something, there is a danger that politicians could give in to it and pass legislation that, though popular, overreaches on the rights of Americans. The KKK should be allowed to march through our cities, and in fact, I feel a sense of national pride that we allow such things to occur, as abhorrent as I believe their views are.

Mr. Paul's point, as I see it, basically asserts that we should allow racists to be racist. If they want to open a Whites Only diner, they should go ahead, and the overwhelming public dissent would make it go out of business. I think that he's incorrect in that line of thinking - in some instances, the government's intrusion on private lives is necessary for the maintenance of a stable country - but I don't think that his heart is in the wrong place, as liberal pundits would have you think. Rather than attack his character, they should be attacking his logic. His view is incorrect, but not malevolent.

And since I was so impressed with Maddow's interview, I thought I'd reward her by showing some embarrassing footage of her rival.

And even better is this remixed version. A good example of how sampling does nothing but enrich our experience of the original. If anyone's interested in seeing a good documentary about sampling (Featuring one of the HHB's favorites, Girl Talk) check out RiP! A Remix Manifesto, currently available on Hulu (for FREE!!!).

Quick Addendum: Here's Ross Douthat's column in Monday's NY Times. I think he discusses the issue pretty eloquently:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/opinion/24douthat.html?th&emc=th

The Bourne-a-thon

My neck still hurts from Jason Bourne. And no, it wasn’t from one of the amnesiatic assassin’s patented choke holds, but from being stuck in a craned position for the majority of a five-and-a-half hour epic Bourne-a-thon in which I finally was able to fill the gaping hole in my movie-watching oeuvre: the Bourne Trilogy.

Almost universally beloved, I was hoping the triumvirate might reduce my aversion to the action genre – perhaps it’s a sign of my premature aging, but all that blasting and intense background music gives me such a headache. No such luck. I found Bourne to be just as commonplace as Transformers or even (dare I say it) The Core.

But we’ll get to my own hang-ups with Action later. Let’s start by discussing the movies themselves.

If you’re one of the ten people on Earth who haven’t met Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), the story begins when a fishing boat stumbles upon a mysterious body floating in the ocean. Though shot four times, the floater clings to life and heals up aboard the ship. The man, who we soon learn is Bourne, can remember nothing, absolutely nothing of his past, but for some reason has a penchant for lethal mayhem. The trilogy revolves around Bourne seeking the knowledge of his past, wandering continually further into a rabbit hole of vaster and vaster government conspiracy.

By the end of the first movie (The Bourne Identity), through the hackneyed use of memory flashes (see for example: every amnesia movie ever made), we find out that he was a secret agent hired by a secret agency for a secret mission to assassinate a renegade militant. The mission went haywire when Bourne’s conscience got in the way of executing the man in front of his family resulting in the “sleeping with the fishes” situation that he found himself in at the beginning of the movie.

Bourne failing to pull the trigger while aiming a gun at the head of a defenseless person would become the first annoying action trope of the trilogy. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t happened SO often. At least twice a movie. “Don’t worry guys,” I assured my friends while watching a similar situation in the final chapter, “If we’ve learned anything about Jason Bourne, it’s that he doesn’t pull the trigger.” The action, or lack thereof, is indicative of the trilogies’ general G-rating as far as action movies go. Though Jason Bourne may rack up a hefty body count, he lacks the ability to make a substantive kill, to actually dispatch one of the top players.

That’s not to say that nobody “important” dies in Bourne. The beginning of the second movie (The Bourne Supremacy) sees the sudden and brutal death of Marie (Franka Potente), the second-billed lead of the first movie. Poor Marie had been pulled into the whole affair when Bourne randomly entreated her assistance as he fled government agents chasing him in Geneva. Though initially irked by his homicidal tendencies and inability to remember his past (who could blame her?), she soon begins an affair with the man, making her move as he seeks (for her safety) to alter her physical appearance in what must be the most sexually charged haircut scene of recent memory.

But ultimately, Marie didn’t add all that much to the story itself, so she was the perfect fodder for audiences hungry to feel that the trilogy was “edgy” and could keep you on your toes. The Bourne Trilogy follows the prototypical rule for movie trilogies – a first movie full of mystery, where the hero emerges, a second movie where the hero must experience defeat and suffering so to grow stronger, and a third movie where the hero ultimately triumphs - see Star Wars or the The Matrix for other examples. Perhaps this is why I found the Bourne Trilogy to be so tired. In the end, there was no real suspense to be had, since I knew that Bourne would have to stay around for the next two movies.

At the same time, each movie follows a similar general arc – Bourne starts to snoop around for information into his past, a government agency puts up its best efforts to quash the upstart, and Bourne emerges supreme and proves he can outsmart the unlimited resources of his opposition. Clean and efficient indeed, but also, simple.

Note: It’s been a busy week, so I haven’t had much time to really craft this posting, so my apologies if it feels disjointed. Contrary to popular belief, segues are not so easy.

One conceit of Action movies is that the audience is willing to accept a lack of realism in exchange for an exciting journey. This perhaps gets to the crux of my problem with the genre. In real life, we all know that one Superspy would never be able to outclass an entire network of superspies (there are no James Bonds in real life). Therefore, each action movie has some sort of Transcendentalist bent to it. That is, it perpetuates the idea that by finding some sort of mythical knowledge, wisdom, or key, a hero can essentially outshine the world. Nobody can touch him or her. If that’s true, then the way that we should read each action movie is by finding the key that allows him or her to triumph. In The Matrix, for instance, Neo learns to trust in himself and his friends that he is “The One,” which allows for him to accept his destiny and conquer the technoscape. In the Bourne Trilogy, I just couldn’t find the key. Bourne doesn’t have to learn anything to gain his power, he just has it, and the movies are less about finding oneself than about finding the right person to kill.

Caspar David Friedrich – Wanderer Above the Fog, 1818

Here’s a painting, by the way, that my 12th grade Modern European History teacher chose as a representation of the Transcendentalist philosophy. (Thank you John Morra) I think this is a perfect case where a picture can say a thousand words.

But, I have to admit, I think that Transcendentalism is pretty much bunk. While I admire the idea that wisdom and intellectualism do grant one a degree of power over the world they live in, I think that it also perpetuates the idea that one can “conquer the world,” or at least shut it out and live a solitary but self-assured existence. And overall, I just don’t care about the journey of one man, but about the way that he influences other people and vice versa. Most action movies boil down to One Man vs. The World, and I just don’t find that particularly interesting to watch.

What I’d rather see is people interacting one another, affecting one another, changing one another, constantly shifting in relativistic positions rather than representing binary absolutes. Good vs. Evil? Please. How often do we really confront issues that plain in real life? And that’s really why I think the Bourne Trilogy failed, and why most action movies fail.

Before I sound too negative about the whole genre, I should indicate that there are actually Action movies I do like, such as The Matrix (the first one). But I would argue that The Matrix is vastly different from Bourne in ways. Primarily, though it is somewhat formulaic in that it is solely Neo’s journey that we are asked to concentrate on, we get to see how he is affected by characters around him. While Morpheus and Trinity provide positive reinforcement, we also see him influenced by Cypher (the Negative Nellie on the ship) and The Oracle, whose enigmatic message ultimately proves a red herring. There’s actually quite a bit of substantive stuff that happens.

Take that in contrast to Bourne, whose chronicles are like watching a little boy play video games on level 1, then a harder level 2, and then an even harder level 3. Instead of the complex layering of different messages by different characters who represent different influences, we get a twenty minute car chase through Central Europe (Oy! Who knew being a secret agent was such a schlep?). Yes, I know that The Matrix has many drawn out action scenes as well, but in that movie the action is an irreplaceable element of the script. It actually helps tell the story about how the Matrix works, and what Neo’s role actually is. I suppose you could similarly justify the action of the Bourne movies as a description of how the world of the secret agent works, but I really don’t think it takes a straight hour-and-a-half of heart-pounding suspense to see that.

Perhaps my problem is that I feel action movies should be on the television screen. Their pulpiness is perfect for when you’re sitting around killing time, but isn’t the sort of thing that should be featured on a silver screen, where it commands that you pay it attention. If I have to pay attention to something, I feel that it should have some sort of meaning. Something other than: Jason Good; Government Baaad.

Maybe I’m completely off here. But, considering the popularity of the movie series, I really have to ask, “Did I miss something?”

Dear Deidre

Deidre is back from hiatus and Pete has been sacked.

Dear Deidre,

I was at a movie with a friend of mine, slightly (heavily) intoxicated by a certain controlled substance, and she offered me an Altoid out of her hand. Knowing how curiously strong they were I couldn't resist their Siren's call, and reached for one. In my stupor, I knocked the newly purchased candy tin out of her hand, spilling precious minties all over the carpet. I, of course, apologized and offered to buy her another pack, but after thinking about it, I started to consider the possibility that I really don't owe her a replacement, right? Knowing my state of mind, and taking into consideration that accidents do sometimes happen, shouldn't she make me culpable for only a percentage of the total cost?

The friendship is intact and the whole case is now moot, but I'd appreciate your opinion for gloating purposes.

Sincerely,

Clutz McGee

Dear Clutz McGee,

At least it wasn't movie candy because if it was, you would surely owe her a new pack, and you would be reponsible in full. Those movie sized candies are inappropriately expensive, and I would be quite irate knowing that a whole box was wasted on someone's frivilous hand malfunction.

But, seriously, is this for real? Is someone really insisting or expecting that you buy her a new pack of Altoids? Was this even an actual conversation? Maybe she should have realized that after consuming intoxicating substances, you may not have the best hand-eye coordination. Not to mention, it's dark in movie theaters. Without proper lighting, it's presumably hard to see and detect the small Altoid lying within someone's palm. And, as we all know, no good deed goes unpunished. Why share in the first place? She bought the Altoids, she should have kept them for herself, and therefore, the only person to blame for spilling all of the precious "minties" onto the floor would be herself.

At the same time, you should try and be respectful of other people's possessions. Even if it is just a few Altoids, remember that not everyone has an extra dollar to buy a second pack. And, since you don't really want to buy a replacement, you probably don't have a ton of extra cash either. If it would have turned into some sort of real argument, I would have suggested that you just suck it up and buy a new one. Be the bigger person. Thankfully, that was not the case. Try to be more careful next time, Clutz. And, check your breath... maybe she was trying to tell you something.

Deidre

Politics Sunday

There was no Sports Saturday because following the Reds' loss to St. Louis Friday - runners on 1st and 2nd with one out, down one run in the ninth, the Reds hit into a double play. A double play, for God's sake! Talk about going out with a whimper - I was far too distraught to do any kind of clear-sighted competitive analysis. And, yes, yesterday's gem was able to right my mood, but now it's politics Sunday. Sigh. Sometimes the timing just never works out. But let's celebrate yesterday together, and root hard for the Redlegs, who once again can take sole possession of first place with a win today.

For today, I'd like to speak briefly on Elena Kagan.

Yikes. Can't anyone snap a decent-looking picture of the woman?

But, really, it's not so much her that I'm interested in speaking about as the conversation surrounding her. Now, I feel somewhat ashamed to admit (not really) that among the first comments I made about Ms. Kagan was, "Who's this Jasper that Obama nominated to the Supreme Court?"

- A Jasper, of course, is a slang term for a particular type of middle-aged lesbian -

Do I feel bad to have used such a base vernacular term in reference to a would-be High Court Justice? Meh. It was innocuous enough, and meant more as a joke about her disheveled appearance than her sexual orientation. Little did I know that the entirety of Ms. Kagan's confirmation process (the only real 15 minutes of fame a Supreme Court Justice gets) would revolve around similar comments made by media sources.

Now, the High Horse Blog enjoys only a modest readership, giving it leeway for being lax on certain ethical standards (i.e. Pete's column last week, or perhaps when I called Liz Cheney a dirty, dirty tramp), but news networks and papers are a different story.

The trouble stems from the Wall Street Journal's decision to post a picture of Ms. Kagan playing softball 17 years ago (when she was a law teacher at the University of Chicago) on the front page of the newspaper. The picture immediately ignited a flurry of conversation surrounding the nominee's sexual orientation because of the popular stereotype that women who play softball are often lesbians.

Court Nominee Comes to the Plate

For the moment, let's forget about the complicated and thorny issue of why people make this association in the first place (it gets into zeitgeist theory and how stereotypes are formulated, which are far too complicated for this humble post to tackle), and ask the question, "Why would the Wall Street Journal, one of the nation's most vaunted news outlets, publish a picture of a Supreme Court Judge playing softball on the front page?"

The byline for the picture, "Court Nominee Comes to the Plate," does not carry in it any substantive significance, and is really just meant to be a witty attention-grabber. It appeared in the May 11th Wall Street Journal after Kagan had been nominated on the 10th, so this was really among the first pictures of the potential Justice that would be published.

So why choose this picture? Why not something befitting the gravitas of the position of Supreme Court Justice? For instance, here is the picture the supposedly Liberal New York Times published the day after the John Roberts nomination:

Certainly, the picture promotes a more dignified image of Justice Roberts, one befitting a future Supreme Court judge. I think, then, that we can see that the Journal is using at least one irresponsible tactic, and inserting subtle bias against Ms. Kagan by using a picture that portrays her as laid-back and folksy as she is nominated for a court that is considered far more grave.

With such a disconnect, the Journal must have known that many people would wonder why it was this picture that was chosen for the front page. What makes playing softball front page news? News people, whose lives revolve around learning how people consume and interpret media, must have been able to predict that people would put together the association of softball's link to gay culture and Ms. Kagan's single status.

So I think that to call the Journal's softball picture an insinuation of Kagan's sexual preference is fair. And I think the issue's insertion into the general conversation around the nominee was intentional on the Journal's part. It's interesting to consider that, in addition to the Wall Street Journal, Conservative news mogul Rupert Murdoch also controls the New York Post and Fox News, organizations integral to controlling the national dialogue. Colbert did a pretty good segment highlighting how calculated interaction between those three sources of Conservative media can bloat a small idea into a national issue. It's very intelligent, and I highly suggest you check it out.

But I think that we should be comforted by the use of these sorts of tactics for Kagan's nomination. Obviously, if we're grasping at straws like the "gay card," as a means to stall the confirmation, it means her chances of getting through are pretty high. What we know so far about Ms. Kagan is that, though she may not have a long paper trail so that we have her registered opinion on EVERYTHING, she is considered one of the most brilliant legal minds in the country. She's not, as Conservatives would have you think, Harriet Myers (and isn't it odd that all of a sudden those who supported Myers's nomination are now suddenly using her as an example of a potential Supreme Court fuck-up?).

By the way, thus far, Miss Kagan has taken the high road and not responded to the calls that she confirm her straightness, but many trustworthy people have confirmed her heterosexuality. I think that questioning one's sexual preference when they obviously don't want to speak to it is one of the rudest things that people can do. Whispering about it in the privacy of your home is one thing - I whisper about how hideous Renee Zellweger is every time I see her squinty pancake face on television - but I hardly think that kind of conversation qualifies to be put into credited media.

So is she? Isn't she? Forget about it. Can't it just be a fun inside joke?

Searching for the Meme

Man, isn't the internet cool?

As I sit here listening to Jurassic 5 (via grooveshark.com), blogging to whoever in the world wants to listen, and watching live sports updates for the Cubs game (not that I actually care about that when the Reds are 1/2 a game out), I am also searching into the past to solve a mystery so trivial to everyone else in the world that I'm almost embarrassed to tell you what it is. But I will:

There is an easy listening song called "Adiemus." Have a listen.

Now, for whatever the hell reason, this is a song that I've loved since my childhood. I fondly remember that it was one of my very first Napster downloads, and it's been a part of my music collection ever since. So, yesterday at work, for some strange reason, the song comes on the classical radio station my boss forces us to listen to. I, sarcastic cretin that I can sometimes be, said to my boss, "Now, I don't mean to quibble with your 'classical' radio station, but they just played a song by Enya."

I returned to making telephone calls, grinning smugly at myself, when a coworker piped up to say, "What are you talking about? This isn't Enya."

The mystery was afoot!

I could have sworn that Enya had written "Adiemus." Napster told me so. It was as if my coworker was taking one of my most treasured nuggets of knowledge and crushing it into oblivion. And he had information to back up his claim: according to him, "Adiemus" was written by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins.

Well, now I just had to know. I couldn't have the origin of one of my favorite songs, a tune that I've had memorized since I was ten years old, in question. Luckily, Google.com was there to help me navigate the rabbit hole of history. Here's what I found:

According to Wikipedia, "Adiemus" was indeed composed by Karl Jenkins as part of a series of albums entitled (fittingly) "Adiemus." Mystery solved right? BUT, why in the world would I have thought the song was composed by Enya? Normally, that easy listening mogul doesn't even register on my radar. There must have been a reason that I thought she was responsible for this strangely addicting and somewhat (somehow) popular piece.

Apparently, too, I was not the only one in the world who thought that "Adiemus" was credited to Enya. Typing "Adiemus" into Google yields just as many results that credit Enya with the song as Karl Jenkins, possibly more. There are youtube hits that have Enya as the composer as well. But Enya's Wikipedia page doesn't list "Adiemus" as a song on any of her albums.

Now, fairly certain that Karl Jenkins was indeed the composer of "Adiemus," I searched Google for the phrase, "Who wrote 'Adiemus'". After swimming through a sea of chat boards, I finally found one where somebody said, "I could have sworn that I saw that Enya wrote the song on the Pure Moods CD or something."

The light bulb moment!

I remembered Pure Moods - an easy listening CD that was marketed ad nauseum on television when I was a kid (probably on Nickelodeon since that's all that I watched). Yes... it was all coming back to me - some commercial where they also played that song from Exorcist. And there was this part with a bunch of candles...

A quick trip to youtube yielded this:

Yes! That's it! That was the commercial! I call this the "Rosebud Moment" where I recover a touching little memory from my childhood.

The commercial does indeed accurately credit the song "Adiemus" as being by Adiemus (the name of Jenkins's album series). Hmm... here's what I think happened:

Both the first song on the commercial and the song that plays just before "Adiemus" are written by Enya, so I'm guessing that someone, some IDIOT, who was among the first people to post the song online on Napster (five years after Pure Moods came out) made a mistake and credited "Adiemus" to Enya. Now, over ten years later, because of the millions of downloads the song must have had (through Napster and other sites) the original mistake has been disseminated all around the internet until, finally, Enya and "Adiemus" are inseparable. Poor Karl Jenkins will go through the rest of his life getting only a partial credit for what is, to me, a very fine song.

Though the whole episode illustrates a danger of the internet (that is, that its information is often perceived as exact yet is prone to falsehood), it also demonstrates the unbelievable beauty of the availability of information on the web. How exciting that we live in a time when, in a matter of minutes, I can search swaths of information in order to find a tiny mistake almost 20 years old! Even 25 years ago, such trivial misinformations were relegated to the dumpster of history. Tiny mysteries like this surely were not important enough to warrant making even a couple phone calls to solve (and perhaps even more work would have been required).

And I, personally, would have been driven CRAZY not knowing the truth. How often does one get acutely bothered by a song in your head that you don't know the name to? Well, as the saying goes, there's an App for that. There's a proverbial App for everything, and they provide more than just a simple service. They provide reassurance that for any, ANY desire that gnaws at oneself, by spending just a few minutes on the information superhighway, we can move past it and return (unstressed) to a relaxed quietude.

Dear (Deidre)

Deidre had to take this week off, so we were forced to field all incoming questions to our substitute spokesman. Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to check his credentials. We’ll hope the column turns out ok.

Dear Deidre,

Lately it just seems like the magic in my relationship is gone. My boyfriend always used to buy me flowers or surprise me by bringing lunch to my work and things like that, but lately he’s seemed more and more distant. We only rarely go on dates anymore. I don’t think I’ve done anything in particular that would upset him, but every time I try to bring the issue up, he just says, “I don’t want to talk about it,” and walks out of the room. I can’t keep going on in the relationship like this, but I don’t want to push him away by suffocating him. What should I do?

Sincerely,

Confused in Columbus

Dear Confused,

Jesus, what’s a guy got to do to please you people? It’s like every time we do something nice for you, you want to us to do more and more and more. So you only rarely go on dates, huh? Did you ever think that maybe it’s because he’s the one who has to pay every fuckin’ time you go to the movies that he doesn’t want to go out?

And do you know what it costs to buy a large popcorn? It’s like seven bucks – not to mention that you always want to load it down with salt, and then in the middle of the movie you make us go and buy you a soda because you’re so thirsty. By the end of the night, it’s like a $40 evening. And then you go back to your place – always your place, even if I have to work at seven the next morning – and you just go to sleep since you’re so tired from eating the entire tub of popcorn, leaving me to sit on your uncomfortable bed wide awake and spoon you.

And let me tell you something, spooning is not a comfortable position for the guy. All the weight is on your shoulder and every time we need to adjust the position you make this annoying little moan like we’re causing you such an inconvenience by adjusting our position, even though I didn’t want to go to bed in the first place.

Let me ask you something, do you ever do anything nice for your guy? Hmm? Like, I don’t know, maybe a nice blow job every once in a while, where the guy can just sit back, relax, and admire the top of your head. But, NO! You’re perfectly content to let us spend a half hour trying to get you to an unattainable climax, but if we ask just one time for you to let us film it, you turn colder than a Woman’s Christian Temperance Union member.

Fine, you want a suggestion? Here’s a suggestion: instead of worrying so much about whether your man is showing his love enough, why don’t you show some love by getting into the kitchen and cooking a fucking pie. After all, any time you do want to cook, it’s always some vegan shit that looks like it came out of someone’s nose. And, so you know, we may tell you we like it, but we never mean it. We’d much rather just hit up Bdubs or even the K-Fried-C for a double down. It may cost a little extra, but it’s worth not having to feel like such a phony asshole having to compliment every piece of shit you make just to keep you from bursting into tears like a little whiny 10-year-old.

Allright, you know what, that’s enough. Just thinking about you and your pathetic problems has completely harshed my buzz. Your boyfriend’s not being attentive enough? Shit or get off the pot. Either suck it up, or just dump the guy, because seriously, it would be so much easier for everyone to just end this thing than have to pay for another Sandra Bullock movie.

Sincerely,

Pete (fuck this stupid nickname bullshit.)

Myth, Reality, and Immigration

If you get to the end, there's a treat...

As the controversial Arizona immigration law brings the subject of immigration back to the forefront of the national conversation, it's worth taking a moment to recognize that this thorny issue is one where the rhetoric and reality often diverge from one another. Take, for instance, the prevailing idea that a strong border fence is necessary to keep illegals from entering the country. While both Democrats and Republicans seem to have latched onto the idea that most Americans are for closing and sealing off the borders, any plan to do so butts up against logistics that are overly complicated and expensive. A border fence sounds nice, but is it really feasible to make a fence along such a large distance? And even if we could, would the type of fence we can afford be enough to actually keep immigrants out of the country? Fences can be cut through with wire cutters, can be leaped over, can be dug under; and considering the speed with which road construction occurs in this country, I can't imagine that a concrete barrier could be built with any kind of timeliness.

Such is the problem of the immigration issue. The two parties realize that Americans don't like illegal immigration, and so have to keep the rhetoric tough so as to not seem "soft" on the issue. But on the other hand, any kind of strict enforcement of the issue runs into logistical trouble. The Arizona immigration laws are an example. The lawmakers of Arizona seem to be saying that the importance of finding and deporting illegal immigrants trumps national privacy rights and guaranteed protections against Draconian tactics. By now, most people are aware of the new law requiring all legal immigrants to carry paperwork on them confirming their status, and allowing law enforcement officials to stop anyone they have a "probable cause" to believe may be illegal - actually, the law requiring legal immigrants to carry paperwork on them is over 40 years old. On paper, perhaps that actually looks somewhat fair (and to be sure, the news media has not cast the measure in a very good light) - if you are a legal immigrant, you really have nothing to fear as long as you carry paperwork on you, right?

But in reality, it's not feasible that this will allow those who have obtained a legal status to be treated with any kind of fairness. Even if you had all of your paperwork on you when you were stopped, the new authority police have been given allows for any kind of situation to happen while being stopped. For instance, a friend of mine was once carrying on him medicine that was not prescribed to him - which is a situation many people find themselves in as one cannot always afford the proper medicine, or may be looking to see if a particular course works for them before officially going on it - and was stopped by the police. Under the new laws, the authority given policemen may allow them to use the "probable cause" stamp to snoop around the car and find the medicine, which is illegal and can result in the deportation of a legal immigrant if reported.

Or perhaps more simply, what if a legal immigrant just forgot his paperwork? How many times have I forgotten something as simple as my driver's license? Well, instead of getting to work on time, what likely would happen is the man or woman would be taken to the police station and held until legal status was determined. This is more than a simple inconvenience, it is treating our immigrant brethren (mostly model citizens) as inferior.

The real debate on immigration seems to come from the problem of what to do with illegal immigrants that are currently here. The mythical approach favored by Conservatives is that immigration reform should include measures to deport illegal aliens currently here. Yet even the most tyrannical approach could not possibly sniff out the millions and millions of illegal aliens living in the country now. Not to mention that if, for some reason, everyone in the country illegally just came out and admitted their status, it would prove unwieldy to actually transport such a large population back to their homelands.

And the emotional tenor of immigration rhetoric stems from perhaps the ultimate myth in immigration. What I like to call the "They took our jobs!" myth.

Overall, the work that illegal immigrants do is for such small wages that no American would really have a desire to do such work. The typical jobs that illegal immigrants are able to hold down because of their status are those in manual labor, the sort of thing that American citizens don't generally aspire to anyway. In fact, perhaps the most complicated part of the immigration question is that Americans capitalize on the cheap labor done by illegal immigrants (cheap restaurant food, or low-cost gardening services for instance) because they don't pay them the type of living wage that their work deserves, taking advantage of their precarious situations. How hypocritical, then, to blame them for problems in American society, when indeed the problems are caused by capitalism, greed, and consumerism themselves.

And one final myth to dispel is that of the "security risk" from illegal aliens. OK, yes, theoretically, having undocumented people in the country is risky considering the sort of world we live in Post-September 11th, but in reality, illegal immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than legal immigrants. There are occasional horror stories to grab onto - the illegal immigrant drunk driver who kills someone in their car, for instance - but generally, the risk of being deported outweighs any impetus for crime.

So, as the immigration debate takes its place on the national stage, consider this a reminder that the rhetoric surrounding the issue is often hyperbolic and unrepresentative of reality. Democracy must start with decency, and if we can't see through a blind rage at the mere act of coming into this country illegally (really, it should be seen as quite a compliment that someone still believes in this country while so many want to see us destroyed), then we will act on the issue with a plan that is both needlessly oppressive, and a possible black hole for cost.

Thanks for listening everybody, and for getting to the end, go see this treat from the Onion.

Deidre is off tomorrow, but maybe we'll find someone to fill in for her...

Reds - The movie - Review

No, contrary to what most Cincinnatians believe, Reds is not a documentary about the formation of the first major league baseball team. Actually, it's a sprawling period piece starring Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton chronicling the Russian Revolution through the eyes of reporter and activist Jack Reed.

Or rather, think of it as an American Dr. Zhivago. That Boris Pasternak epic was remarkable not just because it was a clear-eyed depiction of the events of the Bolshevik revolution (an accomplishment in and of itself considering the lengths to which the Communist government went to excise historical accounts critical of the regime), but because of its intense focus on the uncontrollable disruption of individual lives caused by great (read: important) moments in history.

Substituted for Pasternak's doctor and poet Yuri Zhivago is Jack Reed, an energetic voice of progressivism whose writing skill is matched only by his ability to unite workers and educate the masses. Instead of Pasternak's Lara, the tender nurse that is the love of Zhivago's life, we have Louise Bryant, an empowered yet loyal wife and top-rate reporter in her own right. Both stories depict the disillusionment of the Russian Revolution's initial promise of social justice and subsequent degeneration into a Draconian tyranny.

Reds, as with Zhivago, begins and ends as a love story. Bryant, a quintessential flapper and promising writing talent, leaves a small town life for literary capital New York after beginning an affair with Reed. Though the relationship is able to flourish, Bryant's adjustment to life in the big city proves difficult, especially in the shadow of the mercurial and influential Reed. Clearly, Jack's interest in chronicling and aiding the labor movement in America trumps that of all else - even his eventual wife. The two go through a period of rockiness which includes an affair on Bryant's part with writer Eugene O'Neill (played with a quiet cynicism by Jack Nicholson). After a brief period of separation, the two eventually find their love for one another again as they travel to Russia on the eve of the Revolution. Reconnected, the future looks bright for Jack and Louise, and the world seems to be on the precipice of becoming the Utopian Eden promised under Communist theory.

But this bucolic outlook gives way to the practical difficulties of maintaining a relationship and fueling the reorganization of an entire economic system. Jack is continually drawn into the action of the flailing American labor movement, allowing his literary potential as well as his relationship with Louise to wallow. Eventually, after disagreements splinter the American Socialist Party, Jack decides to smuggle himself into Russia to gain official recognition of his faction through the Commissar. He gets more than he bargains for, being detained indefinitely by the Russians as a party spokesman, despite repeated pleas to be released so he may reconnect with his wife. Though his leaving for Russia frayed the relationship nearly beyond repair, Louise takes off to recover her husband, and the final phase of the movie depicts the attempts of the two to find each other amid the murk of the great historical turmoil.

Despite the length and sweeping nature of Reds, Beatty's steady direction (yes, he directed, starred in, and actually wrote Reds as well) is able to keep things from feeling bogged down - not an easy accomplishment with a 3.5-hour-long movie. This is also a credit to the script, which, though containing an awful lot of talk (much of which on the decidedly un-engrossing subject of Communist theory) moves steadily forward and draws vivid and fascinating portraits of Reed, Bryant, and their relationship.

Reds approaches the complicated question of whether individual human beings can actually steer the course of their own history. Even in his earlier years as a supposedly objective reporter, Jack cannot help but take part in some of the revolutionary activities that he covers, and as his life progresses, he seems to completely disregard any notion of journalistic distance. Louise insists that he has done far more to fuel the revolution through his writing than any of his actions, yet, he is unable to ignore the impulse to try to take some sort control over the future. By the end of the film, the Gods have proven (as they have so many times before), that fate has far more control than one man ever could. Reds seems to assert that rather than look to take hold of the reins of history, the best people can do is stay true to their ideals and to one another.

The ending to Reds does seem truncated and to some extent (and in my opinion, to its detriment) takes the focus off of this overarching question and on to the comparably simple matter of Reed and Bryant's relationship. Still, it reminds us that though so much of what happens to us is completely out of our hands, our ability to connect to one another transcends even the most powerful forces of the universe. Just as with Dr. Zhivago and Lara, the love of Reed and Bryant is able to pierce through the fog of the Russian Revolution and prove that the humble divinity of mankind can occasionally overpower fate, if not drive it.