12 November 2008
Wait, forget the Samoa cookie ice cream...
It's the good people at Haagen Dazs who are doing the lord's work: white chocolate ice cream with peppermint bark? Holy Jeebus. May the timeframe of this "limited edition" be long and sweet.
11 November 2008
Public policy reading lists, courtesy of our google overlords
10 November 2008
FM Country
There are a couple of things you can usually say to a group of music snobs without risk of putting your foot in your mouth: one is to denigrate the 1980s phase of any artist whose career began prior to or ended after said decade (Miles Davis, Bob Dylan*, Elton John, Billy Joel, Bruce to a degree, etc.) The other thing you can almost always get away with is criticizing contemporary country while praising Johnny Cash, or Merle Haggard, or Hank Williams, or any number of other more “authentic” country musicians.
While it’s true that modern country is basically pop, I actually consider it a bit of a guilty pleasure. I enjoy thinking about the fact that there are people who professionally write songs for others – ghost songwriters, essentially. These are people who build songs carefully, with attention to detail, with the occasional bit of clever wordplay. The songs need to be well-structured, and they often have very formal bridges and solos. And a good one can be just as gratifying as a good pop song.
Three of my current guilty pleasures in this realm are Jamey Johnson, Taylor Swift, and Kathleen Edwards. Jamey Johnson writes dark stuff – his oft-quoted line is about how he had a wife and home but traded it all for “cocaine and a whore.”
Kathleen Edwards is Canadian and writes beautifully and honestly, with the occasional bit of wit: her song “I get the dough, you get the glory” has to be the only country song to mention Chateauneuf.
I only recently discovered Taylor Swift, convinced to give her a chance by Sasha Frere-Jones’s recent New Yorker piece on her. She seems like the real deal: she writes most of her songs. She’s got a great voice. The production on her album is good without being tacky. And she seems to relish playing all the roles available to her: seductress, bitter ex-, good friend, devoted lover. While anything produced in Nashville can get a touch saccharine very easily, none of the songs are outright offensive. The album has that great defiant attitude that you only get from someone who is young, talented, and knows it.
She had me from the opening song on her new album, named “Tim McGraw.” It’s a harmless song about a great summer fling. The rhymes aren’t that obvious, the chorus is generous and warm, and it had me thinking back to how Ms. Abstract Citizen was once fond of loudly playing Tim McGraw, back when we first met.
The second tune, "Just another picture to burn," opens with a bit that made me laugh out loud.
So, remember: Lyle Lovett is safe. Being into Taylor Swift? Totally edgy.^
*But not "Foot of Pride" or "Angelina." So help me God if you do so in my presence. In fact, let's just scratch Dylan from that list: you all should know by now that being into 80s Dylan is the new prog.
^Only applies to her first album, which I am two years late in hearing. The new one comes out...TUesday! And I probably won't get around to it till late 2009 or something, so, uh, stay tuned.
While it’s true that modern country is basically pop, I actually consider it a bit of a guilty pleasure. I enjoy thinking about the fact that there are people who professionally write songs for others – ghost songwriters, essentially. These are people who build songs carefully, with attention to detail, with the occasional bit of clever wordplay. The songs need to be well-structured, and they often have very formal bridges and solos. And a good one can be just as gratifying as a good pop song.
Three of my current guilty pleasures in this realm are Jamey Johnson, Taylor Swift, and Kathleen Edwards. Jamey Johnson writes dark stuff – his oft-quoted line is about how he had a wife and home but traded it all for “cocaine and a whore.”
Kathleen Edwards is Canadian and writes beautifully and honestly, with the occasional bit of wit: her song “I get the dough, you get the glory” has to be the only country song to mention Chateauneuf.
I only recently discovered Taylor Swift, convinced to give her a chance by Sasha Frere-Jones’s recent New Yorker piece on her. She seems like the real deal: she writes most of her songs. She’s got a great voice. The production on her album is good without being tacky. And she seems to relish playing all the roles available to her: seductress, bitter ex-, good friend, devoted lover. While anything produced in Nashville can get a touch saccharine very easily, none of the songs are outright offensive. The album has that great defiant attitude that you only get from someone who is young, talented, and knows it.
She had me from the opening song on her new album, named “Tim McGraw.” It’s a harmless song about a great summer fling. The rhymes aren’t that obvious, the chorus is generous and warm, and it had me thinking back to how Ms. Abstract Citizen was once fond of loudly playing Tim McGraw, back when we first met.
The second tune, "Just another picture to burn," opens with a bit that made me laugh out loud.
State the obvious,
I didn’t get my perfect fantasy
I realized you love yourself
More that you could ever love me
So go and tell your friends
That I’m obsessive and crazy,
That’s fine
I’ll tell mine
You’re gay
So, remember: Lyle Lovett is safe. Being into Taylor Swift? Totally edgy.^
*But not "Foot of Pride" or "Angelina." So help me God if you do so in my presence. In fact, let's just scratch Dylan from that list: you all should know by now that being into 80s Dylan is the new prog.
^Only applies to her first album, which I am two years late in hearing. The new one comes out...TUesday! And I probably won't get around to it till late 2009 or something, so, uh, stay tuned.
07 November 2008
Last hyperbolic statement of post-election joy (from me, at least)
via Hayden Carruth's poem "Ecstasy."
Ecstasy
For years it was in sex and I thought
this was the most of it
so brief
a moment
or two of transport out of oneself
or
in music which lasted longer and filled me
with the exquisite wrenching agony
of the blues
and now it is equally
transitory and obscure as I sit in my broken
chair that the cats have shredded
by the stove on a winter night with wind and snow
howling outside and I imagine
the whole world at peace
at peace
and everyone comfortable and warm
the great pain assuaged
a moment
of the most shining and singular sensual gratification.
06 November 2008
CODIS
So, if you're a convicted felon, you lose not only the right to vote - you lose your genetic privacy.
This has some troubling implications, sure. Once a convict, always a suspect? Maybe. It certainly says something that the government has so little faith in the likelihood that felons will be "rehabilitated" in prison, right? And the database can be used to determine whether, for example, DNA from an unsolved crime scene might belong to the sibling of a convict. The sibling of the convict might complain from a purely technical standpoint that this is unfair.
I don't want to make this too personal or dramatic, but an old co-worker of mine was recently murdered in her apartment. While initial reports were vague, we now know that the murderer was her building's super-intendent; he had access to all the apartments in the complex; he was a recovering addict with previous convictions for a number of offenses; and while initial reports didn't indicate a motive, we know now that he raped her before beating her to death.
Thanks to CODIS, this vile human should never see the world from outside a cell again. Virginia can seek the death penalty, which raises a number of other issues that are not worth getting into. What matters is that - at the risk of sounding like I'm trading freedom for security - a number of other single women who live in that same residential complex will know that they are safer in their apartments. And I hope that they will be able to demand that the management company disclose the kinds of historical information about this man that may have impacted Gini's or someone else's decision to live there.
Though I only worked with her for about a year, she was sweet, kind, and very generous. She was active in her church but fun-loving and always friendly. Looking back, I feel awful for my mild indifference to her, for being put off by her cheerful demeanor and for cynically scoffing at her unbridled optimism. The world needs more people like her and fewer people like me.
May she rest in peace.
This has some troubling implications, sure. Once a convict, always a suspect? Maybe. It certainly says something that the government has so little faith in the likelihood that felons will be "rehabilitated" in prison, right? And the database can be used to determine whether, for example, DNA from an unsolved crime scene might belong to the sibling of a convict. The sibling of the convict might complain from a purely technical standpoint that this is unfair.
I don't want to make this too personal or dramatic, but an old co-worker of mine was recently murdered in her apartment. While initial reports were vague, we now know that the murderer was her building's super-intendent; he had access to all the apartments in the complex; he was a recovering addict with previous convictions for a number of offenses; and while initial reports didn't indicate a motive, we know now that he raped her before beating her to death.
Thanks to CODIS, this vile human should never see the world from outside a cell again. Virginia can seek the death penalty, which raises a number of other issues that are not worth getting into. What matters is that - at the risk of sounding like I'm trading freedom for security - a number of other single women who live in that same residential complex will know that they are safer in their apartments. And I hope that they will be able to demand that the management company disclose the kinds of historical information about this man that may have impacted Gini's or someone else's decision to live there.
Though I only worked with her for about a year, she was sweet, kind, and very generous. She was active in her church but fun-loving and always friendly. Looking back, I feel awful for my mild indifference to her, for being put off by her cheerful demeanor and for cynically scoffing at her unbridled optimism. The world needs more people like her and fewer people like me.
May she rest in peace.
truly, obama has long coattails...
how else do you explain the fact that the black cupcake won the cupcake wars?
04 November 2008
Blue and red: origins
Per Tom Brokaw on Scarborough this morning, NBC created the first electoral map for television for the 1976 election. They had Republicans as blue because they thought that the color blue was more closely associated with the right: blue chips, blue blood, etc. Red, on the other hand, was traditionally the color of leftist parties in Europe, and so they assigned red to the dems.
ABC changed up the scheme for the 1984 election, because they were concerned that they might be accused of trying to imply that democrats were associated with communists. So, the color scheme was reversed, and the other networks followed suit.
ABC changed up the scheme for the 1984 election, because they were concerned that they might be accused of trying to imply that democrats were associated with communists. So, the color scheme was reversed, and the other networks followed suit.
03 November 2008
Brand management: election 2008
I mentioned earlier that I thought the big story of the 2008 election might be brand management. Assuming the polls hold on Tuesday, here are a few thoughts:
Too many of the articles written about it will probably overemphasize the notion that the McCain brand was diluted in the general 2008 campaign. I have a hard time not buying the Frontline narrative which says that the McCain brand became heavily exploited shortly after the South Carolina primary in 2000.
Simply stated, imagine two terms of a McCain circa 2000 presidency. It's hard to think that democrats would be on the verge of a permanent lasting majority in both houses of congress, a shift so monumental that republicans routinely use "divided government" as a talking point. (Interestingly, no republicans I know were interested in divided government and out of control spending in 2004.)
A McCain presidency - had it happened in 2000 - would probably be fairly close to a Gore presidency, I think. But in truth, the McCain brand began to suffer shortly after the general election. "Maverick" moves became badges of honor rather than instinctive. McCain manifested a bizarre schizoid tendency, seemingly wanting to avoid his dishonorable loss by having a "come to Jesus" moment with the RNC orthodoxy and simultaneously sticking it to Bush by being a legislative contrarian. 2004 was awkward. And more and more, the McCain worldview seems, to me, to have become about his person, simply stated.
The other problem is that, I think, in hindsight, congressional quiescence will be seen as a major contributing factor to the growth of executive power over the past few years. This growth has largely served goals with which the old McCain would profess to disagree (torture, unaffordable tax cuts, etc) - and McCain, the trademarked maverick, was nowhere to be seen exerting his precious leadership.
So, flip the question. They want to know who Barack Obama is, but do we know who John McCain is? Really, who is this guy? Is he a fundamentally virtuous person who made a deal with the devil sometime between his loss in 2000 and his endorsement of Bush in the 2004 election? Or was he fundamentally flawed - his "maverick-ness" masking as a virtue when in reality it was just a display of his need to place his ego center stage?
I think, again, that if the story is brand management, the narrative will be simple. Figuring out just where McCain lost the weight of his brand, though, will be much more complicated.
Too many of the articles written about it will probably overemphasize the notion that the McCain brand was diluted in the general 2008 campaign. I have a hard time not buying the Frontline narrative which says that the McCain brand became heavily exploited shortly after the South Carolina primary in 2000.
Simply stated, imagine two terms of a McCain circa 2000 presidency. It's hard to think that democrats would be on the verge of a permanent lasting majority in both houses of congress, a shift so monumental that republicans routinely use "divided government" as a talking point. (Interestingly, no republicans I know were interested in divided government and out of control spending in 2004.)
A McCain presidency - had it happened in 2000 - would probably be fairly close to a Gore presidency, I think. But in truth, the McCain brand began to suffer shortly after the general election. "Maverick" moves became badges of honor rather than instinctive. McCain manifested a bizarre schizoid tendency, seemingly wanting to avoid his dishonorable loss by having a "come to Jesus" moment with the RNC orthodoxy and simultaneously sticking it to Bush by being a legislative contrarian. 2004 was awkward. And more and more, the McCain worldview seems, to me, to have become about his person, simply stated.
The other problem is that, I think, in hindsight, congressional quiescence will be seen as a major contributing factor to the growth of executive power over the past few years. This growth has largely served goals with which the old McCain would profess to disagree (torture, unaffordable tax cuts, etc) - and McCain, the trademarked maverick, was nowhere to be seen exerting his precious leadership.
So, flip the question. They want to know who Barack Obama is, but do we know who John McCain is? Really, who is this guy? Is he a fundamentally virtuous person who made a deal with the devil sometime between his loss in 2000 and his endorsement of Bush in the 2004 election? Or was he fundamentally flawed - his "maverick-ness" masking as a virtue when in reality it was just a display of his need to place his ego center stage?
I think, again, that if the story is brand management, the narrative will be simple. Figuring out just where McCain lost the weight of his brand, though, will be much more complicated.
No me llores, Argentina
Ms. Abstract Citizen has been dealing with a consultant in Argentina, which is a fantastic excuse for all of my vitriol to come out. I actually dreamt about this goal on Friday night - one of my all-time favorites. Heartbreaking that it is hard to find good video of it, but you can see Bebeto's beautiful form on the half-bicycle kick.
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