September 17, 2011 0

I Am The Cosmos

By MDS in Uncategorized

Impolitic, by Molly Ivins

I Am the Cosmos

Austin, Texas — “So write about Camille Paglia,” suggested the editor. Like any normal person, I replied, “And who the hell might she be?”

Big cheese in New York intellectual circles. The latest rage. Hot stuff. Controversial.

But I’m not good on New York intellectual controversies, I explained. Could never bring myself to give a rat’s ass about Jerzy Kosinski. Never read Andy Warhol’s diaries. Can never remember the name of the editor of this New Whatsit, the neo-con critical rag. I’m a no-hoper on this stuff, practically a professional provincial.

Read Paglia, says he, you’ll have an opinion. So I did; and I do.

Christ! Get this woman a Valium!

Hand her a gin. Try meditation. Camille, honey, calm down!

The noise is about her oeuvre, as we always say in Lubbock: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. In very brief, for those of you who have been playing hooky from the New York Review of Books, Ms. Paglia’s contention is that “the history of western civilization has been a constant struggle between … two impulses, an unending tennis match between cold, Apollonian categorization and Dionysian lust and chaos.” Jeez, me too. I always thought the world was divided into only two kinds of people — those who think the world is divided into only two kinds of people, and those who don’t.

You think perhaps this is a cheap shot, that I have searched her work and caught Ms. Paglia in a rare moment of sweeping generalization, easy to make fun of? Au contraire, as we always say in Amarillo; the sweeping generalization is her signature. In fact, her work consists of damn little else. She is the queen of the categorical statement.

Never one to dodge a simple dichotomy when she can set one up, Ms. Paglia holds that the entire error of western civilization stems from denying that nature is a kind of nasty, funky, violent, wet dream, and that Judeo-Christianity has been one long effort to ignore this. She pegs poor old Rousseau, that fathead, as the initiator of the silly notion that nature is benign and glorious and that only civilization corrupts.

Right away, I got a problem. Happens I have spent a lot of my life in the wilderness, and also a lot of my life in bars. When I want sex and violence, I go to a Texas honky-tonk. When I want peace and quiet, I head for the woods. Just as a minor historical correction to Ms. Paglia, Rousseau did not invent the concept of benign Nature. Among the first writers to hold that nature was a more salubrious environment from man than the corruptions of civilization were the Roman Stoics — rather a clear-eyed lot, I always thought.

Now why, you naturally ask, would anyone care about whether a reviewer has ever done any serious camping? Ah, but you do not yet know the Camille Paglia school of I-am-the-cosmos argument. Ms. Paglia believes that all her personal experiences are Seminal. Indeed, Definitive. She credits a large part of her supposed wisdom to having been born post-World War II and thus having been raised on television. Damn me, so was I.

In addition to the intrinsic cultural superiority Ms. Paglia attributes to herself from having grown up watching television (“It’s Howdy-Doody Time” obviously made us all smarter), she also considers her own taste in music to be of enormous significance. “From the moment the feminist movement was born, it descended into dogma,” she told an interviewer for New York magazine. “They stifled any kind of debate, any kind of dissent. Okay, it’s Yale, it’s New Haven in ’69, I am a rock fanatic, okay …. So I was talking about taste to these female rock musicians, and I said the Rolling Stones were the greatest rock band, and that just set them off. They said, `The Rolling Stones are sexist, and it’s bad music because it’s sexist.’ I said: `Wait a minute. You can’t make a judgements about art on the basis of whether it fits into some dogma.’ And now they’re yelling, screaming, saying that nothing that demeans women can be art.

“You see, right from the start it was impossible for me to be taken into the feminist movement, okay? The only art they will permit is art that gives a positive image of women. I said, `That’s like the Soviet Union; that is the demagogic, propagandistic view of art.’ ”

Well, by George, as a First Amendment absolutist, you’ll find me willing to spring to the defense of Camille Paglia’s right to be a feminist Rolling Stones fan any hour, day or night. Come to think of it, who the hell was the Stalin who wouldn’t let her do that? I went back and researched the ’69 politburo, and all I could find was Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, and Gloria Steinem, none of whom ever seems to have come out against rock music.

I have myself quite cheerfully been both a country-music fan and a feminist for years — if Camille Paglia is the cosmos, so am I. When some fellow feminist doesn’t like my music (How could you not like “You are just another sticky wheel on the grocery cart of life”?), I have always felt free to say, in my politically correct feminist fashion, “Fuck off.”

In a conversation printed in Harper’s magazine, Paglia held forth on on of her favorite themes — Madonna, the pop singer: “The latest atavistic discoverer of the pagan heart of Catholicism is Madonna. This is what she’s up to. She doesn’t completely understand it herself. When she goes on Nightline and makes speeches about celebrating the body, as if she’s some sort of Woodstock hippie, she’s way off. She needs me to tell her.” I doubt that.

Bram Dijkstra, author of a much-praised book, Idols of Perversity, which is a sort of mirror image of Sexual Personae, said that Paglia “literally drags the whole nineteenth-century ideological structure back into the late-eighteenth century, really completely unchanged. What’s so amazing is that she takes all that nineteenth-century stuff, Darwinism and social Darwinism, and she re-asserts it and reaffirms it in this incredibly dualistic fashion. In any situation, she establishes the lowest common denominator of a point. She says, `This is the feminist point of view,’ and overturns it by standing it on its head. She doesn’t go outside what she critiques; she simply puts out the opposite of it.”

“For example,” Dijkstra continues, “she claims, `Feminism blames rape on pornography,’ which is truly the reductio ad absurdum of the feminist point of view. Of course, there are very many feminist points of view, but then she blows away this extremely simplified opposite, and we are supposed to consider this erudition. She writes aphorisms and then throws them out, one after the other, so rapid-fire the reader is exhausted.”

Tracing Paglia’s intellectual ancestry is a telling exercise; she’s the lineal descendant of Ayn Rand, who in turn was a student of William Graham Sumner, one of the early American sociologists and an enormously successful popularzier of social Darwinism. Sumner was in turn a disciple of Herbert Spencer, that splendid nineteenth-century kook. Because Paglia reasserts ideas so ingrained in our thinking, she has become popular by reaffirming common prejudices.

Paglia’s obsession with de Sade is beyond my competence, although the glorification of sadomasochism can easily be read as a rationalization of bondage into imagined power, a characteristic process of masochistic transfer. Dijkstra suggests that the Sadean notion of the executioner’s assistant is critical to her thinking, though one wonders if there is not also some identification with de Sade the Catholic aristocrat.

Paglia’s view of sex — that it is irrational, violent, immoral, and wounding — is so glum that one hesitates to suggest that it might be instead, well, a lot of fun, and maybe even affectionate and loving.

Far less forgivable is Paglia’s consistent confusion of feminism with yuppies. What does she think she’s doing? Paglia holds feminists responsible for the bizarre blight created by John T. Molloy, author of Dress for Success, which caused a blessedly brief crop of young women, all apparently aspiring to be executive vice-presidents, to appear in the corporate halls wearing those awful sand-colored baggy suits with little floppy bow ties around their necks.

Why Paglia lays the blame for this at the feet of feminism is beyond me. Whatever our other aims may have been, no one in the feminist movement ever thought you are what you wear. The only coherent fashion statement I can recall from the entire movement was the suggestion that Mrs. Cleaver, Beaver’s mom, would on the whole have been a happier woman had she not persisted in vacuuming while wearing high heels. This, I still believe.

In an even more hilarious leap, Paglia contends that feminism is responsible for the aerobics craze and concern over thin thighs. Speaking as a beer-drinking feminist whose idea of watching her diet is to choose either the baked potato with sour cream or with butter, but not with both, I find this loony beyond all hope — and I am the cosmos, too.

What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit. The Norman Podhoretz of our gender. That this woman is actually taken seriously as a thinker in New York intellectual circles is a clear sign of decadence, decay, and hopeless pinheadedness. Has no one in the nation’s intellectual capital the background and ability to see through a web of categorical assertions? One fashionable line of response to Paglia is to claim that even though she may be fundamentally off-base, she has “flashes of brilliance.” If so, I missed them in her oceans of swill.

One of her latest efforts at playing enfant terrible in intellectual circles was a peppy essay for Newsday, claiming that either there is no such thing as date rape or, if there is, it’s women’s fault because we dress so provocatively. Thanks, Camille, I’ve got some Texas fraternity boys I want you to meet.

There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity. Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, “Poor dear, it’s probably PMS.” Whereas, if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, “What an asshole.” Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia: Sheesh, what an asshole.

********************

[From Mother Jones, September/October 1991]

April 17, 2011 1

“IRS excerpt” From The Pale King

By MDS in Story

From pages 83-84 of The Pale King by David Foster Wallace:

“[...] Probably that’s all I should say right here in terms of summary. If you know how to search and parse government archives, you can find voluminous history and theory on just about every side of the debate. It’s all in the public record.

“But here’s the thing. Both then and now, very few ordinary Americans know anything about all this. Not much about the deep changes the Service underwent in the mid-1980s, changes that today directly affect the way citizens’ tax obligations are determined and enforced. And the reason for this public ignorance is not secrecy. Despite the IRS’s well-documented paranoia and aversion to publicity24 secrecy here had nothing to do with it. The real reason why US citizens were/are not aware of these conflicts, changes, and stakes is that the whole subject of tax policy and administration is dull. Massively, spectacularly dull.

“It is impossible to overstate the importance of this feature. Consider, from the Service’s perspective, the advantage of the dull, the arcane, the mind-numbingly complex. The IRS was one of the very first governmental agencies to learn that such qualities help insulate them against public protest and political opposition, and that abstruse dullness is actually a much more effective shield than is secrecy. For the great disadvantage of secrecy is that it’s interesting. People are drawn to secrets; they can’t help it. Keep in mind that the period we’re talking was only a decade after Watergate. Had the Service tried to hide or cover up its conflicts and convulsions, some enterprising journalist(s) could have done an exposé that drew a lot of attention and interest and scandalous fuss. But that is not at all what happened. What happened was that much of the high-level policy debate played out for two years in full public view, e.g., in open hearings of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Senate Treasury Procedures and Statutes Subcommittee, and the IRS’s Deputy and Assistant Commissioner’s Council. These hearings were collections of anaerobic men in drab suits who spoke a verbless bureaucratese—terms like ‘strategic utilization template’ and ‘revenue vector’ in place of ‘plan’ and ‘tax’—and took days just to reach consensus on the order of items for discussion. Even in the financial press, there was hardly any coverage; can you guess why? If not, consider the fact that just about every last transcript, record, study, white paper, code amendment, revenue-ruling, and procedural memo has been available for public perusal since date of issue. No FOIA filing even required. But not one journalist seems ever to have checked them out, and with good reason: This stuff is solid rock. The eyes roll up white by the third or fourth ¶. You just have no idea.25”

24 (attitudes that are not wholly unjustified, given TP’s [The Public's] hostility to the Service, politicians’ habit of bashing the agency to score populist points, & c.)

25 I’m reasonably sure that I am the only living American who’s actually read all these archives all the way through. I’m not sure I can explain how I did it. Mr. Chris Acquistipace, one of the GS-11 Chalk Leaders in our Rote Exams group, and a man of no small intuition and sensitivity, proposed an analogy between the public records surrounding the Initiative and the giant solid-gold Buddhas that flanked certain temples in ancient Khmer. These priceless statues, never guarded or secured, were safe from theft not despite but because of their value—they were too huge and heavy to move. Something about this sustained me.

April 12, 2011 0

Turning Bill Simmons Into Rick Reilly Also Tiger’s Gift

By MDS in Opinion, Sports

The “using golf as a metaphor for father-son relationships” angle for a sportswriting piece is, to me, something that 99,999 out of 100,000 times should never be broached. It might have made for good reading back in the ’60′s when Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer could be appreciated by both Establishment parents and their Baby Boomer kids, but recently the success rate of such an attempt at writing seems so minuscule that every editor should just immediately interrupt with No, no, no! Find something—anything else—to write about when said idea is pitched. It is also decidedly not a coincidence that this type of writing made a resurgence after Nicklaus’ 1986 come-from-behind/last-hurrah victory at the 1986 Masters. It allowed the Rick Reillys and John Feinsteins of the world to write about golf—a sport whose professional center of gravity exists inside of exclusive country clubs and the wallets of Old Money—as a religious experience that Joe and Jane America could attach themselves to. Sprinkle in some safe humor and groan-inducing puns (Who’s Your Caddy? being a real book title that achieved real NY Times success) and you’ve got yourself the kind of Hallmark card way of looking at life.

Being that we are all firmly entrenched in a world in which irony pervades everything we see and listen to and touch, the argument could be made that maybe this perspective and the Rick Reilly- and Mitch Albom-style of writing is breath of fresh air; a reminder to see the pure through the forest of cynicism and the ironical. But to those of us who are quite happy living in our cynical and ironic forests these pieces look and read exactly like what they are: a bullshit desire to try to trade in purity while only delivering overwrought, pungently honey-smelling sap. Or, these pieces read like mailed-in tripe that had been auto-saved and punched up with clichés that were sitting on a hard drive waiting for a rainy day deadline that wanted to be met half-assed. Either one.

Normally, we can rely on Rick Reilly to be the king of this domain. But with his most recent article about Tiger Woods’ performance on Sunday at Augusta it looks like Bill Simmons is willing to wade in Reilly’s waters. The article, which suggest that Tiger’s performance had a transcendent effect on his 3 year old son (or something), is written with the same amount of coloring book aesthetic and soft-lit sepia tones that it could make most people break out the universal I-just-threw-up-a-little-in-my-mouth gesture. I no longer have high expectations for Simmons’ writing, his hack and mailing-it-in tendencies started showing a while ago (for example, this Reilly-esque and puke-worthy piece on Manny Ramirez’s drug suspension in 2009) but I found this piece to be unabashedly retarded, especially considering that Simmons’ recent podcast with Chuck Klosterman saw Klosterman dismantling the idea that kids inherently enjoy sports. (Go here to play the podcast—it’s the one that titled “Basketball Debate”; it is a typically great Klosterman podcast.) Again, I have little faith that Simmons will ever be able to consistently write stuff that had me anxious to read when it when first posted (like he did before he took a writing job on Jimmy Kimmel’s show), but this article is just ridiculous and proof that Simmons may well be on his way to becoming a Rick Reilly-level sports writer.

Which is to say, a grossly overpaid writer who routinely mails his pieces in.

No doubt that the Sports Guy’s latest article is a foreshadowing of a future golf book that he’s going to write, probably called The Gift of Golf and it will no doubt include a chapter about Tiger’s mistresses—complete with rankings—before digging its feet into the Role Model debate. I just threw up a little bit thinking about it.

March 17, 2011 0

Two

By MDS in Series: Numbers

A first crush is typically associated with childhood and innocence and, if you are lucky, possibly even culminating with a first kiss. A first crush can also be associated with someone you never wind up meeting, as in a crush on a singer or a TV or movie actor. A first love, on the other hand, is associated with all sorts of tingly feelings and putting a temporary hold on many of the facets of your life so as to set aside as much time as possible to spend with your first love. A first love feels like you are perpetually walking into the same warm room with the person who is the object of your infatuation. (And it is infatuation at the very beginning; a blind intoxicating desire to always be around your first love.) And every room you walk into is filled with the most interesting things, arranged in a decor that reinforces an abstract beauty that you have never seen before but now, having seen it, you begin to believe that you were always meant to see it. And if the room’s decor isn’t entirely what you expected—maybe there’s an ornate end table in the corner or a banal painting forced inside the boundaries of a garish frame on a wall—you can always bypass it by closing your eyes and kissing and undressing the person you are with and revisit the rooms and the house at a later time.

A first love also (usually) involves pain and tears and the solitary task of trying to figure out where it all went wrong when a breakup occurs. It can leave one yearning to revisit those warm rooms and remembering how that person’s skin felt, and how their lips were always so intense and exotic when your eyes were closed.

The breakup involving a first love involves recovery processes and coping mechanisms that exist on its own plane since these breakups usually involve teenagers, which is to say that the teenaged soul and the teenaged emotions are made up of combustible material that would normally be housed in reinforced chambers inside laboratories and require isotope gloves for anyone who wanted to examine them. Some kids turn to writing tortured poetry and journals that are so entirely free of irony that anyone else besides them would laugh without hesitation if it weren’t for the politeness that the situation demanded. Some kids befriend The Smiths, or goth or industrial music to get them through it. Some kids need to vent with rage to their friends and anyone who will listen about the injustices committed by their previously loving love. Some kids shake it off after a weekend of hanging out with their friends as they, their friends, remind them that everything will be okay and well, you know, it’s probably for the best anyway because if so-and-so can’t see how good you are then isn’t that their loss?

Corrie Weaver’s first crush was Justin Timberlake; her first love was Kenny.

Kenny was the nickname for Amber Kennison, a nickname that had stuck with her since the age of seven owing to her growing up with three brothers and no sisters, and excelling at sports—particularly basketball—at a young age. Guys and athletes of all stripes enjoy giving each other nicknames (or at the very least, calling others by their last name only) and since Amber was surrounded by guys and athletics from a young age there was little chance that she would be called simply “Amber” while she was growing up. So she became “Kenny” instead.

Reader, I know what you are thinking. A young girl, growing up in a male-driven house (and the youngest child to boot), enjoys and excels in athletics from a young age: Kenny was probably destined to be a lesbian, right? She probably looked butch and had a few phases of wearing short hair and walked with a gait that tried to emulate a guy’s stride. She probably was described as androgynous at some point in her life.

No.

Kenny Kennison looked like an up-and-coming young actress who won the part of playing an athletic girl in a movie. She possessed none of the characteristics that come to mind for most people if they were prompted to think about a girl who was a lesbian and was gifted athletically. She was not tall or lanky, or had any glaring disproportions that high school girls who excel in athletics seem to sometimes possess. She was 5′ 6″ and was blessed with a metabolism that caused numerous girls to curse her name and her being under their breaths. People (adult males) would probably use the phrase girl next door to describe her, especially after seeing her eyes and smile up close.

Kenny had a head of perfectly black hair that, when left straight, hovered just below her shoulder blades. Most of the time, though, it was pulled back in some fashion either as a ponytail or with the help of a clip or that chop stick/geisha-looking arrangement that randomly becomes popular for a few months. When she played basketball, as she did from sixth grade up through college, her hair was always pulled tightly back and her head adorned with a headband that matched the primary color of the jersey she was wearing. Her hair was a natural black, its color untouched by the cosmetic industry (which only caused more cursing amongst the other girls once they found out) and it always provided a dynamic contrast against her white face and the color of her uniform or general apparel.

From a scouting and technical perspective Kenny’s basketball game drove everyone crazy because every time someone thought they had her figured out—her own teammates, her coaches, the opposing players and coaches, fans in attendance—they realized, in many cases begrudgingly, that she couldn’t be categorized as a particular type of player. She was always disrupting and tearing apart people’s first impressions and desires to label her and make her conform to their own initial reads of her. In many ways, she was like a television interference signal personified: it is pointless to stare at it with any focus trying to find a pattern because there isn’t one. The first impression of Kenny from her teammates: she’s too pretty, she’s probably too soft. The first impression from her opponents: she’s too small, we’ll be able to blow right by her. The first impression from her coaches: she doesn’t create enough space for her shots, she relies on luck too much. The first impression from her opposing coaches: nothing to worry about with her, we need to focus on her taller teammates. (The first impression from many of the male parents and fans in attendance: “who is that girl wearing the #6 uniform? What I wouldn’t give to be back in high school again…”)

Kenny’s basketball game was naturally disarming; she wasn’t disarming in a premeditated sense, lulling you to sleep on purpose so that she could take advantage of your tired reflexes. She was the type of athlete whose game speed was not fully understood until you had to chase her around a court and challenge her shots and get by her when she was defending you. She defied statistics and became the epitome of intangibles and of possessing It. If she were a guy, local sportswriters would be writing articles disguised as love letters by the truckload praising the effortlessness of abilities and selflessness of leadership that all good high school legend-making requires. Instead, she was a girl.

March 7, 2011 0

Some Dude & Some Guy NFL Podcast (2010-11 Year In Review)

By MDS in Opinion, Podcast

The Some Dude & Some Guy NFL Podcast, “Michael Vick Is Reformed, Brett Favre Is Still A Dickbag” Edition

On this episode Brian and Mike talk about some of the happenings of this past NFL season. We start by talking about the bad predictions that permeated throughout all of the talking heads’ agendas on radio and TV, specifically the collective blowjob offered up by everyone to the Cowboys and Vikings by selecting them as preseason Super Bowl picks—two teams with pretty glaring deficiencies (questionable coaching staffs, QBs relying on borrowed or unearned reputations, suspect secondaries, banged-up offensive lines) that were swept under the rug for the chance to overpraise Brett Favre and Tony Romo. We also talk about the irony of everyone picking the Jets and Packers as Super Bowl picks in the preseason, then ditching them as the season went along. From there, we also touch on: Michael Vick’s season, Tom Brady’s season, the clusterfuck that was the Washington Redskins season (Mike also officially crowns Mike Shanahan “The Most Overrated Coach In NFL History”), and many many things regarding the playoffs, the playoff format, Jay Cutler’s injury, and the ongoing dispute between the owners and the NFLPA.

Links we referenced in this podcast:

— Sally Jenkins’s article in the Washington Post about the owners
— Drew Magary’s article on Deadspin titled “The Real Villains Of The NFL Lockout: A Gentle Reminder”
— Nate Jackson’s entry on Slate about when he suffered an MCL tear, the same injury that Jay Cutler suffered in the NFC Championship Game
— We didn’t talk about this but Dave McKenna’s article “The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide To Dan Snyder” is a must-read for any self-respecting sports fan (or hater of the Washington Redskins and/or Dan Snyder)

You can listen to the podcast below, or right-click here and download it.

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(The intro is “Sickles and Hammers” by Minutemen, and the outro is a live version of “Lost” by Minutemen)

February 22, 2011 0

Some Dude & Some Guy Podcast (2010 Year In Review)

By MDS in Opinion, Podcast

2010 may have ended a while ago but who cares. If magazine and news shows can have year-end wrap-up shows being published and aired before the year even ends, then Brian and I can release our own year-end wrap-up well after the year has ended.

The Some Dude & Some Guy Podcast, “2010 Took Its Talents To South Beach” Edition

In Part 1, Brian and I start out by saying our farewells to Ronnie James Dio, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Greg Giraldo, Dennis Hopper, and J.D. Salinger. We then move on to LeBron James (and, of course, The Decision); we ultimately decide that he is a giant douchebag unworthy of further analysis. We also cover some of the sports highlights of the year, including the Isner-Mahut Wimbledon match that ended with Isner winning 70-68 in the fifth set, and the Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup. From there, we touch on the Arizona immigration brouhaha on the rise of the Tea Party. We are both kind of confused by the Tea Party, and Mike has some words about the people who are anti-immigration.

You can listen to Part 1 below, or right-click here and download it.

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In Part 2, we talk about the things we loved about 2010 (including things that weren’t necessarily released last year). Brian’s lovefest includes the movies The History of Violence, There Will Be Blood, Taken, and Eastern Promises; the TV shows It’s Always Sunny, The Walking Dead, The Ricky Gervais Show, and Eastbound and Down; the metal band Bolt Thrower. Mike’s lovefest includes the movies Toy Story 3, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Black Swan, Tangled, and The Fighter; the TV shows Breaking Bad, 30 For 30, and Modern Family; the novel Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (Mike’s review of Freedom can be found here.) From there we go into our Ranty Rants section: Mike rants about The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons (click here to read Charlie Pierce’s epic takedown of the book too). From there, the Ranty Rants get heartier and filled with more swears: Brian hated Grown Ups with the intensity of 1,041 suns; Mike hated The Social Network with the intensity of 1,047 suns.

You can listen to Part 2 below, or right-click here and download it.

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(Please note that we are still trying to get our footing down with the recording and editing process of podcasting. Apologies in advance if the sound quality isn’t up to par, and if the lo-fi “mixing” of the intro and outro tracks is annoying. Mike happens to like the lo-fi quality of that mixing. So there. The intro and outro track is “Man on the Silver Mountain” by Rainbow.)

October 10, 2010 0

10 Nonfiction Books You Should Read Before You Die

By MDS in Books, Opinion

#10

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
by Chuck Klosterman

If you been reading any of my writing for a little while you will have noticed that I quote Chuck Klosterman quite a bit and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is the primary reason why I do. This was the first book of his that I read and it’s hilarious and, more importantly, interesting and insightful. Some of the essay topics: why women’s views on modern day romance should be blamed exclusively on John Cusack; why the sudden disappearance of Kelly Kapowski on Saved By The Bell is more realistic than you think; why soccer should never be popular in the U.S.; a look into the makeup and psychology of cover bands by following a Guns ‘N Roses cover band. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—Klosterman is like a funnier and more accessible hybrid of David Foster Wallace and Malcolm Gladwell.

#9

Are We Rome?
by Cullen Murphy

Trying to compare current American society to the Roman Empire (as in, when and how will we meet our destructive fate like the Romans suffered?) is probably second only to comparing countries and political leaders to Hitler within the realm of hyperbolic social opinions. Former managing editor of The Atlantic Cullen Murphy tackles this debate marvelously and quite concisely (272 pages) by comparing the social and political climes throughout the span of the Roman Empire and throughout our (in terms of history) brief American Empire. The verdict? There are some similarities between the two but for the most part people forget the scope of how different Rome was compared to how we are now. The book’s strength resides in Murphy’s calmness in explaining his opinions and laying out the historical backgrounds. This book could have easily fallen victim to mindless rhetoric but, instead, it is genuinely interesting, and valid.

#8

Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
by David Brooks

“Bobos,” David Brooks’ shorthand for bourgeois bohemians, infiltrated our society during their zenith in the ’90′s up until the stock market bubble burst. This new social class, made up of people who would condemn the purchase of a Corvette as being selfish but wouldn’t think twice about spending $85,000 on upgrading their kitchen, was the result of an odd mutation between the Baby Boomers of the ’60′s and the Wall Street lifestyle of the ’80′s (for lack of a better summary). To be sure, this book might seem a little dated because, I think, we have already fully grasped this kind of marketing by now and it doesn’t really bother us anymore (remember when Nike used lines from a Keroauc poem? didn’t think so) but it still worth your time if only because of Brooks’ ability to fuse humor and history with a social commentary that we could all probably find ourselves nodding in agreement with.

#7

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel aims to lay out why certain societies (and continents) are successful and why others continue to fall apart very cyclically. In particular, Diamond’s writing about why Europe became powerful so easily while Africa and South America struggle mightily is particularly eye-opening. It’s eye-opening because the reasons are ones that seem so banal, like how Europe benefited greatly from the domestication of the cow and the horse and the ox. An extremely fascinating book (and one that is well written and easy to pick up), Guns, Germs, and Steel is a must-read for anyone who enjoys history, sociology, and/or anthropology. And even if you do not inherently enjoy these things, this book is akin to a fascinating documentary that you happen to stumble upon.

[Note: in August of 2008 I wrote a full review of this book. It can be found here.]

#6

Pictures At A Revolution
by Mark Harris

If you love film and/or film history, this book is a must-read. Pictures At A Revolution follows the five movies that were nominated for the Best Picture Academy Awards for 1967—Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, In The Heat of the Night, and Doctor Dolittle—and comes damn close to capturing the full essence of 1967 in general with regards to Hollywood. 1967 wound up being a definitive year for Hollywood and for American society, and Mark Harris writes about everything revolving around the production of these five movies in addition to the social and economic effects that they all caused and he does it brilliantly. (If you’re wondering “Well, what were the effects of Doctor Dolittle?” Amongst other things, it effectively killed the musical as a genre to be nominated for Best Picture awards for a long time.)

[Note: in March of 2008 I wrote a full review of this book. It can be found here.]

#5

The Tipping Point
by Malcolm Gladwell

One of my college art teachers told me once that the worst thing you can do when criticizing something is to use as few words as possible. (I.e.–the fewer the words, the worse you think the art is.) But when it comes to The Tipping Point I fully subscribe to the theory of “the fewer the words, the better.” Just buy this book. It’s fascinating. Trust me.

#4

The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs

The juxtaposition of the words “death” and “life” was done on purpose. Jane Jacobs was convinced that city planning in America was predicated on counterintuitive thought: rather than designing downtowns and neighborhoods that were conducive towards making cities act like diverse and disparate organisms, most American cities were mistakenly copying the stagnant designs of the 19th century British theory of city design that never really translated here. Published in 1961, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has become an indescribably influential book in the field of city planning and theory in spite of the fact that Jacobs was not an architect, and had never gone to school for architecture or city planning, when she wrote it. This book is at times very deliberate (there are chapters that are simply about sidewalks, and spacing of neighborhood streets) but it is truly an amazing read. The last chapter is one of the greatest chapters I have ever read as Jacobs explains what kind of problem a city is, as well as how we deal with complex problems.

#3

The Progress Paradox
by Gregg Easterbrook

There’s a part of me that thinks that The Progress Paradox should be required reading for anyone between the ages of 21 and 35. The book is about how, as things get better, the more we feel irritable and/or hopeless and/or worse about life around us. To be sure, a topic like this is bound to be resoundingly dismissed by a certain demographic (namely, the people who say—without irony—that they aren’t pessimists, just realists), but Easterbrook’s writing style is inviting and has its moments of well timed humor. There is nary a whiff of snark in this book; just a desire to get people to realize that the times we are living in are only as bad as the people who have no relation to you in any aspect of everyday life are paid to report to you.

[Note: in September of 2008 I wrote a full review of this book. It can be found here.]

#2

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
by David Foster Wallace

Chuck Klosterman once said (I told you that I enjoy quoting him) that David Foster Wallace was the only writer he’s ever known that could write something that was immensely interesting and meticulous and of superior writing ability while also including genuinely smart humor. “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” the eponymous essay for which the book is named after, is nonfiction par excellence. The essay is about a seven day cruise that Wallace took and his observations about everything from the boarding to the final disembarkation. It is one of the greatest essays I’ve ever read. And yet, Wallace almost outdoes himself as the essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” is nothing short of phenomenal. David Foster Wallace can be a daunting writer to read but this book, even if it is the only book you ever read by him, is definitely worth your time. It’s a book that very easily could be re-read multiple times throughout one’s life. It would have been the #1 book but I could not place it above the final book on this list…

[Note: in March of 2009 I wrote a full review of this book. It can be found here.]

#1

The Orchid Thief
by Susan Orlean

Anyone who knows me reasonably well knows that at any chance I get when the topic of books pops up I will pimp The Orchid Thief immediately. If I had the audience size and industry weight of Oprah Winfrey The Orchid Thief would be my first book club entry, no questions asked. This book, which, on the surface, is about orchids and John Laroche (a man who was the defendant of a trial about orchid poaching which led to Orlean’s original articles for The New Yorker back in 1994) unfolds itself into a beautiful book about what drives people to find their passions in life. At the end of the day, what is the difference between the man or woman who spends their lives trying to create a new orchid, and the man or woman who builds office buildings or writes screenplays or teaches disabled children? And because Susan Orlean is herself very curious to find out what makes all of these orchid people tick, she views and writes about them without irony or snarkiness. The end result is a book that is delicate and powerful, epiphanic and breathtaking. We all have our own Dendrophylax lindenii that we want to find, but the bigger point is that that infinite thing that we crave—the thing that we attach significant meaning to in our lives—is an extension of something bigger. This book, more than almost every great work of fiction I have ever read, comes closest to getting at the core of what drives our human passions—what drives us as human beings. I have read this book four times, and I intend to read it every other year until I die. Yes, this book is that readable and that brilliant.

[Note: in May of 2008 I wrote a full review of this book. It can be found here.]

October 6, 2010 0

Nonfiction Books You Should Read Before You Die (Honorable Mentions)

By MDS in Books, Opinion

This coming Sunday is 10/10/10 and to celebrate it I will be posting a top 10 list called “10 Nonfiction Books You Should Read Before You Die.” But before I delve into that I wanted to post an Honorable Mentions list first. These are books that were left off the main list either because they were too specialized, too popular (I placed a higher value on obscurity with the main list—the best nonfiction is oftentimes in the form of something you have never heard of before), or just could not match the titles on the main list for any number of intangible reasons. Either way, if you have not read any of these books I highly recommend them.

#7

Paul Brown: The Man Who Invented Modern Football
by George Cantor

Many people love the NFL nowadays but most are somewhat in the dark with regards to the history of the NFL, and Paul Brown (and his Browns teams) is someone that time has forgotten about a little bit. Yes, most people know that Bill Walsh was a product of Brown’s coaching tree but beyond that and the fact that the Browns were named after him and that his kids own the Bengals, how much does the common fan know about the guy who completely changed the NFL into the modern game it is now? Paul Brown’s contributions to football is akin to Elvis’s impact on rock. This book succinctly describes Brown’s career from high school football coach to the front office of the second team he helped to found, the Cincinnati Bengals. If you love the NFL (and especially the history of the NFL) this is a must-read, especially for everything that is written about those dominant Otto Graham- and Jim Brown-led Browns teams. The foreword, written by Bill Walsh, ends with “If there is any list of great coaches that has any meaning, the name right at the top has to be Paul Brown.” That just about sums everything up perfectly.

#6

The Soldier and The State
by Samuel P. Huntington

Obviously, if you have no interest in the military (or military theory) The Soldier and The State is a tough sell but Huntington’s most celebrated and recognizable work, released in 1957 during the Cold War, is something of a marvel nonetheless because it is still relevant and interesting to read. Too often, nonfiction written during the Cold War is overly dramatic and hyperbolic especially when it comes to the military. Huntington’s main point is that a professional, civilian controlled military is something that all healthy nations need (as opposed to a subjectively controlled military, which becomes hampered by legal restrictions and militaristic hubris). Some of the military history that is delved into can verge on boring but overall this book is quite compelling. And regardless of what your thoughts are regarding the military, one would be hard-pressed to dispute the notion that civilians can learn more from the military rather than the other way around.

#5

Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy
by James Fallows

To be sure, with a subtitle of How the Media Undermine American Democracy you could easily arrive at the point that this book is some anti-journalism rant or Rush Limbaugh-level gasbagging pile of crap. Published in 1996, Breaking The News instead finds James Fallows calmly and objectively dissecting the worst tendencies that the media commits when it comes to covering social and political stories. Fallows on numerous occasions correctly points out the inherent idiocy of the “Who won?” and “Who lost?” mentality when it comes to covering political debates and speeches. Interwoven throughout the book is Fallows’ own opinions and ideas, as well as (in passing) the interesting theory that 60 Minutes might have been the inadvertent tipping point for the proliferation of dumbed-down news (because the newscasters were seen as characters by the audience, and their success caused journalists to want to be on television). Because it was published in 1996, this book is a little dated but its message and criticism of the Media is still pertinent today.

#4

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)
by Andy Warhol

A quote from the book: “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.” Is there really anything else to say? If you find this to be brilliant, buy the book immediately and you will find yourself lamenting the fact that Andy Warhol was not alive to give us his opinions on the ’90′s and the 21st century. In terms of opinions and quotes about pop culture and society Warhol is like a modern version of Mark Twain to me. If you find the aforementioned quote to be dumb or uninteresting, I’m sorry.

#3

The Wisdom of Crowds
by James Surowiecki

The ’00′s saw a nice supply of nonfiction books that specialized in trying to show us that if we were to look at the world in counterintuitive ways, we may actually better understand it. To varying degrees, books like Blink, Freakonomics, and The Wisdom of Crowds all attempted to get us to see things differently as a means of better explaining our worldview, our reasoning, and/or ability to decipher through the white noise of our daily lives and find the more reasonable logic of things that are hidden amongst our society’s clichés and propagandas. This book aimed to prove that, to a large degree, experts are ultimately pointless, and that it is extremely rare in any sector of life for a handful of people to consistently outsmart a group of people. This may seem like common sense but, then again, we are only just a decade removed from the “lionization of the CEO” movement (think: Jack Welch). And we still live in a society in which we believe that the President, a lone person with limited powers, can fix our country’s social and economic problems.

#2

The World Is Flat
by Thomas L. Friedman

The World Is Flat is a book that will probably not age too well and will probably be forgotten altogether as decades of technological advancement begin to pile up, but make no mistake: this is a great book that attempts to explain how globalization came into existence during the late ’90′s and throughout the ’00′s. You do not need to be an IT professional or economist to understand Friedman’s chronology of how we arrived to a point in which support calls for American companies are answered by Indians named “Steve.” The strength and intelligence of this book is that Friedman points to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and Netscape’s IPO as the first two “flatteners” of our modern society—two events that would normally have been overlooked by most people when talking/writing about the rise of globalization and offshoring.

#1

The Devil in the White City
by Erik Larson

Wow. What else is there to say other than this is a fantastic book? It’s compelling, it’s fascinating, it’s unbelievably well written, and when you are done reading it you wish that there were 300 more pages to read. Erik Larson effortlessly weaves the stories of Chicago serial killer H. H. Holmes, the 1893 World’s Columbian Fair, architect Daniel Burnham, and a whole slew of other fascinating informational gems that splinter off these three main points. The historical writing about Chicago is top shelf too. If you love true crime stories this is a must-read. If you love reading stuff about Chicago this is a must-read. Even if you don’t love true crime stories or stuff about Chicago this is a must-read. The Devil in the White City is one of the best nonfiction books written in novel form that I have ever read.

August 30, 2010 0

Twenty Years Ago

By MDS in Opinion, Sports, Wrestling

The term “life changing” is one that by default has a percentage of hyperbole attached to it. I can say unequivocally that the first time I listened to The Velvet Underground & Nico it changed my life within the confines of how I listened to music and ingested art in general. But to someone who has never heard this album—or, conversely, to someone who thinks that this album is a tortuous, 11-track pile of crap—this admission would seem crazy. What could be life changing about listening to an album, they might they think. And they are half right I suppose.

Another facet of life that may not have an amount of hyperbole attached to it so much as it entirely subjective is how we perceive sporting events. To the people of my father’s generation the final game of the 1951 season between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers is something that is on par with the Kennedy assassination in terms of how a sporting event can affect one’s life. The same can probably be said of the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants.

For me, my definitive sporting moments consist of John Paxson’s three-pointer against the Suns, Patrick Kane’s overtime goal to clinch the Stanley Cup, Tommie Frazier almost single-handedly eviscerating the University of Florida, both Bulls-Jazz Finals series, and a Miles Simon and Mike Bibby-led University of Arizona upsetting Kentucky for the national championship (just to name a few).

And the Demolition-Hart Foundation two-out-of-three falls match in SummerSlam ’90.

A WWF[1] wrestling match from 1990 is something that I would consider life changing? Abso-frickin’-lutely.

On August 27, 1990 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia, the then-WWF and their summer pay-per-view event SummerSlam took place. I did not watch it live (we didn’t have cable television at the time) but I rented it from Blockbuster a few months later.[2] The match lineup for this particular SummerSlam was somewhat blah, mostly because the WWF was at a weird crossroads of having too many wrestlers who were either too old (Dusty Rhodes or Nikolai Volkoff anyone?) or too… uncool (hello, Texas Tornado and Tito Santana). Look at some of the matches from that night:

Power and Glory (aka Paul Roma and Hercules) vs. The Rockers[3]

Texas Tornado vs. Mr. Perfect

Jake “The Snake” Roberts vs. Bad News Brown

The Warload vs. Tito Santana

Not exactly a murderer’s row of entertainment. The main event was The Ultimate Warrior vs. “Ravishing” Rick Rude in a steel cage match.[4] But the Demolition-Hart Foundation match? It was like Jordan dropping six 3-pointers in the first half against the Blazers in the ’92 Finals—something totally unexpected. (And, yes, I still realize that I am talking about a Pay-Per-View wrestling match—something that was scripted weeks before the event aired.)

Some background: Demolition was the WWF’s equivalent of The Legion of Doom[5], a tag team that sported two men who looked like they were equal parts biker and potentially demented KISS (or Raiders) fan. They wore face paint that was silver, black and red, and they wore black spiky leather masks and jackets over their black tights. Demolition originally consisted of just two guys named Ax and Smash (more on this in a moment). The Hart Foundation, on the other hand, wore pink and black tights and leather jackets. One wrestler, Bret “The Hitman” Hart, had long-ish black curly hair and could probably be described as “a more athletic-looking mechanic, or stoner.” His face is long and sleepy-looking, to the point that if he weren’t a wrestler he’d probably be a bouncer that wore a Metallica or Megadeth jacket. Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart was the other member and he was the opposite of Bret: Neidhart had a buzzcut, a ZZ Top length goatee, and the physical build of someone who used to be a football player but had gained some weight in their 20′s.

So, this match was designed as a best two-out-of-three falls match which means what you would think it means: the first team to get two pin counts wins. I always like this idea because it meant that the matches would run longer than normal but the WWF rarely scheduled them (maybe fearing that people would lose interest after 15 minutes? I don’t know). The wrinkle with this match was that shortly before it Demolition introduced a third member to their crew, a gentlemen by the name of Crush. You can probably guess what happened, right? Demolition started the match with Crush and Smash and then at some point Ax inserted himself in the fight. But, alas, the ref was clueless to Demolition’s trickery—apparently, white dudes wearing face paint and leather all look alike (even if two of them have their face paint smeared and the other guy’s face paint is unblemished when he entered the ring).

You can probably also guess what happens next as well. Demolition (aka The Bad Guys) win the first fall and resort to trickery and cheap shots, and other standard Bad Guy things. The Hart Foundation (aka The Good Guys) squeak out the second fall (due to a disqualification) and then win the third and final fall in resounding fashion. Even before I saw it, I knew what the odds were high that Demolition would lose. So why is the match so great?

The short answer: it was great theater; all participants played their roles and performed their moves and countermoves perfectly. Everything about the fight, all 20 minutes of it, was a perfect balance of absurdity and guys pretending to fight. If this doesn’t make sense to you, I completely understand; wrestling isn’t a sport. So allow me to end this with a story.

Almost three years ago I was at a bar in Indiana for a birthday party and I started bullshitting with two guys who were hanging out near our table. We were all the same age. At some point we started talking about how we used to watch the WWF during our junior high and high school lives. We covered the big events (Hogan vs. Macho Man in Wrestlemania V, Shawn Michaels turning bad by really kicking Marty Jannetty in the face during Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake’s interview) and the crazy occurrences (Jake “The Snake” using a de-fanged cobra on Macho Man, Rick “The Model” Martell’s marathon performance of 50+ minutes in Royal Rumble 1991). But when we got to this Demolition-Hart Foundation match we probably talked about it for a good 15 minutes. Yeah, we were all drunk while we were talking about it but it made up the bulk of our wrestling-themed bullshitting.

Can you quantify the significance of this match any better?

[You can view part 1 one of the match here, and part 2 can be found here.]

____________________

Footnotes

[1] I know, I know, it’s called the WWE nowadays. But this occurred in the early ’90′s—back when the WWF meant wrestling and not a panda-logoed non-profit organization. And, besides, it will always be the WWF to me (sorry if that offends you, Mr. Panda).

[2] Note: I grew up in Frankfort, IL and the nearest Blockbuster at the time was in Orland Park, IL—roughly a twenty five minute drive, depending on traffic. Not to get all Grumpy Old Guy on you but… in my day we couldn’t watch and rent stuff on our computers without ever leaving our house! If you wanted to a watch a movie or wrestling event that wasn’t on TV you had to go get it! You couldn’t just connect to some site and download it via some kid in Beijing! And we liked it! We loved it….

[3] You may remember The Rockers as being the tag team that typically wore hot green pants and doing a lot acrobatic moves. If Bill James kept track of wrestling and created a statistic for DKPM (drop kicks per match), The Rockers would’ve routinely averaged an 11.7 per year I think.

[4] “Ravishing” Rick Rude was second only to “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase in terms of hilarious caricature of a wrestler. DiBiase threw money at people and toted around a black slave, er, servant named Virgil; Rick Rude had a porn mustache, porn haircut, and tights that sported a picture of himself and a woman or two (I forget how many there were). The WWF was, um, different—it was the ’80′s…

[5] The Legion of Doom were stars of the NWA and WCW. They eventually came into the WWF (wait for it!) and they even made a surprise entrance into this very match.

July 12, 2010 2

Some Dude & Some Guy Podcast, “Roots of Metal & Dutch Art Movement” Edition

By MDS in Music, Podcast

Every podcast, Mike (Some Dude) and Brian (Some Guy) will listen to and critique a rock album that Mike has chosen and a metal album that Brian has chosen. Mike is a non-metal rock aficionado, whereas Brian is a metal aficionado and the albums selected will always be ones that neither has ever heard from start to finish.

In this episode we discuss Black Sabbath’s eponymous debut album Black Sabbath and the sophomore effort by The White Stripes, De Stijl. Mike gives Black Sabbath a B+ because of its historical significance with regards to the birth of metal; Brian does not rate it because it transcends a rating. Brian gives De Stijl a ranking of 12 Larry David heads; Mike says it’s the best rock album start to finish since Beck’s Odelay.

On the next podcast: Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?, the sophomore album by Megadeth and Slanted and Enchanted, the debut album by Pavement.

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(Note: this is our first podcast. Please forgive any technical blunders. We promise that we’ll get better at this as time goes on.)

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