Monday, January 30, 2006

Poor Bernard-Henri

I love hatchet-job book reviews, the more vicious the better. Having read one, you imagine the poor author, at home, sobbing, his work flayed before millions of readers. Joe Queenan and P.J. O'Rourke are grandmasters of this particular art, and "The New Republic"--of all places--unleashes a corker every once in while--though of course these tend to be on the more learned end of things. (Leon Wieseltier's demolition of Cornell West is among the harshest, most devestating things I've ever read.)

Anyway, Garrison Keiller gives Bernard-Henri Levy a serious thrashing in the Times Book Review this past Sunday. Levy's book is an effort to say something interesting about American culture by retracing his countryman Alexis de Tocqueville's famous steps.

Any American with a big urge to write a book explaining France to the French should read this book first, to get a sense of the hazards involved. Bernard-Henri Lévy is a French writer with a spatter-paint prose style and the grandiosity of a college sophomore; he rambled around this country at the behest of The Atlantic Monthly and now has worked up his notes into a sort of book. It is the classic Freaks, Fatties, Fanatics & Faux Culture Excursion beloved of European journalists for the past 50 years, with stops at Las Vegas to visit a lap-dancing club and a brothel; Beverly Hills; Dealey Plaza in Dallas; Bourbon Street in New Orleans; Graceland; a gun show in Fort Worth; a "partner-swapping club" in San Francisco with a drag queen with mammoth silicone breasts; the Iowa State Fair ("a festival of American kitsch"); Sun City ("gilded apartheid for the old");a stock car race; the Mall of America; Mount Rushmore; a couple of evangelical megachurches; the Mormons of Salt Lake; some Amish; the 2004 national political conventions; Alcatraz - you get the idea. (For some reason he missed the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the adult video awards, the grave site of Warren G. Harding and the World's Largest Ball of Twine.) …. There's no reason for it to exist in English, except as evidence that travel need not be broadening and one should be wary of books with Tocqueville in the title.”

“every 10 pages or so, Lévy walks into a wall. About Old Glory, for example. Someone has told him about the rules for proper handling of the flag, and from these (the flag must not be allowed to touch the ground, must be disposed of by burning) he has invented an American flag fetish, a national obsession, a cult of flag worship. Somebody forgot to tell him that to those of us not currently enrolled in the Boy Scouts, these rules aren't a big part of everyday life. He blows a radiator writing about baseball - "this sport that contributes to establishing people's identities and that has truly become part of their civic and patriotic religion, which is baseball" - and when, visiting Cooperstown ("this new Nazareth"), he finds out that Commissioner Bud Selig once laid a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington, where Abner Doubleday is also buried, Lévy goes out of his mind. An event important only to Selig and his immediate family becomes, to Lévy, an official proclamation "before the eyes of America and the world" of Abner as "the pope of the national religion . . . that day not just the town but the entire United States joined in a celebration that had the twofold merit of associating the national pastime with the traditional rural values that Fenimore Cooper's town embodies and also with the patriotic grandeur that the name Doubleday bears." Uh, actually not. Negatory on "pope" and "national" and "entire" and "most" and "embodies" and "Doubleday."

[snip]

And good Lord, the childlike love of paradox - America is magnificent but mad, greedy and modest, drunk with materialism and religiosity, puritan and outrageous, facing toward the future and yet obsessed with its memories. Americans' party loyalty is "very strong and very pliable, extremely tenacious and in the end somewhat empty." Existential and yet devoid of all content and direction. The partner-swapping club is both "libertine" and "conventional," "depraved" and "proper." And so the reader is fascinated and exhausted by Lévy's tedious and original thinking: "A strong bond holds America together, but a minimal one. An attachment of great force, but not fiercely resolute. A place of high - extremely high - symbolic tension, but a neutral one, a nearly empty one." And what's with the flurries of rhetorical questions? Is this how the French talk or is it something they save for books about America? "What is a Republican? What distinguishes a Republican in the America of today from a Democrat?" Lévy writes, like a student padding out a term paper. "What does this experience tell us?" he writes about the Mall of America. "What do we learn about American civilization from this mausoleum of merchandise, this funeral accumulation of false goods and nondesires in this end-of-the-world setting? What is the effect on the Americans of today of this confined space, this aquarium, where only a semblance of life seems to subsist?" And what is one to make of the series of questions - 20 in a row - about Hillary Clinton, in which Lévy implies she is seeking the White House to erase the shame of the Lewinsky affair? Was Lévy aware of the game 20 Questions, commonly played on long car trips in America? Are we to read this passage as a metaphor of American restlessness? Does he understand how irritating this is? Does he? Do you? May I stop now?”

Posted by jwb at 7:10 PM  · 0 Comments   

More on wine shipping

I see, via Fermentation, that the very mountainous state of Colorado is about to enter the modern world by liberalizing it's wine shipping laws.

In more gloomy news, the forces of evil are on the move in Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, and Virginia. See this very nice (and long) post on Fermentation for more.

Jwbblog has--hypothetically, at least--readers in Illinois, Indiana, and Virginia. I would personally appreciate it if you would write to your state reps and tell them to get their heads out of their asses. Thank you. That is all.

Posted by jwb at 12:40 AM  · 1 Comments   

Compassionate conservatism

Posted by jwb at 12:24 AM  · 0 Comments   

Friday, January 27, 2006

Presidential powers

I've been meaning to post something here on the oh-so-exciting topic of separation of powers--a topic that is both timely and something that I know a lot about--for a while but hadn't found the right hook. I'm glad now that I didn't bother because Fafblof--"the whole worlds only source for Fafblog"--has pretty much got it covered:

Q. Can the president spy on Americans without a warrant?
A. The president has to spy on Americans without a warrant! We're at war, and the president's gotta defend America, and he's not gonna wait for a permission slip from a judge or a senator or America to do it!
Q. That's just the kinda tough, no-nonsense thinking I like in a de facto dictator! Now some crazy people say the president broke some silly old laws like FISA and the National Security Act and the Fourth Amendment. Are these crazy people crazy?
A. They sure are! Maybe those laws worked back in 1978 back when Leonid Brezhnev was snortin coke with Ayatollah Khomeini and groovin to the hits of the Bee Gees, but in today's dark and dangerous times they just aren't enough.
Q. Things sure have changed since the innocent days of mutually assured destruction! But is it legal for the president to ignore the law?
A. Maybe not according to plain ol stupid ol regular law, but we're at war! You don't go to war with regular laws, which are made outta red tape and bureaucracy and Neville Chamberlain. You go to war with great big strapping War Laws made outta tanks and cold hard steel and the American Fightin Man and WAR, KABOOOOOOM!
Q. How does a War Bill become a War Law?
A. It all begins with the president, who submits a bill to the president. If a majority of both the president and the president approve the bill, then it passes on to the president, who may veto it or sign it into law. And even then the president can override himself with a two-thirds vote.
Q. See it's the checks and balances that make all the difference in our democratic system.
A. It's true.


And click through if you want an answer to the question of whether the president is allowed to eat a baby.

Posted by jwb at 4:00 PM  · 0 Comments   

Fear of Girls

Doug Doug: "Have you ever been chased by the entire JV football team because you chose to wear your cloak that day?" Er, no. But hilarious.

Via Double Viking.

Posted by jwb at 12:45 PM  · 0 Comments   

Glory wall

Interesting John Dickerson piece on Slate.com about the Abramoff scandal and "the absurd Washington phenomenon of the glory wall."

Also called the "wall of fame," "me wall," and "ego wall," the glory wall is where members of the establishment flaunt their connections by displaying photos of themselves with more famous people. Lobbyists have glory walls in the office to impress clients. Staffers have them to impress other staffers. Socialites have their glory walls on the piano…. For aspiring Washingtonians, the glory wall allows you to brag about conversations you never really had with the chief justice and intimacies you never really shared with the president.

What everybody is grasping for is a collection like the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham had or like lawyer E. Barrett Prettyman's. The truly famous have vast walls with candid photographs of themselves with presidents, jurists, and world leaders, usually with handwritten inscriptions scrawled at the bottom... Jack Valenti, a former Lyndon Johnson aide and former superlobbyist for the Motion Picture Association, has perhaps the most impressive photo of proximity to power. In the iconic photograph of Johnson taking the oath of office on Air Force One after Kennedy's assassination, Valenti is in the background, staring directly in to the camera.

Which brings us to the glory-wall hierarchy. Certain photos are worth more than others. Take presidential photos, for example. The Valenti photo is at the top: a picture that places you at a world-historical event. Next in prestige: you and the president, in casual clothes. After that: a shot of a president at your house. Below that, you and the president on Air Force One or in the Oval Office. And last: shaking hands with the president at some enormous, impersonal event.
The Abramoff-Bush pics are clearly in the bottom categories. The most potent picture, as described by Time, shows Abramoff, the president, several unidentified people, and a tribal leader in the Old Executive Office Building. Abramoff tried to sell such meetings to his clients as consultations with the president—that Bush was inviting the tribal leaders to Washington to get their views. Hooey. The president's performance at such meetings is brisk: pleasantries, remarks, handshakes, and he's out.

Bush doesn't need to stay long because the events are all about the picture, which is why the pictures are a political problem for the White House. Such pictures are a part of the reward system that help the White House run. White House officials know that when they give Abramoff or other lobbyists and political backers such photographs, they're going to use those photos out in the real world to claim that they have big-time access to Bush. For giving Abramoff this little bragging right, White House aides put influence in the bank. When they need a medium-level favor from Abramoff or anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist, who set up that Abramoff meeting with tribal officials, they can call on them and expect fast action. Lobbyists so banked can be called on to raise money for Bush or other Republicans or to build support for a presidential policy…

Posted by jwb at 11:15 AM  · 1 Comments   

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Manbags

There's an important article in today's New York Times on the vexed question of manbags. Capturing the essential conundrum of manbags quite well, one Times' interviewee comments, "It's really hard. You don't want it to look too businessman, and you don't want it to look too girly." Indeed.

Posted by jwb at 3:31 PM  · 0 Comments   

Teenagers today

According to Popbitch, 31% of American teens believe they'll become famous. Not entirely surprising, if true.

Posted by jwb at 9:56 AM  · 0 Comments   

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Ten Most Hated Athletes

Via the indispensable Double Viking, I came across this GQ
story about "The Ten Most Hated Athletes." Boston's Curt Schilling comes in at a hard-earned #4. I was unfamiliar with Michael Iaconelli, "America's biggets basshole."

Posted by jwb at 12:48 PM  · 2 Comments   

Monday, January 23, 2006

El Presidente recommends . . .


According to the always fair and balanced Drudge Report, El Presidente's latest bed-side reading has been the controversial "Mao: The Unknown Story," by John Halliday and Jung Chang. Stories about Bush reading always crack me up. Whatever other virtues Bush may have, the guy has absolutely no patience. The idea that he actually sat down--or laid in bed--and read an 800-plus page book of Chinese history requires at least the same degree of credulity necessary to sit through two hours with "The Wedding Crashers"--a funny movie but also completely prepostrous.

Posted by jwb at 11:01 AM  · 0 Comments   

Friday, January 20, 2006

Dumb**** Mountain


This is, for the most part, a family-friendly website, so we usually don't post this kind of thing, But Lev sent it along--and Lev's "the bomb" (see the item below on 90's slang, if you're not sure what that means). And it's pretty funny.

This also reminds me that it has always been a puzzle to me where Cheney got his reputation for thoughtfulness/gravitas. (Rumsfeld used to have a similar sort of reputation, now also, deservedly, gone.) As we've discovered, he's as big a right-wing nutjob as they come. (He's just about the only person on the planet who will still argue with a straight face that there was a connection between Sadaam and al Qaeda.) I suspect that was always the case. I'll explain why another day.

Posted by jwb at 2:55 PM  · 2 Comments   

Hot indie movies at Sundance

Courtesy of the indispensable Popbitch--a gossipy e-mail from Britain--some of the most talked about independent movies at the Sundance Film Festival:

* Art School Confidential - dark comedy from Terry Zwigoff, director Bad Santa.

* The Night Listener - Robin Williams is a radio personality who develops an intense relationship with a young listener, Rory Culkin.

* The Silence of Sleep - Michel Gondry's follow-up to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, with Gael Garcia Bernal as a man whose whole life may be a dream.

* Little Miss Sunshine - Kiddie beauty pageant spoof with Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell and Toni Collette.

* The Darwin Awards - Winona Ryder's comeback as an insurance investigator.

Posted by jwb at 11:05 AM  · 0 Comments   

Cool chair


I saw this chair a while ago in a design magazine, and thought it was pretty cool. Coincidentally, Cool Hunting has a post today about the very same chair. Check it out here. It's called the Truffle chair and you can purchase one from an Italian furniture company called Porro. Maybe we'll put one in the garage.

Posted by jwb at 8:10 AM  · 0 Comments   

Thursday, January 19, 2006

A few food-related links

This one is for the Krusser: How to kill a lobster properly. Click here. Don't miss the pictures. They're worse than a slasher flick.

Is eating fois gras immoral? Not sure, though it sure tastes good. However, this article is quite informative and interesting.

That is all.

Posted by jwb at 8:54 PM  · 1 Comments   

Chronicles of Narnia

While we're at it, here's a link to the amusing Chronicles of Narnia rap from SNL, in case you missed it.

Posted by jwb at 8:45 PM  · 0 Comments   

You stay classy, San Diego


We here at jwbblog have a great deal of affection for Will Ferrell. He's just about the funniest person alive. He alone makes a dud of a movie like "Bewitched" tolerable. And "Anchorman" has quickly become a comedy classic. What follows are some links from the Internets to some of our favorite bits.

Ferrell as Bush talking about global warming
("Lets talk about something that really matters, like keeping steroids out of t-ball.")

VH1 Storytellers: Neil Diamond
("It gets crazy on the road. That's why I like pornography.")

VH1 Behind the Music: Blue Oyster Cult
(Walken: "I could have used a little more cow-bell.")

Ferrell as a boss with an anger-management problem

Ferrell as an angry parent
("I will downsize your face with a shovel!")

Ron Burgundy auditions for ESPN
(not really that funny, but a must see for "Anchorman" aficionados)

Posted by jwb at 8:32 PM  · 0 Comments   

Slang from the 90's

Sup? Ah, the 90's. What a decade. And such a long time ago.

Anyway, a silly website called Flisp has compiled a list of some of the best slang from the 90's. Click here.

Posted by jwb at 11:21 AM  · 1 Comments   

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

California Pinot Noir


In the past, I've found that I don't care very much for most of the California pinots (many from Napa) that I've tried--they're simply too sweet--preferring instead the somewhat more austere pinots from Oregon. However, we recently tried some pinots from the Sonoma coast with Jenn's colleague Mike Rietbrock--a serious wine nut if there ever was one--and they were simply amazing--full bodied yet not too heavy, fruity yet not too sweet.

Serendepitously, the "Dining Out" section of today's Times has an interesting article by Eric Asimov about some of the winemakers who are making amazing wine along the Pacific on the Sonoma coast. The Times notes that they've been growing grapes in this area for some time--among others, the boutique wineries Williams Selyem and Kistler have been at it for a while. However, a bunch of new wineries have sprung up in the last few years--such as Peay, Faila, and Radio-Coteau--and they are making wines that are remarkable and worth searching for. (The article also discusses the efforts of established names, like Joseph Phelps and Kendall Jackson to get in on the action.)

Alas, these wines tend to be both expensive and hard to find. Most are only available to members of the wineries' mailing lists or to big spenders in restaurants with extensive wine lists. Further, if you can get on any of their wine lists, what should be a simple and straightforward task of actually getting your wine sent to you is complicated by our antiquated and anti-consumer shipping laws. (More on that another time.) Anyway, at Mike's urging, I was able to get on the lists at Peay, Radio-Coteau, and Kosta-Browne, and on the waiting list at Kistler. We'll see what happens--though now that the Times is on the case, these wines will be even harder to find.

Posted by jwb at 11:50 AM  · 2 Comments   

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Up yours, pig



Note: For those not in-the-know, this is Rick from "The Young Ones". If you can make it through an episode or two, much of what passes for conversation between Jenn and Shannon will make a lot more sense. That is all.

Update: For some useful background on The Young Ones, this page (from the British Comedy Library) is quite good. And you can purchase "Every Stoopid Episode" from Amazon here.

Posted by jwb at 2:24 PM  · 2 Comments   

Monday, January 16, 2006

James Ellroy


Watched "James Ellroy's Feast of Death" last night on cable. It's a pretty cool documentary about Ellroy's twin obsessions with the murder of his mother--which he wrote about in his book, "My Dark Places,"--and the murder of Elizabeth Short, the famed "Black Dahlia." It has a great scene with Ellroy chatting over dinner with a bunch of homicide detectives from the LAPD and the LA Sherrif's office about the Black Dahlia case. (Nick Nolte makes an appearance, though he doesn't have much to say.)

Anyway, I was reminded that it has been a while since we've heard from him. However, '06 could be a big year for Ellroy fans. Brian DePalma's film of Ellroy's "Black Dahlia" is due early in the year--with Josh Hartnett (as Bucky), Aaron Eckhart (as Lee), and Scarlett Johansson, among others--and it looks like it's going to be quite good. Ellroy himself likes what he's seen. He's said that Josh Hartnett nails Bucky, so to speak.

Also, the third installment of Ellroy's Underworld USA Trilogy--after "American Tabloid" and "The Cold Six Thousand, said to be entitled "Police Gazette"--is due in '06 (or possibly '07). Can't wait.

Posted by jwb at 1:50 PM  · 0 Comments   

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Alan Wolfe is tough

My teacher Alan Wolfe has a very critical review of Rodney Stark's "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success" in the January 16 issue of The New Republic. Wolfe comments, "'The Victory of Reason' is the worst book by a social scientist that I have ever read." Ouch! And, God knows, Wolfe's read a lot of books. (No link yet.)

Update: Here's a link to the article.

Posted by jwb at 6:55 PM  · 0 Comments   

Friday, January 13, 2006

The Waltham Tavern--"Ladies welcome"


According to the Boston Globe, the venerable Waltham Tavern--across the street from our old place on Shawmut Ave.--is going to be closing down. It turns out that selling crack across the bar isn't such a good idea. You learn something new every day.
Anway, here's the link.

Posted by jwb at 12:30 PM  · 0 Comments   

One of Tristan's amazing new paintings



For more, click here.

Posted by jwb at 11:56 AM  · 0 Comments   

Shipping Wine to Illinois

Illinois has been one of those states with relatively open wine shipping laws--laws that I hope Massachusetts will emulate someday soon. However, the bad guys--the local wine distributors and the state legislators that are in their pocket--are moving toward banning all shipping from wineries, both in Illinois and from other states, to consumers in Illinois. The rationale--that minors are ordering lots of wine on the Internets--is completely bogus. Anyway, our friends in Chicago ought to let their state reps know that this is unacceptable. More background is available at the very good wine blog, Fermentation.

Posted by jwb at 11:55 AM  · 0 Comments   

The Mystery of Larry Wachowski

A very odd story from "Rolling Stone" about Larry Wachowski, one of the brothers behind "The Matrix" trilogy and the forthcoming "V for Vendetta" (with Natalie Portman).

Posted by jwb at 11:26 AM  · 0 Comments   

Our Dear Leader

Posted by jwb at 10:42 AM  · 0 Comments   

Monday, January 09, 2006

The Fourth Indiana Jones movie is on

Click here: http://www.iwatchstuff.com/archives/2006/01/indiana_jones_4_stars_elderly.html

I hope Harrison Ford has a stunt double. He's getting a little long in the tooth for this sort of thing--though if anyone's going to play Indy, it has got to be him. Unlike the Bond films, it's hard to imagine them being able to use anyone else.

Posted by jwb at 1:10 PM  · 0 Comments   

What are they thinking?

Lewis Libby Joins the Hudson Institute
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=58926

The mind boggles.

Posted by jwb at 11:44 AM  · 0 Comments   

Why blogging?

The wife goes away for a few days and I now have a blog. I suppose there are worse ways of spending my time, though certainly better ones too.

I've been reading blogs for a long time--I started with Instapundit, Andrew Suliivan, and Mickey Kaus four or five years ago; that is, before September 11 and, to my mind, before many conservative bloggers sold their soul to the devil. Anyway, while my taste as to what qualifies as enlightened discourse on current events has changed, I still find a lot of interesting stuff to read and think about in the blogosphere (though what a dreadful word).

I'm not entirely sure what I might have to add at this point, but I thought I would give it a try.

Posted by jwb at 11:30 AM  · 0 Comments   

Posted by jwb at 9:27 AM  · 0 Comments   

Posted by jwb at 9:27 AM  · 3 Comments