Month: April 2006

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Idolatry

I’m a late convert to American Idol. The official VM wife had been extolling the program’s vices for a while, but I never gave it a shot until this season. It’s turned out to be pretty darned entertaining, especially with Dave White’s commentary over at The Advocate (so my wife reads The Advocate; is that so wrong?). And the Spoonbender’s preview is always a hoot.

I discovered that nothing can match the lunacy and self-delusion of the first few weeks of auditions, when clueless people try to sing their way onto the show. My boss thinks I’m a bad person for enjoying these so much, but I figure, “You sign your waiver, you take your chances.”

Anyway, the season’s been pretty enjoyable, but it started to slow down in the last few weeks, as more of the novelty acts got voted off the show. (Sure, there was the train wreck of a night where the contestants had to perform songs by Queen, but it’s otherwise been pretty sluggish.)

And then there was last Tuesday’s episode.

The contestants had to sing “great love songs,” as coached by Andrea Bocelli and his producer. Not promising in itself, the episode was redeemed by the sight of Paula Abdul breaking down in tears after a guy’s performance. She tried to talk about some sort of “triumph of the human spirit” moment, but she was just incoherent and crying. What made this more perfect was the mid-range camera shot, in which we saw co-judge Simon Cowell trying to stifle his laughter. Inspired.

Anyway, I bring this up because there’s a neat article in the NYTimes about the history of show’s own audition, when it was being pitched to every network in America. And to admit that I watch American Idol.

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Because they can’t

John Kenneth Galbraith died this weekend. The NYTimes has a long obit, including the entertaining caveat:

He strived to change the very texture of the national conversation about power and its nature in the modern world by explaining how the planning of giant corporations superseded market mechanisms. His sweeping ideas, which might have gained even greater traction had he developed disciples willing and able to prove them with mathematical models, came to strike some as almost quaint in today’s harsh, interconnected world where corporations devour one another.

Make with the read-read.

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Because they can

Robert Kagan has a longish column at the Washington Post today about why Russia & China support other dictatorships (instead of supporting liberal reform the way U.S. & Europe sorta do):

An irony that Europeans should appreciate is that China and Russia are faithfully upholding one cardinal principle of the international liberal order — insisting that all international actions be authorized by the U.N. Security Council — in order to undermine the other principal aim of international liberalism, which is to advance the individual rights of all human beings, sometimes against the governments that oppress them. So while Americans and Europeans have labored over the past two decades to establish new liberal “norms” to permit interventions in places such as Kosovo, Rwanda and Sudan, Russia and China have used their veto power to prevent such an “evolution” of norms. The future is likely to hold more such conflicts.

Read all about it.

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Baldwins Redux

Okay: last week, I wrote about Page 6 and how we rank the Baldwins. If you go through the comments, you’ll find some debate over who’s the “least-known” Baldwin. (There’s also a great comment/anecdote from my buddy Tom.)

My ranking runs as follows: Alec, Daniel, Stephen, and Billy. There’s some debate over the bottom two, but I figured Daniel was fairly ensconced in that #2 slot.

Then comes today’s Page 6, with the following item:

DANIEL Baldwin, the blow-loving black sheep of the Baldwin brothers, has been arrested again on drug charges. Cops say they were responding to a loud noise coming from Baldwin’s room at the Ocean Park Inn in Santa Monica the other day, when they found him holding a drug pipe. Baldwin, 45, and another man, Anthony Hunter, 52 — who was reportedly hiding in the bathroom — were also found in possession of a “small amount of cocaine,” police said. Baldwin spent the night in jail and posted $10,000 bail the next day. The least-known Baldwin brother last made headlines when he had a drug-induced meltdown during the filming of the VH1 reality show, “Celebrity Fit Club.” In 1998, Daniel was found running naked, high on crack cocaine, through the Plaza hotel. Cops were called following complaints that the actor was watching porno movies with the sound turned up loud. After being hospitalized for an overdose, he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was sentenced to three months in drug rehab. Baldwin has admitted battling a cocaine addiction since 1989, shortly after he started his career in Hollywood.

Now, I just don’t know what’s what. Daniel as least-known? When Billy’s biggest movies were Sliver and Fair Game (which was derived from the same novel as Cobra?

So, when all else fails, I will try to re-establish Billy Baldwin’s least-known status with the following series of pictures:

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Across the Transom

Most people get those wacky Nigeria e-mails during the workday. What do I get? An open letter to the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, apparently written by Borat (just out of discretion, I’ve redacted all personal names, except J-P’s):

Jean-Pierre Garnier,
Chief Executive Officer

Sofia, April 29, 2006

Re: GSK in Bulgaria: Lilliputian in One Year

Dear CEO,

Few months ago as the GSK’s chief partner in Bulgaria we’ve revealed the GSK representative was involved in dubious and near corruption practices and have deplored her threatening and intimidating letters in return (all timely & expressly mailed to you). Now, Mrs. XXXX XXXX unilaterally terminated the two GSK cooperation agreements with Commercial League, the largest pharmaceutical company in the territory. Such an illegal act has no material and contractual ground and bears several harmful consequences.

Beyond the severity of the legal and reputationally unavoidable damages I am more concerned about the long term deterioration of CL/ GSK business relations, at the end turning Glaxo to a Lilliputian pharmaceutical company in the fast growing market of Bulgaria, and perhaps other Balkan countries. I am sure you understand, despite systemic anomalies of the representative or any corporate friction by now notwithstanding, as the GSK main contractual partner CL’s unrivaled marketing machine did not compete directly with your product sales. However, this is exactly what your representative, undoubtedly endorsed by Mr. XXXX XXXX, is inviting through the latest hostile and illegal move. Twelve months from now sales of your peers will replace otherwise good portfolio of GSK in all strategic therapeutical arias and only you can take the lead to stop this inevitable down slide, hopefully not too late.

You know, you personally command my enormous respect,
Kindly

[XXXXXXX] Chief Executive Officer

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More on Jacobs

Witold Rybczynski at Slate has a brief appreciation of Jane Jacobs’s work. He points out that Jacobs largely ignored the suburbs, which is putting it mildly. In her best-known book, she considers them solely as a negative, the way most urban theorists do. Which reminds me that I need to get back to reading Bruegmann’s Sprawl sometime soon, maybe before I make the leap into that Robert Moses book. Guess I oughtta get to reading Rybczynski’s City Life sometime, too.

(And I oughtta get back to some of my ruminations on Jacobs & New Orleans)

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Happyish Anniversary!

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my dad’s quintuple bypass (or clock-resetting, as he calls it). He’s recovered pretty well, but he’s gotten kinda sedentary again, which led to piling on some weight. He also doesn’t seem to attach any psychological significance to the fact that he’s been compulsively buying “designer” watches off of Ebay.

Anyway, Dr. Praeger’s procedure has bought time for Dad, for which I’m thankful. Pop’s also finally booted his cardiologist, who had the charm (and appearance) of a used car dealer from 1982. I haven’t made enough time for Dad lately; not like the first few months after surgery, when I was over at his place after work, getting him on the treadmill, talking him through Jim Cramer’s stock advice.

Coincidentally, I read this article about Philip Roth’s new book, Everyman, today. It’s about old age and mortality:

“Old age isn’t a battle,” the protagonist thinks to himself after calling a former colleague who is dying in a hospice. “Old age is a massacre.”

“This book came out of what was all around me, which was something I never expected — that my friends would die,” Mr. Roth said. “If you’re lucky, your grandparents will die when you’re, say, in college. Mine died when I was a schoolboy. If you’re lucky, your parents will live until you’re somewhere in your 50’s; if you’re very lucky, into your 60’s. You won’t ever die, and your children, certainly, will never die before you. That’s the deal, that’s the contract. But in this contract nothing is written about your friends, so when they start dying, it’s a gigantic shock.”

Reminds me of that line from Fight Club: “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

Dad, meanwhile, was giving himself milestones, in the “I just have to live until . . .” dates, like his grandkids’ visit last summer, or my wedding last March. Now that there are no big events to “live until,” he has to start living for each day.

If I have to tell the rest of you again to make the most of the time you have, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. . .

(More coincidentally, my iTunes just shuffled onto “O, Death,” by Ralph Stanley. You know I wouldn’t make up something so obvious.)

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Park it

Conference over! Now my boss & I head off to the Tigers-Angels game! For those of you scoring at home (ha-ha), this is the ninth ballpark I’ve visited (Yankees, Mets, Baltimore, Philly, Toronto, Oakland, Seattle, San Diego); there may be a Fenway visit (grr) in June, too.

Back in 2002, after breaking up with a LONGtime girlfriend, I plotted out a driving trip to hit 7 or 8 ballparks in 9 or 10 days. I thought about it pretty seriously, but concluded that a solo drive that long probably would’ve left me talking to myself WAY too much. I’m glad to do it this way, visiting parks when business-travel brings me around.

I only wish I’d scalped tickets a few Sundays ago for the Cubs-Cards game at Wrigley.

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Athens, Jerusalem and Gillette

I’m here in the Real O.C.! I haven’t seen Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows anywhere, nor Kristin Cavallari’s roots, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

During the flight, I watched No Maps for These Territories, a documentary about William Gibson. I’m ruminating on that one, and might write a lengthy, rambling take on it next weekend. Harass me about it, so I can formulate some more.

Also, I read a pair of short columns that I think you might like, and that seem somehow intertwined. I haven’t gone to Arts & Letters much lately; not sure why. But Amy hit it this weekend and came across both of these pieces, so all credit goes to the official VM wife.

The first is a review of Harold Bloom’s Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, which explores Bloom’s visions and revisions on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments:

Bloom interprets the trinity as an essentially polytheistic “structure of anxiety” in which God the Father—whom Bloom finds “lacking in personality”—is a mere shade of Yahweh. Yahweh, “the West’s major literary, spiritual, and ideological character,” has not, according to Bloom, “survived in Christianity.” In J’s portrait—the earliest biblical layer—Yahweh is “anxious, pugnacious, aggressive, ambivalent,” not to mention all too often absent. But unlike Jesus Christ and God the Father, he is emphatically not a theological God. Indeed, Bloom asserts that “no God has been more human.”

The other piece is about wet shaving, Homer, and the possibility of redemption. I can’t begin to do it justice.