Category: Politics (explicit)

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Time out

No posting from me today, dear readers! I’m exhausted/hungover from last night (we get up at 5 a.m. e.s.t., so we didn’t get a ton of sleep after Obama’s acceptance speech). Maybe I’ll fire up a double feature of Undercover Brother and Coming to America on the computer, but first, a coworker and I plan to celebrate the election by scoring some lunch over at the Chicken & Rib Crib.

Barack on.

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Vote with soul

I haven’t finished loading up my new iPod yet, so I wasn’t able to play James Brown’s Living in America during the drive down to the polling station this morning. I fell back on Prince’s Sign o’ the Times (should’ve gone with America from Around the World in a Day). To make up for it, I offer up some JB:

To provide some more Obamatude, I’ll only play funk, soul and R&B in my office stereo today. Up first, Sly & the Family Stone – Anthology!

Now go vote! And then dance like there’s ass in your pants!

Update! Next up: the soundtrack to Brown Sugar.

Vote Lando!

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That’s certainly transformational

I try to cut the Drudge Report a bit of slack; I figure everyone has an agenda, and so I do my best to weigh their biases and suss out the signal from all the noise. Still, I was a little sad when I checked out the site this afternoon and saw this link in the top of the right column:

Disappointed because I saw the interview earlier in the day, and I knew that’s not what Colin Powell said. In fact, the very story that Drudge quote links to includes the correct version of the quote:

I think the last decade’s proven pretty adequately that “Republican” is not the same as “conservative.” If you’re going to quote somebody, I think you have a duty to actually include the correct quote.

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Not long enough

Here’s a quote from this morning’s reading:

“We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return.”

— Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1953)

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Under the Sun

Barring a major investor jumping in during a time of financial panic, it looks like the Official Newspaper of Gil Roth will be shutting down in a week. How’s today’s Arts+ section looking?

  1. Victor Davis Hanson reviews Martin Creveld’s The Culture of War: “he presents himself as a Thucydidean”!
  2. Steven Nadler reviews Joel Kramer’s biography on the Great RaMBaM: “From Moses to Moses, there was no one like Moses”!
  3. Eric Ormsby reviews Fernandoz Baez’ history of the destruction of books: “Unlike Borges, who delighted in inventing titles which don’t exist (but should), Mr. Báez describes books and whole libraries that fell prey not only to fire and flood but to sheer human malevolence”. . .
  4. And speaking of Borges, Alberto Manguel reviews William Goldbloom Bloch’s The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges’ Library of Babel: “Mr. Bloch notes in his preface that the ideal reader of his book is Umberto Eco”!?
  5. Paula Deitz writes up the Venice Biennale of Architecture: “Two different exhibitions featured walls of refrigerators as stand-ins for enclosed spaces”?!
  6. In a rare disappointment for me, it turned out that Valerie Gladstone’s Bacon and Rothko in London does not actually involve pork products: “‘What I find amazing,’ Mr. Gale said, ‘is that even after all the preparation for this exhibition, looking at Bacon’s paintings still makes my spine tingle. I never stop being overwhelmed.'”

And a bonus! This weekend, the New York Times wrote about the Sun’s plight! While it can’t be bothered to mention the Sun’s top-notch arts coverage until a passing ref. 6 paragraphs from the end — presumably because it puts the Times’ coverage to shame — it does manage to include a quote from a writer at The Nation who called the Sun “a paper that functions as a journalistic SWAT team against individuals and institutions seen as hostile to Israel and Jews”! Awesome! Now I can miss it even more. . .