Saturday, August 9, 2003


Elsewhere
Friedrich -- * James Russell (of Hot Buttered Death) is interviewed by Dave Tepper, here. James is recommending the now-on-DVD film "24 Hour Party People" -- I'll second that. * The innovative Austrian-ish economist Tyler Cowen has joined the team of bloggers over at the Volokh Conspiracy, here, where he's supplying fresh and informative econ-and-culture postings. 2Blowhards visitors are also likely to enjoy Cowen's book about culture and the market, In Praise of Commercial Culture (buyable here). First-rate, and full of eye-opening facts your English and art profs never passed along. Hey, here's a review of the book (from Salon) that I can totally get behind. * Kevin Michael Grace, than whom no one is more balefully conservative, grumps his way (entertainingly, and rather sweetly) through the Bennifer imbroglio as well as (eeeeek) "The Vagina Monologues," here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at August 9, 2003 | perma-link | (1) comments

Free Reads -- Housing in NYC
Friedrich -- I have a theory -- I'm not sure it's defensible, but it's mine and it gives me pleasure -- that politics in America during the last 35ish years boils down to this: that everything is a reaction to the '60s. There's been nothing new, nothing really different. Just a bunch of reactions. The problem is that the programs of the '60s went too far; no, the problem is they didn't go far enough. The solution is they need to be reformed; no, the solution is they need to be ditched entirely. And meanwhile the bills for what was put in place during the '60s continue to pile up ... An example? Here's an amazing article by Alan Feuer in the NYTimes about Co-op City, a 35-building neighborhood in the Bronx. Built in 1968 and currently home to 50,000 people, it was one of those we-can-do-anything postwar government projects, and was intended to create "affordable housing" for low- and middle-class families. A state program oversaw construction, and state money was used to make the whole thing happen. All very huge, as well as very idealistic and ambitious. Ie., very '60s. (Tarzan yodel here.) Today, only 36 years later, Co-op City is falling apart. Roofs leak. Pieces of concrete are falling off of balconies. The garages, which are crumbling, have had to close. Co-op City faces a repair bill of $500 million -- $500 million! -- yet its tenant corporation is running an annual deficit of $7 million. ($7 million!) So the inevitable ugly arguments are multiplying: time to privatize? Time for the state to rush in with yet more money? A working class utopia indeed. Me, I think we should just forward the bills along to Nelson Rockefeller's grandkids. Best, Michael Dept. of Government Boondoggles UPDATE: There's a lot of money sloshing around lower Manhattan that's meant to right some of the wrongs of 9/11, and no doubt the WTC area does need the help. But does Chinatown? Does the Lower East Side? Felix Salmon reviews the facts and the evidence, and does a lot of sensible thinking about these questions (here).... posted by Michael at August 9, 2003 | perma-link | (5) comments

Friday, August 8, 2003


Granularity
Friedrich -- Have lots of people recently taken to overusing the word "granularity"? I don't know why, but I seem to be hearing the word almost every day. Another example of my fine radar at work. Of course, I could also be way behind in noticing this... Best, Michael... posted by Michael at August 8, 2003 | perma-link | (7) comments

Notes on the Word "Intellectual"
Friedrich -- I was cooking up an elaborate posting on "intellectuals." A little history, some research. What do we mean by the word, where do intellectuals come from, what's the best way to deal with them? The public-intellectual question. The American-anti-intellectualism question. Links to a few key books and sites. Etc., etc. I was stoked, I'm tellin' you. But every time I sat at the keyboard the posting gave way beneath me. Why? Why? Well, partly because my ambitious postings usually do give way beneath me. Planning too much and getting too excited are, for me, surefire signs that I'll soon abandon something. But what else? ... Finally I realized what was behind my failure, which was that I really only have a couple of disjointed things I want to say on the subject. Why not take the easy way out? Ie., ditch the research and the hard work, and cut directly to the opinionating, musing and wise-assing? OK, then ... * It was a pleasant moment -- no, make that "a rare triumphant moment" -- for me when I finally understood that "intellectual" isn't a synonym for "smart." How does that work? I'm not talking about waking up to the fact that eggheads can be loony and impractical; I mean that over and over again I met people who were undoubtedly intellectuals yet who were dumb. Flat out dumb. Mentally underpowered. And over and over again, I also met people who struck me as very smart yet who clearly weren't intellectuals. What to make of this? Like you and everyone else with the sense and wit to drop by this blog, I'm aware myself of having a few spare mental horsepower lurking around; I know I can pull out into the fast lane when I need to. (At least I've got the self-deluded arrogance to enjoy imagining that I can.) Yet I know damn well I'm no intellectual. I'm glad of this -- in fact, I'd find it displeasing to be mistaken for one. Hmmmm. (Sound of mind churning away, or attempting to.) Ding! It's a matter of temperament, not IQ points! That's the solution I finally arrived at, and thanks to it my life has been a little simpler and calmer. Here's how it goes: an intellectual is an intellectual not because she's a smart person but because she's got an intellectual temperament. Ie., she's someone who lives in her brain. An athlete or ballerina lives in her body. A painter really lives in her eyes and hands. A lawyer -- well, who knows where lawyers live? But an intellectual? We call 'em that because they do their real living in their brains. Whether it's a lousy brain or a good brain is irrelevant; it's just the place where an intellectual processes what needs processing. A matter of temperament, in other words. That's it. Since coming to this conclusion, I've been a slightly more relaxed person. You can be an idiot yet also be an intellectual. You can... posted by Michael at August 8, 2003 | perma-link | (17) comments

The Chaos of History; Art circa 1940
Michael: After a laughably long gap, I resume my demonstration of the variety of art since 1900. (Completely unscientific and idiosyncratic surveys of the years 1900, 1910 and 1930 can be seen here, here and here. I can no longer remember why I skipped 1920.) This survey is of the years around 1940, a time which, after spending an hour or so looking through my art books, I would have to dub the era of Picasso. His influence was at its peak during this era; interestingly, I would say that it served mostly to intimidate and constrict the output of other artists. Still, there was quite a good crop of painting and drawing produced, particularly in styles of art that were somewhat distant from Picasso’s specialities. (I had to illustrate Pablo's own work with L'Aubade, probably one of my three or four favorite works by Sr. Picasso. It has a truly monumental tenderness and a stillness that seems charged with emotion.) STILL LIFE G. Braque, Black Fish, 1942 GENRE P. Picasso, L'Aubade, 1942 SELF-PORTRAIT O. Kokoschka, Self Portrait As a Degenerate Artist, 1937-9 SOCIAL COMMENT L. Muhlstock, William O'Brien, Unemployed, c. 1935 LANDSCAPE G. Wood, Iowa Landscape, 1941 ILLUSTRATION Unknown, Dime Mystery Magazine Cover, 1938 I had to sneak that illustration in; I think because of its conceptual distance from the Spanish Overlord of Art, it is probably as lively a piece as any in the survey. Do you agree? Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at August 8, 2003 | perma-link | (6) comments

Thursday, August 7, 2003


Elsewhere
Friedrich -- * Aaron Haspel finally comes through with his long-promised, much-anticipated posting on Objectivism and Objectivists, here. More than delivers, really -- it's a corker that makes you wonder exactly how many Ayn Rand-ish bridges Aaron is burning. Not to be missed, especially for those who, like me, are mystified by the lure of Objectivism. Lots of goodies and info, too: Did you know that many Objectivists are Jewish? * I'm fonder of theatergoing than most straight guys are, but even I stare at some shows thinking, They can't really expect the straight audience to be interested in this, can they? Steve Sailer muses about the topic, as well as other gays-in-the-higher-arts questions, here. * Did you know that whistling was once a big cultural thing? Make that a big, big cultural thing. Swing bands featured whistling virtuosos, and whistling stars were popular recording artists. Hey, my dad was a heckuva whistler with a big pop-song repertoire. He could trill and improvise, and was a terrific birdcall imitator. Me, I'm lucky if I get a few sloppy-wet notes out -- and apparently the whistling craze did indeed (mostly) come to an end with the Boomers. Dan Barry of the NYTimes visits with Steve Herbst, currently the country's Grand Champion whistler, here. You can enjoy some whistling sound samples (as well as buy CDs) at Herbst's own website, here. I notice that the sound samples at the site of four-time-champ Chris Ullman (here) are more extensive. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at August 7, 2003 | perma-link | (10) comments

Gals, Guys, etc.
Friedrich -- * I've watched a few episodes of Absolutely Fabulous and a few episodes of Sex in the City. Good stuff! Clever, funny, well-turned, exuberantly performed. Yet I didn't enjoy them and will probably never watch them again simply because the women portrayed in the shows are too much like many of the women I work with in my mediabiz job. ("Insane media broads" is my general category for them.) When I leave work, the last thing I want to do is spend more time around these loons, even if they are on a small electronic screen, and are being satirized. Unfair, but then again I'm not writing criticism or reviews here. No, instead, I'm reflecting on life's passing pageant ... (Chirp, chirp. Tweet, tweet.) A woman friend from out of town who's a fan of "Sex in the City" was once expressing her enthusiasm for the show, then said to me, "But the women in NYC aren't really like that, are they?" Um, er. Well, actually, if you drained the satire out, you could take the shows as documentaries about that class of gals -- the ones who abso-positively have to eat at the restaurant that the glossy magazines won't catch up with till next week. Women who are trying to live out the fantasy lives of a certain type of thrilled-by-the-scene gay man, in other words. I have an easier time watching "Ab Fab" than "Sex in the City" because the Ab-Fab gals are portrayed unapologetically as raging, unhappy, self-centered monsters, while the "Sex in the City" gals are presented as high-strung, maybe, but also cute and lovable. (Ah, American audiences and their difficulties with satire.) I watch the show thinking, "Cute? Lovable? How about selfish, hysterical and vain????!!!" (Then I pull myself together and change the channel.) It's quite an experience watching a tableful of these narcissistic NYC mediagals babbling about their favorite topic -- which is how unfair it is that a bunch of such really super women should have such a hard time finding decent men. It's one of life's funnier jokes that many of these gals -- active creators of their own unhappiness -- make a living telling other women how they ought to live. I'm a little bewildered that so many noncrazy women enjoy not just laughing at but identifying with the "Sex in the City" characters. What do you suppose they're enjoying? Picturing themselves as glamorous, freely sexual, and sophisticated (yet still cute and vulnerable)? If so, I guess (sigh) that's harmless. Still, living the media-centric life I lead, I find myself dwelling on how nuts the real-life counterparts of the "Sex" gals are. I've made a couple of visits to the red-hot heart of "Sex in the City" country -- the Conde Nast building in Times Square. Conde Nast is a media empire that publishes a ton of lifestyle and beauty magazines; its lunchroom is famous for having been designed by Frank Gehry, and its staff is heavily female (and... posted by Michael at August 7, 2003 | perma-link | (13) comments

New York Goes Progressive, Outlook Poor
Michael: In one of my recent postings, Education Reform and the Lessons of History, I discussed the arrogance of educational theorists during the Progressive Era (c. 1890-1920). I was rather surprised to see, just a few days later, a story in the New York Times on the adoption of a new reading curriculum by the New York City schools. It seemed to suggest, sadly, that nothing much had changed. It appears that those who can’t or won’t learn from history really are bound to repeat it. According to “New York’s New Approach” by James Traub, which you can read here, last January Joel Klein, the former antitrust lawyer who is the current chancellor of the New York City schools, and whose utter ignorance of the practical aspects of teaching makes him laughably dependent on his technical advisors, announced that the city would be adopting a “balanced literacy” approach to the teaching of reading and writing. This approach focuses more on children working amongst themselves than on teacher instruction. For those of you who haven’t followed the arcane world of education theory, “balanced literacy” is a “child-centered” approach that derives, ultimately, from the educational notions of John Dewey. Perhaps as an irony of history, Dewey’s quite left-wing educational heritage goes under the title of “progressive” education. Of course, the term “progressive” education has been rather under a cloud since the late 1950s, but in the world of education theory nothing (bad) ever goes away, it just pops back up under a new rubric. Since the 1980s, “progressive” child-centered educational approaches have sailed under a flag of convenience known as “constructivism,” since they emphasize that children must “construct” their own knowledge base. (Holy socks, Batman! Shades of PoMo!) The wholesale adoption of a new teaching approach to reading and writing, coupled with the simultaneous adoption of a new (and also “progressive”) approach to math education, in an immense district like that of New York City, has necessitated an ambitious campaign of teacher retraining via workshops. Many teachers are clearly concerned about the adequacy of this workshop-style retraining, as you can see from a follow-up story in the Times, here. But the notion that one can wave the magic baton and create a warm and fuzzy child-centered classroom is deeply typical of the arrogance that has always characterized “progressive” education. (Remember, Dewey himself emphasized that the point of his theories was not education, per se, but the ultimate reform of society as a whole. Dang, nothing compares with the rush of social engineering, does it? It’s like the smell of napalm in the morning.) The Times story captures the true-believer aspect of “progressive” education wonderfully as it comes out in these retraining workshops: Ms. Calkins's ''writer's workshop'' model [which she has given to roughly a third of the teachers in the New York City schools over the past six months] is based on the idea that children are natural writers; the job of the teacher is to coax stories out and help them... posted by Friedrich at August 7, 2003 | perma-link | (9) comments

Tuesday, August 5, 2003


Elsewhere
Friedrich -- * The Freudians just won't let it go. Have you followed their latest ploy to keep Freud in the legit spotlight? OK, so as a scientist he may have been flat-out wrong, over and over again. It doesn't matter -- because we never should have been evaluating him as a scientist in the first place. It's our fault, our mistake. We were missing the point. Which is ....? That his work shouldn't be taken as science, it should be taken as imaginative literature. He wasn't an out-of-control, ambitious nutcase who made destructive and misleading (and sometimes dishonest) overgeneralizations based on tiny Viennese samples. No, he was a great literary writer. So now we've got Freud the artiste to contend with. I don't know whether to be amused or appalled. Adam Kirsch does a fine job of examining the new case for Freud in Slate here. Link found via Arts and Letters Daily, here. * Buddhist wildman and take-no-guff GenX entrepreneur David Mercer is whipping up a blogging storm here. * Cristina Hoff Sommers bemoans the efforts of educationists to make boys get in touch with their feelings here. * Are there readers who haven't yet enjoyed Luke Ford's long q&a with the very impressive Heather MacDonald (here)? Go. Read. Learn. Caution: megabrain at work. * Given that (depending on the poll) 70-80% of Americans have serious reservations about current immigration policy, it's amazing how little press coverage the issue gets. PC time, anyone? So it's nice to see that the web seems to be breaking this taboo down. Anthony Browne reviews the state of the immigration debate in England for the Spectator here. It turns out that even some lefties are alarmed about current policies. * Yet another way to escape BlogSpot: TypePad, the EZ and cheap (or so they claim) hosted service put together by the creators of Movable Type, is now open for business here. * I get accused of all kinds of Boomer treachery whenever I try to formulate an observation or two about Xers and Yers. Which leaves me wondering: when exactly did I become Mr. Representative Boomer? Heck, I remember you and me bitching about the Boomers 25 years ago. Anyway, I was pleased to see that I'm not the only person foolhardy enough to try to make a little sense of today's young people. Frank Furedi in Spiked Online marvels at them too, here. I wonder if offended Xers and Yers will let him have it the way they do me. They don't seem to like being observed, do they? Hmmm. Kinda fits with the picture ... * Hard-drive rage alert: a message left for the customer-service rep, here. Link thanks to Yahmdallah (here), whose posting is full of many other goodies. * As attention-grabbing as the low-riding hip-hugger style can be, it can also get to be a bit much. As a friend of mine, generally an enthusiastic girlwatcher, recently said, "I don't even know these people. Why am I supposed... posted by Michael at August 5, 2003 | perma-link | (15) comments

42nd Street
Michael: As I have admitted in the past, when it comes to musicals (of the modern variety) I am a pretty lukewarm consumer. Although I have somehow dragged my sorry self off to see “Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables” and “Chicago” (among others) it was usually because my wife wanted to get dressed up and go out when we were playing tourist in New York or London. However, I took my daughter to see the revival of “42nd Street” in Los Angeles over the weekend, and I found myself wondering if, rather than not being too excited about musicals, if I’d simply been watching the wrong type? I suspected I might be onto something more interesting when, waiting for the show to start, I found myself actually reading an essay by Christopher Breyer called “Old Broadway: The musical in the age of Pretty Lady.” Pretty Lady is, of course, the musical within-a-musical being put on during “42nd Street.” Anyway, I scented possibilities when I realized that Mr. Breyer, who seems a man of, ahem, conventional tastes, was apologizing for the retrograde vision of the musical offered in the 1933 film and in the 1980 stage adaptation: In 1933, six years after the epochal Show Boat had definitively demonstrated just how sophisticated and dramatic and meaningful musical comedy could be, the average hit Broadway musical was still only about girls, gags, song and dance (and, to a lesser extent, dazzling lights, sets and costumes. Girls, gags, song and dance are, of course, essential to theatre (and life) but today we tend to think that the best musical theatre should also have story, characters and drama. This, the movie 42nd Street tells us, is not what most artists or audiences felt in the first decades of the 20th century. Being the sort of cranky contrarian I am, I tend to admire retrograde visions. Screw progress: at least in cultural terms, it’s almost always an illusion and a deadly incitement to think that you're smarter than your grandfather. I found myself wondering if it were possible that the American musical had in reality taken some kind of cosmic wrong turn with “Showboat.” At least judging by the contemporary product, the musical certainly seems to find itself up a creek without a paddle. In 1933, American popular musical theatre was—and, with some notable exceptions, had always been—essentially a variety show…[F]or decades vaudeville provided the main ingredient and life blood of Broadway musical comedy: star performers and acts…Broadway had its own variety format: the revue…And the line between revues and musical comedy “book” shows was very fine indeed. Musical comedies featured the same stars, the same comics and “specialty acts,” the same song and dance routines, as revues…Musical comedy’s dependency on vaudeville made story and drama if not actually impossible, then certainly difficult to achieve, and perhaps irrelevant. Anyway, the play started and my musings fell into the back of my mind, where apparently they kept churning away. I say this because during Scene... posted by Friedrich at August 5, 2003 | perma-link | (9) comments

Monday, August 4, 2003


Hugo's Novel
Friedrich -- I just last night finished reading The Execution, the first novel by Hugo Wilcken, an occasional commenter here at 2Blowhards (you can find some good Hugo-comments on this posting here). Pleased to report it's a good 'un, and that I enjoyed it a lot. Camus meets Brett Easton Ellis, with maybe a little Graham Greene and some "Notes from Underground" thrown in as well. Psych-suspense (actually I'd call it psych-horror) about a young Londoner (about to turn 30) who works for a human rights group; his artist girlfriend and their daughter; and the campaign he's running for an African who's been sentenced to death ... Pitch-perfect portrayal of a type we all know -- paranoid and blanked-out at the same time, self-absorbed and prematurely world-weary, failing to connect yet unable to extend himself far enough to ask for help, desperate yet peevish -- not a novel (chuckle chuckle) for those who prefer a likable or attractive protagonist, in other words. It isn't what anyone would call a plot-driven book, either. Instead, it's constructed like a piece of poetry or music, with motifs and echoes bouncing off each other this way and that. This is one of those novels that works by burying a bomb 'way down deep, setting it off, and then letting the explosion rise to the surface in slow, ultra-controlled (and sly and enlightening) ways ... Plus a fabulous use of voice. Here's a short passage I've pulled out of the book at random: That evening the phone rang while I was reading Jessica a bedtime story. Marianne was in the garden, so I got up to answer it, with Jessica pulling at my shirt. Before I even picked up the receiver, though, somehow I knew it was Christian and I had this visceral desire not to talk to him. I just felt it wouldn't be good for me. Perfecto Gen X Meursault: narcissistic (look at the way everything comes back 'round to the narrator); noncommittal in a droning, vague way (look at those overcaffeinated-yet-exhausted extra words: "somehow," "this," "just"); unpleasant and irritable yet screaming "help me" at the same time. Hats off to Hugo. First-rate: a slim, easy read -- always appreciated -- but with a hefty payoff. You can buy Hugo's book here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at August 4, 2003 | perma-link | (3) comments

Economists and Audience Sense
Friedrich -- Though I'm a fan of econ and enjoy poking around the field, I'm no one to pay attention to where the nitty-gritty of econ is concerned. (Many will enthusiastically endorse this self-evaluation: see the comments on this posting here, for example.) But where superficialities are concerned, I persist in thinking that I'm entitled to the occasional opinion and reflection. The presentation of econ for a popular audience, for example. Hey: "presentation" and "the popular audience" -- two things a few decades in the arts and the media help you learn a bit about. One thing I find myself marveling at is how often economists trying to present their subject to a broad audience make the same kinds of mistakes. What could they be thinking? Do they have no audience sense at all? Here's an all-too-typical econ-for-the-popular-audience sentence: "Each person engages in specialization, or a divison of labor, producing what he or she is best at." "Producing what he or she is best at"? "Each person"? Excuuuuuuse me? I'm amazed that anyone could write such a sentence and think that he's doing his field (let alone his readers) a favor. Why? Well, on reading this sentence, my speaking-for-the-popular-audience mind screeches to a halt then spirals off into resentful babbling, all of it along these lines: "Oh yeah? And sez who? If you think I do what I do on the job because it's what I'm best at, you've got another thing coming, bud. And, judging from my experience, if you think the market is a trustworthy, let alone the ultimate, arbiter of what people do best, I've got about a zillion incompetent people I'd like to show you. For example, Mr. Know-it-All Economist? Let me introduce you to my boss." Then I hear the sound of copies of this economist's book being chucked vindictively into nearby wastebaskets. After all, why wouldn't readers stare at this sentence and think, "Actually, asshole, what I'm best at is being a mommy (or a hubby, or a soccer coach, or a friend, or a home cook, or an amateur chamber-music cellist -- or, come to think of it, a blogger). And for none of this do I get paid. So take your so-called science and shove it." This author, presumably trying to do p-r for his subject as well as enlighten his readers, has just insulted and lost his audience instead. Good job! I'm going to risk the usual ribbing and take this opportunity to sneak in a slightly bigger reflection. Which is that, as far as I can tell, it seems to be all too common for economists to forget that people choose -- or to some extent choose -- how to interact with the market. (Perhaps it's wrong to suspect that the way specialists present their field to a popular audience reveals a little something about them and their field -- what the heck. Plus, I think it's generally speaking a good thing to make specialists wrestle with the responses of... posted by Michael at August 4, 2003 | perma-link | (13) comments

Ten Things I Like About Being a Parent, II
Michael: Another good thing about being a parent is getting to re-experience words in their primordial state. Tonight I was in the bath with my son, who recently turned two. He was playing with a supply of plastic kitchen implements, a gift from my lovely wife. (My son is obsessed with tools of any stripe—drills, screwdrivers, onion presses, vacuum cleaners, you name it. I don't remember my girls being like this. I guess it's a sex difference. It's certainly innate.) He held out one with a long handle and a flat blade set at a slight angle and asked what it was. Apparently one of my brain switches was stuck in the wrong position tonight. I looked at the darn thing and thought: skillet. I knew that wasn’t right, but I could not think of the correct term to save my life. Scraper? Slider? I put him off for a moment, hoping my brain malfunction was temporary and they wouldn’t be sending me off to the glue factory tomorrow. A few minutes later, it burst on my consciousness. “Spatula,” I shouted. “It’s a spatula!” My son had moved on, by then, and didn’t really care, but I insisted that he pronounce the word. "SPA-chu-la.” It's at the tip of my tongue...or... somewhere around there. As I said it, I suddenly had some aesthetic distance on the word. Spatula?! What kind of a stupid word is that? Three syllables and an overall Latinate sound for a simple kitchen tool? Is it too late to vote for scraper? It seems far more appropriate, somehow—Anglo-Saxon and earthy. We can keep spatula for the biological name: this tool is a member of the species Spatula Grotesquius. I can dimly remember when I was my son's age having this kind of reaction to the sound of all the new words I learned. So, oddly, my memory lapse rewarded me with another, far more rare, memory in the end. Anyway, if you’re going to get any kind of benefit at all out of a failing memory, it’s really helpful to have these lapses in the presence of someone young enough not to treat you like the pathetic fossil you are. Preferably someone still learning to talk, who still thinks you’re the one who's got the whole language thing sussed. I figure that gets me about another six months with my son. What happens after that, I have no idea. Maybe I can talk my wife into another kid? Cheers, Friedrich P.S. The illustration above is from the website of a guy called Spoonman who will be glad to sell you your very own lovingly crafted spatula headware here.... posted by Friedrich at August 4, 2003 | perma-link | (8) comments