Friday, February 27, 2004


Facts from The Economist
Dear Friedrich -- Buried in among The Economist's good writing and smartypants attitudinizing are many fascinating and illuminating facts. Here are a few I've collected from recent issues. The ten-year-old Channel Tunnel between England and France has been a flop. Even the most pessimistic forecasts predicted that 10 million people would use the Chunnel each year; last year, only 6.4 million actually did. Business suffered at first because channel ferry firms quickly upgraded their ferries, and is suffering today because of low-cost airlines. Management is now asking the governments of Britain and France for a bail-out. It's thought that several million people around the world currently live as slaves. The exact rate of unemployment in South Africa is hard to determine, but the best guess places it at 42%. Yet it's estimated that there are between 300,000 and 500,000 positions available for skilled workers in the country. South Africa doesn't have the skilled workers to fill them. Things are looking up in Algeria, though it'd be hard for them to look worse, given that civil strife in recent years has killed 150,000 people, and that living standards have declined for two decades straight. Haiti, with a population of 7.5 million, has only 5,000 police, most of whom are poorly armed. 80% of Haitians live in poverty. Despite headlines about its economic prospects, India -- which has 17% of the world's population -- still accounts for only 2% of global GDP. 20% of Indian children receive no formal education at all, and 35% of the population is illiterate. More than two million people have died in Sudan's long-lasting civil war. Those rows of road-flanking plane trees in France? The ones that show up in innumerable picturesque paintings, photographs and movies? Well, the French government, concerned about road deaths -- drunken drivers crash into plane trees regularly -- is cutting them down. 90% have already been removed. As the Ugandan army dispersed a recent protest march, four people somehow wound up being lynched. France has lost its stranglehold on high-end food -- even in its own mind. Many Parisian brasseries are now widely recognized as lousy, and many young Frenchpeople have never learned how to cook. Biggest blow to French national food pride: the star of a hot new cooking show on French TV is Jamie ("the Naked Chef") Oliver -- an Englishman. Robert ("Bowling Alone") Putnam's latest research isn't encouraging for partisans of diversity. According to Putnam, levels of trust and co-operation are highest in the least diverse neighbhorhoods, while people living in diverse neighborhoods aren't just suspicious of people who don't look like them; they're more suspicious as well of their own kind. On May 1, ten mostly-struggling countries will join the EU, and Western Europe is nervous. Will poor people, released to leave their home countries, rush into Western Europe hoping to take advantage of its prosperity and generous benefits systems? David Goodhard, editor of the lefty Prospect magazine, has caused a storm by arguing that it's time progressives... posted by Michael at February 27, 2004 | perma-link | (11) comments

Michelangelo and Rodin
Michael: I came across a little book the other day entitled “Rodin and Michelangelo” at a going out of business sale at a Crown Books. (Apparently, as I found out later, this particular Crown Books outlet has been ‘going out of business’ for several years now.) Appropriately, it was the catalogue of an exhibition back in 1996-1997 staged by the Casa Buonnaroti of Florence and the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia. Given their respective investments in their artists, both institutions had a fairly obvious motive for cooperating: i.e., to cross-market themselves to fans of the other artist. The Casa Buonnaroti would of course want to stress Michelangelo’s continuing importance to Modern Art, while the Rodin Museum would like to position Rodin as the heir of the Divine Michelangelo. This little piece of artistic cross-marketing made me consider how common such salesmanship is in art history, and how it often obscures the real relationships between artists. Of course, the cross-marketing of Michelangelo and Rodin hardly began with this exhibition/book. As early as 1884, Octave Mirbeau proclaimed it in the pages of Le Gaulois: I tell you, Monsieur, this man is Michelangelo, and you do not recognize it. Well, I’ll grant you that in 1884 Rodin was producing work strongly influenced by Michelangelo, but that development was only a few years old at the time. Back in 1876 Rodin—born in 1840—was working in Brussels as a flunky for the fashionable commercial sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse. Carrier-Belleuse, a very talented guy who could sculpt in any style but typically worked in a pseudo-Rococo idiom, had assembled a studio the Belgian capital in order to decorate the new Brussels stock exchange. Rodin had worked there for six years without his common law wife Rose Beuret or his son, both of whom stayed behind in Paris, presumably for financial reasons. To make Rodin’s own obvious lack of success more galling, Carrier-Belleuse was dismissive of the younger man’s artistic dreams. The wildly ambitious Rodin, who had been met chiefly with rejection by the art world—he had been turned down for admission to the Ecole des Beaux Arts not once, but three times and seen his first significant work, “The Man With the Broken Nose” rejected by the Salons of both 1864 and 1865—must have been desperately looking for a crowbar to pry open the gates of fame and fortune. He found what he was looking for in an uptick of French artistic interest in Michelangelo. According to Flavio Fergonzi, [There were several] events in the French artistic milieu to which Rodin could not have remained indifferent. The first of these events…was the emergence of the so-called sculptural Florentinism fashionable among French sculptors in the 1870s…[C]ritics began to notice, beginning with the [post-Franco-Prussion war] Salon of 1872, a sober and rigorous neo-Renaissance style that complemented the seriousness of the new values of the Republic…[T]he second event…had to do with the quadricentennial of Michelangelo’s birth and the reactions to it in French culture. Beginning in January of 1875, the artistic... posted by Friedrich at February 27, 2004 | perma-link | (10) comments

Underserved Audiences
Dear Friedrich -- What does the success of Mel Gibson's "Passion" movie mean? Probably many things, but I'm prone to think that that one of them is that there's an audience out there that the entertainment business has been doing a lousy job of serving. I love these the-market-has-spoken moments, don't you? A fairly recent example was the success of the novels of Terry McMillan. Pre-McMillan, an unspoken -- and largely unthought-about -- assumption in the publishing biz was that blacks didn't read much fiction. The phenomenal success of "Waiting to Exhale" showed how wrong that assumption was. Blacks -- black women, anyway -- were in fact eager to see themselves, and their lives and experiences, reflected in fiction. To its credit, the book publishing industry snapped to pronto, and the modern-black-woman's novel has become one of the industry's standard products. Another example from book publishing: right-wing books. For an absurdly long time, the big NYC publishers turned their noses up at right-wing books; the idea of providing right-wingers with reading material seemed (and still seems) distasteful to many people in book publishing. So the creation, production and distribution of right-wing books was left to out-of-town and oddball publishers. Surprise: many right-wingers do read, and these oddball publishers had hit after hit after hit. Recently, but only very recently (such has been the resistance of NYC publishers to anything right-wing), NYC publishers have started waking up to the fact that they can't afford not to pursue the right-wing market. Yucko, perhaps -- but, good golly, there's a lot of money to be made over there. What will the entertainment biz make of the success of Gibson's Jesus movie? Will film and TV people take the movie's commercial triumph as an indication that there are lots of good-Christian types who are willing to buy movie tickets but only for the kinds of movies that they're comfortable with? Or will the biz shrug off "The Passion" as a one-time, unrepeatable phenomenon? What's your hunch about this? I suppose it's also possible that the entertainment biz will simply dodge these questions. Where Flyover Country's concerned, the entertainment biz is comfortable with the status quo: mocking rednecks, portraying uprightness as uptightness, and selling squareness to rubes. I wonder whether the biz will find the idea of respecting this audience and serving its entertainment needs and desires ... unbearable. Sharon Waxman in the NYTimes (here) reports that some major film executives have been so angered by what they feel is the anti-Semitism of "The Passion" that they've said they'll never work with Gibson again. But how about the opportunity to make scads of money producing films that appeal to red-state Christians? No word on that yet. Hey, and to move from the Himalayas to a sandpile: I looked at our 2Blowhards stats the other day and was floored to see that we're averaging better than 2000 visits a day. Fast response #1: when will these people come to their senses? But fast response #2: why... posted by Michael at February 27, 2004 | perma-link | (33) comments

Thursday, February 26, 2004


Bay Area Figurative Artists
Dear Friedrich -- By Wonner; by Peterson The San Francisco painters David Park (here), Richard Diebenkorn (here) and Elmer Bischoff (here) are three of my favorite 20th century artists, but the loose school they represent -- Bay Area Figurative painting -- included many other talented, if less well-known, artists too. Here's a page devoted to one of them, Paul Wonner; here's one devoted to another, Roland Peterson. I think many people who are wary of modernism might find the work of these painters surprisingly agreeable. It's casual, atmospheric, and pleasure-centric -- 1920s Paris via the Golden Gate, a bohemian utopia that smells of the Pacific. The Hackett-Freedman Gallery handles work by a lot of these guys, and their website (here) is itself an informative and helpful thing of beauty. Caroline Jones' wonderful book, Bay Area Figurative Art: 1950-1965, can be bought here. Are you a fan too? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at February 26, 2004 | perma-link | (8) comments

Elsewhere
Dear Friedrich -- * Book Babe meets Hollywood Animal! Ellen Hetzel interviews the screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, here. * I enjoyed exploring the website of DesignChapel, a hot Swedish design outfit, here. Stylish, edgy-but-elegant, and not for those who don't have broadband. * An exciting new addition to the blogosphere is John Massengale, here, who describes himself as "a recovering architect." Would that there were many more such. John designs Classical and Traditional; sees modernism as just another style; and many of the books and authors on his list of recommended readings (here) will be familiar to 2Blowhards visitors. He also helped write (alongside the architect Robert A.M. Stern and others) the fantastic book New York 1900 (buyable here). Go, team. * The architect Lucien Steil, who runs the wonderful webzine Katarxis (here), wrote in to alert me to a delicious-sounding architecture-and-urbanism conference that'll take place in May, in Viseu, Portugal. Details about the conference are here. Now, if the NEA will only give me a grant so I can attend ... Lucien, by the way, is at work on a new issue of Katarxis that he's co-editing with the great Christopher Alexander. * James Howard Kunstler's architectural Eyesore of the Month Award (here) goes to the Stephen Holl MIT dorm we blogged about here. * Most buildings that go up will at some point also have to come down. Here's a page full of videoclips of buildings being dynamited and otherwise demolished. (Link thanks to Pamela LiCalzi O'Connell -- shorten that name, please! -- of the NYTimes.) * OGIC collects Edward Gorey books, here. * After a break, Gavin Shorto, a master of the links-plus-dry-commentary form, is blogging again here. * Nick Kallen knows how to attend a film festival, here. One hint: lots of caffeine. He's also been thinking about Chris Marker's "Sans Soleil," one of my very favorite movies, here. This mindboggling movie, which as far as I can tell is only available used and on VHS, can sometimes be bought here. * Robert Detman, hard at work on a novel, writes about agents and rejection letters here. Sensible conclusion: "Why bother with these people? How did they become the arbiters for our hard fought creations?" * Ivan Eland thinks the U.S. should avoid trying to rescue Haiti, here. Jon Walz cracks some related jokes here. * Forgive me while I do a little dance in the endzone: the topic of immigration, about which I've been blogging for a while, is starting to pop up in the mainstream -- and in the category-defying way I suspected it would. Here's a Salt Lake Tribune story about squabbles at the Sierra Club, for instance. The issue boils down to: what stand does a well-meaning leftish environmental organization take on immigration? On the one hand, good lefties are fans of high levels of immigration. On the other, many environmentalists have always been wary of population growth. Here's Brenda Walker's summary of the kerfuffle. The Immigration BigThink Award goes to Samuel ("Clash... posted by Michael at February 26, 2004 | perma-link | (5) comments

Wednesday, February 25, 2004


In the Neighborhood of Genius
Dear Friedrich -- In the NYTimes, Lawrence van Gelder asks, "What's it like to live near the new Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles?" His answer: Dazzling and hot might be two words that come to mind. Neighbors are complaining that the intense glare from some of the shimmering stainless steel curves, above, of the $274 million hall designed by Frank Gehry has raised the temperature in nearby condominium apartments by as much as 15 degrees, The Associated Press reported. Jacqueline Lagrone, 42, said that when she returned for lunch one day before a temporary change was made: "You couldn't even see, and then the furniture would really get hot. You would have to literally close the drapes, and you'd still feel warmth in the house. You would have the air-conditioning on all the time." On one corner, where a glossy steel finish reflects the sun more harshly than the brushed steel used elsewhere, officials have put up netting pending a permanent solution. "We've chosen a sort of sandblasted finish," said Terry Bell, a Gehry partner. He said the impact of shiny steel on neighboring buildings was considered by the architects, but during construction, curving metal sheets ended up at a slightly different angle than called for by the plans. Van Gelder's piece can be read here. Best, Michael UPDATE: The LATimes has taken note too, here. Link thanks to David Sucher, here.... posted by Michael at February 25, 2004 | perma-link | (1) comments

Women's Magazine Editors
Dear Friedrich -- The latest NYC media-world tempest in a teapot is gathering now and should break in the next week or so. Myrna Blyth, who was editor in chief at Ladies' Home Journal for 10 years, has written a book, Spin Sisters, in which she ... Well, why not just quote the books' p-r material instead? Blowing the whistle on a job she herself did for over ten years at Ladies Home Journal as editor-in-chief, Blyth reveals the almost institutionalized selling of a liberal/do-gooders message to women through chararacterizing women themselves as victims. Playing on women's compassion and ability to be hooked into "uplifting" stories with a moral or happy ending, American media has convinced the most well-educated, rich and healthy audience in history that they are miserable. Here's a quote from the book itself: Many [of these high-up media women] are talented, and ambitious, and smart; and, I must admit, some are friends of mine. But ... I also know they are elitist, liberal, parochial, and pampered, and all of them believe that if you're a woman, you should think like them. Blyth evidently hopes to be the Bernard Goldberg of the women's-magazine universe, calling attention to biases, sloppiness, egos and betrayals. Is it true that the women who run women's magazines are Hillary-esque, unhappy, and bossy? Are they really narcissistic lefty wrecks who insist on being taken as role models? My meek, worm's eye view is: Hell, yeah! That destructive loon played by Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction"? Let's just say that while the stereotype of the terrifying, crazy career media bitch no doubt does an injustice to some women, there are good reasons why it's attained stereotype-hood. And though the Close character worked in book publishing, many of the gals I've met from the women's-mag world have been kindred spirits. But, really, I'm pleased that the subject's being talked about. I'm pleased, in fact, just about any time people examine the media industry and its products more closely and more openly than they usually do. I look forward to the catfights. May the fur fly. A brief pause for some perspective: it seems to me that the people who criticize these media products need to wrestle the fact that these products work. They sell. I mean, the media biz is a going concern; if it weren't onto something -- even if that something is merely how to exploit the fantasy lives and anxieties of American women -- it wouldn't be long for this world. Millions of women buy these magazines, and advertisers pay good money to buy space in them. Why? Is the formula of pushing anxieties (weight, men, careers, biological clocks, medical scares) while selling solutions (plastic surgery, diets, clothes, doctor visits) simply irresistable? And if these magazines are repulsive products, why don't women en masse stop buying them? I'd be the last person to defend the puffed-up, vain madwomen who run women's magazines. But it doesn't hurt to remember that they're working under the... posted by Michael at February 25, 2004 | perma-link | (9) comments

Confessions of a Naked Model
We're pleased to run another guest posting by "J," an artist and art student who helps pay the bills by working as an artists' model. J's site, where you can enjoy some of her art, is here. The Society of Illustrators runs a Jazz-and-Sketch session once a month where three girls pose together and a live band blasts swing. I showed up at my first one a month ago. I came in wearing a red silk robe that I hoped conjured images of opium dens, but which may just bring to mind the Chelsea Salvation Army. Despite my efforts, I got upstaged. On the stand with me stood a blonde with a newsboy cap and diamond collar, using a mink coat as a cover-up, her lips smirking and tomato-red. In good models, exhibitionism runs deep. This isn't something talked about in our profession. We are supposed to be posing for the money, or to demonstrate shoulder-joints, or for some other mature, sterile purpose. We're not supposed to be doing it to show off. But the high of being looked at isn't something I can deny. I fly when I'm on the model stand; afterwards, I'm bouncy and exhilarated, and more flirtatious than I'd ever be in normal, subway-riding life. Being on the stand gives you a persona. It lets you slip into the role of Kiki de Montparnasse (here), or at least of some beautiful wench secure enough to take off her clothes. This exhibitionistic drive gives us the energy and commitment it takes to twist ourselves into horrible poses,spend entire session's wages on props, and serve as inspirations rather than just demos of how a hip joint turns. When the blonde and I were twisted together for twenty minutes, she whispered to me "I wonder how many guys are going to go home and think of us tonight." Posing at a sketch club differs from posing at a school. Private sketch sessions have to attract participants -- to add some honey to the vinegar of work. They can’t afford the dourness that comes so naturally to universities. People won’t show up. Schools can do with you what they want; once you’ve signed over your four years and $35,000 tuition, you can't complain. Also, attendees of private sketch sessions are hobbyists who go to socialize and feel creative, or else professionals on their goof-off hours. They aren't earnest students. At the private venues, we models get to talk to the artists. We flatter and flirt. Cards get distributed and a good time is had. No matter how intense the atmosphere gets at a private sketch club, pleasure is in the air, while at universities, the what's in the air is resolutely work. When I pose in a new place, I have to sound out how much liberty I have. Can I talk to people during breaks, or sit in the corner reading? Can I joke when I'm on the stand? Many universities want models to be like furniture. While this... posted by Michael at February 25, 2004 | perma-link | (6) comments

Tuesday, February 24, 2004


TV Alert -- Black and White Special Edition
Dear Friedrich -- It's only week two of my TV Alert feature and already I'm running late. Blogging's fun, but there are moments when I miss editor-enforced deadlines. Still. As ever, TV Alert focuses on movie history -- specifically movies made prior to 1990, and on the TV programs that enhance our enjoyment of them. This week I've even got a theme: the pleasures of black and white movies. I'm told by profs and video clerks that most young people these days -- even many movie-crazy young people -- won't look at black and white movies. Bizarre, no? Back when you and I were learning our way around the film-history world, we took it for granted that much of what we'd encounter would be in black and white, and that it was up to us to develop a taste for it. But these kids these days seem so overwhelmed by the contempo cornucopia of pushy, shiney, whirling electronic-media thingees that they can't see the point of extending their interests or their tastes. Yet what to make of the fact that, at the same time, black and white photography isn't in short supply? It's in ads, it's in rock videos ... What I come up with is that it's being used as a signifier (used like flashcards to indicate "old," "classy," "subdued," "gritty," "nostalgic") , or simply as rhythmic punctuation. Like so much these days, it's about impact and nothing but impact. You might choose b&w from your Mac's (and your brain's) Menu of Infinite Effects, or you might not. I suppose that you and I, having grown up with b&w TV -- and at a time when the general media problem was Too Little rather than Too Much -- had an easier time of learning to enjoy b&w than today's kids do. For us, b&w movies were a new world -- a wonderland called Film History -- and we were delighted to discover it. Much of today's energy seems to go into filtering or dodging what's unrelentingly comin-at-ya. And I suppose it's also possible that these kids these days, being in the habit of having their nervous systems crammed, find that black and white movies simply leave them feeling starved for stimulation. A brief, and just-between-you-and-me aside: does it seem to you, as it does to me, that the media diet most Americans feed themselves on is the equivalent of a food diet of Big Gulps and bags of crunchiness, trans-fats, salts, and chemicals? It's a punch-pow, knock-yourself-out, whack-yourself-around, pig-out-now, whee-burp experience, or it's nothing at all. A fair number of people seem to have awakened to the fact that eating that kind of food isn't a great idea; I wonder why more don't wake up to the fact that feeding a brain on an equivalent media diet isn't a good idea either. Anyway, in the hopes that a few people might appreciate a few tips, here's Michael Blowhard's Quick Introduction to Enjoying Black and White Movies. And done with... posted by Michael at February 24, 2004 | perma-link | (33) comments

Sunday, February 22, 2004


Rewind -- The Economics of Mozart
Note -- FvBlowhard and I are pleased with some of our very earliest blogwriting, and we're pained that nearly all of it went unread. It takes a serious while to find a reader or two in the blogosphere. So we've decided to unearth some of that early writing and give it a fresh chance; now and then we're going to indulge ourselves and re-run some of our earliest postings. Here's hoping a few readers get a kick out of them. Given that I'm simply copying and pasting into a new posting, comments will be left behind. Apologies for that -- I don't know how to work around the problem. But don't let that keep anyone from commenting this time around. We're as eager as ever to yak about this stuff. In this episode of Rewind, FvB takes a look at The Economics of Mozart. Michael -- Everyone knows the story of Mozart, the composer who was so childishly self-indulgent and self-destructive that, despite his immense gifts, he descended into poverty, illness and an early grave. After all, how could such a talent have failed to make a brilliant career in Vienna, the "Holy City" of music, except by self-sabotage? Actually, Mozart’s fate seems to have been more the result of the failings of late 18th century Viennese economy than any flaws of his personality. Vienna’s economy was quite simply based on being the capital of the Hapsburg Empire. Cash to sustain its opulence migrated to Vienna via imperial taxes and feudal rents from productive centers as far apart as Belgium, Italy, Poland and the Balkans. As Peter Hall puts it in “Cities in Civilization”: …Vienna thus remained essentially a capital of conspicuous consumption, not a center of production…The aristocracy enjoyed fabulous wealth…The professions and the services—medicine, law, education, entertainment and information—ministered to them, at adequate if not lavish terms. …Industry was small-scale, inefficient and badly paid…This was an extraordinarily backward city technologically and organizationally… Overall, in Vienna few lived well and the poor, who were the great majority, lived miserably. In the early 18th Century, Hapsburg Emperor Charles VI recognized the Austrian empire’s economic backwardness as a strategic liability. When his daughter Maria Theresa came to the throne, she began administrative and economic reforms. These “reforms” did not entail any liberalization of the economy; rather, quite the contrary, they focused on creating a centralized bureaucracy directly responsible to the monarch. Maria Theresa’s political and economic model, in short, was not England but the France of Louis XIV. Maria Theresa’s reforms were continued after her death by her son Joseph during the 1780s—the decade of Mozart’s career in Vienna. While not very interested in private enterprise, the Hapsburgs were very supportive of music and had been for over a century. The houses of the great nobles imitated them in this. As a result, music throve in Vienna, and musicians could too--but only if they attracted patronage. Gluck, Haydn and Salieri spent most of their lives on either imperial or aristocratic salaries.... posted by Michael at February 22, 2004 | perma-link | (24) comments

Rewind -- Journalism and Fantasy
Note -- FvBlowhard and I are pleased with some of our very earliest blogwriting, and we're pained that nearly all of it went unread. It takes a serious while to find a reader or two in the blogosphere. So we've decided to unearth some of that early writing and give it a fresh chance; now and then we're going to indulge ourselves and re-run some of our earliest postings. Here's hoping a few readers get a kick out of them. Given that I'm simply copying and pasting into a new posting, comments will be left behind. Apologies for that -- I don't know how to work around the problem. But don't let that stop anyone from commenting this time around. We're as eager as ever to yak about this stuff. Today -- MBlowhard responds to a question FvB asked about the role of fantasy and journalism in art and lit. Friedrich -- Journalism vs. fantasy? I suppose that I view "the journalistic" as one element a given work of art or entertainment might be selling, nothing more or less. I don't live for it, per se, but I'm sometimes glad when it's present. I thought the fiction (is that what you mean by "fantasy"?) side of "Bonfire of the Vanities," for instance, was weak, though I enjoyed the book's journalistic side. I recently watched a movie on DVD called "Perfume," and one of the things it too was selling was "journalism" -- in this case, the look and feel of the fashion-and-media industry. The movie (worth seeing for a variety of reasons) was dead-on, and very enjoyable, in that department. Starved as this spectator usually is for something, anything, I'm not about to turn down some decent journalism if and when it comes along. The "Yeah! That's what it's like!" response is perfectly enjoyable for me. But that's just a mature and impersonal response. Yawnsville. Personally, the fulcrum I'm more drawn to contemplating is realism vs. symbolism. (The strictly fantastic -- sci-fi, fantasy, etc -- doesn't attract me as much as it does you. I tend to be happiest when I can feel the imagination stirring beneath a cloak of something recognizable.) I seem to have a bigger-than-usual appetite for the symbolic -- Colette, for instance, or turn- of-the-century erotic painting. People can talk all they want about Klimt's superficiality, about how he's more a poster designer than a real artist, but they'll never persuade me to stop enjoying his paintings. I suspect that my taste for the symbolic helps explain my attraction to crime fiction, too. Its basic structure (a crime is committed, an investigation follows) resonates for me. I walk around thinking thoughts about how wrong literature goes when it tries to model the (supposed) quantum uncertainty and existential formlessness of existence. What's the point of doing that, or even attempting to do it? (People can do as they please, especially in the arts. I'm just chugging along my own tracks right now...) People are storytelling creatures. We... posted by Michael at February 22, 2004 | perma-link | (2) comments