First Weblog

Link-o-rama

Friedrich --

I just finished Roger Scruton's new book The West and the Rest (here). I enjoyed it, and got a lot out of it. Scruton does an amazingly clear and vivid job of spelling out how different the West has made itself from the rest of the world, and reminds us that not only do the Islamic countries have no experience with democracy, they have no experience with any separation at all between church and state. In a startling article here (click on "Continue to message"), Steve Sailer points out one more challenge, which is the frequency of "consanguineous" marriages in the mideast -- marriages, that is, between first and second cousins. Remember "Deliverance"? Well, an Iraqi is twice as likely to marry his cousin as an American hillbilly is. "In Iraq, as in much of the region," Sailer writes, "nearly half of all married couples are first or second cousins to each other." No wonder tribal loyalties are so ferocious in that part of the world. Why hasn't the mainstream press made more of this?

Polly Frost writes about the influential (and underknown) stage monologuist Ruth Draper here. Polly has also kicked off a "let's discuss art, books, theater and food" forum, which is off to a lively start. You can join the party here.

Lynn Sislo takes note of and wrestles with the way she's an elitist so far as the arts that she knows well go, and a populist so far as arts that she knows less well go, here. A posting that'll ring bells with many arts fans.

Aaron Haspel works up a good God of the Machine head of steam over the question of whether hetero marriage should receive any governmental privileges at all, here.

The assaultively sexual play XXX (which does not star Vin Diesel) by the experimental Spanish theater troupe La Fura dels Baus has opened in London for a four-week run. Based on the Marquis de Sade's "Philosophy in the Bedroom," it's said to be the most sexually explict show ever to be produced in England. Quel surprise that there has been no shortage of coverage: you might start here and here. Here's a Guardian account of the play's original Spanish production. Sodomy, incest, rape and genital mutilation figure among the play's attractions. Did audience members really have sex in the aisles during one performance (here)? Via Daze Reader, here.

Alice Bachini has developed an amusing and persuasive something that she calls the Common Person's Theory of Work (here -- you'll have to do some scrolling, but be sure to let yourself be tickled by Alice's prose and thoughts on the way down too).

How many films has your opinion done a U-turn on? One of the films I came around on was Dziga Vertov's legendary Man With a Movie Camera, which I saw back in film class at our Lousy Ivy University and wasn't much struck by. Years later, when I saw a version of the film set to a score by the Alloy Orchestra (buyable here), I did succumb. What a whirlwind of invention and energy it is. Tim Hulsey celebrates the film here.

Sasha and Andrew (here), Peter Briffa (here), Alexandra Ceely (here), Scott Chaffin (here), and Chris Bertram (here) have all been showing off 'way too much in the way of fizz, mischief and writing chops not to get linked to.

Note to self: Read. Study. Develop some personality before it's too late.

Best,

Michael

Web Surfing

Friedrich --

William Shawcross is best known for his book "Sideshow," in which he made the case that Nixon and Kissinger were responsible for the destruction of Cambodia. So it's fascinating to read this recent speech of his here, which is full of admiration for America and even recognition that, like him or not,  GW Bush is some kind of effective leader.

I guess the French still do wine, cheese and fashion pretty well, though a friend living in Paris tells me that French cooking has gone to hell. But do they matter on any other subject? Yet the French seem to be having an even harder time than the English getting used to the fact that they aren't playing in the majors any more. Jackie Wullschlager in the Financial Times makes some sense about the decline of France here. (Both of these links via the ever-resourceful John Ray, here.)

Are there surfers who aren't aware that TownHall.com, "the conservative news service," provides and updates links to the work of a couple of dozen right-ish columnists here? Too much! But isn't that always the way on the Web?

Denis Dutton (editor of Arts and Letters Daily, here) thinks that Theodore Dalrymple is one of the best essayists since Orwell. And, hey, I'm on board with that. It's a good week for Dalyrmple fans. In the Telegraph, he reviews a new Peter Hitchens book that attempts to explain why the crime rate in Britain has been on the upswing, here. For City Journal, he writes about Rhodesia and Zimbabwe here, and about Cairo here.

An interesting old-media/new-media moment occurred a few days ago when I received an email from the editor of City Journal letting me know that the new issue of the magazine was available online. I was flattered that City Journal knew of the existence of 2Blowhards. But once I was done puffing myself up, I of course realized that he'd no doubt alerted dozens and dozens of other blogs too. What I wound up feeling was intense admiration for his marketing resourcefulness. City Journal (here) is an excellent magazine, by the way. Its ideas were behind the Giuliani approach to crime, it features some rowdy and brainy, fresh voices on politics and the arts, and it's one of the few places in America that publishes such first-rate righties as Dalrymple, Roger Scruton, and David Watkin. Tell a leftie friend about a great article you've read in City Journal and have fun watching her get really, really furious.

The Stumbling Tongue has some provocative musings about computer games as art here.

Movie buffs Ian Hamet (here) and Tim Hulsey (here) are both fans of Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese animator known for "Princess Mononoke" and the current "Spirited Away."

Colby Cosh has been thinking about fast food and the decline of McDonald's, here, here, and here.

April is Poetry Month, and Mike Snider has noticed (here) a few telling things about the poems that are being highlighted by Poetry Daily.

Kevin Michael Grace (here) and Kelly Jane Torrance (back posting again here) are having an interblog discussion about Evelyn Waugh's "Sword of Honor." Oops, make that "Sword of Honour."

Back blogging again too is Polly Frost, here, who took a break to produce a play she's written. She's already posted on "Ghost Ship" and camp movie classics -- but her blog address has changed, so update those links. I notice that she's also been doing some extensive redecorating of her Web home. This here will give access to Polly's many offerings -- which include a gorgeous author shot, erotic horror fiction (hot stuff!), humor, and a tempting-looking forum (here) where she's inviting visitors to gab about movies, books, music and food.

I confess that I  get a naughty thrill out of  reading Ann Coulter, here. She's certainly aggressive, over-the-top and a loose cannon. But does she lower the tone of the general discussion? I'm not so sure, given what a pro-wrestling spectacle it is already. In any case, I take Coulter as a go-for-the-throat political comedian and frequently find her hilarious. Plus, some of her points are genuinely good, and her descriptions of the media-elite world jibe pretty well with what I, from my worm's-eye perspective, experience of it.

Writing has traditionally been about the writer telling the reader something. Blogging seems to change that equation. As much as I enjoy putting on the occasional show, I find that blogging encourages interaction more than monologuing; it tends to be more like a conversation than a lecture. Linking is one of the big reasons for this. When you link to someone, you're providing a service. And yet ... and yet ... (dirty blogging secret), it's possible and fun to make your own points while directing traffic to another posting or article or site. (I could be kidding myself, but I sometimes suspect I get more of my own stuff across in these blizzards of linking than I do in my more complete-unto-themselves postings. All that invisible HTML changes the nature of the writing. ) In any case, you're shaping content in a more interactive and responsive way than in traditional writing. (At least I am.) I don't know of anyone who does creative linking better than the edu-blogger Joanne Jacobs. A complete vision comes across, yet you'll almost never catch her doing any showboating; she seldom writes anything that seems like a self-contained mini-essay, and she almost never goes into lecture mode. Reflective and superficial aesthete that I am, I find this an innovative and exciting development in writing. Luckily, Jacobs is also brilliant, fresh and free in her thinking, so I get to enjoy real meat and substance too. A minor disadvantage for anyone who wants to link to Jacobs is that she's so non-egocentric and helpful that it's hard to pick out individual postings to highlight. So I'm stuck lamely (but admiringly) recommending her entire site, here.

Best,

Michael

Web Surfing

Friedrich --

I remember liking the hotwired early books of Richard Price -- "The Wanderers," "Ladies' Man," etc. But, though I've enjoyed some of the movies based on Price's screenplays, I've lost track of his work as a novelist. Aaron Haspel writes a convincing appreciation of Price's recent books here.

Steve Sailer has written a couple of articles about golf and race that are as satisfying and substantial as one of those New Yorker magazine reporting epics of yore -- but without the excess length and all the fussy writin'. Part one is here. Part two is here.

A lot of wonderfully strange music and bizarre instruments can be listened to here.

Nat Henthoff wrestles with some of the more bizarre consequences of affirmative-action law here.

You'll probably enjoy exploring these two sites devoted to your namesake Friedrich Hayek, here and here. I don't think you've ever told me, by the way, when you first ran across Hayek's work. How did it strike you? And how did you discover it? It wasn't as though the profs back at our Lousy Ivy College were eager to tell us about Hayek.

The good mystery novelist and screenwriter Roger Simon recently started a blog here, and he's a looser and more engaging blogger than most professional writers are. (Most of them can't seem to understand that blogging is as much about holding a conversation and being a party host as it is about traditional writing.) Here's a good short posting on why movie stars tend to be so antiwar.

A study at the University of Rochester (here) has found that meditation seems to make people happier.

John Ray (here) points out that while the world's been fixated on the war in Iraq, millions of Africans have been dying in a war in the Congo. Millions! And he asks, Why aren't the do-gooders carrying on at least as much about this as they have been about the Iraq war? He points to this article about the mess, here.

I enjoyed many of the games at this site here.

Best,

Michael

Tax Time

2Blowhards regrets to announce that tax season has proved so traumatic this year that we have been temporarily unable to blog.

We hope to sober up, er, resume our regularly scheduled blogging shortly.

Best regards,

Michael and Friedrich

Web Surfing

Friedrich --

A quick tribute to the courageous and entertaining Steve Sailer (here), who I don't link to often enough simply because, well ... how to pick out just one good piece from among the riches? Sad to say, but there are days when I take his work -- completely but unfairly -- for granted. Luckily his website is well-organized and easy to browse. Recently Sailer has written about the IQs of Jews, on the murder of Pim Fortuyn, and on why high immigration rates can actually promote, not reduce, anti-Americanism. What's not to be fascinated by? Agree or disagree with him, Sailer's always provocative, smart, and humane.

Tim Hulsey at My Stupid Dog (here) has put up a blizzard of postings in the last few days, all of them well worth lingering over. Be sure not to miss the one about the comic Southern writer Charles Portis (scroll down a bit), or the one about Murnau's "Sunrise."

Girls are frighteningly competent, poised, assertive and achievement-oriented these days, don't you find? Maybe they really are superior beings, as I usually suspect; or maybe (as I confess I do occasionally wonder), a couple of decades of having vast amounts of resources and "self-esteem" pumped into them has been a help too. These days, attention seems to be turning to boys, who are routinely outperformed in high school, and who are now outnumbered by girls in colleges. Julie Henry writes in the Telegraph that studies have shown that boys can benefit from single-sex schooling as much as girls can, here. (Link thanks to View From the Right, here.) You go, boys. On the other hand, I spent a couple of years at an all-male school, and I wouldn't wish that fate on anyone.

Legendary exploitation filmmaker -- OK, in the exploitation world "legendary" doesn't really mean much, but still -- Larry Cohen writes for the LA Times about what a strange adventure it was getting his screenplay for "Phone Booth" made, here. A good snapshot of how the Hollywood process can drive you insane.

Yahmdallah (here) tries to figure out the best way to let the evangelist who has knocked on your front door know that you're already a Christian.

Git funky! On April 29th, the doors of Memphis' new Stax Soul Music Museum will swing open. (You can read about the Museum here.) Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave, The Staples Singers -- the list of Stax artists brings tears to my eyes, makes me feel lucky to share a country with such talented people, and -- best of all -- makes me want to get out on the dance floor and do some spastic white-boy flailing. Which may be a treat to absolutely no one else on the face of the planet, but it makes me feel good. And isn't feeling good -- in a deep, denying-none-of-the-pain kind of way -- what soul music is all about?

I love this 3D reinvention of Pong, here, even though I can't seem to win more than a point or two per game.

I confess that there are times -- such as when I run across a web page like this one here -- when I wish I were Brazilian.

Best,

Michael

Lynn Sislo, blogging again

Friedrich --

After too long a wrestle with Movable Type -- blogging's easy? hah! -- Lynn Sislo finally has Reflections in D Minor (here) behaving again. Lynn has always been one of the most stimulating and one of the freest-thinking of bloggers. I missed her, and it's good to have her back.

Best,

Michael

Philosoblog, R.I.P.

Friedrich --

I hadn't surfed by Jim Ryan's Philosoblog (here)in a couple of days. When I did stop by this morning I was sorry to read that Jim's calling it quits -- something about life getting in the way and demanding a little attention. (These indignities we have to live with! I mean, shouldn't life be a subset of blogging rather than vice-versa?)

Blog-reading and blog-writing have given me a lot of pleasure over the last year, and Jim's was one of the blogs I've enjoyed most. Full of ideas and information, as well as good writing and thinking. And a model in many ways for how to run a blog. Jim always advanced his observations and ideas in an accessible yet never dumbed-down fashion; he conducted the ensuing conversations in a friendly, helpful, and civil way; and he never shrank from (however reluctantly) dropping a bomb when a bomb needed dropping. The blogosphere would be an even better place if we could all do half so well.

So: a toast to Jim for delivering so much in the way of learning and pleasure, and best wishes to him in his new projects. And here's -- greedily and unphilosophically -- hoping he'll find the occasional spare minute to stop by, say hi, and let us know what he's been thinking about.

Best,

Michael

Web Surfing

Friedrich --

2Blowhards visitors will want to check out  Tim Hulsey's new blog, My Stupid Dog, here. Tim (self-described as gay and conservative -- deal with it, world!) is brilliant, can write rueful and precise circles around most of us, and lugs around enough movie and books knowledge for a half a dozen normal buffs. Tim only began taking his thoughts public about a week ago, but he's already one of the brainiest culturebloggers around.

Will and Jane Duquette are a California couple who run a wide-ranging and meaty website, here. The blog is only part of it; there's also Ex Libris, their own book-reviewing publication, as well as much else. Marvel at how much reading the two of them do, and how freely and intelligently they discuss it. A special treat: Felicity McCarthy (usually of Goliard Dream, here) has begun reviewing books for Ex Libris.

Do you have much interest in Dave "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" Eggers? I don't. All that narcissism, the whimsicality and arbitrariness, the fatigue-crossed-with-a-caffeine-high, the self-regard masking as modesty, the supposedly winning frank bragadoccio, the bullying, and the ever-lurking threat of a temper tantrum ... Lordy, I've only got one life to live. I do admire his industry and entrepreneurship, though. These days, Eggers is semi-sponsoring a new lit mag, The Believer. Felix Salmon (here) gives the magazine a good going-through.

Have you run across soundboard sites? They're web sites where sampled sounds from movies and TV are available. Click and hear Arnold say "Hasta la vista, baby" -- that kind of thing. I can't explain why, but these sites make me crack up. Here's one. Experience Eminem's immortal "Fuck you, go home," then marvel at Sarah Michelle Gellar's classic rendition of "duh."

Setting the World to Rights (here) is fresh out of the oven and very promising: British free-thinkers who claim to be real-world libertarians. So far, that seems to be exactly what they are; they genuinely seem not to have that nutty utopian gleam in their eyes that the dogmatic libertarians so often get. Will it last?

H.D. Miller, a Yalie and a military man, thinks it's too bad that more elite college types don't have some experience of the military, here and here. "The social and intellectual elites form their opinions about military personnel in the absence of first-hand experience; form their opinions based upon prejudice and hearsay," he writes.

The BBC reports here on a study that has shown that the oldest known DNA lineages are from East Africa -- "The most ancient populations include the Sandawe, Burunge, Gorowaa and Datog people who live in Tanzania." Mucho genetic diversity in that part of the world, apparently.

Thomas Sowell has a go at the ideas underlying affirmative action here. (A good long interview with Sowell can be read here.) Sample column passage:

Being admitted to a selective college does not make anyone become a better student, any more than joining a basketball team makes anyone taller. In reality, affirmative action increases the chance that a minority student will fail where the standards are higher, instead of succeeding where the standards are at a level that matches the student's academic capabilities.

Bernard Lewis in the Natioinal Post (here) writes about the mistaken assumptions we tend to make about Arabs and their forms of government. Sample passage:

People write today as if the kind of political order that prevails in Iraq is part of the immemorial Arab and Islamic tradition. This is totally untrue. The kind of regime represented by Saddam Hussein has no roots in either the Arab or Islamic past. Rather, it is an ideological importation from Europe -- the only one that worked and succeeded (at least in the sense of being able to survive).

No matter what you think of David Hockney's art (I often like it), he's one of the most thoughtful and articulate of contempo artists. Here's an absorbing recent piece about Hockney by Andrew Marr in the Guardian. Sample passage:

"It's too boring, that's the point. It's not real enough... No wonder people are bored -- they can't see how rich [the world] is, how beautiful it is." He has concluded after many trials that computers, faxes and all the glossy gear of the digital age are simply not sophisticated enough. Printing ink is not paint, and lacks its subtle gradations. Nor can any machine reproduce the complex and delicate movements of "elbow, wrist, body-weight and those pressures" produced by freehand drawing. As for photographs, they have lost trust, now we all know they can be so easily digitally altered; and they are a less-good picture of reality anyway.

Best,

Michael

Web Surfing

Friedrich --

Chris Bertram (here) recommends some books on political philosophy.

Eddie Thomas (here) and Aaron Haspel (here) analyze the lyrics of a song by the Derailers, a honky-tonk band.

Jim Miller (here) argues that a big majority of Iraqis want Saddam gone.

Polly Frost (here) writes about the upside and the downside of  William Gibson's new novel "Pattern Recognition."

Christopher Caldwell claims here that the only way to explain Jacques Chirac's refusal to join the anti-Saddam coalition  is that he's pandering to, er, catering to his own country's poor and disaffected Muslims.

Alexandra Ceely (here, though you have to scroll down about six postings) has an art-history lesson about Caravaggio's Judith and Holofernes.

Jim Ryan (here)  wonders whether to reduce his blogging schedule or to quit blogging completely, while Andrea Harris (here) spells out, in no uncertain terms, what the rules for taking part in the "comments" section of her blog now are.

A few years back, I stumbled across Timothy Taylor's audiotaped lecture series "Legacies of Great Economists" and found it a great help. It's beginning econ for those who fall asleep at the sight of an equation or a graph -- economics as seen through the lives and works of Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Schumpeter, etc. Taylor explains it all in straightforward English and his enthusiasm never flags. I notice that the Teaching Company is currently offering the package for sale here at the really amazing price of $15.95.

A new find: I stumbled across Charlie B's blog Here Inside (here) about a week ago and took to it instantly. It's everything a gayblog should be and more -- witty, cheerfully perverse, moving. Charlie rhapsodizes about classical music, gardening, and cute soccer players; reviews movies and books; makes observations about this and that; relishes what turns him on; and doesn't shy from the earnest and sincere when the moment calls for it. He also turns a heckuva blog posting -- he's one of the slyest and most stylish writers in the blogoverse.

And here's another interactive drawing/animation thingee. Impossible to describe, a lot of fun to play with, completely disruptive of all previous concepts of "drawing."

Best,

Michael

Guest Posting -- Yahmdallah

Friedrich --

I recently swapped some emails with our favorite commenter, the guy who goes by the online handle Yahmdallah, and wound up asking if I could use a few passages from his notes in a posting here on the blog. They were memories of life in the Minneapolis art scene and reflections about staying involved in the arts once equipped with job and family -- too interesting not to pass along to the rest of our readers. After an "aw shucks" or two, he agreed, so I'm pleased to pass these Yahmdallah observations along:

After a romance squashed my heart flat, a buddy in Minneapolis told me to come crash with him till I picked myself up. He was an artist deeply enmeshed in the art and music scene of the "Miniapple" (their cute little moniker for themselves). So, by default, I ended up in the scene, too. This is back when Husker Du, the Replacements, Soul Asylum, and Prince were all getting started or were firmly established.

Minneapolis was THE music scene in America a few years before it moved to Seattle. I mostly helped with a lot of gallery installations. Attended a lot of openings and house parties where some of the bands listed above played along with the ones who never made it. We also lived next door to a design genius who literally won every design contest he entered. So just by association to him we met some superstars.

The Minneapolis art scene was actually very un-P.C. and vibrant. Strand a bunch of Swedes, Norwegians, and Germans in the middle of a winter wasteland, close the liquor stores at 8 P.M. and Sundays, and you get some pretty interesting stuff. In my opinion, the only places in America where the galleries and the openings rival Minneapolis are New York/Boston and San Francisco.

The only odd-ball thing about the Miniapple art scene was a quirk that drove us to create a game we called "find the fish." Most of the artists who came down from the iron range and all the little Garrison Keillor ("Prairie Home Companion") towns around the 10,000 lakes had Christian, particularly Lutheran, backgrounds, so every show by a new artist would somehow have a fish in it somewhere. Sometimes it was in honor of the faith, but often it was, of course, for degradation and mocking. Still, it was something to do if the box wine was gone, and if you'd already completely checked out all the goths, punks, and weird art chicks' costumes. (Why do so many art chicks look exactly like what Picasso painted? -- that weird disjointed countenance and that face with those freaky eyes?)

My participation in the art scene these days is almost entirely via the web and the odd movie about an artist's life. The major city I live near now has an art scene that's truly abysmal. Many little towns in Michigan's wine country have better galleries and showings. I think James Lileks is correct when he says most REAL modern art is to be found in advertising, particularly those trade magazines they make for their internal audience. A local bookstore carries a rack of those big, glossy and expensive-as-hell yearly retrospectives and award displays. I take a ream of paper and copy down the URLs and surf for hours.The web is the best art gallery in the world.

As for how I make room for art these days, what with marriage, job and kid -- well, children take time, but they take time only in the way a family member does. It's a parallel process, so the time is not entire units of time, but shared units of time, if that makes sense. We look at a Miro painting together rather than me viewing it alone on my own time. "Daddy, he does squiggles just like me!" "Yes, dear, he does."

Some of my fellow avid reading buddies told me that once I had a child, my quality reading time would end. So, I pulled out the soapbox and made a speech to my pregnant wife -- on one of her "good" pregnant days, naturally. I said if I cannot continue to be an avid reader, the central passion of my triumvirate of joys -- books, movies, and music -- I would become a truly curmudgeonly person. As wives do during such speeches, she responded to me in a beleaguered but bemused tone: "Oooookaaaay." MPC (most precious child), when old enough, was told that daddy will read, mostly undisturbed, for a little while each day. So far, it's worked. It helps that my wife reads a lot, and now our daughter, who's six, sits and reads her own books while we grownups read. I'm lucky that way, I guess.

I’m also pleased to pass along the news that Yahmdallah has started his own blog, Third Level Digression, where he’s showing off chops even more enjoyable than the ones he shares with us here at 2Blowhards. Devout Christian, pop music aficionado, books-and-reading fiend, as well as avid discusser of matters erotic, he’s an original, and his blog is a joy. It can be read here. Though I'm hoping, probably against hope, that it won't slow down his commenting here at 2Blowhards...

Many thanks to Yahmdallah.

Best,

Michael

Web Surfing

Friedrich --

James Q. Wilson, reviewing David Frum's new book about George W. for Commentary, here, and Richard Brookhiser, in a q&a about George W. with the Atlantic Online here, both have sensible things to say about brains and leadership.

Has feminism destroyed a Frenchman's pleasure in being a Frenchman? Charles Bremner, writing for the London Times (here), suspects so. The Wife, looking disapprovingly over my shoulder, says that she for one is glad to hear that French male egos are being beaten down: "I wish I was a French feminist," she says. (Link thanks to View from the Right, here.)

I'm coming to this late due to a media-free vacation, but it was good to catch up with Blair Kamin's report (here) in the Chicago Tribune (registration required) that the great Leon Krier will be the first recipient of the new Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. This is, IMHO, part of what the strategy of traditionalists should be -- not just to gripe about the lefty/modernist stranglehold on discussion about the arts, but also to set up their own, more sensible and appealing, universe of publicity, awards, and journalism. Readers wanting to learn more about Krier, a brilliant thinker and writer as well as a witty and provocative designer, can start here and here.

The Teaching Company, whose ads you've probably semi-noticed in highbrow magazines, offers lecture series by mostly American profs on audio (tape or CD). Avid audiobook listener that I am, I've tried a number of their packages, and have hit about .250  -- not great, but a far better batting average than I managed at our Lousy Ivy College. Some of the Teaching Company profs I can recommend are Timothy Taylor on economics, Jeremy Shearmur on politics, Robert Greenberg on Western classical music, Robert Sapolsky on neurophysiology, and John Searle on the philosophy of mind. Hint: unless you have big bucks, never buy from the Teaching Company at list price -- they put all their courses on sale at least once or twice a year. Here's a page listing courses they currently offer on sale, and, at these prices, these courses are a steal. Er, deal.

Best,

Michael

Web Surfing

Friedrich --

John Zmirak, an inspired conservative/reactionary, has started a new blog here. He’s using it mainly as a portal to his professional writing, and it’s a good way to sample a very interesting mind. (Link thanks to Steve Sailer, here.)

Robert Birnbaum interviews the novelist and screenwriter (and very amusing interviewee) Richard Price here.

I’ve just discovered that Tim Hulsey -- a topflight arts buff and occasional visitor to 2Blowhards -- is an avid consumer-reviewer of books, CDs and DVDs at Amazon. (Beware the reach of the Blowhards.) Find out whether that new DVD of “Metropolis” is really worth owning. Tim has a couple of hundred reviews to explore here.

In his new book “Diversity: The Invention of a Concept,” Peter Wood argues that -- almost without anyone looking -- “diversity” has become a fullblown ideology, although one with little actual meaning. I haven’t read the book, but Stanley Kurtz’s review at National Review Online (here) and John Derbyshire’s at the New Criterion (here) make it sound like a gem.

Felicity McCarthy, the hostess of the wonderfully freewheeling blog Goliard Dream (here), has put up a couple of short postings about how working as a professional musician affected her pleasure in attending concerts. (Hint: not for the better.) The postings are here and here. "The process of severe self-examination in the pursuit of one's art serves also to burn away one's innocent love -- probably the very same love that brought one to the field in the first place," Felicity writes, and has it ever been put better?

Best,

Michael

Another Web Crawl

Friedrich --

* If you didn't happen to catch the mention of this in the NYTimes (and, boy, don't I hate it when the Times gets wise to things before I do), here are the Photobloggies -- prizewinning (in the most friendly and low-budget way) photoblogs. The great thing about surfing photoblogs: lots of visual pleasure. The worst thing about surfing photoblogs: realizing that I'm not just a so-so photographer, I'm in fact a really bad photographer.

* An amusing review by an unnamed writer in the Economist (here) of Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni's new biography of the film producer Sam Spiegel. I often go on, no doubt tiresomely, about how very much filmbiz people differ from normal human beings. Here's pleasing confirmation: "Honesty came no more easily to Spiegel than financial regularity. To get his way, he would fake heart attacks. 'Telling the truth unnerved him,' according to an acquaintance."

* The Economist's obit of JFK advisor Walt Rostow (here) makes something clear I'd never quite understood before. I'd known that Rostow played a big role in getting the U.S. involved in the Vietnam War. What I hadn't realized was that the war was an extension of Rostow and JFK's altruistic foreign aid policy -- ambitious do-goodism gone mad, it seems. This deserves a long-ish excerpt:

Mr Rostow's ideas matched the mood of the Kennedy administration. It fitted with liberal notions of ending poverty at home and devising a welfareish state. Kennedy declared the 1960s the “decade of development”, and Mr Rostow was allowed to try out his ideas.

He became particularly concerned with South-East Asia. South Vietnam was getting American aid, and prospering. But it was being undermined by guerrillas infiltrating from communist North Vietnam. If the South fell, Mr Rostow feared that a series of countries would topple like dominoes into the communist grasp: Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. His remedy was that the United States should use force to rid South Vietnam of guerrillas to allow the country to continue to develop successfully. It was this policy, seemingly carefully thought-out, that dragged America deeper and deeper into what came to be called the Vietnam war.

* In the Financial Times, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (here) ask whether the joint-stock company has been a blessing or a curse. I can't tell whether this piece is an excerpt from a forthcoming book or an appetizer for it.

What is going on? Seen from a broad historical perspective, two things stand out. The first is that the current wave of anger against companies is completely normal – even a healthy thing. The second is that the company’s gainsayers – particularly the anti-global crew – are wrong: the company has been an institution that has changed the world enormously for the better. Indeed, it has been the secret of the west’s success.

* I missed this first time around, but NRO, bless them, has had the inspiration to run it again: Catesby Leigh's review of the WTC proposals, here. Have you read Leigh before? Stuffy and prissy, but also terrific: he makes the humanist/classicist case quite beautifully. Give the man a merit badge for being the anti-Herbert Muschamp.

Are you as amazed as I am by how much high-quality professional writing is available on the Web for free? There's a ton of classy, fresh-from-the-oven stuff out there -- from the Economist, from Newsweek, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Telegraph, and so many other outfits. Can this really make financial sense for these organizations? And can they really go on handing their goodies out for nothing?

Well, might as well enjoy the pickings while they're good and free.

Best,

Michael

Another Web Crawl

Friedrich --

*Aaron Haspel (here) threatens that his latest "How to Read a Poem" posting will be the last in the series. Email him and theaten grievous bodily harm unless he continues.

*Jim Ryan (here) continues his excellent series on the conservative philosopher John Kekes.

*Brian Micklethwait (here) argues that while Mies van der Rohe's influence on building was largely bad, his influence on interiors was for the better.

*Now that Daniel Libeskind's mausoleum/videogame design has won the competition for the reconstruction of the WTC site, it's all the more timely to give Brian Hanson and Nikos Salingaros' brilliant essay about it a read, here.

*James Howard Kunstler is the New Urbanist movement's attack dog, an entertaining (and brainy) combination of Dennis Miller and Anne Coulter who does his ranting and joking on the topic of suburbs and buildings. I've often wondered why people in towns and cities don't form protest groups and picket aesthetic atrocities. Kunstler shows the way. His own high-blood-pressure website is here (don't miss the q&a he did with the great Jane Jacobs); a decent short interview with him is here. You can buy his eye-poppingly good book The Geography of Nowhere here.

*And, did you know that making little Flash animations of stick figures engaging in fights, especially kung-fu fights, has become a standard Web folk-art thing to do? I didn't either, until I read about it in The Scotsman. (Damn, can't find the link to the exact story anymore.) Anyway, this one guy who goes by the handle Xiao Xiao (here) is considered to be the true auteur of the school. Fun and impressive: plot lines, humor, Bruce Lee-style sound effects -- and watch for the slow-mo/3D "Matrix" passages.

Thwack, thwack,

Michael

Another Web Crawl

Friedrich --

I don't know if you kill quite as much time in front of the computer as I do. But I'm stunned these days by how many good sites and blogs there are. Even given my own relatively-limited set of interests, there's 'way too much to keep up with. Which leaves me feeling like a bad friend, breathless and apologetic. (I  wonder whether young people will have such qualms. They're growing up in a time of media and information excess; it's now just a matter of simple fact that there's never enough time or energy for what's available and desirable. Will they ever be able to imagine what it was like when there were only three TV networks, a finite number of books and magazines, and no internet, no local Borders and no nearby videotape-rental store?) Old fart that I am, it bugs me that I can't manage to make more mention of, just for a very few examples, Cinderella Bloggerfella, PublicInterest, Colby Cosh, Glenn Frazier or Steve Sailer. First-rate and provocative stuff keeps coming from all of them, and at a dazzling rate. In any case, apologies (and gratitude) to many, many sites and people.

That said, today I'm singling out a few (which doesn't mean I wouldn't like to single out a whole bunch of others too).

*Plep and Cronaca are both pig  heaven for arty websurfers. Postings feature lots of links of interest to culture buffs, often wittily chosen and described.  Cronaca (here) has more interest in the art market, in archaelogy, and in art-news headlines, while Plep (here) is more meadering and whimsical, its entries often arranged by theme (lately: tea, and architecture). They're both witty and idiosyncratic resources.  I don't know how the brainiacs behind them get the time or energy to do the sheer amount of good, entertaining and helpful work they do.

*Alaina Alexander is an interesting and thoughtful person who has led a challenging life, and who gives her good times and bad times some moving thought on a small network of sites. She's a young black woman who has studied opera and law, and who has faced family and academic ups and downs, and she's direct and down-to-earth about her experiences in ways I find sweet and engrossing; I'm even touched by the way she uses the web to explore and express different sides of herself.  Here she and some friends discuss one of my favorite themes: the challenges of making a living as an arty person. Here she talks about what it was like for her to bail out of law school. And here she gives her personality-kid/diva side a chance to frisk. I'm not a fan of me-blogs generally, but Alaina's sites -- which, taken together, are like a still-in-process memoir -- I've come to respect, and to enjoy a lot.

*Here's a bizarro web-art treat. Eyeball this here.  Web projects like this one makes me muse all kinds of things about the digital universe and what's maybe becoming of art. (For example: the world's becoming more interactive. Maybe one thing artists will be doing with digital tools and the web is creating oddball web experiences like this -- creations that are both art-things and that are meant for us to play with. Maybe the contemplation of all three things -- the execution, the idea, and the playing-with-it -- will become the art experience, or at least one kind of art experience. And how will the playing-with-it overlap with the contemplating-of-it? ) All of these musings, obviously, not-even half-baked. At the moment, my only semi-coherent thought is: Cool!

*The radio! What a great medium! Yet what a wasteland: I can barely stand to have the local radio on, relatively rich though the pickings are in NYC. Web radio, though a solution, can be more than a little overwhelming. What to do, what to do. The best answer I've found is to click here for Stafanki. John-Paul Gouett has had the inspiration (and skill and time and devotion and energy, etc etc) to develop a site that's rather like Arts and Letters Daily, only for web-radio. Interviews, humor, news, features, all of it selected, presented, and linked-to for your ease. John-Paul must be knocking himself out maintaining the site, all so we can enjoy better-quality radio than has ever been known. The web, and the people who populate it, can be amazing.

*And have you run across Fred Reed's writing? It's apparently plenty popular, but even so I'm amazed it isn't far better known than it is. Op-ed stuff about this and that -- cops, education ... What a writer! Juicy, scurrilous, often hilarious, and evocative in some post-gonzo way that doesn't interfere (oddly enough) with clear thinking. Try this recent one here, about the attractiveness yet also the awfulness of war. Fred was once in the Marines and later covered war as a reporter, so his evocations have punch and weight; even those in favor of going after Saddam should pause to take note. His political persuasion? Hard to put a simple label on it, and I suspect that's how Fred likes it.

Too much, as I've said before. But far better the problem of too much than of too little.

Best,

Michael

Web Crawl

Friedrich --

A few of the goodies I've stumbled across in recent days...

Daniel Libeskind's proposal for the WTC site has been widely praised. Brian Hanson and Nikos Salingaros take a different view. This is the complete version of an essay that 2Blowhards was proud to run an excerpt from a couple of weeks ago.

Brian Micklethwait likes reading Nick Hornby, Susan Isaacs, and a few of his own short stories.

Eddie Thomas and Aaron Haspel are kicking up a lot of entertaining dust on the question of Hegel: Classical Liberal or Writer of Gibberish?

Jim Ryan is up to installment eight in his not-to-be-missed introduction to the conservative philosophy of John Kekes.

Paul Mansour has turned up an excellent City Journal essay by the British new-Classicist architect Robert Adam about skyscrapers.

Sasha Castel recommends the tenors Ramon Vargas and Frank Lopardo.

Andy at Blog Lodge is enthusiastic about "All the Real Girls," David Gordon Green's first movie since "George Washington."

Alexandra Ceely has some reflections about Buddhism and art.

I dimly recall from the days when I was interested in anarchist social criticism that Paul Goodman was a poet as well as much else. (And, hey, "Communitas," a book about city planning he wrote with his architect brother Percy, was pretty good.) Mike Snider recommends some of Goodman's sonnets.

What is it with women and comic books? Let alone graphic novels? Polly Frost has set off an interesting conversation by asking these questions.

Best,

Michael

Free Reads -- Lynn Sislo and more

Friedrich --

Good stuff from all over. Too much! But in the most wonderful kind of way.

Lynn Sislo has written a lovely -- touching and open-minded -- short memoir (here; be sure to read both parts) of what it was like when her Texas junior high school was desegregated. (Note to self: write posting someday on how great it is to be witnessing the birth of new art and literary forms -- the photoblog, the mini-essay, the mini-memoir, etc.)

Although blogosphere sweethearts Sasha Castel and Andrew Ian Dodge remain stuck in a gulag somewhere in deepest Maine, their blogging continues unabated, here.  Well, "unabated" is far too weak a word. The two of them manage to make all other bloggers look like bleary-eyed laggards. Recent postings have touched on opera (of course), the anti-war movement in Portland, and genetically modified food. They're using more images these days too. Sasha links to a special treat: an interview (here) by John Hawkins with columnist Mark Steyn. (Note to self: reserve opera tickets, brush up on political philosophy, then write posting about art and politics as separate "modes," to use an Oakeshottian term. Expect fierce rebuttal from Felix Salmon and, possibly, Robert Birnbaum.)

Aaron Haspel (here) kicks off what he's promised is a series on Bogus American Sages by letting the reputation of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. have it with both barrels; little is left of OWH Jr. when the dust settles. Mere postings later, Aaron returns to a discussion of rule-based reasoning that he's been carrying on with Jim Ryan of Philosoblog (here) fame. Jim responds to Aaron, then puts up a wonderful short paragraph that includes all you need to know about Karl Marx, meanwhile crediting Cinderella Bloggerfella (here) for setting him off. CB's gem of a posting turns out to be a response to Aaron, who in turn had written about a Mark Goldblatt piece about the MLA's annual meeting, which 2Blowhards had linked to maybe six or seven postings ago. Which pleases me, but which seems to prove nothing, really, except that blogging is a Really Great Thing.

At Out of Lascaux, here, Alexandra has been classing up the blogosphere with posts about anime and Japanese scrolls, David Hockney's theories about artists using optical-device crutches, and how she herself was once the stepdaughter of comics legend Wally Wood.

Modernist architecture takes it (deservedly) on the chin once again, this time from Paul Mansour at The Scourge of Modernism, here. "If you cannot line a street with 5 or 10 buildings of a particular style and have the total effect be greater than the sum of the parts then you are not working with an architectural style. Maybe you are working with art or sculpture, but you are not working with architecture," he writes, and Tom Wolfe never put it better.

Kevin Drum's CalPundit (here) and Chris Bertram's Junius (here) are brainy and provocative, the two decent-leftyish blogs I enjoy checking in with regularly. Kevin's been having fun tweaking Bush's proposed budget, and has been doing some innovative blogging too, supplying actual q&a's with actual public figures. Big media, watch out. The latest is with Nation columnist Eric Alterman, who has written a book that asks the question "What Liberal Bias?" -- ie., in the news and media. The q&a is readable here, and it's well worth wrestling with, however demented. (Note to self: write posting blowing lid off topic of how thoroughly arts coverage is saturated with leftyish assumptions and convictions. Include long detour into how it is that lefties can't understand why others look at them and see bias.)

A couple of promising, newish young-whippersnapper arts blogs. In the tradition of the legendary screenwriting-dude frat house the Pad o' Guys, the newly-opened Blog Lodge (here) is a gangblog where conversations are already raging about Jackie Chan, graphic novels, and how the pacing of storytelling in current studio movies compares to how it once was. There's a long posting up about the Oscars, too. But, given how good the Blog Lodge's moviechat is otherwise, even that can be forgiven. Max Leibman's Leibman Theory (here) fearlessly announces itself as the blog of a "politically conservative art school student." Not only does the kid have balls, he's got things to say, too -- plus he seems to visit 2Blowhards from time to time. Thanks, Max!

Big Media, sort of

In the Grand Junction Sentinel, Chris Garcia (here) does an amusing job with a classic and worthy topic, namely, "How is it that the presence of beer, cheering dudes, and video cameras can get some young women to take their tops off?" Via Fark, here. (Note to self: time to start blogging about eroticism. No more -- well, I was about to say "beating around the bush," but perhaps I should come up with better way of admonishing myself.)

A soon-to-be-aired TV movie and a soon-to-open play have some British writers returning to the subject of the dourly amusing poet Philip Larkin, one of my faves. In the Telegraph, Tom Payne (here) wonders why, if Larkin really was that bad a person, so many people liked him; while in the Spectator Robert Gore-Langton (here) makes a case for Larkin as the Sinatra of English verse. (Note to self: rhapsodize in a posting someday about Larkin's book about jazz, one of the best of all crusty-reactionary discussions of an art form.)

Fascinating, isn't it, the way so many people who never collected VHS tapes have become collectors of DVDs? Is it partly because tapes seem flimsy where a DVD is forever? That, it turns out, might be a mistake. Sue Lowe (here) explains in the Sydney Morning Herald that something called DVD rot can make a right mess of a silver platter.

I've found learning a bit about the science and biology behind such topics as color and perception to be far more helpful than reading most aesthetic theory.  Here's a Reuters report on recent discoveries in how the brain perceives and makes sense of color information. (Note to self: rhapsodize in posting someday about the brilliant Richard Gregory and his essential book "Eye and Brain.")

Right Wing-ism 101: the Wall Street Journal's Susan Lee (here) provides a useful compare-and-contrast essay on the topic of conservatives and libertarians. (Note to self: in posting someday be sure to quote Michael Oakeshott saying, "I'm a conservative in politics because I'm a radical in everything else." Second note to self: be sure to doublecheck precise wording of quote.)

Giles Worsley, architecture critic for the Telegraph, puts into print what many have wondered, namely, What should we do with ugly buildings of the 1960s and 1970s? He concludes, here, that perhaps they shouldn't be knocked down and forgotten after all.

The Economist's Economics Focus column compares living standards in the U.S. and Europe, here. The short version: We've got more money; they've got more leisure time.

Perhaps you can guess why it is I haven't gotten through many books recently.

Best,

Michael

Blog Reading

Friedrich --

Has spending time in the blogosphere affected your reading habits? It has mine, even where something as basic as the news is concerned. These days, I find that I rely on the major media only for headlines and basic information. When I want commentary, brains, insight, debate and personality, I turn to blogs. It's a livelier, freer, more open universe than the traditional media one.

But I'm finding more and more that I turn to blog-reading to satisfy fancier appetites too -- appetites for entertainment, and even for pleasures literary. Seeing what's happening on my favorite blogs gives me some of the satisfaction of watching a good TV series. There are recurring characters, long story arcs, the fun of familiarity crossed with the fun of surprise. The bloggers themselves become characters in my brain much like fictional (or public) figures do.

As for literary pleasure ... Well, from a voice and personality point of view -- ie., for some of the things I've tended over the years to turn to fiction for -- there are bloggers who outdo most of what's done in the official literary world. They're as or more distinctive, plus they're looser and more informal. So, let's see: there's story, there's character, there's voice ... Hmm, I'd say literature may have some real competition on its hands.

Which is by way of providing a link to a terrific character I hadn't run across until last night: Rob somebody-or-other, who goes by the handle Acidman and runs the blog, Gut Rumbles, which is readable here. I can't do justice to his voice, though I can tell you that reading it reminds me of reading Barry Hannah, Charles Bukowski, Joe Lansdale, and Charles Willeford -- shitkicking and wild-ass, depressive and bitter, rowdy and absurd. But there I go, getting pretentious. (The curse of the arty.) Here's my reaction minus the pretentions: Smokin' stuff!

Gut Rumbles is instantly one of my favorite blogs, in any case, and not just for Acidman's voice. There's a super-lively set of regular comment-leavers, each one a full-fledged character, and a whole new set of links to explore, many to other southerners with original voices of their own. Lordy, doesn't it sometimes seem like it must be a lot of fun to be a Southerner?

Pulitzer Prizes? New York Review of Books? Your number may be up.

Best,

Michael

Blog Surfing

Friedrich --

Is there no end to the good blogs? It's amazing how many people are both sensible people and good writers -- who'd have thought such creatures existed in such numbers? And even if, who'd ever have known, prior to blogging?

Some of my latest finds:

• Jim Ryan at Philosoblog is finally getting around to his long-promised discussion of the work of John Kekes, and it's a multi-part corker, here.
  
• Paul Mansour runs The Scourge of Modernism, a blog devoted to giving modernist architecture a little what-for. Too bad he doesn't post more often, but when he does it's worth paying attention to, here.
  
• Alice Bachini, the Libertarian Parent herself, has kicked off another blog, Rational Parenting, here.
  
• At Cybrarian at Large, Liz L. does a little me-blogging, and writes about this and that. But she always seems to find her way back to cultural matters, especially what should be done with the WTC site, here.
  
• And a couple of amazing meta-blogs, sites that incorporate typical blogging material but much else as well -- total cranial environments, perhaps: Jeff Ward's brainily seedy and literary Visible Darkness (here), with a focus on writing itself, photography and (good for him) grotty bars; and Alan Sullivan's lyrical and contemplative Seablogger (here), all about Tolkien, the weather, sailing, life in the midwest, and more.

Humbling! But in a good way.

Best,

Michael

Free Reads -- Blogads?

Friedrich --

Is blogging ready for primetime? There are some dynamic, enterprising types who think so. Get ready for "blogads" (advertising aimed at bloggers) and "nanopublishing" (blogging itself). Jim McClellan's report in the Guardian is readable here. Sample passage:

Though, for the most part, he is operating at the other end of the scale to Denton, Jarvis is optimistic about his approach. "Nanopublishing will not replace magazine publishing or mass media. It is a new opportunity. It won't make money for political punditry or for the diaries of college students. But it will work for gadgets and sex and special interests such as disease - imagine a great weblog for diabetics - because it is so cheap to publish."

Time for 2Blowhards to start spinning off subsidiary rights?

Link thanks to The Global Citizen, here.

Best,

Michael

Blog Surfing

Friedrich --

* The scarily-smart Aaron Haspel (here) and the equally-scarily-smart Jim Ryan (here) are having an enlightening exchange about the proper use of slippery-slope-style arguments. Aaron, a poetry buff worth attending to, has also begun treating us to an occasional series of first-rate postings on "how to read a poem." Jim Ryan is still putting off his long-awaited posting on the political thinking of John Kekes. Email Jim and tell him to get his act together!

* The scarily-smart (and scarily-entertaining) Brian Micklethwait, of Samizdata fame, has finally, after much inexcusable foot-dragging, got Brian's Cultureblog up and running. It's already wonderful, and it's readable here.

* Polly Frost, of Notes from the Velvet Crypt (here), is back posting after a few weeks away, during which she produced a workshop of a comic play she wrote. Its subject: a young woman's love affair with her cell phone. Nifty!

* On Banana Oil, his new movieblog (here), Michael Hamet confesses that he has watched "Singin' in the Rain" oh, maybe about a hundred and seven times.

* Alice Bachini, the Libertarian Parent in the Countryside (here), continues to get my vote for the blogosphere's "most winning voice," an apparently inimitable combination of whimsy and acuteness.

* I've never properly pointed out Mike Snider on Poetry (here), so I'm doing so now. Mike's blog is the best, most down-to-earth way I know of to ease yourself into the contempo poetry scene. Some damn good poems, too, from Mike himself.

Best,

Michael

Free Reads -- Felix on Film

Friedrich --

Felix Salmon gets off some good ones at the expense of the Charlie Kaufman/Spike Jonze movie "Adaptation," and then segues into some good ones about the downside of watching films shot on digital video, here.

Sample passage:

Every columnist, it is said, is allowed precisely one column about how hard it is to write the column, how he has nothing to say in his column, how he needs to turn in something but can't think of anything to write, that sort of thing. Even when it's done well, it reeks of desperation. Adaptation is the filmic equivalent of that one column. Charlie Kaufman has got away with it, mainly because he's Charlie Kaufman, and in the wake of the success of Being John Malkovich, he and Spike Jonze could do pretty much anything they wanted. But insofar as Adaptation represents a whole new genre in filmmaking, it only does so because it's a genre which shouldn't exist, and which should never be repeated.

I haven't seen "Adaptation" yet. Have you? I haven't, partly because I was apparently the only person in the world un-wowed by the Kaufman/Jonze "Being John Malkovich." I mean, all due credit for a grabby premise. But I thought Kaufman and Jonze had no idea what to do with it, or where to go with it. And the film seemed to me to start falling apart within about 30 minutes. But most people seemed to love it -- thereby confirming my theory that many people are content these days to love something simply because it's offbeat or unusual.

How'd you react to it?

Best,

Michael

Blog Surfing

Friedrich --

I don't know about you, but I by and large took a break from the blogosphere over the past few weeks. I thought I'd spend the holiday relatively electronics-free -- sharpen the appetite, refresh the mind (such as it is these middle-aged days), etc. And, what do you know, I'm enjoying my plunge back in. Some treats I've stumbled across so far:

AC Douglas (here), being brainy and provocative on that ever-vexing topic, high cult vs. popular cult. Is it really just a matter of personal taste?

Another excellent art-history lesson from Out of Lascaux (here). In this one, Alexandra compares and contrasts three different treatments of the same motif, The Ecstasy of St. Francis.

I normally don't comment much about politics, partly out of deference to those with more expertise, partly out of lack of interest, partly out of pure pusillanimity. Sheesh, as if tempers don't flare enough in the culture sphere! But Peter Briffa's short posting about Germaine Greer (here) shouldn't be missed. (Greer has evidently made some hare-brained remark about how men try to "tame" the female orgasm. I know there's nothing I like doing with my spare time better than taming a female orgasm. Hell, some days, I wake up so full of vim and vigor that I go out and tame a couple of 'em!)

Hey, did I ever tell you about one time I got a stern talking-to from a female work colleague? I guess I'd been irreverent about some sexual-politics thing. And she glared at me and told me in the most solemn possible terms that it's simply a fact that men use the threat of rape to keep women in their place. I couldn't really figure out how best to respond, given that this woman was my boss... [Bad-joke drum thump here. But it's a true story.]

Briffa's a reliably hilarious (in the gonzo-caustic mode) political commentator, by the way. And if I felt any guilt about reading him regularly, I'd recommend his blog, PublicInterest, as a guilty pleasure.

Hmm. I wonder if I'm making any sense. Well, however convoluted my brain and language are becoming, I'm intending high praise.

Best,

Michael

500 and Counting...

FRIEDRICH: Mein Gott, Michael, are we making any progress here?

MICHAEL: Shut up, you pathetic Prussian, and keep blowing! We're at Post #500!

Free Reads -- Timewaster

Friedrich --

Over at the Velvet Crypt, Polly Frost has put up a hilarious piece about her obsession with computer and video games.

Sample passage:

The Status Bar has indicators of your overall health and well-being. The Dimple Palette indicates how much your cellulite hangs over the edge of your computer chair, while the Gab-o-meter shows how angry the people in your book club are with you.

You can visit the Velvet Crypt here.

Best,

Michael

Free Reads -- Kevin Michael Grace

Friedrich --

Have you ever marveled at how little conventional singing gal pop singers do these days? And how much outright whooping, trilling, sliding and warbling they do? I sure have. "What is this? A contest to see how many notes can be hit, and how many vocal effects can be shown off?" -- that's how I tend to react.

Kevin Michael Grace marvels at it too, and does so much more amusingly and articulately.

Sample passage:

Remember that woman who suffered seizures whenever she heard Mary Hart’s voice? I get like that whenever I hear any of the Melismatics—Christina, Céline, Whitney, Mariah. (When did emotion get conflated with trying to cough up a lung, anyway? I blame Barbra Streisand.) I don’t black out; I just want to vomit or howl like a beaten dog. (Much as Christina, Céline, Whitney and Mariah do, come to think of it.)

Let's hear it for intelligent, amusingly grumpy conservative cultural commentary. (Which isn't, of course, to say that we shouldn't also cheer for amusing and intelligent lefty cultural commentary. Hey, this is the arts. Disagreements should be fun and enlightening.)

Kevin's blog The Ambler can be read here.

Best,

Michael

Free Reads -- Velvet Crypt

Friedrich --

A delightful new participant in the culture-blogosphere -- Polly Frost's Notes from the Velvet Crypt, readable here. Polly's focusing mainly on sci-fi and horror, though she promises to make occasional excursions into other interests too. So far, she's put up postings about such topics as Bruce Lee, Japanimation, and Philip K. Dick, and she's wondered out loud about such key questions as "Do you have to be Catholic to love horror," and "Where has the eroticism in mainstream fiction gone." Judging from what's on her blog, she has a remarkably free-ranging, insightful and intuitive mind.

Sample passage:

I found Philip K. Dick's “Ubik” spiritual and moving -- it’s spiritual standup. Like Terry Southern, he’s a romantic cynic -- a bebop nihilist, really. Admittedly, Southern is body-centric, pop, and Rabelaisian where Dick is mind-gamey. Dick's universe is so cerebral. It’s about the disembodied consciousness of our time, and people striving for that. He’s prescient -- he got virtual reality ‘way before it existed. You can see the freak show. And, like Anthony Burgess, he paints a world that’s very Jacobean. But it’s not a sensual world.

I notice that Polly runs some other websites too -- she seems to be in the midst of a right little creative explosion these days. At Tantric Afterlife (here), she's writing and publishing erotic horror and sci-fi stories. Hot stuff! And at Scorpio Visions (here), she has some information about a play she's written on the theme of "a woman's obsessive love affair with her cell phone." That sounds like hot stuff too.

Best,

Michael

Free Reads -- Alexandra Ceely

Friedrich --

Alexandra Ceely, who runs Out of Lascaux (here), has been on a cultureblogging tear, showing how to do it with class. She reflects about working as a kind of teacher's assistant, muses about how reading books as an adult is different than it is when you're a kid, and provides a first-class illustrated introduction to the Candle Light Painters. De La Tour wasn't alone -- who knew?

She also reminisces about visiting Cairo -- not a happy experience, apparently.

Sample passage:

My advice about seeing Egypt: if you want to see pyramids, go to Vegas. If you want to see the tombs of Saqqhara, go to the Field Museum in Chicago. They have an exact replica of the paintings and carvings. So exact, I stepped inside and realized I had been there before. I still enjoy the Ancient Egypt shows on TV.

Best,

Michael

Blogging Bliss

Friedrich --

Do you carry a cafe conversation around in your head? I do. What I mean is that some part of my brain is home to an ongoing bull session.Voices gather to compare notes about all kinds of topics -- occasionally politics and econ, most of the time art and philosophy. (Many detours into sex, of course.) It's Les Deux Magots, open and busy 24/7 in some seedy Montparnasse quartier of my brain, and I'm the grizzled old owner hurrying about with wine and bread, sometimes taking part in the disputes, sometimes watching benevolently out over the excitement ...

Where do these voices come from? Given how hard it is to rustle up good in-person art chat once you're out of college, most of them show up from what I've been reading. I go around thinking about what I've read -- in my mind, quarreling/arguing/discussing/comparing-notes with authors of books and articles. It's all very real to me -- smoke, coffee, lots of intellectual ooo-la-la. It's also all very absorbing, fun, and exciting. So much so that when I surface back into everyday life and start talking to The Wife about the discussions that have been buzzing in my mind, she looks at me (fondly, I hope) like I'm insane.

I raise this because something interesting has happened to this imaginary scene of mine in the last few months. The people taking part have changed -- there's been some turnover in the clientele. Most used to be magazine writers, artists, critics, academics, newspaper people -- professionals. Lately, many of the voices taking part have belonged to bloggers, and fewer voices have come from the familiar old professional crowd (and most of them have been culled from Arts and Letters Daily, here, a kind of meta-proto-blog). The people I'm talking with in my head as I make my way through my daily rounds are as likely to be bloggers like Glenn Frazier, Alexandra Ceely, Aaron Haspel, Sasha Castel, Scott Chaffin, Peter Briffa, Jason Soon, Alice Bacchini, Chris Bertram, Lynn Sislo and many others as they are to be such pros as (god forbid) Paul Krugman and Susan Sontag.

I'm much happier for the change. The conversation is more freewheeling and spirited. There are fresh faces, and lots of new points of view. For every asshole who can't seem to understand that he's addressing another human being, there's a dozen charmers who are funny, loose, wry and civil.

Some human element has returned into my life that I hadn't realized was missing. The bloggers have more sides to them than the pros, their talk isn't tainted by careerism, and they by and large seem to share a respect for life as it's actually experienced. I like the makeup of my new clientele. They strike me as a bunch of rough-edged, three-dimensional people rather than a bunch of disembodied, streamlined egos.

I wonder if my experience reflects the experience of other bloggers and blog-surfers. If so, I think there may be something important happening in the general consciousness, an opening-up, even a general cheering-up. Given that activity tends to arise out of the context of conversation -- one of the reasons I adore Oakeshott is that "conversation" is his central metaphor -- I wonder if better politics, better economics, better philosophy and better art might not be a result.

Whatever the case, what this change has brought me personally is surprise and pleasure, and a much-improved mental climate. My ongoing inner cafe conversation is a whole lot more likable and enjoyable than it was only a few months ago. My brain is grooving to a friendly, unstrained, and goofily cheerful new beat.

Has blogging had any similar effects on your mental state?

Best,

Michael

Free reads -- Philosoblog and Glenn Frazier

Friedrich --

Jim Ryan is an interesting case -- a philosopher with a lot of respect (including philosophical respect) for common sense. At Philosoblog, here, he writes mini-essays on provocative topics. The exchanges in his comments are a special pleasure. Today's topic is "A Rough Topology of Right and Wrong."

Sample passage:

In many cases, one has a right to act in his own self-interest. Also, everyone has a duty to sacrifice his interests in order to help others in some cases. There is a restriction on harming; it is wrong to inflict harm in many cases. But, it is also wrong to allow harm in some cases. Finally, the degree of harm and self-interest at stake matters.

And I just stumbled across this enlightening posting over at the always-interesting GlennFrazier.com (here): a discussion of the differences between what he labels the radical liberal and the liberal conservative.

Sample passage:

The point is that it is very good to want to make life better for people, but it can't be done in ignorance to or without respect for the powerful world outside. The fundamentals of this world will not change, no matter our intentions. We have to go with what works.

And that is the statement that so chills the romantic, the radical, the liberal. And for good reason: "what works" does not constitute a good enough criterion for how we decide to live our lives. The liberal heart insists on doing "what's right." What separates the liberal conservative from the radical liberal is the idea of a balance of tensions between the two.

Exposure to the mainstream media can sometimes leave you wondering whether common sense, as well as horse-sense, have become things of the past. But blogdom seems to have given both a great new outlet.

Best,

Michael

Reflections on blogging

Friedrich --

How have you found the process of blogging? I've found it fascinating. In fact, it's the intellectual/cultural thing that's been most on my mind recently, tiresomely self-reflexive though I'm sure that is. I've found blogging a fun and curious topic to think about, as well as a fun and curious medium to exploit. There are days when I feel the high and crave more, and turn to the computer hungrily, like an addict. There are other days when I don't have the urge at all, and even feel a little disgusted with myself.

But there have been a few things about the process itself that have struck me. The first is that it's its own thing. I don't know about you, but I went into blogging thinking of it as the poor cousin of real writing and publishing. Maybe I could diddle a bit, and maybe I'd get the first draft of a book out of it, or at least cook up a few ideas I might develop in some real medium...

After a few months, I find myself thinking instead: no, it's not a poor excuse for a book or a magazine, it's a blog. I'd been thinking of it as a substitute for something else when it turns out to be its own, fully-absorbing (or at least as-absorbing-as-you-want-it-to-be) activity. These days, I'm feeling no need at all to view what I write here as a preliminary step in any other direction. I'm just happy to be blogging.

Being its own thing, blogging makes its own demands. I went into it, as I've so stupidly gone into many cultural forms, thinking: all right, finally, no formal constraints. Cut loose: finally, I'll have the means to rock on out, unrestricted. Freeform orgy, baby.

Basically, I thought I'd be able to get down most of what passes through my head, and to do so effortlessly. Instead, I find myself putting some real time (in a small way) into these postings, and thinking thoughts like, hmm, I'd better keep each posting to one main topic. (Not easy for me, given my taste for weaving together a lot of disparate, only-loosely-related themes.) I look at the computer screen and think: hmm, better break those paragraphs up, and offer some visual relief and variety. All of which means that, to my shame (but pleasure too), I'm thinking like a magazine editor. So I'm as conscious of effort, and am as consciously attending to form and finish, as ever. And, instead of getting down most of what passes through the noggin, I'm getting down who knows, 10%?

But it turns out that 10% leaves the desk clean enough, as it were. My brain's a little freer of what usually gnaws at it. The frustration of keeping a traditional arts journal was that, enjoyable though it could be to note down reactions and reflections, the journal itself did nothing but gather dust. It was hard not to ask yourself, what's the point? The frustration with traditional book publishing is the laboriousness of it. Who can face it?

Blogging, though, is something else. Something agreeable, something that... Well, this reflection is half-baked, and I'm hoping you can help me bring it along. It's this: I can’t think of another art-or-cultural form whose creation is the same thing as its distribution. When you paint a painting, you're then stuck figuring out how to get it seen. When you finish a novel, you then have to face the tedious process of publishing it, and you have to cross your fingers and hope it gets decently distributed.

How do you make the physical thing available -- that's always a weighty question. But it isn't so in blogging. To blog is to create, to publish, and to distribute pretty much all at once. (I know I'm skipping over the "how do I get people to look at my blog" part, and I'm not sure what to make of that, but it still strikes me as different than trying to find a venue for your music, or your sculpture...)

But maybe I'm overlooking some other made-cultural-artifact thing whose creation/distribution arc is even shorter and more direct than blogging's. Can you think of one? If not, I wonder if I can assert the thought that blogging is the most direct cultural-creation medium/form ever.

My final reflection for the day is: Where are the sociology profs? Because a good topic for study is, "Why do some postings attract a lot of comments? Why do some postings stir up interest elsewhere in the blogosphere? And why do some postings sink like a stone?" I have no idea what the answers might be, and very few hunches. I'm just curious. I had no idea that my discussion of the meaning of the word "liberal" (here) would generate any interest, for instance. Yet it did. I'd have thought my observations about literary-fiction writers and genre-fiction writers (here) would create quite a stir, but they died on the vine.

I happened to be swapping emails with Colby Cosh (his website is here) when this was on my mind, so I asked Colby for his hunches and observations. Here's his response:

The only rules of thumb I've found so far are that (1) purely comedic entries get a lot of traffic and (2) people (Americans anyway) have an inexhaustible appetite for intelligent speculation on the Middle East/Islam/the Clash of Civilizations. With regard to the latter, I get the feeling that ordinary people are feeling world-historical forces impacting on them personally, and they are hungry for information, debate, and plain frank talk. It's 14 months now since Sept. 11 and that stuff still gets attention. Anybody could be forgiven for being sick of it, but it seems they aren't. Rightly or wrongly, they're battening down for a second Cold War...

Aside from those rules, it's a bit of a crapshoot, all right.

Maybe it's time for us to begin cracking jokes about the mideast.

Best,

Michael

Top Drawer Blogs

Friedrich --

Something I’ve come to appreciate over the past few months is blogging as an improvisatory performance art. What generally seems to create the most buzz in the blogozone is political ideas. Steven den Beste and Glenn Reynolds, for instance: brainy guys doing impressively heavyweight things -- and I hardly ever look at them. No music or poetry (or something like that). Culturebug that I am, I’m drawn instead to style and personality, and gravitate to the likes of (among others) Colby Cosh, here, who has a heavy-metal guitar-solo way with a posting, and Kelly Jane Torrance, here, a model of class, grace and generosity.

I'm happy to report some tiptop recent blogger discoveries, both of whom project a ton of likable personality, and both of whom have style to kill. They’re distinctive without trying too hard; they just seem to "have it.” (Of course, that “it” may take a lot of effort to achieve.)

Alice Bachini, whose blog, A Libertarian Parent in the Countryside, is readable here, is a Brit with an eccentrically winning manner -- lots of playful irony and mock-naivete, delivered with the kind of verbal ease that makes an American feel cloddish and want to give up. This is blogging as charming chatter -- until you realize how much substance, daring, and fresh thinking is also whirling by.

Sample passage:

My education philosophy is temporarily stuck at the "well, it works for me..." stage again, at the moment. This happens from time to time. I will take it in to the Repair Shop at some point soonish and see if I can get it a nice overhaul, service and respray. In the meantime, you might find me pottering gently in the comments section, talking contradictory nonsense. Contradicting oneself is positively a good thing, in my opinion. It shows you are open-minded and learning and not unduly concerned with outward appearances.

The other charmer is Scott Chaffin of The Fat Guy (here), who does a burly, ten-gallon-hat-and-a-pickup-truck act better than anyone else online. Part of what’s pleasing about his blog is his drawling, “I’m just a guy with too many dogs and opinions” flair. (Sample posting title: “How do you spell ‘Ten-Hut!’?”) But he’s like a good poker player, always playing what he's got a lot more shrewdly than you could. Most of the time he's humorous and to the point, but every now and then he can really take you by surprise. Check out, for example, his recent posting about hunting and his dad: sweet and powerful. (Search on the posting's title, "Mi Padre.")

Sample passage:

I feel sorry for my poor Mom, now that I think about it. She can cook anything on the face of the earth and make it taste good. And she had to deal with four Texas males who wanted nothing more than fried beef and Del Monte green beans most nights. She tried hard, with salmon croquettes, and eggplant parmesan, and all kinds of gussied-up vegetables like zucchini, but we were fairly incorrigible. Fortunately, we had plenty of dogs that were happy, nay, thrilled!, to have something besides purina Dog Chow. They ate like kings, and we ate like cavemen.

A big round of 2blowhards applause for both of these terrific performer-bloggers. Freethinkers both, by the way.

[A note to our readers: Apologies from 2blowhards to everyone who’s been nice enough to link to us over the few months of our blog's existence. We ain’t rude, we’re computer idiots; we’ve only just now learned how to manage our permalinks list. We’re grateful to everyone who has given us a wave, and are pleased to be linking back, if more than a little embarrassed about how long this has taken us.]

Best,

Michael

Samizdata.net

Friedrich --

Curious about who the brainy, party-hearty British libertarians at Samizdata.net are (here, as though I don't link to them often enough), I emailed Brian Micklethwait and asked what their story is. Here's his reply:

Samizdata happened for two reasons, as I understand it. One, there has long been a London libertarian scene based around the Libertarian Alliance (www.libertarian.co.uk) which has been shovelling out pamphlets, essays, monographs, scholarly writings, call them what you will (I'm working on the next little clutch right now) since the early 1980s. Not that many people knew, but we kept at it.

All very Cities in Civilization, in other words. As a New Yorker you'll know all about the vital importance of physically meeting people in order to get things done. However high tech and globally communicated it all ends up being, it's funny how the inner core of anything is always people who have met each other and who keep on meeting each other.

Well, now it's on the record! (Brian gave me permission to quote his email.) And who knew that England was crawling with libertarians? I thought the whole country was divided between quarreling gangs of Fleet Streeters, Oxbridge showoffs, ambitious actresses, soccer hooligans, Mike Leigh castoffs and rioting Muslims. How wrong we can be.

Best,

Michael

UPDATE Brian reads the above online and writes:

I just hope the LA-Forum people won't be too upset, and will clearly understand how completely partial and biased I am about chat rooms, which I hate because it keeps getting so nasty. Not all the time, of course, but every so often. The LA-F is not that bad, and often pretty good, and it must say something that I still passively subscribe to it and read whatever comes with a title that intrigues me. It's now mostly copy and pastes of interesting pieces in other places.

Colby Cosh

Michael

I must earnestly recommend to anyone who has a brain and a sense of humor that they stop everything else they’re doing and check out the writings of Colby Cosh which you can check out here.

Mr. Cosh’s day job is as Senior Editor of The Report, Canada's independent conservative newsmagazine, but that can’t be nearly as much fun as his website. In a topic close to my heart as an entrepreneur, following is an excerpt from a fairly serious discussion of the excesses of Canadian taxation:

By world standards, Canada is in fact good at facilitating the creation and survival of enormous private fortunes. It is not so good at encouraging people to make that step from a $40,000 income to a $60,000 one, or from $60,000 to $80,000.

These are the good times, mind. The pattern is that taxes more or less stagnate when there's no crisis, and go up when there is. They don't ever go down. I speak solely from the standpoint of one who works for a living. This, of course, is unforgivable selfishness in a Canadian.

On a less ideological note, I can’t help but quote his observation on airline safety in Canada:

My morning Post tells me the U.S. Transport Security Administration has
abandoned the routine check-in questions in air terminals. "Did you pack your own luggage?" Naw, I let my friend do it--my friend Abdul, fresh out of university in Pakistan! He is, like, the goddamn packing master! I think it was his major! Canada is retaining the routine questions, which a ministry spokesman explained by saying "We're all pretty much bonobos with chromosome damage around here." I'm paraphrasing, of course.

Cheers,

Friedrich

Blogging, Movie Update

Michael

The job is coming along. Astonishingly, several of my initiatives from earlier in the year seem to be paying off. I'm always kind of wide-eyed with wonder when my ideas actually come to some kind of fruition--financially, I mean.

By the way, do you have the same reaction that I do to seeing some of your opinions on the Web--to wit, uncertainty as to whether the opinions are too extreme/sweeping/unfair? For example, while I appear to smack Kubrick, Altman and Woody Allen some postings ago, the larger truth is that I love and frankly treasure several individual movies by each of them. I mean, I'm not about to disresptect "Thieves Like Us," "California Split," "Dr. Strangelove," "Bananas," "Take the Money and Run," etc. (Not only do I like them, I understand "Dr. Strangelove" was Elvis' favorite movie of all time!)

Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles in "California Split"

On the other hand, I believe the "Economist" style guide maintains that vivid writing results from a two part process--simplify and exaggerate, so maybe strong opinions are their own reward.

As far as my own movie-going activities, I saw "Signs" which I thought was pretty ramshackle if ultimately redeemed by having Joachim Phoenix take on an evil alien with a baseball bat. M. Night is a weird mixture of an eight-year-old comic book fanatic and an adult in therapy, and this time the adult-in-therapy part never quite got out of his head, so thank God the eight-year-old was along to take up the slack.

I also saw "Spy Kids II" which was like eating cake for breakfast: not exactly stick-to-your-ribs fare, but goofy, fast-moving, and good for a sugar rush. Antonio Banderas was brilliant as the blundering, vain but good-hearted dad. I could have used more of Mom (hubba hubba)--are there other movies she's been in? By the way, what do you think of Steve Buscemi? He appears to be having the ultimate stealth career success of the modern acting world.

Cheers,

Friedrich