Where C-SPAN is the local TV news
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| The Washington Canard Where C-SPAN is the local TV news |
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Sunday, May 30, 2004
WWII SPECIAL  Yesterday afternoon the new World War II Memorial opened to the public. Well, it opened again. There isn't a part of it I couldn't walk around and through at will for several weeks now. Of course, yesterday everybody from Tom Hanks to Bill Clinton to Bob Dole and two George Bushes showed up to recognize the fact that there is now a big fountain in between the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool.
That fountain, along with the dozens upon dozens of Stonehenge-like obelisks around the perimeter, is pretty controversial. I suppose the consensus so far is mostly against it. Charles Krauthammer hates it. Tim Noah defends it, albeit a bit defensively. Krauthammer makes some good points and I agree with him on some of the design elements -- but also I'm inclined to agree with Noah (an unusual occurrence) on the overall look of it. Anyway, I went on down there yesterday afternoon. Walking to the Metro, it looked like a cicada world war had broken out on the streets of DC. Well over half the bugs on the sidewalk were dead, many of them smashed to bits (sometimes a lone wing is all that's left), or in their death throes. It seems that when cicadas get knocked on their backs, they have a hell of a time getting up. Their wings are huge but apparently no use in flipping themselves over. So they just kick their legs frantically until they get lucky or get squashed. Usually squashed. I got off at the Archives/Navy Memorial stop about halfway between the White House and the Capitol, thinking I had a long way to walk before I found the crowds. Not so. In the two blocks to the mall were dozens of street vendors and guys in wheelchairs selling (surely unofficial) souvenirs. And on the mall itself, though I was at least a half-mile from the WWII memorial, the Greatest Generation and their less-great family members were sitting in ticketed sections facing a series of giant television screens, watching someone speak from way over on the other side of the Washington Monument. I trekked on over toward the main action, but as I approached the Washington, I saw a great wall of temporary interlocking partitions stretching as far as the eye could see one way or the other. They're doing construction on a new visitors center or protective wall or both, so I shrugged it off. I started walking around it, until I got to Independence. Then I hit the security detail, who were turning back a steady stream of people like me who just wanted a closer look. To get beyond that point, one needed a ticket. I should have figured. Like when Tractor Man commandeered the West end of the Mall last year, a sizable chunk of downtown Washington was pretty much impassable. So I hopped the Metro back home and watched the festivities on C-SPAN. At which point my story ceases to be at all interesting, if it ever was to begin with. The last thing I noticed, searching but failing to find a literary hook to hang this post on, was the reader board on the front of all the buses waiting to take the best generation now or ever back to where ever they came from. They all said: "WWII SPECIAL." For some reason I can't explain, I thought that was sort of amusing. As Noah said about his praise for the WWII Monument itself: So sue me. P.S. It might have been more interesting had I managed to peer out the window to catch the fighter jet flyby. As it turned out I missed them by seconds -- though the roar was deafening. Friday, May 28, 2004
IT'S NOT A  Thanks to eBay (and dumpster-diving) you have just two days left to own a truly historic piece of Austrian-American history:
At the recent 2004 Peace Officer Memorial in Sacramento on May 7, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was observed removing a cough drop from his mouth and discarding it prior to speaking to the thousands of attendees. The cough drop, dubbed, "The Gov’ Mint" was retrieved from the grassy knoll area near the podium, sealed in plastic and transported to an unknown location in Clovis, California. Contact me if you're interested. P.S. I may not live on a grassy knoll, but I do have a pretty damned good view of downtown Washington! WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO PREDICTABILITY? THE MILK MAN, THE PAPER BOY, EVEN TV...  So how would you explain the Olsen twins to a Martian? It's something that hadn't occurred to me until today, but a blog I haven't seen until now, Bunsen.tv, makes a go of it:
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
GIRL GONE WILD As little as I care about Wonkette, I actually have managed to care even less about all this Washingtonienne* business. I'm really tired of it all, and I hope it goes away soon. (As tired as I am of seeing Tim Russert promote his "Big Russ" book? More so.) Though the Washington Post's Richard Lieby brought Washingtonienne (that is, former Sen. DeWine (R-OH) staffer Jessica Cutler) to the attention of Fox News and MSNBC, it was appropriately (or should that be inappropriately?) enough, Wonkette who made her famous. And that's part of the problem. If you've read Washingtonienne, the first thing you've noticed is that it isn't especially well-written. Wonkette first called her DC's Belle de Jour, but the difference is Belle is an interesting writer with a rich inner life and the language skills to express it. Washingtonienne is clever on occasion, but the only reason anyone paid attention to it was for the salacious bits. It's the only reason Wonkette bothered to pick it up. (Also, Cutler is not that hot. My female co-workers agree.) At worst her blog could all be a lie; at best it's a waste of time. Really, most of it is like:
_____ *Not familiar? See the entire last week of Wonkette, or just read this. Archive of the now-defunct blog here. Monday, May 24, 2004
DAWN OF THE CICADA  On Saturday I noted my first encounter with these big, winged, ugly, stupid stupid stupid bugs. Walking back from watching Sopranos on Sunday, the damned things were all over the place. I counted eight or nine before losing count. About a third were dead on the ground, stepped on or run over by the occasional bicycle. I managed to avoid any shoe-plastic to creepy-wing contact.
This morning, I saw at least a half-dozen on the five-block walk to the Metro. This afternoon, leaving the office, more on the concrete. Aren't these supposed to be tree creatures? Then, sitting down at a Dupont Circle sushi bar -- with no warning at all -- Pfeiffer's face went blank, and he just pointed at me, stepping back. Immediately, I knew, flung it off, and leaped up out of my seat. Climbing up my John Thune '02 (better luck this time!) T-shirt was a giant cicada. No idea when it landed or where it crawled from. For me it was at least as big a jump as the gigantic flying cockroach that landed on my knee in Stanley on the far side of Hong Kong island in 1995. I hate bugs. We stood there just watching it, as the damned thing struggled in the window sill, trying to get back on its feet. After what seemed like minutes and minutes -- though surely was only minutes -- the cicada got its bearing. And then just sat there. Expectantly we watched it, before deciding to take another table -- until the guy who worked there brought over a big cloth napkin, picked up Mr. Brood X and then presumably left him outside, unharmed. I may have drank nearly a fifth of hard liquor over the course of the evening, but that guy was a bigger man than me. BROKEN HEROES ON A LAST CHANCE POWER DRIVE  Over at the Armed Prophet, I have 1300+ words on Bush's speech tonight, if politics is your thing. But as for things regular people think about, I still have last night's episode of The Sopranos on the brain. Most of my thoughts have already been said by the Television Without Pity message boarders (full link plus deletion of these parenthetical remarks when their mySQL calms down) or Slate's weekly correspondents, but in particular Slate writer (and longtime mob journalist) Jeffrey Goldberg nails the thing that's got me the most:
(I should have known when Tony called her from a pay phone. Or when Christopher watched the dismal, normal family get into their station wagon. Or when he left their apartment in the first place.) Before the show began, I told a friend that if David Chase and the writers knew what was good for the show, they'd whack one person in this ep (yes, I've been reading too much TWOP) and another in the next. Right now odds are nearly even that it's Tony B (Buscemi) who's getting whacked in two weeks (damned Memorial Day) and not Christopher. But both seem almost equally possible. As powerful as the storyline ending with Adriana's unceremonious murder (by her own uncle, one shouldn't forget), it was further deepened by the extreme cognitive dissonance I felt while watching Tony move back in to the house. While everything outside the house was falling apart -- did I mention the war brewing between the New Jersey Sopranos and the New York crew under the consolidated control of the truly vicious Johnny Sack? -- everything inside the Soprano family home seemed to be returning to normal. Seemed to, of course. Great line Tony had, finally persuading Carmela that he was ready to be true: he didn't really promise no more fooling around with his goomahs; he just told her it wouldn't affect their home life. Good luck. I know there was a first season episode titled "Pax Soprano," but that title seems more apt to Sunday's episode. With a shortened season coming up whenever the show returns (my prediction: early 2006), it seems clear now that the entire family -- if Chase knows what's right, both of them -- will explode. What happens exactly is up to David Chase, but last night's developments leave me greatly encouraged. One possible dissenting note: If it is Buscemi who gets taken out, the season finale will be a letdown compared to Sunday's installment. If it's Christopher -- holy shit. Oh, I should have mentioned: spoilers above. P.S. Maybe I should have figured. As somebody at TWOP mentioned, now Drea de Matteo is free to do as many sitcoms as she wants. P.P.S. Loved: Adriana tells the FBI the drug dealer Matush is a good guy because he's sending money back to a school in Pakistan. They all look at each other uncomfortably, yet say nothing. Plus: This is not the first time Matush has inadvertently got a Soprano killed. Remember what happened with Jackie Jr.'s card game hold-up? P.P.P.S. "This is fucking weird." Saturday, May 22, 2004
NEW RILO KILEY!  Breaking news as of sometime before I heard about it: the new album, "More Adventurous", comes out in late July. The Rilo Kiley website has been updated to reflect the change, but details seem to be yet elusive. Live versions of some new tracks are available here -- they be "Absence of God," "I Never" and "It Just Is." A bit slow, I'll say, but I do appreciate the harmonica on "Absence."
According to Blog, Rilo Kiley is "everyone's new favorite band." I'm not sure that's true -- right now the indie band finally getting the recognition it deserves is Modest Mouse -- but if it is, then I'd like to think I had a hand in that (i.e. pressing copies of their last album on anyone who would listen). Also: If my relentless promotion of everything Modest Mouse over the years helped eventually push them to the Billboard Top 20, could my recent Rilo Kiley-peddling catapult them to the top of the charts? Wait, don't answer that. P.S. Having listened to a number of these live tracks, I have to ask: WTF are they thinking with their live play of "Spectacular Views"? It's a great choice of a set closer, but that's the end of their great choices w/r/t this song. The live version deprives it of its two key ingredients: 1) Jenny Lewis' voice, and 2) it's rawkingness. For whatever mistaken reason, she steps back from the mic to let Elliott Smith wannabe Blake Sennett bring down the song with his tepid vocals. And while an acoustic version of the song might be a nice departure on occasion, this seems to be the standard live version. Weak! This is Lewis' song, and it's best played loud. If she won't kick Sennett out of the band (not a bad idea, unless he writes more than I'm aware of) she at least should not surrender the vocal duties to him just when concertgoers want something really kick-ass before heading out to their cars. KELLY EVENT ON C-SPAN2 It's unlikely anybody will be stopping by here in the next 50 minutes, but if you happen to read this, do yourself a favor and tune in to the Michael Kelly book reading on C-SPAN2 at about 4:55 p.m. Eastern. If you happen to miss this, check here for the C-SPAN weekend TV schedule. Chances are they'll be running it again at least once before the weekend is out. Friday, May 21, 2004
THE LAROUCHIES ARE HERE!  There's one on the chair on my balcony right now, rubbing his legs together and staring at me with his big red eyes. Wait a minute, that's not a LaRouche fanatic at all -- it's the first cicada I've seen all season! But you can understand how I got them confused.
The local papers and television news have been treating this cicada thing like it'll be a plague of locusts straight out of John's Revelation (note: I am aware that cicadas are not locusts), blackening the earth and darkening the sky. But so far my encounter with the awfully sleepy bug has been limited to the brief meet-and-greet I just had. Nor have I heard them yet -- and thanks to a 1995 trip to Beijing, I know what to listen for -- although the sound could be lost amidst the lawnmower across the street, the high school marching band down the hill, or my own air conditioner. Anyway, about those LaRouchies -- they were here, too. 'Here' meaning down on the corner out in the street, where a handful of young black male LaRouchies were handing out glossy magazine-like pamphlets titled "The LaRouche Doctrine." (Most of the LaRouchies I've seen are late-middle aged white women.) They were probably about two feet off school property, which I assume is why they were allowed to continue, in full view of the security guards. I hope those kids are smart enough to sidestep all that conspiratorial nuttiness -- not to mention the cicadas. Wednesday, May 19, 2004
NEWS I CAN USE As they said when the paper in this town broke the Bob Packwood scandal, if it's news to Oregonians, it's in the Washington Post. Case in point, this:
 Washington doesn't exactly have the reputation of a stay-up-late town, but who says that can't change? It's made my day all right, partly because just a few weeks ago the Post reported that the policy wouldn't change. DC's liquor laws are different from the real states I've been to: one can buy liquor until 10 p.m. but beer stops selling at the same time. Across the district line, one can buy booze in Mary-Land or Virginny until midnight; hence the council decision (which was still settled by a one-vote margin). Now store owners can see if they're competitive later in the evening; the Post seems to think a lot of them will try. I'll certainly help.Monday, May 17, 2004
THE TROUBLE WITH LEFTISM (NOT WHAT YOU THINK) Every once in a great while, along comes a written work that perfectly captures one's thoughts and emotions so perfectly that it almost seems impossible you didn't write it yourself. For some people it's "Catcher in the Rye," for others it's "The Fountainhead." For me it is Lyndsey Layton's "Standing on the Left? You must be on vacation" from this morning's Post. I'm not 100% sure what all Sartre meant by "hell is other people," but I'd like to think it applies to the Washington Metro system, and even more specifically to its escalators. Layton would need another article to address everything wrong with those escalators (i.e. they are always broken) but she does enough for now by highlighting my other key gripe: the out-of-towners who insist on standing along the lefthand side of the escalator, which anyone who knows anything about the Metro knows is meant for walking. But the tourists don't know this, of course, because there are no signs that say so. Layton explains why:
And it's so like a local government bureaucracy to stonewall the solution to a half-assed policy. Metro does what every other quasi-city agency I've ever dealt with (mostly Portland Parks and Recreation) does and that's nothing. Not only can they not fix their escalators, but they can't fix an escalator policy that nobody knows about. I wonder how many of them were aware of all this until today. Downtown at Cap Lounge there's a sign up on the wall canonizing Marion Barry "Mayor for Life.". In some ways, this is still Mr. Barry's town. P.S. Washingtonpost.com, did you notice the web site you linked to in this story prominently featured the word "hatefucked"? P.P.S. It must transportation day at the Post, which reports on the world's first commercial maglev train, just opened in Shanghai. And guess what? Nobody's riding it! Who could ever have guessed such a thing? P.P.P.S. No kidding it's transportation day at the Post -- did you hear about what's going on with Carter's former Secretary of Transportation? Sunday, May 16, 2004
A EULOGY FOR MICHAEL KELLY BY WAY OF ON-THE-SCENE GOSSIPMONGERING  Longtime readers of my other blog will know I was always a fan of Michael Kelly. What a decade: reporting from Iraq during the first Gulf War, stints at the New York Times and The New Republic, his pugnacious New Yorker and Washington Post column, helming TNR and National Journal before eventually moving on to tranform The Atlantic Monthly from an enlightening yet often very boring magazine into the best English-language periodical on the planet. When he was killed outside of Baghdad last spring I wrote this brief and inadequate tribute. So this gives me a chance to write a bit more.
A few weeks ago I went out to Politics and Prose -- the independent bookstore where you see (well, I do) all the book-readings on C-SPAN2's Book TV weekends -- to see a few of DC's non-governmental A-listers read from the recently released collection of Kelly's published writings, "Things Worth Fighting For." Listees present comprised Ted Koppel, Bob Woodward, Maureen Dowd, Leon Wieseltier (actually NY-based), and David Bradley (owner, National Journal and Atlantic). Outside, it was a warm day, one of a few up to that point. Inside, it was sweltering. And crowded. I arrived with friends about 15 minutes before the scheduled start time, which was about 15 minutes later than we'd planned. Already it was SRO, with a square post in the middle of the store creating a wide blind spot for anyone behind it. I managed to get out of that blind spot, but I had to step on a few toes and elbow a few people aside (literally) in order to do it. Of course, the C-SPAN camera was there too, blocking even more views (but enabling, um, hundreds more on Book TV!). David Bradley started things by introducing those present, R to L away from the podium: Wieseltier (pronounced "weasel-terr," I take it?), Woodward, Koppel. No Dowd yet. Typical. Ted is glowing, probably thanks to makeup. Bob almost looks like he doesn't know what he's doing there. Where the hell does MoDo think she is? Bradley read from two e-mails he got from Kelly just before and during the war in 2003, and the transcript of a satellite call between the two somewhere in an undisclosed region of Iraq in the thick of battle with the 3iD. Kelly told him the military forbade him from revealing their exact location ... and by the way, we're "35 miles south of Baghdad." I don't know if it's in the book (Bryan, your McSweeney's collection has me on a six-month backlog) but it should be. Wieseltier was the first up, with a 1996 TRB column he helped edit, lambasting Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell at the time Clinton was reportedly considering them to replace Warren Christopher as Secretary of State.
Woodward stepped up next with "Farmer Al," a couple of Post columns, including one from 1999 that built a few miles of path for the ridicule of Al Gore that followed. Woodward reading this was somehow appropriate, and not just because he represented the Post -- his reading voice is as wooden as Gore's persona. So here you have the least funny man in the room reading what's considered one of Kelly's funniest bits. Call it a testament to the power of Kelly's words or call it a reaction to the discomfiture of that stuffy bookstore, but the laughter was enormous.
At about this point, MoDo came in from the back, looking as much like a fifty-year-old Lisa Loeb as possible (low-neck blouse, thick-rim glasses) and took her seat. !?!?. Koppel (no sunglasses this time) read a bit from Kelly's last column, about pushing north to Baghdad relatively quickly, after only for a minute or so reading from the wrong column. Seriously, I was thinking, where else did Maureen Dowd have to be tonight? To hear Bradley tell it, she and Mike Kelly were likethis in the NYT news room, where they even once co-bylined a Magazine cover story for the first Clinton inauguration. Who did she think she was? Yes, I knew, but I remained annoyed. I know I risk going into argumentum ad hominem, but her voice was irritating -- and this is from somebody largely unbothered by both Susan Estrich and Billy Corgan. If Woodward's banality surprised me, more so did MoDo's nasality. Even more fitting than Woodward's woodenness was Dowd's choice of a column: priceless yet unfortunate. Kelly's 2001 "We Americans are some kind of fat" is filled with clever turns of phrase and well-timed insults, literally is start-to-finish a comic tour de force on the embarrassments of our national pigginess, but it ultimately says nothing. Hmm... who does that sound like? Fitting, all right. Bradley returned briefly to thank Kelly's wife Max, and their two young sons, Tom and Jack. Planned in advance but to my surprise, Tom gets up and reads the last e-mail Dad sent from Iraq, which included a long, half-made up list of the things he was taking into the desert (i.e. a bathtub, a pirate's treasure map). No doubt the crowd cut these kids a bit of slack -- this was but two weeks after the first anniversary of Kelly's death. They needed it, not because they teared up but because they kept getting side-tracked and, apropos of nothing, telling jokes the crowd only pretended to get. The kids seemed to have a good handle on things -- well-adjusted -- but what do I know. Neither did the A-listers. Koppel cracked up. Bradley was enjoying himself. Woodward was already gone (the bastard!). But MoDo was stone-faced. And Wieseltier actually seemed perplexed. (I've made my guesses about which of them are childless.) I read later that the next day Tom and Jack (with Mom in tow) delivered a copy of "Things Worth Fighting For" to President Bush, in the Oval Office, and Tom interviewed Bush for his elementary school newspaper at home in Boston. Courtesy something called the Swampscott Recorder, here's the first couple lines:
[President Bush]: I remember learning how to be a good reader. I think that's the most important part about early grades, is to become a good reader. That way, when you get older, you're a better reader. (TK fumbles with his notebook.) GB: "See, that's why you got the recorder. Most reporters, and you're a big time reporter now, when they come to the Oval Office, they don't spend time writing the answers. They just ask them." THE "IT WON'T BE CLOSE" BRIGADE  Three's a trend, right? That's what people say. Assuming such, the notion that the November election between Bush and Kerry will not be a close one is now just one Howard Fineman column away from being the conventional wisdom. Given events of the past few weeks, speculation leans toward a big win for Kerry, but then again we're barely three weeks out from a Fineman column titled "Why the race is looking so good for Bush."
I don't know where the meme started, but the first one I read was Andrew Sullivan, who wrote at his blog on May 6:
That's three. And I expect more soon, especially from H-Fi, whose next column should be up sometime today. (His one from last week registers the good news for Kerry, but it's still written as if he's expecting a squeaker. Also not counting: John Zogby's much discussed "The Election Is Kerry's To Lose" essay, which calls the electorate "frozen in place" with "very few undecided voters.") As the next six months pass, many more commentators will try out the will-win-big theory for both candidates (here's the WSJ's James Taranto, using different indicators than Todd to make a reverse-Carter argument; see third item). What I want to know before passing judgment is: What constitutes a landslide? 15 points? 10? 5? Compared to the 2000 election, anything more than a couple points could be interpreted as a big shift in this famously 50-50 (or is it 49-49?) country. The higher the threshold for "landslide," the more skeptical I get. If all we're talking here is "more decisive than last time," then count me on the bandwagon. Then again, considering just how preposterously close the last election was, it's no risky statement to guess that this one will fall outside the margin of error. Saturday, May 15, 2004
HEADS UP I'll finally get back to something like full-time blogging in another day or so. Why? Why now?
Before long I'll return with at least something on the Michael Kelly book reading I've already mentioned, and then we'll get on with things. P.S. It is now summer, by which I mean the day I returned it was hot (85°+) and humid and even windy. Good thing my air conditioning is included with the rent. |
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