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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Tuesday, May 31, 2005
WORLD EXCLUSIVE! SORT OF! NOT REALLY!  As of this very moment in today's already half-over news cycle, Technorati tells me that I am the first blogger to post the text of Vanity Fair's press release on their forthcoming Deep Throat exposé — i.e. turns out it was W. Mark Felt all along (see this, too). Could you be any more excited? UPDATE — Other bloggers have posted it by now, so I may as well link to the PDF of the article as it will appear in the magazine. UPDATE 2 — washingtonpost.com, today, sometime before 5:00 p.m., EDT:  washingtonpost.com, today, approx. 6:20 p.m., EDT:  Considering these Smoking Gun documents, how long do you think the Washington Post had this page put together? Maybe Woodward did the layout himself, with Ben Bradlee's approval? Then they both told Bernstein: "Don't worry, it looks good." UPDATE 3 — Flashback: The Atlantic Monthly got pretty close in 1992. And long before that, the Washingtonian's Jack Limpert pretty much had it nailed in 1974. UPDATE 4 — Reporters interviewing reporters! Via via cell phone and satellite from restaurants and studios throught the District. Washington is having a few drinks tonight. But the greatest parlor room guessing game since Tom and Sally is now over. The hangover is next. Monday, May 30, 2005
MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND RANDOMNESS A recommendation:
 A true story:
A confession and a question:
A confession by way of a question:
A set of questions that first occurred to me while watching Pulp Fiction on TV late, late last night: 
A vindictive observation:  Five or so years ago, Radiohead had three out of four number-one debuts counting the US and UK charts in the span of a year. Now, Coldplay is badly outsold on the first week in the UK charts by a goofy ringtone remix of a 1980s instrumental associated with Eddie Murphy. This makes me happy.A curiosity:
Sunday, May 29, 2005
COMMENCED If you're only just catching up, OXR has jumped on the bandwagon and started a personal blog. Definitely worth a look. Meantime, he has sent me the full text of David Foster Wallace's recent commencement speech at Kenyon College. It may take you an hour or so to read, but for everyone who might have endured a lame commencement speech, or who likes their DFW, it's not half-bad. FOR THE RECORD Brandon at Welcome to Blog/laurabush.info has long expressed his preference for Yahoo! over Google as a search engine. I'm not one to judge. I just go with what works. Yet I'm fairly sure he's missing the point of Google, and missing the full weight of its relevance. Well, Statcounter recently started tracking which search engines point readers to a given blog — Search Engine Wars, they call it — and looking at the results for the Canard, I think Brandon may as well just concede the obvious:  Hey Brandon, don't forget to turn out the lights. Friday, May 27, 2005
[INSERT OVERUSED CHURCHILL QUOTE HERE]  Seven months past Tom Wolfe's latest attack on Irving, Updike and Mailer, the right-wing publishing house Regnery rolls out the subtly titled "Porn Generation," an indictment of permissive youth by — and here's why it's somewhat intriguing — an honest-to-goodness youth. (Although not as youthful as this kid.)For some reason, it's more interesting when a young whippersnapper crosses the generational line to side with the fuddy duddy geezers — such as Ben Shapiro, the author in question — than when a pony-tailed fogey throws in with the wild-and-crazy youngsters — see Danny Goldberg's "Dispatches from the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit". But I digress. I believe we were talking about porn, and the Shapiro book. Although it doesn't come out for another few weeks, I stumbled across a review copy earlier today. Surprise: "I Am Charlotte Simmons" is mentioned twice on the jacket and again in the first chapter, introduced with the ever-subtle header, "The real Charlotte Simmons." In this debate I'm generally torn between the libertarian appeal to leave law-abiding adults alone and the conservative argument that society depends on said adults being responsible. Because I've written about this subject before, I'll say no more about it here. But what I will do is list the chapter titles in "Porn Generation," which are, briefly, worth your attention:
Chapter 2: Fun With Bananas Chapter 3: Campus Carnality Chapter 4: Pop Tarts Chapter 5: Where Pimps And Hos Run Free Chapter 6: Teenyboppers Chapter 7: Abercrappy & Bitch Chapter 8: TV vs. Virginity Chapter 1: Porn And Popcorn Chapter 1: The Lotion Picture Industry Chapter 1: Taking A Stand Chapter 12: Roundtable P.S. You know those "Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs)" Amazon recently unveiled? They're fun but useless, and the SIPs for the Wolfe book are no exception:
UPDATE — Change of plans. In a stroke of luck, I just happened across the Showtime series "Family Business" for the first time tonight. It's a reality TV series about a family in the porn industry. The main character is Adam Glasser — better known to the world as Seymore Butts — a well-meaning single dad who, as a matter of business, sometimes has to show girls where their g-spot is. From what I can tell so far, it isn't just titillating (and it certainly is that), it's compelling television as well. I think it's my new favorite show. Much better than HBO's irrelevant and dull "Real Sex". Did I mention that I get HBO as well, and that I don't pay for either channel? Thursday, May 26, 2005
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
STILL BARGAINING Would you just look what I found this very morning at this (hilarious, if now dated) website today, halfway down the page, in the right-hand margin, just below the poll about Laura Bush and "Desperate Housewives":  I know Kerry's campaign had plenty of money left over, and I know the Senator fancies himself a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2008, but doesn't it make you wonder if his grieving process stalled somewhere short of "acceptance"? Monday, May 23, 2005
EPISODE III, or, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY THIS MOVIE I saw Episode III last Wednesday night/Thursday morning, which made me one of the first non-insiders to experience this putative generational event. (In all truthfulness, I've never been more than a casual fan of the series.) On the cab out of there — not home, but to my office building to crash on the couch for a few hours — I finally read John Podhoretz's much talked about early negative review. It did not sway me from my initial reaction, which was that I liked Episode III so much better than "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones" that I (mostly) forgave it for its many failings.   To begin with, Podhoretz's is a spoiler-filled rant of a preview. I'm not afraid of including spoilers in this post because, at this point, many (many) more people than film reviewers and industry types have now seen it for themselves. But that didn't stop JPod from trying to ruin the film and dissuade others from seeing it in the process. Besides, his tack was, for most of the article, to quote its hackneyed dialogue as if this was some shocking development. There's no point in rebutting this. Rather, I ask: Is this the first Star Wars film Podhoretz has seen? He quotes that awful Natalie Portman line: "Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo!" and comments: "No performer living or dead could pronounce the word 'Naboo' without sounding like a moron..." If Podhoretz doesn't get into science fiction or fantasy movies, perhaps he should have declined to review this film? The line is dumb, and Portman never figured out how to fit into this series. But "Naboo" is no less weird than "Tatooine," yet somehow an entire generation of filmgoers got past that.But of course he has a point, even though he misses some of the worst dialogue, including this apparently anti-Bush exchange:
Obi-Wan: "Only the Sith deals in absolutes!"  Darth Vader: "When I met you I was but the learner. Now, I am the master."Obi-Wan: "Only a master of evil, Darth." This actually isn't the only appropriation of a Bush quote from the early days of the war on terrorism. There is also Chancellor-cum-Emperor Palpatine's line before the soon-to-be-defunct Senate declaring, "our resolve has never been stronger!" If you've forgotten, this echoes President Bush's opening line in his 2002 State of the Union speech. There is only one problem. If you want to cast Palpatine as Bush and the Empire as the United States, then you have to see the Jedi Council as al Qaeda and the Jedi Temple as the Middle Eastern madrassas. (I was quoted on Beltway Buzz making this point last week.) Somehow, I don't think Lucas intended that. Then there are his comments on the movie at Cannes. It's been quickly forgotten that Lucas was asked a truly moronic question: "Is George Bush's America the Evil Empire?"   So perhaps Lucas' moronic response about Nixon and Vietnam being the real beginning of an "Evil Empire" can be forgiven. But not entirely. Lucas forgets (as many do) that Nixon did not begin Vietnam; he ended it, even if badly. He added that Nixon wanted to run for a third term ... which is curious, considering he had to remove himself from office halfway through his second. And, oh yeah, didn't Ronald Reagan famously apply the "EE" epithet to the actually-evil Soviet Union? But whatever. Canada's National Post was one of the few outlets to point out that Lucas concluded on a slightly more sane note, saying the political issues in the film were "more about Caesar, Napoleon and Hitler than it is about anything here."And anyway, even if he'd wanted to make this film a statement about American foreign policy, Podhoretz is onto something: the clunky dialogue obscures any clarity Lucas might have intended. So, you might be asking, what did I like about this movie?  I liked Ewan McGregor. Always have in this series. About twenty minutes in, I said to myself: Oh yeah, it's Renton from "Trainspotting" — and then I went back to enjoying his performance as Obi-Wan. I liked Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine. I liked watching Hayden Christensen — much better in this than the last one — wrestle with his existential dilemma and then realize the horrific path he's taken. I liked looking at Natalie Portman, acting difficulties notwithstanding. I liked the Wookie (what, "Wookiee"?) planet and their battle with the droids, even if it was too short. I liked General Greivous, even if his four lightsabers really underscored just how much more lightsaber Lucas thinks he needs to show to keep people interested.I liked the second hour better than the first. To paraphrase a musician character from an entirely different sort of science fiction film, the second half of "Revenge of the Sith" really cooked. I liked seeing, to the extent that Lucas could muster continuity, the prequels move toward the original trilogy. I liked the slaughter of the Jedis, plenty. Very dark. I enjoyed watching the Republic fall apart, much as I enjoyed watching the Titanic sink, the world end in The Stand and, most importantly, the rebellion's nadir in The Empire Strikes Back. It's true there's nothing as morbidly satisfying in this movie as Han Solo being lowered into the carbonite freeze, nor Luke choosing to fall to his expected death rather than join Darth Vader in ruling the galaxy, but it was close enough.  I'll have to see this again, and perhaps my opinion of the film will decline upon second viewing. For the time being, I'll agree with pretty much everything written by Vodkapundit's Will Collier. And as Collier later quoted from science fiction author Orson Scott Card:
P.S. — For an almost completely opposite, but totally defensible reaction, check out my old friend Chase Melendez's post at his blog. The permalinks don't seem to be working, so check out "The Long Slow Death of my Inner Youngling" Sunday, May 22, 2005
THE CANARD RETURNS This town, huh? I mean really. I'm glad to be back and all, sure. While I had two fantastic weeks in Oregon going to friends' parties and wedding parties and favored watering holes, eventually I was ready to throw myself back into my work. And said throwing is why I haven't updated this blog, though I've been back for the better part of a week.  Still, this town. My first day back, I was overtired from travel and, since it looked like I'd be a little bit late if I took the Metro down to Foggy Bottom as usual, I decided to hail a cab. Except, the ATM machine at the 24-hour mart a block away was out of commission. I had to walk several blocks to get money out of 7-11, and ended up being more than a little bit late.I've been working like almost non-stop on a major freelance project, and despite using the name of a highly respected news organization to land the proper interviews, a surprisingly large number of important places have completely failed to return my calls. (Heritage, this means you.)  Then early Saturday morning -- 4am -- early I got a call from Beltway Buzz, on his way to the airport. Turns out a water main at the bottom of the street went bust in a major way. This is on one corner of the mercury-ridden Cardozo High; I think the block is cursed. I walked down there with a drink in hand and chatted up the officers on the scene. Water rushed out of broken concrete, flooding the intersecction. The good news is that I slept late into Saturday afternoon and missed the water outage. The bad news is it's now just before noon on Sunday and I still don't have hot water.This morning I also woke up to another not-so-pleasant surprise: no Internet. Apparently Comcast decided to schedule a service "upgrade" for the same time I had planned to finish up this freelance work. A notice ahead of time would have been appreciated, thanks.  Which is not to say the week has been all bad: I managed to squeeze in a midnight showing of Episode III this week, and like the man behind Blog, I enjoyed it. My reaction will be posted soon enough. On Friday I picked up my first new television in over seven years, going from a 12-inch TV that hasn't worked properly since forever to a 32" behemoth that makes everything else in this apartment look miniature. And I became a convert to the "alc/energy" drink Sparks, which tastes like Orange Jell-O and works like a vodka and Red Bull. Worth a try, if you can find a bar that carries it.It's back to the project for now. Regular posting should resume later today or tomorrow. And I should have a couple of interesting announcements before too long. Thursday, May 05, 2005
LET'S DO THE HIATUS AGAIN The night before last, I was too busy watching the greatness that is "Cannonball Run" to announce: I am leaving for two weeks time, to visit friends back home, watch a friend assume the shackles of matrimony, and drink real microbrews (Widmer Hefeweizen and Rogue Dead Guy are the only Oregon beers readily available in DC; no wonder I drink so much more hard liquor than I used to). Last night I was too busy out with Queen Autumn and Cuponoodles and a few others (without personal blogs) to announce: I have already left. It's fairly unlikely I'll be writing much about Washington, DC until the middle of May, so it's time to go hiatal. Back soon. Tuesday, May 03, 2005
REVELATIONS Is it news to you that Brandon loves George W. Bush? This must be a new development. And a disturbing one at that. Apparently Frank loves George W. Bush, too. Don't ask me if he loves him "like that." Because I think he might. Not Tim, though. Oh no. For Tim it is much worse indeed. A SWIPE IN REVERSE A few weeks ago I welcomed Brian Beutler to the blogosphere by quoting him in a less than complimentary manner. A few days later, he weighed in on my HaloScan comment board. Having found his contribution, I will share it with you now: Oh come on now! Where's your imagination? I think that the little laughs I muster when I read the incompetent submissions we get (some of which get published) do indeed qualify as schadenfreude. You see, I don't laugh just because the content is weak. I laugh because someone somewhere thought the piece was golden. Is that sort of self-delusion not their own misfortune?Well, at least there were worse articles in that issue than mine. If "the content is weak," maybe the Monthly should find new editors and pay them a living wage. Does Charlie Peters know what these people are up to? All in all, it sure sounds like a pretty crummy magazine. Second, although he claims to have removed the post, it's still there all right. And it should stay where it is. It's one of those unwritten rules of the blogosphere: don't delete posts.* Some disagree, but they tend to get e-mails about it. But I harbor no ill will toward you, Brian Beutler. After all, if we Beutlers can't stick together, what chance will we stand against the Smiths, the Joneses, and the Robertses? Or the Nguyens? The Hartleys? If ever we cross paths, Mr. Beutler, the first beer is on me. _____ Unless, say, your job depends on it. |
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