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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Thursday, June 30, 2005
WHEELCHAIR ASSASSINS? SueAndNotU, whom I don't know at all but seems to live a few blocks from me, reports something about the U Street neighborhood I've certainly noticed: There's no delicate way to put this. It seems this little corner of our nation's capital is, of late, and wherefore I know not, infested with a gang of motorized wheelchair thugs. ... They're young, they're mean, and they all have matching motorized wheelchairs in which they haul ass down the avenue, occassionally twirling around, 80s breakdance style, except um, parapalegically instead of on backs.I live above U on 13th Street, and every once in awhile when I'm walking one way or the other, barrelling down the street at speeds in excess of fifteen miles per hour (and sometimes in excess of that) here comes this young African-American man with a ginormous boom box mounted on the back of his wheelchair. For reals. Via Yglesias on TypePad. Tuesday, June 28, 2005
WASHINGTONIENNE DOES THE WEEKLY STANDARD  Kanishka and the guy from DCSOB seem to have been won over by Jessica Cutler, better known as the Washingtonienne, the author of one short-lived blog and one apparently better-than-expected book. But I'm not buying it. Among some surprisingly positive reviews, one that actually persuades me of the opposite is by Judy Bachrach in the latest Weekly Standard. Not only does the book sound bad, but Bachrach's review is one of the most jaw-droppingly wrongheaded book reviews I've seen in a serious periodical. Because I can't make a final call on "The Washingtonienne" without reading it (unlikely) I'm prepared at this point to pronounce Bachrach more of an airhead than Jessica Cutler. Bachrach begins: "How sad is that?" a young female character observes in Jessica Cutler's roman-a-clef, after spotting George Stephanopolous and James Carville across a crowded Palm restaurant. "Those are the biggest celebrities Washington has to offer, and they're not even attractive."Wow. That's such an original thought. Besides, the exact phrase was used by P.J. O'Rourke in 2002, and it's been attributed to him since. O'Rourke is even a contributing editor for the Standard. I wonder if he's picked up his copy this week. Having lost it in the very first paragraph, Bachrach just plows ahead: Ever wonder why, when you phone your local congressman, no one, however low-level or clueless, bothers to answer? Cutler's book is full of dialogue that provides useful insights into this problem.Pardon? What problem would this be? I've been calling offices on the Hill with some regularity for a couple years now — quite a bit in just the past two months, actually — and I am completely unaware of this as being a problem. Did Bachrach actually call any Senate offices, or is she just taking Cutler's word for it?  Bachrach is thrilled with what sounds to me for all the world like rather pedestrian (not to mention prurient) observances. Here's one she quotes, the first in a series of bad calls — commence fisking:"Like, duh, of course I was immature. I was half his age! That's why he was f—ing [verbatim] me instead of his wife, remember?"By this point, Bachrach can't even make consecutive sentences agree: Yes, that's the joy of this novel. The rest stems from figuring out who in this novel is actually Who. Here the author displays a bracing lack of imagination.Let me get this straight: A principal "joy" of Cutler's writing is her "lack of imagination"? That's a strange way of making the sale. And Bachrach just sinks lower:  "I found him chatting up some drunk woman who looked like a goblin up close," Cutler writes of an aging lover who runs into a female network correspondent. "She had a beak of a nose, funny lips, and bad skin. The thick layer of makeup she was wearing did nothing to cover the horrible craters all over her cheeks."Why making fun of Andrea Mitchell's looks is such a hoot, I'm not sure. Possibly Bachrach loves the bitch-slap because she's not the target? (I'll let someone else pursue that argument.) If all Cutler observes is that the most important people in Washington are less attractive than they were back in Manhattan, then you'll have to forgive me if I don't rush over to Amazon and buy it right now. She should get it over with and move back to New York. (And she can take James F. from why.i.hate.dc with her.) Perhaps a better question is why Bachrach is even writing for the Standard at all. She's a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, an eager profiler of Michael Moore and very vocal against the Iraq war. (She also looks like a Washingtonienne grown long in the tooth. Run with it, it's yours.) I'm all for magazines opening up their pages to writers of different political stripes, but she's not a good fit with the Weekly Standard. More importantly, she just isn't any good. On a related note, I've said, if not written before, that the marginally famous Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette gets invited to speak on way too many panels and television news segments about blogs. Today Duncan Black of Atrios/Eschaton, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, Mike Krempasky of Red State and others testified at the FEC. So who did Fox News interview for their story? Why, Ana Marie Cox, of course. All I can think of to say is: Arglebargle! At least her book doesn't seem to be going so well right now. Thursday, June 23, 2005
I'M RUNNING AND I WON'T TOUCH GROUND  It's been a very busy last few weeks. Even eventful, but eventually I'll experience more events than cutting-and-pasting lines of text and code over and over. Not much to say about it yet; I'll have more next week.Tomorrow after work I'm off to NYC for the first time since the RNC nearly ten months ago. Yet it'll be the last full weekend there for Jason George, a man with two first names, who years ago unmasked my imposterity and is now moving to Chicago, where he starts reporting full-time for the Tribune next month. But first we'll take Manhattan until it takes us, and then we'll take Jersey City. I'll try not to fall down any staircases this time. The Buzz probably won't fall off any fire escapes. Then I'll be back by Saturday evening to sit down with a beer or six for an evening with what the kids these days call "MT." In the meantime, I'll plead guilty to self-promotion. Friday, June 17, 2005
HEY PIG, YEAH YOU I present to you the result of efforts by the denizens of Washington, DC, aged 10-13:  I recently found the pig above facing NNW along Connecticut near the cavernous Q Street Dupont exit, put there by "DCPS Middle School Students" (in conjunction with Capital One Bank) in a project called "$tash Your Cash." Now I present to you the result of efforts by the denizens of Washington, DC, aged 15-?:  This was spray-painted (obviously) on the sidewalk opposite the Scottish Rites Temple on 16th between R and S at Riggs, presumably sometime in early 2001, just a few blocks away. Strange progress around here. Thursday, June 16, 2005
BATMAN BEGINS  Not too shabby. I'm much more Desson Thomson than Ann Hornaday. But I'm not quite Rober Ebert (thankfully). UPDATE — And I definitely won't go so far as Brandon R. Hartley, Esq. Wednesday, June 15, 2005
PANDA-MONIUM  DCist breathlessly reports: "Mei Xiang may be with child! We repeat: Mei Xiang may be with child!" If you cannot tell by the picture at right — or the name — Mei Xiang is a Giant Panda (which is a raccoon, not a bear) at the National Zoo. Everyone thinks they're adorable, and everyone wants them to have even more adorable babies, but by now we've all heard a million times that pandas are basically the Shakers of the animal kingdom. Well, not everyone thinks they're so delightful. There's also this commenter at DCist:I've always found these giant pandas to be overrated. Give me a standard-issue black bear, some tranquilizers, and a can of white spray paint, and I'll make you a "panda" that will have lots and lots of sex.P.S. — Speaking of DCist, here's my latest on the Washington Nationals and the District's little-known landmarks. LEFT COLD Although I've only heard maybe four or five songs by Coldplay, I'm fairly sure my animosity toward them is firmly set in place. I've always been vaguely disinterested in them, and with the new album "X&Y" out, I knew I'd have to hear more about them for awhile. But I'm pleased to say this has all turned out quite well for me, if not my friends and colleagues who look well upon the band. First, Pitchfork gave it a measly 4.9 (which sure beats the astonishing 0.4 they gave Weezer, but still). Now Slate weighs in, mostly to my satisfaction: There are 20 million reasons why a band sells 20 million records, but in the case of England's Coldplay...Slatester Hua Hsu writes, and the first one is:  They sound a bit like Radiohead, only you don't have to think as much.Yep. This is the main reason my relationship to Coldplay went from non-existent to indifferent to hostile (the other reason being that I can't get the piano from "Clocks" out of my head. A bit of "Dramamine" should cure this (Update: Better now.)). Assuming that people can get the same thing out of Coldplay as they can from Radiohead — I certainly don't — but without the experimental soundscapes, inventive songwriting and lyrics just elliptical enough to be spooky but not to be overly confusing, then what are they getting? Just a melancholy British rock band? Precisely, says Hsu. But! There's value added: Whittled down to lines on a résumé, Coldplay ... seems like a band worth rallying behind. The band members strike a modest, good-natured, and workmanlike pose; they don't allow their songs to be used in commercials; they play plenty of gigs for altruistic reasons; and Martin himself has been an outspoken advocate on behalf of clean water, forests, and fair trade—and against poverty, President George Bush, the war in Iraq, AIDS, and handgun violence.  Mind you, this is meant as a compliment. Of course, this is exactly what frustrated me about "Hail to the Thief" — bringing politics into their music partly changed what Radiohead was about. Their albums had always trended toward philosophical questions and circumstances, but they never took sides in something so crass as a political campaign. They had touched on politics with "Electioneering," but even there, references to "cattle prods and the IMF" seemed almost a random formulation, and the overall perspective was one of cynicism about politics as a whole. Apparently Thom Yorke is over that. It was like George Lucas putting thinly-veiled anti-Bush rhetoric into his dialogue: I put up with the annoyance, but that's not what I came for. Meanwhile, Coldplay's Chris Martin just heroically denounced the evils of corporate capitalism a few weeks back. If his band is writing industry-friendly guitar pop whose politics I'll just have to ignore, I can think of dozens (and dozens) of rock bands I'd go to before Coldplay for that. Not to mention for something approaching a unique sound. Hsu does end with a thumbs down, citing the fact that the new album is a disappointment: If it's not the sadness of worldly affairs that gnaw at the aching heart of Coldplay's songs—and the lyrics suggest not—it can't possibly be his own life, either. Maybe it's those bastard shareholders. Worse yet: Maybe it's nothing at all.Good enough for me. P.S. — I'd be remiss not to remind everyone of the fact that, regardless of eventual overall record sales, a few weeks ago Coldplay was beaten on the British charts by a ringtone. Sunday, June 12, 2005
TYSON-MCBRIDE, APPARENTLY HERE IN THE DISTRICT  Earlier this evening, Mike Tyson dragged his anemic "comeback" fight vs. someone named Kevin McBride (think Ben Affleck off the Atkins Diet) to the MCI Center in downtown Washington. I didn't watch.* There is little surprise in the news that Old Man Dynamite simply gave up after the sixth round, unable to get up off his stool when the next bell rang. If you think you barely noticed, I'm the one who lives here. Thirty words and one sentence into the first NYT dispatch, the Times' sportswriter declares:If this does not convince the public that Tyson (50-6) is washed up, perhaps nothing will.But will it convince Tyson? Or the fight-promoters willing to stand him up against any old Bald Bull, or maybe even a King Hippo? Sometimes the Times' clueless news analysis is harmless enough to be funny. UPDATE WAY TOO LATE TO MEAN ANYTHING, BUT WHATEVER — So, later I read that Tyson himself said he was done. We'll see. _____ * The last Tyson PPV I saw was vs. Lennox Lewis at Andrew Adams' house on Hilyard, the one FLOG™, I, and a whole grip of degenerate UO pseudo-scholars nearly moved into in late 1999 before settling on The Plantation. Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Monday, June 06, 2005
DO BANK THERMOMETERS DREAM OF ELECTRICAL STORMS? At about 2:30 p.m. today the District was was bright and sunny — 99° Farenheit on the electronic bank clock/thermometer in Dupont Circle. Right now it's thunder, rain and lightning up here in SoCo — but the clouds are moving fast and soon the storm will move on or break apart. I should have a digital camera soon, but not soon enough to catch this awesome electrical storm. Yes, I'm blogging about the weather. Thanks for reading. Sunday, June 05, 2005
LINKS FOR A WARM AND SUNNY UNPRODUCTIVE SUNDAY AFTERNOON  Outside right now it's 86 degrees and humid. Conditions are only a bit milder in my apartment, with the AC on full blast. I haven't closed the heavy balcony doors in days. Only the screen keeps the critters out, and then not always perfectly. Last night was a party in the hood hosted by NFLL and Digital Influence. Transportation was provided by Beltway Buzz in partnership with a shady cab driver who pulled over at one point to trade jokes with his friends. Drank lime-less Coronas and gobbled not-yet-set Jello shots. Met UberMeg. Shady cab driver picked us up again, only to deposit us far from U Street, down by the Sign of the Whale in the so-called Golden Triangle. Altogether there was too much walking back across town as the bars closed last night. Today, I made chicken and rice and watched baseball.The Nationals have won their 4th straight game, battling back impressively, even astonishingly, after a series of injuries and falling under .500 a week ago. Not only that, by beating the Marlins again today, they've retaken first in the National League East for the first time since early April. Better yet, the one-run wonders won 6-3, partly on the strength of two runs by MLB Rookie of the Month Ryan Church (who took a friendly pie in the face from Jose Guillen while being interviewed on the field minutes after the game). And now, some links: 
Saturday, June 04, 2005
WATCHING "THE BLUES BROTHERS" ON AMC AT 5:00 A.M. ON A SATURDAY  Belushi is the greatest casualty of the early 1980s Hollywood era, and of SNL too. "The Blues Brothers," I could argue at great length, is his pinnacle (and possibly that of all SNL-alums-not-named-Bill-Murray as well). I mean great length. (Some day, I will.) Adding in part to the legend, they were all coked up for the whole thing. But it really doesn't come across while you're watching it. And why? The sunglasses! Think: Carrie Fisher has no shades, and does she not seem the most (apologies, if any aunts are checking in) fucked-up?Overlooked: The film really does succeed as a musical. And it succeeds wildly, however unconventionally (or better yet, non-traditionally). I'll certainly make no claim to be an aficionado of Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, John Lee Hooker, various studio musicians from that scene, etc. I'm best-acquainted with James Brown, but then mostly thanks to a burned-MP3 best-of collection and headlines. (I am of course more familiar with the non-blues legend supporting cast — think Fisher, think Spielberg, think Twiggy and Oz, think the guy who played the head Illinois Nazi, Henry Gibson.) My personal affection for the blues as a type of music (let alone my appreciation as a subject in an undergraduate-level rock history class) goes as far as a Robert Johnson definitive double-disc that I enjoy but never listen to. Yet I love every number in the movie. The whole cast gets into the groove, and pretty much every version of a classic song represented here kicks ass, from Jake and Elwood doing "Stand By Your Man" before a crowd of weepy rednecks to the star turns — especially Aretha Franklin, who can kick your ass — and Belushi and Aykroyd belting "Jailhouse Rock" to their newly-fellow inmates in the movie's closing credits. That medley of Charles, Franklin, Calloway, everyone else, and the whole crew, was terrific. I'm trying to download it via LimeWire now. A must-have. As I said, it succeeds as a musical. Plus, it's proof that even Dan Aykroyd (Come on, two (2) Y's? Please.) was once funny.  And while I could be wrong, I do believe the movie was the first in a still-extant semi-genre of buddy comedies wherein the plot demands said buddies raise a staggering amount of money for a cause near (and dear) to their hearts. Think "Waynes World 2" and "Dirty Work" for starters. If you know of any earlier variations on this story, drop me a line. It's not Shakespeare — heck, it's nearly a declaration of laziness — but it nevertheless remains an intuitive plot device that's never been given its proper due.At the very least, "The Blues Brothers" used all the cliches now common to many Hollywood comedies, it used them first (or close enough) and it used them best (I would argue). Only one question remains: Is it better than "Back to the Future"? P.S. — This honestly started as 50 words. If you happened to be checking in between 5:00 a.m. and about 6:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, you would have been privileged to see a naturally-occuring blog post in its native habitat. One has to be really dedicated to witness such things. READING THE CORNER AGAIN — a.k.a. NRO ON LSD  Onetime, I stopped reading Instapundit. Nowadays, I'm back to reading it with some regularity. I also sort of stopped reading NRO's The Corner ... but after a few months, I find myself reading it again. Observed yesterday:A voice in the wilderness:
Am I lame for passing up invites right and left for a while now? Or just too cool for g-mail? Posted at 06:21 AM
8. Get these squirrels off of me! Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine...: Oh, no this list has gotten away from me.... 10. Freedom! Horrilbe Freedom!  Even I can put aside typos and ask: Is this like jazz-writing, free-form, impressionistic? Or just incoherent? Read carefully. This, too:
34. Chop Suey was invented in America. 35. The Shah of Iran gets a bad wrap. 36. Or, I suppose that's rap. My second guess is acid. Friday, June 03, 2005
IP-SO FACTO  I usually ignore "Inside Politics," but it'll be gone from the tube forever when its last hour runs out today, and today I have to concede that I will miss it. It's usually just background for me, but it's less background than "Crossfire" — which is gone for good today as well (but which everyone knows actually died when they moved the studio to the GWU campus). For a true political junkie "Inside Politics" was the essential show. Yes, Judy Woodruff was bland. Yes, Bill Schneider just repeats the conventional wisdom. Yes, Bruce Morton is something less than the poor man's Charles Kuralt. But I still watch it.And what comes after is surely going to be worse. Patrick Ruffini has it exactly right: Inside Politics was the only CNN program left that was worth watching. But that's not what really bothers me about all this. It's what they decided to do with the IP time slot: turn it over to quite possibly the most boring personality in television today, Wolf Blitzer -- three hours of him. Good move, going with a guy who makes B-roll of Greenspan testimony look exciting.Of course, the one person most deserving of criticism here is CNN president Jonathan Klein and — as Mickey Kaus has argued for months (go here and just keep Ctrl-F-ing) — his questionable insistence that storytelling (which sounds to me like hours more Christiane Amanpour visiting remote Central Asian villages) as the ne plus ultra of televison news. P.S. Am I the only one here under 30 who remembers Charles Kuralt? Thursday, June 02, 2005
JUST SAY YES Come on, Seth Stevenson, you can't just say that Slate having you review that Sudoku game is "like when the New Republic got that dude to try crack" and then get away with just linking to FindArticles, which is completely sub. req.! How inconsiderate. Good thing, then, that (somehow) the full text of the 1989 Nation article, to which Stevenson sort-of links, is now available on this blog over here. It's by now-veteran journalist Jefferson Morley and details the fallout, around Washington and nationwide, from his original piece earlier that month — which is itself unfortunately locked behind TNR's fearsome double-subscription wall. THREE DAYS OF THE Bob Woodward's much-anticipated personal story behind Deep Throat, "How Mark Felt Became Deep Throat"has been available online since late last night. It's damned interesting reading, even if Woodward never did learn how to write properly. Meanwhile, is it just me or does the New York Times seem to have a mild case of "Woodward envy" in the following passage? For years, The Washington Post has called Mr. Woodward on the very biggest stories, but in a way almost unheard of at other major news organizations. He holds the rank of assistant managing editor, and in recent years alone has scored many scoops, including the disclosure after the Sept. 11 attacks that chilling instructions had been found in the luggage of one of the ringleaders, Mohammed Atta, and an investigation of Vice President Al Gore's prodigious fund-raising in the runup to the 2000 election.Where's your Deep Throat, Pinch? For that matter, where's your Woodward? P.S. Last night, the Washington Canard. This morning, Jonah Goldberg. Wednesday, June 01, 2005
ISN'T IT IRONIC? (IT'S NOT) Here's Washington Post media writer/CNN talking head Howard Kurtz on "Paula Zahn" last night, courtesy The Hotline: It's ironic, after three decades, that the Washington Post ended up getting scooped on its own secret by Vanity Fair.But there's nothing ironic about it. This couldn't be their story. The Post was ethically obligated not to name Mark Felt as Deep Throat first. A few top Posties had sworn not to reveal the name until after his death; when the news got around this morning, Woodward and company had to agree to break that prior agreement before moving forward. But the Post should worry not: They'll have about a week to milk the glory days before everyone is completely sick of it. And then there are still more questions. And of course, Woodward already has a book. THE END TIMES? "R. Musil" asks some interesting questions about the Okrent-Krugman slapfight and the New York Times' inexplicable decision to lock up their columnists behind a subscription wall. One almost wonders if the Times is taking that old yarn about the "most valuable real estate in journalism" a little too seriously. |
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