I'm trying to think of what could more comprehensively declare "I am a navel-gazing cretin" than this and failing. pic.twitter.com/kNnwU5SLnv
— Big Sexy Jeb! Lund (@Mobute) August 21, 2015
Not the Onion, apparently.
Because Kids, These Days!:
One of the things that had put me in mind of adoption was a sense of alienation from the younger generation. They seemed politically not the way they should be as young people. I thought people were supposed to be idealistic and angry. And they seemed kind of cynical and not very angry. At least not in any way that was accessible to me.
Also, of course, women. And Twitter. Both so irritating, especially in combination!
How many people do you suppose forwarded that interview to Oprah?
Wonder if the Sad/Rabid Puppies will nominate him for a Hugo award next year?
Derelict
So wrong on so many levels. Not least of which is, why would you let something like this out in public? This demonstrates a lack of self awareness not seen since George W. Bush left public life.
Derelict
@Derelict: Great! I’m trapped in moderation. For a comment with no curse words other than the name of a former president.
Major Major Major Major
Screw Franzen.
Day 2 of nine gay men of varying shades of nonmonogamy sharing a cabin in Tahoe and still no slasher flick :(
kped
Never read a book of his. Saw him on Bill Maher’s HBO show a couple of years ago, and thought he was basically the equivalent of Tom Friedman in terms of his “thinking”. Pure centrist BS with no real knowledge of how the world works for real people.
Needless to say, I won’t be reading any of his books.
EBT
Sounds like you are having a pleasant weekend major.
Mike J
@kped: Thee are a lot of horrible human beings who a great writers. Franzen has actually written some good stuff.
geg6
@kped:
I read the one he dissed Oprah over. Obsessed white upper middle class male angst, in the most irritating possible fashion. I think I read Middlesex right around the same time and thinking that Oprah could have made a much better pick. I hated Franzen’s book and every character in it that I’ve tried to forget it ever since. Sadly, I’ve only succeeded in forgetting the name of the book and I’m not going to lose that small peace of mind by googling it.
satby
It’s a beautiful day here in Michigassippi and a stomach bug, exhaustion, and the wasp nest on my deck are keeping me inside. We might as well have a hard frost, this summer kind of stank in my world.
Hope you all are enjoying a better one!
geg6
@Mike J:
Not that I could tell. But granted, that was his first big splash, the one I read. It was awful.
Major Major Major Major
Also: speaking of books, I finally got off the wait-list for that book Look Who’s Back at the library. It’s about Hitler randomly reappearing and getting really popular because people think he’s a brilliant performance artist. Can’t wait to read it.
FlyingToaster
Yeesh.
I live in a town without any bookstores. I can drive to Cambridge or Newton for indies, and to Burlington or Natick for B&N. But I’d never heard of this moron before now.
How did this asshole get published?… Oh, right, that’s why I became a stay-at-home mom, because I didn’t want to work for [redacted] or [redacted] or the epicenter of evil [redacted] educational publishers anymore.
geg6
@Major Major Major Major:
Is he called Trump in that book?
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Is this something on the order of history repeating itself as farce?
Rex Tremendae
I still think The Corrections is a great novel.
gogol's wife
@Mike J:
I thoroughly enjoyed The Connections while I was reading it, but I can’t remember a thing about it and haven’t been moved to read any of his later novels.
Now Hilary Mantel, there’s a writer.
ETA: Obviously I didn’t even remember the title. The Corrections, right.
Schlemazel
@Major Major Major Major:
That sounds horrid! I am off to see if the local library lists it online
EDIT:
Good news / bad news
There are no requests for the book yet so mine is the first. But they have not yet shelved the book so I have to wait anyway.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: I think it’s more an indictment of celebrity culture.
BGinCHI
Franzen’s curse is that he is a terrific writer with nothing to say about people no one should give a shit about.
It is a curse he has righteously earned.
Amir Khalid
@BGinCHI:
Do such people exist?
PurpleGirl
Having gotten some house chores done this morning, I went to a P.C. Richard (local appliance chain) in Sunnyside (Queens) and bought a Samsung TV. Also took the extended warranty this time. TheTV will be delivered tomorrow and they will take away the sick Sharp. I will have a TV picture again…Yay.
Now trying to decide on something else to do, maybe some decluttering.
shell
Huh, Writers These Days!I
I tried reading The Corrections, but always seemed I needed a playbook to keep track of all the characters. Biiiig list.
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: No.
schrodinger's cat
Never read anything by Franzen, not a huge fan of Oprah either. I had a rough week and am feeling so very tired.
bystander
@PurpleGirl: We love our Samsung. Best quality picture in our house. We finally bought a sound bar to beef up the sound, tho, but I guess the accessories are an integral part of the marketing ploy, er, plan.
Wonder if Socialist Bernie Sanders understands why MSNBC would cover Trump’s rally live and somehow not cover Sanders’ Portland rally. He had a reported 19,000+.
FlyingToaster
@Amir Khalid: Most of them are surnamed Bush. A few are surnamed ibn Saud. You can fail to care about any of the GOP candidates and retain your humanity :)
Captain C
So essentially, Franzen is saying, “I don’t understand the youth of today, therefore, in order to do so, I’m thinking of taking on a huge responsibility for another human being that will last at least 18 years and dominate my life (unless I’m a total a$$hole).”
It doesn’t sound like he thought that one through.
satby
@schrodinger’s cat: Right there with you!
Steeplejack (phone)
@PurpleGirl:
Congratulations! No doubt a load off your mind.
What model did you get? There are some sites that give good prescriptions for adjusting the settings from the (often awful) factory defaults.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@geg6: I give Franzen full marks for dissing Oprah. That’s it.
If you want an idea about just what a dick Franzen is, read this. The author makes a point about how Franzen tends to take stories away from dead rivals.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Rex Tremendae:
As movie fans can tell you, it’s possible for someone to be a good artist and a horrible human being at the same time.
Germy Shoemangler
Warner Bros. announced a Carl Sagan biopic is in production. Sagan’s wife is producer.
Oatler.
I don’t believe people fully appreciate how “Sci-Fi oriented” RWNJs are. Heinlein and Yoda are their philosophers. Not a dis on SF but it’s proof that these armchair warriors learned their firebreathing from game consoles and TV screens, while still smarting from the wedgies of childhood.Fearsome are the mighty taps of the keyboard commandoes.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
The tweets, found at Slate, in response are terrific:
His New Yorker editor, Henry Finder, was (to my mind) far too kind:
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
Starring who? Because no actor comes immediately to mind who could pass for Sagan.
rikyrah
this is a funny post. between it and the replies, it’s give you stomach cramps funny.
VSB
@VerySmartBros
The One Superpower All Black People Possess? Detecting Blackness http://bit.ly/1WJwagr
Germy Shoemangler
@Amir Khalid: I haven’t seen any casting information yet. Perhaps it’s too early in the process. I believe a script is being developed, and a production team.
He had an interesting life (to say the least) and was a cannabis enthusiast, joining Rick Steves in that group of folks I’d never expect.
Keith G
Decades ago, I got into an heated argument with my high school English teacher (early 1970s) as he was carrying on about artists and performers (the example of Jane Fonda come to mind) whom he could not tolerate due to their views and life choices.
It struck me as a terrible way to appraise a creative effort that one might otherwise enjoy. That is one of the best lessons I learned from that class.
gogol's wife
@bystander:
Now that we have a Samsung, we understand Sherlock much better, because we can read all the little messages on the screen. Bro.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Keith G:
Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby are great films. Roman Polanski is a creepy rapist who preys on young teenage girls.
It would be nice if the world were simple and both of these things were not true at the same time, but they are.
schrodinger's cat
Caturday Open thread needs kitteh!
Germy Shoemangler
@Mnemosyne (tablet): And the only nice Marx brothers (from what I’ve read) were Harpo and Gummo, and yet what would the world be without Groucho and Chico (and sometimes Zeppo)?
rikyrah
from TOD
http://theobamadiary.com/2015/08/22/west-wing-week-a-look-ahead/#comment-1387379
gogol's wife
@Germy Shoemangler:
Wasn’t Zeppo nice? He was best friends with Barbara Stanwyck, so I thought he must be a mensch.
PhoenixRising
@rikyrah: I hurt myself laughing. So thanks, I needed that. This story has been bugging me from several angles…
1) I’m white but my child didn’t catch that from living with me, her ethnic heritage is still written all over her for those who are literate in such things
2) My BFF in elementary grades was a kid who looked a LOT like Shaun did, with a white mom, who was treated badly by both groups until junior high, when she suddenly became Black, rather than ‘mixed’. She was called a lot of bad names. In Ohio, which is north of Kentucky.
/still not Black, despite the fact that I also have this power. It’s really a ‘where were you raised?’ thing…I saw that 7th grade pic of Shaun and couldn’t see how anyone would suggest that he wasn’t Black or as we said growing up, ‘mixed’. That is just sheer ignorance. Anyone who has spent time around Black people can clearly see…but that’s the problem right there.
Germy Shoemangler
@gogol’s wife: He was caustic like Groucho. Gummo and Harpo were the sweet ones. But Zeppo could be funny as hell; he just wasn’t given the chance onscreen.
Suzanne
I loved Franzen’s book “Freedom”.
If I only enjoyed art made by good people, my life would be much sadder.
Schlemazel
@Germy Shoemangler:
And we never would have heard of the Marx Brothers if Groucho had not kept making them unemployable and Chico such a bad card player.
A great story when Groucho told it.
gogol's wife
@Germy Shoemangler:
Well, I think you can be caustic and still be nice. I’m sure Barbara Stanwyck wouldn’t mind a little causticity.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Very true. Did you make the 2001 screening the other night? How was it?
Keith G
So, Joe Biden made a special trip back to DC and took a lunch time meeting with Elizabeth Warren today.
Interesting move. A few weeks ago many here were sure that the reports of a run-curious VP were wildly incorrect.
Do ya think Joe might be getting the feeling (or info) that HRC’s troubles are not going away?
RSA
Can Franzen never have come across Kant?
I don’t think we should just a work of art mainly by the morality or immorality of the artist, but I think it’s good to be careful that the artist’s skill doesn’t influence us in a subtle, wrong direction.
Haydnseek
John, I think you’re a great novelist, and sadly under appreciated as an essayist. But I must disagree on this. Anger and cynicism can move mountains. We were angry, which is easy, and also quite cynical about the bullshit coming from the administration and the media at the time, a type of cynicism that I find useful to this day. I was beaten by cops. I was teargassed. I was jailed. Did this end the Viet Nam war any quicker? The historians said it did. I’ll trade you the dent in my skull for your money and fame any day of the week. yeah, I’m in a mood……..
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@PhoenixRising:
As a white person, my suspicion is that a lot of white people can’t see blackness because then they’d have to admit how much miscegenation has gone on in our history and how few “white” people whose families have been here for more than 100 years or so are actually white by the one-drop rule. Especially in the South.
I can’t remember the name of it, but I remember a famous short story by Kate Chopin where a young couple breaks up because the husband finds out (I think via the birth of their first child) that his wife is not 100 percent white. Of course, the kicker at the end of the story is that the reason the child turned out that way is that husband ain’t 100 percent white either, and the family keeps that knowledge as a deep dark secret.
Brachiator
@Germy Shoemangler:
I’ve read this, too. But apparently, as far as comedy goes, Zeppo was a great engineer.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Brachiator:
It was great, though the Stargate sequence made me a little sleepy as it always does. We had the very LA problem of idiots getting up and leaving when the credits started to roll even though the orchestra was still playing. Those of us who stayed gave them a standing ovation for their trouble, at least.
The LA Times review was pretty accurate, if a bit snotty towards movie fans:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-phil-2001-review-20150820-story.html
Germy Shoemangler
@Keith G: Here’s a piece by someone who knew Biden, begging him not to run:
http://kikoshouse.blogspot.com/2015/08/politix-update-i-adore-you-joe-biden.html
schrodinger's cat
If you want something else to think, other all Trump all the time, I also have my first installment of my series on the British rule in India, on what else but the Honourable British East India Company, the most powerful joint stock company ever. A corporation so vile it counted among its opponents, Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Edmund Burke.
Haydnseek
@shell: Then I suggest that you avoid Tolstoy. Your brain might get all splody…….
PurpleGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: Cute kitteh.
The rescuer/shelter operator I know in CT has bought a house and has begun moving kittehs and momcats into it. Looking forward to when she restarts her kitten cam.
Schlemazel
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
I tried making sort of a joke about this a thread or two back suggesting every American have DNA testing & anyone whose DNA was not 100% Northern European would have to register as “colored”. Its the ol “1 drop” rule. Either it went over everyones head or they chose not to respond to it. I think everyone would be very surprised to learn if they follow their DNA back far enough we are all of African descent
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@schrodinger’s cat: Adorables! I hope you and satby both have better weekends than your weeks were.
Haydnseek
@Amir Khalid: Really? There must be billions and billions……..
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
I’ll believe Joe Biden is thinking about running for president when I hear him say, “I am thinking about running for president.” Which, despite all the speculation, he has not said.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@RSA:
Interestingly, Polanski’s films (especially Chinatown and Repulsion) have enormous sympathy towards women who were sexually abused and how that can completely fuck up their lives. But he seems unable (has a compulsion?) to translate that artistic sympathy to his own real-life actions.
And, no, it wasn’t just that one famous time with “Sandra.” Look up his “romance” with Nastassja Kinski to see some really fucked up excuse-making.
Amir Khalid
@Haydnseek:
Nah … Maybe 100 million, tops.
PurpleGirl
@Steeplejack (phone): Yes. I won’t have to worry about disposing of the Sharp now.
The model: UN40J5200
http://www.pcrichard.com/Samsung/Samsung-40inch-Class-Full-HD-1080p-LED-Smart-HDTV/UN40J5200.pcrp?_requestid=2034703
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Schlemazel:
I’ve been thinking of getting one of those Ancestry DNA test kits. Given that one of my ancestors is William Bradford, the first governor of Virginia (which means that one side of my family has been here since the 1600s) I will be astounded if I turn out to be 100 percent European in ancestry. It’s possible, but it doesn’t seem very likely.
Keith G
@Germy Shoemangler: I am not going to try to read his mind or his body language. Joe is an apex political competitor. I bet at the molecular level, he is vibrating with a predilection to run. And I bet he understands why that might not be the best idea.
And still, I can understand the possibility that he and other old warriors of the Democratic Party are beginning to wonder if HRC has allowed herself to jog into a quicksand pit.
If so, there must a plan B and quite frankly, I bet no one views the other declared Democratic contenders as being sufficient. So Joe, maybe with the very behind the scene advice from other important Dems, is thinking about Plan B.
If so, that’s not an unreasonable call.
PurpleGirl
@Schlemazel: I’m sure somewhere in my DNA there are genes from North Africa — my maternal side comes from Sicily which has been a crossroads from Europe to Africa forever.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Wow. The Bowl shows a movie and the critic is snotty towards movie fans. What a moron. But a pretty good review overall.
I know the Bowl has done some movie music before, but I wonder whether they’ve shown silent movies with musical accompaniment?
Germy Shoemangler
@Mnemosyne (tablet): There’s an old vaudeville joke about a woman who had two children and wanted another, but her husband objected because he’d read that every third child born in the world is Chinese.
raven
@PurpleGirl: Ever see this scene with Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken from True Romance?
TRIGGER ALERT: RACIST
PurpleGirl
@Brachiator: The Museum of Modern Art has in the past shown silent movies with live piano music. It’s an interesting experience when you are used to music as part of a sound track. I think I saw The General with a live score.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Brachiator:
They’re going to show E.T. before the end of the season. I know why they’re doing it (John Williams), but I just don’t see it as being as good a fit. 2001 was pretty much perfect for that kind of show, because there’s no music under the dialogue — the two parts are pretty much completely separate. I’m not sure how well having dialogue and live music at the same time would work.
That said, if they ever do a sing-a-long version of Frozen like they’ve done with other musicals, I am so there.
PurpleGirl
@raven: No, I haven’t. I played a little of it.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Brachiator:
Also, too, in defense of the critic, they pretty much echoed something I said to G about 10 minutes into the film when I said, “Why is it that everyone in the middle of the row is showing up late?” Again, semi-acceptable at a movie where there will be previews before the main show, but really freakin’ rude at a live concert where the orchestra is already playing.
Brachiator
@Schlemazel:
Of course, there is no such thing as being 100% Northern European, and even “Northern European” is not meaningful in terms of ethnicity. But the idea of designating someone as “colored” if they didn’t match some arbitrary genetic designation is funny.
This shouldn’t be news to anyone. But it may be more fair to say that these early modern humans possessed enough genetic diversity to explode in all of the various ethnic groups which currently populate the planet.
American Racism Trivia: Being “pure white” in the US includes having some Native American ancestry, because so many of the early colonists intermarried with aboriginals in the 1600s and 1700s.
American Racism Trivia Bonus: If an American claims that they have Portuguese ancestry, but cannot point to any actual Portuguese ancestors, this person’s family is likely of African descent. The Portuguese Gambit has often been used to hide black ancestry.
General Racism Trivia Bonus: Some Portuguese people have African ancestry, even if they are as “white” as snow. Early on in the age of Spanish and Portuguese exploration, people from Portugal mixed with Africans. Even though they may look like other Portuguese, they retain the African sickle cell gene (lots of malaria in parts of Portugal, and the gene conferred some immunity).
Oh yeah, the Basques, who are Northern European, may be genetically distinct from other European populations.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Haven’t there already been sing-along screenings of Frozen? (Not that I’d want to be in a cinema with 200 kids shrieking “Let it gooooo …!”)
raven
@PurpleGirl: The Moors. . .
Debbie
@geg6:
Bless you for those words. When that book was labeled The Great American Novel, I almost lost my mind.
raven
@Brachiator: This is interesting
Tony Gleaton, a photographer who turned his back on a career in New York fashion and embarked on an itinerant artistic quest, documenting the lives of black cowboys and creating images of the African diaspora in Latin America, died on Friday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 67.
“Mr. Gleaton, who was light-skinned with green eyes, said he often had to explain to people that both his parents were black and that he was not biracial, and that the preconceptions people had of him found their way into his work.”
sharl
I’ve never read Franzen, but judging from a number of the criticisms I’ve seen – mostly from women – this tweet from “trans-genre poetics” notable Patricia Lockwood* kinda summarizes the gist of those critiques:
*More on Lockwood in this 2014 NYT Magazine profile, for anyone interested.
rikyrah
uh huh
uh huh
………………………………….
On Martha’s Vineyard, black elites ponder the past year
As Obama vacations on the island, an upper-class gathering grapples with a year of unrest.By Sarah Wheaton
8/22/15 8:02 AM EDT
EDGARTOWN, Mass. – For America’s black elite, this year’s seasonal sojourn to Martha’s Vineyard turned into a soul-searching retreat.
The shooting of a young, unarmed black man in Ferguson, Mo., last year did little to disrupt the annual idyll of upper-class blacks on this island 1,200 miles away. Photos showed President Barack Obama dancing at a soiree for political power couple Vernon and Ann Jordan as Ferguson burned. The next afternoon he delivered an anodyne statement urging calm without mentioning race.
Obama returned this year for his sixth summer in office on Martha’s Vineyard, the island off the Massachusetts coast that has been a vacation destination for upwardly mobile African Americans for more than a century. But this year, many of the black doctors, lawyers, executives, professors and politicians who gather here to enjoy the sunshine, surf and cultural events are grappling with the realization that there may not be quite as much to celebrate as they once hoped.
Yes, the country has been led by a black president for nearly seven years. But images from body cameras and smart phones that have splashed police killings of unarmed black men across televisions and the Internet over the past year have forced the black elite to recognize — along with the rest of America — that their highest tide has left some boats sinking faster than ever.
“Middle-class African-Americans, the upper echelon, need to be cognizant of that,” said Linda D. Gaines, a regular summer resident of Martha’s Vineyard. “We cannot go back to our comfortable abodes and forget the struggle even though we don’t live next-door to less fortunate communities.”
The strides African Americans have taken in the American political establishment are on full display here each year. While Martha’s Vineyard has played host to black leaders for generations – Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X vacationed here – the top figures no longer lead protests. They lead the government.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/marthas-vineyard-black-elite-discussion-racial-tension-121628.html#ixzz3jZrwg2zs
Rex Tremendae
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
That was my point. It’s other people on this thread (e.g., post #4) who are suggesting his assholery makes him not worth reading.
Hal
@rikyrah:
I was laughing about this very subject earlier. Me and my cousins are all bi-racial, white mothers, black fathers, and always talked about be able to tell when someone is, as we said when we were kids, mixed. That’s why I just laughed at the Rachel Dolezhal story. I thought that was very clearly a white woman, and also why I never looked twice at Shaun King.
sukabi
thank god he’s realized his ONLY option to get near a kid is to adopt, but for heavens sake someone should forward his ‘article’ to every adoption agency, kid broker out there… NO WAY this arsehole should be allowed near a kid.
Mike E
@Mnemosyne (tablet): And, goddamn it if The Pianist isn’t a far superior film to Schindler’s List. Heartbreaking.
Our local symphony has been making the movie rounds, doing The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, West Side Story (wow), and coming up, LOTR…I saw a score with “Balrog” written in the notation!
Brachiator
@PurpleGirl:
The old Silent Movie Theater and a couple of others in LA did a number of showings with live small orchestra accompaniment. Great fun. And apparently even in the silent era, deluxe houses would have small orchestras, not just piano or organ music accompanying the films.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Amir Khalid:
There are a lot of movie theater sing-a-longs, but the Hollywood Bowl is a really cool outdoor concert venue, so it’s the location that would make it a must-go:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Bowl
raven
@Brachiator: When they gonna do Quadrophenia?
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: I also thought “Freedom” was great. “The Corrections” was overrated, IMO, but still a decent read. Lots of writers are Grade A assholes.
Debbie
@sharl:
That’s pretty funny. His next book is coming out soon. His narrator will be a young girl. I’m getting it from my local library, and I am confident my dislike will be reinforced.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Thank you.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Brachiator:
The Silent Movie usually did organ accompaniment (I was a regular there before the murder). The Nuart hosted the Clubfoot Orchestra a few times, but for full-on orchestral accompaniment, you usually have to seek out a screening at UCLA’s Royce Hall. They usually do at least one or two a year. They used to have a Mighty Wurlitzer at a theater in El Segundo, but I don’t know if they’re still around.
I don’t know if this is still the case, but at one point Harold Lloyd’s family refused to allow ANY screenings of his films without a full orchestra. G got to the New Beverly one time and found out they’d had to swap in a different silent comedy because the Lloyd family had pulled the film from circulation.
Hal
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I’m biased because I like Oprah, though I find some of her spiritualism annoying and at the same time lending legitimacy to quacks like Deepak Chopra. But I also think someone who overcomes poverty, child rape and the disadvantages of being a black woman in a predominantly white male environment, and goes on to be a self made billionaire, deserves some respect.
But I digress. Franzen dissed Oprah in a public way so he could take advantage of her endorsement while not having to appear on the show. She’s still the only reason so many people read The Corrections.
raven
@efgoldman: Love ya man
Sly
Probably because the really passionate and angry people of Frazen’s age fucked them royally, and 20-somethings generally don’t respond well to people who keep tut-tutting them for not being all gung-ho-march-in-the-streets-awesome about fixing the unforced errors of their parents’ dickhead generation.
Brachiator
@raven:
Very sad. I knew about his mainly from his work documenting Black Mexicans. I had not seen anything about his death. Thanks for this.
raven
A woman is on trial for beating her husband to death with his guitar collection. Judge asks, “First offender?”
She replied, “No, first a Gibson, then a Fender!”
raven
@Brachiator: Yea, that slide show is something else.
Keith G
@efgoldman: Noted
And I hope you are right. That would make life a lot easier.
RSA
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I didn’t know that. Sordid, horrible.
I was also thinking of Picasso, by all accounts a bad person, and Leni Riefenstahl, who is probably an easier case to think about, given her subject matter. Kant himself was famously a douchebag when it came to Maria von Herbert.
trollhattan
@efgoldman:
It’s not quite time for Hill to issue her version of this.
But soon.
ETA The Republicans have been aggressively gunny-sacking shit on her since she was the frontrunner in ’07-08 and frankly, never completely stopped when the Big Dog left office, so there’s plenty of poo left to fling. Best to point at them and mock with every shovelfull.
Kay
I read The Corrections. I thought it was fine but it didn’t stick with me in any way.
I think it’s appropriate and right for young people to wall off their group from older people. They’re not supposed to be “accessible” to him. They get to have their own thing, just like he did.
Emma
@efgoldman: Ole! Thank you.
Keith G
@efgoldman:
Really there is not much she can do now. This hand has been dealt and if she has been accurate and thorough in her reporting, all should be good.
Brachiator
Speaking of movies, if it has not come up already, I mostly recommend The Gift. I’ts a bit of a “middle class couple stalked by a crazy” film, with a few twists, and generally good acting from Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, and Joel Edgerton (who also directed).
Fun and suspenseful. One minor nit is that every now and then, the characters act or “react” as though they know they are in a suspense film, bringing too much attention to an ominous noise in the back of the house, etc. But a good evenings fun, especially if you fear you might be disappointed by The Man From UNCLE or other summer fare. I don’t want to say much more or spoil the film by revealing plot details because the movie is still relatively new in the theaters.
I’ve heard some good things about American Ultra:
Getting wasted. Duh. Supposedly funny but very, very violent.
jeffreyw
Toby can’t believe folks are still waiting on Biden to announce…
raven
@efgoldman: And I’m watching golf!
Iowa Old Lady
@raven: God, you must be desperate.
raven
@Iowa Old Lady: Tiger is in the hunt. They sold 50,000 more tickets when he played his way into contention.
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: I was wondering where the hell San Sylmar was. Oh, it’s Sylmar(which is next to San Fernando).
julia
I liked “The Corrections” and “Freedom”. I have heard for years that Franzen is not well liked and seems quite uncomfortable with people. His favorite pastime is birdwatching, a solitary pursuit. He often says things in interviews that most people with a filter would think twice about admitting. But as has been said in other comments, if I only read books with authors I admired, that would result in a lot of worthwhile literature I would never experience.
Peale
sriracha (fillintheblank) and red velvet (fillintheblank) and “goats milk caramel”. I guess I’m eating hipster tonight. Bleah
jeffreyw
Thread needs more blueberry bars.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Yes. Two misconceptions modern people have about silent films: That they were accompanied only by rinky-tink piano, and that they were sped-up.
Baud
@efgoldman:
Righteous.
Germy Shoemangler
@trollhattan:
that should replace “all the news that’s fit to print” as a motto. Also “we report, you decide”
srv
I don’t know who this Franzer guy is, but I’m going to go over to the terminal’s bookshop and buy whatever they have of his.
Also, too, wtf is up with serving chilled red wines on tap? Is this some new liberal obamanation? Or is this some DEN thing? What’s up next, heated beers?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Peale:
Goat’s milk caramel is pretty good — it has a tanginess that regular caramel doesn’t have. And you really should put your nose in the air and inform the waitron that Red Velvet is so Over and unfashionable now. Nobody does Red Velvet on the Coast anymore.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Germy Shoemangler:
Well, I know, but as I’ve mentioned before, I have two (2) film degrees. ;-)
For the most part, silent films were shot at about 18 frames a second, though that could vary based on the cameraman’s personal rhythm (in the days before electric motors in cameras) and on the effect the director wanted (there’s a reason why certain shots are still referred to as being “undercranked” even though movie cameras haven’t been hand-cranked for almost 100 years).
Sound films, by contrast, are standardized at 24 frames a second — anyone else know why?
BillinGlendaleCA
@srv: I’m not sure about heated beer, but room temperature ale in the UK is pretty tasty.
raven
@Mnemosyne (tablet): A Face of Evil?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne (tablet): My guess would be cost. The lowest frame rate that would look good using the least amount of film.
gelfling545
@efgoldman: Bravo, Sir. Bravo.
raven
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Until I watched the Last Waltz with the directors commentary I didn’t know that the motors in cameras were not built to shoot for long periods. They had used up or burned out most of them and had to scramble to get just one for the Muddy Waters (with Butterfield) segment.
schrodinger's cat
@@jeffreyw: Have the relations between Toby and Homer improved?
Tracy Ratcliff
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
per wikipedia
” Thomas Edison said that 46 frames per second was the minimum needed by the visual cortex: “Anything less will strain the eye.”[8][9] In the mid to late 1920s, the frame rate for silent films increased to between 20 and 26 FPS.[8]
When sound film was introduced in 1926, variations in film speed were no longer tolerated as the human ear is more sensitive to changes in audio frequency. Many theaters had shown silent films at 22 to 26 FPS which is why 24 FPS was chosen for sound. From 1927 to 1930, as various studios updated equipment, the rate of 24 FPS became standard for 35 mm sound film. At 24 FPS the film travels through the projector at a rate of 456 millimetres (18.0 in) per second. This allowed for simple two-blade shutters to give a projected series of images at 48 per second, satisfying Edison’s recommendation. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate
Marc
I just saw “A Most Wanted Man” on Netflix. Why had I not known of this film before? If I hadn’t been bored, I’d not have browsed around and stumbled upon it. I gave it five stars, but I’m partial to good writing and acting over things that go BOOM!
raven
@Marc: Proly cuz it wasn’t that good.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I don’t know why 24 fps became the standard for sound film. But are we moving away from it towards 48?
Also, did you know that one of the Marx brothers Paramount scripts calls for the camera to vorkapich a little?
I think this was the first time the man was used as a verb.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Nope. It’s because they couldn’t get sound to sync up at less than 24 frames a second. Originally, the voice track would be “wedded” to the celluloid and run through the projector as a single piece of film, and after a lot of experimentation they decided on 24fps as the optimal speed.
When silent films were “rediscovered” in the 1960s, people ran them through their existing projectors and assumed that they were supposed to be comically sped up. Then some people with older projectors went, Hey, what’s this switch that says “18/24” on it? and figured out to their embarrassment that they’d been showing silent films at the wrong damn speed.
raven
@Mnemosyne (tablet): That IS funny!
Germy Shoemangler
@raven: What did Hitchcock do for Rope? That film contained no cuts; he ran the cameras until the film was used up.
raven
All that tedious bullshit from Rachel last night:
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Tracy Ratcliff:
Close, but it looks like they forgot to cross-reference optical sound:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_sound
raven
@Germy Shoemangler: Beats me.
“ohn Simon, who ran the rehearsals for the show, would give Scorsese details as to who sang what and who soloed when for each song. Scorsese meticulously storyboarded the songs, setting up lighting and camera cues to fit the lyrics of the songs. But despite his planning, in the rigors of the live concert setting, with the loud rock music and the hours spent filming the show, there were unscripted film reloads and camera malfunctions. It was not possible for all songs to be covered. At one point, all the cameras except László Kovács’ were shut down as Muddy Waters was to perform “Mannish Boy”.[9] Kovács, frustrated by Scorsese’s constant instructions, had removed his communications headset earlier in the evening and had not heard the orders to stop filming.[10] As Scorsese frantically tried to get other cameras up, Kovács was already rolling and able to capture the iconic song by the blues legend. “It was just luck,” Scorsese recalled in the DVD documentary, The Last Waltz Revisited.[9]”
Doesn’t say anything about the motors but the film does.
Marc
@raven: It was based on a John le Carre book, and from what I see at Rotten Tomatoes, it got 88% favorable. Probably the subject matter isn’t to real ‘Murican tastes.
Doug R
@Amir Khalid: Benedict cummerbatch could pull it off.
Baud
@raven:
Good. That means Paul won’t drop out of the clown show anytime soon.
And nothing says libertarian like changing the rules when it suits your needs.
Baud
@raven:
Good. That means Paul won’t drop out of the clown show anytime soon.
And nothing says libertarian like changing the rules when it suits your needs.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: So I guess that Rand won’t be the next to drop out.
raven
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Beat me to it, and twice no less.
Germy Shoemangler
@Baud: If he wins twice he’ll make history!
What can’t libertarians do?
raven
Josie
@efgoldman: I was mentally trying to compose something, but you stated it much more eloquently and succinctly than I could. Bravo.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@raven:
I haven’t seen the film or heard the commentary, but I’m guessing that the cameras you would use for a 1970s documentary were much smaller and lighter than the cameras you would use to shoot a studio film on a soundstage, and they probably wouldn’t be designed to for shoot for hours at a time like a studio camera would. Think of the difference in TV cameras between something they use to shoot a late-night talk show and something they carry into the field for a news report.
Baud
@Josie:
Me too. I got stuck on which president’s bathtub to reference.
Germy Shoemangler
@efgoldman: They still think in terms of “frames” with digital films and tv:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate#Digital_video_and_television
Josie
@Baud: Oh, I don’t know. From what I’ve seen of your comments, I think you could do a bang-up job as well.
Tree With Water
Never heard of Franzen, but how bright can any writer be, to have bitten the hand Oprah extended him? Then again, an old family friend I knew was also the owner of a well known, fancy Bay Area restaurant. One summer afternoon at a garden party in the north bay our friend began to drink and run his mouth, as he was prone to do. He then made the huge mistake of insulting San Francisco columnist Herb Caen to his face, and in front of an assembled crowd of Bay Area big shots. Caen was an Institution in the Bay Area. Everyone read his column. Our friend spent years trying to ingratiate himself back into Caen’s good graces, for ego as well as free publicity’s sake. But Herb wasn’t having it, and never mentioned his name or the name of his restaurant in print again.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@raven:
Here’s a photo of Hitchcock shooting Suspicion with a good look at a studio camera:
http://theredlist.com/media/database/muses/icon/iconic_men/1950/alfred-hitchcock/008-alfred-hitchcock-theredlist.jpg
I can pretty much guarantee you that Scorsese shot The Last Waltz with some kind of handheld cameras.
Kathleen
@FlyingToaster: I worked for an evil (redacted) educational publisher myself.
Baud
@Josie:
I was leaning towards Millard Fillmore, but Taft was a better choice.
Kathleen
@Major Major Major Major: Thank you for the heads up about the book. I’ve not heard of it before and it sounds like it’s right up my alley.
Josie
@Baud: Thanks for a much needed chuckle.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Exactly, Taft’s bathtub was yoooge(and very classy).
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Yep. I am amazed at how often a commonly held belief is based on misconceptions.
Another movie related error is that film noir was an actual genre that directors and studios consciously created and worked in.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@efgoldman:
Frame rate has been decoupled from the need to have it sync up with sound, which is why they can play with frame rates a lot more now.
Also, too, the frame rate for video is different than the frame rate for celluloid film, and frame rates differ slightly between video formats (like North America’s NTSC vs Europe’s PAL). That’s much less of an issue now that we’ve moved from videotape to digital DVD, but it sometimes became weird trying to figure out if you had a complete version of a film from Europe since the running time in PAL vs NTSC would be slight different because of the different frame rates of the two formats.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Brachiator:
I can start up my argument that film noir is a style, not a genre, but I don’t know how many people would be interested.
(Short version: there are noir comedies (Unfaithfully Yours), noir musicals (Judy Garland’s A Star Is Born) and noir fantasy films (An Angel On My Shoulder). Therefore, it’s a style, not a genre.)
Hal
@raven: Contingent on him paying for the caucus. Also from Politico, his ridiculous reasoning:
The people of Kentucky already had a say in who gets to run for president. President of the United States, not Kentucky. All this maneuvering just to keep trudging along a few more months.
Kathleen
@efgoldman: Thank you! Very well stated.
jeffreyw
@schrodinger’s cat: Just when I think they have mellowed, there will be a fight. Yesterday Bea whipped Homer’s ass, tired of his constant stalking, I guess. Homey prefers to be with the dogs.
Anoniminous
@raven:
Now that the people of the United States can quit holding their breaths to see how Kentucky would move … Paul will leap from 8th place (4.6%.) “HOW FAR WILL HE GO?!?,” America wonders. 7th place? (5.2%) 6th? (5.4%) Maybe 4th? (6.9%)
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
It would almost be six of one, half a dozen of another. The only noir I never question is Pinot.
kped
@Mike J:
He may have, but there are enough great books I haven’t gotten around to yet. and given my distaste for him as a person, I’ll keep putting his books to the bottom of my list.
Splitting Image
@gogol’s wife:
He was apparently the kind of guy who had a few women on the side but flew into a rage if his wife so much as talked to another man. Zeppo had his good points, but I’m not sure I would have called him “nice”.
Harpo was by all accounts the nice one, and strangely enough he’s the one whose stage persona was genuinely creepy.
kped
@Captain C: Close, but he is actually saying “I don’t understand kids, so I’m going to adopt a traumatized war refuge from a vastly different culture, and then I’m going to study him like a lab rat to gain insight into those things called “teens””
Maybe i’m being undiplomatic, but that’s what I think he was thinking of doing.
Germy Shoemangler
@Splitting Image: Have you heard this audio of Harpo telling an old vaudeville anecdote to the guy who helped him with his autobiography?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19prL2ue4pk
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Mallard Filmore is just not a funny comic.
raven
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Panavision 35mm mounted on elaborare craning and pana-glide equipment. You can see this from time to time in the film./
raven
Last Waltz camera reference.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@raven:
I had to consult with G because he was the film production major and his opinion (without making him get online to do the research) is that they were smaller and lighter weight than studio cameras to allow the rigging, which meant they probably had less powerful (and less reliable) motors. Also, he says they were probably shooting continuously for 2-3 hours and slapping new film cartridges in to keep shooting without a break, which is not how they would have done it at a film studio. That could easily have led to overheating and motors burning out.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Germy Shoemangler:
Uh, that wasn’t a vaudeville anecdote — he was working at a brothel (!) Not an uncommon job for a young piano player in those days, or so I’ve heard.
It’s a little bit of a myth that a lot of silent film stars lost popularity because of their voices, but it was sometimes a problem when the person’s voice didn’t match their silent persona. In addition to several other problems (like his alcoholism and the sale of his contract to MGM when he would have been better off someplace like Columbia), Buster Keaton had a hard go of it in early sound days because his deep, gravelly voice didn’t match his frequently Bertie Wooster-ish screen persona. Here’s a clip from one of his last MGM movies, when he and Jimmy Durante (!) were a comedy team:
http://youtu.be/UWEDF4FdgxQ
raven
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Cool
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@efgoldman:
I met Buster Keaton’s widow Eleanor a couple of times — I’m sure I still have her business card somewhere. Like Chaplin, she was his much younger third wife (when they got married, she was 20 and he was 50), but they were happy together. I probably have every major book about Keaton that was ever published. And yet he died before I was born.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Keaton and Fields are both favorites of mine. Marx brothers, Chaplin… I can watch that stuff for hours.
Recently saw Chaplin’s “The Circus” for the first time in years, and I still marveled at the tightrope scene.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Germy Shoemangler:
One of these days I’ll get back to my Pre-Code blog, and one of the things I want to do is a series about Pre-Code movies don’t realize are Pre-Code, like Duck Soup and It’s A Gift. One of these days.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Have you read Joe Adamson’s book on the Marx brothers? There is a heartbreaking part where Buster Keaton is a hired MGM gag guy for Harpo (the movie was the Big Circus). Keaton offers some ideas which would be great in a Keaton film, and Harpo just stares at him.
Later, Keaton said he couldn’t understand Chico’s attitude. Keaton lived, breathed his films while he was working, while Chico couldn’t wait to knock off work and go gambling.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: like fundamentalist religion. Indoctrination begins at birth.
Yes. This.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Germy Shoemangler:
Keaton started working with the Marxes on A Night At The Opera. There’s a longstanding rumor that the stateroom sequence is a Keaton gag, and it sure has his signature look, but no one can prove it.
Marion Meade did a really good biography of Keaton about 10 or 15 years ago with a lot of new information — she even managed to track down his two sons and his grandkids. She makes a pretty good case that Keaton was most likely functionally illiterate, which would have led to a lot of his problems later with talkies and dealing with studio contracts. Chaplin may have had a crazy mother and been raised partly in a workhouse, but at least the workhouse made sure he knew how to read, unlike Keaton’s neglectful (and often downright abusive) parents.
Another Holocene Human
@Schlemazel: Maybe it’s because even though racists care deeply about purity, but in the real world secret blackness doesn’t matter. You’re conflating genetics with ethnicity and social caste. If a whit person finds out they’re a little bit black it’s just one more talking point for them to concern troll about black culture and the black family.
And they will never be targeted by the police.
Capri
@Betty Cracker: I had a problem with his female characters in Freedom (the only one of his books I’ve read). To explain why being raped wouldn’t bother a female athlete because they are “used to being touched” didn’t really ring true.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
It’s a Gift is one of my favorite Fields movies. Carl LaFong and “Those were my mother’s feathers!”
schrodinger's cat
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thanks!
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Ditto. First VHS I ever purchased; often has been called into service to introduce people who are curious or interested to the world of Fields.
“It’s Biss-oh-NAY.”
satby
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I keep dozing off and losing the thread, but thanks x2 for the good wishes in the earlier thread too. In another year I’ll laugh about this….
satby
@efgoldman: Keith is more worried about HRC’s emails than Trey Gowdy is about Bengazeeee!!!!
satby
@efgoldman:
you’re on fire tonight
Betty Cracker
@Capri: That explanation wasn’t supposed to make sense in the larger context of the novel. If you think that was the takeaway about the rape, I respectfully suggest you misunderstood the book.