A Couple of Words

Do the White Thing

2009-04-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

In his book, White, film theorist Richard Dyer that race in films is often observed in a way that transcends the simply visual and approaches the metaphorical. White has never been an ethnicity, per se - it is generally accepted to mean the absence of any ethnicity. Black is less of a racial classification than a social one. All this should come as no surprise to most people – America’s long-running flirtation with racial politics, or at least the lingering shadow it has left across our social discourse, will outlive everyone. Even though Dyer wrote with an eye turned specifically towards the underlying concept of zombie movies (zombification being something like buying into “The White Thing” ), the gist of his argument translates over pretty neatly to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.

As Dyer puts it, the quality of being zombified is simply an overt way of articulating the much more difficult notion of whiteness – the latter being a concept that seems impossible to define without referencing itself (like trying to explain ‘to the left’ without the word ‘left’) or without creating a reference point (like trying to explain ‘to the left’ without using the word ‘right’). As Dyer would have it, a zombie’s taste for flesh is a metaphor for the free market rat race. A zombie’s shambling, herd-like movement pattern is just another visual way of explaining conformity. On the other side, Ben, the protagonist of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead – the genesis for all movies of its kind – is a black man who is willing to go to great lengths to survive. He finds his contrast in a catatonic, hysterical, helpless white woman.

While literal zombies are conspicuously absent from Do the Right Thing, the feelings that they evoke may be useful in understanding the racial subtexts of Lee’s film. The film takes place in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. The people who live there (predominantly black) live with their backs against the wall in a time of widespread gentrification – a kind of creeping whiteness that is never directly mentioned in the film but the presence of which is certainly felt. Though the two main conflicting bodies in the film – the Italian-owned pizzeria and the unyielding Radio Raheem – can easily be viewed as representatives of the issue at large – a sort of entrepreneurial, patronizing (white) force being met by stiff (black) resistance – Lee invites the viewer to see things from a more thoughtful perspective. Relations do not appear to be quite so tortured as in Romero’s film. Of course, appearances prove to be deceiving; the film ends in a riot, with the pizzeria getting burned to the ground and Raheem getting killed by cops. This, of course, parallels Ben’s demise at the hands of the Sheriff and his men, who had presumably come to rescue him.

Viewers of each film are left with a certain bleak feeling. Those with the best intentions (Lee’s Sal or Romero’s Sheriff) often cause the most harm. However, while Ben’s end is tragic irony, Do the Right Thing succeeds in bewildering nearly anybody who sees it (or, as the director has since described it, succeeds in bewildering white people). The quotations that precede the credits – one demonstrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s LOVE approach to solving racial injustice and the other demonstrating Malcolm X’s HATE approach to the same – only serve to further confound the situation. However, perhaps it is significant to note that Malcolm X’s quote, about the judicious and intelligent use of violence as a means to an end, comes last. Almost as if, in the cosmic argument, hate got the last word. This reading certainly seems to support the ending of the film, even if many of the viewers don’t.

A third possibility, and the one that I favor, is that the film reflects the futility of adhering to any particular “right thing.” In defining what is right, one must consider which one of many authorities one will consult, whether that be law, religion, emotion or any other, in seeking justification. What is “right” by authority is not necessarily what is “right” by another.

The true draw of Lee’s film comes from its unwillingness to tell the viewer what to believe. Its power is in its inscrutability.

In Like Flynn

2009-04-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

Godspeed, Jonny Flynn.

After two years at Syracuse University, upstate New York’s favorite son is headed to greener pastures. Flynn is one of three starting players – forward Paul Harris and guard Eric Devendorf being the other two – on the Orange men’s basketball team who will enter the NBA draft this year.

Toward the end of March – inconveniently, hours before Syracuse was drubbed out of the Sweet Sixteen by Oklahoma – rumors about Flynn’s departure began to fly. Days later, the NY Daily News reported that LeBron James had started calling on behalf of his agent, Leon Rose.

Today, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported that Flynn more than likely intends to sign with Rose sometime this week, thus relinquishing his remaining two years of NCAA eligibility.

And, of course, none of this came as much of a surprise. Ever since he arrived in Syracuse in 2007, Flynn has clearly been a big fish in a proverbial small pond. And in today’s ultracompetitive market, in which even a ten-year stint in the big leagues is rare, the wise player gets in while the getting’s good – even if it means giving up a college degree.

This column, however, is intended to be less of an attempt to crack the egg of The Coveted Player and more of a study of the people who draw inspiration from him.

This March, Syracuse was a sight to behold. After a legendary six-overtime victory over UConn at the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament, the Orange fever was palpable. A local design shop whipped up a commemorative ‘Marathon Men’ t-shirt overnight and sold 20,000 in less than a week. By the end of March, they had more than doubled that initial figure.

To be fair, Syracuse has seen its share of superlative stars this past decade. Most notably, Carmelo Anthony and Donté Green – both ephemeral, one-and-done players. Or Gerry MacNamara and Hakim Warrick. All names that continue to resonate.

But none have captured the hearts and minds of the city quite like Flynn, the diminutive, unflagging point guard. Flynn’s a product of Niagra Falls, which has made him something of a hometown hero for pride-strapped New Yorkers. Plus, he’s good.

While driving one day, I can recall hearing a local car dealer invoke Flynn’s workman attitude as an example to be followed (Flynn, after all, set a school record this year for playing time). Conquer fear. Play until it’s over. Such timeless sports platitudes can really take root in difficult times such as these.

One aspect of sports that is consistently overlooked is their ability to inspire. Though it’s rarely deliberate, athletes often become surrogates for regions. Even ideas. In their purest form, sports allow a city to directly compete with another city in a way that is neither abstract nor debatable. The winner wins. The loser loses. Rarely in life are things so unequivocal. With luck, sports fans and even people peripherally attached to sports fans will always find it this easy to distill the best, positive qualities of athletes and transform them into personal convictions.

So. Is Jonny Flynn really an avatar for our fears and dreams? Do we seek subjective meaning in his trials and tribulations? Is his future somehow tied to our dignity? What happens, then, when the body inevitably leaves town? Does the spirit dissipate too?

Impossible questions, perhaps, but questions that one cannot help but consider.

While it seems fairly obvious that Jonny Flynn is more than just a basketball player to Central New Yorkers, his time here won’t be forgotten any time soon. As teammate Arinze Onuaku recently mused, there’s always the stories. There will always be more players, more championships, more chances at national recognition. There will always be next year – that comforting, maddening mantra.

And even if all those fail, there will always be the t-shirts.

Rochester tops in newspaper readership

2009-03-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

According to a recent report by Scarborough Research, upstate New York is home to four of the top eight best markets for newspaper readership in the entire country:

1 Rochester, NY (87%)
2 Cleveland/Akron, OH (86%)
3 Buffalo, NY (86%)
4 Pittsburgh, PA (85%)
5 Syracuse, NY (85%)
6 Boston, MA (85%)
7 Hartford/New Haven, CT (85%)
8 Albany/Schenectady/Troy (85%)
9 New York, NY (84%)
10 Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, PA (84%)

To reiterate, the above suggests that a full 87% of the adult population of Rochester, NY reads either a newspaper or a newspaper's website at least once per week. Wow.

Vick to the Future

2009-03-25T09:07:00.000-07:00

Two months ago, animal rights activist group PETA demanded that the NFL subject beleaguered QB Michael Vick to a brain scan to test for psychopathy before allowing him to reenter the league. More on that after a brief summary of the events leading up to now.

Vick, once a perennial Pro-Bowler and one of the richest athletes in professional sports, has fallen on hard times as of late. After he was implicated after the bust of an underground dogfighting ring, he was suspended from football and sentenced to 23 months in federal prison. He filed for bankruptcy protection six months later.

It was recently revealed that Vick could be released in May to serve the rest of his sentence in home confinement. What's more, he has every intention of making a comeback in the NFL.

Enter the weird, brain-scanning stuff.

PETA's letter seems earnest enough. It asks, quite simply, that Vick should be tested for the capacity to express true remorse before being allowed to "be a children's hero again." Never mind how troubling the implications of treating the mind as a collection of springs and gears, rather than a complex, emotional, often irrational and easily misunderstood mystery, truly is.

Toni Monkovic, a writer for the New York Times' excellent Fifth Down Blog, couldn't help but wonder in an entry posted yesterday: has PETA gone too far?

Today, a guest commentator addressed that question. If given the choice between entrusting a beloved pit bull to PETA or Vick, he'd take his chances with Vick.

It's an interesting read.

Shorts 3/23 – Revenue 2.0, Spitzer, the Nanny State

2009-03-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

RevenueTwoPointZero
On March 11, a bunch of media re-envisioners gathered together and pledged to come up with a way to preserve journalism and revolutionize advertising – all by March 21. Now that's a tall order.

Early this morning, they made good. It's worth a look.

Being a governor has become America's toughest job | Eliot Spitzer
The latest entry in Spitzer's Slate column. Aside from the attention-grabbing title, the former Guv's got some good insights on how many states wake up and find themselves at the bottom of an impossible hole

Yes, we are living in the Nanny State | Rick Karlin, Times Union
Though it's often taken for granted, a recent study confirms it: New Yorkers have relatively less "personal freedom'' but pay the highest taxes in the United states.

The Black Keys ...

2008-05-02T16:44:00.000-07:00

... fuckin rock, but that's not the point.

Today they released a cover of Captain Beefheart's "I'm Glad", allegedly recorded yesterday. I'm not familiar with the original track, but I think this one's awesome. I can't be alone.

The Black Keys - I'm Glad (mp3)

Listen to it now, while you still can. They say it'll be gone by the 9th.

[post courtesy of Stereogum.]

From Here:

2008-05-02T05:26:00.000-07:00

A straightforward look at the rest of the democratic primary, courtesy of the kindly folks at the New York Times.

lookit me

2008-05-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

Precocious kid sets out to travel America with 50 dollars in his pocket. Follow along as he survives on pluck, shameless self-promotion and the essential decency of the white man's culture.

edit: Two days in and he's already philosophizing about the American Dream. What could he possibly have on his plate for the next 300 days?

Gets Better With Age

2008-05-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.) And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country. [The Gov't]

Five years since Mission Accomplished. 45 dead in Iraq today. Is this what 'turning the tide' feels like, Bob Steinburg? I can only imagine how bad things must be going for the other guys.

For Your Eyes Only: W

2008-04-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Steven Zeitchik of the Hollywood Reporter posted the first four pages of Oliver Stone's upcoming Bush biopic, W.

Though there's not a whole lot there, and it's taken from a draft that dates back to october 2007 (and as such, Zeitchik warns, has potentially gone through several iterations since), it can't help but be compelling - from the opening scene, in which then-Rangers shareholder Bush channels the weird bravado of Jake LaMotta looking into the mirror to a young, frat-pledging Bush mixing screwdrivers in a garbage can.

Of course, one of the highlights is a (probably) fictional roundtable meeting in the Oval Office, where the gang settles on 'Axis of Evil' and tries to figure out where Iran fits into everything.

An excerpt:

Rove opens a bottle of non-alcoholic beer for the President. Cheney finally chimes in.
CHENEY
Anyone can go to Baghdad.
Real men go to Tehran.
Bush smirks, clinks beer bottle with Cheney's coffee mug.

BUSH
Real men.
CUT TO:
A GIANT BOTTLE OF VODKA. INT. DKE FRAT HOUSE - BASEMENT - NIGHT - 1966

Once I got past how much this early draft really resembles some sort of parody, it finally occurred to me that Stone might be onto something pretty great after all: that Bush, when you strip him of all authority and real-life context, makes for a pretty compelling figure.

Strongman Theory

2008-04-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

I reckon I'd better write this before I wander over to the Huffington Post, read the analysis and get my story all crooked. Although it appears that I accidentally just did.

Onward!

It's occurred to me that, of all the CSPAN Senate hearings that I could be watching right now, this one probably tops the bill. Gen. David Petraeus, head honcho among all military commanders in Iraq and one really overqualified dude, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, briefed the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee today about the State of The War.

According to polls, Americans already have some pretty strong - albeit conflicted - views on that one.

Rasmussen Reports, um, reports that 65 percent of us are in favor of a battle plan that will have all American troops home within a year.
Meanwhile, Gallup is reporting that the same percentage of us are also pretty worried about what the implications of leaving Iraq might be.
Gallup also is saying that a pretty meaningful majority of people polled believe that history will judge the Iraq War a failure.

So we've got a sizable group of people who favor a timetable for troop withdrawal and are conscientious about the gaping footprint their government has left in the future of the Middle East. Why can't the big guys see that sort of logic?

So there Petraeus went, telling Congress to put a moratorium on troop withdrawals until at least September, the point at which the Iraq situation ceases to be "fragile and reversible" and becomes something a little nicer.

Ah hell, I'll just embed it. Drink every time Gen. Petraeus or Crocker describes the situation as 'complicated.'

Ricky Speaks

2008-03-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

Ricky Williams called in to Dan Patrick's pretty boring radio show this morning for a chat. They discussed his future with the Miami Dolphins, weed, and The Hobbit.

If you're not a Miami Dolphins fan, or aren't at least pulling for the guy, there is little here for you except for some larfs.

OK, Just the highlights, ma'am:

DP: Would you trust Ricky Williams?
RW: [pauses, intake of breath] Ummmm? Yknow, I would take an interest in him? And I would really try to be there for him. Um. And I think by doing that that's where trust is built. I mean I think for . . . if I'm a head coach or a VP or someone in the front office a-and I really wanna win, yknow, I look at Ricky and I say, well this guy's a good football player, um, am I willing to invest the time and energy into making sure that he feels good about being here. Or am I not?

Ricky Williams is strangely willing to answer a question in the third person. Doesn't Mariah Carey do that?

DP: Explain to me, when you get those urges, if you talk to somebody who's trying to quit smoking cigarettes, they'll go to a bar and they can all of a sudden have a drink and then they have to have a cigarette. What situation gets you into that . . . feeling, where, this is where I normally got high?
RW: Well usually, it's, it's a, for me it's a matter of curiosity, yknow. I think I'm a very curious person a-and I like to explore, like, hidden depths in things that are unknown. And whenever, yknow, there's something to explore, and I really, yknow, want to get deeper into it, whether it's a conversation, whether it's a book, yknow, that's where I feel tempted to smoke because it helps me to go deeper into things.

Hidden depths, like . . . The Darkest Depths of Mordor???

DP: So if you're reading a book. Let's say you're reading The Hobbit-
RW: Um-
DP: -or whatever it might be that you find is worth . . . is that a book that you would dive into and say, O.K-
RW: (laughing) No,
DP: -I'm gonna get high and read that?
RW: No, it's usually more things, yknow, more philosophical books, that are usually Scripture? Um. Not usually, I don't usually mess with fiction.

Stay off the fiction, kids. That shit will fuck you up.

DP: Wait, you would get high reading the Bible?
RW: Yes . . . yes.

Welp, that does it for me. Is there anybody left out there who isn't totally on board with this dude?

Go screw off into the sunset

2008-03-04T07:34:00.000-08:00

Somewhere, Aaron Rodgers is waking up with a weird sinking feeling in his guts. In football (this means "important") news today, Jay Glazer is Jay Glazer, and Fox Sports is still Fox Sports. But I guess Brett Favre is finally acting like the old man he is and getting out.

I Hate Soulja Boy

2008-02-28T19:37:00.000-08:00

Words escape me.

kooba

2008-02-28T11:31:00.000-08:00

I mentioned the other week that I've kind of got a thing for Cuba. And honestly, who doesn't? I think it's pretty tough to call yourself a humanist and not have some sense of admiration for what's been done down there in such a short time. And even if you're not, and you don't, you can surely admit that Fidel and Cuba at least fill a role the likes of which we're never likely to see again. It's iconic. It's like Brando died all over again.

Anyway, I was reading an article just the other week about the possible changes that Cuba might have to endure now that Raul's in command, including big box stores, convention centers and Pfizer plants. Just like Puerto Rico. It takes a little something away, I think. Puerto Rico is a great example of what capitalism does to people with nothing to offer but cheap labor and a view. The death of romance, as I understand it.

Today, I stumbled upon an article all set to appear in the March 3rd issue of the New Yorker, which gives a little bit of an overview of Fidel's rise and decline. Kind of like an obit for a presidency:

And that it should end so ingloriously! No fighting to the last man at the battlements, no martyr’s surrender to an assassin’s bullet, only a creaking, shuffling exit through the ward’s doors, hospital gown flapping. We are less than a year away from the half-century marker of a most astonishing marathon, but even this artist of endurance must bow to fate and acknowledge that it’s time to go. Vámonos, Fidel: no one is standing in the way.
[From The New Yorker]

NYT Baghdad Bureau

2008-02-28T06:46:00.000-08:00

Keeping the NY Times love train rolling, I happily (or at least willingly) report today that the New York Times Baghdad Bureau blog went up yesterday. It boasts the contributions of reporters, correspondents and photographers living outside the Green Zone. Its name is also a mouthful.

It's worth a look, if that's your thing.

Bloomberg Out

2008-02-27T21:20:00.000-08:00

As it turns out, the final word from NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg goes something like, "I'm not running for President, but . . ..

Since Hillary has clearly shown that she hates Obama on what is seeming more and more to be a personal level, maybe this Bloomberg's decision has something to do with being Obama's running mate after the dust clears. I think they'd certainly make a compelling pair.

eh?

The Silence

2008-02-26T19:46:00.000-08:00

I didn't watch the debate tonight. Did I even have to?

Instead, I took a chance on Ingmar Bergman's The Silence. You know - that Swedish dude who died last year after making what seems like one film per year for the entire 89-year span of his life. Now that's something. I was born after the era of two albums per year, so this sort of statistic still floors me.

Anyway, I'm sure it beats the hell out of watching Tim Russert for two hours. You should try it some time - Democracy's not all it's cracked up to be anyway.

Limbo

2008-02-25T13:14:00.000-08:00

Some waves after a picture of Barack Obama wearing traditional Ethiopian clothing during a 2006 diplomatic visit (including, natch, a turban) were shot out of somebody's rectum, somewhere, and found their way onto the Drudge Report earlier today.

All indications are that it was released by a staffer with Hillary Clinton's campaign - which in recent weeks has increasingly used manipulative, lowdown and sometimes just plain stupid tactics to try to get its digs in where it can on the current frontrunner. This includes last week's accusations of speech-stealing.

But what really frosted my balls was reading the response offered by Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams:

Enough.
If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.
This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry.
We will not be distracted.
[From Politico]

So lemme get this straight: Clinton staffer releases inflammatory pictures and attaches inflammatory implications. When Obama camp responds with 'WTF?' Clinton's official word becomes, 'So what do you have against Muslims anyway, huh? Our candidate would be honored if your campaign were to call her a closet Muslim.'

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reading about zombies, Hollywood shenanigans and football.

March-May Doldrums

2008-02-25T08:40:00.000-08:00

The Oscars. Can't say that I enjoyed it, but I watched it. And that's what counts.

I did, however read a writeup from this morning which pretty much affirmed everything I already knew - that the only good American actors left have either already won, are too weird, or are no longer willing to take the exploitive roles that tend to get attention. Or we're just kind of tired of their shit.

So we turned to Europe.

I'm down with Tilda Swinton. Power to Javier Bardem. Marion Cotillard is cute as hell, even if I suspect that her Edith Piaf getup fits under the exploitation category mentioned above (the sort of thing that two-time winner Hilary Swank has really embraced). Daniel Day Lewis is the sort of guy who does very few movies but does them all justice. Especially this latest one.

Anyway, go ahead and read the article. Yknow, for pearls like the following:

After shaving its head and driving drunk around the globe with no panties, calling itself the Antichrist, and finally abandoning its children, totaling its SUV and getting its ass kicked in the parking lot of the Persian Gulf, America is realizing that it is internationally loathed, broke, soulless, tasteless, fat, drunk, malicious, greedy and stupid, and has been generally behaving like a lousy excuse for a world superpower for long enough to lose all its friends and position.
[Lifted from Salon]

I'll miss this award-season circlejerk.

Shorts

2008-02-23T18:53:00.000-08:00

I've never made my adoration for Salman Rushdie a secret. Never even tried. He's got a piece of short fiction in the Feb. 25th edition of the New Yorker, and you ought to read it.

Also, after stomping the crap out of Fredonia earlier this evening, the Oswego State Lakers will move on to the SUNYAC Championship against Plattsburgh next Saturday. If you live in Oswego, this is good news. If you do not, you probably didn't even read this far. You jerk.

Hillary drinks the kool aid

2008-02-22T08:48:00.000-08:00

Overall, a pretty tasty soundbite, and one that she'll likely rehash many times over in the coming weeks. I'm just a little put off by the fact that, after months of trashing Obama for being a little too much of a thespian – a bunch of gut-punching lines and little else - she seems to have put her toe on the other side of the line. Granted, it was a closing remark, and closing remarks aren't a great place for policy.

Is she trying to out-Obama Obama? Whatever she was doing before obviously wasn't working.

Anyway, presenting for your consumption, Hillary sings kum ba yah:

She do

2008-02-21T16:45:00.000-08:00

Just out of curiosity, what has Hillary ever actually done?

That isn't even being facetious. Hill's beat-down mantra of "He talks; I do" is beginning to seem more and more like a beat down suit of armor. You read stuff like this . . .

"If your whole candidacy is about words, they should be your own words."

. . . in response to her campaign's recent allegations about Obama's cred turning out to be chickenshit, and you realize that she's only trying to say, My campaign's never been about words, so of course I don't write anything I say. I'm too busy doin.

What are you when you start puffing about hypocrisy at the expense of saying something constructive about whatever it is that you stand for?

A Bush-era democrat. Weak, shrill, impotent politicians.

What a hoot

2008-02-20T18:55:00.000-08:00

Looks like John McCain's already in bed with the lobbyists.

get it? get it?

You dog. You dirty old dog. Honestly, I thought the only dudes who get hot girls half their age were named Jack Nicholsen. But no, John, you're at the cutting edge. Leading the curve. Redefining what it means to be 71.

Living the American Dream. God bless you. God damn you.

Fidel, my belle

2008-02-19T04:28:00.000-08:00

MEXICO CITY — Fidel Castro stepped down Tuesday morning as the president of Cuba after a long illness, ending one of the longest tenures as one of the most all-powerful communist heads of state in the world, according to Granma, the official publication of the Cuban Communist Party.
[From The New York Times]

I'm sure you've read all about it by now, but this took me be surprise. Going to Cuba was always a dream of mine - I've read enough writers, Hemingway wannabes all, to know that Cuba was truly a place where you could go for something completely. Probably the last place on Earth where they don't accept American dollar bills, the currency of the world.

That was all pretty vague-sounding but I'm strapped for time.

Now, however, with Fidel gone there's even the off chance that Cuba and America might even reconcile their differences. Open the borders and let in the Acapulco shirts. Which is exactly what I'd be if I were to go - an Acapulco shirt, I mean - because I lack the essential confidence to act like a tourist even when on vacation. My biggest failing as a human being.

Anyway, RIP. So what if he was a murderous bastard - he was one of the last romantic things in this world.

kill

2008-02-16T17:05:00.000-08:00

Pentagon Unveils Rogue Spy Sat Shoot-Down Plan
Sometime in the next 11 days, a Navy cruiser is going to aim a missile just above the atmosphere, and try to take out a malfunctioning spy satellite before it crashes to Earth -- and maybe releases a toxic gas in the process.
Defense Department officials detailed the shootdown operation, in a briefing with reporters Thursday afternoon.
The 5,000-pound National Reconnaissance Office surveillance satellite was pronounced dead just a few hours after it was inserted into orbit, on Dec. 14, 2006. This January, the U.S. military realized that the satellite was beginning its descent down into the atmosphere, Deputy National Security Advisor James Jeffrey noted. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be much cause for concern; objects of this size plummet into the Earth's atmosphere all the time. But this satellite contains a full tank -- over 1,000 pounds' worth -- of the rocket propellant hydrazine. And there's a small but real risk that the tank could rupture, releasing a "toxic gas" over a "populated area," causing a "risk to human life.
[from Wired]

Hold on, dude. I've already seen that one.

memry

2008-02-16T16:19:00.000-08:00

I found Launchball the other day. Try it out.

Does anybody else remember The Amazing Machine? I remember it was a game that came installed on my family's first computer, when I was eight.

The premise was that you had to solve puzzles using simple mechanical components - lightbulb, hammer, toy rocket, electricity, trampoline, lever, conveyer belt, gear, candle etc etc. You placed them in certain configurations to make (of course!) an amazing machine designed to maybe throw a cat into a bucket, or drop a bowling ball onto a goldfish bowl. And then you let 'er rip. Sometimes it worked, oftentimes it didn't.

I wonder sometimes why these are the parts of my childhood that I can remember in any detail. I've already forgotten my first kiss. I can't remember what I got for my last birthday. I'm good with faces, but I have to cheat for names.

Memory's such a fickle bitch.

The Illusion of Continuity

2008-02-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

The first time it was explained to me, Paul Virilio's Aesthetics of Disappearance kind of grabbed me. In a nutshell, it studies the nature of whatever it is that we omit whenever we record something, the perhaps infinite amount of unrecorded space between each photographic frame that remains unrecorded due to the slideshow nature of photography.

The red line is what we see.

It reminds me of a kid asking his mom what color his guts are, and coming away disappointed because he understands that they will always be closed in, separated, in darkness, from him by a barrier that is very important to keep in one piece. The mystery is essential and the answer lies only a few inches away. You want to get at it, but a lot of things depend on the fact that you never will. And then you hear that the Japanese have created frogs with transparent skin, and that kind of puts everything on its head. Anyway, I began to think about it in math terms. If a film is a record of reality, and all we see in the film are select frames (thus omitting whatever comes between), the following would stand to reason:

Image (Illusion of Continuity) + Unrecorded Space (???) = Reality

But using some mathematical property that I can’t name - commutative property, maybe? - the following begs the question: after you’ve extracted 24 frames per second of reality, what can we call the unrecorded space? How much of it is there? Can you quantify it? Can you even divide time in any meaningful way (i.e. are we missing out on, say, 15 frames of reality per second?) in the first place? Or is it all just a reflection of the very natural need for the illusion of continuity?

Here’s the equation, rearranged:

Reality - Image = ???

Regardless of whether I’m thinking about this too hard, I remember it being very difficult not to imagine, for just a moment, about what a person accomplishes by removing the images from reality, as postulated above. Is burning a photograph you just took a way of returning to reality, from the unreality associated with using a picture as evidence of reality in the first place?

I don’t think so. Not exactly, anyway. It’s all a lot to process, and I don’t think that reality (the honest stuff, the stuff that disappears every second and is impossible to record) is understandable in simple mathematical terms. If it were, it would somehow take something away from what I like to call the Beauty of Life.

No, I’d like to believe that there’s no such thing as a reality we could ever figure out. Not like the way you beat Donkey Kong. No, real life is more like Pac-man - a succession of increasingly difficult challenges that might end somewhere, level three hundred sixty nine, only nobody’s ever been good enough to make it there. It is so difficult that it exceeds whatever humans are capable of. For all general purposes, endless. Kind of like the asymptote to the line of the Ultimate - maybe we’ll keep getting closer, closer higher higher, flirting with each other as the X between gets smaller and smaller and of course we’ll never meet, we and The Ultimate.

And if I'm wrong, If we ever do, I bet it’ll be the Japanese who get there first.

Foosball

2008-02-11T08:25:00.000-08:00

A creative writing professor I once had suggested that I submit an old piece of writing (maybe I shouldn't say 'old' - I wrote it a few months ago) to a creative writing contest, theme: football.

I'm new to all this, never having believed that anything I could write could be publishable. Even now I don't suppose that much has changed - I still don't think it's good enough. What I wrote, about my weird worship of a certain football player and how it has impacted my life, is too vague, probably takes too many creative liberties, probably isn't effective at what it does.

This is all just a preface.

See, I've always had this thing for Ricky Williams. He was probably the first player in whom I ever had any real investment. Of course it helped that he played for Miami, my team. But what truly made him so interesting was that, unlike the rest of the guys mentioned above, his downfall didn't seem like a product of his own dumb vanity.

But let's start at the beginning. Williams, a Heisman winner, was drafted out of Texas by the Saints, who all but sold the farm to get him. He was traded to the Miami Dolphins for only slightly less after three seasons. He was softspoken, even seemed intellectual - the kind of guy who always wore his helmet to interviews. He spent two seasons with the Dolphins busting balls and heads, setting team records, becoming the league rushing champion.

And then, after his fifth season and just one day before training camp began before his sixth, he abruptly retired from football forever.

It soon became clear that Ricky, a lifelong aficionado of weed, had failed one too many league-mandated piss tests. So he embarked on a journey of self-enlightenment, deciding that money, fame, football were too much for any truly conscientious person. After bouncing from a surfer commune in Australia to India to a yoga camp in California, he eventually settled on becoming a holistic medicine man. An ascetic.

From this - Dreadlocked Demon, wreckin ball of defensive lines, corner confounder, dissector of secondaries, hero of my youth:

To this:

And that was that.

I don't want to go into the intricacies of fan anguish, because nobody's interested in hearing about that. Just realize, those of you who are not into sports, that it can make or break a Sunday. And seeing your favorite player turn into a guy who gets the Sprite catchphrase (commercial sez: "Image is Nothing") all mixed up (Ricky sez: "Image is Everything") and then really takes it to heart, makes it public enemy number one in his own head, is really the sort of thing that makes you reevaluate whatever it was you saw in him in the first place. Is his entire life philosophy built on the tenuous bedrock of a single, misremembered commercial? Takes a little something away, doesn't it?

Anyway he came back a year later and played a half season. Then he got busted again, left again, and played football in Canada. Then he came back to Miami for the third time, near the end of last year, ran six downs, got squished by a linebacker and tore his pectoral muscle. By the time he's ready to play again, it will be September - time for another season and time to see if he can hang with it this time.

Maybe all this that I've been writing about is in line with the thing I've got for Randy Moss (I can still see Moss on the telecast, sitting on the bench before the game, eyes closed, calm as the buddha, the rest of his team hopping around and headbutting each other, as if he just didn't need that sort of adrenaline to help him out there on the high wire). News of Osi Umenyiora's eccentricities (NSFW on account of an arty nude picture) just made me like the guy even more. I am also reminded of the Vikings sex boat scandal from a few years back.

For the same reason that Orson Welles, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain make such compelling figures, there's just something about self-destructive football players that just makes them easier to root for.

Anyway, that's what my piece is about. I'll be submitting my piece within the next month or two. First, I'll have to obsess over it for a little while, and probably edit it until I've wrecked the original spirit. All in a day's work. Hoho.