Grr....

The Village Voice ended its 30-plus year employment of Bob Christgau. Thanks to John for first alerting me.

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

If this comes completely out of the blue, I apologize.

It is now official--Village Voice Media fired me today, "for taste," which means (among other things) slightly sweeter severance. This despite the support of new music editor Rob Harvilla, who I like as a person and a writer. We both believed I
had won myself some kind of niche as gray eminence. So I was surprised Tuesday when I was among the eight Voice employees (five editorial, three art) who were instructed to bring their union reps to a meeting with upper management today. But I
certainly wasn't shocked--my approach to music coverage has never been much like that of the New Times papers. Bless the union, my severance is substantial enough to give me time to figure out what I'm doing next. In fact, having finished all my freelance reviews yesterday, I don't have a single assignment pending. So, since I have no intention of giving up rock criticism, all reasonable offers entertained; my phone number is in the book, as they used to say when there were books. What I don't need is a vacation--the three of us just had a great two and a half weeks, and Nina matriculated at BMCC yesterday.

No need to respond. Forward to whoever you will.

Love,

Bob Christgau

Good luck, Bob.

Justin: His future is sound

As I duly note the hosannas piled like fruit at Justin Timberlake's feet, let me posit FutureSex/LoveSound as Timberlake's Modern Times: an album that refines the achievements of its predecessor, made by a star whose anemic theosophy hardened not long after his thirteenth birthday, who prefers to beg/borrow idioms, sounds, tropes, production doohickeys, and melodies over crafting something world-historic – who may in fact be smarter than we critics because he realizes that begging and borrowing, when refracted through his starpower, becomes lustrous and thus stranger. Like Dylan, Justin knows just enough about how human beings interact to use their language but is incapable of transcending his/their limitations (lots of losing-my-ways, what-goes-around-comes-arounds, and until-the-end-of-times here), which is, I suppose all we want from a star.

Frankly I don't get the complaints that Justin's a cipher without Timbaland; since I figured that JT's a zero anyway he had nothing to lose. But "Señorita" and "Rock Your Body" on 2002's Justified didn't sound like anything the Neptunes had done before, and I give Justin the credit; their toddler-funk and Justin's pseudo-lubriciousness mated and produced a handful of delightful children (if you doubt me, relisten to the latest Nelly Furtado album and you'll note the difference between a client and a collaborator). Divining ways of fucking with his producers' sonic signatures by plagiarizing primary sources is his finest gift. He croons over a Linn drum programmed with Princely precision in "Until the End of Time," forces Snoop to inject languid raps in the loping "Lady Cabdriver"-wannabe "Pose," and overdubs himself singing in his lower register for the magnificent title track. Most happily for all concerned: not a single Brian McKnight horror.

Justin wants us all to love him (and according to this many of his skeptics already do), despite the disparity between his ambitions and the results. He's got great ears and a big attention span though, both of which distinguish him from the other graduates of the Teen Pop Class of '99. The smugness which once made him distasteful has turned into a self-confidence winning enough to win the surly likes of Jim DeRogatis.

Just before the flood....

Neil Young once said about his catalogue: "It's all the same song." Surely this more accurately describes Bob Dylan's. I haven't yet formed a conclusive opinion about Modern Times, but the brazenness with which he quotes if not steals Slim Harpo, Muddy Waters, melodies and chord changes from his own "Love & Theft" radiates its own kind of benighted sincerity. My expectations -- conditioned by years of buying this old coot's drivel after impressive hot streaks -- are so low that all I can be grateful for are good Dylan songs, and every one of these (with the exception of "Someday Baby") is a Good Dylan Song. And this certainly can't be said for the majority of the dull dull dull Time Out of Mind. The album's expediency is itself beguiling. You can listen to "Workingman Blues #2" and "Beyond the Horizon," or not; you can play the album at the end or the middle or the beginning; it makes no difference. Modern Times doubles on itself, comments on itself, a pristine example of post-modernism, with a band schooled enough in blues verities to avoid the hotshot moments that Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell's guitars indulged in on the superior "Love & Theft". Whether stopping to lament that "the buying power of the proletariat" has deteriorated, admitting nary a word of remorse for wanting to kill a man in the closer "Ain't Talkin'" (it's as heartstopping as Mountain Goat John Darnielle's anomic 2004 murder reverie "Against Pollution"), Dylan can't hide his glee in running through the repertoire of blues tropes; he sheds his humanity for the comfort of the tower of song. Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Elrewine is correct: "Modern Times is the sound of an ambivalent Psalter coming in from the storm, dirty, bloodied, but laughing at himself — because he knows nobody will believe him anyway."

Modern Times confirms what Time Out of Mind augured and "Love & Theft" refined: Dylan was never human, not really, not in the sense that you and I are (he makes David Bowie look like Ray Charles). He's gone so far into his music that when it's time for him to gaze at the world it's refracted through the cracked looking-glass of an imagination wholly contingent upon its source material. When a real-life referent appears (the oft-cited Alica Keys line in "Thunder on the Mountain") it feels at first like a sop: ok, the buzzard still glances at Billboard now and then. But it has the perverse effect of exacerbating Dylan's formidable distance from love and pain; this isn't Method acting, it's closer to the English way of creating a character out of peripherals in the hope that the surface will suggest the tumult within. This is really awesome, as far as it goes, and Dylan's grasp of the material means we're less likely to get a Knocked Out Loaded anytime soon; yet, hmmm...maybe he should. At least Knocked Out Loaded intimated that he left his tour bus on occasion.

(Tropical Storm Ernesto, scraping the mountains of Cuba, is less than 12 hours from a South Florida landfall. I'll see you on the other side.)

In Praise of Christina

I'm not exactly sure what unlikely set of circumstances could have led me here, but I'm actually typing these words: "The new Christina Aguilera double album is fantastic, one of the great albums of 2006."
I'm as puzzled as you are. I have absolutely no idea why I walked into a record store and bought a Christina Aguilera album without having heard a single song from it, but I'm telling you, unless my ears are seriously deceiving me, this is as good as pop music gets, and I find myself wondering why this woman is not a feminist icon.

Triumphalism: synths required

Hard-rock melodrama requires the ameliorating effect of synthesizers -- that's what I repeat when I'm unable to listen to Led Zep for more than a few songs at a time. My favorite Pat Benatar single, "Invincible," deserves to be remembered as much if not more than "We Belong" and "Love is a Battlefield," the two top fivers which first channelled new wave tropes into Benatar's dildo-rock. Pat's band thickens the lyrics' appalling triumphalism (just about every mid eighties hit with a battle metaphor -- whether by Madonna or Survivor -- was an implied blood tribute to Ronald, Lord Reagan) with welcome sophistication. Is there anything in Pat's catalogue like the bass and rhythm guitar solos (check out the slight skank) at the 2:15 mark? or the and ricocheting snares/synth stutter before the chorus? If you're going to goose-step before the Supreme Leader I can't think of a less onerous chant.

For your pleasure

Singles roundup:

The Killers, "When We Were Young"

I like Brandon Flowers a lot. He wears bad makeup endearingly. He's a Mormon. He likes the Pet Shop Boys and loves Duran Duran; he even wrote a couple of numbers on the last album which approached their splendor. But more often than not his personality, parched vocals, the nasty metallic glaze of David Keuning's guitar, and a homoerotica he slathers like Dijon mustard on half-assed, unfinished songs (he's a straight boy who wants to assure the gay guy who hit on him that he's okay with it) reveal them to be the third-raters their critics are too quick to dismiss them as. The first single from the forthcoming Sam's Town is, like "Somebody Told Me," a good intention. It goes from verse to chorus too quickly or something; it's missing a bridge; the harmonies and Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me-era synths are mixed too low. The part about drinking the devil's water is cool. GRADE: B-

Kelis feat. Cee-lo, "Lil Star"

With a vocal lifted from the Roberta Flack school of black middle-class sophistication, Kelis aims for Mary J. Blige's patented I-am-a-soul-in-need narcissism racket. She succeeds where Blige fails, and not because she's a better singer, although God knows that Kelis' comparative underplaying makes Mary sound like a Gatling gun. The title's pun is less gruesome when you stop thinking about it ("There is nothing special about me/I am a just a little star" is the first line uttered by this would-be icon whose "Milkshake" was damn near inescapable in 2003). The state of R&B balladry is so dire that the tasteful production -- muted wah-wah, intro trumpets -- doesn't scream archly retro. Cee-lo, competing for the obtrusive-weirdo status that Ol' Dirty Bastard abdicated, handles chorus duties. Despite the Uncle Remus drawls he is, happily, more human than Kelis, mitigating the tune's egotistic humility. Use your imagination and picture a George Clinton guest appearance on Whitney's "The Greatest Love of All." GRADE: B+

Those of us who miss Grant McLennan have this new article by his partner Robert Forster to console us. In uncluttered prose Forster recounts meeting McLennan, an artistic polymath who could have been, according to Forster, a film or book critic. How encouraging to read about a great songwriter for whom reading proved perhaps the only lasting pleasure. Such was his erudition. And melancholy:

He was moody and you always hoped you got him on a good day. Sometimes I'd visit and it would take me over an hour to pull him out. Twice in his life I was with him when he was totally shattered. And there were many years I missed when we weren't in the same city.

Forster correctly notes that the darkness was there, always, shadowing "Cattle & Cane," "Dusty in Here," "Somebody Else's Wife," even "Streets of Your Town," the only nostalgia piece to begin in tranquility and conclude with a regret shaped by an unvarnished acceptance of reality (the "battered wives" with sharpened butcher knives form as much a part of the singer's experience as taking his boat under the bridge). Tracks like 2005's "Finding You" and "The Statue" prove that this fusion was an ideal more tenable than the escape for which so many romantics yearn.

Homoerotica and its discontents

Beyond their penchant for horrorshow tabloid headlines, the Libertines move me because they find a lyrical and vocal correlative for the motormouthed preemptory insistence of their guitars. The dialogue -- between singers Carl Barat and the hapless, hopeless Pete Doherty -- is jagged and demotic, exactly what one would expect from old friends/combatants. Or lovers. The ease with which Barat and Doherty allow for this possibility opens their music; it positions them fully in the canon. Consider Mick Jagger and Keith Richards' yelped harmonies in "Dead Flowers," animated by a mutual delight in tweaking the song's country-blues tropes yet buoyed by the tacit admission that, snarky or not, having a laugh at these tropes' expense keeps the needle and the spoon at arms' length for another four minutes.

The Libertines' 2004 single "Can't Stand Me Now" is a soiled transcript of what happens when two men realize that their jokes no longer amuse, that irony isn't enough anymore, that there yet remains an appetite neither music, friendship, nor even the needle and the spoon can sate. The song itself teeters over chaos: in its opening salvo one guitar keeps a nervous rhythm while another picks high, yearning notes, before trading places -- all this before Barat and Doherty dramatize their revolting melodrama. Barat is matter-of-fact and inexorable: "An ending fitting for the start/you twist and tore our love apart"; Doherty, at first a live embodiment of why the bromides of Narcotis Anonymous are as injurious as the drugs ("you shut me out and blamed it on the brown"), kicks back with a chorus admission so strangled and free of irony that it can make you gasp. By shouting "You can't stand me NOW!" he's inverting a myriad love songs in which the lover can't grasp why the beloved finds him undesirable; and when Barat confirms his partner's conclusion with an improvised "No," it's as chilling a moment as any I've heard in recent years. Where else can Doherty go beyond self-abasement? He'll take his partner anywhere he wants to go, he'll try because there's no worse they can do -- he'll burgle his own room if necessary. It's not a stretch to imagine that the love-which-dare-not-speak-its-name nibbles at the frayed edges of Doherty's heart; it's not hard to postulate that Doherty found the Fisher-Price homoerotica of the Who, the Stones, the Kinks, the Buzzcocks, the Smiths, and Suede a disgusting sham unequal to the dilemma of what to do when the person you want most in the world is your male best friend. There he is sharing your microphone: the only awareness that your improvised lyrics might have parallels beyond the fictive is in the frightened wet in his eyes.

All this serves as a preface to the Dirty Pretty Things' Waterloo to Anywhere. I've only heard it once; it sounds a lot like the Libertines, without Doherty's guitar, harmonies, and subtext. Perhaps Doherty hopes that Barat's perfectly honorable impulse to carry on will suceed -- surely one of the many reasons why he continues to destroy himself is his inability to cope with the news anyway.

This morning

Three readable stories in the New York Times: two critical profiles -- one on Matt Dillon, the other on Outkast -- and an exegesis on the question of faith as manifested in Bob Dylan's forthcoming Modern Times. Jon Pareles suggests that the vaporous apostasy of Time Out Of Mind and Love & Theft has finally started to crimp Dylan's songwriting ("lackadaisical" and "tentative" are just two of Pareles' adjectives).

Taking Sides: Low vs Thriller

I haven't yet met anyone who's too excited about Justin's "Sexyback" -- "bringing sexy back from where?" is one typical complaint. At present it's next to impossible for Justin to be the beneficiary of the critical redress which turned "Like I Love You" and "Rock Your Body" into pop masterpieces. To his credit he seems aware of his position and, employing the canny instinct for marketplace vibrations he acquired as a former Mouseketeer scion, is dropping all the right references ("The best way I can describe that song is say David Bowie and David Byrne decided to do a cover of James Brown's `Sex Machine," Justin helpfully explained). However he is, bless him, bringing nasty back -- by insulting Taylor Hicks (and recanting, or so his publicist claims).

On to the song. Since Timbo can assemble an arresting backbeat from an air conditioner compressor and a jar of Peter Pan peanut butter, the question is whether the blond moppet can work it. In this summer dominated by "Promiscuous," in which the formally coy Ms. Furtado gets hopped up after a couple of sour-apple martinis, Justin's got his work cut out for him. As Andre 3000 discovered on The Love Below's "Dracula's Castle," burying a wan falsetto in distortion will fool your fans into thinking you've been listening to Bone Machine-era Tom Waits; and, indeed, "Sexyback"'s quasi-demo spareness could have supported Gary Lucas or Latin Playboys-inspired guitar blurts. Could have. Justin's gotta know this won't stay in the Top Ten very long -- if it makes it. If he's got a Low or Fear of Music in him, now's the time to unleash it, cuz Thriller simply ain't enough anymore.

A reminder....

...to read a great R&B blog, Back & Forth. You'll find Andy Kellman, Thomas, Michaelangelo, and yours truly, among others.

Lindsey Buckingham's album has an official release date. An acoustic album. He's been threatening this since Fleetwood Mac released The Dance in 1997 (the underrated Say You Will, following a tradition dating as far back as 1987's Tango in the Night, included several tracks that were originally solo Lindsey). If his acoustic tracks on The Dance are an indicator, more "Go Insane" (asshole-ism as resignation), less "Big Love" (middle-aged morning wood).

This City was gone

Thoughts on Andy Garcia's The Lost City, posted elsewhere but recorded here:

(1) Andy Garcia is his usual stiff and uncharismatic self (Soderbergh exploited this for comic effect in the Oceans 11 movies). If he flirted this openly and clumsily with my sister-in-law, I'd have stuck a trumpet up his ass.

(2) The film is a honeyed reverie: gorgeous nonsense, like Sastre's mooing after Garcia. Reminded me at its best of Hou Shiao-Shien's talent for presenting moments of chronological incongruity so as to stress the tension between memory and nostalgia.

(3) In the film Batista is much more than a preening met (and much less: he's like John Gielgud in Caligula). He runs a secret police! His goons shoot suspects in the head after an unsuccessful interrogation! He's got man-tits!

(4) Garcia the director is rather good when instructing the actors to tease and ricochet the good Cuban novelist Gabriel Cabrera Infante's purple dialogue -- initially (a tense scene between Dustin Hoffman's Meyer Lansky and Garcia). In the last third it gets ridiculous. Sample: "Havana is like a rose. It's got petals and thorns, but you still want to hold her close."

(5) Bill Murray?!? WTF?

(6) Jonathan Rosenbaum: "Cabrera Infante had a nuanced sense of how the Cuban revolution soured, not a simplistic set of cold war reflexes—his criticism of the idealized radical icon Che Guevara is a lot more complicated than this film’s."

(7) Once you accept the Garcia character's passivity as an unintentionally ironic portrait of what my grandparents' generation was like -- apolitical bourgeosie who rather disliked Batista but lacking the imagination to realize that their comfort couldn't stand a chance against Cuba's unstable history -- this synthesis of Casablanca, The Godfather, Part II, and Reds is okay to pretty good. There's rather too much music (it's excellent though). Questioning its verisimilitude is as fruitful as questioning the more repulsive The Motorcycle Diaries' depiction of Che Guevara-as-Henry-Fonda (this is a good demurral).

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Does anyone listen to Remain in Light past "Once in a Lifetime"? I've heard "Houses in Motion" get some love, but no one (including me) has claimed much for the three dirges with which the album concludes. The liquid-terror plot foiled a few days ago brought to mind "Listening Wind," which might be the most unsettling track on an album whose grooves throb and rumble with enough existential portent as it is.

The track may chronicle the dawning political consciousness of a nascent terrorist, but David Byrne's he-sees-he-thinks verses (it's like he's keeping a safari journal) complement his demotic melodies. Imagine the narrator of "The Big Country" landing his plane by the banks of the Congo and proceeding upriver; confronting the Heart of Darkness vaporizes his Western condescension (that Byrne regressed to confused up-with-people sincerity makes True Stories doubly offensive). Mojique's evolution is dreadful in its banality; he knows not what he does, but since he's following the wind's instructions it's a reflex as involuntary as sleeping. For a song in which terrible violence is intimated Mojique doesn't seem very angry, or determined; the colonialist tropes (the would-be saboteur's "friend the wind" orders him to construct bombs to destroy foreigners) define instead of cheapen his quest. Like Remain in Light's other slippery people -- troubled men of intelligence who are nonetheless dividing and dissolving or changing their shapes -- Mojique prefers to be acted upon by his environment, which is enough. The minimalist percussion, synth colors, and oddly timed guitar squeals (they flitter like birds) by the Expanded Heads evoke a wind heavy with unspoken threats. The beautiful chorus melody, sung by a doubletracked Byrne in the voice of Mojique, cushions the only sentence fragments Byrne writes, yet they don't seem so because he phrases them with full-throated force.

"The Overload" records the aftermath: no second coming, no center, just evisceration ("the removal of the insides"), a surfeit of feeling, and a benumbed admission that perhaps actions do have consequences. It could be a missive from beyond the grave: terrorists rarely survive their deeds. Makes you wonder whether "Same as it ever was" is a conclusion or another question.

"I was dreaming while I drove the long straight road ahead"

The voice of one of my favorite singers (top five, at the very least) suits Mantovani melodrama, not Mozartian delicacy. This is why Roy Orbison needed to write or co-write most of his material. The only composer approximating "Crying," "In Dreams," "Only the Lonely," and "It's Over" was Phil Spector and, frankly, it's a proposed marriage whose compability works only on paper – like pairing two pieces of aged pork like Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, say.

Buying candles and Quaker Oats at my neighborhood supermarket yesterday afternoon I was surprised enough to hear Orbison's "I Drove All Night" to thrust my crotch at a pyramid of Hunt's Tomato Paste. His cover of Cyndi Lauper's Top 10 hit from 1989 – neo-rockibilly Wilburyed by Jeff Lynne – is the sunlit equivalent to the nocturnal masturbatory tango "In Dreams," with Orbison's running-scared tremulousness echoed by overzealous snare work (the song was recorded in the early '90s) and yummy guitar twang. Celine Dion's aerobic cover is no pox.

Even the video is a yumfest: Their creepy good looks suiting the song's overripe escapism, Jason Priestley and Jennifer Connelly, at the peak of their youthful magnetism, are illumined like a Calvin Klein. Keep tasting those sweet kisses: one or both of them seem aware that they're isn't much time. Jason is needed at a Barenaked Ladies shoot in a few years.

PS: I should really rank the best Steinberg-Kelly songs. How would you? Place these in order of greatness: "Like a Virgin," "Alone," "Sex as a Weapon," "True Colors," "In Your Room," "Eternal Flame," and "I Touch Myself" (their long collaboration with Chrissie Hynde is another issue; I agree with Christgau that, despite the credits, she's the auteur).

A message to Mr. Lieberman (and Mr. Lamont)

As with a number of other leaders, the Senator seemed unaware that it is well-nigh impossible to effect a fundamental improvement in foreign policy without rectifying a few errors at home. But many Americans are beginning to sense for themselves that a prosperity paid for in the coin of chicanery and collusion, inflation and inequities, aimlessness and alienation, is very apt to become an air-conditioned nightmare, even if it does not lead in their lifetimes to nuclear war.

--William Appleman Williams, "The American Century: 1941-1957" (1957)

Thick as a brick

I erred in listening to the commentary track first. One of Brick director Rian Johnson's favorite films is Miller's Crossing. Of course, I thought, sadly: the young director whose own first film can muster a pulse only when it imitates the Coen brothers' enameled replica of film noir gaucheries. Most discussion has centered on Johnson's schooling of hapless young actors to intone the argot of Bogart, Mitchum, and Dick Powell. The DVD sound mix would be insulting if it didn't spare us the chore of listening to these actors mumble if not mangle the dialogue. I sensed the intervention of the Spirits of Noir.

Like so many young directors schooled in B pictures and not in the direct observation of life, the violent tableaux are, predictably, the film's most striking elements. Johnson directs the fascinating Joseph Gordon-Levitt (last seen in last year's excellent Mysterious Skin after leaving "3rd Rock From the Sun"'s orbit) so that the young man's taciturn intelligence is most creative when kinetic: when he's beaten up (often: Robert Patrick of T2: Judgment Day was the last actor to take this much punishment with such sangfroid) he punches and slaps foes who are often bulkier and taller than he; a harrowing chase allows him to devise the best leg-trip since Jerry outwitted Tom.

Brick reminded me of Cruel Intentions, another film in which a director ordered actors to mug archly: Glenn Close and John Malkovich in Guess jeans at the mall. If our educational system has permitted us to stud our sentences with "like" and "um" and "whatever," and actors are trained in nothing but pallid variations of the Method, why then sever the cast from their own remembrances of sins past? Give it up. Yes, well I remember how adolescence seemed naturalistic rather than realistic -- it was pulp, only duller -- but this is a retrospective judgment. Still, when I wrote my own high school novel just two years after graduation I was aware that the interpolation of myths and genres would only magnify the artificiality of my subject -- and the shallowness of my imagination. (The novel sucked anyway) . Brick's rather touching (and monstrous) mispairing of form and content is like an ambitious aesthete chronicling his university career as a monologue in blank verse (right, Wordsworth did it; you try reading The Prelude).

She's Scarlett and no scamp

Most of my colleagues and a large portion of our audience thinks Scarlett Johansson is the moon in June. Fan and very good film writer Nathaniel has constructed a helpful chronlogical analysis of her career to date. For the record I think her mooncalf languor has found its ideal setting only twice (Ghost World and Lost in Translation), but, hell, my audience thinks I overrate Jake Gyllenhaal too.

Fidel: like a grandfather "who just doesn’t know when to stop talking"

The New Yorker's Jon Lee Anderson, who had the indignity of watching his superb essay on life in post-millenial Cuba become suddenly redundant, avers in a Q&A that Cubans are aware that their supreme leader is in his dotage, evincing crowd restlessness during one of Fidel's classic six-hour tirades:

Everybody was moving and restless and talking and sleeping openly, things like that, except for the people right around him. The noise level was huge. And I was shocked. I certainly don’t remember seeing anything like that before. People would have sat in respectful silence for a long time. And it made me think of Ceausescu’s last appearance in Romania, when he appeared in the Republican Square and suddenly part of the crowd started yelling. It was like in the film Network, when Peter Finch sticks his head out the window and says, “I’m not going to take it anymore.” You saw Ceausescu’s face turn from confusion to anger, and, finally, to fear. And he flees, and then we see the helicopter leave, and suddenly the revolution is on.

Hmm

It appears that France and the U.S. have reached an agreement on a resolution on Lebanon. From NYT:

France and the United States reached agreement today on a Security Council resolution to halt the fighting in Lebanon and lay out plans for a permanent ceasefire and long-term political solution.

* * *

The text was to be made public later today and the Security Council scheduled a meeting later in the afternoon to consider the matter.

A vote cannot occur in the Security Council until 24 hours after the formal introduction of a resolution.

The French official said that the text called for a buffer zone to be set up free of all but the Lebanese Army and United Nations-mandated forces in southern Lebanon.

That's all the details we have right now. But the good news is that it calls for immediate cease-fire. I just saw crazy Netanyahu on CNN suggesting Israel might disregard that.

Spoonfuls of sugar make the Thatcherism go down

So when the Lily Allen album is released stateside (next February), will her 57,000 Myspace friends download it in droves and decide, upon listening to it, that the brat's misanthropy is borne of patrician impatience -- with them? Will they delete her from their friend lists? Was she ever their friend?

Like recent albums by the Pipettes and Amy Diamond, Alright, Still attempts to simulate (what its creators think) the insouciance of girl-pop; instead we get these aural testaments to grim Julie Andrews-style careerism. Or Thatcherism: Diamond and Allen (sounds like a law firm, no?), eyebrows arched, can't hide their disdain for the proles who simply don't know the right people; it reminds me of the rich girls in elementary school who had a laugh about the condition of the poor kid's shoes. This hauteur is a throwback, alright, and it certainly has what the New York Times breathlessly calls "the voice-of-a-generation heft of the Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not." Allen sings from the point of view of the clueless snob in Pulp's "Common People," who resorts to smug yuk-yuks when confronted by the (earned) resentment of a Jarvis Cocker or Alex Turner. Tiresome? Sure. But it's more interesting (aesthetically too) than Allen and Diamond's Reagan-baiting optimistic ghoulishness. Gimme ugly satiated whelp Kelly Osbourne any day.

Revelation

Terry Jones says, W. valiantly in the pocket of the Armageddonist lobby.

Those of us who have long been supporters of Armageddon have naturally been greatly cheered by way the president of the United States has been embracing our cause. Our desire to bring chaos, death and destruction to a greater swathe of humanity has, in the past, often been frustrated by peacemakers and do-gooders of all shades of the political spectrum.

For too long, our aspirations have been derided and criticised. In fact, to be blunt, for more than two millennia we have had to put up with opprobrium and vilification, but now all that will be a thing of the past, for in George Bush we have found an ally - indeed, we have found a leader. A man who is prepared to place himself at the head of the forces of destruction and misery, and who is unafraid of the opinion of the rest of the world.

George Bush has finally put Armageddon firmly on the political agenda, and it is likely to stay there for the foreseeable future.

But when we remember this, our laughter quickly turns to tears.

(The comments on the piece are also very funny.)

the art of war

A couple of days ago, Lindsay Beyerstein posted this interview with Robert Fisk. Fisk makes the point that the British, for example, faced very similar attacks, from Irish republicans in Northern Ireland, as Israel, but never retaliated with such devastating violence. Here's the excerpt:

What’s going on in southern Lebanon is an outrage. It’s an atrocity. The idea that more than 600 civilians must die because three Israeli soldiers were killed and two were captured on the border by the Hezbollah on July 12, my 60th birthday -- I’ve spent 30 years of my life watching this, this filth now, you know -- is outrageous. It’s against all morality to suggest that 600 innocent civilians must die for this. There is no other country in the world that could get away with this.

You know, when -- I wrote in my paper last week, there were times when the IRA would cross from the Irish Republic into northern Ireland to kill British soldiers. And they did murder and kill British soldiers. But we, the British, didn’t hold the Irish government responsible. We didn't send the Royal Air Force to bomb Dublin power stations and Galway and Cork. We didn't send our tanks across the border to shell the hill villages of Cavan or Monaghan or Louth or Donegal. Blair wouldn't dream of doing that, because he believes he's a moral man, he’s a civilized man. He wouldn't treat another nation like that.

Not that the British are completely innocent of abuses in Northern Ireland or India, but Fisk's point is a good one nonetheless. And it got me thinking about times that regional powers, especially western powers, have behaved like Israel. I really can't think of many. The French occupation of Algeria, comes to mind. But I keep going back to one single incident, the bombing of Guernica.

"For our contemporaries the role of Helen is played by words with capital letters"

Simone Weil, writing in the terrible year of 1937:

Words with content and meaning are not murderous. If one of them occasionally becomes asscoiated with bloodshed, it is rather by chance than inevitability, and the resulting action is generally controlled and efficacious. But when empty words are given capital letters, then, on the slightest pretext, men will begin shedding blood for them and piling up ruin in their name, without effectively grasping anything to which they refer, since what they refer to can never have any reality, for the simple reason that they mean nothing.

This strikes me as chillingly relevant:

[The national interest] cannot be defined as the life, liberty, and well-being of its citizens, because they are continually being adjured to sacrifice their well-being, their liberty, and their lives to the national interest. In the end, a study of modern history leads to the conclusion that the national interest of every State consists in its capacity to make war.

-- "The Power of Words"

Mel Gibson: "Sick to his empty core with Jew-hatred"

I'm happy we haven't posted anything about Mel Gibson's latest sin-and-expiation psychodrama. Hitchens writes the last word on the subject; and since Hitchens at his most scabrous is Hitchens at his most adorable this one should guarantee him a few busses when we eventually meet:

There's a lot to dislike about Gibson. He is given to furious tirades against homosexuals of the sort that make one wonder if he has some kind of subliminal or "unaddressed" problem. His vulgar and nasty movies, which also feature this prejudice, are additionally replete with the cheapest caricatures of the English. Braveheart and The Patriot are two of the most laughable historical films ever made. (Englishmen don't form picket lines outside movie theaters when "stereotyped," but still.) He has told interviewers that his wife, the mother of his children, is going to hell because she subscribes to the wrong Christian sect (a view that he justifies as "a pronouncement from the chair"). And it has been obvious for some time to the most meager intelligence that he is sick to his empty core with Jew-hatred.

Nice

Oscar Corral gives it to some Juventud Rebelde lackey on the radio.

HRW: "Some Israeli Attacks Amount to War Crimes"

Human Rights Watch released their report today accusing the IDF of committing war crimes in Lebanon. They deny the Israeli claim that the high civilian death toll is caused by Hezbollah operating in civilian areas, using civilians as human shields.

“The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military’s disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Our research shows that Israel’s claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel’s indiscriminate warfare.”

The report is based on extensive interviews with victims and witnesses of attacks, visits to some blast sites, and information obtained from hospitals, humanitarian groups, security forces and government agencies. Human Rights Watch also conducted research in Israel, assessing the weapons used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Human Rights Watch researchers found numerous cases in which the IDF launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military objectives but excessive civilian cost. In many cases, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.

In one case, an Israeli air strike on July 13 destroyed the home of a cleric known to have sympathy for Hezbollah but who was not known to have taken any active part in the hostilities. Even if the IDF considered him a legitimate target (and Human Rights Watch has no evidence that he was), the strike killed him, his wife, their 10 children and the family’s Sri Lankan maid.

On July 16, an Israeli aircraft fired on a civilian home in the village of Aitaroun, killing 11 members of the al-Akhrass family, among them seven Canadian-Lebanese dual nationals who were vacationing in the village when the war began. Human Rights Watch independently interviewed three villagers who vigorously denied that the family had any connection to Hezbollah. Among the victims were children aged one, three, five and seven.

The Israeli government has blamed Hezbollah for the high civilian casualty toll in Lebanon, insisting that Hezbollah fighters have hidden themselves and their weapons among the civilian population. However, in none of the cases of civilian deaths documented in the report is there evidence to suggest that Hezbollah was operating in or around the area during or prior to the attack.

“Hezbollah fighters must not hide behind civilians – that’s an absolute – but the image that Israel has promoted of such shielding as the cause of so high a civilian death toll is wrong,” Roth said. “In the many cases of civilian deaths examined by Human Rights Watch, the location of Hezbollah troops and arms had nothing to do with the deaths because there was no Hezbollah around.”

It's important to note that even if Hezbollah was hiding among civilians populations, which is likely the case, the Geneva Conventions--which are not cited in the HRW release--also unequivocally ban military operations in large civilian areas for the sake of acquiring minor military targets. Here's an excerpt:

Art. 57. Precautions in attack

1. In the conduct of military operations, constant care shall be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects.

2. With respect to attacks, the following precautions shall be taken: (a) those who plan or decide upon an attack shall: (i) do everything feasible to verify that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects and are not subject to special protection but are military objectives within the meaning of paragraph 2 of Article 52 and that it is not prohibited by the provisions of this Protocol to attack them; (ii) take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack with a view to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss or civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects; (iii) refrain from deciding to launch any attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;

(b) an attack shall be cancelled or suspended if it becomes apparent that the objective is not a military one or is subject to special protection or that the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;

(c) effective advance warning shall be given of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit.

3. When a choice is possible between several military objectives for obtaining a similar military advantage, the objective to be selected shall be that the attack on which may be expected to cause the least danger to civilian lives and to civilian objects.

4. In the conduct of military operations at sea or in the air, each Party to the conflict shall, in conformity with its rights and duties under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, take all reasonable precautions to avoid losses of civilian lives and damage to civilian objects.

5. No provision of this article may be construed as authorizing any attacks against the civilian population, civilians or civilian objects.

More from HRW:

Statements from Israeli government officials and military leaders suggest that, at the very least, the IDF has blurred the distinction between civilians and combatants, arguing that only people associated with Hezbollah remain in southern Lebanon, so all are legitimate targets of attack. Under international law, however, only civilians directly participating in hostilities lose their immunity from attack. Many civilians have been unable to flee because they are sick, wounded, do not have the means to leave or are providing essential civil services.

Many civilians are afraid to leave the south because the roads are under Israeli attack. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have fled their homes, but Israeli forces have fired with warplanes and artillery on dozens of civilian vehicles, many flying white flags. Israel has justified its attacks on roads by citing the need to target Hezbollah fighters moving arms and block their transport routes.

However, none of the evidence gathered by Human Rights Watch or reported to date by independent media sources indicate that any of the attacks on vehicles documented in the report resulted in Hezbollah casualties or the destruction of weapons. Rather, the attacks have killed and wounded civilians who were fleeing their homes after the IDF issued instructions to evacuate.

“Israeli warnings of imminent attacks do not turn civilians into military targets,” said Roth. “Otherwise, Palestinian militant groups might ‘warn’ Israeli settlers to leave their settlements and then feel justified in attacking those who remained.”

Here's the full 50-page report, Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon.

Stand by your Lieberman

Yeah, I know youtube makes blogging facile, but I just have to post this, and I promise, there will be proper posts sometime today.

Via Digby, Joe Lieberman's endorsements.

"Some guys actually enjoy watching two women make out"

The Daily Show is loooking back at their first ten years. (Though I haven't seen any clips of Craiggers Kilborn yet, whom I used to mimic in front of a mirror as a high school junior.) Remember Fort Lauderdale-native Ed Heeney?



Here's the full Ed Heney segment; it's worth it.

Who would have thunk it?

That I'd be nodding in agreement to quotes from the Cuban American National Foundation. From a piece in the New York Times, which has been a distant No. 2 to the Herald--but No. 2 nonetheless--in its coverage of the Castro situation.

Jorge Mas Santos, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, said there were still those who talked of reclaiming what was lost.

“You have people who lost a farm and now say they want their cows back,” Mr. Mas Santos said. “Forget it. The cow is dead.”

And I think this is exactly how I feel about my role in relation to Cuba.

“Cuba can give me nothing,’’ he said, “but what we have here, we can give to Cuba. Look at the miracle of South Florida. Yes, we can rebuild roads and buildings.

“But what we have to do is touch the hearts of Cubans and help them smile and dream again. To propel them into the future and not relive the past. That is our generation’s gift.”

Maybe I should join CANF... Nah.

coverage of cliche

Cafecito, cafe cubano, cigar, tabaco, Cuba libre, cafe con leche, Versailles, salsa.

So CNN has this old white woman reporting from Versailles in Little Havana. And her report today started with, "They stand outside drinking their cafe cubano and smoking cigars" as a group of old Cuban guys stand around behind her. Jacques Cousteau-like, you'd think she was reporting on some rare, pellagic creature, not a gaggle of aging men.

Ever since Castro ceded power, the media, especially the local media, has used cliché after cliché about Cubans. I must have seen the image of the gap-toothed dude in the red polo dancing and leering with some woman over 20 times yesterday and in a bunch of channels.

The Miami Herald, for example, which you'd think would be most insightful and thorough in its coverage of Cuban culture, often resorts to the same clichés. It feels like they have a database of these tired cultural references that a reporter can always call up with a keystroke.

Though the restaurant was crowded Tuesday morning -- partly with television news cameras -- few patrons wanted to discuss their thoughts with news reporters over Cuban coffee. Some feared that premature celebrations could imperil Cubans on the island.

Maybe they didn't want to talk anymore because every asshole reporter that talked to them bought them a cafecito, and they are on the verge of a heart attack.

You see these pandering cliches all over the local media. You'd think that on the second day of coverage, reporters would start looking for a story that's not a bunch of Cubans standing outside Versailles, but today's Sentinel's front page had the same old man dressed all in white (including hat) holding a placard in front of the restaurant.

And of course, the bastion of Cuban cliche is Babalu Blog, which revels in tired, unremarkable Cuban references with the relish of a second-generation Cuban American who's never been to Cuba. Coño.

And this from Bob Norman:

The deal is this: A lot of Miami Cubans are just as crazed with hate as Israelis and Palestinians, as the IRA, as Sunni insurgents, as ETA members. Hence they are dancing like banshees in the street because an old man they hate is sick. Those who are trapped in a bitter past can’t be expected to act or think rationally. Make no mistake, they want to see a revolution now, regardless of the destruction and bloodshed that it might cause.

Bob can really do nuance. He's on his way to becoming another generic, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing South Florida columnist.

blogging and the revolution

So I haven't yet posted anything on the Fidel Castro thing, because I really didn't have much to say, and other people were covering it far better than I would. The Herald's coverage is overwhelming. I was working for them when Tom Fiedler again brought up "the Cuba plan" but I never expected the coverage to be this thorough. Critical Miami, for example, which was featured on the Miami Herald along with Stuck on the Palmetto, has a great live blog about the news.

There's a trend appearing that usually pops up among some exile groups and it's being propagated in the local blogosphere by the right wing, Cuban-American blogs, like Babalu Blog, and being echoed in Critical Miami as well, that this is the time for Cubans in the island to take to the streets and topple the government. This is Babalu quoting the ubiquitous guy on Eight Street:

One guy at Calle Ocho being interviewed by local news said everything that needs to be said: "While we celebrate here, I urge the Cuban people in Cuba to take to the streets. This is the opportune moment. Now is the time."

(The bold type is his.) I've always been uncomfortable with these calls made from behind the aegis of American culture. They're not really irresponsible as Cubans know better than to the take to the streets due to calls from a blog, but they're a little disingenuous. I seriously doubt Cubans on the island will take to the streets sometime soon, not because they lack courage, but because they have an abundance of smarts. No one wants to be shot on the possible eve of political change. It's cute that they're getting moral support for an imaginary coup from blogs in Miami, but moral support doesn't cost anything, and it never stopped a tank or bullet.

I've been thinking about what's going on with Castro for the last couple of hours. Andres Oppenheimer has a couple of suggestions. The first one being that the Cuban government is telling the truth, which is quite possible; the second one being that Castro is either incapacitated or dead, and they're trying to ease the transition, which is also likely; and the third is that this is some kind of test of loyalty to filter out the officials who are not entirely loyal to the regime, which I think is highly unlikely. Castro's a risk taker, but he understands that his regime has never been weaker--even if he wasn't sick--and I doubt he's willing to gamble with that.

There's a third possibility, that as far as I can tell no one has mentioned, and that is that Castro may just want to retire. He's mentioned it before and that doesn't rule out that he may be dying. But look at the this scenario. He emerges in a couple of weeks, says that he's sick and old, and though he still wants to serve the Cuban people, his younger brother is more fit for the job now. I don't know, it doesn't seem that far-fetched to me.

"Love me now forever"

Call it bad good luck: they sold a lot of records, teased up their hair, even had a Molly Ringwald-John Hughes film titled after one of their most scabrous numbers. Until 1984 the Psychedelic Furs' catalogue embodied the ultimate '80s paradox, one which has been thankfully disavowed by most acts since Nirvana, hip-hop, girl-pop, boy-pop, and the Internet made such paradoxes seem parochial if not Victorian: if you secretly want to sell records and the records are actually selling, throw a tantrum. Ignore the sequins with which your tunes are garlanded. 1982's Mirror Moves caught the P-Furs before the paradox smothered their aesthetic impulses. Here's my review. And "President Gas" never seemed so prescient.