My review of the disappointing Maroon 5 album, which interpolates ideas discussed here.

Of beauty and copy editing

I'd like to encourage all AGI readers--all nine of you--to check out a blog called Nonsense Verse. It's written by one smart, charming copy editor I met while she was down in Miami for this year's ACES (American Copy Editors Society) conference, a party I was crashing. Yeah, you heard me right; those copy editors know how to get down. Jen--that's all the personal information I'll reveal since she might not want her readers to know she works for one of them east coast institutions of American journalism--is not only bright, but also damn sexy. Not just newsroom sexy, which requires only moderate social adeptness and a complete set of teeth, but sexy in the non-newsroom handicap sense of the word. So do check out her blog and cyber ogle her a bit, maybe it will encourage her to post more often.

I'm going to Valencia tomorrow for the weekend to spend time with family. Blogging will be slow.

Finally, I just found out today that there's a group of extreme right-wing Miami bloggers leading a campaign blaming Spain for exploiting Cuba and supporting Castro. I'll let you know why they're wrong when I get back.

"We build a shield and somebody will build a better missile."

News like this reminds me that, sometimes, it seemed like The West Wing had the answer to some of the major political questions of our time.

"I'm pushing you toward the missile shield, cause I think it works," Leo tells the President.
"Based on what," President Bartlet asks him.
"Confidence. And the understanding that there's been a time in the evolution of everything that works when it didn't work."
Later the President asks Lord Marbury, "Where are you on the missile shield."
"Well, I think it's dangerous, illegal, fiscally irresponsible, technologically unsound, and a threat to all people everywhere. . . ."
"I think the world invented a nuclear weapon," Leo responds, "and I think the world owes it to itself to see if they can't invent something that would make it irelevant."
"Well that's the right sentiment," Lord Marbury tells him, "and certainly a credible one from a man who's fought in a war. You think you can make it stop? Well, you can't. We build a shield and somebody will build a better missile."
"Well," says the President, "it's a discussion for serious men. They say a statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years. I'd like us to be statesmen while we are still alive."

Damn, I miss that show.

Sanchez steps down from CLC

Writes three-page resignation letter blaming the Herald, while admitting BTP's Cuba connections. How does that work? Sanchez explains,

While an affiliate of BTP . . . may have performed certain work in Cuba [as have all the bidders on the tunnel project], the law simply does not allow for the imposition of liability on BTP.

Mr. Sanchez, your less-than-moral bobbing and weaving gets an ironic tip of the hat from us at AGI. Happy trails.

Mid-year singles roundup

Like the title says, in no particular order:

Bright Eyes, "Classic Cars"
Ciara, "Like A Boy"
LCD Soundsystem, "All My Friends"
Maroon 5, "Makes Me Wonder"
Justin Timberlake, "What Goes Around...Comes Around"
Ne-Yo, "Because of You"
!!!, "Must Be the Moon"
Kathy Diamond, "All Woman"
Modest Mouse, "Dashboard"
Avril Lavigne, "Girlfriend"
Miranda Lambert, "Famous in a Small Town"

Home improvements have kept me away for more than a week. The long weekend didn't help – a flurry of activities that included selecting a bathroom floor tile, dim sum, barbeques, a couple of record reviews, and "Beverly Hills 90210: Season Two."

A recap of what's been in my player:

The National – Boxer: I understand why my colleagues are so in love with them: the tunes are pretty, the production and arrangements fulsome, and Matt Berninger's John Cale-esque rumble avoids the declamatory vigor that so many young bands mistake for power. "Mistaken for Strangers" is likely the best Interpol song I'll ever hear. But pretty tunes and fulsome arrangements don't compensate the well-meaning vacuity of what Berninger has to say about love and loss. "Subtle" in this context means "polite." Paul Banks is a tool but at least he shows signs that he's conflicted about it; I don't hear conflict on here at all, unless I'm missing something. I guess I want declamatory vigor after all.

Jarvis Cocker – Jarvis: In which Jarvis falls victim to the common affliction when massively compelling frontmen go solo: he's writing about his well-worn subjects with a verve he hasn't shown in years, while his backing band, so besotted with their leader's conviction, drags the tempos. In this case the backing band is mostly Jarvis, and welcome entries to his canon like "Disney Time" and "From Auschwitz to Ipswich" simmer instead of cook. "Running The World" is cool because Jarvis gets to say "cunt" in his most self-piteous manner, but in the end it's not so much a statement as an epitaph, and not a particularly eloquent one at that (burying it in thirty minutes of silence - so 1993! – doesn't help). I don't doubt that my affection for Jarvis will keep me returning to it in the next few months despite my having not played Tom Verlaine, Stephen Malkmus, and Rei Momo in years.

Finally, this unearthed Robert Christgau essay about one of my favorite bands made my day (Key line: an album "doesn't qualify as great junk unless the possibility remains that it's really pretentious.")

Really?

This language, on an issue as black and white as climate change, couldn't be more spineless.

We hope that we can all assume our responsibilities ... and that our administration will be open to listening to why it is important to go forward, perhaps in a different way than we proceeded in the past.

Alabama lists gay rights groups under terrorists

Yes.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - The Alabama Department of Homeland Security has taken down a Web site it operated that included gay rights and anti-war organizations in a list of groups that could include terrorists.

The Web site identified different types of terrorists, and included a list of groups it believed could spawn terrorists. The list also included environmentalists, animal rights advocates and abortion opponents.

The director of the department, Jim Walker, said his agency received a number of calls and e-mails from people who said they felt the site unfairly targeted certain people just because of their beliefs. He said he plans to put the Web site back on the Internet, but will no longer identify specific types of groups.

I don't know why I'm surprised. It is, after all, Alabama. Their department of education probably labels believers of evolution as witches and devil worshipers.

Talk about broken borders

I hope that the title of this post is not misunderstood as an endorsement of a certain fat, Irish talking head--oh, so many to pick from--but as far as that statement is concerned, I have to agree with the pasty xenophobe: the immigration agency is fucked up. Because rednecks and other subsets of Republican dumbasses don't like paying taxes, the Congress set up a system where fees from immigrants finance the Citizenship and Immigration Services. Sounds fair enough.

Actually, no.

What's happened is that the agency depends on these fees so it's in its best interest to make the application period as expensive and long as possible, because since processes can take up to three years, it can plan its future budget depending on new applications. Presented with a plan that would shorten the application period from three years to just three months, cut the average 45 hours--45 HOURS!--immigrants spend in lines by more than a third, and save $350 million, the agency said "nein."

And this is just one in the litany of problems. The agency has been running in the red, so that new fees are used to pay for application processes started years ago, and, up until 9/11, it depended on a computer-less system of filing and archiving applications. But wait, there's more:

By 2004, Citizenship and Immigration was "looking at maybe $500 million or more in the hole," said William Yates, then head of domestic operations.

As backlogs and deficits grew, the agency ratcheted up charges to cover its budget. The longer applicants waited, the more they paid.

"We were really operating a Ponzi scheme," said Yates, who retired last year after 31 years at the agency. "The money that current applicants were paying, we were using to adjudicate older cases.

For example, Citizenship and Immigration set up a Chicago office strictly to accept signed applications and checks, even though most applications are not approved. Officials said they created the system because the Treasury Department offered to set it up at no cost, and the agency doesn't like to process applications before being paid to do so.

In 2005, it raised $230 million by charging green-card applicants for about 1 million temporary work and travel permits they needed while waiting for their cases to be processed. About 325,000 interim permits went to people whose applications were later denied, creating a security risk, Khatri said.

The agency also charges a $1000 premium fee to speed up applications, but of course, the process is already so slow that most applicants pay the $1000 premium, which kind of defeats its purpose. Maybe they'll start a premium premium service.

And finally, the agency is working on finalizing a program this week that would raise fees by about 50 percent. I could quote that crap about giving us your poor, huddled masses right here, but that would almost be too easy.

Sunday roundup

Got back from Granada late last night. Granada is a gorgeous city and more modern than Seville; almost makes me wish I was spending the six weeks there. And the Alhambra is breath-taking. It's hard to comprehend how the same religion that built it is now being hijacked by a vocal minority of fanatics, and can't find a way to join modernity. I'm going to be in Valencia the next weekend, and Amsterdam the weekend after that.

On the news front, Israelis have possibly the shortest memory of any country in the world in dealing with their neighbors and not repeating their mistakes.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday he authorized the army to do whatever it takes to halt Palestinian rocket fire — even as an Israeli was killed by a salvo from Gaza — but warned his Cabinet there was no quick solution.

Yes, that worked so well a year ago.

Fly around Havana

Today's Herald has a story about Miami Today in Images, a project to photograph dilapidated buildings in Havana and integrate the high definition photos into an interactive map of the city, most of which you can already do on Google Maps--minus the high resolution photos--far more efficiently. You can find the project's website here. The resolution of the photos combined with the crumbling buildings and almost barren streets is close to macabre. You can really get lost going through the images and I found I had to remind myself that I was looking at a real city, not an Oliver Stone set.


Naphtali David Rishe, the director, says it has no "political message" yet one of the links on his site takes you to affidavit to claim specific property. That may not have an overt political message, but it'll definitely inspire some knee-jerk reaction from doddering exiles. And part of it just doesn't make sense. Most of the images are of colonial buildings like the Morro. Who is going to be claiming these buildings? The Spanish? The site's url is no-more.com, which I guess refers to the dilapidation of the city, but it also sounds weirdly political.

As the article points out, reclaiming of land after the fall of Communist regimes has never been carried out with anything resembling equity.

But whether the project will eventually help people reclaim property confiscated under Fidel Castro's regime is uncertain.

''Whether this is considered proper evidence depends on who would be processing these applications,'' says Tania Mastrapa, who runs a Miami consulting practice on property reclamation in Cuba.

''I have not heard of these claim mechanisms being used in other countries,'' says Mastrapa, whose doctoral thesis at the University of Miami examined post-Communist property claims in the Czech Republic and Nicaragua and the lessons they could have for Cuba.

Cubans are better off instituting a political and proprietary amnesty after regime change rather than try to revert the clock to 1959, which is only going to slow things down and make it all worse for those on the island.

There is tremendous value to this project, but affidavits for people to claim land play no role in it. There's really something to be said for scientifically presenting information in a responsible way and not playing to people's sensibilities. I say Rishe should stick to that.

NYT poll: majority support amnesty for immigrants

Many Republican lawmakers have rejected this plan, calling it an amnesty that rewards immigrants who broke the laws when they entered the United States. But the poll showed that differences were not great between Republicans and Democrats on this issue, with 66 percent of Republicans in the poll favoring the legalization proposal, as well as 72 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of independents.

More here.

And...

Cubans are looking to buy American potatoes.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney may or may not be intolerant of gays, but he's definitely tolerant of the flip flop.

Romney's record on gay rights has drawn scrutiny — and criticism that he changes with the political winds. In a 1994 bid against Sen. Edward Kennedy, Romney argued that he would be a better champion of gay rights than the Democrat. In 2003, after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that same-sex couples could wed in the state, Romney pushed for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

He did refer to the presidency as a "secular office," which has been blasphemy for the last six years.

Oh man, this going to generate a bunch of History Channel specials

Apparently Kennedy could have been killed by two shooters.

Conspiracy theorists rejoice.

en España

I'm going to be in Seville for the next six weeks taking classes on EU law and Spanish constitutional law at the university here. I hope to post about these subjects in between tapas y tintos.

The Spanish seem very excited about the EU and are completely committed to its growth. (This is not exactly common throughout Europe; I experienced almost the opposite in Eastern Europe over the winter.) The proposal for a European constitution, for example, passed with a very wide margin over here, before it was defeated in France and the Netherlands. Especially among the professors, there is a palpable sense that they understand the importance of what they're doing, and its significant historical role. This is their late 1700's.

I'm exhausted and I want to go sample more Spanish wine, but I'll be posting some more soon. I'll leave you with a picture of me at the local Irish pub.


I'm coming to the conclusion that no matter where you are in the world, there is never an Irish pub, or an Irishman, too far from you.

Briefly: Venezuelans march to support TV station

Venezuelans took to the streets today, to protest Hugo Chavez's plans to close a TV station critical of his government.

RCTV is due to go off the air at midnight May 27, when the government says its license expires. The channel and its supporters argue Chavez is trying to silence criticism, while the government says it will be replaced by a public-service station and that freedom of expression is being respected.

"If (Chavez) shuts down the channel, he's crazy," said Rafael Velasquez, a 27-year-old construction worker who traveled 150 miles from the city of Puerto La Cruz to attend the protest. "I don't think it's fair. He has to ask the people whether they want it or not."

The march was organized by the channel and 26 opposition political parties.

In a speech to protesters, RCTV chief Marcel Granier urged the Venezuelan president to heed the words of South American independence icon and Chavez hero Simon Bolivar: "He who rules must listen; the people are speaking."

The decision not to renew RCTV's license has been criticized abroad by press freedom groups, Amnesty International, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States and the Roman Catholic Church.

RCTV is the most prominent outlet antagonizing Chavez. Local newspapers and websites are likely next on his hit list.

Conflicted jerkdom

Let us examine two different ways in which contemporary musicians articulate their conflicted relations with their looks, or should I say, how they expect their audiences respond to them. Snapping and crackling like the best Whispers song ever recorded, Maroon 5's "Makes Me Wonder" is so confident in its buoyancy that it puts me on my guard. This song is pure steel, impervious and clean. This is a replication of funk by a decidedly white band that's better than anything attempted by Justin Timberlake's crew (let's not even mention the Chili Peppers), and its lasciviousness way more convincing. Luckily Adam Levine can't project ardor; like any nascent pussyhound who could only afford expensive hair gel when he and his rather homely bandmates (see the Rob Sheffield Dictum: like Bryan Ferry and Brandon Flowers, Levine "makes sure he never gets upstaged by always surrounding himself with much uglier men in public") went multi-platinum three years ago, he revels in jerkdom not just for its own marvelous sake, but because he's learned that lots of girls find it hot. The genius bridge, each verse sweeteened with piano licks, spells it plainly:

I still don't have the reason
And you don't have the time
And it really makes me wonder
If I ever gave a fuck about you

This dialectic – vocal swagger atop honeyed arrangement – strengthens all that's best and shiniest about Miranda Lambert's songs, most of which delineate the hazards of toying with gender stereotypes (the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) just long enough until you get bruised. I hear a little of teenpop's self-involved bravado on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's "Gunpowder and Lead"; I've even got Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" next to "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend"on my iPod playlist ("Desperation" even sounds like a woozy version of Avril's "Complicated"). The glee with which she crunches on the lyrics to "Guilty in Here" bespeak a young woman who's wily enough to play around but affects the right degree of guilt to get her man back. But the bizarre "Love Letters" tells a different story. Discard the tired tropes (angels who don't get their wings, pearly gates, wet paper) and we're left with an admission of adamantine forbearance ("I'm better off living with memories/I know that it's gonna hurt but I don't think it gets any worse") that owes nothing of the self-help pieties to which Lavigne clings as if espousing them signified maturity. Not that it makes life easier for Lambert.

I wish I could find available reproductions of their new albums' cover art (the clearest one of Maroon 5's extant is on Amazon), but how the representations of Levine and Lambert intersect with their personae is fascinating. On the Maroon 5 one Levine is foregrounded, photographed wearing one of his tailored suits with a sullen expression floating a couple of feet off the ground; his bandmates, of course, are either seen in profile or too far back to count, as if to remind us who remains pretty and who's still ugly. Meanwhile Lambert, so white and biscuity-soft that she could be one of the younger Simpson sisters, looks more demure than in her Kerosene cover shot – so demure that the words "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" printed below her image seem to mock her (this is crazy?). The message and marketing are clear, but do their respective audiences know who (and what) they're listening to? Are the kids who made "Makes Me Wonder" the fastest-rising Number One in Soundscan history and listen to Lambert turn small town life into the Peyton Place of John Mellencamp's nightmares aware that these artists are using pretty for un-pretty ends? Judging by casual chats I have with my students, they're more willing to accept caddishness from their pop stars than my generation; caddishness, my students argue, humanizes the likes of Levine and Lambert. This surely must count as an advance.

Hitch on Falwell: "It's a pity there isn't a Hell for him to go to"

Teenpop and its discontents

It's a long one, but this thread has some fine compressed insights (especially by Tim Finney and Jess) on the teenpop phenomenon. Frankly, I don't have a dog in this hunt. There's a reason why I freeze when non-rockcrits ask me what "kind" of music I listen to: I'm expected to list genres (inevitably, the person asking will say, "I listen to anything BUT country"). I don't know any serious consumer of music who says, "I'm a reggae fan" but there are plenty of people who love Bob Marley, Black Uhuru, etc. We listen to artists, not genres.

My feelings for "teenpop" as a subgenre and signifier of various kinds of youth, rebellion, angst, and ecstasy run counter to a lot of what's expressed in that ILM thread. It does, however, return us to the central question: HOW do we listen to what we listen to? Frank Kogan and Chuck Eddy have posited their own answers, not all of which I necessarily agree with, but you can't accuse them of promoting one genre and its characteristics; if anything, Kogan and Eddy (in particular) have tried to expand a listener's notion of what, say, heavy metal can encompass as well as the ways in which our understanding of heavy metal changes as our tastes bump against other records (and other people).

How do I respond to teenpop? As I mentioned in my own post, I got to thinking of Maura Johnston's freestyle panel at EMP. Matos asked me how South Floridians regarded freestyle as a genre. I said something, "It was OUR MUSIC," which, admittedly, was rather lame, but it summarized how thirteen-year-old horny boys and girls felt. We were responding to Company B, "Diamond Girl," "Jealous Fellows," and Noel's "Silent Morning," not to "the music played on Power 96 and Y-100 and listened to by guys in rat tails and girls in Capezios, Taxi pants, and hoop earrings." The hysterical nature of adolescent experiences dovetailed with the scenarios drawn in their songs:

As I age and life gets duller, the memorable experiences are actually MORE melodramatic in context, so "Girlfriend," "Wake Up," and "Since U Been Gone" really do become the soundtrack to my life. Call it hyperrealism. Jody Rosen was right when he posited in his Slate essay last week that the "defining feature of post-Lavigne teenpop is its adult pretensions," but I'd also remark that "the defining feature of adulthood is pretension." Thirtysomethings are pretty smug, generally, and so are the artists we tend to admire; thus, there's something to be said about teens striving for adulthood using the language and manners of eighteen-year-olds.

And then I have friends who wonder why I keep such heterosexist company -- and friends who cringe when I confess that my biggest fear is a story appearing in an anthology like this. A semiotician could spend a giddy lifetime deconstructing the imagery on display here. Suffice to say that Ayn Rand and Leni Riefenstahl are no doubt quite happy.

The price is wrong, bitch!

We haven't said much about Bob Barker's imminent departure from "The Price is Right," a show whose longevity was comforting: one of the few things in life we can count on. This story hits the right degree of affection, snark, and poignancy:

Just the sound of it feels, somehow nostalgically, like being in bed with the flu. ("Come on down!" roars the announcer, Rich Fields -- who replaced the late Rod Roddy in 2003, who replaced Johnny Olson in 1986 -- as you beg some 7Up and toast to stay on down.) There is the sound of it starting at 11 a.m., over those gooey-warm CBS airwaves, just when the day is still technically young and yet already somehow wasted. It feels like skipping class again and again, the MWF 10:30 section of Lit 125: The Emerging Self.

The meticulousness of the preservation job done to Barker every morning is as perfect an example as any of what Hollywood can buy:

Barker is 83 now. He's essentially the longest, oldest, most continuous anything on the air. At a recent taping of the game show in the spangly-sparkly CBS studio long ago named in his honor, he is wearing one of his perfectly fitted navy blue suits and a periwinkle blue tie. His face, neck and hands are layered in stage makeup the hue of pulverized Nevada, so much that you're not sure where it ends and the man begins. His hair (hair?) is snow white; he stopped dyeing it many seasons ago in a nod to the inevitable. "What are you going to do after [you retire]?" an audience member shouts out during a commercial break.

"Well, I plan to do a little more drinking," Barker deadpans.

Reviews

Busy day. Reviews of Ne-Yo and my take on Throwing Muses.

Some records

Arctic Monkeys - Favorite Worst Nightmare: They finally figured out how to write ballads, and not just because they figured out that abandoning their trademark herky-jerkiness doesn't mean sacrificing their talent for demotic cadence -- it just means that on "505" and "Do Me a Favour" Alex Turner slows down enough to allow whatever hapless target is on the other end to note his wit, clarity, and (maybe) charity. Maybe the work that goes into a relationship demands a commitment stronger than looking good on the dance floor, although the catchy but redundant "Brianstorm" and "Bacalava" bespeak a commitment to yobbery that may sustain them when the NME loses interest. Luckily there's "Fluorescent Adolescent" -- witty, clear, and charitable -- and a handful of other contenders out to prove that Favorite Worst Nightmare ain't no Dog Man Star or The Libertines (I know: better albums, but don't remind the NME or Dom Passantino).

Tim McGraw - Let It Go: "I'm Workin'" may be the most honest portrait of lower-middle-class despair I've heard in a couple of years. The children's chorus singing over the fadeout on "Last Dollar (Fly Away)" suggests that McGraw's and his producers have listened to Fleetwood Mac's "Say You Will," and it's a fitting analogy. This is studio craft at its most sterling, with a star who's gotten weirder with each album (each of which sells a bit more than its predecessor). I'd suggest giving "Whiskey and You" to George Jones if I thought George'd do a better job than Tim.

Of course, this won't tour, but I'm almost considering flying to New York just to see it. Having just devoured Garry Wills' intimidating Nixon Agonistes on a long plane ride, this is small fry. I'd pay good money to own the original Frost/Nixon interviews too; for now, this clip is the closest we'll come (if someone finds more please write).

This book is also quite invaluable.

For obvious reasons I don't often link to the writing of friends, but Mallory O'Donnell's essay on Sting's "Why Should I Cry For You?" deserves a read.

In Honor of the Virginia Tech Martyrs

Plastic Guns Don't Kill Theater People, Theater People Kill Theater
In response to the shootings, Yale has banned realistic SWORDS from the stage. Coming next season: "Hamlet," now featuring "death-by-long-stemmed-rose."