Shameless Plug

One of my stories is being featured on an Amazon.com competition... along with a hundred others, so veeeery much doubt it will win. Still, why not vote for moi? In the Christmas spirit.

VOTE

It might be a diversion from the AGI Pinochet storm of a few days ago, which...COME ON! Some people are just blatantly evil, no matter what political pap you're being fed. Pinochet was one of those. Right-wing apologetics suck.

Love and death on 90210

Marisa Meltzer's article on the first season of "Beverly Hills 90210" strikes the right note of repulsion and affection. I don't know how much credit producer/writer Darren Star's attention to the Billboard Modern Rock tracks deserves in assessing the show's ultimate aesthetic worth, but let's just say that hearing Concrete Blonde's "Joey," the Pet Shop Boys' "So Hard," and Soho's marvelous, too-long-forgotten "Hippychick" (my introduction to The Smiths!) introduced this high school junior to levels of melodrama and subtle subversion which made that important year's discoveries all the more interesting. Keying an epochal instance of Dylan Walsh's Byronic angst to R.E.M.'s "You Are The Everything" -- by far the most haunting song on the otherwise misbegotten Green -- was a stroke of genius. It was easier to forgive Star or whoever for promoting Jeremy Jordan's "Right Kind of Girl," but at that point Donna and David were hogging all the important stories anyway, and Shannon Doherty's sui generis Brenda Walsh was sidelined. Here was a girl worthy of emulation: masculine, erratic, waspish, and unworthy of pallid Dylan. When John Hurt exquisitely pined for Jason Priestley in Love & Death in Long Island, I was tempted to snort. Brenda was gayer than Brandon ever was.

Stoned and dethroned

If nothing else, World Trade Center reminds us that Oliver Stone can direct action sequences. Buried 20 feet below the earth and covered by seemingly tons of rubble, New York City Port Authority officers John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) and Will Jimena (Michael Peña) are helpless as fiery embers rain down upon them. We also marvel at a very pregmant Maggie Gyllenhaal's ability to run down a staircase and into roomfuls of Hispanic in-laws without breaking a sweat.

A shame he forgets that we love Stone for his nutball paranoid fantasias. There's something deeply suspect about a Stone film devoid of insinuations, threats, windbag rhetoric, and Donald Sutherland in a trenchcoat muttering National Security Council secrets at 500 beats per minute. I understand why conservative and liberal critics wept with gratitude when WTC contained no bewigged Colin Farrell-as-Prince-Valiant or J. Edgar Hoover snogging the kid from "My So-Called Life." As his coddling of Fidel Castro and enshrinement of John F. Kennedy demonstrated, Stone isn't so much an apologist for power as he is a devotee of men in power performing civic duties for the delectation of a docile, misty-eyed body politic. Example: Gordon Gekko can keep his wife and kids and Long Island mansion as long as he shares mistress Daryl Hannah with a bovine Charlie Sheen (I suspect Stone twice cast Sheen in the hopeless role of his proxy because he genuinely did see himself as a kid as stupid and inexpressive as Sheen, and in a sense wishes he still was). Shorn of subtext and conflict, McLoughlin and Jimena are daguerrotypes whose sensitivity to only the most primal of emotions (they miss their wife and kids) makes them interchangeable with the hijackers in United 93 praying to Allah. That risible film purported to re-imagine one chapter in the September 11 story as Airport edited as if it was a Pontecorvo movie; give Stone credit for shooting a more resonant Towering Inferno. Casting Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello as the worried wives is another plus. Let's remember that most Stone heroines have the libidinal charge of a Scotch tape dispenser – unless you're Sissy Spacek, on whom the assassination of Robert Kennedy produces a reaction analogous to the consumption of two dozen oysters. Stone, World Trade Center reminds us, is a patriot and a good man, in that order, and if it isn't he'll remind you again, on FOX News if necessary.

The closest he comes to creating a batshit-crazy leitmotif in the manner of the endless Zapruder stills of JFK's head getting blasted open or the Indian in Natural Born Killers is a hallucination of the Sacred Heart of Jesus seen by Jimena before he's rescued. The soundtrack swells. The voice of Ronald Reagan ("silver water over peach fuzz," wrote Edmund Morris) gently reminds him that while the Man Upstairs always deserves his due, the only being deserving of worship is a man's wife.

Can you blame him?

I don't think I can blame Bill Nelson for meeting with Syria's Bashar Assad despite objections by the State Department and the White House. However, one of the quotes in the story seemed a little politically contrived.

Assad "clearly indicated a willingness to cooperate" in controlling its border with Iraq, Nelson told reporters in a conference call following the meeting.

Nelson needs to be very careful with his words. There's a long history of American officials being played by foreign strongmen. Of course, Assad is going to show a willingness to do anything; he must be delighted that a U.S. senator is defying the administration that has Syria in the doghouse. He'd probably show a willingness to play patty cake with Ariel Sharon's vegetative carcass if Nelson had asked.

Nelson needs to recognize that this is a long shot of a diplomatic move, and try to appear slightly more conflicted about the visit.

But the actual act of meeting with Assad is commendable. The United States needs all the help it can get in Iraq, and that includes coercing Syria by whatever means necessary. If the Bush administration is unwilling to do that, so be it. Maybe it's up to the Democratic Congress to embarrass them into doing it.

Write your own caption

Palestinians can now sue for Israeli abuses

I've been meaning to post about this all day. A unanimous Israeli court threw out a law forbidding Palestinians from filing claims for damages caused by Israeli quasi-military operations. This is revolutionary on its face but it's also a sign that Israelis are no longer seeing Palestinians as an enemy neighbor, but as an occupied people devoid of access to a court system, or any rule of law, or individual rights.

I don't know if this holding will stick, but if it does, it'll give the Palestinians something of a voice in court, and a stage to legitimize evidence of their status as an oppressed, permanent underclass. The ruling would also deprive the Israeli government of one of its favorite weapons in the information war--labeling its critics as anti-Semites. But again, I seriously doubt the holding will not be thwarted somehow.

In other news from the yet-another-reason-why-there's-no-way-we-should-leave-Iraq camp, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned Dick Cheney that if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq, the Saudis would fund Iraq's Sunnis in their fight against the Shiites, funded by Iran.

Watch it, Iran

In an interview on German television, Ehud Olmert listed Israel as a nuclear power, which everyone already knows, but the country doesn't talk about.

"Iran openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map," Olmert said. "Can you say that this is the same level, when you are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"

What's funny is that he also added Russia to the list of responsible nuclear powers.

Olmert's getting a lot of heat from political enemies who say that his comments give legitimacy to Iran's nuclear research--after all, if Israel has nukes, why not Iran--which is kind of wrong. The world has known since Vanunu, the poor bastard who got 20 years in jail for leaking Israel's nuclear secrets, that Israel is a nuclear power. And the U.S. for years has vetoed, without any explanation, every attempt by the IAEA to look into Israel's nuclear arsenal. No need to worry Israel, your "secret" is safe with us.

No state funeral for Pinochet

Here's the AFP story.

I say throw the fucker in a landfill somewhere. That's about as much of a funeral as he gave his victims.

More Pinochet: the right responds

Posters at The Corner have been publishing various ambivalent obits all day. Tim Graham's remarks on a mellowing Pinochet relaxing his grip causes him to sniff at the left's similar relief when Deng Xiaoping went to commune with his ancestors; it's a post which should please our colleagues at Babalu Blog.

I prefer this rather more sensible one by Goldberg:

I certainly think that supporting a Pinochet-type outside of the context of the Cold War would be much more difficult to defend and would ultimately probably be indefensible. And, even in such a context, I by no means think the US should have simply a blanket policy of my enemy's enemy is my friend. This is partly a moral point and partly a practical one. Our support of Saudi Arabia has proved that such logic carried on indefinitely creates very real problems, both morally and strategically.

(Somehow I don't want to drag Jeane Kirkpatrick's authoritarian vs totalitarian dictatorship meme into this all over again, although since she died recently too, why not...)

Finally, here's a essay by William Buckley himself, composed at the point at which Pinochet was about to be arrested by the World Court.

quickly, more on Pinochet

The New York Times has a good digest of Chilean bloggers' posts on Pinochet's death. The comments on it are pretty entertaining, too.

Oh, happy day

I can't sleep so I'll blog about Pinochet. Fair enough? I'd like to think so.

You'd think there would be a simple formula about, if anything, mass murdering, anti-democratic autocrats. But not so. Just like every single Kashi-eating, soy-milk-chugging democrat should have cheered when Saddam Hussein was captured--yes, I understand that wasn't so because stupidity transcends the Republican party--no one should be making excuses for Augusto Pinochet. But people still defend the fucker. And they are so reasonable that they tried to burn Santiago down today. The argument--if you can call it that--is that Pinochet brought Chile back from the economic abyss of Communism and modernized the country. But while that may be somewhat true, how does that excuse killing thousands of dissidents in soccer stadiums and disappearing the bodies? I've read Milton Friedman; I'm almost certain that wasn't part of his philosophy. Economic turnarounds are possible without mass executions, and if they are not, well, they're likely not worth the human rights violations.

Over at Babalu Blog, some blogger named Ziva is heartbroken that the mainstream media--that single-minded cabal of Jews and homosexuals--mentions that Pinochet's victims will never see justice carried out but to this blogger's recollection, no similar line has appeared in any story about Castro falling ill.

I feel like I've been stabbed in the heart; not once in the months since fidel went into the hospital have I read one word from the MSM about justice for castro's victims. Not once....

Yeah, that's cute. While Ziva's research is almost as bad as his rationale (the same service that he's quoting from--the Associated Press--moved a story devoted to Castro's victims not too long ago) that's beside the point. You know who also probably felt like they'd been stabbed in the heart, people who were actually SHOT in the heart in a firing squad put together by Pinochet's goon squads. I'm sure they feel almost as bad as you do, Ziva.

Fidel Castro is without a doubt the worst dictator the Western hemisphere has ever seen. But that doesn't make Pinochet a cuddly grandfather who just wanted to better his country's economy. And to use one AP story as the only basis for some cutesy, misguided media commentary is kind of dumb anyway. Who knows. I'm hoping Ziva is just suffering from heartburn.

It's Business Time

It may be that I think this is the funniest thing in the world because of law school delirium. So I'll need a second opinion.

And this one's damn good too, again, delirium notwithstanding.

Guess who's back

I stumbled upon this accidentally, but, wow, this is great news: Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide is now on MSN. The usual surprises: he loves the new Rapture album as much as I do, loves the Idlewild soundtrack a lot more than I do. Discoveries: Maria Muldaur, a Pet Shop Boys track on that Elton John Christmas album that would have made Fundamental more wonderful (if upset its gestalt). Delights: he really loves crunk.

Rhymin' Simon

Thanks to Thomas for this Marcello-alluding post devoted to Carly Simon's "Why," the best non-hit (domestically, of course) of her career. I'm not as besotted with it as they are. The slightly atonal warble darkened by an almost electronic sheen turned those big seventies hits that Mom loves into scary polyurethane soul (it made perfect sense that she scored a mild comeback in the eighties thanks to songs featured in polyurethane director Mike Nichols' films). The synthetic filigrees of the Chic Organization circa 1981 would seem to fit her as snugly as those Jane Fonda-esque leotards she then sported; but I sense distance not commitment, detachment, not ambivalence. Chic understand enough about their client not to palliate her patrician self-regard. If Diana Ross' hologram soul at least radiated spunk, Simon radiates the dilettantism of a Marin County parvenue. In the days of Spandau Ballet and Flesh + Blood-era Roxy Music, of course I know why "Why" was a bigger hit in England.

Niggardly distinctions

Blogging on musical matters will be light in the next couple of weeks as year end lists are compiled and final thoughts assembled. I'll concentrate on film and books.

Christopher Hitchens is uneven these days; although subjects for his sclerotic eloquence would seem to crowd his vision, he confines it to critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. When he aims his photon torpedoes at smaller fry seemingly unworthy of his princely (self-) regard, the results are often quite satisfying on a formalist level, and frustrating on the world-historic one. This column on Michael Richards and popular culture's kneejerk condemnation of the word "nigger" would seem to answer an irritating ILE thread begun a few months ago (too bad I can't cite it) and college deans. It's worth reading though for this:

Now, the word niggardly can pass out of the language and leave us not much poorer. But the meaning of the verb to discriminate is of some importance and seems to me to be worth fighting over. It is odd, when you think about it, that we accuse racists of "discrimination." This is the very thing of which they are by definition incapable: They think all members of certain groups are the same.

As the recipient of several doleful glares when I used "niggardly" in a newspaper critique not too long ago, I sympathize with Hitchens' pat Orwellian reversal.

Clipse hath no fury

Like Josh, I'm not hearing a masterwork when I play the Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury, despite a half dozen plays. Pharrell's limitations never seem more obvious than when he's propping lame raps with vaporous melodies and attenuated percussion cha-cha-cha, although tracks like "Hello Cruel World" and "Keys Open Doors" redeem their musty tropes. The tragedy here is one in which two young men of obvious intelligence enact coke fantasies but whose ambivalence undercuts their performances; they're too principled to yield to bad faith. Comparing Hell Hath No Fury to Ghostface's superior Fishscale is instructive: Ghost's baroque, allusive, elusive wordplay matches the baroque, allusive music, whereas the spareness of Pharrell's arrangements reveals the poverty of Pusha T and Malice's tough talk.

Whatevs

Typically equivocal review of the Pitchfork effect, suitable for NPR consumption.

I'm Not Even Gonna Mention "Kingdom Come"

I've vowed to myself innumerable times to never "grow up" or "sufficiently mature" to the point where I no longer enjoy rap music as much as I should. Within the past year or two, however, I've frequently had reason to suspect that such a metamorphosis has unwittingly taken place, and the only thing restoring me is the hopeful thought that hip-hop might just be in the midst of a remarkable fallow period.

Of course, the collective ball-washing being given to recent rap albums ranging in quality from "pretty good" to "meh" is probably a good sign that my hypothesis (which I'm certainly not the first to have expressed) may be correct. Ian Cohen offers a typically withering critique of the Clipse hivemind on his blog, though I think he hedges his bets a bit by ultimately giving the album satisfactory marks when he fails to really give credit to the group for the good qualities (quality?) they do possess.

Basically, Clipse are very good at exactly one kind of pose (streetwise, brand-conscious, unmoved) and they actually do it so well that "Hell Hath No Fury" is undoubtedly a solidly worthwhile release. Still, it doesn't change the fact that they've got about as much breadth as a greeting card. Pusha T and Malice are both blessed with the ability to effortlessly exude badass-edness every time they exhale, a trait certain other rappers (Lil Wayne, Bubba Sparxxx, Petey Pablo) will likely never boast no matter how much more gifted they may or may not be as artists. But as poor a year (or two) as it's been for hip-hop, doing one thing very well apparently excuses the fact that they don't even really try to do anything else.

Sorta like how the Game's fascinatingly constructed persona excuses the fact that he still pretty much sucks as an emcee. I'm very forgiving towards backstory and supra-musical shit informing music in general, and I think it can often forgive a multitude of sins, but Eminem and Madonna still wrote and recorded some excellent fucking songs and made some absolutely brilliant aesthetic choices. The Game, meanwhile, is someone blessed with terrific beats who finally has something interesting to say, but still doesn't know how to say it.

If "More Fish" ends up being my second-favorite rap album of '06, I officially give up.

Love? More like "like"

I'll briefly post to warn the budget-conscious away from "Love." Yes, it's cute to hear a few Beatles songs augmented and tweaked, and there are some surprises along the way, but it's sooo not essential, and you won't be replaying it very often. The opportunity for something truly new was wasted, and this is nowhere near as exciting as The Grey Album. It's just a scavenger hunt for tracks you're familiar with; they're on top of OTHER tracks you're familiar with (call it "White on White".) The Vegas show may very well go on forever, but I suspect the CD will end up in the bargain bins somewhere between The String Quintet's Tribute to Hilary Duff and Marcel Marceau: Live in Concert.

Robert Altman: In Memoriam

Iconoclasm, serendipity, and bad ideas were his tools, and I can't think of any living filmmaker who valued all three in equal measure. My first viewing of The Player almost fifteen years ago was instructive, watching Ready To Wear not long afterwards more so: both films revealed how serenely an artist can create something cringeworthy from the same material he'd transformed so triumphantly.

"The industry" – those windmills that obituary writers claim Robert Altman toppled – no longer exists, if it ever did. "There was always room for an Orson Welles picture," the boy-genius once said about the studio system. Despite Altman's legendary squabbles with boardroom members, he really had nothing to worry about; during his most fallow period, the company men didn't blink when he churned out Images, Buffalo Bill & The Indians, Health, and A Wedding. There was always room for a Robert Altman picture; a system needs a rebel. Even the rebel gets an honorary Oscar if he's around long enough. If the pieties of Garrison Keillor seemed too homespun for a director this purportedly irascible, let's remember that he took David Rabe, Ed Gracyzk, The Caine Mutiny, and Richard Gere seriously too.

We had little time to assemble a commemorative package, but this turned out to be rather excellent under the circumstances.

Sugar: lots of spice

Bob Mould's intelligent, cultivated anonymity was a prime influence over the young Alfred. Luckily I discovered him when Sugar released its debut album. While File Under: Easy Listening made several top tens in 1994 (including SPIN's), it has largely been forgotten, undeservedly. I try to do it justice.

Note to Carrie Underwood, Deana Carter, Lee Ann Womack, etc.

When choosing songs for your respective next records, please make sure to reserve at least one slot for Lori McKenna, who is totally on some Patti Griffin/Lucinda Williams type shit right now as far as gracing superstar pop-country singers with career-defining material. Particularly attractive candidates include “As I Am,” “Borrow Me,” “Girl Like Me” and “One Man.”

Nominally an indie-folk/alt-country type of gal herself, McKenna gains admittance to Nashville’s inner sanctum by being so good at nailing the kind of implacable physical realities and narrow parameters of existence so intrinsic to pop-country’s safe-at-home mindset. The joke’s on Music City, however, because McKenna uses her intimate knowledge of the salt of experience to disrobe suburbia and small-town quietude as the suffocating, spirit-killing shams they often are. Her women may keep up appearances, but just beneath the surface they’re almost unseemly in their desperation for recognition and affection. They cling fiercely to the few things they know while never forgetting just how empty and drained their rigid lives have made them.

The two best country songs I’ve encountered this year by some distance were both actually released in 2005, and were both written by McKenna. “Bible Song” as performed by Sara Evans and “Stealing Kisses” as covered by Faith Hill are rarities in Nashville for explicitly associating traditional communal and family values with stultifying horror and absolute loneliness. Both Evans and Hill are far better singers than McKenna, and further lend her compositions the weight of their own stardom and the contextual nuance of their personas. Still, neither has ever before delivered a more emotionally devastating performance, and both owe a significant debt of gratitude to the deftly powerful internal rhythms of McKenna’s songcraft. Evans lulls you into false contentment so convincingly (aided no doubt by her own apple-pie pro-life public image) with blue-collar blandishments – “they marry young in these parts/they work the factories” – that it literally catches you in the throat when she cries “I ran as fast as I could/through the tall grass and the midnight wood.” In a song loaded with concrete realities, the incomplete suggestion that a grief-stricken mother “came undone” is simply terrifying.

Faith’s domestic drama (one of three McKenna songs on her most recent album) is even more gut-wrenching. The teenage girl who once exulted in the allure of surreptitious romance is now the intellectually and spiritually stifled housewife who can’t entice her husband to even get it up. The throwaway line about how “you haven’t talked to an adult all day/except your neighbor who drives you crazy” is pitch-perfect (made even better by Faith’s delivery), but the real twist of the knife goes right back to running again, Faith “standing outside the high school doors/the ones you walked out of twenty years before” and then whispering to “all of the girls/run, run, run.”

Faith’s performance in the video is almost ridiculously agonized in places, but this scene, with schoolgirls bounding out-of-doors, nudging and brushing by the breaking-down Hill, is undeniably heart-rending. I just hope Gretchen Wilson’s paying attention.

Beyonce: cultural theorist

As if Ne-Yo's ego wasn't swollen enough, he goes and writes my favorite Beyonce single by some distance. The thwackety arrangement of "Irreplaceable" is a disappointment, but the star gets a lyric blaringly subtle enough to suit her blaring voice. "I could have another you in a minute/Matter of fact he'll be here in a minute," she shouts in Sean Carter's ear, as if she was singer enough to persuade us she was referring to a fictional lover. This is no "Express Yourself" or Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful," dependent upon empowerment platitudes; Beyonce, who evidently saves every receipt, equates independence with the name monogrammed on the handbag. I suppose it's the unmitigated vulgarity of so much contemporary R&B and hip-hop which repulses young music fans, driving them to seek the ascetic pleasures of Wolf Eyes and the Junior Boys; but Beyonce understands the relationship-as-capital-investment model as well as Gang of Four, and her guitar sound is just as noisome.

This post is dedicated to the late Milton Friedman. R.I.P.

Haul

First night of ginormous library book sale last night. Here's what me and the missus-to-be scooped up. Feel free to lend recommendations and/or snark where appropriate, otherwise this post just looks totally narcissistic and masturbatory:

Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Read Xgau's piece "James Brown's Great Expectations" recently and realized I should read more Dickens. You can never listen to too much James Brown.

Innocent - Ian McEwan
One of my favorite living authors. Don't know much about this one though.

The Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami
Ditto, though to a slightly lesser degree.

Shiloh - Bobbie Ann Mason
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All - Alan Gurganus
The Knockout Artist - Harry Crews
Southern lit. Rawr.

Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem
I loved Fortress of Solitude. Hate me now.

Sabbath's Theater - Philip Roth
Per Alfred's rec. On a barely related note, I noticed Chuck Klosterman mispelled Roth's first name in the "Nemesis" essay that ran in Esquire. Strange no one caught that.

Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock 'n' Roll - Peter Guralnick
I NEVER find decent music books at book sales. Shocka.

Breaks of the Game - David Halberstam
Ditto sports books. Bill Simmons has lauded this one repeatedly and I think it's out of print, so I was totally stoked to find it. Includes maybe the most unintentionally hilarious epigram in literary history, which I'll paraphrase if anyone asks.

Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville
Seems like something I need to read.

Vintage Mencken - H.L. Mencken
Ditto.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver
Geeked to read this. Even brought it with me to work today.

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. - Raymond Coover
I think I recall JCL testifying to this book's greatness. Terrific find.

For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies - Pauline Kael
I know embarrassingly little about movies and less about Kael. Hopefully I've done Alfred proud with this pick.

Here's Mrs. Caruso-Love-to-be's grab:

United States - Gore Vidal
Lincoln - Gore Vidal
Messiah - Gore Vidal
The Smithsonian Institution - Gore Vidal
I may read Lincoln before any of my own stuff.

The Oxford Illustrated History of Western Philosophy
I NEED to read this myself as I am a philosophy-ignorant motherfucker.

Life of Pi - Yann Martel
I know this one's been hyped to death but I bet it's really good.

The Lexus and the Olive Tree - Thomas Friedman
Lauren digs Friedman but reports that From Beirut to Jerusalem was written suckily, so I'm not exactly sure why she wanted this one.

Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov
I love Nabokov. Lauren LOVES Nabokov.

I did all of that from memory so I'm probably forgetting a few. Will update if/when necessary.

On the redundancy scale this rates a....

Bryan Ferry's 12th solo album is a collection of Dylan covers. Unless he dug deep into the songbook I'm not sure how interested I am; on the other hand, consider how he'd transform "Sugar Baby," "Tryin' To Get To Heaven," "Most of the Time" and "Thunder on the Mountain" if he was in the right frame of mind.

Madonna: The second singles

Marvelling at the ease with which he'd underestimated Confessions on a Dancefloor this time last year, Thomas adduced "Get It Together" and "Jump," its rather fine third and fourth singles. What about her second singles?

To my amazement, most ranged from average to pretty good. First singles like "Vogue", "Like a Prayer," "Live to Tell," and "Music" and third singles like "Dress You Up" and "Human Nature" rewarded committed listening pleasure.

Here are Madonna's second singles graded:

"Borderline": The Madonna singles cause some confusion. "I Know It" and "Think About Me" excepted, every track got dance airplay. Is "Physical Atraction" the second single (even though it didn't hit the Billboard Hot 100) or "Borderline"? Let's go with "Borderline" for fairness' sake. Note the glockenspiel, the rock-steady piano, which represent the borderline over which Madonna's hysterical falsetto must leap -- and does. GRADE: A

"Material Girl": The casual mastery of mid-eighties Chic: adapting to Synclaviers and the rank ambition of their new boss. Or maybe Madonna's imitating rank ambition. The ambiguity is troubling instead of beguiling; therefore the song doesn't resonate beyond its clever gloss. GRADE: B

"Papa Don't Preach": Ah, here's an example of tantalizing ambiguity. She keeps her baby, but papa's still bitching, as any father who looks like Danny Aiello is wont to do. Since the song deals with Issues it got more attention than it deserved. Better than "True Blue" and "La Isla Bonita," rather strained next to "Live To Tell" and "Open Your Heart." GRADE: B

"Causing a Commotion": The closest Madonna approached boilerplate. Not as giddy as the Expose hits with which she was competing in fall 1987; it does get frisky, if not exactly causing a commotion. The most obscure of Madonna's big hits (it held the #2 spot for three weeks); it's simply vanished. GRADE: C+

"Express Yourself": In which Maddie turns into a gay man, complete with basso vocal. The only self-empowerment anthem I ever want to here, unsullied by "wisdom" and "self-knowledge." She may not need diamond rings, 18-carat gold, or the pinstriped suit she wore in the Fritz Lang-inspired video, but she wouldn't have sounded so assured if she was still selling her ass to Playboy and drumming for the likes of Stephen Bray. This is, in short, the real "Material Girl." GRADE: A

"Hanky Panky": Another obscurity. Better than you remember, and if you remember it at all it's cuz "Vogue" preceded it. The world needs more vampish odes to sadomasochism. GRADE: B

"Rescue Me": This one, like "Hanky Panky," is shadowed by its massive predecessor ("Justify My Love"). More Madonna-by-numbers, but since she's sponged as much from gay club life as Bowie did from Kraftwerk and Neu! in 1977 it presages Erotica in the way that "TVC 15" did the Berlin Trilogy. GRADE: B+

"Deeper and Deeper": ...and here's her "Sound & Vision," rewiring the urgency of "Borderline" into a blue-blue-electric-blue Red Shoes saga: while her feet keep dancing, she can't admit her goddamn papa was as right about her love life as he was about keeping the baby. This song is so 1992, just when I was discovering club life for the first time. GRADE: A

"Take a Bow": Rather dated innocuous soul, with tinkly synths courtesy of cowriter/co-singer/co-producer Babyface. A gentler, approachable Madonna, for which the public duly rewarded her by keeping it Number One for six weeks. GRADE: B+

"Don't Cry For Me Argentina": While Bowie never recorded anything as yearningly fascist as the Evita soundtrack, he never sang this well either. To which I say, "So fucking what?" Pop culture colossi like Madonna are as liberal as Richard Perle. Global adoration fills stadiums, not humanitarian impulses (okay, forget about Live Aid). That an icon as feral as Madonna admires a savvy but vacuous recruitment poster like Eva Peron is only the most piquant irony. The dance remix is no help. New Age banalities, here we come. GRADE: C.

"Ray of Light": I'm not as fond of this as so many people are. "Swim" and "Sky Fits Heaven" would have made for more rewarding follow-ups to the wannabe arctic chill of "Frozen." The beats twitter and flicker and Madonna yells her ass off in a most peculiar way (can't throw away the thousands of dollars spent on opera lessons, you know) -- as if Evita was a mistake. No one apparently warned her about The Celestine Prophecy either. Nevertheless, we critics said "comeback" and the public responded. GRADE: A-

"Don't Tell Me": Has anyone properly described how weird this tune is? Acoustic cowpunk and Massive Attack string section compete with Tracy Thorn-worthy melancholia. I'm amazed it hit the Top Five; so was, apparently, the public, since this was the last time her second singles would peak this high. GRADE: A

"Hollywood": Thomas says this is "vile." I want to agree, yet its gaudiness is too insistent for this song to qualify as an unintentional yukfest. She sounds like the manicurist who moved to Culver City, was appalled by the rent, and returned to Miami eight months later -- and moved back in with her parents. She's got mildly diverting stories to tell, but you'd prefer it if she finished painting your left pinky nail. GRADE: C-

"Sorry": We return to the question which prompted this essay. Yes, Confessions On A Dance Floor was underrated. Here's why. Remember the opera lessons? She's learned to propel the beat instead of singing over it or decorating it with redundant vibrato (she leaves that to the chorus of overdubbed Maddies). What a vibrant production. There's so much going on -- the hint of guitar twang (real? sampled?) in the chorus, the squelchy effects, the beat that pummels and ravishes like "Deeper and Deeper" and "Open Your Heart"'s did -- that we're tempted to overlook the singer's fetching vocal melody and her lyrics, which are, for once, revealingly throwaway in the Bernard Sumner tradition rather than attempts at profundity. If "Sorry" has got a flaw, it's that it doesn't go on long enough -- a mistake none of the exemplary remixes redress. Since I love "Sorry" possibly more than any song on this list, I'd like to make a bold claim about the state of Madonna's popcraft in 2006...but I won't. Argue if you must. GRADE: A+

Jonathan Demme's Wild West fix

How appropriate that, on the evening after the Democrats' victory in the House (and possibly the Senate?), I watch a documentary that, inadvertantly, celebrates victory when it meant to enshrine perserverance. Heart of Gold, Jonathan Demme's filmization of Neil Young's performance of Prairie Wind captured Shakey shortly before brain surgery. The prospect of dying frightened him into writing and recording a bunch of hummable throwaways no one will call classics (yet got him his first gold studio album since 1995's Mirrorball). HOG uses the same technique that made Stop Making Sense a triumph: the camera drinks deeply of the performer's idiosyncrasies, with no cutaways to the audience. Demme flatters like a painter trying to persuade a model to undress. As I've gotten more accustomed to Demme's technique, I'm grown suspicious. Like Bob Woodward, he's so dependant on his sources to establish tonal control and perspective that the absence of the authority we expect of an artist strikes me as weird if not feckless. If the lingering shots of David Byrne in Stop Making Sense captured his antiseptic weirdness, the ones of Young casting lovelorn glances at Emmylou Harris and wife Pegi matched the corniness of the Wild West backdrop and battalion of acoustic strummers substituting for sheep: in a ten-gallon hat and singing tunes like "My Old Guitar," Young asserts the right to claim the Western mythos without a trace of irony. Like his old hero Ronald Reagan, Young genuinely believes that John Ford's movies represented the West, especially when the four strong winds are a-blowin' and remindin' him that death's a-knockin' (he's like a lifelong agnostic asking for extreme unction).

"We’re facing the most important election in my lifetime"

I don't take Gore Vidal seriously as a prophet, but interview rumbles with enough portent to scare those lazy sods who've considered staying home today.

The Queen: Strictly for the proles

What's regal about The Queen are the performances (Helen Mirren's pinched, mordant Elizabeth II, Sylvia Syms as a gin-totin' Queen Mum armed with 1,000 years of tradition and a bagful of trenchant wise cracks, Roger Allam as a harried royal sycophant) and Peter Morgan's salty dialogue. Stephen Frears lights and shoots as if he was directing a Lifetime Movie of the Week, but he's sensitive to nuances; certainly there are many members of the audience for whom the weeklong paroxysm of mourning by Princess Di's purported subjects was a ghastly triumph for modern advertising (and a vindication of Elton John-Bernie Taupin's drippy "Candle in the Wind"), which is exactly what flummoxed Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Implicit in their disbelief is: We knew the smiling twit, okay? Princess schmincess. Note the Royals' twitching during Lord Spencer (Diana's brother)'s funeral oration, a compendium of platitudes. We sympathize! I also enjoyed one recurring gag: Elizabeth is shown at her disk, with impeccable posture, writing in her diary. We expect to hear her thoughts read in tedious voice-over. That Frears denies us this convention accentuates his point: what bloody kind of interior life could this woman record for her eyes only?

In its cheap way The Queen is as much an antidote to Hollywood's awestruck representations of monarchy as Marie Antoinette. With the exception of those of us who thought Frears' talent had dissipated in the appalling plushness of Mrs. Henderson Presents (its gags were as disgraceful as The Queen's production values), I can't imagine why anyone would get too excited about it.

So does this make Son House the Buck O'Neil of rock?

Seems to me like the Rock and Roll HOF should take some cues from its baseball counterpart and start being a little less inclusive. In a given year baseball may only yield one or two new inductees, while the folks in Cleveland annually lard their roster with a half-dozen or so fresh faces (and yes, that was just an excuse to use "lard" as a verb like Bob Xgau is wont to do).

If you ask me, Aerosmith should still be fighting for a spot in the pantheon with Andre Dawson and Bert Blyleven, while Jackson Browne and James Taylor should have been long ago relegated to Don Mattingly "not a chance in hell" status, instead of smirking up the hall with their unique brands of bittersweet folk-rock (and I didn't even need to look up that Simpsons quote -- frightening and sad, I know).

Here's this year's crop, of which apparently 5 will be honored:

Van Halen
R.E.M.
Patti Smith
Grandmaster Flash
Dave Clark Five
The Stooges
Chic
The Ronettes
Joe Tex

Personally, I think unless your catalogue is just unbelievably thick with greatness (ie. Prince, Springsteen), you probably need to have made at least some kind of seismic, groundbreaking contribution to the evolution of the rock. Normally I'm not an innovation-over-performance kinda critic, and I sure as hell wouldn't argue The Flatlanders over Fleetwood Mac or Neu! over Neil Young. Still, I don't know if "having a bunch of really great singles and a few really good albums before changing lead singers and becoming a butt-rock joke" or "releasing a landmark debut and several more very solid, marginally successful albums, then attaining temporary superstardom via twinkly melancholy and vague ruminations on dead idols" necessarily qualifies one for automatic immortality. And I love R.E.M., but just as I'm sure is the case with plenty of people who love Jack Morris, I don't know if they should exactly be shoo-ins for the Hall. Perhaps after earning it over time the Bruce Sutter way, but not in their first few go-arounds. Of course, it should've been just as hard if not harder (if not impossible in some cases) for Browne, Taylor, Bob Seger, Billy Joel, Blondie, ZZ Top, Santana, CSN and several others.

For the sheer revolutionary nature of their work, I don't think you should have a Hall without Grandmaster Flash or the Stooges. Maybe throw Chic in there as well. In reality, Stipey and Fast Eddie will most likely lead the pack. After all, somebody's gotta sell tickets.