This is the rare type of photo that gets more disturbing the longer you look at it.

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I'm not Jewish, though for about sixteen reasons I might as well be. Even so, I do appreciate a good Tom Lehrer song, especially when it applies to my life.

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My esteemed colleague in parody Chris Wood has cobbled together six short stories featuring a fascinating new character completely of his own invention named "Sherlock Holmes." Apparently this Sherlock goes around solving crimes, aided by his pal, a Doctor Watson...along the way encountering many difficulties of a digestive and execratory-type nature.

If bathroom humor's your thing--and let's be honest, would you be reading this blog if it wasn't?--you should check it out. I think Chris has really got something with this Sherlock character. He'd better be careful though--we all know how my series about a boy who goes to wizard school turned out.

UPDATE: Incredible--literally five minutes after I finished this post, I saw an ad for a movie called "Sherlock Holmes" starring Robert Downey Jr. I can understand if the character's name was "Bob Smith" or something, but really: I have a hard time believing that they came up with it independently of Chris...It's really disgusting, the lengths some people will go to make a quick buck.

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I love dogs; they're really amazing creatures. And yet...I've had a couple of black labs in my life, and "smart" was never one of the words that sprang to mind. Charming, yes. Loyal, certainly. But also prone to eating garbage.

This article suggests I may need to reconsider. In fact, after reading all the things dogs can do, I'm beginning to suspect that the writer himself is a Labradoodle.

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Dragonfruit. Yes, dragonfruit.

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My friend Andrew Chittenden has just launched a webcomic, Chittyland. Definitely worth a look.

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My very funny friend Joey Green has a new book out: Sarah Palin's Secret Diary. He says that he loves it, and it's the funniest book he's ever written. That should make you take notice, because Joey's written 45 (I may be underestimating), and most of the time when a writer finishes a project, he the-opposite-of-loves it. So I'm thinking this book must be pretty excellent.

In addition to founding Cornell's humor magazine back in 1978, Joey's a great guy and a great writer, and this book is super stocking-stuffer material for all the Palin opposite-of-lovers on your list. Click here to buy Joey's Palin spoof at Amazon.

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The CIA, that's who.

Today's New York Times details Agency stonewalling over 295 documents relating to George Joannides, an agent working with anti-Castro Cubans out of JM/WAVE, their Miami station. Groups under Joannides' direction "publicly clashed with" Lee Harvey Oswald. These clashes were some of the most significant ways that Oswald's personal politics--in other words, his entire motive--were presented to the public.

"The C.I.A. says it is only protecting legitimate secrets," writes Scott Shane. "But because of the agency’s history of stonewalling assassination inquiries, even researchers with no use for conspiracy thinking question its stance."

If things happened the way the Warren Report says they did--if it was one crazy person acting alone with a mail-order rifle--that's where the trail ends, and nothing in CIA's files can change that fact. But CIA has acted guilty from the start, misleading investigations and covering stuff up--and this is in the face of almost total support from the mainstream media. The New York Times is not digging at this story now, any more than it did in 1964. Yet CIA's gameplan has remained the same: stonewall until the information is a curious historical fact. The question is why?

It is completely understandable that CIA would control the flow of information to the Warren Commission, to protect ongoing operations and/or cover its ass in the wake of a huge failure. But this rationale weakens for Mr. Joannides' behavior as CIA liason to the Congressional investigation in 1976-78; and still further for its resistance to the Assassination Records Review Board in the 90s. It's completely ludicrous today.

These documents are nearly 50 years old. Joannides is dead, Castro nearly so. The only reasonable conclusion is that CIA has something to hide regarding the assassination, and it relates to JM/WAVE, Oswald, and anti-Castro Cubans. I don't know what it has to hide, but it has to be damaging enough to justify an organization-wide commitment over 50 years, in the face of sustained public interest and intermittent Congressional pressure. That's the story here, not what scraps of redacted paper eventually emerge.

The Times article trots out a few lone nut theorists--Gerald Posner and Max Holland--who predictably declare there's no "there" there. But CIA's behavior has already answered this question. We already know that when the documents eventually do come out, The New York Times will study them carefully, looking for Allen Dulles' handwritten scrawl, "Get Oswald to shoot Kennedy." Not finding it, the lone nut theory will be "proven" once again, and the rest of us will be treated to some more cognitive dissonance.

CIA has shown itself to be liars on this topic, so sensible people should stop listening to what they say. What they do is much more instructive, and that points a big, fat finger squarely at Langley--for what I don't know, but the enormous amount of other evidence makes that less important. Five decades of imperial government and a lapdog press means that the details will be obscured, but the larger picture is resolving, and it doesn't show Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. Those of us who've known that for decades thank the CIA for helping get the word out.

ADDITION 10/22: Peter Dale Scott on the same NYT article.

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Thought-provoking article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. I think it's right on the money...in every sense of that phrase.

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...and there's a new documentary about him. It's premiering in London of course--one of the many nice things about the UK is how much they dug Bill Hicks.

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I gotta say, this cheered me up no end; it's a photo snapped by a local surfer last weekend. I love me some white sharks, and to know that at least one ten-footer is cruising around (and leaping into the air!) less than a mile from where I am typing this makes me QUITE EXCITED!!!! [cue Jaws music]

You can read the full story here. Oh, and by the way, if there's any other Westsiders who've wondered about those shark photos stuck up on utility boxes all over the place, here's the skinny on them, too. I didn't do it, but wish I had.

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"Hey Mike, why don't you grow a beard?"--my cat

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Unfortunately, I can't find "The Running, Jumping, Standing Still Film" anymore, but here are a couple of videos that fans of classic British Comedy might enjoy.

Peter Sellers...it gets interesting about halfway through.


Jonatham Miller talking about Peter Sellers and Peter Cook (nirvana, indeed)


Stephen Fry's postmortem defense of Peter Cook

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Humor columnist, interlocutor, and bon vivant Mark Bazer sent me the following. Since I'm a sucker for Beatles humor, I'm reposting it below.

Meet The Piggies
By Mark Bazer

If you haven't heard lately from that friend of yours who is a huge Beatles fan, he's likely squirreled himself away to listen over and over again to the brand-new, incredible-sounding remastered versions of the band's albums. Or he's been in a terrible accident.

Last week, along with the much-anticipated release of a Beatles version of the video game "Frogger" in which you must manuever Ringo across a busy street, the band finally issued a corrective to the shoddy Beatles CDs that have frustrated fans and Charles Manson alike for years.

Most exciting is that you can now buy a $298.98 boxed set of the Beatles CDs in a "mono mix," or how the Beatles initially intended them -- which, I think, means Yoko's vocals have been removed from "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill."

As one of the biggest Beatles fans and the owner of a Sanyo boom box purchased for $60 at Target in the mid-'90s, I must say the remastered albums are a revelation. You've never heard "Yesterday" or "All You Need Is Love" or "Get Back" sound so clear. On the latter, you can practically hear the band breaking up!

But the true standout is the remastered version of "Piggies." The 12th song on the first disc of the "The White Album," the George Harrison-penned "Piggies" can finally be heard in its full glory. When George sings, "Have you seen the little piggies," you want to jump up and say, "Yes, I have!"

The "Abbey Road" album, however, has so far been the best-selling of the remastered discs, and it's easy to see why. This was the band at perhaps its most rocking, and songs like "Come Together" and "Oh! Darling" get a nice sonic boost. But let's get back to "Piggies."

The remastered "Piggies" should finally convince Beatles naysayers of the band's greatness -- and innovativeness. Indeed, when the song's pig sound effects kick in, you can, for the first time, picture swine in the studio alongside the band. Paul McCartney, in fact, says the new CDs "are more like what we heard coming out of the speakers as we made the records." That's quite an interesting assertion, and worth discussing in more detail. Unfortunately, with limited space here, more discussion of "Piggies" takes precedence.

Lennon/McCartney are often hailed as the 20th century's top songwriters, but this new "Piggies" calls into question whether they were even tops in their own band! And as the two-minute-and-four-second "Piggies" reaches its crescendo, George's voice booms with an intensity heretofore never experienced by this listener. "Everywhere there's lots of piggies/Living piggy lives," George tells us -- and, in this biggest gift the newly remastered Beatles catalogue has given us, nobody can any longer doubt this assertion.

Mike again. I just had a flash:
Charlie Manson is walking back to his cell at Vacaville, after finishing his one hour of daily exercise. The guard escorting him asks, "Hey, Charles--you heard these new Beatles CDs?"

"I'm over those guys," Charlie answers bitterly. "They've gone commercial."

The guard wipes his glasses. He's a big black fella, six-three and at least 250 pounds; next to him Charlie's a bleached twig. "Well you should get 'em anyway. The sound is fantastic, totally clear. In fact they sound so good"--the guard leans closer--"I finally understand."

Manson brightens; is he saying what I think he's saying?

"Right in the middle of the 'Helter Skelter,' one of 'em, I think it's Ringo, says, 'Why not pop over to Hollywood for a spot of killing people?'"

"Really?" Manson squeaks.

"Yeah. Right into the mic, clear as day."

Manson hops and claps like an excited child. "I'm so happy! I was beginning to think I was crazy."

They get to Manson's cell. "By the end of the song," the guard says, "I was thinking, 'I've been putting off that race war for too long. Monday morning, first thing.'"

Manson can't believe his ears. Vindication! "That's fantastic!"

"Not for you, white boy." Manson falls mid-giggle as the guard snaps his neck. "Nothing personal, Charles," he says, making a tick-mark on a list. "But you know, budgets don't balance themselves."

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Read this, you'll be glad you did.

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Here's a really funny, really short piece by my friend Jack Silbert.

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This blog is rapidly becoming a parade of thoughts on the recent dead. What can I say except welcome to middle-age, Mike!

Teddy Kennedy was to his brothers what Wings was to The Beatles; an attenuated, not-quite-satisfying echo of the real thing, but vastly better than nothing at all. He was Seventies Liberalism incarnate, a consolation prize handed out to the survivors, not so much doomed to fail as doomed to suspect that success carried with it inevitable failure...and perhaps outright destruction. This poisoning fatalism is the final legacy of the assassinations, and nobody embodied that more than Teddy Kennedy.

Had Teddy existed without his antecedents (an impossible thought), he would've come out looking a hell of a lot better. Like Jack he was a consummate operator; like Bobby, committed to improving Americans' lives through government. What he lacked was their magnetism, which sprang from a kind of reckless courage. That's not necessarily a bad thing--the reckless courage of Jack and Bobby Kennedy got them (and us) into some trouble. But it did consign Teddy to Triple-A ball. Perhaps he had a smaller portion from the beginning--or perhaps it was forcibly excised by circumstance.

Was he a drunk? Seems so, and a philanderer, too. But most of all, Teddy was a big, fat target for all those faux-populists who hate the Kennedys and everything they say they stand for: privilege, noblesse oblige, sloppiness. Funny thing, all the Kennedy haters I've met have been supporters of other politicians guilty of the same sins. The difference is that the Kennedys had the temerity to inspire people in between bed- and bar-hopping. That's what Kennedy-haters are really angry about--or more accurately, frightened of. Inspired citizens cannot be controlled. They can't be soothed by consumerism or cowed by phantom enemies. The personal behavior of the Kennedys is moot; it is their ability to activate people that made them important, and Teddy parlayed his borrowed glory into a 47-year career in the Senate, which included things like the Americans With Disabilities Act. Hard to argue with that, unless you're a Cro-Magnon.

The psychological damage wrought by the public slaughter of his relatives--not to mention the crushing burden of their legacy, a legacy Ted Kennedy did not want, nor was particularly well-suited to shoulder--had to have been crippling. Adding to this Chappaquiddick (probably a Nixonian dirty trick), and it's a wonder the guy survived at all, much less racked up a lifetime of public service. In his trauma, and hauntedness, and determination to make the best of reduced expectations, Teddy Kennedy stands in for all of us who never believed in Ronald Reagan or his fatuous, fradulent "revolution." Perhaps the end of Teddy Kennedy means the end of the boundaries and burdens forged in the Sixties. I hope so, and I'm sure he would, too.

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Kate forwarded me this wonderful blog post, where a woman talks about a long correspondence she once had with John Hughes.

The ability to connect with great people--especially great young people--is the best part of writing. I really value the pen pals and e-pals I've picked up over the years, but the normal crush of life can get in the way. If any of you have written me and are still waiting for a response, give me a holler.

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Last night at 11:45, my wife was in the bathroom, washing bits of Burbank off her face. I was in the bedroom twenty feet away, petting my cat, looking at the moon outside our window. Kate and I were doing the married thing, getting our stories straight after a long day. I’d just come back from seeing Le Cercle Rouge at the Aero, my third night of classic French cinema in a row. She’d gotten home from Breaking Bad at a reasonable hour for once, and we were actually managing a conversation, not simply pleasantries mumbled over the oncoming hoofbeats of unconsciousness.
Matter-of-factly Kate asked, “Do you think John Hughes did cocaine?”
“John Hughes the director? Why not?”
“Why do you say that? Because he worked at Lampoon?”
“No, more for when he was in Hollywood. The Eighties, he must’ve—it was practically floating in the air like pollen. Not that I ever heard stories about him or anything. Why do you ask?”
“Because of his heart attack.”
“John Hughes had a heart attack? Really?”
“Yeah, he died. Didn’t you know?”
“No, I didn’t.” My ignorance of entertainment news is rapidly becoming legendary, although I think it’s only remarkable here in LA. Kate’s pals from USC film school still laugh over the time they discovered I didn’t know what Beyoncé looked like. Of course, they can’t sing “This Diamond Ring” by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, so I ask you, who’s the impoverished one? “Wow. John Hughes. That’s a shame.”
“Sorry you found out this way,” my wife hollered into a towel.
“It’s all right. We weren’t close.” Like everybody I vaguely resent it when God moves a piece of the furniture without checking with me first, but it’s not one of my major preoccupations. Still the news did knock something loose inside. As I was falling asleep, I found myself thinking about sitting in the Lake Theater in Oak Park, Illinois, watching The Breakfast Club. It was 1985, I was fifteen, and miserable on a cellular level—but not, at least, for those two hours. The film gave me the heady narcissistic buzz you only get before you realize you’re not just a person, you’re also a demographic. This was intensified by my surroundings; Oak Park was as Hughesian a suburb as was possible without being an actual location. In fact, "the breakfast club" nickname for detention comes from New Trier High, my school’s bitter rival, but showing our natural superiority, we Oak Parkers decided to be big about it.
Because of the time and setting, I thought my connection with Hughes’ movies was a little bit deeper and more genuine than other people’s—but of course every teenager thought that then. They probably think it now, too; I know my younger brother and sister thought it a decade later, during that summer I was living at home and they were watching a VHS of The Breakfast Club so constantly we all thought (read: hoped) it would snap.
In the media’s constant scramble to access our emotions, anything the least bit popular is retroactively anointed a maudlin touchstone status. Granting that this is a lazy, manipulative endeavor, I must admit that, for me, Hughes’ movies really are a touchstone. When I want to show my future kids what being a teenager looked (and sometimes felt) like, I’ll show them The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink. It feels odd to type that—isn’t there something more intellectual, more classic or profound, that would convey it better? Nothing I’ve discovered so far, and believe me, it’s not for lack of looking. (Did I mention I’ve been to the Aero three nights in a row?)
That’s not to say that seeing Hughes movies now make me feel good. For the most part, it doesn’t. The evening I saw The Breakfast Club, I was lonely as a person can be. Maybe that’s just what being fifteen is; I can’t say for certain, having only endured it the once, but I can admit that those years still bite at my heart. It was a time when I desperately wanted to connect with somebody, anybody. I worked terribly hard to be a nice person, to accept others, to try new things, in the hopes that it might happen. I’m not just talking about romance, though that’s the most intense form of what I was looking for. I mean someone who saw me, and accepted me, and encouraged me in what I liked to do. At forty, I think of this as a basic human right. If it had happened to me at 15, I’d probably be a happier person today. Instead, I began my habit of going to see movies alone, as a way to pass the time and soothe myself.
Watching the poor kid hook up with the rich girl—watching them connect, if just for the once—this spoke directly to my longing. Yes! That’s the kind of thing I want! I don’t care if we’re from different backgrounds, I’ll adjust, I promise! Just give me a shot! Sitting there eating popcorn (this was before I became allergic), The Breakfast Club gave me hope—a false one, as it turned out—but living in hope is a much, much easier way to be alone.
Even at their best, John Hughes movies were Hollywood product, and bear all the shortcuts and contrivances of that form. At the same time, they’re so carefully observed, and so essentially respectful of what it was like to be that age in that time, that there was genuine comfort in them. Comfort’s not a small thing. If I go to see Bardot tonight (and make it four in a row), I’d be happy indeed with two hours of comfort.
Hughes’ films’ flaws are those of their audience. Teenagers do perceive the world in types, arranged to form castes, and if you fall outside of those types, or run afoul of those castes, you will be watching movies by yourself. This offends the adult world; trapped in their own types and castes, they need to think of youth as a time where there was more freedom to experiment and experience, rather than less. But Hughes knew better; and it’s because he spoke to teenagers like me in the language we understood, he entertained us, and made us laugh, and feel comfort, sitting there in the dark. That’s quite a lot, and I appreciated it a great deal. Still do. R.I.P.

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To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of human beings on the Moon, I'm passing along something a friend told me about: Buzz Aldrin's taking communion on the Moon.

Happy Moon-day!

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Procrastination + Photoshop.

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I can't seem to embed this West Side Story parody, but do yourself a favor and watch it.

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David Lancaster, a St. Louis artist whose work I admire, is having a show.

Quoting the gallery: "'Give me chastity... but not yet.' St. Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo and one of the major figures of early Christianity, uttered this famous prayer in his struggle to gain mastery over his earthly desires. In the spirit of brazen honesty with which Augustine addressed his deity, David Lancaster proposes a collection of modern prayers, painted in oil on aluminum, designed to explore and question the nature of communication with the divine. Sad, bold, frank and funny, the prayers challenge our collective notions of supplication and gratitude--what we should ask of an omnipotent God and for what we should give thanks--and the very idea that prayer is a catalyst for divine action. Ten of Lancaster's studded aluminum paintings and sculpture will be on view in PHD's Portfolio Gallery June 27 through August 15, 2009 with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, June 27 at 7:00 pm."

David happens to be my uncle, but that should not in any way sway your opinion of my judgment in this matter. His stuff is great.

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When I heard that pop singer Michael Jackson had died, I could not help but remember what a staple he was in the late-night monologues. What would all the hacks, myself included, do now? Crypto-queer GOPers and philandering family-values types can only get you so far. Perhaps Roseanne Barr could be coaxed out of retirement and given the Ambassadorship to Iran. Perhaps Oprah could be slipped some chemical that turned her into a combination of James Brown, Wilhelm Reich, and Minnie Pearl. Even then, they'd be no Michael Jackson. Everything Jackson did was a set-up; everything he was, a punchline.

For his entire adult life, Jackson was ridiculed in public by the best in the business. Think about that for a second. He knew what everybody thought of him--he must've known. At what point did all that weirdness change, from something inside of him, to something caused by all of us? Only he could know, if he ever did, and now he's dead.

Some portion of this ridicule was earned: the compulsive plastic surgery, the persistent whiff of child molestation, the bizarre marriage to Elvis' daughter--these were, if not earth-shattering events, deviations from the norm reasonably worthy of a satirist's attention. But I think anyone not getting paid on a 13-week contract has to admit that at a certain point it became a peculiar kind of public torture. Most of the time that Michael Jackson made the monologue, he hadn't done anything genuinely newsworthy. Yet there he was, the butt of another joke about gayness, or pedophilia, or plastic surgery, or germophobia...I could go on, but there's no point. There never was.

One of the biggest changes in American pop culture has been the demise of humor based on stereotypes (or at least its widespread concealment). This is a good thing, but as the humor of stereotype has waned, other things have had to step in. The things that have filled the void are
a) celebrity humor; and for those intellectuals among us
b) absurdism about "inhuman autopilots"--zombies, pirates, robots, ninjas, etc.
Add in reflexive taboo-busting--sex and drug jokes--and you have described 99% of what passes for comedy in these United States. Most political humor is celebrity humor with a veneer of importance; it comes from no political viewpoint, only comments on behavior. Most of the NPR/New Yorker brand is absurdist autopilot humor, with enough celebrity to satisfy their timeliness fetish.

All that is another post, so I'll leave it and finish this one. Unlike say, Cary Grant, Michael Jackson had the ill fortune to be a celebrity when nightly scrutiny of a pop singer's personal habits became what passed for incisive commentary. Precisely when American power needed all the restraining that satire could throw at it, satire became obsessed with celebrities. Coincidence? Surely not. Part of this was the entertainment industry's self-aggrandizing belief that nobody in the audience knows about anything but entertainment--which, after fifty years, has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But even more powerful was simple risk-aversion. Any Jackson joke was risk-free. Since he was both celebrity and inhuman autopilot, the material flooded forth; and in that flood was protection, safety in numbers. That's why it all felt strangely impersonal, as if this "Michael Jackson" we were all laughing at didn't exist as a person. To the extent that anybody I knew spared a thought for the guy, the human being, they decided he deserved it for being so weird. Such is the compassion of the herd.

But so what? you might say. Life's rough, and Jackson didn't have to be rich and famous. He didn't have to get nose jobs and sleep in a hyperbaric chamber. Well, here's what: It's inconceivable to me that all this concentrated ridicule did not drip down, poison-like, to the man himself, and make a difficult life even more difficult. And it would be one thing if the enjoyment generated as a result of this pain was in any way instructive, constructive, or substantial. It wasn't. It was just meanness. Occasionally Jackson deserved our scorn, but most of the time he didn't, and it says a lot about the culture in which we live that Michael Jackson--a pop singer--was the target of so much vitriol. Anybody who runs for President, much less does what it takes to win, is just as weird as Michael Jackson was. They simply hide it better. Here was a guy so terrorized by his father that he'd vomit at the sight of him; a guy whose talent robbed him of his own childhood; a guy who spent the rest of his life mutilating himself and possibly mistreating others in an utterly doomed attempt to release from his pain. Apportion the blame however you like, but what the hell is funny about that? The moment you stop to think about it--for one second--it no longer becomes fodder for humor. So when we laugh at a Michael Jackson joke, we should know: that's not laughter, that's keeping yourself dead inside.

To accept that there is a limit to how much we can make fun of a celebrity, is to accept that certain behavior is more important than other behavior, and proportionality is a dangerous thought in our politicized times--if you want to get another 13-week contract. Yes everybody knew about Michael Jackson, and his existence as shorthand predisposed him to be joked about; but every second of airtime that he was being ridiculed, other much more worthy targets were escaping without critique. It's not a stretch to suggest that this, too, has created our troubled world.

If satire has a salutary effect (which is debatable), its benefits come in proportion to the importance of the target: what sort of danger is being curtailed or avoided by the force of ridicule. In blasting away at Michael Jackson, American comedy did more than merely shoot a perfectly motionless fish in a tiny glass barrel; it ignored some authentic sea monsters cruising the coast. And for that, everybody in the satirical end of comedy needs to take a long, hard, look--not at the spectacle of Michael Jackson, but at ourselves.

Which was maybe why we were so content to look at him in the first place.

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As some of you know, I celebrated my 40th last weekend with a viewing of several rare versions of "The Secret Policeman's Ball" series. It's really worth seeking out for anyone the least bit interested in that great Oxbridge generation of British comedy (from Cook to Cleese to Atkinson). Film critic Gregory Weinkauf was there, too, and here's his round-up for HuffPo.

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Funny new vid from Dirk Voetberg and friends. So many great touches...

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The Living Dead 1 of 3: On the Desperate Edge of Now
This documentary explores how the narrative setting up World War Two as "the good war" required significant parts of the past to be buried, ordinary Germans to be made into unfathomable monsters, and the experiences of the soldiers to be forever at odds with the accepted myth.



The Living Dead 2 of 3: You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough
A history of brainwashing and mind control, and its mutation into artificial intelligence.



The Living Dead 3 of 3: The Attic
Margaret Thatcher's use of, and imprisonment by, Winston Churchill's patriotic but problematic vision of Britain.

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I am currently working through a wonderful BBC documentary on how the ideas of Sigmund Freud have been used to control the masses (don't worry, it's anything but dry). It's called "The Century of the Self." The four episodes are below; I highly recommend it.

Part 1 of 4:


Part 2 of 4:


Part 3 of 4:


Part 4 of 4:

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This is a talk by Jim Douglass, a peace activist and the author of the book "JFK and the Unspeakable." Perhaps I will get a copy for my birthday. From everything I have read about "Unspeakable," I think it gets closest to explaining why I've always been fascinated with the JFK assassination (from the age of seven or eight!), and why I think it is a keystone event in our national life.

It is always very difficult to discuss this topic, because spoken or unspoken it becomes clear that any deviation from the "Oswald did it alone" story is an indictment of our entire shared reality, and hints at a level of ineptitude and/or corruption and/or outright evil that is almost impossible to live with. This is why the mass media has come down so firmly in favor of the Warren Commission over the years; from Life in '64 to CBS in '67 to ABC in '98, and on and on, the self-appointed shapers of public opinion have relentlessly toed the government line, and resented the public's determination to believe differently.

People want to believe in the lone nut template, not only in this case but in all political murders, because it requires no action from them. It is only the vastness and depth of the evidence which keeps the pro-conspiracy viewpoint from dying off. It is, after all, a profoundly uncomfortable place to be. But there are greater virtues than comfort.

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For those (like my commenter) who desire a more conclusive discussion, one can be found in James K. Galbraith's article here.

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Author Mary Roach is here to tell you some things you didn't know.

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...I wonder if it means anything.

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Dennis Perrin forwarded me this great bit from the early days of Letterman. Dennis sez, "Starting at the 45 second mark, you'll see Letterman writers Max Pross, Tom Gammill, George Meyer (in the Dallas Cowboys shirt, sporting an Amish beard), and then Andy Breckman, in the glasses and secular beard. And at 1:31, that's head writer Merrill Markoe."

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GQ sent somebody around looking for it. Though I might trust their judgment a little more on matters of hair gel viscosity or length of beard stubble, both Sally's and Pepe's did make the list, which suggests it's at least creditable. Notable omission: LA's Pizzeria Mozza, which my wife swears by.

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I clicked on this expecting nothing, but I enjoyed it. As Samuel Johnson said, "If you're tired of mindless internet memes, you're tired of life."

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Michael Caine is quintessential Sixties cool, and I love him (and the National Health glasses he wore in The Ipcress File). Here's a brief but interesting interview from New York magazine. Included is John Wayne's acting advice, and why famous people should never wear suede shoes.

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The excellent UK science magazine New Scientist has published an expert opinion on the "swine flu" virus that emerged recently in Mexico. It's not long, and well worth reading, particularly if you're a little freaked out. My take-away was optimistic--the currently terrifying death rate may return to a more normal range after more cases are discovered--but that may be because I have this cold I just can't seem to kick. (At left is a computer model of the virus. Handsome little jerk, eh?)

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...You Tube vid. It's a woman named Susan Boyle, on Britain's version of "American Idol."

Quite inspiring, as I lay here wondering whether this cold is actually swine flu.

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I've blogged about Peter Ivers before, the musician and provocateur who cut a legendary figure at late-60s Harvard, and was a confidant of Doug Kenney. I'd run across Peter in my reading every so often, and always suspected that there was an interesting story there.

Now I know for sure thanks to a new bio, In Heaven Everything Is Fine, written by Josh Frank with Charlie Buckholtz. The book (very wisely I think) identifies Ivers' still-unsolved murder as the hookiest part of the tale, and their emphasis on this gives In Heaven a pretty interesting structure. First there is a chapter of Ivers' "unsolved life," told in standard chronological fashion; then a few pages of quotes about that period from friends famous and otherwise; then finally a few pages of quotes about the murder investigation, from the detectives and friends involved in it.

I usually get irritated by gambits like these, feeling that they're gimmicky, hiding flaws in the life and/or the telling, but I have to say that in this case, it works. When it doesn't, which happens once in a while, it's due to something that the authors could not control. When the glamor of a subject is unrealized potential rather than mature achievement, one is stuck with a parade of assertions. These are ultimately unsatisfying--even if notable people are making them. Everybody thinks their friends are geniuses, everybody mythologizes their college years, and if Peter Ivers had gone to Michigan instead of Harvard, this book wouldn't exist.

But that is not the fault of the authors (or Ivers), and since it does exist, I'm glad they did it with such skill. The one persistent annoyance I felt as I read was a reticence to really dig into Ivers' flaws; after all, this was a man who was murdered, probably by somebody who knew him well. Obviously not everybody was charmed by his mercurial genius; obviously he didn't treat everybody well. But since this book depended on access to Ivers' friends and family, it's not surprising that it is 97% positive. It's a credit to the authors that there is any negative at all, and if In Heaven is a bit of the anti-Wired, well, so be it.

At book's end, one is not only left with a sense of what might have been, but also of the cruelty contained in peaking too young. From the doubly lofty heights of Harvard in 1968, it seemed a foregone conclusion that "the Three Musketeers," Doug Kenney, Peter Ivers, and Tim Mayer would change the world. Out of those three, only Kenney did, and even Doug's success, as prodigious and rapid as it was, could not have existed without the efforts of many other, less celebrated talents. National Lampoon would've collapsed in 1971, mostly unlamented, had it not been for Henry Beard; and it would've made Doug and Henry a lot less rich had O'Donoghue, Kelly, Hendra, McConnachie, McCall, Miller, and O'Rourke not been on board, just to mention eight off the top of my head. Not to mention Belushi, Ramis, and Chase, each of whom had their own genius, and had been living their own lives, which just happened to cross Doug's in the right way at the right time. And of course there was Matty Simmons, who for all his flaws, was the reason the opportunity existed in the first place, not only NatLamp but also Doug's great launching pad Animal House. So perhaps what Peter Ivers was, was Doug Kenney without that beautiful piece of serendipity named National Lampoon. Both men died mysteriously, by the way, and a leading theory of each is a drug deal gone bad. The role of drugs in distorting and dismantling the dream of the Sixties is a theory I explore deeply in this novel I just finished, so I'll leave it there.

In Heaven places great emphasis on the LA punk/New Wave scene of the early 1980s, and Peter's role in it. In my humble opinion most of that has turned out to be a dead end, both artistically and as a larger cultural force. Every generation since the Beatles feels it needs a cultural movement to define itself, but that's a structure imposed on reality to keep us consuming media. Applying a little historical distance, it's difficult to ascertain which is more dubious, breaking time into generations, or looking to guitar players to sum up the zeitgeist. So John Belushi liked Fear. So what? More people in 1981 listened to Shostakovich, to pick a name at random, and that doesn't mean that Shostakovich played a huge role in defining the art and music of that time. Whatever impact Fear might've had came from the fact that its listeners were between 16-30--and that's the footprint of marketing, not art.

Punk and New Wave were surface changes, not structural ones, and any claims of vast impact are immediately and profoundly gainsayed by the quality of our current culture. Which is not to say that people can't enjoy them, only that people need to be more aware of the great hustle that's being run--"we'll give you media, but we'll keep all the money and power." And within media, the commercial imperative of the constant new thing, and the political effects that this has had. Ever-shifting cultural change--rebellion as fashion--gets in the way of the broader structural changes human society needs. Attention paid to hairstyles is attention not paid to other things.

Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean there wasn't something there only that, like the comedy of the Seventies, punk and new wave was no match for the assimilative abilities of those who control our culture. In the case of the comedy, I can see what was lost, and mourn it; but I'm not surprised it was lost. I'm more surprised that something new and authentic existed for as long as it did. In the case of the music, I like Devo and USA's "Night Flight" as much as the next guy, but to me their influence is limited to one small tidal pool (or, if you prefer, market segment). Since Frank and Buckholtz clearly love that time, that scene, I recognize their love, even if I don't fully buy its larger significance. The Church of the Sub-Genius is a fantastic artifact; satirically brilliant; if it didn't exist, it would necessary for someone to create it. But its aggregate impact is probably smaller than one single mega-church in Texas. Artists don't like to hear stuff like that, but it's the only thing (besides original sin) that explains the mess we're in.

Still, if you're interested in any of the worlds Peter Ivers touched--Harvard in the 60s, LA in the 70s, bands like Fear and Devo, David Lynch--In Heaven Everything is Fine is well, well worth reading. Pick up a copy.

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These color photos taken from the time of France's occupation by the Nazis really struck me. Not because they show things that are terribly remarkable--precisely the opposite. Photos like these transform a much-mythologized period into a reality we can relate to. History should be an empathic enterprise, where the facts of the past are turned into the malleable gold of self-recognition; but the world being what it is, all that emerges is justification, leaden as a handful of bullets.


Here's a pretty woman putting on makeup. I wonder who she was, and what happened to her?

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I knew there was a reason I disliked The Elements of Style. This professor tells me why.

I once had a girlfriend with a similar attitude; it was like making love to Strunk and White without the frisson of a three-way. Though she never came out and said it, I suspect she believed I was to a "real" writer what a three-legged dog is to the usual variety. I, naturally, disagreed. We broke up before Barry Trotter came out and proved us both right.

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A friend of mine at a party said that she had an old Joy of Cooking which showed how to prepare squirrel. I must've had a disbelieving expression (prosecco makes my face slack) because she just sent me the page, which is below. Click to enlarge. I love the squirrel's little closed eyes; it looks like it is dreaming.

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Quite randomly I ran across this old cartoon, which I love.

I spent large chunks of my childhood watching old movies and cartoons, which made me old-fashioned while I was still new. Not the easiest way to be in our day and age, but full of peculiar joys and secret treasure.

...and yes, I do love to singa.

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Last Wednesday, I witnessed David Carradine's public implosion at my home-away-from-home, the Aero Theater here in Santa Monica. (Favorite bit: Carradine declaring "I am Woody Guthrie!" and an irate audience member shouting back "No, you're not!"). My pesky Midwestern politeness prevented me from blogging about it--though not from performing it for my wife when I got home. Luckily Hollywood Elsewhere has a full report. To be frank, it was quite harrowing to watch someone so clearly out of control. And it was a double shame, because it followed Carradine's superb performance as Woody Guthrie in the Hal Ashby film Bound for Glory.

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For that line alone, I had to post this rant from Wallstreetpro. NSFW, and I laughed and laughed. Reminded me fondly of some relatives of mine. Go git'm!

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...is here.

Kate's writers' PA for the AMC show "Breaking Bad," and she wrote this very funny vignette about wedding-day jitters. (Need I mention that it is chillingly reminiscent of my own wedding day?)

Link to it, send it around, but be aware, it might be a little NSFW.

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...is here, and very ably done. Enjoy!

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I happened across this excellent article from Salon, written upon the ascension of James Kaminsky to the editorship of Playboy in 2002. It's right on the money, as far as
--what the best magazines used to be;
--why that worked for them, artistically AND financially;
--why they changed to what they are now;
--and why that destroys them, quickly or slowly, one-by-one.

The major problem with American magazines is that they have no idea what they should be--what they do better than other media. If they identified those things, and provided them consistently, intelligently, almost ruthlessly, they would begin to thrive again, in print, pixels or both.

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