CORPORATE NAMING=SILLINESS, writes Rob Walker, who ably took over writing Slate's "Moneybox" column when James Surowiecki realized the New Yorker would always have more cachet. For what we lawyers might call "silliness per se," look at what happens when Lutherans are given a "branding budget."
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/25/2002 02:57:00 PM

 
THIS JUST IN. George W. Bush is not a moron. And you can trust Chretien, because Canadians are honest. Like Honest Josh.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/22/2002 08:47:00 AM

 
SENATOR BYRD KICKS ASS. How does West Virginia get a firebrand who tells the truth about the Department of Homeland security? Why not Oregon?
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/21/2002 09:15:00 AM

 
"WHERE DEMOLITION COMES ALIVE! This is my favorite Flash intro to a website ever.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/20/2002 03:47:00 PM

 
ERIC AND I TRIED TO UPGRADE my PC last weekend. After much tinkering, a Windows reinstall, and general turmoil and instability, the plan is now Fdisk, XP, and reinstall every application I've ever had. Time to switch.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/20/2002 11:13:00 AM

 
BAD, SICK MAN. Michael "Liz Taylor Used to Call Me the King of Pop" Jackson has apologized for waving his kid out a window like a Homer Hankie. Apologies aren't enough, though, to make up for Jackson's misdeeds. I deserve an apology for having to look at pictures like this.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/20/2002 09:37:00 AM

 
AL GORE SUPPORTS SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE. Read the story--I'll write more about this later.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/19/2002 05:35:00 PM

 
EMBRACE YOUR INNER GEEK. Get a beanie.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/19/2002 10:20:00 AM

 
TOO FUNNY. But very very disturbing.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/18/2002 05:36:00 PM

 
SOME BEMOAN THE HOMOGENIZATION of American culture, the evening out of regional cultural and linguistic differences. The argument runs that mass culture, in the form of TV and other media, provides a smoothing effect, so things like distinct Southern accents fade in the face of TV newscasters using a uniform, Pacific NW-type flat inflection. See the much-reported demise of Gullah culture. In an age when everybody drifts toward the center, it's nice to know that religious bigots still reign in Alabama (or try to).
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/18/2002 02:05:00 PM

 
PHOTOBLOGS ARE THE FUTURE, writes John Gallagher today in Slate.com.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/18/2002 09:50:00 AM

 
THE SEGWAY IS HERE! Though it's more expensive than I had hoped...

Actually, this is the one item on Amazon that I didn't look at and say, "I should really buy this at Powell's instead."
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/18/2002 08:51:00 AM

 
LIKE MOST AMERICANS, I have an abiding fondness for absurd sports, such as sumo. My fondness intensifies when sumo participants do balance board exercises.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/15/2002 01:38:00 PM

 
JOSH LEARNED TO DANCE here. Glad he's finally doing something besides playing Evercrack.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/14/2002 05:59:00 PM

 
2PAC LIVES! Um, actually, no, Tupac's been dead for a while. But with the police kicking things up a notch, maybe we're getting closer to finding his killer. Which is good, 'cause I'll sleep better knowing that Suge Knight is back behind bars.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/14/2002 03:17:00 PM

 
DRUGS BAD, SNUGGLING GOOD.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/13/2002 03:38:00 PM

 
I SAW 8 MILE last night. I was disappointed, but as I told Eric, I don't think it was possible for the movie to live up to my expectations. 8 Mile is set in 1995, and rap is just better now (when done well) then it was seven years ago. Plus the movie focused on informal "battle rhyming," and that impromptu, unpolished exchange of vicious disrespect suffers mightily compared with the lightning speed of Eminem's studio work. The climactic "battle" is gratifying, but misses the pop arcana and dazzling internal rhyme that prompts the white Starbucks-and-Harper's crowd (um, that's me) to write long, mystified apologias about Eminem's crossover (read white grownups) appeal.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/13/2002 02:31:00 PM

 
DOES THE WORLD NEED more 200-m.p.h. vehicles that double as hydrofoils? The scary thing is that they're going to be affordable ($10-16,000), if they ever get built.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/13/2002 02:22:00 PM

 
"YOUR LIFE IS OVER." That's what the guys at Electronics Boutique told me when I bought Morrowind this afternoon. Apparently it is so all-consuming that I will have no time for my other pastimes, such as fantasy football, practicing law, and drinking beer. Although I may be able to work in some beer drinking...
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/12/2002 01:46:00 PM

 
BITTER AND VENOMOUS. That's Cintra Wilson, a great commentator on pop culture. Here, she dissects Robby Benson, who contrary to popular belief, did not die of an overdose in front of the Viper Room.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/12/2002 09:33:00 AM

 
SO I'M A REFLECTING POOL, blank and empty. All I think about is what other people are thinking about.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/12/2002 09:01:00 AM

 
LAST WEEK'S ELECTION was a ringing endorsement of President Bush's policies, such as this one.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/12/2002 08:54:00 AM

 
JACK GETS CREDIT for inciting me to blog. Which means that I get (dubious) credit for inciting Eric to blog, I guess.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/12/2002 08:44:00 AM

 
"DICKSTEIN CHAIRED A SYMPOSIUM about the young wizard at the annual American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting." Harry Potter has been the subject of psychiatric analysis and receives the American Psychiatric Association's stamp of approval. While it's nice that reading HP will not warp fragile young minds, what about those of us in our 30s still compulsively rereading the books and cursing JK Rowling for delaying book 5?
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/12/2002 08:37:00 AM

 
YOU CAN KILL OLD LADIES if you want to. Or not--you can also be a well-mannered citizen, though I doubt there is any secnario under which you obey traffic laws. I'm talking about the world of Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto 3, of course. Its sequel, Vice City, just came out, and continues to develop GTA3's wildly successful kernel concept: nearly perfect "free play." Now you no longer have to make your bones as a carjacker and button man before diversifying into more legitimate enterprises, such as owning strip clubs or porn shops. As Wagner James Au put it,

"...the addition of real estate and commerce puts the franchise one step closer to giving the player a fully realized world that seems more like life, and where mob violence is but one option to choose from among a wide array. (It's like the Sims, with exit wounds.)"

Even NPR's commentator saw the little miracle of GTA3 (the original, not the sequel). According to Robert Holt, in GTA3 you can achieve the gaming Grail of forgetting--just for a moment--that you are playing a game.

It's a common observation that PC gaming has become the prime driver of computing innovation and technological advancement. After all, you don't need that 2.4 gHz P4 chip, or that Alienware system, just to check your email on AOL 8.0. It comes down to this: people play GTA3 because it lets them participate in a believable world, one with touchstones in our own, but one with more freedom. Not only more freedom in the sense of fewer repercussions for petty savagery and firefights with police, but one of instant self-reinvention. The instancy of GTA3 and similar games makes them superior to MMORPGs like Everquest and Neocron, which immerse the player in a community made up of the online avatars on thousands of other players, but require the investment of massive amounts of time in order to feel "at home" in the game.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/11/2002 02:22:00 PM

 
THE TROUBLE WITH THE CYNICAL LEFT is that we all think alike. We have the same complaints and criticisms. We may be right, but self-conscious reflection leaves me doubtful of my own opinions solely because they are shared by others. That is, the opinion is less valid because it's not unique or shocking.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/11/2002 01:42:00 PM

 
BAD COUNTRY SONGS will be written about this.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/11/2002 08:22:00 AM

 
PRAISE BE. There's a new Get Your War On strip up.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/08/2002 09:24:00 AM

 
TRINA POINTED OUT TONIGHT that maybe reading five or six reviews of the same movie is a little obsessive. I think "compulsive" is the right word, but I don't know the technical difference, I guess. But between Elvis Mitchell and AO Scott at the NY Times, Kenneth Turan at the LA Times (who also raved about Eight Mile), and Anthony Lane at the New Yorker (I left out David Edelstein at Slate.com somehow when I was talking to Treen) there's just so much good prose, terrific writing, that how could I give up my reviews? Check this out--Turan ending his review of Eight Mile:

"Eminem is an actor with a rare gift for rage, and movie careers, even big ones, have been built on less."

Clean strong words.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/08/2002 12:23:00 AM

 
CONGRATULATIONS, EMINEM. You are officially a mainstream success--uber-critic Elvis Mitchell has raved about Eight Mile, your new movie. (follow link, painless nytimes.com registration required.) Get this sentence from Mitchell:

"It's only when he gets angry that he comes to life and his voice takes on a shank's edge, dull and rusty."

Damn. Between Mitchell and Anthony Lane's diary this week in Slate, I'm in hog heaven. I don't necessarily like movies, but I love movie reviews. I read Pauline Kael's huge compilation For Keeps from cover to cover, and it didn't even occur to me to see most of the movies she raved about--that everyone raves about. I've never seen Chinatown, fer godsake. Not Ordinary People. Not Scarface. It's not even real criticism, it's pop criticism, so the fact that I'll read five or six reviews of, say, I Spy only cements my status as a total dillettante.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/07/2002 07:30:00 PM

 
I CAME INTO POLITICAL AWARENESS in the Reagan years. They were scary. I remember announcing to the world in seventh grade that if a draft was imposed, I'd flee to Switzerland. My fellow early-adolescent lefty, Melody Dee, announced that she'd come with me, which led to months of taunting.

Anyway, it has been an odd and saddening experience watching the Great Communicator/Fascist Scumbag in Chief reduced, over the past few years, to a husk by Alzheimer's disease. The fun has gone out of hating him and what he stood for. His pitifulness has humanized him (while also making the Eighties, and the attendant danger of having the heartland nuked into a featureless plain of glass, seem all the more scary in retrospect). Nancy has even been made three-dimensional through having to care for him so selflessly. Ronnie deserves this tribute.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/07/2002 06:54:00 PM

 
MICROSOFT TO WORLD: "LINUX RULES!" Well, that's an overstatement, but everyone's favorite monopolist learns from its mistakes. Specifically, the boys in Redmond have figured out that Linux isn't going away, and dissing the open-source movement for a lack of "accountability" just doesn't work from a PR standpoint. Of course, anyone who has ever been told by Microsoft tech support that they can answer your question about Outlook but it'll cost $35 should be heartened when Steve Ballmer starts talking "accountability."
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/07/2002 06:45:00 PM

 
SO FINALLY SOME GOOD NEWS. I drink coffee, and have type II diabetes in my family, so this should make me happy. Apparently it's all about chlorogenic acid, baby.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/07/2002 06:35:00 PM

 
ANOTHER GOOD ARTICLE here from Slate about the collapse of Voter News Service on Election Day. I type "on Election Day" as though these events were not only than 24 hours old...
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/06/2002 06:51:00 PM

 
DAHLIA LITHWICK COVERS the Supreme Court for Slate.com, which means that she goes to oral argument and sits behind a huge marble pillar and observes Justice Thomas falling asleep (get this man some modafinil!). She then breaks down the absurdly technical arguments that are made before the court, and the crazed and lawless form of hazing/questioning the Justices employ, for the benefit of the masses. Yesterday she covered California's "three strikes" law and whether it can produce punishment so disproportionate to the offense (say, 25 years in prison for stealing three golf clubs) that even Antonin Scalia might be offended. Today, it was the recovery of pain and suffering damages for fear of cancer caused by workplace exposure to asbestos. I disagree with her on lots of things, but she's a gem.


- posted by thegusdad @ 11/06/2002 03:53:00 PM

 
I'M A LAWYER, so I care about the all the little legal things.

Saks is now safe from lawless starlets. This is a disaster. Not because some pinhead actress stole, got caught, and actually got convicted, but because the L.A. District Attorney's office will point to the conviction of Winona Ryder as a success which erases a long string of failed high-profile prosecutions. The resources wasted on this case--in L.A.!--are more evidence of the ascendance of appearance over competence.

Time for a FOIA request as to how much time and money the DA spent on this case.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/06/2002 01:58:00 PM

 
JOE CONASON is too right-wing for my taste, but this is a nice little spin of the Democratic party's abject, listless failure of vision for the progressive majority in this country.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/06/2002 09:33:00 AM

 
I TYPE THIS THE DAY AFTER.

In this case, the day after is November 6, the day after Election Day 2002 (U.S.). I woke this morning to NPR on my clock radio. Mad spin games were going on, as NPR's designated Voice of the Mainstream Center (Left) and Voice of the Mainstream Center (Right) cogently and impartially dissected the results of yesterday's elections, telling us who voted for whom and why. Apparently yesterday's outcomes constituted a Vote-of-Confidence-for-President-Bush, or a Vote-for-Democratic-Leadership-Locally-but-Vote-Born-of-Fear-at-the-National-Level. People voted because they like the Bush tax cut, or don't trust Democrats on the War on Terror (TM). Trent Lott: "This was a referendum on President Bush's leadership."

OK.

Stunningly, mixed in with the spin was a short quiet story about the TOTAL MELTDOWN of Voter News Service yesterday. Voter News Service is a news-organization consortium. Its minions trap hapless voters after they have cast their ballots and grill them about their secret ballots--"who did you vote for? how much do you make? why did you vote for that schmuck? you look vaguely brown...are you Caucasian? were you trying to send a message with your vote? what else floats?" VNS then takes the results of these interrogations, tabulates and datafies them, then stews them in a cauldron in that abandoned girls' bathroom where Moaning Myrtle hangs out.

Because of a database breakdown, or a design breakdown, or a nervous breakdown [or a conspiracy, of course], this is the first year since 1970 that we have not had exit polling. So no grilling, no tabulating, no stewing. No real information, just talking heads seeing their agendas in tea leaves. And NPR, which I sadly rely on to get too much of my news, is presenting this vacuum as being chock full of information. Significant. Reading meaning out of this tabula rasa. It's deceit, pure and simple. For all we know about this election, NPR could have one of its readers listing the various elective races and the number of vote for each candidate or measure. In a monotone; the monotone is key.

This is why you nead to read Adbusters.

So I'm extra angry and cynical today. Welcome to my blog.
- posted by thegusdad @ 11/06/2002 08:18:00 AM