The White Peril 白禍

Eric doesn't like being labeled, and not for the usual tiresome I'm-too-free-spirited-to-be-defined reasons:

While I can say what I think about most things, experience shows that adopting any label invites conformity to it. (Especially criticism from those who claim it.)

Once you say what you are, some a**hole will come along and say that you're not, because he is.

Similarly, once you say what you aren't, some a**hole will come along and say that you are, because he isn't.

It's convenient that (small-l) "libertarian" suits me fine, because it tends not to set people off. I like "classical liberal," but (today's left) liberals often seem to think you're trying to dress up as one of them while being a closet fascist. ("Yeah, you're a liberal in the sense that, like, Mill would have meant it," someone sneered at me once.) And while my positions on many issues align with what we now consider "conservatism," I'm not fundamentally a conservative. (Well, I am when some gross guy is hitting on me. Then I identify myself as a "conservative" in a clear, forceful tone and mention that I'm a registered Republican. You movement conservatives don't mind the fib, do you? It's to the end of preventing casual homosexual intercourse, after all. And I really am a registered Republican.)

The only problem with calling yourself a libertarian--besides, as Eric alludes to, being invited by supposed fellow travelers to engage in poker-faced debates over the most inane hypothetical situations imaginable--is that a lot of people don't understand that it doesn't mean "libertine" or "anarchist." I can't count the number of times I've had to explain that no, I don't think all governing bodies should be dissolved so we can frolic naked in meadows all day and subsist on game and wild berries. In general, though, even those who conclude I'm just a closet right-winger seem to give me a fair hearing without rancor.

*******

My buddy grabbed my arm the other night and asked whether I'd seen Julie Burchill's inevitable column about the new Madonna album yet. He summarized it as "If I spent four hours a day at the gym, I'd look better than that bitch!" Not too far wide of the mark:

Madonna is everywhere, reigning over the just and the unjust, friend and foe alike; loving her or hating her is as futile as loving or hating the rain, wind or snow - it'll happen anyway.

...

If Madonna didn't devote her life to harassing us, what would she do with herself all day? Remember, this is a woman with so much time on her hands that she can spend four hours a day working out. I know I'm fat, but I have to say that if I spent four hours a day working out, I'd want to look a damn sight hotter than Madonna does; those vile veiny hands, that sad stringy neck - yuck!

Madonna has the sort of body that tends toward the plump/luscious side; you can see it in her early videos. Endomorphs like that who diet and exercise themselves into having no body fat often end up with skin that has a weird stretched look.

The rest of the column is the exact same thing Burchill writes whenever a Madonna record comes out, and it's as funny (and bawdy) as usual.

*******

Surprise! Hillary Clinton once said something nasty behind closed doors about white, working-class Southerners (via Ann Althouse):

In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."

And since some things never change, Clinton's spokesman responds with contempt when asked about the authenticity of the quotation:

A spokesperson for Clinton said the quote was taken out of context and did not reflect her true political philosophy. "This quote differs from the recollection of others who were in the room at the time this comment was allegedly made," said Jay Carson. "To be clear, that's not how she felt then and it's not how she feels now, and the proof is in how she has lived her life, the work she has done and the policies she has pushed and pursued over the last 35 years."

Asked to produce a witness who would say that Clinton had been misquoted, Carson wrote: "So, you've got two guys we've barely heard of remembering a verbatim quote from 13 years ago?... Sounds totally and completely reliable."

Remember the Clinton administration, when we were subjected to that kind of smear-and-spin routine almost daily when something or other threatened to blow up in the happy couple's faces? We could be mere months from going back to it!

Eric also noticed this story. (He didn't say much about it, but, then, he had to go to New Jersey, so he had plenty of pain to contend with already.)

*******

I don't think this post has enough parentheses.

Does anyone out there know where my evening shirt is?

Well, what good are you?

I thought I always kept it inside the dinner jacket on the same hanger, but unless it's invisible, it's not there. I hope I didn't leave it in Atsushi's closet when I moved out.

*******

How is it possible for one man to have so many vases? If there were ever any doubt that I'm gay, it's been dispelled by the four boxes of decorative housewares I've just packed. Mind you, they don't include anything you could eat off or store something in.

*******

It's time for me to break a pair of sunglasses. Or maybe lose them. I can feel it. The weather keeps going from sunny to cloudy, so you need them sometimes and then not others. They end up in a pocket or dangling by one slender arm from my bag. I seem to have a thing for dropping them in cabs or putting them down on tables and putting something heavy on them. I school myself resolutely to keep them in their little crush-proof cases, but it never works.

*******

I'm not entirely sure why, but I have The Descent in the DVD player, and I'm finding it oddly comforting to have it playing while I'm packing. Given the increasing claustrophic-cave-like-ness of my apartment, you'd think it would make me afraid of confronting a throat-biting humanoid in the bathroom or something, but I actually find it rather cozy. And I used to be of those people who were completely unable to handle horror movies. (When I was growing up, all the talk of demons waiting to getcha we got in church affected my over-active imagination a good deal.)

BTW, if you like suspense and have a strong stomach, The Descent is a great little movie. It's bloody and seriously scary at times, but you don't leave it feeling cynically worked over. It's thoughtful and raises interesting questions without being pretentious, and the cave scenes are very persuasive even though they were all shot on a soundstage. I love hypertrophied old Hollywood glamour-orgy productions as much as the next gay man, but there's a lot to be said for a movie made by people who relied on ingenuity, skill, and conviction rather than piles of money.

I would have bought the lime green, Janis, for the wood sprite effect when out gardening. Then, too, if you garden in earnest (and why would you not?), the mud and earth are likely to dull the color in short order.

I wore a lime-green T-shirt to lunch with Atsushi yesterday. We went to a putatively Moroccan restaurant, which turned out to be a French bistro-ish place (including the ham that came with the asparagus salad) in just about every respect except the figurines of camels and the baskets everywhere. Anyway, the color comes into the story because we both got pea soup--chilled fresh pea soup that looked like bright-green vichyssoise. When it arrived, Atsushi looked from my plate to my shirt to the (green) cushions and said, "You've certainly dressed for the place." Then the waitress came to do something with the cutlery and started giggling. "Same color," she said in English, looking at my place setting and me.

Unlike Janis, I can't wear most V-necks. I'm not worried about bra straps, obviously; it's just that when you have as much chest hair as I do, a deep V looks sleazy (in gay terms) or just plain wrong.

The story's a good week old, but considering what old news it is anyway, I don't feel all that dumb linking to it now. R.E.M. has a new album out soon, and the hype-o-rator has been on full-blast for weeks. Who knows? Maybe it really is the band's best album in over a decade, and old fans should be getting all spazzy with anticipation. (Personally, I dropped away after Automatic for the People, which to me is about as melodious and ear-pleasing as the reaction of a cat when you throw a bucket of ice water over it. I'm clearly in the minority on that one, though.)

Anyway, there's a usual flurry of interviews and photo shoots and magazine covers. GayNews reports that Michael Stipe has finally just cut the crap and identified himself as gay:

This week he told Spin magazine, "I recognize that to have public figures be very open about their sexuality helps some kid somewhere out there."

Although Stipe has never felt the need to discuss his sexuality before, he informed the magazine that he now felt that it was important to be open and honest in order to provide understanding and hope for the younger generation.

"It was super complicated for me in the '80s. I was totally open with the band and my family and my friends and certainly the people I was sleeping with. I thought it was pretty obvious."

Stipe stated that in the past he didn't see that being out could be so important for others. "I didn't always see that. But I see now, of course that's the case, of course that's needed."

Considering how fervently Stipe embraced everything else on the leftist checklist, it's kind of funny that he didn't see coming out of the closet, of all things, as being important. But I see no reason not to take him at his word. He did, after all, make a point of being uncategorizable and enigmatic about his private life--and why not?--and he's been open about being bisexual for years. If he's decided he is, in fact, gay, then sure, no reason he shouldn't be up-front about it with the public if he likes.

I'm not sure the announcement will have the effect of "helping some kid out there," though. Gay kids already know that it's possible to be an open homosexual if, like Stipe, you're constantly going to be pushing what a "transgressive" weirdo you are. Especially if you've also already made a pile and aren't risking much in the way of money and career trajectory. I'm not faulting Stipe for waiting until he was ready to reveal this or that about himself; I'm only saying that it's a bit late to be all public-spirited about it in the way he seems to want to be.

BTW, before anyone tries to call me on it: Yes, the joke of the post title is that "Superman" was neither written by R.E.M. nor sung by Michael Stipe.

Overheard at the bar the other night, spoken between two always-loud friends from the same part of the British Isles:

"Well, I get both CNN and the BBC, you know, and I always think--well, let me put it this way: CNN is entertainment, and the BBC is news."

"Oh, very much so. By the way, isn't that weather guy...Rob Mar...Mar...."

"Marciano! A real hottie!"

"Can't get enough of him!"

To impress upon his mate (and, I'm fairly certain, everyone within earshot--he's that type) the seriousness of the distinction, Speaker 1 drew out the word news with suitable fake-RP/genuine-gasbag portentousness: nee-yeeewwwwwz.

I'm usually very good about not chortling audibly in such situations, but I happened to be sitting with my English buddy, with whom I e-mail news stories and things back and forth frequently through the day. I made the mistake of catching his eye. At that point, it was over.

Of course, it wasn't the novelty of the opinions expressed that I found funny. I've heard that kind of nonsense many times before. But it's still nonsense.

I have little objection to the characterization of CNN as a source of mere entertainment, given that its "in-depth coverage" is like World Book Encyclopedia come to life: all cutesy-poo visuals and repellantly chipper presentation, presumably calibrated to reassure the mass audience that it will not be confronted with anything too complicated, taxing to the intellect, or challenging to existing assumptions.

I just don't see how the BBC--especially BBC World, which has notably CNN-ified itself over the years--can be thought to bring anything more elevated to the mix. It's not that the BBC is worse. For one thing, the reporters don't do as much of that gruesome, would-be-matey joshing with one another as they do on American channels. (Is there no way to make them cut that out?) But you get the same pat, preconception-confirming reporting on stories that you get everywhere else. You get the same "heartwarming" human interest pieces, which I sometimes think are purposefully contrived to make any civilized person's flesh crawl. You get the same asinine patter made necessary by being on the air all day. And you get the same unilluminating Q&A shows. Even the Hard Talk guy, whatever his name is (if he were cuter I'd make more of an effort to remember), is more known for his confrontational-jerk style of delivering questions than for actually, you know, drawing better information out of his subjects than other interviewers do.

At times I prefer the BBC because I find the cool composure of the newsreaders welcome. Just spit out the story already. At other times it's kind of nice the way CNN (as well as MSNBC) is populated by people who appear frankly aware that they're feeding you Spam on Wonder smeared with Miracle Whip Lite. That probably says something about my native Yank preference for forthrightness.

Just to end on a suitable note of (North) American frivolity: Rondi thinks Silda (Mrs. Eliot) Spitzer looks like Jennifer Aniston. There's totally a Hollywood angle on everything if you just look hard enough!

Occasionally, the thought flits through my head that maybe Go Fug Yourself isn't quite as funny as I think it is. Then I start guffawing again and forget all about it. This is Heather's riff on one of the photo-op photos from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions last night:

MADONNA: And the arms, they work, right? Young people have great arms. Justin probably has awesome arms. He's kind of my inspiration, actually. God, I just want to use my fearsome guns to tear off his young flesh and eat it.

JUSTIN: I don't know why, but I'm suddenly afraid that Madonna is going to use her fearsome guns to tear off my young flesh and eat it.

IGGY: I wonder what it'd taste like if I used Madonna's fearsome guns to tear off that kid's young flesh and eat it.

I'm still not sure how much of Madonna's strangeness of appearance is due to getting work done; a lot of it could be all the dieting and working out. No question, though, that she's bringing the same determination to staying "youthful" that she did to becoming a star. And (to bring up Taylor Dayne for the second time in a week) M. at least is working with her facial structure rather than against it.

To see Madonna's continued ability to polarize people in action, refer to this comment thread at Ann Althouse's.

The staff at my office here in Taipei have given me two different nicknames. I was designated "Evil Pink Guy" (by one of the fags, naturally--we're such bitches) the day I showed up in a lavender T-shirt and sat behind my desk with the lights off, apparently looking malign. The girls up front, on the other hand, have decided I'm 型男. No clue how to pronounce that in Chinese, but apparently it means "well-dressed man."

I'm honestly not sure which one I prefer. Being known as the Evil Pink Guy could, it seems to me, have its advantages.

*******

Hokkaido Diet member Muneo Suzuki, an uncommonly proficient glad-hander even by Japanese standards, has had one of his sentences upheld:

The Tokyo High Court on Tuesday upheld a two-year prison sentence against Lower House member Muneo Suzuki, a once-powerful politician convicted of accepting 11 million yen in bribes and other crimes.

...

Although prosecutors can incarcerate Suzuki, his lawyers have requested his release on bail, meaning the lawmaker will likely be able to continue his political activities.

Under the Diet Law, lawmakers accused of bribery while in office lose their seats only when a guilty verdict is finalized.

Suzuki, a former member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, once wielded enormous influence over the Foreign Ministry, particularly on Russian affairs, and publicly clashed with then Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka during the Junichiro Koizumi administration.

But his power eroded after he became embroiled in a series of money scandals.

The lawmaker was found guilty of collecting 6 million yen from Shimada Kensetsu Co., a contractor based in Abashiri, Hokkaido, for his influence in gaining the company preferential treatment for a contract in a large-scale port construction project.

*******

A town in Saga Prefecture has a different (ahem) incentive plan in mind:

The Karatsu Municipal Government will from April start providing special bonuses to any citizens 75 or over who have not needed medical treatment or special health care over the previous 12 months.

Healthy elderly Karatsu citizens will be able to receive a special 10,000 yen payment provided they are on the list the city draws up for entitled recipients and they decide to apply for it themselves.

Karatsu's move to reward healthy older citizens is the first such step for a Japanese municipality.

Karatsu is hoping the idea will catch on and encourage older people to look after their health to cut potential rises in medical costs as the city's population ages.

The original Japanese for the program is ご長寿健康手当 (go-chouju kenkou teate: "payment for health in [exalted] longevity"), but it sounds to me more patronizing than respectful. Those who are already over 75 (or will be hitting 75 in the foreseeable future) are at a point at which there's not a whole lot they're likely to be able to do to affect which ailments they're prone to. They can be extra careful not to fall and break fragile bones, I suppose, but their range of choices is going to be kind of limited.

*******

The new Janet is okay. By which I mean the album. The new Janet herself appears to have gone further toward Michael/LaToya-fying her nose. Kind of spooky.

This morning, for just about the first time in ten years, I got my hair cut by someone who's not my regular guy in Tokyo. He made me feel right at home by putting gunk in my hair despite my telling him that I didn't need any. He also had this idea that he was going to convince me to style it--there was this whole thing about using more gel on the sides than on the top and pushing it foward and down. I think there was a blow-dryer involved somewhere. Since he was recommended by a friend of mine down here (and had given me a good cut), I thought, but did not say, "Honey, I know we're Family, but you have to understand something: I use the best degreasing shampoo I can get my hands on. Then I towel my hair dry. Then, if anything looks out of place, I finger comb it, kind of. Once. Anything more complicated than that, including applications of goo, is not happening."

Speaking of high-maintenance hair, can you believe Dusty's been dead for almost a full decade? Shelby Lynne has an album out now of covers of her songs. (Songs Dusty sang, of course, since she wasn't known for her songwriting.) I'm trying to decide whether to buy it. I like Lynne's voice, and though I tend to run headlong in the opposite direction from anything peddled as "alt-something," I recognize that it's probably not her fault that she gets icky marketing. She also had the good taste to pick two of the best songs from Dusty in Memphis to cover, along with a third, without going for the obvious attention-getting gambit of making a beeline for "Son of a Preacher Man."

Oh, why not? I have one more long-ish commute to work tomorrow before Chinese New Year, and if it sucks, I can always recover my spirits by listening to the real thing.

Work, busy, wontons, Chiang Kai-shek, blah-blah-blah. Will have more to report soon. Two quick notes on the latest (though now several days old) Camille column at Salon.

First, Jeff of Beautiful Atrocities got a letter published and answered. At least, you don't think there could be another Jeff Percifield who would begin with "Longtime fan here. As a Reaganite homo, couldn't disagree with you more on politics, but who cares?" and then go on to write about a Ukrainian drag queen, right? Me, neither.

Then there's this beyond-satire letter about the Iraq occupation:

Thank you for giving us a voice of reason before and during the Iraq war. At a time when many people resorted to clichés or did not speak out openly against the war, you made a strong case for peace. I also commend you for continuing to speak out against this pointless war.

My thoughts about our world, expressed in Haiku form:

War afflicts our world
Random murder and bloodshed
The scourge of our time

No armies in ranks
Just sporadic explosions
Maiming and killing

Serving no purpose
Ending lives before their time.
When will peace arrive?

Again, thank you on behalf of the Peace Party.

I'm not Japanese, so maybe it's not my place to say this, but on behalf of grown-ups everywhere...please don't say things in haiku that are better said in normal prose. Please. If you've had some kind of epiphanic experience in nature and feel stirred to write a haiku, fine. That's right in line with the tradition. In fact, that is the tradition.

We use haiku in elementary school to teach second-graders about poetry because...well, it helps reinforce the concept of the syllable, it's a less confusing way to teach discipline and rules in composition than the sonnet, it introduces the idea that non-Western countries have very different poetic traditions, and most kids can find something about nature that they think it would be fun to write about.

However, it is a mistake to believe in something one might call the Haiku Effect, that (it is assumed) simply expressing something in seventeen syllables on three lines somehow imbues it with major big-time profundity. Pointless line breaks actually come off kind of kitschy, which presumably was not the intention here.

Virginia Postrel links to a true story with the kind of happy ending that can literally make you cry: Afghans get a new industry that provides environmentally-sustainable work and brings cash into the economy...and affluent Americans get access to a broader array of fabulous beauty products!

Anyone who writes to ask which part moved me more will be ignored.

Of course, every narrative like this needs a villain to add drama and make our heroine's eventual triumph sweeter, and this story has a great one:

The letter I received from him a few days later confirmed my premonition. It requested a ream of further documentation, such as a breakdown of the raw-materials cost of a bar of soap and our financial accounts from previous years. “Maybe even more importantly,” the letter went on,

we need to show the real raison d'etre for all of this. It's because there's real demand for your products. Demand is not your problem, Sarah, satisfying it is. You've already established a vibe in the market. You're selling in Manhattan and sundry other swanky places. You've had plenty of free publicity in media with the appropriate reach to capture the attention of the chattering class whose hands you're washing. The wind is now behind you and you've an opportunity to make a significant contribution to establishing Afghanistan as something other than a squalid state exporting only smack and terror. This is what USAID wants to hear.

Peppering this and subsequent communications were colloquialisms like "the first thing we've gotta make plain ..."

I replied, providing the requested information, but also a statement of frustration. I was swiftly scolded for my tone: "unbusinesslike, unmannerly, and just plain unaesthetic."

Ick. No one who uses gotta in a business context--who would, indeed, use gotta for any purpose other than transcribing soul lyrics--should be passing judgments on the aesthetic value of someone else's prose. Especially when he himself appears never to have met a cliché he didn't like. Guy should be sentenced to wash with Duane Reade soap ("Compare to Irish Spring!") for the rest of his life.

Anyway, seriously, Sarah Chayes's piece confirms what you hear elsewhere about funding provided by big-guns organizations for entrepreneurship in developing countries--namely, that it has a way of vaporizing in the pipeline from the West to the target population. It's a very good read.

CNN: "Madonna and, you know, some other people to be inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame." (via Ann Althouse)

I have to say, that picture freaks me out, man. Madonna's never undergone the sort of hideously obvious Botoxing, collagen-shooting-up, and knifing that many stars have; but her martinet's approach to working out, dieting, and general upkeep (including, no doubt, some inpatient work) have landed her in the same place as a lot of other middle-aged stars. Michelle Pfeiffer is supposed to be pointy; Madonna is not.

Been busy of late. Lots of news, though. The best is that Virginia Postrel seems to be doing well with her cancer treatment and is posting again. Best wishes to her.

Speaking of recovered cancer patients…KYLIE! Of course. Some people seem to be bewildered that her new album doesn't address all the profound, life-changing experiences she's had in the last few years, which only makes you wonder whether they've ever heard her music before. Kylie is not Madonna, who apparently regards every thought that floats through her head and everything that happens to her as deeply meaningful and worthy of picking over in song. Kylie is an entertainer, and (bless her heart) seems to feel no need to sing about elements of her personal life if she can't do so in a way that pleases her fans.

The new album is good, of course. With the glut of super-skilled writer/producers for hire and all the technology at their disposal, no dance diva with a recording budget will ever make a truly bad album again, I suspect. "The One" is a terrific-sounding rip-off of Madonna's terrific-sounding rip-off of Kylie's previous terrific-sounding rip-off of Madonna's previous terrific-sounding rip-off of "I Feel Love." And so on.

The thing is, about half the songs on X would, frankly, have better served the strengths of her sister. Dannii Minogue has a deadpan, husky voice that's emotionally blank but stays immediately recognizable even when processed to death--perfect for imprinting a brand on club songs on which the beat is the point. She goes with the mechanical flow…kind of like an antipodean Britney without the skank factor.

But Kylie's gift is for humanizing dance-pop. Fans want to hear her coo, sigh, burble, pout, and wail, and there's little room for that in the kinds of brittle, boxed-in tracks everyone's making these days. Stuck, like Madonna's "Jump," two thirds of the way through is the most affecting song on the album: "No More Rain." Looking forward to the remixes, especially if someone actually comes up with a bassline that hasn't been done to death.

And please, can we consign "Nu-di-ty" to outer darkness while there's still time? No Kylie album is complete without one track that totally sucks, but really! These things do have their limits.

Remember Suck.com's list of ten warning signs you should stay away from a movie on the basis of its trailer? My favorite was always this one:

9. The Ominous Ominousness of Ominosity

Frequently used in tandem with Number 8, this is the one where you see the hero in various happy-family scenes — enjoying a long kiss with the wife, playing with the kids. You know exactly what's going to happen to that wife and those kids. So why see the movie? In addition to providing a nearly flawless "Do Not Enter" indicator, the Triple-O effect provides support for the theory that Death Wish is the most influential film in history. So perhaps it's not completely without value.

I think it was the graphic.

Anyway, it was always clear that there were more rules to be added, and Andrea has found one...albeit by actually sitting through the movie:

[D]ear filmmakers, please think of some other way of getting your characters in trouble that does not necessitate them contravening basic human nature. One tenet of which is people do not stand in the middle of the road, thereby making themselves available to be hit by the next high-speed vehicle that comes along. They just don't.

I don't see movies quite as often as I used to, but though I tend to forget those I do before I get home and have occasion to say anything about them here, they usually make good dinner/drink conversation with my companions afterward.

Not so that Jodie Foster movie, You Talkin' to Travice Starling-Bickle?!, which regurged just about every cliché in action-movie history, then sucked back up and swallowed several in order to hurl them at the audience a second time. Foster did an okay job, considering that the whole point of her character was to seethe in that watch-me-pointedly-refrain-from-chewing-the-scenery way that is supposed to pass for subtlety. She's nothing if not professional. And given that you go in knowing exactly how she's going to be turned into a vigilante, the movie doesn't spend too much time building up the happy-couple scenes before the lead pipe finally falls.

Nevertheless, the dialogue was beyond ridiculous, with Foster delivering an improbably perfect one-liner every single time she was about to blow some baddie away. And yes, there was a scene in which she walked blithely in front of a car with a sicko behind the wheel (while helping along a kidnapped teenaged prostitute!). You know that's gonna end in tears.

I don't think this post has a point. Just, as Andrea says, I think The Brave One is the kind of movie you have to see drunk. That may be why my buddy and I forgot about it almost as soon as we left the theater and turned our attention to more compelling matters, such as where to go for some nice beer and fish & chips.

Yes, of course, I'm in love (whoo!) with the new Kylie song and video--you had to ask?



I suppose it does sort of sound like a Gwen Stefani song...or, rather, what a Gwen Stefani song would sound like if she weren't the second-most ANNOYING PERSON ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. Personally, I see "2 Hearts" more as accomplishing what she should have years ago with her cover of "Give Me Just a Little More Time," which turned out murky and a little flat.

Alice has seen the new Spice Girls video, in which most of the five have their scalpelicious assets on full display, and wonders why women stars in their thirties "all want to dress up as ladies of the night these days"? I don't know--the inspiration has always looked more like stripping than like streetwalking to me. (I guess "ladies of the night" includes both.) The Flea manages to keep a straight face while proffering the argument that the girls' message is that "you should be proud of yourself no matter what you look like," even if you look like a bad boob job wrapped in electrical tape and topped with the head from a Rachel Roberts blow-up doll. Me, I'm not sure whether Baby looks like the spitting image of Bonnie Tyler through nature or art, but the resemblance is so uncanny it's distracting.

Anyway, yeah, slutty outfits and dance moves from pop stars. There's no frisson left, really--witness the perfunctory clip for the lead single from Britney's new album. You can practically see her thinking, Blah, blah...shake rear, gyrate, slide up and down pole, flip hair...yawn. It may be the single lamest attempt at titillation I've seen in my entire life, which is a shame, because the song deserves better. I think the Pussycat Dolls visual tropes will take a while to shake themselves out.

I just got the latest shakedown e-mail from my college. That's fine. They're doing they're first fund drive in twenty years. That's fine, too. What isn't fine is the purple overblownness of the enterprise—is it really assumed we'll only cough up money if we're come on to like this?

What we celebrated this evening was the beginning of what will be a five-year endeavor that will require the ongoing, thoughtful participation of our entire community. I promise you this: When we achieve our goal in 2012, we will hold the keys to an eminent and consummately interdisciplinary Penn that will have a vast, transformative impact on humanity.

Oh, my. That's some fundraiser.

More Penn-related stuff: Erin O'Connor links to a wonderfully crabby review of Alice Sebold's newly-disgorged novel. Sebold is a good example of why I rarely read fiction published after, like, 1950. I'm perfectly happy to listen to current music and watch current television and movies, but every time a friend whose taste I trust recommends a recent novel or short story, I end up giving up on the thing. I finished The Lovely Bones. Ick.

Lee Siegel says of Sebold's latest:

If you welcome the unreal disjunction between killing your mother and reflecting afterward how lucky you are compared with the children of the dead, “uncared for” mothers in Rwanda and Afghanistan, then this book will make you clap your hands with joy. If you find the idea that mothers shape their children’s “whole” lives original rather than simultaneously banal and puerilely overstated, then Barnes & Noble, here you come! This novel is so morally, emotionally and intellectually incoherent that it’s bound to become a best seller.

O'Connor charitably observes that writing in the first person makes it difficult to give the reader a sense of critical distance on the protagonist, and that (though she doesn't put it this way) Sebold just isn't a good enough thinker or writer to do so. Anyway, the whole review is hilarious. As O'Connor says, Siegel writes with real anger, not the airy contempt reviewers usually employ to dump on books they dislike.

Speaking of art that doesn't make good on its shock potential, a good friend and I went to see Death of a President this weekend. (It's a year old, of course, but just made it to Japan.) She and I have known each other for a decade; she's a very liberal history professor who's always ready for a good argument. I looked forward to tangling over the issues raised in the movie.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much meat to it. The assassination itself isn't presented in ghoulish graphic detail, and while the filmmakers' sympathies are rather clearly not with the Bush administration, no one comes off any more cartoonish than actual interviewees on Frontline. But the moral problems that flow from the response to the assassination are rushed through and not developed very well. A Muslim Syrian-American is prosecuted for the crime based on circumstantial evidence, now-President Cheney flirts with attacking Syria for not cooperating in the investigation, and a Patriot III act is passed to increase powers of surveillance even further. But it's hard to sink your teeth into anything because it's all rushed through. It's certainly possible to imagine a Muslim's being railroaded--prosecutors can get overzealous and develop fixations on suspects that fit their expectations, especially when they're under intense pressure from above to produce a case. It's also possible to imagine that a lead with genuine promise could be lost among the thousands of tips that would inundate the FBI during its investigation. But the misjudgments that come after the assassination aren't as fleshed out at those that lead up to it. The result is a nice lefty horror flick, presumably, but not all that hard-hitting about miscarriages of justice.

Glad this week is over--productive but super-busy. I was mercifully spared any cross-cultural encounters of the variety below (sent to me by my buddy--those Brits!):

Speaking of people from the UK, I'd feared, given the title, that Annie Lennox's new album would consist of Songs of Mass Sanctimony. After all, her attempts at social commentary with Eurythmics could be downright laughable. She and David should have won some sort of Freedom from Self-Awareness Award for this one:



Nothing really to fear, it turned out, fortunately--not even on the one with the Choir of Concerned Mommies. Nice to have her recording again.

I also truly enjoyed the opening salvo from this week's Popbitch:

"I theme-dress depending on where I'm going... if I was going to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, I would wear a kimono - it makes it more fun." Kelly Osbourne.

Good to know the child's as much as grammarian as she is a geographer, huh? Whatever you do, though, do NOT click on the Anna Nicole Smith link toward the bottom of this week's mailing. Ugsome. I still haven't recovered.

Out of here for the weekend. Have a good one, everyone.

While everyone else is debating whether there are gays in Iran, this fag (note unapologetic hegemonic-Western assertion of identity--BUTCH, huh?) is wondering anew at how beyond sexy Hugh Jackman is, even if the hair needs a trim (just the hair on his head, obviously).

Speaking of body hair, I'm normally pretty persnickety about this sort of thing--don't get me started on visible clip-on bow ties at black tie parties--but I'm not sure I can fall in line with this post (via Ann Althouse). I can see arguing that grown men shouldn't wear shorts because it violates adult etiquette. I can see pointing out that shorts flatter well-shaped legs and don't flatter dumpy ones. Hell, attractiveness isn't even always the issue. I've been fighting with friends who tell me I should show more chest hair when we go out for years. My relatively smooth buddies can have three buttons open, and you don't even notice. I have three buttons open, and I look as if I should have a sign around my neck that says, "Ask about my low all-night rates!"

But looking decent and looking comely are two different, if related, considerations that it's not good to slush together. (Is it proposed that we go the whole way and ask people who lost the genetic lottery on bone structure and complexion to wear paper bags over their heads?) Noisome breath and body odor or noisy chewing--that sort of thing is inescapable to people around you, so it's flat-out inconsiderate to inflict it on them. I have a hard time equating that with covering up your legs lest someone deem them too hairy.

Oh, great. I hadn't noticed that someone got the bright idea of remaking Halloween. And, this being 2007, the major change is that we now have way more backstory about Michael Myers. John Carpenter and Debra Hill kept it blessedly simple thirty years ago--the child had some inchoate evil in him that was crystallized by his sister's sexual experience. He was a just plain wrong'un.

But that's not good enough anymore. Now we have to have the over-worked and under-attentive stripper mom, the abusive step-dad, and the bullying meanies at school depicted in exhaustive detail so we Get the Message: What's scary isn't primal, unknowable evil. What's scary is that Child Protective Services doesn't perform more interventions.

And yes, I'm trashing a movie I haven't seen. Perhaps it's well-executed. That doesn't make the concept any less tiresome.

Kylie's new single is due out in a few months, and she is looking absolutely fantastic. I think it's great that celebrities who love clothes have the money and leisure and connections to try out crazy, adventurous looks--Kylie's done some experimenting herself--but there's something to be said for just looking beautiful (and alert and sober and happy) for your adoring public. Surprised the Flea hasn't noticed yet, actually.

Added later: Unrelated, except with respect to being fabulous, is this comment by Andrea Harris:

Personally, I always thought the metric system was for people too dumb to divide by 12.

She was prompted by this post by Kim.

It's been a pretty rainless rainy season so far. The weather's lovely--not always sunny, but mild and warm. I've been trying to force myself not to be outdoors too much too soon, without much success. (I burn very easily.) Since it's officially early summer, and I haven't posted about poetry for, like, ever, here's yet another from the Princess Shokushi:

声はして雲路にむせぶ郭公涙やそそく宵の村雨

式子内親王

koe ha shite / kumodji ni musebu / hototogisu / namida ya sosoku / yoi no murasame
Shokushi-Naishinno

Your voice, I can hear--
as you cut a sobbing path
through clouds, O cuckoo,
are your tears pouring down, too?
A burst of rain at twilight
--The Princess Shokushi

Imagining that the fleeting rainshower is caused by the equally fleeting flight of the cuckoo overhead, the princess wonders whether its crying voice (which she can hear) is accompanied by falling tears (which she can't see).

Virginia Postrel blogs that MIT engineers are figuring out how to transmit electricity wirelessly. No more inconvenient lamp cords. Very exciting.

I nearly went insane trying to figure out how to task-light (new verb!) my kitchen work space. Hiding the cords wasn't going to be a problem, but I liked the uninterrupted expanse of cobalt-blue acrylic I'd used as a backsplash and didn't want to wreck it with a bunch of clip lights or floor lamps. Then I ran across a display of these at Tokyu Hands.



That picture is not all that far from actual size. Each light has a diameter of 3.2 centimeters at its widest point, and the whole thing is 7-ish centimeters long if you extend the lamp fully. You can hardly see it unless it's turned on. And the light is powerful. Worked perfectly. Of course, I thought it was nice that the thing is supposed to save on energy and stuff, but it was the design that hooked me. (And no, I did not pay the full suggested list price given on the Kokuyo site. I probably am gay enough to spend the equivalent of US$200 on a light the size of an artichoke heart just because it won a design award, but I didn't have to.)

While Alanis hasn't been in the public eye much lately, she proves there's still reason to love her. Too funny. Fergie is one of the most annoying female singers around at the moment, and while her soi-disant street-wise routine is so laughable it's almost not worth satirizing, Alanis keeps you entertained all the way through. My day is made.

Virginia Postrel links to a post by her husband about bad design and why we can't stamp it out immediately. My favorite part of his list was this:

Auto-numbering in Microsoft Word, which behaves like a peevish poltergeist, randomly changing number and letter headings, creating and destroying tabs, etc., instead of almost any other numbering utility I can imagine.

When I give instructions about how to submit documents to me at work, the very top of the list is "Before making a single keystroke, go to 'Autocorrect,' choose the 'Autoformat' tab, and TURN EVERYTHING OFF. No smart quotes. No automatic lists. NOTHING." I like me some properly-sized em-dashes, but even they can turn on you if you have to use both Japanese and English in the same document and then have it read by computers with Japanese and English versions of Word.

Postrel focuses mostly on design that isn't utile, but I had a funny exchange with a friend last night about design that's just not good to look at. The fast food chain Lotteria has been changing the design of its outlets, and last night when a few friends and I came around a corner (in Jimbocho), I said, "I like the Lotteria redesign (though I could do without the 'straight burger' part)." One of my friends smirked and said, "No, honey, you don't necessarily like it. It's just the only building on the entire street that's not assaulting your eye with neon, blinking lights, a menu board written in every available color of dry-erase ink, various gew-gaws pasted to the facade, and some rotating thingamajig somewhere. Just stripping away the junk is enough to result in a Design Statement around here." Too true.

People can be very odd.

I got my hair cut yesterday. Exact same haircut as I've gotten every month for the past decade (including the gunking up of the finished product with styling wax, as if it were long enough to be disarranged even by a typhoon).

You'd think I'd gotten cosmetic surgery. "Wow! Something's different...you look great!" said one of the giggly, flirty girls behind the counter at Dean & Deluca. She was politic enough to add, "I mean, even better than usual. Refreshed." A less politic friend last night gushed, "Don't you look butch tonight!" Her "I mean, more than usual" wasn't forthcoming for a good thirty seconds and several further sips of beer. I'm not averse to compliments by any means, but is it too much to ask that they not be so time-specific and be delivered without hammy astonishment?

So Belinda Carlisle finally released that album of French pop songs she's been threatening to unleash on the world for a while now. A friend of mine was raving about it. Despite (because of?) being a committed Go-go's fan, I was cautious. We need a version of "La Vie en Rose" by Belinda? But I sprang for it, and it really is good. She clearly chose songs she'd come to be personally fond of, and she pours herself into them. Even if it's just a curio, the album's enough to make you forget some of the crap she's shoveled out over the course of her solo career. (Requisite bitchy comment: Belinda's brow lift makes her look like Marcia Cross.)

I wish Tracey Thorn's new album were less scattershot, but the single really is super-cool, even (I assume) if you don't remember the Yazoo songs it's produced to recall. And the video is the best I've seen in a few years. A friend e-mailed that I had to see it, and he was right: memorably interesting and actually pleasing to look at. The budget for every damned music video made by a pop diva in the last half-decade seems to have been spent on (1) making her up to look like Beyoncé, (2) dressing her up to look like Beyoncé, and (3) having her frolic in various outdoor settings (the desert! the beach! the rain forest! the savanna! the edge of the savanna at the exact moment that the process of desertification turns it into part of the Sahara!) like Beyoncé. Beyoncé is very good at what she does, and of course people imitate what sells. You can't fault them for that. But it's all gotten samey and dull. And cluttered.