Dorf on Stage

Nobel Prize winning Italian playwright Dario Fo as Silvio Berlusconi in The Two-Headed Anomaly.

Tim Conway is Dorf on Golf.

The Search is On!

Brooklyn boy done good, Patrick J. Fitzgerald has been named special counsel, heading up the investigation into who leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame to the press.

Fitgerald was actually Attorney General John Ashcroft's second choice after former All-American (and Heisman trophy winner) O.J. Simpson. Simpson declined the role to continue the search for his wife's real killer.

Simpson and Fitzgerald are both scheduled to complete their inquiries two months from never.

The City of New York: So Mean

"That would be mean to all the people who live there. It'd be right in front of their windows. They paid a lot of money for those apartments."
—Betty Sherrill, resident and former president of the co-op board of 1 Sutton Place speaking out against the planned expansion of F.D.R. into her building's backyard.

In Sutton Place's Backyard, Private Oasis on Public Land, by Charles V. Bagli

Richerspooner

I've decided that my blog-related New Year's resolution for 2004 is to pander a lot. You wanna see it? I'll do my best to write about it.

So, I'm getting a jump start by appeasing the person—or persons—who continually (think: weekly) types Rich Girls "star" Jaime Gleicher's name through our search field. We've never written about Rich Girls, so that search always came up blank. Well, anonymous Jaime fan, Happy New Year!

Rich Girls ended its first season last night on MTV. Much critical ink has been spilled about the show, but to my knowledge, no one has yet to compare it to Silver Spoons, the NBC sitcom that ran from 1982 to 1986. In addition to showcasing the comedic talents of Ricky Shroder, the dance skills of Alfonso Ribiero, and the unclassifiable brilliance of one Corky Pigeon, Spoons also gave its viewers TV's most realistic glimpse into the lives of the young and impossibly wealthy. Make that TV's formerly most realistic glimpse.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of Rich Girls and Silver Spoons: any similarities to actual rich persons or events is purely coincidental.

A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Magazines

"Men are bad at [threesomes] because they’re too macho to deal."— Vice Magazine, vol. 10, no. 11, page 84.

"You know what I’d like the Nature Channel to do a special on? The extinction of machismo. It seems like my whole fucking generation is a bunch of faggots and it bums me out. And I’m not even talking about the 'Chuck and Buck, suck and fuck,' take-it-in-the-ass type of faggot. Through therapy and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy I’ve learned to tolerate those dudes. My problem is the fashion-victim art fags in the clever hats and too-tight T-shirts and corduroys that think because they dress like a pansy and paint or take out-of-focus photographs they are beyond getting their teeth knocked down their throat."— ibid., page 95.

Lists, 2003: The Year in Left-wing Conspiracy Theories

In last week's year-end "lists" issue of the LA Weekly, Joshuah Bearman put forth a wonderful compendium of "Real Names of Classified Concepts in the Military Planning Document 'Air Force 2025'”. The list is disturbing, to say the least, in that it's really, really hard to pinpoint whether or not this list is satirical in scope or merely an illustration of some of the foolish ways in which our tax dollars are spent.

For instance, is the catalog number for military research into these destructive projects really limited to a six-digit range? One would have thought that former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney alone could have brought at least 100,000 ideas to the table when his administration took office. Anyway, here's Bearman's list, included below in its entirety:

No. 900481: Destructo Swarmbots

No. 200015: Distortion Field Projector

No. 200023: Surveillance Swarm

No. 900258: Oxygen Sucker

No. 900299: Hunter-Killer Attack Platform

No. 900336: Cloaking

No. 900364: Bionic Eye

No. 900522: Space-Based A.I.-Driven Intelligence Master Mind System

No. 900288: Swarms of Micro-Machines

And INCAPACATTACK: The Strings of the Puppet Master

We here at low culture think the editors of AlterNet, that wacky left-wing "news and opinion" site, have missed a golden opportunity here to follow up on Bearman's piece above and spew forth some wild, ill-researched conspiracy theories on this past weekend's devastating Iranian earthquake.

Included forthwith, "Classified, but Extant, Weapons for Eliminating Axis-of-Evil Nations":

1. No-fault WMD Insurance
2. The Flatline
3. Detonatron 2000
4. Andre 3000 ("shake it like a Polaroid picture")

The Good L Word

I'll be the first one to admit that we here at low culture often take potshots at marketing, PR, and advertising executives. I mean, it's so easy when they throw so much shit at us hoping something—anything—will stick.

Well, for once, I wanna compliment one of these unsung wordsmiths for a job well done. I just saw a poster for premium cable also-ran Showtime's newest series, The L Word and found it surprisingly, pleasingly clever. "Same Sex. Different City," the ad says, above the sort of airbrushed promotional photo we've come to expect from ads for everything from TV programs to perfumes to clothing lines. I was impressed by how deft the copy was, how effortlessly it compressed so many ideas. I genuinely thought it was well done.

I can't say anything about the show itself, which stars the once phenomenally hot Pam Grier who's gone on to become something of a hip directors' shorthand for "badass older chick." It also features Mia Kirshner, who was decent in Atom Egoyan's Exotica, but seems to have been overlooked in favor her more talented A-list doppelganger, Jennifer Connelly. Anyway, I don't get Showtime, so I'll have to take your word for whether or not this show is even watchable.

I actually had the channel for a short time when Time Warner Cable was making amends for leaving me in the dark for over a week and I didn't see much worth my money. I did, however, manage to watch the entire first season of Out of Order back-to-back in a fit of Huffmania. (To belabor the puns, I found it rather Stolzifying.) I wasn't too impressed with the series' tone of self-seriousness cut with self-awareness: it was just too knowing for me to care about, too melodramatic for me to laugh with. Also, I found the way Donna and Wayne Powers bit the hand that fed them by mocking F. Gary Gray and his hacky Italian Job annoying: if you guys were too good to (re-)write such a shitty script, you should've skipped the assignment—if you sold out big time to do it, just keep it to yourselves. (According to this week's Times, Out of Order was not renewed.)

The L Word premieres January 18th. Reviews TK...

3,000 Americans did not die this weekend

I've been in Los Angeles, away from any form of regular internet access, for a little more than a week now, but, I swear...didn't I hear something about roughly 25,000 Iranian people dying this weekend? I mean, I couldn't have imagined that, right?

Based on an assessment of the major dailies' headlines and a perusal of the cable news networks' coverage, reporting on this natural disaster seems to have nearly dried up. With only a handful of exceptions, there's been no indefatigable documentation of scores of volunteers sifting through the rubble, trying to locate loved ones and instead turning up dead bodies. Does anyone know the Farsi word for "telegenic"?

Earlier this weekend, however (when not watching the "People on CNN" coverage of Nicole Kidman's resilience in the face of divorce), I may have seen a snippet or two regarding "thousands dead in Iranian quake" and then some closing commentary about President Bush's willingness to send humanitarian aid–despite that nation's being on "the axis of evil," as the commentators consistently reminded viewers when fleetingly discussing the massive amounts of deaths.

I guess I missed the correlation there. It couldn't possibly be as base and simplistic a matter as "we Americans are helping those whom we have unilaterally declared to be our enemies," right? And it most certainly couldn't have been some second-tier implication of "they deserved it"?

We all ought to be thankful that this was an act of God and not the work of evil-doers, and that Iran isn't under the sway of any sort of Christian sense of vengeance, lest we should see Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the democratically elected, though effectively useless, President Mohammad Khatami declare an endless "War on Seismology".

Look out, faultlines.

'Lows' blows

If I could imagine the banter around The New York Times Culture Desk water-cooler, it would probably sound a lot like the little year-end roundup conversations included in this weekend's 'Arts & Leisure' The Highs (and Lows) of 2003 package.

Great, relaxed, off-the-cuff discussion on "The Lows" from Elvis Mitchell, A.O. Scott, and Stephen Holden on the film front. I much prefer this sort of approach to the obligatory year-end wrap-up to the more drawn out, rather blog-ish approach of The Village Voice's Take 5 critics' poll or the ho-hum "best of" list found in nearly every magazine you can imagine. Here, for example, is a glimpse into the private life of a full-time film critic and father from Scott:

[I]t's a terrible thing, I think, to have a film critic for a dad. My son—like some of our readers—didn't trust me when I told him Cat in the Hat was no good. I was with another critic, who tried to explain to his daughter why it was a bad movie. She just burst into tears, as if he'd taken away one of her toys.

I also appreciated the fact that they all respected the Zooey Deschanel restraining order.

As much as I enjoyed "The Lows," I have one complaint: stop the Larry Doyle bashing.

Doyle, a former Simpsons writer and New York Magazine editor (full disclosure: I freelanced for Larry at New York), and now the screenwriter behind Duplex and Looney Tunes: Back in Action comes in for a double ass-whupping from The Times triumvirate.

Here's Holden on Looney Tunes: "...a completely incomprehensible, chaotic mess. It's just allusions to other movies, with no story line, no humor... It made me angry... Because I felt insulted. There are no jokes, no real humor. It mixes human characters with the animated ones and the humans take up much too much of the time. When Bugs Bunny's on, he's always surefire. But he's not on that much." (Scott comes to Tunes' defense, saying, "... I think it's some of Daffy Duck's best work. I just think the idea of Daffy being escorted from the Warner Brothers lot, fired and stripped of his name, which is the intellectual property of Warner Brothers, is a pretty funny joke.")

And here's Scott and Mitchell cutting Duplex down a story:

SCOTT... Another that I seem to have been alone in liking was Duplex, from Danny DeVito.

MITCHELL Yes, you are alone in liking it.

SCOTT It struck me that both of those movies had a little mean streak that may have turned audiences off.

I feel for Larry Doyle, because he was basically doomed with both those projects. As soon as he had the idea to redo the classic Looney Tunes, he was thrust into the AOL/Time Warner marketing juggernaut, practically required to write in product placements, conceive tie-ins, and play nice with competing license holders. For a movie like that, the company doesn't even need the services of a writer, it wants a marketing guru, someone who can come to the table with a fast food tie-in, action figure plan, and internet play, not a boring old screenplay with, like, a plot. (Here's The New York Observer on Tunes' behind the scenes lunacy.)

But if that situation was a pain in the ass, it was probably nothing compared to working on Duplex, trapped as he was between two stars' production companies: Red Hour Films, overseen by Ben Stiller, who considers himself something a comedy auteur, and Flower Films, headed by Drew Barrymore, a one-woman franchise, the only actress/producer under 30 with an international blockbuster on her resume. With two huge stars like that vying for screen time and pushing for their own types of jokes and statements, a writer could be nothing more than a transcriber, taking notes from two 800 lb. gorillas.

How could any of Doyle's joke survive the needs of those two star/producers? Throw in the firing of the film's original director, Greg Mottola and the hiring of Danny DeVito, whose recent directorial record is spotty at best, and the fact that Miramax has never quite figured out how to do a comedy (Battle of Shaker Heights, anyone? Kate & Leopold? Um, 40 Days and 40 Nights? Don't make me go on...), Duplex, again, was doomed from the start.

The screenwriter is always the fall guy when the movie goes wrong. But I'm not worried about Doyle. He's currently producing a series of Looney Tunes shorts with amusing names like Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas and Duck Dodgers in Attack of the Drones. We'll be seeing them sometime next year. And I'm sure he's got some other stuff in the works: I just hope he can wrestle control of the projects and fend off his producers the next time around. Maybe then he'll get some more respect from Mitchell, Holden, and Scott.

Finally, a state emergency befitting a former action star

via Reuters: California Town Digs Out After Powerful Quake

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency on Tuesday for the central California county hardest hit by the state's strongest earthquake in four years, freeing up disaster aid for education healthcare reconstruction."

(Some liberties may have been taken with Reuters' original wording above.)

The Notorious S.N.L., Ready to D.I.Y.

My good friends, Derek and Lauren, just gave me an amazing video for the non-denominational gift giving season (okay, Chanukah.) The tape—which was quaintly duped onto a commercially-available VHS tape and packaged in the original TDK E-HG cardboard box—came directly from its producer, director, and star, Sidney N. Laverents.

Never heard of him? Me neither. But I wish I had sooner, since his homemade shorts are incredible. This multitalented filmmaker makes jacks-of-all-trades (and credit hogs) like Robert Rodriguez and Steven Soderbergh seem like lazy bums. According to the Egg segment on him, Sid lives in San Diego and is 94 years old. He's been conceiving, shooting, and editing his unique independent films for decades. (A fuller bio can be found here.)

His most famous film, Multiple SIDosis (1970), is listed in the National Film Registry. SIDosis is a clever, winking visualization of an eight track recording, with every track—guitar, banjo, vocals, etc.—played by Sid himself. Try getting the song out of your head after watching it; trying watching it only once. It Sudses, and Sudses, and Sudses (1963) is a surreal domestic fantasia, like a dream sequence on The Simpsons as directed by David Lynch. (It fits nicely with Martin Scorsese's 1967 short The Big Shave in the tiny 'shaving disasters' genre.) The Butterfly with Four Birthdays (1965) and Snails—and How They Walk (1964) are impressively-researched, wonderfully-shot mini-nature films made in Laverents' own backyard.

All the films have an intimate, handmade quality and a sense of humor that defies any ironic reading of them as "cheesy" or "schlocky." You can see the patience Sid—and his wife Adelaide—put into these projects, the pleasure of scoring and editing them, of designing credits with construction paper and glue. Also, the films are a window into a uniquely mid-century American sensibility, an awe and curiosity about one's surroundings, even if those surroundings are cookie cutter houses in a Levittown. Like Lynch, Laverents sees mystery, danger, awe, and profound strangeness just beneath the surface of even the most seemingly boring locations. Some of the up-close photography of insects acting out their microscopic dramas literally beneath our feet calls mind the shocking opening of Blue Velvet, where suburban idle gives way to naked Darwinism in a few quick edits.

Maybe it's the music, or the light-touch narration, but these shorts remind me of Disney's The Living Desert or other educational films from the 50s. Of course, Sid's approach to nature is very different from Walt's: take the scene in Snails where he attaches a miniature dump truck to a snail's shell and makes the little sucker tow four sticks of butter. (You have to see it to really appreciate it.)

Probably the weirdest film, by far, is Heidi (1977), a look at a dog's life—told by the dog herself. Heidi, a Long-haired Dachshund, speaks with a deep manly voice about her favorite toys (socks), and the simple pleasures of taking a nap. We also witness Heidi's singing voice, which I can say for sure, would make a dog howl.

Mr. Laverents' opus, though, is The Sid Saga (1985-2003), which I have yet to see. The story of his life told in film and video, the four part film is 106-minutes and features, sadly, the death of his Adelaide in 1989. Sid claims it's done, but he plans to live to 100, so let's hope this American original manages to shoot and edit together a 5th segment. Skip Paycheck and that second viewing of Lord of the Rings this holiday and treat yourself to a Sid Laverents video.

Sidebar: Since I'm on the whole D.I.Y. thing, I wanna plug an album I've been enjoying a lot lately: The Bourbons House Party: Rockin' Sounds From Boston's South Shore 1964-'66. Recorded at fraternity parties, weenie roasts, and house parties 40 years ago, the low-fi sound makes Cody Chestnutt's Headphone Masterpiece sound like yet another Neptunes clone. Most of the musicians on House Party are just regular guys who probably learned to play guitar to meet chicks and have fun. I imagine most of them are now accountants and high school math teachers somewhere in America, completely unaware of the fact that their songs are out there on CD and iPods of people not even born when they did their cover of "I Fought the Law." Check out the samples and listen to a simpler time.

Luck be a Ladykillers

Harry Knowles and his fellow movie freaks over at Ain't It Cool News link to the trailer for the Coen Brothers' latest, a remake of The Ladykillers. (The 1955 version was directed by Alexander Mackendrick, probably best known for The Sweet Smell of Success, a film that should be required viewing for all media and gossip bloggers.)

It looks amusing, more in keeping with their 'impossible caper' flicks than their recent foray into Brian Grazer country, Intolerable Cruelty. (I can think of one thing right about that title.) It looks like it has the broad slapstick of Raising Arizona, but it also appears to have that film's late period Fellini-ish love of laughing at odd looking people. Which is sad, since the Coen's have moved on from that with beautifully-shot period pieces like The Man Who Wasn't There, creepy 'comedies' like Fargo, and groovy hodgepodges like The Big Lebowski. (The latter of which, scene-for-scene, is still one of the best movies of the last decade and even more relevant since the capture of Saddam Hussein.)

Sure, O, Brother, Where Art Thou? had its share of mugging and hillbilly teeth jokes, but shot, as it was, to look like a sepia-toned screen gem, you kinda accepted the insensitivity of its humor as part of its period charm.

It looks like the cast of Ladykillers had a ball. Tom Hanks looks more at ease in a comedy than he's been since, maybe, Splash. Marlon Wayans (who appears to have brought his same hairstyle and facial gestures from Scary Movie 1 and 2) looks funny. The character names alone make it worth the price of admission: Hanks plays a charming scoundrel named Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr (!) and Wayans is (Sir?) Gawain McSam (!!). I just hope the racial and cultural stereotypes featured prominently in the trailer aren't as unbearable in the film: no one wants to see the Coens do Big Momma's House.

So, I'm crossing my fingers for the best, and holding my breath until March 26.

Bentsen; Hollings; Tsongas; Dean

Not since Homer Simpson showed off his Starland Vocal Band tattoo have I seen such impetuous inking as this Howard Dean tattoo. C'mon, man: the guy doesn't even have the nomination yet—and he may never get it—yet you'll have that tattoo for life. Try explaining how Dean seized the anti-war in Iraq fervor and the internet to your grandkids: "What's a Iraq?" "What's a Internet?" they'll ask from their robot overlords-issued hovering oxygen-chamber/multi-media jungle gym Orgone accumulators.

It reminds me of this old Norman Rockwell image, "Tattoo Artist (Only Skin Deep)", that depicts a sailor getting his sweetheart's name tattooed on his bicep just below the crossed-out names of several old sweethearts.

Here are some links about tattoo removal:
How Stuff Works: Tattoo Removal
BBC Health
Patient Info


[Link via Boing Boing]

Ripped from the Headline (to the right of this entry)!

From Done Deal:

Title: Untitled Washington-Williams and Thurmond Story
Log line: A reporter goes on 25-year quest to prove that a woman is the daughter of Senator Strom Thurmond and a young black housekeeper who worked in the Thurman family home. The housekeeper was sixteen and Strom was twenty two when the young woman became pregnant. The senator financially supported the young woman but hid that he was her father.
Writer: Horton Foote
Agent: n/a
Buyer: Peter Newman and Greg Johnson
Price: n/a
Genre: Drama
Logged: 12/19/03
More: Optioned life rights from Washington Post reporter Marilyn Thompson who broke her story. Also, the producers optioned the rights to the book Ol' Strom: An Unauthorized Biography of Strom Thurmond written by Thompson and Jack Bass. Peter Newman and Greg Johnson to produce. Newman and Johnson are hoping to gain the rights of Essie Mae Washington-Williams as well. Thompson was repped by Gail Ross Literary Agency. Jack Bass was repped by Goldfarb & Associates.

Duck!

President Bush at the Wright Brothers National Memorial (bottom); Cary Grant in North by Northwest (top)

Is "This Woman" the new "you people"?

From Thurmond Family Struggles With Difficult Truth, by Jeffrey Gettleman (The New York Times, Dec. 20, 2003):

"It's been really hard this week... You have to turn on the TV and there are jokes about him and you're still grieving. I just hope this woman is coming out for the right reasons."— Robyn Bishop, 25, Strom Thurmond's great-niece.

"The man's dead, and he can't speak for himself... I don't know why this lady is doing this."— James Bishop, 59, Thurmond's nephew.

Um, try callling her "Aunt Essie." It may make everyone feel better.

Sidebars: 1. "I went to a church meeting the other day and all these people came up to me and you could tell they didn't know what to say...For the first time in my life, I felt shame."— Mary T. Thompkins Freeman, Thurmond's niece. She didn't feel shame when he filibustered for 24 hours against civil rights?
2. "Mr. Thurmond Jr., known as Lil' Strom and Stromboli..." Stromboli!

Christmas in (Next) October

Last week, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright set off a tempest in a FOX News greenroom by suggesting that the Bush administration may have already captured Osama bin Laden and will reveal him as an "October surprise" to help win the 2004 Presidential election.

Albright quickly recanted, saying that she was being "tongue-in-cheek" (no doubt griping that no one ever gets her jokes!). But in an exclusive interview with low culture, Madame Secretary told us about several other things the Bush administration are strategically holding back in order to bolster George Bush's chances next year:

1. 2 Million jobs—good ones.
2. Higher minimum wage.
3. Enough Inverted Jennys for every American.
4. New Tupac album.
5. Freaks and Geeks DVD with extras.
6. New bikes for everyone who wants one.
7. Your remote control.
8. JFK assassination documents—the real ones.
9. Full frontal photos of Britney Spears.
10. The Bill of Rights.

It's been a great week for Americans, and, no, this has nothing to do with Saddam

This week, fans of rational and democratically-protected civil liberties had many reasons to rejoice (or at least, wait with bated breath until the inevitable appeals process begins) as federal courts issued three striking rejoinders to Big, Bad, and Powerful Interests–notably, King George and the RIAA.

Seriously, try smiling, just this once. Because, realistically, we all know it will be frown season again when November 2004 rolls around.

1. Court: Gitmo suspects need lawyers

In another legal setback for the Bush administration, a federal appeals court has concluded terrorist suspects held in secret U.S. custody on foreign soil deserve access to lawyers and the American legal system.

...The 9th Circuit [ruled that] "even in times of national emergency -- indeed, particularly in such times -- it is the obligation of the judicial branch to ensure the preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the executive branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike. ... We hold that no lawful policy or precedent supports such a counter-intuitive and undemocratic procedure."

2. Court Rules Bush Cannot Hold Padilla As "Enemy Combatant"

In New York, a divided court ruled that President Bush lacked the authority to indefinitely detain Jose Padilla - a U.S. citizen - simply by declaring him "an enemy combatant."

The majority of the three-judge panel ruled that while Congress might have the power to authorize the detention of an American, the president, acting on his own, did not. Padilla has been held in solitary confinement for 18 months without access to a lawyer or the courts. No charges have been filed against Padilla who is a US citizen born in Brooklyn.

3. Record Industry May Not Subpoena Online Providers

The recording industry cannot compel an Internet service provider to give up the names of customers who trade music online without judicial review, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled today.

The sharply worded ruling, which dismissed one industry argument by saying that it "borders on the silly," is a blow to the music companies in the online music wars. It overturns a decision in federal district court that favored the industry and ordered Verizon Communications to disclose the identity of a subscriber based on simple subpoenas submitted to a court clerk.

B.F.F. (Best Friends Forashortwhile)

While conventional wisdom encourages bitter veterans of failed relationships to dispose of incriminating love letters and other such mementos, Donald Rumsfeld sure has proven to be quite the obstinate paramour. Or maybe they just forgot to throw these letters in the big Republican fireplace?

Today's Washington Post runs a feature by Dana Priest examining newly-declassified (don't you loooove that shit?) documentation of the Reagan administration's stances on All Things Saddam, and, in particular, the efforts of special envoy Donald Rumsfeld, who supposedly experimented with Bilateralism in the '80s (hey--who didn't?).

When details of Rumsfeld's December trip came to light last year, the defense secretary told CNN that he had "cautioned" Saddam Hussein about the use of chemical weapons, an account that was at odds with the declassified State Department notes of his 90-minute meeting, which did not mention such a caution. Later, a Pentagon spokesman said Rumsfeld raised the issue not with Hussein, but with Aziz...Privately, however, the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush sold military goods to Iraq, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological agents, worked to stop the flow of weapons to Iran, and undertook discreet diplomatic initiatives, such as the two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, to improve relations with Hussein.

Additionally, the following romantic missives were gleaned from the oh-so-sexy National Security Archive at the George Washington University:

During the spring of 1984 the U.S. reconsidered policy for the sale of dual-use equipment to Iraq's nuclear program, and its "preliminary results favor[ed] expanding such trade to include Iraqi nuclear entities" [Document 57]. Several months later, a Defense Intelligence Agency analysis said that even after the war ended, Iraq was likely to "continue to develop its formidable conventional and chemical capability, and probably pursue nuclear weapons" [Document 58]. (Iraq is situated in a dangerous neighborhood, and Israel had stockpiled a large nuclear weapons arsenal without international censure. Nuclear nonproliferation was not a high priority of the Reagan administration - throughout the 1980s it downplayed Pakistan's nuclear program, though its intelligence indicated that a weapons capability was being pursued, in order to avert congressionally mandated sanctions. Sanctions would have impeded the administration's massive military assistance to Pakistan provided in return for its support of the mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.)

...Later in the month, the State Department briefed the press on its decision to strengthen controls on the export of chemical weapons precursors to Iran and Iraq, in response to intelligence and media reports that precursors supplied to Iraq originated in Western countries. When asked whether the U.S.'s conclusion that Iraq had used chemical weapons would have "any effect on U.S. recent initiatives to expand commercial relationships with Iraq across a broad range, and also a willingness to open diplomatic relations," the department's spokesperson said "No. I'm not aware of any change in our position. We're interested in being involved in a closer dialogue with Iraq" [Document 52].

Iran had submitted a draft resolution asking the U.N. to condemn Iraq's chemical weapons use. The U.S. delegate to the U.N. was instructed to lobby friendly delegations in order to obtain a general motion of "no decision" on the resolution. If this was not achievable, the U.S. delegate was to abstain on the issue. Iraq's ambassador met with the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, and asked for "restraint" in responding to the issue - as did the representatives of both France and Britain.

Sadly, none of the various cables and telegrams posted on the publicly available website archive contain any of the purportedly hand-lettered notebook scribblings, "Mr. Donald Hussein, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld Hussein, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld-Hussein..."

Although some of those blottings do recall cupid's arrows. Hope they're not poison-tipped, ba-dum!

Denby Damned

A friend writes: Radosh has some great fun at David Denby's expense over at his own site today. I'd like to add that based on the excerpt, Denby's forthcoming book American Sucker seems to be the saddest bit of self-exploitation of one's sex life by a New Yorker writer since Elizabeth Wurtzel welcomed us all to her Prozac Nation (population: 1). But then I remembered Lillian Ross' book, which I was sure was called Put It In Here, But Not Here: My Life with William Shawn and The New Yorker, which a visit to Amazon quickly corrected.

Earlier thoughts on David Denby from low culture.

New Kosher words

Piggybacking on Gawker's list of words for the New York Media Elite to drop from their vocabularies in 2004 ('Memo from Gawker's Ombudsman'), I'd like to add the following:

Henceforth, the term schadenfreude is to be replaced with sauerkraut, which, in addition to being easier to spell, means just about the same thing.
Irony is to be replaced with relish, which is a less ubiquitous word by far.
Similarly, Ubiquitous is to be replaced with mustard, for obvious reasons.
And finally, twee is to be replaced with katsup while erstwhile is to be replaced with ketchup.

We thank you in advance for your understanding and compliance.

I'm waiting for the paperback

This season's most covetable coffee table book/load-bearing portable wall, GOAT may be too expensive for most readers (and too big for most homes), but you can enjoy its beautifully-designed Flash-intensive Web site. Less a promotional site than a well-curated mini Ali museum, it's definitely worth a visit, if only for the spare, stirring intro. The excerpts and videos are great, too.

You don't have to be a boxing fan or one of Muhammad Ali's many intellectual courtiers to recognize that the man is a cultural and political icon, the likes of which we will never see again in our lifetimes. (Full Disclosure: I met Muhammad Ali at an airport when I was 6 years-old and still consider him among my best friends. I also wrote my thesis on him.)

Alas, I will not be buying the $3,000, 75-pound Taschen book. Not now; not ever. Man, that stings—like a bee, it does.

Unintentional Fresh Guy™ in the News

Professor Colin Pillinger (right), lead scientist for Britain's Beagle 2 Spacecraft Project, Fresh Guy™ supreme.

[Fresh Guy™ is the universally-recognized intellectual property of How Fresh Is This Guy? and its partners. Used in good faith without permission. Each day's a gift.]

S.O.D. Off

Since we here at low culture pride ourselves on being narrowly focused—as opposed to being interested in all of the cultural offerings presented at this time of year—we decided to do our year-end "best of" list all about one film, director Errol Morris' Fog of War.

Not ones to be pushed around by Harvey Weinstein and his freelance prestige-film army, we decided we'd let ourselves fall in lock step behind the producers of Fog of War (and the good people at The Week, who invited us to an advance screening of the documentary).

Best Unintentional Analogy to Current Events: Morris has said he initially began to rigorously pursue interviewing former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara after he released his semi-confessional book, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam," in the mid-1990s. In other words, well before obscure conceits such as "chads" and "Texas Rangers owner" and "staying the peace in Iraq" entered the mainstream lexicon. The 20 hours of on-camera interviews Morris eventually secured with McNamara took place after the events of September 11th, 2001, but up to and during the American invasion of Iraq, giving the resultant conversations about the unilateralist war in Vietnam a tone of eerie prescience. "In retrospect," indeed.

De-classified Oval Office recordings used in the film's coverage of early 1964 suggest, however, that contrary to those who tarred Vietnam solely as "McNamara's War," it was President Lyndon B. Johnson who, a handful of months after his predecessor's November 1963 assassination in Dallas, began pressuring his inherited Secretary of Defense to take a course of action in southeast Asia. Perhaps, 40 years from now, some enterprising filmmaker will release documentation asserting that McNamara's current counterpart, Donald Rumsfeld, reluctantly spent the past few years succumbing to his superiors' ill-advised wishes regarding the present-day "Middle East Makeover". Or perhaps not.

Best Presidential Indictment by way of De-Classified Archival Footage: Revelatory anecdotes such as those mentioned above come to light through the release of Kennedy and Johnson administration documents and tape recordings made up through 1965. And earlier in the film, when McNamara discusses his advisory role in the aerial bombardment of Japan in the second World War, the suggestion of sorrow we hear in his voice is visually punctuated by footage of bombs being dropped from B-series bombers (in cinematic terms, the wide angle shot) and the tragedies which resulted: footage of Japanese cities in flames, alongside descriptions of the 100,000 people who died in a single night as a result of these firebombs (the close-up).

You witness a single bomb being dropped from its bay, and then you wait, and wait, and wait, as the plane's camera records the bomber's flight above the earth below, and the descent of the bomb in question, and you wait some more as you eye the terrain which scrolls beneath you like an unfurled parchment, because you know at any moment, that bomb from a handful of seconds ago will hit the ground. And it will be terrible. And much like that parchment, Japan will burn. (Some brief samples of this footage can be seen on the film's website.)

Best Usage of Special Effects and 3D Software to Convey Mortality (and Morality): Prefacing these disturbing bombing sequences, McNamara relates his experiences serving as one of the chief architects for WWII's lethal bombardments, contextualizing the process as one of working within the confines of efficiency and proportionality. What is the value of one human death? How many people, innocent or otherwise, need to die to safely ensure that your side emerges victorious? If 100,000 people burn to death in one city, in one night, is this equivalent to annihilating the entire city of Cleveland? Nagasaki? Boston? Osaka? Los Angeles? Would we miss midtown New York if it were to be gone tomorrow?

In a very stirring illustration of the solemnity, and, perhaps, the cynicism of this sort of decision-making, Morris unveils a bomber's cargo bay looming far above the ground below. As its payload is dropped, we see not bombs, but numbers which hurl themselves upon the landscape: the calculus of death, if you will. If this sounds didactic, it is, but in the very best sense of that word's meaning.

Worst Usage of Cliche-Ridden "Tipping Dominoes" Analogy (Honorable Mention): This almost speaks for itself, but here's some clarification on the matter. Picture a map of southeast Asia sprawled across a horizontal plane. Then take note of the neatly aligned rows of dominoes standing tall above this map. Then witness someone topple the first few dominoes, while McNamara's archival voice speaks of consequences both intended and unintended, and the unpredictable nature of events, and watch those dominoes tumble and fall, before righting themselves again much later in the film as the same footage is played in reverse while McNamara narrates the events surrounding his "apology" for the war.

This last device noticeably stands out amidst the emotional resonance of the rest of the film, and almost comes off as very moving, but that's probably just the repercussions of Philip Glass's moody and reflective score.

We hope you enjoyed our 2003 "Best of" list! Check back next winter for our year-end thoughts on 2004's Jonathan Demme remake of The Manchurian Candidate.

Celebrity Worship

Having trouble deciding whether to go see Lord of the Rings: Return of the King or Mona Lisa Smile this weekend? If artist Luis Royo had his way, you could see both at the same time.

Royo is just one of the amazing artists in this gallery of celebrities re-imagined as fantasy/sci-fi heros. All the A-listers are here: George Clooney, Courtney Cox, Isabella Rossellini, and Will Smith all come in for the rippling pecs-swords-and-dragons-treatment.

It's pretty great. Of course, once Pat Kingsley gets wind of this, she'll probably complain that Jodie Foster, for example can be drawn from much more flattering angles.

My favorite? Steven Spielberg.

Agoraphobia

Ask any farmer what to do with a litter of kittens you don't want and he'll tell you to snuff 'em out right away. You can't be sentimental: you don't need all those mewling, hungry mouths around the barn, and you sure as hell don't want another generation of strays spraying up the place and picking fights.

The same can be said for Web sites: some are best put down in their first weeks. Take Agora Magazine, a downy newborn culture and politics magazine—not a blog, never call Agora a blog—so young, its eyes aren't even open yet.

But it's claws are already out and it's more than ready to scrap.

Started by Sam Munson the nephew of second generation neo-Con ne'er-do-well John "Norman's Son" Podhoretz, whose New York Post columns are the second funniest read in the paper after Garfield, Agora takes a cranky Nabokov quote at the top of its page as its mission statement:

Now I shall speak of evil as none has
Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;
Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;
Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;
Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,
Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks

It's all pretty much downhill from there.

Munson and his neonatal-Con pals (whom we're breathlessly told include contributors to Modern Bride, writers for forthcoming issues of Commentary, graduate students, and a "civil servant in our nation's capital") have already brought their Rightward-slanted views on topics like overexposed literary hatchet-man and novelist Dale Peck ("Peck's vision is just as blurry and sentimental as the cuddliest of NYT book reviewers..." You can also read about Peck on a thousand other Web sites since his Times Magazine profile.); Maureen Dowd ( "I think speak [sic.] for America when I say that the words 'Maureen Dowd is on vacation'... give me mixed feelings. I want Maureen to spend some time in the sun and relax, mind you, but I’m not sure I know what’s going on, what’s happening, without Maureen." Conservatives hate Dowd? No way!); the capture of Saddam Hussein ("We can only hope that he is not handed over to the Hague." Yes, send him to Texas.); and the perennial Web joke about Louis Farrakhan's Calypso-singing past ("Perhaps Louis Farrakhan has decided to follow in the footsteps of Cornel West and release another album.." Bank shot! Agora nailed Farrakhan and Cornel West!)

Do we need this? I mean, was the Web crying out for more Conservative culture vultures writing off the cuff? We've got the topper-most of the Conservative popper-most, David Brooks logging his ziggy-zaggy op-eds in The Times twice a week; there's the very model of the (cable) modem major Conservative, Matt Drudge; The Weekly Standard's Matt LaBash, is frequently amusing; there's National Review editorial mascot Jonah Goldberg who can occasionally be called on for a laugh; and for Conservatism with a side of fratboy-ish snark, the comments beside the links on Fark frequently make you laugh as you cringe. Forget what Ann Coulter, et. al. tell you: the Web is one medium that's nothing if not a G.O.P. "big tent" full of snickering, sarcastic boys in Dockers and Oxford shirts bullshitting over Sam Adamses.

Frankly, the whole fun-lovin' Republican thing only really works for Tom Wolfe, and to be honest, even his once impeccable shtick—along with his natty suits—is getting a little frayed around the edges.

But I guess this is inevitable. Every generation that duplicates its elders carries with it some generation loss. All Godfathers, it seems, beget profligate sons, and so too do razor-sharp chroniclers of Ex-Friends eventually give way to dull chroniclers of Friends.

It's enough to make you want to move to the Right and start writing, if only to make the grandpa-Cons forget about these nattering nabobs of the 'net and have something to be proud of when the annual family Christmas newsletter is sent out to Don and Joyce. But not this Christmas. Just tell 'em the nieces and nephews "live in the New York metro area and continue to write." That sounds pretty good, Right?

Jump the Skank

'SIX FEET' SNAGS AMERICAN BEAUTY

"Four years after she starred in American Beauty, Mena Suvari is back again with the film's Oscar-winning writer Alan Ball as the newest cast member on his HBO series, Six Feet Under."

Alan, look out—there's a shark! Good thing you jumped it. Phew.

"Hi, David? I'm calling to ask you to write about Saddam's capture, please."

Get Your War On

Wow, I was just saying Brett Ratner couldn't be more annoying. Boy, was I wrong!

Brett Ratner, Hollywood's "hyperactive, self-promoting no-talent" (per the geniuses at LA Innuendo) is getting serious. Seriously serious! Serious—to the max! Spielberg doing Schindler's List serious! Seriously.

The auteur behind the reportedly hilarious "Asian people talk funny/Black people love the dance" epics Rush Hour 1, 2, and 3 and the cynical stab at a "perennial" holiday favorite (annual Christmas-time broadcast=ka-ching!) The Family Man is set to direct something called Josiah's Canon. (Don't even get me started on Ratner's hubristic remake of Michael Mann's Manhunter.)

According to Done Deal, Josiah's Canon tells the jeering—I mean searing—tale of:

A Holocaust survivor [who] leads the world's foremost team of bank robbers. The criminal mastermind sets his sights on an supposedly impenetrable bank in Switzerland, which holds special appeal: It purportedly houses gelt deposited by Jews prior to the Holocaust.

Awesome! It's The Italian Job with Jews! Topkapi with yarmulkas! I can hear the film's big catch-phrase already: "Zai gezunt, motherfucker!"

Rat, might I recommend this guy for the lead? He's already done the Hasidic Jew thief thing.

The reviews are in: "stinks like rotten meat"—Langston Hughes

P. DIDDY'LL BE 'RAISIN' HELL ON BROADWAY THIS SPRING by Michael Reidel

"Rap mogul Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs will star in a revival of 'A Raisin in the Sun' this spring on Broadway, The Post has learned."

Weirdly, Jerry Blank will be co-starring as Mama.

Let's hope these plans will just dry up... or explode.

Finally, a confession of wrongdoing by an administration official

Or at least, an admission of sorts. Well, it's not really an "admission", so much as it as an acknowledgement. And, come to think of it, no one's "acknowledging" any sort of "wrongdoing", either, at least in such plain language. Furthermore, "administration official" is a pretty far-reaching term.

Ah, fuck it.

Regardless, here's today's sort-of-incriminating quote of the day, courtesy of the American ambassador to Afghanistan, as detailed in today's Chicago Tribune (reg. required):

U.S. officials promised Monday that Hussein's capture would re-energize the hunt for [Osama] bin Laden and his Al Qaeda associates and allies.

"Saddam is no longer a problem now, so bin Laden is the focus," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said.

Phew! Good thing we got that year-long, $166-billion distraction out of the way!

In case you were becoming excitedly optimistic about locating the actual al Qaeda leader behind the events of September 11th, 2001––which launched the war on terror, which (shouldn't have) led to the sojourn in Iraq, which expanded the war on terror to include new acts of terrorism in said sojourn––consider throwing some caution to those Afghanistan winds.

...There is no reason to believe U.S. forces are any closer to finding the Saudi exile than they were when he gave them the slip in the mountains of Tora Bora in 2001.

Since then, the rumor mill has put him in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kashmir and even China. He also has been reported to be dead, from kidney disease or injuries received in the intensive U.S. bombardment of Tora Bora.

Afghan and U.S. officials said they believe he most likely is roaming the frontier straddling the Afghan-Pakistani border, home to the fiercely independent-minded Pashtun tribe.

That's quite a lengthy list of real-world, non-analogous theories. Good thing the Tribune reporter left out the entirely scurrilous rumors about bin Laden's having died and being reborn as a glorious phoenix who soars above the mountains along the border of Kashmir, bedecked in golden armor and sporting silver arrows, squawking orders to his army of terrorist changelings as they sleep, and sometimes taking side trips to Baghdad, Tikrit and the West Bank. This phoenix embodies pure evil, it is said, and never rests.

He just takes occasional naps, much like the administration's war on terror.

The New Sunshine Boys

Paul Thomas Anderson and Lars von Trier fall in punch-drunk love as they interview each-other in the new issue of Black Book.

Here's an amusing excerpt (reproduced on Greg Mariotti's super-duper PTA fan site, Cigarettes & Coffee):

PTA: If Bush invited you to the White House, would you go?

LVT: It wouldn't make it easier for me to sit in a plane.

PTA: But we knock you out, give you a couple of pills, everything's over, we wheel you into the car.

LVT: I'm sure Bush has the power to bring me to the White House if he really wants to.

PTA: But if Bush called you and said, "I want you to come to the White House, talk to me about what you're saying," would you go?

LVT: Uh, no. [laughs] You?

PTA: Absolutely. I heard that Clinton loved Boogie Nights, and that really made me excited. It made me like him very much. And then they actually requested a print of Magnolia.

LVT: We sent Breaking the Waves, I think.

PTA: To the White House?

LVT: For Clinton, or his daughter, whatever. They just can't go down to a video store; it's just impossible--it's too far from the White House.

PTA: I don't know though. Clinton used to like to get out of the White House a lot. He would take night trips to McDonald's, and stuff like that. I think he wanted to get out of the house.

LVT: Compared to Bush, Clinton seemed like a good guy, right? He was playing saxophone.

PTA: He was playing saxophone, he was chasing pussy, I mean that's the kind of president you'd like.

Von Trier's Dogville opens in the U.S. on March 19th.

Even more of those amazing animals!

"Have you ever seen Ann Coulter in person? It's like seeing a rat. It's like, ewwww!" —Tina Fey, quoted by Page Six

Oh, those amazing animals!

"He was just caught like a rat." —Major General Odierno

"[D]uring the search a spider hole was detected..."—General Sanchez

"[F]or operational purposes these locations were identified as Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2."—ibid.

"Breakthrough Capped a Renewed Effort to Ferret Out Leads"—New York Times sub-head.

"[O]ne council member said was filled with 'rats and mice'..." —Ian Fisher

"On Saturday night, I stuffed myself on lamb chops and potato pancakes at a holiday party at the home of Don and Joyce Rumsfeld."—William Safire

"[I]f the pot broke or cracked, the guerrilla could be attacked by poisonous spiders or snakes..."—ibid.

Sidebar: I think I know someone who's happy about all these critters in the news today.

J.M. Coetzee Is Crazy

Just because you’ve won the Nobel Prize doesn’t mean you’re sane. In fact, it’s likely the opposite is true. But recent Nobel laureate J.M Coetzee outstrips even the typical idiosyncrasies we have come to expect from our literary geniuses.

Of course, there is Coetzee’s creepy author photograph – monastic jawline, tropically open collar, glazed expression. This is the most frightening silver fox I have ever seen. In personal detail, Coetzee is slippery, a quality that is politely referred to as academic reserve. The first two volumes of his memoirs, Boyhood and Youth are written in the third person. Coetzee delivered his Nobel lecture in the authorial voice of Robinson Crusoe. Take a look at his latest masterpiece, Elizabeth Costello. It’s exhibit A in any case against Coetzee’s tenuous relationship with reality.

But J.M Coetzee is not alone. In fact, he shares company with a wealth of crazed writers using the first initial “J.” Consider:

J.G. Ballard – Author of various perversions, cf.