low culture

Speaking of six months ago, Dateline has an interview with Elizabeth Smart tonight at 10PM EST on NBC.
Man, is she ever purdy or what? I mean, this kid’s been through hell and come face-to-face (and worse!) with the devil himself and yet she still radiates that wholesome all-American, girl next door glow. Attention editors of Cosmo Girl!, Seventeen and Teen Vogue (or at least the editor of the next Revolve): Put down your chai skim lattes, pick up the phone and get this girl on the cover of your magazine post haste. (Katie Couric, optional.)

Prior to this week, I had always (naively, I suppose) thought the world of architectural criticism was filled with wild arguments between opposing camps of urban theory and clashes between supporters of different eras of architectural history. I salaciously imagined elderly geezers hurling wine goblets at one another as they verbally tore apart Frank Lloyd Wright‘s famed wooded house in Pennsylvania, or young M.A.-thesis-seeking neo-hipsters engulfing themselves in smoke and intellectual detritus as they bitterly debated the detriments and merits of Calatrava‘s bridges.
I was so, so wrong. Apparently, architectural critics can be in agreement, and about uber-post-post-postmodernist Frank Gehry, no less (who burst into the cultural limelight with his somewhat psychotic, but ever-so-fluid Guggenheim Bilbao museum). Everyone, from the San Francisco Chronicle to Slate to the New York Times to, well, the somewhat predictable cheers of the Los Angeles Times, is damned-near raving about this thing: its innovative acoustics, its stately presence, its compelling framing of Los Angeles’ downtown.
“A Wonder of Sound and Magic,” proclaims L.A.’s local paper. “Exuberant” and “a triumph,” coos Slate. “Shimmering” and “undulating,” proffers the Times’ Bernie Weinraub. A “grand pirouette of swooping stainless steel facades and billowing curves,” ejaculates the Chronicle in San Francisco.
And even I think I love it, and I’ve always tried so very hard to be contrarian. Please, someone, help me out and verbally rip this metallic masterpiece apart; shred its bold reinvention of concert-hall acoustics, excoriate its majestic manifestation of sound and space. Pleeeeeeease. Pretend we’re discussing Richard Meier’s ghastly marble Getty Center in Brentwood, if you must — just let the decimation begin!
(Past discussions on blurbs from low culture)

New Spy Gear Aims to Thwart Attacks in Iraq by Eric Schmitt… “Yellow Submarine” by The Beatles
UPDATE: Talk about topicality! Yellow Submarine for the super-rich. (Sorry merely rich and filthy rich: this one’s for the super-rich.)

Today’s journalism lesson from The New York Post: How to write an obituary entirely from the Internet Movie Database.
From ’70s TV star ‘Rerun’ dies by Michael Starr
Berry, known for wearing colorful red suspenders and a jaunty red cap, was also known for his TV catchphrase “Hey, hey, hey!” which he shouted whenever he encountered his buddies on “What’s Happening!!” which ran on ABC from 1976-79.
From Biography for Fred Berry from IMDb
Continually wears a red beret as his character did in “Whats Happening”
Post:
Berry, who recently had a cameo in David Spade’s big-screen comedy “Dickie Roberts”
imdb:
Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star(2003) …. Himself
… aka Dickie Roberts: (Former) Child Star (2003)
Post:
After being canceled, the show returned six years later as “What’s Happening Now!!” for a short-lived run with most of the original cast, including Berry.
imdb:
“What’s Happening Now!” (1985) TV Series …. Freddie Stubbs (segment “Rerun”) (1985-1986)
“What’s Happening!!” (1976) TV Series …. Fred ‘Rerun’ Stubbs
Post:
Berry, who was married six times to four different women (he married two women twice), battled a severe drug problem in the 1980s and, in 1990, was diagnosed with diabetes.
imdb:
In 1990, when diagnosed by doctors with diabetes, he was told he had to lose weight or his life would be shortened. After placing himself on a strict regiment, he lost 108 pounds and 18 inches off his waist.
Has been married 6 times to four women. He married two women twice.
Post:
Berry later became a Baptist minister.
imdb:
A Baptist minister.
Earlier journalism lessons from low culture.

Just got my hands on a copy of MTV’s Spankin’ New, the new MTV Magazine. It’s just like Pulse, the free magazine Tower Records used to give out (some overlapping writers, too). Only I had to pay $5.95 for SN. Talk about value-added!

Everyone and their mother has been heaping shit on Gregg Easterbrook for his now infamous Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and the Jews blog entry. Frankly, I’m bored with this whole thing (so bored, I’m not bothering to link to Easterbrook’s original essay, his apology, or any of the excellent commentary out there on sites like Radosh and The Antic Muse or to The New York Times article), but all this talk of Gregg writing faster than he thinks, not arranging his thoughts well, etc. reminded me of something Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Confessions way back in the early, early days of blogs in 1782:
When I write, my ideas are arranged with the utmost difficulty. They glance on my imagination and ferment till they discompose, heat, and bring on a palpitation; during this state of agitation, I see nothing properly, cannot write a single word, and must wait till it is over. Insensibly the agitation subsides, the chaos acquires form, and each circumstance takes its proper place. Have you never seen an opera in Italy? where during the change of scene everything is in confusion, the decorations are intermingled, and any one would suppose that all would be overthrown; yet by little and little, everything is arranged, nothing appears wanting, and we feel surprised to see the tumult succeeded by the most delightful spectacle. This is a resemblance of what passes in my brain when I attempt to write; had I always waited till that confusion was past, and then pointed, in their natural beauties, the objects that had presented themselves, few authors would have surpassed me.
So, if Gregg had only waited for his thoughts to form properly (and cleaned the pipes regularly like Spanky Rousseau), he might not be in all this trouble now.

For some reason, Yahoo felt the need to post 64 images of Scarlett Johansson today.
If you’re a man, comfort yourself with the fact that Scarlett told The Times recently: “Men have no aid to tell them that they’re getting older. They just see their bodies decaying. A young, fertile, fruitful woman can help you across that bridge.”
If you’re a woman, try not to hate her for saying, “For older women, death happens inside. What comes with that death is a kind of liberation.”
Scarlett Johansson will turn 19 on November 22.