Historical Note

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes

Tiresome-Old-Fart-Reflections Alert …

Younger people seem convinced that nothing as awful as what we’re currently enduring has ever been seen before. But the mood in the U.S. in the late ’70s (when I was a young adult) was every bit as doomy as the mood is these days. We’d left Vietnam with our tail between our legs; there’d been riots and assassinations; our cities had collapsed; our financial wizards had lost control of the currency (read up on the bewildering misery that was stagflation); the gas shock had made us aware of how reliant we were on mideasterners who didn’t have our best interests at heart; NYC had declared bankruptcy; a President had been drummed out of office … And the glossy optimism of the 1950s, when American prospects seemed sunny and unlimited, was still recent history. What a contrast the late ’70s were, and how quickly we’d turned a bad corner. It was an extremely depressing and upsetting time. There was a small industry in publishing articles and books on the general theme of “The U.S. is finito.”

For all I know we’re even worse off today than we were in 1979. Some important things are certainly different about our current situation, god knows. Seems to me (FWIW, of course) that the existence of the internet changes something fundamental. These days anyone who’s curious — and who has a connection to the web — can easily pull the curtains aside and observe the Wizard of Oz hard at work cranking all those levers. How could it not affect our prospects that we’re no longer as vulnerable to being fooled as we once were?

And for all I know the house of cards will indeed come down tomorrow, as many seem to expect. I’ve got the dwelling-on-the-possibility-of-doom gene myself. But my experience in living thru the mid/late ’70s has also left me open, if reluctantly, to the possibility that our nutty elites will figure out some way to stave off total collapse for a few more decades. They’ve done it before, so maybe they’ll do it again. Who really knows? It’s got to be admitted that, however evil they can be they’re also mighty clever …

Posted in Personal reflections, Politics and Economics | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

High Tide of the European Welfare State

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Epaminondas

epiminondas writes:

It seems that Holland is slowly transforming its welfare state.  For some years we’ve been hearing that demographic changes in Europe were rendering the current social models untenable.  The Dutch are now addressing this instability with a reform model that takes a very slow, but steady approach.

Posted in Politics and Economics | 2 Comments

Quote Du Jour

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

dennispotter

I don’t make the mistake that high culture mongers do of assuming that because people like cheap art, their feelings are cheap, too. When people say, ‘Oh, listen, they’re playing our song,’ they don’t mean, ‘Our song, this little cheap, tinkling syncopated piece of rubbish is what we felt when we met.’ What they’re saying is, ‘That song reminds me of the tremendous feeling we had when we met.’ Some of the songs I use are great anyway, but the cheaper songs are still in the direct line of descent from David’s Psalms. They’re saying, ‘Listen, the world isn’t quite like this, the world is better than this, there is love in it,’ ‘There’s you and me in it,’ or ‘The sun is shining in it.’ So-called dumb people, simple people, uneducated people, have as authentic and profound depth of feeling as the most educated on earth. And anyone who says different is a fascist.

— Dennis Potter

(H/T Sax von Stroheim)

Posted in Art, Music | Tagged | 5 Comments

Sounds of the Italian Crime Cinema

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Related

Posted in Movies, Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Village Du Jour

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

assisiAssisi, Italy

Related

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Difference between VRBO and AirBnB

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

The internet has made short term home rental a snap for both renters and hosts.   We live near Boston but have a second home in upstate NY.  And I recently took a job that requires me to be in New York City for several days a week, and I have a tiny place there.  So our housing costs are stretching us and we have started to rent out.

We thought about the relative advantages and disadvantages of VRBO, the leader in such rentals, and the newer, hipper alternative, AirBnB.  We opted to rent the upstate house on the staid and family oriented VRBO, and have not been disappointed.

Hello, We’re traveling to NY to visit family and are considering spending a few days near Fair Haven. Possibly heading to the Sterling Renaissance Festival and doing some fishing with the kids. According to VRBO, your home is available on the dates we are considering, but I was wondering… how is the water near your dock? I know there’s been a drought so I’m concerned that the water may be too low to actually fish from the dock. Also, how far is the dock from the house?

By contrast I use the ultra-trendy AirBnB to rent my micro-apartment in Brooklyn Heights, in an old mansion right on the Promendade overlooking Manhattan.  I list it as “weekends only” and even as “multiple weekends only” since NYC is cracking down on short term rentals when the host is not present, as is typically the case with AirBnB. 

I have been somewhat successful getting the pied-a-terre crowd to use it for longer periods over multiple weekends.  Still, the pictures of the Manhattan skyline on my listing have great appeal, and AirBnB’s reach is broad, so I am forever getting emails from the international set–Maria from Caracas, Bella from Prague, Simone from Provence–looking to rent for a few days or during the week when I am present.  A lot from single women, too, as it turns out.  But not all:

Hi Fenster, how are you?

Your home look great for me and one friend!  we are two young florist in paris and during our montreal’s holidays we come to NYC! 

i’m fall in love from brooklyn last summer and i would like find a place in williamsburg! 

you flat is it available between 06.29 and 07.02 ?

thanks
have a nice day
Jefferson&Simon

I wanted to write back:

Dear Jefferson&Simon, how are you?

I am old professor and will be for myself resting at my apartment there then there!  My futon will not fit comfortable a professor and two florists! Also, we are not williamsburg!

I typically get 1 or 2 of these requests a day on my iPhone, and summarily dispatch them with a “weekends only; read the ad asshole” note, more artfully put bien sûr.  But I didn’t really check out much about my correspondents in my haste to deny them access.

Then the other day I went back and looked at the actual correspondence logged in at the AirBnB site, which includes the photos of the folks writing in. Below is a collage of a number of inquirers from Brazil, Russia, France, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, Germany and other locales.

Used to be women thought it risky to travel alone.  Now with the provocative photos!

fb

[Dear Simone/Graciela/Majorie/Dawn, et. al., how are you?

Zoot Alors, my place while yes small is very very nice!  And so available! Do you mind sharing if I cut price?]

Posted in The Good Life, Travel | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Juxtaposin’: Starlets

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Katy Perry EW 1

1Diabolic - Gangbang Auditions 18

Posted in Books Publishing and Writing, Commercial art, Music, Performers, Sex | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Quote Du Jour

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

adamsmith

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

— Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

(H/T Sir Barken Hyena)

Posted in Politics and Economics | Tagged | 1 Comment

Oslo City Hall Under a Clear Blue Sky…

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Atypical Neurotic

Atypical Neurotic writes:

Image

Begun in 1931 and completed in 1950, Oslo City Hall is an entertaining blend of Functionalism and Arts and Crafts.

Posted in Architecture, Photography | Tagged , | Leave a comment

“Women’s Movies”

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

Sax wrote recently about his search for a good women’s picture.  Now, I am a charter member of a 25+ year old group that calls itself Men’s Movie Night, a shifting group of guys devoted to watching, mostly, action flicks.  I trot these creds out, in this Era of Game, to quite obviously cover my backside from charges that I’ve gone soft, since I do happen to know about, and to like, the kind of movie Sax is looking for.

Well, sort of anyway.  It does seem tough to find Sirk equivalents–“weepies” and “melodramas”.  The odd tribute flick like Far From Heaven reminds us how difficult it can be do update a genre too literally, especially with respect to an issue like gender, which is part of a permanent polarity but which is also quite plastic.

History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.   So I think Sax might have to undertake a rhyming exercise of sorts to find what he seeks: films that are “stylish and smart without  skimping on the sentimentality.”

Here are a few on my list:

Men Don’t Leave.  Jessica Lange’s happy middle-class existence crashes and burns after the unexpected death of her husband.  She is forced to start over with her kids, downscale in Baltimore.  Weepie?  This one qualifies.  The last scene has had me in tears each time I have seen it, and I have seen it any number of times.

Living Out Loud.  Holly Hunter finds herself for a different reason than Lange out on her own.  Can she put the pieces together?

House of Sand and Fog.  Jennifer Connelly also finds herself on her own.  Can she put the pieces together? (Note a theme here: this is one of the ways women’s pictures have needed to change, by looking to reconcile emotion and the need for connection with the double-edged sword of independence.)

Further afield from melodrama but other movies with an appeal to the feminine side: Sliding Doors, Enchanted, Junebug, Away We Go, the bitter but gendered Notes on a Scandal, the action-tinged but curiously distaff-in-sensibility Children of Men, and all the films of Nicole Holofcener.

Then there’s Robin and Marian.  Richard Lester’s film has always struck me as a near-perfect balance between male and female sensibilities.  Connery and Hepburn.  Sword fights and romance.  For me, a kind of bliss, and always tears at the end when the arrow goes flying out the window.

Posted in Movies | 2 Comments